Retrocausual Conspiracy

 

Do you know about the Game? You all loose, by the way. Congratulations, let's see how long can you go without loosing again.

Anyway, there never was a Multiverse. It was not vast, it was not wonderful and it was not destroyed. And still there are remnants, mementos of non-existent history. Trapped in the Void, they long for existence they never had, for memories they never lost. Sometimes, they claw their way into Reality, but they don't belong. They are not, like creature-shaped holes. They need to be filled.

Sometimes, you will catch strange people out of the corner of your eye. They will look familiar, as if you've met them before. They will also look a little wrong, as if they were imperfect, incomplete or distorted. But when you blink or turn around to have a look, they will be gone. It might be weird, but nothing to dwell upon.

You will think nothing of it and forget about them.

Time will pass and one day you will remember how silly you were, all afraid of imagined un-people. And there they will be again, suddenly standing in your peripheral vision. Your heart will skip a beat and you will jerk your head, but there are only normal people going after their business and no one strange or scary.

But you know you really saw something, something weird enough that it cannot be a coincidence. Why have you seen them and nobody else seems to take notice? Is there some sinister plot? Who is behind it? The government? Aliens? China? Or all of them together?

And thus the Neverwere grow.

 
Neverwas (pl. Neverwere)
Neverwere are not but they want to be, and they will grasp at any connection someone can give them to Reality. Neverwere are only encountered as a fleeting sight or an off-handed mention, never directly. If the players don't notice or let it go, forget, or ignore the tidbit, good for them. They just defeated the Neverwas.

If they start talking about it, if they make theories, the Neverwas grows more real. Every time it's remembered, it gains an HD or proliferates. Every connection or power that gets proposed is true (within reason).

What if these strange faceless people were somehow connected to the murders we were investigating?
Sure, they are now and they always were.
No, wait, what if the wizard we pissed off sent them?
He did.

Once Neverwas gains a goal, it will start working towards it, incorporating any new powers or goals or connections as they pop up. Contradictory or paradoxical goals are not a problem, Neverwere are not creatures of logic and reason.

If the players can guess the nature of this absorption of concepts, they can turn it against the Neverwere.

Are they weak to fire?
Of course they are.
Are they afraid of cheese and bawdy songs?
Yes!

This is the other way to defeat Neverwere, apart from ignoring them.

 

d6 Neverwere

1. If a player asks you about some background NPC whose name they have forgotten, tell them he was completely unremarkable. They can remember nothing about his appearance, race, clothing, or ... nothing at all, really. Or wait, was it a woman? Have they actually ever met such an NPC?
   
2. Everywhere a PC goes, they keep getting letters. The envelope always has the address of their current location in nondescript writing, but inside is only a blank sheet of paper.
3. A house where every picture had the faces erased. And in the bookcase, all books are filled with just a single word, repeated over and over and over again.
   
4. Featureless silhouettes are watching the party from behind every window on the street. Nobody else seems to pay any mind to it.
5. Someone familiar who should have been dead or definitely not here bumps into a PC, but before they have a chance to react, that someone is already lost in the crowd.
6. A word or a symbol keeps showing up. Nobody knows why, or what it means. If the PCs decide to investigate, that word or symbol will be present every time they think to ask.

 

 

Poisons, Toxins, Venoms

Someone was bitten by a creepy crawly thing, or inhaled colourful fumes, or their meal tasted funny. The following tables can be used to roll up a new, exciting poison on the fly, or just use the flavour and make the mechanical effects whatever you like.

d4 The Toxin Must Be...

1. ingested,
2. inhaled,
3. injected,
4. absorbed through the skin.

d20 Relatively Normal Poisons

1. A pang of pain followed by nasty rash: One-off extra damage
2. Rapidly worsening breathing difficulties: Asphyxiation damage over time
3. Anticoagulant: Haemorrhaging damage over time
4. Vomiting or diarrhoea: Cramping damage over time
5. Weakness and fatigue: Strength damage
6. Convulsions: Dexterity damage
7. Tachycardia threatening a heart attack: Constitution damage
8. Confusion or hallucinations: Intelligence damage
9. Clouding of senses: Wisdom damage
10. Blisters: Charisma damage
11. Drowsiness and sleep
12. Fainting, unconsciousness and coma: Sleep resistance doesn't help
13. Inflammation and fever: Penalty to further poison and disease Saves
14. Blurred vision followed by blindness
15. Increased anxiety, increased salivation: Penalty to fear Saves
16. Irritability, irrationality and sudden bouts of rage
17. Splitting headache: Staggered or stunned, cannot act properly
18. Cyanosis: Progressive paralysis
19. Shivering and chills: No natural healing
20. Bleeding from orifices followed by massive organ failure: Instant death

 

So, what are we breathing today?
Poison Mist by Louise Goalby

 
As a bonus, here are some magical poisons with weirder effects.

d20 Exotic Poisons

1. Youth concentrate: Like an elixir of youth, but stronger. De-ages the victim 2d100 years, likely killing them.
2. Polyjuice: There will be no evidence left if your poisoned needle polymorphs the duke into an ant. Polyjuice only has temporary effects, but repeated exposure may result in mutations or the roiling polymorph syndrome. Strangely also occurs in nature; the recently-discovered fawlish serpent injects its victims with polyjuice venom, transforming them into a fattened, easily swallowed prey animal.
3. Lethe water: Strong amnestic. High doses leave the victim effectively brain-dead, all of their memories completely erased.
4. Water of Unn: While its classification as a poison is often times disputed (especially by the regular users), water of Unn is commonly employed as such due to its effects not dissimilar to the slow spell. In low dosages, it is however also used for its calming effects, numbing the mind as much as it slows the body. The aforementioned regular users seek out the water not only as a sedative and relaxant, but because its slowing effect is said to slow ageing as well. How is doubled lifespan worth it when you only have half the capacity to make use of it is anybody's guess.
5. Water of Nyanneechuan: A single cursed fountain is the only known source of this poison, which induces a painful sex change in the victim. Famously used by the Fajuna women who wish to escape their lot in life and become warriors. Infamously used by lord Godrick the Gracious to secure both his wife, prince(ss) Jean, and a male heir, before he succumbed to royal bane.
6. Royal bane: This slow-acting poison causes nightmares, paranoia and bouts of madness. Sadly, it accumulates in the body and does not metabolize nor react to healing magic, making an advanced stage of poisoning incurable. When caught early, it can be staved off or kept latent by regular consumption of pearls dissolved in vinegar.
7. Warp gas: Naturally occurring around unbound portals and rift, or created through alchemy, this gas causes unpredictable, uncontrolled spatial displacement. This teleportation leads in nearly all cases to telefragging or falls from great heights. Scarily, the gas is colourless and odourless, plus the teleportation is often delayed in cases of mild inhalation.
8. Octiron poisoning: Fine octiron powder is sometimes employed to assassinate magic-users. Poisoning disrupts the ability to channel magic, with prolonged exposure leading to permanent lowering or loss of spellcasting abilities.
9. Reifmilch: Causes shivering and paleness, then rapid body heat loss (cold damage over time). Can be slowed by proximity to fire, but unless treated it invariably leads to the victim being frozen solid. Used in trace amounts to treat fever and common fire.
10. Breath of catoblephas: Inhalation causes rapid petrification. Also works through skin contact, albeit at a slower, more painful rate.
11. Midas' venom: Extremely rare venom gathered from the scarce and deadly giant gold spiders, it has an effect similar to the breath of catoblephas, except the flesh is turned into gold. Midas' venom works only on living flesh, no matter the efforts of many an alchemist.
12. Xorian lymph: Causes massive swelling in both size and mass. With each failed Save, the victim grows a size category larger, until they max out the size table and die in an explosion of gore and meat. This poison is thankfully relatively rare outside of Xor.
13. Chronolisk venom: A misnomer, as this "venom" is spat by the chronolisk and effective via skin contact. The victim is frozen in time, with the duration of the effect dependant on dosage. Small doses are sometimes used medicinally. In contrast to its rarity, chronolisk venom is rather well-known due to the infamous failed mass poisoning in Tam Ruat, where an extremist group of void monks attempted to contaminate the water sources of the city with the venom.
14. Colourless ooze: A kidnapper's favourite, this poison induces full-body paralysis and invisibility in the victim.
15. Zombie dust: Causes feeble-mindedness, obedience and extreme suggestibility. While a dried up, powdered zombie brain is the main ingredient of this poison, it requires a complex alchemical process to catalyse and prepare.
16. Mum-mist: A single lungful of mum-mist is enough to steal the gift of speech from a person for a full day. Some druidic orders induct their novices by making them meditate for days or weeks in caverns with naturally occurring mum-mist.
17. Ectoplasmic residuum: More coarsely known in the graverobbers' business as grandfather's jizz and a prime reason why one should wear silver-lined gloves when looting an old tomb; ectoplasmic residuum semi-permanently shunts the victim to the ethereal plane. The unprepared victim will then likely be killed by the various hungry ghosts, lesser daemons, rabid psychopomps or other threats on the Other Side. Can be quite easily treated with a neutralize poison spell, but that unfortunately doesn't work cross-plane.
18. Runic honey: An insidious and expensive poison, it distorts and prevents all restorative magicks cast upon the victim. Not only does this reverse the effects of cure wounds, but spells like neutralize poison or restoration will have no effect at all.
19. Erototoxin: A whole class of toxins used by the cupid warriors to poison their arrows and blades. The cupids are widely feared for dismantling the whole societal structure of their enemies through clever usage of their poisons. Different kinds of erototoxin cause overwhelming euphoria and bliss, sudden orgasm, obsessive sexual desire (even against one's preferences, morals and taboos), or emotional imprinting (similarly to a love potion).
20. Colloidal silver, brine water and holy water: While mostly safe for humans, these three "poisons" are classic tools when fighting demons, werebeasts or the undead.

d10 Armour Mechanics

TL;DR: AC is simple and useable, but it doesn't always feel like armour. Here are some alternatives.

Made by The Dungeoncast.

 
This post is brought to you by two thoughts. The first is: What options do I have when picking an armour mechanic for a new system? Which systems have some cool ideas I can steal?

What if I want a Dark Souls-like system where you can pick from many, many suits of armour and each is different, but ideally without the difference being just ±1 point of defence?

The second is: Weapons tend to be more interesting than armour. Especially mechanically, especially in D&D derivatives and especially when talking about non-magical gear. It's hard to make different suits of armour feel distinct and varied when they only scale to bigger defence numbers and maybe their encumbrance changes from one type to another.

But you can have resistances and buffs and such on your armour!

True, but weapons have damage dice (and even d8 versus 2d4 is quite different), to-hit bonuses, crit ranges and multipliers, bleeding and poison and other special effects - and we're still not in the realm of enchantments. The mechanical side of combat procedures is simply more shifted towards weapons. On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with a simple defence mechanic that gets the work done. On the other hand, it would be nice if the choice of armour mattered more, mechanically, and I don't mean just the choice of leather versus plate.

Why should all armours in a game protect you the same way, anyway? What if we had several protections to choose from, to mix and match?

I will not provide you with such a cool new system, sorry. I only have a list of armour mechanics.
 

From here.

 
1. Hit protection
Known as Armor Class in D&D, but other RPGs will most likely call it Evasion or Dodging. Hit protection makes it harder to hit you rather than decreasing the damage taken.

I think that D&D's AC seems weird and unintuitive at first, but once you have accepted it as an abstraction, it works very well within its rule system. In the absolute majority of RPG systems, though, hit protection will be a separate evasion score, leaving armour with some other type of defence mechanic. It is actually rare not to see one of the defence mechanics below combined with some form of hit protection, as the defence dichotomy of "evade the hit or decrease the damage" is pretty fun and thus ubiquitous. Hit protection might be the most popular defence mechanic.

Hit protection tends to apply against all types of attacks and damage, but does not necessarily need to. Starfinder, for example, differentiates between an Energy AC and a Kinetic AC.

As it is an all-or-nothing defence, hit protection has to be scaled against the accuracy of enemies. There is no fun in combat if you or your foe are impossible to hit, though having a small chance to hit no matter how high the evasion is (criticals, basically) can help with that. But frankly, this applies to all mechanics - don't let your numbers scale out of hand.

2. Flat damage reduction
The most simple damage decreasing defence, just take [amount] less damage from attacks. It might only work against a certain type of damage (slashing, fire, magic), or be bypassed by something (silver, +1 weapons, lawful good attackers).

It's big weakness is, in my opinion, that it requires a very careful balancing of enemy damage output versus the amount of damage reduction. If it falls behind the average damage, it feels useless. The damage you didn't take might still add up over time, but that doesn't help you feel better when you shave off 2 points from a 23 damage hit. If it's too high (heavens forbid if it can stack), it just makes enemies flail against you impotently and removes danger from combat. Even worse, it can result in a situation like in higher-level Tunnels & Trolls, where you have high damage reduction but still relatively low hit points. The attacks also get more powerful, with big variance in the damage output, where your damage reduction negates the vast majority of attacks, but those that get through might very well one-shot you.

Which is not to say it's a bad mechanic. One just has to make sure to keep both the damage reduction and the damage outputs grounded, and maybe have some armour-piercing criticals. Flat damage reduction is simple and feels like a protective armour, making it a popular mechanic to combine with hit protection. So many games use this dichotomy that it's actually more rare to see a game using only flat damage reduction - Into the Odd comes to mind thanks to its unique take on combat with no to-hit roll.

Some CRPGs derive both hit protection and damage reduction from a single score; in NetHack and POWDER, for example, high AC eventually starts giving you some damage reduction in addition to the hit protection it offers normally (though in POWDER, it is random damage reduction rather than flat one).

3. Random damage reduction
An alternative damage reduction mechanic that works much better with stacking armour. When you take damage, cut it down by a random amount between a minimum and a maximum. No matter how high your armour is, some hits will deal real damage. Note that this can lead to the "rarely hits but one hit kills" effect mentioned above, so keep that in mind, and it will require extra rolling, so it might slow your combat down.

If you are willing to use digital rollers, then you can have a simple but effective system where you roll damage reduction from 0 to [armour value], but even if you only used physical dice, you can have a crappy d2 armour, basic d4 armour, excellent d8 armour, or a heavy 2d4 armour. As with other damage decreasing defences, adding a damage type/source limit (cold, ranged, inflicted by an animal) can spice it up.

Mörk Borg uses this type of defence, but it's much more common in CRPGs, given that you can easily generate random numbers with arbitrary min and max there. For example:

• Sil and Elona have dice-based damage reduction.
• DCSS and POWDER have "zero to armour value" damage reduction.
• IVAN reduces damage by a random amount between half and full armour value.

4. Damage division
A percentage decrease in damage taken. Usually half damage, though a one-third/quarter damage could also be reasonably easy to calculate on the fly for a TTRPG, while a CRPG can go wild with any percentage that strikes their fancy. As with other damage decreasing defences, it can be limited to a damage type/source - and it often is, representing elemental resistances. The big thing here is that this defence will be just as good no matter how much you scale the damage - you always take half damage, whether it's 10 or 10 000 damage hit. This can be good, as your armour will remain relevant, or bad, as you will still take damage from that 2-dmg-per-hit mook even in your sweet power armour.

One way to make a more consistent damage reducing defence is to combine damage division (so you are guaranteed a certain decrease in damage) with some low damage reduction (so you are protected from minor damage). Off the top of my head, City of the Damned combines damage division and flat damage reduction, Elona uses damage division and dice-based random damage reduction, while DCSS combines damage division and the "zero to armour value" random damage reduction.

5. Damage conversion
This type of defence depends on what kinds of damage the system uses.

• Example A: Lets say that a suit of plate decreases the severity of the damage taken, from aggravated to lethal to non-lethal, rather than decreasing the damage numbers.
• Example B: A power armour in a sci-fi game or an invulnerability power in a superhero setting might convert vehicle-scale damage that normally instakills a human to a person-scale damage.
• Example C: The resource targeted by the damage is changed, like a regeneration power that converts attribute damage to hit point damage, or a magic shield that converts hp damage to mana drain.

Overall, damage conversion doesn't decrease the amount of damage taken, but makes it less harmful or easier to deal with. I can't think of a system that uses it exclusively, you're much more likely to see it as a special effect or ability.

6. Damage threshold
Similar to flat damage reduction at a first glance, damage threshold negates any damage lower than (or equal to) the threshold. If the damage exceeds the threshold, though, you take it in full, no reduction. This accentuates the danger of big hits and the "rarely hits but one hit kills" effect, so make sure you like that and plan for it with your damage and hp values.

7. Damage cap
The damage one can take from a single hit is capped at some maximum value, normally either flat or percentage-based (eg. "You may not lose more than 50% of your maximum hp from a single attack."), though I wonder how well would a random damage cap would work. Anyway, this means that multiple small hits become more dangerous that a single big hit, an inversion of a damage threshold.

It might be interesting to differentiate two armour types by one offering a damage threshold while the other offers a damage cap, especially if the attackers can also specialize in either multiple attacks or one massive attack. Another possibly fun mechanic would be if there was no way to get an immunity to certain damage, but you could combine a high enough damage threshold and a low enough cap to fake it.

8. Ablative armour
Armour either directly adds to your hit points, or grants a secondary hit point pool. You only have to work out whether it's:

• Hardcore: The armour needs repairs afterwards and grants no protection until fixed.
• Temporary: The "armour" is not a real armour but temporary hp that doesn't come back once used up.
• Soak: A small hp pool that can soak a certain amount of damage each round, recharging completely at the start of each round.
  
• Abstract: The hit points are abstracted completely and you have a combined pool of flesh and armour hit points that both come back after combat.

The original Tunnels & Trolls had hardcore ablative armour rules where your armour offered an extra hit point pool, but once these were gone, your armour was broken and useless. This was supposedly an intentional design choice to give fighters a money sink, but was dropped in later editions in favour of flat damage reduction. Many games these days go the abstract route or have some abilities that provide temporary ablative armour, but for example Cogmind is designed around various robot parts serving as your hardcore ablative armour, where you need to replace destroyed pieces as you take hits.

I particularly like soak, as it plays out similarly to damage reduction without making weak attacks inconsequential. Enough attacks in a single round can still bring you down, even if you stack soak. It's also relatively easy to keep track of, because you just reset one number each round.

In any case, ablative armour is simple to use and works very well with stacking armour pieces, as it builds on the already existing hit point mechanic. Technically speaking, hit points themselves are a form of abstract ablative armour preventing your character's death, so I guess I was wrong that hit protection is the most popular defence mechanic - ablative armour is, given all the games that have some form of hit points.

9. Immunity
Completely negates damage of a certain type or source. Most often seen as an enchantment that grants affliction or elemental immunity, but could also be an immunity to non-magical weapons (whether from being intangible or invulnerable), normal missiles, summoned creatures, spells, etc. In a sci-fi game, this could be reflective armour that confers immunity to lasers, or Dune-style shields that prevent damage from firearms but don't stop slow-moving melee and thrown weapons. It could be interesting to see an immunity to all melee attacks.

Given that this type of defence completely shuts down a certain kind of threat, it requires some planning around in the rules and shouldn't be too easy to obtain or pile up multiple types of, lest the character becomes untouchable. On the other hand, immunities can lead to some fun strategies, especially with area attacks or environmental threats.

If you want to have an immunity-based defence, consider some further restrictions than just a damage type. I will discuss several types of limitations in just a paragraph or two.

10. No protection
Mostly relevant to one page RPGs and other super-light systems, or systems that de-emphasise combat to oblivion - there is nothing the defender can do to prevent a hit or reduce damage, therefore armour is by necessity useless. Don't get me wrong, it can work well if combat is the ultimate fail state, it just cannot result in interesting armour mechanics, so I'm including it here only for completeness' sake. If there are any armour mechanics at all, it is no longer this, but one of the above types of defence.

See the Mosaic Strict version of these rules for a TTRPG example of no protection combat, but it is much more common in CRPGs, where combat can more easily be presented as a positioning puzzle (like in HyperRogue or Hoplite). Bonus points if all creatures also die in a single hit - then we can't even object that hit points are a kind of defence.
 

Could be especially relevant in a game
where you build your own humongous mecha
and can decide between multiple defensive systems.
By Hikaru Kanefusa.

 

Sometimes, you might wish to impose an extra limit on one of the defences from above, to curb some of the more powerful ones or the other way around, to let a defence be powerful without unbalancing combat. I think these three options cover most of the commonly seen mechanics:

A. Charges
You have a limited amount of "defence charges" and can decide when to spend them for your protection.

As an example, the shields shall be splintered rule lets you expend a charge (by destroying your shield) to either completely negate a weapon attack (immunity) or decrease damage taken by a die roll (random damage reduction), depending on which rule set are we talking about. In Broken Worlds, you can spend an armour charge to decrease damage taken by 3 (flat damage reduction). You could also spend a charge to reroll/get bonus to hit protection, or for half damage, for damage conversion, etc.

B. Saving throw
Unlike hit protection, which is a passive number your enemies roll against, you roll your saving throws when exposed to damage and apply a linked defence only if the roll succeeds. A saving throw is nearly always limited to a damage type/source (poison, breath attack, weapon attack) or a certain situation.

D&D already has such saves: Fortitude negates (saving throw + immunity), Reflex for half (saving throw + division), or fortification (saving throw + conversion). Mutants & Masterminds have a Toughness save against damage to prevent injury, while Mothership has an armour save for half damage. Encounter Critical also has an armour save, but it adds a little extra brilliance by making the normal save for half damage, but if you roll under half the armour save, you take no damage at all. While the new versions of TGGW use damage division, older versions had an armour save applied point by point; for example if you had Armour 60% and took 3 points of damage, each of those points had a separate 60% chance to be ignored.

C. Cooldown
Your defence is limited by a certain interval before coming back after you use it. There are basically three types:

• A set recharge rate of X rounds (or some other time unit). Probably best when the rate depends on some attribute or skill and thus can be lowered as you get better. Could also be used for a temporary defence buff, as long as the buff duration stays shorter than the recharge time.
  
• A randomized recharge rate, either useable every dX rounds, or with a chance to recharge on each turn. In D&D 4e, you might see some abilities with [recharge on ⚄, ⚅], but it could just as well be a 2-in-6 or 33% chance.
  
• An automatic defence that triggers every X rounds (or some such). For example, a flux field belt that deflects every third attack against you.
  

Note that a 33% chance to deflect every attack is an example of a saving throw, not cooldown, but then again there will always be overlap in these artificial categories I made up here.

Cooldowns are ubiquitous in video games, because they are a simple, effective and scaleable limit, plus the computer can keep track of them for you. In TTRPGs, it might be easier to use the "chance to recharge each turn"-type cooldown, but the automatic defence could prove quite interesting in gameplay, especially if paired with outright immunity. How would your combat decisions change if you knew that you cannot be harmed on every third turn?
 

From Dark Souls.

And how could a selection of armour in this hypothetical system of multiple armour types look like? What about:

• Helmet or gorget can be cracked to reduce a critical hit to normal.
• Shield increases evasion and can be splintered to block a random amount of damage.
• Cloak and boots increase evasion.
• A fighter's skill of parrying gives a saving throw to negate weapon damage.
• A rogue's skill of dodge roll gives a saving throw to negate area damage.
  
• Padded jacket converts bludgeoning damage to non-lethal.
• Leather armour is ablative and needs to be repaired. Better hides give more bonus hp. Hunt for better hides.
• Mage armour is also ablative, but offers soak instead.
• Hauberk grants half slashing and piercing damage.
• Disc armour grants flat damage reduction.
• Battledress grants a damage threshold.
• Flagellant's tunic grants a damage cap.
• Ioun stone of protection intercepts every third attack against you.
  
• Pauldrons offer no protection at all, but they look really cool.
  

Fever-Dreaming in Marlinko, part 8

This is a game of Finders Keepers set in the city of Marlinko. The dramatis personae are:

• Atiin Brigantia, a brilliant but lazy lunatic
• Edward "the Wild" Bleestocles, a leper disowned by his wealthy family
• Jacobin "Jackass" Valentin, a soulless bastard
• Tadzio Checker, an estranged son of a powerful mage
• Victory Alder, a young vampire

 

prior | next

All over Marlinko, late morning to late afternoon
Stopping by the Chicken Scratch shop, Victory collects all the supplies that Attin has ordered yesterday and loads them on a pair of donkeys that will surely come in handy on their venture, too. Then she takes the uncooperative animals all the way back to Atiin's apartment, leaving them tied to the well railing in the yard and giving a random urchin a silver coin to keep an eye on them.

"Hey, Tadz, do you think we could pass a message to your father?" she asks as she sees him through the open door to the apartment.

As she walks further in, though, she notices that he is acting awkward - although a different kind of awkward from the fidgety paranoid seen earlier. Restrained, but still on his toes. A couple of guys, both tall and rather rough around the edges, are standing just around a corner and talking to Tadz.

"Mm-kay. You have your paperwork to fill up if you're taking the job," says one of them. He looks bored. Or tired, maybe.

"If not, the boss needs to know as soon as possible," says the other, all no-nonsense-like. "That means tonight."

Tadz nods and they leave, barely acknowledging Vic's presence at all.
 
"What job?" she asks Tadz after waiting for their footsteps to disappear from the stairs.

"They say Atiin was at the League HQ just the other day asking that giant handler guy for more work. I do not know the details - I don't even think they know. The only more specific thing that they told me was that Tiny Tomáš says that the big boss says 'It has to be the girl.', whatever that means.

And they left a bunch of forms for us to fill out in case we take the job. Again, no details. Basically just them disclaiming responsibility for our actions regarding any nondescript shit not previously covered by other paperwork we already signed."

"Well, that sounds like something that Atiin didn't share. Where is everybody else, anyway? No, wait! I needed to ask you something... Yeah, would it be possible to talk to your dad, or give him a message? Not that I'm really looking forward to meeting him again, but there is something he should probably have a look at."

He frowns as Vic mentions his dad. "W-why would you want to talk to him? I mean, sure, I- If you succeed in scheduling an interview with the big shot wizard at his phallic seat of power, then yeah. Good luck with that, though. He simply loooooves to remind everyone how busy he is all the time. Rosalind would prolly have a slot for you as soon as six months from now."

"I don't want to make you do anything, but... There's a chance that one of the city gods has broken free from the Tomb. Remember that crazy pantsless barbarian we saw the other day? Apparently, he cracked one of the coffins in the Tomb. Anyway, it will be nice to leave the city for a few days. The Frog Demon Temple sounds quite tame by comparison."

As much trouble as Tadz may have when listening to anything that has to do with František, Victory has his undivided attention now. When she tells him everything she knows, sans the murder, that is, he begrudgingly admits that he may be able and willing to broker a meeting with his dad.

"I don't even know if your dad could or would do something about that, though," Vic hesitates, seeing him fighting with himself to help her.

"I don't know anyone else in the town who could give it a shot, much less anyone else that would give a crap. So yeah, I think you should tell him right away." He pauses for a long few seconds, then offers a little twitchy, a little uneasy smile: "If you wish, we can go together."

"Yeah, that would be great. If you don't have something else, we can go right now."

And they do.

"Why did you go into the Tomb, anyway?" Tadz asks Victory to fill out the silence as they walk past Fraža's Brokerhouse and get just across the street from the Checkered Mage's Onion Tower. He looks so strung up he would probably resonate if strummed.

There are all sorts of stalls in the streets, everywhere where it hadn't been cleared for the racing track. Vic stops at one stall to buy some freshly baked quark buchty and also to buy a second to think. Why did she do it? Was it only a stupid, senseless, spontaneous idea born of some suppressed fascination with the Tomb?

"Frankly, I was curious about the Tomb ever since that barbarian guy went inside," she ventures eventually. "And tombs always feel so... welcoming, I guess? The door were open and waiting and, ehm, tempting me? But I might have just been a bit drunk, too," she chuckles and looks up at the Tower.

It is an imposing structure that casts its onion-domed shadow over a long stretch of the city. One could gawk at its colourful intarsias and manifold fine architectonic features for quite some time.

However, they both know they are simply nervous and stalling, so after a brief moment of more awkward silence, they cross the street and walk into the arched entryway, guarded on both sides by half a dozen statuettes of bugs. It leads up several stairs to a double ogive-shaped door crafted out of walnut wood and brass. Tadz grabs the handle and knocks twice.

Five minutes later, the heavy door opens at a narrow angle, just enough that an older, short, bespectacled and red-haired lady can stick her head out to greet them.

"Master Tadzio, I am so happy to see you!" she says, still not letting them in. "And who is your stunning friend?"

"Hi, Roz. This is Victory. Ehm, Alder. Vic, this is Rosalind, the reason dad's still alive and in good health."

Rosalind chuckles and waives dismissively towards him, blushing.

"Look, Roz, uhm," Tadz continues, "I know we don't have an appointment nor anything like that, but we gotta see dad. Vic has crossed the Tomb's threshold and... uhm, one of the town gods' vaults has been breached. One of them's missing."

Rosalind's eyes widen and she goes even paler than her naturally tanless complexion. "Come on it," she says and locks the door behind them.

The entrance hall is massive and richly decorated with tapestry from a variety of places and periods. There are multiple pieces from the second Němetzian empire, some from Kezmarok's golden century, more than a few from the time of the Ancient Pahr horselords and others that Victory cannot place at all. At the back of the hall is a large desk, with piles of books and expensive-looking writing implements neatly arranged on top of it. A crystal orb sits there as well; it lights up when Rosalind touches it.

"Yes?" resonates from the artifact in the Mage's voice.

The secretary quickly explains the situation to him. Then there's a sound like a thousand mirrors shattering, but silent, and before Tadz and Vic have any chance to even process it, their surroundings flicker and change completely. They are now standing in a lofty, well-lit library.

Stepping down from a floating disk that had been hovering along a massive bookshelf that encircles the walls is an extremely well-groomed man in his fifties. He has perfectly trimmed, greying sideburns and wears layered capes and robes with overlapping plaid patterns that should be visually busy and distracting but somehow aren't. He seems to never waste a movement or a frown unless it is imperative to do so. He comes to them and firmly shakes Vic's hand, yet shows no intention of doing the same with Tadz, whom he greets with a cold nod instead.

"Dad," Tadzio replies sourly.

František, the Checkered Mage, addresses Victory instead: "Do you give me permission to touch your head? It would greatly expedite things."

"Okay," she says, caught off-guard a bit by the sound of her own voice. This up close, with the aura of easy, unwitting power, František suddenly reminds her of her Master.

She doesn't like that thought.

"Thank you. I promise you I will not abuse it," he says as he touches her forehead with only the tips of thumb and index finger. "But it is not uncommon for some unrelated memories or fleeting thoughts to conceal or even become entangled with the ones that are of interest to..."

His train of thought is cut off by something else. It originates in Vic's mind. The image of her creator, her sire and Master. That memory of him was clear in her mind, at the top of her head. František sees it too, and pauses. A little vexed, he mutters "Not you." though more to himself than to let anyone in on his thought process.

Digging a bit deeper, he looks at something more relevant. It seems to upset him. Victory's memories from last night's delve. He reaches through them in reverse order. Or rather in a reverse jumble. He bears witness to the murder of bro-dude, yet that doesn't seem to faze him. Maybe because he's already seen the cracked vault, the silvery orbs and the floating amoeba-thing.

He stays a little longer, just to make sure there's nothing else, and looks over Vic's shoulder as she sits in the Tomb's hallway and copies the runes onto that piece of paper. He emerges with her from the Tomb and watches as she deflects that peddler's curiosity by scaring him to death. He's still with her as she gets back to their flat earlier today and it feels so much like the times when her Master went to see the Sun and the daylit Marlinko through her eyes.

He is there in the flat with Vic and Tadz. He stands in a corner and listens to their conversation, or the parts of it that Vic's mind highlights, anyway. He sees her take on Tadzio's fears and vulnerability, and with that memory comes another and another, giving him every talk she had with Tadz and her every thought on him. They are both exposed and laid bare and so helpless, and that feeling of utter helplessness conflates the mental images of the Mage and the Master. There's a dry vanity at the corner of František's mind-eye as he recognizes his own power reflected in this mirror of sorts, but he does not dwell on it. Instead, he moves on to-

Instead, Victory's mind plunges deeper into that helplessness that hides beneath the stolen calm and confidence she shouldn't have and never had while she was still a human.

There is the young seamstress who took the wrong turn and got lost in the alleyways. Once sated, Vic took the package she was carrying, a beautiful black dress probably just about to be delivered to a client. The very dress that Victory now wears.

There is the alchemist's apprentice, all bashful yet boastful when Victory had drawn him into a conversation. She recovered the few potions she now has from his body.

There is the old lady whose cab driver had to take a leak. Victory used to be so proud of her stealth at that time, as the cab continued on its marry way with a bloodless corpse inside while Vic had kept the lady's onyx cigarette holder. At first, she used the smoke to mask the smell of blood, but she grew fond of the habit.

But it was all stolen. She made herself up of stolen things and lies stacked atop each other until they started to resemble a real person. But she is not a person, was not for quite some time. And she stacks more and more lies and stolen things on top of that ever-sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, in the vain hope that she can build herself up faster that she crumbles. In the foolish hope that there is a way how to fix-

František's grip over the inner motions of Vic's spirit is released and ceases abruptly.

She realizes that the Mage has pulled what appears to be the tail end of a lengthy string of... something from her mouth. The string is coated in this glowing slime.

"Don't worry. Nothing was subtracted from you. This is merely a copy. A document, if you will," he says but doesn't look at her. He is winding the string around a spindle.

"Wonderful. Yes. Ehm... Thank you for your time," Vic manages to say.

"The silver containers," the Mage continues, "the fact that you have them might be enough to put a target on your back."

"And why is that, dad?" Tadzio's question is basically bursting with spite. "Are you gonna rat her out to the city gods? How does that even work?"

"The orbs and the pulpit are not related to the city gods' vaults nor to the Tomb itself. The latter are the work of the most powerful arch-sorcerers among the old Pahr tribes. The former are Eld in nature. The Eld have somehow hijacked the Tomb without anyone noticing, and appear to have been hoarding whatever mystical energies they can steal from Marlinko."

He finishes winding Vic's string of memories and places it in a delicate, etched glass casket.

"We have met an Eld. Xoxx was his name. He was looking for some old artifacts, I believe," Vic hears herself say, giving a quick and concise report on the information she has and that her Master might find useful. She shudders.

"Yeah, we might want to find him," Tadz says.

"I believe the Tomb itself is now our best chance. Their tools are there, and the gate they have opened is still operative, according to your memories of earlier today. I will be taking care of that at once," the Mage says and performs a subtle gesture. There's the soundless breaking of glass again and with another flicker, all three of them are teleported to the Main Council's entrance hall, spooking the few bureaucrats hanging out in there.

"You seem to have understood how serious the situation is," František turns to Victory. "I ask you to bring me the orbs that are currently in Glamdalf's custody. If an Eld agent is scrying those, I have the means to identify and locate them. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must inform the Council of my intention to enter the Tomb."

"Fuck the Council!" Tadzio's voice reverberates throughout the entrance hall. "If you abide by their rules, you'll be stuck, still filling out paperwork by the time the Eld decide to make their next move!"

František stares, mildly disturbed by Tadzio's conspicuousness. Then he sternly reminds his son that he, the Checkered Mage, is a prominent member of the Council. Victory quickly looses track of the spiel as he start alluding to a larger philosophical debate about the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos, and how the town's laws, however flawed they may be, are a significant instrument to fend off the chaos energies perennially seeping in from the Weird. Finally, he turns and heads upstairs through the large curled staircase.

When he is out of sight, Tadz mutters: "Fuck that. I'm going in. You coming with?"

"Yes," Vic says, sounding unsure.

She hates feeling like this. Ever since her father's house had burned down and she was rid of her Master, there was this veneer of confidence and drive carrying her through. Sure, it was also tinged with bloodlust, but it kept her acting and moving and smiling. Suddenly, there are cracks in that confidence and what she only sensed and suspected was hidden below can be clearly seen through them. She cannot look at the cracks. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

"Yes," she repeats, more firmly.
 
They turn around and head across the Plaza. More people have gathered to watch the race as six jockeys ride their horses at full speed going from Sevrnu to Vychodi streets, therefore passing right between the Council Hall and the Tomb. The jockeys jump over a contraption of spinning serrated blades, and Vic and Tadz wait for them to pass. The people cheer and try to follow in procession.

At long last, they can circumvent the guardrails and cross the racing lane to get to the Tomb. The drunken dancers from before are still there; some of them asleep on the ground, cuddled together in couples or threes. The girl with the belts around her head is well awake now, however. She sees them coming her way and yells: "There she is! I told you I had seen her come out alive! There she is!"

The other dancers slowly wake up. The commotion attracts more attention from the procession headed to follow the race. Soon enough, there's a whole audience.

Tadz pays no heed and walks right inside.

Victory stops in front of the door to the Tomb, her back to the gathered people. She forces the smile to return to her face and soon, it feels like it's coming back on its own. She turns around and waits until she has the full attention of the crowd.

"Good citizens of Marlinko, my friends! It is indeed I who went into the Tomb of the Gods, and I have returned to tell the truth of what I've seen. And I shall tell you the whole truth, the only truth, just as I have told the great Checkered Mage himself: Our gods, the true gods of Marlinko, are not dead!

They have never abandoned us, it was us who failed them! We were tempted and led astray by the foreign priests who came to our glorious city and preached their heresies, who poisoned our minds with their sweet lies and empty promises! But the gods of Marlinko are infinite in their wisdom and mercy. They were sleeping and dreaming of things yet to come, looking out for us even as we turned our backs on them. But now, a great storm is coming to Marlinko. The gods have foreseen it and they have told me and now I tell you: A great darkness shall sweep over the land and our gods shall emerge from their tomb in our hour of greatest need!

Prepare yourself for their glorious return! Prepare yourself for their righteous judgement! The faithful shall be rewarded, while the traitors shall burn!

Go, go now, good citizens of Marlinko! Spread the word, tell everybody! Tell your families and friends of the things to come! Tell them about the glorious return of our true gods!

And everywhere you go, watch out for the devils with blue skin who walk among us. They are the strombringers, the agents of darkness. They are the enemies of the gods. Remember: Thou shall not suffer a blue devil to live!

GO!"

Lies stacked upon lies, but enough lies can fill up the cracks until one feels whole again. Before any questions can be voiced, she slips into the Tomb after Tadz, hoping the fear of that place will dissuade any pursuit.

Tadz is examining the glowing amoeba, confirming what he has been told about its instincts to avoid a physical presence. He turns to Vic and says: "I've heard you. You're into this shit, aren't you? Sowing chaos."

"I guess so? There's a certain power in it, isn't it? When everything around is thrown into disarray and you're the only one who seems to know what they are doing. The same people that would normally sneer at you will suddenly listen when they are confused, lost and scared. They will do what you say as long as you can say it with confidence. I guess I really like having some power.

Anyway, the spheres and the pulpit are in the next room, behind the amoeba. You have any plan, or are we winging it?"

"Dad said something about a gate left open in this place. My guess is this is it. This ugly thing right here," he points at the amoeba. "We should at the very least try to shut it down or something. I can think of ways to trick it into not avoiding us, but I have no clue how to make it go away for good. Any ideas?"

"I might, actually. I spilled some blood on the pulpit and it enclosed it into one of the silvery spheres, plus your dad said that the spheres are hoarding energies of all kinds, right? Whatever the glowy thing is, it has some energy and it retreats when we approach it. There are two of us, we could try and manoeuvre it over the pulpit, maybe that will suck it into a sphere."

Tadz grins approvingly. It takes some time and effort, but between the two of them, they successfully herd the glowing pink formless thing towards the silver pulpit.

As that goes on, Tadz returns to the topic of chaos: "I get what you were saying, I guess. About the thrill of persuasion, of driving others to do your bidding. Maybe that is the one core experience where both law and chaos really overlap, don't you think?"

And again later, when they have the amoeba nearly to the pulpit: "Because, you see, that's what the great Checkered Mage, despite all his impressive erudition and sharp mind, gets wrong about this whole Eld situation, I think. There's this thing I've read some time ago; it had to do with morals and its relation to Law and Chaos. Well, according to the piece, there's this common misconception (among the few scholars who have heard of them, that is) that the Eld are a force of Chaos, which would mean that their ultimate nature would be aligned with the Weird. But in actuality, all their known actions point to the conclusion that they're rather-"

Tadzio's lecture is interrupted by a sudden loud humming emitted by all the spheres on the shelves at once, as well as by the pulpit itself. At this point the floating amoeba is pushed as far as a few inches away from the pulpit. Enthralled by his own words, Tadz did not really notice how close they are.

All of a sudden, the air feels electrified and staticky. The pulpit doesn't try to envelop the amoeba in silver and the amoeba doesn't flinch away from the pulpit. Instead, the whole pulpit is sucked into that strange body with a split second of flickering.

Then the humming stops and the amoeba remains there, hovering in place.

"Well, that was... unexpected? But it still probably thwarts the Eldish plans, I hope," Vic says. "Maybe we can clean all their equipment from here?"

She starts taking the spheres from the shelves and throwing them at the amoeba. Tadz quickly follows her example. The amoeba swallows the spheres without a hitch.

"And as you were saying, I have frankly never heard about the Eld until yesterday. Do you know who they are? What they are? Or what do they want here?"

"Not many people have. I know of them because they're a topic of interest of dad's and a few other scholars. As far as I can tell, certain artifacts have been found in the Weird a few generations ago. Mostly gear, but there's been talk of a wrecked ship. It was Kuuk the Vapid who named this unknown people 'the Eld'. Back in the day, dad says, the Nefarious Nine used to claim that they had fought beings wearing similar armour, wielding similar weapons. People with pointy ears and pointy heads. More recently, there's been talk of Eld activity in the Dunes to the west. And now this.

As to what they want, well, we can only speculate. The Sun Lord knows that's all those flat-arsed scholars have been doing for years. There's this energy theft theory; sounds half-baked to me. My own guess is that they abhor the Weird as much as we do. They probably think that we are part of it, same as us when we theorize about them. But as I say, it's all wild theories and nobody knows anything."

Victory smiles: "I think we should find one to have a talk, then. I wouldn't give it a high chance of them actually talking to us or telling us anything, but it's worth a shot at least. Maybe if some people bought my babbling from before, the Eld will have more trouble staying hidden now.

Which reminds me, I have talked with Steelpike about Xoxx before going to the Tomb. He basically told me he knows nothing and to stay as far away from the Eld as I can."

"Okay, I thought that came out of nowhere when you mentioned them to dad. Did Steelpike sound like he was lying about not knowing more? If so, we could press him. Probably not as urgent as destroying this thing, but... at least I'd have an idea how to go about it. Or we could try and jump into the pink blob ourselves. To test the theory that it is indeed a gate. If it is, we should be able to cross back. If it isn't, then we might end up dead. Yeah, now that I say it out loud, that's a really bad idea."

"Steelpike was really, really scared of the Eld. He might have been lying, but I think it's more likely he is doing his best not to know anything so that there's no target on his back. And I'd rather bring the others before jumping into a weird maybe-portal. Sometimes it's nice to have a backup. But what if we pushed it out of the Tomb? We can try to get it all the way into the Town Hall, then your dad or someone will have to deal with it post haste!"

"What a lovely idea," Tadz grins.

Soon, the door of the Tomb of the City Gods are opened wide and two figures can be seen herding a wobbly, semi-solid expression of pink high-dimensional energy all the way from the Tomb's entrance to the Main Council. Now the people on the Plaza are really intrigued. There is much shouting; all sorts of fears and hopes are aired around the pair, but the drunken dancers have formed a semi-circle around them, led by the belt-crowned girl, and keep the crowd at bay.

Then the guards inside the Council Hall threaten to stop Tadz and Vic, but the whole religious aura around this moment and the mass of people following seem to dissuade them from stepping in. Rather, they step back and try to regroup. The floating thing is pushed all the way upstairs.

Victory turns back to the crowd, standing above them on the stairs, and shouts: "Behold, a trial of faith! Shall the Council of Marlinko prove themselves worthy, dear citizens? Or shall they be exposed wallowing in corruption and sin?"

The dancers seem to have been waiting for just such a proclamation. They raise their own voices.

"Witness, Marlinkans!"

"The truth shall be unveiled!"

The meeting room's door are wide open. At the head of a long table stands František, and seated near him are the chief undercouncilmen of the Sullen Apiarian and the Yare Domesman districts. Jarek the Nagsman and Hurloj Kladivo are for some reason present as well.

"As you can see, gentlemen," the Mage says and motions toward the amoeba, "my reckless son has made a judgement call. I do not endorse it, but it certainly has the potential to speed things up. This is an extraordinary situation. As such, I would advise you that putting the red tape aside for a moment is the wisest course of action here."

"They have broken into the Tomb of the City Gods! This profanation has to be addressed," the Sullen Apiarian representative jumps in, also jumping up from his seat.

"The trespassers should be kept in custody for the time being, perhaps?" ventures the Yare Domesman representative, a meek red-faced man. As he speaks, his voice keeps dropping in volume and he slowly half-submerges behind the table, shaken by all the attention he got by speaking up.

Some guards have finally managed to force their way up the stairs and they stop the crowd from getting to the council room, though the entrance hall is clogged up and full of shouting.

Kladivo approaches the amoeba. He is known to be rather heavy-handed in everything he does. When he walks, he strides. When he shakes someone's hand, they better not respond with a limp handshake, or they won't be using that hand for some time. This is how he has thrived in this world. He owes it his own success, to an extent. Now, this same personal energy pushes - nay, throws the wobbly entity back. The pressure of multiple nearby people flicks the pink alien thing sideways. It rebounds from the table, then the wall, practically touching it. Then it looks like it will bounce off Jarek the Nagsman, the owner of the Tiger Pit, and continue ricocheting-

Instead of stopping short and bouncing back like before, it touches Jarek's body. It swallows him. Now you see him - flicker - now you don't.

The room falls silent.

The moment stretches on, but before the emotions have a chance to blow up, static fills the air. Victory tastes metal and the frustration of interrupted coitus. The colours in the room fade.

František shouts: "Everyone out of the building, NOW!"

The people don't move and the guards are as dumbfounded as everyone. Kladivo stares at the Mage as the latter mutters and gestures the same bit repeatedly, more and more irritated at every iteration. He suddenly nods and roars in a voice that knows no refusal: "The Mage is right, we gotta go!"

Kladivo sprints out of the room, ramming through the clogged hallway, then quickly turning to an empty side corridor.

"Dad! What's happening?"

František stops whatever he was doing and grabs Tadzio, dragging him along on his way out. The undercouncilmen follow, as does Victory.

Taking the same way as Kladivo did, they run down a secondary staircase that gets them out via the west wing. Some of the drunken dancers are still with the group. The air still feels electrified. The Mage keeps running. They get just past the Plaza when the world's colours vanish.

All sounds go away.

Victory somehow manages to hold onto a door handle as nearly everything and everyone around gets sucked into a stop-motion vortex. She sees the girl with the belt crown in mid-air, dragged back to the former Council Hall.

All sounds return and it's as if a storm has ravaged the Plaza. In the Council Hall's stead, a sore wound in reality is pulsing, a roughly vertical slit the size of two houses looming in the middle of ruins and rubble. There are people crumpled in the streets. The ones who managed to get ahold of something just in the nick of time. Many are hurt, bleeding.

Victory roams through the debris for a while. Eventually, she finds Tadz and his father. Both are shaken. Both.

"What in both Hells was that?" Vic snaps at the Mage.

"Whatever that was, it must have been triggered by something or someone on the other side. How else have you interacted with the gate?"

"We tried to get it contained by that pulpit in the Tomb. It didn't work and got sucked through."

"So master Jarek was not the first object to pass through the gate today. They have known that we know. It took you some time to get it from the Tomb to the Hall. Enough for someone on their end to take action." He pauses and rubs his temples. "But why retaliate instead of just closing it? Thus far they appeared to have had no intention to take direct violent action."

"They panicked?" Victory offers. "Feared retribution and wanted to eliminate all witnesses?"

"Where are the others? The councilmen? Kladivo?" Tadzio asks.

"Could have been accidental, could have been a move to eliminate the town's leadership," František says. "We know nothing. We're in the dark at this point. I'll go look for the representatives. You go bring Irenka to take care of the woun-"

A flicker and Tadz with Vic are standing at Irenka's porch. A simple sign by her door says 'Irenka, healer'. She needs no advertisement with the reputation she has.

"Did your dad do this to you all the time when you were living with him? Because it's seriously getting on my nerves already," Victory grumbles before knocking on the door.

"Not really. It's been a crazy day."

Irenka appears at the front door and is quickly brought up to speed. She grabs as much medicinal supplies as they can carry and then they all rush back to the Tomb Plaza. They spend the rest of the afternoon tending to the wounded.

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