In Hiding and Without Renown (Classes: Ironmonger and Journeyman)

 Armor

  Armor is simple. You have an AC (pronounced "Ahs"), which is 10 if unarmored, 12 if wearing a helm, 14 if wearing a cuirass or other armored shirt and a helm, and 16 if wearing lamellar and a helm. Normally to cast spells the aspects in the soul (housed in the organs) can't be entrapped in armor, but may be dignified by robes or other rich things

Class: Ironmonger

   Ironmongers have an unsavory reputation in Yarfu, though rumors say they are exalted abroad. Their loose order is united by one ambivalent decree, to go where the sun does not warm, and find who you are when no one is watching.
   Start with: an iron shortspear, an iron mask, an iron hammer and twenty nails-of-iron, a skull, a cosmetic kit, and a hood.

   Every template after the first, get +1 MD and +1 to-hit. (Beware, you don't learn any spells from leveling up. (This is the grindset class.))

• A: Cantrips
• B: Comity, Iron Spell
• C: Blood Eyes
• D: Residue
• E: Bounty

Cantrips: with a touch, you can sharpen a blade, sense a metal's purity, conjure a metal glove, or drive a nail. You can use the sling, throwing sticks, and any one-handed bladed weapon.

Comity: You know Kavetek, the language of Ironmongers, elves, giant ferrets, and barren fiends.

Iron Spell: When wearing anything lighter than lamellar, you can cast spells as long as you keep one hand free.

Blood Eyes: Iron suffuses your HP, strengthening its "degree". By pressing your tongue hard into the roof of your mouth, you can push your second eyes into place. They glow red, and pierce through the darkness like bulls-eyes, allowing you to see in the dark up to 60'. They are blinded by mist and fog.

Residue: your sweat is poisonous to non-ironmongers. Those who swallow a shot of it save with magical amulets or take 1d6 damage. Your mounts and lovers develop shallow scarring.

Bounty: as long as you carry at least four inventory slots of iron objects beyond the armor you wear and any weapons in your hand, you may reroll a single MD in every spell you cast.

 Inventory

   Inventory is simple. You have twenty slots. Some identical items can bundle (e.g. a quiver of arrows, a tranch of torches, a sac of ball bearings). Helmets and armored shirts each take up two slots, while lamellar takes up four. Otherwise pretty much everything is just one slot unless specified.

Class: Journeyman

   Strangers in the midst of the vo, and awkwardly received among the savadur. Journeymen are blamed for ancient wrongs, and they make the high and powerful feel guilty. They are considered to be of the race of man, more out of honor than conviction. 
   Start with: an extra two feet of height and five pounds of hair, an oversized spear, an empty skull-sized cage, a jug of houch, and a wheelbarrow (five slots, carries twenty when rolled) with straps to carry it over the shoulder.

• A: Physique, Food for Energy
• B: Comity
• C: Guise
• D: All Of The Rules

Physique: Your nails are like daggers. You can use all weapons and armor that suit your great size, and attack with +2 to-hit. You have a 4-in-6 chance of hearing remote sounds, and can smell blood up to 100' away, discerning between blood fresh, long-shed, that of a hot blooded fighter, or that of a personage or degree-strengthened ironmonger. 

Food for Energy: Get +1 HP when you eat something you find in a dungeon, abandoned hive, or other dangerous location. You can use this ability multiple times per day, but each instance must be more gross or more dangerous than the last. 

Comity: Normal retainers and followers in your employ get -1 morale. They see something in you that disquiets them, even if they followed you gladly before. Rodents, vermin, and other ratainers get +2 morale. You may squeak with rats as though you spoke their language. 

Guise: Like twisting into an acrobat's knot, you may take on a human seeming, including 2-in-6 chance of depicting a particular person, +1 with their clothes, +1 with their tongue, +1 if you know what they love most of all. 

All of the Rules: Your ancestors were made by the wizards of eld, set out for servitude and study. Those chains still connect you to magic, occultation, and the life after life, and you have become aware of the tug that always pulls you. You can grapple magic-users, ghosts, and apparitions from a distance of 100', and do not suffer penalties for any akhs you endure.
 

At the Last, Abundant Equipment for the Tomb (Classes: Fighter and Ranger)

HP and Saves

HP is a measure of your vital spirit (pronounced "hep"). Level 1 PCs start with 6 HP, which is reduced by harms and regained at a rate of 1d6 HP every sunrise. At 0 HP, roll on the Table of Consequences so secret and revolutionary, I haven't written it yet.

There are three types of saves, and they all start at +0.

• Talent: Physical skill.
• Favor: Divine grace.
• Magical Amulets: efficacy of charms and icons.

To test with a save, roll a d20, plus the bonus, and try to get a 13 or higher.  

Class: Fighter

In Yarfu, the bow is the prince of all weapons. Note with pride the fighter's facility with it. Vo men are sought for formal armies in each nation-state, standardizing the more diverse martial traditions that precurse them.
Start with a horn bow and arrows, a spear, a helmet and chain shirt, a tin of pink poppies, a fierce mask, and a bright blanket.

• A: Comity, National Pastime
• B: Captain
• C: +1 attack
• D: Hot Blood

Comity: You know how to use all weapons, including the bow. If you own a magical bow, you are brothers with all other true warriors who carry one. No one can punish you for winning a fair fight against another archer, and you are entitled to what they carried into that fight. You get +4 to-hit with all weapons, and when unarmed.

National Pastime: You are proficient in the fighting style of your people, and honor or shame them by your deeds. Here are some nearby styles:

• The fighters of Faras are dartiers, and their javelins throw a foe off-balance (reduce AC by 2 for a round)
• The maidens of Sawl are moirologists, and when their morale would fail them they keen, slowing or severing the spirit of the undead.
• The knights of Qusair are soldiers, and when they lay low a foe they can attack another one immediately with the fallen enemy's own weapon.
• Zanquecant People are ambushers, and when striking an enemy's flank with an axe, they get an extra attack.
• The Savadur Pacoste Clan are witches, and their charges ignore all resistance and immunity to damage.
• The Savadur Saritur Clan are totemists, and when wearing scale armor they can leap 16 cubits horizontally or 8 cubits vertically.

Captain: No matter now indifferent or cruel you are, you can always find a number of 1 HD Fighters equal to your level in a community.
Hot Blood: You get +4 HP and are immune to the cold, capable of lending that warmth to [level] snuggle pals. Those who drink your blood feel your emotions.

Origins and Speech

• Vo Wanderer. You speak your national language and one other language of your choice.
• Vo Citizen. Decide if you're a nationalist. If you are, you speak your national language, get +2 reaction when receiving reward, position, etc from the nation-state, and get -1 reaction with vo whose nations aren't allied with yours in the war. If you're not a nationalist, you speak your national language and a local language you can use to exclude anyone from more than 100 miles away.
• Savadur Priest. You speak a national language and a dialect of Kha (called, for obscure historical reasons, by ranking. You speak First Kha, Second Kha, etc., up to the Eighth Kha.) Dialects near in number are easier to understand. Kha has no written form, save heraldic strangifiers painted on walls or stamped in armor to You get -1 reaction with Savadurs of other clans.

Nearby languages:

• Crocodolean: spoken by people of the nation, and therefore skeletons, scarab swarms, garden ogres, and crocodiles.
• Abydor: spoken in Abydor, and therefore by Turgid Bastards and gliding lizards. Hostile to Crocodole.
• Vezan: spoken in Vezan, and therefore by temple ogres, rams, rock baboons, and rebel dogs. Hostile to Crocodole.
• Zaun: spoken in Zau, and therefore by Visceral Bearers, aubade fey, and shaggy dingoes. In a compact with Crocodole.
• Koumoulen: spoken in Koumoul and therefore by Wasting Bearers, rock baboons, and maned wolves. Unaligned.
• Tremanian: spoken in Tremanan and therefore by cometary ogres, scrub flies, and pangolins. Hostile to Crocodole.

Class: Ranger

There are many undeveloped places in Yarfu, rugged terrain haunted by the dead. The realm of mankind is narrow, and a rugged few resist the press of chaos on its borders.
Start with a khopesh, a machete, 40' of rope, a portable tent, a tinderbox, climbing gear, a Douglas gray cloak, and four javelins.

• A: Turn Undead, Ranger
• B: Comity
• C: Apotropaic Trophies
• D: Kingsfoil

Turn Undead: You get +2 to-hit and +2 damage vs undead creatures, and undead foes have -1 morale.

 Ranger: You are trained with snares, melee weapons, and the use of slings and javelins. Each overland turn, pick one of the following:

• Forage: gain +1 ration from biting heads off lizards, enticing snowlice with drops of blood, sucking on that secret herb, exc.
• Survey: +1-in-6 chance of detecting hidden or secret features.
• Scout: +1-in-6 surprise chance for you, -1-in-6 surprise for encounters.

Comity: You now qualify for one of several societies of rangers. In Yarfu, there are three of note:

• The Tatouet. Claim to be descended from ancient rebels. They mark their chins with ink and tattoo dots onto their arms and legs. When in a desert region, you can sense secret routes and weather changes.
• Maa Kheru. Claim to be of a hereditary line descended from Saver Heol, despite membership based on skill and achievement. They know the name of the secret herb. Wear golden jewelry in brow piercings and oiled dark boots. When in a scrubland region, you can sense secret routes and weather changes.
• Plijet Hudjefa. Mostly linger and stare with sinister intention and foreign moustache. When in a tundra region, you can sense secret routes and weather changes.

Apotropaic Trophies: Keep a record of every type of creature whose blood, flesh, or other leavings you've incorporated into your amulets. Add+2 to any saves made to resist such a creature. For human types, the bonus rather applies to the traps and hazards of their hive or other home complex.

Kingsfoil: a sweet lie has swept Yarfu, one that organizes its many people into a tight handful of nation-states, languages, and destinies. It is a reality the unpainted border denies, and in your dreams you practice the liberator's perfect blow. Deal +3 damage to serpents and those who claim dominion over more than one hive.

The Second-Last Seal of Poza (Megadungeon Outline)

 

A prison larger than any city
Built on the first prison ever built
Build to restrain the god that wants to eat the world
Built with seven seals (no fewer would do)
Each seal built to forget how to break
The prison abandoned, except for its first charge
Full of traps and hateful remains
And magic things now precious
You enter through a window that seems untrespassed
And find
Sitting on a pile of blood-slick coins
The pieces of the second-last seal 

(I am not precommitting to publishing this in detail. If I ever run Poza Hive, I want to use the sort of shorthand that doesn't work for a blogpost.)

Poza, the hive to trap the devil, was once the greatest project in all the world. Before Yarfu Empire ever rose, its garrisons boasted 5,000 fountains for drinking water, 450 public ovens, a great hospital that accommodated 8,000 patients and which cured all diseases, anguishes, and even old age; 800 lawyers, 100 eidetic historians, 10,000 savadur of all columns, and 100 armorers manufacturing the famous Pozan armors.

Goodwill is the first well to run dry. By the time Yarfu fell, the garrison had fallen to fewer than a hundred wardens, and it was said each was assigned to discouraging an entire company of outlaws, or two tribes of giant hounds, or four squadrons of squatters. Meanwhile, its coffers swelled perversely, for reasons widely believed to be the Lone Prisoner's own connivances. For unknown and counterfeit reasons, the gibbering plants that infest most of the continent flee the prison's surroundings, making Poza the safest and richest death-trap that stories tell of.

The god is so inimical, he is not even worshipped by the perverse or insane. Thus, as interlopers get further down, increasing levels of Revulsion (the opposite of a mythic underworld that hates you, a Morally Responsible underworld that wants to keep the god imprisoned.) For each point of Revulsion, a +1-in-6 chance of a door being stuck, a door closing behind you, a trap re-arming after a day; a +1-in-12 chance of a random encounter per turn; a -1 Morale for non-retainer hirelings and mercenaries.

Each stratum of the hive has a revulsion score and a level, to guide how dangerous and how much treasure can be found, in standard dungeon tradition.

Levels of the Hive

• Towers of Poza (Revulsion 0, level 3) Includes the roof in general, and any courtyards open to the air. Stalked by Archer-Shades, souls dedicated to the devil in life and claimed as his soldiery. Unable to free him, they loiter about the dungeon, waiting for their general to lead them to work ruin. Many narrow walkways and potential parkours, and many cruel sightlines with an untiring archer waiting at the other end. The skeletons of bygone adventurers carry loot to foreshadow what exists below. A small chapterhouse of the few remaining wardens exists under constant siege in the klochdi, and if befriended they will teach the signals of the bells to a party of adventurers. A pod of mourning fey haunt the mastabas, their speaker Painstaking Song commemorating one of the broken seals on the devil's prison, now broken in three pieces.
• Dock (Revulsion 0, level 1) Picked-over trade sector, with graffiti drawings that hint to the existence of traps. "Mastered" by Purposeful Morvan, an iron-monger who wears a metal skull and seeks to capture fighters for the arena in a deeper section. His complex conceals a hidden well leading deeper.
• Upper Hive (Revulsion 1, level 1) Three or so interweaving floors. Home to the Giant Hounds, wild outlaws whose doctrine states that the sun god Saver Heol is already dead, as well as scarabs and the occasional great cat. Every surface is painted with many colors, and the air is heavy with apprehension. One of the devil's seals lies here, forgotten and unguarded.
• Hospital of Universal Recovery (Revulsion 2, level 2) Once an emporium of wonders. Now patrolled by the Masked Procession, reduced to a cursed half-life and lead by cruel and contagious akhs that were unleashed from a storeroom of exorcized evils. Kept concealed in the Ti Amun, a stash of miracle cures still remain. The Solarium bottoms out on this level, and the Masked Ones never enter it for fear of the sunlight. In a grand gallery stands the idol of Panacea, who promises the fulfilment of wishes in exchange for pieces of the seals on the devil's cage.
• The Knotted Ostaleries (Revulsion 2, level 3) An internecine nest of tunnels adjoining the hospital where many stalls and shops once stood. At the far end, a visitor's quarter is now a nest to Vil of the Darkened Soul, an Ahohedaxuox Dragon who drags herself through the many tunnels seeking food for her three kits. An intact seal lies in this nest, and pieces of another are strewn through the tunnels.
• Echoing Shafts (Revulsion 3, level 3) Mines and high halls, for the depths around the devil are always impregnated with gold. Patrolled by Abyssals, the remnants of those guards whose long vigil changed them. They are warriors so empty that you can literally fall into them like a pit. Cloqmarin, a demigod spirit from distant lands, cajoles and mocks them from his great arena, the only place free from bad air and firedamp on the level. Those who win three battles in his blasted pit win their freedom, but those who win five are granted a hasty marriage. Stories of the vampire Cloqmarin's beauty and sexual facility never die in Yarfu, but the fate of his many lovers is never explored. For a pillow, he rests his head on a broken seal.
• Quiet Underworld (Revulsion 4, level 4) Flooded with black water, hot to the touch, fog rising languidly. Skeletons lie waterlogged and forgotten, ready to wake and claw some life from interlopers. This level is the enjoyment of the Feasters of Tenvalijenn, glutton-demons, carrion-eaters— filthy with a profusion of waste. The war temple still stands on this sunken level, heat emanating from it. Within, stored in a reliquary no demon can open, is the Disc of Gwen, which sings in the presence of a piece of the prison seals. Elsewhere on the level, past a totally flooded annex, a ritual bed leads into the Dream of War.
• The Dream of War (Revulsion 1, level 5) Green dust and embers blow down from the sky. It is a memory of the days before the devil imprisoned, a siege of the infant Saver Heol's leaden citadel. Demigods and vanr abound, and nameless things. If the infant sun dies, the whole dream darkens, chills, and fills with screams. In a work space beneath the palace, the heroine Gwen forges the first seal. Visitors of the dream, if they would fall, wake before hitting the ground. Besides the battlements, there are some very very deep drops. Awakening shows that you lose what you've lost and gained what you've found, and death in the dream is death in waking— a silver scarab tears at your head and heart, and rather than generating a new PC normally you may start as a level 1d4+1 Journeyman with a horrifically debilitating Akh.
• Fires of Fire (Revulsion 3, level 4) Patrolled by Visceral Bearers, who grow in wide rings around the furnaces, waiting eternally for the fires to die down. Standard fire level, with lava and gouts of flame and such. Hidden behind a lead door that must be melted by seven different levers which heat it seven different ways, a glass forge can remake seals from their constituent pieces, and render them pliable enough to re-apply up to an hour after heating them.
• The Prison (Revulsion 6, level 5) A small complex. Thinly attended by Rebel Khepri, emanations of Saver Heol that now burn with the light of darkness— ultraviolet, infrared, and other colors beyond sight. Soft-spoken, dignified, quick-thinking. Invisibly burning blades and chariots brutally sharpened. Graffiti drawings by those few who made it to the depths. The devil leans against a cell, its walls invisible and unbreakable. Those who feel carefully find the wall cuts off not only the cell, but a tall portal that leads on to the final level of the hive. Only a final seal hangs on the wall's seams, glassy and undarkened. The devil watches visitors with impassive confidence, and will not speak unless spoken to. He will not lie. If asked what he wants, he says he wants to leave the prison. If asked for inducements, he will promise anything to the person who removes the final seal, and he will follow through on his promise, not twisting its intention but not desisting from his own eventual goal of devouring the sun. If asked about the portal, he says it leads to the promise, and points out that it cannot be accessed without freeing him. If the last seal is removed, he performs any promised actions, then flies out of Poza Hive to do as he wilt. Only approaching with seals readied by the glass forge will make him desperate to deal.
•  The Promise (Revulsion 0, level 6) Not to be publicly revealed. “It is a well-known tendency in tales that are popular and long re-told for them to be enlarged, until they become ‘cycles’, taking up or being linked to other stories with which they at first has slender connexions, or none at all. One of the methods used in this process is to provide the original hero with a son, either a newly invented one, or a character in another story. In either case the son will tend to have similar adventures, with variation, to those of the father.” Tolkien, commentary on Beowulf translation, line 734 

Rogue Trader/Dark Heresy 1e Character Generators

 This character generator sketches out a PC, except that it doesn't list out the standard starting skills and equipment, and it doesn't spend your 500 starting XP. I figured if someone ever used this to make a PC, they'd want to assign those points themselves to cover for any shortcoming in the random character. Mutant mutations from the RPG were eschewed and the list from the OG Rogue Trader (1987) were thrown in their place. Meanwhile, the Dark Heresy character generator is a bit more faithful. I did add more variety to the divination phrases.

 

Mission prompt generator, combining the potential for military, social, and investigative goals.

This generator describes a simple flunky or random human.