Beast Nobles

 

CW: surgical horror. 

Thanks to PRIME, I have biomancy on the brain. A significant debt also to the very great Meal of Oshregaal. 

Whence they come, none know - their great courts and palaces are rumoured to lie hidden across the endless country of the great Imperial hinterlands, lost in ancient valleys or at the peaks of impassable mountains, shrouded in mists and trackless jungles, outside time, beyond the reach of recorded history.

In body they resemble the great apes of the underworld, but they are larger, thinner, longer-limbed. They cut and sew their flesh into forms that please them. They take the heads of dogs, birds, lizards, and insects - some have heads that look human - and they discard and remake them as they see fit. Their bodies are, likewise, sewn-together and changeable things. They hold themselves erect and dignified, and their cloth and finery are all of exquisite make. They are skin-eaters, man-eaters, butchers, gluttons. 

It is said that, in their great ballrooms, their reception halls, their hunting lodges, their manors and palaces, animals walk on their hind legs, and bow to one another, and jockey for positions of prestige. It is also said that humans who spend time in those demesnes become docile, stupid, incurious; that the nobles slaughter hundreds of these mannish cattle at a time to provision their great blood feasts.

The academics of the Capital note similarities to the Royal Woses of the indigenous Baronial cultures, but their conclusions are various and unconvincing. There are many old stories of beasts taking human lovers and remaking themselves as humans, or of their lovers being remade as beasts; of monstrous offspring made to look human and human offspring given the heads of dogs or cattle; of face and body games without end. 

Beast Noble

HD4 - 6, depending on seniority. Armed with an oversized rapier +1 made from surgical steel (damage as heavy weapon, used in one hand), with access to oversized pistols (2d8), sabres (as heavy) and hunting rifles (2d12). Also has natural weapons (fangs and claws) as a medium weapon. Always wearing fine clothing and jewellery befitting their station; many changes in costume - a dinner jacket for meals, a hunting jacket for hunts, a formal costume for the awarding of honours, etc. etc. Unarmoured. Movement: as monkey, or as posture-obsessed aristocrat, switching between the two as needed. Disposition: as human-devouring carnivore ape or etiquette-obsessed aristocrat, switching between the two as needed. 

Switches in demeanour happen instantly and are extremely unnerving. 

Beast Nobles attack twice in melee. 

Each Beast Noble rolls once (or twice if HD6) on both the Baroque Works and Noble Gear tables.  

All Beast Nobles have 10 INV worth of internal pockets sewn into their strange bodies. They alone know how to access and open these cavities, which will never be found on inspection. 

All Beast Nobles regenerate 1 hp per minute, and if not killed outright can regrow limbs and organs over several days. 

Humans who meet the eyes of an enraged Beast Noble must test CHAR or be rooted to the spot in terror. Until they can master themselves (save CHAR), they roll to hit with disadvantage. Once saved, they no longer need to test. Hirelings and similar instead test morale.

Beast nobles can run on all fours at twice the speed a human can sprint, and can climb anything climbable. 

All Beast Nobles can dance a waltz, command troops, run a household, make a speech, debate convincingly, speak rhetoric, geometry, and other practical arts, and confidently assert their superior good sense to those of lesser rank. They recognise and will respect the privileges of nobility from other cultures, and will know its customs (how to bow, the proper forms of address, etc.) They hate the White City, and do not recognise its Emperor. They take slights and breaches of etiquette extremely seriously - a commoner offender will usually be caned and eaten, a noble challenged to a duel, and fought to the death. 

All Beast Nobles are supernaturally gifted surgeons. They see no distinction between cosmetic and medical surgeries, and undertake both with equivalent enthusiasm. They can (for example) replace limbs, transplant organs (including brains), perform blood transfusions, sculpt flesh, bone, keratin, and cartilage, sew someone's head onto another body, etc. Anything that a near future science fiction culture could do with advanced surgical tech can be done by the Beast Nobles. In addition to their usual equipment, all carry scalpels, bone saws, anaesthetics, disinfectants, threads and needles, and other necessaries for surgery sewn into their internal pockets. These together take 2 INV. A Beast Noble given the room to work can safely administer surgery on a wet jungle floor, without risk of complications or infection. 

Beast Nobles are very happy to practice their talent in exchange for favours of various kinds. If they like you they might raise you to a position of prominence in their court - if they do this they will insist that you change your body to become a little more beast-like. It is unseemly to be so human.

Beast Nobles, like White Apes, are biologically immortal. The oldest have been alive for many, many centuries. 

Lords of Misrule

Humans in the company of Beast Nobles slowly revert to a cattle-like state. Animals in the company of Beast Nobles slowly develop into a court. 

NPC humans simply become cattle-like over the course of a week or so. At the end of this process, which is gradual, they will be unable to speak, will walk on all fours, and will be penned by the Beat Nobles in stys and stables attached to their great estates. 

Human PCs must test INT each day, with advantage, or lose a point of INT. If they lose three points this way, they lose the capacity to read and write. If they lose six points, they lose the capacity of speech. If they lose nine points, they become a feral NPC. All of these penalties are permanent, but can be immediately reversed by allowing the Beast Nobles to sculpt your body into a more beast-like form. Each small alteration (ears, fangs, etc.) reverse a single lost point of INT. Larger alterations may reverse more points, and they may have other effects (natural attacks, wall climbing, better or worse hearing or smell, etc.) at the discretion of the DM. You will be visibly a monster in human lands forever after. 

Animal PCs in the company of the Beast Nobles save WIS each day, but lose no attributes on failure. After three failures, they gain the ability to walk on two legs. At six, they gain the ability to read and write like a five year old (and hold a pen). At nine they gain the ability to speak, and replace their usual animal intelligence with a human one. These changes are also permanent. 

NPC animals (hounds, pack animals, etc.) undergo this process automatically, and become ensouled and sentient hirelings over the course of one week. These hirelings will demand rank, and clothing and styles as befits them, which the Beast Nobles will be happy to impart. 

Court Attendants

The Courts themselves will be filled with lesser beasts of unclear natural origin, all having undergone the same layered surgeries as their Noble rulers. They will be dressed as footmen, pages, scribes, and other functionaries. Many wear tall hats, or elaborate neckerchiefs, cummerbunds, etc. All are toadies, and obsessed with station and etiquette. They will shriek and bluster, or faint in revulsion, if you get the correct forms of address wrong.

Stats as commoner, or as men-at-arms for a guard. 

Hunting Dogs

Things that were once people, now used as pack hounds on the great human hunts. Long, long limbs, uncomprehending eyes, elongated jaws. Smell the air and the ground. Treated with great affection and given choice treats by their masters. 

HD1, bite as medium weapon (+1 to-hit and to damage rolls if more than one attacking the same target, or if attacking a prone target), unarmoured, speed: twice human, disposition: loyal hounds, vicious and well trained, easily frightened with flares, fire, and explosives. Smell and hearing as a bloodhound. 

Living Furniture

Some human captives (and some beasts that displease their masters) are surgically transformed into things: furniture, light fixtures, cutlery, portraits. These artefacts can sometimes be seen dancing, singing, humming, and shuffling around under their own power. The degree of sentience that they retain is best not dwelled on. 

Large (table, wardrobe): as bear but deals bludgeoning and moves at half speed. 

Medium (chair, chest, nightstand): as war hound but deals bludgeoning and moves at half speed. 

Small (teacup, fourchette, candelabra): as rat but deals bludgeoning and moves at half speed. 

All living furniture can be used in its original purpose: chandeliers give off light, wardrobes can be used to store clothes, cutlery functions as expected, etc. This is only true is the thing is being docile and well-behaved, which it won't be if it doesn't like you. 

Baroque Works

1. Acidic Blood. Deals 1 acid damage to melee attackers each time they deal damage, or d3 acid damage if they deal a crit. 
2. Great Black Wings. Can fly, as a huge eagle. 
3. Neurotoxins. Unarmed attacks prompt a CON save, with paralysis for a turn on failure. If you fail two of these in a single combat, the paralysis lasts for one hour.
4. Barbed Tail. One additional attack in melee, as medium weapon.  
5. Bioluminescence. Eyes or some other patch of skin glows as a torch at all times.
6. Four Armed. Smaller pair sewn into the chest and often kept folded away. Function exactly as usual - can be used to make another attack in melee if so armed, can use bows or shields, etc. 
7. Twin. A second Beast Noble (with only 1HD) is kept safely hidden in a large cavity where the intestines would normally be. They are usually asleep. 
8. Metal Skeleton. Half damage from bludgeoning. Sinks in liquid. 
9. Refractor Eyes. 360 degrees of vision. 
10. Biological Furnace. When sated, deals 1 radiation damage per turn to everything in melee contact, no save. When starving, devolves into a completely bestial rage, killing and eating anything it can get its hands on. Needs huge amounts of raw meat to stay sated - like two humans a day. 

Noble Gear

1. Heirloom Sword. An enormous, two handed sword, with a blade of blue-green glass. As gigantic weapon, can be used to attack at a range of 10ft - you swing it and wounds open up with flashes of what looks like moonlight - spooky action at a distance. 
2. Heirloom Plate. As normal steel plate armour. The finish is mottled, like an oil slick. 
3. Porcelain Mask. Worn with a large black opera cloak. Unless dramatically unmasked, the Beast Noble will pass as a very tall human in human lands. 
4. Bullwhip. Attendants and Hunting Dogs accompanying the Beast Noble roll morale with advantage. 
5. Cigarillo Case. Silver, inlaid. Contains 30 excellent quality oversized cigarillos. They make excellent gifts; even hated foes might agree to share a smoke before a duel. 
6. Jewelled Dagger. As a medium weapon that heals the Beast Noble for d6 every time it kills something. 
7. Angel of History. A free attack once per turn on anything that the Beast Noble can see. Deals d10 fear damage, and d4 psychic damage. Disrupted by anything that would disrupt an entity. 
8. Ruby the Size of a Fist. Worth 20k silver, easily. No special properties. 
9. Glass Shoes. Exquisitely made. The Beast Noble moves at half speed to avoid breaking them. If you break them by rolling a crit in melee against the Noble, the Noble will lose the ability to speak, focus on you destruction and ignore everything else, and gain a +2 to hit and to damage rolls against you for the rest of the combat. 
10. Human Butler. A perfectly loyal human retainer with d4 templates in a randomly selected Baronial class, wearing a three piece suit, a monkey mask, and holding a sabre and pistol. Impeccably discreet, won't hesitate to remove riffraff. Roll a d6: on a 6, this is actually the Beast Noble's true love and soulmate - they will not wear a mask, but are instead dressed in exquisite formal wear. Both will protect the one another with their lives, and swear frenzied, bloody, terrible revenge if their lover is slain. 

Regional Economies and Harsh Noise Music

I had a brief but productive chat in the Discord about the fantasy economies in Barony. It's not the kind of setting where these things are particularly worked through or watertight, and it's not something I get specifically interested in in worldbuilding, but I do think it's worthwhile having some handwavey grounding for how things work. 

The Barony has an artisanal culture, and things are mostly made by highly skilled individuals. There are organised associations and guilds in the capital, and Petty Kingdoms keep their own specialists as a matter of pride. A workshop can be highly organised and productive, but it will always be run by an individual master craftsperson, who will take apprentices, and who will significantly live by their reputation.

Complicating this, artists and entities working together are capable of making things that have no professional precedent, sui generis. This process is not usually geared towards useful, productive aims - there are no gunsmithing entities inventing cartridge ammunition or whatever - the useful products are downstream of whatever the entity was brought into being to describe, as explained in this post. Artists generally cannot explain how they do what they do to artisans, and most of the time these products only exist for as long as specific artist is around to build them. The example we were discussing was amplified and distorted music in the capital - a huge deal for local musicians and partyhead bravo gangs, and certainly culturally significant if you are interested in music and abstraction, but also understood to be an expression of a unique and non-reproducible sensibility. No one would think to try to make more of this thing after the artist died, although they might try to contact the surviving entity to get access to it if they were interested. 

As a brief note on cultural distinction - Baronials exposed to noise music would understand it as different to music that had come before, exciting in its newness, possibly (depending on factors like whether they like it, like the people associated with it, etc.) representative of an important shift or evolution in what is possible for music. Those who live in the White City would understand harsh noise music (regardless of whether they have ever heard anything like it) as equivalent to other types of music, and would delight in being able to describe this equivalence - every point of distinction can be matched to and cancelled out by a point of continuity - how two things are alike and not alike, and the training/subtelty to articulate different positions along this spectrum. This is one of the reasons that Baronials feel provincial to Imperial Citizens. 

The White City are not an industrial power, but they do manufacture at scale, and in standardised ways. They don't quite have factories, but they transform captured cities and towns into production centres dedicated to specific material goods: armour, razor wire, guns, drugs, propaganda, prison services, food production, etc. Thus you have wire town, gun city, prison town (probably prison town 22 lol), steel city, etc. They use quotas and randomised inspection to ensure production levels and quality of materials. Citizens aren't expected to be material producers (although there is no law against this, and many pursue 'normal' professions) - their role in the state is first: as cultural exemplars, and second: as soldiers, either in the citizen militias, or professionally in the army. 

People in the White City do not produce entities like they do in the Barony (some vague sense that the empire itself is some vast, rapacious gestalt entity type thing, possibly produced in a Leviathan type way by the dreams and nightmares of the child emperor and his giant attendants), but they DO have an iterative, engineer's approach to cultural products - to follow the example given above, if harsh noise music is something invented in the Baronial Capital by an artist who starved themselves for a few weeks searching for visions, and is then enjoyed by like fifty people in something akin to a self-consciously avant garde and jealously secretive scene (and treated in that context as unique, a rupture, outside-of-relation with other cultural practices around it), in the White City it would immediately be incorporated into the image game, which means that everyone would have something to say about it (and that their opinion and position could change moment to moment, without anyone understanding this as a hypocrisy), and it would be placed in relation with everything else, and understood in a way that was more or less contingent on these relations. You can't have an image of genius, or a sacred image. Nothing, at a fundamental level, is separate (the act of trying to assert a separate-ness marks you as a provincial). The image game can metabolise anything, which insulates the Citizens - you can excite them, but you can't impress them, not from the outside. 

If you come across one of the harsh noise Bravo gangs in the Baronial Capital, and their pet artist is doing her thing, you will find that none of them feel pain (-1 to all physical damage) or test morale while the music lasts.

The very great Merzbow, doing their thing. 

Notes on Dark Souls

The best to ever do it!

I've been dealing with some nasty depression recently, and as a way to smooth off the worst edges made a decision to revisit one of my favourite games (maybe the all time favourite? Certainly in high contention) - FromSoftware's legendary Dark Souls. 

It certainly needs no introduction in this scene, and there are roughly one billion think pieces and takes on this game and the genre it helped create and popularise, so I'll spare my gentle reader any kind of high-concept analysis - except maybe to say that it's the game that I think best deals with the great dignity of perseverance and determination, in both its themes and gameplay. I don't think FROM ever got this tight and assured with their theming ever again, although for me Sekiro's 'hesitation is defeat' and Bloodborne's whole fever dream cosmic nightmare come close. 

What I actually wanted to do was collect some notes on the various areas, for my own use writing dungeons, because the thing that REALLY stands out to me on this playthrough (it's been probably five or six years since I've done a full run) is how good the actual nuts and bolts of the fantasy dungeoneering are here. The Depths + Blight Town, the Undead Burg, New Londo, the Catacombs, Sen's Fortress - this is an absolutely wild greatest hits list for OSR dungeon crawling in the video game medium. The palpable horror and indifference of the world is quite extraordinary, and again I don't think FROM ever quite hit these heights again. 

I am currently mucking around with making my first proper megadungeon (more on which soon, I hope), so the other thing that stands out in Dark Souls it that, from the tip of Sen's Fortress to the sump of Ash Lake, the whole is built out like a megadungeon. It is a single, contiguous volume, jaquaysed to hell, and architecturally and historically coherent. Extremely stimulating stuff. 

Notes 📝 for the various regions. I don't pretend to any great novelty here, these are mostly for my own reference:

Firelink Shrine

• Having a safe area in the dungeon that isn't a town is interesting - other characters that you meet all know about Firelink, and treat it as a rallying point and safe haven. Goes to the general feeling of stillness in the game - no one is worried that they might be sought out by hostile forces in Firelink.
• When Firelink is eventually directly attacked/despoiled, it is not by a hollow or a monster - it's another 'sane' undead, doing what he can to keep his mind together. In general in Dark Souls, 'active' threats are not hollows - they are sane undead hunting for humanity. The rest of the world is content to let you come to it. You are overcoming inertia, not withstanding attacks. 
• This passive/active distinction is played out on the micro scale with bonfires as well. It is underscored with the animation and design work - the chosen undead slumps down next the bonfire in an attitude of brooding restfulness. It's not quite Oscar's wounded/collapsed pose of utter exhaustion, but it's certainly introspective and passive. The other characters who make it to Firelink mostly have their own versions of this introspective/disinterested hanging out.
• In general, I like the feeling of having a safe haven tied or bonded to a character, and for their death to disturb or somehow 'deconsecrate' the haven. 

The Undead Burg

• A starter zone that introduces the stakes of the core idea in Dark Souls - that if you lose hope and direction, you go permanently and often (though not always) violently insane. You lose yourself and become a sort of beast. All of the enemies in the burg are what remains of undead just like you, who cannot die, but who lost their purpose and now have no personhood. There is a vague idea that if you stop playing, your character will become a hollow. I always liked the idea that the various soul items scattered around the maps marked the places where undead of different kinds finally lost their hope, and then their minds. 
• Headcannon note - I always liked the idea that 'awakening' at the bonfires after you are killed actually represents your body crawling and limping its way back 'home' while in a non-conscious, hollow-like state, then spending an unknown amount of time in the safety of the bonfire getting its mind together, enough that it can force itself back out into the horrors. All of this time is compressed because you 'come to' yourself once you're a sane and rational body again, which elides the actual mechanics of the thing. It's not supported by the text (where things are dreamy and time fucked and fade in and out of coherence all the time), just an image I have latched onto. 
• An excellent teaching environment that teaches a player to expect: extremely dangerous ambushes, enemies who fight unfairly, the importance of spacing out groups of enemies, the importance of being thorough with your exploration, of thinking vertically, etc. 
• The bosses are recognisable classics - big demons, patterned on goats and cows. An example of how the classics are classics for a reason. Taurus demon is the first time you meet something that knocks you back with the force of its strikes even if you have the constitution to block its swings with your shield. We are not yet in the FROM era of overtuned lightning bruiser bosses - Taurus hits like a fucking truck, but he is big and slow. You can get between his legs, you can use the environment to get a plunging attack, and you can still get flattened if you slip up. 
• Capra is famously nasty, but I had forgotten just how nasty lol. I love this kind of thing, and you just never see it in FROM boss fights any more, which are obsessed with 'fair' difficulty, modelled around the whining of people who want these games to be playable without getting hit ever by the sufficiently skilled. What a terrible direction to take boss design. Capra can and will one shot you before the fog gate visuals have disappeared from your screen. The first thing you learn after getting destroyed is shield up or roll immediately. Then you start getting clipped by the two dogs, and see that there is no room to manoeuvre at all. Capra feels really good to fight and beat, because Capra does not fight fair, and you are hanging on by your fingernails, even on a good engagement. Once you take the dogs out and engage without the pressure, the move set is NOT difficult. He hits hard, and that's about it, much like Taurus. 
• One of the takeaways here for me is that having bruiser bosses who do nothing but hit fucking hard is interesting and fun, especially if the baseline of the dungeon threat is roughly human scaled. Give them a bit of low cunning (surprise motherfucker, hounds be upon ye) and a scary design, and you have everything you need for a memorable encounter. 
• The lone Black Knight in the Burg is mysterious and alien, and works really well in that. It is clearly not hollow, and clearly not human - a tough fight, and obviously from elsewhere. You don't know where yet, but it opens the scope of the world up. Black Knights are a very important part of the story of this place, but you won't find that out for tens of hours on the first go around. Seeding important, weird, obviously out of place encounters like this early is a cool move. 
• The Lower Burg is the first version of something that structures the whole game - vertical descent into the sump or the mire. I have written about sumps before, and how important I think they are for dungeons and adventuring. The Lower Burg is a very light version of this, but you can already feel that it is decayed in comparison with the higher strata of the space. This will quickly get way, way more pronounced in the Depths and then Blight Town, but it's cool to have this statement of intention legible this early on.
• I don't care so much for the drake or the iron boar. The iron boar is memorable because it's such an odd design (and because it will repeatedly murder you if you don't know what you're doing), but it doesn't really go anywhere - there is some idea that, along with the channeller in the chapel, it hints at Seath's presence in the area, but it is not so clear what this actually means in practice, and the association feels slightly murky. The drake is fine, I just don't really like Dark Souls dragons outside of their very specific 'mythic stone progenitors that represent eternal-ness' form. 
• The Gargoyles are a fantastic dual boss, although they feel a bit less potent to me than the demons lower down. The gotcha of the second addition halfway through is a great moment, but the visual designs and general menace in the fight are a bit less intact. Bringing Solaire into the fight feels great, all the OG Dark Souls summoning mechanics feel great, why did they change these things, why did they change poise 😣 it's ok for the game to give you tools that make it easy. If the game becomes self-consciously about difficulty, then its artifice as a game is exposed and it gets harder to invest in as a coherent space. This is a huge shame, and it feels like the hyper-tuning of bosses mentioned earlier.
• The lifts from the chapel down into Firelink are another one of those early statements of intention that work unbelievably well. This game is jaquaysed to fuck and it is so so good. The flash of recognition when you open up a loop, the resulting non-trivial (some of them are a couple of minutes long - if you want to run from the gardens to Firelink or something) but also as-direct-as-they-can-be runs between bonfires, this is the magic. It goes away once you get the Lordvessel, which is fine I guess - the game is big enough to be genuinely unwieldy by that point - but it does really lose something. Don't ever give your PCs teleportation, give them ways to navigate the dungeon more efficiently. 
• A small thing, but the Solaire dialogues about the sun, and the few spots where you can watch it shining (they did a very good job making the clouds and skybox beautiful in this area) throw the whole space into a lovely relief. 

The Depths

• I think pound for pound, the Depths might be the best area in the game in terms of pure dungeoneering fantasy. This is tricky to assert, because this game also includes the Catacombs, Blight Town, and New Londo, which are fantastically good dungeons, but the Depths really hit the 'descent into a terrifying charnel house' in extremely precise ways.
• They are disgusting, cramped, and dark, more so than anything else you have seen so far. This is probably the first time you are going to have your weapon bouncing off the walls because they are too narrow to swing in - dying from this for the first time feels like a 'pure' Dark Souls moment.
• They open with an innocuous basement stairwell that leads down into the floor. A small room opens up into a huge kitchen and larder, which in turn open up into ???? a sewer? A dungeon? We are now firmly into mythic underworld style ambiguous, monumental, predatory architecture. The Burg and Chapel are recognisably useable spaces - the Depths is the beginning of The Dungeon, and the descent into mythical images - the lone figure holding the burning brand, surrounded by filth and madness; points of light in the darkness; desperate courage and the steel determination to push further in - the only way out is through, and you are surrounded by the mangled and eaten remains of others like you who already tried the 'through'. 
• You start with two butchers! What a great, classical flourish. I don't know if it is explicitly a Diablo reference, but it lands perfectly. They aren't demons or bosses, it's nothing insistent, but they are scary and can one shot you with a lucky grab. In general I think that I like monsters than can one-shot PCs with a lucky grab, or at least fuck them up permanently. You have to have the menace; really bad things are always just on the other side of a little bad luck when you tangle with the things down here. It's also fun that there are two butchers - a sort of reprise of the Gargoyle fight, but smaller-scale, nastier, more cramped, with cannibalism, mutilation, and imprisonment palpably on the cards. I also really like that the butchers move silently. It's a good little touch on something this big. Turning the camera to see one running up behind you it pants-shittingly terrifying when you're not expecting it. The butchers are great. It's also very cool that they don't reoccur - this is their moment, they don't overstay their welcome.
• Rats, slimes, hollows, waist deep water, things dropping on you from the ceiling, growths of apparently biological matter on the walls and floor. The tone shift is palpably into disgust, detritus, abandonment. Finding the bonfire and opening it up is an interesting moment - obviously having a checkpoint closer into the the heart of darkness is a good thing, but you are now also tied to the bad place. You are that much further away from Firelink, Andre, the places where you can hear kindness and have a reprieve. You are pushing further in, and the further in you go, the harder you will have to fight to get back out. This feeling is absolutely key to the early experience of Dark Souls, and the Depths and Blight Town in particular. The anxiety of pushing further in, and not knowing how bad things can get. When you don't have the reference from prior playthroughs, nothing will be able to prepare you for how bad things can get.
• To this point, you can get fucking cursed for half your total HP, as an example. It's hard for me to communicate the respect I have for this move. I still can't quite believe that they did it. If this happens, you very probably have no idea how to remove it, and even if you do you are nowhere near where you need to be to get it removed. You need to fight your way out, drastically weakened. The themes of despair and losing hope loom very large in the curse mechanics. Push through adventurer! Keep your head! Play smart, even when the whole world is trying to panic you. A curse that halves max HP and that is non-trivial to remove is a great mechanic. In general, remove curse spells suck and should not exist. A rare consumable, as in this game, is a good option. A difficult to get to NPC who charges outrageous sums for their services is another good one. 
• Basilisks are a fascinating enemy for a bunch of reasons. The design is odd - they're not like the recognisable rats, slimes, and zombie-ish hollows in the rest of the dungeon. They are famously kind of goofy-looking, and supremely menacing because of that. You see the bobble-eyes coming out of the darkness and panic kicks in because: you know how bad curse is, and because: they quickly fill the cramped spaces in the Depths with curse gas that blocks vision. You know they're around because those horrible curse statues are all over the place. You know that each of them was an adventurer like you that fucked up. Divine stuff. Like most of the good Dark Souls enemy types, basilisks are very manageable if you keep your head, and if you don't start to get surrounded. This fragile 'one at a time, keep calm' feeling is something that would be lovely to capture in dnd fights. It's difficult in turn based combat, but I've designed quite a few enemies who get way, way worse in packs, specifically going after this feeling. Also of note: Basilisks haunt the lower depths of this space, and you usually only encounter them by falling through holes in the floor into their territory. You can be vigilant and avoid this, and you can panic easily when you miss one and fall, and hear the hissing. Divine stuff!
• Kirk, Knight of Thorns. A strange horror antagonist type of enemy. Not actually extremely dangerous as a fighter, but unnerving in that she will actively hunt you down, unlike everything else down here. She deals bleed, which can easily catch you off guard, and she looks like a nasty villain. I really like Kirk as a recurring NPC invasion, and I like her story, which gets revealed much later. Not sure how translatable this one is into a tabletop setting because she is so dependant on Dark Souls invasion mechanics, but having a mute, dangerous, motivated, human killer in the dungeon space, alongside the still dangerous but mostly passive 'normal' threats is a good bit.
• I don't like the Gaping Dragon fight. I don't really like dragons, as mentioned above, and I find the huge HP sponge boss sort of anticlimactic in this context. I do like that it can break your equipment mid fight, which is always scary. I also like that you can summon the guys to help you kill it, for the same reason I always like this. I think on reflection that Demon's Souls had the better sump bosses: Leechmonger, Dirty Colossus, and Saint Astrea; even though the Demon's Souls bosses have a slightly less defined personality in general, I think these did a very good job tying together the horror story of the Valley of Defilement.
• Dohmnall of Zena is a normal, quirky Dark Souls merchant guy. Good fun, but I never really felt like he fit super well down here. 

Blight Town

• A very strong start, with the PC literally descending down a drain. Something that you really notice here (and again with the catacombs) is the really intense use of filters to give each space its flavour and character. It's a bit abrupt, but I actually think it adds to the charm - you get a very clear 'scene change' effect. In blight town, the visuals are not quite what you would expect - there are more cold white and blue tones, mixed in with the brown, green, black, red - the more usual 'rot' colours on display in the Depths. 
• Blight Town also announces itself well. You climb down a few flights of timber scaffolding (a new development not on display in the depths, that hints at intelligent enemies), and engage a series of ogre enemies that hit much harder than anything you've seen so far. You fight them on narrow causeways, and they can sweep you over the edge with their attacks. Once you get through these, you find yourself in a timber maze full of cannibal things quite unlike the hollows you've fought to this point - stronger, quicker, nastier, also clearly intelligent to a degree. Their territory extends in all directions - the shantytown is a 3d volume with very few right angles in it, and lots of blind corners, dead end, falls, etc. It is easy to underestimate how many of the cannibal enemies there are, where they are coming from, where you need to be looking, etc. 
• You are also getting poisoned out of nowhere, with the toxic effect. This seems like a sort of ambient effect before you figure out that it's coming from enemies that can be killed, and that stay dead. I like this, because it keeps pressure very high and makes the space noticeably horrible to traverse - with enemies coming from all sides, up and down, and also you need to watch your step, and also you need to try to see where in the darkness the darts are coming from and figure out how to get there to open up passage. 
• I think the most effective thing about Blight Town is that, by the time you get to the mid point bonfire, you are well and truly 'buried' in the level. I vividly remember the first play through of this game considering that fighting my way BACK UP through what I'd just come through, plus the whole of the depths, was simply not an option worth considering. 
• The architecture of the shanties is built around pre existing structures - enormous pillars and buttressing that hold up the whole of the Burg above, and a series of tiled(?) drainage areas, clearly intended as sewers of some kind. Easy to miss, but speaks to the architectural consistency of the world - you are still navigating the same built environment. 
• Eventually you come to your first proper Fromsoft sump, the poison swamp at the bottom of the long climb down. It is quite odd, and quite comforting, to be on 'ground' again, instead of the endless, labyrinthine, built spaces you have been traversing so far. Other than this, I don't have a lot to say about the sump. I think the Valley of Defilement hits these notes better, with its billion slug/leech things, its giant depraved ones, its crying NPCs and relics of dead saints swallowed up in the filth. Maneater Mildred is another FROM moment, and she's fine - also not as good as the OG in Demon's I think.
• First exposure to the Dark Souls demon/wooden/bug aesthetic, with the fire-lashing giant tick things. They're a good, weird design, and they do a good job bringing the gap between the demon ruins and the sump. I really like a lot of the demon aesthetics in Dark Souls, and especially the wooden/roots/fire look that a lot of them have. They are recognisable and alien in a way that Capra and Taurus were not. They feel like vermin.
• Hate the boulder ogres, really boring enemy type. Like the mosquitoes because it's good to have an annoying buzzing, poisonous, flying bug thing in a poison swamp. Feel like the leeches down here are not as good as the Demon's Souls ones, for reasons I cannot really explain to myself. 
• Quelaag's Domain, and Quelaag: does a very good job of vibe-switching after the swamp. The infested hollows are genuinely unnerving, and the eruption of the larvae on death when you don't expect it is horrible and creepy. Does a good job joining the Demon Ruins to the sump. 
• Quelaag herself is, I think, just fine as a boss. She's a fun fight, with the lava denying you room to move and the big AOE magic blasts. I think the maiden/spider is compelling enough, although I also think it feels a bit out of place in the world - we don't get any other sexy demons, even from the Witch of Izalith's other daughters. It's not terrible, but I found it noticeable next to all the rest of it. In the rest of the game, beautiful/compelling human bodies are associated with Gwynn's family and their illusions. I really really wish that we got a proper 'sump boss' in this game, as mentioned briefly above. The Depths/Blight Town transition into the Demon Ruins and the truly elder world, and I get that they are not really the focus in this sense, but it would have been great to get something more than Gaping Dragon, on the level of Maiden Astrea. 
• I think my biggest takeaways from Blight Town are: having temporary structures built over existing, more permanent architecture is a great shorthand for making a space feel inhabited, and making it fucked up, dangerous, and hostile to navigate does a lot of work characterising the inhabitants in advance of actually meeting them. Also: relentlessness and fatigue are interesting things to play with, enemies that don't quit, that come from all directions, that sap and poison you, but follow you when you try to disengage. Tying this to something visceral like cannibalism is a great horror shorthand (ghouls and gnolls tap into this). 

New Londo

• A really good haunted dungeon. Like, shockingly good. It starts with a nice little lead in area, with lots of non-hostile hollows in various postures of defeat, madness, and breakdown. They don't do this anywhere else that I can remember; this is a place of hideous psychic wrongness right off the bat.
• The ghosts are very well designed as enemies. They behave like nothing else in the game, clipping through walls, floors, and ceilings. Their move set is nasty, they can do a lot of damage quickly, and they have a grab attack with a very long range. They cannot be targeted at all without curses - this is one of those touches that works super well, and seems a lot more punishing than it really is, since you can pick up curses from slain ghosts, but if you do find yourself running out, navigating this area totally defenceless is terrifying - I think that ghosts also ignore your armour if you don't have a transient curse on? It's a really effective package to make the area frightening and disorienting to run around in. 
• There are a lot more ghosts than you expect, and they can clip through one another. When you come to the building with the NPC on the roof, there are probably 25 or so ghosts that come out of the water and through the walls at you. What was manageable earlier quickly becomes not-at-all manageable. A good trick to have an enemy that is scary for non-standard reasons (level drain might be a similar trick), and then to throw a really large swarm of them at the PCs who have been dealing with smaller numbers until then. 
• This area is quite dark. Not enough that you need a torch, but enough to restrict visibility, especially inside the buildings. I feels moonlit, although it's actually just lit from a very faint and distant opening into the Valley of the Drakes. 
• The framing of the flooded city - that it was drowned to seal something terrible, is great. Draining the water, and revealing that what was sealed has been alive under the water for ???? years? Centuries? Just waiting for someone to head down there is even better. 
• The post drainage level design really sells why this place feels so wrong from the start - it's built on millions of drowned corpses. A good horror reveal. 
• The Darkwraiths are fine, as a sort of ringwraith adjacent hell knight enemy. They are scary and they fight distinctively, with their special humanity sucking grab which looks way scarier than it is. I don't have particularly strong feelings in any direction about them, although the idea that they were the progenitors of the 'invade other people to get their humanity' technique is extremely cool, and so is the reveal of a second primordial serpent who they serve. A hell knight/antipaladin is a good, classic type of enemy. A gore knight, black plate, black great swords, skull faces, red eyes, probably demon blood, etc. etc. Although of course, because this is Dark Souls, the abyss has a correlation with Humanity and not with demons. It was such a move to make a thing in this world that is called Humanity, which is related to, but not in any straightforward way, what we would normally consider 'human-ness' or 'humanity', and then make it a literal resource that is extracted, produced, coveted, etc. And then not to explain any of this, have the player assume that we all know what 'Humanity' is until things just stop cleanly adding up. They did the same thing with Souls and the soul, and it is rad. 
• The other enemies down here are pretty boring - melted face blobs and more ghosts. 
• I am also lukewarm on the Four Kings. I love that you have to fight them in the abyss, and have to take precautions for this not to immediately destroy you (the walk down and down the spiral staircase, terminating in a drop into the blackness of the abyss, is great stuff), but the fight itself (a bit like the Darkwraiths themselves) lacks personality to me. It's a hard fight, but not a memorable one, arena aside.
• This is probably the first place that you fight someone who you have watched go hollow in real time, in this instance the crestfallen warrior. It's cool to have sympathetic NPCs lose their mind and attack you, especially when they are not that strong, and the attempt is futile. It's like putting down a sick dog or something, it feels bad. 

The Catacombs

• The Catacombs are often run too late for them to be effective I think. I consciously tried them early on this time (roughly when most people would be doing Sen's Fortress), and they are a fucking bastard for a lower level character. I love the Catacombs.
• The first thing you notice is the look, which is brown and ancient and dusty and murky - quite unlike the Depths and lower spaces of the Burg. The second thing you notice, very, very quickly after the first, is the infinitely respawning skeletons. This is a bit like the curses in the Depths, or the ghosts you can't even hit in New Londo - the kind of thing that makes you think 'what the fuck, I am really out of my depth here'. It leaves an impression. Like those other mechanics, FROM has watered this one down in later games - in DS3 the skeletons respawn once, which is way, way less interesting. Having hard to get at necromancers keeping their minions in the fight infinitely is a very good bit. 
• It also led to my character - a STR and FAITH paladin woman in heavy armour, using a longsword and shield - going out of her way to source a holy weapon. This felt badass, and totally dnd, OSR, dungeon crawling flavoured. I need to go and vanquish undead, which means I need a blessed sword. Super good, classic, worth stealing. 
• Even with the blessed sword this area is a bastard for low level characters. It is confusing, it drops you into new areas semi-constantly, the skeletons are nasty (they parry, the big ones hit really hard), and there are scattered mini bosses throughout. It's a slog, and it feels attritional, in a similar way to Blight Town - pushing further in means needing to fight your way back out.
• Pinwheel gets a lot of shit for being a bad boss. I think Pinwheel is a great boss if you're not over-levelled. He hits decently hard (especially if you are wearing heavy armour without much magic defence), his copies can overwhelm you if you don't stay on top of them, and his arena, look, animations, and music are all top notch. His position in the tapestry of relationships in the game is quite unclear to me, but the fight itself is great. 
• Traps: traps are good, they make a place feel hostile. Statues that might or might not be trapped are good, because every time you pass one you are tense (might play worse on the table, when every passing statue needs to be checked and disarmed). Traps that drop you into worse places, and that get you lost, are very good for panicking a player - these are a FROM special, and come up everywhere. Never not effective. 
• I don't tend to like undead much in my own games, but the Catacombs make me love skeletons as enemies. They have a lot of personality, and are very dangerous in groups. It's interesting that I forget that technically everyone in Dark Souls is undead - I don't think of it that way at all really. 
• Bonewheels suck, not in a 'this is a good scary enemy' way. I find them obnoxious and overtuned. 
• Patches is an interesting kind of NPC, another one who relies on the respawning protag to function. Having a sort of lovable(?) bastard in the dungeon with you could be fun, but I think in a game he would have to be less actively murderous and more helpful, while still occasionally acting out. 
• I really like the hook of a religious delegation/paladin/saint descending into the Catacombs with armed escorts, never to be seen again. It's good to remember that the good guys are getting mulched out there semi-regularly. 

Sen's Fortress

• Traps! And snakemen. I like the traps a lot, I like the snakemen somewhat. 
• The traps in Sen's are good because they: announce themselves immediately, have a great sense of humour, are genuinely and consistently lethal, and at their best feel like navigating a working engine. This last one is obviously the central rolling ball trap, around which everything else is structured. 
• Having one big, complicated, branching trap system, which can be manipulated by the PCs to get into places they couldn't normally, or to kill enemies, is a great conceit. You would probably (although not necessarily I think) need the dungeon to literally be built as a large trap device, like Sen's explicitly is. 
• The dungeon declaring itself by basically having a trapped doormat is extremely funny, and something I will be using for sure. Welcome to the trap dungeon!
• It is also noticeable that the enemies here have like 3 or 4 times as much health as they have done up until now, and hit way harder as well. This does some good work to signal the escalation out from the mostly human-ish scaled foes in the Burg, Depths, Blight Town, and even the Catacombs and New Londo to a degree. It's good that these foes are physically huge and visibly monstrous, so we don't get that annoying 'these are just humans same as the last batch, why do they have 5HD' problem you sometimes get in video games (Elden Ring). 
• Sen's has its own specific look, but it's hard for me to really put a finger on what it is. Dust, oil (it has its own weird sump), bright sun, brown tones, odd statues everywhere, snakes, the giants up top. Dust, I think. Iron cages, flashes of white lightning. It's effective, but not in a specific way like something like the Catacombs or Depths. 
• The snakemen. I think they come a bit out of nowhere, and are more or less forgettable as enemies. They are intimidating when you first meet them, but just not that interesting to fight. The giants are better, especially because they contribute directly to the trap systems, and because one of them fucking nukes you from the air as soon as you emerge from trap hell - another fantastic FROM gag. 
• Having your trap dungeon built around a central vertical shaft, and putting an elevator there, is a good framework for a trap dungeon. Putting a horrible pit full of demons at the bottom, and giving the PCs the opportunity to get knocked down there, is also a good conceit. 
• I really like the Iron Golem. A lot of people bemoan how easy it is to kill, and as usual, I feel like bosses being kind of easy is fine. It doesn't feel insubstantial, it hits as hard as something that size should, it can throw you off the roof, it can slip and fall... It's an oddly dynamic fight, and it really feels like a guardian creature. Iron golems are another staple classic that I'm glad to see represented with this much elan. 
• I think that's all I have to say about Sen's Fortress? It's a funny one, it feels good and well made, but not essential like some of the others. 

The Tomb of the Giants

• A continuation of the Catacombs, and much, much nastier. The thing I like most about it is the implication that the strata of civilisations is built atop a lost civilisation of giants. We see some giants in Sen's Fortress, and there are the usual FROM giant-sized people around (who I don't think we should read as giants as in a race distinct from people - physical size is always a bit fucky in Souls games), but here we see that they built their own necropolises, including scaled up coffins, a visual motif that FROM have never really let go of.
• The pitch black darkness works really well here. The various giant skeleton enemies hit hard, shoot you from outside visual range, and the horrible all-fours ones can easily kill a high level character in seconds if you don't see them coming. Having a light source is mandatory, but it also leads to fun things like inching forwards and having a fanged skull the size of your shield loom out of darkness right in front of you. Just a great interaction of mechanics and horror theming. 
• The little drama of the saint, patches, and her guards is very well done. Patches remains a fun comedy character, and it's fun watching the good guys get chewed up. It also feels good to be able to get one of them out of this hellhole, her eventual fate notwithstanding. 
• Most of the skeleton enemies are good - the feral one are the standout. I didn't like the inclusion of black knights down here (they don't feel at home, and those that do exist are grouped too close to the skeleton enemies, which makes it feel like they are fighting together), and I really, really didn't like the bone pillars. A boring enemy to fight, and bizarrely, artificially over-lethal in a way that feels totally unsatisfying.
• The final run towards Nito is visually striking, but not super well realised. Having lots of Pinwheels is a bit lame, and the bone children are not dangerous or interesting enemies really. The walk to this area is also a huge pain in the ass while also being boring. 
• The Nito fight is fine, if a bit slight. He has a great design, and the mechanics make sense. It feels correct and polite and does nothing to draw attention to itself. Nothing to take from here I don't think. 
• The paladin red phantom carrying Bramdt is a great inclusion, another one of the FROM signatures, and appropriately scary when you meet him on a cliff. Meeting what remains of tragic heroes is a ground level Dark Souls thing, and this guy doesn't get much characterisation, but you can infer plenty from the saint storyline and his miserable fate. 
• In terms of notes to take to the table top, for me it's really that pitch black environments are compelling in all the usual ways, and giant feral skeletons are good, scary enemies. 

The Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith

• What a huge shame that this area was so unfinished in the final product. The outlines here are so good, but what is here is so bad. I like the (vaguely Cambodian) demon architectures, and the designs of some of the enemies - the weird acid monsters near the bottom are cool and I really wish we had more 'chaos creatures' to go with them, instead of a billion barely-animated flamethrower demon statues. The dragon leg lava hell is obviously atrocious. It's a shame. 
• The bosses here I mostly find bad as well. Ceaseless Discharge is a gimmick fight masquerading as a normal fight, and if you fight him like it seems you should it's beyond tedious. The gimmick is boring. It's a bad fight. The Centipede Demon might be the worst fight in the game? The design is just about fine, but the mechanics are god fucking awful. Your best hope is that it jumps up and down on you and doesn't do the instagib stomp attack long enough for you to deplete the health bar. Bizarre fight. Bed of Chaos is actually fine next to these two in my estimation. It's a shame we didn't get the fully animated version, but as is it fits quite nicely into the FROM cannon of large gimmick bosses. It's fiddly and annoying, but not to an egregious degree (certainly not to the same degree as the fucking Centipede lmao). 
• This area does have what I think is the nastiest of the falling floor traps in the game - distinguished in this instance by dropping you into a whole complex of poison sludge, acid monsters, tunnels, and trailing roots. I genuinely couldn't find a way out of this one and had to use a homeward bone. It stands out in a way that the rest of the level doesn't, just because it is so effectively horrible. 
• You have your final showdowns with Kirk here, bringing her story to a close. It turns out that she is a chaos servant, collecting humanity to heal the sick Daughter of Chaos. It's a nice little self-contained narrative. The armour you strip from her corpse is sick, if not extremely useful in practice. Having a recurring enemy that reads as a slasher villain or serial killer, and who fights you for understandable and even tragic reasons - this is a compelling beat.
• The best thing in Lost Izalith is the sunlight maggot I think. Because of the way it ties in with Solaire's quest (and, I guess, depending on how you feel about Solaire), it is the enemy that best gets at the core themes of the game - the maggot robs someone of their hope, such that they lose their way and go mad. Solaire is a sort of emotional rock in a hostile world, a genuinely happy, kind, and friendly person, and watching him slowly lose his faith and then go mad is probably the most effective NPC portrait in the game. On this run I made a point of opening the secret entrance and saving Solaire - it is very cool that you can do this. 
• What else... The Capra and Taurus designs continue to be cool as fuck down here in the lava. The classics, executed with style. 
• It is cool to get to a place that is clearly mythical inside the setting of the world - not even the tomb of the giants has that going for it. This is a place from pre-history, the bottom of the world, and it does feel appropriately other. I do really wish we could have seen the completed vision. 

Ash Lake

• The real sump of the world - not a place of horror and degradation; a place where nothing ever happens because there is no disparity. It is cool that this part of the history of Lordran gets its own zone, it is cool that there is one of the immortal dragons still down here.
• The visuals here are striking, but not particularly interesting to me personally. I find this overtly mythical structuring of the underworld less interesting than the visceral and physical one, and respond better to the Tomb of the Giants and Lost Izalith as the bedrock on which the cultures of the gods are built. The beings you find here also feel kind of phoned in - a hydra for some reason, clams for some reason. It just doesn't feel like there's much to engage with or chew on here. 

General notes about the setting:

• I don't care as much about Anor Londo and the back half of the game, because I find it less compelling, and the addition of the lordvessel in particular makes the pacing a lot less interesting to me. Briefly though: I think a god cathedral world tied to: a sealed painting otherworld where the gods kept all the god-killing tech and: the mad scientist prison/library/laboratory, is a cool set up for a big connected dungeon space. Less for me to take from here in specific. 
• I sort of mentioned this above, but writing all of this up makes me realise that the actual mythology of Dark Souls, the stories of the Gods, the creation myth of Fire and Dark, the idea of linking the flames, the cycle, all of this, is actually a lot less interesting to me than the mechanics of navigating the ruined world as it currently stands. By 'mechanics', I certainly mean actually walking around in it, fighting, unlocking elevators and shortcuts etc., but I also mean the omnipresent dream logic, the fog and sunlight, the fade out and fade in, the forgetting, the currencies of souls and humanity, the weight of throwing yourself out of harms way, backing up, waiting for the right time to swing, tamping down panic - all of this is the real texture of this game, and its subtle magic. It's this, much more than any of the grand world-narrative stuff, that I am interested in getting at in my own work. 
• This game is a classic! It is better than its sequels, by a fairly wide margin. It is extraordinary how well it stands up, and also how obviously all of the systems were at their peak here (poise, invading, covenants, etc.). Enormously pleasurable to run through this world again as a lonesome paladin adventurer :)

The Baronial Chronic Disease Post

Way back at the beginning of this blog I wrote about disease in the Barony. It is a bogey man, a sort of societal great enemy, and also ambiguously a divine extermination weapon - diseases are thought to be the remnants of God's war with the chaos at the centre of the planet. This is why there are more diseases the further in you go, why the bedrock itself weeps and howls, and why petroleum forced up from the deepest geological depths is the primary medium for their spread on the surface. 

As described in that post, Baronial diseases are frightening, virulent, and extremely lethal. I have been noodling with a large scale dungeon project recently, and have been struck with the thought that painful and frightening death only captures a portion of the horror of illness and bodily incapacity. I suffer from chronic illness, and being alienated from your own body, ground down with pain, incapable where you used to able, having a sense of your own reduced life expectancy, etc., are recurring staples in my writing practice.

Related reading is the excellent The Right to Maim, by Sikh-American academic Jasbir Puar. This book, and the related Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, are some of the biggest single influences on my creative work. They certainly only grow more relevant. 

-

Chronic Illness

You can be infected with disease (of any type) for days equal to your CON score, and expect a full recovery without chronic complications. If you are ill for longer than this, every day you remain so prompts a CON save. For every failure, you lose a point of max HP and roll on the table below. 

Magical healing and anti disease effects (such as the Little Saint's Lay on Hands) are not effective against these second-order consequences of infection, and neither are curatives and other medications - they represent the breakdown, overcompensation, misalignment, and scarification of the biology (especially the nervous and immune systems) of the infected person. Magic that actually regenerates limbs and tissue might have a better effect, but there is precious little of that in the Barony (none in my games, unless you're questing for the fruit of the invincible heroes or something). 

When I find myself working as a labourer on construction sites I often think about the timeframe in which this kind of work can be viably done by someone with chronic illness. An adventurer in a similar position, who has by their mettle made a bit of coin, might consider retirement. 

Chronic Effects

1. You take +1 damage from all sources. 
2. When you accrue fatigue, it occupies two slots instead of one. 
3. You lose an additional d3 max HP. 
4. You always take fear damage equivalent to all other damage, and never take fear damage from any other source. 
5. You only ever recover HP from rest when in a safe, comfortable bed. 
6. The effects of privation (of rations or sleep) are twice as pronounced. 
7. Reduce each of your physical stats by d3. 
8. Reduce each of your mental stats by d3. 
9. You never win initiative. 
10. You have a resting -2 to AC. 
11. You test to panic whenever you take fear damage - your panic threshold is effectively 0. 
12. Your max templates are now 3, and if you have 4, you lose your 'highest' template (randomise which if you have multiple of the same 'level'). 

The Dead Cultures Matrix

An update to yesterday's post on the Flare Children of the Imperial hinterland. I've long wondered how best to tackle writing about the scale of the Empire of the White City in less abstract terms, and think that the combinatorial logics in this Ultranat generator did quite a lot of work in this direction. 

After some chat with the lovely Sarcophagus on Phlox's discord, I realised that this would be a productive and appropriate place to scale up. Initially I though two d20 tables, then I thought fuck it, why not two d66 tables. Scale is the thing here. Maybe one day two d100 tables?! It's also a good template to do some Invisible Cities style fragmentary worldbuilding for this vast region of the paracosm.

As a general rule, only Ultranats can make use of the special abilities of their gear, unless this wouldn't make sense. Someone with Fighter templates could be taught these skills by a willing teacher. 

Without further ado, the Dead Cultures Matrix. Your Ultranats:

Gear

• 11: Wear heavy armour and fight with heavy bronze spears. If one of them is killed, other Ultranats in the combat get a second attack on their next turn. 
• 12: Hold iron muskets that fire poisonous, shattering bullets - 2d6 damage or 2d10 if unarmoured. If you take damage you must save CON or lose 1 CON and 1 INT per day for d3 days. You may make an additional save on each new day. 
• 13: Shoot white longbows, and fletch their white arrows with peacock feathers. A critical hit from one of these pierces the heart and dispels all aggression: you cannot make an attack or an aggressive action until you save CHAR (you can save each turn). 
• 14: Wear thickly lacquered, layered, and brightly painted paper armour, surprisingly effective and very light. As heavy armour that degrades every time its wearer takes a hit, from heavy, to medium, to light, after which it is destroyed. No matter what condition it is in, it is as light as light armour. Destroyed immediately if it ever gets wet or catches fire. 
• 15: Carry barbed steel darts, which they throw at +1 to hit. 
• 16: Wear strange ceramic armour, which rings like a bell when struck. As medium armour that shatters if crit with a bludgeoning attack. 
• 21: Fight with huge and terrible bone shears: vorpal heavy weapons with -2 to hit. The vorpal effect removes a random limb, not necessarily the head. 
• 22: Each carry a pair of bronze pistols, in lacquered holsters worn beneath the shoulder. 
• 23: Hold blinding powder in their cheeks, and can expel it once per encounter in melee. Save DEX to avoid, or be blinded for the rest of the day. 
• 24: Fight with a light knife, and a thin doping needle loaded with sedatives. As dual light weapons, and on a crit test CON in addition to the extra damage. On a failure, suffer -4 to all checks and become unable to speak for one hour. 
• 25: Each fight alongside an effigy double, which each has sculpted from wax. The effigies are armed with improvised prop weapons, but otherwise fight as their creators do, moving with them, attacking the same enemies, etc. They have 1HD, are unarmoured, and are destroyed by any amount of fire damage. 
• 26: Wear glass armour and carry heavy glass swords. Glass armour counts as medium, and shatters if crit with a bludgeoning attack. It renders the wearer immune to radiant damage and gaze attacks, and refracts beams and other light-based weapons, nullifying them completely. Glass swords can be sundered to deal double damage to the target, and d3 damage to everything within 15ft, including the wielder. You may choose to sunder after rolling to hit. 
• 31: Carry heavy mechanical crossbows that fire twice per turn, with -1 to hit. 
• 32: Light burning tapers and incense sticks that they weave through hair, beards, and loops in their clothing, such that they travel wreathed in thick smoke. Ranged attacks against them roll to hit at disadvantage. 
• 33: Wear medium bronze armour decorated with tall, ornamental bronze wings. Allies test morale with advantage while they remain unbroken. 
• 34: Wear bulky 'Lens-Head' helms, giving them perfect vision at a range of 5 miles. 
• 35: Use heavy billhooks and ringmail coats. 
• 36: Hold bundles of medium javelins with tips of sharpened bone, carved with fluting and notches that shriek in the wind as they fly. When used during a surprise round, they deal critical damage. 
• 41: Wear bisque fired clay masks, sculpted into the faces of smiling children. Each absorbs a single critical hit (which does normal damage instead), and then breaks, dealing 1 psychic damage to the attacker. 
• 42: Never speak, and carry small, mechanical, single-shot dart guns in their mouths. The gun fires a single light dart at a range of 10ft, which can be done as a free action. 
• 43: Wield heavy lances and glider wings made from timber frame and lacquered-paper. They can use them to glide, but not to gain height. Their lances deal double damage when used swooping from the air. 
• 44: Fight with medium axes, shields, and blunderbusses, and wear heavy armour, brightly painted in bold primary colours.
• 45: Carry heavy mother-of-pearl macuahuitls, and paint their faces before battle to resemble the person in the world that they love. Never test morale under any circumstances, not just in combat with the military of the White City. 
• 46: Fight nude and oiled (disadvantage to grapple them), and are each 7 feet tall, with 2HD. 
• 51: Wear mirrored plate, as heavy armour and cannot be targeted by entities. Also -1 to hit with ranged weapons. 
• 52: Carry satchels of glass spheres full of caustic gas (d4 each), which they throw like grenades. The cloud is 10 ft across, deals d8 damage to those who begin their turn inside it (CON save for half), and remains for the rest of the combat unless dispersed by a strong wind. They are not immune to their own grenades. 
• 53: Carry long medium silver spears, dress in shining silver mail, and sing in clear, musical tones as they fight. 
• 54: Hold heavy wooden pavise shields that completely obscure their bodies, such that they cannot be targeted by ranged attacks. They move at half speed while carrying these, and the benefits of the cover can be extended to one other human. 
• 55: Carry large concave mirrors, 6 foot wide, strapped to their backs, and with collapsible wooden stands. On a sunny day, they can calibrate these to set wooden buildings and ship alight at a range of 1 mile.
• 56: Wield medium falx swords and round bronze shields, and have learned the technique of throwing their swords end over end, to a range of 15ft.
• 61: Carry a brace of light fighting knives, five apiece, and have a +1 expanded critical range while using them.
• 62: Wear sealed medium armour, made from brass, iron, and leather, with its own bulky oxygen supply, which allows them to breathe in a vacuum for up to one hour. 
• 63: Are clad in unbelievably heavy stone armour, with helmets carved into the faces of gargoyles. They move at half speed, but have an AC of 20. Their stone-gauntleted punches hit as light hammers. 
• 64: Wield medium meteor hammers, with leaden heads attached to thin steel wire. They can be used the strike at at range of 10ft, and also to entangle their target in place of a normal attack, as described in the Flare Children post. 
• 65: Wear heavy, form concealing cloaks, cloth facemasks, and carry long jezails, similar to those used by the volcano men. As a musket +1. 
• 66: Wear cloaks of white chiffon and lace that are never stained, bright steel plate armour, and carry beautiful golden medium +1 swords. They are HD1+1, and will do any favour that you ask of them, as long as it is asked in kindness and with charitable intent. If you abuse their trust, show cruelty, or say anything positive about the Empire, they will declare you Enemy, and fight you to the death with a fierce, steely, determination. They sing hymns and praise to the great beauty of this world, and to its great indifference. Once you have been declared Enemy, their swords deal double damage against you and glow with a golden radiance. 

Abilities

• 11: Can spider climb with the aid of iron claws on their hands and feet. 
• 12: Can see in the dark, and sprint completely silently. 
• 13: Can speak with birds, and have allies among them. 
• 14: Have strange, nondescript faces, smiling eyes and grinning mouths. In melee, you roll to hit them with disadvantage. 
• 15: Can run all day and all night without tiring, and go one week without sleep without ill effect. 
• 16: Can regain d6 hp by drinking a litre of blood, once a day. 
• 21: Can whistle loudly enough at melee range to deafen a dog or a horse for day, and a human for an hour. CON save resists. 
• 22: Jump three times as high and far as a normal person, and take half the usual falling damage. 
• 23: Can kick as a medium weapon.
• 24: Cover themselves in tiny silver bells. The sound is soft and pleasant, and difficult to describe - listening to it feels a bit like falling asleep. Immune to psychic damage. 
• 25: Have chemically treated skin, stained a red so dark it is almost black, and take half damage from fire and acid. 
• 26: Have been surgically altered, with redundant organs and other biological modifications. Their bodies are heavily scarred. Double HP, cannot be crit. 
• 31: When they are slain, it takes an extra turn for them to realise this and die. 
• 32: Can smell and track like bloodhounds. 
• 33: Know the terrible secret of the Dim Mak - a vorpal unarmed attack, with the vorpal effect deferred for between one and five turns, chosen by the striker. The vorpal effect causes all major organs to fail simultaneously, and all arteries in the head and neck to explode.
• 34: Dog men, known as gnolls, gain +1 to damage and to-hit rolls against panicking opponents. Chatter, laugh, and howl among one another, and have a horrible joke for every occasion. 
• 35: Brew the best coffee in the world, and carry the makings and small silver pressure pots with them on campaign. No effect in combat, but if breakfasting with them as allies, everyone gets +1 temporary HP for the day, or +2 if you have a CHAR of 15 or higher. 
• 36: Can enter a battle trance, a state of supreme focus. This technique is associated with the terrible things at the centre of the planet, and is particularly hated by the soldiers of the White City. The warrior assumes a complicated postural stance. For every combat turn spent doing nothing but maintaining this stance, the next attack taken will be at +2 to hit, with a +2 critical range.  
• 41: Fish men, or mermaids. Can hold their breath for up to two hours, and swim twice as fast as a normal human. 
• 42: Have their souls linked to one another in marriage. Any damage is split evenly between all Ultranats in the combat. Off the battlefield they are lovers and life companions, and take care of one another as any loving married set. Their spats and fights are terrible to see.
• 43: Have a hypnotic gaze - if you meet their eyes, you must save CHAR or be rooted to the spot until you can break the gaze (test each turn). You can still defend yourself, but roll to hit at disadvantage.  
• 44: Serpent men, known as betrayers. Can change their faces with powders and cosmetics, and the effect is nearly supernaturally convincing. They also know your secrets somehow, and yell disgusting obscenities about your loved ones in combat. Serpent men deal fear damage equal to their other damage. A very ancient race of people - they would tell you the first to descend from the sky, at the beginning of the world. 
• 45: Singers and dancers, dressed in beautiful finery, as though attending a ball. Their NPC allies never test morale while one of them lives. This effect pierces through and nullifies the battle drone of the White City military. 
• 46: Can predict the weather with a high degree of accuracy, up to a week in advance. 
• 51: Chew an addictive stimulant before battle, which stains their mouths and teeth red. They do not feel pain in combat, and take -1 damage from all physical sources. 
• 52: Believe themselves to be reincarnated souls of ancient heroes and saints. Perhaps they are. +1 HD, and a great serenity and tranquility, which gives allies a +2 to all morale rolls. 
• 53: Temporal partisans. Angels and demons who have refused to join with the White City, and who now fight alongside its enemies. Use the stats given at the bottom of this dungeon. 
• 54: Slug men, known as black puddings. Can contort and squeeze their bodies through any gap the size of their head. 
• 55: Slayers and reavers. They stain their hands in blood. +1 to hit and to damage rolls, and an additional +1 per enemy killed this combat. 
• 56: Know the country, and can each forage d10 rations a day that they spend doing so. They cannot be surprised in this terrain. 
• 61: Heal d6 when they critically hit an enemy. Their weapons are inscribed with hate poetry and ancient curses. 
• 62: Lens men, known as celestials. Take half damage under moonlight, and deal double damage under sunlight. There are many grand old tales of lens man knights coming to the aid of the weak and oppressed. 
• 63: Ghost men, known as psycho-killers and slashers. Wear iron masks, and do not speak. All carried weapons are invisible, which among other things means that they roll to hit at +1 in melee. 
• 64: Worm men, known as dwarfs or redcaps - the great hereditary foes of the Balistigae. Have an engineer's understanding of tunnelling and demolition works, can see in the dark, and double in size when unobserved (HD3, unarmed attacks as heavy, two attacks from surprise). Usually, attacking someone will mean that you are perceived and are immediately normal size again, but this is not necessarily the case, say, trapped in a pitch black tunnel somewhere buried under a million tonnes of bedrock. 
• 65: Celebrants, who wear wreathes of flowers and bring glad tidings. Enemies not from the White City must test CHAR to attack them. 
• 66: Void men, known as heralds of oblivion. Wear lead masks and lead jewels, and have faces that are terrible to look upon. Total and complete pacifists - will never attack anything for any reason. Also vegans. Anyone who kills a Void Man is themselves slain, and erased from the memories of the entire world. All adventurers know this. The White City has had to manufacture a special corps of fanatics to act as their executioners. If you roll this result, it indicates that the group is accompanied by a single Void Man, who does not recieve the equipment indicated by the equipment roll. Roll again to determine the mien of the other Ultranats in the party.