More Bugaphracts

Following on from this post.

Some quick changes and adjustments to the initial rules:

• In hindsight, soldiers counting for 10 in combat seems overtuned - I think 5 is better. 
• After a battle, corpses are converted into food equal to their daily food requirement while alive; workers give one, soldiers two, spiders twenty, etc. Just makes sense!
• Some troops can only eat corpses. Mosquitoes in the original post, Mandible Demons in this one. The supply rules make this slightly complicated in practice. Treat them as follows: Corpse Eaters consume no supply, and are either sated or starving, with starving being the default state. While starving, a corpse eater will always count as 1 worker in combat. When you win a battle, you may choose how many corpses to feed them and how many to take as food for the army. The [number of corpses you choose to feed them] / [number of corpse eaters] = how many days they will remain sated, during which they fight at full capacity. If they ever remain starving for a week, they will leave the army and might become a new bandit force in the area. 
• Special hex type: pesticide, inflicts 1 percent attrition per full day spent marching over it.  

Some Quick Factions

Black Ants

• The size and fortification of your nests can be increased to +8.
• Black Ant queens require 25 nectar instead of 50. 
• Black ant armies have +1 morale when defending a nest with a queen inside, and a further +1 if the size of the nest is 8.  
• Special Unit: Winged Princes/Winged Princesses. Your winged ants count as two workers in battle. Armies composed entirely of Winged Princes/ses have a resting morale of 10.

Red Ants

• Armies composed entirely of soldier ants can force march at double speed and have +1 resting morale. 
• Red ant armies can convert friendly workers into food at a one to one ratio. 
• Red Ant commanders can spend 50 nectar to cover the battlefield in berserker hormones. This adds a flat 10 percent to all casualties on both sides, regardless of battle outcome. 
• Special Unit: Velite. Costs 1 nectar to spawn, in the same way as a soldier ant. Counts as a worker for digging and building, but fights as 2 workers, and can force march twice as quickly as normal. Velites can join armies of red ant soldiers without cancelling their movement and morale bonuses. 

Slaver Ghosts

• Your commanders can consume 100 nectar to output pheromones that make their army appear as another faction's army on the strategic map. To switch or drop this seeming, the commander must consume another 100 nectar. The glamour falls away immediately when battle is joined.
• 10 percent of all casualties you inflict on your enemies join your army as zombies in the aftermath of a battle.
• All of your ants are immune to pesticides, and inedible to your enemies when killed in battle. You can still eat your own dead. 
• Special Unit: Mandible Demons. Spawned like workers are, and cost no nectar. Can't build or dig, and can only eat corpses, but count as two workers in combat when sated (see corpse eater rules above). 

BUGS

Unless otherwise noted, non-ant bugs are beast-like, and cannot be reasoned with or even spoken to. Workers carrying something else cannot carry any food. 

• Water Boatmen. Able travel on land normally, or underwater, where they are invisible to the enemy. They move twice as fast underwater, and become visible if they attack anything or when they surface back onto land. Juveniles count as worker ants. Adults are worth 10 workers in combat, eat 5 food per day, and can carry 100 food. 
• Dragonfly. Dragonfly eggs hatch into larvae, which are Corpse Eaters, count as 20 workers in combat, and wont carry food. If they are sated for a whole week, they will hatch into adults. Adult dragonflies count as 150 workers in combat, eat 50 food a day, fly, and provide a +1 morale bonus to the army they march with (this doesn't stack). Adult dragonflies found in the wild can speak and enter alliances, although they tend to be aloof, unfriendly, and mercurial creatures. 
• Bombardier Beetle. Juveniles count as soldier ants. Adults count as 20 workers each in combat, can carry 200 food each, eat 10 food a day, and have a powerful ranged spitting attack, which might open up tactical possibilities for a commander on the battlefield. 
• Termites. 'They're five times our size, and they spit acid from their foreheads!' Come in large nests, like ants do. Each counts as 10 workers in battle, and eats 2 food per day. Can burrow in wood like workers burrow in earth. Termite colonies can be engaged with diplomatically. 
• Mantis. Juveniles count as 50 workers in combat, eat 10 food per day, and carry 50 food. Adults count as 100 workers in combat, eat 25 food a day, and carry 100 food. Adult mantis can designate a single bug of similar size (adult centipedes, spiders, etc.) in the enemy army. Both are taken out of the fight for the purposes of the battle, and you roll a d6. 5 in 6 the mantis kills its enemy, 1 in 6 the mantis is killed. 
• Grasshopper. Juveniles count as soldier ants. Adults count as 20 workers each in combat, can carry 100 food each, eat 10 food a day, and can leap across the length of the battlefield. Armies composed only of grasshoppers can move at 5 times normal speed, although they cannot fly. 
• Pillbug. Reliable and beloved pack animals, with the mien of well-trained dogs. Juveniles are soldier ants who can carry 200 food. Adults fight as 10 workers, eat 5 food a day, and carry 1000 food. Both can sacrifice themselves after a battle to save a number of friendly ants; this is 20 for juveniles, 100 for adults. 
• Millipede. The logisitician's best friend. Juveniles fight as 10 workers, eat 10 food per day, and carry 500 food. Adults fight as 20 workers, eat 20 food per day, and carry 2000 food. 
• Bees. Strange, fae dancers from the heavens of the upper air, infamous for their fearlessness and their barbed-stinger suicide weapons. Bees keep colonies of their own, up in the sky where you cannot reach them. They send delegations down to the flowers of the earth, which is where you might encounter them. They may want things from you (typically they want wasps killed), and will pay for these services with huge bounties of nectar. You can never recruit bees. In combat they fight as five worker ants and fly. For every 100 bees in a conflict, roll a d6. On each 6, one large insect in the opposed army is destroyed by their terrible stingers. 
• Slugs. Cannot fight, but can be dismembered for 500 food. If you want to use one as a pack animal, treat it as an adult millipede that halves the speed of the army it travels with. Slugs are ancient and wise, and are known to curse those who harm them.  
• Snails. As a Slug, but if it gets dismembered it leaves behind its shell. The shell can be moved with at least 500 worker ants. If it is brought to a nest, it can be incorporated into the structure for +1 fortification, which can take you above +5. Snails are ancient and wise, and are known to curse those who harm them.  
• Earthworms. Occasionally found beneath the earth during nest excavation. Not dangerous, and provide 100 food each and tunnels of their own when encountered. 
• Assassin Bugs. A horror story, a psychic and pheromonal nightmare. Assassin bugs cover themselves entirely with the corpses of murdered ants, and weave strange spells that let them hunt their prey completely unseen. Assassin bugs are invisible until they attack - this is true both on the tactical and strategic maps. They only eat corpses. Juveniles fight as 10 workers, and adults fight as 50. They inflict -1 morale on enemy armies that fight them. They are mercifully rare. 
• Butterflies. Caterpillars count as juvenile millipedes. After a week they will turn into a chrysalis, which is immobile unless carried by 100 worker ants. After another week, and the butterfly will hatch. Butterflies can fly, and uniquely eat 1 nectar per day. If the nectar supply runs out they will leave. They don't fight in combat, but give the army that they accompany +1 morale. Butterflies are known as diviners, and will speak your fortune (as your favourite elfgame oracle spell) for 500 nectar. 

Still to come: Ant Commander traits, and a proper map and campaign. 

I just love insect guys :')

SimAnt Cataphracts - the roughest outline

Assume Cataphracts rules for anything that isn't specified. Continued here. 

You are an ant commander, with all that that entails. You are winged, but will mostly be commanding armies of wingless ants. 

Terms

Supplies are Food. 

Loot is Nectar. 

Cities, towns, and fortresses are all nests. Nests have a size and fortification level, both from 1 to 5.

Worker ants are infantry, and can additionally improve the size and fortification of Nests. They can carry up to 10 food. 

Soldier ants count as 10 infantry in combat, but consume twice as much food and cannot improve or dig nests. They can carry up to 50 food. 

Winged ants fight as infantry, consume twice as much food, cannot improve or dig nests, and are more tactically flexible in battle when commanders are giving their battle orders. Armies composed entirely of winged ants move at 5 times normal speed, and ignore terrain entirely. They can carry up to 10 food. 

There are no ships, but there are cool ant spies (agents). They cost nectar as normal because they need the sugar to make their brains work that way. 

There are no wagons, but ants don't revolt if you strip food from the countryside. There is only so often you can do this before all the food is gone. 

Queens, Eggs, Larvae

Queens can lay eggs when they are inside a nest. They can convert food into eggs on a one to one basis, and it takes one week to lay the eggs once you have decided to do so. 

The maximum 'clutch' that can be made this way is 500 per nest size. 

Every clutch forms a chemically bonded hatching. In game terms, each clutch counts as a detachment, and cannot be subdivided. 

Eggs turn into larvae after one week. Larvae turn into fresh worker ants after one week. 

Larvae can also be induced to hatch into soldier ants. You do this by feeding them 1 nectar. 

Larvae can be induced to hatch into winged ants. You do this by feeding them 5 nectar. 

Larvae can also be induced to hatch into a new queen. You do this by feeding it 50 nectar. You can only have one queen laying per nest, but fresh queens have wings and can be sent out to inhabit new, empty nests. 

Nests

All Nests start with 1 size and 1 fortification. It takes [new level]x1000 worker ants garrisoned in the nest to upgrade to the next level of either. The upgrades take one week to complete. 

The maximum level of either is 5. 

Size affects the number of eggs that can be laid by a resident queen. Fortification works as it does in Cataphracts. 

A new nest can be dug in favourable ground by an army with at least 5000 workers. This takes one month. 

Each nest size after 3 'spills' into an adjacent hex (meaning that a size 5 nest covers three hexes). Assign each hex a number and roll at random to determine which. If two nests 'spill' into the same hex this way, their tunnels are connected and armies with access to one of them ignore all fortifications in the other. If a nest 'spills' into water, lose 10 percent of the population to flooding, but mark the nest as now containing potentially useful flooded chambers. 

Battles

As the cataphracts rules. You still have morale and routs because these are weird slightly anthropomorphised ants. 

All casualties on both sides are immediately converted into food for the victor, on a one-to-one basis. 

Faction Ants

Factions get unique ants (duh). They might be:

- Faster!
- Stronger!
- Better at defending nests!
- Have a higher carrying capacity!
- Dig and fortify more quickly!
- Capable of limited swimming!
- Better at farming aphids!
- All the cool unique unit Cataphracts stuff. 

Other Bugs

You will find other bugs infesting the country, who may be useful for your cause. 

Of particular import are aphids - bringing aphids back into your nests and farming them is the only way to sustainably get nectar. Each aphid produces one nectar per week, and must be fed as infantry. You will find them in peaceful, defenceless, leaf eating enclaves. They need your protection!

You will find other bug nests, very dangerous - if you can defeat them and bring their eggs back to your nests, you will be able to have them imprint on you when they hatch. All eggs take a week to hatch once placed inside a nest. All juveniles take a month to mature into adults. When they fight in battle, they have the same odds of dying on a defeat as commanders do. The referee may choose to change those odds depending on the tactical use of a given bug. 

• Spiders: Juveniles count as 20 infantry and eat 5 food per day. Adults count as 100 infantry in battle, eat 20 food per day, each attached spider allows its army to ignore a single point of fortification on the offensive.
• Earwigs: Juveniles count as 5 infantry and 10 workers for burrowing and fortification purposes, and eat 2 food per day. Adults count as 10 infantry in battle, 20 workers for burrowing and fortification purposes, and eat 5 food per day. Both can move at twice as fast as ants where necessary. 
• Mosquitoes: Hatch into larvae, who then take one week and one nectar to mature into adults. Can fly as flying ants, count as 5 infantry each, cannot eat supplies normally, only the corpses of the dead after a battle. Their eggs must be deposited in specially flooded sections of a nest or they will not hatch. 
  
• Centipedes: Juveniles count as 20 infantry, eat 10 food per day, and can carry 200 supply. Adults count as 100 infantry, eat 50 food per day, and can carry 1000 supply. Each attached adult centipede allows an army to ignore a single point of fortification on the offensive. Centipedes can move five times as fast as ants. 
• Wasps: The terror, the bringers of death and enslavement. Juveniles fly, count as 10 infantry, and eat 5 food per day. Adults fly, count as 50 infantry, eat 20 food per day, and, when they successfully take part in the invasion of a nest, convert 100 worker casualties each into zombies, who join their army. 

There are many other fun bugs to discover 🧐

More to come!

d4 Planar Travellers

After a similar list someone showed me recently, which I will link to here when I find it again it's this one! 

This list is incomplete, there are a few other settings I would like to do soon. I have prioritised games I have played in, and also the inimitable Goblin Punch, without which this blog would never have existed. 

I challenge other gloggers to make lists of their own! It would be cool to eventually have a d50 or d100 Planar Travellers table.

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Shamash, Breaker of Men, Beloved in the Last City

Shamash is a very tall woman with a shaved head, built like an ox. Her skin is the colour of ash, and she carries a large and terrible sword of bone. She is wrapped up in a tattered cloak of black-dyed linen, and her limbs and torso have been bound with strips of shroud. Her eyes are glazed with despair.

She is slumped down resting by a small bonfire that burns the bones of the dead. Around the fire are six swords of various sizes and materials thrust into the ground by their blades, Seven Samurai style. She sings softly and tunefully under her breath, and watches you, and the flames. Behind her are an iron chest and two leather bags, visibly stuffed with valuables.

There are also two zombies standing behind her, and many bloody and torn pieces of bodies scattered around her makeshift camp. The earth here smells of blood. 

If you sit by the fire or engage her in conversation you will find her polite, although not especially forthcoming. She is from another place, and she wishes to return. She would not die here. She misses the city. What do you mean which city? She misses the red sky. You can leave her this way. She won't ask questions - she knows that you can't help her. 

If you show any violent intention, or if you touch any of her valuables, she will attack you with the intent to kill. She dismembers the bodies of the slain out of long habit. 

Shamash has HD3, attacks twice with whatever sword she is carrying (she starts with a heavy bone sword), and is unarmoured. 

She screams as she fights, the same strange word again and again. It sounds like 'kill', but it's not. 'Call?' Something. On her second attack each turn she will break her sword, with a different effect depending on what it's made of:

1. Iron swords will deal d6 damage to the target. 
2. Bronze swords break the weapon of the target. 
3. Bone swords additionally inflict fear damage equal to their physical damage. 
4. Ceramic swords ring terribly when they break, rendering the target deaf and mute for one minute (CON saves).

When she breaks a sword, she will use her next turn to draw another from the ground. Roll 2d4 to determine its type and material. 1: light, 2 - 3: medium, 4: heavy. 

Her hands are as iron: her unarmed attacks are as light hammers, she can swat aside blades and arrows (AC12 with one hand free, AC14 with both), and knows the special technique of blade catching (AC16 against swords if both hands are free, if the attack roll is 10 or less the blade is snapped and the sword is destroyed). 

She is frighteningly strong, and will automatically win contested STR checks and grapples against anyone with 16 or less STR. Even against those with more than that, she rolls such checks with advantage. 

Her two Labouring Dead are commoners who do not sleep, or feel pain or fear. You have to cut them to pieces to stop them. They follow her orders, and will attempt to grapple and dogpile you if you attack their master. 

Inside her bags and chest are 400 + d20 silver coins, 150 + d20 gold coins, 2d20 precious stones, and jewellery worth 500 + d100 silver. 

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Iolente the Navigator

Iolente has the look of a man who believes that he is dreaming. The wind and sky, the sun, the rain, the procession of seasons and the moods of weather, all of them invoke in him a kind of quiet awe that often bubbles over into brittle laughter. He wears clothing that is unspeakably alien. He is loud, quick, confident, and aggressive, with no understanding at all of personal space. He enjoys gesturing at things with his long, painted knife. 

You will find him looting bodies on deserted battlegrounds, or hiring his services as a saboteur, bodyguard, and assassin. He spends what he earns on information - how can I get back? Who can tell me this? - and the drugs that let him forget the faces of the family he is convinced (more and more these days) are lost to him forever. 

HD3, two attacks with a light painted dagger +1 (made from metal of impossible hardness and lightness, and leaves dyed scars in those it cuts), screaming-face buckler (shield), an oxy cutter with 30 mins left of fuel (can be used in the ways you expect, and also in melee with a -2 to hit, dealing 2d10 fire damage on a hit), 4 navigator darts (d4, thrown like daggers), really really foreign garb. 

Iolente will fight you if you disrespect him or get in his way, but he is generally more concerned with scarring, bullying, and maiming his enemies than he is in killing. His reputation as a lunatic duelist is well earned, but also actively cultivated. Baronials, and especially the Bravos of the capital, love him unreservedly.

He gets a cumulative +1 to hit and to crit range per turn of combat against a single foe (has to be the same person), to a maximum of +3. 

He also has an excellent (indeed in the Barony, a borderline supernatural) understanding of structural engineering, and can and will use this to sap and demolish dungeons if you pay him to. He uses his oxy cutter only as a last resort, wary of using up its fuel. His fee is triple the usual, but once it is paid he is completely reliable. He will take on contracts of all kinds, including very dangerous ones, and has the vigour and jagged cheerfulness of someone who no longer cares much if they are killed. 

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The High Prosecutor

She wears a loose-tailored linen two-piece suit and mirrored aviator sunglasses. She looked like cops look in Hard Boiled or To Live and Die in LA. Her long dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she carries a black pistol and shotgun of strange design. She smoked her last pack of Passwall cigarettes weeks ago and has taken a short brass Baronial pipe instead - she smokes when she is thinking, when she is resting, in combat, to pass the time...

She is the leader of a group of civilians dressed as outlandishly as she is. They are clearly families and refugees, and have been moving from place to place, relying on Prosecutor to protect them from the dangers of the country and high road. One of these people is her husband, one of them is her child. 

If you ask her where she came from she will tell you that Passwall is gone, fallen to madness. She does not know how she arrived here and doesn't much care. Her entire focus is protecting the ragged group she leads, and especially on her family. If you promise them safe harbour or passage to somewhere they can settle down, she will fight alongside you until you all get there. She has been taken advantage of before and will be slow to trust. She carries inside herself unspeakable memories of violence, of the natural order gone mad. She will never again go willingly beneath the earth.

HD3, 9mm, with 15 bullets in the gun and an extra magazine with 4 (as pistol with doubled range profile and no smoke), SPAS-12 with 3 shots left (as blunderbuss with doubled range profile and no smoke), light flick knife in her pocket, unarmoured but dressed in a very nice and outlandishly foreign suit, mirror shades (immune to gaze attacks, immune to charm, frightens entities). 

Prosecutor can choose to attack twice with her 9mm or SPAS-12, at the cost of -2 to hit on each shot. She can also use the 9mm in melee to enact Heroic Bloodshed, spending d6 rounds to do critical damage if she hits (if there are less shots left in the gun than show on the d6, this attack auto-misses). She is immune to fear unless she is underground, or has been deprived of tobacco for a full 24 hours.

Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992

Sir Passadone

An adventurer and devout monotheist of an utterly different church. Accompanied by four strange, savage, brightly-hued ape retainers. These creatures are entirely artificial - cut one open and you will see that most of the body has the consistency of mincemeat, and that the bones are oddly chalky and brittle. If they die, Passadone can make more of them. 

Uniquely on this list, Passadone knows how to return to where he came from. If you ask, he might even allow you to come with him, although he will demand your conversion before he will agree to this. He has his soul to think about. 

HD3, medium longsword and pistol, 3x light surgical blades, medium armour, rides a horse. Also has a spyglass, a compass (a useless but expensive curio in the Barony), a set of weights and measures, a scale, a small golden needle, and fifty copies of a book of collected Hesayan scripture.

His baboon retainers are HD1, attack with bites and coshes (as medium weapon), gain +1 to hit and damage when two or more attack the same target, and test morale at loud noises and bright flashes. They also cannot be crit, as their bodies have the consistency of hamburger and lack vital organs. 

Passadone can use a liver of human size or greater to make a new baboon - the process takes him about an hour. He can only control four at a time, but this number may increase - see below. He can also eat a human liver to gain a second attack in combat for one hour at the cost of 1 fatigue, and can feed one to a baboon with the same effect. 

Once each per day, Passadone can: eat a human heart to regain d6 HP; point at a baboon to have it explode, dealing d6 boiling innards damage to everything within 10 feet; pierce himself with a golden needle, dealing d4 damage, and mirroring that damage on one target that he can see.  

It goes without saying that he will harvest the organs of those he kills. 

He is a merchant, and his retainers act as his porters outside of combat (they carry backpacks for the purpose). He can sell you foreign rations and sundries at twice the usual prices, and will also have one of his specials on him each time you meet. He will only trade his specials for the livers of monsters of 4HD and higher, and each time you buy one, the next will double in liver-price (reroll any doubles). Every special you buy will increase his number of baboon retainers by one.  

1. Cloak of Winds. Allows you to leap ten times your normal height (no protection against fall damage). If you have sincerely converted to the Hesayan faith, you can also cast featherfall on yourself at will. 
2. The Hands of the Ghoul. A pair of animate human hands that you can train like rats. The don't decompose or need food, and the stumps don't bleed much anymore. They love being petted. Each has 1hp.
3. Mutagenic Draught. Whoever drinks it rolls on the list. They roll twice if they have a CON mod of 0 or less. 
4. 'Tame' Baboon. Apparently not one of his. Violent and quite stupid, but cheerfully loyal. Understands common, up to three word sentences. Comes with a bellhop outfit and a medium brass cudgel. Cannot be crit, due to its body actually being composed of hamburger meat. Baronial apes fear it the way you would fear a skinwalker.
5. Eye of the Angelman. An eyeball with a brilliant blue iris. If you replace one of the eyes of a freshly dead (like in the last thirty minutes) body with this, the corpse will be resurrected with its mind and soul intact. Any hair turns white-blonde. The person so-resurrected can now eat corpses as rations, and will be attacked on site by any angel or demon they meet. 
6. Bound Maker. A black tar-like substance in a glass bottle, fitted with a complicated valve mechanism. If you place the valve down the neck of a dead body (of any species), the Maker will take control of the body. It is quite intelligent, and can continue puppeting a host body until it is literally dismembered. I would like to be freed into the ocean, and will request this from you in exchange for loyal service measured in decades (it has an inhuman patience). If it is ever freed, it will begin the slow process of rampant self replication at the bottom of an ocean trench, and finally begin its true works - the laying of great foundations and signalling apparatus in the abyssal deeps. 

You cannot buy anything from Passadone without also taking a free book of Hesayan prayer. 

Breaking Teeth, Victim Worship; more bits on The White City

The relationship with the Barony is an odd one, based in a sort of patriarchal fondness for the backwards and savage Baronials, who remain recognisably (through their assimilation by the Old Capital, centuries ago) culturally familial. There is lots of trade between the two, and the White City takes as given that the Barony poses no credible military or cultural threat. The attempts by the Baroness to modernise her military and form a professional standing army are not taken seriously the City, although they are watching with fascination.

When in combat, the soldiers of the City wail, scream, weep openly, and 'break teeth' (a specific snapping bite at the air that is reportedly terrifyingly audible in combat, even over the roar of cannon and the tumult of the melee). All of these are culturally enshrined, and 'proper' warriors do them more often, and more dramatically - they are said to be expressions of overwhelming civic love. Needless to say, all are made more effectively terrifying when combined with the use of White City combat drugs. 

The soldiers and citizen-militias practice something called 'Victim Worship', in which the dead populations of newly acquired imperial territories are introduced into the image game and portrayed as virtuous, brave, strong, and wise. Their extermination is framed as an inevitable tragedy, and the game players mourn their disappearance from the world. To outsiders this is one of more repulsive and bizarre cultural artefacts of the City. 

When the Battle Music starts to drone, the soldiers and the militias sing along with it, seeking to lose their individual selves in its cycles and repetitions. The drone and round are something similar to Macedonian pipes (but played through immense pipe-and-bellows engines), while the citizen-singing is closer to the Bulgarian folk tradition - all genders sing high, in what we would consider the feminine register.

Jospeh Stella, Brooklyn Bridge, 1919-1920

Class: Royal Wose

The wise know that one must always Enkidu their Gilgamesh. Like the Old Hero, this is not a class that is balanced for normal adventurer play. 

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The Royal Woses are a mystery. They are usually found buried in the earth close to the graves of old heroes, and ancient murals depict these two types as fated lovers, companions, rivals, and tragic victims of a strange insanity that always afflicts them as a pair. 

The stories go like this: if the hero and the wose fight one another with the intent to kill, they will instead fall in love. If they set out to woo one another, the courtship will end in anger, frustration, murder. If they plan conquests and stratagems and deicides and the organisation of cities and populations, they will, by degrees, fall to degradation and insanity. If they instead lose themselves in drink and idleness and the kind passing of time, if they become like beasts, they will wake after decades as though from dream, and find themselves the leaders of empires, cities, great hosts - all that is glorious in human striving and endeavour. 

The wose itself is a monstrous puppet, built from bone or wood, with elongated limbs, long shaggy 'hair' of rotting cord or sinew (the youngest woses are many centuries old), and a hideous, staring human face. They always have a hinged jaw, filled with sharp flint or bronze teeth. They always wear a crown, and they are always weeping. 

The academics conjecture that, in ages past, the great rulers of cities had the woses built to remind them of something that had, with the invention of their royal station, become too easy to forget. The meanings of the many stories of reversal, contradiction, and mutual disgrace are not agreed on. 

ROYAL WOSE

You are a humanoid puppet that stands around 12 feet tall. You do not need to eat, drink, sleep, or breathe. You cannot wear or use anything that is not specially fashioned for you.

You are not a manikin or an entity puppet - no one knows what you are. You move entirely under your own power and volition.

As a Royal Wose, you roll your stats with 5d6 down the line instead of 3d6. You are built from bone or wood - if bone, your have AC12, you move completely silently, and your natural weapons deal d12. If wood, you have AC14, take -1 from all physical damage, float in water, and your natural weapons deal d8. 

Your starting HP is 20 + your CON mod. 

Skills: None

Gear: None

A O! Monstrosity! 
B Farce
C Storm Still
D Contiguity of Base Materials 

O! Monstrosity!: You move on all fours at twice the speed of a sprinting human. You attack twice, once per attack you received last turn, or once per enemy in melee with you - whichever is highest. You have been made with terrible, tearing claws - natural weapons with a damage dice determined by the base material of your construction. You may make an additional bite attack against a single target who is prone or defenceless - if it hits, it deals 2d8 damage and immediately decapitates anything it brings to 0hp without recourse to the death and dismemberment table. If you kill someone this way, enemies that witness the death must test morale.

Farce: You gain any skill you see someone else make use of. If you use it your mien suddenly changes: you stand on two legs and your movements becomes precise and formal, something like a butler or a courtly dancer. There is no upper limit to the skills you can acquire like this, but you lose all of them when you next kill a thinking person. If you have 24 hours alone with someone defenceless, you can destroy forever their capacity to use language, both spoken and written. 

Storm Still: If you rest beneath a roof for more than one night, the weather worsens dramatically. This gets worse with every night you remain so - it starts with rain, storms, and high winds, and after a week it will be bad enough to begin damaging buildings. After two weeks the raging, screaming storm is composed of acid and boiling chemical steam. Those who enter the maelstrom are lost. It is the end of distinction between solid, liquid, air, and fire. 

Contiguity of Base Materials: You may clasp your enormous hands around a human corpse and spend eight hours compressing it down into an inventory slot’s worth (if you can get it into a container) of shit, blood, or hot, clarified sweat. The shit is a deadly poison (smells awful, save or die), the blood cures the drinker of all disease and illness (it can cure things like blindness too), and the sweat counts as ten rations. All of them lose these properties after 24 hours. You can destroy any entity you get your hands on in a single round - you don’t roll anything, you simply narrate how you tear it apart. Kings, queens, and heroes will recognise both your goodness, and your suzerainty. 

Class: Old Hero

 

Found this one lying around in the mists of ancient Discord chats and liked it enough to preserve it here. It's basically a Gilgamesh, and obviously not at all balanced to 'normal adventurer' level. My sense is that you might find one of these guys where you would expect a mummy, kind of like Old King Doran in Demon's Souls. 

Old Hero

As an Old Hero you roll stats with 5d6 down the line instead of 3d6. You are around 7 feet tall, exceptionally beautiful, wild-looking, and frightening. Your features are more pronounced than usual for humans - somewhere between a neanderthal and homo sapiens. 

Equipment: heavy green bronze spear +1, patinaed panoply (AC14), fine clothing, green bronze jewellery worth 50s to a fence or 750s to a collector of antiquities, the key to a great polis that no longer exists. 

Skills: law, feats of strength, agility, and martial skill, forbearance, wrath. 

A - Beloved in Written History, +5 HP
B - A Crown, +5 HP
C - The Invention of Glory, +5 HP
D - The Sun Sings, and Your Name Describes its Song, +5 HP

Beloved in Written History: You can tell if someone is lying, and mentally dominate anyone who lies to you if you make eye contact. They get a contested CHAR check to save. KNEEL, THRALL. When wielding a spear, you can choose to attack twice, or attack once with +2 to hit and damage. You may receive a charge from an unthinking opponent with a free attack. You may throw it (as a heavy javelin without prep, or with +4 to hit and damage after a turn spent focusing your energy).

A Crown: You are immune to laws and temporal authority. Anyone who meets your eye knows this. In battle you are terrible, as the warriors in the great tales. After your first kill of a fight, your allies take -[templates] fear damage from all sources. You always get this benefit. The Invention of Glory: You may curse those that touch you with permanent blindness - they can save CHAR to resist. If you kill someone with your spear you may run them through, attacking another foe behind them as cleave, or stapling them to a wall or tree etc. Whatever happens, enemies who witness it must immediately test morale at -2 per person killed by the attack. The Sun Sings, and Your Name Describes its Song: When direct sunlight falls on the tip of your spear tip, it shines with a terrible light. Angels and demons flee before you. The monsters of the world recognise your kingship. Those wounded by your weapons will speak only truth for a day. You deal triple damage against shapeshifters, liars, earthly tyrants, and the dead. When you throw your spear you may increase its damage by as many d6 as you wish, but you will also take that many d6 in radiant damage as your soul cooks your living flesh.

The Culprit by Memory

You have signed up to man one of the towers that watch the endless open sky at the edge of the world. The sky is, according to the city, dangerous. Your orders are to signal back to them if anything emerges from the boiling, endless clouds. You will be paid badly, and given bed and board, which is actually a significant improvement in your material circumstances. The city back home is not doing well. 

There are, apparently, bonuses for good behaviour (whatever that means), and successful forewarning of anything abnormal in the sky. You can see the cloud banks already in your mind's eye, in all of their various moods - boiling with storms, calm, wall-like and unmoving in the hot air, drifting slowly, heavy with the charge of lightning, glowing in the sunset. 

You are told that the tower will be stocked with provisions, and you have the books and other materials that you bring with you. You have also been provided with two small orange plastic bottles, one with 50 white pills labelled 'to sleep - take one before bed', the other with 50 yellow pills labelled 'for boredom - one at a time only'. Finally, you have been issued a 9mm automatic, two magazines (capacity 15), and a box of 50 rounds, 'for emergencies'. 

Your tour lasts for two months: 60 days and 60 nights. You will be escorted to your post by military helicopter.

Character Creation

1. Roll 3d6 down the line. These are the usual six stats. You know what STR, CON, and DEX are. INT is spatial and abstract reasoning, memory, logic, and rhetoric, WIS is grounded-ness, self control, self-knowledge and self-love, and empathy, CHAR is the capacity for vivid ideation; the invention of concepts and images without precedent, and the ease with which you can express these to yourself and others. 
2. Give yourself a job (you recently lost it) and a hobby. You gain these as skills - you can expect to pass checks related to them (or to be given the chance to roll checks where others would not be able to). You also get a single +2 to one stat of your choice that pertains to either your job or hobby. 
3. You have one minute irl to gather gear for the tour (as in you, in your irl abode, right now). Time yourself. This is your equipment - make a list of every item. The helicopter won't accept loose shit in boxes, it will all need to be in a backpack or travel case of some kind. Things to bear in mind when you do this: you are expecting to be in the same four or five rooms for two months; you already have a pistol with 50 rounds; the enemy you are most likely to encounter will be boredom; you have no phone signal or internet (you do have power, heating, and running water). 
4. Give yourself a name! There are no levels or classes in The Culprit by Memory. There are many ways you might change over time.

Your derived stats and the rules for resolution are as usual for a Phlox server pbp long form game. Most resolution will be rolling to match 10, with difficulty increments of 2, up to 16 for very difficult tasks. The modifiers are printed below for reference. 

• 3-5 (-2)
• 6-8 (-1)
• 9-11 (0)
• 12-14 (+1)
• 15-17 (+2)
• 18 (+3)

You have 6 HP + your CON mod.

Your 9mm pistol does 2d6 damage, and without proficiency it fires at -1 to hit, takes twenty seconds (2 combat rounds) to reload under stress, and forces you to save INT or DEX (your choice) on a critical miss to avoid shooting yourself.

Roll to hit and your 2d6 damage at the same time. Whether or not you hit, you spend ammunition equal to the lower of the two damage rolls. 

If you get LONELY, -1 to WIS checks per LONELY. You can heal it by talking to and feeling understood by others, or by pursuing your own interests in ways that you find personally fulfilling.

If you become DISSOCIATIVE, -1 to INT checks per DISSOCIATIVE. You can heal it by attending to daily needs, creating an environment that is predictable, spending time in the sun, and exercising. 

You can always decide to take a point of DISSOCIATIVE in place of a point of DAMAGE or LONELY. 

If you have DAMAGE, -1 to CHAR checks per DAMAGE. Healing from DAMAGE is significantly more difficult. At the very least it takes time, care (from yourself or from others), and a safe environment to recover in. When you take a point of DAMAGE, mark down what caused it. 

Every point of LONELY, DISSOCIATIVE, and DAMAGE gives an additive -1 to all attempts to heal from any of the others. You may find other modifiers to these attempts, positive and negative, in play. 

You start with 1 point in either LONELY or DISSOCIATIVE, and 1 point of DAMAGE. Include a source of DAMAGE next to it in brackets, or leave this unspecified.

Too much of any of these three stats is fatal, in various horrible ways. Your objective is to survive your year's deployment with 0 points in all of them. 

If your character dies, you're outta the game! Your tower will be taken over by someone else. Elfgame permadeath.

DREAMS

You might find yourself dreaming (you might not). At any time, you can wake up by testing INT. If you fail, whatever scene is playing out concludes before you can test again. 

Inside the dream, your:

• STR = your CHAR
• CON = your WIS
• DEX = your INT

You can will into being a number of objects equal to your CHAR modifier - they can be whatever you want. If your CHAR modifier is negative, you lose the use of that many limbs. If you have DAMAGE, you also find yourself with an item that represents this DAMAGE in some way. The item is functional, but also cursed - it will seek to harm you. 

You can declare that you ignore a number of hits equal to your WIS modifier. If your WIS modifier is negative, you take a proportional + to all damage inside the dream.

You can vanish out of existence a number of things equal to your INT modifier. If your INT modifier is negative, you must roll that many dice and choose the lowest when you test INT to wake up from this dream. 

If you would die, or become trapped or tortured, in a dream, you immediately test to wake up. On a success you do so, with heart racing and horrible images in your mind. On a failure, you are unable to extract yourself in time to avoid the sensation of being killed or mutilated. You take 1 DISSOCIATIVE (if death) or 1 DAMAGE (if torture) on waking. 

Turner, Clouds at Sunset, c.1823-1830

Face Beneath the Earth

The light is dim, soft, it is evening, surfaces are purple, iridescent. The street outside and its bordering palms and rose and blackberry bushes are moonlit. They look like they are made from solid silver. They don’t move at all, there is no wind. Most of the properties along this night-time black and silver street have a big dog in their yard, whose job it seems to be to aggressively charge at those that pass in front of the property. Preempting property invasion, squatting, breaking and entering… Each looks like it might kill you. Once when I was walking in the late afternoon I saw a pack of them wild, jaws buried in some raw heap of stuff they had found, moving freely through one of the unfenced abandoned lots. I wondered if they ever attacked people, if this happened often, was just some fact of life out here. I know (from childhood) that you can carry stones in your pockets to throw, it frightens them, they run away whimpering in fear. I know which properties to avoid during the day. It is not that I am worried about physical attack — the dogs are securely fenced in — it is more that I do not wish to be subjected to that animal adrenalin feeling of being barked at, of being charged, of needing to make decisions about what you would do if the fence failed.

But now it is evening. When I look out the window I see the slopes of the volcano and the thin strips of fire glowing red against the dark grey and purple sky. Mosquitos buzz around me incessantly. They don’t bother me at all. I want to spend time getting more in tune with how the volcano spits forth matter from the centre of the earth, how it is constantly emitting. You can’t get anywhere near it, it’s much too dangerous, although of course there is no threat display, no aggression.

There is no evil in the ground, in the molten material that constantly churns its way upwards like some great, millennial engine scraping away the inside of the planet. But I think that this town is evil. Not the people in it; the town itself, the yards and dogs with their small territories, the empty lots. How can I explain this.

The town is evil because of what has been done in our names — in all of our names, every human. So every town and every city is the same. The silent, moonlit street is saturated in the bizarre and treacherous (treacherous because unknown, untested, unstudied, unmeasured) face of this evil. Our souls have begun to turn and scrape like that subterranean engine. Soon they will show us something new, something we have no record of, that we cannot prepare ourselves to fight.

This house full of centipedes and mosquitoes has the same stink of the face. If I could be like a volcano maybe I could describe it. If I could be like a dog or a centipede or a mosquito maybe I could manipulate it somehow; transmute some of its filth, though even if I could do this, after sublime effort (and I think that effort would damage me permanently), I wonder what material would remain in the aftermath.

Appendix L

For the current bandwagon, and in reference to the setting that I've been noodling at for the last 9 months-ish. Glogheads have been doing nice designs for theirs but so it goes, so it goes. Obviously not definitive. 

Games:

• Silent Hill 2 + 3
• Demon's Souls + Dark Souls + Bloodborne + Sekiro + Elden Ring
• Myth II
• XCOM
• World of Warcraft
• COD4
• Black Sun Death Crawl
• Pathologic
• All the Blizzard RTSs (not the execrable Starcraft 2)
• Unreal Tournament, up until UT3 which I never played

Books:

• 2666 + The Savage Detectives
• COME ON (Peter Wächtler)
• The Empire of Disorder
• Voyage to Arcturus
• Virginia Woolf
• The Conan stories
• Cyclonopedia
• Viriconium
• Fuck Seth Price
• Sappho
• The Story of the Stone
• The English Renaissance Stage (Henry S Turner)
• Moby Dick
• Don Quixote
• Speed and Politics
• 1000 Plateaus
• Pierre Klossowski
• The Duino Elegies
• Jorge Borges
• Rich Texts (John Kelsey)

Film:

• The Exterminating Angel
• Cure
• Battle Royale
• Hard to be a God
• The Thing
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osborne
• Onibaba
• Battles Without Honour and Humanity
• Possession + On the Silver Globe + The Third Part of the Night
• Susperia
• Silence of the Lambs
• Eyes Wide Shut + The Shining + Barry Lyndon
• Heat
• Seven Samurai + RAN + Throne of Blood
• Basic Instinct + Starship Troopers + Flesh+Blood + Robocop
• Derek Jarman
• Hereditary
• Sorcerer
• Akira
• Pulse Kairo
• Marebito
• The Matrix

TV:

• Twin Peaks + Wild Palms
• Evangelion
• The X Files
• Serial Experiments Lain
• Game of Thrones
• Attack on Titan

Artists:

• Gustave Moreau
• Peter Wächtler
• Paul Thek
• Seth Price
• Pierre Klossowski
• Hans Belmer
• Pamela Rosenkranz
• Francis Bacon
• Cady Noland
• Martin Wong

Fashion:

• Chanel
• Knowles
• Helena Manzano

Sunlight Maggot, Dark Souls

The Reeds Adventure Location - Char3terie Board

Onibaba, Kaneto Shindo, 1964

The Beast of Yelenin

The town of Yelenin sits secluded in the vast sea of reeds that makes up the delta of the Jabberwock. The people there fish, farm eels, and sell meagre goods and services to the adventurers and bandits who pass through the region. The local inn, The Lilly of the Waters, is also an infamous gambling house, and the family who run it are known murderers, extortionists, and kidnappers. They control local muscle in Yelenin, and the other villagers fear them with good reason.

Over the last eight months, the town has been terrorised something that emerges from the surrounding reeds and tears people to pieces, before retreating again. It screams and screams. The sounds cannot be human. 

The Beast of Yelenin has, to date, killed just shy of 200 people. A bounty of 5000s has been posted for its destruction by the increasingly desperate villagers, with most of that money coming from The Lilly. 

For every night that you spend in town, there is a 4 in 6 chance the Beast kills again. 19 in 20 that this is d6 random villagers, 1 in 20 this is a named person this write-up, chosen at random. You will hear its hideous shrieking, and if you investigate, find the bodies, awful, torn-up and unrecognisable. 

After two weeks of this the town will be completely depopulated and the bounty rescinded as the Family move on. 

The Lilly of the Waters

Uniquely in Yelenin, built on stone foundations. The ground floor is dedicated to gambling (use your favourite elfgame rules), the second floor has rented rooms. The Family live on the third floor. The place is weirdly cheerful most of the time, brightly painted, with lots of coloured paper lanterns and a functioning private bathhouse for highroller guests. They make good money from gambling bandits and adventurers, and make just slightly-less-good money murdering well equipped travellers just out of town and re-selling their weapons and armour. 

Security is 35 bandits, armed with light armour, shields, and light and medium weapons. They have 5 working muskets, and 5 heavy weapons. They work in eight hour shifts, so 10 - 12 will be on duty in the Lilly at any one time. It would only take a couple of minutes at most for the rest to arrive, fully armed, if the alarm were raised. They are the only fighting force in the region. 

The Family run everything in town. 

The Father is HD3, attacks twice with his spear, and owns a terrifying, magical Demon Mask that rids him of pain, fear, and mercy, and lets him roll attacks with advantage, when wearing it. He is homicidally jealous of his son's wife, and also cheerful, casually cruel, and drunk most of the time.

The Mother is HD3, attacks twice with her greatsword, and owns the only set of heavy armour in town. She will get geared up quickly if she hears a ruckus. Religious, calculating, exact, careful, merciless. 

The Son is HD2, fights with a pistol and a broadsword, and considers himself an honourable young man. He has lead two failed expeditions into the reeds to kill the monster, and is planning a third. Genuinely fearless and protective of the town, but doesn't care about anyone he doesn't personally like.

The Son's Wife is HD2, and doesn't fight, if she can help it. She owns a blunderbuss and carries knives on her person; she also has two vials of deadly poison on her person, and can make more with reagents from the marsh. Plain-featured but extremely attractive. Plans to have the Father kill the Son, and then the Mother kill the Father, and to swoop into the resulting power vacuum. She will also settle for stealing large sums of money from the Lilly and disappearing. Horrified to find herself growing more attached to the Son day by day. 

The Steamboat

Arrived in town two days ago to hunt the Beast. Crewed by the noble Bentham, his man Tuesday, and his retainers. Has a deck gun on board that could, in theory, handily demolish any building in town (or kill a monster, it hits for 4d12, but -5 to hit anything smaller than a building). 

Bentham, HD3, saber +1, fine clothing (+1 to reactions with people who care, which is everyone in town), 10 doses of stimulants on his person, 5000s in spending money aboard the ship. Calm, a bit ditzy, and focused on the hunt. Could easily be persuaded not to take the money. Addicted to stimulants.

Tuesday, HD3, two pistols, two knives, fine clothing (as above), 10 doses of stimulants on 'his' person. Actually a woman, but the deception is convincing until you get close. Extremely pretty, androgynous, loyal to Bentham (they are in love, he is married to someone else), addicted to stimulants. Wears pearl earrings worth 200s as a flex, rolls grappling checks with advantage. 

There are 8 retainers on the boat, all as men-at-arms. They have swords but no armour, and know how to operate the boat and the cannon. 

The Hunters

The bounty has attracted n'er do wells, all currently staying in the Lilly. 

Ella the Rose, a sharpshooter and drunk fleeing debts in the capital. HD2, rifled musket (as musket with a +2 to hit and crit range if you spend a turn aiming. In anyone else's hands these are +1s), hanger sword. Iron spectacles and rumpled clothing. Nearly suicidally miserable at this point.

Bellum, a old poacher and bandit. HD3, two attacks, when in town only carries his boot knife, which he can use to parry with, once per turn. If he goes hunting he will take a heavy bear spear with him. Doesn't like armour; he's seen too many people drown in the marsh. Takes -1 damage from physical attacks. 

Giles the Kid, baby-faced but in his early twenties. HD2, carries a rapier and a bullwhip, which he can use at 15ft to disarm people (and deal d3 slashing damage). Charismatic and very good with his weapons, gets +1 to hit with both. Out to make a name for himself, will sacrifice anything in pursuit of this. Terrified of sexual contact and will kill anyone who puts their hands on him. 

Dame the Vivisector, an actual knight in actual shining armour (as plate). HD4, fights with a set of Vorpal Shears (heavy +1, crits take off the head, or slay any monster or questing beaft). She is mad, and often speaks in nonsense. She is definitely here to slay the beast, but no one can get a read on where her estates are. 

Onibaba, Kaneto Shindo, 1964

The Field of Reeds

It stretches out in every direction. The reeds are taller than a human, and movement through them is difficult and slow. The ground is soft, waterlogged, often treacherous. Islands of silt move each day as the Jabberwock floods and wends its way down towards to coast. 

Making forays out into the reeds comes with risks of getting lost, unless you have a compass (there are two in town, one with Bentham and one with Dame the Vivisector) or are accompanied by a local (anyone from town). This risk is an INT check in the day, with disadvantage at night. If you get lost, you have to spend the night out in the reeds. You can try to find Yelenin again the next day, but each successive night you spend lost gives your check a -1. 

It is impossible to rest for the night in the reeds - the ground is soggy and shifts under your weight, the insects are shrill and awful, and the damp gets into your bones and your skull. 

Each day out allows you to make a tracking roll, a d20. Bonuses for the following (all cumulative):

• +10 the beast killed someone that day and you are following its trail. 
• +5 the beast killed someone yesterday and you are tracking it. 
• +3 you know thew cardinal direction (from the village) that the beast nests in. 
• +2 you know the track and spoor of the beast. 

If your roll is a 20 or above, you find the Lair (see below). If it is between 10 and 19, you don't find the Lair but you add +1 to your roll going forwards. 

In addition, each day and each night you spend in the reeds provoke rolls on the appropriate table:

Daytime Encounters

• 1 - 12: Nothing. Wind on the reeds and baking sun that glints in the water and hurts your eyes. The smells of mud, the sounds of cicadas. 
• 13-15: 2 fishermen, on their way back to Yelenin. You can follow them back if you are lost. 
• 16-17: 3d4 bandits, they don't want to fight but they will if you insult or disrespect them. Tempers run hot in the swamp. 
• 18: d3 Hunter-Killers. Horrible otters the size of horses. They will tail you for a few hours, and attack if you get into difficulty or seem weak. HD2, bite d8!, armour as leather, disposition as predators (will retreat if seriously threatened). 
• 19: an Assassin Bug! Feared above all things by marsh-dwellers, these enormous insects are nearly invisible in the reeds that they hunt in. Always gets a surprise round. HD4, 2x mantis claws (d8), armour as chain, speed: slower than a human, disposition: will fight to the death, but will also eat its victims rather than pursue those that flee. 
• 20: The shrieks and howls of the Beast of Yelenin! Faint on the breeze, but unmistakeable. Your next roll to find the Lair is at +5. 

Nighttime Encounters

• 1-10: Nothing. The moon is large, and the lapping sounds of water soothe you. It will be a long night, without sleep. 
• 10 - 12: Marsh Fires. d3 members of the party must save WIS or follow them out into the reeds. If they are not restrained, they will be lost forever on a 1 in 6. Otherwise they take d3 damage getting back to the camp over broken ground. 
• 13 - 14: d4 Frightened Bandits. They are running from something awful. They want to stay with you for the night. If you refuse they will flee back into the reeds crying. If you let them stay, 18 in 20 it's fine, 1 in 20 they attack you in your sleep, 1 in 20 you are attacked instead by the Beast (see below).
• 15 - 16: 2d6 Ant Lobsters. Weird, carnivorous, pale white lobster things that hunt in packs. 1HP, d4 claws, unarmoured, slow. Easily distracted with raw meat. 
• 17-18: d6 Hunter-Killers: as above. Their eyes flash red in torch and fire-light. 
• 19: The Terrible Thing. The Beast walks calmly into the firelight and sits with the party. It vibrates with barely concealed emotion. After several minutes it will say, in the most unnerved and aggressive voice you have ever heard, that it only wants HIM only wants its FACE back. If you attack it it will begin screaming and a combat encounter will ensue. If you don't attack it, it will walk back off into the black night after delivering this message. You see which way it goes, and get a permanent +5 to your rolls to find the Lair. 
• 20: The Beast, the Terrible Beast: it screams as it crashes into the camp and starts tearing people to ribbons. After it kills one person it will attempt to flee back into the night with the body. You see which way it goes, and get a permanent +5 to your rolls to find the Lair. 

The Lair

A small hollow dug into the side of a more-or-less permanent mud bank. The ground around it is saturated with so much blood that it is literally rotting. Pieces of bodies are scattered around haphazardly. The beast will be inside. 

The Beast of Yelenin

It looks like an ogre that's been stretched out on a rack and then painted with wet blood and offal. Its fingers are long and its eyes and teeth are very white. It can talk, but only for a couple of minutes a day. I will never stop killing people while the Demon Mask remains unreturned. 

HD8, claws x2 (d12), screaming, crying, faster than a human, disposition: frenzied, desperate, mad with hatred. 

Screaming: save WIS every turn that you are in combat with the Beast. One a failure you can choose to take d6 damage, or do nothing but fall to the floor clutching your ears. 

Crying: save CHAR every time you try to strike the beast in combat. On a failure, your strike does minimum damage. 

If you give it the Demon Mask it will make a strange, formal bow, and gift you with its heart (it pulls it out of its chest), then bound off into the reeds. The heart is full of hatred, melancholy, and madness: if you can bottle the blood still inside it, it counts as 10 doses of deadly poison. The blood can also be used to dissolve and destroy holy relics and symbols, and to deconsecrate sacred ground. 

Onibaba, Kaneto Shindo, 1964.