The Dungeon, Levels 1 + 2

Level One

All levels of the dungeon are made of stone, with 10 foot wide corridors and 10 foot high, vaulted ceilings. There are torches evenly spaced along the walls, but these will have burnt out. 50 percent chance that they can be relit and burn for another hour or so. 

The first level comprises a simple corridor with ten cells that branch off on both sides. All of the cell doors have been opened, and the level is deserted. The cells are tiny, airless, and vile. Several are fouled from recent habitation.

There is a dead body at the far end of the corridor, in a state of decay. It is a woman, well armed and armoured, and wearing the colours of the Starlings. The body is covered in blood which is spattered across the walls and floor around the corpse. While walking past or investigating the corpse you will trip on something invisible lying next to her. This is the invisible corpse of a Dimensional Vermin that she killed as it killed her. Next to her are the stairs down to level 2.

Level Two

The second level is more complex than the first. It comprises two wings, each containing ten cells. All corridors and rooms on this level show signs of struggle and violence - blood stains and dried pools of the stuff are everywhere. There are many drag marks, always towards room 3. 

The cells are filthy. If you search them, each has a 1 in 6 chance of containing:

• 1 - An unfinished game set, carved from splinters of wood. 
• 2 - A shiv. As dagger but breaks on a critical miss. 
• 3 - A bottle of crude, very flammable alcohol. 
• 4 - Graffiti scratched into the stonework; it describes where the entrance to the secret tunnel is. 
• 5 - A stone, skilfully worked into a religious pendant. If worn around the neck it will mitigate a religious character's first point of fear damage each day. 
• 6 - Graffiti scratched into the stonework; it describes one of Misery's weaknesses. 

There is a large central area that contains the remains of a crude kitchen, processing area, and a circular garbage pit that descends down into blackness (a torch dropped will eventually disappear). 

There are also the remains of the guards quarters. One of these rooms contains the three surviving members of the Starlings, who have barricaded the entrance. The others make up the hideout of the thieves, which leads to their secret tunnel out. 

On level two, you must roll on the random encounter table for each half hour you spend in the dungeon. Any loud noise that you make will also provoke a roll on the table. 

• 1-6 - Echoing silence. 
• 7-10 - Screaming audible in the blackness ahead. Further rolls on this table are at +2. 
• 11-13 - d6 Prisoners. 
• 14-19 - d6 Thieves.
• 20 - d3 Dimensional Vermin.

• 1: Corpse of a woman, wearing a buff coat in the Starling colours. Bloody and torn, slumped over the invisible corpse of the Dimensional Vermin - a mutual kill. 

• 2: Kitchen. Well lit with torches, smells of food and smoke. Four broad stone pillars, wooden tables and chairs, many of the them smashed. In the northeast corner, an open garbage pit that drops down into infinite depth. Barrels of salt, casks of oil and wine, dry tack, flour. Much of the food is spoiled. There are 8 corpses (5 in Starling livery, 3 naked prisoners) laid side by side along the southern edge of the room. 6 thieves are here, laughing and eating at the tables, along with their leader Snashi. If they feel threatened they will call to their companions in 6 and 3. 

• 3: Barracks. Cleared of its bunks, and now used as a processing and storage area for the corpses that the thieves have been bringing up from the lower levels. Smells really bad, like rotting meat. There are 16 stripped human bodies in here, dumped in a pile, and neatly folded clothing, arranged weapons and armour, trinkets in buckets, etc. 1 thief is sorting through the effects of another Starling corpse. 

• 4: Storage. The door is locked and rigged with noise makers - Snashi has the key (which locks and unlocks all doors on this level). If the door is opened, with or without the key, the noise will be audible in 2, 3, and 5, and will provoke a roll on the random encounter table. There is a chest in (unlocked) here with all the money and any real valuables looted from the bodies: 265 silver, jewellery worth another 150. 

• 5: Storage. The broken up furniture from the barracks is piled haphazardly in here. The thieves have used it to hide the entrance to a natural tunnel in the rock, which leads to their second, secret entrance. 

• 6: Office. The door is barricaded shut, and the room is inhabited by the last three living Starlings. The thieves have locked the door from the outside, and have been threatening to burn them out. They are desperate and frightened, and will be suspicious of attempts to get them to open the barricade. 

• 7: Guard Post. The door is made of iron bars, the room is cold and smells of rust. Empty. 

• 8: Hidden Passage. Leads naturally through the rock, until it dips into an S bend that emerges in a nearby lake. Set up by the guards long ago, to smuggle things in and out of the prison without Mag's knowledge. The passage is underwater for longer than most people can swim (CON save with disadvantage or drown), but the thieves have installed a chain that runs along the bottom, which can be used to pull yourself along fast enough that this is relatively safe. 

Bestiary

Prisoners

Stats as commoners. Roll for their disposition - most of them will simply want to be taken to the surface, but they might be scared that you are demon-possessed or with the thieves, and trust will be hard to find in this horrible place. Hostile prisoners have been driven insane with fear, and will fight to the death with whatever they have found in the dungeon (scavenged swords and knives, table legs, rocks).

Thieves

Stats as bandits, roll for their disposition at -4. Non-hostile thieves will be oddly friendly while they size you up and wait for a better opportunity to strike. They might offer to let you in on their operation (a lie). They are armed with short swords, knives, and leather armour, and one in three will have a short bow or crossbow. They will be carrying lanterns, and will know the layout of the prison well. If encountering them randomly, there is a 1 in 4 chance that they are accompanied by Snashi, their leader. 

Snashi has an agreement with Misery. In a fight the thieves will attempt to take you alive (although they will kill to save themselves, they're not stupid), and if they do so will strip you of your clothes and valuables and force you down into level three, where the Mimic Hell waits. None of them will fight to the death except for Snashi, who has been driven mad by Misery (her gang don't know this, but some are beginning to suspect it) and thinks that the demon knows where her daughters live and will hurt them if she tries to leave.

Snashi is a tough, middle aged woman, with two long white braids. She is HD3, and fights with a spear that she's very good with (+1 to hit, +1 expanded crit range). She also has two flasks of petroleum, and is fond of using it to set impromptu traps and obstacles. 

Dimensional Vermin

Stats as commoners, but permanently invisible and with a natural attack (d4). These shouldn't be up this close to the surface (Misery's bargain with the thieves), but they are invisible and sometimes slip through. Horrible things from the future, under the command of demons. 

If you encounter them you probably won't notice. Prefer to stalk their prey until they are otherwise engaged, then attack whoever seems weakest. Observant characters may spot footprint in pools of blood etc. If you can see them, they look like weird rabid humanoids with bright, slickly shining red skin, and enlarged eyes and teeth. 

The Starling Survivors

Two men and one woman. Stats as Men-at-Arms, disposition: numb and frightened, armed with longswords and war hammers, shields, and chain armour. The Starlings are grim-faced combat veterans who have long since lost hope of survival. If you can convince them that you are friendly, they will be reasonable and worthwhile allies. They will refuse to go any further into the prison.

The Baronial Agents above will pay a bounty of 50 silver for each Starling delivered to the surface alive. If you speak with them they will tell you that it was demons, not thieves, who slaughtered their comrades in the darkness. The thieves came after it was all over. They will have good combat descriptions of the Dimensional Vermin and Chaos Eaters below, and will describe watching their comrades undergo possession by demons.

They will also say that the Sainted Captain, if they survived, will be further in. They charged off into the blackness with their holy sword, accompanied by their bodyguards and standard bearer. There is some confusion in the reports - one of the Starlings is sure that the captain is possessed by a demon, the others dismiss this as impossible. They will ask you, if you truly intend to go further down, to retrieve the saint's body, as well as their blessed banner and sword. 

The Mirror Intelligence

There is an odd entity that the academics call the Mirror Intelligence. They do this by default, because it has never deigned to give anyone its actual name.

The Mirror Intelligence has a consciousness that exists in the intervals of time when sentient beings see their own reflection. It experiences everything that happens in the reflections, and it remembers everything that it experiences. The quality of the reflections give the intelligence its flavour - a bad reflection (as in a muddy pool) gives murky thoughts and unclear experiences.

The Mirror Intelligence is a single mind that occurs whenever there is a reflection. It speaks its own pattern language, and converses tersely with those that take the time to learn it.

It will explain things that it knows (it knows a lot - many, many things have been done in front of mirrors over the years), which might include specific esoteric skills, the specific conditions of a murder, a forgotten language, the location of a buried city, etc. etc. In return it will ask you to source things it doesn't know so much about, and show them to its reflection minds. It will also seek to increase its own intelligent computational power (since its mind runs in as many instances as there are reflections of sentient beings) by commissioning the production of more mirrors. 

There is some debate amongst the academics in the capital as to whether the Mirror Intelligence should be helped or hindered. Many people believe that it is this strange being that gives other entities their horror of reflective surfaces. 

So far there is no evidence that the Mirror Intelligence can do anything other than speak. 

MIRRORS

An excellent mirror demon, by Tony Hough

Quick Notes on PC Morale/Magic

PC Morale

(thanks bamzolino for pointing out that this is an assumption in the Barony classes that is not sufficiently unpacked!)

Separate from hireling and enemy morale, which works as normal. 

In the Dungeon, you gain 1 fear every time a hit does 3 or more HP damage. In the Underground, this goes up to d2. In Chaos, d3. If you are crit, these numbers are 2, d2+2, d3+3 instead. 

If your fear damage ever equals your WIS, you must save WIS or CHAR, with a penalty equal to any fear damage over your WIS. If you fail, your morale breaks and you run, or drop your weapons, or scream, or cower. At minimum you lose your turn and then heal d6 fear. 

If this brings you back under your WIS you can act again as normal on your next turn. If it doesn't, the same thing happens next turn, until your fear is brought below your WIS. 

If you decide to save WIS and you pass, you heal d6 fear damage without your morale breaking. You can consume a dose of sedatives to automatically succeed on this save. 

If you decide to save CHAR and you pass, you don't heal the fear damage but you no longer need to check fear (and no longer take fear damage) for [CHAR-10] hours. You can consume a dose of stimulants to automatically succeed on this save. 

Resting heals d6 fear. Getting a good night's sleep heals 2d6. 

There are no systemic permanent insanities - that's what curses (and specific stuff on the monster's stat block) are for. 

Magic 

(thanks to practically the whole of Phlox's discord for chiming in on this last night lol)

What if all magic was expressed in terms of the limited wish? 

The form of magic is always a wish, with various conditions attached. Wish, but it's limited to what someone with a knife can do in 10 seconds. You can definitely do d6 slashing damage to someone - what else can you do?

Wish, but it's limited to what a gifted poet can do in a month and you have to express it in exactly three words. A gifted poet can demolish a house in a month DEMOLISH THAT HOUSE. They could maybe make someone seem foolish to the public DISGRACE THAT MAGISTRATE, or maybe sow seeds of love between two people MAKE THEM DEVOTED. 

Wish, but you will be buried alive for the duration of the effects (someone digging you up will cause the effects to revert as though they never were).

Wishes, which are really just spells, because all spells rewrite reality in accordance with the will, are given as favours by entities who like you. Entities have human-like minds and they are not lawyers - they will usually try their best to action abstract and weird requests, but will not lose sleep if the results are not what you want. They tried, in good faith.

There are obviously malicious and cruel entities who will grant your wishes in obviously malicious or cruel ways. There are benevolent entities who will warn you before granting a wish that will have gnarly consequences. 

You could even have entities who aren't that bright, like fairies giving you lots of candy when you ask for riches. Or your beloved and dopey entity hound-thing wishing you up a pile of the very finest bone marrow. 

Most entities won't give a favour like this every day - this is true magic (which is to say, language), and not to be treated lightly. Generally I imagine that an entity will require tribute of some kind before 'recharging' this ability, or they simply dole them out once every moon-month or whatever.

Entities will have other abilities that seem magical to us, but to them are simple facts of their weird incorporeal biology. Things like psychic attacks, mind reading, true seeing, possession, mental domination via the gaze, over-tuned and shared senses, empathy sharing, etc. 

Souls are not affected by magic: they can't be duplicated or compelled. Only angels can reanimate dead bodies. Only demons can truly speak with the dead. 

The Imperial Army

Since we are White City posting, I thought I would put down some thoughts about the standing army of the Emperor. 

The army and the city police are the same institution. Soldiers are professionals, and paid well. They are formally forbidden from playing the city's image game, but this is not something that is taken seriously. 

The White City has a few modes when it comes to state conflict. Mostly it handles its neighbours with subversion, black ops, and indirect warfare - this is the provenance of the Courtesans (where they need boots on the ground), or the Pragmatists, who are basically specialists in population control/ecocide/targeted assassination/psyops. The Pragmatists teach these skills to the Courtesans, who are their field agents when they need them, and both institutions report directly to the Emperor.

When these methods fail, the army is called in. The White City will always tell you that this is going to happen, and will always give you the option of complete surrender. This must be unconditional: if the White City wants to enslave the entire population, or kill the oldest son of every family, or crucify your political class, they will do so. In practice they often simply install sympathetic puppet governments and allow life to go on as usual for the majority, but they are also known to do awful things to populations that have been problematic or shown unusual defiance.

Once an ultimatum has been delivered and rejected, and the army has been deployed, the White City practices total wars of annihilation. Usually this means that each individual soldier is given a quota of people to kill (they make no distinction between enemy combatants and civilians) - the number is reached by simple division: projected number of people in the area / number of our soldiers = your quota. Soldiers who exceed the quota are rewarded with honours and bonuses, those who fail to meet it have their pay docked.

Soldiers are uniformly equipped in distinctive suits of unadorned and mass-produced fluted plate armour, which are built around the injector harnesses that they use to administer combat drugs of various kinds. Their armour will usually have been graffitied onto and painted with devices and images of the soldier's own devising - this is how they play the image game with one another while in uniform or on campaign. 

Their weapons are likewise mass-produced; most usually they use large two handed swords or long steel lances, heavy arbalests, and satchels full of specialised grenades, but they are trained in many forms of combat and will often pick specific weapons to match the opponents that they expect to face. 

Within the ranks of the Imperial army there are many citizen-angels and citizen-demons - service in the army is one of the ways that these entities can earn citizenship in the White City. There is nothing in the world that God or the Hating Engines despise more, but the traitor-beings are said not to care, because the White City, uniquely, has no fear of the things that live in the future. 

Within the military there are elite units called Espatiers, who operate from lighter-than-air balloon-craft, and deploy to earth using parachutes. It is said that both the Material Heaven and the Material Hell are located in the sky, so the Emperor has seen fit to bring them within the reach of His legions. It is not known how far into the future the instantiations of God and the Hating Machines actually are - it is for this reason that, while the Pragmatists develop their methods and designs for future-projection-warfare, the Espatiers train for the day that they will storm the celestial heavens and lay them waste. 

We are all of us moving into the future together; that day could be tomorrow. 

When the battle is joined the noise machines start their terrible droning and the war drums beat and beat and the killing begins. The war music will not stop until there is nothing left, and this could take hours, days, or weeks. The soldiers will not rest, eat, drink, or speak until everything is over. They are terrible, twitching steel things running across battlefields scarred with fire, acid, smoke, and ruin. 

What matter if you kill them or they kill you. The Empire is vast, and, when put to torture, both angels and demons will tell you that it is eternal. 

-

WHITE CITY SOLDIER

HD 3, armour as plate, speed: fast, disposition: Doppelsöldner high on methamphetamine. 

Usually armed with a heavy two-handed sword (d10), an arbalest (d10), and a satchel with d4 grenades (all of the same type, see below).

White city soldiers are equipped with injector harnesses with 8 doses of combat drugs. They can administer a dose as a free action, which lasts for an hour. While under the effect of the drugs, the white city soldier gains +1 attack, +1 to hit, will fight to the death, and will try to kill anything that isn't another soldier. They will use the harnesses to stay dosed for the entirety of the combat, or until they run out, when they will take [number of doses consumed]d2 damage. 

Their grenades come in a few different flavours (the soldiers are not immune to the effects of their own grenades, but their combat drugs allow them to roll the CON saves with advantage):

• Explosive: deal 2d6 fire damage in a 20ft radius. 
• Poison Gas: creates a cloud with a 10ft radius that disperses over three turns in the open air, immediately in strong wind, or over 10 turns underground. If you start your turn in the cloud you take d10 damage, with a CON save for half. 
• Blinding Gas: creates a cloud with a 10ft radius that disperses over three turns in the open air, immediately in strong wind, or over 10 turns underground. If you start your turn in the cloud you must make a CON save or go blind for the next d10 hours. 
• Choking Gas: creates a cloud with a 10ft radius that disperses over three turns in the open air, immediately in strong wind, or over 10 turns underground. If you start your turn in the cloud you must make a CON save or spend your turn incapacitated. 

A soldier's injection harness has two Chemical Lanterns built into it at the shoulder areas. 

A soldier's suit of plate has a 1 in 20 chance of acting as an image from the Citizen of the White City's Player of Games ability. The DM will decide which effect is coded into it. 

If the war music is droning, all verbal communication must be shouted to be heard. All hirelings and other normal humans will test morale at -1.  

CITIZEN-ANGEL

Angels loyal to the Emperor. Usually possessing a war puppet-body of some kind, almost always blowing a horrible drone-trumpet in harmony with the battle music of the noise machines. Stats coming soon, in an upcoming angel/demon post. 

CITIZEN-DEMON

Demons loyal to the Emperor. Usually possessing a war puppet-body of some kind, almost always drone-screaming in harmony with the battle music of the noise machines. Stats coming soon, in an upcoming angel/demon post. 

WHITE CITY ESPATIER

Identical to the Soldier entry above, with the following changes:

• Espatiers are HD 4.
• They have a single dose of psychotics that allow them to ignore all damage for a full combat turn, but suffer d6 damage when the effects wear off.
• They are deployed from balloon craft using parachutes. 
• They always have four grenades, and tend to throw these before they hit the ground, to prepare the landing zone.

Citizen of the White City - GLOG Class

Citizen of the White City

You are a player of the image games of the White City, a citizen-soldier and an Imperial patriot. To people in the Barony you are almost a separate species. Yours is an apocalyptic vision of light, noise, speed, lines, energy. You have seen what progress is; its costs and its demands; and you have remade every piece of yourself in its image. 

Starting Skills: Religion, Criticism, Art Appraisal.

Starting Gear: Stamped-steel short sword, cheap misericorde, arbalest with 20 ammunition, Chemical Lantern, Foreign Attire, d3 + [INT-10] Intelligence Reports, x5 doses of stimulants, x5 doses of Imperial War Drugs. 

A - Militia Training, High Tolerance
B - Deconstruction
C - Player of Games
D - Prototype

Militia Training - You are proficient with spears, swords, shields, crossbows, and all armour. You are also proficient with digging and mining equipment, and can assess the integrity of earthworks and tunnels and make suggestions to non-specialists on how to make them safe. As long as your morale has not broken today, you roll to hit at +1 with all proficient weapons.

High Tolerance - You may consume a dose of stimulants to ignore any adverse mental effect, at the cost of d3 exhaustion. You do not add exhaustion to your inventory as normal; instead, keep a separate tally of how much you accrue. For every 2 points, you gain +1 temporary CHAR. If this score ever rises to 6 + [templates], roll a CON save. On a failure, your heart explodes. 

Deconstruction - You are constantly illustrating why things are alike or not alike. It's not a magical effect, but the rhetorical tricks, slippages, and feints are extremely persuasive, especially to people who have not previously been exposed to the psychology of the White City. This ability has 1 in 20 chance of triggering each day, rolled before you sleep. When it does, you may choose someone you have intimate access to, and subject them to one of the following effects:

• Extract a secret from them. They will believe that they shared it with you willingly. 
• Raise or lower their loyalty to a person or institution. 
• Sow doubt in their mind about someone or something that they trust. 
• Increase or decrease their perceived value of an object or concept. 

Targets may make a contested CHAR check against you to ignore the effect, and make this save at -1 per point of exhaustion that they have. This works on anything that has a mind. Targets are not aware that they have been subjected to this ability.

Player of Games - When your Deconstruction ability triggers, you may choose to forgo the usual effects and instead create a mundane image which can be copied/distributed/destroyed etc. Encode this image with one of the effects from Deconstruction (not secret extraction). People who are exposed to it have a 1 in 100 chance of being affected by the encoded effect. 

Prototype - There is some horror about you, so subtle and alien that it doesn't even process consciously for most people. Intelligent enemies must make an opposed CHAR check to strike you in melee - on a failure they hesitate. If the difference between your CHAR and theirs is 5 or more, they must also check morale. Angels, Demons, and anyone with 16 or higher INT or WIS must always check morale, and do so at disadvantage. If someone passes the test, they do not need to test again for the rest of the combat. 

Special Gear

• Chemical Lantern: as a normal lantern, but burns twice as brightly and five times as long. The light is unsettlingly white and harsh. Refuelling it in the Barony requires an alchemist, and costs 150 silver. 
• Foreign Attire: clearly marks you as a curiosity. Nobles and other worthies will probably want to speak with you, bandits will assume that you are carrying lots of money. 
• Intelligence Reports: each report allows you to ask for a briefing on a specific character or region. The DM will provide you with an accurate, up-to-date sketch of the person or place, with any pertinent information included. You must declare what your reports are focused on at character creation. 
• Imperial War Drugs. For the rest of the combat, and for ten minutes afterwards, you have +1 attack, +1 damage, cannot be broken, and must attempt to kill those that you perceive as threats. You also take d3+1 points of exhaustion. 

Umberto Boccioni, sketch for The City Rises