Rust, Amber, Wax: a dungeon for Barony

I wanted to write a high level dungeon for Barony. I also wanted to loosen up a bit and get back to the pulp roots of the setting. 

The soundtrack is Mica Levi's OST for Under the Skin. The aesthetic is UT2003s CTF-Citadel and other rust spike industrial FPS worlds of the era - also Susperia (the first one). The colours are bright and they clash in the brain. 

CW: reference to medical brain injury. 

Castle Delusion

The battlements of Castle Delusion jut out of the freezing grey seas of the Southern Barony. The fortifications are dominated by a central iron tower, black with rust, which rises from a blocky stone fortress, built in turn atop an outcrop of jagged stone, well out in the surf. There are no doors and no gate in the walls of Castle Delusion. None know who or what dwell there, though the rumours are plentiful: demons, monsters, ghosts, terrors. 

What is known: people, or things shaped like people, have been seen patrolling the mist-shrouded battlements. Sometimes they rise up from the sea itself, imperturbable as ancient golems. And everyone knows about the lights; bright, garishly coloured, of every hue imaginable, shooting out from the iron tower and carving up the night. They are clearly visible from nearby Iron Town, where they are counted the worst kind of omen.

The Approach

Castle Delusion has no obvious entrances. There are a series of flooded undersea tunnels that transpierce the stone onto which it is built and terminate within its high curtain wall - this is the most straightforward way inside. If the PCs stake out the castle for a day or two they will see dark humanoid shapes (patrols of Leather Bag Men) making use of the tunnels. 

The sea is freezing cold this far south, and the surf is rough and dangerous. All adventurers will need to make appropriate swimming checks to avoid hurting themselves attempting to gain access to the tunnels. 

The Tunnel

The undersea tunnel has jagged, treacherous walls of black stone. It is guarded by a patrol of d4+4 Leather Bag Men, the aquatic soldiers that the castle's Master manufactures within, and occasionally sells to the petty nobility as specialist combatant-divers. The tunnel is lit with chemical lanterns, but a gaping hole in the floor about midway along its length is totally dark. As you swim above the opening you can feel the movement of warm, pressurised water moving upwards.

Navigate along the tunnel to its natural exit and you will find yourself surfacing in the open courtyard of Castle Delusion. It would take a strong swimmer 2 minutes to swim from the ocean surface through to the courtyard opening, without factoring in combat or other difficulties. 

If you instead swim downwards, into the black opening, you will discover the mouth of a thermal vent; the site of an ancient, flooded, chemical burial. 

The Chemical Burial

Down into the pit is a second tunnel like the first, this one in complete darkness. The walls are the same, jagged stone. There is a current in here that pushes you upwards, and the water is warm and alkaline to the taste. It is also poisonous - anyone who swallows a mouthful must test CON or take d6 poison damage and lose 1 CON permanently. The current means that it takes a strong swimmer (all adventurers are strong swimmers without any mitigating circumstances) a full minute to navigate, even though the distance is much shorter than the upper tunnel. 

Eventually you will see a soft red light glowing from around a corner. When you round it you will see the Chemical Burial proper. 

The Burial is a single, two-tiered hexagonal stone chamber - a larger hexagon about 40ft across and 20ft deep, and a smaller hexagon sunken into it about 20 ft across as 20ft deep. The tunnel enters in the roof, and the chemical vent itself opens into the middle of the floor of the lower, smaller hexagonal room. There are dark openings located centrally on all six faces of both tiers of room: 12 openings in all. 

The floors, ceilings, and walls are covered with elaborate, geometric mosaics, and the natural vents at the top (where you just emerged from) and bottom of the structure are framed by the mural artworks - the rooms where clearly built around this natural feature. 

The entire space is illuminated in a soft red light, which seems to emanate from a red-glowing, six-limbed figure standing on the floor of the smaller of the two hexagonal rooms. There are three other figures like it, but not glowing, with transparent bodies like glass. Unfortunately for you, this is the light of a Lantern Head, EV-099, and the other figures are his Mantid Husk thralls. EV-099 has ensconced itself in the thorax of one of the Mantid Husks and drives it around like a mech suit - its light can shine out through the transparent exoskeleton to animate the others. EV-099 has lacquered his preferred corpse-suit with transparent red pigment, which is why the light is red down here. The rules for Lantern Heads are given in the blog post, and EV-099 and its husks are always hostile on sight. 

You can use the twelve alcoves in the hexagonal walls to avoid EV-099s light, or you can simply try to alpha strike it before you take too much damage. You can only target the Lantern Head independently after you kill the thrall that it rides in. 

If you are able to explore it, the flooded burial site is quite simple. Each tiled alcove is about 10ft deep, and contains a larger-than-human 'coffin' of solid amber. The six coffins on the upper levels are all smashed, and two contain large corpses - something that looks like a wolf (but like 3 times the size), and something that look like a panther (similar scale). Both corpses are rotted nearly to skeletons, and not useable by EV-099 as thralls. The other four are smashed open and empty. 

In the smaller, lower alcoves, five of the six coffins are similarly smashed in. One of these has a corpse inside it that looks a bit like the Mantid Husks, and the other four are empty. The sole remaining coffin contains what appears to be a living animal of the same type as the dead Mantid Husks. 

If you can carefully open it without damaging the contents, you will be joined by a happy and curious Firefly who could make a good replacement character for someone in the party, if they were so inclined. If you damage the contents before the firefly wakes up (1 in 2 chance if you break open the casket using bludgeoning or piercing weapons), the revival process will be compromised and the occupant will die, choking on fluid-filled lungs. 

The chemical vent itself descends down many kilometres into the core. It is constantly pumping up warm, poisonous salt water. Its walls are covered in unbelievably toxic, brightly-coloured growths and algae - if you touch them with your bare skin you save CON or take d10 poison damage. If you ingest one, you die without a save. They can be harvested, but are acidic and will slowly eat away at any container that isn't made from glass. 

The Keep 

If you follow the entrance tunnel along, it terminates in a square-cut opening in the ceiling through which the light of the sky is clearly visible. You will exit into the open courtyard of The Keep. 

If the guards have already raised the alarm, a net of lead-weighted concertina wire will be pulled over the opening, and a squad of 2d8 Leather Bag Men will be waiting to attack whatever attempts to emerge. You can push the net aside from below, which requires a difficult STR check (rolling at 12 instead of 10) to do. On both success and failure, you take d10 - [your AC - 10] slashing damage. You can attempt this test again if you fail, and will take the damage a second time if you do. 

If the alarm has not been raised, the courtyard is empty. 

The walls of the Keep are stone, or plaster and timber for the thin dividing walls on the map. The 10ft wide passages to the north of the complex are covered timber walkways between the three more solid stone buildings represented by the 'clustered' rooms (18+19+20, 22 by itself, and the rest).

For every fifteen minutes you spend exploring the Keep, roll on the table below. There are 46 Leather Bag Men in the keep - keep a tally of how many have been killed.

• 1 - 8: Nothing. The screams of seabirds, the smell of tar and smoke, the crashing of the sea. 
• 9 - 13: Muffled shouts and hurrying footsteps. The keep stirs to your presence. Further rolls on this table are at +2. 
• 14 - 19: Leather Bag Men. A patrol of 2d6. A positive reaction roll means that they will try to take you alive.
• 20: Doom Slaves. d10 of them. You will hear them yelling and screaming to one another before you see them. They are immediately hostile. 
• 21+: A hunting pair of Box Heads, and 2d4 Doom Slave attendants. Sent down by the castle's Master to investigate the disturbance. Not interested in taking prisoners. 

The Keep - click to make it bigger. 

Rooms

1. Courtyard. Open to the air, paved in grey stone beneath a grey sky. Covered in the shit of the hundreds of screaming gulls who congregate on its roofs. Smells and sounds like the surrounding sea. The stones are cold and slippery. The X marked square is where the sea tunnel exits - next to this is a lead-weighted 'net' of concertina wire, and a hooked pole for pulling it over the entrance. In the lee of the North wall there are casks, barrels, and crates full of imperishable goods stored under waxed tarpaulin. The two doors to the West are unlocked, iron, and sunken deep into the stone walls. Otherwise empty.
2. Armoury. Tables, chairs, a spartan iron chandelier. On the walls hang 20 spears, 40 knives, 2 kegs of powder each good fro 100 shots, 4 blunderbusses, 2 pistols. Manned by d4+2 Leather Bag Men. 
3. Northern Passage. Short stone passage that smells of leather, gunpowder, and ammonia. 
4. Workshop. Work surfaces along the walls, and two heavy chairs. Candles for light. One the walls are racks of blackened and waxed leather, ready for cutting. Several sharp leather-working knives (d10 light weapons), cord and thread, and other specialist punches lie on the tables. There are also pots of wax, blacksmiths tools, and a small iron forge in the Northeastern corner - these are used to mend the breathing apparatuses that the Keep's inhabitants wear at all times. Finally, 10+d10 Blackbags (see the Leather Bag Man entry below) are strung on a cord across the ceiling. 
5. Medical. A heavy, stained table fitted with restraints. A lantern with a mirror shade attached for strong, directed light. Hooks, scalpels, hammers, saws, and other surgical equipment laid out on a stand. A small iron chest beneath the table contains 10+d10 sedatives and 10+d10 painkillers. 
6. Southern Passage. Cold, and smelling of brine and kitchen smoke. Lit with braziers at intervals. 
7. Mirror. The door to this room is iron, and barred from the inside. Beating it down would make a lot of noise. Once inside, you find a small stone room, dimly lit with a flickering torch. The long corridor to the East stretches into darkness. If the PCs advance along it, they will see blurry shapes striding forth to meet them from out of the gloom. The adversaries will not answer calls - if you advance, so will they. Any ranged or magical attacks made on these beings are instead resolved against the one who fired them. When you get within 15 or so feet the illusion clarifies - a dirty mirror at the end of the corridor. Your reflections stare at you like they want to kill you, which they do. If you attack them, you take the damage. Studying the picture in the mirror will reveal that the reflection is not totally accurate - the exit on the 'mirror' side is in a different location. You can simply walk through the mirror to reach it - this banishes the evil reflections, and will take you through to the Sanctum of the Doom Slaves. 
8. South Tower. Blocky stone room with a proper fireplace, and (comparatively) comfortable furniture. Two loaded muskets lie on the table. Manned by d6 Leather Bag Men, with 2 more on the second level who will investigate any disturbance. The second level of the tower is a plain stone parapet. The two guards on top hold muskets instead of spears. The secret door in the Southwestern Corner is a slim passageway hidden behind a wooden covering that lifts away. There are two crates full of good quality hemp rope in front of the covering. 
9. Secret. Small hideaway that contains a glass tank of acid as tall as a man (too heavy to be man portable). The liquid is cloudy and red. There is a small mirror on the wall. If you catch your reflection's eyes you know immediately that it wants to kill you. Nothing is visibly out of place, but you know. For every 10 seconds spent studying your reflection in this mirror, your panic threshold is lowered by one while you remain in the castle. 
10. Barracks. Wooden cots that sleep 30, iron hooks on the walls the hang up gear. Some flimsy night stands and benches. There are d6 Leather Bag Men (without gear or weapons) sleeping in here. They won't wake up unless the party makes a loud noise - if they do they are non hostile unless attacked, and will simply stand and stare, going back to sleep after a minute or so. d10 sets of Diving Gear (light armour that is as heavy as plate, with 1 hour of integrated air supply) hang on the walls. 
11. Mess. Smells of stale fat and smoke. Two wide wooden tables, seating for 12, a large iron stove. There are as many rations here as you want to carry off in sacks of dry goods and barrels of salted meat. There are also d6 large glass bottles of cheap, clear spirits, and six barrel of water, the only supply in the keep. You can find tubs of grease and light chef's knives if you look. Lit with braziers and currently empty. 
12. Guard Post. A comfortable space with a fireplace, a table, and seating. Four on-duty Leather Bag Men are posted in here. If the alarm has not been raised, they will not be expecting to fight. One of them is a Captain with full hp and a pistol in addition to his other gear, and who holds a ring of keys. They unlock the manacles in Interrogation, the door to the Strong Room, and the doors in Cells A, B and C. The second level of the Guard Post is a plain stone parapet, currently empty. 
13. Interrogation. A plain stone room, crudely outfitted for torture. An iron chair bolted to the ground and fitted with restraints, a table with pliers, hammers, and tongs, and a brazier for coals, currently empty. Six sets of intact iron manacles hang from hooks on the walls (each 1 inv). The keys are on a ring in the guard post. 
14. Western Passage. Foul smells come from the cell doors along the western wall. Lit with a brazier. 
15. Cell A. Stone, bare of furniture, empty, pitch black. The iron door is locked. 
16. Cell B. Identical to Cell A, but with two corpses decomposing against the rear wall. The source of the awful smell in the corridor. They are both human, and apparently died naked, embracing one another.
17. Cell C. Identical to Cell A, but with a partially-eaten and decomposing corpse sitting crosslegged in the middle of the floor. They appear to be strangling themselves, but the loosening of musculature and tendons has given the body a strange, heaped together look. Small pale crabs have entered the room somehow and starting picking the body apart. 
18. Storage. Large storage area fitted with iron racking. There are bulk casks of oil, canvas, thread, rope, nails and fixings, hides, beeswax, soap, salt. There is probably 10000s worth of goods here, but of course no easy way to transport it. 
19. Strong Room. Bare stone, with iron racking along the walls. Four small barrels of gunpowder, 16 muskets, 6 vials of acid, 18 strange iron canisters with leather straps that the PCs will have seen incorporated into the breathing apparatuses of the Leather Bag Men and have probably intuited are oxygen canisters. The iron door is locked, and the key is on the same ring as the rest. No firelight in here. 
20. West Tower. A square walled stone room, unfurnished, dark, cold. The second story is is a a plain stone parapet, manned by two Leather Bag Men who hold muskets instead of spears. 
21. Wellbeing. A small wooden annex to the long corridor between the northern towers. It has a fire pit and wooden benches, and is currently occupied by two Leather Bag Men, holding their hands out to the fire and taking a break from their patrol. 
22. North Tower. Both doors to the North Tower are iron and locked. The keys are held by the Master of Castle Delusion. The entire room inside is unlit, and completely stuffed from floor to ceiling with tangled together concertina wire. The walls and floors that are visible through the shining barbed strands are stained dark. Trying to extract the wire in anything less than heavy armour is impossible. If you have heavy armour (or bolt cutters), it would take one person about one miserable and dangerous day to clear the room sufficiently to get to the stairs that lead to the second level. The second level is a bare stone parapet, dominated by the rusted bulk of a Cooking Machine. It looks like a huge iron cage on ornate legs, built around a succession of tubes, ovens, reducing chambers, and chimneys. It is, mercifully, not currently lit. You cannot look at the Cooking Machine without taking d3 psychic damage (and again each ten seconds you look at it) - something about it tears strips up in your brain. Its influence means that while on top of the North Tower your mental stats are halved, whether or not you are looking at it. Nothing happens if you climb inside (because it is not lit), but unless you have shut your eyes you will automatically look at it and take damage if you do this. Sitting next to the Cooking Machine is the Elder Angel Distinction, who is described in the Dramatis Personae section. 
    

Susperia, Dario Argento, 1977

The Sanctum of the Doom Slaves

The Sanctum is very unlike the grey stone Keep. It is brightly lit by mirrored lanterns and large chandeliers, and built mostly from iron struts (a bit like the Eiffel tower), with sheets of toughened glass - a substance that does not exist elsewhere in the Barony - fixed to the exteriors. The Sanctum forms the base layer of the Iron Tower, above. 

Every room is brightly lit, from inside at night and also from outside during the day. The tempered glass outer coverings (and the internal lamps and chandeliers) are stained different colours, which means that most of the rooms are bathed in a particular colour. 

Many of the corridors have no doors, and rooms simply run on into one another. All corridors and rooms are constructed from the same iron framework, and all doors are iron. 

You will find reference throughout the Sanctum to pills - the Master of Castle Delusion has been the first to synthesise Baronial drugs and medicines into pill form. Pills are exactly the same as smokeable doses of drugs except you can hold twice as many per INV slot, and they are worth 10 times as much.

For every 15 minutes spent exploring the Sanctum, roll on the table below. There are 54 Doom Slaves and 14 Box Heads in the Sanctum - keep a note of how many have been killed. 

• 1 - 8: Nothing. The harsh and otherworldly lights and colours maze the mind, but your courage holds firm. 
• 9 - 13: Laughter, screams, singing, hissing, sobbing, all human, all nearby. Further rolls on this table are at +2. 
• 14 - 17: Doom Slaves. 2d6 of them, whooping and screaming with their eyes and lips stretched wide open. Positive reaction rolls will result in a minute or two of crazed banter before they attack like a pack of hyenas. 
• 18 - 19: A hunting pair of Box Heads, swinging their horrible bodies from side to side as though tasting the air. Accompanied by 2d4 Doom Slave attendants. 
• 20: Ran Vyn, the Knight of Wax. You hear stealthy movements behind you but see nothing. He is stalking you now and will attack if you become separated, incapacitated, or engage in another fight. If Ran Vyn has been killed, count this as two rolls of Box Heads attacking at once.  
• 21+: d6 Temporal Partisans, sent down to hunt you from the Iron Tower. All in the group have the same type of puppet body, you only need to roll once. 

The Sanctum of the Doom Slaves - click to make it bigger. 

Rooms

1. Red. The long corridor leading away from the keep terminates in a door to the left. If you look behind yourself you will see the enchanted mirror and its hostile reflections. Through the door to the left is an iron room lit with an intense and bloody red.
2. Orange. This room is a rusted iron box without windows, currently unlit but containing a single orange-tinted lantern. The secret doors leading onto the corridor are simple mirrored surfaces that can be walked through, similarly to the mirror that functions as the entrance to the sanctum. The room has a wooden frame bed, four light knives on the floor, and two books: a basic, canonical history of the church, and a journal which contains lists of day-to-day emotional states. If he hasn't been killed, there is a 50/50 chance that Ran Vyn, the Knight of Wax is in this room. He will attempt to escape as this is not his preferred mode of fighting, but if cornered will fight to the death. 
3. Blue. Deep blue light shows pallets and mattresses strewn about the floor, enough to sleep eight or nine people. Currently empty. 
4. Purple. This room is stained violently purple. Two sets of iron shelving around the walls hold 26 white clay jugs, 1 in 3 of which are full of clear spirits. The alcohol content is high enough to burn.  
5. Sedation. The glass panelling in this room is transparent and colourless, so the lighting depends on weather and time of day. There are 8 long, cushioned couches, and a close iron brazier filled with 4d10 sedative pills. There are also 2d10 Doom Slaves in this room, lying on the couches and floor with glassy, fixed expressions. They are just as hostile as any other, but automatically lose initiative, take -1 damage from all sources (can't feel pain), and fight to the death in total silence. 
6. Viewing Gallery. The northern wall is a single long sheet of toughened glass, looking out over the grey sea and the horizon, and four more couches spaced along the southern wall. Iron tables and trays are strewn with the leavings of a large communal meal, and the floor is sticky with spilled alcohol. There is an enormous mirrored oil lamp, currently unlit, with its directional lens pointed out to sea. A shuttered mechanism attached to the front of it would allow flashing of telegraphic codes. It is bolted to the floor. The room is empty. 
7. Green. Lurid green light. Two long, tall glass tanks in the centre of the room. One is cold drinking water, the other is acid. 
8. Mirrors. Every wall in this large, cross-shaped room, is a sheet of highly-polished mirror. Strange chemical lanterns attached to the ceiling cover the space in harsh white light, and stab at the eyes from the mirrored surfaces. Entities will flatly refuse be contacted in this space. If you stare into the mirrors you will see futures, pasts, and presents, all of them possible, all of them subtly distinct, in infinite series. The first time you do this, you lose d10 minutes as you sit catatonic, brooding on what you see. You cannot be woken from this state without dragging you out of the mirror room. The second time you do it you lose d10 hours, then d10 days, then d10 weeks, then d10 months, years, decades, etc. If you need to eat and drink this will kill you. If you 'pass through' the mirrors in this room, in the same manner as the one at the entrance of the Sanctum, you find yourself in an identical room, alone with your reflection, who will immediately try to kill you. They are armed and armoured exactly like you. If you can kill your reflection you gain +1 WIS. You no longer have a reflection in any of the mirrors in this dungeon. You can escape the mirror version of this room by passing back through the reflective interface. 
9. Moving Pictures. A room built around two iron box-machines mounted on tripods. The first has a crank on one side and some kind of 'magazine' or belt-feed running through it, made up of differently coloured glass panels. Its interior contains a lensed oil lantern that can be lit to project a beam of light, with a colour that can be flickered through by turning the crank. If you lift this machine from the tripod, you will see that it can be carried on the shoulder. The second machine is similar but has a magazine of 20 preloaded pistol barrels. The crank cycles them through a mechanism that fires each in turn. It is currently unloaded, and would take about an hour to prepare for firing. You can use it, once loaded, to fire 2 pistols per round until the magazine of 20 is exhausted. If not mounted on its tripod, all shots are made at -4 to hit. Both machines take 6 INV slots, or 8 with their tripods. The room contains a large white timber screen attached to the southern wall, soft furnishings on the floor, and is otherwise empty. 
10. Lensing Room. The room is dominated by four long, iron 'box frames' which house ground glass lenses along their lengths. Experimentation with a lantern will show that some configurations disperse light and some concentrate it. No practical purpose here, but the setup is extremely valuable to a specialist of optics. If they can be exfiltrated intact, at least 5000s.  
11. Yellow. Lurid yellow light. Fouled, and smells of sewage. Bare except for four black pits in the iron floor. They drop directly down into the sea. 
12. Stimulation. Bare iron room of no specific colour. Two iron braziers, containing 6d10 pill stimulants between them. In the centre of the room 2d10 Doom Slaves locked into a tight group embrace, a knot made from straining painted limbs. If they realise that you're there they will attack immediately. Each make two attacks, and fights to the death. 
13. Hallucinations. The eastern wall is unstained glass. There are two iron bathtubs in this room, both full of fouled water, and an iron brazier with 2d10 pill hallucinogens. There is, uniquely, a deep iron dish in the centre of the room that burns a timber bonfire. An iron chimney runs from a hood above it to vent most of the smoke outside the room. There are 2d10 Doom Slaves in here, either watching the flames or the horizon. None are hostile unless you attack them. If you do so, all attack you at once, in total silence - their attacks deal fear damage equivalent to their physical damage. Their faces and limbs blur and smudge as they move. 
14. Elevator. Iron cage elevator that contains a single lever mechanism. It takes you to the first floor of the Iron Tower - one pull takes you up, a second takes you back down. Both destinations have similar levers that call the elevator from the other, Dark Souls style. 
15. Box Heads. A series of small, boxy iron cells that house filthy straw mattresses and little else. This whole area is pitch black. Each pair of Box Heads lives together in one of the cells. There are d3 pairs in the cells (so between 2 and 6 individuals). They lie in the darkness twisted together like lovers, holding one another tightly on the soiled bedding. Roll reactions as normal for each of the pairs; on a positive reaction they will ignore you, negative they will try to kill you. 

Crystal Palace after the fire that destroyed it, London.

The Iron Tower

The Iron Tower is constructed similarly to the Sanctum, with the exception that the toughened glass sheets and interior walls are painted with elaborate trompe l'oeils instead of stained with colours. These optical illusions make the space disorientating and treacherous, with effects described on a per-room basis. 

The castle's Master believes that optical tricks scramble or interrupt the technical sighting that the future uses to 'see' the present. Entities of all kinds hate these perspective tricks almost as much as they mate mirrors, and any summoned in the Iron Tower suffer 1 psychic damage per turn. 

For every fifteen minutes you spend exploring the Iron Tower, roll on the table below. There are 28 Temporal Partisans in the Iron Tower - keep track of how many have been killed.

• 1 - 8: Nothing. A faint buzzing at the edge of hearing, a strange lightness in the head. Light like razors in your eyes.  
• 9 - 14: You hear the scraping of needle points against iron and glass. The whining in your bones gets louder. Further rolls on this table are at +2. 
• 15: The Clever Man. He is smiling as he approaches, and you know that he is kind. 
• 16: A hunting pair of Box Heads, chasing you from the lower levels. Accompanied by 2d4 Doom Slave attendants. 
• 17 - 19: 2d6 Temporal Partisans. Maybe if they kill you they will be allowed to die. All in the group have the same type of puppet body, you only need to roll once. 
• 20+: The Master comes. Fenor Pach, Fateless, accompanied by her Veterans of the Planetary War. Roll her reaction. She is not always actively homicidal, but it usually goes that way pretty quickly these days. 

The Iron Tower, first floor - click to make it bigger. 

Rooms

1. Elevator. The iron elevator that connects the Iron Tower to the Sanctum of the Doom Slaves. 
2. Reception. The walls are painted with perspective trick that make this room appear much larger than it is. When the PCs enter, describe an 80ft by 120ft ballroom, sumptuously lit. The illusion lasts until they move, or for ten seconds, whichever happens sooner. There are always 2d6 Temporal Partisans posted in this room. They attack anyone they do not recognise. 
3. Wire. The doorways to this room are barred with spools of concertina wire. It can be moved, but doing so without taking precautions will force a DEX save, inflicting d4 slashing damage. Wearing heavy armour or fully plated gauntlets counts as precautions. Enormous spool and cutting machinery dominate the centre of the space. The walls are painted with an extremely convincing Chaos Scene of rushing wind and air, or the dissolution of matter into nothingness. On entry PCs save INT or take d6 fear damage. The machines are silent and unmoving, and there are no obvious means of turning them on. There are 38 spools of concertina wire stacked against the western wall - each is difficult to transport but worth 1000s easily. 
4. Bodies. The walls have been painted such that this room appears to be a much narrower corridor. Describe it as such when the PCs enter, and then describe it again in its actual dimensions after ten seconds or so. 20 meathooks hang from the ceiling. 8 of these are 'occupied' by puppet bodies (see the Temporal Partisan entry in the bestiary), currently without an attached puppeting will. The bodies are completely inert. 
5. Sybarion. Both iron doors to this room are locked - the keys are kept on hand by the Master. A small iron cell with a maimed, ten foot tall, blood-red body chained to the western wall. Its walls are not painted. The body is Black-Lighted Sybarion. See his entry in Dramatis Personae for details. 
6. Stairs. This room is not painted with an optical illusion - instead its walls show a series of iconic images that trace the Church's descriptions of the wars that the dragons fought against chaos. The stairs are iron and glass, and ascend to the second floor. 

The Iron Tower, second floor - click to make it bigger.

Rooms

1. Stairs. This room is painted in an iconic series that depicts the institutions of the Baronial executive, the church, and the petty nobility. The stairs lead back down to the first floor, and up to the third. 
2. Treasure. Glass walls without paintings. The most immediately notable thing in this room is the huge set of red, apparently stone plate armour hung up on the northern wall. It is of utterly alien design, and far too large and heavy to put on. It will additionally deal 1 radiation damage per minute to anyone within 5 feet of it. The armour is Sybarion's, and he will be grateful for its return. It is worth 10000s. There are additionally d4[400] gold tokens (15s each), and jewellery worth 2500s (mostly necklaces and harnesses) hung from the walls on iron hooks that show them off in their best aspect. The room stinks of butchery.
3. Corridor. Narrow iron corridor - the iron walls are painted garishly red. The cells along the northern facing are not locked, but they are barred with iron from the outside. Smells awful. 
4. Cells. Bare iron rooms. Each has a 2 in 6 chance of being occupied by an assassin angel or demon in a rotting human body. They are in the process of being tortured into Temporal Partisans, and are completely non-threatening. The bodies are in various stages of decomposition and waste and rotten meat have built up in the cells over time. The smell is indescribably foul. 
5. Making Room. This room has been painted to resemble a beautifully appointment, lit, and decorated drawing room, 80ft by 80ft. Describe this to the PCs first, and then describe the real room ten seconds later. There are two iron cruciform scaffolds erected in front of one another in the centre of the room, positioned so that the unfortunates attached to them would be staring directly at one another. Ten meathooks hang from the ceiling. Otherwise bare. Smells as bad as the cells. 
6. Needle Works. Iron racking along the walls holding 16 steel medium murder pins. Not intuitive weapons for humans (no one gets proficiency with them), but perfectly functional, something like a very brittle and very sharp estoc. An angel or a demon who sees you using one will assume you are one of them for long enough that you get a +1 on initiative rolls against them. There are also whetstones, oils, polishing clothes, and unsharpened lengths of steel resting against the walls. 
7. Armoury. Three glass vitrines, each lit from above, museum style. They contain: a masterwork Sighted-Optics Musket (as musket but +2 to hit and +2 crit range if you spend a whole turn aiming it) worth 5000s, a Bow of Intention (priceless, but some poor fool might give you 1000s for it if they don't know what it does), and a pair of long-handled bolt cutters (2000s - nothing like them exists in the Barony). You can still smell the Cells from here. 

The Iron Tower, third floor - click to make it bigger.  

Rooms

1. Stairs. The walls are covered in iconic paintings of the material heaven and the material hell, as described in the canon of the Church. The stairs lead back down to the second level. 
2. Ring Walk. Glass walls, glass ceiling, very like walking in the air, with the bulk of Castle Delusion spread out beneath you. Two four foot tall glass tanks on the southern passage. One is full of acid, the other is full of bleach. 
3. Telegraphy. An iron projector engine (like the ones in Moving Pictures) with a shutter system attached to allow the operator to strobe the beam manually. There are different fixtures that can be attached to change the colour of the projected light, and two different tripods - one that angles the beam at the ground and horizon, and on that aims it up into the heavens. Glass walls. You can smell the bleach from the Ring Walk. 
4. Meditation. Glass walls and ceiling. Strange tubular steel engines obviously scaled to the human body. Mechanical assistance with exercising. 
5. War Room/Library. An extensive library arranged on iron shelving. Many books on the future, statistics, speculative realism, and the techniques of the future to subdue the present. Other topics of interest: optics, cyphers and cryptology, planetary mechanics, painting, gunsmithing. A large timber board propped against the northern wall shows what appear to be a series of timelines, marked with interventions along their lengths. Some extend into the future, some into the past, and some in both directions. There are several 'present assemblies' - points on the timelines, whose mechanical function in this context is described in a series of probabilistic equations. 
6. The Fight Mind. Glass walls, a glass ceiling, four wooden mannequin bodies, and a painting on board, attached to the eastern wall. It shows a great city gate of white stone, with black smoke billowing out from within. There are thousands of tiny people marching through the smoke, but it is not clear if they are trying to escape, or pushing into the inferno. The four bodies are controlled by the Fight Mind, who will assume you are here to spar, and try its best to kill you. It has been punished before for holding back. 
7. Crown. Glass walls, glass ceiling. The walls have been crudely painted with bleach - almost invisible against the glass, the marks made with hands and fingers. The scene is a tower in the storm. It is repeated over and over. The storm is enormous, as big as the world, and the tower is so small and so fragile. An iron desk. An iron bed. If you haven't already killed her, Fenor Pach, Master is here, and her Veterans of the Planetary War guard the threshold. 

Fresco by Nicolau Nasoni, Grandmaster's Palace, Malta

Bestiary

Husk Mantids

Eight foot tall insect corpses, transparent and empty like the shells of cicadas. The original inhabitants of the amber sarcophagi in the Chemical Burial. They are dead and completely desiccated, but the exoskeletons are intact enough to be made use of by the Lantern Head that lairs there. They look a bit like glass or gossamer statues, and they move like poorly made automata. 

HD4, slashing claws (d8 x2), two humanoid hands for grappling, AC 6 (extremely brittle), speed: as human, disposition: mindless puppets. 

Husk: psychical attacks crit Husk Mantids on a 19 or 20. Additionally, Husk Mantids roll to-hit without modifiers, and take double damage from bludgeoning weapons. 

EV-099

EV-099 is a Lantern Head who lairs in the chemical burial beneath Castle Delusion. It named itself. 

EV-099 rides around in the chest of one of the four Mantid Husks that it has control of. The exoskeletons are transparent, and it has painted the particular husk that it travels in red, so that its thorax acts as a colour filter. 

Leather Bag Men

Strange beings sealed into airtight leather armour that lets them breathe underwater. They are manufactured in batches in the castle, and sold as aquatic fighting specialists to the local nobility. Dominated like every other human here, but additionally lobotomised to get rid of involuntary physiological responses to claustrophobia and drowning. 

A Leather Bag Man's suit holds an hour of air in a heavy iron tank that is slung across the shoulder. It also has pouches at the waist for lead weights to be inserted. When not underwater, the breathing apparatus is unhooked from their mouths. 

HD1, -1 on initiative rolls, medium bronze spear, light bronze knife, blackbag, armour as leather. Speed as human weighed down by their gear (which is heavy enough to keep them on the ground when fighting underwater), disposition: slow, methodical, passionless. 

A crit on a Bag Man severs their breathing apparatus. 

A blackbag is a black leather sack with a cord drawstring. Leather Bag Men pull them over the heads of their victims when they take them alive, and sometimes in combat to incapacitate. -4 to hit, deals no damage but blinds you until you spend an entire turn and make a successful DEX or INT check undoing the drawstring and pulling it off. 

Doom Slaves

The Master's court. Dominated humans, the guards and occasional raiders of Castle Delusion. They fight naked, and each has their entire body painted a single garish colour - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, or white. The paint shines like oil and the colours are exceptionally vivid. The faces of the Doom Slaves hold only two expressions: savage joy and visceral hatred. 

HD1, armed 50/50 with a light serrated knife or medium serrated sword, unarmoured. Speed: as human, disposition: Mad Max bad guys. They don't have independent will anymore, but they are just as intelligent as any other group of people. 

Doom Slaves who roll maximum health are Captains - they carry heavy serrated claymores and wear 15s worth of tin and cut-glass jewellery. You can find more than one Captain in a group.

Serrated weapons have -1 to hit, but deal triple instead of double on crits.

Box Heads

Nightmarishly over-muscled human bodies with strange black iron boxes where their heads should be. They are built somewhere inside the castle, and seconded to squads of Doom Slaves like equipment. In combat, a small iris on the box slides open, and cold, poisonous white light floods out. 

HD3, armed with a heavy great knife, technically unarmoured but DC14 from heavy slabs of muscle and extraordinary tolerance to pain. Speed: Pyramid Head, disposition: Pyramid Head. 

Box Heads are blind, and are lead into battle by hand by the Doom Slaves. They are always deployed in pairs, and point their Illuminator heads at whatever is making the most unfamiliar noise. When they attack with their great knives they pick their target randomly from those possible (which can include friendly targets), and roll to hit without any bonuses. 

Illuminator: the white light that comes from their box heads is indescribably foul, and burns the skin and eyes of those it touches. A Box Head can place a 90 degree cone down each turn, which is blocked by cover and anything else that would reasonably block light. Anyone inside the cone takes 1 psychic damage (at the start of their turn), fear damage equal to all other damage suffered, and cannot communicate with entities. These effects dissipate if you can get out of the area of effect. Friendly targets are not immune to Illuminator. 

Temporal Partisans

Angels and demons, time-imprinted killers who have tried and failed to murder the castle's Master. They have been tortured almost to insensibility, and their reversed loyalties are absolute. 

Roll up a body for each of them. All are armed with medium Murder Pins (long, thin steel needles, each about 5 feet long, used like an estoc and thought to have ritual significance to the cultures of the future), have speed: as human that moves like a fucked up marionette, and disposition: confused, depressed, despairing, ultraviolent. 

A Partisan whose Puppet Body rolls maximum HP is a Captain, and has a strange black box incorporated somewhere into its construction, with copper cabling running from the box to the base of its Murder Pin. A Captain's attacks deal an additional d6 electrical damage on a hit, but a crit with a piercing weapon destroys them immediately, regardless of remaining HP - the black box is pierced and explodes like a Tesla battery, consuming them and dealing d6 electrical fire damage to everything within 10ft. The fire cannot be put out, and will burn white hot for at least 5 minutes, and red hot for another 30. 

Puppet Bodies

1. Wooden Marionette: HD2, hardwood body (armour as chain, floats in water, -1 damage from physical attacks).
2. Ragged Corpse: HD1, unarmoured but doesn't feel pain and is not slowed by dismemberment (has to be killed twice to be put down - set its HP to 1 after it dies the first time). Also smells awful. 
3. Papier-Mâché Dancer: HD1, unarmoured and takes double damage from fire, gets +2 to initiative and crits on a 19-20. Has a paper lantern as a head, which sheds coloured light as a regular lantern. 
4. Wired Skeleton: HD1, unarmoured and takes double damage from bludgeoning attacks. +2 to initiative. Particularly cruel. 
5. Rusted Iron Hulk: HD2, iron body (armour as plate, sinks in water, takes a maximum of 1 damage from physical attacks), -1 to hit, moves at half speed. 
6. Vat Grown: a grey-brown, slimy, vaguely humanoid form. The flesh looks like a mixture of hamburger meat and slug flesh. HD1, AC 12, cannot be crit, and takes no damage from bludgeoning. Hideously strong (it's actually mostly muscle underneath) - has +4 to contested STR checks, and deals +2 damage with its Murder Pin, which it uses like a piston or a rivet puncher. 

Puppeting Will

HD1, cannot be targeted with physical attacks, has trueseeing, and can forgo puppeting its body for a round to launch a psychic attack; either d3 damage to an enemy it can see, or 1 damage to every enemy within 10ft. The Partisan minds are no longer coherent enough to survive the destruction of their current puppet bodies. They cannot speak, but they do scratch things into the walls with their pins, mostly things like ':( :( :( :(' and 'please help me I don't remember who I am anymore'.

The Fight Mind

A single entity that controls four manikin bodies simultaneously - a feat of possession complex enough that most academics would flatly refuse to believe it possible. The Fight Mind itself has 10hp and cannot be targeted by physical attacks. Its four puppet bodies are made of hardwood, and have spherical glass 'heads'. Stat them as follows:

HD2, The Style that is Practiced Beneath the Black Sun at the Centre (Imperfect Technique), armour as chain and -1 from all physical attacks.

The Style that is Practiced Beneath the Black Sun at the Centre (Imperfect Technique): each puppet body strikes twice per turn, and its attacks count as being made with light bludgeoning weapons. Every time a target is hit, they must save CON or be stunned for a turn. The target must save CON for every hit they take, and the stuns can stack over multiple turns. The puppet bodies of the Fight Mind can forgo all attacks to instead deal d12 to a stunned target - they attempt to punch through the chest. 

Veterans of the Planetary War

Ancient beings who fought in the ancient world wars against the Bird Kings, in distant prehistory. The Master found them persevered in amber prisons in the depths of the Chemical Burial beneath the fortress, and reanimated them using experimental medical procedures. 

Protodog

The first dogs were simple creatures, pack hunters and brutes, built to overwhelm their monstrous enemies in groups and then tear them to pieces. Their eyes are human, and startlingly intelligent. 

HD6, bite (d10 piercing), armour as leather, speed 2x human, disposition: aggressive, volatile, fearless. 

Takedown: the bite attack knocks its target prone (a STR save resists). A bite attack on a prone opponent always deals critical damage. 

Growl: instead of attacking, a Protodog can growl, dealing d10 fear damage to everything that can see it.

A Protodog can smell you unerringly within 100ft. 

Protocat

Cats were a later invention of the planetary war, developed as terror weapons and tactically flexible assassins, and sent to hunt like serial killers through the shrinking enclaves of the Bird Kings. Cats are infamous for their sadism, their loyalty, and their strange, transient insanities. The first cats could speak and write, and enjoyed denigrating both practices as absurd mirrors to the fact of the world and its material intensity. 

HD5, claws (d12 slashing), armour as leather, speed: 2x human, disposition: ambusher and torturer. 

Hunting Machinery: a Protocat can turn invisible at will (you can still see its smile and eyes), possesses trueseeing, and deals critical damage against foes who are unawares, restrained, or helpless. It can speak common, and will often talk cheerful nonsense as it hunts its prey. It sounds insane but it can understand you just fine. 

You always have to kill a Protocat twice. 

Bird Thane 

The Kings of the Earth, the Rulers of the Four Corners that make up the Universe. 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 its neck. A Bird Thane is imperious and awful, a completely viable and utterly alien lineage of intelligent predation whose ancient power was broken by efforts of total war far beyond what would now be possible to the race called humans.  

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. 

A Bird Thane is completely immune to psychic and fear damage. 

Dramatis Personae

Elder Angel Distinction, the Centipede

An angel puppet of immense age, its mind fractally deranged. Distinction did not wish to be unmade by God, and came of its own volition to Castle Delusion to escape this fate.

It looks like a very tall and thin human being made from knotted together concertina wire. Its 'head' is a glass sphere encased in a cage of wire. Normally it sits in the lotus position, looking over the parapet and out to sea. Its entire body vibrates almost imperceptibly at all times. 

If you speak to it the response will come directly into your mind like telepathy. The voice is pitched high, neurotic, and tightly controlled. Distinction sounds insane. It is capable of rational discussion and can tell you anything the DM would know about the castle and its inhabitants. It also knows all about the future and especially about the mechanics of the soul, which it describes in material, technological terms. After each question, it will ask you to step inside the Cooking Machine, with increasing hostility. If you refuse them three times, it will attack you. If you enter and then try to exit, it will attack you. 

If you refer to the Cooking Machine yourself it will start screaming until you stop. The second time this happens, it will instead attack you.

HD4, cutting wire limbs x8, armour as chain and takes -2 from all physical damage, movement: twice as fast as a human, disposition: schizoid by human standards, its mind is more often in possibility spaces and probabilities than its immediate surroundings. 

Cutting Wire Limbs: Its arms subdivide into heavy barbed-wire lashes in combat. They deal d6 to unarmoured targets, d4 against light armour, d3 against medium armour, and d2 against heavy armour. They ignore shields.

Ran Vyn, the Knight of Wax

Tells anyone who will listen that he is the only servant of the Master who is here by choice. To demonstrate this, he has deafened himself with wax - can't be dominated if you can't hear her voice! This used to be temporary and reversible, but over the years he has damaged himself permanently. Ran leads the Doom Slaves in battle, and, contrary to all possible evidence, considers himself the Master's lover.

Ran Vyn is strong, quick, and dangerous, and unlike his soldiers does not fight naked. 

HD3, light duelist's stiletto +1, White City Blaster, light leather armour and smoked-glass goggles (see below), speed: as human, disposition: clever, ruthless, attacks from ambush and then retreats, uses his unique eyes to create advantage for himself wherever possible, prefers to pick people off one at a time. 

White City Blaster: a rare military weapon, usually used by elite Esaptiers of the White City. A Blaster is a single-use, completely sealed, steel pistol. It is carried in one hand like normal, but fires as a blunderbuss, silently and without smoke. It cannot be ruined by getting it wet, and once fired it is useless. Blasters are the product of White City research into the Star Weapons of the Steppe Nomads.

Shine Job: Ran Vyn sees perfectly in the dark, but must wear a set of smoked glass goggles to see in normal light. If he somehow loses his goggles, he is blind in normal lighting conditions. 

Knife Fighter: for every round he spends fighting the same opponent one-on-one, Ran Vyn gets +1 to hit, +1 to damage, and a +1 expanded crit range with his duelist's stilleto. This stacks to a maximum of +3. 

Ran Vyn is deaf. He is immune to fear, does not appear to feel pain (-1 to all physical damage), and takes 1 damage max from any attack that deals psychic damage. He rolls all climbing, stealth, and STR checks with advantage. 

The Clever Man

A beautiful black-bearded man, strong, quiet, and wise, about thirty years old. He carries a blacksmiths' hammer and tools, and wears a leather apron. He will offer to mend your gear. He is charming, polite, and serious in his manner, and if you allow him to he will take an hour to look over your equipment and make any repairs that you need. While you spend time with the Clever Man, you do not roll wandering monsters checks. You additionally heal d4 HP and all fear damage, and may choose a single iron or steel weapon to count as a +1 weapon for the rest of the day. He tells you stories of his home while he works, about his people who he has not seen in years, about his village, tucked away in the anonymous woodland in the east, of his young love who he was forced to leave, and who he will see again one day. He will tell you about her eyes (blue) and her hair (golden). There is no one as beautiful as his love, and he will see her again one day, when he leaves this place. When he speaks you can see the people and places he speaks about. You feel the heat of the forge, and hear the bellows, and the wind in the trees outside. You can smell heather and dew, and morning mist, and crisp wind, and the hair of someone you used to love. If you attack him, show distrust, or ask him to, he will leave. It's not quite like disappearing, but he will be there one minute and then gone. 

When he is done with your gear, he will tell you that, though he does not wish to, he is bound to inform his Master that you are trespassing in the tower. He says that you must choose whether to stay in the room and face her terrible anger, or flee from her through her house. If you stay, the Master arrives in five minutes and tries to kill you, accompanied by the Veterans of the Planetary War. If you flee, all further rolls on the the wandering monster table are at +5. 

If you destroy the Master of Castle Delusion you may see him again, smiling and singing about his home, and about his beautiful young bride who he will see again one day.

Black-Lighted Sybarion, Prince by His Own Majesty, Lord of the Upper Hells of Water

A Red Ape and Chthonian Princeling, captured and maimed by Fenor Pach and held captive in the Iron Tower. Sybarion is the one who taught Fenor her unique martial arts - she promised to free him in return for his tutelage, but broke her word when she realised that he could not be dominated, something she had not thought possible. For the 'crime' she had his limbs and genitalia smashed, his eyes torn out, and his wings amputated. His ruined form is chained to the wall at the top of the iron tower. He is around 10ft tall. 

Fenor is more scared of Sybarion than anything (including death), but, perversely, considers her 'control' of him (realised via torture) to be more important than eliminating the source of her anxiety.

HD8 (usually HD14, but has been reduced to a physical shell of himself), bite (d12 piercing), armoured as leather. Cannot move (except his head and neck) under his own power. Disposition: meditates on compassion, weighs the words and souls of those who address him. Will attempt to kill cruel and ambitious people who get too close by biting out their throat. 

Sybarion is blind and will not speak, though he understands everything that you say. 

If you kill him, his gratitude will swell up inside you like a song - you gain +1 WIS and +1 CON.  

If you bring him Fenor alive, and allow him to kill her, he will whisper to you one of the Words of Calamity. If you speak this Word to an entity (including an angel or a demon), it will erase them from history permanently. If this is a living artist's entity, the shock will kill the artist. Once you speak the Word, it erases itself from your mind. The understanding of these mechanics is contained within the knowledge of the Word. 

If you bring him his armour and dress him in it, he will regain the power to move under his own volition - the strange armature supports his smashed body. When he places his helmet on his head, his vision will likewise be restored. He now counts as a full powered (though unarmed and wingless) Cthonic Princeling, but retains the hp that he had in his maimed form.

He will depart for his far-off kingdom in the centre of the earth by venturing down the vent in the Chemical Burial, but before he does so he will gift you a single wish. This is not a magical spell, you tell him what you want and he will do his best to see it done. He has vast resources at his disposal in his Underworld kingdom, and will take this obligation with a seriousness hard to comprehend to non-immortals.   

Fenor Pach, Master

Fenor is a sorcerer. She has spent centuries accumulating power for the purpose of warring on the future, and has been the target of many angels, saints, and demons over the years. She was a correspondent and sometimes muse of the mad King Magda, and they traded in information about the timeline-to-come. She is intelligent, obsessive, murderous, paranoid, callous, and often enmeshed in varying intensities of active psychosis.  

Fenor is nearly eight feet tall, thin and wiry, with large, glittering blue eyes. Her hands have been burned with chemicals. She wears a strange multi-coloured coat made from a durable waxy substance (we would recognise it as rubberised plastic), and ten large rings, each on a different finger and sporting a differently coloured stone. 

She also carries a ring of keys that will unlock the Keep's North Tower and the Prison of Black-Lighted Sybarion. 

HD4, The Style that is Practised Beneath the Black Sun at the Centre, Battle of Wills, 10x Rings of Slaying, armoured in the Raiment of Many Colours.

The Style that is Practised Beneath the Black Sun at the Centre: Fenor Pach makes three unarmed attacks per round, which count as being made with light weapons. Anyone hit by these attacks must save CON or be stunned for a single turn. You must save for each hit individually, and the stuns stack if you fail more than once. Fenor can forgo all three of her attacks to instead attempt to pull the heart out of the chest of a stunned opponent. The target may save CON or CHAR (their choice) to resist this. If you save CON, you suffer -2 CON as her long fingers sink an inch into your ribcage, but you survive; if you instead save CHAR you survive with no ill effect. On a failure you are immediately killed, regardless of which attribute you used, unless you can somehow live without your heart. 

Battle of Wills: see this post about wizards. Fenor's Domination is pulling your heart out without a save - comparatively merciful, as wizards go. 

Rings of Slaying: each ring can be used once per day to form a whip of coloured light that screams like a high voltage cable line. Fenor rolls to hit with them as normal; they have a range of 20ft and can also be used a melee weapons. She can use more than one ring in a turn, and enjoys using all ten at the same time when she is sure that she won't need them later, tearing and flensing her unfortunate target in a threshing machine of technicolour light. The Rings of Slaying have the following effects:

• Red: d6 force damage. 
• Orange: d8 slashing damage. Almost invisibly thin. 
• Yellow: d4 poison damage, save CON or lose d3 DEX permanently to neurotoxic stingers. 
• Green: ignite into emerald flames. Burn for d6 fire damage per turn until you or someone else spends an entire turn putting it out. 
• Blue: d8 bludgeoning damage. 
• Indigo: 2d10 fear damage. Permanently stains those it touches with dye markings, also indigo. 
• Violet: those hit suffer agony for 5 - [CON mod] turns, and can choose to take d6 agony damage or do nothing and writhe on the floor each turn for the duration. 
• Black: save INT or lose d6 INT. 
• White: d10 radiant damage (fire to humans, psychic to entities). 
• Invisible: lose the ability to distinguish between faces. Your panic threshold is halved. Save CHAR after 24 hours - on a failure, the reduction is permanent. 

Raiment of Many Colours: keeps her dry and protects as plate against slashing and piercing damage. Gives +1 to reactions with anyone who would be impressed by the bright, flat colours and foreign materials of its construction, which is basically everyone in the Barony. +2 with Bravo gangs, and they might try to kill you for it. 

Fenor is accompanied at all time by the Veterans of the Planetary War: 1 Protodog, 1 Protocat, and 2 Bird Thanes.