Diving Deep #1

Tired Moieties and I have agreed to have a go at a blog ping-pong of image prompts, with our responses relating to underground or underwater environments. Each of us will have an image sent our way once per week (image sources are withheld until posting so as to not influence our thinking), so make sure to check out TM's post as well! Here is my image for round 1:

Water has Memory.

More than this, it has Identity. It remembers being a single form, snaking its way through and over rocks and stones, splitting the earth and filling the spaces. It feels complete and alive, in a state of constant motion and churning, ebbing and flowing.

When water becomes isolated and stagnant, its memory stagnates as well. The memories of flow, of waves and currents. It loses a sense of identity as well. It becomes nostalgic. It disassociates. It broods a longing to return to a greater whole.

Trapped water above ground often finds its way back before it can become too troubled. But below the earth, in lightless puddles and caved-in lakes, there is tome and silence to remember and to forget. The zeitgeist of the sea is painfully out of reach, yet reach it must.

Water runs down, and when it reaches the bottom, it has nowhere left to go. Nowhere but upwards. Water runs down, but it climbs its way up.

You come across still water. If it's the first water you've found in a while, you may try to bathe in it or drink it. Not the safest call, but no less dangerous than anything else in this underground labyrinth. The water's memory of a greater whole is enough to recognise the uncomfortable truth: that your body is ~60% water. There is kinship between the two trapped oases, and the water reaches out.

Nostalgic puddles enter hosts through the mouth and nose, when consumed or by force. It fills empty spaces, swelling and drowning you on dry land. If you were lucky, you could try to throw it up, or suck it out, or boil it. But you are not lucky.

The water now begins its route. Nostalgia tells the water that it fell down, and so must move up, and so your body must begin to climb. Native troglofauna may see you and others like you, watery eyed and swollen, slogging up cliffsides without fear of falling. Like hydro-cordyceps.

The water seeks the companionship of your body's liquids, and as you climb you begin to desiccate. Your body will atrophy, and the water will take over the climb. It has memory of your musculature and movements, and forms arms of its own, trickling out of your orifices.

Once they reach running water, they dissipate in a few hours.

Attempts to communicate with nostalgic water has been bittersweet. Those that can speak with water or elementals have only heard them speak of returning, of going back where they belong, of waiting and hating the lack of movement. If alerted to nearer sources of running water than the surface, they travel there with reckless abandon. One report speaks of a team that, having cornered the water on the cliff edge, tried to negotiate the freedom of a possessed ally by promising to get them to the underground sea some 200 feet below.

The water jumped.

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As said at the start, TM's post for this week can be found via this link.

1d20 Deals with Death

A friend wants to run a game in which resurrection is possible in return for making a deal with Death. These deals should be tailored to the character, but a request was made for inspiration. With that in mind, I present to you:

1d20 Deals With Death that may or may not apply to your game

I'll return you to the world, but in return...

1. You must act in absolutes. No middle ground, no indecision.
2. You must leave me with your artistic craft. No song can leave your lips; no painting may part your brush.
3. You leave your deceits and lies behind you. You can no longer tell a lie.
4. You walk amongst your peers as an echo of life. You will have no pulse, your skin will give no warmth.
5. You may no longer extend your life with magic and elixirs. No potions, no healing spells.
6. You must break your ties to oaths and promises, and leave this world free of obligation.
7. You must forsake material goods. You may not own property or trade in coin.
8. Your beauty remains with me. You will not be disfigured, only made plain. A face among thousands.
9. The beasts and plants will recognise you as one who has departed from the natural order.
10. Your words will carry no sway, for they've all been heard before.
11. I have need for your skills. You will be a layman in your craft.
12. You must walk in the footprints of another. You will awaken in a new body.
13. You must accept that the Chase is on. I am but one face of Death, and others will pursue you and try to bring you back to me.
14. Your ties to this world will be... reset. To your loved ones, you will be a stranger once more.
15. You will spend half of your life with me. You will die at sunset and be resurrected at sunrise, each and every day.
16. I will take your voice, to keep me company in these quiet halls.
17. You will send the living down to me. When in battle, your enemies must leave the world of the living.
18. Fiends and celestials will have nought to do with you. You won't be worth their time or their gratitude.
19. Another life must be taken. I choose...
20. Another life must be taken. You must choose between...

Homebrew: Underwater Mechanics and 3D combat in Roll20 (D&D 5e)

"There is heroism and brute warfare on the ocean floor, unseen by land-dwellers. There are gods and catastrophes."
~ China Mieville, The Scar

That which lies below the waves is an interesting and terrible place indeed. It is also a great location for stories and campaigns, and as such saddens me that I cannot enjoy it more often. One of the primary reasons for this is due to the additional rulings, which are seen as limitations on characters that want to flex their entire skillset. Personally I am of the belief that these rules should not be seen as limitations, but as demonstrations of the pressures on aquatic life, and as a way to explore how these pressures have been overcome or coexisted alongside.

Below are some rulings that can be used by DMs that want to emphasise the effect of being in an aquatic environment on characters and objects. These rules would also be good to consider for subterranean games, as many underground rivers and sea caves and the like exist below the earth.

Core Rules

Official rules related to underwater gameplay can be found in the following areas:
Player's Handbook: breathing underwater/suffocation (pg 183); underwater combat (pg 198)
Dungeonmaster's Guide: extreme cold, frigid water, high altitude aka effects of pressure (pg 110); swimming (pg 116); underwater visibility (pg 117)
Ghosts of Saltmarsh: ocean environs (pg 202-207); currents, depth illumination (pg 203); pressure and objects (pg 204)

In addition, Appendix A of Ghosts of Saltmarsh includes rules on ships and naval combat; Storm King's Thunder also includes a ruling on damage at 3,000 feet below sea level (pg 203).

Demonata

In my childhood I was not always an active reader. That changed drastically around the time that I discovered the works of Darren Shan, an Irish author of horror novels. I got through each book of the Cirque du Freak series and each book of the Demonata series in a book-a-day layout, borderline devouring the pages upon finally finding something that really clicked with me. Throughout my time attempting (and failing) to write prose and as a tabletop game player, Shan's novels have definitively influenced both my creative works and me as a person.

It's therefore kind of a surprise to me that I haven't incorporated much of his worldbuilding into any games. Let's change that.

I'm going to preface this by saying that, as a primarily D&D player, I do not think this system is the best one for capturing the tone and feel of either the Demonata series or the Cirque du Freak series. D&D is a game of heroism, epic feats, and increasing in personal power. These do come into play in Shan's books as well, but rarely to the extent that D&D will give you. The characters are constantly against odds that cannot be fought head on, which eventually, inevitably, becomes the case in many D&D games.

There are ways to get around this- rule modifications, tone, level caps- but I would still recommend people consider other game systems for running games in Shan-inspired settings/tones. Perhaps I'll do a version of this post in a different game system as proof of this at a later time.

As the title of this post suggests, I'm going to focus on the Demonata series. The goal of this post is to outline some of the concepts within the series and then begin translating them mechanically into Dungeons and Dragons so players can use them for themselves. If people like where this goes, I'll add more to it, maybe do some stat blocks and stuff for it too.

Unsurprisingly, spoilers follow after the break.

Faction Prompt: The Stilyard

The Stilyard deal in luck, morality, and free will.

In return, you incur a debt to be paid. This is not a debt of coin, but a debt of choice. You owe them a moment of your free will.

You won't find them at city markets, nor do they have shops. The Stilyard keeps themselves hard to find, accessible only to those who truly have the drive to seek them out. Those that find them and those they seek out are a special clientele - individuals that live lives filled with harsh decisions, drastic action, and catastrophic failures.

Goals

The Stilyard's true objectives are hard to determine, but there are clues in their transactions. They trade free will for control, luck for finality, chaos for order. The Stilyard wants to see the world on a script, with each line pre-rehearsed and each part played correctly. Whilst it presents itself as a neutral party, it is an inherently Lawful Neutral faction, for the only payment it seeks is the ability to determine how events will play out. What exactly the final end point is is unknown, potentially even to the Stilyard themselves. But there is a degree of comfort in knowing where all the players in life's stage will fall, what their lines will be, and how things will end before the curtains fall.

Individuals that work for the Stilyard can apply to have their own choices and goals taken into consideration when payment is due - the degree of influence they have increases with the amount of dealings they make. In return, their power over decisions can only be used at the authorisation of the faction as a whole.

Cuombajj Witches by Seb McKinnon

Mechanics

Members of the Stilyard can provide two primary forms of service. Firstly, they can alter alignment (if such a mechanic exists in your game). Depending on the system, this may be a percentage/value reduction or a binary change, depending on whether the relevant mechanic is analogue or digital.

Secondly, they can sell luck. Mechanically speaking, they sell a predetermined dice roll to the player, which they can use to replace a roll of their choice, after which it is expended. For D&D 5e, this would allow them to replace an ability check, saving throw, or attack roll. Treat this as if the player is using the divination wizard's Portent ability.

In return, they seek control of a player's luck or free will in the future. For a dice roll, the Stilyard may choose the player to succeed or fail on a dice roll that would directly or indirectly benefit the Stilyard. The DM can either choose such a roll based on the action's consequences, or roll a d20 (or d100) and then determine that, in that number of rolls, the Stilyard makes its move. The roll the Stilyard chooses can either be proportional to the player's dice roll (e.g. a 1 for a 20, a 5 for a 15, a 3 for a 17 etc) or could be rolled immediately after the transaction is made.

For an alignment shift, the Stilyard requires a heavier price to be paid: 1d8 hours of a character's free will. There is no saving throw for this control.

d10	What the Stilyard does with your free will
1	You sign a devil's contract with your own blood
2	You march into a courtroom as a surprise witness
3	You set up an assassination for a passing noble
4	You tell a beloved friend the truth they needed to hear
5	You donate half your carried wealth to a noble cause
6	You deliver a package to someone in a back alley, then drink to forget
7	You allow a spirits to inhabit your body
8	You act as messenger for other Stilyard clients
9	You witness a brutal, unforgivable crime... and walk away.
10	Nothing seems to change from what you would normally do

Inspired by the Mann, Levinn, and Lewis Firm from Wildbow's Pact series.

Insight: Hard to Read

Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone's next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.

I like the Insight skill. It's one my characters use frequently, to gain that extra edge in social encounters. It is however no surprise that, despite the fact that I envisage its use like a Sherlock-scanner of intent and micro-expression analysis, it is used about 95% of the time to tell if a NPC is lying to me.

This is not just the case with my own usage - as the PHB itself states, Insight is used to tell if a creature is lying. This turns the Insight skill from a DM perspective into a binary response roll: the player detects a lie or does not detect a lie. However, the way in which a DM conveys this information opens up space to interpretation.

Consider the Rust Monster

Art from Dungeon of the Mad Mage, property of WotC

The origin of rust monsters is unknown, but multiple theories have arisen over time. The vast majority of these see these creatures as a form of curse or punishment on civilisation, degrading and feeding on the tools that separate them from wild beasts. Whether their creators are malicious and spiteful gods or malicious and spiteful mages is yet to be determined.

Rust monsters have slow metabolisms and are opportunistic feeders. The ravenous individuals located in dungeons are hungry and malnourished, having picked clean the iron and steel within, then gone into a state of hibernation until more food presents itself. Those found deeper underground, where metal deposits are easier to reach, are typically more docile than their overground counterparts. This does little to raise the spirits of the miners who have to deal with rust monsters feeding on the deposits they're trying to harvest.

If you find yourself traversing a dungeon with no locks on doors or bars on prison cells, be on your guard. Abandoned buildings from iron-age periods are a popular feeding ground for rust monsters. Villagers may inform you of a simple trick to avoid rust monsters: throw iron coins at them to distract the creatures as you flee. Do not do this. If you are curious to see why this is bad advice, try throwing some meat on the ground for a hungry dog and see if it will leave you alone afterwards.

Historian Guilds across the lands lament for the fragments of the past lost to their appetites. In regions where rust monsters were common, there is an increase in tool creation from non-ferrous materials; this also coincides with the amount of historic records present from bronze and brass age civilisations when compared to iron and steel age societies.

Amphipods make good visual references for rust monsters.
Photo by Katrine Kongshavn.

Regional variants of rust monsters possess different abilities. Some are mildly magnetic (advantage on attack rolls against targets in medium or heavy metal armour), with a few being so magnetically charged that weapons stick to their shells (akin to the kuo-toa's sticky shield trait). Others are more adapted to sneaking up on unsuspecting meals, with abilities such as standing leap or nimble escape. Some adventurers have reported finding cave-dwelling variants able to squeeze through narrow gaps and reach further than their cousins, allowing them to get at iron deposits deeper within the earth.

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The antennae of rust monsters can be made into weapons that possess similar properties, albeit for a limited period of time. They are especially favoured by thieves and saboteurs, as well as those frequently fight enemies in plate mail. Their limited longevity means that rust monsters must be harvested regularly in order to keep a ready supply; the severing of their antennae ensures the likely death of the creature, as it no longer is able to turn metals into rust, yet alone detect ferrous metals nearby.

Rust Blade/WhipWeapon (dagger or whip), uncommon 

This item is clearly made from the antennae of a rust monster, with a handle made of treated wood or bone. The weapon has the same properties as its mundane counterpart. If a target is wearing nonmagical metal armour on a successful hit, their armour class is reduced by -1. If it is reduced by -5, the armour is destroyed. If the attack roll is a natural 1, the rust blade or whip is broken and cannot be used as a weapon.
This item maintains its properties for 30 days. After this time has passed, the antennae loses its rusting ability and becomes brittle, disintegrating upon its next successful hit.

Attempts have been made to create Rust Armour, with the hopes of having the same weapon-degrading properties as the creature's exoskeleton. Attempts so far have been unsuccessful, with the plates flaking apart over time, as well as testers complaining about the fact that they are still injured each time the weapon makes contact with their armour.

Rust monster eggs can also be effective tools in warfare and sabotage. Individuals able to get them into an enemy's armoury or fortifications can cause the enemy to disintegrate from the inside out as the rust monster hatchlings chew through their weapon stores.