St. Ferragun's Day

Every day of the calendar has its corresponding saint. Most of these saints are minor and not well-known, but St. Ferragun's Day is a well-known favorite.

St. Ferragun is the patron saint of wrestlers. Originally, his day was a time to challenge one's neighbor to a friendly wrestling match, but now the holiday has shifted, expanded.

On St. Ferragun's Day, anyone can challenge anyone else to a fight, as long as that person is outside of their own home. People who want to fight, but don't want to leave home, will hang gongs in front of their house, so that challengers can summon them. In rural areas, fights are scheduled weeks in advance, to accommodate travel time.

The streets are filled with duels, brawls, and wrestling matches. The windows are full of spectators.

Refusing a match brings a curse. Challenging a underpowered opponent brings a curse. So does unnecessary roughness. Ferragun is a saint, after all.

The challenged person chooses the terms of the fight, usually. (You cannot challenge wizards to wrestling matches.)

Traditionally, the loser gives a belt to the victor. Beware of swaggering young men wearing a dozen belts. Every village has a badass.

The day after St. Ferragun's Day is St. Vivione's Day, the patron saint of healing.

How to Use This in Your Game

Want to wrestle the blacksmith who cheated you last session? Want to see how badass the king's champion is, in a situation where he isn't actively trying to kill or arrest you?  Hell, the king's challenger might even invite one of the PCs to a friendly match in the rose garden, followed by high tea.

It's also a good day to have your players fight a procession of weird challengers (maybe one per PC) or an entire rival adventuring group. And if your party isn't interested, they can just stay in their rooms.

Where Vampires.Come From

Vampirism is, first and foremost, a dietary restriction and dangerous allergy.

"Newborn" vampires are often disappointed to find that all they've gained is a set of weaknesses and a certain callousness. Magical powers and nigh immortality come later.

Young vampires often become murderers, and as they drink more human blood, even the most reticent and meek vampires quickly become arrogant psychopaths.

Or, vampires band together and take up brigandage. Vampires make the most stylish bandits.

Or, most commonly, vampires gather near the front of churches, where they beg for bloody alms. The nation of Noth has had an epidemic of vampires, recently. It is difficult to enter the church without hearing cries of, "Open your wrists, kind pilgrim! Just a drop! A drop for a dead man!"

Elder vampires are believed to have been eradicated by the vigorous purge campaigns of the Church's witch hunters.  The only known remaining elder vampire is St. Cascarrion, the leader of the Third Lantern and the Church's witch hunters.  The Grim Saint spends most of his time sleeping, awaiting a summons from the Patriarch.

New Biome: Star Beast Gravelands

Cosmic megafauna swim between the stars above Centerra. Star whales, void wyrms, and thousands of sundry species. The smallest is fifty feet long. The largest can be up to half a mile.

When these star beasts feel the hand of death upon them, they migrate to a certain part of Centerra. They fall from orbit onto an area about the size of Texas. Their scintillant clathrates burn away in the atmosphere, and the exotic metals of their eyes incandesce. Finally, they hit the ground, creating a crater and sending up a huge cloud of dust. 

This is only the start of the story. As soon as the star beast impacts, millions of eyes turn to face it. There are constant clouds over the Gravelands; star corpses are the main source of food.  And correspondingly, every thing is a scavenger.

Most of the colossal corpses that impact the Gravelands belong to never-before species. Space is huge and weird, and so are the creatures that live in it. And for some reason, a great many of them prefer to beach themselves on a particular plain in Centerra.

On rare occasions, the star beast survives the fall, and the first scavengers to arrive at the blast crater are in for a nasty surprise.

The first to arrive are the carrion harpies, whose song rots the flesh and clouds the mind.

Second are the armored ape-hounds, who indulge in vast orgies atop the corpse. They will give birth to thousands of pink babies before the corpse is fully consumed.

And of course, there are the grave lice, but they've always been there.

Then the cities of the necromancers arrive.

Kel Bethor, which walks atop millions of skeletal legs, the buildings swaying with the grace of a corpse.

Kel Dravonis, which is pulled by living slaves and walking corpses (although the two are often indistinguishable). The death knights of that place compete to build the most fearsome steed. Only the youngest death knights still ride skeletal horses. The elder death knights have augmented their 'horses' so much that each monstrosity is unrecognizable as something that was once foaled.

Gulgus is the city of the insect necromancers. They ride in giant undead beetles and adorn their carapaces with corpse candles.

The cites have only a few days to war with each other and harvest precious resources from the huge corpses. After that brief period of rampant butchery, scavenging, and thievery, the eels arrive like a tide of sludge, and no other creature is foolish enough to contest them for ownership of the star corpse.

Where Faeries Come From

Faeries come from the dreams of children. Each faerie is dreamed into life by a particular child, or the way that old, wise faeries tell it, they dreamed themselves to life.

Each faerie inherits a few traits from their dreaming child: language, regional knowledge, favorite foods, nursery rhymes, etc.

And because they come from children's dreams, faeries are wildly varied and inherently chaotic. The capriciousness of faeries is the capriciousness of children. The whimsy of faeries is the whimsy of children. The cruelty of faeries is the cruelty of children.

That's why faeries kidnap children. They take them away and put them to sleep. (They put them in diabetic comas by feeding them candy.)

Faeries prefer to approach children (and childish adults). Though they give kisses, they have no concept of sex. And although they kill, they do not understand death.

Faerieland is filled with sleeping children. Great mounds of them. Orphanages where they are stacked like firewood.

Some children are trapped in nightmares, and terrible things come out of their heads. But that's okay. Faeries can't even spell 'consequences'.

And if one of those children is woken up, somewhere a faerie dies forever. They don't disappear; they suffocate. Eyes rolled back, gasping, as nightmares curl around their heads.

What Mermaids Want

So, this weekend I ran a one-shot (that turned into a two-shot) for some friends so we'd have something to do between abalone dives.  The one-shot was nautical-themed, of course.

The game had some mermaids (HD 2, AC 13) who spoke in Dutch accents.  After their statblock, I wrote down their motivation, but these mermaids had two, instead of the usual one.

• To eat people.
• To trade juicy gossip.
• (They'll be content with either, but both is best of all.)

This led to some lovely emergent behavior, at least for me as the DM.  The mermaids came up to chat, but when the opportunity presented itself, they swam away with a dude and ate him.  Later on they came back to apologize (at a safe distance) to chat some more, since they hadn't had their share of gossip.  They even offered to share some of the meat (since the party was short on rations).  So, in my mind, the mermaids became nice, reasonable ladies who couldn't resist adding some easy protein to their diet.

The situation could have unfolded a lot of different ways, but most of the potential events would have had that same tension, I think.

The players might not have noticed the difference, but it made a big difference to me, as the DM, to figure out what the mermaids wanted to do next.

A lot of games list a monster's motivations after the stat block.  I think Dungeon World and Numenera are among those.  But I just want to point out that giving monsters two unrelated (or even conflicting) motivations can lead to some wonderful behavior.  Plus, it was a bit more fun for me, as a DM, to think about which goal the mermaids were more interested in pursuing at that particular moment, instead of just how to accomplish a single goal.

Side Note: Every NPC should probably have a goal as well, and usually a pretty visible one.

Anyway, I look forward to giving more monsters conflicting goals in the future.  Examples:

• Protect the nest.
• Make a new friend.

• Do not damage anything beautiful, especially faces.
• Collect meat for the master.

• Keep the sanctum perfectly silent.
• Throw intruders from the Precipice of Consequences.

• Stop the invaders!
• Kill nothing, not even an ant.

• Steal all the gold in the fucking world.
• Learn some new songs for the wife to dance to.

Even stupid predators could have two goals.  Could a purple worm have two goals?  Probably.

• Hunt.
• Protect the babies.
• OR Teach the babies how to hunt.