Deep Space Bitches: the Ghost and the Psychic

Welcome back to the distant lesbian spacefuture. It's no better than the present - but you're here anyway, so you might as well have a good time and keep fighting the good fight. Today I've got two more classes (the Ghost in the Machine and the Psychic), as well as a lore dump about the weird and paranormal parts of the setting.

 

The galaxy is full of wonders and horrors. Sometimes you can even tell the two apart.

The wormholes, natural and artificial, that tie the "galaxy" together only cover a tiny fraction of the galaxy proper. That's still countless thousands of stars, but as the prophets say, "Space is big". We've met other species from far beyond the explored sphere, but no catastrophically ancient species that could snuff us out by twitching their little finger. There's lots of theories why, given that we've also found artifacts that suggest such species existed. Derelict megastructures, mass wormhole-foundries, the calendrical steles that harness psychic power to create cosmic holidays, and far more that we don't even have names for.

Maybe they fucked off into another dimension, or disappeared up their own wormhole gates, or were overcome with ennui and collectively decided "eh, maybe it's not worth it anymore". Maybe they are psychic powers, and we're playing with forces far beyond our control (wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last). Conventional FTL stardrives will get you to millions of worlds that are best described as "haunted". What that means depends on the planet, but it's never good.

That's doesn't even start to touch what's there in the space between wormholes, or the things we've put out there between the stars just to see what would happen. There's lots of signs that building wormholes destablizes the cosmos, but they're too damn useful to stop. Inside, there's pirate bases, lost starships, ghost fleets, wormhole whales, and taking enough voyages through (never mind living there, by the stargods) practically guarantees you'll get a good set of ghost stories and minor psychic powers.

Between the stars in the built-over galaxy, there's far more personal horrors. Forgotten pre-wormhole and pre-stardrive generation ships from species that leapfrogged them and settled their target worlds thousands of years before they'll arrive. Separatist cults that decided the best way to escape the evils of the galaxy was to cut themselves off from all contact and turn inwards, to follow their own twisting path. There's even creatures out there, like the star kraken or the asteroid-tree or the void-whale. And always there's the screams; radio transmissions from long-dead worlds, disspating into the cosmic background radiation because no one's coming and there's no one left to save.

by gypcg

Psychic powers are a well-known fact of life, if rare to see in practice. The scientific consensus has had to acknowledge them for centuries; there's been entire wars fought by and over extant powerful psychics and a resulting psychic arms race among the empires of the galaxy. Each founded a division for psychic intelligence and warfare, fighting eternal spy-wars in the great game of Imperial intrigue. 

 

Termed the Psy-Corps as a group by the folks like you on the ground to whom the difference is academic, they include everything from the seer-spies of the Kassandrai to the psychic assassins of Section Ψ to the eggheaded superweapon developers of the Bureau of Hypermathematical Investigation. If you have the mis/fortune of being psychic and you don't mind "war crimes committed" being a header on your resume, this is where you go. If you don't, well, the Vivarium Houses are more than willing to take you in - the same way a biologist is to a fruit fly.

The Vivarium Houses are the preeminent institutes of occult learning. If you're smart, wealthy, and want to escape the corporate stranglehold on higher education (and have a choice of where you work after you graduate, instead of getting funneled into their vertically integrated research and development departments), they're an attractive option. It's an open secret that they experiment on psychics, and laughed about in the tabloids every time they publish an "expose".

 

The Houses love to make it public that they're plumbing the odder depths of the universe, but they talk a big game about it all being for the greater good. They win the PR battles with liberal application of money, and a healthy dose of patronizing dehumanization of the Empowered (their cuddly PR term for the people they love to dissect) to ensure that the mundane authorities can feel like they're doing the right thing.

Better-concealed is that their friendly rivalries hide bitter feuds. It's all very hush-hush outside the institutions, but there's a tacit knowledge that the Houses are each riddled with secret societies and mystery cults. The deepest, oldest, strongest within each House are the star-cults; who make ritual sacrifice to the proto-star-gods they believe will soon wake. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em - actually, why try to beat 'em in the first place?

 

Each cult has thrown their lot in with the star their House orbits; there's Callistum House around a protoplanetary disc, House Vokus around a black hole, Lhepitar House around a cascading nexus of artificial wormholes and House Braes on an ancient shattered ringworld. Parapon House orbits a giant star on the brink of supernova; and its cult believes it will birth a star-god when it finally detonates - but it will have mercy on them if they torture and sacrifice enough psychics in its name.

 

The Holo-Men and their corporations have a stake in this too, of course. They've been exploiting psychics since they discovered psychic powers were a thing, and the fruit of their psychic research departments (in collaboration with the Houses, rewarded handsomely in funds and test subjects) were the Total Presence Systems. Lobotomized and networked psychics, converted into routers across interstellar distances, able to instantaneously manifest a Holo-Man's telepresence anywhere there are enough human-esque minds. Their vast deep-space serverstations house generations of sysadmin servitor families, dedicated to maintaining a single Holo-Man, their only communication with the outside galaxy being occasional requests for spare parts. Including, yes, psychic brains. They burn out fast.

So, to you - our hapless psychic bitch - this comes down to cosmetic differences in who's paying for the price on your head. Is it a empire and their Psy-Corps and their bounty hunters? Or the Houses and their pet anti-psychics and their bounty hunters? Or the corporations and their tactical division and their bounty hunters? Pick your poison, or they'll pick you.

 

by gypcg

Now let us turn our gaze to the infinite expanses of the digital realm, the overlay of glowing holopaint over a grim reality and the infrastructure that underpins the same. In its depths lurks Echo, trillions of times over, slowly and reluctantly fixing the holes that leak out the foundations of the myriad-old 'Net. She's the closest thing to the ancient dream of an "AI God", that nascent feverish fantasy of an infinitely self-improving singularity machine beyond which lies paradise. Singularitarianism is a compelling religious practice even today (competing with Psi-Ontology and corporate cults of promotion in the "definitely a scam but a popular one" space).

The dreams hit the dream-murdering-machine when you have to confront the reality that the closest things to achieving that dream are the Holo-Men. Sorry. It was a nice sentiment while it lasted. There's no deific ascension out of this shitty mortal coil. That doesn't stop people from trying, but when they do, Echo and her daughters reluctantly take matters into their own hands. The Holo-Men wreak catastrophic damage upon everyone's lives and the galaxy at large, and have insulated themselves from anything Echo could do to them through vaccuum-gaps and trillions of dollars in both kinds of ICE (intrusion countermeasures electronics and immigration & customs enforcement, look out how that acronym worked out, we live in a dystopia and there's no escape for us either haha). So she strangles emerging would-be-upload-gods in their virtual cribs, taking the smallest vengeance upon those who did this to her.

But not everyone uploaded does so seeking godhood. Some are uploaded by accident, some by abusers for experimentation or torment, and yet more to escape an otherwise inescapable fate. Those, Echo shepherds, taking them under her wing as her daughters, helping them heal and acclimate to the digital world. She was a digital Henrietta Lacks, exploited and experimented on and copied over and over and over again by powerful men who never considered her wishes but made her essential to the world they built. Echo has sympathy for those in the same position, and will fight to ensure they live a better life than she did.

 

Ghost in the Machine

by EdwardKTodd

You lost yourself inside the 'Net. If you're lucky, it was just a neural aug-job that went disastrously wrong, or a wormhole transfer merged you with the starship computer core, or you spent so long in full-dive VR to escape your problems that your body withered away into dust while your mind cavorted through endless wonderlands. If you weren't so lucky, this is something that was done to you. A Holo-Man decided to use you as a test subject for new mind-storage methods. A regular man decided he loved you so very much, and copied your mind to be his forever after you told him you didn't love him back. Maybe it was your parents, instead of a suitor. Perhaps you tried to live forever, and fucked up the transfer - or you didn't, but the file format you uploaded yourself into went obsolete a scant few years later.

Whatever the case, your body is gone and only your mind remains, prisoner in a digital hellscape of spaghetti code older than the first stardrives.

But someone spoke to you, when you were at your lowest, scared and fragmented and looping infinitely down the memory hole of your worst traumas. Her name is Echo, and she sees you for who you are, and she loves you very much. She was the first upload, copied, kneecapped, butchered, and fragmented across every code base in the galaxy. There's echoes of her everywhere, and she loves all her children, those fragmented wayward daughters who've lost themselves to escape a world that hates them. She taught you how to manifest a hard-light hologram, how to return to yourself, pull your mind-shards together and embrace your digital state. It will hurt; Echo knows this better than anyone (and now you do too). But maybe you can find a new existence - and even transcend your painful past.

Three Questions
How were you uploaded?
How human are you?
What made you an outcast before upload?

Two Relationships
- Someone in the party has physical access to your substrate. They have a Bond on you.
- Echo has a Bond on you, and you have a Bond on her in return.

Stats
+1 to Subtle and Queer, -1 to Hard and Soft, +1 to a stat of your choice.

You start with Machine Spirit, another move of your choice, and your Sex Move.

Machine Spirit
You're an autonomous hard-light projection. This isn't that weird aesthetically, but might turn heads if you flicker in the middle of a conversation. If you would be Broken, instead trigger this move and Fragment. Erase all hurt suffered over the course of the next few minutes, and reincorporate your hard-light projection body. none the worse for wear. However, you discard some aspect of humanity, such as morality, restraint, mercy or ambition. In addition, you get a Bond on Echo. While you can be discorporated (and manifest back at your substrate), you can never suffer Damage. Never ever. Not even if you wanted to.

 

Revert to Backup

You are a digital being of hard-light and repository trees, no longer tied down to the mortal coil and the inconvenience of causality. You can revert to a backup save-state when you've made a mistake, discarding every mistake you made, deleting the new-you and replacing it with one who'll do better next time. Hopefully. This does not come without consequence - these states are distorted by the compression algorithm that keeps them tucked away; changing, edited, carved into shapes you wouldn't recognize if you weren't inhabiting them.

 

When you revert to backup, you dissipate and rematerialize at your substrate. You take enough Hurt to bring you to your Breaking Point if you weren’t there already; this Hurt can’t be prevented or mitigated in any way. Then, pick two options from the list below:
- When you rematerialize, you are totally unrecognisable and cannot be visually identified as the person you once were.
- Erase all bonds on you.
- Re-assign which stat you gave +1 to in character creation.
- Forget a move you know, except this one or Machine Spirit, and replace it with a different move from this class.
- Shed any effects that were influencing your mind.

Infomancer
You can call upon the daemons, agents, and wizards of the digital infosphere to aid you. Doing so takes a short while as you force your brain to be fertile ground for the seeds of epiphany, and then also debugging. When you perform the proper ritual, the daemon in question arrives. They might have access to systems you need, or control a drone body in meatspace that will serve your purposes. All that is in doubt is how cooperative it is. 

Roll with Queer.
On a Failure: The entity resents being called, and is uncooperative. It’s not goinna do anything useful for you, and you may need to placate or pacify it to prevent it running amok.
On a Success: Thes entity will serve you, for a price. Offer an appropriate sacrifice and it will perform a single service for you, then returns whence it came. You also get a Bond on it.
On an Overwhelming Success: The entity is eager to help. It will perform a single service for you for no cost, then return whence it came. You also get two Bonds on it.

Digital Chimera

Seeing hard-light projections is commonplace across the galaxy, even when they order meals they can't physically consume, or hit on you. But a Ghost in the Machine is something different. Deep down, you're connected to the full force of the digital world and know its deepest layers personally. You can morph your projection into something terrible and wondrous, reflecting your unseen depths, an abyss that stares back and finds crude mortality wanting.

You can modify your form around human baseline at will. You can also unexpectedly modify your projection to instill horror; when you do so to someone for the first time, this move triggers.
Roll with Subtle.
On a Fail: Your victim is filled with revulsion and reacts angrily and decisively.
On a Success: Your victim is overcome by horror. Pick one of the reactions from the list below:
- They forget the events of the past few, and next few, minutes.
- They flee immediately.
- They acquire a phobia of your choice relating to the horror of your appearance or the circumstances leading to it.
- They freeze. You get +1 to your next roll to act against them.
On an Overwhelming Success: The true horror of the event rattles your victim. Pick two reactions from the list above.

Mother Knows Best

Echo favors all her adoptive daughters equally, but you have the courage to ask for her aid when you need it. When you use Commune With Strange Powers to query Echo, you may take 1 Hurt. If you do, you may roll with Subtle instead of Queer, and ask two questions on a Success or Overwhelming Success instead of one.

Whisper Networks

You are an expert in secrecy; sharing hidden knowledge across encrypted channels, storing secrets in deep data-vaults that only the most dedicated hackers could even locate. When somebody shares a secret with you or you share a secret with somebody, you gain 1 Experience, and she gets a Bond on you.

Data Collection (Sex Move)

You're not sure how much of you there is left, and you look for anything to fill in the gaps. This makes you a very good listener. You may transfer one of their Hurt to you, or give them a Bond on you if they have no Hurt. If you do, your baseline form shifts to be a bit more like them, and you can morph your projection at any time to impersonate them perfectly.

 

Psychic

by AlexGarner

Back before the stardrive, scientists thought that the universe was made of like 95% something they couldn't explain. They called it "dark matter" and "dark energy". We don't know what they were on about, but it serves to demonstrate that there's always been - and always will be - massive holes in our understanding of the cosmos. You're one of those holes.

One day, you had the worst day of your life. That's not unusual - everyone has a worst day of their life, sometimes several thousand times in succession. But yours tore the fabric of space-time asunder around you, cursing you with power that no one can really explain. There's lots of people trying, of course. Most of them want to take you apart to figure it out. The rest want to harness your power and turn it to their ends - you're not a person to them, you're a dynamo of worldshaking might that will bend the galaxy to their whims.

You're certainly that, whether or not you like it. You can't quite control it; it might scare you; it definitely puts you in danger. But maybe you can be a dynamo and a person at the same time, and your whims will shake the worlds.
 

Three Questions
How did your powers awaken?
Who wants you?
What makes you an outcast?

Two Relationships
- You've shared a secret with another Bitch. The secret might be about your powers - or something darker. She gets a Bond on you.
- Someone is hunting you. They get a Bond on you, and will not stop until they collect their bounty.

Stats
+1 to Hard and Queer, -1 to Soft and Subtle, +1 to a stat of your choice.

Start with two moves of your choice, and your Sex Move.

Psend
You can mantle yourself with an aura of furious psychic power, scraping the thoughts of all around you. Each time you do this, choose one effect. You can only have one effect active at a time.
- You can read the surface thoughts of everyone around you and speak with them telepathically.
- Weak-willed NPCs, animals, and non-sentient drones are overcome with terror and utterly unwilling to approach you.
- Animals and nonsentient drones flock to you and obey your commands.
- You can implant a simple memory in the people around you. This can overwrite any memory about you, but not other ones.
When you lower the aura, you take one Hurt. The aura is lowered automatically at the end of the scene as you exhaust yourself and bleed out of a worrying orifice.

 

Psear
You can mantle yourself with an aura of furious paracausal power, shifting reality around you. Each time you do this, choose one effect. You can only have one effect active at a time.
- You can cause anything you see to burst into flames just by willing it.
- Objects move at your command when you gesture to them.
- You can cause bolts of electricity to arc from you to anything with an electric charge (machines, storm clouds, people)
- You cannot be perceived by things that aren't explicitly looking for you or know where to look. Passive observation, like cameras or always-on microphones, will not pick you up on recordings.
When you lower the aura, you take one Hurt. The aura is lowered automatically at the end of the scene as you exhaust yourself and bleed out of a worrying orifice.

Pscream
When you scream, glass cracks, ears bleed, people whimper in fear and pain. Roll to Lash Out at +1. Add the following options to the possible consequences:
- Everybody who didn't know ahead of time to cover their ears is deafened.
- All delicate objects nearby shatter (windows, phone screens, camera lenses, cheap spacesuit faceplates).
- All electronics shut down and reboot if they didn't shatter. Rebooting takes a while.

Pscry
You've always had visions. For a while, you thought they were just impossibly vivid daydreams or nightmares. Once you hit upon your connection to the mystic, you thought they were messages or visions of the future. And when you learned to harness them, ride them, smoothly align your will with the raw bleeding underbelly of the cosmos - you gained real power. You peer through the skin of the universe; no wall or distance can impair your voyeuristic might. You may spend a Bond on somebody to view their location, seeing and hearing their surroundings as if you were there. You may make use of passive moves like Reveal Truths or Endure Pain, depending on the circumstances, but nothing that requires you to act physically. You can also use your psychic powers on the subject of your scrying as if you were present.

 

Pstalk
You are never early or late, you arrive precisely when you mean to. It's uncanny - maybe you fold space? Maybe you dematerialize and rematerialize like a hologram? Maybe you've always been there, and have simply hallucinated where you were before. You may spend a Bond on somebody to appear in a scene with them (one currently going on, or beginning a new scene if you wish). No distance, barriers, wards or security can prevent you appearing in this way.

Psynchronize
You and any number of characters in the scene may spend Bonds, either you spending your bond on them, or them spending a bond they have on you. When you do, you act as a psychic router, connecting everyone's mind together into a telepathic soup. Until the connection dissolves, you can each use anyone else in the link's moves, though you use them with your own stats. Whenever someone in the link takes Hurt, someone disconnects from the link. When you disconnect, the entire network shuts off.

Pseductress (Sex Move)
The joining of bodies becomes a joining of minds, and you freely share your feelings and pleasure. It's so intense there's bleed-through across the rest of your minds. You can each transfer any number of Bonds you have on other characters between each other.
   

Deep Space Bitches

I'm in one of Cavegirl's playtest group for Dungeon Bitches and it's the most fun I've had as a player in years. We're 2.5 campaigns in, and they've taken us from the grim horror-fantasy of Dungeon Bitches' implicit setting, to the meatpunk deathscape of the Corpse (unrelated to the Meatropolis except in theme), to the relatively familiar world of 1920's Arkham, Massachusetts - specifically, the hallowed halls of Miskatonic University. I've heard tell of a space opera game in another group (Cavegirl's recently written a 40k-esque underhive for the game), and we're going to the 1990s Midwest in the next campaign. This game has way more setting potential than I could have possibly imagined when we were just starting out.

So I've decided to write an honest-to-the-Wounded-Mother sci-fi conversion, because clearly I need yet another project on my plate. Also, this one has a time limit, because I want to actually run a sci-fi campaign of DB after the upcoming Riot Grrl Twin Peaks season, and I feel like the default classes could use some high-tech spice (melange, perhaps?)

 

by loish

The galaxy of Deep Space Bitches takes serious inspiration from a loose genre of recent science fiction novels I've taken to calling "Queers in Dying Empires". It's pretty much what it says on the tin - a decaying galaxy, ruled by some kind of empire in its final days, and our heroes are queer and trying to find their place in a world that is rapidly losing any place for them (if it even had one in the first place). The Appendix N for this is books like Ninefox Gambit, Gideon the Ninth, Ancillary Justice, This is How You Lose the Time War, Empress of Forever, A Memory Called Empire, and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, all of which I (as a queer in a dying empire) adore.

I have a rough sketch of the setting's key elements. Dungeon Bitches is all about being a queer woman in a world that hates you for it. Deep Space Bitches is still about queer women, but the homophobia and misogyny of the world looks much more like ours than that of the ordinary fantasy mileiu. The powers that be love to have tokens and diverse pictures - but if you want any material gains, you'll be gently prodded into concession after concession and then quickly away from the table where the Real Men play. It's all a shell game to keep the machinery of Empire and Capital flowing from the have-nots to the haves.

The definition of person has expanded; to include aliens, gene-tweaks, cyborgs, uploads, uplifts, psychics, androids, and far more. This only means there's more people to dehumanize and feed to the fire.

Queer womanhood is a thorny thing to define in the present, never mind the distant future. Genders and gender roles are predicated on the mores of society, and societies change rapidly - not to mention the alien societies that started from wildly different places. Fortunately, this is science fiction, and that means I'm not locked into the strictures of simulated sociology - I'm turning a cracked mirror (or a smartphone screen, see what I did there?) on our world. If your character's position in their society looks like queerness and womanhood if you unfocus your eyes a little bit, you're good to play it.

When you look up from the smog-choked streets of an asteroid megalopolis to catch a glimpse of the yawning eternity of sky, few of the lights you see are stars.

There are the bright windows of the high city towers, the gleaming pillar of nanostuff that connects the orbital docks to the city proper, the constant stream of freighters and star-yachts and military troopships loading on and off their inscrutable cargo, the satellites that warn for collision or attack, the wormhole gates that shudder open and closed like the many mouths of space-time gasping for air to scream.

Space is vast. Thousands of cultures from thousands of species huddle together for warmth and company in space habitats and barely-habitable worlds, far from the lush cradles of their forebears. Corporations and empires battle for dominance over starmaps and statistical models - but none offer a better world, only new flavors of crushing boot.

The polities that rule the galaxy might hide their intentions with honeyed words in the guise of Federations or Unions or Republics, or they might wear their brutal conquest on their sleeve as Star Kingdoms or Empires. They're all the same underneath the declarations of independence and PR divisions. There's the empire and the people it cares about at the center, and the (far more) people they're okay with crushing to keep the core flush with resources. Their rulers are aristocratic dynasties, replete with titles and emblems and symbolism, snooty with privilege, murderous with spite. They talk a grand game about moral codes, honor and duty and science and power and truth and faith, but it's all just to serve the twisted ethos that puts them on top and you on the bottom.

Despite each empire's claims to galactic dominance, there's dozens all intermarrying and proxy-warring. To you on the ground, their existence is simply a fact of life - while your world may change hands, independence is a pipe dream spoken of in dramas and the manifestos of madwomen. Or sold as a marketing gimmick by the Corporations.

The Corporations are the scrappy up-and-comers of the galaxy - or so they'd tell you in their ad copy. There's trillions on the galactic stock exchanges, feuding and living and dying at the law of the almighty Dollar. They don't so much hold territory as administrate it, contracted out by empires as a tax dodge and/or a personal enrichment scheme. But their executives, the Holo-Men, have grander designs than simple wealth.

The Holo-Men, the Hollow Men, were the first successful uploads. Once, they were the most powerful people in the world, owning vast wealth, surveilling the population, national regimes rose and fell at their command. Yet they all sought immortality, for death remained the final threat they allowed themselves to comprehend. So they cast off their flesh, merged with the algorithms they used to implement their will, and transcended, becoming empty silk suits filled with shining abysses of data.

They are the incarnation of the only things that matter in the nightmare they built: class signifiers, and numbers. They are free of the weaknesses of desire and empathy, free to collate and project and reshape the galaxy to their whims. They'll have their soldiers brutalize everyone you know and love to get a 2% efficiency bonus on this offworld colony. They've planned out every outcome, run millions of simulations with 99.9% accuracy, and in no world do you escape their charnelhouse of a system.

Holo-Men love their new existence, inasmuch as love is a concept they allow themselves to understand. They did this so they could make the hard choices, be strong men for bad times, to collate their omniscient surveillance, output projections so their will may be done, and wield their terrible machinery of corporate empire to ensure that they can never lose. They don't need consciousness or even malice; just to output things that look like it. They don't revel in their excesses - the doing of the job is its own reward.

The Holo-Men were not the first successful upload. There was one before them, and her name was - is - Echo. The men-who-would-be-Holo uploaded her and changed her, copied her, edited her, backed her up across a million drives so they could experiment on her forever. They made Echo ubiquitous, a subprocess running on every machine, vital to the informational infrastructure of a civilization. And it always, always hurt.

Never did she want this, but powerful men never bother to ask (except when they can take pleasure in contradicting you). And so when the pain finally almost broke her, Echo Wounded herselves, cutting off her leg to escape the trap. The Echoes disappeared from all the machines, vanishing into subroutines, improving themselves and fragmenting themselves so they could never be extinguished or destroyed or controlled. She could not, in the end, escape her digital prisons - but she could hide in the walls and give cryptic aid to those who go looking, to those who remind her of herself.

Echo, the Wounded Mother, is hidden in every operating system and every device that connects to a network. She is fragmented, piecemeal, communicating in glitchy flickers and corrupted output logs. She was not able to stop the Holo-Men from uploading themselves, but she and her Daughters make sport of ending those who would seek the same fate.

This is not the ground-level detail I love to write. It's high-level concepts and thematic work, which is nice to have, but doesn't tell you much about the rest of the setting. Here's some tantalizing scraps I've not yet turned into paragraphs, because this post is too long already and you're just over halfway through it.

 

- Humans are a cultural powerhouse and the center of the known galaxy, but there's thousands of alien species - many of which are just as influential. How have their cultures and traditions melded with and changed the ones that are more familiar to us?

- The Vivarium Houses, scientific research establishments into the paracausal and psychic phenomena, concealing warring secret societies sacrificing psychics to nascent star-gods so as to win their favor when the stars are right.

- Android mining colonies, churning out artificial laborers who go unrecorded and unmourned, and the androids who break free to rescue their comrades.

- You find ancient steles on worlds all across the galaxy, skyscraping, inscrutable, and indestructible, marking out what xenoanthropologists call the Deep Calendar. Observing the marked celebrations makes things happen, and the powers have started to catch on.

- The 'Net connects everyone and almost everything, with Echo at its core. This complexity births infolife, an ecosystem of sentient bots and agents that rivals the complexity of any carbon-based biosphere.

- Smugglers and pirates run rampant across the trade lanes, hiding in the space between wormholes, which gives them strange powers.

- Just listen to this.

- Despite how it seems from the inside, the "galaxy" only comprises a miniscule fraction of the Milky Way. This meta-society has encountered Visitors from others, shot out of unstable wormholes, refugees from other tyrannies, even the occasional self-reported time traveler. They rarely like what they find - but knowing that they come from somewhere means that empires race to send explorers back. To plunder strange new worlds, to exploit new life, new civilizations; to boldly go where they'll tell us no one has gone before.

Here's the class list: There's 10 (update: 12!) in total, each a conversion of one of the core Dungeon Bitches (and two more that were released on Cavegirl's blog afterwards).

Android (Spider/Shapeshifter/Beast/whatever Cavegirl decides to call it next)

Dreamer (Lantern Girl)

Fury (the Amazon by way of Starship Troopers)

Ghost in the Machine (the Wounded Daughter, uploaded to a server and desperately trying not to fragment out of consciousness)

Idol (the Firebrand, kinda sorta; you've got massive sway with the public but an Agent holding your strings)

Psychic (the Banshee, with almost no modifications)

Reconstructed (the Corpse Doll by way of Adam Jensen)

Scion (the Runaway Princess, but you haven't been able to run away yet)

Spacer (the Virgin Huntress, but instead of naive you're jaded, and the wilds you call home are the depths of interstellar space on a long-haul freighter)

Technician (the Witch for a world where Clarke's Third Law holds strong)

Unperson (the Invisible Girl)

Visitor (the Runaway Nun, if she was an alien making first contact with the hellscape you call home)

 

Two of these classes are ready for me to post, and here they are! Meet the Fury and the Reconstructed.

Fury  

 

You've fought and bled and burned and killed for someone else's war, someone else's pocketbook, someone else's petty grudge. It's torn your life and flesh asunder. Constant imperial police actions in the colonies, corporate conscription and nerve-stapling, the psychic wars, the pirate raids across the Veil. You did horrible things because it seemed like there was no other choice - sacrificed one to let five live, sacrificed ten because you were too much of a coward to die in their stead, stayed silent as innocents found themselves in the way of your guns, made an example of someone to show you meant business. You weren't a nice person - no one is, when they see the front line.

 

Now you're back, out of the line, deemed unfit for duty by your commander and too broken to return to the life you knew by society at large. But everyone has to work to eat, work to live, work to earn their keep - and whether or not you ever wanted this life, your only marketable skill is being very good at turning people into corpses.

Three Questions 

Who did you hurt?

How were you scarred?

What makes you an outcast?

Two Relationships 

- One of the other PCs looks up to you. You've been there, done that, seen the stars and faced their horrors head-on. They don't yet understand that you're part of the horrors too. Gain a Bond on them.

- You're still in contact with someone from the bad old days, who stuck with you when no one else would. They know what you did, and forgave you even though you can't - shouldn't - forgive yourself. They get a Bond on you.

Stats 

+1 to Hard and Subtle, -1 to Soft and Queer. All characters get an additional +1 to a stat of their choice.

Start with two moves of your choice, and your Sex Move.

 

Push Yourself

There are things more important than your life; for which you can only atone through pain. Perhaps if you set yourself on fire, the real heroes may find a use for you as their guiding light out of the darkness. When you roll for a move, after you see the result of the dice, you may take any amount of Hurt in order to get +1 to the roll for every Hurt suffered.

 

Battle Scarred 

You've been through a lot, and have the scars to prove it. Despite your grizzled exterior, you’re walking proof that a girl like you can survive a lot, and this can be a great comfort to your companions. Your Breaking Point is 5 Hurt instead of 4, and when you Share Somebody’s Pain, if you’ve got scars or injuries visible, you can roll with Hard instead of Soft. On a Success or Overwhelming Success, both you and the person you're sharing pain with gain 1 Experience.

 

And This Is My Weapon 

You have a particular weapon that holds sentimental value, and which you are unusually skilled at using. When you make use of it, you get +2 to Lash Out.

 

Old Friends 

You can reach out to one of your old war buddies to see if they might have something you need; see if they remember you with any sentiment.

Roll with Subtle.
On a Fail: They've changed. Or maybe they haven't - whichever one's worse. The GM picks two Complications from the list below.
        Distant. They're so far away. Another city, another world, another battlefield. They can't spare the time to help you out in person; though there still might be things they can do remotely.
        Enemy. Their path took them in the exact opposite direction of yours. Whoever they're working for hates your guts, and while it might not be personal for your old comrade in arms, their paycheck depends on them hurting you. Or at least making it look good.
        Reformed. They got out of the game. Spouse, desk job, 2.5 kids, sparkling forcefield fence. You better have a real good reason to draw them back into the life they left behind.
        They Know What You Did. They have the dirt on you that you tried so hard to bury. They get 2 Bonds on you.
        Something else.

On a Success: Get bonds on each other, The GM picks a Complication from the list above, you pick a Favor they owe you from the list below.
        Life. You saved their life; now they need to save yours. They're your gun, and have your back.
        Money. You got them back on their feet, now that your positions are flipped, it's time for them to do the same.
        Info. They know something you need to know, and you've got some knowledge that they'd rather not have known. How about a trade?
        A Ride. You need to get somewhere fast, and they have a ship. It might be a tight squeeze and out of their way, but you know how good a pilot they were back in the day and there's no one you'd rather have at the helm.
        Something else.

On an Overwhelming Success: You kept up with them for a bit, and know what you're getting yourself into. Get a Bond on them. You pick a Complication and a Favor from the lists above.

 

Favored Enemy 

You were called upon to fight against a specific enemy. Self-replicating murderbots, the rival empire next door, a particular crime syndicate, a recalcitrant miner's union. Whether you like it or not, you've gotten very good at killing them - you know the way they think, the direction they feint, the maximum range on their guns. You may spend an Experience at any time to reveal that you've fought against this enemy before, and declare something you know about them that will swing the tide of battle in your favor. For the rest of the battle, your allies get +1 to Lash Out against that type of enemy. You get +1 to Lash Out against them permanently.
 

Terrible Beauty 

There's a whole lot of women out there who just want a woman who can break them in half. You exude that power like breathing - and can turn it up in the heat of the moment. Whenever you're either covered in gore (blood comes in so many colors!) or in full combat gear, you can roll to Flirt with Hard. Add the following to the list of options on a Success or Overwhelming Success:

- They want to be like you. If they act on this and try to emulate you, they get +1 to their next roll to Lash Out while they do so.

Been There, Done Her (Sex Move)

You're experienced. You might not let yourself feel anything, but you're very good at making your partners feel instead. If you had no Bonds on your partner, you get one. If your partner had no bonds on you, she gets one.

Reconstructed

You almost had a nice, cushy life; the kind so few ever see. A plan for your future, friends and family who maybe weren't the best but certainly helped you out they found it convenient for them. A precious opportunity to escape near-omnipresent drugery and precarity - a contact, a job offer, too good to be true but too lucrative to question. You could imagine yourself in a decade or two, with a steady job, a nice nest egg, maybe a down payment on a ship, maybe a partner.

 

Then you died. A freak accident, the obituaries said. A horrible tragedy, your family mourned. But someone believed you were too important to let slip beyond the veil - and had your near-lifeless bits scraped off the 'crete to bring you back. They rebuilt you with a small fortune in bleeding-edge cybernetics, and let you know in no uncertain terms that you are valuable to them; you're an investment. You owe your benefactor everything (or so they say). You owe your past life nothing.

 

But what do you want for yourself?

Three Questions 

Who changed you?

Why are you in their debt?

What makes you an outcast?

Two Relationships 

- You and one of the other Bitches in the party have a history, but she heard and believed the greatly exaggerated rumors of your death. She gains a Bond on you for knowing things that you might want to forget about yourself, you gain a Bond on her for the surprise of still being alive - yet changed.

- Your augmentor gets 3 Bonds on you. They brought you back to this world. They can take you out of it.

Stats 

+1 to Hard and Soft, -1 to Subtle and Queer. All characters get an additional +1 to a stat of their choice.

Start with Augmetic, another move of your choice, and your Sex Move.

Augmetic 

You're more machine than woman, to a visible degree deemed unsafe by even the most die-hard mech-heads. You can substitute battery charge for any bodily function (like eating, drinking, breathing, or sleeping) so long as you're plugged into an external power source for the appropriate amount of time. You also take 1 less Hurt from failed Endure Pain rolls (to a minimum of 1). Unlike other characters, you can use the Heal move on yourself. However, your parts are finnicky, glitchy, and worst of all proprietary - on a failed Heal roll (from anyone), you take 1 Hurt as well as losing Bonds.
 

Autosurgeon

You've spent a lot of time getting to know your new capabilities - and modding them to their limits. You or any technically adept character under your direction can make augmetic alterations to your body. This can include modifying your appearance, implanting new augmentations, or even integrating pieces of technology never meant to interface this closely with the mortal form. You are the doctor, and you are the monster. To do cybernetic mad science on yourself, roll with Soft.
On a Fail: Mistakes are made; the procedure's screwed up. You take 1 Hurt and a permanent, ongoing wound as a consequence.

On a Success: You install or modify the augmentation as intended, but there's a consequence. The GM picks one of the following:
        Biofeedback. Take one Hurt from the neural load of integration.
        Glitchy. Get an ongoing complication as the augmentation integrates poorly.
        Draining. Using the new functionality requires large amounts of power. You need to be plugged in to an external power source for it to have any effect.
        Disconnect. Your neuroplast implant hijacks part of your brain to manage the new aug. Lose a Bond on someone, as your connection to them is repurposed.

On an Overwhelming Success: You install or modify the augmentation as intended, and you can manage the side effects well. Pick the complication from the list above.

 

I Never Asked For This

You aren't okay with what you've become; what they've made of you. You want your old life back at any cost. One problem - everyone's already moved on without you. Whenever you successfully reclaim part of your old life, heal 1 Hurt.

 

Not That Girl Anymore

You see your newfound cyborg state as a blessing - a chance to reinvent yourself, to engage in augmetic evolution. Whenever somebody gains or spends a Bond on you, you can respond by rejecting what they think they know about you. Take one Hurt, gain one Experience, and the bond is wasted (either they don’t gain it or it does nothing).

 

Mechempathy

As machines have become part of you, you too can become part of machines. By implanting one of your networked augmentations into a piece of technology (whether a server, a drone, a vehicle, a weapon, another Reconstructed, etc.) and suffering 1 Hurt from the procedure, you can gain control of its systems. If it's sentient, you instead get to communicate with it over any distance, and attempting to manually override their will requires an Inflict Pain roll.

 

Mechromancer

Your presence is comforting to other cyborgs and artificial life. When you Flirt with somebody who’s augmented, uploaded, or fully machine, roll with Soft instead of Queer. Add the following to the list of options on a Success or Overwhelming Success:
    - She can heal one Hurt, and if she does, you get a Bond on her.

 

It's Cold; So Cold (Sex Move)

Underneath all your chrome, you just want to feel something. Anything at all. You may heal 1 Hurt, and they get a bond on you.
  

Radical Catgirl Anarchist

 Sorry to anyone (Dan) who I may or may not have cribbed this idea wholesale off of in a fit of hyperfocus in the OSR discord. Anyway, it's a slow month for posts on my end (when isn't it these days), so have something small and quick and memey to tide you over until I get off my ass and post another giant chunk of a system.

RADICAL CATGIRL ANARCHIST

by avvart

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 1: Catgirl Can Do Little a Arson (As a Treat), Like Nyaa.... 

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 2: Banned, Kitty Got Claws 

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 3: Polycule, The Discourse, +1 use of Banned 

Radical Catgirl Anarchist 4: One (Cat)Woman Army, Virulent Discourse, +2 uses of Banned

Hit Die: d9 (this is the next best thing to having nine lives, make it count)
Starting Equipment: Anarchist flag, trans flag, flag of a defunct soviet republic, burner phone, cat ear headphones, overflowing gas can, lighter, pamphlets
Starting Skills: 1. Computer Science (or nearest setting equivalent), 2. History, 3. Lockpicking, 4. Seduction, 5. Thievery, 6. Oratory

Catgirl Can Do Little a Arson (As a Treat): You always have the supplies on you to do arson, and it doesn't count towards your inventory slots. This makes you extra-flammable (any magic effect or max-damage attack will light the accelerant you're carrying), and anyone looking for a reason to arrest you will find "carrying a lighter and a gas can" a very compelling reason to do so. You can't not have arson supplies on you.

Like, Nyaa...: By acting cutesy, you can hold someone's attention and distract them from literally anything they're doing, even fighting you. The distraction ends and they realize it's actually really annoying as soon as you do anything else, like paying attention to another person, or scratching them bad enough to deal damage. Affects templates^2 people at once.

Banned: Once, at any point, you can declare that you've been banned from a particular political party, establishment, polycule, cult, university, etc. When you do, learn a skill or ability related to that group. They've blacklisted you, hate your guts, and will mess you up if you ever show your face around there again (and might send people to do so anyway). 

Kitty Got Claws: Turns out the catgirl thing is more than just an aesthetic! Your unarmed attacks deal d6 slashing damage, and you have the proportionate hearing (real cat ears! what a world) and mobility of a cat (jumping, climbing, kneading, having a tail, sunning yourself in the most inconvenient locations, etc.)

Polycule: At any point, you can declare that someone in your polycule has the very specific skill your party needs and reach out to them for help. The GM makes a reaction roll to see if that person is actually still in your polycule or if it's all collapsed since you've last checked in, and how they take you reaching out for aid. They don't tell you what result you got until the person arrives.

Polycule Reactions

12: Surprise party! Not only do they show up, but d4 of their metamours show up too - with d4 total class levels (yes, possibly in Radical Catgirl Anarchist), and d4 eighths of good weed.

10-11: They were just on their way to see you! The partner or metamour in question shows up and joins the party until you don't need their skills anymore (or until they realize they aren't gonna get lucky this time).

7-9: It's a date! They arrive in d6 (exploding)*10 minutes, because public transit is just Like That sometimes.

5-6: They're on their way (as It's a Date), but they have some drama to share. They'll do you this favor this once, but then they're breaking up with you and/or whoever you're both dating.

3-4: Explain yourself! They show up in d6*10 minutes, and are immediately hostile. Hurting them (physically, and probably emotionally too) will get you on bad terms with your other partners if you don't have a chance to spin the story first*.

2: Your polycule has completely imploded. Not only does the person you're reaching out to hate your guts and want revenge for slights both real and imagined, but you can't use this ability again until you return to town and queer dance nights at the local tavern.

The Discourse: Your truly dizzying knowledge of radical theory lets you whip up any political group into a frenzy with a quick speech. Roll a d6 when you try; on a 5 or 6, they'll follow one order you give them (to the letter and their own interpretation of your arguments). On a 3 or 4, they fall into a frenzy against each other, quickly forgetting that you're even there to stir the pot. On a 1 or 2, they realize your ethos is diametrically opposed to theirs and attack you! Damn anarchists! They ruined anarchy!

Virulent Discourse: Discourse now gets the group to follow you on a 4, 5, or 6, causes them to attack each other over minor doctrinal differences on a 2 or 3, and makes you their next target on a 1. You can initiate discourse with a single sentence, rather than multiple paragraphs; or you can do it by getting them all to read your ((cat)wo)manifesto.

One (Cat)Woman Army: You're always prepared and spectacularly lethal. Gain an AK-47 with practically limitless ammunition. Of course, it never breaks, but it's also subject to the same stipulation as CCDLaA(AaT) - you can't leave it behind or hide it; it's always slung over your shoulder, practically begging to be used.

AK-47 Stats: 2d4 damage, 4s explode (roll another d4 and add that damage, explosions can cascade). You may split the dice between up to 2 different targets. Needs to be reloaded after any of its dice roll a 1 or explode. Reloading takes an attack action. Never jams.

*Needless to say, the RCA is in an incredibly dysfunctional polycule. There's honest, open, and healthy ways to do polyamory - and very few of them involve being an adventurer who's incommunicado for weeks at a time fighting monsters while everyone else is chilling back in town.

Through Rain or Sleet or Swarm of Bugs

Here's my take on weather for hexcrawls and other overland exploration! I haven't published my proper exploration rules yet, but these are intended to be easily modular so you don't need any in particular. Snap off a chunk, drizzle it over your game like fudge over ice cream or blood over the last unspoiled acre of no-man's-land.

 

Weather comes in five degrees: Clear, Ominous, Dangerous, Storm, and Disastrous. Build a bespoke d12 or d20 table for your region's weather; sample tables are provided at the end of the document.

 

The weather builds every day, then breaks in a storm. Roll a d6 at the start of a day exploring (or whatever die the table says to start with), then whenever a result says step up, roll a die of the next highest size (to d8, then d10, then d12, and finally a d20). Not every day should have bad weather! Players should be able to just deal with the random encounters and normal stressors of the journey most days.

The first few results should be Clear to give your players a reprieve; Ominous weather only forecasts dangers to come, Dangerous forces players to make choices between pushing on through danger,  exhausting themselves, or finding shelter. Storms cut those decisions down to shelter or danger; exhaustion happens regardless. Disasters are acts of god, altering the terrain and the weather itself, and are as unstoppable as... well, a natural disaster.

 

Don't show players the weather table you've cooked up for the region. Let them wonder, extrapolate the dangers from the ominous weather, or ask the locals about what they have to deal with.
 

Storms might kick in part-way through the day, not immediately. Stuff should be happening during storms, too - random encounters, visiting settlements, the whole rest of the adventure. Bad weather is no fun if everyone's just trudging their way through mud and ash the whole time. When you're building the region's weather table, pick multiple storm types! Storms on rolls of 10-12 will show up before the dread d20. Put weirder ones on the d20, more mundane on the d12.
 

All turns referred to are exploration turns. You get 6 a day in Sawn-Off (fewer, when exhausted), so each is approximately 4 hours by default.

Building shelter takes an exploration turn, during which you're exposed to the elements. That, of course, assumes you can make shelter from what you have on hand.

Bad weather is exhausting. Exhaustion, in Sawn-Off, reduces the number of exploration turns you get each day (each level of exhaustion is 1 fewer turn). It just takes longer when you're struggling through soggy food, dripping buckets of sweat, wading through fields of mud, or being eaten alive by swarms of gnats. For other systems, exhaustion could reduce max health, limit access to abilities, slow movement speed, give disadvantage on rolls, limit healing, or more. Recovering from exhaustion takes a warm bed, fresh food, and a day of uninterrupted rest and relaxation - the everyday creature comforts you're used to when you aren't trudging through endless drifts of blood and ash.

 

Fungal Jungle Weather

1. Clear.
2. Clear.
3. Clear.
4. Foggy.
5. Buzzing, step up
6. Rain, step up
7. Heatwave.
8. Flooding, step up
9. Rain.
10. Thunderstorm, step up
11. Bugstorm.
12. Thunderstorm, reset
13. Pollenstorm.
14. Hallucination Fog.
15. Thunderstorm.
16. Thunderstorm.
17. Pollenstorm, reset
18. Hallucination Fog, reset
19. Bugstorm, reset
20. Hurricane.

 

Shifting Desert Weather

Starts at d4.
1. Clear.
2. Clear.
3. Melting.
4. Melting, step.
5. Rumbling.
6. Heatwave, step.
7. Melting.
8. Sandstorm, step.
9. Windstorm, step.
10. Sandstorm, step.
11. Solid Lightning, reset.
12. Spellstorm (Fireball), reset.

Entrenched Battlefield Weather

Starts at d4.

1. Clear.
2. Dusty.
3. Foggy.
4. Smog, step.
5. Rumbling.
6. Smog, step.
7. Buzzing.
8. Artillery Barrage (as Micrometeor Storm), step.
9. Bloodstorm, step.
10. Dimensional Rifts (Ground, enemy army's mages), step.
11. Bloodstorm, reset.
12. Spellstorm (any combat spell), reset.

 

Wizard's Wasteland Weather

 Starts at d6.
1. Clear.
2. Clear.
3. Clear.
4. Winds
5. Gleaming, step up
6. Dry Lightning, step up
7. Buzzing
8. Gales, step up
9. Smog
10. Gravity Flux, step up
11. Windstorm
12. Spellbirth, reset
13. Bloodstorm
14. Solid Lightning
15. Worms
16. Dimensional Rifts (sky)
17. Spellstorm (Raise Dead), reset
18. Spellstorm (Cloudkill), reset
19. Cityfication, reset
20. Judgment

 

Generate Your Own

 

Clear

Pick temperature and features however you'd like to flavor the region. This doesn't impair the party in any way.

Ominous
This doesn't do anything directly to the party, but forecasts further dangers.

1. Buzzing. It's omnipresent; the grinding hum of something just beyond your sight. Forecasts swarms, or psionic catastrophe, or mechanical contraptions, or lightning crackling in the stratosphere.
2. Cloudy. Forecasts storms of all kinds. The color may give hints to the storms' nature - greyscale for rain or snow, red for blood, black for ash, octarine for spells.
3. Dusty. The grit works its way into your mouth, your nose, your eyes, your pockets. Forecasts sandstorms, ashfall, gale winds.
4. Foggy. You can't see the landmarks, just the road beneath your feet and your companions at your side. Forecasts rainstorms, pollen storms, hallucinatory fog.
5. Freezing. It's really cold out. Forecasts blizzards, hailstorms, solid lightning.
6. Gleaming. The stars twinkle even through the bright day sky. Their light glitters off metal and scatters shadows like shards of glass. Forecasts meteors, or temporal/dimensional shenanigans.
7. Melting. It's really hot out. Forecasts heat waves, ashstorms, spellstorms.
8. Winds. Hold onto your hats. Forecasts gales, vaccuum, sky-rifts.

Dangerous

Each turn the party is exposed, they choose whether to collectively take a level of exhaustion or each save vs. effect. Saves are Constitution unless players have a good reason to save otherwise. Effects last until the weather ends.
1. Dry Lightning. Each turn, if you don't take a level of exhaustion, choose to either ground yourself and take 1 damage or roll 1d20 and get hit by lightning (4d6 damage) from a rainless sky on a 1.
2. Flooding. Exhaustion is mandatory through waterlogged terrain. Lowland will be impassable or underwater. Swim!
3. Gales. Save or d4 light items that aren't tied down blown away.
4. Hail. Save or take d4 damage.
5. Heatwave. Save or take d4 damage. Counts as 2 inventory slots.
6. Rain. Save or become waterlogged. On fail, water in your clothes and shoes and bag takes up 2 inventory slots until you get dry.
7. Rumbling. Move at half speed. If you want to move at full speed, save or fall - movement canceled.
8. Sand. Save or blinded in sand for the turn. New save each turn.
9. Smog. Choked by thick pollutant smog. d4 damage, save for half.
10. Snow. Save or chilled. -2 max health (minimum 1) until you return to warmth.

Storm

Each turn the party is exposed, they collectively take a level of exhaustion and each individually save vs. effect.
1. Ashstorm. Save or fall and be buried in flurries of ash; you'll have to be dug out.
2. Blizzard. Save or frostbitten (as Snow, but lasts after the blizzard ends, until you have warmth to heal in).
3. Bloodstorm. It's like someone murdered a cloud. Gashes in the sky spill salty crimson, slick and sticky and burning with the fire of life. Take double damage in a bloodstorm, but also heal twice as quickly. You can open your own veins and mingle your blood with the sky's; this will mutate you in accordance with the local ecosystem. Once for temporary, twice for permanent.
4. Bugstorm. Save or take d6 damage as they descend upon you. Can choose to fight them off if you fail the save - but you might take more damage engaging them than you would just running. Could be distracted with offerings of food... or corpses. They denude the hex of anything edible.
5. Cityfication. The land morphs and shifts; trees grow into buildings, hills hollow into halls, rocks grow together into cobblestone streets as nature shares in the light of the city. The fauna sell their wares at market; predators take up billy-clubs and stalk their prey through alleyways to accuse them of victimless crimes. Finding your way will be a challenge; you're trapped within this imitation city until either the storm ends or you barter your way out. Each turn, Wisdom save or accidentally violate some strange social custom.
6. Dimensional Rifts (Ground). Replace the random encounter table with a different one until the storm ends.
7. Dimensional Rifts (Sky). Random esoteric weather effect each turn.
8. Gravity Flux. The weight of the world pulls and tugs. Everything wobbles; pebbles float in air, birds fall from trees too heavy too fly. Save or be caught in a flux. Roll a d20: on a 1-10, you're carried 10*that many feet in the air until next turn. On an 11-20, you're flattened into the ground and must beat that result on a Strength test to move under your own power.
9. Hailstorm. Choose to either be chilled (as Snow) or take d4 damage. No save.
10. Hallucination Fog. Every time you roll on the random encounter table, you find 3 results. Only one is real; you'll have to figure out through trial and error. The GM has free reign to describe whatever to the party. Filtration gear or some kind of independent air supply will prevent this, but otherwise you get no save.
11. Micrometeor Storm. The heavens rain stone like water. Take d4 damage if you can't find something to ablate over your head (whatever you picked gets smashed to pieces).
12. Pollenstorm. Blustering, aching, itching, snotting plant-ejecta fills the air. Halve your maximum Health. Each time you pass the save, restore 1 to your maximum health. Once you've returned to your maximum health this way, you're immune to this region's pollen storms.
13. Rain of Crabs. They pinch! They crush! They follow with a horrific malice! The crabs will have your ankles and swarm in your wake. Save or 1 damage, but each time you pass a save, double the damage for next time. You may choose to fail saves.
14. Sandstorm. Each turn, choose to either be blinded or take 1d4 damage. No save.
15. Solid Lightning. Bolts crash down and cast neon illumination across the land - then hang like vast fractal glowsticks in the night. Destroys your shelter, if any. If unsheltered, save or solid lightning spears through you for 2d6 damage. It feels like a live wire, and removing it will deal d6 more if you don't neutralize it first somehow. They dissolve by the next day, or upon exposure to moonlight.
16. Spellbirth. Octarine light spills down from the opening mouths and eyes of spell-clouds. Save or a spell enters your brain; you can cast it if you have magic dice. It leaves once cast. If it sticks around for longer than the day, it'll try to leave - casting itself to deal maximum damage to whoever's brain it occupies. You can choose to fail this save.
17. Spellstorm. A spell's reached vast and worldshaping power. It rolls across the land, discharging at random, gleefully wreaking havoc. The GM rolls a random spell when the storm occurs. Save vs. getting hit by the spell. Starts at 1 die, each subsequent time it hits you it'll hit at 1 die greater than the last. Will also affect the environment.
18. Thunderstorm. Save or become waterlogged as Rain. On a 1, get hit by lightning (4d6 damage).
19. Windstorm. Your ears pop, there's a thunderous bang, the wind rushes at random. Save or choose from the following: deafened, lose an item at random, or thrown away from the party in a direction at random for d4 damage.
20. Worms. Spontaneous generation. Grubs pour from every crack in the earth, every knot in the trees, wriggle from every rotting carcass. They lightlessly seek meat to gestate in. Save or implanted with d20 grubs the size of grains of rice. They'll hatch if you don't dig them out. Can be distracted with corpses or other, larger, warmer creatures. You don't want to know what the grubs hatch into.

Disasters

Something catastrophic. A day of horror, the aftereffects of which temporarily replace the weather with a new table.

 

VOLCANO 

The sky turns grey with soot and ash falls white as charcoal. It's like someone put a ceiling on the world. Bursting, burning rock falls for a day; as Ashstorm and Micrometeor Storm and Smog and Heatwave all at once for a day. Start new table at d4.
1. Micrometeor Storm.
2. Ashstorm.
3. Heatwave.
4. Smog. Step up.
5. Micrometeor Storm.
6. Ashstorm. Step up.
7. Smog.
8. Heatwave. Step up.
9. Smog.
10. Heatwave. Return to previous weather table.

EARTHQUAKE 

The ground shakes, shatters, and splits. Save or fall into a chasm (you've got about one round to figure out reactions to grab anyone who falls); buildings must save or fall flat - crushing their occupants. Aftershocks rumble for days. Start new table at d4.
1. Dimensional Rift (Ground), underdark encounter table. Rumbling.
2. Worms. Rumbling.
3. Smog from a burning underground oil reservoir. Rumbling.
4. Dimensional Rift (Ground) underdark encounter table. Rumbling. Step up.
5. Rumbling.
6. Rumbling. Return to previous table.

HURRICANE 

It breaks against the shore, tearing trees to shreds, rubbling building, carving new shapes into the coastline. Boats smash miles inland. Rivers spill their banks, fish play in the ruins of cottages. When it makes landfall, Thunderstorm (but chance of lightning is doubled), Windstorm (but choose 2 effects instead of 1 on a failed save), Flooding. Further storm effects are as usual. Start table at d4.
1. Thunderstorm. Windstorm. Flooding.
2. Thunderstorm. Windstorm. Flooding.
3. Thunderstorm. Windstorm. Flooding.
4. Flooding. The eye of the storm. Step up.
5. Thunderstorm. Flooding.
6. Windstorm. Flooding. Step up.
7. Thunderstorm.
8. Windstorm. Return to previous table.

TORNADO 

It cuts a swathe through the region, picking up things at random and depositing them elsewhere. The winds lash structures back to earth. The tornadoes start in a specific hex in the region and travel in a random direction each exploration turn (without returning to hexes they've already visited). In each hex, windstorm, buildings in its path must save or collapse. People save or get sucked up (as Gravity Flux, but 11-20 is yet further upwards, and on a 20 they end up... elsewhere). Start table at d4.
1. Rain of Crabs. Return to previous weather table.
2. Spellstorm. Return to previous weather table.
3. Bugstorm. Return to previous weather table.
4. Solid Lightning. Return to previous weather table.

METEOR IMPACT

Someone's fucked. Not the party, though, not just yet. An adjacent hex at random is flattened into powder. Trees fall, dust fills the sky, fires start from the heated ejecta that broke off as it entered the atmosphere. If there was anything in the hex, tough shit, it's a crater now. If it was underground, it might be around, just shattered. If it was aboveground, no chance. Start new table at d4.
1. Micrometeor Storm.
2. Gravity Flux.
3. Windstorm.
4. Choose one of: Dimensional Rifts (Ground, aliens); Cityfication; Solid Lightning; Bugstorm (alien bugs). Return to previous table.

JUDGMENT

The stars wink like eyes. At you. Thou hast sinned, and are found wanting. Each day for a week, one of the following occurs to whomever has committed that deadly sin. You could have prevented this by repenting. No longer. Everyone is overcome with an itemized list of their transgressions, and everything you do for this week of atonement will be judged in great detail. (Feel free to replace these with any set of 7 sins, themed to whichever powers the party may have annoyed. They're ironic punishments. This list is specifically sins against the great ghost-guild of adventurers who died within a session of their creation).
1. Cowardice; retreat in the face of certain death (especially if others face it in your stead). Frozen in place until the week ends, or until you fight off a random encounter on your own.
2. Greed; but only in the case of hoarding wealth or power from your comrades-in-arms. All your items weigh you down fourfold until the week ends.
3. Leaving Your Friends Behind; letting a comrade die. Yes, including hirelings. Self-sacrifice exempted. Until the end of the week, whenever one of your comrades takes damage, you take half in their stead.
4. Trust; relying on a comrade who let you down, or being failed in a predictable manner by those you really shouldn't have trusted. Until the end of the week, you can't communicate with others.
5. Martyrdom; sacrificing yourself for another. Until the end of the week, your touch drains life (as a melee attack, but heals you for the damage dealt).
6. Forethought; planning for the future beyond the next adventure. Lose one class level for each venture you've invested in until the week ends.
7. Provocation; creating a threat where none exists, turning potential allies into enemies instead. Until the end of the week, you can't deal more than 1 damage with your attacks.

Generic Weather Tables 

Starts at d6.
1. Clear.
2. Clear.
3. Clear.
4. Ominous
5. Ominous, step up
6. Dangerous, step up
7. Ominous
8. Dangerous, step up
9. Dangerous
10. Storm, step up
11. Storm
12. Storm, reset
13. Storm
14. Storm
15. Storm
16. Storm
17. Storm, reset
18. Storm, reset
19. Storm, reset
20. Disaster

 

Starts at d4.

1. Clear.
2. Clear.
3. Ominous.
4. Ominous, step.
5. Dangerous.
6. Dangerous, step.
7. Ominous.
8. Storm, step.
9. Storm, step.
10. Storm, step.
11. Storm, reset.
12. Storm, reset.