More un-Classes for Ouroboros

This is a continuation of my post on fiction-first classes here. Check that our for replacements to the "base classes" assumed by most OSR games. In this post, I cover some societies in Ouroboros that could replace your barbarian, warlock, bard, paladin, or monk. Enjoy!

Another day in paradise

Ironclads

A tradition older, some say, than Ouroboros itself. The Ironclads preach the gospel of might. The strength is all.

Initiate

Joining: Present the trophies of 10 foes (or 1 monster) you slew to a master Ironclad.

Benefits: Minimum damage rolls seem to wound you but deal no actual damage.

Restriction: You must not show affection, or emotion, under any circumstances. If you do, minimum damage rolls will deal double damage to you until the next day.

Adept

Joining: Present the trophies of 30 foes (or 3 monsters) you slew to a master Ironclad.

Benefits: When your attack kills an enemy you may make another, and another, attacking as long as enemies are adjacent and the first hit kills them.

Restriction: You must never flee from a fight. If you do, you will be branded (literally) a coward and kicked out of the Ironclads.

Master

Joining: Present the trophies of 50 foes (or 5 monsters) you slew to a conclave of masters.

Benefits: Once per day, you become immune to all damage for d4 rounds, after which all damage taken during this time is inflicted on you at once (this counts as one "hit").

Restriction: When you are insulted, you must respond with deadly force. If you let it slide, you will be declared a dishonor to the Ironclads and the masters will come to collect your skull and turn it into a flagon for their ale.

blessed be the biceps

Mantic Apostates

Those who abandon the Mantic School are hunted by the Mantic Demon. Most die, their souls stolen away, but some make a deal instead...

Initiate

Joining: Make a pact with the Mantic Demon, in exchange for your immortal soul.

Benefits: You are given a familiar. You may conjure your familiar to work magic on the order of trickery or deceipt.  This works once per day before you must make a 1 HD blood sacrifice or roll on the Marks table. Each subsequent summoning demands double the blood sacrifice.

Restriction: You must make blood sacrifice to your familiar every week. If you don't, it will not answer your summons.

Adept

Joining: Feed the soul of an adept from the Mantic school to the Demon.

Benefits: You may conjure your familiar to work magic on the order of protection or prophecy. This works once per day before you must make a 2 HD blood sacrifice or roll on the Marks table.

Restriction: You must sacrifice an elf's soul to the Mantic Demon every week. If you don't, it collects half your soul, cutting all your mental stats in half until you do (and even then they all come back reduced by 1).

Master

Joining: Feed the soul of a master from the Mantic school to the Demon.

Benefits: You may conjure your familiar to work magic on the order of inflicting curses. This works once per day before you must make a 4 HD blood sacrifice or roll on the Marks table.

Restriction: Every night, you must sacrifice someone to the Mantic Demon. If you don't, it comes to collect your soul.

*Marks Table*

Visible marks are recognized by all as evidence of your apostasy. Most will shun you, members of the Mantic School proper will seek to bring about your ruin.

1. Your face becomes a mask of blood, dripping like a curdled veil and trailing behind you, elegant and horrible. If you re-roll this, the veil spreads across your whole body, swamping your clothing in crimson.
2. Your legs fuse and the skin peels away, revealing a single mucosal foot like that of a giant slug. The silvery trail you leave behind sprouts myriad exotic plants which die off in seconds. If you re-roll this, your eyes shoot out on viscous stalks and soft antennae grow like a mustache.
3. Your skin turns translucent, revealing your organs and veins and bones, like you're some kind of cave fish. Direct sunlight deals d6 damage per round, but in total darkness you recover 1 HP per round. If you re-roll this, you burst into flames in sunlight for 2d6 damage per round, but in total darkness you recover d6 HP per round.
4. Your voice dies away into a rasping whisper, everyone nearby can hear it pounding in their skull, as if your mouth were pressed against their eardrums. If you re-roll this, you can telepathically communicate with someone at any distance, but give them and yourself a random insanity.
5. You no longer gain sustenance from food and water - your body demands the crimson feast. Every day you must drink 1 HD of blood or suffer the effects of starvation as normal. If you re-roll this, you need 4 HD of blood per day.
6. Any attempt to magically heal you results in horrific pain, no HP restoration, and a random mutation. If you re-roll this, magical healing lights you on fire for d6 damage.
7. Your teeth fall out over the course of the day and are replaced with row upon row of glass needles. If you re-roll this, you gain a d6 damage bite attack.
8. You no longer have a shadow or reflection. If you re-roll this, you now have two shadows, and two reflections. They are intelligent, malicious, and beyond your control.
9. Mantic dice rolled in your presence automatically result in calamity, no matter the result. If you re-roll this, calling upon your familiar always results in a roll on the Marks table.
10. When you call upon your familiar, the dead nearby are awakened, even those long-buried. If you re-roll this, these undead attack you with malign intelligence and hungry strategy.
11. The familiar of a rival apostate is called down upon you, you have interfered in someone's schemes and will now pay the price. If you re-roll this, this enemy familiar will appear every time you roll a Mark, in addition to whatever is rolled on the table.
12. You and those nearby are transported to another Ouroboros. If you re-roll this, the Ouroboros is highly malignant and unfriendly to you and yours.
13. Your blood, when ingested, confers all of your Marks onto this unfortunate soul. If you re-roll this, this happens whenever your blood touches someone else.
14. Gain a random insanity from the Gauche Madness table. If you re-roll this, gain another.
15. You contract virulent leprosy, depriving you of feeling and flesh, spreading rapidly to those you touch or sneeze on. If you re-roll this, you lose a random body part to the contagion.
16. Gain a random insanity from the Urbane Fervors table. If you re-roll this, gain another.
17. You are pregnant, regardless of gender or sex. What the child is, you are not sure, you know only that its sire is the Mantic Demon itself. If you re-roll this, the child is born.
18. Gain a random insanity from the Eldritch Lunacy table. If you re-roll this, gain another.
19. Your familiar roosts inside you from now on, emerging in a shower of gore when summoned that deals you d6 damage. If you re-roll this, it moves its infernal nest to somewhere more vital, 2d6 damage instead.
20. The Mantic Demon comes to collect your soul.

O, how they have fallen!

Dead Poets' Society

Subversive and distrusted (perhaps with just cause), this society tells the stories of the other Ouroboroses.

Initiate

Joining: Learn a story from another Ouroboros and deliver it to an adept in the form of a poem.

Benefits: Once per day, when you deliver a poem about a great deed you have witnessed, you make the deed manifest again (so if you compose verse about the fighter getting a crit, she will crit again on her next attack).

Restriction: You must never allow visiting denizens of another Ouroboros to come to harm before you get a story out of them. If you do, you will be forced to rejoin the society.

Adept

Joining: Recover a written record from another Ouroboros and deliver it to a master in the form of a poem.

Benefits: Once per day, when you deliver a poem you can implant a suggestion in it that the target audience will unknowingly follow.

Restriction: You must maintain correspondence with an adept of the society from another Ouroboros, and always answer their calls for aid. If you don't, you will be kicked out of the society across all Ouroboroses.

Master

Joining: Go into another Ouroboros, perform a great deed there, and compose a poem about it for judgement by the masters.

Benefits: Once per day, when you deliver a poem that tells the story of another Ouroboros, the events of this story manifest in our world.

Restriction: Every week, you must journey into another Ouroboros and exchange stories and verses with the Dead Poets' Society there. If you miss a week, you will be stripped of rank and busted back down to adept.

dead poets, dead audience

Knights of the Botfly

These are not the famous castrati legions of the Dominatrix Botfly: but they are her biggest fans.

Initiate

Joining: Help the castrati or the blind masons stem the tide of a violent incursion from another Ouroboros.

Benefits: You have +2 to hit and damage against any being from another Ouroboros.

Restriction: You must always assist the forces of the city when an incursion occurs and you are at hand. If you refuse to do this, a tribunal of masters will be held to either expel or admonish you.

Adept

Joining: Fight alongside one of Dominatrix Botfly's expeditions into another Ouroboros.

Benefits: Once per day, you may declare someone an "enemy of the city" and whenever you hit them you roll double damage dice. You may not use this ability again until your foe has been dispatched.

Restriction: You must slay any being that has come from another Ouroboros. If you knowingly look the other way, you will be expelled from the order immediately.

Master

Joining: Lead a crusade into another Ouroboros yourself.

Benefits: You are encased permanently in a giant botfly, giving you AC as plate and allowing you to fly at half your normal speed.

Restriction: Every day, you must feed your giant botfly armor a citizen of this Ouroboros. If you feed it someone from another Ouroboros or fail to feed it anything, it will abandon you, ripping away half your HP with it. You will be excommunicated from the order.

abandon all hope

Pankratonii

An ancient order of wrestlers and unarmed fighters sworn to defend the city's poor from injustice.

Initiate

Joining: Give all your possessions and silver to the poor.

Benefits: When you hit an enemy with a melee attack, you may choose to disarm them instead of dealing damage. Your unarmed attacks gain +1 to hit.

Restriction: You must never attack a foe who cannot harm you. If you do, you will be expelled from the Pankratonii.

Adept

Joining: Take a vow of poverty, never again to own property or silver save your clothes and your staff.

Benefits: When you hit an enemy with a melee attack, you may choose to throw them 10 feet and knock them to the ground instead of dealing damage. Your unarmed attacks gain +1 to hit.

Restriction: You must always protect the poor from harm. If you fail to do this, you must defeat another adept in trial by combat or be expelled from the Pankratonii.

Master

Joining: Remove your eyes, defeat a Pankratoni master in combat, and don their blindfold.

Benefits: You suffer no penalties from blindness, and can effectively sense anything within 10 feet of you. When you hit an enemy with a melee attack, you may choose to grapple them, keeping them from taking any action while you hold them. During the hold, you may move but take no other actions. Your unarmed attacks gain +2 to hit.

Restriction: You must never wield a weapon. If you do this, you must face a master in single combat, and will be expelled from the Pankratonii either way.

a master of the order

Declassifying Ouroboros

The idea of normal D&D classes could easily be applied to Ouroboros - just run LotFP or B/X or whatever your system of choice is, steal some tables from Last Gasp Grimoire (plug), and you're probably good to go!

That being said, I had a more esoteric idea for how this could work. Instead of picking a class and sinking levels into it with XP won through combat and plunder, just join a society and move up through the ranks to unlock new powers. It's a little bit based on the "Special Abilities & Permissions" section of the Blades in the Dark rulebook.

So here are the base classes (cleric, fighter, thief, wizard) replaced by the society you could join to gain their abilities.

The Cult of Ishtar

Initiate

Joining: Liberate someone from an unhappy marriage.
Benefits: You get 1 favor die (d6), which is depleted for the day on a 1-3. If it is not depleted, next time it depletes on a 1-4, and so on. Rolling a depleted die still works, but you must roll on the Divine Punishment table. When you kiss a wound, you may roll a favor die to heal the damage and close the wound.
Restriction: You must renounce your gender and wear only the pearls and robes of the courtesan. If you do, you will be slathered in honey, filled with wine, and excommunicated.

Adept

Joining: Shelter one who has been done violence by their lover.
Benefits: You get a 2nd favor die. When you kindly ask someone to do something, you may roll a favor die to magically compel them to do it. This compulsion lasts until the task is complete.
Restriction: You must never turn down a request to aid true loves course. If you do, you will be forced to re-enter the cult as an initiate.

Master

Joining: Smite a powerful person who has abused their lovers.
Benefits: You get a 3rd favor die. When you or an ally is attacked, before the roll is made, you may roll a favor die to force the attack to miss. Alternately, when an ally makes an attack, before the roll is made, you may roll a favor die to force their attack to hit or to add it to their damage.
Restriction: You must never wield weapons. If you do, Ishtar's flaming sword will pierce your heart in the dead of some soon-to-come night and your soul will never be taken to her boudoir.

*Divine Punishment Table*

Effects, unless otherwise stated, last d6 hours. Rolling a 6 means it's d6 days, and then weeks, then months, and so on.

1. The target suffers stigmata and begins to exsanguinate, suffering d4 damage every round for d4 rounds. The blood pouring from their wounds is of the sweetest votive wine, and would make a great offering to Ishtar.
2. The target's eyes swell and slit like snakes', all seems painfully bright to them and they feel the urge to slither away into somewhere dark and damp. They take -2 to hit / AC in direct light, but they can see in the dark.
3. A crown of spiraling goat horns push from the target's head and their breasts grow massive (if they didn't have breasts, they do now!). Their constant lactations, if collected into a wine bottle, heal d4 HP.
4. The target grows delicate, graceful wings like that of a moth. They are vestigial, but beautiful in an ethereal sort of way.
5. in patches, you can see tiny shapes squirming just beneath the surface. When attacked from behind they take double damage, and the tiny bastard spawn of Ishtar will spill forth.
6. Their eyes, nose, mouth, and other orifices constantly ooze honey of richest amber. It attracts clouds of stinging, biting insects that fortunately die shortly after their first taste of Ishtar's sweet nectar.
7. Twisting horns and jagged fangs burst from the target's joints, dealing d6 damage and forcing them to move at half speed, lest they take another d6 damage.
8. White lilies sprout wherever the target's blood lands, if ground and ingested they grant +2 to physical checks for an hour, but after a week the madness sets in, and after another the change comes over them.
9. Ishtar boils your blood for a few moments, causing you to vomit up caustic sanguine blobs and dealing you d6 damage.
10. Angelic organs and prehensile things burst from the target's mouth, fronding the air, the only noises they can make are of the most beautiful music, even their screams for pain are choral and harmonious.
11. The target's saliva transmutes into a powerful aphrodisiac which they're at danger of swallowing to the point of overdose.
12. The target's tongue is replaced by a black adder, malicious and intelligent, though wishing no harm upon the target themselves. It will depart back to Ishtar once allowed to lethally envenom someone.
13. Ishtar finds the target's form wanting and reshapes it. Re-roll all physical stats. The target finds themselves now androgynous and beautiful.
14. The target's eyes turn into valuable exotic red gems, their skin to soft and pliant marble. They can still see and feel just fine, and don't get any fancy powers or a boosted AC.
15. The target's skin becomes glistening and night-black, their hair falls out and their nails pop off, their teeth sharpen into small fangs, they take on an overall Giegeresque appearance.
16. The target falls into writhing ecstasy, unable to act or speak in any coherent fashion.
17. Ishtar's glory manifests in the target, forcing everyone who can see within 30 feet to save or be overcome by ecstatic melancholy, falling into an orgiastic frenzy as they are overcome by hallucinations of beckoning genderless figures.
18. The target begins fading from reality. Every day they must save or advance down this track: Real --> Insubstantial --> Invisible --> Gone. The only way to end the march towards vanishing is to fall in love.
19. Ishtar finds your devotion wanting. Prove yourself forever beyond all question, right now, or have your pitiful body returned to the primordial squirming flesh-mass it was always meant to be.
20. The next time they sleep, the target must save or go to Ishtar's boudoir in their dreams and never return.

A priestess of the Lover of Lovers

Blackheart's Fencing Club

Initiate

Joining: Defeat an initiate of the club in a formal duel, proctored by an adept.

Benefits: Choose a signature sword and design a trick for it that you can perform instead of attacking. Also, you get +1 to hit with your signature sword.

Restriction: You must never refuse a duel, and must duel at least once a week. If you fail to uphold either of these commitments, you will be banned from entering the club.

Adept

Joining: Defeat an adept of the club in a formal duel, proctored by a master.

Benefits: Once per combat, you may parry a blow that would hit you, ignoring all damage. Design a new trick, and get another +1 to hit with your signature sword.

Restriction: You must only fight with your signature sword. If you use another weapon, you will be kicked out of the club, forced to win your way back in.

Master

Joining: Defeat a master of the club in a formal duel, proctored by a gathering of the other masters.

Benefits: Attacks with your signature sword ignore AC provided by armor. Design a final trick, and what the hell, get +2 to hit with your signature sword.

Restriction: You must never wear armor. If you do, the other masters will hunt you down and kill you without honor.

A club member

The Hand

Initiate

Joining: Steal a treasure worth 200 silver and gift it to an adept.

Power: Once per day, when you are restrained (physically or socially) and you could feasibly escape, you do. You get +1 to hit from hiding.

Restriction: You must fence everything with the Hand, and hand over half the take to the Hand. If fail to uphold this commitment, you'll be kicked out of the Hand and blacklisted by every fence in the city.

Adept

Joining: Steal a treasure worth 1000 silver and gift it to a master.

Power: When an attack misses you, you may redirect the attack to another target, forcing them to roll a new attack. You get +1 to hit from hiding.

Restriction: You must never pay for anything. If you do, the other adepts will attempt to steal everything you own and hold dear.

Master

Joining: Steal a treasure from the Queen's palace and gift it to the Hand's coffers.

Power: Once per day, you may leave a scene and later declare yourself to have been disguised in the background all along. You get +1 to hit from hiding.

Restriction: You must never honor a deal. If you do, the other masters will attempt to steal your life.

Light fingers

The Mantic School

Initiate

Joining: Bring an artifact or spell grimoire recovered from another Ouroboros to an adept for verification.

Power: You get 1 mantic die (d6), which you roll to cast a spell. On 1-3 the spell still casts but the die is depleted for the day. If it is not depleted, next time it depletes on 1-4, and so on. You may push a depleted die to cast the spell anyways, but you must roll on the calamity table. You are taught 3 random spells by your new adept-teacher.

Restriction: You must spend every night studying your spells. If you fail to do this, you won't be able to cast the next day.

Adept

Joining: Bring back an unknown creature from another Ouroboros for study by the masters.

Power: You get a 2nd mantic die. You are taught 3 more random spells by your new master-teacher.

Restriction: You must take on an apprentice selected for you by the masters and teach them 3 spells. If you neglect your duties or death befalls your pupil, you will be forced to re-join the school as an initiate.

Master

Joining: Bring lore about the Mantic Demon and how one might defeat it to the masters.

Power: You get a 3rd mantic die. You develop your own signature spell, which you can cast once per day without rolling a mantic die.

Restriction: You must never push a depleted mantic die. If you do, the old Mantic Demon will come for your soul in the night, it can be fled from or driven away but never truly defeated until it claims you.

*Calamity Table*

1. Arcane flames wreathe you, scorching your flesh and dealing you d6 damage. You will heal somewhat, but will always bear the marks of witchfire.
2. You age 5 years an hour. At age 100, you die and are reborn as an infant out of your corpse. The cycle begins again.
3. You gain a random insanity from the Gauche Madness table (a post yet to come).
4. The spell takes form, it holds nothing but hate for you and is possessed of a terrible intelligence, defeat it if you'd ever like to cast it again.
5. Your face becomes a spiral of whirling shattered crystal, you are unable to speak  but may still cast spells.
6. Strange fungus blooms from your back and sporulates aggressively, affecting everyone within 30 feet. This happens every time you cast this spell now.
7. A tiny version of the Mantic Demon in one of its many guises claws its way up your throat, dealing d6 damage on the way out before scampering off to scheme and sow mischief.
8. You gain a random insanity from the Urbane Fervors table (a post yet to come).
9. Caustic green mist pours from your mouth with the words of the spell, choking you and everyone within 30 feet who fails a save into painful unconsciousness. While knocked out, they dream dark and prophetic dreams.
10. You gain a random insanity from the Eldritch Lunacy table (a post yet to come).
11. Your skin begins to shine reflectively, your joints crackle when you move. You have become somewhat crystalline, with no obvious downside.
12. You wretch violently, borne to the ground by the force of the heaving, what comes forth are wet tendrils with no apparent other end, curling and twisting in the air.
13. You swell and swell, witchfire pouring from your mouth and eyes and nose, dealing 2d6 damage to everyone within 30 feet as you explode, before reconstituting all wrong (re-roll physical stats with 2d6).
14. You gain a random insanity from the Gauche Madness table.
15. You gain a random insanity from the Urbane Fervors table.
16. You gain a random insanity from the Eldritch Lunacy table.
17. Everyone within 30 feet, including you, suffers a spontaneous infestation of tiny crawling things just beneath their skin. This happens every time you cast the spell now.
18. Your blood is slowly and insidiously replaced by infectious worms. They do no harm to you, their glorious host, but any time your blood contacts someone else's skin they will be rapidly devoured from within and turned into a parasitic monstrosity.
19. You are suddenly encysted in a cocoon of silver and crystal, lapsing into a delirious and delightful slumber, unlike any since you were a child. If no one penetrates the chrysalis within the hour, the thing they find inside will no longer be you.
20. The Mantic Demon comes for you in the night.

Master of the Mantic School

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

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