Something Weird!

“Something weird heah!  Get yer weird things!”  I raised an eyebrow.  Street vendors rolled by the Woflo Inn about five hundred damn times a day, screeching like strangled gulls.  I've never cared for cities, and the ones in these human lands are really dire, and I got sick of the racket by the second day.  But it was midsummer, and closing the shutters would’ve choked us with the heat.  This was a new call on me, anyway.

Chav was on her feet and grabbing for her belt pouch like a shot.  “Where are YOU going?” I drawled.

“You GOTTA come see this, Eve!  This guy is great!” And with that, she was right out the door and pelting down the stairs.

“Something weird heah!  Get yer weird things riiiight heah!” 

No one knows his name ... he’s never said.  No one knows anything about him ... he won’t talk.  But every rare once in a while, once or twice a year, he’s pushing his cart down the cobblestones, barking out his sales pitch.

The man’s of average height, dusky complexion, raggedly cut dark brown hair.  His garb is dusty, worn, nondescript homespun, with a faded indigo wool vest.  He always seems to need a shave.  He bears no weapon.

But the tale’s not about him.  It’s about his cart.

It’s a simple pushcart, two handles, two wobbly wheels.  On it is a baffling array of packages, all wrapped up in faded, threadbare canvas and tied with coarse twine.  They are of all shapes, and of many sizes; no two are alike.  For just five silver pennies, you can have one item.

But only one.  On any given trip, he will never sell more than one item to one person.  He’ll hand you your item, and move on, sounding out his call once more.

And then it’s your turn: to figure out just what in the hell you’ve got.

✵   ✵   ✵   ✵   ✵   ✵   ✵   ✵   ✵

What the cart vends is offbeat items.  My own list runs several hundred deep, and are almost all modern-tech items, usually quite mundane.  Examples I’ve given out over the years include rolls of Scotch tape, a modern Alpine backpack, a car antenna, a Bic lighter, a box of plastic army men, a Brillo pad, a tube of Preparation H, a box of tampons, a TV tray, a space blanket, a penlight, a Slinky, an aluminum baseball bat, and a parking meter.

The trick is to identify it without any handles that would quickly reveal it: “You’ve got an odd wooden pole.  It’s about four feet long and an inch square.  It has strange runes on it, unrecognizable to you, painted on the shaft.  At one end is a flat paddle, about a foot long, and breaking off at a 45 degree angle.  The end of the pole is tipped with an odd black substance that’s sticky to the touch and slightly flexible; the paddle is wrapped in the middle with a thin layer of what appears to be the same substance.”  That’s an actual example, and it took the party that had it over a half-hour to figure it out.  (Feel free to put your own guesses in the comments.)

The vendor won’t sell you more than one, and no matter what it is it costs no more than five silver pennies.  He won’t give you any clue what anything is, and is blandly incurious.  He’s also laconic about damn near everything else too: “I get these from friends.” “Eh, selling them is a living.”  Ask too many questions, he’ll frown and move on.

If you try to follow him, he’ll disappear around the next corner and just plain vanish.  No one’s ever accosted or attacked him, and no one’s been insane enough to try to rob him.  (My parties, who are uniformly charmed when the fellow shows up, exert peer pressure on anyone who’s tried to so much as give him a hard time.)  I leave it up to GMs what happens if anyone tries, but I recommend lightning from the sky and the earth opening up to swallow offenders.

It is, of course, up to the players to decide what good the items are for, if anything.  Some, like a 20th century cowboy hat, are obvious.  Some, like a lava lamp or a toaster oven, sure as heck aren’t.

30 Naval Officers

1) The Hornblower: Coming from a relatively plebeian background in a navy that favors aristocrats, coming very late to the sea, unlucky when it comes to money, unwilling to play the political game, the Hornblower has numerous strikes against him. Yet his brilliant mind took to mathematics early, and his hard work, diligence and native talent led him to become a very successful captain in single-ship actions.  (When it comes to it, it doesn’t hurt that he’s a skilled, scientific fencer, but he's not one of those swashbuckling leads-every-boarding-action types.) Anything but hidebound, he questions many of his navy’s shibboleths and sees further than most. But his background has led him to chronic self-doubt and introspection – he’s sure that if he’s ever anything less than perfectly successful at sea, he’ll be beached, and he’s intensely troubled by questions of honor that others shrug off with a bemused smirk.  The Hornblower overcompensates by striving to be the epitome of wooden stoicism and pushing would-be friends away.

2) The Lewrie: In many ways the polar opposite of the Hornblower, the Lewrie was a town clown – and happy to be so! – interested in little beyond partying, wenching and drinking. Shipped off to the navy in a virtual shanghaiing in order to steal his inheritance, he took an interest in gunnery out of boredom, and eventually became an efficient and effective naval officer almost despite himself. He hasn’t changed all that much: his inability to keep his trousers buttoned around women has threatened his career, as does his relative egalitarianism – he has a few too many freed slaves in his crew for the liking of some – and an occasional tendency to shoot off his mouth to the wrong people. But he’s a lucky captain who’s popular with his crews, and the rumors are rife that the god of the sea is his personal patron.

3) The Seafort: He is a skilled naval officer, yes, and the survivor of more than one disaster; his honor and personal probity are unsurpassed and rarely questioned. But he has two traits seen by some to be virtues and by others to be flaws. In the first place, he has a deep religious faith bordering on fanaticism; in the second, he holds to the service regulations with an intensity that leaves your average fanatic gasping. The Regs are the Law and the Godhead rolled into one, and he will enforce their letter to the utmost, even if he is sickened by the result, no matter how much blood he needs to spill: even if it costs him family, friends or everything else.

4) The Aubrey: He’s almost close to a split personality, the Aubrey ashore and the Aubrey afloat. Ashore, he’s a beefy, jovial scion of the minor gentry, a bit on the shallow side, more than a little gullible, open-handed, fond of horses, gambling and living beyond his means ... with no pretensions to intellect beyond that he’s a notable amateur astronomer and musician. Afloat, he is a master seaman, tactically brilliant, mechanically sound, with a natural aura of command, a renowned gift of sea-luck, and a bright love of battle: while he’s more a good hand-to-hand fighter than a great one, the Aubrey has a touch of the berserker about him. He spent time as a common sailor, and knows the lower deck intimately – what they will put up with, what they won’t. It doesn’t hurt his career that he’s a (largely absentee) member of his nation’s legislature.

5) The Prescot: A renowned knight of his nation’s most revered fighting order, the Prescot is a good tactician, a veteran sailor, and possesses an almost mystical charisma for leadership. He has the common touch, and thrills his men by recognizing even those who he hasn’t seen in years. But what truly leads him to success is less his skills as a ship’s captain – good, but not superlative – than his unparalleled mastery with his greatsword.  The Prescot leads all boarding actions, none can stand before him, and the bottom of the sea is carpeted by the bodies of his slain. He fights his nation’s enemies as if it were a holy war – which, in truth, it is – and in battle his normally affable expression turns into a veritable demon’s mask. Indeed, he’s been accused of being one.

6) The Leary: The Leary and the Aubrey would likely get along; they share many a similarity. The Leary’s own path to the top is smoothed by that his father is the retired ruler (and eminence grise) of the nation, and that the admiral-in-chief is his patron, but his own naval skills are great. He is a navigator of almost supernatural skill, the finest of his day, and he has an impressive record of battle success against huge odds. What sustains him above all else is his cheerful love of life, the loyalty of his crew – many of whom have followed him from ship to ship (to the point that the “Sissies,” nicknamed after the Leary’s first command, are a large cadre recognized by that name alone) – and his unwavering belief in the superiority of his nation’s naval personnel: that they are the best anywhere, and that they will always succeed. One peculiarity is that he’s a devoted amateur naturalist, and often travels with guidebooks.

7) The Bolitho: Like the Leary and the Prescot, the Bolitho has his loyal cadre of followers, to the point that they call themselves “We Happy Few,” and inspires many a lifelong friendship. He is a skilled seaman and tactician, and beyond that skilled at strategy as well: admiral’s rank rests as easily on his shoulders as a captain’s rank did.  Moreover, he's an excellent teacher, counting numerous captains and junior admirals among his former pupils. The only fly in his ointment is a string of personal tragedies that often leave him brooding and depressed, but he seldom lets these moods affect his duty to ship, crew and country. A paragon of decency in an indecent time, he has a disregard for both social conventions and political expediency.  The axes of his superiors seem always sharpened for him if he falters, something his lieutenants grasp better than he does.

8) The Cochrane: On the one hand, the “Sea Wolf” is a renowned and lucky captain, having racked up some of the most impressive single-ship actions in history, against insanely long odds. He is also a skilled coastal raider, a technological innovator and a meticulous planner with a eye towards keeping casualties to a minimum. On the other hand, well. With a large chip on his shoulder (the Cochrane is the son of a great – but impoverished – lord), he is innately incapable of getting along with his superiors, his subordinates, the press, the aristocracy, the government ... pretty much anyone who doesn’t agree with him in all things. With a record of publicly criticizing the admiralty and the government, and superiors who'd rather be damned than offer him an appointment, he’s been reduced to being a mercenary admiral for foreign nations.

9) The Ramius: His country’s been long at (formal) peace, but he is a very well-regarded captain, technically highly competent, a sound tactician. His commands are tacitly teaching ones, and the admiralty looks on the “Schoolmaster” with favor for the large number of talented captains and officers that were juniors in his commands. But there is a canker in his heart. His wife recently died at the hands of an incompetent physician who was too well politically connected to be punished, and the Ramius himself is the rare officer in his nation’s navy from a downtrodden frontier minority. His tolerance for the failings of his nation exhausted, he plans to defect to the enemy: with the fleet’s newest and deadliest warship.

10) The Farragut: Adopted as a child by a celebrated naval captain, the Farragut joined the navy as a midshipman himself at age nine; he was a successful prizemaster at twelve, wounded in action at fourteen. He has been in the navy ever since, even now that he’s becoming an old man. He’s fought in many a war and many an action, and held many a command – largely in anti-piracy patrols. Now his nation is in a civil war, and even though he is from the secessionist province, he is staunchly loyal to the colors he has worn for nearly fifty years. His nation’s leading admiral through seniority, some worry that he’s too old for the task (and a few mutter about his loyalties, if never ever ever in his hearing), but his innate aggressiveness, daring and knowledge of artillery may well see him through. 

11) The Porter: His grandfather was a renowned navy captain. His father was a renowned navy captain. (Indeed, his children are all navy officers.) The Porter is his nation’s second admiral in history, and adding to the family tree, the Farragut is his much older adopted brother. Like the Farragut, he joined the navy very young, and like the Farragut, he has served his entire life. He grew up overseas and speaks several languages well, and despite friction with his superiors – the Porter tends to be cocky and challenges his superiors’ skill and knowledge – was selected to found the national maritime academy, and with his characteristic energy, added honor, discipline and knowledge to the service. He’s much more of a thinker than his brawler of an elder brother, which so far has served him well in the nation’s civil war. The Porter is experienced in handling flotillas of small craft and river boats, as well as in combined operations with army forces, one of the few sea captains who is.

12) The Hull: Bred to the sea in merchantmen – his father was a civilian captain – he joined his newly independent nation’s nascent navy at age 25. In something of a makeshift squadron, his captain’s time was taken up with its command, leaving the Hull as tacit “captain” of the warship. He received his first independent command just two years later, fighting pirates – whom the Hull hates with a bitter passion – and while the new navy is small and operating on a shoestring, the Hull hasn’t lacked for the best commands available since. He’s proven to be an efficient and reliable leader, and has made his name in single-ship actions, being perhaps the fleet’s best shiphandler. Unfortunately, his popularity among his crews is suspect; difficulties in manning the fleet has led him to put newly recruited sailors in irons, lest they immediately desert with their hiring bonuses. With his country in a new war against the world’s leading maritime power, it is up to the Hull and his fellow captains to stave off their fleets.

13) The Pigot: Young for his post, advanced up the ranks with indecent speed, he’s made captain through good connections and patronage (his father’s an admiral). Unfortunately, the Pigot’s no seaman and even less of a shiphandler; his ships have rammed two merchantmen so far. What is worse, he seized the master and officers of the second merchantmen, blamed them for the incident, and had them flogged, creating a diplomatic incident and nearly leading him to be cashiered. His new command may be his last chance for glory. However, he now has a reputation for extreme brutality, and scarcely a man in his crew has escaped flogging or worse. Whether he gains the distinction he seeks or dies at the hands of his crew is the toss of a coin.

14) The Doria: A scion of the minor nobility, he was orphaned at an early age, and became a mercenary to support himself before joining the navy. Even after becoming a renowned leader in the service of his native navy, the mercenary has never really left the Doria’s soul: he’s touchy when it comes to being paid per contract and on time, and has switched sides in consequence more than once. Still, his heart is with his homeland, and he is seldom out of its colors for long. His fellow citizens don’t seem to mind, and he’s been called upon as an honest broker more than once to help sort out his nation’s occasionally dysfunctional government. Age has not lessened his vigor, and deep into his eighties, his land has called on him again – for perhaps the final time – to lead their navy against the enemy.

15) The Semmes: When the rebellion began, the Farragut stayed with the colors. But his comrade the Semmes – as with the Farragut, a naval officer for many decades – could not turn his back on his home province. The secessionist navy is weak and consists of raiders and privateers, and its captains have proven to be masters at this style of warfare. Though it is seen as ignoble, the Semmes rationalizes this as the only real chance he has of using his skills in his new nation’s cause. Still, the dishonor stings somewhat, and so the Semmes will risk his command in “honorable” single-ship actions with the enemy navy. Handsome and deceptively young looking, he is also a student of philosophy, and read for the law as a lieutenant.

16) The de Clisson: The war was long and savage, but punctuated by occasional truces. The de Clisson’s husband was treacherously seized during one of them, and cruelly executed for treason in what was widely seen to be a judicial murder. Escaping just ahead of the law, the de Clisson swore red vengeance. She took what portable fortune she could, outfitted a squadron of warships painted black and with sails dyed red, and with her vassals as crews, offered her services to the other side. The “Lioness” and her Black Fleet are greatly feared, having preyed relentlessly on her old nation ever since: she scorns quarter and offers none, being famous for leaving only one survivor of any of her attacks on ship or coastal town, so that the survivor can tell others who was responsible. Her two surviving teenage sons sail with her, and are as redhanded as their mother. Gruesomely, her husband’s severed head is the figurehead of her flagship Revenge.

17) The Amra: His homeland is in the barbaric north, and while he’s lived in civilized lands since he was a teenager and possesses a crude honor and sense of chivalry, he’s been tarred with the barbarian brush ever after. While he’s a decent enough seaman and shiphandler, he’s neither an expert navigator nor much of a tactician: his plan is usually to sail straight up to the enemy, board them and take them without undue fuss. While his tactics often result in heavy losses among his crews, he possesses a formidable charisma ... and he is the best fighter in the world, all-but unconquerable. The Amra has spent years as a pirate, and is greatly respected by corsairs and the coastal tribesmen, whom he has led on more than one occasion. Between this and his barbaric upbringing, he has no patience with politics, and has foundered more than once on his insistence on straight talk and plain speech, and his bemused contempt for laws he finds foolish.

18) The Wallis: He wasn’t really at sea when he was five years old; that was an illegal dodge used by many a parent to get their children naval seniority young.  He didn’t actually go to sea until he was 13, and hasn’t had all that distinguished a career: been in the right places, had decent enough luck, never was wounded, never screwed up, had the usual number of commands, was an admiral at fifty.  But.  His nation really takes seniority seriously, and up the ladder the Wallis continued to climb, refusing to retire ... and he can’t be compelled to do so, nor can he be superseded.  He’s nearly a hundred years old now, technically on “active” duty for over ninety years, and Admiral of the Fleet for the better part of twenty years.  The ruler’s begging him to retire, threatening him with a seagoing command if he doesn’t.  The response of the Wallis is that he’s ready to accept one!

19) The l’Olonnois: But as to that, nations can do worse than the Wallis.  There’s the l’Olonnois.  The enemy ambushed him and his crew, slaughtering almost everyone – he himself survived by covering himself with blood and playing dead.  After that, he swore he would never give quarter to the enemy, and he hasn’t.  He will loot and torture, rape and murder, commit any atrocity and break any law to defeat them, and no naval officer has a worse reputation for cruelty or implacable ferocity.  Nor is he any more civilized with prisoners of war: one of his most gruesome deeds was to tear out the heart of one surrendered captain and eat it raw in front of the surrendered crew.  With an immense price on his head, the enemy has sworn to serve the l’Olonnois out as he has done to others.  If they can catch him.

20) The O’Malley: Her nation is the restive and unwilling conquest of a larger, and as a noble, she commands the rebel fleet.  Whether the O’Malley is a freedom fighter or a pirate depends on one’s point of view, but in any event she’s a fearless swashbuckler, less by way of a tactician than in ambushes and direct strikes.  It helps that her lands are in a region where the sway of the oppressors is weak and sympathy for her is strong, and she keeps the loyalty of the common folk with her coarse manners and coarser language ... and through her many victories.

21) The Lamb: He has a profound hatred for physical labor and for rising early in the morning (having grown up on a hardscrabble farm), and so avoids both at all costs.  However, the notion of sitting down – and being paid to read books! – is of great delight to the Lamb, and so he arranged, very efficiently, to pass through the naval academy with the least amount of effort.  (This involved becoming an expert smallsword fencer, so that he could avoid playing a rougher sport, and avoid harsh discipline that might threaten his chances to win matches for the dear old Navy!)  He has a very well trained and disciplined memory, so he has all the answers to hand for senior officers.  This makes them look good, and therefore happy, so the Lamb is a highly valued staff officer ... he's never had a command and would decline one if offered.  A natural efficiency expert (less work that way!), every job he holds is simplified, and his successor always has less work to do than his predecessor.

22) The Ghormley: With a long and uneventful career in the peacetime navy, moving up through the usual ladder of posts and commands, he became friends with the nation’s ruler.  And so, when the nation went to war, the Ghormley was placed in command of its expeditionary fleet, over the heads of others the naval authorities preferred in the role.  Unfortunately, the Peter Principle is very much at work.  Technological advances have him in command of ships far different than he remembers how to handle, he’s never before held fleet command, the details of admiralty are beyond him, he’s indecisive, and he often skips planning meetings.  His indecisive defeatism is starting to infect his command.

23) The Togo: His once-isolationist nation had no experience at sea ... until the day a foreign navy raided them.  The teenage Togo fought the invaders, but to no avail, and a humiliating defeat was the end result.  Shortly thereafter, the nation founded its first navy, and the Togo enlisted.  He knew that his best path to naval knowledge was in the very nation that attacked them, and he lived and studied there for several years ... insulted, derided – but successful.  He rose quickly up the ranks upon returning home, despite bouts of ill health, and now he is the fleet commander.  He now leads that fleet in a new war against a major power, and he is the only commander on his side with actual combat experience at sea.  Certainly the honor of his nation and his race are at stake.

24) The Mundy: Like the Lamb, she’s a career staff officer.  Naval punctilio means nothing to her, not even her best friend would call her a people person, and the only way she really knows how to act in certain situations is to observe others and do likewise.  (She’s only in the navy at all out of the noblesse oblige of her aristocratic culture, and as a substitute family for the one she lost in an insurrection.) But in staff work she’s unsurpassed, especially in communications and intelligence gathering and analysis, and is immensely respected on the ships she’s on ... not least due to the Mundy’s expertise as a duelist and as a deadly shot.  While she’s never served in the line and has no feel for navigation or shiphandling, the Mundy has a basic grasp of tactics, and has done well in situations where she’s been forced to command a vessel ... or a squadron.

25) The Tyacke: Very successful early on as a commander of small warships, his luck ran out in a battle that badly disfigured him.  The injury cost him his command and his repulsed fiancee, but he stuck with the service with his bitterness fueling his natural intense energy.  The “Devil With Half A Face” became a greatly feared captain in anti-slavery patrols – a much-derided arm of the navy which was the only way the interest-lacking Tyacke could get a command – fighting slavers with both his vast natural talent and a distinct lack of quarter.  He’s capable of great loyalty to an admiral who’d take a chance on him, but contemptuously rejects pity, and sometimes lashes out savagely at the hint of it.

26) The Bonden: Coming from the lower classes and the lower deck, he’ll never have a command; as to that, uneducated and only becoming literate later in life, he’s barely an officer.  But the Bonden is a consummate natural seaman, skilled at all aspects of his trade, and his captains often trust him as a prize master or as the “advisor” for less competent, higher status officers on independent commands.  Able to deal courteously with his superiors, just as able to speak the coarse lower deck idiom, he’s often the backbone of his ships.  It doesn’t hurt his reputation that he’s a renowned boxer and wrestler, often the champion in fleet-wide competitions.

27) The Pascoe: On the one hand, the Pascoe’s got it made: he’s the nephew of the Bolitho, one of the great admiral’s many successful proteges, a natural frigate captain, young, successful, handsome, gaining renown in his own right, far less prone to make enemies than his uncle.  But on the other, there are shadows ... quite aside from that the Bolitho is a tough act to follow.  The Pascoe is in fact a bastard whom his uncle took in out of pity; his mother was a penniless prostitute, and his father (the Bolitho’s older brother) was a despised traitor to his nation, gaining a reputation the Pascoe has had to live down.  He’s also unlucky in love, involved in more than one romance doomed from the start – notably on one occasion, with his admiral’s wife.

28) The Blood: Apolitical, a member of a disparaged and oppressed minority, while the Blood was an experienced soldier and sailor in his youth, he never would’ve entered a naval career except through the hazards of misfortune.  Settling down to the practice of medicine, he humanely treated wounded rebels, was swept up in reprisals by the scared government, condemned, sold as a slave.  Popular among his fellow slaves due to his skills as a physician, he gathered together a cadre of sailors, escaped, and now commands a successful squadron of privateers ... as much out of a lack of anything better to do as for any other reason.  Curiously solicitous of his home nation (which causes some friction among his lieutenants), the Blood preys with verve upon its enemies: perhaps hoping for a pardon and reinstatement.

29) The Harrington: It’s not that her nation’s navy frowns on female commanders; it’s relatively egalitarian, with many women in high command.  Nor is it that the Harrington is a poor captain – quite the opposite, she’s highly successful both with single-ship and squadron command, with a talent for overcoming obstacles and for winning the respect of her enemies, and the Bolitho is her only peer on this list for their proteges achieving command in their own right.  Perhaps it’s just that the navy in which she serves is factionalized, politicized and more than a little corrupt, that she’s too honest and forthright to play such games ... and she's delivered too much testimony and too many reports laying well-deserved blame for screwups at the feet of highly placed admirals.  As such, all too often she winds up on the wrong side of factional battles, and her career’s suffered for it.

30) The Adama: He was on the brink of retirement, the weary, aging, bypassed last commander of an obsolete warship about to be mothballed.  Then a disaster struck his nation, the navy was gutted, and it’s not so much that the Adama is their best captain available as that he’s damn near the only one left.  Nonetheless, he plays a losing hand as well as anyone can hope for, managing the retreat with grim determination and skill.  His focus is intense and almost unwavering, his love of his ship almost symbiotic, and he will do what it takes to get the survivors through to safety.

A Tribute NPC: Valthor

On the gaming forum I most patronize, there's been a character creation challenge running the last month: come up with a new character every day in January.  A lot of people went with a number of different systems.  Mostly I stuck with GURPS and Fantasy Trip, but I dabbled in OD&D, two different rules iterations of Empire of the Petal Throne, Champions, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, original Traveller, etc.  This was one of my entries: 

Valthor (GURPS fantasy character)

This was one of the original five characters in my campaign, a somewhat-grimdark barbarian who would dedicate slain enemies to his grimdark tribal gods.  I still have a 1980 character sheet for Valthor – by then, fairly experienced – and rather than try to explain my baroque heavily VD&D system, I’ve popped it into GURPS.  Valthor was a relatively uncomplicated character, classic barbarian type.  Gambled for the fun of it, started a combat throwing hatchets and then waded in with a greatsword, well-practiced in martial arts, had a price on his head, nothing all that much out of the usual for adventurers.  I include him because ...

* Those quirks?  Heh.  Well.  Those stem from the influence of the Arduin Grimoire in my gaming.  I cheerfully incorporated its character quirk list, and Valthor turned up with the “Flesh tastes bad to monsters” quirk.  So okay.  The group’s fighting a wyvern, and the wyvern gets a critical hit in on Valthor.  So – in the very first incidence of me rolling on that Arduin table, the “Genitalia severed” entry comes up.  And the last thing Valthor sees before he passes out is the wyvern screwing up its face, and spitting out that which it had just bitten off.  Much hilarity, and Valthor wore a solid steel cup for the rest of his adventuring career.

* Valthor’s player Rick was a born-again Christian, and his faith was an important element for his whole life.  Someone asked him how he could reconcile playing a guy who worshiped dark barbarian gods with that faith, and I’ve always remembered his answer: that he figured that the Lord God Almighty, omniscient creator of heaven and earth, had enough on the ball to recognize the difference between fiction and games, and real life.  A level of common sense uncommon then and damned rare now.

* Finally ... well.  Rick went career in the Navy in 1982, and eventually settled in the Midwest.  I hadn’t heard from Rick since the spring – coinciding with me taking much of the year off from social media – but found out only yesterday that he’d died back in April from COVID.  He was an old friend, and a good man, and he passed away too soon.  He played a material role in my start in this hobby which not only is one of the enduring elements of my life, I met both my wives through it.  So should any of you want to put Valthor in as an NPC somewhere, I’d be grateful, and know that my friend’s impact is still out there.

Martial arts, the Navy and his faith were so important to Rick.  Rest well, old friend.

 
ST: 14     DX: 13    IQ: 11    HT: 14   Speed: 6 (reduced)             
 
Advantages: Acute Hearing/2; Attractive; Charisma+1; Danger Sense; Discriminatory Smell; Extended Hearing Range; Fit; Language: Altanian (N/-); Language: Avanari (A/-); Outdoorsman Talent+3; Strongbow.

Disadvantages: Bloodlust; Low TL+1; Social Stigma: Outlaw; Struggling.

Skills:  Armoury (fletcher)-13; Bow-13; Camouflage-14; Climbing-12; First Aid-11; Gambling-10; Karate-14, Religious Ritual-10; Riding-12; Seamanship-11; Singing-14; Stealth-12; Survival-14; Tanning-12; Thrown Weapon: Axe-13; Tracking-17; Two-Handed Sword-15; Weather Sense-13

Quirks: Deep bass voice; Devout (tribal god); Flesh tastes bad to monsters; Protective of genitalia.

The Village of St. Chanan's

I am active on the RPG Pub, my gaming forum of choice.  There's a topic about usable gaming content in blogs, and I figured I'd take up the challenge and work something up.  So here 'tis!

The Village of St. Chanan's

 

HISTORY

St. Chanan’s is a sometime-castle, situated in a border hill country.  In the most recent war, it was invested by a force far greater than its lord and the inadequate garrison could withstand.  The attacking general ordered an immediate escalade, which was badly botched, and while successful sustained far too many casualties.  In any other war, between any two other nations, the ensuing massacre would have been a tale of horror on the lips of minstrels continent-wide; in this war, it was one of all too many.

Intending to render the fortification unusable, the raiders murdered almost everyone they could catch, pulled down the donjon, turned the villages in the valley into smoking ruin, and was about to start on the walls when they were recalled, leaving an empty shell save for the (however much looted) church in the courtyard.  The war has been over for three years now.  The castle was not reclaimed, what with the lord’s heirs carrying on a pitiless war of their own in the courts, over its possession.

TODAY

No one’s sure who made the suggestion, but the several dozen villagers who remained moved in within the walls, to what they now call St. Chanan’s, after the church to the Moon God that still – miraculously – stands.  The outer wall remains in usable condition, and the villagers live inside the towers.  Every day the villagers head out to tend their fields and herd the goats to pasture; every night they come back within the somewhat-dubious safety of the walls.  The fortification is not terribly defensible as it stands, but the towers themselves are fairly secure.  Should PCs find themselves inside, the dwellings within are furnished catch-as-catch-can, with furniture and goods either salvaged from the depredations in the area, or from the donjon itself – it’s by no means unlikely to find a rich, embroidered tapestry serving as a family’s quilt.

The border country was exhausted in the war, and with nearby towns razed and pillaged, St. Chanan’s has become a trading post.  Cross-border traders are treated with nothing beyond bare civility, but without trade St. Chanan’s dies, and they are not targeted.  The area marked with asterisks is where peddlers set up stalls or wagons.  A cut of all sales goes to the villagers, but they are more interested in goods useful to them than in coin, and are downright resistant towards gold, preferring to be paid in silver – gold is too easy to steal, they feel.  They are not very interested in things they cannot use, and offering them jewels, weapons or magical items in trade will fall flat (“Pretty necklace.  Can I eat it?  Will it plow a straight furrow?”), believing that they cannot resell such items without being cheated or robbed.

Beyond that, St. Chanan’s doesn’t produce much beyond local crafts, goats’ wool and goat cheese.  These are of good quality, and cheese is available in bulk – typically aged in caves, those weren’t pillaged by the invaders.  The local goat cheese is a white cheese similar to feta, and aged in large balls about 6" wide.  (They have thick rinds and will travel well.)

St. Chanan’s has no leader, and the villagers govern by consensus, meeting as needed.  They are otherwise a sober lot, and aren’t wont to chatter with outsiders without a good reason to do so – law and order has broken down throughout this stretch of the border, and strangers who aren’t obviously traders are suspected of being bandits until proven otherwise.

The fortress is built on a leveled-off hill.  It isn’t all that high – though it has good sightlines for the region around – nor all that steep, save for the bluff just north of the walls.  It has the one well, large and delved by a sorcerer in days gone by.  Travelers are welcome to camp inside the walls, in the center of the compound between the ruins of the donjon and the garden at #9.  The grass is cropped short enough to be unsuitable to feed mounts, however, although one can obtain hay from the villagers for about double the going rate.

CUSTOMS

The builders were pious, and sigils of the Moon God – a chevron of seven different phases of a moon – are over every stone doorway and the gatehouse.  The inner door of every tower has a niche with a devotional statue in it (only a few were desecrated), and locals touch their foreheads and lips to the statues when passing by.  It is an inviolable custom to have oil lamps burning below each statue, but also the source of much contention: a large sum of money dedicated in better days as an “oil fund” is administered by the priestesses of the Moon God, and felt by them to be beyond touching ... no matter how many villagers think there are far better uses for the money than to keep lamps burning beneath eighteen statues.

The villagers hold to several other folk customs.  Adults bear a small wooden or leather tube on their sashes, inside which is a ribbon embroidered with the words “If the Moon Lord does not keep the watch, in vain do mortal sentries do.”  The same phrase is painted over or etched into every lintel.  It is also the custom to ring bells in order to drive demons away, and to wear animal masks into religious ceremonies; a great grief to the villagers is that most of the elaborate carved and painted wooden masks they used to have were burned by the invaders.  Those who rely on crude workarounds feel an inchoate sense of shame (and no small amount of anger) out of the loss of their heritage.

The villagers frequently burn incense or potpourri in their tower dwellings, even down to sweet grass or foraged herbs if that is all they can get.  (They won’t discuss why readily, but in the aftermath of the massacre, the stench was so great that they needed the incense to be able to get a decent night’s sleep, and can’t collectively shake the habit.)  New scents are a trade good that interest them highly.

 

LOCATIONS

1) Blacksmith: Kenesh the smith (Smith-13) runs one of the two interior shops, and lives on the first floor as well.  A burly, easygoing man, he is a perfectly competent smith and a good farrier, but has no experience in armoury beyond knifemaking, forging arrowheads, and basic repairs.  One quirk of his is that he sings while he works ... constantly.  It is always verses from the locals’ epic poem (see #10), and to a tune he makes up on the spot.  Kenesh isn’t a bad singer, mind, but the habit does grate on some nerves.

2) Gatehouse: The gatehouse is in good repair save for the gate itself.  That was smashed by the invaders, and all repairs managed was to make it able to keep goats from straying out at night; it will not deter a determined assault for more than minutes.  The gatehouse remains well stocked with coal, sand (much cheaper and convenient than boiling oil) and weapons that the invaders were unable to cart away.  The invaders smashed the fortress’ artillery, but the villagers repaired two ballistae, one for each of the gate towers.  Not being siege engineers, the degree to which the reconditioned ballistae are safe to operate is anyone’s guess.

Four mercenaries live in the gatehouse, and serve as the village’s guard, keeping an eye on the traders, loitering around the compound during the day to give the illusion of it being patrolled.  The mercs are combat veterans (around 90 pts, on the average), but are either too old or too battered to serve in the line any more.  They are what the villagers can afford, and some locals grumble at scraping up the wherewithal for that much.  They are at least well-supplied from the stores in the fortress, with good swords and mail.  The villagers ignore the detachment as much as possible (the traders, at least, exchange greetings and news), and the mercenaries leave them be.  This is a decent retirement gig, and they’re disinclined to jeopardize that.  

Pereval is the leader of the unit, who call him “Sergeant,” a term at which he himself sneers.  He’s not yet old, and not yet crippled ... he’s just been in too many battles over too many wars, and is past it.  Pereval’s method of peacekeeping is intimidation, backed up by his glaring, orange-gold eyes; it is rumored that he has demon blood in him, something he carefully does not gainsay.  Of course, he talks a far better game than he can back up these days, but he is veteran enough to gauge the prowess of potential foes, and neither he nor his men fight with any degree of chivalry.  They will keep the peace within the walls, but aren't up for pursuing marauders who get away.
                                    
3) St. Chanan’s Church: While the invaders thoroughly looted this small temple, they shrank from destroying it.  The only remaining decorations are the padded kneeling cushions, overlooked by the invaders, and painted murals depicting the saint, purportedly the bodyguard of the Moon Lord as He walked the land.  (In fact, “St. Chanan” is apocryphal, and the organized authority of the moon faith does not recognize his existence.)  A tapestry from the old donjon now serves as an altar cloth, and services and ceremonials continue here.  It is also the closest the locals have to a community hall, and is used for meetings and gatherings.

Learned Elena Macardry is the embittered priestess (Theology-14, various scholarly skills/ Public Speaking-13, Physician-12).  Once the respected (and well-supported) chaplain of the castle’s lord, she heavily resents her now-straitened conditions.  While the villagers still support her out of piety, they do not love her, for she arrogantly treated them as simple clods who were beneath her before, and their memories are long.  No longer young, gone to fat, she is prone to rages and lashing out at everything – the tallow candles which replaced rich beeswax, the humble fare which replaced dainty imported viands, the traders still offering her books she can no longer afford to buy, old grievances both real and imagined ... and, secretly, the god she is sure betrayed her.  Only two teenage acolytes still serve her, and that for a roof over their heads and a decent meal – she has driven the others away.  The Learned is a lay priestess without supernatural powers, but is a skilled scholar and theologian, a good public speaker (when she doesn't lose it and harangue her congregants for their failings), and a fair physician.  

4) Statue Seller: Industriously, Sabek (Merchant-11) salvaged numerous small statues and busts from the ruins, and peddles them as antiquities to credulous buyers.  Most are quite fine (barring the occasional chip, scratch or fracture), and a number are made of valuable materials such as porphyry, jadeite, alabaster and the like.  He emulates the perceived manner of the itinerant traders, and believes that he is a champion hustler.  The traders, in return, treat him with bemused condescension.

This shop, as well as #5 through #8, are exterior stalls, made of scrap wood and felted overhangs and drops.  The degree to which they’re open is weather-dependent.

5) Tailor/tentmaker: Melev (Sewing-14) is a young fellow, lean, pious, bespectacled and diligent, sure that if he just works hard and keeps on working hard, he will Get Ahead, and so be allowed to marry the agemate of his dreams.  While he sews the simple caftans, vests and peaked hats of the area, and will copy non-local garments if he’s allowed to take them apart for templates, where he really shines is in tentmaking, using felt from the goats.  Melev’s pyramid tents are sturdy, warm and shed water admirably – if you don’t mind the weight – and it only takes him a week to make one.  (However, the itinerant traders value his tents highly, and one might have to pay a surcharge to bump one in the queue.)  He will also add colorful abstract appliques or embroidery to the tents, and indeed works in one set up in this location.

6) Provisioner: Sonsy and middle-aged, Khautyn is the friendliest, most outgoing local the PCs might encounter, short of Kenesh.  She prepares sausages (Cooking-13, Merchant-12) from goats, from game the hunters bring in, and from other sources best left unmentioned.  The sausages are of good quality for what they are, and keep well on the road – the more sensible traders scoop up as many as she might have available.  If she lacks sausages, what she also has available in profusion is Good Advice, which she’ll dole out to patrons asked for or not.  Her eldest daughter Indigo is a goatherd, and the light of Melev’s (#5) eye, affections she reciprocates.

7) Leatherworker: Alpa is a slender young woman (Leatherworking-13, Artist/tooling-15), with fierce hawk-like features and an intense manner.  Her work is in saddle- and tackmaking, and she readily does repairs of trail gear, which occupies much of her time.  She can do other work – and does very nice tooling in abstract patterns – but only slowly, and the other calls on her time interrupt.  Apparently deeply affected by the burnings, she’s manifesting an odd syndrome: an inability to draw inferences or conclusions from a statement.  For instance, you can tell her, “I’m down to my last dozen silver sinvers,” but she won’t be able to get from there to “... and that means I can’t pay you much for the work.”  The other villagers are aware of the issue, and try to look out for her as best as they can; Khautyn the sausage maker especially will keep an eye out.

8) Cartwright: Labrys and his two teenage children (all that survived of his family) are kept busy repairing the wagons of the traders; he is skilled enough and honest that traders will stagger well out of their way to cadge a repair (Carpentry-14).  They are also available for general carpentry as needed, but if they’re otherwise idle, they’re busy making a wall-sided wagon, sturdy and sound.  (If the PCs need a wagon, the gang is within a day of finishing it, and while Labrys himself has no more use for gold than the average St. Chanan’s local, the traders will willingly take the gold and play middleman, delivering to Labrys such goods as he might find useful.)  Not quite to the point of sullenness in dealing with outsiders, the cartwright will only talk about business, and that in little more than monosyllables.

9) Several small canvas-and-scrap stalls are arrayed from here to the gatehouse, and reserved for villagers who have anything to sell: mostly produce, in season, but also cheeses, handcrafts, gathered herb bundles, and the like.  For anything that would be sold in bulk, the villagers negotiate directly with the traders.

10) The Moon and Goat: The settlement’s tavern has a crudely painted sign depicting a goat taking a bite out of a moon.  Its interior is a jackdaw’s mix of furnishings from the old donjon and crudely fashioned tables and chairs from scrap wood; the bar itself is the high table from the old Great Hall, of wrought mahogany and baroquely carved.  It would be worth a great sum if it hadn’t been cut in half, lengthwise, for the purpose, and the usual reaction of traders seeing it for the first time is a pained groan.  (They groan a fair bit harder upon hearing that the rest of the table was chopped up for firewood and table legs.)  The Goat is a relatively convivial place, where the traders take their meals and swap tales of the road.  Any villagers patronizing it of an evening are likely to have a looser tongue than usual.

The story above is divided into living quarters for the proprietor’s family, as well as four small private rooms for rental.  Only two have windows – arrow slits, really – and all are equipped with rope-frame beds with mattresses stuffed with goat’s wool, nightstands, water jugs and chamberpots.  Simple locks (+2 to pick) were salvaged from elsewhere within the fortification.  There is a small copper bathtub, but hauling and heating water takes some doing, and baths are pricey.  

The fare is relatively simple: goat cheeses, goat stews with root vegetables, sausages, barley flatbreads.  The one leavening in the mix is that the hill country produces culinary herbs in profusion, so the stews are well-seasoned, and they can be seasoned to taste if the tavernkeeper is warned in advance.  Barley beer and herbal teas make up the great majority of the drinks; wines and spirits must be brought in, and at a stiff premium.  Stews are served in stoneware bowls salvaged from the donjon, and eaten with the flatbreads – the bowls were once valuable, with fine glazes and decorative scenes – but are chipped and cracked from constant tavern use.  (If magically repaired, they could fetch a fine price.)

A couple times a week, locals provide entertainment.  Instrumentalists include goat-skin hand drums, wooden flutes, and a fretless five-stringed instrument resembling a guitar.  Otherwise, there is an epic poem revolving around the heroic deeds of the locals’ forebears.  Most villagers have memorized some of the poem, and a couple pride themselves on knowing all of it: there are over ten thousand verses, and getting through it all would take months.

Beyaza is the tavernkeeper (Innkeeper-13), a quiet middle-aged woman with a talent for unobtrusiveness and blending into the background.  She will tend to a customer’s needs with little comment, and respond laconically and evasively to questions.  Her family are cooks and servers, and in case of any trouble, the one closest to the door will slip out and – in order – roust the mercenaries in the gatehouse, the blacksmith, and any other villagers available.

Talo has rented one of the rooms for a couple months now.  He dresses simply, openly carries long knives (Knife-15), and is a short, wiry fellow with abrupt, jittery mannerisms.  Talo doesn’t have any visible profession, isn’t interested in work, but pays his tab every week in good silver ... or else goes out to the traders’ row and buys something the tavern could use in lieu of the same.  He’ll engage in jocular, neutral conversation, but reacts angrily to any personal questions, including when he’ll move on (“None of your damn business”) or whether he intends to stay indefinitely (“You hear me the first time, pal?”).

11) Ruined Donjon: What’s left of the donjon is a stub, consisting of the first story – the rest of the rubble was sold off as building stone and carted away.  The practical villagers use the ruin to pen up their goat herds during the night, toss them garbage generated within the compound to eat, and use the droppings to manure their fields.  The goats are used for dairy and their wool, and excess kids are slaughtered for meat.

12) Garden: The broad oval space is a tightly landscaped community garden, where the locals grow vegetables and herbs.  There is barely enough space to walk between plots, and the villagers are intolerant of outsiders breaking the perimeter (fenced by large stones from the donjon).  A couple youths bearing switches are tasked with keeping goats and other draft animals out.  The fortification’s well is at the southeast corner.

PERSONALITIES

The villagers generally have a reasonable spread of crafts (generally at skill -12/-13), for PCs who want to avail themselves of the same: basket weavers, tapestry/quiltmakers, charcoalers, cheesemakers, fletchers, brewers.  They’re usually willing to hire out for it, as long as it doesn’t impede the work of herding or farming.

Bekova (Area Knowledge/Crossbow-16, Survival/Traps-14) is a representative hunter and trapper, who brings in meat for the locals, and trades hides and furs to the itinerant peddlers.  She is lean, quick, good in the field, a crack shot with a crossbow, and mingles as little as possible.  All know that she’s the one to speak to as far as knowledge and conditions of a 15-mile diameter area around St. Chanan’s, but pinning her down is hard, and she’s seldom interested in dealing, unless a party has magical aids to hunting they can offer her.

Dastan is the local cunning man, a masterful forager, and the one to go to for medicinal herbs (Magery/1 (ceremonial), Naturalist-14, Herbalist-15).  He is a sardonic, sometimes sarcastic aging fellow with little tolerance for fools, but is one of the only villagers willing to take gold or valuables as payment.  Dastan also has magical powers on the hedge-witch level, mostly in simple illusions, communing with animals, finding lost items and minor scrying, but doing so takes a lot out of him.  The locals hold him in a superstitious awe, for they fear his curses.

A representative trader is “Master” Argelle (Merchant/Intelligence Analysis-14, Fast-Talk-15), who passes herself off as an alchemist, selling a medicinal tonic of her devising. Argelle’s Famous Tonic is touted to help what ails a person (although she doesn’t make specific, explicit claims that might come back to haunt her) and to promote general health and growth.  Her sales patter is masterful, entertaining and popular, and her demeanor is warm and caring.  Argelle runs a circuit, moving around the region in a loop taking about a season; she stops here at St. Chanan’s to rest up for a week at a time, not being as young as she used to be.  The Tonic is bitter herbs and honey with a stiff alcohol content, but her real purpose is as an agent of one of the warring border nations, scouting around the area, and bearing confidential messages for the nation’s intelligence apparat.


ADVENTURE HOOKS

* There are credible rumors that the war is about to resume.  Having accepted a few too many of those otherwise unsellable pieces of jewelry, weapons and magical trinkets, the villagers seek to hire the party with them as short-term mercenaries to stiffen the defenses.  The value of the goods they offer are roughly twice what the going rate for the mercenary work would be ... if the party survives to cash them in.

* One of the heirs approaches the party.  There’s been nothing to indicate that the secret vault beneath the donjon was ever found, either by the invaders or the villagers.  The heir is sure there’s portable treasure in there, and is willing to hand over a blueprint of the donjon indicating the right spot for a 50:50 split of whatever’s found.  How the party pulls it off is their business.  (How they will manage with the fact that the heir doesn't have an undisputed legal right to the goods, and that the other heirs will be on the warpath if they find out, is also their business.)

* The lawsuit’s been settled; the castle has a new legal owner.  While the new Lady of the manor wants to get her fief in order and is not unwilling (within her finite means) to help the villagers rebuild, they are all squatters and she wants them out of the fortification.  She offers to pay the party well to drive them out and keep them out until she and her entourage arrive.  A city-bred agent of the Lady will travel with the party to do the talking, and will prove supercilious and dismissive of “country folk” and their customs.

* A villager is dead certain that one of the party was in the attacking force that torched her home, laughing as her screaming family burned to death inside.  She means to make certain the PC is dead ... as cruelly as possible, however she can manage.

* A band of slavers/bandits thinks St. Chanan’s would make a very handy base of operations, and that they can just scoop up traders.  They’re either there and in control when the party arrives, or strikes when the party is there.

 

NPC of the Day: Jake "Greywolf" Nelp

"Every day I don’t get up, the suits rip down another acre of trees.  I can’t quit."

Jake Nelp is an aging hippie. He grew up on a commune, and holds firmly to 60s counterculture values, morals and practices. The fellow lives out of "Betsey," his colorfully painted '65 Westphalia WV microbus, traveling between various Ren Faires, counterculture festivals and bashes like Burning Man, to hang out with like-minded individuals and sell knives. He forges and grinds his own, and has a wide reputation amongst festival regulars as a superlative knife maker, and as a friendly fellow who plays at campfires and always has a story to tell. It's enough to get by, and for him money is only needful to pay for gas, propane, spare auto parts, food and knife-making materials: "the buck’s a prison of green."

He's also a practicing shaman, with a wide range of occult lore, and is a devotee of Carlos Castaneda (though he greatly prefers pot to mushrooms) and various Cherokee shamen. He's come up with his own rituals, which for some reason he does in jackleg Cherokee, and they do work: largely in the way of manipulating fire and spirits.  He'll only work with magic at night, and song.  Meditation, for him, involves putting on some 60s tunes (he's reluctantly given up his decrepit 8-track player for an iPod player), lighting some joss sticks, putting the lava lamp on, and smoking a bowl.

A few notes:

* Jake is used to living rough, and can manage out of a tent just fine. However -- and this is where the Chronic Pain and Slow Riser comes in -- he's over 60 now, and living off of Faire food and on a futon in back of his microbus has just taken a heavy toll; he's achy. A lot.  He loves being a drifter, but fears that his roving days are nearing the end.

* He is only a pacifist by philosophy. He's well aware that him and people like him get hassled a lot by the Man (thus the Social Stigma, and having an FID in case he gets bothered about the honking big knives he carries around), and that some folks aren't willing to live and let live. He is very fast for his age, knows how to use his knives, and won't shy away from doing so if he figures he must.

* The Contacts represent probably four types of people: a fellow knife-maker, a fellow Faire merchant, a fellow shaman, and that lady who bakes the awesome flatbreads at his old commune.

* He's something of an ecoterrorist.  The "Suits" are all that's wrong with the world, and them building highways and pipelines everywhere will ruin it if you aren't vigilant.  A natural gas pipeline proposal which would go through his rural home county -- going, naturally, from places far away thataway to the Big City far away that away -- is very much in his crosshairs, and he's making plans.

* His daughter Brooke is a pediatric surgeon at a teaching hospital.  They love each other very much, and spending the first few years of her life on Jake's commune (that given name is "Riverbrook," actually) gives her significant sympathy for his POV.  Still, she's made up a mother-in-law apartment at her home, hoping Jake will settle down with her. 

* The milieu presumes Normal Mana, the character first being imagined for a Mage game that didn't survive the first session.

 

ST: 11       IQ: 12      DX: 13      HT: 12      Move: 5

Advantages: Charisma/1; Contacts (4 points' worth); Less Sleep/2, License Perk (has an FID); Magery/2 (Night, Song aspected); Night Vision/2; Reputation+3, as master knife-maker, Ren Faire types, 12-.

Disadvantages: Addiction / Pot smoker; Chronic Pain / Mild, 2h, 9-; Code of Honor (Counterculture); Disciplines of Faith; Farsighted (mitigated); Slow Riser; Sense of Duty: underclass; Social Stigma: Second-class citizen; Struggling, Vow (Oppose The Suits).

Languages: Speaks and reads Cherokee at Accented level.

Quirks: Cats are people; Don't mess with Betsey!; Dresses in stereotypical hippie attire; Loves his daughter; Pyrophile.

Skills: Armoury-18; Carousing-13; First Aid-13; Gardening-13; Knife-14; Mechanic (auto)-12; Meditation-12; Merchant (knives)-12; Musical Instrument (guitar)-12; Observation-12; Occultism-13; Public Speaking-12; Religious Ritual-12; Savoir-Faire (counterculture)-13; Singing-13; Survival-14; Thrown Weapon: Knife-13.

Spells: Affect Spirits-13; Create Fire-13; Divination-14; Heal Plant-13; Identify Plant-14; Ignite Fire-14; Itch-14; Plant Growth-15; Seek Plant-14; Sense Spirit-13; Shape Fire-15; Spasm-14; Summon Spirit-13; Turn Spirit-14; Warmth-13.

Betsey is a ‘66 Westfalia VW Microbus camper.  Named after a lady Jake knew (her likeness is on the driver’s side door in a white bikini and glasses), Betsey is done up in lime green and liberally festooned with Peter Max-esque counterculture paintings and liberal bumper stickers.

Her interior is done in ash paneling, with handmade curtains in the windows (gifts from Brooke) and dark blue shag carpeting.  There are futons with homemade quilts in the overhead extendable camper and the back (used for a spare bed in need and for general hanging out).  Behind the macrame-and-beaded covered seats are a couple propane burners scavenged from a Coleman stove, a wash basin, a cutting board, and narrow cabinets holding cooking equipment, wooden and handmade pewter flatware and Jake’s fetish kit. 

On the walls are a bookcase, brackets for Jake’s guitar case, a CD player/radio and a modest stack of CDs, a battery-operated fan, a propane space heater and several dreamcatchers.  The bookcase has the following well-worn titles: Stranger in a Strange Land, The Hobbit, an omnibus of the first three Foxfires, Complete Guide to Camping, Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, the Pentagon Papers, the North American Field Guide to Plants, the 1972 Whole Earth Catalog, the Nelp family Bible, Carlos Castaneda’s Teachings of Don Juan and A Separate Reality, and the following Cherokee shamanic texts: the Kanâhe'ta Ani-Tsa'lagï E'tï, Origins of the Bear, and the A`yûn'inï “Swimmer”, Gatigwanasti, Ayâsta/Gahuni, Inâ'lï “Black Fox”, Tsiskwa “Bird”, A`wani'ta “Young Deer” and Takwati'hï “Killer” Manuscripts.

Beneath the futon is jammed with stuff (getting things out can be a chore): a dorm-size propane refrigerator, two grinding wheels, a portable anvil, a propane cutting torch, a number of canvas sacks, mosquito netting and spare tarps, as well as a 2-gallon spare gas can, a 5-gallon iron cauldron, Jake’s fetish kit, miscellaneous gear and food.

For further explanation of system numbers, check this link.

NPC of the Day: Ruy Sanchez Koriskevich O'Higgins

I ran a Firefly campaign for a bit – and would love to run one again.  The campaign was based out of Twilight Station, in the middle of the Black, floating above a pastoral planet of religious fanatics.  It was something of an interstellar truck stop, with a bunch of businesses, and run by unregenerate Browncoats who were seeking to jump start the Lost Cause.

The group was stranded there, but won a decommissioned war surplus gunboat in a poker game, which became their new ship – Nightwind.  Unfortunately, Nightwind came with an extra: a fellow who claimed to be the ship’s medic.  They tried to run him off, but he waved what he said was an ironclad contract for him to be ship’s crew for three years or until he got tired of it, with a guaranteed rate of pay.  Not much they could do about it, so onboard he stayed.

Ruy Sanchez Koriskevich O’Higgins is a bit of a whack job.  He’s swarthy, with piercing black eyes, and long post-Civil War era hair and mustache ... the hair which he dyes mauve.  Go figure.  He’s keeps a shortsword scabbarded to his side, heaven knows why.  Don’t get between him or anyone he feels like beating down, either, because he fights like a wounded weasel and doesn’t really know when to stop.

He’s also a bit of a pain in the ass aboard ship.  He’s a devotee of Feng Shui (whatever the heck that is) and has a habit of rearranging the wardroom furniture and cargo pallets to suit notions of “positioning” ... and if you ask him to explain, the answer is so laden with jargon you never understand.  He also claims to be seeking “satori” (whatever the heck that is), and frequently is doing yoga routines, which he insists on following through no matter the emergency.

Still, he’s a good doc, nothing much ever fazes him, he’s a middling shot, he’s fast as hell, and he’ll always throw in to whatever scheme the crew proposes ... including smuggling, which he’s altogether good at doing ...

One thing not readily apparent (and which he’ll conceal from the crew) is that he took permanent damage from chemical agents in the War.  As a result, he doesn’t eat much (and will throw up if he tries), he’s unusually susceptible to toxins, his senses are dulled, he can easily tolerate very cold temperatures, and he’s just not as physically capable about a third of the time.

ST: 11    DX: 14     IQ: 13     HT: 11     Per: 10    Will: 14     Speed: 6  
               
Advantages:  Cultural Familiarity/Black, Reduced Consumption / 2/3rds food, Temperature Tolerance+1, Unfazeable

Disadvantages:  Berserk (12); Compulsive Behavior / Wanderlust; Disciplines of Faith / "Satori;" Odious Personal Habit / “Feng Shui;” Susceptibility to Poison; Sense of Duty / Crew; War Wounds / -2 everything, on a 9- or less, for two hours

Skills:  Area Knowledge/Black-13; Boxing-14; Calligraphy-12; Crew/Spacer-13; Diagnosis-13; Fast-Draw/sword-14; First Aid-16; Free Fall-13; Gardening-13; Guns/pistol-14; Housekeeping-13; Meditation-13; Philosophy-11; Physician-14; Pressure Points-14; Shortsword-15; Smuggling-13; Surgery-14

Quirks: Bombastic around women; Constantly snacking (but only nibbles); Eats tapioca pearls in drink; Twirls his mustache compulsively

Cultural Familiarity is knowing the customs and suchlike of an area to which you're not native.  Odious Personal Habit, in GURPS terms, is a reaction roll penalty for something about you which is obnoxious enough to bug people.

For further explanation of system numbers, check this link. 

NPC(s) of the Day: Fourteen Lovers

I've participated in a number of collaborative gaming lists on various sites.  The Small Town Horror post I put up a while back was one.  This is another.  As part and parcel of any rational setting, you're going to have couples as NPCs.  Sometimes those romances are more out there and turbulent than others; here are my parts of a collaboration for lovers.  I don't give stats or details -- for a change, plug them in where you'd want them!

The punch line is that, in every case, these are from prominent characters from my own campaign ... or that I've played one side myself as a PC in either tabletop, a MMORPG or a LARP.

My Chemical Romance:  Whether business partners, next door neighbors, rivals, forced allies or arranged spouses, this couple can’t stand each other.  They agree on practically nothing, always trying to score points off of one another, and lose few opportunities to backbite (or even backstab) the other.  Periodically the hostility breaks into a vicious fight ... which inevitably ends in screaming, clawing, prolonged sex, until the parties are sore and exhausted.  He hotly denies they’re actual lovers, she coolly denies it, and they show no signs of any rapport whatsoever the moment the clothes go back on. 

Class Ringwearers:  Gosh, they’re so in love!  Why they just celebrated their three-month “anniversary” and his class ring hangs around her neck!  By the standards of their culture, they’re underage and/or immature.  The grownups around them are patronizingly dismissive of their “crushes,” and they’re about ready to scream the next time anyone uses the term “puppy love” around them.  Increasingly angry, they’re on the verge of doing something their culture would consider drastic: having sex, getting pregnant, running off to get married, publicly disavowing any arranged future marriage ... whatever it takes to get people to take their love seriously and recognize that it’s for real and forever!

Pre-Raphaelites:  She’s a celebrated artist.  He’s her model.  His face and body have been immortalized in a half-dozen well-known compositions, and his own poetry -- though somewhat amateurish -- shows the illumination of her soul.  But to touch one another would mar the artistic purity of their collaboration (and age, class and possibly marital barriers intrude) ... so for years now they’ve suffered in silence, unable to consummate their relationship, unwilling to part and so lose each other’s muse.

Bennifer:  They were Yesterday’s Supercouple ... rich, celebrated, the hit of their social circle and so totally wrapped up in one another.  But that was then, and events have pulled them apart.  Their lives are going in different directions (well, in truth, they always did) and the spark is gone, however much they’re not particularly willing to admit it.  ‘Tis a pity that everyone still expects to see them together, harmonious and dazzling as ever, and the act is wearing thin.

Mutt & Jeff:  They don’t have a thing in common ... everyone knows it, they freely admit it.  He’s neat and she’s sloppy, she’s athletic and he’s intellectual, he’s dynamic and she’s live-and-let-live, she’s a gourmet and he’s steak-and-potatoes.  Yet when their orbits intersect, they live and love in tender harmony.  No one knows how they do it, and well-meaning people keep trying to pry them apart in favor of “more compatible” partners ... to no avail.

Bonnie & Clyde:  Yep, they’re in love, since the moment they met.  She loves the exciting times he shows her, and he loves the ebullience and intensity of her spirit.  They’re also complete sociopaths, perfectly eager to rape, kill, pillage and torture their way around the landscape.  The wind’s at their backs, their luck is in, and their hands are dripping red.  If they’re doomed to a bad end, they don’t know it (and might not even care): their focus is only on the next jaunt, the next meal, the next kill.

Putting On The Ritz:  See them on the dance floor (or on the concert stage, or performing as a duo at the local Ren Faire, or the ice dancing Nationals ...) and they’re silken smooth.  They’re just arresting to watch, and the aura about them is tangible – their eyes follow one another like magnets.  But this activity and their athleticism are all that really links them, and they’re awkward and uneasy with one another away from the spotlight.  You could scarcely recognize them, with that vast luminosity of theirs shuttered, and two plain, ordinary people left behind.

Hunk-A-Hunk-A-Burnin-Love:  They can’t keep their hands off of one another.  Ever.  At every conceivable opportunity they’re stealing off for sex of any sort, and in a night camp they don’t bother much with sleep.  Whether wild and clawing, or completely vanilla, they’re screaming with passion at all manner of inconvenient times.  They’re constantly sore and exhausted, but they not only don’t give a damn, they always have those obnoxiously smug, creamy smiles on their faces after.

Double Blind:  She’s the city’s -- and maybe the realm's -- most powerful wizard, and a gifted enchanter and scholar.  He’s an elven prince of a dynasty older than Time, and one of the world’s great swordmakers.  But they both wanted to live simple lives (and find someone who loved them for themselves, not their fame), and both have been slumming with the gypsies: he works as a blacksmith, and she keeps a very discreet magical watch over the encampment.  She’s now pregnant and happily keeping his wagon for him, and neither of them have any idea of one another’s true identity, a difficulty which preys on them both.

Á la lanterne!:  He’s a key player in the revolutionary government.  She’s an actress devoted to smuggling out of the city the “traitorous class” the newly-ensconced rebels are seeking to execute, for their “crimes.”  Honestly, she was only pretending to seduce him just to get him out of the way for a few hours while the rest of the party did the mission ... and things got far, far out of hand.  He knows who she is, now, and neither of them are comfortable with how far they’re compromising their genuine beliefs with one another.  If his comrades knew, he’d be executed; her comrades do know, and while they take advantage of the access, they don’t care for the relationship.  Nonetheless, the lovers are devoted to one another and can’t bear to separate.

Miss me?:  He was rich, powerful, handsome, brilliant.  She was sixteen years old and a fresh, unplucked flower.  He moved on, with his cronies, as he always had ... until six years later, when she returned with his only known heir.  He won’t marry her and she wouldn’t have him, and they’re both at the opposite ends of a vast gulf of class, wealth and bitterness, but they’re forced into cooperation for the sake of the child.  And she remains beautiful and incandescent, and he remains handsome and debonair, and they both hate themselves for the simmering desire for one another they still find they feel.

Ever After:  The duke’s daughter and the princess’ son were content enough to marry; they were of the right age, betrothed as children, and had no objections to one another.  A pair of unique wedding bands were wrought, out of living crystal, by the King’s Enchantress ... and, in a spirit of fun, the duke’s daughter put on hers two days before the wedding, while the young prince’s best friend put the matching band on his finger.  They turned gazes towards one another ... and were enraptured.  Now they’re fleeing for the border, with household troops in hot pursuit, completely unaware that the rings were enchanted to cause love between the wearers, as a kindness by the wizard towards an arranged couple.

Soulmates:  They finish one another’s sentences.  They seem to read one another’s thoughts.  They absolutely anticipate one another’s needs.  They apparently have the same skill set. They’re always together (and seem badly out of sorts and dissonant if forced to be apart for too terribly long), and seem to savor the same activities and hobbies.  They were even raised in the same small neighborhood/estate/village, and share the same background and memories.  (Alright, it's a pity that they're brother and sister, and even in their tolerant culture going that last step is out of bounds, even if they weren't high nobility and destined for arranged marriages.)

Days of Wine and Roses:  She’s all of sixteen years old, and one of her agemates raised by the Wise and Patient Teacher – plucked from the deeps of Time itself to be their tutor – to be one of the prophesied group who would stand against the Darkness.  She’s diligently learned all his martial arts skills, and already is a formidable fighter.  But now, coming to the Big City, they’ve realized that the time and place from which “Teacher” was plucked are here and now.  They've met him, and he's decades younger, at the height of his powers.  She realizes she’s a woman after all, and she wants to be his ... and be damned to the risk to the timestream.

NPC of the Day: The "errantry kids"

So ... I've been having private runs for my wife's powerful wizard-princess for a few years now.  One of the customs of the elven empire in which she now lives is "errantry" -- in your youth, you get together with your best buds and go wandering about for a season or two, all under assumed names like "Snowviolet" or "Morningstar" or "Nightflame," and Do Worthy And Good Things, only traveling with what they can carry and accepting no pay for their deeds.  While the tales have it that people on errantry are fighting dragons and battling for the rights of the downtrodden, the elven empire has secure internal borders and good government, and the authorities aren't crazed about young folk wandering across into the truly scary lands beyond them.  So, for the most part, those on errantry wind up teaching schools, helping farmers bring in the crops, building barns and the like ... which is rather the true lesson behind it all.

Some folk make errantry their life, and indeed go out to take on monsters and warring against the over-mighty.  As far as the rest goes ... well, sometimes the teenagers get uppity and want to go out too.  So Princess Elaina, with some restless teens on her own estate, decided to do the local landowners a favor and announce that she was leading a pack of teenagers out on errantry for two summer months: who was in?  Well, damn near everyone, but in the end, she set out with thirteen.  And, much to their dismay, led them to the task she'd already arranged in advance -- helping a village heavily damaged by the spring flood to rebuild.

I did this cheat sheet for the pack, which is far preferable to doing up individual NPC sheets for what is, after all, a group of relatively nondescript teenagers.  It summarizes their race, age, manor of residence, parental background, a couple key skills, and (teenagers being teenagers) whether they particularly Like! or Dislike! those cute kids of the opposite gender, that being in terms of GURPS Reaction Rolls (high is good, low is bad).

The three for which there's scarcely any info are from Elaina's own manor, so I didn't particularly need cheats for them.  But for a pack of NPCs, for which nonetheless you need to RP them and come up with a personality trait or two, this is a good approach and doesn't take all that much work.

NPC of the Day: Tas

So okay, I'm a packrat.  That's the character sheet (well, filecard) of my first character.  "Tas the fighter" was very much playing against type, but I had fun in the first heady rush of the new hobby.  He was an Empire of the Petal Throne character, and something of a stolid warrior.  He made a brilliant political marriage (fueled by his movie-star looks) to the daughter of a high official in the imperial government, and wangled a post in the Omnipotent Azure Legion, something of a coup for a foreigner in xenophobic Tsolyanu.

A lot of the above is straightforward.  "Eyes," in EPT, are technological artifacts that function, effectively, as magical items: the Excellent Ruby Eye places the target in indefinite stasis (barring another use), and the Eye of Indefensible Apprehension casts a fear spell.  The magic dagger on the right was something like a light saber -- it would flicker out a beam of force extending its range to that of a rapier, and it was Tas' go-to weapon.  The "parrah" on the lower right was a fetish of the GM's -- they're tribble-like familiars which he pretty much insisted every PC have.  Mine was, by parrah standards, a tough hombre.  The "bronze ingot hand" was a bronze ingot which, when palmed, turned the hand into solid, living bronze: great for hand-to-hand brawls or dangerous manipulative tasks.

I traded him out after a while for a wizard, which I preferred -- damn that random gen.

NPC of the Day: Lady Datia

My wife put in a request for some of her favorites, but I figured I'd ring in an interesting Big Bad.  (Sorry, love!)

Lady Datia, third daughter of the great lord Teraeth val Linix, is tall, willowy, beautiful.  She was the wife of a country squire whose holdings are a day’s ride from the capital, and had a three year old daughter.  Though always careful to display the proper decorum, Datia yearned for the high life, and sought – vainly – to convince her husband to relocate to the capital for the social whirl.

The shenanigans that ensued wound up getting rolled into a plotline, and the party drew her ire when they busted up what she thought would be a permanent gig, forcing her to flee one step ahead of the authorities and leave behind her husband and daughter.  Her pattern since has been to marry rich men, under a false identity, take them for what they're worth and split. 

Feeling vengeful, Datia went to work and learned about the party.  She supplied damaging information about the rogue's father to the rogue's mother, causing the breakup of their marriage.  Her next target was the old alchemist on the corner who was a favorite of theirs, and in marrying and ditching him clipped a heap of gold and a bunch of high-powered alchemical poisons, which she used to great effect -- through cutouts -- in taking out or sickening several folks near and dear to them.  On two other occasions, the trouble coming to the party was provoked by her, unbeknownst to them.

Datia's only significant magical item is a stolen religious relic of some power, much of which she can't use; the key power she can use is that it renders her immune to scrying or divinations. She's a good actress and deft at disguise.  She also has some modest arcane powers, but no one outside of her estranged and embarrassed family remembers that she had a brief wizardly apprenticeship in her teens, and she never lets anyone know.

Beyond that, she’s smart and focused. She doesn't have a gang to betray her.  She's very likeable, and folks trust her instinctively and talk freely in front of her.  If she needs help, she'll beguile a fellow and wrap him around her fingertips, but she'll never let that fellow know where to find her, and she will always have a bolthole and a fast mount available.  She won't let herself get suckered into a confrontation, direct or otherwise.  She doesn't leave trademarks or mocking Ba-Ha-Ha notes.  If a plan looks like it's blown, or she thinks a situation is spiraling outside her control, she'll cut her losses and bolt, and if possible has a secondary mark in hand to take the fall.

In short, she's read the Evil Overlord Rules.

RPG groups, by and large, suck at detective work.  They rely heavily on their widgets and spells, and they count on the bad guys making predictable, cliched mistakes or having blatant, exploitable character flaws. They don't often do patient, and they can't often handle patient.  A hundred times more of these scenarios end because the GM has placed a finite limit on them (and, of course, the PCs always win in the end, right?) or from the foregoing factors than not.

I was proud of her.  It's easy for a GM to beat down a party with overwhelming force, zowie! powers like teleportation or insubstantiality, by a NPC's Epic Uberness, or by a torrent of widgets.  Doing so with guile and misdirection, with a hard-keyed scenario (hey, if they had made all the right guesses and been a little lucky, she could have been nailed much sooner), that's harder.

What they never did attempt was to trap her at the only spots of vulnerability: (1) There's only a finite number of rich, single guys out there who get swept up by a beautiful, cultured woman from Somewhere Else and who loves the city life; and (2)  She still had affection for her first husband and for her daughter.  It took the main party nearly five real years to catch her, and in the end only because they called in some major favors and brought some immense arcane powers to bear.

ST: 9     DX: 11     IQ: 13      HT: 10    Speed: 5.25      Move: 5  

Advantages: Acute Taste-Smell/1; Beautiful; Charisma/1; Comfortable wealth; Empathy; Magery (Body Control spells only)/2; Serendipity; Smooth Operator/2

Disadvantages: Callous; Greed; Minor Medical Ailment/migraines; Social Stigma: outlaw; Major Vow: Revenge!

Skills:  Acting-15; Administration-13; Area Knowledge: Warwik royal demesne-15; Baseball-13; Body Language-14; Current Affairs/high society-15; Carousing-15; Connoisseur/music-13; Dancing-12; Detect Lies-14; Disguise-15; Erotic Art-14; Fast-Talk-15; Filch-13; Forgery-13; Holdout-13; Knife-12; Mimicry (human)-14; Musical Instrument / lute-11; Needlecraft-10; Observation-13; Poetry-12; Poisons-13; Savoir-Faire-16; Search-14; Sex Appeal-17; Vajikry-13

Grimoire:  Arousal-13 †; Birth Control-13 †; Choke-15; Comfortable Seat-13 †; Fair Skin-14 †; Rapid Intoxication-13 †; Resist Intoxication-13 †; Resist Pain-13; Stun-15; Tears-15

Maneuvers:  Ruse / w/Sex Appeal-16

Quirks: "But wealth IS power;" Attracted to "bad" men; Fashion slave; Overestimates her luck; Soft spot for animals & kids

Explanations: Serendipity means something just goes seriously right for you, once per adventure: a tree branch breaks over the head of the guy who's about to run you through, the first box you break open in the warehouse has the Ark of the Covenant, that sort of thing.  Smooth Operator gives bonuses to social skills (which are figured in already) and you’re recognized as a suave person.  Migraines?  Make a HT roll every day.  If she blows it, she’ll have about two hours worth of -2 to everything, at some point (she's taken too many alchemicals over the years, and the headaches are a side-effect).  Yeah, they play baseball on my world, and it’s considered an avant-garde spectator sport in the capital.  Vajikry is a game that's something of a cross between checkers and Stratego.  Her Ruse maneuver basically drops a guy’s combat defenses by heavyweight vamping; letting her top fall open or off is a favorite.

I’ve invented a bunch of spells (well, a couple hundred of them); the ones marked † are the non-book ones.  Comfortable Seat prevents saddlesores and jostling in carriages.  Fair Skin keeps your complexion mild.  The others are self-explanatory, and I’m quite narked that SJ Games saw fit to exclude a birth control spell, which you’d think would be one of the more fundamental spells in any realistic culture.  If you prefer GURPS RAW, substitute others.

For further explanation of system stats, check this link.