Saturday, July 12, 2014

Shops in the Poor District



  1. Relicker*. Mostly third order relics lying around and sham devotional tracts. Has 1d6-2 1st or 2nd order relics. For each, roll to generate the item as relicker presents it: GENERATE RELIC
  2. Unlicensed alchemist**. Small shop, cramped, ingredients packed everywhere. 1d6-2 potions for sale. Use this to GENERATE EACH POTION's appearance as it is unveiled from within a snug wrapping of fox fur. 
    1. This alchemist can make potions with the following fx:
      1. Emotional projection: focus on an object within sight, or concentrate on a known object anywhere. It will change color to reflect your mood as long as the potion and your concentration lasts. 
      2. Read emotional projections: your eyes sense the emotional state, color-coded, of every object in the world that has emotional states. 
    2. This alchemist is always needing and will pay good coin or trade in kind for:
      1. Sweat of a murderer
      2. Reproductive fluids of an adulterer
      3. Teeth of a happy child
      4. Tears of widow married fifty years
    3. This alchemist is paying off a corrupt authority to turn a blind eye to his business, but the authority is demanding more and more. You seem like the sort who could help.
  3. Locksmith. Door-curtain of scrap keys, rugs and tapestries of linked keys.
    1. Glad to make copies of keys, asks no questions, DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW.
    2. For the right coin, maybe he'll take a look at a lock and see if he knows who made the key. If it's in the neighborhood, odds are he made it. Outside the neighborhood, he'll recognize the lock of a famous smith so the players will know who to go to next. 
  4. Carpenter. Really fine chairs, the walls are covered with them: rocking chairs, stools, all carved with intricate swirls and curves > when your eyes relax, someone trained in religion might recognize the name of an ancient god in the pattern > act interested in his worship, and carpenter will admit he's a cultist, will tell you more if you come to next meeting. 
    1. Will present d6-2 of his finest items: rocking chair, stool, ottoman, chaise lounge.
    2. More or less a month's wages for each. 
    3. +XP for spending money on them if you take them back to your place or give them as a gift. If spending money normally grants XP in your campaign, spending money on these grants 2x XP. 
    4. However, if you sit in these items you find yourself outside his shop or outside the meeting place of the cult without explanation once or twice a month, and the chair (or whatever) seems warmer and more soothing with the passing of time.  
* Relickers: for each relic, 1/6 genuine, 1/6 of those magical. Relickers usually do not know which ones are genuine or magical. Third order relics are those that have touched second or first order relics. They are basically worthless. Second order relics touched the body of a holy person. First order relics are part of the holy person. Second orders sell for maybe a month's wages. First orders (depending on the fame of the saint concerned) sell for at least 10x that. 

** An alchemist can make other potions than the ones listed, but they're not very interesting. Just boring Advil-like medicine and other products that you might see advertised gaudily on the internet.

Beauty in the Poor District


  1. Twisting grand staircase to nothing. Granite. Choked with vines. Shaft of sunlight at the summit. Carved with symbols around the balustrade > eyes, snakes, blanks (key to another area). 
  2. A small but well-kept playground, initials carved into fence, gleeful squeals and quiet parents. Stone-carved stumps provide seating.
  3. A fertile vegetable garden tucked into a nook that the sun unaccountably reaches, tended alternately by the young and elderly. Healing herbs sprout in the far corner. Wrought iron benches give relaxing view.
  4. An ancient, dry fountain of a human in patchwork armor resting on a spear with tip to heaven > scales detectable on skin > along the tail, faded draconic runes are lore-key. Older siblings or parents have carried water in leaking buckets to fill the basin. Children splash in water and break to snack on hard bread. 
  5. Half crazy bums playing wargames. They are very skilled and will remain calm so long as the rules are respected. There's plenty of rubble around to have a seat. 
  6. Members of a good cult have a booth set up to distribute free coffee and proselytize in a friendly way. They are thoughtful, and chatting with them will leave you feeling better off. 
  7. An incredibly complex mural symbolically illustrates an entire period of history. Study it and maybe you'll learn something. 
  8. A landlord hands out bread for pulling weeds around the building; he gives to each the same ration regardless of effort. 
  9. Pre-adults are playing a standing team game of chance. There's lots of hostile trash talk, but no one ever gets hurt. You can join in, and they don't mind if you're terrible as long as you're amusing. 
  10. An old woman continues her sculpture of twisted metal. It will have great meaning, and she doesn't mind if you watch as long you keep quiet and bring her tea.
  11. A group of children regularly reenact a famous war; each session covers a historical battle; results from one carry over to the next. They have a system of memorized adjudication principles; the referee is highly regarded and carries a wooden stick 'mace' inscribed with traditional runes containing deep meaning.
  12. Intergenerational party of birdwatchers. The birds all look like flying rats to you, but the watchers see nuance at great distance. Over time you will see it too and find the process of identification soothing.

Caves


  1. Bubbles. There are bubbles. Permeable. Air pockets. They collect in a secret place. Transport. 
  2. The Floor is Lava. Actually is. Stone statues here half submerged and colossal. They hold secrets as does the far side. 
  3. Milk Bath. The floor of the room curves inward and ends in a bath of cave milk. A sump. Nutritious if drunk but will blind and albinize you and turn you cave-denizen like over time. Heals skin imperfections, lesions. The breasts of the cave are here. 
  4. Flower Maze. Maze of long-stemmed floral speleothems of all colors 5-8 feet high. Fragile. Sharp. Gradual loops. Drop items or use chalk to mark paths. Pale yellow sweet haze a mild soporific. Bats snoozing on ground, some fall from ceiling to be impaled on flowers. You can tell you're getting sleepy. Roll under Con at end of each turn to avoid passing out. -2 cumulative penalty each turn. A sculptor-gardener bare stone cottage in center. Bag of bright green seed pebbles (2d20). Plant them shallowly in the rock and a flower will grow. Breathe on it to color it. 
  5. Symphony of Dissonance. Awful dissonant woodwind sound. Large central column. Coming up through hollow stalagmites like a distributed organ. Cover some of the pipes, even with your hand (the air is warm and moist) to silence them and so produce music. Teaching the room a tune no matter how simple shakes the cavern and dislodges rock from the central column, where a creature of otherworldly beauty has been imprisoned in the rock. At first only the stone around her feet is dislodged. More complex or  beautiful compositions dislodge the her hands, arms, hair, legs, face. She wakes up at this and asks for a song to be played that would soothe a child. She then relapses into coma. If request granted, she falls out of the stone and grants a wish to the most compassionate before disappearing in fire. Not with words does she communicate. She will grant a wish for anything that is good and can be lost again. Otherwise she gives what she thinks the character needs most as a person. 
  6. Cavern Heart. The shape of a massive hollowed egg. A heart of magma beats here. Its booms are deep and loud and painless. The magma is suspended in the shape of a heart by forms of thick glass. Tubes of glass carry the magma elsewhere, out of sight. A narrow tube of glass (no magma) empties into the opening of this chamber. It can be chimney climbed. A pleasant temperature throughout. The tube exits beneath a seat of glass. Armrests. The left contains a mace cut with images of beasts spiraling down in complexity to plants and dirt. When a human sits in the seat or touches the mace, the heart of the cave shows you all the horror it has seen since the beginning. It will then ask permission to sleep, as a vassal to a lord. Not in words but concepts. If granted, all magma in this cave begins to cool rapidly, starting with the heart itself and shooting down the tubes. By the time you leave the room, all magma is cool in this cave. If not granted, the whole cave resounds with a groaning, and the heart beats faster and brighter for days. Triggers the **high lava flow** condition of the relevant areas. Whatever you decide, you will be in shock for 2d20 days. Nonhumans cannot take the mace. If they touch either chair or mace, magma obviously begins to flow toward the chair from above. It will fill the chair and spontaneously combust anyone touching it or the mace. As soon as a nonhuman stops touching the chair/mace, the magma begins to recede. 
  7. Heartbeats. Convex glass floor pressing up into the cavity; so slick; no purchase. Below are flares of magma, saturated orange. A deep boom as the unobservable heart of the cavern beats. **Do not tell the players what the booming is. Do not say it sounds like a heartbeat.**
  8. Inconvenient Lava. Lava flows around a stony protrusion on which a fantastic treasure rests. The heat from the lava is too much. Without protection from heat, starting 80' away, and for each 10' closer, you are warm > sweating > screaming > 1st degree burns > 2nd degree burns > 3rd degree burns > on fire > ash. If the lava has cooled, that's cash money.