Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 20

The Beast Fears Fire - Weavers

Weavers [Disaster 2]
Impulse - Weavers Gonna Weave.

It's hard to get proportions on the populations of the different species that comprise the collective nations of the spiders, but weavers seem the most common, or, at least the ones we see the most. Compared to most other classes of giant spider, the different weaver species seem one of the more comforting. They don't have a lot of the same alien preoccupations as the other spiders; they aren't as social as money spiders or mimic spiders, but money spiders always approach a deal like it was prey, and mimic spiders, well, you know their true form is going to make you despair. Weavers are the working man's spider. They build things, they make things, they try to keep their families fed, and if they have to drain a small animal of its blood every couple of days, well, that's not a lot different than anyone.

I mean, it's different, but it's not hard to understand. Weavers are the builders of spider society. They are also the primary soldiers, which seems a little weird since there are spiders in the forests much more adept at violent confrontation than they, but it makes more sense once you start to realize that medicine is a concept only a couple of generations old among spiders, and that they are quite aware that any fight can be fatal, or, worse, disabling. Without supernatural intervention, spiders don't heal as easily as critters with endoskeletons, and so they prefer to set traps and leave barriers to defend their settlements.

Weaver spiders tend to be very sleek and dextrous, they don't need as many bristles as many other spiders since they use their webs and silk to sense things, and they are always leaving silk around. Weaver silk is, without a doubt, the strongest substance going proportionally, and weavers are good at making traps, tripwires and all sorts of structures with it, and practice long and hard at positioning.

Harm 1/Peril - Poisoned or Paralyzed Weavers don't have very strong fangs, but they have decently strong poison, usually of the neurotoxic variety, causing either generalized weakness and sickness or paralysis. Weavers are more adept with their webs and silk than any other classification of great spider and can make some downright diabolical traps.

If you are facing a weaver who doesn't like you, use Would You Like to Play a Game from the Ogre entry to handle that. If you are a weaver, and you'd like to do this to someone else, on the other hand...

Come into my Parlour
When you want to trap, delay or lead an enemy to grief with your fiendish traps, face Disaster
On a Hit, choose 1 thing that happens to your enemy (Blocked from Route, Trapped Temporarily, Cause Harm, Ripe for Ambush [+1 Hit Forward to face your target]).
On a Hard Hit, choose 2 things.
On a Miss, Moderator Hard Move.

I can't walk out
Weaver silk, once it's properly washed, is amazing stuff and the backbone of trade between the spiders and other species. Weavers sometimes use it to make armor for themselves, other spiders and allied creatures. Silk armor has the distinction of being extremely light for its strength and protective capabilities. It is also the only form of armor effective against guns, which would be really important if guns weren't as rare as they are.

The Beast Fears Fire - Dear Boyfriend, We can Make Your Girlfriend Scream Louder than You Can.

The Spiders

The northeast corner of Crickton is the southeast corner of the Senlin Teigou, a forest that no one has really mapped all that well and extends east to the coast and north to the taiga. Technically, it's part of Murren, but things don't always work out that way, and anyway, it has a government of its own.

There's a forest just to the west of where the Surlycrow Plateau juts down and cuts off northwestern Crickton from northeastern Savel. In the Savelish highlands, there is also a forest, much smaller than the Teigou, but home to a tiny nation of its own. These nations don't get a lot of recognition on maps or in the halls of power of most countries; Murren had diplomats in these two and several others, which were considered as part of the case for the western kingdoms to go to war with Murren.

The objection the west had to Murren was that these nations are composed of spiders. About a dozen different species around the world, 50-60 kilograms of #nope a piece, sentient, conversant, strict carnivores and apex predators. And some of them are really hairy. And all of them have all those legs...

Beyond the aesthetic terror the spiders cause (they find humanoids a little weird, and a few squeamish souls do find them distasteful and even frightening, it's not quite as widespread as arachnophobia is among humans), they are alien and while no more threatening, on average, than our fellow sapient vertebrates, they aren't any less threatening, and almost all of them possess some sort of venom as a weapon.

Spiders can use the languages of the sea (in fact, their language is primarily Neritic and Littoral in sign, using their pedipalps), and vocalize using the spiracles on their bodies. This, of course, gives a single spider a chorus of hissing whispers for a voice, and that helps nothing in terms of interspecies comfort.

There are about seven species that live together in relative amity in the Teigou, and two that have frequent feuds in the Savelish highlands. Crickton attempts to have regular relations with both nations, but finds it hard to staff the diplomatic posts, and occasionally tough to guard spider diplomats. That said, Money spiders are starting to make inroads in the northeast through trade. Almost all of the great spiders possess specialized hairs on their pedipalps which make them as dextrous (though not as strong) as human hands. That's right, they can open doors. Hell, they can pick locks, and with their vastly superior sense of scent, hearing and touch (to make up for their abysmal vision - again, there's no mechanical difference), they're usually better at picking locks than most accomplished locksmiths.

:D

Playing Spiders

Of course you can. Things to remember:
Spiders can climb on just about any surface, including ones that are upside-down.
Spiders can manipulate objects as well as a human can with their pedipalps, but they don't have quite the strength in them to wield weapons other than crossbows and black powder weapons effectively, and the latter are quite risky for them to operate.
Spiders possess the following Gear, which they cannot lose, choosing 1 as a D8 and the others as D6s.
-The Silk in my Abdomen
-The Venom in my Fangs
-The Strength in my Carapace
Spiders have an ability determined by their classification, which you must take.
Spiders do not heal very well. All Harm they suffer has to be treated by someone who has the Miraculous Healing Ability. They can recover 1 harm per week otherwise.
Like Wolves Spiders are subject to the What's for Dinner and Walking Man's Road Moves. Unlike wolves, spiders don't need to make that move for manual manipulation of things, but they do for all social interactions, including intimidation (they tend to be too frightening to actually intimidate people normally).

The Beast Fears Fire - Silver Coats

Silver Coat [Want 2]
Impulse - Survive

Silver coats are the descendants of a people who lived in a mangrove swamp off to the southeast of modern Crickton. The swamp flooded some years after the formation of the Gulf of Catastrophe, and the silver coats were the among the first to navigate its waters, setting up in the Bogsong from nearly the first day there was a Bogsong.

Silver coats are natural shape-changers who possess a human form and a form that is an awful lot like that of a giant (approximately 3/4 the size of an adult human) bipedal opossum. A silver coat is born with whichever form matches the forms their parents were in when they were conceived, and develop the second during childhood. Most silver coats in modern times are conceived and born in opossum form and their human forms tend to be a little odd. White hair, pale skin, eyes that are almost entirely pupil, black spots either just above or below their eyes. Some silver coats who rarely form their human bodies end up retaining opossum tails and ears in human form. Practiced shape-changers and those born in human form have a distinctive appearance, similar to unusually slight and compact Crickish Sōng people, but with darker skin. Those who were born in human form tend to be better at forming an opossum body than those born opossums forming a human body, if only due to social pressures and the utility of the opossum body in the swamp.

Silver coats tend to spend most of their time in the deepest parts of the swamp, where their opossum climbing, ability to stomach almost anything and natural immunity to poisons and venoms are great advantages. In their previous homeland, they were constantly in conflict with the local non-shape-changing neighbors and most silver coats traditionally tend to be very shy of Cricks, even generations later, and contact with outsiders is usually closely monitored by community leaders.

Harm - Varies. There's not a lot that you can say collectively about the martial inclinations and abilities of a silver coat that you can't say about anyone. They do possess sharp teeth and claws in opossum form, but the former are mostly for climbing and the latter get used in combat about as often as human teeth do. Silver coats are good bow fishers, and usually have small bows and a few arrows (often attached to lines), and most people in the swamp have a machete, hatchet, or even a hunting spear they can use to defend themselves. Generally, they don't use or possess weapons of war. Silver coats do use heavy darts affixed to lines, a weapon rarely seen in Crickton, only in Sōng martial disciplines. Some silver coats pursue witchcraft as well, usually following the water and wood traditions, since those are the most relevant to daily existence.

Some silver coats also possess artifacts of a poorly understood time well in the past. These relics insinuate themselves into a body, integrating with the nervous system, providing its host with unusual abilities. These modules look like bobbins of impossibly thin, clear thread that unwind completely inside their host. These modules can't be removed from a living body (they wind up after their host dies, and are [comparatively] easy to retrieve from under the skin at the site they chose to enter the body). Some of these modules are of limited or very specific actual use (e.g. one common module regulates insulin and blood sugar for diabetics. Really useful for diabetics, but not that impressive for someone without).

There are some with tactical applications - things that don't have any modern analog. People who are aware of them assume they are technological weapons from the distant past that no one has any idea how to reproduce.

Don't think by the moon, I'm nocturnal
Interested players can play a silver coat if they want. Mechanically, this is represented by an Ability.

Silver Coat
You can switch back and forth between two forms, human and giant bipedal opossum. Human form is just like you'd expect, though silver coats who are inexperienced with human form tend to have odd appearances. In opossum form, silver coats are unaffected by poison or venom of any kind and cannot suffer the Poisoned or Sick Perils (assuming opossum form resolves these Perils if they suffer them in human form). Likewise, you can climb and travel in trees without making it a Move. However, when you try to interact with other humans that you do not know in opossum form, you have to make the Walking Man's Road move. The human form has vastly superior eyesight and slightly better hearing. The opossum form has vastly superior olfactory senses and slightly better kinesthetic sense; mechanically, they are equal in terms of sensing the world.

It's also possible for you to have one of the relic modules implanted in your body.

Joey
This ability is only available to characters who have the silver coat Ability (the modules no longer bond to unaltered humans). You are the host of an ancient module which has bonded with your nervous system and offers you one of the following Abilities.
- "Hard Light" armor which absorbs up to 4 Harm for the rest of the Scene.
- An area-targeting pulse attack (usually electromagnetic or subsonic) which allows you to engage Gangs as individuals.
- A focused "Hard Light" weapon which allows you to face Want to fight with instead of Violence.
Moderator and player can come up with additional powers and effects to be found in these modules. Regardless of the power the module has, activation is pretty much the same.
The Trick is not to Mind that it Hurts
When you attempt to activate a module implanted in your body, face Want
On a Hit, you are able to activate the module, by focusing on the pain caused by that module alone.
On a Hard Hit, the module reacts with special responsiveness to your attempts to command it and you gain +1 hit forward on any Move you make while the module is activated.
On a Miss, the pain and distraction reminds the module that you and its last hundred or so hosts are not the host for which it was designed. The module shuts down for 24 hours, and leaves you in quite a lot of pain (though not enough to have a mechanical effect).

Silver coats wear long coats in both forms. They and their human clothing is made out of fabric woven from fibers of a swamp growing plant otherwise similar to flax. The fabric itself is a light silvery gray, very hard wearing, and holds up well to wet conditions.

The Beast Fears Fire - Hippothalassoi

Hippothalassoi [Violence 4]
Impulse - To Wreck Your Ship

Hippothalassoi are exactly what you might expect.

There's not a lot that's mysterious about 10000 kg littoral-dwelling behemoths, really, other than how they got to be in the coastal areas of the Bogsong. The local story is that one of the Dukes of Crickton tried to have them imported as a curiosity for a zoological garden and the ship wrecked near the Bogsong. Research doesn't bear that one out, exactly - the Duke and the Murren royal family in exile don't have that kind of money and pretty much live as guests of the Republic. There's also the fact that the zoological garden capable of containing even a mating pair of hippothalassoi would, by necessity, not allow anyone to view them. The most plausible explanation is that a pod of them got caught up in a storm and followed the ocean currents to the Bogsong. Whatever the case, these giant, bad tempered herbivores found the place to their liking and took over pretty extensive stretches of the Bogsong Coast.

Harm 4 There is nothing mysterious about these creatures and what they will do to you if you are handy. Hippothalassoi take the aggressive bad temper of their hippopotamus cousins, double the mass and add a healthy supply of mean. Far beyond territorial, hippothalassoi seem to enjoy destroying things that happen by. They are slightly more omnivorous than their river dwelling cousins, too, though predation by Hippothalassoi is pretty rare. They absolutely kill you if they happen to notice you, but they generally won't eat you. Comforting, I know. Hippothalassoi are infamous for being mortally offended by the very concept of boats; bulls will gladly violate the territory of other pods, even swim out into deep waters to attack a boat or ship he sees.

That Sinking Feeling
If you are on a boat or ship that a hippothalassos decides it doesn't like, make peace with your gods and and face Violence
On a Hit, you keep the animal at bay for long enough that whoever is piloting your conveyance can attempt to make an escape.
On a Hard Hit, you can also do harm to it.
On a Miss, the good side, is you might be able to see your house from the heights you reach before you hit the water and suffer Harm as stated.

There's Nothing Unexpected about the Water Giving out
Hippothallasos tusks occasioanlly get harvested for ivory, but hunting the beasts is, as you might imagine, all kinds of tricky. Some people have made outer-clothes from hippothallasos leather, or boiled it for armor, but their skins aren't really much different from cowhide.

The Beast Fears Fire - Apple Tree Witches

Apple Tree Witch [Malevolence 4]
Impulse - To Keep Secrets

There was once a kingdom to the west of Savel, but not the west, a former province of the old empire, which rose briefly to prominence on the strength of its enduring souls before the weight of the dead bore the living down. The blood of those people runs in the veins of Cricks and Savels and their own descendents, but their power is long gone. In that nation, there was only one group skeptical of the advisability of storing up so much of the nation's strength in the next world. When it all came down, they were the ones to reap the blame for the collapse, and they fled, cursed by their ancestors to never die. So far, they haven't.

The witches of the Apple Tree resemble the sea folk who comprise most of modern Crickton's ancestry; dark brown skin, brown eyes, coarse hair. The eyes of the original witches, though are all of two different colors; usually one dark brown and the other lighter - golden, chestnut or hazel. Their hair has a strong red tone to it. Apple Tree witches range in apparent age from very young adulthood to extremely well kept old age. All of them are vigorous and athletic and dress quite well, given their environment.

The tradition of the Apple tree has no analog in Savelish traditions, and Savelish witches have a very uneasy relationship with Apple Tree witches. The Apple Tree is aligned with fire, which its practitioners list as one of three elements (gommy) alongside earth (toner) and water (sway). No practitioners aligned with those elements are known to have made their home in the Bogsong.

Harm - 3 or Moderator Hard Move. Apple Tree witches range in their personalities, desires and drives. Some are quite gregarious, open and friendly with outsiders. Some are outright villains who hate everything that reminds them of all they lost. Any Apple Tree practitioner will defend themselves if attacked, occasionally with weapons, but mostly with their powers. The magic these witches command is one poorly understood by the Savelish traditions, but it allows them to implant commands into the minds of any creature that speaks, which cause the target of these commands to erupt in blood-red gommy fire if they refuse to try to complete the command.

Make it Burn them
If an Apple Tree Witch has told you to do something, do it, or face Malevolence.
On a Hit, you can stall and ask the Moderator for a shady interpretation of the command that will let you off the hook, if you do it.
On a Hard Hit, their hooks don't hold, and you get +1 Hit forward to face witch for the rest of the Scene.
On a Miss, you can do what the Witch told you and suffer 1 Harm or not and Suffer 3 Harm.

I will Return the Phoenix from the Flame
If an Apple Tree Witch suffers lethal Harm, whatever the source, they will appear to vanish in gommy fire. They tend to reform unharmed elsewhere, and may or may not be interested in getting revenge.

Apple Tree witches who received their curse while still of reproductive age can and do have children. Kind of a lot of them, at this point, though they do not share their parent's immortality, or, necessarily, their affinity for magic. They do tend to be athletic, vigorous, healthy and long lived, even as Cricks go, and the red hair and missmatched eyes tend to persist for a couple of generations.

Apple Tree witches do initiate new witches, though they do this somewhat rarely, as their relationship with the Savelish traditions is, to say the least, fraught, and they do not provoke reactions from their rivals lightly. A student would have to be very promising and very strong willed (so as not to give up their secrets to Savelish witches if caught). However, if one were to secure initiation to the Apple Tree, it would look like this.

The Power - You are a supernatural force. In addition, you cannot carry more than 1 Peril at a time (if you Suffer a new one, the old one resolves itself). If you are sent to Death's Door, you may return with no loss of Insight and no change in Ratio. You will still die, someday, at the end of your allotted lifespan, but violence and accidents won't be the cause.

The Craft - You control the element of Gommy (fire) that dwells within every being that speaks. You can give a command to any creature that speaks (regardless of what language they speak) and face Malevolence.
On a Hit, your target must try to carry out your command or suffer Harm from gommy fire.
On a Hard Hit, they will suffer Great Harm if they do not carry out the spirit of your command.
On a Miss, the Moderator can tell you to take an action or suffer Harm as stated, if you refuse.

The Word Count Fears Fire.

You know, I am up to 49169 words on this thing.  That's kind of... I'm not sure what it is, but it certainly is.

The Beast Fears Fire - Black Jade Walnut

Shulcha Kaaren Kal [Ignorance 3]
Impulse - To Stand Outside

Shulcha Kaaren Kal ain't the kind of place to raise the kids.

Occasionally, travelers in the Great Bogsong catch glimpses of ruins, buildings made of green-black stone in the deepest parts of the swamp. The locations where these ruins get found don't always match locations of mapped settlements of the old Ketteleye, and they don't always not. They never show up in consistent locations, and they don't stay any one place for long. Occasionally, they've shown up near or even in modern settlements. The stone from these ruins isn't like anything anyone with a love of comfort uses to build, and certainly nothing the people of the Walnut Province (ancestors of the modern Savels and Savelish Cricks) ever used (they generally built in the trees on account of the weaknesses in the earth and stone that plagued the Ketteleye long before it became the Gulf of Catastrophe).

Local stories don't tell when or where the city of the Black Jade Walnut (Old Savelish: Shulcha Kaaren Kal) got founded - somewhere in the Ketteleye or the western hills of the Walnut Province beyond - but the people who founded it have a lot of specific details recorded about them. Modern stories call those people the Blackthorns, named so for the branches they used to use to bind up their hair, with thorns intact, so they could never rest their heads. Stories go that this was a fraternity of villains that drew members from all over the world; people with ideas too dangerous for polite society. The way the stories go, they pulled together in one of the least desirable corners of what was then the provincial system where even custodial spirits don't like to go and made a city. Then they made the world forget where it was. Which meant that it could be a lot of different places, some of which were in the Ketteleye when it fell into the Tannic Sea, and some which weren't.

You might see the problem inherent. Sometimes the city is intact and active, full of the descendants of the Blackthorns and anyone who served them. Sometimes it's ruined and half submerged in the swamp. Sometimes it's at the bottom of the ocean. As you can imagine, this has a somewhat undesirable effect on the inhabitants, beyond centuries of isolation and rule by supervillains. Don't discount those, they're factors, but the destroyed/not destroyed aspect of the city is the most salient danger for casual passers-by.

Harm - Moderator Hard Move (including Harm to 3) Passing by Shulcha Kaaren Kal is only as dangerous as the inhabitants who notice you, which include a lot of Goblins, Ghouls, Blackthorn-tradition witches and an obscene number of Cruelties of Man. If you find yourself comfortable with that (WHO ARE YOU), there are a lot of things you can find here that you won't find at the goblin market (or, at least not in the quantities available here) - black tipped matches, night-fighter conversions, body sealing green ink tattoos... Neat things (use the Dark Market Move for shopping here, short on the goblin fruit and long on the Cruelties randomly crashing your shopping spree). Particular things. However, if you are not careful, the city will be destroyed before you leave.

City on the Edge of Embuggerance
When you walk the streets of Shulcha Kaaren Kal, face ignorance.
On a Hit, you conclude your business and have a chance to leave before you notice that the city is destroyed. However, you may exit the city in any part of southwestern Crickton or even Eastern Savel as a Soft Move (for sake of clarity in this matter, miles from shore in the Gulf of Catastrophe is NOT a Soft Move).
On a Hard Hit, you are able to spend an extended time in Shulcha Kaaren Kal, if you want (WHO ARE YOU).
On a Miss, Moderator gets a Hard Move and is invited to be inventive as to the consequences of hanging around in the ruins of an evil city that was destroyed by a natural disaster (miles away from shore in the Gulf is a possibility here, but consider also being deposited in a reeking dungeon somehow full of still breathable air whose only exits are through the Underworld or half a kilometer of water. I like that one.)

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time...
Natives of Shulcha Kaaren Kal do get out on occasion. Blackthorns are the usual culprits, but the don't stay too long in Crickton as there is some old, old, bad, bad blood between them and the Savelish tradition of witchcraft and witches have, institutionally speaking, VERY LONG MEMORIES. Some... I hesitate to call them normal, but not-evil, sometimes even pleasant and kindly people escape from the city, but since they do all the actual work and suffering in the Black Jade Walnut, their keepers don't like to let them escape. Occasionally, blackthorns will send out parties to abduct and enslave people, but that never works out in the long run. Non-natives eventually get destroyed by the nature of the city (if they aren't destroyed in the shorter term by its inhabitants). Natives who escape eventually become acclimatized to the rest of the world and have the same problem that non natives have if they ever return to the city (and are not immediately, publicly and messily executed as an example to the others).

Night Fighter Conversion This was common in the waning days of the empire, abandoned since then because of the risks involved and the erratic behavior its subjects eventually began to exhibit. It involves infusing shadow directly into the third eye of a person (in the visible form of a tattooed pattern on the forehead), which renders the subject able to see in the dark and to not need sleep, however, there is a price:
In the Dark, I See Clearly
You can see in all levels of light as if it were daylight. Additionally, you do not need to sleep (though you can be knocked unconscious through trauma, drugs or magic).
When the Moderator makes a Soft Move against you to call for it, Face Hardship
On a Hit, you suffer minor hypnagogic hallucinations, nothing terrible. You're fine. Really :D
On a Hard Hit, you experience a burst of energy that Refreshes Strength gives you +1 Hit forward on your next Move. During this time, people who know you might notice you are talking quickly, having unorthodox ideas and generally behaving like you're having a hypomanic episode, but no worries. You got this :/
On a Miss, D: Moderator can tell you to take an action. If you take this action, nothing worse happens. If you do not, suffer 2 Harm and an appropriate Peril [Panicked, Hallucinating, Torpid are all possibilities].

Black Matches Blackthorn evil magic in a convenient travel size. Striking one of these matches gives off a lightless, black flame that will send out minor psychic shockwaves at everyone within 3 meters. Temporary blindness [Peril: Blinded] or psychic harm are the most likely results, but not the only ones (resisting these requires you Hold Steady against Hardship, Threshold 2].

Green Ink Tattoo This one goes on the crown of the head, a green pattern that prevents any spirit from inhabiting your body. You can grow out your hair again over it without it impeding function.

The Beast Fears Fire - The Lesser Otterleys

Lesser Otterleys/Red Swamp Tigers [Hardship 3]
Impulse - Bring Forth Change

The people of Crickton should take some comfort in the fact that the only members of the wicked Otterley clan in their nation are the ones who got exiled from the family many generations back for not being evil enough. Well, exiled is a word you can use for, escaped under cover of darkness and swam all the way to the Bogsong, never to poke their noses out again is another. Unfortunately, less evil than the main branch of the Otterleys still leaves whole vistas of evil before you reach anything you might invite to dinner, and even though a fair number of the lesser branch isn't particularly evil at all, their river necromancy has gone kind of sour in the swamp and makes them very disturbing to deal with.

The Otterleys of the Bogsong resemble otters, in particular, giant river otters, though their faces are a little less angular. They grow to be almost 3 meters, tip to tail, with rich red fur (similar in color to red velvet cake) and visible blood-red auras. Generally, they are content to be left alone, minding patches of melons and vegetables and eating aligators and crocodiles, but some are interested in people (as their ancestors were once human before the river necromancy changed them), and some are interested in making mischief, an aim for which they are well suited.

Harm 4 or Change - The lesser Otterleys aren't usually that aggressive towards humans. Most are a little cranky and secretive or simply, for lack of a better word, assholes who like to mess with people. They are very strong, have sharp teeth and strong jaws, and will maul a person if they've the mind, but the real danger and harm that they cause is with their river necromancy, which, unfortunately, even the most benign and well-meaning of the family has trouble controlling. At least, controlling in a sense that it does not change the things around it.

Gabble Gabble, One of Us
When you are touched by the red aura of Lesser Otterley River Necromancy, face Hardship
On a Hit, you feel a little funny and your skin crawls a bit, but that's the worst that happens to you, unless you try to fight the Otterley, at which point, make this Move again.
On a Hard Hit, you assert your own form against the necromancy, and for the rest of the Scene, the Otterley can only do Harm 2 to you.
On a Miss, your body starts to change with what the magic wants. You can either choose a significant alteration to your appearance or suffer 4 Harm from the shock. If' you're fighting the Otterley, and you choose to change, you suffer 2 Harm from being mauled, anyway.

I look through the eyes of a stranger
Otterleys use their powers to make attendants of the fruits and vegetables they grow, usually little humanoid figures with the fruit or vegetable as a head, which they call alarunes. Watermelons and pumpkins are the most common alarunes, but tomatoes, cantaloupes, cucumbers, onions, eggplants and just about anything will serve. They create these creatures as servants, mostly, as they are only really formidable combatants when they gang up (Disaster 2 Harm 1 Gang).

Lesser Otterleys don't usually change the form, significantly, of someone they are not trying to kill, but every so often, you get one who fancies themselves a scientist, and that's how we get frog people, or about a hundred other small populations of unfortunate folks in the Bogsong. River necromancy doesn't let the Otterleys turn you back into what you were before they started messing with you, not exactly. Hell, not even bogstalker-close. They could turn me into something else and then back into a fat white guy with a beard, but not anyone you would mistake for me.

Lesser Otterleys recruit new blood from the locals, either by changing themselves into human form or potential lovers into river tigers. Over time, any person turned into a river tiger picks up the river necromancy, once that happens, they can never truly be human again. Otterleys born in human form tend to change into river tigers at puberty, which is awkward, even as puberty goes.

You can sell river tiger furs, and there are some people who will pay a lot for them. These people don't go anywhere near the Bogsong, and perhaps, once you've made the sale, neither should you.

conservateur problématique

The joys of getting older seem to include, rather than the gradual fading of you must return to highschool dreams, their amalgamating with the college midterms and there's a class you haven't even been to, yet dreams. Amazing.

But near the end, something awful enough to be worthy of comment happened. I was talking about something in a class and pulled out something I'd been given to make a point. It was preserved human meat in one of those hexagonal sided jars they use for fancy marinades and what my local supermarket calls international foods. Now a jar of people in some dark brown sauce is not all that unusual or terrifying for my dreams, but it was the attention to detail that really brought it home for me.

The label was an attractive dark green with gold and red, and written up in English and French, but the French part of the label said something entirely different than the English; in English there wasn't any advertising copy, but in French there was something, which I sort of read as something along the lines of "This product have intrigued diners for centuries with it's problematic preservatives."

Disclosure: I don't speak French. I did sort of accidentally read a French-language text on the history of alchemy, once, but it was 2 a.m. and it made just as much sense as the things I was reading in English at that point.

Speaking of problematic, it bore a little golden starburst that proclaimed "100% Brown Meat Free!" Which, in the dream, I knew to be referring to less tasty cuts of human, but, at the same time, I remember looking at that, wincing a little and wondering if it would be so hard for them to formulate that in some way that wasn't quite so racist.

It never occurred to me until just now that I should have probably also been asking myself how the hell I knew what they meant by "brown meat" in reference to eating people.

It also had a sticker put on it saying "Certified Human Remains."

This is not a good dream to have the night after I finished making up a crock pot full of chili. Especially given that I used pork shoulder for the meat. And I don't really have the money to eat anything but this week.

Or next.

The Beat Fears Fire - Everlasting Bogstalkers

Everlasting Bogstalkers [Disaster 3]
Impulse - Lead Astray, Entrap & Kill.

The Ketteleye took a lot with it when it sank, people, animals, plants, spirits, the Queen of the Ugly birds and most of her servants. For a long time, there were nasty storms that brewed up over the Gulf of Catastrophe. Haunted storms, and they took a toll of their own. It's been a couple of generations since the last big haunted storm rolled in over the Gulf, but there remains some fallout from the destruction that persists. In the Bogsong, this fallout likes to coalesce into bogstalkers.

Bogstalkers are a lot like barghests; they are naturally manifest spirits that can assume multiple forms and guises. They are also gleeful, hammy, balls-out villains. The major difference between barghests and bogstalkers, in terms of temperament and nature is that while barghests go for grandeur and bombast, bogstalkers aim for being wretched and melodramatic.

Bogstalkers don't have a true form or even a reflexive form the take. Instead, they tend to hang out between forms when at rest. When hunting or causing mischief, a bogstalker will take a human form (they aren't good mimics, but can and will take specific peoples' appearances just to fuck with you) or a composite vegetative/earthen/watery sort of lumpy form to blend in. They can also assume the form of a large, coherent floating flame with arms and a face, if they want them, in whatever color strikes their fancy. They'll switch back and forth between these forms in order to confuse, separate and lure people into danger.

Harm - 2, Moderator Hard Move Bogstalkers like to strangle their victims and are quite strong (usually taking an at least partially viney or rooty form to do it), often drowning their victims simultaneously. In fiery form, they can light swamp gasses or burn their victims. This isn't quite as satisfying to them as manipulating the already dangerous environment of the Bogsong to kill their intended targets. Bogstalkers have a hard time remaining in a form, or even in a location when excited by the prospect of prey and flicker around in space and through forms at disorienting speed while attacking.

Bog-Standard Bog Stalking.
When a bogstalker decides to attack you, face Disaster.
On a Hit, you see through this form, evade this trap or ambush, and can even hurt the bogstalker back, causing minimal Harm.
On a Hard Hit, you get the bogstalker to trip itself up in it's shuffling through space and form, harming itself (no Moderator Hard Move).
On a Miss, you fall prey to its machinations. Suffer Harm as stated, including the Moderator Hard Move.

I Don't Like the Look of that.
Bogstalkers, when you can kill one, are chock full of crystals, miasmite, astaracite and eldracite, as well as the odd root of esoteric wood (usually bloodsap and moonwood). Bogstalkers usually cannot reform exactly as they did before, so, unless they have something to work off of, they won't be able to retake a previous form, exactly. This makes singling out a particular bogstalker quite challenging.

There are rumors of stronger bogstalkers who have a "true" form - a terrible amalgam of human, fiery and boggishness that gives off a psychic shockwave when they assume it, allowing them to use the Behold my True Form and Despair Move, but these are only rumored, so what are the odds you'll meet one, right?