Thanks Roderick and Joerg! Really nice entries! We still don't have nearly
enough though.
Just to keep the ball rolling, here's the challenge and the list as it
stands (a new order obfuscates the authors):
Chaos Feature Competition.
Write three *new* chaos features that you think should go on a Top 10 Chaos
Features of All Time list. Interested in Glorantha on *any* level? We are
interested in your entries! From Glorantha's creator to the person reading
this list for the first time, from your kid sister to your great grandad, no
entry is too great or too small! It doesn't have to be clever, funny, canon
(in fact it shouldn't be) or anything like that - YGHV already! This is
chaos - let your mind take a walk on the wild side (just see the entries
below for examples :).
When enough people have entered the contest, there will be an anonymous vote
and the Top 10 Chaos Features of All Time, as voted by members of this list,
will be posted. [I have constructed a private web page to accept votes, I
will open for a limited time to accept people's votes].
Don't worry if you don't want to post your entries to the list - send them
to me off-list and we will enter them for you. Nobody's name will be next to
their creations unless they want it to be. The Top 10 will not have names in
it.
THE ENTRIES SO FAR
13 people have already sent in entries. Here they are, for your edification:
- Weaken separation to Otherworlds. Encounters with the creature tend
to move in and out of Otherworlds, for which this creature suffers no
Otherworld penalties. Struggles that move into, and then back out of, the
Spirit Plane can also shift the combatants across long distances. Those that
flee the fight might find themselves in some alien Hell. Hopefully heroes
can hold out until they intersect with the Hero Plane (and, ideally, a
heroquest that they know).
- Two random body parts are made of gorp. If abdomen or chest, can
excrete or vomit micro gorp. If limbs can elongate, attach, whip, throw
micro gorp etc etc (depending on gorp type). If head, becomes 'brain of
gorp'.
- Sticky skin - anything that hits the skin of the creature adheres
(with some high strength needed to tear object away - and if it's your flesh
that's stuck, then you're going to leave some behind!)
- Sprout New Dialect every minute (highly contagious at hearing)
- Sneezes balls of explosive snot
- Slick, entangling hair covering body
- Skill Swap. Randomly determine 1d8 skills and swap them.
- Rubber Soul. Other spirits that engage you or are engaged by you in
spirit combat simply bounce off. ie, you're immune to spirits.
- Rubber away soul Touch feature
- Plague of Altering Size Breath
- Part physical, part spirit/soul/essence. Only part of the
beneficiary is corporeal. The other part is purely insubstantial.
- Magic Birthmark Companion
- Look like you. Anyone that sees/touches/interacts with the creature
senses the creature as a duplicate of themselves. Multiple targets would
see/hear/sense completely different things, but that's the way with chaos,
isn't it? This is not an illusion of any sort. It's more like simultaneous
physical mimicry that breaks all the rules.
- living fax machine - skin is constantly being 'tatooed' with
information from books and scrolls (possibly those being consumed by
Atyari). Skin sloughs of in lumps every so often in paper-like sheets.
- Limbs Detachable (may be traded with others like you)
- Invisible tentacle (think about it; don't YOU want one now?)
- Inconceivable. People cannot accurately describe the creature to
others.
- Imitation: takes on the looks of someone else in the battle, may be
friend or foe
- Hollow shell of skin; interior filled with hundreds of crawling
poisonous vermin that fly or scuttle out when skin is ruptured, while
spiders try to sew it back together again from inside
- Half-a-creature. Only 1/2 of the creature is present in the physical
world (the other is...somewhere else). For Example, if it's a broo, then you
have the right side of the broo, and a view of his insides at the "split".
- Eyes shifted into spirit/gods/essense plane, disturbing hollows in
sockets
- Everything you touch turns invisible. Clothes, weapons, armour etc
- Emotion Vacuum - sucks the emotions from a person. Games like
heroQuest ro pendragon would work best mechanically, as they quantify
emotions. Tyhe effect is like an aura - come within X yards/meters of the
creture, and it automatically "feeds" on your emotions. It's a always-on,
area effect Tap [Any Emotion].
- Emits clouds of powerful hallucinogenic gas... to which it is not
immune
- Edible Excretions (+10 Camping for your companions)
- Dissassociated: limbs and organs are only loosely connected and may
swarm apart.
- dickhead - genitalia replaces head on the end of its neck, while its
head shouts obscenities from betweem its legs.
- Devour Words (Or Reverse Meanings of Words in a Radius, if you
prefer)
- Conduct to the Ultimate: will make illuminated and occluded
characters face a major crisis, and might illuminate others.
- Completely hollow (handy for storage)
- Cause stammering
- Bowels of Chaos. The Void exists where your bowels are.
- Any Chaos Feature You Haven't Thought Of (thanks Grant Morrison)
- accompanied by theme music, either appropriate or inappropriate to
the action.
- Able to absorb the skill of anyone in their presence. e.g. can use
a swordsmans skill at their ability, only lasts while person is in their
presence.
- 1000 Arms (Disturbingly, also possessed by some Mystic beings...)