Payback's A Bitch (an adventure about a dragon)

 You are in 10,000 gold’s worth of debt to THE COMPANY. That’s okay- they’ve generously loaned you a near-dilapidated seaskipper, the Last Resort, and sent you out to make its fortune back trawling the Drakewracked Isles for treasure.

    The Last Resort carries up to 20 SLOTS of cargo. Every day it spends on the water costs 10 gold in maintenance. On top of standard random encounter checks, roll d6 for weather daily: 1-3: clear skies. 4-5: rough waters; extra 5g. 6: storm: extra 10g, lose a random SLOT of cargo.

    Whenever you arrive in safe port, THE COMPANY seizes whatever it can of what it’s owed. You can only be free of their clutches when you’ve paid debt in full.

(I’m running an after-school DnD club for 5th graders. These are notes from a campaign premise they missed out on. You’ll hear more about the game we’re actually playing, including the rules we’re using, by the end of the year.)

--

VULCAN ISLE- a backwater volcanic isle terrorized by Pyronax, a fearsome dragon lord with an untouched hoard (vanishingly rare in the wake of the Drachomachy). There’s a mouldering dock off Naxburg, or a cove tucked away on the other side of the isle where 4 goldeaters roost.

NAXBURG. A hamlet called Olis, before Pyronax took roost.

• Only CHEAP goods are available in the Naxburg Mercantile, at a 5x markup. Proceeds go directly to Pyronax.

• The Dragonspeaker, a painted fool puppet of Pyronax, has long held mayorship. Him and his two thugs try to extort and humiliate whoever passes through town.

• In the basement of the temple, the Council of Olis stages quiet resistance against the Dragonspeaker’s regime. They can be convinced to supply Mercantile goods for free.

MT. VULCANA. Once housed a shrine to Vulcana, the Abeyant Goddess, before it erupted- so much for abeyant. Her worshippers were transformed into melted undead. Now, Pyronax has made his lair in the bowels of the mountain, and controls the slagfaces (as zombies/cultists with fire immunity) with the Amulet of Vulcana. There’s two ways in, neither of them safe: in through the TEMPLE GATES (I), or the arduous climb and perilous drop through the CHIMNEY (III).

(I) TEMPLE GATES. 2 slagfaces, one wearing a key around its neck, guard the sealed iron double door to the ABLUTION CHAMBER (II). On their signal, 6 more emerge from the scrub.

(II) ABLUTION CHAMBER. A pool of scalding water simmers sulfurously in a central pool, fed from a vent in the wall. In the center, a face-down, inert slagface wears the key to the CHIMNEY (III) around his neck. It attacks if disturbed.

(III) CHIMNEY. Carved basalt stairs wind around the volcano’s throat, from the ABLUTION CHAMBER (II) to the BROOD POD (IV) to the SHRINE TO VULCANA (V) at the very base. Pyronax has clawed away the stairs within ~10 feet of the door to the BROOD POD (IV), leaving a drop of ~40 feet. A chasm in the throat’s floor looks down into the HOARD (VI) below. Four goldeaters, blind flying serpents with corrosive spit, cling to the walls, descending on anything that makes noise with shrill screams.

(IV) BROOD POD. In the center of the room, three of Pyronax’s eggs sit on a bed of heated crystal. They’ll hatch after warmed to the point of taking 30 points of fire damage. The crystal magnifies heat; as long as it’s being warmed, it deals 1 fire damage/ROUND to everything in the room, then 2 the next ROUND, then 3. If it ceases to be heated, it cools down at the rate of 1 damage/ROUND, too. Clinging to the ceiling, a dragonspit elemental falls on anyone who gets CLOSE to the eggs.

(V) SHRINE TO VULCANA. Three statues of Vulcana with rubies for eyes flank a pool of lava: one weeping (coated in powerful adhesive), one snarling (animates to attack if the room is disturbed), and one shushing (conceals a secret door). The secret door to the HOARD (VI) opens whenever something heavy is placed in the offering bowl before the snarling statue.

(VI) HOARD. Once a burial vault for the cult of Vulcana. Now, Pyronax sleeps atop an uncountable pile of raid-spoils, including 5 TREASURES and as many slots of gold and gems (each worth d20 x 100 gold) as can be carried.

PYRONAX’S SLUMBER. Every time the party triggers a random encounter for noise, roll a d6. If the result is equal to or under the number of times Pyronax has been disturbed, Pyronax awakens. He’ll first climb up to the chimney and inspect his lair for intruders, breathing fire into any room that shows signs of having been disturbed. If he thinks it’s safe, he’ll then fly away to eat some cattle, leaving his hoard undefended for 2d6 TURNS.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Ekman's Screw (mask relay)

From: https://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2026/08/mask-relay-37-everlixir-visor.html

To: https://velvetinks.blogspot.com/. Have fun!

--

A metal handle, bent into a loop and tipped with a wickedly sharp drill bit. A few inches back from the bit end, there's a metal cap. (Looks a little like a paint can opener turned combination lock, all told.) Carved onto the cap, written from the center out like spokes on a wheel, are six words: joy, sorrow, surprise, fear, anger, disgust.

If you insert the screw into the base of the skull behind the spinal column, slowly, methodically, you can turn the key to adjust the facial expression of whoever's been screwed. It works on anything with a face, living humanoid or otherwise otherwise. The insertion looks real nasty, but it's only a dull discomfort, like how people say acupuncture doesn't hurt (which, unrelatedly, bullshit, man). Before it gets turned, it can be removed without any negative effects save a concerning amount a blood. Pulling it out once it's been turned, though, is the hard part; without a medical professional taking their time to extract it, save vs. death, taking a permanent -d6 to INT even on a success.

Built by Ekman, a renowned professor who wanted to help manage his depressive symptoms. He didn't have any trouble getting it in...

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

GLAUGUST 26: the compilation

For GLAUGUST 26. Completed in speedrun mode (500 words or less apiece). Incidentally, I think this is the first GLoGtober/GLAUGUST challenge I've ever completed, despite starting the damn thing myself a number of years ago...

GLAUGUST 1: “Review Another's Blogpost.” Garamondia in review.

GLAUGUST 2: “Deicide dungeon.” A riverside shrine.

GLAUGUST 3: "The many qualities of night air." Meditations on endless night.

GLAUGUST 4: “Tree dungeon.” The wreck of the Red Horizon.

 GLAUGUST 5: "Post a timeline of the near, far, and distant future of one of your precious pet settings." Pb: history, forward.

GLAUGUST 6: “Art movement dungeon.” The Cruel Theatre.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

History, forward (GLAUGUST 26)

    History is strange. I've scarcely started living through my third decade, and the changes I've witnessed in my world are sweeping. Look in a history textbook, though, and you'd think that about one really significant thing happened a year. Before the past 200 years, even less. Is that incongruity an artifact of...

...real, substantial historical change happening at a much faster clip than the history books let on?

...a postmodern (post-postmodern?) world, hurtling through social acceleration at a rate newly enabled by technological acceleration?

...a hindsight bias of historicization, only "reading" events that connect in a chain to contemporary life and losing the countless seismic shifts that wash out in the intervening generations?

...a product of my psychosocial development, signaling not a change in the structure of the world or history but my awareness of it?

--

    Thinking about the future in these ways is even more precarious. The word for "atom" comes from the Greek "unsplittable one". 69 days after the New York Times claimed that human flight would only be possible in the next 1-10 million years, the Wright brothers flew their first airplane. Our telephones carry more computer than it took to put man on the moon, and AI asterisk asterisk asterisk. We're who knows how long way from renewable energy infrastructure, much less flying cars and interplanetary colonization. Our fantasies of what's possible when, and what can and will change the world, are greatly misaligned with the realities of human development.

--

    Anyways, this post is about Pb. Since Pb is my experiment in anti-canonicity, it's hard to pin down specifics, but here's one vision of what's to come.

Near future (~10 years): Legions of adamant-clad serpent-men pour out of the Undreamt Wilds in innumerable hoardes and begin an indiscriminate slaughter. Before our history began, they hiss, we made their fathers our greatest enemies. Some among them still bear the scars.

Far future (~100 years): The core lands of the Motescape lie shattered and irradiated in the wake of the Infernal War. What remains of the Entente progroms Septacanonical worship out of its despondent and traumatized citizens. On the peripheries of the Undreamt Wilds, cells of civilization stitch their souls back together in the shadows of jet-ship nebulae and pox-bomb wastes. Maybe we are those who survived the end times, maybe the stories of end times were simply a false comfort.

Distant future (~1000+ years): At the center of the world, a monastery-metropolis of crystal-carvers endlessly refine the great silicon god AM. Once they’ve finished him him, they say, they won’t have to live out the rest of time. AM will tell them what’s to come, down to the smallest details, and then they’ll decide: live out eternity, or drink the potent lotus they’ve brewed for five generations and pass into dreamless death. Everywhere else, they believe, is lifeless dust, and even the lights behind the firmament are guttering, the groaning and cracking from above an omen of immanent collapse into the Æther. Where have the Saints gone?

--

GLAUGUST 5: "Post a timeline of the near, far, and distant future of one of your precious pet settings." This has proven to be a productive GLAUGUST for SSnSS! It's been wonderful reading everyone's posts, and seeing steadily strong blogging come out of the scene- I appreciate everyone's creativity and inspiration. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Trying to fire up a bandwagon: names

    Names are an art. Some syllables come together and stick, more than the sum of their parts. In the GLoGosphere, we're spoiled for good namers- Phlox, Vayra, and Louis all come to mind, as (very divergent) exemplars- whose naming conventions carry a distinctive sense of identity, taste, and craft. But there are many others out there whose knack for naming I admire.

    I want to learn your secrets, your tools, your ideosyncracies. How do you choose, create names? What sits on your tongue and sticks in your brain? Where does the skill for naming come from? What about the skill for identifying a good, functional name- the taste component? What names don't land at the table? Appendix Ns of legendary names- novels, histories, random tables, IMDB pages?

    Thinking about it, I don't know very many clichés about naming conventions in RPGs. Don't choose anything that the players might take as a false cognate (i.e. "Herpys" to "herpes"), avoid alphabet soup, use google translate to avoid unintended cross-linguistic double entendres... and that's it. So there's a lot of wide-open space to make even the simplest observations! Seeking not only deep dives and sustained thinking, but also rudimentary insights memetically phrased.

EDITED TO REFLECT THE MANY THOUGHTFUL, WONDERFUL RESPONSES:

• Ro
• Phlox
• FirstGokun
• Squamous
• Louis
• Hilander
• Semiurge
• EcksianRaven
• Prismatic Wasteland
• Beneath Foreign Planets
• Christian H
• ...Sundered?

    My corner of the GLoGosphere is filled to the brim with writers and DMs I admire and look up to, and I always appreciate the chance to call upon you all as a brain trust. I'm very much looking forward to hearing what insights people have to share! Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

The Cruel Theatre (GLAUGUST 26)

THE THEATER. When a mystery cult of St. Manganese summoned the demon ANTONIN, he shattered their minds and rebuilt their shrine as a nightmarish theater, pulsing with music and violent light. It now contains ANTONIN, who starts in room d6+3, and the 12 GIBBER-MEN he’s AWAKENED. (ANTONIN: stats as chain demon carrying random TREASURE. GIBBER-MEN: stats as cultists, or zombies.)

AWAKENING. Ailment, cured by a REST outside the theatre. No detriment. TERMINAL (X): become a GIBBER-MAN. Roll BEARING or contract AWAKENING upon first entering each room 4-9.

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS.

1-3 d4 GIBBER-MEN.

4-5 ANTONIN enters a random adjacent room.

6 ANTONIN arrives.

--

1 SHAFT. A hole in the earth, looking down through CATWALKS (2) to the STAGE (3). 2 GIBBER-MEN advertise “a new play of metaphysical proportions”, bringing whoever obliges down to THE STAGE (3) and strapping them in. 3 more GIBBER-MEN hide in wait to push dissenters onto the CATWALKS (2).

2 CATWALKS. d4 GIBBER-MEN reset pulleys and adjust polychromatic lights. Doors randomly lead to room d8+1, where 2 means SHAFT (1).

3 STAGE. Towering, imperfectly scrubbed white walls surround a pile of cushions hiding manacles. Six doors ring the performance area (4-9).

4: Gentle splashing.

5: Thunderous, omnitonic music.

6: Odor of blood and paint.

7: Low red glowing.

8: Whistling and undulating light.

9: Nothing.

Once an audience is shackled, a performance begins, not stopping until it ends or the performers die. Each act (d4 ROUNDS long), roll BEARING or contract AWAKENING.

I: COSMOGONY. Titanic instruments swim through seas of light.

II: SEX. 2d4 GIBBER-MEN enact an sadistic orgy.

III: STRIFE. The GIBBER-MEN descend upon each other and the audience. (1 HD, 2 HD if restrained.)

IV: SACRIFICE. The GIBBER-MEN ritualistically impale one of their own on a massive needle. (Automatically contract AWAKENING.)

V: APOTHEOSIS. Icy chiaroscuro, total stillness.

4 POOL. Two GIBBER-MEN, mutually cannibalized, slumber fitfully in a pool of liquid manganese. Between them sits a TREASURE.

5 ORCHESTRA. A GIBBER-MAN operates titanic, cacophonous instruments. If he stops, ANTONIN and d4 GIBBER-MEN arrive in d4 ROUNDS to restart the noise.

6 SHRINE. Torchlight illuminates a statue of St. Manganese coated in blood and paint. In the offering-bowl before it sits Antonin’s notebook, containing bloody charcoal portraits (12 GIBBER-MEN and mutilated self-portraits), a map of the theatre, poetry, manifestos, and mad hieroglyphs.

7 WARDROBE. Red light illuminates a forest of ill-proportioned mannequins draped in ritual robes and masks. d4 GIBBER-MEN hide ramrod-still among them, grabbing whoever comes close.

8 SCULPTURE. In the center of a broken ring of towering, polychromatic glass sheets, a chest-high chandelier orbits on a chain, whistling as it swings. ANTONIN occasionally comes to reinvigorate the contraption.

9 PAINTINGS. A disemboweled GIBBER-MAN (1 HP) uses his own entrails to paint a savage mural. Behind a tapestry of a brutal battle are stairs to the SHAFT (1).

GLAUGUST 6: “Art movement dungeon.” Inspired by The Theatre and its Double and the Outlast video essays I've been watching. (Eventually for Pb's STARTER BOX, though if anything gets cut from that project, it's this.) Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

THE WRECK OF THE RED HORIZON (GLAUGUST 26)

    (If you don't want the STARTER BOX's mysteries to be revealed prematurely, don't highlight the redacted text. It's not all that shocking, but I want to keep the mystery alive, you know?)

 THE RED HORIZON. An armed cargo ship whose skeleton crew carried clandestine delivery runs for the Church. Scuppered by a storm, it crashed deep in the K--Y forest, splitting in two on the bough of a great tree.

WHAT THEY KNOW. The crewmembers (L--, B--, R--, T-- (deceased), V-- (deceased), U-- (wandering the forest)) know that they’re carrying dangerous cargo to Outpost Delta, a secret laboratory in the trackless depths of the K--Y forest. If the Church learns its secret has been leaked, they’ll be marked for heresy, so they’ll withhold unless their life is on the line. Only Captain K-- (deceased) knew that their cargo was a dragon larva.

UNSTEADY. The wreckage is tangled precariously in the tree’s limbs. Whenever anyone causes a major shift of weight, roll FINESSE or the ship teeters. When a given half would teeter three times, it instead crashes to the forest floor (all take 3 HD).

(1) TRUNK. Crewmember L-- nurses B-- against the trunk of the tree. Without intervention, B-- dies in d4 ROUNDS. T--’s fallen corpse lays nearby. The two halves of the Red Horizon groan 60 feet overhead.

CLIMBING. The trunk is slick with rain. Instead of branches, it’s lined with shelf fungi, releasing soporific spores (roll MIGHT or fall asleep) when broken.

CRIES. R--’s groans of pain are barely audible from the COLLAPSED DECK (4) above. His crewmembers are eager to see him safe.

(2) GUN DECK. Over the door to the CARGO HOLD (3) lays a lightning ballista (2 HD). Also thrown against the back wall are three hypo-oxygen tanks (Ud12), one of which is crushed, a lead diving suit (armor AS PLATE, immunity to radiation, DISADVANTAGE on FINESSE rolls), and coils of extra rigging-rope.

GAS. Hypo-oxygen from the ruptured tank saturates the room. Every ROUND holding an open flame, roll FORTUNE or the room ignites (2 HD).

(3) CARGO HOLD. A massive gold-and-tungsten cage sits empty, its bars wrenched open. Three TREASURES hide in the wreckage of shattered crates around it.

RADIOACTIVE. Every ROUND, roll MIGHT or contract radiation sickness, residuum from the dragon larva’s blighting presence.

(4) COLLAPSED DECK. The forecastle has collapsed downward into the galley. A splintered plank spears R--’s leg in place near V--’s corpse. The dragon larva attacked R-- as it escaped, and the claw marks on his irradiated chest bloom with scabrous pustules. He’ll promise anything for freedom, even revealing what little he knows about the secret shipments or what attacked him. Even if he’s freed, he’ll succumb to his wounds in d4 days without expert treatment.

(5) CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS. The mangled, irradiated corpse of Captain K-- bleeds out over a pile of shattered silicon crystals and destroyed documents bearing the Black Hierophant’s seal. (There is no Black Hierophant, only the three Red Hierophants.)  Around his neck is a key to a locked chest against the wall containing a piece of TREASURE.

CRYSTALS. The larval dragon killed the captain before he could destroy the crystal map to Outpost Gamma. Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omega lie in pieces on the ground.

GLAUGUST 4: “Tree dungeon.” Also a dungeon with no monsters, which I think would make a sick GLoGtober prompt all its own. Eventually for Pb's STARTER BOX.Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.