#maceofthemonkeyking

VESTIBULE

A sandwich-board sign, solid gold: “Welcome 967th Great Race Participants!”

A statue of the Monkey King looms. Astride the staircase to the Mural Hall (pg xx), balls shining street-lamp bright—Brass Tower property glows fluorescent in their light.

Two gods guard the way. “The Tower is closed for a special occasion. Your invitation?”

+

“HORSE-HEAD”, DOOR GODDESS HD 5, as heavy armour, trident 2d8. Morale 12. Polearm arts, watching, running.

Decay is a racing horse. Hit by her trident, age d10 years.

Horse-head is a hell-deity, tricked by the Monkey King into servitude. You cannot sneak past. Try a bribe? She wants to taste horse meat. She will not know the difference.

+

“OX-FACE”, DOOR GOD HD 5, as heavy armour, trident 2d8. Morale 12. Polearm arts, goring, snoring.

Misfortune is a lumbering ox. Hit by his trident, fumble your next action.

Ox-face is a star-god, the Monkey King’s sworn bosom-brother. Hates Horse-head, and incorruptible—but 2-in-6 chance he is asleep at the job.

+++

("Two scary dumbasses guarding the way into the place you wanna go" is a trope I always seem to want to write into RPGs.

This is not even the first time I've used Horse-face and Ox-head in writing; they appear in this story, about a businessman's takeover of Hell—

A concept which itself got recycled in "Spy In The House Of Eth".

Guess I keep cannibalising myself? Maybe that's why I'm attached to the idea of the horse-headed hell god wanting to eat their namesake.)

+++

Have been working on a TTRPG adventure. A small town has been destroyed by a literal act-of-god; there is point-crawl through its ruins.

Writing this town meant building two versions of it in my head:

The town, still living. What secret dramas fuel it?

The town, destroyed. What fires continue to burn?

And figuring out how to use the latter's fires to imply the former's fuel.

+++

One of several locations in the main road through town:

TALLY HOUSE

A tent of bright textiles and fine rugs, where traders wined and haggled. Now flattened.

From under the fabric: sobbing. Manan, a young boy. “Bad babies took mummy away!” Fetus spirits dragged her to the Yellow House attic (pg xx).

+

One of the houses in a wealthy hilltop neighbourhood:

YELLOW HOUSE

Turmeric-caked columns. Missing roof; disaster has flung it elsewhere (pg xx).

Ground floor: a medicine cabinet, fallen on its face. Salvageable tinctures and powders enough to treat 6d6 persons.

Second floor: a chest. Hair combs and scarves and toys—one hundred personal items townsfolk previously thought lost.

Out back: Tun Dek, the town physician, decapitated. In the roll of his sarong: a cord strung with dried infant pinkies. Fetus spirits (pg xx) obey this cord’s holder.

+

Finally, a location on the forested edge of the valley:

YELLOW HOUSE ATTIC

The roof of Tun Dek’s house (pg xx) landed here. Upended like a beached ship.

In front: a woman grilling rats. This is Kirata, mother to Manan (pg xx) and Maran (pg xx). Tied to her ankle: a rope, disappearing into the attic.

In the attic: hammocks and cages; would fit infants. A jumble of broken toys. Kirata is an unwilling servant to thirteen fetus spirits (pg xx).

+

Maran, Kirata's other son, is not found in the town's ruins, due to some magic bullshit.

Elsewhere, in the adventure's encounter table / bestiary, is an entry for fetus spirits, a creature very loosely based on the toyol:

FETUS SPIRIT HD 1, as light armour, knife d4. Morale 5. Surrounding, stealing, taunting.

Teenage urges in the bodies of hairless tofu-hued one-year-olds.

Missing pinkies. Invisible at night. The doctor Tun Dek (pg xx) created them from babies stillborn or aborted; used them as spies, petty thieves.

To acquire baby corpses, Tun Dek must have had a votary accomplice.

+++

So here is:

A monster / encounter around the ruins;

Location(s): a rich doctor's house getting blown up due to disaster befalling the town, inadvertently setting his dirty secrets loose;

Background: A rich doctor with a dirty secret: he turns the town's stillborn children into monsters, and uses them to steal townsfolk's personal effects;

A powerful magic item: a cord that confers control over the monsters;

An explicit hook: a son looking for his mother, kidnapped by monsters;

An implied hook: it is elsewhere established that this town practices cremation; the doctor was working with a corrupt priest, who helped him spirit dead babies away from their rightful burial. Is this dude still alive? What else is he up to?

Spread across the breadth of the point-crawl---hopefully enticing players to tug on its various threads.

Also tried to practice economy. "Tun Dek makes fetus spirits!" is a minor detail, totally unrelated to the adventure's main themes. The passages above represent the total wordcount I allowed myself to spend on it.

+++

Been revisiting old manuscripts, turning them into new TTRPG adventure drafts. Context: a town, flattened by what was basically a meteor.

Am pleased with the combination of brevity, info density, and rhythm I am now able to do, compared to four years previously. Things haven't been going well for me, lately.

I'm glad that, in the end, I still have my craft.

+++

FORGE HOUSE

Sulem the smith is dead—skull staved in by a falling pillar. A loner without family, nobody remembers to bury him.

A sealed box clatters. Inside: Sri Sula, magical war club. 2d6 damage; capable of independent flight; chooses the buffest among you as her new partner.

Kill a sentient creature every day or Sri Sula leaves to find her own fun.

+

RICE HOUSE

A brown-grain dune spilling from the barn’s split belly. One month’s worth. Wading in it: a tearful girl made of glutinous rice. Meramura, rice spirit.

Will not leave the rice house. Cannot be killed, can be eaten. Unguarded, rats nibble her up in two days. After which all rice in the valley spoils.

+

TEA HOUSE

On its side like a kicked barstool. Behind the counter, a locked box: d6x6 gold pieces, three pearl necklaces; a nameplate: “Sarai”. She ran this place.

Under a wall: faint singing. Trapped in this tiny cellar, a survivor binges on the palm wine stored within.

+++