Background info, Humans & Dwarves for my personal OD&D homebrew "MORDHEARSE"
The name was inspired by BLACKMOOR and my intention is to throwback to the earliest proto-D&D gaming expectations. Most of the dungeons will be randomly populated with zero consideration given to survivability and very little given to realism (although I love Gygaxian naturalism, so there'll be a bit of that). You can find monsters and items out of depth. XP comes from spending your money on carousing and philanthropy. Players will be expected to build or steal fortresses at the higher levels. There's a heavy post-apocalyptic swords&sorcery super-science bent. Damage dice and HD are all D6. Wizards aren't TOTALLY useless when they run out of spells.
I'm also considering letting everybody where any armor they want and just making it horribly painful to lug around or do adventuring, which mostly requires you to be light and quick if you wanna survive.
This is our Earth billions of years into the future. Humans have risen, fallen, been reduced to the stone age, risen, fallen, been enslave for millennia, discovered, forgotten, and rediscovered sorcery, technology, religion, culture, art, in all it's various multiplicities. The planet has been reduced to glass and grown back a half dozen times. What was old becomes new. We've mutated into a thousand different species, been reduced to ashes, and re-congealed back into our original form, only to do the same thing over and over. We've colonized space, discovered, enslaved, and obliterated extraterrestrial life, discovered time travel, traveled to other dimensions, given birth to universe spanning AIs, incinerated whole galaxies, played out every conceivable game to its bitter conclusion. Time after time we've fallen back to old Earth, our home, our mother, built and rebuilt anew.
The sun is dying. We've kept it alive through technology and sorcery, completely rebuilding it a few times along the way. Things have gone on too long, all those ways are unknown now. It's burning out for good. The night sky is empty and lonely, and more stars wink out every year. There's an enormous tear in the sky where it seems to pinch itself together, a seam of lost 'space' that collapses inward, like a mirage in the corner of the eye, and that patch grows larger every year. NEMESIS--All see it but none may know it.
In the morning the flickering, feeble sun rises and drifts weakly across the lower horizon. Some days it doesn't even rise at all. Its feeble light sheds gold and ruby and sapphire in every direction. At night all is dark and grey and men and beast shiver and hide in their holes. Unearthly noises fill the air and things hunt in the jungles which envelop the globe.
Humanity is unimaginably old and senile. We've changed as a
race along the way, but not as much as you might think. We've built
perfect Utopias that lasted eons, and perfect Hells which spanned solar
systems. There's nothing left to try, but we flounder onwards.
HUMANS come in many shapes, colors, and sizes, of even more complexity than we do now. At the basic core we are still human, fighting and fucking and living as we always have. Though perhaps a bit more cynical if not wiser for the trouble.
Their societies are spread across the globe, mostly lost and disconnected from each other, and forming an ever-changing face of complexity. Villages and towns near to each other may speak a different language, wear different clothes, pray to different gods, and have totally different rituals and customs to their neighbors. Between some groups these differences are seen as healthy diversity and respected. Between others it is viewed as evil and strange.
Humans have a multiplicity of different living styles. When creating a human settlement roll:
Society type
1. Hunter/gatherer
2. Fuedal
3. Industrial
4. Technomantic
5. Hedonistic
6. Raider
Organization style:
1. Anarchist/Utopian
2. Tribalistic
3. Theological/Diabolic
4. Kingdom
5. Aristocratic/Caste
6. Sorcerous
Other tables for various societal creation will be given at a later date.
The territory of this given society is also in 6 mile hexes. More hexes may indicate a more powerful society, centrally constructed, or of a spreading/diverse collection of varying but similar groups which consider themselves relational. To determine the territory of a group roll on a d4, d8, or d12.
Humans may begin play as any class: Fighters, Pilgrims, Thaumaturges, or Mountebanks. They may switch to a different class later on, as long as they have a 16 in the Prime Requisite for that class. They may not, however, switch back to their original class unless they also have a 16 in that Prime Requisite as well. Humans are ever-learning and endlessly adaptable, but even they have limits.
Humans may reach any level.
DWARVES a relative of man, though none know it. They hail from the continent-wide Silver desert, where they build canyon-side edifices and carve intricate hidden tunnels in the rock, craftily hidden from any but those with the eyes to see them. They harvest potent Mercurial water from the sands themselves using processes which combine plant, animal, and technomatic forms. This water is a jealously guarded and holy product of the dwarves. To use this water for a wrong purpose, or to give it to others is a deadly sin to the dwarves. No dwarf may live without it, and all dwarves carry a bit with themselves, held in special organs inside their bodies.
Dwarves are nomads and tend horse-sized locust creatures, and hairy behemoths which graze the fallow sands, traveling from hidden keep to hidden keep. They are shepherds of the sandworms which make travel through the desert perilous and regard these titanic creatures as living gods, the perfected Dwarf-form which creates tunnels and consumes all and hoards endlessly
Many Dwarves choose to leave the desert, for their own reasons, and travel the world abroad. They are a common sight as roving bands of hustlers, thieves, bards, and traders. They are often used as ranch hands, or animal tamers, or beastmasters because of their inclination for animal husbandry.
They do not have a written language using runes or symbols, but their words are melodious, and they can speak with virtuosity using instruments of varying style. Dwarves paint and tattoo their bodies and wear elaborately detailed textiles and weave tapestries of delicate complexity, and the colors and shapes and images therein breathe meaning with every shade. A Dwarf can 'read' music and color created by another dwarf, and absorb the meaning and feeling the one who created it intended, though through the lens of their own individual perception. They believe they were given life by the sound of the wind whistling through water-made caverns.
In addition, Dwarf players may start knowing the languages of THREE beasts or beastmen. Dwarves are highly in tune with the movement of the earth and the creatures which dwell in it. They may calm an enraged mundane animal on 3in6, and converse with animals they know the language of, though such animals may not be very intelligent or talkative.
"Man Magic" is considered strange and dark to dwarves, who weave their own form of magic into every facet of their lives, guarding it in secrets and moonlight. Dwarves may not learn spells or develop as Magic-users. They are, however, capable of telling which direction is North, their general elevation level, the humidity, and seeing in the dark by the wan light of the feeble moon or by using the memory of sun-dappled sands. In total darkness Dwarves may activate their dark vision for up to d4 hours before it must be recharged in the sunlight.
Dwarves may consume Mercurial water to restore their wounds, even from the brink of death, and sate their thirst and hunger for days. Hoards of Mercurial water are kept in deep vaults far under the Silver desert sands, though all dwarves carry a sip of it within their bodies. To remove this sip is to kill the dwarf, and it is deadly poison to all non-dwarves. Dwarves ritualistically drink the sip of their closest friends upon death and to die forgotten and alone, with the sip intact, is the only fear a Dwarf knows.
Dwarves are immune to fear attacks from Undead creatures, but not to fear-inducing illusions which work upon the mind in a different way.
All Dwarves are of the Fighter class, up to the 6th Level. They also have a +4 bonus to all saving throws.
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