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Candle Color is: White
Today is blog entry 10. Ten days have passed and ten blog entries have been made. I was pondering what to write about while I was at work today and it struck me that I have so many things I could possibly share just from the D&D campaign that I might consider a schedule or theme for each day of the week.
I am not totally ready to make a hard and fast list yet but I do have a working outline that I plan to go from for a few weeks to see how it goes.
Wednesday - Wonder Workers
Today's theme will focus in broad strokes on magical casters in my home campaign. From week to week this may bounce from arcane casters to priests to cultists or present a list of homebrew spells, that sort of thing.
I thought today I'd expand on what I had talked about briefly on the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG google+ group where I delved a little into using Mythos ideas in my campaign history and deity roster. I have been a fan of the writing of Howard and Lovecraft for years and pulling hints of elder beings, ancient gods and powers of chaos was pretty much a guaranteed deal when I began work on my home campaign.
In this entry we will touch on two cults. The Cult of the Piper and the Cult of the Rag Man. Both of these cults are somewhat obscure and related to the Mythos theme creeping around the edge of my Kingdom's Chimerical campaign setting. Priests of these two cults may cast spells only up to cleric level three although the High Priest of each cult may cast spells up to level casting level five. At character level three and five I grant priests / clerics a religion based special ability unique to that particular sect in addition to their spells.
The Piper
The Piper is an entity, often unseen, which seems drawn to those suffering an extreme personal crisis. Whatever the being(s) is or are, they seem to feed on the dark emotional suffering and extreme stress of those going through a great personal loss or trauma. The Piper begins by trilling its eerie keening piping noise near the edge of the village or rural home of its intended target. Over the following nine evenings a growing mist accumulates in the surrounding countryside until a fog so dense it limits vision to a mere twenty feet covers the area for miles around. Each evening the Piper draws closer to its victim. Each evening the victim must make a saving throw or plunge into violent and usually homicidal madness.
The Piper makes rare appearances but is credited with a fair and growing number mass murder events scattered throughout the more isolated villages of the North.
Priests of the Piper while aligned with Chaos are not necessarily evil in nature. They travel the countryside as investigators and their goals are more to ward off the Piper through proper observations, odd sigils and rituals and protect the wider community than anything else. A priest of the Piper is a strange combination of detective and cultist. When she arrives at the afflicted community her first task is to attempt to identify which member of the community is the Piper most likely targeting with its madness inducing song. Only one member of the community will be so changed and sometimes it is not altogether easy to figure out who the next convert of the Piper will be.
Level Three: Palm Reading
Once per day the priest of the Piper can read the palm of any humanoid. They can offer advice and insight into one event in the future. This advice can be tucked away by the individual and used later as a one time reroll of any dice roll although the second roll must always be taken. The priest can also use this ability to immediately identify the palm of the intended victim of the Piper's song should the priest choose to read the palm of the specific person being attacked. This ability regenerates at high noon on each new calendar day.
Level Five: Fashion Charm
The priest of the Piper may fashion one charm a week from the knuckle bones of any humanoid. All ten knuckle bones from the same skeletal remains must be used for this purpose. Any humanoid creature will suffice. Each bone is marked with a special sigil only known to the priests of the Piper. Any character carrying this charm may burn its minor magic for a one time +1 bonus to any roll OR the charm can be worn around the neck of a character and it will automatically end the assault of the Piper against that person, should they be the Piper's intended target on the very next night. When this occurs the charm crumbles into dust. The Piper will move on to a different and likely distant new hunting ground when its intended target is lost.
The Rag Man
The Rag Man appears as a cloak shrouded, hunched and tall humanoid as it moves about the shadows of the city where it lairs. It typically feasts on beggers, street urchins and other dwellers in the back alleys and margins of society like a lion picking off the weak from a flock of sheep. In a similar fashion to the priests of the Piper, the priests of the Rag Man maintain their small shrines faithfully in cities scattered throughout the world and when signs of the Rag Man's presence is discovered move into action to protect the wider community.
Level Three: Disease Resistance
Living as they do in the filthy parts of the city and often friends to beggers, lepers and others living on the margins the priests of the Rag Man develop a +4 bonus to any saving throw related to disease when they reach third level.
Level Five: Create Poppet
Using twine, sticks and various bits of trash the priests of the Rag Man create simple poppets which they string up through alleys and around a neighborhood to ward off the Rag Man and encourage it to move along. These stick figures seem to function as a limited protection versus any Mythos creature or Outsider for any character standing within thirty feet of the stick figure. The protection provides a +2 bonus to AC, saving throws and attack and damage rolls versus Mythos creatures or Outsiders.
Happy Gaming!!!
Ed Kann
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