The Caves of Tÿğeštai, Chapter One

In Which

 "She ate my name" ⁂ Adventurers encounter a troglodyte hunting party with predictable results ⁂ Our heroes learn the value of teeth ⁂ Auto-haruspicy is practiced ⁂ Herbs are obtained

This is the first log of a campaign I'm running this summer. I haven't abandoned the one from December -- I fully intend to pick it back up in the very near future now that I have time to type stuff like this -- but as I didn't have a recording device going and took no notes, if I'm going to write this one down, I'll need to do it before I forget everything.

You can find the pitch, the setting document, and a crude map here.

Our Heroes

Umba the Wrong-Eyed (Level 5 Bard) is a nightmare kobold -- a combination of words that could probably use an explanation, as my campaign world handles kobolds ever-so-slightly differently: basically, just by emphasizing the connection they have with their draconic heritage. The kobolds were created by dragons to be their servants -- high-level homunculi, essentially -- many millennia ago. They weren't created all in one go, however: a dragon that wanted kobold servants would create their own, from drops of their own blood. The result is that there are as many subspecies of kobold as there are of dragon. To quote directly from the setting document:

Each tribe of kobold shares scale color and minor physical traits with the type of dragon that created their ancestors. Above ground, the various varieties of dragon, and therefore of kobold, are very simply labelled — said varieties of dragon are well-known in legend, and familiarity breeds a certain ease of naming. Above ground, you find red kobolds and gold kobolds, blue kobolds and brass kobolds. Below ground, the races of kobold are somewhat stranger, as they sprang from more esoteric species of dragon. In Tÿğeštai, you will find cave kobolds, shadow kobolds, underworld kobolds, nightmare kobolds, and howling kobolds.

Nightmare kobolds are especially strange-looking, resembling a very small and toned-way-down version of the image below. The nightmare kobolds here in the caverns, who call themselves Clan Malrukva, maintain their own brand of darkly surreal mysticism, can see the dreams of sleeping people, and have a tendency to haunt the human town situated on the surface above the caverns, stealing things that strike their fancy. As far as anyone knows, they are the only nightmare kobolds on this plane.

From the Pathfinder Bestiary 5. Art by Christina Yen.

This last bit is something that interests Umba. He is called the "Wrong-Eyed" because he was born with an extra eye in the center of his forehead, allowing him to see brief and vague glimpses of the future -- however, he is more interested in the past. His life's goal is to find out who the dragon that created his ancestors was, and what happened to it.

Notable among his stolen surface possessions are an awkwardly-sized hurdy-gurdy and a battered steel shield made for a halfling. The shield has a rather complex design painted on it, the significance of which is beyond Umba.

Argent gouttee-de-sang, on a chevron Sable five crocottas cabossed Or in chief a raven displayed a comble of the third charged with a crescent of the first.

Mechna-dza (Level 2 shaman) is a doppelganger and an outcast. It is customary among doppelgangers to spend plenty of time living among other humanoids, learning their culture so that they can blend in wherever necessary. Mechna-dza took this a little too far. She spent a lengthy period with a band of grimlocks, and even grew herself -- using her shapeshifting ability -- a head of luxurious hair in order to impress the blind humanoids with its texture. To cut a long and distressing story short, some years later, she was regretting her mistakes as she fled from her enraged half-grimlock son. She fell in with some troglodytes, and found salvation in the Cult of Anagana, troglodyte goddess of plants, eggs, and growing things. By now, her fellow doppelgangers would completely refuse to acknowledge her as one of them: she insists on continuing to grow hair, which is an insult to the doppelganger's ever-changing form; she follows an alien religion, demonstrating allegiance to species other than doppelganger; she has a gender identity, which, along with everything else, indicates that she has rejected the doppelganger ethos -- a doppelganger is not supposed to identify, in terms of gender, nationality, species, religion, or anything else, as something other than "doppelganger". Mechna-dza has joined up with Umba mostly on the grounds that finding a dragon sounds like fun. She carries a ridiculously large arsenal of weapons, for reasons obscure to everyone but herself.

 Sss----''ashKatha¹ (Level 0) is a chuul heretic. Their tribe lives in the deep reaches of the underground sea, and worships Katha², the demigoddess of a particular undersea volcano. Some time ago, there was a schism among the cult regarding whether a particular passage about "the energy that surrounds us" referred to water (as was the orthodox view) or to the fire of the volcano. AshKatha was on the latter side, and stubbornly clung to that position even as the orthodox view won out. Not only were they exiled for their blasphemy, but Katha herself cursed them by inflicting the Tainted template upon AshKatha. AshKatha's form is now horribly twisted, with four extra mouths and what seems to be a hole into space where their eyes should be. They also have a working set of beetle wings -- the intent here was to separate AshKatha from the element of water in order to show the goddess's displeasure. AshKatha, however, continued to misinterpret the signs, and believes that they have been blessed. Even now, they continue to do their work in Katha's name, to Katha's extreme irritation.

AshKatha also acts as the party's pack mule, since they are incredibly strong and has a Heward's Handy Haversack that they obtained through some underwater bartering with the Kuo-toa. Said haversack contains, in addition to some weird Kuo-toa alchemical devices, a massive amount of dried & salted fish. They (AshKatha, not the fish), unfortunately, do not speak anything but Aklo, obliging Mechna-dza to translate for them. (The translation will be glossed over in these logs unless it becomes relevant.)

Our story begins...

 ...with Umba, Sss----''ashKatha, and Mechna-dza searching the caverns for something to eat other than fish jerky, and discussing how they might find that dragon Umba so wants to know more about.  This excitement is interrupted by a clan-mate of Umba's emerging from a nearby tunnel with a strange troglodyte in tow. The latter looks rather dazed.

Umba recognizes the kobold as Ghent the Sure-Clawed, and asks what's going on. In a rush, Ghent explains that there is some sort of threat from the surface. A troglodyte hunting party in the area ran into a group of humans, and were slaughtered, except for the one who Ghent has with him -- who claims that one of the humans "ate his name".

Some confusion at this ensues, and the two clarify that what they mean is nobody can remember the troglodyte's name, and if they give him a new one, everyone forgets that too.

In case anyone is reading "troglodyte" as a generic term for "cave-dweller", here we are talking about these guys.
From the D&D 3rd Edition Monster Manual. Art by Sam Wood.

Flashback from the nameless troglodyte ("_____"):
The hunt went tolerably well; the troglodytes were heading back to their tribe with several neatly-javelined bats to augment the insect-and-fungus diet they usually had to settle for. Hÿšilia, walking at the front, suddenly stopped in confusion. "There's a light coming from ahead," she said. "From that tunnel there."
"It's probably just a cook-fire," said ____ dismissively.
"Who would be cooking something here? There aren't any other tribes in this area."
"I don't --"
And that's when four humans stepped out of the tunnel Hÿšilia had indicated. One of them carried a staff that glowed with a bright and eerie light. _____ had time to wonder, briefly, how he could have mistaken that for firelight, before the staff-carrying human pointed at the troglodytes' spears and shouted something. Then everything was horrible.
One of the humans -- the masked one -- chanted in a strange language, and right next to _____, Šapalulme swelled up and burst, light flowing from his wounds as he screamed. It was so bright that _____'s eyes stung and he could barely see -- then something tackled him. Enormous hands pinned his arms to his sides, and something stabbed right through the side of his face. There was a strange sucking sensation -- not a physical one, but a spiritual feeling -- and he felt himself black out.
When he came to, he was alone except for the dead and mutilated bodies of his comrades, and he couldn't remember his name. Nor, as he discovered when he returned to his tribe, could anyone else. As he and his tribe were trying to sort out exactly what happened, one of those weird little kobolds showed up and said that the spirits had moved him to visit...

Ghent has come to find Umba because, as a fifth-level character (not that Ghent is familiar with that phrase), he is the toughest in their tribe. Besides, he hangs around with that enormous crustacean killing machine, and that's got to be worth something. The Malrukva clan is very worried that the humans are going to come for them next, since they're near the passage to the surface, and make a habit of stealing from the town above, so they need someone bigger and stronger to protect their home from the humans. The PCs are ready to go kick some sun-lander butt, but Ghent stops them.

Ghent: Umba -- you can't possibly be thinking of going without consulting the spirits?
Umba: Oh. Uh, no. Of course not.
Ghent: Good. Come, we must speak to the Haruspex.

They travel through winding tunnels for a few hours before reaching the Malrukva mines, at which point Ghent stops them. The mines are, of course, built for kobolds, and the ceilings are rarely more than four feet high at any point. Mechna-dza can just compress herself into a smaller size, but AshKatha can barely fit a claw inside.

Ghent: Luckily, some years ago, the spirits moved our chief to craft something for such an eventuality. Wait here.

Several minutes pass, and then Ghent emerges from the mines with an amulet, which he presents to AshKatha.

Ghent: Put this on... um... do you have a neck?
AshKatha: I'm not sure.
Ghent: Find somewhere to hang this.

AshKatha manages to get the amulet of reduce person to hang behind their head, and shrinks down to roughly the same size as a human on its hands and knees. Ghent then leads the party into the mines, proudly pointing out their treasures to the newcomers.

Ghent: This is where we keep the stuff we steal from the humans. Weapons, armor, tools... lots of barrels... that one, we think, is full of beer. And on that shelf, there's a foot -- don't worry, it's stopped bleeding. Here is the Hall of Records, where we build mosaics of the more interesting human dreams -- note the exquisite use of lack-of-color. This here is where we store our collection of teeth, in urns constructed for that purpose.
AshKatha: Teeth? What teeth?
Mechna-dza: Human teeth?
AshKatha: What are they for?
Umba: Teeth are very useful. And the humans don't take care of theirs -- they're always rotting and falling out anyway.³
Mechna-dza: If they're rotten, can we grind them up and use them as poison?
Ghent: That would be a waste of perfectly good teeth.

Eventually, they reach the Haruspex's chamber, where incense is burning in a complete disregard for the issue of closed spaces -- don't worry, there's a chimney at the back. Bundles of some kind of strange herb hang from the ceiling, and in the middle of the floor sits an elderly kobold. Her head is ringed with small white eyes -- though nightmare kobolds often have extra eyes, more than three or four is extremely rare, and such a profusion of them identifies a powerful seer. The Haruspex urges them to sit, and pulls out a long, thin obsidian knife of obvious antiquity and surpassing sharpness. Strange patterns iridesce on the blade.⁴

Haruspex: I'll need a volunteer.
Silence.
Haruspex: I need to read the entrails; who's willing?
Mechna-dza extends her arm.
Haruspex: You can't fool me, dearie. I know you people don't have any entrails, and shapeshifted ones won't give me an accurate reading. Someone else.
AshKatha: I don't think any of us want to be disemboweled before we go fight.
Haruspex: That does not auger well -- fine, I'll do it myself.

The Haruspex expertly disembowels herself with a slight wince, and begins to examine her entrails. She explains to the party that, from what she can see, the humans do indeed intend to plunder the Malrukva mines, and that they will be successful if not stopped. She also warns the party that the true threat is not the one who eats names, but a masked woman who accompanies her. It is important, she says, that the PCs not let the masked woman touch them. After a slight pause, she also informs them that their lucky numbers for the week are 7, 5, and 3, and that they should avoid fish. They dutifully make note of this on their character sheets. She then carefully replaces her entrails, and drinks a healing potion. The wound closes.

The PCs have additional questions, but the Haruspex frustratedly explains that she "just put the entrails away" and doesn't want to get them back out just now. As an apology, she gives them some of the herbs hanging from her ceiling. They're a sort of thick, leafy vine, dried and wrapped into small bundles.

Mechna-dza: What are they?
Haruspex: I'm not sure. We get them from the surface.
AshKatha, examining the herbs speculatively: Are they... flammable?
Haruspex: Probably, but you're supposed to chew them.

The PCs each mark "Herbs?" on their equipment list, and depart the mine.

---

1 The dashes are pronounced as an extended bubbling noise, and the apostrophes represent a clacking sound made with the claws. This name is generally shortened to "AshKatha".^↩

2 The first syllable there is mostly swallowed. If I hadn't seen AshKatha's player write it down, I would have spelled it "Ctha".^↩

3 It should be noted that Umba's player seamlessly slipped into explaining the weirder behavior of his clan, and made sure Umba exhibited some of said behavior himself, despite the fact that said player hadn't been aware of the teeth & similar until I mentioned them at the table. ^↩

4 Blade of the Haruspex:

+1 keen dagger. Any creature injured with the Blade of the Haruspex immediately gains temporary hit points equal to the amount of damage dealt by the Blade. These temporary hit points persist until the damage begins to heal, at which point they vanish at the rate of 1 temporary hit point for each point of damage healed.^↩

The Caves of Tÿğeštai -- Background

This is the material for a short campaign I'm running this summer.

The Pitch, as Provided to the Players

In most D&D games, you are the agents of civilization, exploring the blank spaces of the map, eliminating threats, and bringing treasure back home to the city/town/ship/whatever. In this one, you’re playing the other side. Y’all are members of nonhuman tribes (or whatever sort of organization your people have, if any), living in what the humans would call “uncharted wilderness” but what your people have called “home” for tens of thousands of years. And now some assholes are trying to COLONIZE it.

Your job is to figure out how to keep “civilization” from ruining your home. This can be accomplished through multiple ways:

[a] Kill ‘em.

[b] Hoard their stuff*. (Not necessarily so you can use it, but so they can’t. Imagine a bunch of goblins stole Excalibur. The goblins might not be any better off, but it’s going to cause trouble for Camelot.)

[c] Literally anything else you can think of.

(This is all based loosely off of this blog post.  I’m not planning to take many rules ideas from this blog, but I really like the CONCEPT.)

The details of the setting are currently undefined. This is because my intention is to have y’all express your opinions about what you think would be interesting to play, then I’ll do some worldbuilding based on your thoughts.

The Setting, After Player Feedback

Only one of the prospective players actually took the short survey I wrote for this purpose, but the results made things quite clear. Chokers, Chuul, and Doppelgangers were all ranked highly as potential playable races -- and the only place I could see the three of those species coexisting was underground. So I wrote up the linked document: The Caves of Tÿğeštai

(Note that the images in the above document are from various RPG sourcebooks -- I'll come back to this post and credit the artists in a bit.)

The Map

Bestiary: Asterite Calicrat

Okay, so I have had slightly more beer than advisable and decided to write a thing instead of going to bed like a sensible person. (Somewhat motivated by the fact that someone texted me about D&D so that is what I want to do right at the moment.)

Also on the subject of doing things that are not sensible, I have chosen to write another bestiary entry based on words I have discovered whilst reading the OED. (This is not sensible, because the previous bestiary thing was not terribly popular.)

Anyhow...

A Bestiary

Dictated Posthumously by Zovik the Doomed

Entry #2: Asterite Calicrat or Ant King

The Ant King is not a natural creature — as we all know, true ant colonies have a Queen only, never a King. It is not even organic; it is a made thing. And easily enough made, too, for any mage who has the time, the money, and some strange reason of their own.

First, shape a sculpture-mold of an ant. This mold should be at normal ant-scale, or as close as one can make it. Then, take enough molten iron to fill the mold and sprinkle in dust-of-asterite¹ in whatever quantity you desire whilst chanting a simple ritual². Pour the mixture into the mold, and proceed as if dealing with any work in cast iron. The quantity of asterite determines the capabilities of the Calicrat, as follows:

The Asterite Calicrat, once made, is not compelled to obey the orders of its creator. Calicrats with more than 1 HD will generally recognize their creator as someone to whom they owe loyalty and gratitude, and will cooperate with their creator’s wishes voluntarily.⁶

Eventually, however, any Calicrat with more than 2 HD will decide that their needs are not best being met in their current servile relationship and will attempt to change things. This could be something as benign as an argument that they and their creator should be equal partners in whatever endeavor, something as malign as an attempt to assassinate and replace their creator, or something as simple as just wandering off one day. The more intelligent the Calicrat, the sooner this occurs.⁷

Once a Calicrat has abandoned its creator, or its creator has died, they embark on the sort of behavior that has led to their being called “Ant Kings”. Ant Kings will find an ant colony that is not currently occupied by one of their own, and use their innate verminous authority to alter the ants’ instinctual behavior so that they allow it to dwell in a specially-made chamber within the colony. The ants of that colony will then begin to behave abnormally in a way that the Ant King has “commanded”. There is a great deal of variation in what an Ant King will cause his ants to do, and the purpose of these machinations is rarely clear.

If I were writing this up for publication, I would include here a d100 table of Projects of the Ant King. However, I am not, so I won't. Maybe another day.

Image obviously not mine; I found it on Google Image Search.
Sculptor is someone by the name of Will Carr.
Carr's work can be found at http://willcarrsculptures.co.uk/
(Yeah, yeah, it's not MLA format. Fuck off.)

Sidebar: Zovik's Personal Account

It was in the Empire of Stones — far distant, long dead — where I first learned of the Calicrat and its construction. The Emperor was a foolish man, and — a quality rare among fools — well aware of this deficiency. Having learned of the ritual that allows one to construct an Asterite Calicrat, he declared that he would have the wisest advisor ever seen in the Empire, and ordered his court to collect every piece of asterite they could find.

The process of finding the asterite had gone on for years by the time I had arrived, and the Emperor had four of the gems in his possession. Each had been the proudest possession of a noble house, and their acquisition had been difficult. All four could have fit together on a man’s fingernail, and I would have dismissed stories of their value if I had not seen one struck by the light and been paralyzed by its beauty. I stayed for several months within the Empire, my tales of other worlds keeping me much in the Emperor’s favor, while the asterite project continued.

The Emperor shared with me the old manuscript in which he had found the instructions to the ritual of crafting the Calicrat, and I was chilled when I learned that one created with two of the miniscule gems was more intelligent than any man or monster on record. At this point in time, the Emperor had six.

A month later, the Emperor acquired a seventh gem of asterite, and decreed that construction of the Calicrat begin that evening. I left at once. That evening, well out of the capital city but still travelling as fast as my horse would take me, I was stricken by a sensation of something pressing in on my mind from all sides. I fell from my horse, not even noticing the pain, focused only on the vision forcing its way into my head. Seven gems of asterite, forced into the rough shape of an ant by a bare iron filigree, glowing with an unearthly light. Chanting seemed to assail my ears, in what I knew in my bones and my blood as the True and Ancient Language, which no living being understands or speaks, but which all will recognize upon hearing.

When I returned to my senses, my horse had gone, and I seemed to have been lying there in the dust for days. Others in that part of the country later told me that they had the same experience. What those closer to the event may have experienced, we shall never know; the lands east of the city and the lands west of the city now meet, seamlessly, as if nothing had ever stood there.

---

1 An extraordinarily rare and valuable gem.^↩
2 Do not worry about causing impurities in the metal; the magic will hold the thing together.^↩
3 Only at ant-scale. Left to its own devices, tends to create vast and complex subterranean complexes.
4 It should be noted that Will hates this.
5 Answers, while coherent, contain only things an ant would know.
6 Calicrats with only 1 HD just act like ants; why did you make that?^↩
7 For Calicrats with more than 5 HD, this period can be measured in hours. Sometimes minutes.^↩

Bestiary: Auf

So there are a lot of things I should be writing.
I have a paper on the semiotic value of footnotes I need to work on.
I have the campaign logs that I'm supposed to be putting here.
I have a piece of fiction that I want to add more to, and someone will actually notice if I don't.

However, this is what my brain decided to focus on, and sometimes my brain withholds sleep from me if I don't write what it wants me to write.

Also, the images turned out a lot better than my artistic attempts usually do. That's a pretty low bar, though.

So, without further ado, here is one entry in what may become an ongoing series of monsters inspired by obscure words found in the OED:

Bestiary

By Zovik the Doomed (dictated posthumously)

Entry #1: the Auf

There is a story told in the city. They say that the small, shrivelled, man-like creatures who live in the mountains -- called the Aufs -- have a penchant for stealing human children. They say that, after taking the human child, they disguise the theft by leaving one of their own, an auf-child.

The auf-child is, inevitably, horribly deformed. Sometimes this is readily apparent. Sometimes it does not show up for years. Sometimes the deformations do not develop until the child is ten or more years of age. It always shows through in the end, though
.
They say that the only way to deal with an auf-child is to take it to the mountains -- the Aufs themselves will not interfere, as they are frightened of the men and women of the city -- and abandon it there, to be raised by its own kind. Then forget.

The original child will never return, for they have become an Auf themselves.

An Auf of the chroolepoid variety.

There is a story told in the mountains. They say that, in ancient days, people of the city abandoned deformed children in the mountains out of shame, claiming that this beast could never be of their blood -- for such would cause the other city-folk to perceive weakness, failure, even immorality on the part of the parents -- and blaming mythical “Aufs” for stealing their true child. They never searched for their “true” child, because they knew in their hearts that the one they had just left to die of exposure was indeed theirs.

They say that, over time, some of the older children who had been abandoned in this manner survived. That they watched for the occasional trips from the city to the mountains, rescued other abandoned children, and raised them in their own shadow-society. They say that these children, knowing that the people of the city thought them deformed, took to wearing wooden masks and shapeless brown robes to conceal themselves.

They say that these children grew up and had their own children, who inherited their parents’ deformities, often to a greater degree. That this shadow-society in the mountains grew, and became organized, and all of them knew of themselves that the people of the city had judged them to be Aufs, so they took this name as their own. And they knew what Aufs were supposed to do with human children.

Both of these stories are, by and large, true.

An  Auf of the Acanthophorous variety.
(I think it's kind of cute; is that wrong?)

One-Shot Campaign Log -- Chapter Two

In Which...

Identities are confirmed ⁂ Squirrels are captured and presumably eaten ⁂ Magical items are received ⁂ Plans are made ⁂ Arson is discussed ⁂ The difference between insurgencies and conquering hordes is clarified ⁂ The party determines the benefits and drawbacks of feeding people to ghouls ⁂ Pamphlets are considered

Warning: The following is a transcript of about half an hour of mostly-in-character dialogue. (Multilogue?) If that's not your thing, you're going to be bored.

Annotations provided by Sister Mangata of the Most Righteous Order of Sybarite Isle.

“Just to make sure you’re the people I’m waiting for,” says Brother Appleseed, “can you tell me who sent you here?”

Confusion ensues out of character, as not all of the players remember that there was even a name mentioned in the mission briefing, and those who do don’t remember what it was. They consult the PDF.

“Mother Malachite,” Lyra replies.

“Oh, good, it is you.”

“Then,” Lyra says with relief, “we can put aside pretense and awkwardness.”

“I have a small delivery for you,” says Brother Appleseed, “and I was instructed to let you stay here for as long as you need in order to formulate your plan of attack.”

Little Marco gets excited. “Ooh, ATTACK!”¹

“Not necessarily literally.”

Silence, feeling the pangs of his ghoulish hunger, interrupts to quietly-but-urgently ask if there might be any live animals about. Appleseed allows that there might be some squirrels out in the orchard. Gwyneth goes out to set up a snare and try to catch some.

While this is going on, Appleseed goes back to his “delivery” -- he says that certain items came to him via divine intervention, just appearing in his shrine one day, and he believes they are for the PCs. He hands them each a scrap of parchment about the size of an index card, each with the holy symbol of that PC’s god painted on it.

Marco rolls Sense Motive and gets a 5. Marco decides Appleseed might be a traitor, and the party might want to be wary.

Marco OOC: My eyes burn with passionate intensity and suspicion.

Lyra, refusing to trust Marco’s judgment, rolls their own Sense Motive and gets a 23. Lyra believes Appleseed to be exactly what he says he is. The players decide to settle this with opposed Diplomacy checks [sure, why not]. Lyra gets a 14. Marco gets a 21. In a brief whispered conversation, Lyra is impressed by how certain Marco is about this issue.

While Lyra and Marco squabble quietly, Brother Appleseed informs the others -- so, at this point, Harold, Ophie, and an increasingly-distracted-by-hunger Silence -- that these pieces of parchment are basically one-shot commune items; tearing one in half allows the holder to summon a minor servant of their god and ask them one yes-or-no question. ²
The party ask if Appleseed has any further information for them; he says that all he was told is that he should keep them safe and hidden here until they decide what to do next.

Silence: Are we going to kill people?
Marco: Gods, I hope so.
Harold: I think we need to kill the Worm that Walks³. That should be our goal.
Appleseed: That would be a lofty goal.

Out of character, confusion ensues as the players try to work out how to approach their fairly-open-ended quest.

Gwyneth returns from outside, having set up her snares.

Harold asks Brother Appleseed if he knows of any strongholds of New God worshippers in the country, people they might seek out for assistance. A quick die roll indicates that Appleseed has some limited knowledge on that subject.

Appleseed: Only rumors. I’ve heard that there is a certain so-called heretical⁴ order over to the east that worships the New Gods, somewhere in Lizard Bay.
Marco: Lizard Bay? Yes!
Harold: Sounds like a fun place.
Appleseed: I’ve also heard rumors that there’s at least one coven of Skøtta Blacktooth active in the region. But the only one I know for sure is that we here in this village are devotees of Jivmarana.

The PCs discuss.

Harold: Definitely go to Lizard Bay, because that sounds awesome.⁵
Marco: I think so too as well.
Silence: I want to recruit a bunch of lizards.
Harold: I want to ride a giant lizard.
Silence: I want to eat a lizard.
Lyra: We have one lizard already.
Harold: You’re going to ruin it for us, Silence.
Lyra: Gwyneth’s a lizard.
Gwyneth: I got you squirrels! Don’t forget that!
Lyra: Have you actually produced any squirrels?
Gwyneth: I don’t know yet.
Marco: I want to acid splash some squirrels.
Lyra, quietly, to Harold: What happens if Silence doesn’t get fed?
Harold, quietly, to Lyra: Well, I have turn undead.

There is some out-of-character discussion of skills and abilities at this point, which contains this gem:

Marco: I can detect poison. Because a lot of people have tried to poison me. They find my demeanor… un… satis… factory.⁶

Gwyneth checks her snares, and finds she has already caught a brace of squirrels. [Craft (trapmaking): 22]

Gwyneth OOC: TEN squirrels.
GM: TEN SQUIRRELS.
Gwyneth, to Appleseed: Fixed your squirrel problem.

The PCs resume planning.

Marco: How strong is the stronghold at Lizard Bay? Like, what’s the weakest point? What do you think is the place --
Appleseed: Okay, when we say “stronghold” --
Lyra: Intellectual / ideological stronghold.
Appleseed: Yes. We don’t mean they actually have an impenetrable fortress.⁷
Lyra: I think we need to start a radical arts and culture movement that favors the New Gods and proliferate it throughout all the major cities. [Sidenote from GM: I’m kind of disappointed this isn’t the plan they went with. That would have been interesting to run.]
Marco: I think we should destroy all the cities, and then we won’t have to worry about it.
Lyra: Well, that’s another perspective.
Marco: I think we should destroy those who oppose us.
[pause as they examine the map, which Ophie’s player has on an iPad]
Marco: Think like a terrorist.
Lyra: Yeah, we need an “insurgency” mentality rather than a “conquering horde” mentality, because we don’t have a horde.⁸
Marco: We need to find some influential people.
Lyra: By “influential”, do you mean people who can manufacture, like, weapons that can kill large numbers of people?
Marco: Either that, or we need to convince someone who can convince everyone else.
Ophie: We should try to get all the undead onto our side, because they were basically enslaved under the old regime.
Lyra: [Marketing jargon that I don’t understand no matter how many times I rewind the audio] … and I can chant. I can perform chants.
Harold: I’ve got chalk, so I can deface all the Old God temples we see with some chalk.
Ophie: Where are all the undead people again?
GM: There’s a high concentration of ghouls in Clarenfair, which isn’t far from here…
Marco: We could start there.
Lyra: We have a ghoul.
GM: … but they’re not exactly oppressed these days.
Ophie: Well, they WERE.
Harold: Hundreds of years ago.
Ophie: That stuff leaves scars.
Lyra: Are they satisfied with the status quo?
GM: Some of them, probably. It varies from person to person. But they’re not politically disenfranchised, and they manage to get away with eating a halfling here and there, so a lot of them are probably okay with the way things are.
Lyra: We need to find large groups of malcontents whom we can work with.
Silence: And then maybe we can bring the ghouls some people to snack on to persuade them.
Lyra: That is good reasoning.
Marco: We could find the influential people and feed them to the ghouls.
Lyra: I don’t think that’s the way we want to leverage our influence. But if we could form our own ideological stronghold, or find one, we could remove the opposing faction by feeding them to ghouls. Both thin out the ranks of people who disagree with us and bring in the ghoul contingent.
Marco, to Appleseed: How was this town converted to the New Gods?
Appleseed: Well, you may have noticed there aren’t a whole lot of humans in this country [human population is about 7%]. Villages like ours, who are still mostly human, were here before the Necrocracy took over the area, so there’s this sort of undercurrent of general discontent.
Marco: What about the lizards? Are they on our side?⁹
Appleseed: Depends on the lizard. The lizardfolk don’t have much of a civilization anymore -- they’re basically leftovers from an empire that collapsed before recorded history.
Lyra: That sounds ripe for discontent.
Appleseed: They live in small settlements in the swamp, and probably don’t care about any of this, unless you can think of a reason to get them involved.
Silence: We should manufacture a reason. Tell them that people are going to come and kill them.
Lyra: I have a suggestion that might appeal to everyone.
Marco: We should commit atrocities --
Lyra and Marco, in unison: -- in the name of the Old Gods!
Lyra: Exactly. We could start murdering people, pin it on our opponents, and start manufacturing, um --
Silence: Dissent?
Lyra: Yeah. [Comparisons to U.S. history ensue]
Gwyneth: I’m not comfortable with this idea.
Harold: Neither am I.¹⁰
Lyra: Well, it’s actually kind of a Lawful thing to do, using terrorism to create a consensus. That’s how the law typically works.

[Confused discussion follows regarding Gwyneth’s alignment, Byfona’s less-known aspect as Goddess of Arson, and whether kobolds can breathe fire. Gwyneth’s player, upon learning they can’t by default, swaps out one of her feats for Draconic Breath.]

Marco: We’ve got to find a temple or something. Or a political building. What’s the best place to blow up?
Lyra: I’m wondering if there’s a way -- and this will sate Harold’s desire to not do absolute chaos --
Harold: I just won’t help. I would stand there.
Lyra: I’m thinking if we find something where the target itself accomplishes an objective for us in hurting the Old Gods, so we’re not attacking our own elements, but we spin it in a way that makes them look bad… what if we fabricate fighting between different Old Gods? Letting us short-term destroy an enemy temple, but long-term make it look like both Wee Jas and Hextor… fabricating a dispute between the two of them? Thus not only hurting our enemies in the short term, but in the long term creating instability in their church that we can then move in and say, “this religion is unstable.”
Ophie: There’s a place -- the Brotherhood of Book and Bone -- a monastery dedicated to Wee Jas. It’s not too far from Lizard Bay.

Harold: Maybe we should start making our way there.
Lyra: So we could burn it down and impersonate followers of Hextor. We could preach a bit about how Hextor is going to basically overtake Wee Jas, and judgment is coming for the followers of Wee Jas because Hextor is a jealous god. Then, as ourselves, move in and preach about how the Old Gods are leading their followers to destruction.
Ophie: I like that. And leave a bunch of leaflets. And things that are from Hextor.
Lyra: Does anyone have the ability to make leaflets?
Silence: We should make pamphlets for both the sides we’re fabricating a dispute between and our own side.
Marco: Less about pamphlets, more about arson.
Lyra: No, we maximize the impact of the arson through planning and ideological control. If we just burn something down, it won’t necessarily further our goals and could even be spun against us.
Marco: I don’t see how.
Lyra: I feel the need to point out that, for those of us who aren’t survivors of frequent poisoning attempts from everyone around us, there are certain social skills that make people not want to poison you.
Marco: My experience is that everyone wanting to kill you doesn’t make so much of a difference.
Lyra: Well, you are still alive, which is true, but our goal is not just survival here.
Ophie: So should we head to this place, the Brotherhood of Book & Bone? It’s also on the way to Lizard Bay.

The party agrees that they should do this.

Silence inquires with Appleseed about whether they can acquire mounts in this town. They can. They also inquire about flammable oils, and pamphlet materials. They can get those as well. The party beds down for the night in one of Appleseed’s outbuildings.

---

1 Yes! Attack the unrighteous! Let the light of the moon scour them from the world!^↩


2 A most potent boon! I am certain these doughty heroes will put these items to good use and not forget them in the bottoms of their knapsacks!^↩


3 Yes! The foul Duke Thull should be slain at once! We have sent many of our heroes to confront him in his tower of unnatural sorceries, where they have proudly died in the greatest traditions of our order -- doing something noble and brave and true and utterly, utterly futile.^↩


4 If by "heretical" you mean burning with the righteous fury of Arraou!^↩


5 Indeed, we provoke awe in allies and foes alike!^↩


6 As do we. But poison is the craven weapon of cowardly swine!^↩


7 Unless you mean an impenetrable fortress of righteousness!^↩


8 It is the doctrine of our order than one should always act as if one is at the head of a great horde.^↩


9 The lizardfolk of Sybarite Isle certainly would be! Although this "Marco" is a morally repellant creature.^↩


10 Neither am I.^↩

One-Shot Campaign Log -- Chapter One

In Which...

Gwyneth falls in with a bad crowd ⁂ Ophie makes an awkward new friend ⁂ Silence eats an apple ⁂ The group is bad at covert operations ⁂ Little Marco perpetrates petty evils ⁂ We're on a mission from God ⁂ Cider is imbibed ⁂ A contact is contacted

The party is brought together rather abruptly. Not all of them have worked together before, but most of them are vaguely aware of the others as being operatives on their side. Each of them was instructed by Mother Malachite, their handler, to get passage on the merchant ship Pristine Lucre as it moved along the coast. When it reached Cinder Cove, they were to steal a lifeboat and row to the coastal village of Nether Mawsnall, to meet a contact by the name of Brother Appleseed.

GM: So, like the mission document said, you’ve been recruited as… um… I was trying to think of a way to sugarcoat this, but I guess you’re essentially a terrorist cell.
Lyra OOC: That so doesn’t bother me.

So the characters travel from wherever they are to nearby ports & board the ship. The last members of the party are picked up in Sepulndia. (All of this was accomplished through liberal use of handwavium, so that all the characters could start in the same place, since I didn’t have any backstories ahead of time.)

There is one exception to all of this: Gwyneth has absolutely no connection to anyone in the party, does not work for Mother Malachite, and isn’t even remotely involved in the war beyond having sympathies for the New Gods. She’s on the ship because she thought it seemed like an interesting experience, and met the other PCs on board. She is “hanging out with them because they seem cool.” Like I said, the game starts when she falls in with a bad crowd.

Anyway, that evening, the PCs are faced with their first decision: the ship is about half an hour away from Cinder Cove, and they need to get a rowboat without anyone noticing -- how?

Marco explains that Marco is “notoriously clumsy,” so should not be doing the sneaking around and stealing. Notorious among whom? What has Marco done to become notorious for this? These are things Marco does not wish to share with the other members of Marco’s group.

Marco has bluffed the crew into hiring Marco as the ship’s cook, allowing Marco to move around without drawing attention. Gwyneth is present legitimately. The rest of the party are stowaways, but they make a series of high Disguise checks so that they can pass as members of the crew when they go onto the deck to get the rowboat. Said Disguise checks were all above 15 before bonuses, establishing a trend of the party rolling absurdly well when sneaking around and doing social engineering, saving all their bad dice-karma for combat.

Lyra makes the first of many of what I think of as “Bavarian Fire Drill checks”, rolling Bluff to look like they are supposed to be where they are and are supposed to be doing what they’re doing. They roll an 18. Other members of the crew on deck -- nobody’s right next to them, but several are within line of sight -- apathetically shrug off the fact that several people who look like members of the crew are fiddling with a lifeboat. Gwyneth follows Silence and Ophie in, out of an apparent decision to go with the flow. Harold leaves five gold pieces behind to pay for the boat, which Little Marco picks up without anyone noticing. Lyra lowers the boat to the water, and climbs down the side of the ship to get in.

Discussion follows about whether leaving only five gold is too cheap for a supposedly-Lawful-Good character; Lyra is pretty sure a good rowboat costs ten times that much. It is eventually justified as being okay because “it’s a used boat.”

Lyra: We fully intend to bring it back, maybe.

Navigation at night is easy. Cinder Cove is so named because there is a castle on the coast, built by the elves in days long gone by, that is enchanted to constantly glow as if with firelight; the enchantment also makes the cove itself appear as if many small fires are burning deep below the water, so that the area is reasonably well lit even at this time of day. Ophie easily makes a Survival check to get them properly oriented, and they strike out for Nether Mawsnall.

Late that night, they reach the shore, and leave the boat on the beach as they head into town. Ophie suggests they look for a bar, and the rest of the group agrees -- after a pretty short time, they locate a tavern called the Starved Vulture.

Lyra: Sounds dismal; let’s do it.
Silence: Well, that means everyone’s alive.

The Starved Vulture is pretty run-down; there are visible stains on the floor and walls, and the furniture is old and battered. Nobody in the bar is looking at them or acknowledging their presence in any way. A quick scan of the room by Brother Harold indicates that there isn’t anyone in the bar openly displaying allegiance to the New Gods. Here, the group realizes another problem: they have no description of this guy, just a name. Can they just ask for “Brother Appleseed”? Will that tip people off that there’s something up? Just how much secrecy do they need to operate under?

Ophie orders a drink, and hands the bartender a gold piece instead of a silver. “What’s going on?” she asks. “What’s up with you today?”

“Tending bar. Doing bar-tending things. You know. What bartenders do.”

Harold walks up to Ophie’s “awkward new friend” and coughs, “Brother Appleseed.”

“Ah. You know, just recently, I happened to purchase some excellent apples in that orchard to the west of town,” says the bartender in a seeming non-sequitur.

Lyra, suspicious, rolls Sense Motive. 14. He seems legit.

Little Marco rolls a 17, and realizes that the bartender might have been expecting for someone to come ask him about Brother Appleseed.

“Can you be more specific about ‘the west of town’?” asks Ophie.

The bartender gives the gnome an odd look, and says that if the gnome were to walk westward on either of the town’s two streets, they would quickly come to the west side of town, and a hill from which the orchard is visible.

Little Marco drinks Ophie’s drink, and they leave.

Lyra, after leaving, disguises themself and heads back in. They approach a corner of the bar where a few people who look like farmers are quietly drinking. “Hey,” says Lyra, “what do you think about those people who were just here?”

The farmers look at him flatly and reply, almost in unison, “What people?” Lyra leaves.

They find the orchard easily. Passing through, they notice that the apples growing there are abnormally large, almost grotesquely swollen. Silence takes one and bites into it experimentally. Since he is a ghoul, however, he’s immune to disease and poison, and if there were something wrong with the apple, it wouldn’t affect him. In addition, since it’s fruit and not the flesh of the living, it does nothing to sate his unholy hunger. He doesn’t even have working taste buds, so no data is gained. Lyra sticks four apples in their backpack for later.

In the center of the orchard, they find a cluster of crude shacks, one of which has candlelight coming through the windows. They go up to the one that appears inhabited, and Harold knocks.

A small and cadaverously thin man opens the door. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Brother Appleseed,” replies Harold.

There is a brief pause, during which some out-of-character discussion suggests the theories that (a) this might be the wrong guy and (b) they might have remembered the name wrong.

“I’m sorry,” the man says, “I don’t know anybody by that name.” (Later, it occurred to me that he could have interpreted that statement as answering the first question. “I knew Brother Appleseed. Brother Appleseed was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Brother Appleseed!”)

Brother Harold rolls Sense Motive. He gets a total of 20, because he has maximum ranks in that skill, and realizes that his contact might be taken somewhat aback by this approach, especially since they haven’t identified themselves.

Little Marco chimes in. “We need some apples, STAT!” When this provokes only a confused stare -- who needs emergency apples in the middle of the night? -- Marco tries another tack. “We’re on a mission from God.”

Marco OOC: ...and we need help with our terrorist cell. [pause for laughter] I’m joking about that second part; I don’t say that.

The man asks which god, exactly.

Marco OOC: I got an 11.
GM: Which one?
Marco OOC: On Diplomacy.
GM: No, which god?

“Um, whichever one’s the right one,” replies Marco. “The new ones.”

Appleseed stares at the group for a few seconds, then gives up. “I’m just going to assume you guys are legitimate, because I feel like if you were spies, you’d be better at this.”

Lyra steps in. “I apologize for my assortment of friends who don’t know how to talk to strangers.” [Diplomacy: 25] “Can we come in? We’ve just been on a very long journey, and we’re just looking for a place to rest and something to eat.”

“Oh, yes. Come in, put your feet up, and have some cider.” The party enters. “And since it’s late, you can stay in one of the other shacks for tonight -- they’re usually for hired hands, but I’ve made on up in case I had guests tonight.”

While Brother Appleseed is fetching some cider, the group poke around the shack, trying to find anything that would indicate allegiance to either Old or New gods. Harold, with a high Search roll, notices that the apparent shrine to Wee Jas in the corner seems to have been set up very recently, judging by the fact that there’s no dust on any of the movable items, and some scuff marks on the wood suggest that maybe there was a different idol in the shrine just previously. Harold guesses that there was an idol to a New God there until he knocked on the door.

Silence: Does anyone have something we can use to show that we are for the New Gods?
Harold: I have a holy symbol.
Marco: I can display my love of destruction.

When Appleseed comes back with the cider, Ophie asks, “Hey, do you have any new dogs around here?” She elbows Appleseed conspiratorially. “You know what we’re saying. New DOGS, right?”

Lyra downs their cider in exasperation.

Gwyneth decides to make herself clear by bowing her head and audibly praying to Byfona.

“Since some of you seem legitimate,” says Appleseed, “I suppose I can forgive your eccentric behaviors.”

Little Marco punches the wall, to the exasperation of the rest of the group.

One-Shot Campaign Log -- Prologue

After the last campaign petered out and died -- and then I moved out of state, so it's very dead -- I'm going to take another shot at writing these things up.

This is the log from a one-shot game -- 3rd edition D&D with some Pathfinder elements -- run for a group of six people, whose experience with D&D covered the spectrum between “memorized the Monster Manual in elementary school” to “sorry, Dungeons and what?” It was set in the same world as my past couple campaigns; I designed it with the meta-objective of making a change in the campaign world that I’d been wanting to implement for a while -- moving away from the default D&D pantheon. The following is the mission briefing and map the players were given:

That map shows the Duchy of Lysinka, one of the many tiny nations that comprise the Necrotic Bloc. It is the country to which you and your team have been sent. That last sentence introduces a few questions. “What is this team?” and “who sent us?” and “why here?”, for instance. So let’s back up a bit.

A couple hundred years ago, an unusual thing happened: a mortal -- a man of great power and ambition by the name of Maghestros -- ascended to godhood for the first time in millennia. This apparently heralded some sort of metaphysical shift, because previously unknown deities continued to appear. These “new gods” represented a significant departure from how the “old gods” operated: while the Old Gods had been distant, vast beings who spread themselves over many worlds and planes of existence, the New Gods reside here on Aern and walk upon the soil.

The churches of the Old Gods weren’t pleased with the sudden influx of competition, and tensions have been gradually mounting ever since the New Gods first began accumulating followers. Three years ago, the first blood was spilt in the Great Holy War, and the fighting has only intensified. You are followers of the New Gods, fighting the good fight -- but not on the front lines. You are trained in unorthodox warfare, and missions in enemy territory. You report to a high-ranking member of the Cult of Saurivuntyr by the name of Mother Malachite, but are generally allowed wide latitude and autonomy.

That brings us to Lysinka. Duke Thull, who rules the Duchy, has been slow to act and reluctant to go to war -- but that is clearly changing, and Lysinka is preparing its forces. They are expected to join the war within months, and they will not enter on your side. Duke Thull is a devout worshipper of Wee Jas, goddess of death & magic and one of the Old Gods; it is certain that when he enters the conflict, he will do so in her name.

While Lysinka is small, its capital city, Sepulndia, is one of the largest port cities in the Necrotic Bloc. It would be a powerful asset in the war, and cannot be allowed to fall fully into the hands of your enemies. Your job is to find some way -- any way -- of preventing this.The methods you employ are entirely up to you.

The characters they created -- whom I would hesitate to call “our heroes” -- are as follows. Note that this is the information they gave when I asked them to introduce themselves to the group (with some comments from me), which is why some of these descriptions are much shorter than others.

Ophie OOC, reading from the top of her character sheet: ... my gender is “not applicable”...
Marco OOC: I put that too!
Lyra OOC, five minutes later: “... and my character is genderfluid.”
GM: Okay, all of you gender-non-conforming types, can you give us your characters’ pronouns?
Lyra OOC: “They” is fine.
Ophie OOC: “Gnome”.
Harold OOC: Like “the gnome” or “that gnome”?
Marco OOC: My preferred pronoun is “your Majesty”. 

 Little (or possibly “Lil”) Marco:
A Neutral Evil elven sorcerer who worships Grandfather Kraken in his aspect as a merciless force of destruction. Marco has spent much of Marco’s life hopping from town to town because Marco tends to be strongly disliked, citing “destruction” as “my main interest, hobby, and lifestyle,” and admitting to a history of “arson and assault and stuff.” “Little Marco” is a “street name”, given by someone who is now “mysteriously dead” -- Marco’s real name is not revealed. For some reason -- possibly because, out of character, Marco’s player is the one who memorized the core rulebooks when she was in elementary school -- Marco ends up making a lot of the decisions for the group despite the fact that all Marco’s party members recognize Marco as being dangerously amoral. Marco’s player also wrote down “Kalamata olive” on the “skin” line of the character sheet, which I had to Google.

Marco, starting character description: “My name’s Little Marco, and I’m a Gemini.”
[Marco’s player explains the above]
Marco, ending character description: “And I’m a space sorcerer. I’m not going to explain that, and I don’t have to tell you any more about me.”

Gwyneth the Moonbringer:
A kobold wizard -- one of a tribe of brass-scaled kobolds whose ancestors came to the region as refugees some three hundred years ago. She’s small even for a kobold, and always felt socially isolated among her tribe. When she became an adult, she moved to the big city of Sepulndia, where she was amazed by the varied cultures and ideas; at this time, she converted from her previous faith to the Cult of Byfona. Gwyneth is “always ready to meet new friends and chase new experiences”… which is probably why the campaign essentially starts with her falling in with a bad crowd. Her alignment is somewhat unclear, but she’s basically a good person.

Brother Harold the Hole-Digger and Heart-Breaker:
A Lawful Good dwarven cleric of Arraou from Grosmund, a dwarven city down the coast. He left home to fight for his chosen deity and “make a better Necrotic Bloc”. It becomes clear over the course of the game that he is of the “hear no evil, see no evil” school of Lawful Good, studiously ignoring everything his companions do that might offend his moral sensibilities.

Ophie:
A gnome ranger. The gnome’s character sheet specifies that the gnome has orange eyes, “bark brown” hair, and olive skin. The gnome is a worshipper of the Leper, and grew up in the insular fishing village of Crimpwood. Ophie, unlike that gnome’s fellow gnomes, is not content to ignore the goings-on outside the gnomish community, and has been adventuring around the region for some time.

Lyra:
Lyra has “no last name, because I have no need for one”, worships Byfona, and is a Chaotic Neutral half-elf bard and a genderfluid werewolf. (Just typing that sentence right there, I thought that if Lyra lived on Earth, they would probably spend a lot of time on Tumblr.) Their human mother worked on the docks in the port town of Cobsey when their elven father passed through, impregnated her, and left without bothering to warn her he was afflicted with lycanthropy.

Lyra’s mother tried to hide that Lyra was different, but they didn’t fit in very well anyway due to being half-elf and “having no visible gender characteristics.” (It’s later decided that Lyra’s elven blood makes them look like an androgynous teenager, since a thirty-year-old half-elf probably looks pretty young.) Lyra tried unsuccessfully to disguise themself, but ended up an outcast in the town who spent a lot of time “out by the river singing to the moon”. Eventually, they had an accidental werewolf moment and Lyra was driven out of Cobsey. They spent the next few years swindling their way through different towns and trying on different identities.

Lyra: I was the priest-queen of Shersl for two years, until the lizardfolk began to question whether I was actually divinely favored and I got chased out of town.

Lyra finally ended up in Sepulndia and realized they could just be a stranger to everyone and be whoever they wanted to be. They made a living through singing, and got together a band of musicians who stole and performed until they had enough money to open their own theater. Some years later, followers of Hextor torched the place because they thought Lyra and their companions were degenerates. At this point, Lyra’s primary motivation is to destroy the Hextorian religion. They also end up making a lot of the party’s decisions, which explains a lot about where the game ended up going, now that I think about it.

Silence:
Silence is a ghoul rogue who worships Qualme. His relationship with his god is somewhat fraught -- Qualme being a Lawful Neutral god who thinks the dead ought to stay dead, and Silence being both undead and Chaotic Good. If he has any crises of faith, though, he doesn’t say anything -- he doesn’t really talk about his religion. Despite his hunger for the flesh of the living, Silence wants to be good -- but he admits that he tends to “kinda fuck up sometimes.” For some inexplicable reason -- I’m going to guess either Frankensteinian sewing project or botched Polymorph spell -- Silence has some subtly feline features.

Marco OOC: It’s pronounced “          ”.

For anyone who's interested, you can find information about the setting here, information about the pantheon of New Gods here, and a bigger version of the map here.

Lysinka Map

The New Gods

The following is a run-down of the New Gods, the pantheon of deities that is referred to in this post. It is word-for-word what the players received when they were picking their deities -- except the domains, which I've swapped out for Pathfinder domains so I can use this document in the future.

Right, so this is important, since you’re probably playing a pretty devout worshipper of one of these. There are twelve major deities in the pantheon, along with a host of minor ones. I’m just going to list the major ones, because that’s all I’ve written up. You can feel free to just make up one of those minor ones if you don’t like the options before you.

It should also be noted that clerics and paladins in the service of the New Gods generally take on a new name after joining the church. These names traditionally take the form of Brother ___ or Sister ___, where the blank is something relevant to their faith; high-ranking members of the church are Mother ___ or Father ___ instead, while very recent members are Acolyte ___.

The Pantheon

Grandfather Kraken

As the top god in the pantheon, Grandfather Kraken gets first billing on this list. Rumor has it -- and by “rumor”, I mean the deep mysteries of the church and suchlike -- that Grandfather Kraken has been a god at least once before, but whatever civilization used to worship him vanished, and he was forgotten for many centuries before being rediscovered. He is the god of the sea, and of forgotten things. He is generally depicted as -- surprise -- a kraken.
Alignment: True Neutral
Domains: Catastrophe, Defense, Destruction, Ferocity, Flotsam, Knowledge, Memory, Oceans,  Protection, Defense, Solitude, Stars, Storms Strength, Void, Water, Weather.
Epithets: Eldest, Devourer of Leviathans, The Tentacles that Circle the World
Favored Animal: Squid
Favored Weapon: n/a

Arraou

In her mortal life, Arraou was a great heroine in some distant land. The details of that are very probably known to her priests, but I have not written them. Her church encourages the doing of great deeds and the accumulation of honor and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori -- generally all of the sorts of ideas that turn out paladins who smite evil first and ask questions later, then get themselves killed in tremendously stupid ways. She is the goddess of heroism and of the moon, and is generally depicted as a gnoll in shining armor.
Alignment: Lawful Good
Domains: Ash, Darkness, Law, Good, Fire, Loyalty, Moon, Night, Protection, Purity, Redemption, Smoke.
Epithets: Hero of Heroes, She Who Howls At The Moon
Favored Animal: Hyena
Favored Weapon: Flindbar

Skøtta Blacktooth

Skøtta Blacktooth is the odd one out in the pantheon of new gods, and something of an adversarial figure. She does not have any established churches -- in fact, if someone did establish a church in her name, it would probably just annoy her. When her worshippers meet, they do so in groups of exactly three -- no less, no more -- and generally in the accepted configuration of “maiden, mother, and crone”. She is the patron goddess of witches. This patronage makes a lot of the nicer witches pretty uncomfortable, because she is also the goddess of madness, hatred, unforgivable deeds, and the end of the world. She is not openly worshipped anywhere, for fairly obvious reasons, but you will find covens who worship her in secret almost everywhere. Who she was in mortal life is unclear, but you probably wouldn’t have wanted to meet her. She is generally depicted as a night hag.
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Domains: Cannibalism, Chaos, Corruption, Destruction, Entropy, Evil, Hatred, Madness, Magic, Nightmare, Rage, Torture.
Epithets: The Hag, The Crone, The Witch Queen, Granny Doomsday, The Adversary
Favored Animal: Black cat
Favored Weapon: Flint knife

Qualmë

Qualmë is the new god of death, and the old gods of death do not like him. This is because Qualmë is, specifically, a god of peaceful death: he mandates respectful treatment of the dead, and guides souls to the afterlife in a fair and businesslike fashion. Wee Jas, the Old Goddess who is still popular in the Necrotic Bloc, is especially opposed to him because Qualmë’s dogma only allows necromancy if you get explicit permission from the dead. In his mortal life, Qualmë was a sea elf, an aquatic species constantly on the verge of getting wiped out by the sahuagin. He wasn’t a particularly special sea elf, either -- until he sacrificed his life to delay a raiding party of sahuagin and let his tribe escape. The reverence other sea elves place on such sacrifice was apparently enough to propel his spirit into divinity. Because of this, he is also recognized as the god of nobility of spirit, and patron of martyrs. He is generally depicted as a small, slim elf poring over an enormous book -- the Book of the Dead, where he finds the information he needs in order to fairly judge the spirits of the deceased.
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Domains: Ancestors, Darkness, Death, Fate, Law, Loss, Luck, Martyr, Nobility, Psychopomp, Repose, Souls.
Epithets: Death, The Bookkeeper, The Undertow
Favored Animal: Pufferfish
Favored Weapon: Trident

Jivmarana

Jivmarana, like Grandfather Kraken, was a god before. For him, however, it was much more recent -- sufficiently so that there are even surviving records. He was the cruel harvest-god of the fallen goblin nation of Vyutommourt; when Vyutommourt was destroyed, and his worshippers wiped out, he allowed himself to die and be reborn as a rakshasa -- a race of supernatural beings who practice reincarnation. For a millennium or two, he continued to be reborn over and over, moving up the ladder of incarnations, until he was blessed with a gift that only the greatest of rakshasa achieve -- the ability to remember all of his previous lives. He then gathered his followers, travelled thousands of miles to the north until he reached the spot in the Wastelands where Vyutommourt once stood, spent some time collecting ancient artifacts and building his strength, and finally reclaimed his divinity. The worship of Jivmarana requires the sacrifice of sapient beings; if they do so, his worshippers will be rewarded with a supernaturally bountiful harvest. Theologically, the justification has something to do with the circle of life, but let’s not get into that. Jivmarana is primarily a harvest god, but he also has aspects of death and healing. He is generally depicted as a goblin with backwards-facing hands and a vulture’s head.
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Domains: Day, Decay, Death, Evil, Growth, Healing, Murder, Plant, Resurrection, Seasons, Sun, Weather.
Epithets: Lord of Life and Death, The Maharajah
Favored Animal: Vulture
Favored Weapon: Sickle

The Leper

The Leper is from some other plane of existence, and how he arrived here exactly is unclear. He started out as far less than a god -- some strange entity who appeared to madmen in their dreams -- but a few years after his presence was first reported, the weapon of mass destruction that created the Tainted was unleashed, and the Leper soon found his people. The Leper is now the god of outcasts, madmen, malcontents, and other people who simply don’t fit into society. He has declared the Tainted to be his chosen people, and the vast majority of them have accepted him as their patron god. There is no fixed image of the Leper -- he is considered to change shape constantly. Icons of him show him as a bizarre collision of limbs of different species, and no two icons are made to look the same.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Domains: Blood, Chaos, Dark Tapestry, Freedom, Insanity, Isolation, Liberation, Madness, Revolution, Stars, Void, War.
Epithets: n/a
Favored Animal: Silverfish
Favored Weapon: Garrote

Maghestros

Maghestros’s ascension to divinity was the event that opened the floodgates and let the pantheon of new gods come into being. In life, he was one of the great merchant-lords of Vireion, and had access to many obscure books and forgotten powers. Maghestros is the god of greed, of commerce, and of scavengers. Many ghouls and other intelligent undead are among his worshippers, as well as traders and the nobility. His symbol is a maggot on top of a gold coin, and he is usually depicted as a hooded not-quite-human figure.
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Domains: Aristocracy, Death, Deception, Evil, Greed, Innuendo, Leadership, Nobility, Travel, Trade, Trickery, Undead.
Epithets: The Scavenger King, The Plutocrat, The Golden One, The Ghoul Lord, The Maggot that Reigns
Favored Animal: Fly
Favored Weapon: Rapier

Weorlace

Weorlace was a legendary smith of the dwarves in centuries long gone by. For more than a thousand years, it has been dwarven custom to ask Weorlace for small favors when crafting something particularly difficult. It was only recently that she began to answer -- theologians suspect that the metaphysical disturbances caused by the other new gods’ apotheoses allowed her spirit to ascend from her home in the afterlife to a spot in the pantheon. Naturally, she is the god of smiths -- she also has dominion over the element of earth, and over runecraft.
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Domains: Artifice, Caves, Construct, Earth, Languages, Law, Magic, Metal, Rune, Toil, Trap, Wards.
Epithets: The Smith, The Civilized One, The Craftswoman, The Empire-Builder
Favored Animal: Mole
Favored Weapon: Warhammer

Vald

Vald is the incarnation of the fierce weathers of the Arctic -- and, by gradual extension, of storms pretty much everywhere. He encourages heroic behavior in his worshippers, but to him, heroism involves great feats of strength, the slaying of foul beasts, and the accumulation of honor. Vald would be a big fan of Conan or Beowulf or the Klingons, essentially. He is generally depicted as an enormous white wolf -- though some sects prefer to depict him as a hulking barbarian wearing the pelt of a wolf.
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Domains: Air, Animal, Catastrophe, Chaos, Destruction, Fur, Good, Ice, Storms, Water, Weather, Wind.
Epithets: The Blizzard, The Giver of Honor, The Beast of the Battlefield
Favored Animal: Wolf
Favored Weapon: Greataxe

Saurivuntyr

A long time ago -- okay, a few centuries ago -- there was an artifact called the Robe of the Panoptic. It had been crafted by a creature called Jak, a kobold lich who was favored by the old goddess Tiamat, and allowed him to unite the tribes of the kobolds. The power of the robe was that it allowed the wearer to see for hundreds of miles around, in a thousand places at once -- which had the unfortunate side effect of driving the wearer slightly mad. There was also, thousands of miles to the south, a dragon of immense age by the name of Saurivuntyr who obsessively collected secrets. Saurivuntyr and Jak never met, but the adventuring party who finally slew Jak permanently had the bright idea, several months later, to trade the Robe of the Panoptic to Saurivuntyr for a particularly valuable secret from his hoard. With the power of the robe added to his already considerable power and knowledge, it didn’t take long for Saurivuntyr to discover a few more shortcuts to power. He is now the god of tyranny and judgment, and patron of all the reptilian races. He is depicted as a green dragon, often with a kobold in tow -- for Jak’s soul is bound to him in the afterlife.
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Domains: Dragon, Evil, Fear, Judgment, Knowledge, Law, Saurian, Scalykind, Slavery, Thought, Tyranny, Venom.
Epithets: The All-Seeing, The All-Knowing, The Eye, The Judge
Favored Animal: Chameleon
Favored Weapon: Blowgun

Lewinna

Lewinna is the goddess of travel, exploration, and adventure, the lady of the river. Travellers everywhere call on her for protection. And she does protect, fiercely, as she is also the patron of brawlers, and grants strength in unarmed combat. Lewinna encourages her worshippers to, simply, travel and do good wherever they go. In contrast to the good-aligned gods previously mentioned, Lewinna does not care about flashy acts of heroism, as long as they do good -- which is why the truest and most noble heroes pray to her. She is usually depicted as a river giant.
Alignment: Neutral Good
Domains: Exploration, Fist, Flowing, Good, Glory, Heroism, Honor, Resolve, Rivers, Strength, Travel, Water.
Epithets: Lady of the River, The Wanderer
Favored Animal: Crocodile
Favored Weapon: Spear

Byfona

Byfona tries to define herself as an approachable, friendly sort of divinity. If she were a teacher, she’d be the kind who insisted on her students calling her by her first name, with no “Mrs.” She is also not the sort to perform flashy miracles -- but those in her favor will often find her to be free with her advice. It is fairly common for her, or one of her servants, to show up in the dreams of particularly devout worshippers for a friendly fireside chat about whatever is bothering them. She is the goddess of love, luck, celebration, and fire; she is consistently depicted as an elderly goblin woman with a mischievous smile.
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Domains: Arson, Charm, Chaos, Curse, Fire, Love, Luck, Luck, Revelry, Thievery, Trickery, Whimsy.
Epithets: The Fool, Auntie, Lady Luck
Favored Animal: Rabbit
Favored Weapon: Sap

Tealeaf

Tealeaf is not a deity of adventurers. She is the goddess of the shire, of home and hearth, of kind gestures and simple pleasures. Her worshippers stay at home in small villages, and live good, simple lives. She is usually depicted as a rosy-cheeked halfling woman.
Alignment: Neutral Good
Domains: Community, Cooperation, Family, Friendship, Good, Growth, Home, Imagination, Luck, Healing, Plant, Restoration.
Epithets: Just “Tealeaf” is fine, thanks all the same.
Favored Animal: Hedgehog
Favored Weapon: Sling

Katenakhte

The savage patron of hunters, from some distant and unmapped land, Katenakhte is god of the sky, the sun, and the hunt. His dogma stresses purifying oneself in the hunt, and his worshippers show their devotion by hunting the largest and most dangerous beasts they can find, using only equipment they have fashioned themselves. He is depicted as half-man, half-bird.
Alignment: True Neutral
Domains: Air, Ambush, Animal, Cloud, Day, Feather, Light, Revelation, Sun, Tactics, Trickery, War.
Epithets: The Hunter, Rukh-Slayer, The Taloned, Lord of Birds
Favored Animal: Falcon
Favored Weapon: Javelin