Slosh swoosh goes the slush.
- Peacocks are prized by illusionists, their bluster and 'eyed' feathers fit quite the metaphorical bill when it comes to their deceptive magic.
- A giant underground lake that is entirely one massive gelatinous ooze/slime. It is sentient and speaks by vibrating its massive surface like a giant jello speaker. Philosophical by nature, the creature enjoys conversation and ponderation. Perhaps the players must convince it to tense up its surface so they can walk across.
- Ignatius Agni Ferrous, the godling of flame, fire, and smelting.
- There are statues of the tyrant sorcerer-king everywhere, as way posts, road signs, in random fields, many for some reason seem to have their eyes gouged out, this is because the sorcerer king spies on his kingdom through the eyes of the statues.
- Elves are a type of lungfish cloaked in glamours to appear human-esq.
- Road priests with plumb lines and surveyors tools making sure things are level.
- Road gods in great road palaces in the spirit realms, the maintenance and traffic of a road determines the gods prestige/appearance/retinue and etc...
- The grave goods you are buried with determine your wealth and comfort in the afterlife. Likewise, stealing grave goods will change the status of someone in the afterlife. Pillage a king's tomb and vwoop they become a pauper in the afterlife. Also/or dead people will manifest helpfully to those who gave them proper grave goods/the bigger the treasure buried the more helpful they can be, this applies even to enemies, they are honor bound to help you.
- Background: A zoologists who studies the ecology of superorganisms, specifically corporations and states, those huge living systems.
- A culture where polycule partner chains (partner A - partner B - partner C) form the basis of a family unit, family units are very wide but not necessarily deep.
- Space travel based on constellations, depending on whose you use you get access to different routes.
- The first humans were made of dough by the gods.
- Burglar is an incredibly underutilized word.
- Maces and thwack sticks as an important cultural weapon.
- Despite the stereotypical 'blood for the blood god' sounding name, the Broken Vein Cult is actually famed for its hospitals, surgeons and addict support programs.
- Big ferrets instead of guard dogs, writhing around on the ends of their leads.
- Unweight - a floating/anti-gravitational liquid substance.
- Gutter Vampire.
- "Wrong side of the grass" as an euphuism for being dead or in some cases being undead.
- Oyur, a half frozen land of war-goat riding reavers trapped between the polar lords of the north, and the empires of the south.
- The city of Mahket.
- There are five seasons; blooming, sporefall, scorching, dimming, and blackness.
- A mystery cult where their esoteric secrets are special math, not magical math, just fancy calculus and stuff that know one but them knows.
- Item: A hunk of limestone, nearly a cube, 1 meter by 1 meter by 1 meter, riddled with fossils and possessing a great big cleft down the side. When wetted it bleeds Cambrian wildlife. Scuttering trilobites, waving crinoids, mollusks, sponges, brachiopods all pouring out of the fissure. It ceases once dry.
- Every year at noon on the solstices, a great tower rotates it's way up out of the earth, by midnight it will rotate back down.
- Yoinkershins, tiny thieving creatures, spidery and batlike, that snatch up items of interest (shiny things mainly) and store them in extra-dimensional nests. Used by trans-dimensional travelers in a similar manner to how sailors spy birds to tell if land is nearby.
- Steal the statues of the gods (which are the literal gods, or their abodes at least) to imprison and hold hostage a peoples gods.
- A culture where women dress drab and men dress colorfully and fancifully like birds of paradise.
- It is common practice for opponents engaging in honorable battle to play a round of cards first, both to perhaps deescalate tensions and resolve the conflict without blood shed and to determine who shall get to have the first blows. This tradition originated as part of one on one duels but nowadays even king's will meet before a battle to play a game.
- The clothing of choice for sophont bat-people is clearly the waistcoat. It has pockets, it allows for ornamentation, but it doesn't interfere with their wings. Bats. In waistcoats. Get on it people.
- An ancient city of mechanical men stuck in their routines but also subtly evolving, breaking forth. People come to the city to pillage it and study it. On occasion some of the mechanical men leave to explore the world.
- Arquebusiers, their matchlocks swaddled in oilcloth and held high above their heads, wade through a bog past towering ruins of glass and steel. Their frog-folk guide weaves the mist out of their way and closes it behind them in a sticky mist web to block their pursuers.
- The king has commissioned a new headpiece, a metal 'crown' first of its kind.
- The current monarch and her royalist forces have been overthrown by the parliamentarian army and its dreadful dictator-general who reigns with terror over the land, the peasants stir in dissent against both regimes.
- The king has been shipwrecked, presumed dead, a crisis of secession has sprung forth. But the king is not dead in fact, what will happen when he returns?
- Frog/salamander/fish folk must apply moisturizing goop to themselves to keep from drying out.
- A tall city of spires and bridges, deep in its underbelly among the middens, the gong farmers are one of the city's biggest factions, threatening to stop their work and see the upper echelons overflowing with refuse and waste if their demands are not met.
- Bandit camels... wizard camels... shapeshifting camels... camels...
- Wooden (or perhaps metal) slat tokens carried & worn that represent social status/worth. Kept track of by bureaucrat-priests who assess your worth based on arcane ledgers.
- A mountain, neatly bisected by perfectly straight walled canyon. The work of an ancient super weapon. Far in the distance another mountain similarly bisected. And another. And then a great gouge in the earth, now filled with water.
I love number 32
ReplyDeleteLotta good stuff here, no. 38 is a particular standout. Haven't seen much use of camels in fantasy, seems they're always replaced by giant beetles or something for desert travel. What secrets do their humps yet hold?
ReplyDeleteUnweight is from Vattu eh?
ReplyDelete