Beastmaster Pits

This idea came to me while watching an episode of Samurai Jack. It's basically a psychotic version of the druid.
The Beastmasters form packs of primitive scavenger scum who live in the outskirts of a city, usually in a garbage dump or a scrapyard. A Beastmaster pack is lead by from 1 - 3 alphas, one or more of whom is a shaman. These shamans have the ability to command all kinds of animals (and even some animalistic humans) and force the minds of an animal and a human to change places. A Beastmaster pack always has a cadre of beasts with them, ranging from carrion birds to vermin swarms and frenzied, degenerate dog-things.

The favorite entertainment/justice system with many Beastmaster packs is to exchange the minds of two humans with two dogs and then pit them against each other in their makeshift arena. Meanwhile, the human bodies with the dog spirits inside are kept in their cages. When one or both of the combatants die, their original body lives on, and the beastmasters use the resulting creatures as shock troops and disposable cannon fodder.

Usually the Beastmasters pit captured outsiders against their champions, as the dazed victim usually has little control of his new body. Some prominent alphas even manage to intimidate the shamans to give them a sort of immortality; moving their minds to new bodies as they begin to age. Though this is a risky business, as the alpha is easy to betray when mindswapped.

The New Death and Others - a review

Though I usually don't do reviews, I thought this was a nice chance to mix this blog up a bit.

So, The New Death. It's a collection of short stories and vignettes, 94 pages long.
It also contains a few poems, of which Under the Pyramids (based on the H.P. Lovecraft/Harry Houdini story) was my favourite. This poem, and other gems like The Face in the Hill, Rumpelstiltskin, The Jeweled City, The New Death are the best parts of the book, and I heartily recommend buying and reading the ebook for those stories alone.

However, even Under the Pyramids has a problem that pervades the whole book, however. The quality is very variable, which makes me think that Mr. Hutchings could use a good editor. As it is, there are some stories that seem to be there just for the sake of it. This, however, wouldn't bother me nearly as much if it weren't for the good ones. Especially in the case of the poems. It is extremely jarring to read excellent, flowing verse, only to come to a part that uncomfortably stumbles on the words. I think the book would be better off with careful cultivation and cutting of the worse material. Sometimes less is more.

Though the main cause of this problem is that the book's style is all over the place, which is not a bad thing in itself. I can easily see that some parts that didn't appeal to me would appeal to another. The bright side is that this allows almost anyone to find something they like.

The New Death and Others costs 99 American cents and can be bought at Amazon or Smashwords. I recommend reading the preview pages at Smashwords, though it doesn't have some of the best parts of the ebook. Overall, I'm glad I read this.

Blackwater Magic

For centuries the witches of the Blackwater swamps have used and refined their own type of magic. As their magic is based on the lore of local plantlife and numerous pacts with the minor spirits of the brackish waters, they can be identified outside their domain by the vials and wineskins of murky water they carry around. They cannot perform their sorcery without this water.

The water has numerous magical properties when used by the witches.

When drunk, the water forces the drinker to fall into a deep, nightmare riddled sleep, where he is besieged by shadows of the spidery, tentacled water spirits of the Blackwater swamps. When the victim wakes up, (usually after 3d6 x 10 minutes, when he manages to escape the creatures, although high willpower will help here) he will be riddled with a vile stomach disease that causes him to vomit near-constantly, but is not lethal. The upside to drinking the water is that the victim is healed of all other poisons and diseases.

When applied to a wound by a witch, the liquid infects the wound and the mind of the victim, making mind affecting effects more useful.
When used on wood or other organic materials, the water causes them to rot and burst in a matter of seconds.

If offered a sacrifice of blood, ample quantities of the water can be used for greater effects, including summoning a spirit or healing wounds. The higher ranking witches are able to conjure the minor swamp gods themselves to aid in battle and divination. The water can also be used to raise the dead, though sufficient skill is needed so that the target does not become a mindless hungering undead.

The network troubles should now be over. I'll be updating more frequently from now on. Also, expect a review of the ebook The New Death and Others later this week.

Chrono-Assassins

[Sorry, no picture this time. I've been moving apartments and recovering from the said move during these past two weeks and we still don't have a passable internet connection x.X]

Chrono-Assassins are mysterious operatives that hail from the haunted deserts of the Southeast. Only few people even know about them and none have been known to hire their services. They only work for their almost monastic secret order, the Order of the Hourglass. Some say that the assassins work for Chronolords, powerful liches that have uncovered the secrets of the sands of time and now lurk in timeless dimensions, sending only their agents to work in the material plane.

The Chrono-assassins have control over time, due to the secrets taught to them during their meticulous training. First, they can see a few seconds to the feature with their singe mechanical golden eye, giving them a 50% chance to evade any attack they have the speed and mobility to evade. They are also never caught surprised, unless sleeping. Any given chrono-assassin wields one of two weapons; a gilded bronze khopesh or a silenced firearm, usually a rifle of exquisite detail. Each assassin that has the rifle also has 1d6 chronobullets. These bullets affect their target 1d6 rounds after being fired, usually allowing the assassin to shoot their target a couple of times and, if lucky, even leave the crime scene before the target is hit.

Some veteran (and with a chrono-assassin this might imply thousands of years of training) assassins have additional powers, including jumping in time 1d6 rounds into the future or even the past, effectively summoning a duplicate from the future to fight alongside himself. After 1d6 rounds, however, the original disappears as he travels back into the past. Any wounds done to the original also appear on the duplicate, including death.

The Hangman's Mask

The Hangman's Mask is actually a noose. To create this noose one must first braid a rope out of the hair of hanging victims, preferably those who were innocent and framed. The noose must then be used to strangle their executioner during a crescent moon.

The enchanted noose can then be worn as a necklace, allowing its wearer to alter his appearance to those of the victims. Though the appearance can be changed at will, all changes after the very first one and any attempt to remove the noose will cause a strangulation roll:

The wearer rolls a d10, with a +1 modifier for every victim he has avenged (by killing the one who framed them, usually). If the result is 4 or less, the noose will attempt to strangle the wearer. While strangling, the noose will lessen its hold (though not coming off) only with the use of Remove Curse or Dispel Evil. Otherwise it loosens only when the wearer dies or the noose is destroyed (it's flammable and easy to cut.)

The noose will automatically try to strangle anyone who framed one of its victims.

The Red Corps

The Red Corps a.ka. the Red Angels are a mercenary military company that first mobilized in the Weird Wars. The Corps is unique in that it's composed almost entirely of medics and usually only a few soldiers from the company are recruited per mission. The angels are easily identified by their crimson trenchcoats, blood-shot eyes and anemic look.

The Red Corps was founded by Major Rothmann, a medic and a magus who specialized in blood magic. He found that the ability to quench, control and purify blood was an invaluable ability on the front lines of the first Weird War. His superiors, however, condemned the nigh-demoniac blood-rites heretical and kicked him out of the military. Rothmann, just a captain then, decided to found his own mercenary company.

A Red Corps blood-mage can serve in battle by rapidly healing and causing wounds, neutralizing poison and inciting fear and rage in the enemy. They are quite useless against undead or mechanical forces however. And while peerless in the field of battle-surgery they can't raise the dead like their necromantic brethren in the Black Battalion.

The Fractal Planes

During the last century, mathematicians have discovered fractals, mathematic formulae that create shapes with finite size but infinite detail. A simple equation, no longer than a line of text, can create a world within a world within a world. The tiniest outcropping becoming a massive mountain over a small scratch that becomes a continental canyon.

Some fractal cosmologists even believe that the nature of the planes, time or cosmos itself is fractal, with ourselves just too small and large to see the whole picture. They seem to be at least somewhat right, as some of them have created demiplanes and pocket dimensions with these new equations, the most horrific being the Maze, an infinite prison plane containing a maze within a maze within a maze...

The more sinister ones want to change the whole nature of reality by altering the grand equation they believe to be behind the workings of the multiverse, the formula that defines everything in the cosmos from the largest galaxies to the smallest atom.

These are basically 3D fractals, if you haven't seen them, you should check them out now!

I want to apologize for the irregularity of these posts lately. I've been busy with starting my education at the university, which has eaten a lot of my time. I've been working on FACTS in the meantime, though. I'm beginning to suspect it won't quite fit into a pocketmod format though :/