I heard the fissure before I saw it; the inverted, almost delayed, crackling pop-pop-pop of a rent in the multiversal fabric is unmistakable. As I slowly moved around the twist in the tunnel, I felt my exposed skin grow warm and my hair fray with static. Before me, in a shallow dugout as wide as a tall man, was a vertical gash of pulsating blackness in which I could see the deep time of the broken multiverse.

And there I was. 

My color was off, all bleached out or covered in a fine, viscous scum, though I was seemingly wearing the exact same delve gear. Gooey strands of multiversal matter connected myself back to the fissure, as if I had just pushed my way through. And my movements… my movements were erratic, interrupted, as if I was flickering through the dugout, skipping actions between beats.

Although mostly quiet lately, we’ve been hard at work on a number of projects here at Superhero Necromancer Press, and now you can take a closer look at one of our closely held efforts.

We’ve released the beta version of ALTERITY (subtitle yet to be determined), a Forged in the Dark tabletop roleplaying game that uses the game system underpinning John Harper’s Blades in the Dark.

ALTERITY is a game set in the wreckage of a gloom-infested city during its weird ruinpunk renaissance after a multiversal apocalypse. You play delvers of an aetheric order, a radical guild or cell whose members scour glooms across the ruins of the Veiled City of Alteris in search of the multiversal aether they need to fuel their power, prestige, and protection. 

There are dangerous delves into glooms; battles against gloomspawn and rival orders; gloom hunts and ruin rangings; secret conspiracies and hidden ceremonies; archaeological digs and searches for ancient technological artifacts, and aether-fueled multiversal shifts to prior historical epochs.

Character options from ALTERITY. Art by Alec Sorensen.

“To live is to die is to live,” say the Seated Stylites on their crumbling pillars in Upper Thelial Square–marble monuments of a solar dynast whose regnal name is lost to the swirling eddies of time and cataclysm. Hoods pulled forward so only their shaggy muzzles protrude, the Stylites stare keenly at the aristocratic bravos lounging around Belisar Fountain drinking matter juice and ginfruit bubble. 

“To gloom with you, mange,” call back the bravos, courage fortified by breeding and liquor. No Stylite ever leaves their solitary perch but by plummeting after death, it is known. 

Chortling laughter abruptly ends as a single Stylite, then another, then four more, pull shock blades from beneath their cloaks and bare pointed, bone-white teeth.

Every dog has its day, it is also known.

You can check out the beta for ALTERITY on itch.io, following the direct link here or the iframe below.

This has been in my head in one form or another for a long time. It originally started as a game using our long in development Skeleton Game System ruleset. I think my earliest notes for that version date to March 2019. But that all changed after I first read through Band of Blades around Christmas 2020. That quickly pushed me on to Blades in the Dark, which I had owned since 2018 but never read, and well, ALTERITY changed drastically then, for the better.

As a beta, it is incomplete, but only really here and there. In writing it, I’ve made some attempt to boil down the FITD mechanics of the game into something more concise. Your mileage may vary, of course, and also maybe FITD-type games need clear and detailed explanations of their mechanics for a reason. I’ll guess we’ll see if I accomplished my task. 

So check out ALTERITY and let us know what you think. Follow us on itch.io or sign up for our mailing list to receive word when the next beta version drops sometime in July.

Into the Odd Resources for the Rainy City: Rainy City Starter Package Table | Rainy City Arcanum Table (coming soon)

For the start of February and what’s essentially level two of the Great Cuttle, I wanted to shift gears a little into a settlement of what I’ve been calling “burrowers” in my notes. These are basically folks who have been stuck on the cuttle and decided to just make the best of it. So here’s the burrower settlement known as Seychell’s Ark.

The ark itself is a massive ruin that’s nestled down in the lower reaches of the Wake Fields zone, with only the very top of the ship peeking out above water where the Lonely Hut is on the Introductory post map. Most of the ship is flooded and destroyed, but the front area of one deck and the middle area of two lower decks are still viable (it’s a fantasy world, let’s run with it, shall we?).

As always, this is mostly transcription, not polish, except where I didn’t have enough room in the Hobonichi Techo to make my intent clear.

Seychell’s Ark, Upper Hold (Zone: The Wake Fields; Dungeon Level: 2)

General Details

• Seashell fused pipes are threaded throughout the Upper Hold as a rudimentary air vent system (connected to the Mongrel Mush in the Chum Pit of 2.2)
• Water drips down constantly, but someone is always running around slapping slime or mucus into the cracks (in the Unseen, slime/mucus has a strange magical glow, as if it has been treated with magicks)
• Seychell’s right hand is Eunice Greentoes, a florens folk from another world, who has the bunk next to Seychell in 5 (specifically 5a); she designed the seashell pipe system

2.1 – The Lonely Hut

• ← Door into hut is locked & sealed w/ mucus that looks freshly replaced
• Was once an aviary for the Ark below; walls still have stalls and rusty cages & perches, no birds
• → Barrels of salted fish along the walls of the inner room
• → Murder holes in wall to shoot crossbows through (on table with bolts inside)
• → Doors (↑↓) barred from inside, open hatch in floor leads to 2a after a long shaft
  • Sides of shaft wet & slippery, lots of mucus and sticky glue to seal in doors to flooded parts of the ark
  • 15×15 foot shaft
  • Several seashell fused pipes thread down the other walls
  • Makeshift ladder built into wall of shaft & a knotted rope hangs nearby
  • Pulley system for moving heavy objects up & down
• Bored guard (Lars, STR 8, HP 4)

2.2 – The Market

• Vaulted center hold of the Ark, with support beams running the length on either side
• ← Flotsam wreckage blocking area off from flooded ship
• ↑ Corridor to 4 & 5
• ↓ Corridor to 6 & 7
• → Doors, never locked, to 3
• Marketplace w/ stalls & work areas all over (use chart below for special items on sale), lots of people always here (use other chart below)
• 2a leads to 1 above

2.3 – The Warren

• Formerly crew quarters, now basically a tenement for residents of the Ark
• Doors to the Warren not secure, although someone is usually sitting by them to say hi
• Corridors are usually busy, and many people leave their doors open; strangers are always greeted as potential community members
• Use charts below for people & treasures (coming soon)

2.4 – The Fishery

• Old animal stables converted into basins for farming the Mogg Fish, a rare fish from another world that’s quite delicate and tasty, a staple of the diet here
• Each stall has a low chain gate
• → Top left stall has salvaged barrels labeled “Gryter’s Stout”
• Caretaker: Arles Fries, is quite friendly, would love to get his hands on more moss from the Sunken Maze, the fish love it

2.5 – Seychell’s Bunk

• Seychell Andragosi understood the waters were coming, and built an Ark to save who and what he could…and when the Ark wrecked on the Great Cuttle, he worked to save the last survivors as well
• Seychell has lived for 175 years, sustained by the Doppel Gem he wears under his shirt (in the chest in his side room, locked, is the shriveled husk of his twin brother, Desroch, wearing the Ganger Gem)
• Desk contains personal papers
• Under bed, 1 Arcanum:
  • The Bat Whip, a riding crop/whip that when you crack it a crazed vampire bat appears (STR 6, DEX 8, HP 2, d4 bite) that attacks warmblooded creatures except for the wielder of the whip

2.6 – The Moot

• ← Door to 7, always barred from the outside
• Hole in floor leads to flooded deck below & eventually out to the water
• 1 Long table and 4 chairs, damp and moldy
• Room used for trade with fin folk or the occasional undine curious about the burrowers
• Bell hangs above pool, with string down into the water, for signaling an arrival

2.7 – The Cap

• Large double doors in floor, access shaft that leads down into the Lower Hold at XXX, about 3 decks down
• Always 2-3 guards here (STR 6, DEX 8, HP 3, d6 w/ axes or daggers or hooks), as beasts in the Lower Hold are always trying to get up here

Special Items For Sale in the Seychell’s Ark Market (2d6)

• 2 – Arkshroom Tapenade (in seashell that’s sealed w/ skin covering and sinew twine)
• 3 – Bone Jewelry (made from dead coco birds and Mogg fish)
• 4 – Cuttle Drums (made from wooden salvage & specially treated cuttle skin)
• 5 – Candied Fish Heads (made from gulfweed and, uh… fish heads)
• 6 – Ornate Lantern Sticks (using shimmer moss & flotsam, work underwater)
• 7 – Skin Suit (made from cuttle skin, greatly improves swimming)
• 8 – Cuttle Rope (made from muscle fibers, stronger and more durable than hemp rope)
• 9 – Spec Breath Moss (strange, eldritch moss that when held in mouth like chew, allows user to breathe water like air)
• 10 – Clacker Eggs (from clacker crabs, taste sweet)
• 11 – Cuttlebone Dirks (specially sharpened but somewhat brittle, 1 in 6 breaks per use)
• 12 – Conch Horns (for music and signaling)

Ark merchants prefer barter over coinage that’s fairly useless to them (although occasionally handy when buying off pirates). Barter is the main means of trade with undersea factions. If “money” is used, specialty items range between 20S and 40S in cost.

Random Folk Living On or Visiting Seychell’s Ark (1d12)

• 1 – Crelina Farkstad, weaver of rope, doesn’t miss the feel of ground anymore
• 2 – Sandy Shimmyjimmy, achterfuss resurrectionist, just dropping by for a pickup
• 3 – Eugeus, a porter, has supposedly drowned 10 times, claims the water hates him
• 4 – Hamo Heraclia, a balladier, lost their love recently to a slime serpent and can’t write anymore
• 5 – Lyell Lowbottom, mucker on an old galleon, The Blackspitter, but she’s wrecked now, nothing to do but die
• 6 – Warynicks, former bounty hunter, now missing an arm, tried to bag the carrion hag (Lvl 3), but couldn’t hack it, but if you feel lucky…
• 7 – CiCi, a whaler, well, not anymore, misses pastries and blue skies, is it true that there’s a whale that can swallow other whales whole?
• 8 – Quint Taber, an ex-Clanger, grew tired of the animosity w/ the Thatchers, came for the quiet (secretly exiled for unsanctioned murders)
• 9 – Toothy, an old sea dog with “Hold Firm” tattooed on his knuckles, has a piece of metal shot lodged in his head
• 10 – Esmond, half-man/half-snake soothsayer, will tell your future, if you dare to know it
• 11 – The Wizard Talcinder the Resonant, here to capture a rare spore folk in the Lower Hold
• 12 – Leroud, a seamstress, who believes in going where the people are no matter the difficulty

Random Treasures of the People of Seychell’s Ark (aka, what do they have in their bunks – 1d12)

• Coming soon!

Next week, the Lower Hold, which is probably going to be a weird mushroom ecosystem with wild beasts from another world roaming around. It’s either going to be wild or a mess…or both!

Into the Odd Resources for the Rainy City: Rainy City Starter Package Table | Rainy City Arcanum Table (coming soon)

This week’s section of the Great Cuttle megadungeon started off as a brief note I made back in 2019 when I first prepped the Cuttle for the one shot we were playing. It simply said: “The Sunken Maze: Crazed Rainy City Pirate, stuck down here, driven mad w/ fear.” I’m pretty sure they never made it to the Sunken Maze during that one shot, so that area remained as nebulous and unprepped as everything else…until now!

(As always, the notes below are largely transcribed, except where an error was too egregious for me to ignore; this week in particular there’s a lot of clunky description I will want to polish later, but for now it’s fine.)

The Sunken Maze (Zone: The Wake Fields; Dungeon Level: 1)

General Details

• Sticky, wet moss all over, seeming to be what’s holding the shape of the area, glows softly
• Water drips and runs everywhere here, a strong sense it could collapse at any moment
• Area feels constructed, but poorly and with a tinge of madness
• Area smells weirdly sweet – spending longer than 10 min in Maze requires a WIL save, on failure, lose 1d4 WIL
• Corridor floors jumbled and waterlogged, like walking on a raft floating on water
• Entering the water anywhere here will attract carnivorous sucker fish (d2 damage every round in water)

What Do You Hear? (d4)

1. Angry crying and screaming
2. A soliloquy about tea
3. Ranting about the “perfidious Gaunts!”
4. “I smell you, I smell you…”

Bestiary

• The Brill (aka Aquellus Brillitane)
  • An emaciated ghoul in tattered fancy dress, body covered in patches of sticky green moss that may or may not be growing out of him!
  • STR 12, DEX 14, WIL 10, HP 12
  • Driven to secure fresh meat and entertainment, not necessarily in that order all the time
  • Attacks with claws (d6), showing great ferocity. If anyone takes Critical Damage, they are paralyzed and bitten for d10 damage.
  • Talks to self constantly, unless he’s trying to hide from potential prey
  • Exiled from the city by his ghoul family, probably because of his failure to hold cutlery correctly, or other such aristocratic ghoul nonsense (ed. thanks, Rich!)

Where is the Brill?

• Make a Luck roll in every keyed area to see if the Brill is there

What’s the Brill’s Mood? (d4)

1. Pleasant and Inviting
2. Lonely and Pensive
3. Suspicious and Scared
4. Angry and Violent

1.8 – The Plaque

• ← Heads back to entrance
• → Continues into the maze
• A dirty & tarnished brass plaque has been mounted on the wreckage here
• A fresh bundle of sea urchins has been left in front
• Inscription says:
  • “Dedicated to the Marie Clare – May she bring luck to the fleet for all days”
• → Pool at end of corridor goes under wreckage to 1.9

1.9 – The Treasure

• ← Pool goes under wreckage, leading to 1.8
• ↓ Pool goes under wreckage, leads to corridor that eventually reaches 1.12
• → Partial piece of large rowboat in wall, creating an awning
  • Under awning, skeletal body in tattered uniform & locked chest (d20 in S, diamond ring [3S], fine silver dagger [2G])

1.10 – The Moss Baby

• A large lump of undulating moss fills the area, sticky to the touch, coos softly if touched or climbed over, but otherwise harmless
• Clearly the source of the moss holding the maze together
• Moss baby extends down into the water (through the floor); this may only be a small part of the creature

1.11 – The Bone Gallery

• → Way out, leading back to 1.12
• A dozen corpses (bones only) are affixed to the walls in these dead end corridors (notable: fin folk, gull, a larva husk, winged serpent)
• ↑ Strange glowing frog idol at end of corridor; approach within 10ft triggers a fleshy tongue to lash out, DEX save or be dragged to idol & take d8 energy drain until freed or make a STR save (per round)
• Chest behind idol: 2G & 1 Arcanum

1.12 – The Brill’s Nook

• This is the private nook of the Brill (formerly Aquellus Brillitane, a ghoul of the City trapped here, or more like exiled)
• → Pool allows the Brill to catch sucker fish & escape quickly if threatened
• Chest, locked: oyster shells taken from The Wrap, 45S, & deed to rowhouse in the Mids (Smallsides)

1.13 – The Dead End

• → Pool under wreckage leads to 1.14

1.14 – The Way Out

• If the PCs have not encountered the Brill, then he will be here, desperate for them not to leave
• If asked, can warn about the Ostreogolem in The Wrap, will also complain about the “burrowers in the big boat” not being hospitable to him
• Knows of the fin folk town of BrokeShell, but doesn’t know how to get there

Next week (*sigh* this week), I plan to start tackling the “burrowers in the big boat” aka Seychell’s Arc, one of the larger area’s of Level 2.

Into the Odd Resources for the Rainy City: Rainy City Starter Package Table | Rainy City Arcanum Table (coming soon)

Earlier this week, as I am wont to do when creating RPG stuff for the Rainy City, I was trolling through words looking for inspiration. This takes the form of seeing an interesting word or image and then following the rabbit hole through Wordhippo.com or Wiktionary.org looking for patterns or tracing etymologies. Once something catches my eye, I start probing associated jargon, distressing the word, and generally massaging it until a broader idea forms. Welcome to the origins of almost every wizard I have ever added to the Rainy City.

Anyway, so earlier this week, I stumbled upon the word “osteolith,” which in a medical sense means a mass of bone or bone-like tissue. Hmmm, I thought, there’s a wizard here. And then an even grosser idea formed, and a section of the Great Cuttle megadungeon was born.

So, a little background on the Wrap, so named because it wraps around one of the Great Cuttle’s arm tentacles that are woven throughout the mass of wreckage that is the Wake Fields and Midden zones of the megadungeon.

There was once a Wizard of the Tower Cliffs names Ostreo the Sporogenous, who was infamous for two things: 1) his too exuberant predilection for working with bone and bone-like substances; and 2) he showed a creation he dubbed the “Master Mantis” at Colloquium one year that totally disrupted the whole event (Hyperion the Hated had to burn the Master Mantis alive to keep it from attempting to conquer the whole Rainy City, and boy, does that jerk never let anyone forget it).

Unusually chastened by his poor reputation, Ostreo kept to himself, and was largely forgotten in the city proper. Who lives in that skull-shaped tower near the edge of Silver Falls? No one who matters.

And then came the Great Cuttle to the Rainy City. Upon hearing of the Cuttle’s existence and quite enamored by all that cuttlebone, Ostreo decamped from the Tower Cliffs and journeyed to his new home.

He began constructing his new tower within the upper wreckage of the Cuttle and set about securing new material for his experiments. Often this took the form of snatching locals (fin folk, burrowers, and the occasional sea hag) and extracting their bones. This, of course, did not make him a popular neighbor. Among those who knew Ostreo, the rumor was he searched for the means to craft an amphibious golem able to explore the very deep sea ruins around the Rainy City.

And then, one day, he snatched the wrong local. What he thought was just one of the fin folk turned out to be something more dangerous, the daemon warlock Riqshalkor the Eminent, and, thunder and rain, the daemon was not happy about it!

Riqshalkor turned the tables on the bone-obsessed wizard and brought him low with a vile curse. He turned the vain wizard into a mindless, living mass of oyster shell and bone bound forever to his crumbling tower, endlessly thirsting for the bone he craved in life but never satisfied with what he claims.

The Wrap (Zone: The Wake Fields; Dungeon Level: 1)

General Details

• Past Room 1.2, the area flotsam is stuffed w/ shells and bones and aragonite, all stuck together by osteocolla glue (glue made from bones) and magic
• Ground in 1.4-1.6 all covered in loose shells and bones as well

Bestiary

• Ostreogolem
  • A large mass of sea shells, bone, and aragonite chunks that shambles about with a vague upper torso of a human – all bones + shells in contact with the ostreogolem are a part of the golem
  • STR 18, DEX 10, WIL 7, HP 14
  • Driven to add more bones to itself
  • Strikes out with bone tendrils (d6), either from its main form or anywhere else bone and shell are linked to it. Anyone taking Critical Damage is subsumed by a wave of bone and shell that tears the flesh from their bones every turn (d8) until they are pulled out or succeed on a STR save. It can rend up to 3 targets at a time.
  • When inert, is hard to spot as an animate creature. Largely mindless and instinctual.

1.1 – The Crevasse

• Floor remnants of a ship’s deck, waterlogged and damaged (vigorous activity can cause one to fall through, Dex save or d8 dam & fall to 1.2 (more likely where water pools 30ft below)
• Stream of water flows across deck + cascades down to 1.2
• Flag of the Admiralty ship Ravage hangs from the debris above

1.2 – The Guzzling Serpent

• → Head of massive, fossilized sea serpent, mouth agape, water flowing down its throat, which has been carved out with handholds, leads down to ______
• Room tilts slightly toward the serpent head
• Water not deep enough to jump in without getting hurt
• ↓ Purple mushrooms, if eaten, restore 1 pt of ability damage/day (5 doses to exhaust)

1.3 – The Fork

• ← Left fork slopes down and around, eventually leading to _____
• Center point of fork elevated, all paths slope down from here
• → Passageway, leads to 1.4, sloping down

1.4 – The Resin Hall

• ↓ Passage to 1.3
• ↑ Passage to 1.5
• 3 stalagmite sculptures(?) of 2 fin folk and 1 seeming human refugee – once alive, now art
• → 4th stalagmite has a pirate of Rickety; in the Unseen, ghost is here, happy to talk
  • Jumpin Jay Jimmietown “Sorta like being honored on Skipton Plank” – will trade info if PCs take his body back to Rickety

1.5 – The Laboratory

• Summoning circle, to trained eye, is clearly damaged and won’t seal
• → Large globe, showing landforms + locations of flooded lands around the Rainy City
• ↑ Cabinet, locked, contains so many bones, will cause the ostreogolem to rampage in here from 1.6, hungry for bones
• → Rotted chair, reading stand, desk, and locked chest under desk, chest contents rotted but there’s a spellbook (1 spell) + 1 Arcanum that can be salvaged

1.6 – The Ossuary

• Large concentration of bone + shell here, anyone who enters will awaken the ostreogolem (see Bestiary)
• Beneath main mound is physical remains of the wizard Ostreo the Sporogenous w/ 1 Arcanum (Calcification Rod: DEX save or caught in bony growth; while caught, attacks Impaired and cannot move)

1.7 – The Turn

• Passage turns abruptly and slopes down for more than 150ft around the Cuttle arm tentacle, leading to ______
• No more shell/bone fill in the wreckage after here

Next week (this week?), I’ll be tackling the other remaining area of Level 1, the Sunken Maze.

This is useful for me because the Great Cuttle is being keyed for use with Into the Odd, so when I start playtesting parts of the megadungeon, having a custom starter package chart will be handy.

This is a draft, so if you spot anything, please let me know.

I finished up the cargo deck of The Nautilus Dove, a wrecked astral galleon resting at the heart of the Wake Fields, a mess of surface flotsam and jetsam resting above the Great Cuttle itself. Here’s the ridiculously small scale I am working with:

The cargo deck is where the surface wreck meets the megadungeon itself, an area called the Midden that I will start to flesh out in March. Although I haven’t labeled it such (calling it the Wake Fields instead), I have been conceptualizing this surface area and the immediate levels beneath it as the Upper Midden, a transitory area acting as a lure for pirates and treasure hunters who think they’ll find wealth or glory if they explore it, but really, all they’ll find is death and their ship becoming just more debris in a giant cuttlefish’s mouth.

So that you don’t need to try and read my tiny, ass writing, here’s the room transcriptions below, loosely keyed for use with Into the Odd. I’m simply transcribing what I wrote in the journal, not fleshing out, expanding upon, or reorganizing in anyway. As always, I’m aiming to keep this a short and simple task. There’s plenty of time to revise later.

I’ll probably go back and update the first two posts with transcriptions as well, so keep an eye out for that.

The Nautilus Dove – Cargo Deck

General Details

• In the Unseen, vague & amorphous figures linger in every room, spectral haunts that are unsettling but harmless. wrapped in spectral chains and seaweed, flailing and jerking as if drowning

Bestiary

• Star Mouth
  • Purple and black space starfish w/ mouth full of tentacles & teeth on top
  • STR 14, DEX 8, WIL 6, HP 12
  • Driven to feed
  • Lashes out with tentacles tongues for d6, anyone taking Critical Damage is pulled into its mouth for d12 damage
  • Can stick to any surface, but can detach & scuttle around if necessary

N-CD-1: Crew Quarters

• ↓ Door to 2, blocked by crystal growth
• Pile of corpses along far wall opposite door, partially consumed/overgrown w/ sharp crystals
• Crystals resonate oddly, causing headaches (If PCs ignore warning, take d4 WIL damage)
• Buried in pile, a star metal saber (worth 1G)

N-CD-2: Aft Cargo

• ↓ Stairs up to MD-2
• ↑ Door to 1, blocked by crystal growth
• Smashed casks and boxes strewn about, a search finds only 20s
• ←→ Doors to 3, barnacle covered and locked

N-CD-3a & 3b: Officer Quarters and Galley

• 3a – Officer Quarters, trashed and covered in luminous slime
  • On ceiling, a Star Mouth, starving and desperate
  • Under broken bed, a jade helmet worth 1G, 15s
• 3b – Galley
  • Overgrown w/ strange crystalline mushrooms
  • Large mushroom in center has a skull top, eyes & teeth
  • Profound sense of unease

N-CD-4: The Brig

• Door sealed w/ hardened cuttle secretions
• inside a bound and starving Fin Folk named Dolon Houlage is chained to floor by his neck
• Chain contains a bound spirit tasked w/ keeping Dolon from shapechanging out of the chain
• From a Fin Folk town in The Maw called BrokeShell
• Dolon is being punished for “abominations” & will barter for their life

N-CD-5: Forward Cargo

• ↑ Partial flooding in front of massive coral growth blocking access to rest of 5. Can hack or cut through but grows back quickly & hacking through draws attention
• ↓ Door to 6, stuck…
• Smashed and looted cargo here, search reveals nothing of value

N-CD-6: Quartermaster Stores

• Looted & wrecked, tattered hammock hanging from ceiling to →
• ↓ Hull smashed open, but beyond is waterlogged tunnel heading down
  • Tunnel walls made up of flotsam & jetsam stuck together w/ some sort of secretion or seepage, water drips constantly

N-CD-7: The Flue

• Water in tunnels is ankle or shin deep
• Floor is piled up debris also sealed & hardened by secretions or slime
• Stench of rotting fish, air tastes coppery, from the flue
  • Shaft in room goes down (farther than 60ft), leads to ______
  • Flue walls slippery, requiring equipment to climb down

While working on this, I decided not to add a steerage deck, so next up, I’ll tackle either of the nearby zones I noted on the map above, The Wrap or The Sunken Maze. I’m only vaguely sure I know what those are, but I’ll start to figure it out tomorrow.

So, this week’s dungeon level starts off on the main deck of The Nautilus Dove, a wrecked astral galleon floating at the heart of the Wake Fields debris zone above the megadungeon itself. Here it is in all its tiny hand-drawn and handwritten glory:

There’s a couple of organizational and design elements going on here I should comment on. First, I’m still grappling toward what I want to use consistently, but for now, I have used colored pens to denote the level key on the map, mostly to break up all the black and be easier for me to decipher quickly when glancing at this later. I’ve also started playing around with how I am going to quick key the areas for easy indexing and reference later (so, for example, “N-MB-1” stands for “Nautilus” level, “Main Deck” sublevel, and room number). When I start getting into the lower levels, I might switch it up in some way, but, for now, this is what I am trying.

Second, since I had room on the map page, I added in some general details about the level itself, as well as some potential random encounters. The chart includes some atmospheric encounters, but is mostly other folks/creatures/whatnot. I don’t have all the factions of the megadungeon planned out or anything, so I have kept these encounters a bit more surface-level and Rainy City-esque while I figure that out.

Also, I started a Bestiary section in the back of the notebook, here’s a couple creatures from the encounter chart this week, keyed for Into the Odd, of course:

And, yes, if it wasn’t clear, this wreck is a homage to Spelljammer, one of my favorite TSR D&D settings from back in the day. I’ll probably scrub the serial numbers off a bit more in the future, should this transition to an SNP Rainy City product of some sort, but for now, it’s important to just get shit down.

For the upcoming week, I think I’ll be tackling the Cargo Deck of The Nautilus Dove. At this point, my plan is to connect the ship through this level to the underwater debris level of the Great Cuttle, but I guess we’ll see how the week develops. Maybe I’ll add a Steerage Deck?

Lastly, a brief comment on the whole process.

I largely don’t have a problem sticking to projects on a somewhat regular basis, and so far have had no issues continuing with this. I’m very big on project management at the moment (mostly because my overlapping work lives are busy shitshows that absolutely require organization; you should see the project task lists I built yesterday for finishing up the beta for Alterity and the production files for Rising Waters), so the procedure of breaking down this megadungeon into 365 distinct parts works for me.

My main issue so far is the Hobonichi Techno planner I am using. One of my many minor nerddoms is the notebook/planner/pen axis, so Sean McCoy putting this one on my desk, so to speak, is great.

But.

It is very small, and the paper is very thin. While I have no issues working at the scale of this on this kind of paper, my natural design instinct is to rebel against simplicity and embrace complexity. In other words, I want more space, damnit!

Part of me is also thinking about the future of it (an important consideration here at the Press), and wondering if it wouldn’t be better to put this in something like a Canson XL Mix Media sketchbook, so I don’t have to redraw everything later.

For now, I’m not making a change or anything (keep it simple, as Sean has repeatedly said), but, we’ll see.

See you next week!

Addendum: 01/15/23

Here’s the write ups for the rooms above, so you don’t have to try and read my minuscule writing.

General Details

• No normal ship features (i.e., rudder, ships wheel, sails & mast, etc)
• Made of curious hardwood, uses sigils in place of nails or joins
• Ghostly faces in the waters around the ship
• In the Unseen, a faint astral bubble or barrier around the whole ship, spirits cannot pass it willingly
• Upon examination, it is clear the ship is resting on something, and not free floating.
• Treatise: A petty grimoire entitled On Phlogiston
  • Largely on the properties and practical applications of “void substances”
  • Two spells:
    • Simeon’s Soul Wave
    • Sardar’s Scintillaic Solipsism

Random Encounters (d6)

1. Bedraggled, Raving Pirate (Old Silver Seasalt of the Danger), abandoned by crew, desperate for safe passage
2. Two Slime Serpents, coiled together
3. Wrecker Wing, gull scavenger, resting after long flight, looking for loot (8 hp, d6 claws), might have some loot
4. Ghostly Moans echo from everywhere & nowhere (in the Unseen, nothing?)
5. A Star Squid Spectre, roaming & confused
6. Motes of Stardust coruscating in the air, making subtle tones

Bestiary

• Nix
  • Reanimated corpse of someone who drowned in the sea; pale blue skin, black eyes, swollen & disfigured, covered in seaweed
  • STR 16, WIL 12, HP 10
  • Driven by bloodlust and greed
  • Hates those who steal riches from it, attacks w/ powerful, raking claws (d10 damage), able to sink into the ground or through solid matter if in danger of being destroyed
• Slime Serpent
  • Gray water snake oozing black and purple pus, large fangs
  • STR 8, DEX 12, WIL 6, HP 6
  • Driven to defend itself
  • Attacks w/ quick bite (d6 damage, on Critical Damage, injects coagulating poison that hardens flesh until limb crumbles off)
• Star Squid Spectre
  • Immaterial humanoid w/ kraken for head, hands gnarled, wearing tattered sailor’s kit, deep black void dripping from hands & mouth
  • STR 12, WIL 13, HP 6
  • Driven by intolerance
  • Shoots out inky black tentacles from void, piercing brain for d8 damage, on Critical Damage, suffer intense agony for d6 WIL

N-MD-1: Stern Castle

• Massive catapult, missing a wheel, tension rope rotted & frayed; shot balls (6) covered in glowing sigils (faint)
• Loose debris everywhere
• Large opaque, crystalline dome lashed to the deck w/ ropes, now loose; it extends through the deck
• ↓ Rickety stairs down to 2

N-MN-2: Main Deck

• → Knotted rope on port side
• → Large chunk bitten (?) out of port side, exposing cargo deck
• ↑ Door, spiked, to 4
• ↑ Stairs up to 1, down to CD-2
• Cargo doors covered in green, spiky coral (sting on contact for d6 DEX loss)
• ↓ Door to 7, stairs up to 3, stairs down to CD-5

N-MD-3: Forecastle

• ↑ Stairs down to 2
• ↓ Frayed rope ladders to front forecastle & the anchorhead ram
• Sun symbol carved into deck; standing on it, one can hear faint murmuring as if hearing a far off conversation (In the Unseen, frayed tentacles whipping in a fake wind

N-MD-4: Navigation

• Solid crystalline astral helm in middle of room, is part of the opaque dome above in 1; dead body sits in it, a mummified husk
• An undead Nix is trapped here; will shamble out from corridor if door unspiked
• ↑ Door to 5 & 6, locked
• ← Navigator’s chest, bashed but still locked: 40s and treatise (On Phlogiston)

N-MD-5: Navigator’s Quarters

• ↓ Unkempt bed covered in spindly, orange sea fungus (if eaten, STR save or take d4 DEX damage)
• ← Small wooden desk, several gouges in desktop
  • Drawer jammed, has a knife w/ pommel of ivory carved as an octopus
• ↑ Window, glass broken

N-MD-6: Crystal Vault

• Shelves of sparkling space crystals & small rocks from interstellar asteroids
  • Used to power helm in 4
• Debris all over, broken shelves, the very air glitters (WIL save or hallucinate astral phenomena overlaying the physical world for 1 hour)

N-MD-7: Captain’s Quarters

• Contents smashed, except for bed in → corner, which is covered in brown mold (harmless)
• ↓ Debris in corner has a large crystal shard buried beneath (worth 75s)
• Floor smashed open in center of room, leads down to CD-5

This quickly picked up steam, leading Sean to make a more detailed post on his Substack, which added more fuel to the fire. And now it’s all I see on various social media streams, which is bloody awesome.

So, of course, I’m going to do this…with a little Rainy City twist.

Let’s explore The Great Cuttle megadungeon together, shall we?

As a bit of set-up, here’s the original game night call from 2019 that spawned this idea. It was for a one shot Rainy City session, so naturally instead of keeping things small and contained, I came up with a megadungeon idea. Typical Devenney…

Tales of the Rainy City: The Curious Jaunt of the Nautilus Dove

The Windy Season is behind us. The Quiet Season is upon us. And refugee traffic into the Rainy City has started to pick back up after falling off during the Windy Season. It’s a time to scrape the barnacles off the boat, stretch out creaky limbs, hoist the main mast, sharpen the cutlass, and sail the Swells again, looking for refugee salvage, the One That Got Away, or that damned blackhearted pirate you just can’t stand to see the face of anymore. What a time to be alive!

In the piss pots and public houses of Vagabond Bay, the talk bubbling up, in amongst chat on the recent Dragon Boat Festival race and the latest seas duels between the pirates of Rickety and the Admiralty, is the curious jaunt of the Nautilus Dove, a recent refugee ship floating dead in the water somewhere between Rickety and the Bobber Sea. 

Refugee ships making it past the Outer Swells wrecked and ruined with all hands lost are pretty common and are key targets for salvage operations (it’s basically how Rickety survives, after all). If unmolested by Rickety scavengers, such dead hulls drift near the Rainy City, eventually washing up near Vagabond Bay, where city salvagers of all sorts take over. 

But the Nautilus Dove is curious. It has not drifted towards Vagabond Bay. In fact, it remains fairly stationary between Rickety and the Bobber Sea. It has also not remained unmolested. In fact, at least three crews from Rickety that are known have sailed to the Nautilus Dove, but none have returned whole. 

Gee Willy Will and his crew of cutthroats were the ones to find the Nautilus Dove, with the pirate Dirty Jim’s boat, Soapy, floating adrift nearby, Dirty Jim and his crew long gone. Willikers sent some men into the Nautilus Dove. They did not come out. Gee Willy cut his losses and lived to tell the tale. Then Barnacle Bill Pushings got his dander up, and blessed by a wayward gull feather that landed in his rum, set out to take the Nautilus Dove for himself. But alas, the Gull’s Brush was but a Brush Off, and Bill Pushing’s Rickety berth has already been claimed by another. Most curious indeed. The Nautilus Dove must be filled with such dangers to claim so many able pirates.

Clearly these Rickety ruffians and scalawags are showing their ineptitude when it comes to salvage. Surely someone from the City, a reputable salvage crew perhaps, will show the pirate scum how it’s done. Absolutely the dangers are exaggerated. Assuredly there must be excellent salvage and wealth in the wreck. Such is the talk in Vagabond Bay this rainy, quiet day…

I made a few sketches on some notecards to prep for the session, one of which was the secret of what was beneath the dead in the water Nautilus Dove:

A few more notecards laid out some other details, a ganked ship layout from some old 3rd Edition module provided the Nautilus Dove, and the session was ready. And, as usually happens, being a one shot, we never followed up on it. And the prep went into my Rainy City Field Notes notebook from that time…until now!

So, what is the Great Cuttle?

Well, it’s a giant alien cuttlefish free floating in the Inner Swells somewhere between Rickety and the Bobber Sea. And other than the notecard sketch above and some other notes I made at the time, I don’t really know.

The spirit of Dungeon23 seems to me to be about the habits of creation itself and the discovery of it all, not to create some sort of product at the end (although that is obviously my secondary motivation here). So while I have some notion of what’s going on, I guess we’re going to see together.

Is it the abandoned avatar of long dead god that’s still alive but not? Is it a vast ocean beast trapped in some sort of stasis prison, unable to react as the denizens build through and consume it (that’s pretty dark)? Is it a living, floating arc created by some powerful wizard to survive the flooding of worlds?

I guess we’ll see. I’ll post weekly updates to the feed here. You can select out either the category “Publisher’s Blog” or “Dungeon23” to add just these posts to your blogroll, if you so choose.

In terms of mechanics, I plan to key this for Into the Odd Remastered by Chris McDowall and Johan Nohr. The rules-light system lends itself very well to this kind of megadungeon, and the fact that I don’t have a lot of space to play with (which will keep me from overworking on this, maybe!).

Last week, as a warm up, I sketched out and keyed a part of the initial starting zone for the Great Cuttle. On the surface floats the Wake Fields, a mass of shipwrecks, dead beasts, and other flotsam and jetsam extending out from the Nautilus Dove itself at the very center. To get to the wrecked ship, one must navigate the Fields, not an easy task!

Ideally, I would sketch out all four sections of the Wake Fields, but for now, I’m going to stick with this, and start figuring out what’s underneath it all.

See you all next week!

Superhero Necromancer Press is happy to announce our next Rainy City Kickstarter campaign as part of ZineMonth 2022, BEASTS OF THE OUTER SWELLS!

BEASTS OF THE OUTER SWELLS, by game designer and fantasy/horror writer William Wandless and artist Bill Spytma, is system-agnostic RPG zine offering a collection of tall tales, legends, and galley gossip about several strange, wondrous, and horrific sea monsters found in the rough seas around the Rainy City–a doomed fantasy metropolis at the end of the world where the wizards jealously guard their rotting magical tomes, the gargoyles are always watching, the thieves are on the prowl, and the rains never stop!

BEASTS is built as a companion bestiary to A VISITOR’S GUIDE TO THE RAINY CITY. However, being system-agnostic, any busy GM needing quick flavor or interesting content can use BEASTS for their own campaign without the VISITOR’S GUIDE. Tall tales are universal, after all, and there’s nothing to say these strange and peculiar leviathans of the seas can’t wash up in any campaign where coastal waves lap the shore!

Projected to come in around 12,000 words and 48 pages, BEASTS will explore the legend lore of nine of the Rainy City’s strangest sea monsters. Come hear the tales of:

• The Aspic Lantern, A dying light to beam above the deeper dark
• The Clackermas, Some thunders speak of more than storms
• The Coldwater Council, Not even the Outer Swells are beyond the law
• Handsome Randy, Sometimes the Swells can be comely and subtle
• The Mirror City, The impossible harbor that hosts a subtle hunger
• The Mother of Manatees, She for whom the children shed their skin
• The Scraw, The bones that name the City’s secret shame
• The Wishful Wakame, A waking dream of distant shores and open doors
• The Wondergull, A strength that dares to rise above the rain

The Kickstarter campaign for BEASTS OF THE OUTER SWELLS will go live on Tuesday, February 15th!

Head on over and follow the Kickstarter Prelaunch Page to know the moment the campaign goes live!

“Eubertess Orngrove, an eminent hodgepodger among the many mongers of Arowana Way in Murk Corners, once told me the secret to uncovering the quality find was to rummage the piles everyone else ignored. I have found this quite true in the pursuit of esoterica as well.

I am Thaddeus Flott, alchemist and operatic tenor, and I am once again honored to offer you this second miscellany of eclectic hodgepodgery on our great Rainy City.

Rummage away, my friends, rummage away!”

Greetings everyone! Superhero Necromancer Press is happy to announce that we have pushed the button on our next Kickstarter campaign for the Rainy City: FLOTT’S MISCELLANY VOLUME TWO!

Offered as part of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest 3 promotion, FLOTT’S MISCELLANY VOLUME TWO is a system-agnostic RPG zine offering a wonderfully curated collection of random charts, name lists, esoteric and unusual facts, and even more lists about the Rainy City–a doomed fantasy metropolis at the end of the world where the wizards jealously guard their rotting magical tomes, the gargoyles are always watching, the thieves are on the prowl, and the rains never stop!

Like the first volume of the MISCELLANY, which came out last fall, this is built as a companion to A VISITOR’S GUIDE TO THE RAINY CITY (our ZineQuest 2 offering last year). However, being system-agnostic, any busy GM needing quick flavor or interesting content can use FLOTTS VOL.2 for their own campaigns without the VISITOR’S GUIDE. As the good Mr. Flott advises above, rummage away, my friends!

Projected to come in around 7,500 words and 36 pages as a 5.5″ x 8.5″ saddle-stitched zine in black ink, FLOTTS VOL.2 will contain:

• Themed sections for each of the Eight Districts of the Rainy City (Vagabond Bay, Old Town, Levee Town, the Sump, the Mids, Embassy Row, the Headlands, and the Tower Cliffs), as well as sections for the floating pirate haven of Rickety and the flooded Grand Academy of Magic beneath the mist-shrouded Murk; 
• A Neighborhood Spotlight section on the odd and magic-infested Old Town neighborhood of Eastcheap, offering more details about the residents, street life, and businesses found there, as well as a detailed map; 
• At least fifteen pieces (but probably more!) of original Rainy City art by Bill Spytma done in the woodcut style he used on the VISITOR’S GUIDE; and 
• A Tales of the Rainy City section on the Willoughby Ark Auction and Alefest that will serve as a short event scenario made up of interrelated narratives, art, charts, lists, and random tables–offering busy GMs helpful building blocks they can use to run this Rainy City event in their campaigns.

And much much more! We’re going to stuff this one silly, folks!

For more details, as well as draft pages and art, head on over to the Kickstarter page!

FLOTT’S MISCELLANY VOLUME TWO KICKSTARTER

Thanks everyone, and stay safe!