Seventy-Seven Vicious Princes

Wow wow wow Alpha 20. What an arbitrary milestone. Head  to the carrd  to pick it up! As always, thanks for checking it out; please don't hesitate to DM me on twitter or find me on Discord if you have any feedback. Here's an incomplete list of changes in  Alpha Version 20: Wealth  has been rewritten to hopefully be a little clearer. 8.1  is where the majority of this effort went. An extra box in Section 16  and some additional text in section 13  to encourage trying the web out as a method of organization. A new rival, Keve Kornel,  with thoughts on running Great Lord rivals. Various itty bitty devils unleashed across the pages.

I've been using the splendid MRMOTEXT lately alongside Playscii to make dungeons. The character set is supreme stuff for quickly making some beautiful dungeons, but it lacks letters in its character set. Any that I understand, at any rate. I invite you to take this map and use it in any way you see fit--it just needs a little bit of translation first. What you come up with is bound to be more interesting than anything I could have written. @ me on Twitter or on Discord (I'm in the usual stomping grounds there) with what you come up with!

  Rank 6: Great Lord. The Great Lords do not need your love, nor your loyalty. They don’t even need your obedience. They don’t expect it. How could they?  They want your awe . This is how they survive: cultivated unassailability. Not of the men and women (who die like anyone dies) but of the Fourteen, and the Seventy-Seven. As well oppose the rain or the dark. As well rage against death than against the Great Lords. Imagine Zarkany burnt to the ground or slid into the sea–do not imagine it without the Council. Bring one down and sixty-two salivating suzerains line up to fill the seat. Kill one and take their patent and their place. Why wouldn’t you? Do you know what you’d be throwing away? So the bulwark has held for centuries. But Keve Kornel (Fourth Great Lord of the Day Council) has noticed the spiderweb faults in the foundation. The hellish exhalation of the Fabrication district. The nascent eighth ward. The constant cancer-growth from which the Council fancies itself deta...

Devils in Zarkany are firmly in the Hieronymus Bosch mode. They speak Zarkanian, but often have little to say. They delight in confounding humans.  Devil hunters do brisk business trapping devils, then selling them to the Fabrication District barons—burning a devil provides bountiful energy.  Devils congregate at places of power like flies to corpses. Most are no bigger than dogs or rats; but major places of power can coax bigger ones down from the Red Mountain. The largest devil on record was a  7 tonner, 24 years ago. Devils serve a few purposes in VICIOUS PRINCES. As chaos agents they make great sources for dispatches--their destabilization can be a problem or an opportunity in equal measure. Catch a devil and you can sell it to the Fabrication District factories for scratch. Most devils are pocket change, good maybe to bring a prince from  rank 1  to  rank 2 , or give a rank 2 prince some liquid coin. Any person-size...

Version 19 is up  on the carrd.  This is a pretty big one! I'm excited to get it out to you. I think I'm close to wrapping this up. As always, thanks for checking it out. DM me on twitter or find me on Discord if you have any feedback for me! Here's a list of changes in  Alpha Version 19: Part I Magic has gained a couple of untrained spells, usable by anyone. Now you have something to spend your points on even if you don't have any magic traits (as long as you didn't explode!) Part II Changed some GM advice to reflect the importance of rivals. A new section, Section 18,  describes the nitty-gritty procedure of actually running the game. Conversations with NPCs  has additional language clarifying what contacts can and are willing to do for you Running Projects  is complete now, with a baleful little prince illustration. Consequences  have been completely overhauled, and a new GM-facing mechanic introduced--the fallout die. Added some stuff in the FAQ, r...

Rank 3: Gentlewoman. It’s good to be a prince. Life is a song. Theft is sport. Soma has trouble understanding why everyone is so eager to overcomplicate things, but it certainly makes her career easier. Princes crowd around darkened tables in secret cellars, all guttered candles and twisting plots and furrowed brows. Soma is upstairs, stealing their candelabras. A songbook’s worth of ditties have been composed about Soma Sinaros.  Gems in her Pockets ;  The Laughing Prince ;  When Soma Came to Astrabek ; and the unspeakably tawdry taproom hit  Polishing Gems , which would leave an orthodox prince flushed and furious. Soma has memorized all of them. Her carpet-draped, redolent home in Fallaburg is full of uneaten grapes, half-tuned lutes, and a magpie melange of stolen shit. Some of it is useful, some frivolous, some from lordly manors and some from commoner businesses. If you give her a few minutes she could probably remember which is which. She hosts smoky, musical ...