Silent Bell of St. Dorbaine and d12 Relics of the Church

Saint Dormaine helped found the early church and was later mutilated by the removal of his uvula and tongue, so that he would be unable to cast spells.  However, the saint was so precious in the divine eye, that he continued to speak, pray, and cast spells.

Even when he was struck down during a sermon, his head removed, and then burnt, the saint continues to speak without pause.  His melodic voice filled the chapel and inspired his followers.

He is the saint of evangelism in Hesaya.

In the Holy City of Coramont, there is a cathedral dedicated to him.  At the top of cathedral is a huge bell.  Like its namesake, this bell lacks a tongue, and so it is silent when rung.

Or at least, silent for most people.  Only the truly faithful can hear it.

It calls them to secret masses.  It strengthens them on secret holidays.  Sometimes it even rings when the rope is not pulled.

Sometimes the bell only rings for one person, or for a group.  Sometimes it even rings for blasphemers.  Sometimes it leads the faithful out of peril, and sometimes it condemns them.  Sometimes it even speaks with the voice of Saint Dormaine, and bestows prophecy.

d12 Relics of the Church
Magical abilities only function for clerics of the church.  Each relic is also worth an XP bonus when turned in to the church.  This XP bonus is shared by all members of the party.  All other part members enjoy sobering dreams of heaven and hell.

1 - Tongue of St. Dormaine, Speaker of The Truth
When this mace is rung against a shield, no speech is possible in 30' except that which is in praise of the Authority.  Demons of 1 HD or less must also save or silently bleed to death (from the ears) over 1d6 rounds.

2 - Hand of St. Gustau
This skeletal hand is held together with silver wire and boiled leather.  It grants telekinesis for 30', Strength 8.  Additionally, the bearer can choose to lose a hand instead of suffering the effects of a failed save.  The sacrificed hand instantly ascends to heaven, where it will await the cleric in the afterlife.

3 - Jaw of Ingvar, who defied The Tyrant
This fire-blackened jawbone trembles when in the presence of a dragon or large reptile.  It's bearer suffers no negative effects from being swallowed alive (suffocation, crushing, acid).  Additionally, all fire damage is reduced by 1 point per die.

4 - Liver of the Unknown Saint
When this liver is held in hand and prayers are continuously spoken, all poisons in the holder's body are postponed.  After each hour of continuous prayer, the holder may make an additional save against any ongoing poison.  While praying to the Unknown Saint, a small flame appears on the tip of the bandaged liver, like it was a lamp.

5 - Crucifix of St. Almahd
Anyone who is willingly crucified on this 10' crucifix drops to 0 HP and then must make 3 saves vs death.  The effect then varies depending on how many they succeed on.  If all three succeed, they get +1 Wisdom and permanent immunity to bleeding damage and blood magic.  If two succeed, they get +1 Wisdom.  If 1 succeeds, they get +1 Wisdom and -1 Con.  If all rolls fail, they die without chance of resurrection.

6 - Mummy of St. Iasumaya, the Lantern Atop The Tower
This leathery mummy is preserved by the natural oils and lacquers that the saint ate for the three years before his dehydration ceremony and subsequent living mummification.  It is sitting in the lotus pose.  Anyone who sits at the feet of the mummy and meditates is immune to the effects of starvation, dehydration, and aging for as long as they meditate.

Remember: you don't carry holy relics around in a SACK
you need a RELIQUARY

7 - Femur of St. Telluchus, who is called The Devoured
The bearer of this well-gnawed bone is worshipped and obeyed by dogs everywhere.  They can also turn wolves (in addition to undead).

8 - Ribs of St. Cavurha, the Great Martyr
The bearer of this shattered bag of ribs is immune to pain and torture.  The bearer deals double damage when bashing a skeleton with a bludgeoning weapon.

9 - Remains of St. Kurelda, who was immolated by witches
If the bearer of this bag of ashes dies from fire damage, they instead turn into an ash cloud with 1 HP (treat as gaseous form).  At the end of one minute, they reform, exactly as if gaseous form had expired (still with 1 HP).  Burning to death more than once per day is (obviously) traumatic and may require saves vs. psychology (morale penalty, insanity, whatever, depending on system).

10 - Skull of St. Grendelweiss, patron of moths
They say that the skull of St. Grendelweiss was transformed into quartz upon his death.  The bearer of this relic is aware whenever someone attempts to read their thoughts, memories, or dreams.  Additionally, they can spoof false thoughts/memories/dreams which the snooper now accesses.  Lastly, the bearer speaks constantly while asleep, monotonously chanting prayers and scriptures.  Attempts to muffle or hide their nocturnal proclamations will have negative effects.

11 - Heart of St. Carnelli, who fed the Companions
If any part's of the bearer's body are eaten, they will regrow overnight.  This applies to bite damage from hungry beasties, but it also applies to body parts that are used to feed teammates.  A character can feed himself and up to 3 others this way.

12 - Genitals of St. Olmado the Chaste
This mummified penis is contained in a leathery scrotum, held closed with a drawstring.  It is adorned with a single bead of lapis lazuli.  The bearer gets +4 to save against charm effects.  Additionally, anyone who kisses the relic gets an additional save against anything affecting their flesh that was caused by a failed save, or can be cured by a successful save.  (Such as demonic pregnancies or parasites.)

now this is a RELIQUARY

FIS (Feral Infant Syndrome)

Something spooked the horses.

There are two leading theories about Feral Infant Syndrome.  The first is that it is a type of lycanthropy, which only affects certain infants, and is brought on by the sickness that is always present in moonlight.  The second theory ascribes it to faeries and their ilk, and claims that after a faerie has stolen a baby away, it replaces it with a Feral Infant, which is the source of both fear and wonderment among honest men.

Feral Infants do not stay in their beds at night, but instead leap from their cribs and wander the streets.

Laying awake in your bed at night, was that a cat that you heard yowling underneath your window?  Something woke you up, but was it the neighbor's goat? You've never heard it cry like that before.  Didn't you close that window before you went to sleep?

Feral Infants are possessed of an agility and strength far beyond their daytime selves.  Newborns that are too weak to lift their heads are suddenly capable of scampering up a drainpipe.  It has been said that they fight like cornered weasels.

Their nocturnal activities are varied.  Sometimes they travel around singly.  Sometimes they travel in packs.  They break into houses, gorge themselves on cheese and milk, and despoil what they cannot eat.  Or chase down stray cats and kill them in dark alleyways.  If threatened, they will hiss and bite.  If seriously threatened, they prefer to disappear down storm drains and mouseholes (which they can do with a 4-in-6 chance).  Only rarely will they seek the death of someone.

Adventurers who notice the pink-skinned imps shitting in their rations and seek to strike them down would do well to remember that at the end of the day, these are someone's children.  Feral Infants that are killed (brought to 0 HP) have a bad habit (2-in-6 chance) of crawling back into their cribs before expiring.  And in most communities, the penalty for killing a feral infant is the same as for killing a normal one: death.

And in many communities that 'suffer' from packs of feral infants, there is a strong, native pride in them.  Why be ashamed of such vital, energetic youth?  In these communities, feral infants are seen as something worthy of pride.  Windows are left open and milk left on the sills.  Many people seek out rituals or herbs, in order to entice the same transformation in their newborn.

Of course, these communities rarely share this secret with outsiders.  Especially not paladins or witchhunters.

It is said that feral infants who grow to adulthood become dhampir, who seek shadow but do not know it.

No, that's not right.  Feral infants grow up to become sorcerers of fey blood, and have the scent of scentless forests.

Or they flee into the forests and become druids, or perhaps bugbears.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that people speak of some darker, overarching intent the bind the feral infants together.  They sometimes coordinate their actions when they have no method of communicating, or behave with intelligence or knowledge that they should not possess.  For example, a parent attempting to restrain their feral infant by locking it in a cage will usually be assaulted by the other feral infants in the city, who will attempt to free their fellow.

Feral infant activity peaks during the full moon, but they are invariably quiescent during the new.

How to Use This in your Game

Put it on the random urban encounter tables, obviously.

Feral babies don't need much lore, other than "Although they are feral babies who bite out the bottoms of your pockets, they are someone's babies and you probably can't just kill them the way you would kill a rabid dog."

They occupy the same monster-space as urban imps or gremlins.  Run around, break shit, kill pets, despoil food.  However, their logic is (maybe) a little more straightforward than an urban gremlin, plus they have the complication that people won't thank you for killing them.  Also, they're babies who hide in cupboards and throw knives at you.

Homemade Unicorns

They are playing some game of their own invention, but the rules of the game make no sense to me.  (Perhaps there are no rules.)  They scamper and clop heavily up and down the stairs, their horseshoes sending up sparks where they contact the flagstone.  Even from the kitchen, I can hear their braying and reedy laughter.

They are young, my unicorns.  They are so young that they have not fully grown into their hooves, or the heavy architecture of their knees.  Their backs sway when they trot.  Their hips are heavy and unbalancing, and when I let them in the house they will invariably knock something delicate from the top of a table.

I must punish them when they are not careful around my glassware, but it is with love that I do so.  My unicorns know this, and that is why they always come back to me.  They crowd around the food trough when I fill it.  And when the bread scraps are gone, they nuzzle my hands and beg for more, with gentle bleats.  I stroke their long faces and comb their downy-hair.  I hold bring them blankets at night, when they have nightmares.  (And they have so many, poor things.)  They love me, my unicorns.

And in the mornings, I rub ointment into their pink skin, and massage the cartilage of their joints.  Every day, I practice my profession by smoothing out their scars.  I mend the red-white seams of their body, where the flesh is still puckered and angry.  I am so good at this that by the time they are adolescents, they barely have any scars at all.

Perhaps there are others who know more about healing than I do, but if so, I have never met them.  I look at their pristine bodies and I am proud.

In some places, their bodies have begun to revert, or to reject the grafts.  The skin peels back from hooves, or some stubborn ligament begins to slough off the bone.  Or else the mule's teeth (that I so lovingly collected) will begin loosen in their sockets.  Oh, how I hate waking up to find bloody teeth in my unicorn's bedding!

I don't mind repairing them.  It is my craft, after all.  It just gets so tiresome after a while.  Scalpel and saw, needle and thread.  The flesh is stubborn, but I am more stubborn still.

When my herd is in good health and I am not too busy with my other projects, I will send my helpers out for more supplies.  They'll bring me back a baby and a foal.  Always the healthiest and brightest.  Nothing but the best will do for my unicorns!  They are all brought down in to my workshop, where we throw a party.  Carrots for the foal, milk for the newborn, and cider for my helpers.  As for myself, I might drink a small glass of rosewater or two.

The operation takes almost three days.  It is exhausting and makes my arthritic hands ache terribly, but it is worth it, I think.  Afterwards, what is left of the foal is buried in the garden, behind the tomatoes and near the creek, along with the superfluous parts of the infant's skeleton: hands, feet, forearms, and the frontal sections of the skull.

In the old days (the good old days, do they still say that?) I was able to buy a real unicorn's horn for my children.  But now all that I can manage is narwhal or elephant, which is nice enough, but lacks the nacreous luster of a real unicorn's horn in the sunlight.

The implantation of the horn is the final step.  The drilling and hammering actually function together as a partial lobotomy.  Take away the pain.  Take away the language and loneliness.  Smooth away the ego like the rough scar that it is.  What is left is a creature of grace.  You have only to look in their eyes to see innocence there--true innocence.  In this cruel world, it is a commodity more precious than gold or alicorn.  And then the skull is sealed up with gold.  The skin is sewn up, like a purse with all the world's wealth inside it.

And then I lead my new unicorn outside, into the sunlight.  The first few steps are always the hardest, and the hip sockets might not have sealed completely after the resectioning, but the new unicorn is always welcomed to the herd.  They cavort in the meadows, my clumsy unicorns.  And when they tire, they will come back into the house and lay their heads in my lap.  I will stroke their hair and tell them that they are beautiful, because they are beautiful.

They will be coming back soon.  I will go heat up some milk.

-From the journal of Agamond, Wizard of Asria, Beloved by Unicorns.

High Elves and their Creation Myth

There are two kinds of elves.

Low elves (high elves and wood elves) are the cliche ones.  They build tree-houses, live in harmony with nature, and are highly magical and aloof.  They worship beauty in all of its forms.  Beauty is what they are all about, since beauty is a special sort of goodness all of its own.  You'll also find them living on beautiful islands, beautiful caverns, and atop beautiful meadows.  They won't want you there, since you are smelly adventurers.

True elves take the magic and the aloofness and turn them up to 11.  They are the ancient masters of the planet.  True elves were once low elves until they enjoyed certain magical enhancements in the womb and during their maturation.  In adulthood, they enjoy a level of health, beauty, intelligence, and magical aptitude that dwarfs any other race.  They are the perfect creature.

Unfortunately, true elves are going extinct because they no longer have the resources required to turn normal elf fetuses into high elf fetuses.  So, all of their children are merely low elves, which they despise the way you would despise monkeys if your wife constantly gave birth to them.

High elves are immortal, and the least of them is a more powerful than any human wizard.  Without a society, and with dwindling numbers, most of them spend their days pursuing obscure agendas of their own.  Actually, you'll find them at the bottom of high level dungeons as an alternative to liches because (a) I'm tired of liches and (b) elves are easier to talk to, aren't all necromancers, and aren't obviously evil.  If you ever meet a high elf, running her golden fingernails though the ichor of a dead godling's eyeball on the 15th level of some dungeon, you should probably run the other way.

So, yeah, powerful sorcerer-kings of a former age.  Waged numerous genocides against the lesser races whenever they felt like it, with varying degrees of success.  Godlike magical prowess.  Elitists who claim to know more about the universe than anyone else.

That's only mildly interesting.  What's more interesting is their creation myth, since they are atheists in a world where no one is an atheist (because giant faces appear in the sky with alarming frequency and also clerics exist).

this is the douchiest looking wizard I could find
and he's still not douchey enough

The High Elven Creation Myth

In the days before the Time of Fire and Madness (where recorded history begins; everything was either on fire or insane) high elves were rulers of this world and countless others.   Reality was bent to their will and the physical laws were pudding under their soft feet.

High elves created all the other races.  There are no gods, only a shared mythos that is sometimes given form by human faith.  Wood elves, beautiful and wise by human standards, are their degenerate cousins.

Halflings were bred for small size, clever minds, and quick hands.  They would travel in ships that flew up above the clouds and between the stars, where there are other worlds.  They needed to be small so that they would require less space in these ships, where size and mass were at a premium.

Dwarves were bred to be laborers.  Once, there were many kinds of dwarves, but now there are only the miner-dwarves.  They excavated the many worlds of the high elves, and also stripped the resources from mountains the floated in the airless spaces between worlds.  Because they were created to work, they were not given creativity.

Orcs were bred to be supersoldiers.  They are fast, strong, and cunning.  They were regulated alchemically by various elixirs and potions that were pumped into the orcs' brains.  And even now, where you find high elves you may also find alchemical orcs, who have realized the full power of their birthright.  There is no mightier warrior on the planet than an alchemical orc with his ancestral regalia, nor no thrall more rigidly controlled by its master.

Humans were the original stock.  The first creatures that high elves bred were themselves.  In the Time Before, the rich and brilliant bourgeoisie of human society enhanced their children to make them smarter, healthier, and longer-lived.  After generations of improving their children, the high elves declared that they were perfect, and turned their attention to creating the other races to serve them.  Currently, true humans are nearly extinct, and can only be found on isolated enclaves beneath the surface of the moon, where they are kept as holy pets.

Subhumans comprise most of the people on the surface of Centerra.  They come in different colors.

Low elves (PC elves) don't believe any of this, and instead have a much more generic creation myth.

Does any of this affect the generic fantasy milieu of Centerra?  Nope.

Last Night I Dreamt of Monsters

Guinos

They look like hairless weasels with kissy-face lips and bulging eyes.

Once a guino bites you, it never lets go.  An enzymatic/magical reaction fuses the guino to its host, like a male anglerfish.  (Are there any other examples in biology where two separate vertebrates permanently fuse together?)  They are poisonous, but they only release this poison into the host's bloodstream when they are damaged or killed.  Never hurt your parasite, and it'll never hurt you.

Eventually, the whole guino will digest itself, leaving only a mottled sphincter on its prey that belches out a baby guino every week, which promptly scuttles off to seek its own prey.  They also 'fart' periodically.

Having a single guino parasitize one's body has no detrimental health effects (though they may have severe social ones).  Multiple guinos on a single creature can have pretty severe health effects, though.

They are a delicacy in the Darklands, so much so that Darklanders will intentionally infect a cow with several dozen guinos, in order to harvest the young ones.  (Infested cows lose their hair, as well as most of the bones in their head.)



Skeleton Jellies

They look like a skeleton that has been colonized by a ruby-red ooze from another dimension.

They are completely immune to damage.  Anything that would deal damage to them, doesn't.  They count as undead.  They have 8 Str and 1 HD.  The challenge to players is to find ways to neutralize them.  (I've had players throw them down wells, shove them into heavy-lidded sarcophagi, and pile furniture on top of them.)

There is a strange song that (if played on a set of chimes made of meteorite steel) can compel a skeleton jelly to show you the way to the Mountain of Consequence, where the a brave adventurer can journey to the Blackness Between the Stars.

Glassbabies

They look like gelatinous babies with long limbs, semi-translucent and with an completely inhuman skeleton visible inside them.  They glide around on their 'head', completely upside down.  They scratch with their four limbs.

They can only be damaged by attacking their reflection in a mirror.  The mirror takes an equal amount of damage (so most mirrors will shatter after a single blow).



Biomancer's Revenant

These were once normal men and women.  Then some fucking biomancer scooped out their brains and filled their skull with dragonblood and needles from a bone needle man (link goes to a Google Drive pdf that I wrote: Book of Mice).  They behave like people who have been magically dominated (sweaty, unsubtle, wide stares) until they are killed.

After a biomancer's revenant has been killed, they immediately explode into four separate bio-revenants, each of which is equal in HD to the original creature.

The Visceral Revenant is blood, guts, and muscle.  It clomps around and bashes shit, but it struggles to maintain it's shape without it's bones.  It's surprisingly strong.

The Bone Revenant is pretty much a regular skeleton that's just covered in blood.

The Skin Revenant will float around and try to smother people.

The Vital Revenant is an incorporeal spirit.  It will fly around and attempt to possess people.

The Minor Revenants don't really matter in combat, but there's about 20-30 of them.  These are slithering puddles of bile, aggressively rolling eyeballs, and a tiny shuffling mound of hair.  These bits and pieces aren't strong enough to directly attack a PC, but maaayyybbbeee a PC might slip on an eyeball and fall, or a puddle of bile could digest an unattended spellbook.  Use your DM discretion to have a few tactically relevant revenants running 'round, and some minor hazards.

CAPTION CONTEST
WINNER GETS A BIZARRE-BUT-SINCERE COMPLIMENT
BEGIN!