Hunger Tide, or what happens when the land grows starved for too long

Flocks of carrion birds, bands of starving wolves, men and women with nowhere left to go and nothing left to sustain themselves on, all living as a single pack.
When enough of them gather together, simply brutalising each other or snatching cattle from nearby settlements will no longer suffice for sustaining them.
Pangs of hunger take over, drowning out both reason and fear alike as the Hunger Tide takes to villages, travellers and even entire towns.

Forming of a Tide

A typical Hunger Tide will form either because of famines among the locals, over-hunting of forests, or after natural disasters.
Animals, men and women find themselves starved to the point that all common taboos weight less than one's own continued survival. Neighbour digs up someone recently passed, not letting the flesh go to waste. A wolfpack brutalises it's own cubs and weak in order to sustain itself. Carrion birds descent down on those still clinging on to life. All are driven by nothing but hunger.

Transcending such preconceived notions as species or friend and foe, a mutually beneficial relationship forms between those simply looking to survive. Men abandons reason and language, wolf abandons care and familial ties, a crow becomes bold and an owl will hunt through both day and night.
Men and women are the bait, stopping caravans and stumbling into villages. They'll use their knowledge of society to lead their packs to new venues of sustenance.
Wolves appear soon after, hounding and corralling the prey as they ensure that none escape. Those trying to act by themselves get snatched, likely starting in-fights within the pack about who gets to eat the first catches.
All the while birds have been gathering, ready to gouge eyes and wreck havoc among those trying to stay organised.

In their wake, villages lay still and lifeless. Caravans are raided with none of the goods taken or even touched. Only bones are left behind, thoroughly gnawed and pecked with not a scrap of meat wasted.

Determining the size of a Hunger Tide

Wildmen - 1d6 x 2d6
Murder of Wings - 1d6 + 1 Read Beak for every two flocks
Wolves - 3d6 + 1 Men-Eater for every 6 wolves

Driven by Starvation - The pack forms over a common sense of hunger, but that doesn't mean they won't still need to sate that hunger somehow if they cannot catch prey.
After each week during which the pack hasn't had enough food to satiate it's members it will lose 1d6 HD worth of it's own either to starvation or from eating it's members, and counts as Hungry in terms of determining their morale until they next get to gorge themselves.
Food Intake - If the amount of food the pack requires is not being handwaved, 1HD of victims will feed 2HD of pack members for a week.

Murder of Wings

Hungry flock of crows, owls, vultures and the likes.
HD: 2d6+2
HP: 4 per HD, each hp corresponds to single avian
AC: 16
ML: 5 (10 if Hungry)
ATT: 4x per round @ +1 for d6 dmg
Eye Gougers - Every hit blinds the victim in one eye. Victim must pass a Con check each morning to restore eyesight, failing three times means the eye is permanently blinded.
- Three successful gouges, or a nat20, on single target means the eye has been removed.

Red Beak

Single crow covered in scars and with feathers missing, it's beak is perpetually stained brown and red from old blood which makes it easy to spot amidst it's airborne flock.
HD: 2
HP: 10
AC: 16
ML: 5 (10 if Hungry)
ATT: Eye Gouge @ +4 for 1d6 dmg
Eye Gouger - Every hit blinds the victim in one eye. Victim must pass a Con check each morning to restore eyesight, failing three times means the eye is permanently blinded.
- Three successful gouges, or a nat20, on single target means the eye has been removed.

Wolves

Tangled fur, hollowed ribcages and impeccable teamwork to split, isolate and dismay their prey.
HD: 3
HP: 14
AC: 14
ML: 8 (11 in Hungry)
ATT: Bite @ +4 for 2d4 dmg

Men-Eater

When a wolf grows disproportionately large it will need more and more food to sustain itself, such wolves sometimes get called Men-Eaters for they are perfectly ready to pounce even an armed hunter or armoured caravan guard to sate that need for food.
HD: 7
HP: 35
AC: 14
ML: 12 (retreats out of necessity, not of fear)
ATT: 2x Bite @ +7 for 2d8+1 dmg

Wildmen (& Women)

Men and women that have tossed away their humanity, now driven by instinct, indistinguishable from their pack of Hunger. Incidentally, this is also as close as one will get to a druid while still lacking the understanding of those who voluntarily discard language and civilisation.
Hides wrestled, bitten and devoured off of those who tried to oppose their position within the pack and feathers plucked from those that mocked their origins, they have truly discarded all emotion but that of simple need.
HD: 1
HP: 6
AC: 16
ML: 6 (10 if Hungry)
ATT: Improvised Weapon @ +2 for 1d6 dmg

 

Recalled from Action - Report

 I made a challenge and here I am doing it myself now, so I'll proceed to explain to y'all how I ran a scene that I haven't run.

The system that I didn't use to run this scene is the same I use to run most of my tables with, using Lamentations of the Flame Princess as the baseline with rulings and random fancies thrown in here and there as applicable. 

What follows is a fake play report, which turned out to be a rather fun little excercise as well in figuring out how I might have handled a fight like that. I tried justifying things with game mechanics where applicable and figuring out how I would have ruled some of the more unorthodox things that happened in the fight.

I hope it feels believeable and not too forced, and maybe you can even pick up an idea or two from all of this.

For bit of context, our PC Guts has been on the run from a force of knights and got cornered at the dead end of a winding city street.

He has mowed down knight after knight with his massive two-hander of a sword very onesidedly to the point that the knights have lost their morale which has lead to a standstill in the fighting.

The knights still having a numbers advantaged, I ruled that they haven't fled despite having broken their morale but at this point were just standing there, weapons still meekly pointed towards Guts the PC and if he would have stepped forwards the knights would have let him pass for the sake of keeping their own lives.

Now however, the knight captain arrives at the scene. The rest of his troops will not back him up after having just broken morale, but he of course doesn't know this.

The timing of his arrival is unfortunate, but I had used a d6 to determine how many rounds it would take for him to finally get here and had rolled a full 6 meaning that Guts had all the time he needed to weed out the regular knights first.

Nothing too spectacular here, as the knight captain steps in the situation doesn't quite immediately devolve back into a fight but rather he attempts to intimidate the PC out of the fight by boasting the difference in the height and build of the two.

However upon seeing that just the threat of violence isn't enough to make Guts the PC to back down the captain decides to escalate the situation and attempts to mash the large two-handed sword that Guts the PC is holding straight out of his grip.

To the player of course I described the large military pickaxe the knight captain was holding and how he deliberately raised it up and was readying a swing, which prompted an action from the player which in turn prompted an initiative roll to see which party is faster.

Since this is essentially a 1v1 situation, we used d6 + DEX mod for the initiative rolls for both sides. The knight captain of course didn't have any sort of statline at this point so I quickly rolled a 3d6 to see if he had a modifier or not.

The dice were cast and the knight captain won initiative.

The knight captain finishes the swing at the blade of Guts the PC.

I believe I was ruling this as non-lethal damage that on max damage roll would have disarmed the PC since it certainly wasn't quite something that would have fallen under grappling/wrestling.

The attack did however miss and as such the only thing damaged or sent flying was bits of the cobblestone pavement.

However this guy is no pushover, they're a captain and thus have two attacks per round.

Seeing as the disarm attempt failed, the captain decided to Press his next attack.

For those not familiar with the concept, in LotFP Fighters have access to two combat "manouvers", or rather methods of fighting/attacking. Pressed attacks give +2 to hit but make the attacker suffer -4 to AC untill the next time they act, and Defensive attacks give -4 to hit but provide +2 to AC for the attacker untill they next act.

Since the rest of the regular knights had already broken morale they were pretty much just expendable set pieces and thus I thought I'd highlight the brutality of the captain's fighting style by having his second attack force his own men to step aside out of the way or get impaled by the pickaxe as well.

The attack would land, but Guts the PC is a Fighter who has not yet acted this round so I reminded the player that if they wanted to they can spend this round's action to Parry the attack.

For those not familiar with LotFP, anyone who has not acted on the round can declare to parry an attack made at them to temporarily increase their AC at the cost of their action for the round. For non-fighters this is a +2 to AC, whereas for fighters this is a +4 to AC.

At this point however the player informed me that even with a parry the attack would just barely hit them so I offered them a bargain:

Either Guts the PC takes the hit that they can already see coming their way, or if they use the parry I'll allow them to avoid the damage but they will have to tell me how avoiding it put them in a worse off situation as a trade-off.

The player decided they didn't want to risk a high roll from what they had intuited to be a d10 as the knight captain was similiarily to Guts the PC handling a heavy two-handed weapon.

As such, the player nominated that while avoiding the attack their character had been cornered and now couldn't run away from the fight.

Boths sides have now acted.

Knight captain with his two attacks, and Guts the PC with his parry.

New round ensues and initiative is re-rolled.

The knight captain went first again.

Another pressed attack from the knight captain, both because I had figured he'd be rather pissed off at this point and because he needed everything he could get to break through that +4 AC from a fighter parry that Guts the PC's player could use to defend with.

Knight captain rolled a 21 for their attack, something that not even Guts the PC could manage to parry with their AC of 16.

I was already rolling for the damage when the player asked me something that I couldn't turn down. Could they try to do the thing that the knight captain did at the beginning of the fight where they tried to mash the weapon off of Guts the PC's hands?

When your player gives you fire like that you can only pull through with it.

There was already a set example of a similiar manouver within the same fight too, and the PC hadn't acted yet.

I ended up ruling that if Guts the PC can with his own attack beat the 21 that the knight captain had rolled, he'd get to roll damage for his weapon and then reduce the incoming damage from the knight captain's blow by that amount.

Which the player proceeded to do. 22 beats 21, 10 damage reduced!

Seeing as Guts the PC's player's 10 managed to beat the 6 damage I had rolled the knight captain's attack to inflict when the player had asked me about this crazy manouver Guts the PC came out of this exchange unscathed.

Furthermore, since they had rolled a max result on the counter swing, I decided that instead of just simply deflecting the blow the weight and strength of the two-hander that Guts the PC was wielding was enough to reduce the knight captain's warpick unusable as it's metal shaft bent backwards and it's sharp blade shattered from the force of impact.

At this point I figured that even though he hadn't lost any hp yet in the fight, the knight captain probbaly should roll morale since he had just had his weapon rendered absolutely and utterly unusable.

He failed his roll.

At this point the entire force of the knights had failed their morale checks, even the captain having lost his will to fight.

Normally I might have still had the knight captain pull off his second attack that he hadn't used yet this round but I figured with the failed morale check he'd have had enough of this fiasco for now.

As such, we dropped initiative but I did still allow the player to roll another attack against the knight captain now laying on the pavement and covered in large beads of cold sweat.

"Just something to kinda sell the whole message you know, I'm gonna kick his teeth in and try to scare the knights off now that I've beaten their boss."

Max damage. Granted with a kick so it's still just 2 damage but does drive home the point.

Just to be on the safe side, I rolled reaction for the rest of the knights to see if they'd still at least stand their ground or if half of them were already runing at this point.

Snake eyes! They must have not liked seeing their captain kicked around like that.

From there on things moved along and surprisingly it didn't result in combat but rather an escape by Guts the PC despite the knights having regained some fighting spirit, but that is outside of the scope of this blogpost or even this writing challenge really.

reCalled from Action - Blogging Challenge

 Or how I had a cool idea that I wanted to turn into a blogging bandwagon because by god I need to write more of these.

I'll also be compiling takes on this prompt/challenge to this post as I either come across them or am informed of them so de feel free to check back here every now and then.
So far myself,  Havoc of Lonely Star blog, Mr.Mann of The Foot of Blue Mountain blog, diregrizzlybear and Justin H of Aboleth Overlords have taken the challenge for a spin.

I would also like to apologise in advance, the formatting of images is not exactly one of blogger's strong points so I couldn't make this post look exactly super pretty. Hopefully it should still be readable and not go too janky on mobile view or anything of the sort.

The what now?

So this is an idea I stumbled myself into after witnessing another user on the OSR discord server going over their re-read of Berserk and talking about it's fight scene of Guts facing off against Lord Zondark and how some of the things that happen in the fight might translate to stuff players could do during combat in a tabletop rpg.

You wouldn't believe how difficult formatting this on blogger was,
there's no way to make text wrap around images

Some amount of spitballing ensued, and I wanted to try getting people on board with this for couple of different reasons.

Firstly, there really isn't that much player-facing advice out and about on the osr blogging circles, or if there is I have ran into pretty much exactly none of it, and I figured something like this could kinda be used to highlight to the players how you can pull off all sorts of cool stunts in a fight in order to attemp to level the playing field instead of just resorting to the "I hit you, you hit me, I hit you, you hit me" that I find B/X combat can often devolve into.

Secondly, I thought it would be really interesting to get to take a peek inside the heads of different GMs and see how they approach adjudicating these type of more unorthodox fighting manouvers in whatever syster, hack of one, or other amalgamation of rules and procedures they use to run their games with, as well as seeing how two different GMs might adjudicate the same scene with the same ruleset in a completely different manner to kinda highlight how the OSR scene is often more about rulings made during play rather than hard rules recited from a book and a number of GMs aren't afraid to let players pull of cool figting manouvers just because there's no rules precedence for them.

The Challenge

It really is as simple as:

1. Pick a fight scene that isn't just two dudes hitting/shooting each other back and forth. Preferrably something with clever/weird manouvers and unconventional fighting techniques.
2. Run as through how you would have adjudicated the fight, what kind of rulings would you have made to allow the players to pull off all the cool manouvers. 

I would of course love to see as many people as possible run us through the same scene to get to see how differently it would run between numerous systems and GMs.

As such, the scene that sparked this all is from the manga Berserk and takes part during The Guardians of Desire chapter between Guts and Lord Zondark.

Here's the short of it, you can go find it yourself if you'd wish to read around it for more context or just prefer not squinting through series of screenshots on blogger.

Also, how would you run mass combat? Do you got a cool scene that displays all sorts of things that might come up during adjudicating the clashing of armies or just fighting against swarms of mooks?
I would love to see your thoughts on running something like that!

Thoughts on (mega)Dungeons & the experience of crawling them

We all know what a dungeon is, right?
A dungeon can be a hole in the ground, a cave, a crypt, an old abandoned castle or even a full city depending on how it gets framed by the GM. The common denominator in all of these cases being that a dungeon is a hostile environment which a regular sane person wouldn't wish to set foot upon, and from where treasure hunters and the desperate go to and sometimes return from with enough shinies to comfortably sit back and live a good life for a year or two.

What'll follow are some of my musings regarding dungeons and the experience that I personally would wish to evoke among those crawling through them.

 A dungeon should be information warfare

• It should be important to scout the place and try to learn of it in order to understand it's traps and dangers better, thus being able to anticipate and avoid them.
• Initially, decisions are made based on incomplete information and like with a puzzle the PCs keep acquiring new information to fill in their gaps in knowledge untill eventually "mastering" the dungeon.
• As such, planing about future delves should hold some importance other than just making sure the party has enough torches and rations for the coming delve. Different types of gear required for specific paths, traps or even entrances to the dungeon in order to safely traverse the locale.
• The dungeon and it's denizens can likewise learn about and prepare for the party as they delve deeper, creating a kind of tug-of-war between PCs and Dungeon trying to learn more of each other and figure out how to handle and navigate around the dangers they pose to each other

This is something that obviously works the better the larger a dungeon you're working with. A small five room dungeon doesn't have a lot of room for mystery and hidden secrets, let alone to imply them and slowly trickle in information about them for the PCs to find and intuit out.

In a larger dungeon, let's say closer to 20 rooms and all the way up to mega in size there starts to be noeugh breathing room so that you aren't constantly peppring the players with clues about the place as if every room contains five clues and hints to the true nature of the dungeon and it's workings I can see t becoming very exhausting not only for the players to keep track of these things but also for the GM to continue presenting them in a consistent and interesting manner.

TL;DR I want dungeons to be something that can be learned and eventually mastered, if not in their entirety then at least in chunks of certain areas and wings of them. Not "system mastery", but in a sense "mastery over the fiction".

Swords from songs

 Small collection of weapons imagined up from song lyrics

This started with me having a passage from a song stuck in my head, afterwards I liked the idea of using song lyrics as sparks for magical weapons especially considering that I don't really have too many custom ones sprinkled into my games.

This is the second part of why this blogpost exists:

So let's get to it, I apologise if the formatting is a bit odd as these are pretty much my notes on the weapons pasted here from Obsidian.

And before anyone asks for them, here's where each name is from. Some probably based on misheard lyrics.

Blood is thicker but the drink I prefer is water - Mili / From a Place of Love

Let us be one - Mili / From a Place of Love

Oh to be hunted like an animal - Flower Face / Kaleidoscope

We started feeding off each other - Mili / From Place of Love

Why'd you crowned your most violent as champions - Mili / In Hell We Live, Lament

You will cut them to their knees as if in prayer - Kiki Rockwell / Madeline

Blood Is Thicker But The Drink I Prefer Is Water

Small dagger with a sky-blue gem embedded at the base of it's blade, shaped like a water droplet.

DMG: 1d4+1

- Any blood that comes in contact with the blade instantly turns into water

- This has the added effect of drawing a waterfall of not-blood out of any wounds inflicted by the weapon as well as introducing large amounts of water into the victim's blood flow

- On max damage, target must Save vs Poison or receive the first stage of water poisoning.

- Every further round they must keep saving or the symptoms will keep escalating.

- Successful save stops new symptoms and starts moving current ones back each passing of an hour.

- Water created by the dagger is able to interact with incorporeal beings.

Water Poisoning

Stage 1

Swelling around the wound and inside the brain.

- Headache

- Confusion

- Irritability

- Drowsiness

Stage 2

Swelling all over the body

- Difficulty of breathing

- Muscle weakness and pain, temporarily halve STR score

- Twitching & cramping, 2-in-6 chance to not be able to act per round

- Nausea & vomiting, -2 penalty to all actions

- Thirst

- Dulled ability to perceive and interpret sensory information, receive terse descriptions of the fiction

Stage 3

Roll 1d4:

1. Seizure, out of action and on the floor for 1d4 turns

2. Permanent brain damage, halve INT score

3. Coma, 1d6 weeks

4. Death

Let Us Be One

Broad greatsword, chipped and worn with small scraps of skin almost melted onto the blade and it's grip.

DMG: d10 -> d12 -> 2d12kh -> 2d12kh & ignore armour

- With every attack, the sword swims up further the wielder's arm without ever falling from their grip. Flesh warps and bones twist to firmly grasp onto the blade, never letting it go.

1. Just picked up, easily dropped and discarded. 

- Damage as d10

2. After d6 swings with the weapon the hilt has buried itself between radius and ulna, the forearm bones. Removing the sword would cause d6 damage and probably a loss of functionality on the arm. 

- Damage as d12

3. After additional 6 swings the guard now connects to glenoid cavity, the shoulderbone socket, and while removal of the sword is possible it will cost the entire arm.

- Damage as 2d12, keep highest

4. After 6 more swings the sword has firmly fused with the host, bending their spine and bursting open ribs to accommodate itself. Removal of the sword will surely result in death.

- Damage as 2d12, keep highest & ignore armour

- Able to harm incorporeal beings from the beginning

Oh To Be Hunted Like An Animal

Large bone sharpened to a single point, like a thick rapier.

Grip has small sharp splinters poking from between the wrappings and is covered in old blood.

While bearing open wounds, anyone and anything can smell the wielder's general direction and will be able to gauge out roughly how far they are from the wielder.

DMG: 1d6

- If the blood from the grip is not washed away, able to wound non-corporeal beings

We Started Feeding Off Each Other

Small arming sword with several vine-like grooves snaking along the length of the blade.

Forged out of it's user's blood and veins, cutting sharper the more it is given.

DMG: 1d6

- Roll damage from the sword against self to increase it's damage dice by one step.

- Receive healing by the sword's current damage dice and lower it's damage dice by one step.

- Able to damage incorporeal beings only when damage dice higher than d6

Why'd You Crowned Your Most Violent As Champions

Large two-handed flanged mace, each protrusion like a small axe head.

The entire shaft is of metal, making the weapon have a hefty weight to it.

DMG: 1d10

- Treat your STR as your CHA for all purposes (reaction roll modifiers, hireling morale, stat losses etc etc.)

- Violence does the talking for you just the same as words would, if not louder and more effective

You Will Cut Them To Their Knees As If In Prayer

Unremarkable longsword with a slight indent running down the length of it's blade, inscribed with prayers to guide one's hand.

DMG: 1d8

- Use spell slots (cleric or MU) as extra attacks equal to the level of the slot burned

- Eg. lvl.3 spell slot -> take immediate three extra attacks

- Able to damage inconrporeal beings only with extra attacks

Marmoris Carcerem - Chapel Tower

 So couple of weeks ago I got infatuated with the idea of taking Kindap the Archpriest and using it instead as a downwards going spire of a prison complex rather than a high tower of an archpriest's palace.

Around the same time, if not a bit before, a friend of mine was showing interest in dipping their toes to a more OSR styled game so I was also looking for something to run as a little introduction to the style.

Ideas ruminate and I ended up realising I was already building up the "Inverted Kidnap the Archpriest" inside my head not long after.
And if I was already taking the maps from KtA, I might as well staple on some bits and pieces from other modules as well. One suggestion I really liked was taking some choice lairs from Caves of Chaos and stapling them on to the sides of the downwards spire as additional prison wings.
And of course if I was already inverting KtA, the premise could also be swapped onto it's head. Instead of kidnapping an archpriest, what if the PCs are there to rescue some specific person from this prison complex.

It's just Fear & Hunger, isn't it? Especially with the style I tend to run my games, leaning towards more horror-y aesthetics and presentation of locales.

I needed some illustration or the post looks barren, haven't used this one yet iirc

As such, I've been slowly working on keying out rooms and modifying the stitched together maps to better fit my needs for roughly two weeks. Last saturday I got to run the first session of this mess too!
Always a lot of fun to run stuff that I've built together myself as opposed to just bridging gaps between numerous published modules in an open sandbox.

Now that the rambling is out of the way, here's the section of the dungeon the players mostly cleared in that first session so I can even say it's playtested for the most part!

Marble Cage - Chapel

Two storey tower adorning one of the four corners of the hefty walls surrounding the Marble Cage.

Random Encounters: Check every 2 turns

Area Boss: Self-Mummified priest

Where is the Priest headed:

1. Pyre outside chapel, burning more books

2. Common cell (8), collect more bodies for her flies

3. Underground Shrine, to commune with God (yet unkeyed location)

4. Relic Hall, to inspect the sacred text (53)

5. Headed to party's location

6. Lair (44)

Random Encounters: The way this works is it keeps the boss monsters roaming around the place, potentially creating opporturnities for encounters with them. Fighting might not be advised.

1 - 3. Area Boss (roll to see where they going next)

4 - 5. Random Monster (appears from somewhere)

6. Random Boss from different area (roll to see where they going next)

42 | Entrance

Timeworn wooden double doors, barrable from the inside. Faint smell of incense & something going bad.  Heavy marble pillars. Large censer-like metal orbs hanging by chains from ceiling, chains attached to an overlook (47) above.

43 | Altarside

Stench of death and near-deafening buzzing of flies. Stained silver candle stands. Marble steps lead up to altar covered in candles. The back wall behind altar is covered in numerous tumour-like hives oozing red-black liquid (honey). Six robed figures prostrating in front of the stairs (each with a polished metal spike cracking the back of their head open, in severe state of rot).

- Silver holy symbol clutched in the arms of each priest

44 | Crypt & Wall Fountain

Smell sweet enough to feel at the back of your throat. Heavy marble pillars. Lit torch scones.  Modest sized wall-fountain & pool full of blackened-red honey. Entire back wall covered in slowly dripping blackened-red honey.

- Black Honey heals for 1hp per handful

- Start receiving the total amount healed during single day as ramping up damage on following days (day 1 - 1dmg / day 2 - 2dmg / day 3 - 3dmg etc etc.)

45 | Chapel Cells

Row of confessionals, painted wooden doors defaced with carved symbols.

From left to right:

1. 3d6 cut open and composing corpses covered in ashen dirt, white bell-flowers growing from them like on flowerbeds.

2. Barrable from outside. Walls scribbled full of incomprehensible passages and symbols, In the middle of the back wall a palm-sized symbol sticks out amids the scribbles.

- Looking upon the symbol causes nausea -> Save vs Magic or vomit out the contents of your stomach, taking 1 damage and an entire dungeon turn doing so.
- Studying the symbols and scribbles for a dungeon turn reveals this to be notes about some sort of ritual.

- Spending an hour studying the ritual reveals the spell Summon.

3. Single bible, pages from other books glued onto it's pages with black-red honey.

4. Barrable from outside.

5. Empty.

6. Barred from outside, peephole hacked into the door covered in dark red sticky residue. Three prisoners, mouths peeled of skin and crawling with flies.

- Tell that their insides feel like they're burning, says they have been fed strange stuff that tastes like ash and honey.

46 | Library

Scattered books, piles of tomes, fallen bookshelves, torn pages & loose papers with strange symbols. Tome glued together with red-black honey laying open on a lectern. Several books have been glued shut with black-red honey. Others have their contents altered by gluing pages from yet other books inside them.

- Tome on lectern is full of rambling gibberish and symbols, open on a page reading: "Anointed with life, a body submerges in nectar. Spirit trapped in viscous balm does not ascend. What returns is no longer just sum of it's parts. This is but one of the paths a man may walk to leave mortality behind."

- 3 cleric prayer scrolls mixed in with the papers: Sacrifice, Sanctuary, Insect Plague

47 | Overlook

Body with it's back flayed open, dozens of flies crawling on it.

48 | Balcony

Ornate wooden door with stained window panelling, locked but easily forced.

Self-Mummified Priest
HD: 5✝ / AC: 18 / Honeyed Touch @ +5 -> 1d6+2 dmg. | Damage from touch does not heal

- Sloppy, sticky footprints. Accompanied by buzzing of flies.

- Long priestly robes with ashen sash. Sticky black-red handprints.

- Sunken features, translucent skin clinging onto cheeckbones and hollow eyesockets. Once a woman, now a walking festering wound.

Priest's Key - Around her neck.

Supernatural: Only tracks hits dealing 6+ damage, after receiving equal to or more such hits than HD it crumbles into honeyd jerky.

Spells:

Drown in Ashes (F&M p. 114)

Duration: Permanent | Range: 0 | Area of Effect: 50ft radius | Save: Vs Breath

A wave of ash, 1m (3ft) high, fills the area of effect. 

Any living being with it's head below the surface must save Vs Breath or be buried, taking d4 choking damage per round untill they do save.

Solo game journal - Session 3

Sessions 1 & 2 here.

Continuing up from where the last journal entry ended with me having spent my Grit in order to make it down the elevator shaft safely.

Again, this is simply me copying my journal entries for all of you to read so it lacks notes about what is going on mechanics-wise such as the use of the loot dice to determine if any of the sword in a room I find are usable as replacement weapons.
The "Doom Dice" is just me keeping a track of dungeon turns as they pass and doing an automatic encounter of some kind every hour within the current adventuring location.

Session 3 - The Thing Wrapped in Cloth

I decide to check the door to my left. I hope this amount of ash is limited to only this corridor and not beyond the door.
No luck, the doors are large and heavy and refuse to budge. Thinking about it, it looks like they would open towards the corridor in which case the high tide of ash must be blocking them.
I have nothing to attempt to break through with either.

Thwarted, I can only turn around and climb past the bits of collapsed ceiling instead. The amount of ash covering the ground feels less here, although I am still unable to see the floor.
As I pass through the fallen stonework I enter into a small chamber. The ceiling is still absurdly high here, nearing seven metres by my best guess. Now however when looking up I am seeing something truly bizarre.
Sword after sword hanging from frayed ropes and what looks like long curtain strips have turned this chamber into an enormous wind chime. And in the middle of the room, extending much further down towards the floor than any single sword hangs a cocoon of faded red curtains. It is tied together into a roughly man-sized bundle and held hanging from the ceiling by several fraying ropes.

Before investigating further, I take a further scan around the room. No other exits. Not even windows. Looks like I'll have to figure out a way through that door if I want to get anywhere from here.

The lowest hanging swords can't be higher than a metre off the level of the ash. I untie one from the curtain strip that it's hanging by. It might lack a scabbard, but at least I'll have something to defend myself with this way after the unfortunate loss of my maul.
I give the blade couple of test swings to gauge out it's balance. The craftsmanship is fine, although I fear it might not be able to take much abuse should I end up relying on it extensively in a fight due the it's apparent age. Not that any of the other swords left hanging here seem better either. Well, at least I know where I can find more should it come down to that.

Then the cascading sound of numerous blades clinging against each other chimes through the chamber.
Alert, I quickly take a look around.

The red cocoon, a man-sized bundle of faded red cloth hanging from the middle of the room almost touching the ash below it is squirming and wiggling, causing the blades around it to sway and impact with each other.
Cautiously I bring my newly acquired sword in front of me and start to approach without a sound. My footsteps, as I have noticed from my wandering thus far, procure no sound for some reason.
I weave through the hanging swords chiming against each other and upon reaching the cocoon firmly press the tip of my sword against it. As I do so it starts to squirm and shake even more vigorously, causing my blade to sink in deeper untill the faded cloth starts to slowly dye a more deeper red around the entry point of the tip of my sword.
I hear a muffled cry or a scream from within the cocoon.

Quickly, I pull back my sword. The muffled noises continue. Whatever it is, it sounds hurt.
I cut the ropes holding the cloth cocoon in the air and it thuds down onto the ashen dunes covering the floor. As I watch, it slowly starts it's wriggling again.
Hoping that wrapped in the cloth is a person, I try raising my voice and asking out who is it but all that comes out is a dry, rasping "Who..?"
It feels like even my throat is full of ash.

No answer. The wriggling grows more violent, but the "cocoon" is tied together with rope so try as it might I should be safe from whatever is inside.

I clear my throat. Another attempt:
"Is there someone inside?"
A bit better, still feels like gurgling with sand though.

A single wriggle, accompanied by a muffled sound.

"You are bound and tied with cloth. I will now cut you free, so do not move."
I carefully start to cut the ropes that tie this bundle together. After a bit the wriggling of whatever was bound up inside is enough to loosen the rest of the cloth and from one end of the "cocoon" emerges an ashen gray, bald, head. It is completely devoid of hair, but also lacks any protruding features such as ears or a nose. There is no lower jaw either, instead a single large eye fills it's place.
It strains backwards it's neck, covered in what I assume to be some sort of viscous fluid from it's eye, revealing a pathethic small mouth that is more akin to a long wet slit along the length of it's throat.

By reflex alone I step back, shuddering, while bringing up my blade to keep it from approaching me somehow.
It's single eye turns towards me, a wet gurgle from what should be a throat forms what sounds like a question: "Who..?"

It is enough to send shivers down my sides realising that I understand it's attempt to communicate.
I stop for a breath's time to consider my options.
Do I kill it?
If it can communicate, I still have no idea where I am or what has happened here.
I could simple turn back and leave it here, but I am at a dead end untill I figure out a way through those doors.

I decide to swallow my disgust and attempt to communicate with the thing. Unlike the spectres it has yet to attack me, so perhaps it can be reasoned with.
"My name is Dyrkyr. I cannot say much more than that, as I know not how I ended up here."
Hopefully I am not laying out my cards too bare here.

Still mostly wrapped in the curtain sheets, the thing continues it's attempts at wriggling free. I can now see loose gray skin with gaunt bone structure poking through it, like a foot inside a sock several sizes too large. Where there should be shoulders are just two tiny stumps, as if arms had never developed despite the human-like anatomy suggesting they should be present.
As it squirms free, emerging from this cocoon of red cloth, it's long mouth more closely resembling a long wet wound gurgles a response.
"Dyrkyr, thank you. Ghrlhhglr."

(End of session 3 @ doom dice 5/6. Loot Dice has been used and is now stepped down to a d10. What is the strange creature and will it prove to be of any help?)