alt.rec.games.medusae

Gorgons and medusae turning their victims into stone is so yesterday’s news. Happening DMs know that petrification is only leveraging one of the elements. Why not a gaze or breath that turns the victim into water, air, or fire? Getting a stoned companion out of the dungeon is challenging, but the challenges of any of the alternatives cranks the difficulty up a bit, at least if you’re unprepared.

Vendors outside the dungeon should be offering sponges for sale, and stoppered bladders, and maybe a hooded lamp, “just in case you encounter the gorgon.” Whether or not there are monsters in the dungeon that actually have alternative -ification powers, it should put the hapless PCs on alert.

Assuming a local magician or miracle-worker can turn stone to flesh, there must be variant rituals for turning other elements to flesh. A hydrocated victim would need to have as much of their remans as possible sopped up and brought back. Maybe they lose some equipment, a limb, or maximum HP if too much was left to seep into the dungeon floor or evaporate.

A pyrocated victim, reduced to column of flame, could be taken out of the dungeon by having something lit from them before they burn out on their own (a matter of seconds): fire regenerates itself, so presumably the whole character is in a bit of flame passed to a torch, candle, or lamp; maybe it works like a holograph? Extra fun if the flame is transferred to multiple torches etc.: can you make a new, identical PC from each flame? Did you want an evil twin? This is how you get evil twins.

The aerated victim would be the hardest to save, since they would likely diffuse so quickly. Assuming they turn into a colored cloud (based on their alignment or class maybe — black smoke for an assassin, blue mist for a magic-user, a dust cloud for a dwarf, a sweet fragrance for an elf?), their companions would need to vacuum them up as quickly as possible into an empty bladder or bellows. CON check to inhale the remains completely and then exhale into an empty wineskin?

Just some thoughts occasions by seeing the word “Pyrolisk,” a variant basilisk/cockatrice which apparently just lights thing on fire.

Wiltshire’s last gasp

After session 11, I decided to convert the campaign over to Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy, which is a third or fourth generation “retroclone” type OSR RPG. OSE is an emulation of the Moldvay/Cook “B/X” version of D&D, with race-as-class, more limited spell casting, and generally simplified rules versus AD&D. A few bits were redesigned, but it’s largely covering the same ground as Labyrinth Lord, in a slicker layout and with much more “support” in the form of adventures and third party supplements, so it seems like the dominant OSR set at this point. OSE:AF adds classes, monsters, and playable races — including race as an add-on to class — from AD&D without all the bloat and stat inflation. We ogt as far converting a few PCs and the party started exploring the ruins of a citadel said to have been used by heretics, possibly part of the Clerical Necromantic Underground.

It went OK but with several players out due to work, health issues, and family, it seemed like time to pull the plug, at least for now. The published version of B&B IV  will definitely use OSE:AF as a chassis, but without most of the existing classes. Fighters and Knights from OSE:AF stay. Thieves are now Rogues, with a menu of skills that can be chosen and developed to make a fairly customized character (the traditional Thief, Assassin, Acrobat, the “new” Fool class I’d already added, as well some other period-specific types). The Cleric is gone, replaced by the Clergyman and a further revised Palmer. I’ve also got a firmer idea of how to pull off  a complete a revision of magic (arcane and divine) systems that will replace spell memorization entirely with appeals and charisms (for divine magic) and the summoning, control, and binding of spirits (for arcane magic). Paolo Greco had a fairly brilliant suggestion that will make the whole thing flexible and consistent with medieval ideas about things worked. That’s about all I can say about this now, as some things are still being ironed out and I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

In the meantime the gaming group will continue gaming. We recently played someone’s homebrewed game which took elements of FATE and his silly but coherent take on FRPGs to form something really nifty.  So last time we made characters and played out a heist with a party consisting of a mage, an assassin, a dwarf fighter, and an orc wolf-rider. It’s been a couple of weeks so I don’t recall enough for a play-by-play recap but it was a lot of fun.

Wiltshire session 11, to France!

The penultimate session saw our heroes bolstered by the return of Fr. Worthy, the cleric whose play is unfortunately travelling a lot for work. He joined the group on Glastonbury Tor, standing over the remains of the defeated ogre. The party discussed visiting Grail Hill again, as Fr. Worthy hadn’t been there, but then remembered they were on their way to face find Fr. Beaumains on the Tot-top. As they approached the final ridge, the ranger scouted out ahead a bit and saw the old wooden church in the middle of a somewhat flat plateau, guarded by a man with a club who was at least 10 feet tall. As he hadn’t been spotted, he reported back and the party decided to attack with missile fire, given their numerical superiority.

A volley of slings and arrows left the giant injured, especially by the ranger’s powerful bow, but he returned “fire” by lobbing a rock that knocked the cleric out cold. A further exchange of missiles left the giant badly wounded, and after missing with his rock again he retreated inside the church. The party closed in, and had the druid’s bear batter open the doors. Fr. Beaumains was behind he altar, working a spell with several clerks and men-at-arms in attendance, and the party was met by another rock, which managed to miss again. (I was really rolling terribly!) A furious melee ensued, and Fr. Beaumains barely escaped down a secret hatch under the altar, leaving a web to impede pursuit. The party burned off the webs, which alas set the whole church on fire. Forced to wait out the blaze, they made the best of it by visiting the Chalice Well to venerate the site (gaining Piety!) while the Fool sought relief from boils on his bottom. They found the hatch in the moldering ruins the next day. It opened to a tunnel which went down, down, down to an underground river, with a mooring the Necromancer must have had an escape boat tied to. Undeterred, the party had the clever idea to use the druid, in log form via a Tree spell, to follow. But alas! the river emptied into the River Brue, and Fr. B was long gone when the party emerged, having had a full day head start.

I should mention that the church on Glastonbury Tor really was destroyed (by an earthquake) in 1275, so I enjoyed seeing the party fulfill that bit of history in their own way.

They remember that his papers said the key to the Necromancer’s scheme lay in Naples, so they continued west to Bristol to hire a ship. [At this point I realized I planned a bit less than I really ought to have, for example checking on the possible routes they could take. This was a good reminder that I should sketch out costs of transport too.]

They found a harbormaster who was willing to help them find a ship going their way. The choices were a simple crossing of the Channel to Brittany, and hoof it from there, or starting on a fully water-based route. To go that route, there was a ship headed to Brigantium (A Coruña), Spain, but they’d need to find another ship, and failing that would be even further from Naples than they were, so they went with Brittany. Not all the PCs can speak French, adding a little challenge. They met some pilgrims on their way to Santiago, and were cautious about joining them for the small part of the way their paths cross.

We ended the session there.

*************

Along the way there was some table talk about various aspects of the rules I’ve cobbled together and the PCs. It’s pretty much cemented the idea that I should cut some classes from the published version of Burgs & Bailiffs IV (or whatever I end up calling this). For one thing, the druid is completely out of place and often in conflict with the party because there is no good reason for a pagan priest to be be involved with all the Church-related goings on. No one in medieval England thought there might still be druids anywhere, and there is no evidence that organized paganism really existed in England after the Vikings were assimilated, so no Druid PCs. I’m going to take another look at Clerics too. Their easy access to spells sort of devalues the minor miracles offered at shrines. I’m coming around to the idea that AD&D 1e might not be the best engine to hitch B&BIV to.

Wiltshire session 10, which actually took place mostly in Somerset

It’s been a bit but we got most of the band back together for another session.
This time the party was regrouping in Warminster, where “Brother” Maynard the Palmer caught up with them. The Palmer player agreed to try out my revised Palmer idea, which is that rather than learning  how to perform specific miracles at shrines, they can gain charismata (spiritual gift) at shrines. If they make a suitable offering and get a good reaction from the saint in question, they either gain a specific charism associated with the shrine, or can roll for a random charism (I developed a brief random table so that should a party have multiple Palmers, they can gain different blessings. Eventually I’ll expand the chart to include the shrine-specific ones, or most of them anyway. So, rather than having access to a random number of Cure Light Wounds spells daily, the Palmer gained a one-time use of Word of Recall from St. Osmund’s shrine in Salisbury and a Halo (Continual Light cast on his head) from the shrine at Bishopstrow. He’d had a very positive reaction when he stole, er translated, the relic of St. Wolfram, from Sarum, so I let him roll for a charism for that, and he got a third level Cleric spell, 1x per day. As Palmers can only have (Level x 2) charisms at a time, he dropped the Word of Recall for that.

In Warminster the party decided to investigate the grave-robbing they’d heard about, and staked out the graveyard after talking to the parish priest. They set up an ambush and sprang it on a small group of figures who had started digging up a grave. It turned out to be a Necromancer, three clerks, a mercenary, and a skeleton and a zombie (who looked like regular folks until they returned to the graveyard). The ranger’s arrows quickly dispatched the Necromancer, and the party defeated the rest in a few rounds. They took the mercenary alive but killed the rest, and unfortunately the mercenary didn’t really know much about the group that had hired him. But the Palmer used Speak with the Dead to interrogate the Necromancer, and learned that the Baron in Wiltshire’s son Steven, a clerk, was among the “brotherhood” of the Clerical Necromantic Underground; that the abbot of a Somerset abbey was as well, and that the ringleader is Father Beaumains — trusted priest in Warminster! They also asked about a wax-covered, mummified hand they found on the Necromancer, which of course is a Hand of Glory.

Knowing that Fr. Beaumains had set off for Glastonbury earlier, the party set out, after informing the Baron about his role (but not that of his son). They arrived at Glastonbury Abbey and spoke to the monks, who had seen one of the clerks named by the dead Necromancer, posing as a novice monk carry a roll of the dead for copying (monks would periodically travel from monastery to monastery, copying down the names of those recently dead to be included in prayers). They noted the storm clouds gathering over the Tor, and the monk remarked that locals claimed a giant was walking the Tor again, though the monk dismissed the giant as a fable for children.

They tracked the clerk to Glastonbury Tor, the nearby pilgrimage site. The Palmer stopped at the Chalice Hill to venerate the well there, and gained the ability to lay hands like a Paladin (losing his halo in the process). Walking up the Tor, the party encountered a three-headed ogre, who let the Druid pass but then attacked the party.

The entangled him with the Entanglement spell, making the fight a bit easier, but it as a drawn out affair because as each head took control of the body each round it had different powers. At that point we ended the session.

*****

Three-headed Guardian of the Tor

All stats as an ogre, but with maximum HP

Each round a different head controls the body. While he has at least 1/2 his HP, they take turns in order; when below half HP, roll randomly to see which is in charge.

1. Moe: 50% magic resistance
2. Larry: take 1/2 damage from all attacks
3. Curly: Make 2 attacks a round and move at double speed

 

Wiltshire session 9

There was a bit of hiatus as various schedules conflicted but we were back at it last night and the Fool, the Ranger, the Druid, and the Fighter all made it so they finished exploring the tomb near Moordoth (the Palmer and Cleric apparently had bad cases of gastro-enteritis from bad food at the village and had to leave in a hurry).

There were only a few room left to explore, and the way the module was written they monsters were in pretty good positions to be surprised by the party, especially as the Ranger crept up to the doors and opened them just a crack, slowly. The Ranger player also knew the AD&D surprise rules quite well and the party rained death of the ghouls in both cases, hardly taking a scratch. (Going forward we all agreed that the “shoot three times as many missiles as normal in a surprise round” rule is too much and will likely reduce the effect to double damage or and additional die of damage or something.)

They secret of the ghostly maidens was revealed and the party went back to the village to accuse the elders of their crimes. They took them into custody when the villagers threatened to hang the elders without a trial, and moved on, back to Warminster. In Warminster the elders were turned over to the baron for trial and the party asked about any other problems or monsters in the area. (They might have investigated the Clerical Necromantic Unground since the cluse under Old Sarum cathedral seemed to point to Warminster but decided against it as they were without their Palmer and Priest.)

They decided to investigate yet more missing shepherds (Wiltshire is wool country you know!) and found an abandoned wagon on the road which looked like it had been looted. Soon a small flock of sheep appeared on a nearby hilltop and the party realized they were under attack by three shepherds wearing masks and driving the flock toward them. The party split up, the Ranger riding off one way to harass the shepherds with bow fire while the Druid and Fighter retreated (the Druid to protect his animals and the Fighter to also ready a bow). The fool leapt onto the wagon. Soon it was clear that the Ranger’s fear of venomous sheep was well-founded!

The Ranger was charged by two venomous rams while the rest of the flock was driven downhill at the party on the road. The shepherds meanwhile slinged stones. Things got grim when the Fool passed out from the sheep fumes and the Ranger was being butted repeatedly by the large rams, but the Druid managed to convince the sheep that the shepherds were planning to sell them to a butcher with a Speak with Animals spell and two great reaction rolls. The sheep turned on the last shepherd (the other two being killed by arrows) and the party celebrated another victory.  The Druid had to be convinced that the venomous sheep would not be good animals to add to his menagerie and the session ended.

*****

Venomous sheep

Number appearing: 2d8

HD1 (rams, 3 HD)

Damage: special

AC 6

Venomous sheep emit a slightly off-putting toxic odor that causes anyone within 20 yards to fall asleep unless they save versus Poison. The sheep will then slowly trample the victims to death, inflicting d6 damage per round. Any flock will also be accompanied by d4 rams, who will protect the flock by charging any threat (2d6 damage the first round from a charge, then d6 from ramming on subsequent rounds). If the rams can mob one opponent, they will take turns withdrawing so they can charge again.

Wearing a vinegar-soaked mask over the nose and mouth protects from the fumes and some shepherds have been known to turn to banditry, herding the flocks into travelers and merchant caravans and looting them.

The VVitch

I first saw this woodcut (engraving?) in Olga Hoyt’s book on witches, and I thought it was dumb when I was a 4th grader, but now I love it. I like the image of the witch as a crazy cat lady, but instead of cats they are demonic semi-animals with names like Jamara and Pyewackett. And Grizzdl Greedigutt? Come on! (Actually per Hopkins’ book those are two different names, but they sound good together too.)

Anyway the thought of a witch with many familiar spirits tickles me — sort of the trope of “the crazy cat lady” but the cats are imps. Because witches in particular are depicted as having multiple  familiars, as opposed to the RPG trope that a magic-user has but one, I thought it might be fun to draw up rules for late medieval-style witches with a menagerie of familiars. To be fair, Timothy Brannan, grand poobah of OSR witches, already drew up rules for a “pagan witch” that can have multiple familiars. However, I’m going with the late medieval belief that witches were Satanists, in league with the Devil with the aim of destroying the Church (and personal gain).

The Witch, a subclass of Magic-User

XP, HD, weapons and armor, saves:  all as a Magic-User; poison use is a yes.

Special abilities:

Wiltshire session 7 & 8

A double feature as I’m behind on recaps.

Last week, the party limped back to Salisbury for much-needed medical attention, as Reginald the Ranger and Gillem the Fighter would need a full week of rest before being able to do much of anything. Worse, the Ranger noticed that his joints were swollen and painful, decreasing his agility. The Fool, still aged from the poisoned needle in an earlier session,  sought out the local wise woman hoping for a cure. Long story sghort, the party traded the strange magical book they’d found (The Red Dragon, or True Grimoire) for cures for the Fool’s poisoning and the Ranger’s disease. The Druid managed to recover his bear from the local woods.

Once they were able to move about, the fighter and ranger went to confession, admitting their role in releasing the demon. The priest chided the ranger for his pride in attacking the apparently contained demon, and referred both to the bishop. Meanwhile the fool and druid heard about some missing children. The bishop tasked the party with recovering the grimoire from the wise woman, and then to find the demon so he might try to banish it. He also informed the party that the real reason he’d moved the cathedral from Sarum to Salisbury was that his predecessor had fallen into evil practices and was part of the (da da dum!) Clerical Necromantic Underground. The CNU are priests and clerks who turned to black magic (necromancy in the general sense of consorting with spirits). Are they organized or mavericks? Who knows? But the sacrilegious altar, presence of demons, and everything else suggests someone was back at work beneath the old cathedral.

To recover the book, the party returned to the dungeon to seek out the treasury, and they recovered some loot from a previously missed secret room. They traded two jewels for the book, and then set about tracking the demon, which seemed to be lurking in the area and returning to the dungeon at night. Using an altar boy as bait, the party set up an ambush, lurking outside the dungeon at daybreak the next day. It was a rough fight, especially as the demon gated in another of its type, but with the assistance of the bishop’s Protection From Evil, Bless, and Chant spells, they defeated first demon and the bishop was able to banish (turn) the other. (He used the bit of St. Aldewulf’s finger that the party had found earlier to create a reliquary in the form of a crucifix. Holy Symbols with relics enshrined in them increase a Cleric’s effective level for turning, but are not otherwise usable for appeals for intercession/miracles, per my house rules.)

The next session, last night, the party reformed with everyone but Marcus in attendance, and worked on gathering information about the CNU, spending loot, and generally regrouping. They Cleric  went to St Edmund’s College, which had been founded by the previous bishop, and found some suspicious activity (clerks copying bits of one of Albert Magnus’ books in the library). He defaced the pages they’d copied after the students were gone and reported back. They also learned that the copy of the Red Dragon they’d found had an inscription signed “Fr. B.” The Palmer meanwhile broke into a chapel in the new cathedral to steal a relic, and against all expectations, the saint’s reaction was friendly, indicating that this was a furta sacra, or “sacred theft” of the sort that was in accord with the saint’s will. He took the signet ring off of Saint Edmund’s finger and also made an offering to the shrine, adding Bless to his miraculous repertoire.*

Returning one last time to the dungeon to look for clues, and explore the only unfinished bit of the map, they found a room full of bodies in the caverns. These rose up and attacked, giving the party a relatively easy fight. Fortunately they took out the hurdy-gurdy playing skeleton before it could use its power to animate and reanimate the dead. The only additional clue they found was that one of the bodies had a girdle-book identifying the owner as a being from Warminster, the town they’d visited earlier.

The bishop asked the party to take the cross with Adelwulf’s finger to the shrine in Bishopstrow, so they set out back west. Along the way they stopped at Moordoth, a village, and at the tavern witnessed a haunting, which led them to investigate a nearby hill and the rash of attacks the village had been experiencing. They found a tumulus grave which had been expanded and used in more recent times as a crypt for some wealthy family, and inside found evidence of ghoulish activity — even finding one ghoul struggling to emerge from a sarcophagus. They explored a bit more, Gillem fell into a pit trap, and the Druid negotiated with some giant rats, but learned nothing useful. Then we ended the session.

=================

*From the playtest I’m realizing that the Palmer class is more interesting if we emphasize the conman aspect: selling indulgences, stealing relics, and generally relying more on Charisma than Piety. I’ll likely tweak the rules on this.

Wiltshire session 6

In this week’s session, the entire party was assembled at last. We met up in a relatively new venue in Akron, the Green Dragon Inn, which is filling a void left by the closure of another boardgame/TTRPG bar last year (The Malted Meeple). It was kind of busy with a Pokemon tournament in one of the private rooms and a “open D&D” in the other, so service was not great. The oven was down, so snacks were limited to some very sad chips and popcorn. Overall, though, it was fun to run a game in a place that looked a lot like the interior of a medieval castle!

The party got past the riddle in record time, and got right into exploring. With this big a crew — Marcus the templar, (Cough cough) the ranger, Gillem the fighter, Thomas the Druid with two dogs and bear, Lord Chucklebum the fool, Worthy Barker the cleric, and “Brother” Maynard the palmer — I rediscovered how terrible 5′ wide halls are when miniatures are involved. This was lesson learned long ago in my first Telengard game, and obviously forgotten.

Anyway the party returned first to the tomb that had the screaming gryllus, and opened the other sarcophagus. This released a second gryllus, but the ranger cut it down swiftly. Next they spent some time searching for secret doors, and finding none decided to brave the other door that had caused PCs to flee in fear a couple of sessions back. The brutal AD&D saving throw table made it a challenge to restrain PCs as they approached and fled, but eventually the party got a few past the fear effect and opened the door. They found another tomb, inhabited by a blobby, slimy humanoid (a manes devil) and four giant maggots with human heads (larvae). The templar spiked the door shut and the group came up with a plan to reopen the door and make a fighting retreat so that they could lead the slow creatures down the hall to a larger room where they could take advantage of their numbers. The plan mostly worked, except that the larvae used a secret passage to ambush the druid and range who were standing guard part-way back from the door. In the end, after a drawn out melee the party triumphed. Next they had to get the whole party past the fear effect so they go deeper into the dungeon, and the time it took for failed saves, restraint, and finally successful saves all around allowed the manes to regenerate and attack again. Their numbers made quick work of it, and after discussion someone poured holy water on it, destroying it for good.

Next they used the secret door the larvae had used to explore some connected caverns. The caverns had a human-faced giant rat (Brown Jenkin), which they killed, and a study with some more books and a nest made of silk cloth which they deduced belonged to the rat-thing. From there they found a flooded cave, which presumably had caused the water damage in some other rooms they saw in the earlier session.  The ceiling was studded with stalactites, though no stalagmites were obvious (cough, foreshadowing!). As they passed through the cavern, some piercers dropped on the party, injuring the fool. Then they cam to a final chamber with a large, green demon confined inside a pentagram. It begged them to release it, and after short discussion the party opened fire with archery, dispelling the circle and releasing the type II demon.

Now you might be thinking, a 9 HD demon seems a little tough for a mostly 1st level party (the fool and cleric might be 3rd and 2nd, I tihnk?).  Of course it is. But they could have left it alone.

The demon first used it’s fear ability to disperse the party; several unaffected made a run for it but the fighters and rangers all saved and stood their ground — the Templar would have been unable to retreat without breaking the Templar oath never to retreat unless outnumbered 3:1. Things went pretty much as expected, except that the ranger beat the odds and hit its -2 AC almost every round. First Gillem fell. The druid returned just in time to see the ranger fall, and carried him off while the templar continued to fight it out. It became more of nailbiter than you might expect, as the demon was down to single digit HP and one hit could have finished him off, but instead the templar fell next and so the fighters’ bodies were both swallowed.

The session ended with some table talk about whether attacking the demon was a good choice, but I hope fun was had by all.

<<UPDATE>>

It occurred to me after the fact that the Templar player hadn’t really understood that he COULD break a vow, at a cost of Piety. Had he instead grabbed Gillem when he fell and made off for safety, the Ranger could have held off the demon and been rescued by the Druid. (How the Druid would have managed to drag off the ranger I didn’t really consider.) But in that case all the PCs could survive and they’d just need to deal with a demon on the loose. The demon moves rather slowly (6″ on land) so an escape seems barely possible. All agreed to that resolution.

As much as I love to see PCs die by their own foolishness, it hardly counts if they don’t have all the information they should.

Wiltshire session 5

Replacement characters were made, and another player rejoined the group! It was great to have John back, as he’d been mostly out since we returned to indoors last year.

The new characters were a ranger, a fighter, and a palmer. I introduced a few tweaks to rules (this is a playtest after all) shifting to a 3-18 score for Piety, allowing me to give +1 /-1 every session, if need be, without it getting too “swingy” as the character can lose more than point without changing the modifier and so on. Another minor tweak was making sure everyone rolled for age and took the appropriate modifiers — one player knew to in session 1 and I forgot to have everyone follow suit. A bigger change was to Social Class as I decided to use it for starting wealth, which seemed logical. This would affect the new PCs a bit.

The same player who lost a palmer last session created a new one. This one would have much better luck in play.

The ranger replaces Big John the fighter, who died last time. I’m slightly tweaking rangers for the middle ages as a militant order devoted to protecting humanity from monsters. As “giantkin” are not really that common, they may choose a general type of monster to gain their bonuses to damage and tracking versus: the undead, chimericals, monstrous (usually giant) animals, etc. As alignment is out, their need to keep their Piety to a certain level or lose their powers. Rangers are similar to mendicant orders more than monastic: they travel, and generally work alone. This fits the ranger’s other usual restrictions on working with other rangers, not keeping too many magic items, etc. Franciscans but with swords. (In hindsight, maybe I should have made Druids magical Franciscans, given St. Francis’ association with animals. Hmm.)

The new fighter was the first character to have a really low Social Class — in fact a 4, so he had been enslaved. So, he started out ill-equipped like a CRPG character: leather armor, wooden shield.

The party gathered at a tavern, naturally. The Fool was telling the Cleric and Druid about his misadventures, and the others approached to get in on the treasure-hunting,  monster-killing, and relic-seeking according to their motivations. The Druid had spent his absence last session seeking new animal friends and returned with a bear!

Back at the dungeon, they made it past a new riddle* and then solved the mystery of the wooden statues in the first chamber: if the heads are all turned completely around so that the demon-faces show, a secret door opens. This led to a study with a trapped chest, which the Fool opened, getting stuck by a poisoned needle that aged him a few decades into middle age! They managed to retrieve some of the fallen characters’ stuff – they found the fighter stomped flat, but some of his stuff was usable. They continued to the room where grylli had killed the palmer, and found it quiet, with the palmer’s flattened and headless body on the floor. One of the new PCs approached, springing the same Gryllus assualt as last time, but this time one of the grylli had Alfred of Mercia’s face, perhaps accounting for the headlessness of the corpse.

The party, much stronger in terms of fighters (and bear!) this time, defeated the grylli and recovered more loot. Deeper delving led to another burial room. This one had a screaming gryllus whose voice caused confusion, creating a tense few rounds of confused animals and characters wandering and not helping the fight much, but again the party triumphed. Battered and low on resources, they made another retreat to the surface and here the session ended.

The party seems to have found a relic among the loot, but there is more to explore in the dungeon.

---

*”I have one and you have one. So do the woods, fields, streams and seas, fish, beasts and crops and everything else in this revolving world.”
Party answered: Age. Accepted, but classic answer was: a shadow.

The book of charlatans

Al-Jawbari’s The Book of Charlatans is the only one of his three books to survive to modern times. A lot of it is a hoot, or at least the translation I’m reading is (New York University Press, ©2020.). It consists of 30 chapters, each titles “Exposé of the tricks of X.” X may be “Fake prophets,” “Monks,” “Fire-and-Brimstone Preachers,” or other religious charlatans; X may also be assorted medical frauds and con artists, illusionists and alchemists, and burglars and assassins. The variety of tricksters being exposed is almost staggering, even more so because Al-Jawbari admits to practicing many of these tricks in his travels. Most of the exposés end with his refrain “Wise up to these things!” Al-Jawbari was alive in the 13th century, so it’s an intensely Medieval take on mythbusting and exposing scams.

Some of the tricks seem to be instructions for simple magic tricks, such as mixing and applying an herbal make-up to give the illusion of leprosy which the faker “cures” by washing it off the schill for an audience. Some of the recipes are presented as real magic, used in questionable ways, such as a concoction that al-Jawbari says will stop the rain from falling if burned in a fire; the “trick” is that the charlatan claims this to be a holy miracle. The longish chapters on alchemists and “Masters of the Crafts”* expose alchemical procedures and magic spells. These too generally give credence to the effectiveness of magic and seem to be intended to expose occult secrets rather than “tricks.”

Other “tricks” are poisons used for various purposes, which may or may not be effective: one “trick of those who practice war and bear arms” is to dip their blades in a mixture of onion juice and “high grade alum,” which makes the weapons deliver “severe wounds.” Alum can certainly irritate exposed skin, so I imagine this poison will make the wounds extra painful and debilitating. Another poison applied to blades and points uses oleander — which is definitely a deadly poison if eaten, though I don’t know if it is effective delivered directly into the blood. There are also several accounts of sleep-inducing poisons, most of which involve opium as an ingredient and which would presumably work.

Adulterated or fake foodstuffs and spices are another common trick, which dutifully provides recipes for. Similarly he describes rogue jewelers and their fake jewels.

Other tricks are drawn out scams and cons, often taking advantage of people’s credulity and/or cupidity, and are not too different from the cons that are practiced today — most typically scams involving claims that a small amount of money is needed to yield a huge return, money0changing scams, and so on.

Disappearing inks are described (for use by rogue notaries who draw up fake contracts), as are invisible inks that can be made to appear when exposed to heat, water, or other catalysts. These are used in various fortune-telling scams or to convince onlookers that someone has magical powers or knowledge.

The author naturally spends a fair amount of space on the tricks of infidels. The “Tricks of the monks” exposes Christian miracle-working, and the “Tricks of those who manipulate fire” exposes Zoroastrians. The chapter on charlatan monks expresses sympathy for victimized Christians but the chapter on Zoroastrians condemns the whole faith. There are some really ugly parts, too. Antisemitism, misogyny, and a smirking indifference to sexual abuse. The “tricks of the Jews” suggests all Jews are constantly on the prowl to drug, poison, ravish, rob, or simply kill. Similarly the last chapter, on the tricks of women, paints all women as untrustworthy. The chapters on the trick of “Solomon’s ant” and the tricks of “those who creep up on beardless boys” give leering accounts of sex abuse and rape — the author even claims to have participated in the last trick.

Much of this review is based on a casual skim of the book, which is kind of invited by the format — each chapter is broken into sections, most less than page and some just a paragraph. I expect I’ll dive more deeply into the front matter (introduction, etc.) and then give it straight read-through.

---

*On closer inspection, the chapter on the tricks of “Masters of the crafts” is meant to cover advanced chicanery, including some more alchemical secrets as well as tricks used for things that can’t be accomplished by magic. Some of these “masters” are mystics or religious leaders too: there is a section on creating the illusion of a talking severed head, whereby an accomplice conceals their body in a chamber in the floor of a specially prepared room. Distressingly, after the trick is accomplished the accomplice is beheaded for real!