Plaguerot and Other Diseases

June 26, 2026June 22, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

I fully admit that I don’t use diseases much at my table, but I wish I did more often. So, to that end, six foul infections that can complicate the already messy adventuring day. (See also Advanced Diseases and Diagnoses at the Blog of Forlorn Encystment for a deep rundown on how AD&D handles these.) These are all magical in some aspect, thus defying the natural order to a degree and also allowing discovery by means of detect magic or its equivalent.

Small note: cure disease isn’t a standard in Whitehack – no magic is – so I will always provide a secondary means of dealing with these, and usually with an implied cost. Coin, time, social capital, you name it. If players are creative in how they’re willing to spend resources to overcome a problem, I like to reward them, so alternatives are welcome, as long as they cost something.

For utility at the table, I give each disease a common structure, a progression which intensifies the effects over time. Some diseases may include silver linings, where a symptom proves beneficial under the right circumstances. Bad doesn’t have to be all bad.

Structure is in stages, from incubation through three different and/or escalating effects. For something as destabilizing to players as a serious disease, hanging it all on a gameable framework helps them manage it. Keeps my notes tidier, too. Other details exist to allow alternate means of dealing with a problem, something outside the brief means outlined.

Look, this one’s long. So, before we launch into it all, a brief summary:

Plaguerot – Xylophagous fungus which weakens the living and strengthens the undead.

Firefever – High fever sometimes resulting in a fiery, explosive demise.

The Soft Wasting – A slower process of turning adventurers into green slime.

Echopox – Infected words and miracle wordings, giving rise to tiny demons.

Moonwilding – Ailment mimicking lycanthropy.

Devil’s Lace – Parasite of magic items, using adventurers to facilitate its spread.

Plaguerot

Primary host: Dead plant matter, commonly large trees or accumulated masses of marshy reeds; rarely the great timbers of a sailing vessel.

Secondary hosts: Mammals, birds; reptiles show resistance (save to avoid).

Source: Fungal mycelium, tiny black fruiting bodies. Nonfatal.

Plaguerot infests an area surrounding its host, within 300′, causing a withering of life and virulence of undeath. Healing falters, the undead grow stronger, and disease runs rampant. Cascading infections may result in large regions of overlapping effects.

Living creatures may serve as asymptomatic carriers, bearing spores across great distances. The fungus cannot grow enough to produce fruiting bodies in the living, but causes weakness and suppresses the immune system. Undead which pass through the area invariably bring spores to anything they touch.

Incubation: 1 month. Innate magical essence permits identification before other signs and symptoms.

First stage: d6 + 1 months. Natural healing occurs at half the expected rate; illnesses have maximum severity and/or duration. Animals will avoid the area.

Second stage: d6 months. As above, and all undead gain +2 to saving throws, plus 1 HP per Hit Die (potentially above the ordinary maximum). Magical healing costs 1 HP above the level set or rolled. The deathly magic begins to attract undead from elsewhere. At this stage, the fungal spores begin to spread.

Third stage: d6 years. As above, and any living creature which dies in the area rises as a zombie 24 hours later. All undead gain 1 HD. Resurrection magic inevitably fails.

Treatment and cure: For living creatures, a day’s rest outside the area clears out any lingering effects. A hot bath with plenty of soap, plus laundering one’s clothing in boiling water can ensure spore destruction. Long-duration freezing may be effective in arctic climes. Removing the fungus requires destruction of the affected plant matter, usually with fire or saturation with toxic chemicals. Regions with entrenched infestations may require constant vigilance to root out each mycelial pocket; the unexpected arrival of undead may indicate the fungus is near.

Additional comments: Use this as your next ghost pirate ship!

Firefever

Primary host: Endothermic animals, primarily mammals; others resistant (double-positive saves).

Secondary hosts: None known.

Source: Virus, potentially fatal.

Beginning as an influenza-like illness, with aches, chills, and a raging fever, firefever continues to accelerate until the victim literally burns up. Early on, symptoms may be managed with a low temperature environment, and in certain extreme cases may be advantageous.

Advanced cases have a high mortality rate, and the collateral damage to nearby persons and property can be severe.

Incubation: d6 – 2 days. No symptoms, not contagious.

First stage: 2d6 – 1 days. Fever, aches, chills; -2 penalty to all task rolls. Gain 1 slot of fatigue. Mildly contagious; anyone in close contact (<30′ for 1 hour, check once per day) must save with a +4 bonus or become infected. Mask or other respiratory protection offers an extra +2 to saving throw.

Extreme cold, such as temperatures below freezing, will double the stage’s duration. The victim suffers no adverse effects from such an environment, even without protection, and gains resistance to cold-based harm.

At the end of this stage, the victim may attempt a saving throw, ending the illness on a success. After a night’s rest, they recover normally.

Second stage: 2d6 – 1 days. As above, with task roll penalty at -4 and a second slot of fatigue. Water needs double. Fever becomes extreme, hot enough to feel painful to the touch for others. Fully contagious, with no bonus to saving throws.

Effects of extreme cold and resistance to such harm continue. No natural saving throw to curtail the illness at this point.

Third stage: d6 days. Fever races, with victim hot enough that water sizzles on their skin. Delirious and incapacitated, able to walk or crawl only fitfully. No longer contagious.

On the final day, the fever spikes out of control. Over the course of an hour, they go from hot to glowing a dull orange, before erupting in a roar of flame. The victim is incinerated, and anyone and anything within 5′ takes d6* damage from the fire. Flammable materials ignite.

Treatment and cure: Treatment by a trained healer for at least 48 hours during the first stage grants a +4 bonus to the saving throw. Treatment during the second stage permits another saving throw, albeit without a bonus to the roll.

Expertly applied medicines offer an additional bonus, provided they include rare ingredients from cold-themed monsters or places; fresher is superior. For example, the heart of a yeti (HD 4) would offer +4 to the saving throw if freshly procured, but only +2 if acquired as dried yeti jerky in the markets. Hotspots of firefever may have reliable medicines for sale, though beware snake oil and exorbitant prices.

Additional comments: As with many diseases, if rodents can be common carriers, the disease can be widespread. Beware the unkind omens of combusted mice.

The Soft Wasting

Primary host: Animals with cardiovascular systems.

Secondary hosts: Subterranean fungi, deliquescent varieties.

Source: Bacteria, potentially fatal.

A disease of the blood, the soft wasting slowly breaks down a victim’s internal structure into green slime. Clumsiness and a brief period of extreme flexibility precede the eventual dissolution into a corrosive hazard. Considered challenging to treat, with a high mortality rate, though contagion can be contained more readily than most diseases.

Most infections begin through contact with blood from a victim, or by consumption of dungeon mushrooms carrying the bacteria.

Incubation: d6 – 3 days. No symptoms, not contagious.

First stage: d6 + 1 days. Victim becomes clumsy, with a body which responds sloppily to conscious intent. Suffer -4 penalty to Dexterity task rolls and -2 to attack rolls and saving throws. Sensing vibrations becomes natural, and they can pinpoint signals as minor as a footfall up to 30′ away through a solid material.

Contagious through contact with infected blood. Attempts to bandage wounds after combat, for example, require a saving throw to avoid infection.

At the end of this stage, the victim may attempt a saving throw, ending the illness on a success. After a night’s rest, they recover normally.

Second stage: 2d6 + 2 days. As above, with bones and other rigid body parts becoming soft and pliable. The victim can squeeze through narrow spaces, as thin as three inches, though their equipment may constrain. They also become vulnerable to fire and extreme cold, taking full damage from any source of harm. Still contagious.

At the end of this stage, the victim may attempt a saving throw, ending the illness on a success. Their strange state persists as an injury (Dexterity, if a Group slot is open), but they may be restored to health in a week’s time under the supervision of a trained healer.

Third stage: d6 – 2 days. Over the remaining course of the illness, the victim decays into green slime, beginning at the extremities and inexorably moving toward the heart and head. Movement and manual actions become all but impossible rapidly, and the victim develops an intense fear of fire. No longer contagious, though contact with green slime is corrosive and dangerous.

Treatment and cure: Treatments typically involve cleansing the blood, a combination of drawing some with leeches or bloodletting, then restoring with transfusions of fresh blood. The process is long, and requires multiple volunteers to donate blood, but stays the disease while it happens.

Master herbalists have had success with preparations intended to counter snake venom, though success is not guaranteed. Allow an additional saving throw, with a bonus of +2 to +6, depending on the rarity and expense of the antivenin used. If it fails, a second attempt will not succeed.

Additional comments: You can’t scrape it off, but this is still a kinder way to be converted into green slime, with time to consider options for seeking cures and/or having one’s will notarized. Shrug it at the end of the second stage, and you can choose to spend the rest of your adventuring days as living rubber!

Echopox

Primary host: Creatures with language.

Secondary hosts: Recorded, audible language, such as a magic mouth.

Source: Vox-virus, a virus-like fragment of magic. Nonfatal.

Echopox infects words and memories, using living hosts to multiply and spread. Infected words carry the vox-virus and can infect others who hear and understand them. While infected, victims struggle with speech, burst into echolalia, and have difficulty writing. Those with miraculous abilities, the Wise, find their wordings charged and threatening to twist out of control.

Anyone who has been infected before gains a +2 bonus to the saving throws to avoid reinfection, with each subsequent infection accumulating greater resistance.

Incubation: d6 – 1 hours. A victim develops small, red dots in patches across their skin, which persist for the duration of the illness. Not contagious.

First stage: 2d6 days. A victim loses three words, chosen at random, from their vocabulary. They cannot intentionally speak or write them, yet immediately repeat them out loud as they hear another speak them. (Suggestion: choose one word from their inventory, one applicable to their vocation, and one ordinary verb.) Each person who hears and understands a repeated word may be infected; make a saving throw, up to once per day.

Second stage: 3d6 days. As above, and the victim loses an additional three words from their vocabulary. (Suggestion: choose one word from a nearby object, one applicable to an ally’s vocation, and one color.) Wise characters instead select one wording from each Slot, and can cast them normally; each casting is contagious as the infected words. These infected wordings each have a 1-in-6 chance of costing 0 HP, instead marking the caster with 1 point of Corruption.

Third stage: d6 + 1 days. The victim can now only speak and write their infected words and miracle wordings. Infected wording costs are one level cheaper. On the final day, they cannot speak at all – save for the Wise, whose infected miracles still function – until the illness suddenly breaks. The victim takes d6 points of Corruption, and a number of kritches equal to (6 – Corruption gained) bubble into being, and may be zero. Kritches released, the victim returns to normal.

Treatment and cure: None known. Healers aware of echopox may isolate the victims where the words cannot be heard, plugging their ears with beeswax to provide food and water until the disease has run its course. Many of them have suffered it before, and their resistance helps limit further spread.

Additional comments: Kritches may be of any appropriate sort, but a suggestion for a language-based kritch follows:

Kritch, language Babbling fool: A creature within 30′ loses all understanding of language, babbling nonsense for 1 hour. One affected cannot cast miracles. Save to avoid. (1 HP) Wandering wordings: Kritch fractures into millions of tiny fragments, leaving a void of understanding in up to 15′ cube. For 1 hour, no Wise character may perform a miracle there, as the wordings slip from their mind.

Moonwilding

Primary host: Humanoid mammals.

Secondary hosts: Humanoids, non-mammalian: resistant (double-positive saves).

Source: Bacteria, nonfatal, except with complications from shock.

After nightfall, the light of the Moon stirs hallucinations in the minds of the infected. Victims believe themselves beastlike and hunted, and may lash out in violence, flee to the shadows, or otherwise act erratically. This is but one source of the tales of werewolves. Infections typically occur via a bite from an infected victim, but any infected saliva can spread the disease. Those exposed make a saving throw to avoid.

Incubation: Until the next full Moon. No symptoms, not contagious.

First stage: d6 lunar cycles. At night, upon seeing the full Moon, a victim must save or be overcome with hallucinations of transformation into a werewolf or similar beast. While overcome, the victim loses the ability to tell friend from foe, inciting a fight-or-flight response. In this state, they gain +2 Strength, +2 to attack and damage rolls (unarmed only), take half of any damage inflicted, and cannot take a defensive stance. When the Sun rises, the hallucinations cease; if the victim has lost any HP while hallucinating, they lose an additional d6 HP to shock.

Second stage: 2d6 lunar cycles. As above, with saving throws against the hallucinations made a -2 penalty. Strength, attack, and damage bonuses increase to +3.

Third stage: Until cured. As above, with saving throws against the hallucinations made a -4 penalty. Strength, attack, and damage bonuses increase to +4. Loss of HP to shock increases to d6*.

Treatment and cure: A victim fights off the infection with three consecutive, successful saving throws against the effect. Trained healers can prepare various medicines to ward against the transformation, granting a bonus of +2 to +6 to the saving throw, depending on the rarity and expense of the ingredients required.

Note that victims who avoid gazing upon the Moon do not trigger a saving throw, and may not realize their infection persists, nor that they can unwittingly spread it.

Additional comments: True werewolf hunters recognize the hallmarks of madness caused by Moonwilding, and those of suitable temperament may be inclined to offer aid.

Devil’s Lace

Primary host: Magic items.

Secondary hosts: Creatures with magical abilities.

Source: Parasite, insubstantial, of demonic origin. Often nonfatal.

Devil’s Lace forms a bond between a magic item and its bearer, bearing both boon and curse. The bond leaves telltale marks, a set of faint, silver Lichtenberg figures etched along the bearer’s limbs, until the disease is cured. The ultimate effects are unpredictable, though the parasite’s goal of duplicating itself onto another magic item tends to keep the infected victim alive. An infection takes hold of a victim when the magic item is first used, with no option to save.

Nothing is conventional about Devil’s Lace: not contagious, not fatal, incurable through nonmagical methods.

Incubation: d6 + 1 days. No symptoms, not contagious.

First stage: 3d6 days. Victim gains one boon and one curse, randomly determined. The boon remains in effect while the infected item is held or worn; the curse is always in effect.

d6 Roll	Boon
1	When regaining HP, gain 1 additional HP.
2	See shapes and outlines even in darkness, up to 30′, without fine detail. No penalties for combat in darkness, but impossible to read text without light.
3	Gain an innate sense of cardinal directions, no matter the location.
4	Perceive the nature of – or lack of – a serious, nearby danger once per day. Applies to traps, ambushes, structural damage, etc., as long as the inquiry is clear.
5	At the end of a day without sustenance, make a saving throw to press on without fatigue. Players may not attempt the roll and then choose to consume rations.
6	When an ally fails to identify a magic item, make a saving throw to turn the effort into a success. Once per day, and does not bar the PC from making their own attempt.

d6 Roll	Curse
1	Reduce a random ability score by 2.
2	Burning thirst doubles daily water needs.
3	Add an injury to a random Group slot.
4	Always go last in initiative order.
5	Movement reduced by 5′.
6	When a task roll fumbles, suffer 1 HP of harm.

Second stage: 3d6 +1 days. As above, and the victim gains an additional curse, always in effect.

d6 Roll	Curse
1	Compelled to close into melee in combat; must save to attack at range or to retreat.
2	Daylight hurts the eyes; -2 to task rolls in daylight.
3	Fear of the dark; must always hold a light source in dark places or suffer -4 to task rolls.
4	Fear of fire; -2 to task rolls when within 15′ of flame.
5	Burden of violence; all weapons in possession occupy twice the usual slots.
6	Unceasing greed; take all treasure of value, even meager coins or obviously trapped objects, with an optional save to resist the urge. Insist upon carrying the finest items, even to the point of being encumbered.

Third stage: 3d6 + 2 days. As above, and the victim gains a compulsion, always in effect. The parasite grants the victim a brief vision to guide them toward their goal.

d6 Roll	Compulsion
1	An amulet of carved bloodstone, deep green with red flecks, in the shape of a laughing skull. It rests atop the black-stained altar deep within the shrine to The Evil One Which Sobs, now half-buried in the Gray Mire. With it in hand, drip three warm drops of your own blood into the skull’s maw.
2	A heater shield, edged in steel, decorated with the Red Eye on a white field. Lain atop the body of the last King of the Redriders, entombed within the great royal barrow, now watched over by the ever-vigilant spirits of his warriors who fell before the Orcish hordes. Grace the hero’s eternal slumber with the golden lilies which grow atop the barrow, still damp with morning dew.
3	A wand of smooth, polished ironwood, handle wrapped in braids of red leather, tipped with a fragment of raw starmetal. Cherished and held close by the usurper prince, whose magic comes from demonic pacts, in his tower redoubt in the northern hills. Hold it high, beneath the open sky, as the prince watches on.
4	A blade of bronze, heavy and curved, set in a handle decorated with wings of ivory. Gracing the chamber of the Oracle of Silverweb, no human eyes have gazed upon it since the greatmother of the spiders claimed it from her victims. Holding it in both hands, meditate among the Oracle’s dream-vapors to awaken its powers once more.
5	A golden ring, simple and precious, whose inscribed name is revealed only in flame. Lost in the caverns beneath Blackspire Peak, where the River of Pale Fish tumbles into the unnamed lake where dark things swim. Fetch this gleaming ring and bear it to the fresh air, that the Sun might shine upon it once more.
6	A gnarled oaken staff, its knotted head draped with silver thread and the feathers of ravens, worn smooth from many years and many hands. Still grasped in the dead hands of the Wolf Druid, who sits in meditative repose forever, undisturbed in the quiet glade of the Walking Wood. Take it, plant its base in the fresh earth at sunset, and watch over until the dawn breaks.

If the victim can fulfill their compulsion’s goal in time, the compulsion fades, along with one curse of their choosing. The other curse and boon remain as before. The magic item becomes as a typical cursed item.

If they cannot fulfill their compulsive need before the end of the third stage, they become driven by an urge to gift the infected item to another individual whom they honestly believe can complete the task. For each day they fail to do so, at sundown, the victim gains 1 point of Corruption. If they succeed, they are cured, as below.

Treatment and cure: Aside from using magic, there are several known remedies:

Destroy the infected item. The disease’s bond compels the bearer to avoid this at all costs. Think of it as your friends staging an intervention to get you clean.
Beg the aid of a demon. Doing so will forfeit the item to the demon and leave the victim with d6 points of Corruption, along with any additional costs negotiated in the bargain. It will be expensive.
Wait it out. Hope that when the third stage compulsion arrives, the infected item may be passed on to another.

Once cured, the victim’s boon and compulsion immediately vanish. The remaining curses linger for another 3d6 + 3 days.

Additional comments: Resolution of a Devil’s Lace infection requires advance planning. Replace the compulsion with an existing aspect of your campaign when possible. PCs may elect to take the newly-infected item and bear yet another cursed disease, but that’s on them.

Consider the Cyclops

June 21, 2026June 20, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

A contribution to the RPG Blog Carnival for June 2026, on the theme of Cyclopes, Ettins, Hill Giants, and Ogres from Advantage on Arcana.

Because I assume that you all, just like me, spotted that and immediately plucked your copies of The Odyssey (Homer) and The First Fossil Hunters (Adrienne Mayor) off the shelf. I will also assume that each of you also has a good friend and table regular who, growing up a poor boy in the hollers of eastern Kentucky, idolized Mary Anning as a kid. So fossil talk and weird biology excursions pop up at the game table all the time. At yours just like mine, right?

In case it ain’t obvious, I like my monsters high-concept. Let’s communicate 90% of the situation to the players in a sentence or two, because anything else is going to slow everything down. That last 10% holds potential for a twist or something else to make the situation interesting. A rose is a rose is a rose, and all, except that there’s a lot of variety even among roses. Even among red roses. Even among red rugosa roses.

I appreciate Homer’s Polyphemos, that classic archetype of the cyclops. A giant (even if how giant remains unspecified) with a single eye. Herdsman of sheep, but no farmer – and consequently without grapes and wine. A loner, living far from human civilization, with the sort of hospitality that manifests as devouring his visitors. When Odysseus tricks and blinds him, his howls of agony draw the other cyclopes near, but they – being as social and empathetic as Polyphemos – laugh off the “Nohbdy” line and leave him with his blind rage. We get that, and in the Odyssey, his part is a memorable one. Were he more complex, we’d probably forget half of it among all the rest of the poem’s adventures and excitement.

Polyphemos is a brute, and while no brilliant tactician – for that’s Odysseus, always clever and one step ahead – he’s not dumb. Unwise, lazily confident in his size and strength, sure, but his failure stems from the faulty assumption that strength means everything. He never bothers to make a fair assessment of the situation because he’s too comfortable being the biggest and scariest. No use being smart if you don’t make use of those smarts.

I’ve already explored an alternative to the big, smashy brute in my campaign’s take on the ogre, and I’m not about to let the cyclops become a fat sack of hit points and not much else. If I need something that’s monstrous, dishing out damage and taking it, too, I have better options. Animated statues. Giant skeletons. Dinosaurs, if I gotta. (I mean, it’s a jungle-centric campaign. Dinosaurs might lurk in any random valley.) If it can talk, open the door a crack for proper parley.

Hell, my giants aren’t even all that giant. Those ogres might end up roughly twelve feet tall, which is still terrifying in the context of a world where one doesn’t regularly find creatures as big a house. Even Andre the Giant was “only” 7′-4″, and that dude was huge by any reasonable standard. (For reference, the hand-comparison shot from The Princess Bride.) If I were to tell my players they were up against Fezzik, they wouldn’t bat an eye if I said each hit of his did d10 damage. Did 2d6 damage. Just crushed skulls outright.

Okay, maybe they’d cry foul at that last one. But if we’re talking about a house-sized monster, anything short of insta-death seems, I dunno, silly. Polyphemos literally eats two entire humans like potato chips with every meal. Like it’s not even effort.

Let’s also take a moment here to flip through Mayor’s The First Fossil Hunters, in which she works to reconcile the persistent descriptions and depictions of ancient monsters with the fossils which emerge in known locations of the classical world, against the assertions of 19th-century archaeologists and others who believed that the ancients didn’t notice the fossils around them or understand them in any way. (Spoiler: humans from thousands of years ago are hardly any different than we are today. Curious, insightful, and prone to seeking sensible explanations within the structure of the natural world as they understand it.)

It’s the griffin that piques her curiosity, and she makes a compelling case for the origin of stories of creatures half bird, half lion guarding gold in the windswept deserts of western Asia. Further exploration explains the hero worship of antiquity, of how massive bones eroding from Mediterranean cliffs could be construed as evidence of heroes from a prior era – for in more ancient times, the legendary heroes such as Achilles and Orestes were far larger than today’s humans, the common wisdom went – in part because mammal bones reassembled in humanoid form look a hell of a lot like a giant human skeleton. Especially if you’re primed for it.

Turns out those ancient heroes and giants might have had animal-like features. (Convenient!) Or multiple heads! (Why not?) Particularly human-ish and large fossil bones often ended up in shrines to the founding heroes of a city; in the event of an “entire” skeleton weathering from the earth, the locals might celebrate and provide a new and proper burial.

Did the cyclops come about because of the misinterpretation of an ancient proboscidian skull, from an age before the elephant was known in Greece? Mayor doesn’t deny the possibility, only disprove a longstanding historical myth of how the elephant error came about. She also points out that fossil elephant-and-adjacent skulls don’t survive as fossils nearly as well as teeth and femurs. The relative fragility of skulls, once stone replaces bone, means that in the Mediterranean fossil beds, you’re likely to come across visible fragments of giants, but with few cyclopes among them.

Look, too, at art depicting the cyclops. Hit up the Wikipedia page and check out the Roman versions from the first century CE. I’m particularly fond of this sort, where we see a clearly human face, only with a little unusual about the eyes. Two eyes closed, and quite possibly empty sockets instead, but with very human eyebrows. Then, a third of ordinary size in the middle of the forehead, open and alert. It calls to mind the blind seer trope, and it’s the hook that I think makes for an interesting cyclops to explore.

Where else do we have the one-eyed man with wisdom and foresight in commonly-known mythology? Odin, of course. Many versions of Odin/Wodin/Wotan exist across northern European cultures and time periods, so I’ll focus on my favorite: the version where his sacrifice is a curdled blessing. See, Odin plucked out his own eye, a sacrifice to the Mimisbrunnr that he might drink from its waters and divine the future. In exchange, he foresaw Ragnarok and his own death, rent apart by Fenrir the wolf. How’s that for a classically bundled win-lose proposition?

Recall also that Polyphemos knew his future, that one named Odysseus would blind and defeat him. His hubris and violent actions pressured Odysseus into his “Nohbdy” ruse, enabling it all to happen as foretold.

(Note here that Polyphemos, in great regret, offers to intercede with his father, Poseidon, on Odysseus’ behalf. That hubris which meant he could not see a mere human – “small, pitiful and twiggy” – as the danger of which Telemos had warned recedes in the face of a divine prophecy fulfilled. Then Odysseus, as expected, is a total dick about it and suffers the wrath of Poseidon for years to come.)

(PS – My favorite version of Odysseus is George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, for what I assume are obvious reasons. Such a glorious asshole.)

So: a curse, self-inflicted. Invited in.

The cyclops seeks foreknowledge, a miraculous and Faustian bargain which transforms them into a monstrous form. By my reckoning, any such magical exchange involves demons and Chaos and all of the unexpected outcomes that entails. The wish-granting djinni, whose interpretation of any request is always true to the letter and orthogonal to the spirit, is merely a demon by another name.

No shortcut to enlightenment exists, and those who would seek a higher consciousness and sight beyond sight can expect to spend a lifetime – perhaps many thousands of them – in meditation to achieve it. Impatient for an awareness which transcends the limitations of linear time and past as memory, some would beseech the Chaos for a favor of impossibility. For magic is expressly the impossible manifested in this world.

Touched by this miracle, a cyclops finds themself blinded in the eyes they have known since birth, the orbs turned milky opaque and painfully sensitive to the light of the Sun. A third eye tears its way open in their forehead, returning ordinary vision in addition to an awareness of spacetime as four dimensions, to possibility as an ever-expanding fractal yet to collapse into certainty. All futures are possible, a hazy halo of chromatic aberration about all beings.

And yet, and yet. Futures fade into indistinct auras about the tragedies the cyclops cannot unsee. The world bends about its shadows, and in particular the terrible fates which await the cyclops. Death, dismemberment, agony, loss. With all of existence arrayed against them, they retreat to the remote lands, drawing strength from their mystical misery, seeking true enlightenment in the thin rainbows of color which outline the cruel darkness which beats as the heart of all things. Such a cyclops grows huge, and strong, and fearsome. Thrice the height of an ordinary human, capable of breaking trees and hurling boulders. A giant who need fear no one, and yet, in quiet sadness, fears everyone.

Those who would seek out a cyclops do so, aware of their second sight, in pursuit of an oracle capable seeing the contours of the future. As with their own existence, a cyclops’ sight finds in the presence of others a dominating darkness of future doom. Of a thousand possibilities of their demise and ruin. Of only the slightest potentials of anything beyond endless horror.

Who could possibly want to know such things? What benefit would any sensible person find in the prophecies of their own destruction?

Probably none, but your typical adventurer is rarely a sensible person. Forewarnings of disaster have a tendency to correlate with potential for great wealth. Risk and reward, like peanut butter and sandwiches.

Go, track down the cyclops, hidden far from the shining cities on their remote island. Bring gifts of thanks, and inquire about the myriad ways in which the dungeon will grind you into sausage. Take notes, that you might find the delicate rainbow outlining the shadow of death, silver lining to the stormcloud of the dungeon.

Cyclops HD 6 – 9 + 5 | AC 3 | MV 45 | giant, keen senses, hurl boulder, visions of doom

Let’s not oversell our cyclops here: when it’s time to draw steel, they’re not brilliant adversaries. A lack of clarity in their attempts to critically evaluate their life situation resulted in the current, monstrous predicament, and a whipsaw shift in perception to pessimistic depression isn’t helping matters. They’re massive brutes and that’s their strategy.

Which, when you’ve got up to 9 Hit Dice and a pile of sorta-unearned confidence, sure can result in pulping a number of adversaries before the dust settles. Hell, if the cyclops has foreseen this moment as their undoing – which, given their propensity to seeing everything as the potential for such, assume so – they’ll fight as if they have nothing else to lose.

At a distance, a cyclops will readily hurl heavy stones at threats (see Polyphemos: “The blind thing in his doubled fury broke / a hilltop in his hands and heaved it after us”), be they approaching or fleeing. In melee, fists and tools will do to crush the nearest foes; at giant size, clubs and rocks reduce humans to messy stains. Being a giant, consider using a d10 for damage instead of the typical d6.

Recall that our cyclops lives immersed in visions of dark doom, for themselves and others. In moments of distress, they may take advantage of that curse and act upon their visions of doom. For a cost of 1 HP, grant them combat advantage (+2 AV, +2 damage) on one attack, as they will their visions to reality. Telegraph this to the PCs if at all possible; d10 + 2 damage is a serious threat in Whitehack.

Before it comes to stabbing, though, let them be the NPC they deserve to be. Tortured and difficult, imprisoned by regret for decisions they cannot undo. Perhaps, with enough solitude and meditation, even capable of the true enlightenment they had once imagined so easily acquired.

M Is For Moons

June 19, 2026April 9, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

M is for Moons. Three of them, discussed previously, wandering through the sky.

In the premodern era of the campaign, the state of astronomy is essentially Ptolemaic, an observational understanding with shaky mathematical modeling and prediction mechanisms. Also it’s currently believed that the Moons are the gods of this world.

A fantasy campaign doesn’t need gods, though it’s a rare table with no source of divine power and authority. We tend toward systems with numerous gods, great pantheons of powerful and inscrutable beings whose actions shape the world. Portfolios of influence constrain their interests and abilities, guide their faithful, even those who deal in death and suffering hear the prayers of mortals, if for no other reason than to ward off their gaze.

I’ll admit that I have never managed well with a large and diverse pantheon, because it’s one more thing to keep track of, and unless I’m using an already-familiar set – Greco-Roman, probably – my players are going to struggle to remember them, too. Sure, the cleric knows their deity’s details forward and back, but beyond that? It’s more exposition from behind the screen, and I talk enough already.

If it’s slowing down play, or not offering enrichment to the game, I need to pare it back. So I have a world with three gods. I can handle three.

A few ground rules define this system. Foremost among them: Gods created the world, and the world is the purest expression of divine will and purpose.

Second: The power of the gods derives from the faith of mortals.

Third: Magic is the impossible made real.

What this implies is that the world itself is the divine being, and those aspects which incite awe begin to express godly power in a positive feedback loop. The gods are what we believe them to be, but are only as permanent as the faith of humans across generations. And magic, with certain key exceptions, is explicitly outside the reach of the gods. Which may sound bizarre, but bear with me.

Why include gods in the game? If clerics – the spellcasting sort – are integral to play, they’ll need gods to worship, ones which can grant their faithful a mote of their divine might in times of need. If your campaign pits Good versus Evil or some other form of alignment absolutism, you’ll need indicators and enforcers of those alignments. Maybe it’s a referee shorthand for regional devotion or national pride or something else of use. I guess you have plenty to pick from, right?

Humans also seem genuinely drawn to the divine, to mystery and awe, to the idea of something greater. If it’s not built into our very nature, it’s pretty deeply baked into virtually every culture. The fictional peoples of a made-up world are going to tend to be spiritual, too.

I don’t have clerics at my table, and there’s usually a moral relativism vibe instead of clear alignments. Humans finding evidence of the divine, though? That’s going to happen, and it’ll steer societies. Inspire individuals and organizations. Bring conflict and war and desperate grasps for power. I include gods because it sets the stage for bigger problems.

In the beginning, the gods created the heavens and the earth and the energies that set them into motion. Though its purpose may forever remain obscure, its infinitely complex nature reflects the perfection of the gods, its every aspect being that of the divine. The world is an extension of the gods themselves. The power of the gods is within every possibility of the universe.

If the universe contains all possibilities of the divine, then magic – the impossible – is the Chaos which breaks the divine order. That which the gods cannot or will not do. The gods cannot perform miracles.

If every aspect of the universe is part of the divine, then the gods are everywhere and everything. Those who worship any part give praise to the gods; that faith reflects back with a proportional intensity. When an entire city-state gazes upon the Moons with love and fear, the sense of the divine becomes nearly palpable. A god, a specific god, is unwittingly willed into being. They are not human-like, with outsized personalities and immense magic, beings to be understood in metaphor and allegory. No, they are the raw intensity of the natural universe. (Just imagine the spectacular tides which threaten to wash away whole cities when all three align!)

In this, the Age of Kings, the peoples of the city-states see the divine in the three Moons in the heavens. They are gods, inhuman and inscrutable, their desires guessed at through priests and oracles. There are no tablets brought down from the mountaintop, no avatars walking among mortals, no promises of salvation. But the world reacts to their presence, and none would doubt their power.

One exception to the above: the gods can offer one small bit of magic. Not true magic, but a trick upon the human sensation of time as a unidirectional, linear process, on the limited perspective of being one individual in the great cosmos. The gods can offer insight through divination.

Being the entirety of the universe, the gods have seen and experienced everything, from the beginning of time, across all of existence right now, and including the probability of all futures. Those who can discover the means to ask can tap into that immense corpus of knowledge. It certainly seems like magic – and often resorts to magical means to acquire – but isn’t.

The primary Moon, the most consistent and predictable, is Albaion, the White Beacon. Its near-circular orbit dictates the months of the calendar, and its priests are the dominant force in human civilization. The priests of the Order perform rituals beneath the moonlight to read into the omens they believe come from the gods.

Albaion is also associated with werewolves, for folktales tell of humans turning into feral beasts beneath the full white disc. Sensible folk don’t stray outside after sundown on these Wolfnights.

Less predictable, and less bright against the night sky is Caenak, the Black Cinder. A more eccentric orbit leads to some phases passing quickly, while others linger, in a manner that has proven challenging to predict with accuracy. The Monks who observe it and study its ways have come to appreciate that Caenak acts without concern for the opinions of mortals.

Caenak is considered the world’s connection to the Land of the Dead, and those skilled in reading it may glean knowledge of that other realm. When the dark disc rises full, the veil between the realms grows thin. Spirits of the dead cross more easily; the undead seem to grow in strength; those skilled in necromancy find the voices of those long gone to call more clearly.

Erratic and small, Rubiram, the Red Eye glows with a fierce redness as it drifts across the sky. The unpredictable nature of its phases and timing – for sometimes it even drifts backwards – means that most consider it an ill omen. Superstition tells how to ward off its gaze with a sprinkling of salt, and children learn early on not to stare back at it, lest they invite trouble.

Though part of this world and its heavens, Rubiram has long been thought to tether reality to the Chaos outside. On those rare nights of a full, red Moon, demons find their bonds weakened; magic which draws from the corruption of Chaos feels effortless; and sensible folk keep watch for dark days.

Next: N is not for Nightmare. A sub-campaign of gonzo horror dungeons, non-Euclidean geometry, twisted monsters, and not wearing pants to math class. Maybe… don’t do that.

The 10:17 to Leeds

June 17, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

You could run a serious, long-term Mausritter campaign set entirely within the confines of a Yorkshire train station. Dangerous wilderness down on the platforms. Shops full of risk and reward. (Which restock and adapt to pest incursions with traps and poisons!) Pigeons and rats and all manner of non-human creatures to interact with.

And when you run shy of unexplored locations, well, there’s a brand new megadungeon a short train ride away.

Its own risky endeavor, of course.

Monster: Roh

June 12, 2026April 26, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

The penultimate, number nine of the undead! Yet another odd monster to fill a necessary void in my campaign, a different tack when considering how love and attachment can cause the soul to linger beyond the body’s death. In a sense. We presume to know what a soul is, how to define its contours, to know it when we see it.

But what if the reality is much messier? The driftsmoke is no monolith, but rather an assemblage of fragments, capable of change. What if we take that notion and go one step further?

Fragments of Self

Where the driftsmoke’s existence is a shifting and inconstant mess, the roh is an accretion of individuals. Fragments of them, that is, very specific memories and emotions which cling to the world of the living even as the spirit of them passes to the Land of the Dead. As with the Ship of Theseus, are we still ourselves when a piece is lost or replaced?

And what of that fragment?

Any place which forms an emotional connection can draw those memories as a spirit breaches the veil. The more meaningful, the greater the force. The longer it holds. In time, the energy fades, and a lone fragment makes the final journey.

The roh comes into being when a critical mass of these fragments, lingering, grows such that it tips the balance from a jumble of memories to a self-perpetuating consciousness. The gravity of dead memories collapsing in upon themselves, the pressure building as their interaction sparks the heat of forgotten emotions, the ignition of a new self, emergent from its constituent parts. Someone new, with a driving compulsion from the uniting element of all those fragmented memories.

Enduring Love

Memories cling firmest where we find meaning. Few of those survive long past our own deaths, and few inspire a collective meaning capable of gathering the fragments of many into one. Emotions are potent but fleeting. The people who matter most to us rarely, if ever, command the true love of thousands, and even then, their mortality makes for stark limits.

Places, though? While nothing lasts forever, certain ideas of place seem like they might. Grand architecture; a landscape of rare beauty; a seemingly unremarkable field where the red poppies grow in great profusion every spring, a reminder of the war and the dead.

Take the example of a great cathedral, an edifice of stone ascending impossibly high, with ornate windows inviting in sunlight such that its elegance rivals that of the sunrise. Crowds flock in daily, seeking community, understanding, absolution. Communities thrive about this place for generations, centuries.

Each life which connects to this place, and all of the meaning they construct around it, leaves the potential for a fragment to linger. That love, enduring even beyond death, creates the potential for a roh to form. That laser focus on a single common source and implies a fiery intensity, as the overlap and reinforcement build to a fever pitch. Everything, literally everything else becomes secondary.

It’s a recipe for a devoted guardian, if you’re feeling generous about it. This may be their eternal tomb, but it’s a sacred one, and every thread of their essence reveres it.

A Spirit Takes Form

A roh rarely appears while the place of its power thrives, for it is unneeded. Maintained by the living, the fragments of the dead can bask in its radiant glory. They emerge as the living begin to abandon the place, standing up as the final guardian against the decay of time and forgetting. Or when an existential threat appears, too much for the living caretakers, and their aid might turn the tide.

Or, rarely, when those tasked with protection learn of their invisible guardian, and call out to them. This assumes an organization without serious qualms about the undead, so, y’know, use with caution.

Under typical circumstances, a roh resembles a lost spirit rendered invisible. Incorporeal and capable of passing through solid matter. Bound to their location. Sometimes deeply out of touch with the modern world. They can observe and speak with the living.

Except that when a roh speaks, the walls themselves vibrate with the sound of their thousand voices. And when they wish to interact with the material world, they form a body from the very place itself: earth, architecture, furniture, etc. Anything inanimate works, and the goal is to impress as much as it is to provide an impervious form.

If you have an enormous basalt statue in the entry, carved like a fearsome, winged lion, you’re gonna lead with that, right?

And if not, expect a massive Ben-Grimm-like amalgam of stone and earth, ready to pummel intruders into a sticky paste. Maybe they’ll assume it’s an earth elemental? Not that it matters greatly. The roh will make demands, threaten as needed, and follow through without compunction. Being misunderstood is of minor concern.

For the average tomb robber, the presence of a roh threatens harm and death. Everything in this forsaken ruin (sun-dappled glade, crumbling library, technical school of the thieving arts, whatever) matters, and is worth protecting. Once an item leaves, the roh cannot retrieve it unaided, and even a roh with serious tunnel vision can watch as the place they love changes over years, over centuries. Every object lost, even the grains of sand stuck to the boots of wandering explorers, hastens the demise of their precious home.

That said, a roh is not simply violent retribution. Canny adventurers may gain favor by offering aid, by trading their efforts for the treasures which may be of lesser worth. Remove an infestation of goblins who leave graffiti and trash. Recover a stolen artifact of great sentimental value. Gather craftsmen and artisans to restore faded glory, in exchange for valuables which may be given. (No, you can’t take the golden idol.)

Information carries value, of course. A monster made of a thousand memories has information like few others.

Plus, every intruder who’s tried to steal that golden idol – and gotten pounded into meat paste – leaves behind an accumulation of stuff. Even magic swords and spell books mean bupkes to a roh, except as currency.

Destroying a Roh

Okay, so maybe you can’t get everything you want or need by playing nice with the big monster. I mean, that golden idol is worth a fortune, and it’s time to pick a fight. How do you kill this thing?

Option one: Destroy the place of its power. Nontrivial but effective. For as long as traces remain, so does the roh, so be thorough.

Option two: Destroy its physical form, then its true and incorporeal self. The former is an ambulatory statue; the latter is a wraith with invisibility instead of drain life. Magic is more or less essential to the task.

Option three: Persuade the roh’s constituent fragments of spirit to cross over to the Land of the Dead. Of all the suggestions outlined here, this is far and away the most challenging. If you think it’s difficult to talk one person out of the deep-seated beliefs that feel like the foundation of their being, try doing that for a thousand for whom that belief is literally the basis of their existence.

Option four: Technically not a means to destroy the roh, but it can be silenced by returning the place to its former glory and restoring the community that once sustained it. No one’s going to put in the effort, of course, but it would work.

We know you’re going with option two. It’s okay.

Roh HD 5 – 7 | AC 2 – 5 | MV 30 | undead, bound to place, animate objects, incorporeal, magic resistance

For an AC value, select based on materials used in forming the physical body. Loam and grass will be less than wood, which proves less durable than granite or steel. A roh will use what’s available – sometimes dependent on the current space – but always what’s most advantageous.

A roh’s reaction will be tuned to the apparent threat of the PCs, with an awareness of other complications it might consider more pressing. Goals are clear and direct, focused on preserving (or, ideally, restoring) their place of power. Those who can offer aid will be negotiated with. Those who steal or damage the location will be threatened and quite possibly attacked.

As an angry, ambulatory statue, the roh never shies from danger. The most threatening adversary will be the first target, be it the front-line tank with a magic sword or the squishy spellcaster trying to keep at a distance. It pummels its foes one by one until victorious or defeated. At any point, if its foes offer to surrender, the roh will entertain offers to cease hostilities and make things right. Priority is always to preserve the sanctity of the place.

If the PCs overcome its constructed form, the roh continues the fight in its incorporeal form, using the stats of a wraith. Replace drain life with invisibility, which is a nasty challenge in its own way. Should combat get this far, the roh will never retreat, seeking only to destroy you before it succumbs.

Worth Sharing (June ’26)

June 7, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

Big month elsewhere, with family vacation overseas and all the chaos that brings. Not keeping up on blog stuff, that’s for sure. Good thing I can pre-schedule posts – this one’s going up early so I don’t forget.

rootring

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A Tolkienian Magic System at 3×5 Arcana. Magic as wordplay, a simple two-word version easy enough for young kids, made for open-ended use – like magic – with negotiation between player and referee on effect and cost. Which is exactly like what my table uses with the Whitehack rules, except we ain’t limited to two words.

Spectral Fronds and Flowers Comprise Elegant Animals in Molly Devlin’s Paintings at This Is Colossal. These are true faerie monsters.

Harold A. Taylor’s Autochromes of California Flowers (early 20th century) at Public Domain Review. Has zip to do with TTRPGs, but they’re amazing photographs and I only wish I could produce something which could compare.

How to Semiotically Sex Up Your Campaign Setting With Celestial Symbolism at Monsters and Manuals. Invest your cardinal directions with meaning! Remember: in a magical world, subtle symbolism can be made real, and it can stalk your PCs and devour them.

Fear not the big booms at Seed of Worlds and A Brief Observation on Putting Guns in your Fantasy Game at Behind the Helm. Two posts on guns in fantasy gaming. Did I miss a blog bandwagon thing? Anyway, the former considers low rate-of-fire weapons (being not that different from a crossbow) in addition to the shenanigans players can get up to with gunpowder in their possession, and how none of that broke the game. The latter points out the actual lethality of a sword strike compared to the harm from a bullet, which might just boil down to how you’re handling hit points in both quantity and as to what you’re really abstracting.

AD&D’s Most Expensive and Irritating NPC at Blog of Forlorn Encystment. It’s the sage, of course, and as someone whose current players are like 80% professors (and all have PhDs), I find this immensely entertaining. Pretty much every irritating aspect of the D&D sage? I’ve met someone like that. And as for my players, they’re lovely people, but oh, do they have stories.

L Is For Law and Order

June 5, 2026April 8, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

L is for Law and Order, the structures of society which exercise power and control. Depending on the context and your place in it, these can be anywhere on the spectrum of good to bad. For the typical adventuring rogue, they’re a mixed bag.

The dungeon and the wilderness are an anarchic Wild West, and the city needs to have some structure in contrast. It just doesn’t have any obligation to be friendly or helpful.

Whatever form your government takes, it requires a means of enforcement for its policies. In game terms, it’s important that the apparatus of enforcement provide meaningful constraints on player behavior. Not hard barriers, necessarily, but sufficient motivation to justify creative problem solving. Annoyances.

I strongly recommend that you pay your taxes. I also think it’s better for the game if the PCs make serious efforts to avoid paying theirs. The reasonable and justifiable real-life cases for murder are vanishingly small, but for fictional characters in the game? Have fun storming the castle!

Our imaginary government performs all of the tasks a real one should, but we can ignore those outside the game’s interests, introducing those necessary as the campaign dictates. All of this falls into two general categories:

Duties which make life easier for the PCs. Or at least doesn’t have a negative impact. There aren’t often owlbears roaming the streets, which is rather helpful for getting a decent rest and not being mauled to death after drinking to excess at some of the city’s fine establishments. So there’s that.

Duties which make life more difficult for the PCs. Use as many of these as your heart desires. Taxes on goods brought in (thus diminishing XP rewards)? Absolutely! Sluggish bureaucracy to inhibit direct action? You betcha. Paperwork and permits and a culture of bribery? Reread some Kafka and rewatch Brazil for inspiration.

You’ll want to cover the serious-crime basics, of course. Murder and robbery and all of the murderhobo bad behavior gets curtailed – not that the PCs can’t engage in assassination and/or an artwork heist from time to time – to keep up the sensible function of a living city.

The key here, I think, is to give the players nuisance obstacles that they can overcome in various ways. The pressures of the dungeon and resource management, with lower stakes. No longer life and death, but still a chance to play the game, put both character and player skills to use, and to goad them into doing something interesting.

Taxation putting a dent in the tomb-robbing gig? Time to start smuggling. And if you’re going to set up a system for that, maybe you can pick up a sideline in running drugs or weapons or political prisoners? Or save a little coin by bribing the inspector. Less than it’d cost otherwise, and saves a good deal of time.

Difficulties in getting approval for time-sensitive tasks? Develop NPC connections and trade favors. Offer those adventurer services in exchange for jumping to the head of the line, and get yourself a dungeon quest where robbery and murder pay the bills. Or circumvent the usual channels, just do your thing anyway, and roll with the social consequences. Not like making enemies can’t be part of the fun.

Propose adventure and profit opportunities via NPCs frustrated with the system. They have needs, and coin, and a group of irregulars willing to skirt the expected legal process. Leave the particulars open-ended, so as not to constrain player thought. So as offer your NPCs plausible deniability.

There may even come the time when some among the establishment reach out to the rogues. It could run from illicit activities – assassinate a political rival – to hiring a group of expendables for an off-the-books mission.

I try to keep things simple and straightforward for my players, because even if we were playing a campaign of court intrigue and solving mysteries, the structure of the TTRPG experience rarely wants complicated. I want opportunities to do stuff, not a reference binder for everyone. There are a few important factions, a handful of NPCs – amazing how it’s so often that one dude they already know! – and everything painted in broad strokes.

The Bronze Lord rules over the city-state of Boru Brann, mostly isolated within his central fortress. He rules through his proxies, organizations with missions to further his goals and ensure he remains in power, unquestioned. To make everyone’s life easier, each group has their boundaries defined simply. The PCs might have to negotiate a resistant bureaucracy, but the players shouldn’t.

The Order of the Temple of Albaion, the priests of the White Moon, serve as the Bronze Lord’s agents within the city limits. Tasked with many duties, their primary interactions with PCs tend to be in their work as the city’s police force. In practical terms, they are the law and all its aspects. When in doubt, a priest’s word carries more weight than the accused. Corruption would seem rampant if anyone knew of any other system, but this has been the default for centuries.

Not that corruption is the default. The ranks of the priests are large, open to all citizens regardless of background. Many families see a career in the priesthood as insurance against tough times, and send one child in hopes that doing so will bless them all. The wealthy, as one might suspect, can usually garner cushy appointments for their children, though not always positions of power. Internal politics are cutthroat and generally opaque to outsiders. They cultivate an air of mysticism, of secrets known only to those in the white robes. (It’s mostly hogwash.)

What is broadly known but rarely spoken of is the Order’s quiet abduction of those with a spark of the miraculous. Some disappear; some become isolated from the broader society, yet can be seen among the others within the Temple complex; none ever seem to retire back into the company of the regular citizens in their autumn years. Families whisper that this is because they are the chosen ones, honored as the archpriests to live out their days in the splendor of the Temple.

Among the player-facing nuisances, the Order can levy taxes and demand bribes. They can delay travel for inspections, searching saddlebags and wagons for contraband. Their hostility toward magic-users forces those adventurers to act with high caution. In extreme cases, the Order can issue warrants, arrest PCs for crimes real or imagined, and even hang them in the market square.

The Bronze Legion is the city’s military, responsible for protecting civilization from outside threats. In extreme cases, they may be called to duty within the city walls, but otherwise rarely concern themselves with daily life in civilization. Outside those walls, they keep the wilderness at bay, and their duties bring them into contact with adventurers with some frequency. Accustomed as they are to dealing with bandits and ruffians, there’s no telling how friendly they might be in the dark of the jungle.

For the most part, they don’t much care. While a position within the Order carries some promise of income and security, the inherent danger of joining the military’s ranks dissuades many potential recruits. In quiet times, recruitment of volunteers is a challenge; when the temperature rises, they resort to conscription. A small fraction of their officers bear a touch of the miraculous, a distinct group of those with the gift and the awareness that its value gives them leverage. Conscripts may serve for their tour, returning to ordinary society afterward, but those with magical gifts never do.

Player problems can often be logistical. The Legion can occupy a bridge, complicating passage, or their presence can disturb monsters and others in a region to make travel more difficult. They travel with food and basic supplies, and will part with them, but only at premium prices. Medical attention in exchange for future services. And future services, inevitably, take the form of dangerous missions where the expected casualties are too great for the rank and file.

After all, independent adventurers are expendable, and if they don’t make it back? It isn’t as if the situation calls for any extra paperwork or difficult letters home to grieving families. (Do many adventurers even have loved ones?)

Of least frequent concern are the Monks of Caenak, the ascetics who worship the Black Moon and guard the veil which separates the living and the dead. They maintain the great Necropolis, overseeing the slow processes of decay that the spirits of the deceased may pass on freely. In a world where the undead are a known problem, dedicated servants keeping the dead dead play an essential role.

Nuisances for players lean to the specific and uncommon, when death and undeath make demands. When the Monks come into play, something has gone sideways.

Next: M is not for Murderhobo. Look, it happens sometimes. Just play out the consequences of it on the fringes of a functional society, where the acquisition of basic needs – food, shelter, human interaction – becomes challenging. Ain’t no moral judgement. This is just what happens when you feed a stranger scrambled eggs.

“around the north star-fire”

May 29, 2026May 25, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

Short version first:

I believe that your fictional world deserves its own night sky. To that end, I have put together a tool to help you create one for your campaign. Make a copy of the Google Sheet and see what you can come up with.

Stellar genesis spreadsheet

Look, I know. A spreadsheet. But it’s the most accessible I can make this thing, and all of the pain-in-the-ass work was on my end. If you use it, let me know how it goes.

So much of the D&D-ish game relies on a world that runs parallel to the one we know. You could do anything, anything, but the practical limits show up real quick. We rely so much on things that are normal, but for certain exceptions, because every change calls for an explanation. And referee explanation isn’t any fun for anyone.

But, pause. How many constellations can you name? (There are eighty-eight.) How many stars can you name? (There are more than 9,000 visible to the naked eye under dark skies, across the world, but not all have agreed-upon, non-gibberishy names. I mean actual names, like Regulus and Deneb and Antares.) What can you identify on a night with patchy clouds, disrupting the familiar patterns? For folks playing the game, those answers could run the full spectrum.

For the characters, though, in a world without mechanical timepieces and all of our modern conveniences, one should assume a familiarity with the night sky. In addition to being more visible with little light pollution, the celestial sphere has served as an exceptionally reliable clock and calendar for thousands of years. At least. Everyone has a passing familiarity at minimum. The myths and tales of imagined order in the skies tell us a great deal about the societies that created them.

So should your skies not be a mirror of those here on Earth – which is, honestly, plenty interesting enough – consider this an opportunity to quietly expand the lore and richness if your campaign.

Or just have fun and doof about. I’ll explain how this works, and how I imagine using it for my own purposes. Follow the link above, make a copy that you can edit, and if it works for you, awesome!

This is built on an Earth analogue, using algorithms provided by the U.S. Naval Observatory for sidereal time and by NASA for solar position and time. (I have the code and my notes, but can’t find the website for a link. Apologies.) There are a lot of terms to calculate, lots of corrections and adjustments, and hidden sheets so you don’t have to look under the hood if you’re not inclined. So: same year, axial tilt, planet-star distance, orbital eccentricity, etc.

Also the same starting day of the year, so if you’re using a different trigger for rolling over the calendar – like the vernal equinox, maybe – take that into account.

You’ll need a latitude and longitude for your observer, though longitude mostly doesn’t matter here. When nightfall arrives, the stars look the same. You might get some weirdness in the auto-generated star charts approaching the poles, once the Sun no longer either rises or sets.

A year and a reference year, the latter only important if you plan to examine changes over extended historical time. Shifts over thousands of years can have big changes, and maybe you can work with that. What vestiges of the past have changed, such that the long-lived elves never quite adapted?

A time: day of the year, with hour and minute. The sky at nightfall is different than at midnight, and moreso when twilight first glows in the morning. For when you need specifics. The spreadsheet gives you sunrise and sunset times on the selected date if you need them.

Feel free to change the year length, too. It might break everything, or throw in some weird artifacts, but if you want to?

The last is a random seed. Pick a number, any number. It powers a pseudorandom algorithm that the spreadsheet uses as inputs for all of those stars. Write down that number, and it’ll produce an identical “random” sky every time. Go ahead and type in different seeds until you generate something you like.

What you get, then, is a bunch of charts showing dots. Dark backgrounds with white dots to look sky-like; inverted versions should you ever want to print and not hemorrhage toner. On the Sky View sheet, you’ll see a circle showing the entire sky, projected flat, horizon to horizon. That’s the sky at the indicated time, with south at the bottom, north at the top.

Because you’re looking up, east is left and west is right. Change the time, and you change the stars. If you look closely, you’ll see rotation about a point in the north (or south, if you’re located in that hemisphere). If there’s a star there, it’s your pole star, and a selection of others will turn about it day and night, never falling below the horizon. These are your circumpolar stars. You can see them on every clear night.

The rest are seasonal stars, and only visible for a fraction of the year. They’ll be your timekeepers, the stars whose first and last appearances on the horizon align with annual events. Planting, harvests, the monsoon season, major religious cycles.

Notice that the dots aren’t all the same size, and that tiny ones greatly outnumber those big stars. Size is an indicator of magnitude, the visual brightness. Of the 525 stars spread across the heavens, they’re loosely analogous to those seen from Earth, down to 4th magnitude. Lower magnitude means brighter (blame Hipparchus), and while you can see down to 6th with the naked eye, no one’s making stick figures in the sky with them.

Historically, most of the important stars have been the brightest. They’re the ones which get common names. In constellations, they’re often important to the imagined form. Aldebaran, the red eye of the angry bull, Taurus. Castor and Pollux, the heads of the twins in Gemini. Antares, the red eye of Scorpius, also traditionally known for not being Mars. That sort of thing.

(Reddish stars often stand in for anger or violence – Betelgeuse at Orion’s shoulder as he’s about to swing his club – and are distinctive. The original Python version of this included a B-V color index, but proved too fiddly to port into Google Sheets. You’ll have to introduce those aspects yourself, sorry.)

You also have charts showing the entire celestial sphere, stretched out to fit a rectangle, with the red dots marking the current horizon. See how that curve shifts with day and time, such that some stars are always visible, some occasionally, and some never? Wherever you are, there’s sky you can’t see; equator and poles give odd exceptions.

The second version of this chart includes a cyan or blue dotted line. (See the header image for an example.) This marks the ecliptic, the path the Sun traces across the heavens throughout the course of the year. This is the approximate area you’ll see the Moon and planets – assuming a flat disc structure like our solar system – and is the region of sky for the zodiac. Note: moons and planets not included.

If you’re looking for star signs in your campaign, one’s zodiac sign is where the Sun was at their birth. Note that the sign of the zodiac is 30°, even when none of the constellations associated with them are a nice, round, even number like that. If fudging the boundaries was good enough for the Babylonians, you may take that as license to play loose, too.

I’ve also included two sheets loaded up with a dozen snapshots of the sky throughout the year. Each is taken 90 minutes after sunset, more or less when twilight has faded, and can stand in well enough for a month-by-month survey of what’s visible. Export, print, make notes as is useful for you.

If you’re going to make the most of all this, print out a full sky on paper. Consider that the Babylonians divided the ecliptic band into a dozen constellations, and see how you feel about size. Keep in mind that this will map onto the inside of a sphere, so the top and bottom of this chart converge to a point.

Enormous constellations are unusual, but no one’s going to stop you from imagining an ourobouros forming a great circle across the entirety of the heavens. They can be tiny – Canis minor consists of two stars, both close together – or even made of disparate parts, as Serpens is bisected by Ophiuchus.

When in doubt, adjust the view in your star chart to see how things stack up.

Here’s a quick first pass at groups of stars that might make decent constellations, with the zodiac marked with Roman numerals I – XII, and a handful of other possibilities A – K. I’m not going through all of these – exercise for the reader! – but I’ll quickly point out three.

Zodiac I: Jirda, the Jumping Mouse

First rising at opposite the sunset in late summer, the bright star Aldylfhar at the tip of his long tail tells that the harvest season is not far away. Jirda and his kin grow active, hoarding seeds and grain for their winter burrows, knowing that the hot Sun is no excuse to put off preparations for winter.

Zodiac VIII: Hakiel, the Great Eagle

Rising at the beginning of the year, first appearing on the horizon around the winter solstice, Hakiel brings a promise from the gods that despite the winds and snow, humans are watched over, and that spring will come once again.

Zodiac X: The Shadow of Nyx

Following the First Cataclysm, the gods banished Nyx to her prison of eternal night. In revenge, she stole the stars once placed here, that she might have playthings in her seething solitude, and that humans would be reminded of her loss in the cold winter months. The elders say that when the Moon rises full within her shadow, she walks the world again for one night.

This post takes its title from a poem by Manny Loley, star poem. The original is untitled, and in Diné, and I doubt you’ll understand it untranslated any better than I do. Still: follow the link, read, and listen to it as intended. Every day could use a little poetry.

K Is For Kyronycht

May 22, 2026March 24, 2026 briangarthwaite2 Comments

K is for Kyronycht, whatever the hell that is. Because no one knows what one of those is, except me.

Let’s be clear: my players have had a frightening run-in with a kyronycht. They just don’t call it that.

I am of the firm belief that the campaign world should be full of strange and monstrous things, rich with weirdness and forgotten histories. In addition, I shouldn’t feel the obligation to over-explain any of it. So I structure my notes with many details for my own use, parcel them out as needed, and – here’s the thing – explain as much in plain language as possible. Information matters, and I want them to make sense of it in their own way.

They’ll remember it better, for sure. No one reliably recalls made-up fantasy names unless they accidentally sound like fart jokes.

Names are strange until they become familiar, and we have two typical paths when creating something new for our imaginary worlds. We can give them flat-out descriptive names, or we can make up something and hope it doesn’t sound like total garbage. All are fraught with potential awkwardness.

Let’s run a thought experiment with a dumb monster made up for the occasion, a frozen version of the Scottish kelpie. Those horse-themed fae spirits who drown fools.

Descriptive names can seem flat and dull. Ice-horse, maybe? How about a portmanteau, like horsesicle? Which, in addition to sounding a bit off, implies that you get the popsicle reference (not a fantasy standard) and don’t assume it’s a bicycle thing. (Also not a fantasy world object.) An equine on wheels strikes fear in no one’s heart.

I prefer to assemble something from foreign languages, occasionally corrupted, or even pieced together from two. I am not above a Greek-Latin mashup, my mother tongue being English. Recall that the hippopotamus is a “river horse,” and a cursory search suggests that págos is Greek for ice. Hippopagos, perhaps?

The next step is to scribble this alongside the stat block, in a place the players will never see it. Describe the fearsome steed that drags them beneath the frozen crust of the winter lake, its mane untamed and shimmering blue-white, the joy and cruelty in its gaze beneath the surface. They’ll call it whatever they want.

Probably an ice-horse, but at least they got there honestly. Or maybe a snowpony, if they listened to a lot of Britpop throughout the ’90s.

Describe appearance, action, evidence after the fact. Tangible, useful things. What matters most is communicating the details the players need to make a decision.

Goblin. Ghoul. Ogre. These all come with accrued meaning, which bring benefits and limits. Does some of the heavy lifting when your assumptions align. Provides friction when you’re not all on the same page. A little friction keeps players on their toes, but a significant reimagining begs for confusion. When naming them, you’re including key information efficiently.

Brunnmigi. Onkallar. Kyronycht. Unknown things, existing outside the lived experience of city folk. Danger to be studied, given a wide berth at first. The name carries no useful information with it, and everything that will be known will have to be earned.

Instead, the players refer to the kyronycht as the grizzly bat. Captures the contours pretty well.

Look, there’s no reason you need to draw up your own monsters. Every decent ruleset has a menagerie capable of running the game with whatever you might need. I have the utmost respect for those who can run entire campaigns using only the monsters and magic items in the core sources of their game. (Oddly, the tendency to go all “Imma make m’own spells!” shows up less than I’d expect. Maybe that’s because it’s more on the players?) I will happily play in a game like that.

I can’t help but lean into making up my own world, monsters and all. Part of it is because I want the right peg for a specific hole. Part is so I can always keep my players on their toes. I want them to solve problems with no prescribed answer, and see monsters as just one aspect of that.

Besides, the simple statting of Whitehack monsters – Hit Dice, Armor, Movement, Keywords – means it’s easy. Quick. You can toss together an idea at the table. Mid-session. I mean, don’t. There’s an edge case where a PC summons something powerful and puts you on the spot, but you get the idea. Why shoehorn in a bear when making a more sensible creature is barely any more effort?

So, the grizzly bat.

Kyronycht HD 8 + 2 | AC 3 | MV 25 / 40 (fly) | Flight, rending jaws, echolocation

Because this sort of world can incorporate owlbears and enormous web-shooting spiders, we can handwave away some of the finer limiting details of biology. Hence an enormous bat, as large as a bear and vicious when hungry. Which, considering that flight demands a lot of calories, means always moving, always ravenous.

Grizzlies span a range of sizes, but expect a kyronycht taller and heavier than even your beefiest Conan-wannabe. Include wings, great and sharp teeth, and a preference for nighttime hunting with echolocation. Top it off with a cunning animal intelligence, and a lifespan long enough to learn the risks of humans bearing torches and shiny metal. PCs beware, not only for themselves, but also for their horses.

Combat is going to be risky, of course. A kyronycht at night, when most of the party’s in their skivvies? Bad news, you squishy ape. But losing one’s pack animals, far from home? That’s a serious problem, and you know it’s going to avoid the campfire and the PC on watch in favor of a restrained horse.

Fortunately, these beasts are rare, effectively unknown to the civilized world, just one of many semi-fictional terrors of the wilderness. They hunt and feast in great flurries of activity, then climb into dark caverns and ruins to sleep for months. After all, who would be foolish enough to traipse about the forgotten temples of the distant jungle, poking about in the dark corners, awakening hungry beasts that hunt in the night?

For reference, the ur-kyronycht is the monstrous thing from the video for Mogwai’s “Batcat,” directed by Dominic Hailstone.

Next: L is not for Lepidopterist. But I can imagine a game with a butterfly-capture reward system, sending adventurers into dangerous lands in search of the rarest winged treasures, braving terrible dangers and fierce monsters in search of fame, renown, and some serious coin. Might as well steal every orchid out there, while you’re at it, Indiana Jones.

Worth Sharing (May ’26)

May 20, 2026 briangarthwaiteLeave a comment

Hey, I got m’self a spot on the ROOTRING by elmcat! Spread the love a little and click around if you have the time. See the links in the sidebar to the right (depending on your device) and also when you scroll all the way to the bottom. I’m making a point to click on “random” every so often just to find new things.

rootring

Prev Random Directory Next

Maus Haus: House-Rules for Elementary Schoolers at A shrike for my dreams. It’s a beast, but a rewarding beast, introducing the game to young kids. If ever there were a situation for “your mileage may vary,” this is it. My heart goes out to everyone making the effort.

Living Graveyards at Musings on Monstrousness. The undead city churning alongside the human metropolis, an uneasy existence for all involved. Messy, intentionally so, and the sort of chaos that begs for players to get involved.

Magic by Return of Post: How Mail Order Delivered the Occult at Public Domain Review. Sure, it’s an essay explaining how flimflam parted suckers from their money a century-ish ago, with excellent illustrations plucked from pamphlets and newspapers of the time. And a worthwhile read, a given from the PDR. But imagine the possibilities of mail-order magic in your campaign! For prices that seem too good to be true, questionable scrolls with uncertain effects!

Designing Pamphlet Games (With Shitty Printers in Mind) at Crow’s Corner. Tips if you’re planning on producing printable content, instead of just slapping it up on a blog, like me. As someone who dabbled in PnP board games for a time, trust me when I write that ease of printing matters so goddamn much.

Around the Blogosphere in 80 Days (Blogwagon Roundup) at Prismatic Wasteland. Man, I love maps. Loved ’em even before those years of architectural training. 50+ blog posts with so many perspectives on maps!

Magical Violence at The Foot of Blue Mountain. Free-form magic by wizards, mere utterances bringing forth anything. Which is, of course, the essence of magic. Key line: “If it doesn’t feel like cheating, it isn’t magic.”

American Name Generator at Whose Measure God Could Not Take. Phlox makes a random name generator that attempts to take into account the breadth of people we’ve got in this big-ass country! Go clicking in search of someone half-remembered from high school, and end up with an 8-year-old on your kid’s soccer team and comedian Albert Brooks.

Is the OSR evolving? at Congas.blog. There’s an old joke that if the newspaper headline is a question, the answer’s probably “no.” And I will readily admit that part of what I enjoy about flitting through lots of blogs is finding ideas I don’t necessarily agree with, but at least seem genuine and considered. In hobbies as in life, I don’t much enjoy an echo chamber. Short answer: I don’t think the OSR is evolving, but it’s reasonable to view the popularity of Mythic Bastionland as a flowering of something else that once took root in OSR ideas.

(Which, itself, is a loosely-if-at-all-defined thing. Whatever.)

Aside from being sympathetic to Gus L – post here – I am actually most struck by the notion that players wish to be heroes, with no interest in looting old graves for coin and success. Might be true, and given my experience with younger-than-me players, it’s not uncommon, but, really? I find that the wish to be heroes bleeds so easily into a wish to be superheroes, and a lot of what makes the game an actual game starts to suffer there. Admittedly, I’ve sought to thread the needle there myself, which will come up for discussion on my alphabet series (probably) on R, but my players are still money-grubbing shitbirds. All of my players are hard-working folks in real life, a bunch of us raising kids, trying for about 200+ hours a week to be good, upstanding, seemingly-intelligent and responsible adults in the real world. I don’t want to pretend to be the hero of the realm any more than I want to sit around the table and pretend to fold laundry and wash dishes.

I want difficult choices. I want to explore bad ideas I’d never approach in reality. I want to play as Harold Shand from The Long Good Friday or Tom Stall from A History of Violence. I want to deal with the mysteries that make the story of Porcupine so heartbreaking in Stalker. I want the complex feelings that come from playacting as Tony Soprano. Or the nameless ronin from Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Don’t tell me I’m a hero for riding out in polished steel armor and killing a bunch of orcs. Let me be a desperate dirtbag, willing to do unsavory and possibly terrible things to make a living. I never do anything remotely close to that in real life!

Heroes – intentional heroes – are boring and built for narrative arcs and all sorts of other bullshit. Give me uncertainty and agency and the likely chance of blood-drenched failure. If I can barely scrounge up a few hours each week to have fun playing in this hobby, let’s make ’em count.

Look: Tim B’s not wrong, not even close. Has a point, and one well worth considering (and reading!), but sometimes it’s also valuable to stand up for what was once seen as good and thoughtful practice. This isn’t necessarily cars replacing horses. We’re talking about how the best is both art and craft (not me – I slap together crap!), and simply following the popular trends makes it easy to lose sight of what else might have worth and value.

Go watch Bob Hoskins play Harold Shand, by the way. Horrendous (fictional) human. Goddamn brilliant.

What the Light Knows at Atlas Obscura. A reflection on magic.

The Imagoes at Garamondia. Ancient magic, seemingly lifted from the Fifth Branch of the Mabinogi.

52 Monsters

Explorations in TTRPG Games