Month: July 2016

Dwarven Ruins

This week, three box-text descriptions of unique dwarven ruins.

Dwarven Racing Ground Ruins

Giant racing wheels rust on the overgrown track. A breeze blows through the arena, stirring the wildflowers and rattling the empty stands. The place would be very quiet if it weren’t for a small building on the far end. Light and voices stream out of its windows.  A gruff shout for music and the sounds of fiddles and singing join the noise. Over the inn, a giant bell engraved with Dwarven lettering sways in the air. Each time the clapper strikes, the wheels in the yard seem to twitch as if disturbed from a deep sleep.

Dwarven Moonshine Operation Ruins

Copper tanks of all shapes and sizes spill across the mountainside. The smell of alcohol still wafts up from their broken hulls. On every one is painted a red circle pierced by an ‘X,’ letting all know that the King’s agents have found and destroyed this tax-dodging operation. 

Dwarven Shipyard Ruins

Black slabs of ships float next to docks. On board, rows of golems stand ever ready to load cargo and sail across the seas to wherever it’s needed. Their salt-pitted casings and the slime covering everything informs that no cargo has come for a long time. 

Flikers

Another Dungeon World Monster this week. This is my first try at the “statless” monster – one that relies entirely on its special moves instead of its stats. This creature acts like a virus, harmless when outside the body, devastating when within.

Tulippe smiled at Garyver stretched out on the picnic blanket. He smiled back and told her how beautiful she looked with the sun shining off her hair. Tulippe blushed and told him he wasn’t so bad himself. The afternoon whittled away with the sweethearts eating their paper-wrapped food, talking of small things, and exchanging kisses. With the sun still bright in the sky, Garyver asked Tullippe if she had remembered to bring that dandelion wine with her. She answered by running to the stream and pulling out a glistening bottle of blonde liquid. Garyver looked just as the glass winked in the light. A stinging pain struck through his eyes and down to his feet, but then was gone. He finished the rest of the picnic, but it felt weird. The colors slightly off, the sounds slightly the wrong pitch.

As the days went by, he began experiencing more odd things. He’d feel bugs crawling over him, but no one else could see them. He’d hear people whispering about him, but when he turned to confront them, there was no one there. Despite the summer heat, he’d sometimes feel so cold, he’d cover himself in wool blankets and heavy furs. One day, the light got so bright all he could see was whiteness. He curled up in a ball and lost sense of time. He came to again at night in his bedroom. Tulippe was sleeping in a chair near his bed and a full moon shone through the window. He reached over and shook her shoulder to wake her. She opened her eyes and began to say something when she looked into his eyes. Her face froze for a second, her mouth hanging open, and then she shook her head as if trying to fix her vision.

Flikers appear as the shimmer of the sun on waters, as the sparkle on snow on a bright day, as the glitter cast by a young woman’s sequin dress, and anywhere else light twinkles. Usually they pass through the air harmlessly. But when infused with light, they gain the temporary ability to enter the eyes of anyone looking directly at them.  Once inside the body, they disrupt the host’s senses, slowly driving them insane. The afflicted have run off cliffs, clawed out their own eyes, and dumped boiling water over their head. Only extreme measures or luck will save them. Administering a cure can be dangerous, as the Flikers often appear as the glint in their victims’ eyes and thus spread to another.

Instinct: To infect and spread

Poisonous, Minuscule, Infectious

No HP, Armor or Damage Die. See special moves.

Special Moves:

  • Get inside you and confuse your senses
  • Slowly make you go insane
  • Spread to someone else

Three Caves

Three box-texts of caves for your game.

Ice Cave

Winds howl across the glacier’s top, but can’t reach into its deep channels . In one particularly dark crack, someone has carved foot slots. They descend into the darkness until reaching a corridor which extends out in either direction where purple orbs cast a cold light. Faces and wings flit within the solid ice behind the walls as if they were swimming in water.

Flooded Cave

At high tide the ocean washes into this cave and rummages around in its numerous tunnels like a man looking for something in a drawer. Then it drags the water back out along with anyone or anything it found. But at low tide, most of the cave remains dry but for the very deepest crevasses where a lake forms. Without waves to break its surface it resembles a sheet of black glass. Peering within, you can see a green cloud that hide its depths like spilled ink. Black branches poke out of the cloud giving a hint to what lies beneath.

Beast’s Lair

Cool air wafts up from hidden chambers bringing with it the smell of wet stone. The sound of dripping water echoes off the walls like a drum. From deep in the cave, a scream tears through this peaceful rhythm followed by the crunch of bone and muscle breaking.