8 Sea Witch Spells

Art @Adrien Amilhat

[1] Net of Foam - 1^st level
This spell creates a magical net from ocean spray and foam. You must be on the shore and able to reach your hands into the water to cast this spell. You form the ocean spray into a magical net which acts exactly as a regular net would. The net can be thrown at enemies (save to untangle/break free) or used for fishing. The fish caught by this net are known to have a pleasant salty flavor. The net lasts for up to 3 turns if used for fishing or can hold struggling enemies for up to 3 combat rounds at most before it breaks apart.

[2] Shell Shot - 1^st level

If you have both a sling and a sea shell- this spell empowers your shot. You roll with advantage to hit and the shell will impact dealing 1d2 damage. More importantly, the shell will shatter and spray the target with sea water. The level of the caster determines how soaked the target becomes- from a minor sprinkling to being totally drenched in brine.

[3] Salt Shield - 1^st level

This spell requires about an hour or so. Any piece of cloth will work with this spell- they must be dropped into some salt water and allowed to stay there for an hour. After that time, they will come out encrusted with salty scale and be more stiff. Any piece of clothing here becomes as protective as leather- you can cast this spell on yourself while you're swimming or sleeping underwater as well if you want, and if you can do that.

The spell is permanent, as long as the clothes are not cleaned. If you fall into a river while wearing them, get a bucket of fresh water splashed on you, or are out in the rain the salt will wash out and the effect will end. Strangely, anything burnt while stiffened and hardened by this spell will give off a silvery white flame which increases the power of divination spells by 1 caster level.

[4] Low Tide Stink - 2^nd level

This spell is rubbed on like a perfume after it is prepared. The caster gains an ungodly odor of the low tide- a horrible smell of fish and rotten waste follow them. This has the effect of giving -2 to all reaction rolls and keeping most folks away. Animals will not be repelled by the stink, and giant crabs will actually be attracted to it as they search for food. The stink of this spell is enough that it can cause or exacerbate problems caused by miasma- not recovery for toxic gas damage for you.

The Low Tide Stink also has a secondary effect. If used in a place that is especially grimy or disgusting, such as a pit of offal or dungeon's latrine, it actually empowers the user's spells. It only works on spells related to disease, decay, or anything else that's gross. The MU casts spells as one level higher for a single spell, OR can shapeshift into a creature of +1 HD higher then they normally could, as long as that creature has a negative connotation, with the use of a polymorph spell or ability.

[5] The Venus - 3^rd level

This spell creates a woman. She will arrive 1d3 days after the spell has been cast in a giant clam shell, created from ocean spray. She is unattractive, overweight, not terribly clever, but a good listener and gives her creator a lot of undeserved loyalty. As she was born of the ocean, she has no bloodline and is not of any real importance- she gets +2 to sneak or disguise as a servant or washing girl. Otherwise, she is just a normal girl.

Sea witches use this spell to create for themselves a washing girl, or someone to go out onto the beach to collect shells for them. They'll often treat them very badly and forbid them from every speaking or even being seen by anyone else.

The Venus is a tragic figure. While she is created from magic, she feels and seems real, and she herself believes she is real. But she is cursed. The Venus is a young girl and as a result may find herself falling madly in love to random, exciting new people she's introduced to. Her curse is that, when the moment her lips touch another, she will sigh happily and then turn back into ocean spray and be lost forever.

[6] Coral Corral - 3^rd level

This spell must be cast on the coast, and requires a full round of screaming at the sea and is impossible to do with stealth. The magic will rise a 'cage' made of corral from the water and can trap an area of 200 sq ft. This can be done in the depth enough that an ocean dwelling animal may be beached, or a land creature to be forced to tread water. The area is surrounded by thick, poisonous corals that are very painful to touch (deals 1d2 damage each time you touch them, painful). The corals are very hard and tough but could be chopped through with a good steel axe, though it would take the better part of an hour to make a man-sized hole. The corals rise up 20 ft into the air and last for about two hours; at which point they will start to wither away and crumble to dust.

The caster may make a saving throw vs spells to open a “door” in the side of the corral they can pass through one direction. Once they pass through, they'll have to make another check to leave again, and so on. If they fail any check, they cannot re enter or leave their corral.

[7] Sailor's Death - 4^th level

The most fearsome spell of the sea witches- and their main form of self defense. Upon this spell being cast, the lungs of her enemies fill with ocean water. This spell can be used on up to four people with each casting, all whoever the caster chooses to a maximum range of a stone's throw.

If your lungs are filled with water, you'll start to drown. Every round, you must save. On a failed save, you die. Your lungs were filled and popped apart with salt water. If you succeed your save, you can't do anything but grab your throat and choke as you take 2d6+2 damage. This spell is totally useless against beings who don't need to breathe, or who can breathe underwater.

[8] Horrible Squid Vagina - 4^th level

This is a bad one. This spell replaces the caster's genitalia with a horrible squid vagina in it's place. The squid vagina is fully functional, but has a retractable beak which can bite at 1d4 and had 8 tentacles coming off of the pubic region. This tentacles are about a foot and a half in length each, and are fully prehensile. This spell is a permanent transformation. Also you pee ink.

40 Minute Settings- Bombed Empire

On the distant planet of Wagan, the ships are bombing the surface. It's been going on for about two years. If you're here, that means you weren't able to get off the planet in time. Now you're kind of stuck. The royal blockade has kept everyone here. You stay alive off humanitarian aid and scavenging through the ruins; but some co-opt farms and underground grub farms work well enough.

The war all began when the last emperor gave up the planet. Now, four species fight over it. The clever Tulari, the militaristic Zimt, the repugnant Olgun, and the conniving Jess'et.

These four alien races are just small smattering of the ones that inhabit the galaxy. Wagan was a very cosmopolitanism place. But after the human emperor gave up the planet, moved the capital back to Earth after four hundred years of tradition keeping it here, the planet became a real hell hole. Humans, Tulari, Zimt, Olgun, Jess'et, other species too- the little people are stuck down here in the ruins.

Every day bombs fall over head, trying to knock out important power connections and religious or cultural sites. Every day anti-bomb defense bombs try to blow up the first bombs. It's hard for the people of the planet to do much about it, mostly because they're all up in space in cruisers and battleships. These ships send down small armies of elite troops, mechanized infantry and drones to try and capture locations, while other factions try to bomb the shit out of them at the same time. At this point it's probably just laughable.

It's easy enough to avoid getting rubbled for the most part; staying indoors is a good start because most of the buildings here are made of zirconian elements, pioneered by the Tulari, which are essentially compression and explosive proof. Still, the damage takes its toll. You can see inner-city markets spring up in neighborhoods that were attacked two, maybe three days ago. The smoke still rises but it's cleared up enough that you can move in for a time. Usually any place that gets destroyed stays clear for up to a week before the ships overhead move back into position to fight for the next useful speck.

Wars on the Ground

The soldiers in the sky aren't just interested in each other though; there are factions on the ground too. People down here are willing to sell their knowledge; secret tunnels, bomb shelters, and lead troops into ambushes against their enemies. Everybody down here wants somebody to win this war for their own benefit, if they're interested at all in Wagan politics. The Jess'et are promising to make the planet an anthropological paradise for all of the deep-space remnants of old cultural importance for many resources who, frankly, can't afford to keep them on planets anymore. Space is at a premium on planets when compared to the vast empty. But the Zimt are famous for well-planned central economies that keep people working and hearty pensions for veterans; of which civilians who aid them will be recommended for by the Zimt ground captains, naturally.

The players could take the role of minor leaders. They could be landed nobles from a quickly dissolving feudal land-ownership system, gang and rebel squad strongmen, or military commanders in way over their head. You lead squads of men into the rubble to rescue civilians, capture territory, or hold important objectives. You need to keep a good schedule of the ships above and where they'll be over next, and down here short hyper-wave transmitter scanners are as common as microwaves. Everybody, civilians and soldiers alike, listens to the Wagan Renegade- the hyperwave transmitter AI that gives coordinates and estimated time of payload hits, calculating wind resistance and gravity acceleration in real time to give the most accurate reports. Nobody is quite sure who set up this AI, but whoever did has saved far more lives then they would know.

Of course, urban combat in such a chaotic environment is brutal. Half of warfare is about setting up hardpoints and using technology from the various races to augment your own forces, or make it hard for the enemy to catch up. The Zimt are experts in energy field manipulation, and while their ships and brigades sent from above are the best at it, most races can hack together some energetic fields that displace blaster fire or make force fields that cannot be passed except by those with the right keys. The Olgun are a special example as they partially terraform entire city blocs; pulsating moss growing on every surface fast enough that you can see it, turning interior spaces into gas-spore infested condemned buildings. Their race is adapted to breathe it with their air gills, you probably aren't.

There are wars in the Sky too. The ships above are in constant stalemate. The large carriers and cruisers holding the weapons refuse to cross over the horizon line close enough to see another ship; going too far over the curve of the planet means laser weapons can annihilate you at the speed of light. Instead, they play a careful game of posturing and delayed bombing. For the second half of the second year, kinetic rods were all that has been used since traditional ammunition has seem to run out. But if the council is anything to go by, new shipments of payload is coming in to replace the old. As such, some rebel civilian groups have even banded together to stop it from arriving. But how to get out into orbit and stop transports carrying military weapons with just our own scrap, planet-locked forces? That's the tough part.

War in the Council

Meanwhile, near the heart of Wagan is the Council building. The huge, laser-protected dome is one of the few megastructures not yet bombed to shit by the above cruisers. The garden terraces around the building can always be seen from below and above; a jealous look of cultural elegance that is anything but. Just about as much violence is inside the building as around it.

In truth, the Council is just about as cutthroat as anywhere else. Racial diplomats at the end of their rope; assassins hired among the staff are constantly stalking the halls. Young privates and custodians with no experience are quickly promoted to official liaisons, even generals, as the body count keeps growing. The Jess'et are pretty close to wining this war just through attrition; their RNA unsequencer poisons placed in cloth fabrics and ventilation shafts kill quick and clean.

Pointless debates over if cyber-bounce grenades should be banned by military troops who don't follow the guidelines in the first place rage on as slimy arms dealers try to undercut the expensive imported military goods from space, since the space elevators were cut at stratosphere height ages ago, by using cheap local manufacturing. Some of the most well off people on Wagan are those who put shell casings together by hand in what used to be a preschool.

Hyperinflation is the bane of most fiat economies- in Wagan? It's another form of attack. By getting the mints to mass duplicate credit codes, you can destabilize and cause hyper inflation in your opponents army. Of course in a month when things change and you're now reliant on the codes to supply your own side you'll do anything to shut down the computer farms that duplicate the digital currency; like bomb them from space. Now you can see the problem.

The Goodness tucked Away

All over the planet; people are just trying to get by. While some sectors seem almost well cleaned after the constant destruction, some don't even look inhabited. Young people get along as well as they can in education, requiring digital uplinks and learning from archaic methods, like reading books or watching videos, as opposed to full VR education exercises. Holographic imaging technology requires a lot of infrastructure a lot of people here just don't have anymore; theaters do plays in person with costumes and everything. It's a time of great cultural expansion; the people of the planet looking inward when a galaxy who has forgotten about them keeps turning the great wheel of productivity.

Wagan was once a planet of nothing but gray sludge formed into building shells and maximum utility centers of industry. Almost all of its natural resources were stripped a long time ago; a great desolation occurred hundreds of years ago when the humans settled here. It seems now, with their leaving and the jealous war over the aliens who are descended from their imperial ambitions, life untethered is making a come back. Species who were intentionally made extinct by city planners during the great urbanization have been seen in rumors around mossy-covered parks. Escaped Olgun specimens and mold-children have actually somewhat melded with the common ecosystem. Underground birds have begun to reappear, the lack of skyscrapers coating every inch of inhabitable ground means that the air currents that they navigate by with their eyeless little faces are opened up to them. In some ways, life has made a combat only through mass destruction. Perhaps it is just a temporary change as the result of a great, mostly pointless conflict. Or perhaps it is a change here to stay.

Garden- Reality Warpers + 8 Reality Warpers

Reality Warpers are psychics who have ascended beyond mastering a single power, and now have the ability to change reality. While many begin with only minor mental instability and only a few powers, in just a few weeks reality warper powers grow exponentially along with their insanity.

All Reality Warpers are crazy. Most are narcissists and many are homicidal. You can't play as these.

However, it may be possible to run into one as city explorers or as Garden Enforcers- the lay police force that tries to keep the anarchistic city running. Instead of a traditional stat line, all reality warpers instead have three stats, which are all measured from 1 to 10.

Potence is the measure of the warper's power level, mostly in relation to which reality warper wins if two try to change the world in opposite ways. Even a warper of power level 1 is omnipotent. The potence level is also the number of weeks any impossible changes or items made by the reality warper last until entropy brings it down to Earth again.

Awareness is the measure of the reality warper's passive perception of the surrounding world, including its range in city blocks. Reality warpers are all potent psychics as well as just being able to change anything, as such they can easily read the minds of everyone in their radius. This is how far you have to be away or else the reality warper instantly knows your plan to kill them and the special artifact you brought along to do it.

Lucidity is the sanity level of the reality warper. This is not the same as Awareness; Lucidity is the X in 10 chance that they process any given information in a way a sane person would. It is highly likely a reality warper will just ignore you if you walk up to them with a gun; they'll assume you're the milk man because of your hat and bag full of clinking ammunition.

When you first create a Reality Warper, roll 1d10 for each stat. Every year reduce their Awareness by one point. Every year, Reality Warpers also have a 1 in 4 chance of increasing their Potency by 1 point, and at the same time, reducing their Lucidity by -1 point. If a Reality Warper has a Potency of 10 and a Lucidity of 1 or 0, they have a 1 in 6 chance of disappearing from Garden forever every single week. Nobody knows where they disappear to, but many believe they create their own universe, or achieve a sort of advanced disassociation that causes them to erase themselves from existing.

What Reality Warpers are Capable Of

These are all the things a Reality Warper can do at a Potence level of 1;

• Change someone's species, features, or biological sex, permanently.
• Curse someone so every single dollar they try to find or spend is lost or wasted somehow. If this curse hits a millionaire they'll be dead from starvation in a few months.
• Give someone a distinct smell that makes everyone they meet want to fuck them.
• Noneuclidan connections between spaces; go through closet to visit neighbor's house
• Conjure any amount of any matter they want.
• Read any person's entire life story, including memories they have forgotten or things they have deluded themselves into believing and knowing about that, just by looking at them.
• Killing anything within their Awareness range, instantly.
• Bring back any dead thing, as long as they possess at least one molecule of their corpse.
• Fly or levitate at any height or speed. Themselves or anyone else they want.
• Create an engine of any horsepower that never runs out of fuel, or a gun that never runs out of bullets, or anything like that.
• Making a place x1000 times bigger on the inside then the outside.
• Make everyone within their Awareness radius forget they exist.
• Reverse time and go back 10xPotence minutes (or Turns equal to Potence). Only they and other Reality Warpers remember what happened in the “first” timeline.
• All of the above and anything else they want.

Whenever a Reality Warper tries to change reality in a way that violates a law of physics, it is ignored totally and the change just happens, that's of little concern. Whenever a Reality Warper tries to change reality in a way that violates logic, have them roll under their Potence level. If it rolls under, it succeeds. If it rolls over, they still succeed by there is a psychic backlash or unforseen consequences. Ie; they create a squared circle but every right angle within a few feet of them curves unnaturally into a circle shape, like bones or gun barrels.

Whenever a reality warper creates something plausible or within existence already; it is indistinguishable from the real thing. It IS the real thing. They can give people mutations or change their forms; from human to animal or alien to another, and these changes are totally permanent. Anything conjured by them that is a regular bit of matter is permanent and totally real; This is the reason why Garden uses paper money. Whenever a reality warper gets down and inflates a hundred million dollars of Garden's currency, the government just switch over the mint to use a new design and new dollar bill. It's happened enough times to be an issue. They can even create or resurrect living beings which are real and will live on to the rest of their biological lifespan, unless if they were created poorly. Impossibly strong monsters or beings made of unnatural materials may die soon after the reality warper is defeated or forgets about them; their biology cannot sustain a creature of the imagination.

When reality warpers create things that are impossible, supernatural, or highly psychically charged however; these things have a limitation. They begin to lose their power after a number of weeks equal to the warper's power score. This includes things like manipulations of luck or fate, localized distortions of the laws of physics, or anything involving extradimensional spaces or time. These gross manipulations of what is and what isn't correct themselves quickly; the blunt laws of reality snap back into place like rubber from the twisting hands of the warper.

Fighting a Reality Warper

You lose.

You can't beat a Reality Warper in a straight up fight. The only way to “beat” them is to destroy what little interests they have out of their zone and to avoid them and their territory at all costs. The sole exception is what happens when two Reality Warpers clash. If you could somehow convince a reality warper (who doesn't want anything) to reduce the powers of a weaker Reality Warper, then you might actually have a chance.

Any reality warper with a potency of 0 remains an incredible psychic and psychokinetic. At 0 Potence, a reality warper has the following stats;

• 10 HD
• Mastery of all unarmed, firearm, and melee martial arts
• Superhuman strength, speed, intelligence, and perception. Treat any stat modifiers as +5
• Can conjure any weapon it wants and use it once each round.
• Regenerates 2d6 Hit Points and 1d6 Psychic Stress per round
• Automatically deflects the first 1d100 bullets, shells, and cartridges fired at it each round.
• Kills anyone it can see, one per round. If you survive the first attempt, it kills you on the second round, regardless of the number of immunizes you've acquired.
• Total freedom of movement, levitates self at fast running speed, break free from all traps, containment, or snares in one round regardless of material or strength.

With enough firepower, it could be possible to defeat a Reality Warper through sheer force of arms and numbers. If so, the Reality Warper cannot revive itself from the dead as long as its body is sufficiently destroyed and ashes scattered to the winds.

What Reality Warpers actually Do

While all this above paints a pretty obvious picture; Reality Warpers are Gods. Something about Garden has awoken incredible power in some individuals. Reality Warpers don't exist on other worlds, even if psychics do, as whatever special feature makes Warpers here doesn't happen anywhere else.

However, Reality Warpers are Gods, but they don't act like it. They're all insane, and almost all of them are incredibly insular. Newly awakened Reality Warpers may be a bit more lucid and aware of the world then others. Many may get involved in local politics, conjure a few hundred kilos of high quality steel to build a new skyscraper, or slaughter entire gangs on their own. But as time goes on, they all become more and more withdrawn from the world. The vast majority of Reality Warpers stay in a single place; usually their old home or place of work, and just exist in a sort of dreamlike fairyland where all of their baggage is aired again and again. Perhaps their old apartment complex which has become like a utopia; the people there without control of their muscles or mouths and seeing everything they are doing and saying as little more then puppetry, a facsimile of kindness and neighborhood. Maybe the reality warper goes back to the job they hated, tormenting their coworkers and boss for years through mutations, constant humiliations, all of them unable to leave or find even the release of death; as they cannot die while the reality warper wishes them to live through his torments.

Once a Reality Warper has gone totally insane, lost their Lucidity, and gained more power and control over reality, they will eventually just leave. Everything inherently impossible they made will stop functioning after a number of weeks equal to their power score they had before they left.

Reality Warpers Table – Roll 1d8

[1] King Leo the First

Potence 4, Awareness 3, Lucidity 4

This lion-like alien is from another world. He lives in an apartment complex whose walls have been dissolved away, an artificial river runs through the floor, old couches and refrigerators turned to stones and sand on the floor. The area within is much larger then the area outside, though the ceiling is still the source of light, it stretches outwards. The various neighbors of all species have been stripped of all clothing and personal items except for loinclothes and primitive weapons. Guns don't work in his domain; everything is based on tribal warfare and primitive spears and shields.

King Leo is delusional and thinks himself as a King of a primitive empire. It has a Lion-King esque power structure, with the Lion and his family on top, noble beasts below, and those are above anything he views as a “cowardly scavenger” like anything resembling a hyena, vulture, or insect. At first, he may have created this “kingdom” simply to rule over his neighbors, but now he has started to fall into routine and may think that this Kingdom is his actual birthright, as he plans to give to his son when he is born.

Unconsciously, King Leo's wife has had her pregnancy extended and delayed for six years. She's still happily pregnant and thinks the baby will come any day, but doesn't know why it won't happen. She also doesn't know why she feels so tired and ready to die all the time. She goes along anyway. Leo's psychic powers are manifesting to keep his son from being born, perhaps as a subconscious desire to not accept Leo's own morality or desire to rule on his own, without sons or daughters or anything else to take it away from him or to share his prestige.

[2] Kamipo

Potence 5, Awareness 6, Lucidity 3

This is a female ice-skipper, a penguinoid race of aliens from a cold planet. Even they miss their weak, blue sun that gave the only life-sustaining heat in their icy world. Kamipo unlocked her psychic powers and currently lives within an underground subway station, part of an abandoned subway network that was built for mass transit. Doors along the train tracks lead off into the white-washed service tunnels of garden. The deeper you go through these tunnels, the colder it gets.

Kamipo is very aware of intruders within her lair, but has little grasp on reality. She views other beings as distractions, who she freezes in place and never lets leave her lair. She stays down here in absolute stillness and the cold. She manipulates the air around her body in a 10 ft radius to be almost absolute zero, but due to her psychic powers she can move and live in that environment. Needless to say, this will instantly freeze any body part coming close to her solid, even the air is sluggish and half liquid, though her reality warping means it doesn't react exactly as you'd expect.

Kamipo has become a bit of a “big game” label, somewhat more famous then some of the loose reality warpers in Garden and due to the many members of the population she has frozen in permafrost many wish to see her dead. This may also be the cause of some of her paranoia; the constant swirling of cold air around her body is to freeze bullets solid and slow them to a crawl before they touch her, not that she has let her skin and downy feathers retain their normal weakness from when she was a mortal. Regardless, there is a bounty of $100,000 on her head.

[3] Ozy

Potence 7, Awareness 2, Lucidity 2

His physical form is gone. Whatever species or type of being this once was, perhaps even female though now presents with a masculine and domineering voice, it is nothing but a spirit. His “body” is a shroud of fabrics that constantly fold and clean themselves ever moment, immune to being lit on fire and a dark mass where the face in the folds of the shroud would could speak to you.

Even as far as reality warpers go, Ozy is powerful. There is a great buzz of unreality when you are nearby his, thankfully, short range. He typically spends his time in the destroyed ruins of an old factory where he was “awakened” to his powers. Since then, a great fence has been erected around the place and people are warned heavily to stay away. He has not moved from that spot since then, and seemingly has no interest in the outside world or his continued gloomy self introspection. He spends all his time sitting on a half melted throne of chrome and iron, forged together from materials found in the factory, and staring at a wall while thinking to himself.

As a final note; there is a great number of rumors that people who climb the fence and visit this living god will be rewarded with a wish at random, if they go to him when he is in the right move or they have a righteous cause. There is seemingly no known origin for this myth, and as such it is believed to originate from the warper himself, perhaps to see how far people will go to chase an ideal. It is likely that within the next few years, Ozy will ascend to a higher plane of being or disappear from Garden as whatever is left of his sanity and universal awareness fade to nothing.

[4] Heavy Eyes

Potence 2, Awareness 1, Lucidity 8

This creature is a relatively new reality warper. They are from a genderless species of strange, doll-like people with set facial expressions from when they were born. “Heavy Eyes” looks like they're half asleep all the time, when in reality they have awakened to a cosmic level of being. However, for a reality warper they are quite weak, and are not in full control of their powers, requiring to be in the same room and taking a round to force any change on the world by staring at their target and concentrating while mumbling to themselves.

In exchange for their relative weakness, Heavy Eyes is much more sane and “awake” to the world then most reality warpers, and for the past few months has been trying to find ways to “help” people. Unfortunately, several warring factions such as an aggressive expansionist work union and a few street gangs have been trying to align Heavy Eyes against their enemies or make them fabulously wealthy by conjuring masses of money and gold for them, and as such the doll is soon going to be burnt out of trying to help people entirely. Social isolation is the eventual reality for all reality-warpers, but this will only speed up a loss of lucidity into mental decay.

Finally, Heavy Eyes as a person seems to be well meaning but idealistic. Those with sleeping psychic powers who speak to this being will find it moving to touch them; its touch unlocking their psychic powers and causing a few days of intense insomnia as their mind adjusts to the new powers. Heavy Eyes has also accidentally killed a few people this way, its touch having caused a sort of psychic resonance where the person turns inside out and dies pitifully. Heavy Eyes will always reach to their own eyes in shock and panic, and then within a moment, delete the memory from their own mind. It has no recollection of these events, and refuses to accept them even if you tried to prove it to the entity. While more sane then any other current known reality warper, it is still prone to bouts of irrationality to defend itself.

[5] Burnstar

Potence 5, Awareness 7, Lucidity 0

This reality warper is a strange exception. Having no “mind” left to speak of, it is merely a psychic manifestation that goes without thought or ending. Burnstar appears as a burning ball of plasma that falls in on itself each second, before billowing back out in fractal patterns. It has no understanding of the world or of sentient beings, but is aware of its surroundings and has a decent level of power.

Burnstar appears once every few hours randomly in the city, usually hovering over a building or interstate. For most people, they will see it in the distant as a bright street lamp and pay it no mind, but those who pass under the being may find themselves starting to sweat as it burns their skin through radiation. It may take an interest in something unusual, or strangely people wearing the color green, floating over them and following them around for a large distance. It is very difficult to lose the Burnstar once it has noticed you, usually only losing interest if you escape to the underground tunnels where it refuses to follow or you are dead and become a charred corpse.

It is highly likely that whatever psychic echo created the burnstar will wear off in the next few weeks as its lucidity means it has deleted itself from being.

[6] Cruise Malta

Potence 3, Awareness 1, Lucidity 6

Cruise was once a industrial worker turned rogue. Killing several of his coworkers after being laid off from his job, he developed a racially motivated killing urge against several species in Garden, as they made naturally better workers then his race. His rage and hatred seemed to also unlock his psychic potential, and with focus Cruise was able to transform his physical body.

Since those days, “Mr.Malta” as he is called is plastered with sheets of metal welded to his body, with rivets drilled into his skin and bones painfully to keep them together. Without his reality warping powers he would have died of infection or organ damage a long time ago, but as of now he's nearly indestructible. Unlike other reality warpers, he rarely uses his powers directly to change reality or emit energy, instead of he mostly just uses his supernatural physical strength and speed to destroy things in his own way.

In the past few years, Malta's mind state has deteriorated and he stalks an old trainyard. His mental state is such that several greedy conductors have been able to get him working for them; pushing train spikes into the ground, twisting sheet metal into place, loading and unloading cargo, even picking up and moving entire train cars. However it must be carefully monitored who goes near him, else if one of his hated races appears nearby he will fly off into another rage that may take weeks to die back down again. Unless Malta's creativity and intelligence increases over time, it is unlikely his potence stat will increase over time and as a result his lucidity will drop from it. It seems like being a reality warper means also needing a certain amount of creative force or imagination to power the changes, as Malta lacks most of those traits and mostly just judges things as they appear.

[7] Briers

Potence 9, Awareness 8, Lucidity 1

Among all the reality warpers, Briers is the most feared but well understood. She only cares about one thing; a single special object. This object is a pair of reading glasses with one lens removed. It is old and dusty, stained with a foreign yellow smear over the left rim, and despite this it is one of the most revered objects in Garden due to their reality warper's influence.

As far as everyone knows, this Reality Warper has no physical body, or her body remains asleep underneath the ground at all times. Any consciousness she has is abstract during this time, or perhaps instigating the psychic web of connections and fate that tie the city folk together, perhaps why these glasses keep being found again whenever lost. The reality warper is incredibly powerful and dangerous, but remains in this totally dormant state until someone touches the glasses. If you wear the glasses it grants a mystic sight in the remaining lens; you can see psychic energy in people and flowing through the air, and it also grants a +2 bonus to psychic attacks by anyone who wear them.

However, once someone has touched the glasses, Briers begins to look for them. Her psychic power has incredible range and perception, meaning that with each night it sweeps the city to find the person who touched the glasses, and homes in on them, hence her high awareness score. Once she has found them, several strange and unfortunate accidents beings to befall them, and plant life nearby them begins to become agitated and grow faster and stronger. Within a week, they are always found dead with their body being torn apart and decomposed by numerous brier-barbed plant tendrils growing through walls or mattresses, burrowing into their body and ripping them apart. It is almost impossible to hide from this entity once you have woken it up, even the mysterious service tunnels which most reality warpers seem to instinctively avoid she will reach to kill you with ther powers.

Strangely, while this reality warper has no known mind or personality, she seems to have enough lucidity and sanity left to spare exactly two people; the first is her great granddaughter who was the ones who found the cursed glasses and lost them the first time, and was never killed by her power. The second person was a museum coordinator, who after finding the glasses respectfully cleaned them, repaired them, took photographs, and kept it on display for a few months in a glass case until they were stolen. This person treated the glasses with such respect that the entity seemed to not have any ill will towards them, or it could be a long lost family or old friend who the entity knew back when they were a normal person. It is unknown how much longer this warper will remain in the city; most with high levels of power and low lucidity burn out shortly, but with Briers and her obsession with the pair of glasses she may remain until they are destroyed or lost forever.

[8] Gye Oceans

Potence 6, Awareness 4, Lucidity 4

Once a fairly standard musician down in his luck in Garden, he had since unlocked a great power inherent in the playing of his music. Around him now is a constant droning beat, which is muffled through walls and sounds very much like soft bar or speakeasy music, this noise somehow stretching for a city block or so around him in all directions. Those who live nearby it often question if a new place has opened up, just before it leaves the very next night. Gye is a mobile reality warper, which is not the standard for these beings.

Every few days, Gye will set up and move somewhere else. He will transform himself into different forms, different species and looks, and play music on the sidewalk to panhandle for music. This is not an uncommon sight in Garden. Those who do not provide coins for Gye will be cursed by his reality warping power- they will receive bad luck for a whole day. Treat all rolls of 2 as a roll of 1 instead.

The true terror of Gye is if he encounters another musician. If you carry an instrument, or claim to be able to play music to any level above an amateur, Gye will take interest and stalk you. When he has cornered or isolated the musician, he uses his power to strap them down and take off their skull and skin on their head; painless and gorelessly opening a hole into their body to examine their brain. He seems to have some kind of ability to psychically detach body parts and warp them to examine them closely, and can seemingly spot “talent” and “inspiration” inside his victim's brains. It is unknown how these abstract quantities actually exist in their brains, or if this is merely a delusional brought on by his reality warping abilities. He will then take away the “skill” of the player and seal their head back up. Unfortunately for the victims, this reality warping power doesn't stave off all of reality; losing skill in music usually means losing most fine motor control of the fingers, become illiterate, developing a mild form of epilepsy, and sometimes infections and death if bacteria enters the brain during his “surgery”. For this reason, Garden's Big Brass Band gang has a price on his head, and treat him a bit like a boogeyman, even though there is very little they can do against a reality warping demigod.

Video Games- ARPG & Path of Exile Defensive Mechanics (and how to improve them)

So Path of Exile is one of the few games I've played where your build in regards to your defense is just as important, if not MORE important, then your actual offense. While the game isn't perfect, I think it has a really good set of core principles.

To summarize, this game has 3 basic stats which kind of guide all the characters- Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. All the character classes are either “pure stat” in one of the stats or are “mixed stats” and have two. So for example, there is the pure Strength Marauder, who is a generic big honorable warrior dude, and there is the Strength/Intelligence Templar, who is a strong priestly crusader who can also do magic stuff. Every class actually has the access to the same abilities (skill gems, which are socketed into equipment), the difference between classes is there starting location on the skill tree, some base stats, and their ascendancy class (subclass). The exception is the Scion who is all three stats at once and starts at the center of the passive tree and only has one ascendancy class, but it can kind of steal abilities from all the other classes.

Now if you're seeing a pattern here it very firmly falls into the sort of Fighter, Rogue, Mage sort of thing that I am fond of. I like it in video games but also in tabletop games too. But each one has a different method of avoiding damage that fits with the theme of each stat- these are the Defenses.

Strength is Armour- which reduces damage taken.

Dexterity is Evasion- which makes it harder for enemies to hit. Also reduces chance of taking critical strikes.

Intelligence is Energy Shield- a second life bar over the first which recharges quickly outside of combat, but cannot be restored with potions.

As you can see, this triangle system is really interesting and sets up a lot of nice ideas, and even different gameplay elements for each character. Armour reducing damage from Armor is totally fine, very basic- they just run up next to enemies and attack them up close. Since they can 'tank' the most hits it fits the character, but the problem here is they may lack depth. One way to solve this is because they ARE taking more damage more often even if it is highly reduced, having rapid use block or damage absorption abilities and make them rely on healing a bunch is a good way to pull this off. To be fair, these are actually things the Path of Exile developers are doing in recent years to make the game more deep, and I appreciate it and think it's good, though there is still a noticeable bit of carelessness that creeps into your play as a melee character. I'm fairly certain that the reason Cyclone is such a popular skill to build around league after league is because it just lets you turn your brain off- and trust me, I love Cyclone, but I don't really think that's the kind of play experience you want when you're playing an ARPG.

Evasive characters don't get hit often, but when they do it can be pretty dangerous- though it does reduce the chance of getting crit (enemies need to roll to hit you twice to confirm a crit I think). However, this means that all the damage you're taking is just a dice roll, there's little game play difference, which is the core of the issue here. I should also mention that some games, like the other PoE (Pillars of Eternity) has 'glancing blows' which I think is another good way to make Evasion more effective. Stagger the kinds of hits/damage/crits into different categories- like miss, glance, hit, crit, etc. and evasion gives you a better or worse chance to evade these.

Finally, Energy Shield fits perfectly for a Mage type character- staying far away from enemies and spamming spells. They need to run away to recharge their energy, and energy shield also absorbs damage from elemental attacks that the other defense types; they only block physical damage/attacks.

Now while D&D uses Armor as Damage Avoidance in that system, we already kind of have this kind of set up in a lot of D&D/OSR/DIY games already. Fighters have the best armor so (even without Damge Reduction armor) they take the least damage from direct combat hits. Rogues on the other hand aren't as good as combat but tend to have the best saves and have stealth, which means they avoid those types of dangers more often, and Magic-Users have spells that buff and protect themselves and others, which could be thought up as a type of defense that the others don't have. For example, using a wind spell to clear away toxic gas or turning undead to avoid level drain are defenses the other characters don't have access to at all.

Suggestions for Evasion in Video Games

This is a video game idea from someone who doesn't make video games, but I've thought about it a lot. Basically, my biggest complaint for how the above system works is too much randomness, especially for Evasive characters. Personally I'm a big fan of randomness, but it doesn't feel as good to build out an evasive character, especially that there are other ancillary systems like Dodge (which has nothing to do with evasion whatsoever) and Block (which is good, but anyone can do it and isn't really tied to anything in particular.) It also grants little defense from spells, though it may grant more defense against elemental damage since armor just absorbs physical, I think, so avoiding an elemental attack is a slight edge in defense here.

So here's my suggestion- Evasive characters are meant to be fast on their feet, right? Well PoE already kind of does this with most of the Dex characters having nodes or skills that are all about moving quickly already. So you're kind of expected to dodge more as an evasive character. This works, but it has nothing to do with the actual Evasion defense or how much evasion you build! So the idea is to combine the mechanics a bit; physically change the area of effect or damage radius of enemy attacks in the game. Now I know that may sound crazy, but consider that in most ARPGs or games with movement and combat; enemies have certain telegraphs or big damage circles that appear that you have to move out of. Stacking high levels of Evasion on your character could have the extra effect of literally shrinking these circles. It would be a client side sort of thing- you see a smaller circle then another character would against the same boss. This is already in the game to an extent, as maps or zones can be modified to have greater enemy Area of Effect, so it's not some pre-programmed value for every attack.

The biggest problem I see with this is two fold. The first is what happens in multiplayer. This is the beauty of a client-based online game like this with different screens; every player sees exactly what their character would, so enemy AoE are smaller for an evasive fast Ranger, because she knows how to skirt the edges of an enemy's blow to best avoid getting hurt, where as the notably more clumsy Witch could not. However, you might see another player in your game session walking into enemy Area of Effect circles and not taking damage when they explode- causing you to think the game is glitched or they are hacking! I have a solution for this; make it so if a player on your screen is in an AoE you can see, but is too small for them on their screen, little 'action lines' appear around their character model as they walk. Then, when the boss smashes down and they are in the AoE for an ally, but not for themselves, they won't take the damage- and you can play an extra client-side only animation of them rapidly dodging away, or like a cool flashy afterimage glow effect that makes it appear as though they just dodged the attack in the nick of time. I think this solution would be extremely cool in any ARPG, not just Path of Exile, as evasive characters would have different playstyles to everyone else- based more on dodging and weaving through enemies.

The second is cheesy shit, like switching to evasive gear right before or during an enemy's wind up animation, to help make it easier to avoid. I don't have a good solution for this- instead maybe the evasion mechanic doesn't actually shrink the circles, but just makes them do less damage farther away from the center. This makes evasion more important, though it doesn't directly solve the above issue. Still, I think this idea is unique and has merit, and is a unique kind of mechanic that only works and is uniquely suited to the video game genre as a whole.

 

Edit: Over five years after publishing this blogpost? I got a lot more to say about it which can be found here.

6 High Level Summoning Spells

[1] Father of Black Pool

This spell can only be cast by pouring a vial of darkest black ink into a pond, bath, or other small contained body of water. Trying to cast this spell in a river or the ocean will cause the magic to be wasted, as a large cloud of black water flows away from you. When the ink is dripped into the pool, it corrupts the water within to become foul, stagnant, pitch black water that causes sickness if you drink it and discolors clothing used to wash in it. This water can also stunt the growth of crops or plants if disposed of improperly; this is part of the cost of summoning this being. Once brought into this world; the Father remains in our realm for one day, nobody else can summon him until this time is up.

This is a powerful spirit from another realm. It is not a demon, nor is it even malignant, despite its elemental affinity with stagnant and foul water and love of secrets. The Father appears as a roughly humanoid figure with no facial features except for a set of triangular gills running up its face. These gills disconcertingly flap open and closed when the entity speaks, but it has no need to be underwater to breathe. It is native to a realm where all that exists is pitch black water. From questions asked to the Father, its realm is an infinitely deep, pitch black pool of water with boundaries made of thicker still darkness; the only things that pass through here are deceased abyssal creatures from the ocean and the souls of dishonored krakens; which shrivel up into rocks that endlessly fall deeper and are crushed harder and harder by oceanic pressure. The Father claims this realm is quite peaceful but boring, and as such it adores being summoned and speaking to mortals.

The first power of the Father is that he is an absolute master of magic pertaining to water, necromancy, decay, and darkness. It will gladly translate or transcribe any spell of this nature by using the black water of its pool as ink- sometimes when this spell is cast Mages will line up by the dozens to have their spellbooks described or annotated by the Father to help in spell research. The Father does this freely as a favor; it simply loves to share its knowledge with others. It has no interest in magic outside of this sphere and won't help in casting or learning any spells outside of his domain.

The second power of the Father is that of secrets. The Father is an old being and knows many things from when the world was still young, and it has learned many things from all of its masters over the years. It will tell you some secrets if it knows them; the location of ship wrecks for one, as well as the secrets to cure many wasting sicknesses it is also willing to trade for. This information the Father holds in much higher regard then his magical knowledge; it will only give up these secrets in exchange for an artifact it holds in equal value. All the artifacts the Father accepts in trade are taken to its magical realm and stored there eternally.

Finally; some summon the Father to combat it, as it cannot leave until its time is done. If the Father is fought, it will fight back. Treat as a 8 HD outsider with 16 AC, and powers over death, water, corruption, decay, and capable of splashing black pool deep water (treat as 1d6+1 acid) at you every round as an attack. It can cast powerful spells and will do so to defend itself, even though it cannot truly be killed as long as its realm exist. If you manage to defeat the Father, he will dissolve into the black pool and by sticking your hand inside (save or contract a wasting sickness) you can magically retrieve any artifact within the Black Pool realm. Since most of the artifacts lost within that realm are no longer known about in our dimension; the ability to claim an artifact is tied to the character's desire. If you desired a powerful weapon, then the pool would give up a powerful magic sword or trident of the deep black ocean. If you desired magic, then the pool may give up one of the Father's many magical, waterproof spellbooks written on decayed kraken skin, and so on.

[2] Je-Et

The Je-Et is a perfect commander. It is a being of the Celestial Sphere, and as all beings of that holy realm they appear as a strange angelic amalgamation of various animals, body parts, and flawless divine people. The Je-Et specifically appears as a divine man in a flowing yellow robe studded with round armor plates of holy iron woven into the fibers. The Je-Et has a three foot long neck, its neck tied with ribbons around it to give it the appearance of a battle standard at a distance, and this vantage lets it see over the heads of its allies to guide its forces on the battlefield. Instead of having normal legs, it has two long cricket legs which give it an incredibly jumping ability. It wears a heavy iron chestplate, but on the center of its back is the head of a rooster which can caw loudly to announce a charge or sound the alarm; its head is oriented backwards so it never falters in the face of the enemy.

The Je-Et were the divine commanders in the ancient days of the armies of heaven when the ultimate battle decided who would rule the Earth and Heaven. After that war was over, the Je-Et were “retired” in the realm of ultimate peace and tranquility. They have despised the Gods ever since and are constantly seeking ways to get out of that realm to see some action again.

To most, the Je-Et sounds and acts as the perfect commander for an army or warband. Instead of needing to pay them, the Je-Et pay YOU for each month of service you commission them. Every month its rooster mouth coughs up 4,000c worth of silver coins. However, the Je-Et is such a good commander that it will constantly keep its men motivated, in training, and on the march at all times. It also needs an enemy to fight. If kept defending a fortress or on guard duty too long, it will consider the work beneath it and either take the men away (who will likely be more loyal to the Je-Et then their true master) off on a campaign of its own design, or it will start to question or even imprison its master to micromanage their life and make new enemies and instigate conflicts so it constantly has something to fight and lead its army again.

The Je-Et fights as a divine being of 6 HD. It is immune to aging, disease, and level drain but can be killed by supreme martial skill above its own. It is summoned with +1 magic spear, shield, and armor made from heavenly alloys but can easily swap to new weapons if they are superior. It knows 2d6 blade arts that it can deploy with or without weapons; heavenly spear thrusts and elemental-charged attacks, and resistances to magical attacks, are just a few of its potential tricks. Finally, every Je-Et carries a pigeon made of stone, once tossed over the horizon to serve as a messenger to the Gods. Since then, the bird is lifeless after being retired and the Je-Et can instead evoke its stone companion to turn itself to stone in the middle of a battle. While the Je-Et is stone, it can see and think but cannot move until three rounds have passed. The Je-Et will use this ability opportunistically, such as to break your sword on his stone skin during the middle of your swing.

The main ability of the Je-Et is that it is an incredible commander and can size up any foe with realistic plans to defeat opponents; even those of much greater number or superior arms. The Je-Et can treat a troop of 20 men as equivalent to a detachment (usually requiring 50 men). Detachments use their own rules and can't be harmed by individual soldiers, unless special area of effect weapons or super high-level character are deployed against them. Those who train under the Je-Et for at least one week find their old injuries and inadequacies seemingly lessened under their commander, who always puts them in the position where they shine the best. Every soldier under the Je-Et no longer treats any of their negative ability score modifiers as negative for combat rolls; a crippled veteran with a -1 Strength has no penalty to attack rolls, since the Je-Et taught them how to fight using the enemies momentum, and so on. Finally, the Je-Et fixes group morale, treat soldiers under them as having a Morale of +1 or 12, whichever would be higher for the troop.

[3] Bath Woman

This spell brings forth a mystical female spirit. She appears as a golden skinned woman with a pale glow, her body made of mist underneath a transparent silk dress. She is a spirit of healing, cleansing, and of magic. The spirit will clean any being or object presented before her, and is known to be able to remove the taint of dark magic, the cursed eternally stained bloody hands of murderers, skim the foulness from artifacts touched by doom horrors from outside of time, and all other things filthy and unclean are made right again by the purifying waters that pool from her hands. Additionally, she may heal someone of one level of level drain or 2d6 points of attribute damage once per day.

The Bath Woman is not an aggressive spirit but is also known as a bringer of death. Those who are cursed with immortality and wishing for death, or those simply wanting to pass on peacefully, can find themselves set underneath the water of her bath and drowned, peacefully rocked into death by her gentle touch. For some, they believe the bath woman to be a succubus or other demon who preys on men's souls, but those who willingly die to the bath woman's touch always have their souls reach the next life as it was intended; she only helps those pass on who wish it.

Once the Bath Woman has been summoned to a spring, bath, fountain, or other place it becomes mildly holy and sacred. Demons and undead cannot bear to feel the waters here, though they are no longer considered holy water if removed from the bath. If someone was to defile the place, such as by dumping waste into the water or attacking the peaceful Bath Woman, even once, she will disappear. Otherwise this summoning is permanent.

[4] Quadallochi

The Quadallochi is a mischievous spirit of death and disorder. It can only be summoned once the magic user has constructed a totem from three skulls bound together with copper wire, which are arranged facing each other with a candle burning between them as closely together as possible. The Quadallochi can only appear within 20 ft of one of these candle totems. If the totems are destroyed or the caster moves away from one, the Quadallochi cannot appear. Once someone has summoned a Quadallochi it becomes quite difficult to get rid of, so avoiding and destroying these totems is one method to mostly avoid the spirit.

The spirit can appear in two forms. Usually it appears in a more “casual” form of twisting black smoke over its totem when speaking to its summoner. Otherwise, it may appear as a dark skinned young girl with bright red eyes, usually peaking around corners or from under furniture. This secondary form is used when others are present, with the Quadallochi whispering in the summoner's ear, as it is quite shy and doesn't like to be seen by others. This secondary form can also interact with the environment in the way a small girl could; moving light objects around a room or blowing apart circles of salt and the like. For this reason, the Quadallochi is extremely hard to contain once it is summoned; this body can build new totems or take away ritual implments when not being watched. As long as there is no totem nearby it cannot appear, but the Quadallochi has been known to build a totem in a wall or hide some of its primordial death energy in the form of purple jewels that it can hid in your boots or pocket; which give it some control over energies and matter even outside one of its totems.

The primary reason for summoning this spirit is so it can grant you its blessings. The Quadallochi has four different blessings it can give to its summoner, but it only gives these at a cost. The first blessing you take is given for the price of a small amount of necrotic energy; usually the amount you would get from a few cremating corpses in an alchemical furnace. The price increases from there; ramping up to include requiring giving the spirit hundreds of bodies worth of energy, human sacrifice, or assassinating immortal beings so the spirit may supp on their death essences. Everything consumed by this spirit cannot be risen to a state of undeath, as it has lost is undeath potential, but the soul is still intact and can be affected by resurrection magic or pass on to the afterlife.

The four blessings of the Quadallochi are as follows. It will grant them to you at any order, but most conjurers do not know all four and may simply have to ask the spirit to grant them a boon or power without specifics, and without knowing the costs first. The spirit has no problem granting these powers before you pay up, which is exactly why it hounds its summoners so much who so often try to extract the spirit's blessings without the sacrifices to keep it sated. All powers are permanent.

• Gain the power of indestructibility to all mortal weapons, so long as you in a very dark place. The level of light must be less then that of a candle; dark umbral flames rise off your form in darkness from your indestructibility.
• Gain the power to consume the dead flesh of mortals without thought to disease or the divine curse of ghoulism (the common punishment for those who commit cannibalism). You regain +1d4 hit points for gorging yourself on as much dead flesh from a member of your own race.. As a side effect, your tongue turns bright green.
• Gain the power to cause wracking pain to anyone you see. This causes dark black scratches to form on their body, dealing 1d6+1 damage and dealing immense pain enough so that they must save or lose an action that round. You can perform this power even without using up your own combat action; it requires but a single moment's glance. You can use the power three times per day and Wizards can cast it additional times by expending 1^st level spell slots without needing to prepare them in advance.
• Lose both legs. You can still stand and walk upright, but your legs are naught but ghostly shadows. You can glide around as fast as you could walk or run before. You can avoid stepping on pressure plates, avoid caltrops, float over gaps, etc. However, your legs and any tight-fitting pants appear gone so you must wear long cloaks or dresses to hide your lower body, else you'll look like a floating upper body.

Once you have gained all four blessings, or if you take a blessing without paying back the spirit, it will not want to leave you. Even if it has nothing else to offer, it becomes clingly with its summoners and wants to use them gather more deathly energies for it, as its realm is already totally dead and nothing left in it can die fresh. It will continually push for more sacrifices, and promises to pay them back with future powers or by finally leaving you alone, but it never does and keeps following you until you finally die and it can drink your essence or it is banished by a powerful sage.

[5] Dwarfkiller

The Dwarfkiller is debated to be either the soul of a heroic goblinoid ancestor to all their kind, a magical spirit created by a massive communal goblin spell, or some kind of unknowable entity that perfect encapsulates the war between the goblins and the dwarves. The Dwarfkiller appears as a fidgeting green-skinned ball of enraged goblin faces, with dark blue colored spikes poking out between them. The ball essentially moves by sliding across the ground, capable of retracting its points or extending them a bit, constantly in a defensive position. These blue spikes are magically powered armor-penetrating dwarf-killing weapons, meant to penetrate the toughest plate armor. The Dwarfkiller ignores armor bonuses to AC, only evasion or advanced fighting techniques help avoid its lances.

The Dwarfkiller hates Dwarves and wants to kill them. If you summoned it as a Dwarf, then you are stupid and it attacks you. It attacks dwarves on sight. It will also attack non-dwarves if they either try to defend dwarves from it or if they strike it first. It snarls and blabbers mouthfuls of insults and cries of battle every round in goblinish, but hardly follows orders unless given to it in goblinish and the order doesn't take it more then a few seconds off course to the next dwarf to kill.

Dwarfkiller

HD- 8+8 HD,

AC- 14

Morale- N/A

Numbers- Usually One

Attacks- (+4 to hit, ignores armor) Three 1d8+1 damage blue spike attacks

Abilities- Cannot be Surrounded, Goblin Faces

As a ball of goblin faces, the Dwarfkiller cannot be flanked or snuck up on, since it sees and attacks in every direction at once. It can attack three times per round, either focusing all of its spikes in one direction to kill a dwarf, or in several to fend off attacks or kill many dwarves at once, just slower. The Dwarfkiller by default exists in our realm for only three hours once summoned, but if somehow brought here another way or through mass Dwarf sacrifice, it can be kept here longer.

The Dwarfkiller is also made up of many small goblin faces. They are the size of a normal goblin's face, and plastered together into a ball shape. If you use a war pik or tear one off with your hands, the face will be removed from the ball and it will now have a gaping hole that shows off its core. The inside of the Dwarfkiller looks like an amorphous blue mass of stone which the spikes jut out of or recede into when not in combat. Attacks against this blue mass deal double damage against the creature. Secondly, the faces pulled off can continue to speak and even bite you if you're holding on to it, but lack any intelligence of their own. They also don't say anything useful in goblinish except racial slurs and a desire for you to throw them at a dwarf so the face can nibble them to death.

Also; the blue-stone core of the Dwarfkiller is its heart and takes additional damage. If one of the pikes is taken off or a section of the core is chipped, it will remain in this realm even after the rest of the goblin orb has vanished. This stone material is very heavy and strong; and if fashioned into weapons it becomes capable of fashioning weapon tips or spear heads out of. It requires a high strength score (17 and up) to use a spear with a blue-stone head, but it ignores armor and punches right through even heavy plate armor.

[6] Bush of Ta'Ool

This spell conjures a magical bush, which grows from the ground as though a seed with a year's growth. It has hearty red-brown branches and brambles, with white and light pink leaves. It smells wonderful. It remains in a mostly dormant state where it is summoned for up to one season, after which it rapidly loses color and dies off. This bush is but one single seed or branch of “growth” from the true Tree of Ta'Ool, a magical force from another realm embodying life and energy. This spell is difficult to cast as it requires rare reagents and magical white jade to be buried in the ground as a “seed” to cast the spell at the first moments of it being finished.

This bush has two primary effects. The first is that, while within the bush, the spellcaster gains an innate sense of the natural world. Around them, the sensations of animals and the winds become one with the spellcaster, letting them lose their sense of self and become one with nature and life around them. The growth of Ta'Ool also remains in this realm for at most six hours once summoned, and as such the danger is mitigated, but for those who find a way to increase its time of summoning and get too lost in the sensation can lose their mind entirely, their body disappearing from inside the brambles and their spirit becoming one with the web of life.

While within this advanced state of awareness; the caster may hone in on anything natural and living within the general area around them; focusing in and watching things as though disembodied from a collection of sensations and energies around them. They could watch a fox hunt for a rabbit, or see a carp splashing majestically on the surface of a lake. Then they could shift their attention to the road, to see humans walking along, and zoom their mind over to a volcano, and sense its heat and how close it is to its next eruption and so on. Consider this an advanced, totally freeform but limited in range form of scrying. Additionally, while within this scrying state, the caster may embody one of the natural elements or things they can sense and see into themselves for a short time, granting advantage on a related roll. For example, they could channel the swiftness of a river to gain a bonus to escaping an enemy, or they could invoke the ferocity of the tiger they had been watching in spirit-form, thus giving them advantage on their first attack roll, and so on.

The second power of the bush is that of the living conduit. By mystical ritual applications, requiring the spell caster a bit more magical knowledge then the growth spell by itself, you can embody the spirit of the land within the bush. This magically makes the bush animate into either a humanoid golem, a long snake made of vines and leaves, or a magical white dove, the form of which is determined by the spirit of the land. This spirit represents the animate spirit of life in the area; gaining a personality based upon the land it was spammed. The dark and stormy mountain land in the deep, lifeless winter will probably be a cold and distant spirit, where as the spirit of a fertile valley in the heat of summer will probably be joyous and encouraging. Regardless of how it is created; this magic spirit is always subservient to the desires of its maker. Once the spirit is animate, the user can give it any number of commands or orders that it is required to fulfill. The spirit will then use its boundless well of life energy and the powers of nature in the land to do its best to fulfill them. These commands must include changes or magic to be woven into the natural world; such as “encroach the forest back onto the arrogant human town”, an elf would say, and the growth-spirit would try its best to do so. The spirit can interweave life in this land to attempt to fulfill its end of whatever it is asked; it can make species adopt unusual habits, such as scratching the spellcaster's name out of any open books or wanted signs they see to let them pass through unmolested. The growth spirit can make the predators in this land more tame, or make the rivers flow more predictably for the drought stricken land and so on. This spell is often cast by elves, as their Ta'Ool spirits race around their forests to make the land as sustainable and livable for their elven masters as possible.

However, it is important to know that after the spirit is let loose, it will change nature that may well have unforeseen effects. It also only lasts one season, meaning once that season is up and the spirit dies, it will no longer be able to make any changes or reverse changes that had unforeseen consequences. Lands affected by two or more conflicting spirits may well have their natural ecosystems brutally upended and chaos reigning over the people and animals of that place. Commonly, a magic user may use this spell to conjure a spirit and order it to increase their power or control over the land they live, and when that time is up the Wizard will have lost control over their own constructs made of interwoven branches or have packs of wild animals following them; attempting to serve their commands but killing the magic user's followers in mistake for intruders. It is also possible that, if the spirit is given foolish orders or is captured by evil forces, the connection to the land could be used to drain it of all life and goodness to create a barren or twisted wasteland. Once that has happened, the land can no longer grow a Growth of Ta'Ool and the spirits of this spell will no longer come here; only time can mend the wounds wrought by this magic spell.