Elemental Reductions

This is post is for this month's  RPG Blog Carnival topic: feasts and festivals hosted on Of Dice & Dragons .  This post covers a beggar's feast as part of the Feast of Winter Solstice. Feast of the Winter Solstice This feast is done on the evening of the longest night of the year, right before New Year's day.  During the day, people seek to pay off debts and settle grudges. Everyone also makes sure their fellows all have an invitation to a feast gathering, as it is believed those left out will easily invoke Hekate for a curse on those who have spurned them. The wise among the wealthy and powerful ensure a beggar's feast for the destitute and the sheltered, supplying good food and inviting the everyone in their area to make sure they have a place to socialize and make merry. In the evening, people gather for their feast. An hour before midnight, they take a good serving to a crossroad, and lay it out in honor of Hekate.  It is usually eaten by dogs.  If al...

  Last session     October 23, 2025  In the morning, we all walk back to Tanky McTank face through the soaked terrain.  Despite taking about an hour to get to the mansion last night, we find it was only about a kilometer away. Shan's cousin is making breakfast when we arrive.  Midnight goes out on his own, hunting.  He comes back as we're finishing breakfast, and lets us know he's got a track on a slaver barge.  Tony asks them if they're good with staying with us while we hunt them.  Ardyn agrees, and asks if he can have one of our "mule" shotguns. It turns out Midnight & Tony have actually had brief encounters with them, and the rest of us have at least heard credible information about Splugorth. Ardyn and Paruuku bundle into Tanky's cabin, and we set off. Our survival/navigation/driving team of Midnight, Faith, and Shan all succeed on their rolls, and we get to position ourselves as we want to. We found the slaver barge near a ramshac...

  October 3, 2025 The  team was traveling north after a stop to repair Tanky McTankface, Shan's armored hospital on wheels, when we ran into a ley line storm. Our electronics mostly went to crud, so we hunkered down, with the mystically sensitive having bad headaches.  That's when we started hearing a woman or girl sobbing on our radio.  Not getting any responses to our hails, Tony suited up into his SAMAS, and the rest of the party dressed for the weather. Based on triangulation, we went in the direction of the signal, which seemed to be a hut on a hilltop. The going was slick, and we decided to go stealthily, so Tony waited until they breached and called him in psychically.  Faith and Midnight took the lead, breaking into the decrepit mansion, where they saw a woman of some sort torturing a young woman, with a young and scared man sitting a few feet away from them. As they burst in, about a dozen humanoids apparently made of worms, oozed out of the walls,...

Session 10: The Golden Mesa Bar Met Thrinn the dwarf and his buddies at the Golden Mesa Bar, near Commanche . We told them about the Daemonics encounter. Shan shows them where on their map our black out zone was, where the daemonic remains were, and where we found the daemonics. Thrinn has an awesome map, but it's annotations are wickedly encoded. Shan pulls out our map. We show them our map, and try to get some extra info out of him: Further north, the more dangerous things are. First Apocalypse patrols the ruins of Topeka. Junction is pretty dangerous for us. Emporia is probably about as far north as we can safely go. Thrinn tells us there's a crew that wanders from the Colorado Baronies all the way up to Kingsdale who are in the area. They stand out like a sore thumb. They also have a Mountaineer and some ATVs. They're well protected. They like TW stuff. Thrinn's companions have passed out before Thrinn.  

Fantasy Stones This month's Blog Carnival prompt from Wobblerocket is Magic Rocks . I have catalogued stones less commonly known by people of our wondrous city. Some of these are only known to those of us who travel frequently, while others are already well known to us from songs and stories, but with their impacts vastly exaggerated. Read on and learn. -E Large Stonework & Boulders Oracular Stone A large,  hollow stone with diagonal lines decorated with a particular type of insect or small animal. Random decoration type: Animal : 1. Mouse, 2. Wren, 3. Owl, 4. Ferret, 5. Asp, 6. Spider. Insect: 1. Bee, 2. Ant, 3. Butterfly, 4. Moth, 5. Grasshopper; 6. Beetle. Benefit :  An oracle puts their head in the stove, inhaling the smoke, then sharing their oracular statement.  These statements are often cryptic and open to interpretation, and so allow the GM to play both sides of the outcomes with the same message, while providing guidance to the player characters on where...

Item Quality Items come in three grades: Superior: masterwork items, four notches.  They usually cost ten times the normal cost of such items.  Most magic items are always made from masterwork base items.  They may provide a minor intrinsic non-magical bonus (+1 to hit for weapons, a reduction of 1 to armor item penalties, or a +2 on tool use checks). Standard: a typical item, three notches. Poor: a poor quality item, two notches.  They have a -1 penalty (-1 to damage for weapons, -1 AC for armor, or -2 on tool use checks for items). Notches Notches represent wear and tear equipment has taken.  They affect performance in the following ways: Weapons Odd notches (first, third, etc.) inflict a -1 penalty to damage. Even notches (second, fourth, etc.) inflict a cumulative -1 penalty to hit. Armor Odd notches inflict a -1 penalty to checks due to damage. Even  notches inflict a cumulative -1 penalty to AC. Items This requires some interpretation by the GM. In...

Cast Anthony "Loco" Riaz (SAMAS pilot) - Ruins gang survivor, captured and raised by the Coalition, now late 20s, Fugitive SAMAS pilot from CS El Dorado, wanted for stealing a SAMAS suit with some vibrosword upgrades, getting in trouble with, whom it turns out, was the Colonel's wife.  Fleeing north towards Castle Refuge, he ran short on supplies while evading Coalition supplies, and got dehydrated, before being rescued by.... Layla Lacoi (DB Mystic) - A tall dimensional mystic being with a bit of a catfish face.  She healed him and fed Tony.  She has a bond to.... Midnight (Psi-stalker variant) - A dark and mysterious stranger, riding a strange horse.  He seems to have influence over lightning, and is a man who lives off the land.  Midnight has a bond with.... Faith Macavoy (I'm not really sure) - A non-descript vagabond woman, who seems to be quite capable and full of supplies.  She has a bond with.... Shan Medsans (Cyber-doc, I think) - A...

So a few weeks ago, some people I used to play RPGs with reached out to me about bringing the band back together.  Once we slayed the scheduling demon, we figured out what we could play.  We settled on Rifts , using the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. Rifts being Rifts , just assume trigger warnings of an awful post-apocalyptic world with demons and fascists apply. Session 0 We made characters.  Here's the list, starting with my characer, Tony: Anthony "Loco" Riaz (SAMAS pilot) - Ruins gang survivor, captured and raised by the Coalition, now late 20s, Fugitive SAMAS pilot from CS El Dorado, wanted for stealing a SAMAS suit with some vibrosword upgrades, getting in trouble with, whom it turns out, was the Colonel's wife.  Fleeing north towards Castle Refuge, he ran short on supplies while evading Coalition supplies, and got dehydrated, before being rescued by.... Layla Lacoi (DB Mystic) - A tall dimensional mystic being with a bit of a catfish face.  She heale...

    This is post is for last month's  RPG Blog Carnival topic:  hosted on Sea of Stars .  The gods have continued to laugh at my plans, so I'm a little late. Nobody is sure what dragons really are. Some believe they are related to demons: that they are merely agents required for the creation of the universe.  As evidence of this, they posit: A common language they are all born understanding, even if the least of them are incapable of speaking that tongue.   The universal pride and avarice even the most virtuous of their kind demonstrate. Their incredible affinity with certain forms of magic that dragons have, and  Their fecundity with creatures of other kinds. In contrast, others, including most of the scholars of the Southern Sands, argue that unlike demons or other outsiders, dragons  Can breed true amongst themselves.  The most powerful of them lay small clutches of eggs incredibly rarely, while the more common kinds freque...