The Lovely Dark

Poetic Truth, Material Reality A post all about magic! ^_^ What is it? How does it work? Well, let's look at some examples: Quentin Blake In Roald Dahl's Matilda , the protagonist is a brilliant child in an environment that doesn’t give her any way to express or develop her intellectual curiosity. She sneaks home books from the library and reads them in secret. She develops a special relationship with a kind schoolteacher, who teaches her things the curriculum won't permit.  But it's not enough. So all that leftover energy goes into trying to solve the little problems in her world, to push out against the walls. Her irrepressible intensity and unused energy manifest in the ability to move things with her mind.  There are rules to this power (She can lift small things but not large ones, fling them around but not make delicate motions. She refines and strengthens her skill with practice), but these rules reflect the emotional truth that the magic represents within...

Semiramis-Nebuchadnezzar-Shamsi, LLP A patron for Oblidsideryptch's lovely GLOG Warlock . from War of Omens Goal: The world is a delicate balance of contracts and obligations. Spirits, ghosts, demons, gods— all varying legal terms for creatures of the same substance, bound by intricate laws rebuilt and refined over epochs. You never know what family politics have been built around their ancestor’s chain of demonic pacts, or what water rights dispute might trespass on of a long-settled divine imminence tort. There is great profit to be made in keeping these threads held together, and plucking them to the advantage of paying customers. Equipment: Formal work attire, and an attaché case containing paper, pens, legal bona-fides, and a company letter-opener. Boon: You have a lawyer’s education. The firm has legal possession of your soul for the duration of your employment, and keeps it secured in their vault. You can file appropriate paperwork if you want to temp...

Destroying Angels The Underworld’s bureaucrat-assassins. Grandmother Possum takes especially promising paper-pushers and breathes a legacy into their eyes, which germinates in their orderly minds and blooms into a fruiting chaos through their mouths and ears and nostrils and empty eye sockets, encasing their whole head like a fungal rocket ship.  Then they hone themselves for 7 years, fighting the rattling cold in cages made of razors, wrestling jaguars made from dead pets to bone-deep blood-soaked exhaustion, until their minds break sharp and clear and perfect, and the legacy chokes on them, burning to a char-black bramble cage. They smell like sweat and charcoal. They sound like like a phone call from a submarine. They’re the ultimate enforcers of the Underworld’s order: To every life, a name. For each name, a life.  To every name, a soul.  For each soul, a name.  To every soul, a death. For each death, a soul.  ...

Twenty More Questions, Answered With Aplomb These are from Scrap Princess . I think they're more relevant. Der Totentaz Is there weaponized Squid?  Only in Nacre, where they're used as saboteurs. They're as smart as wolves and fired like missiles. Everybody hates Nacre, which is a beautiful opalescent city that hangs upside-down from the bottom of an enormous bubble-rafting snail. It is a single giant academy built around the obnoxiously overwrought moral philosophy of a committee of long-dead pedants, entirely dedicated to the Right and the True. They raid other, less ethical cities with their missile-squids and also with spears and such. Like I said. Can I start with one?  Sure. I really like the Adventure Points system, and I think a toned down version might be a good fit for the setting. I'll probably write up some tables of connections, investments, secrets, tools, and so on for players to draw from or get inspired by. How much are they?  Co...