Class: Gnome

Gnomes are an artificial race created by Dark Lady Ta-tiki-tekh-uata, the Witch Mother, to serve as her attendants, spies and enforcers. Some sources suggest that she tried to replicate the long-lost Sidhe biomantic recipe for turning humans into elves, others claim that she did so successfully, but used her plentiful goblin slaves as the base stock instead of her much more sparse human subjects - in any case, gnomes were the result.

No one has a satisfactory answer for the colourful cap thing.

 

Old Gnome Wizard by Skywise00

 

This is a racial class, so its template A can only be gained during character creation. Inspired by Konsumterra.

I have no love for gnomes. They are surprisingly bland fey dwarves. There is no strong theme, no nice twist that would make me want them in my world. Yet for some reason, my players want to play as gnomes. Or rabbits. Making gnomes a regional offshoot of goblins gives them a place in the world, but at the same time, there don't need to be any gnomes save for the player characters, unless the party travels to Pflec. I can live with that.

  

High level grey cap gnome
From here.

  

Quest: Visit Pflec or the Witch Mother's lost demesne.

Language: Sylvan (Red, Green, Gold, Blue, Grey) or Pflecian (Svirfneblin)

Items: gnome cap, tool of your hereditary trade

Skills: (per sub-species) Parade, Recall Details, Music, Cooking, Tinkering, Ward-Breaking

Age: There was a mild imperfection in the biomantic formula used to create this race. Gnomes reach adulthood at age 20, but their appearance ages faster than that. A twenty years old, young adult gnome will look like a human in their sixties or seventies. They only get wrinklier and more stooped with age, though this does not affect their physical capabilities much. Gnomes live up to 200 years and in old age start to develop plant-like characteristics - wrinkles become bark, beard is more moss than hair. This is another flaw of the biomantic formula.

A: Gnome Cap, Small Stature

B: Gnomish Magic, +1 MD

Gnome Cap

Gnomes possess an innate magical spark than can be imbued into a special cap, which must be made by the gnome's own hands and have the appropriate colour. Only gnomes can use a gnome cap, but they can use any gnome's cap. Each breed of gnomes has a different power that they can imbue into their cap.

Each gnome can only make one cap at a time. Should they wish to make a new one, the old one must be destroyed first for the gnome's spark of magic to return and be ready for imbuement again. Thus gnomes are highly protective of their cap. Stealing a cap is seen as a heinous crime in gnome communities, often resulting in harsh punishments. Similarly, confiscating one's cap is a harsh punishment reserved for the most vile criminals.

You cannot wear both a cap and a helmet.

Small Stature

You only need half as many rations as a grown man. You can fit into small spaces rather comfortably.

Many items will be bulky for you due to awkward size. You can only wield long weapons (long sword, spear) with both hands and cannot use heavy weapons (great sword, halberd) at all.

You cannot reach the top shelf.

Gnomish Magic

You have learned to use your magical gift similarly to a wizard, though you do not possess a spellbook. Gain 1 Magic Die. Each subspecies gains two spells:

• Red: death scythe, speak with blood
• Green: misty step, speak with animals
• Gold: part crowd, unseen orchestra
• Blue: clean up, speak with doors
• Grey: make material, move earth
• Death: non-detection, spell collapse

You have to be touching your cap to cast your spells - your spells are "memorised" in your cap.

 

Young blue cap gnome
From here.

  

Gnome, Red Cap

Red cap gnomes were soldiers and enforcers. Once the most plentiful of gnomes, their numbers were mercilessly culled when the Dark Ones fell, the remaining few fleeing to Pflec or abroad.

Red Cap

When you put on your cap after it has been drenched in fresh blood (enough to actually drench it, a few drops will not suffice), you can take any number of Fatigue points - that number will be X. You gain Xd6 temporary HP, deal +X damage in melee, roll Strength with +X bonus and count as X size categories larger for grappling purposes (without actually growing larger). This lasts until you lose all the temporary HP or take off the cap.

Gnome, Green Cap

Green cap gnomes were scouts and messengers. Most have found refuge among wood elves or druids.

Green Cap

When you put on your cap, you can transform into a natural animal - specifically the animal whose blood and viscera was used during the creation of your cap. This animal can be no larger than a dog and no smaller than a mouse. You can transform as often as you wish, but your equipment (except for the cap) doesn't transform with you, you cannot speak (unless the animal can) and you can only use the animal's abilities while transformed. Your HP carries over between forms.

Gnome, Gold Cap

Gold cap gnomes were entertainers and designers.

Gold Cap

You can manifest tangible illusions from your cap, no larger than what would fit into the cap. For lack of a better term, these illusions are like a hardlight hologram. They can be be pretty much any inanimate object, but they do not have any special effects (illusory potion does nothing), they pop when they would take damage, deal damage or get overexerted (illusory dagger or crowbar are pretty useless) and they last no longer than 10 minutes.

Gnome, Blue Cap

Blue cap gnomes were servants and spies.

Blue Cap

When you put on your cap and close your eyes, you become invisible.

When you put on your cap and hold your breath, you become as light as a feather. When damaged or otherwise distracted, roll Concentration to keep holding your breath.

Gnome, Grey Cap

Grey cap gnomes were custodians and sappers.

Grey Cap

You can manifest small tools and spare parts from your cap, which can be used to repair various mechanisms, from locks to clocks. If not handled by a gnome for more than a day, anything you manifested from your cap crumbles into fine sand - pretty disastrous for any mechanism.

With an hour of time, you can construct a small, fragile clockwork device that performs a simple function. For example, it could be a walking toy soldier, a lighter or a music box.

Gnome, Death Cap

Death cap gnomes are a splinter group of gnomes who rebelled against the Witch Mother and helped the Attnamese Empire in toppling the Dark Ones. They call themselves Svirfneblin and ignorant commoners sometimes know them as Bog Gnomes - a name whispered with disgust and fear. Once the designated infiltrators and saboteurs, they carried out a series of attacks that turned Pflec - a thin stretch of land between the river Amir and the Trollish Peaks - from the breadbasket of the Dark Ones to a haunted, miasmatic wasteland of spellborn horrors.

After the war, imperial magistrates granted the Pflecian Marshes to Svirfneblin along with Hin halflings and some of the few survivors of the dwarven genocide as their new sovereign territory. The so-called "gnomish dictatorship" is the direct result of the resulting anti-imperial sentiment. Hidden behind a nigh-impenetrable mix of mires, mutated war-beasts and curse-warped illusions, Svirfneblin have established tightly controlled enclaves run with relentless efficiency and ruthless surveillance. Paranoid, secretive and unapologetically authoritarian, the Svirfneblin are widely hated for their plundering raids, river blockades disguised as taxation and the occasional disappearing of useful individuals from the borderlands.

And yet, for all their cruelty, they have made their death-bogs thrive.

Black Cap

When you put on your cap, you are warded against all magic. Any magic used on you - baleful or benign - has a 50% chance of failing.

Note that you will have to drop your cap when you want to be for example healed. Also note that your cap doesn't help you against secondary effects of spells. For example, ground coated with a grease spell will still be slippery.

Other subspecies of gnomes exist, such as quicklings and darklings, but they are a) basically extinct and b) not a player race.

 

  

Spells:

Clean Up

Up to [highest] creatures or objects within 30' no larger than a human/horse/ogre/dragon are instantly cleaned, groomed and perfumed.

One may specify the grooming, e.g. shaving, shaping or trimming of the beard; type of perfume, etc. This does not destroy the filth, merely puts it into a neat pile on the side.

Adapted from the handsome wizard.

Death Scythe

Plunge your arm into a corpse and pull a black scythe from its chest as it crumbles into dust. The scythe deals 1d8+[dice] damage, or double damage to creatures of the same type as the corpse. It lasts for [sum] rounds/minutes/hours/until dismissed.

Adapted from the necromancer.

Make Material

R: 60'

Produce [dice] slots worth of basic items or equipment from thin air. They are very low-quality and have a 50% chance of breaking when used. You may produce [sum] slots of items instead, but they will be of such poor quality that they always break on first use. Broken items or items older than a day crumble into fine sand.

Adapted from the manufacturing wizard.

Misty Step

R: self and touch; T: creature; D: [sum] rounds

Transform into a fog cloud. You can fly at your normal movement speed, but lose all senses except for touch. For every [dice] after the first, you can take someone with you.

Move Earth

D: concentration

Control a small amount of earth within 30'.

At 1 [dice], you can (a) excavate a bucket's worth of dirt, (b) shape the same amount, (c) cause the earth to swallow a small item or a non-resisting person, (d) knock over a shoddy shack with a tiny tremor.

At 2 [dice], you can move a wheelbarrow's worth and even make the earth slowly levitate.

More [dice] increase the effects further.

Adapted from the garden wizard.

Non-Detection

R: touch; T: [dice] creatures, places or objects no larger than a wagon; D: [sum] hours

Target is warded against divination magic. The target and anything on or in the target cannot be detected or perceived through magical means.

Part Crowd

Raise your hands over your head, then swing them down. Along a 500' line, creatures move out of the way, opening a clear path. Hostile creatures get a Save. The path closes naturally in 2d6 rounds.

Stolen from the civic wizard.

Speak with [thing]

Talk to [thing] for [sum] (real-life) minutes, or ask [dice] questions it must answer. Each [thing] only knows what it cares about:

• Animals care about food, shelter, safety, etc.
• Blood knows about sex and violence, instinct and base wants.
• Doors know what is behind them and who uses them.

Spell Collapse

R: direct line of sight; T: spellcaster; D: reaction

The target caster must make a Concentration check at -[dice], or their spell collapses. In that case, roll d6:

1. Normal spell effect inflicted on target caster.
2. Half spell effect inflicted on target caster.
3. Half spell effect inflicted on you.
4. Half spell effect inflicted on random target.
5. Half spell effect inflicted on original target.
6. Spell works in an unexpected way. GM tells you how.

Adapted from the metamancer.

Unseen Orchestra

D: concentration

You are surrounded by instrumental music, as a single musician at 1 [die] and a full orchestra at 4 [dice]. It can play any song you have heard before, but cannot duplicate speech. The effect can either follow you, or stay anchored to the spot where it was cast.

Adapted from the elf wizard.

 

Svirfneblin butler by edubenavente

  

Gnomeblight is a poison developed by Svirfneblin and used profusely against their red-capped brethren during the war. It causes mild gastrointestinal inconvenience when ingested by most species, but rapid necrosis on touch to gnomes - they must Save vs Death; on success they "merely" take 2d6 Con damage. The formula is a tightly guarded state secret of the gnomish dictatorship.

The Three Tombs of Words

There are three Great Books, artifacts of prodigious power that are hidden and protected in three corners of the world. Each one is capable of changing the world.

 

Book of Void by AppleSin

  

The Book of Names

The book contains the three names of every being that lives, lived and will live.

• Given name is the first name that a creature was ever granted or referred to with. It holds a mystical significance in many rituals. Especially magic users are careful to keep their given name a secret, while devils and the Folk will gleefully buy them.
• Taken names are any names, nicknames or titles that a creature is/has/will use, no matter how obscure.
• True name is the cornerstone of one's identity, the true self. Mastering one's true name unlocks great power, but if anyone else finds one's true name, they gain power over them.

Not only can the Book be used to learn the names of any being, it can also be used to erase names. When a given or taken name is erased, it fades from the memories of the whole world. All deeds and misdeeds will be forgotten. But when a true name is erased, that person's identity will fade. They will, slowly and torturously, become a Blank, a being without history, purpose or fate. An unperson.

The Book is located in a great underground library in the Steel Mountains. A lost dwarven dynasty had dug deep halls into the mountains and filled them with endless knowledge in the form of books and scrolls and tablets from all over the world. The dwarves have mostly disappeared, but the scholars they invited to their library remain. And deep within the library, hundreds of floors below where any normal scholar dares to delve, where the books cease and only endless wards and traps and guardian golems are present, is a vault of curse-rock holding the Book of Names.

The Book of Years

The book contains the whole of the past, the present and the future of the world. It can all be changed. A change in the future becomes a prophecy, a fixed point in time that will come to pass. But changing the present or the past is more complicated. The minds of people are rarely completely changed, and many historical events have a lot of inertia, so things will happen similarly anyway. But if the change is large enough, a bit of the world might change without the rest of the world following suit, resulting in paradoxes like ancient civilisations who were always there but no one remembers, or an event that everyone remembers but there are no physical signs of it, or people who have no parents, etc.

The book is found in a small shrine in a beautiful oasis deep within Utabi, the Red Desert. A magic circle around the oasis displaces it to infinity, making any journey to the oasis impossible.

The Book of Laws

The book contains all the Laws of the universe, physical and metaphysical. Rewriting it can fundamentally change the world, or destroy it with a single stroke of a quill.

The book is said to be protected by a whole pantheon of forgotten gods somewhere in the sunken continent of Kal Cher. Maybe.

 

How do you actually use these books in your game? You don't, or at least not the whole books, unless you wish to destroy the setting. But a single page, somehow stolen and lost?

d6 Book Hooks

1. The old king is dead and his heir is about to be crowned. The heir is the last one of the dynasty, the only royal remaining in the country... Wait, but what about all the cities that had been ruled by... nobody for years? And the statues that depict people no one remembers? And who is this guy in lavish clothes, begging you to help him, because he doesn't know who he is and why does he have this signet ring?
2. A single page from the Book of Names is available at the next Black Auction. It contains true names of the four most powerful gods of this continent, among others.
3. The Loyalists have been running the kingdom ever since the unsuccessful uprising. The Rebels have fought failed to ensure prosperity for all, but there is still a long way to go before the rightful powers could even begin to be threatened by the Rebel scum.
4. A rumour about a "scroll of prophecy", in fact a page from the Book of Years, sends every faction into a deadly race to find it first and write their own bright future.
5. A lich is looking for a scrap of paper that apparently contains one clause of the Laws of Magic. She wants to change them to suit her whims.
6. A benefactor of the party has fallen into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that claim that a Law has been recently rewritten and reality was changed. Why? By whom? And while some of the conspirators want to change everything back as it was before, a growing portion of them want to keep the changed Law...

The Many Schools of Magic

The Manse has recently published a very nice rant on categorisation of magic where they discuss several approaches to the classification of spells and derive their own schools of magic, a neat and clean system of seven traditions with a rigorous naming convention. But there's a fallacy in this approach, I venture. It's tempting to create a well-defined, all-encompassing set of categories and just use them for everything. I will freely admit to doing just that many a time. But real-world systems are rarely if ever neat. There's always something off, missing or superfluous. New findings undoing the symmetry of old theories, things that do not fit into known patterns, weird edge cases that could go either way, someone who made a mistake a century ago and now it would be too costly to fix it. Classification is a human invention and humans are imperfect.

If the classification of magic is to be used in-universe, I think a different approach is needed. Embrace this imperfection, build on it. Explain it, so that it stops being an irritant and becomes a piece of lore.

Also, why should there be only a single classification?

  

The Imperial Collegium recognises eight schools of magic:

1. Abjuration
2. Conjuration
3. Divination
4. Enchantment
5. Evocation
6. Illusion
7. Restoration
8. Transmutation

Restoration is a very recent addition, founded and still led by Archmage Hasenbach, whose groundbreaking research into positive energy allowed any mage to wield the healing arts that a generation ago would be the sole purview of the divine. Any naysayers who point out that white magic is quite common outside of the Imperium are usually booed out by Hasenbach's near-fanatical followers.

Necromancy used to be a recognised school for centuries, but also illegal for most of the time. After decades of academic misuse, where every spell deemed inappropriate would be labelled as necromantic, and after increasingly pointed inquiries from the Inquisition about why exactly does the Collegium keep a library wing dedicated to illegal magic, Necromancy was officially struck from the Rolls of Magic in the year 769 of the Three United.

One might also wonder about Enchantment and Illusion, the two odd schools out. There used to be a single school of Prestidigitation, but a falling-out between two archmages about three centuries ago led to a schism that created two new, closely related yet highly quarrelsome schools. It is a public secret that whether a spell is an enchantment or an illusion depends entirely on who publishes the paper first.

Foreigners are sometimes confused that the school of Enchantment works with mind-trickery rather than creation of enchanted items. Well, there used to be a school of Imbrication dedicated to crafting enchanted items, but it was officially disbanded in the wake of the Dwarven Trade War.

In Nymbia, magic is colour-coded:

• White Wizards are the only sanctioned practitioners. They deal in healing, protection and exorcism. Some tower-cabals can get quite militant about their exorcisms, training squads of professional undead hunters, though this get rarer the further one gets away from the Dead Lands.
• Grey Wizards are a wide assortment of hedge practitioners who hold very disparate secrets, from wood-singing and fate-reading to teleportation and unmaking. They are not allowed to own a tower, so a grey practice rarely has more than a single master and one or two apprentices.
• Black Wizards are practitioners of the dark arts, which is a nebulous set of practices that include necromancers and biomancers, but also telepaths, mindcrafters and most alchemists. They are outlawed everywhere but in Alema.
• "Red Wizards", or rather Pyromancers, as they actually call themselves, are foreign to Nymbia, coming from the Great Swamp. Their magic is very limited and narrow in scope, but all the more powerful for it. So powerful in fact, that the authorities have not yet found a response to their increasingly common depredations. Hence also the reason why Black Wizards are now allowed to settle and openly practice in Alema, whose countryside suffers the most from the flame-makers' raids.

An island nation of Sik has an alternate colour scheme to their practitioners:

• White Mages are healers, just as in Nymbia, but much less belligerent. They are widely recognised as the best surgeons on the continent, capable of cutting away ills of the body and the mind alike.
• Blue Mages study weather control and ship magic. They can be quite potent war-casters, but their primary focus is binding the powers of the ocean and its storms for use in transportation and agriculture.
• Silver Mages are spellwrights who specialise in charms - a type of talisman - and wards. While charms against insects, snakebite or the cold, glamour-charms to allure and impress, or any kind of dowsing-charm are sought-after export goods, the much more powerful wardstones that can protect a whole village from locusts or pirates are never sold outside of Sik.

The Mage Guild of Thorlan considers every spell to be an aspect of the four Great Elemental Dragons:

• Air also covers everything related to swiftness, movement and communication.
• Earth also deals with the Dead, as the Old Stone Serpent holds dominion over the dearly departed in Thorlan. Earth sages traditionally handle matters of inheritance and murder investigations.
• Fire also deals with destruction, counter-spells, curses and high emotions.
• Water also deals with knowledge, illusions, cleansing and low emotions.

Wizard as a Strategic Resource

In another installation of ramblings about unplaytested magic systems cribbed from books I read so long ago I only half-remember a few bits, what if spells were a long-term, strategic resource?

In Markus Heitz's The Dwarves series, magi are very powerful. High level D&D wizard powerful, even, which most writers tend to avoid for the understandable reason that it breaks many stories apart. The magi can fly, blow up a building with a single gesture, spam teleportation spells, or heal from anything not instantly lethal. However, all that comes with one big caveat: They have limited reserves of magical energy that can only be refilled at a magical wellspring, of which there are like six in all the kingdoms where the books take place.

What if instead of the tactical refill-on-sleep magic, wizards had a strategic refill-in-town magic?

This approach assumes that resource management is a part of your intended gameplay. It only works well if the dungeon is not easily/quickly accessible from the town, so the party needs to spend another resource (time, food) to refill their magic, otherwise you are only buffing the wizard. But when it works as intended, the five minute adventuring day is gone. The party can no longer start every fight with all spells refreshed by sleeping in a rope-tricked pocket dimension all the time.

Many systems can easily be converted to strategic magic by giving the magic-users more spell slots / mana / MD. Caster level still limits the highest spell slot / the amount of mana a wizard can use in a single spell. This makes wizards more powerful as long as they can regain magic, so make sure that ley lines are not ubiquitous - which brings us to the interesting domain-level considerations that all magic-users must now deal with: Ley lines are a limited, extremely precious resource that everyone wants to control.

Generated with Bing Image Creator:
"sorcerer drawing power from a ley line,
clean old-school lineart for swords and sorcery"

 

All wizard towers are built atop a ley line, capping it and concentrating the energy flow into a specific room, a sanctum, thus limiting who has access to the mana. A wizard's tower is his most prized possession and will be filled to the brim with wards, traps and protective enchantments. A wizard's tower is a fortress to make other wizards flinch. A wizard in his tower is basically unassailable, and not only because he will never run out of spells.

A rare and difficult ritual exists that allows one to link a wizard tower to a ring of power. Who wears such a ring can draw mana through it as if they were always within reach of a ley line. Battling an archmage who has such a ring would thus entail damaging their tower first to disrupt their supply of magic. Stealing such a ring is a big deal and will see the thief hunted down tirelessly, as breaking the bond between the ring and the tower to re-link a new ring would require destroying the tower completely, foundations included.

An easier way to gain some extra mana exists - store it in a gemstone. That's not even a spell - all mages can push mana from themselves into a gem, or draw it back. Thus it is often the job of apprentices to prepare spell gems for their master.

While larger gems can contain more magic power, only flawless gemstones should be made into a spell gem at all. While you definitely can imbue an imperfect gemstone with power, this will sooner or later result in a blast of wild magic.

Spell gems are very expensive and very much sought after. Every wizard wants one, but just as with towers, there are never enough. Even some nobles with no magical talent will hoard them, as the magic held within gives spell gems a strange, unearthly twinkle unseen in any other jewel, plus they can be used to bribe a wizard in a pinch.

Spell gems are usually worn set into a ring (only the most pretentious of wizardling upstarts would call that a "ring of power", everyone knows what a real ring of power is), a circlet or at the tip of one's staff. A master granting such jewelry to an apprentice is seen as one of the highest of praises one can receive.

Most ley lines in the civilized lands have been taken over, either by powerful mages or by the Mage Guild. A solitary sorceress will allow friends and apprentices into her sanctum, but strangers will nigh-definitely be met with refusal (and it's not a good idea to oppose a sorceress in her tower). The Mage Guild offers their ley lines to all members - for a fee. Becoming and staying a member incurs other fees. Therefore a PC wizard with no mentor will have a nice money sink in simply restoring mana.

There are still some free ley lines in places where seizing them would be too much of a hassle - underwater, deep in wilderness or underground, in sacred groves and other holy places of yore. There might also be very weak ley lines that escaped the notice of the Mage Guild either by pure chance, or thanks to some secret sect or cult veiling it from detection. The Mage Guild would pay rather nicely for information about even the weakest ley lines. They have a monopoly to maintain, after all.

Illegal mages have a hard time. Either they are very good at pretending to be law-abiding magic-users, or they belong to a secret sect with their own ley line, or they need an alternative source of mana. Thus there is a blooming black market in spell gems and power smuggling (legal mage selling their mana to illegal mages), while even possessing power-draining spells is a felony.

Languages of the Amir Steppes

Here is a conversion of the standard D&D languages to the world of Althan, or more specifically the Amir Steppes in West Althan.

In addition, a new house rule is in effect: You may take an expertise in language, just as you can in any other proficiency. See the expert effects in the table below. Also the Linguist feat now lets you pick an expertise in one language you know.

Any effects that require a saving throw have a

DC = 8 + double proficiency bonus + Charisma modifier

 

d20	Language		Expert Effect	D&D Equivalent
1	Low Imperial	Various dialects of Old Imperial, spread throughout the fallen Aunian Empire. All mutually intelligible, though with many funny accents.	You can speak High Imperial with no accent. High Imperial is the language of imperial nobility, so people will generally assume that you are either a scholar or a noble.	Common
2	Nymbian	Language used in Nymbia, a great southern empire beyond the Trollish Mountains, and also by the southern barbarian tribes.
3	Taalish	Language used in the Thirty-Three Kingdoms.
4	Khazum	Old dwarven language once used in Khelek Dur, the dwarven realm beneath the Trollish Mountains, and now used by the dwarven clans who fled when Khelek Dur was destroyed. Useful as very few non-dwarves can understand it.		Dwarfish
5	Kanish	Language of the ashen elves from the triplet city of Kani. Related to Substratal.		Elvish
6	Trollish	Language used in Trollamor, the city of trolls. Related to the Dark Speech.		Giant
7	Pflecian	Language used in Pflec, the gnomish dictatorship. Related to the Dark Speech.		Gnomish
8	Skurut Tongues	The many dialects of various goblin tribes, all at least a little bit mutually intelligible. They often incorporate various body sounds.	Gain scent. You also become a little more ugly and green, slowly starting to turn into a goblin.	Goblin
9	Hinnish	Language of Hins, the tiny savages from the Hin Highlands.		Halfling
10	Ugrathish	Language of Ugrathi, the nomadic orcish clans who travel far and wide in their caravan wagons, wheeling and dealing.		Orcish
Rare Languages
11	Golden Gospeltongue	Language of clergy of the Triune Divinity. Said to be also used by the Empyreal Host of the High Heaven.	You can detect lies told in Gospeltongue. No save from the liar, but there must be intention behind the lie.	Celestial
12	Draconic	Also used by the dragonborn races and many sorcerers.	If you know the True Name of a dragon and call it in Draconic, they will always hear you, no matter where they might be. Their reactions may vary.	Draconic
13	Druidic	A secret language, forbidden to the uninitiated.	Animals understand your pleas or demands perfectly, even if you do not understand their replies.	Druidic
14	Dark Speech	Language of the Dark Ones, dead since they exterminated themselves in endless civil wars.	You can speak ancient words of command that still hold sway over the many races created by the Dark Ones. All creatures of such races* in earshot must make a Wisdom Save, or they must choose one of a) kneel immediately (as Prone), or b) cower in fear for [Charisma bonus, min 1] rounds (as Frightened). You may use this ability again after a short rest.	Deep Speech
15	Hereafter Speech	Language used by psychopomps, demons and the dead.	Any demon, undead or psychopomp must answer you one question thruthfully. Mindless undead get no save. Every creature can be affected only once.	Abyssal, Infernal
16	Djinnish	Language of the Elemental Lords. (Not an otherworldly power, they live around Lake Siva to the east and waged a long war against the Aunian Empire.)	The elements understand and try to help you. When you speak Djinnish, wind will blow when you command, fires will dim when you are whispering, earth will shake when you laugh and water will flow according to you will.	Primordial
17	Fey Speech	Language of the fickle Folk.	You can speak in endless riddles and allegories. Only the people you designate (who must know Fey Speech) will understand the true meaning of your speech.	Sylvan
18	Substratal	Dialects used in the various settlements around the Sunless Sea. Contains a lot of clicking sounds.	You can very, very poorly echolocate by clicking your tongue. Handy in the dark.	Undercommon
19	Thieves' Cant	A combination of code words, hand signs and markings used for covert communication. Originally developed by the Insurgency when they were fighting the Dark Ones, but later adopted by thieves all over the Amir Steppes.	You can sign with a single hand at the speed of normal speech. You can place marks that only you will find.	Thieves' Cant
20	Lip Reading	Works for any language you are proficient in.	You can lip-read even in languages you don't know. You will not understand the words, but can perfectly replicate the sounds for someone who does know that language.

*) Dark Ones specialized in biomancy and necromancy, leaving behind many half-human, half-animal races and hybrid monsters.

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 10: Domestication

Riftborn buffalo

• Riftborn buffalos migrate between alternate realities in search of new pastures. Their herds number in the tens of thousands, thus requiring frequent relocations. A stampede of such a herd can shatter the local reality, opening a temporary portal to the next dimension over. In a year, they will have come a full circle through a hundred different dimensions.
• The rifts close within several hours, but that leaves enough time for brave explorers to gather samples from another dimension. A smart researcher will hire a band of adventurers to get them safely through the rift and back again before it closes. A stupid researcher will surely be in need of rescuing for a fat reward.
• Riftborn buffalo dung is dried and then burned as the cheapest form of teleportation interference. Research implies that this property of the dung ensures that the herd doesn't backtrack and that the rifts destabilize and close on their own, covering the herd's backs against predators. It also means that royal chambers or treasury smelling of burnt buffalo dung is a rather common occurrence.
• There is no grazing land in the windswept wastes of N'gzul, but the herd must cross through to get to the lush plains of Shadarkeem. N'gzul hunters wait for the day when the sky starts to rumble and crack, and then kill many of the buffalos, providing a midwinter feast for their tribes. If the herd got delayed or diverted to another dimension, the tribes might not all survive till spring.
• A lost, lonesome buffalo cannot hope to pierce reality at will, but it still has a way to find its way back to the herd. The buffalos can sniff out places of weakened reality and then attempt to crash through there, even on their own. Sometimes, people will capture a riftborn buffalo for this very reason, releasing it when they need to find a way between planes, or detect a weak point where an incursion might be waiting to happen.
• An elderly or injured buffalo will spend its last strength to perform a dying plane shift to a dimension not normally visited by the herd. The so-called Buffalo Graveyard, a dead world with pitch black skies and mountains of buffalo bones. The bones are a prized alchemical ingredient, but that is not the main draw and concern here. When the herd is attacked, a wounded buffalo will sometimes carry out a suicide bullrush to drag an attacker with them to the Graveyard. Who or what might have ended up in this lost place?

QHW, Day 3: Children

1. There is a land where no children are born. In this land, there is a river and every few days, a newborn baby floats down its stream in a woven basket. The midwives catch the baskets and distribute the babies among the villages.

This river emerges from a deep cave in a great cliff, the Birthing Cave. What lies hidden inside?

2. An archmage once tried to resurrect a whole civilization by bringing back their dead. He succeeded, in a way.

The dead are indeed rising, in their old, decrepit bodies but with the blank souls of newborns. Then they start ageing - at normal rate but backwards! The helpless senior citizens are raised and educated by the middle aged. The twenty-something hold all the high positions, already experienced and physically in their prime. The ruling class is made up of the respected and wise teenagers, while those who keep their faculties into the baby years are often world-renown sages in their field.

3. Human babies are delivered by a stork. That is a fact. Humans are born from eggs in a stork nest. Where do young storks come from, then?

You see, when a human dies and is buried, a tree sprouts from their corpse. In time, this tree bears fruit, and many a woodland animal comes to feast on these sweet, fragrant fruits. Once sated, the animals are overcome by a strong compulsion to gather in one place and huddle tightly together. They then vomit up a strange bluish substance that hardens over their bodies, forming a chrysalis. After a few days, a small mustering of storks will hatch from this chrysalis.

And the cycle is complete.

QHW, Day 2: Beggars

Ah, the beggar-dead. Those unmourned souls and unburied skeletons.

They are immortal. They are ever-present. They are so feeble that even a child could beat them up.

They hide in the shadows and back alleys. They swarm the gates of graveyards and temples.

They want your mourning, your sorrow, your tears.

"Please sir, I died alone and nobody cared."

"Just a tear, ma'am, please! My children never loved me."

"I beg you, milord, show mercy! I was murdered by my wife and left in a ditch. Please, help me move on."

Don't. You help one and a thousand more will swarm you. You could cry yourself dry and they would still keep coming.

Just ignore them or notify the Busters' Guild.

QHW, Day 1: Weapons

All weapons are magic.

Anything used as a weapon is imbued with magic by that very act. The more violence and death a weapon brings, the more powerful it grows. Once it grows powerful enough, it develops a consciousness.

It is said that a weapon that was only ever wielded in a righteous fight will gain a righteous soul, one that was used by a sellsword will gain a greedy, merciless soul, but one that squandered an innocent life in vain will have a ravenous, diabolical soul.

Do not ever fight unarmed, for then you are the weapon. True, angels might be a proof that one can keep fighting the good fight, but there are so many more monsters and demons who were once all men.

Regional Trouble

Maybe your PCs have been all around the neighbourhood and it's time to spice things up a little. Or maybe you're looking for a way to seed your world with brewing conflicts and problems to be solved.

Either roll on the table when needed, or drop a bunch of d20s on your world map. Where they landed, that trouble starts brewing. Or it might not come about just yet, but there are omens and portents aplenty.
 

From here.

 

d20 Natural Disasters and Man-Made Messes

1. Drought: Start tracking water skins, as in a desert. If not resolved soon, will lead to famine. Water levels might be so low that river trade is crippled. Can the PCs persuade a local god or a coven of witches to bring back rain?
2. Famine: Might be caused by drought, locust swarms, blight... Cost of food soars, taverns are closed. Bandits everywhere, but they want your rations, not gold. Services and goods can be cheaply bought with a meal, but not with money. Have you heard that you can buy food cheaply and in bulk just over this dangerous (d4) forest/desert/swamp/mountain range? We shall reward you handsomely if you can bring back enough for the town.
   
3. Flood/Tsunami: Water everywhere, houses and crops are ruined, survivors are gathering in tent towns up on hills. A boat is a must, aquatic monsters are now a common encounter. A local wizard tower or fortress might be compromised; an ideal time for a heist!
4. Sinkhole: A megadungeon or a part of the Underdark has partially caved in. Lots of unusual riches are suddenly up for grabs, but also lots of unsettling threats are set free.
5. Earthquake: Houses collapse and ground breaks up. Might result in a sinkhole or a flood. On the plus side, whatever was the most secure, most impregnable building in town is now sporting large cracks in its walls and many of its guards have been injured or killed. What was it guarding?
   
6. Wildfire: How did it start? Can the PCs evacuate the town in time, or divert the fire? And where will all the druids and witches and trolls go when their home is reduced to ashes?
7. Volcanic eruption: Thankfully you were far enough to avoid the blast of overheated ash, but there is something wrong with this eruption. It's (d4) a greater demon starting to break free of its prison after a thousand years/an army of fire elementals there to take our forests because their nation is starving/an ascension of a lesser volcanic goddess, she has so much more planned now that she can/a female dragon in labour, her newly laid and extremely valuable eggs will now be safely resting somewhere deep in the volcanic caves.
8. Tornado/Hurricane: This one is probably better as an imminent threat. Can you get to safety before the wind drops a hut on your head or sweeps you away to Kansas? Afterwards, many structures will need to be rebuilt. Maybe the PCs can lend a hand and leave their touch on the town?
   
9. Blizzard: The winter this year is colder and darker and longer than any other you remember. Wild animals are starving and coming closer and closer to the town. The roads are nearly impassable, who will brave the blizzard to bring food and medicine?
10. Meteor: Whatever the most imposing or important structure nearby was, it has been hit by a shooting star. Some people say it's the star-gods coming for their chosen, some that it's an invasion. Others just see a huge chunk of starmetal up for grabs.
11. Plague: Bring out your dead! Make it some really weird, magical disease, as that would probably be more fun to play than 2020: The Campaign.
12. Terrorist attacks: Someone is blowing stuff up, or releasing wights in the streets, or laced the water supplies with potions. People are afraid. Martial law might have been declared. Is a cult involved? Or mind control? Lots of opportunities for investigating or bodyguarding.
13. Witch hunt: The Church is out for blood and any magic-user might be at risk. People are disappearing in the middle of the night and the stakes are already built. Black market in magic blooms. Wizards will offer their services cheaply or for free, if you can just hide them. What triggered this, anyway? And how to stop it before the resident archmage notices and goes to war against the Church?
14. War: There's always a war on. Except now, it has reached right here. If the PCs are in a town, it is now under siege and they cannot leave. There might be a forceful draft, a spy scare, or a supply shortage that could be solved by someone sneaking out through the old tunnels. If the PCs are out of town, the villages are looted or burned, enemy forces patrol the roads, and if they don't shoot you on sight, they would pay handsomely for information about city defenses.
15. Crusade/Jihad: Equally likely to be two different religions or two factions of the same religion, but the other side is clearly heretical. Otherwise treat this as a combination of a war and a witch hunt against clerics. Are the PCs religious?
16. Coup d'état: The king's twin brother has emerged with a claim to the throne! Or the ancient elven conspiracy has finally decided it's time they start ruling over the lesser races in the open! In any case, powerful factions are moving against each other and they need allies. Old allegiances are doubted and new ones sworn. There's a great opportunity to quickly rise to wealth and power, if you can pick the right side.
17. Civil unrest: The hoi polloi have had enough of the upper classes. There are mobs and looting in the streets. Nobles and the rich are either driven out of town, or outright lynched. Maybe you can use all this chaos as a distraction for your misdeeds. Maybe you can be richly rewarded for helping a noble protect their property, and/or escape with their life. Maybe you can find a way to stir this up into a full-on revolution, because why not?
    
18. Criminality: The Thief Guild has collapsed; or the most powerful crime lord is old or dead; or there is a new player in town who wants in on the illicit trades and is ready to spill blood over it. One way or another, this is going to be a big old mess.
19. Monsters: The monsters are coming out of the dark woods and deep caves, towards the town. The military is overextended, the roads are unsafe and the villagers scared. Lots of monster-hunting and escort contracts. But why have the monsters left their cosy lairs? Are they running away from something worse?
20. Roll on the Weird Troubles table below.

 

 
d6 Weird Troubles

1. Behemoth: It is huge. It is coming from the (d4) sea/mountains/wilderness/underground. It is not openly hostile yet, but its path will lead it directly through the town in just a few days.
2. Necromantic outbreak: Corpses rise mere minutes after death. Ghosts appear even in daylight. The graveyards are crawling with all kinds of things that should be dead. Is there a metaphysical imbalance to be righted? Is someone doing it intentionally? Does this herald something else?
3. Eternal night: The Sun has set one day and then didn't rise in the morning. Mass hysteria. Doomsday cults get an influx of members. Is this a localized event?
4. Thaumic fallout: It's raining random animals, houses are gaining extra rooms and body horror is ubiquitous. If there was no overt magical incident, then (d4) the ley lines are going haywire/there is a covert wizarding war/the government is experimenting on us/something is coming.
5. Alchemical spill: A massive amount of toxic and mutagenic waste has leaked into the environment. Clean water is at premium. The sewers are crawling with mutant crocodiles and worse. There's noxious fog and acid rain. The public at large wants some answers. Who is responsible?
6. Portal: A massive rift to another dimension has opened. If it's full of hostiles and dangers, that's bad. If not, that's still bad, because now everybody will call dibs on the new land and resources. Things will be busy around here.
   

All Wizards Are Warlocks

No human can just learn to manipulate magic.

The so-called wizards who brag and drone on about their long years of careful study that granted them supernatural powers simply don't want to acknowledge the obvious: You cannot build a tower without the foundations. You cannot make a cow fly without some serious help. Indeed, humans can use magic - but only with help, if they are given the Gift by a spirit of some sort.

A patron, if you will.

Thus every magic user must follow a certain pact that grants them access to their preternatural powers, though the exact nature of such pact and the price they pay differs wildly between practitioners. While there are no hard and fast rules for sorting magicians into neat and clear-cut categories, at least some of the most common kinds of magic users and their approaches to magic and the spirit world are discussed below.
 

"Wait! I can go up to ten babies, but not a single one more."

 
Sorcerers would be the exception that proves the rule, as they do have an inherent gift of magic that they can train and hone on their own - except they are not human, not fully. Their pact is one of blood and bloodline, their patron the non-human ancestor who set their whole family apart from the rest of the human race.

Sorcery tends to have a very narrow focus - a dragon may sire a lineage of pyromancers, a fairy a line of illusionists - and departing from one's hereditary, traditional craft is basically impossible. Indeed, sorcerous families oftentimes gravitate towards a strong sense of tradition, elitism and purity of blood, stoked by the fear of loosing that which makes them special. As their bloodline gets diluted over generations, the sorcerous spark grows ever weaker and their gift of magic eventually fades away. This unfortunately drives many sorcerers to search for ways of preserving the power of their family. Affairs with non-humans and incestuous relationships are regrettably common among sorcerers. And while this does keep the magic in the family, it also sets the sorcerers ever further apart from true humanity, with each new inbred generation being more powerful, more mutated and more insane, until at one point, it's no longer possible to consider them human magicians any more, but rather magic beings in their own right.

Such creatures are then quite likely to find a human spouse for themselves, and the cycle starts anew.

Mediums pay for magic with their bodies. In exchange for power, they offer agency to any spirit who desires a more physical presence in Reality. In short, they willingly let themselves be possessed.

This form of the Craft is probably the easiest to start with - a spirit who would enjoy a ride in a living body can be found pretty much everywhere and all a prospective medium has to do is keep an open mind as say "Yes" - but doing it in a safe and useful manner is very hard. After all, you are opening your Self to a magical being and the only way to gain more power is to let more powerful spirits in. As the saying goes, there are no bad mediums, only dead mediums.

The good ones, though, eventually end up either bonding with a single spirit and gaining a great, focused power through the breadth and depth of their connection; or amassing a host of multiple spirits for short-term possessions, each a different tool in their toolbox. The former run a high risk of eventually merging with their possessing spirit and shedding their humanity as a newborn magical beast. The latter should take care to play all of their spirits off against each other, lest the spirits grow discontent with their limited access to the medium's body and unite their forces, resulting in an involuntary possession by the whole host of spirits, banishment of the medium's soul and the birth of a creature known as the wisp-lord.

Priests are quite obviously serving a higher power, a distant deity that deigns to answer some of their pleas for help in exchange for regular prayers and rites. Never forget, though, that there's really not that much of a difference between a cleric of the Lord of Light and a cultist of He-Who-Lurks-In-Corners - both are trying to catch the attention of a being that could squash a city without even meaning to, and that doesn't really listen to, care about or understand its worshippers. Priestly magic is very powerful, but unreliable and prone to missing the point or being helpful only in mysterious, alien ways.

Evangelists are often seen as priests with another name, but that's plain wrong. Evangelists don't work with the gods, they work with angels. And where priests might be fine with going through the motions of reverence with no true faith or zeal behind it - they are so deep beneath the notice of their patrons that all but the most egregious sins and mistakes are overlooked - evangelists have to always stay true in their ardour.

Indeed, angels tend to take a great interest in evangelists, keeping them an unseen company at all times, helping and guarding them, but never forgiving. Angels are spirits of holy war and vengeance. Angels are razor focused on battling evil in all forms and shapes, enabling a lone evangelist to repel an army of the dead or go toe to toe with a greater demon, until they misstep and get smote on the spot.

Diabolists are the archetypal warlocks. They made a pact for power or knowledge, pledging their services or selling some bits and bobs of themselves to a patron who has need of what the warlock offers and can provide magic in exchange. The name "diabolist" is misleading, as they didn't necessarily have to make a deal with the devil - they could have made a deal with any number of other otherworldly entities - yet the principal difference from other magicians is that a diabolist's power is strictly contractual, its limits and conditions clearly stipulated. The magic of diabolists is the most reliable of all the forms of practice, as long as they are able and willing to keep their side of the bargain.

Druids cater either to the many small nature spirits that infuse every tree and spring and herd of animals, or to the great spirits of nature who oversee whole forests, mountains or islands. They build up favour with a location until the very wind and ground and undergrowth likes them and tries to help them and fulfil their every wish. They hold great sway while in their place of power, but they are also greatly limited should they leave. While the spiritual word of mouth may allow them to draw upon some of the favour they amassed even elsewhere, the spirits of nature are jealous, fickle and territorial - if the druid is gone for too long from their demesne, they may return to find that the place has forgotten them, or even worse, faults them for leaving.

Shamans work with lesser spirits too, but where druids build their relationship with all spirits in a location, shamans try to win the affections of specific spirits - ancestral and heroic ghosts, petty gods, minor demons or Folk, anything goes. All their magic is very much quid pro quo, and the nature of favours they may draw upon depends on the kind of spirits they commune with. They are the socialites of magic users, they have connections, they know a guy who knows a guy. They also have to juggle their spirit friendships very carefully, as trying to woo two feuding spirits could result in some bad blood very easily and getting bad-mouthed by an angry spirit might seriously threaten their Craft.

Elementalists, necromancers and demonologists are all proud to differentiate themselves from one another, but they are all in fact just specialized summoners. They are not even that different from shamans, except that a shaman has a long-standing relationship with their spirits, whereas a (whichever) summoner calls upon any random spirit of their chosen type, offering it a payment for one specific task. Take it or leave it, we don't need to see each other again once the job is done.

An elementalist doesn't throw a fireball, she feeds some delicious bat guano to a fire elemental and it makes an explosion for her. A necromancer doesn't animate the dead, he offers to return corporeality back to the dead in exchange for servitude. And a demonologist exchanges souls for services.

Magi are sometimes disparagingly called the dabblers or wandslingers, or with less prejudice the collectors. They didn't make a pact or build up favour - they found a stick and learned how to activate it.

Of course, that is an exaggeration. A magus is often a determined individual who sacrificed a lot to win their wand or spell-blade or another artifact. Their magic is simple and strong and stable, but also set in stone - there is no flexibility, no growth. Once they learn to use their artifact, that's all they will ever be able to do unless they hunt down another artifact. Plus they are the only type of magician whose magic can easily be stolen. Easy come, easy go, as they say.

Alchemists are the strangest bunch - they force magic to happen. Other magicians occasionally fabricate magic items, but alchemists specialize in it. They create spirit-lures in the form of tasty potions, interesting scribblings on scrolls, or strange alloys of metals forged into rings; then they bind the spirits they entice, with the only way out of the binding being to perform as requested. They can trap nearly any magical being and when they negotiate, it's always from the position of power. They are masters of magic runes and circles and sigils. They build golems, craft enchanted arms and armour, even transmogrify living creatures with biomantic surgery-seals. With the right formula, they can make nearly any magic happen. The greatest of them take years to reshape the landscape into geomantic bindings that enslave gods.

They are also universally hated by the spirits. They have to be very meticulous and methodical, because if they make the tiniest mistake, all hell breaks loose.

Goblin kings, or filthomancers, are the living proof that even awful things can be useful. It is a common knowledge that goblinism is contagious. It is not a normal disease, though, but rather a spiritual one. A wild disease-spirit that can nonetheless be tamed with gifts and drawn on for magic.

Everything a goblin can do, a goblin king can do better - creating a variety of noxious and toxic odours, slipping anywhere unnoticed, smelling out everything from what you had for lunch to hidden treasure or emotions, surviving nearly anything by becoming more disfigured and disgusting, getting bigger and stronger and tougher by eating a lot, making others suffer. And with the favour of the goblin-spirit, the "friendship" of goblins comes hand in hand. A prospective goblin queen will soon find herself with a cohort of goblins that follow her everywhere (especially where she doesn't want them to follow) and kind-of help with everything (but mainly make a big mess) - thus also the title of a queen or king.

Importantly though, goblin kings are prime carriers of goblinism. Everything they touch and anyone they interact with will be at least a little bit tainted - a little bit under their control. They don't need to build a trapped mansion for themselves - any building they live in will eventually become an ugly, filthy goblin-shack, full of nasty and dangerous surprises for trespassers. They have no need for magic weapons - any knife they use for a while will become a serrated, rusty, poisonous, deadly goblin-shank. If you're willing to debase yourself enough, goblin magic can be disgustingly useful and treacherously versatile.
 

For the low price of your sanity...
From Magic the Gathering

 
And what about the wizards? Those who would be bloody insulted if you called them a warlock, insulted enough to singe your eyebrows off with a lightning bolt, even? Those who are always accompanied by their familiar, a spiritual guide and helper and friend? A familiar that they made a pact with, a pact for power or knowledge?

Yeah...

Black Moon of Vanth

Eons ago, a miniature black hole emerged in near vicinity of Vanth. Today, no one can recall whether it was a natural quantum coincidence, a failed experiment of stupendous science, or an equally failed deployment of a planet-busting superweapon, but the black hole caused a series of cataclysms on the surface of Vanth before being contained in a powerful antigravity field by a cabal of scientists, gods, sorcerers and a time traveller. Since then, it had settled into a stable orbit, causing only a periodic visual distortion of the night sky well-known to all vanthian stargazers.
 

Black Moon rising above the North Mountains.
From here.

While the Black Moon doesn't have a true surface, there is one structure built atop of it. The Black Tower started as a simple space station housing the magical and technological apparatus necessary for maintaining the antigravity field, but has been repeatedly expanded and upgraded until its current incarnation. First, it was just the addition of new barracks for a garrison of defenders, should someone try to seize control of the antigravity field for nefarious purposes. Then a new technology stolen acquired from a crashed alien starship allowed for a mineshaft to be drilled through the event horizon of the black hole, and an explosive growth of the station begun soon after the first chunks of the extremely valuable black hole metal ore were extracted.

The station was further fortified as attacks of both space pirates and covetous civilizations grew in frequency and ferocity, until after a century of power struggles and interplanetary wars, a group of no-name psi knights calling themselves the Blackstar Order blind-sided everyone and took over the Black Tower. This Order eventually gained system-wide recognition and acknowledgement, after they withstood the onslaught of many enemies and entrenched themselves into the economy by virtue of their monopoly on black hole metal production.

While the Blackstar Order runs its black hole metal mining operation to this day, its primary interests have slowly shifted more towards politics. The crenellated duralloy bulwarks of the Black Tower no longer have to defy endless would-be conquerors, rather they serve as a secure neutral meeting ground for world leaders, gods and alien ambassadors. Or at least they served, until the recent failure of the Galactic Beacon. With interstellar travel, trade and communications suddenly severed, the Order faces an unexpected end to their routine power plays. However, with their accumulated wealth, an army of psi knights and mercenary troops, and connections throughout the whole solar system, the Order might stand to gain much from this sudden isolation, if they play their hand right.

Čert

While watching the many folk and fairy tales that are on the TV during the Christmas holidays, I realized that Czech take on Hell and its inhabitants is perhaps a bit unusual. In pretty much every story, the devils (or rather čerti, singular čert) and Hell are displayed in a positive light.

Čerti are not malicious, true evil is always found among humans. Čerti might be lazy, bureaucratic and ineffectual, but in the end they are there to punish and take away the sinners, thus leaving Earth a bit better off than before. Interestingly, angels, Heaven and God appear very rarely, and justice is generally served because čerti and good humans cooperate against evil humans. The mills of God Hell grind slowly but surely.
 

A čert coming out of the oven to get you!

 
Three main types of čerti appear in the folk tales:

The trickster čert is charming and the most diabolic, tempting people to sell their soul for money, power or magic. However, he likes and oftentimes ends up helping good people who defy him, even borrowing them magic items or coming to their aid. He will employ his human friends to get at sinners who protect themselves from Hell with holy ground or other magic. He will always have a contract for one's soul ready, to be signed in blood.

The punch-clock čert is ugly and dirty, but scary only because it's his job. He will try to frighten you, but if that fails, he will probably offer you a roast and a beer, then complain about how boring the job is, or hellish wages, or some such. He's very likely to be fooled and trapped by some evil human, who than uses stolen hellish magic to commit actually evil deeds. In that case, the čert will need to be saved by the human protagonist.

The clueless, young čert is either the protagonist, or his (soon to be) friend. He's really not good at this devilish stuff, and one of his blunders will probably strand him on Earth until he can recover a lost magic item / find a fugitive sinner / otherwise make up for his mistakes. He also tends to fall in love, which generally ends up in a wedding (becoming human optional).

When Lucifer, the King of Hell himself, appears, he ranges from being a wise mentor to the protagonist, to a strict and grumpy, but still fair and just ruler. He always comes off as nearly a saint in comparison to the corrupt, lazy, spiteful and outright cruel nobles on Earth. He will grant a wish (or three wishes) as compensation to innocents dragged to Hell by mistake (caused by the young čert above).
 

Lucifer in attendance on human wedding.

Every čert

• is male. Female čertice are very rare.
• has horns. These grow with age and power, so a young and weak čert will have tiny horns, while an older čert will have much bigger goat's or ram's horns.
• may have a hoof instead of one foot, or a tail. This is not always the case, though, so let's say 1-in-6 chance of each.
• spits brimstone, which can start fires.
• is immortal and immune to fire.
• is repelled or even burned by anything holy.
• cannot harm an innocent person.

d6 Hellish Powers

1. Human disguise: Loose the horns, hoof and tail, plus change from any demonic garb into a commoner's clothes (weak čert), huntsman or soldier uniform (trickster čert), or a noble attire (powerful čert). Also removes the soot and smell of brimstone.
2. Animal form: Transform into a black (d6) dog/cat/goat/horse/crow/rooster.
3. Hell portal: Teleport between Hell and Earth with a cloud of smoke and brimstone. Most čerti can only do this when they drag a soul to Hell, but Lucifer and his trusted lieutenants can pop anywhere at will.
4. Pyrokinesis: The more powerful the čert, the hotter the flames.
   
5. Telekinesis: Only the most powerful čerti.
   
6. Wish: Can grant wealth or build palaces to humans who sign away their soul in blood. Only Lucifer can grant wishes without getting a soul in return.
   

d8 Gifts from Hell

1. Cloak of invisibility: As any other cloak of invisibility, but doesn't work when wet and burns up when touched by holy water.
2. Tablecloth of wine and dine: When you unfold it, conjures a magnificent feast.
3. Sack of soldiers: Open to summon a squad of damned soldiers that will be loyal to whomever holds the sack. Treat as normal HD 1 soldiers, except they have Morale 12 (if they run, they go back to Hell; if they die, they go back to Hell) and disappear in flames when killed.
4. Bag of many items: Take out any item you can think of and that could fit inside of the bag. Each item taken is a sin.
5. Coat of gold: A dirty, threadbare overcoat. When you reach into a pocket, you always find a gold coin. However, no amount of grooming can make you presentable (-4 Charisma, -4 to Reaction rolls) and the coat disappears if you ever take it off.
6. Seven league boots
7. Scarf of fire resistance
8. Posh needle: Knits the most beautiful attire you can imagine out of thin air, but the clothes become ash when touched by sunlight.

 
All of these were given to the protagonist of one fairy tale or another.
 

Sinners in cages and boiling in cauldrons.

 
Here are several films that should give you a taste of čerti and their Hell:

• Anděl páně (Angel of the Lord): A čert tempts his angel buddy to fall, then does his best to get him back to Heaven. Available on Netflix.
• Čertí brko (The Magic Quill): Quite anvilicious, but has very nice depiction of bureaucratic Hell. Available on Netflix.
• Nejlepší přítel (Best Friend): This one actually inspired the post. Available here, but without subtitles.
• Princezna ze mlejna (Princess from the Mill): Your friendly neighbourhood čert. Available on Netflix.
• S čerty nejsou žerty (Give the Devil His Due): Basically a cult classic around here. Available here, but without subtitles.
• Z pekla štěstí (Devil's Own Luck): How being friendly with Hell can help you slay a dragon. Available here, but without subtitles.

So maybe the next time your players run into devils, these might be well-meaning collectors of evil souls, or good-natured spooks just doing their job.