Criminals and Canines

‘We look around for a place to rob’

Now you can blame the dice for that damn dog.

The table below gives the number of houses displaying a vulnerability. Note that the number is modified is the players are looking for a certain wealth level of house (specified in the next table)

# Vulnerable Houses	Settlement Class	Special Notes
1d4 -1	Village	Maximum wealth is Middling.
1d6 -1	Town	Organised guard force present 90% chance.
1d8	Large Town	Organised guard force present and a thieves guild may operate (5% chance)
1d20	City	As above, but 15% chance of a thieves guild.

This table is used to generate the wealth level of vulnerable houses. The Search Penalty applies to the above roll as previously discussed.

d12	Wealth Level	Likely Security Measures	Search Penalty
1 – 2	Destitute – you’ll get some coppers at best. 2d4 cp in overall wealth.	None.	-
2 – 6	Poor – perhaps they’ve stashed some silver? 2d20sp in movable wealth.	Simple Lock	-
7 – 9	Middling – they’re doing okay, something in here should make the fence smile. 10d20sp in movable wealth.	Secure Locks & 5% chance of guard dog.	-1 to vulnerable houses
10 – 11	Rich – some decent loot should be about. 2d100sp in movable wealth.	Secure Locks, 10% chance of guard dog & 1d4 guards.	-2 to vulnerable houses.
12	Extravagant – the big heist – you can’t believe this place has an opening. The amount isn’t an issue, finding the time to get everything is!	Great Locks & 1d10 guards.	-7 to vulnerable houses.

Simple locks raise your effective tinkering skill by one. Great locks do the opposite.

d6	What, exactly, is vulnerable about this house?
1	Open window(s) with relatively easy access.
2	A door has been left ajar. Weird that.
3	Incredibly on-display wealth makes this worthwhile. (re-roll for extravagant)
4	You’ve got a key – dropped outside or perhaps left in the lock?
5	Rumours abound that the owner is out of town for a while.
6	A disgruntled guard let you know that the cellar door is always unlocked.

Just because you’ve got guards doesn’t make them any good. Add 1 to the roll for Extravagant houses. Guards are assumed to be equipped with leather armour and longswords, and fight as standard humans.

d10	Guard Skill
1	Inept. +2 to Stealth skill, unlikely to follow clues etc. Guards are asleep 1-in-6 times. No patrols.
2-3	Poor. +1 to Stealth. Will miss subtle clues. Very loose patrol structure.
4-7	Average. About what you’d expect. Regular patrols, informal check-ins every couple of hours.
8-9	Skilled Guardsmen. -1 to Stealth, relative diligent. Good patrol routes and check-ins every hour.
10	Exceptional. The very best money can buy. -2 to Stealth, well designed patrol routes and check-ins every 20 minutes.

(Tinkering is the LotFP lockpicking skill, and is rated 1-6 to give you a rough estimation for conversion)

Essential Elementals

Fire Elementals destroy, dance, feed and fuck with a fierce passion for life and change within the span of about five seconds. If spoken to, they howl joyously about the extremes of sensation and the beauty of destruction even as they die before your eyes. There is no consideration of meaning or consequence - to enjoy sensation is enough. The act of doing something is enough of a reason for a Fire Elemental. They do not have names.

Wind Elementals see many sights and freely exchange information, although most are world-weary. It is not often a new wind is made, meaning the Wind Elementals are an ageing population. They speak highly of speed and impression, and feel the inherent failure of solid matter in everything. They do not rejoice in the ending of matter as Fire Elementals do, but simply accept it as another fact. They bear titles which serve like the titles of books - giving an idea of the knowledge the individual holds.

Water Elementals are communally minded, believing strongly in the greater good. Most prefer to remain in their homes, although the rebellious Rain Spirits insist on roaming to and fro, but lack in-depth knowledge on any great matter. The more conservative Ocean Spirits are dour, but hold the deepest knowledge of their kind, although their fury is nigh unstoppable. River Spirits are always up to date on the latest rumours, though any such information changes in the telling. Water Elementals are known by the name of their social grouping, whether this is Rain Spirit tribes of Ocean Spirit collectives.

Earth Elementals are timeless, numerous and relatively static. They shift over time, although their ire, once roused, is sudden and devastating. They struggle innately to learn things they did not know upon their creation, leading to a great deal of stagnation in Earth Elemental thought. Though considered slow and stupid, they are blissfully happy with their place in everything. They are known to sing to the mineral formations, causing wonderous resonances to echo throughout their chambers. Each bears and individual name with pride.

Realm Spiders

***TUESD&D PLAYERS GO AWAY***

Their lairs are messes of web adorned with strange trinkets glinting in the light. More often than not, the Spider itself will remain hidden whilst business is conducted, only revealing itself when required. Their forms vary somewhat, but the impression of hideous numbers of legs are common to all of them. It is known that they deal in two things - portals and information. They can weave portals between realms, but the cost is dear - a single memory of great importance.

The cost for information varies -

**edit - probably want to use this table instead.

D6	What does the Spider want?
1	The spell slot of a magic user, plucked from the mind.
2	A diary.
3	The dust of a lost and forgotten city.
4	Three thumbs, freshly gathered.
5	Someone’s ability to speak.
6	A beloved pet.

The Plane of Towers

***TUESD&D PLAYERS GO AWAY***

[music to read by]

The Plane of Towers is bleak and desolate. The titular towers burst from the landscape at skewed angles, all of them decaying. Anything could live in these towers, but a known inhabitant is the Realm Spider. For the price of an important memory, they can weave portals to allow return to your home plane. Information can be bought from them.

Each tower has d12 levels. Some of these may be below ground. The entrance will be on a random floor. Floors are not constrained by the size of the structure – they are as large as they need to be.

D30	Room
1	Realm Spider Lair – 80% chance of being present. 15% chance of other customers being present.
2	Larder – Randomly determine what the stored food is for. It should always appear appetizing until eaten.
3	Trap Museum – Everything in this room is trapped. A celebration to ingenuity and security conscious buildings.
4	Oracle – 30% chance of being ransacked. If not, the Oracle will give prophesy. The prophesy is locked in once spoken, this is the price to be paid.
5	Prison Cells – 1d8 cells, each with a 30% chance of occupants. These occupants are likely alternate party members.
6	Execution Chamber – Filled with the tools of messy, painful and slow death. 30% of being recently used.
7	Botanical Garden – All manner of strange herb and vegetable. 20% chance of sentient or carnivorous plants.
8	Exotic Zoo – Gilded cages contained a myriad of creatures fair and foul. Cages are nearly indestructible from the inside, but as delicate as the web of a spider from outside.
9	Sustenance Garden – The most meagre crops grown in poor earth. The crop is unnaturally bountiful, though only a trained eye would notice it.
10	Pool of Ooze – A stone bowl contains all manner of oozes, slimes and the like. The breed and grow, with the occasional individual slipping out of the edge before fleeing. Pushing over the bowl releases 100x d10 slimes, who object to such treatment.
11	Neutral Meeting Space – Two dimensional entities at war are conversing in this neutral ground. The party are viewed as either intruders or negotiators.
12	Observatory – Alien stars and the beasts that swim the void can be spied from the machinery here. The void beasts can see you too.
13	Apothecary – Dubious cures and tinctures for the discerning adventurer.
14	Splitter – This room allows the various alternate ghosts of the party to interact. 1d4 copies of the party flicker into reality in this room. Each will be one step further removed from the original than the last.
15	Room of Heads – A huge hall containing the heads of various species in jars. These jars contain preservative. The heads are very much alive and aware of their plight. Many are screaming.
16	Mechanical Animal Room – Clockwork animals stalk around this room. They are ignorant of organic life, and will only harm you by accident – they literally cannot see you.
17	Fire Chamber – A huge pillar of flame erupts from the centre of the room to the ceiling. It speaks, although it is quite mad from its extended lifespan – fire is meant to die and be replaced by its children every 7 seconds or so.
18	Meditation Chamber – This simple chamber is very calming, and helps those who take a moment within to focus their minds.
19	Dojo/Practice Room – A huge variety of arms and armour line the walls of this chamber dedicated to martial glory.  Weapons removed from the room are revealed to be practice dummies.
20	Feasting Hall – The food looks great. It is all putrid. The host of the feast appears to be laughing endlessly – he is crying.
21	Throne Room – A simple, unadorned stone throne rests in this cavernous chamber. One who sits on the throne sees their court before them, and will be reluctant to leave it behind.
22	Tomb – A single great sarcophagus rests in this highly ornamented burial chamber.
23	Skin Flier Aviary – A huge collection of the native Skin Fliers rest here. They are passive if not disturbed.
24	Library – A collection in a language foreign to conventional planes on a subject even more alien.
25	Adventuring Assets Store – The travelling magic store finds itself here. The storekeeper is most distraught that more than one of the party has entered.
26	Architects Workshop – Plans of various towers are scattered about, but the notes on contents are indecipherable – written both in a strange language and then encoded.
27	Theatre Room – Masks, costumes and great reams of screenplay are scattered about this room. There is a stage.
28	Personal Study – This cosy room has a leather upholstered chair of human proportions, a roaring fire and many detailed, eloquent works on the choice subject of cannibalism.
29	Brewery – A huge number of beverages are on the brew in this room. The yeast is psychic yeast, and screams for help even as they continue to hasten their own demise.
30	Statuary – Many statues line the walls. Some of them are smashed into pieces. There are corpses in this room.

Describing the Plane of Towers

Twisted ugly landscape grins

with rotten cracked tower

teeth scraping sky painted

in bruise and disease. To

glimpse it once more would

damn me thrice over, yet -

that plane haunts every

moment thinking or idle

tainting a reality more

wholesome with it's

foulsome canker.

The Towers

Nothing lives

within those

towers and no

hand built them.

Nothing changes

or ever has

yet the towers

are twisted

old and bent.

Crooked fingers

claw at the

sky, rotten

tooth in bleak

jaw resting

uneasy - pained.

Skin Fliers

They ride on

stretched skin

taught twixt

talon tipped

fingers too

human for

such horrors.

In that land

they can be

seen yet not

heard - the

cry of the

chosen echoes

from those

ugly towers.

A Dead City Twitches

***MORE SUNDAY GAME CONTENT, GO AWAY PLAYERS***

The city is dead, but things still stalk the abandoned streets and empty buildings. On top of this, something lurks from the cataclysm so long ago.

D6	Random Encounters within the City.
1	Animate dead, driven wild by confinement and tragedy. They hunger for intruder-flesh, for the red stuff of life so long absent.
2	1d4 Active defence golems on patrol. Will not attack unless the party is somewhere they shouldn’t be.
3	An insane golem bursts in through a wall, destroying everything in its path. If defeated, a new structure have been revealed.
4	A foraging party of Kausikans, looking for supplies for their hibernating brothers and sisters.
5	The long dead whisper and moan in the ears of the living in strange tongues. They ache to be remembered.
6	An ambush team of cave-adapted humans, inbred and wild from cannibalism and a lifetime within the tomb of their people. Some will be wearing rotting, rusting and corroded ancestral armour and wielding weapons made of metal twisted with bone.

With every drop of blood split, it grows. Every HD worth of damage dealt to living things empowers it, giving it one HD. Once it reaches 4 HD, it manifests and kills. A presence ushered in by the Kausikans, it haunts the streets and follows the living. It sees moisture, not light. Whilst not manifested, it calls out to those who dwell in this place, drawing them like moths to a flame. When destroyed in it's physical form, it simply hides for a week before the process begins anew. It is old.

Artefacts of the Last City

***LOTFP PLAYERS GO AWAY***

There are two main classes of artefact in the Last City. Those which belong here, and those brought in by the Kausikan invaders. These are just some of the notable things an expedition could discover.

The Last City	Kausikan Serpent Peoples
A tablet detailing their golem-craft. Could be used as a manual. Incredibly valuable and rare, and extremely delicate.	Endless spell-slates can be found with Kausikans living, dead or hibernating. Most are broken, and the majority of the whole ones replicate the effects of modern spells.
A blessed weapon of Serpent Slaying. This will be a short sword, spear of axe, and has been blessed by the war-deity to serve well against all serpents. Considered magical vs Serpents and grant +1 to hit.	Beaten copper collars, usually found around the necks of dead human skeletons. These slave collars are bound to a rod, and cannot be removed once they are donned.
A tablet containing a spell, either clerical or arcane. These are mostly found in temples or libraries, and many will be cruder versions of modern spells. Some are unique.	The slave rod can be used to inflict inhuman levels of pain on all of those wearing collars at once. It cannot be used on a single slave. It is a small stone baton with a glyph on one face.
A carved bone rod which grants power over crops, giving the wielding the power to visit blight or bounty upon that year’s harvest in the region. Using it binds the user to the region until the harvest.	A small polished rock, which seems to have some inner quality. It is a seeing-stone of the Mountain Things. Significant military personnel of the Kausikans would carry these.
The three-tablet Prayer to a Rain Spirit, which visits powerful rains to the region. It can be used to flood creatures out of their nests, or to ensure a good crop. These tablets caused the war which resulted in the death of the city.	A variety of weapons with uncomfortable balance and grip, but perfectly serviceable. The wielder will not be able to forget the otherness of the weapon. They thirst for the blood of mammals, especially that of humans. These weapons deal +1 damage to all mammals, and score a critical on 19-20 against humans.
A fantastically light suit of mail made from the scales of some long-extinct fish. The scales shimmer and wink in the sun. It functions as leather with the protection of chain, but stealth is difficult.	A strange metal spike with a great deal of intricate carving around the point. These Stone Killers were used to punch holes in walls and to obliterate the famed golems of the last city.

University has done a terrible thing

and wrought changes most foul.

A thousand tear
stained stitches
of desperate
thanks gripped
in the hand of
a young man
terrified yet
grappling with
twin sticks.

Dying bird of
poor metal make
plunges in
shearing the hull,
parting the decks
obliterating
plane and ship.
Fire atop the waves.

Dig yourself a bigger hole

***SUNDAY GAME PLAYERS GO HOME PLEASE***

Designed for use with this, which has just been updated.
Whenever a structure is revealed, roll below. Rolling several times can generate connected structures, districts being unearthed etc. Particularly large structures being rolled means only an entrance has been unearthed. Roll on the Contents table to determine randomised contents.

D100	Structure
0-2	Mausoleum
3-20	Market
21-31	Workshop
31-65	Poor Housing
66-70	Rich Housing
71-77	Temple
78-85	Barracks
86-90	Palace
91-95	Library
96-00	Golem Manufactory

D100	Contents
0-15	Human Skeletons
16-30	Salvageable Equipment
31-36	Usable Equipment
37-47	Mixed Skeletons
48-50	Baked/Stone Tablets
51-58	Destroyed Golems
59-63	Active Golems
64-70	Insane Golems
70-75	Hibernating Kausikans
76-86	Minor Wealth 3d4SP
87-95	Medium Wealth 10d10SP
95-97	Treasure Hoard 12d20 x10 SP
98-00	Cave Adapted Survivors

The following guidelines are in addition to the randomly determined content.

Libraries always contain 1d6 intact tablets, a 50% chance of mixed skeletons and a 20% chance of Hibernating Kausikans.

Golem Manufactories always have 2d10 deactivated or half-completed golems, 1d4 active worker golems and a 50% chance of 1d2 insane golems. The insane golems will be fighting the active golems, or each other.

Temples always contain a treasure hoard, human skeletons and a 70% chance of baked tablets.

Barracks always contain mixed skeletons, in addition to a collection of salvageable and usable equipment.

Mausoleums always contain human skeletons and many (1d100) offerings of minor wealth.