Let's Eat: Unicorn Meat

EXT. THRONE OF SALT. DAY.

Winds howl and tear across a broken, rusted landscape. Scrap towers twisted in heaps and torn open with bellies to the sky litter the horizon, wounds filled with drifts of salt. Pan to a singular unbroken spire of chalk splitting apart the vacant blue steely blue sky. A great bronze brazier rests atop, its towering flames spite the wind. Fly through the window to the chamber beneath the flame. A cerulean light swirls and twists shadows in the room, we face the back of a jagged throne hewn from a singular chunk of crystalline salt. Circle the room and reveal a robed wizard atop the throne, brow furrowed and gesturing wildly at the formidable orb in front of the throne, manipulating crackling lightning and swirling mist inside its shadowed depths. After great exertion, the lightning ceases and the wizard, revealed now in steady light now as DAN D, settles into the Throne. Slow zoom on DAN D. from across the orb as a brilliant white light pours out, flooding the room.

NOODLE

I'm Noodle! My flesh is worth more than your life!

DAN D. smiles. Camera flies back out the window and races upwards into a darkening, empty sky. We hear cackling mingle with the howling wind as the scene fades.

INT. DUNGEON. KITCHEN. 

A cozy furnished kitchen well lit with oil lamps. CRAB is searching through an ice chest. The dumbwaiter suddenly drops into the kitchen with a loud clatter and CRAB jumps, then carefully moves to examine. A brightly wrapped package is on the dumbwaiter, spotted with grease. Through a tear in the packaging a slab of opalescent meat can be seen. CRAB froths at the mouth, lifting the package in claws above his head and scuttles out of the room.

INT. DUNGEON. BANQUET HALL. 

CRAB sits at the head of the banquet table, a silver tray covering a dish in front of him. Squat frog-like creatures with bow-ties busy about preparing cutlery for empty seats and stoking the fireplace. They jump and scurry out of the room as CRAB clacks his claws suddenly. As the doors shut and we hear only the crackling of fire, CRAB pulls the conspicuous silver lever next to his chair. 

Grating gears and the screech of metal is heard and rapidly overcome with a shrieking wail from thousands of voices as a cage in the ceiling opens and a chained ball of clacking skulls and searching shadowy tendrils is lowered above the table. Clinking his glass with a fork, the screaming quiets to a murmur and CRAB lifts the tray on the dish, revealing the colorfully packaged slab of meat, distinct artwork clearly displayed. 

CRAB

 Rejoice, ye DAMNED, we're eating Unicorn Meat tonight! 

TITLE CARD

 

Rowan A. (Mon)

CRAB

Fresh from the THRONE OF SALT itself, this is. A machination by the hands of DAN D. with all this packaging and artwork courtesy of Rowan A. You know, just from it being a product of DAN's I was interested to start with, but even if not for him this artwork is dripping with a sauce and flavor that is hard to resist. From the rainbow of blood alone down to the rotting white-eyed unicorn corpse you get an immediate picture of what we are in for in this adventure. And let me tell you, that artwork carries on in quality and in its insidiously unsettling nature. The portraits of these NPCs reveals their nature just as much so if not more than the actual descriptions. Really, the art is such a choice pairing for the mood of the setting. I might even get that cover art as a print if I can find it, I'm so delighted. 

 

The DAMNED clack their jaws and howl as their shadowy tendrils flit about, dimming the lights and shaking dust from the ceiling. 

 

CRAB

 Oh right, yeah let's start with what this is all about. Unicorn Meat is a low magic and low level module meant to run for a couple of sessions. Its pretty system neutral and generally can be fit into any old-school-ish ruleset. In a 19th centuryish country backdrop, the Sunny Smiles Unicorn Farm has been running for decades, butchering unicorns and selling their product to the wealthy who can afford (and taste the sweet succor of) the unspoilt meat of these magical beasts. 

Now, these Sunny Smiles characters are your run of the mill corpo-fascist bastards out to squeeze every inch of profit from a system they can. With this case, we have the unicorn farming and slaughtering business. What DAN has done here is to take the idea of the magical unicorn and yank it into the post-industrial revolution to examine how it could be domesticated, farmed, and generally exploited. Following that logical line, who exactly is best suited to handle unicorns? Most people know them as gentle beasts, good aligned yada yada, but vicious as hell in the right circumstances. The unicorns we deal with here on Sunny Farms are these classic types that can only approach virgin girls, fleeing or berserking and otherwise spoiling the meat if anyone else touches them. 

DAMNED

[INCOHERENT GIBBERING AND THE SHRIEKING OF RATS]

CRAB

Look, I know what you may be thinking, but DAN really did his work here to handle this topic with as much respect and care as he can for the players and game runners who are averse to the conceptual consequences of where this sort of set up can go. The third page of the book- before even the table of contents- contains a Safety warning about the kinds of topics being covered and instructions for how to  run things while respecting everyone's boundaries.

DAMNED

[COYOTES YIPPING]

CRAB

Yeah I know some of you are big strong burly nerdskulls who scoff at these sorts of things but chill out and pay attention here. This is an example of a wizard performing a class act. Check out the preview on the drivethrurpg page, you'll get the whole first fourteen pages including the details of the content warnings. 

There. If anything listed isn't your cup of tea then feel free to walk away and go on with your day. For the rest of you, let's dig in. 

 

A crackling boom is heard followed by a long high pitched wail somewhere further in the dungeon. From underneath the tail, A soiled plush Unicorn with a limp neck crawls from underneath the table and slides up one of the legs like a slug, planting itself on one of the empty dishes. 

 

NOODLE

Organic is our guarantee!

 CRAB

 No, it really is not. This here cuddly symbol of corporate oppression is NOODLE. He's the mascot of the farms and should be slathered liberally around all the environments that you can. More on him later. 

So, the farms. All this unicorn murder has gone downhill and corrupted the area around the farms, called the Backwoods, and now all the adults on the farms have wandered off into the swamps, leaving the various press ganged and kidnapped young girls who worked the machinery to survive on their own. We pick up about 8 months after the adults left. 

None of the kids can escape the farm because of a big magic fence that surrounds the area kills you if you leave because of a chip in your head. Of course, you could play as an adult coming to search for a missing kid, but honestly I think you would be missing out if you don't embrace the setting and run as a band of carvergirls. 

Sunny Smiles has devolved into a tribal system of multiple factions of carvergirls at this point who have really gone full cargo cult and developed a culture all around unicorns. The hunting and processing of them, that is. As such there is plenty of cargo cult slang to sprinkle around that gels so perfectly with the setting. Anyways, there's tasty set of tables to roll up your carvergirls and then we're off to the races. 

 

The plush unicorn slumps over. Its skin bulges as something inside it moves around. 

 

NOODLE

If your parents loved you then why haven't they come to save you?

DAMNED

[DOGS, WHINING]

CRAB

Isn't he just a peach? He's one of the many just super flavorful magical items scattered around the book to find. There is plenty of mystery to solve around the farms with about 10 locations and two dungeons. No matter which of the three factions vying for power you end up helping out though (if any), you will eventually need to go out onto a swampcrawl and hunt a unicorn. 

Swampcrawling is a great little mechanic to simulate your expedition out into the swamps hunting unicorns. See, everyone needs the bits and pieces of unicorns and its sort of one of the best currencies to be found, and now you have to go find and murder one in the swamps to make any headway. The swampcrawl is done by way of drawing cards out of a deck and dealing with their results in order, sometimes running into the various mutant denizens of the swamp, finding caches of supplies, and hopefully ending in finding a unicorn. There are ten different types of unicorns (they come in horse breeds and I just think that's neat) and once you've managed to murder one you need to butcher it for parts. There's a table for how much you can get from a unicorn and even a little crafting system for building and upgrading unicorn bone weapons and armor a la Kingdom Death or Monster Hunter.

This NOODLE plush here is one of the many things you can find while swampcrawling and he whispers secrets and little corporate nonsense at you when held, serving as a way to deliver some information to players when stuck. Like I said before, used correctly this adorable little shitstain can be a great tool to add that banal factory cruelty vibe to any location.

NOODLE

 Your tarnished hands could never hope to touch a god. 

 

A side door at the back of the hall is thrown open and a fat bloody crow crashes through, squawking profanities at the froglike creature chasing it with a net. The pair eventually clamor through the opposite door, slamming it shut behind them, leaving the room silent but for the moaning DAMNED.

 

CRAB

Moving on then. There's a spooky factory dungeon where the unicorns used to be process and is now the home of a crazed Beast that stalks you like the Alien Isolation Aliens and it's a really nice chef's kiss of a touch when you pair it with the environments and the various "signs of the Beast" you can use to flag the creature's presence.The second dungeon is the cave systems and I'm not spoiling any of that. The descriptions of the rooms are all quick and detail oriented, letting the game runner get the important bits zapped into memory quickly and without extraneous fluffery- granting you the tools to make those quick details into wretched painting.

There are 10 NPC carvergirls detailed who all have their own agendas and quirks and highly flavored portraits. Each one has their own relations to other carvers and factions as well and are all succinctly described. Overall the feeling much of this gives is a Bloodborne-y swamp with farm itself being a Southern Lord of the Flies summer camp gone horribly, horribly wrong. Nothing in here is explicitly Southern per se, but a factory in the swamps that industrially farms and processes unicorns feels like something you would see in a low-magic 19th century Florida or Georgia.

DAMNED

[CONGRESS OF BOREDOM AND DISCONTENT] 

CRAB

Fine yeah let's wrap it up. This module is good. It tastes like a soft-shelled crab roasted over a campfire and then fried in butter that you bite into and savor as gushing blood runs down your face. Everything from the setting to the artwork I've already praised to even the simple, readable layout (also by DAN) flows together and presents a clean product with just the right amount of seasonings. There's intrigue and mystery and plot stuff that is also well paced and revealed for those who want to go hunting for it, but you can read that yourself. Go buy Unicorn Meat there or here. It's $12 and is driving me slowly insane. 

Come on, this is DAN's first work and it's so good! How did he cook this delicious dish up? What other secrets is he hiding in his orb? Go play it! And then after that let's all start porting some basic D&D monsters into this scrumptious 19th century hellscape and see what other mundane cruelties twisted into eldritch horrors the players must overcome. 

And get me more NOODLE! he should be all over the place! Give that plush to a character as a starting item and make it FOLLOW the party! It's free license for snark and puns and grim commentary from you as a game runner and he needs to be omnipresent! My sole gripe is that I can ctrl+f and only find six instances of NOODLE and maybe two drawings of him. Criminal.

 

CRAB continues frothing at the mouth for several minutes before settling and tying on an ornate bib and sharpening a knife. He then pulls the lever again and the DAMNED shriek and strain against their chained enclosure as they are lifted into an unseen chamber once more and sealed away. CRAB looks into the camera and cuts a chunk of the slab of meat off  and then stabs it with a fork. Vibrant red juices run down the fork. 

 

CRAB

So why farm unicorns anyways? 

It's the taste. 

Unspeakably disgusting to the innocent and yet addictive and decadent to the cruel.

What's it taste like to you?

The camera pans back slowly to a corner in the banquet hall and out down a corridor through the open door. Dozens of frog-like creatures pile into the hall from the corridor and the sounds of cutlery against porcelain can be heard. 

END TITLES

"Moon Hooch - Number 9" begins to play.

Shot continues to pull down a straight dimly lit corridor. The NOODLE plush walks down the center of the corridor, following the camera as it continues retreating down the the hallway, flashes of light from off camera sources reveal a twisting slumped unicorn in NOODLE's shadow. 

When Number 9 ends the corridor goes dark. A distant whinnying can be heard.

Rowan A. (Mon)

FADE OUT

Knave Report 1: Clowns, Hand-spiders, and lions

As alluded to earlier, I have been running an in person Knave campaign for nearly a year now. It's been on and off with a noticeable break to play the chocolatey delicious Gradient Descent with the new 1e wip rules, but overall we have had a couple dozen sessions with a rotating cast of players hexcrawling around the town of Yonwell, on the Dellen Plains and I'd like to write a bit about it. 

This session is going to be referred to as session 1, but really I've failed to keep track of just how many sessions this has been- so we will start with this most recent game as our beginning and I'll post some player notes if our chronicler finds time to finish transcribing them. First: the map!

 

 

This is the current state of the player's map. Every session I've brought this little battle map to the game and one of the players has been mapping the progress of the party, writing down notes about hexes, and sometimes just writing random speculation about where rumors are combined with notes about locations heard from NPCs. It's chaotic, frequently water damaged, and dubiously accurate. I love it. 

It says "Dragons?" in five separate places (at least three of which are correct). 

Important events so far:

The players have created a loose guild of cutthroats and treasure hunters known as the "Whoa Whoa Bell-Ringers Club" after multiple incidents during hazardous encounters where at least one character will ring a bell loudly and miraculously avoid harm while shouting "Whoa whoa whoa!". They have purchased a two story flat in Yonwell where retired PCs hang out and they keep equipment. None claim guild leadership at this time and the frequency with which hired lantern boys and men-at-arms fail to return alive from the guild's services have recently spawned the creation of an Adventurer's Union in town.

Earlier in the year, the dread castle Honorwatch set upon the hills at the north of the Dellen Plains north of Yonwell had posed a significant threat to the land. After uncertain events in the recent past, the castle's lord, Duke Konrad, fell to darkness and raised an undead horde against his brother, Duke Conrad of Yonwell (the naming was a good joke at the time I swear). The Yonwell army barely managed to scrape a defense together and fight back the traitorous Honorwatch hordes. Defeated, the Honorwatch forces retreated to the hills where they menace travelers along the plains to this day, until... 

 

Lorenzo Nuti

 

The players trigger a resurgence of forces from Honorwatch after pilfering a Scrying Orb from an outpost in the mountains staffed by strange and powerful undead as well as recovering a magical sword from a hateful wight in a lake in the northern plains (at great cost). Castle Honorwatch mobilized a horde of the dead to find the sword (ostensibly) and attack Yonwell while the players joined Duke Conrad and the Bell Priests (clerical order that puts down the dead) in defense of the city at the Battle of Yonwell. In a pitch battle over an ancient blood altar (after accidentally and spectacularly blowing up one of their own horses), the players successfully slew the general of the enemy forces who was identified as being likely Duke Konrad himself. They recovered his cursed blade and signet ring after ritually salting the body to prevent resurrection, but have yet to venture into the now quiet Castle Honorwatch for fear of its dread reputation. 

A Rangers Guild used to keep the roads safe and explore ruins in the region before they were destroyed due to murky circumstances surrounding possible involvement with the fall of Yonwell. After tracking down the location of their guildhall in the cursed Shellwood east of Yonwell, the players plumbed its depths for treasures and answers. While there, they encountered a Demon, Gorebold the Devourer, that was devouring the library in the guild. After much negotiation, Destrian Rumboldt (a former clown) agreed to feed the Demon knowledge and books in exchange for access to its repository of lore. During this excursion, Destrian also made use of the Scrying Orb and attracted the attention of something from inside of Honorwatch. After evading cloaked riders dispatched from the castle, he sought safety in the guildhall at Yonwell, as a giant three eyed crow stalked his movements... (The player then retired the character after losing the character sheet in a move and opting to "let him rest and be happy" before the player unfortunately moved away).

Now, several months later, the primary element of the Whoa Whoa Bellringers Club has returned from a lengthy expedition to the freeport of Gnarlshore, where they became embroiled in a snake-cult investigation (*cough*) and a second death-defying expedition into the depths of the Rangers Guild. While traveling abroad, they heard rumor of a haunting in Yonwell and children going missing. Now, returned to the guildhall, they make investigation of the rumors...

Malek Barah Abdoh

Dramatis Personae:

Alma Tumbler (level 5) Aspirant Ranger, purple feather mutation, Wielder of the Unknown Blade and the Lightning Bow, Chronicler and Sole Survivor of the first session

Olga Derippe (level 3) Body builder, Hammer Enthusiast, Haunted by a Revenant, Death Defier, Hoardmaster

Pepper Slorah (level 3) Expert Archer, Herbalist, Bell Priestess, Blindshot Expert, expedition leader and freshly returned from work with the Bell Priests

Catching up with two retired PCs living in the guildhall, one Vivian Droll (Snake fingered, player moved) and Fox Gimbal (lost a leg in the battle of Yonwell, player not present this session) as well as reuniting with the long gone Pepper Slorah (player briefly back in town), the party uncovers some troubling facts. Firstly, the giant crow has been seen perched on the roof of the guildhall these past few months and there have been reports of children going missing around town. Additionally, Destrian Rumboldt stole a magical blade from Damaris Westergren (Destrian's player's other character) and left the guild. The next day, the flat across the street had a bright orange and white striped circus tent thrown over it and the giant crow began to roost on top of the tent. Travelers along the street have become almost non existent, but some guild members relate catching glimpses of cloaked figures entering and leaving the gaudy tent in the dead of night.

The party begins to discuss the plan for their next expedition and the possibility of locating Cormac the Green, former leader of the Rangers Guild and current leader of the Hunter's Pact in Taubey Town, deep in the Beastwarren. Cormac had been sighted recently in the Greenspine that walls the Dellen Plains hunting a drake of local renown. Having long tried to unravel the mystery behind Honorwatch's fall to darkness, the party begins to contemplate braving the deadly mountains for a chance to meet Cormac and illuminate their many questions.

While performing the session start ritual of accounting for everyone's inventories and loading up the donkey (Don Quetello) and horse (Yellow Beedums), Pepper asked what had been done with the cursed blade of Duke Konrad which had been recovered from the Battle of Yonwell. Upon asking, the guild realized that they had left it in the guildhall basement these many months, unattended, which they all now concurred was likely a very *bad thing*. They agreed that the local commander of the Bell Priests at the Bell Shrine just outside of town- Aliah-, should be consulted as to what ought be done with the blade.

Before any further discussion could be had, a woman's scream was heard form the street outside and the party decided to investigate. Immediately they realized that a heavy fog had been rolling in up and down the street and there was not a soul to be seen amongst the low visibility. The giant crow was seen atop the circus tent covered building, tapping its talons rhythmically. Coming to the conclusion that Destrian Rumboldt was likely in the circus tent covered flat house and that the woman's scream may have come from inside, they carefully crossed the fog-shrouded streets under an early autumn gloom and found the door. 

Dalle2generator

 

Beyond the door was a long, dark hallway. Proceeding carefully, lantern and bell in hand, Pepper led the group down the abnormally long and bare hallway. Eventually, the hall opened to a room beyond- but first they encountered an ossified skeletal arm hanging out of one of the walls, several weeks rotted at least. The walls took on a gray pallor and upon investigation looked to pit and bulge subtly. Pressing her hand against the wall, Olga felt as though another hand inside the wall was trying to grip hers before immediately deciding against continuing to touch the wall and the party crowded closer and proceeded into the room. Strange thumps were heard from behind the wall and a skittering was heard from up ahead.

A long room with a set of doors locked by chain at the end of the room. In the center of the room was a round, long wooden table with chairs thrown haphazardly back. A wrought-iron holder fit almost perfectly to that which held the stolen scrying orb sat empty in the middle of the table, at the far end was a small box with lid askew and torn colorful wrapping around it. Carefully investigating the box, they found whatever it contained gone- only a receipt for a carriage and horse teams bought for an extravagant price from the Incontinent Vicar, a traveler's inn just south of town. 

Heavy footsteps were heard from above and Olga picked the lock on the chained door as the woman's scream was heard again- this time from the way they came. Still trying to locate Destrian, the party pressed forward through dusty red curtains behind the door and discover a floor to ceiling mirror at the end of a corridor. On approach they realized it was actually just the start of a dark hall of mirrors that continued on into the building. After testing marking the mirrors resulted in the mirrors screeching and trying to absorb what hit them, the party heard running and a heavy panting from further in the hallway and decided to leave and better prepare before daring to navigate the hall of mirrors. Before leaving they note a small engraved plaque on the central mirror: "Destrian Rumboldt's Funhouse Emporium". 

Retreating out of the hall the party noted a lit candelabra set on the table that had not been there before and made haste to exit the building, spilling out onto the empty streets. The three-eyed crow atop the building laughed at the party as they debated the situation and tried to find another entrance into the building. Under the circus tent now but outside the building, they discover windows flanked the door and were boarded up from the inside. Smashing a hole through the boards, Olga peeked into the room beyond and saw a long, dark room with something large at the end of it. It squirmed. Pepper came to look as well and was startled to see nothing but a mirror, but when turning back to inform Olga- Pepper's "reflection" however maintained a steadfast stare dead ahead. 

 

Ian Hampton

 

Thoroughly spooked the group discussed illusion magic and tried to determine the source- possibly the crow or Destrian's demon pact, and after several minutes of heated discussion illuminated by lantern light under the tent- Pepper noted the hand on Alma's shoulder. Slapping it away they found it to be a severed hand that crawled along the wall quickly and spiderlike. Olga swung her hammer and appeared to smash the hand by her estimation- but Alma and Pepper looked in horror as they saw the hand scurry up the length of the hammer and up Olga's arm before crawling into her mouth, fingers disappearing last down her throat. Now panicking, the group reconvene outside the tent and in the empty street and try to convince Olga of what they saw. Eventually, Olga coughs and wretches up a slimy and gore covered hand under the laughter of the crow above- with the hand scurrying away under the tent. 

The bird above coughs up a feather covered child's doll and takes flight- prompting the party to leave at haste and seek advice from Aliah. Upon exiting to the main streets they find the marketplace bright and busy and realize upon discussion with the local vendors (and buying some turnips in line with local saying "A turnip a day keeps the 'magination away!") that the peasantry were not even able to see the fog shrouded road to the guildhall or the distant circus tent, but they were increasingly guarded and moving in groups and armed. 

Spying a clown near the fountain, Pepper approaches thinking they are Destrian but discovers only an unknown and silent face-painted harlequin in front of a central fountain juggling bowling pins to no audience, an old boot in front of them which Pepper tosses a coin into and tries to strike up a conversation. The harlequin leans forward and gestures for Pepper to come closer. Leaning in, Pepper sees the harlequin's facepaint begins cracking and they whisper into her ear "There's a snake in my boot." before bending unnaturally backwards and disappearing into the fountain with a splash. Pepper jolts backwards in time to evade the large python that coils out of the boot before slithering off into the crowd. The party decides its time to make haste out of town and make for the Bell Shrine.

Leaving town, Alma catches sight amongst the rooftops of a gigantic, four story tall peasant calmly walking amongst the town. The peasant stops and stares as Alma. Alma waves. The peasant waves back and smiles, the smile begins to split their face along the middle and suddenly the peasant drops on all fours. Alma sprints away to the Bell Shrine, dragging the rest of the party along with her. 

Jef Wu

Arriving unharmed at the shrine, they discover Aliah is on patrol with the Duke's cavalry after an unspecified uprising was reported near Shellport. Consulting with the local monks at the Bell Shrine, the party discovers that the giant three eyed crow was rumored to have been a demon summoned by the cursed Duke Konrad of Honorwatch's wife Elvea. The monk also details the ways in which cursed objects may be uncursed- through baiting the cursed spirit into a host and slaying the host while sanctifying the artifact or using a stronger spirit to destroy the curse. Alma recalls some previous lore about the swamp hags north of Honorwatch being able to trap spirits using tattoos but the party is not eager to venture to the swamps. Buying a great deal of ritually treated gravesalt, the party returns to the town and writes a letter to the Circle of Fire- a group of librarians and scholars collecting lore in Gnarledshore- and ask after information about the demon crow, now convinced it is the likely source of these illusions that plague them. 

Heading back to the guildhall for the night and to stakeout the circus tent across the street, the party finds themselves quickly absorbed into the foggy street where something is slowly revealed to be walking in front of them. A lioness turns around as the party stops, with a second lioness appearing at her side. The party backs away slowly, offering turnips to placate the giant cats, before realizing an enormous lion now approached from behind- blocking their escape. Batting away the turnips, the lionesses disappear into the fog as the lion roars and leaps at Olga. 

Jiayan Li

Pepper flees down the street to the guildhall and eats a turnip, trying to convince herself these are just illusions. Olga and Alma engage with the lion and are suddenly attacked by one of the lionesses, nearly killing Olga after a critical hit. Thinking quickly, the pair decide to abandon the fight and run down the street to catch up with Pepper. Lightening their gear to try and gain a lead on the lions behind them, Alma hurls her helmet to the side while Olga tosses a lamp behind her which bursts brilliantly into flames that delay the lions. The party locks the guildhall door behind them at the last minute and Pepper takes time to salt the entrances to discourage any intrusions. The enormous face of the lion fills the front hall window, not fogging it from its breath at all, but watching Pepper until nightfall.

As night falls, Vivian and Fox inform the party that while they were gone a metal carriage tore down the street and stopped at the circus tent but due to the fog they could  not tell if someone was entering or exiting. Armed with grave salt and unwilling to exit the guildhall under the dark of night, the party decides to apply as much salt as they can to the cursed blade of Duke Konrad in their basement and turn in for the night. However, upon uncovering the basement's trap door it blows open of its own accord and a cold wind issues forth. 

The basement, however, does not contain the blade. Examining the shelf they had left the blade on revealed only dust and cobwebs. Scouring the room the party uncovers the source of the cold wind- cracks along the far wall which dissolve when salt is thrown on them and reveal a dark passageway that they surmise goes under the street and into the circus tent-ed house. Additionally, the party spies three large crates that they do not recognize amongst the cobwebs and detritus strewn about the damp basement.

Carefully opening the first crate they find it to be filled with damp hay, a scrap of brightly colored red cloth poking out from amongst it. Pulling on the cloth they find that there's simply more and more cloth until finally they dump the crate over and unfurl the full thirty feet of colored cloth- this greeted by the scratching laughter of the crow from the street above. The second crate is terribly similar, but as Olga begins to pull on the cloth she finds it yanked out of her hands and recoiled into the crate. Furious, she draws her dagger and stabs as the contents of the crate, the rest of the party watching on as flecks of blood fly out and a dark red stain develops around the base of the crate. Once satisfied, Olga dumps open the crate and discovers an eyeless corpse of a man- but one she knows. This is the corpse of Hannibal (Olga's player's previous character who had been left with the Mermaid Temple in Magda for training many months ago and never returned). As the grisly discovery washes over the party, they have little time to think when a rattle and buzz emits from the corpse. Minds recalling a horrific encounter with flesh eating giant locusts that burst out of the chests of their hosts- the party quickly tosses the body back in the crate and the three proceed to smash, stab, and slice apart the corpse until the buzzing stops. 

The last crate they opened with resignation which quickly turned to greed as they found it contained a three foot in diameter hollow glass sphere. Inside of the sphere were the skeletal remains of at least a dozen snakes, with the glint of gems distinct amongst the mass of bones. Just before Olga smashed apart the sphere, the party sees the snake skeletons begins to slither and slide around inside the sphere, their bones grating against the glass. Having only recently barely survived an encounter with a gigantic skeletal snake, they resignedly reseal the crate and begin to come up with ways to safely deal with the snakes. 

Cold wind blows out of the tunnel in the wall again and Pepper salt-wards it as a precaution, before the party musters their courage and head into the tunnel in search of the cursed blade and their lost companion Destrian who presumably stole it. 

What will the Whoa Whoa Bell Ringers Club find at the end of the tunnel? Is Destrian behind these hauntings- fueled by his pact with Gorebold the Devourer or is it the demon three-eyed crow tormenting the guild that spited its master? Can the cursed blade of Duke Konrad be recovered? Will the secrets of Castle Honorwatch be unveiled? 

All I can say for certain is that someone will probably aggressively ring their bell in desperation or for comedic timing.

Hacking Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is probably my favorite game. I have been playing it on and off for about a decade and its nuances and peculiarities are as well nestled into my brainspace as driving at this point. Over this time I have played an uncountable amount of hours, experienced dozens of unique stories, and built many a wild fortress that would succumb to the enemy.

For those who may only be tangentially familiar with the game, Dwarf Fortress is a management game/world generator/city builder/tactical RPG and so on and so forth. Started in 2002 by Tarn and Zach Adams it was first released in alpha form in 2006 where it began to grow a massive cult following. The foundation of the game is its world generation features. Whenever you start a new game you must first generate a world, and as the game has continued to update over the years this generation has gotten more and more complex. World generation, like most of the game, is highly configurable and starts with defining the landscape of the realm and then creating civilizations and beasts that populate it. The game then simulates history, generating individual historical figures and simulating interactions between civilizations and roving bands for as long as you have it set to run. This can be hundreds of years of unique history in the blink of an eye. 

Once the generation is complete, you choose to either view the Legends of the world and examine those unique events or you choose to play in Fortress or Adventure mode. In Adventure mode, you take up the role of one of the thousands of individual characters that populate the world and can interact with it at a ground level- taking on quests, singing songs and learning dances, slaying dragons and exploring the vast world. Each unit generated has a complicated needs system as well which defines what activities make them happy and focused, so fulfilling these becomes an emergent role play system that must be followed for any adventurer to succeed. 

The crux of the game however is in its Fortress mode. In this mode, you select an area on the world map and choose your specific civilization to play as. By default, these are all dwarven civilizations, and you are then able to configure your seven hardy dwarves' skillsets and the equipment they bring along with them before embarking. After that, you start to build a fortress, weather sieges from enemies, entertain visitors, craft masterworks, cater to nobles, even engage in worldspanning intrigue and warfare- or you can dig too deep as dwarves are wont to do and test your might against the many cave dwelling beasts that exist down in the deep stone caverns. At its heart though, Dwarf Fortress is about none of these modes and yet all of them. It's about the story that gets built by experiencing the clash of the underlying systems and experiencing the myriad tales and worlds that it allows. Each generated world becomes filled with stories- including those that you make by interacting with it. Emergent storytelling is king.

/u/leekeegan

 

 

 

The game has been under continuous development for twenty years now by the team of Tarn and Zach Adams- and its been freeware this whole time. The pair has been sufficing off of monthly donations (Patreon here) and have even been drawing crayon depictions at request of the donators as a thanks. Over the years their passion project has accrued a dedicated following of fans who have taken the little ASCII game about dwarves and absolutely run wild, creating utilities for 3D visualizations, in-game lighting engines, beautiful tilesets, and of course they have been modifying the game to all hell with everything from dark cthulhu mythos worlds,  realistic medieval combat and guns, Halloween horrors that assault your fortress, and even post-apocalyptic cyberpunk overhauls. The sheer imagination and creativity as well as craft displayed by the modding community, the artist community, and the writing community surrounding this game is a sight to behold and truly unique. 

One of the most popular mods when I started playing was Meph's Masterwork DF Mod, originally released in 2011 it added over 1100 creatures, 1000 new plants, 35 civilized races, 110 buildings, the ability to play as different and fully fleshed out races, and came with full graphic support and bundled with a number of utilities this mod was the work of many talented modders around the community and would continue to grow over the subsequent decade- adapting and updating as Tarn and Zach made steady updates to the base game as well- continuing to be one of the most popular mods to the game to this day.  

The reason that any of this could come about stems from how extremely hackable the base Dwarf Fortress game is. Inside your game folder you can edit almost every aspect of the game, from creating or removing creatures, setting to play as dragons, you name it and someone can probably do it. There's even a battle royale mode modded in. Certainly there are hard limits on some aspects of the game that cannot be changed by modders, but the sheer amount of variables that are open to us to modify make Dwarf Fortress one of the most hackable and accessible games that I know. That's not to say any of these modifications are easy- per se- or even the game itself. Dwarf Fortress was especially notable in its earlier days for having an exceptionally steep learning curve but being extremely rewarding once you get the basics down. With the upcoming Steam release Tarn and Zach look to make the game much more accessible than it is now (go ahead and check out the 15-30 part tutorials you can find plastered over YouTube), but I will always dwell fondly on how I was eventually able to learn the game mechanics and thrive in spite of the difficulty. 

Saber-Scorpion and Zippy

So we come to now, where over the past few weeks I have felt an itch to play a game about necromancers and wizards. Unsatisfied with my available options, I recalled the excellent Warlock mod created by Meph and previously integrated into Masterwork. Picking it up again I ran into some problems with stability and some features I liked from the current version of the game that were missing. I have very little experience with modding but do have a general familiarity with the game's raw files and so, I got to work. 

Surely there were better ways to go about it, but for many hours over the past week or so I have had thirty tabs of notepad opened to raw files of various versions of Masterwork, Warlock Tower, Old Masterwork, and a half dozen other mods that I dug through and analyzed to try and learn how the mods worked and implement the changes I wanted to make myself. Looking back at some of these older mods I used to enjoy and the depth of data to dig through it felt like doing archaeology, uncovering the hidden guts and gems that make the game tick in just the right way and then taking them back to a modern copy of the game and tinkering with it until I could make it work- recovering ancient technology- pondering the orb and divining its secrets. 

A random series of random design questions I had to solve when putting this all together: 

• How expensive should skeletons be? 
• Should imps be more or less of little bastards? 
• Is stone_vapor_template more stable than a dfhack modtools/add-syndrome reaction trigger?
• Are prisoners OP? 
• Is it too macabre to farm babies for souls?
• Is there a way to change the name of human leather to baby leather when made from babies and is it a valuable investment of my time to find out?
• Would a baby leather jacket be more or less valuable than a human leather jacket?
  
• Are ghouls cool? If not how do I make them cooler? 
• What's the price of immortality?
• If a ghoul was a letter what would it be and should it just be reusing the goblin 'g' or giant 'G'?
• How easy should it be to make steel from the corpses of the dead?
• If it shows up in the errorlog as an error but still works in game, is it really an error? 
• What should it cost to gain infinite lava or water? 
• How much slade (the literal rocks of hell)  should be made from a single soul?
• Are sentient souls interchangeable with nonsentient ones? 
• Should you keep playing around with playscii ineptly or go back to finding out how to tame werewolves? 
• What's the balance of cohesion and complexity?
  

And ultimately, this is the result. Nowhere near perfect or finished, but it's working! Here we take the standard of dwarves on an expedition and this time make it about Warlocks harvesting souls and building their armies in a dark tower filled with twisted experiments and dark magics! Grind your enemies into pieces and use their souls to feed your infernal creations and learn powerful spells! Achieve immortality and rule the world, or just bathe it in chaos!

Dragon Dungeons

What do you want? Office hours aren't until the next equinox. 

The last lecture forgot something? 

Oh. That. 

Dragon As Dungeon

As we discussed last time, the dungeon dragon is a degenerate form of a True Dragon that has become bound to a dungeon spirit by way of symbiotic mutualism. However, as we discussed in Aetheric Formalism 102- the Dual Inverse Theorem applies. For every creature under the stars there exists its equal and its opposite.

 Naturally forming Dragon dungeons are somewhat rare. Certain conditions must be met:

First, a Dragon of extreme size must glut itself on wealth

Second, this Dragon must be in a hibernation cycle. Cycles lasting less than a year will not generally work, with those lasting in the centuries being most attractive. 

Finally, a dungeon spirit must merge with the Dragon. These spirits are, of course,  notoriously attracted to the abandoned and the valuable spaces of the world. In the case of Dragons, they can sometimes be attracted by the terrible dreams that emanate from its slumber, and in some cases True Dragons have made pacts with powerful spirits to protect them in their slumber by way of dungeon. 

Yakun Wang

Aetheric Attractors on the scale of True Dragons will of course generate attention over time. In order for their slumbers to be peaceful, they harden their scaly exteriors to begin the molting process and then drift into the Ur and let their dreams shape their world around them. 

Combined with the powers of dungeon spirits, these dreams will shape the dungeon itself. The ecology of the Dragon's dungeon varies on the nature of the creature itself and is molded by the dungeon spirit to a form readily recognizable by the common pilferer as a dungeon. 

In some cases, this can be as simple as stepping through the jaws of the slumbering dragon and entering a castle adrift in the Ur with the Dragon's treasures- both tangible and intangible- locked away sometimes in comical grand treasure chests. Other cases can be as alien as any of the infinite planes of Ur. Grand watery caverns, orchestral palaces, bright and sunny islands, all can come to be in the shades of the dreaming Dragon- populating it with both figment and often tangible beasts that make their way inside at the beckon of the spirit. 

Of course, our academy is a Dragon Dungeon as well, but you should already have suspected that.

 

 

 

Campaigning

For the past few months I have been running an open table hexcrawl using Knave with a cast of seven or so players who have rotated in and out and twice as many characters over the same period of time. It has been such a breath of fresh air to return to a rules light system that urges player skill over character skill, especially after running two lengthy miserable 5e campaigns (both ending unfinished) back to back.

Kevin Gnutzmans

More than I can tolerate, I find myself being drawn into running 5e games over the past few years as a result of the hype building from podcasts that popularize 5e as their system of choice. Personally, I can stomach running maybe 2-3 sessions before I get tired of coping with the rules as written and player expectations built upon exposure to media portraying the game in a certain style. The extensive corpus of material available to help run games in 5e is certainly impressive, but the styles they portray and the thematic baggage of the implied settings get in the way of running a game that is gels with my DM style. Hence, Knave.

Enough whinging about 5e though, Knave is sick. It's a slick little system with rules easily intelligible by those with experience in rpgs and very friendly to those completely new. For my campaign we've had a good mix of both at the table which brings a fun mix of prior knowledge of games and open exposure to them. 

I have used this campaign as an opportunity to tinker heavily with the ruleset and try out new ideas, sometimes to great success and sometimes not. It has been messy, overwritten, contentious at times, but a hell of a lot of fun. Some highlights that I have learned from running the game so far: 

• Death & Dismemberment tables sound and look cool in theory, but in practice they often as not serve to remove a player from the game for long periods of time. Nixed using a table in favor of a single death save + current level when at zero HP. 
  
• Item slots are intuitive and provide a real logistical challenge for the players when they're planning their next moves. Most sessions open up with a shopping sessions to ensure everyone has enough rations, torches, lantern oil, etc. Things really hurt when you forget about your donkey loaded with rations and bedrolls and then have to scrounge to survive your way back to town. 
• If you stock a hexcrawl well, you don't need anything more than about a 10x10 to keep sessions fresh for more than a dozen sessions. 
• The Tenfootpolemic Bonus Exp doc is chaotic and delightful to implement at a table, especially when using gold = xp as your base means of character advancement. Likewise for incentivizing party roles (mapper, chronicler, etc.) with exp gains.