Unorthodox Grimoires

The supernatural is always seething beneath the surface and many find that knowing the lore of these creatures is most useful for survival. Combined with the modern school systems and the ubiquity of the ability of practically anyone to read and write books, journals and articles, this thirst for knowledge has resulted in the creation of a wide variety of makeshift grimoires and unconventional guides to the supernatural.

Random Grimoire Table
Roll a d8
1 - Corrected Good Book This kind of grimoire usually takes the form of a worn and cheaply produced hotel bible (or a similar holy text). Strangely, the book has been "corrected" with many underlinings, added notes on the margins and blacked out or even missing pages.
2 - Research Notes This grimoire is composed of multiple articles and research journals that, while innocent individually, together seem to hint at some unspeakable horror. A version concerning demons might include articles on the anatomy of the brain, theological essays and notes on the research of multiple personality disorders.
3 - Diary/Journal This grimoire is actually the lifestory of one who has seen too much. Policemen, hunters, sewer workers and especially undertakers often see things in their lines of work that they do not dare to speak, but are compelled to put on paper. It usually has a much more practical view of the supernatural.
4 - KUBARK manual This grimoire differs from the others that it's a government-sanctioned secret guide to the supernatural employed by various secret agencies. These types of manuals are very useful for methods of containing and especially killing the creatures, but offer little insight to their nature.
5 - Scrapbook The opposite of the manual, this book is a collection of newspaper clippings and conspiracy theories, devised by some paranoid madman in his cellar. However, the theories often have a hint of truth at their heart, but usually even the most insane theories pale before the true nature of the subjects.
6 - Game guide This grimoire is disguised as a guidebook to a game, such as poker and chess. Upon closer inspection, the book seems weird and out-of-context, with its long descriptions of the White Knight or the Ace of Swords or its strange, cryptic sentence structure.
7 - Art piece Another disguised grimoire, this type is usually written in the form of a play, musical notes or poetry. Often the notes or the words themselves are somehow magical. These grimoires usually contain spells, due to the ease of hiding the secret chantings and melodies.
8 - Stories This type of grimoire is usually a book of fairytales, usually of the old mature type. The stories themselves seem altered; often lacking a moral lesson and describing creatures uncommon to the public with very specific detail.

The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune is a unique single-action revolver that belonged to the famed monster-hunter and gunslinger Johnny Claine. The Wheel is easily recognised by its striking blue colors with a silver finish and the 'X' carved on the handle.

Johnny was known for loading a different type of magic bullet into each chamber, so that a quick succession of shots would most likely hold the bane for the creature at hand. This quirk of the gun was amplified when Johnny lost the weapon and his soul in a game of Russian roulette.

The Wheel has an unopenable cylinder, and the weapon therefore cannot be loaded by traditional means. However, after depleting, the gun reloads by itself. The first bullet is always random and impossible to determine before firing. The others follow the first one always in the same order, according to this table:

Roll a d6 for the first bullet
1 - Witchbane: Anyone hit is unable to use magic.
2 - Silver: A werewolf or other shapeshifter hit cannot transform from its current form.
3 - Sacred: Demons and undead take damage until the bullet is removed. Turns water into holy water.
4 - Web: The target is enclosed in webs and cannot move.
5 - Rust: The wooden bullet pierces metal and armor and causes it to rust.
6 - Seeking: The bullet automatically hits its target or the nearest creature if targeted at no-one.

All effects last until the next sunrise. All the bullets except silver and rust are made of cold iron.

The Wheel of Fortune can be destroyed only by using it in a game of Russian roulette and winning. (Which since the gun is always full, would be quite difficult.)

Moggorod

Moggorod, the Buried City, was once the greatest center of chymical knowledge and research in the known world. Now, however, it's a frozen ruin inhabited only by vengeful ghosts, coal-fueled iron-golems and desperate scavengers.

It's not known why exactly the Frozen Holocaust occurred, but the effects were clear; the city was covered in a layer ice and snow many meters deep overnight with all its inhabitants frozen to death, apparently instantly. The only "living" things left functioning were the numerous golems used for factory and security work.

Rational minds blame the incident on Ice-9, a chymical substance that theoretically could cause a chain reaction and turn all the water it came into contact with to ice. Others believe that the hubris of the city angered the gods. Yet others say that the force behind the Frozen Holocaust was an ancient frost elemental, disturbed by the heat of the city's forges and factories.

Those who are not afraid of the rumours or stupid enough to brave the city's dangers of cold winds, incorporeal undead and automated security measures for the riches and secrets hidden beneath the frozen city find either immortal glory or an early grave. There are those veteran scavengers, however, who are said to know the layout of the tunnels in the snow and the fuel-fetching schedules of their black iron guardians.

Demon summoning

Demons, though often confused with devils, are more primal and protean in nature. In their natural forms demons are immaterial spirits, manifesting themselves as electrical malfunctions, weird shadows, radio interference and so on. To create a true demon, one must perform a summoning.

To summon a demon, you need a receptacle for the spirit. This vessel can vary greatly, though corpses and special homunculi are the most common. There is only one variable that never changes from summoning to summoning: human blood. The blood gives the demon its intelligence and hunger for life, twisting the spirit to the raw animal needs of the body it didn't have before. During the summoning, the blood and the demon with it bond with the receptacle on a primal level, and if one is destroyed, the other follows.

To get the most powerful and useful demons, one needs to use lots of blood and a mostly human corpse. The corpse is usually spliced together using animal and human parts appropriate for the task. The most common formulae for this splicing include a bat/monkey for messenger imps and familiars, a goat/human for a dark satyr and many many others from minotaur warriors to octopus-headed psychics. During the summoning, the demons power twists the corpse to its proper proportions, turning the flesh soot black and the eyes milk white.