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.

Mastering the Runes: A World of Warcraft d20 RPG Class Handbook Written in the Wrong Decade for No One

A wizened old dwarf chisels symbols of power into her ornate hammer. A defiant orc beats his fists together until his body is struck through by tattoos crackling with arcane might. A night elf knits herself into the thrumming weave of leylines underfoot in search of lost knowledge. A tauren gently coaxes life back out of a land ravaged by war and demon-fire, painted fur rustling in the breeze.

These people each come from vastly different walks of life in search of radically different goals, but they all share one thing in common: the art of rune-casting, that first and most enduring of the Titans' gifts.

They are all Runemasters, and their power is woven from the ancient magic that undergirds Azeroth herself.

Click Here for the Runemaster Handbook

-

For a bit more context...

It's an old shame of mine that I still play World of Warcraft. It's not one of my worst shames—not even in my top 10 (which no, I will not be listing here)—but it’s still not something I'm proud of. For the record, my shame stems from the fact that my subscription money supports an abusive company and its despicable little overpaid executives, not that I still casually enjoy WoW; you should all know by now that I have dull, trash tastes.

Despite those misgivings, I’m still fond of the world of Azeroth. It’s by-the-numbers kitchen sink pop-fantasy done in a maximalist visual style and tone that evoke the feeling of "Fisher-Price toy set but for grownups", and it's been copied and emulated so much over the decades that it sometimes evokes Seinfeld-esque disgust for being so quaint and unoriginal nowadays, despite originating many of those styles, tropes, and moods. But it introduced me to online gaming and fandom in a way that has shaped much of the creature I have become. It gave me a hobby, friends and loved ones whom I still play with to this day, and perspectives I'd otherwise lack; I can’t not care about it on some level.

Fortunately for me, the kind of nostalgia I get for my earlier memories of Warcraft doesn’t involve me running Molten Core on a private German permadeath server for the millionth time or some such. Instead, it makes me turn toward the weird peripherals from the early days of the IP; the spin-off board games, the card game from before they came up with Hearthstone, the handful of comic books and novels I managed to read, etc.

And World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game is right at the top of that list.

The WoW RPG is the d20 tabletop port of WoW published under the Sword & Sorcery label, which included many properties during the early 2000s OGL craze that I call the 3E Gold Rush. It’s also the sequel to the Warcraft RPG, which makes it one of those rare instances where two editions of a game were both made for 3.5E rules, rather than one being made for 3.0E and the other updating it by +0.5.

Let's get it out of the way now that 3E d20 was never a good match for anything Warcraft. 4E and 5E came a little closer to capturing the feeling, but nothing short of a bespoke system made from the ground up would ever "feel" like WoW, and I doubt Blizzard will ever bother with that. But that's okay, because I'm happy to explore and fiddle with the failed attempt, and find everything about it that I like.

I should probably save the rest of the history talk for an actual blog post on the subject, and just get on with my point: I decided to kill two birds with one stone by turning this trip down memory lane into an exercise in good old-fashioned class handbook creation.

I have never made a handbook before in my life, and I don’t think anyone on the internet has ever written extensively on my subject here, so let’s bumble around in the dark together shall we?