Ooze Class

You are a sentient ooze formed around a cluster of gems you absorbed in your days as a more primal creature. Your form is held together by a thin membrane through which you can absorb water and sustenance. Your sentience and sense of self is new and alien to you, only recently after absorbing many gems into your body, did you find the capacity for conscious thought. You have formed your shape to more closely resemble other sentients, forming pseudopods to emulate arms and legs. You keep your “heart” in your “torso” or “head”, hiding it under robes or behind masks.

 

The Gemheart Ooze is another product of the setting my players helped make with Wasteland Without Epithet years ago. A player decided his chosen people would be oozes and detailed them as basically fantasy roombas. The real challenge came from making them a full class. We decided that sometimes an ooze would pick up gems while slithering around. Every gem in Hodas has a small amount of background magic and enough of them in one place can lead to interesting results.

 

The Gemheart is meant to fill out a role similar to a wizard in a setting where humans are greatly diminished in number. They lean hard into being creatures of magic with a lot of power behind them, letting the Goblin class fill out the more scholarly side of the wizard. Also, they tend to name themselves after objects they vaguely recall from their time as a more simple creature, such as Coins, Bottle, Pulley, or Puddle.

 

I decided to post this one this week because a Judge who's content I absolutely love asked about them. Please go check out their blog over on 19 Sided Die I feel I've done too many monsters and magic items lately, we gotta shake things up sometimes.

 

Gemheart Ooze 

Disclaimer: File has AI Generated images 

Crystalline Zeppelin of the Legendary Coronet

 Today's post is a one page dungeon. It's short, its fast, and it's real job is to fill in space and buy you, as a judge, time when you have nothing else prepared or need some time. It's written to be easy to handle in a short session and scaled based on your party's level but as written i suggest a group of level 1 characters and could lead to further questions as your party tries to make this device operational again.

 

Crystalline Zeppelin of the Legendary Coronet 

Crew of The Traitor: Session 1

 Party:

Ubo the Kobold

Bluebell the Thief

Alistair the Cleric 

Lookout the Ooze 

Session 1.

 pirate adventures started off good. Party arrives in local Tortuga equivalent, Freeport,  and is told by their captain they can all retire early if the locate and sell "the shard of radiance" 

Party is sworn to secrecy and splits off to party hard while the captain Casey takes the first mate and locates a buyer for their stolen goods. 

Alister the human makes a "friend" in the goblin "Toxic" who spends the night buying him drinks and sharing his recent story of a massacre that made him a lot of money. Alistar is sent to a brothel known as "the hairy honey" to spend the night with one of the girls in Toxic's "stable". It seems he's a business man too. Turns out stable is more literal and the woman is a minotaur. 

Ubo the kobold buys himself a garrote made with human hair, very rare and very valuable, at a low price and finds comfort among his own people. 

Lookout the ooze decides they want to be the mysterious person in the corner of the bar and sits there until thrown out for not ordering drinks. 

The next morning they are given some gold, some of the goods moved and they need to find a buyer for the black powder. It seems no one will trust it if it doesn't come from a kenku. 

The group rushed off the ship leaving Hopeless and Dishonest the goblin gunners to keep an eye on the ship. 

Alister spends the night drinking, singing, and kissing. He meets a kindred soul, a kenku who embraces his faith and as a result, gains a follower. 

Ubo takes his wealth into town looking for a whore and rejects the advances of an old crone. He narrowly avoids being turned into a pig. 

Lookout decides he will discover what sex is and quickly gets over her head gambling.  He wins a large pot, stabs a man at the table, and maybe makes some friends? 

They board the ship and thanks to the help of the new kenku, Klank, they find a buyer for the black powder. A new and easy job has surfaced, a wealthy human wants to charter them to take him to an uncharted isle. Captain Kasey puts it to a vote and the crew agrees to take the easy job.

The ship leaves, it's an uneventful week as the ship makes it's way to the City State of Oradale, dropping off some steel and making a bit of money to cover supplies for the next leg of the journey. 

Casey tells the crew to be back in 2 days, otherwise she's leaving without them. If they end up in an Oradale dungeon she'll assume they are dead. 

The crew scatters.

Ubo attempts to form a gang after encountering a kobold gang called the sharp fangs. He is pushed into the water and given a bag of rocks by the sharp fangs.

Lookout meets with another ooze and they both awkwardly pretend not to be oozes.

Alistair set up shop for a couple of days as a tattoo artist. 

The ship left again, bound for the uncharted isle and is met with a talking narwhal who asks them to investigate a shipwreck below the water. He says something he wants is in it and asks them to get it, he tells the crew there is treasure in the wreck. 

After confirming that a whale just spoke to them the party decides to help the whale and debates who is going to dive to the wreck. After talking it over, it seems Bluebell the thief is the only one with the lung capacity. She takes her crocodile, cherub, and dives for the wreck with the narwhal following at a safe distance. 

She reaches the wreck and explores the cabin, finding a weirdly boutant trunk and a closed wardrobe. She takes the trunk and opens the wardrobe. Inside is a blue skinned woman with black eyes, claws and webbed hands. Bluebell runs the fuck away and the trunk gets her to the surface easily.  

Back on the deck Bluebell explains that she saw a monster in the water and wanted to kill it. Ubo discusses with the narwhal their payment for killing the woman. Ubo bargains that he will get one of her legs. 

After some discussion the party decides to send Bluebell back down with a harpoon to kill the creature. 

Bluebell approaches and the creature instead invites her to the wardrobe. Bluebell trusts the strange creature and is dragged into the wardrobe which is closed. She begins to assume this is the end of her life when the Creature shares air with her and telepathically tells Bluebell that she's been running from the narwhal for days and needs help.

Bluebell pulls on the rope attached to the harpoon and the wardrobe is pulled up and onto the deck. When the wardrobe is opened Bluebell steps out with a hauntingly beautiful woman who speaks in a breathless tone, thanking them for saving her until Ubo asks for one of her legs. She drops the tone and is confused until Bluebell says she will give Ubo a leg later. Alistair grabs some of Hopeless' goblin bombs and hands them out among the crew who all at once throw them at the narwhal. The goblin Hopeless, excited that they are blowing things up throws his remaining satchel of bombs overboard and the combined explosion rocks the ship hard.  The only remains of the narwhal are chunks in the water and it's horn embedded in the ship. 

The woman offers to go down to the wreck and retrieve the treasure for the party. Bluebell dives in too making sure nothing fishy is happening. She is given a magic shell by the woman, one she can hold over her face to breathe under water. Bluebell watches the magic water lady leave and returns to the deck with the magic staff "Roigar's spite". Ubo insists that it's a magic kobold staff and demands 20 gold for it. He is talked into the much higher price of 10 gold and 4 back rubs. 

The party also opens the trunk to find a brilliant orange vest with sequins, the vest is magical and is, in fact, the vest of floating.

Magic item: Vexilar's Mantle

 

Vexilar’s Mantle

The mad mage Vexilar Doomhand believed he could overcome death through the art of necromantic magic and as such created the Mantle. It allowed him to live long beyond his years, serving the empire for hundreds of years while appearing as a decaying corpse. Steps were made to preserve his form for the noble court’s sake but he found this new form to be an absolute victory, granting him freedom from needing to eat, breathe, or sleep, even the daggers that found his back in court weren’t enough to kill him. Vexilar’s Mantle seemed to have given him exactly what he wanted, until he was separated from it and his body destroyed. This seemed to be the true ending of Vexilar Doomhand. His mantle was passed on to a successor who thought it to be little more than a trinket and put it on. Soon the change took him and he became much like Vexilar, undead in all but name and granted the same strengths and weaknesses. With the fall of the empire Vexilar’s mantle disappeared.

When this mantle is worn by a character they gain the following benefits:

• Damage Resistance: Half damage from non-magical slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning. Silver, mithril, or magical weapons bypass this.

• Undead Sustenance: No need to eat or drink (but cannot taste). No need to sleep (cannot sleep or gain restful recovery). Immunity to poisons.

• Corpse Decay: Body slowly rots. Steps to preserve it (embalming, mummification, organ replacement, etc.) prevent decline. Each month without preservation causes -1 Personality (cannot be recovered normally).

• False Death: If “killed,” the wearer automatically succeeds at any “roll the body over” checks, feigning death convincingly.

• Death Rest: Cannot heal through normal rest or magic unless the healing source is tied to an undead deity. The wearer may enter a Death Rest, healing 1 HD per turn. They are helpless during this time and cannot awaken early.

Secret property: Vexilar Lives!

The Mantle’s magic preserves more than its wearer’s body, it holds the will and cunning of Vexilar Doomhand himself.

When the wearer is in danger, they occasionally feel an unfamiliar urge. a thought they instinctively know is not their own. These urges are always self-preserving: a suggestion to move, hide, or act in a way that keeps them alive.

If the wearer follows these urges:

• Over time, the instinct becomes a raspy, echoing voice offering genuinely helpful advice.

• Continued trust in the voice grants small boons: +1 to certain checks, rerolls on failed saves, or hints toward survival.

• Vexilar never speaks unless offering something valuable, and “fades” immediately if pressed for details about himself.

Eventually, Vexilar offers to “help” directly:

“Let me take over. Just for a moment. I can get us out of this.”

If the wearer agrees, they cede control of their body to Vexilar.

• Regaining control requires an Ego check against Vexilar.

• Vexilar knows the wearer intimately and can mimic their mannerisms and speech well enough to fool nearly anyone.

• Failure means Vexilar remains in control until he decides to relinquish it, or perhaps never.

Magic Staff: The Alder Circle

 This Week's Tuesday post is another wizard's staff that is ready for you to drop into your game at any moment. similar to other posts like this one this isn't a wizard staff like the spell would create but more a personalized focus for a single wizard that might even influence your table's wizard to change how they describe their spells. 

The basic appearance and elements of this staff were rolled randomly using D10 Dimensions Magic Staff Description Generator. I highly recommend this short and fairly priced table to help bring wizard staffs to life!

 

The Alder Circle:

Centuries ago, in the marsh-bordering hamlets of the western isles, a small order of hedge mages was born under the sign of the Alder tree. These mages, styling themselves The Alder Circle, prized community, protection, and the quiet strength of their chosen symbol. Together they labored to create a staff for their leader: not just a tool of magic, but a shield for allies, and a badge of office for their order.

They carved it from alder wood, famed in their homeland for turning rust-red when weathered by the air, a color they took as a mark of defiance and warding. Its core, however, was an unwholesome choice: elf blood, taken from unwilling captives, bound in place with conjuration runes etched on silk ribbons, The same ribbons used to bind this staff. These runes shimmer faintly in battle, whispering in an unknown tongue when magic is cast.

For centuries, the staff passed from master to master of the Circle, its origins slowly forgotten. But elves do not forget. When retribution came, it was swift and merciless. None of the Circle survived, and the staff vanished into the spoils of war,  waiting for the day it might be found again.

If the wielder is of elf blood (full or partial), they suffer a -1 penalty to all rolls while holding the staff. The object hums with quiet malice in their hands. Elves who see it may react with hostility, disbelief, or grief depending on their knowledge of the Alder Circle’s crimes as they feel the blood of their kin soaked into the wood.

• Alder’s Protection: Grants the wielder +2 AC at all times.

• Elf-Blood Core: Wielder gains +2 to attack rolls and spell checks for harmful spells against elves. (Elves who detect magic on the staff immediately sense this property.)

• Rune-Covered Ribbons (Conjuration): When striking in melee, once per combat the wielder may blink to the opposite side of a target they’ve hit. This does not provoke free attacks.

• Lightning-Scarred: Grants +2 to saving throws against electrical effects (or +2 AC against purely electrical attacks).

• Length & Symbolism  “The Circle Stands Together”: Allies adjacent to the wielder gain +1 AC and +1 to attack rolls while remaining adjacent.

• Ever-Warm: Maintains body temperature regardless of climate.

 

The Black Emperor: Epilogue

 

Epilogue:

With the emperor slain the party gathers their allies and surviving enemy leadership in the keep, deciding now is the time to discuss the future of the country. 

They bring the following NPCs to the table to speak:

• Yolanna & Greycloak to represent the forest folk

• Cormac to represent Clan Buryn

• Pluto & Commander Gunt to represent the mayors of the empire

• Yum-Yuck to represent the Blackback gang

• Jupiter & Lugh to give an independent view

• Jagh-Deesh to represent the old empire

The party guides a discussion among the committee, re-affirming their promises and trying to instill a new government. The party first talks Yum-Yuck down from trying to become the emperor. They suggest Cormac become the new emperor as he has proven to be an honorable man. Cormac declares that his clan will continue to serve, no longer serving the emperor but the empire itself, its people and what the empire represents.

Yolanna takes this time to declare the forest folk and druids to be independent. The affirms that they will assist the empire as they always have but the forest will belong to them and they will not be a part of the empire’s wars and conflicts other than in its own defense. This is generally accepted by the party and the assembled committee.

The party suggests Jagh-Deesh take the role of emperor, at very least as penance for his time serving under the emperor. After discussing minotaur honor Jagh-Deesh agrees to take stewardship of the throne, if a better candidate is selected by council later, he will step down. 

Lugh declares that his reason for being here on the Black isle is concluded and that he will be moving on, there are other people all over the world who need a champion to fight on their behalf. The party, with some sadness tells their friend they will celebrate him before he goes. 

The newly selected steward to the throne, Jagh-Deesh, offers the party rewards and duties within the new empire.

• Homlet: the ooze is offered a position as the court wizard of the steward. He takes the offer, his withered and weakened form not made for the dangers of adventures any longer.

• Prodigious: the goblin requests the land around the murder machine facilities and wishes to study the process and facilities. He is given this land which is more or less orc mountain lands anyways, he takes both Stonesinger and Determined with him as additional security and to ensure he never takes it too far.

• Acastus the fury & Jacob Ironsides the constructed, are sent out of the empire as official diplomats.

• Cindergrip and Bronzefist the goliaths form a special team whose responsibility is to keep orc populations in the mountains in check.

• Atreyu is appointed into Jagh-Deesh’s old position, the general of his armies.

• Ilanth is asked to build a church to her faith in the capital. The Star in the Darkness will become the official faith of the empire, used to unify the empire

• Colossal the goblin simply wishes for access to the capital libraries to help her complete her books, she expresses no interest in politics

• Sunai requests to become the imperial stablemaster and is appointed as such

The Echo Servant

     This week we have a monster courtesy of the Monster Extractor IV! As always I cannot endorse this enough! It is such a wonderful play aid to quickly get something you can shape into your monster.

     Today's monster is the Echo Servant. formerly household servants in an empire that once covered much of the world and lived in absolute decadence. Now, the Echo Servant is freed from it's masters and yet still trying to fill it's programming. 

 

The Echo Servant 

The Wyrdcoil

 

Wyrdcoil

+2 Lawful Reinforced Mithril Wheelock Rifle (axe head)

9 int, communicates with speech

Made to protect the weak, punish evildoers, and slay the demon Yllorrg

Bane of wizards (Berserker rage)

Bane of Demons (+1 attack & damage)

Reinforced: +1 to damage

Mithril: fumbles at -2

Special powers:

• Detect invisible 1/day

• Eviscerator (when Wyrdcoil deals damage, if the highest number possible on the die comes up, roll an additional damage die. If this die also comes up the highest number, add another, and so on)

• Thundering (fired into air or ground, deals 2d8 in 80’ radius to enemies, no save)

• Throwing (can be thrown 20’ as part of an attack and always returns to the owner’s hand, even if not part of an attack)

Omen: Divine Shelter, When it rains or snows, neither the weapon nor its bearer gets wet. Rain turns aside, snow melts before it lands. Even in storms, their clothes remain dry and clean.

The Wyrdcoil was created in a desperate moment by Featherfolk Gunsmiths when the legions of a powerful demon, “Yllorrg, the Hunger Below”, swarmed their small island home. They poured all their knowledge and secrets into this weapon, even gaining a donation of the rare mineral “Mithril” from the elves who had a vested interest in the defeat of Yllorrg. The Featherfolk didn’t fully understand how to work the metal and so they used more than needed to reinforce it, falsely believing that it was a brittle metal.

Wyrdcoil was used to successfully hunt down and slay the wizards responsible for inviting evil into our plane and eventually was brought to bear against Yllorrg himself. Unfortunately the first bearer of the weapon was slain, his body withering away at the demon’s final curse. His strong connection to the weapon was the final piece of the puzzle that made this powerful weapon into a legend, his soul became bound to it, ensuring that its power would be used to continue to hunt down demons, those who consort with them, and protect those who would be the victims of these monsters.

With Yllorrg banished to the abyss, Wyrdcoil was enshrined in a Featherfolk House of Law. Eventually as the Old empire of man rose this House of Law was pillaged and burned, the weapon passing into a human noble’s treasury. Quietly Wrydcoil waited until a suitable bearer entered the treasury and called on them to take up arms. The soul of the weapon believed that the gods this human empire served were just demons in disguise and was used to fight against this rising empire until finally it fell out of history.

Wrydcoil is able to communicate with speech but will not speak to just anyone and will resist attempts to use it that are contrary to its nature. In order to fully awake the weapon the bearer must suffer something truly good being lost, giving up their most precious memory in order to understand the loss it hopes to prevent. Once this is done the weapon functions at its full power. Until then it is only a +1, and has half of its special powers (determined at random), only one of its banes (determined at random), and will only communicate with the bearer when no one else is around to hear it.

The Falsemate

 This weeks Tuesday post is another monster entry being added to our growing bestiary, hopefully to be published some day.

The Falsemate is something of an alien creature that slips in among bandits, brigands, pirates, raiders, and highwaymen and pretends to be one of them until it finds something interesting to add to it's horde. It's presence in your games means that those bandits who accost the party might have one of these horrors walking among them and not even know it. 

 

The Falsemate 

Wasteland Without Epithet

 

 Come check out my first ever Published work!

Wasteland Without Epithet is a system-agnostic method to generating a setting (along with player races!) your players will adventure in. It will be weird, magical, and unique. I've made this with fantasy settings in mind, but it can also make excellent sci-fi or modern worlds as well! All you need is a group of players that don't know what you're up to, and some time to sit down together. 

Enjoy the activity, along with the cool art in this book! 

 

Come take a look!

The Black Emperor vol 15

 

Session 15:

The time has come, the party gathers its forces in the druid’s forest and marches on the capital. Their army consists of druids, villagers, pine knights, fae, regular soldiers, and even Lugh’s men, a formidable force. When the army arrives they find that the capitol has been buttoned up, prepared for the siege but having left the people of the slums to fend for themselves. 

Colossal spies an opportunity and heads into the slums. She seeks out the gang she was accidentally inducted into, the Black Back tribe. After some negotiations she convinces them to assist in getting a strike team into the city. Their price is that they get full plunder of the city’s major guard post. Colossal agrees and returns to the army which has already begun construction of siege weapons.

A party rides out from the capital under a white flag of truce. This party consists of Jagh-Deesh, Cormac, and the emperor’s hand. The party is asked to disband its unlawful rebellion. Atreyu states that the rebellion is lawful and declares that the emperor has forsaken his people. Cormac states that Atreyu’s honor is above reproach and he will hear out his case, asking them to collect seven peasants to speak before them. The party presents a slew of peasants along with the fury, Pluto. Most of the peasants are dismissed by the hand, their responses and stories are not backed by law. Pluto, it seems, came prepared. He makes declarations and with the two Kenku of his party he quotes the exact letters of the law that are violated by the emperor. The end result of this is that Cormac declares his clan must begin an investigation through the empire, as a result his clan cannot assist in any conflict the empire finds itself in for at least a month while his clan rides out and surveys the villages. In frustration the hand of the emperor rides back into the capital. With the official gone Jagh-Deesh and Cormac relax. Jagh-Deesh informs the party that without the support of the Buryn clan, the walls wont have enough defenders to adequately cover every inch. He further advises that they may be able to take the wall with little more than ladders. Jagh-Deesh laments that the emperor may have lost his way but in his own way he has brought peace to the rest of the world who remains in a stalemate, fearing the black army. After some pleasantries they part and return to their respective camps.

That night the party discusses their plans for the assault and while arguing they realize they have the powerful magical shovel, The Dirt Devil, and could simply undermine the walls or dig into the sewers. They agree that the best course of action is to use the dirt devil to get the army into the sewers while the knights distract the troops on the walls. Then, using the black back tribe’s advice, they position the army around the city. A separate team consisting of Illanth, Atreyu, and Homlet is set to attack the keep itself, making an attempt on the emperor. 

The assault on the capitol is better than expected, the walls quickly surrender and the troops lay siege to the keep, lead by Lugh and the rest of the party. This draws the emperor’s house guard to the keep’s walls and out of the party’s way for the most part. Ilanth draws on her divine senses and leads the party through the keep, avoiding all remaining guards and possible threats.

The trio enter the throne room and are confronted by the emperor himself. He laughs and explains that he has waited a long time for this. He explains that he has been alive as long as his empire has stood, and he cannot die until the empire does. He has spend ages trying to make himself the enemy of the free world to no avail. So he turned against his own people, trying to spark a rebellion all this time. He comes at the party with all his strength, crossing blades with Atreyu. Homlet, in a moment of brilliance draws another magical nova out of himself, casting a powerful spell to make everyone in the capital believe that the empire is broken and that the emperor has betrayed his people, filling the need for the empire to die before the black emperor can. The emperor disarmed Atreyu and used a magical blast to strike down Homlet. Ilanth picks up Homlet, healing him and protecting him against further attacks. Atreyu takes up the Beryn clan shield and his sword, using them to fend off the emperor while Homlet reaches deep and draws on another magical nova, shielding his allies and leaving his body withered and weak, a moment away from death. Even with the protections it seems the party is only evenly matched with the emperor. Ilanth draws on the mightiest powers of her god and paralyzes the emperor. After some deliberation the party realizes they cannot let this man live, he will only find away to be a threat later, so they finally put down the mad emperor.