Planarch Codex

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Welcome to Dis, letters to get started.

A Story Games Thread:

Ill-Met in Waterdeep

Dear Prime Newb Whose Home is still Digesting in Dis’ Guts,

Welcome to Dis.

You have what you could carry from your home and need to find some scratch so that you don’t have to sleep out under the alien stars.

Sure, this isn’t your first rodeo and you had plenty of adventures back at home but now you are in Dis. The trappings are familiar but the context is entirely new. Now you are all small fish in an ever-expanding pond that is constantly devouring other ponds.

Someone among you took the lead in getting you to Dis alive. Have that one roll +Int.

On a 10+, you either got out with a really amazing artifact or know someone in Dis who can help you settle in a bit.

On a 7-9, you have some remnant of your old world that isn’t immediately useful but you could sell it for 3d6 silver if you don’t mind it becoming a curio in a local parish’s shop window.

On a miss, trouble from the old world has followed you here.

There is a place for rent here in the Vecna Parish that has something that reminds you of the City of Splendors. Sure, all of the architecture seems to be littered with eyes and hands but something about this joint feels like home, dammit. Explain to the GM why you want to rent that place so badly. The owner, a one-eyed recovering wizard (recovering?), likes the idea of renting to new refugees, as it reminds him of when he first got here, fresh from Greyhawk City.

Chunks of your world are still floating on the top of the stew that is Dis. When your GM rolls on the job table, he will insert an element of the Forgotten Realms as either the Patron, Target or Job Type. The GM could describe a job and ask you what about that job is actually a piece of the Realms and how your character recognizes it.

The one-eyed former death cult wizard will hold the space for you for a few days while you do some honest or dishonest freebooting.

Hugs & Kisses,

Your GM

Please come to the thread and play along.

Planarch Codex Job List Table Results

After spending the past two years looking for a job (I start the new gig on Monday!) it is no surprise that the Planarch Codex job table spoke to me. It is fun and like any good random table gives you just enough detail to give your imagination an inspiring kick to the nethers.

Below are some results I rolled up on a lonely night when I still lived upstate with some GM’s notes below.

 

From the Job Table in the Planarch Codex:

Bloody business for those with the stomach for such things. Need highly skilled operators to get into an arcane library tower that is never in the same place two nights in a row and destroy an infernal item. Begin negotiations for employment at the Malsheemi Merchants’ Guild, where an array of eclectic arcane and mundane payment options are offered.

DM’s Notes: Malsheemi is a city in hell. These merchants are devils.

Holy work being offered, a delivery to a demi-god’s distant holy shrine on a distant plane so that my tithe might be delivered. Time sensitive. Pay can be in gold, gems, secrets, maps and more.

DM’s Notes:  Players in a play-by-post game took this gig, it turned out to be a gang leader wanting to send his tithe to a shrine to Prometheus, god of stealing from the high and mighty. Turned out  his home was being torn apart by a war betweeh Ghoul King and the Demon-Prince of the Gnolls

Professional adventuring party needed for bodyguard work for guild wizard. Please apply in person to the Wizard’s Guild Tower with list of appropriate references.

DM’s Notes: I’d ask questions about the players’ thoughts on wizards and riff off of that.

Guards needed for pilgrims walking the Kas Road. Food and pack animals provided. Payment in full upon reaching the City of a Thousand Swords.

DM’s Notes: Kas was the greastest swordsman who ever lived and is looked on as a saint to dedicated butchers who favor a sword. His pilgrimage is taken by swordsman on the verge of becoming legends but in order to take up this holy walk, they must put down all weapons and wear no armor. Here’s hoping their enemies don’t show up looking for vengeance.

Who squats in our harbor within those alien ships? Why are they here? I will pay you to find out! Inquire in the Manticore Tower and be prepared to discuss pay and begin immediately. How long can we afford to wait?

DM’s Notes: The players will be hired by a xenophobic shit-heel of a wizard very much inspired by Dying Earth books. The ships are woven, floating nests of giant spider refugees because I love giant spiders. I’d want to ask the players questions about how they feel about newcomers to Dis and/or how they felt when they first arrived.

According to the Laws of Dis we must inform any adventurers or freebooters who might consider the following job that it will put you in the midst of a holy war. When and if you inquire in person we will, by Dis Law, have to inform you one more time and then our lawful obligation will be met. The Holy Executioner, servant of Blind Justice is seeking the Trickster with 13 Faces for crimes perpetrated on several planes. Inquire about this work at the Gallows Temple.

DM’s Notes: Pretty self explanatory, a trickster deity known for disguise is hiding from a goddess of justice. I have no idea how I’d run this one.

Adventurers needed to aid a man possessed by an alien god. From what many of the best alienist summoners can tell us, the deity from another reality is seeking a pilgrim who ventured from this deep plane and is now in Dis. Inquire among the Nurse Warden’s Guildhouse.

DM’s Notes: I’d ask questions about the players’ past interactions with the nurse wardens and their brushes with alien gods.

Do a solid for the Captain of the Silver Axes and you will be paid well. Need freebooter scum who know the streets of Dis to find an obscure Temple.

DM’s Notes: I’d ask the players about their past tussles with the Captain before he asks them to find a roving temple that stiffed his merc company on a past bill. 

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Holding my breath on another Friday

Reading: Janaki suggested A Shadow in Summer, telling me about the way Poets in the book summon up Andats is right out of the Sorcerer RPG. She’s right; it is a keen concept. For the first time in a long while I’m reading a fantasy novel and I am hooked.

Planning: I can’t plan much until I get a phone call verifying some important info. This weekend should be about some apartment stuff, reading and laundry. Tonight, Chinese food that I can safely eat and great company. I am so tired of holding my breath and waiting.

Writing: Some diseases often caught by freebooter scum and other bits here and there.

And you?

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Silver Swords in Dis

No matter where or whom you come from, in someone’s eyes, you and your family are monsters.

– The Planarch Codex: Dark Heart of the Dreamer, Walton and Friends

The Silver Swords are named for the arcane weapons they carry into battle, forged from the astral chains that kept them in slavery for centuries. Since rebelling and gaining freedom from the psionic monsters who dared call themselves their masters the Silver Swords have founded a city in the Deep Astral built from the wreckage of a thousand cathedrals, the psychic detritus of dead faiths.

The Silver Swords put their faith in no deities but in the corpse of the young lady who liberated them. When she died, their warlock eunuchs set the body on their Dragon Throne and continued to rule in her name. If one of their own people should complete a great work, they are ritually sacrificed before her throne and their soul fuels the Corpse Queen, allowing her body and will to animate and rule. When she is in repose, the Silver Empire is run by the cruel warlock eunuchs.

When the queen is awake, the Silver Empire is ferocious, just and embraces change.

When the queen is dead the warlock eunuchs are in charge of the empire and the Silver Empire is then ferocious, myopic and fearful of anything or anyone who could upset the status quo.

The Silver Swords are not quite human. Maybe it was from the psychic torments under slavery’s cruel tentacles or from breeding with all manner of dragons and mythical creatures from a hundred different worlds along the astral deeps. They are humanoid in shape and most often bipedal but vary greatly in all other ways with only a single silver eye to unite them.

A Silver Sword is a monster with these moves:

  • Claim land for the Silver Empire’s Corpse Queen
  • Make a pact with a greater mythical beast (dragon, liche, etc.)
  • Free slaves from their bondage

P.S. There is a heretic off-shoot of Silver Empire, those who threw down their blades, refused to worship the queen after she died. They lead lives of contemplation in floating monasteries amidst the primordial chaos from which the ur-gods created everything.

The Chaos Monks are monsters with the following moves:

  • Release land from feudal bonds.
  • Give an enemy’s inner turmoil a physical incarnation.
  • Let others know how to destroy the economic realities that make slavery profitable.

DW Stats

Silver Sword

HP: 7

AC: +2

Damage: d8 (roll two, take the higher)

Tags: Planar

Chaos Monk

HP: 7

AC: +1

Damage: Fists, 1d6, Psychic Blast 1d8+1

Tags: Planar

Other things to stat out: The Corpse Queen, Eunuch Warlock, Silver Sword Dragonrider

Maps: Silver Empire Colonial Outpost, Silver Navy Astral Corvette, Silver Captital in the Deep Astral, Monastery in the Chaos Waste, The Deep Astral, The Chaos Wastes

Inspired by:

Githyanki

Russ Nicholson’s Githyanki

The Planarch Codex

Dungeon World

World of Dungeons

Link to Conversation over on G+

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Planarch Codex, old school book cover ignition

World of Dungeons and the Planarch Codex have a firm grip on my inner freebooter scum.

I want to start a game by throwing some books on the table and asking:

How did you freebooter scum get into debt with this Efreet gangster from Blood River?

Are any of you sleeping with this guy?

Does one of you hold a grudge against him from back in the day for that gig with the thing and the other thing?

[Roll on Job Table, page 14 ]

Who is  up on the statue and who is standing guard?

Are you worried about the superstitions surrounding this idol?

Do any of you worship this deity?

Are you really going to fence the gems to your patron with the key necklace or do you plan a double-cross?

How did you meet this guy again?

Are any of you sleeping with this guy?

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Pubs and Inns of Dis

Dark Heart of the Dreamer + Dungeon Dozen =

Roll a d12, Dozen Pubs of Dis

1) The Eye and Serpent: with a Crypt Thing barkeep it has some of the finest beer in town if you don’t mind using sarcophagi as bar-tops.

2) The Stone: run by a Blue Slaad and its human husband, who is pregnant with the Slaad’s eggs beneath his skin as he slowly turns into a Slaad.

3) The Dream: an inn started by the remnants of an adventuring party who were decimated, took their loot and started a pub. Each table is engraved with a dedication to a hireling or member of the party who passed away.

4) Slate and Spell: run for wizards, by wizards, the walls and tables are all covered in slate with bowls of chalk everywhere so the patrons can write down arcane formulas and debate their truth. The wait-staff are often summoned creatures.

5) First Pub: this was the outpost of Dis on this pub’s original world. They sold accepting the encroachment of Dis to the denizen’s of their world by using the motto written under the sign out front, “The food’s just better!”

6) The Eternal Stew: a pub built around a tremendous stew-pot that has been cooking, so they say, since the beginning of time. It is bad form to enter and not provide something you consider delicious to add to the stew.

7) People’s Free Pub: a co-operative inn, run by those who can’t quite get on the road just yet.

8) The Scroll and Spine: part pub, part book and scroll exchange. Don’t spill your drink, you heathens.

9) The Sleeping Dragon Inn: legend has it that a dragon is sleeping somewhere beneath it and when you sleep there, it slips into your dreams.

10) Death: Choose a pub or inn above and the joint is packed with mourners attending a local’s wake.

11) Taxes: Choose a pub or inn above and an official is there to either close the joint down or collect taxes.

12) FIRE!: Choose a pub or inn above but it is on fire.

EDIT: For 2d6, 1d6 is for the inn and the other 1d6 is for an event going on.

Inns

1) The Eye and Serpent: with a Crypt Thing barkeep it has some of the finest beer in town if you don’t mind using sarcophagi as bar-tops.

2) The Stone: run by a Blue Slaad and its human husband, who is pregnant with the Slaad’s eggs beneath his skin as he slowly turns into a Slaad.

3) The Dream: an inn started by the remnants of an adventuring party who were decimated, took their loot and started a pub. Each table is engraved with a dedication to a hireling or member of the party who passed away.

4) Slate and Spell: run for wizards, by wizards, the walls and tables are all covered in slate with bowls of chalk everywhere so the patrons can write down arcane formulas and debate their truth. The wait-staff are often summoned creatures.

5) People’s Free Pub: a co-operative inn, run by those who can’t quite get on the road just yet.

6) The Scroll and Spine: part pub, part book and scroll exchange. Don’t spill your drink, you heathens.

Events

1) Death: Choose a pub or inn above and the joint is packed with mourners attending a local’s wake.

2) Taxes: Choose a pub or inn above and an official is there to either close the joint down or collect taxes.

3) FIRE!: Choose a pub or inn above but it is on fire.

4) Bounced: You are walking in just as a regular has pushed it too far and is in the process of being escorted out.

5) Gold on the Table: A successful group of freebooter scum is celebrating an amazing haul.

6) Packed: A festival, gathering or rite is happening and the place is packed.