d100 Ritual Killings

Sacrifice Details, for any awful game, roll d100

1, Multiple sacrifices, each must die as their father did

2, Murdered by exposure to terrible winds

3, Sealed in stone then dropped in the water

4, Wrapped in fine worm silk until suffocated

5, Wrapped in ancient skin and drowned

6, Burned alive by the sun

7, Scalded by lava or molten metal

8, Eaten by bacteria

9, Snake or vermin inserted into body, orifice sealed, eaten/poisoned from the inside

10, Force fed a cobra’s venom sac

11, Force fed 200 moth orchids

12, Buried alive 20’ down

13, Impaled on a steel spike

14, Impaled with a icicle of their own frozen tears

15, Decapitated with a knife of bone

16, Lungs removed with a knife of diamond

17, Tied with jade vines and eaten by eels

18, Thrown to crocodiles

19, Chained in iron and killed by a parent of twins

20, Strangled with an octopus tentacle

21, Dissolved in acid

22, Bandaged and embalmed, organs removed

23, Cut with silver wire

24, Held with pig leather and branded with pokers

25, Carved open with ram’s horn

26, Asphyxiated with jackal’s innards

27, Force-fed eyes until stomach ruptures

28, Blinded, then deafened, then silenced, then slain

29, Crushed beneath bodies

30, Torn by rabid animals

31, Drugged and consumed by pirahna

32, Given to panthers

33, Bound with own hair and stung by crawling things

34, Drawn and quartered by blind horses

35, Killed by those most trusted

36, Held down with coffin nails and eaten by vultures

37, Killed with a knife 900 years old and never used

38, Killed by poison from an untouched cup

39, Slain by lightning

40, Given a plague

41, Locked in an iron maiden

42, Skewered on a dagger that once killed a king

43, Killed in combat with another sacrifice

44, Driven mad and made to crawl

45, Punctured in 9 places

46, Stomach filled with black beetles

47, Skull crushed with a stone hammer

48, Cut in five pieces of equal weight

49, Covered in salt and pierced by stakes

50, Cannibalized by children of 10 years or less

51, Ripped open with volcanic glass

52, Sewn to functionless limbs

53, Pelted with rocks from above

54, Boiled in a vessel cast by a bastard

55, Crucified inverted, pierced with copper pins

56, Skin removed with a malachite scalpel

57, Hung with catgut

58, Caged and pierced from north, south, east and west

59, Sawn open with a weapon lined with tiger’s teeth

60, Sliced slowly with a razor used to cut seven men

61, Suffocation in ash

62, Fed the shards of cup from which only a virgin has sipped

63, Killed by a family member

64, Killed by their own hand

65, Buried underneath bleach-white items

66, Bled out from small cuts in the shape of sigils

67, Disemboweled with weapons of nickel

68, Throat cut wth the hooves of animals

69, Drowned on dry land with the waters of three oceans

70, Drowned in priests’ saliva

71, Drowned in mother’s blood

72, Drowned in mother's milk

73, Drowned in the purge fluid created when organs decay

74, Rent with fragments of a lovers’ skull

75, Neck pierced from eight directions with ebony

76, Taken apart a half-inch at a time

77, Drilled open from three directions at once

78, Killed unwittingly by a friend

79, Killed as the sun rises

80, Battered with a gemmed gloved

81, Killed in sleep

82, Multiple sacrifices, each kills the next

83, Three killed in one motion

84, Smothered in a funeral shroud

85, Kept alive in torture 9 days

86, Immersed in tar

87, Pushed from a tower

88, Set alight by sunlight focused through lenses

89, Immolated in a bonfire fueled by human fat

90, Throat stuffed with tongues

91, Exsanguinated by hundreds of leeches

92, Killed as a summoned thing emerges from its body

93, Sacrifice’s members delivered to four corners of the earth

94, Clawed by crows, called by the ceremony

95, Crippled then left to fend off hyenas or coyotes

96, Eviscerated at the point of erotic climax

97, Parietal lobe perforated by ancient bronze forks

98, Killed by shock

99, Killed by a weapon handled by 7 honest men

00, Stabbed and dropped in a black pit

Donate to the Demon City Patreon

d100 Ritual Locations

When it's time for you or the bad guy to perform a ritual the text might just be like "Hey wherever's clever" but rituals are notorious for making irritating demands, like:

a) You gotta be in this specific place here in this continent/hex/latitude-longitude (in which case that's a plot device all about where the GM wants the game to take place) or it might say...

b) You gotta be in a place with certain characteristics.

If b, roll on the table below. This list is skewed toward places more likely found in an urban setting (not so many sheer cliffs and volcano edges) so I can use it in Demon City but there's probably enough here that you can trade out 10-15 of them and make it your own for whatever campaign.

1, A fortress never taken

2, A place reclaimed by green things

3, A tomb without a body

4, Where none have died

5, Where two-hundred and nine have died

6, A desecrated church

7, A dethroned king’s home

8, Where 13 died by fire 15 years ago

9, Where a nun has drowned

10, A circle of white elms

11, Where a great battle was once fought

12, A place of witch-burning

13, A hidden place, known only to seven souls

14, A place of standing stones

15, A peak with a view of an ocean and a valley

16, Where the northern lights were seen not 5 days before

17, The last home of 9 brothers

18, A cold peak

19, A place dark but warm, where echoes can be heard

20, A frozen lake

21, A place consecrated to ignored gods

22, A place of prophecy

23, A place without vermin or growing things

24, A river without fish

25, A place of executions

26, A house that has sunk beneath the sea

27, A place of buried animals

28, A home to spiders

29, A room with iron walls 

30, A circular dais

31, Beneath the sea

32, A saint’s crypt

33, A place of desperation, where fortunes are lost on games of chance

34, Where at least 99 marriages have begun and then failed

35, Where 50 rituals have been performed before

36, A structure standing at least 600 feet above the ground

37, The site of a nuclear explosion

38, Where the radiation reading is at least 200 mSv

39, A place diseased and so abandoned

40, The last home of a rat king, died happy

41, Between two places of unmarked graves

42, Equidistant from three rivers

43, An ossuary with the bones of a killer, a kind man, three slaves and a beast

44, A waterway that has never seen the sun

45, Where 5 roads come together

46, A place with poisoned water

47, Where the wind can be heard but not felt

48, A swamp forest, beneath alders or willows

49, A great city's geographic center

50, A house owned by two wicked men and then a widow

51, Where a prisoner slew a jailer

52, Where unused gallows stand

53, A garden where nothing grows

54, Where birds eat corpses

55, A windowless church

56, A nameless street with seven houses

57, Where animals eat their own

58, A place with 700 stones

59, A room of ice

60, A room with 8 walls

61, A place of 5 revenges

62, A cannibal’s home

63, Beneath a dead oak no less than 20 feet tall

64, A flooded room

65, Two places, simultaneously, on opposite ends of the Earth

66, A prince’s only home

67, A cave never before seen

68, A derelict vessel, veteran of four seas

69, The site of a future massacre

70, Where the dead are buried five deep

71, Where a wolf has slain a stag

72, A place with a puzzle unsolved

73, A place without steel or glass

74, On disputed territory

75, Where a bishop has died

76, Where children drown

77, On a slope facing east

78, On an island devoid of inhabitants

79, The oldest place of worship inside city

80, In a lucid dream, one step each night

81, A place that has seen one suicide a year

82, A bridge between warring factions

83, On dueling ground where friend has slain friend

84, A liar’s palace

85, A snow-covered river

86, A scavenger’s lair

87, A place lit only by fire

88, A place of total silence

89, Where lightning has struck

90, Where women without mercy pray

91, A place never owned

92, A place built by the caster, with no other hand

93, A structure with many walls but without nails

94, A place with 6 ghosts

95, Where a thousand died of hunger

96, A place destroyed by winds

97, A place of ignorance, where the caster is not known

98, A burned place

99, A place from which the sun glows green as it sets

00, A place of volcanic rock

And now, a word from our sponsor:

Donate here

Those Who Dwell In Tears And Disputation

DEMONS

(useful for any game, but made for Demon City)

Demons come from the negative universes and their variety is not comprehensible or finite. Their ranks have numbers and the numbers are inside the meaning of them and the means by which they traverse the way between their places and ours. They desire first always to tempt and then to deprave and then to destroy. They prize most that prey that takes to bait.

Animals will avoid demons in any form unless they are specifically under the demon's influence. 

The summoning and banishment of demons is a matter of ritual and careful timing, requiring great premeditation. They can be controlled only by mortals who know their true and individual names, and even then any demon will follow the letter of a request while perverting the spirit toward goals of their own devising.

Here's one...

Those Who Dwell In Tears And Disputation (Demons of the Sixth Order)

The Demon of the Sixth Order is a parasite—it comes in unseen places, summoned by slow steps, extruded from the antiplane, a growing thing. Resentments make it strong in this world, and when it is large enough it will speak.

It eats ironies and destroys through a council of inversion: this must become that, tenderness into contempt, desire to disgust, generosity and empathy into jealous protection of the self. The decay into antithesis will seem reasonable--to protect this child you must keep it safe from other children, obviously.

The demon drinks the distance between the purity of the intention and the grief it inculcates. It runs its fingers down the necklines of its pawns. Its movements are impossibly fluid.

The true names of these demons have six letters, such as Xith'Ix and Hollow or else they have 10,000,000,000,000,666,000,00,000,000,001 letters and require entire languages to express. They are summoned when a sufferer curses--unknowingly and in earnest--the names of six comrades respectively on six successive moonless nights, or else in a ritual requiring the tumors of six diseases from six creatures of land-dwelling species, each dropped living into six successive baths of six compounds containing six ingredients each, and eaten by six unloved souls.

These demons can be detached from their victims via exorcism after slaying the entity's physical form (the thing will begin to re-grow if only one of these steps is taken). The rituals of exorcism (from any culture) inevitably take 6 hours and the incantations must be spoken by six virgins. The corpse of the slain demon must be encased in six successive carbon vessels, each encompassing the last like a Russian doll, and buried 6 feet below the earth.

(stats for Demon City)

Calm: 10

Agility: 4

Toughness: 1-10 (see below)

Perception: 7

Appeal: 0

Cash: 7

Knowledge: 9

Calm Check: 7

Special abilities:

Demonic: Demons don’t need to breathe or digest, don’t age, and are immune to poison, etc. and cannot be mentally controlled with psionic abilities. Animals will avoid demons in any form. Firearms can hurt but never kill demons, they must be dismembered.

Sixth Sense: All demons are supersensitive to danger, hostile emotions and signs of past trauma or the supernatural.

Immunity: Only physically hurt by carbon.

Parasitic Permeation: The demon generally begins its manifestation on Earth in the home of the summoner--with Toughness 1, all special abilities at Intensity 1, and mentally attaches itself to a host (the host must be present at the summoning but after that distance is irrelevant). Both stats grow by one point each time the host harms an innocent in any way, up to a maximum of 10. At its largest size the creature's coiling bulk will completely fill a room.

Selective Visibility: A victim that unwittingly summons a Demon of the Sixth Order will be unable to detect it until the creature harms a friend.

Despoiling Touch: The demon intensifies the target's most basic positive trait and forces it to dominate their personality until it becomes unwholesome. The target may make a Calm check to resist vs the Intensity once per minute if allies are around, and once per day if alone.

Envelopment: Any victim who can be made to destroy the person they love most can be enveloped into the body of the demon--one round after a successful grapple check--becoming a part of it.

(Possibly) Necromancy: Those Who Dwell In Tears And Disputation may have access to other Necromantic spells (any number), which they will use at Intensity 9.

Weaknesses:

The holy symbols of any faith cause a demon to make a Calm check or flee until they are out of sight. The intensity of the Calm check is equal to the degree of fervor of whoever is wielding it (1-5 based on Calm, 0 for nonbelievers, 5 for fanatics). In the case of an incidentally encountered symbol (a glimpsed church steeple, for instance) the intensity is 2.

Touching a holy symbol, including holy water, does damage to a demon as an ordinary physical attack.

Speaking the true name of demon causes it great pain, and the creature must make a Calm Check against the speaker’s Calm each round to avoid obeying the attacker.

Demons of the Sixth Order cannot leave the building where they are summoned.

This kind of demon can only be slain by with weapons made of diamond, graphite, or some other allotrope of pure carbon. High-carbon steel won't do it.

-

-

-

And now, a word from our sponsor...

Donate to getting this project done here.

D&D Subway Maps

So this guy made a map of the old Roman Roads in the style of a modern subway map:

Click to enlarge obviously

This includes a lot of ancient trade routes and well-traveled paths, the details of which roads were formal "roads" with names (a lot of them) and which were sort of simplified or combined are on the page.

Some things about this style of map for D&D:

-Well it definitely makes things easier for players

-If overlaid onto a standard hex map, you get a difference between "traveling on the roads" and "wilderness" which should probably be reflected in terms of speed.

-The original idea of D&D hex-maps is the area was mostly untrammeled wilderness and you were exploring it. So if you wanted, you could draw a wide gameological difference between traveling on the road and not--so if you're not actually into the travel-slog and doing a political campaign and PCs are on the road you could declare that moving along a known trade route was like "2 encounter checks per populated area then you're there" or "2 encounter checks period" or even "if you use the main roads, you just get there, period, going off-road is for wilderness adventures".

-Each road can have its own encounter chart, based on geography (like the Via Claudia has all these amphibious encounters) or what the landmarks on the route are (like people on the Via Suicinaria are more likely to be amber traders).

-It's also just fun to describe a town as "Along the Via Aquitania just past Reims" or whatever.

-Routes also suggest plot hooks, like why isn't there a major road between Florence and Pisa? Impassable terrain? Are they at war? A monster lives where the road should be? Anyway someone should handle that.

-You could totally have a fantasy setting where things are called "The Blue Road", "The Grey Road" etc. or even do other visually identifiable things like "The Snaking Road", "The Straight Road" etc. to make it even easier for players to get what's going on. It's always fun when players start using the language inside the setting.

-Unless I'm mistaken, Yoon-Suin doesn't have a map like this, despite trade being a big deal in the way David describes the setting. Maybe surveying the land to lay down a trade road is a campaign.

And now a word from our sponsor...

Support this blog and offend someone named theeb lycan by donating to the Demon City kickstarter

My Favorite Opinion In The History Of Games

Ok, so you know what an X-Card is?

It's like for games where people might get freaked out. (For some people: all games.)

It's a card you hold up when the game is genuinely traumatically freaking you out and then everybody dials back whatever the offensive thing is.

The theory is: sometimes if you're freaked out, you're too freaked out to explain to your fellow gamers that you're freaked out, so you use this card to say it. X! And they all then know that means stop.

Ok.

------------

So recently this person (a storygame fan, naturally) suggested that the X-card should be mandatory for all games.

And I was like "Well then why not for all activities ever? I mean, you can be doing anything and then be triggered and then not be able to explain why?"

And they were like Yeah, the X-card should be mandatory for all activities.

So this is the cutest opinion in the history of games.

But then I was like--y'know what, I know lots of people who have triggers. Maybe it would actually be a good idea if there was just a trigger ap that actually called up a message saying "Hey this is difficult content for me" with translation options.

Mandatory though. Online RPG people, jesus.

That would make murder trials hella fun, right?
-
-
-

Retropost Sunday: Gamer Lunch Flowchart

(original)

Retropost Saturday: So It's Like A Space Fish That's Old...

The Alphabetical Monster Thing was a popular feature on this blog if you're new here. Totally finished it, too. Here's how it started...


I was looking through the AD&D Monster Manual and was struck forcefully with the following insight: monsters that start with "A" suck.

Aerial servant

Invisible? Boring.
Air elemental? Boring.
Summoned by clerics? Boring.
Here's the only good part: "If the aerial servant is frustrated from completion ["frustrated from completion"?] of its assigned mission it becomes insane, returns to the cleric which sent it forth, and attacks as a double strength invisible stalker."
Let's not mention how invisible stalkers are also boring.

Ankheg

This is one of those rare Gygax-invented monsters that gets absolutely no love from anyone. Nobody likes them, nobody hates them, nobody thinks they're funny, they're just one more giant bug. Being a big M John Harrison fan I have a soft spot for insects in medieval settings and still just can't bring myself to write "d4 ankhegs here" on a map. I think it's the name. Sounds like a verification word.

Ant, Giant

Within the insect-and-arthropod community, I'm pretty sure "ant" is synonymous with "square". As in, there's a bunch of wasps, spiders, flies, and cockroaches hanging out and they're like "Come onnnn, man, roooadtrip!"
"Awww, I don't know, Jimmy."
"Ok, man, look: you can crawl up into the van and come with us and have a blast seeing the world, or you can put on your tie, and go to work, and do whatever the Queen says, like some fucking ant."
"Awww, Jimmy..."

Ape, Gorilla, and Carnivorous

My theory is: there are Ape People and there are Monkey People. Monkey people like monkeys because they are funny. Also, they are creepy, clever, and decadent. The perverted elf princess in the silk-swathed tower made of jasmine and murder has a pet monkey--for sure.

Ape People are different: ape people tend to be fans of what I call "hairy" entertainment: Conan movies, Jack Kirby Comics, Zardoz, Planet of the Apes (naturally), these:

For these people, King Kong actually had a shot against Godzilla, and the giant ape is the finest monster of which one could ever hope to dream.

I confess to being more of a pretentious, scheming Monkey Person than a fun-loving, good-hearted Ape Guy, so the idea of asking a wizard to take time out of his or her busy schedule just to deal with some fucking gorilla just seems basically disrespectful. Though I will say that this thing is awesome:

Axe Beak

Does anyone care about the axe beak? Ok, didn't think so...

Ok, so, see? The A's are hopeless. If you go beyond the Monster Manual, the only other "A" monster that ever got any traction is the Aboleth.

Aboleth

These were supposed to be sort of creepy Lovecraftian menaces from the deep. But if you never read Lovecraft when you first got ahold of the Monster Manual 2 because you were a little kid at the time then this is just like a really fucked up whale that hates you.

If it wasn't a classic, like a dragon or a hydra, then you pretty much had only the illustration to go by to figure out what the fuck is the idea with a monster.

Strangely enough, I am right back in this position with my players now. This is how meeting an aboleth would go with my group:

Me: "...and it looks...like...this!"
KK: "What the fuck is that?"
Me: "It's an aboleth, an ancient and inscrutable race that lives deep beneath the sea, older than man, older than the tides, older than the gods, older than...."
Mandy: "So it's like a Lovecraft thing?"
Frankie: "What's a Lovecraft thing?"
Daniel: "He was like this science fiction writer who wrote about, like, big monsters that looked like that."
KK: "So it's like a space fish that's old?"
Connie: "Can I pickpocket it?"
-
-
-