my heart is clean as the cratered moon / and the sea of darkling mood

my heart is clean as the cratered moon / and the sea of darkling mood

You are a Sphinx. A knot of grotesque gentility with manicured claws and carrion breath. 

Sphinx, by cidaq

Your mother is the Mother of all Monsters, and when you were born she made your caul into a shroud to keep you in the dark. The places under the world are hers, starless and sacred, and if you keep your shroud over your eyes the night under the earth will follow you wherever you go. If you lose your shroud (and some night surely you will), the light of the moon will dazzle and devour you. But not tonight. Not yet.

Under your shroud, you have the head of a human and the body of a beast. Your hide is as tough as old leather, and your teeth and claws are sharp as daggers. You save like other monsters, or like other chthonic things, whichever is easiest. You cannot wear anything that was not made for you. But a tailor does present certain inconveniences- the sanctity of your shroud, the indignity of measurement.

Over your shroud, you are a person of a certain age. Whatever you wear will always seem appropriate, so long as it is rich and soft and personally-tailored. It is only eccentric, never ignorant- you simply do not permit changing fashions to disturb you. You walk veiled, or hide your face beneath the wide brim of a hat, or employ a parasol to keep your caul from the sun, or all these things and more. Your claws and teeth are still as daggers, and your hide still as leather.

The Dybbuk, by SceneSick

You follow these templates:

a) the house zeboim ~ Sometimes, when you dream, you visit a place of pale stone under moonlight, open to the wind and the sky. The sybarites wait politely, avidly. The drool that drips from under their masks stains their evening clothes. You always wake before the music begins. You can roll wisdom to unearth a useful secret from your dreams that relates to a place you're exploring or a person you're speaking with. If you fail, you can try again when you've had a night's sleep. You may learn one secret about each subject.

b) les apéritifs et les digestifs ~ With the support of someone powerful and influential (a god, a mayor, a celebrity) you can establish yourself as a guardian of some local, socially important threshold. Everyone knows this, in one way or another, and anyone who wishes to transgress this threshold must prove themself sufficiently cunning, or refined, or pitiless. You decide which, and how they are to be tested, and by what metric their performance is judged. You may be as gentle or as exacting as you desire, and perhaps for the right price you will indeed be gentle. 

You preside over these trials in dream. The jury wait politely, avidly. If you judge the dreamer insufficient, they fall in loving supplication on your teeth and claws, and you devour them. When you wake, the sybarites will devour what is left, and the dreamer will not see the sun again. If you judge them worthy, they are taken from the court to be fitted for a mask. They are free to act on their desire in the waking world, and your guardianship of that threshold is broken.

c) cannibal hymns ~ Your blood is rich as cream. It coils in your heart like a serpent. When you grow, it is in on yourself, and you grow knotted and marbled and strange. For each dreamer you digest, roll for one of the following:

1. You are feverish with their unfulfilled desire, and can focus on nothing else until you indulge it.
2. Their ambition beads your skin, gold and sweet as honey. Collect it, and you'll have a single dose of a secret and dangerous poison. For a night and a day, the victim's secret ambitions will rule their heart, and any offer that allows them to pursue those ambitions will be all but irresistible.
3. Their desire coils from your mouth like cigarette smoke. Capture it, and it can be inhaled to produce a deep and satisfying night's sleep, the kind that comes from a desire triumphantly fulfilled.
4. Their anticipation twists knots into your hair. Cut them free, and anyone who wears one of the knots under their clothes will be protected from harmful magic, once. Afterwards, the knot will burn to nothing.
5. You vomit up a dark and heavy stone. Anyone who sleeps with the stone under their pillow will wake from fitful sleep, a deep dread enthroned in their heart, having lost confidence in their plans, their politics, or their principles. The stone will be gone.
6. The image of their face is seared into your eyes like the shadow of the sun. Until sunset, you can focus on that image to make it seem that you look just like them.
7. Under your caul, your lips are glossy with your rose-attar drool. If you trust someone enough to permit them beneath your shroud for a kiss, they will carry your perfume with them for a night and a day, and you can always help them in social situations, even if you aren't really there.
8. You grow a new set of teeth, and the old ones crumble in your mouth like charcoal. If you gather up this dust, it can be blown in someone's face to make them forget where they are, and what they're doing.
9. Your fingernails are left brightly polished with swaths of sentiment and memory. You can paint with them in all the colors of the rainbow, but if anyone else comes in contact with the paint, it will dry and peel, and their sentiments will be catalyzed dangerously. For a night and a day, any significant emotion could spiral wildly out of control, eventually leading to physical fever and sickness.
10. You vomit up a thick chyme, and in it is a little scrap of silk or hank of hair. It fetters you to a family ghost or ragged old childhood imaginary friend that once attended your last meal. It is very distressed, but perhaps it could be useful to you. If not, you can swallow its fetter again and be rid of it.

You have advantage on saves against poison and curses, and on rolls to understand them.

d) carne vale ~ You are a monster in the oldest sense. An undeniable omen of a conclusion long forgone.

You can make a contested wisdom roll with a someone who has taken a stand against you. If they win the contest, they understand what you are. This information will do them no good. They must immediately check morale at a disadvantage. If you win the contest, the moon comes in the window, and dream washes the world away. They must submit to a trial, and prove themself sufficiently cunning, or refined, or pitiless. It does not matter what virtues they held to be important. If they wish to contend with you in your world, they must be one of these. You get to choose the method of trial, but the trial must be fair.

If they are found unworthy,  you eat them alive, and the sybarites eat them dead, and if you wish you can keep their face as a keepsake- while you wear it over your caul, no one will know the difference between the two of you. 

If they are found worthy, the sybarites will make their appetites deep and rich, and when they wake they will have a fork and knife of moon-touched silver. Now they have advantage on all rolls made against you, forever. 

You can't challenge someone this way more than once.