marcher lord pcs

making tables in blogger sucks. but. here is a table of generating pcs for my marcher lords setting. i am trying to turn it into a small book that you will be able to buy for a cute amount of money

YOU WERE...
	FIGHTER	ROGUE	WIZARD	CLERIC
1	Raised by wolves. Speak their language, badly. Eat raw meat and bite your foes.	Raised by elves. Laugh at odd times. Know a few faerie sleights-of-hand.	Raised by birds. Insecure. Certain you could fly if you weren’t lazy.	Raised by hermit. Thought you were the only two people in the world until you were ten.
2	Street urchin. Hoard food. Bully the weak. Don’t let the big kids intimidate you.	Child beggar. So pathetic they look away. Pick every pocket you see.	Half-elf. Mother seduced, abandoned, passed it off as virgin birth. Weird eyes.	Abandoned on monastery steps. Raised by silent monks who punished you for noise.
3	Raised by poor farmers. Good with herd animals. Scared of reading.	Raised by tinkers. Good with tools. Get in trouble, move on to next town.	Raised by gypsies. Told the future until they made you stop for being too accurate.	Raised by secret pagans. As a youth, inducted into their vile worship. Saved by Christ, grateful.
4	Raised by blacksmiths. Patient. Burnt. Good eye for weakness in metal.	Raised by sailors. Good with knots. Hate the sea that’s in your blood.	Raised by woodsmen. Clumsy. Missing a finger where an axe turned in your grip.	Raised by shepherds. Compassionate. Think people can be herded. Play the pipes.
5	Raised by butchers. Good with cleaver, anatomy. Smell of blood is home.	Raised by weavers. Bad eyes, fine hands. Loathe detail and drudgery.	Raised by cobblers. Superstitious. Always set out milk for the elves.	Raised by millers. Hate corruption, more so when it robs people of food.
6	Raised in a pub. Alcoholic since childhood. Carry it well though.	Raised by tanners. Twitchy. No longer stink of piss but behave as if you do.	Raised by gong farmers. Fastidiously clean. Sure of noble destiny.	Raised by fishermen. Devise ways to trap converts with nets of argument.
7	Raised by soldiers. Scornful of feudal system but fanatically loyal to local lord.	Raised by castle servants. Sweet tooth, sticky fingers. Practice being friendly.	Raised by castle falconer. Sharp eyes. Look for omens in the clouds.	Raised by castle gardeners. Better with plants than people. Inconspicuous.
8	Raised by a knight. Never admit to the secret hatred of chivalry you nurture.	Heir to penniless baron. Jealous of other lords, disgusted by peasants.	Child of wealthy merchant. No interest in money. Greedy for knowledge.	Raised by a bard. Utterly humorless. Despise music. Think jokes are Satanic.
9	Lord’s youngest kid. Will inherit nothing. They tried to make you join the church.	Lord’s bastard. Defensive. Assumed to be evil by wife and true-born heirs.	Lord’s niece or nephew. Comfortably outside line of succession. Well liked.	Lord’s heir. Joined the church instead of inheriting, to your dad’s despair. Humble.
0	Taken by lord as ward to guarantee your family’s loyalty. Always homesick.	Prisoner’s child. Grew up in castle dungeons. Born in darkness, molded by it.	Kidnapped by witch as baby. Every night she said she’d eat you tomorrow.	Archbishop’s bastard. Bent on forcing the old prick to acknowledge you.

AND THEN...
1	Village watchman who slept through massacre. Insomniac. Hear clank of swords in every shadow.	Castle steward fired for embezzlement. Resentful. It was unfair of them to catch you.	Astrologer. See dreadful futures in the stars and feel obliged to prevent them, by destroying the sky.	Cheerful missionary. Everywhere you go you spread the love of Christ. Never let your optimism flag.
2	Former knight who broke a vow. Cynical by day, mourn lost life at night.	Romantic minstrel. Serenaded the wrong person, on the run from their spouse.	Pyromaniac. Set fires and leaves town. Only a matter of time before someone dies.	Kicked out of your monastery for doing weird sex stuff. Nobody can know.
3	Former squire who got their knight killed through ineptitude. Pretend to be upset.	Court jester who got sick of pies and dropping their pants. Can fart tunes. Won’t.	Fanatical atheist. Flatly refuse to acknowledge the reality of own magic.	Inquisitor. Empowered by the local lord to root out heretics. Sees elvish influence everywhere.
4	Sheriff who got chased out of town for finally catching populist bandit.	Populist bandit. Recruiting new men after the sheriff killed all the old ones.	Former apprentice. Mis-drew summoning circle, master eaten alive by demons.	Runaway novice. Believe in God but not the system. Die before going back.
5	Given a magic sword by a nymph who promised you’d be king one day.	Itinerant surgeon. Pull teeth, cut hair, set bones, apply leeches. Always in demand.	Hedge wizard. Just want to help. Hugely unlucky. Leaves in hair and beard.	Invented your own non-canonical saint. Other priests not happy about it.
6	Lord’s true-born heir, swapped at birth, gathering men to reclaim your title.	Itinerant torturer and executioner. No moral qualms at all - pain’s the essence of justice.	Owe a debt to an elf. Must do random tasks to pay them off. It’s probably harmless.	Former advisor to lord. Banished for telling them everything they didn’t want to hear.
7	Killed a dragon by accident, now feted as dragon-slayer everywhere. Expected to do it again.	Itinerant puppeteer. Can never resist the impulse to cruelly caricature local dignitaries.	Mind displaced in time. Refer to things that happen a hundred years ago or tomorrow.	Secretly worship the Devil. Sacrifice innocents at midnight black masses. Insist that it’s good, actually.
8	Bailiff. Tasked to hunt down debtors and bring them before the court, unless they pay you not to find them.	Happily married until elves stole your spouse. Take iron, find them. No-one believes they existed.	Fixate on the science of the nameless race. Dig in burial mounds, illegally uncovering their history.	Leper. Slowly rotting. Want to do one more good deed before you die. They don’t believe you’re not contagious.
9	Famous wrestler, much in demand at county fairs. Can’t turn down a dare or challenge.	Monk impersonator. Brown robe and smattering of Latin disguises you as a holy man, gets you alms.	Hunt your own reflection, animated by an evil mirror. It insists it’s real and you’re the fake.	Mendicant friar. Talk to animals. Give away money and property. Disliked by wealthy establishment.
0	Veteran of lord’s army. Brutally scarred. Got old, discharged without pension.	Elves drove you mad. Peasants assume your rantings are prophetic, feed and clothe you.	You’re a king of the goblins and they keep showing up in your life, asking for orders.	Hear God’s voice in your head. Try to ignore it. Fail. Fuck up your life by following his orders.

YOU HAVE..
1	Very stupid horse.	Very smart mule.	Talking pig.	Well-trained raven.
2	Very good dog.	Very evil cat.	Wise pet snail.	Caged, angry imp.
3	Implausibly heavy claymore of historical significance.	Needle-like misericorde, easily concealed.	Lightning wand with a 50% chance to explode in your hand.	Steel aspergillum, used to sprinkle holy water and crack heads.
4	Full suit of plate armour, rusted to shit, unwearable.	Chainmail shirt hidden beneath your normal clothes.	Book of ancient riddles and fables, suitable for children.	Statue of the Madonna that weeps milk in the presence of children.
5	Shield bearing a long-lost knight’s heraldic device.	Vial of clear, deadly, distinctive-smelling poison.	Lump of clay that moves and talks if shaped into a face.	Collection of dried and pressed herbs, suitable for cooking and medicine.
6	Enormous wheel of cheese, no more than a single bite out of it.	Forged deeds to a tavern in a town you’ve never visited.	Acorn that grows into an oak tree overnight if planted in holy soil.	Leatherbound Bible heavy enough to bludgeon a man to death.
7	Wide weatherproof cloak that doubles as a warm blanket.	Enchanted penny that always returns to you at daybreak.	Bottled cloud that anticipates the weather. Friendly.	Reliquary containing fragments of a saint’s skull. Deters plague.
8	Black oak walking stick, iron-banded, carved with spirals.	Dice made from ogre’s teeth. Always unlucky for the thrower.	Sheepskin belt. Turns you into a sheep. Only removed by shearing.	Long-lasting bannock bread and delicious sacramental wine.
9	Utterly comfortable elf-made boots that never wear out.	Grappling hook and 50’ of compressible spidersilk rope.	Dragonbone pipe carved into the shape of a goblin’s head.	Book of cryptic prophecies that only make sense in hindsight.
0	Hefty hand-cranked arbalest that takes thirty seconds to wind.	Map to the treasure hoard of a famous bandit, currently endungeoned.	Very tall floppy hat that other wizards envy. Embroidered with stars.	Golden, jewel-studded crucifix that no-one, surely, would dare to steal or sell.

rainbow monks

These are not the most famous of the rainbow monasteries. Not the most powerful, wise, or even sinful. They are good temples, for the most part, or at least useful. All of them are corrupt. Their corruptions share a common thread: each vice is a virtue's reflection, the black rainbow shining up from below.

Strike-The-Stone-Producing-A-Spark is a multi-story wooden complex, reconditioned from an old summer manor, surrounded for miles around by fertile countryside. The school is supported by the local lord as it provides a dependable reserve of well-disciplined troops in this time of trouble. It's supported by the local peasants because they like being able to beat up the lord's tax collectors. The price of entry is deliberately simple: bring them a flame from the hearth in your home. It's common for vagrants to claim the road is their home and light a fire then and there. The current grandmaster was especially sly, claiming that as the school was destined to be his home their hearth already held his flame.

The skills taught at Strike-The-Stone are practical; an accessible two-weapon fighting style and the cultivation of inner heat. Most pupils, and thus many people in the surrounding country, can proficiently wield sword, hammer and axe, and light candles with their breath. There is one exceptional talent currently undergoing training, a red-headed peasant girl set to solving increasing opaque riddles by an increasingly nervous grandmaster. Unwilling to have his status usurped, the grandmaster is frozen by indecision. His once vibrant red energy is fading to pyrrous and draining the source of his martial power in a sad, ironic spiral of paralysis that threatens to corrupt him utterly and cause great scandal to the school.

Sun-Heats-The-Stone sits stubbornly on the north face of a squat mountain. Entry for anyone, not just students, requires enduring three nights waiting outside the gate, with the whole order coming out every sundown to beat you with staves. Inside, the beatings are less regular, woven into a draining, demanding, dogmatic training regime that breaks most people's will, though teaching them a lot about suffering and themselves along the way. The school was not always thus. When the grandmaster was more mobile, lessons involved ritual fasting, jogging up and down the mountain, working out in front of big fires, and giving yourself a big pat on the back for a hard day's work. And then the great art of Sun-Heats-The-Stone was perfected, the grandmaster having eaten nothing for a year and a day and achieving self-mummification.

Now the master's star pupil leads a wailing chorus of self-flagellation and refines their tortures upon themselves and the other students, striving for the perfect point of pain in which the grandmaster's voice becomes clear to them once again. This does not happen. The school venerates a false idol, not of the self, but of ideal; their bodies and pain offered to a higher power, instead of used to outline their own true selves. They say the school's kung fu has never been more powerful; their strikes blow memories from the mind and their hated, scarred bodies shimmer into unreality before a blade can land.

Broken-Bough-Falling hunches in the belly of a bustling town. All are welcome to stay the night and share the food, though the bonsai gardens are closed to most that are not monks. The price of training in the art of pruning is variable, though universal. Give away all your worldly possessions, toss all of your riches into the old well in the centre of the house and serve a single night in the kitchens. Most monks stay in the kitchens, serving those on the street where they once lived. Many return to that ascetic life, if they feel called.

The grandmaster is out there now, trying to pass on their great wisdom, never returning to their bed in the temple garden. The grandmaster's greatest technique is very simple; take a loaf of bread, split it evenly, and have both halves hold the same nutrition as the whole. The temple's charity serves a hundred mouths a night, but the grandmaster's hands feed cripples and lepers and lonely souls across the whole city.

Back in the temple's rotted core, in the caverns hidden beneath the old well, the steward squirms on a pile of gold, freely given and yet stolen from the common good. He demands to be called a dragon, guarded by golden axes and hissing cut-throat advice to the merchants, bankers and drug dealers that come for his wisdom, always with a gift. The steward is a shrewd man, and sharp with numbers, though it helps his wisdom along that a petitioner's rivals come just the same as them, spilling everyone's plans and fears on the cold cave's ground.

Leaf-Curled-In-The-Palm rises from the forest on a low hump of earth, its great stones barely peeking above the trees. It is a rock garden and a vegetable patch, roots and vine planted in the long furrows carved by each boulder's painstaking, months-long slide down the slope. The huge, happy, vegetarian monks chortle warmly as they roll the rocks back into more pleasing and productive arrangements. Joining their ranks requires not size, but strength alone. The test is to carry, drag or roll their sacred sow, the size of an ox, from the food troughs to her bath. Quickly though! The act must be done before the grandmaster, the size of two oxen, too fat to even speak, lumbers up behind and hoists the great hog over one shoulder, off for a pampering in petal-strewn water.

The monks are happy and free, blessed by good food and warm rains and growing, always, richer and more content upon their hill. It is the boundlessness of their love that will be their undoing, of course. Their fertile pig, totem of their happiness, has had hundreds of happy hoglets, nurtured by the monks and, with no space to feed them on the hillock, allowed to wander into the forest. Slowly but surely the forest is dying, roots upturned and vines torn and munched. As the forest thins the rains will fade. Crops will fail and the monks, sadly, will wither and move on leaving only a tangle of briar and boar to mark their excess.

Stone-Sitting-On-Water is a fortress jutting sharply from the middle of a raging river. The channels around it have been sculpted over patient years to contain the most treacherous rapids in the known world. The condition of entry is very straight-forward - anyone that can navigate to the great stone library deserves to study there. The monks are a mix of sailors and scholars. Beyond the vast collection of maps, tax records, census scrolls and tide charts, the knowledge is twofold. The first lesson is a mnemonic system based on the movement of water over a stone, which allows one to analyse and memorise the underlying principles of ostensibly any interconnected system, be it the flow of wealth through a kingdom or the course of an entire river delta. The second is a sailing technique known as Two Tortoises Wrestling, which uses the body and sails of a boat as a lens for flowing water, a river stone throwing the oncoming wave at the enemy.

Below the fortified waterline is a labyrinthine filing system containing the uncouth secrets kingdoms have scrubbed from their own records: the actual genealogy of every two-bit king claiming to be the 'Son of the Undying Dragon'; the quiet fraud performed by viziers and spiritual advisors. The grandmaster, chief librarian, sits happily at the center of all this, quite content to act as an appendix to the sum of human knowledge. Below them a cabal of bookish monks works tirelessly to corrupt the library, convinced that it is an engine, a pivot point, a strand of dna, that can be altered to control the flow of the whole world.

Flower-Reflected-On-Rippling-Water occupies almost the entire eastern wing of the Four-Times Hidden Palace. Entry requires first finding the palace, through royal blood, sheer volume of money or an insatiable passion for social insects. The monastery's test is a classic riddle; a nameless monk asks for the name of every termite in one of the mounds outside. Inside they do more than study bugs. There are formal lectures on anthropology, history, philosophy and architecture. Quiet tutorials on sleight of hand, disguise and poison. The grandmaster advises kings and spirits in secret, has performed backroom deals with demons that shape the course of nations. With his real work all under the table, he would actually rather like credit for heading this house of subterfuge, but of course all the students believe that it's an elaborate double-blind, and the real grandmaster must surely be the nameless doorman, or perhaps one of the termite keepers.

The grandmaster's actual ploy runs far deeper. None of the students here have true violet energy, not enough humility to recognise that they, too, are just termites, so the school does not teach real lessons in enlightenment. Instead each individual's education is controlled, coded and recorded, preconditioning an order of mandarins and spies to respond in particular ways to particular pressures, tightening the school's grip on the kingdom like a mandible biting soft clay.

rainbow

too many muses. vipassanā, kill 6 billion demons, chinese

alchemy, journey to the west, the guy pictured above

the rainbow path is an ontology. a creation myth and a guide to self-creation. both spiritual and intellectualized, embedded in culture. like the cardinal directions in syr darya, star signs or the heavenly branches, it provides a framework for understanding, interrogating and finding peace in the world

the rainbow path must be walked in order, from blackness through genesis to selfhood. service to others before reproduction of one's own. attaining harmony in the moment, before enshrining one's values for the reapplication of this cycle.

each step on the path can be thought of as a process, and attempting to skip a step in this chain will inevitably lead to a reverse in the flow of energy through these processes. this backsliding from order into the chaotic void is venerated by the lowest order of heretic as the black rainbow, path of the vampire sun

the rainbow path should be walked again and again in life, with no thought as to a destination. it is said, however, that there is a seventh colour, that of enlightenment, which can only be seen by those who have mastered the rainbow. many of the enlightened beings that have spoken of this experience describe UV light as held in the understanding of Ultra-Violence. scholars broadly suggest that these beings have fallen to the vampire sun

red is motion, life. genesis and the emergence of a waveform in the void. its element is fire, its virtue is decisiveness, its organ is the heart, its animal the snake. its scholarly arts conjure fire and grant quickness, can transmit objects across great distances. its martial arts rain a hundred flaming blows with the sword. it grants your warform extra arms and fearsome fangs

orange is consolidation, discretisation. self-conception and a waveform collapsing into a particle. its element is iron, its virtue is courage, its organ is the skin, its animal the goat. its scholarly arts refine and harden, can make a pebble as unmoveable as a mountain. its martial arts can turn aside blades and punch through steel plate. it renders your warform armoured and utterly inviolate

yellow is division, gift-giving. mitosis and a particle spewing energy. its element is gold, its virtue is generosity, its organ is the lung, its animal the bee. its scholarly arts partition and bisect, can loan life essence and healing. its martial arts turn hands and feet to vorpal axes. it arms your warform with blades that can cut truth in two

green is growth, self-sufficiency. crystallisation and the formation of molecules. its element is wood, its virtue is fecundity, its organ is the stomach, its animal the panda. its scholarly arts swell and make fertile, can burst forth a grove from a single seed. its martial arts swing hammers with ponderous, unstoppable strength. it grows your warform as large as a mountain

blue is harmony, equanimity. sustainability and stable orbits. its element is water, its virtue is peacefulness, its organ is the mind, its animal the koi. its scholarly arts calm and conduct, can settle a storm or call one up. its martial arts conserve motion, launch a perfectly timed arrow through the heat of a battle. it lets your warform hold back from war, de-escalate violence

violet is recursion, respect. fractalisation and ancestor worship. its element is air, its virtue is honour, its organ is the reproductive, its animal the dragon. its scholarly arts predict futures and conjure spirits, can slow time to a crawl or stop it outright. its martial arts practise the same blow ten thousand times, until it is the thought itself that strikes the foe. it imbues your warform with spiritual authority and a voice of binding command

many rainbow traditions extend this praxis further. most common is the inclusion of a colour wheel, often called the Wheel of Suffering, or Wheel of Conditional Enlightenment, which holds enlightenment either in the center or on the rim, and often harmoniously opposes colours across its axle. indeed the colours are greatly partitioned. the lower/higher or id/ego divide, r-o-y against b-g-v. positive/negative or outward/inward delineations, r-y-b against o-g-v

in almost all of these traditions, the black rainbow remains a constant mirror of the light. each dark colour is a reflection of the true, but is also wholly defined within the rainbow path. pyrrhous is refracted red, true, but can also be seen as a reaching for orange energy - self-identity and self-preservation - without first mastering red decisiveness and courage. the result is paralysis, fear, impotence; pyrrhic catatonia.

so it continues. fulvous: self-sacrifice before self-definition, subservient erosion and debasement. xanthic: accumulation before charity, small-minded greed and hunger. feldgrau: gregariousness before self-containment, an infectious overstepping of bounds. glaucous: self-veneration before an understanding of the other, masturbatory idolation. phlox: grasping at enlightment without respect or virtue, the beginning and end of the Wheel of Suffering.

phlox is undoing, sacrilege. unholiness and the cutting of knots. its adherents claim it is antienlightenment; the delicate wingbeat of reality that butterflies down the rainbow into searing entropy. its scholarly arts dissolve and devolve, necrofy spacetime and convoke foul shades. its martial arts seek to unmake utterly, strike the whole timeline of a life. its demons tear holes in space like ripping through wet flesh. its herald is the beholder*

glaucous is turmoil, mutation. incest and catastrophic collapse. a bruised purple narcisism turned to eugenics and arms race. its scholarly arts destabilise and debilitate, provoke tumours and twist the genome to malevolent ends. its martial arts are a barely suppressed suppuration of self that inevitably consumes its practitioners. its demons crawl through marginalia and gut linings, budding up to instigate imbalance and violence. its herald is the troll

feldgrau is overgrowth, pestilence. population collapse and nuclear meltdown. contaminating other systems with the unmastered self. its scholarly arts bloat and overwhelm, exacerbate sin and crush enemies under their own weight. its martial arts overrun with ever-increasing force, suddenly twist and use your own weight to pull you under their bulk. it's demons bud forth new teeth and eyes and arms with every cut. its herald is the hydra

xanthic is theft, greed. addiction and exsanguination. obsession with stockpiling and stealing the last possessions of the poor. its scholarly arts drain and dry, sap strength and suck out the soul. its martial arts wage wars of attrition, demand diets of blood gold and that extend life to unnatural span. its demons curl chittering underneath coins, whisper in the ears of merchants and treasure hunters. its herald is the mummy

fulvous is facelessness, suicide. grovelling subservience and erasure of identity. debasing and subsuming the self to unholy aims. its scholarly arts dominate and demean, scrub memory and scour into utilitarianism. its demons enslave and torture, carve out homes in hollow human shells. its herald is the doppelganger

pyrrhous is paralysis, fear. stillness and gasping, desperate, futile self-preservation. absolute refusal to take action, a slow collapse into entropy. its scholarly arts freeze and entomb, slow the crawl of time and hold implacable inertia. its martial arts are rarely used to fight, but rather to sit in lonely desolation, unmoved by the collapsing of the world, dragging all else down in lament. its demons moan and weep piteously, insist that they were once like you and you will soon be like them. its herald is the basilisk

*beholders are guys with black holes for heads