The Dove: Metamorphosis

The Compleat Spell Book of Metals

THE BAD IN EACH OTHER
Turns the caster and whoever she is conversing with at the moment into best friends, for the rest of the afternoon. They will feel all "IT'S US AGAINST THE WORLD MAN!".

For any outsider, they will just look like two drunks.


GRAVEYARD
Old nursery rhyme. Reverses life status for all those in range equal to caster's level measured in some nice way that makes it turn into a circle like radius thing found in old books about mathematics. In other words - all living humans caught in the radius fall down dead, while their soul seeks out the nearest dead body found in the ground in the same radius, and if found, possess it, raising it from the grave. If no dead body is found, the soul turns into a wight and will haunt the place for the rest of the afternoon.


CAUGHT A LONG WIND
Only deceased wizards are able to cast this spell, right after their last breath. It's basically a fart made up of all spell residue that slips out. It will travel the countryside for a whole afternoon before disappearing.


HOW COME YOU NEVER GO THERE
Truth spell; target will speak truthfully about why she never visits a specific place. If place asked about is unknown, target will get up instantly to seek out a similar place for the rest of the afternoon.


A COMMOTION
Cast upon any inanimate object, and it will start communicating (to the best of its ability). It will not answer questions - you've basically giving something that cannot communicate the ability to do so, and man does it want to tell you about really important things right now!

(Most scholars are certain this spell is misspelled, or a short form for "a communicative motion".)

It will do this for the rest of the afternoon.


THE CIRCLE MARRIED THE LINE
Positions the sun at horizon line, making it instantly sunrise or sunset (determined randomly by the GM by counting the number of birds outside her window). This phenomenon will last for what feels like an afternoon, after which the sun will return to its previous position.


BITTERSWEET MELODIES
Cast upon any wizard, and that wizard's spells will all have pros and cons for the rest of the afternoon. That is, for instance, if a healing spell is cast by that said wizard, it will have some negative effect as well (and vice versa), proportionally to the level of spell just cast.


ANTI-PIONEER
Depending on caster's level, may make a whole town pack it all up, reversing "civilization", giving back the earth to Mother Nature, so to speak. Houses will be carefully taken down, plank by plank; roads will be undug; everything must be restored to "before".

If cast on something not "civilized", several earth golems will rise, starting to undo what Mother Nature has done to this little patch of the forest (or glade), turning it back another thousand years.

If cast in the afternoon, nothing special will happen.

If cast on an afternoon, it turns into lunch.


UNDISCOVERED FIRST
A narrow tower rises from the ground - or water! or lava! or whatever! - climbing, climbing towards the sky, rumbling like madmen beating a thousand drums just enough off-beat, causing a shadow blacker than a dark night in the middle of the universe, to be cast like a pillar itself onto the ground, and anyone caught within that horrific dark shade, will instantly forget whatever first thought they had that day!

(It's a really cumbersome spell just to have people forget things. Most scholars nowadays agree that this spell is overly complicated, not to mention all those tall, narrow towers that get left behind here and there, loitering the countryside like a giant's used toothpicks. And besides, the effect only lasts for an afternoon.)


CICADAS AND GULLS
It's a fly spell, basically, but with an additional side effect that is permant (roll to randomly determine):

1. Caster's eyes grow further apart
2. Caster can't lower her voice
3. Caster gains a small, transparent wing, anywhere
4. Caster gains a feathered wing, anywhere
5. Caster's mouth turns into a beak
6. Caster shrinks to half size

If cast in the afternoon, the flying wizard will always spot a ongoing conflict from her view above.


COMFORT ME
Cast upon any caster to make her healing spells turn targets into bitter enemies, making them not wanting any more help from that caster until the next afternoon.


GET IT WRONG, GET IT RIGHT
A two-split spell. When cast, the wizard determines if the target will get her next thing right or wrong, whatever endevour that may be, large as small, but the endevour must be taking place the coming afternoon.


WOE BE
Makes the target fall in love with a bard. The bard will return this love only in letters, ending each with "Meet me by <SOME PLACE OFF BUT NOT TOO REMOTELY> this afternoon, dearest! This time surely I will come!"

A land with a crash

Maybe it's related to all this.

MYN and NYM, two spiders I wrote about using black text on black background

DARKEST ROOMS

a one-page adventure written with black on black 2019-10-08

(I cshould probably take a screenshot of this, I'll try to remember, but it will just show a Firefox tab that's completely black with some red wavy things because  probably didn't turn off spell checking on the element I made editable...? )

(Also, correcting things with backspace and/or delete is nigh impossible, because I can't see anything.)

(Anyway, on with the adventure)

THUNDER STRUCK, AND SPLIT THE BLACK STONE, in which two spider eggs were.

One was Nym, the other Myn.

The eggs rolled away in different directions, because the large rock that contained them stood on a high hill in a forest somewhere.

So the eggs disappeared into separate directions.

Fourhundred and fiftyseven years later, both eggs hatched. At the same time..

the web of nym

IS A TOWER HARD AS ROCK BUT BUILT ENITRELY OF SPIDER WEB. nym WEAVES WEB BLACK AS TAR.

tHE STRUCTURE RESEMBLES A TOWER, BUT THE BASE IS WIDER, AND IT GETS MORE NARROW TOWARDS THE TOP, LIKE A CCHEESE WEDGE.

iT IS HUNDRED METERS TALL, BUT THERE ARE NO FLOORS INSIDE, ONLY STRINGS OF WEBSHOOTING ACROSS HITHER AND DITHER.

r 1st iNSIDE THE TOWER (YOU CAN'T LOOK IN FROM THE OUTSIDE BECAUSE THE WEB IS TOO THICK), THERE ARE MILLIONS OF BONES TANGLED UP HERE AND THERE.

tHERE'S A 1 IN 6 CHANCE AAT ANY GIVEN TIME THAT THERE'S A LIVING BEING IN HERE, CRYING FOR HELP (IF HUMAN):

1-3. nON-HUMAN

4-6. hUMAN

tHERE'S A LARGE (SIZE OF A BIG HORSE) SWORD AT THE TOP OF THE CEILING, ONE OF LAST FEW PIECES FROM hRUGHR THE gIANT. iT IS ABOUT TO FALL DOWN, AND WILL CUT THROUGH ENOUGH STRINGS OF WEB TO MAKE THE STRUCTURE COLLAPSE (IT HANGS FROM THE HILT OR HANDLE OR WHATEVER YOU CALL IT).

tHERE'S A TREASURE CHEST ENTAGLED TEN METERS UP, AND ANOTHER ONE TWENTY METERS UP. tHEY CONTAIN A CRUCIAL QUEST PLOT DEVICE FOR WHATEVER QUEST THE PARTY IS TRYING TO FULFILL.

ND/OR A MONKEY HEAD IN GOLD

nym IS NEVER HERE. sHE HAS ABANDONED THIS TOWER, WHICH IS WHY MOST THINGS JUST GET STUCK AND DIE OF OLD AGE. oR BOREDOM.

halls of myn

wmyn IS REALLY TINY SPIDER, BUT HER PSIONIC POWERS LETS HER LEVITATE STUFF ABOVE HERE. . sHE'S VERY KEEN ON HAVING THORNS AND OTHER SHARP OBJECTS ORBIT ABOVE HER FOR PROTECTION. sHE CAN ALSO FLING THESE THINGS AT HIGH SPEED, KNOCKING OR EVEN KILLING WHOEVER IT HITS.

myn KNOWS HER TWIN SISTER nym IS OUT TO GET HER, AND NO PEBBLE TOSSED WILL SAVE HER THERE.

sO myn BUILT HERSELF A VAST LABYRINTH BELOW GROUND, TOO TINY FOR MOST CREATURES.

iT IS ACCISBLE THROUGH NARROW, VERTICAL TUNNELSE THAT GOES STRAIGHT DOWN FOR A HUNDRED METERS, LIKE SHARP NEEDLES INTO THE GROUND. (sorry for hathe caps-lock, I didn't realise it on, I just saw the ligh on my keyboard indicating I had it turned on).

Anyway, so NYM is out to eat MYN. One very large spider, and one very tiny.

(At this point in the text I'm wondering if I should let it rest til tomorrow, for illustration (Also blind folded), to see if I can remember things just about right, or if I should just post it, nah alright I'll just post this as is with some ugly illustration, no one cares)

QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERS:

1. Why did NYM abandoned her enourmous tower?

2. How old are they?

3. Why were they in the stone?

4. Why must NYM kill/eat/b MYN?

5. What does MYN's labyrinth look like?

6. What about MYN's shrink-ray I didn't mention, which she uses to shrink and enslave humans to work in her labyrinth?

6. What number am I on?

7. How the hell did the giant sword end up at the top of the ceiling?

7. Can the screenshot of my black on black Firefox with red wavy lines be used as a dungeon map for this stupid adventure that isn't a adventure but merely some poorly written hook?

There's no such thing as wind

There's no such thing as wind, or breeze or so. It's all annoyed ghosts and spirits. Even when you breathe out air, that's a minor ghost.

A gust: slightly irritated.
A squall: annoyed.
A tornado: out for revenge.

Don't get me started on farts.

Peekaboo

Stuff I've written on this blog that I had forgotten I had written but still like

Just some links to old stuff on this blog that I kind of like but had forgotten I've ever written. My memory is pretty limited so I easily forget. This is some kind of meta-post, so ignore at will.

(This is not a best-of post, or "these posts represents my writings the best". It's more like "I awoke too early because my daughter needed to go to the bathroom and while she fell asleep straight away after I couldn't so I wasted away my time on my blog".)

• Non-physical swords - Ethereal swords that harms spirit and mind, but leaves the body untouched
  
• The Swords of Ålrick the Hairy Barbarian - On his eighteenth birthday, Ålrick was given a choice of weapon to represent him on the battlefield - the swiftness of a sword, or the might of an axe. Ålrick couldn't decide, and demanded a combination of them both
  
• Chewing Warlock - There's a small risk that a recipe leaks into a spell while the warlock memorizes it. For example, some claim that the Wicked Witch War all started because of a misaimed Magic Missile and Shepherd's pie
  
• Spells are individuals - or more like fish maybe - Spells are individuals, meaning there are only one of each in the whole wide world. The witch who memorized read magic is the only one capable of casting that - until she does, after which the spell is free for all to catch
  
• PuterPlane (an extremely tiny setting): monsters - Commodoreberus
  
• String demons - Witches, hags and other foul mouthed creatures such as school children, have the inborn ability to summon string demons by chewing on strings and then spitting them out on a hot stove

(On more or less serious note only of interest to myself: to me, it's sad to see how my writing changed during the more intense days of G+. I was never invested or part of any scene on G+ in any major way, but I can see how my usual not-so-serious writing changed into a more gritty and/or grimy deal, maybe thinking "it can't all be Douglas Adams, it must DARK AND VERY SERIOUS and if it's supposed to be funny, make it DARK HUMOUR".)

Too Tall Tower

Using the CSS basic box model for RPG stuff

If you've ever constructed a web page, you'll most likely have heard of CSS.

If you have not, this post is probably mostly gibberish, or gallimattias as we say in Sweden.

So, there's this thing that's called CSS, and it controls how things look on a web page, i.e. how text flows and make it scroll across the page oh no wait they deprecated that, the bastards.

And one of the basic building blocks of CSS is how to properly size things, and what constitutes the immediate area surrounding something - which when I started to think about it late one night, sounded a bit like something you could apply to RPGs.

Because, for every little thing that exists in RPGs, be it monsters or tows or NPCs, there exists at least ten different methods of creating it. So here's one more, completely untested and not necessarily meant for serious work. But hey, I'm struggling to keep my interest for RPGs and this blog alive.

So, in short, everything is made up of: content, padding, border and an invisible margin.

Image from Mozilla Developer Network

(Since this is not a thesis, I'm not bound to present this is any logical or even coherent way. It doesn't even have to be true, so I'll just write it all out here, let me know where I lost you, ok?)

So, let's apply this to create or define or refine a NPC for instance. Let's just create a blank NPC shall we, so we have something to work with:

Clueless McClue

Clueless McClue is totally blank, all we have is this awful rendition of this NPC. Let's start from the outside to define this blank newborn.


MARGIN

From Mozilla:

"The margin area, bounded by the margin edge, extends the border area to include an empty area used to separate the element from its neighbors." (emphasis mine)

So what empty, invisible field is separating McClue from her neighbours? Well it could a lot of things. Banishment (exiled), superstition (people keeping away from her - "'tis a witch!"), and so on.

Clueless McClue is shunned by the locals because she is believed to be a witch.

So if the margin is separating by an invisible force - from either side - a more physical approach would be the next layer, which is...

BORDER

From Mozilla:

"The border area, bounded by the border edge, extends the padding area to include the element's borders."

I'm thinking the border is more of a physical thing - a wall, a moat, a force of some kind (bodyguards) and so on.

So if McClue is a witch, and people are taking the long way round to avoid her (margin), what physical thing exists around her?

Maybe she's clad in scales?

Maybe she's wearing a non-typical witches armour that makes her look like a rook?

Maybe she's surrounded by a murder of crows, so thick you can't see her?

Ok I like that, but only a bit more than the rook look.

Clueless McClue is shunned by the locals because she is believed to be a witch.
She is constantly surrounded by a murder of crows, so thick you can't see her.

I'm starting to get a feel for this NPC, thank you very much Mozilla Developer Network.

What's next?

PADDING

From Mozilla:

"The padding area, bounded by the padding edge, extends the content area to include the element's padding."

Much like the technical description for border, this doesn't give us anything useful that makes for good clickbaiting, but in my brain padding is not another layer of space (like margin and border), but rather a stage to pad what we've already stated. To decorate.

(This stage is what gives you negative scores on Bryce's reviews. But remember that this entire post is just a dream. You're not really supposed to do this. I'm surprised you've read this far, actually.)

So let's pad our McClue:

Clueless McClue is shunned by the locals because she is believed to be a witch. All animals with more than two feet avoid her.
She is constantly surrounded by a murder of crows, so thick you can't see her. They're mostly silent, but some claim to have heard them form a single sound, much like a name or a spell.

Ok it's getting late here, so that's enough padding. I guess you could go wild there if you'd want.

Last thing is...

CONTENT

From Mozilla:

"The content area, bounded by the content edge, contains the "real" content of the element, such as text, an image, or a video player. Its dimensions are the content width (or content-box width) and the content height (or content-box height). It often has a background color or background image." (emphasis mine)

Ok, that got a bit more technical than we wanted, but I included it all just because I like the last sentence, the bit about background color.

Or in other words: WHY?

Why is Clueless McClue a witch?

Why is she surrounded by a murder of crows?

Why are they trying to form a name or spell?

Or ARE THEY?

Or IS SHE REALLY A WITCH?

Da da da DA-DUUMMM.... (Swedish reference)

So the content is the background image, the real deal, the answer.

And why not pad this as well? Why pad one step before the finish line? Because - and I'm making this up as I go - the content should be really short. The content should be the fact sheet, the cheat sheet. Don't pad the truth.

I'm guessing if this was one of those really well-thought-out posts from one of the really well-thought-out bloggers, they'd conclude this post with some really nice finish that made our Clueless McClue "NPC of the Month".

But I'm not so I'll just do two alternatives, the sad and the evil version:

SAD VERSION Clueless McClue is shunned by the locals because she is believed to be a witch. All animals with more than two feet avoid her. She is constantly surrounded by a murder of crows, so thick you can't see her. They're mostly silent, but some claim to have heard them form a single sound, much like a name or a spell. FACT: she was cursed as a young child when she drew a picture on her mother's kitchen floor, crossing lines with ley lines beneath their house, angering the old God of Crows. The sound that's heard sometimes is a spell that attracts more crows.

EVIL VERSION Clueless McClue is shunned by the locals because she is believed to be a witch. All animals with more than two feet avoid her. She is constantly surrounded by a murder of crows, so thick you can't see her. They're mostly silent, but some claim to have heard them form a single sound, much like a name or a spell. FACT: she is a witch. Her body has rotten away long ago, so there's nothing inside the murder of crows besides bones and hair, in a constant swirl. The sound that's heard sometimes is her evil thoughts - manifested as hot air - that slips out between the crows.

Ok I'm really tired now. Let's end this post with this image that shows how great the end result is, thanks to our faultless and perfect method:

Blö!

I know the Ravenloft image is really classic, but it's really stupid as well