loving these priorities
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Ex Stasis Games needles at some uniquely modern fears with a new collection of system-neutral roleplaying scenarios.
Do Not Adjust Your Set is an anthology of system-neutral adventures based on writers’ favourite urban legends. With everything from infernal paintings and extradimensional arcade games to masked vigilantes and cutthroat academic competition, creepy one-shot TTRPG opportunity oozes from between the ectoplasm-slimed pages.
Do Not Adjust Your Set is a follow-up to 2022’s Midwinter Ghost Stories - a successfully Kickstarted anthology of system-neutral scenarios in the tradition of Victorian ghost stories. DNAYS features more modern stories and scares.
Do Not Adjust Your Set launches on Kickstarter on 31st October.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exstasisgames/do-not-adjust-your-set
Roleplaying Races 14: Trox
(art by Nicholas “Rookzer0” on Artstation)
And here we have another example of an ancestry originally created as an example in ARG’s race builder, this one demonstrating how strange and powerful you could make a playable race. The result was powerful and bulky beetle-folk with a chip on their shoulder.
While there doesn’t seem to be any one specific inspiration for this ancestry, fantasy has always been full of big, monstrous peoples who may or may not actually be surprisingly gentle despite their bulk and fearsomeness.
Interestingly, trox got a major update to their lore in Starfinder, which we’ll talk about momentarily.
As we learn in Starfinder, the trox as a people were created by the goddess Hylax as her envoys and sentinels, and are in fact native to the Liavaran moon of Nchak. However, while the majority of their people lived in relative peace, that group is not who we are talking about today.
You see, many trox were sealed inside protective asteroids by their goddess and launched to various other worlds to serve as envoys for her diplomatic ways, and one such stone fell to Golarion in the ancient past. However, the Golarion clan had the misfortune of being discovered by the duergar , who saw their physical might and similarity to the giant beetles they already used as beasts of burden and enslaved them, subjecting them to eugenic breeding programs and alchemical enhancement to turn them into powerful brutes.
Many trox have since rebelled and broken free, escaping to the surface, only to discover that the evils of slavery were present there as well. As such, while they retain some aspects of their heritage, the trox of Golarion are distrustful of other species due to the suffering their people have gone through.
Sporting heavy chitin elytra, mandibles, and armor, trox resemble humanoid beetles, but they are not fully arthropod-like in anatomy, sporting an internal skeleton as well and soft fleshy parts as well. Additionally, they also sport an array of smaller appendages on their chests in addition to their bipedal arms and legs. While not strong and articulate enough to wield objects, they can come in handy.
While the trox of Golarion have become brutish and somewhat violent, they share with their ancestors a strong sense of community that overrides personal desires, they also prove inquisitive, eager to learn about the ways of others, and fiercely loyal to those the call friends. Sadly, the vast majority of them still live in slavery, either to the duergar or to surface slavers of various peoples.
Trox are immensely strong, but centuries of conditioning have dulled their minds in all regards.
Despite their bulk, they prove surprisingly agile when they need to be.
Their night-eyes also suit them well for a life underground.
This in turn is fueled by their powerful digging claws, making them swift under the ground.
The conditioning that they were subjected to and the subsequent fury this engenders also makes them surprisingly violent when replying to the attacks of foes that have harmed them.
Additionally, their grabbing appendages are quite useful for latching onto a grappled foe, freeing up their arms to fight other foes.
There is one alternate option for the trox, representing those trox that have trained themselves to abandon their rage and focus, tapping into an atrophied vibration sense, all the better to notice when invisible foes like their duergar slavers are coming.
With their extremely high strength bonus, trox are very suited for melee builds, particularly grapple builds thanks to their extra appendages, making any combat class a good pick for them. The penalty to all three mental stats is something of a deterrent for any caster or skill-based class, but not an insurmountable one. In fact, the fact that their penalty applies to all three means that it’s almost like the board is even between the three, just expect to have to make a little effort to bring them in line with other casters and characters. Any class that can blend casting with more traditional combat will probably work best for them, such as druid, magus, paladin, and warpriest.
That does it for today, but we’ve got one more entry to do before we’re done. Look forward to it tomorrow!
The Pathfinder Metaplot Is a Coded Trans Narrative
Starring a goth succubus queen.
Figured that’d get your attention.
Here is the cover of Paizo’s Book of the Damned, which is the big PF1e sourcebook about demons, devils and daemons:
Our representative for demons, who was also the cover representative on the softcover book about demons specifically, is Nocticula. The Queen of the Succubi, and the first succubus:
The byline is appropriate here: Nocticula is one of James Jacobs’ characters, and might honestly be his favorite. And throughout the history of Pathfinder RPG, she has been a background presence who transitioned from mysterious possible threat to ally, and eventually from demon to goddess.
Ever since the first entries in the Pathfinder setting, statuettes of two entwined succubi have been scattered in various adventures as treasure. At first, this just seemed like, “oh, we don’t have to follow Wizards of the Coasts levels of content standards, this is a darker, edgier, sexier game”. But eventually it became clear that this was an easter egg for something bigger. We eventually learned the name of the sculptor; Ayavah. Ayavah is an intersex tiefling woman with connections to the Pathfinders, whose artistic muse is erotic sculptures of succubi. She’s a member of a heretical sect called the Cult of the Redeemer Queen, which believes that Nocticula is trying to expunge herself of her demonic nature and be reborn as a goddess. This cult is correct.
Nocticula as a demon is the patron of succubi, darkness and assassination. Her domain is the Midnight Isles, each one of which is grown around the corpse of a powerful demon. There were rumors that she was Lamashtu’s assassin, but that doesn’t really hold. Nocticula and Lamashtu do not much like each other, and when Lamashtu’s ally Baphomet started mining the Midnight Isles, Nocticula killed him. He got better.
This is Alushinyrra, the Porphyry City. Formerly Nocticula’s capitol, and a manifestation of another of Jacobs’ themes, “what if Mos Eisley was horny?”. Other manifestations include Scuttlecove from the Dragon Magazine days, and Vyre from Hell’s Rebels. All three of these cities have morally ambiguous goth women who are most likely to be allies of the PCs in the adventures that occur within them.
For Alushinyrra, that adventure is The Midnight Isles, which is part of the Wrath of the Righteous AP. That AP starts with the PCs helping Anevia Tirabade, a trans woman, get home to her wife, the paladin Irabeth Tirabade. Irabeth sold her holy sword to afford for Anevia to get magical gender affirming care.
Anevia
And Irabeth.
The same AP also featured a character named Arueshalae, the Heretic Demon. She was a succubus who attacked a cleric of Desna and was imprisoned in a dreamscape because of it, and when she got out realized that becoming a better person wasn’t just a dream, but something she could work towards.
Any or all of these characters can be in your party when you go to the Midnight Isles to ally with Nocticula. And all three of them are thematically resonant with her.
Artistic, creative women are a running theme through Paizo’s APs and adventurers, and a secondary running theme is that a lot of them seem to be transformed into something one way or the other and need the PC’s help to get themselves back to the way they should be, ranging from mortals to goddesses. Both Shattered Star and Hell’s Rebels, for example, have half-elf Pathfinders who are turned to stone by the villains, and need the PCs help to rescue them and can then be recruited as allies.
Koriah Azmeren (Shattered Star)
Shensen (Hell’s Rebels)
The Reign of Winter AP is basically “Baba Yaga is Doctor Who”, and the Queen of the Witches is stuck in a set of matroyshka dolls for most of its length.
Arazni is one of the goddesses in the Pathfinder setting, who was the herald of a god but was turned into a demigoddess lich against her will. Very goth. The last 1e Adventure Path, Tyrant’s Grasp, involves her sacrificing her unlife to save the PCs. And then, in 2e, she’s back, with a new portfolio of protecting the abused, maintaining your dignity and getting revenge on those that have hurt you.
(That collar, btw, covers up an autopsy scar where her heart was ripped out. The scar was customarily left exposed until she gained “dignity” as a portfolio item, which is a helluva piece of art direction)
And guess which of the Runelords, the wizard dictators that are how Paizo decided to introduce the Pathfinder setting way back when, which one of those is the only one to have redeemed themselves?
Sorshen, the Runelord of Lust, of course. Who now is one of the rulers of New Thassilon, a giant artist’s commune of a nation where Nocticula is practically a state religion.
Because Nocticula did redeem herself. Transform herself into the woman she was always supposed to be, even if she was born something different. She’s the goddess of artists, of exiles, of the soothing darkness. She’s adopted the caligni, known as dark folk to others and in D&D, who are all born the same but whose phenotypic destiny is forced on them by sinister outside forces, the owbs, to the point where they have different body plans and abilities that are forced on them by others. Caligni outside of owb influence can grow up to be whoever they want to be, and choose their own destiny. Sound familiar?
Here’s what Nocticula looks like as a goddess. Still goth AF. Still got the scary tails and the hooves. But she’s embraced her inhumanity with an unusual hair and skin color, and her feet are no longer literally blazing with suppressed rage. Nocticula looks much more whole and happy now that she’s transitioned from CE to CN, from demon lord to goddess. And if that’s not a trans narrative, I don’t know what is.
Of all of my writing, from monsters to a master’s thesis, this is still probably the piece I’m most proud of.
Not doing inktober this year, but I wanted to make some SWL art here and there- and craft a few good portfolio ink pieces again.
Yahoo, she's finally done!
Hope you enjoy! Here's Kezia on a Custodian's shoulder just hanging out after working on it. :) Custodian bestie.
Been having so much fun in SWL, and I love my OC Kezia and she works SO well in the game too soooooo... this had to happen.
Now to contemplate if I make a motion graphic to it....
I have made TINY ENAMEL LIZARD DESIGNS go check them out via link on bio if you want to make them a reality!
First and most important goal! I just want to make the obsession clear and official.
Here’s a kickstarter link.
This is Creatures of the Night: Ghosts (1997). The cool thing about ghosts is that anything can become one — something that has mostly been overlooked in D&D up to this point. There are 13 ghosts (classy!) described in this book, with full backgrounds and a short adventure that, generally, culminates with them being laid to rest. Helpfully, they are arranged in order of threat, from least to greatest. While all of these are set in Ravenloft, there is very little here conspicuously tying the spirits to that campaign setting, so you effectively have 13 scenarios you can use for any D&D campaign. One a year, every Halloween, for 13 years?
Like the vampire book, there is a good deal of creativity on display (perhaps a bit more, since this book features a larger group of contributors), making for unusual and unexpected hauntings. Some favorites: the ghost of a kid who witnessed a murder and whose fatal headwound allows his spectre to say just three words; the ghost of a werewolf, who can be both phantom man and phantom wolf; there’s also the ghost of stone giant who is possessed by another ghost, which is kind of wild. My favorite is the unfamiliar, though — the opposite of a familiar, who is called forth as an aid, this spectral black cat is an unwanted guest that brings trouble.
Nice art throughout by Mark Nelson and Michael Sutfin.