Body, Bone, Soul: Necromancy in Tarfel

Two posts in one day! I better pace myself or I'll collapse from exhaustion. Truth is I've got a minor backlog of 21-ish posts at completion levels ranging from 0% to 25%. I try to knock out one every so often.

Carnomancy

Carnomancy is the magic of the flesh. It makes wounds heal or fester, it restores withered limbs or makes healthy ones rot on the body. Carnomancy is the most common form of healing magic and also the least restricted.  Carnomancers are also employed as animal and monster trainers, using magic to sharpen or dull some biological responses; they are also sometimes found working as torturers or loansharks, able to mete out and heal injuries. Carnomancers with an interest in undead can animate dead flesh, creating stereotypical zombies. Such zombies are sluggish because the magic coursing through them only animates their flesh, not their bones; without a skeleton to support it, undead flesh is limited to a slug-like locomotion. Needless to say, such activities are not well-regarded both for their desecration of the dead and the risk of disease.

Osseomancy

Osseomancy is the magic of bones. It restores bones to their original condition, reshapes them and strengthens them, or warps into instruments of torture or violence. Ossemancers in civilized lands mainly work as bonesetters and surgeons. Like Carnomancers, some Osseomancers get involved in seedier business relations but they demand higher pay than Carnomancers. Their cost makes criminal Osseomancers somewhat of a novelty. The stereotypical undead created by Osseomancers are magically animated skeletons of all kinds. In most civilizations, Ossemancers make a point of avoiding the animation of humanoid remains, preferring to animate animal skeletons. Skeletons never cause as much panic as a zombie but they aren't exactly popular either.

Animancy

Animancy is the magic of souls. It alone is the only component of Grand Necromancy that is nigh-universally outlawed, hated, and feared. Animancers manipulate souls, changing personalities, imposing terrible curses or dubious blessings, and denying souls their eternal rest by turning them into monstrous spirit-things. Wraiths are one of the many vile creations of Animancy.

Least Necromancy

Least Necromancy is the most common form of "True" Necromancy. Least Necromancers have a knowledge of both Carnomancy and Osseomancy as well as mundane sciences such as surgery and medicine. Least Necromancers rarely tend to be the types who raise an army of undead or what have you; they tend to operate openly as healers and secretly use undead they create as servants, orderlies, and test subjects for treatments that are too dangerous or illegal to practice on living people. The only dark side of the Least Necromancers is that they need bodies for all those assistants and test subjects. They acquire them most often by grave-robbing, although some don't mind murder either. Greater Zombies (or Fast Zombies as the unimaginative call them) are an example of a Least Necromancer's craft.

Lesser Necromancy

Lesser Necromancy is generally what people are thinking of when they hear "Necromancy". Lesser Necromancers know Animancy and either Osseomancy or Carnomancy, but never both. Lesser Necromancers can (and do) create small armies of undead. Because they taint Carnomantic and Osseomantic magic with Animantic elements, most undead they create tend to possess an instinctual hatred of the living and kill them whenever possible. Lesser Necromancers who master Animancy and Ossoemancy may eventually transform themselves into Liches; those who pursue Animancy and Carnomancy tend to create monstrosities such as the Blood and Flesh "Elementals".

Grand Necromancy

If Lesser Necromancy is the popular face of the discipline in the eye of the public, Grand Necromancy is the popular (and most feared) face of Necromancy among Mages. Grand Necromancers unify Animancy, Carnomancy, and Osseomancy in a terrible synthesis. While Least Necromancers tend to be eccentrics and Lesser Necromancers are little more than local nuisances, Grand Necromancers can topple entire kingdoms. Thankfully, few individuals are focused and skilled enough to master all three of this discipline's components and so they are thankfully rare. Grand Necromancers can create exceptionally powerful undead such as Mohrgs, Mummies, and Vampires.

Shapeshifter Personalities

Anyway, I've got some "new" ideas for you guys. These personalities are general descriptors of how shapeshifters interact with non-shapeshifters in their territory. All are based on multiple "skinwalker" stories popular on certain imageboards. As such, they're more suitable for types of shapeshifters that live in the wilderness (mainly Fey creatures in D&D terms) as opposed to more urban shapeshifters like Mimics or D&D Doppelgangers. The images are ones that I felt fit the general concepts I'm presenting and they come from magiccards.info, a website I highly recommend.

Precocious

Most shapeshifters are at first just truly curious about the strange new creatures that enter their domain. Precocious shapeshifters tend to copy the appearance of a non-shapeshifter and then interact with an individual or the group. They will sometimes temporarily incapacitate the person they are mimicking but they tend not to. When the shapeshifter's trickery is discovered, it will quickly flee. Precocious shapeshifters will avoid combat if at all possible.


Helpful

A few Precocious shapeshifters with enough self-awareness and empathy will eventually develop a Helpful personality. Such shapeshifters help those who travel through their territory by indicating dangers, food, water, and good campsites. Helpful shapeshifters may have good intentions but they are not always well-equipped to communicate with passerbys because they often have an incomplete understanding of common languages. Additionally, Helpful shapeshifters loathe direct mimicry, instead preferring to create a unique shape based on a combination of many individuals. Because of their ignorance, these form can end up quite strange and disconcerting, like a male Dwarf's head on a Human woman's body. Helpful shapeshifters will help their charges in combat and flee if their charges attack them, but they will rarely hold grudges.


Mischievous

For some Precocious shapeshifters, the fear and desperation that non-shapeshifters feel in reaction to their activities becomes intoxicating. These Mischievous shapeshifters engineer situations to agitate and frighten non-shapeshifters as much as possible, often given rise to legends of haunted or cursed woods. Despite their apparent sadism, Mischievous shapeshifters rarely plan or execute plans that may be lethal to their victims. They reason that too many deaths may scare potential prey away and so rein in some of their more destructive impulses.


Malevolent

Some of the Mischievous eventually grow tired of non-lethal pranks; sometimes they merely seek a stronger and more exquisite form of fear. Other times they find the color of their victims' blood and the taste of their flesh to be even more intoxicating than fear. Almost as often, a Precocious or Helpful suffers great harm from a non-shapeshifter and settles into a vengeful demeanor. All these possibilities can create Malevolent shapeshifters. Malevolents always try to kill. Some do so slowly and methodically, relishing the fear they produce in their victims. Others kill quickly, rampaging through campsites and killing as many as possible before escaping into the night.

Rethinking Hobgoblins

I think it's safe to say that when most RPG players hear the word "Hobgoblin" they tend to visualize something that boils down to "a Goblin but bigger and with decent equipment". If we're mapping out an equivalency between Lord of The Rings and Dungeons & Dragons then Hobgoblins are the Uruk-hai to Goblins' Orcs (as an aside, I suspect that Bugbears are based the Olog-hai).
Of course, that isn't what Hobgoblins were like folklore (at least according to wikipedia):

Hobgoblins seem to be small, hairy little men who—like their close relative, brownies—are often found within human dwellings, doing odd jobs around the house while the family is lost in sleep. Such chores are typically small deeds, like dusting and ironing. Often, the only compensation necessary in return for these is food.
While brownies are more peaceful creatures, hobgoblins are more fond of practical jokes. They also seem to be able to shape-shift, as seen in one of Puck's monologues in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Robin Goodfellow is perhaps the most mischievous and most infamous of all his kind, but many are less antagonizing. Like all of the fae folk, hobgoblins are easily annoyed. They can be mischievous, frightening, and even dangerous.^[3] Attempts to give them clothing will often banish them forever, though whether they take offense to such gifts or are simply too proud to work in new clothes differs from teller to teller.

While certainly an interesting take, hairy little housekeepers aren't exactly prime material for most fantasy campaigns. At the same time, the militaristic Goblin jocks are a bit too overexposed. As an alternative, I present the Hobgoblins from Magic: The Gathering's Shadowmoor block:

Fair warning, I haven't been able to read the novels so the precise details might be off, I'm just going by what's on the cards. Shadowmoor's Hobgoblins are related to the setting's Goblins (who in terms of behavior are basically D&D Orcs). But they live in cozy cottages and pursue agrarian existences. So this is tying back into that domestic angle while also homaging Tolkienesque Hobbit/Halfling lifestyles. At the same time, they still have a sinister edge to them, as the flavor text for Hearthfire Hobgoblin (pictured above) states:

Hobgoblins are best left alone. They sharpen their farm implements far more than is necessary for their work in the fields.

 So behind this idyllic Shire-esque surface there's something dangerous, something murderous. But still, despite their seeming homicidal tendencies they don't seem to bother anyone who doesn't bother them. But look at the flavor text for Rugged Prairie:

Hobs bury their kin far from home. They believe the dry, open ground keeps hags from stealing the bones and gwyllions from stealing the spirits.

So what happens if a party of adventurers or Joe the peasant stumbles onto a Hob funeral? What happens when a Human village starts expanding out into Hob burial grounds? Sounds like an interesting potential encounter.

Extracting these Hobs from their native setting, think about how they could fit in to a "Traditonal" Fantasy setting. How are Hob-Halfling relations? What about Hobgoblin-Goblins relations? Are the Hobs ultimately just a weird off-shoot of Goblins or are they the product of Human-Goblin/Halfling-Goblin/Hobbit-Goblin pairings?

The last idea to consider is a bit more radical: Give Halflings the boot and replace them with Hobs. If the Short Guy PC race is composed of rustic axe-murderers instead of rustic thieves then it changes the flavor of the setting to something more sinister.

Roll d% to see if you rise as a Ghoul

One of the things has always bothered me about D&D is how so much of the fluff is segregated from crunch.

"You can fail a resurrection spell and someone back as zombie? That sounds -- oh wait, there are no rules for that."

"You can combine two animals into an abomination like an Owlbear? That sounds -- oh wait, there are no rules for that."

"People can spontaneously rise as undead? That sounds -- oh wait, there are no rules for that."

The last one brings me to today's post. I've been thinking on-and-off about developing my own retroclone-esque roleplaying game (probably something that'll end up an Owlbear-tier combination of GURPS, AD&D, 5e, and Mutants & Masterminds with a dash of Fighting Fantasy but I digress). 

One idea that keeps rattling about is a subsystem that allows the DM (or players, whatever) if a PC can rise as an Undead. Being a spy (or a voyeur) can make your PC rise as a Spectre. Party members near an evil shrine or temple may rise as Zombies. Eat any bit of the flesh of a sapient and you have a higher chance to rise as a Ghoul. Think of it as an earnest if somewhat misguided attempt to make those old adventure hooks into spontaneous self-perpetuating rules constructs. Anyway, on to the rules:

When the character dies, roll d% or 1d100. If the result is higher than the chance of rising then nothing happens. If it is equal to or lower than the percentage then the character rises as a Ghoul  about 24 (4d12) hours after his death. 

The base chance of a dead character rising as a Ghoul is 5% modified by the table below. Modifiers are cumulative. The final percentage cannot be less than 0% or greater than 100% unless you want to homebrew some crazy results.

The dead character . . .	% Modifier
. . . was Evil (if using an Alignment subsystem)	+10%
. . . was Chaotic (if using an Alignment subsystem)	+5%
. . . was Good (if using an Alignment subsystem)	-10%
. . . worshiped a god or power related to death, gluttony, Ghouls, or hunger	+10%
. . . had more than two character levels or Hit Dice (if using a level/Hit Dice subsystem)	+1% for each level/Hit Die beyond 2
. . . unknowingly ate the flesh of a sapient creature within the last 48 hours	+1% and additional +1% for every 5 pounds of sapient flesh consumed
. . . knowingly ate the flesh of a sapient creature within the last 48 hours	+10% and additional +1% for every 5 pounds of sapient flesh consumed
. . . killed a sapient creature within the last 48 hours specifically to eat it, but was in a state of extreme hunger and/or had no other food	+15%
. . . killed a sapient creature within the last 48 hours specifically to eat it, but was in a state of hunger and/or had little other food	+25%
. . . killed a sapient creature within the last 48 hours specifically to eat it despite having plenty of ordinary food	+45%

Here are examples of the system in practice:

Hogni Redbeard was a Lawful Evil (+10%) thief-acrobat-rogue with 3 Hit Dice (+1%). After becoming a devotee of The Great Maw, god of hunger (+10%), he adopted serial killing and cannibalism as hobbies. He kidnapped a Halfling merchant then killed him to make a stew (+45%). In the last 48 hours the only sapient flesh he managed to eat consisted of two hearty meals of Halfling stew which together added up 15 pounds (+10% for knowingly consuming, +15% for the amount consumed) before a band of vigilantes busted in and killed him. There is therefore a 96% (5% + 91%)chance that 4d12 hours after his death he will rise as a Ghoul.

Brother Magnus was a Neutral Good (-10%) Human 5^th-level (+3%) cleric. Trapped underground and without food, he stumbled into the storage room of some Goblins. Inside, he found some bundles of preserved meat. He ate 5 pounds of the meat without realizing that it was Elf jerky (+1% for unknowingly eating, +1% for the amount). Suddenly, two Hobgoblins appeared and attacked! Magnus was victorious but one of the dying Hobgoblins taunted him by revealing the nature of Magnus’ last meal. Distraught but still hungry, he grabbed some more of the meat and continued on his journey to find an exit from the underground hell. Although hungry, he only managed to eat another 5 pounds of Elf jerky (+10% for knowingly eating, +1% for the amount) before his moral repulsion overpowered his gnawing hunger. Alas, in his sleep a leak of toxic gas suffocated him. There is therefore an 11% (5% +6%) chance that he will rise as a Ghoul in 4d12 hours.

Now of course, there are some issues that I still have with my concept. Do the same rules apply to carnivores? What does this mean for creatures like Gnolls that deliberately eat sapients on large-scale? Are they basically guaranteed to rise as Ghouls? Should a mammalian humanoid incur the normal penalties for eating the flesh of sapient avian, insectoid, or reptilian humanoid or should they be diminished or waived? What about eating the flesh of sapient non-humanoids like Awakened Cows, Beholders, and Sphinxes?

I should have plenty of time to iron out the finer details later but a start is a start.