The Age of Eight Plagues, Part One

I'm trying to flesh out the history of Starfyk, one of my continents. My next campaign takes place on it, and so it seems prudent to know what would have happened in the last 500 years of its history (I already have its immediately-after-God-and-Titan-War stuff down). A big part of the continent is the huge area controlled by mainly anti-civilization druids (known as Alquari) to its north, and they're going to be prominent in the upcoming campaign, too. So I figured I'd start this exploration with them.

I'd been writing this for like two weeks when I decided to just break it into parts. Eight is a lot. This is the first half of them. The next will skip the introductions and just go into the last four.

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In 717 A.E.M., the Sacellum of Rimhr set its sights on the northern portion of Starfyk. They had unchallenged control of the southern half of the continent, with most folks being happy to join the people who had toppled the most powerful of the Giant Empires. Though the two other empires in the north had long since fallen, there were still numerous setbacks in trying to obtain those lands. The biggest of these were the Alquari.

They have no name for themselves. The name we use - that the locals first spoke when communicating with the Sacellum - means "dog people" in Giant. They are the escaped slaves of a former empire, who allied themselves with the wyverns so that they might topple all those who would enslave them. For some, this grew into a hatred for all civilization.

The smallest town is an abomination under their eyes. The forest is the true home of men. To break its bones and refurbish them into obscene symmetry is the highest crime. When all races live like beasts, reveling in the base, carnal pleasures - that is when they will be truly happy.

Not all the Alquari think like this. Some are content to live peacefully in the northern woods, coexisting with the outside world. But the Sacellum see them all as the same, and so they are all put to the sword. They torched their woods and broke their bodies.

So, in response, the Alquari sought the High Druid. They begged her to bend the will of the forest and called for retaliation against the invaders.

The High Druid broke their necks for daring to speak in front of her. And then, she set about to concocting a plague.

For the purposes of this post, all plagues come from the High Druids of the Alquari. They manufacture their plagues, using their own bodies as breeding grounds for all manner of vile disease. Travel to distant lands is no trouble for them (for it is said that every forest leads to another), and so they may capture distant infections within themselves and bring them back to lands where they are foreign and vicious.

Most of the High Druids do not have names. It is against their way - names are a product of civilization, and they have long-since abandoned all that is birthed from that putrid womb. So, in the Sacellum's official historical records, the name of a High Druid and the name of their Plague is the same.

The Plague of Flayed Skin

When the first of the plagues came, it was like nothing the Sacellum had ever seen. Most people were happy to join them, and those that weren't could be easily beaten into submission or destroyed, if necessary. But a disease is an enemy that cannot be fought with spears and torches.

It ravaged settlers and their livestock alike. Clerics from the capital sent to treat it found themselves quickly consumed. Refugees brought the plague to the southern cities, creating an air of intolerance for outsiders that would last a millennium. This was intentional on the part of the archdruid who went on to be called Flayed Skin - her purpose when crafting it was to divide the conquerors. To create a whole new social class: lepers.

Speaking of, this was when Rimhrheld's odd prejudice against armadillos started. The little critters carry leprosy very well, but can live just fine without it. They brought in a second wave of the disease just when the Sacellum was getting good at eradicating it, extending the duration of the plague until 741 A.E.M. This was especially unfortunate for the Armadillo Knights of northwestern Starfyk, who lost much prestige and a beloved mascot to the Plague.

The Pangolin Knights rose after the power vacuum formed, but their mascots just weren't as cute as the old guard.

The Plague of Fallow Fields

Flayed Skin was killed in 738 A.E.M., and her plague was arduously destroyed over the span of the next few years. While the forces of civilization struggled with that endeavor, the druids were busy crowning a new archdruid. The Alquari that was eventually selected came to be known as Fallow Fields, and his patience was only outmatched by his malice.

Why kill the Sacellum, when you can just kill their food?

More of a blight than a plague, Fallow Fields did exactly what the name sounded like. It was never spread as wide as Flayed Skin, but it did its job in creating a dependency on food imports in the north. Again, creating a schism between north and south that would drive a wedge into the continent's two halves.

Twelve years and millions of gold later, and the Sacellum's appointed alchemists concocted a pesticide that would kill the bacteria behind the blight. Fallow Fields himself was killed early into the Plague's lifespan, in 745 A.E.M., but the longevity of it even after its death points to his ultimate success.

The Plague of Shingle-Eyes

There was an almost ten year gap between this Plague and the last, due to infighting among the militant factions of the Alquari as they searched for a new archdruid. Medical staff in the Sacellum's colonies had been increased after the last two plagues, and they fervently watched all who got sick, waiting for the next Plague to rear its head. But both factions didn't realize that a new plague had already begun. When Shingle-Eyes announced to his fellows that a tenth of the settler population had already contracted his Plague, they bent the knee to their newfound archdruid.

Shingle-Eyes is a slow-acting plague. It is said that it first appeared in its earliest stages before Fallow Fields had even been defeated, but the effects are slow-acting that it took until 762 for it to even claim a life.

Shingle-Eyes is an airborne disease that only worsens with the loss of sleep. The result is the growth of more eyes. Many, many eyes, coating the body like shingles (hence the name). The more eyes you have, the harder it is to close them all, the less sleep you get, the more eyes you grow. Eventually, the victims are bedridden, but unable to sleep, and eventually die when enough eyes grow in their throat to block off the windpipe.

As you can imagine, it isn't pretty. Image Source: Bloodborne

Eventually, with help from humiliating curfew laws strictly established in the northern settlements, Shingle-Eyes was defeated in 770. His death stopped the production of more of his Plague - it had spored from him, like a smokestack polluting the atmosphere. The curfew laws continued for several decades afterward, leading to much tension between settlers and law enforcement.

The Plague of Vermin

Though this plague is by far the one with the least casualties (official records state only thirteen died directly from it), it was the most damaging. It was a war not against the people of the Sacellum, but its infrastructure.

Vermin was the next archdruid after Shingle-Eyes, and hers was a blood-born disease. It was essentially a mass dominate spell spread through Vermin's own blood. Rats would come from miles around to drink of her, then birth whole generations of pups who would never have minds of their own. Vermin's sentience superseded theirs.

And in the summer of 774, every single pest in the forest came out to wreak havoc on the cities.

Wooden support beams surrounded by three layers of squirrels, chewing at them until their gums bled, knocking it down in the span of an hour. Moles tunneled under the Sacellum's shrines to collapse them during the next festival held in it. Crows shitting all over statues of Aurdao Vihn, the war hero who had killed the previous three archdruids.

It was also an especially difficult plague to quash. Vermin lived on through her progeny, her feral sentience having no problem existing in the tiny minds of her namesake.

Whole cities were declared fallen to Vermin and burned. The Sacellum would pay a silver piece per dead rat brought in to them, almost driving them to bankruptcy in a mere month. Their victory over it was the most pyrrhic the Sacellum had ever known - and it was impossible to tell if more pestilence would come spilling out of the forest. But finally, in 833, they stopped coming.

However, by that point, another Plague had already started.

Megaman and Level Design

I think there's a point in everyone's life when we look back at the early Megaman games and realize how genius they are, and for me that day is today.

I heard an orchestral remix of a Megaman song and tracked it down, mostly just to figure out where I had heard it before. Then I noticed that there was gameplay in the background, and decided to watch that. And man... a lot of the things in these levels are really great design examples.

Here's why:

FLASHMAN

So, the beginning of this level is sort of mazelike, but the cool thing is that you can see what lies on the other paths. If I remember right, those brick doors can be blown up with the bombs you get from one of the other bosses. It's blatantly showing the players "hey, if you loop around to the beginning and take a different path, you can get more stuff!" with the optional flavoring of mandating they have specific items to access said stuff. This asks the players what they care about more: getting more loot, or the progress they've already made?

Later on, we see more alternate paths where there's less resistance from enemies, but also more rewards near them (and the drops you get from killing them, of course). That's asking something similar to the last one - teasing players with additional loot, so long as they think they can take a fight.

Ways to implement this would be a maze made out of reinforced glass (can be seen, but not smashed, though) or letting players see the end point of an alternate path from an elevated outcropping.

QUICKMAN

The first thing of notice in this is that there's one screen Megaman just kind of... walks through? With no resistance at all? Sometimes you just need to build atmosphere, or give a sense of descending. Flavor is a big part of the game.

The next really cool thing is that this level actually attacks the light source that the players rely on. That's an often-underutilized DM tactic. It might require some workaround to darkvision depending on edition - but that's usually as simple as specifying it as ~*~ magical darkness ~*~

During the running-from-lasers section (those one-shot you, by the way - which is something you'd want to telegraph!), there are items that exist solely to bait the player. Do you wanna risk trying to get them? Do ya feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? It's also extra fitting for the level based around quickness.

Lastly, the mechanic of enemies respawning when you return to their location is brutal, and likely more of a technology limitation than anything, but it's really interesting nonetheless. It rewards aggression in a way antithetical to how Flashman's level rewarded backtracking (which is, again, fitting, as Flashman is Quickman's weakness) - push on, or else "reinforcements" arrive. This is another example of how quickness is used thematically.

WOODMAN

Further experimenting with that "reinforcements" mechanic, this level actually uses it for the opposite purpose. The enemies are slow, but numerous and can easily overwhelm the player. You gotta finish 'em off before moving on, or else if you need to create space when the next enemy shows up you'll have double the number of enemies on your tail.

In D&D, this is as simple as the (poorly-hid) goblins waiting for the party to leave the room before they try to sneak up on and backstab them. Root them out of their tunnels and deal with them, or else they'll be a real pain in the ass when they corner you with the manticore in the next room.

Also, those bird enemies are great. They creating a sense of tension - shoot the egg or else there's gonna be a ton of tiny, difficult enemies. This begs the question: do I shoot the bird or the egg first? And of course, if you get too focused on that the monkeys will clobber you.

Finally, with some of the later rabbit enemies we see a great example of enemies using the environment to their advantage. You can't shoot the rabbit at the bottom of the stairs from this angle (replicate in D&D with usage of cover), but it can hit you just fine. You have to go pure-defensive while you approach it, and then beat the hell out of it when you do finally get there.

METALMAN

Another cool exploitation of system errors - black in these old NES games was transparent a lot of the time, so they actually use that to make it so attentive players can just barely see those drill enemies while they're in the ground. Sometimes the simplest way to challenge players is to just have them look closely at something.

Thematically, this level is also great. It has a factory vibe, and the platforms that alternate between speeding you up and slowing you down help that by lending a sense of "hurry up and wait" to the level (airport level where you ride on the baggage claim treadmills, anyone?). And those little flat enemies move quicker when Megaman is near them because they're magnetic! So cool.

Finally, let's look at a boss fight. The whole stage you fight Metalman on is an acceleration platform, which significantly increases the fight's difficulty. Thankfully, players have been dealing with these platforms all level and know how to work around them! In this, it's as simple as jumping, but in D&D there could be so many more solutions!

Jam a sword in the slit the tread rotates through! Shoot the generator to power it off! Knock Metalman off his footing so the tread actually brings him towards you! I don't even have to think of all the possible solutions, because it's designed to inspire creativity. 

And that's fantastic level design, friends.

Session -1

So, the concept of a "Session 0" is well-known. Establishing what kind of setting your players are gonna be working through, helping with character creation, stuff like that. It's a step of the process and of establishing communication between the DM and the players. That's an important thing to do, for multiple reasons.

But last night I did something similar, which I'm deeming a "Session -1." I'm gonna do a proper Session 0 later where I actually talk about the setting they'll be in and help them make characters. So what, then, is a Session -1?

Basically, it's for establishing player and DM expectations. In mine I focused very little on the setting itself, and more on finding out what kind of setting my players wanted to exist in (Loom is large and diverse enough to where I felt like I could accommodate any sort of time period). I mainly did this because I'm playing with (mostly) new people I wanted to make sure they knew what they were getting into. And I think making sure everyone is on the same page about things like how lethal a game they're playing and what sort of adventure they're on is important.

So, I'm gonna post the general questions I asked my players here. If any other DMs see it, I figure it may be useful for them. And even if they don't, having it here will help me refine it later on, probably.

GAMEPLAY EXPECTATIONS

1. How much experience does this group have with tabletop roleplay, and if any, with what systems?
2. What balance of combat, exploration, and roleplay does the group want?
3. What power level would you like your characters to have?
4. How much lethality are you comfortable with?
5. How much homebrew are you comfortable with?
6. What amount of gore is okay, or are there any subjects that should be avoided during gameplay?
7. Would you prefer your actions to have more consequences on your character sheet, or on the game's story?

SETTING EXPECTATIONS

1. How big of a physical area do you want your adventures to cover?
2. What sort of technology level do you want the setting to be at? A real-world frame of reference would be helpful.

STORY EXPECTATIONS

1. What sort of "scope" do you want your adventures to cover? Personal goals, or saving the world?
2. How deep are you planning on going in terms of character backstory?
3. Do you want the personal character arcs of your characters to be integrated into the campaign, or just a natural consequence of their adventuring?
4. What races are you interested in playing or knowing about? (A lot of my races differ heavily from their portrayal in "vanilla" D&D, which is why I ask this)

After my questions were done, I let them ask their own. And, of course, if they needed stuff clarified about any questions I made sure to.

Overall I would say it was pretty helpful. As it turns out, what my players wanted is pretty damn different from what I was planning. And I tend to build things around the whims of my players, so knowing some of them from the get-go helps a lot.

They wound up wanting a world in its early Renaissance era, on the brink of industrialization. They like the idea of starting with a small-scale story and moving into a larger one, both in terms of physical and narrative scope. They want weak characters starting out who scale up into relatively powerful individuals - maybe with some hidden powers, to boot.

That's pretty different from my past experiences, and it's exciting to be pushed in a new direction. I think I'm gonna start doing this with all my groups from now on.

Fey Statblocks

Gonna take my first crack at writing system-agnostic monster statblocks. Here's some general rules:

• HD is hit dice, obviously. If you're playing 5E or something more modern/with generally larger statblocks, double whatever amount I give you. If monster level or CR are important for some reason, just refer to its HD.
• Size is most important for determining what dice the monster uses for health. Medium sized = d8, going up or down a die step with monster size. General sizes will be Tiny (pixie), Small (goblin), Medium (human), Large (ogre), and Huge (giant).
• AC and Speed stats will be given in reference to something else in the system for ease of translation.
• Attacks will be given with damage dice, any bonuses, and if deemed necessary damage type. They're given with a DC to beat, but if you roll attacks for monsters just take ten off the DC and add it to the attack.
• Multiattacks are written as: "Attack 1 + Attack 2."
• Creatures with a choice between two attacks are written as: "Attack 1 / Attack 2."
• Attacks with two different damage types are written as: " Type 1, Type 2."
• Any ability scores that seem noteworthy (read: not common sense/easily interpreted) will be given. Otherwise, just use your best judgement.
• Special languages, senses, and/or damage/condition immunities or vulnerabilities will be given if they exist.

With the housekeeping done, let's get to the monsters.

Krovatilde

When a fey gets venerable and senile enough, they are magically transformed into a Krovatilde and usually dumped onto the Material Plane (which the fey see as a vacation spot) as a reward for their service. This makes them, above everything else, very sleepy. They usually know a lot about whatever location they're in, as the fey who decide where they take their rests usually pick someplace they had an interest in.

They look like a big snail, pretty much. The snail shifts across all colors, lava-lamp style. The shell is usually black, with star or sheep designs on them that also glow in rainbow colors.

They're quite pleasant when they're not sleeping. Only problem is that they sleep 24 hours a day. The magical programming in their shells kicks in to defend them whenever somebody gets near. The party probably won't realize this and will just think that it's a mollusk monster. But if the party puts two and two together, upon waking up Krovatilde usually feel really bad for attacking you and will offer whatever assistance they can provide (they're usually pretty good spellcasters or can put in a favor with local fey).

Krovatilde
HD 8 Size Large AC As Platemail Speed As snail
Arcanopods: Dodge 16, 1d8 + 1d8

Comatose - While sleeping, the Krovatilde is unaffected by visual illusions. Damage won't wake the Krovatilde up (it's done to the shell), but the following things might: exceptionally loud noises (roll on random encounter table), the sensation of falling, or putting bright light down the shell's aperture.

Magic Murmurs - The Krovatilde sleeptalks. Whenever a spell is cast near it, flip a coin. On heads, it casts that same spell on a random target on its next turn as a free action.

These guys were inspired by Jirachi's fights in the PMD games.

Dullahan

I wrote about them here.

General Dullahan tactics are to restrain and behead whoever looks like the party's leader. They'll run if alone (usually after casting Mass Restrain), but they might let you kill them if it looks like you'll follow them back to their Court.

Dullahan
HD 2 Size Medium AC As Goblin Speed As human
Guillotine Blade: Dodge 11, 1d12

Courtly - While in their Court, the Dullahan have doubled HD and no limit on their spells. If killed outside their court, they reform in it in eight hours.

Headless - Critical hits deal no extra damage against Dullahan.

Spellcasting - Spell save DC = HD + 10.
At-will: Wheel of Fortune
3/day: Restrain
1/day: Mass Restrain

Grig

Members of one of the Low Courts. Like centaurs, but the bottom half is a grasshopper instead. Want to help you compose new songs about your epic deeds. This will usually involve you fighting something while they make it harder with their spells.

Grig

HD 1 Size Tiny AC As Hawk Speed As Dwarf, but moves via jumping

Courtly - While in their Court, the Grig have doubled HD and no limit on their spells. If killed outside their court, they reform in it in eight hours.

Spellcasting - Spell save DC = HD + 14.

At-will: Cure Wounds, Invisibility, Irresistible Dance

2/day: Mass Irresistible Dance

Fey Spells

Available to your party members if you really feel like it. I'd make them quest for 'em, personally. Mass spells replace "target creature" with "all creatures within a 30-foot area."

Irresistible Dance

Standard Action, Range 60 ft.

Target creature must make a Save or become unable to take any action but dance. Target gains no benefit from Dexterity to dodging and moves at half speed. On their turns, they may either attempt to make a new Save or take evasive maneuvers, restoring their Dexterity modifier to their dodging. If someone kills the partying mood (tells a really bad joke, does something particularly grim) the effect is ended.

Restrain

Standard Action, Range 30 ft.

Target creature must make a Save or become prone and restrained. Slashing weapons automatically crit targets in this condition.

Wheel of Fortune

Initiative Action (free action taken after the last creature in initiative order acts)

All creatures within the current combat reroll initiative.

Moral Leanings and Self

This is my first post about game design.

So, story consequences are my favorite kind of consequences. Piss off the right people without confronting them and your hometown gets slaughtered. Retire your character to settle down with your new spouse or else they'll get killed trying to join you on your adventures. These kind of things don't have an effect on your character sheet, most of the time. They're aimed more at the player.

But that doesn't mean the story the game's wrapped in can't have gameplay consequences.

Death is the biggest gameplay consequence most of the time. You don't get to keep playing your character - roll up a new one, and lose all of your sweet gear as a result. Start from scratch.

But, as some other D&D blogs I read have pointed out, death isn't the only way to accomplish that. What if your character just gets sick of being an adventurer?

Here's a rough draft of some mechanics based around that.

Moral Leanings

When you roll up a new character, give them up to four Moral Leanings. These are rules that they, as characters, follow strictly. Breaking them would go against what they stand for as people.

Try to keep proper nouns out of them - usually, kicking in the teeth of the lich that killed your father is its own reward. It doesn't need gameplay to motivate it.

EXAMPLES:

"Provide medical aid to injured innocents."

"Do not strike down an enemy who surrenders."

"Bury the religious with their belongings."

Self

Self is a stat. It's how much your character is comfortable having their actions controlled by you, the player.

They aren't necessarily aware that they're being puppeteered, of course. But if they act against their own moral compass, they will begin to question themselves. Have I lost myself as a person while pursuing gold and glory? Is the adventuring life really for me? What would my mother, may she rest easy, think of me now?

When you roll up a new character, you have an amount of Self equal to 1d6 + however many Moral Leanings you have. Your maximum Self is 10.

At 10 self, you may give yourself advantage on one d20 roll per day. (This is like a less shitty version of 5e's inspiration, or at least I like to think so. It doesn't really need to be there, if you don't want.)

At 2 self or lower, you stop wanting to take so many risks. You must roll a Save vs Fear whenever you fall under half health (once per combat). If you fail, your character is only able to run away.

At 1 self, you fall into a deep apathy. You automatically lose initiative, and cannot gain initiative-based benefits in any way.

At 0 self, you lose control of your character. They probably just retire, but it's also possible they become an antagonist.

You lose one self whenever you act in a way that is contradictory to one of your Moral Leanings. You gain one self whenever you act in accordance with one of them. 

Discussion

So, this mechanic was almost entirely inspired by Deltarune's ending (that link is spoilers and contains a mild jumpscare, btw). The idea of fictional characters getting fed up with the player is really interesting to me, and I think it's a cool way to "enforce" roleplay, if that kind of thing is your cup of tea. Especially since the smartest thing to do is to start with at least two Moral Leanings, since that way you can't start off with either of the debuffs. 

This obviously isn't going to be a good thing to implement into every game. I'd stay away from this in one-shots. And sometimes players just want their characters to be mechanics-on-legs. But in longer-term games with a focus on roleplay? I feel like this works nicely (though it could probably benefit from some tuning).

Dullahan

Courting Rebellion

All spirits are born from mortal want - similarly to how gods (most of them, anyways) rise from mortal hope. Pixies slip from in between flower petals when a child laughs, and when a wizard ponders how to gain more power a familiar spirit seeps from her shadow. And Dullahan crawl up from between the cracks in pavement when the impoverished overthrow the ruling class.

Once, they were a court of low fey who wished to upturn the power structure. They fashioned a guillotine and intended to dispose of the highest-ups on their home plane with it. They were eventually discovered, and their own tool used against them. Most died, of course. But it's said that some waited for the rabble to run off, collected their heads from off the ground, and fled onto the Material Plane. Now only the foolhardy speak of them, with the epithet of the Headless Court.

They're usually found in abandoned buildings. The old church in the woods that's only used for its graveyard nowadays. On top of a stretch of aqueduct left behind by an ancient civilization. The room at the end of the hall in your tenement building. These are where they hold their court, spinning their great wheels (also used as coat racks, but for heads) and dancing. The guillotine, blade polished to a mirror shine, sits in the center of the space - which seems much bigger on the inside. They are waiting. Waiting for you!

Jevil is a Dullahan.

Because everyone knows the Headless Court has helped with all the world's greatest revolutions. The Lightclaimers, the Tenth Empire, the Alquari - all danced with the Dullahan, and they were the builders of nations for it. The foundations of which were laid, of course, with skulls.

And when you come, they will whisper their words, sweet as honey mead, bitter as wine-turned-vinegar. They will tell you that history is a cycle. A society is born, and the ambitious corrupt it, placing themselves as the ruling class. They plunder the labor from the poor, who then rise up to put them to the sword. And a new society is born - one turn closer to perfection. But the wheel has stagnated - won't you give it a nudge? Look how it glitters in the moonlight. It's waiting for you, dear.

Inevitably, someone does nudge it. The wheel of history turns, and there is much rejoicing. The rest of the night is spent in revelry, wild dancing and ball-games with the laughing heads of the Good Folk. And when morning comes, the spinner wakes up alone. And gets to work.

Start your revolution. Make it successful. The more join your cause, the more new Dullahan are born. Bring a noble back to the abandoned room every fourth Rimhrset, and we'll liberate them of their head for you. There will be more rejoicing, and all your new friends are welcome, too!

And if you come empty handed?

Not to worry, dear. Your own head is quite pretty. It will make a fine substitute.

Grind, the Checkerboard Moon

so as it turns out, copy-pasting google docs into blogger doesn't really... go well. i wanna play around with a solution to this issue, but right now i'd rather put out content rather than wait to put it out because i'm too busy trying to figure out how.

luckily, this post was written by hand in a notebook, and needed transcribing/finishing anyways. it's about one of the moons.

Lunar Ichor

It was discovered in 36 A.E.M. (After the Emergence of Mortals). A third moon, hiding out in the sky. Because of the black dirt coating its surface, it was invisible at night and looked like a hole in the heavens during the day. The giantine society known as the Ruby Star had a thriving scientific community, and the astronomers among them used their telescopes to confirm it as a celestial body. Because of its appearance (or lack thereof) at night, they called it the Ashamed Moon.

But dig half a foot down and Grind's soil turns bright red. Nowadays, it looks like a warped checkerboard - hence its epithet. Other titles include the Patchwork Moon (considered slightly more offensive) and the Scarred Moon (considered much more offensive, but is also the most "accurate" of the bunch). Children often remark that it reminds them of a many-eyed beast (more often than not a spider), glaring down at them. But the learned know the crimson is the ichor of a celestial body - bloody evidence of Grind's many wars.

(Sidenote: most celestial bodies in the Loomverse give birth in some way. Planets birth gods, and moons are eggs that eventually hatch into eldritch monsters. The embryo in Grind is literally bleeding.)

To the south of Starfyk there's a large island called Carnelsica. Its two main exports are high-quality steel and books detailing its rich history of knights, nobility, a indigenous demons (like how Arthurian legend has a weird amount of both Christianity and fairy shit). It's primarily inhabited by tieflings. Its main tourist attraction is the Quillatakiy - a natural teleporter pad a few miles long. Once every century, thousands of vagabonds disappear from atop its surface, replaced by refugees from Grind that clustered on their own identical Quillataiky.

New arrivals on Grind inevitably approach a marketplace on their first day there, eager to bite into the ripe red flesh of the moonfruit on display. The tiefling merchant inevitably laughs when the newcomer presses silver pieces into her hand. On Grind, everything is bought with blood. 

That's not some poetic way of talking about glory and battle, either. The tiefling returns the coins, grabs the domesticated tubeworm they use to charge customers, and asks if they prefer to be pricked in the arm or the neck.

Fiendish History

Around 10,000 years before the emergence of mortals, a myriad of events caused the Archlords (six creator gods) to descend into civil war. This was known as the Fall of the Archlords, and resulted in one of the bunch being stripped of his title (Alenta, now called the Exarch) and another being wiped from history entirely (The Fallen). One of the main aggressors in this messy business was Ose - the father of all fiends. Though he himself was a pacifist, his creations were not. So once the war was over and the reparations paid, he imposed exile on himself and his people. 

Ose and his progeny left for other planes of existence. But tieflings, while more humanoid than fiendish, were forced by stigma to vacate too - not necessarily the whole Material Plane, but at least Loom. So they used the Quillataiky (they called it something else then, but that word is lost - what we use now is the giantine name) to travel to Grind and live in relative peace. As time wore on and the Fall of the Archlords was seen less as history and more as mythos, some returned to Loom's surface and settled Carnelsica.

The tieflings who stayed, though, found a bizarre ecology. Loom's body is prone to physically blocking out the sun for long periods of time, so its basic food web starts with chemosynthesis instead of photosynthesis. Tubeworms send a long proboscis down into the earth, absorbing chemical nutrients that some helpful bacteria convert into food. Not all of them are actual worms, and some are more like sponges or coral (but don't get me wrong, there's a lot of worms).

Everything else is pretty much an arthropod. This means anything from isopods to Morrowind-style silt striders to giant horseshoe crabs (or spiders, if you swing that way). These sometimes get teleported onto Loom's surface and become really big nuisances (if they aren't crushed by the higher gravity). A lot of Carnelsican legends involve a knight slaying some kind of huge bug or worm.

Oh yeah, and sometimes people domesticate the isopods.

This is partly why the economy is based around blood - the ecology happens to be, too. It turns out moonblood makes for a potent fuel source. And an expensive one, so mortal blood is sometimes used in its absence. There's a stock market that measures the value of different types of blood, and literal blood banks. And of course, nobody's truly broke until they've been bled dry. As it happens, the usual funeral rites on Grind involve bloodletting and then cremation. The skull is usually preserved, and the horns decorated with the same accoutrements the tiefling rocked in life (horn decoration is the foremost way of expressing yourself in most tiefling cultures).

The other reason for the predominance of sanguism is actually a philosophy held by Ose. Tieflings have a complicated relationship with their creator god, but they generally agree with a lot of what he says (while also being prone to misinterpretation). Ose often equated luxury with sin - in his eyes, nobody should thrive while there were still those who could not survive. The exact quote is something along the lines of "labor that begets only pleasure steals food from impoverished tables, water from impoverished throats, and blood from impoverished veins." It got taken a bit literally.

Source of Scars

So, eventually one of the other moons invented space travel. It is called Crest, and it's where Aasimar come from. So, naturally, when the angel-people find their neighbors are demon-people, it doesn't go well. This is further complicated when the third moon, Vessel, gets involved (it's populated by refugees from the Shadowfell and also eventually gets blown up entirely). 

The first Lunar War happens in 810 A.E.M., and there are about five more after that in the next 1,000 years. Grind is the first to get nailed with weapons of mass destruction, a trend that continues throughout the Lunar Wars. At first, it isn't that bad - the moon is living, and its "skin" (the black topsoil) can grow over the scars and mostly take care of things. But sustained orbital strike can leave more permanent scars, as can chemical weaponry (Crest was fond of the former, and Vessel utilized the latter).

So yeah, that's why the surface of Grind is so fucked up. This also means a lot of dust bowl style severe weather pretty commonly occurs, but the specifics of Loomverse atmospheres probably deserves its own post.

(Sidenote: the major advantage Grind had in the Lunar Wars was its access to Yugoloths, interstellar mercenaries from a planet a comet's throw across the solar system [known, fittingly, as Yugo]. They had an outpost on Grind and are generally on good terms with its governments.)

Practical DM Usage of All This

I'll just make a list:

• Opinions on how fiendish tieflings should be vary, but this lets us have the best of both worlds. More mundane tieflings - just horns, weird skin color, and occasional cloven hooves or tails - come from Loom's surface. But the more hostile environment on Grind gives an excuse to have some genetic variation, i.e. way more monstrous tieflings.
• If your players are cool enough to want to learn lore about various monsters, now you have that squared away for anything vaguely similar to an arthropod. Purple worms are pretty much tapeworms built for a moon-sized body, and I don't even know what to tell you if that isn't cool as fuck to you.
• Going to the moon is plausible at any time period. Of course, if you want it to be round-trip you're either gonna have to strand your players on the moon for a century or resort to space travel anyways. There are probably blood-themed methods of cryogenic freezing available for player characters with shorter lifespans if you wanna go the route of the former.
• An excuse to write rules for lower gravity. There's obviously the jumping thing, but increased carrying capacity, lowered armor restrictions, and increased range on projectiles are other options, depending on how much verisimilitude you want.

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Credit goes to my fellow Loom DM Jodi for lore regarding the Archlords as well as telling me to write about Grind in the first place (each of the three of us are taking a different moon). She wrote a lot of the initial lore for the place (blood economy, tieflings being the prime inhabitants, Lunar Wars stuff), and this is mainly just me expanding on it. Also, I wrote most of this post to the Nuclear Throne soundtrack, which I suppose is useful if you want to run something on Grind or just want a better idea of the tone I'm going for.