Dungeon Emigrés

A comment on False Machine sent my mind in the direction of dungeon émigré groups. Now, this is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek exercise - applying the tropes of the Cold War to the trap-strewn dungeon of cliche. But there is no reason to assume that the Goblins of the Yellow Eye are an unshakeable monolith, ready to fight Our Heroes to the death, incapable of civil strife. So: splinter groups, refugees, ex-pats. 

Several tables below offer examples, all centred around a sizeable town or city.

What group is this? Roll d12

1. Kobold dissidents, inciting fire and revolution against their draconic overlords.
2. Goblin satirists of the Red Brows clan, whose unsubtle burlesques and avant-garde wall paintings vexed the wrong chieftain.
3. A scion of the Drow aristocracy and retainers, forced out in the course of yet another court intrigue.
4. Minotaur heretics, who have radically different notions on the proper worship of the gods of slaughter and thirst. Their debates are heated.*
5. An Orc warlord and his huscarls, motivated by the perceived ingratitude of the Orc plebeian classes to throw their lot in with mankind.
6. Cultist defectors, trying to either atone for misdeeds or get out before the summoning ritual begins.
7. Goblins of the Blue Lips Clan, who have fled from the join-or-die assimilation policies of the Hobgoblin Hegemony.
8. A train of misplaced phantoms and spectres cling tenuously onto a single grave slab, carried by a tomb guardian. They have been banished by foul magics from their centuries-old rest.
9. A bundle of Orcs who have left before the new boss can enact the usual purges. 
10. Deserters from the Dragon's Tooth Regiment of the Grand Skeleton Army, who have grown tired of pack-drill, roll-call and saluting pimply necromancer's apprentices who can't tell grave-dirt from bone-dust.
11. A drake who has seen the writing on the wall and is negotiating his conditional surrender and residency in the city before a band of adventurers gets lucky.
12. Roll twice; clearly two separate groups have elected to make common cause. 

An utterly unrelated picture of Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus,
from a 2011 film adaptation. 

Where have they taken up residence? Roll d6

1. An unused warehouse.
2. A scattering of refugee shanties outside the city wall.
3. They have a wing to themselves in a sympathetic Nobleman's home.
4. Several garrets and apartments in the tenements of the Bohemian quarter.
5. The squalid confines of a non-human ghetto.
6. A suite of rooms at an expensive guesthouse. 

How motivated are they to go back? Roll d6

1. "Give us money and arms, we'll go back tomorrow!"
2. "One day soon, we'll be ready!"
3. "One day..."
4. "For the time being, our policy is to...."
5. "It may take a generation, but...."
6. "Ah, who cares about that anymore?"

Their Handler or Sponsor Roll d8

1. A svelte, apathetic, functionary.
2. An ambitious merchant prince.
3. The Head of a charitable but well-resourced Religious Order.
4. A calculating, farsighted statesman.
5. A Romantically-inclined, socially-adept noblewoman. 
6. A Chief Lecturer at a renowned Academy.  
7. An ambitious, splenetic nobleman.
8. A soft-spoken wizard with large glasses and ill-fitting robes.

An unrelated picture of Alec Guinness as George Smiley,
from the BBC adaptations of John Le Carre's novels. 

*Presumably they are debating whether one waits in the centre of the maze for victims, or if one should harry one's victims in an effort to drive them to the centre of the maze.

The Orrery of Golems

An idea I've had knocking about for a while. Not really connected to other Golem posts, which have their own implicit setting.

The Keep of Malphoebe was the home of that most infamous of renegade sorcerers, able to maintain her wealth and carry on magical researches outside of the usual system of Universities and Guilds. The gaze of the Church and the Magistrates fell on her often, but she kept to the letter of the law whilst violently abusing the spirit of it, and was never tried for her misdeeds.

In the deepest basement of that looming trapezoidal donjon, with its five pentagonal turrets, there is a wide room, perhaps fifty feet across. In the centre of this, between scattered pillars you will find seven rings, surrounding a raised dais. Bands of inscriptions bind each ring to the dais. Each ring is a circuit, each trodden by a human figure. These are seven golems, composed largely of fired clay, but with intricate metal fittings.

Each is clearly one of the seven heavenly bodies that circle about Terrae Vertebrae in the celestial procession. From the centre out, we see Mani, Stilbon, Hesperus, Eliodromus, Pryois, Phaethon and Phaenon. This is an orrery, of a kind. No clockwork powers the movements of these spheres. But one can see the marks where the golems tread out their long circuits, wearing down the flagstones. Parts of the paved floor have clearly been replaced near where ever-changing Mani and nimble Stilbon make their swift circuits. 

The golems are given character by the things they bear, by the pattern of metal fittings about them and by the rough shapes of brow and body. Mani glitters in arabesques of silver, with a veil of silver wires, carrying a sistrum. Stilbon ports in ceremonial mode a petrified snake, with lustrous bands of amalgam about the torso and thighs. Hesperus holds several apples in one hand, a looking-glass in the other; Hesperus is decorated with lozenges of copper, which are alternately untarnished and covered in verdigris. Eliodromus holds a curling gilt whip and an ornate golden flambeau. Pryois stands angular in layers of rustless iron plate, with a plume of fine wires; Pryois holds both shield and spear, and bears other arms on belts and baldrics. Phaethon is robed toga-style in swathes of white tin and carries an ornate tin-patterened chalice and a judicial sceptre with a lightening-bolt motif. Phaenon is cowled in lead and leans upon a crooked vinewood staff; through a lead belt is thrust a reaping-hook.

Each golem is, as in Ch. 16 of C. S. Lewis's Perelandra, sexless. ('Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless.....The two white creatures were sexless. He of Malacandra was masculine (not male); she of Perelandra was feminine (not female).'

Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, 1766
(Paul Kidby did a Discworld pastiche of this for The Last Hero, and I can't find an online image of it).

These, that tread the path of the stars, are celestial proxies. Malphoebe used them to predict the arrangement of the planets and the times of various conjunctions, as well as the aspect of that planet in the mute pantomime of the constructs. The golems automatically match the pace of the planets across the sky, but a device built in the shape of a sundial on the dais can have its gnomon moved to increase their pace. However, Malphoebe did not only this but used the golems as foci, to foster benevolent or malevolent influences upon her enchantments, even outside of the naturally occurring celestial seasons.

If someone should attempt to remove the items they carry or the metal fittings, the golems will attack, though they will also try to continue on their path. 

If a golem has a serious obstacle in their path, they will attempt to remove it. 

If a golem is frozen in place is a way that does not effect their sense of time passing, they will then speed up to get back to where they should be. 

If the inscriptions linking the rings are removed, the golems will continue on their courses. 

If somehow the majority of metal fittings are removed from a golem, it will stand stock-still. (These are their link to the planets proper). If the fittings are restored - even crudely - they will move again.

The words of power for these golems are found in their items, rolled up as scrolls. If the sistrum, snake, looking-glass, torch, spear, sceptre and staff are broken, the golems will fall to their knees and cease movement altogether. There will be the sound of a great bell, though no bell may be seen. 

If the golems are all de-powered or otherwise obliterated, in 1d4 weeks a band of seven people may be seen in the footsteps of your band of adventurers. Clearly colourful characters, they are much remarked upon in the neighbourhood. These are a Rogue, a Mountebank, a Guide (Elf), a Militant, a Fighter, a Wizard and a Prophet. Each is of at least the second level. Several of them - for instance, the Fighter - may be surrounded by pets.

Mani and Eliodromus are as 'Luna' and 'Sol' would be to 'Moon' and 'Sun'. The first is Norse, the second Mithraic - that is, Greco-Roman workings on a Persian base. There's a few other influences in the above to draw it away from purely Olympian imagery.

The term 'The Human Orrery' has been in my mind for a while as a sorcerous device or a curiously rituralistic band of adventurers. Here it became both.

As it emerges, Armagh Observatory has a Human Orrery of its own. This differs significantly from the above.