The Kinekozan Jags
Location - Tier 4
Designed by Felix Isaacs
Mountainous, Underground, & Strange
A moving mountain where the stone dances by day, slumbers by night, and the deep mines provide only questions.
Distinctions
A living mountain of rough, hard-edged grandeur. The rocky slopes of the Kinekozan Jags spring to life with each sunrise, an outer shell of stone shards flowing and reshaping around a deeper lithic mind.
The Waltz of Stone
Though there’s much to be said of the mountain’s interior, it’s the mantle that first draws the eye—shards and slabs, boulders and scree, a ponderous avalanche of stone that coats the peaks in constant movement. The inhabitants of the jags refer to this as the mountain’s dance or, more properly, the waltz of stone—a dance that travelers would do well to learn the steps of if they want to survive. This monumental mobility only slows as the light fades, dusk bringing a geological calm that lasts until the first rays of the next day’s sun.
You might find:
- Chains of arcane power glimpsed deep in the space between stones, the mechanism behind the mountain’s restless nature.
- A cockatrice call, slowly fading into the distance as the beast’s nest is carried from base to summit.
- A feeling akin to seasickness, quelled only through familiarity with the mountain’s movements.
Patterns In The Flow
While the movement of an individual shard may at first seem random, the infrequency of collisions speaks to a broader pattern in the seething shale. Those who watch for long enough, or who make regular trips out across the slopes to fish, farm, or scavenge, come to understand the mountain’s whims and rhythms; one might identify a copse of pines that circles one of the greater cities twice a year, or a twisting spire of stone that always reaches one of the peaks at high noon. The most experienced dwellers of the Kinekozan Jags can scale an entire mountain in a handful of strides, stepping from piece to piece as they ascend.
You might find:
- A faded chart printed with mathematical equations and careful observations.
- A sudden jolt, evidence that the shard you’re riding has fallen out of sync with its fellows.
- A guild member of the Here-To-There’s, ascending the slopes with minimal effort by stepping from stone to rising stone.
Industries of Dusk & Dawn
As confusing as the slopes might be for newcomers, long-time denizens of the Jags have adapted to their environment admirably. Settlements are built on larger slabs that frequently pass shards containing fertile earth or pooling water, allowing farmers to hop from home to field and back again as the dance dictates. And, as the moon rises, heavier industry comes into its own—segmented rail lines snap into place as the mountain-skin settles, allowing passage between areas otherwise kept distant by the dance, and miners light their lanterns as they descend into the calmer heart of the mountain, eager to take what they can and return to the outer layers before the next day’s motion covers the mouths of their tunnels.
You might find:
- The hiss and creak of a funicular locomotive, racing toward the nearest summit before the dawn pulls the rails it travels on apart.
- Sweating labourers relaxing in the shade, hampers full of harvested produce balanced on the edge of a bridge that, for now, leads nowhere.
- Coded whistles, miners counting down the moments until nightfall opens up a valuable shaft.
A Mountain-Hewn Mind
The dancing slopes aren’t the only wonder of the Kinekozan Jags. The deepest mysteries, suitably enough, are found in the quiet stillness of the mountain’s interior. It’s there that miners’ tunnels and natural caves converge, leading to the dwelling place of an ancient intelligence, the Mesolith—a sculpted shepherd of questions and stone.
You might find:
- A brief, yawning gap between the moving slabs that beckons incautious visitors beneath the mountain’s skin.
- Miners carefully sawing calcified questions free from tunnel walls.
- A scrape of stone on stone, that might be a sigh. A grinding echo that sounds remarkably like a good-natured chuckle.
The Shatterwood
There was a time before the mountain moved. None remember it, but the signs are there—some structures so weathered by time that you can barely see the split in their walls, the occasional unsettlingly barren shard that still bears the mark of a long-dry riverbed. But there’s no other piece of evidence as singularly compelling as the shatterwood, a great forest that must once have covered the mountainside, now split into distant fragments doomed never again to touch.
You might find:
- Predatory birds making daily migrations, hunting in one copse and nesting in another tens of miles away.
- A whiff of toxic musk—the sure sign of Kinekozan hogs.
- Delicious fruit that can only be eaten within the shade of the tree it grows upon, withering to dust if carried across the gap between stones.
GM Principles
Use landmarks to aid groups as they traverse the shifting slopes - One jag of stone looks much like another, and sometimes it might even be difficult to tell which direction a piece flows in. But towers, farmlands, rail-lines, and the distant peaks? They’re all worth navigating by, points of the world you can anchor description to as well as direction.
Highlight the ingenuity and adaptability of the locals - It would be easy for those who dwell in such an unstable landscape to carve out their own niche and stay there, but the various communities of the jags develop new techniques that make their lives easier, share them without a second thought where they can, and stay in contact through even the toughest times. It’s a hard place to live, but not a barren one.
Respect the mountain as a living creature, one that permits passage by default but that can also choose to revoke it - The Mesolith dwelling in the mountain’s core has its own wants and needs, only rarely aligned with those of the folk that make a home for themselves on its flanks. It has moods too, and opinions—it can be bargained with, outsmarted, bribed, or offended, but it will almost always have the upper hand.
Landmarks
The Iron & Blue
The Jarbone Inversion: Considered bad luck to mention near an aqueduct.
Gallons of Water Shuttled Down From The Peaks Each Night: Too many to count.
A confusion of raised rail lines and staggered aqueducts built over centuries, each section anchored to (and looming over) one of the larger slabs of moving mountainside. Though these sections admittedly spend most of their time disconnected due to the waltz, every sundown brings a new opportunity; great gears turn, bridges spin, and elevated tracks snap together in drunken, temporary forms.
With each reconnection, the Iron & Blue opens for business. Sluices open as aqueducts are levered into place, sending a deluge of snowmelt and captured rain careening into the water storage towers of a hundred settlements. The air fills with the sound of train whistles and squealing brakes as passengers and produce are shuttled, sometimes almost vertically, from place to place. The network lights up the Kinekozan nights, a friendly reminder of connection and cooperation amid the geological whirl.
Sunpeak Station (Settlement)
Resting atop one of the mountain’s many peaks, on one of the few craggy stones too massive for even the mountain to move, Sunpeak Station is the domain of rapid-response repair crews and water-wise alchemists. Whenever there’s a problem on the lower sections of the Iron & Blue, you can bet the workers of Sunpeak will be on their way there in a heartbeat. While most Sunpeak Station employees work the night shift, where travel is at its easiest, a rare but venerated few brave the unconnected rails of the daily dance in order to help when they’re most needed—when nobody else can.
Tethered Balloons (Feature)
A convention created by a single lower settlement that has since spread throughout the range, most smaller stations run a tethered balloon of lighter-than-air gas from their rooftops, acting as an elevated watchtower. Actual stone towers were used in the past, but the lessons taught by the Jarbone Inversion have most definitely stuck. Rarely spoken of in the modern day, Jarbone was an oversized settlement that built one too many towers for holding stored water, eventually overbalancing and completely inverting the shard it was built upon, with catastrophic results.
Funicular Raiders (Threat)
Riding scrappy but cleverly-designed trains that can hop the spaces between disconnected rails, these piratical types race up and down the Kinekozan by day, hoping to ambush stranded trains and distracted farmers. The raiders rarely kill, but they have absolutely no problem with taking everything they can in a single swooping pass, then circling back around (sometimes even hours later) to do the same thing to any rescue crews that might have been called in the wake of their first assault. The most famed of these raiders, a Clank known as Mortuko the Swift, is said to have adapted her entire body into something that can run the rails faster than any scrap-built train.
Lake Ladenscree
Largest Stone in the Lake: Breaker’s Isle, the size of a small cart.
The Colours Beneath: Raw. Chameleonesque. Dissembling.
Another source of water perhaps, fed by some determined spring? If only the Kinekozans were so lucky. Lake Ladenscree is a miles-wide stretch of broken stones, each no bigger than a fist, tumbling endlessly up and down the range in a manner that defies expected patterns. It’s a place more dangerous than most—these unmoored rocks will barely take the weight of a smaller creature, let alone something as heavy as a giant—but also of outstanding beauty, with passing communities having painted as many of the rocks as they could reach with a variety of colours over the years. Lake Ladenscree is a stone rainbow, lit from below by skeins of arcane force.
Raw Magic (Feature)
Though never far underfoot, the thicket of magical energy that keeps the surface of the Kinekozan jags in motion is rarely visible. A traveler might catch the glow of it at night if they’re close to the gap between stones, and miners will carefully pick their way through it when digging to the mountain’s calmer heart, but it’s only on the shores of the Ladenscree that it can be seen with any real clarity from the surface. Scholars argue back and forth over the nature of the forces beneath them, some positing that they’re threads, others veins, others chains… And the taciturn nature of the Mesolith ensures debate will continue for decades to come.
The Ladenscree Swell (Threat)
Unlike with heavier sections of stone, the arcane forces that keep the mountain moving have less of a grip on the Swell—when they come into contact with a larger shard, the smaller stones are just as likely to move over and through this new obstacle as they are under it, shredding foliage, smashing trees, and hammering like horizontal hail against windows and walls. More than one settlement that drifted out of the pattern of the dance has been leveled by contact with the Swell.
Adding To The Lake (Festival)
A common pastime for local youths, settlements that pass close to the Lake will often find smaller objects going ‘missing’—pots, cups, silverware. This is all in aid of adding to the lake, a somewhat delinquent tradition of drinking too much, painting whatever you’ve stolen bright colors, and seeing if it stays near the surface when thrown in amongst the smaller stones. It’s rare that anything does, almost vanishingly rare, but every child seems to have a sister, brother, cousin, or best friend that managed it once. You wouldn’t have met them, though. But they definitely did it.
The Asking-Mines
Shortest Question Ever Mined: “Why Only Twelve?”
Number of Active Shafts: 32
There’s an old joke about the asking-mines, the kind that makes philosophical sorts wince and travelers furrow their brows, if they have them: “Why dig for an answer, when a question is worth its weight in stone?”
The miners of the jags realized long ago that the mountain’s ores and crystals were of secondary concern. The real bounty is the stone itself, not of the ever-moving outer layer but of the mountain’s heart, stone shot through with weighty curiosity, drenched in arcane thought.
Heavy With Questions (Feature)
The closer one draws to the Mesolith, the heavier with questions the stone around them becomes. Just under the surface of the slopes a hewn block may, if you run your hands over it, seem to ask why the clouds move so strangely, or how you got such a shine on the buttons of your lapel. Move further from the light and you might find a pebble asking how one might train a cockatrice to sing, or a lump of quartz laden with complex, unsolved equations. And, deeper still, the truly insightful—questions that open the mind to arcane potential, divine revelations, secrets of a lost age, or the truths behind myth. The issue is with the mining; the more potent a question, the weightier the stone. More than one group of miners have found themselves wrestling to drag a hyper-dense chunk up through their tunnels, convinced that the question it contains, when posed to the right wizard, might grant them the kind of rewards that only an adventurer could usually earn.
Day-Delvers (Threat)
There are some for whom profit outweighs the value of honesty. Day-delvers are mining scavengers, small bands equipped with pickaxe and drill who track the movement of tunnels through outer stone, risking their lives to enter the mountain’s heart while the waltz is in full progress. Many are crushed between stone walls, torn apart by unexpected contact with bands of raw magic or simply lost to the darkness of a poorly-chosen tunnel, but the activity offers bounty enough that there are always some willing to try. The Ancient Mind promises, in the Contract, that no citizen of the slopes shall ever be harmed on purpose. This may, or may not, be true.
Settlements
Hognito
Closest Dance To The Summit: Spitting distance, they swear.
First Settled By: An irate hog-herder on his way to Sunpeak Station, who put down roots and never left.
While settlements on the Jags are hardly a rarity, Hognito stands out due to its sheer size. An entire city, complete with multiple districts and its own overground rail system, taking up every available inch of the moving stone it’s built onto. The foundations run deep enough that basements thrum with the mountain’s magic, and blocky tenements shift their positions throughout the year, sliding and grinding their way through the city to carefully balance it no matter where the waltz takes it.
Directional Districts (Feature)
Smaller settlements don’t have to worry too much about weight distribution. The stones upon which they move are far heavier than a cluster of houses, and even the steepest slopes aren’t enough to tip them over. But the designers of Hognito learned from Jarbone’s catastrophic capsizing, and the local architectural guild have essentially created a city that moves much like the mountain does—as weight shifts and directions change, districts rearrange themselves like the segments of a sliding puzzle, ensuring the city stays upright. Districts are named after the compass point they’re closest to, but this might change several times a day thanks to the movement of the waltz and the counter-movements of Hognito’s foundational mechanisms.
The City That Chases The Sun (Festival)
The residents of Hognito are a diverse bunch, but they hold one thing in common—a desire to reach the summit of the Jags, to equal the heights of Sunpeak. The dance of Hognito’s stone takes it from the base of the mountains to so close to very highest points, but always turns them away in the very final moments. But still they hope—every time they draw close to the peaks the entire city is drawn into a raging festival, complete with chants and dancing, feasting and fireworks. The festival always ends on something of a whimper, but by that point most residents are too caught up in the celebrations to care.
Hogling Heights (Location)
With cramped streets and shifting architecture, Hognito doesn’t have much room for the greener side of life. Most farmers leave at dawn to tend orbiting shards of tilled soil and greenery, but a trusted few are elevated to work among the Hogling Heights—rooftops given over to barns and piggeries, where tamed hogs are fattened, milked, and butchered in a never-ending cycle. Their lives, though cut short by the necessity of an omnivorous society, are often seen as far more free than those of the average citizen. For while none among the citizenry have ever reached that fabled peak, the rooftop hogs gaze over the mountains and out to the world beyond with every failed ascent.
The Crawling Villages
Settlements That Have Passed Close to Hognito: Racketattle, Day-By-Day, Tortoiseholme, Steam Town
Most Famous Derailment Site: Track 187B, Spar 46 (which has claimed two villages in only twenty years)
The Kinekozen waltz is undeniably beautiful, but it’s also fickle—settlements may spin apart from their fellows for weeks, months, or even years at a time, thrust into the wilderness of the outer peaks and away from larger centers of habitation. For some, this is a fact of life on the slopes. For others, it was a problem to be solved.
The denizens of the Crawling Villages are firmly in that latter camp—rather than trust the dance, they put their faith in the engineering prowess of the Iron & Blue. Their homes are constructed around heavy-duty railcars, flatbeds carrying farmland and hog-pens, markets and village squares. And while their lives are no less movement-driven than any other Kinekozan, at least they choose where they travel… When the rails are willing, of course.
Life on the Rails (Feature)
Every Crawling Village has an oversized steam locomotive pulling it along, usually acting as a combination of town hall and courthouse. Many also have additional, smaller engines providing more torque, essential for when the Iron & Blue turns steep. The average railcar holds four to six houses, their fixtures bolted to the floor to absorb the constant rattling sway of the village’s movement. Hammocks are the preferred sleeping accoutrement for all but the most stubborn of villagers.
Lazy Days (Custom)
The Crawling Villages are named more for their speed than their mode of transport—as impressive as these trainback settlements are in terms of engineering, their uphill speed is rarely faster than an amble. Inhabitants tend toward the same sedate lifestyle, their rhythms set by the engines that pull them. There are definitely hours where a passing grove spurs apple-pickers into action, or a brace of wild hogs sets hunters swinging down from the elevated rails, but on the whole the villagers busy themselves only when they absolutely need to. Work fast or work slow, as the saying goes, we’ll always get where we’re going eventually.
Derailment (Threat)
‘Stable’ is a word few would use to describe the Iron & Blue. It’s a marvel of engineering, but it’s still an imprecise system. All it takes is for a set of tracks to not quite mesh after the nightfall adjustments, or a heavy train to push them out of alignment, and an entire village is at risk of toppling onto the drifting stone below. Instances of derailment are actually quite rare, thanks both to the attentions of the network’s engineers and the slow pace of most travel, but there’s more than one village left shattered and abandoned on the mountainside from an unfortunate choice of path.
Contract
Hands of the Mesolith: One fewer than there should be.
Attendants: With their eyes reverentially lowered at all times, their hands running across the scarred floors.
A huge, hollow space deep within the mountains, Contract is the dwelling-place of the Mesolith. While it started as a natural fault, generations of Hollowing Hands miners have expanded the space into an ordered settlement, rooms hewn straight into the stone walls and connected by twisting walkways. The floor is kept clear of habitation and machinery, reserved for the Mesolith’s dais, and those making pilgrimage to read the scrawls that surround it.
It’s these scrawls, as much as the presence of the mountain’s geological overseer, that draws visitors into the lamp-spoiled darkness. Contract is also home of the Kinekozan rules, spiraling text carved into the floor by the very first miners, under the direction of the unmoving Mesolith itself. These are the tenets by which the entity has chosen to operate, part contract, part declaration, part warning.
The Mesolith (Individual)
Though barely larger than the average giant, the physical form of the Mesolith is still an overwhelming presence—a reclining, faceless figure swaddled in carven robes, posed as if waking from an eternal dream. It’s not quite a statue, not quite a god, immobile save for the movements of a hundred flexing hands. And it’s these hands that hold the tethers of the mountain slopes, strands of raw magic leading up and out into the fissures of Contract’s carven ceiling. The steps of the dance follow the Mesolith’s whims, and some spend entire lifetimes trying to decrypt them. Close observers may notice that one of the arms ends in a rocky stump, the strand once held by that missing hand now hanging untouched.
Reading With Fingers (Custom)
With enough of a vantage point (such as could be gained from standing on one of the many walkways or bridges), one could read the carven rules of Contract by the light of lamps and magic alone. But that, the knowledgeable proclaim, would be to miss their intent. For a true understanding of the scrawled words that give this place its name, one must start at the outer edges of the room and work along the spiral, hands on the floor, reading each rune with fingers and palms. It takes hours of shuffling motion to do so, but each turn brings you closer to the dais of the Mesolith—and closer to understanding its wishes.
Hidden Histories (Feature)
Few working miners ever make it to Contract—there’s nothing to be taken here without the Mesolith’s direct permission, and communication is hit and miss when you’re working on a geological timescale. But some come anyway, eager to take in the history of the place or pay their respects—it’s here in Contract that the principle of trade was first established, that the entity first spoke with the head of the Hollowing Hand… And that the First Deep Theft, so shameful as to have been scrubbed from the history books, was committed.
Factions
The Hollowing Hand
Preferred Tools: Steel picks for the newcomers, diamond-edged fingersaws for the experts.
Current Leader: Flexile, technically, though it’s Dashan that makes all of the daily decisions
It doesn’t take much in the way of specialist equipment to tunnel down into the innards of the Kinekozan Jags, but it does take years of training to do so safely. The Hollowing Hand are more than an experienced group of miners—they’re cartographers of a shifting skin, delvers into stone and thought, merchants of the Mesolith’s bounty.
The Contract Fundamentals (Custom)
Anyone can steal a stone from near the surface, if they get lucky, but the Hand pride themselves on following the first fundamental rule of Contract with every stone they take: a question must be traded for an answer. Luckily for those of a less metaphysical bent, the Mesolith has made it clear that ‘an answer’ can really be anything from the outside world that it finds interesting. Groups of miners can often be seen approaching their tunnel entrances laden down with gifts to be left in the tunnels, anything from finely-crafted blades to rocking chairs, alchemical mixtures to books of poetry. Some members of the Hollowing Hand put a lot of thought into these items of barter, others tend to grab whatever’s lying around as they leave the house. One in particular, Utherin Glasbenit, takes great pride in boasting that he’s swapped over a hundred shoes for question-heavy stone.
Riddler’s Eve (Festival)
Once a month, at the start of a moonless night, the miners abandon their usual tasks and come together for a celebration of all they’ve acquired. Stone after stone is brought before local townsfolk, and their questions released into the world by the eldest of the Hand, read by their ungloved fingers and spoken through their ale-wetted lips. Stones containing simple questions that the crowd can answer are set aside, but those that pose queries fit to set a mind afire are cataloged and packaged up, ready to be sold onto wizards, tutors, and traveling philosophers of all stripes. Every sale is final, even if the eventual buyer answers their question before they leave the mountain’s slopes.
Flexile (Absent Leader)
A nearly skeletal figure dressed in the remnants of mining gear archaic by the standards of the modern day, immediately identifiable thanks to the stone hand that clutches his face, covering every one of his features save a single eye glimpsed between two fingers. Flexile spends his time in a converted balloon watchtower, unwilling to touch the stone of the mountain the Hollowing Hand spend their lives exploring. It is Flexile, or the person he once was, that committed the First Great Theft - the breaking and looting of one of the Mesolith’s own stone hands. It’s said that if the question it contains is ever answered, it may relax its grip—but Flexile refuses to let anybody other than him ever touch it.
Principles
The Hollowers are revered by the Kinekozan locals, their work bringing in the majority of outside funding for the building and maintenance of settlements. Along with their lofty position comes a certain level of arrogance—earned, perhaps, but sometimes representing an organizational weakness. The principles are there to keep newer Hollowers in check.
- No stone is yours - it merely passes through your hands.
- No shaft is yours - each exploration is shared with your fellows.
- No question is yours - and if the Mind wanted your answers, it would ask for them.
NPCs
Dashan, the Never-Exiled [ Underborne **** Ribbet , he/him]
Difficulty: 19
Cheerful, Exuberant, Meticulous
Experience: Storekeeping +3, Mining +2
Look: A squat ribbet with a ‘beard’ of floating stones, Dashan’s small stature doesn’t get in the way of him ordering larger miners around. He’s respected throughout the Hollowing Hand as having a cool head in a crisis, a propensity for catching small but important details, and a laugh that booms as if he were three times his size.
Motive: Ensure that miners aren’t just equipped for the journey down into the dark, but the path back up as well.
Quirrelus Kivian, Historian of Hollow Places [ Underborne **** Orc , she/her]
Difficulty: 12
Long-Suffering, Haunted, Quizzical
Experience: Patience +4
Look: Orc history speaks of the Stone Father, and the hands that brought the entire ancestry into being. Who better to answer questions on such matters than the Mesolith? If only it wasn’t so taciturn…
Motive: To have her questions about the Stone Father answered.
Story Hooks
The Flexile wishes to walk the Asking-Mines once more, but requires an escort to do so.
A powerful mage has summoned an answer of great import, but it struggles for freedom—she must match it to one of the mountain’s unmined questions before it tears free.
A band of errant locals have taken to stealing the barter-goods left by the Hollowing Hands, hoping that if there are any consequences they’ll fall on the miners themselves.
The Nomadic Guild of Here to There
Where is Here?: The place you have no love for now the sun has set.
Where is There?: The place you want the day to meet your brow.
Anyone that intends to put down roots on the moving mountains will, inevitably, come into contact with the Nomadic Guild of Here to There.
They’re cartographers of a sort, though some prefer to call them artists, or engineers, or mystics. No term quite encapsulates their totality, their skills at once so diverse and so specific. For it’s the Guild that chart the flow of the dance, and predict the next steps, entirely independent of the Mesolith. Who lick quartz and tell others which way the rains are going to come. Who decide where the newest extensions of the Iron & Blue are planted, and how those tracks are designed to swing.
The Guild see the mountain as few others can; as answers, rather than questions.
Absent a Mind (Feature)
Unlike the members of the Hollowing Hand, the Guild prefer to leave the Mesolith to its own devices. In fact, as a rule, they stay out of the interior tunnels of the Jags whenever they can help it. They’re there to interpret and discern, not to mine more questions that may never have an answer. The Guild and the Hand have forged an uneasy alliance over behavior and beliefs, meeting only to discuss the most effective spots to begin drilling a new shaft entrance.
Meat, Milk, & Paper (Custom)
With the mountain spurring a question-based economy, the Guild are perhaps alone in being paid purely for the answers they provide. When they can be found, that is; membership requires a huge amount of dedication, and acolytes are lost almost as often as they progress through the ranks. This results in a huge amount of respect and power commanded by a relatively small number of individuals, which would be a recipe for disaster if the Guild’s nomadic lifestyle didn’t prevent them from accepting gifts of material value or weight. Meat and milk are the two most common gifts for a member of the guild, though clothing, paper, and charcoal are also gratefully received.
A Stumble in the Waltz (Threat)
A nomadic lifestyle spent on the Jags comes with its own host of dangers. Stilt scorpions step delicately from shard to slab in search of warm prey, venomous hogs snuffle through flimsy tent flaps, and railway pirates are opportunistic enough to strike even the loneliest of figures. But the worst fate a member of the Guild can come to is with a stumble, a misstep that sends them sprawling through the gaps between stones and into the sizzling magic that moves them. And at that point, death is a kindness—there are tales of stumblers that manage to pull their way back up onto the outer slopes, changed in mind by what they’ve learned and in body by what they’ve endured.
Principles
The principles of the Here-To-There are never written down. Why waste paper on such banalities when there are other, more pressing answers that warrant the space?
- No puzzle is impossible to solve.
- Pose only questions, take only answers.
- Match the mountain’s rhythms with your own.
NPCs
Long-Strider Levine [ Ridgeborne **** Katari , they/them]
Difficulty: 15
Gentle, Precise, Focused
Experience: Navigation +4, Pathfinding +6
Look: Long of wooden limb and even longer of stride, Levine lost their first set of legs in an unfortunate jag-related collision. Their replacements, whittled from the boughs of the shatterwood, are made for sure purchase on even the least stable of surfaces.
Motive: Chart the mountain’s movements, learn the waltz of stone.
Evening Over Low Lakes, Hog-Hustler [ Seaborne **** Halfling , she/her]
Difficulty: 16
Belligerent, Brusque, Caring
Experience: Hogling Affairs +10
Look: Stones and rails? That’s the easy stuff. Evening Over Low Lakes has dedicated her life to the tracking and training of venomous hogs, and she’s quite happy with her progress, thank you very much!
Motive: Wrangle a kingly beast.
Story Hooks
A rare meeting of the Guild - they’re asking for visitors to attend as well, particularly those that have arcane potential or an eye for cartography.
A member of the Here-To-There’s has been tasked with tracking down a child, carried far from home on a flow of the mountain’s stone. They know where to go, but they’re not sure they can make it through the intervening territory alone.
An argument between the workers of the Iron & Blue and the miners of the Hollowing Hand has erupted over a proclamation by the Guild on where a new shaft should be sunk.
Resources
| MOMENTS OF HOPE | MOMENTS OF FEAR | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A passing stone from the Shatterwood, laden with unique fruits. | 1 | The Ladenswell arrives without warning, a cascade of painted stones traveling at dangerous speeds |
| 2 | A shout of greeting from a passing train, followed by the thump of a bag of supplies hitting the ground nearby. | 2 | A jarbone spirits rising from the glow between stones. |
| 3 | A diminutive figure sits atop a distant rock, playing a delicate flute. | 3 | Two tracks of the Iron & Blue haven’t quite meshed together… |
| 4 | A scorpion-wrangler passes by, pack laden down with unusual venoms. | 4 | The soft clucking of a cockatrice as it hunts for fresh meat. |
| 5 | A stone-soaked question is read, one that sets your mind on the path of an answer. | 5 | A drawn-out crunch, of two moving islands grinding together. |
| 6 | A chance meeting with one of the Nomadic Guild, an elder with answers you sought without meaning to. | 6 | A question escaping from a split stone, a question about something you’d rather forget. |
| 7 | A nearby village is holding a festival. The smells of fresh milk and roasting meat are unmistakable. | 7 | Whistles blare in the distance. A train is under threat. |
| 8 | Rail workers share secrets from upslope. | 8 | The creak of beams overhead, and the miles of rock above them. |
| 9 | A Sunpeak train clatters overhead, toward the very threat you were facing. | 9 | The corpse of a Guild member, still aglow with raw power. |
| 10 | Tucked into a cairn of balanced stones, a detailed map of recent movements and careful predictions. | 10 | Movement without sunlight, a denial of the natural order. |
| 11 | A swift-moving shard passes close, on an unerring route to the peaks. | 11 | The stinger of stilt-scorpion glimpsed briefly through the trees. |
| 12 | An eclipse stills the waltz for precious moments. | 12 | A sudden loss of balance—the shard you’re on is sinking. |
Rumours
While the citizens of Hognito desire more than anything else to catch that rising sun at its zenith, doing so would likely crash the entire city into Sunpeak Station.
The First Deep Theft may have been erased from the history of the region, but the Mesolith still remembers, and hasn’t yet forgiven the exiled head of the Hollowing Hand.
A painted glass jug is sometimes seen bobbing in the Ladenswell Lake - what are the limits of stone, one wonders?
An oracle of the Here to There, captured by funicular raiders, was close to discerning the greater pattern of the waltz.
A dissident group is working toward derailing one of the crawling villages over a crack beneath two plates of stone, sending the whole settlement tumbling into the raw magic running beneath them.
One building of Contract is off limits to all but the highest ranking members of the Hollowing Hand, the walls within scrawled with rules that have been unwittingly broken.
Each portion of the Shatterwood, though still divided by miles, is drawing closer - the wood yearns to reform, and to still the stone of the mountain once more.
Equipment
Asking-Stone Staff - Knowledge Far - d10+10 (phy) - One-Handed
Feature: Curious (During a rest, you must spend one of your downtime moves answering its questions, or every attack made with it until your next rest is at disadvantage.)
Primary Weapon
Diamond-Saw Glove - Strength Melee - d4+2 (phy) - One-Handed
Feature: Delicate Touch (Mark stress to add your Finesse to any damage rolls made with your Primary Weapon)
Secondary Weapon
Ladenscree Swarm - Base Score: 9
Feature: Coruscating (Your armor score is increased by your Proficiency against ranged attacks.)
Armor
Items
Strand of Raw Magic: This animates an object temporarily when wrapped around it, causing it to move erratically and (sometimes) take on sentience. Do not touch this with your bare hands. Ever.
Untethered Tent: A floating tent weighted down with stabilizing stones, the perfect place to rest for one that wants to stay just off the ground while they sleep. During a long rest, you always gain a Hope.
Jag-Striding Boots: Boots with soles of stolen stone. Heavy, but they remember the motion of the waltz. Mark stress to increase your Evasion by +2 until your next roll with Fear. When you avoid an attack, you can immediately move anywhere within close range.
Consumables
Hollower’s Folly - A hand made of quartz, shaped to resemble the one stolen from the Mesolith. On a successful Spellcast (16) roll, it will skitter along the ground and up onto a target’s face, latching on and making them temporarily Vulnerable and giving them disadvantage on any attack rolls until they are no longer Vulnerable.
Hogling Crunch - Sweet and savory, fatty and acidic - if you can get past the mild dose of toxins it contains, it’ll perk you right up. Mark 2 Stress when you consume. You can move anywhere within far range when taking an action (instead of within close range) until your next short rest.
Crushed Questions - These are less than fragments, sand-like stones containing the offcuts of larger questions. Sprinkling them into the wind provides questions on a topic you wouldn’t have thought to ask. Use this when making a Knowledge roll to make your Hope die a d20 instead of a d12.
Adversaries
Toxic Hog
Description: Poisonous beast bristling with hair and a bad attitude.
Motives & Tactics: Charge with Wild Abandon, Catch and Toss, Trample
Tier: 4
Type: Standard
Difficulty: 17
Attack Modifier: +5
Tusks: Melee | 4d12+6 phy
Major 35 | Severe 80
HP: 5
Stress: 2
Experience
Cliff Hopping +4
Features
Charges Like a Train
The charge of a Toxic Hog hits like a freight train. When charging a PC, spend a Fear to slam the player back into far range. When they land, they take 1d10+2 phy damage.
Bristles - Reaction
Mark a Stress when Toxic Hog is hit by an attack from within very close range. Immediately make a counterattack using their poisonous bristles. On a success, deal 3d8+4 phy damage. A PC hit by these bristles must also mark a Stress from the poison when they act until their next roll with Hope.
Stilt Scorpions
Description: Large scorpions that track and ambush their prey.
Motives & Tactics: Shadow, Surge, Use Terrain
Tier: 4
Type: Bruiser
Difficulty: 18
Attack Modifier: +5
Pincers: Melee | 3d8+12 phy
Major 50 | Severe 90
HP: 3
Stress: 2
Experience:
Tracker +5
Features
Out of the Shadows - Passive
On the first attack a Stilt Scorpion makes against a target, their attack modifier is increased by +3.
Stinger - Action
+3 attack modifier
Make an attack against a target within Very Close range. On a success, deal 5d10+5 phy.
Kinekozan Cockatrice
Description: Reptile-fish hybrids that vary in length, armed with powerful jaws.
Motives & Tactics: Hide, Hunt, Subsume
Tier: 4
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 19
Attack Modifier: +7
Beak & Mandibles: Very Close | 6d10 phy
Major 25 | Severe 80
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
The Waltz +8
Features
Stone Snare - Action
Spend aFear to turn an area of stone within close range of the cockatrice in to a quicksand-like slurry, slowing anyone who moves through it. Any PCs who attempt to pass through must succeed on an Agility (19) roll or become Ensnared. While Ensnared, the PC is Restrained and Vulnerable.
Leech Moisture - Action
+5 Attack Modifier
Mark Stress to make an attack against an ensnared target in melee. On a success, deal 4d20 mag damage. The cockatrice sinks its mandibles into its victim and sucks all liquids from the flesh around the wound, turning affected areas to stone as it does so. Until their next long rest, they cannot heal Hit Points.
Keening Dive - Reaction
Once this adversary only has 1 HP left, you can mark a Stress to have it keen, discharging large amounts of raw magic and diving into the stone. From there it acts like an aquatic hazard, swimming through the stone. Its difficulty becomes 22.
Environments
Coming soon!
Themes
This section offers a palette of themes to utilize when crafting locations for your Daggerheart adventures. We recommend choosing 1-3 words to use as jumping-off points when you need to create a location, landmark, settlement, or faction.
When building a campaign, you might choose or create regions that have overlapping themes in order to preserve the verisimilitude of the world you’re playing in together. For example, the Locations in the next section suggest starting themes, which overlap in Ancient, Haunted, and Strange. Consider how these themes vary between each location:A city that is “verdant and serene” is very different from one that is “verdant and martial.” That difference is made even more pronounced when “devout” is added to the themes. How would a militarized community protect the forest home of their god vs. a quiet collection of worshippers that make a home in the remote woods with little outside disturbance?
Ancient - Artifactual, awe-inspiring, excavated, fossilized, hushed, irreplaceable, lost, preserved, primeval, risky, ruined, sacred.
Aquatic - Abyssal, bioluminescent, briny, calm, endless, enigmatic, monstrous, navigable, overpowering, peaceful, stormy, tumultuous.
Arid - Dry, golden, inhospitable, parched, remote, sunbaked, tranquil, unbroken, unforgiving, vast, waterless, windblown.
Desolate - Abandoned, conquered, desperate, expansive, hazardous, hopeless, lonely, polluted, ravaged, ravenous, remote, weary.
Devout - Ancestral, ascetic, blessed, fanatical, heartfelt, isolated, obedient, pristine, restrictive, sanctimonious, sincere, unyielding.
Frozen - Beautiful, bitter, bleak, breathtaking, brittle, crystalline, frigid, harsh, pristine, remote, stark, uninhabited.
Haunted - Alluring, captivating, covert, cryptic, cursed, eerie, gloomy, harrowing, lethal, nightmarish, terrifying, unfathomable.
Impoverished - Alienated, blighted, collaborative, disadvantaged, empathetic, enterprising, forsaken, hardened, resilient, restive, scrappy, tenacious.
Innovative - Accessible, advanced, balanced, efficient, exacting, experimentative, hierarchical, meticulous, orchestrated, revolutionary, sustainable, technological.
Martial - Austere, dutiful, fortified, honorable, lethal, overbearing, regimented, safe, stoic, strategic, trained, violent.
Mountainous - Alpine, barren, formidable, jagged, majestic, perilous, remote, rocky, scenic, towering, unexplored, valuable.
Opulent - Artistic, comfortable, elegant, exaggerated, insatiable, lavish, privileged, stratified, superficial, treacherous, vibrant.
Scholarly - Acquisitive, assiduous, curious, cultured, deliberate, dismal, obsessive, progressive, refined, serene, sinister, strict, unconventional.
Serene - Bucolic, communal, euphoric, harmonious, innocent, insincere, placid, quaint, quiet, riant, specious, welcoming.
Strange - Devouring, ethereal, illogical, imposing, monstrous, paradoxical, playful, spellbinding, surreal, uncanny, uncharted, weird.
Tropical - Balmy, bountiful, breezy, coastal, deceptive, flowering, infested, invigorating, teeming, tempestuous, tranquil, vivid.
Underground - Cavernous, claustrophobic, cooperative, dark, foreboding, hazardous, inaccessible, precision-engineered, resourceful, secretive, secured.
Urban - Bustling, efficient, industrial, innovative, labyrinthine, lively, loud, multicultural, political, rapacious, stratified, utopian, wrathful.
Verdant - Biodiverse, dense, feral, flourishing, fragrant, harmonious, hushed, picturesque, unrelenting, unspoiled, vulnerable, wild.
Chapter Six
A large portion of TTRPG play includes the act of customization based on the needs and desires of your table–personalization doesn’t stop after the act of character creation. Below you will see the beginnings of some recommendations for ways to modify Daggerheart based on your needs and desires.
You’ll notice portions of this section are currently unavailable. As our team continues to refine mechanics, we’ll update and expand upon this text.
Adversary Balance
As adversary/system balance is a work in progress, this section is under heavy development and might not fully reflect the current ruleset and math in the previous chapters. Use at your peril.
Scaling Attack Modifiers
When creating or scaling adversaries, you can default their attack modifier to the tier you’re creating them for and adjust up or down depending on how likely you want them to be to hit and the evasion scores of your party. An adversary’s attack modifier might be as much as 4 points lower or higher than their tier when the foe is meant to be especially likely or unlikely to land a blow. You might balance an adversary with an especially powerful attack by giving them a lower attack modifier (especially if they’re a Bruiser-type) or give an adversary that doesn’t do as much damage a higher attack modifier so that they wear the PCs down a bit at a time.
Baseline attack modifiers by tier:
Tier 1 (level 1): -4 to +5, averaging at +1
Tier 2 (levels 2-4): -3 to +6, averaging at +2
Tier 3 (levels 5-7): -2 to +7, averaging at +3
Tier 4 (levels 8-10): -1 to +8, averaging at +4
Minion adversaries often have a lower attack modifier than the average, with a Tier 1 minion often having a -3 or -2 modifier. Leader, Solo, and Skulk type adversaries often have a higher modifier than the average, with a Tier 1 leader having as much as a +4 or +5 modifier.
Scaling Damage
In Daggerheart, you’ll find yourself needing to create a dice pool for damage from a threat or foe that you hadn’t already prepared. In these situations, here are some guidelines to follow:
Tier 1 Damage
At level 1, most classes have damage thresholds of Major 7, Severe 14 or below.
Recommended damage pools to reliably deal Minor, Major, and Severe damage. For a quick choice, take the bolded option.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| 1d6+1 | 2d4+5 | 3d4+10 |
| 1d4+2 | 2d6+3 | 2d8+5 |
| 1d8+1 | 1d8+7 | 2d6+8 |
In a group of tougher characters (Guardian, Seraph, Warrior), the average damage needed for each threshold is higher. Add +1 to all values to get the same results in a group where the average threshold is 8/15.
Additionally, class, foundation, and heritage features can impact HP thresholds, so keep those in mind when tailoring adversaries to your game’s needs.
If you want an attack to have a high variance of damage and a high ceiling, consider using a smaller # of dice that have a higher number of sides (d10s, d12s, or d20s), and avoiding flat damage bonuses. Note that this higher range of results can reduce how consistently useful armor is.
If you want an attack to hit consistently within a certain range of damage, use a larger # of dice with a smaller number of sides (especially d4s, d6s, and d8s). Alternatively, adding a flat bonus to damage can help more consistently deal damage with a minimum result.
If you want to ensure that an attack cannot do Severe damage to any characters in your party, set the maximum damage value of that attack to be lower than the party’s lowest Severe threshold.
To ensure that an attack will always deal at least Major damage, set the minimum damage value of that attack to be equal to or greater than the party’s highest Major threshold.
In a party where the highest Major threshold is 8, you can ensure a hit will always deal Major damage with a dice pool of 2d4+6, since 8 is the lowest possible result.
In a group with a large spread of damage thresholds (a Stalwart Guardian in a group with a Wizard), the damage needed to cause Minor damage (1 HP) to the Guardian might cause a Major injury (2 HP) to the Wizard. You might want to use dice pools that will generate more reliable averages to avoid swingy results that could deal an unwanted Severe blow to one of the more fragile characters. However, in a group with this large range of thresholds, characters with protective instincts/abilities have the opportunity to shine by protecting their comrades.
Damage at Higher Tiers
As characters grow in level, their damage thresholds increase as well. Characters’ damage thresholds will diverge more over time through players choosing different advancement options as well as through special items and abilities. But here are some tips & benchmarks for scaling impromptu damage.
Find below a chart for Tiers 2, 3, and 4, with suggestions for damage pools that will usually deal Minor, Major, or Severe damage, respectively.
Example damage pool suggestion:
| Major Damage |
|---|
| 2d6+3 (5-15) |
At Tier 2, the damage pool of 2d6+3 will generally deal Major damage. The (5-15) listing shows the full range of results for that damage pool, where the lowest roll on 2d6+3 will be 5, and the highest result will be 15.
Tier 2 (Levels 2-4)
Characters will have Damage Thresholds that rise to an average of Major 8 / Severe 19.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| 1d8+2 (3-10) | 2d6+3 (5-15) | 2d6+15 (17-27) |
| 2d4+3 (5-11) | 2d10+4 (6-24) | 2d8+12 (14-28) |
| 1d6+2 (3-8) | 1d8+3 (4-11) | 2d10+10 (12-30) |
Tier 3 (Levels 5-7)
Characters will have damage thresholds that rise to an average of 10 or 11 Major and 26 Severe. Use the following chart for damage suggestions, with each column suggesting damage pools to deal Minor, Major, or Severe damage, respectively.
The numbers in the parentheses show the range of results for that damage pool.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| 2d4+3 (5-11) | 2d4+7 (9-15) | 2d8+20 (22-36) |
| 1d8+4 (5-12) | 2d10+5 (5-25) | 2d10+18 (20-38) |
| 2d6+2 (4-14) | 4d6+5 (9-29) | 2d12+15 (17-37) |
Tier 4 (Levels 8-10)
Characters’ damage thresholds are likely to have diverged substantially, but the benchmark for this tier is 15 or 16 Major / 39 Severe.
| Minor Damage | Major Damage | Severe Damage |
|---|---|---|
| 1d8+6 (7-14) | 2d6+10 (12-22) | 2d8+30 (32-46) |
| 2d6+4 (6-16) | 2d8+8 (10-24) | 2d10+25 (27-45) |
| 2d10+3 (5-23) | 2d10+6 (8-26) | 2d20+12 (14-52) |
| 2d8+3 (5-19) | 4d6+8 (12-30) | 4d6+20 (24-44) |
| - | - | 4d8+20 (24-52) |
Scaling Difficulty
An adversary’s difficulty sets the standard target PCs will need to meet to succeed in actions against them. If your party is level 4 (the top of Tier 2), you might use a higher difficulty and higher thresholds than if you were making the adversary for them at level 2. Most adversaries should have difficulty numbers that the party can consistently succeed against over 50% of the time.
| Adversary Statistic | Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Difficulty | 11 | 14 | 17 | 20 |
If the adversary has a passive feature that adds to their difficulty in certain situations, it’s usually best to give them a slightly lower default difficulty.
GM Difficulty vs PC Evasion
Difficulty for NPCs and Evasion for PCs have some cross-over, but their main difference is functionality. The PCs have an entire character sheet and hand of cards that define the scope and power of their characters, and Evasion is a way to measure how often they are hit by an attack. As a GM, you’re often creating (or improvising) many characters throughout the course of a session that interact with players in a multitude of ways. Therefore, NPCs have a simplified Difficulty as a catch-all for any rolls made against them, and you can add their relevant Experience for anything they are particularly adept at. So, in a way, Evasion is bundled into Difficulty for the GMs to help make your job running the game easier.
Scaling Damage Thresholds
Adversary damage thresholds represent how much damage is required to deal HP to them. The chart below gives some benchmarks per tier depending on whether you want an enemy to be more fragile (like a Skulk, Social, or Ranged adversary), average (like a Standard, Horde, or Support type), or tough (like a Leader, Bruiser, or Solo type).
| Tier | Fragile | Standard | Tough | Extra Tough |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Major 5 | Severe 10 | Major 7 | Severe 12 |
| 2 | Major 8 | Severe 16 | Major 10 | Severe 20 |
| 3 | Major 15 | Severe 27 | Major 20 | Severe 32 |
| 4 | Major 20 | Severe 35 | Major 25 | Severe 45 |
Things to Keep in Mind
- If an adversary has a healing ability, consider dropping their damage thresholds to reduce the chance of the fight dragging.
- If your party does not have any abilities that grant temporary proficiency bonuses, they will have a hard time hitting the Severe thresholds of Extra Tough enemies without a critical success.
Example Adversary Scaling
Mike is preparing an encounter for their level 1 group but wants to use the Assassins writeups. Mike could just tweak the Tier 1 Bandits, but decides to scale down the assassins. They start with the Assassin Poisoner, planning on using a poisoner and some minions for this first encounter.
They start with the Tier 2 writeup:
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 2
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 14
Attack modifier: +3
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d8+12 phy
Major 10 | Severe 19
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Grindletooth Venom Blade - Passive
Targets that mark HP from a Poisoned Throwing Dagger attack are made Vulnerable until they clear one Hit Point.
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within Close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
First, the difficulty of the Poisoner drops 14 to 12 so that level 1 characters can frequently succeed against them when using their stronger traits and closer to a 50/50 chance when using their other traits. The attack modifier drops by 1 since Tier 1 characters will have lower evasion.
Then, their damage drops from 2d8+12 to 2d8+5, still capable of dealing notable hits to a level 1 character.
The Poisoner’s damage thresholds drop from Major 8 / Severe 16 to Major 5 / Severe 10. The Poisoner is not meant to be tough, but it will still take a strong blow from a level 1 character to deal a Severe injury. Mike leaves the HP and Stress as-is.
Finally, Mike decides to drop the Grindletooth Venom Blade feature entirely for Tier 1, but leaves Fumigation as-is, since it does not deal damage or have a reaction roll with a difficulty.
The Tier 1 version of the Assassin Poisoner now looks like:
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 1
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 12
Attack modifier: +2
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d8+5 phy
Major 5 | Severe 10
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
Tier 3
If instead Mike was scaling the Assassin Poisoner up to Tier 3, they would increase the attack bonus, damage, difficulty, and damage thresholds.
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 3
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 16
Attack modifier: +4
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d12+15 phy
Major 14 | Severe 27
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Grindletooth Venom Blade - Passive
Targets that mark HP from a Poisoned Throwing Dagger attack are made Vulnerable until they clear one Hit Point.
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
Tier 4
If adapting the Assassin Poisoner to Tier 4, Mike would substantially increase their damage, difficulty, experience, and their damage thresholds, raise the attack bonus, and add one or maybe two features.
Assassin Poisoner
Description: A cunning scoundrel skilled in both poisons and ambushing.
Motives & Tactics: Anticipate, Taint Food and Water, Disable, Get Paid
Tier: 4
Type: Skulk
Difficulty: 19
Attack modifier: +5
Poisoned Throwing Dagger Close | 2d8+30 phy
Major 21 | Severe 35
HP: 4
Stress: 4
Experience:
Intrusion +2
Features
Grindletooth Venom Blade - Passive
Targets that mark HP from a Poisoned Throwing Dagger attack are made Vulnerable until they clear one Hit Point.
Out of Nowhere - Passive
Assassin Poisoner has advantage on attacks if they are Hidden.
Fumigation - Action
Drop a smoke bomb that fills the area within close range with smoke, making all targets Dizzied. Dizzied characters add two tokens to the action tracker when they act, then are no longer dizzied.
Stinging Gas - Action
Toss a sachet up to a Close distance that erupts into stinging gas that grants disadvantage to all targets within Very Close of the eruption. The effect ends at the end of the scene or when the target clears HP.
[Playtesters: We invite your constructive feedback on how the adversaries included work at your table, as well as your experiences with this scaling framework. This extends to difficulty ratings, damage, damage thresholds, features, etc.]
List of Adversary Features
The adversaries in this book are written with various features, but when you’re creating adversaries, you may not have an existing writeup that makes sense to adapt and need to make your own. Here are some standard adversary features to use or modify as needed.
[coming soon]
A moving mountain where the stone dances by day, slumbers by night, and the deep mines provide only questions.