Krenjian Panther

 The Krenjian panther stalks its prey from the shadows. It hunts in moonlight, when the colour of its fur shifts to blue-violet, treading the grasslands and the forests with large and silent paws. It stalks caravans and lone travellers alike, preys on mounts and draught animals, and takes sleeping travellers to careless to keep a watch.

And it follows you into your dreams and hunts you there, as well. 

The Krenjian panther is a thing of nightmares.

If you're on watch and you see three palely glowing spots of light, look away quickly. But rouse your companions and have them do the same.  Awake, you have a chance to fight back.

The Krenjian panther is a three-eyed psychic predator of the plains and surrounding woodlands.  Much like a leopard with broken stripes, in appearance, it has a third eye in the top of its head. When it attacks it tries to cause its prey to flee, an easier target, panicked and heedless if possible. It does this using its Anguished Yowl attack, which puts fear in its target and causes a Willpower or Morale check at -2.

If its targets are sitting at a campfire, it will strike each in turn with this psychic  attack, hoping to panic them into leaving the safety and company of the fire and fleeing into the darkenss. Krenjian panthers have been known to pick of members of a company one-by-one like this over days, their bodies found secreted in trees along the route by the next caravan. 

But if you are  asleep when the creature strikes, things can be much worse. For a failed save during sleep, will allow the beast into your sleeping mind, where it will hunt you through dreams, unable to waken, unable to fight back. Victims toss and turn, call out and sweat as though fevered, into the finally the beast's fangs close around their throats.

 

 

KRENJIAN PANTHER: no: d3 AC 13 HD 3 Claws (2) 1d6 and Bite 1d8 Nat 19 Bonus Psychic Assault vs target.

S12 D16 C12 I6 P14 W12 Ch13 L5. Move Fast. 

If both claws hit the target is knocked Prone and the bite automatically hits. 

Unnerving third eye: causes instant Luck (Will) save (or Morale check for NPCs) the first time one is encountered and again with Advantage thereafter or the panther automatically wins the Initiative. Ignore after 3 encounters.

Anguished Yowl: Targets within a 30' make a Willpower save (or Morale check) or flee to Very Far range (beyond 60'). Full action, including one Psychic Assault. 

Psychic Assault: One specific target within range of the Anguished Yowl becomes irrationally afraid and takes a penalty of -2 to their Willpower save due to the cat's focused psychic assault. Recharge: 2 in 6 (1-2 on d6, roll in secret).

Dreamreaver: One sleeping target per round is targeted by something similar to a Psychic Assault which keeps them entangled in nightmares from which they cannot awaken unless they make a Willpower test at Disadvantage. If an ally attempts to wake them, they gain Advantage instead. Can only make one attempt to wake up per turn. For each round a target remains  entangled Psychic Assault recharge increases by 1.

Reac 2-4 Hostile 5-6 Aggressive 

 

Feedback welcome! 

The Skrael

 Stories abound of the origins of the skrael. Stories abound also of the sorcerous origins of various creatures, of demented mages intoxicated by power, using dark arts to meld forms and birth twisted bodies and nightmare creatures, a mishapen race, an unnatural guardian. Some of these stories may even be true.

But in the case of the skrael, it seems more likely than most; how else would a creature with the head of a seagul and the body of a human possibly come to exist? And so the tales of their sorcerous origins are held, almost universally, to be true.  

But there is another version.

The skrael are known to inhabit a range of environments. In particular, the love coastal areas and rockly ones especially, though large bodies of freshwater also seem to appeal. In fact, they seem to have an unerring, though perhaps unconscious, ability to sense water. As if they can smell it. They are known to have a keen weather-sense, able to predict accurately changes in the weather, appraching storms, rain or fine weather, and even drought. 

Skrael have heads like herring gulls. White feathers, yellow beak, smudge of red on the lower bill. A skrael's white feathers extend down the neck to the chest, but how much further is unclear. In some individuals it would seem the entire torso is feathered, but in others not. It is unclear whether such differentiation indicates distinct populations. Limbs are never feathered, however. Feet, though avian, are not webbed. Hands are entirely human. Which might bring us back to that origin story. 

Skrael was once a man, punished by, depending on the version you hear, the sea deity or a storm deity. for mistakenly thinking the world was only there for his use. He fished in forbidden waters. He hunted dolphin in the breeding season. He caught fish he didn't eat and used other people's boats to do it, borrowing without permission. Worse, he stole from others' nets and fought with his fists over the right to fish in particular waters. The deity told him to change his ways. But he did not heed the warning. His wife asked him to change and warned him his behaviour would end in disaster, but he would not heed her warning either. So the deity gave him the head of a gull, saying "If you behave like a gull, you should look like one, that people are warned of what you are".

Thus marked as an outcast, Skrael wandered the earth. But his wife took pity on him and stayed with him and bore him... eggs. And from the eggs hatched more skralls, for the deity had cursed him with this also: that all his folk should be like him and behave no better than he, so that he would never get any rest. 

Skrael and all his kin still roam the world, screaming their ancestor's name and taking what they will. 

The skrael are consumate sailors. An innate understanding of current and wind makes them almost infallible. But they make poor traders. They are impulsive, impatient, impolite, unreliable, untrustworty, aggressive, selfish and disonest. 

They are very good raiders.

They travel the coastlines of their world in longboats, (often stolen), in crews of a dozen to a score, armed with whatever weapons are to hand (often stolen) and makeshift armour (often stolen). They don't wear helmests: they can't make them and stolen ones don't fit. 

Skrael eat almost anything organic. This often includes victims of their raids. After attacking a coastal settlement, they can often be found gorging on any food supplies they find until the place is bare. Fresh meat, such as bodies, will be eaten first. They do not drink, for physiological reasons (beaks) and they are immune to food poisoning. 

The one area of trade in which skrael are partially successful is the slave trade; skrael are  at least able to value foodstuffs and they recognise livestock as such, an humans as a form of livestock. They are also moderately successful mercenaries. Though indisciplined, unreliable and dishonest, they are courageous, or at least unable to conceive of danger. They are also cheap and vicious and often find work in return for food alone or 'spoils', which in skrall terms means dead bodies and shiny stuff.

Skrael are not designed to be playable. But should some misguided player ask to, then the Intelligence score of any skrall should be the minimum for sentience. In class-based systems, skrall are best represented by the Barbarian class, and if Barbarian is an Origin or Background option, this is mandatory for any Skrael player character. They are , by nature, violent thieves, so Thief or Rogue might also be a viable class, but only with a focus on physical cometence, not persuasion of trickery-focused characters. Thug, Outlaw or Bandit would also be suitable profiles, backgrounds or careers or NPC types.

Skrall don't do magic.  Unless you decide they do. Or worship in the way humans comprehend, but they do show respect (through a kind of walking, bobbing dance, that involves lowering the head and making a wretching noise) to something called The Great Deep one, which is definitelt NOT the sea god of your world.  And some recognise Great Thunder Cloud Head, which might be a personification of storms.

They don't bury their dead.

They don't do mercy. 

And if they want something you've got, they don't give up. 

My VTT Ate My Upload; Now I Don't Need It

 Recently I ran out of storage on Roll20.

This only happened because I stopped paying for it, of course. I had been an avid user of it until a couple of years ago, when the frequency of my online gaming became monthly, rather than weekly. And although I don't think Roll20 is overly costly - its actually cheap if you use  it to run a weekly game - its an expense I didn't need. 

Its not like the free version isn't still good.

But of course, I lost quite a few resources - everything above my storage quota - and I couldn't upload anything. So I decided to do two things: check how much crap I keep on there that I don't need, and learn how to use less storage.

Turns out the answer to the first task was - a ton. Especially as stuff you buy does not contribute to the storage and you can buy personalisable noticeboards for your fantasy tavern that do WAY more than the homebrew one I had on there, despite how proud I was of it. So I cut back.

Eventually, I had a tiny amount of storage I could use again. Know what I did? I uploaded a map from an old DnD adventure. And then I drew over it. And then I deleted it. And then I uploaded a different map, this time of Utah, and drew over that.

So basically, here is a step-by-step instruction set on how to create an interactive hex-crawl map for your campaign, either from an existing resource, or from something you want to adapt:

1) Upload the map you want to use and place it on the GM Layer. You can still see it.

2) Switch to Map Layer. Select an appropriate pen thickness from the drawing menu and trace over the coastline of other major features. You may want to use different colours, or you may want to stick to classic black and white. Pen thickness can help distinguish between different kinds of linear features, such as coastline, borders or rivers.

3) Switch to GM Layer. Select a feature on the map, alter the thickness of your pen to suit, select a colour and draw over your feature, for example a mountain, a tree or a bridge. If possible, make it a single, continuous line. You can draw it large and then select and reduce it. It doesn't matter if you have to try this a few times; take the time to get it right. I actually sourced some icons for cities and castles because they looked better, but you may be better at this than me.

4) Select and copy your feature, then paste it everywhere you want it. Repeat for any other features you want to show on your map. 

6) All your map features are now on the GM Layer. Players can't see them. But you will make these features visible when player characters enter a hex. So select now which ones you want players to begin the game knowing about or already able to see. By making a few of the features visible, you make it clear to players that this map has such features and this will hopefully pique their curiosity. Move these features to the Map Layer. I suggest large mountain ranges are included in this, as characters have a variety of ways to know about them, even if they cannot see them. But you don't have to put them all on yet; in fact its better if you don't. 

7) At this stage, decide if you want to include icons for famous or visible creatures, such as known goblin territories, giant eagles, or dragons. This can represent local knowledge, or in the case of large flying beasties, actual sightings from adjacent hexes.

8) As your players progress, make more features visible, hex by hex. Annotate using the Text tool.

Dice pool settlement generation works on a VTT, too. There are various methods running about on the internet, for using dice pools to generate towns and villages, etc, where the physical spread of the dice represents the layout of the settlement. You can do this on a VTT. Have your VTT roll a handful of dice, using the 3d dice setting. You may have to use an Advanced Dice setting or type in the dice you want using '+' or find some other means of combining different die types in the pool, depending on your VTT. But it should be possible get a handful of varied dice roll across your screen. Screenshot this. The screenshot is necessary because as soon as you click on the screen the dice will disppear. When the screenshot pops up, copy it, typing or freehanding the numbers onto the grid (the grid helps you locate them precisely). You then cross reference the numbers with whatever index of building types you are using. Like I said, there are several versions of this on various blogs - you'll have to select one that works for you or invent your own. But very basically, the number on the die tells you what sort of building it is. Os something. Anyway, my point here is just that you can do this on a VTT, too. You could probably do it in session, but I haven't tried that. And you can pretty it up with map tokens between sessions, if you feel the need. 

If you decide to give any of these ideas a try I would love to get feedback.