Best Left Buried Ancestry: Rogue Fae

This is a demi-human ancestry I have written for Best Left Buried. This came about when I was writing my solo game of Darkling Seas of Islesmere; I wanted a character to be a cast-off exile of the Glories, and this is what I came up with. I also wrote a unique Advancement and Disease for the character to use. 

ROGUE FAE:

The myriad Fae are a bitter threat across Lendal, those of the forests and of nature who twist and contort the very reality they step upon. Divided into disparate and hivelike 'Courts', these shelled beings – more insect than human – show rampant dimorphism across their varied origins, each feudal and covetous Court a different species in its own right.

They settle themselves in the regions of untapped natural awe; the Torran ally themselves to their rain-saturated fetid swamps, the Darklin to their accused and gilded Hidden Sky and the Antlered to the shifting glens of the Linwode. Their forms alter and change in relation to this allegiance: the Fecundites, obsessed with fertility and reproduction, grew lustful and bloated in their fungal chasms as the Darklin Glories grew gold-scaled and starkly humanoid in avarice.

In this uncontrolled adaptation, scholarly folk debate on a distinct origin of the Fae peoples. No such point can be reasonably traced in their ancestry: unlike the Skaill or Orcs, who bear distinct and catalogued mythic inceptions, the Fae bear no such lineage. Only one continuous force unites the Courts in such a way; a collective love for the stars.

Rogue Fae are uncommon to see. In their covetous and inconstant nature many find solace in the childlike rivalry of the Courts; those who cast themselves out from them often bear humanoid emotional qualities and a lack of possessiveness that other Fae often find boring. Cast from the gluttony and pleasure of the Courts, their only solace is in their final love: the stars.

There are a selection of reasons why such Rogue Fae may join the motely ranks of a Cryptdigging company. Perhaps, to them, the company is a court in its own right, more entertaining or interesting than anything a Fae mind could produce. Perhaps they seek vengance on those who cast them out, or perhaps it is all a scheme; in secret, they may work on behalf of the Court, acting as a spy or concierge for their own devious ambitions.

Regardless, suspicion and intrigue are often brought about when a Fae stumbles upon a Cryptdigging camp. Unfamiliar allies may be found in the scholarly or Demi-Human, ancient grudges mended in the mutual dismay of the crypt.

[Note: Rogue Fae are built as a Demi-Human Ancestry as per the Best Left Buried: Ancestries Zine.]

BANISHED COURT: Pick a Fae Court you were banished from and note its assosciated Mood.
You gain 3 Fae Grip that can only be spent on Exertion or Advancements used on Fae of this court or on Monsters of the court's Mood.

Fae Grip resets when you sleep under the stars.

STAR-SPAWN: Once per lunar cycle you can read a prophecy from the stars and trees. This tells you a thread of fate itself: the Doomsayer must give you a cryptic vision as if you had used and spent an extra Grip on I see Truth in the Stars.

HIDDEN IDENTITY: Your Fae nature acts as a ward of sorts between you and lesser magical effects. Any none-attacking magical effect that targets you is rolled Against the Odds.

However, if the caster of a magical attack or effect knows your True name, the roll is made with
the Upper Hand.

YOUR FINAL COURT: You find comfort beneath the stars. If you do not sleep underneath the stars, you must make a Will Check or lose 1 Grip.

Rogue Fae Psychology:

When taking an Affliction, Rogue Fae roll below:

Rogue Fae Afflictions:
1. Feasting Dreams.
2. Yearning for Antiquity.
3. Hoardlust.
4. Silver Fingers.
5. Courted Nightmares.
6. They Are Watching.

Courted Nightmares [Growing Affliction]

Your mind races in sleep, the shimmering images of your former peers cropping into dreams like weeds in a flowerbed.
When sleeping make a Will Check or spend 1 Grip to avoid the sway of the court.
If failed, roll twice on the Mood table appropriate to your Banished Court.
When you awaken you must act in a way which presents the qualities rolled, perhaps offputting others or acting brash and uncontrolled.

Yearning for Antiquity [Character Flaw]

It begins as an inkling intrusive thought, yet with every attempt made to push it away it grows deeper and stronger: have you made the right choice?
You develop a concern that perhaps this is not the life for you, shadowing the mannerisms of your former peers from your Banished Court.

Such behaviour – which is similar to the Moods of the court – is distinctly inhuman and inconstant. Hunger may rise and fall rapidly, you may burst out into laughter at a slightest moment or may be in a constant misery at seemingly happy occasions.
Given time, you may even seek to make peace with your Court once more.

Fae Names:
Fae names are often akin to titles, commonly beginning with 'The' to denote that the name spoken is more descriptive than identifying. This is often due to Fae names being innately false in nature, a mask used to hide a precious 'True name' that, if disclosed, exposes the Fae to magical influence and attack.

Giving another their true name rarely happens within Fae Courts. It is considered prized and romantic to hold the true name of another, a currency in its own right that many Fae will drool at the mouth for.

Shown Names: The Marigold, The Daisy, The Sun-Shine, The Petrichor, The Rainer, The Oaken, The Patience, The Lunar, The Star-Spawn, The Valley, The Lilly, The Rosemary, The Beauty

True Names:
Roll up to three times, rerolling duplicates, and connect through dashes or apostrophes.
Gwardlym, Ha, Styrien, Jaia, Krosis, Erichor, Gwain, Epplyah, Iil, Kki, Mells, Sammira

D12 Banished Courts:

The appropriate Mood is shown in parenthesis beside the Court name.

Antlered Court (Hungering), Brazen Court (Igneous), Darklin Court (Otherworlder), Falen Court (Glacial), Fecundite Court (Earthen), Torran Court (Aquatic), Polypen Court (Arcane), Hiis Court (Critter), Kar'Tarn Court (Unthinking), Court of Inken Monogamy (Void-Hearted), Graven Court (Abomination), Keenen Court (Holy)

D12 Shell Patterns:
Spotted, Striped, Crescents, Scarred, Scaled, Smooth, Glittering, Translucent, Sculpted, Curvaceous, Bejewelled, Tattooed

D12 Newfound Pleasures:
Eating, Drinking, Singing, Laughter, The feeling of Rain, Sun on the skin, Flower-Picking, Flirting, Fencing, Woodworking, Reading, Herbology, 

The following is a Rogue Fae-only Advancement I made for a herbalist character in my Darkling Seas of Islesmere solo play. I partly made this because a few other of the cryptdiggers had died and I wanted a feasible way for their story to continue. I also wanted a scary Fae disease that turns people into trees and weaved the two ideas together.

ADVANCEMENT: ROOTING REVIVAL:

You can bring the recently deceased back to life.

Implanting the seed of a Fae taproot tree in their stomach and letting its roots spread throughout their body, the mind and spirit are woven together and the physical form is crudely repaired into an imperfect new life. They will live again, yet their existence will be marred by the vines that weave within them; the Fae-Rooting that coils and petrifies.

Activating Rooting Revival costs D6 Grip and takes an hour, the deceased target it is used upon being brought back to life with a none-lethal Injury and the Fae-Rooting Disease.
Should a person revived through Rooting Revival die, they turn into a tree and cannot be brought back to life again.
Curing the Fae-Rooting Disease will also kill the revived target, though in such a scenario they may be brought back to life through other magical means. 

 A cadaver cannot be revived with Rooting Revival if the body is not intact or if they have been deceased for more than a week.

FAE-ROOTING:

STAGE 1: Small twigs prickle from the scalp, skin turning green and pulpy.

The infected feels a strong aversion to industry and feels particularly exposed when out in the open. They must make a Will Check or spend 1 Grip when resting in a non-natural environment such as a tavern or camp, otherwise gaining no benefit.

STAGE 2: The skin hardens into a thick and fibrous bark, eyes glowing with golden shimmer. Ever-falling tears, thick and gilded tears, exude from the eyes in permanent sorrow.

The infected gains the Weakness (fire) Adaptation and none-herbal medicine loses all effect on them. The golden tears they weep are prized by Fae.

STAGE 3: Whee limbs meet the ground the taproot bursts from the skin, limbs turning to thick branches and rooting to the earth. 
Every day at stage three, the infected loses a limb of their choice. Arms turn into branches, legs into roots.

Once all limbs are lost, the infected is transformed into a tree. They are still alive, and as the disease regresses they will regain function of their body. The infected loses D3 Grip every day they spend as a tree.

CURING FAE-ROOTING:
-At Recovery's end, pass a Will Check to reduce Fae-Rooting by 1 Stage. Any limbs lost to the illness return to function.

-Knowing the name of the Fae who infected them gives the check the Upper Hand.

-The Fae themselves are immune to this curse. Tricking them to cast a ritual or protective ward upon you could purge it from your body.

Mentality Archetypes rework: Coenobite

Yesterday I posted an example for how I might update Mentality Archetypes to be a bit more usable and evocative in a game setting. I've decided to continue with that and have finished my rework of the Coenobite Archetype! This came with a rewrite of their initial description and a slight alteration for what 'Mask of the Mind' does.

The different Coenobite factions are pretty heavily based off the archetype tables in Thrones of Avarice. Unlike ToA, however, they come from a variety of duchies, with each faction having their appropriate duchy shown in brackets beside it.

I can't really decide on a favourite of these. I guess it would depend on where the campaign would be set.

In yesterday's post I had also drafted up some tables for Coenobite rituals and rare artefacts. I might keep these (perhaps reworking the artefacts to be treasures the Cryptdiggers could find on the body of a dead Coenobite), but as is I feel that there is enough here to spark some potential ideas for a Coenobite character. 

I'll probably do this with the other Mentality Archetypes I've made, especially those I find particularly interesting. I might even cut some out or add some new ones in and publish it as an 'updated edition' of sorts.

Best Left Buried: Mentality Archetypes:

Best Left Buried has the potential to be a pretty nasty game system, at least from a mechanical perspective. A single lucky hit from anything could outright kill a player character, even (by technicality) a bite from a rat. Your characters - intrepid Cryptdiggers - will emerge from their tombs of plunder broken, battered and traumatised. If they don't carry debilitating Injuries then they'll certainly bear mental Afflictions, disgusting Corruptions or virulent and bizarre Diseases. Characters tend to die, quite a lot.

As such, I've found a lot of things to like in Best Left Buried's method of character creation. It's quick and easy, simple enough to complete yet flexible enough to give your characters some flavour and flair. A major caveat of this character creation process is in determining an Archetype your character bears - effectively their occupation or 'class', which gives a few abilities for flavour and can be useful in determining backstory and personality.

There are 12 Archetypes in the Cryptdigger's guide to survival. They're all really good, I think, very unique and discernable from one another. They all have a lot of character to them, and this can be interpreted by the player in a load of different ways to make a cryptdigger stand out from the rest, and make their story particularly interesting (or tragic).

Mentality Archetypes:

One of my first big projects I did with the Best Left Buried system was that of writing more Archetypes. I wrote around 16 of them and put them all into a pdf - honestly, it's probably way too many but I enjoyed writing them and have even more written down in notes.
They were mainly focused on examining how different cryptdiggers respond to the trauma their job is exposing them to; a handful of them aren't really focused on specific occupational roles, more so on how they are coping with the horrors. 

Others are the opposite, focusing more on precise job roles and occupations that the cryptdiggers might have once been in their lives. There are the Woodsmen, traumatised lumberjacks from Ilym, the blinded Coenobite Monks and noble Scions, to name a few.

The Coenobite is probably my favourite. Blinded monks who defile gods, who can't see due to some past occurrence. They might have had their eyes torn out, had some kind of curse put upon them or might just wear a blindfold or helmet. 

One of my characters was a Norui Monk who had his metal mask melted into his skin due to an arcane mishap. He died in Islesmere and it made me a bit sad.

Though this project is complete, I have ideas for how I can update it. Somewhat embarrassingly, i exported the pdf from GIMP and as such you can't highlight any text or search for any words. I'm definitely gonna have to rewrite it in a more useable form.

There also isn't a lot of art in it, and I feel that the art I have included isn't particularly evocative in the way of showing what might be possible using these character options. If I rework it then I'll definitely add more and work on trying to make the designs more visually descriptive.

I've also got some ideas for as to how I can make these archetypes more usable in a game setting. It's something I'll have to work on, but an idea I have is how I might add random tables to generate details and background elements for the character. I have some notes for how this might work using the Coenobite archetype:

D6 COENOBITE FACTIONS:

• Interer Coenobite [Norui, those who worship Vaashni. Use masks to hide faces in necromancy, embalming and battle.]
  
• The Gouged Order [Torre, those who ritualistically remove or cover their eyes to stave off intruding nightmares]
• Peer of the Ordo Silencia [Maigne, Cult of Chalice members who perpetually wear a sealed helm. Trained to spar blind.]
• Follower of the Orc-Iron Way [Jerrod, humans who delve into Rytik with Orcish folk. Need to cover their eyes so not affected by Iron Hall monsters.]
• Mourner of the Pale Wrappings [Keene, person who covers themselves in white linen in memory of a white wizard saint]
• Sunajin Huntress [Salver, person who lost their own face to hunt face-takers]
  

(these also include notes on the appropriate Duchies a character of this faction might hail from. I'll work on fleshing these out more when I get around to reworking this project)

D6 CAUSES OF BLINDNESS

• Eyes were torn from head
• Fae replaced eyes with useless gold
• Use of the arcane melted a mask to your flesh
• A holy helmet is bolted into your skin
• Void magic has made your eyes and forehead a dark pit
• Used eyes in an alchemical ritual to restore a limb

D6 UNCOMMON RITUALS

• Sleeping ritual, burning incense and meditation
• Food ritual, the utter engorgement of the body between periods of fasting
• Orgy ritual, give up sexual pleasure for magical prowess
• Creation ritual, create elaborate paintings before destroying them with acid
• Arcane ritual, spend days in reverence of dark and forgotten powers
• Bloodletting Ritual, spill the blood of others to saturate your vision with suffering

D6 RELICS OF REVERENCE

• Your mask is engraved with blasphemous runes
• A scarf that has verses of your appropriate practices [Ritual+Faction] Written atop it
• Ritual knife that was to be used on you
• A sealed reliquary containing an unknown treasure
• Scriptures engraved with words hot to the touch, untranslated
• Your own eyes, mummified and pickled into an anatomical antique  
  
  

Personal Introduction

Around this time last year, give or take, I began looking into a role-playing game I hadn't heard of before. I'd heard about it through a games expo that my university held, a company local to the area (Soulmuppet Publishing) having a small stand there. 

Their games seemed interesting, and certainly caught my attention; this was shortly after the beginning of the OGL debacle Wizard's of the Coast was embroiled in and other role-playing games had been on my radar for a few months prior. Like many my age, my introduction to the hobby had been DnD 5e, and branching out from it brought me into a whole world of Role-playing games that I didn't really know existed! I had been having some issues with DnD at the time, especially in trying to plan and convey darker themes and grittier dungeons. I was big into Darkest Dungeon (and its overhaul mod, Black Reliquary) and really yearned for a dark and oppressive atmosphere in my role-playing game sessions. I wanted to write nasty, gritty dungeons filled with monsters and consequences and ancient treasure and forgotten peoples, to inject a feeling of dread - yet also exploration and triumph - that I had not been able to replicate in my sessions. I gave Soulmuppet's stuff a look and, lo and behold, I found exactly what I was looking for.

Though I am certain my issues in running DnD 5e must come, in part, due to my own inexperience of running sessions, I found something unique in what I found in Soulmuppet's projects, and felt particularly drawn to their game Best Left Buried.

Best Left Buried has been something of a creative outlet for me over the past year. I've been writing dungeons, character options, lore and monsters for it yet have mainly kept it to myself. Ultimately, this has caused me to have a surplus of stuff that I haven't really done anything with; I intend to post this stuff on this blog, at least for a little bit. 

I hope that you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it :)