Superpowers (or Mutations)

This is a list of 100 (!) superpowers / mutations. There are already amazing tools out there like the metamorphica revised, so I wanted to keep these superpowers in the spirit of Weird & Wonderful; I really don't think you'll be able to find most of these in any other list of powers or in the Marvel or DC universes or any other pre-existing superhero setting or book. In addition to all of my usual inspirations, one of the big inspirations for this table is the manga/anime My Hero Academia and the "quirks", but probably my main superhero comic influences are Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, and most of all Grant Morrison.

I did not design these powers with game-implementation in mind. I think many of them could be implemented in OSR or other rules-light systems fairly easily, but there are some that might be quite difficult, and may be better suited for enemies/NPCs or plot devices. I figure with 100 powers, it's ok if a few of them are a little too tricky to make work in-game (although I think with enough creativity any of them could theoretically work).

If I'm being honest, I don't feel a strong impetus to convert each of these into usable game mechanics, that just doesn't excite me personally, but this is a case where I would very gladly crowd-source! I would love to have implementations for these powers, I just don't have the desire to do it alone.

Likewise, if this table is well-received, I'd like to follow it up with either a collection of superheroes designed around these powers (in which case I may provide game mechanic implementations for those heroes), or even more than that, I'd like to crowd-source an entire superhero universe around these powers! It would be a present-day or near-future "real world" setting, but other than that we can brainstorm what some of the hero and villain teams would be like, distribute powers, and come up with those heroes and villains and teams, again ideally with game mechanics. While I do already have a superhero setting, World of Wonders, that one is a very alternate-universe with specific premises, and the "weirdness" of these powers I think might get a bit lost in that setting.

One last thing before the table, if you have not done so already and it is still November 2018, please take my survey!

With all that being said, here's the list!

Auto-Generators

NOTE: If you catch any bugs in these generators please let me know! Even though I've tested the script, it's almost certain that something will have slipped past me >.<.

I was told that my HTML tables don't work well on mobile, so I'm hoping these backward/forward or number-entry tools, in addition to the randomizer, will be helpful for people!

Click through the list of superpowers:

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Full Table

Number	Superpower	Description
1	Aether alchemy	Can create fields of manipulated gravity, altering gravity within a local environment, or concentrating the fields into gravity beams and gravity bombs. Can use this power to fly by free-fall.
2	Alkahest	Has yellowish-orange skin, with a touch of red. Their touch is like a universal solvent, and can dissolve any molecule into its basic elements.
3	A-logical	They enter a state where they operate under a fundamentally different set of logic and physics than that which we understand about our universe. They are physically (and seemingly emotionally and intellectually) unstable in this state, but may be capable of doing or solving the impossible.
4	Altered shadow	There is platonic realm, and reality as we know it is just its shadow. There are, however, many other realms between the platonic and our own, and some of these realms serve as filters. The filters separate the essence of the platonic forms into altered shadows, coexisting with reality as we understand it but normally inaccessible. This individual's shadow is altered, containing one or more of their shadow-selves within it. The shadows can interact with the world like ghosts, like a haunting presence. They creep into the perceptions of those around them, subtly influencing their mental state. They have a limited ability to interact with objects, levitating them, or tossing them about. Under duress, they can even take a semi-corporeal form, acting with superhuman strength and agility.
5	Artist's touch	Their touch imbues objects or surfaces with an inherent, aesthetic sense of "art". Likewise, by touching art, they can extract the aesthetics from it. The object or surface does not change, merely others' perceptions of it.
6	ASMR aura	Their whispers oscillate at an impossible frequency, activating the pineal glands, the meridians, chakra, and pleasure centers in the brain, spine, and extremities. If they transmit a sufficient amount of chi into an object or person, they alight with an aura of spiritual energy, providing superpowers such as super strength, speed, durability, flight, energy projection, teleportation, and metaphysical awareness.
7	Ballistic	Once they set a trajectory and engage, they commit to the motion. The shorter the distance, the less power is accumulated, but even a movement as simple as stepping into a punch applies above-human force. While on trajectory (and only while on trajectory), a kinetic mesh forms around and within them such that they are safe from the speed and impact of the ballistic movements, but they do not otherwise have superhuman durability.
8	Binary causality	Two solutions to a deductive problem can be simultaenously proved (1+1 = [2,3]). The separate effects of these two proofs also occur simultaneously, up until reality would become terminally unstable. At that point, reality converges on the single, original proof, although the outcome events during the period of binary causality still occurred and can affect future outcomes.
9	Black iridescence	Creates semi-translucent black bubbles reflecting various colors along a cyan/yellow/magenta spectrum. Within each bubble another dimension or universe can be viewed, and to a limited extent, interacted with.
10	Blue hive	A literally blue-blooded, amazon-like superwoman. Speed, strength, agility, intelligence; the full package. Excretes pheremones which can influence others to do her bidding. Nutritious royal jelly courses through her veins. Small amounts can provide sustenance or minor super powers, but if a fatal amount of jelly is drained from her, whoever consumes the jelly will become the new Queen in Blue (regardless of their original gender).
11	Bone creep	They are still physiologically animal, but look and behave more like a plant, like coral. Their main body is a patch of forest of bone-trees centered around a gigantic tree, their original self. However, their consciousness is distributed across all of their offspring, varying in sizes and shapes. Sometimes they inhabit a humanoid bio-feedback suit with a small bone-plant in order to interact effectively with the animal world, but they generally think of themselves as more akin to plants, fungi, and coral.
12	Cognition-reality interface	The subtleties of their subjective perceptions and cognitive biases manifest into the objective reality around them.
13	Cognitive compression	The majority of their body tissue is composed of ganglions, clusters of nerves. Their brain, their cognitions or mental representations, are distributed across their entire body, with redundancies. If they are critically harmed or mutilated, they can compress their knowledge and memories, reverting to a simple, child-like, or animalistic state, until they can regenerate and decompress their cognition. Even with redundancies, they have a supergenius intellect, and the ability to flexibly construct or hold multiple mental representations, essentially superhuman multitasking.
14	Cosmic cooking	Has a natural inclination towards cooking. Can produce amazing food with relatively simple ingredients. Somehow produces a larger quantity of food than ingredients. The food often contains flavors not obviously represented by the ingredients, including flavors otherwise never tasted before and not of this world. Their food also has supernatural health qualities such as immunity boosting, healing, stimulating, tranquilizing, and benefits to mental health.
15	Dialectic	Has a supernatural ability to engage in argumentation.They utilize a proportion of logos, pathos, and ethos as needed in any given context, formal logic, evidence-based reason, tone of voice, body language, etc., such as to be masters of argumentation. Even when they are objectively wrong, or less knowledgable than their audience, they make strong points. They are not supernaturally charismatic per se, nor have psychic abilities to manipulate minds. Despite being supernaturally gifted at argumentation, they are not necessarily gifted manipulators; their audiences are not necessarily moved to change their beliefs or behaviors given the argument per se.
16	Doppler shift	Creates an internal model of wave effects in an environment relative to position, and can alter the perceptions of others in the environment to perceive the wave as if they were positioned elsewhere, like hearing a fast-moving loud noise passing from behind as if it were passing from ahead.
17	Dragon call	Has a psychic connection to an ancient organism orbiting the planet. It's a massive kaiju-sized creature with a serpentine body, generally in the shape of a spiral with its head at the origin. Its scales are actually densely-packed tardigrades of varying tones, an ever-shifting psychedelic wiggling pattern, orbs like the eyes of a spider, the geometry is fractal time. Its face is vaguely like a rat crossed with a carp. When summoned, it either crashes into the atmosphere, face-down, like a cosmic ballista, or instead hovers down to the lower atmosphere, twisting and spiraling, drawing energy, and pummeling the earth with a beam of milky energy in the shape of a drill. The dragon does not always heed the call, and does not always wish to return to its orbit after its work is done.
18	Dry ice	Has the ability to super-cool carbon dioxide in the air to produce and manipulate dry ice. Their body contains a natural anti-freeze agent that makes them highly resistant to freezing, and even if they do freeze, they maintain cell integrity when unfrozen.
19	Eldritch blood	There is something in the blood. When it releases from the body, uncanny things happen. Powerful blood tentacles, blood lasers, a red pool of carnivorous eldritch things. There is great power in the blood.
20	Electromagnetrode	Fingertips are electromagnetrodes. They can sense the electrical activity from an environment or surface with effectively zero impedance. They have an entire sensoriperceptual mechanism that performs both analog and digital signal processing, signal to noise tuning, and dynamic range tuning, to sense the electromagnetic signal at much higher spatial and temporal precision than any currently employed scientific tool (e.g. EEG, MEG, ECoG, etc.).
21	Extrapolation	Given some sequence (minimum two observations), they produce the next in the set. If given two apples of increasing ripeness, redness, size, etc., they will produce a third apple as one might predit from a statistical model estimate.
22	Extra-sensome	Secrete particles around an area which send and receive various sensory signals along a cascade back to the host organism.
23	Flash-frame	Can perform ritualistic movements of finesse, like the drawing and slashing of a katana (iaido), the quick-drawing of a gun in a Western-style duel, the dealing of cards, etc., with supernatural speed as if in a single frame of animation.
24	Force of will	Their will is so indomitable that they can impose upon reality, or rather, they impose upon their own perception of reality and the subjective gestalt of all perceptions of reality. By willing themselves to be unseen, it is as if they are invisible, although the light does not reflect or refract off of them in any unusual way. The less plausible the action or state, or less naturally inclined others would be to believe it, the more difficult it is for them to impose their will upon them.
25	Fractal cartographer	Despite our limited perception of three-spatial and one-temporal dimensions, the universe can be more parsimoniously explained by a fractal model. The cartographer has an intuitive understanding of this fractal, non-integer geometry. As a result, so long as they can deduce their position at least one-dimensionally (i.e. they are not blinded or in absolute darkness and can draw a mental line between themselves and some environmental feature), they have perfect dead reckoning. Additionally, they have an intuitive sense of the fastest route between nodes in a circuit, supernatural sensorimotor processing of geometry, and the ability to escape seemingly closed circuits.
26	Gamma builder	Absorbs transient gamma energy from throughout the cosmos (or beyond the universe itself). The high-energy rays collide inside them, turning into usable energy and even mass, allowing them to grow into a monstrous, superhuman brute, project energy, and even produce simple molecules. They also produce anti-matter/energy in the anti-matter universe, although they do not normally have conscious control over this process (unless they are in the anti-matter universe, in which case the reverse is true).
27	Geothermal proboscis	A symbiotic organism like a trilobyte is latched to their face like a mask with a probiscis. When placed in a natural body of water or against unimpeded earth, the head of the proboscis sends a transmission signal of unknown composition deep into the planet, drawing geothermal energy in massive quantities and defying the square law. In addition to negating the need for sustenance, the energy can also be used to short-circuit electronic devices or cause them to explode.
28	Goop	A sack of smart-goo. It can create semi-solid lattice structures to give itself shape, and by default takes an oblong shape with two arm-like tendrils, and can occupy and manipulate solids such as armors or body suits. It can regenerate from near-complete destruction within a matter of hours. It is homeopathic, it can absorb small quantities of substances and replicate its chemical composition within the goop.
29	Groundhogger	They can revert time to 24 hours in the past from any current moment (and will instinctively do so if they die), maintaining any knowledge or skills they developed over the course of the no longer existent day. However, this means they also maintain their age; every time they use this ability, they are one day older.
30	Hyper-dimensional	Exists in a higher dimension. Their manifestation in spacetime as we understand it is like pressing a thumb on paper, the circumference of the thumbprint would be the two-dimensional manifestation of the thumb. Like the thumb lifting off one place on the paper and pressing onto a different place, they can similarly interact with spacetime from their higher dimension.
31	Hyper-planar compression	Can condense ~6 seconds of time into three-dimensional space. Can only hold one compressed hyper-time at a time. Spacetime may be altered within the hyper-time, and the effects will hold when the hyper-time is expanded.
32	Hypnowog	Their eyes are actually the bellies of extra-dimensional tadpoles with a spiral shape that swirls as they wiggle. The swirl is hypnotic, and those who look into their eyes are calmed and open to suggestion (but will only act on suggestions they would reasonably be willing to do). The eye-to-eye contact with lifeforms feeds the tadpoles, and eventually they will metamorphose into... something.
33	Imbue life	By holding objects, they imbue a form of metaphysical life into them. A brief touch imbues barely an insect-like intelligent, but a frequently worn or held item may develop human-like sapience. The objects can communicate thoughts by touch, and over time can provide skills and affect the mind-state of the wielder. For instance, a gun may imbue precision shooting skills but also feelings of violent rage.
34	Interpolation	Given some sequence (minimum two observations), they produce a new observation in the middle which best fits the set. If given two apples of increasing ripeness, redness, size, etc., they will produce an apple in between the two as one might predict from a statistical model estimate.
35	Irritating presence	They have the uncanny ability to annoy everyone in their vicinity. Even the most patient, most passionate individual is tested in their presence. It may be something about their physical appearance, perhaps they are gross or awkward-looking, mismatched clothing, stains on their clothes. It may be the way they stare, or fail to make eye contact. The cadence of their speech or the sound of their voice. Weird mouth noises or body grumblings. Too loud or too quiet; too oblivious or too attentive. Bad breath. You feel their presence over your shoulder. You hear a dissonant and irregular buzzing or tapping in your head. You feel an itch underneath your skin.This is not just any irritant, this is like the one-sided phone call in the neighbor's apartment while you're trying to sleep. It is the irritant that is all-consuming and cannot be ignored. They do not have many friends.
36	Karmic awareness	They have both a cosmic awareness, and magic-like abilities to impose upon reality. However, these powers are mutually exclusive, and contingent on their degree of attachment to the physical world (measured in units of karma). If they cling to materiality, they become much more powerful, but lose their cosmic awareness and experience deep existential suffering. If they become too attached, they become a powerful asura demon, but lose their personhood. If they relieve themselves of all karma, they become physically frail and catotonic, but their essence has transcended into something like divinity.
37	Kintsugi	Whenever they are cut or break a bone or strain a muscle, it becomes stronger when healed and turns gold.
38	Letter of the law	Has a supernatural ability to identify rules, regulations, laws, bureaucratic organization, etc., and additionally to either find the loopholes in them, or enforce them through legal writing, counseling, or courtroom tactics.
39	Lignomancy	They have the ability to control wood, but only when it's dead and mutilated. Kindling, paper, crafts, and pulp. The more processed the carcass the better. They are a necromancer of a kind, feeling for the cold patches in the distributed consciousness of seeds and sap.
40	Living system	A being existing as an idea or mental representation, or more accurately, a self-organizing, distributed network. It exists across many organisms, or maybe even whole institutions or species. It is not a "hive-mind". There is no "Queen". It cannot be destroyed without isolating it from all of reality. It can only be predicted, or manipulated.
41	Logical gestalt	If a postulated argument is not cogently refuted, it becomes objective Truth to anyone in the vicinity who could have refuted it, even if it is objectively wrong. If the power fails to work, it is objective Truth that the argument was cogently refuted.
42	Macro microbiome	The bacteria in the gut microbiome have become sentient, and symbiotically work with their host to give them peak-level or even enhanced intelligence, strength, agility, etc.
43	Manic grease	Greasy skin, covered in acne, a body of loose fat. They exude grease vapor, staining the environment around them. A stifling heaviness builds in the air. Normally slow and unhealthy, they can temporarily harness their store of grease and fat into superhuman strength and speed.
44	Matrioshka	Rather than growing and replacing cells, they started as a tiny person, and grew a new person over the old person. They are currently the size of a large humanoid but have many smaller selves within them, called hummunculi. If the hummunculi exit the body, they will grow into new people. It is not clear how deep / how small the hummunculi go, nor how large they can become.
45	Memetic	Their photos, drawings, writings, etc., tap into the metaphysical collective unconscious, virally infecting culture within a matter of days. Often the tail of the meme lasts only just as long.
46	Moment analysis	Any single moment in spacetime can be stored at 100% resolution in a pocket dimension for later examination.
47	Mu gender	They look neither masculine nor feminine, nor androgynous nor agendered. Despite being identifiably of their species, there is something alien or bestial about them from the perspective of a typical member of their species. When they embrace another member of their species with mutual affection skin-to-skin, a weak membrane connects them, and some unidentifiable energy or substance is osmotically passed between them. Within 1d10 hours, 1d4 soft, wriggling, baseball-sized eggs form. Each egg is a gestating new universe composed of some emotional state like positive affirmation or unconditional love. The eggs can repeat emotional universes, but each egg has its own psychic imprint, or it's own personality, that will never exist again. If the eggs are allowed to hatch in 1d6 weeks, they disappear from the universe and are never to be seen again, but may be visited by multiversal beings. If instead they are prematurely hatched, they create a field of emotional energy for 1d6 minutes, but the pocket universe will be unstable, consume itself, and die, never to reach its full potential.
48	Naked mask	A featureless blank mask of plastic, wood, or metal is inextricably attached to their face, covering everything except their eyes, nostrils, and mouth. The mask projects constantly shifting and overlapped faces of artificially generated people. For as uncanny as this may seem, they seamlessly blend into crowds and slip from minds.
49	Narrativistic	Their life is a narrative, and conforms to pre-conceived theories of storytelling and narrative arcs such as the Hero's Journey or Greek Comedy or Tragedy. They are not necessarily aware of this fact, they just know there is something supernatural about how their life has progressed. Even if they correctly guess or discover their narrative, it cannot be avoided.
50	Numinous tendrils	A four-dimensional hyper-torus of warped spacetime hovers inches behind them to their back, roughly proportional to their size. Tendrils seep from the hyper-torus, sometimes human, sometimes of other terrestrial creatures, sometimes altogether alien. The tendrils are like inverse-sensory organs, not sensing their environment, but projecting sensory signals into their enviornment. Sometimes they project warmth, sometimes cold; sometimes a sense of the divine, and sometimes a sense of horror.
51	Operator system	They can interface with electronic hardware directly, serving as their own BIOS/firmware/operating system. The electronic devices they create can only be used by them, are powered by their own energy, and can leverage both the computer hardware itself and the raw power and unmatched complexity of their organic body to function as a supercomputer beyond current technological limitations.
52	Orgone accumulation	Sex magic. By engaging in consensual sex where both partners receive pleasure (do not have to orgasm, although if both parties orgasm more orgone is produced), they collect orgone energy, an anti-entropic force. The orgone can be used for general superpowers (strength, speed, durability, dexterity, etc.), but can also be used to reverse the effects of thermodynamic, and more generally all Shannon entropy. It can halt combustion, reverse oxidation, restore corrupted data, etc.
53	Orthogenetic mutate	The more frequently they engage in an activity, the more they change, both genotypically and phenotypically, to be better suited to that activity. In the span of weeks they can grow long arms to grab fruit from trees, or winged membranes to glide across longer distances. Their adaptations don't go away unless a mutually-exclusive activity causes adaptation in the opposite direction (e.g. long to short arms). They become genetically more complex, and unexpected properties emerge from the interactions of their adaptations. They become increasingly alien to their original species. There are patterns in their genetic code that do not appear accidental. The mutation appears teleological. They are mutating into... something...
54	Oscillator	Their entire body subtly vibrates at a certain frequency, frequencies, or cross-frequency couples/triplets/etc. Other objects and organisms in the environment entrain to these oscillations. By oscillating at frequencies corresponding to brain activity, radio transmitters, vocal transmission, etc., they can outright disrupt, or subtly manipulate, these systems.
55	Panopticon	Has a baroquial, uncanny, holy appearance. Two large, nested wheels covered in bright eyes encircle them, and a smaller set of many-eyed, nested wheels swirl overhead like a halo. Can create a wheel-shaped spirit field centered on themselves, nearly football field sized, where they can sense the motives and intentions of those within the field. They can only sense one individual at a time, but can cycle rapidly, and there is no obvious indication that one is being sensed.
56	Paradigm shift	They identify the system dynamic, and disrupt it. The shift must be lateral, the stronger fighter doesn't become weaker, but the circumstances of the fight change such that the skills of the weaker fighter become more advantageous. They are not able to control exactly how the paradigm shifts; it emerges statistically, but as the origin of the shift, they may be able to capitalize on it. They are even able to paradigm shift their own cells, inducing mutations driven by founder effects or population bottlenecks.
57	Paradoxical pigmentation	Is chimeric or impossible-colored, or has a color outside the electromagnetic spectrum, or is simultaneously two or more colors, or is colored and invisible, or some other paradox. The paradox is physically straining on the visual system and also existentially painful. It is impossible to remember their appearance, and to attempt to recall them reactivates the visual strain and existential pain.
58	Parthenogenic	Can asexually produce clones. Conception and birth occur within an hour, the clones reach maturity within a day, and they are permanent and independent lifeforms. Occasionally a half-clone is birthed. The half-clones may have a different gender or slightly different phenotypical traits.
59	Penrose person	Their body is an optical illusion, like a penrose triangle or MC Escher painting. They appear normal from most forward-facing perspectives, but their unusual geometry makes them difficult to target or physically interact with.
60	Perpetual motion	Does not require sustenance and can maintain physical properties indefinitely. However, the longer they violate the laws of thermodynamics, the more reality breaks around them. To restore order in reality, they must consume as much energy as the deficit in reality they created.
61	Photobomb	Appears like a photographic negative of themselves, and can project a ~10x10 photo-field around themselves. The field is like a spatial-frequency filter, which they can use to extend their own photo-negative, produce Gaussian (or some other kind of) spatial-frequency noise, filter luminance (leaving only color), filter color (leaving only luminance), or other similar manipulations of light.
62	Pierce-borg	Any technological or magical devices woven into or onto their body through body piercings integrate into their nervous system and are powered by their own energy (even if this should be impossible, like a mechanical device made of wood). A body-pierced cyborg.
63	Planar compression	Can condense a roughly human-sized portion of three-dimensional space into a flat surface, a flat surface into a line, or a line into a point. The mass, energy, and other properties of the space remain constant. They can only maintain one compressed space at a time. Where the compressed space once filled is now negative-space. When the compressed space is no longer maintained, it returns to its full dimensionality, but if moved, does not return to its original location, although its expansion does lead to the negative-space being filled, even if not by its original contents.
64	Plant person	Despite their humanoid/animal appearance, they are a plant. They can root into the ground to absorb water and nutrients, and photosynthesize. In this state, they experience a dream-like consciousness and a connection with the plantosphere of the world. They can temporarily take on superpowered traits of the plants they touch.
65	Platonic vision	Sees into the Platonic realm, the ideal form of all things. This provides unique insight into the nature of the world, and protection against most forms of deception or obfuscation.
66	Positronic power	They exist partially in the universe and partially in the anti-universe. An energetic, iridescent, crackling membrane protects the universe/anti-universe from violent collision. Piercing the membrane to the diameter that even a single electron and positron could meet would create explosive gamma energy. Were the membrane ever to be fully torn, the universe and anti-universe would annihilate each other.
67	Quantum positioning	Can transport their entire body to any location within the path of any of their sub-atomic particles instantaneously. Within that range they can be anywhere in any moment.
68	Quantum traveller	Has the ability to instantly shrink to sub-atomic proportions to enter a quantum microverse (the quantumverse). Physical principles operate differently in the quantumverse; no matter how much time they spend in either universe, only mere moments have passed in the other universe. They physically age separately in each universe, and no matter how long they are in one, when they return to the other they remember their exact state as if they had never left, the memories of the other universe dream-like and difficult to access or interpret. Across universes they may carry over useful knowledge or skills, or even small artifacts.
69	Reticulation	Their neurons have fused into a single, continuous network. It is efficient, but slow to adapt, and incapable of change. They connect things, physically and metaphysically. Shoes tie themselves, car or foot traffic swells, social networks form around them. Sometimes these formations are functional, sometimes they entangle like a rat king, ugly and painful and trapped in place.
70	Retropath	Can go back in time (generally up to one minute in the past) and change their behavior, altering the future, but maintaining their memories of the original events.
71	Roach	Hard exoskeleton, proportional strength and speed of a cockroach, limited gliding/flight, pheromones, allergic reaction. Their abilities extend beyond those of a literal cockroach, extending into the symbolism of a creature capable of adapting and surviving.
72	Saiga-suited	Has an alien-looking face reminiscent of a saiga antelope. Its deep breaths can be used as a vacuum, to filter harmful particles in the air or even extract breathable air from water, superheat and supercool itself, and control its internal pressure. It can even survive (at least temporarily) in the vacuum of space.
73	Sees the fourth wall	Is aware that they are a fictional character, and has some degree of awareness of the Real World. Nothing they do can convince the other beings in the fictional world of this fact; they will have absolute cognitive dissonance. However, they can still meaningfully utilize this knowledge to serve themselves, even if nobody can acknowledge how they're doing it.
74	Shag	They can grow long, strong, shaggy hairs over their entire body and articulate each one individually. Each strand of hair is as strong as steel and electroconductive. The tickling and caressing of the hairs create static shocks that may be mildly or extremely painful, but also induce pleasure, arousal, pain-relief, and even psychedelia, like super-powered acupuncture.
75	Smooth operator	Have a superhuman ability to read body language, intonation, visual cues, micro-expressions, etc., and manipulate people by responding to these cues in specific ways. They can even subtly alter their physical appearance to evoke the desired response from others. While not as powerful as outright empathic reading, telepathy, or shapeshifting, what makes them so dangerous is that they are inconspicuous.
76	Sonic wave	Can create high-amplitude, broadband-frequency vocalizations. They can produce waves of sonic energy in the air powerful enough to push back or knock over a humanoid-sized creature, and in water or certain other liquid mediums, these waves are even more powerful, cover a wider area and have a longer range. When projected against solid surfaces, the sonic waves can shatter or break all but the hardest and densest of materials.
77	Soothing beams	Can project beams of rainbow from their hands. The beams provide a feeling of warmth and soothes pain, but no actual protection from the cold or healing. Those touched by the beams, if they are capable of love, experience self-affirmation and contentedness. Hostility drains from them, and they re-examine their decisions. In certain cases, the beam sets off a cascade of personal growth which extends beyond the brief duration of the effect of the beams.
78	Spiralbourne	Their face is a series of semicircular tubes, the back of their head is in a spiral like a cochlea or nautilus shell. The top of their head is like romanesco broccoli. Their eyes are corkscrew-shaped, spiraling to a point at both ends. Their body is cartilagenous and flexible. They move in slink, spacetime itself curving, or, perhaps, their movements make salient the non-euclidean curves of spacetime. They are naturally attuned to nature and life. Although they have taken many forms, they have always been, and will always be. They are present at the epicenter of spacetime and at its logarithmic bound.
79	State shift	Can change the physical state of inorganic molecules, e.g. gas, liquid, or solid, without changing their temperature or pressure, and even when the molecule could otherwise never be in that state. The effect only lasts while the state shifter is concentrating. Afterwards the molecules return to their original state or as close to it as possible. They can also shift molecules into plasma, but only in quick bursts, and this usually makes it impossible for the molecules to return to their original state or shape.
80	Sub-space	A metaphysical pocket dimension is stretched over reality, the size of a small room. Within the field, people go into a hypnotic-like state and take on either a hyper-dominant or hyper-submissive persona, or sometimes switch between them. The submissives follow the commands of the dominants, but only if the commands are things they would be willing to do in the first place. The dominants give commands, but are compelled to only command the submissives to do things they would want to do anyway, but might be too afraid or ashamed to do otherwise. A field of mutual disinhibition where psychosocial power is manifest and social structure breaks apart and recombines in new and often exciting ways.
81	Super proprioception	Conscious awareness of (and control over) internal and autonomic bodily processes such as metabolism, healing, bloodflow, breathing, etc.
82	Symbol generator	They condense ideas into symbols. Each symbol is unique, but may share properties that make two or more symbols analogical, and by extension, mathematically derivable. The symbols do not exist physically, but are more like an object-oriented source code overlaid on reality. The symbols contain methods which can be cast as spells, affecting objects or concepts for which the symbol represents in ways that seem "magical", but must still have some internal logic, and is necessarily subordinate to real logic.
83	Synchrous flow	They have an intuitive understanding of rhythm and sequence, of music and dance. More than that, events synchronize to their rhythm, like how random music tracks seem to synchronize to trailers. They and those they coordinate with enter a flow-state, where they reach peak performance in their coordinated task, almost as if detached from time.
84	Template brain	Can produce egg-like sacs of stem cells, and offload their consciousness into the eggs, or onto sufficiently powerful supercomputers, and start anew. They can observe the inner-workings of these consciousnesses and simulate environments to test or alter them. They can trade their current consciousness with one of these stored consciousnesses. Creating a new consciousness from scratch would normally take years, but they have learned how to create and rapidly train new consciousnesses into functional states by bootstrapping to previously trained consciousnesses.
85	Tesselation	They exist simultaneously in the present, six seconds in the future, and each moment in between, creating a tesselation effect when they are in motion. Existing simultaneously in the present and future means they have both awareness of the future and the ability to act upon it in the present. In order to speak coherently, they must space their words by six seconds.
86	Third strike	They cannot fail at a specific task more than three times. However, the consequences of failing for a third time are proportional to the benefit of never again failing at the task.
87	Three bodies	Three developmentally-stunted bodies linked by a single head. The bodies are capable of acting independently or in coordination for tasks utilizing muscle memory or procedural memory.
88	Tooth gnasher	Rows and rows of teeth of any shape or size, the ability to grow dentate-based tusks, fangs, and horns. Each tooth is implanted with an emotionally challenging thought or memory and so long as that tooth is present, the thought or memory remains fresh. The teeth must be violently torn from their socket, and can either be used as weapons or projectiles. If the teeth penetrate into the bloodstream, the recipient experiences the negative emotions associated with that tooth.
89	Trinary counsel	Three brains are interconnected as part of a single consciousness, but each has a unique personality and perspective. They utilize competitive dynamics to test mental representations against each other, leading to super-genius intellect, a more "objective" perspective, and enhanced empathy.
90	Uncanny organism	Their appearance is disturbing. They are not ugly, just "wrong", like an imperfect computer generated model of a person, or a charicature, or a realistic portrait in a stylized cartoon.
91	Undefined	Their physical form is merely a projection. They exist within a Riemann Sphere, within an undefined dimension a/0. They have limited ability to physically interact with the world, but can sense probabilistic/relativistic quantum states and the complex plane of mathematics.
92	Vantablack	Darker than dark; stands out in anything less than absolute darkness. Because they absorb all light, they have no visible contours, giving them a two-dimensional or amorphous appearance. The rate of light absorption slowly accelerates, first dimming the light in a room, eventually leading to total darkness.
93	Vector sharpness	At the atomic level, every row and column of the individual is organized as a perfect, atom-width edge, giving them a pixelated appearance. As much force as the individual can produce can be leveraged into the area of an atom, giving them supernatural sharpness to slice into or through most materials.
94	Viral incubator	Can create or alter viruses. They can be pathogens, vaccines, bio-markers, or even alter the phenotypes of those who contract a given virus.
95	Visual distortion	Generates traces of stochastic visible light radiation producing visual noise, visually distorting the surrounding area like a funhouse mirror or a spatial frequency filter.
96	Vorpal solvent	When wielding a sharp object, each slice reduces the materials in its path. Air crackles with static electricity and the smell of ozone as molecules are torn apart and metal alloys deconstruct. The effect is even metaphysical; cutting a wedding ring can reduce love or conflicting emotions after a divorce, cutting a person reduces their egos and defense mechanisms and forces them to confront their true nature.
97	Wandering mind	Can seamlessly traverse between the physical world and the metaphysical worlds, such as the astral plane, logical/Socratic plane, etc.
98	Were-horror	At twilight, or out in the wilds, or down a dark alley, or in all the other scary places and hidden corners, they become something else. It is never any single animal, or even an animal at all. It's form is something unique, that represents the archetypal fear of the place it is in. The more frequently they take the same form, the more revealed the form, and the less powerful it becomes.
99	Zeno marathon	Any person or object on their trajectory must run the zeno marathon. In order for the object to reach them, it must pass half the distance between them and it. In order to do that, they must pass half the distance between half the distance, and half that, and so on, until their movement must be infinitely small and in fact logically cannot even begin.
100	Zero-point energy	Can manipulate the Brownian motion-like free energy in the vacuum of space derived from Heisenberg uncertainty.

Weird & Wonderful Survey October / November 2018

I'm running another survey, and would appreciate all of your inputs! I want to make this blog the best it can be, figure out where I can go with it, and in general better understand the RPG community. The survey should only take a minute or two, and it would really help me out and hopefully be interesting for others as well. Thanks!

Micro-Settings

I've been trying to move away from writing tables, because I've gotten so comfortable with doing them, but also because I feel so comfortable doing them, I want to keep doing them! At the same time, I've been trying to write micro-settings, and I just keep finding mental blocks, or being unsatisfied with what I've written and how it's conveying the setting. So I decided, why not just make a table of settings! Some of these settings are intended as full-blown settings, others could be fit into larger settings (and in fact some of these are intended to fit into each other). It's the most micro way to do micro-settings, but it'll include settings I've already talked about in depth such as Phantasmos. Having to train myself to reduce a setting to a few sentences or less should be a good exercise if nothing else.

Also, depending on the feedback I get for these settings, that may influence which ones I decide to focus on next for my full post write-ups!

Image Source: https://mertun.artstation.com/

Setting	Description
Antikythera Nova	A non-Anglocentric scifi future. A gritty space opera. Eldritch trans-humans. Psionic signal processing aliens manipulating quantum uncertainty. A dash of speculative science.
Aquarian Dawn	A low fantasy feudal world, several hundreds or thousands of years after a high fantasy / science fantasy post-apocalypse. The typical fantasy races have mostly receded or taken on niche roles in this world, while humanity desperately clings to the Middle Realm. However, with the arrival from the seas of the peaceful, socialist, androgynous aqua-colored humanoids known as the Aquarians, humanity must face the fact that their age is coming to an end. Some wish to take this transition with grace, as many of the other races have, while others wish to fight and struggle against the (literally and figuratively) rising tide to the last.
Carnopolis	An ever-expanding city, like a slimy, protoplasmic meat or fungus. A living shoggoth city. The shoggoth matter are like nanomachines, able to rearrange the structure of the city or encode information, creating a hybrid virtual/augmented reality where there is no meaningful distinction between the physical and virtual. Generations of survivors living in a world of never-ending hostility. A city that can be anything. A city designed to kill.
Cold War Under a Rising Sun	An alternate history where the atomic bomb was never dropped on Japan. In a prolonged second world war, the victorious allies carve Japan, the Soviet Union creating North Japan, and the western allies creating South Japan. Both Japans become cultural, technological, and economic powerhouses. Given the prosperity of the Russo-Ainu North Japan, this is a 1960's Cold War-era where the people in the communist world actually thrive. It's a world as much pulp as noir, with gadget-toting superspies, secret nazi revival sects, and world-threatening super-terrorists.
Dark and Misty Remains	A world of The Darkness Lagash and The Nameless Mist, the space in between the shell and spine of a world-sized dragon turtle. Albino underdeinos and platypus people who sense the electrical activity of muscle contractions and weird creatures made of dark matter and harnessing dark energy. A subway train system made of bone and the electrical activity of massive nerve tissue and muscle fibers. Houses the remains of Thalarion, the city of a thousand wonders, the undead shamanic Skadamutc and their necrotic god Lathi.
Frost and the Final Frontier	A near future semi-hard scifi setting where Antarctica has been colonized, and is in the early stages of urbanization. A modern-day New World / Wild West. Heavily reliant on technology, but with early-20th century-esque access to resources. As much if not more so Chinese and Russian as American or Western European. A sprawling Denver-like city. A utopian military-science industrial complex, like a precursor to the Federation in Star Trek or Heinlein if he were less crazy.
I-Cons	A near future cyberpunk world where electromagnetism has somehow fundamentally changed. While limited radio and television transmission is still possible, the internet is gone and nearly all electronic or electroconductive devices are connected to the Noö-Net. Humans can observe this realm, but can only interact with it through their Individual Constructs (I-Con), a Noö-Net artificial lifeform, trained like a neural network from the consciousness of their operator.
Kwik & Kantankerous	A near future cyberpunk world with a 90's-00's LA street racing aesthetic. A world populated by fungal, plant, and animal humanoids across socioeconomic strata race weaponized kwik karts in the streets. A world of gangwars, heists, social justice, and family.
Monsters and Madmen	The big war; the cities bombed and nations EM-pulsed; civilization as we know it is on the way out, but adults still cling to the old world from only a few years ago. On the other hand, the children wish only to leave their homes, to travel the empty, broken roads, and to collect and battle the monsters that have surfaced (or, perhaps, resurfaced) in the wake of humanity's decline. The world is in anarchy. Some of the magical creatures the children geas are intelligent, some infinitely more so than humans. They bide their time as anarchy ensues and humanity dissolves under its own weight.
Overlight	Deep-dream qualia elves, golden carp-dragons, rainbow thunderbirds, baku devas. A realm of soft thunderous clouds like the action potentials of neurons. The air is vaporized alcohol, the clouds are novocain, the lakes and rivers are liquid mercury rising into semi-solid structures, the mountains are lithium salts, and there's a rainbow space elevator to the moon.
Phantasmos	Heavy Metal gonzo weird Lovecraftian BDSM post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy. Lovecraft, Gygax, Dick, Morrison, and Asimov filtered through my own personal lens.
Quantumverse	An emergent microverse that exists "between particles"; a compressed computational world formed from the distribution of sub-atomic particles in physical space. A world of varying densities of compressed and encrypted pixels, voxels, and polygons. A fantasy world on a circuit board; a kingdom of baking-yeast people and the nefarious Rat King; A silk road Arabian Disco.
Second Exodus	In a near future, several decades after narrowly surviving the eldritch kaiju Nephilim, a new breed of monster, the Qlippoth, have forced humanity off the planet and onto orbiting space colonies. The Ein Sof have developed psychokinetic mecha, which must be piloted by children, to take back the planet.
Silicon Survivors	A world of trans-human cyborg hunter-gatherers in a naturalistic world of silicon, plastic, and the most advanced technologies conceived in 1980's science fiction. They ride their white, plastic-skinned, CRT monitor-headed beasts across fields of flayed cables, hunting blocky robots for their nutritious floppy disk innards. They are led by an ancient and wise computer like a knockoff Max Headroom, although some suspect the computer may have ulterior motives.
Starcrossed Sentai	In a small rural town in an anachronistic, mid to late-20th century "golden age" Japan analogue, a group of preteen children are granted superpowers and must save the world from alien invaders, while still passing their exams! Their costumes may look like they were made in a middle school home-ec class (because they were), but when their powers activate, they become the greatest superteam the world has ever known! If the videogame Earthbound is a weird Japanese person's take on Golden Age Americana, this is a weird American's take on Golden Age Japan.
Starflower Voyagers	A utopian post-singularity scifi setting. A trans-human entity, the starflower, a pure and child-like, god-like being, leads bands of loosely affiliated, 1960's-70's mod/hippie anarchic troupes known collectively as the Flower Power, to search the stars for intelligent lifeforms on the verge of their own singularity and assist them in the transition. They generally try to do good elsewhere in the cosmos along the way, not so much like police or judges, but like neighbors or good Samaritans. They are, of course, concerned with the greater philosophical implications of their actions, but generally hold a light heart and take a light touch wherever they go.
Stonepunk Journey	When the first Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait, they were not alone. They encountered monsters and spirits which went on to inspire the mythologies of the First Peoples, but also other intelligent species from sword and sorcery and medieval fantasy such as serpent-men and elves. This is a stonepunk world of chaotic primal magics, of anachronistic stone technologies, and perhaps other hidden, weird secrets.
Vortekka	A world surrounded by a shimmering vortex. 17th century-esque pirates and privateers with a dash of steampunk mechs and flying machines. Competing centripedal and centrifugal forces where humans reside on floating plates and other species reside on the islands and oceans along the inner surface of the shimmering, iridescent vortex.
Weird Wars	A science fantasy trench war... in SPACE. Warp-speed weaponry tear the fabric of reality into pocket dimensions, across which inter-dimensional trench warfare is fought. The heavy, deadly gases allow humans to take flight, but only the mutated Weirders, with their weird-metal bayonets and warp-blades, can maneuver gracefully in the harsh environments of the tears.
World of Wonders	A significantly alternate-history superhero setting where orgodynamics and entropy are opposite but equal physical forces of nature. Many ancient civilizations never fell and social constructs around things like religion, race, and ethnicity operate totally differently than they do in the world as we know it.

Unique Weapons (generated by the Weird & Wonderful Weapon Hack 2.0)

This is a set of example weapons built using my Weapon Hack 2.0. As with how I use most tables, this isn't about following the table exactly, but using it as a point of reference. I'll decide on some number of qualities at some number of costs, see what I get, organize it into something interesting and coherent, and give it a name, some details, and maybe a plot-hook or related NPC. In the same way that James Raggi of Lamentations of the Flame Princess has argued that every monster should feel unique and should be able to be a story unto themselves, I think people should put a greater emphasis on doing the same with weapons. And not just the macguffin / generic Excalibur-esque supersword type of legendary weapons, but weapons that tell a unique story and say something about the character wielding them or the location they're found in. So hopefully these examples will demonstrate what the Weapon Hack can do and how to make weapons interesting both for combat use and for storytelling.

Name	Base Form	Total Cost	Qualities	Description	Plot Hook
Flamemare	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	1	Sticky (0); Devil-Water (0); Elemental: Fire (1)	A one-handed but powerful, piston-pumping warhammer, powered by devil-water which leaks onto the handle. The combustion of the devil-water frequently ignites onto the leaking surface, covering the head in flame.	A Blackcap Goblin warlord designed the Flamemare, powering it with his own devil-water, and that of his slain enemies. A talented phreaker and materialist, he kaibermantically manipulates the wild flames of the devil-water, such that his horde appears as a stampede of oily black horses in an aura of fire.
Merstaff	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	1	Whispering (0); Animal (0); Elemental: Water (1)	A swordfish-like naiad, geased to serve as a pointed staff. It whispers nothings into the ear of its wielder to no avail.	Once a revered lake spirit, over the centuries the naiad grew bored and resentful of its limited domain. It manipulated its village into building an aqueduct, connecting the lake to a larger network of waters. The village benefited greatly from its aqueduct, growing in power and influence. The village rose to a fiefdom, overpowering its neighbors. After years of greed and exploitation, eventually the exploited villages united, razing their ruler's village to the ground. The naiad, seen as the architect of their suffering, was geased into a weapon to serve the people. Its elemental power over water is also leveraged to power the aqueduct. If the staff were taken, the united villages would be unable to power their aqueduct and necessarily fall to famine and chaos.
Metallic Venom	Light: 1d4, +1 AB, One-handed, Concealable as free quality	1	Edible (0); Mutilating (1)	A knife-like file of an unknown metal alloy. When mixed with blood and saliva, such as when licked on the sharp edge, a chemical reaction between the materials produces a coating that is volatile to living tissue.	The original alloy was developed in a remote village, and was cheap to produce and easy to work into kitchen cutlery. Fearing the attention and inevitable exploitation this would elicit, when the soldiers arrived, they changed the formula in the alloy, inducing the poisonous reaction. Hundreds of innocents died. When the soldiers came back to punish the villagers, the villagers all committed ritual suicide with the venomous knives. The village was completely raised, and the formula for the alloy lost. It is believed that all but three of these knives have been destroyed. The Grim General would pay handsomely for even one of these knives.
Rosethorn	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	1	Fragrant (0); Invisible (1)	An invisible shortsword identifiable only by its strong and pleasant rose-like aroma. As the thorns of a rose are often obscured, so to is this sword.	After countless guerrila slaughters, the major kingdoms agreed to an invisible weapons ban, making the use of weapons hidden from the senses a war crime. The Grim General realized that by making the weapons fragrant, he could circumvent the letter of the law. Less than a dozen Rosethorns were produced, when one of the blacksmiths on the project had a crisis of conscience, fled to the Deino Kingdom, and made the project public. The project was shut down and the weapons were supposed to have been destroyed, but it is believed that the Grim General saved at least one Rosethorn. If they were to be discovered it would be a political controversy. If they were to be stolen, reproduced, and placed in the wrong hands, it would be war.
Arm of Frankenstein's Demon	Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed	2	Animal (0); Electrical (0); Spellbreaking (2)	The arm an ogre-mage, kept reanimated with electricity and preserved with yellow jam, giving it a jaundiced-yellow color. In addition to its use as a blunt weapon, residual jammer magic in the arm can be used to counter spells or mana burn arcane magic users and phreakers.	An ancient materialist and apoptomancer, a mad alchemist, a practitioner of the dark sciences, once deigned to create life. He practiced placing the spirits of his mad compatriots into the bodies of ogres and other monstrous creatures, but this was not enough to sate his curiosity. He combined the parts of the most powerful ogre-mages, the parts of his former friends in the bodies of ogres, to construct a super-demon of electricity and yellow magic. He succeeded in creating his demon, but he knew not what he was unleashing, and eventually the demon would be the death of him. Nobody knows what exactly happened to the demon, but it is said that a mad warlock off the meridian system, near Nova Arkham, wields the power of its arm to conduct its mad magics.
Flame-Dancing Yo-Yo	Light: 1d4, +1 AB, One-handed, Concealable as free quality	2	Greasy (0); Elemental: Fire (1); Flexible (1)	A greasy yo-yo producing some kind of animal fat, the friction of the yoyo sets it aflame. The twists and complex motions of the yoyo can create dancing flames.	Although made of synthetic materials, it seems that some oily organism lives inside the yo-yo. No one is sure how the creature got inside the yo-yo, and nobody has been able to open it without destroying it. Whatever the case, the grease of the creature has made the yo-yo itself, and the string, stronger and more resiliant, and the former childrens toy has become the ceremonial weapon for the chieftan of the village, going back several generations. To become chieftan, one must face off against the current chieftan in a dance-off yo-yo battle... to the death!
Heat-Stroke	Light: 1d4, +1 AB, One-handed, Concealable as free quality	2	Singing (0); Small (1); Phlogisten (1)	A halfling-sized shortsword that glows violet with phlogisten heat. The sweeping of the blade and the ever-changing heat differential as the phlogisten absorbs heat from its environment produces a pleasant singing sound.	A weapon created by the halfling/vaki. It was intended as a multi-purpose tool to provide light and warmth in subterranean travels, and the singing would scare off sonic bats and other cave creatures, and burn away by the time the party reached the end of their travels. Because of their temporary nature, high cost, difficulty to produce, and strategic importance, they rarely sell the heat-strokes to outsiders. Only those who earn the trust of a vaki company may receive a heat-stroke.
Pitmaster Plant	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	2	Plant (0); Cooking (0); Elemental: Impossible light (2)	A long reddish-purple plant that ends in a two-pronged fork like a barbecue skewer. The plant is impossible light photosynthetic, and can also draw power from skewered impossible organisms.	Like the devil's own pitchfork, a hellish, living, vine-like impossible organism, barbecuing the denizens of hell (if rumors are to be believed). The current owner of the pitmaster plant has, in fact, become a renowned barbecue pitmaster and chef. Once a greasy spoon out in the middle of nowhere, after stumbling upon the plant, the quality of their food improved over night. Not just the subtle tastes and textures, but the meat itself seemed to change entirely, in colors and shapes and aromas. As their star rises, some have noted that many of their customers become violently ill, or have mysteriously disappeared. It's probably just a coincidence...
Rainbow Baton	Light: 1d4, +1 AB, One-handed, Concealable as free quality	2	Plastic (0); Multi-Colored (1); Elemental: Air (1)	A plastic, rainbow-colored conductor's baton. The sweeping motions of the baton can harness the power of air, subtly altering airflow, producing bursts of pneumatic power.	The pneumatic abilities of the baton allow it to be used for musical conduction, aerial magics, and as a wind instrument. It was designed by a renowned conductor / explorer, a renaissance person, who needed to be both conductor and performer; artist and combatant. The ultimate musical bardic tool. On their last expedition deep into The Wilds to discover the musical majesties of nature, the conductor went missing. The search for the lost conductor is still ongoing.
Thought-Picker	Light: 1d4, +1 AB, One-handed, Concealable as free quality	2	Crafting (0); Reflective (0); Astrium (2)	A psychic dental instrument made of astrium glass, on one end a mirror and the other a dental pick. Can harness the power of anxiety to carve works of art out of teeth and other dentate tissue.	The astral plane is a place where boundaries of self and identity are deconstructed. One does not simply go to the astral plane, they become it. Not all who seek the ways of mystics find enlightenment. Some, at best, become psycho-knights, and others, psychopathic killers. One such fool was a dentist. His ego so stretched and warped by the astral plane, upon his return, he became fascinated with the horrors people unleash on their teeth. The gnashing and clenching and chattering. At first he would pull teeth that did not need pulling to carve his art, but eventually this was not enough. He must have all the teeth, even if it means he must kill his patients. The dentist, with his handy astral-edged thought-picker, travels from remote village to remote village, offering dental services on the cheap.
Ur-Smith	Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed	2	Ugly (0); Elemental: Metal (1); Elemental: Earth (1)	A heavy pickaxe on one end, a hammer on the other. A single stroke of the axe can carve complex tunnels, and a single stroke of the hammer can perfectly smelt ore. The hammer appears rusted and is covered in the tetanus blood of those who could not handle its power.	This mythic tool was created ages ago by a great Coleopteran queen, often given demigod-like status. It is thought that the dwarves were once more populous, with sprawling subterranean kingdoms, but with the Ur-Smith, the coleopterans overtook much of their territory and the dwarves were forced to abandon their past. Of course, now even the coleopterans are a rare breed, at least within the meridian system. The Ur-Smith is thought to be lost somewhere deep in the abandoned subterranean system. Without the ability to create new meridian nodes on the surface, if any kingdom were to find the Ur-Smith, they would be able to expand their domain well beyond the capabilities of the other kingdoms.
Wailing Ram	Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed	2	Static Charge (0); Loud (0); Impossigen (2)	A battering ram filled with impossigen, making it especially useful against a-logical structures and impossible organisms. Each bash of the ram produces a hideous sound like the wail of a ram or goat, and a powerful static shock on impact.	During an incursion from another universe, the Men of Leng, demonic, goat-like beastmen, brought with them certain tools from their universe. One of them, the wailing ram. While disorientating and unwieldy in its internal physics under normal conditions, where impossible organisms thrive and a-logical physical principles prevail, the wailing ram can be a powerful tool for bearing down on villages and small towns. Few remain, most having long ago fallen apart under normal physics. Those few are often employed less for their siege effectiveness, and more so for their intimidating wailing noises. One gang of gnolls recently got their hands on a wailing ram, and have been terrorizing the nearby villages and towns.
Bolter of Breaking	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	3	Short Range (1); Meridian Metal (1); Breaking (1)	Like a crossbow made of meridian metal, except rather than a bow and string, the bolts project by magical energy, making them exceptionally potent at breaking objects. Coded into the metal is a Hold Portal spell which can be cast once per day by firing a bolt.	A prototype for an auto-magical military-police weapon. Its mechanical and magical ability to break objects makes it useful for taking out a lone attacker in a hostage or violent outburst situation in a relatively non-violent manner. It can also be useful for temporarily containing powerful outlaws with its Hold Portal spell, until they can be routed to a more secure location. They have been itching for an excuse to try out their new prototype and securing funds for a mass rollout, but such a rollout would be expensive and is currently an unpopular plan. If the prototype could play a pivotal role in a media-grabbing incident, surely they could get the funds...
Dragon Lance	Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed	3	Ornamental (0); Sentient (1); Aether Metal (2)	A large and ornate fire lance made of aether metal, the shape of a dragon twists around the shaft. The lance is too large for practical use and can't be fired, but it has an animalistic intelligence and is believed to house the spirit of a dragon.	The Dragon Lance was said to have been created by the very first aether dragoon, a massive deino who could wield pillars like a lance. The lance is clearly ornamental, making this story unlikely. Even so, it is valued by the mercenary group Riesentotter, whose lineage carries back to the beginning of the aether dragoons, during the deino-tartarian wars. A group of quenduin thieves recently stole the dragon lance right from under the Riesentotter. They have managed to keep this embarrassing event secret, for now, but are looking for agents to find the lance and return it to them, discretely.
Godspine	Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed	3	Concealable (1); Glowing (1); Cold Iron (1)	A long object in the shape of a spine, that can be concealed by attaching itself over the wielder's own spine. When detached and wielded, it glows blue with anti-fey energy.	The spine of an ancient, mythic creature, possibly humanoid. Nobody has been able to determine if the spine has been somehow transmuted into cold iron, or if it came from a creature made of cold iron; if it is the spine of a fey creature, an impossible organism, or some other parraterrestrial organism of immense power. Nobody knows for sure who has the Godspine, but it is rumored that the Grim General wears it on his person at all times. Of course, if this were true, the Fey King would be quite unpleased.
Kaiber-Gaussian Sniper Rifle	Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed	3	Long Range (1); Magical (1); Deadly (1)	An ancient artifact, a magnet-rail sniper rifle. The magnetic field of the rifle is kaibermantically encoded, and not a physical magnetic barrel that could be reverse engineered.	High-calibre sniper rifles, especially Gaussian rifles, are a rare enough commodity as is, but the kaiber-gaussian sniper rifle is especially unique. It is believed to have been created very early in the current era, or in some prior era between that of the ancient technologies and the present, but its exact kaiber-mechanics are even less well understood than the even more ancient, strictly mechanical Gaussian artifacts. It had been held in a museum in the Dogu Kingdom, but went missing, and is believed to have been stolen by the dogu mafia and smuggled into Nova Arkham. The reason for this is unknown, but the Nova Arkham military police are on the lookout for an unusual sniper rifle.
Pneumatic Knockout Machine	Light: 1d4, +1 AB, One-handed, Concealable as free quality	3	Medium Range (1); Stunning (1); Silenced (1)	An antique-looking weaponized air press. Filled with pressurized gas pellets that, when released on contact, incapacitate their targets. The pneumatic power of the pump is nearly silent.	An unusual and unassuming contraption, originally designed for feldshers to anesthetize their patients. Some spies and assassins disguise themselves as feldshers, their odd tools a convenient disguise for weapons and tools of stealth and thievery. The mysterious reptilian Feldsher of the Quickie-Cut Barbershop has recently come under fire, being accused of making and selling pneumatic knockout machines to foreign spies and other enemies of the state. The evidence is dubious at best, but the Grim General himself has already decided that the Feldsher must be guilty and has expedited the trial.
Swarm Rake	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	3	Farming (0); Reach (1); Byzma Metal (2)	A long-handled rake, the head made of byzma metal. If programmed with byzma metal armor, the teeth of the rake can detach from the head and swarm around the wielder, pelting others in reach.	During the height of the psilosymbiote wars, even the farmers had some garlic knight training. They wore byzma metal armor and used farming tools made of byzma metal. The detachable, autonomous teeth of the rake, while less effective than a garlic knight chakram or sword, could provide short-term protection against a horde of psilosymbiotes. Now, rather than fighting psilosymbiotes, these rakes are used to fend off against bandits and tax collectors. One wandering garlic knight has taken it upon himself to protect his new village against those who seek to exploit their rich farms.
The Rosegold	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	3	Bronze (0); Mutilating (1); Deadly (2)	An urumi, like a flail of metal sheets. Although soft against iron and harder metals, it is damaging and mutilating against leather and flesh.	The rosegold is so named for the pinkish color it has developed from the staining of blood on the bronze sheets of the flail. Although still found in remote villages, it is considered a war crime to use an urumi. It is primarily only effective against under-armoured targets, and inflicts devastating, mutilating wounds. For this reason, it is often used by guerrila fighters and terrorists. An unidentified killer has somehow gotten their hands on a traditional rosegold, and has been targeting individuals with political and industrial power. The Grim General, Occulon, and other powerful individuals wish to find this killer and make an example of them.
Twilight Snake	Medium: 1d6, One-handed	3	Anthropomorphic (0); Obsidian (1); Masterwork (2)	A piercing obsidian flammard. The guard is in the shape of a serpentine humanoid head, the blade like an outstretched serpent tongue.	The preferred dueling blade of a mutant outlaw with the ability to create dueling fields. Not in itself especially powerful, but by reputation alone the Twilight Snake has become a symbol to be feared.

Picture Source: https://www.deviantart.com/random223/art/Weaponry-547-669537899

High Level Games: 5 Steps to Make Monsters that Matter (A Halloween Special)

This is my second article for high level games, 5 steps to Make Monsters that Mater (A Halloween Special). It's partially a play report / loose module for a "Halloween" special, partially my attempt to explain how monsters can be used to build a setting and tell a story, and partially my attempt to do Halloween with a Weird & Wonderful twist. Let me know what you think!

SHIELDBREAKER: Play Report 5

Jim-Thing: A collage/digital edit created by our very own z_bill!

Click here for the Session 1 Play Report!

Click here for the Session 2 Play Report!

Click here for the Session 3 Play Report!

Click here for the Session 4 Play Report!

Click here for the NPC Character Cards!

Characters 

Jim Casper: Tartarian-Mutant Specialist. Working in a storehouse in the Tartarian kingdom, he learned about a mysterious martial cult, and has since been attempting to learn more about it. Has a mutation, a slit on his body which must be fed ancient artifacts. After his death at the hands of Kail under the effects of the Shit-Shroom, Ortega used apoptomancy to bring Jim back to life as an Unliving Metamorph. He now has completely white and cytoplasmic skin, a giant exposed brain, necrotic tentacles, levitates, can bud like a fungus, and has a bony detachable eye-like growth on his knee.

    -- Player: Z_bill

Kail: Mimic Knight (Fighter). A bland-looking mutant with greyish skin and coal-black eyes, giving him a stone-like appearance. Seeking something to make him special, he chanced upon a mimic, and was able to arrange a symbiotic relationship. The mimic armor slithers over him, occasionally altering its appearance to various effect. With his armor, Kail now seeks adventure, and has joined the Pearl Panthers to get it.
    -- Player: David Horowitz

Ortega: Mutant Apoptomancer. The fools back at the academy turned a blind eye to the limitless potential of the immune system... but who's laughing now?? He got kicked out of the academy for a very, very uncontrolled experiment and is now on the run. 

    -- Player: Saker Tarsos

Xx_Slayer_Queen_69 (Slayer): Mutant Phreaker and thrillseeker. Goth cyberpunk hacker-type with a scarlet mohawk and a black jacket covered in spikes and red eyes to boot. She has an automagic PMC on one arm and she makes it look good. She also has a roth obsidian visor.

    -- Player: Michael Kennedy

Play Report

• At the end of the last session, the players found themselves in a room full of viscera. Destroyed aquorum drones; exploded frelin and gozen; violated soma addicts; broken psycho-cells with fetal nematode-like corpses. Patches of null-space around the plastic, cybernetic, bio-tissue remains of SWORD corpses. Rows of dead SHIELDS delicately placed on emergency tables. The room is surrounded by shadow and null- the entrance cannot be found. The null-space has been occupied by a Spreading Shadow. 
• Spreading Shadow: An ethereal mass in the shadows, spreading shadow-pseudopods. Claws reach out to prey from the shadow. The shadow is a pocket dimension. From within, it hums. The walls feel like fur or moss-covered chitin. The fur-like cilia push and pull at the objects within. Will only attack infrequently (every other “round” or so).
• Also in the room with them is the mutant cult-leader / drug producer SOMA (pictured above). 
• SOMA: A mutant in his 40's wearing a cloak. He has jaundiced yellow skin and spiky platinum blond hair. He produces the drug soma, and has formed a cult of homeless and social undesirables deep within the Grand Stable system.
• There are seven lamps, numbers written above them in blood, only the last lamp is lit, and it is violet colored. The numbers read 18-15-25-7-2-9-22.
• SOMA offers to help the party escape if they give his cult amnesty from the law, legal autonomy, and if they sample his soma. Instead, Slayer... slays him (accidentally, supposedly). Serabia freaks out and nearly gets absorbed by the shadow. Kail saves her, but in the process nearly dies, and his consciousness is temporarily taken over by his mimic armor. 
• They eventually solve the puzzle and open a rainbow-light portal which takes them to another room.
• The next room is completely dark. Eventually they see a void elemental, not because it produces light, because it is darker than dark and therefore stands out even in absolute darkness.
• Void Elemental: A vantablack void orb with thorny tendrils. It is not clear if this is an organism, construct, or the platonic concept of null. Suction cups on the trendrils create mini-black hole vacuums.
• It makes the following statements each round as it attacks the party:
• What does the cow say?
• What is the non-binary response? 
• Do you still hate me? 
• What does the cow say? Do you still hate me?
•  In response to the last statement, on the verge of death, the party says "Noo" And the Void Elemental dissipates (the correct answer was supposed to be Mu/Moo but I misheard and anyway it ended up being funny so I ran with it ;) ). 
• The party, a faction of the mercenary group the Pearl Panthers, are now known as The Knights Who Say Noo.
• After escaping this room, they find themselves in front of an unlocked, but heavily reinforced door, covered in scratches and indents from SWORDs, lying dead in front of the door. In a hallway preceding the door, they find two weapons (generated using the Weapon Hack 2.0).
• Kaiber-Gaussian Sniper Rifle: An ancient artifact, a magnet-rail sniper rifle. The magnetic field of the rifle is kaibermantically encoded, and not a physical magnetic barrel that could be reverse engineered.
• Heavy: 1d10, Two-handed
• Total Cost: 3
• Qualities: Long Range (1); Magical (1); Deadly (1)
• Flamemare: A one-handed but powerful, piston-pumping warhammer, powered by devil-water which leaks onto the handle. The combustion of the devil-water frequently ignites onto the leaking surface, covering the head in flame.
• Medium: 1d6, One-handed
• Total Cost: 1
• Qualities: Sticky (0); Devil-Water (0); Elemental: Fire (1)
• They enter the room and find the SHIELD, who gives the following monologue: 
• Read the monologue quickly, with little space between sentences. Put a twinge of anger and sadness and voice-breaking in it. Imagine it building up as it progresses into a mad crescendo. 

I was alive once, I think. I think I am. I am, am I not? Null, Unalive, Unliving. If I am, I am Unliving. Am I, I? Can four dimensions exist while three are null? Where are the vertices of null-space? If space is null, what are objects? Null objects = Null life. Living = Unliving. Yes = Not Yes ~= Yes. Binary logic dissolves and I remember when they separated my sibling and I, when my heart turned Blu and my mind went to a faraway place, and my sibling hunts me like a dog and we are broken inside. Fractured, defined by conflict, mathematical models derived from psychic suicide, playing a game no party understands to serve ends that mean null, and now I ask you: What was it all for!? Am I alive?! What am I!? AM. I?

• Suddenly a SWORD enters the room from behind and attacks the SHIELD. The SWORD ignores the party, and they choose not to intercede. The SHIELD casts kaibermantic magic missiles at the SWORD, but eventually the SWORD latches onto the SHIELD's throat and tears through it. For a brief moment, the party sees consciousness, remorse, and finally hatred in the SWORD's eyes, and it attacks the party.
• After defeating the SWORD, they go into a mesmeric trance. They hear the following voice in their heads, along with this song (although I screwed up the audio so they only heard my the voice >.<).
• Play this video, wait until after the cassette tape clicks and the music starts, and then read or say out loud the below to yourself slowly. It's better if you can get someone else to say it while you close your eyes, or you for them. The timing doesn't matter too much, but if it helps, I finish the monologue with a little under a minute left in the song.

Your eyes are warm, your eyelids heavy. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth *breath 5s in, 5s out*, and then another *breath*. A warm current flows through you, radiating out from you like a soft blanket tickling your skin. You think about everything leading up to this moment, all the way back to childhood. You acknowledge the bad moments but only focus on the good. You’ve been through a lot. I know there were times you thought you couldn’t make it, but here you are, and you’re doing it. Even when the world feels wrong, you can find your center, I know you can. Just think of all that you’ve accomplished. Think about where you are right now. Think about the people around you, and the experiences you’ve shared, and the memories. It’s hard to believe, it feels like you’ve only just met and now you all are such good friends. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, all the people in the world, and how at any moment any of them can become your friend. Mmm… it feels good, doesn’t it, focusing on the good. There is still so much left to do. I know it can be daunting, but I believe in you, I believe you will do it. And if you don’t, if your adventure is cut short, that’s ok too, because you will always have those good moments, they carry with you. Every moment leads to this one, so every good moment is with you too, always. There is good and bad, but you get to choose which moments drive you, only you get to make that decision, and I believe in you, I believe you will focus on the good. Take another deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, *breath*, and again *breath*. Ok, take your time, and slowly open your eyes. I’m sorry to say, it won’t be like this anymore, it may be cold, you may see bad things, but that’s ok. You always had to open your eyes, but remember, you will eventually close them again. Things can be bad out there, but when they are, just remember that you were here, and you will be here again, and in fact you never really left. You are here right now, in this moment and in every moment. I would wish you good luck, but you don’t need it, because no matter what happens, you will find the good in it. I know you will. I believe in you.    

• This scene was inspired by the "Coffee Break" scene from the videogame Earthbound (below).

• The party magically find themselves at the terminal entrance of the Grand Station. They meet up with Gary Molehands and the violinist cricket, Mr. Myce leaves the group to do paperwork, and they reach out to their handler, Arnold Tanaka, to get paid (and gain 2 levels!). They meet back up at Helnwein's Tavern, where this adventure started. 
• Helnwein serves them a strange purple drink with living fish eggs in it from Sporie's, which gives Jim temporary lucidity, and then the entire party is psychically imprinted with a memory from a page of one of Jim's occult books of a picture that looks much like his new form (see picture at top). The moment passes, and they only vaguely remember this impression.
• Arnold tells the party that they will be receiving a dossier of new missions in the near future, and for now should just enjoy the city.
• CAMPAIGN END!

The Breakdown

    I'm really happy with how this campaign went! The first couple sessions were a bit of a learning curve, but I think I really hit my stride with session 3. This session was a little on the short side, in part because they got through the puzzles a little faster than I expected, and I'm still annoyed about the audio issue with  the "coffee break", but on the whole I think this was a fun journey, and I'm looking forward to the next adventure!

    We decided that the next session we're going to do a one-shot of something else, a different system and setting and possibly different GM, and then come back to the next Phantasmos campaign. I really wanted this one to be entirely within Nova Arkham, but I think the next campaign will involve exploration!

    The "coffee break" is a thing I've wanted to do for a while, and I think it was fairly successful. Try it out yourself and let me know what you think! I'd like to see more of this kind of thing- integration of guided meditation, ASMR, breath practice, etc. in tabletop. It's kind of weird, but then that's what I'm all about ;).