1d30 Trinkets and Oddities for Adventurers of All Sizes

A trove of trinkets, an assortment of oddities, a bevy of baubles, a cache of curios. All ideas free to a good home—appropriate for an interesting additionial starting item, a peculiar prize stolen or won, rounding out a vendor's wares, or whatever other purpose one might see fit.

Mateusz Wiśniewski

1. A coin of the highest local denomination, with two heads.
2. A full-sized trombone, nonetheless able to fit into any pocket or container.
3. A frog, able to record and repeat messages up to one sentence in length; can only hold one at a time.
4. A jar, containing a very annoyed bat, refilled at any reputable swooprat breeder.
5. A double-ended flask—any liquid poured out one side comes out perfectly chilled, out the other scalding hot.
   
6. A pair of leather boots that make not a sound.
7. A dead snake, ~10 yards in length (works surprisingly well as a rope).
   
8. A startlingly convincing mask of the local mayor's (or other city official) face.
9. A taxidermy model of a small animal that probably doesn't exist.
10. A pair of dice enchanted to only ever land on 1 or 6.
11. A small hand drum that plays itself to match the beat of music around it.
12. A bottle of perfume that smells like its wearer's favourite scent, cranked up to 11.
13. A questionably authentic letter of authority from the local duke, painfully vague in what it permits.
14. A pocket mirror.
    
15. A music box, containing a famous hymn. Painfully loud.
16. A stolen satchel, bearing the official seal of the Courier's Guild.
17. A pack of gold-leaf playing cards, including jokers, blanks, and a double-back card.
18. A gold medal, its inscription long worn off.
19. A deeply heretical prayer book, proscribed in all lands of the Church.
20. An expensive locket, containing nothing but a daguerreotype of a frog.
21. An adjustable wrench, caked in rust.
22. A hat, always just a bit too large for any bearer.
23. A hot air balloon license, with the PC's name spelled slightly wrong.
24. A set of wind chimes that generate a small breeze when rung (warning label—"keep out of wind.")
25. A diary that writes about its owner's day by itself.
26. A clockwork mouse—makes noise, can travel ~10 yards before stopping, and must be wound before use.
    
27. An address book of folk-healers and local wise ones.
    
28. A wanted poster, depicting someone who looks just like you.
29. A pickled pinky finger, supposedly that of a famed saint.
30. A pair of glasses that don't improve the bearer's distance vision, but instead let them see regardless of conditions.

d100 Food Found Foraging in the Bayou

oh to wander among the mangroves

The swamps and bayous of the Ontarachie are ancient—far older than New Alores, older still than any written record. The trees stood when people arrived, and they will stand long after people leave. Layer upon layer of decay and growth and renewal they lie, ever-flourishing on the corpse of the old. On these layers stand the villages of the fungus folk, the Archangel's cathedral, His Resplendent Majesty's great city; all the marvels of artifice made material by mundane hand. New Alores stands resplendent, yet beyond its borders lies something greater—something primal, something verdant. In the Ontarachie, everything is simply more—life abounds, teeming under every surface; its waterways and passages twist and turn, as gnarled and dense and crooked as the branches of any tree; there the lotus truly blooms.

1-10: Mundane mushrooms. On 10, truffles instead.

11-20: Onions. On 20, they're riddled with odd holes.
21-30: Thistles. On 30, they ooze a dark liquid.
31-40: Shrimp. On 40, they're bright blue.
41-50: Rabbit. On 50, it has wings.
51-60: Swooprat (bat). On 60, it bristles with spines.
61-70: Pitch-dark pecans. On 70, sickly-sweet walnuts instead.
71-75: Crawfish. Just crawfish.
76-80: Frog. On 80, it glows.
81-85: Small elk. On 85, it has a crab-like shell.
86-90: Catfish. On 90, it has horns.
91-95: Slugs or snails. On 95, they continue to squirm on the way down.
96-99: Wild pig. On 99, it's coated in spores.
100: Reroll. That, but giant.

An Eralou-related post. Expect more... eventually, perhaps.

13 Superstitions for Sci-Fi Space-Farers

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Sailors are notoriously superstitious; does it not stand to reason that the same would be true for those who sail the stars? Here's 13 folk beliefs among the travellers of wildspace, from the crews of the greatest star-galleons to the smallest dragonships, free to a good home.

1. Always take a leak before you launch.
2. Every ship should have a cat, and every crew should trust their cat.
3. Nep'Thulir, the Great Wurm Who Roams the Sea of Endless Stars.
4. The Gravitas, a famed ghost ship, forever damned to drift on the solar winds.
5. If you don't knock twice on your way out of the airlock, what comes back in won't be you.
6. Make sure any new ships are correctly blessed by a Priest of the Seventh Sun before their maiden voyage. 
7. No praying in the Warp, lest you attract a jump-beast.
8. The Void. A vast emptiness, devoid of a single star, meteor, or speck of dust. None pass through it.
9. Moon-madness; never stay too long in the orbit of a moon without a waystation. Nothing good awaits.
10. Always wake up the machine spirits through shanties, prayers, or music before you fly, lest your equipment fail.
11. Hold your breath while passing through a ship graveyard.
12. Never carry change in your right pocket.
13. Idle minds open the way for thought-feasters.

d6 Doors

Maybe there is more of the magical

in the idea of a door than in the door

itself. It’s always a matter of going

through into something else.

—Marge Piercy

1. A handmade wooden wardrobe, carved lions for feet and a leaflike pattern inscribed on the doors. A maker's mark was once visible, but has worn away with age. Currently located in the private collection of an eccentric antiques dealer.

2. A ruined arch of time-weathered stone, cloaked in moss. It lies secret in the forests of the north, in a clearing all its own among the trees. It bears no sign of having been part of another construction, and cannot be found by those who seek it without having visited it before.

3. A door under the stairs of an unassuming suburban home—things stored in it have a habit of disappearing, and that which is found is often not what was left. The owners take little note of this; a collective refusal to acknowledge the truth has convinced the family that uncle Darrell died in a car crash.

By Alexandra Petruk

4. A mirror, currently stored in the bowels of a cathedral. Rectangular in shape and tall in size, its gilt frame depicts dozens of animals and plants. Its inscription, a rhyming couplet in the tongue of snakes and foxes, advises all those who enter to "keep one eye in front and one behind". 

5. A cave, hidden behind a crashing waterfall. Stalactites dot the ceiling, and the air is heavy with the rank scent of mildew. Fog drifts out from some hidden source deep within the cave; those who exit discover themselves somewhere different, most often dizzy or confused.

6. A barrow mound containing the bones of a nine-foot tall giant, buried alongside a sword half his height and a dozen desiccated rats. It can only be properly entered at auspicious times of year—solstice or equinox most particularly.

The City Who Slumbers Not

City! I am true son of thine;

Ne’er dwelt I where great mornings shine

Around the bleating pens;

Ne’er by the rivulets I strayed,

And ne’er upon my childhood weighed

The silence of the glens.

Instead of shores where ocean beats,

I hear the ebb and flow of streets.

—Alexander Smith, 'Glasgow'

The City is an old thing, built long before living memory. It reaches out endlessly in every direction—east & west, up & and down, inward & out. Layers of new creation spring up over layers of ruin, the old consumed to make way for the present. Petty factions vie for power, each eager to further their goals and advance their standing—councils, unions, cults, and consortiums of all stripes always interfering in each other's works.

The City is alive, change its near-sole constant; a fixed map is of little use to anyone, save perhaps as something to blow your nose with. Everything in the City matters to someone; quite who might not matter yet, but they do exist. Life is everywhere, even in those bits abandoned by humanity.

By Stephan Martiniere

The Sewer-Ferry Syndicate

The Sewer-Ferry Syndicate are one of the City's most wealthy purveyors of transport, providing passage all across its lower regions. They provide financial and military backing to gondoliers and boat captains of all kinds, undercutting or threatening any potential operators who refuse to pay their dues. They often draw the ire of those who call the sewers their home—the Rat-Speakers, fungus cults, &c.—and are quick to ally themselves to those who might see the City's annals 'cleaned up', as it were.

Goal: Outcompete financial opponents, regulate all passage through the sewage network

Allies: The Plumber's Guild, Waterworks, the Sludgemarket

Enemies: Other transport suppliers, the splintered Fishing Coalition, native denizens of the sewer system

The Church of Urbis

Members of the Church of Urbis are worshippers the City itself, ever-eager to perform good deeds in Her service. They revere those who work to maintain Her various boroughs and enclaves, and often take it upon themselves to clean up messes or decorate empty spaces in Her honour. They deride other forms of faith as idolatry and heresy, including those who worship the City in the "wrong" ways. Bureaucrats, lawmen, and officers of local governments are among the Church's most common adherents.

Goal: Convert all to the light of the City's worship.
Allies: Hapsmire District Council, the Street-Sweeper's Guild
Enemies: Litterers, loiterers, other faiths (especially the Cult of Metros)

Their Majesty's College of Wizardly Study

No one quite recalls whose majesty the College was named in reference to, but the College Board's bureaucracy thinks it adds an air of grandeur. It is but one among many institutions offering tutelage in the practice of magic, each eager to draw the eye of new prospective students to extort for money and saddle with debt shape into the next generation of scholars! The College is particularly renowned among its peers for its research into spatial manipulation, though accusations remain of stolen experiments; total codswallop, of course.

Goal: Provide as much return to investors as possible education to all who desire (and can afford) it!
Allies: Very little; the academic world is one of spite, not friendship.
Enemies: Agselsior University, the Institute of Elemental Arts, Gdinsleslav Academy; the list goes on.

1d50 factions for player characters to love, hate, or owe copious amounts of money to:

BLLOG Backgrounds (d100 Table + Rulings)

100 backgrounds for the Black Lotus Laws of Gaming, a GLOGhack set in a fantasy world inspired by Louisiana. See a brief setting intro here.

My planned background "rules" for BLLOG are as follows: for tasks related to your background, you won't need to roll where others might. For more difficult or potentially consequential tasks, the DM may still ask you to roll with advantage (roll 2d20, take the better). Where others might roll with disadvantage, you roll normally, etc. If you would prefer to use a different system, by all means do so.

First and foremost, these backgrounds are intended to give you new tools with which to approach the world of Eralou, opening up opportunities for interactions and solutions to problems that might not come up otherwise.

A crawgiant. By Josh Shelnutt

The Table:

1:	Chef	51:	Candlemaker
2:	Waiter	52:	Athlete
3:	Bokor	53:	Homemaker
4:	Farmer	54:	Teenage rebel
5:	Fisherman	55:	Glassmaker
6:	Pickpocket	56:	Architect
7:	Art forger	57:	Construction worker
8:	Virtuoso	58:	Music historian
9:	Aristocrat	59:	New Alores historian
10:	Chorus singer	60:	Storyteller
11:	Former zoulev practitioner	61:	Prankster
12:	Researcher	62:	Humble heir
13:	Shady butcher	63:	Loan shark
14:	Raised by mushrooms.	64:	Ramshackle inventor
15:	Born in the bayou	65:	Gator haberdasher
16:	Carpenter	66:	Local expert
17:	Tour guide	67:	Conservationist
18:	Smuggler	68:	Untrustworthy almanac writer
19:	False seer	69:	Unscrupulous mortician
20:	Failed bureaucrat	70:	Bottle-golem sculptor
21:	Marshcroak breeder	71:	Lotus ale brewer
22:	Tomb attendant	72:	Moderately successful flourist
23:	Bartender	73:	Wannabe adventurer
24:	Barfly	74:	Serpent hermit
25:	Riverboat pilot	75:	Parent of 3d4 children
26:	Boat engineer	76:	Talisman salesman
27:	Circus performer	77:	Huntsman
28:	Teacher	78:	Descendant of a saint
29:	Beekeeper	79:	Champion beignet eater
30:	Devil wrangler	80:	Former deputy
31:	Trufflemonger	81:	Got lost in the bayou, wandered out one day
32:	Crawgiant rider	82:	Maid to the royal family
33:	Swooprat (bat) tamer	83:	Courier
34:	Balloon engineer	84:	Cheese consultant
35:	Bounty hunter	85:	Fireworks enthusiast
36:	Local celebrity	86:	Misunderstood poet
37:	Local crackpot	87:	Trashtalker
38:	Failed author	88:	Very trusted merchant
39:	Surgeon-in-training	89:	Exotic animal handler
40:	Infamously bad barber	90:	Town gossip
41:	Gambler	91:	Gazette writer
42:	Subject of a famous song or painting	92:	Experimental stiltwalker
43:	Jewel thief	93:	Parade float judge
44:	Street partier	94:	Plagued by vicious rumors
45:	One hit wonder	95:	Outlandish hoax-crafter
46:	Obscure collector	96:	Perfume connoisseur
47:	Tourist	97:	Ten times failed entrepreneur
48:	Orphan	98:	Victim of a minor irreversible curse
49:	Mobster	99:	Child of the mayor
50:	Fireman	00:	Reroll twice. Both backgrounds apply.