Tag: Hex Page 2 of 7

Hexopoly

On April 12, 2021

One of my players and playtesters (credited as sparkletwist in Genial Jack Volume 2) has programmed a fully playable version of Monopoly on Discord. She recently customized a version to play in the world of Hex, so I thought I’d share the rules. Having played this a few times now, I have to say I much prefer it to standard monopoly – spells add an extra dimension of tactical challenge, and some of the more unusual cards and features, like the Plasmic Woe potentially escaping and ending the game early, definitely enliven the usual Monopoly gameloop.

Everything below this point (including the wonderful art in a pastiche of my style, and the commentary on spell use) is sparkletwist’s content, lightly edited.

Rules of the Game

Unless noted, Hexopoly is played like standard Monopoly and all standard rules of Monopoly apply. All players in Hexopoly start with $2000 on Delirum Castle, and roll two six-sided dice to move around the hexagonal board, pictured here:

The board consists of the following types of spaces:

Property – There are twelve color groups representing land, as well as a group of four Marketplaces, and six Skycabs.
Delirium Castle – The starting space. Players also collect $300 each time they pass here.
Mooncross – The second corner. Players landing here collect a random spell card.
Nullworth/Spellcage – The third corner. Equivalent to Jail (and Just Visiting) in standard Monopoly. Magic may not be cast on this space, in or out of Spellcage.
Feypark – The fourth corner. Characters landing here may be given a gift, find a spell card, or be the victim of a strange fey enchantment, determined randomly.

Warded Ward – The fifth corner. Every time someone lands here, there is an increasing chance the Plasmic Woe will escape, immediately ending the game.
Go to Spellcage – The last corner before returning to Delirium Castle. It sends any player landing on it to Spellcage, just like “Go to Jail” in standard Monopoly.
Arcanum Tax – Replaces “Income Tax.” You must pay a tax of either 10% of your net worth or $300, whichever is lower.
Church of the Magistra – Replaces “Luxury Tax.” You must pay a tithe of $75.
Entropy and Bureaucratic Bijoux – Spaces where you draw a card and carry out its instructions, equivalent to Chance and Community Chest, respectively.

There are twelve color groups representing land, as well as a group of four Marketplaces, and six Skycabs. Rent for the colored properties works the same as in Monopoly, though the rents rise more slowly from group to group due to there being more properties. Brown, light blue, orange, red, dark green, and dark blue are unchanged, and magenta and yellow as well as the new purple, olive, light green, and pink groups have rent values interpolated from these.

Buildings cost $40 on the cheapest side of the board, increasing by $40 to $80, $120, etc., all the way up to $240 to build on dark green or dark blue. Buildings are salons (equivalent to houses), academies (equivalent to hotels), and universities, which can be built for the normal building cost by building again on a property with an academy. In addition to the normal limits on buildings, each color group may only have one university. The university rent is generally around $500 above the rent of a hotel.

Skycabs work like railroads, with rent instead being dependent on the number owned: $25 for one, $50 for two, $100 for three, $200 for four, $300 for five, and $400 for all six. Marketplaces work like utilities, where the rent is equal to the die roll times a multiplier, which also depends on the number owned: 4x for one Marketplace, 10x for two, 20x for three, and 40x for all four.

The biggest difference between Hexopoly and standard Monopoly is the use of spells. All players start the game with a random spell. You get an additional random spell card when you roll double sixes, or when you land on Mooncross, or on any university whether or not you own it. Some random Feypark events and Entropy and Bureaucratic Bijoux cards also grant spells.

Each spell card can only be cast once. Spells may be traded among players.

The following spells are available:

Charm – You talk your way out of paying rent owed.
Demonic Contract – A demon grants you $666, but you then lose $66 at the beginning of your next ten turns.
Haste – On the next roll, the target will roll three dice, and any pair of two counts as doubles.
Hexcrawl – Instead of rolling, advance 6 spaces.
Slow – On the next roll, the target will roll one die. Rolling doubles is of course not possible.
Mage’s Mansion – Add a salon to any property with space for one. The spell can be cast even if there are no salons available, nor does the property need to be in a complete group or built evenly. You need not even own the property, but it can’t be unowned.
Magic Missile – The target will lose between $20 and $50 [you could roll 1d4 to determine in an analog version of the game], and will roll 1d4+1 to move on the next turn. Magic missiles can also be cast at summoned monsters in order to get rid of them faster. Cannot be used during auctions.
Miasma – Places a miasma cloud on any property, which prevents rents from being collected. The owner must land there (or another property in the same group) to clean it up.

Mirror Image – Roll three different moves and you get to choose which one is the real you. The two illusions then vanish.

Polymorph – The target is transformed into a frog for 3 turns. Frogs neither collect nor pay rent, and cannot cast spells. They can engage in all other business transactions, because a frog buying real estate isn’t actually that weird for Hex.
Suggestion – Use to propose a “reasonable” trade that will be auto-accepted. A reasonable trade consists of a one-for-one exchange of property that does not break up a complete group, or a cash offer equal to the property’s value. This definition of “reasonable” of course can and should be abused!
Summon – Conjure a rampaging otherworldly beast that will move around the board causing costly damage to property— including yours, if it lands there. The Warders will eventually defeat it.
Teleport – Teleport directly to any property. You need not own it, but you will pay rent if you don’t. You don’t count as passing Delirium Castle.
Thieving Hand – Steal up to $200 (limited to cash on hand) from the target. Cannot be used during auctions.

Many winning strategies for standard Monopoly also apply to Hexopoly: you want to remain in Spellcage (jail) when there’s nothing left to buy, it’s still generally a good idea to build your groups up to three houses as fast as you can, the last property in each group has slightly higher rents so should be built first if you can’t develop the whole group, and there’s really no reason to unmortgage properties with trivial rents.

The board layout is somewhat different, though orange and red are still good investments due to increased traffic from players being sent to Spellcage and being let out. Of the other properties on this half of the board, yellow is still decent, and light green and pink are also about as valuable as yellow, albeit with somewhat higher rents and house prices. Light blue is slightly better than it is in standard Monopoly, since salons only cost $40 and the rents are the same. Purple and olive are a bit lackluster, but the houses are still pretty cheap; the rents won’t finish anyone off who isn’t already in bad shape, but the income can help you build and trade.

If you can get two groups, controlling one side or corner is good, as is holding one cheaper group and one of the more pricy groups, using the modest rents from the cheap group to pay for expensive houses on the expensive group.

Skycabs (railroads) aren’t likely to win the game by themselves, but, just like in Monopoly they can make a valuable secondary source of income, especially if you have a color group that you can’t develop due to lack of cash on hand. Getting four out of six skycabs is generally good enough (for a $200 rent) but if you can get all six, that’s even better. On the other hand, if you have only one skycab, it can make useful trade leverage to complete a group of your own, though you should avoid giving an opponent their sixth skycab if you can.

Marketplaces (utilities) are similar to standard Monopoly, but there are now four instead of only two, with rents of 20x and 40x the die roll for owning three or four of them. This means that if you own all four marketplaces, you collect an average of $280 rent, which also means that unlike Monopoly’s utilities, in Hexopoly, having the four marketplaces is a secondary investment equivalent to owning four or five skycabs. If a player can amass both a sizable number of skycabs and marketplaces, this is more dangerous than any single color group, even orange or red.

The biggest strategic change in Hexopoly comes, of course, from the spells. Here is a brief summary of some ways to use each spell effectively.

When to use charm is generally situational, but it’s best to save it for a rent that would impact you severely. If you can pay a $300 rent by mortgaging a couple of properties, that will probably be worth it instead of charming, especially if Hordewalk has a university on it. If you have one, you might also consider signing a demonic contract instead for one of these mid-tier rents.

Demonic contract gives you $666, which must then be repaid over time. This is actually a much better deal than mortgaging, though the steady cash drain can also ruin your day. It’s best to be proactive with demonic contract, as the trivial rents you collect each turn from single unmortgaged properties can go a long way to giving you the needed $66 per turn, but you can’t collect these rents if you’re already overleveraged. Also, pay attention to the demon’s face: he has a surly frown if you have enough cash on hand to repay your outstanding debt, and a wicked grin if you do not.

Cards like haste and slow are used to give some degree over movement, whether yours or that of an opponent. Haste is valuable for getting around the board quickly, and with 10 being one of the most common rolls, it might also be a good time to try casting haste if you’re on one skycab and hoping to buy the next one— or on an opponent, if you own the skycabs and not much in between! Slow is useful when an opponent is near one of your properties to give a greater chance of landing on it, or you can cast slow on yourself when you’re near a property group you’re hoping to buy.

Mage’s mansion builds a salon anywhere, but building a single salon won’t actually make you much money. If you can manage to get three of these cards, it might be worth developing a lone expensive property, but otherwise you should probably just save it to build a house on a group you’ve already developed. On the other hand, if things are going against you, might as well build that mansion!

Magic missile costs an opponent a bit of money, which is useful to annoy cash-poor rivals, but its real power is that it reduces the movement roll to 1d4+1, i.e., 2 to 5. The best time to fire a magic missile is thus when they are two spaces from the first property in a well-developed group you own— there is then a 75% chance they’ll land on it.

Miasma is useful for shutting down a high-rent property, and it can be even more valuable in collusion with another player who also has one; it is often a winning play to follow up another player’s miasma against a third player with one of your own on the same group.

Mirror image gives even better control over you move than haste or slow, and should be cast when you’re close to somewhere you really want to land, or somewhere you really want to avoid. You can also combine a mirror image with a haste or slow, giving you triple the potential value from the spell.

Polymorph turns you or an opponent into a frog, which cannot collect or pay rent. Polymorph is most often used offensively against a player with dangerous properties, but it can also be used defensively if you’re coming to a dangerous stretch of the board. It only lasts three turns, so try to time it so that it maximizes the amount of potential income lost for opponents, while not really harming your own prospects.

Suggestion lets you trade one property for another, regardless of what they are. Of course, this usually means completing a color group while giving an opponent a property they can really do very much with. On the other hand, if you’re on the receiving end of a suggestion, try to make the best of it. You’re going to have gotten something of a raw deal, but you’ll always gain something, so try to do what you can with your new gains, including trading it to another player. You can also offer the cash value of a property for a suggestion, which is a good way to pick up cheap property, as it ends up being far more valuable than its low retail price. Buying higher-end property like greens or blues is less worthwhile, and you’re better off making a trade.

Summon makes a rampaging monster appear at your current location which then goes around costing everyone money as it smashes up the board. The amount is randomized, but it is generally around $25 per salon, or $125 for an academy and $150 for a university. You generally want to cast summon if you have far less exposure than your opponent(s), and preferably cast it near their properties rather than yours. Also remember that you can shoot a summoned monster with a magic missile to try to get rid of it early.

Teleport lets you move to any property on the board, which has a number of valuable applications. If you own two properties in a group, you can teleport to the third one and buy it. Teleporting to somewhere near Delerium Castle is also possible, but it’s often a better idea to hold onto the teleport and try to fulfill a quest goal instead, especially if it is on a property you can then buy.

Thieving hand is pretty self-explanatory most of the time. The main thing to remember is that it is limited to cash on hand, so try to steal from a player who has at least $200. It may not always be most effective to steal from the richest player: often a player who has amassed a pile of cash doesn’t really have anything to spend it on. Stealing someone’s last $200 before they can build houses with it is sometimes a better idea!

Also remember that spells are commodities that can be traded, just like property.

Hexian Cosmologies

By Bearded-Devil

On April 7, 2021

In Roleplaying

The Six Planes

Although a multitude of pocket-dimensions, demiplanes, pseudo-planes, and otherworldly subcreations have been documented by metaphysicians, mystics, and wizards, reality seems to consist of six primary planes. Although there are innumerable cosmologies, religions, and metaphysical models, relatively few dispute the reality of these six planes, though some may posit the potential existence of further planes of existence that remain inaccessible. The six principal planes are as follows:

Anathema

Little is known about the alien universe known as Anathema, homeland of the Unspeakable Ones and possibly the Librarians themselves. Some have suggested that this plane of existence is the source of all magic, and that spells are in fact spurts of this aberrant reality spilling into our own world. Whether or not this is true, Anathema is said to be so fundamentally different from our own existence that no sapient mind native to this reality could withstand its strangeness – even the best-honed mind would be reduced to madness in moments.

The Dreamlands

The world of sleep is sometimes called the Dreamlands, a plane of existence to which countless dreamers nightly travel. Most confine their explorations to the misty outskirts of this amorphous realm, but studied dreamers can journey further to discover such places as Dylath-Leen, Ooth-Nargai, Quiddity, Fiddler’s Green, Pegana, and of course the famous Plateau of Leng, that spider-haunted region of horror from whence the Lengians originate. In the Dreamlands, logic and sense are amorphous and the very physical substance of the world is malleable. Many gates and portals to the Dreamlands can be found scattered throughout the planes, including the Gate of Horn in the city of Hex.

Faerie

Faerie is the world of the Fair Folk, more properly known as Elfhame to its denizens. Unlike the Dreamlands, Faerie is subject to very strict rules – albeit rules that mortals find bizarre or nonsensical. Faerie is saturated with magic: indeed, the elves might be said to be made of magic. The capitol of Faerie is the city of Gossamer, which lies at the converge of its four principal realms – Logris, Annwn, Tír na nÓg, and Mag Mell – but Elfhame functionally consists of countless individual fiefdoms ruled by powerful nobles, though there are also various unclaimed lands given over to strange beasts. Pathways to Faerie are reasonably common but difficult to find unless one knows where to look. Several can be found in the Tangle, as well the Feypark of Hex, and in many other places throughout the Mortal World.

Jotunheim

The world of giants, Jotunheim was once accessible from the other planes, but has ceased to be so, apparently knocked loose from the rest of the cosmology, reputedly due to an ancient conflict between its denizens and the Fair Folk, the “Enormity Wars.” Said to be a place of impossible vastness and scale, Jotunheim is now but a strange memory; however, remnants of this plane can still be found in the other worlds, including various giant-folk, trolls, and other creatures. Many speculate that oddities such as the Godwhale Genial Jack or the gigantic die that makes up the Propitious Isle may have originated from Jotunheim, but the most obvious fragment is the island-continent of Terra Prodigiosa, where trees tower high as mountains and the mountains themselves pierce the sky.

The Material Plane

The Material Plane, or Mortal Realm, also called the Waking World, is the plane on which Hex resides – a vast universe, of which the planet of Og is but one of countless others. Some believe that the Material is but one of infinite variations of the same plane, repeating endlessly through time and space. A veil lies between the Mortal Realm and the Netherworld, the Ethereal, a realm of shadows and ghosts, but it is not a true plane – more like a kind of membrane or liminal state between planes.

The Netherworld

Also known as Hell, the Netherworld is the afterlife, the destination to which the souls of the departed arrive. Some virtuous souls (or those with sufficient leverage over the denizens of the Netherworld) may retire to the various Meadows of Rest or choose reincarnation or the comforts of oblivion. Most souls simply dwell in the Netherworld as citizens, some eventually earning passage back to the world of the living via reincarnation. The truly vile are condemned to the lower levels of Hell – some say by their own guilt rather than any cosmic law – where demons of various kinds act as tormentors of the damned. The Netherworld is ruled over by the Chthonic Gods, primordial deities of earth and death and bone.

Twelve Cosmologies

Metaphysicians in Hex have a number of different cosmological models. Their speculations are largely untested, although travel between this world and others is certainly known – conjuration magic, of course, largely depends on such travel. Most of the denizens of other worlds, however, have no greater understanding as to the nature of the multiverse than do the learned cosmologists or ontologists of Hex. The following thus represents the most commonly accepted hypotheses rather than established fact, and constitute only a smattering of the many models and theories denizens of Og, and indeed the six planes of existence more broadly, have posited.

Notably missing here is any form of Elfin cosmology. The Fair Folk lack all religion save for certain forms of ancestor worship; this distaste for matters theological seems to extend to metaphysics, and when asked about how the cosmos is organized or how it came to be, most Elves respond with perplexity and indifference, wondering how anyone could possibly consider the question important. It has been suggested this may be a side-effect of Elfin egocentrism (though saying as much is not recommended in earshot of the Fair Folk themselves).

Celestial Toad Theory

According to the Dagonians, the entire multiverse is in fact being born aloft through the void by the Star Toad, an unfathomably huge being who swims the astral seas and leaps from cosmic lily pad to lily pad. The planes are in fact the Star Toad’s young, who are currently eggs being borne upon her back. These eggs will eventually hatch, ending the universe as we know it and transforming it into a new and sublime form. This is what Dagonian mystics believe occurred to Jotunheim. In Dagonian lore, the Netherworld is a stillborn larva which will never mature to adulthood, while Anathema is a form of mutant, a “rotten child”; the Mortal Plane, the Dreamlands, and Faerie, however, are coequal sibling-planes who will eventually hatch together and ascend into the void to become Star Toads themselves. This process can be assisted by observing certain spiritual and ethical axioms.

The Cosmic Web

In Lengian cosmology, the multiverse was spun into existence by the Mother of Spiders, with the Dreamlands at its centre. The other planes are in fact morsels which have become snared in the Cosmic Web. Their destiny is to be consumed by the Mother of Spiders so that the Cosmic Web can be sustained. Jotunheim, in this cosmology, managed to wriggle free from the Web and has now passed on to some distant corner of creation, beyond the Mother’s grasp. One of the Sacred Secrets of the Mother’s worship – revealed only to certain of Her most devoted nuns – is that the Lengian diaspora throughout the planes will hasten the Devouring, as the Lengians are the Mother’s literal young, implanted into the planes; eventually they will eat these planes from the inside-out, like the parasitic larvae of certain arachnids and insects.

Cultivated Universe Theory

This theory, common among Transmuters and specialists in the Old City, argues that the multiverse was not actively designed in the sense posited by Magisterialists but was rather “grown” intentionally by the Elder Species, often the Librarians specifically. As evidence for this theory, Cultivars (as the theory’s proponents are called) point to various Librarian technologies which seem to indicate such Elders were growing additional universes in this one. Many believe that Anathema is a level “above” the other five planes, as the homeworld of the Elders, though some have also argued that Anathema itself was likely cultivated by some other, even older species, possibly with no point of true origin. Certain radical Cultivar theorists claim that eventually universe-creation could be revived on the Material or other planes, producing new universes – and that perhaps, eventually, another version of Anathema will be created, which will then give rise to another version of the Elder Species, who will then cultivate universes similar to the Material, and so on ad infinitum.

Demonism

When asked about the nature of the universe, Demons describe reality in vertical terms, with the Netherworld at the base of reality, the bedrock from which all else emerges. According to Demonic metaphysics, the Netherworld is the bubbling cauldron of everything, a steaming, sizzling sea of energy which gave birth to souls, eternal beings who gradually explored the Netherworld and then began to ascend – first to the Mortal Realm and Jotunheim, where they took on physical bodies like deep-sea divers wearing suits to explore the reaches of the ocean, then on to the more rarefied realms of Faerie and the Dreamlands, and finally to the terrifying Outer Realms of Anathema. Over time, however, this grand ascent will cease and reverse, with all creation collapsing back into the Netherworld once more, perhaps forever, and darkness and death will reign illimitable.

The Godhive

The waspkin have a monist view of reality which is interestingly both broadly congruent and distinct from views such as Tenebrous Idealism or Cultivated Universe Theory. Pantheists and panpsychists, they believe that all beings, objects, matter, and spirit are enmeshed in a complexly branching network which together forms a harmonious totality, comparable to an individual consciousness, but greater than any individual creature’s mind. The Elder Trees, in this cosmology, are not “gods” as such but embodied symbols of the divine immanence of Nature, making visible what is all around us – the truth that everything is connected, and that what seem to be individual beings are ultimately One, a unity which human translators term the “Godhive,” though the waspkin have indicated the term is a rather anthropocentric rendition. In this sense, the six planes are simply parts of the Godhive – the waspkin refer to them as “Cells.” The waspkin in fact suggest that the six planes may be only the most familiar Cells of the Godhive, and that other Godhives may also exist, themselves but Cells in an even larger totality, and so on in ever larger and grander structures.

The Great Game

Cultists of the Antinomian describe the universe as a fantastically complex game which the Antinomian himself invented, played by a host of gods at the Laughing Lord’s table. Proponents of this viewpoint point to the prevalence of randomness in the universe as evidence that reality itself is governed by celestial rolls of the dice. In this theory, all living beings are essentially game pieces being moved about the “boards” of the six planes for the amusement of the Antinomian and his guests, playthings for the Lawbreaker. This view has significant overlap with the claims of Tenebrous Idealism and the Universal Play model, though followers of the Antinomian suggest that given the status of the world-as-game, it behooves us to endeavour to amuse the Laughing Mad God and his friends as best we can, in hopes that we will not be discarded.

Magisterialism

Devotees of the Magistra argue that the universe is a simulation which they believe has been programmed by an intelligence which they call the Magistra, a remote over-goddess who almost never interferes in her creation save through occasional miracles, interventions by which she rewrites the cosmic code. According to this theory, the universe is essentially a gigantic machine, an analytical engine of astonishing complexity. Magic, in the view of Magisterialists, is a way of hacking the cosmic source-code of creation, reconfiguring it for new uses. Some believe that select consciousnesses who impress the Magistra with their creativity and ingenuity will be rewarded by transcending the simulation, having their consciousnesses implanted into new forms in the upper level of reality the Magistra herself occupies. A number of Magisterialists claim that Anathema itself is not a true part of the simulation but some manner of virus introduced into the system by unknown agents. Many gnomes also hold to versions of Magisterialism.

Mythosolipsistic Subcreationism

A popular recent theory among Hexian metaphysicians, Mythosolipsistic Subcreationism, or MSS for short, advances the suggestion that all planes of reality are fundamentally extensions of humanoid consciousness. According to this theory, the Material World is generated by our conscious minds, the Netherworld is a reflection of our elemental desires and drives, the Dreamlands are generated from our anxieties, fears, and secret wishes, Faerie is a distorted manifestation of our laws, narratives, and stories, and Anathema is quite literally a plane of madness. How then, to explain Jotunheim? MSS has struggled with this errant plane, with some believing it is a kind of tumour (“overgrown”) which was somehow excised, others insisting it never truly existed and that the Behemoth bones scattered throughout the world are a kind of prank on the part of the Elder Species.

Planar Budding Theory

Originally advanced by certain fungoid thinkers, Planar Budding Theory has gained traction among a group of Hexian metaphysicians as an alternative to other popular ontologies. Like MSS it centres the Material, but holds that other planes are just as “real” as our own and not dependent on consciousness, positing that the planes formed by a process called Planar Budding, wherein a plane eventually splits in two in response to some dramatic cosmic Event. These Events have included the emergence of life and thus of death, which led to the budding of the Netherworld from the Material; the development of consciousness and unconsciousness, which led to the budding of the Dreamlands from the Material; the appearance of language and narrative, which led to the budding of Faerie from the Dreamlands; and the development of war, which led to the budding of Jotunheim from Faerie. Anathema has been posited as another budding from the Dreamlands, but some Planar Budding Theorists hold it is a second “original” universe, or possibly that the Material itself was preceded by Anathema.

The Universal Play

Followers of the Queen in Yellow have suggested that the entire universe is an intricate play being conducted by a figure they called the Dramaturge, who is himself a servant of the Queen, his patron. According to this theory, all of reality is a kind of performance being put on in the Court of Carcosa for the Queen in Yellow’s enjoyment, sustained by the divine imagination of the Queen and her courtiers. Some believe the play to be improvisational (Libertarian Carcosans), while others insist it is rigorously pre-scripted (Determinist Carcosans). Both sects suggest that the world and all within it are part of a series of metaphors or allegories – that everything from the lowliest insect to the tallest mountain is a grand Symbol and can be read as such. By becoming aware of our parts in the Universal Play and working to make it more beautiful, we may be assured of the Queen’s favour when the Play ends and we once more become fully aware of ourselves as spirits in her Court.

Tenebrous Idealism

A theory favoured by many illusionists, Tenebrous Idealism suggests that the Material World – indeed all of the planes – is an illusion, a representation, and that some deeper, untouchable reality produced or preceded it. According to Tenebrous Idealism, all levels of reality are equally real (or rather unreal), potentially including the “worlds” created by works of art or secondary illusions. Unlike Magisterialists or Carcosans, Tenebrous Idealists are highly sceptical that the fundamental noumenal reality undergirding the world of illusions could ever be reached by denizens of the six planes, believing themselves and everyone around them to be creatures of shadow and thought, ephemeral constructs in the minds of unknowable gods, who may themselves merely be representations in the minds of some other entities, and so on.

The Worldstone

As the trolls tell things, the various planes of the universe were once one, bound together in a single conglomerate, a vast rock hurtling through space known as the Worldstone. Eventually, the Worldstone fragmented into six pieces due to the stirring of Yawp, the primordial ur-giant embedded within, who formed like a geode. The largest of these fragments became Jotunheim, which circled the others for a time before colliding with the shard of Faerie and hurtling off into space. The others now orbit one another but are destined to eventually collide and break into smaller components. In the long run, however, the various shards will again coalesce back into the Worldstone, eventually producing a new Yawp who stirs and begins the cycle again, repeating events in precisely the same order as before. Fate goes ever as fate must.

Hexchess

By Bearded-Devil

On March 1, 2021

In Roleplaying

Hexchess is a popular Hexian strategy game, playable by two, three, or six players commanding three, two, or one armies each, respectively. The board consists of a six-sided hexagon; each side has nine hexagonal cells. Pieces may either move orthogonally (crossing a common border between hexes) or diagonally (following the line between hexes rather than a common border). Conventional chess pieces would adapt to this such that pieces like the Rook can move only orthogonally, while pieces like Bishops can only move diagonally. The board looks like this:

DEMONIAC PATRON

At the beginning of every game of Hexchess, a die is rolled to determine which of the six Patron Archdemons of Hex will reign over the game. These Archdemons modify the rules to each game slightly:

Roll (1d6)	Archdemon
1	Astaroth: An Archwizard is automatically “checkmated” once it has been checked three times.
2	Belphegor: A piece being attacked by another piece of the same type becomes paralyzed until one of the pieces is captured by another piece or the line of attack is broken.
3	Demogorgon: Once an Archwizard casts all of its spells, it can select six new spells.
4	Lilith: When an enemy piece is captured, that piece can be deployed onto the battlefield as a friendly piece anywhere on the seven back-rank starting cells as a move, provided a cell is empty. Ghosts are immune, and Zombies and Ghouls must be permanently destroyed to be redeployed.
5	Merihem: When a Ghoul captures a piece, that piece falls over as per a Ghoul or Zombie and can “rise” as a Ghoul controlled by the original Ghoul’s player. This includes enemy Zombies but not enemy Ghosts.
6	Orobas: Zombies and Ghouls can move up to two cells orthogonally instead of only one square. They cannot capture en passant. Zombies must choose to move one or two cells forwards or at 60 degrees to capture – they cannot split their move between forward movement and capturing.

If a die is unavailable, the Demoniac Patron is typically determined by placing six Zombie pieces of the six different colours in a bag or hat and drawing one – white is Astaroth, black Belphegor, blue Demogorgon, pink Lilith, green Merihem, and gold Orobas. This method can also be used to determine who goes first in a game.

There are also many “heretical” variants of Hexchess played throughout the city with different patron Demons; these are typically used for friendly games only and agreed to ahead of time by all players involved, or drawn out of a hat.

CHECKMATING

When an Archwizard is checkmated, it and all its pieces are removed from the board. If playing under Lilith’s patronage, these pieces become available to be redeployed by the player who checkmated. If more than one player contributed to the checkmate, whoever has the most pieces checking the Archwizard claims the captured pieces. In the case of a tie, a die is rolled, and whoever gets the highest number claims the captured pieces (re-roll ties).

If an Archwizard could be captured due to a discovered check facilitated by another colour – say by an Imp or a spell removing defending pieces from one colour, freeing up an opportunity for another to capture – this does not count as an automatic checkmate. The Archwizard cannot be captured, only checkmated – if it can move out of danger on its player’s turn, it is still capable of escaping and therefore not checkmated. In other words, enemy pieces can only check an Archwizard, not capture it, even if that check is a discovered check assisted by another colour’s captures. Checkmate is always evaluated on the turn of the player potentially being checkmated, not before, allowing them a chance to escape via spells.

PIECES

Instead of the conventional chess pieces, standard Hexchess uses the following:

Zombie

Each player begins with six zombies. Zombies move up to one cell orthogonally and can only move forwards. They can only capture enemy pieces at 60 degrees to themselves. If a Zombie is captured, it is placed on its side. If a fallen Zombie’s cell is unoccupied, the Zombie can use its move to return to upright position, and subsequently can continue moving and capturing as per normal. An enemy piece occupying a Zombie’s cell can use its move to permanently remove the fallen Zombie from the board. A Zombie which reaches another end of the board is promoted to a Ghoul. Pieces can move through cells containing fallen Zombies, and fallen Zombies do not break lines of attack. Fallen Zombies are not affected by spells and do not provoke Ghouls.

Ghoul

Each player begins with one Ghoul. Ghouls move up to one cell orthogonally in any direction. If a Ghoul is in a position to capture, the only move it can make is to capture (the player can let it remain where it is, however). If there are multiple targets it must capture one of them if it moves. Ghouls die and return just as Zombies do.

Imp

Each player begins with two Imps. Imps can move two cells orthogonally or diagonally in any direction. An Imp cannot capture except by en passant – if a piece moves within one cell of it in any direction, it can “hop” over that piece to capture it. If an Imp captures one piece, it can continue to jump and capture provided there are sufficient enemy pieces to do so, but must stop moving as soon as it can no longer capture. Imps cannot land on an occupied cell, but they can hop over friendly pieces.

Ghost

Each player begins play with two Ghosts. Ghosts move diagonally as many cells as they like in any direction. If a Ghost is captured, you may sacrifice any other piece on the board (including a fallen Zombie or Ghoul) in order to return the Ghost to its starting cell so long as the cell is empty or there is an enemy piece on it. If an enemy piece is on that cell, the Ghost captures and becomes that piece, “possessing” it, and no longer returns to its previous cell if later captured. If a Ghost does not have an original starting cell (having been created via Polymorph, Doppelganger, etc), it does not possess this ability. Ghosts cannot possess one another and cannot possess Archwizards.

Fungoid

Each player begins play with two Fungoids. Fungoids can move orthogonally as many cells as it likes in any direction. If the Fungoid is captured, its capturer and all pieces on orthagonally adjacent cells, friendly or enemy, are knocked over as per Zombies or Ghouls, and can “wake up” as per Zombies or Ghouls.

Doppelganger

Each player begins play with one Doppelganger. The Doppelganger moves three cells orthogonally – two in one direction, and then one at 60 degrees. Upon taking an enemy piece, the Doppelganger moves and attacks as per that piece, until it captures a different piece. Like Imps, Doppelgangers can “hop” over enemy pieces, though they cannot capture en passant.

Familiar

Each player begins with one Familiar. The Familiar can move in any direction as many cells as it likes, orthogonally or diagonally, but cannot capture enemy pieces (it can dispatch fallen Zombies and Ghouls). However, the Familiar can be used to cast any spells the Archwizard has prepared as if it were the Archwizard, including any spells that directly affect the Archwizard or which affect pieces adjacent to the Archwizard. These spells are still used up.

Archwizard

The Archwizard is the “leader” of a given army. It can move one cell orthagonally or diagonally in any direction, can be checked and checkmated like a King in standard Chess, and cannot move into check. Each Archwizard also has a list of six memorized Spells, written on a sheet of paper beforehand. These are special moves; each time one is used, it is crossed off and is no longer available to the Archwizard. Players must secretly select six Spells before each game. Archwizards cannot affect one another with Spells. Spells include:

Banish: The Archwizard moves and captures a piece it attacks. That piece is removed from the game and cannot be returned through any means, even if it is a Ghost, Ghoul, or Zombie, and even if Lilith is the patron Archdemon.
Burning Hands: Up to three orthogonally adjacent pieces are captured, including any friendly pieces.
Charm: Move one of the enemy’s pieces instead of your own.
Deflect: A piece giving a check to the Archwizard or attacking the Familiar is instantly captured without the Archwizard or Familiar moving.
Haste: A piece orthagonally or diagonally adjacent to the Archwizard immediately takes two moves. This cannot be used to checkmate an Archwizard by “capturing” it but can put one in check.
Lightning Bolt: The Archwizard moves diagonally or orthogonally any number of cells and captures an enemy piece.
Mirror Image: Two other Archwizard pieces are placed in cells orthagonally or diagonally adjacent to the Archwizard. One of these is the real Archwizard, secretly noted down by the player. The other two are illusions which can move like the Archwizard but cannot capture enemy pieces or cast Spells of their own. If placed in check, they are revealed as illusions. These pieces do block the movement of friendly pieces and interrupt lines of attack.
Petrify: A piece orthagonally or diagonally adjacent to the Archwizard is permanently frozen in place. It cannot move or capture but can be captured.
Polymorph: Any friendly orthagonally or diagonally adjacent piece is transformed into any other piece aside from another Archwizard, or any enemy piece is transformed into any other piece aside from another Archwizard.
Reanimate: Instead of capturing a piece it attacks, the Archwizard converts it into a friendly Zombie.
Shield: All friendly pieces adjacent to the Archwizard cannot be captured next turn.
Summon: The Archwizard conjures any piece on an orthagonally or diagonally adjacent cell. This piece remains on the board until the end of the player’s next turn.
Stinking Cloud: All pieces on orthagonally adjacent cells, friendly or enemy, are knocked over as per Zombies or Ghouls, and can “wake up” as per Zombies or Ghouls.
Teleport: The Archwizard swaps places with a friendly piece.

A variety of other pieces are common additions to the game, especially its regional variations. For example, the Faerie version of Hexchess (“Elfchess”) involves a number of invisible Pixies who reveal themselves only after attacking, enemy pieces that be transformed into friendly ones unexpectedly (Changelings), swaps Ghosts for Treefolk that can “root” themselves to become harder to capture, changes Zombies into Goblins who lose the ability to return to the dead but gain the abiltiy to retreat when attacked, and many other substitutions.

SETTING UP

Hexchess is set up such that each army is positioned at one corner of the board. Place a Ghost in the corner square; widdershins, place the Archwizard, and clockwise, the Familiar. Place a Fungoid directly adjacent to each of these previous pieces along the edge of the board. Ahead of the Ghost, place a second Ghost, and then place to Imps to either side. Place the Doppelganger ahead of the second Ghost. On the fourth and final rank, place six Zombies flanking one Ghoul in the centre. The setup should look like this for each corner:

Repeat for the remaining colours and assign armies to each player. Each player now selects their six spells, written on a piece of paper and kept secret from the other players. At some more luxurious chance-houses, cards are used for these spells in lieu of a slip of paper.

The fully set up board should look like this:

Hex Cabinet of Curiosities

By Bearded-Devil

On February 18, 2021

In Roleplaying

If characters in Hex search a random body, treasure chest, thief’s cache, cabinet of curiosities, or even a sewer-drain or trash-can, here’s a list of things they might find.

Roll (1d100)	Curios, Oddities, Tosh & Treasure
1	A small, framed painting of a castle, the details of which – the number of towers and parapets, the banners flown, siege weaponry on the battlements, and similar features – change subtly when no one is looking.
2	A cat’s skull on a catgut cord. Its wearer’s personality becomes subtly more cat-like over time, possibly due to the presence of a feline ghost possessing the talisman.
3	A gnomish pocket pistol small enough to conceal in a coat-sleeve.
4	An extremely graphic love letter between a demon and one of the Fair Folk, mentioning unknown orifices and appendages. Equal parts arousing and grotesque; oddly touching in places.
5	A book of matches that burn with a green flame and can only be quenched by blood, not water.
6	A tarnished pocket-watch that shows the time in the mortal plane and Elfhame simultaneously (Elfhame experiences seven times as much time as the mortal world).
7	A humorous ensorcelled cartoon strip about Cernuous Cedric the slug-about-town, a languorous libertine known for his lechery, taste for strong drink, and allergy to any form of labour. The strip speaks and animates when read, telling the story of one of Cedric’s disastrous affairs with the husband of Mordiggia, the Charnel Goddess.
8	A satyr statuette which increases the libido of everyone who sees it by fifty percent while it remains in line of sight.
9	A crumpled map of Corvid Commons marked with the entrances to the hidden shrines of the Shrouded Lord.
10	A tiny pouch of ghostdust which, if snorted, allows the user to see any nearby ghosts for ten minutes.
11	A grocery list which, halfway through, clearly becomes a list of ingredients for an occult ritual as it starts listing objects such as the blood of a murderer’s child, candles made from minotaur tallow, the tongue of a second-rate poet, a serrated knife, one set black robes, incense, an altar-stone quarried from Mount Shudder, salt distilled from virgin’s tears, etcetera.
12	A pepperbox pistol that can fire six shots before reloading. It currently has three bullets loaded, one of which has a curious worm-like sigil etched upon it. This bullet, if it hits a target, transforms into flesh-eating grub that deals an additional 1d6 piercing damage per turn until the target is dead or it is removed with a DC 15 Wisdom (Medicine) check.
13	A false eye with an iridescent iris. If placed into an empty socket it functions as an organic eye that can also see any invisible fairy creatures.
14	An ode to Genial Jack, the Godwhale, who swims the Sixty Seas with the city of Jackburg on His back and in His belly. Scribbled on the back is a mysterious phrase: “The tongues of the dead wag at midnight.”
15	A pocket-sized book devoted to the ancestry and heraldry of the vampiric Bloodlines of Erubescence. This copy has been annotated with cutting remarks about the various families, sometimes revealing embarrassing gossip or secrets.
16	A severed doll’s head whose expression mirrors the mood of whoever is looking at it.
17	A bone pipe carved with intricate crimson sigils; its smoke appears as writhing shades of the damned.
18	A 500-gp poker chip for the Behemoth Casino, with the eyes of the image of Behemoth scratched out.
19	A hard candy which, when sucked, changes the accent of the sucker for one hour. Insist that the player must use this accent if their character sucks on the candy.
20	A small, speckled egg. This egg will hatch into (roll 1d6): (1) a mundane chicken, (2) a tiny cherubic angel bearing strange prophecies and descriptions of the infinite heavens, (3) a miniature hydra, (4) a cockatrice, (5) a two-headed albino crocodile, (6) an evil spirit; while incubating, if held to the ear, it reveals the darkest desires and shameful secrets of the person nearest the one holding it.
21	A length of yarn that never tangles.
22	A club studded with extremely nasty spikes, coated with poison.
23	A magnifying glass that peers backwards through time up to one hour as you look through it.
24	A vest of putrecampus skin; treat as padded armour.
25	A bootleg quarto of Vittoria Wolfsheart’s plays The Thirteen Torments of Jacqueline Chandler, The Scarabs, The Miscreation, The Inquisition of Wolves, and The Gibbous Prince. The copies are poorly transcribed, riddled with errors and incomplete speeches.
26	A bewitched slip of paper which, if placed on the bark of a tree, reveals in writing the species of that tree.
27	A pamphlet put out by the Society for the Abolition of Demoniac & Infernal Servitude & Maltreatment arguing for the emancipation of summoned beings and the criminality of coercive conjuration.
28	A switchblade spoon.
29	A pink stone sculpture of an ear which grows warm when it hears false flattery.
30	A buckler with an animated face that makes rude grimaces, notionally to distract opponents but actually to show off in a duel.
31	A small black notebook with a mysterious list of names. The names change everyday. These names are the names of people who (roll 1d6): (1) owe money to the Horned League, (2) are having adulterous affairs, (3) died, (4) cheated at games of chance, (5) skipped a bar tab, (6) criticized the Hexad Council.
32	A skin of shadowmilk.
33	A phial of perfume that smells precisely like your mother.
34	A glass rattle filled with actual baby teeth. If rattled with an action, all incorporeal creatures within 30 feet must immediately use its reaction to move as far away from the rattle as possible. Each time this ability is used, one of the teeth disappears; there are currently 20 teeth.
35	A zombie tongue for licking stamps and envelopes.
36	A flask of endless soup du jour – the flask generates a new “soup of the day” at dawn. Many of them are viscerally unpleasant, but hey, free soup.
37	A dip pen that writes in blood, seemingly inexhaustible.
38	A dog-eared copy of Man of Her Dreams, a novel by Simone Vertices, in which the heroine falls in love with a man from her own dreams and quests through the Dreamlands to bring him into reality. Halfway through, a scrap of paper serves as a bookmark; upon it is written “Meet me at the Gilded Graveyard, north entrance, midnight. Bring shovel.”
39	A coin of the Old City, ancient beyond reckoning, though virtually untarnished. If dropped, it rolls towards the nearest entrance of the Old City – likely straight back into the sewer from which it was dredged.
40	A cursed child’s doll that produces real piss, swears like a sailor, and makes insulting remarks about all nearby; originally produced as part of an extremely ill-advised, deeply unpleasant, and utterly ineffective birth control scheme intended to reduce the population of the urban poor.
41	A wax cylinder recording of someone being tortured. Between their screams, they wheeze out the following words: “THE MEMENTO MORI! CELLAR! KEG! NORTHWEST CORNER!”
42	A bottle of limited-edition Moss Piglet Porter from Pustule Brewing, complete with novelty magnifying glass cap, produced during the company’s infamous Spontaneous Generation marketing campaign; collectors will pay handsomely for it, though actually drinking it might be ill-advised.
43	A toy mirror that causes a reflected visage to make grotesque faces.
44	A theatrical mask in the tradition of Ancient Penumbral Theatre; the mask changes expression to suit the performance.
45	A silver key with a coiled chameleon for a bow. This key fits into the next lock into which it is inserted, changing shape, but thereafter only fits that lock.
46	A torture implement, the pear of anguish.
47	A suppository of anti-putrefaction; if inserted into a corpse, any decomposition gradually reverses until the corpse is perfectly preserved as per Gentle Repose. If removed from the corpse, the corpse rots rapidly back to its previous state.
48	A pair of psychically weighted dice that always show the number the thrower visualized.
49	A fully-illustrated bestiary. Upon encountering a new monster, the bestiary has a 50% chance of having an entry for it, and another 50% chance of having accurate information pertaining to its strengths and weaknesses.
50	An animated manikin head intended for kissing practice. It is capable of coquettish speech and constructive criticism and offers three settings for the kisser-in-training: “Lips,” “Tongue,” and “Nibbling.”
51	A phial of Sap, an eldritch syrup harvested from the Elder Trees.
52	An envelope containing a series of highly incriminating umbratypes showing Hexad Council member Barnabas Grimgrove at the troglodytic brothel known as the Warren. These were in fact faked – the semblance of Barnabas was produced via illusion.
53	The deed to a mysterious abandoned house in the Dreamers’ Quarter, wrapped around the brass key to the front door.
54	A scrap of dirty parchment bearing a list of names, some of them crossed off. Investigation reveals all of the names on the list are dead people, mostly buried in the Gilded Graveyard. Those who have been crossed off have recently have their graves’ plundered, their bodies stolen. Further investigation still reveals that these were all jurors in the trial of Isabella Rasping, a necromancer convicted of using a zombies as murder weapons during the infamous “Meatpuppet Murders” two centuries ago. She was executed for the crime by her own creations. Isabella has returned as a revenant with unfinished business; she maintains her innocence and believes she can now prove it, and so is gathering the previous jurors for a kind of “retrial.”
55	A glass box containing a small spider, a gnawed human finger-bone, and curious webbing spelling out the words “I always loved you.” When fed humanoid remains, the spider spins elaborate webs spelling out the last words of whoever it consumed.
56	A dagger which cannot cut the flesh of humans or animals but deals 2d6 damage against Lengians or other creatures from the Dreamlands; its pommel is set with a tiny snowglobe within which is a model of the Plateau of Leng.
57	A slightly tattered but complete copy of a rare first printing of the Saga of the Sacred Cauldron, a chivalric romance recounting a quest in the realm of Elfhame involving such colourful characters as Bellstajj the Capacious, Blue-Eyed Molly, Fennrix the Blind, Fun Guy the Barbarian, the Knight of Harts Petalu Morriden, Susurrus Psithurisma, Weevil Stench, Wick the Silent, and the notorious Sparks & Mud.
58	A rude cartoon of the adventuring party, all of them mercilessly caricatured.
59	An anti-seed, grey and ominous-looking. If planted, it begins to kill all plant-life in a slowly-expanding radius, transforming the soil to poisonous dust. The seed itself blossoms on the Ethereal Plane into a grotesque, shadowy flower that slowly spreads more of itself, invisible weeds that expand the anti-seed’s aura of decay.
60	An eye-dropper filled with belladonna; this dilates the pupils, giving the eyes a pleasant sparkle, and only causes blindness if used quite regularly.
61	An article on the breeding habits of tunnelswine, partially peer-reviewed. The results look promising, but the reviewer has some questions about the Methods section.
62	A wheel of cheese veined with vivid green mould. If consumed, the eater must pass a DC 10 Constitution saving throw each day or begin to metamorphose into a plant-version of themselves, capable of photosynthesis and requiring regular rooting in good soil and plentiful irrigation. Three failed saves in a row completes the transformation, while three successful saves in a row fights off the parasitic growth.
63	An extraordinarily well-crafted dildo of polished ivory in a velvet-lined carrying case. If the correct command word is whispered – written in blood on a small slip of parchment hidden beneath the lining of the case – the incubus bound within the dildo manifests and the device becomes part of his body; if the command word is spoken again, the toy reverts to inert ivory.
64	A map of the city of Erubescence, marked with mysterious circles demarcating particular buildings. If investigated in the Red City, it can be discovered that such locations are safehouses for the Nightshade Society, a secret sect devoted to ending vampiric rule.
65	A list of results for fights in the Hellpits, each with an indicated date – in the future. All results will be proved completely accurate, allowing someone in possession of the list to bet heavily in favour of certain outcomes. These results are due to (roll 1d4): (1) match-fixing, (2) time travel, (3) skilled divination, or (4) artful magical sabotage.
66	A plain copper key, slightly warm to the touch. If used to unlock a door, that door will lead to a random layer of the Netherworld. The key disappears after use. If the door is shut and opened again, it ceases to function as a portal.
67	A book of poems, Six-Sided Satire, ruthlessly skewering Hexian culture and politics in perfect dactylic hexameter, the traditional meter of heroic Hexian epic. The text portrays Hex as a city of pompous intellectual parasites and thieves, feasting vulture-like on the ruins of older cultures, appropriating their knowledge as their own, and then condescendingly lecturing other states and peoples about the virtues of Hexian “free-thought” and “innovation.” The text is anonymously authored.
68	A fishbowl containing a dagonian tadpole, potentially stolen from one of the Hatcheries. It appears that a drop of curiously coloured blood has been added to the bowl.
69	A small flask of Lovewine, a rare pink vintage with heart-shaped bubbles which, if drunk, produces intensely romantic dreams. The hangover is quite rough.
70	A box containing a roach-like beetle with a red “X” marking on its back, with a small, separate compartment containing gold leaf. If released from the box, the beetle begins moving towards the nearest buried treasure and remains there until the treasure is exhumed. The treasure-beetle must be fed a steady of diet of gold leaf (10 gp/day) or it swiftly perishes.
71	A punch-card for an analytical engine. If placed into an automaton, the card changes that automaton’s personality to make them (roll 1d4): (1) murderous, (2) possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of all things arcane, (3) intensely pious, revering and proselytizing for the Church of the Magistra, (4) a jester with a wide repertoire of off-colour jokes.
72	A leather bone which squeaks when squeezed. Any dogs within earshot of the toy become charmed as per the spell Animal Friendship (DC 12). This only works on domesticated canines, not wolves, wild dogs, or similar creatures.
73	A six-sided Hexchess set with purple, orange, green, pink, black, and grey pieces. If a game is played wherein the pink pieces win, a hidden compartment in the board opens, revealing (roll 1d6): (1) a diamond worth 1,000 gp, (2) a map of Delirium Castle which changes as the castle’s eldritch architecture shifts, (3) a piece of vellum upon which is written a demon’s True Name, (4) an eyedropper of Wraithsbane, a poison which can deliver a second death, (5) the signet ring of elfin royalty, (6) Deck of Many Things.
74	A human skull with a strange sigil carved into the forehead. Each night at midnight, the skull vomits forth some variety of creeping vermin. If someone smashes the skull, they will be devoured from the inside-out by flesh-eating insects at midnight unless Remove Curse is first cast upon them; all that remains is their skeleton, their skull carved with the same strange sigil as the skull they smashed. Their skull now vomits forth vermin. The Church of Mordiggia desire this relic and will demand its return if they learn of its existence.
75	A key to Cell Block D of Spellcage.
76	A battered old music box. It plays an eerie tune which, if listened to continuously for more than a minute, produces intense feelings of nausea and induces vomiting for 1 turn.
77	A bewitched letter which appears to be addressed to whoever is currently holding it, describing their features and personality in adoring terms.
78	A fashion magazine, Rich Filth, describing the latest trends for the ultra-wealthy, including the most recent Slimewear, Cathedral Chic, and Roachdress looks, as well as even more outré fashions such as “Patching,” which involves magically transplanting patches of flesh (usually taken from corpses) to one’s body in peculiar designs.
79	A pale grey pill stamped with a little skull. This is a zombie lozenge; if placed in the mouth of a corpse, the body revives enough to answer one question as per Speak with Dead.
80	An automaton crab. If wound up with the key in its brass carapace, it will menace any nearby animals with its snappy little mechanical claws.
81	A beautifully carved wooden prosthetic arm fitted for a Small creature, etched with tiny runes in ancient High Goblin, a language now all but forgotten along with the proud culture that produced it, who some say were forerunners of goblins and gnomes alike. If attached to a torso missing an arm, the prosthesis animates and becomes a perfectly useable arm which, when used to wield a weapon, acts as if it had Strength 20; the creature’s Strength is otherwise unaffected unless the arm is exclusively being used for a check.
82	A wedding dress, quite exquisite, which miraculously fits a bride of almost any size. Unfortunately, the dress curses any marriage it touches, dooming one of those wed to an early death, often at the hands of the other.
83	A crying child in a small basket. The child is (roll 1d6): (1) a changeling, (2) a doppelgänger spy from Idolum, (3) a remarkably life-like automaton, (4) a ghost which possesses anyone who gives it suck, (5) an alchemist who accidentally de-aged herself during an attempt to produce a Philosopher’s Stone, (6) a perfectly normal child, apparently abandoned, with a rather foreboding dragon-shaped birthmark.
84	A small box of elfin salt which, if sprinkled over a meal, instantly makes it taste absolutely delicious and even purifies spoiled food, but also completely deprives the provender of any nutritive value.
85	A small crystal which, when peered through, appears to show alternate universes. Actually a fragment of a much larger crystal, part of a complex device deep in the Old City.
86	A taxidermy wolpertinger – a hybrid of rabbit, bird, squirrel, and deer – native to Mooncalf Valley.
87	This book of history seems to detail an epoch approximately 2,000 years from the present and has been rather clumsily translated into Hextongue. Current powers and states are still vaguely visible in this future time, but have become barely recognizable. Flip a coin; heads, this is a work of artful science fiction; tails, a translation from an authentic future history procured via time travel.
88	A well-oiled pilliwinks for crushing thumbs.
89	A piece of amber. Suspended inside it are what appear to be miniature adventurers – one for each player. Should the amber be smashed, the adventurers are freed and return to normal size, explaining that they ran afoul of some sinister machine in the Old City, from whence the amber was retrieved. Have your players generate these new characters (pick a level), who promise the other party that before their miniaturization and imprisonment, they discovered a fabulous trove of treasure beneath the city, which they would share as recompense for their freedom. Should the party embark on this quest, run it as a brutal funnel and warn your players in advance.
90	A bottle of minotaur milk.
91	This stained manuscript is fan fiction for the popular and long-running Wendolyn the Werewolf sequence of serialized romantic novels.
92	A snowball warded such that it cannot melt. At its centre is a small glyph-etched stone.
93	A small pouch containing a handful of moss crusted with what looks like dried blood. The blood was in fact taken from a patricide, the moss from a hangman’s tree; the combination makes this quite a valuable reagent to the right buyers.
94	A tin of rare green tea from the distant Occident.
95	A half-melted bust from the Midden with features made so grotesque they are now unrecognizable. If placed such that the bust can see someone while they sleep, that individual will experiences extremely strange and powerful dreams with minor prophetic power. When such a dream is experienced, have all players contribute one potential prophetic element, and then randomize which of these predictions will come true.
96	The death mask of a forgotten archwizard. Sleep with the mask placed over your face and you wake with some of his knowledge. Replace all class levels with wizard levels after at least 8 hours of sleep wearing the mask. Your levels revert after another night’s sleep without the mask. Sleep with the mask on your face three nights in a row and it disappears, making the change permanent.
97	A small box of tapeworm eggs.
98	A collection of animated toy soldiers, complete with distinct personalities, in a specialized carrying case; they come alive once removed. Their weapons can do no real damage save to one another. Placing the corpse of a slain soldier back in the box, it “heals” by reverting to its inanimate state. The soldiers consider whoever carries the box to be their commanding officer.
99	A potted portal flower with the word “WATER ME” on a note tied to its stem. If watered, the flower rapidly grows into a gigantic arch of flowers that becomes a portal to one of the four Realms of Elfhame (roll 1d4): (1) Tír na nÓg, (2) Mag Mell, (3) Logris, or (4) Annwn.
100	A tiny stone sarcophagus containing a mummified cat. This is one of the ancient Cat Princes of New Ulthar, snatched from its tomb by Hexian robbers centuries past and now somehow lost from the museum. If placed in a building, all those who pass within will sicken and suffer terrible nightmares, losing 1 Constitution per day with no saving throw. Those who linger inside will worsen; those who perish of their sicknesses rise as undead. Only if the cat remains are properly interred will this curse be lifted.

Encounter Tables from the Hex Gazetteer

By Bearded-Devil

On January 1, 2021

In Roleplaying

Work continues, slowly but surely, on the Hex Gazetteer. I thought I’d share some encounter tables for two districts, Mooncross and Suckletown – the first is a waterfront neighbourhood filled with cafes and artisan’s workshops and little bars, built around primordial monoliths that have covens of independent witches devoted to them. The latter is a rusted-out industrial district fallen into abandonment and poverty after the Elder Tree at its heart died, petrifying to become the Withered Tree. Most districts in Hex will receive similar tables, along with a table of adventure hooks, and of course the street-by-street descriptions.

Mooncross Encounters

Roll (1d20)	Encounter
1	A magically awakened mural depicts a fully functional farming village, a bucolic idyll quite at odds with the greasy metropolis surrounding it. The cheerful painted residents greet passersby with folksy idioms and local gossip.
2	The Fair Folk performers known as the Headless Troupe are doing their bizarre juggling act at a street corner. At the end of the performance, their severed heads hold out their tongues for coins. Especially generous donors may receive something in return – a Fairy secret, a glowing bauble, a tattered map to some treasure in Elfhame, or similar marvels.
3	A trash-can mimic lurks here, a tempting jeweled pocket-watch worth 100 gp atop the heap of garbage inside it as bait.
4	A tiny cult has sprung up worshipping stray cats. Dozens of saucers of milk and several hundred dead rats (both cooked and raw) have been set out in a strange shrine adorned with images of the cats in chalk, paint, and blood. The cult believe that these strays are the secret rulers of Hex, kin to the magical Cat Princes of New Ulthar. The cats do seem unusually alert. In fact, the high priest is dosing their milk with an intelligence-enhancing potion…
5	A nest of miniature raven-winged pegasi (no larger than crows) can be spotted in the eaves of a nearby building; they are delighted by oats, carrots, and shiny objects, and are frightened by waspkin.
6	A murder of jinxcrows, heads swollen with spells, cast Firebolts and Magic Missiles at a trio of cheeky seagulls attempting to feast on the spoils of a maggot-ridden cat.
7	Marion Bracewind sells fish and frogs caught in the Radula. These being Hexian animals, many are magically deformed, with extra fins, the heads of human babies, strange proboscises, tiny bat-wings, and similar mutations – the result of alchemical by-products regularly dumped in the river.
8	A side-street leads into a maze whose dimensions should be spatially impossible given the surrounding layout. Randomly generate a maze (online generators are helpful here!). The only way to exit the alleyway is to navigate the maze to its other exit – the way in appears as a blank brick wall, and climbing or flying is impossible, as the walls grow ever higher. A minotaur, Atta, lives here, but he is generally friendly and eager for the company – he cannot leave the maze, but is acquainted with many of the locals, and his lair is occasionally used by thieves as a dead drop. He cannot advise the party on an exit, as the maze changes regularly.
9	A mysterious bank of mist swallows anyone who steps into it and deposits them in Gloomway.
10	A philosophical debate over whether the true nature of the world-in-itself can be rationally deduced a priori or whether we can only ever receive phenomenological knowledge via the senses has snowballed into a full-blown brawl, with one thinker threatening to show another “the true face of the Absolute” with a broken bottle.
11	A dozen broken dolls are heaped in a grubby pile nearby. The insides of their hollow bodies bear residues of Ghostdust. An Investigation check reveals that one is still full of the stuff – the drug is worth 100 gp, and if sniffed, allows the user to peer into the Ethereal plane.
12	Psychic graffiti. Ask the players to write down or draw what their characters are thinking as they enter; this graffiti appears on the walls for all to see.
13	A spellshower has caused thousands of mouths to grow on the buildings here. Their jabbering fills the air with mindless chatter and halitosis. If one of the mouths is fed, it may temporarily speak enough sense to offer the party advice, divulge a secret of the city, or cast a minor, beneficial cantrip.
14	Two rival witches’ covens, the Frogsfeet and the Stardaughters, bicker over which coven filled out the paperwork to book a Sabbath at a nearby monolith. If no one intervenes, curses might be exchanged.
15	A stack of newspapers moulders on a street-corner. The newspapers are from two weeks’ hence, each issue prophesying some strange disaster – a flood of sentient marmalade, an invasion of trees, a raid from distant Pellucid with its evil machines, an outbreak of Wraithwaste that leaves whole districts of people permanently invisible. Are these some elaborate hoax? Artefacts left by time travelers?
16	Pulsating greyish-pink moss coats the walls of buildings and cobblestones. It is parasitic, draining spellcasters of their spell-slots beginning with the highest – one per turn unless a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw is passed. With each spell absorbed, the moss grows another foot.
17	A one-armed fairy knight, Sir Jonquil, offers his services on a street-corner, boasting that he is a stronger swordsman one-handed than any two-handed mortal. He charges an exorbitant 1000 gp per day but is indeed skilled beyond any mortal measure with a blade.
18	A gaggle of geese wander the street. Made semi-sentient from arcane runoff, they harass passersby with lewd jokes, peck at young children, terrify the elderly, and molest everyone else. Their shit is instantly everywhere. Shopkeepers will pay a small fee for the geese’s slaughter or removal.
19	Dense foliage chokes an alley off the street, alive with birdsong and the buzz of insects. Some spell-gone-wrong has turned the gap between buildings into a fetid jungle, complete with exotic birds and other animals. Venturing within may alert the two-headed tiger (as a standard tiger but with two bite attacks) that slumbers lazily within the deepest parts of the miniature rainforest.
20	A fractured mirror leans against one dingy wall of a nearby building. Anyone peering into it catches a glimpse of one possible death in their own future.

Suckletown Encounters

Roll (1d20)	Encounter
1	Two miasmentals inhabiting the bodies of members of the Beggars’ Guild have a gleeful fight with broken bottles in an alleyway, joyfully slashing at one another to experience the novelties of pain and mutilation.
2	A parade of worshippers from the Cultists’ Quarter winds ill-advisedly through Suckletown, the papier-mâché length of the Hundred-Headed God held up by two dozen cultists.
3	A broken-down clockwork automaton languishes in a puddle, its limbs rusting, its ornate mechanical brain slowly winding down; for all the world it resembles an abandoned toy discarded by a cruel and careless child. It can be repaired with a DC 15 Dexterity check using tinker’s tools, or with five castings of Mending. Its owner, Seraphina Opalfire, has been dead for some time; the automaton was sent out for alchemical reagents, but was waylaid by anti-automaton protestors and hobbled. If repaired, it becomes the servant of its saviour.
4	Amidst the ruinous husks of industry in Suckletown, a mysterious factory seems to have started up again, its windows filled with light. Sounds of machines churning echo from within. Locals look on the place with fear, claiming that those who enter do not emerge, but become recruited to work for all eternity by a shadowy figure known as the Foreman who can be glimpsed from a high window late at night. What the factory produces and where its goods are sent remains unknown.
5	Two Roofsguard, Mina Quench and Josephus Stonesky, were hired by rival gangs; they duel over a block of buildings, chasing one another from roof to roof and sending arrows flying. If one of them is assisted in defeating the other, they will give anyone who helped a cut of their profits from the job (50 gp).
6	A building has gotten so decrepit and rotten that is falling down, requiring a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw to avoid 2d6 bludgeoning damage from debris. Within the wreckage can be scavenged 1d100 gp and a Potion of Climbing, leftover from a dead thief’s cache.
7	Rogue hunting trash is rapidly gobbling up street-detritus and people into its pastiche body of wood, bones, glass shards, quivering sinews, nails, and rotting garbage. Snared amidst its variegated form is a bone amulet carved into the shape of a fish; its wearer loses the ability to speak all languages, save those of water-breathing creatures, including fish, cephalopods, crabs, and the like. Once worn it cannot be removed. save by severing the head of its wearer.
8	A sewer nymph, Greasy Georgina, has been left stranded in the street and is slowly “drowning” in the open air. Anyone brave enough to approach the putrid creature and help her back to the sewers will be rewarded with her affection and any boon she can bestow.
9	Demonic symbols drawn in blood cover the bricks of a nearby alleyway. Here and there, a brick is missing; placed in the hole is a humanoid body part such as a finger, eyeball, kidney, tooth, tongue, ear, toe, or nose. A wizard who makes a successful DC 20 Intelligence (Arcana) check can extrapolate the symbols into spell form as Conjure Lesser Demon.
10	Two members of the Beggars’ Guild, Skully and the Whistler, are intimidating a freelance pauper with knives, wooden planks, and a giant attack-rat on a leather leash.
11	A group of vagrants, street children, and other locals bet on a fight between a three-headed pit bull and a swarm of rats in the middle of the street. Among the gambled objects is the skull of a child, which sings what might be lullabies or mysterious hymns in a forgotten language.
12	The sewers have flooded this entire area, filling it with filth and murky alchemical sludge with similar effects to a spellshower. Rats who were caught in the arcane effluent are sloughing off their skins and starting to set up a symposium on the nature of eudaimonia, while a sodden newspaper saturated in the slime is rearranging its letters into what appears to be a religious tract revering a machine-god from the future instructing its followers in how it might be created.
13	A thrum addict has overdosed, spasming in and out of physical reality too rapidly to track, a flailing mass of phantasmal limbs and juddering abreal flesh. This poor wretch – Dexter Scruple – can be treated using a DC 10 Wisdom (Medicine) check or spells such as Dispel Magic or Protection from Poison. If untreated, he stumbles into the wall and materializes in a hideous spectacle of broken bones, blood, and brick-dust.
14	A grim band of twelve cutthroats bedecked with holy symbols sell phials of vampire blood and undead organs harvested from their victims. They call themselves the Garlic-Eaters and are trying to establish themselves as mercenaries and local toughs; they are led by Abra Blackblossom, an exiled Erubescent revolutionary. A phial of blood functions as a potion of Common Healing (2d4+2 hit points) and sells for only 10 gp per dose.
15	A Broken Glass Golem half-drags, half-rolls itself down the street, smashing windows to add to its body. It is not aggressive towards living creatures unless attacked and speaks with a voice like shards of glass scraping together in crudely fragmented Common, beseeching passersby for glass trinkets to add to its body. Medium construct, AC 14 HP 50 Spd 10’ Atk +6 (2 slam attacks) Dmg 1d8+4. 700 XP.
16	A band of 2d6 pallid, scarified Brickwoses led by the sewer princess Sludgepearl scavenge for food and detritus down a side-street. They will happily attack groups they outnumber, but rapidly flee if outmatched; if approached peaceably they may barter for scrap, food, and weapons.
17	Half a dozen Graveyard Girls have cornered three of the Filthy Fingers after a nasty little turf-skirmish. The Girls, triumphant, are cutting off the pinkies of the Fingers as gruesome trophies of their victory. They are led by a lieutenant of the gang, Christabel Rottenclock, whose burn-scarred face is always illuminated by a lurid grin, and who wields a serrated hand-axe with ferocity and fervour.
18	A pair of heimgeists battle for territory, the two ramshackle monstrosities scuttling back and forth and ramming one another, their zombie inhabitants scrambling over the stamping, charging knots of wild architecture.
19	An outbreak of Crownpox is spreading along this street – the Monarch’s Malady. Its sufferers all possess ornate crowns growing from their scalps, and have been seized by the delirious belief that they are kings, queens, and emperors. They loudly issue orders to all within hearing, demanding taxes, and are attempting to organize wars and marriage alliances with their neighbours to establish dynasties and borders.
20	A shrine to the Polypous Princess is evident in a carved niche. The icon in the shrine is a twisted congeries simultaneously arousing and terrifying. Sacrifices of coins, nail-trimmings, and the organs of stray animals are heaped before it. Sufficient sacrifices will Bless a supplicant for 30 minutes.

Hex Sessions XXXVI – Actual Play – “Shadows Lengthen”

By Bearded-Devil

On July 5, 2020

In Roleplaying

Various writing projects – D&D-related and otherwise – have kept me from keeping the detailed actual play posts for the Hex campaign. I had thought I might catch up on them during the summer, but by now even with notes I’m not sure I can do the logs true justice in the blow-by-blow fashion I did in previous sessions. I’m going to be resuming the Hex campaign shortly after a hiatus due to quarantine (I also have Elfhame actual play reports to post), so to catch up blog-readers, I’m going to be writing up some briefer accounts of several old sessions – these won’t be quite as detailed as some of the previous write-ups, but they’ll contain the most important story information.

All illustrations apart from the map and character portraits are from Bronwyn McIvor.

The characters in this session were:

Alabastor Quan, a gnome rogue-turned-warlock and failed circus ringmaster; wielder of a cursed dagger and member of the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild.
Armand Percival Reginald Francois Eustace de la Marche III, a suspiciously pale, apparently human noble and sorcerer, and certainly not a ghoul (how dare such a thing be suggested).
Caulis, a homunculus warlock liberated from its master; has made a pact with certain Faerie Powers.
Comet the Unlucky, waspkin ranger, a dreamer and an idealist, longing for the restoration of the Elder Trees and the liberation of his people. Loathes the Harvester’s Guild, parasites and destroyers.
An ancient and enigmatic Lengian cleric of the Mother of Spiders, name unknown. She wears bulky ecclesiastical garments covering an uncertain number of limbs and goes by “Sister.”
Yam, an eccentric gnome illusionist and local graduate student at Umbral University. Yam cares little for money. Yam is curious. Yam is Yam.

XP Awarded: 1000 XP

*Caulis’s familiar Eleyin plays with the skeletal cat of Valentina Nettlecrave.*

The party undertook a reconaissance mission to Mount Shudder, having ascertained that the spectral city of Penumbra – seeking revenge on Hex for its destruction in centuries past – had manifested on that fell peak. Equipped by the lich Valentina Nettlecrave with a musical Exorcism Box which would cause ghosts to depart from possessed creatures when wound up and played and freshly supplied with ghostdust from a dealer in the Memento Mori tavern, the party headed west from Hex, traveling through several nearby towns and villages. These included the penal settlement of Beastbury, where prisoners from Hex were “reformed” by being polymorphed into beasts of burden; Greenheart, a lumber-town run by a family of dryads and humans; Zephyr, an industrial outpost of greenhouses and windmills, run on elemental labour; and the twin settlements of Soothwick and Knavesville, the former shrouded in a permanent Zone of Truth. Along the way the party encountered a number of Penumbral ghosts possessing polymorphed prisoners, sacred trees, and striking labourers, and used the Exorcism Box to dispel these malignant shades. They also encountered the merchant Hearthbrag, trading various items (Comet also tried to steal a dragon’s egg, but ended up grabbing a display replica).

The party pressed on into the Unquiet Mountains, encountering the trollblood clan known as the Spineskulls, a group of “toll-collectors” little better than brigands. Rather than fight, the party chose to negotiate, hiring the trollbloods on as guides. They investigated the abandoned spa-town of Snugging, discovering through judicious use of ghostdust that Penumbra had transformed the town into a forward operating base in the Ethereal plane. They sojourned on to Hog’s Hollow, suffering a truffle shortage due to the over-long winter the Variegated Company previously helped avert, and discovered further evidence of Penumbral activity. Traveling further to the Giant’s Head Inn, the party performed a ritual from the Book of Ghosts that allowed them to assume spectral form. They proceeded in ghostly form up the slopes of Mount Shudder.

*Exorcised ghosts in the industrial town of Zephyr are defeated.*

*The path through the mountains is the haunt of Penumbral wraiths – and muscle-bound troll toll-collectors.*

The trees thinned, and they could hear the sound of rushing water – a river, tumbling down the mountain in waterfalls. The forest continued to clear, giving way to bleak, frost-bitten stone. Snow blurred theirvison, but something was evident up ahead, emerging as if carved from the mountainside. Walls, towers, bridges – a formidable edifice of stone, glimmering and phantasmal, rising up the mountainside in seven tiers. A waterfall gushed from an enormous demoniac face at the city’s heights, falling down the tiers to a harbour below. A prodigious fortress guarded the entrance, a castle that looked as if it were hewn from a massive boulder. The city itself had a look of impossible age and forgotten grandeur. It was crowned by an enormous spire like a cyclopean torch, blazing with a ghastly blue effulgence that cast eerie black shadows across the city and the pristine white snow beyond. This was Penumbra, the City of Shadows, returned from out of the depths of the past to menace the world once again, and avenge itself upon its destroyers.

The party infiltrated the city using ghostly uniforms purloined from soldiers, claiming to be Penumbral forces. They explored the Moongate and the docklands of Fellwater, then ascended through the slum of the Dogsprawl, where spectral cynocephali howled and scratched ghost-fleas from their fur; up through the Circus Tenebrosus and into the market of the Wheel. After gathering what evidence they could of the numbers and composition of Penumbral forces, the party escaped the city, letting loose a flock of ghostly griffins shortly before the dawn, when their ghostly forms returned to their bodies.

Elfhame

By Bearded-Devil

On March 25, 2020

In Roleplaying

Due to the pandemic and the current necessity for social distancing, my regular gaming group can’t meet in person. We’re switching to an online game, but rather than simply continuing our regular campaign I decided to hit “pause” and run a mini-campaign. There’s a kind of frame narrative: the PCs from the regular game are reading a book of fairy stories round the campfire. The mini-campaign describes those stories, set five hundred years before the present time period in Hex, during the medieval past. The whole thing is going to be set in and around Faerie – or Elfhame, as the Fair Folk call it. I’m hoping for a kind of dark fairytale quality, but with a rollicking, swashbuckling energy as well – gonzo rather than grimdark.

I’ve prepared a primer for the party with suggestions for character ancestries, plus some house rules we’ll be using that grant the players some extra powers over the narrative, and details on how things like time, death, plants and animals, names, oaths, debts, and gods work in Elfhame. Check out the PDF below – it’s a lot more rough and ready than a Genial Jack volume, but it has some art, worldbuilding, and 15 playable species (including several also found in Hex).

Elfhame-5 Download

As the campaign progresses, to help keep myself occupied during the long days at home I’m going to be polishing up adventure notes and will likely make them available in some form or another in the future, probably as a pay-what-you-want PDF or something similar.

Stay safe everyone!

Map of the Quill Coast

By Bearded-Devil

On March 3, 2020

In Roleplaying

My players are going to be embarking on a journey back to Hex from the far north (long story as to how they got there), so I decided it was finally time to draw a proper map of the region. It’s pretty huge, so as with the city maps, I’ve added some smaller images of particular areas of interest, and the larger file can be downloaded from the link below:

Quill-Coast Download

Hex Appendix N

By Bearded-Devil

On January 1, 2020

In Roleplaying

Here’s a short list of the various books, films, and games that were particularly inspirational in designing Hex and the setting around it:

*Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland*, by Lewis Carroll

*The Blazing World*, by Margaret Cavendish

*Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell*, by Susannah Clarke

*Thief: The Dark Project*, by Looking Glass Studios

1d100 Characters & Crooks in Hex

By Bearded-Devil

On December 14, 2019

In Roleplaying

*Palace-Pate and Chantarelle Tombsworth, two of Hex’s many colourful characters.*

My approach to DMing favours the specific over the procedural. However, like any DM I still enjoy a random table from time to time.

I’m planning on including various tables like this in the Hex Gazetteer. The goal will be to provide DMs with a very quick but very unique, quirky, interesting NPC every time without having to make multiple rolls for species/profession etc. The same philosophy will be applied to encounters and events to make the city feel like it’s overflowing with strange delights and horrors round every corner. The sheer volume of them, like the sheer size of the map, should make Hex feel inexhaustible without using procedural generation techniques.

*“What’ll it be, miss? We’ve got Sarcophagus Ale and Blackeak Brew on tap – and a nice case of Erubescent claret in just Mazeday last…”*

1d100	Character
1	Sir Aart Vex, a Slumsknecht – a gnome lancer clad in scavenged oddments of armour and riding a giant rat steed. Eager for adventure and possessed of an antique and lunatic chivalry. Charges a 5 sp toll for use of his “manorial alleyway.”
2	Blind Sheila, a gorgon whose eyes have been removed and whose serpents have all been defanged, snapping gummily at any who touches them. Sheila’s a member of the Beggars’ Guild and knows many strange secrets from the world’s youth which she’ll divulge for those with sufficient coin.
3	Imogen Lowchurch, last surviving member of the Sixty-Six Rodents, a gang the Crowsbeak Thieves’ Guild destroyed in the Moulting War between criminal organizations in Corvid Commons. Grimy, vicious, wanted by the Crowsbeak, and filled with righteous vengeance. She lives in the sewers, having escaped the wrath of the victors above.
4	Sebastian Rut, cambion artist and hired assassin, exquisitely handsome and perfectly merciless. Long black hair kept in flowing curls around his delicate ivory horns. He paints macabre masterpieces with the blood of his victims. Wanted with a 1000 gp reward; rates vary from 100-500 gp for assassinations.
5	The Husk, an otherwise nameless man who wanders Corvid Commons with ponderous tread, enormous cysts slowly growing on his exposed skin. These cysts are actually incubating the larvae of a being the Husk refers to as “the Angel” which he claims to have met in the Old City. When the cysts pop, the larvae emerge – whining worm-things with grotesque little humanoid faces, like monstrous “Cherubim.” The Husk nurtures these beings somewhere in his underground dwelling, a sewer-hovel he calls “the Cathedral.” No one has seen one of the creatures pupate.
6	Stained Bill, a wild-eyed vagabond, mute, with swirling, magical discolourations all over his skin. The amorphous patterns leech into any organic matter he touches, causing people to grow feverish, fruit to rot, meat to spoil. Reputedly an adventurer whose entire party disappeared in the Old City; only he returned.
7	Zelda Scratch, a bearded lady and footpad; she skulks in the shadows, twirling her goatee in one hand and her blackjack in another, waiting for likely marks to cosh and rob. Wanted for theft, for a 50 gp reward if brought in alive.
8	Lizzie Sneer, a twelve-year-old pickpocket and member of the Jackdaws with a +6 to Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks and a taste for expensive jewellery, some of which often decorates her ears, neck, and fingers, despite her otherwise bedraggled appearance.
9	Rumkin the Bold, a waspkin youth with delusions of chivalric heroism and a sword frankly far too big for him. A useful hireling on sojourns to dangerous locales. Absurdly muscular for a tiny waspkin.
10	Adrianus Gaunt, a veteran of the Moon Wars and member of the Beggars’ Guild. His time in the Wolsfwald on the borders of Erubescence left him badly scarred and afflicted with lycanthropy, which he treats with a diet of wolsfbane and powdered sliver; nonetheless, he is subject to partial transformations into lupine form, his teeth occasionally becoming fangs, patches of fur sprouting across his body. If caught by the Warders or City Watch he would doubtless be quarantined in Catch All.
11	Matthias Wode, disgraced City Watchmen, drunk, thrum addict. His limbs gradually fade as his beard and hair lengthen and his mind and liver rot. Does occasional work for the Crowsbeak Guild, whose bribery cost him his job.
12	Toothless Gwen, a wizened, grey-haired soothsayer, can cast Augury for a mere 10 gp, throwing a handful of her own loose, glyph-etched teeth against the wall of the alleyway to prophesy weal or woe.
13	Jenny Greenbeast, a Crowsbeak thief cursed by a magistrate for her crimes with the Curse of Terrible Volume: every breath, word, stomach-grumble, or sneeze she issues is deafeningly, astoundingly loud.
14	The Possum, true name unknown; an escaped inmate from the Institute for the Magically Insane. Due to an enchantment-gone-wrong he believes he is literally a possum and can be found hanging upside-down in unusual places. A member of the Beggars’ Guild, though not an especially productive one.
15	Sir Bartholomew Meddling, a Slumsknecht obsessed with justice, who enforces ludicrous feudal laws within his tiny demesne, wielding a massive zweihänder as he serves as judge, jury, and executioner.
16	Chanterelle Tombsworth, one of the few ghoul courtesans outside of the slums of Shambleside – an “exotic” companion working at the Black Leash, said to have studied for several years at the Académie Macabre before a scandalous expulsion. Rumour has she is the latest muse of Vittoria Wolfsheart, Hex’s foremost playwright of gruesome tragedies and twisted dark comedies.
17	Chartreuse, a fungoid footpad who confuses their marks with clouds of soporific spores.
18	Father Ezekiel Mottlehead, a vagabond priest of the Hanged God, wanders Corvid Commons with a sacred noose around his neck, preaching the doctrine of his strange northern deity and offering to perform hanging rituals to induct passersby into a new order. The official Church of the Hanged God in Trollhome have disavowed his activities.
19	Snips, a rogue barber-goblin from Delirium Castle. He gives excellent haircuts with his sharpened nails and teeth for only 1 sp.
20	Winnie Coldpalm, a ghoul scavenger fresh from the catacomb. Sells corpses stolen from the crypts for 25 gp each. She idly chews on the merchandise.
21	Margery Shackleton, a cheeky Roofsguard who likes practicing her archery on rats and other vermin from several storeys up. Has been known to shoot hats off heads or weapons from hands.
22	Zibb, a homeless gutterpuck. He rapidly changes forms – donkey, dog, cat, giant cockroach, pigeon – to delight passersby. The Beggars’ Guild usually don’t mess with fey, but his gig is becoming profitable enough to attract their ire.
23	Buggle Fogwit, a slack-jawed, fish-headed dagonian member of the Stench, whose mildew reek is coupled with a disgusting piscine stink. Fights with a spiked club with poisoned spikes.
24	Gregor “Whipstitch” Scald, one of the Bonesaw Boys, whose favoured weapons are sharpened surgical scissors wielded like punching daggers and who has developed a taste for humanoid kidneys.
25	Telepathic Tabitha, a mind-reading vagrant and Senior Mendicant in the Beggars’ Guild; can cast Detect Thoughts at will for only 1 sp per minute.
26	Brother Gloaming, a monk dedicated to the Shrouded Lord, known to appear when sacrifices are left at twilight. His features are obscured by the black garments of his order, but his voice is thin and needle-like. He has been entrusted by the Shrouded Lord with knowledge of bloodlines – calling on the power of the Unspeakable One, he can tell any person the names of their parents and grandparents.
27	Archibald Slack, a balding, clever-faced conjuror from Fiend’s College, often found perusing the length of Tatterwing Way in search of banned grimoires that even his institution’s library won’t stock. Has a toad-like imp named Skroi for a familiar.
28	Simone Vertices, a wide-eyed gnome novelist slumming it in Corvid Commons, often found scribbling down stories in the dark corners of the Thieves’ Quarters seediest bars. She is reputedly working on a romance about Crowsbeak and Ravenswing thieves falling in love, the aptly titled Love Among Thieves.
29	Theophilus Grubby-Hook, a philosophical cutthroat and leader of the Tailfeather Fops, much given to existential navel-gazing after relieving his victims of their purses or lives. Blonde, pretty, and terribly tiresome at parties.
30	Patience and Languor Weevilbane, conjoined twins in the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild renowned for their good looks and expertise in picking locks. The Weevilbane twins each have +8 to checks to open locks and are surprisingly nimble.
31	Nurse Nigella Mothsbrain, the only female member of the Bonesaw Boys. She’s quick with the chloroform and gas grenades – both useful for subduing potential victims – and an ether-addict, much given to ether frolics.
32	Jorok Mosshide, a trollblood brawler and drunken lout prone to making outrageous and dangerous bets when he’s in his cups (which is always).
33	Verena Ratsbabe, a rag-and-bones woman and scavenger from the Midden; one of her hands has wriggling centipedes in place of fingers, courtesy of the eldritch pollution in that district. She sells various curios and junk, some of it magical, often at bargain prices.
34	Desdemona Subtlety, a fence specializing in jewellery and objets d’art. She wears an elaborate porcelain mask magically animated to move with her features; none know what her true visage looks like. Some claim she is one of the Fair Folk.
35	Anaximander Thrush, Solicitor – a lawyer with offices in Golemsgate, frequently to be found in the Witching Hour and other establishments meeting clients. Corpulent, friendly, incredibly intelligent, with a selection of fabulous wigs.
36	Bonifacius Lamentable, a bony leech-collector, often seen on Widdershins Way hawking his wares to the sick. He shambles out to the Radula every dawn, wading into the shallows to attract each day’s catch; his legs are badly scarred as a result.
37	Prowl the Silent, a waspkin pickpocket missing her wings – they were cut off by the Bonesaw Boys and sold to the alchemist Angelique Duvide for her shop, Queen’s Crimson. Prowl runs with the Jackdaws and is a favourite of Sly Rufus. +7 to Dexterity (Sleight of Hand).
38	Yawp, a Brickwose on a shamanic quest from his tribe, the Bat-Eaters. Missing his ears, covered in elaborate ritual scars, and seeking the head of Agnes Greycheek.
39	Palace-Pate, one of the Fair Folk, who has an entire palace populated by miniscule sprites growing out of his head. He speaks with a thick accent and refuses to discuss the palace; some have speculated he is simply its bearer.
40	Elisabeth de l’Abysse, a dhampir bastard from the Crimson City of Erubescence. A sensuous killer, monster-hunter, mercenary. She finds the eternal night of the Midnight Market soothing.
41	Henry Snoresby, out-of-work actor turned Crowsbeak thief. Leading man good looks, but totally wooden on the stage. He’s decent as a pickpocket, though: +5 to Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks.
42	Ratgirl, a vigilante dedicated to “cleaning up Corvid Commons,” an insane, impossible, and seemingly suicidal quest. Decked out with magical equipment, she also possesses a preternatural sense of smell and the ability to hide in shadows, scurry up and down walls, and similar abilities. Although she appears quite young, her actual identity is unknown – theories claim she might be a student at one of the magical universities, a rich brat from Fanghill, or an avenging demon. She dresses in rat-fur clothes and wears a gruesome rat-like mask.
43	Danielle Periwinkle has the lower body of a gigantic earwig, ever since she stumbled waist-deep into a pool of alchemical sludge in the Midden. She’s made the most of it and now runs a thriving rickshaw service – just 2 sp to reach anywhere in South Hex.
44	Geoffrey Clattersoul, a Royalist who insists that Xavier Soulswell is the true ruler of Hex and that the city state must be restored to an absolute monarchy. Scrawny and unconvincing; even the aristocratic Slumsknechte find him vaguely obnoxious. Hands out pro-monarchist pamphlets to anyone who will take one.
45	Alaric Mulderwood, a self-taught necromancer who specializes in reanimating body parts. Accompanied by a retinue of crawling reanimated hands and arms, hopping legs, and murmuring heads, embalmed and tattooed with glyphs. His shop hauls itself about south Hex.
46	Houndmoss, an emancipated homunculus encrusted with grey lichen; member of the Beggars’ Guild. A talented street musician with the panpipes, accompanied by a troupe of Charmed raccoons.
47	Many-Blades, a Lengian mercenary swordsman, highly skilled with his mismatched swords, who hangs out at the Ignus Faatus looking for work. He wears a suit of impeccable spidersilk armour.
48	Arthur “Sniffer” Slumply, a curmudgeonly Roofsguard, highly skilled with a crossbow. A nasty spell left his vision damaged, so he wears black glasses at all times, and aims partially through a highly developed sense of smell.
49	Deirdre Scrunch, a changeling street-witch and occasional arsonist with a talent for evocation and ever-shifting hair (length, colour, texture), who is always accompanied by her gutterpuck companion Scuttle.
50	Big Urk, a diminutive fungoid and Crowsbeak enforcer who likes the sound of breaking bones and collects the fingers of those who refused to pay their protection. Generally accompanied by 2d4 Crowsbeak toughs.
51	Millicent Briar, a demure cambion girl of seven who insists she is the Endbringer, a descendent of the Archdemon Moloch, and will break the Seal in Little Pandemonium to usher in an age of brimstone and become Queen of Hell. She is a powerful sorcerer for such a young girl, though much given to tea-parties with broken dolls in the back-alleys of the Commons.
52	Oswald Tealeaf, a gnome tinker and knife-sharpener who can impart a +1 bonus to damage to any slashing weapon for 1 gp; the bonus lasts for one encounter. He can also cast Mending for 5 sp.
53	Gutwrench, a Brickwose often seen carrying her twin boys on her back while raiding. A muscular woman of short stature, her preferred weapon is, appropriately enough, a gigantic wrench; she has a dented manhole cover for a shield. Her tribe are called the Drowned Rats.
54	Barbaros Khatun, a freelance mercenary and veteran of the endless warfare on the Purple Plateau, broad-shouldered, big-bearded, one-eyed, wielding a symbiotic sword and a shield fashioned from the carapace of some otherworldly monster. Hireable for 10 gp per day.
55	Gerrit Impsboon, an eldritch tattooist, sinewy, covered in squirming, tiny sigils; slighted points ears suggest he may be a changeling. He can provide a Thief’s Mark to those with Guild affiliation for 100 gp.
56	Ursula Killing sells jinxcrows, wheeling dozens of cages filled with them in a ramshackle cart. Each crow costs 100 gp and has one random first level spell memorized. A few prized crows worth 250 gp each have memorized a second level spell instead.
57	Abbey Slugswallow, a black-market apothecary; she runs a nomadic little shop selling illicit scrolls of Remove Curse to dodge magistrates’ maledictions, along with various illegal poisons.
58	Delilah Deadrose is a Wraithwaste survivor who spent several years in Catch-All. The disease is cured, but her entire left half is spectral, passing through solid objects. She can see spirits and other Ethereal creatures with her left eye. She now finds her employment as a courtesan on Heartbreak Street.
59	Jacoba van Snout, a Ravenswing illusionist, Fledgling rank, trained at Umbral University. Dark of hair, heart, and humour, she delights in particularly gruesome illusions, often pranking those she meets by magically simulating her own grisly demise.
60	Damien Shrug, a Ravenswing Talon with a stone arm courtesy of a magical trap he triggered during a burglary. Likes a bit of shadetea at the Dark Drop and similar establishments. The arm does prove somewhat useful in a fight.
61	Persimmon Swig, a farmer who got lost on his way to St. Monstrum’s Gate. He is, frankly, pretty terrified at this point, and could someone please help him find his way out of this horrible place? His sheep must be missing him!
62	Captain Joost Lijkburger, a crooked member of the City Watch sometimes glimpsed in plainclothes meeting his contacts at Sallow Sally’s or other establishments. Meaty, pig-eyed, scarred of face, small of brain, large of appetite, bad of breath.
63	Calliope Tumbledown, a skilled lock-picker, pickpocket, and Ravenswing Fledgling, often found honing her skills on random doors and purses throughout south Hex. Short, cropped hair, a quick smile and quicker fingers.
64	Byzou, an emancipated demon possessing a large doll resembling a well-dressed boy of noble birth, cracked and fissured with unholy energies, glyphs adorning its cheeks. He is a member of the Magpie Consortium and an expert on diabolic artefacts.
65	Razor the Droll, a waspkin satirist who writes and illustrates for the column “Razor Wit” for the seditious newspaper Counterspell. He has an impressive moustache (especially for a waspkin) and a flair for caricatures.
66	Phillipe Trench, a Crowsbeak second-storey man cursed by a magistrate for breaking and entering. He is deathly phobic of open windows as a result of the curse and compulsively closes them in any room he is in. To be honest, open doors aren’t great, either. Or trapdoors. Or manholes. Or latrines. Cabinets. Closets. Any opening, really. Could you close your mouth, please? It’s disturbing.
67	Luciana Fenris, an adventurer-librarian, tawny-haired and ruthless of demeanour; she is employed by the Institute of Omens and is often found in Crowsbeak Commons in search of certain volumes sometimes for sale on Tatterwing Way.
68	Edwina Ramsfoot, a Bloodworm tough renowned for her skill with whips. Statuesque, no-nonsense, enjoys the fights at the Butcherbird Fighting Pits on Shrike Street. Heavy Incarnadine user.
69	Acrid “Doomblade” Morrigan, a pretentious teenage poet and freelance mercenary who dresses all in black leather armour and carries a gigantic sword. He’d be completely laughable were it not for his genuine martial and magical talent: he’s a sorcerer and swordsman of considerable natural ability. A would-be adventurer, he’s looking for a party to accompany, and can be quite an asset for a group willing to put up with recitations of extraordinarily overwrought and melancholy verse.
70	Persephone Lilac, an adventurer of some renown, dungeon-pale and strangely scarred, is unstuck from time, skipping across its surface like a peddle across a lake. Ever since she ran afoul of the Sundial-headed Knight in Elfhame she experiences every other hour of time, disappearing for an hour and reappearing with no memory of the interim. The time between skips is very slowly shrinking.
71	Klub Stoneclaw, a trollblood cook, hulkingly muscular and massive of belly, jovial of disposition; renowned for his eel-tarts, which he sells for 5 cp each from a little cart. Beautiful runic tattoos on his expansive biceps and forearms.
72	Amelia Flinch, a former Hexmarine in the navy, who fought during the Ichor Wars. She is now a Roofsguard, but still walks with a limp due to the living shells embedded in her left calf, courtesy of parasite-guns of the Gelatinous Empire.
73	Xanthus Joy, a Ravenswing burglar renowned for his beautiful golden hair, obsession with stealing sacred artefacts, and daring approach to thievery. A libertine, and the subject of many romantic fantasies in Corvid Commons and indeed throughout the city.
74	Otto de Wilde, sometimes said to be the strongest man in Hex, though there are rivals for that title, particularly among the trollbloods. This seven foot-tall, hulking man – a Bloodworm enforcer covered in crimson worm tattoos – can bend steel bars and perform similar feats quite easily. He occasionally fights in the Butcherbird Fighting Pits.
75	Varicose Strum, an elementalist who specializes in blood magic, controlling people using their blood or animating gouts of the stuff to form weapons, armour, servants. Debonair, epicene, slender, chalk-pale, dresses all in red.
76	Sister Stygian, a cultist of the Shrouded Lord who appears to petitioners on moonless nights. She is swathed in back cloth but is long of limb and carries a censer of velvety incense. The Shrouded Lord has entrusted her with knowledge of the secrets of death, and for the right sacrifice she can discern the cause and time of any person’s death, though never the identity of their killer.
77	Flamingo, a fungoid fence of the Magpie Consortium, bright pink and sweet-smelling, covered in vivid sacs, usually clad in voluminous dresses with dozens of Pockets of Holding sewn into the fabric.
78	Gabrielle Ankh, a rag-and-bones woman whose junk-cart is piled high with musical instruments, rusty firearms, bent cutlery, and a live bird’s nest with her pet jinxcrow, Giltbeak, whose ensorcelled, sigil-graven beak has been known to occasionally transmute objects to gold for a few brief moments when pecked (the result of a spellshower – see Phenomena for details).
79	Astra Scudd, a gnomish poison-seller with terrible chemical burns, false teeth, and a cheerful manner.
80	Musty Moll, a member of the Stench, one of Noisome Nancy’s lieutenants. Skeleton-thin and brown-toothed, with sharpened iron implants in place of nails. She has a serious Ghostdust habit and sees spirits everywhere.
81	Ezra Metatron, a priest of the Thousand-Suckered-One, who frequently ministers to the poor in Corvid Commons. Massive of girth and of generosity, he and his acolytes distribute medicinal tonics, food, and religious pamphlets. His limbs are puckered with angry red scars from his ritual couplings with the Cephalopod Saints in his order’s temple.
82	Judith Swanskull, a cambion gunfighter and highwaywoman of great derring-do. She often lounges in Corvid Commons in-between jobs on the road. There’s a 250 gp price on her head. Crimson hair and vestigial bat-wings courtesy of her succubus mother.
83	Wendolyn Froth, a Crowsbeak thief caught and cursed by a magistrate to be followed by a miniature stormcloud for the next six years. It rains down on her in a soft drizzle most of the time, but begins to pour rain if she lies, and electrocutes her if she commits any outright crimes. Currently a member of the Beggars’ Guild.
84	Chrysanthemum, a renegade homunculus in the Ravenswing Thieves’ Guild – cheeky, preternaturally stealthy, specializing in “hiding in plain sight” as a house plant in the homes of the wealthy.
85	Maxime Smack, one of the Jackdaws, a dagonian orphan just out of her larval stage, mottled yellow-brown scales, often found selling scavenged treasures culled from the muddy depths of sewer-tunnels.
86	Nibbling Oliphant, a second-rate pickpocket and Tailfeather Fop with expensive taste in clothes but clumsy fingers. He tries his best, but ever since the mousetrap incident his game’s been off.
87	Dorothea Rabid, a voluptuous ghoul courtesan expelled from the Courtesans’ Guild for murdering a client for unknown reasons. Moonlights as a freelance assassin. Huge yellow eyes.
88	Gash the Bodger, a waspkin messenger and petty thief who is also a minor mechanist, building rusty clockwork toys from scavenged scrap.
89	The Switchskin, one of the Fair Folk, who during the day is a manic, violent, whimsical, lecherous prankster, and during the night is a preternaturally calm sage of immense wisdom. He can occasionally be seen in The Lady with the Bloodstained Fan on Carrion Street.
90	Harry Sluaghwarren, a ghoul costermonger who specializes in eels, hot and jellied, avaliable with pie and mash. His cries of “JELLIED EELS” and “EELS ’N MASH” can be heard for some distance.
91	Virgil the Noseslicer, a terrifying Crowsbeak cutthroat, beloved in some circles, known for his dislike of the City Watch and his keen ability to detect plain-clothes officers (“Noses”). He keeps a grisly series of trophies – literal sliced-off noses – on a string round his brawny neck.
92	Charles “Pighead” Perrottet, a criminal originally from Erubescence, captured by Hexian authorities and polymorphed into a pig as punishment. He was liberated and partially transformed back, but the Dispel went badly wrong dueto some wild magic current or the incompetence of the caster (he insists the latter) that has left him half-human, half-pig, permanently. A member of the Crowsbeak Thieves’ Guild.
93	Empty, a shadowmilk-drinker who has not spoken in thirteen years, black of eye and lip, nondescript of clothing and face. They appear unpredictably when jobs need doing, without being summoned or contracted, and inevitably do whatever needs to be done, exhibiting an incredibly broad array of skills in exchange for coin, usually only a guinea (1 gp). Those that refuse to pay Empty for their labour are cursed with nightmares of unbelievable horror for weeks or months on end, sometimes going permanently mad.
94	The Vinemother, an aged druidess who lives in Mooncross but journeys across Hex planting tiny plants everywhere she goes, nurtured with magic, in a vain but endless war against the industrial sprawl of the metropolis. Long white hair strewn with leaves, clad in ragged garments of leaves and vines.
95	Notch, a Brickwose warlord usually accompanied by a band of 2d6 marauders, inevitably on a raid for food, clothing, and thralls; covered in scars and wielding a serrated glaive.
96	Backbreak Ben, a wiry but muscular ghoul gladiator renowned for his signature spine-snapping move in the Butcherbird Fighting Pits. Actually quite a gentle soul outside of the Pits, but an utter maniac within them.
97	Corina Crumbsmoot, a pockmarked, taciturn woman; a dead-cart driver, she rolls through Corvid Commons every Boneday collecting corpses to sell to the Reanimators’ Guild in Shambleside. She pays between 10 and 50 gp per corpse depending on its species and state of decomposition.
98	Carmelita the Crustacean Courtesan promises an unforgettable experience for the discerning lady, gentleman, or any who lieth betwixt. Half-transformed during a magical accident into a hybrid of woman and shellfish, her exoskeleton glistens with cheap gemstones, adjacent to pearlescent human flesh, advertised from the delicate balcony from which she beseeches passersby. Those with sufficient coin (100 gp) to patronize her boudoir will also find her rich in philosophical conversation.
99	Cynosure van Rump, a scrawny anathemist covered in eldritch tattoos, who summons tentacular horrors from distant dimensions through his guts – his belly expands rapidly and he vomits forth stomach-conjured monsters. Perpetually ill-looking.
100	Jangling Jane, a lockpick-merchant. Most of her merchandise is contained in her gigantic tunnelswine-leather coat, from which her epithet is derived: hundreds and hundreds of lockpicks, skeleton keys, and specific keys to doors scattered throughout the city, which she sells for anything from 5cp to 1500 gp.

If you like what you see here and want to read more of this larger setting, check out Genial Jack: Volume 1, including NPCs, districts, and playable species in a city within a giant whale.