One page setting: The Shrouded City

Created with watabou's fantasy city generator

Another one-page city setting for Earth-at-the-end. The previous two are the Haunted City and the Mad City.

This time we have the city of Gaulot, where people have been living an idyllic life, protected from seeing the horrors their city is built on by the sea of coloured fog that surrounds the rooftops they live on.  Now they're facing invasion and centuries of peaceful living have crippled their ability to fight back.  Worse yet, the invasion has stirred up the awfulness of the city below and it's boiling to the surface.  Safety was always an illusion, now it's been stripped away.

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Magic on Earth-at-the-End

I've been thinking a lot about Magic on Earth-at-the-End, specifically in the form of Lighthouse Cults.  The cults and their devotion to the mysterious orbital installation which is so large it can be seen from every part of the world's only continent and in daylight.

I hadn't intended Earth-at-the-End to be a B/X setting, but I've been using Necrotic Gnome's B/X Essentials books for inspiration and templates for monster stats.  The Essentials books are my gold standard for reference because they're laid out so well.  The cleric and magic user spell lists work well for my setting, because they lend themselves to reskinning as technological effects instead of supernatural ones.

My basic premise is that magic is ancient technology in a convenient, portable form.  (Cure Light Wounds?  It's a ray that reverses entropy in a limited area.  Originally intended to keep meat fresh for consumption.)  Handed down from parent to child or from master to apprentice.  It's not something you learn, it's something you inherit.  Magic-users are machine operators who understand their devices well enough to aim and trigger them, but not the underlying principles.  Spells can occasionally be created anew by salvaging a piece of technology and making it portable -- maybe the Last Academy has a few painstakingly-copied manuals that describe those devices well enough to identify them and a few reliable techniques for swapping out power sources and control plates.  Perhaps there's a crazy Godmind out in the desert with a cult of dedicated followers worshipping in a machine workshop.

Following on from that, anyone can use these devices but only magic-users have the training to use them correctly and in a crisis.  And devices aren't restricted by level, but the knowledge to use them properly might be.  I think it would be a useful rule to have the user roll 1d6 and if the result is equal or less than the difference in levels between device/spell and user, the attempt is a mishap on the following table.  Non-magic-users take an additional -2 penalty.

1. Reduced effect.
   The device functions as intended but the most important factor (potential, range, area of effect, number affected, save difficulty) is reduced by half.
2. Increased effect.
   The effect goes off as planned, but too much.  A medical device might treat the target's mouth as a wound to be healed over.  A single-target weapon might gain an area of effect.  A charmed person may become obsessively protective of the user.
3. Reversed effect.
   A healing device harms, a transport device roots the target to the spot, charm becomes grudge, etc.
4. Random target.
   Roll 1d8 and whoever is nearest in that direction from the intended target (and within range) becomes the device's new target.

Example: Barret the technician(1) attempts to help an ally who has been exposed to an ancient virus by using a Cure Disease device.  It's a 3rd-level device, so the difference between his level and the device's is 2.  He rolls 1d6 for mastery and unfortunately the result is 2, a mishap.  He rolls 1d4 and gets 2 again: Barret's device kills the virus in the ally's body, but also a great deal of his normal intestinal bacteria.  The ally's next meal will make him vomit.

I'm giving some thought to combining the cleric and magic-user spell lists.  Earth-at-the-end is a tired and cynical place, and the only faith you'll find is the lighthouse cults' hysterical need to believe something can save them when the world ends.  Organised religion is a thing of the deep past.

Scar artists

If you're a rich weirdo with access to miraculous medical equipment and if you need a distraction from the fact you'll die soon when the sun fizzles out, you might choose to spend those last days in hope and generosity, healing the needy... or you might silence your better nature with drink and drugs and become a scar artist.

Some of the medical machinery available to people living on Earth-at-the-end dates back five hundred centuries, but it works as well today as it did then.  The ancients built to last.  These devices can perform surgery without pain or blemish, cure infection, remove hereditary conditions and repair crushed, cut, burned, poisoned, or frozen tissue in moments. But they can't create flesh from nothing.  The raw material has to come from somewhere, and that's almost universally another person.

Needless to say, scar artists are attractive if that's their thing.  Lean, tanned, muscular, perfectly coiffed, exquisite faces.  It's an eerie beauty, though.  Somehow slightly removed from human.  Shake hands with a scar artist, and you could be shaking hands with three different people.  Those long, strong bones could be from one donor, that even-toned skin from another, and the muscles and veins could be from someone else.  Someone so destitute they sold a piece of themselves or just vanished in the city's back alleys late one night.  Those scar artists are disturbing if you consider the implications of their existence, but they're not the worst.

There's a faction that says becoming the platonic ideal of the human form just makes you first among a very bland group.  They want to push past beauty into artistry.  Transparent skin, veins that bulge and glow, feathers or fur or scales instead of hair.  Muscles that chime as they flex, lungs that exhale psychotropic vapours, glands under the fingernails that stain whatever they touch with swirls of iridescent pigment.  Creating that kind of exotic flesh needs experimentation, and there's an implied level of human wastage.  But creepy as they are, they're not the worst either.

There's a school of thought at the extreme forefront of scar artistry that says keeping the natural human body plan is timid, pedestrian, dull.  Take risks.  Go further.  Dare.  Take what you need, use what you need.  Cut your conscience out if it bothers you.  Become art.  And keep your mistakes alive, because they have a kind of beauty too.

Those are the worst.

Lord Scapho of the mad city Incarnari has a hole all the way through his torso.  He can reach through and shake hands with himself.  At parties, he encourages young ladies to put their heads through it, to the amusement of all present.  To achieve that he needed a second spine, and to replace his two adult kidneys with six child-sized ones.

Lady Vinta has a crown of eyes.  They blink in unison and swivel to face whatever has her attention.  She claims each one of them is a trophy forfeited by a lover, and only laughs if someone points out that not all of them are human.

The Daly Twins, sons of the city's wealthiest merchant prince, play a complex ongoing game of their own devising to see who gets to wear all the arms this week.  Their older brother was the first to experiment: he had the position of his arms and legs swapped.  He was a sensation for several months, but it made debauchery awkward, so he dispensed with limbs altogether and had himself attached to a distended floating gas sac.

Lady Margot, wife of the city's ruler, earned their respect by suffering for her art.  She had her breasts carved into the shape of roses the old-fashioned way -- a knife, a vial of poppy juice and a surgeon who loved money more than his reputation.  Now she heads the Critics, a clique of scar artists who kill the creators of what they consider bad art.

Scar artist Narcissist
Narcissists are the lowest rung of the scar artist ladder.  It's not the art that interests them, it's the health, youth and beauty.  They don't warp their bodies so much as fine-tune them.  They're physically tough as well as gorgeous.  They form the baseline for scar artist stats.

AC 4 [15], HD 1+2 (6hp), Att 1 × weapon (1d6 or by weapon), THAC0 19, MV 120’ (40’), SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (F1), ML 8, AL Chaotic, XP 15

Scar artist Canvas
Canvas scar artists transform their bodies, but not so much as to be unrecognisable.  Roll a D6.  On a 1, 2 or 3, give them one feature from the table.  On a 4 or 5, two features.  On a 6, three.

1. Silver eyes.  Reflective like a cat's, can be any shape or even a symbol. Gives low light vision. *
2. Transparent skin.  Watch blood flow through veins, muscles flex and slide.
3. Hollow fangs.  After successful grappling, the scar artist can automatically do 1d6 damage and regain half that number (rounded down) of HP.  They take blood, bile, spinal fluid or eyeball jelly. *
4. Musical muscles.  Sounds like a violin, or some other instrument where strings are strummed with a bow.
5. Pheromone glands - as per Charm Person.  HD x daily.  One target in an adjacent square, only in an enclosed space. *
6. Bioluminescent markings.
7. Echolocation - dark vision. *
8. Mobile tattoos.  Usually of an offensive and/or erotic nature.
9. Thick skin - as leather, +2 to saving throws vs heat/cold. *
10. Skull ridges.
11. Scales. Equal to 2 points of AC. *
12. Feathers.  Colourful.
13. Quills.  On a successful grapple, target must save vs poison. *
14. Eyestalks.  Disturbing rather than practical.
15. Serpent tongue.  Enhanced sense of smell. *
16. Reversible joints. The life of any party.
17. Talons.  Never unarmed.  Att x 2, 1d4 damage. *
18. Striped or spotted skin.
19. Prehensile tail.  Adds to climb ability. *
20. Extra fingers or toes.

* +4 XP.

Scar artist Atrocity
Atrocity artists have redesigned themselves (and the test subjects they keep with them like pets) to capture attention and offend the senses.  1 - 3 on a d6 - one feature.  4, 5 - two features.  6 - 3 features.

1. Faces. The artist has extra faces on their body (and perhaps limbs as well if they're unusually large).  They uniformly wear an expression of fear and revulsion and some have independently-moving eyes.
2. Crab claws.  Serrated and bony, like giant scissors.  (d8 damage) *
3. Extra limbs. More arms, more legs or a combination of both.  They're often mismatched in length and position of joints, and may sprout from surprising places on the body.
4. Cloud.  The artist carries a visible miasma with them, coloured or simply blurry.
5. Shrieking.  When the artist moves, it's accompanied by screeching from joints and muscles remade to generate noise as they function.  Discordant and loud.
6. Wings.  Non-functional wings made from elongated finger-joints with skin stretched taut between them.
7. Protruding bones.  Sharp bones emerging from the skin, like spear points twisting erratically around them as they walk.
8. Symbiote.  The artist has one or more smaller creatures living inside their body.  Like wasps in the eye sockets or mice in body-holes.  Will emerge on demand to cause disgust or work mischief. *
9. Sticky.  The artist's skin continually secretes a viscous fluid.  It may be caustic, flammable or just unpleasant to touch. *
10. External organs.  Air sacs on the back that inflate with every breath, a pumping heart attached to the breastbone, pulsating tubes emerging from and re-entering the body.
11. Giant.  This scar artist is much larger than the average human being.  This one's more of a billboard for their work than a canvas. (+3 HD, 125 XP)
12. Bloody.  This artist's skin continually seeps blood, staining everything they touch.  Doesn't cause any harm to the artist, just inconvenience to anyone else.
13. Hot.  This body runs at a temperature much higher than normal.  Not hot enough to injure, but anyone in close quarters is going to feel uncomfortable fast.
14. Mutilated.  This artist has reconfigured him/herself to cause maximum distress with their appearance.  They're fully fit, but appear to be terribly wounded.
15. Stinking.  Continual or at will.  The artist produces a smell so reeking anyone within two squares must save vs poison or spend a round vomiting. *
16. Foul.  The artist is covered with small orifices that continually dribble body waste.
17. Pustulant.  Random body parts slowly swell, then shrink back to normal.
18. Sting.  The artist has a venomous stinger they can attack with.  May be obvious, or hidden. (Att x 1, 1d6 + poison) *
19. Armour plate.  Thick, stiff skin like a rhino's hide. (2 [17] AC)*
20. Electric.  The artist has sparks arcing over their skin.  If touched, delivers a shock to both the artist and whoever touched them.

City of Ghosts

It's off to GeyserCon this weekend, where I hope to get in a drunken argument about whether Spock's ear-points give him better or worse hearing in the air pressure maintained on Federation starships.

This is another city-based one page setting.  Like the previous one it's part of the far-future mythical post-apocalyptic world I call Earth-at-the-end.  In this case we have three factions camped in the wasteland around a city haunted by ancient machines and deadly electrical ghosts.  The city's homes automatically prepare fresh food, medicine and clothing every day.  It's the resource that allows the tribes to survive in the wilderness, but it's also a fatal trap.  The machines enforce an obscure ancient code of laws and their punishments kill.  An encounter with a ghost might be survivable - barely.  A second, probably not.  There are treasures in the city's residential towers and the Ice Market, but no-one has lived to describe them.

Made using Watabou's fantasy city generator, which deserves a lot more recognition.

Click the image to view the PDF

And now we are 12

Fair warning: this post may be NSFW if your work considers accidental text-based smut problematic.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my Earth-at-the-end setting, with its cities coiled around ancient technology that sustains them on a dying planet.  I've got the one city so far, but I mean to add more and it would be nice to have an overland map to tie them together.

I'm an artist the same way a dead horse is a life raft - it'll get the job done, but there are probably better alternatives.  The map generator at azgaar.github.io is one of them.  Click on the image below and you can see one of my experiments.

The T&C allow users to make use of generated maps for their own purposes and as you can see it makes attractive ones, so it's perfect.  I decided not to use this particular map because I wanted a single continent rather than several spread out ones, but then I noticed there was an even better reason not to use it.

The generator automatically creates place names for maps.  I assume it has a table of syllables and uses Markov chains or a similar technique to ensure you get pronounceable words.  You can edit place names, but I swear to you: I didn't do that.  May all my crits be failures if I tell a lie.

Imagine the travel brochure for these places.  "Take in the sights of Pornia, explore the hidden depths of Vilva, all the while anticipating your arrival at the final destination of Cum!"

Yeah, I am so twelve.

The Anthropophage

In a previous post I added a one-page setting document for a far-future city in a world inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. One of the hazards mentioned but not described thanks to space restrictions is the anthropophage. And that might be best, because I think with the one page setting concept, it's proper for a GM to interpret the beasties in a manner that suits their campaign. Michael Prescott often includes creatures as a name only in his Trilemma adventure locations, as a kernel for GMs to form ideas around.

But I've been thinking a little more about my Mad City hazards. At first I intended the anthropophages to be poetically-named human cannibals, decadent and morally bankrupt. Now though, I think I like the idea that they're a separate species entirely. Something out of antiquity, from a previous age of the Earth. Maybe even that age's human race, devolved into savagery. I always wondered how Vance's deodands originated. Irresponsible magical experimentation? Visually, I'm inspired by Doctor Who's Futurekind. 

*     *     *

It's common wisdom that the Lighthouse has revived the human race from extinction on at least three occasions. Since the last revival, the world has been plagued by man-eating anthropophages. It's possible that during the last age of man the human race degenerated into this predatory form and no longer met the Lighthouse's minimum standard for 'human', triggering the next revival.

The typical Thropo is human-looking, but with a spine curved slightly forward and bowed legs, as though frozen in in the moment of springing at a victim. They also have leopard-like spots on shoulders and neck, where they can be easily hidden by clothing. And carnivorous teeth. There's a noticeably musky smell about them, like a lion or other large predator. They like to attack at night, when the darkness hides their nature. A common tactic is for a female or cub to pretend to be wounded and call for help, drawing rescuers into a pack ambush. They've been known to join travelling caravans, stepping into the column one by one until they have the numbers to grab someone and drag them away, quietly incapacitating them in the process. They have a talent for mimicry and learn languages easily.

Thropos are cunning, but not clever. They don't plan long-term. They can use tools or technology if they see a human use them first, but don't retain the knowledge. Specimens in captivity have learned to read, but they show no interest in doing it without the threat of punishment. They're highly sensitive to human moods and quickly pick up on stress or fear. Thropos themselves don't react to fear like human beings. They'll retreat from a conflict if the odds are against them, but if cornered they fight without hesitation or holding back.

Packs usually number around 3D4 of all ages. When food is scarce, Thropos cope by eating their weakest. A pack which has had lean times will have no cubs or older specimens with them. When there's real risk of starvation, they turn on pregnant females as well. They can supplement their diet with animal meat, but a Thropo that doesn't get at least half its protein from human flesh will grow sickly and become a target for others.

Communities which catch or kill Thropos like to dismember the bodies (so they don't distress residents with their human appearance) and put the parts on high stakes at a distance around their settlements. Thropos can smell their own dead for miles, and are less likely to hunt where other Thropos have been killed. Even so, their numbers have been growing in recent years. Well-known settlements in the plains have been wiped out by Anthropophage predation. In these times of lost hope, only creatures that never think further than their next meal can thrive.

HD 2, AC 6 [13], Att 2 claws (1d4) 1 bite (1d6), MV (120') 40', SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (F2), ML 9, AL Chaotic

Specials:

• Howl. Once per combat a Thropo may spend an action to make a screech that triggers an atavistic dread in any living man. Human characters of level equal or less than the Thropo must save or freeze for a turn.
• Frenzy. A Thropo bloodied but still in positive HP gains 1D6 temporary HP that lasts until the end of the fight. It's quite possible for a Thropo to defeat all opponents and then keel over dead from their wounds.

If a player wants to play an anthropophage: why? Did their serial killer character get locked up? Create the character with -2 INT +1 WIS.  Each day they go hungry, make a saving throw vs paralysis.  On failure, immediately start hunting the nearest suitable prey.  -1 to the roll per extra day spent hungry. Each week they don't eat human meat, roll vs death or take -1 CON with no natural recovery until their next meal of long pig. Each turn, NPCs can make an opposed WIS roll to realise what it is they're standing next to.

Earth-at-the-end

A while back I posted my dying Earth one page setting, The Mad City.  I thought I was finished with it but it's been on my mind lately, because I'm not sure there isn't more to be done with it.  A single page doesn't have room for more than a sketch of the setting and in writing it I found myself putting aside ideas that interested me but needed more detail than I could go into without overflowing the page.  Some of them seemed like they were worth getting down in text.

This post is to serve as a kind of setting bible, so I can get my thoughts on tone, theme, etc. down in one spot.

The premise

Earth is old.  Unimaginably old.  Epochs have come and gone.  The sun has shrunk to a glowing coal.  The planet's core has cooled, mountains have worn down to hills.  There isn't a square inch of land that hasn't seen epic adventures of greed, altruism, lust, courage, tyranny, nobility, betrayal, redemption, rebellion and rebuilding play out a hundred times over.  The Lighthouse has revived the human race from extinction at least three times.  There's no history any more because it's all history.  Where would you even begin?

Earth is tired.  All the ores and useful minerals have been dug up and used.  The ground is nothing but stone and dirt now.  The magnetic field flickered and died.  The oceans shrank.  The environment is maintained by ancient machinery, but most of the land is sterile desert.  The other planets are gone, mined away to nothing.  Siphoned away into hydrogen fuel to feed the sun for another eon.  Now there's nothing left.

Earth is dying. Everyone agrees that the sun is in its last decade of life.  It might explode and destroy the world in fire, it might gutter out like a cooling ember and freeze the world in darkness.  There are different schools of thought, but there doesn't seem much point in arguing about it.  Whoever's right won't have much time to gloat.  The skills to operate the machines that might have saved us vanished megayears ago.

People are handling this knowledge in different ways.  The majority carry on the way they have their whole lives.  If crops don't get harvested and replanted, they'll starve before the sun has a chance to kill them.  Perhaps they make more time for family and friends than previous generations have.  Others are giving in to despair and letting it degrade them.  Abandoning responsibilities, chasing grudges, surrendering to hedonistic urges they might have kept buried if there was going to be time to have regrets.  A few (and hopefully this is where the player characters would come in) aren't ready to give up easily and spend their remaining time doing what good they can and chasing rumours and folklore about forgotten technology that could save even just a few.

The style

People live fairly primitive lives for the most part.  The majority are subsistence farmers.  They might enjoy a few conveniences that need advanced science to develop but function just fine at a subsistence level - farmhouses are very commonly heated and lit by burning methane gas fermented in simple biogas plants under the building.  A village might be built around a single surviving machine from an earlier age that provides an important resource.

Cities tend to be where the most ancient technology can be found.  It's no longer under human control but it carries on working by itself, providing heat, light, food, etc.  Sometimes it's a threat as well -- robot cops run amok and killing indiscriminately, industrial processes poisoning the streets -- but people still hold on in the cities because the deterioration has been gradual and their cultures have developed rituals and taboos that keep them safe for the most part.

Technology is, and isn't, a mystery.  In most cases how it works is unknown, but what it's meant to do is obvious.  The methods of the people who built it half a million years may have been swallowed up by the dust of history, but in any age people are people, with reliably human motives.  Magic is technology.  Monsters are machines following orders from long-dead masters to walk a perimeter and kill intruders.  Building a golem is done by assembling parts stripped from defunct mechanical arbeiters.  A healing 'spell' might be a device produced to keep meat edible by reversing entropy.  (Knave seems like a good system for this, since it already treats spells as inventory items.)

The situation

As the end comes, forgotten devices all over the continent are starting to reactivate on their own.  Transport networks are coming back to life and automated vehicles have started moving - often with no regard for any structures that might have been built in the way since they last rolled or flew.  (One of my influences is pulp novels from the 1970s in which artificial intelligence could be maddeningly simple-minded.)  Many of them are in an indifferent state of repair and adventurers using them to access the isolated areas of the continent need to be both agile and prepared.

The reactivation has encouraged some people to hope for the world's survival, but for the most part they're working at cross purposes.  Lighthouse cults practice human sacrifice to give the giant orbital installation the power it needs to save us.  Scholarly cabals sabotage each other out of fear that if there are still-working spaceships, there will only be enough to carry a few.  Powerful nihilists want to ensure the world dies because their twisted philosophy tells them that to be the final generation is to be the most important of all generations.

The tone

What I'm going for here is bleak-but-with-hope.  Even with the player character efforts, things are probably going to end badly.  They're surrounded by examples of people who've lost hope and decided to forget about it and carouse their remaining time away.  But if there is salvation, even if only for a few, it'll be because PC action made it happen.

Incarnari, city of the mad

Created with watabou's fantasy city generator

Over at the RPG subreddit, user /u/Dan_Felder proposed the idea of the one-page setting.  His example, The Echoing Wood makes it seem like a great idea.  It's a fae-haunted forest that could be dropped into any adventure that requires overland travel.  One page is just enough information to supply a framework to hang your own ideas from.  A few more followed:

The Iron Dunes, a desert where the sand is a mixture of tiny metal filings and ore grains, and corroding clockwork monsters steal children.

The Slugslime Sedge, a dry lakebed given over to vegetative rot where disease festers and only weird loners seem to thrive.

The Savage Tundra, a cold region facing multiple threats in a climate where the environment can kill you if nothing else does.

The Ashlands, a sci-fantasy wasteland with the hook that a war was fought with a superweapon that erased the survivors' memories.

Out of all the examples above, Savage Tundra would have to be my favourite.  The author (Dungeon Possum?  His blog profile doesn't give him a name) describes the region, the locations, the factions, the important NPCs and day/night encounter tables in just the right detail to invite a GM to colour it in.  There's months of gaming in that page.  I think he's also arrived at exactly the right format for showcasing a 1PS.  Everything's available at a glance and easily related to the map in the corner.

I've written a setting of my own and tried to match that format as closely as possible: The Mad City.  It's a far-future setting in Earth's dying years, inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories and M. John Harrison's Viriconium novels.  People are falling to despair and desperately looking for distraction.  The city is a permanent drunken party that can switch to violence at a moment's notice.  Player characters may be natives looking for revenge, redemption or profit in the time they have left, or the forgotten heroes of a bygone age revived as entertainment.

Click the image to view the PDF