Hot Rod from Hell (GLoG Class: Champion)

 Just because I think it’s funny. Start with a full tank, some now-peeling flame decals, and something unwholesome moving in the backseat.

d6 reasons this car has been imbued with a demon soul:

1 Some innocent schmuck was killed and stuffed in the trunk. They’re still there, piloting the car post-mortem to hunt down their killer.

2 A drunk driver’s erratic attempts to pull out of their driveway backwards accidentally outlined an infernal sigil on the concrete.

3 This was the only car in the parking lot of a Midwestern megachurch that some hooligans decided to burn down.

4 The original owner (rest their soul) left the windows down in the car wash one too many times...

5 Whoever thought using an electric chair to give a car a jump was a good idea was very wrong.

6 You think that spirits just disintegrate after exorcisms? They have to go somewhere!

A On the Highway to Hell. You are a sinister motor vehicle, with all that entails. The roaring belches of black smog from your unholy exhaust pipe carry your words, and the brimstone-burning headlights betray your emotional intent.

B Undying Fury. You don’t need to refuel, and small nicks or mechanical defects repair themselves. In addition, you can wreath yourself in hellfire at will.

C Not a Scratch. You can never be destroyed by anything short of an exorcism and liquidation, only damaged. Your metal hull repairs at the same rate and in a similar way to human flesh and bone.

D Night’s Dark Cavalry. If you have a corpse in your gas tank, you can burn it up to fly for a TURN. In addition, you can look at a vehicle and imbue it with the same unholy energy, creating a Level 1 Hot Rod from Hell. The new vehicle has no obligations to anyone, and usually screams off into the greater world to cause supernatural havoc.

Magic in the Flesh

 Here is what we all agree upon:

There are three forms of magic. Generative magic, whose patron is Lady Rachayha [she who birthed the Flesh and carves life from bone], Perpetuative magic, whose patron is Lord Rahayan [he who is chained in the bowels and weeps the world’s blood], and Annihilation magic, whose patron is Lord Rahavesh [they whose eyes smoulder with fire and are blood-sworn to slay the Flesh in the Final Days].

In the Final Days, when Rachaya and Rahavesh lock eyes, she will draw her needle and hammer, and they will draw the reaping scythe. The Flesh will writhe, its muscles will tear and its flesh will bloat and rend. In these throes of death, Rahayan will be unbound from his chthonic incarceration. The Lord of Preservation will have to make a choice as to whether he will stand with Rachaya or Rahavesh, and by his allegiance seal the flesh of the Fate, whether it be preserved or razed.

It is generally believed that the Final Days will happen on the eve of we don't want to alarm anyone but they’re happening right now. When you sully the names of the Triumvirate on your lips to invoke their magics, it brings that day ever closer as you acknowledge the terrible truth of the massacre to come, or perhaps keeps it at bay as you pull their grim power away from them.

Here is what we disagree upon they are wrong about:

The Suid Chain believes that the Flesh is boundless, its corpulent warrens stretching to the ends of reality, and, for the matter, that there is no afterlife; this is all that there is. To this end, the Chain (irresponsibly) preaches reckless hedonism to its worshipping body, the icon of the pig representing their ideal unending gluttony and sloth. They claim Rot is Rahavesh’s work, an attempt to unmake the infinite Flesh from the inside out. But what do they care of it? Their flames will be long extinguished by the time the Rot has done its foul work.

The Ravagers’ fundamental crime is the excessively liberal application of the predator-prey dialectic. They believe Flesh is a mammoth apex predator who swallowed our fathers’ fathers’ fathers long ago, and only by honing their capacity for death (like their totem, the bear) through any means necessary do they have a hope of escaping into another world, be it beyond the Flesh or into the predator’s afterlife. Extremist sects believe in reincarnation, and thus see no way of escaping the Flesh save a mass purging, securing their seat in the Court of Beasts. They believe that the Rot is Rahayan’s artifice, an attempt at balancing life and unlife, predator and prey. Some extremists boldly claim that the attempt was successful.

We know naught of the Winding Coils, save that they are also sadly misguided. As a word of advice, if you see a painted or branded insignia of a snake clutching an orb in its maw, watch your back and ask as few questions as you can muster.

Here is what is, despite what they say:

The Flesh is a great and unfathomable beast that dwells in an even greater and more unfathomable land of blinding light. We are part of its microbiome, aiding it in its digestion and homeostasis through the nature of our lives. However, through meditation and study, we may enlighten ourselves to escape this inherent cycle of labor and glimpse a truer purpose.

The world of light, the Outside, is a world that is more real than our own- while we survive sleeping in the Flesh, glimpsing the Outside would complete us in some way we could not fathom with our fettered minds. However, the latent knowledge of the Outside is buried deep in our collective psyche, it simply needs a canvas upon which to be unleashed. Our oracles have declared that there is or was or will be a Gastrolith somewhere within the Flesh; an artifact from the Outside with the potential to unlock our latent knowledge.

We perch at the edges of that which is and feed passively and invisibly off its scraps, like our chosen emblem, the gnat. We meditate and try to carve truths we find within our minds onto calculi. We seek to reunify with the Akashic Record, and the Outside, through the Gastrolith we seek. Our mission is the truth of our purpose for being, and you too can occupy our Ghost and aid us in our search for enlightenment. Talk to a recruitment officer today, and remember, the password is don’t just publish the password, you buffoon!.

(The Rot, of course, is Rachaya’s mutated and least favorite child, trying to strangle its greater sibling out of jealousy and hatred. It is to curb the Rot’s rage that Rachaya will be incited to pick up her hammer and needle and begin the End Times, so have our oracles foretold.)

-Excerpt from the first draft of a flashily-decorated pamphlet called “So you wish to be a member of the Hyper-Obtuse Ghosts?”, found inside of a moderately-sentient fatberg in the Capillaries

Four Campaign Pitches

 With any luck, I will be starting a new game soon. I always like to whip up multiple pitches and let my players choose the one that interests them the most. I find that expositing settings with Three Truths works well because it’s a very digestible amount of information that leaves enough gaps as to allow the characters their own space to build out the world by asserting their place in it, as well as leaving a number of questions to be explored over the course of the campaign. That in mind, here are the Three Truths of the settings I’m going to present to my new group, so that I may have enough to run half of a session.

These first two are closer to the classical fantasy experience. I say “closer to” because if I run one more generic fantasy game I will rip my eyes out and feed them to the crows.

RIPPED FROM HELL’S WOMB SCREAMING

• You have been kidnapped by the Drow, subterranean humanoids with coal black eyes and unearthly pale flesh, at its thinnest points exposing miniscule spiders rushing through their veins like blood. They are holding you in the back cell of some strange temple-laboratory, intending to sacrifice you in some sort of ritual of summoning. Escape is imperative.

• Your locale of incarceration is miles below the earth in a chthonic network of caverns known as the Underdark. Choked with fungi and infested with infernal predators accustomed to the eternal lightless depths, survival is a challenge even for natives- the odds you’ll make it out, at least intact and sane, are slim to none.

• On the surface, the Paladins of the Red Sun conduct an invasive crusade on the demonic cults that have recently manifested and started festering in the dark corners of civilization. The Demon Lords Zuggtmoy, Fraz-Urb'luu, and the dread Demogorgon are rearing their heads and setting their putrid gaze upon the mortal realms, heaven help us all.

PERFECTLY FROZEN IN A MOMENT OF AGONY

• Thirty-three years ago, the sun inexplicably disappeared and the world suddenly plunged into an eternal icy darkness. You are among the survivors of this cataclysm, or perhaps those born into the world just after Nightfall.

• You don’t remember much of the light-drenched before-times anymore, the memories hurt your eyes like a phantom pain. Your remaining recollections are wracked by smoke-scented traumas in the shadow of the Ordinal Authority’s tyrrany. The Authority’s great bureaucracy was sundered by Nightfall, but the resulting anarchy wasn’t much better. The people of the darkness are bereft of leadership, a void waiting to be filled...

• The dead haven’t stayed dead since Nightfall.They return as dead-silent Gaunts, with flesh blue as ice and eyes black as the space between the stars. Their behaviors are erratic, ranging from mimicking human emotion to repeating basic behaviors to stagnantly staring to wandering the gelid wastes, but all seek isolation, and grow violent when they cannot be left to their own devices. Where have their souls gone?

These last couple of options are me going a bit crazy. If you don’t think considering what material your sword is made out of is fun, and you like knowing everything about a setting going into it, turn away here.

RUSHING THROUGH YOUR VEINS LIKE FIRE

• All your life, you have lived within the sanguine walls of some greater entity; that is to say, you dwell within a creature known only as the Flesh. You are surrounded by osseous flora and strange bacterial fauna, and bile rivers flow into sputum springs at the banks of kidney stone mining colonies.

• For decades, the Rot has plagued the deepest caverns of the Flesh, populated by mutated beasts of necrotized flesh and clods of rotting mayflies bringing plague with their kisses. Within the last year, the Rot’s ashy, cancerous demesne has spread aggressively, and threatens to consume and make unliveable great swathes of the Flesh within months.

• You are citizens of Ribcage, the greatest human city left standing. Peasant rebellions threaten to unseat the oligarchs of the Marrow Concursion, who live in their bone spire manors and gaze imperiously down on the meat farms they command. The only thing standing between open class warfare is the Blue Guard, whose purses are lined with Concursion grubs.

THE EMPIRE PERCHED UPON THE UNKNOWN CHAIN

• Just read this

Here’s hoping the game goes well. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

May My Tongue Cling to the Roof of my Mouth if I do not Remember You (GLoG Class: Justiciar)

 LAWFULLY WEDDED HUSBAND

50-odd percent of marriages end in divorce. Of the remaining portion, many of those are propelled by inertia and obligation more so than the spark of passion. However, a fraction of a fraction of such unions are truly remarkable, and the vows that seal them together are wellsprings from which a strange form of magic sparks. Truly, their matrimony is blessed.

You cannot take this class for your first Template. Instead, you are made eligible for a Level in this Class by proposing to someone over the course of the game (or having started the adventure having proposed to someone, talk to your DM). The next stretch of downtime you both have after your proposal, you each gain your first Template in this class, then roll once on the table to below to see what gifts you have brought each other, functioning as your starting equipment in this Class.

1 A miniature sleeping Ophanim disguised as an eye-covered engagement band

2 A horrific painting of you and your beloved portrayed as aliens wrapped in a blasphemous embrace found abandoned in a rain-drenched alleyway

3 A talking bullfrog named Horace; he secretly is enamored with your Beloved, and seeks to woo them for his own

4 Both halves of a bisected heart necklace originally owned by your grandparents. Grandma’s side has a picture of Scruffy, her capybara, while Granny’s side bears the sigil of a known criminal network.

5 A white carnation that hums a love song when placed in sunlight and turns red while whispering the same date over and over again in moonlight

6 A gift card for a million silver shillings at “Urgoo’s All-You-Can-Eat* Clams** ‘n Boiled Carrot Smorgasbord (No They Don’t Come Separately, Please Don’t Ask)!”

7 A rune-etched crystal orb that, when placed by one’s bedside, literally makes their dreams come true. Not safe around those with night terrors.

8 Some shiny rocks you found on the ground and thought were cool- a timeless classic!

(Of course, you don’t have to be a male-identifying person to take this Class; you can be a Lawfully Wedded Husband no matter your gender identity, or can absolutely be a Lawfully Wedded Wife or Spouse. However, homosexuality is always encouraged.)

A Wedding Fever. You’re not quite married yet, but you will be soon, right after you organize the festivities. You always know where your Beloved is and how they’re feeling (and vice versa), and when you see them take damage, you can choose to take it in their stead. If you do so, it cannot be reduced or mitigated in any way. Your Beloved can do the same for you. To gain another Level in this Class, host your wedding; your DM has permission to make that as difficult as they can muster.

B Tie the Knot. After the tribulations of wedding planning, you’ve made it out of the gauntlet intact (hopefully) with your Beloved at your side (hopefully). You can perfectly mimic the body language and voice of your Beloved, and vice versa. In addition, once per day, you can instantaneously switch spots with them, no matter where you may be in the cosmos at the time.

C Till Death do us Part. You are a paragon of unity, to the point where you become two sides of one coin. You can see out of each other’s senses, read each other’s thoughts, and switch spots at will. In addition, if one of you dies, they wake up right next to their Beloved on their Beloved’s next good night’s sleep in a bed- only if you both are killed before that point will you fail to return from the dead.

Mazel tov to Ren and Phlox. Fuck you both. You both are such wonderful people with such wonderful taste, and the world is a happier place with you in it, much less united. I hope your celebrations are worth all your exhaustion and meticulous planning and more, and that you reap from them all the magic you so rightfully deserve. Love you both, don't tell anyone.

I mean seriously guys what the fuck is this shit

The Chronicle of the Fannie May (Pb play report)

 Dramatis Personae

Essim Rosalind(?) the Noble Thief, played by FifthDragon. Claiming to be a scion from a fallen noble house, he has fallen to piracy, captaining the Fannie May and taking odd jobs to sustain himself. His skill in manipulating the noble gasses has gotten him out of many pinches hence.

Hexatimus Szylagyi the Arcane Harbinger, played by the ever-odious Reneford. A heretical arcanist captured by the Inquisition before being broken out by a rogue Inquisition defector, bearer of magics even he doesn’t fully understand.

Taz d’Alvor the Ex-Inquisitor, played by yours truly. As the Inquisition pushed him and his partner to ever greater misdeeds, he finally came to his conscience when asked to torture Hexatimus. Leaving his old life behind for that of an outlaw, Taz broke them both out and joined Essim for some “honest” work.

The Chained Thief, played by our wonderful DM CyberChronomancer. Our mysterious and secretive client who hired us to take some powerful, unstable dirigible fuel across the border into the Bursingr Confederation. Technically an NPC, but he accompanied and assisted us through the entire duration of the adventure, so he counts.

ACT 1: Some Lame Sword

We meet the crew of the Fannie May in the alleyway of a warehouse district near the edge of the Iodine Empire. After a bit of a wait (how unprofessional), the Chained Thief comes down the alleyway with a bulky crate loaded with crystal-topped cylinders- our intended cargo. As we finish loading it, Hexatimus spots a ripple in the fabric of space forming on-deck. Reacting quickly, he uses his Arcana Thief ability to hurl the ripple 200 feet into the air. An Inquisitor bearing a magic blade plummets out and goes splat (“Rudolpho! I knew him from work.” -Taz). More masked Inquisitors file out, blocking our escape. We grab Rudolpho’s blade and Essim sets sail, but not before our hull is punctured by coin-fire from ecclesiastical pepperboxes.

As we sail away to our destination, the Bursingr city of Iunathar, we look over the blade. A slender, curved blade with a basket handle adorned with a wax ideogram by the name of HALF MOON SETTING, capable of ripping holes in space with an incautious swipe. Though desperately coveted by Taz, it ultimately went to Hexatimus, the one among us least martially capable. Still pissed about that.

ACT 2: Close Calls and Fireworks

A few miles out from Iunathar and the Confederation border, the Fannie May runs into an Imperial guard ship. They signal flag for our identification. Us being pirates, this kind of fucks our shit up. Thinking fast, Taz dons a Saccharinian masquerade mask and dresses Hexatimus in his golden manacles. As the Fannie May pulls up, Taz whispers that he’s transporting a very dangerous heretic for questioning, and that he needs the utmost haste. With a clutch CHRM roll, the officer lets him slide, and the ship sails on unhindered to Iunathar.

Before we get there, we smell it on the stale winds. Smoke. On the horizon, crimson and black betray the gauntlet we are yet to face. As we get closer and closer, we see it. A massive zeppelin, the biggest we’ve ever seen, dominates the burning city’s skyline. The label on the side, painted in Imperial crimson, reads dreadnought. It dwarfs the pirate and mercantile ships surrounding it, engaged in a one-sided Lightning Cannon firefight with the Bursingrian ships, one of which is the flagship of our supposed contact, Captain Jig Beef. Seeing the massacre, we decide instead to wait it out in the clouds hovering above the Æther. After some nail-biting maneuvering and some brief glimpses of eyes and elbows in the churning deep within the back of our minds, the explosions die down above us, we narrowly dodge one of the Dreadnought’s Lightning Mortars to make our way back out into the wine-dark sky. The Chained Thief explains that if we can escort the cargo to Zenith Mons instead, he can pay us double.

ACT 3: Surprise Guests and a Course in Spontaneous Balloon Repair

We decide to take back roads to get to Zenith Mons, as to lessen the chance of an altercation with Imperial ships- though they are few and fall between in the Confederacy, we didn’t want to take our chances. After a stretch of sailing, we looked behind us and to our great surprise saw two Inquisition cutters. They couldn’t have followed us, this far, how did they get there? As we combed through our possessions, Hexatimus found a vial of quicksilver containing a red thread, and Taz recognized it as an Inquisition tracker. In a fit of impulse, he chucked it overboard- bad plan, now we couldn’t throw them off the trail any way except running faster than them.

This was when our dice started running real cold. We tried gunning it by skimming the top off of our superfuel shipment, but that didn’t get us out of eyeshot. We maneuvered to dive into a mess of winds known as St. Nitrogen’s Labyrinth, but the cutters managed to follow us. Our last gambit was to enter range of a mote that was shattered by a Conduit accident long ago called the Shattered Fist. Essim’s steering is true, and we manage to outpace one of the cutters, tangling it in some of the dangling chains. The other one is hot on our tail, but Hexatimus has a spell called Brain Rebellion, and using it on the captain of the second cutter sent the whole aerodyne plummeting into the Æther. However, we still had the problem of momentum. As we were hurtling through the sharp, broken rocks of the Fist, one ripped into our balloon. Hexatimus climbed up to try and repair and ended up head-over heels tangled in the rigging. When Essim tried to fly up and save him, he ended up dislodging Hexatimus, sending him tumbling into the void. At the last second, Hexatimus whipped out HALF MOON FALLING and clove a rend in space, depositing him on the deck with nothing more than a hearty bruise and a healthy nosebleed.

Taz saw it fit to make a hasty landing, but didn’t manage to make it quite right, and the hull was broken inward by a mote-shard. Temporarily grounded, we turned our gaze to the cutter wrapped up in the chains. If we could get aboard, they’d probably have supplies we could use to repair our hull, and we could put a definitive end to the Inquisition tracking us. We used the blade to carve a path onto their hull. A lot of muder and a bit of light bondage (thanks to Taz’s golden manacles) later, we had cleared the ship and made our way back to the Fanny May to rest, resupply, and repair. After all, we had to get the ship back to the Widow Marleene before her death intact, so she could give herself a proper viking burial.

EPILOGUE: Of Coins and Crusades

We crept our way back to the main spaceways. The Chained Thief revealed to us that he was not only transporting the fuel- he had two pieces of valuable documentation with him as well. One was an Imperial schematic for an experimental floating weapon, and the other was an edict signed by all three Red Hierophants that sanctioned a Crusade against the Confederacy. He was delivering them to the Pirate Queen Nine, leader of the Council of Free Captains, who would be giving us our coin.

As we received the ludicrous quantities of coin and began to squander it in one of the many crusty taverns at the base of Zenith Mons, we heard a rumble like thunder outside. We went out and saw the massive bulk of the Dreadnought dwarfing the port…

REFLECTION

This was truly a gem of a game. Cy did a delightful job in expanding the setting in a very appropriate manner, and many of their embellishments have been added into the living canon of the Iodine Empire. The system seemed easy enough for everyone to understand, use and abuse. The group (both players and characters) really clicked and resonated. It excites me for the prospect of running a Pb campaign sometime soon, there’s something really powerful about this game and I want to dip back into that well as often as I can.

As a parting gift, here is all the art I drew during the session, and here's a link to Pb. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

A Little Salty, a Little Crispy, Would've Been Better With a Pickle on the Side (GLoG class: Gourmand)

 GIGANATOVORE

As part of their ancient curse, giants do not give live birth to giant babies. Instead, they give birth to sickly, fetal creatures which they expose to the will of the elements. Depending on how the fetus dies, it is reborn into a giant form, while those who survive turn into the ever-feared Giant Slayers, boogeymen of the giant mythos. However, a select few of the proto-goliaths meet a different fate, one that involves a dinner plate. What? You were hungry! Start with a belly full of giant fetus, a cookbook for rare meats, a tiger’s eye brooch with matching jabot, and a set of silver cutlery missing the spoon and half the knife.

A The Mutation and the Mask. To conceal the shame of what you’ve done, you’ve manufactured a genial aura that people of high society (or those who like to think they are) are drawn to. In addition, you sprout a random gross Giant Slayer appendage somewhere on your body.

1	Eye	Your eye can see something otherwise invisible, like auras or secrets.
2	Ear	You can make sense of anything you hear, no matter how incomprehensible or inaudible.
3	Mouth	You can imitate any sound through the second, concealed mouth.
4	Arm	You get extra inventory slots equal to your Level.
5	Leg	You can move 10 * Level extra feet each ROUND.
6	Animal part	Specifics depend on which random part of which random animal; limited flight, natural weapons, limited camouflage, etc.

B Fee Fi Fo Fum. Another random Giant Slayer appendage sprouts from your body. In addition, you can literally smell creatures that are larger than you from a mile away.

C A Hunger Unsatisfied. Your body has learned to process organic matter. When you eat a significant part of a living creature in a short span, you gain one of its properties or powers for as long as its meat is in your system.

D Second Birth. The thing inside you, that which they call a Giant Slayer, has finished gestating. You can choose to regurgitate it (getting a fiercely loyal but ravenously hungry mount that needs to eat the equivalent of a stable of horses every tenday) or enter symbiosis with it (you can turn into a Giant Slayer at will, appearing like a chimeric tangle of limbs and eyes and serrated teeth, but if someone who doesn’t know and trust you very well sees you do it, you’ll be executed with haste, because that shit’s freaky).

huehehehehehehe

SIX ARCHETYPES

As I have been designing a sickening number of mediocre GLoG classes recently, I have found myself falling into strange patterns, patterns I think deserve to be reified. Here are my Six Archetypes: the dimensions by which my future classes will be defined- I have some interesting projects in mind to flesh out and utilize these delineations. No longer will the fruits of my artifice be labelled Fighters or Thieves or Clerics, no. Those days are over. Instead, they will be…

VESSELS, those who get their power through communication with or the channeling of an external force or entity. See the Astrologer and the Primal Exemplar. The archetypal Vessel is the Warlock.

CHAMPIONS, those who get their power through mythopoetic levels of physiological, intellectual, or spiritual mastery. See the Cloudstepper and the Soul Lancer. The archetypal Champion is the Vagabond.

JUSTICIARS, those who get their power from their conviction in or manipulation of some sort of law or code. See the Oathbinder and Low Templar. The archetypal Justiciar is the Paladin.

VIGILANTES, those who get their power from intentionally subverting or defying some sort of law or code. See the Order of the Red Cobble and Pugilist. The archetypal Vigilante is the Balladmonger.

TOTEMISTS, those who get their power primarily through the acquisition and/or use of physical objects. See the Symbiotic Hunter and Groundskeeper. The archetypal Totemist is the Orbseeker.

GOURMANDS, those who got power through imbibing something, typically something magical and once-living. See the Giganatovore, Dragonheart, and Claret Stalker. Yikes, there’s a lot of them. Don’t read into that. The archetypal Gourmand is the Gothique.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

The Unblinking Eyes Churn Above In Their Cradle // And David Smote Him With His Sling (GLoG classes: Thieves)

 ASTROLOGER

The stars have always held their mysteries, for those keen enough to try and seek them out. You have tapped into the cosmic power of the archetypal zodiac, staring down from thor stellar fetters upon the world. Perhaps through their eyes you can see something no mortal has ever seen, through their voice you can speak a deeper truth than your mind can comprehend. Start with a ley deck (Ace-10 in Feathers, Orbs, Moons, and Flames with zodiac High Arcana), silk shawls and coin veils akimbo, a tacky faux-divination prop, and an irregularly perforated half-orb of iron that shows a multichromatic map of the stars when light is shone through the bottom.

A Fortune Teller. Predictions and divinations you make with panache are taken as ineffably true. In addition, roll a d12/draw a card each dawn to see which Constellation is Ascendant, granting you a special benefit, as noted on the Almanac.

B Stellar Manipulation. You can navigate peerlessly when stars are visible, and you have memorized the dates of every astrological event to happen for the next half century. In addition, instead of deciding randomly, you can choose to take a Constellation that is Sympathetic (adjacent) or Discordant (opposite) of your current Ascendant Constellation.

C I Claim My Own Fate. Once a tenday, you can foretell whether a course of action will reap weal or woe. It will be so. In addition, you have two Ascendant Constellations each day, one of your choosing and the other determined randomly/through Sympathy or Discord.

D Cloak My Flesh In Starstuff. You can take on an awe-inspiring Zodiac Form for an hour each day. The shape your Zodiac Form takes is determined by your Ascendant Constellations, as indicated on the Almanac.

d12	Card	Constellation	Domain	Ascendance	Zodiac Form
1	J♣	MAGICIAN	Creation	You get a random SPELL.	Eldritch Terror
2	Q♣	HIEROPHANT	Divinity	You can banish creatures to their home plane with a touch and a CHA roll.	Ophanim
3	K♣	SHIELDBEARER	Preservation	Choose one thing you cannot be killed by.	Valkyrie
4	J♠	BEAR	Violence	Weapons you wield become magical while they’re in your hand(s).	Giant Slayer
5	Q♠	RAVEN	Change	You can fly as fast as you can run.	Wind Dragon
6	K♠	GALLOWS	Death	Point to one person with less health than you; they die.	Psychopomp
7	J♦	DEVOURER	Destruction	Your touch rots, rusts, erodes, and decays.	Annihilation Orb
8	Q♦	SERPENT	Temptation	Everyone believes what you say is true.	Archdevil
9	K♦	FOOL	Ignorance	You can become invisible for a single TURN.	Moon Knight
10	J♥	POET	Perception	You can see auras, hear surface thoughts, and smell emotion.	Chosen Prophet
11	Q♥	LOVERS	Impulsivity	Choose one person or object; if you focus for a moment, you know its location.	Two of yourself
12	K♥	JUDGE	Reckoning	Name a rule; it must be followed by everyone in your sight.	Bone Dragon

The Almanac, by the way, is the extent to which I’m explaining MARROW’s alchemy system. Good luck.

RUNE KNIGHT

    Long ago, before the Cataclysm, the giants lost the ability to create. Ever since, they have been forced to live in the shadow of their once-great empire of Ostrehaargen, poring through the refuse of the Smallfolk for scraps they can extrapolate and reconstitute into their star-crossed return to greatness. You have stolen something very peculiar from one such giant. Not coin, not gemstone, nor trinket or bauble. From their dead body, you have stolen their rune, the one thing that connects them back to the collective. Start with a glowing tattoo of the rune you stole, the severed head of a giant, a weapon made of scrimshawed bone, a kilt, and a sling.

A Glyph-Marked Life. To offset the glowing rune on your body, you have learned how to make people’s eyes skate over you, and unless they have a reason to, people will ignore your presence by default. In addition, you gain a special ability depending on which type of giant’s rune you bear (roll a d6 if you want to generate randomly).

    Dirt. You don’t need to breathe, and can digest anything. 

Ice. You are immune to cold, and are considered SKILLED in every weapon.

Wood. Animals are automatically friendly to you, and can tell the value, origins, and history of a piece of art with a glance.

Sand. You are immune to heat, and can automatically spot architectural discrepancies like secret doors and pit traps.

Stone. You are immune to poison, and you know the ending to any story you hear a fragment of.

Storm. You cannot drown, and can smell magic.

B Mastery Through Osmosis. You begin to look like the type of giant whose rune you bear in small ways. In addition, you get a free SKILL that doesn’t occupy INT slots depending on which type of giant’s rune you bear.

Dirt: Farming OR Construction OR Vehicles

Ice: Tactics OR Cause Of Death OR Survivalism

Wood: Art History OR [Insert artisan tool of choice]

Sand: Engineering OR Architecture OR Survivalism

Stone: Riddles OR Poetry OR Mythology

Storm: Arcane Lore OR Religious Lore OR Magizoology

C Become Goliath. Your height doubles. In addition, nonmagical creatures smaller than you are intimidated by you by default.

D Runic Apotheosis. You can take the form of the giant whose rune you stole at will. All forms are about the size of a small house. However, you have all but lost your gift of creativity.

Dirt. You have the form of a mass of roots containing a crumbling morass of dirt, splitting open pac-man style to reveal a festering mass of insects in its maw.

Ice. You have the form of a skeleton armored in ice, snow, and stone, a glow between your ribs swirling with the screaming souls of every creature you've butchered.

Wood. You have the form of an ambulatory, knot-ridden dead tree, brittle limbs crowned with abandoned works of art and artifice.

Sand. You have the form of a massive, humanoid bundle of scorched cloth wrapped in on itself countless times.

Stone. You have the form of a bipedal, geode-encrusted mass of lichen-ridden rock, fragments of stories and poetry carved into your flesh.

           Storm. You have the form of a thunderhead shaped like a massive sculpted bust, bright with lightning and screaming with thunder and rain.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.