96-100 FUCK YOU CIVILOPEDE, FUCK YOOOOOOUUUUUUU!

96# The Book of Insect Hours

Illustrated, bound in layered shells, smooth to the touch.

This book has daily prayers for household use on every page. Prayers to the Titan of Swarms for the gaze of his Faceted Eye. Images show a dweller of the deeps going about their daily tasks. Spearing blind fish above the black falls. Hanging red lamps to ward off Eigengrau in the dark. Unlocking the tongue of a mage-thrall. Pausing in randomised semi-cyclic silence to listen for a subterranean attack. Each task has its appointed time and a prayer for aid.

97# Scurrilous Lies

Sculpture in stained but unbaked clay.

This hand-made caricature has silly fine cheekbones, a delicate pursed mouth, half closed eyed and a dandyish bow. The artist made it for himself, of himself. The plump roughness of the clay contrasts amusingly with the delicacy and pretension of the figure. It whispers a single scurrilous lie whenever you lean in close.

98# Skeleton Cello

Not bone, but burnt and rotted wood. And not truly a cello

The remains of this angular instrument is haunted by the ghost of the woman who played it while it burnt. No-one knows her name or why she played. For the ghost to be released, all that must be done is for the rest of the cello to burn. The music she creates is so beautiful that even the brave have been unwilling to set her free. Only the cello’s part of the concerto can be clearly heard, other unknown instruments exist only on perceptions edge. Not just the music, but the scale and arrangement is alien and totally unknown. It may come from the fractured worlds, planets trapped inside a baffling knot of space and counter-turned time whose inhabitants, though human, perceive our reality as a maddening whirl and cannot even breath out air. If so, this is the only sign of those unearthly cultures that has ever been found

99# Bridge of Birds

Fine ceramic vase.

This vase is emblazoned with a beautiful flock of coloured birds of every kind forming a bridge across a sunset sky. Occasionally, a bird will hop out of the vase, stand on its lip, look around, then disappear back inside. When you look inside, the jar is full of birds, millions of them, calmly waiting.

Once, two lovers were separated by death. They begged death to let them meet again, but were unheard. The birds of the air were so sorry for the lovers that they offered to make themselves a bridge across the sky for the lovers to walk upon. Death saw this and grew angry. He could not harm the birds, as flying between heaven and earth, they were beyond his purview. So he took all the birds in the sky and forced them into his pot. The lovers fell. The August Personage in Jade, seeing this, commanded Death to open his jar, release the birds into the sky and allow the lovers to meet once more. But when Death looked for his jar, it was gone, disappeared into the earth. So the August Personage in Jade stripped death of his robes and commanded him to dwell in darkness and silence till the bride of birds was made once more. Death searches still.

100# Axel Whiteclay Mulqueen.

Naked human male in cage.

This man has pierced his flesh with gold and silver tines from ornamental forks and combs for noble hair. He has carefully tattooed his all his accessible skin with the story of his confinement. Mulqueen is a critic, a cannibal  and a criminal. (The last two are not always the same underground.) Mulqueen has really precise and insightful views on art.  He can value almost anything by looking at it (though he regards people who ask for values with distain.

He can spot provenance, deduce fakes and most importantly, has a firm grasp on aesthetic worth. (Mulqueen also spots the magical qualities of items, but only as it relates to their beauty or impression, not mechanical effects.) Mulqueen wants to escape, the Civilopede will not like this. He talks sometimes of ‘Blamphin’ and ‘Bon Clerk’, apparently tow frenemys, critics like him, their locations unknown.

88 - 95

88# Parent and Child.

Hand-sized sculpture in unknown grey stone.

This almost-formless shape is exactly what it needs to be and no more. The natural shape of the rock has been carefully smoothed and shaped so that it looks and feels unlike a piece of work, but more like something found. Two simple faces rise out of the stone like faces pressed against a sheet. The eyes, nose and mouth only have been scratched as single lines. And the hair of the child cradled in the parents arms.

89# War on Shaft Five

Bright synthetics on rough silk.

The paints, or acrylics, are amazingly bright. They glow under even the palest light. Overwhelming, almost bleeding over the edges of the image. It represents, in primitive style, a scene of war. A tribal people in (what we must assume are) astonishing war masks and head dresses is in conflict with a mechanical thing served by stunted warriors. The thing advances with raised metallic arms, the warriors respond with tubes that shoot abstracted fire. The sympathies of the image-maker seem clearly with the masked tribe.

90# Copy of a Museum Guide

Scorched book in Unknown Tongue.

The book is half-burnt. The language of this book has no relation to any living language, making it almost impossible for anyone but an expert to decipher. Magic may reveal its meaning in part, but not whole. The book is itself a copy of a copy of an older book, transcribed multiple times by writers with no knowledge of the tongue they wrote. It seems to be a guide to a lost collection of un-assignable things. Things which have no place or relation to either each other or the world. Some look like technology.

91# Image of the City of Death.

Silver-Nitrate image on paper.

Held under darkened glass, players (not PC’s) will recognise this as a primitive photograph. It is a street scene of a vaulted township carved from white stone in an art-deco style. Everything still in the image is picked out perfectly. Everything moving is blurred into a kind of river of shapes. The crowds in the street are a torrent of shadows, the water in the fountains is a wash of grey light. Yet, in the crowd, are still figures. It looks like someone has poised corpses there for a joke. The dead are dressed in robes of state and carry silver needles through their tongues and eyes. Yet some see, and one turns towards the makers point of view, its hand is blurred, as if it moves to raise.

92# Magma Chamber Dreaming.

Sand, held in relation by some unknown art. 3x4 metres.

This living mandala of crow-wing black sand never stops moving. Dominated by four strong lateral lines which shift around each other, sometimes waving, sometimes straight, the space between them broken into changing shapes that shift and rearrange like bacteria in a dish. A dreaming of the magmatic flows within an elemental chamber deep beneath the earth, the action of the image is linked to the eventual eruptions of  a specific mountain chain. The link proceeds both ways, the magma changes the mandala, the mandala changes the magma flow. One cannot change without the other. Anyone with the deep skills required, and the unknowable black sand, could try to control the eruption of the volcano’s that make up the range.

The consequences of feedback are unknown.

93# Monkey Egg

Stone egg, acid-etched calligraphy.

This two metre high stone egg is rumoured to be a twin to that which birthed the monkey king. It’s black surface is cold and the egg is either lifeless or asleep. Scholars propose either a miscarried twin, or some other form of divine life, taking its time, maybe destined for another age. An anti-monkey, or unmonkey. Maybe a snail. The egg has passed back and forth between the ownership of different cults multiple times. At some point is was acid-etched in a form of ‘mad grass’ calligraphy.

The ‘monkey prayer’ looping round the surface of the egg is also an image of Monkey himself. Stained in violent spectra, Monkey is a near-abstract half-blur of living power surging up out of primal darkness. Everything is dying yet he lives.

94# Primum Mobile

Carving on bone.

This carving seems to show a royal or wealthy family eating a formal meal. Around them a massacre is taking place. Uniformed soldiers are destroying a less well-equipped force. This seems to happen on another level of reality to the main image. Nothing in the massacre affects the eating family to the smallest degree. Murder and fighting flow around them as they look on indifferently. A man is drowned in the soup. Blood splatters the walls. Nothing touches them

95# Fat Lights, No Hunger.

Book of Poetry, handwritten.

This long form poem follows a deer through an Autumn forest at night. Every form of life the deer encounters receives its own stanza, from plants to animals. Remarks on the wind, the darkness and the stars make a kind of chorus. The unusual element is that all of this is seen from the perspective of a visitor from the Underdark. The sights and smells are alien and strange to the poet. Nevertheless they are given in a state of rapture. The language is Gnollish and the ink is blood.

The DOOM of the OSR

Bullshit clickbait title, couldn't resist it. This has nothing to do with that.

Has anyone ever taken advantage of Tolkienesque DOOMs for roleplaying?

In the Silmarillion a DOOM (always capitalised in this post) is like curse, or fate, prediction or pronouncement laid upon a person or a group.

A DOOM is always right and it is always a bit dark and almost always concerns the death or destruction of that character or people and how it will come about. There is an angle/demigod guy whose whole job it uttering DOOMS at odd moments. They seem to be brought about either by, or in connection with, major powers. Like the sub-gods that rule Middle Earth. Melkor for the most part.

Having a DOOM is also kind of slightly cool. It guarantees that you are totally fucked. But it also almost guarantees that you will do something fucking amazing. One guy goes down fighting a gang of Balrogs, a DOOMed magic dog beats up wearwolves, Sauron and the worlds biggest wolf, another guy bones his sister and kills a dragon. You know if you are DOOMed then at least life will be interesting.

Huan is Jake the Dog.

The doom is like a living thing in the story, hunting the characters. People can go towards their DOOM and it may retreat, or they may hide from it and it will stalk them, but it never goes away. Strong characters who head straight at their DOOm seem to do a bit better, or at least casue less damage to others before they go.

The doom acts just like a railroady DM. It knows what is meant to happen and just keeps shuffling the deck until it does. The DM is a bit like Melkor anyway. Watching, planning, sending forth forces and lies.

You can get caught up in someone else’s DOOM if you are close to them, friends with them, or owe them loyalty, fall in love with them or just help them too much. Even if you fall into conflict with them. This would be a good way to realistically bind together a group of adventurers.

(A lot of characters in the Silmarillion spend a lot of time constructing large underground complexes, filling them with treasure, then running away. Clearly so in millennia to come people can do D&D adventures in the same place.)

The idea-word DOOM is quite metal and would/might satisfy OSR alpha players. Having a fortune is mundane, a ‘fate’ is a bit boring and bland, a ‘weird’ is better, a DOOM is excellent. It’s even more fun to say.

“You feel youself move closer to your DOOM.”

Constructing a DOOM could be a game opening session mixed in with char-gen. Lots of hippy games do the thing where you build the world and the characters at the same time. AW, Fate, Microscope. You could just run a game of Microscope to make the DOOM and then create characters caught in the DOOM.

Is it disempowering for a player to play to an inevitable end if they helped to construct that end? Would the means of getting there and the unexpected evolutions of the DOOm be interesting enough? You can struggle manfully against your doom, or towards it. You made it so it must be pretty good. It seems to work in Call of Cthulhu. Everyone knows they are probably not getting out alive.

The whole period, or at least the kind of period covered by the Silmarillion is much more interesting for RPGing in than the LOTR era because there is more stuff and more mad characters and more potential for strange things. Also the elves are more like mad 70’s rock stars and less like cosplayers, which makes them interesting to play and be around. And you know almost everyone’s going to die. And the gods might turn up.

Also you get to curse people and oath things. Having an oath or a curse is at least as good as having a class. It tells you what you need to be doing in the same way.

What if your character dies? Just Pendragon it and bring in the family? Family DOOMs work quite well in the Silmarillion.

No XP but maybe you get DOOM points that make you stronger the closer you get to your DOOM so you can pull off some last-ditch heroic bullshit at the end.

Maybe the DM (Melkor) tries to make your doom as pathetic as possible, you try to make it as metal as possible.

Anyway that’s my idea for a Tolkien RPG. Its DOOM based. Make the DOOM, let that create the characters in the world. Players play the characters, DM plays the DOOM. Finish when the DOOM is done.

(Tom maybe you already invented this?)

82 - 87

82# Embassy

Oil on skin

A large image painted across multiple skins, invisibly stitched.

The scene is historically incoherent.  Set within one of the sunken stone forests of the Drow, lost long ago and known now only in song.  But featuring Knotsmen, whose origin should lie after that event. The pale calcified trees of the forests forced underground when the Drow were driven from the earth, shine, carved and whetted, under the conflicting glows of multiple meeting courts.

A young Drow priestess sits, naked, yet covered by the swirling forms of tortured geisha golems in silk that halo her always, cursed never to be still and never quite to touch her flesh. Ultraviolet butterflies form knots of blue-black light around her. Opposing her, a Knotsman embassy, several of their Weeping Knights, a pair of fathers and a Balif, horribly crooked and strewn with scrolls on a palanquin of naked Usurers. They carry lanterns of burning magnesium and infra-red.

Crowded in the background are nobles and chiefs of many cultures. Olm in their savage finery. Duergar and cringing Derro. Illithid are not absent. A Beholder chats to a Fungal Ambassodile and some slow drifting Archeans. The scene is thick with cunning, the eyelines and body language of each person present sketch out a story of deceit and secret advantage. But whose is not clear

83# A Star Map

Glass and magically crystallised lead.

This antiwindow is a weave of the bullet-point semi-luminescent slatwork resulting when lead is crystallised at room temperature. Slivers of glass are carefully placed to highlight the darkness of the negative space. The chiascuro shadowplay created by the lead and glass contains encoded information. A map, through song, to an unknown constellation of stars. The map uses darkness, not light at its waypoints.

It is designed for extra-terrestrial travel, where the starlight is so bright and continuous that the black nebulae that blot out the light are more visible than the lights themselves. These dust-clouds are the frozen weave, the shards of glass are time and tone to give the order and the depth.

84# Tunnel and Rider

Paper scraps glued together with meal and spit.

This was painstakingly drawn with broken pencil bits and colours from ground-up food rock dust and blood. An eye-cramping clench-work of black lines is worked around the central image of a frightened rider. The rider is being enclosed by some unknown force, he stares directly out of the image, wide-eyed and helpless. Hidden in the black lines is the Thing with Eyes on Its Back which seems to be moving towards the rider. When carefully measured, the abstract curls of the thing give clues to a secret entry to the city of Ganglia Moor

85# Rats Embargo.

Kinetic sculpture in steel and tin

This hectic revolving monster is powered by sourceless clockwork to no useful end. The blind gigantic beast that makes its base turns slowly with audible clicks. On its back is a counter-rotating multi-levelled pagoda-temple. Human figures powered by wires race all over its walls and floors. Their actions are frantic and desperate yet seem to serve no purpose. At the top and conclave of fat rat-men with lolling tongues turn to each other and nod.

86# Philtre of the Silent Saints.

Glass bottle with the head of a snake.

This treasure is a scent. Anyone who smells it will feel as if transported to a bioluminescent garden of strange beauty. In the dark spaces between the fruiting bodies of the glowing plants, the faces of strange enamelled gods peek through. Mirrored and surfaced with shining glaze these house-sized twisted faces bring only calm. Anyone in the garden feels utterly safe from any outside threat. The scent has no physically protective qualities but does supress the effects of threatening scrying, curses and any kind of remote magical attack.

87# Maeg Lome

Oil on Canvas

A couple embrace in a city of blue stone lit only y flickering blue flames in cages of gold. Through a window we see buildings, square set and storm-cell blue. In the room, the walls are layered with white flowers on the blue tile. The silk of  the sheets is white and the bed itself of many colours. The male figure sits on the bed-edge, legs half crossed. The woman stands, a sheet runs down her naked skin, she half-turns, back towards the man.