Thursday 8 November 2018

Vultureman Class (The God Faced Lands)

I'm working on a project with Christopher Mennell: The God Faced Lands.  It has a sort of fantasy mad max in space vibe going on. Warbands of mongrel aliens stampeding about on bizarre and mutated mounts, fighting their way across a plain of skin ripped straight from the face of god. 

Here's an overview of the setting from Chris himself: 

"The Dumontiluvian War rages across the vast, pockmarked skinlands of the God Faced valley of He-who-Hungers, with the roving hordes battling to drive their enemies into the massive, screaming gorge whose walls rise up and crest into a fang-rimmed chasm known as the End of the World.".

I've been working away at a bunch of different crazy classes that Chris has come up with. Each comes with a table of possible warband names and a set of mind, body and soul mutations. Here's the Vultureman. The art is by Guillaume Jentey.

Guillaume Jentey.

From the recordings of Mindsage Chemen’ell: Clearly at some time the hawkbeasts were free roaming. The gangly vulturemen, In all their skeksi-like glory, have imprisoned them, quite possibly in heavy and burdensome shackles making flight difficult but possible, but hardly graceful. And the vulturemen could fly themselves, but they are lazy and hate to use their wings.”

Cruel iron beak and talons, both are often rusted and red stained. Rotted pale skin, jowley, hanging and loose. Flesh marbled with blue veins, visible through molting black feathers. Nigh useless haggard wings terminate in gnarled fists. Eyes of loathing scowl out with disgust at the universe, crowning a hobbled and gangly form.

d12 Clan Names:

  1. The Saturnian Wing.
  2. Crypt Buzzards.
  3. The Cracked Talon.
  4. Hade’s Feathers.
  5. Hackled Claw Brood.
  6. The Lord’s Murder.
  7. The Titan Flock.
  8. Fleet Odium.
  9. The Cthonic Volt.
  10. Foul Orcus Committee.
  11. The Feast of Kettle Maws.
  12. Bearers of The Great Wake.

Mind Mutation, d6
Body Mutation, d6
Soul Mutation, d6
  1. Other beings with wings are an offensive most vile, must remove all pairs they see.
  2. All wings must be under their suzerainship, bound and controlled by them alone.
  3. Must pilgrimage to the highest place in the land, that shall be their home.
  4. The largest carcass must be found, to hold the feast of all feasts. Then there will be peace.
  5. Constantly cackling hysterically. Vile, cruel laughter that intensifies when blood is drawn.  
  6. Must teach all other beings to fly, against their will. Often by throwing them over sheer cliffs.
  1. Staglike horns erupt like rude bone lightning from the base of the beak. Protrudes menacingly and  used for gouging.
  2. Two ever bickering and beak snapping at one other heads.
  3. Scaled and bereft of feathers, taking on the visage of a winged reptile.
  4. Hyper coloured and psychedelic plumage. Swirling, sicking and too bright.  
  5. d6 small black birds perch and nest along the shoulder flesh, a symbiotic relationship. They spy and send messages in exchange for protection
  6. Ancient and dead, half skeletal. The consumption of too many carcasses has extended the lives of these vulturemen beyond death.  
  1. Green, irradiated globe eyes. Refuse to acknowledge the sentience of all beings without this trait. The Green Orb is their holy icon.  
  2. Ever smoking braziers of charred flesh. A cloud of black smoke cloaks and follows them.
  3. A caged pet demon is their godlet, it always gets the choicest carcass cuts. It grows in size and anger.
  4. Their holy work is the creation of an enormous bone effigy. It is dragged everywhere with the clan and ever growing.
  5. Weep and wail in memory of the dead grove: A mythic mound of rotting flesh surrounded by the neverending perches of dead branches.  
  6. Never speak, only caw and shriek. A sash of dark green is tied about all of them. The air shimmers red above and behind them.

Class Details:
Iron talon (d8 when mounted, d6 x 2 on foot) and iron beak (d6), +1 To Hit every 2nd level, Gangly form and distracting feathers (AC 13), d6 HP per level.
Vulturemen can, begrudgingly, fly short distances by testing CON at Disadvantage. Add level to CON when testing for flight.
Level 2: Spending an hour feasting on the corpse of beings recently slain grants a bonus of 1 to all rolls for the next day.
Level 4: Wing feathers calcify and harden, now glinting and metallic. Gains a d6 bonus to AC and loses half that amount of DEX.
Level 6:Half level times a day can spend a round glowering with menace at a target. Test CHA, if successful target is cursed for d6 hours (rolls everything with Disadvantage).  

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