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.

What is Ouroboros

As my 5th edition Inquisition campaign comes to a close after a solid year and a half, it's time to look for the Next Hot Thing.

For me, that's an OSR campaign.

It's been a little while since I've run this style of game (maybe two years) but I already have some ideas percolating for this campaign.

Without further ado, here's everything I know about the City that Devours Itself, Ouroboros.

Pablo Genovés

Playing in the City

The city continually re-imagines and reinterprets its inhabitants, just as it devours and regurgitates itself again and again.

At the beginning of each session, you can re-roll one ability score. You must use the new result. You don't have to roll of course, but come on...

Street Encounters 1

Roll up one of these every time the players travel more than a few blocks.

1	Silent woman, making herself known telepathically (though you don’t immediately realize this), offers you a place to rest and a warm meal, her house seems abandoned, she will devour you all, rests after each killing.
2	Hawker of cursed and brittle swords, d10 in stock now, but put in a request and he may have what you want next time (the cursed version of course).
3	Things posing as humans, most of them passable, trying to lure you near the open sewer with a “business proposition” though they don’t quite know what that is.
4	Archery contest with women from a far land, nearly unbeatable, they sucker you into putting down serious money, may have to cheat your way out.
5	Living saints, pale and bright, determined to silence you for seeing them beat a beggar to death and feast on his brain matter.
6	Blind masons traipsing about town are taking turns at ever-escalating feats of vandalism and outright destruction, and they both want your help overcoming the other.
7	Roadwork leads you through an alley, once past a blind turn you see its bricked up, little claws are reaching out of every crack to pull you into the seams between stones, their tiny voices beg you, they are so hungry.
8	Defamed alchemist, desperate to restart career, is giving away one random potion for each potion you buy, the random ones are untested and mutagenic.
9	Night falls suddenly and the shadow men make themselves known, threatening you without words, stalking you, waiting for the moment to steal your last breath.
10	A great parade of lunatics and celebrants, masked and painted, many will ask you to join and make outlandish promises to encourage this, they’re being herded out of the city by the Queen’s men, never to be allowed back inside.

Canaletto

Seven Virtues

This one has spoilers for my crew, so if you're in my group get out while you can!

The Seven Virtues, and the organization they represent, have emerged as the great villains of my Inquisition campaign. But who are they exactly?

The Ordo Ferrum, the Inquisition's demon-hunting arm, has long been experimenting with the unthinkable heresy of demon binding.

It all began in 987, when the Pope became possessed by a demon so mighty that even the most expert exorcists failed to rid him of the afflicting spirit. Many a fearful clergyman believed that this demon must be Lucifer himself, and that this disaster might spell the end of the fledgling Church.

With nowhere left to turn, the high clerics called upon the Knights Evisser, founded by a legendary paladin of the same name. With all haste she was rushed to the Vatican and brought to the Pope's bedside. Faced with perhaps her greatest challenge, she did what any sensible crusader would do when faced with Satanic incursion: smite the Pope and declare herself head of the Church.

With the Knights Evisser and their allies behind her, the organs of the Church could do little to thwart her, and so her seizure of the Papacy went uncontested aside from the lamentations of the Cardinals.

Her power secure, Evisser turned her mind to the corruption plaguing Christendom, for what other reason would God in his infinite wisdom allow the Pope to be overcome by Satan? She gathered knights from every land under God and launched a massive purge. With sword and fire she swept across kingdom after kingdom, putting millions to the torch. If Evisser sensed even a whiff of heresy in a city, it would burn. If a king's relative had ever been accused of consorting with dark powers, there was war against him and his people. Her great crusade was deadlier than any plague that ever touched the lands of man, and all told it remains the bloodiest war in the Church's already sordid history.

But the fire burning in Evisser's heart could not be extinguished, and soon she turned her eyes abroad. Across the Sea of Whales to the north were arctic lands who knew not God's love. In the 19th year of her purges, grown old and scarred, she swore an oath that before her death she would spread the true faith to all who lived under the sun.

An expedition was mounted to that hyperborean place beyond any map's edge, a venture unthinkable to even the most ambitious of conquerors in history. But Evisser was unlike any other. With a cadre of her most elite, she boarded a great black ship and set sail for the unknown.

What she found was a temple, nestled amidst the peaks of a mountain they called Erebus.

Evisser set her mind to abolishing this shrine of false gods, and they left the ship to scale the frozen slopes of this craggy mountain. It was cold, cold enough to crack stones, and the winds that assailed her force was so ferocious that many among them spoke dreadfully of elder forces keeping them at bay, that perhaps the gods of this place still dwelt within and even now resisted the approach. In hushed tones, they spoke too of Evisser's madness. Fitfully they slept, plagued now with nightmares of the cities they had razed in her name, of women and children fed to endless fires, and always they dreamed of her blood-mad eyes. Unknown to Evisser, mutiny brewed among her faithful.

Men starved and froze upon the mountain. Every sunrise over the mountain was a fresh grave dug in the frost-hardened earth. Talk of insurrection glutted itself on every buried warrior.

Then finally, after many days of hardship, Evisser gained the peak, and entered that unhawllowed pagan place.

To the shock of a learned woman named Abyssinia among the crusaders, the ruins were Assyrian! An ancient empire, long vanished, that once ruled half the world. But they were never thought to have ventured beyond the Sea of Whales, there was no record of their journey to this land of wind and ice. Abyssinia warned of the great and restless evil of this people, but her fear only enraged Evisser, who set about the task of tearing down the hateful forms of inhuman idols.

Ill content to watch yet more wanton destruction, Abyssinia set off deeper into the temple. She followed a trail of runes carved into the wall, a script that told stories of the War in Heaven, the Dragon, and the Hidden Ones.

One of the crusaders followed Abyssinia, likewise discontent with Evisser's rages. This is how it began. First one, then his sword-brother, then many flocked to Abyssinia, lost in following her runes.

By the time she reached the tomb, half the expedition was behind her.

Enshrined here was a woman, with skin like starry night and a robe like flowing blood. The aeons of interment had not touched her.

And her eyes opened. And she spoke. And they listened.

She told of the evils that Evisser had wrought as if she knew them firsthand. She told of all this suffering as part of a cycle, one that echoed itself over and over, the bell of history tolling with cries of woe. Before Evisser's purges the Romans had done much the same, before them the Assyrians, and so on. Human history seemed trapped in an endless flat circle of self-destruction.

What God, she asked, would allow this?

God is long departed from us, she said, his throne in Heaven empty since Adam was cast out of the garden. He has abandoned you, and yet you perpetrate bloodshed in his name. Why?

God has trapped this world in a yoke of pain, and the only way free is the utter destruction of the horror-stricken earth he has created. Then the new world will grow up from the ashes, as such things always do. But a world free of God. A world free of pain.

It was simple then, to slay Evisser. Lost in her destruction of the temple, she never heard Abyssinia behind her. Her only warning that something had gone wrong was when her sword was seized from her belt. Then, as Abyssinia had done to a thousand heretics in Evisser's name, she ran the woman through.

Returning to the woman in the tomb, Abyssinia thanked her for setting them upon the path to freedom. And the woman in the tomb introduced herself.

I am the Black Goddess, she said.

And she taught Abyssinia the lost art of binding, by which she might chain demons to her followers and grant them great infernal power.

Returning to the Vatican, Abyssinia asked the crusaders to keep this secret from the Church. She was not Evisser, she said. She would not command them or threaten them, there would be no execution of those who disagreed. If they desired, they could kill her then and there for all she had done. There would be no resistance.

It was simple then, to win them over.

So Evisser's sword was buried in lieu of her body, lost to northern pagan arrows as far as the Church would ever know. And the Inquisition was founded to carry on her great mission of rooting out heresy in the peoples of Christ. And its first order, Ferrum, "of steel and sword", was founded. And Abyssinia bound the princes of Hell to her mightiest followers, great demon kings helplessly slaved to mortal men by the Black Goddess' secret knowledge.

And Abyssinia faded into history, leaving a legacy of extraordinary Inquisitors that would be exalted by layman and clergy alike as great heroes, called the Seven Virtues.

Long story short, here are some stat blocks for 5th edition enemies:

Humility (Pride)

Humility, in another life, was a beggar boy in the Lotus Empire. The Inquisition records are incomplete, but somehow he became a pupil of the swordmaster Masanari Hanzo and quickly rose to prominence in the school of the Falling Star. The boy's gift with the sword elevated him from the lowest of the low to one exalted across the prefectures of the Empire. Perhaps this sudden and unexpected rise to fame led him to fall from grace. One morning, the other students discovered him kneeled in the master's study, stolen sword drenched in Hanzo's blood. Needless to say, Humility fled the Lotus Empire and found himself picked up by Inquisitors at the edge of the Oasis Kingdoms. Eventually brought before Abyssinia, psychological evaluation revealed him to be a perfect candidate to be bound to Lucifer, the prince of Pride. He accepted with an easy smile.

AC 18, HP 162, STR+5, DEX+5, CON+4, INT+3, WIS+5, CHA+5
Saves Str/Dex+7, Con+6, Wis+9, Cha+9
Immune to frightened condition
Compelled duel is cast on anyone who hits him with a melee attack.
Smirk: Each time he is missed by an attack or lands one, he gains +1 to hit and AC, and 10 temp HP and a battlemaster die (starts with 1).
Look Down Upon: Each time he is damaged, he gains advantage to hit on his next round.
Starfall Sword: 3/round, +8 to hit, d8+4 damage plus 4d8 radiant damage, make a battlemaster move if he has a die available.
3 legendary actions (sword)

Patience (Wrath)

Patience was eldest daughter to Lord Melrose, Anglikan old money. By the time Melrose's incestuous predations were revealed to the public, it was far too late for his daughter. Horrifically burned in an "accident" her father perpetrated, she learned to quietly build her rage for select moments when it could be unleashed. Taking after her father, this was usually played out on the helpless; first animals, then children, and finally - rising to prominence as a crack confessor - prisoners of Church and state. After observing her 10 year interrogation of the Sabine Witch, Abyssinia selected her as a candidate for binding to Baphomet, the prince of Wrath. No persuasion was necessary - she volunteered.

AC 19, HP 146, Move/Climb/Fly 40, STR/CON+4, DEX+3, INT+1, WIS+2, CHA+3
Saves STR+8, DEX+7, CON+8
Acid Blood: Any weapon that strikes her is corroded to the point of uselessness.
Howl of Pain: Her constant screaming drowns out spellcasting as silence.
Rising Anger: Every hit she takes grants her +1 attack and +2 damage.
Bloodied: At half HP attacks and reactions per round double.
Claw: +11 hit, d8+8 damage.
Flames of Rage: 15 ft cone, 2d8+4 damage or strike nearest creature for +2 damage.

Vengeful Riposte: When hit moves to attacker and makes claw attack, 2/round reaction.

Chastity (Lust)

Chastity was a humble nun at a flagging convent in Cordoba. She and another sister loved eachother, deeply, secretly, and in the desperation of their plight tried to conjure up Lucifer to free them. He agreed to grant them their desire, only if she would break her vow of chastity, as she had done many times with the other sister, and lay down with him. Their congress cursed her, destroying her heart and leaving a bottomless pit that no pleasure could fell. When Inquisitors dragged her away, Abyssinia picked her from the bottom of the heap to find her begging for possession, anything to fill the emptiness. And so she was given to Asmodeus, the prince of Lust.

AC 19, HP 142, STR+4, DEX+3, CON+4, INT+1, WIS+2, CHA+5
Saves Int+5, Wis+6, Cha+7
Skills Deception+7, Insight+6
How Charming: Any mind-affecting spells are reversed on the user with no save.
Perfection: While she is at full HP, foes must WIS save DC 20 to attack her or fall into admiration. Whoever kills her falls into a deep depressive fugue that may last forever.
Eloquent (DC 20): Every sentence she speaks is a suggestion. When she smiles, save vs charm.
Thorn Whips: 2/round, +8 to hit, reach 15 ft, d8+4 plus 1 bleed/round, and either throw 30 ft for additional d8+4 or grapple (escape DC 20).

All credit for the Perfection and Eloquent abilities goes to this article on a way cooler blog.

Temperance (Gluttony)

Temperance was born in a time of plague, and turned to the old ways of flagellation, seeking salvation through penance. By some miracle he was spared, and he led a movement to repopularize this ancient tradition. What began as a cleansing act became an addiction for him, and his followers were pulled in his wake as they transformed into a pain cult. When the Ordo Ferrum broke up the cult, Abyssinia made him a prime candidate for binding to Belphegor, the prince of Gluttony. He agreed, so long as an enchantment was placed on him that would leave his wounds to never heal.

AC 16, HP 133, STR+5, DEX-1, CON+4
Slam: 2/round, +8 to hit, 2d10+5 damage, he regains HP equal to damage dealt.
Glutton for Punishment: When damaged, 50% roll below instead (use for finishing moves too):

1. Leg severed. Blood geyser grants 60ft jump. 2nd result grants 60ft fly speed. Ignore additional results.
2. Disemboweled. Intestines grapple @ 20ft and drag targets in to be dissolved 3d6/turn. Additional results = additional grapples.
3. Decapitated. Blind but locally omniscient @ 10ft. Stump roars, head still speaks.
4. Hand severed. Shoot as missile @ 30ft, choke or blind (DC 20 to remove). Second result = additional attack. Ignore additional results.
5. Foot severed. Foes knocked prone in blood when entering 5ft. Second result = 10ft radius. Ignore additional results.
6. Struck in heart. Weapon grabbed.
7. Fountain of gore. Foes in cone pushed back 15 ft and blinded d4 rounds.
8. Mortal wound. Seemingly dead, automatic sneak attack 2 rounds later.
9. Arm severed. Gains riposte with legs, as Slam but only as reaction to attack.
10. Jaw broken. Spray broken teeth in 15 ft cone 3d6.
11. Head pulped. Weapon grabbed.
12. Pulp hand. Damage of that attack doubles, more surface area.

The Glutton for Punishment ability is a straight-up rip from a much better blog, found here.

Diligence (Sloth)

Diligence was raised by an Inquisitorial mage as a virtuoso, an absolute magical prodigy. He entered Vatican University at fourteen in the School of Magic, excelling in class though rarely attending, and certainly never studying. He didn't need to. The headmasters expelled him when he was caught using an enchantment to cheat, and he was brought to court for consorting with dark powers in an attempt to blackmail the masters into handing over his degree. At Abyssinia's order, an execution was staged with an unfortunate body double and Diligence was handed over to her care. On meeting her, he claimed to know about the binding project and requested Beelzebub, the prince of Sloth.

AC 15 (mage armor), HP 99, INT+5, CHA+3, DEX/WIS+2, STR-1
Saves INT+9 WIS+6
Magical Whiz: Advantage on magic saves, resist damage from spells.
Swarmlord: Surrounded by swarm of insects, does 2 each round for free:

1. Shield of Wings grants +5 AC against all attacks.
2. Sleepy Buzz all in hearing range save DC 17 WIS or take Exhaustion.
3. Hornet Sting save DC 17 DEX or 8d6 damage, half on success, poisoned.

Spells: DC 17, +9 to hit, can hold 2 concentration spells at once.

• Ray of Frost (cantrip) spell attack, d8 damage, -10 ft speed.
• Bane (4 slots) 3 targets, CHA save, -d4 on rolls, concentration.
• Hold Person (3 slots), 1 target, CHA save, paralyzed, concentration.
• Time Stop (1 slot), d4+1 turns of frozen time.

Mercy (Envy)

Mercy is just her mortal guise. Envy is her name, or Leviathan, and she is the only one of the Seven Virtues who is not a human bound to a demon. Rather she is the demon, a full-fledged prince of Hell. She was bought easily by the Ordo Ferrum, who should by rights be her enemies. She was bought with the promise of that which she had forever desired: a human life. She was given a body to live out her fantasies through, fantasies of simple things and motherhood and the thousand experiences a demon would never have. After Abyssinia gave her this gift, a mortal coil that could be shuffled off so easily by the Ordo Ferrum, she became a faithful servant of their aims.

AC 16, HP 112, STR/CON+3, DEX+1, CHA+5
Shapeshift: Take the form of any creature she has seen.
Harpoon Arm: reach 60ft, +7 to hit, 4d8+3 damage target grappled (escape DC 20).
Sorrowful Embrace: DC 20 WIS save when grappled or 4d8 psychic damage, steals painful or triumphant memories (50% which ones she steals).
Never Let Go: When damaged while grappling someone, she deals an additional 4d8 psychic damage to them as a reaction and steals even more memories.

Charity (Greed)

The third son of a Cosa Nostra don, Charity was born into such extravagant wealth that he never knew want in his life. He was a self-consumed playboy for most of his life, which only ended when his father cut him off after the killing of his mother by a rival syndicate. He became a traveling mountebank, hawking snake oil from village to village and moving fast enough to stay ahead of the angry mobs formed in the wakes of his "miracle cures". Caught with counterfeit cargo by Inquisitors, Abyssinia picked out the insatiable desires in his profile and selected him for binding to Mammon, the prince of Greed. It was an ugly, unwilling binding.

Personally never saw the need to stat him up. He's just not a fighter.

If I did make a stat block for him, he would be a Noble straight out of the Monster's Manual, with the ability to turn every metal object within 20ft into gold as a reaction to getting hit.

The Old City

Buried beneath the Mad Queen's Palace, buried by time and earth and historical revisionism, is the Old City, called in contemporary annals the Nameless City, called by its modern populace the City of Ghouls.

In the years between the great flood and the rise of Rome, there ruled an empire unparalleled. They were called the Assyrians, and their armies marched from the Sea of Monsters in the west to the Wall of Heaven in the east, and their fleets brought ruin to the Children of the Sun beyond the Boiling Waters, and their palaces were buttressed with the skulls of their enemies, and their streets were lined with the shattered statues of enemy gods, and they were great and terrible.

But no earthly power is enough for man, whose avarice is infinite. The Assyrians desired the power of the gods. They craved, above all, power over Death.

It was then that the Black Goddess came to them, as she came to the Romans before their fall, and as it is whispered she comes to us now. She came with a book of secret truths, hidden from man by the gods, those jealous guardians. From this book, the Assyrians learned and mastered a hundred sorceries. Chief among these magicks was that most highly sought by the kings: the secret to eternal life.

Of course there were wars and schisms, for few would abide the destruction of the natural order, an affront to the gods themselves. But many of the Black Goddess' followers survived, and she commanded them to build a great city beneath the sea cliffs of a place where certain eldritch stars shone on starless nights.

They built a city of the dead.

For a time, the king of this city reigned above all others. His armies were inexhaustible, the enemy dead swelled his ranks, he grew ever stronger while his enemies could only weaken. But this army of the hungry dead would never stop its march, so bottomless was its hunger. The dead, beyond the king's control now, bled their former kinsmen dry until the Assyrian empire, built on the bones and severed heads of the conquered, was itself ground into dust.

They made a wasteland, and called it peace.

And so there remained one city of the Assyrians, sole relic of a fading broken dream.

But the people of this city had long ago disavowed the gods, and now divine vengeance fell like the sword of Damocles upon them. The earth was scorched and salted, the seas emptied of fish, the rains would not come, disease struck the people. Everywhere was famine and sickness. The people were terrified, surely judgement was upon them and they had been found wanting. And in fear, the king turned back to the Black Goddess. And she told him of the Hidden Ones.

Before man, before earth, before the gods, there had always Been. The gods did not come from nowhere. All things had come from the roiling chaos of Before, and in this nowhere, there were hidden beings older than ancient. It was they who wielded true power. It was they who would save the city, not gods or men.

But such things come at a price.

Great temples were built and sacrifices made; hecatombs slaughtered and their blood drained into the maws of statues whose thirst could never be slaked, children cast into the open arms of flaming hundred-tendriled idols.

And the Black Goddess, pleased at the frenzied orgy of worship, touched the king with Death. "You will never thirst or hunger again. Illness will pass you by." She smiled a terrible smile. "You will grow fat from death".

Time passed and the prophecy proved true: the king felt no hunger, no thirst, and the plagues that stalked his city spared him. He knew he must act quickly to save his people. He begged the Black Goddess to minister her blessing upon the people, promised her anything, anything. She smiled again, and said no sacrifices would be needed. One by one, in the temples of the Hidden Ones, the Black Goddess blessed every man, woman, and child with Death.

And though the plague died away, and the people rejoiced, their praises to the king fell on deaf ears. Something was amiss. He could feel it. The pains and needs of life had been relieved, and yet a great hunger was growing in him. No food would satisfy it. No wine would drown it.

It was a hunger for the dead.

Horror mounted in him as he presided over the burial of those who refused the Black Goddess' gift. He could not keep his eyes from the bodies. They seemed to call to him.

It was then he knew what the Black Goddess had done. Before he could glut himself upon the corpses of his people, he ordered his tower sealed and sunk with him inside it.

Soon this same hunger gripped the people, but few chose the king's path, even in the face of such monstrosity. In the space of a week the city turned upon itself, the mausoleums were broken open, the graveyards excavated, the great tombs of the royal family looted for their lifeless plunder.

And so rose the Ghoul Kings, great and gluttonous, partite masters of this City of Ghouls. Deathless aeons and the devouring of the dead has made them monstrous, twisted creatures, and the "people" are little better - ragged beasts who bear only the trappings of civilization, noble necrophages, preying upon their past and eachother.

Anything to live.

This whole take on the undead is inspired by the wonderful ghouls detailed here.

The Queen's Madness

As old as it is, this one has spoilers for my campaign. My players best get out before they ruin things for themselves.

The old ones do not sleep or die, though to mortal eyes they do both. Their minds  dwell on higher planes, and for long aeons their bodies in the physical realm may seem to sleep. Indeed these bodies can, through great destructive power, be destroyed. But even the final annihilation of their body is not the death of the mind.

Her whole life, the Queen lived in a man’s world. Never anything more than a party favor, a festival attraction, a bargaining chip. Until she married the Prince. That was her first taste of real power. She could make anyone do anything, save the royal family. The Prince and his father always towered over her. When the Prince’s father died and she first took the title of Queen, her power grew. So did her desire to see no man command her. Some say she poisoned the Prince. All that’s known is that he died, and she was so beloved that the people demanded she continue to reign in his stead. And so she has. For a time, she enjoyed peace, finally ruling over her life as a man might. But with true Queendom came responsibility to foreign powers and with that came new ways of subjugation by men. This new way was the Church, whose God is a man, whose high clerics are men. The Church had attached itself to her land like a parasite, and in the tenth year of her reign it sucked its prey dry. The Church wanted to become the official religion of her realm, and the people wanted it too. The Queen accepted, as she must, lest she be deposed by chain and pyre. But she was not going to surrender power to these men with their holy water and their God. Through her Mathematician, she found a way to contact the old ones, and they instructed her how to become like them. She will bear a child, herself, into the world. The birth will kill her, but her consciousness will be reborn into her child. Even now she is undergoing the ritual. The madness gripping her city and the phantasms of her that seem to walk the palace are manifestations of this deep disturbance of the natural order. The Queen doesn’t care. Now, surely, no man will hold power over her.

The madness of the maids is a symptom of the Queen’s coming ascension beyond the reach of men. This energy has infected them with uprising, and now they would do as their Queen does (without knowing it, thinking her the symbol they rebel against rather than rally around) and ascend beyond their station. They would become royalty, no longer servants.

The wing occupied by the Mathematician has succumbed to the chaos of higher realities. The architecture has rearranged around non-Euclidean geometries and impossible space. To walk there is to warp. Nothing there is natural. The Archbishop Artemis has become trapped here, trapped and twisted. Things are coming through from the other side, but who knows what is what.

Below the palace dwells the Nurse, and with her all the failed experiments that led to the triumph of the Queen’s rebirth. The space is right but the denizens are horrific, and it is the reality, not unreality, of the gruesome experiments here that makes them truly horrible.

Below even this, buried under the palace’s foundation, are the ruins of the old city. Here the last dynasty, who communed personally with the old ones, dwelt and still dwell. For they have transcended death in their own way, not quite living and not quite undead, a cannibal society of ghouls and vampires. It is here, in the holiest shrine, that the Queen is being reborn. Here the bodies of the slain become possessed by lingering quantum spirits of the old ones, corpses fashioned into shoggoth-hulks of dead matter.

This was the earliest iteration of lore for my Inquisition campaign. "The old ones," vague as they were, were replaced by a more Biblical (but not too Biblical) Dragon, a product of Lucifer's war against God that finds itself chained outside the cosmos, sealed behind the angel-portal Lilith and awaiting the day it is unleashed upon the quaking Earth...