Incunabuli
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On the path, before the yawning wood, there stood a sign.

A crooked, nailed-together affair assembled from three planks and a rotting post. Covered in the crusty lime of lichen and dry bird droppings.

Down the path, from a sunny wheatgrass field, gained a sound of horseshoes. Two sets, and a jangle of spurs. Someone whistled. The steps slowed, stopped by the sign.

Two cutters in leather and dusty riding-cloaks peered, frowning at the sign. One scratched his unshaven chin. The other mouthed, frowned. She spoke. "'Bratton's Wood. Schedule 3 Forbidden Forest," she said, haltingly. "Passage unsafe between seven and sunrise." She raised an eyebrow, looked at her friend. "Forbidden forest?"

The scruffy man frowned, rummaged in his coat. A silver pocket watch glittered in the late-day sun. "Cor. Bloody twenty minutes till seven," he said, curling his lip, stuffed the watch away. "I know the lay of these parts: We'll never make it to Dunnoch in time, if we turn round now."

His companion stared into the trees, squinting. Black, drooping boughs of closely-packed firs. A floor of needles, pathless, full of white mushrooms. An owl called from the precocious twilight, within. "Ya' reckon," she said. "Tha' it's actually forbidden? Monsters, n' all? Or is it forbidden fer, like…" she waved a hand, made a face. "Tax reasons, or somut?"

"Nah, it's actually forbidden, so far's I recall," the man said, unhappily.

"Only now ya're remembering it's forbidden?" scoffed the woman. "After we com'all this way?" 

"Guess I misjudged the time."

"Well why's it so bad, huh? Wha's keepin' us from sprintin' through in time fer supper?"

He looked her in the eye, raised his eyebrows. "Massacre of the Hogshead was fought here, you know?" he shifted in his saddle. "During the Boundary Skirmishes of 223. Bad affair." He shook his head. "Baron Eaverson sent in a fair bit of an army to route the Lothrheimers and reclaim the goods they'd been stealing from travelers, keepin' them in here. Problem was, he never realised why the Lothrheimer's decided to put up in here at all: The bogs."

He scratched his chin, made a profound wag of his chin. "Bogs, deep in the trees. Had paths in 'em since the Dark Ages, all built up with field stones so they didn't flood." He raised his eyebrows. "Naturally, the Baron's men took the paths. Found out too late the Lothrheimers'd sapped 'em, months ago. You see, nitroglycerin explosives were quite new, at the time. Baron's men got blown to bits and scattered in the bog. And the Lothrheimers let it be their burial place."

"So?" said his companion. She craned her head, watched the sun begin to set over the treetops.

"So, they're still in there, the Baron's men. Sleepin' in the mud. Plagued."

"Oh." She shivered, averted her eyes from the trees.

"N' I hear the grues slinks around a bit after nightfall. Find new beds."

"Well, guess Dunnoch's gonna wait." The woman patted her horse, turned to go. "Bloody forbidden forest."

"Aye."

"Hey, how you know summuch about that wood, anyway?"

"Ach, simple, I guess." Said the man. "I know the lands round Dunnoch pretty well, though it's been a while."

He grinned. "I was born there, after all."


I Have Some Memory of This Place

The following is a mechanic from the Incunabuli Playtest:
If at any point a Lore topic becomes relevant but a character does not know it, they may choose to recollect it.
To recollect a topic, a character must reasonably possess some proximity to it. It must plausibly relate to their sort, species, background, culture, land of origin, or other experience that might provide range of knowledge.
If so, they may immediately learn up to 4 levels of Lore in the topic. They must spend XP to do so, as normal, and may apply any discount furnished by their Intellect.
The GM may offer characters the opportunity to recollect a topic if it becomes pertinent.

Making Lore Skills Work

I have long searched for some method of making lore/knowledge skills functional. Recollection is part of my dual solution.

It's an exceedingly simple one: Allow characters to retroactively gain lore topics/skills they might logically already have. In my system, skills are gained by spending XP, and the convenience of recollection comes at a cost.

Your system is very likely to differ. But so long as it involves discrete skills (some GLOG hacks, many d100 games, Troika!, etc.) you can integrate recollection. I recommend you do include some cost (perhaps XP, just like mine.) Otherwise, there's not much point in linking the dispensation of knowledge to skills, rather than simply doling it out as the narrative suggests. Discrete lore topics/skills are not everyday knowledge, anyway: They should provide something worth their cost, just like any other skill.

The "worthwhileness" of lore skills constitutes the second portion of my dual solution. In order to cultivate it, I do thus: While planning encounters/monsters/other content, I make a note of several levels of beneficial knowledge relevant to said content and lock it behind a corresponding Lore skill level. When that content comes up, I either dole out the knowledge as befits the party's preexisting, matching Lore levels, or I offer the group the chance to recollect and effectively pay for knowledge that will help them. (This also has the effect of making it very worthwhile to seek out and absorb the contents of books.)

For instance, upon entering the vicinity of the Northern town Silton, this info may be available to those with Lore: Firlund or Lore: North, or may prompt an opportunity for Northern characters to recollect:

Lore Firlund, Lore North, or relevant 1 or above:
  • Silton lies on the precious Bay of Grey: the world’s primary source of grisodate and the Firlish Empire’s trump card as a superpower. Like all cities on the Bay, Silton’s primary industry is salt mining. Salt, once dredged with painful slowness and great loss of life, is now extracted from brine wells hydraulically blasted into the shore, still with great risk to life. Salt is exported by sea, and by the huge Silton Canal.
Level 4 or above:
  • Silton is afester with Kingsmen: Mobsters from the Capital. Their rackets are prostitution, drug-running, and protecting, mainly in service to and in exploitation of salt miners.
  • Silton has been subtly rebuilt as a fortress city, over the last century. Its once-medieval city center, tower blocks, walls, and fort have been gradually remodeled as bombardment-proof, bunker-like fastnesses against would-be attempts to seize the Bay.
The above are examples from my own notes.

That's it. There we are. I do not often do mechanical posts, but this is one. If you're eager for more normal Incunabuli content, don't fear: It's on the way (especially for you Patrons.)


If you like what you've read, r/Incunabuli and @Incunabuli are very fine ways to get updates served directly to you.

If you like what you've read quite a lot and want exclusive articles, consider joining my
 generous supporters on Patreon. Among them are Tommylee Leroux Gagnon, Jonathan Syson, Enyal, Sergio Saenz, and Bratton. Great thanks to them. Incunabuli is made possible in great part by their assistance.
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Out on the moor, there stood a red deer.


A fuzzy-antlered buck. It surveyed the rippling moor. Veritable waves of purple heather and gold wheatgrass under a cathedral of driving clouds. It sniffed languidly. The moor smelt of honeycomb and alfalfa. It chewed, kept back to munching the floral scrub.

There was a whistling in the breeze. An angry, nearing whine. No sooner had the deer's ears pricked, than a bladed ash shaft stove deep and wet into its side, passing through. The buck bolted two dozen meters, muzzle frothing red. Abruptly, it staggered, went to its knees, tipped over.

"A fair shot," said a voice over a distant heathered rise. 

"Ah do believe so," nodded another.

On a hill, some ways off, there crouched on the scrub and heather two men in leather jackets and twill traveling cloaks. One had a crossbow in hand. The other: a bundle of kindling. They stood, cloaks and unshorn locks whipping in the wind. "Aye, Wheelan," said the bowman, a blond, raspy fellow, shading his eyes. He nodded, satisfied. "Ah believe e's right stuck 'n scuppered."

Wheelan grinned, started off down to the kill. "Waste no time, then, Garles." He scampered down the rustling hill. "I've an intention to smell venison before the sun's full down."

They walked. Wheelan retrieved the crossbow bolt where it had stuck, bloody, opposite the buck; and Garles, with a length of rope, tied the buck's legs for transport. Together, they dragged it over the soft earth, trekked a few hills over.

There, in the forested lee of a great glacial rock, they'd put up a camp. Wheelan quickly struck up a match, began to coax fire to life. Garles produced a knife, and, with a hank of their rope, dressed and strung the deer up to bleed. In little
time, the mingling smell of smoke and spilled iron filled the sheltered spinney.

Some time later, as a few lingering gold rays faded round their rock, Garles was carving healthy cuts of backstrap. He worked his curved knife through the flesh with gusto. “Been awhile since Ah've put a shot to anythin',” he commented. He slapped a heavy cut on a rock beside, kept cutting.

Across the fire, Wheelan squatted, teased cherry coals together under a cast iron pan. “Aye. 
No' since that nest o’ wretches, few weeks back.”

Garles grunted, satisfied, slit another good and bloody cut off the back. "Plenty pleased to be shootin' deer, 'nstead o' them bastards."

“Rather enjoying life. Without summuch necessary violence, ye know?” With a knife, Wheelan carved a pat of butter from a jar, slid it spitting into the pan. "Maybe it's the hunter's life, for us? Maybe leave cuttering behind?"

"Could be. Might do." Garles stooped, proffered the bloody steaks. "Can't be makin' decisions onna empty stomach, tho', can we?

Into the burbling butter went the venison, along with a handful of marjoram and a pair of quartered leeks. Wheelan seared the lot, turning with a big fork, sniffing eagerly. "That's the stuff."

"'Tis, indeed," said Garles, buffing a steel plate with his sleeve. "N' the rest'll fetch us a fair bit." 


"Aye. Fair bit. Hold that out, now, it's ready," indicated Wheelan. He forked up a steak. Butter sizzled into the coals.

"Much obliged." 

Wheelan divied up the grub, and they tucked in with their knives. But they managed not even two scant eager bites before a peculiar sound gave them pause: A faint clacking and a clattering, like dry shims, beyond the trees.  

Garles froze, a speared bit of meat halfway to his lips. He looked to Wheelan, eyes white. Whelan had hunched as if someone pinched him between the shoulder blades. He whispered: "Whot was tha'?"

"A rum sound, fer sure," muttered Garles. He put down his knife, looking about.

"Wha…" Wheelan started, trailed. Garles raised a finger to his lips.

For the rattling came again, dry and overlapping; like chimes of hollow bone. Not loud. Passive, as if swayed by wind, or by the gait of a stalking creature.

Wheelan's eyes widened. He hunched further, frowned. "No. Couldn't be. We don't kill that much. And it's not been so long since we have. Couldn't be. Couldn't be…"

Garles waved at him. "Shoosh."

Wheelan piped down. "Could it?" he repeated, small.

Their eyes tracked over to Garles' crossbow; to the hanging, bloody buck. "Couple 'o weeks is long enough," said Garles, low. "Bloody well could be."

Wheelan looked at his steak. He looked to the hanging buck, longingly. "Than wha' do we do with these?" he said.

"Only one thing ta do." Garles tucked back into his food with haste, shaking his head. "We finish up, and we leave the rest for it."

He wolfed down the leeks. "We leave it for the rattleshake."





Rattleshake, rattleshake, take your share.

Take it and break all the bones you can wear;

Snap 'em, and gnaw 'em, and do as you are free,

So long as you spare the like for Tommy and me.


Firlish nursery rhyme, cutter variant

Scavengers

For every predator, there's a scavenger not far behind. With the wolf come the ravens. After the shark follow the hagfish. Following the lynx: the worms.

And behind the venturesome cutter* waits the rattleshake.

Bone Collectors

A rattleshake is a monstrous collector from another world. Where, precisely, none can say. Only that the monster was never ago known in the time of Noren.

It is an osteophage. An eater and collector of bones. It desires not animal flesh. Only the rich sponge of marrow. This it obtains by cracking, gnawing large bones with its substantial, molared beak. The empty bones, gnawed to long splinters, it collects. It lodges them away in the stiff, deep, gummy folds of its skin, where they protrude, stuck fast, like the needles of some dreadful porcupine. This coat of bones protects the monster, and lends its stooping gait a hollow, rattling clatter: the source of its name.

A rattleshake will ply its scavenger's way for many decades. Gnawing and cracking and collecting the bones of man** and beast alike. It grows steadily larger, more ensconced in prickling bone. Its grossly-folded skin grows ever wrinklier, every tackier; cementing its rattling bone quills, and permitting the creature to affix favored skulls as armor upon its beaked head.

Many who've spied a rattleshake will describe a small, bristling haystack of rattling bones. A huge cloak of quills wrapped round a cow-pelvis mask, or some other large bone for a face, with a hooked and nibbling beak below.

Haunting

A rattleshake is not partial to exertion.

In lieu of the effort required to sniff out carcasses,*** it will prefer to "haunt" a reliable source of kills, usually an apex predator. It follows at distance, waiting. When said predator makes a kill, the parasitic rattleshake patiently awaits its bony share.

Cutter bands naturally risk acquiring the haunting of a rattleshake. † Given the level of violence inherent their profession, even moderately lethal cutters produce a trail of corpses easily sufficient to attract and keep a bone collector pleasantly fed and growing. And, if their trail continues apace, cutters may not even notice the haunting, so occupied might the rattleshake be, several killings behind. If they do notice, it will be by dint of backtracking. Of returning to where they left carcasses behind. There, they will find only bone flakes and curiously pallid dung.

Of course, if they stop their killing, a band of cutters will indeed come to notice their trailing haunt.

Most scavengers are also hunters, if need be, and the rattleshake is no exception. If a haunting grows unfruitful, stops yielding kills, it becomes the hunter who appeals as the rattleshake's next prospective meal.

Cutters who do not kill for a time may come to notice the circling, rattling monster; though they may not see it, for rattleshakes are adept at hiding. The nearing, clattering mantle of bone splinters grows loudest at night, when the thing nears to survey its prey. To prospect its ambush.

Though a rattleshake is loth to exert itself, it will, if immediate food presents itself. And it can do so terrifyingly. With wiry muscles laden with potent phosphate stores drawn from digested bones, a rattleshake may move with explosive force and speed. Striking from ambush and armored with layers of spiny, anchored bone, it is a woefully challenging combatant. Worse yet are its skull-crushing beak and its propensity to house a retinue of deadly grues in its layers of bony spines.

Many an unwitting band has stopped to rest, after long weeks' venturing, for a warm bed and a proper meal. Rest, until there grows, out of sight, but not out of earshot, the rattle of the haunting rattleshake.

How to Use the Rattleshake

"The gang acquires the interest of a rattleshake," is an entry on my wilderness encounter tables. Here's how it works:

  • Put together a hasty list of the last ten (?) fights in which the player characters produced a corpse. Indoors or out, no matter.
  • Randomize what fight the rattleshake first ate. This is how many days away it is.
  • Start counting down, one fight, one day at a time. (Or .5 per day if a given fight was pretty big.)
  • Once the rattleshake is one day away, PCs will hear distant rattling when they camp/outside their pub. Appropriate lore skills will identify its origin.
  • At the end of day 0, the rattleshake will attack. It will only do so if it has a good ambush set up. If the characters are too well protected or in civilization, it bides its time.
  • If new corpses are added to the trail, reduce the rattleshake's proximity accordingly.
  • Every five corpse-eating days, the rattleshake gains either one hit dice/chunk of HP or an accompanying grue.  

That's it.

Here are my recommendations for statting the rattleshake:
  • Make it a miniboss.
  • Give it a retinue of two or more grues (fast, dangerous "undead.")
  • Only make it attack in a "boss arena" ambush point that gives it some advantage of your choice.
  • Moderate health (increases with each meal.)
  • Some combination of high armor value/AC, and physical damage resistance from its thick bone cloak.
  • One legendary save, if your system has such a thing.
  • High speed. Should probably pingpong between opponents.
  • Three or four attacks per round, split up between two activations per round (gets two initiative markers.) Split the attacks between different opponents. This may seem too much, but it's essential if you don't want a boss to get punched down immediately.
  • Make it proc some sort of bleed or debuff, due to embedded bones, after attacking.
  • Make it retreat after losing 50% health. It drops its mask, puffs out its spines like a hedgehog, and runs.
  • If it must continue to fight, it deals extra damage (~30% more) and damages players if they hit it in melee, due to hedgehog mode.
  • If it runs successfully, it won't come back. Its mask remains as loot. 



If you like what you've read, r/Incunabuli and @Incunabuli are very fine ways to get updates served directly to you.

If you like what you've read quite a lot and want exclusive articles and a big fat 8K map, consider joining Rowan Fiocchi and all my generous supporters on Patreon. Incunabuli is made possible in great part by them.

Footnotes

* Cutters are the world's venturing class. Part mercenary, part outlaw; all perilous ambition.
** Many a plagued human body has had its gruesome transformation forestalled by a hungry rattleshake. Despite this, a rattleshake will not eat a grue.
*** Rattleshakes have an uncanny sense of smell.
† Or even a mating pair.

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