Chaos Feature Competition News
We have 83 features from 28 people and are aiming for at least 100 before
voting can begin. Please, please, please can I have entries from everyone?
What it's all about
Here's the challenge and the list of entries, as it stands (ordered to
obfuscate authors' names):
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 granddad,
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 it for a limited time to accept people's votes].
Don't worry if you don't want to post your entries to this 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.
We're not looking for masterpieces or the ultimate in coolness or
necessarily 'something better than the RQ lists'; we're just after things
you like/have used/think is entertaining/could create story in people's
games etc
THE ENTRIES SO FAR
- Only susceptible to indirect attacks. You can write down or draw
damage, but not harm it with a weapon.
- Healed by any magic, empowered by wounds. Wounds strengthen its
magic, spells cast upon it heal its wounds.
- Takes damage from insults. words *will* hurt it, sticks and stones
don't
- Conduct to the Ultimate. Will make illuminated and occluded
characters face a major crisis, and might illuminate others.
- Appears closer to you than it actually is. Whenever you try to touch
it you realise that it's too far away. If you turn around and it's behind
you then *IT IS OMG BASICALLY BREATHING IN YOUR EAR* Possibly the most
dangerous missile weapon user in the world...
- Duplicator When it is "killed" it takes on the form of whatever
killed it (sword, wolf, fire....). You can't ever really get rid of it, but
you can contain it.
- Slick, entangling hair covering body. Weapons might slide off or get
entagled.
- Vomits Fruit. Vomits up perfectly edible (non-chaos tainted) fruit
when frightened.
- Chronovision. Victim's right eye sees everything aging and decaying
while their left sees things grow younger and more vital. While using both
eyes, vision can be normal. Careful use of closing one eye lets creature see
future or past of a given target. The left eye appears decayed to observers,
the right appears oddly young and bright.
- Emits clouds of powerful hallucinogenic gas. To which it is not
immune
- Smokey skin. This crature has skin that is like dark smoke. It
drifts sluggishly and you're not sure what it is but you *don't* want to
touch it. It's greatest use is sneaking into steads - it doesn't reflect or
gleam, it blends into shadows and it disguises movement. Its feel causes
dread.
- Invisible tentacle. Think about it, don't YOU want one now?
- Two or more souls in one body. They struggle for control if they
disagree about what action to take. Mind affecting magic affects only one at
a time (unless it would affect multiple targets.)
- Bowels of Chaos. The Void exists where your bowels are.
- Translucid body The skin and muscles of the creature are
semi-transparent, you can see all of their internal organs and its veins.
And whatever it has eaten too, half dissolved in its digestive system. You
better have a strong stomach.
- Enticing smell. The creature smells like the most fragrant, sexiest
perfume you have ever known.
- Noitarapes. The creature radiates a field where separations are
broken down. This can take any number of forms: things blending together
physically, the dead appearing to bother the living, family ties reasserting
themselves mythically/magically. In a way, it is an anti-Humakt power,
restoring the confusion before things were separated into their proper
categories.
- Ages backwards. The creature is born as a frail, wrinkly, grizzled
oldster, grows younger into adulthood and adolescence, to finally die as a
mewling infant.
- Only Visible in Reflections. The chaotic can only be seen by his
reflection in other objects. You can glimpse him in that puddle, or in that
metal bowl on the table or perhaps a polished sword and shield.
- Devours Emotions. The chaotic can feed on and relishes emotional
energy, and in doing so removes the capacity for that emotion from its
victim (I would leave recovery options up to the story).
- Self Cannibalism. The chaotic appears with bite marks all over it,
some healed, some partially so.
- Deadly sonorous eructations or flatulation. The bodily emissions of
the creature are extremelly loud and dangerous in some way, belches emit
deafening noise like a super huge cathedral organ, musical farts emit toxic
gas or flame....
- Can temporarily absorb disease spirits. The being can cure any
disease by absorbing the spirit into themselves. The spirit is apparently
banished or destroyed, being no longer detectable. After a while (which is
shortened for every absorbed spirit) the spirits are released, first
infecting the being (inflicting symptoms but causing no permanent harm) and
quickly spreading to the surrounding population.
- Any Chaos Feature You Haven't Thought Of. Thanks Grant Morrison.
- Imitation. Takes on the looks of someone else in the battle, may be
friend or foe
- Emotion Vacuum. Sucks the emotions from a person. Games like
heroQuest or 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].
- Rebellious Limbs. Subject's limbs are somewhat self-aware - and
self-interested! In extreme cases they may actually hold a plebsicite and
depart the body en masse. In lesser cases mistreated members of the limb
classes may attempt to secede alone - typically while the subject is
sleeping.
- Turns To Jelly At Slightest Provocation. Subject turns to a
basically indestructible chaos ooze when prompted by *something*.
- Emotional Vision. Subject suffers from a kind of aphasia, combined
with the ability to perceive visually the emotional makeup of others.
- Rubber away soul Touch feature. Spirit combat by touch.
- Scolding voice. Sounds just like your Mother when speaking.
- Speaks any language. Somehow, the creature can communicate with
anyone, regardless of what languages the other speaks.
- Randomly produces sensations Randomly produces a sensation to every
living being at 100 metres from him, including himself. For instance, he
could produce pain, hunger, fear or love. He could also produce multi-sexual
attraction which would surely end in an orgy. The creature can't control
what or when it happens.
- Skill Swap. Randomly determine 1d8 skills and swap them.
- Aphrodisiac Ingredient. Random body part becomes easily recognised
as the principle ingredient in a much desired aphrodisiac or similar
potion.
- Plague of Altering Size Breath. Plague of Altering Size Breath
- Thought leak. People in range of the creature begin to hear each
other's thoughts. This can be surface thoughts, emotions, deeply hidden
secrets, what have you. Who is thinking what thoughts isn't easily
discerned. It is possible to get thought leak with non-sapients, although it
is not particularly likely. In such cases, what is shared is often a scent,
a hunger, or an instinct. Needless to say, this has a tendency to cause
quite a bit of disruption and paranoia.
- Inconceivable People cannot accurately describe the creature to
others.
- Rubber Soul. Other spirits that engage you or are engaged by you in
spirit combat simply bounce off. ie, you're immune to spirits.
- Devour Words. Or Reverse Meanings of Words in a Radius, if you
prefer.
- Part physical, part spirit/soul/essence. Only part of the
beneficiary is corporeal. The other part is purely insubstantial.
- 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".
- Gestalt Body Sharer. One soul spread among two or more different
physical bodies. Mind- affecting magic(or mind-affecting anything, really)
that affects one affects all.
- Elastic tendons. Most obviously allows jumping like a grasshopper.
But also consider the application to thrown weapons and escapology (not sure
why anyone would tie up a Broo but if they do...).
- Magic Birthmark Companion. Meet my brother. He's called
'Strawberry'. Careful he may bite!
- Limbs Detachable. May be traded with others like you.
- Disassociated. Limbs and organs are only loosely connected and may
swarm apart.
- Reincarnated in you. Its killer/eater becomes the creature. Its
memories may be transferred.
- Doppelganger. It takes the form of the last being it has eaten, but
not its size we can have very short dinosaur or very large humans ...
- 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
- Born after death. In infant form back at the nearest chaos pit but
remembers how it died. It has to grow up again and suddenly, a few years on
in the campaign, IT RETURNS! "I know you. We killed you!"
- Cause stammering. I-In range we h-had t-trouble speaking.
- Tap Sanity. If it touches, you might start seeing/hearing things,
believing strange contradictory ideas or even laughing a bit too long after
the joke is over.
- Amalgamation. If it loses a body part, may replace it from a victim.
- 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'.
- Can't move when anyone is looking at it. However it can't be
physically or magically harmed while anyone is looking at it. Add it to
lightening fast speed for extra plagiaristic goodness :)
- Left and right reversed. Hit its right arm, the left takes damage.
- Sprout New Dialect every minute. Highly contagious at hearing.
- Completely hollow. Handy for storage.
- Inverse Swelling Grows bigger when it is hungry, shrinks as it
feeds.
- Goey Flesh. Flesh becomes goo, all the skin and muscle of the
creatures becomes a sack of transparent goo, which shifts and oozes to
reveal bones and internal organs.
- Causes excessive body hair growth. Exposure to this chaos monster
causes excessive body hair growth.
- Causes sunburn. Exposure to this chaos monster causes acute sunburn.
- Radiate Acceptance. Everyone within range receives a warm and fuzzy
feeling when the chaotic is around.
- It is your child. Everyone else who can see it knows exactly what it
is but to you it is your child. You carry it with you, suckle it (regardless
of whether or not your female) you love it and care for it and can bear to
see no harm come to it. When you finally die, worn out and shrivelled, it
will be someone else's child.
- Doppelganger Every time someone fights it, that person looks like it
to others for the duration of the fight. An observer would see two identical
broos fighting, or two gorps, etc.
- 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).
- 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...
- Eyes shifted into spirit/gods/essense plane. Disturbing hollows in
sockets
- Changing visage. Creature's facial features constantly undergo a
slow morph. Time to completely change features could be minutes
- Everything you touch turns invisible. Clothes, weapons, armour etc
- Reversed digestive tract. Censored.
- Legs facing the wrong way. Cannot walk forwards.
- Gift of Colour. Anything touched changes permanently to it's
complimentary colour. The players find an apple tree with blue apples (blue
being the complimentary of red). A track of magenta grass is found crossing
a field.
- 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!)
- 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.
- Merges with Mount. Any creature that the chaotic can sit on or ride
becomes an extension of the chaotic, if the 'mount' is intelligent then
there is a continual power struggle for dominance between the two parties
requiring concentration and strength of will.
- Changes color. Another less extreme version of Changing Visage.
- This monster uses D&D rules. All characters must be converted for
this encounter.
- Sneezes balls of explosive snot. Achoo! Whizz! Bang!
- Changing features. A less extreme version of Changing Visage.
- Edible Excretions. +10 Camping for your companions.