Food in the Veins

Three sources of food exist, above, below and within.

Nutrients can come from the sunlit lands above, washed down in rivers, lost, searching or stolen from the surface. (This includes the party. If they die, they will almost inevitably

be eaten by something eventually. Nothing is lost.)

In the lightless seas, vents gasp out heat and strange chemistry to feed the ecology of those abyssal deeps. From strange planes or portals, sometimes edible things come through.

In between, strange fungi and odd organisms slowly transmute stone, water, heat and air to eatable food.

It is never enough. Everything is hungry, all the time. In the cities the poor are hungry and the rich, insanely wealthy as they are in gold, occultum and silk, are also hungry.

Cities in the veins are made possible by a few factors. The careful tending of every available resource. Relentless recycling, no waste is thrown away. The fact that they

occupy volumes, not flat two dimensional plains. Every area of the veins may be a 20th as productive as a surface desert, but the controlled volume extends 360 degrees around each

city, giving a vastly increased surface area of workable land. The use of generative magic is vital. As is cannibalism. The slave labour force of a city in the Veins can be directly

transformed into agricultural produce, either to feed the free population, or to trade. They can even transport themselves to the point of consumption or sale.

The low caste population can likewise be transformed into a food source for the upper caste and military in a state of emergency. They will not be informed of this ahead of time, or

at all.

Eating.

Rather than obsessively tracking food, adding another element of accountancy to the game, it is assumed that the party is constantly foraging and re-supplying. They are on the border of starvation at almost all times. The counter-

effects of starvation vs drive and determination are considered to even themselves out in most cases.

In the Hungry stage, bonuses are given for finding and eating food.

If the team fails to incur regular bonuses they enter the Starving stage.

In the stage, negative effects are incurred for not eating food when available.

if the team incurs too many negative effects they enter the third stage.

In the third stage, terminal starvation sets in and character performance decays.

An edible opponent is one whose biochemistry matches yours. So, Drow, Toraptoise or Dragon but not Cambriman, Silichominid or Archean.

The food creation abilities of a Cleric or Magic User, or careful explicit food-and-encumbrance keeping can keep a party out of Stage One if they wish it to, so long as a meaning ful amount of food is generated or carried each day.

(A real caver used about 6000 calories each day, though DM's may wish to be more forgiving.)

Stage One; Hungry

Bonuses for Eating

Eating the flesh of an edible opponent.

This gains you XP equal to the HP of the creature consumed.

Eating the flesh of a PC or henchman.

This gains you XP equal to the HP of the colleague consumed.

Stealing food.

The party can re-roll a failed caving or climbing test either once each or once collectively.

Paying for food.

Ten calories cost 1. You must buy at least 2500 calories, spending at least 250. Party gets XP equal to the cash spent, up to 1000.

Provoking a combat encounter simply to get food.

Party adds d4 to intimidation tests over the following 24 hours.

The party must do one of these every three days. If they do not, they move to the second stage.

The party can ignore the effects of a day if they spend the whole 24 hours resting, conserving energy and doing nothing.

So if they have spent 3 days exploring, and gained no bonuses, they can simply sit down to wait. If someone turns up, they can buy food, steal food or just kill and eat them to avoid moving to stage two.

Stage Two; Starving

Negative Effects for Not Eating.

Eating the flesh of an edible opponent.

Doing this puts you back in stage one. Failing to do this if it is possible reduces every roll by 1 for each failed opportunity.

Eating the flesh of a PC or henchman.

Doing this puts you back in Stage One.

Stealing food.

Doing this puts you back in Stage One. Failing to do this if it is possible reduces every roll by 1 for each failed opportunity.

Paying for food.

Ten calories cost 1. You must buy at least 5000 calories, spending at least 500. This puts you back in Stage One.

Provoking a combat encounter simply to get food.

Doing this puts you back in Stage One so long as you get the food.

The party must do one of these every three days. If they do not, they move to the second stage.

The party must act, if they spend the whole 24 hours resting, conserving energy and doing nothing they get another -1 to every roll.

If your starvation minus to rolls hits -5, you enter the third stage.

Stage Three; Dying

You Must Eat Or You Will Die.

The good news is that the madness of hunger now cancels out the -5 you had to your rolls. You are now too crazy with hunger to be slowed down

Every member of the party loses one level, as per the level drain spell, for every 24 hours they spend in this stage.

Consuming an edible opponent entirely.

Doing this puts you back in stage one.

Consuming a PC or henchman entirely.

Doing this puts you back in Stage One.

Stealing food.

Doing this puts you back in Stage Two.

Paying for food.

Ten calories cost 1. You must buy at least 10,000 calories, spending at least 1000. This puts you back in Stage One.

If a party members level hits Zero, They starve to death.

The Cathedral at Night

From ‘Cathedrals of France’ by Auguste Rodin, Chapter Ten

Distant gleams turn brown and blacken before certain columns. They clarify others obliquely, feebly yet regularly.

But the depth of the chancel and the whole left part of the nave are plunged into a thick gloom. The effect is horrible because of the indecision of things in the lighted distance. A whole square space is struck by stark illumination; lights flame between columns that take on colossal proportions. And I am made to doubt this epoch and this country by the interruptions, these conflicts of light and shadow, these four opaque columns before me and these six others lighted further off in the same oblique line, and then by the night in which I am bathed and which submerges everything. There is no softness. I have the impression of being in an immense cavern from which Apollo will arise.

For a very long while I cannot define the horrible vision. I no longer recognise my religion, my Cathedral. This is the horror of the ancient mysteries. At least so I should suppose if I no longer felt the architectural symmetry. The vaulted ceilings are barely perceptible, braced by shadows, the ribs of the arches.

I must escape the oppression of this effect of closing in. A guide takes me by the hand, and I move through darkness that soars as far as the vault.

From the light beyond them, these five columns have their oblique illumination. The ribs, the arched ceiling beams, the ogives resemble crossed flags like those at the Invalides.

I advance. It is an enchanted forest. The tops of the five columns are no longer visible. The pale lights that cross the balustrades horizontally create infernal roundelays.¹ Here one is in heaven by day and in hell by night. Like Dante we have descended into hell.

Violent contrasts are like those from torchlight. Ardent fire at the mouth of a tunnel spreads out in layers. Only the columns against this flaming background are indistinctly black. At moments a drapery appears with a red cross; the light seems to be extinguished, but no, it persists in a mortal immobility.

The chancel is laid bare to horror. But the horror controls itself, imposes order, and this order reassures us. And then, our memory of day, our connections with the day come at this moment to our rescue, giving us the necessary confidence.

There is a reflection on one ogive; the perspective is masked and the clarity, imperfectly developed on the edge, shows only the stationary construction in the dim gleam. But this gleam, although terrible, nevertheless reveals the masterpiece.

The Cathedral assumes an Assyrian character. Egypt is vanquished, for this Cathedral is more poignant than a Pyramid, father from us than the grottos where the great creation of rules appeared. The unknown is the mystery of this spectacle. One thinks of a forest, of a grotto, but this is nothing of that sort: this is something absolutely new, which it is impossible to define at once.

The frightful bulk of night, feebly pushed aside for a moment, as quickly, and with an irresistible violence, regains empire.

This is like Rembrandt, but as a spectre of taste and order. Rembrandt himself brings us not more than an echo of this prodigious world.

I am in terror and in rapture.

Dante, did you enter this circle of horror?

The chapels are transformed by the struggle between darkness and light.

This one is a sombre grotto where there seem to be only shells set out along the ribs of the arches. And yet, the terrible shadow allows itself to be seen, appreciated, and modelled.

Another chapel is divided in two by a cast shadow. One whole side is abolished. The columns seen from three-quarters, black and formidable, disturb the whole architectural arrangement. My dissipated mind apprehends only frightful things; it sees horrible supporting legs repeated in this forest that man has created for his God. Is this forest less beautiful than the real one?  Is it animated by fewer thoughts, less populated by atrocious larvi and by fewer spirits?

And you, gargoyles, did you not issue from the brain of sculptors who returned to the Cathedral after sunset to take counsel there from the night and to seek there the memory of some horrible dream?

I aspire to a new confirmation of the grandeurs of the Gothic soul.

One would have an impression of a Tower of Babel if, in this apparent confusion, all at once architectures did not surge out of the night, if the shadow itself were not organised. The moment is present without words and without voice.

Completely black columns are around the chancel; this is stone in prayer, a waterspout that rises to God.

Oh Night, you are greater here than anywhere else. It is because of the half illumination that terror comes over me. Incomplete illuminations cut the monument into trunks, and these gleams tell me the thrilling pride of the Titans who built this Cathedral. Did they pray? Or did they create?

Oh genius of man, I implore you, remain with us, god of all reflections!

We have seen what the human eye had not seen, what is perhaps forbidden it to see. Orpheus and Eurydice feared being unable to escape, since the boatmen did not come to fetch them in the terrible gloom. We walked alone amid the Night. We were in the straits of Tarn. We went alone into a great forest. A whole world was in this Night that the Titans had prepared for us.

A candle buns: a tiny point of light. To reach it I must stride over heavy masses of shadow where I rub against dead gleams, unicorns, monsters, visions.

The Thinker² would have been well adapted to this crypt; this immense shadow would have fortified that work.

By lighting a candle, the sacristan has displaced the shadows. There is a treasure here, the treasure of shadow accumulated by the night. It hides the treasure of the Cathedral.³

As we reached the door, this gigantic scene advanced toward us: the immense room seemed prepared for a banquet to the infernal gods.

Then the small door of the Cathedral was closed. The vision disappeared. All is entrusted now to our memory

1. Translators note: dances in the round. See Albert E. Elsen, Rodin, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1963, pp 155-156.

2. Translator’s note: This refers to Rodin’s enlarged figure of the Thinker.

3. Translator’s note: The French word here is église (Church), but obviously it refers to the Cathedral of Reims.

Silly Fashion Post

40k has, or had, an interesting save system, depending on the power of the weapon shooting at you, you either do, or do not roll a save for your armour.

So heavy guns just shoot right through poor armour.

So if a normal dude wearing a flack jacket gets shot by another normal dude with his normal gun, he gets a 5+ save.

If a normal dude gets shot by a Space Marine with a bolter, he gets fuck all.

If a Space Marine is shot at by a normal dude, or another Space Marine, he gets his excellent 3+ save.

If a Space Marine is shot at by a Las cannon, behold, he recieveth not one fuck.

 

In the same way, when the strength of the weapon pointed at you is double your toughness or more, you don’t lose wounds, you just die. I’m pretty sure a few races have mega-weapons that don’t even roll to wound. The last time I looked, template weapons don’t roll to hit.

The problem with clothing systems so far is that they are too mild and they almost make sense*. Instead, they should be really intense and barely make sense.

Fashion in D&D should be like shooting in 40k, it should just blast right through poor defences. Like a crazy plasma weapon that might blow up at any time. It should encourage people to spend loot on ridiculous clothes instead of sensible things, and to obsess over how they look, just like real people.

What did you spend?	CHA bonus	With
1000	+1	Peasants
10,000	+2	and middle class
100,000	+3	and Nobility
1000,000	+4	and Kings

Plus; you get to use your insanely valuable and beautiful clothes to cause an effect that is the equivalent of a temporary Charm spell on one of the groups you can effect.

Every time you use the Charm effect there is a 50% chance that thieves with levels equal to your entire party have taken note of your insane wealth. The DM rolls secretly.

The ‘logic’ is that if someone walks in so insanely blinged out that you just can’t believe it, then they must be someone important. I mean if someone can spend enough to build a castle on their clothes then they have to be worth taking notice of, right?

People of different classes are logarithmically more difficult to impress. It's 10 times harder to impress a burgher than a peasant and 10 times harder to impress an emperor than an aristocrat.

The CHA bonus doesn’t go up or down or get modified. You either wow the hell out of someone like a gunshot or you don't. If you don't it doesn’t hurt you, you are just thrown back on your own personality.

It works on humanoids and people part of a hierarchal culture, it might not work on others.

The level of detail you need to describe goes up with effect as well. At least as many adjectives as the bonus in effect. Preferably more. Try this for a set of requirements;

+1	+2	+3	+4
Named merchant	Named Tailor	Named designer	Personal designer
Named cloth type	Fit described	Named style	Style named after you
Knows the rules of style.	Bit of flair	Does things their own way	SHOCKS EVERYONE, YOU CAN’T DO THAT (or can you?)
Named colours & body type.	But you added something. What was it.	Describe how you put your own twist on it	Name all the rules you are breaking, and, for each one, how you are remaking it.
Visible gem	Weapons gilded at least	Jewels everywhere	No jewels as now too important for that, but one legendary named gem with its own story, and you wear it all the time.

*Arnolds was OK

Can you BECOME a random generator?

When I was being a big hippy playing story games whenever I needed to generate something and there was no point where dice needed to be rolled and no random table, this is what I would do;

I would look off into the middle distance. I would imagine everything about the game world that I could, try to hold as much of it in my mind at once. I would try to hold it uncategorised, the pieces would not be consciously arranged by type or ordered in hierarchies.

I would try to imagine the active elements, all the people and monsters, but also weather systems and plots and nations, in a state of half-completion.

That is, someone in the middle of getting off their horse, one leg slung over, weight shifted, already almost inevitably on their way down. Not frozen in the action in the same way as a photograph would freeze it, but held, not looping through the same thing but with time stilled.

It sounds complicated when you try to put it into words but when you run it through your mind you realise that you can imagine the essence of a movement without it being like a snapshot in your head, or like a repeating gif, you can just recall the nature of the movement itself.

Anyway, that immanence of something being about to happen but no absolute guarantee as to what is how I would try to imagine the active living things.

Sensual aesthetic things are important too. How would the ash-stained snow feel? What does it smell like, how to boots crunch walking through it.

So I would hold this all in my head as intensely as possible and, this is the important part, for as short a time as possible.

As much as I can, in as much depth as I can, absolutely without forcing it to any particular decision. Something will then rise to the surface. it must be two things, it must have the right fit, and it must be unexpected. It must genuinely surprise me. That shock is important.

It’s a kind of a paradoxical thing, the shock and the rightness. You must think 'of course that would happen' but you must also be surprised.

The whole thing shouldn't take more than 5-15 seconds, if it has gone on too long it has probably failed.

Now obviously, looked at rationally this is not a random generator of any kind. Everything there came from inside my head. There was no outside force.

But it _felt_ random. At the moment of creation it was unexpected.

You can't roll dice inside your head, but all dice really do it bounce about in gravity and air. You could argue that if you knew all the physical forces acting on the dice at the moment of the throw then you could calculate the exact result ever time. You could go further and say that if you knew all the circumstances in which the dice were thrown, with a god-like knowledge, then you could still predict the result.

Does a vast number of powerful idea's and potentials colliding in the human mind have more or less potential for a random result than a platonic sold falling through the air?

I would submit that if the dice can genuinely be random then the mind can, in some circumstances, be random as well.

Counter-arguments?

The mind takes in ordered information and all it does is create order. You cannot get randomness from mashing different kinds of order together.

(Maybe you can? The dice analogy again.)

Just because something feels like a surprise that doesn't mean it is one. There are lots of levels operating below your conscious mind and one of them will simply hand you the result it thinks you want.

(Maybe if there are lots of levels and inner factors in the mind, and I bring as many of them into play as possible as quickly as possible, then it gets more random, not less?

If one person works for you in an office and you keep asking them questions the answers will not be random but if a hundred people do and you force them all to leap into unexpected work that is unfamiliar to them without specifying an exact answer and then take the first good result, that must be more random at least.)

The mind creates patterns, it’s impossible for people to generate a bunch of random numbers without there being some pattern to them, that's how codes get broken. If you can't generate simple random numbers what makes you think you can generate more complex structured forms of information and have them be random?

(Numbers are alien to the mind. It is bad at numbers. It is good at complex 3d environments, complex social situations, interesting objects that can be grasped in the hands and highly distinctive living beings. This is the natural programming language of the mind. So using this language will allow you to manipulate and combine much more data than simply using numbers, human processing capacity improves the further from abstract data you get so even though you can’t create a string of purely random numbers your capacity to create a random event, with powerful and energising constraints, in conjunction with the processing capacity of other people who are also doing what their minds are naturally good at, might be much higher.)

I would argue that in the right conditions you can use your mind to generate something at least as random as the throw of a die.