Reapers

Hell’s invasion of the moon Asphodel increased its metaphysical gravity, and some souls from other moons get trapped on the the new pseudo-hell rather than continuing to their proper afterlife. They reincarnate on Asphodel, now known as Pilgrims, remembering their death but not their judgement. Some devote themselves a more virtuous life, atoning for a past life’s perceived sins. Some throw themselves into hedonism, knowing their gift could easily shatter. Almost every Pilgrim clings dearly to their second chance at life.

The Reapers are entities dedicated to gathering up these escaped souls and returning them to their journey. They are the manifestation of powerful metaphysical forces, but they are not invulnerable, and they can be evaded. If killed or thwarted, the Reapers reform elsewhere after 24 hours but lose interest in whoever they were targeting.

Death can afford to play games. When you gamble with your life, the house always wins. (Source)

The Grim

Grim Reaper. Hooded, cloaked skeleton. Chill but not talkative. Not mean to Pilgrims, but also no great comfort. Appears in a doorway when no one is looking.

HD 8; Armor as Leather; Move 2; Scythe d12
Scythe hits everyone adjacent to the Grim at once. If damaged to 0 HP, save; if you fail, your fate is sealed and you will die in exactly 3 rounds—nothing can kill you until then, but you will die instantly.

You may bargain for your soul (if dead) or the souls of others (if alive) by playing a game with the Grim. If you win, you and any other agreed-upon souls go free and the Grim leaves. If you fail, both your soul and the others are taken to the afterlife. You can pick the game but the Grim has veto power. Rock Paper Scissors and Connect 4 are popular.

The Angel will be sympathetic as it lets fall a radiant deathblow.  (Luca Giordano)

The Angel

White robes, dove wings. Constantly attempting to comfort the Pilgrims. Its efforts would be more effective if it weren’t trying to kill them with a flaming sword. Walks up like a normal person and tries to ease Pilgrims into their second death before revealing its angelic form.

HD 8; Armor as Leather; Move 2 Fly; Flaming Sword 2d6
Cannot enter any blessed building. Also easily engaged in conversation or bribed with food.

Look, subtlety is not my strong suit, okay? Sometimes you just need a flaming skull in your campaign and that's that (Source)

The Rider

Flaming Skull Head. Motorcycle, dark clothes, lots of spikes and chains and belt buckles. Yells threats and curses and revs the engine.

HD 6; Armor as Chain; Move 10 Motorcycle; Roadkill 2d6 + Knock Prone OR 1d8 Chain Whip
Leaves a trail of fire.
Has to slow down to a stop to turn on the spot. Cannot detach from the motorcycle, so it cannot go anywhere you cannot effectively maneuver a motorcycle.

The death of a person is a tragedy. The death of ecosystems is a constant. (Marek Madej)

The Wild

Huge Humanoid Skeleton with Deer Skull and glowing red eyes, roots knotted around its joints. Plants wither of disease around it and animals lay down to bleed out. Makes a constant low buzzing sound.

HD 8; Armor as Leather; Move 1 Float; Laceration Field 1d6 (15’ radius)
Laceration Field damages all living creatures within 15 feet of the Wild.
The Wild is Vulnerable to fire; it fears and takes double damage from it.

The Deadbolt soundtrack is AMAZING and you should listen to it. The game is also pretty awesome. Seriously. (Soundtrack)

The Marksman

Bleached skull head, brown trench coat, not very large. Careful to protect its fragile, near-mortal body. Mute.

HD 4; Armor as Plate; Move 1.5; Revolver 1d8/Revolver 1d8 OR Sledgehammer 1d12
Each of the Marksman’s two Revolvers has only 6 shots.
Cover: It can hide behind cover to upgrade its Armor to Plate and Shield.
Ash: It can transform into a cloud of ash to become invincible or reach somewhere it couldn’t normally (no attacks as ash).

d5 Random Encounters with the Reapers

1. Old, old farmer pretending not to be home with a Reaper at the door
2. Ragged person sprinting across the landscape, Reaper in pursuit
3. Bandit gang facing down a Reaper on the road. The leader is terrified
4. A Reaper approaches the party and asks the players about the whereabouts of the last NPC they spoke with. They’re good at detecting lies, but not supernaturally so
5. A Reaper has caught the trail of a member of the party 

Every time I go to google Deadbolt I forget that that's also just, like, an object, and get a bunch of pictures of these (Buy It I Guess??)

6 Hellish Hexes

I've been plugging away at Hellwalkers for a little bit now, mostly keying hexes. There are 216 on the map; my goal is to key at least 108 of them. Here are a few, not in any particular order. They're a bit wordy, but this is my first draft for personal use; I would like to polish this hexcrawl eventually to the point where other people can run it. In the meantime, check this out.

Like this but red and with a hammer and with glowing eyes (Castlevania Wiki)

C02

Demon Forge Hammer on an acropolis, guarded by a Demon Blacksmith. He will give it up if the adventurers can best him in honorable combat. The Hammer actually is the Blacksmith; the humanoid body is projected from it. He was employed in creating the chains that hold the great demon Asphodel at the planet’s core, and has no love of it nor the Order of Asphodel, which he knows was probing for the secrets of the original demon binders (space elves). In order to carry the Hammer, a person must cut off their own hand; in its place, a demonic armored gauntlet will grow to hold it. If it is given away to another person, the new wielder must also cut off their hand; the original wielder will be left with a (healthy) stump.

Demon Blacksmith: A huge hollow suit of hoplite armor, blood-red but shiny and neat. Its eyes are embers.
HD: 6, Armor as Plate, Move 1.5, Hammer 2d6
Chains From Below: Summons chains from below to restrain every creature within 10’ of a point (60’ range). The Blacksmith can restrain itself with this by accident.
During duels, won’t incur permanent injuries or kill opponents.

Loot: Demon Forge Hammer. Main Hand, d8 damage, Sapient Demon Blacksmith personality. Imparts expert blacksmithing knowledge to wielder. Throwable, and returns to its hand. Can vaporize a creature’s armor 1/day.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Q05

The Eclipse Fountain. A concrete fountain built before the apocalypse, now covered in a web of deep cracks filled with obsidian and marked by the Order of Asphodel. It has inscriptions depicting an eclipse. The water is crystal clear and carbonated. If someone drinks it, they gain a Mutation, and the rest of the water in the fountain loses its carbonation and mutagenic effects. It recarbonates and becomes mutagenic again after every eclipse (every 5 days).

(Matthias Withoos)

N04

The Graveyard of Stones (O03). There are concrete headstones from the Old World weathered to illegibility, but there are also newer cairns and driftwood gravemarkers and a few recently-carved stone headstones. Many of them have a prayer carved into them: “May your rest be dark and deep / Though your absence we may weep / Asphodel will break your sleep / Granting you new company to keep.” 

Gandalf if Gandalf had died in the first five minutes of the Lord of the Rings (DanielRound on DeviantArt)

M03

Strontium Carbonate, the Firework Wizard. He died in a Firework Accident on a medieval fantasy world before reincarnating as a Pilgrim. He’s very confused. He has an entire cart full of regular, physical fireworks. He can shoot tiny flares from his fingers and blow animated smoke rings at will. He has 5 scrolls of Firework and keeps the spell Finale safely in his mind; he is good friends with it. It is the original owner of his name, Strontium Carbonate, and he confers with it frequently. He will gladly trade a large amount of fireworks and a scroll of Firework for directions to safety.

Loot:
Firework
R: 500’ T: Point D: 1 round
Launch a firework. Casts light in a 100’ radius. Deals d6 burn damage to anyone it hits directly and lights fires in particularly flammable objects. If cast with 2 or more [dice], the firework can be animated.

Finale
R: 2000’ T: 100’ Radius Sphere D: [dice] rounds
Launch a dazzling display of fireworks into an area, in whichever pattern you desire. Creatures inside the area of effect take d6 damage every round and must Save or be Blinded. It lights fires on all flammable surfaces.

Uhhhhh have this concrete disk I guess (This Photo Website)

L02

A concrete disk 100’ across webbed with obsidian and marked by the Order of Asphodel. In the center, there’s a glass disk 5’ across set level with the rest of the disk. Under the glass, gold glints. The concrete and glass are frictionless--anything that moves onto the disk slides slowly across the entire thing. If anything is on top of the glass disk, a 60-second countdown flickers to life in the glass and mechanisms whir; at the end, the glass disk retracts, allowing access to the treasure. It resets if the pressure is released, though, like if an adventurer skids briefly across it.

Loot: 500c in pre-invasion gold coins, Frictionless Boots, 3 Flasks of Ultragrease (covers 10’ radius), Scroll of Grease

Pictured: a deadly weapon, at least for this guy (Rocks)

K02

Tomb of the Blade-Proof Demon, a small concrete bunker in a cliff. It has a vault marked by the Order of Asphodel and a sarcophagus with a pentagram and an inscription. The inscription reads “An Invincible Demon guards this cache. It must be killed to access the vault. Drop blood on the pentagram to summon the guardian and learn its doom.” If the pentagram is activated, new words will burn themselves onto the inscription: “No weapon nor tool nor spell forged of mortal hands can harm the guardian.” Then the Blade-Proof Demon will emerge from the sarcophagus, non-hostile but inordinately smug. If he is killed, the vault opens, revealing the treasure.

Blade-Proof Demon: A red man in a flowery swimming suit. He’s not particularly strong or tough looking, but he is inordinately smug. He’ll dare people to attack him, just to prove his invincibility. He is easily bored and will wander away from crowded areas after a bit.
HD 3; Armor as Leather; Move 1; Longsword d8
The Blade-Proof Demon does not take damage from any weapon, spell, or other object made by a mortal person. Takes regular damage from punches, bites, rocks, falls, and other such things.

Loot: 500c, Tortoise Cloak: Crouch down to make yourself immobile and invincible, but it takes a full minute to get back up.

MUSIC DRAGONS

Dragons are great.  They should have great noises. 

Other smart people have written a lot about dragons already. Beloch Shrike wrote a post about constructing them, Skerples wrote several posts about a precarious kingdom of dragons, and Arnold K wrote some about a precarious family. My dragons have a little bit of Patrick Stuart’s Spectre of the Bröcken in them as well. These posts are my basic model for dragons: they’re intensely magical, scary for everyone at every level, but conceivably so, and also all batshit crazy. They go on every long-distance travel and city encounter table. 

But my dragons are special, of course. Along with appearance, abilities, and hoarding, I add something else to the mix:

Instrumentation. It can telegraph a dragon's strengths or weaknesses, even before the players see it. 

It also lets your players know that they're not in Magic Kansas anymore. 

Dragons have the strongest souls. They’re more real than everything else; the universe likes them, reshaping itself to their whims, letting them fly and breath fire even though--according to all known laws of aviation--those things are ridiculous. The universe also likes adventurers a lot. Who does it like the most? Bards. 

That’s not a coincidence. Bards stole music from the dragons, and with it, they made the universe like them, too. The dragons are still pissed. Before, each dragon had their own unique instrumentation, but then those filthy humanoids came along and started mucking things up, duplicating instruments and forming ensembles. 

But this isn’t a post about bards. Here’s some dragons.

"Sell me on your music dragons"

The Devourer: Low brass brays over the hills minutes before you even see it, nearly drowning out the bleating of the sheep in its claws

Ludwig: Violins poke your eardrums while the dragon skitters around, judging your musical potential

The Pipewyrm: The sound of an electric guitar dragging along a metal pipe echoes from every direction, then you realize it isn't echoing

Gunshow: Are those snare drums or gunshots, wait no it's both and also a dragon

Postwald: Gloating laughter isn't as intimidating when it's accompanied by an asthmatic accordion

MUSIC DRAGONS Playlist

Now Some More Detail 

Name: What it calls itself and/or what people call it

Appearance: What it looks like

Instrumentation: The noise it makes as it moves

Personality: How it behaves

Weakness: Vulnerability and effect on dragon

Minions: Lesser beings serving the dragon. Kobolds and dragonborn were other creatures who came to the dragon offering servitude; the dragon ate them, remaking them in its image as servants or warriors. 

Hoard: Types of thing it hoards. Will not attack if offered an item for its hoard, no matter how shitty it is

HD: Number of d8s, rolled for HP

Armor: In terms of equivalent armor (Leather/Chain/Plate/Plate and Shield)

Move: In multiples of the standard human movespeed, assume 1x Ground if unlisted

Attacks: Attacks separated by a slash can all be taken on the same turn, and OR means the dragon must choose. Breath attacks are always “OR” attacks

Breath: Special attack, most often breathed out. Recharge is chance to be able to use its breath 

weapon at the beginning of each turn 

"wy do all mi shep keep dyin aftr som days, gotta steel som mor" (Kou Takano on ArtStation)

Name: Nameless, known as The Devourer

Appearance: Large-cottage-sized, verdant green, fairy tale dragon, the sort knights might slay

Instrumentation: Low brass braying before it comes over the horizon

Personality: Bestial. Roughly understands language but doesn’t deign to speak

Weakness: Coordination is confusing 

Minions: None

Hoard: Small houses, Livestock. They die after a few days without food, frustrating The Devourer. It never eats the livestock in its hoard

HD: 10

Armor: as Plate

Move: 2x Fly

Attacks: 1d8 Claw/1d8 Claw/2d10 Chomp

Breath: 60’ 60 degree cone, 3d6 Fire Save for Half, Recharge 2-in-6. Spectacular movie fire

They call it the Devourer. It swoops down every few days and carries off cows or entire sheds, leaving burned wreckage where the townsfolk tried to fight it. It would be better for everyone if it had someone to tend its flock, but nobody has seen the state of its hoard besides the dragon itself. 

Season with Mustache to taste (How to Train Your Dragon)

Name: Ludwig

Appearance: Size of a small dog, bright yellow, snake-like, snobby mustache

Instrumentation: Frantic violins, like a cartoon character sneaking 

Personality: Egotistical snob. Particularly detests music that isn’t classical

Weakness: Takes double damage from Sneak Attacks

Minions: Network of rat-sized kobolds spread throughout an entire city, scouting out performers, and Dragonborn performers

Hoard: Sheet music and performers, who are 50/50 on willingness to be part of the hoard regardless of status as dragonborn, kobold, or unconverted

HD: 4

Armor: as Plate and Shield

Move: 2x Fly

Attacks: 2d6 Bite OR 3d6 Poison Bite on Sneak Attack

Breath: Eye contact, 3d4 Silent Ignition, no Save, Recharge 6-in-6, interrupted by damage. The dragon stares at you and flames leap from your body

Ludwig has been kidnapping musicians for 10 years now. Its orchestra is nearly complete. The violinists are excited to perform because they’re very good, the violists are excited to perform because they haven’t done that before, the cellists are weaponizing their bulky instruments in preparation for a rebellion, and the bassists are getting ready to raft out on their instruments. Ludwig is a terrible conductor and any performance he leads will probably end in violence. 

Like this, but with fewer legs and more unidentifiable excrement and lethal electric charge (WoodsOfOld on DeviantArt)

Name: Pypewyrm

Appearance: No legs, six inches thick around the body, hundreds of feet long, mostly in pipes at any given time. Would be electric blue if it wasn’t caked in mud and feces

Instrumentation: Metal pipe dragged across an electric guitar

Personality: Hissing suspicion, always hungry

Weakness: Smell of good cooked food is irresistible 

Minions: None

Hoard: Cooked food, especially baked goods. It rots constantly, frustrating the dragon. It never eats the food in its hoard

HD: 8

Armor: as Chain

Move: 2x Slither Through Pipes

Attacks: 2d6 Bite

Breath: Electrically charged body deals 1d6 damage to attackers using bare skin or metal weapons 

The Pypewyrm lives in the sewers below the city, stealing and gathering as much food as it can, unbeknownst to the citizens it slides beneath. It will soon learn the location of the city’s bakery, the most decadent in the country. This will be too much for the Pypewyrm. 

There's not really anything I can add to this (Real Truth on tumblr)

Name: Gunshow 

Appearance: Elephant-sized, firetruck red, bulging biceps, capable of short-distance bipedalism for showing off

Instrumentation: Snare drums like gunshots 

Personality: Swaggering jock, flexes biceps as punctuation

Weakness: Always responds to immediately-fulfillable challenges (dares)

Minions: Kobold pyrotechnics experts, always ready with more fireworks and the occasional illusion-spell hologram/megaphone, and musclebound Dragonborn experts with hoarded guns

Hoard: All types of firearms, art of muscle-y things

HD: 8

Armor: as Plate

Move: 2x Ground

Attacks: 3d4 Punch/3d4 Punch

Breath: 200’ line, 2d6 exploding on 1-2 (regular Attack roll). Mouth opens snake-wide, brief pause, bullets pour out

Gunshow is going to host a sharpshooting tournament. Gunshow will try to A) rig its own victory, B) find a way to petrify the most muscle-y participants into statues, and C) kill the remaining participants, resisting spectators, and meddlers and take all the guns for itself. 

Do you see how majestic this is? The relaxed pose, the regal expression? Try to picture the opposite of this (Ciruelo Cabral)

Name: Postwald

Appearance: Twitchy, horse-sized, patchy white, salamander thing 

Instrumentation: Asthmatic accordion 

Personality: Gloating, pompous, stupid

Weakness: Plans always fail when Postwald is involved, one way or another. Postwald is also very foolish, just in general

Minions: Very intelligent, lethal kobolds. Masters of traps and deception. Single dragonborn named Bos, creaky storyteller. Worship Postwald as god

Hoard: Religious texts, secrets, criminals

HD: 6

Armor: as Leather

Move: 1x Ground

Attacks: 1d6 Flail/1d6 Flail

Breath: 30’ 60 degree cone, Save vs Overconfidence, Recharge 4-in-6

Postwald is a dragon in Skerples’ Veinscrawl, which is free and awesome and has a handful of other useful dragons. Postwald itself is a perfect example of the sort of incompetent villain I love most. The only thing I’ve really added here is its instrumentation: a wheezing accordion. Postwald and its minions believe it is the sound of Creation coming into being, naturally. 

Storytime

So when I first came up with this idea--musical dragons--I didn’t actually use it. I was still in the fairly early stages of learning to GM (well, earlier than now, anyway), I was playing just once every few weeks, and my players weren’t traveling above ground enough to get the “dragon” result on the random encounter table. As a result, my dragons—just Ludwig and Devourer at that point—languished in the back of my mind. The idea of musical dragons slowly faded for me, becoming bland in comparison to the other RPG books I was reading (Vornheim and Veins of the Earth, I think). 

Then, finally, they hit a dragon encounter: Ludwig, in the middle of the city. My players loved it. They were fascinated by the violin noises it made, and talked to it for a solid 10 real minutes before moving on. I was surprised by how interested they were in it. Later on, the same group of players met the Pypewyrm (they cooked some rats for it), and I think a couple of them started to figure out how I run dragons. Unfortunately, that group has scattered to the winds, but I’m hammering out a new group now and they’ll start running into dragons soon enough. If there’s a point to all of this, it’s to have confidence in your own ideas even after you let them sit unused for a while.

UPDATE: Torch Hollow made some more MUSIC DRAGONS for Secret Santicorn! Check 'em out here: https://savevshollowing.wordpress.com/2018/12/24/music-dragons-santicorn-2018/