Oracular Practice

 

The other day I wrote a bit about running my current game - one of the things I discussed very briefly was the introduction of controlled randomness into a storytelling space. In our hobby this is done with the simulational machinery of the game world - the dice form the foundation, and are spun out into tables, matrixes, resolution mechanics, etc. What distinguishes games writing from prose writing? For me it's the way it introduces bounded regions of indeterminacy into a text. An adventure location or module is explicitly nearly entirely indeterminate states, to be 'completed' by the characters as they navigate it. Character creation may have randomised elements - the bounds are set by the writer, who defines a range inside which this 'type' of being is exposed to this or that variety of gear, abilities, circumstances, etc. We are good at pattern recognition - we read the indeterminacy textually, and it tells us something about the world we are all inhabiting together. 

You can do this in prose writing, but in vastly less efficient ways. You could literally say something like: these types of people are largely predisposed to this sort of activity, but there are some exceptions that instead prefer x and y. You can also try to invoke the feeling of the indeterminate state of specific character: it's not well documented who these people are, their practices and origins are mysterious; sometimes they are described as x, sometimes y, and more rarely as z. There is some sense that keeping a natural voice (instead of breaking out into a table, or dice notation) stops something from rupturing - you are still inside literature (that is, you will compose and be read under a certain heuristic, or with a set of very widely-disseminated and agreed-on shared assumptions), and not inside games writing. I think this is probably true, but I find it interesting to think about the artificiality of the distinction. 

The Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani talks often (in my reading of him, mostly in Cyclonopedia) about 'infection' or 'implication' or 'opening oneself to' or 'complicity with' an outside. The complicity of the book's subtitle is of this sort - one enters into (reader or writer, there is a sort of levelling process here - the writer is already fully complicit and so cut away or damned; the reader is given a choice as to how far they want to take things by continuing to read) a 'complicity with anonymous materials', and in so doing, opening themselves to the inhuman (as in literally inhuman, not inhumane or bad or cruel, though they do certainly have their cruelty) logics of the outside. This is a radical and ungrounding movement - elsewhere he talks about 'pure intelligence' in similar terms, as something one might move towards and be opened up by, by the practice of reading (and crucially, thinking) philosophy. 

The cruelty (or danger, if you are the writer or reader) of a Negrestanian 'outside' or a 'pure intelligence' is not a directed, reasoning, torturing one (although he has some fun with thinking about what that might look like in Cyclonopedia, when he talks about the sentience of oil/the Middle East) - it is systemic, pattern-based, unreasoning, and non-sentient. You cannot 'think philosophy' effectively if you are unwilling to open yourself up to the logic of pure intelligence (which of course has nothing to do with people being more or less 'quick' or 'smart' - it's a total state of cognition, and in my amateur reading it feels comparable to but crucially distinct from something like computation), but in so doing, you necessarily expose yourself to ungrounding and cutting up and dissolution. These things are not good for humans to be exposed to (gung ho young men proclaiming their own mastery of or closeness to cruelty/pure intelligence/whatever verbiage they've picked up recently are one of the most unpleasant parts of reading philosophy at university, and also one of the surest tells of individuals not yet having been exposed to the forces under discussion), so exposure to the logic of philosophy must be carefully managed (even managed with kindness).

There is a section in Deleuze and Guattari's 1000 Plateaus where the authors explicitly state: 'now is the time to multiply practical warnings'. They say it while discussing how one might build themselves a 'Body Without Organs', which I always pictured as a sort of thought-pattern-machine by which one could live alongside and manage exposure to an outside, without too much damage being done. It is telling that they care to warn you against a gung ho approach - one of the many things I love about these two writers - because they know that being all-in about something like this can lead to. I have a couple of friends who've confided to me about psychosis and other difficulties that were exacerbated by attempting good faith engagement with this type of thought - it's no fun (although reading about it an be enormously fun and very sexy), it's work. For D+G I suspect (again, I am an amateur reader) that it was work against capital, and against capture by its sense-making - fun doesn't really enter into the discussion, although love and joy (as examples) certainly do. 

This is all to say that an outside, or a logic of ungrounding, is a potent and extremely interesting material to work with in writing - probably(?) the best approach to doing so seriously would be philosophy, but I write fiction, and find my enjoyment using the tools I have to circle around these things. To bring things full circle, I suspect that the 'region of bounded indeterminacy' that games writing hinges on with its tables and resolution procedures is an interesting technique for managing contact with an outside, a non-human (or non-linguistic) regime of sense. Combinatorial logics, infinite series, structural repetition - all of this can be described in prose, but not efficiently. We actually have the tools to do this efficiently ready to hand. I have no idea what this means for writing OSR games (lol), but it has been on my mind. 

After the post on Brythwin, Weird Writer put up a very interesting piece of writing about oracles. In my post I had mentioned the theory that oracular practice can lead to better decision-making, by systematically opening up the mind to interpretive solutions and unexpected first principles. In her post, WW gets to the point immediately - you don't ask an oracle for a second draw, or a second prophecy. To enter into the oracular contract/logic, you are tying yourself to that logic - you submit to the bounded indeterminacy that the system has cultivated (because all oracles work within a system of referent images - you are not 'purely' ungrounded), and also submit to its primacy. A hero might be clever with the prophecy, but a hero would never simply roll again if they didn't like the response. There is something in here about cowardice, dignity, fortitude, virtue - I suspect that AI chatbots and algorithmic content feeds and many of the other artefacts of our current moment that feel so sinister are created by people that would see no issue in simply rolling again on the oracle, if they thought no one was watching. It's amazing to me that someone could not see the absolutely abject failure here: you don't fail when you get a bad prophecy (though it may destroy you), you fail when you lack the courage to genuinely open yourself to its logic - if it's only risk when convenient, you've already failed.

When discussing in the Rainbow server, WW further mentioned an artist (I have embarrassingly forgotten who this was exactly it was Austin Osman Spare!) who had an idea: that everyone ought to draw their own tarot deck. A wonderful idea, and one that got me thinking in broader terms: how might one invent one's own oracle, or oracular system? If submission to an outside is a good thing in controlled doses (and I believe that it is), how would one go about controlling the dose?

It seems to me that what you need is a picture language, and a mechanism for generating semi-random states (shout out to this lovely post, which, among other things, talks about how to roll a dice in prison, where dice are not allowed). 

A picture language: this does not need to literally be a set of images or pictures with meanings, a la the tarot. It could be a series of states (as in the Book of Changes) with correspondences between them, a cast of characters (if the liver looks this way, then Hera's mood is such and such), or whatever you like. I think the important thing is that it comes from you yourself - that it has personal significance, and that you can elaborate on it in your own time. I would also say: that you can trust it, and trust yourself not to simply change it when it tells you something you don't want to hear. This probably means that the images in the language will need to find purchase at the level of human truths - love, alienation, ageing, fortune, labour, friendship, etc. Anything above this 'level' (I suspect) will be too specific to be usefully interpreted. 

A mechanism: dice, a deck of cards, the ways the birds fly, the liver of the sacrifice, anything you wish that gives randomised, structured feedback, and which can be associated with this or that image or state from the picture language. The combinatorial machine - the bounds that you set on this will limit your exposure to its inhuman logic. If you desire to create a mystical attachment to your own interpretations, you could use something fuzzy or difficult to cleanly demarcate. If you desire to create a pattern game, and have the interpretation come later, something like dice or cards are probably more appropriate. 

My sense is that it does not matter at what point in the process the interpretation happens, except that this style of interpretation suits you personally, and has been developed by you for your own use. Fuzzy images or fuzzy relations - both of these will work fine, and each will have its particular savour. 

The point is to develop something true to yourself; one might seek guidance or tuition (and I think that one should - no human society in history has failed to develop an image of a wise mentor), but the work must, ultimately, be done in isolation. You are the only one responsible, for the very good and potentially also the ill. 

I don't know how I would approach this myself - I think that it's probably one of those things (like any practice worth taking seriously; writing, painting, whatever) that ends up being the work of a lifetime. We have high visibility examples of people who have developed a system for themselves and successfully marketed it to others - my wager is that doing this creative work yourself, setting the appropriate bounds, managing your exposure, managing your relation to the picture language etc., is more fruitful that reading someone else's attempt. The very great systems in history are guides and foundations, and I imagine that the very great oracles had personal relationships with those vast and sprawling edifices of tradition and procedure. 

I could attempt a quick list for a personal picture language:

• A human torso, with the frame cropped such that the limbs are not visible.
• A 'net' of jewels, that can be placed in front, or behind, any other thing.
• The sharp point of the needle that slips beneath the skin.
• A human face with its eyes and teeth opened too wide, a sort of demon.
• The sun, the sunlight.
• The image of loneliness, distinct from a second image of alone-ness.
• Death, of course.
• The interior of the body, opened up by illness - a sort of red landscape of sores. 
• Smoke, steam, fog, mist - like the net of jewels, a framing image
• The shared meal, distinct from a second image: the solo meal.
• Chemical stimulants.
• The whole body, understood as a sort of sorting or processing engine - its flows easy and uninterrupted, and its various limbs, organs, and metabolic systems working as they should. 

I've found these over many years of writing and paying attention to what coheres and what remains in the wake of this or that particular attempt. I suspect that I will need more to build my oracle. 

As for the mechanism, I haven't found a good one yet, and so am at the mercy of my own preconceptions, desires, wants, obsessions. Discovering a semi-random mechanism to slot into the image language feels like a worthwhile project. I never used to like the Oulipo adjacent experimental groups, but as I get older I suspect that this is the sort of thing they were interested in and gesturing towards in their very self-conscious formal play - there are plenty of painters that end up here as well.

Thank you beloved Weird Writer for prompting this set of thoughts! 

Bring Me the Head of Sapphon Delayer

 

CW: femicide

The capital is abuzz - rumour says that the poet Sapphon Delayer has murdered his wife, the poet Tinter Briar, in a drunken argument over royalties. 

Sapphon has been heard admitting the deed with his mercenary companions, but publicly he denies it, and claims that his wife has abandoned the capital with one of her lovers. Tinter herself is nowhere to be found. 

The great poetess' friends and allies understand the truth of the situation: that Sapphon is too well ensconced in the military and political machinery of the capital to be vulnerable to the investigations of the Baronial Agents. While proof of murder remains illusive he is legally untouchable, and knows it. 

Tinter's publisher, Elder Wass, has collected 2000 silver pieces from those who loved her, and put the word out among the poets, artists, and bravos of the city. The lucre will go to the one who can: 

BRING ME THE HEAD OF SAPPHON DELAYER

Sapphon and Tinter lived together just outside the capital, in an aging and decrepit stone house gifted to them on their wedding night by a wealthy patron. The house is well known to the delinquents and aesthetes of the capital; the parties, readings, and shows thrown here were the stuff of minor legend. It is no fortress, and the ancient stone walls will not seriously inhibit any attempt to gain access to the grounds.

It is around 10pm, and Elder Wass' proclamation was made this very evening. In addition to the PCs, the following groups are making an attempt on Sapphon's life, and angling to get that head:

1. Euron and Phelter 
2. Bliss
3. The Telamont Girls
4. Fia's Party

One of these groups, determined randomly, will be already present when you arrive, squatting behind the stone wall at the back of the property, and whisper-arguing (unless it's Bliss, who will be here alone) about how best to handle the assault. 

Each d10+15 minutes after game start, another group will arrive at random, until all are present at the house, searching for the Sapphon and trying to take his head. Their temperaments and gear can be found in the Dramatis Personae section. 

The House

The house is two stories tall, and has thick stone walls, glass windows, and wooden doors. All doors and windows are unlocked. 

The front garden is long grass and brambles - out the back are tilled vegetable patches, two old fruit trees, and a freshly dug grave. You won't be able to excavate it without being heard by the inhabitants of the house. The whole property is surrounded by a low stone wall about 4ft high, with two wooden gates in it - one at the front, and one at the back. The front gate is watched at all times by Balder the sharpshooter, who is currently posted up on the roof with his musket, invisible in the darkness. If he spots you approaching, the sharp-eyed will mark the glow of his slow match as he takes aim. 

Inside are the rest of Sapphon's mercenary friends, who he has called to his side as protection until the 'little drama' blows over. The mercenaries are detailed in the Monsters section. From the outside you can see black silhouettes moving within - if you fire on or otherwise attack one, randomise its target from those available.

The layout of the house is as follows:

The House, 5ft squares. Ground floor on the right, upstairs on the left. Click to make it bigger!

Rooms:

1. Reception/Main Room. Large windows to the north and south, and well stocked bookshelves installed around the walls. Poetry from all over the world, but also novels, plays, technical books, and religious literature. A large wooden table in the centre of the room, with six comfortable chairs. 5 Baronial Mercenaries and 3 Arditi are sitting or standing around the table, drunk, gambling with dice, and counting and recounting a small pile of coins: 314 silver - the royalties from Sapphon and Tinter's collection.
2. Study. A beautiful desk and plush chair, installed beneath a large bay window. Inside the desk, good quality paper, ink, quills, and an expensive steel pen imported from the White City - worth 35s, and useable as a -1 light weapon if you want. The desk is sticky with blood - this is where the mercs killed Sapphon this morning. 
3. Cots. Barracks-style cot bedding along the walls, enough to sleep eight. Large windows to the east and south. The furniture is well-made, but spartan. This is where their guests slept when the guest room was filled. Four Mercenaries lie on their backs, trying to catch up on some sleep before they all leave tonight - out of armour, but with their weapons close to hand. 
4. Kitchen. A large iron stove, wooden surfaces and boards, several well-used knives, a small pile of timber for the burner. A pot of oil, a jar of salt, a small glass bottle of expensive imported red wine. Two Arditi in here, smoking amphetamines and cooking up some fry-meat on the stove, arguing about what to add once it's finished. Blueberries? Fig? Pickles? They really can't decide. 
5. Greenhouse. Large room with a glass ceiling, full of plants in terracotta pots. Not many of them are useful or edible, they appear to be mostly ornamental flowers. Two Mercenaries in here, high and giggling and making out with one another, blissfully unaware of the world around them. 
6. Dry Store. Large sacks of grain, hanging cured meat, spices, dried fruit, oil, salt, spirits. About 35 rations in here, none of which will spoil. Otherwise empty. 
7. Landing. A large and mostly empty room with glorious floor to ceiling windows, and paintings on the walls. The poets had many artist friends in the city, and some of this collection might be worth something. There are sixteen paintings, and each is worth 10xd4! silver if you spend a day in the city finding a buyer. You have to spend the day before you get to roll on the price. Alternatively, Phelter could accurately appraise them for you right here. 
8. Guest Room. A large double bed, a night stand, a wardrobe (empty). Officer Senet sits on the bed, unnaturally still, watching the window. 
9. Bedroom. A smaller double bed, a night stand with some chapbooks on it, a wardrobe that contains 8 jackets and various other nondescript bits of clothing. The bed is absolutely sodden with blood, and the smell is overpowering. This is where Tinter was killed. The empty pistol is still on the bed. A Mercenary sits slumped down with her back to the wall and her head in her hands - a single Arditi lies beneath the saturated bedframe, becoming slowly covered in gore. All physical damage in this room also deals equivalent psychic damage. 

Monsters

The Mercenaries

Old war buddies from Sapphon's days as a soldier. He left at a young age, but his friends went career - none of them really like or respect him much any more. They are from several different companies, and in the capital for their own various reasons. Impassive, violent, and calculating men and women, heavily armed, professionally armoured, and completely used to killing other people over nothing at all. 

The mercenaries inside the house are expecting an attack, and will have their armour on and weapons to hand unless specified. 

Baronial Mercenary

Humans with HD1+1, medium warhammer and shield or heavy sword, light dagger, 50/50 heavy and plate armour, 1 in 3 carrying a pistol or musket. Disposition: good morale and hard to spook or intimidate, but not willing to die for the coin in the house. 

Arditi

Professional light infantry, often used as terror troops and infiltrators. HD2, medium fighting knife and buckler, light armour, 50/50 pistols or a single firebomb. Arditi carry climbing ropes and hooks with them, and are famously good climbers. They also carry stimulants for use in the field. Disposition: aggressive, vain, and dashing fighters - still not willing to die, but very easy to provoke. 

Balder the Sharpshooter

An unarmoured Arditi fighter armed with a musket, a medium knife, and climbing gear. A very good shot - rolls with +1 to hit. 

Officer Senet 

Senet is a large, lean Baronial of indeterminate gender, dressed in expensive plate and wearing a full face of professionally applied cosmetics. Senet is completely hairless, including eyelashes and brows. Their teeth have been replaced with sharp crystal dentures, worth 60s if you could pul them out in one piece.

HD4, bite as light, or as heavy in a grapple (this attack can be made freely in a grapple), plate armour. Disposition: calculating and ruthless. Thinks of people in terms of use value. 

Dramatis Personae

Euron and Phelter

Euron and Phelter are old friends of Sapphon and Tinter's. They can't quite being themselves to believe what's happened, and have come to confront Sapphon and learn the truth. If he confesses the murder to them, or can't give satisfactory explanations, they will kill him and claim the bounty. Neither is expecting a hostile reception from the mercenaries - this is all just a big misunderstanding. 

Euron has HD1, carries a medium hangar sword, is unarmoured, and shares his body with an entity he has has never revealed the name of. The nameless entity can blind everyone that it can see through his eyes, for as long as he can see them - note that it blinds everyone that he can see, he cannot pick and choose targets for this ability, though he can switch it on and off.

Phelter has HD3, carries a medium cane sword and pistol, and wears medium armour. She deals an additional 2d8 from ambush in melee. 

Bliss

A poet of some standing in the city, and one of Tinter's best and most trusted friends. Bliss has a strange, wrinkled, bestial face, enormous strength, and beast-like fangs and claws - she is a beast, or fast becoming one, which is very strange because she has never been a soldier as far as anyone knows. She writes poems with a famously detached and precise style, and is well respected in capital society. She is here for revenge, which to her means hurting Sapphon before she kills and eats him, and, as a wealthy woman, doesn't care at all about the head or the money attached.

HD4, claws as light weapons, bite as heavy weapon. Light armour worn beneath expensive, fashionable clothing. Roars when she kills something, which forces a morale check on enemies in combat. Has 1DR against weapon attacks. 

The Telamont Boys

Fanboy bravos, here to do a good deed and make a bit of money in the process. The Telamont Boys are spear-affiliates of the 52 Girls, and not well established. They study literature at the university. All five of them are here: Tenna, Burr, Belit, Sisoon, and Poulindred. They are clever and capable fighters, but seriously out of their depth against the mercenaries. Bicker constantly with one another, and are genuinely courageous and heroic.  

HD1, light cross knives and medium steel clubs, light armour, harlequin half-capes, white ape masks. Skilled in acrobatics, stealth, and climbing. Disposition: somewhere between The Warriors and the Scooby Gang. Will freak out if comrades start dying. 

Fia's Party

Fia is a professional, and will approach the problem of getting the head without sentimentality or over-complication. She and her crew will set fire to the house, and shoot whoever comes out - if they can, they will block the doors from the outside before they do so. They have bought oil and guns for the purpose. They do this sort of thing a lot. 

Fia has 3HD, a heavy spear, a musket, and heavy armour. She is also carrying 2 petrol bombs. 

She is accompanied by 8 bandits with medium spears and medium armour. Four have muskets, and the other four have a single petrol bomb each.  

The Truth

Sapphon really did kill Tinter over the royalties. He always considered his writing superior to hers, and convinced himself over several bitter weeks that he was the sole reason that their collection sold at all. When Tinter laughed at this he shot her dead. 

In the days that followed he became panicked, remorseful, and delusional (he maintained that she had made him do it), and gathered the mercenaries for both protection and emotional validation. After a few days of putting up with him they cut his throat and buried him with Tinter in the back garden. That was this morning. Now they are getting ready to strip the house of valuables, including the (meagre, as it turns out) royalty payment, and leave for the southern petty kingdoms later in the night. They don't know about the bounty on the head, but fear the vengeance of Sapphon's many enemies. 

This post is courtesy of beloved Xeno's 'Baronial Poets' prompt.

Some Reflections on Running Brythwin

 

I am currently 8 sessions into running this campaign for some people on the glog server. It's been eye-opening running games again, and I thought I'd do some reflection on how it's going, to get my thoughts in order. 

The first thing to say is that I don't consider myself a skilled DM - this is not self-effacement, I've seen really good DMs run games, and I don't have that type of fluency in my own approach. I think of myself as a writer and artist, and have spent more than fifteen years developing those practices professionally and in my private life - I'm confident with them, I can trust them completely, I understand that whatever I'm trying to get at with creative work, those two things can get me closer to it. Not so with running games. 

Why am I doing it? I've been asking this question of myself quite a bit (not because it's making me miserable, because I think the question is interesting), and the answer that I keep swirling around has an odd flavour to me - I think it's because I think there is something extremely specific and interesting (and I think really unexplored compared to more straightforward prose writing) about games writing - using writing, dice, procedures, tables, and the other tools of design, to define a space with varying quantities of simulational logic and affective picture-making. This answer feels much truer than, for instance, 'I enjoy it' or 'rules come alive in play' or 'world-building is completed in collaboration' - I hear these a lot from other people, and none have ever resonated with me. Simulational logic to me simply means anything that introduces controlled randomness into the 'space' of the writing - that's the only difference between a game world and a book of prose. You define procedural spaces, and attach images to them in sequences, and you give your players and DMs the tools (dice, procedures) they need to navigate those spaces. 

I remember reading ages ago (about ancient prophetic practices) that introducing controlled randomness into decision-making can lead to people making better decisions. The logic is that when you are given unstructured input from a semi-random 'oracle', you are constantly engaging interpretive thinking processes, and potentially approaching problems from positions that you would never have thought to start from. 

Introducing simulation into writing feels a bit like this to me. It is fantastic fun to have my naturally controlling tendencies (which are entirely appropriate to writing in isolation, but not very appropriate to running games) scope 'in' and 'out' - from prose description and poetics, out to encounter tables, hex and dungeon maps, stat-blocks - all the artefacts of simulation writing. 

In my mainline writing practice I like to keep things under control. I have a working theory that serves me quite well in my own prose (it's almost a trick, I picked it up reading Bolaño) that the more that you work at denying yourself, the crazier the images get when they leak out of you (as they inevitably will) - a sort of edging logic in writing. I like to make use of this method in games writing as well - when I speak about Barony being 'grounded', as I have once or twice, I think what I mean is that I try to write it 'normal'/'down-key'/'grounded', such that when things inevitably do spiral out of control, they hit harder and realer. The more interesting ideas develop inside you as you write the normal stuff, and the normal stuff has its pleasures as well. 

While running the games on Brythwin, this training and these impulses have served me less well. You really need a lightness in play with others; if you get too neurotic you start to attach yourself to other peoples' ideas and play experiences in an unhelpful way. When you're writing, the lightness can come and go, and the moments of heavy neuroticism have their place and are actually just as important. In play it's hard to find a good use for the heaviness. In one example that stuck in my mind, one of the PCs asked me if they could have a particular ribbon skill on campaign start - I said no, because their class didn't specify that they got a skill to start with, but it was the wrong call. It would have been easier and better for the health of the game to say yes and let the character breathe in the way that the player wanted them to. In general, my control-processes mean that I am over-present in policing what people can and can't do, and, since I have less experience as a DM than basically all of my (21! lmao) players, I often lack the courage of my convictions when calling on way or another. Not at all an issue when writing - you just sit with it until you know what the correct decision is - but a big issue when running a game with others in real time. I'm certainly better with this stuff than I used to be, but I'm not sure that I want to be worrying about it in the time I put aside for my hobby. 

I'm used to treating studio and writing time with a sort of ferocious seriousness (the type that you give up work for, or pour your own money into), and my brain ends up trying to treat everything in the game with that same seriousness. Because it's not practically possible, I end up not being able to put emphasis in any particular place. This has lead to a sort of same-ness or stamped-out quality that I've started to notice in the world I've invited my friends to inhabit. I'm consciously aware of it because the adventure is actually written around that feeling to some degree, but I really notice it (in a negative sense) in play recently. It's also resulted in me running some of the encounters with NPCs and monsters quite poorly - forgetting rules, mucking up stat blocks, etc., because I can't prioritise focus efficiently. One of the things I can genuinely say that I love in myself (it's taken a while!) is that I understand my own speeds and rhythms, and can adjust my life around these such that I can produce creatively. DMing has been a very interesting experiment in stepping way outside those comfort zones. 

This is all very maudlin and makes it sound like I'm not enjoying running the game, which is not true - I am having fun, I absolutely love my players, I absolutely love their characters, and I am pleased with myself on a few fronts: 

• The Barony classes, by and large, work well in play. No one is more shocked than I am. There are a few bits here and there that need tweaking, but the ones we've used so far are completely functional and, by the sound of it, good fun to play. The animal classes need a buff. I'm particularly pleased with fighters (fucking nasty in a fight, in a delightfully concrete way), bravos, errants, fairies, and academics. 
• Lethality is on a knife's edge, which I think is wonderful. I gave everyone top level gear on game start, which has lead to some interesting encounter dynamics - plate armoured characters (we have a lot of them) as very, very tough in melee, while the scattered lighter-armoured characters are significantly endangered even against extremely weak enemies. Even in plate, a single hit slipping through can put someone down instantly. We haven't had a death yet, but three characters could very easily have died in the last few delves. I think I get more scared than the players do lol.
• I tend to have good first instincts, and bad second thoughts. I won't get into the specifics here while the campaign is ongoing, for opsec reasons, but it'll be good to break it all down when everyone dies the Swallows emerge from the depths victorious. 

Things that need tightening up:

• I need to get better at keeping thing like characterisation and information between sessions consistent, and relying less on the murky atmosphere of the adventure to carry me. This is another one of those things that I like and cultivate in my writing, but there is definitely such a thing as an annoying amount of misty strangeness, especially when a group of people are trying to get something done. 
• I need to get better at remembering how my own rules work. Normal baby DM problem, but it means that encounters that could have been more dynamic end up feeling rote and boring because interesting and scary abilities get lost in the muddle of rolling and adjudicating turns.
• I need to get better at writing with clarity and usability in mind. Especially the earlier stuff on the blog is written without any contact at all with actual play, and bits of that show through. Some specifics: monsters probably need morale scores, damage needs to be unified under the light/medium/heavy rubric, or always specified as [dice]+[modifier] for finer control, I need to delegate prices to lists that make sense, I need to write up rules for ranged weapons instead of just assuming everyone knows what we're talking about, etc. etc. etc., there's actually lots of these, and I suspect they will take some time to coalesce after the game finishes. 

The Attendants in Second Printing

 

A quick post to note that my story collection The Attendants has entered a second printing, and is now once again available worldwide from Waterstones, the publisher Ma Bibliothéque, and the distributor. 

If you enjoy my writing here, there's a good chance you'll enjoy the pieces in this collection :) They're all about art, and most of them were commissioned by galleries over the first four years of my living in London.

The image below is the cover art, used with the generous permission of artist and friend Xavier Robles de Medina. 

Magic Mountain, 2016-2017, graphite on paper, 18.5 x 12.5

Mask 35: Beholder Mask

 

Previously on mask relay: the lovely Vivanter. 

Next on mask relay: TBC!

Beholder Mask

Tin mask with ten eyes engraved into the forehead, each fashioned from a differently coloured gem: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, indigo, white, jale, and ulfire. 

Each gem fires a thin beam of its colour that sets a target you can see alight (burns for d6 per turn until extinguished). Blue, violet, and indigo additionally deal d4 fire damage, and white deals d6. Jale and ulfire respectively set the mind and soul alight instead of the body - for jale, the affected creatures loses d6 MD, spell slots, mana, or whatever your wizards use to power their spells, and for ulfire they lose d6 of (work your way down the list, all results stack):

• their purpose.
• thier ambition. 
• their joy.
• their faith. 
• their name.
• all memories. 

Gems recharge in sunlight - each takes a full day after use (12 hours if you need to get precise with it). 

May additionally cast Turn Adventurers on any adventurers seeing it for the first time, per the rules for clerics. 

Ghosts of the Eastern Hinterland

 

CW: medical brain injury. 

In the White City, the military pragmatists keep robust records of troop numbers and movements, materiel requirements, leadership postings, and areas of active instability inside the empire. Their strange methods are useful culturally, but also logistically: they are capable of processing and interpreting vast amounts of data, and using it to generate predictions, models, and other indispensable planning documents.

Within the pragmatist clades are a secretive few called the Eastern Group, who take as their specialist interest the far-distant eastern borders of the empire. The citizens understand that their territories are vast, but finite - that the endless plains of conquered city-states and peoples does eventually end at the far end of the world. It is known that the eastern borders are the shores of a strange sea. 

The work of the Eastern Group is mostly concerned with how the empire might extend its capacity for force projection across this sea - they are naval planners, sea-steaders, bridge-builders, proponents of massed air power, proponents of draining the oceans, of freezing or transmuting its ultrasaline waters. Of cities in the sky or on the dark ocean beds. Of new moons to pull the oceans back like the skins of overripe fruit. Of the perpetual workings of great, sealed engines that might traverse them. The Eastern Group dream of another empire, mirrored, expansive back 'through' the volume of the world, and that eastern shore is its obscure line of inflexion. 

They are also, more secretly, the creators of ghost soldiers, ghost companies, and even entire ghost armies. A ghost is an Imperial Soldier who has been socially and informationally removed from the polis - the Eastern Group are very good at this; they have a lot of practice and institutional know-how, as well as access to staff and resources. A 'true' ghost is one who is remembered by no one outside the Eastern Group itself; a 'false' ghost is one with outstanding traces to be expunged. 

Because of their nature, no one can truly claim to know how many ghosts there actually are. It could be thousands - it could conceivably be millions. The ghosts themselves are subjected to chemical and surgical procedures that destroy long term memory encoding, and then shipped out east to fight and die in secret wars unguessed in the polis. 

Uniquely among the soldiers of the White City, the ghosts of the eastern expanse are dressed in plain steel gear, undecorated with the images of the game. The impulse, however, cannot be truly obliterated - they play games of their own, but in a vacuum, cut away from the complicated system of referents, assumptions, and cultural history that animate the play of citizens in the core territories. Each ghost creates his or her own visual language from a vastly reduced set of images. Usually each of these refers directly to another soldier. The other ghosts (and the kindly, smiling agents of the Eastern Group) are all that they know; are their entire world. Each is an image, nested amongst their peers, and their games and diagrams grow like gnarled family trees of the disappeared, the disembodied, in disincorporated. 

Each soldier takes an image for themselves, which they tattoo onto the chest or back.

Never Going Home

Don't Ask

A Lifetime of Silence

The City, The City

We Stalk at Night

Operational Assurance

Devour Light

Special Projects

Prism Watcher

I Was Your Daughter, Now I Am Something Else

Make Of Me What You Will

Precision Instruments

From Our Bodies Will Grow

Knowing Red Spectrum

Test Bed

We Kill What We See

Eastern Ghost

As Soldier of the White City, but no images painted on armour - usually unpainted steel, sometimes painted black. 

Every time an Eastern Ghost takes psychic damage they must save or suffer a seizure, which deals d3 damage and, if they survive that, takes them out of the fight non-lethally. 

Ghosts are just as vicious as normal soldiers, but they are also muddled and dreamy. It takes them a while to make decisions, and they will usually be confused by your presence unless you feature specifically in their mission. 

Bands and companies are like family to one another, to a greater degree than normal soldiers. If you slay one, the others will react as if they were siblings. They sing together as they fight and work - not the patriotic war music of the city; softer and gentler songs, improvised on the spot, for ten to fifteen people singing rough harmonies. 

They all have a strange horror-fascination with the idea of returning west, to a city and a people that have been systematically removed from their memories.  

Baronial Knights

The Barony does not produce knights - the hereditary nobility of the petty kingdoms are expected to be capable administrators, planners, strategists, and logisticians - many of them also train with weapons, but this is mostly for personal, pragmatic reasons, and not socially expected. 

The culturally enshrined/romantic warrior archetype in the Barony is the mercenary soldier; usually the heavy infantry fighter, but also more specialised types: the fierce medium skirmishers known as arditi, valiant and clever kill team captains, and, of course, adventurers. 

Both light and heavy cavalry do feature in Baronial field armies, but neither is of especially high quality - competent and capable of everything you would expect them to be, but not elite troops. 

On the Southern steppes, by contrast, cavalry make up nearly the entire force of a given nomad army or warband, and fighting on foot is done only when there is no opportunity to avoid it (another post soon on the low-status but extremely nasty steppe foot troops, called variously 'legless', 'slow men', and 'untouchables'). 

The nobility there have developed chivalric codes, and heavily armed and armoured lone horsemen go questing to attain virtue. These are notably foreign ideals to most Baronials, but that doesn't mean that they haven't been adopted by a few eccentrics.

To wit:

Helen, Poet of Void

A Baronial with an actual star patron and weapon - probably the only one in the world. Helen was one of those unlucky(?) few who never emerge from their teenage years of sociopathy. She was born to a poor family, and left them when she was very young, surviving mostly by thieving and luck. She joined one of the church's kill squads when she was fourteen, and then made her way through the ranks until she found herself captaining a band of highly rated professionals. One of her contracts took her south across the border, where something happened - it's not clear exactly what - and her entire crew were killed. Helen won't talk about it at all.

She spent five years wandering the steppe. During this period, she composed poems to the glory of Sapphon, the constellation that the nomads say rules time and memory. She memorised these poems in a vast mental 'library', and has never written any of them down. She fought monsters, bandits, and, eventually (to hear her version of events) found and breached one of the sealed passages to the void labyrinth. 

What she found within, and what resides inside, she has sworn never to say. The star smiths usually kill those who attempt to access the labyrinth - Helen appears to be an exception. 

Now she is The Foreigner Whose Arms are Range Finder, and the Sound of Unseen Wings. Her star weapons take the form of a terrible monster which uses as a mount, something like a terror bird with a single cyclopean eye, wingless, and moving swiftly on four limbs, which she discovered and imprinted on inside the Void Labyrinth, and a strange piece of eye protection that kills those she gazes on with invisible fire.

Helen is regarded as an oddity in the Barony, but she has a broad readership, and her poetry is respected in the White City to the north. Her work deals in simple terms with human joy, loss, and heartbreak, set like precious jewels against unimaginable gulfs of time, the great, freezing arcs of the heavens, and the shifting of geological strata. 

Helen, Poet of Void

HD3, injector knife, The Sound of Unseen Wings, plate armour, movement: as human, disposition: extremely justice sensitive, and extremely violent with those she believes are behaving unjustly. Otherwise clipped and awkward in her manner, more concerned with the heavens and their mysteries than other people. 

Helen has an absolutely perfect memory for text. She has read a lot about poetry, mathematics, and astronomy.

Injector Knife: as light weapon -1, which contains a trigger on the hilt that will inject a single dose of deadly poison (2d8 poison damage, CON save for half).

The Sound of Unseen Wings: a strange set of lenses and white bone that sit over the eyes. A switch on the temple activates them, after which they set all creatures within 50ft, and inside a directional 90 degree cone, alight. Helen mostly eschews 'fair' combats, and uses this device in concert with Range Finder to kite enemies while she burns them to death. 

Range Finder

The great cyclopean beast of the Void Labyrinth, Helen's ally and companion unto death. Range Finder has stats as a Bird Thane that cannot fly, whose single cyclopean eye can force a CON save against one enemy per turn - a failed save will paralyse the enemy for a turn. Helen rides her into battle, and she wears an ornate harness and saddle of silver. 

Vauquelin, the Red Knight, the Knight of Dreams

A hardwood mannequin of enormous size and mighty strength, who rides a huge southern warhorse. The Red Knight is a folk legend among the people of the Baronial provinces, and is famous for hunting and killing church officials and especially angels. 

Vauquelin (he always refers to himself as such) is accompanied by a young child-squire, Jupiter Rex, of indeterminate gender, who proclaims him and negotiates with friendly woodworkers for his repairs. They communicate using a personal language of hand signs, 

Vauqulin's wooden body is painted with thousands of fine red roses, and his device is a red sun shining on a field of thorny rosebushes. None know how he acquired his titles and chivalric affectations. He is fond of using his swords to carve bloody 'H's into the chests and foreheads of slain enemies; when questioned on the practice, Jupiter Rex will say that the H means 'hypocrite'. 

The Red Knight is beloved by those in the Barony with reason to fear the church, and many (illegal) songs of questionable accuracy are sung of his heroic and selfless deeds in defence of the innocent and the meek. 

Vauquelin is also famous for patrolling the Dreamlands, where he takes the form of a monstrously tall man in crimson armour, with a large rose flower for a face. In that place he enjoys absolute immunity decreed by the Prince, and spends his time hunting and destroying angels and demons who seek refuge there.   

Vauquelin, the Red Knight

HD4, holds two heavy swords (one in each hand, attacks twice per turn with them), and a 'brace' of 4 blunderbusses, actually hung over his shoulder on leather thongs. Hardwood body gives him armour as chain and 1 DR against weapon attacks - he also floats in water. Movement: as human, disposition: in combat, the Terminator. Outside of combat, very gentle, very laidback, with a weird sense of humour. Rides a large warhorse with no special properties. 

In the Dreamlands, Vauquelin grows to twice his usual size, doubles his HP, and deals double damage. 

The church have a standing bounty of 1500s on the Red Knight. 

Jupiter Rex

Stats as commoner, rides their own horse and also takes care of the spares that travel with them. The only person who can speak Vauquelin's sign language. Loaded with treasure, and pays woodworkers extremely handsomely to make repairs to their master. 

Tanquebin, the Scholar Knight, Whose Arms are Before the Heavens Withdraw Their Grace

Tanquebin is a postgraduate of the Scholomance, whose subject interest and dissertation topic is the chivalric customs of the nomads. She has, progressively, over the years, 'gone native', and has studied the bow, the lance, nomad riding, and the norms of their chivalric codes with an obsessive intensity. She makes periodic research trips down south, and is known and loved there, although her home-made 'star weapon' Before the Heavens Withdraw Their Grace raises some eyebrows with more pious nomads. Tanquebin is keenly aware that she does not have a star patron of her own, and her current scholarly fixation is figuring out how she might acquire one.

Tanquebin is also famous for attempting the first detailed biological study of the Star People - she has been working on this paper for many, many years, and so far has not shown anyone the drafts. She is a tall, thin, loud woman with small round glasses, and when dressed for errantry, she wears baroque plate armour adorned with decorative steel centipedes and locusts, which she commissioned herself at enormous expense. 

Tanquebin, the Scholar Knight

HD2, heavy recurve bow, medium sword, Before the Heavens Withdraw Their Grace, plate armour, shield, movement: as human, disposition: extremely earnest, very loud, very excitable, too trusting.

Tanquebin is a surprisingly skilled combatant (she practices a lot), and gets a +1 to hit and to her crit range with both her bow and sword. She also rides nomad-style, without saddle or bridle, and can use two handed weapons while on horseback. 

Before the Heavens Withdraw Their Grace is a complicated firearm of her own design, which she claims was forged in something akin to a star trance, although she would also be the first to admit that her trance was a muddied and confused version of the real thing. In practice, a musket +1 that takes up 4 slots of INV which heats the bullets that it fires, such that they deal an additional d4 fire damage and set flammable objects alight. 

Bartholomew and Santigan, Society Knights

Bartholomew and Santigan are successful mercenary captains, and also initiates in the southern chivalric fighter cult. Unlike most members of the cult, the so-called 'Society Knights' have fully adopted the customs of their neighbours, swearing themselves to the Corpse Stars, and dedicating their lives to defending those weaker than themselves from the predations of evil. Their mercenary band that they lead are split on whether this is a sincere adoption of a foreign faith, or merely good marketing for clients back home.

The Society Knights are adept poisoners, siege engineers, and marksmen. Bartholomew also leads the company's arditi fighters, and Santigan their heavy infantry corps. Neither ride horses, considering that practice to be incidental to the true tenets of knighthood. They wear identical white flag-capes in the southern style, which proudly display their dedication to the Corpse Stars. 

The Society Knights are minor celebrities in the southern barony, and make good use of this reputation to command a premium for their services. They are less well-liked on the steppe itself. 

Bartholomew, Society Knight, Sworn Sword of the Corpse Stars

HD3, medium cross-sword, light knife, medium armour, shield, pistol, musket. Climbing gear and two fire bombs. Movement: as human, disposition: monied, confident, smiling, unflappable.

Leads a company of 18 arditi in the field. 

Santigan, Society Knight, Sworn Sword of the Corpse Stars

HD3, heavy estoc, light knife, plate armour, pistol, musket. Movement: as human, disposition: grim, quiet, watchful, miserly.

Leads a company of 54 heavy baronial infantry in the field. 

Bartholomew and Santigan are successful and experienced Baronial mercenaries, well used to dealing with the power games of the Baronial nobility. They each carry d4 doses of deadly poison on themselves inside hollow jewellery, and are very good at spiking food and drink with it without arousing suspicion. This is their preferred method of dealing with enemies, although neither has any compunction about ambushing someone and stabbing them to death, or shooting them from a hidden position in a second-storey window. +1 to poisoning, slight of hand, and to-hit rolls with muskets.  

They also truly do possess the favour of the Corpse Stars, which they are not themselves currently aware of. When either is slain, the body will continue attacking you with horrible, flowing, jerky, insectoid movements. The bodies will need to be literally dismembered to stop their attacks, and even then the individual pieces will try to get at you. 

A Mechanical Transcription of the Limbs

 

This is a short post about the building of mechanical bodies using ball-and-sockets joints - a practice and obsession specific to some of my favourite artists in the world: Hans Bellmer and Heinrich von Kleist. I have recently become fascinated (again) by these bodies; by Bellmer's hypermobile erotic sketches and by Kleist's 'pure pendula' of the limbs. By their inhuman grace, dictated by a total/directional gravity, in place of the more or less neurotic conscious will.   

The post is an addendum to the Mannequin class (though the rules could be useful for any number of bodies and beings in the Barony), and should be read as 'as well as' and not 'instead of' the rules for that class as originally conceived. 

The additions are simple: an artificial body built in the human form using ball and socket joints, and animated by something that does not quite cohere into a conscious mind (Mannequins yes, angels and demons usually no), gets a base +1 to rolls to hit in melee, and to any check that involves graceful or precise movement (doubled if this check involves dancing).

'And the advantage that this puppet would have over a human dancer?'

'The advantage? First of all, a negative one, my excellent friend, namely, this, that it would never be self-conscious. [...] Now, as the operator has absolutely, be dint of a wire or string, no point in his power but this one: all remaining limbs are, as they should be, dead, pure pendula, and so follow the simple law of gravity...'  

        - Heinrich von Kleist, On the Marionette Theatre (go read it, it is extraordinary and only four pages long)

At any point in the puppet body's limbs, a new joint can be introduced, which allows for pendulous movements of ever more inhuman a flexile grace, but also makes the puppet-movements more and more jerky and unpredictable. You can introduce as many joints as like into arms, fingers, or legs. All joints must be installed across all limbs of the same type, and in the same relative position (ie the same length down the arm or finger), to function, otherwise they only give their negative effects. 

• For each joint introduced into the arms, you receive -1 to hit in melee, and gain +1 damage to melee weapon attacks. 
• For each joint introduced into the legs, you receive -1 to any roll that involves gracile or precise movement, but +1 to climbing, keeping your balance, and otherwise not being moved against your will (think those horrible self stabilising robots).
• For each joint introduced into the fingers, you receive -1 to hit in melee, but +1 to any check that requires dextrous mechanical labour: weaving, lockpicking, embroidery, knotwork, etc., and +1 to any attempt to strangle something with a neck. 

Entities hate and fear possessing bodies that do not cleanly map to the familiar human jointed skeletal structure. Angels and demons are especially susceptible to this, and actually lose a point of max HP each day they are forced into one (they regain this is they are able to leave the body). 

In both cases they receive none of the benefits, and all of the negatives. 

Hans Bellmer, untitled

 

Hans Bellmer, untitled

Ghost in the Shell, of course

The Sirens of the Open Ocean

 

This post is dedicated to the lovely PRIME. 

Out in the western islands around the Lantern Berth there are many stories of the strange beings and monsters that make their homes in the dreaming, sun-drowned seas of the Barony. Some of these are not really stories at all - the raider 'salt drinkers' that plague the sea caves and sand bars of the outer islands are very real, and kill and eat lone travellers and isolated families from time to time, and the monsters and great serpents hunted by the whalers of the Lantern Berth are infamous across the world.

But others are myths and stories, something like dreams themselves, and the Islanders keep on their secret face when land-dwellers ask after them. The fierce and terrible Sea People who live in silver towers and hold court with sailors who stray too far, and can never return to waking shores; the millions of drowned children who attend to the King of the Isles; fragments and echoes. 

None of these stories are as important to the culture and history of the Islanders as the sirens that live in the open ocean. 

In appearance they are human-ish, but very large - most around four metres long - and fat with insulating blubber. Their fingers and toes are long and webbed, and their bodies are covered in downy hair. Their eyes are very large, protected by translucent films, and in the darkness of the deep water the pupils dilate across nearly the whole of the surface. They are a good omen for a sailor, and harming or, god forbid, killing one, brings down the most terrible curses.

Sirens are also fickle, like the sea is fickle, and beautiful and strange, and dangerous, like the sea is dangerous. Their skin takes on the colours of the water they swim in; they reflect the moods of the oceans.

Sirens are intelligent, and some of them - those who spend their time close to the shores and enjoy the company of sailors - can speak, in pleasant whistling voices. Their temperaments tend towards curiosity, coquetry, flirtation, and humour, but when enraged or fey and high-handed they can be as terrible as any serpent. Whether or not they can communicate with language, all of them sing. 

Many are the stories of sailors who choose to follow those songs out into the west, to fates uncertain. 

Siren of the Open Ocean

HD4, unarmed attack as medium weapon + bite as heavy weapon, can also ram or breach against a boat as a gigantic weapon (against the boat) which always hits, and which deals d4 damage to the Siren, blubber and tough hide protect as leather, see also: Siren Song and A Bottomless Curse, A Bottomless Sea, movement: swims about as fast as a dolphin, which is about 5 times as fast as a human in the water. On land they are ungainly, like a seal: half human speed. Disposition: see moods of the ocean, below. Will always disengage when wounded, and never fight to the death. Fears whalers' harpoons attached to floats, and if threatened will target carriers of these weapons preferentially. 

Siren Song: a siren's song is beautiful, even when it is terrible. You must save CHAR every time you wish to attack a siren: on a failure the attack is wasted. 

A Bottomless Curse, a Bottomless Sea: one of the first laws of the sea: don't hurt sirens, and definitely, definitely don't kill them if you can avoid it. Every adventurer knows this. Those that do kill a siren are cursed forever: all monsters of the sea will target you preferentially for the rest of your life. 

Moods of the Ocean: instead of rolling reaction on encountering sirens, your DM will note the current state of the ocean. Note that you don't roll for this, it is dependant on the weather and time of day in the game world, and as such, a sailor with experience will be able to accurately predict the mood of any approaching sirens. The colour records both the sea itself, and the skin of the siren or sirens. Note also that angering or attacking a siren can shift its skin colour as it becomes angry, frightened, or vengeful - this will change the mood of the ocean around it. 

• Bronze-Green: the mood of the sea on a fine day, in good sun. Perhaps a wind and sometimes calm and dreamy. Happy, chirping, playful, inquisitive. No additional effects.
• Burnished-Lightning-White: the highest sun, the water iridescent, both extraordinarily clear, and with a surface that holds so much glare that it blinds you. Tranquil, unmoving, watchful, aloof. Will not speak even if able to. To the Islanders, this is their most beautiful and painful aspect. A hot, aching clarity. If you are accompanied by Islanders in your boats, any who do not blind themselves with rags and similar will test CHAR with advantage, or dive into the ocean and never be seen again. Their song in this aspect deals one fear damage per minute, or per round if combat is joined.
• Blodsombre: the Islander name for the periods in the morning and evening when the sun rises and sets crimson, and the sea turns a rich blood-red. The aspect in which the sirens become most interested in humans, and often also when they will choose them for husbands and wives. Their voices and songs are brash and trumpeting, and those that they choose will be given the choice of joining their new spouses, and harshly mocked, insulted, and cursed (just verbally, no magical cursing here) if they refuse. Sailors who marry sirens usually disappear, but not always. Those who return sometimes do so with children, more on which below. The songs of the sirens in Blodsombre are proud and warlike, but possess no specific special effect. 
• Grey-Hard-Clear: a sea of storms and chopping winds, of scudding clouds and a sky like slate. A serious, brooding aspect, during which sirens often will not approach ships at all. If they do they will be mercurial and brief with their words, and also easy to anger and quick to violence. The songs of the grey sirens deal one fear damage per minute, or per round if combat is joined.
• Skies-Like-Dreams: purple, but also pink, orange, green, phosphorescence. Time seems to slow and stretch, and certainties collapse. Purple sirens are on their way back to dream, and they will allow you to follow them if you wish to. They will say nothing, but form up around your ship as you sail out of the world forever, chasing the purple-orange sky and the sun at the western horizon. Those who hear the siren's songs in this aspect must save CON per hour, or fall asleep, which will take them out of the dream. If your captain (or someone else steering the ship) can make five of these saves in a row, you arrive in the western archipelagoes of dream - for each success, the consequences of an eventual failure will be more dire (ie passing two saves before you fall out of the dream might leave you off course but in familiar trade winds, failing four will leave you in unknown seas, becalmed, and soon to die). Sirens in the dream shift under the gaze; they seem even bigger than normal, impossibly big beneath the ship. Their black eyes are kind and terrible and their smiling, shark-toothed mouths are heavy with mirth and hunger.
• Black-Killing-Storm: the terror aspect, when the sea rages and tears at the boats, and when the sirens hunt men like prey, and laugh and sing their terrible war songs and laments for the world that was. Sirens in the black aspect will attack on sight, grinning and laughing terribly, playing with their kills, tearing men to pieces. The cannot be reasoned with like this and, uniquely, will not flee when wounded. Their songs deals d6 fear damage per minute, or per turn in combat.
• Moon-Bright: when the silver light of the moon falls on the waves and makes the sea strange and otherworldly. Joking and flirtatious, especially fond of blue-balling sailors and other amorous tortures. Many, many bawdy Islander tales and songs about the wonderful agonies of the Moon-Bright watch. No additional effect.
• Lightless-Midnight: No moon, or clouds over the sky. An oddly horrible aspect - not immediately violent or attacking, but bullying, frightening, insulting, belligerent. Like the sea serpents, sirens of the lightless midnight will call horrible things to sailors from out of the blackness, and seem to somehow know your secrets and insecurities. They are not usually seen this way, but when they are they are reputed to move like depthless shadows, black shapes cut away from the usual stuff of the world. Their songs deal d3 fear damage per minute, or per round if combat is joined. Islanders do not sail on moonless nights unless they truly have no other choice.      

Marriage and Progeny

Some sailors are known marry sirens, and these marriages are rarely happy. Usually they are taken beneath the waves to fates obscure, but sometimes they return, pregnant or carrying children birthed at sea. 

These babies are human, but possess a specific set of physical features by which the Islanders know them: large eyes widely spaced on the face, a heavyset frame and great height, a preference for meat, and a tendency to put on fat easily. Many in the harpooner cult have the so-called 'sea face' (or 'bastard face' if you're feeling unkind, since the sailors who return with children are assumed to have divorced or run from their siren wives and husbands), but you will see these people everywhere in the islands. No particular special rules attached. 

   

Disaster at Sea, JMW Turner, 1835