Clerics as Prophets (Esoteric Lorebuilding)

 Clerics are odd ducks. Their classical image of the mailed crusader with a religious proscription against wielding bladed weapons deliberately evokes medieval warrior-priests of the Archbishop Turpin and Odo of Bayeux vein. But while those fellows were members of a powerful Church with clear heirarchy and vast political power, the adventuring cleric is free to roam the backroads and wildnerness, associating with thieves, bandits and witches, and if they run afoul of the authorities they can expect to be treated like any other homeless vagabond. The various incarnations of the Cleric from OD&D to 5E have expounded on their power to call down miracles and avaunt unquiet souls, but conspicuously absent has been any reference to the political power of the church or temple they represent. This is strange on the face of it, priests have always wielded a lot of social clout - but our adventuring cleric is unmoored.

There's plenty of ways I could develop subsystems and add class abilities, but I don't like changing something when I can just recontextualise it instead. And for the adventuring cleric, one little tweak to how clerics are conceptualised makes everything about its design make perfect sense;

Clerics aren't priests, they're prophets.

You have no political power or support from a wider Church as a cleric because there isn't one. Oh, there's religions out there, sure - whole heirarchies of temples, pontiffs and priests - and you're not part of it.

Bearer of the Word

As an adventuring cleric you're a revelation, a new Word coming out of the wilderness to shake the foundations of the earth. If the wider religious heirarchy hears about you they're probably not going to welcome you with open arms; they're probably going to either laugh at you or ignore you. Once you start getting more notoriety they're going to denounce you as a heretic, maybe try to get you burned at the stake if your message is a bit too radical. Once you hit Name level and start gathering real power, they're going to start sweating bullets and quietly packing the silverwear into easily-moved trunks. Either way, they're not going to help you.

Terrible Purpose

But adventurers? Freethinkers and desperadoes, living by their wits and determination. The kind of folk who decide to make a profession out of wresting handfuls of grave goods from nameless horrors deep beneath the earth aren't the sort to look askance at a fellow for worshipping strange gods and preaching radical heresies, not when he can heal with a touch and cast back the unquiet dead by force of will. Sinners one and all - the ones who need to hear your Word the most.

Shake the Foundations

When a player wants to be a cleric I now tell them to invent the name of their god and the tenets of their faith themselves and that nobody before them in the current mileu has ever heard of it. This might be because they're a foreigner, a missionary from a mysterious land far, far away (with accompanying odd customs), or they're the first to hear the voice of a nascent god in the wilderness. As they grow in notoriety and perform great deeds, so too does the power of their god over the land swell - this is why their god can't just grant them miracles on command; their power is finite and constrained - the cleric's god is at first little more than a whisper on the wind, but quickly grows to titanic proportions.

Inner Mysteries

The spell list of all clerics is broadly similar because the divine itself has a certain essential nature - that of bringing Order out of chaos. Curative spells like cure light wounds and restoration just return broken parts of creation back to their intact state, but really that's all any clerical spell does. All clerical spells are essentially just glimpses into the world as it should be, sinless and unfallen. In the world as it should be water would refuse to drown, bar the way or even moisten the robes of the righteous - that's how a cleric casts water walk, by reminding the waters of their duty. Command and Gease/Quest? People should obey a servant of the gods. Flame strike? That's just the sun and stars fulfilling their intended purpose as weapons against the forces of darkness.

Of course there are gods of Chaos and Darkness, too. Sometimes they're just the guys who cast the reversed versions of Cleric spells and command rather than turn undead by default, but in my home games clerics are exclusively the servants of Order. The gods of Chaos have their priests, of course - they're just represented by Magic-Users.

Again, this is not an excercise in changing the class - it's an excercise in not changing it, keeping it exactly as written without any need to make the game world change to fit the way clerics are actually played. That said, if players want to add one or two spells per level of their own devising to their clerical spell list to flesh out their ethos I'm more than happy - I'm ecstatic in fact.

Lightbringer

The Folly of Alchemists is Believing Man is Perfectable - Fantastic Implants

Originally intended to be GLOGTOBER content, but that ship has long since sailed, ho-hum.

Inspired by this incredible post (and excellent blog overall).

The sorcerers of old were ever searching of ways to transcend their feeble biology, to allow their bodies to match the transcendant powers their minds were able to encompass. Of these practices the rite of lichdom is by far the most enduring, but in the tombs of sorcerers who sought to expand their powers rather than prolong their lives can be found relics of another tradition - the replacement of mundane flesh with fantastical artifice.

d66 Eye Replacements
11. Adamant Orb: Completely indestructible, ignore any facial wounds that target this eye. You will never be permanently blinded while you have it.

12. Apatite Deciever: Brilliant blue faceted apatite. Allows you to cast an illusion over your face, letting your features appear however you wish.

13. Autochthonic Eye: Mummified eye of an elder race, like the serpentmen or gigantes, set in amber. Lets you read their language and understand the purpose and operation of their artifacts instantly by sight.

14. Balorian Marker: Emits an eye-wateringly bright but narrow red beam of light. Anyone you make eye contact with must save or be dazzled. If implanted on your dominant side, allows you to aim ranged weapons with startling accuracy (+2 to hit). Makes stealth impossible in the dark unless you wear a patch over it - the light is visible even through your eyelid.

15. Bibliographic Oculus: Marble orb, bound with brass rings, set with a quartz lens. Records up to five thousand pages worth of text that has been presented before it, allows you to recall it to your vision at will. Can function as a spellbook.

16. Cathexic Monitor: Polished welo opal, set with a ring of rosegold on one side to imitate a iris. Allows you to see how much emotional energy is invested in objects, by a roseate glow about them. Things nobody cares about are unlit, while something considered very important is limned with a rosy flame.

21. Clay Eye: Simple orb of fired river clay, with a stylus-marked sclera and pupil. Lets you identify the presence of motive force in animated objects, golems and the like without having to see them move.

22. Coalblack Sphere: Carved and resin-varnished coal, perfect in every detail right down to the veins on the surface of the eye. Staring at something intently and squinting causes it to catch fire as if a lit torch had been pressed up against it, thrice per day. 

23. Daguerrotypic Lens: A sphere of polished tin, set with a dark lens of smoky quartz. Lets you perfectly memorize up to 15 images and recall them to memory. If implanted on the same side as your dominant hand, you can sketch or paint the scene from memory in photorealistic detail in a tenth of the time it would normally take an artist to depict.

24. Diamond Gaze: Faceted and uncomfortable, the socket it is placed in weeps metalic gold resin that collects like candlewax around the lower eyelid. You may determine the market value of gems automatically, and identify magical gems and jewellery.

25. Excogigating Oculus: A perfect sphere of hardened glass, within which can be seen moving thousands of intricate clockwork mechanisms and miniscule diamond lenses. Roll a d20 at the start of the day, at any time thereafter you may swap the result of this die with any other made by yourself or anyone within your field of vision.

26. Fane Orbit: Brass, with a cinnabar lens, intricately inscribed with minute Adamic script. Can be possessed by a noncorporeal being, allowing them to see through it and communicate telepathically with the wearer. The wearer gains the possessing being's visual abilities, if any.

31. Gorgonized Sphere: Polished granite, with a jagged vein of malachite running through like a serpent's slit-eye. Closing your other eye (if present) and looking through it alone makes you immune to the petrifying gazes of basilisks and medusae. 

32. Hoarfrost Orb: Clear crystal sphere filled with a viscous liquid and flecks of silvery powder. The wearer's vision is not obscured by snow or fog, no matter how thick.

33. Habile Eye: Ivory inlaid with silver in geometric patterns radiating out from an aquamarine lens. Guides the bearer's hand-eye coordination, increasing their skill in delicate tasks such as trap-disarmament and similar tasks, as if they were a Thief of the 3rd level (or giving a Thief +3 levels worth of skill improvements in Climbing, Disarming and Lock Picking).

34. Isocratic Orb: A clear glass sphere, changes its surface to match exactly the wearer's original eye. Persons making eye contact with the wearer automatically assume them to be of equal social status to themselves, regardless of their current attire or familiarity, until given reason to suspect otherwise - at which point they may make a Save vs. Devices to shake off the enchantment.

35. Jacinth Apotropaic: Bright orange cabouchon with a cat's-eye reflectivity. Renders the bearer immune to disease-like curses such as mummy rot, lycanthropy and wasting sickness caused by a Bestow Curse spell and magically induced fear.

36. Karyote Stone: Looks like a bacterium the size of a grape, firm and slightly rubbery to the touch with organelles swimming within. When placed inisde the eye socket will slowly divide into smaller and smaller subdivisions over the course of a week, eventually forming a new biological eye of random colour and possibly belonging to another species, which divides once more to produce a copy of the stone. 

41. Lachrymose Spherule: Marble with a bloodstone cornea. Once per day on command it will weep a single tear of an oily crimson fluid which will act as a Cure Disease potion to anyone who imbibes it within an hour of it forming, and emits a subtle scent in the immediate area which drives vampires and other blood-drinkers into a berserk frenzy, throwing off their human guises and bearing their snarling fangs openly.

42. Malediction Optic: Obsidian inlaid with minute geometric patterns of silver. Allows the wearer to percieve curses on beings and objects as floating achromatic notation in the language of bygone Koth. If the wearer doesn't speak Kothic they can still see curses in this way, but if they also speak the language it will provide details on the nature on the curse and has a 2:6 chance of revealing a non-spell method for removing the curse.

43. Nacreous Spheroid: A beautiful pearlescent orb, optical distortions on its surface give the impression of a rainbow-coloured swirling iris when viewed from the right angle. Amplifies the bearer's charisma to superhuman levels, doubling their hireling limit and loyalty and allowing them to cast Suggestion a number of times per day equal to their Charisma bonus, if any.

44. Numiform Eyecap: An ancient electrum 1 Obol coin, such as those placed over the eyes of the dead. Placed in an empty eyesocket it will affix in place and allow the bearer to see through the ghost of their lost eye. This ghost-eye can see into the spirit world and allows the bearer to percieve invisible undead.

45. Oriform Orbit: Horribly organic, looks like a ball of human gum-tissue with a double row of tiny teeth on one side. Unlike other eyes on this list it provides no replacement vision in the lost eye, however once in place the bearer may open the 'mouth' and if the eye of a dead being is placed in it the bearer may see through it, gaining any special vision modes they once possessed, or allow the Oriform Orbit to chew it up and eat it, allowing the bearer to see the last 5 seconds of the dead's life.

46. Paynim Ocule: Basalt, iris is an incised triskele. The bearer is able to read Ogham and has their alignment move one step toward Chaotic.

51. Quern Gaze: A short cylindrical ring rather than a sphere, granite with a borehole in the centre. Can exert a tortional force on whatever it is directed at, crushing it to a fine powder. This acts as a Disintegrate spell that only functions on brittle, non-living substances, thrice per day.

52. Relucent Cusp: Mirror-shined and featureless. Gives a 50% chance of reflecting back any gaze attacks directed against the bearer.

53. Sable Stone: A light-drinking black stone with a bright star at its centre acting as a pupil. Thrice per day it may absorb all light in a given area, acting as a Darkness spell. However, before the Darkness effect may be cast again, the absorbed light must be first expelled, either diffusely as a Light spell or as a penetrating beam of laser light - dealing 3d6 damage in a 120ft line, save vs. wands for no damage.

54. Setiferous Sensor: Resembles a fossilised sea urchin. When inserted into the eye socket it exudes spines in all directions, painfully embedding itself in the cavity beyond the capacity to be removed without a Regeneration or Heal spell to save the patient from dying in the process. While unsightly, it does provide the bearer with subtle senses beyond the limits of human perception - the bearer gains the ability to detect vibrations in the air produced by moving objects, giving them a 5:6 chance of detecting ambush and negating the attack bonus to sneak attacks.

55. Telestic Witness: Appears to be a piece of midnight sky fashioned into a sphere, with a tiny swirling nebula as its iris and a black hole as its pupil. Once per day permits the bearer to identify the exact nature and function of any kind of weird dungeon shit they find - magic mirrors, sinister altars, bottomless wells of chaos, that kind of jazz. No mucking about, just tell them exactly what it does.

56. Thelemic Monocule: A plain white marble marked with a hexagrammatic ideogram on one side. Acts as proof against any visually-induced mind control effects, such as Hypnotic Pattern or the entrancing gaze of a vampire.

61. Ultion Glare: Initially appears to be a nondescript glass eye that changes to mimic the bearer's original, but when in sight of monstrous humanoids it becomes a baleful slitted and bloodshot red, twisting the bearer's face involuntarily into a snarl and filling their mind with images of slaughter. The bearer gains a bonus equal to their level to damage against orcs, goblins, ogres, giants and other such marauding humanoids, exactly as a Ranger does. They automatically reroll any friendly result on reaction rolls with such creatures.

62. Vaticidal Oculus: Smoky quartz with a flower-spray inclusion of iron oxide at its core. The bearer is immune to any effect that alters luck, fate or probabilities, such as Bless/Bane or portent dice, seeming to step through impossible parabolas of time and space to disregard such oracular chicanery.

63. Willemite Revealer: A brilliant yellow-green gem. Permits the bearer to percieve strange radiations - including magic but explicity excluding curses and illusions - as flourescences within their field of vision, and with practice and experimentation to tell them apart.

64. Xylotomous Eye: Tungsten steel with a spiral screw-head pattern as its iris. Permits the bearer to see through wooden surfaces. Even a coating of paint will obstruct this sight, so it's less useful in seeing through buildings than might be expected but it could allow someone to spy through floorboards with great ease, and is exceptionally useful in spotting things hidden in a forest, granting a +2 bonus to surprise rolls in forested environments.

65. Yantra Stone: A brilliantly coloured enamel sphere covered with a circular geometric diagram. A Cleric who bears this eye treats their effective Wisdom as 4 points higher for purposes of determining bonus spells per day.

66. Zendic Orb: Gold-bright brass, set with the ideogram for "Truth" in the ancient tongue of High Acheron. Divine magic washes off the bearer like water from a duck's back, granting them 80% magic resistance against Clerical or Druidic spells. 

d12 Tooth Replacements
1. Aeviternal Molar: A flawless recreation of an actual human molar (actually slightly larger than modern human, due to the creator having a greater concentration of neanderthal blood than is common in the present day), cast in indestructible black adamant. Grants the bearer immunity to the failure chance of potions of longevity - they can prolong their life indefinately though the use of such potions without the cumulative chance of the effect being reversed.

2. Aerobic Incisor: Coffee-brown and horribly pitted along the inner side. Produces enough oxygen to allow the bearer to survive without an external source of air as long as their airway is not obstructed (such as by being strangled).

3. Bacchanalian Cuspid: Carved from crimson Alexandrite. Allows the bearer to throw off the effects of drunkeness with a moment's thought and acts as a Neutralise Poison spell that only affects ingested toxins.

4. Canicidal Canine: Sharp, conical, formed of gray alien metal shot through with silvery streaks of unknown provenance. The bearer's bite injects a save-or-die poison on any dog or wolf-like creature, including werewolves, wolfweres, wargs and the like.

5. Demephitising Dental: A row of flanged and rugose alagdonite mandibular incisors. Purifies the bearer's breath, both inward - allowing them to ignore poisonous gasses and spores by simply breathing through the mouth - and out; eliminating halitosis.

6. Eclipsis Razor: A maxillary central incisor of titanium-capped cerulite. Allows the bearer to make their speech silent to specific individuals, as many as they choose - though they must be aware of them at the time this power is invoked.

7. Furibund Fang: Silver, longer and sharper than human and intricately cast with symbols of baying wolves, packed together tight as sardines. Allows the bearer to enter into a berserker rage, wherein they increase their To Hit and Melee Damage by +2, decrease their AC by -2, and gain 2d6 temporary hit points for 3 rounds. User must consume several handfuls of raw red meat before using this power again.

8. Grammarye Tusk: Ametrine lower canine, inset with a tiny silverwork shrine to Yig the serpent god. A magic-user with this tooth may once per day choose to increase one of the numerical variables of their spells (such as range or damage) by 50% before casting.

9. Hamartia Taster: An oddly sharp ammolite molar. By tasting the flesh of a creature you can determine any special vulnerabilities or resistances it has. 

10. Irroborating Molar: Lead-gray and metallic. Grows into and through the bones of the user's skull, converting the bone into living steel. The bearer has a 2:6 chance of ignoring critical hits, due to the added internal protection.

11. Tentiginous Mandibular:  Crystal-clear mellite incisor. Increases the bearer's Charisma by 2 points and allows them to cast Dominate by kiss once per day - only one target can be Dominated in this way at any given time, the prior victim being freed from influence if another is targetted.

12. Winterkill Fangs: Replaces both the user's maxillary canines with translucent white feldspar fangs. The bearer's breath mists in hot weather but doesn't in cold. Grants resistance to harm from cold weather, reduces damage from cold-based spells by half, and allows the bearer to breathe a Cone of Cold once per day per point of Constitution bonus.

d12 Fingernail Replacements
1. Batrachian Touch: Patterned like a poison arrow frog. The bearer's attacks inject lethal poison on a critical hit, requiring a save vs. death.

2. Drepanoid Talon: Squamous and reddish brown, like the back of a pangolin. On command extends into a curled sickle-blade. Acts as a dagger in melee combat, and gives the bearer advantage on grappling and climbing rolls.

3. Evirating Claw: Pointed and porcelain-like, shot through with pulsing crimson veins. With a touch the victim must save vs. death or suffer a great langour and muscular ache, reducing their melee damage by -4.

4. Foveate Plate: A plate of horribly pitted leaden metal, like the surface of the moon. Bestows 2d6 bonus hit points, rerolled each dawn, from a paramagnetic field encasing the bearer's skin.

5. Hastate Nail: Shaped like the head of an assegai, cast in dark bronze. The bearer's arm can extend 10ft with a whiplike speed, striking as a spear in melee combat.

6. Kinematic Claw: Mirror-shined and intricately inscribed with geometric diagrams. The bearer can perfectly replicate any hand motion they observe. Amongst other uses, this can allow them to copy a person's writing while observing them from a distance.

7. Nebulising Nail: Initially translucent and colourless, spotted along its surface with tiny pores. By touching it to a liquid substance the nail will absorb it, taking on the same colour. Thereafter it will emit the absorbed substance as a gaseous puff in a 90-degree 3' spray.

8. Obsidian Tecpatl: Razor-sharp and black as night, carved with a side-profile of a skeletal face, could easily cut through a binding rope with a minute's work. If dipped in the blood of a freshly-killed sapient humanoid, holds a charge that can be used to activate any other implant that has limited uses per day.

9. Puissant Finger: Silver-chrome and inset with the constellation Orion in tiny diamonds. The finger it is attached to can be slowly pressed through any solid surface like it was made of wet clay. Useless in combat as it must be pressed in the same place for a few seconds before it will take effect, but can make peep-holes or slowly cut through any surface less than a finger's thickness.

10. Quaffing Digit: Striated and porous like pumice. Allows the user to taste potions to determine their properties by placing their fingertip in the liquid. If tasting would ordinarily reduce the potency of the potion, it is not affected in this case, if the potion is poisoned, cursed or caustic the nail can be sacrificed instead of conferring its penalty to the victim - it turns black, shrivels up and drops off, allowing the victim's normal nail to eventually regrow.

11. Smiting Nail: Silvered, bearing the image of a warrior saint's deathmask. Once per day enwreathes a weapon held in the hand that bears the nail with a radiant silver flame, adding +2d4 damage to the next attack made with it and forcing the target to Save or be stunned with agony for 1 round.

12. Upheaving Claw: Black iron thumbnail, squared like a chisel. Endows the arm that bears it with tremendous strength for purposes of lifting only. The bearer could haul an oxcart off a trapped person one-handed but would not be able to carry it even a single step.

I HAVE LASER BEAMS COMING OUT OF MY HEAD - (GLOG Psychic Paths)

The common man has infinite options available to them, and like the diffuse rays of the sun their will presses itself only lightly upon the World. The true master prunes his will, aligns and collimates it, as a lens focuses light into a narrow point - and the World burns beneath it.

These being possible advancement paths for Locheil's psychic. Go read it first or little of this will make much sense.

MY FOCUS IS EXCHANGE

A: My Paradigm is... I will never go back on my word.

From it I gain the Power... Dis For Dat

I can trade anything for anything. The exchange doesn't have to be balanced, because value is subjective, but everyone involved has to agree it's worth their while. A rich man could buy a year of a bum's lifespan for a million bucks. A soldier could sell his marksmanship skills in exchange for a would-be terrorist's previously peaceful life. More prosaically, people within my Crown can swap places with eachother freely.

B: My Paradigm is...  I will never steal.

From it I gain the Power...  Here For There

I can trade the places of anything inanimate or consenting within my Crown, including myself. If I exchange the places of things that are of radically different mass they both create sonic booms, which can stun and deafen anybody nearby - including myself.

C: My Paradigm is...  I will never work for free.

From it I gain the Power...  Fuck You, Pay Me

Anyone who wishes to attack me or force me to do something I do not wish to must pay me for the privilege. The minimum payment is one gold piece, but each seperate act requires an individual payment - if the gnoll who wants to gut me throws a platium piece they get one attack, not ten. Payment can be in goods as well as legal tender, but the one-for-one rule still applies.

D: My Paradigm is...  I will never accept charity.

From it I gain the Power...  Equivalent Exchange

I can transform objects I own into other things. If exchanging goods for goods, some bastard cosmic exchequer taxes the transaction, meaning I can only transform it into something of half its market value or less. If exchanging legal tender (including gold and gems) for goods though, the transformation occurs at the market price. I can also combine the value of things with identical characteristics, like merging two 50' ropes into one 100' rope or a pile of small diamonds into one big diamond with the combined value of them all (this particular ability makes me incredibly popular with wizards). All coins are considered to have 'identical characteristics' for this purpose, so that giant mound of copper coins I found at the bottom of the last dungeon can be quite easily squidged down into a more manageable pocketful of platinum.

MY FOCUS IS ORDER

A: My Paradigm is... I will never enter a home unwelcomed.

From it I gain the Power... Inviolable Domain

I can exclude a broad or narrow category of things from the area of my Crown, one at a time. They simply cease to exist within it. Whatever I choose applies to me as well, but I can game it through specificity - if I choose projectiles then any bullets in my gun will dissappear, but if I narrow it down to bullets and use a crossbow, I'm good. The excluded things go back to existing once they leave the area of my Crown or I change it to exclude something else.

B: My Paradigm is...  I will never vandalise a work of art.

From it I gain the Power...  Crystalise

I can convert dead or inorganic matter within my Crown into a changeless crystalline form that is immune to the passage of time and back again. Living organic matter can be encapsulated within it but not converted. Beings that have been so encysted (they should probably get a Save to avoid it) remain alive, not aging and requiring no nourishment nor air and could be chipped out but outside my Crown crystalised material returns to its normal state in about 10 minutes in any case. Crystalised air has equivalent physical resilience to ice, but feels warm like polystyrene to the touch. Anything I Crystalise is vulnerable to a Shatter spell.

C: My Paradigm is...  I will never break a written contract.

From it I gain the Power... Indivisible

No part of my body can be separated from the whole, nor can my effects be removed from me against my will. I can still be poked full of holes and have my organs lacerated and bones broken, but I will never die of blood loss or being beheaded. Likewise I cannot be disarmed or pickpocketed, any attempt to do so finds the item held as firm as an immovable rod.

D: My Paradigm is...  I will never damage a work of artifice.

From it I gain the Power...  Pyramid Power

Things that spend time within my Crown subtly get better over time, slowly moving toward their ideal form. Entropy itself flees before my Crown; rust returns to healthy iron, cracks meld together, dirt sloughs like water from waxpaper, dull blades become sharp. The effect extends to living things; diseases halt in their progression and in time reverse their course, wounds never fester and heal at thrice the normal pace and never leave scars, people even age backwards or forwards at an accelerated pace until they reach the age where they are at their physical peak, though it is rare for someone other than myself to be within my Crown long enough to see such an impact. Given enough time, objects and even people might even become better than they were at their best; blades cut atomic-thin, silk ropes become as tough as carbon fibre, skin and muscle as clean and defined as marble statuary.

MY FOCUS IS IDOLATRY

A: My Paradigm is...  I will never take up arms.

From it I gain the Power... Stone Shadow

I can transform my body into a statue carved from solid stone of my choice. I can then step outside of the statue, leaving it behind - it is real and permanent, even if it leaves my Crown. If I grapple someone and leave them trapped in a stony headlock they're probably not getting out without help or a hammer and chisel. Given enough time I can create relatively stable walls or other structures out of interlocking statues of myself, mortared together with naught but handholds and embraces.

B: My Paradigm is...  I will never refuse an offering of food, drink or incense.

From it I gain the Power...  White Jade Shintai

By my will, as many statues created through Stone Shadow as I have levels can be declared Idols. Each Idol has its own Crown, I can see and hear through all my Idols and count as standing in their place for purposes of Telekinesis, Telepathy and Manifestation. At will I can dissappear from where I stand to step out of them. When I do so I cannot leave the area of the Idol's Crown, but I really have moved places and can take back anything I find there with me when I return. If I wish to declare a new Idol once I have reached my limit, one of my previously created Idols of my choosing crumbles to dust.

C: My Paradigm is...  I will never mistreat social outcasts or show unearned respect to the mighty.

From it I gain the Power...  Army of God

I can animate the statues created through Stone Shadow and control them as if they were my own body while they are within my Crown. All the animated statues are as subject to my Paradigms as I am, and so may not bear weapons, but their fists are still made of stone.

D: My Paradigm is...  I will never desecrate a sacred place.

From it I gain the Power...  Smoke of Sacrifice

I gain power from people who worship at my Idols. Any item left within my Idol's Crown as a sacrifice transforms into smoke and is inhaled by the Idol. I can summon to hand anything they sacrifice, and gain one point I can apply to any number on my character sheet for every magnitude of worshippers I have (10, 100, 1000, etc.). Finally, if someone prays before my Idol for a blessing I can bestow them a Power that fulfils their wish, along with a Paradigm of my choosing - as many such blessings as I have Templates can exist at any one time.

Dark and sinister man, have at thee - GLOG Duelling Styles

Answering Locheil's challenge here.

Loch's original post mentioned Lessons that some fighting styles had, but didn't elaborate on them. I interpreted them as extra special bonuses you could gain once mastering all techniques within a given style. I leave it up to the DM how they are acquired, probably via questing.

Ψ - Gloriam
Style of the de Voltenes, an aasimar noble family descended from ancient heroes, now sadly degenerate and impious - their youngest son rumoured to have been born a tiefling as divine punishment and sent to the New World aboard a slave barge to save the family's face. Requires the use of a silvered blade.

1. Technique: Ave Igna - Shout a holy word aloud as you execute a lunging fleché and the wound site sparks on contact - your attack causes fire damage on a hit, and may set flammable things alight.
2. Stance: Pinhead Dance - As long as you have an elegant weapon in hand, you cannot lose your balance no matter how narrow or unsure the surface you stand upon. What is considered elegant changes with fashion and circumstance, but in general; rapier yes, thousand-folded eastern disembowelling scimitar yes, sledgehammer no, lochaber axe no.
3. Technique: Speculum Solis - Use the mirror-polished surface of your silvered sword to dazzle your foe. Target must Save or be blinded for one round, in addition to being stabbed. Only useable outdoors in the daytime or with an equivalent source of light - a Daylight spell is fine.
4. Stance: Immaculate - You cannot be muddied, bloodied, dusted, splattered or moistened by the to-and-fro of combat. Mostly this is just showing off, but exceptionally useful when fighting things that have acid for blood, emit gouts of spores when poked, or other such nonsense.

Lesson of Gloriam: On Angel's Wings - At will you may change your body weight to be equivalent to the weight of your sin. The DM will judge how sinful you are, based on past conduct. A truly light soul can fall like a feather and skip across the surface of a pond with a few dainty taps of their toes to propel them. A thoroughly wicked soul cracks pavement tiles when they tread and could make a carthorse strain to pull them from where they stand.

Ψ - Calcolo
Enthusiastic application of the skills taught at the Drezelli School of Mathematics, whose students can be found in most wine bars after exam-season, gleefully taking eachother apart with algorithmic precision. Requires the use of a cubit rod in the offhand.

1. Technique: Point Control - You can never roll lower than your last attack roll in this combat. i.e. If you rolled an 11 one round, and 7 the next, your second roll is considered to have been an 11. The next round your minimum roll would be 7.
2. Technique: Measure Twice - If you win initiative, you may choose to let your opponent act before you. If you do, ignore any bonus to their AC that comes from any type of armour that has gaps - including scales and the like.
3. Stance: Music of the Primes - When your attack roll comes up 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 or 19, you deal an additional 1 point of damage, even if the attack would not otherwise hit.
4. Stance: Long Division - The AC you get from Panache is doubled versus arrows and hurled daggers and the like as long as you have not moved in the past round. Seeming to cross an infinite number of divisions between you and the archer, they are very easy to swat aside.

Lesson of Calcolo: Number of the Beast - At the start of each day you have done at least two of the following things the night before that are pleasing to the Devil;

1. Got riotously drunk.
2. Played a game of probability for money.
3. Attended a lecture on one of the natural sciences.
4. Got in a fight.

...roll a d6. You may add or subtract the result of that d6 from any roll you or another makes today, after which it is discarded. If you roll a 6, keep it and roll another d6, up to a total of three dice.

Ψ - Lirippé

Discrete cloak-fighting style popularised by Antigonese Bladewards, designed to neutralise assassins hiding among the fashionable set to target their masters. Requires a cloak or cape of fine quality.

1. Technique: Clean the Blade - An envenomed weapon that attacks you and misses has its poison wiped clean on your cloak.
2. Technique: Toro! - You may apply your Panache bonus to AC to another person within arm's reach. You do not personally benefit from it in any round you use this technique. If you know Clean the Blade, you may apply it on attacks you intercept this way.
3. Technique: Olé! - You may Parry against attacks directed at another person within arm's reach.
4. Stance: Capa y Espada - While in this stance anyone carrying a concealed weapon must make an opposed Wisdom check or you know exactly what they're carrying, and when you Riposte you may choose to disarm your opponent instead of attacking.

Lesson of Lirippé: The Horns - If you die in defence of another, you have a 2 in 6 chance of instead miraculously pulling through, leaving you on 1hp.

Ψ - SoÞwide

Personal style of the wide-eyed barbarian turned sanctioned witch-hunter Aethelwulf the Questioner, who loathes wizards and takes grim delight in putting them to the question.

1. Technique: Fear & Surprise - If you win initiative on the first round of combat you can backstab your target for +4 to Attack and double damage, providing you have enough movement to run up behind them.
2. Stance: Ruthless Efficiency - You deal +2 damage to anyone who has Magic Dice.
3. Stance: Fanatical Devotion - If you are charmed or otherwise mentally compelled the one who charmed you takes d6 psychic damage every round the effect remains active.
4. Stance: Scarlet Robed - While garbed in cardinal's red you add your [level] to Saves vs. unholy magics. This includes most necromancy, all demonology and anything from a witch's spell list, but not fireballs and lightning bolts and the like.

Lesson of SoÞwide: The Question - You have permanent sanpaku eyes. When you defeat someone you may scream a question in their face, they must Save or answer as honestly as they can before they are removed from combat.

Ψ - Scytta

A style of archery perfected by outlaw poachers and bandit woodsmen of the Stonewood Forest, rumoured to have made deals with druids and witches to keep their brigand villages hidden from outsiders. Requires the use of a longbow and stone-headed arrows.

1. Technique: Stag-Piercer - Add your Strength modifier to damage with bowshots within Close range.
2. Technique: Legs & Eyes - Ignore cover penalties from any shields smaller than a pavise.
3. Stance: Hunter's Eye - Each round you spend aiming, reduce the effective range bracket of the target by one step.
4. Stance: Wind Wyrd - Ignore weather-related penalties to shooting, even in howling winds and torrential rain you can find just the right place to put an arrow in the air such that the wind will carry it where you want it. Supernatural weather may force you to make a Save to oppose it, but you still can.

Lesson of Scytta: Fruit of the Yew - Given a day to forage in a forested environment you can manufacture a single poison arrow that deals 4d6 damage or 2d6 on a successful Save. You can have as many poison arrows in existence at any one time as you have Templates.

Nothing Stays Dead Forever - Mushroom Wizard (GLOG)

 Why not just take one spell from DCC and turn it into a whole GLOG wizard? Yeah, lets do that.

Use your favourite GLOG wizard chassis

Starting Equipment: Big silly sadogasa hat, tan-coloured linen robes, wide utility belt covered in tooled leather pouches, 6 empty phials, 2 phials of yellow mold spores, tiny duster bellows, 2 pieces of Sporulated Oddities.

Perk: You can detect and identify funguses, slimes and molds within a 60ft radius without a roll, through a combination of intimate understanding of their growing conditions and a practiced nose. You are proficient in blowguns and poison.

Drawback: When you sleep you experience uncontrollable psychadellic visions, if roused from sleep before you would naturally awaken you act as if under a Confusion spell every round you do not pass a Save vs. Poison, until you either return to sleep or pass 3 tests.

Cantrips:

• Touch a surface to leave behind a bioluminescent slime patch that glows softly whenever something significantly magical (1MD or more worth) comes within 5ft of it.
• Spend an MD to make a useful or edible fungus grow enough to provide 1 dose/meal.
• Instantly cause any liquid that has sugars in it to ferment into crude but respectable alcohol.

Spells:

1. Choking Mold
Your magic drives the omnipresent mold and mildew spores in the area into sudden extraordinary fecundity, until they have filled an area 10'x[dice] diameter with choking, toxic particles. Air-breathing creatures within that area are incapacitated for [sum] rounds by coughing fits unless they make a Save vs. Poison, able to do no more than move their normal walking speed and defend themselves - they still keep their full AC but may not attack, cast spells or use supernatural abilities that require focus and concentration. Hypothetically impossible to cast in extremely clean areas, but the spores you tramp around on your person will usually do the job in that case.

2. Ablative Polypores
The caster causes the dermal yeasts of the target to go into a bloom, covering their skin with a layer of spongy, leathery chitin. The target reduces any physical damage taken by [dice], the spell ends on the next sunrise or when it has absorbed [sum] damage, whichever comes first.

3. Entangling Hyphae
The caster indicates a point of earthen or wooden surface and 30' long whipping tendrils of fungal matter as thick as hemp ropes explode from it, attacking anyone in the area with a bonus equal to the wizard's own attack bonus +[dice]. Anyone successfully attacked is snared and may not move until they have freed themselves by dealing the hyphae a total of [sum] damage with a bladed weapon, hitting automatically. This damage must be dealt seperately for each creature snared. Once the initial explosion of tendrils is over others may enter the area without risk of being attacked. At the end of any round where a creature is still snared they take d6+[dice] damage from the crushing tendrils.

4. Shape Mold
The caster causes thick, rubbery, fungal matter to come into existence where they gesture and forms it into simple solid shapes such as walls, ramps, pillars, blocks, funnels, umbrellas and bridges. The total fungal mass equals [dice] 5' blocks or 10' sheets and are stable as long as their ends rest on solid ground. Mold matter is about as tough as polystyrene - in large blocks it's sturdy enough to bear a man's weight and would take a full minute of work with a bladed weapon to hack through, but the thinner sheets will crumble under any serious weight - they are however air and watertight and look solid enough at first glance, even though anyone with the strength of a goblin or more could easily push their way through.

5. Medishroom
The caster causes the fungal flora of the target to repair their injuries - dermal yeasts growing over wounds like bandages, reducing inflammation and relieving pain. The target heals [sum] points of damage. If cast with 2+ MD the target is also instantly cured of any fungal poison, disease or parasite. If cast with 4+ MD the target also regenerates any lost limbs or organs, and gets a new Save against any non-fungal poisons, diseases or parasites.

6. Psilocybic Vision
Credit to Deus-ex-Parabola's Zouave - though, annoyingly, not the version currently on his blog - for the mechanics of this.
The caster induces a potent and revelatory hallucinatory state on the target, who gets two Saves vs. Magic; the first to throw off any madness or mind-affecting ailments, the second to avoid [sum] rounds of traumatic and violent hallucinations, as a Confusion spell. The target gains a +/-[dice] bonus or penalty to their saves, divided between both as the caster desires.

7. Slimemold Form
The caster disolves their body and gear into a protoplasmic state for [sum] rounds, during which time they can slime under doors or through bars and the like, move along any surface in defiance of gravity and are immune to harm that doesn't come from fire, cold or acid. While in this state they may not attack or cast any other spells and their senses besides touch are quite dull - simple eyespots let them detect the presence and rough direction of light and movement and they can hear as if through a pillow.

8. Puffball
A big purple puffball swells into existence at the targeted point until it reaches the size of a football, then promptly explodes into a cloud of toxic spores. Creatures and objects composed of organic matter (including wooden and flesh constructs and corporeal undead) within a 10'x[dice] diameter area take [sum] damage, Save for half. Creatures and objects destroyed by this damage are reduced to nutritious compost.

9. Sporulate Shroomen
With a wave of their hand and a puff of spores the caster causes [best]+[dice] human-height toadstools to suddenly come into being, shortly afterwards growing crude faces, arms and legs, uprooting themselves and doing the wizard's bidding for [dice] turns, after which they revert to being mundane - if rather large - toadstools. Shroomen have the base stats of 0-level Men-at-Arms in leather armour who deal d6 damage with their clublike fists, but are utterly fearless and gain a bonus to attack, damage and hit points equal to +[dice]. For each MD spent after the first, add one of the following bonuses;

• All Shroomen can form chitinous melee or throwing weapons out of their own corpus once per round. These strike as +0 magical weapons but are otherwise mundane examples of their type from the equipment list. These weapons cannot be seperated from the Shrooman for more than a round without decaying into mulch.
• Their armour class is improved by one step, i.e. from Leather to Chain, Chain to Scale, Scale to Plate.
• Anything that draws breath which starts its round in an adjacent square to a Shrooman must Save vs. Poison or suffer d4 damage.
• Morale checks made in a 20' radius of a Shrooman are made at a [dice] penalty from the clouds of psychogenic spores.

10. Cordyceps Command
The victim of this vile spell must Save vs. Magic or be rendered entirely without a will of their own, obeying the last command given to them regardless of source for [sum] minutes. If the caster wishes they may invest a MD in the victim, which is set aside from their pool and not rolled until the spell is ended - while this MD is invested the caster may percieve through the victim's senses and send them commands telepathically.

11. Chartreuse Destruction
The caster flicks their finger and projects a single droplet of the horrifically deadly green slime at a the target, requiring an attack roll ignoring armour but not dodge bonuses. Victims who do not recieve disease-curing magic must cut, burn or freeze away the affected area by dealing themselves [sum]+[dice] damage within d4 rounds (others may help), or collapse into a pool of green slime, quite dead.

12. The Knowledge & Conversation of Aklo-Myotes, Eater of Death
Meditating on bare earth, the caster comes into contact with Aklo-Myotes - a globe-spanning sentient mycelial mat that is one of the oldest life-forms in existence - it was consuming their flesh that first sparked true intellect in mankind. In return for the wizard's magical energies Aklo-Myotes can perform several useful services. They will flawlessly answer [best] questions related to history, geography, mathematics, biology or chemistry. It is worth remembering that Aklo-Myotes is a being purely of the physical world - it has no spirit or soul to speak of, just a towering but wholly material intellect, and is thus utterly ignorant of spiritual matters. Aklo-Myotes does however pay scrupulous attention to anything related to lifeforms and especially dying things, has perfect memory, is almost omniscient within the sphere of the planet's surface and is very nearly as old as life itself. For greater negotiated payments, ranging from MD being automatically expended to sacrifices, errands and quests undertaken by the caster, Aklo-Myotes can  perform greater feats. This includes assisting with developing new fungal, biomantic, necromantic or geomantic spells, causing enormous natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis by rippling its massive body beneath the earth or changing a whole 6-mile hex of terrain into another type over the course of a season, such as draining a swamp into pastoral land or raising hills on previously flat ground.

Mishaps

1. Arcane Allergen: Your body and mind start rejecting your magic, MD return only on a 1 for 24hrs.
2. Urgh: You double-over in helpless nausea for d3 rounds after the spell is cast.
3. Agnosia: You briefly lose the ability to tell people apart - the best you can do is friend and foe, any attack or spell that targets others has a random chance of hitting the intended person in the group for d6 minutes.
4. I feel weird: Gain a random fungal mutation; after [sum] rounds make a Save vs. Magic, on a failure it's permanent.
5. Yarghble: Vomit up a giant pool of proteinous purple liquid in a 10' radius centred on yourself. Anyone fighting in or moving through it must Save vs. Paralysis or fall prone on the slippery mess.
6. Ohshi-!: Mycotoxins briefly induce potent but wholly uncontrolled psychic powers. Everyone within 20' - yourself included - takes a blast of [sum] psychic damage.

Dooms

1. Nocturnal: You take a [Templates] penalty to saving throws made while standing in direct sunlight. You only regain hit points through rest if you sleep during the day.
2. Anyone else getting trails?: At the start of each day, make a Save vs. Magic, on a failure you are completely insensate for d12 hours, lost in phantasmagoric visions. Without curative magic the best anyone can do for you is tie you up and pull you along on a lead until you calm down.
3. The Shroom Doom: The wizard takes root and over the course of a day and a night transforms into a Brain Fungus. Sentient but unable to take any physical action other than shrieking incoherently and only able to sense moving objects within 30' by vibration. After each week the wizard must make a Save vs. Death or go completely mad, Brain Funguses in this state are incapable of rational thought and use their spells to attack anyone coming within their sensory radius.

Avoid your Doom by undergoing an Astral Quest into the centre of your mind, being crowned the Myconid King or gaining a new, better brain.

Sporulated Oddities
1. Can of Dwarf Yogurt: Actually a kind of mold that converts leaves, twigs, moss and other random bits of organic matter into a nutritious but terribly sour brown yogurt-like slime. Allows you to live (poorly) on otherwise inedible plant matter, if not kept supplied with feedstock and water it dies after 3 days. 1 slot.
2. Portable 1-man tent: Very easy to assemble and disassemble, throw it out and peg it down. Folds up into 1 slot.
3. Bioluminescent Lantern: Not as bright as a normal lantern, illuminating out to a 20ft radius, but only needs a spoonful of fertilizer daily for fuel. Distinctive blueish light. 1 slot.
4. Long-stemmed smoking pipe: with a pouch of suspicious tobacco and a box of matches. 0 slots.
5. Six phials of antifungal powder: Gives an extra Save against the effects of fungal toxins and diseases. 1/3 of a slot each.
6. Big knife: It's just a big knife, as a short sword in combat, well made and maintained, has a little honing bar that screws into the handle. 1 slot.
7. Pair of knee-high waterproof boots: Absolutely essential for fungus-farming, made of one solid piece of alchemical faux-leather, sweaty. 1 slot, 0 when worn.
8. Long-handled tongs: Made of springy metal with wooden handles. 1 slot.
9. Spray Mister: Currently full of a fertilizer-water mix, could be filled with all sorts of things. 1 slot.
10. Spidersilk Scarf: Decorated with a fetching pattern. Wrapped twice around your face, gives advantage on Saves against airborne particles. 0 slots.
11. 50' of rope: Oddly organic in texture, like a spooled-up leathery tendril. 1 slot.
12. Quarterstaff: 6 foot of waxed oak, brass shoe, anything that you can't kill with a magic missile you can probably see off with a good whack. 1 slot.
13. Pack of mushroom-themed playing cards: A bit grubby, from your time hustling the other apprentices at Whist (at which you are Skilled). 0 slots.
14. Hammer and 10 iron spikes: When you don't have them you'll wish you did. 2 slots.
15. Thurible and 10 cones of incense: Covers up unpleasant scents. 1 slot.
16. Sack of fertilizer: If mixed with sugar, startlingly explosive. On it's own, smelly. 2 slots.
17. Bamboo Blowgun: A meter long, fires darts the length of daggers. A medium ranged weapon. Comes with 5 darts. 1 slot.
18. A jug of mushroom wine. Tastes like regular wine with a musty finish. 1 slot.
19. A farmer's almanac. For the current year, contains weather foreacasts, planting tables and assorted bits of useful knowledge. 1:6 chance once per session that it has advice relevant to a current problem that would also interfere with agricultural-types. Retains this property for 1 year, then it's good toilet paper. 1 slot.
20 a curious treasure;

1. A pair of +1 scissors: Steel with an ormolu finish, as a dagger if used as a weapon. 1/2 a slot.
2. Sapient Treefrog: Speaks common, mildly toxic skin - could be really toxic if condensed and mixed with pure alcohol. Used to be a mushroom-thief. 1 slot.
3. Tin Bucket of Potion of Mushroom Growth: Makes regular mushrooms into giant ones, the whole bucket could make a toadstool you could hollow out and use as a house. Bucket has a lid held on with little clamps on the sides. 4 slots.
4. Wand of Acid Arrow: One cubit of bogwood & verdigrised copper. Holds 1MD, regenerating at dawn. 1/2 a slot.
5. Antishawl: Woven from brown-mold mycelium, eats heat - the wearer is immune to heatstroke in all but the most absurdly hot weather, and gets advantage on saves even in those cases. 1 slot, 0 when worn (but it would be chilly to wear it all the time).
6. Jar of Adamant Glass: Looks like a regular glass kilner jar, actually made of transparent adamant - completely indestructible and seals spirit-tight. 1 slot.

Concerning the Abbreviated Races - Dwarves, Halflings & Gnomes

Extract from Ode Diminutis Propinquis Hominum: Demi-humans and Their Habits, by master wizard Athanasious Great-Wand, called "the Glaucous".

There is a common misconception even among scholars of demi-anthropology that the three taxonomies of Dvergar, Rotundus and Gnomii represent different branching clades on the tree of life. My own examination of these groups has revealed a startling truth; there is in fact only one demi-human race of foreshortened stature, and its truest form is represented by the common or mountain dwarf! That this truth has gone unrecognised is due to certain cultural and biological peculiarities, namely the dwarven shame-culture and unusually complex relationship with their humoural balance and local morphogenic fields. It is still remarkable that this revelation should have gone un-noticed for so long, given the inviability of so many physically similar species occupying the same subterrene ecological niche. To explicate;

Halflings represent the dwarf in a kind of prolongued neotenic stage. It is oft remarked that humans find halflings endearing due to their resemblance to human children, it is for this very reason that they are repulsive and annoying to dwarves - to whom they resemble overgrown dwarven children. Dwarves are dependant on strenuous physical exertion during their adolescence - ideally in low-light conditions, somewhat analogous to the growth of rhubarb in a forcing shed - to promote the production of the melancholic and choleric humours that complete their metamorphosis into hirstute and mesomorphic adulthood. Deprived of the rigors of anvil, shield-wall and mine-face their naturally strong sanguine humours take precedence, physique tends toward portliness and beard growth ends at the mutton-chop if at all. An intermediate example of this can be observed in the valley dwarves who trade with the human kingdoms and supply their mountain-dwelling cousins with the products of the surface world. While still stout and hirstute by human standards, the valley dwarves - who maintain their humour balance through heavy agriculture and forestry - are notably willowier, softer-featured and higher-voiced than the mountain dwarf and less taciturn and dour in temprament. I conjecture that halfling communities likely form in the aftermath of dwarven civil wars which are customarily concluded with mass exiles. 

Fig. 1, the halfling dissolute.

Those exiles unable to find another mountain home may have adopted human customs to survive, engaged in light agrarianism and forage, dug subterrene homes in sod hills rather than carved out of stone, and over time abandoned the practices that lead to dwarven adulthood entirely. A further proof of this conjecture is the halfling custom of going unbooted - traditional dwarven culture considers bare feet risqué in the extreme, and it is easy to imagine that exiles with grievance might adopt taboo-breaking behaviour as a means of thumbing their nose against their culture of birth. The halfling's famed skill at thievery, stealth and the burgling arts may also originate from the other major cause of exile among the dwarf holds - crime. I suspect that it would not be uncommon for entrenched halfling communities to find their numbers periodically added to by exiled dwarves tried for thievery, and that over time a corpus of knowledge regarding thiefcraft could accumulate among their descendants, preserved in the cultural background noise much as children's games are passed on from one generation to the next almost unaltered for milennia.

The final proof, and I think the most pellucid of them all, is the periodic dwarven practice of abducting or press-ganging halflings into military service. This author has observed this practice in person on one occasion when he participated in it first-hand! In this I was playing the role of the dwarves' agent, the vital initial stage - humans who have regular contact with halfling communities are induced through bribery to spy upon the inhabitants and identify a likely target - favouring a young, spry halfling of good (or at least decent) moral character and imaginative temprament, which it is hoped is indicative of an underlying courage and sense of adventure. I was then given orders to scratch a dvergar rune on the door or gatepost of the target. I observed from afar as by dead of night a troupe of dwarves dressed in hoods and common clothes rather than their customary armour for sake of stealth, though still carrying weapons concealed beneath their cloaks, invaded the halfling's home and after a night-long process of indoctrination involving alcohol, the singing of folk-songs and much back-slapping encouragement not dissimilar to that observed among adolescent human males, elicited their target to leave behind his home and comforts to join them on a venture to retake an orc-infested dwarfhold!

Halflings who have been subjected to this practice - which I believe is an attempt by the dwarves to induce a kind of moral fortitude and essential "dwarfiness" to grow in what they consider to be a redeemable case of halfling degeneracy - do indeed take on a more dwarf-like spirit thereafter. While they never metamorphose into true dwarves, they tend to be more willful, stoic and often regard other halflings as frivolous and petty. A great many of these halfling janissaries will spend long years even after their release from dwarven service pining for the majesty of the mountains and even take to wearing armour and relishing the lustre of gold and hammered steel. In time some of them return to the dwarfholds and, I think likely though I cannot confirm, marry into them and thus restore their lineage from exile.

Regarding Gnomes the matter is somewhat more straightforward, though no less fascinating - it is oft opined that dwarves have no talent for the arcane arts, that their innate resistence borne from the heavy concentrations of certain metalic salts in their bloodstream - particularly sal ferrum and sal plumbum - precludes them from ever gaining the facility outside from the priest class who in any case are mere intermediaries for the power of their gods and not true spellcasters. This, I say, is not so! While it is in fact the case that the dwarven race produces a deficit of arcanists this is for a far more profound reason than the talent being lacking among their kind, but rather because so few with the talent are willing to endure the consequences; namely the malady known as gnomism!

Fig. 2, the gnomish adept, age: 42

Gnomism, from the dvergar "gnomri" meaning ash or slag with connotations of being used up or withered, is a wasting sickness that afflicts all dwarves who practice the mystical arts. The aformentioned blood salts react strongly with the presence of arcane forces - when these forces come from outside the body these reactions serve to protect the dwarf from the effects of hostile enchantments, but when they come from within as is the case when a spell is memorised and cast, the dwarf finds their very humours rebelling against them. Like a man subjected to a long-term infection, the humoural reactions leech health and vitality from the victim's marrow. A dwarf who has fully initiated into wizardry will soon find their muscles shrinking, their skin wizening, their hair and beard becoming wiry and coarse. Unlike the neoteny experienced by halflings, gnomism resembles a form of progeria - the subject comes to resemble an elderly human in miniature, crook-backed and wiry of frame. Perhaps even more significant than the physical changes is the mental impact of gnomism - the sparking of arcane energies in the salt-laden grey matter of the brain results in bouts of whimsy and mild hallucination often resulting in eccentric obsessiveness as a coping mechanism to remain focused on the present.

While these effects are extreme, curiously they do not actually diminish the lifespan of the subject, nor do they suffer any of the common maladies of senescence such as rheumetism or hearing loss. In fact, there is strong evidence that gnome lifespans can in fact be longer than that of their hale peers despite their frail appearance. This can perhaps be attributed to the anti-entropic nature of certain magical energies, the pyr technikon ordering their humours and sustaining them long past the point where mere gross animal vitality would have failed. This explanation does fall down somewhat in the case of the progeny of gnomes - for indeed, gnomism is partially inheritable, with a chance of being contracted by the descendants of any gnome if their spouse is a non-suffering dwarf and a certainty if both parents are gnomes - who do not have to be magi to still suffer and benefit from the effects of gnomism. This author would conjecture that in these cases even if not trained in their use the vital pneumatic channels for magical force likely still exist within these offspring.

Unlike halfings, gnomes are not outcasts from broader dwarven society. There is no particular law in dwarven legislature against dabbling with the arcane - though there are some prohibitions against tempting the young with promises of eldritch power. Any adult dwarf of sound mind who is willing to brave the consequences is within their right to study the arcane arts. As the number of gnomes grows while the dwarven population struggles to avoid diminishing, this is likely to change in the future - though given the glacial rate at which dwarven jurisprudence advances this change will no doubt be some time coming. This author predicts that within two centuries dwarven law will require any dwarf who wishes to pursue the magical arts produce at least one issue before their descent into gnomism, for simple reason that many dwarven families already pressure this condition upon their magically inclined relatives in an unofficial capacity.

Gnomes live in close proximity to dwarves, though not too close - their communities that resemble inverted subterrene wizard's towers (for the same sound reason that aboveground magisters construct their domiciles - that being to concentrate geomantic forces) located on the outskirts, just seperate from the main dwarfhold. It would be perhaps unkind to liken them to leper colonies, given that they are far from being dour sanitoriums but rather lively and collegiate in character, but the principle of isolation from the untainted remains the same. Some gnomes, particularly those of the second and third generations, have even taken to abandoning dvergar society altogether and strike out to found new homes of their own in geomantically agreeable locations, with some even going so far as to abandon their clan-names and establish new lineages.

Tl;dr: There's only one human-looking shortarse race and that's dwarves. Halflings are dwarven thieves, gnomes are dwarven wizards. Inspired by By This Axe: The Cyclopedia of Dwarven Civilisation.

Languages of Megara - GLOG/OSR

 Megara is a world where the spoken word carries a lot of weight, all magic comes from Words of the lingua supernal, the ontologically perfect language from which the One God sung the world into being. If you are a sorcerer then you already speak lingua supernal, albeit like a grunting beast that has been taught to yowl a roughly understandable approximation of it's immaculate beauty. It's not really the sort of thing you use to converse with other mortals though, for its clarity of meaning is so pure that reality - itself merely an echo of its speech - changes to match it. All classes in Megara have a supernatural capstone ability in which they acquire and internalise one Word of the lingua supernal, be it the Soulknife's understanding of the Blade that lets them cut even the immaterial, or the binding oaths and invincible sangfroid that come from a Caste Noble's Blood.

But there are other languages, ones less blasting and unbearable in their clarity but safe for common use. All characters begin knowing one of these mortal tongues, plus another for every point of Intelligence bonus they have. Additional languages can attempt to be learned as a season action, at a cost of 500gp of tuition and books. An already known language can attempt to be mastered, also taking a season action and 1000gp. In either case the chance of successfully learning or mastering the language is 1:6, modified by Intelligence Modifier and number of prior attempts, if any. A starting character may at their choice spend two starting languages to master one. 

As all languages are debased forms of the lingua supernal, mastering one has a small supernatural effect. Some languages have a written form that is rarely used or exclusive to the higher caste, and must be learned seperately from the spoken tongue.

Cthondine
Cthond was the mightiest of the great magiocracies that controlled the western continent. The Jet Obelisks that demarked the territories of the Cthondine Autocracy can be found as far to the south as Heraclium and as far to the north as the banks of the Ypra River - and when the Ironmen came south across that river, Cthond was the first to feel their wrath. Yet today the legacy of Cthond is its tongue, spoken even further abroad after its fall than it was at its height. Cthondine has a complex system of conjugations that make it highly accurate, but can lead a novice speaker to stumble into clownish malapropism.
Written: Yes
Mastery: Cthondine is especially suited to giving commands. When NPC's under your command fail a Morale check, you may reroll one of the dice - the second result stands.

Emmanican
A land plagued with a surfeit of philosophers, Emmanica is the archipelago home to a people of omnivorous intellect that has stood largely untroubled by either sorcery or barbarians for centuries and is only now beginning to stretch its muscles and feel its own strength. Emmanican is sybilant and methodical, with a great richness in its description of the World as it relates to the Self.
Written: Yes
Mastery: Your grounding in Emmanican formal logic reduces the duration of mind-affecting evocations and other such magical effects by half. If ordinarily permanent, you are permitted a saving throw to cast off the enchantment once per week.

Kikalese
The Kikala plateu would be unremarkable save for its people; herdsmen who claim the title of King, sorcerers who are considered holy rather than damned, and the only people whose reputation for martial excellence is sufficiently great to deter even the rapacious Tongen Khaganate. Kikalese is rapid and onomatopoeic, containing barked consonants designed to be heard clearly over long distances against the mountain wind.
Written: No
Mastery: You can predict the weather and track herd animals with 85% accuracy. It's probably worth remembering that horses are herd animals.

Sassálid
Ancient rivals of the Autarchs of Cthond, the Sassálid Imperium was a place steeped in the twin scourges of power and luxury. Having long since subjected nearly the entirety of the southern continent to their imperial dominion and reigned unopposed for over a millennium the Sassálid Pashas were free to bask in the reflected glory of their ancestors and invent ever more impressive titles for themselves. Sassálid is an unctuous tongue, drifting from the lips like incense smoke.
Written: Yes
Mastery: You reroll any result of immediate hostility on reaction rolls with demons, and they will be marginally more reasonable in dealing with you, accepting any offered compromise as long as it is not massively favouring you over them, e.g. taking the souls of two captives rather than yours.

Tongen
Tongue of the rising power of the Tong Khaganate, currently the largest and by far the most precocious empire in the world. It has become the lingua franca of the entire eastern hemisphere and is required to use the Lam, the Khaganate's extensive mail system - by imperial decree the Lam will carry no message that is not written exclusively in Tongen. Tongen is a forthright language, filled with plosive consonants.
Written: Yes, must be learned seperately from spoken.
Mastery: You can convey broad meanings to horses and eagles, they will understand and will obey commands as long as they are favourably disposed to you or sufficiently bribed. They can reply to you but only in exclamations of 'Yes!', 'No!', 'Here!' or 'Danger!'

Nuncerian Glyphs
Nobody needs to learn Nuncerian, this eldritch language more than any other carries potent resonance with the lingua supernal, with some calling it the written language of God. First discovered on the plains of Nunceria, when a mighty earthquake unearthed buried steles etched with the history of a long-vanished prehuman people. The contents of the steles were deemed so awfully heretical and in contravention of all decency and truth that they were smashed to pieces and scattered into the ocean. Still, more and more Nuncerian markers are still discovered from time to time and the Cthondine Autocracy was fond of using it to issue proclamations throughout its expanse, so that none could claim ignorance of the law. Words written in Nuncerian Glyphs are automatically understood by their beholders, without having to learn it.
Written: Yes, only.
Mastery: You can now write Nuncerian Glyphs, with all that entails. Nuncerian Glyphs require a third dimension to function, and so must be inscribed upon stone, wood or clay with appropriate tools.

Yrensprecht
The Ironmen are still considered the epitome of the barbarian by all people south of the Ypra, and are viewed as much as boogeymen as they are fellow humans. Still, some small amount of trade and congress does take place along the border of old Cthond, and a cunning merchant does well to learn the rudiments of their harsh, growling tongue if they are to acquire their incomparable tools and arms of Steely Iron in return for the perfumes, silks and wines of the south. Its written form is called Brande, angular runes designed to be carved with a blade or chisel, and is almost exclusively the province of the Ironmen's priest-caste.
Written: Yes, must be learned seperately from spoken - never taught willingly to non-Ironmen.
Mastery: If you spend a round spitting invective at a sorcerer who is casting an evocation you may roll a D6 and deduct the result from the [sum] of their working, on a 4-6 you also deduct 1 [dice] from their working, but cannot perform this trick again until you have rested your voice for 8 hours.