Spell: Animate Lump

Art by Lex Cazimi

     Recently I have found myself feeling the need to try my hand at writing spells, something that I find a little intimidating because it can get rather long and coming up with an escalation at each jump always feels a little overwhelming to me. Recently Nick, from Breaker Press Games made a video where he made a spell for DCC using Knave 2E's system of naming a spell and then worked from there. This video really got me in the mood to give making spells a shot. Doing what he did in that video is definitely in the cards for us but today we have a spell that I've been thinking about for a while.

    So this is how we get Animate Lump, the 1st level wizard spell. This was made after I read over the spell Breathe Life in the core rulebook. I like the idea of a wizard animating things. What I didn't care for with that spell was that it was both not swingy enough and didn't offer enough control. That seems like it might contradictory and it is! What I mean is that when this spell is cast, the most pathetic of your options are temporary. As it is written, this is fine, because the spell doesn't have a cost component unless you get to the really high end. On it's higher end this spell allows the creation of golems and other animated guardians at a steep price with a great amount of control over what comes out the other side. 

I think there is room for two options to expand the ability to create constructs.

The first is linked below, Animate Lump. This allows a wizard to create a permanent servant that, for the most part, isn't better than having a hireling but does allow a creative mage with gold to burn to create a useful and potentially interesting tool for dungeon exploration or small conveniences such as a torch bearer that can and will advance down a trapped hallway without a second though. The trade off is that it's costly. the circle costs 100gp in materials, the golem costs another 50gp. It takes one day and one point of spell burn. this is a steep cost at lower levels and allows the wizard to experiment during down time at higher levels when money is a little more available. 

 The second... I think the creation of golems under Breathe Life offers too much control. Magic is supposed to be unpredictable and dangerous. I think that the creation of a golem should work similar to sword magic. There should be dice rolls, there should be powers that you never expected to be added to the golem. There should be strange things that you couldn't foresee that are a part of the golem's creation. I think, when I am more familiar with writing spells, I'll write myself a higher level spell that emulates the nature of sword magic in the creation of a golem or animated construct. 

 

Here is Animate Lump, I hope you get some mileage out of it!
Animate Lump

Blog D100: Where do the undead come from?

     Another post this week inspired by d4 Caltrops: d100 subject list. This week we're talking about the undead in Hodas

 

Rolled: 23 - How are Skeletons Made? Ghouls? Why haven't Wraiths/Vampires taken over?

 In Hodas, undead in the form of spirits are shockingly common. Common enough that you'll see them in any location with a large enough population. They simply continue their lives as though they never died. In fact it's common enough that Hodas has special rules when you fail to roll the body over, allowing for a character to escape death in the form of a new class, the spirit. Eventually these spirits fade, usually 1 year after their death for each HD or level they have. This gives them time to give their loved ones time to get closure and to tend to their final affairs. 

 

What if they don't let go?

This is when things get messy, it's how we get things like vengeful spirits. Those who hold on past their time  start to twist, their minds break down and they take on a unique nature, no two vengeful wraiths are the same. These can be a threat that requires adventurers to come deal with, potentially the adventurers might even need to put down the spirit of an old friend who refused to let go.

 

Source: Gordy Higgins

Skeletons, Zombies, and Ghouls?

These are simpler. 

Skeletons rise from places where sources of dark magic touch the dead, including use of spells that specifically create the undead such as animate dead or Breathe un-life. 

Zombies are the result of a magical disease, an imperfect form of vampire's curse. Those who are killed by the bite of a weaker vampire do not simply die or get to come back as a servant, they return as a zombie. Through their own bite, they spread their curse. 

Ghouls, I'll be honest, haven't come up in Hodas yet. They are a classic staple of fantasy but with skeletons and zombies I feel like I have a good foundation of the weaker undead and following examples in the DCC rulebook, I really like my undead to be unique if they are anything more than rank and file skeletons or zombies. So, do ghouls have a home in Hodas? Probably not. Will this always be true? Probably not. That all depends on the players, maybe one of them will create a ghoul intentionally or otherwise. At the end of the day Hodas always has been and always will be shaped by the players, ever since the very first game of Wasteland Without Epithet was run.

 

 

What about Vampires?

Part of the question above is "why haven't vampires just taken over?". It's part a numbers thing and part a paranoia thing. An individual vampire can be very powerful. In fact, I roll up my vampires on Graves & Groves vampire tables. Some of these are powerful enough to rival even dragons. The issue is that a vampire's greatest enemy is other vampires. Their motivations and drives are so varied, it's much more likely that a vampire who encounters another will choose to fight instead of speak. Vampires survive through secrecy and being clever, even if they are powerful. In the past they had the human empire to hide from, with it's extremely powerful divine powers and knowledgeable lore masters who could spot a vampire or it's signs quickly. Before that, it was the dragons and their absolute power. Now? Now there might be a few vampires who are starting to see a world with significantly less knowledge and divine might. They are starting to realize they can stretch their legs just a little, and that is leading to problems for adventurers.

 

Other Undead!

Just like the rule book talks about, the undead of Hodas are mostly unique creatures from one another. This means we lean a little hard on the table in the rule book or something like Monster Extractor II to create truly unique undead. Things like The Reconciliant are made and used probably once every 3-4 campaigns to keep them mysterious.

 

 

The Dagger Dropped by Harry Clarke

 

 I wanna sign off on this by saying that making undead mysterious has had a huge impact on the games. Players don't get cocky around even weak looking undead, they approach with caution, they never really know what they are getting into. Even before I got my hands on the monster extractor, just following the advice in DCCRPG I found that it really got my players thinking and acting more carefully. If you take nothing else away from this post, take it as an absolute endorsement of the suggestion to keep monsters strange and unknowable. If you're interested in seeing another take on the same table, check out 19 Sided Die! Buster has made a couple of posts based on the same d100 table from d4 caltrops, please check out his posts, he has some really interesting articles up!

The Eternal Champion and The Games

 

This week I wanted to share a peek behind the screen of the games I run. I wanted to talk about the media that has been extremely influential in how I run games. This post will be about how I see the players as a multiversal constant. If you’re Familiar with Michael Moorcock’s work then you already know from the title what this is going to be about. If you aren’t then here’s the skinny. 

The Eternal Champion:

Elric of Melnibone, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum Jhselen Irsei, Erekose. These are only some of the incarnations of the eternal champion. They are the same person, but they aren’t. Sometimes they are aware of this, sometimes they are not. They have met each other, they have fought at each other’s sides, and even crossed swords on occasion. The Author Michael Moorcock has created a massive multiverse of heroes spanning more than a few genres. The eternal champion fights for law or chaos always serving balance, even if they don’t know it. Each of these heroes, or anti-heroes, or villains, depending on how you look at it, are connected to each other through an unbroken chain of reincarnation across the multiverse. 

I am not at all doing this justice but I strongly recommend Moorcock’s books. My introduction to his writing was Corum and I think it’s a good place to jump in. His books are influential enough in DCC to have a spell named after the concept of the eternal champion.

What does this mean for games?

This starts with a question. What is something that every single character you have ever played has in common?

Most people will answer that question with some trait they give their characters or something along those lines. They may be right but it is highly unlikely, if you play long enough you’ll eventually play someone who doesn’t have that quality. And this question applies to more than just the games I run. What does your character from Exalted at another table have in common with your star wars clone trooper veteran? What about your Legend of 5 rings ninja? How about your pathfinder warrior? Now, I’ll admit that there are people out there that try to play literally the same character in every game they get into, no matter the system or genre. Ironically those people play into this even harder than those who don’t.

The real answer is that every single one of those characters has been played by you.

You are the thread that ties these characters from different worlds, times, places, and even games & tables together. Each of them is a piece of you. You might play a character who is nothing like you, but it’s still you playing that character, even if they aren’t like you. Every character you’ve played is secretly the same hero. 

How do I use that?

In the games I run, This means something. It’s not a literal one to one recreation of the eternal champion of Moorcock’s books, his books are telling a story with a planned ending, so we take some liberties for games. You are the eternal champion. Each of your characters is a piece of you, a shard that you cast into a setting. That shard fights for one side of the eternal conflict, bringing balance, even if you don’t realize it. 

It doesn’t come up often but when it does, its important. Players have gotten themselves into situations where they end up in the wrong universe, a character from a Heroes Unlimited game might end up in the world that runs on the rules of Pathfinder. Sometimes you see a glimpse of the multiverse you aren’t supposed to. This was how a lesser villain of a prior campaign summoned his monstrous reflections, through a shard of a mirror meant to glimpse the multiverse. That mirror, when it was whole, was a portal what was shattered by a character some 20 years ago in another game, scattering the pieces of the mirror to the multiverse and breaking his character into slivers of himself.

This is how it plays out, magic and technology get a little weird, things break, people end up in the wrong places. I don’t create a new setting for every game, so naturally shards of your eternal champion can exist in the same position and meet each other. To this day no one has ever asked about the-four-who-are-one or what happens if they gather enough shards in one place. Most of my players have never and will never pick up a Moorcock book. That is okay. They don’t need to in order to interact with that part of the games. 

This works in my games for three reasons: 

First, because I’ve connected all my settings. Games that run on different rules simply use their own rules when in a non-native setting. Conflicts defer to the visitor’s rules. It keeps things simple in what could get out of hand very quickly. 

Second, because I’ve run the same handful of settings consistently for decades. Things that happened in the superhero game 10 years ago are still being felt by players now. This long history means that they can recognize these patterns and threads across games. Their warrior from DCC lands in the streets of NY and looks around, they have no idea what is going on but the player sees a poster for the 457th jack dagger movie and hears the name “Ultimate Stealth” on a nearby TV and they instantly know, out of game, what happened. 

Third, I’ve spent decades using the same system for a dozen different Genres, palladium. Yes, I also ran non-palladium games. heck this is a DCC blog. What palladium offered was a system that could do a lot of things without being GURPS. No shade for GURPS but it is just not for me. With Palladium I could run superheroes, space opera, mecha, TMNT, a game based on kung fu movies, horror mystery, Spy games, basically anything. So with this multiverse using mostly the same system it kept things tidy. Given that Palladium was built on the back of a d20 system and also somehow a d100 system it blobbed up against other games with shocking smoothness. In recent years I’ve transitioned away from Palladium, I use DCC for everything now. My kung fu game uses Kung Fu Classics. My superhero game is Evolved: Justice Edition, you get the idea. So i’m cheating a little bit by having my games mostly use the same system it allows seamless blending with only a few hiccups… but there are still other systems that are connected, and I am always ready for those to interact.

As a small bonus to all this I like to change things that interact with the multiverse, like the Eternal Champion spell, it no longer just pulls a generic guy out to fight, it pulls one of your other characters from somewhere else in the games, potentially even a game I didn’t run, to fight for you. Sometimes I’ll have something show that it’s operating at a whole different level by directly addressing the player, in the same way that Vivec of elder scrolls addresses the player, not the character you play, using a phrase that basically means “you who is controlling this incarnation”. 

The Meta-nature of games

This brings me to possibly my favorite part of this idea. How games are all connected to each other, through the players. You and I might never play together, we might never even have players who play with each other, but through the games, slowly, branching out into other people’s games, our games are connected to each other. In the same way you know almost everyone through 6 degrees of separation or less, you’ve likely been connected through this web of eternal champions and shards longer than you realize. I think that's wonderful. My player Steve has played in in a game I’ve run. Steve has also played at another Judge’s table, putting his characters into that Judge’s games. Creating a connection. That Judge might have their own player who plays in the Third Judge’s games. That player, the eternal champion in my interpretation, has played with Steve and is now connecting those three tables. Adventure League for 5e was something that, to me, really leaned into this without realizing it.

Sometimes this takes on a more direct appearance. This post is getting a little long but I really want to share these two stories so I’ll keep them short.

I have a friend who I have never played games with, I’ve never run a game with him in it, I’ve never been in a game with him, nor has he run a game I played. We orbit the same spheres of players. This friend heard about something in my games, called “the house” which players had been using as a dumping ground for problems they didn’t want to fix the hard way for decades. When I ran this game, The House, I would allow my players to pick any character they wanted from any game I ran or use a character from any other game they had played, the only rule was that they had to have played the character at least once. This lead to all kinds of interesting things coming into this supernatural place, a pokemon trainer, some superheroes, a spartan from halo, at least one clone trooper, a bard from the witcher. So my friend learned that the house was a makeshift prison in the games, created by lazy and cowardly players. He approached me and asked me if I would let him take something out of his own games and put it into the house. I shrugged and said sure, why not let him write something for the games? But what he meant was “Toast, i have no way to contain this thing in my setting. Can I put it into yours for safe keeping?” This was the first and only time someone asked this and it was wonderful. It meant our games, though never really connected, now had a very real connection to each other.

The second story is also about The House, which is really where the multiversal fabric of the games gets thinnest. A player brought in a delta green character. His character died in the house. Now, within my setting i warn players, if you bring in one of your characters to the house and they die in there, they are erased from the multiverse. Obviously this only applies to games I run, I can’t kill a character in someone else’s game. But this player nodded when is character died and got back to me something like a month later. He told me that this character had been erased from that delta green game. He approached his GM for that game and asked if he could have his character erased because of what happened in the game I ran. I thought this was pretty cool, because it created a very real connection between the games I run and another GM’s games, even though neither of us knew each other.

This was a long one that turned more into a tangent but I just really love the concepts of a multiverse and interconnected continuities in games. I think it’s possibly my favorite part of games, to see the connection we all share and might not even realize. I love when things get meta, I love when your characters meet each other. I love when something that happened in an unrelated game influences even a small decision in another game. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you got something here to think about and maybe take home to your own game.

Judge Toast House Rules Vol1

     I wanted to talk a bit about house rules this week. Things I've picked up from other games or tables and integrated into my own game. This was spurred by someone asking for a document of my house rules to see what i do differently. I figured I could share the list in sections and talk a bit about why I use those rules. For this post I'm gonna cover about half of my general house rules, future installments will cover the rest of this section and rules that are more relevant to specific classes. 

 

General Rules:

Lore: as described in this post.

 

Not gonna go too much into this one as it's in the middle of a re-write. The reason I have a rule for this at all is because I like magic items to be mysterious. Characters shouldn't pick up a sword and instantly know the name and powers of it. They should have to use it or study it, questing for information. Lore gives threads for characters to pull on to learn the specifics of a magic item they find, an avenue to quest for it.

 

 

 

Destiny changed: Upon reaching 1st level a character may choose to re-roll their birth auger on a different table, they must accept the new results

 

With this one I don't show the players the alternative table, I tell them that I'm not going to use the standard one in the book and that they must accept the results of the new table. This is a good chance for someone who has something that they won't really feel is relevant to them to have a second shot at their birth auger. This could represent a lot of things, usually I say this represents the character breaking from the mould and destiny of their old life as a turnip farmer to become an adventurer. If their stars don't change? well then it's clear this was always their destiny.

 

 

 

All babies are born lucky: All players have at least a +1 to their birth auger even if they would otherwise have a penalty. 

 

This is NOT an original from myself, I know I took it from someone but I couldn't tell you it's origin. I liked this because it mitigates situations where a guy who would otherwise make a decent warrior and nothing else suffers because he's got a -3 to hit or damage. 

 

 

 

Forged by fire: At each level, other than first level, players roll 3d6 and find the total. Any ability score they have that is below this total may be increased by +1.

 

DCC doesn't have built in stat increases, some people say Quest for it, other say it should be a part of the rewards for adventure. I actually agree with both of those but also think there is room for this.  This represents, just as levels do, a growth over time. These are people who are facing challenges day in and day out, it makes sense to me that they would have growth in unexpected ways.

 

 

 

God Calls: When a character is at death's door, usually hitting zero hit points or undertaking a task that will certainly kill them, they may reach out to any god they worship. This is similar to divine intervention but can only be used in this moment of death and is rolled on a d%. Characters have a base 1% per level, Clerics gain 5% per level, and paladins 10% per level. Players may write out their character's prayer or offer magical items to boost their roll. Things that modify this include if what you're asking for or attempting are within your god's portfolio, if the sacrifice is selfless, if the character has been shown to be devout, or if the prayer is relevant to the god.

 

This one is a bit of a relic from my days playing 2e. I adopted this from a DM I used to play under. It's been in every game I've run for decades now and it sees way more mileage in fantasy games than modern ones due to the prevalence of the gods. I think it really adds something and makes everyone rethink if their character has a relationship with a deity. suddenly the thief might actually think about if there is a god appropriate for their character to worship. A warrior might find a deity that resonates with them and actually carry out work for the faith.

EXP and encounters: Everything that uses up resources or presents challenge is an encounter. This one is covered pretty well under this post. I won't cover this one too much.

 

 

 

This is the first half of my general house rules, I don't expect anyone to take this as the word of law, it's just how I do things at my table. These rules won't work for every table and certainly wont fit well with the groups who lean more into sticking to the book as written, and to be clear I think this is a perfectly valid way to play the game. Everyone does things differently and I really feel like just how diverse tables are really says how good DCC is as a game.

Monster: The Pulsecrawler

     In Hodas, deep underground deeper than where the deepest mines of man reach, is a place where even the dwarves refuse to settle. The Wurmways stretch or across the entire world in a confusing and ever changing network of tunnels and grottos, created by massive burrowing wurms. Kobold nomads walk these passageways and know their dangers and local fauna. One such creature they encounter in these passages is the Pulsecrawler. To them, it is something to be avoided, the tunnels it leaves behind are false paths and if you respect it, it will leave you alone. Harass it at your own peril.  

The Pulsecrawler

Shields in DCC

 

Shields in DCC are covered under simple rules, you do or don’t have a shield, it grants +1 to AC and a -1 check penalty. This is simple, this is elegant, this is good. There is nothing wrong with it and I think that for an overwhelming majority of games this is more than sufficient.

But...

We have so many other things about there for shields. A great many tables i’ve played at considered the rules from Crawl! #2 to be cannon and very important to the table, specifically the rule for Shattered shields and the expanded shields list. Its a great rule that adds something important and dramatic to the game. The shield list is fun, it gives us some fun new options. Without any additional prompting, the buckler is just strictly better than the normal shield because you can use it with a weapon in hand or with a ranged weapon but it costs 10gp more. 

I’ve played with a Judge who did something I really liked, he had some special rule for a volley of arrows with basically “get behind cover” and the guy with the normal shield was able to make himself small behind it but the guy with the buckler had to dive under a wagon. Mechanically, there is nothing there in the rules to support that. The Judge just made a call knowing a thing or two about the actual size of these shields and vaguely recalled old D&D 2e rules that talked about shield sizes and % chance for blocking ranged attacks, but he made a good “rulings, not rules” moment out of it I really liked this. It got absorbed into my games.

This really got me thinking, could homebrew for other types of shields be covered? Why not? Would it just make things needlessly complex? We have a brief line in the dwarf section about spikes or rounded edges on shields to deal more damage with a shield bash, so I kinda take that to be more or less covered. This is the big Strength of DCC, flavor it yourself. In it’s magic, in it’s classes, even in it’s equipment, flavor it yourself. I love this part of the game. Sometimes your warrior is a proper nobleman who is the typical chivalrous knight, sometimes they are a barbarian warlord, its just flavor you’re handling yourself without some mechanic getting in the way. So what could we do with shields to make them more nuanced? That's what I want to do here, list some alternatives to the standard round shield offering suggestions but not strict mechanics for them. So with no further rambling, here are some alternative options for shields.

Hungarian Targe:

This is essentially a buckler that runs the length of the forearm and then some, ending with a spike past the fist. This works by enhancing the natural shape of the arm and allows for use of a bow or second weapon, just like the buckler from crawl, while also being it’s own option for a two weapon fighting combination, should you choose to fight like that. It can be used with a two-handed weapon while still granting it’s AC bonus but isn’t going to be doing the user any favors against ranged attacks, not granting it’s AC bonus against ranged attacks.

Cost: 20gp, Bonus: +1, Check penalty -1

From: Wulflund

 

Leather or Rawhide:

This type of shield might seem like a bad idea on the surface, a steel weapon might punch right through it, right? Not always true. There are plenty of examples of these being used historically and in reality, you aren’t trying to go through your opponent’s shield but around it. Even a shield made of what could be perceived as lesser materials still serves it’s purpose. There are a lot of factors in this, such as the animal the hide came from, the methods used to make it into a shield, if it’s stuffed with anything and what with. We also have historical accounts of some of these leather shields stopping early black powder weapons. The other small advantage was that, if someone did get through your shield, their weapon is very likely now stuck and leaves them open to an attack. 

When used as part of a deed to disarm the user may choose to forgo their shield bonus in order to grant a +1 to their deed die. This shield cannot be used to block fire attacks, using it as part of your AC against flaming attacks will render the shield damaged beyond usability.

Cost: 40 gp, Bonus +1, check penalty +0

Medicine Shield via PittRivers Museum 

Nguni shield:

Another form of hide shield, these are lightweight and serve well to stop arrows and spears. They are tall and made with no armor in mind and are made to provide cover to a full body. Given the inspiration for these you might question how this could ever be useful against the kind of weapons present in DCC but I ask my readers to suspend disbelief for a world in which magic and the supernatural exist. This shield is often accompanied by a spike on one end of the staff used to support it. They work best in formations and are often painted in colors and patterns to designate the unit, company, or rank. 

This shield is best in the hands of someone unarmored using just this shield. But an armored user may still use this shield with diminished results. It is too large to be used on horseback.

Cost: 40gp, Bonus +2 (armored)/ +4 (unarmored), Check penalty -4 (armored) -0 (unarmored)

Nguni Shield via Internet Archive

 

Pavise (Archer’s Shield):

This is less of a shield and more of a personal deploy-able fortification. This is a large, usually wooden, shield that is planted in the ground and braced, providing cover to archers and crossbowmen to fire over and around. These cannot be used in an arm or in melee, it’s bonus only applies against ranged attacks from the direction it’s facing, for this reason they aren’t seen often outside of battles but use cases can be made for them for adventurers. In settings with black powder weapons we might see versions of this where there is an opening for sliding the weapon through without ever stepping out from behind the shield and some kind of metal plate with holes punched to allow sighting the shot.

Cost: 20gp, Bonus +6, check penalty: N/A

 

Pavis shield User:Julo - Ugo Pozzati, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link 

Shield Sconce:

This isn’t a shield but a torch sconce with straps on it to allow for shields to hold a torch. This is a specialist tool that should be hard to come by due to it’s niche use among adventurers. When this is strapped to a shield a character may plug their torch into the sconce and have a torch and shield in the same hand. The drawback is that if the shield is used in defense while the torch is attached, the torch will go out. 

Cost: 25gp

These few options by no means commit to the list of possible shields, of which history has thousands. Do all of them need to be accounted for? No, the rules of DCC covered shields well enough in my opinion. Did the shields I listed need to be accounted for? Also no, I’m just a guy posting about things he’s done at his table to shake things up a little bit. The DCC rules cover most shields well enough, just the occasional oddity is just fun to think about. You want a targe? Get a buckler and give it a spike. Covered under the DCC and Crawl rules cleanly. You want a kite shield? Standard shield. You want a round wooden shield, standard shield. You want the roman legionary shield? Tower shield. It can be as simple as you want it to be and should only ever be as complex as you want. 

Proxy Conflict Generator

     A short while ago I shared the Mercenary Company Generator and in it I briefly talked about the nobility of Hodas (or any setting really) fighting their little proxy battles and skirmishes. I always imagined it like the Italian Mercenary wars, where the mercenaries would take the money and have a brief but not super lethal skirmish and then just claim to the nobles that they couldn't gain any ground.

    Well as a companion to that table I also made the Proxy Conflict Generator! Using the below tables you can create your nobles, find out what they are fighting over, what the PCs are supposed to do about it and what complication they encounter. The name sections are just there to get the ball rolling on names for Hodas races and are not the end all be all of names, of course. If you roll and get something that you cannot generate a story around then that is okay, roll again! Keep in mind, the conflict the nobles are having might not have directly to do with the task the PCs are given, it might just be background information to give context.

 Proxy Conflict Generator

 

Sunday Special: The d4 Caltrops list (part 1: Jewelry in a dragon's hoard)

     Recently another blogger who's content I love laid down the gauntlet by sending me a challenge, roll on the table found on d4 Caltrops blog and making a post about whatever I rolled. So here we are, posting on a sunday instead of the usual Tuesday and Thursday because of Buster over on 19 Sided Die! That mad lad is making this a challenge to do all 100 topics. I might follow suit as an occasional Sunday special as a way to keep the energy from the weekly Saturday night game.

 

Rolled d100: Result 10

Describe Expensive Jewelry one might find in a dragon's hoard

     

     In Hodas the dragons have been sleeping for an exceptionally long time. The dragons ruled the world unchallenged for thousands of years. They enslaved the "lesser" races such as humans, giants, minotaur, and featherfolk. Only the mountainborn remained free, pockets of resistance that were too remote for the dragons to care about. Likewise, the Furies were not in the world yet, they had yet to look down from their sky citadels in curiosity. The kobolds had not come to the surface world yet.

    To keep the story brief, Humans lead a rebellion against the dragons by organizing the giants and striking back. With nearly 90% of their numbers wiped out the dragons decided it would be better to retreat and simply wait for the rebellion to burn itself down in a few thousand years. This post isn't about that rebellion or how humans rose and fell after that. Its about the dragons!

    Naturally as a result of this disappearance thousands of years ago if one can even find one of the few remaining dragons or their hoard you're no doubt going to find items older than the oldest living man, possibly older than the living memory of dwarves. These are art pieces that are unbelievably ancient, some of them showing signs of craft long lost to history. 

 

 Irizoxas' Gift
This locket is made of rose colored gold and set with a turquoise stone on the front. the clasp is still functional. inside are a pair of preserved lifelike sketches of human women. 

GP Value: 1500

This locket belongs to Irizoxas The Moon Gaze, a Dragon who, during the days of their kind's rule always had his eyes skyward at night, watching the 4 moons of Hodas. Believing that they could reveal the future in their dance across the night sky. Irizoxas was not present when the rebellions began, perhaps he had advanced warning.
The locket itself is extremely intricate, the carving on the gold are of such fine detail one must have extremely sharp eyes or a magnifying glass to see the finest of details. The piece of turquoise almost seems out of place here, a simple hunk of polished stone set into the face of the locket is the key to opening it, by depressing it the latch on the inside is released.
Wearing this locket causes the wearer to roll at +1d when attempting to use non-magical means to calm other humanoids. 
If Irizoxas is not dead then he is aware of the missing locket from his horde and will hunt for the thief and the current bearer until he is made whole. The subjects of the sketches are his two favorite servants, who he showered with gifts and treated as pets.

 

The Grand Rings
This is a gold bracelet set with alternating stones of spinel and Jade clearly made by dwarven hands.

GP value: 800

This bracelet lays in the horde of Thriinathavochan The Grand. A dragon who ruled among the highest counsels of the empire of dragons. Thriinathavochan was mortally injured by giants in the rebellion and flew off, escaping to the secrecy of her horde, her final moments of life were on her horde and among her clutch of eggs. Should her secret lair be found, her eggs are even harder to locate, blending into the architecture of her lair. around her lair has grown into it's own hostile ecosystem, life has sprung from her corpse, leaving only bones in which monsters live among.

This bracelet was part of a collection of bracelets given to Thriinathavochan, worn by her as rings on her claws. The collection was a form of tribute from the dwarves who lived under the hills of her lands, begrudgingly given to her. The designs of them are distinctly dwarven and any dwarf could recognize this as dwarven work but there are exceptionally few living dwarves who could identify the makers mark on the inside of the bands.

When worn together with the 7 identical bracelets the wearer gains +1 to their AC and may cast magic missile and magic shield at the 12-13 level of success at will, as often as once each round.

Silver horns of The Sky Scourge
These massive pieces of silver are hollow on the inside, worn by Morrosuth The Sky Scourge. They are worn at the ends of his own horns as ornamentation and to hide his disfiguration. In human hands they are large enough to require two hands to hold, similar in size to a small child.

GP Value: 2500

These caps were crafted for Morrosuth in order to hide a disfigurement he gained in a battle with the ancient furies as he attempted an assault on one of their sky citadels. The horns are more like caps that are placed on the ends of his horns, hollow on the inside. They were commissioned in secret, a request handled by one of the only other long lived people that dragons respected, elves. The carving on the outside of these are intricate and blend seamlessly into the pattern on Morrosuth's own horns, giving the appearance of the horns simply turning into silver at a certain point. 

Should a PC think to melt these down or fashion a weapon, tool, or armor from the silver they will find that this silver is unusual, having properties similar to the legendary elven mithril, allowing it to make for excellent weapons and armor with the same weight and penalty as steel. 

Followup:

I wanted to detail some items with some history to them, the PCs might never know that history but the world might and releasing something like these items into the world can have repercussions, for better or for worse. What happens when someone learns that the PCs are carrying something worth these extreme amounts? how do they even sell it? what if the dwarves find out about the bracelets? I think these should lead to further adventure or challenge, which is why a history for something so valuable feels important, even if it's only judge facing. 

 

 

If you like this idea, rolling a d100 and making a post about it, please head on over to d4 Caltrops and roll for yourself. Link me your post in the comments below this post so I can share your post in my next one! head on over and take a look at Buster's post for where I was inspired by!