The Shore

The coast of the Southern Salt is an intertidal zone that stretches well beyond the sight of any eyeglass. The tides beat a slow, unsteady rhythm and the locals keep pace. The local measure of time, the fiveyear, follows the water - it hasn't been anything close to five years in living memory. Somewhere in the endless expanse of littoral variety is the Captured Sea and its resident islands but for the most part it's fishing villages, houseboats, seaweed farms, snail ranches and merfolk warrens.

The below table isn't going to cover your whole adventure, but should be useful for generating a stretch of tidepools in a pinch. I'm thinking most groups of people you meet can just be from Skerples' neat camp follower table, reskinned a little for the setting. Oh, and remember to roll a d20 to figure out how many inches deep the water mostly is right now!

	Terrain	Creatures	Features	People	Threats
1	Round black stone, slick with algae	Toadfish and salamanders	Unfathomably deep pool. Suspiciously brackish	Floating house. Family of fishers, tiny dogs. Huge lucky fish under floorboards	Hermit crab. Cart-sized. Known for eating hermits
2	Jagged rows of orange rock	Gulls and clams	Massive ball of driftwood washed down from mangrove forests. Rustles	Clade of nomads on stilts, picking at debris with hooks and spears. Odd philosophy	Storm petrel. 20' wingspan. Lands like a thunderbolt
3	Thick layer broken, razorsharp shells	Snails and octopi	Dead animal, bloated and swarming with scavengers	Gang of smugglers in cramped boat, happy to trade for smallest valuables you have	Field of giant salt squirts. They begin erupting when you reach the centre*
4	Sucking mud, clumps of rotten seaweed	Crabs and platypi	Abandoned rowing boat. No oars, half full of rum, smashed chest in bottom	Snail gaucho, performing one of the slow hobbies of the snail people. Hundreds of whittled idols for sale, keen to buy anything smokeable	Bask of false gharials, ever smiling with those idiot mouths
5	Brittle, bleached coral	Silver fish and plankton clouds	Ineffectual attempt at tower. Long ago abandoned. Tallest thing for miles around	Salt witch on unidentifiable riding beast, pretending to not be a witch for comedic effect	Sentient algae. Exposed to a cut it will do its sad best to communicate via hallucinations, prophetic visions
6	Water slick quicksand, reflecting the sky	Silverfish and anenomes	Raised peat mound, standing out like a sore thumb. How has nobody nicked this yet?	Merfolk studiously pretending to be a "NORMAL HUMAN PERSON". Thinks there's nothing at all funny about this	Riddle fish. Squat, ugly, not near as well camouflaged as it thinks. Laughs, spitting poison, when you can't solve its riddles

*Remember that falling over on rocks or coral is likely to cut your shit up and maybe crack your skull unless you're wearing armour. If you're wearing armour, falling over in mud could see you drown before your slip-sliding companions can get to you. In sand it's just a fun and light-hearted time!

And of course you need a bunch of magic junk washed up on the interminable shores.

1. Spiral shell. Tip it and a pinch of sand pours from the mouth. Spin it around and other pinch falls. Spin faster and the sand begins to flow out in a stream. Held to the ear, one can hear the ocean, and the sound of someone very far away shouting into a near identical shell.
2. Palm-sized, translucent jelly, washed up after a savage storm. If the skin breaks it bursts into a wave. Good throwing technique allows for increased control over the resulting wash of water.
3. Knot of driftwood, snapped from a long-sunken ship. Molded by currents in the glacial rise to the surface, it now resembles a leering beast of the deeps. If returned to salt water, even just a bucketful, the wood will contort itself into a living, hateful creature and attack all in sight. Whittled into a religious symbol it will instead ward against the undead, evil, bad luck.
4. Bubbling fulgurite, emerging from the sand just before a storm strikes. If exposed to a cloudy sky it will call down a bolt of lightning and explode violently. The stone will absorb magic moving above it. Larger specimens soak more power before shattering.
5. Coral grown into jagged folds. When the right seam is found, and the coral twisted just so, the wielder is folded up into the piece. Fresh specimens may contain lairs of eels, labs of merfolk witches, troves of forbidden treasure. Some corals twist deeper and deeper, seeming without end.
6. Forked mangrove root. Held by the forks it points to fresh water. Held by the shaft it points to dry land. Planted forks-down in a dish of salt water it grows a serviceable quarterstaff in about 40 minutes.
7. Head-sized salt crystal, looks very nearly like it has a face. Touch the 'mouth' to anything and it will attempt to suck the water out of it. Wood can be rendered dry and brittle, flesh exsanguinated, pools of water greedily devoured. Also makes the air quite dry, if you don't cover it up.
8. Cuboid lump of pumice. Clutched in the fist it lightens the holder. Gravity is about 1/6th as effective on them and anything they hold. If something would float in water, it floats now. Swimming through air is hard, but achievable with a pair of wings.
9. Hard red jelly. Ingested, it causes the blood to thicken and grants immunity to bludgeoning, falling. A little more eaten and the limbs swell, crimson and heavy as cudgels. A little more seizes up the body and mires the heart. Repeat users are sluggish and mildly addicted.
10. Sea's tooth. A fist-sized rock that, nestled into mud or sand, functions as if it were the tip of a boulder ten thousand times as large. There's an exceptionally sturdy iron ring embedded in it, for convenience.

d10 Masks

1. Stinkle. Crotchety and imperious. Can sniff out buried treasure and smell where disease is located in a patient's body, but will refuse to do so except for money. Stalwart against fire, but fears water and sharp objects.

2. Bode. Can speak with the freshly dead, and sees no important distinction between them and the living. Borderline autistic. Clammy to the touch. Attracts amphibians, who seem to hold it in some kind of reverence.

3. Gosper. A rabble-rouser and demagogue. Voice can be heard by anyone who sees it, even over the rumble of a crowd. Convinces people to smash their idols for the fun of it and burn their own cities as a joke, then skips away merrily in the ensuing confusion.

4. Jiro. Infuriatingly calm in dangerous situations. Always knows a way out, but won't reveal it until the last minute. Knows the most carefully-guarded secrets of everyone it meets and refers to them in casual conversation. Seeds sprout at its touch.

5. Egwu. A loveable idiot. Everyone's best friend. Can move unconcealed through any social environment on account of being obviously too stupid to be dangerous. Clumsy but lucky, always blundering headlong into fortune. Hated by dogs.

6. Shrieg. Always hungry, but too embarrassed to eat in the presence of other people. Stomach rumbles audibly in the presence of food. Can sustain life on any kind of organic matter, the more rotten and indigestible the better, and will fall on garbage with gusto as soon as it's left alone.

7. Balank. A connoisseur. Takes an amazingly long time to make up its mind about anything, but makes the right decision ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Has an annoying habit of clicking its tongue.

8. Rocus. Walks with the shuffling gait of a very fat man. Insists on getting a laugh from everyone it meets, progressing from jokes through slapstick to unpredictable and nauseating violence. Strong enough to lift a cow over its head.

9. Pippi. A crack shot with any kind of ranged weapon. Terrified of a golden panther that may or may not be hunting it down to take vengeance for some unspecified sin. Looks under all beds and unseals all closed containers to check if the panther is hiding there.

10. Hampus. No special powers. Just a really cool, laid-back sort of a dude.

d20 Traps

1. A crown floating on a jet of water. Taking the crown allows the jet of water to hit the ceiling, where it brings to life a dehydrated and carnivorous fungus.
2. A bar of silver held between the mouths of two copper dragons. A powerful electric current flows through the silver. Taking it will force the current to instead flow through the copper chains that hang like a curtain over the room's door.
3. A room with a ruby on a pedestal in the centre. Every second wall is mirrored. The ruby acts as a lens for a blinding white light emitted by a fleck of rare metal in the pedestal, making it redder and darker. Removing the ruby will blind everyone. Replacing the ruby with an emerald will reveal secret messages written on the walls.
4. An urn in a stone alcove. The top of the alcove is flush with the top of the urn, acting as a stopper and sealing inside a powerful djinn. The djinn is the bored djinn from this story, and has decided just to kill you.
5. An ankle-deep pool of clear water. From one side, you can see the floor through it. From the other side, it reflects the sky from the window above the opposite door, which is too bright to see through. Once you've crossed from the first side, the floor slides away and the water becomes ten feet deep with piranhas in it.
6. An ogre chained to the wall. A sword stuck in a plinth, out of reach of the ogre. The blade of the sword passes through the links of the chains, holding them in place. If it's removed the ogre will be freed.
7. A wall-sized painting depicting an impressionistic parlour scene of a distraught, howling figure. The painting is actually a framed sheet of glass that makes anything behind it look like a painting. Behind it is a drawing-room and a ghoul standing very still with its mouth open.
8. A pleasant grassy clearing with small trees, blackberry bushes and a couple of birds. Actually a pool of cow shit abandoned by a negligent farmer. Anything heavier than a child walking across it will break the crust and drown. There's no air within a foot of the pool's surface, as cow shit swallows oxygen.
9. A river of quicksilver with a thin layer of flammable oil floating on top. Lighting the braziers in the walls also lights a fuse that conducts flame to the oil, which burns away and allows lethal quicksilver fumes to flood the room.
10. Razortoothed rats in the walls that emerge in their thousands if even a drop of blood is spilt. A very fat woman sitting on a treasure chest who demands an extravagant sum before she'll move and let you open it. She will make sure you know about the rats. She has a crossbow. Its bolts are blunted, stunning but not wounding.
11. A vampire nailed to the wall with ruby-tipped silver spikes. Its palms continually bleed. It pretends to be a normal person who has only been there a few hours, but its clothes are dusty and it won't let you see its teeth.
12. A bone whistle on a glass pedestal. The walls of the room are strangely curved, echoing and amplifying any sound made within. The resonant frequency of the pedestal is such that, if anyone blows the whistle in the room, it will shatter and explode into a thousand flying shards of glass.
13. An old dusty book, expensively bound and illuminated with gold leaf. Contains several hundred years of parish records. Infested with tiny black worms that are experts at mimicking letters and live to sow strife and discord. If undetected they will crawl into the wizard's spellbook and riddle it with tiny punctuation errors, meaning the next spell she memorises will go horribly wrong when she tries to cast it.
14. A rack of venison roasting on a metal spit. A big carving knife with a metal handle standing in a block of wood. An electric current runs through the spit, which bulges inside the meat so that if you try to carve it you will probably make contact with the metal and be electrocuted.
15. On the floor, a trompe-l'oeil painting of a spiked pit. Perception save to realise it's only a painting. It is made of canvas, which will tear if you walk over it and drop you into a spiked pit.
16. Spring of fresh water with a faint reddish tinge and metallic tang. Testing for poison reveals a high but harmless concentration of iron. In the next room there is a giant magnet that will pin anyone who drank it to the wall by their stomach.
17. Spiral staircase that is actually a spring. When you turn the doorhandle at the top it releases a latch at the bottom and the staircase collapses upward, crushing you between its coils.
18. Mushrooms emit a curious light that makes it impossible to distinguish between humans and statues. The room they illuminate contains ninety-nine statues and one blind assassin.
19. Swarm of mummified macaques. Big flaming torch on the wall beside you. If you set them on fire you'll swiftly discover they're stuffed with gunpowder and shrapnel.
20. Floor is covered with pyramids, from the base of the door you walk in through to the far wall. On top of each pyramid is balanced a small green egg. Ten thousand starlings stare at you politely from the walls. If you manage to get to the other side without disturbing any eggs you'll find out that the door to the next room opens inwards.

BONUS: An abandoned drawing-room with rats scurrying across the floor and a spiral staircase in the centre. The stairs get bigger as you go down, as do the tapestries and torches. At the bottom is an exact duplicate of the first drawing-room only much larger and with giant rats in it. We wanted to put this in the list but it turns out it's just funny, not a trap.

BONUS TWO: Worm in a bottle of alcohol. If the worm is ever not submerged in alcohol it will rapidly grow to problematic size. Nico insists that this is an item and not a trap.

surely you know what oglaf is
(it has naked pictures! beware!!)

Tengu

Tengu are Japanese mountain spirits with wind powers and enormous noses. I like them. They are a good mix of funny and awful.

They have a few jobs, in the grand scheme of things:

• Fuck with anyone who enters the mountains
• Fuck with organised religion
• Occasionally shake things up by going to towns and fucking with people there

They have a whole bunch of powers which make it impossible to beat them in a fair fight. They are immensely swift and strong. They can't fly but they can jump as far as they like. They can change shape and become invisible at will. They also own a lot of magic items. Each tengu has a fan of feathers which can stir up great winds, as well as grow and shrink people's noses.

Here are some things that a tengu might do to anyone who enters the mountains:

• Bombard them with hail
• Surreptitiously fill their packs with stones
• Steal their rations and get them to blame each other
• Pick them up and strand them on top of huge trees
• Move them to a different part of the mountains while they're sleeping
• Pretend to be an old man and challenge them to a wrestling match
• Pretend to be an old woman and sell them weasel shit in the guise of foul-tasting medicine
• Take them under its wing and teach them the arts of swordsmanship
• Same as above, but intentionally teach them wrong
• Straight up rip their throats out
• RIDDLES

Here are some things one might do in town:

• Get itself invited to a party, accuse the hosts of inhospitality when they can't keep up with the tengu's drinking and dancing, then wreck everything and leave
• Sabotage the marriage prospects of the local lord's heir by making their nose huge and hideous
• Take the form of a handsome suitor from a distant land, marry the local lord's heir and spirit them off to the mountains
• Destroy the reputation of a venerable priest by taking their shape and going around town doing ridiculous things like wearing a fish as a hat
• Eat the bridge. Talk very loudly about how delicious this bridge is and how grateful you are to all the villagers for making such a delicious bridge
• Make it rain on the day of the festival that everyone has been planning for months
• Sell magical items that break just when you've come to completely rely on them, like cream that makes you beautiful until your wedding day or a purse of endless coins that runs out when you promise someone enough money
• Give enormous noses to all the sacred statues in the temple
• Destroy the harvest, then take the form of a delicious fat pig and watch the villagers fight over who gets to eat it

So tengu are super annoying. But, and this is key, they are also cowardly and gullible. Here are some things that you should try on tengu:

• Pretend that a mundane item is actually super magical and offer to trade it for something good
• Offer it a fake riddle with no answer
• Give yourself fake eyebrows made of moss and tell it you're the king of the devils
• Talk about how hot it is until the tengu begins to fan itself, making its own nose grow so long that it reaches heaven and irritates God
• Bet it that it can't become small enough to fit inside this bottle
• Talk very loudly about how much you hate gold and you couldn't stand it if somebody filled your pack with heavy, awful gold
• Teach them a fashionable new dance called the "let's all sit very still with our eyes closed" dance
• Tell it that the ocean is sake and ask it to show you how much it can drink before it gets drunk
• Ask it to demonstrate its mastery of swordsmanship by cutting off its own head, like that famous samurai totally did once
• Basically any variation on don't throw me into that briar patch

As long as the tengu feels like it is in control of the situation it will be a cheerful bully. As soon as it feels itself outdone on any trivial thing it will either go to extreme lengths to prove its natural superiority or just give up and run away screaming into the wilderness.

There are also King Tengu, who are blue instead of red and have even longer noses. King Tengu have the power to see through exactly one layer of deception. The only way to beat a King Tengu is to get it to think you are trying to trick it one way when actually you are trying to trick it another way.

Also here are some magic items tengu can have, I forgot to do that:

• Magic gun that never fails to kill something, even if you shoot it in the air
• Straw cloak that makes you invisible and foul-smelling
• Lute strung with hair that makes your fingers bleed as you play the most beautiful music
• One-toothed wooden sandals that give you tengu jumping powers if you can balance on them, which you can't
• Book that holds the answer to every riddle ever asked, but doesn't tell you which answer goes with which riddle
• Addictive spinning top
• Hook-nosed mask that makes everyone who looks at you flee in terror and can't be removed by yourself
• Sword that makes the wielder incapable of breaking any oath
• Kite that carries its flier into the air and doesn't let them land
• Ebony figurine of an owl. Speak the magic word and it turns into an actual owl. The owl knows a magic word that will turn you into an ebony figurine

d10 Monster Weaknesses

Drawing from Arnold K's post about shitty dragons and some of his posts on G+ about making weakness as integral a part of monster design as strength.

1. Monster is afraid of something. This could be something stupid, like cats or bards or children. It could also be something that humans are afraid of, like darkness or heights or talking to people.
2. Monster is very old. If it breathes it's wheezy and asthmatic, if it has bones they're fragile, if it has memories they're unreliable. If it's an ooze then maybe it's tough and rubbery, like old Blu-Tack.
3. Monster is lonely and depressed. It desperately wants friends, but it also still wants all the other things that monsters usually want. Which is probably why it doesn't have any friends.
4. Monster is vain. It won't kill anyone who is actively bolstering its self-esteem. You can distract it with flattery, gifts, or easily-refuted objections to its favourite line of intellectual argument.
5. Monster has creepy obsession with one specific person, who thus exerts a measure of control over them.
6. Monster has awkward deformity, like teeth where they shouldn't be or a useless extra head.
7. Monster collects something. This could be something stupid, like cats or bards or children. It could also be something that humans collect, like paintings or teddy bears or Magic cards.
8. Monster is lazy. It's overweight, has unhealthy eating habits, doesn't stir from its lair before midday and has a hard time really committing to any project. If killing you looks hard enough it might just not bother.
9. Monster is hiding from other, scarier monster. It might owe them money or just be lower down on the food chain.
10. Monster is just incredibly dumb. This is probably funnier if it thinks that it is incredibly smart.

These fall into a few distinct categories. Physical peculiarites (age, deformity), character flaws (laziness, vanity, stupidity), conflicting goal systems (avoiding something, collecting something, stalking someone). The last is probably the most useful of the three. The tension between wanting to do X and wanting to do Y seems likely to lead to some interesting emergent behaviour.

Anyway you should ignore all this because I have just discovered that Googling the phrase "awful taxidermy" is a better summation of the ethos of this blog than any words could ever be. This blog is about awful taxidermy now.

d10 More Terrible Assassins*

thank you, google image search

1. Lichen Mahone. 100% success rate, but insists on going at her own pace. Has been known to take up to ten years for a single kill, by which time the intended victim had caught on, hunted down Mahone's employer and had their whole family slowly boiled.
2. Fastidious Raj. Peculiar religious precepts mean he can only kill people who are wholly submerged in water. Has come up with various strategies involving barrels, trapdoors, rivers, bathtubs.
3. Vargo Featherflank. Either committed to erotic griffin roleplay or genuinely believes self to be an erotic griffin. Jumps on victims from rooftops, nude except for clawed gloves, oiled and fully erect.
4. Marta the Moustache. Lulls victims into a false sense of security by pretending to be utterly convinced that her false moustache renders her invisible. Distracts them with antics until her accomplice strikes.
5. Mr. Cranberry. Reverse vampire. Has too much blood. Face is puffy with blood always. Holds people down and puts blood in them till their veins burst.
6. Rem Bardscowl. Will only kill you with something that is an anagram of your name. Most of her victims, sadly, not named Fnike.
7. Hildegard Spry. Gets really enthusiastic about the job, comes up with brilliant plans for like an hour then can't figure out how to make it as good as she wants it to be, gets bored and distracted and spends the next three days slumped on the couch reading comic books before finally doing a half-assed job at the last possible second.
8. Oxman Jake Jarvis. Really really wants to one day kill someone with a stampede of oxen. Won't stop talking about it. Always trying to figure out if his latest job could possibly involve a stampede of oxen.
9. Petra Squidlegs. Has squids for legs. Not individual tentacles, whole squids.
10. The Right Honourable Thumbus T. Macflann. Poses as a merchant or local politician, approaches his target through the usual channels and offers a hefty, though not absurd, reward if they perform some moderately dangerous task. Task is 1000% more dangerous than he makes it out to be. Will actually pay reward, though, in order to maintain his cover.

*terribleness of assassins not guaranteed.

d10 Terrible Assassins

The women and men of the Assassin's Guild are among the most deadly entities ever to walk the earth. They can slit your throat with a whisper and break your back with a glance. The least of them has taken more lives than the plague and knows less mercy than the desert. Once they mark you, your fate is more inevitable than Death itself.

Nobody ever actually hires them. People aren't that hard to kill, and there's always some asshole hanging around a tavern who'll do it for the local equivalent of a buck fifty. Here is a selection of those assholes.

have at thee!

1. Katy the Sponge. So named for her habit of sponging up every last drop of her victim's blood before leaving them lying in an alley. Often this takes long enough that somebody wanders along and she has to kill them as well, which causes an unfortunate chain reaction.
2. Jumbles Marco. Trying to build a Frankenstein in his basement out of trophies he takes from his victims, but can never remember which parts he's missing. Has three left feet and no right ones.
3. Joey Two Eyes. Has two eyes. Believes for some reason that this is a huge deal. "I got one little advantage, see. These babies." *points to eyes*
4. Goolblum the Wizard. Gets close by disguising self as wizard, then pulls knife out of hat.
5. Mucky Mike Callahan. Always has a cold. Always having his sneak attacks foiled by ill-timed sneezes. Would otherwise be a pretty good assassin.
6. Nimbus Urk. Moves with absolute silence. Sadly, is an eleven-foot swamp troll who glows in the dark. Often teams up with Mucky Mike, to the advantage of neither party.
7. Puzzles Malone. Has a gimmick where if you solve all her puzzles you can go free. Puzzles are pretty hard, but this still leads to a lot of annoying conversations with clients when she has to explain why the guy she was paid to kill is still walking around.
8. "The Butcher". Is a butcher. Flatly refuses to use any of her butchering equipment in her assassin work on the basis that it would be unhygienic.
9. Colander Jones. Down-on-her-luck flower fairy. No wings. Crawls in through your window at night with tiny dagger between her teeth, the game plan being to fill you with holes until you bleed out. This never works, but she is a relentless optimist.
10. Trudy Crabs For Hands. Four knives, one in each claw.

thinking about all the black clothing he still has left to buy

Gameable Shit From "Quest for Camelot"

Rewatched a childhood classic the other day. First of all, it's completely astounding that this movie was released four years after The Lion King and yet is such complete, unmitigated garbage*. Secondly, this movie fucking rocks, if you have some children you should foist it on them. If you are a child you should foist it on you.

Here is some gameable shit from the film, because I am kind and generous and benevolent and etc.

d6 Plant Traps from Living Forest

1. Whirlstumps. Man-sized, grow packed together. Pressure on base and touch at shoulder/waist height cause it to snap itself into the air violently, carrying you along/smacking your skull. 
2. Snatcherbranches. Trees that grow all branches with enormous tension along bottom. Older branches cave to less and less disruption. Trees at centre of grove suddenly start ramming down trying to trap you, but younger trees at edges will start to slam if you run past them, snapping vines.
3. Sprinting Twigs. Actually a parasite growing over the surface of all the leaf litter. Causes burnt twigs to start crawling in random direction. Will seem cute until you realise how much you need a fire.
4. Whipbuds. Thick petals of pig-sized bud hide dexterous stamen, open at a touch. Stamen whips towards your breath when exposed. Sap paralyses.
5. Hillmaker. Meters-deep moss reacts when you walk on it, rolling out of the way so you can't apply lateral force. Shallows make running hard. Hit a deep section and all of a sudden you can't run, walk or jump.
6. Mossmaws. What looks like moss/algae covered stone is actually thick-skinned pitcher plant, jerks open to swallow people whole. Tendency to grow into bottom of shallow streams for maximum surprise value.

d6 Monsters That Deform Their Environments

1. Dragon. Acidic urine carves out gullies and canyons, leaches into soil, kills plant life. Guano worth a small fortune. 
2. Stone giant. Farts out suffocating, heavier-than-air gas that pools in caves and low places, killing small animals and anyone who crawls.
3. Roc. Tornado-speed wind of wingbeats erodes away topsoil to create scrubby plains and scoured-clean mesas.
4. Gorgon. Petrified forests. Herds of basalt buffalo grazing on granite grass. Only living things are lichen and reptiles.
5. Golem. Trenches dug, towers erected, mills built in places where water has long since dried up, all in accordance with centuries-old instructions.
6. Giant flies. Harvest huge mounds of rotting flesh, vegetation. Maintain nitrogen-rich atmosphere for larvae.

AND Merlin has this one weird cameo appearance and he is the only character that looks like the mouth animation was done for a different language, which is exactly what I want from Merlin.

AND the comic relief is a stunted set of conjoined-twin dragons with opposing tastes in art which is such a good idea for an NPC you might not actually do it justice.

AND the villain has a plan to steal the Excalibur and fuse themselves with it. Uses fusion potion to first make army of mercenary/weapon hybrids. Works with sentient, servile griffin, whom is bullied mercilessly. Is voiced by Gary Oldman for some fucking reason.

* Turns out this is not a Disney film, which I thought it was (thx Jeremy Duncan) though I guess that explains why the songs feel like a lazy attempt at psychological torture.

We Cursed These 12 Pirate Captains And You Won't Believe What Happened Next

They are still acting as captains, mind you, it's just that they are a:

1. Parrot. Looks at you with their head swung to the side, one eye open the other closed. Panoramic vision makes brain hurt. Gathers gossip, intelligence from seagulls.
2. Swarm of rats. Can't speak, but masters of cartography. Several will pause to stare disapprovingly if you make a rat joke.
3. Ship. Wheel turns on its own and crew scurry to keep up. Gives orders once a night at midnight answering yes/no questions. Silence means yes, horrible creaking means no.
4. Collective memory. The old crew can still hear a voice barking orders just over their shoulder. Spend enough time around them and you start feeling the stare of dead eyes.
5. Tarot deck. The more ways to deal a deck you know the more complex the conversations you can have. Afraid of being transformed back and losing powers of foresight.
6. Figurehead. Has had self removed from prow and set into back of wheel. Old enough to know basically everything about the sea.
7. Elaborate wig. Grows roots into anyone wearing them and gradually takes control. First thing they instill is a phobia of open flames.
8. Bank of fog. Can't go up on deck during high wind. Impossible to otherwise kill. Insists they are still a real person despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
9. Coral reef. Their fleet is anchored around them. Commandeered ships of no use scuttled, added to mass beneath the waves. Communicates semaphore-style with schools of colourful fish.
10. Barrel of Rum. Drinking more strengthens the urge to sail to a specific place and rob specific people, working oddly well as a team with all these people you just met tonight. Watering down the barrel does not diminish the effect.
11. Orangutan. Hates sound of own voice and does not speak. Evocative with sign language. Could already kill with bare hands before transformation, but enjoys improved climbing ability.
12. Sea monster. Mash-up of Davey Jones, the monster from The Host and the swarm demon from the Constantine movie, but all fish obviously.

Don't even TELL me this isn't super usable. Grab your faves and tell your PC's they have to turn them all back. Introduce one as a cute side character/source/fence/villain. Introduce two as fighting over a potential cure. Just think about the seahag that cursed them all!

d20 Birds

1. Hook bird
2. Displacer kookaburra. Distracts you with copies of itself while it steals your sausages
3. Skin suit sparrows. Wacky crazy inflatable arm man made of birds in a person
4. Camouflage parrot. "Kraark. I am a tree. I am a tree."
5. Circular owl
6. Yawny mouthfrog. Yawns itself inside out to become a rubbery yellow frog thing with a mouth full of feathers
7. Processor heron. Swallows snakes whole. Shits them out as other, more poisonous snakes
8. Face lyrebird. Its tail is your face, saying rude things about your face
9. Boxing stork. Challenges you to a stand-up boxing match
10. Bowerbird
11. Landlord pelican. Rents out its beak pouch to immigrant families
12. Escaped fishing cormorant. Brass ring around its neck to prevent it swallowing its catch. Only eats tiny things. Cries a lot
13. Humanguide. Guides humanbadgers to humans so it can feed on the scraps left behind
14. Sociable hornbill. Constructing giant palace of animal shit for the immurement of the hornbill queen.
15. Multitool bill. Wide range of beaks allows it to get at insects in practically any location
16. Hummingbird phoenix. Dies, is reborn every ten minutes
17. Detective vulture. Can't eat any corpse unless it has discovered the murderer
18. Ambitious cuckoo. Tries to steal human babies and leave its eggs in the crib. Rarely succeeds
19. Psyduck
20. Spider in disguise

Space Opera Planet Generator

What is this planet's single biome?

1. Temperate rainforest. Tall, slender trees with few branches, gigantic ferns, mist and moss.
2. Towering red sand dunes. Incongruous oasis cities built around shafts into ancient ice deposits.
3. World-girdling coral reef. Sinkhole-riddled limestone escarpments lifted by tectonic activity.
4. Glacier-carved highlands. Cities of ice slowly carried toward their demise in equatorial lakes.
5. Stagnant bayou. Flat, windless, permanently overcast. Breeding-ground for fun new plagues.
6. Rolling prairie. Caravans of nomads tend to vast herds of beasts. Nobody knows what trees are.
7. Volcanic waste. Jet-black jagged lava fields, billowing vents of sulphur, pockets of fertile soil.
8. Carnivorous death jungle. Agile predators and parasitic vermin vie with the trees themselves.
9. Cloudscape. Floatstone archipelagos, hovering cities, mysterious and uncharted surface.
10. Scrapyard. Original surface of planet invisible beneath thousands of years of space junk.
11. Megacity. Depopulated by long-forgotten economic collapse, whole areas now abandoned.
12. Zero-atmosphere rock. Domed cities on verge of exceeding population capability.

What kind of thing are the inhabitants?

1. Human
2. Mammal
3. Bird
4. Reptile
5. Fish
6. Insect
7. Mollusc
8. Annelid
9. Plant
10. Fungus
11. Machine
12. Mineral

What's the one personality they're allowed to have?

1. Honour-bound warrior
2. Noble savage
3. Conniving politician
4. Greedy merchant
5. Emotionless savant
6. Decadent aristocrat
7. Preachy pacifist
8. Xenophobic fascist
9. Religious fundamentalist
10. Eccentric scholar
11. Enlightened mystic
12. Comic-relief idiot

Who runs the place?

1. Corporations
2. Crime syndicate
3. Military dictator
4. Space pope
5. Absolute monarch
6. Feuding noble houses
7. Fairly-elected president
8. Council of elders
9. Caste of scientists
10. Impenetrable bureaucracy
11. Hive mind
12. Nobody

What's their aesthetic?

1. Ancient. Pyramids, weird gods, clay and cuneiform.
2. Classical. Marble columns and philosophers in togas.
3. Medieval. Castles, peasants, paladins and wizards.
4. Renaissance. Conquistadors, courtiers, powdered wigs.
5. Orientalist. Monks, mandarins, silk and calligraphy.
6. Arabian Nights. Turbans, harems, eunuchs, bedouin.
7. Native American. Feathered headgear, buckskins, warpaint.
8. Cyberpunk. Neon, black leather, hackers and sunglasses.
9. Space Nazi. Uniforms, jackboots, synchronized marches.
10. Space Hippie. Wreaths of flowers, nudity, drum circles.
11. Space Cowboy. Ten-gallon hats and spitting in the street.
12. Space Gangster. Fedoras and inexplicable Brooklyn accents.

What problem are they having that the crew of your starship could solve?

1. Civil war
2. Alien invasion
3. Mysterious plague
4. Impeding meteor
5. Social unrest
6. Collision w/ parallel universe
7. Utopia w/ terrible price
8. Secretly-alive planet
9. Omnipotent mischief-maker
10. Time travel
11. Hippie love cult
12. Murder mystery

God Generator

RPGs don't actually need another god generator. Regardless, here is mine.

click 2 worship

Bigger Rations

Ration systems have always kind of shat me off. They're either a pedantic, flavourless mini-game of addition and subtraction or they're totally forgotten about. In order to make rations more interesting I have done the only sensible thing and made them bigger.

These should now work as practical, reasonable loot and also maybe be actual useful tools for once.

You All Spend The Next Week Eating A

1. child-sized sack of dates
2. animal carcass
3. cask of olives in oil
4. rack of fish
5. salted rat king
6. enormous clay pot of pickles
7. crate of fruitcakes
8. cauldron of thick soup
9. bunch of bunches of bananas
10. single, enormously long sausage
11. bale of nutritious but bitter herbs
12. stack of stale pies
13. small tin of brownish lard
14. bundle of gristly bones
15. flock of live chickens
16. wheel of cheese
17. ten-foot stale baguette
18. necklace of dried toads
19. potted pear tree
20. pyramid of pineapples

Look for our next post: 20 Ways to Carry Water That Are Only Slightly Boring

Professions in the Belt

1. Asteroid Miner
2. Comet Hauler
3. Battery Salesman
4. AI Breeder
5. Marshal
6. Pilot
7. Guide
8. Noodle Shop Owner
9. Brewer
10. Trafficker
11. Undertaker
12. Drone Trainer
13. Mechanic
14. Worm Farmer
15. Mendicant
16. Card Sharp
17. Welder
18. Tracker
19. Minesweeper
20. Ratcatcher
21. Bodyguard
22. Safecracker
23. Bandit
24. Unionist
25. Factory Worker
26. Anarchist
27. Navigator
28. Gunner
29. Solar Sailor
30. Horticulturalist
31. Lensgrinder
32. Electrician
33. Plumber
34. Drycleaner
35. Doctor
36. Counselor
37. Salvager
38. Radiation Scrubber
39. Organ Trader
40. Cook
41. Gas Merchant
42. Hitman
43. Clock Synchronizer
44. Trucker
45. Saloon Owner
46. Barkeep
47. Companion
48. Pawnbroker
49. Wine Microbiologist
50. Pornstar

Mundos de los Cataclismos

They get called Sleepers, mostly. Sometimes postapocs or just apocs. Formally they're supposed to be referred to as failed colonies, but even the government calls them Cataclysm Worlds when they're feeling sensationalist.

There are lots of them. The empire is big and space is full of surprises. Plenty of worlds have a colony ship, or ten, launched at them before the probes turn up any real data. Usually it's the air. Too much nitrogen, not enough CO2, unexpected clouds of acid, something like that. Other times it's the topsoil, or oceans full of some horrible poison cooked up by a brief flare of single-cell xenos a million years ago.

But then there are more interesting ones. Sometimes it's not even the world that's the problem. There's an issue with cryosleep, a problem in the reactors, a captain that just sort of snaps. The worst, of course, is when the world is too hospitable to life. The ship settles down, folds out into a city and fucked-up alien biology starts pouring in through the windows, through the walls.

All of them are worth huge amounts of money. They're the collected remnants of entire asteroid belts, pre-manufactured into everything that's needed to support life on hostile worlds. Power cells, atmo machines, medical supplies, seed stores, gene banks. One salvaged AI core or gravity compensator can set an explorer up for life, especially if the rest of the expedition is too dead to split the profits. The governments offer rewards, though they're not quite enough, and you can always find buyers on the black market. Though what a crime syndicate wants with a tailored strain of nitrogen-fixing bacteria is perhaps best left unexplored.

What's Wrong With This Cityship?

1. FOG
2. PLANTS
3. EVERYONE IS HATE
4. BUGS
5. ROBOTS
6. DINOSAURS
7. CRYSTALS THAT ARE BAD SOMEHOW
8. SHIP IS ALIVE
9. GHOSTS
10. PORTAL TO HELL
11. HIPPIE LOVE PLAGUE
12. COMPUTER WORSHIP
13. TIME IS BROKEN
14. PIRATES
15. BRAIN FUNGUS
16. SQUIDS
17. FISH MANS
18. ACCELERATED EVOLUTION
19. MUTANTS
20. FLOOD
21. PSYCHICS
22. ICE
23. MORLOCKS
24. PUNKS
25. ALL MEDIEVAL FOR SOME REASON
26. SHADOWS THAT ARE ALIVE AND KILL YOU
27. BIRDS I GUESS
28. FACE CRABS
29. APES
30. VIRUSES
31. MEMES
32. SHAMANS
33. ENERGY VAMPIRES
34. OOZE
35. THE SUN
36. JELLYFISH
37. CANNIBALS
38. SAND
39. CYBORGS
40. SHAPESHIFTERS
41. RADIATION
42. RATS
43. MAD SCIENTISTS
44. MOST DANGEROUS GAME
45. LEOPARDS
46. METAL HATES FLESH
47. MUTAGENIC PLAGUE
48. LUDDITES
49. GLADIATORIAL COMBAT
50. AMNESIA

If you have some way of choosing a famous historical personality at random this list also doubles as a Doctor Who episode generator.

we make thank for picture famous artist Kilian Eng

12 Things the Aurora Borealis is that Isn't Aliens

Because all it ever feels like it is is aliens. Or spirits of the dead or something. We can do better.

1. Ice madness. Can actually see the aurora in the eyes of afflicted people. They just see it when reasonably cold and looking up
2. Backwards time echoes of a magnetic doomsday device that will strike the area in the next hundred years
3. What the sky normally looks like - everywhere else is cloudy b/c of alien contrails/rivers of souls
4. How the sky celebrates Christmas
5. Shadow of a negaworld poorly superimposed over this one like that old blue-red 3D effect thing
6. Great sheets of luminescent sky algae feeding on overabundance of nitrogen
7. n-th dimensional demiurge has scrawled signature into latest project
8. Sign that the sky turtles have come to earth to breed and you will soon be finding sky turtle eggs about the place
9. Mountain-top monks weaving big green eternity blanket to forestall existential dread
10. What happens when the moon is close enough to reach out its tendrils and start grabbing at shit
11. World's diary. Major historical and geographic events recorded with significant bias
12. Elf poo

Shark Tabble

Tabbles are very important and also are sharks. Thanks for enjoy.

1. Fat. Scarred. One side of mouth pulled up in grin.
2. Lean. Dark. A little too long. Spine not smooth enough; jointed like elbows.
3. Short. Blunt. All mouth, no tail. Fins stunted.
4. Striped. Poised. Fins suggest elegant, poisonous fans.
5. Hunched. Intent. Drags itself through the water like it's crawling.
6. Vacant. Monolithic. Drifts like a glacier, mouth agape.
7. Misshapen. Symmetrical. Blunt hammer-heads of flesh along length.
8. Powerful. Uncaring. Kills of spite not for you, but for your species.
9. Sharp. Tight. Bent like an arrow. Always watching something else.
10. Silent. Watchful. Mouth itches its way forwards. Tips of fins spasm.
11. Curved. Pale. Body washes away from a pointed maw.
12. Driftwood. Roll again for the description of the driftwood.

These all also work flawlessly for describing people, as well. Just roll on through the bits with fins.

Hopefully I included all the sharketypes.

I really wanted to include this shark chart because I love it.

d100 Stuffs

This is a big fuck off tabble of normal stuffs that normal people could conceivably have on them and like fiddle with enough for it to be noticeable. You should kill those people and steal the the things and make them part of your schtick because character building.

Click to find out what weird loot this idiot is fiddling with

1. Bag o' dice
2. Snuff box
3. Opera eyeglass dealie
4. Monocle
5. Really blunt butterfly knife
6. Ball-peen hammer on cute utility belt
7. Necklace puzzle thing from Yu-Gi-Oh
8. Prayer beads
9. Pipe
10. Sketchpad
11. Bonsai tree in glass bubble
12. Sea monkeys in glass bubble
13. Good luck charm
14. Foreign language dictionary
15. Nutcracker
16. Bag o' sunflower seeds
17. Ruler, protractor, abacus
18. Palm-sized idol of dead god
19. Ball-on-a-string
20. Oracle bones (don't work)
21. Straw hat
22. Tricorn hat
23. Tall hat
24. Broad hat
25. Colourful felt hat
26. Hat w/ bells
27. Medieval beanie equivalent
28. Hand-knitted hat
29. Non-shit fedora
30. Shit fedora
31. Pocket-watchy sundial/star map
32. Broken compass
33. String of shrunken monkey heads
34. Clockwork beetle
35. Playing cards
36. Erotic playing cards
37. Poorly-scribed holy book
38. Beaten-to-shit teddy bear
39. Knitted scarf
40. Small flute
41. Pet rock
42. Pet dried toad
43. Kaleidoscope
44. Locket w/ stranger's hair
45. Dominoes
46. Ghost in a jar
47. Ghost of crab in a jar
48. Quillpen and ink
49. Hammer and chisel
50. Leather notebook etched with picture of unicorn
51. Magic 8-ball
52. Walking stick
53. Really lovely vest
54. Music box
55. Hand mirror
56. Conch shell
57. Slightly creepy cloth doll
58. Stuffed canary
59. Very large, very old coin
60. Dried mouse heads
61. Fisherman's cap
62. Hat w/ buckles
63. Reversible hat; one side filthy
64. Toortsog w/ tassels
65. Skull cap made of actual skull
66. Bandanna with flowery motif
67. Greasy newspaper folded into captain's hat
68. Hat from fertility festival. Wildly inappropriate
69. Huge powdered wig
70. Almost-entirely-eaten helmet
71. Slightly overlarge copper ring
72. Tin of caviar from by-gone era
73. Satchel of potpourri
74. Tiny violin
75. Holy symbol shaped like torture device
76. Crab claw
77. Oyster shells
78. Seed pearls
79. Fingernail-sized chunk of fool's gold
80. Geode
81. Miniature bagpipes
82. Very well preserved jerky sausage
83. Winding key for something clockwork
84. Scrimshaw
85. Whittling knife
86. Quill pen and ink
87. Vellum
88. Snowglobe
89. Thumbscrews
90. Extra shoelaces
91. Half a lockpick
92. Box of watercolours
93. Pouch of tobacco
94. Flask with ever-present thimbleful of potent liquor
95. Hourglass
96. Caged fairy
97. Political manifesto
98. Pamphlet about immigrants
99. Sealed letter
100. Potato stamp

Barons of the Kingdom of Calvino

1. Split in half by cannonball in wars w/ the infidels. Each half leads separate existence. Bad half runs the barony, executes peasants for trifling crimes. Good half hops about doing good deeds and living in the forest. Both are in love with the same person.
2. Lives in the trees. Swore an oath when twelve years old never again to set foot on the ground. Has kept it. Goes pretty much where they please - barony heavily forested.
3. Does not exist. An empty suit of armour that maintains itself through sheer willpower. Stickler for rules. Obsessed with counting and organization. If you can prove its title to the barony is in error it will fall apart and disappear.
4. Obsessed with birds. House is an aviary. Due to an absence of crows in the kingdom, has trained storks, flamingos, parakeets to prey on flesh in their wake.
5. Is a book detailing the life of a fictitious baron whose decisions always correspond to those which must be made at the exact moment of reading. Turning ahead to predict the future is strictly forbidden by the order of the baroness.
6. Is a guy's reflection in a mirror. The guy is not the baron; only the reflection is the baron. Mute, because sound cannot travel into or out of the mirror, so must communicate in hand gestures. Writing is backwards, deeply incomprehensible.
7. Was swallowed by a tiger when very young and cannot get out. Lives quite comfortably inside the tiger, although quarters a tad cramped. Orders can only be heard by pressing one's ear right up against the tiger's belly. Professional tiger tamers constantly on standby, as tiger rampages cause total political paralysis.
8. Is, by order of the queen, the poorest person in the barony at any one time. Life in barony a feverish race to the bottom. Winners accumulate huge amount of property in single executive order before having it all confiscated by the next guy. That or starve to death.
9. Wanted for murder in a dozen counties, arranged to be put on trial by himself. Legal proceedings against him cannot legally proceed until the resolution of the current case, which has been going on for fifteen years now. Jurors, barristers, witnesses all barred from leaving courthouse.
10. Baronship communicable by touch. Current baron lives in a barrel. If they were to move about in public the barony would disintegrate into a massive and bloodthirsty game of tag.
11. Thinks clouds are people and people are clouds.
12. Power-sharing arrangement in low-lying country means first baron has authority over everything above sealevel, second baron has authority over everything below. Sea level in most places about waist height. You can kick someone to death and avoid extradition by walking about on stilts.
13. Believes self to be hideously ugly. Has made illegal mirrors, portraiture, the act of description. Individuals caught using words to represent visual images are disfigured with hot pitch.
14. You're the new baron! Village archivists just dug up a bunch of old papers that prove your claim conclusively. You have also inherited an ancient feud with the family of the count next door, who have a tradition that you can't come of age until you have wreaked vengeance on an enemy of the bloodline and (it turns out) are resorting to forgery in order to generate more enemies.
15. Has memorized every square inch of the barony, every stray thought in the heads of its inhabitants. Hasn't left study in years - passes laws based on deterministic model of events that they maintain in their imagination. This worked infallibly up until two weeks ago, when the baron forgot to account for one tiny detail and the whole thing spiralled out of control. Now people are getting executed for crimes they would have committed in an alternative universe where a single sparrow never fell.
16. Terrified of a monster that changes each time they describe it.
17. Citizens tell you sorrowfully that the baron has gone mad and believes herself to be a crocodile. They offer a hefty reward for a cure. In fact, the baron is just a crocodile they have put a hat on.
18. Barony is a vast empty desert. Each grain of sand is subject to the baron, making them ruler of the greatest empire in the history of the world.
19. Fears assassination and usurpation by their future self. Plots to assassinate and usurp their past self.
20. Village of a thousand barons and one subject, who has a difficult life as they are the only one expected to grow any food.

First three are from the endlessly gameable Italo Calvino, rest are more or less (in some cases less) my own invention. Use with bandit table to engage in maximum literature.

Hydras: The "I can't keep doing this to myself" Edition

Swear to god y'all better let this die because we will keep making posts if you do and it will kill me and I will haunt the ever-loving shit out of you.

HYDRA OF THE LABOURS
Heads regrow in about a year, if the body isn't slain. Cutting off the first ten heads will cause the last two to sprout. Kill all the heads and you get to go hunt for the golden fleece, probably. Or maybe the hydra just has golden fleece.

1. Nemean Lion. Face is halfway between Helen of Troy and a wildcat, and not in a sexy way. Golden skin is impervious to arrows. Bites for 1d6.
2. Lernean Hydra. Head cloaked in chitinous shell. Can spit a spider crab (1 HD, AC as plate, two claws at 1d4 each, grapples your face on a successful hit w/ both) at you 1/day. Bites for 1d6 + poison.
3. Ceryneian Hind. +20 Dex bonus to AC. Yeah you can't hit this thing unless you trap it first, somehow. Ram 1d4.
4. Erymanthian Boar. Mouth is framed by jutting tusks. Mottled skin is exposed beneath ragged fur. Cold damage puts it to sleep for 1d4+1 rounds. Gores for 1d8
5. Augean Stables. Looks exactly like a horse butt. Fires excrement at you for 1d6 damage to your sense of honour. No actual damage, though. Can cast Grease 1/day. We both know that ain't really grease.
6. Stymphalian birds. Has two bronze beaks, one on either side of face. Plumes of metal feathers sprout from neck like mane. Can fire feathers like arrows as attack action. Is terrified of rattles and will flee from them. Peck 1d4.
7. Cretan Bull. I mean look it's just a bull head. Always loses initiative. Gore for 1d8.
8. Mares of Diomedes. Rearing, mad-eyed horse head. All teeth are canines. Can breathe fire for 2d6 damage in a cone, 1/day. Bite 1d6.
9. Belt of Hippolyta. Strong-featured head of a woman with a golden girdle around her neck. Immune to damage. Remove the girdle, head falls off. Probably definitely a metaphor for something. Hair whip 1d4.
10. Cattle of Geryon. Cow head dripping thick, meaty cud. Has a crush on the bull head. The upper body of a two-headed dog sprouts from its neck like a tumour. Can vomit forth a swarm of gadflies 1/day. Gore 1d4.
11. Apples of the Hesperides. Branching, twisting limbs like a tree made of arms. Fat, golden organs hang from the branches. Snake heads tip each limb, a hundred in total, tongues lolling catatonically. Slam 1d6 + poison against everyone in a 10' radius circle.
12. Cerberus. Three headed dog. Three attacks for 1d4 each, all against the same target.

So easy to Google image search it's actually disgusting

PACK HYDRA
Stats as wolves. Roam around in packs of 1d6+1. When you cut the head off one, each other hydra gets another head. First one just dies though which is super sad </3

MEMETIC HYDRA
Is rumours about the pcs. Must kill with fire. Somehow.

~topical humour~

TRICK HYDRA
Any damage not done in an effort to remove a head spawns a head with HD equal to the damage done. Cutting off heads does/does not produce more heads as normal, depending on how much you hate your players.

FUCK YOU HYDRA

When you cut off its head, you grow a hydra head. Your new head hates you so, so much, and you can actually hear it thinking mean things about your weight.

OUROBOROS HYDRA

Haha but no seriously I don't think this is gameable I'm just out of ideas.