Artist and Editor Callout

I am planning on going on a brief hiatus from this blog - the initial creative impulse has spent itself a little, but I also have some other projects going at the moment that I really need to focus on in a sustained way. I look forward to getting back to it all with renewed energy in the next few months. There may well be a few short posts here and there in the mean time - Maze Builders, Slow Giants, and the Jabberwocky/Questing Beast/other Legendary Monsters are all things I would like to write about.

Another thing I would really like to work on during this period is pulling together the first print version of Barony in a cohesive way. For this I will need artists, a designer, and an editor. I will be doing some of the art myself, but I'd also like to include work from others.

My first call out to anyone reading this: if you know any artists who might be a good fit for the content on the blog, please let me know, either in the comments or on Phlox's discord, so I can reach out. Likewise for designers and editors, preferably people with experience doing TTRPG publications.

Thank you in advance!

Gods, Assassins, Hirelings, 1/2HD Fodder, None Are Immune

The '2 Arbitrary Beings Who Are Exes' Table:

1. Get along, still fucking, split was mutual. 
2. Hate each other, still fucking, split was mutual. 
3. Get along, not fucking, split was mutual. 
4. Hate each other, not fucking, split was mutual. 
5. Get along, still fucking, split was one-sided. 
6. Hate each other, still fucking, split was one-sided. 
7. Get along, not fucking, split was one-sided. 
8. Hate each other, not fucking, split was one-sided. 

Certainly the content that the people were clamouring for. 

Kings of the Earth

A non-comprehensive list of the honourifics of the Bird Kings: Kings of the Earth; Kings of the Eight Lands; Those Who Rule Where Others Claim to Rule; Kings of Kings; Those of the Royal Aspect which Horrifies the Soul; Kings of the Universe.

These were all titles given to the Bird Kings by others, because the Birds did not have language. The were highly intelligent, formed complex social hierarchies and sophisticated military organisation, and were masters of metal-working and jewel-crafting, but they did not have language.

They ruled the earth for a million, million years. They ruled, and they ate their subjects. They were the first murderers. They are said to have farmed humans before humans knew who they were; before God, before magic, before writing, before fire, when the world was appeared exactly as it was, without abstractions or projections of any kind. 

The terror of their hunts, of their impunity, is deeply engrained into the psyche of all lesser animals, humans included. The thing that kills you in your most primordial nightmares is a three-foot-long beak as sharp as a whetted knife, and a pair of bright and horrible eyes, burning with alien intelligence.

The power of the Bird Kings and their terrible armies was broken over literally thousands of years, in a series of utterly genocidal wars with a nascent humanity and their dog and cat allies. During these wars language was slowly developed and refined as a weapon to counter the advantages of metallurgy, adornment, and decimal organisation.

Few outside the academies now remember them, except in their darkest and most animals hearts, but the gnostics maintain (heretically) that it was from them that humans learned to work steel, cut gems, lead armies, and conduct themselves with regal majesty. 

Like this, but without arms. Art by Chris Riddell. 

BIRD THANE

A 12-foot-tall hunting nightmare with long, powerful legs, a heavy beak shod in bronze, and kill and mating tokens woven through feathers, hammered into keratin, and looped around the neck. Bird Thanes hunt in packs of ten, usually led by a distinguished noble. 

HD8, Killing Beak (2d8, crit range 19-20, rolls d12s on a crit), claws d8, armour as leather, speed: 5x that of a human, disposition: cruel, fearless, sadistic, curious. 

Freezing Stare: If you lock eyes with a Bird Thane you must test CHAR or freeze in terror, which renders you unable to move. 

Limited Flight: Bird Thanes do not take falling damage, and can glide 50ft with a 30ft run-up. 

Bird Thanes are completely immune to psychic and fear damage. 

BIRD NOBLE

Leaders of roosts and hunting grounds, subject to the Kings and responsible for their Thanes and clutches. Often artisans of superlative skill. Veteran hunters of prey-subjects. Skilled in the use of political terror to undermine rebellion and defiance, generally via collective punishment and elaborate public torture. 

Stats as Bird Thane, but HD10, armour as chain, and with an improved Freezing Stare (you subtract 3 from your check to resist). Also has skill in one of either jewel crafting or metallurgy. 

Like Bird Thanes, Bird Nobles are immune to psychic and fear damage. Additionally, if a Bird Noble is targeted by an attack that deals either damage type, a single point of the appropriate damage is reflected back onto the attacker. 

Notes on the Old Capital - Warbodies and Exterminator Orbs

The Old Capital was the ruling power in the Barony before the Barony was a thing - its collapse was what birthed the Barony into political existence around 200 years ago. It was destroyed in a string of disasters, some geological, some military, some magical. The great system of aqueducts that linked the Old Capital to the provinces famously ran with blood for three days, and then dried up.

The ruins are still there, great black stone towers and apartments and boulevards, wrought iron ornaments, beautiful stained glass and mosaics. The Old Capital was the sister city of the White City, and they shared a culture (although culture in the White City has progressed quite a bit in the last 200 years), as well as trade and military alliances. The White City declined to send military aid at the last, and the Old Capital was burned and razed in less than a week.

The facts are hazy. What is known for sure is that large sections of city fell into the earth, and some kind of army poured up out of the ground to massacre the inhabitants. The army of the Old Capital fought until they were eventually overcome, despite their great powers of killing and destroying. The conflict released roiling waves of heat and pressure, clouds of disease and putrefaction, and employed thousands of bizarre and now-lost engines of war.

Treasure-hunters have been picking through the ruins of the Old Capital for two centuries, but it is dangerous work. At best, the ruins are infested by hostile Cuckoos, and there are much, much weirder things that hunt in the broken buildings. Expeditions have reported a gigantic sinkhole in the old city centre that drops directly down into darkness. 

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I'll write more about the Old Capital at some point - it's dangerous, it's cursed, it's probably radioactive and diseased, it's haunted by things from the centre of the planet. People don't go there without heavy, heavy protection. The Baroness really doesn't like people going there at all, because she's worried about moron adventurers poking/waking up whatever destroyed the city in a week. Normal endgame region stuff.

This post is about the Old Kingdom military relics that appear in legend, to wit: Warbodies and Exterminator Orbs.

WARBODIES

Warbodies are essentially biological suits of armour that interface with the wearer and provide enhanced strength, endurance, speed, and protection. The most common look like 9 to 10 foot tall humans with weird, placid faces and barbie anatomy. They are very strong and very tough, and when they went to war they were usually armed with weapons befitting their stature.

No one knows this, but Warbodies were the first version of what would eventually become the Chemical Courtesans.

A Warbody is not conscious, but it is a biological thing - it needs feeding (you keep them in pools of nutrient soup), and you need protections before you get into one, to stop its nervous system and other tissue from growing into yours. A pilot (as the old knightly caste were called) would cover their bodies in poisonous oils to stop the two fleshes from growing together. Piloting a Warbody is still dangerous for your psyche, and most pilots burn out in a couple of years. In days of prosperity the Old Capital would pension them of on generous estates. Towards the end, the staring, maddened veterans were often quietly disposed of by the agents of the city, to avoid morale loss among the population. 

Pilots had their own Warbodies, and would go into battle wearing an upscaled and personalised harness of decorative chains made from lead, tin, and cut glass (again, you can see the continuation of this practice with the Courtesans). Their veterency, service history, notable kills, and feats of arms could be read from these chains by those with the learning to do so.

There are many rumours of Warbodies of much, much greater size, and with bizarre and non-human physical appearances. 

Warbody

You are not a Pilot, and do not have a personal relationship with this Warbody. 

Donning it is easy and intuitive, and must be done naked. A Warbody is either fed or unfed. 

While you wear it, a fed Warbody increases your STR and CON to 22, your speed to that of a horse, causes you to gain 30 hp, and sets your armour as chain. Your unarmed strikes hit for d6. You can see and hear, but you cannot speak. 

An unfed Warbody increases your STR and CON to 18, does not increase your speed, causes you to gain 20 hp, and sets your armour as chain. Your unarmed strikes hit for d4. You can see and hear, but you cannot speak. 

A Warbody will always be unfed if you find it outside of its nutrient pools, of if these have dried up. 

If you enter an unfed Warbody without applying barrier oils, you take d6 damage as it feeds on your blood to revive itself, and you will lose one max HP for every hour you wear it as it digests you. From then on the Warbody will count as fed, until one hour after you take it off. 

Since this Warbody doesn't know you, you must also save CHAR to try to remove it - if you fail, then the ganglia have penetrated too deeply into your spine, and you cannot be removed without it killing you. Applying barrier oils before you enter will let you automatically succeed on this check. 

Terrible Armaments of the Old Capital 

Warbodies are buried in huge stone crypts with the skeletons of their pilots, and honoured with grave goods like soldiers. Rarely, an honoured Body will be entombed with its weapons of war.

Spear: Huge pale metal spear that hits for 2d8, and also shoots invisible harming beams (2d8, range as rifle, d4-1 shots remaining). The method of refuelling or reloading this weapon has been lost to time. 

Khopesh: Terrible limb-lopping weapon of old, with a weighted sickle blade. Considered brutal, fit for dull and unimaginative Pilots. 2d10, crit range, 18 - 20, -4 on the death and dismemberment table if this is the weapon that brought you below 0. 

Maul: The weapon of the Magistrates, who by law fought in battle with the Pilots. 2d10, knocks anyone hit prone, crits structures and prone enemies automatically.

Talons: Worn by the Pilot-Nobles of the City and considered the most honoured of the Armaments. The ripping hand-shapes signify the supremacy of humanity over brute existence. 2d8 + 2d8, and allow melee attacks to be made at a distance of 20ft (this looks like telekinesis).

Honourifics

A Warbody will have d6-2 honourifics attached to it.

Lead Harness: The Warbody can never be surprised in combat, and will always act on any enemy surprise round.

Glass Harness: The Warbody can run twice as fast as normal, and can leap 20 feat into the air, or 40 feet horizontally with a run up. 

Aluminium Harness: The Warbody cause Angels, Demons, and Beings of Chaos to test morale every time it attacks them.

Brass Harness: The Warbody always counts as unfed, but attacks three times each turn. 

Ceramic Harness: The Warbody gives off enormous amounts of heat, visible in clouds of steam and waves of distortion. Being within 5 ft of the Body inflicts 1 fire damage per turn, and being grappled by it inflicts d6 fire damage. 

Tin Harness: This Warbody can SCREAM once per combat. When it does so, all enemies test morale at disadvantage. 

EXTERMINATOR ORBS

Exterminator Orbs are a myth, but there are enough historical reports of their existence that the academics do not doubt that they were real once. In some ways they were simple weapons. A perfectly white sphere of an arbitrary size is generated, and then sent in an arbitrary direction at an arbitrary speed.

Anything living thing that comes within a distance of the orb equal the orb's diameter, dies. There are no exceptions. Exterminator Orbs were generated and projected by unknown means, and they terrified their users in their own time. There were, apparently, no inherent limits on size, speed, or direction. Terrible weapons, thankfully now forgotten to history. 

GLOG class: Terror Bird

Following on from this post. 

Like Dogs and Cats, you cannot talk, use ropes or ladders, or manipulate anything that requires fingers. You can't wear gear that has not been specially made for you. Your speed is 2x that of a human. You are very intelligent for a Terror Bird but that doesn't mean that you can read or do arithmetic - your intelligence is social and spatial, not logical. You do understand spoken language when it is used by party members, or other people that you know well. 

Unlike Dogs and Cats, you do not have a more human form in the dreamlands - instead, you are twice your usual size, have double HP, deal double damage, and are wearing twice the amount of jewellery. The dreams of the Terror Birds long predate those of humans, and have nothing in common with them. 

Also unlike Dogs and Cats, Terror Birds are not able to designate a Companion in the party.

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TERROR BIRD

A Sprinter, Limited Flight, Killer Born, natural weapon (terrible, ripping beak) d8
B Imperious
C Transfix
D King of Predators, Majesty

Sprinter: Outside combat (it takes a while for you to get going) your speed is five times that of a human. You can run at this speed all day without tiring. 

Limited Flight: You do not take fall damage. With a 30 ft run up you can glide 50 ft, but get no elevation. Flapping your wings to facilitate either of these is loud, ungainly, and generally accompanied by squawking and hissing.  

Killer Born: Your crit range is increased by one, and you roll d12s instead of your usual d8 when resolving critical hits. 

Imperious: Attacks against you that deal fear or psychic damage have their damage capped at 1.

Transfix: When you lock eyes with an enemy you may force a contested CHAR check. If you win the contest, your prey is frozen in terror and may not move on their next turn. 

King of Predators: Mundane animals will not willingly attack you. Every time one of your crits kills someone, all enemies with 2 or less HD must check morale.   

Majesty: For each 200s worth of jewellery you are wearing, your CHAR counts as one higher for the purposes of your Transfix ability, to a maximum of +3. 

I find them genuinely horrifying, and can totally imagine them dripping in jewels

Total Control: Wizards, Sorcerers, Magi, Necromancers

Every so often, rarely, something is born that looks human but isn't. They have bright eyes and crystal minds, and they can make people do things. The control is usually sporadic, hesitating, violent, and unpredictable at first - over time, usually many years, it becomes perfect; as inescapable as a cage of steel bars or a pit in the earth. 

Usually these beings are killed as soon as they are discovered - you have to do this before they become too powerful to kill. Sometimes they learn to hide themselves, bide their time, let their abilities grow into full fruition.

Wizards are a blight on the Barony. Everyone knows that they are monsters, insane, not human. People call them demons. To look into their eyes is to surrender your mind, and expose your soul to dismemberment or utter erasure. 

Those that do survive are usually very old, very intelligent, and very evil. Entities (including angels and actual demons) are just as susceptible to their control and domination as humans are, and wizards often have whole legions of slaves spells and guardians in their thrall, alongside their human victims. They are also infamous for hoarding strange, ancient, knowledge, and forgotten artefacts of power. 

In the popular imagination a wizard lives in the wastelands, surrounded by slaves, in a tower or a fortress made impregnable by traps and arcane wards. In the very best cases they are eccentric, cold, and without human empathy - in the worst, they are nightmarish things whose only interests are the acquisition of power and the abuse of the helpless. 

The very very great James Earl Jones, playing the also
very great Thulsa Doom.  

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WIZARD

Stats as a human (from 1 to 4 HD) with an infinite CHAR stat. They automatically succeed CHAR checks of all kinds, and automatically win contested checks. If two Wizards contest each other, neither wins. 

Battle of Wills

As soon as a Wizard becomes aware of you, it may choose to begin a Battle of Wills. It can do this against as many targets as it wishes. Each target of the battle must make a CHAR save, with +1 to the save for each additional target of the Battle of Wills that turn. A Wizard can do this every turn, for as long as it wishes. 

Targets who fail this save will be dominated by the Wizard. If the Wizard is looking directly into your eyes from a distance of 10ft or less, the save is made at -6. A Wizard who chooses to do this cannot target others as normal. 

Some wizards may have other methods of active domination (instead of the eyes) - classics are large mirrors, crystals full of swirling smoke, patterns traced in the air, strange paintings, a deep melodious voice, etc. They function exactly as described above to anyone looking into them (or hearing them if applicable). 

If you are dominated by a wizard, you treat every spoken command of theirs as a Command. If you have no instructions from the wizard, you may attempt a CHAR save to act normally, making all rolls at disadvantage - otherwise you spend your turn in a stupor.

Additionally, Wizards can do various horrible things to victims that they have dominated. See below for details. 

Each Wizard will also have 2d6 contrivances - choose from the list or roll for them, and if you roll, replace as many as you wish with Slave Entities. Multiples stack, unless this would be obviously silly - if so, replace with another entity. See below for details.

Dominations 

(A Wizard gets one of these). Each one takes a turn to perform on a single target, which can be done at any range. The process is horrible, and all those witnessing it will take d6 fear damage. 

1. I'll blast your soul! You suffer Soul Destruction. You die, and will never be resurrected. 
2. You will crawl your days to an end as a worming thing! You are transformed into a form of the Wizard's choosing - your rough body mass is maintained. This process causes you to go insane, and your new body becomes an NPC. 
3. You will know endless torment! Your soul is transported to a nightmare plane of winds and fog where black claws rend it in agonising perpetuity. Your still living body is without brain function. 
4. You are lost to time! None shall remember you! In a flash you disappear. None remember that you existed, save the Wizard. 
5. Demons of the elder world shall possess your very flesh! Your body is taken over by a monstrous and completely inhuman intelligence. They now control your actions (as an NPC); your conscious mind is 'locked in' behind the eyes that were once yours. 
6. The black night of aeons swells around you! You live through countless lives, in swirling vortexes of star matter, in boiling volcanoes, in swamps and jungles, in the cities of humans; a million, million lifetimes in an instant. Something takes root in your brain and soul, a parasite of hideous lineage. When your mind returns you have become a 1HD NPC Wizard, with your physical stats maintained, bound forever to serve the one who created you. 

Contrivances

1. Slave Entity - Create an entity as normal. They are the slave of the Wizard, and will act in exact accordance with its commands. A Wizard can communicate with Slave Entities telepathically. A Wizard can always cause any psychic damage that they suffer to instead be suffered by one of their Slave Entities. Any spells that are cast by a Slave Entity are cast using its own HP, which can kill it. Wizards usually have lots of slave entities around them, which is why they often have access to lots of spells. On mishaps and dooms the spells still work, but the casting Slave Entity is immediately destroyed. 
2. Poisoner - The Wizard is skilled in the brewing and use of hideous poisons. They have a supply that includes doses all of your world's poisons, including any legendary or rare ones. They also have a signature method of delivery, either a blowgun, a hollow ring, powder in a tube, traps full of it, lipstick or other cosmetics, or their own blood. The Wizard is immune to poisons of all sorts, and any human servants will fight with poisoned weapons. 
3. Artefact of Power - A gem, circlet, ring, rod, or other ancient artefact that increases the power and majesty of the Wizard. While it survives, all spells cast by the Wizard have 1 additional MD. 
4. Grimoire - A book scribed with the true names of d3 Kingly entities. It allows for their summoning and binding (by anyone, not just the wizard) - binding is identical to Wizard domination. If summoned and not bound, the entities will seek revenge on the Wizard. 
5. Traps - The Wizard is a sadist and a master engineer, and has constructed a fortress or tower festooned with mechanical booby-traps and baited with treasure. There will always be some method by which they can watch unfortunate heroes torn apart by their machinations. One of these might well be a narrow well that leads straight down into Chaos. 
6. Pets - Choose a monster from the Barony bestiary. The Wizard has one (or d6 of them if HD2 or below) dominated and kept in the cells beneath their fortress.
7. Acolytes - Human followers, dominated and utterly loyal. 20+d10 with stats as commoners and wave-bladed knives, or 10+d6 with stats and equipment as men-at-arms.
8. Banefire - Keeps a fire burning in their lair whose flames kill the soul of those they burn. This prevents resurrection, and inflicts d6 fear damage on those who witness it. The main fire never burns out, and can be transmuted and captured in glass grenades in an arcane laboratory. 
9. Mimicry - The Wizard can perfectly mimic the voice of anyone they have heard speak, and can throw their voice so that it is heard from a point of their choosing inside the same room. 
10. Actor - The Wizard is an actor of unbelievable skill. They are extremely convincing when they wish to feign emotions of all kinds. A character with template in the Actor prestige class will note their skill, but never be taken in. 
11. Contortionist - The Wizard can contort their entire body to fit through any gap the size of their head. 
12. Dreamer - The Wizard spends most of their time in the dreamlands, and can bring back things and beings that it finds there. Their lair will always contain a mirror-gate that facilitates this. Their sleeping body might be vulnerable. They might dream of you, and bring you out from the dream (your expression is strange, your gait a little off, you never smiled that way at anyone...) to confront yourself. 
13. Chemist - The Wizard is a heavy user of drugs of all kinds, and keeps a stockpile of every type imaginable, including doses of rare and legendary narcotics. All are of superlative quality.
14. Cursed Weapon or Armour - The Wizard has dominated the mind of an enchanted, sentient weapon or suit of armour. Use your favourite, and remember that a Wizard always wins any contested CHAR check.
15. Meditation - The Wizard can meditate easily and deeply, and is immune to all forms of psychic damage while doing so. They are also immune to physical pain, and take -1 damage from all other sources. While meditating, the Wizard cannot move, but has truesight of the entire room. 
16. Weapons of a Lost Age - The Wizard has one of the following: a Warbody; a Duelling Rod (as pistol, but shoots an invisible beam of force that does 2d10 force damage, contains d4-1 charges, never needs reloading, creates no smoke); an Exterminator Orb. 
17. Apprentice - A 1HD Wizard, under the main Wizard's thrall. Uniquely among their servants, other Wizards cannot be dominated, so this one will be kept under control with mundane threats and coercion. 
18. Body Control - The Wizard can control their body to such a degree that they need take only one breath per hour to function normally. They need food and water only once every two weeks. If they wish, they can appear dead - this fools people learned in medicine, although the soul will still be visible if you can see it.
19. Political Connections - This Wizard has leverage on the closest serious political player, and is considered protected. Killing or inconveniencing them will have consequences.
20. Assassin - The Wizard has a capable assassin under domination. Here are some ideas about what to do with this. And some more, it was a crazy time.

DESIGN NOTES

I have been listening to way too much Robert Howard recently (more of his DNA in Barony than may immediately be apparent I think). I love the way wizards are in that world - extremely deadly, pretty fragile, with the conceit that you are always totally fucked if you let them cow or overawe you. This is an attempt to convey some of that - you gotta act decisively and kill them quickly, or you will die screaming. 

Dogs and Cats (After Arnold K's Really Good Dog)

Once upon a time, Arnold K wrote a fantastic class. It happens pretty regularly, but this one was one of the things that got me thinking about writing my own blog for whatever reason, so it's a post close to my heart.

Barony is a bit more grounded and less whimsical in tone than Centerra, but I want to have PC dogs in it. I've tweaked and snipped at the original, until it feels like something coherent with the other classes I've put together. As a fun BONUS, I also realised, at the same time that it hit me last night that playable dogs were necessary, that I also wanted playable cats. Think of these as like cougar sized, but proportioned like and identifiable as enormous house cats. 

Many people in the Barony keep pets, and there are dire-breeds that have been bred as companion protectors. The dogs would come up to about the chest of an adult (totally realistic for big dogs), the cats very slightly shorter (not at all realistic). 

A side note: when I worked in Film and TV I once had a chat with Chloe Grace Moretz's close security, who told me about her two German Shepherds - apparently they were raised from puppies to imprint onto her, are trained to bite and crush the wrist of anyone they don't recognise approaching her holding something, and can be given a kill command by her or her security. They are basically working-dog close security. This type of animal is, apparently, pretty common with rich people in LA.

Also everyone should watch Green Room. 

Anyway, the classes:

You are a Dog or a Cat, with all that that entails. Both Dogs and Cats have the following in common: you cannot talk, use ropes or ladders, or manipulate anything that requires fingers. You can't wear gear that has not been specially made for you. Your speed is 2x that of a human. You are very intelligent for a Dog/Cat but that doesn't mean that you can read or do arithmetic - your intelligence is social and spatial, not logical. You do understand spoken language when it is used by party members, or other people that you know well. 

In the dreamlands you take on a different form - you walk on two legs, might wear human clothes, can use tools as a human would, and can speak. 

You may also choose a member of the party to be your Companion, if you wish. While your companion is alive, both of you take -1 fear damage from all sources. If either of you die violently, then the other loses 2 WIS permanently. In addition:

DOG

A Takedown, Lick, Sharp Smell, natural weapons d8
B Go for the Throat, Watcher
C Protector
D +2 HP, Terrify

Takedown: If you move at least 10ft before you attack, your target must save of be knocked prone. 

Lick: During lunch, you can give each of your party members +1 to their healing. Your Companion gets +1 and also heals the full amount possible without rolling. 

Sharp Smell: If you can smell, you can tell if someone is not themself. You can smell poison and magic. You can track things by scent up to a day after their passing. 

Go for the Throat: Your attacks against a prone target deal double damage (roll once and double it). All of your damage dice explode, whether or not your target is prone. 

Watcher: You always count as awake and alert for the purposes of being ambushed or caught off guard. You are never surprised in combat, and will act on any enemy surprise rounds as normal. 

Protector: You can take an attack meant for another member of your party as an interrupt, provided you are in base contact with them. Once per turn, you can instead attack the attacker - your attack is resolved before theirs.

Terrify: Once per combat, you may force your enemies to test morale. This test is made at -1 for each enemy you have already killed. 

CAT

A -2 HP, Stalk, Keen Eyes, Purr, natural weapons d6 (which count as dual wielded)
B +1 HP, Ambush, Inquisitive
C +1 HP, Cruelty, Joie de Vivre
D +1 HP, Inscrutable, Murder

Stalk: You move completely silently, and are almost invisible while immobile in shadows and long grass. You can jump up to a height of 10 feet, fall 5 times normal without taking damage, and never need to test for feats of balancing or leaping. 

Keen Eyes: Your eyesight is twice as good as a humans. You see well in dim light. You can also see the faint residue of magic for up to one hour. 

Purr: You heal all party members for d3 fear damage during lunch. Your companion heals all fear damage. 

Ambush: You attack twice when attacking an enemy who is unaware of your presence. 

Inquisitive: You can make use of scrolls, wands, and other magic items that you can hold in your mouth. 

Cruelty: Your attacks deal +3 damage against targets who are already below 50 percent of their HP. 

Joie de Vivre: You acquire a special pattern language and a special entity. Generate it as you would for an Artist, except that it only ever has a single trait and is always sociopathic. 

Inscrutable: Your mind cannot be read by any means. You always know your way perfectly in the dreamlands, and may travel there at will when you sleep.

Murder: When attacking an enemy with HD2 or less who is unaware of your presence, you kill them silently. 

Red Apes/Returner Demons

I've been working on a construction site again, and have been dissociating quite intensely/dreaming of terrible and awful things. 

Here are some excellent assassins, the GLOG server is having a great time with them :)

This post is actually vaguely assassin coded, but sadly without a class attached. I may update this soon!

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RED APE

The Red Apes are, to the White Apes who live in the twisting black mazes of the Underworld, roughly what angels are to humans. 

They emerge out from the deepest regions of the core on great red wings to do their inscrutable work. They never speak and they never blink, and their wide, staring eyes petrify those that they transfix. They are beautiful the way statues are beautiful; graceful, unwavering, precise, direct, solid and sure and terrible in their movements.

The White Apes call them the First Murderers, and they are the ones who long ago taught the subterranean monks and adepts their infamous bone-breaking martial techniques. When the Red Apes deign to ascend close to the surface (they will never actually emerge to look upon the sun), it is usually to wreak violence and destruction, which they do in silence, with unclear motivation. Less often they will kidnap people and bring them down and down through endless warrens and into Chaos.

They are beings of an order of reality more dense and subtle than that of humans. None can claim to know their means and ways, but there is one academic in the capital who says that she has spoken with them, and spent time sitting at their feet, in the bowels of the earth, getting wisdom. Her dissertation on the topic, which was mocked at length by her tenured colleagues, claims that the Red Apes possess minds unlike anything on earth - that they are somehow intelligent but not conscious. She claims that they are beings of process and instinct, so refined that they are able to act as avatars and archons of the obscure powers that they are descended from.

Their homes are weird and iridescent caverns so far down into the core that they have never been seen by lesser beings. Poison steam and acid and plasma, and endless mineral caverns, garish and stained in every primary colour by obscure geological and chemical processes.

It was the Red Apes who first warred against God in the elder days. Usually they go naked, and kill by ritual strangulation, but when they make war in earnest they will take up the terrible armaments of the Underworld - bone-white, ossified, super-dense and radioactive, and rend their foes to pieces, silent and awful as time, entropy, gravity, dust, change.

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A Red Apes stands about 10 feet tall, has four arms, great wings, and skin, feathers, and fur the colour of bright fresh blood. They never blink or stop baring their awful white fangs, and are usually seen naked, sitting in silent meditation, in the deepest monasteries and holy places of the Hollow Earth. A Red Ape will not speak, but if you sit at their feet and make suitable offerings, they will instruct you in forms and postures. They can teach you unarmed combat, use of the bow, poetry, dance, sex, and meditation, and will teach a human these skills to a level of refinement impossible for most mortals. They will also accept assassination contracts - they will never travel to the surface, but other than this are utterly dispassionate about who they kill. The only currency that a Red Ape will accept will accept as payment for their favours are sentient sacrifices, and they will usually demand tens of these for the pettiest gift. 

Red Ape

HD12, unarmed strike d10 x 4, Bone-Breaking, armour as chain (supernatural grace and poise, various blade slapping and arrow swatting techniques), speed: twice as fast a human on foot, ten times as fast flying, disposition: completely inscrutable. 

Bone-Breaking: A Red Ape can attempt a grapple if it makes only 2 of its 4 unarmed attacks in a single turn. It rolls advantage on its grappling checks and counts as having a STR of 24 for this purpose, because it has been doing this for thousands of years. If the Red Ape begins its turn with a human grappled, it can choose to kill the human by strangling it (or pulling its head off), or to break two of its limbs. 

Awe: A Red Ape is so vividly real and vital that humans cannot bear its presence for long. All mental stats are a -6 while in combat with a Red Ape, and human enemies take 1 point of psychic damage per turn. 

Petrify: A Red Ape can transfix the hardiest mortal with its insane, unblinking stare. It may gaze at one enemy per turn - that enemy cannot speak (including pattern languages), move, or attack during its turn while eye contact is held. Save DEX to shut your eyes in time and avoid the terrible gaze, at the cost of blindness that turn.

Stance: A Red Ape can assume a complicated postural stance if they do not move during their turn. While they hold their stance they can do nothing else. Each turn that the stance is held increases the critical range of their next attack by 2.

Chthonian Princeling/Chthonian Princess

As above, but HD14, armour: as Enchanted Plate +2, and armed with a Bow of Intention. A Bow of Intention is a Longbow +2 that has double the usual range, and instantly slays anyone that it crits. A human firing one will need to spend 1 max HP each time they shoot it, unless taught how to use it safely by a Red Ape. 

The bone-white, insectile armour of a Chthonian Princeling/Princess is far too heavy to wear, and is also poisonous. A human who comes within 5 feet of it will take one damage per turn that they remain there.

A Chthonian Princeling/Princess will always be wearing at least 10k sp in bizarre and alien gems, chains, brooches, and other richly-worked harnessing, which will always incorporate  hundreds of tiny jewel-like incense burners.

A bit like this except redder, four-armed, winged,
staring, grinning, etc. I think I may need to furnish
 some bespoke art for these eventually, the image
 in my mind is very clear. 

-

RETURNER DEMONS

Returner Demons are a myth, the worst horror story told by scholars who study the Material Hell and the Bright Shiners.

Returner Demons are a punishment and a deterrent. The Hating Engines have determined, quite correctly, that nothing is worse than psychical instantiation into the Material Hell, and so the threat of being taken is reserved for those who they consider truly dangerous. In this way, the populations of the past are policed - to overstep, to act against Hell's realisation, is the only way to provoke this fate.

Since all souls are to be resurrected and ensconced anyway, the Hating Engines don't mind discriminating in this way, and (apparently) staying their long reach from those who work to stay in learned ignorance. 

Returner Demon

Stat a Returner Demon as any other demon, with a least 3 traits from the list. 3 of their traits will always be spent on the spell The Return. Their physical stats will be determined by the body that they puppet, as normal. 

The Return: This spell can only the cast when the Returner Demon is in physical contact with someone, and underneath an open sky. The demon must remain in physical contact with their target for three consecutive turns, and for each of these turns it will scream NIHIL, and the air around them will charge with more and more electricity. On the third turn and the third NIHIL, a lightning bolt will strike both the demon and their target for 10d10 damage. If this kills both (and only if it kills both), then both bodies will be burned to ash, and both intelligences will reawaken in the absolute worst future. 

Citizen Angel, Citizen Demon - The End of the World as the Present Forever

The White City infamously welcomes both Angels and Demons into its citizenry. They live among the population, take part in the image games, and vote as human citizens vote - the White City practices a limited form of democratic decision-making around state affairs, with the Emperor and his court setting the agenda for general elections held in the municipal stadia. 

Before they are given their citizenship, angels and demons must perform a penitent military tour of twenty human years. They are built iron puppet-bodies for the purpose, and in battle are primarily used to generate a hideous war-music called the battle drone, through huge pipes and organ machines built into their bodies. The drone cannot be played effectively by humans, and it is a key component in the White City's war machine. Soldiers use the drone, which is loud enough to drown out a human shout over entire battlefields, to enter a dissociative killing trance. It also has a catastrophic effect on the morale of their enemies. 

The drone, and the mad, lilting, recurring round that is usually layered on top of it, also have a symbolic significance to the citizens of the White City. The drone is the eternally occurring present, and they say that playing it merely brings its formal consistency into temporary sensory intelligibility - the drone is always there, beneath things, whether you can hear it or not. The round is the play of intention across the present. Intention repeats, although not precisely - it layers refrains, themes, and moods.

This is important because the citizens of the White City know what waits for them in the future. They know that both God and the Hating Engines work towards a system of perfected, absolute, and totalising stasis - towards the material resurrection of all conscious beings, from all of history, and their integration into perfected systems. Every single intelligence, from the whole sweep of history. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the total image, the total project.

To match these visions of a total future, the White City have invented their own image of a total present. It is one of the immutable and final forms of the image game, and the product that best demonstrates the infecting, killing potential inherent in its practice. In the total present we have already reached the end of the intelligible world, and what remains are actions, dissociation, the wailing of the pipes and the beating of the drums, hot breath like smoke falling from your mouth, your body moving under the sun, your muscles in their place, swelling to their work, your eyes cutting the world into its legible units. Your words dissolved into the drone, and the round, and the sky that churns above you, and the earth that you have poisoned in your malice; screams without end. 

Citizen angels and citizen demons are tangible proof of the efficacy of this project against the future. None can tell if they were originally sent from Heaven or Hell, and their steel bodies are uniform and show no distinction. When the fighting starts and the horns begin they stride across the boiling mud and blasted fields on their longs iron legs, clubbing and tearing the limbs from those who stand against the empire and its impossible insurrection. 

-

CITIZEN ANGEL, CITIZEN DEMON

Puppet Body

HD2, iron fists d8x2 bludgeoning, armour as plate, speed: faster than a human.

The puppet body of an angel or demon given honour by the metropole will carry a Guillotine Sword (2d10 slashing, only one attack, always crits a prone target), or an Imperial Bombard (fires once per combat, 2d12 on a hit, deals d10 to everything within 20ft of the target whether it hits or misses, including the target itself on a miss). These puppets will wear capes and flags that proclaim their deeds in service of the City. 

Drone and Round: The body will be emitting either the Drone or the Round from the complicated series of pipes that make up its torso. If the Drone, all verbal communication in the combat is impossible, and any Imperial Soldiers, Militia, or Courtesans gain d10hp (they no longer feel pain). If the Round, all verbal communication in the combat is impossible, and any Imperial Soldiers, Militia, or Courtesans gain an extra attack. 

Iron Body: Takes 1 damage maximum from slashing or piercing damage. The bodies are often painted or embellished in the citizen style, and have 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. 

Angel or Demon

The animating intelligence inside the body. 10hp, disposition: patriot zealot. 

Takes a single trait from the entity list, and can use it at will. If it takes a spell, it casts from its own HP. Like any entity, the Citizen Angel/Demon is difficult to damage. See the entity rules for details. 

Carlo Carrà, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1910

The Dreamlands

If your dreamlands don't look like Gustave Moreau paintings you are canonically doing it wrong.
Jupiter and Semele, Gustave Moreau, 1895. 

I wrote about orcs and goblins yesterday - it made sense to me that they were literally nightmare creatures inhabiting a place called the dreamlands. I've spoken about dreams in Barony before, and designed a class, the Chemist, that interfaces with them specifically. 

So what are the dreamlands?

They are a place that some people can travel to when they sleep. Many children do this naturally, and there are adults who can teach themselves to do it. Travel to the dreamlands can be induced with drugs or, less commonly, with magic. There are entities that are comfortable there but these are surprisingly few; most entities distrust dreams that same way that they distrust mirrors. Academics theorise that this has something to do with the impossibility of fixing images in the dreamlands; things slip from state to state, things are not what they are, the face is both itself and not itself, etc. 

The dreamlands are significantly architectural - most of the traversable space is composed of fantastic and nonsensical interiors. Broad streets bordered by blazing lamps, which run between the vaulted arches of grand cathedrals. Towers that dig downwards into the earth. A house that contains the city. 

The geographies of the dreamlands do not rearrange; new additions simply layer on top or cluster at the edges of the whole. The available space is infinite. It is known that particularly strong-willed and imaginative children build entire kingdoms here, and that these encrust and encircle one another. Sometimes dreamers will attempt to tear down the constructions of others, but this is rare, and considered a sign of mental derangement by most inhabitants of the dreamlands. Why tear something down when you can spend your time building?

Where there are exteriors, they tend towards the iconic; skies gone mad with frenzied storms; endless forests buried in mist; seas that churn and boil; lakes like mirrors, perfectly circular, perfectly still, perfectly reflective. A thousand different suns and moons, each of whose multicoloured light falls across different domains.

There are also beings native to the dreamlands. The Barony sees a lot of warfare, so dangerous nightmares like orcs are common, but they are not the only things that live here. There are talking animals, riddle-beasts, old friends and lovers wearing different bodies and using different names.

You can travel quickly in the dreamlands if you put your mind to it, and if you move beyond the human architectures and imaginings you will start to find more abstract zones at the borders. Children rarely think to go here, because building your own kingdom is more fun. Adult dream travellers call these borderlands the Blazing World - an expanse of fire that is also earth that is also air that is also intention. Ulfire and jale and octarine. It is hypothesised to be either the stuff that dreams are built from, or the form of the dreams of older things than humans. Some say that they can see cities that hang in the air beyond the wastes of the Blazing World but none can say that they have travelled to them. 

Gustave Moreau, The Apparition, 1876.

HOW TO USE THIS

In game terms, you can travel to the dreamlands any time that you sleep and take the appropriate measures to ensure travel. A Chemist can do this for you with hypnosis and sedatives, and you can also learn to do it yourself, usually with the aid of certain more specialised drugs. 

When you arrive in the dreamlands, you will always arrive in your House. Your House has a form that corresponds to your desires - most Houses are peaceful places, and many are very beautiful. If a Chemist is using their Travelling template ability to build you a dream space to explore, this space will be added to your House as an extension. 

Your House is always secret, safe, uninhabited, and restful. If you choose to remain in your house, you get an excellent night's sleep and wake refreshed, with no specific in-game benefit. Leaving the House is always a decision made by the dreamer - they can never be compelled to leave it against their will. 

Every House also has a Mirror. You access the Mirror by, naturally enough, stepping through any reflective surface that you choose to construct or encounter inside your House. The Mirror is exactly like the House but architecturally reversed; it is also inhabited. The inhabitants of the Mirror will depend on the dreamer - a frightened, traumatised, vengeful person may have a Mirror full of dangerous monsters. Someone at peace may have Mirror inhabited by friends, mentors, and other helpful NPCs. Your DM will populate your Mirror like they would any other dungeon.

Beyond the walls of the House and Mirror are the Dreamlands proper, and in this environment all bets are off. You are in a wild hinterland, and will encounter beings and environments of all sorts. The architectures around you are all technically the Mirrors of other dreamers, but smashed together into a contiguous space. There are dangerous minds and dead minds and safe minds. Dream beings roam at will. 

In the Dreamlands you act exactly as you would in the waking world, with the exception that all of your stats are replaced with your highest mental stat. If you die in the Dreamlands you awake immediately, and get no benefit of sleep. If you are tortured or otherwise seriously traumatised first, save WIS on waking - on a failure you lose 1 INT, WIS, and CHAR as your connection to and trust in pure possibility diminishes. 

You can travel vast distances very quickly in the Dreamlands. Simply concentrate for a full minute in front of a closed door, and picture where you wish to go - when you open the door there you are. Anything chasing you can also use the door that you have created.

With training you may be able to locate other people's Mirrors (never their Houses), and navigate them. This may provide you with useful information about that person. There are certain minds that are unbelievably dangerous to enter this way, most notably those of wizards and vengeful children.

If you travel to the Blazing World you will find nothing, but peacefully meditating there counts as resting in your House. Nothing will ever attack anything in the blazing world. Certain academics will swear blind that exposure to the uncolours changes people in fundamental ways, but there is no hard evidence for this.

-

DESIGN NOTES

the dreamlands are intended to give your DM the possibility of making dungeons from the minds of your PCs (always an interesting exercise), and to open up fun Inception style heist possibilities if your game skews that way, as well as Lynchian (RIP to one of the greatest ever) doppelgangers and strangely doubled architectures. The waking world in Barony is a few steps more grounded than a lot of GLOG material, so travel in the dreamlands is also meant to be a way to open up possibilities for fairytale logic, ultra-weird beings, and other gorgeous published material that might otherwise feel out of place. 

If it doesn't jibe with your campaign flavour just ignore it, and let the Chemist work as written in the original post. 

Gustave Moreau, The Chimaeras, 1884. Yes, this is where orcs and goblins come from. 

Dreams of Helplessness - Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears

When people are subjected to the predations of warfare, of bands of soldiers and deserters, thieves and killers, the trauma stays with them. The feelings of helplessness and impunity come back to them in all sorts of ways, but commonly this happens in dreams. In dreams, a soldier is an inhuman thing, an armed brute carrying horrifying weapons and stacked in anonymous plates of steel armour. A long-armed nightmare squatting in your house and sharpening its knife. A feral pack of stinking, shouting thieves, falling over one another to stuff your valuables away into sacks and packs.

These dreams are common and standardised enough that the images have been given names. They appear in dream bestiaries, and some academics claim to have compiled ethnographies and studies on them.

An uruk is an archetypal soldier, as seen through the eyes of a civilian that they have at their mercy. They are strong, brutal, cruel, and direct. They kill people without thinking much about it, and feel no pain. They are usually drunk and high, and can sometimes be outwitted, although most have a predatory quickness and sharpness in their thought. They hate law, police, and magistrates, because they know that if anyone found out what they are and what they've done they will be punished, possibly executed. For this reason they mass around leaders as cruel as they are, leaders unlikely to investigate or even care about atrocities in wartime.

A goblin is something like an uruk, but quicker, meaner, less sure of itself, less direct. They are sly, quick, thieving, cruel. Some people think that, if the uruks are dreams of soldiers, then the goblins are dreams of deserters or bandits. They are famously incapable of group organisation, and will kill one another over trinkets and baubles, or choice victuals, or the right to eat your children.

A bugbear is a stranger thing. They appear alone, usually (but not exclusively) in the dreams of children. The academics think that a bugbear is a dream of helplessness, usually begotten by memories of a single, nightmarish encounter with a soldier, rapist, killer, or murderer. A bugbear comes back again and again, and it has a personal relationship with the dreamer, it wants to scare them and see them suffer before it tears them limb from limb. It is known that the only way to kill a bugbear it to stop fearing it, something vastly easier conceptualised than achieved. 

Of course, uruks, goblins, and bugbears are creatures of dream. They are dangerous to inhabitants or travellers in the dreamlands, but they do not trouble the waking world, and most people think of them as bedtime stories to scare children with.

There are rumours. That those who see uruks when they sleep become sly and brutal, hunched and goblin-ish. You can be tortured in your dreams. If you are captured you can be strapped down and force-fed filth, or have your limbs smashed and burned, and it can change you over time.

It is popularly said that there are more and more uruklike and goblinish people about, and it is true that the petty wars of the nobility, and the disorder and pillaging that always follows them, have multiplied in recent years.

-

Dreamlands Uruk

HD2, sword or axe d6, burning torch or shield, armour as chain, speed as human, disposition: sadistic pillager. 

Impunity: an Uruk is fearless unless they believe there might be some consequences for their actions. If you can convince a band of Uruks that their deeds are being watched or recorded, and that they might face justice at a later date, they will flee in terror and confusion. 

Creatures of Dream: Uruks are only encountered in the dreamlands. When you slay one, another will immediately take its place and all uruks that can see you will mock your helplessness. 

Dreamlands Goblin

HD1, long knife d6, armour as leather, speed as human, disposition: manic, skittish, cruel, scatter-brained. 

Skittish: Goblins are cowards. If you can kill the biggest goblin in a band, the others will flee in terror. 

Creatures of Dream: Goblins are only encountered in the dreamlands. When you slay one, another will immediately take its place and all goblins that can see you will mock your helplessness. 

Dreamlands Bugbear

HD4, long clawed fingers d8 x2, armour as chain, speed: faster than a human, disposition: fixated torturer. 

Nightmare: Bugbears are only encountered in the dreamlands. You can never outrun a bugbear, they simply appear behind you if you try. You can only defeat one by conquering your fear of it. When you damage a bugbear, make a WIS save - if you fail, you do no damage and the bugbear will mock your impotence. 

-

Design Notes: It occurred to me that the original orcs probably were something like Tolkien's worst dreams, or most savage archetypes, of the soldiers who fought in the wars that he witnessed. The rest followed from there. 

Two Orcs, Alan Lee

BARONY 1.1

I've put together a more up-to-date version of the BARONY document, incorporating a lot of the stuff that has appeared on here over the last two months.

You can read it here, and I would love hear what people think of it.

It's getting closer to finished, but I would like to include a starter adventure dungeon to go with it for release. 

More collating required.