DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Chaos Lorebook: The Bloated Lords

Some among the zaug were transformed by the Galchutt and “turned to a new purpose”. As the zaug were made living receptacles for manifest corruption, the zaug soulharvesters became living prisoners for captured and tormented souls.

“Their very flesh burned with the fire of the souls which screamed within them.”

“Their hunger was without end, fed eternally by the torment of those who seared their flesh.”

This week’s campaign journal is The Bloated Lords, a lengthy chaos lorebook describing the zaug, one of the Servitors of the Galchutt.

In the Ptolus campaign setting, the Galchutt are lords of chaos and the Servitors of the Galchutt are demon-like creatures who, as their name suggests, serve them. Along with the strange arts of chaositech which are inimically tied to these entities, you can point to a goulash of antecedents Monte Cook is drawing from — Lovecraft, Moorcock, Warhammer, cenobites, etc. — but the result, particularly when blended into traditional D&D fantasy, is very distinct.

When I brought Ptolus into my own campaign world, however, the Galchutt posed a conundrum: I already had my own pantheon of Mythos-adjacent strange gods.

I thought about replacing the Galchutt with my own pantheon, but then I’d lose a lot of cool stuff. It would be a bunch of extra work for, at best, a neutral result.

Another option would have been to simply add the Galchutt to my pantheon: The more strange gods the merrier! For various reasons, though, they didn’t really sync. I’m a big fan of adaptation and reincorporation, but it’s not always a boon. Sometimes you shove stuff together and you’re left with less than what you started.

So what I eventually ended up doing was nestling the Galchutt into a lower echelon, as “Dukes” in the Demon Court. They brought with them the Dukes (powerful, demon-like entities) and the Elder Brood (demonic monsters who serve the Dukes). This worked really well, creating an unexpected bridge (Elder Brood → Dukes → Galchutt → Demon Court → even stranger depths of the pantheon) between the inexplicable and the mortal world. It’s a good example of how you can pull in influences from a lot of different places and gestalt them into something cool.

Another example of this was the Elder Brood: In the Chaositech sourcebook, only two examples of the Elder Brood are given (the obaan and the sscree). I knew I wanted more than that, so I hit up one of my favorite monster manuals: The Book of Fiends from Green Ronin. (Which also played a major role in my remix of Descent Into Avernus.) I pulled all the cool devils and demons from that book that had the right flavor for the Elder Brood and added them to the roster.

Along similar lines, the zaug — one of the Servitors and described in The Bloated Lords lorebook — were expanded in my campaign to include the Soulharvesters. These were adapted from solamiths, a monster described in Monster Manual V.

If I recall correctly, the specific sequence here was:

• I was looking for a miniature I could use for the zaug (since I knew that one would appear in the Mrathrach Machine).
• I found the solamith miniature and realized it belonged to a monster from Monster Manual V.
• I checked out the solamith write-up and realized thar it could be folded into the mythology of the zaug.

It’s been a while, though, so my sequencing on this may not be correct. (I may have found the solamith write-up first while scavenging monsters for the campaign and then tracked down the miniature from there.) In any case, it’s a technique I’ve used with monster manuals for a long time. It’s similar to The Campaign Stitch, but rather than melding adventures it takes monsters and asks: What if these are the same monster?

It’s kind of like palette shifting, but rather than taking one stat block and using it to model a multitude of creatures, this technique — let’s call it monster melding — takes a bunch of different stat blocks and brings them together.

Another example is that, in my personal campaign world, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and ogres are all the same species. (Which, conveniently, gives me access to a much larger variety of stat blocks to plug-‘n-play with while stocking goblin villages.)

What I like about this technique — in addition to utilitarian stocking adventages — is that, much like gods and ventures, the melded monsters can often be more interesting than using the two separately. (For example, the implications of hypertrophic dimorphism in goblins raises all kinds of interesting worldbuilding questions and the soulharvesters, in my opinion, make zaug society much more interesting to explore.)

So ask yourself:

• What if these are the same creature with slightly divergent careers, abilities, etc.?
• What if these are the same creature at different stages of its life cycle?
• What if they live in some kind of symbiosis or parasitic relationship?

Bring these creatures together and see what you get!

Campaign Journal: Session 40C – Running the Campaign: Moral Dillemmas of Magic
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

THE BLOATED LORDS
(Chaos Lorebook)

They were the least of those that served. They were corruption given flesh; a corpulence of festering death and decay. Rebellious in spirit, yet forever bound to the power of their masters.

This tome describes the zaug – one of the “servitors of the Galchutt”. Physically the zaug were grossly obese humanoids with no hair. They had wide mouths full of teeth, claws for hands, and short horns on their heads. Some are described as possessing vestigial, rotting wings. A few passages describe their bodies as “corrupted receptacles”. Sores and oozing pus and bile covered their fat flesh. And much of their skin hung loose in rotting folds, pocked with holes from which intestines and other guts hung out – spurting vile fluids.

Several passages are given over to describing festering poisons and other vile alchemical substances that could be created from the “bile of the zaug”, although no true details of the required procedures are given.

The flesh of the zaug itself is ever-regenerating – allowing it to survive despite the diseases, poisons, and parasites that teem through its body. They are said to never eat or drink or breathe, and to speak only telepathically.

THE SOULHARVESTERS

Some among the zaug were transformed by the Galchutt and “turned to a new purpose”. As the zaug were made living receptacles for manifest corruption, the zaug soulharvesters became living prisoners for captured and tormented souls.

“Their very flesh burned with the fire of the souls which screamed within them.”

“Their hunger was without end, fed eternally by the torment of those who seared their flesh.”

Where the flesh of the zaug festered, the beruned and corpulent flesh of the soulharvesters was glistening and taut. And pressing out against the green-veined and pallid skin of their guts were the screaming faces of those imprisoned within them.

The “soulfire flesh” of the zaug soulharvesters is described as an immense, living power source.

THE LORE OF THE LATTER YEARS

And while their masters slept, the labors of the zaug were endless.

Later lore describes the zaug working with the “titans of the Purple City” in labors of “the technology of the taint” as they worked to “perfect the crafts gifted from beyond the Demonweb”.

Other passages refer to the zaug working in the laboratories of Ghul the Skull-King. “And their works turned to the binding and changing of the flesh, and the lesser races were turned into weapons of dark might.”

KASTRALATHAKASAL

And in the sleep of the Galchutt and the sealing of the Vaults of the Rhodintor, the zaug at last found their freedom. And in their caverns of the deep, their works turned inward.

Deep beneath the surface of the earth, it is said that Kastralathakasal – the City of the Zaug – “stands citadel upon the Throne of Darkness”. The city itself is described as a stronghold of alien metals and living, organic components.

Running the Campaign: All Your Zaug Belong to Us – Campaign Journal: Session 40C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Androids have a lot of advantages in Mothership, being functionally immune to a bunch of dangers that humans have to contend with.

So I thought it was only fair to level the playing field a bit…

PSEUDOMILK PARASITES

[W:1(3), Android Infestation: Body Save or 1d10 DMG/minute]

These opal-white flatworms have evolved to feed on the pseudomilk “blood” used by most androids and some supercomputer installations. They can notably infest android production lines, grinding synth factories to a halt.

They are, of course, also dangerous to individual androids, clotting their pumps and damaging their cybertronic systems (both directly and due to depriving them of pseudomilk).

In addition to individual androids, pseudomilk gestation pools, pseudomilk infusion bags, and the like, the parasites have evolved to embed themselves in synthflesh and plastic. They can also be found dormant in other liquids. This is particularly true of the parasite’s embryos, up to 40,000 of which of which may be found in a fertile proglottid.

They pose no known threat to humans.

Officials have now confirmed the reports of a massive outbreak of parasites among the pleasurebots on Pandora Station.

CUT TO—

Dr. Eberhaus: We’ve never seen anything like this. It appears that the Taenia lacsitienti on Pandora have evolved to infect human gonads with their larvae, allowing them to pass between android hosts via human sexual contact.

CUT TO—

It remains unclear what effect, if any, the worms may have on their human hosts, but those who may have been exposed — directly or indirectly — to the Pandora outbreak should schedule a medical scan as soon as possible.

LX-510 SuperNEWS Broadcast

Android Infestation: If an android touches a pseudomilk parasite, the worm will aggressively burrow into their skin with shocking speed. The android must succeed on a Body save [-] to prevent the worm from burrowing in, and must make an additional Body save once per minute or suffer 1D10 damage.

Treatment is difficult:

• Immediately amputating a limb has a 90% chance of stopping a burrowed parasite (-20% chance per round).
• Applying flame or acid to the wound may kill the worm, dealing 1 point of damage to the worm for every 3 points suffered by the android.

If the worm has burrowed deep, a cybernetic diagnostic scanner may be able to locate the worm, although extracting it without inflicting significant physical trauma will likely be difficult or impossible without proper treatment facilities.

An emergency exsanguination will disable the android and, if not carried out with proper equipment, carries a risk of significant damage (Body save or 3D10 DMG). But it can also force the worm to make a Body save or suffer 1D10 DMG. (Even if it survives, the worm will usually enter a dormant state and reduce damage checks to once per day, possibly allowing enough time for the android to be moved to a proper treatment facility.)

If an android has been infested by a worm for more than ten minutes, they must also make a Body save to determine if they have a larval exposure (see below).

Larval Exposure: When individual androids are exposed to parasitic larvae, for example,

• wading or bathing in contaminated liquids
• physically interfacing with an infested android/system
• using a contaminated synthflesh or plastic item
• wearing infested power armor or clothes

they must succeed on a Body save [-] or become infested, with 1D6-1 worms hatching 2D10 hours later and every hour thereafter. (Each additional worm after the first adds +1 damage per damage check.)

Risky Environments: Androids in risky environments — e.g., powering down in a parasite-infested facility — might have a 1 in 6 chance per hour of attracting the attention of a pseudomilk parasite.

Valpurna Cyberdoc: Bite marks identified on right calf. Source biological or synethetic?

Ettin 5: Synthetic. w0lf-XYα security pack.

Valpurna Cyberdoc: Initiating emergency parasitic scan.

Next: Pseudomilk Predators

Learn the fine art of getting everybody in the same room to play the game! We’ll talk about both types of schedules and attendance policies. And discover why Jessica just won’t let us play.

TYPES OF SCHEDULE

• Regular
• Ad Hoc
• Open Table

ATTENDANCE POLICY

• Mandatory
• Minimum Threshold

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The Haunting of Ypsilon-14 is a pamphlet adventure for the Mothership roleplaying game. It’s just two pages long and designed to fold up as a trifold pamphlet. The goal is to make this an adventure that a GM can pick up, read in about fifteen minutes, and then immediately run. In addition to the super-fast character creation and streamlined rules of Mothership, the result is an RPG that you can pick up and play as easily as you might a board game or card game.

I think the short length of the adventure can also make it a great example of how I read and use published adventures, as described at length in How to Prep a Module. I’m going to try to give you a peek into my thought process as I read through Ypsilon-14: What I’m looking for, what I’m prepping, and how I’m solving problems before they happen at the table. Even if it’s all happening in just fifteen minutes.

Although I don’t think it’s necessary, you might want to grab a copy of the adventure to follow along.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

THE HOOK

The basic concept of Ypsilon-14 is that Dr. Ethan Giovanni, while studying a mysterious “yellow goo” discovered by asteroid miners, has woken up an alien at the mining colony and now it’s killing people.

The published scenario hook for the adventure is that the PCs have come to a mining asteroid (the titular Ypsilon-14) to pick up some cargo.

This is not a bad hook. It gets the PCs where the scenario is so that they can start interacting with it. What I notice, though, is that it could very easily require some heavy-lifting in actual play to get the players invested in the action and have a clear vector for taking action. (For example, it would be pretty easy for the PCs to just stay at the docking bay and wait, forcing the GM to figure out how to bring the action to them.) The scenario hook is relying on open-ended player curiosity, which can be fine, but isn’t particularly strong.

If I was planning to run this as part of an ongoing campaign, I would look to make the hook specific to the PCs and their goals: Not generic cargo, for example, but a specific thing that the PCs need. Or maybe the PCs learn that Dr. Giovanni has information that they need, and now they’ve tracked him to Ypsilon-14.

In my case, I’m planning to run Ypsilon-14 as an open table one-shot, so the hook will need to be more generic. (Although I might look for opportunities to feed specific hooks or connections to the adventure to various PCs: For example, if someone creates a former asteroid miner, I might suggest Ypsilon-14 as a place they previously worked.)

What I will do, though, is make the generic cargo pick-up more specific: The PCs have been hired to pick up a scientific sample from Dr. Giovanni.

I do this knowing that:

• The sample they’re picking up is the extremely dangerous yellow goo, which will encourage them to interact with it.
• Giovanni, having been infected by the yellow goo, is locked up inside his ship.
• His workstation, where he accidentally woke up the alien and also where I think I’ll place the sample container the PCs are supposed to pick up, is located down in the mining tunnels.

What I’m looking at here are the vectors of the hook: Where is the hook pointing the PCs?

The vector of the original hook terminated at the Docking Bay. As you can see, though, just a slight change to the hook creates vectors that point much deeper into the adventure.

With the PCs, therefore, motivated to follow those vectors, it will be much easier for the players to get invested in the scenario. Their actions in pursuing the vector will also give me more opportunities to bring the other elements of the adventures (e.g., people going missing and alien attacks) into play as part of the natural flow of the action.

CATCHING BOOBY TRAPS

Published adventures often have booby traps: Information that’s either missing or hidden that can unexpectedly sabotage you at the table.

Sometimes these are deliberately included by designers who want the GM to read the adventure as if it were a novel: They want you to be flat-footed by their surprise ending! And, for some reason, you’ll often read mystery scenarios where you have to first solve the mystery yourself before you can run it.

More often, they’re just mistakes and oversights.

For example, in Dr. Giovanni’s workstation in the mines:

A small WORKSTATION of scientific equipment has been set up nearby. A SCANNER relays readings from the pod to the Heracles [his ship] and a SCRAP OF PAPER sits on the desk that reads “0389.”

There are two booby traps here. The milder of the two is that I don’t know what “0389” means unless I cross-reference it to a different section of the adventure.

The more significant one is the scanner relaying readings to the Heracles: First, what do the readings say? I could improvise that, but it feels pretty core to the adventure so I’d probably throw some prep on that. More significantly, these readings aren’t mentioned in the write-up for the Heracles, so if the PCs go to the Heracles first, I could very easily not realize that PCs checking the Heracles’ computers should notice the scanner reading being relayed.

Another booby trap can be found with the crew listings. The adventure includes a great reference for the CHARACTERS in the adventure, listing everyone on the station. This write-up includes:

DANA. Head Driller. Stoich, professional, sullen.

KANTARO. Leader. Muscular, quiet, hasn’t bathed in a few days.

That’s all well and good. But in the adventure key for the crew quarters, we can also read:

KANTARO’S BUNK. Dana’s clothes mixed in with Kantaro’s laundry.

And you can probably immediately see the problem: Kantaro is in a relationship with Dana (or he’s a huge creep. But because that essential information isn’t included in the character write-ups, you could very easily end up roleplaying Dana and/or Kantaro earlier in the adventure without realizing they’re in a relationship and end up creating a continuity issue that booby traps you later.

This kind of “essential information missing from a section of the adventure that presents itself as a comprehensive reference” is a surprisingly common booby trap. Obviously, though, it can be cleared up if you just keep an eye open for booby traps while reading the adventure and make a quick note in, for example, their character write-ups.

INFORMATION FLOW

I also like to identify the essential information in a scenario, make sure I understand how the players will get that information, and improve this process where I can.

In the case of Ypsilon-14, there seems to be three key pieces of information that should be established at the beginning of the scenario:

• A miner named Mike is missing.
• Ethan Giovanni is a scientist who’s doing research onsite.
• The cast of characters — nine miners + a cat named Prince.

There doesn’t need to be a single, definitive vector for any of this information, and just having the mental list of what’s essential will go a long way towards setting you up for success at the table. But I’m not above giving myself a little clearer structure to work with.

First, you’ll note that I’ve already sorted Dr. Ethan Giovanni by connecting him to the scenario hook. So that’s done.

Second, in the adventure as written, Mike has been missing since last night and everybody knows it. So presumably, at some point, I can just have one of the NPCs give that information to the PCs. But what if we show instead of tell?

As written, when the PCs’ ship docks, Sonya, the team leader on Ypsilon-14, unlocks the docking bay door for them. What if, instead, Mike was supposed to be on monitoring duty? So the PCs dock, signal the mining station, and… nothing. They get no reply. You can give the players a little rope to figure out how they want to respond to that, but eventually Sonya will show up, open the door, and apologize on behalf of Mike’s dumb ass. Or, if the PCs have already hacked their way through the docking bay door by the time Sonya arrives, maybe that conversation goes a different way. Either way, “Mike was supposed to be here, where the fuck is he?” gets established through action that directly affects the PCs.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Third, we have the cast of characters. This is essential information because (a) “Oh no! Jerome is missing now, too!” is probably more effective if the players know who Jerome is; (b) until the PCs figure out an alien is involved, this is your list of suspects; and (c) once things shift fully into survival horror mode, these are the people who need to be kept alive.

When an adventure has a large cast of characters like this, it’s vital that you don’t just introduce them all at once. It’s literally impossible for the players to process an info dump like that: They’ll never be able to remember their names, differentiate them as individuals, or form any meaningful relationship with them. The NPCs will just be an anonymous mob to them.

So when I see a big list of characters like this in an adventure, I’m immediately thinking about how I can split them up and sequence their introduction. In this case, my rough thoughts are:

• They meet Sonya first, as described above.
• One or two more people can come into this opening scene, probably prompting an additional discussion about the missing Mike. (Sonya: “Have you seen Mike?” “Not since last night after he broke the fucking shower.”) Maybe the cat could be in this scene and Morgan comes in looking for her?
• Throw together a quick adversary roster for everybody else.

The function of the “adversary” roster here is to just split everybody up into smaller groups and scatter them around the base. Specific groupings and locations probably won’t stick as the situation evolves, but it’ll still give me a good starting point for spreading out the introductions.

Looking at the cast list:

• It looks pretty easy to split them into On Duty and Off Duty.
• I can split the On Duty crew between those near the entrance to the mine in the Mine Tunnel and those working in the Depths.
• Off Duty crew can be split between Crew Quarters, Mess, and the Showers.

As I’m quickly spreading these characters around, I’m likely already getting ideas for how some of these scenes could be framed up. (For example, if I put Ashraf and Kantaro in the Mess, what might they be arguing about? Or is it Dana and Kantaro in there and they’re flirting with each other? Or is Dana supposed to be in her quarters, but she’s missing if you go looking for her because she’s actually shacked up with Kantaro in his quarters? If Rie is sleeping, how do they react if they get woken up? And so forth.)

If a particularly brilliant idea occurs to me here, I’ll jot it down for posterity. But I’ll usually just let these wash over me. It’s a sign that the scenario is beginning to take life in my imagination, but I’ll trust myself to find the rights answers while improvising at the table.

WRAPPING UP

On that note, the intention of a minimalist adventure like The Haunting of Ypsilon-14 is to give the GM raw material and trust them to improvise.

This is, of course, good praxis: Don’t prep stuff that you can improvise at the table.

With that being said, if you see a place where the adventure is expecting you to improvise and either (a) you’re not comfortable improvising that or (b) you see a big value add from prep, then you should finish up by prepping that stuff.

For example, Sonya has a collection of cassette tapes in her quarters and she’ll blast music from her boombox. Improvising a bunch of titles for her cassettes is the type of thing that I, personally, can get hung up on in a session, so maybe that’s something I’d want to do ahead of time. (In this specific case, that’s being balanced against my desire to keep my prep for these open table one-shots somewhere between “extremely minimal” and “none at all,” so I’ll probably end up skipping it.)

As another example, with the large cast of characters it might be useful to grab pictures for each of them that you can show to the players to help keep them all straight. Along these same lines, if you’re not feeling confident in improvising these characters from the minimalist descriptions, then maybe it’s worthwhile to spin up a universal roleplaying template for each of them.

It’s important to remember that there’s no “right” answer here: It’s about what you feel confident improvising at the table and what added material, if any, seems valuable to you.

In this case, jotting down the prep described above took about fifteen minutes. That feels about right for how I’m choosing to use this module, and I think I’ve set myself up for success at the gaming table. What and how you choose to prep will different from the choices I made, but ultimately we have the same goal!