OSR: Volume-Lords and Volume-Folk

I probably should leave the post about my new module, Kidnap the Archpriest, on the top of my blog for a little longer. Oh well. 

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Volume-Folk are cave-dwelling humans and near-humans, feral and strange, buried miles below the surface. Exiles from rotting kingdoms. Holdouts of sense in a world of madness. 

They are surface-incursions on a meteoric trajectory, pockets of creatures from outside the Veins trying to make their way in a hostile environment, imposing temporary order on uncaring stone. Think of them as arctic explorers or shipwrecked sailors. They fled catastrophe, plague, war, or judgement. They went searching for gold and immortality. They ended up here.

Except... the island their ship crashed into has seen shipwrecks before. The locals, hungry and smart and perfectly adapted to their environment, will not be awed by gunpowder and horses.

Some domains last for decades or centuries. Some collapse immediately. The general tone is post-apocalyptic. Every settlement is surrounded by hostile nations who don't need as much water, food, light, heat, or comfort. Volume-Lords are lords of wastelands, borderlands, dead stone, areas not worth mining or claiming or patrolling. Their holdings are small: a single fortress-city at best, but more likely a village-cave, and even more commonly a single festering den. The Volume-Folk might number in their hundreds but never, ever in thousands.

Hexcrawl Notes
The map I'm working on has several areas owned by specific factions: the Olm, the Dracospawn, etc. There are also unclaimed spaces. One of the results on the Random Encounter Table for unclaimed areas is "Volume-Folk". They will be generated using this table, or selected based on nearby hexes, previous encounters, the GM's whims, etc.

There will also be specific keyed hexes with specific Volume-Folk encounters and locations. Speleo-mages and mad sorcerer-kings and specific dungeons and all that.

This table is also useful for filling out the more esoteric encounters in Veins of the Earth. 

Andrew Mar

Table of Volume-Folk

Sorry about the formatting. The PDF version in the hexcrawl will be better. You can read an entry left to right for "standard" volume-folk, or randomize each row for added complexity and depth, or roll once and read the next entry up 1 diagonally. If a result doesn't make sense, too bad. The Veins don't have to make sense.

The "Total?" column gives the total number of Volume-Folk in their entire culture, not counting the ones encountered (typically 1d6). Unless otherwise listed, the rest are back at the culture's Holding.

1d20	Who and What?		What Are They Doing?		Total?		Holding?
1	Feral Degenerates. Filthy, coated in cave mud and grit, barely alive, barely aware.		Tearing one of their own apart for food. Manic hunger.		Just the ones you see.		Filthy cave full of bones and clay.
2	Bandits. Wild and free and starving. Smart enough to lie and flatter. Face paint.		Preparing for a difficult climb. Rope coiled at their feet.		Just the ones you see.		Cave high on a wall. Lots of loot and grime.
3	Survivors. Torn clothes, bloody feet, fear. Carrying children, weapons, valuables.		Running, heading for a half-remembered safe area.		1d6 more just out of sight, but moving.		Burned, shattered, invaded. They flee.
4	Cannibal Exiles. Rags and knives. Tremors from prion disease. Sharp teeth, no lips.		Hunting something. Could be the PCs.		5 in the holding, +1d6 captives.		Spiral maze-cave death-trap village.
5	Lost Miners. Mad, gibbering, wounded. A liability. Wandering for weeks in the dark.		Staggering towards the light, begging incoherently.		1d6 were left behind. Not far.		Landmark they can find by sound alone.
6	Crusaders. Focused. Leather armour, clubs, a plan. Blunt but conversational.		On a divine mission to kill something. Could be the PCs.		20, +1d6 penitent captives.		Fortress-village, solidly built, well guarded.
7	Mad Prophet. Prophet is naked, followers are armed. Bells and hoots and muttering.		Trying to restrain one of their number, who has gone mad.		5, +1d6 supplicants.		Temple made of piled bones and rocks.
8	Muck-Rakers. Smeared head to toe in clay. Look like rocks if they close their eyes.		Sifting through a streambed. Eating a fish.		5, +2d10 young ones.		Deep clay pit. Dive in, swim for the caves.
9	Early Adopters. Eyes gouged out, copper ear funnels, skin like leather. Lucid, polite.		Listening in the dark, moving around the PCs, learning.		10, +1d6 on scout missions.		Cave village with surface trinkets.
10	Driven Explorers. Fine clothes, sharp weapons. Total fixation on their goal.		Protecting their camp. Completing a ritual.		20. Rival faction, 30 (identical), nearby.		Mobile but fortified camp.
11	Escaped Slaves. Iron collars and broken chains wrapped in cloth. Frightened.		Looking over shoulders, listening for pursuit, shivering.		1d100 more trapped somewhere.		Ancient fortress, retaken. Slave-pens.
12	Defense Force. Bone knives, hooded lanterns. Wary, but not hostile.		Checking caves near the holding. Slowly patrolling.		40, with 5 on guard. +1d6 prisoners.		Fungus farms, cave-castle. Cold, sturdy.
13	Slave Hunters. Tough clothes, well fed. Red-light lantern, rope, good weapons.		Scouting, searching for footprints, looking for someone.		30 masters, 20+2d20 slaves.		Crude stone villages, cave-snail farms.
14	Parasite Saints. Emaciated, but agile. Huge eyes with worms swimming inside.		Dragging something from its burrow. Screams and kicks.		10, +1d6 creature or monster-slaves		Warrens half full of water. Dry shelves.
15	Stealth Grazers. Naked, ritually shaven. Long soft toes and wrinkled fingers.		Climbing carefully, looking for cave crickets to eat.		20, +1d10 really really weird ones.		Painstakingly carved marble monastery.
16	Pain Junkies. Impossible stitch-wounds. Nail-fingers. Bits of laughter and moaning.		Finding something to torture, eat, and kill. Might be the PCs.		1d6 more out of sight. 30 at holding.		Cave village they invaded recently.
17	Anarchocapitalist Commune. Once-fine clothes, good weapons. Educated, insane.		Bickering quietly about politics, religion, death. Shuffling.		1d20. Varies a lot. If 10+, debate night.		Sinkhole village-auditorium-arena.
18	Civils. On a diplomatic or trade mission. Robes, masks. Politely tell you to go away.		Lockstep march, heading for the nearest settlement.		40, +2d10 slaves, +1d6 visitors.		City-fortress, with streets and squares.
19	Farmers. Shit-stained, surly, weary. Polite as a form of self-defense.		Herding/chasing 2d6 Sonic Pigs!. Pigs are currently happy.		100, +20x1d10 slaves. Crowded.		Hell-pit city. Anarchic, brutal, collapsing.
20	Nobles. Gold and silk and dead eyes. Retinues of shining servants.		Meeting in the dark for secret plots. Are the PCs useful?		100 +10x1d10 slaves.		Dictator-driven cult-fortress. Many statues.

Jihun Lee

And a Race table. It's specific to my setting.

d10	Race	Details
1	Human	Albino-pale, long arms and legs.
2	Human	Normal-ish. Unshaven, unwashed, wiry.
3	Human	Grey-green skin, huge luminous eyes, gnarled teeth.
4	Human	Long shaggy hair, small eyes, sail-like ears. Padded feet.
5	Beetleling	Scarred, violent, clicking limbs, shining eyes.
6	Toadling	Goggle eyes, gawping, warty. Chortling quietly. Dough-sticky flesh.
7	Batling	Small, sharp teeth, echolocating. Fidgeting.
8	Elf	On the edge of total collapse. Like a tired toddler at a cocktail party.
9	Wormling	White outside, red inside. Vulgar.
10	Flealing	Spiny, quick, vampyric. Mocking laughter and great leaps.

Thomas Mahon

Lone Wanderers

If you roll a 1 on the "Number Encountered" section of the Random Encounter Table, you can use one of these characters instead. They might also be useful as replacement PCs.

1d20	Name	Description
1	Banjat Garangabal	Prospector. Shoots first, questions the wounded. Good gear, pickaxe.
2	Loops	Abseil ferry owner. Something at the top has gone wrong. Worried.
3	Presindiligon	Eugenicist. Has measuring calipers and books. Wants samples, plans.
4	Xort	Survivor of robbed caravan. Silk robes, dagger, ritual brands. Callous.
5	Fren Jenss	Mad. Says he found a way out. Actually a pit. Will push you in.
6	Gamspender	Old fighter, guard. Fleeing a disaster he caused. Guilty, paranoid.
7	Joal	Traveling cave-singer. Sings creatures to sleep for a fee. Ethereal.
8	Sister Sister	Undernun. Roving angel of silver-sword deliverance. Very polite.
9	Wospot	Lost, desperate for attention. No useful skills but very obedient.
10	Lord Spasbar	Exiled noble, pompous, magical, ambitious. Wants to rule again.
11	Kar-kar Bite You	Bone-seller. Uncanny knack for finding lost things. Worm fingers.
12	Mawlostana	Assassin. Bitter, ungrateful. Wounded in the leg, trying to make it home.
13	The Fink	Sly climber and nest-thief. A bit crazed. Tittering laugh, three teeth.
14	Howittler Beans	Cannibal connoisseur. Bargains for bits of you. Rich but fast and mean.
15	Nork	Charming, incongruous. How did someone get here? Exiled cave-mage.
16	Cup Face	Body to die for. Face like flesh landslide. Hunting for food. Mute.
17	Ipsibibibibipal	Scout. Ate something, became half-real. Exists through right eye only.
18	Ahr	Filth prophet. Will speak of next random encounter/hex in vague terms.
19	Ole Long Johnson	Makes ladders from anything. Loves ladders, heights, feathers, socks.
20	Relibert	Plant-finder, potion-maker, wandering herbalist, wise trickster.

Efflam Mercier

Things Volume-Folk Know

1. Major features in their own hex (including their Holding).
2. The approximate content of adjacent hexes.

Names

Did you know that Veins of the Earth has a table of names? VotE pg. 278.

OSR: Kidnap the Archpriest Megapost

I wrote a heist module. It's the first RPG-related thing I've published for money. You can buy it here.
 
The print version is now on sale.

Why?
People seemed to want OSR-type heist modules, but I couldn't find any really excellent examples. Some modules had diplomacy, some had stealth, and some had burglary, but nothing seemed to put it all together in one really compelling and easy-to-use package. This is my attempt.

Much like my first (free!) module, Tomb of the Serpent Kings, I don't think Kidnap the Archpriest is revolutionary... but that was never the intent. I just wanted to make a good, solid, thoroughly tested module that was fun to run, cheap to print, and easy to adapt. I also wanted to include some tools for designing your own heists. They might not be useful for experienced GMs, but when I was first starting out in this hobby, I'd have loved to have read a module like this.

Inspiration
Heist films, of course. The Oceans movies. The Italian Job. All the classics.

The module is based on a few historical events. In 653, Pope Martin I was kidnapped by the Byzantine Emperor Constans II over a doctrinal dispute. In 692, Pope Sergius I was very nearly kidnapped as well, but was saved by a popular uprising, botched diplomacy, and an unfortunate war. The Castle of St. Logan in this module is based on the Castel St. Angelo, although the interior layout was altered significantly.

Art
Luka Rejec did the art. I had a remarkable number of people work on the maps, but Luka really went above and beyond to produces these pieces. They are all gorgeous.

Isaac Bacterian
Agent of His Dread Majesty

Layout
This module wouldn't exist without David Shugars. That man is bottled patience. I'm not very good at the whole "turning words into a usable document" thing, but he really, really is. I can't count how many times I asked him for impossible things and he delivered.

A heist module lives and dies by its layout and usability. Playtesting helped, but David spun that raw information into a sensible, usable, and consistent format.

Reviews
1. I sent the mostly complete module off to Bryce Lynch, of tenfootpole fame, for a final round of comments. After an enormous amount of helpful advice and editing, Bryce finally said,

"And that all leads me to this, the second highest praise I can give: This is as good as it can be, in an obvious way. It meets expectations. I don't think you've broken new ground, the way, for example, the first one page dungeons did. But that's not a criticism. This is a good adventure. I would not feel ripped off if I purchased it."

-Bryce Lynch

 And if you know how he writes... that's not bad at all. I'll take it.

2. ktrey parker also reviewed the module. The whole article is worth a read; it covers the contents and intent very well.

I’ve always been interested in options for play that do not involve the conventional D&D graph-paper flow-chart experience, but this module seemed a bit ambitious. Could a tutorial be produced that provides the necessary tools to run a successful, entertaining, and exciting adventure without the typical focus on combat encounters and character sheet-bound challenges?

After pawing over KtA a few times, I’m pleased to say it does an admirable job at providing these tools. [...]
Flavorful encounter tables are also provided to further furnish the GM with some interesting complications and situations. I really can’t see this module going the same way twice, which can seldom be said for more traditional site-based crawls.
-ktrey parker 

3. Ben Milton / Questing Beast has a video review here.

4. Nickoten has a detailed review here.

If this elevator pitch interests you, buy this module and actually run it, because it does all of these things well. You know that blissful wave of relief that comes when a player ask about some small detail that informs a pivotal game decision, you think “wait, maybe the book can answer this” and realize that only has the module anticipated and met this need for you, it’s made sure that the answer makes for as interesting a decision as possible? This book gave me that feeling over and over.

-Nickoten

Extras
Oorlof has made an "animated" map of where each NPC is each hour.

Final Notes
If you read this module I'd like to hear about it! Feel free to post links to play reports or reviews in the comments below.

OSR: The Inner Workings of Creation

Normally I'm against mapping cosmologies before I absolutely need to, but I want to write about creatures that live deep underground.

Diagram is not to scale.

The Surface contains perfectly normal Fantasy Feudalism. Dungeons, farms, castles. Plagues, wars, and taxes. Also, the bits of the ocean you can sail across and dive to without special equipment.

The Littoral zone is the start of the Veins of the Earth. Surface rules are bent here but not fully broken. Creatures here survive mostly on runoff and nutrients from the surface and may have even seen the sun. If the random encounter tables for this zone were a film, it'd be C.H.U.D.

The Profundal zone is an intermediate zone. Surface rules are broken; new rules are creeping in from below. Some creatures here rely on the surface, but most have no conception of a world above their own. If the random encounter tables here were a film it'd be Alien.

The Abyssal zone is the end of the Veins. The deepest points join up with Hell itself. Creatures here obey their own rules. Their chain of life is disconnected from the surface and the sun. If the random encounter tables here were a film it'd be Solaris.

Side Note: the hexcrawl I'm working on covers only the Littoral, Profundal, and Abyssal zones.

The Nightmare Seas are pockets of water trapped in the crust. Some are connected to the oceans. Some are isolated. Fish with strange upward-facing eyes and fish with no eyes at all. Colossal squid. Horrible things. Shimmering volcanic rifts and crustaceans of unusual size. Psychic whales and the falling forgotten dreams of surface creatures.

Hell is a vast network of plate-like caves and chasms and cities. It's real, and you can walk to it if you know the right path. Souls here are shriving their sins, or wandering, or drifting downwards to the Final Pit. Hell has outposts below every city (to catch the souls). If someone has died in a place, there is a tunnel to Hell below it, though the tunnel might only be as wide as a hair.

Below Hell, the Undersun. It moves through rock, slowly heating it, churning the engine of the world. A spiral orbit, eccentric, out of sync, aeons long. Roots of plants grow down, seeking the Undersun. Undersolar flares burst off and form volcanoes.

There is also an Undermoon whose orbit is even wilder and stranger. It bounces between the surface and the Inner World like a loose ball bearing in a turbine. Its passage causes earthquakes. It might be hollow and full of elves. If it bonks into the deepest part of the Veins you might be able to hitch a ride.

The Inner World is almost completely unknown. No surface soul returns from so near the Final Pit. Is it hollow? What could live down there, crushed by pressure and scoured by heat? Perhaps they ask the same questions of the surface, open to the pitiless sky and the eternal vacuum?

The Final Pit is oblivion. Some ecclesiastics think it is another kind of Hell. Some think it is far worse.

Imagining Depth

This isn't particularly useful for a game with a mythic underworld, Undersuns, dragons and all that, but I couldn't find any decent to-scale diagrams on the internet so I made my own. Let's say the rocky crust is 30km thick - a good solid value for most of the world, I think.

4 km down, water coming out of the rocks is ~45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit for the barbarian tribes). That's warm, but not deadly. You could learn to live down there. Some rock seams can get much hotter.

Every kilometre you descend, the water temperature rises 30 degrees Celsius. I've drawn a "sauna line" at 90 degrees Celcius (194 Fahrenheit) Below that, without special equipment, I can't imagine anyone living comfortably for any length of time. That means, give or take, that the maximum depth humans could safely visit is about 5.5 km. Below that, you'll boil.

I've included a to-scale diagram of the earth's crust (30km thick), with the a typical dungeon, the world's deepest cave, and the world's deepest mine marked to scale. Click to zoom in.

And just for reference, here's the radius of the earth compared to that 30km crust segment. That little grey bar at the top is the 30km crust.

On the other hand, this drop in Ellison's Cave, Georgia is a mere 180m from top to bottom. Seems plenty deep to me. 

OSR: Dragon Banks

Yellow dragons are Creation's greatest bankers. Silver dragons often try, and copper dragons often set up banks that deliberately fail, but yellow dragons have a true talent for finance. Dragons might be neurotic lizards the size of cargo ships but their neuroses make them excellent at risk assessment. Their cold and ageless perspective makes them good at speculation. Their obsessive hoarding drive focuses their intellect to a razor edge.

No one knows who taught them. But perhaps it happened like this...

Jaemin Kim

"Very nice hoard you have," she said, casually eyeing the enormous pile of gold.

The dragon rumbled. Not quite agreement, but not a threat either. A hoard, it seemed to imply, was never 'very nice'. It could always be larger.

"Would you like to increase it?"

This was familiar music to the dragon. It slowly opened one eye, like a curtain being pulled back across a vast fire-lit stage, and stared at her. "Speak," it said.

"Only if you swear not to eat me," she said, crossing her arms and trying to look impressive. It didn't work.

The dragon considered the idea. It hadn't planned on eating the prisoner. "Speak, and if you speak truth, I will not eat you." I could always throw her into the scorpion pit, it thought, or squish her with one claw. And she'll starve to death eventually. All the rest did.

"Well, uh, you see, all this gold you have... it isn't really doing anything," the woman continued.

"It is being my hoard," the dragon replied slowly, wearily. "That's what it's for."

"Right, but what if you could use this gold to make more gold?" 

"Are you an alchemist," the dragon said peevishly, "because the last alchemist I met..."

"I'm not an alchemist," she said, as the dragon continued.

"...and it turned all green and runny the next day..."

"I'm not an alchemist."

"...boiling oil, and they never found his head. Well, what are you then?"

"I work for a bank. Well, more accurately, my father owns a bank."

"What is... a bank?" the dragon asked, its giant orange-white eye staring at her, unblinking.

"A bank," the woman explained, "is a large secure building. People who wanted to protect their gold put it inside the bank. That way, they can't be robbed or accidentally lose their wealth. The bank keeps very good records and always knows how much a person deposits."

"Like tribute," the dragon said. It understood tribute. People gave it gold all the time, usually to prevent the dragon from ransacking their cities. Sometimes people too, which is how he'd ended up with this prisoner. She was talking a lot more than the usual prisoners and screaming a lot less. This intrigued him.

"Not... quite. You see, the bank gives them the gold back if they ask."

"Gives it... back."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it's their gold." She could see the dragon was struggling with the idea. "But don't worry. Most of the time the gold doesn't leave the bank."

"How?"

"If two people are using the bank, and one wants to pay the other, they can go to the bank and say, 'give this man ten gold coins'. The bank could hand the first man ten gold coins, and he could hand it to the second man, and the second man could hand it back to the bank. Or..."

"Or the bank could just say it has been done and... move the gold from one pile to another. Cunning. Yes, I see," the dragon said. 

"Except there aren't really piles of gold," the  woman said.

"What?"

This was the part the woman was worried about. She had the dragon's full attention now. It was like sitting in front of a loaded ballista. "Because," she said carefully, "the bank didn't really keep the money. It kept some and gave the rest out as a loan."

"What is... a loan?" the dragon asked. It liked the sound of the word. A. Loan. Alone. As in 'desolated and abandoned.' It had a pleasant ring to it.

"Imagine someone needs money to build a flour mill," the woman explained. "It takes a lot of money to start, but once it gets going the mill produces a steady stream of flour, and therefore gold. But without the starting funds it never gets built. So this person goes to a bank and says, 'If you give me ten gold pieces today, in a year's time, I will give you fifteen gold pieces back.' "

"And... people do?" the dragon said, incredulous. 

"All the time."

"What if they don't? What if the person who took the loan spends the money on... human things. Pants," it said, grasping for something a human could possible desire. "And does not build the mill? Your bank looks very foolish then."

"Well, perhaps," the woman said carefully, "but to get this loan, the mill-builder had to give the bank more than his word. He also promised to give the bank his house or his treasures if he didn't pay back the loan. So if he fails to pay, the bank takes his house or his treasures or his children and sells them. And," she said hastily, "that is worth more than the loan."

"So... the bank wants people to fail?"

"Not quite. I can take time to sell houses. People can vanish. There are sometimes losses. It's tidier if the loan is repaid, but the bank makes money either way."

The dragon closed its eye. The woman could hear it thinking. It sounded like a distant thunderstorm. After ten long minutes it opened its eye again, and this time it glowed with inner fire.

"How much gold is in your bank?" it asked.

"About one hundred thousand gold pieces," she said. The dragon's nostrils flared. 

"One hundred thousand! A mighty hoard In one convenient building?"

"Oh no. Most of the money is loaned or invested."

"Ah," the dragon said, "more pants." It understood vestments.

"Not... quite. You remember the mill?"

The dragon, who could remember when humans were hairy apes that fell out of trees a lot, considered a sharp reply, then decided it had been a long enough day. "Yes," it said.

"Well, if the bank knew that the mill would make money, it could avoid the entire loan business and build the mill itself, or pay someone to do it. If the bank invested ten gold pieces it could make back fifty in a few years, easily. More profitable than a loan."

"But what if someone burns the mill?" the dragon said. It had burned a lot of mills. They made a satisfying fluttering sound and sometimes exploded. 

"Wars are always a problem, it's true. But the bank can pay mercenaries and make loans to kings and try to keep the peace. Or..."

"Or?" the dragon asked.

"Well, if the bank was a dragon, then anyone who who wanted to burn the dragon's mills or tried to rob the dragon's bank would probably reconsider."

The gears inside the dragon's mind stopped. Heavy counterweights of thought shifted and clunked into new grooves. Unused tracts of neurons fired into life with startling speed. Dragons had never needed to evolve. There aren't many things that can pressure an immortal reincarnating lizard-god from the dawn of creation. But they could adapt very, very quickly when they needed to.

"You could have two hoards," the woman was saying. "A private hoard with the finest gold pieces, just for you, and the bank-hoard, your reserves. You could build a great banking-house in every city. And..."

"The humans... would do this voluntarily?"

"Yes. At first it would be a sort of tribute, but when everyone realizes the benefits they will rush to give you their gold."

"But... if a bank has all this money, why is the bank not a king?" the dragon asked slowly. It already had the shape of the answer in its mind.

"Because kings die all the time. The bank stays. Sometimes, the bank can even chose the king."

This matched the dragon's expectations. It had eaten a lot of kings over the centuries, usually after a proclamation went out to the tune of, 'Slay the dragon and win a princess.' Kings always seemed to want money. Loans. It could give them a loan. And if they didn't pay it could eat them... and everyone would think it was right and proper.

"How... do we begin?" the dragon said carefully, slowly rising from its enormous treasure hoard. It shook a small avalanche of gold from its wings.

Later that afternoon, the dragon landed on the roof of the largest bank in the nearby city. The woman hopped off one scaly arm, climbed into the building, and politely informed her father that he would need to take an early retirement. The dragon spent the first few days memorizing the ledgers, fixing inconsistencies, and tracking down defaulters and deadbeats. A few people took all their money out of the bank and fled; the dragon let them go. After a week, things returned to normal. After a month, the bank and the city were flourishing.

Bastien Lecouffe Deharme

The First National Dragon Bank

The default bank in my setting (in the county of Pellamy) is owned by Sicorax the Mercantile (formerly Sicorax the Merciless). All major cities in the county (Elderstone, Boyer, etc.) have a banking house with the dragon's shield on it. Sicorax lives somewhere up in the mountains and hasn't been seen for decades. Her children (Melsworth, Korbal, and Zut) are more active, and serve as roving auditors. They sometimes conduct customer satisfaction surveys and oddly enough, everyone surveyed by a yellow dragon the size of an aeroplane reports complete satisfaction.

Like all yellow dragons, Sicorax and her brood have an affinity for stone. They can swim through it like a fish swims through water, appearing stealthily and suddenly in the middle of cities or from bare stone cliffs. They can also vomit stone cannonballs at tremendous speed. If you are handed a carved stone sphere covered in scales, you have been marked by the Dragon Bank. Pay up or expect a cannonball through your window.

Such threats are rarely needed. The Dragon Bank is prosperous, if a touch ungenerous. Other banks offer better rates and more polite service, but none can match the Dragon Bank's deep reserves and deeper security. Adventurers and the newly enriched are encouraged to bank their gold. The sudden injection of thousands of gold pieces into a limited economy can cause chaos; the Dragon Bank likes things tidy and quietly prosperous.

Each account comes with a unique brass identity card. The card allows the bearer to draw funds from any Dragon Bank house. Provisions for next-of-kin access or distribution after death are available for a small fee. Everything at the Dragon Bank has a small fee: coin counting, coin washing, jewelry smelting, special storage for magical items, deposits over a certain amount, deposits under a certain amount, withdrawals on days of the week ending in "y", etc, etc, etc. 

The Dragon Bank hires unusual people for unusual tasks. Tracking down ghost currency. Espionage. Magical item retrieval. They can even loan you Adventure Capital to fund your next mission.

OSR: Antlings

Another race for my underground hexcrawl based on Veins of the Earth. They are my replacement for the Gnonmen.

Joshua Kubit

Major Features

-Human-sized ants.

-Centuar-like. Walking on 4 legs, manipulating things with two arms.

-Sighted, but with a vivid sense of smell and touch

-Secretive and clandestine

-On a mission

Antlings have a complex history.

On the surface, they were a sort of barbarian curiosity, like certain swamp-dwelling heathen tribes, until missionaries and merchants managed to wedge them into the feudal system. Each ant-hill became a "village" or "city", with a ruler paying tithes and sending armies in support of the larger feudal structure. Antlings became perfectly acceptable feudal citizens. Isolated, reclusive, and strange, but part of feudal society nonetheless. 

Inside, the Antlings have undergone a revolution.

Adrien Zumbihl

Souls and Virtues

Before adapting to the feudal heirarchy, Antlings had a very simple religion. Their Queen, and certain favoured Princesses, had immortal souls. All other ants did not. The Queen therefore needed to live a virtuous life in accordance with the Authority's laws; all other ants were merely extensions of her will, with no need to worry about salvation or morality on an individual basis. The very idea of individual responsibility was unthinkable; Antlings existed only in relation to their Queen, in a state of obedient ignorance.

Prolonged contact with the outside world shattered this ideal state. Official visitors from the Church were pleased to find the Authority's laws were already practiced. They were baffled to find that most Antlings had no idea they had souls, and had taken no steps to ensure their own salvation. Furious ideological battles left martyrs on both sides, but most Antlings were convinced. They overthrew their former Queens, established new dynasties, and, in a few short years, moved from a fully collectivized to a semi-individualized society. The details of this bloody revolution were kept from the outside world. As long as taxes kept flowing, few Barons were inclined to look into the affairs of their Antling subjects.

The Philosophical Mine

Lobochello, the famous Antling philosopher and preacher, reasoned thus.

1. Many Antlings, before the Revolution, were deceived into acting against the Authority's laws.

2. Their punishment is damnation in the fires of Hell.

3. Since they were not instructed by the Church, they may never leave Hell or find Salvation.

4. It is therefore the responsibility of all living Antlings to rescue their damned ancestors.

The presence of Antlings in Hell has been confirmed by necromancers and the Church. Some villages have elected to try prayer and rituals to draw their unfortunate ancestors out of the flames. Some send specially prepared Antlings to Hell deliberately to guide lost souls on their proper path.

But some have chosen another, safer, more direct method. They are digging tunnels into Hell. It's not far. 

The Antlings reason that the task is their penance and holy duty. They will rescue their ancestors from Hell by force if necessary. The Authority cannot, they believe, prevent such a selfless and merciful mission. What could be more noble than rescuing those damned by accident and trickery rather than free choice?

Encountering the Antlings

A work crew with picks and buckets breaks into your tunnel. They mill around in confusion, feelers waving frantically. "Hello Ma'm,", one of them says nervously, "a fine morning."

Note: Antlings assume everyone is female until corrected. 

Or, you hear hymn-singing in the distance. A small group of Antlings is on the move, mapping the tunnels ahead or carrying a letter to some other part of the Veins.

Antlings can smell you before they see you, but they probably can't tell what you are by smell alone. Their eyesight is better than you'd expect. The old "wear a dead ant on your head" trick isn't going to fool anyone. They are new to the Veins. They are innocent but not idiotic. They will assume you mean what you say. If you openly blaspheme or curse they will start to mutter and might turn on you.

mag3llan

Ant-Speak

Surprisingly fluid and comprehensible. There's a slight buzz and they have trouble with "p"s, but if you ignore the ever-churning mouthparts it's just an accent. 

Antling workers are diligently educated. They speak clearly and carefully. Their diplomats are as sly and twisted as anyone else on the surface. All Antlings can read and write. 

Ant-Names

Simple and direct. Names are relatively new to their culture.
Personal: Alice, Matilda, Agnes, Margaret, Joan, Isabella, Emma, Beatrice, Mabel, Cecilia.

Or virtues: Diligence, Prudence, Faith, Charity, Wisdom, Providence, Honesty.

Their warriors append the most impressive or personally significant battles to their names: Alice 14-Goblins-At-Black-Pass, Annie Basilisk-In-The-Upper-Galleries.

So A Giant Ant Is Talking To You...

It wants to figure out who you are and what you are doing and if you can be safely ignored. The Antlings are on a mission. Distractions are not helpful.

But Antlings are also curious and easily distracted. They know the Veins are a hostile environment and they want to learn more about them. They want maps and stories.

If thing seem to be escalating, the Antlings will retreat and call for a diplomat.

So A Giant Ant In A Silk Hat Is Talking To You...

Antling diplomats are polite and efficient. They believe everyone is either reasonable (like them) or insane (like... most of the people they've encountered in the Veins).

The diplomats negotiate trades and missions. They will offer rewards, sign contracts, and generally act like reasonable surface-dwellers negotiating with underground lunatics. They believe in imposing order by example. If they act properly, the rest of the world will fall into line.

If you prove useful or interesting, and you are capable of behaving like a civilized person, you may be invited into the Antling warrens.

Personalities

Nervous/Angry Antling
1. Torso drawn up to full height. Arms slowly flexing, legs springing.
2. Lungs inflating and deflating rapidly. Faint whistling sound.
3. Rubbing claw fingers together, like they are sharpening a knife.
4. Short upward flicks of the antennae.

Happy Antling
1. Torso lowered, like they are slightly hunched.
2. Antennae folded flat.
3. Rhythmic mouthpart movements, like they are playing scales on a piano.
4. Ignoring your personal space to smell you better.

Comfortable/Curious Antling
1. Touching you idly with its antennae.
2. Half-sitting on its legs.

3. Antennae folded flat, but moving in little circles at the tips.
4. Full-torso wiggles.

The Hive

From the top down, it's a fortress. A buried castle protecting a buried city.Very few Antling cities have ever been conquered by surface-dwelling races without the aid of rival Antlings or a diverted river. Armies go around them.

Inside the fortress-gates and layers of false defenses, the Antlings have underground farms full of Myconids. They also farm on the surface and store grain and timber in vast halls. When famine strikes, desperate villagers sometimes raid Antlings nests. Thieves are more successful than invaders. Antlings don't like eating people but they will happily feed corpses to their fungus-piles.

Below the warehouses and barracks, the locked and guarded egg-rooms and treasure halls are kept in spotless order. Below them, the Queen and her court lead quiet, well-ordered lives. They have little time for decadence, but poetry and the trappings of feudal nobility still amuse them. Their position is maintained by common assent; the Queen is closer to the Doge of Venice than a true monarch. Not quite an elected monarchy, but definitely a nervous monarchy.

Deeper still are the iron mines and secret storehouses, and the prisons, where Royalists languish and strange things howl in the dark. There are egg-rooms and warehouses here too, but small ones, disposable ones.

The Front is below them, behind a second layer of fortress walls and thick gates. The Philosophical Mine. The tunnel into Hell.

You can't dig straight down. The Veins get in the way, but they also save time. Every step downwards is a step you don't have to carve. Unfortunately, everything virtually everything in the Veins wants to kill, devour, infect, or enslave the Antlings. Their mine is a warrior mine, an expedition into enemy territory.

Ant Caves

Militaristic. The Antlings have waged underground warfare for centuries. They know how to build a fort and fight for territory. They don't like mentioning this to surface-dwellers. Barons tend to get excited in all the wrong ways when they discover their subjects can fight.

A typical outpost contains three small soldier ants, a worker, and one siege ant. In the event of an attack the worker will flee to a larger fortress and bring reinforcements. The outpost is a small set of rooms carved into the rock with at least one hidden exit. All rooms have spear-holes. There will be a set of beds, a table, some food, a few trinkets, a shrine, and several weapons.

Larger fortresses are deliberately maze-like to trap and confuse invaders. Most have false keeps or command posts; invaders find themselves fighting to reach an empty room or a killing square. Conventional traps and plenty of secret murder-holes. False maps and false prisoners. There are chapels and priests and regular services too. Some priests aren't Antlings; the one respectable profession for an outsider in an Antling colony is preaching and religious labour.

Antlings advance cave by cave, chamber by chamber, building barricades and solid walls whenever possible. Large chambers are sometimes filled with poison gas and sealed; Antlings have no use for 50' ceilings. Their art is portable. Architecture isn't art.

Cory Trego-Erdner

Politics, Plots, and Plans

The PCs are unlikely to meet fairer or more focused people in the Veins. This doesn't mean Antlings are charitable or foolish, but they will cut a fair deal and they believe in virtues beyond the next meal. In the Veins, this is an anomaly.

Veins-adapted PCs are useful to the Antlings. They will try and hire the PCs as mercenaries, explorers, spies, or assassins. They will be paid. They might even get medals.

Current Plots

1. There are dragons somewhere nearby. Discuss. Find out how many and if they know about the Antlings. Reveal nothing.

2. There is something in the depths of the Fungid Valley. A creature living in a shell of swords and armour. We would very much like the swords and armour. Yes. Please kill it for us.

3. We sent a princess to visit the Olm on a diplomatic mission but she disappeared. Find her, or find out what happened to her.

4. They say the Mind Flayers come from an underground sea. Find out if they know how to get deeper in the Veins. We also hear they have machines that swim through rock. Find one for us.

5. Deliver this ultimatum to the King of the Ghouls of Illiam and then wait for a response.

6. We found a chasm. Map it for us.

7. This Ghoul-Baron has kidnapped several workers. Rescue them and kill him. Make it look like someone else did it. The more spectacular and intimidating the better.

8. Everyone seems to get very excited when we show them this rock (a piece of Dvergrite). Find out why.

9. Something (a Trogloraptor) keeps stealing our children. It is very, very stealthy. Track it and kill it.

10. We have heard rumours of strange creatures from deep underground (the Archaeans). Can you make an introduction? What do they want? Can we trade with them?

Weta Workshop

Ants and Gender

All the ants the PCs are likely to meet will be female. Feudal gender conventions fling up their hands in despair. Ants aren't bothered by this. Male ants are rare, weird, and dumb. They aren't really part of the colony. They're a sort of temporary genetic courier. They arrive from other colonies and cluster around the Queen, proving their worth in elaborate jousts and deadly contests. It's all very amusing to the spectators.

According to the Church, devout Antling workers and soldiers are blessed with the gift of perpetual virginity, an extra mark in their favour. Theologians, many of whom have never met an Antling or bothered to research their social structure, write long essays claiming Antling colonies are living exemplars of grace. In their minds, a colony is a working and peaceful nunnery. They miss the truth by a wide margin.

For a typical Antling, attracting a male is a sign of scandalous prestige, like owning a pet tiger or a rocket launcher. "Look at me," they say, "I'm like a Queen. I've got my own drone and he's very nice, even if he is a mammal." Having one is enough; physical difficulties aside, the Antlings have no reason to fool around with anyone. Some particularly bold Antlings in isolated fortresses have even purchased slaves from the Drow or memories of romance from the Illithids. It's a sin, but the Antlings are trying to go to Hell anyway...

How Do The Antlings See You?

To an Antling, a human is:
-tall but narrow
-smelly
-covered in hair and long bendy squishy limbs
-squishy all over
-tiny teeth
-a weird fat face lump (nose) and two more on the side (ears)

Humans can stand very still if they want to. They are warm and very squishy. You have to be careful not to puncture them. They look like accident victims; no shell, just flesh and organs. Like Antlings, they have 3 body segments: a lower bit where they make smells, a middle squishy bit, and a head bit. They are all about the same size but the male ones have different lumps and more hair. They can't make smells on purpose but they make accidental smells all the time. Their jaws are tiny and they have to work really hard to eat things.

In human lands, every human female has a human male, and they are all Queens, but their colonies are very small because they only lay one egg at a time and their children are immensely stupid. The humans have to fight all the time to find out which Queen is in charge. She is called The King and she lives far away.

Melvyn Yeo. Surprisngly difficult to find art of ant spiders.

Ant Assassins

In the distant past, before Antlings learned how to think and use tools, there were creatures that preyed on them by mimicking their behaviors. The most famous and terrible were the Spider Ants, an ancient clan of predatory mimics. Rationality evolved faster than the mimics; they were trapped, hunted, and eventually domesticated.

Spider Ants are giant stick-limbed spiders with eyes like car headlights. From a distance they look just like Antlings. That's the point. They wear Antling uniforms and march in formation. If the column is ambushed, the mimic drops its disguise and behaves in ways the ambushers did not expect. It climbs, leaps, poisons, chases, and terrifies. It has dagger-fangs and active camouflage. It's also as smart as a person; after the Revolution, Spider Ants were also found to have souls, and are equal partners in the Philosophical Mine. They are widely feared and respected as instructors. By ancient law they cannot feed on living Antlings, so they feast on the fresh dead and unwanted prisoners. Particularly interesting prisoners might be used in training demonstrations.

Treasures and Trade Goods

1. Gold. The Antlings aren't rich but they will pay in good solid coin. They will also let you bank gold with them.

2. Food. The main draw. Everyone wants access to the fabled riches of the Antling storehouses and their stable farming complexes. Antlings will serve a proper meal, with real butter and everything, if they like you. Antling rations restore 1 additional HP.

3. Soldiers. Typically 4 soldier ants and 1 worker, armed and equipped for combat in the Veins. The price varies. Ants will accept suicide missions, but only if the result serves the Colony and their overall goal.

4. Magic. Antlings wizards are very dutiful and well-tutored. They can perform conventional magic from the surface and might be willing to sell or buy magic items.

5. Chitin Armour. Lighter than leather but as strong as chain. It also floats slightly.

6. Surface Comforts. They will never, ever allow you into the main colony. They can't take the risk. But they will carry a letter or an item to the surface for you and send it with a pilgrim or a trade caravan. They will even try to deliver a response.