TWICE SIX SUPPLEMENTAL LOCI

 "Now I'm going to merely sit here on the side and laugh my ass off at how you sink into the quagmire like the triceratops." - Harlan Ellison

Brandon Heyerdahl

Per Noisms's call for twelve one-sentence modules and Semiurge's excellent answer, behold! The one-sentence thing appears to have been beyond me, alas. On the other hand, I gave them codes! Which are kind of themselves like one-sentence descriptors. So all fair!

PSQ1 – Eight Unfortunate Candidates to the Chairmanship of the Union Unconscionable

A patron the party doesn't particularly like (pays late, understates danger of the job, gives a bad feeling he might betray you any moment) hires the adventurer to rough up a political rival. Before long one of them is the one being coerced into running for elected office.

NFIII2 – Brittle Gateway Granting (almost) Infinite Knights

There's a war on – goblins and their ilk are pouring in from every sort of environment: forests, swamps, high desert, what have you – the laird for now holds the wall by porting in extra dimensional knights through an enchanted conduit – but the gateway can't take much more of this and the resultant knights are behaving increasingly erratically.

UDRLFB3 – The Onerous Knot Unexcogitable

An oracle says the next king will be known by their ability to tie down "the colossus" with ordinary rope – but what colossus and how can we get one (never mind the rope tying mini-game conducted by flipping coins of larger and larger denominations)?

Lisa Betournay

DLO4 – An Undead Engine Requires Periodic Maintenance

After establishing a city-state on what is the vanilla-fantasy equivalent of a cursed Indian burial ground, the atavistic wizard-king constructs an apparatus to keep the hauntings from happening. Every once in a while, though, someone's got to go in to clear the grease trap or else all hell will start shuffling about. Guess who that somebody is this time?

ZXCI5 – Repeat Impressment by Profuse and Code-Divergent Chivalrous Orders

It's a screwball comedy sort of where Henry Fonda has to carry on as if he is engaged to 3 different girls all the while the TRUE object of his ardor labors elsewhere in a hat shop, except they "girls" are gangs of murderous border reivers with palaisinian affectations. You're with us or against us friend Fierabras! All the gangs ostensibly serve the same feebleminded monarch, but predominantly focus their energies to loot anything not stapled secure. Join all ten at once and unbeknownst to the others and win a name level "Multidon" no matter how many XP.

FPA6 - Math ap Mathonwy's Fire Insurance

The powerful wizard is doing the rounds, inspecting his holdings and occasionally (it is said) leaving a smoldering wreck if his whims aren't satisfied to the letter. You know the type: Van Halen's article 126 wherein there will be no Brown M&Ms in the backstage area upon pain of show forfeiture. Except in this case the Brown M&Ms are jinxkins (he hates 'em), and wouldn't you know it, a week in advance of the wizard, your town's suddenly got a full-blown infestation.

Dorothea Braby

LEV7 - Leg Irons for Dissolute Demi-Planes

Twice now a deranged enthusiast has erected an obelisk with the power to shape reality strange. Twice now this rebellion against nature has been harshly put down by the High Eldritch Counsel; mad scientist and tekhenu to boot imprisoned utilizing the very same extra-planar power as they engineered. Alas, these toxic twins times two have somehow found each other and although they themselves remain quarantined are communicating by metaphysical string telephone, the resultant longitudinal wave has become zone of havoc. But wait. This chaos chord is more of a triangle than an isolated segment - one of the vertices appears to be in the vicinity of the very Tower For Acts of White Witchery that put a stop to such shenanigans before. Is one of the H.E.C. is a little bit less on the square than he presents himself? And what is his satellite antennae of chaotic synchronization?

RTB8 - Soldiers of Cerulean Certitude

You know the Rogue Trader cover. Imagine those guys seizing the center of town, in particular the sacred spring contained therein. They ain't moving for nobody. Take your pick of a d12 of reasons. Maybe their chief is wanted by the crown for conspiracy, or else they hold that one of 31 flavor of apocalypse can be held at bay by 20 righteous men. Maybe they are in the sacred spring-strangling business and the epoxy takes a full month to cure. This is immaterial to the PCs, who have dire need to access that sacred spring right now. (Operational alternatives abound, but they are time-prohibitive, unless they are not).

CHQ9 - Drawing a Vancian Blank

Behold this neat little first level spell: Kethervirus - which replaces a random spell from a rival spellcaster with itself, and then slowly eats its way through the others until everything is Kethervirus. Think you're about to fireball those orcs? Um, not so much. Wizards thus afflicted will shortly start doing some All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy edits to their spellbook too. Spell Research rules in reverse to engineer a cure.

Arone Meeks

KL10 - Collapse of the Astralic Northwest God Fishery

To celebrate their deliverance from bondage to cthuloid Brain Excoriators (copyright Pishogues of the Inland Empire, all rights reserved), Gith Yankees everywhere and according to their own inscrutable calendar set off megabombs amidst the stillness of the void. Alas, one particular bomb got a bit too big and its detonation disrupted the harvest of extinct pantheons around which Gith Yankee civilization is structured. Any further fishing's got to be done deeper into open astra, with even more delicious worms - it being well known that clerics calling on extant divinities for aid are considered particularly tasty - perhaps the party knows some?

B7E11 - Just the Pit Traps, Ma'am

This is the city, Opanimium . . . I work here . . . I'm an inquisitor. It was Bearsday, 18th year of King Radiaro's ascent, long may he reign, it was raining in Opanimium; we were working the night watch out of Western gate. Inquisitors in Opanimium work in pairs. My partner is Stabby Stavros, the Boss is Geumyoil the Burned, my name is Fríggjadagur. The ninth bell had just rung when I walked into the lab - the dials on the Spectre-graph were going crazy. The prisoner, was slumped, still twitching from his ordeal. The panicwright had turned white. "H-half the city," he raved, "Half the city has overnight got one-page dungeon inside of them!" As I looked, I could see the blue grids beginning to form underneath the panicwright's skin.

JMHVA12 - Objective Scoring of Murderhobo Handling and Stunning Practices in Slaughter Plants

During the past 25 years, murder hobo handling and stunning at more than 100 labyrinths has been increasingly scrutinized. Balance has been alternatively extolled and vilified as the game seeks to mediate the loss of beloved characters and resulting feelings of upset. Up to now, numerous mechanical innovations have been attempted: negative hit points, structural damage capacity, HP inflation, blank epistemological nihilism, a more comprehensive access to raise dead and resurrection. Such efforts have largely failed - the problem being the existence of stairs. Remove them! As it went for Iphigenia, death is the only escalator you need. Each occupation can be assigned a number - typically 1 for skulkers, 2 for heroes, 3 for men of magic (always the cleric, his soul rising skyward, receives a negative number from -1 to -3 per degree of militancy). The demise of each valiant opens a rent in the floor down that many levels for a full 24 hours. (PCs only please, lest the dungeon be portal-pocked as Emmental). With any luck, you can descend, fetch the valiants' manes and a bundle of treasure both, and escort all back to the surface to live again as men. 

ETH Library

b15 - LEWTON BUS

TRAP!

A round room with sheets of metal haphazardly leaned against the wall. 

Sound - That godawful tingling of bone chimes. And something else just out of earshot. A high-pitched scraping. Ellison's previously invoked "thing that giggled like a harpsichord."

Party rolls surprise. On a 1, they are surprised, so is the critter, and everyone has a nice brisk jolt of energy as they roll initiative.

Cooking Companions

Any other number, and the party is now CURSED. All future surprise rolls fail on the rolled number or below until they leave the level. So if they were super alert and rolled a 6 for surprise, they'll be surprised NO MATTER WHAT from now on.

You know how this works from watching a million splatter films. You jump at the harmless thing and get a real scare even as you are coiling back into your defensive posture.

The creature who has (not) surprised the party is some sort of giraffe looking thing with a short neck. It dumbly ambles on, unless the party decides to perforate it before they can see it's a harmless sort of cattle. HD 3, Mv 4/10, Ml 7, Att (if cornered) 1 for 1-4 (hoof)

Should they choose murder and then really fish around in its body, they'll find a locket where its heart ought to be. One of those evil ornaments where a shadow is lurking behind you making threatening gestures. Clears up the curse though.

Bennett Cerf

b13 - TRANSFORMATIONALIST APARATCHIK

TRAP!

A bespectacled functionary sits at a desk (HP: 8, AC: 2, MV: Won't, ML: 11 Att: Special). He is the guardian of a terrible machine that can draw outside the implied PC inside. 

He will calmly explain that the machine only goes one way, no refunds. Also, it won't turn out the way you want. Also, you are prohibited from using it at all.

Although he won't directly stop the party as they barge past, if they do so,

(or attempt to stab him to death or otherwise interfere, successful or not as he is a slippery little fella - and even if killed dead he will do the same, although afterwards expire theatrically) 

he will stand up, greatly aroused, and make GRAND PROCLOMATIONS in a surprisingly booming voice, advancing:

1    Disquisitivism               
Leave no stone unturned! As a CONFUSION spell as party investigates.

2    Excessiveism                 
Redundancy is the new Theurgy! As a bastard child of HALLUCINATORY TERRAIN and MIRROR IMAGE. Instead of a machine, there are copies on copies of the party. There are so many of them they can scarcely remember who is the original.

3    Sensory Conflictism     
As the planet moves, so should your inner ear. Motion sickness all around. As HOLD PERSON.

4    Symetryicsim                
Kissing cousin to Dichotomy Paradoxism - That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal - even further, as you step forward, the scenery steps back, cha cha. As WALL OF ICE.

5    Capcaisinism               
Spicy! As a 1/2 strength FIREBALL cast by a level 6 Magic User.

6    Rapacitism       
Drink deep and greedily from the cup until, like a squeezed tic, you pop. It ain't hedonism, it's an physio-electro-mechanical imperative. Clown Corp doesn't enjoy drinking the brains out of your skull per se, but drink it does, and heartily.

Effect is similar to a chain of HASTE spells, but really, it's its own thing. Party is moves like highly caffeinated toddlers - so fast they don't have a lot of control over themselves. Anything they want to do, roll 3d6: if any of them are a 6, they succeed (while the other 3 segments they are doing any one of 100 other things), but a particularly complex action (like casting a spell) mostly likely needs AT LEAST 2 6s.

Problem is, on a 1, they can't help but interfere with their fellows because "MINE", undoing the next 6 following, unless the second gives them a sharp blow (1d4 damage, automatically hits) to keep them away.

The machine unfolds thusly, doing its magic on the first person through the apparatchik's cordon of conceptual complexity:

a Thief finds Reliijon and becomes fire-breathing Cleric

a Cleric gets corrupted by forbidden Books and becomes demon-haunted Magic User

a Magic User gets his brains scrambled by an unhealthy diet of sugar and eldritch electricity (and perhaps acquires a resultant Alcohol problem) and becomes quarrelsome Fighter

a Fighter gets his A** handed to him and become jumpy, jumpy Thief

(Please note that subclasses go the OTHER direction FOR THE MOST PART)

a Paladin's faith goes up in a puff of hubris and Disappointment, becomes flim flam artist Illusionist.

a Ranger's trip TOO far into the wilderness changes the whole deal for him - there is a woods inside woods inside woods like a tree matryoshka. Only in the well-ordered grove of a monastery can he calm his nerves through study in combat and Monk mediation and untangle the awful ramble.

an Illusionist's phantasmagorias over time go all Jungian-granola archetypes, becomes spooky Druid

a Druid's sacred glade is burned down by Industrialist, becomes revenge-obsessed Assassin

a Monk's side loses in factional dispute following the death of the Master, becomes sad circus Acrobat

(or if you must, go ahead and call him a circus Bard - I choose corde lisse over chords lute, but realize this is not a universal or even popular opinion) 

an Assassin's botched attempt to kill a Demigod results in a shift in targets and in times - they the determined holdout, an Onada Hiroo situation, waiting for a second shot at the diety. Alas, the span of a Demigod is but slightly less fleeting than a man's. The world has moved on, and it has completed the work of this grizzled now Ranger, whose assignment cannot now be completed.

an Acrobat's fall from an obscene height pops him into a sword-dimension where he is handed some sort of armament of justice by an extraterrestrial force. It ain't a Holy Avenger per se, but it makes him a swashbuckling Paladin out of him anyway.

(or if you gotta do bards, make it an EPIC carousing session - wine, wo(men), and song in any order)

(and although the use of demi humans is strongly discouraged in this particular setting, in any other that such a machine were to be constructed, Elves become Orcs (war and industry exerted on a sylvan temperament), Orcs become Dwarves (hearth, mound, enclosure, and roof remold the battle monster to a boaster of an dim-lit antique past), Dwarves become Halflings (give up the gold for butter, the dirge songs for dancing), Halflings become elves (by travel along the Straight Way perhaps, even over generations or in spaceships they stretch out, or at least they seemed shorter from here - see length contraction).

(Gnomes are Gnomes and there's nothing to be done about it)

(all XP remains the same, so levels might fluctuate depending on the transformation).

b1 - SWORDS AGAINST ARTILLERY

This damn boat. This boat. Somebody is piloting it, running upriver, letting it drift again, shooting off eight bizarro cannons. They hit Iscyra. They hit Superbia. They knocked over some of the Lawful Goodfolk's towers. They punched through Hunch. 

Everybody is pissed.

Everybody is sending their people to put a stop to it.

She's a live one. A well-organized resistance while being boarded.

Edmund Ranklin Ward 

As your small skiff approaches, they train their cannons on you (ok, one cannon, roll 1d8 to see which)!

It takes a while, the cannons being ancient things from olden days on broken wheels. It's OSR innint, so the chassis of these terrible weapons are the bodies of dead Gods: as follows 

(thanks you Dan Sumption's https://twitter.com/deitygalaxy 

I am sorry, I came to worship but instead I killed them, after watering them up toward the sun with delusions of grander spheres of influence than industrial tidbits)

Treat any of these as breath weapons from a dragon (save for half the effect).

You've got time though. To train any one on you takes 1d6 turns. Given that you can scale the ship in 1d3 turns, you ought to be OK.

1    Zaraklou            Marsupial god of Industrial Agriculture

Two modes: Fertilizer and Napalm.

2    Joouj                  Will-o-the-wisp goddess of musique concrète

Screaming skull illusions. They'll drag you kicking and screaming to another plane unless you disbelieve them. Grippy teeth.

3    Wiechioauv        Mouse demon of heat sinks

Like a bath bomb, but full of rats.

4    Oup-lath            Hierophant and World Conquering Elephant of Sexy Fembots

Charm person and you'll be led around on a leash by the lady whose sigil has boffeted you.

Carl Barks

5    Goocxax            Oblivion god of deprecated protocols

Level drain - 1d3 levels! Save for no drain but a RUSH of memories from antique civilizations that overwhelms you for 1d6 turns and don't ever quite go away.

6    Eepgu'yäb         Readable by medium insect god of the Impervious Wall

A stream of locusts.

7    Lej-soujaua      Goddess of Social Darwinism and phrenology

Calipers. 1d20 permeant Charisma damage. If you fall below 3 charisma, you turn invisible because nobody will acknowledge you exist.

8    Kaboor             Many-limbed guardian of the 16 Esoteric Treasures

Guardian might be overstating it. Sometimes its chunks of concrete, but sometimes it's the priceless treasures that are being fired at you. Whatever is on hand goes into the cannon. The treasures will crawl back home over time, hit or miss. They'll make you go with them. Guard them.

They are the Picnic Basket, the Bugle, the Bicycle, the Snaffle, the Pen Knife, the Fire Pit, the Whetstone, the Fur Coat, the Soap Dish, the Backgammon set, the Cloak, the Poncho, the Anchovies, the Lightbulb, the Icecream, the Rolling pin, the Small but Full-throated dog.

Alexander Jansson

(in Kaboor's native form, he looks like a picnic from a distance, checkerboard tablecloth - there are flashes of some sort of horror: bear mauling or otherwise - his cannon body is also so disguised)

a29 - COMBINANT CHIMERAMEN

A pile of rags. Is this the laundry? It smells like it.

Reskinned Mongrelmen. Camouflage and pick pockets and that jazz. But These guys are tiny: perfectly matched to the midden.

If they are surprised, you caught them out and about. Otherwise they are undetectable.

One of the boys will pilfer something. Roll the 1d6 in the open - party has a feeeeeeling, but doesn't know what it is. On a 3-6 they succeed.

1       Failure: Caught red-handed.
2       Failure: Skittering halfway across the floor with whatever he took
3       Success, but the PC so pilfered notices the item is missing
4-6    Success: Nobody is any the wiser, other than that feeling something is funny

Tristam Evans

It the party squashes one, they'll come out of the woodwork, joining and joining, d10 at a time. If you roll a 1, they have had it and go back to hiding, otherwise the group is nigh unto inexhaustable. Add 1 hp for every Chimeraman.

Even worse, 1 attack for 1d6 damage for every 5 of them (round down). It's a clumsy beast, thank the lord, so it stays 1HD even as the HP go up and up. AC7, Mv 5, Att: Special, Dmg 1d6, Morale: special (see above)

They call out their names which are stylized colors as they join the collective: "Jazzberry Jam!" "Purple Mountain's Majesty!" "Laser Lemon!"

Body of Evil

Bring a paint chip catalogue or a box of crayons if the party chooses to tarry is what I'm saying.

a27 - OIL STARVATION of the LAW

The OIL

Tove Jansson

The LAW

Michael Hague

The STARVATION

We must now consider the various kinds of chaos: under which head there are eight points of inquiry:

1 - Whether there is eternal chaos?

2 - Whether there is natural chaos?

3 - Whether humans are creatures of chaos?

4 - Whether there is Primordial Chaos?

5 - Whether there is one Primordial Chaos, or several?

6 - Whether chaos can be generative?

7 - Whether chaos is a snake Apep?

8 - Whether chaos is a ladder?

TERMINAL

Wolves mill about in their leathers. They don't pay any attention, but will become thick as you try to get to the terminal, an old style telephone.

To get past them you must pass a test. These are straight ability checks blackjack style, much to the annoyance of any Grogs lurking in the wings.

1d6/1d4

1      Test of Strength

        1 - Wrestling

        2 - Tug of War

        3 - Javelin

        4 - One punch apiece

2       Test of Wits

        a - Shell game

        b - Riddles

        c - Free Arithmetic

        d - Polymorphs

3       Test of Will

        a - Holding the hand to fire

        b - Holding your breath underwater

        c - Bloody Knuckles

        d - Climb the Infinite Stair

4       Test of Speed

        a - 100 Meter Dash

        b - Snatch the Egg of a Dangerous Animal

        c - Capture the Flag

        d - Three-Legged Race

5       Test of Fortitude

        1 - Pin the Tail on the Donkey

        2 - Lodovico Technique

        3 - Beatings on the Hour

        4 - Competitive eating contest

6       Test of Oratory

        1 - Last Request

        2 - Lead the Group in a Sing-a-long

        3 - Fast Talk the Ogre

        4 - Tongue Twister

And who will be your doughty opponent in this competition? Roll 1d6 and 1d6 as many times as needed.

ONE (the brawn)

 (1)    Little old Lady (Ethelvere)

 (2)    Impossibly thin Wired steel 

 (3)    Sneaky Pete - Weak, but cheats

 (4)    Big Bruiser

 (5)    A circus bear

 (6)    An angel of the Lord

TWO (the brains)

 (1)    Trashy Nougas

 (2)    Zebra-striped Metamorphis Alpha Mutant

 (3)    Grieving Widow (she killed him tho)

 (4)    Absolutely out of his head on ergot poisoned

 (5)    Shameful acne'd genius

 (6)    Peace Frog Bullywog

THREE (the survivors)

 (1)    Six small children street gang

 (2)    Boss Betty

 (3)    Sunburned Pink

 (4)    Miner trapped in a cave-in (still trapped)

 (5)    Teflon Don - Nothin' touches him

 (6)    Full body cast

FOUR (the quick)

 (1)    Tattooed Amnesiac

 (2)    Crash

 (3)    Well-dressed knifer

 (4)    Sheila Sundress

 (5)    Wheeler

 (6)    Lazy lolling about, but lighting when roused

FIVE (the toughs)

 (1)    Loco

 (2)    Romeo Pomade

 (3)    Eggbreaker

 (4)    Ernie Eris-stotle

 (5)    Lovely Rita Mitre Sawer

 (6)    Waldo the Coyote

SIX (the wits)

 (1)    The Bleached White Baronette

 (2)    Dazzling Sparkle Ghost

 (3)    Cerano Piscisiac : Talking Fish in his bowl feeding lines to a dumb hunk

 (4)    Disgraced Territorial Governor

 (5)    Life of the Party

 (6)    Maniac Sociopath

Biker #2 - I say we kill him!

Biker Gang - YEAH!

Biker #3 - I say we hang him, then we kill him!

Biker Gang - YEAH!

Biker #4 - I say we stomp him . . .

Biker Gang - YEAH!

Biker #4 - Then we tattoo him . . .

Biker Gang - YEAH!

Biker #4 - Then we hang him . . .

Biker Gang - YEAH!

Biker #4 - Then we kill him!

Biker Gang - YEAH!

Pee-wee - I say we let him go.

Biker Gang - NO!

Biker Mama - I say ya let me have him first!         

a7 -DIVING BELLE

  ¡SWORD and SORCERY SATURDAY!

Andrew Brosnatch

A Wolf Terminal taking the form a Specter floating over a diving helmet wearing maiden. Flowers are strewn everywhere. The girl has just been chained in place and the specter invoked.

There are aproximately 15 wolves laying about in a state of stupor.

The maiden is aged 1d6 decades per feed.

A jackalw.e.r.e. can jackal in while the specter is feeding. It takes 1 turn to jackal in, 1 to jackal out, and 1 for the time spent inside. This means that if the specter only feeds 1 or 3 he will feed on the w.e.r.e. On a 2 they will get stuck inside!