A Note on Gender
Whenever anyone in the Eclipsed Lands tries to disguise
themselves as the opposite gender and puts on all the clothes & adopts the
behaviours, that this disguise will be utterly impenetrable to anyone from
those lands.
BUT - it only works across one axis. That is, if a PC
dresses himself up as a washerwoman, and then commits crimes as that
Washerwoman, then escapes and while being hunted, dresses up as a different woman, then the hunters will
see straight through that disguise,
but not the fact that they are male.
"Ah ha, Widow Gargleblast, you thought to disguise
yourself!"
So effectively (so long as they have the clothes and
accoutrements) every PC gets a secondary opposite-gender identity, but that identity
stays stable.
Plus, depending on their gender, looks and CHA, most PC's
will become extremely attractive to specific groups in their new gender role.
Young women disguised as men become highly attractive to
other young women and former male enemies may now find them strangely
charismatic and charming to be around.
Good-looking young men in a female role become attractive
to young men and other attractive women become jealous of them, but oddly drawn
to them.
Older men in a female role will become attractive to
older men (to hillllaaarious effect) and will be regarded as trusted, but ugly,
friends to young women.
Older woman dressed as men will commonly be taken for
Priests and Scribes and be treated as trusted advisors
IT MUST BE LOVE
...........................
Blackbeard’s Prisoner
It’s the Max Von Sydow scene from Conan. A princess has
been abducted, or just eloped, with an Eldritch Knight from the Eclipsed
Kingdom. Her dad wants her back. A plate, or bucket or gems is on offer for
anyone who returns her safe and sound.
Complications;
She’s ensorcelled (or just raised) to hate a fear all
men, so to spend any time around her without her screaming continuously and
trying to climb the walls you are either going to need some female characters,
or, much better, dress up as her new ‘handmaids’ and get her out that way.
AND
She’s magically compelled to stay in the castle, or just
with her new husband, unless a highly-specific fairy-tale challenge is met.
It’s a time thing like “only when a shadow cast by the new moon lies upon the
castle gate”, or it’s an endless love thing “only when the ravens* leave the
ruined elvish tower” or it’s just a creepy possession thing “only if I forget
the colour of your hair will I ever let you go”, so the PC’s need to go off and
make sure that insane condition happens.
(*Ravens & Crows excluded from the oath of St Vish,
as previously mentioned
AND
He’s eventually going to kill her, probably due to some
other insane cyclic condition. Like, she has to clean the mud from his boots
each night but he has a rack of infinite boots and she has to guess which are
the ones he means. Or, she’s allowed to go into every room in the castle Except
One, but she sleepwalks and is entering a different room each night. Or he just
flies into a murderous rage whenever he has to turn left so she needs to
predict every thing he might want that would cause him to have to turn left to
get it and place it on his right.
So the PC’s need to run about fulfilling the fairy-tale
challenge, like getting the light of the new moon and casting a shadow with it
ahead of time, while also dressing up as handmaids and trying to keep this girl
alive in this insane situation until they can get her out. Then once they do
they have to get the fuck out of the Eclipsed Kingdom while this nutter gives
chase.
..................................
The Enraptured Prince
This time it’s a guy and instead of being charmed he’s possibly
just horny for some Eclipsed Girl. Maybe he was due to marry some local girl to
seal the treaty between two warring kingdoms and they need him back in a
certain number of days or the treaties borked and everyone has to kill each
other.
Maybe fell in love with a half-elf princess and her
Unseelie Mother has set him a certain-death problem to solve.
“Bring me the tears of a ghoul, freely given.”
“Her wedding ring must be the eye of a Basilisk.”
“She must be given away by a Slaad.”
“The slats of her wedding bed must be the staves of
magicians.”
His parents hire the PC’s to follow him around and make
sure he stays alive while also looking for a way to either break them up or
just get him married safely.
Obviously this good looking young bro isn’t going to want
any chicks following him around so all the female party members are going to
have to dress as lithe young men (If they aren’t already) and obviously the
Unseelie Mother isn’t going to want any dirty guys around her sweet daughter so
all the male members are going to have to cross-dress when dealing with her.
Obviously the Prince is going to have Strange Feelings
for his new ‘buddies’ and the Princess is going to fall for her new
‘handmaids’.
..................................
Steal Back the Queens Heart
The Queen or Kings Daughter (Prince if you're into it)
has had their heart stolen by an Eldritch Knight from the Eclipsed lands.
Now they are walking around with a visible hole in their
chest, unable to feel any emotion. The PC’s are asked to bring back the heart.
Depending on the kind of PC’s you have, this could be a
money thing or it could just be the heart of an innocent peasant girl.
The Broken Heart has been used as currency and bits of it
sent to every part of the Eclipsed Kingdom. Tracing it is one part of the
quest, to get each piece they must defeat, trick or serve whomever has it.
The quest is only finished if they return every piece.
But if they do; hooray! An innocent can feel again.
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The Half-Elf's Court
Two Half-Elf nobles are getting divorced.
Half the PC's are employed by one half of one half-elf
and the other half by one half of the other half elf. Meanwhile, the second
half of the first half-elf tries to bribe the second half of the PC's to betray
the first half of the second half-elf while the second half of the second
half-elf is still secretly in love with the first half of the first half elf
and tries to bribe the lawyers to sabotage the divorce without the first half
of the second half-elf noticing.
It's happening in religious court and the Judge is a
Bishop of Azathoth so the requirements for a divorce are strange and extreme.
For even more fun, one noble holds one part of a kingdom
and the other hold the other part. As they break up, different parts get traded
back and forth between the houses, so the pattern of the divorce case affects
the shape of conflicts, troop movements and social changes in the world the
PC’s are questing in.
For instance, they agree to split a town between them, so
a new border goes right down the middle, splitting families and guilds apart,
now they are technically in service to different lords all kinds of weird
conflicts and opportunities are breaking out.
DREAM-BASED BULLSHIT
…………………………………………..
Find the Sleeping Spies
An Emperor or nation-ruler is having trouble with Eclipse
Knights sneaking into his Empire and dicking his schemes around. They seem to
have a surprising level of knowledge about how the Empire works and what his
weaknesses are. They hire PC's to deal with the situation.
Turns out this guy put a shitload of his closest advisors
and opponents in dungeons for life and, while they sleep, they have worked
their way up the feudal hierarchy in the Eclipsed Lands the smartest one has
become a Grima Wormtongue figure for a Feudal lord, meaning they can direct his
knights to screw over the Empire their sleeping bodies are imprisoned in, to
the benefit of both them and their new lord.
..................................
The King of the Prisoners Dreams
A high-status prisoner living in a kind of 'mafia don'
situation in their prison, calls for the PC's. They don't want to be broken out
of jail, maybe for dynastic reasons, maybe because they are happy with their
books. Instead, every night they dream of their lives in the Eclipsed Lands.
There is something they don't like about that life and they want to hire the
PC's to go to the Eclipsed Lands and change something about the socio-political
situation there so they can have more pleasant dreams. Maybe try to exchange
their current king (in their dreams) for a better one.
(Maybe they don't want to leave as they were blinded due
to a dynastic thing and they can see in their dreams so that life is more real
to them now.)
...................................
A Bounty of the Mad
A bunch of high-status mad people have escaped from an
asylum en-masse and gone off to the Eclipsed Lands, their wealthy families have
placed rewards for their safe returns.
If PC's track them down several have become knights and
may even lead their own small kingdom. Plus, the situation in the Eclipsed
Kingdom is such that the mad often make a lot more sense than the sane, and are
sacred to Azathoth to boot, so the PC’s may find themselves battling a kingdom
of the crazed to return one of them to the desert of sanity.
................................
NOT SURE ABOUT THIS ONE
Dream-Inception Prison Break
The Silent Knights have taken a very powerful high-status
prisoner or a very important treasure into the Eclipsed Lands. Someone wants to
pay the PC's to get them back.
The Prisoner is being held inside a jail shaped from
either multiple levels of other peoples dreams or with different elements made
from a crosshatching of peoples dreams.
So the conical tower guarded by fearsome black and yellow
armoured knights with poisoned blades might be the dream of a Beekeeper
somewhere.
The Endless Stairs of Oroborous that lead down from the
tower and its guard of flying snakes might be the dream of a retired
theologian. Maybe the stairs and snakes are his theological problem
The Black Dragon of Carcasses might be the dream of a
frightened child of abusive parents somewhere.
So you can D&D it and try to penetrate the thing and
solve it in-world in the Eclipsed Lands. But each element as it is embodied in
the Eclipsed lands carries clues as to who the dreamer is, and of you go back
and forth across the boundaries of the Eclipsed lands, find the dreamers and
either solve their problem or understand its nature, they can give you the clue
to removing or resolving each threat of the dungeon so you can get the treasure
(or free the prisoner).
And the Silent Knights might want to stop you doing that
but, of course, they don’t want to endanger the dreamers as that would damage
their protection for the treasure, and they don’t want the dreamers state of
mind changed too much for the same reason, (plus they might be vulnerable
outside the Eclipsed Lands, maybe having to go in disguise) so they will have
to be reasonably subtle in their attempts to stop you.
Beekeeper tells you that burning a specific herb will
cause the bees to fear you - this works on the Black and Yellow knights.
Helping the Theologian resolve their philosophical
problem makes the snakes friendly to you, or transforms them into something
else, or teaches you something that makes them afraid.
Helping the kid makes the dragon friendly to you.
CREEPY AZATHOTH RELIGIOUS STUFF
……………………………………………………………………………
No-One Expects the PC Inquisition!
That’s the Player Character Inquisition, not whatever
culture war joke I can’t be bothered even completing in this sentence.
The Church of Azathoth has been creeping its belief
system into neighbouring kingdoms. PC's are hired/probably something more
ceremonial than just being hired, as 'Grand Inquisitors' to find the peasants
who are worshipping Azathoth and restore the True Faith (whatever that is).
Either by getting them to Apostasise or by whatever
methods necessary.
Basically you are now the bad guys in Martin Scorsese’s
'Silence'.
This one is going to go dark and get disturbingly violent
and horrible pretty quickly.
………………………
We’re Really Serious About This Inquisition Thing
Either PC’s are simply hired by an Inquisitor of the
Black Church (if they are dark enough) or if they get caught dicking around in
the Eclipsed Kingdom, Nyralthotep (through the Black Pope) geas’s them into
helping the Inquisition to work off their debt to society.
Congratulations, you guys are now in your own game of
Dark Heresy except you have to bring back the heads of some Baku or get shrunk
down to mini-size to find the Sycamore Dryads hiding in the fruit garden of the
Head Inquisitor.
...............................
Dark Quest
A bunch of hardcore dangerous knights from the Eclipsed
Lands are roving around the outside world grabbing people as sacrifices,
killing people and taking treasures (that should really belong to the PC's).
They are doing this to complete a very specific time-sensitive ritual in the
Eclipsed Lands. PC's go after them to save the day
Turns out that they are extremely honourable, decent
knights who are only doing this ritual to hold off the anger/notice of
Azathoth/keep Azathoth asleep and that completing it will save thousands of
lives and avoid disaster that would produce chaos, sending armies roving out
into the surrounding lands en-masse.
They are good people doing a terrible thing for the right
reasons. Will you try to stop them and if you do, are you capable of doing so?
.............................
Saints of Azathoth
PC's emerge from their current bullshit to find a
Cardinal of the Black Church of Azathoth waiting for them. Extra points if the
PC's are at a low point, either imprisoned or close to death and this
guy/delegation saves or frees them.
The Cardinal anoints one or several PC's as 'Saints of
Azathoth', whether they want it or not, saying that the Son of God has
whispered to the Black Pope that this is their fate.
This completely screws the PC's in any reasonable polity
as who the fuck wants the 'Saints of Azathoth' roaming around or coming to
dinner? PC's become pariah's and get paladins & clerics after them.
To stop being 'Saints of Azathoth' they have to find the
Black Pope and ask her to please ask Nyralthotep to ask Azathoth to remove this
honour from them. There will be specific shit they have to perform to get this
done.
Extra points if, by doing what the Black Pope says the
PC's end up fulfilling their Dark Destiny anyway in classic Twilight Zone
style.
FEUDAL PEOPLE PROBLEMS
"Who Might
Rid Me Of This Troublesome Knight (if
I were asking, which I am not)?"
An Eclipsed lord is being threatened by an Red Knight out
in the forests around his realm. This Knight is immune to any harm if it comes
due to an order or request of any king or queen. Even if such an order is given
secretly, in code or via sign, and no matter how many stages of authority stand
between the command and the harm done.
Nevertheless, the King, or his Vizier, or his Wizard, is just going to leave this gold right here OK?
Or come up with some other cunning oblique scheme which will inevitably lead to
the PC's fighting and killing the Knight without
any order to that effect being given.
.......................................
Chibi Grendel
Fey lord has a terrifying monster on in the wilderness on
the edge of his kingdom. All his knights afraid to go near it and run from its
cry. Breaks into villages and churches terrorising people. Gets PC's to swear
to defeat, in a specific way i.e. "bring me its head on a plate" it
for major reward.
PC's go and find the monster, it's a naked six year old
human child living alone in the woods. There is nothing special or magical
about it. Nevertheless, all Fey are terrified of it.
.......................................
The Barons Peryton
The Baron loves nothing more than flying about on his
giant Peryton, but it's hungry and weak. He needs hearts to feed it.
So go and get some fresh hearts. Human, not elven,
half-elven or the pale hearts of dream-people, the full, real deal.
It's an open-offer rats-in-the-basement fetch quest.
……………………………………
Kill this Peasant!
The Baron is pissed off with one particular dream-person
peasant and is getting tired of torturing them to death every day.
Dream people are hard to kill in the Eclipsed Lands as
usually, they just wake up wherever they are at the moment of maximum terror,
then come back the next time they fall asleep.
So, to get rid of them for good, the King wants the PC’s
to go into the outer lands and either free that particular person from prison so they never turn up again. Or just
kill them, eithers good.
Except this person is being held in whatever deep &
terrible dungeon the DM has available.
…………………………………
Straight-Up Dream Lives
The PC’s are captured by a major enemy and kept in a
genuinely-unbreakable dungeon from which they cannot escape.
BUT, they now have new lives as dream-person peasants in
the Eclipsed Lands. Can they fight their way out of peasantry and impress the
King/The Church/The Queen of Air and Darkness/anyone enough to get a strike
team of Unseelie Chivalry sent out to free their mortal bodies from prison?
Is there a chance that this wonderful setting will get published? Or failing that a pdf compilation?
ReplyDeleteThe aim is to publish it eventually yes.
DeleteWhat inspired you to use a quote from the ten foot pole in your banner? It is from his review of "The Brigade" right?
ReplyDeleteI occasionally find Brice hilarious when he breaks into astounded Bryceisms. I put it up there on a whim.
Delete