The Castrated Wolf of Whiteford

The party passes through Whiteford while on the way to somewhere more important, and find it mostly abandoned, the only signs of life a few corpses and a smoldering old man, the only survivor of last night's attack. Through burnt lips he tells you of the shape-shifted wizard Agnencor, trapped in the body of a massive wolf, and how he must be stopped before he spreads his fury across more of the land. If the party agrees to hunt the wolf the old man will give them directions to the wizard's tower and promise untold riches will be found within. He then utters the phrase "you must remember to kill the wolf with the silver balls" before dying.

If the party continues on this line of plot they will eventually find the tower, break in, discover all kinds of neat shit, including a set of silver worry balls on an ebony pillow, and may actually set out to kill the wolf. They may even figure out that the dying man's last words meant Agnencor was a castrato and has a set of prosthetic silver testicles, not that they have to use the worry balls as weapons against him. Or that Agnencor has a small pack of wolves he has dominated and taught basic fire magic to, and thus there are multiple targets to be had. Agnencor will flee and become a regular nuisance to the party if they manage to do enough damage to him or kill his retinue.

Agnencor is a normal wolf, stats-wise, except for his high intelligence and his spells; when the party discovers him he has a fireball spell memorized and there's a 50-50 chance he also has a fire golem spell still ready to fire off. His pack are also normal wolves who each have two fire-based spells memorized.

The Mocap Tribe

Among the ruins of what used to be the Paramount Studio lot on Melrose live one the larger gangs of the area, the Mocaps. They've learned to adapt and reuse the old studio equipment to expand their influence greatly with special effects and chicanery; each member wears a portable projector around their neck which allows them to display a holographic image of their choosing around them, distorting and obscuring themselves among the color and shape of the seemingly alive illusion.

Horses don't exist

They're mythical creatures, spoken of by mad knights and shrewd stable-boys. Think you've ridden a horse, before? Of course you have, dear boy. Clearly what you're astride now is a nihilcorn, a ruined unicorn, gelded and made tame by removing its horn. Common enough, since unicorns are rampant.

Now horses, horses are rare. Incredibly so. Seeing a real horse is a thing of mystery and wonder, and you'd better catch it and take out any bits you can before it fades, because those bits sell for more money than you can imagine to wizards, witches, and kings. You can tell the difference by the face, and the ears, and the legs, and the tail. Mostly the tail. It's different.

Many people will claim to have seen a horse, to have touched one, ridden one, fed it and kept it warm. They're liars, insane, or trying to sell you something. Probably a horse. Just remember, you're sane, you're fine, there are no horses, only nihilcorns.

(Stolen and badly adapted from the amazing Goblin Punch.)

Mazran Oracle

The Oracle at the Mazran Temple requires a sacrifice of vitality before it will reveal an ultimate truth to visitors. After spilling a measure of blood into the brass urn the temple room will turn completely black and the oracle, glowing with an inner light, will reveal itself. It will answer any questions directed to it with perfect accuracy, though it's answers will always be vague and couched in mystical terms, but it will only tolerate two or three questions per sacrifice before departing. Once the visitor is done they will leave feeling as though drugged, convinced they saw nothing but smoke and darkness, but aware of thoughts not their own that solve their problem.

(Image, used without even a shred of permission, by Grieverjoe.)

An Excavation in Egypt, 1817

This is a collaborative story-telling game. Which I hate, but the idea has come to me so here it is.

The players are employees of Henry Salt, famous Egyptologist and infamous robber of the dead. They have just found something in the sand; a stairway. An unknown tomb, perhaps? Or an unknown side-entrance to a known crypt? The cards will tell.

Yeah. Cards. I dislike card-based games, too, but here it is. Take a standard 52-card deck (I'll come up with rules for using a 6-suit deck later), shuffle it, and lay the whole thing face down on the table. Play starts with whomever goes "So we found this stairway..." first. They draw the top card, then using it as a guide describe the first 'room' of the new crypt, as well as what their explorer does when they enter it. Play then continues to the next person who speaks up, until everyone has had a turn. Then the next round begins, where the first person who goes "Then we found a..." gets to draw a card, and the game continues in that vein.

Hearts: Something related to health and safety, life, love, shit like that.
Spades: Something to do with finding something, digging, searching, cracking open a door.
Clubs: Something violent, a trap or altercation between explorers, or MUMMY or some shit.
Diamonds: Fuckin' treasure.
Jokers: Salt shows up and ruins everything by taking credit for whatever the player was about to do, sends everyone away. Game Over.

Higher the card the better the thing (use your judgement, you fucks. A 2 of Diamonds would be a broken chunk of pottery, a Q of Clubs would be a giant fucking scorpion or something), from 2 to 10, then face-cards, then the aces.

Take a card or something and draw a rough map of the place you're exploring, make notes or whatever, and keep track of treasure found. In the event of combat, everyone draws a card and whoever draws lowest gets hurt. If anyone gets hurt three times before someone bothers to say something like "I patch Iggins' wounds with a piece of my shirt and some saliva" they die. Whoever draws highest wrecks whatever's attacking the group. Put those cards back in the deck and re-shuffle.

When you draw cards normally put them in discard; when the deck's done, you're done.

There. You've told a thrilling tale of tombs and robbers. Good job.

And now for something completely different: IN SONG FORM!

To the tune of Ludo's "Topeka". The first line of this has been floating around in my head for a LONG time, and I finally finished it.

I found the Force in a thermal detonator

on Malastare during the war

I see red every time I think of battle

and I know I'm in for quite a time

'cause I'm looking for some cover in a rain of blaster-fire

yellin' for that air support

No, you can't keep a good clone down.

The generals are worried about keeping clones alive

don't they know that we're expendable?

As they kill themselves just to keep a trooper going

good to know they've got our backs

I think we're gonna win this war.

I found the Force in a thermal detonator

on Malastare during the war.

Every Jedi has a past, maybe clones have a future

so you know what keeps me fighting on,

no you can't keep a good clone down.

One's gotta wonder if all of this fighting

is just part of some vicious cycle

(gotta wonder, gotta wonder)

But you know you just have to get your ass up

and get back into the thick of it.

I found the Force in a thermal detonator

on Malastare during the war

I found the Force in a thermal detonator

on Malastare during the war

Every Jedi has a past, maybe clones have a future

Jedi has a past, maybe clones have a future

Jedi has a past, maybe clones have a future

Jedi has a past, maybe clones have a future

clones have a future

Project OSTRICH

OSTRICH is joint UK/German endeavor to place operatives deep undercover in the New Chen Zen Zone in order to undermine grassroots attempts to develop nano-nuclear arms. So far a dozen agents have reported back; three times that many have not.

Perspective

Dr. Nier Orfarr had a promising career in research and development for Fellqual Industries. As head associate in Project Two-Ends, a theoretical warp drive device, he was on the cutting edge of scientific potential. Then the accident happened.

Nobody knows what precisely occured, but the end result was horrific: Dr. Orfarr was, at least visually, split into two forms, one appearing directly beside the viewer, the other at the edge of their vision. This split perspective caused Nier to go quite mad, and he fled the scene of the accident.

Months later a new supervillain emerged, capable of disorienting his victims with his seeming ability to teleport great distances. Dr. Orfarr, now calling himself Perspective, uses his new appearance to rob, cheat, and kill any who get in his way. His goal? Unknown.

Brinley Beasley, King of the Mountain

Unfortunately for the good people of Yargsbrorough, the old gods of the mountain have accepted the madman Beasley's claim to the throne of the old kingdom, six-thousand years dormant. Fortunately for him it means whatever he says is law for the domain of the mountain gods, an area about 32 miles square. Reality within this zone is his plaything. A lot of people would be very greatful to anyone who might go ahead and kill Beasley. Beasley would probably be ecstatic to have friends, or at least sycophants.

Have fun.

The Editor

Ezkriel Mosier has the ability to rewrite the history of anything or anyone he chooses by uppercutting it in its fucking face. The Retcon Uppercut is a mystical force known only by a select group of monks in he Himalayan mountains, which they mostly use to make goat meat more delicious by retroactively giving the goats better feed. The Editor uses it to fight crime, or get himself free stuff. He has never employed the Retcon Upper on himself; the monk who taught him the technique, Ubiquitous Mu, warned that to do so could unravel the fabric of reality in unforseen and disastrous ways. Or just make him forget how to Retcon Uppercut. Either way, bad ju-ju.

Fincher Gojek

Back in the dawn of the AI controlled Technocrocy of Allied Planets, there were revolutionaries, mostly organics with a few synthetics in the mix, who felt that the AIs could not be trusted with actual power. Their terrorist war lasted over six thousand years before it was finally quelled, and the most dangerous of the warriors who fought was known only as The Monster. He was a simple human, a man from one of the undersea ghettos of Nulantis, who became legendary for his kill-count, conservative estimates at the time numbering in the tens of billions, and his viciousness, having once destroyed a nursery with over ten million nascent AI. He was eventually captured and sentenced to eternity in digital prison, his body destroyed and his mind converted into simple data.

Fast-forward to today: the TAP hasn't existed for over a million years, and a dozen other governments have risen and fallen in just the last six thousand. One of those, the Holy Order of Sentience, has finally reached The Monster's cell in their re-evaluation of the freedom fighters against the Robot Menace. However, they fear his retribution, the stories of him still lingering in the histories, and so they agree to a compromise: they offer him two options, a quick death, or he agrees to never speak of his history again and be provided with as much wealth as he desires so long as he never harms another sentient life again. He quickly agrees, takes the offered unlimited-credit card handed to him, and disappears.

The HOS feel they did the right thing. The rumors of a shadow that murders by night are just rumors. The Monster is certainly not Fincher Gojek, security guard at Halposs Research. He did not help the Rogue, who murdered a thousand in his search for his lost memories, to be reunited with the Rampant AI Mad-Assa-Badger-Inna-Sack and escape the justice of two dimensions and a thousand governments. Nor did he slaughter the Masked Jailer in a mighty battle that leveled four buildings and caused a still-rising number of known casualties.

These events are fiction.

The Fifty-Five Districts of the Grey Man

Great stretches of nothing, dotted by the occasional primitive village living off the scraps of the megalopolises. In the long-run the world is identical to our own, but things are a bit weirder; mutants are as common as pure-blood humans, the Grey Man's lieutenants constantly perform experiments, men in bio-mechanical armor ride android horses to battle. Shit like that.

Probably gonna be a hex-crawl, with the eventual goal of reaching Saucer City and piercing the throne room of the Grey Man itself.

Rules for Wayfinders, part 1 of whatever

Every time a Wayfinder ship comes across a new island and is part of the formation of a new colony, another fish is added to its sail: sailing aboard a ship with many fish is considered an immense honor. For every fish on your ship, you get that many bonus dice to every roll made aboard it.

The Red Woman

She exists. In the background of your favorite book, or the edge of audibility in the music you're listening to, behind the tree in that painting you're looking at; there she is. She's dressed all in red, red hair, red lips, red nails. Her face is misshapen, eyes all wrong, teeth all too long, nose wrongside up. She's too far away to see much detail beyond the wrongness.

She's closer, now. She's wearing a mask, all white with red accents. She's closer. Her arms are moving. Closer. She's taking off the mask. Closer.

If only you couldn't see her, somehow. It might make her stop.

Closer.

M.F. Brown

MotherFucker Brown, who prefers to go by M.F. in polite society, is a soft-spoken, gentle man in his mid forties. He is a well-known wheeler-dealer in the art world of the mid-west who, though prefering not to, calls upon unsavory types from time to time to insure his deals go down smoothly. He will never break the law, himself, without a very good reason.

M.F. Brown can be found in Calsoon City at any point in history, no matter how far back. It is the same M.F. Brown, not a family member or coincidence; for whatever reason M.F. just is.

In terms of manner and appearance, think a less sarcastic Doc Holiday as played by Val Kilmer: he is legitimately polite to everyone, even people who actively dislike him, and although he can defend himself he prefers to play the victim card whenever possible.

Slavering rat-things with fucking creepy-ass tongues

Picture a hairless rat, with slightly longer ears that sweep up and back like a frill and skin that's tight and scaly. It's a little big for your average rat, maybe the size of a teacup dog. It has three fingers on each paw, each double-jointed for grip-strength. It has an extendable, prehensile tongue, much like a chameleons, able to stretch out three times its body length, for catching prey. It'll eat anything it thinks it can grapple long enough to kill. When desperate it'll go for things it knows it can't kill, but it's damned sure gonna try anyway.

d4 bite, speed like an unencumbered person, 1hd, armor equivalent to an unarmored person. If you see one there's d6 more somewhere nearby. They're not herd or group animals, but if one takes down prey the rest will come running to get their bit.

12 strength for purposes of grappling, anything caught with the tongue is automatically critted if the next attack hits.

Beliefs of the Esoterics of Kree

An eye taken from one who sees you as a friend and placed within your own socket will see only the future. An eye taken from one who sees you as an enemy will see only the past.

Tebbolic the Melancholy

Teb to his friends, who you could count on one hand if you were missing three fingers, spends most of his time in an abandoned manor home in the formerly upscale Jenk Libboc Quarter, now one of many slums in the great Grey Maze. When he does deign to leave his home he can usually be found half-drunk, or worse, in whatever drinking establishment he can stumble into. He is an accomplished warlock, known as the Master of Four Faces in some dimensions, but he is chronically depressed after losing his husband to a great beast years ago and subsequently acquiring a mental block that will not allow him to distinguish individuals; if pressed he will admit that everyone he sees wears the face of his dead love.

Dust Plains, 11-04

A man-shaped creature in heavy clothes and a gas mask is hung from a light-post. It appears to be very dead. If you cut it down, it's still very dead. Underneath the gas mask is a face like a fly, but it's otherwise human. It's not carrying anything, anymore, but if you want the clothes and the gas-mask it's not using them anymore. The mask has a multi-purpose d6 filter.

Her Majesty's Royal Space Force (A short play in one act)

THE QUEEN is strolling down a hallway, followed close behind by her HEAD BUTLER. As she passes a door, a BUTLER steps out, carrying a small cup of TEA.

BUTLER: I took the liberty of preparing you a cuppa, marm.

THE QUEEN looks from the TEA to the BUTLER and back again, before accepting it and gracing him with a small grin.

THE QUEEN: Another one of these, young man, and I smell a promotion in your future.

THE QUEEN and her HEAD BUTLER walk away, the HEAD BUTLER eyeing the BUTLER.

Six years later...

THE QUEEN is strolling down a hallway, followed close behind by her HEAD BUTLER. As she passes a door, a BUTLER steps out, carrying a small cup of TEA.

BUTLER: Your tea, marm.

THE QUEEN looks from the TEA to the BUTLER and back again, before accepting it and gracing him with a small grin.

THE QUEEN: Ah. Yes. I've been wondering how long it would take.

SHE turns to her HEAD BUTLER.

THE QUEEN: Make this man a lieutenant in my Royal Astronautical Royal Space Royal Force, immediately.

HEAD BUTLER: Already did done do, marm.

THE QUEEN turns back. The BUTLER is now wearing a space suit, complete with bubble helmet, and is standing on top of a spaceship. They are still inside the hallway. It's now huge.

BUTLER: I will do my duty as a member of the Royal Astronautical Royal Space Royal Royal Royal Force Space Royal Space Queen's Royal Space Force Royal Shabadu. I will conquer new worlds, kill the scum who dared to live there before me, pee in their skulls, and drink that pee because there's nothing else worth drinking in space!

The HEAD BUTLER, shedding a tear, salutes.

HEAD BUTLER: Quite!

THE QUEEN, shedding a tear, salutes.

THE QUEEN: Godspeed!

The LIEUTENANT, shedding a tear, salutes.

LIEUTENANT: God save the queen!

ALL: God save the queen!

Hanger Crew of the ZDL Lionell Caine 1

Richard "Fatman" Pozz and Elliot "Littleboy" Kramer are the Caine's resident experts on the navigation systems for the experimental Leis Rafter hybrid. Their nicknames are unironic. They usually get very little attention from the majority of the pilots, with the exception of Lobber and Cruft, the two LR pilots, who have managed to develop a decent working relationship with the pair.

The dragon

It doesn't have a name, at least not one anyone knows; it's just the dragon. It usually keeps to itself, but sometimes it comes around and wrecks shit because it can. Or maybe it's hungry. Whatever. It's a dragon, it's alien and weird and it attacks us sometimes.

The dragon has 20d8 HP and no armor class (Stole that from Broodmother Skyfortress. Buy it. It's awesome.), which means you can hit it just by wanting to hit it BUT all damage does to it is at -5. It can attack basically however it wants, any attack it tries does 4d6 damage to however many enemies the GM deems appropriate (including a breath weapon).

Basically don't fuck with it. BUT if you really want to take it down, the old hill hag knows how to kill it; track down a couple of reagents for her and she can make you a poison that will kill the dragon, but it's gotta eat the stuff (Exception to the hit it rule: if you wanna try to throw the bottle into its open mouth you gotta get a critical hit). The poison is made of three things that will require the party to go on other adventures to find (Lich's dick, The Jeweled Eyes of Gablong, whatever).

Spencer Daw (v1)

Spencer Daw is a notorious criminal, a sneak-thief and con-man wanted across a dozen governments for a multitude of crimes both mundane and serious. His bounty if captured alive and brought to trial in even one jurisdiction is more than the gross income of some planets.

He's also a really nice guy who happens to be a really good grifter. He is clean, sober, polite to a fault, and always willing to lend a hand or save a life, assuming it won't be suicidal to do so; he will allow himself to be imprisoned if it will keep someone else from dying. He is incredibly gifted at escaping almost any perilous situation.

If the players are on his trail, keep them constantly in the dark about wether or not the crimes he's wanted for were actually commited by him or not; they should never come to believe he is either wholly innocent or wholly guilty of anything except existing and being notorious. And if it makes it more fun, keep them guessing about those things, too.

Mechanics wise he's a 0th-level character with above-average intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, and average everything else. He has the unique gift of being able to escape any situation, including obvious death, 5 out of 6 times. He will not, however, willingly place himself into a situation where the outcome is obvious death without a clear and coherant plan to escape (in the event of a surprise situation he is saved by some deus ex machina which only applies to him, though he will usually offer to extend aid to those around him). This escape ability includes his ability to not be surprised and applies as all of his save rolls and even for taking damage (Literally any time you have to roll for Spencer to avoid some fate roll a d6, and on a 5 or less he succeeds).

He is moderately skilled at everything, a jack-of-all-trades who will succeed at any task on a roll of 12 or less on a d20. Any of his successes are treated as critical in the sense that they are bombastic and amazing to behold.

He will not actively help anyone, in the sense that he will not come to someone's aid as a plan but only as a spur-of-the-moment decision, and only if that help will keep them from dying or furthers whatever plan he has at the moment.

Plague Beavers

Plague Beavers, 1HD monster, AC like chain, speed twice of an unencumbered human. 1d4 bite attack, 1d4 tail-slap attack. A successful bite attack has a 25% chance of becoming infected with Beaver Fever.

Beaver Fever causes sweats, palpatations, and random vomitting (-1 to all rolls while sick, plus you throw up whatever's in your stomach on a 1 in 6 every whenever the GM tells you to roll, taking up a combat turn where you can't really do anything else). It passes after 2 successful CON checks during overnight (or between adventures/during downtime, whatever) rests in a row.

They look like beavers, but mangy and grey, sick; their skin is loose, their eyes mad, they foam slightly at the mouth. Plus they make that obnoxious NYEEEE sound when they're in danger, which can attract more of them (1 in 6 chance of summoning however many beavers are in the area, or 1d6 more, whichever).