A Continent of Banalities

Today I’m making the first character for Strange Endeavors, a hack of Cepheus and Enoch’s Wake I've made. Traveller(ish) life path but for horror/conspiracy games. I'll go into how character creation works with this system.  For the first character I’m using the “Straight on into the Darkness” method, which is fast and gives you a young character with a solid hook.  Step one is rolling 2d6 for each of the four stats. Endurance: Your character's physical ability to continue despite injury and exhaustion. Serves as hit points in action scenes. I roll a 6. A bit low, but not tragically so. Luck: Intuition and good fortune. I roll a whopping 11! Resources: A combination of standing and cash-on-hand. I roll 10. I’m starting to see this character as a silver-spoony kind of person. Willpower: Your self-possession, self-control, and your ability to control arcane energies. Certain psychic attacks or energies damage Willpower. A 6.  Step two is picking a starting Boon. I choose ba...

Day 12 is kind of a cheat day. This Rats in the Walls character was made as a pregen for a convention game.  Evlyn Moreau , who played the character, drew her beautifully.  Life didn't turn out the way you’d planned. That doesn't mean it isn’t good, just different. You met Cora when you both studied to become a vet, and you had it all planned out. You’d run a vet clinic together somewhere in upstate New York. You could grow old with Cora, and never get tired of her beauty and her strident attempts to do right by all living creatures. Well, a man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps, as the book says. Cora had nephritis. She just figured that the joint and muscle pain was from work and exercising. Too busy with life to run to the doctor, your Cora. She was diagnosed, but too late. Thank you, Evlyn! Finishing your education seemed pointless at the time, but you did go to upstate New York. Silver Bay is a place where there aren’t too many distractions fro...

The Complete Works of Sewan Sooth the Younger The Works is a being comprised of books. Leather bindings with brass corners formed a ridged back, like that of an exotic lizard. Black alchenical paper form the sinewy limbs, and the great jaws is a copy of “Tears of the Wyvern” thrown open on the centre pages. The creature stalks the great library of the Resolute Custodeans, the only place known to have a complete collection of Sewan Sooth the Younger’s writings. The Resolute Custodeans are tough greybeards who have dedicated themselves to collecting all wisdom for whoever come after us when the world ends as it has been foretold. Onceagain I'm indebted to Evlyn. Support her on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/evlynmoreau/ The creature is territorial and a swift ambush predator, at least in behavior. It does not eat those that it kills, but flays them and uses their hides to write on. If the part of the library it considers its turf can be avoided, the Works is harmless eno...

Csikaal, the End of Words [Inspired by a piece of Evlyn Moreau's art] Csikaal is a creature from the stars. That, at least, is the agreed-upon story. It is either a monster, robbing us of the means communication available to us, or a harbinger of the new way. Csikaal has a spindly body mostly hidden under a colorful robe made of a light shiny fabric. The head is crab-like and seems too large for the body. Its eyes are black like beetles and situated on long segmented stalks. It moves in blurry bursts of speeds or stands still like a statue. By Evlyn Moreau. Sign up to her Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/evlynmoreau/posts Csikaal has power over words. Any communication, whether verbal or written in a certain radius means whatever the creature wants it to. This includes the speech neccesary to use scrolls, shout orders, declare love or surrender. All in the hands of a creature as alien as the stars themselves. Some people have surrendered themselves to the new way of...

(Another post inspired by one of Evlyn Moreau's illustrations. Support her patreon . It'll do you good). If you’re from around here you have seen this pair. Graffiti-artists love painting the working stiff grim reaper with the larged-eyed imp perched on her head. Scholars say they symbolize the unpredictability of life and the grim certainty of death. Others say they’re just unlikely friends. More and more people say they have seen them out there. Resting by the batting cages at sunset, keeping lumbering pace with a speeding Lexus, or coming out of the neighbor’s house as you rush to catch the bus. Used with permission. If you’re from around here you won’t be surprised that people have begun pertitioning them for aid. If you have Death and the Devil on your side you’ve got it made, right? Murder, she gloat This miracle is the perfect symbiosis between the gravity of Death and the cruel mischief of the Devil. Everyone in a city-wide radi...

(The following is inspired by a piece of art by Evlyn Moreau. Follow her Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/evlynmoreau/posts) Some say she is the mother of all bats, daughter of Luna, the warm embrace of night, or the promise of the world made bearable by darkness. Other call her vampire, mother of demons, sister of Lilith. Her worshipers flock to Conal County, Texas to worship at Bracken Cave, where her offspring hang by the millions. In Yunnan province, China she is the bringer of five blessings or disease. In Spandau Citadel in Berlin, her offspring is said to spell out her secret name as they swarm under the castle’s vaulted ceilings. Used with permission Whatever her true nature, she is a nurturing friend to all bats. Humans she tolerates, if they show respect and kindness to her charges Winged Embrace The simplest of the Mother’s blessings is simply her embrace. Thosewo invoke her will feel enveloped by mighty wings and clutched to a furry bosom. Th...

I have two settings for TROIKA! available for free on Itch. Art by Evlyn Moreau There's The Liver of Acratopotes , a fantasy setting set on a demigod's liver. And there's the TROIKA! version of Passing Strange . 21st century weirdness and the weirdos who must suffer it. Both of these have been featured in stages of unfinishedness on this very blog.

(Once again this is an entry based on one of Evlyn M's brilliant pieces. Support her on Patreon !) Many would probably call hobgoblins a ‘warrior race’. This is quite reductive of course, no species of intelligent creatures are just one thing. It is however true that the hobgoblins spent untold years as the Grey Emperor’s slave-warriors and expendable workers. They staged a great uprising which the hobgoblins call the Us War, since it was the event which made them their own masters. Of course the Grey Emperor is gone from the world now, but these ancient evil have a way of returning. The other species do not see beyond the surface, and still think of hobgoblins as ‘foot soldiers of evil’ or some such nonsense. The hobgoblins for their part keenly remember how the species turned them away harshly or ignored them when they sought aid against their oppressor. Hobgoblins must have perfect hair when they go war. In the days of enslavement it was a creative outlet and an act of de...

Hi! Remember I was writing a game of modern weirdness called Passing Strange? I almost did. Now I'm back at the keyboard, and what follows is a chapter on magick. Your fingers weave quick minarets. Magick is the way by which one bends the world to one’s will. Magick knowledge is hidden among a lot of nonsense, half-truths and ego, but it is there to be sought out and learned by everyone.  The step that opens the conjurer up to magic is one that must transcend routine, or exaggerate some facet of it. This is by no means a safe or certain process. Many search, but few find, and few things in this world are as dangerous as the seekers after wisdom. 5 Strains of Magick Magick is divided into five strains. Some call them traditions or schools, but whatever the name all true occult philosophers agree on this division. They are the basic components of the human condition (commonly called Heart, Soul, Mind, Flesh and Blood). It is not impossible to learn magick of sev...