Dollguard (Arise Ye Wretched)

In elder days, two great empires vied for command of the realm of dreams - mighty Old Sybilline and High Isshin-Daga. That they were separated by the entire bulk of the Interdark, on opposite sides of the world-plane, was of no consequence. 

The peoples of these proud civilizations dreamed of worthy opponents, of one another, and met in commerce, diplomacy, and battle upon the immortal coil of sleep. Children were sired, crops exchanged, philosophy and poetry recited to rapt foreign audiences. One of the greatest marks of this collaboration, of peace and respect between equals, was the establishing of the Dollguard under the Catalyd Dynasty. 

This elite force of prætorians was composed of esteemed and trustworthy Isshin-Dagan warriors given military doll-bodies by the Sybils and tasked with protecting the life of the Sybilline Emperor. Their foreign nature proofed them against involvement in internecine politics (or so it was believed), and their sexless forms made them ideal guardians for the Emperor's harems and seraglios (or so it was believed).

It hardly needs to be mentioned that this all came to ruin with the advent of the Dreaming War, which shattered the dreamscape with terrible oneiric weaponry and caused a panhexagonal crisis of Meaning, along with the twilight of the oracles. This, incidentally, is why dreams don't really make sense anymore—dreams used to be a fairly straightforward affair with clear-cut interpretation before the War fucked everything up. 

For the Dollguards, the War was an unmitigated disaster, dividing their loyalties between their homeland and their adopted liege. Those who survived the brutal campaign of internal purges and assassinations found themselves trapped in their false bodies and driven irrevocably mad by the cataclysmic conclusion of the conflict. 

A few still wander to this day...  

Dollguard

Source: this is just Sasori from Naruto...

HD: 8

AC: 14 (Lacquered paper)

Hit: Three attacks at +9 each

Damage: 1d10 (Glaive) or 1d6 (Chakram, Thrown), usually poisoned (1d4 STR, DEX, or CON damage)

Movement: Uncannily graceful, with a strange tinge of mania, sped-up

Intelligence/Mien: Skillful, graceful, poetic, ancient, utterly insane. Mute, but can speak all sign languages fluently.

Special: Can Parry and Guard like a Sword-Shepherd. Roll 1d4 one to three times for special traits. Duplicate rolls result in extra charges.

1. Flamethrower - Sprays a 10m cone of jellied napthta, dealing 1d10 damage on a failed Save plus 1d6 damage each subsequent round until extinguished. 3 Charges.
2. Shoulder Hwacha - A pepperbox rack of envenomed needles propelled by rocket microcharges. Fires once, peppering a 5m radius with hundreds of projectiles and hitting each target with 1d6-3d6 needles, depending on size. Each needle does 1 damage, and deals 1 damage to STR, DEX, or CON.
3. Wired Reflexes - Limb rigged up with internal runesteel wires, allowing extension and retraction - fire as a grapple, or swing as a flail to slice for 2d4 damage. 
4. Gas Canister - Launch up to 20m in any direction, hitting at +4 and dealing an extra die of damage on a charging attack. 2 Charges.

Their fire-retardant lacquer coating makes them fireproof (or at least, no more flammable than normal), but their paper body takes maximum damage from heat and flame if the protective layer is peeled or scraped off (this usually happens at half HP or less).

Fatal Woman

The most élite Dollguard are the Fatal Women, who were rumored to be not humans but Valkyries, enfleshed in filigreed mannequin frames. 

Source: Come on. You know who this is.

HD: 12

AC: 18 (Frozen mercury panoply)

Hit: Three attacks at +12 each

Damage: 2d6 (Atgeirr) or 1d8 (Tachi) or 1d4x1d4 (Machine Pistol)

Movement: Zoomer shooter protagonist.

Intelligence/Mien: Rip and tear, until it is done. Can somehow speak, despite lacking any vocal apparatus.

Special: Can Parry and Guard like a Sword-Shepherd, as well as Cleave. Spurning the poisons and trickery of the regular Dollguard, she instead weaves the fates of all violent men with her clacking, elegant fingers—she can roll 1d20 three times prior to rolling initiative, and can swap the results of any roll (even damage rolls) that occurs during the battle with one of those stored numbers. The number that would've been rolled had she not intervened is stored in her 'pool' in the place of the one she used.

 

 

 

False Medusae (Arise Ye Wretched)

False Medusa is a somewhat insulting appellation to distinguish them from the "True Medusa" of Qabalque legend. They have no singular language or endonym (some include: Kuo-Toa, Sahuagin, Trithoni, and Locathah), though recently there has been the formation of a nascent political group identity under the banner of the Ocean People, in solidarity with various other aquatic humanoids.  

One of the many demi-humans (if you're kind of racist) or "monstrous humanoids" (if you're extremely racist) of the Underside. They've got dense thatches of long fronded tentacles that trail from their heads, shoulders, wrists, and around their cloacae; these appendages have limited independent motive power and are armed with nematocysts and bioluminescent nodules. Their faces are smooth and sharklike, with folded-over slit nostrils and rows of bristling razor teeth, yet with an odd intimation of feminine beauty (though, in truth, they are genderless and reproduce parthogenetically). Their skin is grey, brown, or deep green; they are covered in tough, leathery scales that show a faint iridescence at certain angles. Webbed fingers and toes, coupled with thick fluked tails, give them powerful and agile underwater movement.

Their eyes are their most notable features. Under normal circumstances they are glossy, depthless black marbles; sloe eyes. Many have written off the famed petrifying glare of the Medusa as an urban legend, a sailor's exaggeration of the arresting beauty of their alien gazes. In reality, their shining black eyes are the product of nictating membranes which possess a natural polarization, like biological sunglasses. Should the film ever retract, their true eyes are revealed, glowing orange-yellow and capable of paralyzing with a glance. Initiates of their most feared and exclusive martial societies peel off their eyelids with a shucking knife as a rite of passage.

Their societies are divided between mostly-settled kelp-farmers, transhumance sturgeon herders, and fully nomadic hunter-gatherers. 

Farmers tend to massive rafts of algae, cultivating "food forests" that make use of every part of the complex ecosystems that form around these great drifts. Their primary economic product is umami seasoning, though their business is being undercut by new methods of chemical synthesis. Sturgeon herders subsist on caviar as both a staple foodstuff and a luxury export. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is severely endangered, with most remaining practitioners turning increasingly to commodifying their lifeways for tourist consumption, or else living off remittances from family-members in the commercial diving, whaling, and coral-mining industries.

In addition to their formidable natural gifts, Medusae fight with a variety of hydrodynamic weapons. Their most common tools of war are long, slender finned darts, cunningly crafted to supercavitate upon being launched from an atlatl. In hand-to-hand combat, they wield half-moon ulu blades, which they call "mother knives," and a kind of streamlined monk's spade, which they call the "grandmother knife." They consider these especially suited for underwater combat, as the fan-shaped blades mimic flippers or fins and can be used by a cunning warrior to augment movement or agitate currents. Underwater thunderarms are rare and extremely prized. They often wear armor made of salvaged netting, which protects against slashing and serves as a trophy of successful raids against fishing trawlers, which they see (correctly) as threats to their homes and livelihoods. Their martial arts teach them to maneuver to gain the lower position and strike with the advantage of buoyancy, and to cut with perfect edge alignment, which is necessary to minimize water drag. While they generally shun swords as dumb weapons for losers, they are also terrifyingly good with them. 

They are biologically immortal, and follow a logarithmic growth pattern. Their grandmothers are their fiercest warriors and their wisest leaders.

False Medusa 

HD: 2

AC: 12 (Net-Maille)

Hit: +3/Special

Damage: 1d8+1 (Dart) or 1d6+1 (Mother Knife) 

Movement: As dolphin

Intelligence/Mien: As human who knows she could kill basically any normal human she meets.

Special: Anybody in hand-to-hand range with her with exposed skin must Save every round or suffer 1d4 DEX damage. Anybody making eye contact with her must Save each round or take 1d10 DEX damage. You can automatically pass this Save by closing your eyes, blinding yourself. She is not immune to her own paralytic gaze.

 

Medusa Grandmother

HD: 5

AC: 16 (Hull Panoply)

Hit: +6/Special

Damage: 1d6+2 (Mother Knife) or 1d10+2 (Grandmother Knife) or 2d8 (Hydrojet Pistol)

Movement: As shark

Intelligence/Mien: Old, wise, and inured to violence.

Special: Anybody in hand-to-hand range with her with exposed skin must Save every round or suffer 1d6 DEX damage. Anybody making eye contact with her must Save each round or take 2d10 DEX damage. You can automatically pass this Save by closing your eyes, blinding yourself; she is very good at punching you in ways that make humans involuntarily open their eyes. She is not immune to her own paralytic gaze, but is trained to reflexively shut her nictating membranes at the slightest glint of a mirror; she gets +4 to the Save to avoid reflected gaze attacks.

Be On Your Guard (More GLOG Magician Schools, Arise Ye Wretched)

The previous post contained lies - or perhaps this one does. Conjuration was not merely split into Dislocation and Goety—it was, in fact, the Ur-School, singular in its power and purpose, and subjected to a sevenfold split to create the modern categories of Gnosticism.

Other coherent paradigms of magic exist: Necromancy, devised by Unræd and kept jealously by the Curators of Necropolex, harnessed to maintain the stalwart independence of the Necropoles; Illusion, secreted away in a dream to the otherside of the Hex, where it found wide popularity in the academies of Jiangskr and High Isshin-Daga; Dislocation, an art traditionally kept by diasporic clans of nomadic mountain-people who can be found in all the high places of the Hex, leaping from one peak to another.

Conjuration herself, Queen of the Arcana, long rumored to be the subject of clandestine investigations in dusty Panopticon basements, each new generation producing some sublime quicksilver genius who inevitably burns all her talents and potentials on attempting to reconcile the syntactic gaps in that which was broken.

Source: Delphin Casado

 

Necromancy

Words (Regular/SCHOOLMASTER):

1. Ice
2. Keratin
3. Ash
4. Bone
5. POISON
6. HOPE
7. BLOOD
8. DEATH

Implements: 

1. Skull - Animate [Word] to obey one-word commands, or release a drifting cloud of [Word].
2. Tome - Ask a question of [Word], or bind sentience into a mass of [Word].
3. Gun - Fabricate bullets from [Word], or lay a curse of [Word] with a shot.
4. Scythe - Mark something for death by [Word], or harvest [Word] from the dead or incapacitated.
5. GRAVE - Take [Word] into yourself to enhance power and vitality, or chimaerize two beings of [Word]. Immobile.

Praxis: Gain +[Templates] temporary HP upon waking, which are expended prior to any regular HP. When a living being dies within your Crown, gain 1 point of temporary HP, up to a maximum of [Templates]*2 at any given time. Your hair and nails count as Light weapons.

Illusion

Words (Regular/SCHOOLMASTER):

1. Mist
2. Glass
3. Smoke
4. Silk
5. MOON
6. MUSIC
7. AUDIENCE
8. MEMORY

Implements:

1. Veil - Vanish into [Word], or craft an uncanny disguise from [Word].
2. Fan - Redirect attentions to or from [Word], or banish illusions with [Word].
3. Torch - Conjure a silent image from [Word], or release a disorienting burst of [Word].
4. Censer - Fill your Crown with illusory [Word], or trap a single subject in a false world of [Word].
5. STAGE - Dude, fuck if I know. I'll come back and put something in here later. Immobile.

Praxis: See through illusions worked by beings with less HD than you. You can project a swarm of [Templates] mirror images around you. Targeted attacks against you have only a 1-in-[Templates] chance of success, increasing by +1 per failed attempt and +2 per successful attempt until success is guaranteed. 

 

Dislocation

Words (Regular/SCHOOLMASTER):

1. Dust
2. Rain
3. Birds
4. Paper
5. LIFE
6. TREASURE
7. DOOR
8. MIRROR

Implements:

1. Bead - When thrown, appear at point of impact in a burst of [Word].
2. Knot - Exchange locations with [Word] within your crown, or return to the location where the knot was tied in a burst of [Word].
3. Key - Allow unhindered movement through [Word], or open a passage between two instances of [Word] within your Crown.
4. Bolt - Split yourself into clones made from [Word], or teleport [Word] with a touch to anywhere within your Crown.
5. GATE - Teleport yourself to any [Word] you are aware of, anywhere, or open a doorway into an extradimensional Demiplane of [Word] the size of your Crown. Immobile. 

Praxis: Gain +[Templates] equipment slots, held in an extradimensional space and retrieved with a mudra. On your turn, take 1 Fatigue to materialize anywhere you could walk in one round, ignoring difficult terrain and hazards but not barriers. 

Conjuration

Words (Regular/SCHOOLMASTER): 

1. Fire
2. Water
3. Earth
4. Wind
5. Wood
6. Metal
7. Darkness
8. SUN
9. STAR 
10. LIFE
11. SPIRIT
12. MEMORY
13. THOUGHT
14. DIVINITY
    

Implements:

1. Staff - Create a sphere or wall of [Word]. 3 Slots.
2. Sword - Divide or parry [Word] with a strike. 2 Slots.
3. Grail - Distill a potion of [Word], or cause one who drinks from the grail to be wracked with [Word] at your will. 2 Slots.
4. Pentacle - Call forth a being of [Word], or exchange to compel a favor from [Word]. 1 Slot.
5. Mirror - Trap or deflect [Word] while the mirror is aloft. 2 Slots.
6. Orb - Get a vision of nearby [Word], or something in nearby [Word]. 4 Slots.
7. Key - Allow unhindered movement through [Word], or open a passage between two instances of [Word] within your Crown.
8. WELL - Call forth an unlimited font of [Word], or realize a Wish via [Word].

Praxis: Creatures of your [Word]s must Save to knowingly harm you.

Q&A Section

A brief Q&A, featuring a mix of questions I was actually asked by people on Discord and questions that I've made up to give myself an opportunity to elaborate on things.

Q: Are Implements the same things as normal objects? Like, can a Transmuter just pick up any old hammer and do Transmutations with it?

A: No :). In the modern day, Implements are machined according to precise numerological ratios and inlaid with gold circuitry to make them proper vessels for magic. You can't buy a new one at a supermarket, but specialists can probably sell them to you for about 100g a pop.

Q: Can you learn new Words? 

A: Yes, but it's hard as hell. Some kind of Quest for Power or other major undertaking is needed in order to alter your school's guiding logic enough to accommodate new inputs. 

Q: How about Implements?

A: Ditto. The Gnostic trades flexibility for reliability. If you want to be picking up new spells all over the place, go play an Occultist.

Q: So how do magic spells actually work? Mechanically?

A: Because of the wide variety of possible [Word] inputs, I figured less is more when writing Implement descriptions and neglected to write a proper GLOG-style spell description. You know how to write these, plop down some [Sum]s and some [Dice]s and so forth and get to casting!

Q: Does a particular Word/Implement combo always result in the same spell?

A: I've actually been thinking about this, and rolling it around in my head, especially in the context of the "hotrod spell" bandwagon that was going in the GLOGosphere in times of yore. While I'll leave how permissive you want to be down to the individual GM, I'd say that, at minimum, you should allow different Magicians to cast different variants on the same spell—one guy's Sphere of Fire can be a classic Fireball, another a rolling orb, a third a lingering firestorm, and so forth. If you allow one Magician to devise multiple variants of the same spell, you should probably require each interpretation to be tied to a different Implement. It'd be neat if, for instance, you could gank another magus and steal her Implements to gain access to the specific hotrod versions of spells that she knew.

Q: Blah blah blah I have questions etc etc

A: Too bad, I'm bored of this format. Go DM me on Discord or something.

3+1 Neat Catalysts

Modifiers are a subset of Catalysts that must be integrated into Implements and modify all spells cast with it. They are typically non-consumable, but must be used every time the Implement is called on, and cannot easily be exchanged.

1. Attuner -  One of the most ubiquitous Modifiers - a 1-slot attachment to an Implement that attunes it to a single Word, making it unable to channel any other Word but granting all spells cast a +3 to [Sum]. The form and composition of the Attuner is specific to the Word and the Implement it modifies.

2. Multi-Threader - A complex 2-slot splitter matrix that allows a spell to be cast with two Words at the price of halved [Sum]. 

3. Silencer - A 1-slot aetheroresonant baffle that causes spells to be silent or invisible, at the cost of -3 to [Sum]. Decoheres on a Mishap, causing the release of all stored light and sound in a blinding and deafening flashbang burst.
   

You ever think about how a tower is basically just a really big wizard's staff? Me neither, I think my delightful girlfriend actually pointed that out. Anyways:

+1. TOWER - Increase the radius of your Crown by an order of magnitude for every story beyond the first.

Subtle Body, Luminiferous Mind (GLOG Psychic, Arise Ye Wretched)

Presented without comment. This is a part of the Hex setting that I've been poking at for a good while.

 

Lucid 

A: Crown, Intent, Manifestation

B: Scanner, Lingering Intent

C: Inception, Evanescence

D: WAKE UP.

A: Crown

Like the Magician, you too have a Crown of 10m radius per [Template], suggesting a deep symmetry between traditional magic and Lucidity. Some theoreticians, in fact, have labeled it a third form of magic—Solipsistic. You, however, are far more limited by your Crown. 

Not only do your powers fail to affect anything outside your Crown, but all changes you make to the world are fully reverted once the affected subjects leave your Crown. This should be interpreted fairly strictly—for instance, if a Lucid were to shuffle the contents of a room via telemotive force and then leave, all items would snap back to their original locations as if they had never moved at all (and, who knows—maybe they didn't). 

There are two exceptions to this, which are really only one exception, referred to collectively as the Aleph-Taw Principle: Life and Death remain constant across the bounds of wakefulness. Or, to put it another way: you die (or get pregnant) in the dream, you die in real life.

While you possess a Crown, all your sleep is completely dreamless. 

A: Intent

While in theory your capability to alter the world within your Crown is near-infinite, the slippery nature of dream-logic causes your actual power to be bottlenecked by your ability to focus. In order to exert the true measure of your strength against a target, you must fix your Intent on it. This usually involves intense staring, putting fingers to temples, mantra chanting, &c, but does not strictly require an outwards show of exertion.

Most of your Attainments will specify a general effect, which can be brought to bear on anything within your Crown at any time, and an enhanced effect which can only be used against targets of your Intent. 

You may channel Intent on up to [Templates] subjects at any given time. The targets of your Intent can be switched with a Maneuver. If something exits your Crown, you instantly lose Intent on it.

When taking damage, your Intent can flicker—Save or lose Intent. This can be reestablished via the normal process. 

You can "stack" multiple instances of Intent on a single target to intensify the effect of your Attainments. They take -2 to Saves against your abilities per level of Intent past the first, and many abilities will designate additional effects for higher levels of Intent.

A: Attainments

These are the primary categories in which your reality-warping power manifests. You gain [Templates] of these abilities, rolled or chosen from the list. You can wield your psychopowers with about as effort as swinging a sword or casting a spell (read: they take a "standard action," whatever that means), requiring no expenditure of MD or Fatigue or any other such resource. 

If an Attainment directly alters another person, they can probably Save against it. 

1. Ergotics 
1. General: Fire a bolt of reioplasma for 1d6 damage.
2. Intent: Fire a continuous beam of reioplasma from your crown chakra for 1d6/1d8/1d10/2d6 damage every round, flowing around obstacles and penetrating all armor and resistances.
2. Telemotion 
1. General: Apply a force about as strong as a two-handed shove in a single direction.
2. Intent: Seize something in a telemotive grip as strong as [an ordinary person/an Olympian athlete/a wild beast/a giant]. Intelligent subjects get an additional Save if you attempt to manipulate them in a way that violates their self-image. Most people tend not to imagine themselves as horribly injured.
3. Reformatting 
1. General: Cause something to have superficially different features (wrong number of fingers, clocks showing wrong numbers, etc...). 
2. Intent: Completely reshape a subject into something [of the same type (e.g. human→different human)/in the same general category (e.g. human→pig)/in the same ballpark (e.g. human→great soft jelly thing)/of any kind at all (e.g. human→toaster)]. 
4. Realization 
1. General: Pull any common pocket-sized item from your pockets whenever you need it.
2. Intent: Conjure anything up to the size of [a sword/a bazooka/a car/an airplane] from thin air. 
5. Excitation 
1. General: Apply a heat like a butane torch.
2. Intent: Cause an object to heat violently, resulting in [ignition/melting/incineration/detonation]. Intelligent beings get an extra Save at +10 against this if applied directly to their person. 
6. Body-Lightness 
1. General: Float around like you're weightless, or fully submerged underwater, or suspended from wires.
2. Intent: Gain flight as fast and elegant as [a sparrow/a falcon/a biplane/a fifth generation supermaneuverable fighter jet].
7. Esperance 
1. General: View colored auras corresponding to emotions around intelligent beings. 
2. Intent: Read [surface thoughts/intentions & beliefs/core memories/complete mind-meld].
8. Attraction 
1. General: Make a verbal suggestion or change somebody's attitude towards you one step along the chain of Nemesis→Adversary→Irritant→Stranger→Acquaintance→Friend→Partner.
2. Intent: Dominate somebody, controlling their body like [a marionette (badly)/a marionette (skillfully)/a dyspraxic person/your own body].

B: Scanner

By making eye contact with another Lucid, a Gnostic, or any other class that has a Crown, you gain the ability to use their Crown as your own, and vice-versa. You can dedicate your Intent to negating your opponent's on a one-to-one basis.

When you kill another Crown-bearer, your own crown expands by 2m.

B: Lingering Intent

Once you've fixed your Intent, you can maintain it even once the target has left your Crown. While you are no longer able to make active changes, any effects of your Attainments will persist until you refocus your Intent.

Your Intent is reset when you sleep. 

C: Inception

At any time, you can cause your Crown to "pop" like a diaphanous bubble, causing it to vanish without reverting changes. In this way, you can make real, permanent alterations to the universe, at the cost of your Crown.

To regain your Lucidity, you must obtain a new Crown. The most common way to do this is to kill another Crown-bearer and take theirs, but dream-quests to have new ones forged at the anvils of the Valkyries, daemon-pacts, super-science serums, etc... are always alternative options.

C: Evanescence

Just as a veil of forgetfulness occults the dreaming world from the waking, so to do the workings of your art fade from the minds of your subjects. If you so choose, intelligent beings must Save upon exiting your Crown to recall any events that occurred within in any substantive detail.  

D: WAKE UP.

If you would die, instead you can sunder your Crown to WAKE UP. When you WAKE UP WAKE UP PLEASE WAKE UP, you reappear in your bed, fully unharmed, unsure whether or not IT'S ALL A DREAM. If YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP in the presence of others, they perceive your apparent death as usual; YOUR FAMILY will WANT YOU BACK, your FRIENDS will NEED YOU, and so forth.

You can regain your Crown in the usual manner.