Damnéd Guttersnipes!

They look like children - any children they want. So we call them guttersnipes.

One moment a scruffy urchin, the next a stroller-bound bairn, or Little Lord Fauntleroy, or whatever you can imagine. Just not what they can imagine.

You see, whatever you were expecting when the thought "child" occurred to you upon seeing them is how they present themselves. Whether this is mere glamor or true transformation is not known. The effect is party-proof: whoever saw it first generates its form in their mind, and that is what all will see until they leave your sight.

But why exactly you think you are seeing a child is not known, nor is their true form, if they can be said to have one. Those few who are honest among them claim to have forgotten it in the long years in our Ouroboros. Most recall that they once lived in another version of our city, one where cruel child lords ruled: they wanted to be like these lords. Instead they have found their way here, where children are often mistreated and usually discredited as cheats and liars (they are, both real ones and guttersnipes).

Guttersnipes as a whole are capricious and mischievous, often straying into downright malevolence when the humours take them. Naturally they use their youthful guise to great effect among us, sowing chaos and malefaction every which way they can.

For whatever reason they cannot be banished by the blind masons, something the latter are eager to hide from their elvish masters. They fear they will be sent back to the pits to undergo some fresh hell, a return to the ocularum or worse. So there is an uneasy truce between the masons and the guttersnipes: they will be left to their tricks and japes so long as they stay far from the watch of the elves. The blind masons call this the Accord, the guttersnipes call it Our Naughty Little Secret. *shudder*

There isn't exactly a magic bullet for countering guttersnipes (though real bullets work fine). There is no dead giveaway, no telltale mark hidden somewhere upon their skin (many are the children who have been cruelly stripped down to their undergarments when adults search for such a thing). And they are highly intelligent: if one can hold conversation with the philosophers of Ouroboros, one can certainly play the innocent.

But while they represent a force of chaos and often petty crime, they aren't exactly evil. After all, so long as the Accord with the masons is in effect, they must keep their presence relatively hidden. While many know of them, and most have heard tales, none among them are so brazen as to raise their heinous acts to the awareness of the city (and by extension the elf houses) at large.

So there is an uneasy balance in Ouroboros. As there always is...

Anthony van Dyck

"Parents"

It is unfortunately common in our fair city that the guttersnipes trick honest men and women into financing their nefarious schemes and gaudy lifestyle.

This is easily done. The guttersnipe, arriving in the home of those with young children, will instantly be mistaken for their true offspring. From there, the guttersnipe will proceed to rob the parents blind, all while receiving room and board.

All that would be fine, if not for the fate of the true child. For the ruse to work, they must not return home while the guttersnipe is at its work. The honorable impostor will merely kidnap the child and hand them off to its gang of cronies for safekeeping until the work is complete. But too often these days, the children are drowned in the sewers, cut up and left in different alleys, or simply vanish.

Usually the business is concluded inside a week. But there are known cases of guttersnipes staying on rather long-term, even permanently, if the setup is particularly sweet (who doesn't want rich parents?). Most of the victims never realize this, but some do, and often this ends in violence. But in Ouroboros, where anything is possible, even this is not the case. Rarely, the parents will keep the guttersnipe even after the jig is up. Some even prefer them to real children. The conversation is better.

Antonio Mancini

Street Encounters 5

1	Scampering child bumps into you, bursts into tears and flees, later another child is hawking something of yours, many interested buyers gather.
2	You pass a coffee house filled with cackling children playing at deadly games, they invite you to join, become violently insistent if you do not.
3	An enraged lady in waiting is locked in a gutter duel with an elvish child dressed in stolen finery, her finery maybe for it is hilariously oversized, yet the child is winning: the guttersnipes have grown bold in these waning days.
4	Two screaming children tussle on the ground, biting and scratching, they are identical, but which is the guttersnipe? Both beg for aid and offer reward: one their parents riches, the other a secret spell known only to the young.
5	Gang of guttersnipes block your path, clad in rancid decadence, wielding razors and sharpened sticks, "alms for the young madam?".
6	Somber (or titillated) crowd gathers, the object of their attention is a dismembered baby, that same baby watches wistfully from their ranks, dressed in tricorner hat and blue frock.
7	Small girl offers you a smoky ball, patterns and colors flash once accepted, too late you realize it has fused with you, children up and down the street cackle madly.
8	Ragamuffin urchin on an auction block, charismatic, gathering a throng of onlookers, peddling dreams (erotic or otherwise), this is of course a trick, they will invade your dreams that night and devour the dinners your mind sets out.
9	A procuress, well-known, approaches you with a delicate offer: many of her clients prefer guttersnipes, would you care to partake? If the secret gets out, she could be ruined.
10	Exceedingly young junkies crowd the alley nearby, few are actual guttersnipes, can anything be done to save Ouroboros' youth from the grips of addiction?

Men About Town

While the elf houses dominate the upper circles of the city, theirs is far from complete monopoly. People (and others) of all stripes may be found among the rich and elegant, in the secret parlors and closed societies of Ouroboros. They are legion, and they are ever-changing as the city itself fluxes, but here are some of them. Let's say, I don't know, 10 of them.

Just your average citizens!

High Society

1	Mournival Croak, reptile-faced and shark-eyed, dressed in the finest rumpled suits, master of parlor games, always wants to raise the stakes, holds deliriously decadent teas.
2	Carthus von Umlaut, always armored in polished yellow bone and black lace, grim duelist obsessed with his own prophesied death, the details of which he will not reveal.
3	Fibbing Jim, eyes like the moon and skin as pale, wardrobe selected daily by his sister, always getting suckered into get-rich-quick schemes, possessed by mania and a legendary stutter, a deadly shot with a flintlock despite his shaking hands.
4	Astarte, toga-clad and lit by an inner golden radiance, resembles a marble statue come to life, always in a dynamic pose, obsessed with obtaining the respect befitting a god, which she certainly believes herself to be and may be.
5	Her Fecundity Margot von Caligula, voluptuous and cruel, wears only a thick cloud of incense
6	Le Infante, more toad than child, wears a suave coat of teeth, breeds odd snakes and bugs in his terribly wealthy parents' estate, always displaying them and holding auctions before a terrified and captive audience, usually there are disappearances when no sales are made.
7	Tiger Glamerung, graceful and massive cat with prosthetic limbs of porcelain, each tipped in too-human hands, she is known for her approximate knowledge of many things, which she generally has an oily sense of humor about.
8	Lady Misanthrope, clad in mourning veil and wielding bladed fans, surrounded at all times by unbreachable ranks of simpering sychophants, oh her husband's loss was so terrible, and to lose the child too, so soon after...Likely possessed by a demon from another Ouroboros.
9	Locust von Villaine, an oily-mustached troubadour and privateer, legendary for his compositions and his skill with the bardiche, well-loved despite the gravedirt and creepy-crawlies leaking from his every orifice.
10	Maharan, iridescent with patches of rainbow scales, augmented with shawls and scarves of gemstones, champion swimmer and industrious shipbuilder, funds dozens of charities, harbors her own harem of elf men much against the wishes of the houses they have fled.

I'm actually in love with Takato Yamamoto

(Four of the) Seven Sentinels

Inquisition players! Don't get spoiled! Run away again!

This post covers one of my biggest issues with 5th edition.

But don't worry, it also has seven dope-ass monsters you can steal from me! Or perhaps you'll only take the art.

Let's talk power curve in mid levels. Now I'm not one of those people who claims to have "done the math," and I know people say different things about which classes scale which ways, but I think one thing is plain for all to see: the power curve of 5th edition characters is not a linear one.

*Ensue argument in the comments*

But it just isn't. Sure it all depends on how you run your game and how many encounters per day. I know it's supposed to be like 6, but I usually don't have time for that many at a session. So there's often 2-4. And maybe my players are geniuses, but I can throw CR 23 monsters at their 11th level party and watch these "mighty foes" get demolished.

And this brings up a problem in my setting, and for me as a designer: my players will cakewalk through the enemies that daunted them a few levels ago. Meaning my campaign is in constant need of new intermediaries for the Big Bad Evil Guy that they can fight.

You've read about the Seven Virtues. There was a time when one of them nearly wiped the party. During their most recent encounter, Humility (you know, greatest living swordsman on Earth) lasted about 1 round, as did Chastity, and Diligence and Temperance fought to little effect before retreating. These were 1:1 numbers and the series antagonists were getting their pants pulled down around their ankles.

From this came the Sentinel Project.

In the Seven Virtues post, I outlined that these are basically people with the arch princes of Hell bound to them, body and soul. And I always wondered, what does that do to the mortal soul? Long-term, what are the effects?

And in my search for some 11th level baddies, I came up with an answer: it was just phase one.

You see, binding to a demonic entity prepares the soul to be bound again, to a higher and more radiant life form: the angel. In the Inquisition setting, the War in Heaven ended with the angelic race being split into souls (demons) and empty bodies (watchers). But seeing as the bad guys have Lilith, the last true angel, on their side, I figure they have the power to bind the now-fled souls of the Seven Virtues to the vessels they had been prepared for: angelic bodies.

Lo and behold, the Seven Sentinels come forth to fight again in the name of Lilith and the Black Goddess (who are obviously one and the same).

So basically these are enemies built around the time-tested fireball method (I could be making this up). Seeing that a caster of 11th level could conceivably get off 3 fireballs in 3 rounds of combat for B-I-G damages, and assuming that any monster in D&D is gonna survive M-A-Y-B-E long enough to take 3 turns, the enemies below are built to output about a fireball of damage per turn.

They're also built around a very simple design philosophy developed over the course of this campaign, and probably to be used in future 5th edition games (whenever that happens again). Each monster has an action, a reaction, and a passive ability. I've found that it's very simple to make, and very dynamic in play.

Enjoy!

The Raging Sentinel

AC 18, DC 17, HP 200, Speed 30, STR+8, DEX+6, CON+8, INT+7, WIS+7, CHA+10.
Immune to radiant.
Enraging Presence (passive): All within sight must WIS save or use their action to attack her (or otherwise deal damage).
Bloody Blades (action): 2 attacks, +10 to hit, 4d6 slashing damage, target bleeds 1d6 damage if they take action or 2d6 if they move.
Revenge (reaction when hit): 2 attacks, +10 to hit, 8d6 slashing damage.

As you can see, she hits hard but basically deals double damage on the reaction. And her passive lures players in. She's a classic tank, with a nasty surprise once you strike her. Best not to succumb to primal instincts like "hit thing with sword until dead" and actually plan your approach.

The Covetous Sentinel

Like this, but not attached to an arm, and walking like a headcrab.

AC 18, DC 17, HP 200, Speed 50, STR+8, DEX+6, CON+8, INT+7, WIS+7, CHA+10, Large.
Immune to radiant.
Midas Touch (passive): Any objects or creatures that touch it are turned to solid gold.
Flick (action): +10 to hit, 8d6 bludgeoning damage, thrown 30 and knocked prone.
Spellworm (reaction when spell is cast): Caster chooses: the spell costs 2 slots, or the sentinel can now cast it at will.

Another "don't just hit it" monster. It has another nasty reaction surprise, which like the previous sentinels' bleed ability forces you to make a hard choice (though this one punishes casters, not fighters).

The Lusting Sentinel

AC 16, DC 17, HP 200, Speed 40, STR+8, DEX+6, CON+8, INT+7, WIS+7, CHA+10.
Immune to radiant.
Alluring Beauty (passive): All within hearing must WIS save or use their move to approach her.
Engulf (action): Effects any creature in her space. DEX save or take 8d6 acid damage and restrained, on a success half damage and knocked prone (she rears up and attacks you with legs).
Pain is Beauty (reaction when hit): Half the damage dealt to her is inflicted on the attacker as psychic.

Sort of a siren, she pulls in the players against their will then devours them, and any attempt to stop her with straight-up damage dealing will be met with, you guessed it, the patented nasty surprise (can you see the formula emerging?).

The Proud Sentinel

All credit to the Angelarium!

AC 20, DC 17, HP 200, Fly 50, STR+8, DEX+6, CON+8, INT+7, WIS+7, CHA+10.
Immune to radiant.
Grovel Before Me (passive): All within sight must CHA save or be knocked prone (save at the beginning of each turn ends).
Reducing Strike (action): +10 to hit, 8d6 slashing damage, reduces size of target by one level.
Show Off (reaction when missed): +10 to hit, 8d6 slashing damage, STR save or pushed 15.

Basically a controller, this one didn't quite come out how I wanted. With Humility, now this enemy, and of course Satan (who the players have been in a running battle with for 2 sessions now) I've continually struggled to have the concept of Pride reflect in the mechanics.

I Was Promised Seven Sentinels

Well, sorry! I have a design philosophy that I don't design things I'm not gonna use next session, and the last two Virtues (Temperance and Diligence) are still alive and well, meaning no Devouring Sentinel and no Sleeping Sentinel yet. And we all know about Envy...

As soon as the last of these poor fools who deigned to stand against PCs is dead, I'll update this.

Zounds! A Sword!

There's an earlier Ouroboros post that mentions a "hawker of cursed and brittle swords" with d10 in stock at all times. Since we've got plenty of 10-entry tables and hey, swords are fun, here are 10 brittle swords and 10 curses they may carry.

Joachim Meyer

Brittle Swords

1	Zweihander, all of green glass, chipped edges, grip bound in fragile leather prone to tear, easy to cut yourself holding this one, shatters against heavy armor.
2	Child's rapier with the point of a needle, guard crudely-wrought in the image of a gape-mouthed face vomiting forth the blade, thin enough to plunge through the gaps in mail.
3	Foreign cutlass of blood iron, not crimson and beautiful but flawed with muddy brown like an old battlefield, wrong edge serrated, better at cutting throats than armor.
4	Centuries-old sabre stolen from the castrati spider regiments, black blade crusted with old toxins, if it tastes blood again it will drip deadly venom like a new wound.
5	Baselard, pitted and scored as if dipped in acid, will snap off inside the first foe it strikes, even if they get away sepsis will end their lives within a miserable week.
6	Shining steel broadsword, missing its guard, pommel unbound, strangely weighted and overall just too heavy for anything but two-handed use.
7	Obscenely large cleaver, over-long and hooked at the end, might be a better climbing tool than weapon, will be dulled quickly on anything but flesh.
8	Clay estoc, pierces even heavy armor but breaks as soon as it lands a blow, never to be reassembled.
9	Exquisite flammard, twisting blade inscribed with golden runes, gilded guard, easily turns aside the enemy blades but useless outside a duel.
10	Jagged stub of an elvish yatagan, still viciously deadly against unarmored plebeians and other elves, carves through anything like butter, only a few more blows in it before shattering.

Curses

1	There is a malignant ugliness about the sword, hidden until elves come across you wielding it. They must save or attack you, disgusted that they must now cross swords with such an abomination.
2	This is a storied blade, one that attracts all the wrong kind of attention. Criminals and scum-folk in your presence must save or offer you a lucrative opportunity for wetwork (maybe this isn't bad to you, but others will surely overhear).
3	Belongs to another Ouroboros, seeks to return home, whenever you walk the city alone you must save or find yourself in this alternate realm, at first briefly but longer and longer each time.
4	Corruption spills from the blade onto your skin, deepening and spreading up your arm whenever you strike down a foe, slowly driving you to kill again, faster this time, more bloodily the next, and so on.
5	Children (of any being) will always be alerted to your presence, crying for their mothers and making a general racket as you approach.
6	Visions of the old wielder plague you, but are they past or present? Either way, you notice people in these waking dreams that have begun to follow you in real life: what do the faceless women want?
7	Something lives within the metal, a cold and alien intelligence, thirst not for blood but pain. It will fuel the strength of your arm, but what does it ask for in return? Mutilation of the highborn.
8	Your fortunes have swung wildly ever since taking up this sword. When you wield the blade odd results on checks are now always successes, evens are always failures (maybe this is good for you).
9	Change is coming over you, too slow to notice. You no longer sleep. Soon you do not blink, barely eat or drink. You crave the stuff of dreams, and night finds you stalking the streets, hunting for an open window, an unlocked door. You are becoming.
10	An old trick by a mischievous lady in waiting: you will become an elf. It has already begun. Do not expect pointy ears immediately. Expect hideous mutation, wrack and ruin, extra membranes in all the wrong places, skin like batwings. The transition will be painful and uncertain.

Talbot Hughes

The Blind Masons

The geography and history of Ouroboros is ever-changing, and it is often true that its Tuesday night denizens cannot recall the state of Monday morning. Obviously, the elf houses hate this. While they sometimes benefit from the overnight disappearance of political enemies, it is just as likely a fallen house may rise to power in the same span it fell, throwing all their schemes into disarray and wasting centuries of work. While hegemony can benefit from chaos, it also demands a certain stability.

Without intervention, there can be no status quo in Ouroboros.

The blind masons intervene.

Sculpting

To make a blind mason, start with a slave.

The elf houses keep a great many slaves, mostly of human stock. Usually these unfortunates are stolen from another Ouroboros in castrati raids, but that is not true of those destined to become blind masons. They must be from our iteration of the city, grounded in the instance of reality they would reinforce.

The flux of the city is such that few question the sudden disappearance of a lover or a child overnight (though remembering them after this does raise eyebrows). And true, most have wandered into or been taken by another Ouroboros. But a rare few citizens who vanish have been taken into the secret pits beneath the elf houses, to be broken and made anew.

This is called the sculpting.

To sculpt a blind mason from human marble, a great deal of chiseling is involved. The artifexes reshape the stolen bodies through the holy medium of pain. The eyes go first, spikes of cold iron driven deep into the brain pan. Usually this kills the subject. The elves have ways, of course, to drag their screaming souls back from the void. After the shock of death and resurrection, the real work begins. Every bone is broken in a thousand places. Every limb amputated, then affixed again, and again, and again. There is more, much more, and many things are done that the elves will never speak of, not even to the Reverend Mother. Deniability is key. If word got out...but word never leaves the sculpting pits.

Of course it is easy to reshape a body: a mind is more resistant.

To bend the human mind into a form that can see our city as it should be, it must first be exposed to all it should not. After the bodies are broken and remade in a new image, the fiendish ocularum are placed upon their ruined skulls. This device grants the sculptee vision into Ouroboros, every Ouroboros. To perceive a million million iterations spread across the temporal curve, the mind shatters into just as many pieces. The torture can last for years, but eventually it ends. The mind longs to return to its reality. Understanding of every possible Ouroboros is instilled, and with it a great fear of the malignant iterations that have deviated so far from our own. None will ever see the things the blind masons have seen, not all of them, not even an infinitesimal fraction of those horrors.

But the mind longs to return, and when it finds home, it knows instinctively. The blind masons awaken, the sculpting is complete, they have seen the infinite Ouroboros and know the differences between home and the Other.

This is only knowledge, however, and the blind masons must enforce it somehow or their words will seem the deranged prophecies of mad oracles. This is why they must devour elves.

It is believed the elves were made, or perhaps only changed, in the event that fractured Ouroboros into infinity. Their blood carries traces of this, strong in some and weak in others. This is why the Reverend Mothers must manage the bloodlines so carefully: the blind masons, ensurers of elvish rule, need the highest concentrations of this strange resonance to gain their power. As the elves were reshaped by the great shattering, so too will the blind masons (fueled by their blood) reshape that very same reality. Those chosen to undergo the ritualized devouring are often unpopular, or downright criminal: harem bandits, castrati-fuckers (how this is done is not widely known), failed challengers to the Reverend Mother, and committers of social faux pas. They are conferred the status of martyrs before being eaten by the greedy mouths of the newly sculpted.

And after this, the sculpting is complete.

Shapers of Reality

But what exactly does all this nonsense mean?

Blind masons walk the streets in twos and threes, shoring up errors in our reality. They can sense that today's market square is not yesterday's, though it may have vanished from the memory of common folk. They remember that there ought be no House of Shurikens and Ammonia, that this is from another city entirely. The blind masons remember reality as it should be, and feel the presence of incursions or more subtle alterations like one might feel a fever.

Then they set about repairing these deviations. How they do this varies from mason to mason, but it is always a highly personal ritual of some kind, something that recalls the reality they were born into: the repetition of a particular lineage, the folk dance of their youth, the carving of sigils learned in school...it could be anything. But it always brings forth the truth and history, unaltered, of our city. Often their fellows cheer them on, or if the aberration is great, pitch in with nursery rhymes and genealogies of their own.

Once the ritual is complete, the affected part of the city (however insubstantial it may have been) returns to "normal". The monsters vanish, the statues of dead gods too, and the market square no longer sells human flesh (unless it was the Square of the Feast, then it absolutely does).

Overall they are a jolly lot. This is unnerving to most, who believe their time in the pits should have broken their spirits. This is false. Sure, their souls were shattered, but they pieced themselves back together with a newfound love of this particular Ouroboros. This is the love of the child for its mother, the child who packed its bags and ran away, making it as far as the street corner before turning back in tears. They cling tightly to the bosom of this Ouroboros, for they greatly fear the infinite other cities, which recall too much their time in the ocularum. As such, they are always glad to mend the world and return it to the comfort of home-as-it-should-be.

Trouble

The procedures presented above are ideals, of course, and theory is often more neat than practice. The truth is, the life of a blind mason is a dangerous one. There is a reason the pits are always full, that the unpopular elves always fear a grisly death at the hands (and teeth) of the masons. Turnover is high in the business of shoring up reality. There are many threats to the work of the masons.

First are the most obvious: violent incursions. An eruption of cavemen, or castrati raiders on a slavetaking mission, or malevolent and intelligent spiders (not like the friendly intelligent ones kept by the elf houses), all pose physical danger to blind masons on-site. Their lame forms cannot defend themselves, so castrati are always nearby when the masons are at work. Many a brave eunuch soldier has fallen in their defense, and animosity between the two parties has always been high. Sadly the castrati have no recourse, as violence against the masons will always be met by swift and brutal death.

Second, there are more existential threats. Reality is sometimes rewritten so quickly that the masons are swept along in the wake of change. Many simply vanish, to be forgotten by all but their fellows, who hold secret memorials in their apartments. Others are irrevocably changed, their powers warped and even, in the worst of cases, turned against us. Many have been the battles between a fallen mason and their former brethren: these are always horrific affairs. The twisted creatures run amok, changing the city willy nilly, faster than even veterans can keep up with. The fallout can take weeks to repair, and sometimes changes are so subtle that the masons miss them.

Last, and most troubling, are the other masons. Our city is far from the only Ouroboros to have come up with the idea, and was probably not the first. They come in all forms, for all purposes. Some have stumbled in, swept up in currents of change, blindly seeking to convert our reality to something resembling theirs (obviously this scales from minor nuisance to horrific catastrophe). Others appear to be sent for sinister purposes, to weaken us for incursion from their side. Many are the forms these deadly agents take, and few resemble our own (though those that do are the most threatening).

Worst of these other masons are those sent from Thor, the great enemy to Ouroboros. Scholars and masons alike suspect it is an Ouroboros that is utterly inimical to the other iterations, a city whose sole purpose is the destruction of its sisters. Some of the worst incursions have resulted from their interference, or so it is suspected. Ultimately there is no proof of its existence, but the blind masons have spoken of the farthest point their ocularum ever took them, a hellscape at once alien and familiar. They speak in hushed tones to eachother of the visions, snatched glimpses of a great and yellow eye. Often it was this sight that hurled them screaming back into our reality, their sculpting complete.

Street Encounters 4

1	Trio of drunken masons, giggling and stumbling over eachother, they've turned the cobbles to slick wet meat, horrified citizens scream and flee and trip facedown in the offal road.
2	Pair of curious masons, inspecting the hawker stalls along the sidewalk, muttering of an incursion somewhere, the vendor furthest from them grows nervous.
3	Lone mason feeling her way along an invisible line as if it were a wall, ah-ha she smirks, found you, and begins to dance a merry jig, invites you to join her, it'll stop last month's murders, put the Reverend Mother back on her throne.
4	Bravos and dandies taunting a mason who turns this way and that, they've taken his hat, they don't see the approaching castrati or sense the impending bloodbath.
5	Masons in strange garb, crystal spikes in their eyes, marching with a purpose, clearing the way with syllables of power.
6	Mason dragging her dead comrade, calling for help, it's too late for them both, a flash of knife claws and razor teeth and she is eviscerated,  her dying words: its skull, its skull, please.
7	Castrati cadre leader arguing with a mason trio, they demand protection, he demands they get out of his way and let him get the slave-train to his Dominatrix or she'll have his hide.
8	A beast, a wrong thing, a monster, walking down the street in company of two masons, they notice nothing amiss, not even when it snatches up a bystander and devours him whole.
9	Grim-faced mason, smeared with blood, one arm gone, stalking an unseen foe. He holds charms in a white-knuckle grip and hums a tune in low tones, tells you to help her find the bastard or clear the street at once.
10	Sounds of a scuffle around the corner, muted cries and elvish swears, turn and see a castrati with blade hilt-deep in a mason's gut, more lie dead around, his fellows watch grimly, they turn to regard you with cruel smiles.

The City that Devours Itself

Shoutouts to my good friend and fellow roleplayer Astra, who helped me with the tables and provided constant support in the making of this post.

Maybe this strikes you as pretentious crap - it kind of strikes me that way, but it serves a purpose. The Inquisition campaign I've run for over a year is highly classicist; cosmology has slowly accreted into a set of knowns and rules that I've pigeon-holed myself into operating inside of. And so I long for something very different; a world that can be shaped and reshaped as best fits the adventure, rather than having to find the adventures that fit the world. Neither is wrong, but one is what I want right now. So without further ado...

Phuoc Quan

The Nature of Ouroboros

One should not go about trying to make sense of things. Let the blind masons and perhaps the Reverend Mother Echo Minor worry after such temporal matters. For those who are caught inside the interstices of "reality" in dreamlike Ouroboros, thought of theory amounts to little.

What is known is that sometime during Ouroboros' existence - whether it be distant past or impending future - a great shattering occurred. The city exploded into a thousand thousand iterations of itself, and they were scattered across timelines and universes. All these cities exist, though not simultaneous in space or time, and that should isolate them from another?

Except things keep slipping in through the cracks.

Most of the time they are from other Ouroboroses that are like ours, just a few meters or minutes away, always there but never quite here. Usually these are merchants with a miracle cure we've yet to develop, or refugees with a horrible plague we happen to be immune to. Sometimes they are conquering armies, and that is when Dominatrix Botfly proves herself a hero, if a bastard as well.

But sometimes they are other things, wrong things, things from Ouroboroses very unlike our own.

One might pass through an alley they have walked all their life to find themselves on a dark and unknown boulevard. Night has fallen, the lamps are unlit, and something howls to challenge a moon which should not be. And nowhere is the sign of the Queen.

Some Incursions

They are/were/will be many. These are but a few notables.

Most famous in recent memory was the Night of Seventy Seven Houses, when delegates from no less than seven other Ouroboroses arrived amid great confusion to an important council vote. Remarkably, all had arrived to address the same issue, but their methods of addressing the epidemic of lotus eaters varied wildly (this is why dancing in pleasure houses has been criminalized and the lotus eaters themselves have gained a permanent council seat). Equally remarkable were the level heads of the house representatives, leading to a uniquely bloodless incursion. Surely none will forget the dauntless rhetoric of Reverend Mother Pazuzu Juvenile, though all have forgotten whether she has ever existed in our Ouroboros. Either way, she and her house are here to stay.

Perhaps the most bloody incursion in recorded history was the Battle of the Nine Day Noon, where the sun's progress halted at its zenith and remained there for more than a week. This coincided with the spontaneous appearance of an invading castrati army with unrecognizable heraldry in the Plaza of Green Glass. This deadly force seized most of the city before Dominatrix Botfly was able to reassert control. How she accomplished this has been forgotten, but it is remembered that her house rose to great prominence after this tragedy.

And maybe strangest of all was the unnoticed invasion of identical dopplegangers of every man, woman, child, and dog in the city. Not only was this a large scale incursion, but more curious was that none of these dopplegangers seemed to have any memories or notion of which Ouroboros they had come from. Most of them were put down by the castrati, but they couldn't have gotten all of them.

Max Strasser

Street Encounters 3

1	They look like you, but lifeless and bloody and torn and entirely nude. A small crowd has gathered, but none of them seem to notice you; neither do the castrati cordoning off the area.
2	A creeping man pushes a cart of bodies, he is not an undertaker, he beseeches onlookers in a creaking voice to tell him where more of the fruit may be found. Why do the bodies writhe so?
3	A woman walking ahead of you freezes and drops her vase, screams, then turns and walks somberly into an alleyway, vanishing into thin air as she crosses some invisible border.
4	Boys handing out broadsheets, proclaiming the end of a war, you are named as saviors of the city, "the king" will honor you at a great festival on the next new moon.
5	An inviting melancholy flute tune, always just around the corner, you want so badly to follow it, any moment now your body will take off running to chase down the sound.
6	A beggar squats at the mouth of a storm drain, but they have no alms cup, their form hidden beneath a formless robe, look closely and you can see their tongue flick out, scenting the air.
7	The last eight corners you've turned lead you back to here, but every time there are less people in the street.
8	Troglodytes seize the street in a storm of bloodshed, taking hostages of the lame, sacrificing the beautiful, doing battle with the castrati coming down the lane.
9	A wrong turn leads you down a broad deserted boulevard you've never seen, the way back is lost, two moons hang over head but the sky is empty of stars, nothing moves in this quiet place.
10	You turn left into nightmare. Bleeding eyes peer from the soft skin of every building, and inhuman shapes skulk quickly into the darkness to await your moment of weakness. Who can say how long this terrible night will last.

The Question of the Queen

There is a doubt nagging at the mind of every citizen: where did the Queen come from?

Is hers an ancient bloodline of this world, as she claims, or is it from some Other Ouroboros?

Could she be from an enemy iteration, planted to bring us down from within? Are her decrees all designed to soften us for a killing blow?

Or is the Queen a memory of our Ouroboros as it was, and not as it is? Has she faded from reality into legend? Here are the Queen's men, but when was her last public appearance?

Shintaro Kago

Dreams in the Elf House

While the Queen is a renowned figure, the true rulers of Ouroboros are the Elf Houses, and the rulers of the Elf Houses have always been their women.

Like this...

...but dressed like this.

Gender in the Elf House

If you are a woman, life is decadent and dangerous.

If you are a man, it's either a total fuck-and-murder fest, or the dull life of a soldier.

Let's break that down a little.

Elf Women...

...do not speak: the subtleties of their body language convey all.

...are taught a thousand subtle arts over their long lives: chief among them are poisoning, dagger-fighting, spellcraft, and conspiracy.

...give birth to great clutches of eggs, though usually only one child survives the hatching (when two survive they are called twins, feared and respected, but that's another article). Those with children are Matrons, some of whom grow quite immense.

...are supervised by the Reverend Mother, who oversees the bloodlines and controls who breeds with who.

...are pretty much all Ladies in Waiting (meaning that they're waiting to strike down the Reverend Mother with poisoned needles).

Elf Men...

...are mostly kept at home in a communal harem for the house. They spend their time vying for their mistresses' favor and poisoning their competition.

...are sometimes chemically (or magically) sterilized to become Castrati, the grim private armies of their house.

...are ruled by a female Dominatrix (commander of the castrati) and Consort (minder of the harem, only woman to be sterilized).

...can be declared women and given all the privileges of a lady in waiting. This happens for many reasons: military valor, political alliances, managing the bloodlines, etc.

Houses of the Elves

The House of Salt and Honey: Theirs are the pleasure houses and vice dens, and their Reverend Mother Farniece is the only living thing in the city that has ties with the mysterious entities known as bees, from which the mutagenic and geriatric substance we call honey is derived. This monopoly, if it can be maintained, has secured stability for this house until the end times.
The House of Blood and Milk: Their Dominatrix, Botfly, leads her great armies of castrati plundering into the other Ouroboroses and defends this iteration from incursion by these alternate cities. It is by her will that the cosmic predators called ourselves do not slaughter us and take our children for meat-slaves.
The House of Stone and Silence: They own the blind masons, responsible for preserving and protecting the architecture of the city from its constant restructuring. This grants the house power over time and space unrivalled by any other force in Ouroboros (save perhaps Uncle Moth). However no one really likes them, as they are universally grim and changeless over the long and imaginary eons.

Street Encounters 2

1	Train of castrati-guarded slaves taken from last month's battle with the enemy.
2	Spider-riding ladies in waiting, out slumming, positively intoxicated by your absolutely horrific aesthetic. Peddlers swarm them, isn't it charming?
3	Warm-smiled matrons with little superfluous arms, they ride in silk-and-silver palanquins, guarded by huge formation of castrati. Crowds cheer.
4	Elf woman from a fallen house duels a lady in waiting over the heart of a human (interpret that literally if you want, but you don't have to).
5	Wandering troop of disbanded castrati, drunk and looking for trouble.
6	Silk bridge over a sludgy canal of sunken gondolas, escaped harem men crawl out from underneath and try to extort an exorbitant toll (they'll also accept escape from the city).
7	A sinister lady in waiting greets the worst of you with your most heinous crime.
8	A sobbing, broken castrati abandoned by his patrol mates, a green recruit from the pillowy abyss of the harem.
9	Crane-riding elf children, some have fallen off their mounts, the others mock them as they weep on the cobblestones.
10	Castrati slavers, heavily armed, waiting to take you.

Takato Yamamoto

I could do this all day.