Volume 2: Monsters & Released

For those who come direct-to-source:

Volume 2: Monsters & is out and available from EF for physical and itch.io for PDF.

A collection & expansion of those monster posts I’ve been doing.

2. Child of Stone

Within the earth things grow. The earth does not love all of them equally. Some are banished.
Upon the lava plains they can be found - an armful of stone, egg-shaped, the rejected child of stone. Without the warm embrace of the earth, they dream, hoping to escape their isolation.
Bathed in molten lead, they awaken, and can be queried. They can act as tutors and sages - but all their knowledge is bitter.

Difficulty 1. Spells: Animate Dead, Baleful Polymorph, Curse, Circle of Protection(The Elements), Cloudkill, Fireball, Move Earth, Stone to Flesh.

Magical grimoires reward repeated study. Each has a difficulty score. This is how many weeks of study it requires before a spell is wrested from the grimoire. If your game is slower, this is weeks of intensive study. Pulpier games may allow study at camp to count.

Plus Three Versus

Magic weapons carry the legacy of the wielder.

To make a weapon +1 versus a specific type, kill one hundred of them with that weapon. Give the weapon a name.

To make a weapon +2 versus a specific type, kill two hundred of them with that weapon.

To make a weapon +3 versus a specific type, kill three hundred of them with that weapon.

No estimation is permitted. The count must be exact.

Weapons with specialist manufacture (e.g. forged by the extinct giants, quenched in venom) may halve these requirements.

To make a weapon +1 versus all types, kill a thousand with that weapon.

House of the Perishing Worm - Free Adventure

Finished something that I didn’t like but was taking up brainspace regardless. Now it’s yours - grab it here.
put in a page because it’s big and ugly - there’s a pdf link in there which isn’t much better.

5. Doubleface Drachm

Silver coins marked by two oddities - the obverse always depicts a pair of faces, each facing outwards albeit tilted away. There seems to be endless variations - implying hand-made coins or a very long run. The second oddity is on the reverse - small lines and markings implying an order but without any obvious guide. The obverse and reverse are always paired. The originating city is unknown.

If 500 unique coins can be assembled (1% chance of any two given coins being the same) and arranged, the reverse is revealed to be a map. The centre depicts a city found on no other map. You would not be the first to try and assemble the map.

Heavy silver coins. Worth 15sp, 30sp to a casual collector, 100sp to someone assembling the map.
1d6 found in many hoards - as if a curio.
Obverse - A pair of faces.
Reverse - Disorganised lines (map sections to the initiated).

A Border Fort

Upon the sluggish river a fortress has sat since before these neighbouring lands knew indigenous kings. Hands recruited from far away laid the stones, and build the first boat-traps across the river.

Now the sons of the Southern kingdom dwell within the fort, watching for flat-hulled vessels moving down the river, carrying Northern troops - or taxable goods.

There are twelve of them - all are local, bar one. The outsider has been banished from Southern courts in all but name - a punitive posting. The other eleven, border families for generations, have no great love for either kingdom. Identity is mostly a matter of payment.
They take it in turns to slip away for 2 weeks at a time, in pairs. They ride down the river, spend time in the nearest town. They return penniless, without fail.
As no-one is willing to spend their rotation with the outsider, he has been on-duty for a year. He gives them money to buy books they cannot read.

They have chain shirts, swords, spears and crossbows. They do not wear the shirts. The crossbows are mostly used on rabbits and stray deer. The swords are carried to impress people, and to settle drunken disputes when off-duty. The spears gather dust.

The fort is a single square tower, accessed via a ladder to a door, 12ft up. The walls are thick, old stone, whilst the floors are wooden. The upper floors have tight arrow-slits, and shutters of wood - for dousing fires set beneath the fort. Inside there are 4 floors:

• A basement granary, where food is hung to stop rats accessing it.
• A ground floor, where the low fire coughs smoke out gently.
• The first floor, where they sleep when off duty.
• The second floor, where nominally they should watch from. It is used as a second bedroom.
• The roof is accessible, although a large, angry seabird has nested there. One of the soldiers lost a finger to it.

An empty stable is beside the main building. They should have a horse to warn of any activity - it was stolen months ago. Another has yet to be sent.

The boat-trap consist of a large wooden beam, reinforced with bands of iron. From this juts spikes and bars of wood and metal. A large crank can raise it, but the handle is kept within the fort. The mechanism needs re-greasing every time it is used.

The wide, flat expanse stretches away - there is almost nothing to break the wind as it sprints from distant shores. It howls around the fort - the inhabitants keep the fire low. The roof has burnt down before, the fire leaping like an eager hound at the return of its loved ones.