QHW, Day 30: Dwarves

Dwarves need metal. Dwarves eat metal.

Dwarven society is stratified into castes, which in turn are based on the metal which a dwarf can afford to eat. (This can be quite useful for PC dwarves, who can switch between racial benefits simply by changing their diet and waiting for their body to adjust.) More wealthy dwarves can afford better metals, which in turn marks them as belonging to a higher caste. If a dwarf doesn't eat metal, they will grow weak, sickly, and eventually die.

The Alloyed
Any dwarf who switched from one diet to another. It takes several days for one metal to be cleared from the body and superseded with a new one, during which time the dwarf's skin is mottled and uneven, often with rust-pimples or cracks.

Politely ignored if it's a dwarf mid-transition between castes, often with a celebration if they change into a higher caste. Dwarves who keep changing their caste and are more often Alloyed than not, disparagingly called the "slags", are widely considered untrustworthy and ignored impolitely.

The Impures
The lowest caste is composed of dwarves who do not always have access to the same cheap metal every day, or just don't have enough energy left to care. These are the labourers and unskilled workers.

Copper Dwarves have increased stamina, though overdose can lead to restlessness and insomnia. Tin Dwarves have somewhat enhanced senses, especially in the dark. Overdose can lead to migraines. Bronze Dwarves have a lesser version of both, which is especially useful for the miners.

Bronze Dwarves are not considered Alloyed and don't get the tell-tale signs of changing a diet, even if they eat two different metals.

Iron Dwarves, Ferrics
The military caste. Iron Dwarves are stronger and tougher, with overdose leading to the numbing of pain and all emotions.

Many dwarven veterans are unwilling to ever change their diet, as they have brutally slaughtered many enemies while under the influence of iron and losing the numbness would quickly lead to PTSD. Swallowing a large amount of iron at once to intentionally overdose can be used by dwarves of any caste as an emergency painkiller, though it leads to them becoming Alloyed if they weren't Ferrics.

Silver Dwarves, Argents
The craftsdwarves, artisans and artists. Silver Dwarves have augmented creativity, imagination, empathy and emotional intelligence, but overdose can leave them with hallucinations or something akin to a bipolar disorder.

Despite their social nature, many Argents choose to lead a reclusive life, as silver diet sometimes leads to embarrassingly undwarven behaviour, like freely expressing your feelings!

Gold Dwarves, Aureans
The leaders, merchants and scholars. Gold Dwarves have augmented mental capacity, memory retention and brain plasticity, allowing them to learn quickly and easily outwit most others. An overdose leads to a loss of empathy and moral restraints, allowing one to stay calm, objective and profitable even in the face of death and despair. As such, many Aureans eat more gold than would be necessary.

Occultum Dwarves, Occultins
Dwarves never have a natural gift for magic, but they can gain one by eating occultum. This is quite often lethal, but those who survive the first dose are rewarded with sorcerous powers. Occultum Dwarves rarely change their diet unless forced to by circumstances, as they cannot return to occultum without risking their life with that first dose again.

An occultum overdose has roughly equal chance of either a massive explosion, or a transformation into a mighty spirit of the earth.

Quicksilver Dwarves, Mercurials
Mercurials are not a part of the dwarven society. They are outcasts, considered monstrous and perverse. They are feared, despised and only whispered about in stories to frighten children. Their blood is a deadly poison, thus they steal the blood of other dwarves to survive. Just like quicksilver, they are malleable, able to change their appearance at will, or even dissolve their body into a pool of living mercury.

Some stories also claim that Mercurials are immortal. Many dwarven lands ban mercury to forestall the temptation and prevent the rise of dwarf-eating monstrosities in their midst.

QHW, Day 22: ...in SPACE!!!

Oort

• Knot of long, multi-limbed insectoid limbs with no central body. Silicon based.
• Every joint is covered in sensory whiskers. Extremely sensitive to electricity and vibrations.
• They communicate via bioelectric signals. Can interface directly with their organic-electronic technology.
• They live off thermoelectricity. To feed, they lie down with one limb in sunlight and the other in darkness.
• Vacuum-proof, cannot survive in planetary gravity.
• Their kilometre-long ships are actually their females.
• Merchants. They fill their ships with cargo and travel at sub-light speeds to new systems.
• Due to their slow travel, they often have strange technologies and ancient objects for sale.

Zeno
They have nothing in common with humans, not even a distant space-faring ancestor, yet they are completely human looking. On the outside.

On the inside:

• Two hearts.
• Rib plates.
• Nictitating membrane.
• Don't sleep, they enter a trance for two hours a day.
• Extremely long, prehensile tongue.
• Can see in infra/ultra, but only black and white. Thus they have trouble understanding human art and fashion.
• When pregnant, can hold an embryo in stasis for years.
• Long lived, don't shrivel and wrinkle, but instead loose pigmentation. Old Zeno are albino.

QHW, Day 7: Humanoid Races

Baseline Humans, True Men

• Citizens of the few arcologies that were not damaged or destroyed.
• Cults of pure blood are rampant, with all other strains of humanity seen as only good to be enslaved or purged.

Cyborgs, Shellers, Aug-Men

• Second-class citizens of the arcologies, super-soldiers and specialized slave-workers. Dependant on the few skilled surgeons and remaining auto-docs, thus kept in line.
• Out in the Rad Wastes, they either die of implant rejection, or thrive as invincible warlords.

Robodroids, Mech-Men

• They never were human and thus don't cling to a humanoid shape. Intelligent vehicles, buildings, etc.
  
• Immune to hunger, thirst, asphyxiation, fatigue, poisons and diseases, but suffer from nanites, malware and EMP.

Chimerae, Splicers, Beast Men

• Humans cross-mutated with animals via careful gene-engineering, gaining useful perks with minimal downsides.
• Range from a human with a few animal characteristics to a humanoid animal.
• Unlike mutants, they breed true, including with their parent species. Many splicer tribes roam the Rad Wastes.
• Radiation exposure often times turns them feral and mindlessly hostile before resulting in mutations.
  

Synths, Fake Men

• Shapeshifters. A brain-box suspended in metamorphic synth-flesh.
• Can also spend their biomass for various effects, like fabricating bone items, breathing toxic gas, shooting enamel-bullets, or creating independent, non-intelligent life forms.

Replicants, Vat Babies

• Their DNA was hand-crafted to make them peak human, and it shows. Their brains were pruned to make them obedient and happy to serve, but it didn't work. They have no belly buttons.
• Created in batches of hundreds of clones. Some pre-Turn sites will have tribes of people that all share the same face.
• Extremely vulnerable to radiation due to their delicate DNA.
  

Holograms, eGhosts, Hollow Men

• They all have a phylactery, a tiny piece of tech containing their mindstate, a holo projector and a power source.
• Can freely switch between soft- and hardlight, but hardlight drains their power reserves fast.
• Most were once powerful people who sought immortality. Now they are the tyrant kings and queens of the Rad Wastes.

Blighters, Zeds, Chem-Men

• Gene-plagues and chemical superweapons depopulated whole countries during the Turn. A tiny fraction of a percent of the victims survived, albeit changed.
• Extremely resistant to diseases, toxins, chemicals and radiation. Basically unageing. Their bodily fluids swiftly kill most lifeforms.
• Shunned by all, they live in isolated villages or abandoned pre-Turn sites deep in the Rad Wastes.

QHW, Day 6: Radiation

Dreamers

• Humans with a non-intelligent symbiont which grants them psionic powers.
• The symbiont can cross from one host to another, usually on the host's death, taking some memories with them.
• A single host is sometimes called an incarnation, with the switch between hosts being a reincarnation.
• Strong emotions carry over the best between incarnations. It is not unheard of feuds or affairs between Dreamers that span multiple reincarnations.
• Like an unborn baby, a symbiont absorbs any radiation the host is exposed to. This makes the host mostly immune to the Rad Wastes, but it also affects the psionics of the symbiont, increasing their power at the cost of stability and reliability.
• Some Dreamers purposefully expose themselves to radiation in hopes of getting a temporary power boost. However, an overdose will leave the symbiont broken, with their powers unshackled and uncontrollable. Such monstrosity is known as a Nightmare.
• Awakening is a rare and dreaded quirk where the symbiont gains full sapience. An Awakened takes over the host body and subsumes the self of the host completely.
• An Awakened will sometimes quickly jump from one body to another to gain the skills and knowledge of the hosts.
• Awakened are mortally afraid of Nightmares.

Class: Random Advancement Vampire

Vampirism - You don't need to eat, sleep, or breath, but you must drink blood. Allergic to sunlight. Powers and weaknesses develop as you drink more people.

 
A character of mine in a Finders Keepers game currently has this trait. The question remains, what kind of powers and weaknesses will a vampire develop? You can use the generator below - once you drink enough blood, press the button and you will gain one random power and one random weakness.

While the powers and weaknesses were created with Finders Keepers* in mind, they can easily be used for vampiric characters in any Into the Odd-style game. To make it work as a GLOG class, you could grant Vampirism and one roll on the generator at template A, then one extra roll each level. Or just use it to inspire powers for your NPC vampires.

 
Dead blood is any blood removed from a living body for over an hour, or taken from a dead body that already started to grow cold.

To feed someone your blood, take d4 damage unless otherwise specified.

*) Some of the abilities are frankly stolen from there.

Weres of Vanth

Weres are notorious if rare on Vanth, the victims of a hereditary curse that brings about excessive hair growth*, alarming allergies and a monthly involuntary transmogrification associated with one of the Vanth's moons. The origin of the curse varies by the family line, from a pissed-off deity or experimental gene splicing going awry to the unspeakable depravity of bestiality. (Who am I kidding, it was the bestiality most of the time.)
 

While certain level of animosity against these animal-shifters is not uncommon, a poll carried out in the Realm of the Hobling Emperor and the cities along the western coast of the Sea of Great Peril showed that most citizens are accepting of their therianthropic neighbours, as long as all fowl devoured during the full moon is promptly compensated for. In the south-eastern jungles, Weres even tend to hold positions as revered druids, shamans or other religious leaders, due to the belief that they can commune with the spirits of nature much more easily than other folk, especially in their animal form.

By contrast in the Slaver Kingdoms, Weres are considered a high-priced commodity, as they can be sold either as curios to extravagant nobles, or as quality breeding stock**. And don't even ask about the Shunned Towns.

A recent study published in the Paranature journal suggests that it is not advisable to tell any jokes along the lines of "You mamma was a bitch. Literally." in the presence of Weres. The study concluded that such a joke tends to elicit a brutal, violent reaction from 93.7 % of Weres.

 

Wereshark, werecheetah, werebat and weregator.

 
Were-animal
When you roll this racial option, assemble your therianthropic curse from the tables below, then roll on the table of races again to find your actual race when you're not prowling the night in animal form.
 

Wereserpent
From Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

 
Beast Form
You turn into an animal form. Roll here.

If you don't like the result, you may reroll, but only once. If your beast form is particularly tiny, you may turn into a swarm of such animals instead.

While in your were-form, you have all abilities that the animal would possess, whether extra combat effects, better senses, or new forms of movement, but you cannot wield weapons or wear armour. Wounds carry over between forms.

You always shape-shift into your animal form on the night when your moon is full, and cannot turn back until morning when you revert automatically. At any other time, you may try and roll Great Feat to change. This roll can only be attempted once per day, whether to turn into an animal, or to turn back.

You can communicate with animals of similar type as your beastly form, no matter your current form.
 
d20 Banes
When exposed to your Bane (skin contact for the materials, otherwise as appropriate), take d4 damage per round. When attacked with your Bane, take double damage.

1. silver,
2. gold,
3. iron (but not steel),
4. copper (including bronze),
5. chrome,
6. obsidian,
7. gems,
8. glass,
9. ice (but not snow),
10. paper,
11. fresh wood,
12. old bones,
13. synthetic fibre and plastic,
14. sea water,
15. alcohol,
16. garlic,
17. music and singing,
18. phasics,
19. magic spells and weapons,
20. the light of your moon; you change on new moon instead.

d8 Moons

1. Black Moon
2. Green Moon
3. Grey Moon
4. Half-Moon
5. Red Moon
6. Skull Moon
7. White Moon
8. Yellow Moon

Vanth actually has nine moons, occasionally. The Blue Moon, also known as the Capricious Traveller or the Stargazer's Bother, tends to appear sporadically for a few days, then not be seen for many months. Its erratic presence thankfully doesn't affect any vanthian Weres, who would otherwise be quite inconveniently at the mercy of its quantum whimsy.
 

Good old werewolf transformation.
From Hemlock Grove

  
*) Not to be confused with the much more common super-hair-growth mutation. Also note that non-mammalian Weres tend to develop small patches of feathers or scales instead of becoming hirsute.
**) It has been shown that interbreeding with Weres increases the intelligence of animal offsprings to near-human levels. The loose alliance of several Were tribes known as the Horse Tamers voluntarily uses this quirk of biology to breed their world-famous, highly intelligent horses.