#horf will get a name. eventually

[vaultsixtynine]

also been thinking about rhubarb So Much lately and her name in her home tongue is tirze (bc i'll never get around to salvaging that sw character) tal-kheer, but she uses rhubarb/rhu tal-kheer because she thinks it's a fun rest-of-the-world analog to what her name actually means (name pending, a socially & spiritually important plant in her culture that is now nearly extinct; she carries a living plant of it on her person at all times and lots of people in her culture group had names related to it bc it was so important) - and she's more... comfortable. with that. it's a little bit of distance from painful memories/her not wanting something sacred and vulnerable in other people's mouths, And it's a fun nickname.

her bug-horse mount that's also from her homeland is a larval giant moth that Only exists where her culture group used to exist and is also nearly extinct, because her people, the Important Plant that's Kind Of Like Rhubarb, and the Bug Horse Moths exist as three parts of an ecological triangle - the moth larvae need the plant in large quantities to progress to mating maturity & cocoon/hatch with wings, the people/culture monitored the plant and helped it grow at its natural sites (not quite agriculture... more like a mutual agreement) as well as eating it as a spice, fermenting it into fruit wine, treating the leaves - which are poisonous when raw/untreated - and curing them for smoking (has weedlike effects when used this way - when turned into wine, too), turning it into dye & paint (the fleshy stalks and more woody branches once it gets big enough are a natural Extremely Bright Red with a hint of purple, like rhubarb), and the people ride the larval bug moths and use their cocoons as a fiber source (it's like silk)

MothHorse has a pointy snoot and six quadruped (sextoped? lol)-esque legs (ie, reminiscent of how quadruped legs are built), big fuzzy moth antennae, and Big Ol Eyes, and Normally they turn redder and redder as they eat more and more not-rhubarb like flamingoes with shrimp, but he's stuck with his natural color (which i haven't decided on yet 😔). certain parts of him - usually the spots less covered in the hardest carapace - are fuzzy as well. these creachers have extremely powerful kicks, are famously longwinded, and only really listen to the person they're "bonded" to, though even that's kinda tenuous. they're vegetation/fruit & nectar-eaters, but their tongues (which serve as a proboscis, basically, though they have both mandibles and a proboscis in this life stage) are extremely sharp and Under Duress they've been known to drink blood from various sources.

rhu keeps her plant very well maintained, and she also makes her own makeup/facepaint & her own supply of cured leaves for her pipe from it. it produces One Giant Berry With Exactly One Seed a year, and she's been saving them as... a future plan? a memorial? a way to mark time passing? probably all three. she's been doing her best with it, regardless, and loathes to be separated from the plant At Any Point.

her horf can take care of himself, but they've reached an understanding and are both Separated from their original context, so... they stick together. the moth species are extremely long-lived and some larval forms have been Kept as family heirlooms thru generations (if they allow themselves to be, anyway), so it's more realistic that she'll probably die before Horf does.

[foodbytesback]

What Does Sonic the Hedgehog Eat at Olive Garden?

Despite all the setbacks it had faced, the Sonic the Hedgehog movie finally saw its very romantic Valentine’s Day weekend release.  And while the critic’s reviews have been all over the place (tldr: Jim Carrey goes full Jim Carrey, so your enjoyment of that will depend on your opinion of Jim Carrey, and also the rest of the movie is “cartoon character has to learn about the Real World™,” a la the live-actions Smurfs movies), one thing in particular sticks out like a sore thumb (Spoiler Alert: it isn’t Sonic doing Fortnite dances):

Olive Garden Product Placement.

At one point, Olive Garden comes up in a conversation (somehow? I haven’t actually seen it yet, I’ve been working 10 hour shifts all weekend) and Tom (the human main character) just drops the “when you’re here, you’re family” tagline, like that’s something a normal human would do.  Then, after the climax, the US government gives Tom a $50 Olive Garden gift card for his role in saving the planet, like that’s something a normal government would do.

Why Olive Garden?  What part of Olive Garden’s brand seemed compatible with Sonic the Hedgehog?   Did Sonic Drive-ins, who, name aside, actually serve Sonic’s trademark favorite food, chili dogs, think it would be too on-the-nose?

None of that’s important.  I want to know what, in lieu of a chili dog, Sonic would order off of the Olive Garden menu.

I think we can all agree that in order to maintain his status as the fastest thing alive, Sonic must consume an improbable amount of calories.  However, the saying is “Gotta go fast,” not, “I can go fast when I want to,” so I can only imagine most meals for him are hurried affairs dedicated to ingesting the most calories per second possible.  Basically, it’s me, back in my restaurant days, hunched over a trash can horfing down family meal in between prep jobs.

So, it basically comes down to two factors: caloric density and ease of consumption (Given his aforementioned chili dog affinity, I don’t think Sonic is much of a gourmand, so I don’t think actual flavor is going to come into play much.).  

Caloric density is the easy part.  Lots of stuff on Olive Garden’s menu exceeds 1,000 calories per serving.  The big winner here would be the Chicken Alfredo at a whopping 1,620. Somehow.

But, Sonic would have to waste soooooo much time twirling his fettuccini around his fork.  All long, stringy pastas are out.  And don’t get me started on anything that requires a knife.

Turns out, after cutting out every twirlable pasta and everything that would need to be cut into bite-sized pieces, well, there’s isn’t much of a menu left.  So, what are we left with? Some would say that the make-your-own pasta with the Rigatoni (440 cal) and the Asiago Garlic Alfredo (940 cal) would be the most caloric combination left available.  But, whether or not this slight edge in total calories is enough to offset the time lost in explaining your custom order to your server has been fiercely debated by Sonic historians, critics of make-your-own menu items, and speedrunners for decades.  The only other worthy adversary would be the Five Cheese Ziti al-Forno, which, despite just being ziti, cheese, and marinara, is somehow 1,220 calories.   

If he’s willing to sacrifice precious seconds of his Olive Garden speedrun towards also ordering an appetizer, the Lasagna Fritta, at 1,070 calories and seemingly ready to be eaten with your hands, would make a good contender.  

And idk, Sonic doesn’t seem like much of a dessert kind of guy to me.  I think he’d stick more to complex carbs than simple sugars.  

...

The worst part of all of this is that you can’t say it wasn’t effective advertising.  I just spent this whole time talking about Olive Garden, and you just spent the whole time reading about Olive Garden.  Sure, I might not have painted the OG in a particularly appetizing light, but this is the first time I’ve even thought about them in years, so that’s saying something.

When I eventually go to see Sonic on the big screen, I’ll be smuggling in a chili dog.  It’s what he would have wanted.

[terrible-tentacle-theatre]

The Bestiary Revamped: Vampire Squid (HALLOWEEN SPECIAL)

Disclaimer: While this article is founded in scientific fact, it contains hyberbole and conscious exaggerations for the sake of comedy. Do not take my ramblings at face value. You can find the sources at the end of the article and tools for scientific fact-checking under the “Learn more” link on my blog.

The old article can be read here.

(I intended to post this yesterday but stuff came up. Anyway.)

Ahem.

Cue the spooky music.

*threatening organ music plays at unbearable volumes*

That’s right, dear readers, the Spooky Gourd Day has finally, finally come, and with it the nigh-endless Halloween shitposting that permeates this website every October like the smell of pumpkin pie did my house just a few hours ago, immediately before I ate most of it. (I still have like half of it left, but it’s cold now so it doesn’t have that mouthwatering smell unless I reheat it. And I was too busy watching old Betty Boop Halloween cartoons to reheat it. Anyway, I’m getting off track.)

Frankly, the obsession of internet culture with this innocuous holiday has always fascinated me. What it is about a day when you get to dress up all funky-like, go from house to house acting like an idiot, horf down all the candy you can get away with and watch scary movies all night that is so attractive to them youngsters? I simply cannot wrap my head around it.

However, it is a day of great significance to this blog, since this is the day when we celebrate the utter freakiest of the freakiest that can be pulled up from the stygian waves of the planet’s oceans. This is the third Halloween of the Terrible Tentacle Theatre, and for this notable occasion, I have decided to give one of my earliest poster children a much-needed revisit.

Back in the early days of the blog, when it was still called Hectocotylus and my content mainly consisted of spicing up Wikipedia and Cracked articles with swearing for the sick enjoyment of some 30 followers, the article in question was my first big hit among the people of the Digital Blue Hills of Hell. In the days when most of my articles didn’t go above 20 notes, this beast gathered up 300 notes by using its nebulous tendrils to reach into the deepest corners of the ole ‘web. Not only was this creature my first big hit in my career as a marine biology blogger with tone moderation issues, it would also fit in great as the main monster in a theoretical Universal Horror/Syfy teamup, which would be the Halloweeniest shit ever.

Ladies, gentlemen and other fellows, the vampire squid.

Before you even see this thing in full detail you can already gather that I didn’t choose it for this year’s Halloween special for nothing. Everything from the ghoulish dark red color scheme to the bat-like webbing between eldritch tentacles screams “cheesy Hammer Horror movies written by good ol’ Howard Philips”. And it will become even more evident when you see it in its full, glowy, betentacled glory.

This is how it looks like when you stare down a squishy, floppy incarnation of doom. This thing looked so freaky that the dude who discovered it, a certain German biologist called Karl Chun, decided to name it Vampyroteuthis infernalis. That’s Latin for “vampire squid from Hell”. Yep, that’s right. Remember the part where science is hard fact unaffected by emotion? Well you can throw that right out the window, because this fucker freaked its discoverer out so hard that he named it the vampire squid from Hell.

“The shit I’ve seen, kiddo. You wouldn’t believe.”

Even descriptions of this guy sound like they escaped straight from a 19th century gothic horror novel. For example, in 1925 the Arcturus expedition caught one near the Galapagos Islands and described it as “a very small but very terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white jaws and blood-red eyes.” Even in the years of the Roaring Twenties, merely seeing the vampire squid was enough to bring out anyone’s inner Poe or Bram Stoker, apparently, which isn’t very surprising considering that it looks like Béla Lugosi had an illicit affair with one of the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu.

You’re welcome for that mental image.

While calling it a vampire is more than appropriate, the names “squid” or “octopus” are much less fitting. While intially appearing to be something of an octopus, it’s actually not one of them; and it isn’t a squid either, which left the confused scientists to place it within its own little private taxon, the order Vampyromorphida. If you know a little bit of Latin, that means “vampire-shaped”, which would imply that this is the general shape for vampires. So next time you read Twilight, imagine Edward as a vampire squid flopping around on the ground the entire time and I guarantee you’ll have a blast reading through several hundred pages of sweaty bloodsucker romance.

Unlike Edward however, the vampire squid doesn’t actually feed on blood. Dashing from shadow to shadow in the cover of a snappy opera cape and hunting for innocent young maidens in the night is the kind of energy expenditure that this malevolent mollusk cannot afford. Mainly because it lives (you guessed it) in the darkest, deepest excesses of the oceans, where the eternal darkness creates an all-year-round Halloween mood. In these waters, even beginners have a hard time finding the tiniest scraps of food, and have to resort to drastic measures to get by. But the vampire squid looks at those beginners and goes “yall are scrubs git gud lmao”. Compared to the vampire squid’s lifestyle, virtually any other denizen of the deep sea lives right in the middle of a goddamn cornucopia.

See, the vampire squid doesn’t just live in the deep ocean. It specifically prefers places called Oxygen Minimum Zones (OMZ), which sounds more like the hardest Sonic level ever than any serious place which can support life. OMZs are vast sheet-like expanses of water in the deep sea which barely contain any breathable oxygen. Some of these zones can contain as little as 5% of the oxygen that saturates air, and barely anything survives here.

And guess what? The vampire squid lives here. Not only lives, but thrives.

This is the game the vampire squid plays, every day of its life. On hard difficulty.

Obviously, living in a dead wasteland of suffocating water has required the squid to adopt some nifty tools of survival. Do not do so would be like entering the final dungeon of a video game with early game gear.

First off is a pair of sensory filaments, which the vampire squid extends through the water much like a spider does its web. They are super long and flexible, and probably the source of so many dick jokes that the squid will choke a bitch if anyone tells one more.

“No, I’ve never heard that one ever. Ha ha ha. Real fuckin’ original.”

Next up is a pair of membranous wings, used by the squid to travel through the aether of space to “fly” through the water, it’s cape-like arm web billowing behind it. The vampire parallels are getting more and more accurate.

Interestingly this wing isn’t the same in adults and juveniles. At one point in their devlopment they start growing a second pair of fins which eventually fully substitutes the first pair, which then atrophies back into the flesh. Thus if you’re lucky enough to catch a vampire squid, it’s not impossible that it will have four fins. The biologists who first found these four-finned squid nearly went insane trying to describe it (and several other developmental stages) as separate species. It was such a mess it took years to sort out, and nowadays the vampire squid is the sole surviving species of its order. He’s standing in the darkness. Alone.

WAKE ME UP INSIDE

The fins and the filaments aren’t just decorative elements the squid picked out at Hot Topic, either. Used in tandem, they’re a fearsomely effective netting tool and the way this crafty cephalopod earns its daily bread. You think spiders are cool with their webs? Nah, Spiders ain’t shit. They’re lazy idiots and their web does all the work for them. the vampire squid’s filaments is where it’s REALLY at.

See, the vampire squid’s main diet is thankfully not blood but something called “marine snow”. This is basically the shower of discarded tissue, shit and corpses that rains down upon the lower layers of the deep ocean from the upper layers all year round. Having this fall from the sky for “White Christmas” would probably be quite traumatizing.

DECK THE HALLS WITH BALLS OF FECES SHALALALALALALALALAAAAARGH

The vampire squid, however, has had its resolve steeled by years of isolation in the darkness of the deep ocean, and is willing to chug down anything to survive. Bear Grylls is a picky gourmet chef compared to this guy.

That said, it needs to eat something that’s actually of some nutritional worth. It could spend its life scarfing down every chunk of marine snow it comes across, but that would be a waste of muscle movements since most of it does exactly nil to fill up its stomach. That’s where the filaments/fins combo come in, turning the vampire squid into an angry little tripwire trap ready to snap at any moment.

Note the filament. That’s not a parasite, that’s legit a part of the animal. Nobody knows where it evolved from, it’s not a modified arm or tentacle and it’s a fucking enigma.

Mystery tentacles: the quintessential Terrible Tentacle Theatre experience.

Extending its filaments (one at a time) into the mucky waters around, it waits more still then I do when I go to the kitchen for a glass of water during the night and I hear a sudden noise. The filaments come with a plethora of sensitive nerve endings, ensuring that anything bigger than a flea’s asscheeks landing on them will elicit an immediate response from the squid. And if said asscheeks touch the filaments, responds the squid it does. Specifically, it exhibits a surprising burst of speed (considering it just drifts around all day and it is effectively the consistency of Jell-O), pulled entirely by its fins to perform an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle, whipping around in a loose loop and catching its own filament. Millions of dogs around the world enviously sigh in unison.

After this, the squid pulls off its prey from the filament using its arms, which generate a solid slime-like material. The collected chunks of edible whatnot are rolled into a ball of slime, and horfed down by the squid at once. You probably cannot tell but there’s a Michelin star underneath its mantle. “Slimeball à la Vampire Squid” is one gourmet-ass dish.

Molto bene!

Of course, all this fine dining makes the vampire squid itself tasty as all hell. You are what you eat, afterall. But in the deep sea, you do NOT want to be tasty, because everyone is hungry on top of being the most light-deficient gourmet motherfuckers on the planet. So naturally, our subject needs some sort of way to evade the raving food critics hunting him in the deep. And he has this way in the form of a very unlikely tool: bioluminescence.

“But Admin”, I hear you say, “didn’t you just get done telling us last week that glowing in the deep sea will attract everything around you?” That I did, young padawan, and it still stands. However, just like last week’s subject, the vampire squid uses its built-in glowsticks with a very express purpose and doesn’t just flash into the sunset willy-nilly. The glowy parts of this beast have very well-defined places and usages, exquisitely located and timed, just like a laugh track in a sitcom. Underneath its dark-red skin the vampire squid carries clusters of glowing photophores mainly on the tip of its arms as well as in two fake eye-spots on the top of its mantle, ready to flare up in a blue burst of light on demand. The fake eyes even come with their own built-in eyelids, opening and closing as Dracula Jr. sees fit.

Imagine you’re a predator and you see this glowing collection of random bullshit. Now figure out where to bite. Good fucking luck.

These lights are used with great care and consideration in order to troll the fuck out of anybody who is foolish enough to make an attempt on the vampire squid’s life. Upon attack, the squid whips its arms around with the lights on full luminosity, creating a confusing dance of light spots in the otherwise total darkness and messing up the predator’s perception. The false eyes only make things worse, finally creating the illusion that the vampire squid possesses unlimited godlike control over space and time, which may damn well be true.

Question: What way is this vampire squid going? Hint: It’s not facing toward you.

The appearance of the squid as a godlike psychic is surprisingly in line with the whole vampire angle, since Dracula has reknownedly had the ability to charm and hypnotize people. The effect is further accentuated by the squid’s eyes, proportionally the largest of any animal ever discovered. With a diameter a whopping one sixth of the animal’s whole body, this thing's oculars are like if you were walking around with eyes the size of your head. Each.

And for added effect, they glow and change color depending on which angle you’re looking at them from.

DISCO CTHULHU

And finally, if a spooky vampire-looking-ass dark red glowing octopus-squid-thing with hypnotic powers isn’t Halloweeny enough for you, the vampire squid has a final trick up its sleeve that catapults it right into the realm of body horror. This is suspected to be a defensive tactic but who the fuck knows, really. Deep sea creatures are enigmatic as shit, and they guard their secrets jealously.

Alright, I’ll quit beating around the bush and say it outright. Basically the final defensive measure of the vampire squid is turning itself inside out.

Yep.

Of all the stupid shit that Mother Nature could have come up with, she went and decided “alright, it just up and turns itself inside the fuck out. What are you gonna do about it?”

This behavior is known to science as “pineappling” or even more Halloweeny-ly “pumpkin posture” (no, seriously) and it involves the squid taking the webbing between its arms and turning it upside to shield its head and body from harm. Now folded comfortably into a spiky little footbal, the vampire squid knows itself free from harm. The webbings are thin enough for it to see through, but also don’t let its lights to shine around, so doing this effectively means the vampire squid switches into stealth mode. Plus it looks stylishly similar to Dracula popping the collar on his cape.

The vampire squid is every Monster Mash horror cliché come to life and smushed into a vaguely cephalopod shaped package for best user experience. When the stars are right and Cthulhu and his Star-Spawn emerge from the sunken city of R’lyeh to bring the world to ruin once more, these guys will be the first living things they encounter. And then they’ll fuck off back to their stupid city, mumbling things like “what the hell man, that’s plagiarism” and “that’s way too extra, even for us”. The apocalypse is postponed once again, thanks to the vampire squid’s vailant efforts of looking weird as fuck.

Happy Halloween, everybody! I was a day late due to the length of this article, but I hope you don’t mind. Until next Tuesday’s article, have a wonderful time with the aftermath of the day of cheesy horror and confectioneries.

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Life

Tree of Life Web Project

Animal Diversity Web

Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)

Ellis, Richard. “Introducing Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the vampire squid from Hell”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. 

Seibel, Brad. “Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Deep-sea Vampire squid”. The Cephalopod Page. Dr. James B. Wood. Retrieved 3 July 2011. 

Hoving, H. J. T.; Robison, B. H. (2012). “Vampire squid: Detritivores in the oxygen minimum zone”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 

[brownstonearmy]

2021-07-18: Careful What You Wish For (Part 2)

Wednesday September 9 (morning)

Before the day begins in earnest, it's time for a brief montage of how what our heroes are up to before beginning the work day!

When Norm checked in with Silas after his literal graveyard shift, Norm was handed a letter that stated his order of antiques was now on its way. Norm didn't remember ordering any antiques, and upon closer inspection of the letter, notices a little-known thieve's cipher that reveals an ominous message: "I know it was you." Unfortunately the handwriting of the letter was inconclusive for analysis, and the letter's author could potentially be anyone.

Let's shift over to Lucky and Hilaria now! After the murderous events of the harvest festival, Hilaria is getting a little worried about Lucky's safety because of this whole demon-trying-to-destroy-the-world-with-a-douchebag-wizard questline. Things have been getting noticeably more deadly lately. However, according to Lucky's math, an approximately equal amount of good things and bad things happen so statistically speaking, Lucky will probably be fine. Lucky does make a promise to Hilaria that she won't do anything to get herself killed, and that eases Hilaria's mind.

In a converted barn on the west side of town, Spleenifer has been listening to the tone-deaf serenades of Trashpit as he hangs out underneath her window at night. He has recently discovered a stinky river that is running underground through the bank vault and was hoping Spleenifer might accompany him down the tunnel of love for a little canoodling. Spleenifer does not understand why Trashpit is wanting to have pasta so badly on a river outing.

Lastly, we get to Q, who is going as Dazzle today. Last night and this morning, a translucent faceless figure has been haunting the outside of Dazzle's hostel. When Dazzle attempts to communicate with the spectre, it just responds with fart noises. Dazzle responds by casting Tongues and is able to comprehend the spirits words.

This particular spirit is A. Brownstone, the individual responsible for building Brownstone's sewer system and making sure that Norozogaan was disposed of 400 years ago. In order to do that, though, A. Brownstone had to make a bargain with a devil. The terms of that deal meant that A. Brownstone's true name would be lost to history, no one would remember their face, and no one could truly converse with Brownstone's spirit on the Material Plane because their responses would just sound like fart noises. Until recently, A. Brownstone's spirit was forced to manifest as a toilet paper ghost, but now the spirit is able to assume a vaguely dwarven form.

Dazzle makes plans to speak with A. Brownstone's spirit in the future because who knows what sort of advice they might be able to give. Good thinking!

Once everyone gets to SHART HQ, Dave informs the party that the usual work orders are postponed for today because someone else needs the party's assistance. After Dave has a brief bout of casual racism directed at gnomish names, the party learns that Brother Clifton needs their help to track down Curtis Hanover, an important orphan who escaped after yesterday's hostage situation. Bob the Modron and that gnome who Dave can't remember (Side note: the gnome was Bostvick Humplebumple) will take on the work orders in the party's absence.

The party is dismissed and now faces a choice: look for Curtis, or try the lead on the gang warehouse looking for Dion. Consensus comes quickly, and the party sets off for the orphanage to get some more information about Curtis and where he might be heading.

A sweaty Brother Clifton returns from a horse-mounted patrol the same time the party members arrive at the orphanage. Brother Clifton struggles to dismount from Horf's saddle, but eventually his feet make it to the ground. This isn't going to be a standard missing persons case, Brother Clifton warns, because Curtis Hanover has a backup potion of Polymorph just in case his cover gets compromised.

Curtis might look like someone completely different by now, but Brother Clifton provides the party with a rough sketch of what Curtis looked like at the orphanage. That's enough for Lucky to formulate a plan, and casts Seeming to make the party (and Brother Clifton) look like Curtis.

Now that there are five Curtis Hanovers of varying height hanging out, the party spreads out over a two-block area while remaining roughly within line of sight of each other. All that's left to do in Lucky's plan is to get kidnapped, and Lucky lays claim to the nearest dark alley close to the orphanage and innocently plays jacks.

It takes a bit of time (four hours, to be precise), but eventually a pair of scary-looking grown ups approach Norm-Curtis. Norm recognizes these people from their attire as being affiliated with the Brownstone City Runners gang, and makes a quick survey of the scene to check for additional potential assailants. The only other suspicious person he sees is a tattooed woman leaning around a corner and discreetly watching him and the gang members.

Norm-Curtis attempts to lure the bad guys out toward the city's athletic field. It takes a ludicrous amount of luck for this to work (THANK YOU, LUCKY!), but Norm is able to wander in the direction of the athletic field and goad the gang members into a walking-speed foot chase.

Lucky-Curtis, with her eyes on Norm-Curtis, also ambles stealthily in the direction of the athletic fields. Dazzle-Curtis follows Lucky, and Spleenifer-Curtis brings up the caboose of this train of followers. Norm-Curtis is aware of everyone except dazzle following him.

Once Norm-Curtis reaches the athletic field, he plays with an oblong-shaped ball he found on the ground. A vendor is setting up a booth to get ready for the "Pecans In The Park Party" (Tourism Side Note: It's not as big as the Harvest Festival, but still worth checking out; it's nuts!) and demands that Norm pay a copper piece for the ball if he's going to play with it. Norm pays up, and is now the proud owner of a pecan-shaped ball the size and approximate shape of an American football.

The rest of the party hasn't made it all the way to the athletic field yet, but Dazzle notices the tattooed woman. She is maintaining her own stealth, but teleporting to a new location every few moments to keep tabs on her quarry. Dazzle has seen this woman before and recognizes her immediately.

It's Rooney, one of Brynnan's wizard companions from Wentenbocker! She puts hands together and there's a small flash of light from the ring she's wearing as she casts a spell.

Spleenifer-Curtis is the first to hear the results of the spell. It's a low whistle that is getting louder by the second, and it smells like a dairy farm. It's a tornado coming straight for her, and it's made of poop! A literal shitstorm, if you will. Each of the party members in the stealth train is able to narrowly avoid what we can politely call an "induction ceremony" for the whirlwind.

The tornado is barreling down on Norm-Curtis and the City Runners goons. Rooney makes herself known and yells "Get away from my brother, you creeps!" as the tornado slices between Norm-Curtis and the goons. Rooney keeps the tornado chasing the goons until they flee the scene.

By this point, everyone aboard the Curtis Hanover Sneaking Train makes it to the athletic field and Rooney emerges to ask which one of the four party members is her real brother. With four separate people come four separate answers:

Spleenifer-Curtis turns around, faces backwards and blows a raspberry.

Norm-Curtis says "Sorry, you got the wrong one."

Lucky-Curtis has the lengthiest response: "Two of us always lie and one of us always tells the truth.  I will give you one chance to rephrase your question to me."

And Dazzle-Curtis spouts off some harsh truths: "That orphanage shit SUCKED."

Rooney is aware that this is some kind of magical shenanigan afoot, but the responses are childish enough that she is convinced that this is really just some of Curtis's friends trying to help keep him safe. But Rooney still doesn't know which of these individuals is her real brother, so she asks again.

Lucky-Curtis points at Norm-Curtis, you know... like a liar. But this untruth is a stroke of genius, because Norm knows a bit more about the real person who turned into Curtis Hanover as a result of being on the city's crime beat.

The party already knows that Curtis Hanover is the polymorphed child of Hjalmar Magnusson, and that Hjalmar is likely the leader of the Brownville Devil Boys gang. But Norm knows that Curtis's real name is Alex Thistle Magnusson, and that Alex Thistle Magnusson is nonbinary. Norm also knows enough other random details to bluff his way through the security questions Rooney asked Norm in order to prove that he was actually Curtis Hanover.

Additionally, Norm-Curtis is approximately the same size and weight of a human child, so Rooney continues to believe that Norm-Curtis is indeed her sibling. This is enough confirmation for Rooney to begin spilling the details of her plan.

Hjalmar is mixed up with some bad people, and Rooney is going to stop those bad people from hurting their father with the help of a powerful ring a wizard friend gave her. She gives Norm-Curtis a list of addresses to stay away from, one of which is already crossed out. Norm realizes that this was the same address that was destroyed yesterday. If Rooney's plan stays on schedule, it'll probably take 5 or 6 days to complete and then they'll be safe and Alex won't have to live as Curtis anymore.

Norm-Curtis explains that he's staying with some friends to stay safe and avoid being alone. Rooney gives Norm-Curtis a pin to wear so she can keep tabs on him, before teleporting away to complete her master plan.

One Rooney is out of earshot, Norm suggests that the party scout around the area to see if the commotion would have attracted Curtis to see what was going on. Lucky slips on a patch of tornado poop, accidentally kicks a pecan ball that ricochets off the side of the vendor's booth and hits Lucky in the side of the face in just such a way that she sees a person matching Curtis Hanover's description fleeing on the far edge of the athletic field.

Lucky-Curtis teleports in front of the real Curtis, triggering a wild magic surge upon materializing at her destination. A large stag beetle appears on her shoulder (large for a stag beetle, I mean).

Real Curtis is terrified that there are several other people who look just like him, and tries to flee away from Lucky. Lucky tackles him to the ground, where he pleads for his life. Lucky drops her Seeming spell and tells Curtis that they were hired by Brother Clifton to keep him safe.

After a quick check-up at Mom's medical tent, Curtis has a clean bill of health and Lucky introduces Curtis to the party. Norm gives Curtis the pin from Rooney, and Lucky accompanies Curtis to the nearby fighters guild to meet the fighters. Hilaria's skill with a blade is particularly impressive, and Curtis is quite content with the care he is being afforded by the party.

But all adventures must come to an end, and with the party having completed their task of finding Curtis, the adventure concludes for the evening. Stay tuned next time for more!

[purplelizardman]

GM's Easy Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.) - World Creation Kit (make vivid worlds, quickly)

As a GM, one of the most fun and daunting tasks you can undertake is the creation of worlds.

New gods, myths, legends, artifacts, heroes, villains, history, kingdoms, cultures, religions… there’s infinite room for creativity and no shortage of fun to be had!

The problem is that there’s literally infinite room for creativity. 

Knowing where to start can be tough and when rushing in head-first it’s not uncommon to find that you’ve wrote yourself into a corner. When this happens it’s easy to lose enthusiasm for the world you’re creating.

It’s a problem I’ve encountered many times during my 7+ years of GMing. For each campaign I would create a new world and eventually I developed a set of methods that makes the world creation process fast and fun while producing vivid, consistent, and imaginative worlds.

It all begins with the first step:

Choose the Gameplay

Worlds in RPGs (both tabletop and otherwise) are not stand-alone constructs: they are meant to be played in.

The first step to creating a vivid and interesting world is to decide what type of game you want played in that world. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

What does the typical session look like?

Is it straight combat? Very little combat? A mix of puzzles, riddles, combat, and social encounters?

Are the players classical, good adventurers or are they mercenaries, space pirates, or planar pillagers, etc..?

Where do I see these encounters happening?

In dungeons? In cities? In spaceships? In temples built out of bones of decaying gods?

In locales that span a wide range of heavy metal album covers?

In all of the above?

How do I want to guide story progression?

Is the game entirely player driven or will NPCs and world events drive most of the plot?

Do the players exist within a command structure, fulfilling orders? If not, are they free agents on a mission, mercenaries for hire, or a rag-tag bunch of outcasts that gets into mischief?

Is the progression driven primarily by exploration, social encounters, or pre-determined events?

Choose Central Conflicts and Environments

Once you’ve answered the previous questions you should have an idea of how you see gameplay and plot unfolding in a typical session, in other words: the assumptions of your game. 

Now that you have a clearer idea of the assumptions you’re working with it’s time to build a world around them. 

Worlds are meant to be played in, so start with the environment: create a reason for the environment to be the way you envision. Give the players incentive to explore the environments that you’ve chosen.

This ties in closely with the central conflict or theme of your world: if it is a war time campaign, the environment should be blistered with the signs of battles, cities will be impoverished, nature will marred by weapons of war. If an eternal winter has spread across the continent, everything will be cold and harsh, but nature may yet struggle on.

If the primary method of story progression is exploration, define a few interesting locales with good backstories and a home base, for example:

The material plane has been shattered to thousands of pieces. The players begin on a shrinking shard of the plane (a single kingdom), drifting through a dark sea of stars, gradually breaking into smaller pieces. On their journey they will likely encounter the Volcanic Stronghold of the Fists of Hextor, the Sunken Kingdom of the Drowned God, The Impossible Tower of the Mad Mage, etc…

In 3 short sentences we have defined: a central conflict/theme (the material realm being shattered), provided the players motivation for exploring (their realm is literally falling to pieces), and formed an idea of 3 interesting places for the players to visit.

A second example:

The gods could never agree on how the world should be, so they made two worlds and separated them by a thin veil. Now the veil is weakening and new, bizarre cities, towns, and kingdoms are popping up everywhere along with dangerous monsters in unexpected places. If it’s not stopped the players will lose everything familiar to them and their entire world. The players will probably visit the Crag of the Crab King, the Industrious  Imperium of the Formic Hive, and the Brain Bakery run by Granny and Grandpa M’Flayer.

We’ve outlined a central conflict/theme (two worlds colliding), provided player motivation (anything they know and love could be destroyed or swapped with something at any moment), and 3 interesting places.

Entire articles can (and will be) written on how to flesh out interesting locales and encounters. Once you feel you have enough interesting locales and a strong enough central theme to create new environments throughout the campaign, it’s time for the next step.

Create NPCs and Flesh out the Backstory

The environment implies the backstory of your world as your descriptions of the environment reveal the world illuminated in the light of the central theme. Yet it is the NPCs who will ultimately become the face or even the very personification of your world, it’s backstory, and its central theme. 

When writing NPCs it is important to flesh out the backstory of your world. The central conflict of your world is going to have 3 main facets:

Cause – How did the conflict come to be? i.e. creation myths, political events, a wizard did it, etc…

Resolution – How is the conflict resolved (the ultimate goal)? Gather artifacts, dethrone a mad king, etc…

Factions – Who’s on what side of the conflict and why? Doomsday cultists, angry gods and their followers,  bellicose Kings, devious dragons, the merchant guild, a rogue sect of angels, etc…

Define the factions you’d like to see in the world and the cause for their conflicts, then create the NPCs that will be agents and eventually faces of the faction. 

Most important of all: make your NPCs interesting! Not every shopkeeper needs an important backstory or a quirk, but important NPCs do. Make the backstory related to the central conflict, but keep it personal so that your players will be motivated by it. 

Define a few NPCs for each faction that the players will interact with early on. At a minimum you should define a leader, a high-ranking officer, and one or two low ranking people.

You can get by with a short description of a name, personality/mannerism, and a sentence or two describing them and how they act.

For example:

Iara Tsun, the unusually tall dwarf who owes a life-debt to the King. She is never seen outside of her formal armor and never uses a word when a nod will suffice.

Zorc the Mad, a half-elf mage with a dragon facial tatoo, obsessed with the summoning of demons. He wears a cocky expression to match his attitude and truly believes that summoning a powerful demon may allow him to free his son’s soul from hell. 

Auren the Keeper of the Gate, an immortal former-human who is mostly made of glowing blue stone; his former knightly robes hang off him in tatters. He speaks in a loud booming voice that sounds like it comes from far away; he has guarded this portal for ages and will allow only the worthy to pass and receive the truth contained beyond.

Rog Horf the disgruntled half-orc cultist in charge of new recruits. He keeps his cultist robes pristine and is mindful of prejudice, choosing to annunciate each word carefully, but feels he is woefully underappreciated for his talent and intelligence.

The best part about using the short description method is that NPCs can be inserted into nearly any role we need on the fly: their role in the game is only set in stone once they make an appearance on the stage.

This saves prep time and makes the game flow smoother, giving you a pool of NPCs to work with for when your players do something unexpected.

After you’ve defined the key factions and some interesting NPCs, spend some time fleshing out the myths and lore: this will make your factions and NPCs more believable. 

CAUTION!!!

A lot of GMs fall into a trap at this point and end up developing extensive lore, legends, religion, etc. While this is fun, you should finish out the “party facing” aspects of your world first i.e. develop the starting local, it’s NPCs, factions, and environment. The PCs will definitely see this part of your world, but there’s a chance they will never delve deep enough into the lore to learn the deeper and more obscure parts of your world backstory.

Focus on the parts the players will see first then, if you have time, feel free to circle back around to lore and flesh it out even more.

Finishing Up

At this point, you’ve identified your assumptions about the game, you’ve defined a central conflict, a motivation for players, the environment with several interesting locales, NPCs, and the backstory of your world.

All that’s left is the quests, plot hooks, and encounters. 

By now these should flow very naturally, but if you’re having trouble just look back at your NPCs and factions and ask “How would they get the party to help them? What would they do that would harm/hinder the party?” For example:

Would Zorc the Mad use an alias to post a reward for the retrieval of a magical artifact from a dangerous dungeon?

Would Rog Horf send the PCs out on his personal errands where chance encounters will surely alter their fate?

Would Iara Tsun require the PCs to prove themselves against an encampment of orcs that suddenly appeared in the lower quarter of the city?

Start with at least 3 potential plot hooks and get a feel for which one you think will be most impactful to your group (which one they will like or at least remember best). 

At this point: you’re done!

You’ve made a consistent world built around a central conflict, interesting locales, memorable NPCs, and enough plot hooks to start the adventure. Add more interesting NPCs, locations, plothooks, and factions as needed.

    If you enjoyed this article you may also like Active Player Agency – A Crash Course or A GM’s Guide to Communication

GM’s Easy Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.) – World Creation Kit (make vivid worlds, quickly) was originally published on Friendly Neighborhood Lizard Man