Wayward Perchtling Background for Troika! Community Jam: Xmas 2025

Another little entry for another little Troika! community jam, this one holiday-themed.

You can find it and my past jam entries on Itch.io.

Wayward Perchtling

Mother Perchta and Father Krampus were arguing again when Saint Nikolaus arrived to browbeat your Perchten kin into service for the holiday season. But that old dodderer reeks of pickle juice, and you don't intend to suffer the sting of his crozier again this year. So you gave them all the slip, and sneaked down from the mountains under the cover of a snowstorm.

Now you fill the midwinter nights with frightful howls and raucous cheers as you please.

Possessions

• Empty Basket.
• Long, Shaggy Fur.
• Bundle of Birch Branches (Damage as Staff).
• A Large Winter Coat (stolen from a debt collector who was kicking orphans).

Advanced Skills

4 Cause Ruckus

3 Yuletide Lore

2 Birch Fighting

1 Gift-Giving

Special

You may Test your Luck to whoop, howl, ring bells, rattle chains, or otherwise do something loud and obnoxious to terrify a group of bystanders. You can choose to make them cower in fear for 1 minute, or observe the spirit of the laws of the solstice for 1 holiday season. The targets can be any age, not just children; your travels have taught you adults are more wicked by far.

Additionally, your fur renders you immune to the cold of wintry or high, alpine climes.

Perchtling by Coco Sketches

Venturesome Svinn (TROIKA! Background Inspired by Sorcery!)

Your people are the Svinn clan, sometimes called "aggressive-looking man-orcs" by those humans of Kakhabad who have not yet known the modest grace of your hospitality (or a corrective fist to the face). 

For generations they've survived and, dare you say, thrived in the village of Torrepani. There, on the edge of the Shamutanti Hills, the disparate collection of outcasts who would become the Svinns settled and founded a home for themselves after they were pushed out of gentler lands by the slow, grinding vagaries of prejudice. Ever since, it has been a refuge for those of "unlucky" birth; a quiet place of community and acceptance in that rough land.

And then the Analander showed up. That enigmatic wanderer, that champion of Libra tasked with retrieving the Crown of Kings. They shook all of Kakhabad to its bones in their wake as they journeyed to defeat the Archmage of Mampang. The way they slew the dreaded manticore and rescued Chieftess Tia when she was but a child sent ripples throughout the community.

After all, no kindness like this had ever been shown to the Svinns by an outsider in living memory- quietly ignoring the part where the whole town shoved the Analander into a basket and forced them down into the manticore's lair to do it, of course.

Their exploits inspired a whole generation of Svinn children, yourself included. What if the people in the outside world aren't so bad? Or if they are, what if there's at least more neat and exciting stuff out there?

It wasn't long after you came of age that you decided to venture beyond the thatched roofs of Torrepani.

Svinn villagers celebrating, John Blanche

Possessions

• Bomba Fruit (eat alongside Provisions to heal 2d6 Stamina)
• Skunkbearskin Cloak (Surprisingly Odorless)
• Lumpy Clay Amulet of Hashak
• Manticore-Fang Knife

Advanced Skills

3 Climb
2 in a Craft Skill of your choice
2 Etiquette

1 Knife Fighting
1 Strength

1 Tracking

Special

Your life experience gives you the insight to Test your Luck to reroll any actions related to socializing or otherwise friendlily interacting with other outcasts, exiles, marginalized groups, people of maligned mixed ancestry, and/or redheaded stepchildren.

Additionally, you inherited a second stomach from your orc side. (Yes, you read that right.) You may eat 1 more Provision per day, and you don't get sick from spoiled food.

I Wrote a Book Called Sooty Beards! Check it Out!

My first ever book written as lead project designer is finished and out for presale now!

Sooty Beards is a mostly system-agnostic micro-setting that combines the earthy majesty of an ancient dwarf-hold with the hopeless decay of a dying North American coal town.

Among other things, it contains 8 diverse regions, 8 weird new critters for your simple d20 or TROIKA! game, a host of statless narrative items like screaming lanterns and steampowered sportballs, and a set of tables to ask What Used to Be Here? and What's Here Now? The city of Vesallberg is an old place, not haunted but marked down to the very bones by the memory of what's come before.

Also, there are drunk canaries who curse a bunch. I feel like that part can't be emphasized enough.

The zine can be bought standalone or bundled with a booklet of appropriate TROIKA! backgrounds, a print of the map (with art by our excellent Charlie AF), beard & skin oil by PlusOneXP, and even a felted dwarf figurine by my dear friend and cowriter The Lawful Neutral.

The book is 100% finished and there's no crowdfunding necessary. Presale goes until March 15th, at which point we start shipping. Digital copies will deliver instantly at that point.

I really hope you enjoy the book and its grim whimsy (grimsy, if you will). Heading this project was a big step in my what's-starting-to-look-like-a-real-career as a TTRPG creator.

Blue Priest of the Salt Steppes (TROIKA! Background inspired by Sunless Sea/Fallen London)

The light flickers to life overhead, momentarily blinding you and transporting you someplace else. For just a moment, you imagine it is the warm glow of a sun you have never known. For just an instant, you pretend the blue dome that fitful lightbulb dangles from is in fact the vast, infinite heights of the Deep Blue Heaven that was stolen from you. Then the afterimage passes like wind on the steppe, and you are left to remember that you live not upon a sea of grass, but upon the peliginous waters of the subterranean Unterzee.

You begin chanting as your congregants kneel, and try to ignore the commotion outside the shrine as some Taimens take issue with another foreigner at port.

Possessions

• D6 Electric Filament-Bulbs
• Ritual Robe (not necessarily blue)
• Pocket Scriptures written in ʼPhags-pa Script
• Lacquered Wooden Horsehead
• Pouch of Darkdrop Coffee Beans

Advanced Skills

4 Religion - Deep Blue Heaven
3 Electrician
2 Etiquette
1 Secret Signs - The White-and-Golds

Special

You can jury-rig a flickering lamp from scraps, prayers, and a random battery found lying around. The lamp shines a bright cone of light for 2 hours before going dark. You may also choose to overload the lamp in a foe's face, forcing them to Test their Luck or be blinded for 1 minute and take Damage as Small Beast as they're showered with bright light and exploding glass.

Gryphon-Rider of Riphaea (TROIKA! Background & Creature)

According to Pliny the Elder, savage gryphons and a tribe of one-eyed Scythians battle endlessly over gold in the mountains of Hyperborea.

Also according to Pliny the Elder, it's a good idea to sail one's fleet into the toxic fume cloud of an erupting volcano while suffering from a chronic respiratory condition. So, grain of salt and all that.

But there is a kernel of truth to the stories reported by Pliny and others. Once upon the time, the nations of Grypes and Arimaspoi did fight a long, endemic war against each other. A tribe of Scythians was pushed into the Riphaean Mountains by their belligerent neighbors, as so often occurs in nomadic politics. That cold, hard land was unsuited for their traditional equestrian lifestyle, but it soon revealed to them an alternate source of wealth; gold. The mountains were struck through with gold deposits, as well as many agates, though those were often overlooked.

Though the gold was plentiful, it was not free for the taking; it all laid within the territory of the endemic gryphons, who reacted defensively at the despoliation of their land and the disturbing of their nests. Many Scythians were mauled, and many gryphons were downed by javelins and arrows. Yet little gold was earned, and few interlopers were driven away for long. The two peoples settled into a long, ugly stalemate.

This continued until the younger generation looked upon the evils they had inherited from their forebears and decided "no more".

A camp of wounded veterans, bereaved families, and the occasional opportunist selected as their leader a princeling named Arimaspos. They overthrew his hidebound, warlike father and installed him on the throne of gold, bronze, and gryphon bones from which one last decree would ever be issued before it was dismantled; make amends.

Arimaspos led a delegation into the Riphaeans, where after much peril and precarity they came face-to-face with the Clutch Mother, eldest and wisest of the surviving gryphons. She listened to their petition for peace and considered it at length, surrounded by her bristling and wary children. Then, she leaned forward and plucked Arimaspos' eye right out of its socket, sucking down and devouring it in one lightning-fast snap.

After a tense, uncertain moment, both sides let out a cheer of relief that rang out across the mountains. For the Clutch Mother had been promised his eye as part of the treaty, his blood her signature. His people had done the first harm by invading their home, after all. It is said that he smiled when it happened, through all the screaming and crying. The Clutch Mother in her great magnanimity even permitted him to ride upon her back down to his people, woozy from blood loss as he was.

In return for his eye and the friendship of his people, the gryphons would permit the newly-dubbed Arimaspians to settle and live in the Riphaean lowlands. Again in turn, the Arismaspians would defend the gryphons and their nesting grounds from all other humans who would try to ransack them for their riches. Never again would a pickaxe fall upon Riphaea.

Finally, the compact made between Arismaspos and the Clutch Mother would be renewed with every generation.

Somewhere along the line there, more and more people came to have their eyes plucked out as a demonstration of friendship, emulating the bond between chieftain and paramount gryphon. From those grizzly dainties emerged a radical new class of people who've completed the bridge between their cultures: the gryphon-riders.

Finial: Apollo on Griffin, 4th Century BCE, Scythian, Bronze.
Found at the Slonovskaya Bliznitsa kurgan archaeological site,
Housed in the State Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg.

You carried an agate decoy egg to your companion's home roost, symbolically filling the place you've taken them from and vowing to return them home one day. They gazed deep into your eye, waiting patiently for the last vestiges of fear and hesitation to dissipate from it. You nodded and stroked their plumage, and then that razor-sharp beak descended.

Now you are as one, patrolling the Riphaean skies together in a lethal fusion of bronze and feathers. With your good eye and strong bow-arm you make pincushions of threats from afar, and with beak and claws your beloved eye-bearer makes short work of any who would dare get close.

Possessions

• One Eye (luckily it's your best one)
• Four-Bolstered Gryphon Saddle
• Composite Bow and 2d6 Poison-Tipped Arrows
• Hemp-rope Lasso

Advanced Skills

3 Bow Fighting

3 Ride
2 Awareness
2 Language - Gryphon
1 Tracking

Special

You are an accomplished gryphon-rider with a reasonably loyal companion. So long as a gryphon is willing to bear you, you can loose an arrow from midair without penalty and perform all manner of aerial stunts without risk of falling out of your saddle or succumbing to altitude sickness. All other risks from using the Ride skill are still fair game, however.

Additionally, you lack binocular vision. You've been living without it long enough that it doesn't affect depth perception beyond 5 feet or so, though.

Riphaean Gryphon

Skill 13
Stamina 16
Initiative 4
Armour 1
Damage as Modest Beast

Workhorse-sized amalgamations of lion and eagle who make their home in the cold north beyond the steppe. They have a reputation as territorial people, being unwilling to let others mine their mountains for gold. They peck chunks of agate into egg-shaped decoys with their diamond-hard beaks and place them in their nests to deceive ovivores, leading to the myth that their eggs are actually chalcedonous.

Contrary to popular belief, gryphons don't actually like human eyes all that much. They enjoy a diet of reptiles, smaller winged creatures like birds, certain fruits and nuts, and occasionally horseflesh.

Special

If a Riphaean gryphon strikes the same target twice in one Round it attempts to peck out their eye. They must Test their Luck (or Skill for NPCs) or lose one eye. Needless to say, failing the Test twice results in complete blindness.

MEIN
1	Napping
2	Hungry
3	Playful
4	Regal
5	Defensive
6	Preening

Hob-Goblin (TROIKA! Background)

Hob

Noun

(archaic) The flat projection or iron shelf at the side of a fire grate, where things are put to be kept warm.

Hob-goblin

Noun

The goblin who sits upon a hob. Duh.

Most folk claim that hob-goblins are named for the hob upon which they sit, but if that was true then what was the hob named for? You know the truth of the matter; hobs are so-named for the hob-goblins who deign to alight upon them in secret, always just out of sight of a home's occupants, even when sitting right beside them at the hearth.

You should know, since you are one after all.

It is your calling to find a spot by a nice, warm hearth where you can rest, and watch, and ensure that the household around it doesn't descend into utter ruin in the indelicate hands of the big folk who own it. To some, you are a small-god of raked ashes, of docile mice and spilled milk unwasted. But it isn't an easy job, and you aren't always thanked for it either; some big folk don't even know you're there, and blame the disappeared leftovers and scraps of cloth on rats or elves, which you are perfectly fine with.

But it satisfies something deep in your liver to preside over a well-kept hearth and home, and to see your chosen wards prosper in at least some small ways. You watch them grow and cycle through the home generation after generation, some far too soon and others lingering on well past the point you expected. Perhaps this is what it's like to be a schoolteacher.

When a home finally dwindles and empties with no one left to tend the hearth and leave you little offerings (knowingly or otherwise), you die down with the embers, awaiting the next big folk who will assuredly need your help, but might not ever know where to look.

That is why, on rare occasions, a hob-goblin will separate themself from their hearth. It's an uncomfortable process that leaves a groove in the hob forever unoccupied by their behind, but it frees the goblin to follow after a departing family, or even strike out on their own.

Your head is full of knowledge and memories from across the hump-backed sky now, but your feet are beginning to ache. Perhaps you'll find a new hob to sit upon soon.

Brownie by a Fireplace, John Bauer

Possessions

• A Tatty Old Cap
• Walking Stick (actually a Fireplace Poker)
• D6 Mementos of families you've sat beside

Advanced Skills

4 Sneak
3 Homemaking
2 Sleight of Hand
1 Language - Mice

Special

At any time you may designate a hearth, firepit, or similar fixture as your chosen hob. You can become perfectly silent and invisible so long as you are within range of your chosen hob. What constitutes "in range" depends on the size and nature of the household in which your hearth is located; you might stay invisible all throughout a farmhouse and surrounding yard, but you can't haunt an entire castle this way. Severing yourself from your chosen hob requires that you Test your Luck, usable once per week.

Additionally, you can produce a flame like a match by snapping your fingers.

Ride Ze Shoopuf? (TROIKA! Background & Creature)

Shoopuf Driver

You are one of the froglike Hypello, clammy and laidback in the extreme. So laidback in fact, that when the river decided to change its course during a routine cruise and dump you and your elephantine mount across the hump-backed sky, you didn't fret. You just hopped back up on top of your shoopuf, picked a direction, and started walking.

Wherever you go, you're sure it will all be Shmooth Shailing.

Possessions

• Shoopuf Mount with Howdah
• 1d6 Preserved Moonlilies
• A Stack of Moonflow River Tour Brochures (Soggy)
• Bottle of Shoopuf Milk (Not Yet Fermented)
• An extremely Lackadaisical Disposition

Advanced Skills

4 Swim (Shwim good, yesh?)
3 Shoopuf Riding (All aboards!)

2 Awareness (For inveshtitagating dangerous waters)

2 Etiquette (Befriend ebullibody!)

1 Blitzball (When you feels like it)

Special

You are amphibious. You can breathe water and take no penalty to your Swim skill for item slots filled, but you are torpid and slow on dry land, moving at half the speed you otherwise would.

Addishunally, you finds it imposhibibble to loshe your akshent.

Shoopuf card from Mobius Final Fantasy

Shoopuf

SKILL: 4

STAMINA: 16

INITIATIVE: 1

ARMOUR: 2

DAMAGE: Proboscis Slap (As Large Beast)

A placid leviathan of the Moonflow, normally found wading its depths and snorkeling up food with its long trunk-like appendage. Often tamed by the Hypello and saddled with enormous howdahs befitting their great size and strength. Despite this, they are typically very gentle creatures, willing to help pilgrims cross the river free of charge- so long as no drunken Blitzballers mistake them for fiends and start swinging at their ankles.

SPECIAL

Anyone successfully hit by a Shoopuf's proboscis must Test their Luck (or Skill for Enemies) or become Grappled as it winds back up around them like a party horn.

MIEN
1	Gentle
2	Timid
3	Filter Feeding
4	Curious
5	Splashing Around
6	Amok

Bridgetown on Bundle of Holding

For the handful of readers who don't use any form of social media, I wanted to let you know that my book Bridgetown (as well as a bunch of other great books) are part of the latest Bundle of Holding for TROIKA! 

There are 10 days left at the time of posting. Can't believe I took this long to make a post here about it!

Bundle of Holding is a lot like your other electronic product bundling websites; grab a bunch of related games or books or other pieces of media all at once for a crazy-good discount. This comes with the added bonus of everything sold by BH being DRM-free, and a chunk of the proceeds going to charity.

Less than $10US gets you a $90 value including the full core Troika book line, Swann Castle, Goblin Mail, and of course Bridgetown. If you spend $19.98, you get another 6 books added to the bundle including big names like The Big Squirm and Slate & Chalcedony. So if you've been waiting to jump into Troika or want to gift-bomb a friend of yours who might be interested in it, now's a great time to start or expand a collection.

My cowriter TheLawfulNeutral and I are also splitting the profits Bridgetown makes 50/50 because our publisher David over at Technical Grimoire is pretty cool, so buy the bundle if you want to support us in making... whatever the heck you call the stuff we make!

Longfolk Archer (Troika! Community Jam: Backgrounds 2024)

I'm back with another piece of Troika! content for another community jam hosted by Hod Publishing and the Melsonian Arts Council. Last time was for a bestiary entry, this time it's a player character background inspired by some of my old Ivory Tower University junk.

Check the jam out here!

Longfolk Archer

You have done the forbidden, and ventured beyond the Axebitten Woods to hunt the corruption that squirms rotten and sickly-sweet from the depths of the Reossos Basin. Your elongated twelve-foot tall, ash-painted frame is unnerving to outsiders, as is your even taller longbow. But when the decaying monsters show up, they appreciate having you and your meters-long arrows to protect them.

You've also developed a taste for archery competitions with little folk who call your bow too huge and unwieldy to use.

Possessions

• Prodigious Back Muscles.
• Longfolk Bow (Damage as Fusil) & 2d6 Spear-Sized Arrows.
• Ash Ritual Paint (Armour: 1 until it gets washed off).
• Jar of Horn Glue.

Advanced Skills

3 Bow Fighting
2 Eagle-Eyed
2 Firemaking
2 Woodworking
1 Mimic Tree

A rather modest Longfolk Bow, sporting only a single trophy.
(Image Credit: The Theory and Practice of Archery)

Special

You may challenge someone to an archery competition. The target must Test their Luck or be forced to accept. If you win, you may take their bow as a trophy and add it to your own like some kind of mismatched multi-recurve penta-bow abomination. For every trophy bow you add this way, you gain +1 to Damage rolls with your Longfolk Bow.

If you ever roll max damage with your bow (the damage die shows a natural 6), all your trophy bows explode from the force of the draw and your bonus resets to 0.

A band of mercenaries, playing with some stolen Longfolk arrows.
(Image Credit: Rijksmuseum)

Tramplers of Chains, Liberators from the Labyrinth (GLOG/Troika!/D&D 5E Character Options)

Long ago, a vain and despotic king was cursed by a cruel and petty god for defying it.

The god punished everyone around the king, but the king learned nothing. He only recoiled in disgust as the members of his court and family twisted and changed into pained fusions of human and kine; the symbol of wealth the king had surrounded himself with.

With all his riches, the king ripped open the womb of the earth and delved a deep and dreary prison for his former subjects, banishing them out of sight and out of mind forever. Those cursed prisoners wailed and called out to the god for salvation, but the god was too busy gnashing its teeth to powder after the king to listen. And so the prisoners languished in the cold, stone halls until the world forgot them.

Time got on. The king died, his kingdom ruptured and reformed as something else, and the god faded away. But the prisoners remained, bringing children into their labyrinthine world if only to ease the pain of loneliness somewhat- and to teach them. From generation to generation they passed down their clouding memory of the past, the king, and their curse.

They came to believe that they had been punished for their own evils, which grew so malignant that they came to life and took the form of that old lord. Each child was taught that their parents had sinned, and that they must now do better. Never again would they covet. Never again would they imprison. Never again.

Time got on. The earth settled. Stone eroded, and metal corroded. Hinges weakened. The labyrinth boomed with the sound of its doors crashing down. A severe and blinding light shone in its place. When the screaming quieted, and their eyes stopped tearing up, they looked out onto the world that had forgotten them.

And they beheld a world choked with sin.

Avarice ruled. The land was filled with prisons, walls, fences, and cages. The privileged ground the unlucky beneath the heels of those ugly, fleshy hooves they call feet. Every cruelty that had damned the dwellers in the labyrinth festered unchecked in the hateful light of the sun.

Never again. Never again.

They washed over the land like a wave, bellowing cries of anguish and redemption and leaving an almost bloodless havoc in their wake. They ripped open animal pens, seized people only to sunder their bonds or split their yokes, and tore palaces down upon their lords' heads. Then they left as suddenly as they arrived, leaving townsfolk puzzled amid the wreckage. They were certain the beasts were just crude marauders, yet they couldn't explain why they didn't actually steal anything, or why they had the almost preternatural clarity to burn debts and legal documents...

Now they wander the world in loose bands under the open sky, searching for the next target of their divine fury. They live utterly fearlessly, except for the fear of closed spaces burned into their cultural memory for all time.

Most cities try to find ways to repel or divert the harrowing herds. But there are growing numbers of those who welcome and even join them, drawn to the stark and terrifying freedom they bring with them. Their trail is not difficult to follow- just look for the trampled chains and smeared bits of tyrant.

POV: You just finished building that new chicken coop.
(Anaba Bodyguard art by Greg Staples)

Child of the Labyrinth Species (GLOG)

Reroll: STR

Bonus: +4 to Strength for breaking chains, destroying walls, busting down doors, etc.

Weakness: Can't wear shoes. Save vs Fear when trapped in a small, enclosed space or suffer a claustrophobic episode, running and attacking anything that prevents your escape.

Children of the Labyrinth, in their own language. Bullfolk, to most others. Bos taurus anarchos, to gigantic nerds. Victims of an old curse, broken free from their labyrinthine prison. No cage shall hold them—or anyone else—ever again. Never again.

-

Child of the Labyrinth Background (Troika!)

Possessions

• Big Horns & Hard Hooves (Damage as Spear).
• Thick Hide (Always count as being Lightly Armoured).
• A Labyrinth-Stone Memento.

Advanced Skills

3 Anarchist Thought

3 Strength

2 Navigation

1 Hunting & Gathering

1 Mathology

1 Run

Special

Once per month you may Test your Luck to destroy any barrier confining you or another creature, no matter how improbable or immaterial it might be. Walls, chains, debts, legal bondage, and even magical effects like Affix count, among others.

-

Child of the Labyrinth Lineage (5E)

Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.

Creature Type. You are still a Humanoid, despite everything done to you.

Alignment. The Children abhor not just individual and eminently stompable tyrants, but the violence and degradation inherent in all systems that prioritize law and orderliness over the wellbeing of its constituents. They tend toward chaotic alignments, with roughly equal numbers being neutral or good.

Size. The Children are broad and hulking, but not exceedingly so compared to their more humanoid ancestors. You are Medium.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Darkvision. Your ancestors' time in the labyrinth left its mark on you. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

Horns. You have horns that you can use to make unarmed strikes. When you hit with them, the strike deals 1d6 + your Strength modifier piercing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.

Goring Rush. Immediately after you take the Dash action on your turn and move at least 20 feet, you can make one melee attack with your Horns as a bonus action.

Never Again. You have advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the frightened, grappled, or restrained conditions on yourself.

Breaker. You have advantage on all Strength checks to break through chains, doors, walls, etc.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and the Lingua Labyrinthine. It's more of a continuum of related dialects than a single language; linguistic prescriptivism and purism is just another form of tyranny, after all.

The Lukkawei (Troika! Community Jam: Bestiary 2024 Submission)

I had been considering making a monster for a bit, and it just so happened to line up with my friend TLN sharing the newest Troika! jam hosted by the Melsonian Arts Council. So, I decided why not?

Click here for the Community Jam!

Click here if you really want this mess in PDF form for some reason.

The Lukkawei

SKILL: 10

STAMINA: 12

INITIATIVE: 4

ARMOUR: 5

DAMAGE: Frantic Flailing (As Small Beast)

A drawn, vaguely pellicular creature at home in the shadows like a fish in water. They are normally content to lurk in the deep caverns, ancient ruins, and neglected cellars that spawn them. The unbearable agony of being perceived is lethal to them, so they try stay hidden at all costs, swathed in onion-like layers of shadow. They are not violent by nature, but being intruded upon sends them into a panicked frenzy in which they will attempt to scare away or run away from all observers. They are named for the shriek they emit when startled.

Lukkawei! Lukkawei!

SPECIAL

Once per Round a Lukkawei may send out sheets of tepid darkness to quash all light in a 100 foot area. Anyone holding a torch, lantern, or other personal light source may Test their Luck to keep it alight.

If a Lukkawei is exposed to bright light for 3 consecutive Rounds, its Skill, Initiative, and Armour are reduced to 0 as its protective shadows peel away.

MIEN

1: Paranoid

2: Agoraphobic

3: Bleakly Serene

4: Consternated

5: Anemoiac

6: Exhausted

TROIKA! Background: Corpse-Cutter

Sky Burial by Ronan Boyle

You are a constant companion to death. Not the process of it; that usually runs its course on a battlefield or in a bed miles away. But the state of death, the decaying evidence of it, is your life and livelihood.

It is your duty to bear mortal remains up to those high, lonely places where they may be returned to the elements from which they came, in as efficient a manner as possible. The body is just an empty vessel now, after all- best not to let something else fill it. In this arduous task, you have companions of your own: your tools, and the vultures.

Your tools are many and varied. Knives to remove the flesh, cleavers to disarticulate the limbs, a mallet to pound the bones into pulp. According to best practices, each should be used no more than once, then destroyed and purified. Bereaved families and monasteries rarely pay you enough to buy frequent replacements though, so you use each for as long as you can. The grizzled, rusty accoutrement doesn't do your public image any favors, but it marks you as a seasoned officiator.

Most people find the vultures to be foul, noisome creatures. In your experience they are quite decent, resourceful, and polite. They occupy an important role that no one else is willing to take; just like you. The worst you can say about them is that sometimes, a few members of the wake get impatient and try to make off with the flesh before you're finished processing it. You just shoo them away until they wait their turn.

Some people afford you great respect and reverence for your service. Others, mostly outsiders, consider you unclean—even untouchable—by association with your work. Others still don't say anything; they just come to gawk and stare. You don't pay any of them much mind anymore.

You know when to crack jokes and laugh as you work, so that the spirit is reassured and convinced not to return to their empty shell. You know when to stay solemn and silent for grieving family members of the deceased who may be in poor humor. And above all, you know that your actions help this great, groaning wheel turn a little more smoothly.

Possessions

• A set of pitted and worn Knives.
• A cracking wooden Mallet.
• Bloodstained Apron & Gloves.
• 1D6 uses of Incense (more for the burial attendees than yourself).
• 1D3 Sin Cakes from a curious funeral you recently attended (count as Rations but makes you feel vaguely uneasy while eating).

Advanced Skills

3 Funerary Rites
2 Etiquette

2 Strength
1 Knife Fighting

1 Maul Fighting

1 Mortuary Science

Special

You have an unusual rapport with scavengers everywhere. Vultures behave, hyenas act playful, even flies avoid buzzing around you. This friendship effect extends to nearby allies of your choice, and breaks for 1 day if any of you harm a scavenger.

Additionally, you are thoroughly inured to the sights and smells of death and decay.

TROIKA! Background: Psammomancer of the Singing Dunes

Your people exist at the whims of the sand.

Sure, you do all that you can to resist the desert. You plant rows of saxaul trees to root the soil every year. You build windmills to spite the sandstorms and focus valuable labor elsewhere. Water conservation is built bone-deep into the beliefs of your culture. You survive the desert.

Some even dare to claim that you are taming it. Those people are fools.

Every year the dunes encroach a little closer. Your cough gets a little bit worse. Some of the saxaul grows, but most of it dies. When the herders come to market they tut and say you are planting next year's firewood, then do their business and retreat to greener parts. The inland sea your grandmother swam in as a girl has vanished, and the dust blowing from its salt-encrusted bed tastes like ash and death. You warn the children not to breathe it in.

You hold no illusions. You know you live because the desert has decided not to do anything about it. Yet.

That is why you go to the dunes for answers- you, and anyone else who realizes that the desert will betray its thoughts, feelings, and even the future through its endless, mindless mumbling. You need only listen.

Well, not only listen. Anyone can listen to the sand. How it sings, howls, moans, drums, and even barks as it slides and strikes against itself. No other sand in the world does it quite like this. Long ago, you're told, travelers even came from far and wide to hear the sand. A bygone epoch when the desert couldn't reach them fast enough.

But you are not some awestruck tourist. You have trained for years to listen, watch, and understand.

From the patterns of the sand particles drifting through the air off the edge of a dune, to the cadence and tamber of their call, you know that omens and portents abound. Sometimes the wind alone gifts them to you; other times you have to bribe a camel or a youth to run across the dunes and coax out the secrets of the sand. Always, you cut through the idle chatter for the truth of the dunes.

Maybe someday it will share some good news with you.

Possessions

• Extra-Large Waterskin.
• Saxaul Divining Rod (Damage as Small Beast).
• Beautifully Beaded Headdress and Long, Billowing Robes (doubles as 10' rope).
• Pocket Sand! (the stuff just gets everywhere).
• Mild Silicosis.

Advanced Skills

5 Language - Sand

3 Second Sight

2 Awareness

2 Deserticulture
1 Survival

Special

You may Test your Luck to study the sights or sounds of blowing sand for hints of the future. Test Luck normally to divine a pertinent event that is currently destined to happen in the next week. Test Luck -1 for an event destined to happen sometime in the next month. Test Luck -2 for an event destined to happen sometime in the next year.

Additionally, your hearing and vision are not reduced by sandstorms and similar phenomena.

Narblesnard Reveler, & Other TROIKA! Backgrounds I Completely Forgot About for Like Two Years

In classic Furtive fashion, I fretted over a post for several days in a row and got it around 80% finished before completely forgetting about it for years. Earlier today when I found out that it's not only December but late December, I started to scramble for something seasonal to write. Failing in that, next by chance I searched through my unfinished drafts for anything containing the word "Narblesnard", and lo did I find this neglected installment in that series of shamelessly self-referential Troika! backgrounds that I was working on for a while in the hopes of eventually publishing a d66 table (which will still happen Eventually).

The other backgrounds don't really have a common thread between them, certainly nothing holiday-themed, so think of this post as more of an ugly, re-gifted sweater than a proper present. But hey, that's more than I usually manage to do on short notice.

Blessed Narblesnard and stay safe, dear Burrowers. May your Scrap Goblin find you ragged yet whole this coming year. I promise I have less mechanical stuff coming down the pipe after this.

Beaten Chieftain

Your tribe of techno-barbarians follows a simple code of governance: leaders and representatives are elected on an ad hoc basis, and all eligible voters do so with their fists. The candidate who receives (and endures) the most punches from their fellow tribesfolk is appointed to temporary office. Unfortunately your platform proved to be a little too popular with your fellows, and you passed out under the hail of approval. Now you nurse your bruises and hope to toughen up before the next caucus.

Possessions

• A Mild Concussion.
• Muscles, Scar Tissue, Callouses & Microfractures (Lightly Armoured).
• No Shirt, ever.
• A Data-Sphere filled with your ancestors' wisdom and also workout tips.

Advanced Skills

4 Pain Tolerance

3 Athletics

3 Tribal Law

2 Unarmed Fighting

Special

Whenever you strike a Mighty Blow with an Unarmed attack, you deal triple damage instead of double.
Additionally, people who have punched you in the face find it easier to like you.

Delta Dead-Keeper

You are called "necromancer" by some, and on the surface that may appear true. You speak to the dead, and under great duress might beseech their help. But you love the spirits in your care, and strive to see the wheel spin on, uninterrupted. The humid river deltas still echo with your jovial songs to the dead, even in your absence.

Possessions

• Weathered Old Staff
• Talisman-Bedecked Robes
• Coffin containing a Deceased Loved One

Advanced Skills

3 Etiquette

3 Religion (Ancestors Cult)

2 Second Sight

2 Spell - Banish Spirit

1 Singing

Special

You can see all ghosts and undead by the aura around them. It's impossible not to see them, they're so glaring and bright. You can also speak to all undead and corpses, even if they are normally mindless. Getting fruitful conversation out of them is another matter, though.

Graft-Elf Beautician

Once feared, reviled, and propagandized against for tinkering with flesh, outsiders now seek your kind out for the potential that you can draw out of the physical form. With enough time, patience, sinew, and bone, you can induct anyone into the Fair Folk. But the creativity of a yearning heart knows no bounds, and you must search far and wide for just the right donors.

Possessions

• Far Too Many Knives
• 3 doses of Anesthesia
• Dreadful Beauty
• 1 Random Roll on a Mutation/Augment/Prosthetic table of your choice.

Advanced Skills

3 Surgery

2 Healing

2 Inspire Awe

1 Knife Fighting

Special

You may Test Your Luck to perform a special surgery upon a creature to add or replace an appendage or other body part. This process requires a day of uninterrupted preparation and work, the spare parts in question, and enough anesthesia to knock out your patient (unless you are operating upon yourself). Failing the roll or interrupting the process reduces the target to 1 Stamina.

Narblesnard Reveler

You are one of the little hole-dwellers living next to the perilous woodland realm of the squirrels. You celebrate the winter solstice as a time of quiet and safety, when the narbling horde has finally laid itself down for hibernation. Yet you know in your heart that their malice always lurks close by, no matter where in the spheres you've burrowed yourself to.

Possessions

• An Anxiety Disorder of your choosing.
• Letter Opener (Damage as Knife).
• Running Moccasins with Decade-Old Socks.
• Sack of d66 Acorns.
• Jar of Emergency Peanut Butter.

Advanced Skills

3 Run Away

2 Foraging
2 Sneak
2 Woodland Lore

1 Evoke Pity

Special

You instinctively know the exact location, health, and aggression level of all squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, or other sciurids within a 1 kilomile radius.

Sea Nomad Mariner

Your people are born of the sea, and the sea of stars and spheres is just another ocean for you to explore and conquer. Or so you thought. Your flotilla is scattered, and you are marooned on curious shores. But you hold true to the teachings of the Eternal Blue Above & Below and keep floating on.

Possessions

• An Old War-Dinghy painted in totemic images and tamghas.
• Brocaded Sailcloth Sarong.
• Fishing Net, sporting a few holes.
• Waterproof Composite Bow (Damage as Bow) and 20 Arrows.

Advanced Skills

4 Sailing

3 Archery
3 Climb

2 Use Rope

1 Manatee Herding

Special

While piloting an outrigger canoe, catamaran, war-dinghy, or other small water vessel, you may Test Your Luck to perform extraordinary tricks with it. This includes but is not limited to jumps, banks, rolls, sailing against the wind, and the time-honored tradition of oar jousting.

Uncrowned Monarch

That petulant, shrouded upstart. He did this to you. After he stole your crown, it all went downhill. He broke the natural order of things- surely the people would not have otherwise risen up and deposed their liege and lord? No. 𝒰𝓃𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝓀𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒. The blame lies squarely with him, and with your vengeance you will reclaim your kingdom. You will claim many. You will slay the Double King.

Possessions

• A Compulsively Well-Maintained Royal Seal.
• Tattered Royal Robes.
• Mostly Ceremonial Weapon of your choice.
• A Sad little Replacement Crown.

Advanced Skills

4 Self-Aggrandizement

2 Fencing

2 Oration
2 Ride

1 Etiquette

Special

Your obsession with "good breeding" allows you to identify the genealogy of anyone you come in contact with, and determine whether or not they are a royal. "Royalty" is a culturally subjective term you have no control over.

TROIKA! Background: Homo Algus

They are frightened of you, the little dry ones. They fear your long face and your long limbs. They mistake your little lights for cruel will-o-wisps. They mistake your attempts to deliver food and medicine for attacks, and drive you off with torches and peat knives. You would have spurned the dry ones long ago, were it not for the fact that you seem to know them. You remember them from a time long, long ago, before you were born from the mud, and they were even littler.

If they would just stop running away, perhaps you could ask them what they mean when they call you a "bog body".

Possessions

• Lots of Algae
• Even More Algae.
• Excessive Amounts of Algae!
• Favorite Pebble (perfectly round)

Advanced Skills

3 Swim

2 Herblore

2 Sneak (4 in Wetlands)

1 Acrobatics

1 Climb

1 Spell - Light

1 Strength

Special

You may enter a state of suspended animation known as the "Swamp Hunch". During a Hunch you sit perfectly, deathly still for up to a week at a time. During that time you do not need to eat provisions, and others must Test their Luck to recognize you as anything other than a very misplaced sculpture. It takes 1 hour to enter or leave a Hunch, as your joints pop and your metabolism adjusts.

More photos of the original exhibit by Sophie Prestigiacomo.

TROIKA! Background: Moondog

 Moondog, the Viking of 6th Street

Whether you're rubbing shoulders with Yardbird and the King of Swing, praying at your altar to Thor at home, or accidentally scaring the hell out of New York City couriers in darkened entryways, you do everything with a groove and a sense of vision that not even a dynamite cap to the face can cramp.

Go forth under the howl-honored moon, and remember the beat that Chief Yellow Calf taught you.

Possessions

• Spear, mostly for show.
• Horned helmet, jauntily tilted.
• A Trimba, Oo, or other idiosyncratic homemade instrument.
• Beard like a homeless wizard (which you are).

Advanced Skills

4 Acute Hearing

3 Classical Avant-Garde Jazz

3 Music Theory

2 Couplet Poetry

1 Religion (Old Norse)

Special

Once per day during combat or another situation that uses the Initiative Stack, you may activate Snaketime. This strange, slithery rhythm dislocates you from time and space, allowing you to briefly move through it as you please. You may remove as many tokens from the Initiative Stack or add as many previously drawn tokens back into it as you like, with the exceptions that you can't remove the End of the Round token or add the tokens of dead characters back in. This special ability lasts for 1 round, then time and Initiative return to normal.

Additionally, if you are ever reduced to 0 Stamina and the End of Round token is drawn (meaning you die), you may activate Snaketime regardless of whether or not you've already used it that day. Afterward, death rules apply normally.

Humanity might die in 4/4 time, but you won't.

Troika: The Spellsponge

You aren't sure if you were lucky or unlucky when the witch-hunter's spell fizzled out upon your bare skin with an inelegant schlorp. On one hand you escaped immediate, agonizing death. But on the other hand, everyone within sight of the incident couldn't shake the feeling that maybe the fanatic's suspicions about you were not completely baseless.

You've been on the run ever since. Not because you're still being hunted, although that certainly is one motivator. No, you wander because that fateful day awakened something in you. A thirst for magic that isn't academic, nor megalomaniacal, nor power-hungry. Well, maybe it's a little hungry. A hunger for spells, the look and feel of them, the sensation of intuitive knowing that fills you when you're around magic.

That ineffable feeling has sent you wandering far. Maybe somewhere in the feeling of sublime wholeness, you'll find out just how and why you randomly soak spells up like a sponge.

Or maybe you'll get to freak out another inquisitor.

The Spellsponge

Nishat by Ron Koza (formerly hvit-ravn)

Possessions

• Travelworn Cloak, stitched and patched in many colors.
• Walking Stick, inexpertly carved out of boredom.
• Knife, more for the outdoors than the battlefield but still quite sharp.
• Idiosyncratic Trinkets & Charms which don't actually do anything supernatural but help you make sense of the world and your aberrant relationship to magic within it.
• A Map scribbled with notes on local wizard schools, temples, ley-lines, etc.

Advanced Skills

    3 Second Sight

    2 Awareness

    2 Intuition

    2 Spell - Random

    1 Spell - Random

Special

When you witness a spell being cast or are targeted by a spell, you may Test your Luck to learn that spell as if you had trained a new Advanced Skill to rank 1. Additionally, if the spell is targeted at you and you succeed your Test, you "soak up" the spell and it does not affect you. You may attempt this once per week per spell. You can't use this ability on a spell you already know.

Species & GLOG Class: The Trilobite-Knight (Veins of the Earth)

I am not a fan of Lamentations of the Flame Princess or any of its supplements that I know of, with the exception of Veins of the Earth by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess.

For those unfamiliar with it, Veins is basically a toolbox and implied setting for spelunking deep beneath the earth. It's far grittier and more claustrophobic than your average Underdark campaign, with a lot of attention paid to starvation, hypothermia, lack of light, mental stress, and the challenges of navigating a world that actively rejects surface-dwellers like you. The denizens of the veins are also stranger than most; the creatures are outlandish without being tentacular Lovecraft fodder, and many of the more humanoid cultures down there have deeply alien senses and mindsets which reflect the fact that it is a very different world you're setting foot in.

The disjointed, evocative nature of its writing combines with the sketchy, chaotic artwork of the book to create a reading experience that actually feels to me like the act of traveling through its tunnels: vague suggestions of shape and scope beyond the fitful reach of your lantern, occasionally broken up by spectacular, oftentimes terrible glimpses of what's really there, rearing up in full color, front-and-center. But even those moments of revelation are small and separate parts of a much greater whole, flashing without context before vanishing back into the dark just as suddenly.

I think it's neat stuff, and that's coming from someone who hates horror on multiple levels. It reminds me that for all of the hole-dwelling I do, I am as much a creature of the surface world as you humans. My domain of topsoil and sedimentary rock is a far cry from the world of deep darkness and deeper time beneath our feet. We are both blessed and ignorant not to know it.

Veins is also more subdued than a lot of other LotFP material. There's dark content like insanity, enslavement, and children being harmed a few different ways (I hate the trogloraptor so gods-damned much), but none of it is lurid or perverse in its attentions like certain other publications are.

This post isn't for me to wax poetic about darknesses, though. This is about trilobites!

Trilobite-knights are my favorite part of the book by far. They, alongside the tiny, philosophical presentist Gnonmen, are like unexpected pinpoints of light amid all the drear and fear.

Trilobite-knights are 5 foot-tall humanoid arthropods covered in clattering plate armor of their body's own making, equipped with dazzling compound eyes and a code of ethics weirdly similar to chivalry, hence the appellation "knight". They don't call themselves that, though. They don't even seem to have names, and they rarely speak. But their sign language is eloquent and beautiful to watch.

They are leftovers from an era hundreds of millions of years ago when an ill-defined but malevolent extinction event wiped out 94% of all life on the planet. They seem to remember those days, and are traumatized by the evil they survived. But they bide their time, knowing that it will be back, and that life will need them again. Until then, they wander like knights errant through the darkness, finding worthy opponents to challenge to contests, defending the weak, and generally being cool little buggos.

The knights remind me so much of the characters from Hollow Knight. Which is funny, because the original blog post for Trilobite-knights over on False Machine was published in January of 2013. That was a good seven months before the 27th Ludum Dare game jam that produced Hungry Knight, the precursor to Hollow Knight.

Sketches of different trilobites appear throughout the book, often accompanying the quotes that mark the beginning of each chapter. They're like the reader's guides through the veins, helping to keep you oriented. You tend to learn your way around after 250 million years.

The book mostly limits trilobite-knights to a few lonesome, random encounters while adventuring in the deep, but as the title you clicked on suggests, I want to do more with them than that. So here's another trifecta of GLOG/Troika!/D&D material.

Scrap Princess, again

Trilobite (GLOG)

Reroll: CON

Bonus: +2 Defense. Can eat detritus as Rations.

Weakness: Can't wear armor or clothing (except cloaks). Must Save when knocked down or lay uselessly on your back like a turtle for 1 round.

Silent, chivalrous survivors of the day that almost killed the world.

Trilobite-Knight Class

Starting Equipment: chitin repair kit, personal heraldic crest.
Starting Skills: Climbing and Chivalry. Also, roll on the adjacent table.

A: Protaspis
B: Meraspis
C: Holaspis
D: Paladin mucronatus

You gain +1 Defense for each Trilobite-Knight template you possess.

A: Protaspis

You are barely more than an upright larva, but you already grasp the fundamentals of survival in the veins of the earth. You decorate your carapace with trophies and mementos of things that didn't kill you- reminders of life's endurance in the face of adversity. Each time you survive damage from something (arrows, a fall, etc.) a total of 10 times, you become more familiar with and resistant to that danger. Once per day per danger, you can reduce incoming damage by 1d12 points.

B: Meraspis
Your first molt has come, and after much fitful squirming you have risen stronger and more confident for it. You gain +2 to Save vs Fear, and can reroll Save vs Fear once per day as you seize on the inspiring feats of past trilobite-knights. You can also use your chitinous body as a Light weapon.

C: Holaspis

Another molt, and you have come into your own, replete with clattering plates and bristling spines. Successful melee attackers must Save vs Dex or be disarmed as they lodge their weapon between your plates. You can also curl up into a ball and roll at 2x Movement for 1 minute per hour. You can roll up to escape being stuck on your back without making a Save.

D: Paladin mucronatus
Your terminal molt. It is a slow (or sudden) decline from here. You fully internalize the code of the trilobite-knight. Your reputation precedes you through the long, winding dark. You gain +2 to Reaction Rolls against the weak, the righteous, and those who have surrendered. You may Challenge enemies, as the Knight template.

1d6	Trilobite-Knight Skills
1	You hail from the shores of the subterranean Nightmare Sea. It is a far cry from the warm oceans that were stolen from you, but it still left you wistful. Start with the “Swimming” skill and a whalebone trinket.
2	You met a dying Olm who instructed you in the finer points of their people’s customs for the dead. Gain 3 rations.
3	You had a grizzled mentor, once. They gave you much, and then the dark took them. Start with the “Wilderness” skill and their old spine-pennant.
4	You arrived too late to save a village from raiders. Start with 1 Camp Follower (Orphan) and a vendetta.
5	You were tapped on the shoulder by a blackfoot gigaferret, once. Once. Start with the “Light Sleeper” skill and a scrap of fur worth 5sp.
6	You once befriended an honorable surface dweller- a rare thing. Rarer still, now that they have fallen in battle. You speak 1 extra language, and carry scraps of their armor to return home.

Trilobite-Knight (Troika!)

Possessions

• Chitinous Exoskeleton (Heavily Armoured).
• Salt-Encrusted Weapon of your choice.
• A Tattered Old Bug-Banner.

Advanced Skills

3 Etiquette

3 Fighting in your Salt-Encrusted Weapon

2 Climbing

1 Awareness

1 Strength

Special

You may curl up into a tight ball of armored plates and spines and roll out of (or into) danger at twice your normal speed. You can't do anything else while rolling.

Trilobite-Knight (5E)

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Strength score increases by 1.

Age. Trilobite-Knights go through life stages marked by molting. They are considered adult once they grow their last body segments, after which they molt progressively slower and slower. Since the trilobites tend to live deep below ground with minimal contact and nothing like a solar calendar, no one knows how quickly they mature, or if they even die of old age. The eldest ones seem quite old, however.

Alignment. Trilobite-Knights seem to follow a code remarkably similar to the human myth of chivalry, without all the sexist or hierarchical bits that make no sense to a bunch of primordial invertebrates. Some will deviate from this code, whether out of necessity or disillusionment. Most are lawful good.

Size. Trilobite-Knights stand about 5 feet tall and weigh over 200 pounds from the weight of their chitinous shells. Your size is Medium.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet.

Superior Darkvision. Epochs spent in the bowels of the earth has not dulled the strength of your people's calcite-hive eyes, but they have lent them a strange luster. Your darkvision has a range of 120 feet.

Clatter & Clamber. Your kind forsook the boiling seas in desperation and shame long ago, but the gentle undulation of your many little legs lends itself almost as well to crawling and climbing as they did swimming. You gain proficiency in the Athletics skill.

Natural Armor. Your exoskeleton is covered in articulated plates of armor and protruding spines of chitin, giving you a measure of protection from a world that has forgotten you. You have a base AC of 17 (your Dexterity modifier doesn't affect this number). You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield's bonus as normal.

Roll Out. You can curl up into a tight ball so that your chitinous plates protect you on all sides. Until you unroll, you gain a +2 bonus to AC, and you have advantage on Constitution saving throws. While rolled up, your speed is 50, you can't take reactions, and the only action you can take is a free action to unroll.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common, and communicate in the silent speech of the trilobites.