DOWNTIME DEMANDS OF SENTIENT WEAPONS: Or The Care & Feeding of Excalibur

Elric & Stormbringer
by Piotr Jablonski*

Sentient weapons and magic items should be like an annoying NPC

With great power comes a great lists of spurious demands. No matter if the object contains a true soul or is more similar to an arcane AI. Jennell Jaquays had great magic items like Tim the Fish Amulet with a great personality and several items in The Dark Tower, which had their own goals. And of course, Stormbringer is a character all its own in the Elric saga.

To me, a sentient weapon is not human. It understands its own purpose very well and desires to execute above all else, all the time. It finds it very hard to relate to its human welders. If for some reason it can relate, well most likely it was human at some point and that usually means a lot of baggage. I mean just look at vampires- they were once human too.

There can be positive benefits too. It might be that adorning the weapon or building a shrine could attract attention from other factions. Maybe knight errants come to kneel at an alter to the sword and offer a week of service. Maybe when traveling, the PC increases the disposition of neighboring towns towards the party as rumors of the sacred Mirror of Stars- perhaps even the queen seeks to know her baby's fortune.

Below are d20 such demands to be rolled during downtime periods. The request must be performed during the following downtime. If not, roll on the hireling negotiation table. Should they be ignored, a magic weapon will be just +1 and will refuse to perform any but innate functions. After all, the great Sword of the Sky is no mere rapier! Its not meant to just hang about your person like 50' of rope or that thuggish crowbar!

Demands of Sentient Weapons (& Perhaps Of Other Intelligent Objects)

1. I should be oiled or polished with expensive agents

2. Fancy display case or scabbard of rare materials

3. I wish to be paraded

4. I wish to be better known

5. I should be utilized 3 times next delve

6. I desire to walk around in your body, let me possess you

7. A change in scenery is needed; we should travel to the next town

8. You must carouse with me; excitement is needed

9. You should commission a poem about me

10. I should be housed for a week in a place of worship aligned to my purpose

11. Your skill is weak- practice with me 1d3 weeks (PC cannot adventure)

12. The king/lord must hear of my exploits, seek an audience and tell them

13. Three foes should be struck down by me

14. You should appreciate my other talents (only use innate or non-combat talents)

15. You should know my history and place in the centuries, find it!

16. You only need me and no other protection! (Wear no armor)

17. Announce me with vigor! (All to-hit attempts are prefaced by a player battle cry)

18. Your vestments should match my regalness and you should bear my icon.

19. Your flesh shall rot, I am eternal- designate who shall bear me when you die

20. You are an adequate bearer, nothing is needed…today.

*Really wish I had picked up these Elric reprints from Centipede Press when I had the chance

THE UR-GODS: Matter, Time, Energy, Thought, & Entropy

In the Rules Cyclopedia, there is a section on anti-magic that explains what is is in terms of RC Basic D&D game. And in that explanation, is brings up that all creatures on the prime material plane are made of four components: matter, time, energy, and thought, but that creatures in the astral plane might lack one of those components. Here is the passage below:

It is interesting here that one could devise a pantheon of gods around these 5 forces. But given that they are so primal and foundational, I view them as the D&D version of the Greek Titans. They are the gods of gods, but more specifically, they are forces that underpin the gods. And I see them as also falling along the Law-Neutral-Chaotic axis presented in basic: Matter & Time (Lawful), Energy & Thought (Neutral), and Entropy (Chaotic). 

So could these be the gods of a campaign? Are these concepts too abstract for players to role-play? And why do they all still allow turn undead?

And I think it might be interesting to consider monster design in terms of taking a vanilla creature and removing one of those 4 forces. Like, what do you get if you take "frog, giant" and remove matter, energy, time, or thought?

NIGHTWICK ABBEY: The Purple Eater of People, Session 124

 

Want to learn more about the world of Nightwick from Miranda? You can follow her blog here and the ongoing development of Nightwick Abbey at her Patreon here.

Previously in Nightwick...

Blossom (Rogue 6)
Mayfly (Magician 6)
Thekla (Magician 5)
Ulf (Magician 5)
Liminal Space (Changeling 5)
Poppy (Fighter 5)
Pataki (Graverobber 4)
Yevgeny the Coward (Cleric 4?)
Felix (Dwarf 1) 

At the Medusa's Head...
The group deliberates on any "unfinished business" on the first level. Meaning, what foul captains of the Pit have not lost their heads to our hands. We settled on one last target- the [REDACTED]

...Then Down to the Abbey...

• The party had to flip way back to their older maps in order to chat a path through the Abbey's upper works (PC NOTE: mapping works y'all!)
• The trip should have been easy, but a colony of fungal zombies halted progress but a fireball from the hands of one of the party's many magicians sauted those 'shrooms (PC NOTE: seriously, our party is spellcasters and thieves...and the Dark Country's most beloved being- Liminal)
• The fungal zombies cause further deliberation since they generally reside on lower levels- is something pushing up? Worrying as these same monsters laid low Sotar, a Cleric of the 4th level (RIP to a real one)
• We also visited the [REDACTED] to show it off to the new party member and ended up tusslin' with some goat men who had ample coin and a figurine of the Lady (uncorrupted; 500sp)
• This led us to the lair of our intended target, which is cut off from the rest of the Abbey. We experimented with a few different ways of reaching the beast and found success in rotating magicians out in a tense moment of trying not to die every 3 rounds.
• In the end we were able to walk away with some new spells, silver, and furniture!

...And back to the Medusa's Head

Together this action clear the first level of all the "hot-spots", but the presence of the fungal zombies might mean we've just cleared space for a new foe to make its home!

TABALDAK'S GEAS: The ICL 2025 Appx. N Jam Entry

 

Last Thursday, I submitted an entry to the 2025 Appx. N Jam! 

The Appx. N Jam was an itch.io contest requiring submissions to be a four-page RPG adventure based on a made-up book title that was randomly assigned. Those titles were of the vein of those old swords & sorcery novels found in the AD&D DMG's Appendix N- the influences for AD&D listed by Gygax.

For a great collection of Appendix N stories, I would like to recommend Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons edited by Peter Bebergal from MIT Press.

I was hoping to get a title such as [The Location of the Noun + Noun], like "Crypt of the Red Wizard". This sort of title gives a clear idea about the dungeon and the random encounter table.

Instead, I got "Tabaldak's Geas", which, while it gives a potential antagonist, a "geas" is not a location nor something that could be easily used as a treasure. Furthermore, a geas in the D&D sense often forces the players to do X. For example, in OD&D, running across a wizard stronghold might result in a geas being applied to the party, forcing a task of some sort.

So I decided to combine ideas that had been kicking around for the Appx. N Jam:

• The idea of the Deck of Many Things has been used as a campaign starter since its often considered a campaign breaker
• A cult based around mistaking a beholder-kin (which has create food & water) as a bounty-delivering god
• Try to submit a fairly good-sized dungeon (I hit 23 rooms)

Here is the synopsis I created for the dungeon:

“Who has misfortune thrown into this trap’s jaws?"

Escaping danger, the PCs are trapped in the villa of an inscrutable, unscrupulous, and absent sorcerer, the Lord has gone mad, the Captain is hopeless, the Vizer is obsessed, & the Friar turned heretic...

The only way out rests under the baleful gaze of The Eye!

This 23-room dungeon villa tasks the PCs with finding a way to escape the powerful geas that holds them prisoner. They will have to navigate the dead that the geas won't let rest, hungry familiars angry at their abandonment, candle-wax doves that hate light, and a dream-mad lord stalking the halls. All the while, they will puzzle over the tria prima, bemoan a mask made of cheese, tame a desk with a nasty disposition, and ponder the black lacquor box below the alien monstrosity at the center of the villa.

An adventure for four characters levels 1-2 (or twice as many level 0)

I'll try to do a more specific post-mortem after the Jam is over, but overall, I am very pleased that I was able to create, key, and design an old book cover for the Jam. And look forward to maybe doing it next year or participating in other design contests. Below is the map and random encounter table.

If you are interested in other designs that I've done, please check out the free Designing Dungeons course I co-wrote with Josh, the 2025 SILVER ENNIE (Best Game & Best Rules) award-winning author of His Majesty the Worm