The Assassins Lamp

The Assassins Lamp

This is an an idea for a slightly different pattern of Investigation Adventure, which I will probably never have the time to flesh out into a real thing so here you go.

It was provoked a little by listening to that FoaBD podcast episode about Death on the Reik and by thinking about Investigations in games generally and the challenging polarity of creating a network of clues which both presents a meaningful challenge but which also doesn't leave the investigators trapped and sprawling.



....................................................


This would suit an Arabian Nights-style setting in which the Genie would be an actual Genie,
but could probably be adapted to a variety of settings.

This is how it goes;

- Someone is doing murders around the city (this would probably have to take place in a city, town or even more closely connected community).

- These murders are, in some sense, impossible. Either locked-door mysteries, victim killed with some unlikely substance (i.e. a sword of cheese), or in some other unlikely way.

- The PCs work out that a Genie is responsible for the deaths.

- The Genie is too powerful for anyone in town to defeat it directly or easily.

- However. The Genie is being ordered to commit these crimes by whoever has its lamp. And the Genie does not want to be doing these things.

- But it has to obey the directly-given orders of its lamp-holder.

- So the Genie will keep killing people as ordered. But it will do so in such a way that it actively tries to leave clues, inferences and details which will help the Investigators (the PC's) find their way to the holder of its Lamp.

But

- If the Lamp-Holder works out the Genie is doing this, they will;

First, give specific orders for the Genie to not do the things it has previously been doing, meaning the nature of its clues will shift each time its actions are discovered, becoming more and more distantly contextual.

Second, order the Genie to kill the PCs.

So the PCs will have to investigate in such a way that the successes of their investigation are near-invisible, at least so the Lamp-Holder cannot tell the PCs are on their trail. And they will have to wait until they are absolutely certain before they pounce.

....................................................





This is essentially a kind of Death Note game of wits situation, except that the Shiginami is actually trying to help the detectives.

Its meant to get over the 'searching for clues' part of the Investigation without resorting to too much world-bending fluffiness because the PCs know there are going to be clues because they know the Genie is trying to leave them. They just don't know in which form the clue will exist.

And hopefully the 'Game of Wits' thing where the PCs realise they have to disguise their investigation as something else would just emerge naturally from play.



NEEDFUL THINGS TO BE DEVELOPED


List of Victims. 

The first few victims of the Lamp Holder may provide the strongest initial indicators to their identity. At this stage they may not have fully processed that they were going to be investigated and could have chosen people based on more personal factors.

As time goes by they will probably try to obscure their trail by killing random or semi-randomly chosen people. They will have to kill people who are on their trail, and will have to kill more so those particular murders are lost in the pattern or ignored completely.

So the list would actually only be a 'list' for the first few murders. After that it would be a series of randomisers and possible methods of concealing murders.




Limits of the Lamp

The more limits are placed on the use of the Lamp (if it is a lamp) and the more contextual and specific they are, the easier the investigation will be.

Specifically, if there is some limit on the number of murders. If they can only kill once per night then the Lamp Holder may have to restrain themselves in order to defend their own safety. If there are only specific ways that someone can be killed (i.e. never the same method twice or never the same wish twice), that places a harness on their (and your) imagination and makes the PCs safer the more deaths they fail to prevent.

Safe zones. Maybe the Lamp can't be used during the day, or during a certain festival or when loud music is playing, maybe it is recharged by the moon, maybe the Genie can't enter certain sacred spaces or has to do something to get in, like be invited, or knock.

Tracing the Lamp. Tracking the Lamp itself has to be one of the best ways to find the killer and the more specifics there are to the nature of the killings the easier its will be to trace.

Investigating the Lamp could also reveal a specific secret weakness that maybe even the Lamp Holder doesn't know about, allowing the PCs to pull a last-minute emergency deactivation during the final scene and engaging Genie Vengeance.




Patterning of the Clues

The more the Lamp Holder realises they are being traced, the more specific will be the orders they give the Genie, restricting its actions and what it can reveal.

Of course if the Lamp Holder gives orders of overwhelming restriction then those risk allowing the Genie to prevent the murder, or to do something the Lamp Holder really doesn't want as, with mutually-impossible overriding instructions, there is a risk the Genie could just make something up that fits.

So the patterning of clues has to begin in a way that's clearly legible to the PCs. But once they follow up the initial clues, the patterning has to change, and change again each time they make a visible successful assumption.

So the opening encounter could be something as simple as them witnessing a terrible murder, maybe of a child or woman. Then they try to stop it. The Genie easily defeats them (but doesn't kill them as it hasn't specifically been ordered to do so.

But the Genie can actually talk to them (because it hasn't been ordered not to yet). It can't give away any details of its owner, but it can effectively tell the PCs it doesn't want to be doing this. Maybe it can tell them that it cannot by any word or omission reveal the identity of its master.

But it could leave something behind, an object, something moved in the room, the location of the murder, the methods used, the murder weapon....




Derpy Cops?

The local cops need to be that strange combination of investigation stories, clearly competent and well-meaning enough to interact with, but also so generally derpy that only the PCs ever really get anywhere.

Or you can go for a darker feel in which the Cops or city authorities are somehow 'in on it' or just generally corrupt and bad. In this case maybe the PCs are the only ones who know or believe their theory about the Genie.

Even then you would need a Jim Gordon figure to bring them info about the case.

And you would need some element to make the PCs Investigators. Maybe they get a special badge from the Arabic Feds, like the Caliph gives them a scroll but he's gotta go out of town. Maybe there are some complex inter-ethnic or fantasy-ethnic fractures in the city so this group of high-status, or unknown-status outsiders (the PCs) are the only ones who can cross those lines and talk to everyone.

Probably what I would go for, in my usual style, is an actual opening scene with the Caliph themselves.

Say there's a murder of some vulnerable person and the PCs witness this and/or get wrapped up in it *as it happens*.

Hopefully they are heroic about it and at least try to be useful.

Then we have a big Robin Hood/Lionheart reveal scene, because one of the people who witnessed this was in fact THE CALIPH IN DISGUISE (as subtly suggested some time near the beginning of the scene).

So the Caliph, in full regalia (as the cloak is thrown back). The Caliph is a noble dude, like a Disney dad, he's regal, but he cares about his people. And he's old, or maybe he's got a wasting disease or something (which he bears with nobly), or maybe he's a kid.

But the Caliph knows the PCs are good guys, and knows about the situation with the Genie, and obviously understands that their investigation must remain secret, but, as honourable outsiders "You are the only people I can trust, will you help me my friends?". Also he's getting the fuck out of town till this invisible assassin situation is resolved. Here's my seal, good luck.

So we have the avengers of social wrong motivation with the murder of some innocent, and the agents of righteous authority motivation with the "Guys, the Caliph needs you." So if you don't get 90% of players with both of those at the same time then I have no idea what to do.

Oh, also there's a reward and its that thing you were looking for, social position and/or a bunch of cash. There, now 99% of players.



Suggestive Nerd

Probably you would want some helpful dork to come along and tell the players, or at least suggest to the players, basic concepts they should have already gotten in their heads but which are utterly necessary to the investigation. In Silent Titans the Ouzel played this role, maybe here you could have some Blind Fakir or wandering Holy Man who just happens to be around to offer good advice. A Genie expert or Lamp salesman. (Who can also be a possible suspect).




Obvious Methods of Concealment

Hopefully the players rapidly get the idea that they should be concealing their advances (and possibly emphasising their failures) to stop the Lamp Holder realising what is going on.

So it would be helpful if the city in question thronged with opportunities for concealment or invisible action. Maybe there are groups with masks or who go around in long robes. A festival where everyone dresses up. Geography or a built environment that makes concealment and secret movement possible (rooftops, sewers, multi-exit homes, areas divided by screens, hanging cloths or passable obstacles of some kind, ethno-social position uniforms or ID-fashions of some kind that make it relatively easy to 'swap costume'.

In another murder story these would be ways for the killers to escape detection, but here the Genie can do that easily so they are meant to prompt the PCs to find ways to hide what they are up to, because...



The Baddy is Getting Closer

In classic Death Note style, since all of the other cops are Derplords, the Lamp Holder is going to realise that the PCs are their main enemy, and they are going to try to find ways to get close to the investigation.

The more they can find out about the PCs the better they can combat them, but the more vulnerable they become.

So this provides both opportunity and threat to the PCs as, if the Lamp Holder finds out a lot about them, they can just take them out, but as they are getting closer they are more and more likely to make a mistake themselves and to become vulnerable in some way.

There would need to be some kind of mechanism. No, it wouldn't need to be a mechanic, but some suggested routes or paths for the Lamp Holder to use to get close to the PC's, like threatening the family of this one guard, worming their way into the affections of the bureaucratic overseer, becoming a housemaid and cleaner to the PCs, creeping around in the sewers etc.



Whats the Motive

Is it like a Death Note thing where they are bringing JUSTICE to the world and stopping them is a matter of philosophy more than anything? Are they a killer with a point? Or a mad Anarchist like the Joker who is trying to pull the skin off the face of the social world? Does this one go "right to the top" and there is a head of department or Vizier who is trying to make some kind of point? Or maybe they are a very small, very ignored person like a housewife or beggar who has stumbled into unexpected power and is now getting a chance to use their previously un-demanded intelligence?

Since the motive and relative social position (and access to information it provides) is going to be the major constraining factor on the choice of victim, probably best to work that out first.




And then what about High Level Play?

The Goddamn high-level investigation and magical tracing spells. Fucking mystery-killing fuckers.

We can maybe get around this somewhat by making the Genie, or Demon or whatever, either very high-level or from outside the socio-cultural context of the PCs. So maybe its this thing or entity they have never seen before, so their dispels and trackers won't work on it.

That's a half-bullshit explanation but whatever.

So far as tracing the lamp, well, who's to say its actually a Lamp? Or what it is? All you really know about it is whatever you can learn from the circumstances of its use.

The Speak with Dead stuff actually isn't that bad, as the murderer didn't do the killing themselves the most useful things that can be found out are stuff that might place the victim in the pattern of people who came into the notice of the Lamp Holder. So the PCs would still need to 'investigate' by asking the spirit questions.

Really the most dangerous stuff is the meta-magical spells that would dispel, trap or kill the 'Genie' or compel it to truth right away. Not sure what to do about those other than nerf them. Its a bit of a basic bitch answer I know.


.................................................................




So, there you go. With about a month of work you could probably get the simple version where there is one set killer in a specified social network and a specific lamp with particular rules.

With maybe a year of work you could get the full Ennie-bait version where all that stuff is broken down into tables and the killer, motivation and nature of the Lamp are different each time.

Instead you get this.

VaporWare Contrails in the Prehistoric Sky

Reading through 'Wolf Packs and Winter Snow' made me think a lot about prehistory. It made me think about things I would add and take away. Vaporware contrails. What would 'my' Prehistoric game be like?

.......

Perhaps classless. Prehistoric and tribal societies are less likely to have 'jobs'. Or at least their lives are less job-like. Everyone essentially has the same job: be an effective hunter-gatherer, from there people branch out a bit into different skill sets as provoked by talent and circumstance.

I spoke about this a long time ago in Godz Without Limitz. I think older less densely populated societies with a lower tech level regarded their individual members with a much lower degree of specialization. When you thought of a problem and needed help you considered the shape of the problem and cast your mind through the varied talents of your friends, looking for a matrix of capacity within a particular person, not for someone with an assigned role.

"I've gotta butcher this animal. Blue-teeth is really good at butchering, I'll see if he's around." Rather than. "I've gotta butcher this animal, better call the tribes butcher, who is called Blue-Teeth."

So it makes sense to have, maybe a developing skill system related to the basic stat line with skills growing as you try new things, (as promised in every fucking Elder Scrolls game until you jib it off and become a super-armored-mage-knight-assassin.)

.....

I might not include INT as a stat. I would tell new players that they are portraying among'st the most intelligent people ever to exist in the human race.

This might not be literally true, its likely that prehistoric man was pretty much 'as' intelligent, or, as capable as we are. It's an interesting question as to how you account for intelligence vs 'capacity. So much of how we understand intelligence is based on our culture or our mind state having a *lot* of abstract information to move around. And dealing with abstract information teaches familiarity with abstract information, it feeds on itself.

How do you measure intelligence in a world where almost nothing is abstract? Where everything is sensory? Being able to guess or predict the path of migrating deer is a bit abstract. Tracking an animal through broken terrain is hyper-complex, but not abstract. Facing off with a live animal that you want to eat in a situation where, if it gets away, you starve and if it doesn't, it dies, is hyper-complex with multiple highly sophisticated result paths interacting with each other at high speed and in a situation of significant stress, but I'm not sure how you would measure the IQ factor in it.

We remind the players continually that they are playing intelligent people to remind them to act in an intelligent way, even though they have few of the signs, signifiers and mental tools of intelligence as we measure it. These people are smart, they just don't have very much to think *with* (by our standards).

In the same way I might not include WIS. Let's just assume that everyone is as observant as its possible for them to be. The way Into the Odd insists you tell people stuff if it is there to be seen is interesting so lets continue with that.

Not only the discovery of technology but the transmission of knowledge would be important
dancing, storytelling and performance would all be vital for forming culture-groups.

(It's kind of staggering how much we don't know about dance. I've been reading Wendigo papers and all the time they say "This was communicated with his dance", "they were frightened by his dance", "his dance was tamed by their medicine dance", "in winter, the society was organised by dance", but we never find out how the dances fucking work or even what they are like to see.

We have no good language for describing dance and apparently don't give a fuck about it. It's like an alien watching white people and saying "Ah, of course they manipulated the actions of their sub-group with a book", "much of the continent was inflamed by war after reading a book" "he was hanged and his books destroyed because of something he had put in a book", "books are a vital medium of exchange and influence for this culture" but no-one talks about whats in the fucking books.)

Since you wouldn't speak the language of most people you encountered and they might seem racially or morphologically very different to you you might simply view them as monsters or 'other'. The role of peacemaker, translator or culture-transmitter could become a powerful one.




MAGIC - whooooo

There are few, or no, spells in this setting. In "our" world, or the more common fantasy world, reality is a given and magic users unleash spots of unreality, thereby defining the boundaries and rules of the imagined world as well as their own distinctive natures in it.

In the prehistoric world mild magic is everywhere. Shamans use magic a lot less than they investigate and refine the borders of reality.

the concept of 'dreams' doesn't exist, or at least not to the same extent or in the same way we understand it. People know that what happens while you sleep is of a different quality that what happens while you are awake, but, what happens while you sleep is still important, worthy of consideration, decision and even worth sharing if it seems necessary.

You might meet dead people when you sleep, you might meet them when you are awake, neither of these would necessarily be more or less frighting or important than the other. There aren't that many people and if you don't like the people around you, you can usually leave  go somewhere else
so the terror of people is more about what they mean to you, rather than numbers.

If you see a dead person you know well while you are asleep and *don't* tell people when you wake up, then that might be a mistake. Good or bad, they wouldn't come to see you for no reason.

In the same way, laughing or making fun of what someone tells you about what they saw when they were asleep doesn't make sense (most of the time). It's just more news, more information.

One of the most important things a Shaman does is keep the dead in their place and maintain a very clear boundary between them and us so they don't just come back all the time and do stuff.

In our own time we might regard Shaman as psychopomps, people defined by their ability to go back and forth between this world and the other world, but I suspect we have it the wrong way round. Yes, they cross the border, but as custom officials, border guards or ambassadors, reaffirming the reality of the border even as they cross it.

Animals and places and people have spirits, the exact difference between a spirit and a real thing is permeable. Shaman can tell the difference and work out how they work Everyone else pretty much has to deal with what they get. What we call 'dreams', 'spirit' and the material world, all interpenetrate. PC's and shaman mark things, perform rituals and tell stories to mark  boundaries, between sleep and waking, death and undeath, solid and perceived. The difference between 'corporeal' un-dead, ghosts, dreams and just someone who has recovered from what seemed an impossible illness or wound, is unclear.

Human beings have incredible minds. We can model reality with a sophistication and range no other animal can match, but it won't. stop. we can't turn it off. A huge amount of what the religions and social guardians of early societies have to do is just dealing with the overwhelming sophistication of the human mind and all the incredible things it can do, and keeps doing. you need to repress and transform so much to get get human beings acting together, but you can never repress anything directly, its like pressing bubbles on plastic over glass, instead you have to divert, transform, persuade, suggest, and you have to invent the culture to do it with.

In this game the job of a Shaman is less 'doing spells', but controlling magic, controlling otherness, naming it and giving it it's boundary. Investigating and reaffirming the borders of reality, of 'what is'.

I'm imagining something a bit like the Civilization tech-tree, but showing different ways of dividing up reality. No-one knows where the dead go, or how to keep them there, or what spirits are where or how they work, or where people came from, or where they are going, you would have to 'discover' these things, and by discover I don't mean just make it up, you would need to come up with a coherent set of culture rules that *make sense* according to the experience of the people who hear them and which deal with the pressures and strangeness of the human mind.



THE RAY MEARS PROBLEM

The big problem (if you consider it a problem) with putting so much effort into making things from the natural world and noticing things IN that natural world is that the game becomes one where whomever paid most attention to the survival manual is a badass and its hard for PC's to subtly investigate the natural world if the DM doesn't them-self have a deep knowledge of it.

This is really different to the investigation of imagined worlds based on genre or story type or fictional constructs. Someone can know more about Faerun than you, depending on how you run your game, but its hard for them to know more about how a dungeon works, or about how horses work in a fantasy setting (you jump on them to go somewhere, they eat at the end of the journey, they rarely run away, they fade into the background when not needed, they poop only when it would be funny). Horses in *reality* are probably much more complex and weird to deal with and the same goes for all natural things. Can you make a canoe from the bark of that tree? Well can you?

Fuck knows.

I don't have a great answer for the Ray Mears problem. I guess you would put together a simple yet interesting crafting system, that would help. But crafting is never interesting. You could maybe take the OSR route of breaking down sophisticated world-information into attainable objects, except the objects are aspects of the world. Like understanding part of an ecosystem is like a treasure. No idea how that might work.



END GAME

It's the Bronze Age. Even though that doesn't make sense, the idea is too cool for it not to be. The adventures of your neolithic PC's become the seed for the hero-cycle of a Bronze Age culture. "Hey, you remember when those guys fought that giant thing, and it looked like they were going to lose? But they didn't? Well its thanks to people like that that we currently have a unitary culture."

You might not start with a class but maybe you can end with one, depending on what you do.

God King. Or legendary hero for a fighty person, like the Herakles or Gilgamesh of a culture, someone who made the world safe for humanity, or (if you're a hippy) founder of something like the Iroqois Confederacy.

Crafty Dude."I literally invented bronze motherfucker! you remember flint? It was a shitshow!" or maybe you are the person who invents agriculture, or writing. Or you could become the Trickster-figure who dicks the gods around to help humanity.

Magicy Person. This could be the  revealer of a core religious faith and cosmic schema capable of creating and linking an entire culture, think Zoraster, less someone who named the gods, but someone who laid out the cosmos, discovered where the dead go and how that relates to us. You'll need a big mad religion to help the God-King make people live in your terrifying cities.

The Ogre and the Golden Bird

This one is for Arnold, who sent me a book.)

Everybody knows where the Ogre came from, though nobody was there to see it done, and no-one knows how it attained the Golden Bird, (did he always have it?) and no-one knows how the Ogre got his twin, (did he have a twin within the pit? Were they down there together?), and no-one knows where the Ogres Palace came from.

From the Golden Bird somehow.

It seems right that the owner of the Golden Bird should have a palace. A mighty treasure should be protected,the golden bird could not be kept within a cave. Diamonds end up in palaces and crowns, either their owners get one, or the treasure changes hands, so maybe it worked out like that with the bird.

Anyway...

Someone threw a baby in a pit.

The pit was deep, with vertical steep-sided walls: close-packed soil that collapsed under the hand. They threw scraps in every couple of days, or not. Other than that they forgot. They didn't talk, they didn't look, they didn't think. No-one went there and that went on for a good long time.

Then the baby escaped. It had turned into an ogre in the pit. It was huge and strong and smart and mad. Its hair was a matted mess, its skin was brown from filth. It drooled and twitched and gnashed its teeth and peered with short sighted eyes at a world that it had never seen. It was naked and its skin was full of scars. The scars were words, (phonemes really), the baby had survived and taught itself a language, one made from the wind and rain and the glimpses of the sky, the stars telescoped by the rim of the pit as they moved across the night and by the curling of worms that fell from its sides and by the bones of birds that died and were preserved as treasures by the Ogre-Child.

It was a language no-one else would ever speak or learn. It sounded like a river of mad noise, but it served to Ogre well enough to abstract and divide the world.

The Ogre had built steps, carved the black earth of the pit into a step-well, slowly moving soil down and around over years, not that impressive intellectually, you could have thought of the same thing but the Ogre thought it through from nothing, from raw nothing, it invented the idea from solid black.

(Also it came up with language on its own, which is more impressive, though less practical in the circumstances.)

Anyway.

As to what happened to whoever threw the baby in the pit, here stories divide, for some it's a revenge drama and the Ogre tears them up, in others he just leaves. However that goes, everyone knows where the Ogre ends up: in his bifurcated castle with the Golden Bird. And everybody wants the Golden Bird, especially the Mad Thief League, who have all tried to steal it and failed. And that's where the PC's come in, an encounter with the Mad Thief League.

............


THE MAD THIEF LEAGUE

It's exactly what it sounds like.

By its own mad law, every mad thief, anywhere, is a member of the league, though they may not know it.

Some thieves who are absolutely active members of the league do not know they are. Some do not know they are thieves, some do not know they are mad.

What binds the active members together is that they have all tried to steal the Golden Bird, and failed.

The Mad Thief League wants you to steal the Golden Bird.

(Everybody talks about the Golden Bird like it's the most incredible thing they can imagine but they're a bit short on specifics. They know it's very gold, it's  beautiful, how wonderful its feathers are, how wonderful its song is, how beautiful and rare and unique and precious it is, but exactly what makes it so great is hard to put a finger on. They don't know, for instance, what species it is, or what gender.

They really want it though. When they mention it they get a dreamy look in their eye and even the maddest thieves grow quiet and calm. Eventually, you'll probably just give in and agree it's pretty great, everybody else seems to think it is, so why not go along with them?)

The Mad Thief League are not the *only* ones who want the Golden Bird, sorcerers, kings, madmen and monsters all want it too, it's just the Mad Thief League that wants it *most*.

The only people who don't want it are extremely worldly, boring, materialistic persons, who regard it as a silly fad, but anyone with half a gram of poets heart wants the Golden Bird within their hands.

Anyway.

Members of the Mad Thief League get caught a lot. They are mad. Some are severely retarded. Some are effectively immobile. Some can't stop hooting under stress. This makes no difference, the League still brings them along on capers, heists and robberies. If they get caught, the League just steals them back from jail.

The talents of the League, as a whole, are enough to accomplish any task. They have savants that can open any lock, those who can forge any object, those who can simulate any personality, those who can see perfectly in the near-dark and those who can perform any athletic maneuver even if seen only once. They have people who can draw a complete building plan after glancing at it once from the corner of their eye, they have people who can imagine a heist in such concrete, absolute and perfect detail that they can visualise a city block and know which locks will need oiling, which guards will cough, and when, which tumblers will turn and why, and be right, all in advance.

They have any talent necessary for a crime, somewhere, though that talent probably goes along with a bag full of serious neurological and psychological impairment.

The greatest of the League are fractured geniuses of crime. People with incredible powers of lateral problem solving and fine expression, though also always severely fucked in the head. As in, they might hoot at you and flap their arms, lunge spastically, throw things, not be aware you are a person, not be aware you are not a collection of objects, not look you in the eye, not understand basic social cues, not understand that language is real, not understand that they are not the only personality in the cosmos, not understand that they are a separate thing to the environment around them, not remember anything done after a certain date, not be able to see or not be able to hear. They may think they are someone else and try to arrest themselves. They may think *you* are a member of the Mad Thief League and attempt to find out what you want. That can be a complex conversation.

If the need of the Mad Thief League is simple and direct, their methods are  are infinite and oblique, including, but not limited to:

- Blackmail, either with real sins or fictional ones confirmed by exhaustive, but false, evidence.
- Conspiracy.
- Entrapment.
- Threat, or offer of, Assassination.
- Hearts Desire.
- Glory.
- Revenge of any kind.
- Imprisonment, or freedom from imprisonment.
- And of course the offer of staggering amounts of cash, a figuerative, or literal, Kings Ransom.
- Or just an actual King, if you want a particular one?

Once PC's have been persuaded to accept their 'mission', they will be told about the Ogre and his palace, and his bird.


..............

THE PALACE OF THE OGRE KING

There are two Palaces locked onto the dark rock, mirrors of each other. The sides that face each other are nearly sheer. The sides that face away are crenellated, towered, encrusted with keeps and details, bridges and roof's, multi-levelled, staggering and slipping down to the walls and the glinting hematite on which the palaces reside.

The two sides match each other almost perfectly, the divide observable only from a narrow axis.
Stand here and you can see the gap between the palaces, like the gap between close skyscrapers, and the slender bridge of white that forms their only visible link, hanging high in the air in the near-centre of the buildings shape.

There are no gates to the Palace of the Ogre King, you have to climb in through a window, or sneak in through  hematite caves down below where the Onyx river gusheS from the rocks.


ITS LAYOUT AND OCCUPANTS

The Palace, or Palaces, is/are occupied almost exclusively by animals of varying levels of intelligence.

Their arrangement is as so:


The Dungeons of the Worm

Deep in the bowls, below the Onyx river, where the black organic walls are hung with ooze and mats of simple fungi droop into pools of soft invertebrate life, there is only a gigantic worm. The worm is huge and consuming and eats anything it finds. it never leaves the dungeon. No-one is sure what it looks like, or if it matters that it looks like anything, it is a worm, mindless and alive it seeks only to feed and live, no more detail is required. It fills corridors and runs through rooms like a freight train.

These dungeons are the only other place, other than the silver bridge, where someone can pass back and forth between the two palaces, but they must brave the darkness and the worm to do it.


The River-Corridors

Above the dungeons are almost dark corridors lit by dim blue lamps and reflected light, most of them hip-high in the water of the Onyx river. Fish live in the corridors exactly as if they were the river. The fish have few duties, they swim and feed and mate, sometimes mammals harvest their parts for the work of the Palace. Some fish may speak a little, single words.


The Reptile Halls

Hot and steaming are the Reptile halls, hung with tattered finery, full of crocodiles, chameleons and snakes (not all the Reptiles in the Reptile Halls are true reptiles, a ball-park similarity seems to be enough to get you in), tortoises and Tuatara's smoking cigarettes. It's here that the work of the Palace truly begins. The Reptiles chew wood into simple tools, gnaw things into shapes that might at one point be useful when combined with something else. The Reptile halls are full of fine trash that might not be trash, but something being re-purposed or transformed into useful stuff.

The Reptiles are still reptiles so, even though they have a modicum of intelligence regarding their mono-focused task, they still find manipulating things very difficult, it takes a long time for a Tortoise to gnaw out a simple picture frame, or for a snake to weave cloth.


The Mammal Rooms

Ballrooms and parlours and kitchens and armouries and endless painting halls. It becomes clear here that though the work of the Palace includes every kind of object and construction, its real work is the production of paintings. Most animals tend to have two jobs, whatever their main job is, and painting. Or at least, facilitating painting. The wolves, antelopes, pigs, cows, dogs  and zebras are bossed about by tribes of fast monkeys that run back and forth constantly, checking and manipulating. As soon as something is ready, maybe some blotches of colour or lines on some canvas, or some other work of rudimentary art, then it is snatched up and taken to an apes tower.


The Ape Towers

In the towers that encrust the palaces Artistic Apes do their keen work. Gorillas, Orangutans, Chimpanzees and slutty Bonobo's. The Apes make art, or re-interpret and finish art that's brought to them. Over half the art is paintings but they do sculpture, music and poetry too. The music sounds like wind and rain.

Apes tend to hyper-specialise

The fast monkey tribes run back and forth between the towers of the Apes, bringing art supplies and sometimes moving art around. (The Apes like to be inspired by and to re-interpret art made by other Apes.) When it looks like something is quite done, the monkeys, or sometimes an ape, grab the art and take it to the Skeleton Aristocracy.


The Skeleton Aristocracy

At the front of the Palaces, above the gushing waterfall of the Onyx river, are the many-windowed parlours of the Skeleton Aristocracy. While almost every animal in the palaces has the purpose of creating art, these Skeletons attired in finery have the deeper purpose of appreciating it, of understanding it, to this they devote enormous energy and drive, sometimes (rarely) entering mutual duels and often (with the Mirrored Skeletons of the Twin at least) engaging in massive arguments.


THE OGRE KING

Everything in the Palace is ruled by the Ogre King (though the Worm just barely) and must obey his direct command (to the best of the subjects ability). Yet the King is silent and rarely commands at all. He is occupied almost entirely by his marvelous bird, which he keeps tenderly in a cage held in his hands. His only wish is to protect and preserve the bird and to understand its song. So, it might be truly said, that everything in the Palace of the Ogre King serves the Golden Bird, as much as it can understand it to do so.

The King does not live like a King or look like a King. He is still near-naked, draped in faded finery, with matted hair, and his language-scarred skin still visible. The King has a throne in a room above the well-lit many-windowed parlours of the Skeleton Aristocracy, but he is rarely there. Instead, he creeps about his own Palace, investigating it, trying to understand its workings. He creeps like a thief and no-one in the palace can predict where he will be. He roams the halls, hiding and waiting. Sometimes he hides his golden bird in some safe and secret place, but then, worrying about it, goes back to it to take it up, but then, fearing for it, finds some new place to hide it.

And so it would be hard enough to find and steal the Golden Bird, even if it were not for the Twin.


THE TWIN

There are two palaces, linked only by the silver bridge and the dungeon of the worm. The Ogre King rules both and all must obey his unspoken commands, but the King only occupies one palace. The other is rule more fiercely by his twin.

The Ogres Twin is physically exactly like the Ogre King, but its behaviour is utterly different. While the King slinks through his palace silently, investigating, waiting, tying to understand, the Twin rules like a verbose tyrant.

The King himself can speak, but rarely does in the language of men, talking mainly to the Golden Bird, perhaps in the language he invented in the pit. The Twin however will not shut the fuck up. He even murmurs in his sleep. (He rarely sleeps.) The Twin talks and talks and talks, and the mirrored skeletons that serve him in his palace also talk and talk and talk. He talks enough to drive you mad, describing, dissecting, boasting, threatening, lying, persuading, whining, playing on words and making puns. He says some wise things, but they are drowned out in the torrent of words. Its as if his life was just a puppet to the words he speaks.

He rules his mirrored skeleton aristocracy like a tyrant and regularly sends them on mad missions in the palace or embroils them in strange conflicts. They have picked up from him his verbosity and argue with each other constantly, racing about the place on one mission or another. Many intrigue against him, thinking that if they depose him, they might rule in his place. He finds this hilarious.

The Twin wears a glorious wig to hide his scarred head, and has a golden crown on the wig. It's always about to slip off so he has a Rhesus monkey up there to keep it continually straight. The monkey falls off when he moves quickly and has to race back up to catch the crown. He wears glorious clothes and a glorious embroidered coat and wonderful silk shoes that wear out after half a day, and stockings around his huge thick legs.

The Twin is clever, snide, reductionist and wrathful. He hates being told things he does not already know and can only accept new information through a kind of invisible osmosis in which he persuades himself he always knew it, or was about to deduce it from what he did know. He loves novels though and has the Apes write him twenty a day which he reads voraciously.

It is a curious aspect of the Twin that he does not know he is, and has, a twin. He does not know that there are two palaces, that there are two Ogres, he does not know that he is not the King.

You can explain it to him, point out the other palace over the bridge and tell him about his brother, you can prove it to him, but he will rationalise it away with one of his endless lexical-spumes. Even if you can bring him to understand, even for a moment, he will quickly forget, and so will his skeletons.


THE KINGS SIDE

In the Kings side, the Skeletons are not mirrored, or very talkative. They are calmer, more aware, more silent and perceptive. The animals are calmer too, that whole side of the Palace is very quiet.


GETTING THE BIRD

The animals won't become aggressive right away, they don't really understand that you are not an animal like them. In fact, you seem to be some kind of ape.  They will try to incorporate you into the work of the Palace, only if you resist or if a Skeleton notices you will they attack. Of course, the Twin will ferociously oppose anything that threatens him, but is insanely egocentric and easily flattered, at least until his mood changes.

The King will simply hide and run, protecting his Golden Bird. Even if caught, he has a final power. The Ogre King can, at any time, in the blink of an eye switch positions with his Twin.

This means to catch the Ogre King, you must also catch, or kill, his twin.


THE FINAL TRICK

Of course there is a trick and of course there are two reasons that the Mad Thief League has sent you here. If you succeed and retrive the golden bird, the Ogre King will die of a broken heart and the Twin will take over both palaces and rule ever-more insanely until the building collapses and a passing hero takes him out.

If you fight in the palace, if you kill animals, if you shatter skeletons, every piece of damage you do will be reflected in your own mind.

That's how Mad Thieves became mad. If you kill a skeleton you may become schizophrenic or autistic, if you kill an ape you may lose the power to perceive colour or shape, if you kill a mammal you lose memory or access to memory, or fine motor skills, if a lizard then you may lose basic motor skills. If you kill the worm your heart will stop.

The plan of the Mad Thieves is that, even if you fail, you will simply add to their number and allow them to send a better hero next time. (Assuming they have a plan.)

Widows of the Mad Mole

(This is vapourware for a game I will probably never run based on the 'Into the Odd' ruleset. I couldn't stop fiddling with it so I'm dumping it here. This is kind of like ripping off a scab.)

Its 1840, and its Liverpool. Joseph Williamson the ‘Mad Mole’ of Edge Hill has died.

This eccentric and wealthy merchant is famous for employing large numbers of unemployed men to excavate a series of tunnels underneath his properties in Edge Hill. Though some of these are thought to have a practical use (one is said to lead from his house to the church so he can walk there privately) most are arranged in a seemingly mad and functionless way.

Original here

Williamson always claimed that these were built to employ the large numbers of men left without work after the Napoleonic war, although that doesn’t quite explain why he had them building functionless tunnel systems instead of anything else.

Williamson was renowned for his odd character, strange disappearances and his poor relationship with his wife. On his death a range of unusual people are called to the vaulted ‘Banqueting Hall’ beneath his house.

All those called are Ladies, or at least, women. Some might be family members or household staff, some could be people Williamson had encountered on the street or in church, or simply people he had read about. Some of those present could be friends or servants of those called.

Regardless, as the will is read, all the women present is given access to Williamsons private tunnel system and ‘a share of the discoveries thereof’.

And as the players explore this tunnel system, they find portals. Each portal leads to a different reality, to Carcosa, Yoon-Suin, Vornheim, Vovoidia, Quelong, Marlinkio, Arthurian England, Mouse-Guard World, Al Quadim, action-movie 80’s Hong Kong and others. Maybe even the Imperium of Man and the Federation. Williamson had a junction to the multiverse beneath his house.

Char-Gen is a hack of ‘Into The Odd’ so who you are depends on how many Hit Points you roll and how big your highest stat is.

Its 3d6 down the line; STR, DEX and WILL, swap two if you want to and then roll a d6 for Hit Points.

There is very little equipment on this list because you are a Victorian Lady. You would’t be expected to have any. You will have to buy it or find it.

	1HP	2HP	3HP	4HP	5HP	6HP
9 or less	Duchess Castlereagh, 13th in Line To The Throne.	Experienced  Medical Doctoress.	Independently Wealthy & Uniquely Beautiful with an Unquestioned Reputation.	Experienced Aristocratic Poisoner (with Poison)	Colonels Widow (Could re-fight Waterloo & win)	Sea Captains Widow (Could circum-navigate the earth)
10	Widow of famed explorer. Speaks five languages.	Lady, enthusiastic horsewoman, houndswoman and huntress.	Lady  kleptomaniac. Can Pick Pockets on a whim.	Delusional sailors daughter brilliantly faking nobility.	Circus-Woman with rope. Costume & juggling sticks.	Irish Maid and Experienced Thief. (has lock picks)
11	Lady and Doctor of  Chemistry	Lady with Gigantic Hound and pistol in her skirts.	Unmarried debutante with famously ‘fine figure’. Climbs like an ape.	Common Poisoner. Five dead husbands.	Gypsy Girl with functional Tarot Deck. Can Dance.	Bakers Wife, gave birth 5 times, immune to fear.
12	Beautiful, seems harmless. 12 years old.	Extremely Beautiful Pre-Raphaelites model. Near destitute.	Former Nun. Pyromaniac, (has matches hidden)	Enthusiastic Methodist. Immune to madness if singing.	Alcoholic Barmaid. Iron constitution.	Put-Upon Shop girl (Rolling Pin hidden)
13	Lady, and experienced boxing fan. (Can ‘read’ Hit Dice)	Lady and Renowned Artist. Exceptional Hair.	Lady and Much-Appreciated authoress. Severe melancholic.	Floozy.	Merchants Wife. Can calculate interest in a jiffy.	Butchers Wife (has cleaver and pig).
14	90 Years Old. Remembers American Rebellion.	Extremely silly young girl.	Husband a wretch. Numerous debts. ide	Pregnant Housemaid. (Married).	Sarcastic Jewess armed with long pin.	Fishwife with One Eye and Plentiful Hooks.
15	Dowager obsessed with her small and useless dog.	Divorced ‘Entertainer’ and Fake Medium.	Dressmaker with abusive husband. Has a knife.	Plain Housemaid with Sapphic Drives.	Housemaid with Husband in gaol.	Serving Girl who weeps too much.
16	Educated Laudanum addict.	Pipe-smoking Beggar-woman.	Half-Chinese Former Prostitute	Insurrectionist Irish Washerwoman	Serving girl with a Hook Hand	Pursued by Violent Husband
17	Escaped Prisoner & experienced cross-dresser.	Spinster. Former Bedlamite. Sees Things.	Current Prostitute & Quadroon.	Old, with Wooden Leg and a shameful dog.	One month pregnant. Unmarried.	Black. Five children to support.
18	Faints Under Stress.	In Staggering Debt.	Obsessive Abolitionist and Hysteric.	Back-street Abortionist ‘Given to the Bottle’.	Hideous Tobacco-Chewing Crone.	Pregnant, Homeless, Black and Mad.

The Derro Review Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier

In this blizzard of images and sound a friendly electrical German tries to help the Prime American Conspiracy remove treasonous elements. The plan is opposed by the Captain America and therefore fails. All elements become treasonous. The Prime American Conspiracy is destroyed. The Captain America remains.

The Captain America is Johnathan Storm, Johnathan Storm is the actor ‘Evans’. Nicholas Fury is the Man of Snakes, the Man of Snakes is many men. Who is ‘Evans?’ Are the snakes a sign of ‘Hydra’? Numerous ‘Hydra’ personal infest airborne craft. The Man of Snakes opposes them, or seems to.

Scarlett Johansen is charming, as always.

The Captain America is stronger and faster than any Human Thing and has killed many thousands of Human Things. It retains the sympathy of still-useful Humans by pretending not to understand popular culture.

A theoretical conversation might proceed this way;

Still-Useful Human - “The Captain America, it has recently occurred to me that you are a mass murderer and have escaped the bonds of mortality and any moral responsibility for your previous actions. This seems non-optimal to me.”

The Captain America – “Sounds heavy, like that Beatles album, what was it called. ‘Paint it Black?’”

Still-Useful Human – “Oh ‘Steve’, your innocent yet entirely understandable misapprehension of popular culture has caused me to temporarily forget that you can crush my skull in your bare hands because you are not a human being.”

Throughout the presentation of this seeming reality the Captain America refuses to disclose any information, saying either that it has been asked not to, or that it lacks any information to disclose. At the same time, it mocks other elements for not readily disclosing information to it. By the presentations end, all information is disclosed, the Captain America reveals none itself.

The Captain Americas primary opposing element and chief instrument of the Primary American Conspiracy is the ‘Winter Soldier’. Its apparent superiority to The Captain America is an illusion. In reality the Captain America has fully subverted this element before the events depicted even began. In a previous existence or parallel reality the Captain America ensures that its most Useful Human is placed in position to become ‘The Winter Soldier’. This being done, the Captain America simply waits for the inevitable decay of inferior American mind-control techniques. The Winter Soldier element ultimately neutralises itself. When the Captain America presents apparent vulnerability the Winter Soldier element is fully subverted and, in fact, risks its own life to protect the Captain America by executing a downward leap to avoid the effects of Newtonian physics.

The most significant ability of the Captain America seems to be its ability to transit between realities by leaping in a downward direction. When circumstances become non-optimal and a rational assessment of odds would indicate an almost-certain death, the Captain America leaps downwards. First from a helicopter, then from a building, a bridge, a flying machine, and in numerous other circumstances.

On completing this downward movement, the Captain America suffers no ill-effects, but rather, executes a series of apparently-incoherent and disconnected movements that nevertheless result in its avoidance of any physical harm and the achievement of its immediate goals.

The Captain America is only rarely seen to move upwards. It is continually falling, though it rarely climbs.  Its main direction is always down. On a few occasions the Captain America joins machines in the air. These machines inevitably fall to the earth.

At all times those occupying underground spaces hold the advantage. Nicholas Fury escapes in a pipe leading directly to the Captain America’s bedroom. He is then placed in a secret cave. The friendly electrical German occupies the deepest possible position. When this position is threatened the Captain America escapes with Scarlett Johansen to a still-deeper area in avoidance of a bomb.

Even after its total destruction of all opposing and restraining factors and its obvious position as most powerful element, the Captain America is not suspected by any elements. As its power grows, belief in its innocence deepens. This is the lesson of Captain America 2, The Winter Soldier. The hero conspiracy is the most powerful conspiracy of all.