Skip to main content

ref's notes: our budding cosmology



Some notes on our budding cosmology.

Prospero


Description


Prospero rigid, authoritarian, commanding. Growth and nothing but growth. Prosperity gospel, endless attainment of wealth. Avarice.

Materials

Fine brocade, tailored robes, shining armour

Language

Command, must, insist, duty, honour, justice, order, custom, tradition

Traditional Alignment

Law

Dictums

Followers must produce wealth through action: farming, fishing, construction, applied research, preaching. Growth must be orderly, contained, predictable. Listen to your boss.

Restrictions

Followers must not be too idle: leisure not encouraged. Stand against decay and oppose rapid, surprising, or unusual changes. Do not peer into the unknown, as the work of prosperity is endless.

Boons

Prospero causes longer growing seasons, temperate weather, favourable rainfall. Prospero may grant control over plants, animals — even wounds and disease.

Social Structures

Hierarchical, gently authoritarian. Traditional, patriarchal, conservative. Followers live in large, organized social groups.

Followers' Works

Farming, logging, mining, tithing. Tamping down disorder. Followers may be asked to build churches in distant lands to preach the word of Prospero and grow the movement.

Traditional Spell

18. Control Plants

Ref's notes

Prospero was chosen by a lawful cleric early in the campaign, named by said player, and established as the dominant religion of a small, parochial village. The cleric died and that was that for many sessions, until the church burned as the result of a carousing table, so I felt like the deity would respond — or perhaps even more likely, a rival deity to Prospero would be pleased and impressed. So, the birth of Entropus.

The party met a priest of Prospero, Tuzo, who preached the word to several heretics during the Coming of Sorg and has since taken over the plateau there. I'm not sure I described him as particularly fancy or authoritarian but going forward I'll lean further in that direction.

Entropus


Description


Entropus discord, change, renewal, decay. Change and disorder. Shakes shit up, pokes holes, takes action. Falls in and out of love.

Materials

Ragged scraps, homemade, pieced together, utilitarian

Language

Try, experiment, wild, loose, may, perhaps, why not?

Traditional Alignment

Chaos

Dictums

Followers could chase change and decay, the passing of the now into infinite branching futures. They may want to challenge extant structures and could, perhaps, propose replacements.

Restrictions

Followers probably won't leave the world as they found it.

Boons

Entropus grants unpredictable powers that may themselves be fluid. Entropus may pluck the chords of chaotic drift to shift genetic codes and make mutations.

Social Structures

Loose, utilitarian, anarchic. This may shift with the wind. Followers often solo hermits or small gaggle of affiliated weirdos.

Followers' Works

Pranks, graffiti, graverobbing, assassinations, revolutions, leaving nobody in charge. Followers may be asked to free creatures from cosmic prisons.

Traditional Spell

80. Spellseize

Ref's notes

Entropus came out of that carousing table, and my history with Dungeon Crawl Classics which taught me that cosmologies should be real, nasty, and constantly at odds. Being a deity is a zero-sum game (unless you're Neutral) so where Prospero suffered, Entropus gained. Basically formed as a chaotic force writ large, portrayed with swirling vapours and a massive enigmatic metal mask, appearing to the party in a wild dreamsky, the size of a building.

He'll have another quest for the party, the Hole in the Sky. I'll bump up hit dice, maybe, or maybe just run as-is!

the Ælf-Adal Prophet / the Nightmare-God


This is drawn from the Veins of the Earth where it's mentioned pretty off-hand. I won't say much here beyond my interpretation.

Description


The Nightmare-God is brooding, occasionally fanatically cruel, a Byronic Joker. Sews fear, distrust, delusions. Hates surfacers, delights in schadenfreude. Known as the Prophet.

Materials

Rare earth filigree, light chain armour in twisted spikes, thick wax stockings

Language

Suffering, damage, trauma, play, joy, delight, cowardice, contempt

Dictums

Followers serve the whims of the Nightmare-God, dancing and dying for its pleasure. They must bring fear and succor to surfacers, per the Prophet's wishes.

Restrictions

Followers must not contradict the Nightmare-God or ever have truck with Dvargir. They must never speak of the surface.

Boons

The Prophet brings lithe unnatural beauty to dark, twisted landscapes. The Prophet offers night forever — dreams of blood and screams.

Social Structures

Monarchy. Nightmare-God at the top, servants in various tiers below. The Ælf-Adal are on a war footing but serve the Prophet first.

Followers' Works

Exotic sculpture, exquisite torture, body modifications, blood sports. The Nightmare-God will want to toy with you.

Traditional Alignment

Chaos

Traditional Spell

23. Disassemble

Ref's notes: "traditional spell"

Traditional spell isn't something I've used, but I thought it'd be a fun exercise. If a PC should become bound to one that might be a nice reward. They're from Knave, the game we've been using for most of the campaign.



More to come, surely!


Edit: Ref's notes pt 2

I've been discussing cosmology with a player who's stimulated me to think more about the deities and their places in the world. He challenged me to ID some practices and such for one of them, so I thought I'd do all three. I've added dictums, restrictions, boons, social structures, and follower's works. I'd like to do some d6 tables of tasks for each faction, too, going forward, if the players really do wanna play the deity game.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

session summary: knaves of the earth, 200223

Following their intuition and the cool chill coming from above, the party returned to the buried pyramid's torture chamber and tore aside the vertical stretching rank and wich. In doing so, Luwang was buffeted by a forceful blast, the bellowing screech of High Priest Vladdis. The wraith bore an icy longsword and an amulet and charged for Luwang, but failed to injure the skeleton. As Luwang swung his silver greatsword, Mirabilis, sensing the amulet's importance, sprung to the sarcophagus to deface it wih his file. Doing so caught Vladdis' attention, so Ferris sprung in to divert it. Unfortunately, the vandalism was too strong a lure, and Vladdis grazed Mirabilis's helmet, sending a cold, coursing shock through the former thief's body, leaving him stunned. Ferris plunged his icy touch into the spectre's ethereal form, and with an outpouring of willful magic, froze the wraith completely, letting it shatter upon the sandstone floor. Attempting to shake off t...
Post a Comment
Read more

session summary: yoon-suin 200325

The Hess' nest stinks of rotting fish. Our Hess partner introduces himself as Jez, along with his friends, rotund Gruzz, who bears a third eye, SaSo, and Nant, whose scales lack all pigment. We discuss the Hess' missing idol until wormlings assault our position from all sides. We take one out with a bear trap, and do our best to spike the doors closed, but a brawl breaks out. Alongside the Hess, we slaughter and loot them all. Umesh scouts our surroundings, finding a pile of "fake dead," before Gruzz reveals a secret door in their lair, filled with loot. With the Hess, we head to the wormlings' hideout and sack it, too. The Hess tell us of their twisted cousins, the Yoch Hounds, and we encounter old writing under algal growth, telling us to "pray before the benediction of Kezek; the blessed may pass the fall and come to the deep." Kezek, we learn, is the Hess' idol. Shortly thereafter, we reach a massive lizard carving with outstretched hands, surrou...
Post a Comment
Read more

session summary: yoon-suin 200311

Yama, Ade, Qui, Bishal, Umesh, w/ tipsta as ref Jade's Favour has been making money and moves in the world; found a new home for a dragon, uncovered the secrets of the sky metal, funded an insurgent group in the Roach Feeders. Now we're on a quest to recover the world's most powerful magic word: Reincarnate. We seek the watchtower in the Topaz Isles. With the help of Spider Climb, Yama reaches the top, spying on the way a family of spiderpedes, as well as some conspicuously tidy rooms. At the summit, he finds four platonic solids of pure sky stone, and vaults them down for the gang to recover. In his descent, Yama encounters a brilliant gold and red elemental lion — the Sakomere Guardian — while the gang below is set upon by a clutch of grim natives bearing spears. Yama pleas his case, and the lion agrees to show the way to the Grand Palm in exchange for the solids' return. The lion and its followers depart as Yama is killed by a spring trap of spiders, so the gang foll...
Post a Comment
Read more