Please do not Take these Organs

Please do not [T]ake these Organs by JamesLeng
Act 1 Thread 1 Thread 2 Thread 3 Act 2 Thread 4 Thread 5 Thread 6 Thread 7
Discussion thread 1 Discussion thread 2

An old school dice-based dungeon crawl, where individual suggesters control their own hapless adventurers.

This article contains spoilers! You were warned.

Player Characters

For long form character sheets, see here (google doc).

Listed in order of introduction, sorted by act.

Act 2

The currently active session.

Character	Class	Specialization	Summary	Player
Maru Red	Tiefling Townie	Skald	A boisterous and bawdy musical brawler hungry for fame and afraid of being forgotten, with a spectral axe earned in an act of bloody vengeance at her beck and call.	Santova
Hore Wutashi	Gnoll-Human Hybrid Hedge Witch	Plasmakineticist	An erratic, bloodthirsty, and shameless cybernetically-enhanced murder-gnoll, complete with variable arm cannon.	Kome
Decaro Vos	Eel-man Soldier	Grappling	The friendly and good hearted paladin of a benign tentacle goddess, blessed with the power of holy mutation. Currently sporting a third eye, a crab claw, and naga tail.	strngy
Davina / Viste	Human Rich Bastard	Fencer	A noble swordswoman capable of cutting portals in air, prone to hologram flickering, and host to an extraplaner horror. Moonlights as a magical girl and seeks to restore her fallen house.	mageykun
Eric Grimwald	Human Rich Bastard	Commanding Others	A lonely soul, possessing a disquieting appetite and difficulties with conventional healing. He seeks the immortality of undeath and a bride with which to share eternity.	GB
Yisheng Ji	Half-Avian Hedge Witch	Healing / Medicine	A dour and serious medical professional in the style of an eastern cultivator. Capable of moving weightlessly, possesses perfect balance, and seeks true immortality.	Tunic
Maria Agate	Human Hedge Witch	Purifying Light	A fighting nun of a family order who wields a searing, purging light to combat evil and the undead. Skilled with knots and more abstract wards and bindings.	The Archivist
Daniel Agate	Human Hedge Witch	Purification	Maria's brother, and the black sheep of the family due to his homosexuality and a non-combative manifestation of the familial gift: an aura capable of repelling or purging poisons, curses and disease.	The Archivist
Djan Seriv	Elf (Orc) Soldier	Slinger	A soldier-turned-deserter who has the ability to manipulate most metals like putty, with the exception of a painful allergy to gold. He hopes to find both peace and revenge.	DanZapman
Rhea	Half-goblinoid Hedge Witch	Empathic Fire	A cheerful and somewhat guileless half-goblin fire priestess, from the deep underground. On a pilgrimage to the surface in service of her real passion as a dessert chef (and an unhealthy fascination with the sun).	mageykun
Geoffrey Vargas	Human Rich Bastard	Escapology and Evasion	A former Royal Guardsman, professional coward and most recently (and mostly accidentally) an ancestral sorcerer. A sigil burned into his flesh warns him of danger, but also attracts it to him.	Riotmode, strngy
Helen Nabot	Human Townie	Deception / Gall	An older intellectual and scholar, bearing a curse on her back (literally and figuratively) which she believes is slowly consuming her past. She's turned to dangerous adventuring in search of ancient secrets and a possible cure.	strngy
Azure Youngmason	Phoenix Blooded Harpy Rich Bastard	Healing Serenader	A self absorbed and flighty avian who expects to breeze through trouble with some combination of fast talking, sex appeal, her brutish slave, Pog, and conditional combustible immortality.	Kome
Isaiah, son of Elohim	Necrolithograph Hedge Witch	Death Domain	An ambulatory suit of armor with the mind of a twelve year old boy who ineptly attempts to conceal his unnatural condition. Prophet of Hanspur, blessed with the power to divine the wisdom of roads.	Santova
Pog Roastchester	Orc Soldier	Untouchable Bloodrager	Azure's slave and a being of astonishingly limited intellect and prodigious strength and resilience. Possesses porcine features and appearance.	Kome
Malkov	Human Hedge Witch	Lightning/Undead-Bane Chi Powers	A clawed and scarred martial artist and former victim of necromatic experiments who now seeks to destroy both the undead and their masters.	The Archivist
Wendy	Human Hedge Witch	“Miracles”	An ambitious tinker and gadgeteer with a holy touch, persecuted and driven from her home. Venom drips in both her words and teeth.	The Archivist
Nistamatsin	Demon Hedge Witch	Abjuration	A bound demon driven by conflicting and paradoxical desires who steals faces to hide the ghastly visage of his true form. His body serves as a living bag of holding, filled with blood.	strngy
Kent Vogner	White Elf Townie	Artificing	A mutant, an engineer, and a thief capable of great bounding leaps, and whose passage leaves ripples in stone. They seek social equality through freedom of information. They also adore spiders.	Santova
Valeno Nahesa	Vishkanya Townie	Poisoner	A viper girl on a journey to become a legendary poison master, which has been marred by a demon-attracting curse. Hired by Nistamatsin to, of all things, liberate and restore a place of healing and curatives.	Shadowkaisen

Group I, The (New) Fire Hawks

Maru (Leader), Hore, Vos, Davina (Lieutenant), Ji, Maria, Daniel,

Group II, The Neutralizing Scrubs

Geoffrey, Isaiah (Lieutenant), Helen, Pog, Malkov, Wendy, Nistamatsin (Leader), Kent, Rhea, Azure, Valeno Nahesa

Demoted to NPC

Eric, Djan

Act 1

^{[TODO: Add summaries, clean up relevant section in external doc]}

The original session, which died after we spent an entire thread faffing around setting up a pirate ship.

Character	Class	Specialization	Summary	Player
Marijke	Hedge Witch	Suggestion / Mental influences		mageykun
Sgt. Nick	Soldier	Intuition
"Sir" Garaile	Soldier	Single combat		Tunic
Nico Nashville	Townie	Bluff / Acting		CalimariGod
Yeven Surgis	Rich Bastard	Demons		Bad transetor
Than	Soldier	Sharpshooter
Dimitry "the White Snake" Nicola	Townie	Stealth, assassination, thievery
Letkra	Rich Bastard	Spear-dancing		Mitsukara
Riv	Hedge Witch	Alchemy / Artificing		Santova
Ravenous Llyr	Soldier	Tracking / Hunting		Tunic
Stone	Hedge Witch	Spirits		Santova

Notable NPCs

^{[TODO: add more NPCs, expand/add descriptions]}

Contemporary

Broken into rough groups, by location and/or affiliation.

In the Dungeon

(Queen) Aaphia

Jank

An orc guarding a pie.

Black Boar Inn

Ulman Dark

Unlicensed Necromancer, "your one-stop shop for no-questions, no-promises, cash-up-front medical care." Ulman is married to Kanndra, and a friend of Eric's.

Kanndra Dark

Slightly corrupt itinerant bounty hunter. Married to Ulman.

The (Original) Fire Hawks

An experienced and established adventuring company, whose membership is largely MIA after heading Down The Well, just like everyone knows you shouldn't. One group of PCs has inherited control of the company, and is now responsible for rescuing, recovering the remains of, or learning the final fates of the original team.

Captain Azarthraine (MIA)

A dynastic sorcerer capable of 8th circle magic. In melee, he usually fought with a rapier whose 'blade' was made from a piece of green wood, or else a three-pronged spear loaded with various tricky enchantments. It could shrink to a concealable baton or extend to improbable length, flex like a gripping claw and then deliver electrical shocks, lots of other stuff. He's been planning and prepping for his last trip for years, maybe even before he founded the company ...and we're supposed to rescue this guy?

Master Sergeant Oldaric (KIA)

A 6th level orc fighter. We recovered just enough of his remains to reincarnate him into a new body, if and when we can afford it.

Corporal Adrenai (MIA)

An elf who dual wields hatchets, and a semi-reformed thief. She joined the company when her opportunistic mugging took down a bounty target the team was in pursuit of. Rather than ceding the bounty to Adrenai, Azarthraine made it a new rule that when somebody jumps in and finishes a job the Fire Hawks should've already been doing, faster and better, the new kid gets a few shares of stock from everybody they upstaged if they agree to join up and share credit for the deed itself. (Which is how we eventually ended up in control of the company).

Lt. Mezuryk (MIA)

Male, able to tank traps?

Sister Kalina (MIA)

The chaplain.

6th Member (MIA)

Name and description currently unknown.

Acolyte Galanodel

A young half-elven woman with dark skin and teal hair, she served as Sister Kalina's apprentice in the worship of a minor divinity best known for promoting the construction of public libraries, doing clerical work to pay for room and board until she's fully initiated. Currently the most senior surviving Fire Hawk, our secretary, and sleeping with Davina.

Passholdt

Sasha Green-Iron

The Minister of Security.

Prince Aaron IV

Sovereign ruler of Orcmeet, Passholdt, and some 2500 square miles of associated hinterlands

Chrysomelkarcalchaxis

The Minister of Thunder, and an adult cloud dragon.

'Ratbag' Amphoranung

A half-orc, and the current arena mixed-melee champion. Very flashy style, using something like a quarterstaff but with double-bitted axeheads on both ends, He mostly twirls it around like a baton, while doing dance moves in full plate that most people couldn't manage stark naked.

Nick

An ex-PC, changed by his time abandoned in the dungeon. Shelf fungi encrusts his backpack, his clothes, and out of his skin. He's got a magic helmet with a light that keeps an air bubble around his head. Deemed mentally incompetent, and put under the care of a guardian.

Einsoku Amphoranung

A dynastic sorcerer with 6th circle spells, including but not limited to techniques for lifting multi-ton stone blocks with his bare hands, teleporting while carrying them, permanently transmuting them into flesh, and inscribing tiny runes which he can later spy through. Can also whisper to people from afar. The Minister of Punctuality, Chrysomelkarcalchaxis' son, one-third half-orc, and one-third some sort of god or demon.

Pickled Locust

Someone the Minister of Punctuality would liaise with for quarantine procedures.

Historical / Mythological

Zelkor of the Green Tassels

Azarthraine's beloved mentor, who disappeared Down The Well more than a century ago.

Aguinbreke

A blue dragon who held a high position (both literally and figuratively, an important government official in a large city atop the tallest mountain in the world) during the last days of the Old Empire. She observed how and why things went to hell, theorized how such a terrible thing could be prevented from happening again, and wrote a book about it. This book is now mandatory reading for every dragon, and is the shaping and motivating philosophy behind the entire dracocracy.

Religions / Gods

^{[TODO: add more gods, expand/add descriptions]}

Orcus

Tittivila

Tentacle goddess of flesh and growth. Associated with flowing saltwater and blood, Tittivila heals, transforms, and enriches the living. Her followers are often blessed with the power of holy mutation.

Tsathoggua

Frog demon nemesis of Tittivila. Associated with stagnant freshwater and phlegm, Tsathoggua befouls, preserves, and eventually consumes the dead. His most positive quality is a sort of vigilance, countless wart-like eyes too lazy to close their lids. Graven idols of otherworldly green soapstone watch over tombs, vaults, and treasure-caves long lost to history.

Agatia

Both an ancestor to Maria and Daniel, as well as their deity of choice. Goddess of Flames, Purity and Rebirth, she's kind of a bitch.

Philista

Patron goddess of the Passholdt forgeworks. Has three separate aspects, Weeping, Laughing and Burning, which are capable of acting independently (or at least, in different places).

Minor Library Deity

Name unknown, worshiped by Kalina and Galanodel.

"Fire Mom"

The fire divinity of Greznek, and goddess of hearth and home (think Hestia's portfolio, but not as nice or as passive?). Has lost considerable influence to Orcus since his worship was introduced to goblinkind. Rhea's mother, name currently unknown.

The Old Gods

Vast, impersonal, eternal, corresponding neatly to sacred numbers zero through eight. Their bodies are worlds, and more than worlds. Each of the Old Gods corresponds to - in some sense IS - a plane of existence, extending infinitely in at least one direction. To them, the greatest behemoths were as fleas and ticks are to us, and the Titanomachy was of no more significance than a skirmish between anthills over the right to harvest a spilled bag of candy.

Sacred Number	Name(s)	Plane / Physical Domain	Description	Symbol(s)
0	The Hollow Pillar	Illusion and discontinuity. Dreams, spaces behind mirrors, temporal stasis, teleportation mishaps that send people to something like the "minus world" of Super Mario Bros., and so on. Bags of Holding and other pocket dimensions are carved from, and eventually return to, that realm, but are not of it while they still function.	God of charm, death, beauty, physical prowess, void and the horror of non-being which precedes existence.	Polished stone hand
1	The Storm Forge	The layer of the sky where weather happens	God of artifice, nobility and weather.	Lightning-struck tower
2	The Blood Mire	Land, especially wetlands, but also including everything from beaches to the relatively habitable outside parts of mountains, plus rivers, most of the smaller lakes, and shallow caves. Continues at least as far down as the depth of topsoil and at least as far up as the tops of trees.	God of earth, plant and war.	Grain encircled by a blade
3	The Green Breath	The ethereal plane(s). Every space with life in it eventually develops an ethereal analogue.	God of air, repose and travel.	Pointed S-curve with a central pivot
4	The Burning Hate	The Sun	God of glory, healing, the sun and darkness. Bestows miraculous healing, righteous charisma, and simple clear-cut solutions to complicated problems (often downright horrific). He detests restless spirits and walking corpses for their inability to feel pain.	Golden face, scowling, with radial spikes
5	Tiamat, The Scaled Ocean	The greatest lakes, shallower parts of oceans and deeper parts of caves, including any serious dungeon.	God of destruction, magic and water. The root cause of seismic activity such as mountain ranges and earthquakes.	Black/blue/green/red/white pentagram
6	Serpenthearth, A serpent coiled around an egg	Something beneath the deepest caves, a secret hearth to light the darkest parts of the oceans	God of community, knowledge and fire. The root cause of geothermal activity such as hot springs and volcanoes. Reputed to have once swallowed the sun. Side effects from that act led to the extinction of all mortal life, then vomited the sun back out and created at least one entirely new category of mortal life just to get things started again.	Snake or hexagram around a burning egg
7	The Unbroken Word	The Stars (and more than just the stars)	God of protection, luck and rune.	Colorless geodesic dome or hollow web
8	The Horned Queen	The Moon	God of animal, madness, trickery and liberation.	Stylized spider with white mouth, raised pedipalps. Stylized rabbit/elf head with a fractal hat.

If there is an Old God whose sacred number is 9, it must be very strange even by the standards of inscrutable cosmic horrors, for no mortal has ever successfully worshiped it to efficacious result, nor knowingly visited it's domain and returned to tell the tale. There are creatures, called 'qashmallim,' 'mothmen,' or 'aeons,' which sometimes profess direct and personal service to, and orders from, such an entity... but then again, some demons or madmen can claim almost anything with that same utter sincerity, so it is also plausible they serve nothing but their own, largely arbitrary if not outright random, compulsions and delusions.

Places

^{[TODO: add more places, expand/add descriptions]}

Dungeons

The Bloodmist Labyrinth

The starting point of the quest. An underground maze.

The Green Tide

A primordial forest that spontaneously erupted from the earth outside Ekton's walls.

Cities / Towns

Passholdt

150 miles east of the dungeon's gazebo entrance. It's situated on one of the few easy paths across the mountains. Most people assume that's where the city's name comes from ("hold the pass") but the literal translation is "place of walking trees."

Orcmeet

Greznek

An underground goblin city, below the Bloodmist Labyrinth, that still primarily follows the old ways and the local fire divinity rather than this newfangled Orcus fad that has taken root in so many of the goblin settlements closer to the surface. Where Rhea's from.

Overmire

A city where tungsten is processed into immovable rods.

Eckton

A coastal settlement near an eelfolk colony, with a brand new dungeon on its doorstep.

Races / Species

^{[TODO: expand/add descriptions]}

Known sapient mortal creatures (as opposed to animals and vermin on the one hand, or ageless spirits on the other) fall into five broad categories. Generally, any two members of the same category can produce fertile offspring, and parents of two different races will produce a child of neither parent's race, but within the same category. Mating across categories doesn't usually yield children at all, unless powerful sorcery is used to force the issue or one of the parents is a disguised dragon, in which case the resultant hybrid is usually sterile.

Even in-universe, these categories are incomplete, and do not account for everything.

• Elvenoids

  Would probably be called "humanoids" if elves weren't so stuck-up and insistent on defining the language around themselves. Not a lot of natural variation beyond the cosmetic, although (as cases like White Snake demonstrate) they're the most vulnerable to magical mutation.

  • Elves

    Mature an order of magnitude slower than orcs and humans, and have not been conclusively proven to die of old age.

  • Humans
  • Orcs
  • Eel-men

    Traditionally lives in or near Freshwater along the estuaries and large bodies of water that pepper the area near the coast. Reproductive R-strategists, they travel to the sea to lay many eggs. No bloodline inheritance, hatchlings that survive the trip back to an eelfolk settlement are adopted and communally raised. Tittivila worship is common. Ritualistic and/or pragmatic cannibalism is practiced as a form of respect for the dead.

  • Fishlike sapient amphibians (and non-amphibians)
• Eohippoids

  Can mostly be described in terms of combinations of human, equine, and avian traits.

  • Dwarves
    • Green Dwarves
  • Harpies
  • Centaurs
  • Minotaurs
  • Mound-Builders

    Resemble miniaturized humans (averaging just under three feet tall, around thirty or forty pounds), but they move in short jerks alternating with eerie stillness, like startled deer, or hopping sparrows, or praying mantises. Tend to use slings or javelins rather than bows, due to issues of scaling and sudden vs. sustained strength. They're good at climbing and jumping, amazing at sprinting, not so good at marathon running, or surviving extremes of temperature and food shortages. Habitually barefoot. They made it through the dark times after the collapse of the Old Empire by going nomadic, but unlike orcs, they mostly stayed in green areas, burrows and other crude earthen fortifications (hence the name) dug with help from giant ground sloths and domesticated dire weasels.

  • Satyrs
  • Sphinxes
• Goblinoids
  • Goblins
    • Forest Goblins
    • Tidepool Goblins
  • Hobgoblins
  • Man-wise Wolves
  • Blink Dogs
  • Squidlike Sapient Amphibians
• Dragons

  Largely solitary, comparable to apex predators even though they can apparently subsist on a diet of ambient magic and ordinary rocks with no more ill effects than a human living on bread and vegetable broth. There's pounced sexual dimorphism, female dragons are the large, intelligent and dangerous ones controlling large scale politics. Male dragons are considerably smaller, and may be clever enough for the basics of language and tool use, like apes or crows or dolphins or parrots.

  • Blue

    Breathes lightning

  • Bronze

    Breathes lightning

  • Cloud
  • Various other colors / types
• Troll-kin

  Unusual in that many of them aren't generally known to reproduce at all by conventional means.

  • Trolls

    True Trolls have a two-stage life cycle: a sapient bipedal hermaphrodite with hands suited for tool use, and a tangled serpent which grows additional heads when wounded. Sloughed or severed heads develop arms, legs, viscera, and self-awareness in no particular order.

    • Mountain Trolls
  • Hags
  • Huldra

    Make no damn sense physiologically: they could be mistaken for elvenoids, apart from the fox tails, but instead of a spinal column they've got a gaping hole, and instead of a normal array of vital organs, the inside of a huldra's torso looks like a hollow rotten log.

  • Lamias
  • Medusas
• Other / Unknown

  Various creatures that don't fit neatly within the dracocracy's scholarly taxonomy. (As well as those that perhaps do, but have not been properly categorized due to player ignorance).

  • Neogi / Eel-ticks
  • Umber Hulks
  • Ghouls
  • Gug
  • Qashmallims / Mothmen / Aeons

Languages

Characters can have fluency on a scale of 0-3, where 2 is enough to avoid "my hovercraft is full of eels"-level errors. Spoken and written tracked separately.

This list merely covers those languages we have personally encountered; it can be safely assumed there are many more.

• Humish / Low Draconic

  The presumed default for most adventurers, unless otherwise specified.

• High Draconic

  Scholarly research tends to be written in High Draconic, but it'd be unusual for any non-dragon to have fluency in spoken High Draconic above 1, due to a mix of deliberate secrecy and physiological limitations.

• Elvish

  Elven language has two spoken dialects (green and white), which are similar enough that it's impossible to achieve full fluency in one without at least minimal comprehension of the other, but only a single written form, consisting of densely-packed ideograms. Elves also have their own system of sign language.

• Elemental Languages
  • Elemental Fire / Flametongue
  • Elemental Water / Seatongue
  • Elemental Earth / Rocktonque
  • Elemental Air / Skytongue
  • Elemental Wood / Forest-tonque
• Orcish Intertribal Trade Pidgin
  • Specific Tribal / Familial Dialects (Various)
• Quenyl

  No spoken form, just ideograms and sign language best performed by pairs of three-fingered hands sharing an elbow.

• Ghoulish
• Dwarven / Harpese

  Thought to be a distant relative of rocktongue, though any lingering similarities are readily apparent only to the most cunning linguists.

• Goblinese
• Liturgical (Various)

Gallery

Official

Maps

Battle site, Greznek Fort

Seacoast

Eel-tick Base

Goyle Base

Partial map of the Bloodmist Labyrinth, past the chasm

Fanart

Letkra By Mitsukara

Vos By strngy

Also Vos By mageykun

Geoffrey By Riotmode

Geoffrey By Riotmode

By GB

By strngy

Davina By mageykun

Rhea By Riotmode

Maps

Cubic Cart of Holding By mageykun

Bloodmist Labyrinth (Part II) By mageykun

Overworld (initial rough) By mageykun

Node map of The Green Tide. Not to scale, cardinal directions inaccurate. By mageykun