Inadvisable Decisions (GLΔG)

 This is not an exhaustive list.

INADVISABLE DECISIONS

𝚫 - Noticing the Problem

Point a powerful telescope at the darkness between the stars, become aware that it moves. 

You can now learn the Basic Alienist Deltas. 

BASIC

𝚫 - Basic Preparations

Find a way to obscure your soul from esoteric observation. The classical answer is a lead helmet that locks shut around your head and neck, but that only works while you’re wearing it. 

Creatures that “see” you via the presence of your soul will not be able to see you. This won’t help with grues - they know you’re there, but the other things you encounter along the path might not. 

𝚫 - Grue Theory

Establish a cogent theory on what grues actually are. Write it down. If you lose your theory, find evidence that disproves it, or forget your theory, start again.

If a grue has a choice between eating you and eating somebody else, they won’t choose you. This might save your life. If there’s no other options, they’ll happily eat you.

You can now also learn the Theoretical Alienist Deltas

𝚫 - Opening the Mind

Lose your allegiance to any nation, find any faith hollow and papery, abandon your pride, forget your hometown, forget the faces of your parents. Put a hole in your skull, literally or metaphorically. 

You’re immune to charm effects of all sorts (including propaganda) - you can sense reality decay like  a bad smell. Most of the world smells pretty foul. 

You can now also learn the Connective Alienist Deltas. 

𝚫 - Mouth with No Tongue

Don’t worry, it’s a poetic term. Create or find aperture (a door, perhaps) that opens into true darkness. If the aperture is ever closed permanently, start again. 

The image of the aperture calls to you in your dreams - it beckons you enter. Things thrown into it are gone forever, totally unrecoverable.

You can now also learn the Invocative Alienist Deltas. 

𝚫 - Blind Corner 

Create a space where there is no possibility of light entering, scribe it with glyphs in your own blood, and keep it perfectly dark for a year and a day. If light ever gets in, start again. 

You can move around totally dark spaces as if you could see, if given a stationary hour to sense out the space’s dimensions and properties. 

You can now also learn the Geometric Alienist Deltas. 

THEORETICAL 

𝚫 - Collapse Projections

Complete three of: Watch something mechanical come apart violently, watch a corpse rot for a week, watch a lost person go the wrong way, watch a violent act, or watch something important break. If you turn away, interrupt or forget, start again. 

You can tell exactly when something physical that you can see is going to break, fail, stop working, come apart or become useless. This borders on the precognitive. Future sight is never perfect and circumstances can change. 

𝚫 - Jade Box

Lose your sense of wonder and drive a wolfram nail into your head. If you get it back or lose the nail, start again. 

Your mind can’t be read. If people try, they immediately envision their worst memories and also probably vomit. You can’t be possessed or mind-controlled - anyone trying to inhabit your psyche finds it somewhat like trying to inhabit a paper-shredder. 

𝚫 - Expert Preparations

Tear your soul out of your head without dying. Store it somewhere safe. If it’s ever destroyed, die. 

Now even grues can’t tell you’re there. Creatures that track by soul (and other things, like scries and detection magic) can’t find you. You could be classed as a lich now. The death of your body is no longer necessarily the death of your self. You’ll need another way to get a new body if you lose this one, however. 

𝚫 - Colourless Arguments

Read a library’s worth of history, mathematics, statistics, politics, theology, philosophy and esoterica. Stare into true darkness for a week - if you blink, start again.  

By talking to someone calmly, you can destroy their trust in institutions, traditions, people or systems, at a rate of one per hour. These wounds can be healed by therapy or time, but they immediately reopen if the victim sets eyes on you again. 

𝚫 - Ghost Town 

Describe a blasphemous glyph in eight animal bodies (at least one of which once had a soul), in a location below sea-level, that has never been touched by sunlight. If sunlight ever touches the glyph, or if the glyph is destroyed, start again. 

You place local reality partially into [ ]. For 500 metres in all directions from the glyph, animals cannot grow properly, plants die quickly, light has a greasy feeling, nobody can recognise you if you don’t want them to, reaction and morale rolls suffer a malus of 4, fire fails to produce proper heat, water doesn’t slake thirst, metal rusts quickly, and shadows are darker than normally possible.

You can expand the Ghost Town 1d6*50 metres by adding another formerly soul-inhabited body to the glyph. 

In this place, Advanced Theoretical Work is possible. 

CONNECTIVE 

𝚫 - Tenant

Drink a pint of blood. Put a hole in your digestive system in a place where there’s a straight line to the night sky. Fall asleep, if you can. If you awake before dawn, start again. 

Your entrails are now inhabited. Poisons you consume will never reach you, but you must eat double rations for yourself and your occupant. You will never be harmed by anything you put down your throat. Your spit gives people a sickness that causes them to be pallid and weak for months. 

𝚫 - Incursion Vector 

Put a hole in one of your hands with a wolfram spike, then let it heal over. Then do it again. Then do it again. Then do it again, but leave the spike in this time. If it’s removed, start again. 

Your muscles are inhabited. Contact is established. You can let the Unrestrained Force flow through you whenever you want - while you do so, you are personally as strong as a piece of industrial machinery, tearing through walls and bending steel with your bare hands. You can stop bullets by running into them and jump very high (though you’re not necessarily able to land any safer). 

Absolute silence and focus is required while letting the Force flow through you. You have to take 10 minutes to re-suppress the connection. 

If you break focus or let your mind wander (i.e., plan too much IC or OOC) it takes its chance and hits you like a train crash. If you survive the result, you’ll wish you hadn’t. 

𝚫 - Fantasma Enamorado 

Look at your reflection until you don’t recognise it. Figure out a way to put a hole in it you can see through. If the mirror breaks, start again. 

Your reflection is inhabited. It can move independently of you inside mirrors, and exists physically on the Umbral Plane. It stares in a bright-eyed sanpaku way with somebody else’s eyes. It can interact with the intangible, and when you have something in your hands in a reflection, it does too on the other side - strangle a spirit with piano wire or stab a ghost to death. 

It looks right at you whenever it can. 

𝚫 - Mind Hovel 

Sit in a small dark room alone for a week without dying of thirst or hunger. Eat a piece of wolfram. If you leave the room or see any light during the week, start again. Afterwards, consider the memory of sitting in the room. 

That memory is inhabited. Whenever you consider the memory, you can “physically” move around inside it. When considering the memory you appear to all outward examination to be dead. Nobody will move you from where you are while “dead”, even if they otherwise would and should. While “dead” you have no need of food or water. 

You can store thoughts, spells, memories, ideas and beliefs inside the Mind Hovel for safekeeping. They can’t be harmed there, but while they’re inside, you forget about them. 

𝚫 - Black Blot 

Dig a straight hole from sea-level, down to a place that sunlight has never touched, in one night. At the bottom of the hole, bury a complicated mechanism, a full skeleton, and enough money that it hurts to let it go. Then cover the hole up. If sunlight ever touches the bottom of the hole, start again. 

Target a complicated system you can explain in full detail, such as an engine or a financial trust. Illustrate a complicated diagram, then soak it completely in ink or soot such that it can no longer be read. Put a hole in the diagram. The effects of entropy on this system will be maximised - parts will rust hastily, contracts will become unreadable, agreements will fail, joints will break, systems will spin into uselessness. 

Your mind is a complicated system. 

Put a hole in it - in this state, Advanced Connective Work is possible.

INVOCATIVE

𝚫 - The Millstone 

Break one of your limbs and let it heal wrong. Get a bone from a downtrodden worker as a lure. If conditions in that worker’s profession materially improve, or the profession ceases to be, start again. 

With the lure, and forty pounds of salt, summon the Millstone. It only approaches those with poorly healed wounds or damaged limbs - it is bizarrely skittish. 

It is a grinding feeling, a persistent sound, a tiny point of distorted space sliding over itself. Anything you throw into the Millstone is immediately rendered into a fine powder which maintains the thing’s original properties (this includes, say, water or chlorine gas). If you try to powder a living thing, the Millstone just eats it instead. Don’t wear a tie. 

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will wizen and twist and a limb will become incapable. 

𝚫 - The Opener of Ways

Stretch a pig around the frame of your Mouth with No Tongue without killing it. Nail it in place with wolfram. If the pig falls off, dies, or you can’t fit through it, start again. 

With 20 gallons of blood (any kind), you can transform your Mouth with No Tongue into the Opener of Ways. It looks like rainbow-coloured slime mold that grows and pulses and threatens to overspill the door. Walk through it, and it will take you wherever you desire. If you spill blood in its mouth (for that is what you pass through) it will consume you instantly. 

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will forget the places you remember. 

𝚫 - The Headless Oracle 

Develop a unique cocktail of chemical reagents. Find a way to extract memories from your own head - extract a memory of success to serve as a lure. If you remember what you forgot, start again. 

With the lure and sacrifice of the reagents, you can now draw the Headless Oracle through your Mouth with No Tongue. The part it will put through into the world is a slithering mass of ice-cold white tendrils. If you give it a decapitated head, it will slither into the neck and take a human shape. It will speak in the head’s voice and converse with you, acting with all the memories the head’s owner had until their death - even the repressed and forgotten ones. 

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will forget who you are. 

𝚫 - The Prince Deferred

Forge documents giving you a claim to something important but now destroyed, and have someone believe it. If anyone discovers your deception (and manages to report it), start again. 

With a crown of gold, and a dose of poison imbibed by yourself, you can summon the Prince Deferred through your Mouth with No Tongue. 

It has a humanoid shape locked in warped armour, and it talks. By god, it talks. It gives you 2d6 of its twisted, ashy bristles - they can be used like daggers or extremely shitty arrows. These bristles, when stabbed into a thinking creature, make them forget delusions until the bristle is removed - delusions like “mercy” or “law” or “borders” or “love” or “fear” or “ego” or “money”.  You choose the specific delusion.

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will forget the faces of your friends and family. 

𝚫 - The Intercessor

Enter a state of altered consciousness, via chemicals, meditation or concussion, as necessary. Blind one of your eyes, temporarily or otherwise. Stare at the dark moon of the world uninterrupted, without blinking, from sunset to midnight. If you blink or turn away, start again. 

Your Mouth with No Tongue will open up into an empty place the next time you visit it. Something there will speak with you. He knows many things, and used to see everything, but God made him blind. He will give you tasks. For each task you fulfil, he will answer a question to the best of his ability. After five tasks, he will consider you one of his own. 

With his patronage, Advanced Invocative Work is possible. 

GEOMETRIC

𝚫 - Idiot Waltz 

Leave a pair of shoes in your Blind Corner for a week, then put them on and go dancing. Go dancing with other people. Ignore what they say, and stand on their feet. Do the steps wrong on purpose. Listen to the silence above their heads. If you deign to notice anyone in any way before the sun comes up, start again. 

In your dreams, you learn a “dance” that lets you walk into corners and keep walking. The corners are infinitely deep and seem to narrow infinitely. You can stay inside as long as you keep moving. Don’t stop moving inside a corner or nobody will ever see you again. You can leave things hidden inside corners and come back to get them later, if you want. 

𝚫 - Dry Rot Instincts

Sleep inside your Blind Corner. Don’t wake up no matter what torturous images your brain provides you. If you wake up, in a cold sweat, saying her name again, start again. 

You can navigate unconventional spaces, fucked up portals, dangerous pocket dimensions and gravitational fuckups without danger. You have a sense when a massive collapse or natural disaster is about to strike your current location. You get extra saves against explosions, vehicle crashes or other things where survival is purely a case of luck. 

𝚫 - Sacrifer 

Inside your Blind Corner, produce a box with indestructible walls. Adamant would be easiest, but the spells to shape it broke a long time ago, so you’d need to find one. Place something you actually value inside the box. If you ever take it out, start again. If whatever box you made ever breaks, start again. 

The Sacrifer can contain literally anything. A raging spirit? An explosion? The name of a god? Sure, chuck it in. It won’t be able to get out. Nothing can. 

𝚫 - Blade of Disaster

Inside your Blind Corner, take a weapon and break it beyond use, then kill a thinking person with it without repairing it. 

This is now your Blade of Disaster. It gains one charge every time you use it as an implement of murder. You can expend a charge to make the Blade able to cleanly and harmlessly divide things it “cuts” for an hour, to make it able to cut light for an hour, or to make it extremely poisonous for an hour (as in, “someone else picking it up sickens and dies in minutes” poisonous.) Your Blade will never harm you unless you want it to. 

𝚫 - Broken Geometry 

Find a way to unmoor your Blind Corner from conventional reality. If reality notices and it is normalised, start again.

Your Blind Corner slowly expands, like a tumour, into a labyrinthine nightmare of dark passages. Every season it’s unmoored it gains 10d6 cubic metres of new space. The spaces that are present iterate - pillared halls lengthen and grow new, worse pillars, staircases gain pointless new flights, tunnels lengthen and narrow. Crossing it takes an inconsistent amount of time. You can navigate it perfectly. All teleportation, apportation and similar fails if trying to leave or enter it  - distance does not exist to be subverted. 

In this place, Advanced Geometric Work is possible. 

AND

𝚫 - The End

Be eaten by darkness.

Find oblivion. 

Gangs of Iskadar

 In the City of Cities, many people fall through the cracks. Aclas’ underworld is a mirror reflection of its society, like a puddle far deeper than you expect. The mobster of Aclas lives in a moonlit shadow of the world, with their own kings, priests, nations… 

Especially in Iskadar, City of Cities, where the continents meet and everyone in the world stares each other in the face.

1820 has been a bad year - perhaps the worst since 1808, when what was left of the volunteers and the expeditionary force came trudging home from the war in Zymech, missing most of themselves. 

A month or so ago, to rescue a man claiming to be a part of god, who had been “dead” in the form of a statue at the harbour bottom (a long and sordid story), the Adavoran navy has shelled the City - the first such attack in over a century. There’s panic in the air. Words like “total war”, “rationing”, “alcohol prohibition” and “divine retribution” are thrown around carelessly in the Senate.

It’s a good time to look out for oneself.

Iskadar is five or six cities stacked atop each other, a walled-city style architectural babel which goes beyond even the comprehension of its inhabitants. Down, underneath the mass, in the damp, in the coal-dust and the phoslamp glow, are the city’s Guts - and the Guts are gang territory. 

The criminals live a life of relative extravagance compared to the honest poor, but also ones of extreme danger. Sure, they can eat caviar instead of squid-ink noodles, but what good’s that when you’re fucking dead? 

Gangs work a little like Domains, except your numbers are counted in the tens instead of population in the hundreds, and you have access to the entire gang as goons, not just a percentage as levies. 

Instead of Law, you have Armaments, instead of Trade, you have Racket, instead of Temple, you have Reputation. 

Esoteric is now Fucked-Up - you’re mobsters, not academics.

“What kind of magic is this, Tony?” 

“Iunno, man, it’s… Fucked-Up.”

Gangs, unlike Domains, don’t make money - so you only get income if you have Racket, or you do Heists. I think Heists would be a big part of this game. 

Gangs garner Heat when they do a heist, a robbery, what have you. At the end of each season you lose [reputation] Heat. You have a… what, [Heat]-in-6 chance of the Iskadar City Watch trying to fucking get you each Season? I don’t know. This is the first draft. 

Picking a gang, you play all of its members. You, the player, are playing the gang, not a PC and their domain. The gang has a boss, but they’re just one face of the thing. The boss starts with the first level of a class for free, but any dipshit that gets 50XP can graduate from Level 0.

The Gangs of Iskadar 

1. Red Tooth - A big, nasty gang full of shitheads, punks, toughs and good old fashioned thugs. Famous for their custom vehicles - loud, plated, spiked and heavy. Originally a gang made up exclusively of Zarumaan immigrants and their families, they’ve expanded to include anyone who finds the idea of an autocar with a ram or a chain hidden inside your coat exciting
• Level 2: Armaments 1, Racket 2 (Mechanics and Scrap)
• Assets: Control over Hawthorne Autocar Works, a disused factory with attached garages, and the adjoining scrap yard. 15 customised autocars. One extremely armoured autohaul.
• The boss of the Red Tooth must be a Zarumaan human related to the previous boss, Vengen “Haunted” Ilmaar, who has “retired” - such as criminals in the Guts ever do. 
  
  
2. The House de Stroza - Once a house of the Verdaran peerage, they were exiled here for treason. They cling to the trappings of nobility, and their innermost family still occasionally receives invitations to attend Upper-City events, at private clubs frequented by Senators. Until last year, the don was Aldovico de Stroza, their 101-year-old patriarch, living on spite, extremely expensive longevity medicine, and gin. He was killed by a horrible malfunction (or assassination?) involving a piece of medical equipment at a warehouse on the docks. Every Stroza dresses in green when “on business”. 
• Level 2: Racket 1 (Smuggling), Reputation 2 (Old-Money Class) 
• Assets: A mansion on the docks and a theatre in the guts. 10 autocars. 
• The don (or dona) of the Strozas must be a Verdaran human with two siblings: Lauranne (psychotic, competent) and Piet (drunk, lethargic). Aldovico was their grandfather, their mother and father died in an airship crash. 
• Problem: Lauranne and Piet. 
  
  
3. Courtesan’s Union - Iskadar’s brothels are old and noble institutions (according to certain Iskans, at least), with some stretching back into centuries of continuous operation. As the Guts worsened, they banded together - mutual interest. Become a gang, or get taken over by one. They look after their own with famous efficiency: unpleasant guests turn up dead in canals days later with silk stockings tied round their necks. 
• Level 2: Racket 2 (Brothels), Reputation 2 (Guess Why)
• Assets: A string of sixteen brothels throughout the Guts, the most famous of which is the Kind Attention, an establishment that clears the threshold for “classy”. 4 autocars. 
• Any kind of person could be head of the Union. It’s likely they have professional experience in the field, as well. 
  
  
4. The Pulps - They’re named after the disused pulp-mill next to Mud Canal where they hide out. A broad collection of ex-war-wizards, failed mage-graduates and dropout apprentices (of the wizards who use Iskadar to hide from their manifold crimes). They’re funded by a rich collector called Ialanna Merce, for no clear reason save that she seems to find them funny. 
• Level 1: Racket 1 (Cheap Magic), Fucked-Up 1 (Shitty Wizards) 
• Assets: Their fortified pulp-mill, and definitely the best grasp on the actual mechanisms of magic among anyone on the list. Also, the… “patronage” of the Upper-City bigshot. 2 autocars. 
• The boss of the Pulps must be a wizard. They won’t be led by some fuckin’ no-spark mundane jagoff. 
• Problem: Whoever runs the Pulps must deal with Mosca and the Kookaburra, two former members of the outfit who were kicked out and want to run it themselves. Mosca’s a (highly, highly illegal) biomancer, albeit a very polite one, and the Kookaburra is a complete asshole who is classed as a limimancer (ooze wizard). 
  
  
5. The Starving Rats - A gang of snarling, hungry shitheads who have a decent claim to being the oldest gang in the City. The Rats were (technically) founded by “Starving Sveya”, the so-called ‘Queen of Iskadar’. She’s long dead, but the sons and daughters of her scum are still around. Their usual haunts are Salvaro Bridge and the Battery Tent Village far under it, the narrow switchbacks of the Snickets, and the city sump at Gin Tip. They’re in with the spirits of the City, most especially the awful little creature referred to as the Vermin Supreme. 
• Level 1: Armaments 1 (Stolen Guns and Bad Manners), Fucked-Up 1 (Spirit Favour)
• Assets: Contacts among the homeless people of the city, 
• The Rats would prefer to be led by a speaker, a sworn or a fighter - someone who can deal with spirits, or someone tough, or maybe even both.
  
  
6. The Disciples of the Stilled Tongue - Exiled here from the isle of Uvar, famous for its hundred cults, after choosing the wrong side in an intercultinental struggle. They are, to be clear, a cult - a mystic one, in the “union with the cosmos sense”. They started doing crime to get capital to buy more psychotropic drugs. Every member of the cult is magically voiceless, and in exchange, has short-range telepathy (it’s not that much better than speaking, but at least it’s unaffected by language barriers).  
• Level 1: Racket 1 (Psychotropics), Fucked-Up 1 (Telepathy) 
• Assets: A secret sanctum-sanctorum that apparently allows their members to astrally project (dubiously true). 
• The Disciples would only allow themselves to be led by someone with some enlightenment on their side - a wizard, a speaker or a psychic of some sort. 
  
  
7. The Gutter Worms - This lot haunts the Old Coal Pit, the absolute stygian bottom of Iskadar - pitch dark, poorer than wild pigs, filthy with coal and runoff from the gutters. They wrap their heads in bandages, cover their eyes in goggles, and wear heavy, dark coats - surplus from the Iskadar Expeditionary Force. They move together and fight with unusual co-ordination. Sometimes, their made men and higher ups stand up from being shot dead. 
• Level 1: Armaments 1 (Military Surplus), Fucked-Up 1 (Something Vile).
• Assets: Knowledge of the Old Coal Pit and its twists and turns. A hideout in a disused processing plant. 1 autocar and some ancient mining equipment (including some possibly out-of-date explosive stockpiles). 
• The boss of the Gutter Worms can be any kind of person, but must be afflicted with something vile to be in charge. 
• Problem: Something Vile. 
  
  
8. The Iron Company - A mercenary company that has slowly collapsed into a straight-up protection racket, running a small corner of the Guts between the Snickets and Bullet Street. They fought in the Spits War, and the War of the Ruins, but nobody called on them for mobilisation after the shelling this year. They’re finally just criminals. They still wear their charcoal-coloured coats and wear dog tags, but it only helps the Watch pick them out. 
• Level 2: Armaments 2 (Actual Military Gear), Racket 1 (Protection Money)
• Assets: 4 autocars, 4 motorbikes, 1 autohaul, 2 armoured cars, 2 pieces of small artillery. 
• Anyone of sufficient toughness could lead the Company, but they’d prefer a fighter, tactician or an apparatus. 
  
  
9. The Bellwether Sheep - A cricket club that’s become a gang, but is still inexplicably considered a club by the Watch. As such, they get away with a lot of shit in Bellwether, which is perhaps the least deprived part of the Guts. Whatever they do, they seem to be in with the multitudinous little spirits of the City - at least, the ones that don’t like the Rats. Most notable among these spirits is the so-called Queen of Cats.  
• Level 1: Reputation 1 (Mistaken for Harmless), Fucked-Up 1 (Spirit Favour) 
• Assets: A clubhouse in Bellwether, a part of Iskadar’s old town that isn’t considered a slum. 4 autocars. 
• The boss of the Bellwether Sheep can be any kind of person, though a speaker would be most popular. 
  
  
10. The Stouts - A nasty little gang of lowbrow legbreakers, most usually found haunting a stretch of disused warehouses between the Green Hundred and the docks. They’re led by an honest-to-goddess animated scarecrow, by the name of Blackthorn Stout. They’re armed with nothing more persuasive than cricket-bats and gold clubs, and so far haven’t nicked anything more valuable than a motorcycle - and yet, they never seem to get caught. On the rare occasion someone tries to whack one of them, they’re coincidentally out of town. 
• Level 1: Fucked-Up 1 (Amazing Luck)
• Assets: A hideout in an abandoned storage warehouse and 1 motorcycle (nicked). 
• The boss of the Stouts has the unique opportunity to be Blackthorn Stout, an animated, deranged scarecrow who has decided he wants to be a gang boss. Blackthorn is most likely some kind of thief or fighter. Blackthorn’s ongoing goal is figuring out how a man with straw guts can learn to drink alcohol. 
  
  
11. The Faceless - The famous masked criminal syndicate of the Etran continent. Truly, out where the Faceless are, there is a shadow society of thief-kings and robber-aristocracy, and the so-called-law fear to go alone in the dark. So, being in Iskadar is the Faceless equivalent of being reassigned to the ends of the earth to keep you out of trouble. 
• Level 2: Racket 2 (Illegal Alchemy), Reputation 2 (Robber-Barons) 
• Assets: Every member of the Faceless has a unique brightly coloured animal mask they can summon with a fingersnap. The names of members of the Faceless cannot be written down. 12 Autocars, 6 motorbikes, and connections back east. 
• The Faceless are traditional criminals, and would prefer a thief or an acrobat as a boss, but really, they’ll accept anybody who proves themselves competent. 
• Problem: The Faceless back east expect great things from you. 
  
  
12. The Memorials - A minor gang of nobody thugs that have experienced a sudden, anxious spike in wealth and success. Wear carnations on their lapels, drink botanical gins, polish their shoes and pretend at class. Take their name from the Spits War Memorial, right in the middle of their usual haunts around Bullet Street and Gin Tip. 
• Level 1: Armaments 1 (Just the Right Bullets), Racket 1 (Drug Trade) 
• Assets: 10 autocars, connections in the press, and an apartment in the Upper City. 
• The boss of the Memorials could be any kind of shithead, though they’ll be one with unpaid debts of a vague and serious nature.
• Problem: The aforementioned unpaid debts. 
  
  
13. The M.T.s - Glass-eyed people with no empathy and a sick sense of humour. Found associating with the newly opened Dead Dog Casino out in the northern side of town. It has a lovely view of the ugly Vis-refinery and the sea out west, across which the core of their outfit sailed. They were sent here by some mysterious figure back west - a man whose written orders they follow without question. 
• Level 1: Racket 1 (Numbers Racket), Fucked-Up 1 (Glassy and Cold) 
• Assets: A rich benefactor, a casino, 10 autocars, a seaworthy ship. 
• The boss of the M.T.s is in contact with their real boss out west. Whoever they are, they’ve got to be cold and heartless like everyone else in the outfit. 
• Problem: Everyone can tell there is something seriously wrong with you. 
  
  
14. The Polite Enterprise - The real Polite Enterprise are a fractious mass of crime families based in Astera, out at the north-eastern edge of the world. These guys are a little local branch, a feeler for expanded interests. They’ve got a little base in the wedge of streets between the docks, the train-station and Kardat, and they don’t have much expansion beyond that. The real Polite Enterprise is feared and respected. These guys? Well….
• Level 1: Reputation 1 (Asteran Friends) 
• Assets: A penthouse apartment right next to the city train station. 4 autocars. A fast little cigarette-boat in the Lesser Harbour. One (1) illegal automatic machine gun. 
• The boss of the Enterprise is probably Nevechi or Zymani in culture. 
• Problem: None of the members of this gang are even remotely local. They’ve got weird Asteran accents, and eat too much beetroot, probably. 
  
  
15. The Kardats - Hailing from the riotous little district of Kardat (it’s not a very imaginative name for a gang.) Kardat also gets called Little Myr, because almost all of the citizens are Myrish goblins. This gang are local weirdoes, with local accents and local addresses. They look out for the little old ladies, and perform policing duties according to their own values (while also not policing themselves). 
• Level 1: Armaments 1 (Homeland Guns), Reputation 1 (Local Support)
• Assets: A variety of addresses all around Little Myr. People that will happily hide them from the watch. 10 motorcycles. 
• The leader of the Kardats must be a maglath (or “goblin”, in common parlance), like almost all of its members. 
  
  
16. The Eels - The folk under the waterline call the city Oscioda. Like everyone else, they’re just trying to get by - not letting the bastards grind them down, as it were. Sometimes, you snap and you say “fuck all that. I’m going to steal for a living.” In Triton culture, that’s a religious rite - you cover your thick hide in blood red tattoos and swear to always bite the hand that feeds - it’s only trying to keep you placid. Eat the motherfucker that hand is attached to with your big fucking teeth. 
• Level 2: Racket 1 (Nautical Protection Racket), Reputation 2 (Living Like Sharks)
• Assets: Fanatical devotion. Every member of the gang is amphibious. Each and every member would rather be torn up by a ship’s propellers than spill a single secret to the Watch. 
• The boss of the Eels must be a triton - they won’t countenance being led by some fuckin’ airbreather. 
• Problem: Members of the Eels are sworn off honest work and will only live by plunder and hunting. 
  
  
17. The Boots - A little gaggle of do-nothing fuckups in Green Hundred. Broadly and accurately considered harmless, they spend most of their time stoned out of their buckets on weed (perfectly legal in Iskadar), growing weird little plants for whoever wants them. Who knew all those poisonous plants were illegal?
• Level 1: Racket 1 (Botanicals), Reputation 1 (Who?)
• Assets: Twenty greenhouses in a walled complex, a literal ton of weed, one rifle none of them really know how to use. If you’ve ever seen Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you’ll get the sort of guys I mean. 
• The boss of the Boots could be anyone so long as they were harmless until approximately yesterday. 
• Problem: Every Boot is an idiot down to the last stoned botanist. 

Now, fight.

Of course, these aren’t the only groups running around in Iskadar’s shadow: 

1. The Stubbs Outfit - The bigshot kings of Iskadar’s underworld. Run the Coal Club, the unofficial neutral ground for any Iskan criminal, dead in the middle of the Guts. They’re a higher-class of criminal - sharply dressed, classy, fine whiskey types. Most of Iskadar’s less successful and worse-dressed gangs despise them passionately, but it’s mostly out of envy. 
• Level 3: Armaments 2 (Serious Guns), Racket 2 (Drugs, Drink and Contraband), Reputation 2 (Kings of the Underworld), Fucked-Up 1 (The Boss).
• Assets: The Coal Club, an unclear but high number of autocars and autohauls, and rumours of much worse stashed away in the myriad, tangling cellars of the coal club. Also, they’re friends with “Drastic Action”, a group of deranged “adventurers'' who keep showing up in the newspapers.
• The boss of the Outfit is Sensible Stubbs, a man who looks 22 and talks casually about events from centuries ago. He is completely, exquisitely deranged. He gets drunk by drinking milk, dresses in the most expensive shirts and slacks, and considers himself the petty God of Iskadar. He obeys different laws of physics from everyone else (his are rubbery, goofy and far more forgiving). He’s like a cartoon character, except very physical, full of cheerful malice, heavily armed and - apparently - unstoppable. He never blinks. 
  

An example of Stubbs Behaviour

1. The Church of Torc - Why is there an Aspect of Thieves? It’s a thorny question for any Makerite interested in the rule of law. Perfection isn’t necessarily peaceful, they say. The gangs say it means the Maker wants them to lie, steal and kill. They offer spit-and-tobacco prayers to the great old Torc in his glittering vault - and, when Lord Law puts them in the gutter with new ventilation, the black-clad priests tiptoe out to bury the dead. 
• Level 3: Reputation 3 (Literally the Church of the Maker)
• Assets: A sacred temple to Torc and the Maker which the Watch would have to have a really good reason to attack, which serves as perfect neutral ground. 
• The man in charge is Bishop Stilts - he’s called that because surely he’s not that tall normally? Nobody has ever seen his face. Nobody knows where he came from - all anyone knows is that he’s not kidding about being a mighty cleric. 
  
  
2. The Vox Populi - The voice of the people. They would be offended at the assertion that they’re a gang. They’re an anarchist cell. The Iskan Vox Pop are historically of the “precise gunshots to the back of bankers’ heads” type, more than the “firebombing a public space” or “socially conscious activism” type. They have no strict territory, but they’re definitely a force in the underworld.
• Level 2: Armaments 2 (Mainland Connections), Reputation 2 (In The News) 
• Assets: Total secrecy.
• Nobody’s in charge, you fucking dolt, that’s the point!
  
  
3. The Docker’s Union - The strongest union in the world. Control the Great and Lesser Harbours with an iron fist and a warm smile. They’d resent being lumped in with everyone else on this list - but, all the same, they control territory on Iskadar’s lowest level, they square off with the watch, and they patrol their territory. Their uniform is sleeveless yellow hooded garments, worn by stevedores and accountants alike. 
• Level 4: Racket 4 (The Docks), Reputation 3 (Honest Moral Good) 
• Assets: Four ships capable of cross-oceanic travel, hundreds of autocars and autohauls, five giant cranes, and more besides. 
• The head of the Union is Anya St. Zizek, an elven woman somewhere in her 40s who chain-smokes menthols and has the second-most-piercing death glare in Aclan history (and I literally mean piercing). 

Not to mention the Watch and their employers, the Senate and the Expedtionary Force, who want everyone mentioned in this post dead. Deader than dead. Shot in the head and dumped in a canal if the usual ways don't work.

It's a good time to look out for oneself.  

WHO DOES NOT UNDERSTAND? (Class: Angelologist)

 For BUCKETS OF BLOOD.

Here’s a little secret tip. It’s you - you don’t understand. Walking in a straight line towards divinity doesn’t actually work. 

No Enoch are you, though someday, hopefully, you might reach your destination. 

THE ANGELOLOGIST

A - Sigils, Power

B - Seeing-Stone

C - Guardian Angel

D - Two at Once

Sigils

You’re familiar with the sigils and methods which will invoke angels to come to this world. 

Roll 3d12 on the list below, to see who you know. 

You can summon new angels if you find their Sigils out in the world. The list below isn’t exhaustive. 

You must inscribe a circle of chalk, salt, gold, silver or holy water. 

Angels refuse to leave their circles. By their very natures, they’re sticklers for the rules. If you suggest you might try and free them from the circle, they’ll leave immediately, or lecture you about the importance of following the instructions. 

Unlike every other player class in a Buckets of Blood game, you actually have a chance of going to Heaven when you die. 

Power

You have [templates + 1] points of Power. When you summon an angel, choose how much Power you give to them to bring them into this world. This number is [power]. Each time you use an Angel’s abilities, the value of [power] reduces by 1. 

You have this much power, and no more. 

Most angels will keep your [power] until you next do a good deed or participate in a religious service (any faith is fine). 

If you give it to an Angel and you don’t fulfil their standards, they won’t give it back until you do. It would be irresponsible of them, wouldn’t it? Like giving a child a loaded gun. 

If you fail to meet an angel’s standards, they’ll keep it indefinitely, and you’ll be fucked until you propitiate them (luckily, angels never stay angry for long. They might have a little job for you to do to patch things up). 

No angel will give Power back to a murderer. If you kill anyone, or have killed anyone, your Power is one use. 

Your spirits are, by and large, avuncular and/or materteral, easily-worried and invested in your safety. They have a habit of putting out your cigarettes, or vanishing alcoholic drinks while you aren’t looking - those things are bad for you, you know!

If you wanted cool spirits you should’ve gone the way of Cutty-sark or Solomon and become a demonologist. 

It’s possible, if you seek out powerful Heavenly artefacts, read the right books, or save somebody’s soul, that you might gain more Power. 

Seeing Stone 

With a reflective surface that isn’t metal, you can choose a location anywhere within 10^[power]km and see it as if looking through a window. The Seeing Stone shows the view until you reclaim your Power by the touch of your right hand. 

“Ten to the power of the power kilometres” is fun to say. Try it. 

Guardian Angel

You can use your power to protect people, assigning a very minor angel to hover by their shoulder. You do this by patting them on either shoulder with your right hand. You can’t use this power on yourself. 

The Angel will deflect fatal attacks, rescue them from the consequences of failed saves, shove them out of the path of a moving car, pull them out of the sea, etc, [power] times, before getting all tuckered out and having to sit down somewhere and drink a juice box. 

If it comes up, a Guardian Angel has 1HD and 6HP - (but surely it wouldn’t. 🥺)

If you meet the person again (or at least see their dead body and/or final resting place), you can choose to reclaim the Power you invested, as the Guardian Angel scoots over like a child who has found a weird bug and would like to show you it. 

Two at Once

You can now summon two angels into the same circle. They each have an individual [power] value, which is equal to however much you spent to summon them both. 

So, if you spent 5 Power, you have a total of 10 angelic boons! Wow! 

Angels react to this, broadly speaking, like a divorced couple who haven’t seen each other in ten years, on a long elevator ride together - i.e., with discomfort, awkwardness, tapping of feet, and possibly an argument that nobody would enjoy spectating. 

You have to fulfil both of their conditions to get your [Power] back. 

1d12 Angels from Heaven

1. Shamsiel the Dominion 

An athletic, attractive man, his face and hair hidden behind branches bearing apple-tree leaves that seem to grow from the air behind his head. He wears a cream-coloured shirt, a maroon waistcoat, and maroon suit-trousers. His wings are warm, downy white, and his halo is like the dawn, casting beams of light through the leaves and branches of his head. His shoes are black, polished to reflectivity. He carries a burning longsword of pure flame in his right hand. On the same wrist is a watch with seven hands. Irritable and charming. 

Shamsiel will guard a location you direct him to for [power] hours, preventing any human from entering or passing by. He does this with persuasion and, if need be, his blade. He will always let past innocents, people fleeing danger, or people you command him to.

Shamsiel will give you [power] blessed apples that cure bacterial diseases and restore 2d6HP when bitten into. 

Shamsiel will make sure everyone you meet knows who you are for [power] days. 

Shamsiel will keep your Power if you’ve trespassed anywhere you weren’t meant to within the last month. (It ticks him off.) 

2. Sahaquiel the Virtue 

A tall, nude, sexless figure with sky blue skin and a head made of clouds. They have four huge white wings like an albatross’, and have golden thread wound tightly round their ankles and wrists. Their halo is like sunlight. Cool, sweet ozone seems to flow from and into them, as if they’re not a person at all, but a silhouette-shaped hole to the highest part of the sky. Soft-spoken and kind. 

Sahaquiel will give you precise, sensitive and selective hearing for [power] hours, allowing you to choose exactly what you hear among all the sounds within [power]*100 metres  - hear a whisper hidden under an ambulance siren. 

Sahaquiel will, in exchange for 2 power, let you climb through them, putting you ten-thousand feet above anywhere in the world. Bring a parachute. 

Sahaquiel will cause a wind of [power + 2] on the Beaufort scale to blow through your location in a direction of your choice for [power] days. 

Sahaquiel will keep your Power if you’ve used a machine powered by fossil fuels in the last month. Riding as a passenger counts as using it. 

3. Baraqiel the Power

A tall man, dressed like you’d expect a member of the RAF to dress, circa WW2. He has a handsome face made of some silvery metal, and hair made of flames. He hovers in the air, lounging slightly against bright, gleaming wings of golden feathers. He carries a glowing spear wrapped in black cloth covered in golden Arabic writing. Friendly and lethargic. 

Baraqiel will make anything metal on your person indestructible for [power] days. 

Baraqiel will summon a shining car of any model made before 1970, with enough fuel in it for 20*[power]km of travel. 

Baraqiel will strike [power] buildings within 100km with the most powerful of lightning, regardless of the weather. Unfortunately, many modern buildings are lightning resistant. 

Baraqiel will keep your Power if you own any guns. 

4. Rampel the Dominion 

A large, muscular figure, as pale and well-proportioned as an unpainted classical statue. He preserves his modesty with his large, dark wings, and carries a shining silvery hammer. His halo is like the sun reflecting off of the sea. Stoic and encouraging. 

Rampel will lift any one object within 100m and place it down [power]*20 metres from where it started. He will try his best not to damage the object in question. He’s pretty proud of this gig, he’s done some famous things with it. 

Rampel will increase your strength score by [power]*2 points for 24 hours. 

Rampel will turn you into a fox, a golden eagle or a barracuda for [power] hours. 

Rampel will keep your power if you’ve ever mistreated the meek or powerless. 

5. Bezaliel the Virtue 

A tall human figure, a silhouette of total darkness. He wears a pair of old-fashioned 3D-glasses, one plastic lens red, the other green. He has broad black wings, lightless and dotted with tiny stars. His halo, too, is darkness. He carries a book full of indecipherable symbols. He communicates in single words and expansive gestures. Timid and gentle. 

Bezaliel will place a black door with an indecipherable symbol on it anywhere within [power]*2km of the place you have summoned him. The next [power] times that door is opened, it leads to the place you summoned Bezaliel. After that, the door vanishes harmlessly. 

Bezaliel will make you invisible in darkness for [dice] hours. 

Bezaliel will make you immune to cameras of all kinds for [dice] hours. 

Bezaliel will keep your Power if you are famous in any way. 

6. Phanuel the Seraph

A burning golden light concealed behind six lustrous red wings. Smoke pours out constantly from behind the wings, smelling like myrrh and cedar. Her halo is like lightning suspended in motion. Occasionally, she will project a form resembling a woman made of smoke with candle-flame eyes to speak with her summoners. Calm and hopeful.

Phanuel will suspend hatred, feuds or rivalries between two people or two groups for [power] days. 

Phanuel will give you immunity to fear, anxiety and despair for [power] days. 

Phanuel will render [power] explosive, flammable, poisonous or toxic objects inert and harmless. 

Phanuel will keep your Power if you have ever denied the needy charity. 

7. Sandalphon the Principality

An incredibly tall man, at least eight feet in height, thin like a spider. In place of his head hovera a rose-gold mirror, and he is dressed in a dark blue suit, fine gloves and shiny shoes. His wings are large and umber-coloured, and his halo is soft, diffuse rosy light. He speaks never above a whisper. Reasonable and honest. 

Sandalphon will produce [power] perfect duplicates of you with 6HP each. They’re all perfectly friendly and piloted by cheerful minor angels who are just happy to be here. If their physical forms are destroyed they burst into sweet grey smoke, a flash of golden light, and a brief section of a Gregorian chant. 

Sandalphon will calm the emotions of the next [power] people or animals you gently ask to calm down. Being calmed by Sandlphon is faintly euphoric, and will probably cause a fit of giggles. 

In exchange for 2 Power, Sandalphon will change or adjust your biological sex perfectly and painlessly. 

Sandalphon will keep your Power if you haven’t donated to charity recently. He changes the definition of “recently” often to keep you from gaming it. 

8. Raziel the Ophanim 

A portly fellow, whose head appears to be a softly spinning spiral of loose paper pages. His halo is of fuzzy lamplight. He has two soft, downy wings, like an owl’s. Besides that, a dusty brown tweed suit, with moths fluttering here and there. He carries a briefcase and a grey golf umbrella, which he’ll open for you if you summon him during inclement weather. Professorial and perceptive.

Raziel will make you forget up to [power] facts of your choosing, storing them in his briefcase. He will return them for an equal exchange in power or in good books. 

Raziel will translate up to [power]*1000 words of text from any language, even dead, obscure, or non-functional ones. 

Raziel will reveal [power] secrets kept by cruel people. 

Raziel will keep your Power if you’ve ever hurt someone by revealing a secret. 

9. Armaros the Virtue 

A broad shouldered man with pitch black skin and no facial features, dressed in a red-and-orange hawaiian shirt, grey cargo shorts, and iron-age leather sandals. He maintains that humans don’t make good sandals anymore. Sometimes he carries a bottle of beer conspicuously marked 0% ALCOHOL. His wings are huge, dark and ragged, always discarding burnt feathers. His halo is a dull orange glow, like a sodium streetlight. You can tell he’s trying to force himself to relax. Cynical and painstakingly polite. 

Armaros will seal off [power] rooms or doors in a building, preventing anyone but you from accessing them. He’ll only do this to one building at a time. 

Armaros will end [power] spells, enchantments, curses or hauntings with a wave of his hand and the faint smell of napalm.

Armaros will produce a +[power] gun of any model, with any company logos replaced with “Army Surplus” (get it?). He’d like it back after you’ve fired it forty nine times, or within a week, whichever happens first. 

Armaros will keep your Power if you’ve never participated in politics or activism. You have to be involved, you know! PLEASE VOTE! (He’ll also keep your power if you steal one of his guns.)

10. Zagzagel the Ophanim

A long-limbed woman wreathed in bright fire and fragrant smoke. Her skin is all the colours of sunset. She is clad in burning leaves and branches, and nothing else. Her long hair also burns, and her halo is fire. She carries a shining, reflective disk of gold. Talkative and curious. 

Zagzagel will show you a vision of the future which will happen if our course remains the same, answering [power] questions in a visual form. 

Zagzagel will totally burn up and destroy [power] slots of cursed, demonic, haunted, or vile items presented to her. 

Zagzagel will make you immune to mundane fire for [power] days. 

Zagzagel will keep your power if you’ve ever hurt or killed an animal without good reason. The only good reason, in her eyes, is if it was that or die of starvation. 

11. Agiel the Seraph

A blazing light obscured behind lustrous black wings, orbited by a ring of floating silver spheres. The wings are covered in blinking, searching eyes with golden irises and deep white pupils. His halo is pure white light. His voice is deep, sonorous and inexplicably Welsh. He can’t stand pedants. Genius and erudite.

Agiel will instantaneously repair up to [power] electrical devices brought before him, making them better-than-new. 

Agiel will answer [power] questions accurately on engineering, science, chemistry, mathematics or lacrosse. He likes lacrosse. 

Agiel will increase your intelligence score by [power]*2 for 24 hours. 

Agiel will keep your power if you have ever mistreated someone for being less informed or intelligent than you.

12. Wormwood

A little man wearing a green hazmat suit and a black gas-mask. He has large fine red-feathered wings, and wears heavy black boots. His halo is a ring of glowing dust. He carries an unopened bottle of absinthe (he doesn’t mind if you drink around him. It doesn’t matter too much). If you look very closely, you might be able to see his eyes through the mask - but I don’t recommend it. Soft-spoken and fatalistic. 

Wormwood will completely annihilate [power] objects presented to him by sending them back in time to the centre of Castle Bravo. This works on anything at all.

Wormwood will cause an asteroid to strike a location of your choice, causing a massive explosion [power]km in diameter. That’s a taste of things to come, buddy. 

Wormwood will transform [power] gallons of water into a vile spiritual poison that tastes and smells exactly like good absinthe. Humans drinking it must save vs. death and save vs. condemnation to Hell (separate saves). 

Wormwood won’t ever give your Power back. He needs it for the Last Judgement.