Tuesday 13 November 2012

Not In Petty Gods

Back at the end of 2011 I sent a submission for James Maliszewski's 'Petty Gods'. I thought I was going to be int it, but now apparently am not. So here is the guy I made anyway.


I must be memory-obsessed

The God of Lost Chapters

Some books are so long, and so boring, that almost no-one finished them.

During the reading of a an important but very long and turgid book, the mind of the reader will abruptly enter an unaware fugue-state. It is at this moment that the god of lost chapters makes his appearance.

Say half-way through Das Kapital or the Bible, your head begins to nod, your eyes are open but in fact you are mildly unconscious. The God of Lost chapters will fill your mind with the memory of the chapter you should have read. After a few moments you wake up again. You never realise you passed out. You have the memory of reading the book and the book is in your hands so your must have read it. You continue.

But he never ever gets it exactly right.

This god is the reason people who spend their lives reading very long books always disagree about the exact meaning of what they have read. They remember reading different things. His powers are mild, almost non-existent, but he has probably started a few wars. And a few crusades.



Name: Moorealeth

Symbol: A broken circle

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: Human

Armor Class: Standard unarmoured

Hit Points (Hit Dice): Random, d20 HD, reroll every encounter, he forgets how divine he is.

Attacks: Probably just a normal guy with bare hands. But if he touches you, you don't know why you're there. Twice and you don't know who he is. Three times and you don't know who you are.

Damage: Low. 1D6?

Save: High. he is a godlet after all.

Morale: Fights and forgets why he's fighting. Runs away and forgets why he's running.

Hoard Class: Like treasure? Books. Expensive, valuable beautiful books of spells and strange knowledge. All slightly wrong. None of them work. You could probably prise the gems off the front or sell them for the dragonskin bindings. If you try to sell them to anyone who knows what they are  doing they are going read them, wait a while, read them again, and get very pissed off.

XP: 1500? But if anyone doesn't remember why they were fighting at the end then they don't get any.

If a PC ever tries to hit Moorealeth and misses, they forget why they were trying to hit him in the first place. Another member of the party within earshot must spend one round explaining to them why they are fighting and what is going on. If everyone forgets and there is no-one to remind them then the encounter is over. Moorealth also forgets.

Moorealeth looks like a distracted bearded man wearing tattered grey robes. He knows everything but can never relate it correctly. He is unaware of this. He is eager to help anyone who passes by. His assistance is always slightly wrong. if you ask him where the Goblin City is he will give your the wrong place, or the wrong spelling. Or tell you it is a city of Gnolls, or say that the name 'Goblin City' is based on a misspelling of an ancient tribal term and actually it's a mountain, or an oasis. Or he will get it exactly right but transpose the co-ordinates so you end up on the wrong side of the globe, exactly opposite the goblin city. Or he will send you to 'Roblin City'.

4 comments:

  1. Well that's ironic, isn't it?

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    1. I hadn't thought about it like that, but yes, it is.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Patrick, I've revived the project.

    http://gorgonmilk.blogspot.com/2013/03/let-gorgonmilk-do-layoutedit-for-petty.html

    If you're interested in including Moorealeth in Petty Gods, drop me a line:

    flowthrake AT gmail DOT com

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