Table Tuesday

It's Ten-sided [dice] Table Tuesday! Here's three dice tables for your Game Mastering convenience.

 

1d10 only situationally useful magical items

For fostering ingenuity and/or populating the back of the archmagician's wardrobe.

1. Circlet of Tartar Control
2. Belt of Expertise With Monkey Bars
3. Bag of Dehydrated Oozes
4. Ancestral Spirit Blade of Somebody Not Yet Born
5. Animated Bucket of Sandcastle Making
6. Epaulettes of Depilation
7. Boots of Walking Up 45 Degree Slopes
8. Amulet of Protection Against Boors
9. Sword of Being Sundered
10. Movable Rod

  

1d10 fresh mysteries

To hand your players when everything gets unexpectedly resolved and you're in a pinch for content.

1. Someone woke up invisible today, only fades in slowly
2. The temple is doubling your tithes
3. Who stole the horseshoes off your steeds?
4. Those bodies you left strewn about vanished overnight
5. The moon has changed colour
6. Your guide was an illusion the whole time
7. All the bed frames in this inn are altar-stones
8. Sudden glut of impossibly cheap spices in market
9. Various signs of a persistently-nonexistent secret door
10. Urgent yet cryptic message from a patron divinity

 

1d10 strange allies

For dispensing sage counsel, showing up when all seems lost, giving clues, or being piteously in need of help.

1. Sealed terrarium of hyperintelligent moss with questions about the world
2. White-haired retired crimelord with huge family
3. Gloomy intelligent enchanted shovel with unfulfilled destiny
4. Human-shaped mass of solar plasma in need of a friend
5. Trio of cursed gourmands at table they cannot rise from
6. Charismatic leader of uprising amongst sorcerously-created henchthings
7. Very bored dark magician entombed in ice, speaking telepathically
8. Ascetic anteater monk on strict regimen of single ant per day
9. Abominable flesh-heap once worshipped as evil god, now exploring spoken word poetry traditions 
10. Hivemind of swamp damselflies communicating through coordinated flight patterns

Illustrations by Gordy H.

Blogwagon: The Valley of Eternal Cheer

Merry hexmas! Here's another weird adventure location I made for the community holiday blogwagon courtesy of Prismatic Wasteland. Use it however you like! Creative commons license at the end. If you link one of your hex edges to mine, drop a comment or message me on Bluesky and I'll update the post!

Download link

If you'd like a copy of these Christmas hexes in PDF form, get it for free here: https://periapt-games.itch.io/hexmas-locations

Summary

A sect of treetop angels makes this isolated mountain valley their home. Dwelling in the porous rock caverns, the object of their worship: the Blissful Homogenate. It is an immense festive slush composed of thousands of former intelligent entities, now an immense mushy rainbow sea, a hivemind experiencing True Holiday Joy. It dissolves anyone who touches it.

Hex terrain description

This is an area of lofty wind-wracked mountains, most of them bare other than the omnipresent snow. In the more protected valleys, pine trees huddle together for warmth.

One particularly deep valley, more of a huge crevasse than anything, is curiously warm. Wisps of steam drift about, and a rivulet of snowmelt runs its length. Bubbling up from clefts in the rock, a lumpy rainbow mishmash that looks like a tendrilly mess of soft modelling clay.

Above, there's a stand of huge trees, where glittering candlelight suggests the presence of people.

Connecting hexes

• Southeast: The Transient Snowfields (https://periaptgames.blogspot.com/2025/12/blogwagon-transient-snowfields.html)

Locale: The citadel of the treetop angels

A huge ice-encrusted treehouse with numerous parapets, slit windows, and clear sightlines. It is supported on the trunks of six massive pine trees. The only way up, if you can't fly, is a winding path that flips back and forth between ladder, tunnel, and staircase. Concentric walls of stakes at the base help keep out interlopers, but the gate – and the charitable donation box next to it – are both kept unlocked.

Inside, the citadel is freezing cold, lit only by candles. What care angels for warmth?

Principles of hospitality are a little fraught at the moment: the order is nearly torn apart by religious quarrel.

The treetop angels consider the whole valley a holy site. The caves and tunnels honeycombing it are filled with a miraculous vast-lake-sized gelatinous entity of perpetual cheer and enormous power, the Blissful Homogenate. The treetop angels revere this entity as their guardian, guide, and future, but they are at odds over the nature of their worship.

The order of angels is split into several factions, or 'choirs'.

• The loudest voice is that of the status quo, who sing: those who should be drawn into the Blissful Homogenate are already fated to do so. No intervention is needed.
• Another choir believes the angels should be united with their deity at once. These angels are only holding back long enough to convince their sistren to take the plunge together.
• A more radical faction sings carols of escalation: the heathen must be converted, whether by the sword, by persuasion and pilgrimage, or by cracking the stone of the valley asunder and letting the Blissful Homogenate descend like a multicoloured avalanche into the plains below.
• A small number of voices call for study and for optimisation. The rate of dissolution should be maximised. The Blissful Homogenate should be increased in volume if possible. The order should investigate methods for budding off new homogenates to carry elsewhere in the world.

The rift between angels is unlikely to be repaired, but canny adventurers could align themselves with a choir for personal gain, and possibly even egg on the factions to the point of violence. The treetop angels don't have much gold, but their stockpiles of frankincense and myrrh run deep.

Locale: The overlooking cliff

A precipice directly above the deepest part of the valley. Ancient, crumbling steps descend in fits and starts into the crevasse. It's screamingly windy here, shredding the wisps of steam that rise up.

When the sun is high, you can see through eddies in the mist below: parts of the Blissful Homogenate extend from the valley's caverns. It looks like a colourful smear across the rocks, as if vomited by some vast sherry-soused god on its way home to a mountaintop paradise to sleep it off.

There is a little shanty town here, made from rough-hewn pine wood, stacked boulders, and reindeer hides. A motley bunch of people have come here, mostly on bad information, and are unsure of what to do next. There's a continual argument simmering like an eternal stew.

Currently about twenty people live in the shacks (detailed in the encounter table below). Many others before them have returned to the lowlands, or descended into the valley to become one with the Blissful Homogenate.

There are also four treetop angels hanging around here:

• Numerica Of The Last Apex Unclimbed. Studying the Blissful Homogenate by observing those who may or may not eventually enter it. She's conducting an ongoing census and interviews. Currently taking measurements.
• Radiala Of The Final Pinnacle Unmatched. Feels a desperately personal relationship with the Blissful Homogenate. Paranoid. Fanatical. Has given up everything. Will keep herself out of the homogenate for all eternity to fulfil her self-appointed role of keeping it safe. Currently making patrols.
• Levitica Of The Ultimate Peak Unsurmounted. She's trying to enforce a taboo against hanging around the valley through persuasive sermons. Mostly she has succeeded in making everyone annoyed with her. Currently standing on a boulder and lecturing to the wind.
• Honoria Of The True Zenith Unparalleled. She's dipped a toe in the Blissful Homogenate and will soon be part of it. She's flown back up the cliff to spread the good word. Currently ecstatically dissolving.

Random cliff encounters (1d10):

1. Inkoo and Shmo. Pair of gigantic lumbering penguins. Mountain natives who make a simple living guiding curious people out here, then usually earning even more to guide them back again. Very disliked by the treetop angels.
2. Jenk Holdfraught. Withered old man. A would-be lich who hasn't managed to walk any of the normal dark paths. He's decided that eternity will still be worth it even if filled with tinsel, whistling, and the cross-talk of a happy hivemind, but it's not his first choice, and he's waiting until the last moment possible. If he waits much longer he won't be able to get down the steps under his own power. Has a small amount of treasure, mostly in the form of magical scrolls and cursed ritual equipment.
3. Five tuskers (huge tusked trolls) all wearing enormous boots and ceremonial bells. Not very smart. A small religious pilgrimage from the Grove Where The Snow Is Like Icing, over Rime Ridge. They were trying to find the Big Rock Candy Mountain and are unsure of what they've stumbled upon. That thing down there... is it pudding?
4. Prudence Dearborn. Half-angel. Skilled chef. Her current ambition is to make the ultimate festive spice mix, and she's travelled here for inspiration.
5. Old Father Chrysalis. A white-bearded wizard who touched the Blissful Homogenate and is becoming one with it, but much more slowly than usual. Meanwhile, he's wandering the valley and the cliff. Nobody knows his real name. Doesn't converse. Mumbles a slurpy bubbly mixture of arcane half-secrets and mystic half-truths. (Probably warded himself against the homogenate's effects and only partly succeeded.)
   
   
   
6. Snarlface, Dayglo, and Toad. Three escaped orcs of the Red Lord (see magnoliakeep.blogspot.com/2025/11/blog-bandwagon-orcish-toy-factory.html). One of several secret orc cells combing the world for potential superweapons to wield against their despicable master. Cautiously excited by the potential of the Blissful Homogenate, but underequipped to do anything with it.
7. Plush Carl. Three-eyed misfit toy. Trying to track down his happy-go-lucky great aunt, missing for months. She's one with the homogenate already.
8. Terrrence Norrbrright. Gangly hollow-eyed elf. Legate of a deposed tyrant. Truly hates good cheer, but is pretending otherwise. Smile like a death rictus. Hums off-key. Secretly wants to destroy the Blissful Homogenate and has brought a sorcerous weapon looted from his old boss's treasury to accomplish this. With the right invocation, the Cauldron Of Inversion should turn the homogenate's boiling, joyous form into something cold and hard and miserable. It won't, though. It'll just splatter dangerous chunks of it all over the landscape.
9. Jephrow Bosk. A skeleton percussionist. Inexpertly plays his ribcage like a xylophone. Thinking of branching out into skull bongos. Extremely cheerful; was drawn to this place by a mysterious inner pressure he can't explain. Jephrow wears the bejewelled Tiara Of Undead Control, giving him enormous amounts of self-actualisation. If it is removed he will become a mindless bloodthirsty monster.
   
    
10. Zephany. A westerly wind, separated from her easterly sister Gale (see thegloaminglog.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-quiet-season.html?m=1). Gale was last seen above these mountains, having talked to a treetop angel on the way past. She has left already, but Zephany doesn't know that, and deeply dreads descending into the valley. She hopes her brother Eddy will catch up to her here to lend some support.

 

Locale: The cheer-clogged depths

The rocky valley floor is in shadow for much of the day (the parts near the walls, perpetually so). A small stream of snowmelt pours the length of the middle and ends up in a sinkhole, feeding who knows what underground river further on.

Steam shrouds much of the valley depths, stirred by the omnipresent mountain wind, and occasionally scattered in wisps to the top of the overlooking cliff. It's slightly warm down here, and feels shockingly hot compared to the rest of the freezing mountains.

There's a pleasant humming sound.

Entity: The Blissful Homogenate

Larger than most lakes, and composed of colourful whorls of half-liquid, half-solid organic strands. These flow and wobble and slowly move about by themselves, occasionally splitting off and wandering semi-independently, never far from the main mass. Looks like the aftermath of an inconceivably huge and ultimately failed modeling clay project.

Vestiges of faces smile back at you.

It smells of cinnamon and hot plastic.

Background and expansion

The world's most optimistic and spirited are instinctually drawn to this place on their deathbeds, making it an elephant's graveyard of the merry. They make up the bulk of the homogenate. It has also amalgamated various stupid or unlucky animals (most avoid this place), unwanted experiments/victims who were disposed of here long ago, and a certain number of people who couldn't hack it as liches.

The rest of the homogenate is made up of molten treetop angels. They've been joining it pretty regularly over the years.

If you touch the Blissful Homogenate, you immediately start turning into it. You go runny bit by bit, the event horizon slowly travelling up your arm. You can be saved from the effect if you strike off the digit (or, for the incautious, the limb). Just make sure you cut far enough up.

It usually takes a few hours, after touching the Blissful Homogenate, to collapse into a pile of goo. Features slide off the face. The face drips off the body. Limbs elongate. Clothing melds with flesh. A distinct cheerfulness is felt all the while.

Once it's done, you're indistinguishable. Now if anybody touches you, they start turning, too.

Capabilities

The Blissful Homogenate is in a sense an intelligent hivemind, but undirected. It has never been known to take any real action; it is continually thrilled beyond mortal comprehension just to be experiencing the world around it.

The entity only cares for things that are lively and moving and glittery; it doesn't eat through rock and trees.

The Blissful Homogenate is extremely hot to the touch, like flowing candle wax. Hot enough to warm the rock of the valley and melt the snow above. Bits can be struck off its mass, and if this happens, they slowly cool, losing their animation. They will try to return to the main mass before this happens.

The entity doesn't retaliate if struck. There's an ocean of this stuff, much of it underground. What could possibly harm it?

Challenges and opportunities:

• The Blissful Homogenate is always happily humming. Its underground parts sometimes break out into full-on carols. The distant singing could draw characters into the dangerous cave systems around the valley walls where the goo level ebbs and flows.
• There's tall cliffs above and below the valley, and the rock is porous. A landslide, snowmelt-heavy river, earth tremor, or explosion could knock things into motion. An avalanche of hot homogenate would flow into the network of valleys below like a rainbow lahar, eventually reaching inhabited pastures. There'd be enough mass for it to last for weeks or months independently of the main blob, with all the trouble that would ensue.
• The trouble that's brewing with the treetop angels could easily reach a head. The outlook for their custodianship of the Blissful Homogenate is different depending on which faction wins.
• The shantytown inhabitants all want different things. Trouble is particularly likely from Terrrence Norrbrright, Jephrow Bosk, the orc trio, or the not-too-clever tuskers.
• If a small part of Blissful Homogenate is separated from the main mass, it will eventually cool down, deanimating. But it does not become completely inert. If a small part got into a town's water table before rotting away completely, it could cause strange hallucinations, and toys to be born as misfits.
• Buried in the caverns of the Blissful Homogenate are a few bits of magical treasure too dull and/or cold to be homogenised. The Sceptre Of The Snow Miser turns a foot-wide sphere of solid matter into snow with a touch (exactly as horrid as it sounds). The Woadstone is a simple stone amulet which dyes you blue as long as it is worn. The Snow Deanimation Orb projects a league-wide field which annihilates the consciousness of any snow-based lifeforms.
• The Blissful Homogenate has never been stirred to anger... to date. Characters who presented a genuine threat to it would find out how mobile it really is.

Rumours about this hex (1d6):

1. The long-sought Fountain of Merriment really does exist, and it's closer than you'd think! A drop of its waters would leave you happy for the rest of your life.
2. The Banshee Queen, whose voice was the demise of thousands, did not herself perish but is still alive somewhere in a hidden valley, kept alive by unnatural magics.
3. There's a geothermal springs with miraculous healing properties deep in the mountains. Their waters can even heal a damaged spirit!
4. Should a treetop angel be slain in anger by its brethren, the body's angelic halo can be snatched up by a mortal to grant an unearned textra life.
5. Some deranged alchemist created a dangerous substance called Colourful Amalgamising Clay. If you survive a brush with it, your mind will be forever changed.
6. A cabal of the world's most naturally cheerful people have a secret mountain retreat where they recharge their optimistic energy and make blood sacrifice to a great chthonic god.

Credits

The text of this post is released under a Creative Commons BY (4.0) license. Do what you like with it as long as you follow the terms: credit me, link here, and link to the license.

Illustrations licensed from Alderdoodle (alderdoodle.co.uk), Amanda Lee Franck, Jose Eduardo "Jegs" Gonzalez, and Art SilverGlass / Sophie Grunnet. Some illustrations by Fernando Salvaterra - used with permission.

Blogwagon: The Transient Snowfields

Merry hexmas! Here's a weird hex I made for Prismatic Wasteland's end-of-year blogwagon. Use it however you like! Creative commons license at the end. If you link one of your hex edges to mine, drop a comment or message me on Bluesky and I'll update the post!

Download link

If you'd like a copy of these Christmas hexes in PDF form, get it for free here: https://periapt-games.itch.io/hexmas-locations

Summary

A highland region of magically-animated snow. It is home to a village of 'roblings', creatures cursed to compulsively steal. A dysfunctional team of researchers has travelled here in a gingerbread mecha, now broken down.

 

Hex terrain description

This hilly region rises out of the rich pastures to the south and grassy steppe to the southeast. Here little grows beyond a dark moss, with snow always blanketing the ground.

The snowscape is dotted with missing patches, each one beginning a trail of footprints, as if areas of snow were getting up and walking away.

The region otherwise appears devoid of villages, hamlets, or other habitation. It rises higher into tall mountains at the northwest edge.

Connecting hexes

• Northeast: Three Calves (see https://elsewhere-elsewhere.neocities.org/posts/2025-12-07-23.-hexmas)
• Northwest: The Valley of Eternal Cheer (see https://periaptgames.blogspot.com/2025/12/blogwagon-valley-of-eternal-cheer.html)
• Southwest: The town of Borsk (see https://coppershaman.com/merry-hexmas-babbling-baboon/)
• Southeast: The Silver Steppe (see https://www.fluoriteguillotine.com/blog/2025/11/08/blogwagon-broken-bronco-on-the-silver-steppe/)
• ➡️ Let me know if I should change any for organisational purposes.

Description

The landscape is not-quite-beautiful. The sparkling white snow is thoroughly dotted with missing patches and criss-crossed with tracks. The wind gently sighs, except for when it's howling.

Transient snow can be found covering the hex. The large hilly snowfields look quite mundane, but are home to intelligent creatures who fall as snow during the night and collapse into quickly-dissolving piles of slush by the following afternoon.

The transient snow creatures all have names, personal stories lining up with hazy false memories of the world, and often relationships with each other. They have a dull understanding of the broader world, but only come to comprehend their own immediate mortality through the course of the day. Each has a unique appearance, as if bespokely made by a snow artist. They have equipment, clothing, and skills, all of which dissolves as the sun descends.

 

 

Locale: The village of the roblings

Roblings are part mischievous goblin, part red-breasted robin, although they joke that there's more magpie than robin. Something in the genetic mix gives them tails and claws, too, and makes them taller than most humans. They're muscular and very quick, and with the aforementioned claws, each one is about as dangerous as a bear if it comes to a fight.

These folk are all covered in long fur. Apart from a touch of red at the chest, they are dark green shading to black, the same colour as the moss and lichen under the snow. The roblings harvest those tiny plants, and hunt the reindeer that compete for it. They supplement their diets with small river fish and with sugared oranges of unclear origin.

Their village is two hundred roblings, of all ages. They hatch from knobbly hairy eggs, and their yurt homes have a nest-like look to them, low communal structures made from reindeer hides stitched with sinew, huge mammoth tusk struts, dried moss, and goose down.

The roblings are hospitable, but seem a little concerned that they are receiving visitors. A village elder will explain their circumstances:

• Background: The roblings as a species are cursed with kleptomaniac episodes. They are individually compelled at random intervals to go to the nearest place where they think some valuable objects might be, taking a big sack, and loot it all in a mischievous frenzy. They then return to wherever they live and find they don't care about the things they've taken, feeling fairly embarrassed about it (but not inclined to give anything back).
• Community: Because they are otherwise normal, the roblings don't like the outcomes from this behaviour. Their attempts to sublimate the urges failed, so a couple of generations ago they formed this community, leagues away from anywhere. A big part of their local culture consists of stealing from each other and the attendant little customs of going around to find their stuff again. Relatively few robling robberies now take place outside the village, but they have a big collection of things they stole in the past.
• Transient snow: Because the ancestral curse is about stealing valuable things, the roblings can safely live here amongst the transient snow creatures. The creatures' snow equipment (which evaporates daily) is largely worthless, so the robling instinct never targets them.
• History: The roblings were created in vats as an arcane experiment. Oral history says their creator was a genius archwizard whose hobby was thievery. She was betrayed by her apprentice who killed her, stole her powers, and abandoned the roblings for a new project, making some kind of huge mechanical baboon (see https://coppershaman.com/merry-hexmas-babbling-baboon/)

The roblings are smiling. Self-actualised. Happy with the niche they've carved out for themselves. They only admit to two worries:

1. In the distant future, population growth could have them brushing up against regions with other kinds of people, with friction as a result. They'd like to find a way to lift their curse if they could.
2. More immediately, some big, pricy, well-defended target could come along, prove irresistible, and the village would suffer some violent retaliation after robbing it. (They don't know about the W.A.I. gingerbread mech yet – see below)

If you could somehow alleviate either fear, you'd have the gratitude of a lot of interesting people.

Notable items stolen from the outside world by roblings (1d10):

1. Mrs Clause's rocking chair. She probably wants it back, but it's pretty heavy and unwieldy.
2. Treacle hourglass. Ornate ceremonial timepiece. The dark liquid very slowly flowing through it has almost finished counting down a decade.
3. Sack of large rubies and sapphires. Used as 'practise gems' by an apprentice gnome lapidary, they are all quite misshapen or in some cases have been split in half. Still valuable.
4. A set of telescope lenses once belonging to the Snow Miser (see https://tbr.bearblog.dev/merry-hexmas-blog-bandwagon-snow-misers-houseboat/)
5. Two large golden rings, from a set of five. A recent political intrigue is said to have revolved around them. Sounds like a tall tale to you.
   
6. A taxidermied chimerical denizen of some nightmarish realm. This particular chimera has the glassy-eyed head of a reindeer, body of a giant penguin, and feathers of a turkey, duck, and chicken combined. It also has human arms, holding a knife and fork.
7. Trunk-sized golden key to the city of Sniffleheim, fortified ancestral home of the frost giants. Etched on one side with the Sniffleheim coat of arms (a stylised scowl) and on the other with "Property of Jarl Keith".
   
8. Tongs of the Heat Miser. Magically room-temperature kitchen tongs. Once used by this mysterious figure to manipulate objects without melting them into white-hot blobs, before he learned a measure of control over his eldritch power.
9. Bottomless Pouch of Sugared Oranges. Vital to the roblings, who use it to supplement their moss-based diet with extra calories and vitamins.
   
10. Single-use doomsday device stolen from the Red Lord (see https://magnoliakeep.blogspot.com/2025/11/blog-bandwagon-orcish-toy-factory.html). Ugly pear-shaped mess of steel pipes, loose wires, and warning symbols. If activated, it instantly tinselifies all organic life in a six-league radius, leaving nothing but glittering strands and a mass of fused slag at the epicentre.

 

 

 

Locale: A curious expedition

A campsite huddles around the legs of a massive gingerbread mecha. The five-storey-tall delicious biscuit robot is currently immobile.

Houses a research party from the Weather Advancements Institute (W.A.I.), here to study the magical properties of the snow. They are competing with the North Pole Ironworks and the Hannukademy for funding, and would offer trade tips and small favours for news about either group or for leads on new sources of private equity.

The gingerbread mecha is a quadrupedic walking vehicle constructed from pastry, icing, spun sugar, high-tensile marzipan, and rolled steel. The inside smells like a holiday drink made from hot machine oil. The mecha broke down slightly short of its destination two leagues further into the snowfield, so the expedition has set up camp here while mechanic Grace tinkers with it.

The mecha is armed with a devastating heat ray and six pop-out autocannon turrets which lob chocolate shells at an unbelievable rate of fire. Part of an experimental fleet belonging to the Heat Miser, who contracted the design out to the W.A.I., funded the construction, and leased it back in a sweetheart deal.

Weather Advancements Institute team members (1d8):

1. Dr Margrit Blithely. Principal investigator. Stressed out. Really needs this expedition to work. Has only just found out about the roblings and is worried there could be a violent clash. The mecha has autonomous defences which can't be deactivated.
2. Thab Xnox. Research assistant. Hammock enthusiast. Has raised laziness to an artform. Motivated by nothing but new excuses not to do his job.
3. Magus Kaleb Baiseen. Academic wizard. Fascinated with the elements. His life's work is the construction of a periodic table partitioned along the lines of which elements can or cannot be animated or summoned.
4. Jennet Jensdottir. Meteorologist. Seven feet tall, platinum blonde, glittering celebrity smile, mind like a steel trap. Sociopath. Prolific writer. Managing editor for a journal of sorcerous metereology.
5. Dward Blue. Former jolly postman. Current grouchy mech driver. Chain smoker. Mood made worse by the expedition's limited stock of booze and their current inability to get out of here on a moment's notice if anything goes wrong.
6. Grace Isthmus. Gingerbread mechanic. Green-skinned and covered in warts. Wears black overalls, bright red sequinned shoes, a permanent grin. Omnidirectionally overoptimistic. Very confident. Loves her job. Currently trying to work out why the gingerbread engine in Knee #3 won't start.
7. Snid Kipper. Dogsbody. Young, anxious, splay-eared. Self-consciously amateur bagpiper and even more amateur poet. Very earnest.
8. Chunk. Team mascot. Salamander. Little salamander collar with her name on it. Sleeps in the main boiler. Eats coal kibble. Very fat.

 

 

 

Random hex encounters (1d10):

1. Jessica Bonechill. Transient snow creature in the form of an axe-wielding skeleton. Mercenary for hire, briefly. She wears a windbreaker and complains of the cold.
2. Magus Glace von Zephyrous. Transient snow creature in the form of a pretentious floating wizard. Capable of casting up to fourth level spells, but will thoroughly indulge his fondness for riddles before being any help at all.
3. Mister Hiphup. Transient snow creature in the form of a snowman. Hiking through the snow, eager to explore this new world he has found himself in, unaware he will live only a few more hours
4. Megafrosty. Transient snow creature in the form of a gigantic three-headed snowman. Sings in a robotic voice. Has false memories of having lived thirty centuries. Dislikes solemnity and may attack the maudlin.
5. Ia Snowhorn. Transient snow creature in the form of a fearsome ice centaur. He is struggling to traverse the snow on icicle legs which sink knee-deep with every stride.
6. Kel Brittlegrasp. A young wandering robling, curious about foreigners.
7. A small team of gnomes wearing piping hot steamsuits for warmth. They are crossing the snow on coal-burning sledges on a long journey to the big city. All of them are accomplished builders and interior designers, absolutely desperate for work (perhaps at a place like this).
8. 
   Three roblings (Bok, Twik, and Winston) armed with spears and big empty sacks, stalking a small herd of reindeer across the snow.
9. A small herd of reindeer.
10. Snid Kipper from the W.A.I., looking for a bit of solitude to practise the bagpipes. He keeps bumping into slightly simple-minded transient snow creatures and is finding it hard to shake them.

 

 

Rumours about this hex (1d8):

1. There's a whole town of grinning demons out beyond the steppe, dark green like the algae-slick walls of an old well. They live to steal.
2. A privately-funded research group has sent an expedition armed with gingerbread technology after something valuable out in the deep snowfields.
3. There's a place where the snow gets up and walks around, asking confused questions.
4. There was a string of odd thefts a couple of decades ago. Mrs Clause's rocking chair. The key to the city of Sniffleheim. The Tongs of the Heat Miser. Things that have never been fenced.
5. Some strange naive chap walked down from the hills. He was white as snow and dressed in strange baubles. He got drunk enough at the public house to cause problems, and couldn't pay his tab. When they opened up the gaol cell the next day there was nothing left of him but a puddle.
6. The Red Lord has been furious about a break-in which he was never able to avenge. He's put a big bounty on the head of something called a 'robling'.
7. If you find a place where odd folk are birthed from the snow itself, the flowering lichen there should be cut under a full moon, dried, powdered, and burned as incense. You'll have oracular visions.
8. Up beyond the snowline there's an orc spawning pit that went wrong and all the orcs there are obsessed with theft.

 

 

Credits

The text of this post is released under a Creative Commons BY (4.0) license. Do what you like with it as long as you follow the terms: credit me, link here, and link to the license.

The illustrations incorporated here are by Alderdoodle (alderdoodle.co.uk), Joe-Austin Flynn (www.patreon.com/c/u95234086/), Evlyn Moreau (www.patreon.com/c/evlynmoreau/), Steven Colling (https://stevencolling.itch.io/), and Jeffrey Koch (https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/26533/Jeff-Koch-Stock-Art). Used with permission.

Character class: Gestalt of magic items

Game idea status: Non-instantiated; untested

The pitch

In your next tabletop role-playing game, you play as a mismatched assortment of sapient magic items. You are seeking like-minded paraphernalia to add to your burgeoning hivemind. Underneath the magical finery and glowing gemstones is a small, timid commoner who doesn't really know what is going on, but who you have formed a fierce attachment to.

Being a magical treasure hoard

Character idea: You are four or five magic items, of various levels of intelligence and various capabilities. Parts of you can move. Others can perceive their environment. Others can communicate with the fleshy types, or puppet their movements. You work in superb co-ordination, each making the others stronger, and forming a gestalt entity stronger than the individual nodes in your network.

Possible appearance: An old biddy is napping in an ornate wooden throne which walks on four clawed feet, careful not to wake her. She grips a glowing sword as she snoozes – its blue blade dances this way and that, clearly moving her bony arm rather than the other way around. A griffon's head graven upon a shield glares from the top of the throne, held by an animated rope. In the old lady's lap is an hourglass absolutely dripping with fretwork skulls; within, the sand is frozen in time.

Motivation: You are lonely and incomplete. You seek missing members of once-paired items, objects of particular aesthetics to complete your look, magical swords of similar alignment, bored cursed amulets, and so on.

Terminology: You are a gestalt entity. Your prospective compatibility with other sapient magic items you might come across is your gestalt personality. The person you have convinced to carry all of your components around (the ones that can't carry themselves) is your host. They perform tasks for you and in return you shower them in good luck, ability bonuses, conjured food, saleable abilities, magical protections, and adventure.

Legal status: Chances are, the local magistrates' willingness to recognise you as a self-actualised individual is highly questionable. Even in the kind of utopia which does grant personhood to smart objects, you are likely still on the run from covetous dragons and other unsavoury types.

Niche protection: Are you kidding me?

Player characters and hosts

These objects have achieved concordance, or at least codependence, through a history of amicable cooperation. They fundamentally want to remain together; they have no interest in being separated.

Therefore, the character is never at risk of being "parcelled out" by other PCs.

Sapient artefacts are notoriously difficult for a living wielder or wearer to get on with nicely. You have problems of:

• Personality or alignment conflict
• Jealousy or disparagement of other magic items (and their different nature or perceived utility)
  
• Jealousy of the capabilities of the living, or criticism of their perceived weaknesses
  
• Pridefulness; expectation of obedience or submission from all other than the item's maker
  
• Disrespect of the long-lived and unbreakable for organic intelligences
  
• The desire to be carried at all times, to be treasured, to be maintained and given consideration above the bearer's more intrinsic goals
• Items having instinctual control over their wielder or wearer in various ways, and unwilling or unable to suppress it for long
  

It's a rare person indeed – and a meek, biddable one – who meets all the slightly different criteria of a whole assemblage of such items.

Therefore, the character is not at risk of disappearing because it "makes sense" for some other PC to wield and wear them all at once.

At some point, the gestalt entity's host – a person who is probably regarded as something between a valued servant, a sapient home, and a fascinating pet – might die. This is not sufficient reason for another PC to stand in, except as an extremely short, uncomfortable stopgap until the gestalt entity can travel to a population centre to begin the long, arduous search for another truly suitable host. This may or may not be considered a form of character death, dependent on the nature of the particular game.

Game mechanics

Take a character sheet and some scissors, and cut away everything but the important box which says 'equipment list'.

I'm not going to go so far as to instantiate this character class for any particular game system.

Obviously it's going to take some GM work. The following guidelines occur to me.

How to handle advancement:

• Start out with four or five magic items, able to communicate amongst themselves telepathically, visually, and/or tactilely. Between them they should have the ability to move around, communicate with other folks, protect themselves, perceive their environment, and do something that could be leveraged to make money to pay their way. They should also have a short list of utility or battle powers – say, one per item.
• The player should be (e.g.) picking from a set of pre-prepared candidate objects/powers rather than getting to pick all the details of the magic items for their starting gestalt character.
• For character progression, switch up between unlocking new powers per item, and adding new friends to the convergent hivemind. This character class is the perfect use case for 'found advancement'.
• Try to treat this as special; seed the world with possibilities. Don't just say "you're level seven now, so I guess another magic tiara with a compatible personality shows up and integrates with you. Here are its powers." Ideally, you should provide the player characters with leads and clues as to all sorts of things out there in the world and/or lost long ago, and if they pursue the more difficult, elusive, and dangerous ones, the rescued artefact is correspondingly stronger as a reward (after all, the other PCs will be getting more experience because of the higher challenge).
  

Possible items and powers:

• Three cuts from the elsewhere axe open a semi-permanent portal to wherever the last such cuts were made. Also breaks into extradimensional spaces.
  
• Hood of invisibility blinds the wearer while making them invisible. Not too much trouble when other items in the gestalt can do the seeing.
  
• Old slippers of agility are very comfortable; improve reflexes and stealth; worn through at the heels.
• Cursed hat of headlessness flies through the air carrying small weights; seeks legendary 'hatrack of lichkind'.
• Wand of force emanates dangerous gravitational waves and can be used to get around in a pinch.
• An old artefact has expended all its uses as a rod of reincarnation but can still summon woodland creatures and force them to sing.
• Classic flying carpet has powerful mobility and speed, little intelligence, follows its fellow objects like a lost puppy.
• Scarf of glittering fascination seeks other accoutrements in complementary colours; grants wearer powers of hypnosis and authoritative voice.
• Demanding helm keeps full-face visor open except to turn aside blows; acts as immovable rod in times of great and specific need.
• Half-finished golem, creator's whole civilisation long dead and their secrets gone with them, is missing its voice, one arm, and ability to turn around.
• Just the left glove of giant strength only provides said strength to the left side of the body; yearns for its twin.
• Animated tent can pitch self and walk short distances, dragging things with it; also predicts the weather and cleans shoes and tack.
  
• etc.
  

Peril, hit points, and death:

• The host should have baseline commoner statistics, likely boosted by some of the magic items in the gestalt. The person's hit points and skills and things never really go up, and don't matter too much. The player playing the gestalt entity is just kind of puppeteering them, just like the gestalt entity is in-world.
  
• It's possible to play this kind of character in 'high score mode', where the goal is to keep the same host alive for as long as possible while racking up as many magic items discovered and checked for compatibility as possible.
• Alternatively, to better fit in with other character types in a game where everyone is meant to experience true peril, the GM needs to do some work. I mentioned above that you can treat host death as character death by making it incredibly difficult to find a new host: the magic items can't get the quality of life they prefer without a host, so if it happens, they disappear from the campaign.
• You can also start rolling saves or tracking hit points and hardness or making destruction checks or whatever your system already uses for smashing objects up. This means it needs to be possible to repair at a similar pace to the in-game healing rate; that might already shake out of the system neatly, or you might need to make it a property of one of the sapient items.
  
• Regardless of approach, you could usefully level threats directly towards the aggregated items. After all, everyone wants a magic object or two, and this set is hanging around in the possession of some nobody! Alternatively, some of the items might be cursed or diabolic or spiritually aligned, in danger of being exorcised or corrupted or disenchanted. Note that a lot of players really hate when their characters are stolen from or kidnapped, so tread carefully with this.
  

Let me know

If you've tried this or something like it!

Other reading

Willful weapons and the trouble they cause: https://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=1648

Interesting magic items: https://periaptgames.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-puzzle-from-1978-ad-1st-edition.html

Ideas for awoken magic items: https://githyankidiaspora.com/2015/04/20/wake-up-magic-items-wake-up-dccrpg/

A history of swords with ego: https://www.paulsgameblog.com/2018/01/28/ego-through-the-ages/

Difficulties with intelligent swords: https://www.tenkarstavern.com/2012/12/intelligent-swords-in-ad-1e-whats-with.html

Sapience in AD&D: https://periaptgames.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-puzzle-from-1978-ad-1st-edition.html

Engaging Magic Items

How do you make magic items as interesting and memorable as they really ought to be?

A short list of suggestions off the top of the dome.

• Make them multi-purpose problem-solving tools, encouraging out-of-the-box thinking. Magic items conferring numeric bonuses occupy a tiny corner of the design space!
  
• Make them limited-use, for a resource management game. This way, you can put tons of magic items out there without getting hung up on balance and character power.
• Make them interact with each other in interesting ways, some obvious, some non-intuitive. What happens when you put the chemolotrophic coral fragment which continually dispenses clouds of steam into the impermeable, inviolable lockbox? Let's find out!
  
• Make some of them big and heavy and useful, so that the players have to work out how and whether to bring them on expeditions - and where to store them in between.
• Hand out visual and other clues to what they do, then play an identification mini-game (assuming some sorcerous source of apprehension isn't at hand). This can be as simple as asking the players what avenue their characters are going to explore first (e.g., "the coiled centipede figurine has a water droplet motif underneath, so we're going to try doing various things with it underwater or near bugs"); based on their answer assign an appropriate modifier to a dice roll to see how long it takes to identify.
• Make some of them quite minor and appear from the very first game session. They might be sold as treasure or never picked up to begin with, but they also might become a player character's favourite thing.
  

Above all else,

• Make them weird! Defy tropes! Roll on four completely different random tables and work out how something could possibly lie at the intersection of the four results! Blow minds! Change worlds! Borrow, steal, and remix! Life's too short for +1 armour!