A Continent of Banalities

The following is a knightly order for Paolo Greco's Mageblade! rpg. I think it's an overlooked gem.  I was reminded of the game because Paolo recently put out a third magical grimoire which may be used with the game. The Knights are people of leisure, lovers of good food and drink in ample measure. They are a ruddy-faced, pot-bellied lot who would probably perform all their heroics at the feasting table, if it were not for the pull of Luilekkerland. This place is sometimes called Cockaigne, Schlaraffenland or simply the Big Rock Candy Mountain. It is a place where fine libations flow in streams, sweets grow on bushes, and where quail fly into one’s mouth already roasted. While questing for this layabout's paradise the Knights will save the enslaved, slay dragons and brave moderate discomfort. Devotions Sleep After Toil, Port After Stormy Seas: The Mageblade draws a circle which protects 1d6+Focus number of people from bad weather and wandering predators and vermin. F

 Like great men before me, I too have wandered the evil paths where hope is a distant memory. While I cannot claim to be of the same stature as my learned forebears, fact itself might be the reason why I have discovered hells they overlooked in their cartographies of suffering. Here I shall endeavor to describe one. By what door or opening it is entered into no one can say. Perhaps there is a darkened corridor, like a cavernous digestive tract or perfumed tomb through which the damned enter the phantom-life of the café. Perhaps there are as many entrances as there are patrons. Perhaps one does not arrive but simply endlessly is, the past a dream and one's order already placed. Such things do not ultimately seem to matter. One finds oneself standing in line, bone-white tray in hand. Some sort of grand treat seems to have been promised. Outside the café are snowdrifts, looming houses and damp, menacing shadows, as distant and uncaring as the inhabitants of deep sea trenches. The peop

Theistr, the Charnel House Giant Scholars have deduced that giants must have been a mistake by a careless god. While they are not bestial by nature, they need such great amounts of food that they often go cruelly hungry in their formative years. This under-nourishment makes them weak of mind, in addition to being ravenous. Furthermore the giant physique seems a poor fit for this world. They are too large for any real interaction with humans, and animals tend to flee them. Ginats stub their toes on boulders and unknowingly tramples the fences and huts of humans, leading to enmity between them and us. These are the reasons that giants are nearly extunct, and that those who live on have grown twisted in their ways. Theistr is such a giant. He dwells in theValley of the Unfortunate Undead, in one of many charnel houses. Standing up straight he’d be six meters tall, but he is bent and hunched from his cramped living quarters. His face is long with a constant ha

Zibga, the Coral Fortress (I base this entity on a prompt from Evlyn Moroau's Mythos Entity Generator ) In the western outskirts of Sarkash, Zibga had been sleeping beneah the earth for aeons, when a chance series of events brought it into the light of day, such as it is in that part of the world. A great storm had uprooted trees, leveled cottages, and uncovered Zibga. Several gigantic oaks had grown on top of it, keeping it dormant. Waiting. The entity was slowly waking up under the cold sun, basking in the warmth of animals, when Griel came along. Griel was looking for musrooms after the storm, and never expected to see a wonder like Zibga. Zibga is a multitude of organisms, a colony of tiny polyps building great structures of mineral, when it is awake. The structure it builds is an opulent castle with concentric courtyards, buttresses, spires and balconies. As of yet it has only begun this process, awakened by Griel’s body heat as he explor

Thaurazz, the Infiltrators From Outside This world is ending and humanity is doomed. This seems to be agreed-upon wisdom of our age. The creatures who call themselves Thaurazz certainly seem to think so. They mingle with the aristocracy in the manor houses and courts of Schleswig, ready to move in when our doom consumes us. They are not above helping things along a little. A Thaurazz is a semi-tranluscent creature, its nternal organs on display like a sargasso of vivid reds and blues. It has no skeleton and drags itself along on eight-digit limbs. Its mouth is a serrated, octopus-like beak. Needless to say when the Thaurazz made their first foray into our world, they were killed by horrified humans. This time our natural inclination toward narrow-mindedness and revulsion steered us right. When next the creatures ventured forth, they had allied themselves with an animal from theior unimaginable home, a symbiont with a gift for imitation. In its natural state this creature looks

Marika, the Blue Lady Marika is a ghost which haunts Grift, and has done so for several decades. One story has it that she was the lover of a minor noble, and took her own life when she realized she would never be a wife. Another claims that she was a murderess, hung from the bridge as she cursed the authorities and declared her fidelity to Nechrubel.  Yet another suggests that she was a midwife who died from exposure one cold night between deliveries. Marika is a petite woman with auburn hair and dark eyes which seem sorrowful and tired. Her face is gaunt, and she is always wearing a long blue dress. Misinformation gathers around Marika, and it seems to be her greatest pleasure to add to it. She will often approach newcomers to Grift and beg them to help her find rest. Here follows some of her favorite schemes. 1: “Please help me! My cruel family will not give my moral remains a proper burial!” Marika will lead her marks to a house where a family is mourning over a dead fe