An RPG Wargame
Investigating Censor is a dark rules-light RPG wargame set amidst a campaign by oracular warrior monks to eliminate a sect of human-sacrificing pirates.
The leaders of these monks, Investigating Censors, can enlist anyone into their retinue on pain of outlawry. Anybody who is not an enemy can be turned into a party member.
Proper use of this power will bring powerful alchemists, spirit-binders, sword saints, and courtesans to the cause of the Investigating Censors.
Misuse of the Investigating Censors' charter will arouse fanatical resistance among the people of the pirate regime.
Allies will be needed, as the warriors monks must wage archery battles from horseback, fight pirate ships at sea, storm sacrificial fanes in the caverns of the rocky coast, and survive encounters with supernatural creatures and their powers of prophecy.
"100% febrile... 100% scintillating
The whole work sparkles. An excellent way to generate febrile situations and toss chaos in the form of the PCs into the middle." -
The Lone Amigo
Passages from Investigating Censor
Index
Investigating Censor
The Mission
Treetop Willow Musth Harvesting Complex
Urban Vice District
Manorial Valley
Massive Excavation Operation
Pirate Assets
Pirate Temples
Winter Temple
Conflagration Temple
Infrared Temple
Plunder Temple
The High Road
Appendix A: The High Dreaming Citadel
Appendix B: How We Came to the Land of the Pirates
Appendix C: Secret Societies
Appendix D: Co-Opting Centers of Gravity and Key Personalities
Appendix E: The Search for Allies
Appendix F: Monks of the Lower Orders
Appendix G: Corruption, Loyalty, and Resolve
Appendix H: Cachet and Skill Investment
Appendix I: Skills
Appendix J: The Uses of Alchemy
Appendix K: The Uses of Fetches and Fetishes
Appendix L: Retinue Personalities
Appendix M: Combat
Appendix N: Commentary
Appendix O: Local Hostility
Appendix P: Variants
Investigating Censor
You are an Investigating Censor of the High Dreaming Citadel, a warrior monk from a temple of stricture and prophecy.
Your order overthrew the Castellans’ Alliance and then destroyed the pirate regime of the southern coast, for they owed their loyalty to the Castellans.
You are now deployed against the Cult of Preservation, the underground remnants of the pirates. Your mission is to burn their pirate ships, tear down their wharves, seize their assets, eliminate their captains, save their captives from sacrifice, and send their cliff-face temples tumbling into the sea.
You go to a land where the people have every reason to believe in the righteousness of their cause, however bitter its method. They were the only ones to profit from the Castellans’ disastrous wars.
You have been vested with a fell power by the High Dreaming Citadel. You may issue a Writ of Purpose to any individual in the southern realm. Doing so will compel them to follow your directives on pain of outlawry. You may order them into battle, to go undercover under dangerous circumstances, or to end their own lives.
The Writs you issue and the services you compel will greatly shape the reputation that precedes you and the resistance you will face.
Treetop Willow Musth Harvesting Annex
The trees are so thick that there are bunkers made of tree rounds rolled into position and hollowed. The actual harvesting of musth occurs in the canopy, the narcotic hyperfuel welling out of hacked-up sprigs.
…
The laborers and exporters of the annex are ill-suited to the surrounding wildlands, but they interface with a forest tribe that uses its ancestral burial pit as a smoldering soil furnace to imbue charcoal with alchemical properties.
…
Attempts to create alchemical tinctures with Hypervigilance, Sexual Arousal, Euphoria, or Battle Psychosis effects here gain a free reroll due to the availability of fresh willow musth. See Appendix J: The Uses of Alchemy.
Urban Vice District
Vice neighborhoods are bathed in a low blue light. They are kept elevated and walled off to avoid polluting the ground beneath them and the mountains around.
...
The vice districts have not lost their popularity with the downfall of the pirate regime, though the character of the games has grown darker and more vicious as the source of offshore treasure dries to a trickle.
Brothels are ubiquitous here but are complex affairs; many men develop burning affections for individual prostitutes, and meetings held in the brothels can be complicated by the men competing for the attention of prostitutes and prostitutes playing the men off each other for amusement and demonstration of mastery. The madams keep a close eye on proceedings, manage bodyguards, and ensure that powerful visitors are positively-disposed enough to them that they can be called upon during power plays.
Every kind of alchemy is needed in the Vice District; hedonizers, entheogens, poison, stimulants, soothing creams, artificial immune systems, and panacea. Production and sale of alchemical reagents is controlled by the Vice Provisioner, in the sense that underground operations will need to give him a cut.
This Secret Man prizes autocratic stability. He does not care about public decorum or the wellbeing of this society's worst-off people. He provides narcotic reagents seized from smugglers and unauthorized tincturers to addicts in exchange for their services in pretty much any simple task he needs. He has found them usefully disposable.
Hereditary Arsonists
They were created as a corps of firestarter burglars in service to a corrupt Secret Man. He would use them to set fires in valuable but vulnerable properties, and then he would rush in to make a fire-sale offer. As soon as the money changed hands (in presence of his general counsel), the burglars would re-infiltrate and end the fire.
Today they do not re-infiltrate. They serve no Secret Man, having burnt him alive when they'd learned all they could from him. Now, they are a fire cult dedicated to the ruthless and exclusive protection of the prerogatives of the common people of the Vice District- both against oppression from above, and against economic competition from without.
The ICs will be continually called out by drunks. Actual confrontations will be more occasional. When the ICs or members of their Retinue walk in the streets, the GM may, at will, roll on the Vice District Atavism Table or generate a similar result
Knocked-over lanterns cause a massive fire; a volunteer destruction squad rushes to the scene, but local extortionists pelt them with wood and pottery. 2d4 criminals
Human traffickers carry a passed-out woman or a screaming child to a donkey cart with a wicker cage in the back. 2d4 criminals
Despite the violence and degradation, there are many shrines here. The ICs may encounter one in passing, or more if they seek them out.
A Shrine of:
d10
1. Rats
2. Mortar
3. Drainage
4. Meat
5. The Winds that Roll the Dice
6. Fire
7. Liquor
8. Prostitutes
9. Loans
10. Foreigners
If an offering is given, roll Poetry or Flute vs d12. On a success, the supplicant gains a reroll to be used at will.
Volksgeist that slithers through the pipes:
d4
1. Tempting and devouring people
2. Gambling with lone celebrants in out-of-the-way places, putting forth dangerous otherworldly artifacts for its part
3. Eating and drinking vast quantities of the Vice Fortress’ reserves
4. Killing those who’ve lost everything
Volksgeist
Acuity: d12
Alchemy: d20
Fetches and Fetishes: d20
Flute: d20
Gambling: d20
Impersonation: d12
Prophecy: d20
Prowess: d20
Soon, Luck Angels are attracted to the proceedings and stand perfectly still with their freakishly proportioned bone, wax, and ceramic bodies near the goldtalkers, their false porcelain faces low in their scale- ribbed chests. They move only when following the goldtalkers, or to blow burning gold dust on those who accuse this cult of prosperity of malfeasance. Those touched by the dust will die of freak accident or confrontation in d4 days from the encounter.
Manorial Valley
The great grain-harvesting steps have fallen into the shadows of volunteer orchards, and the sun- warmed water has sunk into the earth to service cassava. Shacks and counting-houses nearly slide into the valley from their perches amid ever-growing bramble. At the bottom of the canyon, more shadowed than the faces before they grew covered in trees, is a shining white and gold manor that tumbles across a river plain. The mansion’s luster is undimmed but its outer walls have been broken in many places.
The cavalry are loyal to the FRO, but a few of them have been enchanted by subtle words from the concubines. If there is ever a power struggle between the wife and the concubines while the FRO is away, these men will side with the concubines. They will claim that the wife was cut down after poisoning several of the concubines' children. The concubines are willing to make this ruse credible, and characterize poisoning their weaker sons as a sacrifice for the stronger.
They pore over woodblock scrolls detailing vast nautical victories, plunder ennobling the plunderer, the sacred bond of blood and treasure which their people have with the sea. They have not forgotten, and their myth sings in their blood. They are partisans of their father's lost cause, and as their food supply dwindles and their cavalrymen sit on the walls, their ire grows into a black bile that must find its means of expression.
She knows exactly how long the stores are going to last, exactly which FROs are sending messengers here and what it is they lack, and she knows how the bandits in the hills grow bolder and bolder, closer and closer. She knows how the concubines whisper; she does not know the chasm-like darkness of their design.
The daughters have little to gain from the maneuvers of the concubines, given the agnatic inheritance of south coast society, and they are broadly aligned with the lady of the house, though they dread the day that the blood of their mothers and brothers will run across the smooth tiles of the white manor.
Headman
He oversees the people who live on the valley slopes. They grow their cassava in the shade, shelters of bramble that hum with trilling insects. There is silkrock in the crags; it is impregnated with bacteria that concentrates aerial filaments around it, and the women pull it in reams from the sun-warmed rocks.
Tree-Ghost Nephews
Men who can speak to the tree ghosts of the outer wild, gaining information and sometimes sending travelers to unfortunate ends. They are often dismayed by how the forest spirits seem to favor the bandits, given some elemental kinship.
Acuity: d6
Alchemy: d6
Archery: d6
Fetches and Fetishes: d12
Flute: d8
Impersonation: d8
Poetry: d6
Prophecy: d4
Massive Excavation Operation
Ten thousand monks can be seen from afar, their white civilian headwraps weaving around the hillside like airborne cotton.
The true carpet of the land makes itself apparent as one nears the mountain, the common laborers in earth-tone tunics scraping the soil with their fingers.
There are great rickety networks of pallets cut from green wood mounting endless sacks of red millet kept beneath multicolored reams of waterproof tissue; these are not for eating but for making wine in stone basins cut through disused quarries, which can be seen around the lakes, gray walls poxed by weeping pools of fermenting millet.
There are many tattooists working around the millet pools, and they advertise their abilities with beautifully-tattooed pigs.
They are monks of soil, and have no intrinsic loyalty to you monks of stone beyond the value of your association in the commoner's eye.
At night, some shelter-complexes are lit by red lanterns, some are lit blue. Where they are blue, wounded men lay. Where they are red, cards turn and tiles land amid scampering dice.
A man who loses everything can trudge out at the next dawn to win another day's pay and another chance at the pot. A man who wins everything faces a new problem: getting back to civilization with his life and his riches.
He gazes at the black walls in his imagination that encircle this mountain, and these are from where demons and disasters emerge. He watches his workers with an unblinking eye and keeps a hand of iron ready to subdue them, for he can sense the shadow taking root in their hearts.
Magistracy of Arsenic Artificer
A grim but harmless madman who assesses artifacts and carries out engineering projects, otherwise speaking nonsense.
Voidmaker
An expert in explosives and solvents, and he can consistently produce a material that acts as both. He is morbidly fascinated by the stripping of the mountaintop; as stranger forms emerge, he becomes more and more obsessed with the unaccountable structures that must lay beneath, and their implications for the work of nonhuman consciousnesses in this realm. He will not stop, no matter what might emerge from the mountain.
Alchemy: d10
Fetches and Fetishes: d6
Horsemanship: d6
Prophecy: d4
Prowess: d6
Labor Boss
This man is the end of a long, unbroken line of sea lords belonging to the Cult of Protection. His fathers calmed hurricanes with offers of blood and called down thunder strikes on pursuing navies. The lore of his youth was of sea battles, the love of naiads, and fabulous treasure given to one's fellows or secreted away.
He was a boy when the High Dreaming Citadel sent his father screaming through their antechamber, bristling with arrows and squirting blood. His dreams of salt and timber turned to ash with his family's manor. He escaped with a scullion boy, their futures uncertain but matched in prospects.
He grew up rough, a manual laborer since he was old enough to cut his hands on the rock. He forgot the glory of battle and sea maidens, seeing drunken thuggery and broken hearts in the lanes of his township, far from the manor or sea. What he did not forget were stories of treasure, especially not one that his childless great uncle told him of this mountain.
[…]
He will stop at nothing to reach the root of this mountain. He will stop at nothing to be the first to enter its final chambers.
A murmuring ziggurat hanging with fresh fruit
Secrets of the Shifting Earth
d4
3. Monks of an outlawed monastery are infiltrating the laborers and legitimate monks to break open the site of a propitiated tigress banshee sealed away by ancestral sword saints.
3d4 Monks of the Sapient Scream
Acuity: d8
Alchemy: d8
Archery: d8
Fetches and Fetishes: d8
Flute: d10
Impersonation: d10
Prophecy: d4
Prowess: d8
Tigress Banshee (if unsealed)
Acuity: d20
Alchemy: d20
Archery (scream, affects all in earshot): d12
Fetches and Fetishes: d12
Impersonation: d20
Poetry: d10
Prophecy: d20
Prowess: d20
Speed: 12 squares
The excavation unearthed a court of blood serpents which had been sealed when their complex was attacked using tectonic weapons; several survived the centuries by binding their fellows and draining their blood. The survivors have still dried out to the point that their organs no longer function, and so they need blood to maintain their animation and rationality.
A man apparently buried alive. He spits dirt and speaks an archaic version of the southern coast dialect. In truth, he is the superstructure of a dozen mummies of varying ages and sizes fused in layers throughout each other like a matryoshka doll. […]
A layer may be good, the next evil, one sagacious, another elemental, one musical, and so forth, until the wizened core is revealed, a drawn ancient infant like a wooden mandragora.
Some of the buried individuals took parapanaceums before their inhumation and have survived the ceremonies in degraded form; they have been mentally and physically “altered” by their long ride in the soil, but come to their senses when disinterred.
Pirate Assets
Pirate Interceptor
A great rectangular box fanning slightly outward at sea level, a great prison and shipping container built around a long, brazen sea ram. It has warehouse doors on its side and front for heaping treasure and disgorging fighting men, and there are gaps in the wood beneath the eaves for men to fire bows sidelong or hurl down pots of naphtha and scorpions.
The ship operates under lateen sails until contact range is imminent, when the pirates descend to oars and prepare to ram or come alongside the prize.
Pirate Mothership
A great mansion carved into a floating boulder. It rocks back and forth with the cascading tide, its walkways and balconies bristling with men armed with shortbows and firepot slings and grapnel- laden arbalests.
Pirate Temples
Winter Temple
Snowflakes thick as cotton balls whirl in the air. The cracked rock beneath the temple mouth is clad in ice in splash patterns. The pillars and crags off the coast are hemmed by the bones of arctic creatures killed by the cold and carried in on the whitecaps.
The interior walkway to the sacrificial is cliff slippery with ice. A shrill wind cuts the cavern’s mouth. It is a moaning, salivating gullet.
Deeper in the shrine, there is an even more beastly figure. He is a man in symbiosis with a polar shark, its white body split open and woven through him with pink coral which transmits their blood and nervous tissue to one another in exchange for a portion of the principal. His face has disappeared within the beast’s gullet and his voice emerges from within, and he feeds on the slurry of gore that is made by the creature’s thousand teeth when it finds or is given prey. He is armored in whalebone, and the shark’s dry and reeking back is similarly clad in a spiderweb of bone. Its tail and its sidefins have been cut away; the man devoured them, and the beast devoured parts of him, all as part of their dread pact.
Conflagration Temple
The pathway to the sacrificial edge is a carpet of burnished brass flanked by tall fires in rings of gold and candelabras that blaze with whale fat. The effect is that of too much light, an infernal illumination of fate, an overwhelming intensification of one’s last moments.
Infrared Temple
At first, it seems like stars can be seen in the roof of the cave but these are luminescent silkworms and flecks of mercurial metal.
The glow of the pallid moon-specter is faint, here. It is from the air itself that the stone takes its purple shadow.
This is a place of slowly-transforming stone, ropes of smooth rock coiling with an almost imperceptible movement like gore in the mouth of a salivating lamprey. Worse, some coils seem to have their own animation, emerging from the bedrock and then pausing as if sampling the air before moving in a new direction. Some of these have already traversed the cavern and move from wall to wall, a continual line with new matter. Some would continue in this course for centuries if fire and sword were not carried to this place.
The true inhabitants of the cavern are not seen in the pirates, though therein they reside.
People are often cast into the sea from coastal pirate fortress temples. Sometimes, things in the sea like what they have been given, and slither up the walls to find more.
Plunder Temple
A Former Regime Official presides here, sacrilegiously turning this place into his own personal fiefdom.
Brazen candelabras burn scented red candles and waft the characteristic scents of faraway lands, holding the sacred brine air at bay.
They wear lamellar tunics segmented and colored like cockroaches, and carry a variety of halberds and pikes like long straight black lines projecting from their bodies. Some carry magnificent longswords, gifts from the overlord or prizes from sea-sorties, lacquerware scabbards shimmering like golden ghosts in the cavern’s half-light or else sheathed in venous prepuce, oasis tree raisin, lavender moonsail, or dripping bloodworm silk.
There is coffee, turmeric, ground gallstone, saffron, liverwurst, hyperephedra, bloodglass, and celestial peacock down in abundance, spilled and reveled in, mixed together in scattered concentrations or piled in wooden bowls to await enjoyment.
The High Road
14: d4 Fetch Whisperers (d8 Acuity, d8 Fetches and Fetishes)
15: d4 Wandering Sages (d6 Acuity, d6 Alchemy, d6 Fetches and Fetishes, d6 Poetry)
16: d4 Traveling Courtesans (enclosed palanquins with 2d12 bearers and 2d4 guards with d6 Prowess) (see Appendix C: The Search for Allies)
17: d4 Lower Order Monks (see Appendix C: The Search for Allies)
18: d4 Foreign Eunuchs (see Appendix C: The Search for Allies)
19: d4 Soothsayers (d6 Poetry, d6 Prophecy)
20: Sword Saint (see Appendix C: The Search for Allies)
10. Tower staffed by uninformed militiamen holding imprisoned figures from the time of the fallen regime.
11. An alchemist's estuary with a floating market and a salt smuggling operation, this resource normally the prerogative of Former Regime Officials.
12. An old, overgrown burial grounds with gravediggers' and mummy grinders' shacks half-visible in the foliage.
Appendix A: The High Dreaming Citadel
The Mirror of the Moon
The vast ridge that the High Dreaming Citadel apexes lays above the clouds, and is so cold, dark, rocky, and barren that it is said to be a colony of the moon.
These monks are chosen for having a predisposition for solitude and the solving of arcane puzzles. They sit amongst eldritch mummies, who were the first men to open this enterprise and paved the way by taking the guards and wards of the gate of that certain heaven into their flesh and psyches.
The men who became mummies contacted an isolated sanctuary in a failed universe. It is a place set aside from the cosmoses to shelter mortals against sphere-devouring horrors brought forth by excess incantations. The inhabitants speak cryptically, often in simple impressions, but with a wisdom not replicable through terrestrial divination.
They are described as bald, eyeless, genderless sages in halls of glowing white. Their sanctuary is expansive, indefinite, with only the dimensions of the lower reaches demarcated by golden angles.
They speak to the other side amidst existential interference, and must focus through an ever-changing labyrinth of sensory inputs and perceptual gaps. This ability is channeled with the aid of the ephemeral spirits of the first mummies, and the conduit is supported by the Permanent Ones who have died. Their bodies sit among the living, hunched where they starved, and serve as fetters and transceivers for the energy of the white and gold sanctuary. This is the fate of all Permanent Ones.
These monks can barely hold onto their flickering impressions. Clear signals have grown rare with the corruption of ages, but the missive to eradicate the Cult of Protection was as clear as any in the last century.
Appendix B: How We Came to the Land of the Pirates
A hundred thousand northern warriors were shipped up the Poison River and died there. Only the pirate realm profited from this war.
With the ruination of the Castellans, the monks descended from their mountain peaks and gave a new law with their iron clubs.
Appendix C: Secret Societies
Ultracarcerists: A brand of south coast ultranationalists at odds with the Sea Brothers. They blame piracy as the cause of the regime being attacked and subjugated by an outside power. While they oppose monastic rule, they see it as a symptom of the real problem: the pirates and the Cult of Protection. Their response is Draconism; kill all pirates and Protection Cultists, and then incarcerate all other lawbreakers with hard labor for life.
Appendix D: Co-Opting Centers of Gravity and Key Personalities
The legitimacy of the mountain congregations is not widely accepted in the southern coast as anything but a temporary fact of life.
Issuing Writs of Purpose to Key Personalities and Centers of Gravity incurs a serious loss of face for the receiver, and will lead to deep consternation on the part of local leaders, and possibly dismay among the people if removing a leader from their duties destabilizes the community.
If the ICs do issue Writs of Purpose to CoGs and KPs, the GM should strongly consider implementing effects from Appendix O: Local Hostility.
Appendix E: The Search for Allies
Raven Confidante
Advisors and entertainers from the time of the Castellans. They are women who wear men’s clothing and are hired as partners for discussion and banter. They typically dress in all black, have black teeth, and carry swords. They are highly entertaining, but are also experts in etiquette. They were treated well in the Castellan realms, but are keenly wary of pirate lords due to terrible tales passed down within their syndicate.
Acuity: d6
Flute: d6
Gambling: d8
Horsemanship: d6
Impersonation: d8
Poetry: d8
Prowess: d6
Special Advisor
Poetess-oracle nuns of the Lowland Path. Having them write and disseminate poetry in a region can bend sentiment towards the monastic community; they can also improve sentiment by acting as lawspeakers.
Acuity: d8
Archery: d8
Flute: d6
Horsemanship: d8
Poetry: d12
Prophecy: d6
Prowess: d6
Horse Archery (Derived Stat): d8
Appendix F: Monks of the Lower Orders
Monks of Willing Putrefaction: Monks who seek the soul’s transcendence from their bodily state by degrading it. They are known to live in trash heaps and in the most extreme circumstances in gong pools, and when on procession they drink liquor to the point of illness, eat the greasiest foods at roadside stalls, sleep in ditches, and debauch the most ill-favored prostitutes. They are, however, very good alchemists and excellent gamblers.
Alchemy: d8
Fetches and Fetishes: d6
Flute: d6
Gambling: d10|
Impersonation: d6
Appendix G: Corruption, Loyalty, and Resolve
Corrupt characters may steal from locals, commit violence, attempt to extort sexual favors, or even sell Retinue artifacts on the black market.
Corruption cannot be mechanically ascertained by any means except Prophecy.
Paid hirelings who have not received Writs of Purpose are always Disloyal.
Pain of outlawry is a terrifying prospect in these lands; relocating to a distant community is a dangerous and potentially impoverishing affair.
Appendix H: Cachet and Skill Investment
Cachet can be spent to request support from the High Dreaming Citadel. The requestor writes a missive using Poetry. Cachet is only spent if the request is accepted.
Introductions: Gain a specific Ally for the retinue. See Appendix E: The Search for Allies. Cannot be a Sword Saint. Cachet Cost: 2. Poetry vs d6
Warship: Galley with ram. Rowers hired from coastal village, HDC finances for 1 month. Cachet Cost: 6. Poetry vs d12
Steppe Cataphract Panoply: Golden horse goblin lamellar and ornate phlogiston-bearing meteor hammer. When swung, the meteor hammer gains extra velocity from the agitation of the superheated matter within. 50% deflection vs missile fire, 25% deflection in melee, +1 to Prowess rolls involving close combat and smashing objects. Cachet Cost: 3. Poetry vs d8
Appendix I: Skills
Poetry: Monks of the Lowland Path practice poetry. A powerful poem spoken by an IC and heard by a local bard, minstrel, or soothsayer can affect the sentiments of a regional population.
Pirates disseminate folk stories repurposed with piratical and Cult of Protection themes. Countering these requires superior Poetry.
Prowess: Used for close combat and raw physical tasks, including physical stealth. When launching a surprise attack, the attacker cannot be Cut Down on that roll.
Supernatural monsters and divinely-blessed heroes can have skills at d20.
Appendix J: The Uses of Alchemy
6. Bodily Stasis: You will stay alive. The variations on what will happen to your body (and your mind) are nearly endless. You will be very, very lucky if you regard the byproducts as desirable. In particular, using this for those who have suffered fatal physical trauma will induce a state worse than death.
7. Euphoria: No more, no less, with all that comes with it. There is also an herb that amplifies all sensations, an antianesthetic. Administered before meals, sex, and torture.
18. Battle Psychosis: Temporarily increases Prowess die size by two steps, and d10 increases to d12+2. d12 increases to d20. Usually fatal and taken in desperation; after the battle, the user must roll base Prowess vs d20 to survive.
19. Psychostabilization: Suppresses mania, may reduce (or increase) depression, stabilizes certain forms of schizophrenia. Some warriors take it before battle, some gamblers keep it for when they get a winning streak, others acquire it as a practical matter due to their humours.
20. Life-containing: Becomes capable of hosting sapience, abiogenetically or by fettering an entity, depending on the type.
Roll your Alchemy vs d12.
Failure: Roll d20 on the above; that is what you have produced.
Natural 1: Roll on the above and immediately suffer the effect.
Hit your skill exactly: You create the base effect you are looking for. Roll d20 on the above table and add second effect (radically heightened effect if same) - yes, you can create sapient explosives this way.
NPCs can attempt to produce these substances behind the scenes, and then apply them in play.
Alchemical Interrogation
Interrogator rolls Alchemy vs victim Acuity.
If the interrogator rolls a natural 1, the victim suffers:
d4
1. Agrypnia excitata with subsequent dementia and death
2. Permanent, maximum-strength psychosis
3. Permanent catatonic dissociation
4. Death from endless epileptic seizure
Appendix K: The Uses of Fetches and Fetishes
Hanging Nocturne
A set of wind chimes that attract ghosts and spirits to come and hazard passersby. The emplacer rolls F&F vs the following difficulties, depending on what kind of entity he or she wishes to summon:
-Whisperer: d4
-Poltergeist: d6
-Specter (follows those present, levying d8 attacks on them. It cannot leave earshot of the Nocturne): d8
-Banshee (d8 attack on all within earshot when it appears): d10
A failed F&F check creates a soundless ethereal wail which will immediately draw the desired entity.
The creator of the thunder reed places a single hollow reed upright in the earth, surrounded by sticks of incense or burning herbs, and plays it a flute song. Sonic energy is supersaturated in the reed so that a mighty thunderclap will be released when it is broken.
The reed is first prepared with F&F vs d4. A failed check galls the winds of music and the flutist cannot attempt to create another thunder reed until the next daybreak.
After the reed is prepared, the creator stands by the reed and makes his or her Flute check.
Substrate Disruptor
A music box that, when triggered, can arrest the progress of any supernatural entity (ie one that is not entirely biological) touched by its sound. When the music box activates, the entity rolls its Prophecy vs the emplacer’s F&F; if it is defeated, it cannot continue until the sound comes to an end.
Appendix L: Retinue Personalities
Twelve Loyal Personalities (d12)
1 Duty-oriented
2 Conscientious
3 Up for an adventure
4 Loves to kill people
5 Weak-willed, accepts what powerful personalities say
6 Despises the pirates for their depredations
7 Human sacrifice abolitionist
8 Stoic, accepts exterior conditions, attempts to act in congruence with plans that may bring harmony
Twelve Disloyal Personalities (d12)
4 Secretly serving a millenarian cult or ideology
5 Enraged about being forced into service
6 Lay initiate of the Cult of Protection
Twelve Corrupt Personalities (d12)
1 Desperate to acquire fungible wealth to avert economic collapse of home community
2 Utterly nihilistic and disgusted with life; seeking absolute hedonism and then a quick death
3 Member of a prosperity cult; looking to abscond with wealth and gain status within the cult
Appendix M: Combat
A Sword Saint (d12) is in melee with Pirates A, B, and C (d6).
Three example result spreads:
1. Sword Saint rolls 8, all pirates are Cut Down, victory being impossible.
2. Sword Saint rolls 6, Pirate A rolls 6, Pirate B rolls 5, Pirate C rolls 4. Pirate A clashes with Sword Saint, Pirates B and C are Cut Down.
3. Sword Saint rolls 2, Pirate A rolls 6, Pirate B rolls 5, Pirate C rolls 1. Sword Saint is Cut Down before having a chance to Cut Down Pirate C.
Appendix N: Commentary
NPC retinue members will have conversations with each other and the players, and then be risked and killed in combat. This kind of sacrifice is normally relatively opaque in wargames. Named characters may die, but they haven’t manifested themselves as real people in the way that TTRPG NPCs can.
The purpose of structuring things this way is for the drama and tragedy of it, and for the experience of an iron dedication to an outcome capable of sending people with personalities to their deaths to win a battle or produce a needed resource. That is depicted here not because it’s a positive good, but because it has always been a part of the lives of those who manage people in dangerous situations, and I felt a desire to create a ruleset that focuses on it.
Appendix O: Local Hostility
1. Service Refused: Provisioners refuse to supply the ICs and their retinue, being gruff or citing potential loss of business or reprisals.
2. Hail of Rocks: d4 retinue members chosen by the GM have rocks cast at them by locals who then rush away into crowds, markets, rookeries, or the wilderness as is appropriate. Each targeted retinue member has a 1/20 chance of being killed.
3. Code of Silence: Practically all locals refuse to speak to the IC and his retinue.
4. Night Militia: Hooded or masked locals attack the retinue wherever they take refuge at night.
Example ways to reduce or mitigate Local Hostility
Aiding locals by assuming the risk of Prophecy.
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It's been a while since my last post, as I've been spending much of my free time editing large adventures and RPG sourcebooks, but I needed something new to work on while editing, so Investigating Censor was born.
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