IX TRANSCENDANT
This is: 2 races, a trap, 2 NPCs/monsters and a magic item.
The People that hack themselves out of the wall
intelligence , wisdom, charisma start at a 1d4 . In your second session add a d6. In your 3rd session add a d8. You may never be stopped, held or slowed again.
Waving flagella fluoresce and send chemical signals from pond to stream to pool to puddle. They squat over rotting fish that once swam, birds that once dove for fish, water-insects whose now-prayerful legs once danced and delighted the fish, little dog-things that used to lap up the water and wash the fish that once swam. The chemical signals communicate that there is no longer food/complexity here. Soon the flagella will grow dim, harden and grow fruits of newer, stranger, larger beings.
Waving flagella fluoresce and send chemical signals from pond to stream to pool to puddle. They squat over rotting fish that once swam, birds that once dove for fish, water-insects whose now-prayerful legs once danced and delighted the fish, little dog-things that used to lap up the water and wash the fish that once swam. The chemical signals communicate that there is no longer food/complexity here. Soon the flagella will grow dim, harden and grow fruits of newer, stranger, larger beings.
Some men harvest those fruits, to study the progress of the pathogen, watch another man grow foolish, the tissue at the feet, fingers, around the mouth and neck turning blue, purple, yellow, necrotic black, falling away, studying or perhaps finding beautiful the glowing, waving fingers that emerge from the flesh.
Those afflicted rend their flesh and beat their skull against the wall. They knew things and they forgot them, but they knew they knew more. The loss is gradual and it is maddening. The Church of Ur-Hadad and the Academy deploys these People to punish the worst thought crimes.
New Rule: to increase your intelligence you must infect an unconscious subject with intelligence, wisdom or charisma greater than you. After a full rest, they die and you are reborn, gaining d6 in their highest of intellect, wisdom or charisma.
New Rule: you must try to eat in this manner once a session. the dead food of your food is repulsive, the complexity of the weaker mind like filth on the tongue. Failure to consume a more intelligent, wise or charismatic creature causes your form to harden. -1 to AC or hit (each session, cumulative, you choose)*
New Rule: every time you grow as above, make a Check against the attribute just increased. If you pass, your new form retains some physical characteristic of your meal. Regardless of your form, your stuff remains protoplasmic and you cannot be held or constrained, just move like astral liquid through the chain links.
Other things about your body: you take an extra die of damage from fire and cannot speak until you've got an Int of at least 8 and have spent time learning a language.
*The most intelligent of your kind sometimes choose to no longer eat and their stiff, frozen bodies are revered as statues, while their brains rattle in their head cavity's like a shriveled nut.
The People that conceal birds.
When you die your next character may start with one stat the same as this one
The gravity here has changed. We used to scrape the ground on our bellies and lick nutrient salts off the dried up sea beds or chew rocks with our bright teeth. But water returned and our legs grow long and we look up now.
The People that conceal birds.
When you die your next character may start with one stat the same as this one
The gravity here has changed. We used to scrape the ground on our bellies and lick nutrient salts off the dried up sea beds or chew rocks with our bright teeth. But water returned and our legs grow long and we look up now.
Our grandfather left his throne. There was the tolling of the bell around His neck, the neck thicker than any tree, the head bigger than any rock, the head itself scaled and ponderous, the first rock. The bell tolled once and split the earth below the throne and the water welled in fat tears from the crack and then grandfather lost his weight and was gone and our legs grew long and we learned to look up again.
We had birds that flew but we were ashamed of them. When the gravity makes you grovel, flight seemed like a mortal sin and so we always looked down and averted our gaze. And they would shit on us and laugh but one day there was less shit and then none at all and the birds were gone. It was assumed they had got bored and moved on, but then, after the grandfather left, we started to die and we learned the truth. We had hidden our birds inside of ourselves.
New Rule: 1/session re-roll a failed Save v paralysis/force/crushing blow
New Rule: You cannot hold weapons as your stumpy legs cannot grasp them but your broad white molars can grind a foe as a warhammer strikes.
New Rule: you can carry double whatever you should be able to.
New Rule: upon death, there is the flutter of wings. Bird shit smears the floor. A rock nearby uncoils and tests its long legs, runs a fat pink tongue along wide, white teeth, and feels pounds of imaginary bird shit right between the shoulder blades, the shame of birds.
The people that eat soil
you need not nor cannot drink. Your body contains no water and expels it immediately from consumed things.
They stand in the sands like silver mouths with asphalt tongues, the shimmering judgment of Ur-Hadad descending from the upper lip like a sheer curtain. Below the gate, the throat of the tunnels turns and dips low and is lost from sight. Below is rumored temple-sarcophagi, cathedral-pyramids, black as night or lit by green witch light, the death-free lands of Ur-Hadad, his wondrous treasure vaults and halls of science.
The people that eat soil
you need not nor cannot drink. Your body contains no water and expels it immediately from consumed things.
They stand in the sands like silver mouths with asphalt tongues, the shimmering judgment of Ur-Hadad descending from the upper lip like a sheer curtain. Below the gate, the throat of the tunnels turns and dips low and is lost from sight. Below is rumored temple-sarcophagi, cathedral-pyramids, black as night or lit by green witch light, the death-free lands of Ur-Hadad, his wondrous treasure vaults and halls of science.
Ur-Hadad is the god of paper, truth, undeath, timelessness, science, hobgoblins and mummies.
The curtain is the judgement of Ur-Hadad. All that passes through it must Save v Undeath at -4 or become an undead of half as many hit die as their current level, their mind turned to Ur-Hadad, their will married to his heart. Outside these gates are often pools of stinking fluid, the impure remains of recent converts. The effect upon the non-living is less intense, they need merely Save v Undeath or have all liquid expelled from them (roll once for all non-magical liquids being carried and again for all magical liquids).
The people that lost the sun
light is dark and dark is light
The people that lost the sun
light is dark and dark is light
We are the children that are always hungry. We are the inverse of love and tenderness, we are those left to die in the desert. We are the unwanted children, our bellies never full, our faces long, our limbs thin, sad.
New Rule: treat as children Banshees but replace the keen/wail with weeping/moaning. The weight of the child left to die by his family is in that weeping and the weight bears upon the soul of those that hear, carrying it down to the engines of Ur-Hadad.
New Rule: the banshee child is unable to see the world for what it is, but instead sees kindness as hatred, love as cruelty, light as dark and dark as light. Accordingly, they cleave to those that are most obviously evil, only to be disappointed by some minor act of kindness.
The people with snakes for bones
you are always prone but can squeeze into the smallest gaps. Your mind is shared amongst all your bones.
The thousand wives of Sultan X were said to be the sum total expression of all possible beauty. One had lips like a bird's wings, another, the penis like the Bull-of-Heavens. But, like all things that are only ever beautiful, they became also vain and demanded the Sultan spend his days among them, forever choosing whose embrace was warmer than whose, whose lips softer, whose kiss wetter, slipperier. And so the Sultan failed to take seriously the growing unrest, the lack of food, the droughts. Many left the great shining city then and walked into the mouth of Ur-Hadad.
The people with snakes for bones
you are always prone but can squeeze into the smallest gaps. Your mind is shared amongst all your bones.
The thousand wives of Sultan X were said to be the sum total expression of all possible beauty. One had lips like a bird's wings, another, the penis like the Bull-of-Heavens. But, like all things that are only ever beautiful, they became also vain and demanded the Sultan spend his days among them, forever choosing whose embrace was warmer than whose, whose lips softer, whose kiss wetter, slipperier. And so the Sultan failed to take seriously the growing unrest, the lack of food, the droughts. Many left the great shining city then and walked into the mouth of Ur-Hadad.
From among the people came a woman as ugly as any who had ever lived. She was a great witch, the wife of the Bull-of-Heavens and also his daughter and mother. She pulled down the shimmer from the towers and put it in a box, to be held by the people who would carry that shimmer with them over the sands forever, and she spat three times and the Sultan grew terrible, many-limbed, soft and city fell to pieces, back to the clay as it had been before the Bull-of-Heavens had stomped it to bricks and the thousand wives grew long and narrow and ugly as any who had ever lived.
New Rule: For each snake in a wilderness encounter or in a den/nest there is a 1 in 20 chance that the snakes remember their true nature, as wives of the Sultan of the Lost City, servants of the Witch of Change. Snakes that remember their true nature are treated as the body corporate of a single cleric of HD equal to twice as many snakes are present.
The people that cannot lie
you always lie
The people that cannot lie
you always lie
IX the dissembler, god of change and the living fashioned for her one hundred and one servants a mask. The mask is an emblem of true discipleship.
New Rule: the Mask of IX can be molded to look like anyone but you.
New Rule: the Mask is an emblem of true discipleship, any truth you speak comes out a lie (either the GM speaks for you or what you say turns out false) and removing it peels the skin and muscles from your face (no save)
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