Wandering in the Astral Plane

The astral plane really should not be just a void-world where ghosts or spirits live. It is, after all, the realm of pure idea and imagination, where concepts live. In honour of this, I devised a series of linked tables that allow you to project yourself into the astral plane. By rolling on the linked tables you will experience fantastic delusions/visions/glimpses of the impossible until your thoughts eject you. Suitable for vaguely Delta-greenish/modern OSRish/gonzo GLOGish/urban fantasyish settings. If I ever get the energy, I want to expand this to a full hexflower thing where you can move from hex to hex by thinking different thoughts/feeling different emotions. Merry glogmas!

A: How do you enter the astral plane? <depending on plot circumstance, or roll 1d5>

1. A lucid dream where you decided to peel away the surface of the dreamworld. <goto B1>

2. Meditation for thirty-two consecutive hours, according to the instructions specified by the recovered Tokai Botourouden (Tale of the Eastern Sea Dream-lantern). <goto B2>

3. You were on stage, and fell sideways. <goto B3>

4. [someone] cracked open your skull and [something] your brain [...] <goto B4>

5. Experimental program to determine the origin or prospects of consciousness through the use of EEGs, copious psychedelics, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. <goto B1>

B1: What do you see? <1d6, goto C>

1. A riot of sound, emotion, and colour. Howling red blushes and acrid blue silences, tinged with yellow fear.

2. A slow procession of ancient embarrassments, stirred up by an irritated superego.

3. The deep marsh of comforting primordial darkness that all sleep tends towards, arrested only by the day.

4. A replay of your life, flowing through the stream of a river. By moving your hand against or along the flow you can speed up or slow down the images. The air is lit by a beautiful golden sunset.

5. Yourself magnified a thousand times, talking, chattering, laughing, loveable, hateful. To go deeper you have to step around/through/into/beyond yourself.

6. Them. Why did it have to be them, waiting here in the dark? Oh god, you have so much to tell them. But would they understand? Can they ever forgive you?

B2: What do you see? <1d6>

1. Your house, but the colours have run cold and the time is fixed at midnight.

2. Your family, standing solemn and still, the jokes have fallen from their eyes.

3. Your Family, generations on generations, a great teeming mass of historic humanity reconstituted as astral shells. You can ask them many questions. Whether they remember the answers, and whether you can understand what they say, is another matter entirely.

4. A great stone amphitheatre, filled with meditating monks. You see a host of different colours on robes, banners with foreign scripts, and the standard of the Isshin-muten (One heart without sky) school whose practices you pilfered.

5. A massive theoretical construction they would have once called Oriental, impossible layers of towers on towers and seas of tiled roofs, gates ever growing and folding into themselves.

6. A beach. Each grain of sand is a letter or a character. The waves push the sand into new sentences and paragraphs, each lasting for a mere instant before being destroyed as the wave retreats.

B3: What do you see? <d6, goto C>

1. A massive industrial elevator, grinding and whirring as it cycles through backstage moments from across time and place. Macbeth, Agamemnon, Journey to the West…

2. A circle of people, clothed in skins and holding spears. You have been summoned as part of the enacting of a Hero’s Journey, a spectre of the future to perform for the past. A crackling fire sends soot into well-exercised lungs. Your body feels… younger.

3. Gold upon gold and ultraviolet upon ultraviolet. Barely human spectres–translated to umber-grey digital ghosts by your primitive visual cortex–review your performance in the simulation of your universe. Why has this agent simulacra temporarily unbound itself from the constructed quasi-Euclidean world-manifold?

4. Back on stage. The show goes on. The show is of your life. Offstage is just another stage. 

5. Three aged witches. Something tells you that they are the three witches. Three as old as story. Three as old as time. They smile with gaping maws for mouths.

6. A great stone amphitheatre, filled with everyone from your life, even those you have not met yet. They are clapping and cheering, celebrating you, all of you, all of the tiny disappointments that you suffered, all of the titanic blows you survived. 

B4: What do you see? <d6, goto C>

1. A circle of cackling magicians, wearing vestments and robes from another time and place. “This one will do,” says one, before another aims a spell from behind at his caged heart.

2. Still, gigantic, ponderous, glorious statues. Statues of the gods, past and present. Perhaps they are not statues—they cannot be, they are too terrifying and awesome. But they are not moving, not for you.

3. Three aged witches. Something tells you that they are the three witches. Three as old as story. Three as old as time. They smile with gaping maws for mouths.

4. An operating theatre. Surgeons with complex masks and devices for eyes, manipulating mechanical stingers that pierce and probe. Beeps and whirs, snaps and cuts, you are on the bench and unable to move until your thoughts untangle themselves.

5. A great library with caged shelves hanging from more caged shelves, forming chains of knowledge that stretch from a cold blue heaven into a burning red hell. Walkways connect them, and spirits scurry between the books. A set of hieroglyphs burn before your mind, giving you coordinates and commands. You find that you can choose to ignore them.

6. A digital nullscape, matrices of gridlines arcing between voids. At first, it appears to be merely rows and rows of nothing. Patterns slowly emerge from the shadows, ICE and AI constructs weaving between each other, interfacing with each other, devouring each other, spilling gigabytes of data into dust.

C: Even this is merely a shadow of the real astral plane. Which verb do you choose? <d8>

1. THINK <goto D1>

2. HATE <goto D2>

3. LOVE <goto D3>

4. REMEMBER <goto B2>

5. FORGET <goto B1>

6. PERFORM <goto B3>

7. MANIFEST <goto B4>

8. EXIT <goto E>

D1: What does it mean to think? <d4>

1. To grasp the iron laws of reality, and through them attain ultimate power. <goto F1>

2. To peel back the deceptions and falsehoods that drive our days, and beyond them attain truth. <goto F2>

3. To weave a deception about yourself, and in turn flee from that which you already know. <goto B1>

4. To think is to carry out the operations which form the computational unraveling of the universe. To think is to be. <goto G>

D2: What does it mean to love? <d4>

1. To deny yourself in abnegation, and escape yourself through a more gracious other. <goto B1>

2. To maintain yourself in the face of an uncaring universe. <goto F1>

3. To attain true appreciation of the oneness of things, and dissolve the artificial boundaries that divide us. <goto F2>

4. To exist and to care, which we do by existing. To love is to be. <goto G>

D3: What does it mean to hate? <d4>

1. Death. Destruction. Hurt them. They hurt you. Make them pay. <4d6 psychic damage, goto E>

2. Kill. Kill them. Kill someone. Kill them all. <3d6 psychic damage, goto E>

3. Why? Why did it have to be me? What was wrong with me, that you chose to do this to me? How could you? Why could you? Where are you? <2d6 psychic damage, goto E>

4. It is not me. It is not clean. It is not safe. It is not, it cannot. <1d6 psychic damage, goto E>

E: How do you exit the astral plane? <d6, end>

1. A fading, a dimming into a realer, more disappointing blackness.

2. An unravelling, the end of sense into nonsense into senselessness into a way a round a long the riverrun past eve and adams…

3. Floating. The infinite worlds become infinitely small beneath you. They recede into a unity, a unity that splits apart again into division, into reality.

4. Sinking. Fact, feeling, and idea swallow you. They demand more of you, until there is nothing to be done except to become real again.

5. Like a film reel or a comic book, time itself segments and accelerates towards the end of the story.

6. A train bursts onto the screen/dream/reality/self, and everything is shocked into order again. You wake up as if no time has passed.

F1: What is the nature of power? <1d6, goto E>

1. KINGSHIP. Rule them, command them, burn them, break them. <+1 CHA>

2. FORTITUDE. The totality of the self must become sealed against the totality of the other, this is true safety. <+1 CON>

3. OVERTHROW. Overcome all opposition, and thy will shall be law. <+1 STR>

4. FLOW. To be in the moment, to move with the moment, to supersede the moment. <+1 DEX>

5. KNOWLEDGE. To know is to control. Once you can understand something, you can have power over it and make it your own. <+1 INT>

6. FORESIGHT. True strength comes from knowing what battles to fight in the first place. <+1 WIS>

F2: What is the nature of truth? <1d6, goto E>

1. NOTHINGNESS. There is no root-substance, everything is relational and therefore hollow. There is no base matter. <Gain spell: DISINTEGRATE>

2. BEAUTY. The trueness of a thing is simply its aesthetic power. Falsehood is ugliness, and plain appearances mere nonexistence. <Gain spell: GREATER ILLUSION>

3. LIFE. That which is true is that which grows and changes over time. <Gain spell: RESURRECTION>

4. COMPLEXITY. There are layers upon layers, details upon details. There is always a caveat, another fractal reality beneath the current one. <Gain spell: POLYMORPH>

5. SIMPLICITY. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. <Gain spell: GREATER DISPELL MAGIC>

6. SYMMETRY. What is true in one place and time is true forever. <Gain spell: TRUE TELEPORT>

G: How is existence maintained? <goto E>

1. SUFFERING. Life is a mere contiguous sequence of senseless indignities. Shit happens and then you die. <Gain health>

2. HOMEOSTASIS. A delicate shell of extreme complexity and ever-shifting order, balanced on the cliff’s edge above senseless chaos. <Gain experience>

3. LOVE. You are loved, and that is enough. <Gain a wish>

 

Giving classes more gameplay, not less (Mechanics)

It is a common piece of advice that classes should not be able to skip gameplay, or otherwise reduce the time players spend interacting with parts of the world that the class is connected to. For example, a ranger should not have the ability to fast forward through overland travel, since presumably players choose to play rangers because overland travel is a core part of their ideal gameplay or narrative experience. 

The natural answer to this is that classes should give their players more options to interact with the world, not less. In particular, we should give players options that are hard to come up with simply with ad-hoc creative thinking, or otherwise quick improvisation at the table. Not only are simple and predictable class abilities boring, they also lead to questions like "if the rogue can roll to sneak, does that mean nobody else can"? 

Here are some ideas for rich and option-expanding class abilities. Names in italic are references. I leave out the magical classes because of all the classes they are the most well-equipped with options already.

Meta note: I use dice-based checks to gate uses of abilities because they are a common gameplay "button" and offer a good dose of uncertainty (especially for the failure-gated abilities). Depending on the preferences your table you may want to skip the checks.

Martial Classes

Battle-cunning: When you succeed on a to-hit roll, you can always specify a body part to target. You can also target accessories or pieces of equipment like rings, sword hilts, or bowstrings for disarming or other manoeuvres. You can also choose to simply roll damage as usual, or forego damage to perform a specific trick or manoeuvre taught to you by a master.

Lightning Reflexes: When you roll to dodge or evade an attack or trap, you can specify what side of the attacker you end up on, or what part of the room you dodge to. If you are holding a weapon or a large item, you can always drop what you are holding to automatically succeed at an evasion roll.

Recoltes et semailes: When you fail on a to-hit roll, you can choose from the following options: If you push, you can still hit and deal the minimum damage for your weapon or attack, but the next attack against you by any opponent gains advantage. If you withdraw, you fall back out of range of the enemy's melee attacks (they will need to move to get to you), but are now prone (you'll need to use your movement to get up).

The Body Speaks: When you fail on a to-hit roll, you can use the chance to observe a weakness, current ailment, old wound, or past scar on an enemy as they strain to block or deflect your attack. If they are a notable foe, the GM will tell you what you see and a snippet of their history or lore. As an alternative, you can make a perception check. On a success, you can predict what they will do next turn in broad strokes (attack, flee, go for an item, shout a command).

Specialist Classes

Perspicacious Loris: When you succeed at a perception check in any inhabited area, you can see, as if it were playing out before your eyes, 1d4 ways in which the space could be used. One of them is accurate to the way it is currently used, if it is used at all. This can reveal traps if the traps require regular maintenance. The vision takes place over the course of a second and is reflexive. (Credit to @choiroffire and this post)

A Quiet Fellow: When you succeed at any check related to hiding, deception, or passing undetected, you will be informed of the explicit requirements for someone to discover your presence or uncover your deception by the GM. If you or anyone else does not break those requirements, you are considered undetected by default. If the situation changes significantly, the GM may alter the deal.

Liar's Friend: When you succeed at a check related to detecting magical or mundane deception, disguise, illusion, or charm, you can work backwards and discover what the deceiver or liar was trying cover up, or at least have a very good hunch.

Improvise! : When you are discovered in a deception or uncovered from hiding (or simply fail a check related to these activities), you can immediately improvise and describe how you use a learned ruse, trick, part of the environment, or piece of training to escape from the situation. Roll another check for persuasion, deception, stealth etc.: If you succeed you can extract yourself from the scene unscathed. However, if you fail this new check the consequences will be much worse (suspicious guards become hostile, angry customers become violent).

I met a traveller: You can determine upon hearing a rumour or a tall tale the sort of person who would spread it, its approximate provenance, and how likely it is to be embellished (but not how likely it is to be true).

Overland Classes

The Folkways: If you succeed at a check related to tracking or navigation in an outdoors or wilderness area, you can name something you want (a shortcut, food, water, shelter). The GM will offer you a deal for it: a shortcut can be dangerous, food can be off the beaten track, shelter can require 1d4+2 hours of work to set up. You can choose to take the deal or not.

Hwaer cwom symbla gesetu: When you encounter ruins, habitations, or other buildings in the wild, you can immediately tell how old they are, their approximate purpose, and how much force it would take to tear them down.

Reading the Leaves: When you come across a patch of disturbed wilderness and succeed at a perception check, you can sense what happened here in the last while (it can be the last few hours or the last few days depending on the weather). You can then ask questions of the GM: Did someone or some animal pass through? What kind? Was there a struggle? Were they wounded? Was magic involved?

 

The Great Bowl (Setting)

A setting post inspired by Sekiro, the Three Kingdoms, and Japanese and Chinese mythology.

Sit down, my son. You are now of age, and I must tell you what my mother told me, and her mother told her, and so on until the first days when we arrived in the great bowl. Your mother passed early defending our village, so it falls to me. I hope I will do her story justice, as she did for me so many times.

The world in which we live is the great bowl (太元). Our village elders believe it was an ancient lake created by the gods in their strife, which has dried up in the ages that have passed since the years of the wise emperors. In those days gods and men were not so different, and one could know the histories of things merely by asking the divinities within them. Now the gods are remote, and rule by onerous written laws and vast celestial courts. It is known that they define our fates by actuarial tables and arithmetic. It is hard to talk to them, and harder still to plead your case. The merciful listener goddess who keeps the west safe for the lotus-path followers has herself been placed under divine arrest. She cannot help us now.

So, what is in this great bowl? You have seen most of it. There are villages, built along the old Yi River (易江) which runs from west to east, starting above the rim of the bowl and running down into the cavernous courts of hell which pull the land into shadow around them. You would do well to stay away from those parts of the valley, for they are where the echoes come at night.

In this bowl the greatest monuments are four sacred cardinal temples (四象廟). They are larger than our houses and halls. They are larger than anything we could build today. The story goes that they were built by great emperor Shengzu of the Li dynasty (立聖祖), the last of the good and wise kings, who sought to leave the bowl and forge a great empire. He built them to honour the many gods and the cardinal divinities, and they in turn gave him four sacred treasures with which he killed his rivals and conquered the land. They are as follows, remember them well:

To the north, the Black Turtle-snake Xuanwu (玄武), who gave Shengzu his sword after Shengzu made the correct offerings. The pale snakeblade, it is said, grants the wielder invincibility in battle, but only while they are holding it.

To the east, the Azure dragon Qinglong (青龍), who gave Shengzu his crown after Shengzu presented a great speech. The dragon-blessed mianguan has sixteen braided cords made of dragon whispers and pearls from the sea-king's palace, and gives the bearer total knowledge of the past and future.

To the south, the Ruby phoenix Zhujue (朱雀), who wrote Shengzu's writ of kingship after Shengzu wooed them with song and archery. On the writ it is written that he who bears this scroll will claim all eight corners of the world under a single roof, and thereby make the whole realm his abode. For it is well known that beyond our bowl the realm is a square.

To the west, the White tiger Baihu (白虎), who never yielded to Shengzu's bribery, martial prowess, and flattering words. They say that the frustrated Shengzu used the pale snakeblade to slice off one of Baihu's marble paws, and crafted the first imperial seal out of it. This ancient wrong - and it is a wrong, even though Shengzu won the fight - is why the tigers in the west still hunt us.

The temples still stand today, protected by the divine laws and ancient rites, but they are old and out of repair. Perhaps in our time there will be a great storm, and then the final protections of Shengzu will fail and we too will die.

What did you say? Yes, we once were a mighty people, who ruled lands far beyond this tiny bowl. We had a great and mighty empire that united many tribes, and we marched across the desert to find rival empires which we engaged in trade and war. But our emperors were unwise and capricious, and in time they squandered the riches the generations past gave us. Our fertile fields they desecrated with war and famine, our great archives they desecrated with lies, our noble people they desecrated with rapacious taxes, and our great gods they desecrated with foul and unspeakable deeds. Till at last the heavens turned against us, and the last of the emperors was incinerated by lighting in a great storm, and the great lords arose in revolt. That was when we fled the royal city and returned to the bowl from whence we came. 

Alas... Yes, alas for fate, which brings time and decay. Still, my son, it is hard for a heart to escape the dictates of fate. And to speak the truth, I am sparing you many stories of the imperial days, and they are not glorious ones. Perhaps it was for the best that what was united by evil forces came to divide once more.

And for you? Well, if you wish to stay in the bowl, there is much for you to do. We hold back echoes and ghosts from the caverns of hell at night. By day we negotiate with the other villages for food and other necessities. Every now and then someone gets it in their head to become the next Shengzu, and we have to beat them back. Every year we must undertake a pilgrimage to all four of the cardinal temples, to complete annual rites and remember the past. But I sense that your heart lies beyond these walls.

The outside world is dangerous, my son. If you could find some vestige of the old blessings from the cardinal temples, perhaps you could leave. What is outside the bowl? To the west is a vast desert, beyond which they say strange and foreign peoples live. To the south is the ruins of our old capital, a vast and impenetrable maze of walls and gates. To the north a storm has raged for the last twenty years and more. And to the east after many miles of walking is the sea, where the mighty dragon they call the eastern sea-king sits.

It's best that you stay in the bowl. It is safer here. But if your heart is set, I have only one piece of advice for you: Forge your own path. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The Herald of Woe (Enemy NPC)

They say that he rides in full black garb, even during the hazy midsummer months when the moon brings no coolness and the sun a baleful warmth. He is not armoured save his head, where he wears a dull grey helmet from some vanquished principality. He arrives always in public, during the day, when there are children playing in the town square and merchants hawking their wares in the market. None know where he retires once his work is done.

They say that his order is dead or dying, that no new initiate will replace him when he is gone, because his nation has been wiped from the earth and the adherents of his secret faith burned at the take. They say this and half-believe it, regardless of any evidence for or against these rumours, because they are terrified of him.

In the hidden isles they say that some mystics learned to commune with a nameless god. The domain of this god is most peculiar. The god does not rule over any element, or symbol, or land, or bequeath any form of magic. Instead, the domain of this god is the inner realm of a person's heart, their private moments, their whispered self-admonitions, the thoughts they think in the quiet hours of a very cold evening. The mystics called this god the Lord of Silence, and in communing with the Lord they learned to detect the innermost secrets of any whom they laid eyes on.

Wisely, these mystics kept to themselves, and mostly used their art to further their studies of the psyche. They did this in the hopes (some say) of ridding the world of shame and guilt, a noble goal indeed. Unfortunately, they came to admit a student to their ranks, who learned their arts and fled in the dead of night. The student, proud and cruel, used his skill to become a spymaster for a kingdom. Eventually he rose to absolute dominance within the kingdom, and became feared and loathed by the king and the nobles alike. Using his terrible knowledge he kept each angry party at bay, and spent their secrets to play them off against each other. His power was absolute... Till at last death, who accepts no gifts and fears no threats, came for him. 

But it was too late, death was too patient, the spymaster (whose name men swear never to speak) had already trained students of his own. These students learned lesser techniques, more crude approximations of the true mystic communion, but they were no less feared. They formed an inner cult to the Lord of Silence and kept a death-grip on power for four generations until the whole kingdom was annexed by the Empire in some war or another, and the flag suborned beneath the Cloth-and-standard Throne of His Revealed Excellency the Emperor at the Capitol Mount where He was borne. The cultists were scattered, the cult disbanded.

They say that he is one of the cultists, or someone who took on their mantle. He rides into town at midday and whispers secrets to men, secrets they would die rather than see revealed. No matter rich or poor, noble or citizen, each pays his dues to the herald of woe. Those who refuse to give in to blackmail are destroyed with a sentence, or a phrase, and often flee their homes never to be seen again. Sometimes he need not even say the phrase in public.

Some who hail from the isles themselves say that the Lord of Silence is not a figure of terror. They say that the Lord is a benevolent god, who sought to relieve the burden of torturous secrets and self-deceptions from those who had to live with them. How the Lord can then empower such agents of misery is unknown. Surely he would know the darkness of their innermost thoughts?

Then again, they say that after his death the king of that long-forgotten principality ordered the spymaster's head cut open to see what brain spawned such wickedness. They say that when he did so, he found his skull an empty shell.

Herald of Woe

2 HD, AC as leather, longsword (1d8)

After 1d4-1 rounds of observation he can whisper a secret to anyone in sight of him as an instantaneous action. Only they hear this secret. They must immediately make a morale save (or equivalent) or take 2d8 psychic damage. If he is allowed to speak in an uninterrupted manner for one round to a target, they must also make a morale save or enter a panicked fight-or-flight response. 

Depending on the number of secrets a person carries, he can keep doing this indefinitely. Those who are resistant to Fear take half damage and get advantage on such morale saves. The average person has 1d4-1 secrets. Add 1d4 per rank of nobility (knight, lord, duke, king...). For PCs, at character creation or when encountering the Herald each PC should roll 1d6 for any secrets they might have. If the Herald directs his attention at you, you take the damage, write down a secret, and give it to the GM. Secrets obtained in play or during adventures add to this total, rather than taking up an existing secret's place.

On death, drops a wooden idol. Attuning with the idol over a week allows a trained cleric or magic user to commune with the Lord of Silence. The Lord, of course, will not offer any response, but perhaps if he is made aware of how his gift has been misused something of this terror will end.

The Ones Who Pass Through the Fields (NPC and class)

You will find them at the edges of battlefields where the clouds of war have scattered briefly. They move amongst the bodies and step between fallen flags. To the still living they give water, light healing, and usually a hand to lay on their shoulder as they recover. From the dying and the dead, they collect last letters home, personal tokens, and sometimes final promises delivered out of ashen lips.

They do not have names, titles, or orders. Their clothes are those of peasants or monks, but they usually wear a white sash about them, which they keep clean with great effort. The armies of the living do not usually trouble them, even when they give succor to their enemies. They do not offend them, because they know that if they ever fall in battle these people may be their final mercy. From them come the stories of valkyries and battlefield saints, but these are not demigods. If you cut them, they will bleed.

If they must be referred to somehow, they are known as the ones who pass through the fields. Sometimes, one whom they heal elects to join their ranks. Sometimes, more rarely, someone joins their ranks of their own volition. Perhaps this will be you.

This group can serve as NPCs, a class, or as the basis for a campaign. There is no prohibition against violence for this class, because above all the ones who pass through the fields are practical and do what needs to be done. However, doing harm to others is contrary to their spirit.

One Who Passes Through the Fields (Δ)

Skills: Diplomacy, Observation, Medicine

Starting Equipment: Plain clothes, white sash, walking staff, waterskin, wrapped bundle of farm cheese and bread, dagger, rope, wing-charm. 

On Wing Charms

The more established groups of ones who step through the fields will give new initiates a small charm, a wooden carving in the shape of a wing pierced by an arrow. None know why or how this tradition started, but those who receive one guard it jealously. 

Display of the charm grants you safe passage in some civilised kingdoms (3-in-6), and may even stay the hand of bandits in rougher ones (1-in-6). 

In Widdernmark they call these feather-gifts (federgifter). Whose gifts they are is not known. And while the empire keeps records stretching back hundreds of years in an unbroken chain, it sees no need to record the lore of unimportant peasants who can neither fight nor rule.

Take My Hand

Δ: Spend a day comforting someone who is dying. If they recover, it does not count.

You always know what to say to calm down the dying and wounded. This means that you can often gain valuable information about who or what wounded them. They will often instinctively trust you, and tell you their dying wishes. You are compelled to complete them, even if they are impossible or extremely difficult.

A Word to Power

Δ: Stand up to an agent of violence, knowing that they can always kill you if they get too annoyed. If they weren't actually a threat to you, it does not count.

Once per day, when you stand tall and wield the moral high ground against a superior foe, you can force them to make a morale check at disadvantage.

Lay On Hands

Δ: Watch over someone as they recover from near death to full health. If they don't reach full health before you leave them, it does not count.

You can touch someone and grant them 1 HP. This will stabilise them if they are dying. You can do this X times per day, where X is the number of Δ templates you have in this class.

See Through Shadow

Δ: Live amongst the agents of a temporal power for a month, sharing in their cruelties and revelries. If they are not cruel to each other and those weaker than them in an ostentatious manner, it does not count.

You can detect the lies and superficial deceptions of power with ease. This includes lies told in speeches, proclamations, signs, archival records, and history books. Where you notice them, you become irrationally angry.

Succor for the Wicked

Δ: Save the life of someone whom you hate and revile, then let them go. If you don't actually revile them, it does not count.

You register as non-hostile to most intelligent creatures, unless you attack them. Unless supernaturally motivated, reaction rolls made by monsters against you and your party will never result in immediate hostility. They must see or otherwise sense you for this effect to work.

Power of the Powerless

Δ: Accomplish someone's dying wish at great cost or difficulty. If the wish is not difficult to complete, it does not count.

When you are acting to complete someone's last request, you can reroll dice (attack rolls, initiative, saving throws, ability checks etc.). You can do this X times per day, where X is the number of number of Δ templates you have in this class. You cannot reroll multiple times in a roll, and you must take the rerolled result.

Passthrough

Δ: After accomplishing all the other Δ templates, give your wing-charm to your successor, or make a new one to give them if the old one was destroyed. If you don't believe in them and their ability to carry on the work, it does not count.

A door opens in the side of reality. Someone walks through, someone you knew once. They take your hand, and lead you through the portal. One day the battles will end, they tell you. One day there will be no more tears. But your part, at least, is done. 

Did I do okay? You ask. 

You can't help yourself. It's been so long, and so hard.

You've fought well, they say. And that's all you can ask for.

The Hand's Neck Inn (Location)

The Hand's Neck Inn was once known as The Tower Pub, and before that the Four Lions Inn. You can find it on the crossroads between Madingley Road and Crossbones Lane. During the day it is a quiet throughfare, and the pavement stones gleam with a grey respectability that drains away at sunset. After the Cathedral-school rings Vespers the daylight ordinances of the church give way to more urbane night-laws. The solid oaken door is unbarred and the lanterns cast a fetching orange light, seeping out from the windows and the cracks in the walls.

Once a gambler feels that glow, it leeches onto him. He finds it hard to merely walk past-Everyone knows that the Hand's Neck has the best games and the best players. In the thrill of the bet or the swoon that comes with winning, it's almost possible to leave your life behind.

The Gamblers in the Hand's Neck Inn

Tonight there are six in the main room, muttering under a blown-up portrait of Lord Chamberley (Magister of the Night-Laws and himself a frequent patron during his more rowdy years). Two more are hunched by the bar, their faces obscured by the gleaming brass taps. If they're drinking at eight, they won't be playing for a while, so we can ignore them. 

It's still early-more gamblers will come by nine or ten, fat lawyers from the temples and grinning students from the colleges. Most are men, and almost all are poor, or headed that way. They are not here to win. They are here to play.

Sir Six-of-Knives

He was a knight, or says he was, anyhow. That wicked curled moustache and those fox-like eyes give him a shrewd look. His favourite games involve cards, shouting, and much staring across the table. He fancies that he's a noble strategist, but he always ends the night in arrears. When he loses, he makes a big show of reaching for his sabre, but he seldom draws. 

He's ill and he knows it. Maybe soon he'll convert, and leave the Hand's Neck for a monastery.

The Lizard

A student from the accounting school that they set up four winters ago. He has a frilled collar and a trendy rose petticoat. His eyes dart about behind heavy copper spectacles, and he mutters incessantly while betting on dice. They call him the lizard, because he never quite seems to lose everything. 

If you talk to him, he's convinced that he's beginning to spot numerical patterns in the dice. Patterns, he says, that will let him win big-any day now. He is eager to tell anyone about his discovery, because it pleases him greatly to be recognised for his intellect-not that anyone here cares. For now, he plays oddly and leaves by midnight to work on completing his patterns. He never drinks.

Miss Morning

A young countess, or someone with standing. Unable to force her way out of an arranged marriage, she plays to regain some sense of her dignity and choice. Her family do not know that after her lessons at the Women's College she puts on a shabby black shirt and hunches over the felt table while counting cards. Miss Morning, of course, isn't her real name, but her sharp eyes and face have a way of making people ask fewer questions.

Miss Morning won't show it, but she's observed the Lizard for several weeks now, and completed his half-finished work on her own. She plans to amass enough money to flee the city and start a new life. To that end she wins a little every other night, drawing from many houses of ill repute to mask her newfound skill. She won't be staying here for long.

Ladislaw the Younger

He had dreams once. What dreams he had, he's not exactly sure. Now his face is bloated and he has a beer belly, and his prim white shirt has stains that he can't afford to get cleaned off. With each cast of the dice or hand of cards he gets more enraged. Nobody knows whether this anger is directed at the life he is living, or the life he wishes he had. Either way, best not to win against him after ten thirty. 

He's a regular, but he's almost out of his share of the inheritance. In a few weeks he'll be broke, and the debtors will have their way with him. Ladislaw knows this, and is becoming desperate.

Magister Schole

A stern lecturer at the cathedral-school who prides himself on his strict obsesiance to rules and regulations. He sees the Hand's Neck as an escape, and will play to forget the shackles he has placed himself in. Drinks to excess, and often vomits. If you can collect evidence of his debt, he will pay handsomely to protect his reputation and his posting at the cathedral-school. On the other hand, you'll have made a power-hungry enemy.

Hans of the Gun

He's a mercenary from some land outside the empire. A long scar runs across his face, down into his neck, the sort of scar you see when someone's been tortured by a fine sabre. His clothes are some tattered mockery of a captain's uniform, and his gun and knife are not for show.

If he is provoked, he'll end your life in a heartbeat. He has a strong sense of fairness, however, and always pays his debts. It's best not to ask where he got his money from.

What are they playing?

A new game, it seems, called the First Flush. Everyone buys in first, and gets two cards which they keep to themselves. Three cards are dealt onto the table from a shuffled deck. One by one, the house flips them over. At any time someone can call and take all three cards. They are then placed in front of him and turned over. If all three are turned over and nobody takes them, the cards are discarded. Then three new cards are laid. 

This continues until someone collects five of a suit. If someone ever gets six or more of a suit, however, they are bust and out of the game. People can continue to up their bets between deals. The winner is the last player standing and takes everyone's bets, unless there is no winner, in which case the house takes everything. The Lizard is busy trying to understand the chances involved here.

Addendum

The hand's neck refers to the wrist, which is of course essential to flicking cards, shuffling decks, or casting dice. The proprietor, John of Somers, is a wily man, and this is his device.

GLAUGUST: Gardener (Class)

This is a class created for the GLAUGUST challenge Paladin of an unorthodox law. Westu hal, ðu gehalgod gardin-haþel.

The GarΔener

+1 to Bond per template

A - Tradeworker, Cultivator
B - Warden
C - Producer
D - Resident

Introduction

They are sometimes called gardeners, although that is not always what they do. Some of them are blacksmiths, librarians, tenders of small huts in the desert. But always they are distinguished by their common love of a place. Not a grand place, not a great palace or noble temple, no place of public honour or mighty treasure, but a small place. A garden, perhaps. Or a tomb.

To become a gardener, you must first have a garden. Over a year, pay continuous attention to some small location, no larger than a house a commoner in your land would live in. Remove the weeds, tend to the flowers, polish the worn statuettes and keep the ancestral shrine well-tended. You must not spend more than a month in this time away from the garden. Come to know it as you know yourself, and in coming to know it, come to know yourself.

The only way to level up in this class is to spend more years tending to your garden. There is no shortcut for true devotion. If your garden is destroyed, you lose all templates of Gardener immediately, no matter where you are or what you are doing.

Bond

After one year tending to your garden, you are bonded to it. Each template of Gardener you take increases your bond to your garden by 1. Gain +bond *2 to your AC, to-hit, perception, and initiative (or any relevant statistics in your home system) while you are in your garden. You gain half this bonus when you are in a place that is similar to your garden.

Tradeworker

After one year tending to your garden, you come to know its use. Your garden is the source of some trade or product, which you have learned to harvest or produce. This can be as simple as flowers from the grass or water from a well, or as complex as swords from a forge, or even blessings from a shrine. The important thing is that you are now considered proficient in that craft, even if you are away from the garden. However, being in your garden gives you +bond to that crafting activity.

Cultivator

After one year tending to your garden, you are instinctively aware of the needs of your garden, and how best to meet them. You can tell when the weather will be too warm or the currents of the aether too cold. You know how to keep plants alive, how to repair the workshop table, and how to restock the correct kind of birdfeed. This is tacit knowledge which would take you a day or more to write down, and even then cannot be perfectly recorded.

Warden

After two years tending to your garden, you become fiercely protective of it. You can sense instinctively if someone means harm to you or your garden, even if they come with fancy robes and seemingly bearing gifts. While in the garden, you are capable of identifying magic items and sensing if illusions, charms, magic effects, or lies are present. You are not able to pinpoint the source directly, but you will know. You also find it very hard to not get angry when visitors disrupt the peace and order of your garden.

Producer 

After five years tending to your garden, your attunement to your garden and your craft has grown to mastery. This leads to the things you produce being of superior, nearly magical quality. A meal from your garden is equivalent to a day's worth of rations. Weapons and armour from your forge count as +1 weapons or armour. Draughts from your cellar can help with illness or curses. This is only true if you hand-produce each item, giving it the care and attention it deserves. You cannot make this a commercial operation.

If you wish, you can take a student, teaching them how to tend to the garden. This allows you to take leave from the garden for up to three months, while keeping it well managed. While you are gone they count as a Gardener with 1 bond. If you mistreat them, they may destroy your garden, or abscond with its secrets.

Resident

After ten years tending to your garden, your fame and the fame of your garden have grown. Some start to call you "The sage of such-and-such grove" or "the hermit of such-and-such village". Visitors will seek you out for your wisdom and expertise. Gain 3 points distributed between Wisdom and Intelligence, or equivalent. This can raise your Wisdom or Intelligence above 18.

While in your garden you are immune to charm, deception, fear, and illusion. While outside the garden, you are resistant (but not immune) to such effects. You are never surprised and recover at twice the normal rate in your garden. All attempts to persuade you to leave the garden are made at automatic disadvantage. The produce of your garden are now renowned for their magical properties.