Nuclear Ooze

I finished the first draft of my gloghack, Nuclear Ooze! Finished is a strong word, I guess. I looked through it again after I published the pdf, and noticed a bunch of wonking formatting, weird choices, and wording issues that I can't be bothered to go back through right now. Next time, I'll fix it.

It's primarily frankensteined together from Arnold K's original rules, Skerple's Rat on a Stick, Meandering Banter's Die Trying, and Cratered Land's Mimics and Miscreants, although there are a lot of influences (read: things I've mercilessly stolen and ripped from other games).

>>Get Nuclear Ooze Here<<

Tell me what you think, especially if you use it!

Here's a bonus race, because I haven't posted any actual gameplay related stuff in a while.


Dunkleostans
Bipedal jungle fish-people. Long, single-finned tails and stubby legs like newt's limbs. The tail is thick with corded muscle, wide as two human thighs. Their heads are large and covered in thick plates of bone; two beady eyes stare out pugnaciously above a wide mouth lined with two razor-sharp ridges of bone, able to shear straight through a spear's haft.

They are unwieldy on land; they propel themselves through the water with powerful motions of that huge tail and catch prey like riversquid and the bastard dolphins that move in the silty water. A bonefish kraal is made of padded, clay-thick mud, woven with water reeds and bamboo beneath the surface. They sleep in the mud, gills gently moving and bubbling through the surface.

Despite their fearsome appearance, they are quite friendly with traders and other denizens of the Hundred Rivers Valley. They usually choose to remain in conclaves with other bonefish families, although a few of their number go to Larothe or any of the other Lake Cities to make a life in the newly-burgeoning modern, industrialized world.

Perk: Your head always is considered armored. +1 AC or AP or whatever system you use, ignore most head wounds.
Downside: You must return to the water (or at least a wet bank of mud) to sleep every night, or you'll start to suffocate.
Stat Reroll: Strength

Lunar Vampires

The Moon is dead, but there is life on and in it. Deep under the surface where the polyp-trees stretch their paralyzed branches and release reified madness in mercury drops to the sky, beneath the caverns and hollows made when the ground shifted and made room for lunar slugs and beetle-bears, there are deposits of a strange, hard material like ceramic but somehow more pliable. This is where the dead lie, the terrible secrets of eons past that have been buried under ash and layers of strange decay.

The deposits, if you were to exhume them (and exhuming them is what it would be, for you would be digging up tombs and coffins), would be ovoid, like squashed spheres of white plastic. Sometimes they'd have crushed and bent articulated legs. There are doorways and openings. They are huge, a few more than a mile across. You'd see the tracks they dig through the strata as they so slowly gravitate towards each others, at a geological pace. They grow into each other like mitosis in reverse. Inside, they are dark, deactivated, fractal, and incomprehensible. They each served myriad purposes, once.

This is the main arena of dungeon-delving on the Moon. Or at least the most ripe for plunder; a latticeman doesn't have much to offer adventurers than a pile of slimy spacesuits and some rotted bones. But the vampire catacombs are jam-packed: filled with strange equipment, surgical labs, esoteric weapons, and of course, vampires.

Lunar vampires aren't stereotypical eastern European counts. In fact, they look like slightly-shriveled, dead versions of your friends. Sometimes literally. There's a 25% chance that one of the vampires you fight or interact with is a doppelganger of someone you know. There's a 1% chance it looks like you. They actually come from a different version or timeline of the Moon and Earth. It doesn't really matter; they're stuck here now, just like you. They look utterly human externally, but they wear strange elastic jumpsuits, and arcane bits of machinery cover them occasionally. They look like extras from a 60s-70s scifi television show, and their tombs are built to match, all formica and plastic and curves.

Their bones are black carbon, scintillating with strange elements. Their blood is thick and greenish, more like sap than blood. It carries the vampiric germ; anyone who drinks it, or is fed it, or is injected with it in one of the ancient surgical machines will become a thrall-vampire in 1 week, unless their blood is cleansed before that. Vampires have blunt, human teeth. Biting does the same damage as a human does, unless they use tongue. Their tongues are coated in microscopic saw teeth that rip flesh with horrifying ease, and they use these terrible appendages like sponges to soak up blood. They are inhumanly strong, and magnificently hard to kill. Vampire wars were once fought with vibroblades and sonic canons that could disassemble you at a molecular level.

They once created a race of Renfields out of conquered people, enslaved on their millenia-long conquest of the universe. The DNA slurried and combined and restructured, extruded and recombined with more and more victims. Slowly creating the space ghouls that now wander these white, darkened corridors, maintaining the slow workings of their kidnapper-masters. Renfields are diminutive, like hunched men. Their translucent flesh displays their glasslike bones and pumping lymph. (The vampires removed the Renfields' need for blood so as to not eat their own slaves.) Renfields won't harm adventurers, prefering to lure them into traps or their sleeping masters.

***

Vibroblade
Extremely sharp. Does 1d8+1 damage. Has 50 charges in its tenebrovoltaic battery. Using one charge activates the vibration motor, causing an additional 1d8 of damage, sawing through limbs like butter and leaving heavily bleeding, ragged stumps.

Molecular Disassembly Canon
A mass of tubes and wires with a series of Nixie tube-like glass bells underneath, filled with Sonic Ooze. Must be fed blood weekly, or the ooze dies. Firing it causes an electric shock to agitate the oozes, which send out a metasonic vibration through the tubes. Does d12 damage, exploding on a 1 or 12.

***

Lunar Vampire
HD 3 ATK 12 DEF as leather MV 16’, 6’ fly once per day Tongue 2d6 Bite or Weapon 1d6/1d6 Save 8 Int 10, 15 if recently fed Morale 4
Emaciated, near-feral, and weak. Shadows of the dread cosmic vampires they once spawned from. Crave blood all the time, made mad by their hunger. Must be decapitated, have their hearts ripped out or staked, or be burned. Want to eat flesh and regain their opulence.
Vampiric: Regains 1d4 hp whenever it drinks blood.

Rose-Devil
HD 2 ATK 14 DEF as leather MV 18’ Thorns 1d6 Tendrils 1d6/1d6 Save 8 Int 16 Morale 3
Ancient vampires whose flesh has finally dissolved away from hunger. Bendy and thorned. Heads look like skulls made of wicker mixed with rose blossoms. They bathe in blood to grow back flesh. Can only be burned, or utterly dismembered. Want to become whole again.
Regeneration: When bled on, gain 1 hp.

Renfield
HD 1 ATK 10 DEF unarmored MV 12' Bite 1d4 Save 6 Int 8 Morale 6
Translucent, jellylike. Born from vats in the cellships, reconstituted collected biomass. They eat flesh too, but don't hunt; they'll eat whatever's left after their masters finish. Want to faithfully serve the vampires.
Translucent: Advantage on stealth rolls while in dim light or darkness.

Dwarves and Orichalcum

The old dwarf across from you in the cramped booth hacks and spits and laughs, his craggy face marred with evenly-spaced scarification, his wide teeth black and coated in rasps. His lips are red with dripped rust. Eyes bulging and thick with veins like knots of twine. He leans forward and swigs from the mug of alcohol you procured for him, stuff used for sterilizing medical equipment, laced with belladonna and morphine.

“Sure, I can show you into ol’ Mound 378. I can even get you to the tomb-forges outside her jurisdiction. But I’ll need something more encouraging than this tepid shit.” He swirls the mug for emphasis. His words seem hollow, the human dialect alien to his tongue even after all these years exiled from his kind. The singular pronouns especially strike dull from his mouth.

He drinks the rest of the booze in one gulp, then sighs. A wind like that off of a rusted scrapyard blows across your face.

You ask him his price.

Another harsh laugh. He fingers the scars up and down his face. “A trice more than you can afford, deary.” He quiets and thinks for a moment. The levity falls from his face like a dropped mask.

“On further reflection, maybe I can get you in. But you’ll have to do me a favor or three...”

***

Many people have written about the Folk Underneath. I’m not the first, nor will I be the last. My account is not comprehensive, but it is more accurate than others. Those “scholars” have studied the dwerro from afar, using unsubstantiated reports from drug-addled silk merchants and half-dead adventurers. They say that dwarves are living golems (a ridiculous prospect, since any golemist worth their salt know that golems exemplify unlife). Others claim they are born spontaneously from the rock, or were shaped from it by a god. That dwarves are magical mole-people who can grab anyone at any time. That they are little men who enjoy engineering and alcohol. That dwarves are a branch of humanity, like Neanderthals or the mooncalf quadrupeds that the halflings of the Bhyru Plains cultivate and ride. That dwarves don't exist.

These claims are ridiculous.

(Although the Hermit of Mount Whimsy got it pretty close)

They grew deep in the earth, from life much different than that of the surface. Their flesh provides no nutrition for predators of the surface. A beast may starve to death with a belly full of dwarf.

They eat metal. Their skills as miners and engineers come from necessity, the same way early humanity became hunters and gatherers. Dwarvish cuisine is boles of wires and slabs of foil in divergent hues, layers of brass and silver and iron with heavy corners. Supplemented with bacterial mats and fungal blooms and huge eyeless fish. They consume the empty calories to extract the rare trace metals in them, like vitamins.

Common folk think there are three types of dwarf. White Dwarves, impetuous and quick, Black Dwarves, stolid and reliable, and Red Dwarves, slow and thoughtful. These are actually just the stages of dwarvish life. They start off pale and alabaster-white like milky babies. Their flesh cleaves, not tears. The metal a dwarf eats begins to stain their skin and muscles with molecules of iron and bismuth, gold and aluminum. They turn shiny and gunmetal grey. Eventually their metabolism slows down and the metal suffusing their flesh rusts, turning their skins rich russet hues.

Each person in a dwarf city is a cog or wheel in a greater machine, working together for the betterment of the community at the detriment of anything else. The concept of communism sprung forth from the savant minds of dwarven leaders. They work together intrinsically, nascent fixation on community like underground honeybees of alien flesh. They don’t understand philosophy, individualism, and religion is regarded as a thoughtvirus, punishable by jailtime or even mutilation. Their god is the great god Efficiency, blind and dumb.

Each city is governed by a conclave of 188 councilors or ministers who dictate each aspect of life. Thoughtcrime, neuro-atypical dwarves, seditionists, and possible demiurges are exiled, stricken from dwarvish thought, scarred with the parallel mark that lets all dwarves know this one has been made undwarf. They regard the exiles as humans, or at best thick halflings. Exiled dwarves make up most of the "adventurer" dwarves of the surface, but sometimes truethread dwarves come up and act as if they were exiled, deep-cover operatives to jealously guards the autonomy of dwarfdom.

Dwarves don’t take baths, because their biology fights off what germs their high-proof liquor doesn’t kill. It isn’t efficient to waste time cleaning yourself when there’s work to be done. They’re also terrified of water, because their skeletons are made of metal.

A strange reaction occurs within the gut of a dwarf. The minerals they eat dissolve and discorporate into molecules, which suffuse their body. Over time, the molecules settle and join with the fractal hooks and spurs of the dwarvish skeleton, forming crystal-laticed structures of alloyed metal. Quicksilver joins to lead, lead joins to gold, gold joins to iron, forming a new material found nowhere else naturally on earth. Refined and worked, it is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, more powerful than uranium. Orichalcum.

Dwarves use orichalcum in everything they make. Weapons, work-machines, architecture. A bar of orichalcum is worth a small kingdom on the surface, and many a would-be thief has met their end at the brutally efficient defenses of the mound-cities. They will wait a century or two until all the flesh has fallen off of the bones of a fallen dwarf, then smelt them into raw material to be reused later.

“That’s a really nice warhammer.”

“Thanks, it was my grandfather.”

***

If you’re a dwarf in a GLOG campaign, use these stats when rolling your character:

Perk: you can eat metal along with rations to gain health. The type of metal corresponds with the ration; eating 5 copper is the same as 1 ration, while 1 gp is like a feast. You can’t suffer heavy metal poisoning.

Downside: your skeleton is metal. You’re much heavier than you look. People trying to lift you suffer a -2 penalty, and you sink immediately in water. Those who know about the secrets of orichalcum might try to murder you for your valuable bones.

Rerolled Stat: Strength

Anyway, it's taken me like 2 weeks to write this. Couldn't get it to sound right, and I'm still not sure it does. I'll link the other GLOG writers who've made awesome dwarves once I can find their pages.

The Golemist (GLOG Class)

In the rain-soaked city of Ischaim, cloistered scholars and rabbis perform sacred rites and incantations over holy simulacra of men, designed to impart life and stewardship into these guardians of the faithful. You are not a holy man, or one of the faithful. The secrets of golemistry were leaked to the arcane public, losing the trappings of religion in the process. Now golemistry is utilized by most major countries, and wandering golemists fill secretive clubs and barrooms with hulking clay bodies, glimmering in the firelight.

This class was inspired by a lot, notably Judah Low from Iron Council and the State Alchemists of FMA. I wanted something like a summoner class that drew upon their surroundings for quick minion creation in combat. It’s kinda like a spellcaster if they only had one spell that got more specific as they levelled up. I’m not sure it’ll work, since I haven’t really tested it, but it was fun to write. Maybe in time, after some testing, I’ll give it another writeup and spruce it up (but probably not).

I wrote it as a competition with Spwack over in the OSR discord. Check out his Golemist class (I have no doubt his actually works) and his other stuff, it’s all very good and weird. I've never written a GLOG class before, so this was a really fun way of getting into things!

Mikoláš Aleš

Golemist

Starting Equipment: Notebook, dagger, set of brushes and inks, roll on your favorite random item list.

Perk: You can block out any external stimuli that would cause you to lose concentration on your work.

Downside: Any HP you use to create a golem can’t be regenerated by any means until that golem is dismissed.

For every Golemist template you have, gain +2 HP

A: Dismissal, Animate Lesser Golem

B: Understanding, Animate Common Golem

C: Usurp Command, Esoteric Material

D: Efficiency, Animate Greater Golem

To create a golem, you touch an object and invest a portion of your body and soul, in the form of HP. Each golem type has different HP requirements from you. I.e., you cut yourself for 1 HP and invest it into making a lesser golem. That golem has 1 HP, and you can’t regain that 1 HP until the golem is dismissed. Golems are brought to life by an arcane word inscribed in blood on their bodies somewhere. If this word is marred or erased, the golem is destroyed.

You start off being able to make clay or mud golems.

Universal Studios

Dismissal

You can instantly dismiss any golems you control with a thought, rendering them insensate matter once more. Greater golems get a save, while rogue golems have to be manually erased.

Animate Minor Golem

Spend 1 HP per golem HP to imbue a material or conglomerate of material with a portion of soul and the semblance of life. They can only follow simple commands (“Go for their legs”, “Protect this doorway”). Lesser golems are smaller than a human. Each HP you spend is one golem HP.

Understanding

You study something at a fundamental level, and gain an insight to it unrivalled in the field. Takes 1 hour of uninterrupted extrospection (30 minutes with proper equipment like a 10 gp microscope) on a solid you can examine with your tools and hands. Save vs. forgetting what you learned while you sleep, after three successes the knowledge is permanent. While you understand something, you have advantage on identifying it in other materials, and you know the best ways to kill or neutralize it. You can also create golems out of that material from now on, and golems made of that material go rogue 5% less.

Animate Common Golem

Cost 2 HP per golem HD. Your golems can be bigger (human to ogre sized), and more complex. They follow fairly complex or sequential commands.

Usurp Command

If you meet another golemist on your road, kill him and take his golems. You can impose your will over other constructs. Their controller gets a contest (or the golem does do, if it’s controller is dead). On a fail, take 1d6 psychic damage, and all your currently active golems are dismissed.

Esoteric Understanding

Your golems are stranger, utterly unique. You can use your gift of understanding on even stranger or more complicated things, like radium, air, ideas, or anti-matter. Up to GM discretion. Normal material understanding no longer needs a save vs. forgetting. Reduces all rogue chances by 5%. Stacks with understanding.

Efficiency

You bypass the Golem-Master Bond problem, allowing you to regain half the HP you invest when you create any golem. The HP is still drained, but you can regain half (rounded down) while the golem is still active.

Animate Greater Golem

Invest 3 HP per greater golem HD. These creations are thinking, sapient. Act as a hireling that is utterly devoted to you. See below on greater golem building.

Saddleback. Allows the golem to be ridden like a horse or riding lizard or whatever creature you want. Moves like an elephant. Costs 3 HP during creation.

Gun Barrel. Your golem can shoot cannon balls for 4d6 damage on a hit. Costs 6 HP, and you need a cannon on hand (or enough raw material to make one, I guess.)

Many-Legged. Your golem has more than two legs, possibly far too many. It cannot be knocked over. Costs 3 HP.

Amorphous. The whole thing is made of wet clay, living flesh, protoplasm, or other gooey substance. It can be cut in half and survive, and eventually reconstitute itself. Costs 6 HP.

Shell. The golem is hollow, with a space inside for you, the creator. Basically a mech suit, gives you the physical stats of the golem and AC like plate. Costs 6 HP.

Bladed. Covered in metal teeth, shards of glass, actual swords, sharpened bits of bone, planes of refined entropy. Does 2d6 damage on contact, really good at grappling. Costs 3 HP.

Keith Thompson

Rogue Golems

Creating a golem is a difficult undertaking. The more complex the mind, the more likely the golem is to break free of your mental restraints and act on its own initiative. This is known as “going rogue”. Whenever you create a golem and the first time you ask it to put itself in harm’s way for you, roll 1d100.

Lesser golems: 10% chance of going rogue

Common golems: 20% chance of going rogue

Greater golems: 45% chance of going rogue

Keith Thompson, again

A Few Example Golems

Here are some golems statted up so you can see what they do and how to model them in your games.

Scissor Golems. 2 HP. AC as rat. Tries to cut your tendons or stab your feet for 1d4 damage. MOV as rat. MORALE 20. Flock like piranha. They don’t do much damage if you’re wearing good boots, but god help you if you trip and fall.

Door Golem. 3 HD. AC as Plate. Can’t really attack, but will slam itself shut on your fingers if it has to, 1d4 damage. MOV 0. MORALE 20. Used as guardians, like sphinxes. If you answer the riddle correctly or know the secret password, the way is opened for you. Forgetful mages tend to include hints to their passcodes.

Clay Golem. 1 HD. AC as Leather. Pummels you with rock-like fists for 1d6 damage. MOV as human. MORALE 20. Stolid, dependable, unoriginal. Look for the secret word on its forehead or in its mouth. 

Ball-of-Flesh Golem. 2 HD. AC as unarmored human. Rolls over you, slashing at you with random appendages for 1d6 damage. 50% chance of trying to suffocate you and add you to its mass. MOV as horse. MORALE 20. When most people see a bunch of strewn bodies, they see carnage. You see raw material.

Oliphaunt Golem. 6 HD. AC as Plate. Hits like a fucking tank, tusk-blades do 1d8 slashing while the gun in place of its head shoots for 4d6 damage. MOV as elephant. MORALE 20. Not only is it huge and dangerous, it is cunning, and seeks only to aid its creator.

Artist unknown, from Goethe's Faust

What Your Golem Does When It Goes Rogue

1. Attacks everything in sight, including inanimate objects. 
2. Attacks only you, then leaves out the nearest exit.
3. Screams without lungs or vocal chords, then collapses back into whatever original matter it was constructed from.
4. Obeys your commands a millisecond slow, then sneaks away at its first opportunity.
5. Walks in a counterclockwise spiral until it hits an object, then reverses around it.
6. Begins eating everything it can fit in its mouth. If it doesn’t have a mouth, it just mashes the things on its face. The objects aren’t actually eaten; they’re still inside it, crushed and covered in clay.
7. Attacks everything but you.
8. Carries you to the next room/building/clearing/area then collapses.
9. Is entirely unresponsive.
10. Moves at one quarter of its normal rate; every attack is telegraphed so far in advance anyone can get out of their way.
11. Constantly emits noise/smoke/sparks, thwarting any attempts at stealth or polite conversation.
12. Walks backward, trips on everything.
13. Obeys only the most simple and direct orders. Like playing a text-based game. Even “Go through the door” will cause it to overheat and lock in place.
14. Whatever it wants. It is now an NPC. It remembers everything you’ve done to it, including while it was the base material.
15. Shadows your every move, obeys none of your commands.
16. Begins scratching every word and discernable noise it has heard on the wall/floor in dictation.
17. Does the literal opposite of all of your commands.
18. Uses whatever appendage is able to smash out its own word, crippling or killing itself.
19. Gets visibly hot, then explodes for 6d6 damage.
20. Transmutes to a new substance, then discorporates.