Class: Star Seed

 

NB: In the far south, the winters bring a 3 month night and the summers bring a three month day. The time of year has repercussions for your access to your templates.

Gear: Cold weather gear, a medium cleaver and 3 sharp light knives, sun goggles, either snow shoes or skis, 10 doses of stimulants (dried human amygdalas, mechanically identical), and one roll on the Southern Gear table.

Skills: Astronomy, anatomy, five languages of your choice (one of which is always The Language of the Stars), and two of: history, geometry, architecture, engineering, animal husbandry, ballistics, chemistry, medicine, acute hearing, 2x normal human vision, the ability to ignore pain.

A - Astral Carnivore, Clarity

B - Numen, Offal

C - Starlight

D - Host

Astral Carnivore: You can only eat meat, other food is indigestible to you. You can eat raw or spoiled meat without ill effects (literally rotting meat effects you as usual), and human meat counts as double rations for its weight. You have a mental inventory, which currently has a single slot, filled with the gift Clear Vision. If Clear Vision is ever not in your mental inventory, you immediately lose all your class templates and skills, but can now eat normally.

Clarity: Every point of exhaustion in your inventory grants you +1 INT, and otherwise affects you as normal.

Numen: Your mental inventory now holds [templates]x2 slots. You may spend a night without sleep, staring at the stars, to make an INT save. If you succeed, you gain a random gift from the table. If you fail, you get no sleep that night and additionally take d3 psychic damage from the poorly managed contact with the invisible things in the burning night sky. You may consume a dose of stimulants to reroll your INT save, and may do this as many times as you like taking dx psychic damage, where x is the number of doses consumed past the first. Gifts are stored in your mental inventory, and you can overload this inventory and accumulate parasites, as detailed below. Once gained, gifts are usually permanent.

Offal: You can make one dose of sedatives from a human heart, one dose of curatives from a human liver, and one dose of stimulants from a human brain. Preparing a single dose of any of these takes a full night without sleep. The stars must be able to see you. You can consume a dose of stimulants to prepare an additional dose - do this as many times as you like, taking dx psychic damage each time you do so, where x is the number of doses you consume past the first.

Starlight: When beneath starlight you add one point of temporary HP per gift in your mental inventory, and add 5ft to the range of your melee attacks per parasite. These effects disappear if you leave the starlight. The temporary HP replenishes at a rate of 1 per hour, back to its maximum.

Host: You benefit from the following:

• For every gift in your mental inventory you gain +1 INT, and for every parasite you gain +1 CON.
• When you die you will not leave a corpse - your body is stolen away by barbed limbs and shunted into the invisible corners of the world.
• You can use your own organs and limbs to replace other people's, and can replace your own with anyone else's. It takes one sleepless night under starlight for any foreign organ or limb to naturalise to your body and become 'donatable' this way.
• You may swallow an organ whole, and regurgitate it after 24 hours, transformed into any other organ you choose. If this organ is put inside someone (including yourself), they gain a parasite, rolled below. If the organ is a brain, then whoever you put it into immediately starts screaming terrible curses against all sentient life in the language of the stars. They become actively homicidal to everyone around them, immune to pain or fear, and capable of pushing their body in ways humans cannot (STR 18, +10 HP).

Gifts

• 1 - 4: Hyperfocus. 1 mental inventory slot. Choose one of your skills. You may now consume a dose of stimulants to perform a superhuman feat with it. A feat of superhuman ballistics might give you a roll to hit a particular person on a castle wall with a cannon. A superhuman feat of engineering might allow you to identify load bearing points in a structure, or calculate fluid dynamics accurately and immediately. A superhuman feat of pain suppression might let you fight on for a minute or two after losing your limbs or dropping to 0 hp. You take dx psychic damage, where x is the number of times past the first (per day) you have used this gift.
• 5 - 8: Parallel. 1 mental inventory slot. Choose two skills from the list above (or come up with some applicable alternatives with your DM). You may consume a dose of stimulants to gain access to them as normal for one hour. You may stack multiple instances of this skill, but each will require a separate dose of stimulants to unlock. You take dx psychic damage, where x is the number of times past the first (per day) you have used this gift.
• 9 - 10: Recall. 1 mental inventory slot. You have an imaginary room in your head, which you can populate with items that you touch in the real world. The room is 10ft x 10ft, and can be filled with as many items as you wish - however, once something is in the room, it will never leave. You can mentally enter the room yourself by meditating, and interact with these copied items. Books, maps, plans, schedules, etc. are completely intact. Weapons or other tools can be practiced with. Living things appear in the room as friendly, emotionless, docile NPCs with no memories, personality, or curiosity. Additional instances of this gift give you access to additional 10ft x 10 ft rooms.
• 11: Imago. 2 mental inventory slots. Your unarmed attacks deal an additional d4 cold damage and d4 fear damage, and require one fifth of the usual rations. Your face can no longer naturally express emotion - you must do this consciously, and it's never very convincing. You have -1 on reaction rolls. Each multiple increases the dice size by one.
• 12: Focussing Array. 2 mental inventory slots. You gain a gaze attack, which deals d6 cold and d6 fear damage to a single target who can see you. They may test DEX (with disadvantage the first time you do it) to close their eyes and avoid it - if they do so they are functionally blind. Disconcertingly, it originates in your open mouth. When you use it, your jaw unhinges slightly. Each multiple increase the dice size by one.
• 13 Additive. 2 mental inventory slots. Your blood turns clear as water, and burns like gasoline. It smells vaguely of sugar syrup if it burns. Small amounts can be bled without issue (to light tinder or soak a rag), but for a cup full you take 1 point of damage, and for a bottle full d3 points. Multiple results give you +1 CON, and extremely high blood pressure.
• 14 Security. 2 mental inventory slots. You are gifted a medium +1 machete which is completely invisible - it appears in your clasped together hands as your star watch ends. No one else can perceive it or pick it up. In your hands it does everything a machete does, and the corpses of intelligent beings slain with it count as double rations for anyone, not just you (even if eaten raw). The meat has an oddly sweet and synthetic taste. On each multiple roll you may transform this weapon into an invisible +1 weapon of your choice.
• 15: Navigator. 2 mental inventory slots. You may meditate to gain vision of yourself from directly above, provided the stars can see you. You can choose the height you wish to see from, up to 100ft. You are completely immune to cold damage. Additional rolls give you +1 CHAR, -1 WIS, and -1 to reaction rolls. Your eyes are completely wrong.
• 16: Captain Espatier. 3 mental inventory slots. You count as wearing plate, and hover about 10 inches from the ground, at all times. Blows are turned by solid air. You cannot stop smiling. Every day you spend with someone gives them a cumulative -1 to their reaction roll, to a maximum of -3. Multiples each add +1 to your AC.
• 17: Type Glorious. 3 mental inventory slots. You are gifted a permanently invisible Star Weapon. Roll it up here. It has no name. Multiples fully reload your star weapon, and give it an additional trait, if applicable.
• 18: Void Ghoul. 3 mental inventory slots. You no longer need to breathe. If you grapple someone, they take d12 cold damage per turn they spend grappled. You grow about a head taller, and twice as bulky - armour will need to be refitted. Multiples grant you +2 CON.
• 19: The Shout. 3 mental inventory slots. First, suck in air for as many turns as you wish - your jaw hyperextends as you do so. Then you begin to SCREAM, for as many turns as you sucked in air. Enemies who are capable of breaking immediately flee from you while the scream lasts, and take d2 psychic damage per turn they are exposed to it. Multiples grow the psychic damage dice by one. 
• 20: Uncounted Aeons of Our Simulated Trajectory: 4 mental inventory slots. You pass all INT checks - your INT stat is effectively infinite. Ranged attacks miss you on anything but a crit. You become immune to psychic and cold damage. All reaction rolls are at -4. There are rushing corridors of darkness at your shoulder. All entities will flee from your presence. Begin a countdown, starting at 100. Every time you slay an intelligent foe, tick it down by one. if it ever reaches 0, you are pulled jerkily into the air by invisible forces, accompanied by the blaring of strange horns and trumpets. You will never be seen again. Multiples add 100 to this score. Your character is aware of their own number at all times.

Parasites

For every slot that your mental inventory becomes overburdened, you gain a parasite, rolled below. Regardless of which parasites you host, you always take psychic damage equal to your current parasites if you fail an INT, WIS, or CHAR check.

• 1-5: Benign. Small tumours that grow on the inside of the brain. No additional effect.
• 6-7: Mind Tearers. Strange, black, hooked worms, that tunnel through flesh and organs without discrimination. For each Mind Tearer that you host, you additionally take d3 torn organ damage when you fail a mental check.
• 8-9: This Terrestrial Hell. Fear breeds in you. For each hosted Hell your threshold for panic is reduced by 2. You also suffer d3 psychic damage if you panic. Your organs darken over time, and take on the consistency of tar.
• 10-11: Sunworms. Tiny, live in your eyes, where they lay their eggs. One your first result, one eye is blinded, but emits light as a torch unless you cover it. You have -2 to hit with ranged weapons. On your second result you are blinded, and both eyes emit light this way. Consider retiring. One your third result you die. Your mouth, eyes and nose (and your skull, if cut open) radiate light.
• 12: Eaters. Every time you fail a mental check, you have a 1 in 2 chance that each Eater will devour one of your mental slots, starting with the highest, and working backwards. Gifts function normally until they are completely devoured. Slots opened up this way can be filled as normal. No effect on those without mental inventories.

Southern Gear

1. A large, well-trained, and very handsome dog with a winter coat. HD2, d8 bite, unarmoured but takes half damage from cold, unbreakable, will protect your body to the death if you fall.
2. A preserver, a small glass orb that outputs light (like a torch) and heat (like a hot stone in a blanket) indefinitely. With one of these you can protect someone from exposure - if you have a shelter built, you can protect up to ten people as long as they fit inside.
3. 2d3 shrunken heads. Each will absorb a single instance of psychic damage in your place.
4. Moon Goggles. Distinct from your sun goggles (you wear both at once), and made from smoked glass lenses instead of carved whalebone. Allow you to see as clearly in moonlight and starlight as you would in bright sunlight.
5. A trepanning drill. Use it to trepan someone (not yourself) - this takes an hour, and you must save DEX. On a success, the trepanned subject gains a single gift from the gift table, and loses a point of CON (note that since they do not possess a mental inventory, they will also need to roll parasites equal to the slots their gift takes up). On a failure, they still gain a gift but suffer -2 on all stats as you damage the brain. No one can be trepanned more than once.
6. A Star Pistol, rolled from these tables. It doesn't have a name. Unlike most star weapons, your pistol holds a single shot (or three shots, if you roll the Repeater trait). It can be reloaded by submerging it in a bucket of human blood for 10 hours. This spends the blood.

White City Facing

I wrote here about food, including food in the White City. 

Writing about food and the pleasures of eating and drinking (and coffee, and alcohol, and smoking) was, I think, the earliest version of an imagist-literary obsession of mine - trying to capture something specific and beautiful, and hard to do proper justice to, in language. Since then, other obsessions - light, architecture, art and art's function, 'perfected' bodies - have come and gone, but food and the pleasures of eating are the OG for me (complicated by illness later in life, but still keenly felt).

In the White City, they play the image game. This is the face. You play well (most people play well), and you have the respect of those around you, and you can be considered the right type of person. This is a more volatile security than similar positions in most cultures, and this is by design - the volatility is thought to keep people sharp, and makes room for dramatic reversals of fortune for individual players. This formally-encoded drama feeds into the game, provides it fuel, etc.

The people who live in the White City are strange, but they are still people. Not many of them (there are celebrated exceptions) can handle the idea of playing at literally all times, although there is a polite understanding that people should act as though everyone does do this. There are several culturally enshrined pressure release valves for Citizens. 

One (actually the biggest one, at least in the White City proper) is swimming in the sea. When the sea is mentioned in the game, it is with a sort of coy deferral - what could possibly be brought into relation with the sea? It is excessive to its place in the game, it contains too much; far, far more than cruelty and the future and the destiny of the emperor and the total hostility of the White City's great and terrible machine of war. To invoke the image of the sea is to provide another player with a neutral avenue for deescalation, should they wish to take it. Let's go for a swim together, and lie on the rocks and watch the sun grow red above us. We can get back to this tomorrow. 

Another is brunch. I had a chat with some of the lovely people on Phlox's discord about brunch the other day, and was surprised to learn that it still has a sort of ridiculous and middle class (derogatory) reputation. I grew up in Melbourne, which is a city where the institution of brunch is celebrated (I own, probably also in ridiculous and middle class (derogatory) ways) - a way of spending three or four hours of empty time with a friend or a small group, eating good food together, drinking stimulants (good coffee), catching up, all while the sun is working into its hottest period of the day. You don't (usually) get drunk, and you don't (usually) spend more than 25 dollars.

In the White City, this is the time where you don't have to maintain face. Most apartments in the city have a dedicated room for this (it will have stained-but-unpainted wooden shades, unembellished with images - these are moved around as the meal continues and the sun shifts in the sky, to allow for different 'room and sunlight' configurations. Guests usually take it in turns to set the shades in their favourite and most comfortable positions), and there are public eating houses where hundreds of citizens can sit together at vast communal tables and relax with the food and coffee and company. 

With great civic labour there must also be periods of rest - the exhalation after exertion, after trying for glory and after your success or your failure. Success and failure are strangely equivalent; they look like work, like striving. Rest is neither. Eat together, and swim in the sea. Tomorrow your service may begin anew. 

Room and sunlight configurations. Still from the (excellent) artist film SLOW ACTION, Ben Rivers, 2013, which can be found here. 

Fiction Drop - Sore Anthology

 

Another quick one - one of the reasons I haven't been as active on this blog this month is that I've been writing fiction commissions for a few different places. One of the these is an art-adjacent literature and poetry magazine called Sore Anthology, which launched last week. 

If you're interested in some non-elfgame writing of mine, you can find it and get a copy here :)

There are a bunch of cute etchings in it as well. 

Joesky tax!

d6 ways to put a Firefly in your game:

1. An NPC dies and an 8 foot tall plated mantis bursts out from the corpse, the legacy of a brief and intense affair in their youth.
2. The next time you roll a monster encounter, you instead enter the room to find is covered in blood, viscera, and moonlight. The gore-soaked bug thing turns to look at you, grins hugely, and immediately starts chatting you up.
3. This probably wasn't obvious enough in the post, but Fireflies are a type of celestial innocent. They are powered by a tiny sun, which turns into a tiny moon (located where the human brain would be) - very valuable to alchemists and wizards and can be used as a source of heat and light if cut out of them. All to say: you watch a shooting star turn into a burning comet, which smashes to earth nearby. If you investigate, you find a baby Firefly unconscious in the centre of a large crater, its protective slime ball already melting away into vapour.
4. You break open a lead-lined clay jar at the bottom of some subterranean murder hell. It's full of a protective slime ball that melts away in vapour...
5. You come across an apparently self-sustaining Firefly colony who live in peaceful seclusion in the mountains/forest. Each new generation (there are only ever two of them, dying and spawning anew) has their turn to be shocked and overjoyed at realising that they also Truly Love the only available option - the other Firefly. This has been going on for years at this point. 
6. You find what amounts to a dating profile pinned up in the centre of town. It lists an address, a series of preferences and selling points, and urges those interested to waste not a minute making that interest known. 

Extremophiles, the Old Chaos

Loch asked me a while ago about what he named The Old Chaos - the time before the world was divided into its proper orders via the radical separateness of language. 

I've written before about how Chaos is not an ideal cosmic force or a corrupting power in Barony - Chaos is what things look like without layerings of abstraction. The world as it is, denuded of attempts at categorisation. 

There actually were horrible things that lived at the dawn of creation though. The fact that they were (or are) not symbolically or spiritually opposed to something called Law or God doesn't mean that they weren't terrible and awesome. 

Down, down at the core, where fire and iron and earth and water and air are as one burning tumult. 

Thing Operant

A being of muscle and sinew and indestructible flesh-like-stone. Its entire mass is organised into four thick, radially arranged tentacles that meet in a 'knot' of material at the centre. The tentacles can subdivide (and re-cohere, once they have split) into thinner and more dextrous tendrils, and can do this infinitely, into fractally finer strands of sinuous muscle. It takes time and energy to do this, and the Thing will only split to the size required for whatever task it is currently focused on - its entire focus is on energy: how to get more, how to conserve what it has. There is no apparent upper limit to the subdivision - given time, a Thing Operant will be able to slice through flesh, bone, and adamant with a writhing forest of invisibly fine mono-filaments.

The nervous system and sense organs are distributed through the limbs - they can touch, smell, taste, hear (vibrations), sense heat at a range of 50ft, and perceive souls at a range of 1000ft. 

A Thing Operant, when stretched out, is about 15ft x 15ft, and weighs about 30 tons. If you get hit by one that's trying kill you, or grasped by a manipulator and flensed by its smaller feeler tendrils, you take 5d12 manipulator damage. 

If you are giving it trouble, it will grapple you (you can't win a STR check against one), and spend about an hour subdividing its manipulators to the requisite fineness before taking you apart at a cellular or molecular level: annihilation with no save. 

There's a good chance it will pick you up and taste/look at you with its tentacles, and then place you back where you were without harming you. The precision of its subdividing manipulators is indescribable to humans. Its tentacles could write poetry onto motes of dust if it wished.

A Thing Operant is not really intelligent, but it is biologically immortal, almost impossible to kill (they live in molten metal close to the core), and has a good facility with pattern recognition. You could probably teach one to speak if it came to the conclusion that speaking might get it more abundant energy. They are also curious creatures, and like taking things apart and putting them back together. 

PCs probably can't kill one, but if you need stats give it 40HD and an AC somewhere around 30.

Hoping that this will be the first of several horrible extremophiles. However would one fight them?!

Class: Firefly

 

Beloved Vayra asked me to blog this so that it never gets lost in the murk of the discord server.

Unsure if this is currently a thing that exists in Barony, I could be convinced, I like these guys. When did I become such a coward obviously this is canon. 

Class: Firefly

Skills: none.

Gear: nothing. 

A: Firefly

B: The Shape of a Life

Firefly: You are an eight foot tall humanoid insect. You:

• Have just been born, and have no knowledge of the world or the people in it.
• Have four arms, two of which end in broad and wickedly sharp mantis blades, each three feet long. These bladed arms give you two d8 melee attacks, and your remaining two arms end in humanoid hands, which can be used normally to hold weapons, shields, bows, whatever. This potentially allows up to three attacks in melee. 
• Are covered in thick natural carapace, which protects you as plate. This natural armour does not slow you, sink in water, give disadvantages on stealth or movement, or take up inventory.
• Can climb walls and ceilings, as permanent Spider Climb.
• Use a d12 for your HP die (unlike other classes, you roll HP for your A template instead of assuming a max roll).
• Permanently give off light equivalent to a torch. This shines evenly from every part of your body - if you are reduced to half hp, it is reduced to the light of a candle. While you possess only your A template, this light has all of the qualities of sunlight (plants will grow, vampires will burn, etc.). The hot wildness of youth! The sun and all its strength!
• Lose 1 maximum HP per day. 

In every other way, you are a baseline adventurer. Your extraordinary neuroplasticity means that you pick up your first language after an hour of hearing others speak it - this only works once, hope you get Common!

The Shape of a Life: If you make it to acquiring your B template, you go through the following changes:

• The light that you give off keeps its intensity, but grows silvery and subtle, and now has all the qualities of moonlight (vis Lycanthropes, magic doors, etc.). The wisdom that comes with a life well lived! Its softness! Its simplicity!
• You become fertile. Fireflies do not reproduce sexually; instead they must find True Love. This must be reciprocated, sincere, offered with full, informed consent, and does not have to be with another Firefly.
• If you do manage to find True Love before you die, each of you will spawn a single firefly offspring on your own deaths. Fireflies emerge (messily) from the corpses of their parents fully formed with their template A. Your own death will be soon (and might provide you with a new PC if you feel like playing another Firefly) - your partner's may be years or decades from now. Thanks to Vayra for this elegant suggestion, which is way better than my OG larvae idea. 

Consider including these rules. 

Probably a PICTURE coming soon. 

 

Quixotic Pursuits - Part One

The duel with Loch continues, blows rain down with extraordinary ferocity... Today's prompt:

Quixotic Pursuits

The Old Errant

Normally when an errant from the steppe has journeyed far and gotten wisdom, they travel home to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Just as commonly, an errant will be killed in the attempt. Vanishingly few errants grow old. 

He is called (still) The Youth Whose Arms are Birds, Who Feel the Expansion of Air in More Intimate Flight. He is old, shrewd, very sharp, very perceptive. His beard is long and silver. He never thought that retiring to marriage, and the business of horse and cattle ranching, looked much like wisdom - he still believes this, even in the holy and by-now unconquerable loneliness of his later years. He is completely and scrupulously courteous, though not extremely friendly. If he likes you, and he likes most people until the first time they give him a reason not to, he will talk with you about books that he likes, and protect you from harm (he is extremely good with a spear). 

If he doesn't like you he will leave. He doesn't like fools, bullies, the incurious, or the bloodthirsty. If you are obviously an actively evil bastard, he will probably try to kill you, without fuss, while your sleep.

The Old Errant owns a thin mare, a long spear and a long knife, a buckler, wine and rations, and a cheap chap book that he writes in to pass the time. If you read them you will find that it is mostly nonsense stories, full of baroque wordplay (a rough analogue would be Carroll; more The Hunting of the Snark than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).

He also owns his star weaponry, a suit of pearlescent star metal armour that he named over fifty years ago, when he first set out on his errantry. 

The Old Errant

HD4, spear +1, dagger, armour as: plate +1 and buckler. 

The Old Errant is totally immune to fear damage and morale checks. He can choose at any time to become invisible to entities. When dressed in Birds, Who Feel the Expansion of Air in More Intimate Flight, he does not feel pain, moves silently, and can paralyse someone with a touch (lasts one hour, CON save to resist) - muscles lock into horrible, screaming rigidity. 

You will encounter him at dusk, planning his assault on the hide. He will explain to you clearly what he is doing, and tell you to leave - he does not expect to survive. He says that three ogres have butchered the entire population of a Baronial town half a day's march north, and that he has tracked them to this spot. He will attack while they sleep tonight, and kill them or be killed. If you offer to help and look like you can handle yourself he will accept with gratitude, and bow to each of you in an old fashioned, courtly style. 

The Hide

The Hide has not been made by ogres - it actually houses three Chemical Courtesans; the remains of one of the White City's genocide squads. 

What happened is this: the squad were dispatched to investigate and take control of an Old Capital research site, which the White City thought might house some ancient military hardware. While on reconnaissance in the area the unthinkable happened: one of their number was taken by surprise, without her armour and weapons, and killed by a group terrified hunters. In retaliation, the remaining three Courtesans tracked the unfortunates back to their settlement and killed everyone inside, dismembering the bodies, and burning the town to the ground. This was last night. The Old Errant came across the charnel house that morning, and followed the tracks back here.

The Hide itself is a simple, temporary wooden wilderness shelter, built from neatly chopped timber and fixed with rope. The Courtesans have rigged noisemakers at the boundaries, which the Lone Errant will stumble into if left to his own devices. 

The Courtesans are currently mourning the loss of their sister/lover, and are extremely high. Two and Four are in the hide, passing a long bone pipe back and forth and debating whether the three of them should risk descending at less than full strength. One is sitting alone, hunched over in full armour, smoking by herself and watching the leaves move in the forest trees. If the noise makers are triggered, all three will grab the black swords at their sides and investigate. They will be murderous, intoxicated, and more or less impossible to reason with. If you don't trigger the noisemakers, you have a very good chance at an ambush/surprise round.

Two and Four

HD4, Black Sword x2 (d10), unarmoured, movement: as human, disposition: really angry, really high.

They don't feel pain, and if they get to their stash of stimulants (one turn to get there) they will take them and become a lot more dangerous (sword does 2d10, they gain 2d6 temporary HD, speed is now: as horse). 

All Courtesans save and test STR and CON with advantage. 

One

HD4+4, Black Sword x2 (d10), armoured as plate, movement: as human, disposition: really angry, not quite as high as her squad mates, in command, very slightly more open to being reasoned with.

One doesn't feel pain. She has her stimulants on her, and will take them if you don't get her to deescalate immediately (with the same effects listed above). Once she is dosed up, parley is impossible. She also has a single dose of Psychotics, which make her totally immune to damage for a turn. If she takes these she will start screaming and breathing thick black smoke like a furnace. 

All Courtesans save and test STR and CON with advantage. 

The Black Site

Just north of the Hide is a pit in the earth that leads down into the complex that the genocide squad are here to clear and hold. Part two of this dungeon coming soon...

Island Hopping

Herron, Master

A tall and unsmiling man - unsmiling because he is an introvert, and finds people difficult, not because he is unfriendly. He likes the sea and the wind, and solitude, and his boat, the Gywngalet, and he likes bringing people and cargo from the mainland to the Lantern Berth. His services are relatively cheap.

It takes a day and a night to sail from the capital to the Berth, north along the coast, and then out into open sea. You and your companions are making the passage for your own reasons. Herron will usually stay awake for the whole trip, but he will advise you to sleep on the deck and tell you not to worry. The breeze is warm, and you doze easily, lulled by the movement of the waves. 

When you wake, Herron is gone, and the Gwyngalet drifts without direction. It is early morning, and the colours of the morning are just starting to illuminate the sky. You can still see the ragged dark outline of the Lantern Birth, and the twinkling of its red and blue lighthouses, on the horizon.

The Gwyngalet

A fleet, shallow-keeled craft with a handsome square-cut sail and brightly painted sidings. Its timbers are pale yellow, nearly white, and the windows of its small cabin are bordered sections of colourful stained-glass. There are oars for manoeuvring without wind, and the sail is slightly larger than standard for a craft this size, giving the Gwyngalet an excellent sailing speed. 

It will bear you well enough close to the shore, but its light frame and poor displacement cannot withstand the rough seas further out. It has a cargo storage on deck - a simple cleared area that can be covered with a tied-down and waxed tarpaulin. The cabin sleeps 2 comfortably or 6 uncomfortably. In the summer and spring you can sleep on the deck, beneath the stars.

It has ample store for rations, water, and trade goods, and would make a fine boat for island hopping, if indeed the islands in the sunset exist. 

Aboard are 2000s worth of trade goods (textiles), 50 rations (including a cask of drinking water), and the ropes, tar, canvas, and tools to maintain the craft. 

If you pull into the Lantern Berth, you will be asked to account for the disappearance of the Master - Herron was well known and respected on the island. 

The Horizon

As you survey your surroundings from the newly empty boat and try to collect yourself, you see something supposed to be impossible. Out to sea, past the Lantern Berth, so far out that they could be visual distortions or tricks of the pre-dawn darkness, are two dim shapes rising from the water.

All have heard the stories of the islands beyond the Berth, and of their fantastic inhabitants - and all know that the islanders swear that they are real. But, to your knowledge, none from the mainland have ever actually seen them. 

Out at Sea at Dawn Ravenscar, David Baumforth

Food!

Princess Mononoke

Glaugust is here, one of the prompts is from Vyra is about food. 

I have had a hard time writing anything good for the blog recently, partly because I've had fiction writing to get done, partly because my job is overwhelmingly busy at the moment, and partly because I was trying to finish the weird dungeon that just went up, and struggling through misgivings about it. 

The wise and kind Purplecthulhu has correctly identified that a vibe shift is in order. 

Food

The Barony:

• Most people eat a salted meat oat porridge day to day as travel rations. This is most likely what 'rations' represent, if you have bought them in the Barony. You fry them in oil and then add water, or cook them in milk, or mix an egg through. Usually the oats and the meat come separately, and there are beloved mixtures of both that give subtle changes in flavour. Popular additions that can be found in the wilds while travelling: honeycomb, herbs from the roadside, berries, nuts, etc. etc. 
• For non-travel food, fish and seafood are a huge part of diet, so much so that settlements further inland are thought to be malnourished and deprived because they don't have easy access to them. Most fish is cooked with citrus, which grows in the northern Barony, or apples, which grow further south. Always eaten with fried bread. 
• Potatoes exist and are beloved. The miracle of the soil. 
• Expensive meals are mostly sweets and pastries, both of which are a delicacy in the capital. The Baronials are extremely fond of them. Common: Turkish Delight, candied fruits, and laboriously constructed and ornamented pastries. Fine-milled wheat flour exists, but is uncommon and expensive, associated almost entirely with sweet pastries. Most bread is dark, salted, and eaten toasted. 
• Alcohol in the Barony, like in the White City, is mostly harsh, clear white spirits, which are heated before you drink them. Beer and wine don't really exist as we know them, but there are various, usually sweet, 'specialist' alcohols made from fermented fruit. They will all get you extremely fucked up. 

The Steppe

• People in the Steppe eat lots of meat. They cut it into chunks, rub it with salt and spices, skewer it, and cook in over a flame. They are especially fond of interspersing chunks of fat along the skewer, so that it partially melts on the fire. 
• Most cooking, if you have the time to cook, is in stew pots. They are known for spicing their food to levels unacceptable to Northerners. Most stews have a meat and potato base, but they have other tubers in the south as well, which often take the place of potatoes. Then lots of salt, lots of oil, lots of spice. 
• 'Rations' in the south are probably jerky, black bread, and maybe hard white cheese made from horse or dog milk. Expensive rations might include imported dried fruits. 
• Steppe nomads living by the sea will fish, but they don't have the same relish for seafood as their northern neighbours. 
• Expensive Steppe meals will be hospitality banquets, featuring whole roasted animals, tubers cooked a hundred ways, buckets of 'popped' and salted maize kernels, strong red wine, and bitter green salad leaves (a local type of rocket hardy enough to survive in the cold). 
• Other than their strong wine, Steppe nomads are obsessive about clean, fresh, cold water. They have a hundred ways of talking about it, and ascribe it healing properties and sweeping health benefits, often to the amusement of others. 

Further South

• The Southern Nomads are said to eat people, prepared the same way the Northerners prepare horse and cattle flesh. The two kingdoms don't get along - this might be a myth.
• Certainly not a myth: the Southern Nomads produce the only hard candies in the world, and trade them with their neighbours for extortionate amounts of money. They have an aniseed-ish taste, keep well in paper wrapping, and are each worth their weight in silver.
• Apparently they also make wine out of spinal fluid and petroleum? That can't be true. 

The White City

• Rice is the staple crop, grown in the northern empire and exported everywhere in enormous, centrally controlled caravans. 'Rations' are going to have a sticky rice ball base, and will probably layer on plantains and spiced meat or fish as a filling. A larger, sit down meal will have these same ingredients, but more of everything and not rolled into a ball.
• Seafood is just as important in the Empire as it is in the Barony. They love fish, olive oil, octopus, pepper, cress, spinach. 
• The white spirit that the Baronials drink was invented here, and drinking is a serious past time. You only ever drink it hot. Water is cold, alcohol is hot. Many apartments in the white city will have a dedicated room and stove for drinking together. 
• They ship ice from the south for their water, at enormous expense.

The Mountains

• The mountaintop walled gardens are the only place in the world where tomatoes, strawberries, peaches, and roses grow. You can steal them and try to do it elsewhere but it won't work. Something about the mountaintops sustains them. 

BONUS: a real, non-elfgame recipe!

My favourite liver pasta. You need:

• A courgette
• A beef or lambs liver
• A jar of kimchi
• Pasta

Slice the liver very finely, and then fry it brown in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Cut up the courgette into thin, quartered slices, and fry that in with the blood and oil/salt mixture. You want the liver and courgette browned but not burned, and lots of blood and oil in the pan.

Mix through the kimchi to taste, and simmer the whole lot until it's piping hot. 

Mix through pasta, keep in on the high heat for about thirty seconds, allowing some liquid to cook off. 

Serve with cold sparkling water, unless ye be a heathen tap water drinker. 

The Worst Place in the Capital

Somewhere in the butchers' district of the Capital there is a nondescript iron door in the side of one of the meat processing warehouses. The local bravos (the 52 Girls) know it, but won't discuss it. If pressed they will tell you that on the other side of that door is...

The Worst Place in the Capital

The iron door is locked at all times, and the keys are kept by two senior members of the Baroness' spy service. Once every three or four mounts one of them will arrive with a bound prisoner, and enter with them. An hour or two later they will leave, without the prisoner. 

A locked iron door will not stop any determined adventurer. 

On the other side of the door is a tiny wooden room, in the shape of a cube - 5ft to a side (tall characters will need to stoop); wooden floors, ceiling, and walls; three sets of thick leather restraints bolted into the wall; and nothing else. 

There are 4ft tall wooden doors on the other three walls. You are now in the Box Maze.

The Box Maze

A series of small rooms, each 5ft - 10ft wide and long. Each has its own unique contents, the monsters move between them. A 'reveal': there are more boxes above and below - the structure is 3 dimensional. This is not obvious to the people moving through its 'ground' layer.

The walls of the boxes are variously timber, paper, or iron. Timber walls can be battered down, and paper walls can but cut or even pushed through. Some walls have been disguised to look like another material. Note that this only applies to interior walls of the structure, all exterior walls are iron and cannot be battered down. 

All tunnels are 2.5 ft wide, and share their walls with the rooms they border. Their exterior walls are iron. They can only be traversed single file. 

Walls interior walls that are shared between rooms can be of two materials, ie iron walls with timber cladding, or timber walls with paper glued to one surface. 

You cannot sleep anywhere in this dungeon; a strange mental static makes it impossible. The entire dungeon counts as dungeon depth 3. 

All ceilings are 5ft high, all doors are 4ft high. If you have to stoop (most humans), then you roll to hit at -1.

The box maze is tiny, and sounds travels. For every fifteen minutes spent in the Box Maze, or whenever the PCs make a loud noise, roll on the following encounter table:

• 1 - 5: Nothing. Silence and dead air, smells of filth. 
• 6 - 12: Stealthy movement close by. It stops if you stop, and starts again when you resume your own movement. Further rolls on this table are at +2.
• 13 -16: 2d6 Ghoul Cats, lead by a Hunter Chief. They are either stalking the PCs slowly and silently, or running through the space at high speed, fleeing something else. 
• 17 - 19: A Maze Demon. The specific Demon will depend on the room it is encountered in. 
• 20: The Machete Gang enter the maze. You can hear them yelling to one another and laughing; cheerful, aggressive, unhinged, completely unafraid. Further rolls of 20 result in a combat encounter with the gang as below, and further rolls on this table are at +2. 
• 21+: A combat encounter with the Machete Gang - they hack through the walls and kick down the doors. If they have been killed or have fled, this is instead d4 Hunter Killers who have slunk up into the Box Maze from the lower warren. 

The scale of the Box Maze is much tighter and smaller than typical dungeons. A single square on the above map is 2.5 ft at a side. 

Rooms - Ground Level

1. Entrance. Wooden walls, with four sets of thick leather restraints bolted into them. The smell on entry is foul; a mixture of rot, dust, mildew, and shit. A lit and filthy lantern in a corner gives poor illumination. 
2. Bone Storage. Wooden walls. Bones from around 30 human and maybe 200 cat skeletons, stacked neatly by type against the walls. 
3. Mirror Room. Paper walls, stretched between wooden frame. Lit with a lantern. About twenty large shards of mirror have been propped against the walls. They are dirty and some of them are cracked, but they give good reflections. Entities will refuse to be summoned into this room, and if forced to will take 1 psychic damage per turn. Wooden ceiling - if you cut through it you will find yourself in rooms 8 or 9 of the second level. 
4. Bone Tools. Paper walls. A crude table made from an overturned crate, with a sharpened light paring knife on it. The knife has been used to make hundreds of tools out of human and cat bones. You can find d8 of each of bone whistles, lockpicks, and shivs (light weapons that break on a critical miss or a max damage roll), as well as cutlery, awls, needles, and buttons. There is also 20d6 silver worth of carved bone rings. The passage to the north is accessible by cutting through the paper. The room is unlit. 
5. Water. Iron walls. Full of 30ish buckets and tubs or iron and wood. The wooden ones are caulked with human and cat fat. All are full of water which smells gaggingly foul, but is potable. An iron grate in the ceiling drips bloody water constantly - runoff from the slaughterhouses above. 
6. Story Room. Paper walls, painted onto with bright, primary oil colours. It seems that five different artists have been given different sections of the walls to work on, but all of them were using the same paint. Painty human foot and boot prints on the wooden floor. The scenes are mostly of the sun and sky, with a few diagrammatic paintings that show the correct methods for building an animal snare, for gutting and dressing, and for tanning leather and rendering tallow. Lit with four lamps, one in each corner. A row of glass jars along the northern wall are filled with urine.
7. Pigment Room. Iron walls. Unlit. Four piles of luridly bright powdered pigment heaped against one wall, one red, one blue, one green, one yellow. There are also two large iron dishes, one full of fat and one full of petroleum. The pigment is valuable - about 200s per INV slot. If you touch the eastern wall, it is hot to the touch.
8. Heat. Iron walls, iron ceiling. Unlit. The room is about 40 degrees Celcius most of the time, but sometimes the ceiling glows red hot (which sheds a very dim light) and the temperature raises to 80 degrees. 1 in 20 chance of the room currently burning each time you enter - if it is, anyone inside takes d6 damage per turn until they leave. There are two horribly burned human bodies in here - the occupants of the maze use the room for executions. 
9. Oubliette. Iron walls, unlit. The entrance is trapped with large and very sharp bone caltrops, scattered across the entrance. If you have a light source you will see them, but entering at a run will incur d3 piercing damage. There is a pile of bedding or clothing bunched into a corner, and two cat cadavers lying by it, bound up in sinew cords. If you search the bedding you will find a pair of very beautiful lead and diamond earrings worth 250s, and a small leather satchel with 3 doses of sedatives and 1 curative inside.
10. Butchery. Wooden walls. The floors are covered in offal and blood, and reek. There are 8 dressed and skinned cadavers, 2 human and 6 cat, hanging upside down from iron hooks in the ceiling. There is also a heavy wooden table with a lit lantern, a cleaver, and a paring knife lying on it. Bloody cats skins lie folded into a corner. If you go through the wooden ceiling you will end up in room 2 or 3 of the upper level, depending on where you cut. 
11. Nest. Unlit, wooden door, steel walls. Chewed paper cubby holes line the walls, cat filth mires the floor. There are 4d10 harmless Ghoul Kittens staring out at you from the openings, and d3 Ghoul Cats led by a Ghoul Cat Den Mother (stats as Hunter Chief). They are defending their young and are unbreakable. 
12. Glass Nest. Unlit, wooden door, steel walls. Chewed paper cubby holes line the walls, cat filth mires the floor. There are 4d10 harmless Ghoul Kittens staring out at you from the openings, and a single Ghoul Cat Den Mother (stats as Hunter Chief). She is defending her young and is unbreakable. Scattered around the entrance are cat-shit-smeared shards of broken glass - if you cross them wearing soft or no shoes, or if your are knocked prone on them in light or no armour, you take d3 damage and save CON against a random disease.
13. Snares. Paper walls, lit with two small lanterns. The walls are lined with crude string and wire snares, obviously designed to trap Ghouls Cat. There are d6 rations worth of dead cat caught in them, but the meat is tainted and, even after cooking, eating these rations will provoke a CON save against a random disease. There is also a 3 in 6 chance that a live Ghoul Cat is caught in one of the snares, spitting mad and terrified. It will attack you at -4 if you come near it. 
14. Record Room. Iron walls, unlit. The walls are painted with thirty different common Aronial first names, and tally marks against each. Most names have 5 or 6, a few towards the start of the list have between 20 and 30. There are 6 glass jars full of petroleum in this room. There is also a thick, floor-to-ceiling iron pipe in the north-east corner that has been broken open, and which flows with bloody water once or twice a day. 1 in 20 this is happening when you enter the room. 
15. Refuse. Iron walls, unlit. Completely stuffed with decomposing corpses (human and cat), smashed furniture, rusted iron machinery, and rotten timbers. Mould and rust stain the floor. It smells of blood but also more strongly of rot. Searching in the refuse for an hour will yield d10/2 silver. If you're pushed into it, or press in without being careful, you must test CON or be caught on an edge and take d3 slashing damage which exposes you to disease. 
16. Drugs. Paper walls, no entrance, unlit. A wicker basket in the centre of the floor contains 12 dried out cat amygdalas. These count as stimulants, but provoke a WIS check if you ingest them. On a failure you become non-verbal for an hour, and lose 1 WIS permanently. Also two jars of drinkable water, and a wooden bowl full of black sludge that smells strongly of liquorice. This is a strong sedative, strong enough to allow you to sleep in the box maze (the only way to do this, regular sedatives won't cut it). The bowl has d3 doses remaining. If you sleep in the box maze, and you enter the dreamlands, you can try to talk to the Cat King as he used to be, before he went mad. He will repeatedly tell you to leave this place forever, and is of little other use. 
17. Conclave. Wooden walls, lit with 3 lanterns. This is where the Maze Demons gather to discuss the governance of their room-territories. It is swept and clean. There are four wooden daises along the four walls of the room, and a central circle made from thick red paint. In the centre of the painted circle are neatly folded (but dirty) judges robes, a jewelled sceptre (silver and opal) worth 450s, and a crown made from twisted wire. 
18. Leather. Wooden walls, lit with two lanterns. 4d10 cat skins stretched on wire and timber frames. A table with a paring knife, and several smaller frames for stretching tendons for rope. There are hot metal pipes running across the ceiling, and the room is warmer than most of the others. If you go through the ceiling, you will find yourself in room 4 of the upper levels. 
19. Fortress. Iron walls, unlit. Currently unlocked, but the iron doors both have iron bolts on the inside, solid enough to withstand determined assault. There are three muskets in this room, propped against the wall, one of which is loaded and ready to fire. 
20. Books. Iron walls, unlit. This room has a tiny opening in the ceiling, through which the meat plant workers dump books and other paper waste every few days. These are brought to the Paper Maker at 22. If you search the stack you will find nothing of value. The books are, of course, highly flammable. 
21. Library. Iron walls, unlit. Where the books that are worth keeping are stored, for the pleasure of the Paper Maker. There are probably 200 books in this room, d6 of which are worth 10s apiece (rare editions; the Paper Maker has a specific but developed taste). To find the d6 that are worth something, you would need to search for 30 minutes. 
22. The Paper Maker. A large iron room, lit by four lanterns in the corners. Dominating the entire centre of the room is the Paper Maker (details below), a long-limbed giant for whom the room is a hideous confinement. He wears an iron mask with a lock on the side, and has finger painted his own skin with bright and colourful fools motley. There are two pits in the floor that lead down to the lower level, where the Maze Demons bring the waste that they produce. If you harm the Paper Maker in any way, all surviving Maze Demons will converge on this room and fight you to the death. 
23. Wardrobes. Two identical rooms with paper walls, lit by lanterns. They each contain clothing and armour hung on racks. The clothes vary; there are lots of rags, but also richly ornamented jackets and other pieces from the Baronial elite. Each room contains d3 costumes or pieces worth 40s, jewellery worth d6x10s, d3 sets of light armour, and 1 in 2 chances of one set of medium armour. Each room also has a floor to ceiling mirror installed on one of its walls, enough to upset entities, but not enough to stop them from being summoned. 
24. Stocks. Paper walls, unlit. Two heavy wooden stocks, stained with blood, unoccupied. They are not secured with locks, but with thick iron bars that slide through the iron islets and are not reachable by the one restrained. A heavy bone saw hangs on the wall, as described in the entry for the Maze Demons. 
25. Blood. Paper walls, unlit. 4d10 glass jars full of blood, source unknown. It has settled and clotted. Probably used for food. There are also 4 undried cat amygdalas and one larger amygdala, each in their own jar. The cat amydalas let you attack once more per turn than you would normally be able to, but reduce your WIS and INT by d3 permanently once the effects wear off (the end of the combat). The larger amygdala has the same effect, but lasts for a day, after which you must save WIS or die as your heart bursts in your chest. If you survive, you still suffer the WIS and INT loss. 
26. Paper Lanterns. Paper walls, painted white. Lit by a single lantern in the centre, which, unlike the others in the maze, is directional. There are a number of thin paper sheets that can be held in front of the lantern and projected onto the walls - some of them blocks of solid colour, but others scenes of the outside, of the sun, of mountains and of the sea. If you start projecting images like this, any Maze Demons who witness you do so will become non hostile and remain that way. They may follow you around, but they won't attack you. If you take the lantern from the room, all Maze Demons who know this will attempt to kill you on sight. 
27. Strong Box. Iron walls, unlit. A large iron lock box dominates the centre of the room. It is locked, and the Maze Demon who claims this section of the maze holds the key. Inside are 2d10 human heads in various stages of decomposition. 
28. Cat Pen. Iron walls, and iron doors with bolts on the inside. A natural fortress. Three iron pipes run from floor to ceiling, each with a living Ghoul Cat chained to it by the neck. None of them have enough slack to get to one another (the room is 5ft wide, the chains are very short), and all are frantic with terror and anger. They will attack anyone who enters within their range. 
29. Glass storage. Paper walls, lit with a single lantern. Hundreds of carefully stacked, intact glass bottles and receptacles line the walls. Four small bottles at the entrance are filled with petroleum, and one is filled with milk (1 ration). 
30. Clay works. Iron walls, lit with two lanterns. The iron floor has been pulled up in sections, revealing pits in the earth beneath. These are shallow and full of brackish water, but are obviously clay pits. Lumps of wet clay sit around the lip. There are approx 150 small, unfired clay bowls and vessels sitting around the walls. 
31. Oil Room. Iron walls, unlit. The floor is covered in about 0.5cm of thick and foul smelling petroleum. It leaks from cracks in the ceiling, and also covers one wall. 

Rooms - Upper levels

1. Cat King. Paper Walls. This room is filled with half eaten and rotting cat carcasses. It is inhabited by the terrible Cat King (see below), the reason why you can't sleep in this place. There are ten dishes set out, each full of milk. Lit by two lanterns. 
2. Butler's Room. Paper walls, unlit, bedding piled in a corner, a nice suit hung on the wall. A rapier under the bedding. The Maze Demon whose territory includes this room is the butler for the Cat King, and refills his bowls. When they do so they wear the suit. 
3. Coloured Glass Store. Paper walls, unlit. About twenty stained glass windows, smashed into shards, which have been rearranged on the floor to resembled a large, sliming face. The leadwork has been twisted into a corner. 
4. Queen's Nest. Unlit, paper walls. Chewed-paper cubby holes line the walls, cat filth mires the floor. There are 6d10 harmless Ghoul Kittens staring out at you from the openings, and 2d6 Ghoul Cats led by the Cat Queen (stats as Hunter Chief). They are defending their young, and are unbreakable. 
5. The Queen's Larder. Three barely decomposed human bodies, neatly chopped up (limbs and heads removed, gutted, quartered) and variously nibbled on. 
6. Hidden Jeweller. Paper walls, unlit. 6d20s worth of silver and gold jewellery lying on a solid wooden table, all of which has been painted over with thick oil paint in bright, primary colours. Worth twice its value with the paint on it to a collector. 
7. The Dreaming Room. Paper walls, unlit. A large glass jar holds 10 doses of the black sedative from room 16 of the ground floor. The Butler does their best to dream with the Cat King, and to record the dreams. There are walls drawings and notebooks full of shapes and meandering images, and also prose accounts that sound like it always sounds like when you try to record a dream. You can nearly taste the frustration. It looks like they've been at this for years.
8. The King's Hoard. Paper walls, unlit. 300+6d10 silver in cash, 200+4d10s in fine jewellery, pushed against the walls of the room. 
9. The King's Executioner. Paper Walls, unlit. A single Hunter Killer, decked in exquisite-if-mismatched armour that has been cobbled together from different human suits of plate (as Hunter Killer, but armour as plate). Sits coiled and dozing around the Butler if they haven't yet been killed - the two will fight together if angered. 

The Lower Chamber

A stone-vaulted chamber, with no doors or other means of egress. The only way in or out are the two tunnels from the Paper Maker's chamber, which both open into the ceiling of the larger of the two chambers. The entire space is buried waist deep in sludge and foulness, and home to four feral Hunter Killers, who occasionally creep up into the maze to hunt cats and people. 

It is unlit, and the conditions mean that most people will be rolling at -1 to hit while sloshing through the filth. You are also exposed to disease while down here, and without Prophylactics must save again each time you take physical damage. 

BESTIARY

Pin Leeches

Horrible vermin that live in the maze. A pin leech is a black worm about 5cm long and a 1mm wide, that can move very quickly by violently whipping its head around and pulling itself along like an inchworm. 'Leech' is a misnomer as they don't suck blood; instead they burrow into dead or unconscious bodies and eat them from the inside. They hate light, and will usually keep out of sight in the crevices and walls of the Box Maze, but if they sense carrion thousands of them will swarm out and begin to feed. 

If at any point a someone falls unconscious, or is wounded badly enough that they cannot move, AND they are in partial or total darkness, the pin leeches will emerge and begin to devour them. For each turn in these conditions, they take d3 worm damage. Another character can stand over them with a torch to prevent this, and holding a torch over the body will disperse any leeches already attached. 

Cat Ghouls

Ghouls in the Barony are not a specific type of monster, they are simply people who eat other people, and who have grown to enjoy it. Cat Ghouls eat other cats. They are mangy, filthy, staring, spitting, yowling, murderous bastards. Each is about the size of a doberman. They are not intelligent, but possess excellent hunting instincts.

Cat Ghoul, HD1, light slashing claws, unarmored, speed: twice human and never takes falling damage or tests for feats of balancing of acrobatics, disposition: the most psychotic cat you've ever met, who has learned to treat humans as prey animals. 

All Cat Ghouls can heal themselves fully by eating the corpse of another Cat Ghoul. 

Cat Ghoul Hunter Chief, as above but HD3, attacks twice from ambush, deals +3 damage to characters who are at 50 percent or less of their HP, and can speak common in a horrible, yowling cat voice. It will mostly just talk about wanting to torture you to death, but might also taunt or try to scare you from another room if it knows where you are. This is very unsettling, and also noticeably weird - even the smartest Baronial cats shouldn't be able to talk outside the dreamlands. 

Maze Demons

Look a bit like demons, but aren't. They live in the maze, and have had their minds badly affected by it over the years. All the Maze Demons know one another and vie for territory, resources, and carrion. Rely on stealth and ambush to kill things - ideally when their targets are occupied fighting something else. They usually cover themselves from head to toe with clothing, armour, bandages, etc. - if you peel it all away you will find an emaciated and bug-eyed human being.

Roll up d6 Maze Demons to populate the Box Maze. They each have d3 HD, and a random combination of armour and weapons, rolled on tables below. Maze Demons with the same armour and weapons live and hunt together as a family. Give each Demon or Demon family its own territory in the maze (divide the rooms evenly between however many you have) - this is what you encounter on the appropriate roll. 

Maze Demon

HD1-3, random armament (roll below), random armour (roll below), movement: like a human and like a spider and like a worm, disposition: like a human/spider/worm, also murderous and calculating. 

Maze Demons are just as intelligent as humans, and most of their time is spent thinking about how to use the maze and its traps to kill things. They are immune to poison and disease, and know about every trap in the maze, so will only trigger them if forced to by someone else. 

Most of the time they move very slowly, and very quietly. 

This Maze Demon is armed with:

1. Nothing, will try to strangle you if it can.
2. A light butcher's knife. 
3. A pair of crude light claws, bound to the hands and made from multicoloured shards of stained glass. They shatter, first one, then the other, and are rendered useless, on a critical miss, or if they deal max damage. 
4. A long length of iron piping, as a two-handed medium club with -1 to hit. 
5. A lasso and a light cudgel. The lasso is a ranged weapon useable at 10ft, with -1 to hit. If it hits you, you trip and fall prone, where you remain until you spend a single attack cutting (if you have access to a slashing weapon), or a whole turn undoing, the rope. If you are crit with the lasso it instead tightens around your neck, and you take d3 damage and 1 point of fatigue per turn it remains there. 
6. A rusted medium cross knife, taken years ago from an unfortunate bravo. It breaks on a critical miss, but can still be used as an improvised weapon after it does.
7. An elaborately papier-mâchéd heavy mallet. The papier-mâchè has been applied over the top of a very real, heavy, and solid iron mallet, which functions as expected. 
8. A large medium bone saw, which rolls to hit at -1 in combat, but which, against restrained targets, automatically crits, and treats every roll on the death and dismemberment table as 'saw off a limb or head of your choice'. Losing your head is fatal; losing a limb is immediately fatal if you fail a CON save (shock), and, even if you pass, very swiftly fatal thereafter if you can't stop the bleeding. 

This Maze Demon is clothed in:

1. Layers and layers of filthy rags. Foul smelling, unarmoured. 
2. A strange, foreign-looking iron helmet, and what appears to be a large curtain or heavy blanket. AC 12, -2 on initiative because the helmet has a closed visor.
3. Makeshift leathers made from stolen belts, cinched tight around limbs, with odd pieces of scrap iron woven through them. Looks extremely uncomfortable to wear, but gives protection as light armour. The whole has been soot-darkened black.
4. Elaborate, and elaborately painted, papier-mâché armour. Very beautiful to look at. The colours are something like fools' motley, and the face mask is of an animal. Exquisite craftsmanship, which anyone with Artist templates will know immediately on looking at it. Would be worth 200s to a collector if it can be retrieved intact. Protects as medium armour once, and is ruined afterwards. 
5. A butcher's apron and gloves, and an odd, featureless wooden mask. As light armour. 
6. A suit of rusted and squealing plate that its wearer can barely move in. It has been painted in bright colours, just like the papier-mâché armour listed above. Protects as heavy armour, but squeals loudly when its wearer moves, and reduces movement speed by half. 
7. Diseased and stinking blood and excrement. Unarmoured. If it grapples you or deals damage with an unarmed attack, you are exposed to a random disease. 
8. Naked. Movements are usually slow and languid but sometimes drops into a fast, jerky crawl. Accompanied by odd visual distortions around the limbs and face. You cannot see the face, even looking directly at it. You cannot say why, but you cannot see the face. Unarmoured, immune to psychic damage, cannot be surprised, always knows your location if you can see it. 

The Machete Gang

16 violent, cruel, and frightening men who haunt the maze in a pack. Unlike everything else in here, they can leave whenever they wish, and have normal lives 'on the outside'. The other monsters are afraid of them, and will always avoid them. They have stats as men at arms, but are unarmoured and carry medium machetes. While at least 10 of them live, they do not test morale. When more than one of them attacks a single target during the same combat round, all of them get +1 to hit, and their hits additionally deal 1 fear damage. If you ever lose your nerve per morale rules, their machete attacks additionally deal +1 damage and impose a -2 penalty on the death and dismemberment table for the duration of the combat.

Hunter Killer

Hunter-Killers are large (like 8 foot long) weasels, about as strong as a bear. They are so-named because lords, merchants, criminals, and other worthies sometimes train them as attack and hunting animals. They are infamously good at getting into houses, castles, and strongholds thought secure, where their ferocity will make short work of unready foes. They are not intelligent in any general sense, but they can be sicced on enemies, or released in a feral state to tear whatever they find to pieces. 

Hunter-Killer

HD3, unarmoured, bite (d8!, crit range +1), speed 3x human, disposition in the wild: territorial predator, will retreat if seriously wounded, unless you are a threat to its young. Disposition if trained: attack dog, will keep biting until it is killed. 

Hunter-Killers have sharp, hard, ripping canines, powerful jaws, and instinctually attack weak points like the throat and groin. A Hunter Killer's bite attack damage explodes on maximum damage roles. 

A Hunter-Killer can fit through any gap the size of its head, which is about the size of a human's. They move completely silently, and can smell living prey within 50ft, and blood within 200ft. 

Once they have subdued or killed something they usually drink the blood from the corpse, leaving horrible, drained cadavers that will betray their presence to anyone familiar with them. 

Cat King

8 Cats tied together by their tails, and joined together in psychic misery. They are mad (cat brains are not made for joining together like this), and actually barely even conscious any more. The King cannot move, because the cats all pull in different directions, but has 7HD (one of the cats is actually dead already), and is unarmoured. For every turn you spend in the same room as him, you must save CHAR or take (x)d2 psychic damage, where x is the number of cats still  surviving. Every time the Cat King is hit with a melee attack, a cat is killed. All attacks made against the king are at -(x). 

If you speak with him in dream, he will tell you to leave him and the box maze for your own safety. 

The Paper Maker

The Paper Maker is an elongated ogre or giant of some kind, locked in the maze by parties unknown as a punishment. He has a crude iron helmet fastened over his head, and spends his time tearing up books, chewing them up, and making papier-maché armour and weapons. He also enjoys painting very much, and has tried to teach the Maze Demons his love. Can't speak any more, but will defend himself if attacked. If you leave him rations (at least 5) or alcohol he will assume you are a new Maze Demon come to take care of him, and will offer you one of his creations: an exquisite suit of painted papier-maché armour, worth 250s. Stats for the armour are as detailed in the Maze Demon entry. 

Paper Maker

HD8, unarmoured, giant fists (d10x2), speed: immobile in the iron room, can't even straighten out, disposition: mute, but friendly and curious.