Sebez - Numenera Creature

    Okay, time now for another creature. One thing I've noticed about the Numenera creatures is that they tend to be outdoor-focused, with a somewhat lacking assortment of dungeon-focused creatures. I think from now on I'll put a little more emphasis on dungeon monsters, so as to correct this lack.
    With that, I bring you:

Sebez          5 (15)

    Sebezes are serpentine automatons of sleek, black-metal rings, roughly 12 feet long, but only as big around as a man's waist. The head is an array of spidery metal arms tipped with surgical tools and sensory equipment, which the sebez uses to pursue its passion.

    It is theorized that sebezes were invented by a prior world to serve as robotic surgeons, capable of performing surgery with a speed and skill impossible for an organic being. However, with the passing of eons and the disappearance of their masters, sebezes' programming has been corrupted, and now they perform surgery on anyone they can find, preferably sapient, willing or otherwise.

Motive: Insane desire to perform surgery

Environment: Anywhere. Sebezes are solitary, and prefer to lair in caves and ruins in or near communities of humans or other sapient creatures.

Health: 18

Damage Inflicted: 5

Armor: 2

Movement: Short

Modifications: Surgery as level 10, numenera and stealth as level 7

Combat: Sebezes prefer to avoid combat, when possible. They prefer to use stealth to stalk their prey and wait until they are asleep or otherwise vulnerable before striking.

    Instead of a regular attack, sebezes can choose to inject their prey with a sedative. If the attack succeeds, the victim takes no damage, but must succeed on a level 8 Might defense or fall into a drugged sleep from which they cannot be roused. The victim can make a Might defense once per hour to wake up, and every hour the level of the roll decreases by one. The sedative does not take hold immediately, and if used on someone who is wide awake it will take at least 10 minutes to kick in. Administering sedative is painless and will not wake a sleeping victim.

    Surgery: A victim captured by a sebez will invariably be sedated and brought back to its lair for surgery. Any given surgery takes 1d6+3 hours, during which time the victim must make 3 level 3 Might defense actions, once at the beginning, the middle, and the end. Failure of any one of these drives the victim down the damage track by one. A sebez will perform surgery on its victim once per day until they either die or the sebez is slain. Pick a random surgery from the table below:

1. Bionic eyes. Roll 1d6. You can now see: 1 - infrared, 2 - ultraviolet, 3 - electro-magnetic fields, 4 - radiation, 5 - dead people, 6 - as before.
2. Brain implant. +4 to Intellect pool; "robotic" personality damage increases difficulty of pleasant social interaction by 1.
3. Datalink. You have a plug in your temple or neck. If you use it to plug into a device, you can identify and learn to operate it as though the task were one level lower. Also, you see glimmers at least once a week, or twice as often, where applicable.
4. Muscle weave. +4 to Might pool. -2 to Speed pool from constant stiffness and pain.
5. Bionic limbs. +1 armor, +2 to a Might or Speed pool. You also gain the Special Healing inability from the Fuses Flesh and Steel focus (Numenera corebook pg 64), except that only the first 3 points are affected.
6. Adrenal implant. +2 to Might and Speed pools. At the start of every combat, there is a 5% chance you fly into a screaming, bestial rage during which you cannot make any Intellect actions.
7. Artificial lungs. You can now breathe underwater or in any oxygen-containing atmosphere, regardless of quality. However, you take -2 to your Might pool, and the constant bellows-like sound of your lungs increases the difficulty of all stealth tasks by one.
8. Auto-defibrillator. If an attack or other damage source should kill you, assuming your body is still mostly intact, you have a 50% of coming back to life. You come back unconscious and debilitated, with your Might and Speed pool at 0 and your Intellect pool at 1. Success or failure, the device only activates once.

Interaction: Sebezes are intelligent, and capable of rapidly learning new languages, so practically all of them can be expected to speak Truth. However, they are single-minded in the extreme, and care only about securing medical supplies and fresh victims. Parley with a sebez is possible, but only if such an offering is provided while also convincing the creature that the petitioners are capable of destroying it if the sebez does not cooperate. If armed adventurers simply come barging into the sebez's lair, it will more than likely hide and try to ambush them later.

Use: In an isolated village, something has been abducting villagers at night. The victims are mostly drunks and vagrants, but a few people have disappeared from their homes. The villagers are terrified and will pay dearly for a solution.

    Alternatively, the players might intentionally seek out a sebez, desiring a cybernetic implant. A character who Fuses Flesh and Steel might need to see one for an upgrade or a tune-up.

Loot: A sebez's body may contain 1d100 shins, 1d6 cyphers, an oddity and perhaps an artifact. Its lair may contain more.

Alright, and that marks this blog's 10th post! Yay! This was quite a ride, but I'm sorry to say that things will probably slow down hereafter. I expect to put up a new update once a week, but this will vary in accordance with my schedule.

Either way, stay tuned for more exciting adventures aboard the Weird RPG Spaceship! Iadace!

Curses of the Ninth World - RPG Blog Carnival Entry

    Hello! And welcome to my entry for this month's RPG Blog Carnival. The theme is curses; specifically, stories and ideas about curses or cursed items.

    Like most RPG enthusiasts, I cut my teeth in Dungeons and Dragons, specifically version 3.5. I have many fond memories of D&D, and I basically always played an evil wizard. In one campaign, I had the opportunity to play a yuan-ti pureblood wizard/monk/enlightened fist based off of the Alchemist (warning: nudity & weird gore) from The Holy Mountain, by Alejandro Jodorowsky. He was also the inspiration for the character Death in Adventure Time, but I digress.

    In the campaign in which I played him, I found myself walking down the fantasy equivalent of New Orleans' Bourbon Street, when I was accosted by an enraged drunk who insisted I had disrespected his girlfriend. I told him I was a wizard and he shouldn't mess with me, but he didn't listen. I decided to take this drunken oaf down a peg and also clear the street with one spell: bestow curse.

    Bestow Curse, the D&D 3.5 spell, allows you to greatly reduce one of an opponent's ability scores, give them a penalty to basically everything, make them miss half of their turns, or anything else you can think of that is comparable to the first three. Going with the snake theme, I picked item three, and framed it so the man would forever be cursed to vomit tiny snakes.

    This is how I discovered that Bestow Curse is my favorite spell. It's the perfect "fuck you" spell, not just because of its power, or that it's permanent until dispelled, but because of the versatility. Any sort of ironic troll you can imagine can be realized with Bestow Curse.

    But this is a brave new world, and Numenera is my new obsession. So today, I am going to try and recreate the almighty trolling power of Bestow Curse in a Ninth World appropriate format, and a few other, related aspects of cursing. Here we go:

New Esoteries

3rd Tier Nano

Execrate (4 Intellect Points): With a hand sign and an evil word, you inflict lasting harm on one victim you can see in short range. If you succeed on an Intellect attack versus your target, glittering circuit traces appear in a small patch somewhere on the victim's skin (hand, face, heart, etc., your choice), and you may inflict one of the following curses on them:

• Reduce one of their Pools or their hit points by 1/2, rounded down. This can never result in the victim's death; instead, it limits their ability to recover.
• All of the victim's attack and defense actions are reduced by one step to their detriment.
• Every round, the victim has a 50% of acting normally. Otherwise, they cannot act.
• Any other effect of equal or lesser detriment, subject to GM approval.

    This effect lasts indefinitely. It can be ended with a thought by the one who bestowed the curse, it c an be ended by any effect that ends a numenera effect, such as the countermeasures esotery or a deactivator cypher, or it can be ended by a lengthy and complicated surgery/ritual requiring first a Heal check and a Numenera check, the base DC being your tier plus two.

    A victim can only bear one curse at a time. Action.

Black Mark (4 Intellect Points): With a touch, you can put a black mark on an object that bears a curse. The mark is roughly 1" x 1" and can resemble anything you like, as long as it is black. Anybody besides yourself who tries to handle or use the object without your express consent is subject to a curse. This curse functions the same as that laid by the execrate esotery. A person already cursed by a cypher or the black mark or execrate esoteries cannot be subject to a second curse. The mark persists until you decide to disable it. Action.

New Cyphers

Curse Tablet

Anoetic

Level: 1d6

Usable: A 1' x 1' synth tablet covered in runes and circuit traces. 

Effect: This tablet is meant to be buried or hidden and laid as a trap. When another creature (aside from the one who placed it) steps on or comes too close to the place where it was buried or hidden (GM's discretion), they must make an Intellect defense or suffer one of the following effects:

     Roll 1d6:

1. The target is struck blind. (See Numenera pg 96 for rules on complete darkness)
2. The target is driven mad. When greatly stressed or in the presence of a major numenera discovery, the GM can make a GM intrusion without awarding XP. You also have an inability for social interaction.
3. The target has one of their stat pools reduced by 1/2.
4. All of the target's attack and defense actions are modified by one to their detriment.
5. Something weird happens (turned into another creature, forced to speak in rhymes, rendered sexually impotent, etc.)
6. Nothing happens (the effect was not applicable to you).

    The effect is permanent, but it can be ended by any effect that ends a numenera effect, such as the countermeasures esotery or a deactivator cypher, or it can be ended by a lengthy and complicated surgery/ritual requiring first a Heal check and a Numenera check, with the level being that of the cypher. A player who crafts a curse tablet chooses the effect it bestows. Once the curse tablet has activated against one target, success or failure, it is spent.

Curse Tablet (Memetic)

Occultic

Level: 1d6 + 2

Usable: A 1' x 1' iridescent synth tablet covered in weird, glowing lines and glyphs.

Effect: This cypher functions as the curse tablet, except that instead of coming too close, it activates on whoever sets their eyes on it. The tablet can curse a number of sentient beings who see it equal to one-half its level, rounded down. All victims must see it simultaneously. Once the tablet curses at least one person, it is spent.

Mystic Mirror

Anoetic

Level: 1d6 + 2

Wearable: Amulet, ring, bracelet, sash, vest

Internal: Implant

Usable: Carried charm

Effect: As long as this cypher is worn or carried on your person, it can reflect a numenera effect, such as the effect of an esotery, cypher, artifact, etc., back on its initiator, as long as the cypher level is equal to or higher than the effect's level. If the original user of the effect is dead or the effect is not applicable to them, mystic mirror nullifies the effect but the original user is not effected.

    Alright, I hope you all enjoyed that. And just to get into the spirit of things, *ahem*:

WHOSOEVER DOTH READ THIS POST AND FAIL TO RECOMMEND IT OR COMMENT SHALL BE STRUCK BLIND. SO MOTE IT BE BY THE GREAT NAMES OF GYGAX AND COOK.

Thurle - Numenera Creature

And we're starting off with a creature! Yay! Enjoy:

Thurle - 2(6)

The biomechanical thurles are insect-like creatures slightly larger than a man's hand. Their back is covered in a domed shell of an amorphous, mercury-like substance, and their underside is host to ten silvery legs. At their front, they have a set of mandibles and three eyes, the latter of which glow in slowly shifting colors.

    Thurles are ambush predators, well known for their ability to transmute their body into any other solid material, be it stone, metal, synth, glass, etc, taking on all its hardness and mass. When transformed, they can meld their bodies into a surface they are clinging to, becoming almost indistinguishable from the rest of the surface. 

Motive: Hungers for flesh

Environment: A colony of thurles can be as small as a mated pair or a dozen or more individuals. They can be found anywhere, but seem to prefer clinging to artificial surfaces, particularly in ruins.

Health: 6

Damage Inflicted: 4

Armor: 3

Movement: Short, can climb any surface

Modifications: Hiding as level 4 when melded to a wall or ceiling, 2 otherwise; listening for prey as level 4

Combat: When a colony of thurles hears prey approaching (as they are blind when hidden), they fling themselves off of their perch at tremendous speed and transmute into something hard and dense mid-flight, essentially becoming living cannonballs.

    When transmuted into a hard, dense substance, they have Armor 3 and deal 4 points of damage. If the players can spot them before the thurles hear them, they can attack them while still on the wall or ceiling. At that time, depending on the composition of the wall, they might have Armor 1 for a wood or synth wall, Armor 2 for a stone wall, Armor 3 for a metal wall, or no armor in the case of dirt or other soft material.

    Transmuting takes less than a second, and a thurle can transmute into any material once per round as part of another action, taking on the hardness and mass of that material. A slain thurle reverts to its natural form.

Interaction: Thurles are mindless and cannot normally be interacted with. However, a character who Masters Insects (Ninth World Character Options pg 65) can use their abilities on thurles.

Use: An enterprising bladesmith is intrigued by the thurles infesting a nearby ruin. If he can find some way to make them remain in their transmuted state after death, he could have a functionally endless supply of azure steel (Numenera pg 77) or other materials. First, though, he needs a large number of the dangerous creatures to experiment on.

Loot: A slain thurle's biomechanical parts can occasionally be scavenged for a few shins, or an oddity.