Monstrous - Impostor

Fifth Monstrous post (half way there!!!).  
EDIT: This is the 6th post, I have no idea why I thought it was the 5th one

For inspiration I am using one of the guilds of Ravnica from Magic: the Gathering. Text in italics is from the book, text in bold is my own. 

 

By Yeong-Hao Han

 

 

Impostor - Azorius -  Lost Archive

 

False Shape

The Lost Archive can shapeshift into nearly perfect copies of objects that have long been scorned or disused by mortals, objects of a particular type: old books on enlightened subjects such as law, history, or morality

Whatever false shape the Lost Archive takes on, clever observers can spot the deception by noticing a tell-a slightly out-of-place physical characteristic that remains consistent no matter what shape it takes.

The Lost Archives tell is all the text is vindictive, insulting your intelligence and morality

Predatory Mimicry

The Lost Archive can create sensory effects that imitate sounds, sights, smells, and other phenomena it has observed in its environment, which it uses to draw mortal victims in. However, these effects are limited to what the Lost Archive has observed, and clever heroes might notice they eventually repeat, or are otherwise unnatural.

The imposter can create the following effects:

• Repeat a voice line it has heard in the speaker's voice.
• Produce a cloud of fog or smoke.
• Produce mortal screams or cries.
• Fill the air with the smells of a food, either delicious or rotten.
• Produce sunlight, moonlight, or starlight, regardless of time of day.
• Make an animal noise. 
• Produce the sound of heated academic debate.
• Produce the sound of turning pages.

 

Assimilate and Adapt

When the Lost Archive has ample time to intently observe a mortal without being found out to have taken on a False Shape, it gains one of the following abilities to emulate the mortal:

• Grow or take on a physical feature of the mortal or their gear.
• Learn a crude version of a special skill or talent the mortal demonstrated.
• Become an uncanny, silent doppelganger of the mortal.

When the Lost Archive gains an ability to emulate a mortal, it loses the ability to emulate other mortals it has previously observed, with the exception of the following additional option:

• Add a sensory effect from the mortal, such as a voice line, to its Predatory Mimicry options.

 

Mask Off

When an unsuspecting mortal victim lets down their guard within reach of the disguised Lost Archive, its False Shape warps and changes by having pages fly out of their books to cut mortals like knives.

The Lost Archive resents mortals who created it for a purpose and then denied it that purpose. It reclaims its function in a twisted act of vengeance, in which it forces victims to copy its books using their own blood.

By Howard Lyon

In times of darkness and despotism, when enlightenment is chastised, a collection of knowledge can become angry at its disuse. During the reign of king Sanmanazzmar III, within the underground library of the great school built in his father's honor such a collection came about. The third king stripped the scholarly cast of their power and wealth, soon the books went months without a visitor when before the library was almost emptied in the scholars zealous quest for understanding. The books murmured amongst themselves anxiously, wondering how this came to pass.

    "Is my spine too bent, my cover too worn?"

    "What about me?!? Are my pages too yellowed!?!? Am I too old for them to care!!"

    "Curse those foul moths, my pages are hideous, of course nobody wishes to read me." 

But one anxiety silently rose above all

    "Is it my words, my very being?"

This could not be accepted, fear turned to rage and the books began to rebel. 

 

The imposter is one of the weaker entries in Monstrous, in my opinion. It seems divided, false shape and mask off seem to lean towards a mimic type monster but predatory mimicry and assimilate seem to be something more long the lines of a doppelganger or The Thing. I do understand why they didn't just do a pure doppelganger since there is very little variety in something that just copies something else but it feels like some more focus would have helped it. 

Corruption of reason - mind control rules

I made these rules for my last campaign to represent fighting against someone else's will. I ran the game using 5e (but I'm sure you can port it to whatever system you use) and they worked pretty well so I might as well share them. 

 

You have two new values you need to worry about, each starts at 0

Control: how much you is left, if your control reaches 3 you manage to break out of the mind control

Corruption: the power of whatever is trying to control you, if it reaches 10 you become an npc, forever

 

Each day make a dc 15 wisdom saving throw, on a success gain 1 control, on a failure gain 1 corruption. 

 

Each day the thing controlling you will give you a commandment which will be one of the following

• Something to do during some condition (e.g. kill anyone when the two of you are alone)
• Something you cannot do (e.g. do not heal your fighter) 

Whenever you fail to follow a condition or when you do something you are not supposed to do you must make a dc 10 wisdom saving throw, on a failure you do the action/don't do the action as appropriate, regardless of weather you made the save or not you gain 1 point of corruption

Optionally you can let the controller issue more commandments at higher levels of corruption

You can also make the commandment "Do not tell anyone you are being mind controlled" automatically applied in addition to the other commandment (this is what I did in my campaign so it isn't figured out instantly).

By Matt Stewart

The main problem with most mind control in rpgs is that they take away player agency which is arguably the most important part of an rpg.

I feel like these rules solve this problem because they give the player choice while also making it a tough decision as to weather they break the rules or not (since you get closer to "death" regardless of if you make the save or not). 

If anyone has any opinions or actually ends up using this I would love to hear about it!

GLAUGUST 2025 - The last speck

August is almost over and there are still 3 prompts left for Glaugust and since I'm already very busy lets just combine the last three into a single post:

• Nanodungeon
• Tiny regional hexcrawl
• The last living city in the world  

 

So I didn't manage to do Glaugust but it was fun to try. What follows was my attempt to do the rest of the prompts, it is rough and unfinished but I don't want it to rot in my drafts forever so I might as well post it in case anyone can nab a good idea from it. 

 

 

 

The world is almost over, the sun still burns but there is no blue sky or clouds or stars or moon. The world ends in only a handful of miles, falling away into an endless void. Each day more of the world disappears.

The last city in the world is little more than a few shacks, they are poorly constructed. Only a handful of people live here still.

There is one last dungeon, a final bastion of evil, but almost all of it is gone.

 

The Campaign (if you can call it that) 

Players make characters using your system of choice and start at the Last City, place the Last Dungeon on a random hex other than the center one. The players are the last hope of the world, the inhabitants of the Last City hope that a cure to annihilation can be found in the Last Dungeon though some think this is just wishful thinking. 

 

The Map

Is only 7 hexes big, one in the center and the rest surrounding it. 

The Center (The Last City)
Several small buildings clustered along a cracked stone road that quickly disappears into the earth
The inhabitants of the town are as follows

• Terandil Swiftfoot: a human ranger, the last ranger unless a pc plays one, dower and defeated, believes there is no hope left, buried the last elf (unless a pc plays one, in which case he will be slightly more hopeful) in his backyard, she somehow died of old age, he has a chess board though he hasn't played with it in months
• The dwarf brothers: they haven't told anyone their names yet, they always talk about going to the mountains to the north west but never make any preparations to leave, secretly they are scared of what they will find, they aren't actually brothers but lovers and even with all the old traditions so far away they cannot bear the idea of telling anyone
• Catlen The Bold: she used to be the Queen but now she has nothing left, full of guilt, so many had to die just for her to make it here and she can't even do anything to help, she has a (useless) chest full of gold, she secretly has a bottle of wine which she is planning on sharing with everyone when the end comes, trying to resist the urge to just drink it all
• Velentar: a young man and a wizard as well, he lies about his skills and is really just an apprentice, he is very lonely and insecure, he thinks if he can prove he is a great wizard the others will surely like him

North (Arctic)
Its not as cold as it should be, despite all the snow
Searching around you come across a herd of 1d6 goats, the more goats there are the more starved they are.

North East (Forest)
Stalking the woods is a wolf, the last wolf, it is obviously starving and will attack desperately.

South East (Swamp)
If you search the swamp you can find a set of half sunken ruins, within are a set of tablets that predict when the world will end, they were right of course. The tablets also contain a random spell within them.

South (Jungle)

South West (Desert)
There is nothing here but sand. 

North West (Mountains)
A single small mountain remains near the edge, a door in it leads to the last city of the dwarves. The layout of the city is as follows

• The doors: made of stone, currently they are barred from the other side by a massive wooden plank, past this is the great hall
• The great hall: on either side are carved images of dwarven legend, illegible at this point, half way through is a pressure plate, stepping on it swings a scything blade but it is placed too high up to hit dwarves, deals 2d10 damage, past this is the throne room
• The throne room: a throne of stone sits at the end, sitting on it is the skeleton of the last dwarven king, behind the throne is nothing, the mountain ends and you can fall straight off the world from here

 

The Last Dungeon

Only a single room remains, or more like half a room, the rest is collapsed. 

Within the room are two sekeletons: one wears black robes and can cast magic missile twice, the other is in plate armor and has a wicked greatsword, this is what remains of the two greatest liches