Frogsmouth

Secondlina

The City Of Frogsmouth

As your barge poles along the marshland and its swarming piranha-school mosquitos suddenly gives way to a canal city of stuccoed brick tenements, and rickety wood stilt-shacks stacked upon ancient mud-sunk foundations. Bustling, busy footpaths and bateau choked canals leading between all manner of trading houses, music filled cabarets, and elegant mansions. Lamps, liveliness, and old money. All scrawled with the city’s omnipresent frog and crocodile motifs.

The Docks

A bustling, rickety wooden affair of stilt raised clapboard warehouses and narrow boardwalks. Laden barges from upriver and heavy, curving hulled merchant ships from the sea meet and mingle. Crowded with dockworkers, sailors, prostitutes, and fishermen. Spontaneous boat-hook fencing bouts oft break out and many gamblers circulate their way through the crowds keeping track of their favored fighters.

• Tobias Eclair - The paranoid dockmaster, his office is covered in charms, icons, and holy symbology, his ledgers meticulously kept and often hidden, his person guarded by three swaggering bravoes of the Three-Sword School. A stooge of the Lang family, he tips balances and adds fees to rival businesses.
• Foul Henriette - Longshoreman, pugilist, and queen of the docks. Wickedly effective boat-hook fencer, the best of all the dockworkers. Was paid a small fortune by the Black Beast to be smuggled into the city and has been liberally spending it.
• The Fifty Pachyderms - A ladies gang specialized in shoplifting, pickpocketry, and running various dens of sin. Operate pervasively through docks, most locals can point you to a member if you were looking (or more likely tell them people are asking so they can accoust you).

The Foggiest 

Sprawl of slums, all stilt built shacks and trundling board paths, the anti-mosquito wards don’t reach so well out here, and the slum is constantly under the haze of a burning incense that keeps the swarms away. The Fifty Pachyderms have their roots sunken deep here, hard for the constabulary to hunt that which disappears into the hazy maze. 

• Cammie Potchard - Loudly arguing with icebox company workers in the street, demanding to know news of her brother who disappeared while on the job. This close to leveraging her Pachyderm connections to break into the company warehouse.
• Suzette Drim - Leader of the Pachyderms, widower of several bargemen, authoritative, larger than life figure, plotting to use her sister’s love affair to scandalize the Lang family or at least blackmail them. Does not know about their assasination plans. 
• Tammy Obadiah Oberon - Prominent Pachyderm lieutenant. Planning a daring scheme to steal Felecia Cormorant’s fortune. Needs someone with upper class manners to get in the widows’ good graces.

Maxim Icebox Company

A sprawling semi-refrigerated warehouse complex held above the muck of the swamp on thick brick foundations. Receive clockwork shipments from their ice houses upriver, quickly distributed throughout Frogsmouth to their customers. Plagued by infestations of ice mephits which is far more serious than their letting on. 

• Millicent Maxim Jr. - New owner, struggling with the financial and reputational repercussions of his father's ill fated scheme to only employ 'ruggedly handsome' ice deliverymen. Keeps Renard and Simoné on a sufferance but his patience is rapidly wearing thin as problems beset him from every side. At the point of throwing money at any potential solution to his woes.
• Hubert Maxim - Clammy skinned, piercingly-blue eyed man. Chief iceologist. Uncomfortably sympathetic to the ice mephit infestation. Drives his brother mad.
• Beau Renard - The handsomely chiseled model for the Maxim Ice Deliveryman who decorates the company advertisements. Simone's 'assistant' (they both sleep and live in the studio quarters). Taciturn, silent personality well suited for his work.
• Simoné Tabernack (formerly Lang) - Black sheep of the family, abandoning his station for the life of a painter. Friendship with Millicent strained by his vices (cigarettes, laudanum, and more besides) and lackadaisical attitude towards work. Spends his time in the studio or at parties and nightclubs with Renard at his arm. Owes the Pachyderms big time money.

Ice Mephit Incursion

Tiny, spiky, white-blue devil’s in mercury armour with mercury blades (melting within wounds, poisoning) who have conquered several sub-cellars of the warehouse, building frozen barricades and forges. Accidentally summoned by Maxim Senior… still cloyingly feel his power over them (of which he is unaware). Would like to kill him and either establish a devilish foothold or go home.

• Stopholise - Chief sergeant of the mephits, perfidious and wheedling, plotting how to best conquer the warehouse and/or how to slip some assassins out after Maxim Senior. Has been passing notes through the ventilation system with Hubert Maxim, the mephit is manipulating him into freeing their tiny army. 
• David Potchard - One of three workers frozen alive, kept as hostages by the mephits, the company could give half a damn. If thawed he will lead a very angry strike. Handsome. 

Fire Pillar Pool

Wide market pool surrounded by cafes and businesses, at its center is a tall carven stone pillar (out of place among the brick and wood buildings) capped with a fat bellied frog statue belching flame. In the mornings it is crowded with canoes, sampans, and bateau so dense that you can walk across the pool.

• The God-Hunters - Heavily armed, wearing foreign and esoteric clothing, protective wards, maille, hard faces. They have come to hunt Big Moses, the albino crocodile god of the swamp, an unspeakably heretical goal. Looking to purchase guides and boats. Covertelly bankrolled by the Lang family.
• Toothless Catherine - Sells baskets of crayfish from her boat, slurps up crustacean innards whilst talking. Gossipy, loose tongued. Knows a secret route into the mausoleum catacombs where she collects blind crayfish. Recently she's been taking several 'wealthy gentlemen' on trips there (members of the Fibula Lodge buying stolen bones from the mausoleum).
• Loud Lucien - Classic soapbox mad-preacher, rants to an amused crowd about evil conspiracies and whatnot. Secretly an informant of the Pachyderms.

The Glew-Pot Cabaret

A lively dance hall on the pool's edge, slanted, sinking into the swamp, looks to be less made out of bricks so much as hunks of solidified mud. Center of nightlife for the city's more libertine subcultures. Frequented by Millicent Maxim Senior, who likes to watch the pretty boys dance. 

• Sweet René - The innkeeper, an enthusiastic, heavyset, and astoundingly homosexual man. His personal charm is the sole thing keeping the place afloat (perhaps literally if rumored romantic liaisons with certain spirits are to be believed).
• Black Beast (real) - A sworling spirit of soot-ash, brimstone, and steel talons, nocturnal. Comes from a very different land, of chimney stacks and cobblestones. An old lover of René, lodging here while it hunts the rich fuck who is sullying it’s reputation. René does not wish it to kill so blaisly.

Hotel Doré

Finest venue in the city, pillastered, cornice overloaded, gleaming white plaster and spiraling gold decorated seven story manse in an antique style. Reeks of sophistication.

• Harold Luc Pierre - Manager and owner, feuding with René whose “hideous debaucherous eyesore” sits directly across from the hotel. Secretly paying a work gang to slowly undermine the Glewpot.
• Felicia Cormorant - Wealthy widow of suspicious circumstance, holed up on the fifth floor suite with a fortune in cash, antiques, and fine clothes. Paranoid but compulsively gregarious and often invites guests over. 
• Hector Armitage - A wretched scamp of an aristocratic bachelor and none other than the Black Beast who has been terrorizing the town, he’s not really a monster, its all costuming and smoke bombs, a rich boy’s sadistic hobby. Feels hunted, but brushes it off. Is yet to properly hurt anyone but is thiiiis close to becoming a serial killer for fun.

City Courthouses

Languid, stuffy, full of fanning bureaucrats and the terrifically corrupt aldermen, not a man jack of them isn't in someone's pocket.

• Luc D’Vone, Commissioner of the Constabulary - Corpulent, bedecked in jewelry, official truncheon of office. Annoyingly smug. Working with Felicia Mont to steal peoples blood and log it in an effort to trackdown the Pachyderms ringleaders. 
• Amadeus Wit - The people’s lawyer, beloved by the public. Wins most of his cases. Currently high up on the Kovac Twin’s covert disposal list. 

Fibula Lodge 

Local lodge of the Morose Society (a necromantic society of rich fucks), dramatically decorated with all sorts of old skulls, jars full of preserved things. Opulent. Smoking rooms, studies, and laboratories. Mostly a social club for dabbling dilletants.

• Isambard Lang - The lodge's Grandmaster, an indulger in opium dreams and blackmail, runs the family liquor company during the day but leverages his real power via the society's other wealthy members. Has been letting Armitages inane plan run its course, dismissing it. Supportive of his sister’s assasination schemes.
• Millicent Maxim Senior - Slightly doddering with terrible judgment, prone to ill fated schemes and big ideas. Left the public eye after one too many scandals and failed ventures. Has somehow managed to entangle himself as a lynchpin to half the conspiracies in the city. Largely oblivious to all this. 
• Joahanson Armitage - Father of Hector (the false beast), ignores his son’s activities but would be outraged if he found out what he was really doing, building a necromantic war machine with Maxim Senior using bones stolen from the mausoleum. It's ungainly and hasn’t worked yet but there's a glimmer of chaotic potential in there.
• Grand Witch Felicia Mont - Elected head of the mosquito-warding wizard order, she has been using her mosquito minions alongside the commissioner to secretly (and illegally) create a catalog of citizen’s blood. 

The Grand Mausoleum

Massive, domed, stuccoed brick, baroque ornamentations, within thousands of cupboard niches hold human remains. Below are the flooded catacomb vaults, where blind crayfish and an ancient shrine to Big Moses live.

• Sacristan Kovac - A strange little man who knows each niche's inhabitant by name and talks to the bones (some say they talk back). Deeply worried by a recent spate of thefts, fruitlessly harangues the Commissioner about it. Commiserates with Maxim Senior.
• Assistant Sacristan Badeaux - Disgruntled, reedy amateur necromancer with weaselly ambitions and no talent. Is thieving bones and selling them to the Fibula Lodge who he obsessively admires. Uses the catacombs to store his thefts and meet the lodgers.
• Big Moses - Magnificently big albino crocodile, decorated with scars and golden torcs, languid, alien, thinks on a centuries long time scales, can take a hybrid man-animal form, killible, but if you were to screw up he would go upon a godly rampage. Gentle to his lovers.
• Henriette Drim - Sister to the leader of the pachyderms, fiery, lurid, and belligerently kind. Lover of big moses, got permission to use the mausoleum's catacombs as a meeting place from Sacristan Kovac (who thinks she’s just playing around with another ordinary youth).

The Lang Family Residence

Pillared, four storied townhouse all whitewash stucco and curly bits. The Lang family is old money and old prestige descended from the last woman who laid and loved Big Moses, the albino crocodile god of the swamp, and enriched since by their booming distillery and other conniving business stratagems. Their heritage shows in their crocodilian features. Scaly hides and long jaws.

• The Lady Lang - Queen debutante of the town, a beautiful crocodilian headed woman who hosts only the most lavish parties. Wears the hereditary Lang Ruby (gifted by the god himself). Arrogant, has decided to assassinate Big Moses in order to prevent another family ascending in prestige as the god’s new paramour. Yes, she’s that arrogant. 
• Inandorf - Severed head of the familial sorcerer who advises in general, and on matters of dental hygiene in particular. Roundly ignored nowadays. Mostly spends his time muttering about how they're going to get themselves killed trying to off the god. Can control a swarm of teeth round his cushioned reading pedestal. 
• The Mademoiselle Lilly Lang - Younger sister of the current Lady, troublesome, loves to slum it through the unseemly parts of town (crocodilian features hidden by veiled sunhat). Has fallen in love with Tammy Obadiah Oberon, one of the Pachyderms lieutenants.
• Josephine & André Kovac - Twins, identical to the point of confusion, both finely dressed at the Lang's expense, who manage the family's more underhand dealings. Visit their old man at the mausoleum to bring him certain corpses for secreting away. Efficent murderers.

Rumors: Public 

1. "The Black Beast stalks the night!" Say the lurid penny dreadfuls. "Youths viciously murdered and kidnapped! The constabulary are useless!"
2. The Lang Family's secret whiskey recipe has been stolen, and for once the bulbous rump of the law has lifted itself into action.
3. The Maxim Icebox Company has has had several workers go missing, and they're having a hard time covering this up! 
4. Foreigners have come to kill the crocodile god for sport, such an insult to the Lang family!
5. The Queen of the Docks is truly long lost royalty, giving magnificent treasures out left and right. 
6. Swarms of mosquitoes have been seen, assailing people, can’t those wizards do their jobs?

Rumors: Private/Secret

1. The Chosen of Big Moses may not have been the one that was rightfully chosen, and the God Hunters seem to know more than they let on.
2. The Black Beast's modus operandi is completely different, suspiciously sloppy for a force of legend. A copycat, perhaps? 
3. Maxim IceCo's storage basements have been overrun by supernatural pests, and yet they refuse to ask for help or even acknowledge this.
4. The Lang family has their fingers in every business and office in town. But the Fibula Lodge has said nothing. What scheme occupies them so?
5. The Pachyderms have been speaking of a card up their sleeve, and of usurpation. They're just waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
6. Maxim Millicent Sr. seems to be related to every strange happening in this town. Surely, that can't just be a coincidence...?
7. Beneath the Great Masoleum, in long-flooded tunnels full of strange fish, lay long-forgotten gifts from Big Moses himself.
8. The Mosquito Wizard is intentionally weakening the blockers near The Foggiest, to force the people to move into Lang-controlled Slums. 

Encounters: Town 

1. 1d6+1 Drunken Dockworkers, surly and belligerent, are just spoiling for a fight. Out-of-towners seem a pretty good target.
2. 1d4 Pachyderms, camouflagued in the current fashions and oozing charm; looking for an easy pickpocket target.
3. 1d4+1 God-Hunters, casually strolling about town in battle gear, harrassing the locals. Few dare stand up to them.
4. 1d4 Fibula Lodge Initiates, spoiled-rich teens with a disdain for the lower classes. Like to practice their ill magicks on the streets past midnight...
5. AND 6. Bump into major NPC on street. Roll d6 for situation: 1 - In Trouble, 2 - Upset, 3 - In hurry, 4 - Busy, 5 - aptly talkative, 6. Aptly Friendly! 

Encounters: Surroundings 

1. 1d6 God-Hunters, looking around for tracks and signs of movement. Jumpy, nervous, not too happy to have been seen. 
2. 1d6+2 Fibla Lodge Initiates, performing Bog Rituals and seeking new bones. Not too concerned with who those bones are currently attached to.
3. 1d4 Giant Leeches, trailing and ambushing those foolish enough to step into the deeper bogwaters.
4. 1d4 Great Crocs. 30% chance of being accompanied by a Wild Squamous, 80% chance at nighttime. 
5. Firefly Pixie Cloud. May lead travellers to safety, or may lead them into peril, depending on how "local" they look.  
6. The Mosquito Swarm. Run. 

Items: Trinkets and Souveniers

1. A set of Drenchwood Fishhooks, considered a favorite of the local catfish. 

2. Limited Edition Miniature Lang Whiskey bottle, empty. 

3. Seasonal bundle of Reekweeds, said to repel mosquitoes.

4. A little doll made of cork, easy to recover from the water. 

5. A rustic carving made in a large plate of crayfish shell.

6. A tiny soap from the Hotel Doré, a collectible since they stopped making these.

Items: Treasure and Loot 

1. A box of Spirits from many years ago, back before the formulas were changed and watered down. Highly sought after.
2. Scales of Great Moses, extremely valued by the superstitious and the hermetic.
3. A Bogblood Vial on a necklace, can be cracked to keep the mosquitos at bay for 3 days. Why do the Lodge Initiates wear these? 
4. A mint-condition playing card from an Old Master's deck. Family heads would kill to get a complete deck.
5. 1d4+4 Bloodseeker Darts. They never fail to draw blood from their target.
6. The Skeleton Key, lost long ago by the bumbling Comissioner. Opens any door in town older than 5 years. 
7. Page from the Captain's Log, a document whose signer will immediately be pardoned of all animosity. Wonder what happened to this "Captain".
8. The Peeler, a copper knife enchanted to cut a sheer piece out of anything. Seems to be very brittle.

HWG from the Orbital Crypt was wonderfully helpful in making this. 

Dark Creeper - My Edition

Dark Creeper

Short, light hating thieves hidden under many-layered cloaks, turbans, and wraps

• Are greatly pained by bright light and will whisper a spell to extinguish all lamps, torches, and fires near them when going about their thievery.
• Kill only when necessary, preferring to 'repossess' desired items by subtler means, if forced into violence they will freely employ hit and run tactics and the numerous magical items they have acquired.
• Hide stolen matchboxes, pilfered magical trinkets, and other items in their copious pockets.
• Violently combust upon death.

An odd people from the far-off City of Dreams. Can be found in small cadres pursuing esoteric agendas for their shadowy masters. Sporadically work with others if it suits their purposes but prone to suddenly abandoning allies. Occasionally one might meet their agents hunting a rogue cadre.

Sword Gremlin

Nathan Dupouy 

Sword Gremlin

You are a short, nay tiny little thing, a child? a goblin? specifics don't matter, what does is that you have a huge fuckoff sword, and a disposition to use it.

Meine: Purposeful & Urchin-y

Items: scrappy clothes, huge sword + scabbard, a memento

What allows you to wield such a massive sword with such ease?

1. Magical enchantments upon its blade.
2. A helpful spirit's hand.
3. Sheer willpower.
4. You're stronger than you look.

Why do you wield this sword?

1. An ancestral mission you must complete.
2. Revenge for a wrong committed.
3. You enjoy fighting a lil' too much.
4. To return it to its original owner, a mighty warrior.

What unique feature sets this sword apart?

1. It speaks to you, consoling and chiding.
2. The blade writhes with flame.
3. It tugs you through the air, almost as if it could fly.
4. Only it can cut your skin.

Three Strange Cities

Bilbiring Town

It sits on the border of two provinces, appearing only at night as a black city of glistening stone and shining golden lights. It is said its inhabitants are descended from shape-changing spirits who intermarried with humans, this heritage distinguishes them with the conspicuous lack of a nose. Each third night of the month all the local townsfolk from the two provinces to either side of Bilbiring row their boats, laden with goods, out to the glistening black city to do trade and make merry love with its inhabitants.

Smeerenburg

In the cold north waters, far from shore, through the mists, following the smell of boiling blubber on the breeze, you can find the city. Its harbor crowded with strange ships, the clapboard houses rising up around the tryworks, brothels, and blacksmiths. Odd blubbers are sold here. Products of things which one might hazard to call whales. And even odder are the many manners of whaler, cloaked in oilskins which conceal atypical bodies.

Esrever

It is a country of reverse spires sunken into the ground, and of inhabitants who walk backwards and speak backwards and proceed through all of their life in reverse. Visitors are provided with charms, little necklace bells which ring before you shake them, that allow for interaction, though it remains a headache inducing process. Folk who peddle in the arts of harm oft covet the blades of Esrever, able to wound before a blow is made. 

Flind - My Edition

Flind

DEX 12, WIL 14, 5hp

- Flindbar (d6, make a Dex save or be disarmed)

• A well built people with feliform features, known for their keen smell and knowledge of herbs.
• Always carry a collection of various roots, remedies, teas, and pipestuff about them.
• Prefer to disarm and frighten assailants and enemies.

Although tending to avoid their own kind and travel alone, Flind are quite gregarious, especially when given a chance to discuss herblore. It is indeed rare to meet a Flind who doesn't at least have a passing knowledge of the subject (though there are certainly those who have other interests). 

Mezzodaemon - My Edition

Mezzodaemon

DEX 15, WIL 13, 8hp, Chitinous Exoskeleton (Armour 1).

- Jagged Claws (d6)

• Hoard magical tomes and artifacts which they employ and will barter for.
• Can create gates between various dimensions and planes of existence, 
• Jealously guard their true names, which would allow the possessor to command them.

Transdimensional travelers and inhabitants of the in-between places. Mezzodaemon's curate and carry with themselves personal collections of occult items. They are normally quite loathe to let go of an item but can be persuaded to trade. Often found grudgingly in the service of wizards and other sorts who have acquired the Mezzodaemon's true name.

Death Knight - My Edition

Death Knight

STR 15, DEX 15, 16hp, Armour 2.

- Wields an ancient Longsword (d8, can create gouts of cold flame for d4 blast dmg )

• Radiates a chilling cold that seems to drain the surrounds of all heat.
• Can command the weak willed to cower before it.
• In dire situations it can create a gate to its chosen place of respite.

A Death Knight is made by binding the spirit of an ignobly deceased warrior to their body and arms, it is thought to be a form of lichdom. The resulting being is one driven by shame for its half-remembered death. A Death Knight is not stupid, but its intense devotion to 'correcting' for its shame is often easily manipulatable. It will leap upon any opportunity to show courage and worthiness yet can never truly atone. For it does not even remember what it is atoning for. Merely that it must somehow.

Worldbuilding Queerness #3

The Veluoga were originally a hill people living in scattered fortress settlements bordering the vast wastes of the Polar Lords. Then, some fifty odd years ago, they conquered their way down the rivers of the eastern basin and to the edge of the sea.

They ride upon shaggy mountain goats and form complicated familial arrangements based on webs of multiple husbands and wives. Richly brocaded and colored fabrics are highly valued and often they trade or raid the southern cities for such.

For the Veluoga romantic relations involve cycles of age and responsibility. For early years of ones life till coming of age only same sex relations are tolerated. Upon reaching marriageable age opposite sex relations become the new norm. And finally in elder years any relations go.

Likewise, in youth ones number of partners may range as wide as one likes, but upon marriage must be restricted to the number of married partners. And upon old age is once again allowed to be as wide as one wishes.

The Stone Monks dwell in their cliff side monasteries far removed from the outside world. Food is farmed from terraces and within the monastery walls philosophy and magecraft is taught.

Skilled are their mages in the shaping of stone. The very canyons they dwell in are said to have been struck into existence by the mage founder of their culture.

Key in their philosophy is the concept creation. To craft something is akin to giving birth, the highest and most precious of acts. As such the mages spend most of their time creating art and chiseling the elaborate sculptures that line the canyon walls and denote which monastery controls this land. 

They are a matriarchal society, with each monastery run by an abbess who has beaten the previous abbess in contest of art (judged by their peers).

Men for the most part are expected to tend the fields and do housework such as cleaning and cooking. However, persons of any gender are allowed to train in the arts but must prove themselves with a magnum opus to be allowed lessons in magecraft. 

It is claimed by some, that the most skilled of their mages can shape the very clay of your flesh. And spawn from you identical clones.

The Undying Bank (pt. 1)

A squat stone edifice, pillars like bony forearms holding up a roof of black slate tiles. Above the heavy iron doors a simple etching, half worn by the elements. A robed skeleton holding clutching an hourglass and scales.

This is the Undying Bank.

This but scarier

An ancient institute, its founders a hazy memory. It has no living employees. Not anymore. The bank's accounting is impeccable, and it guards the assets of many wealthy bastiards. 

Two odd factors make the bank stand out however.

First, the Undying Bank is not scrupulous with its loans. There is only one collateral and condition it requires. You must put up a body. It needn't be yours but if you cannot provide it might be yours.

Secondly, its employees are all skeletons. 

No one is quite sure how the skeletal clerks are created or animated but several dubiously legal expeditions have been mounted into the labyrinth of empty offices, hallways, and vaults that lie within the bank in attempts to find out. None have succeed. Few have returned.

For now the residents of Bastion have accepted the bank as, more or less, normal. But it is still unsettling for many.

---

Skeleton Clerk

4hp, Str 13, Choking Grasp (d6), Slashing & Piercing is Impaired

A human skeleton with a a strange, typewriter contraption wedded to its chest and stranger mechanical contraptions within its ribcage and skull. To communicate, it types out a message which is displayed upon an extruded piece of paper.

    - Will accost and forcibly remove or kill anyone not in the entrance hall or accompanied by a clerk

    - Mechanically follow preordained routines

    - Communicates with its fellows through unknown but quick and far reaching means

---

The Expeditioneers

The current expedition into the bank is lead by the enterprising Professor Emily Scribble of the borough university. Her entourage consists of assorted credit hungry students, down on their luck faculty, odd job porters, and a one Mr. Stew, sole survivor of the previous expedition, who mostly spends his time miserably prophesying doom.

They have set up base camp in several disused offices along the upper story and sneak supplies in thorugh a skylight.

As of yet they have only explored some of the already mapped upper levels but Prof. Scribble is eagerly making plans for further excursion. 

---

Professor Emily Scribble

3hp, Journals & Notebooks, Surprisingly Sharp Pencils (d6)

Wears a waistcoat bedecked in bulging pockets.

    - Very enthusiastic but capable of bouts of intense seriousness

    - Talks your ear off about her theories

    - Keeps a journal full of documents from previous expeditions

Mr. Stew

5hp, Dex 13, Cha 7, Hidden Pistol (d6)

Ragged, torn up suit, nervously grips his flatcap. 

    - Really, really, does not want to be here

    - Forced to guide the Professor or stay destitute

    - Jumpy and pessimistic

Assorted Entourage

3hp, Miscellaneous Implements (d6)

The clothes that suit them.

    - Some are enthusiastic, others... less so

    - All are desperately hoping for credit, wealth, or fame

    - Prone to panic and clumsiness

---

What dangers lurk in the dusty offices and halls of this place? We'll find out whenever I post part two this!

More Wonderful Art!

Several NPCs for Electric Bastionland written by me and generously illustrated by the talented Roque Romero!

You can find their instagram here, their website here, and the Clay Shelf, a deep country adventure locale written by Yochai Gal and illustrated by Roque Romero, here.

Use these bastiards as you will but please credit me and defiantly Roque Romero.

Worldbuilding Queerness #2

In the multiethnic Velosi Empire it is held that anyone who is willing, irregardless of background, may offer themselves forth and have their identity and personhood stripped away in order to join the ranks of the identity-less Bureaucrat-Soldiers who administer and wage the empire's wars.

To become a Bureaucrat-Soldier is to abandon all vestiges of the former self. No personal items may be kept. Hair is shaved, genitals castrated, tattoos and birthmarks removed with ointments. Lastly the name is ritually written on a note of paper and burned. 

From then on the Bureaucrat-Soldier is known by their rank and number.

Upon completing their twenty year service a Bureaucrat-Soldier is given the choice of either remain onto death or to reentering a civilian life with a small pension and due accolades.

While not officially endorsed, it is a commonly held fact that upon taking up the mantle of gender and identity once more you are not bound to that of your past and may take what gender and life you will.

Contrary to popular belief, the Lodge Dwellers of the western coasts do not, in fact, ritually consume their spouses after conception. This being a misunderstood and greatly exaggerated version of a traditional marriage ritual wherein which two partners both bloodlet then consume the opposite numbers blood.

Faulty translations and bigotry on the part of early visitors is generally blame for the spread of such nonsense. 

Another such cultural practice greatly misunderstood by foreigners is that of Second Marriage. Among the Lodge Dwellers it is expected that a woman marry a man (and vice versa) and have a child firstly in life, but afterwards may marry and lay as they choose.

It is not required that the previous marriage is terminated in order to proceed with the second however, thusly creating large extended familial relations. 

Worldbuilding Queerness: Examples

Follow up to this post. Some examples of how to go about it.

High up in the tall mountains where the air is bitter and thin and the snows do not melt there live the Root-Folk who farm the starchy tubers and herd the great hairy yaks. The Root-Folk organize themselves into clans based around their stepped farmlands, essentially being large familial units.

Roles are gendered and split. Men do the work of farming the tubers, repairing structures, and crafting wood. Women do the work of herding the yaks, weaving the wool, and raising children. Both men and women do battle against the other clans. 

Traditionally there are two sorts of marriage, that for the purposes of conceiving and raising a child, which lasts as long as the two parties agree to raise said child together. And that for the purposes of inter clan alliances, which lasts as long as the good graces of the two clans does.

However in both cases partners are allowed, and indeed expected, to keep lovers of either gender. Both forms of marriage are more akin to mutual agreements towards a goal (the first being raising a child, the second being an alliance) with other relationships freely permissible. 

Among the Kulnites of the great river cities when a parent is pregnant they will preform a specific ritual to ensure the preferred gender of the baby they give birth too. Of course the result is not always exactly what the parent desired. 

When this happens it is assumed (even to the parents disappointment) that the gods intervened for their own obscure purposes. Such a child is deemed God-Touched and now has two options in life. When they reach the traditional age of adulthood, being fifteen among the Kulnites, they must choose between joining the priesthood and following their parents craft.

Joining the priesthood offers potentially great wealth and influence but comes at the cost of cutting all ties with their family. A difficult choice to make.

Regardless of their choice, all God-Touched are raised to the expectations of their own unique gender. Not quite woman or man, something all of its own. While either man's or woman's work are open for pursuit, they are expected to walk a fine line between not favoring one or other for fear of angering the gods. 

While the priesthood may not sire children without divine permission (granted by the Arch-Priest), God-Touched may lay with those who they please. A freedom not granted to the other genders.

Of course, both of these examples are rather tame and do not even take into account magic and other potential speculative aspects. But they're good examples of how this kind of thing should go. 

If you would like this to be regular thing, creating examples of worldbuilding queerness, please leave a comment!

Mister Slip

(Foxytomcat)

You can find him fishing off the end of a pier down in the Red Quarter on sunny days. Elsewise you can find him selling his catch down at the fish market. 

He's an older, well muscled man, skin turned a deep brown from decades of sun. An ancient unkept beard obscures his near constant frown. A loincloth and a bright, golden-yellow turban are his only clothes. His fingers are long, gnarled, and incredibly quick.

Mister Slip's customers respect him well for he sells the finest fish this side of the Old Wall and does not take kindly to rudeness. 

He is a kind man though despite his omnipresent frown and little tolerance for insult and often gives gifts to struggling customers.

Mister Slip is also one of the finest thieves ever born.  

A lifetimes worth of practice has honed his skill to a point. He is far more agile than his age would imply and if so inclined can contort his way through the narrowest of gaps. Picking your pocket is a trivial matter to him, you won't even notice an item is gone till he's holding in front of you.

He does not thieve often, and frankly finds the whole matter tedious nowadays. He much prefers to spend his time fishing in the sun. 

Mister Slip

Dex 18, Cha 16, A Well Placed Smack (d6)

- Wants to peacefully fish and help his neighbors

- Says he is "far to old to fight" but can and will still beat your ass