The Liver of Acratopotes

In the ancient city of Attica Acratopotes was hailed as a demigod and drinking brother of Dionysos, god of wine, grape-harvest and estatic madness.

Now it seems that the doughty drunkard is gone. No one knows if knows if evil killed him, if excess was the culprit or if his friend tore him asunder in a fit of divine insanity. It seems that everyone has an idea though. His liver has surfaced on the Astral Plane, the graveyard of gods. It has attracted a motley assembly of religious oddballs, the culinarily adventurous, and those who grasp for anything to get a better lot in life.

The Liver of Acratopotes is a Troika! (or Advanced Fighting Fantasy) setting, inspired by mythology, westerns about prospectors and the planes of many D&D editions (including but not limited to Planescape).

Roll d66 to get a character background

11: Luckless Barge Captain

You lost you ship in a game of cards, or possibly dice. You were good and soused, and the others must have been cheating. Anyway you’re sure you can win it back, if only you had something to stake. Then you’d unmask the frauds, win back your proud ship and once again feel the harsh astral winds against your face.

Possessions

No longer a barge (what’s its name?)

A hat that has seen better days

A sword

A pistolet

A ratty captain’s uniform.

Skills

2 Astralogy

1 Etiquette

3 Silver Barge Pilot

1 Swim

1 Weapon Fighting (pistolet)

2 Weapon Fighting (sword)

12: Klacker

Acratopotes’ liver is still a young settlement, but conflict arrived on the first boat. As such there’s money in killing people. There’s even money in the threat of killing them. You do it for a living. The mammals call you ‘klacker’, because of your carapace and because of your guns. They consider you an ‘insect-man’ and ‘murder-scarab’ and hire you to settle their disputes for money.

Possessions

2 pistolets

A bag of dried lice (Enough for 2D6 provisions)

Black silk sash

A small jar of carapace oil

Carapace (treat as modest armor)

Skills

3 Awareness

2 Climb

1 Tunnel Fighting

3 Weapon Fighting (guns)

1 Weapon Fighting (mandibles)

13: Minotaur

It is no surprise that the labyrinthine veins and bile ducts would attract minotaurs. You’re one of those. You didn’t arrive here mby design, you just followed the twisted corridors whereever they lead.

You’re not exactly like THE minotaur, your illustrious ancestor Asterion, a king and a great monster of legend. You’re more like a sinewy hobo with the head of a runty ox. Sic transit gloria mundi, right? Still you are in your element and these hapless fools are not.

Possessions

Loincloth

A hauch of meat

A skein of golden thread

Skills

1 Climb

2 Labyrinth Sense

2 Run

1 Strength

3 Tunnel Fighting

2 Weapon Fighting (unarmed)

I'm a souse who doesn't imbibe.

14: Unseen Souse

You’re a member of a society. IT isn’t secret, but its membership is. You are the ex-drunkards, the reformed imbibers and critics of Bacchus. This place is a testament to the dangers of drink and a rife recruitment ground.

Possessions

Simple grey tunic and pantaloons

Mask

The Tome of Twelve Steps

A coffee pot and a bag of decent-ish coffee

A jug of water

A knife

Skills

2 Awareness

1 Etiquette

2 Healing

1 Poison

2 Secret Signs (Rogue-Signs)

4 Spell (Amity)

1 Spell (Purple Lense)

15: Pre-Fermentation Barbarian

Of course you know what fire is. There is one burning in your cave back home. The red flower is what separate man from the wild beasts. People here think they’re as separate from you because they have a fire in their minds, a fire from the things they drink. They think they’re on par with the gods in their madness. They think this flesh-lump is a sign that they’re right.

If only you could find your way home.

You tower above most humans in your hides of extinct animals. Your hair is long and thick, your skin a deep nut-brown. You can’t really hold your liqour though. Your prelapsarian system rejects this self-induced madness.

Possessions

Coarse hides

A club

A bag of dried dinosaur (2D6 provisions. It tastes a bit like shredded duck).

Skills

1 Climb

1 Run

3 Strength

1 Swim

1 Tracking

1 Trapping

1 Weapon Fighting (club)

1 Weapon Fighting (rock)

16: Grape-gnome

Ask any gnome about grape-gnomes and they’ll look confused. They few that do not will be miffed. Yet here you are, setting up shop on in this far corner of the astral. So, what’s the deal?

The sordid truth is that underneath the broad-brimmed hats and the skin pain-stakingly died a burgundy red grape-gnomes are goblins. What were you supposed to do? There is so much goblin-bias in the multiverse and a goblin vintner or sommerlier would be a joke. This is a cover for your species and a way to get the life you deserve.

Posssessions

A bottle of wine (you decide the quality)

A taster’s cup in a chain around the neck

A broad-brimmed hat

A jar of red dye

A smal chunk of cheese (1 provision)

Skills

2 Disguise

3 Etiquette

1 Poison

2 Sneak

3 Wine Lore

21: Escaped Convict

When the convict ship passed here you saw an opportunity and bailed. You nearly drown in condensed Astral, but managed to claw yourself onto land. Well, meat as it turned out. It is certainly no bed of roses, but it is better than breaking endless rocks in the Elemental.

You just got here and are still wearing the rags and chains those bastards put on you. You just gotta get them off and avoid whatever passes for the law around here.

Possessions

Rags

Chains (stats as mace)

Skills

1 Climb

1 Locks

1 Sneak

1 Strength

1 Swim

2 Weapon Fighting (Chains)

2 Weapon Fighting (Unarmed)

22: Cancerman Saboteur

Some people manage to negotiate with their disease. The result is a cancerman, a creature made from lumps, boils, tumors and vestigial tails. It can’t really die, but can you really call it alive? You’re one of these weird bastards, and you’re on a mission from the gods pestillential! It is your task to sow the seed of tumors on this divine liver.

Meanwhile it is nice to just get to hang out in this astral boomtown. Disease will win in the end anyway. Right now your focus is to get a bit of circus money and blow it on frivolities.

Possessions

A club

A small censor-locket (full of pungent myrrh)

A cowl

Gloves

Cloth face mask

Skills

2 Disguise

1 Healing

1 Mathmology

2 Poisons

1 Run

1 Swim

2 Wrestling

23: Fluke Elf

You are an elf. Your ears are pointy, your cheek bones the stuff of sonnets, and your skin is a pearlescent gray. You perfect lips hide a lamprey’s mouth of cruel teeth. You are a fluke elf, the oldest of an ancient race. Your kin lived in the organs of the elder gods themselves. Their meat was your ḧome and their blood was your sacred sustenance. Why, you were one with them!

You are prepared to share your home with the lesser races – provided they show respect.

Possessions

Fine god-bone spear

A gown made from serous membrane

Skills

2 Ancient Lore

1 Awareness

1 Etiquette

2 Language – Paleo-elvish

1 Tunnel Fighting

2 Tracking

3 Weapon Fighting (spears)

24: Rejoiner

The live still works, even when it is cut from the divine body. Blood and bile enter and leave as surely as the tide. This means that Acratopotes is still alive! You are one of the Holy Rejoiners, a religious society dedicated reuniting the Liver with Him. First of course you need to discover His location, and then there is a non-trivial matter of logistics.

Possessions

Astral sextant

Oilskin suit

Quill, parchment and writing ink

An ugly but practical haircut.

Skills

3 Astralogy

1 Awareness

3 Mathmology

1 Silver Barge Pilot

1 Strength

1 Spell (Read Stars)

25: Poison-Hunter

You are from a cold place called Tagusia where people ride wooly ponies and herd yaks.. You were sent here by your tribe’s god-talker who had received a vision about the poison that could be found here. Your people are no strangers to using liver squeezings as the basis for poison. How great must the poison from a god’s liver be? You could kill your tribe’s enemies forever.

Possessions

Blowgun

12 darts (in quiver)

Spear

Fur and leather clothes

Several empty bone vial

1D6 bone vials of poison

Fur bedroll

Skills

1 Awareness

1 Healing

2 Language (Tagusic)

3 Poison

2 Ride

1 Weapon Fighting (Blowgun)

2 Weapon Fighting (Spears)

26: Frontier Chancer

People come to frontier places with more money than sense. Not that they have much money. They just have less sense. Along with them come people like yourself. You would be content if you had a decent bit of land, but taking a bit of money from fools is just so tempting and easy. It’s an adventure for you and a lesson for others. They’re welcome.

Possessions

A set of relatively clean and decent clothes

A weapon

A knife

A shovel

Skills

1 Climb

2 Locks

2 Run

2 Sleight of Hand

2 Sneak

1 Weapon Fighting (choose a weapon type)

31: Runaway Slug Brat

Being the first offspring of an ooze baronet is TEEDIO-UUS. You have to go to formal dinners and, let’s be real, the Oozelands are the ass-end of the multiverse. You’re like a big fish in a small slime-pond. That is why you ran. Just jumped into a gate and here you are.

The vertebrates are rude and ugly, but at least they are not boring. If you could raise an army you could claim this place for the de Caracol family. The liver really agrees with you, and it would be nice to have non-ooze subjects.

Possessions

Emerald Monocle

Monkey-shit brown silk cape

A pistolet

A valuable heirloom (describe it!)

Skills

3 Climb

1 Etiquette

1 Evaluate

2 Sneak

1 Strength

1 Spell (Light)

1 Spell (Poison)

1 Spell (Quench)

32: Hepatomancer

You read the future in entrails, an old an honorable trade. Of all the organs the liver has the greatest potential for the taking of augurs. It is the crossroads of blood and bile, the high and the base. That this blessed island of organ meat even exists is a sign that the gods have some grand revelation in store.

Possessions

A knife

An apron

A bushel of incense

Skills

1 Evaluate

2 Second Sight

2 Tracking

2 Trapping

1 Spell (Read Entrails)

1 Spell (See Through)

1 Spell (Thought Vapor)

33: Jaded Epicurean

You have tried it all. Firebirds drowned in brandy. Sea-angels in Elysian honey (it’s dolphins, really), sinner’s pie (they use only the very worst sinners for filling) and ambrosia of Olympus. It is all as dust in your mouth now.

You must taste this new delicacy, the liver of a god! Otherwise your life isn’t worth living. Now that you are here you find yourself hesistating for the first time in ages? What if this does not live up to your expectations? What if it does? Where in the Dark Chasm of Unbeing is a food-lover supposed to go after this? Must you throw yourself upon your fork and end it all?

Possessions

Generous silk shirt and breeches

An exquisite knife-fork-spoon set in a chain around the neck

False teeth made of acheronian iron and ivory from the Beastlands. (treat as Small Beast in combat)

Skills

1 Cooking

4 Evaluate

3 Food Lore

1 Poison

2 Spell (Levitate)

1 Weapon Fighting (false teeth)

34: Dandy Sooner

Sure this is out of the way, but aren’t the best places always? It is a good thing to arrive before the masses come crawling out of their two-bit portals and grotty astral barges. Here on this liver life is patinated with meaning. You may need to work a bit, but soon there will be nothing standing between you an alehouse catering to a select palate.

Possessions

A weapon

A bag of excellent hops

Two ostentatious outfits (somehow combining working class and high society).

A jar of beard oil

Skills

2 Brewing

2 Card Games

1 Etiquette

3 Evaluate

2 Fashion

1 Run

1 Weapon Fighting Skill (choose a weapon no-one’s heard of).

35: Astral Castaway

You washed up here when the barge went down. Somebody yelled something about a “dreadnought” and the vessel was smithereens. This place is something else! An island made of meat wasn’t what you hoped for when you enrolled as a cadet.

Possessions

A cadet’s uniform (roll 1D6: 1: The Rainbow Sultan’s Navy, 1: The Bleached Bone Flotilla, 3: Duke Ispharin’s Golden Lions, 4: The Daugr-Queen’s Horde, 5: Lord Ethis the Righteous’s Crusader Armada, 6: Amdosias’ Legion of Penitent Fiends (or make up your own)).

A sword

A pistolet

A pocketful of soggy hard-tack (2 provisions)

A length of rope

Skills

1 Astralogy

1 Awareness

1 Climb

1 Languages (choose one)

1 Languages (choose another)

1 Silver Barge Pilot

2 Swim

1 Weapon Fighting (pistolet)

1 Weapon Fighting (sword)

36: Strongarm

You came here on a job. Someone needed a bit of muscle, some skinned knuckles oe even a blade. This place is full of disputes over land, or over ideology. In the Astral that’s almost the same thing.

Possessions

Broadsword

Shield

Crossbow

10 bolts

Bone dice

Salted dried herring (2D6 provisions)

Skills

1 Awareness

1 Climb

1 Run

1 Secret Signs (Rogue-Signs)

2 Weapon Fighting (swords)

2 Weapon Fighting (crossbows)

1 Weapon Skill (your choice)

1 Wrestling

41: Hígador

According to some the liver is the seat of anger. Other cultures say that it is where courage is born. You know the truth. It is the finest piece of meat in creation. Fried with onions, salt, pepper and lemon it is better than all the dishes of Mount Celestia. You are a chef sitting on the choicest cut in the multiverse.

Praise be.

Possessions

Frying pan

Onions

Lemon

Spice rack

3 excellent knives

Skills

4 Cooking

2 Evaluate

1 Poison

3 Weapon Fighting (Knives)

42: Amnesiac Reveler

That was a hell of a party! You vaguely remember tearing a deer apart with your hands, puking your guts out and them having more wine. You don’t remember getting here though, or what you go by. You’re somewhat used to this, but it is disconcerting that you seem to be on a divine liver. What manner of omen is this?

Possessions

Toga

Thyrsus (spear adorned with grapes vines).

A near-empty jug of wine

Skills

2 Run

1 Second Sight

1 Strength

1 Weapon Fighting (Spear)

2 Wrestling

3 Spell (Ironhand)

43: Tea Monk

There is no shortage of religious people here. They embrace drunkenness or the eating of meat. You’re not one to oppose thise directly. They probably need to use all this hateful energy before they can really hear you. You’ll be there when they’re out of breath and sore from fighting or drinking. Then perhaps they will be open to a cup of jasmin tea, an almond cake and the truths that reside within.

Possessions

Monk’s robe

Samovar

A selection of teas

Basic cake fixings (fat, sugar, flour, almonds, candied violets)

A baking pan

Skills

3 Acrobatics

2 Baking

1 Run

1 Secret Signs (Seals of Balance)

3 Tea Brewing

1 Weapon Figthting (unarmed)

44: Cirrhoid

Man is a mistake as intelligent creatures go. Too fond of himself, too given to hubris. That was how your creator saw it anyway. Didn’t really see the irony in complaining about hubris while creating a new superior species. Not that there is much to laugh about.

You are a humanoid creature made from the cirrhotic liver tissue of a demigod. Your face makes people cry. When you walk it looks like sealions wrestling. If you meet your maker you’ve a good mind to throttle the bastard on the spot.

Possessions

Sackcloth cowl

Driftwood club

Scarred hide (treat as Modest Armor)

Skills

1 Disguise

2 Sneak

2 Strength

3 Swim

2 Weapon Skill (club)

The central authority of the flesh in the flesh.

45: The Governor

You are the governor of this hunk of meat, this illustrious organ of divinity. Other people who call themselves consuls, viceroys or gauleiters are base criminals or lunatics. The grace and the humility with which you conduct yourself reveal your status.

Possessions

A slim long blade

Two outfits (each consisting of one part that is garishly colored, one that is fiercely expensive, and one that is made of something that isn’t generally considered a garment).

A pack of beautiful playing cards

A folding chair

A fan

Skills

1 Astralogy

2 Card Games

3 Etiquette

2 Harpsichord Playing

2 Ride

2 Weapon Fighting (fencing blade)

46: Yellow Bile-Fiend

One minute you’re in the Abyss (The Choleric Swamps of Berith to be precise) and the next you’re here. Some kind of spontaneously occurring gate presumably.

Frankly it’s a relief to be in a place where people temper their evil with other things. There are flavors to social interaction you never knew existed. Back home you were a small-fry, but here you’re potentially a big bad deal.

You look kinda like a bright green salamander with ram’s horns and scary horse-teeth. Oh, and wings that you’re not super confident in using.

Possessions

Claws (Modest Beast)

A stolen cowl

Skills

1 Fly

1 Inferno-Lore

1 Sneak

3 Swim

2 Trapping

1 Tunnel Fighting

1 Weapon Fighting (natural weapons)

Turning you all into cockroaches would just leave me with a cockroach problem.

51: Warlock

This used to be a great place to live and do your experiments. Living on a divine liver also served to mute your unspeakable master’s demands somewhat. Now it’s crawling witrh pioneers and all manner of holy rollers and chancers. Company is nice sometimes, and food and libation has gotten better. If only they would accept you as their overlord.

Possessions

A grand robe

A skull cap or an ostentatious headpiece

Dark grimoire

Sign of essential corrupt nature (describe it!)

Skills

2 Awareness

2 Secret Signs (Infernal Runes)

2 Sleight of Hand

4 Spell (Blood Shroud)

5 Spell (Cockroach)

1 Spell (Fear)

1 Spell (Random)

52: Meat Thief

In the infernal plane people starve as their sins and the cruelty of fiends dictate. You are really an existential freedom fighter, bringing sustenance to the suffering souls of Hell. Or you will be, once you get some of this prime meat shipped out. You’re gonna make a fair bit of coin too, but that’s not a sin, right.

The problem is that everyone here is so damnably invested in this hunk of meat. You start carving it up and all kinds of mystics and madmen give you grief. Idealism really is an anchor tied around the neck of the multiverse.

Possessions

2 daggers

Oilskin coat

Soft boots

A ream of butcher paper

Make-up kit

Scars in the shap of vile infernal sigils

Skills

1 Awareness

1 Disguise

1 Climb

1 Evaluate

1 Silver Barge Pilot

2 Sleight of Hand

2 Sneak

1 Weapon Fighting (small blades)

53: Psychedelic Orc

You are not really here. This is a vision quest brough on by the shaman’s herbs. This is more vivid one than usual, and the apparitions appearing before you seem more grounded and less symbolic somehow.

You appear as an orc, a broad-shouldered and bandy-legged invidual with a boar-like face. You are made of a rainbow of colors and patterns, like insects made of florescent light. If only you can find out what task you atre meant to fulfill here, then you can return to the sane life in the Cleft Fang tribe.

Possessions

None (the mighty axe you carry is really part of your self-image. Not really being here also means that you don’t really need to eat or drink).

Skills

1 Awareness

1 Ride

3 Second Sight

1 Strength

2 Weapon Fighting (Axe)

1 Wrestling

54: Nermatode Rider

This used to be your people’s hunting grounds. You ruled the liver astride your noble steeds.The ones they call fluke elves came later, despite what they claim. You fought many battles with them, and have made several uneasy truces. Now perhaps things have changed with the arrival of these strangers, most of whom are not elves. In any case they seem keen to hire guides.

Possessions

Nermatode steed

A javelin

A hand axe

Liver jerky (2D6 provisions)

Membrane clothes

Skills

1 Awareness

3 Ride

2 Tracking

1 Tunnel Fighting

2 Weapon Fighting (javelin)

2 Weapon Fighting (axe)

55: Junior Diplomat (order)

You worked hard to become an envoy of cosmic order. Your parents were both servants of the Bureaucracy of the Fractal Truth, and it was the logical next step. You sat all your exams and the Seven Precision Minds appointed you First Monad Diplomatic Envoy. Your parents wept with pride.

The liver of Acratopotes is your first assignment and what a baptism of fire it is! This place shows many signs of chaos infection, and it’s not wonder. After all a liver is supposed to be part of the body.

Possessions

Ceremonial sword

Aristocratic outfit

Belt with many pockets

Telescope

Quill, ink and parchment

Abacus

Skills

1 Astralogy

3 Etiquette

1 Evaluate

4 Mathmology

1 Weapon Fighting (swords)

3 Spell (True Seeing)

56: Miner

You’ve dug ‘em all. Granite, gold, the coals of despend in the Star-Grave, singing crystals in the deep Elemental. Meat can’t be all that different, yeah? You’re in the dark and it stinks. Of course if something else were to present itself you’re not married to this backbreaking gruntwork.

Possessions

A pickaxe

Kneepads

Hammer and chisel

An explosives charge

A canary in a cage

Skills

2 Demolitions

3 Mining

1 Sneak

1 Strength

3 Tunnel Fighting

61: Frustrated Immortal

Being immortal is less of a feat in the Astral. Time doesn’t work the same way here, and it just need a firm will to bring it to heel. With time and distractions out of the way, you could devote your life to art. You make sculptures of the things the cosmos shows you.

One day of course there’s a big noise, like an infinitely long piece of paper being ripped. When you came to your senses your unassuming rick was orbiting a titanic liver! Since then people have been pouring in and peace is a thing of past. It’s enough to make a body retire to the Grey Wastes.

Possessions

Oilskin robe

Paring knife

Rune of Timelessness

Skills

2 Astralogy

2 Sculpt

3 Spell (Affix)

2 Spell (Breach)

2 Spell (Farseeing)

5 Spell (Earthquake)

No, I would NOT like a nice Bordeaux

62: Dwarven Ale Extremist

Dionysos or Bacchus are human names for your god Hanseath. The young tall ones consider him a god of the grape. Little do the fools know that the hop is His favored fruit, and that ale is the drink which most honors Him.

Acratopotes is his human servant and honored driinking brother. The fact that he has become de-livered is the surest sign that wine is a heresy. A bomb under every vinyard! A keg in every hand! Let every lip be adorned with beer head!

Possessions

A bomb

A keg of dwarven brown alehouse

A dwarven battle axe

Coarse wowen tunic

Heavy boots

Skills

1 Awareness

1 Demolitions

4 Brewing

2 Tunnel Fighting

3 Weapon Fighting (axe)

63: Adiposarian Ogre

This is a feast unlike anything else out there. You are a three meter tall cannibal giant. About as wide too. You’ve eaten lotsa folk outta neccesity, Always neccesity. Not a cruel bone in your body. If anybody questions that you have bones under all the blubber they’re ragout though.

This is paradise. You don’t have to hunt it or nothing, you can just scoop it up from the ground. Hells, it IS the ground. You can take your mind off the baser needs and start playing the flute again.

Possessions

Blubber (treat as Modest Armor)

A cleaver

A femur flute

Skills

1 Cooking

2 Flute Playing

4 Strength

3 Tracking By Scent

1 Weapon Fighting (cleaver)

64: Junior Diplomat (Chaos)

No one prepares for a position as diplomat for cosmic disorder. You’d kinda be disqualified for it. You looked in the wrong tome. Okay, you licked the wrong tome. Vellum mold is said to give mystic visions, and that turned out to be an understatement. You found yourself in the court of Chaos Itself, in the unbearable presence of Unk Cekula, Mother of Inexplicable Absences, Orka, The Dappled Maw, and Dermookh, Waste of Creation. You were volunteered on the spot. You don’t even know what the alternative might be.

Furthering the interests of Chaos isn’t too bad of a job, and this place is fairly disordered already. You could do without the mutated mouth on your left shoulder whispering advice.

Possessions

A notebook (in cipher)

Quill and ink

Ceremonial mace

A robe of scintillating colors

Skills

1 Etiquette

3 Second Sight

2 Secret Signs (Babble Script)

1 Sneak

4 Spell (Assume Shape)

2 Spell (Babble)

1 Spell (random)

65: Hoplite Angel

You are a righteous angel of Olympus, tasked with correcting this whole mess. Your white wings are blindingly pure and your bronze cuirass polished to a high sheen. If only the rest was that easy. If only there was a central authority instead of all these chancers and tinpot priests.

Possessions

Cuirass and large shield (Modest Armor)

A short sword

A spear

A seal marking you as a divine harbinger

Skills

2 Second Sight

2 Fly

2 Weapon Fighting (short sword)

2 Weapon Fighting Spear (spear)

2 Wrestling

2 Spell (Thunder)

66: Rosy-cheeked Farmlass/lad

Back home there was this wandering wizard who proclaimed you the Chosen One. All the signs were there he said. You were meant to save the realm from the Demon Plague by venturing into the God Rift and defeating evil. You didn’t buy it, really. Everyone else sure did though, and you were wined and dined and met with the Grand Duke and the Dowager Mediatrix. Before you knew it you were glad-handed straight into the God Rift.

So, this is what’s on the other side. It’s like town on a Saturday night, only with some stranger drunkards. It doesn’t really seem like there’s a Demon Plague or anything. And they sure as shit haven’t heard about you.

Possessions

A ratty old sword

Shovel

A set of simple clothes

A handsaw

A bag of tubers (2D6 provisions, especially if cooked)

Skills

1 Carpentry

2 Farming

2 Ride

1 Run

1 Tracking

1 Trapping

1 Weapon Fighting (Farming tools)

1 Weapon Fighting (Unarmed)