Tables and Flavor - The Cyclopean Organ #4

The Goat and the Bear - Late 19th century Lubok

Nearly there! It's been a busy week, but I spent the last couple of days assembling the secondary tables for the Cyclopean Organ to complement the Depthcrawl Engine. I'm really excited about the possibilities for the Organ's unique mechanics - the Sheet Music and Console Glitches for funnel victims that attempt to bend the Organ's power to their own will.

I originally wasn't going to include a "loot the body" table, but given my playgroup's proclivities I'd like to have something on hand. You could easily replace it with whatever you usually use, as it's not terribly specific to the adventure.

In terms of Treasures, I went in wanting to try to make my own RAW Cairn Relics. I think they're genius, especially the recharge mechanic. I also tried to introduce magical or mundane items that have built-in prompts for future adventures or arcs or complications for the continuing campaign. That's always something I want out of magic items - context for their place in the world. These things feel more magical and wondrous when they're tied to and distort the world around the characters.

Anyways, this concludes the bulk of my initial work on the Organ! I'm still trying to decide whether I want to write my own funnel rules as originally planned, and that kind of depends on how well playtests with Xenio's Cairn Funnel work. For now, though, I'm excited to give this janky machine its first live run. Playtest report coming up soon, then throwing everything together for a final version. Who knows, maybe if it goes well I'll actually try to do some layout work on this beast.

Treasure

When a situation or a table result says a treasure is present, roll 2d6 on the table below.

• 1 Writs of nobility with the family name of the villager that found them. They detail a small mountain kingdom called Garreg far to the north, with rights to an ancestral family home and all profits from the tenants of the land surrounding it. The writs are apparently legitimate under any scrutiny, as are the writs held by the lord of another name currently occupying the place.
• 2 Cursed Handcannon (d10 damage, bulky, 6 charges), a bulbed pipe of bronze with a satchel of bullets. It requires no flame to ignite, and fires on the wielder's impulse. Recharge: Tattoo the face of an individual killed with the Handcannon since its last recharge onto your flesh, mixing gunpowder into the ink. If nobody's been felled by the thing in its last round of six shots, you can always default to a clonk over the head (d4 damage).
• 3 A Black Key. 2 charges. Pried loose from a Reedkeeper console, it feels like well-polished ivory. If struck firmly against a solid object and held, it will hum like a tuning fork for up to a minute. While it's humming, no lies can be told in its presence. Recharge: Learn an uncomfortable truth from someone you care for, or tell them a hurtful lie.
• 4 A velvet sack of 300 gold pieces. Within a month, a weeping man in priestly robes will seek you out, begging you to return the gold you cheated from him - it was meant for the church, and if it's not returned the inquisitors of the Divinity of Cirq will come for his throat, and yours. None of the villagers, nor anyone in Torond, have ever heard of the Divinity of Cirq.
• 5 A Cipherphone, 1 charge. A dull brass harmonica that tastes like smoke. A message can be encoded into it by playing an improvised tune. When the message's intended recipient plays the instrument, the Cipherphone will speak the message in the encoder's voice. Recharge: Betray a potent secret that was told to you in confidence.
• 6 A suit of Reedkeeper Armor, rags and strips of poorly-cured skin bound tightly together. A long-billed Ibis-head helmet of tin stuffed with ear-padding. As Gambeson (+1 Armor), but also makes the wearer immune to any sound-based damage or effects.
• 7 A well-made but mundane objet d'art, easily sold in Torond for Depth x 20 gold pieces.
• 8 A Spellbook (Roll on the Cairn spellbook table, pg 8)
• 9 An unsettling but gorgeous Longfolk bauble. It's worth Depth x 100 gold pieces, but nobody in Torond is likely to have an interest in the uncanny thing.
• 10 Boots of Fleeing. They're made of reddish leather, well worn and supple. Longfolk that see a villager wearing them falter in their fixed grins for a moment. The boots allow the wearer to run at the speed of a galloping horse with no more fatigue than a normal sprint. If the wearer ever stays in one place for more than a day or two, they spot an abnormally tall, stumbling, limp-limbed man approaching them from a distance. The next time they stay in a place for more than a day or two, the figure appears, closer this time. He begins to appear in the wearer's dreams. He's right behind them. They cannot run. They cannot hide. They can never escape.
• 11 The Three Sisters, two of three glass marbles with imbedded streaks of orange resembling feline pupils. If one is inserted in a villager's empty eye-socket they can see whatever the other two see, whether or not they're being used as eyes by others. Currently the third missing marble is in the head of an ambitious Pirate standing watch outside the mouth of the Organ, impatiently awaiting the return of her comrades, already plotting her takeover of their ship's command if they don't.
• 12 Conductor's Baton, a long stick of polished teakwood that can channel the power of the Organ, within or without. 3 charges. Randomly unleashes a Tenor, Alto, or Bass blast at wherever it's pointed. Recharge: Plunge into the flesh of the Organ's Wind Generator.
• 13+ A jug of Longfolk Slime. It can do just about anything its holder desires to a living or recently dead body if it's applied external or internally - healing, resurrection, sculpting and reshaping, instant death. The effect is dependent on the owner's intent when it's applied, and with a player's permission the effect may manifest an unintended but subconscious desire. There's enough for three uses.

Looting the Body

If the party wants to thoroughly search a corpse (or a location) and the situation rolled doesn't prescribe the results, the Warden can roll on this table at their discretion. It's a d20, with no depth added.

• 1 2d6 Coins
• 2 A torch or two
• 3 Rusted lockpicking tools
• 4 A short (5ft) length of rope
• 5 An amulet with the face of a local god. It seems light enough that it might be hollow, but there's no apparent mechanism to open it
• 6 A Reedkeeper claw (d6 damage), varnished in some reddish substance with a handle bolted to the base
• 7 A flask with one swig of strong, bitter spirits remaining
• 8 A mostly empty notebook with a pressed flower marking one of the last pages - it contains a scratchy ink drawing of a dark pit, or tunnel
• 9 A badly damaged concertina - only a few notes still sound
• 10 A stationery set, with quill, ink, perfumed paper and sealing wax
• 11 A pouch of herbs for smoking and a well-used clay pipe
• 12 A mess set and a small sack of dusty oats for porridge
• 13 A still-flickering firefly in a tiny glass jar
• 14 A small cat, scruffy and hungry but otherwise healthy
• 15 A ragdoll with an unsettlingly crooked smile
• 16 A spell scroll (Roll on the Cairn spellbook table, pg 8)
• 17 A torn and faded deed to an abandoned shop in Torond
• 18 A Treasure
• 19 Two Treasures
• 20 A tattoo resembling the face of a grinning imp. It is animated and sentient, and calls out to the villagers once revealed, pleading that they take it with them, and promising some vague but rich reward

Sheet Music

It takes time and a bit of luck to learn the strange, impressionistic music notation of the Longfolk. After taking a turn to study a sheet of music, a villager can attempt to play it on an appropriately-sized console by making a WIL save. If they fail, roll on the Random Events and Console Glitches table. They need to study the sheet of music again before another attempt. If they succeed, they activate the music's effect as listed below, and never need to roll again to successfully perform a Longfolk composition. 

The Music gets its power from the compositions, not necessarily the Organ - playing them faithfully on another, lesser instrument may grant a lesser effect.

• 1 A spiraling serpent weaves through the notes on the page, tail disappearing into its mouth. The song is a slow, quiet dirge, both tender and foreboding. Time permanently dilates for the villager by a factor of two. They act first in any tense situation. They age twice as fast as their friends and loved ones.
• 2 A squat, lizard-like dragon with bulbous eyes dotting its entire body lurks at the bottom of this page, its stomach bulging like a boiler. Upon completing this tune the villager feels a hot pressure in their stomach, volatile chemicals bubbling up inside of them. They are somehow aware that the next time they open their mouth, the chemicals will escape and mix with ambient oxygen, causing an instant, incredibly destructive explosion.
• 3 Hundreds of wispy, shady figures emerge from tiny holes dotted across the page. The villager's maximum STR is reduced to 1, and they take on a pallid, almost translucent appearance. Every time the villager dies, they appear again through any nearby aperture or hole of appropriate size, thinner and taller and more translucent than they were before. They may only permanently die if their WIL is reduced to zero. Otherwise they continue to reappear after death until their form is too thin and wispy to be perceived or to sustain itself, trapped in an endless cycle of death and revival witnessed only by themselves.
• 4 A large painting of bipedal animals playing instruments and dancing dominates most of this sheet, the actual tune short but strange and angular - it only requires one hand, but it's deceptively difficult to pull off. Strands of skin and ligament bridge the gaps between the fingers of the villager's playing hand. They may be played like a small harp. The villager may attempt to Charm any creature that can hear this playing, and animals automatically fail any save against this effect. If a string is ever severed, the villager takes d12 damage instantly. If all strings are severed, the villager's WIL is permanently reduced to 0, barring magical or divine intervention.
• 5 The Organ itself is depicted on this sheet, twisting and inscrutable, with the horrible steel-plated muscle of the Wind Generator at the center of the illumination. The Organ shudders and shifts, the pipes flailing and twisting like the arms of a dying cephalopod. The paths within are completely reoriented - the villagers can no longer Go Back from this Location, only Go Deeper.
• 6 The sheet depicts a fish-like beast with an enormous, exposed brain, its eyes squinted in agony. The villager hears the thoughts of everyone around them at all times now. At first they can only suffer through the deluge of data, or sing and talk loudly to drown it out. As long as it's not being drowned out, the villager takes 1 WIL damage per turn. In time they may learn to ignore the thoughts to the point that they're merely a soft mumble in the background of their mind, only exposing themselves to the full stream of thoughts when they choose to do so for their own gain.

Console Glitches

When a villager attempts and fails to play one of the Longfolk's compositions, or plays anything else, the Organ manifests unpredictable effects. These are some generic options to help you at the table, but be ready and willing to improvise as well. Perhaps if they perform a cheerful ballad about a roguish woodsman of legend, the character appears in front of them in an uncannily incomplete state. Or if they perform a rousing war march, their companions may be filled with violent rage against them.

• 1 Each of the villager's fingers split at the second knuckle into two fingers. Given time to come to grips with their new digits, they have the potential to become extremely adept at any task involving fine manual manipulation.
• 2 The villager, while unchanged, is now perceived by all others as whatever monstrosity is portrayed in the sheet music of the composition attempted (or whatever seems appropriate if they were playing a non-Longfolk tune).
• 3 The stops and drawbars shoot outward from the console, impaling the villager. They deal d8 damage and bind the villager to the bench. They will deal a further d8 damage when removed unless it's done in a way that avoids causing further trauma.
• 4 The nearest Reedkeeper dies spontaneously in a bloody collapse - a failsafe built into their biology to discourage them from toying with the consoles frivolously. A group of Reedkeepers starts seeking out the fools that are speeding the Organ's awakening.
• 5 Nothing happens...yet. The next three times an encounter would be rolled, a Bass Blast occurs instead, the Organ attempting to expel the intruders.
• 6 The villager is the only one that hears the resulting, deafening note, leaving them dizzy and addled. For the rest of their lives they hear the echo of that note, distracting them incessantly. They're only able to speak their surface thoughts at any given moment - they cannot focus enough to lie, obscure, or speak in abstracts or hypotheticals.