Hereticwerks

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Bujilli Art: The Thing That Watches...

From Episode 9

You could say that Bujilli has this thing's full and undivided attention...

So what should Bujilli do now?

You Decide!

Series Indexes

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six

Starting Page | Central Index

About Bujilli (What is This?) | Who is Bujilli? | How to Play

Bujilli's Character Sheet | Leeja's Character Sheet | Cast of Characters

Bujilli's Spells | Little Brown Journals | Loot Tally | House Rules

Episode Guides
Series One (Episodes 1-19)

Series Two (Episode 20-36)

Series Three (Episodes 37-49)

Series Four (Episodes 50-68)

Series Five (Episodes 69-99)
Series Six(Episodes 100-ongoing)

Labyrinth Lord | Advanced Edition Companion

New T-shirt: Wermspittle 1

Wermspittle T-shirt1 by hereticwerks
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We're working on a few Wermspittle-inspired designs for more than just a few T-shirts...

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Strange Places: The Cold Roads (Vignette)

The scholars and students who huddle together in the fetid taverns and smoky tap-rooms and rathskellars of Wermspittle have a saying: 'What's fiction here, isn't necessarily fiction there.' Of course they tend to look at one all knowingly, as though this were one of the profoundest statements anyone could make, especially after imbibing lots of lager, black-stout and bitter with a shot of Dim Ichor. And they rarely bother to clarify what they mean by 'there,' but one is tempted to assume that is would be some place other than what qualifies as being 'here.' One might hope.

Down the mountain and across the main bridge over the Ertish River, past the terraced orchards full of twisted and gnarled apple trees and the burned-out ruins of what once was the village of Nebitesh you can pick up the main route North. Follow the North Road for about twelve miles or so and you'll eventually spot the remains of older, unkept and non-maintained side tracks. These old roads lay upon the stony soil like fossilized remnants of dead empires or forgotten conquerors. The land is thick with the things as you head farther North. But if you make your trip during the coldest part of winter, and you find yourself moving along as the sun is at the funny angle...well...then you'll be able to see the Cold Roads from where you're walking or riding along.

There has been plenty of fancy talk of 'temporal ambiguity,' and 'transplanar transitions' whatever that all actually means. The midwives just shrug and mumble vaguely obscene trivia concerning Weak Points and the dowsers are nearly all convinced that the Cold Roads don't 'really' exist. Unnatural Philosophers have written numerous manuscripts regarding their various theories, but most languish unpublished because none of them are truly quite sure if any of them are even close to being right...and it is a rare author who allows such niggling concerns as accuracy or factual-ness to get in the way of a way to cover their bar tab, at least for a while. There are as many theories as there are cellars and tunnels and crawlspaces in Wermspittle. Or worms. The place is crawling with more questions and mysteries than a gibbet-man has worms under their oily hides.

No one is really sure just what the Cold Roads actually are. But then no one really needs to know, not if they're still sitting warm and snug behind the walls of Wermspittle swilling brews and swapping words with the likes as get caught up in heated discussions or pointless debates. Philosophy is good for business, if you're a bartender, but it never solves anything more than killing time and filling uncomfortable silences with what passes for learned discourse. The Cold Roads are out there, past the perimeter where the patrols used to try to protect travelers. Anyone honestly curious about the things ought to just go and find out for themselves.

And a few do just that; go and take a look for themselves. Some get caught by the roving plague-gangs, or fall afoul of worse sorts. If you're foolish enough, or hell-bent, or whatever, you can make the trip and leave the North Road so you can strike out along one of the Cold Roads. Every year, each winter, some choose that over quietly starving to death. Others seek out the Cold Roads thinking to escape the Plagues, the festering madness that seems to be blowing in from the east like so much bad weather, or the wandering bands of mercenaries and bandits. Others are looking for a better world, for strange adventures, or just some place other than here.

They're all looking for something, though.

Huh.

Like most of us. Maybe.

Perhaps they find what they're looking for. It is possible. When the dead walk up to the walls of Wermspittle looking for tribute and some desperate cook in a shanty-camp figures out how to make sausages from gore worms...well...maybe anything can happen. What's fiction here isn't necessarily fiction there. Or so the drunken students and grumbling professors hiding behind their tankards have been known to say.

Welcome to Wermspittle

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Gobbling Grout: Attack Spackle (Type 1B)

Gobbling Grout: Attack Spackle (Type IB)
No. Enc.: 1d2
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 12' (4') [along any masonry surface]
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 4+
Attacks: 1 (Acidic-Sting)
Damage: 1d6/minute
Save: F3
Morale: 10

Special: Retains Type I's Suffocation Attack, but can only use it on immobile/unconscious/sleeping victims.

Large, lumpy and ponderous creatures that resemble discolored and slightly bubbling patches of nastiness spattered across walls, ceilings and sometimes floors where the bulk of the curdled mass of these things tends to settle into the cracks, joints and seams of the local masonry. The central mass can be up to a foot or more in diameter, but they rarely gather themselves up into anything more than a couple of inches deep at any given moment, unless confronted by voltaic, actinic or similar effects or open flames. Attack Spackle fear the shock-prods and are often herded and forced into service by wielders of these sorts of weapons and similar devices.

These things will also attempt to sneak up on victims who are either asleep or unconscious in order to suffocate them by slithering down their throat and filling their lungs, just like their lesser brethren the Type I's.

When suitably fed and trained, after a fashion (they are decidedly non-sentient), these odd creatures can be conditioned to stand watch over a specific station and to attack anyone who attempts to pass by without first feeding them. Unfortunately, these things will not distinguish between whomever feeds them, so anyone knowing to give the creature a treat can pass by easily.

These particular sub-types of Gobbling Grout have been successfully integrated into Ochre Jelly solutions in order to produce a denser, darker, more virulent 'Burnt Orange Jelly,' that is so far quite rare, but gaining a serious reputation as a terrifying new addition to the sewer ecosystems beneath Wermspittle.

Unlike the usual Type I's, these bulkier sub-types do not make a good mortar when ground down, and are instead better suited to the formulation of a durable, mold-able paste that hardens into a dense, water-permeable cement that is used in the maintenance and repair of various underground systems.

There are also records of old experiments with the Type Ib Grouts that investigated their potential utility in treating hides, making leather and so forth, but that line of inquiry was cut short during a rampage by a rogue Type IV Grout that leveled the laboratory. Anyone recovering those records would find several competing bidders who remain very interested in learning how to harness these creatures for industrial (and potentially other) applications.

There are other types of Gobbling Grout, at least four distinct varieties are duly noted in the Sewer System Concordance & Cthonic Ephemeris published every October by the Sewer Militia in Wermspittle.

Known Varieties of Gobbling Grout

Zurian (War Breed)

Zurian (War-breed)
No. Enc.: 2d6 (3d10)
Alignment: (10%) Chaotic, (60%) Lawful, (30%) Neutral (But all are unstable, -2 reaction to all non-Zurians)
Movement: 90' (Passwall & Planeshift Ability*)
Armor Class: 4
Hit Dice: 4+
Attacks: 1 (Weapon)
Damage: 3d4
Save: F5
Morale: 10

Special: Use Discern Weakpoint, Detect Ley-Line, and Locate Portal at will. Zurian War-Breed can use Passwall and Planeshift up to 3/times per day at no cost. A fourth attempt results in 2d4 damage, and subsequent attempts cost an additional 1d4. Zurian War Breed actively cultivate various forms of vampirism as a chosen weapon. Upon physical death they have a base 60% chance to rise as an undead vampire, if their body is not completely destroyed. The unlucky 40% who fail to make the transition take the form of lesser undead and serve as droogs, stooges and disposable cannon fodder for their vampiric masters.

Tall, dark and fearsome the Zurian War Breed are a specialist sub-type of pseudohumans devoted to the mastery of personal martial prowess. They almost never use missile weapons unless it is to demonstrate their significant skill in the use of an antique fire-arm or their accuracy with some complicated alien weapon system such as a customized heat ray projector taken from a fallen Sarmakian or something similarly gauche and show-off-ish as that.

All War Breed regenerate at a rate of 1/hp per hour. They can also restore lost hit points by draining them from opponents in melee combat, regaining 1 hit point for every 20 hit points of damage they inflict. Certain sorcerous weapons and special items allow this rate to be improved or adjusted, but such things are mercifully rare.

It might be helpful to consult the Alternative Forms of Vampirism Table for some idea of what approach or particular technique any given War Breed might be using, at least as a further option.

War Breed are not bothered by the whole casting-spells-while-wearing-armor silliness that seems to trouble lesser species. They are intrinsically dual-classed Fighter/Spellcasters and wield weapons or spells with equal skill and panache. (Treat their spell-casting abilities as being at a level equal to half their total hit dice.)

War Breed form small cadres of no more than thirty oath-sworn vassals. Some also attract various followers, familiars, servitors, or champions and many freely employ undead slaves and bound-spirits in their retinues, but these beings are not counted as truly being part of the War Breed's personal, core cadre.

Source: Zurians were inspired by some wild speculation of the best sort found in The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort, first published in 1919. You can download a copy of The Book of the Damned from Sacred Texts, or from Project Gutenberg. There's a nifty hyper-text version of TBotD that can be accessed via Resologist's site, if that's more your speed. As an aside, the Complete Works of Charles Fort are available from Sacred Texts...which is also very handy. And yes, the Zurians really do build their castles and fortresses in such a way as to completely fuse and vitrify the outside into a dense, hardened glass-like surface by the sorcerous/technological application of great heat. They also tend to be great aficionados of heat rays as a lovely way to evaporate enemies at a distance...

Other sources of inspiration came from the depiction of Lord Shiva as having blue skin, perhaps a slight nod to the Vhadagh of Michael Moorcock, and the very real medical condition known as methemoglobinemia which produced the so-called 'Blue People of Kentucky.' All half-Zurians have a better than 80% chance to have full-blown methemoglobinemia, but all of them have bluish tinges to their skin, eyes and blood. Hair coloration in Zurians and half-Zurians seems to be randomly determined and encompasses a wide range of tints and hues beyond the 'norm.'

Zurian (Pseudohuman)

Zurian (Pseudohuman)
No. Enc.: 1d6 (3d8)
Alignment: (10%) Chaotic, (60%) Lawful, (30%) Neutral (But all are unstable, -2 reaction to all non-Zurians)
Movement: 90' (Passwall & Planeshift Ability*)
Armor Class: 4
Hit Dice: 3+
Attacks: 1 (Weapon)
Damage: 2d4
Save: F3
Morale: 9

Special: Use Discern Weakpoint, Detect Ley-Line, and Locate Portal at will. Most Zurians can use Passwall once a day per every 3 HD they have gained and they can use Planeshift by expending 2d4 hit points; some are adept at vampirically siphoning these points from enemies that they've struck in melee combat. Zurian Nobles keep a close guard on the secret to the technique of using these abilities without taking damage, mostly as a way to keep their lessers from getting into too much trouble.

Zurians are tall, athletically-inclined humanoids with vivid blue skin and dark eyes. From an early age onward the majority of Zurians are raised within a culture that spans myriads of adjacent worlds and parallel realms. The ability to traverse the length and breadth of these regions is very much taken for granted by the mainstream of Zurian society; those lacking even a rudimentary talent for slipping across the interplenal boundaries and interstitial zones of the paraverse are seen as somehow damaged or possibly morally questionable. Most such individuals somehow get stranded on some wilderness world far off from the usual haunts of the rest of their folk, either to fend for themselves or to at least have the good grace to not embarrass their fellows any farther.

The only non-spellcasting Zurians tend to be certain members of the so-called 'lost generations' mentioned above, and the War Breed who are a self-selected and modified sub-type devoted to martial prowess of the personal variety. Zurians have never had generals, nor have they fielded an army at any point in their Acknowledged Histories. Each Noble approaches their personal security and the expression of their political and military ambitions through a hierarchy of champions, agents and servitors, including summoned xenomorphs, pact-bound spirits, specialized constructs, and enslaved non-humans. Designer insect-species are something of a fad among the ultra-elite.

It is worth noting that there is no real central authority or polity among the Zurians. They tend to clump together into loose affiliations, extended family-groups and demi-tribes, but rarely ever manage to maintain any real ties to one another that might lead to the formation of something even as prosaic as a clan. Even the most organized, orderly and ruthlessly rigid members of this pseudohuman species have not been able to weld a significant number of their fellows together, not even in the face of terrible enemies or threats of annihilation. Zurians just do not know how to cooperate meaningfully for any real length of time. They also tend to get distracted by sensory impressions filtering in from dozens of planes/dimensions/timelines at once.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Gobbling Grout (Type IV)

Gobbling Grout Type IV (Pit Pore Leviathan)
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 10' (3')
Armor Class: 10
Hit Dice: 8+
Attacks: 1 (Crush or Swallow)
Damage: 3d4 or see below
Save: MU10
Morale: 8

Huge, ponderous creatures of ambiguous outline and protean form, the Type IV Gobbling Grout is a grotesque combination of a living stain and some sort of protoplasmic blob that sloshes about the lower sections of some alleys, fills old cellars and wallows in backed-up and over-full cess-pits where they slowly digest all the organic matter that they come into contact with, often producing massive amounts of highly explosive gasses.

These creatures grow to a size where they can shift buildings off of their foundations when disturbed.

They generally do not attack, so much as they roll over and crush anyone within reach as they stretch and slither about in their feverish dreaming. If a human-sized or smaller victim insists upon being swallowed by clambering atop one of the things, or if they get caught within the blubbery folds of the thing, it will swallow them, but this is totally involuntary and un-premeditated as these things are not truly conscious on any level recognized by sentient beings. But they do dream. How and why has yet to be determined, but they most definitely do dream.

Flattened at the top and festooned with the filth they slumber beneath, Pit Pore Leviathans are a constant nuisance and menace to densely populated cities as they block drains, stop-up pipes, re-direct gutters, and cause back-flows, ruptures, floods of rotting waste, and the aforementioned pockets of explosive gas.

The Grand Marshall of the Sewer Militia traditionally has offered a fairly substantial bounty on these creatures, but collecting the reward is a very difficult and dangerous task. Capturing or killing a gravid female before it can expel its spawnage into the sewers is worth a great deal more than just another slow-moving mountain of fetid ooze dug out of someone's basement.

Certain specimens of the Type IV have shown a remarkable talent for a sort of dreaming that Oneirists, Fantomists, and others have begun to investigate. There might be some esoteric secret or occult knowledge to be gained from dredging through the noisome muck and darksome mire below the city streets after all.

There are other types of Gobbling Grout, at least four distinct varieties are noted in the Sewer System Concordance & Cthonic Ephemeris published every October by the Sewer Militia in Wermspittle.

Known Varieties of Gobbling Grout

Gobbling Grout (Type III)

Illustration from The Sewer System Concordance & Cthonic Ephemeris

Gobbling Grout Type III (Killing Floor)
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 20' (6')
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice 4+1
Attacks: 1 (Bite, Trip or Gulp)
Damage: 2d4 or see below
Save: MU6
Morale: 6

Much more mobile than any of the other known types of Gobbling Grout, the Type III is known as a 'Killing Floor' precisely because it lies in wait looking just like a slightly damp and lumpy floor until some unfortunate soul awakens it by walking across it's exposed surface. Then it either forms a vicious mouth and bites the trespasser, extrudes a stony pseudopod and trips them or it makes an attempt to gulp them down whole (only if the victim is human-sized or smaller).

Fortunately, much like it's relatives, Type III Gobbling Grout is a bit torpid and tends to rely on ambush tactics to get close enough to strike a likely victim. Once it lurches up to bite, trip or gulp a victim the brutish masses of gritty goo are most likely to slowly subside back into their pre-attack posture and go back to sleep. If severely threatened or tested, a Type III typically lapses into a death-like state, allowing its exposed flank to harden into a tough armored layer (now AC 3, and as hard as granite) and remaining motionless for 1d4 days.

Some butchers are believed to have installed false floors in their abattoirs with Type III Gobbling Grouts underneath, allowing the sluggish monsters to soak up the effluent and debris that is a natural consequence of their trade. For the most part, the Gobbling Grouts seem content to wallow in the blood and entrails, getting bloated, obese and even more incapable of movement...unless suitably stirred up or motivated by extreme measures.

It is estimated by the Grand Marshall of the Sewer Militia that there could easily be as many as several dozen over-sized Type IIIs ensconced or embedded within Wermspittle. They decline to comment on the unfounded supposition and rumors that there might be any such creatures left slithering about loose in the alleys or abandoned sectors, under strict prohibition from the Privy Council.

There are other types of Gobbling Grout, at least four distinct varieties are noted in the Sewer System Concordance and Cthonic Ephemeris published every October by the Sewer Militia in Wermspittle.

Known Varieties of Gobbling Grout

Gobbling Grout (Type II)

Gobbling Grout Type II (Biting Stain)
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 12' (4')
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3
Attack: 1
Damage: 2d4 (Bite)
Save: MU 5
Morale: 9

Strange, slithering silicaceous and carnivorous stains, the Type II variant Gobbling Grout is a larger, slightly more aggressive and nastier customer than it's predecessor the far more shy and retiring Type I. Where the weaker Type I relies upon slow-motion stealth to make its attack upon the unwary and unprepared, the Type II prefers to arrange itself so as to present a nearly unavoidable ambush as it adheres to stairs, narrow passages, confined spaces, at the bottom of disguised pits, and other such places where passersby are most likely to come into contact with them. Thankfully, these things tend to prefer dark, damp environments and seem to have an intense dislike for bright lights and intense heat. Even a hungry Type II will seek to escape rather than attempt to go after what appears to be an easy meal when confronted by even as much as a Gloomlight spell or a Koponu in a tin cage.

Once a Type II Gobbling Grout bites a victim, they must make a Save or else the gritty thing will lock onto them and slowly begin to curl up around the affected part in order to bite again. It takes 3d4 minutes for the sluggish thing to finally get curled into position to do a follow-up bite. Often this is enough time to take suitable preventative measures.

Particularly large specimens can sometimes curl up for a third bite attack, again taking another 3d4 minutes to get into position.

Type II Gobbling Grout is not suited for the production of mortar or much of anything else. Their only real use is as hindrances, nuisances and weak traps used to deter things such as ratterlings and the like, and even then these things are not terribly effective even at that simple a task.

Several back alley magic peddlers, Midwives and golemicists will sometimes pay a small fee for a sealed jar containing a Type II Gobbling Grout. It is unclear just what they might actually do with the things though.

Local folklore asserts that Type II Gobbling Grout can destroy animated statues and most masonry/stone-work golems if left unattended for extended periods of time, necessitating regular inspection and maintenance of these sorts of features.

Known Varieties of Gobbling Grout

Pages

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Bujilli Art: The Thing That Watches...

New T-shirt: Wermspittle 1

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Strange Places: The Cold Roads (Vignette)

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Gobbling Grout: Attack Spackle (Type 1B)

Zurian (War Breed)

Zurian (Pseudohuman)

Monday, January 23, 2012

Gobbling Grout (Type IV)

Gobbling Grout (Type III)

Gobbling Grout (Type II)

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