The Lovely Dark

 i say cling to rocks and i mean hold my hand   Ole Lukoje Rode to War, by korintic   Being bound to someone is like the screaming wind calling out for you and you don't know where from; plummeting away from yourself forever into darkness; being alive and not being dead. It's maybe the only thing that's like being alive and not being dead, and it's still a little like being dead.    These rules also apply to friends who need to carry you a while. Even just from one day to the next.   Each bearer has three things they LOVE and three which they FEAR. For each Love you detour or stop for, mark one BOND at journey's end.  For each Fear you encounter, roll 1d6 under bond or else erase one bond. If bond would drop below nothing, then your bearer abandons you however they can. Your bearer's SPIRIT and HEART add up to bond: raise or lower them as needed. Compared to walking, being borne cuts journey time in half and lets you carry twice as much.  Your bea...

christmas leaves and codine falling through the cracks in my ribs Hide Me by Sasha Shaderski Swords are uncommon in the Lovely Dark. Firearms, less so. Most use colored glass bullets and piezoelectric liquid propellant capsules. They fire with a dreadful ZOK and leave a trail of glittery pink smoke. But there are others. They work like so: Guns have multiple weapon actions. To attack with a gun, choose one action. LOCK X means load your gun with X rounds, up to the maximum it allows. BURN X means that the weapon action requires and consumes X rounds. A single inventory slot can hold 100 rounds. Guns must select their targets within a limited RANGE. Guns require direct line of sight. They cannot target through smoke or darkness. If you are darting in and out of an opponent's range, ducking into smoke, and hiding behind bookcases, you are COVERED. If you're just standing there cackling, you're OPEN. Your gun has an X-in-6 chance to JAM when fired, where X is the number of ...

A Family of Evil Swords by muckngabe The Eight Remain are wicked spirits of devious inclination. They were a family of people once, but ghosts do not retain a human ipseity for very long. They collapse into other, stranger things. Sometimes a person is like a tool of murder, and a family is like an armory.  Each will serve you for a night and a day, in exchange for proper propitiation. You wield their manifest form as a weapon, in your off-hand. There are no penalties for fighting with two weapons this way. Once one of the Eight has left you, it is prohibitively rude to call on it again until you have called on another of its family first. You call on them at their secret place, in an empty house on a high hill in the dark dark wood. Fireflies dance by night. Leave their offering in a place special to them– in the hearth ash, down the well, in the back of the big dark closet (don't look). Turn around, close your eyes, hold your breath. Count to three. You're armed. Butcher-Bi...

Trolls (Part Two of Two) To roten erthe, ryght thus sayde I, "Thow art my fader of whom I cam," And unto wormes sekurly, "Thow art my moder, thy son I am; My sustren all ye bene, forwhy None other then ye, forsoth, I am." I shall call hem sustres, lo, forthy For I shall roote amonge ham. Of the lowest erthe God made Adam, Of whyche my kynde I had, as he. Now, Lorde, that art lykened to a lambe, So Parce michi, Domine! -Pety Job  The Butcher's Heresy If you know something about the art of the trolls, you know that it is strangely derivative. If there is a poet in your town, and the trolls know of her, they have their own, who shares her name (or the nearest equivalent: Leon to Lavi most famously) and keeps up avidly with her career, mirroring her poetry with subtle alternations in theme and language- eliminating references to the intangible, reinterpreting all her relationships into a desire for unification or predation or submission in suitable melange. This is ...

Pirate Radio (A Contact for Lighthouse) Lighthouse is something you can see out the window, if you're sitting on the Throne of Salt . They did something with card-based resolution, which I've always been very fond of, so I've done a little writing on something they're fond of. Radio Live Free A station you hear through the static. Nobody tunes into Radio Live Free by accident. Some loyal listener showed you how before they disappeared, or you got some strongly worded advice in a chain email from a friend you don't keep in touch with, or you read a weird creepypasta and decided to give it a try. There are all kinds of different rituals: sometimes you have to dance under power lines. Sometimes you have to fall asleep to the static under the open sky. Sometimes you just have to be in the right state of mind. If it works, it rarely works twice. You'll know if you do it right. The voice of Radio Live Free will crash through the static in all its joyous ...