EVOCATIVE WORDS : a matrix for idea generation

I find that nothing is more evocative than looking at a page, not really reading sentences anymore, and instead pick up words, somehow melting them together, creating mental images and cool concepts. Combining two or three words, seemingly unrelated, might create a very bright mental image for you, as it does for me : the name of a spell, of a magic artefact, of a faction, a monster concept, a pnj idea, etc. With this idea I made a list for you to use if you wish.

Something to gaze distractedly at to create word associations and new ideas.

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CRUSTACEAN/TEETH/BLOOD/HORSES/WARLOCK
MOUTH /LAMPREY/ MEAT /BONE/RUST /MUTANT
CURSES/ GOAT/ ORE / LEECH / FLESH/MIST/ LORE
UNDEAD /COPPER/ SHIELD/ FORGOTTEN/ROTTEN
HELMET /SCROLL /CHURCH/ FLAME / SKIN /BLUR
JUG /HAT/CARVING /BEARD/MAGGOTS /IRON/AXE
BOOTS/TORCH / HAND / INFAMY/DECREPIT / BIRD
MACHINE /DICE /CUP/ COLD/ PLENTY/ WAND/SKY
ART /GOLDEN /BRASS/ KNIFE/ BOOK/ HANDS/ EYE
RIBBON/ GLASS/ OLD/JEWEL /SEED/ WONDEROUS
PRIEST / DRAGON / OVERLORD / VIOLENCE / GOD
FIRE / STONE /BOOK /FRUIT/RING /CLOAK /SPIRIT
FLEA/NAILS/RATS/LUCK/FEW/EYE/RELICS/CRUDE
CHAOS/TOMB/WORM/CORPSE/MAP/SINISTER/ODD
SPIDERS /ARCANA/ROTTEN /CLAY/ GOD /MUMMY
EYELESS / HATRED / GOLD / SECRET / DRACONIC
VIALS / FOG /FOOL /GROW/ BELLS/ROPE /MIRROR
GREEN/ VIOLENT/TREE/GROWTH /BARK/BRANCH
DIRT/GRAVE/SWORD/WAR/LEATHER/HALF/CHAIN
LOW / ORDER / GREAT / UNIQUE/SKY / HIGH/ POLE
GIANT / KNIFE/ WOOD/ ZERO /MOLD / FILLED/ORE
WILL/SKULL /ANTI / HUNGER / WILL / TRAP /THIEF

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Just look at it without thinking too much, and let your eyes wander around. They will pick up words and your brain will start to boil ; words will start to meld together and concepts will start to grow and end up bursting out of your occiput. 

DO NOT use more than 5 times a day !

else the skull will notice you...

Helmlings & Potlings

Helmlings, and their cousins, potlings, are tiny humanoid creatures that you often only see the legs of, coming out of the helmet they live in. They abund, of course, in dungeons and other places where you can find discarded helmets and other pieces of armour, as the hat has to be unattended for quite some time before a helmling choses it as its home ; they very rarely happen to elect a helmet kept in an exposition room, but sometimes do, and are akin to pest for the servants made to maintain those rooms, who then have to chase them to get the helm back as it is carried away by two small but fast and steady legs.

Potlings are more of a nuisance, as they will take any contenant left alone as their new dwelling ; you truly can't leave a cauldron or an empty jar outside for more than two days before it starts scooting away with its newly acquired legs. You then have to fight the potling to get it back, or get ambushed on your way to the well a few days later.

Helmlings are tiny, but fierce and brave, oftentimes seen wielding daggers as swords when they show their arms. and will act as a tiny knight would when encountered ; with displays of courage and chivalry. More likely, the helmling has not found a weapon, and will just headbutt you with force to defend itself, if made to. If not armed, it will probably try to scutter away on its tiny legs.

When the creature is sleeping, the hat simply rests upright, and a faint snoring sound can be heard if you have good enough ears.

They dont speak any known or intelligible language, and no attempt to communicate has been met with succes so far ; when they are heard talking to one another, or arguing, it is through some echo-ridden child-like gibberish that they seem to understand fine, but that is so far removed from any dialect, even the most obscure ones, that linguist try their best to evade the subject when it is brought up.

For centuries, wizards and scholars alike have been puzzled by these tiny creatures, as its spawning has never been observed by anyone. You can find a helmling, you can even sometimes capture it, you can even keep it in captivity in a vivarium for years, but no one truly has seen one get inside of a helmet ; they always seem to chose the perfect moment, when nobody is looking, to get inside the hat. Their true nature is still shrouded in mystery and subject to heated debates in the academies, and multiple schools of thougts are conflicting over what they really are and how they reproduce. Teratozoologists are convinced they are, of course, magical creatures, spontaneously appearing when a helm is available, Elficologists insist that they are in fact from the fairy people, while necromancers suppose that they come from the souls of the dead warriors that were originally wearing the armour.

Spontaneous generation hypothesis

It is believed that they just pop out of thin air right inside of the helmet, as maggots would spawn on a chunk of rotting meat. If we can't see it outside of the armour piece, perhaps its because it does not exist outside of the helmet ? Their biology is very misunderstood, as attempts to remove them from their shell without destroying both has always been met with failure. Savants basically know that they do eat, in small quantities from time to time, by bringing the food inside their helmet and making a chewing sound, but it is not known if they do need sustenance, or if they just mimic other living beings. The fact that they are found in dungeons without a regular acces to food might indicate that they are indeed able to survive for a long time without a meal, or more grimly, that adventurer or monster carrion can sustain them quite fine.

The hermit crab idea

Another popular theory among zoologists is that they are akin to hermit crabs, and shed their shell for a bigger one once they are grown enough and don't fit anymore, but, while popular, it is more of a joke that teachers tell their young students as a fact while discussing the weird biology of the helmling.

Faery hypothesis

Those that spent their whole lives studing the litlle folk will tell you with assurance that helmlings and potlings are in fact, fays, a sub-class of the gnome family, to be precise, and that if you cannot encounter a helmling without a helm, it is because they remain invisible until they inhabit it. They would be some kind of trikster folk, as would explain their sometimes playful nature, and their child-like (to our eyes at least) display of chivalry would be a mocking mimicry of the previous users of the helm, instead of a genuine show of honor and culture. Of course, none of that would explain why they would not be burned by the iron, but if the fae folk was an easy subject to study, elficologists would not have chosen it, as they often are people who like to overcomplicate everything, and refuse simple explainations.

Souls of warriors hypothesis

The last and grimmest hypothesis is held by necromancers, mostly younger ones, because the older ones have started looking for a way to turn themselves into liches anyway, and dont really care about things so tiny anymore, is that the helmlings are spirits of the dead warriors, returning to their gear after being slain. They are not affected by attemps to turn the dead, nor have ever been summoned by a necromancer, despite some attempts years ago, so it is more of a musing than a solid theory.

10 Wizards

1. Parazited by a mushroom colony. Hazy eyed, perpetually hallucinating. Spends most of his time napping. Robes, hair and beard always damp and funky smelling. Lives out of society in his tower, 

all windows shut or draped to preserve from the light, with his two apprentices, on their way to be colonized too. The fungi feeds off connexion to magic. All the books of his giant and otherwise complete library are moldy. The knowledge is now in the mycellium, the apprentices never talked to the wizard or each other since they moved in. 

2. Has seen the inside of a dying star by mistake during a scrying spell gone wrong. No more face, a big black hole instead. Impossible geometry, a voice seemingly coming from all angles, as a scream and a whisper at the same time. Looks like a bad reflection from a bent mirror when not looked at directly. Perhaps hovering, maybe vibrating. Colors fading. Knows what is between this reality and the next. Sometimes speaks backwards.

3. No longer has skin, due to a disagreement with a devil. Always in pain, slightly slimy. Knows everything there is to know about distils and cauldrons. Renowned alchemist, looking always deeper for the secrets of the natural world. After having spend his life searching for answers in the material world, he had to ask around in another, but lost his epidermis after talking back a little too much to a devil he had convocated for trading secrets with. Understandably still holds a grudge with the devil that took his skin, and is conspiring with other  otherwordly entities to get it back.

4. Due to too much star gazing, the wizard can no longer understand what people mean when they speak aloud, only what the movement and placement of the sky prophecizes. Spends more time looking at the planets than writing down what they say. No longer can they predict what people would do based on their behavior or their promises. The future remains only in the stars for them.

5. Spent too long studying wall scriptures and clay pot inscriptions, in a city deserted of all life for centuries.  Is now hearing voices and seeing shadows in the corner of their eyes, always paranoïd, always checking behind themselves. Has a small notebook that they keep against their heart and frantically clutch when they are surprised. Very knowledgeable on past civilisations, and especially the reasons they disappeared, sometimes overnight.

6. Is there even someone under that robe and that hat ? You cannot be sure, everytime you think you can have a glimpse of the wizard, there is dust in your eye, the sun shines unpromptedly, or your friend moves in front of you. The old dude is not making it easy either, he wears a scarf, long gloves, even indoors. and never looks anyone in the eyes, always shifting in place. He is a specialist of forgotten secrets and hidden truths that he dedicated his life to.

7. The old man lives in a lighthouse next to the windy ocean, on a cliffside. He claims he can read the movement of the waves and will never go to a place where he can no longer see the water. His abode smells like salt and dried kelp. This wizard spends his days on the beaches and the creeks, gathering sand, salt, seashells and algea, and his nights feverishly watching the ocean with a rusty looking glass. Will not shut up about the upcoming end of the age of man, but is suddently silent and shifty when asked what will come next, and trying to avoid the subject. the bottom of his robes are always wet.

8. Sleeping in an open grave, claims he can listen to the secrets of the worms, the maggots and the bugs during the night. This wizard says he is not one, and that everything he ever wrote down in his spell book has been dictated by his nightly  visitors. Seems always distracted and listening to three different things at the same time, and often mumbling in response. Has a 3-day beard every day. Is always questionning the ingredients when he is preparing a potion, expecting answers that he is the only one to hear. When asked about something he is repeating it multiple time, and seem as surprised as you  are by the answers. Grave dirt, worms and maggots are always falling from his sleeves.

9. This wizard is now made of stone, with two fiery eyes. He has been stuck to the wall of a mountain for years now, perhaps decades, after a duel with his rival. People from around the country bring him offerings, because his eyes never stopped burning since then. He can still communicate during nights of storms, where he can project his thoughts in the cracking of thunder. It is said that he can see everything that happends in the mountain through the eyes of the birds of prey flying in circles high above. The wizard is eager to share his knowledge of evocation spells whith whoever asks.

10. His skin is weirdly textured, almost like it has fingerprints sometimes dotting his arms or his forehead, his eyes are a deep dark color, and seem dead and full of life at the same time. Like marbles filled with a roaring fire. The voice is deep and rocky, too deep, too rocky... This is not the original wizard, this one has been fabricated years ago in the laboratories, out of clay, herbs and oils. The wizard gave it life with a fire that was stolen from a city of spirits. He taughts him everything he knew, and one day died of old age in between scrolls and books. The homonculus assumed his place and continued his oeuvre, his research into the creation of artificial life. 

The alignement sytem, or why I hate essentialism

 

All of these discussions of « monster as people » and « evil races » that are all the rage right now actually hit a chord in me, as I remember as a teen I would look up in the monster manual to find monstrous races to play for my next character, and my inability to play as an evil alignement.

The alignement system is very boring to me. It always was. I can't tell what an evil character thinks or acts like, besides killing people, and our characters always end up killing people even when playing good or neutral characters anyways. Maybe we were just bad at playing the game, Maybe no one really undertands what alignements are supposed to be, I don't know...

It seemed that the alignement was refering to something outside of the character, and not to a characteristic inside of them. How do you do intrigue inside of a clerical order, whent hey all worship a lawful good deity and everyone can cast detect alignement ? What if the lich truly thinks they are doing their nefarious plots for the common good ? Can a band of revolutionary people be anything else than Chaotic if they go against the established order (backed by a Lawful godly power), even if they have a very stable set of moral rules ? Stealing food is bad, even if it is to feed your starving family ?

Like what the hell does « chaotic » even mean for people ? Do you hate the law ? Are you tossing a dice to take any kind of decision ? Is the law never wrong ? What is the alignement of someone who follows the law without faith in it ? Is the alignement set by core beliefs or by the actions of a character ? No one knows, everyone is winging it. Law and chaos really is the messiest part of this system, it is just good and evil, but set to an administrative setting.

These are charicatures of people inside a system that KNOWS what good and evil are. This is a deeply manicheic view of a world where there IS a RIGHT and a WRONG and where you have to chose to be wrong if you want to go against it, and no one choses to be wrong, aside from your occasionnal evil mad cultists. This system takes for granted that there's a correct way to be, a correct way to think, a correct god to worship, and that everyone else wants the end of that world because they disagree with it.

In a word, it is very monotheistic, and from a monotheistic point of view : my god is good, my city is lawful, therefore, our enemies can only be the opposite of that, they are enemies of our civilisation, and of our way of life, or something. They must be evil and want to bring about chaos. Nonsense.

You can play a character that thinks like that, and playing a zealot can be fun, but I refuse to live in a world where this is the right way to be. Not everyone has to be a pure zealot.

I needed something more personal than good/evil and chaos/law because those things don't mean anything to me for people. Nobody is really Evil in real life. So I started thinking about a way to make an alignement system that looked more like what I think people can be defined with, from the inside.

It had to be a system to explain relationship with people between people and not as a society. If your system can't have nuance, don't give me those big axis with huge concepts like good and evil is what I'm saying.

SELFLESS/SELFISH, your relationship to others, or ALTRUISM/EGOISM

« I act to help others/I act in my own interest »

What do you think of when you start a quest ? What you get out of it, or the people you are helping ? You can be good or evil while being selfless, same with being selfish.

A religious person can still worship the undiying light (or whatever), believe very hard in everything it teaches, and act selfish or selfless. It shows the reason they are doing something instead of what they are doing. You can break the law if it helps you, or to help other people in need. You can be a hardcore process-following bureaucrat for the exact same reason. 

Everyone believes the system they are following is doing the right thing, if they didn't, it would make them sick to do it.

You are not just "GOOD" or "EVIL"; those are moralistic principles and are relative based on space and time. Putting others first or putting yourself first is a very concrete thing that you can use to make decisions.

What a "GOOD" person would do changes based on where and when you are, stepping on someone for your own gain rarely changes based on the times, you either do it or you don't. You either want to benefit from the situation, or you don't.

Which leads us to...

SET/FREE, how you act about institutions and power, or HIERARCHY/ANARCHY

« The law protects us all/I decide for myself »

You follow the law, not because you think the law is particularly good, but because following the law is the right thing to do. It is what keeps our cities from crumbling everyday, even if the law has to hurt an innocent, or a justified person from time to time.

You are SET in this system, you don't want to change it, wether you are living in a utopia, or the worst dictatorship, you believe that the hierarchy is the way to social order, and that the system has to be changed from the inside, updated or kept the exact same; but more importantly, it has to be obeyed.

At the opposite end, you can believe that the law is faillible, put in place by people with interests, that want to remain in power. The law does not decide what is right or wrong, your guts do, or the people do, your moral code, whatever, the point is that the law of the local king is not going to stop you from making decisions. You could be a bandit, you could be a revolutionary; breaking the law is no longer good or evil, and you don't have to be labeled chaotic if you disagree with the way a lawful evil god-king opresses his citizens through a complicated legal sytem. You are FREE (at least in your mind), this is what is defining your relationship to power.

I don't want law/chaos to be civilisation vs savages, because I think it is way more complicated than that.

It can be simplified as "Do you trust the establishment, to begin with ?"

CONCLUSION

I just want an alignement system that does not tell me from the get-go that there is a correct way to be, and that I can choose to be wrong. This just leads to essentialism, and I hate that.

A lawful evil person seems like a fake thing to me, a selfish « hierarchist » person does not, I know what this person is like, I've met a few before...

Maybe it is just a reflavoring of the basic alignement system, that I maybe never understood right, but these words seem better to me than the previous ones, and maybe I'll come back to it at some point, who knows ?

Great skull abomination

A great hulking shape of flesh, bones and fur pelts sometimes takes form on the site of fresh battlefields, or in mass graves ; an amalgamation of spirits and bodies. The consciousnesses and bodies alike, melted into one another. The skull often does not understand what is happening to itself, constantly remembering having died as multiple people. Great skull abominations spend their time crying and sobbing in a high-pitched voice, not unlike the voice of a child. 

Great skulls tower at 8 feet and are about the same width, a number of arms and legs that may vary, and are not always symmetrical. Their limbs are often shaking or prone to spasms.

They are mostly intelligent (although always confused about their situation), but unable to express themselves through voice, and very prone to anger. They lack patience, to a very high degree, and will go into tantrums where they try to break everything they encounter fairly quickly. Their own failure at communication may throw them in such a state of anger and frustration that they will find it easier to rip apart their interlocutor than to endure the shame of their current situation.

Great skull abominations are not undead, but a very strange magical creature, and as such have bodily needs, such as feeding, breathing or sleeping. They will eat anything but they are not very fast or good hunters, so they mostly eat scavenged food or carrion. Sometimes raiding nearby farms or settlements to steal food at night. They won't attack humans for food unless the situation is already dire and they don't have any other choice.

A few days after their birth, they will move away from their place of apparition, to find shelter. Oftentimes a cavern, or a ruin, but will often travel to their birthpace to mourn on themselves and cry. As they live in those shelters, they will start to gather things that will make them feel "more human" and fashion their lair as a household, wearing unfitting clothing on their misshapened bodies, almost looking like they are playing house.

The skull will store anything that has been created by other human beings, be it carpets, furniture, clothes, or even weapons or art, and are very possessive of their hoard. They can generally cohabit peacefully with the usual dungeon ecosystem, which will protect their treasures while it's away, and will probably never try and talk to them, which the skull finds nice. A relative peace will be attained after some time, and some boundaries established in torn and crushed trespassors.

Stats :

It has got the same amount of HP as a buffalo would;

Armour is the same as leather or fur;

It can attack at least twice per turn (once with claw and once with bite) and more depending on the number of arms you gave it. Sometimes it can even carry a weapon instead of using its claws.

It can't talk, but it would scream like a deer (look it up, it's scary) to scare opponents off, or cry if they were being beaten and cornered.