Spes Magna Games

I’m trying to get more serious about my writing, which includes posts here, game material to sell or give away, my school blog, and some fiction. To help, I found the nearby illustration by Ivan Bilibin, an early 20th-century Russian artist who died during the Siege of Leningrad in 1941.

The adjacent picture shows Buyan Island as imagined by Bilibin. Contemporary Russian author Alexey Trekhlebov writes that Buyan sits near the Baltic Sea’s southern shore. Island denizens call two towns, Retra and Arkona, home. Retra houses the temple of Radgostu, the god of war and hospitality, while Sventovit, the god of war and fertility, presides as chief deity in Arkona.

Storytellers set many myths in Buyan. Some of the myths claim that all the weather in the world originates from Buyan, created there by Perun, god of thunder and lightning, and then sent out to the rest of the world. Owing to its magical properties, this amazing island disappears and reappears, perhaps at random, perhaps in accordance with Perun’s will, perhaps both.

Fabulous tales of Buyan’s wonders and wealth attract adventurers from all over the world. They brave hardship and danger, crossing monster-filled wilderness and hostile barbarian lands. Those that survive reach the sea’s shore maybe at the right time to see Buyan in the distance.

In the next several posts, I want to further explore Buyan, writing posts about some of its more exceptional people, places, and things. At least to a small degree, I’ll try to base my posts on both Bilibin’s art, much of which is in the public domain and available on the Internet, and on Russian and Slavic folklore and myth. To whet your appetite, my next post will feature Koschei the Deathless, who hides his soul on Buyan.

Tags: Buyan, place of power

Are you familiar with the art of Domenico Neziti? If your answer is “No”, you owe it to yourself to check out his on-line portfolio. If Spes Magna Games had an art budget, I’d love to commission Domenico to do a cover and some interior art.

Domenico’s art has a definite voice that sets it apart. His character studies are evocative and stylized in a way that reminds me of Tony DiTerlizzi‘s Planescape work. Domenico’s monsters are usually scary, but some are adorable. His action pieces are dynamic and vivid.

Domenico has graciously permitted me to feature two of his pieces on site for this post. If you click on either piece, it will embiggen for greater clarity.

And now, some game content for Fate Accelerated Edition.

Sitting adjacent to a narrow, shallow canal that angles its way between barley fields, Kaosunoie appears as little more than a smallish, sturdy stone building. Its single entrance is blocked by nothing more than a silk curtain. Its small round windows hold nothing within their panes, presenting no real obstacle to sun, wind, or rain. The nearby well offers fresh, crisp water, and the dai-dōrō next to the winding path leading up to Kaosunoie hints that the structure is some sort of shrine.

Only the most aged locals remember a time when Kaosunoie was not there, and in the decades following the buildings mysterious appearance after a thickly fogged, windless night, everyone in the nearby farming village has made their peace with the strange structure. At the appointed times, they offer sacrifices of barley, rice, and braided hair, leaving these offerings around the dai-dōrō. In return, the bakemono that live within Kaosunoie avoid destructive mischief and even defend the village against threats.

Kaosunoie’s interior exists within two overlapping realities. In the mundane reality that the village also occupies, the building houses a single room with a dirt floor and unadorned walls. For those who, like the bakemono, can cross over into the spirit realm, Kaosunoie’s interior is a bewildering maze of corridors, ladders, chambers, and courtyards open to a starless, cloudless sky locked in eternal twilight. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of bakemono live in Kaosunoie, and the spaces harder to reach are home to more dangerous creatures, including at least one oni.

Stats for gangs of bakemono:

Bakemono Gang
Shapeshifter
Skilled (+2) at: Ganging up, pranks
Bad (-2) at: Staying focused, maintaining current form
Stress: [] [] [] (6 bakemono)

Stats for a bakemono character:

O-Tomiki
High Concept: Bakemono Shaman of the Void
Trouble: No Such Thing As Too Much Sake
Other Aspects: My Shapeshifting Powers Are Strong, Look! Over There!, I Can Smell Your Weakness

Approaches: Careful Mediocre (+0), Clever Average (+1), Flashy Fair (+2), Forceful Average (+1), Quick Good (+3), Sneaky Fair (+2)

Stunts
Like the Wind: Because my form is fluid, I gain a +2 to Quickly create an advantage or overcome an obstacle by changing my shape.

Refresh: 3

Tags: Domenico Neziti, Fate Accelerated Edition, monsters, place of power

The island of Yondral with its collection of some half dozen buildings floats on invisible, eldritch currents, perpetually surrounded in mist. Once upon a time, an order of mystics called Yondral home. Peaceful, contemplative, and erudite, these mystics practiced arcane meditative arts, seeking to divine the mysteries of reality for no other purpose than the pure joy of learning. Life on Yondral was peaceful, even idyllic.

That is until one of the mystics named Blaise turned his mind toward darkness. A malignant force wormed its way into Blaise’s psyche, and slowly the mystic became more wicked while the force became stronger. Before the other mystics could figure out what was wrong with Blaise and take steps to heal him, the force lashed out. Yondral was sundered, but not into pieces. Instead, beneath the floating island, there appeared a demon-haunted mirror image of Yondral.

Today, Yondral and its twisted opposite drift about, abandoned but not abandoned, perhaps still home to ancient wisdom but certainly home to ineffable evil.

Tags: A to Z 2015, place of power

Heavy loads stone slung over shoulders, workers climb up the logs leading to the low-ceilinged cave leading to Kisima’s tomb. It’s not an easy climb, but the only other point of ingress, a stone shaft rising more than 70 feet to the surface, doesn’t leave a better option.

At the shaft’s bottom, supervisors from the Imperial Cartographical Society loiter around the shallow pond at the bottom of the stone shaft. Other workers carry jugs of water from the lower caves, emptying the containers into the pond, which drains away in trickles and traces some distance away from the wooden ladder.

In the lower caves, workers labor with picks, shovels, and ropes to break up and haul away stones. Much of the work has already been done, and the ornate carvings stand out boldly in the flickering torchlight. Serpents intertwine intricately. High up on the wall, a lizardman king stares down, his stance imperious. He holds a human skull in his left hand and a spear in his right. The stones that remain block a descending flight of stairs.

The Imperial Cartographical Society believes those stairs lead to the tomb of Kisima, the last of the kings who ruled in Salmagunderland before lizardman civilization fell into its current state of barbarity. It’s only a matter of time before a sufficient quantity of stone is shifted out of the way and the stairs stand unblocked.

At least that’s what the foremen hope. The workers murmur about curses, and yesterday’s accident, several large rocks that fell, crushing three men, hasn’t helped the mood. The tension and fear are palpable, made worse by the drums echoing through the jungle each night.

Dangers

The Imperial Cartographical Society (Cabal)
Impulse: To expand frontiers

Grim Portents
* The ICS oversees the excavation of the tomb.
* The stairs are cleared and the lower chambers revealed.
* The lower chambers are explored and the sealed door found.
* The seal is broken.
Impending Doom: Pestilence

Lizardman Tribe (Horde)
Impulse: To drive out intruders

Grim Portents
* The drums’ noise draws nearer.
* Venomous serpents become more common.
* Lizardmen skirmishers attack the camp.
Impending Doom: Destruction

Description & Cast
Kisima’s tomb rests undisturbed, sealed centuries ago. Kisima died of a terrible plague that has not died off since the lizardman king’s corpse was interred. Rather, the pestilence has grown, becoming a virulent biomass. The local lizardman tribe learned that intruders were violating taboo territory, and they are gearing up to massacre the foreign trespassers if they do not take heed of the warning drums.
* Renata Cottee, Ranking ICS Official
* Sessih Besmil, Lizardman Scale-Talker
* Dridsa, Influential Laborer

Custom Move
When exposed the wasting pestilence in Kisima’s tomb, roll+CON. *On a 10+, choose 3. *On a 7-9, choose 1.

* You do not suffer the weak debility.
* You do not suffer the sick debility.
* You do not suffer the shaky debility.
* You do not become highly contagious.

Stakes
Can the pestilence be cured? If so, how?

Tags: Dungeon World, place of power

The windswept, arid heights of Mlima-Wa-Moto support little life. The plants that grow there are small and tough. An aggressive, burrowing species of large wingless wasp crawls around, its mottled hair-like covering allowing it blend in with the terrain, providing camoflauge against the shaggy-furred rock badgers that feed almost exclusively on the insects. As for the wasps themselves, they survive on sticky umande, the jabalitika’s dewy excretion.

The jabalitika grows lichen-like on rocks. This strange plant has a rapid growth cycle. Spores take root in a rock’s tiny fissures and quickly mature, spreading over several square feet in just a few days. A mature jabalitika has a thickness of about one-quarter inch (or 0.635 centimeters). Via enzymes, the jabalitika converts minute quanities of the rock’s surface into a micro-stew of minerals and water that the plant uses to survive. Of course, being a plant, the jabalitika also engages in photosynthesis. The aforementioned dew-like excretion, or umande, is a waste product of the jabalitika.

Umande is highly nutritious but slightly punguent. A half-pint (about a quarter of a liter) provides sufficient nutrition for an adult human for a full day. Umande also increases the efficiency of respiratory systems in animals, making it easier to breathe Mlima-Wa-Moto’s thin, high-altitude air. A square foot (a bit more than 900 square centimeters) of jabalitika produces about a half-pint of umande under optimal conditions.

The rugged mountain people of Mlima-Wa-Moto cultivate jabalitika to harvest umande. They domestic rock badgers to help keep their jabalitika fields as free of wingless wasps as possible. While those insects are not especially dangerous, their stings are extremely painful, capable of incapacitating a grown man for several minutes.

Tags: place of power