“The Badlands Twists Its Creatures” - Utilizing the Shadowdark Monster Generator

“The Badlands twists its creatures.” This was a rumor (and/or warning) passed on to the Sunday night PCs a few sessions back, perhaps from the nomads. 

Probably just an old wives' tale. Nothing to be concerned about.

Spoilers for my players, so be on your best behavior. 🙄

Second installment in my June Randomness Wagoning... 

Now, my prior campaign players/PCs were no stranger to the mutants engineered by the vivimancers in the mountains. As I mentioned way back when, Jon Becker's "Comes Chaos" and Steven Cook's "Chaos Hordes" were used for all my mutation needs. 

Particular player "favorites" were the Damned Horses, and that one naked guy running through the battlefield who no one wanted to get near. Cowards.

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But now we find ourselves in a new campaign, and a need for new randomized random monsters. In the flavor of Shadowdark.

So cracking open the rulebook, we find ourselves on Pages 190 ("Monster Generator") and 191 ("Make It Weird"). 

The critters were generated with four d20 rolls to get the basic build, and then d3 mutations to spice it up. My initial rolled results are below, followed by some quick thoughts, and the final creation. For the Party Level, I'm assuming Level 3 PCs.

Secondly, they are moving into the "badlands," which I have described as an arid region characterized by canyons, ridges, and natural labyrinths. Creations will be suited to such an environment.

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I rolled/created mostly honest, with one exception...

D66 Lost Cities

First of all, Prismatic Wasteland's current Blogwagon topic is "Randomness" - which means I'm posting sumthin' random...

According to the randomly assigned posting window, I have until the 12th, so there will be a couple more posts to follow this...

Secondly of all, during our Sunday night game, I posited the question of,  "Why do you seek the lost city of X" to my players. Drom, the dwarf desert rider (currently MIA) has his personal quest, so I wanted to poll the rest of the party on what they may hope to find. I'll post their answers in my game report, later.

Anyway, the question came up of "How do we know if we found the correct Lost City?" After all, the lands of the Cold Desert could just be lousy with them.

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"Damnit, Bjorr! This is the THIRD lost city we've found, and STILL not the one we're looking for!"

Anyway, have four d66 columns of fun, with names, reasons for abandonment, current occupants, and reasons to visit!

Download to Discover What Was Lost

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Qua'um's Gauntlets of Arcane Redirection - a Shadowdark Magic Item

These came to me in a dream.

I need more drugs, or fewer...

Qua'um's Gauntlets of Arcane Redirection

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A pair of mail gauntlets, crafted of mithril and embellished with arcane symbols of star-metal. Wearable by arcane spell-casters. The gauntlets will be found with a severed finger stuck into one of the glove's fingers.

The gauntlets were developed as a defensive item against spells targeted at their wearer. 

On a successful spellcasting roll at same Tier as the cast spell, the targeted spellcaster may “catch” the spell and either redirect it or recraft the arcane energies to a known spell of the same Tier for immediate casting. Re-crafted spells require a second successful spell roll. Spells may only be crafted to Tiers accessible to the caster.

If the wearer fails their defensive spellcasting roll, the spell takes normal effect. Additionally, the wearer (d6):

1. Flees, 1d4 rounds
2. Is paralyzed, 1d4 rounds
3. Loses one random memorized spell for the day
4. Is stunned, disadvantage on action rolls, 1d4 rounds
5. Is blinded, 1d4 rounds
6. Casts their next spell at disadvantage

In the case of a critical failure: The wearer loses a finger. At five critical failures, the gauntlets vanish.

Metal, dude.

They Met at a Tavern 28: Side Explorations

Memorial Day Weekend, so the party was mostly partying, except:

• Dan: Kiara, elf Ras Godai
• Seana: Zanegar, 1/2 orc Sea Wolf
• Chris: Thorn, dwarf Wizard

Side-questing, it is...

The trio (and NPC Zet The Conspiracy Goblin) decided to scout the edges of the badlands, hoping to find evidence of paths through the tortuous landscape:

something like this

They were moving along through the canyons and washes without too much difficulty when they crossed paths with a large number of humanoid tracks heading deeper into the badlands. Past experience called these out as serpentfolk. The trio decided to track the band for a while, to see if they could get a sense of their destination. Kiara was able to scout ahead, and the ID of the group was confirmed with a pair of dead serpentfolk, who had apparently succumbed to wounds. After a few hours, the party caught up with a warband of approximately 20 serpentfolk and a handful of pack-lizards. Since there were many more of them than there were of the party, the three chose discretion over stupidity.

Oh, they picked up a shortbow and a few arrows off one of the corpses, since none of the three had a missile weapon, and they intended to do a little hunting.

Backtracking the warband's path, they eventually found a small redoubt built into a cliff-face near the edge of the badlands after spotting a column of greasy smoke. They cautiously approached and were hailed by a guard. Upon closer inspection, they saw the source of the smoke, a pile of burned bodies, as well as several fresh graves.

The place looked like it had just survived a small siege.

some Dyson joint

They Met at a Tavern 27: Hangin' With the Horde

Who's riding along with the wagon train tonight:

• Rick: Bjorr, 1/2 orc Paladin
• Dan: Kiara, elf Ras Godai
• Seana: Zanegar, 1/2 orc Sea Wolf
• Chris: Thorn, dwarf Wizard
• Wayne: Pharan, dwarf Sea Wolf

Drom was off on a dwarven pout after being teased too much about his camel.

Anyway... The party had conferred with Tuva, the horde's "librarian" regarding possible references to the lost cities of the north. Since it would take the sage time to sort through his "bookmobile" for relevant texts, it was time to chill.

"I know it's around here somewhere..."

The horde had set up camp near some sacred hills in order to inter some honored dead in their fashion. And, among other rituals to honor the moment, a number of sporting and other competitions were held. The party joined in, of course. Bjorr in horsemanship, Pharan, Zanegar, and Kiara in wrestling, and Thorn in lore and tales. All managed to win or tie their respective contests, and came out with a few extra coin to immediately spend...

Prepping for the games

While they were resting after their bouts, they saw a distinguished pair walking among the populace, greeting people. Their importance was hinted at by the substantial guard. He appeared to have been a worthy rider at one time, but who had gone soft with the mantle of leadership. She was a severe beauty, marred only by a healed broken nose. They introduced themselves as Khan Astulfus and Khana Belavrida. As the leaders of the Dekan Khanate, it was their duty to welcome the invited travelers and know their business. 

The party shared their quest. The Khan was pleased that they had made contact with the librarian, as their literacy was a point of pride. After all, he had gifted three of his most treasured books as part of the bride-price when he wed his lovely wife. Likewise, he mentioned their "memory folk" who memorized lore and history for recall. 

Time to do some shopping. Kiara sussed out a pair of dwarves she had seen driving a wagon with a smoking forge. Thori and Nori were tinkerers and craftsmen (craftsdwarves) proud of their skills. They took a look at Kiara's razor chain and wrinkled their noses. That chain is substandard. Give us some coin and we'll smooth those links out. How you use it without getting bound up we'll never know...