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A guild of brass and bronze workers which actually serves as a focal point for Vladaam chaositech research.

DENIZENS - DAY	Location
2 Guild Apprentices + Vladaam Guard	Area 1
Vladaam Guard	Area 2
Apprentices + Master Craftsman	Area 3
3 Chaositech Masters + 2 Apprentices	Area 4
DENIZENS - NIGHT	Location
Vladaam Guard	Area 2

Guildsman District
Brass Street – H8

AREA 1 – STOREFRONT

A variety of workbenches cluttered with tools. Guildsmen on duty here will do minor repair work.

TOOLS: Two sets of jeweler’s tools and a set of tinker’s tools.

MERCHANDISE: Various works of brass and bronze, mostly knick-knacks, cheap candelabras, or specialized components of little value. Total worth of 150 gp if it’s all hauled out of here. There are two sextants worth 250 gp each and a set of brass marbles worth 1 gp.

AREA 2 – STAIRWELL

The stairwell is guarded with three alarm spells which are triggered by anyone traversing the stairs who isn’t wearing a guild badge.

• An audible alarm (heard throughout the workshop and out on the street).
• A mental alarm that notifies Aliaster Vladaam.
• A mental alarm that notifies the guioldmaster.

AREA 3 – UPPER WORKSHOP

This workshop contains ten sets of smith’s tools, two sets of tinker’s tool, and two sets of jeweler’s tools., along with a large supply of brass, bronze, and copper (2,000 pounds, worth a total of 1,000 gp). Two small forges are positioned near windows (for ventilation).

PAPERS: A few miscellaneous papers are strewn about, including a Bill for Repairs Done to a Spiked Pit Trap.

SECRET DOOR – DC 16Intelligence (Investigate): The chaositech workshop in Area 4 is actually the second floor storey of the building next door (which has no access to its second floor, just a long stair that goes up to its third floor), so it’s not immediately apparent that there should be any access to it.

BILL FOR REPAIRS TO A SPIKED PIT TRAP

To the attention of Arquad—

A request of remuneration for the services of the Founders’ Guild in the repair and servicing of the safeguards in the back hall of Marquette’s Textiles, Pitch Street, Guildsman District.

To whit—

Repair of hinge mechanisms in door.

Replacement and treatment of spikes.

Additional items—

Blue whinnis commissioned from the Poisoners’ Guild on Black Str. Paid in full. Inc. in billed amount.

Billed amount—

1,875 gold thrones.

DM Background: The trap mentioned here is located in the hallway of Part 17: Undead Shipping Warehouse. The poison (blue whinnis) is being sourced from Part 7B: Alchemy Lab 2 – Poisoner’s Guild.

AREA 4 – CHAOSITECH WORKSHOP

A faint, pink-purple haze clings to the ceiling. There’s sickly-sweet scent raw with some form of potent pheromone. (Ask the players what the emotional reaction of their PCs is to the powerful pheromones.) Strange machinery – some combination of bronze and an unidentifiable black metal – crawls up the walls, although it’s difficult to tell where one device ends and another begins. Several work tables in both halves of the room are covered with softly bubbling chemicals, strangely glowing items, and an eclectic effluvium of technomantic components.

CHAOSITECH: Among a variety of half-completed devices and experiments, there is a sickening rod and blight bomb. There is also a copy of the Book of Greater Chaos. (See Addendum: 5E Chaositech.)

RIFLE CRATE: An open crate that originally contained 12 hellsbreath rifles from the Shuul Foundry. 6 remain in the crate, 2 others have been partially disassembled (and are in various states of study), and 4 have been repacked into a smaller container with a note attached: “Have these sent to the security cache in the temple on Malav Street.”

• DM Note: The temple referenced in the note is Part 6: Abandoned Temple of the Great Mother.

IRON COFFER (10% chance): There’s a 10% chance of an iron coffer containing 500 gp, 40,000 sp, and 50,000 cp with instructions to have the Ithildin couriers ship it to the Red Company of Goldsmiths on Gold Street (see Part 12).

STAT SHEET

Guild Apprentices: Use artisan stats, Ptolus, p. 606.

• Proficiency (+2): Arcana, Smith’s Tools
• Equipment: dagger, hourglass, magnifying glass, oil of mending (x2), Vladaam deot ring

Master Craftsman: Use artisan stats, Ptolus, p. 606.

• Proficiency (+2): Smith’s Tools
• Equipment: hourglass, magnifying glass, oil of mending, Vladaam deot ring.

Chaositech Master: Use mage stats, MM p. 347.

• Proficiency (+3): Medicine, Chaositech Tools, Smith’s Tools
• Equipment: oil of mending, chaositech tools, chaos storage cube (Ptolus, p. 535), any 1 chaositech weapon (Ptolus, 535), Vladaam deot ring
• Chaositech Stabilizaiton: 50% chance of negating chaotic failure of chaositech device.
• Resist Insanity: Advantage on saving throws made when working with chaositech.
• Tinker: Work 1d4+6 days to double a chaositech item’s range, area, duration, or add +2 to its damage or save DC.

Spellcasting: 9^th-level spellcaster. Spell save DC 14, +6 to hit with spell attacks.

• Cantrips (at will): acid splash, dancing lights, mage hand, sense spell (Ptolus, p. 632)
• 1^st level (4 slots): detect chaositech (Ptolus, p. 628), mage armor, magic missile, shield
• 2^nd level (3 slots): meld into stone, siphon (Ptolus, p. 633)
• 3^rd level (3 slots): counterspell, gaseous form, lightning bolt
• 4^th level (3 slots): private sanctum, stoneskin
• 5^th level (1 slot): mislead

Vladaam Guards: Use guard stats, MM p. 347, with AC 17. (Equipment: breastplate, shield, longsword, longbow, arrows x20, potion of healing, Vladaam deot ring.)

Go to Part 12: Guild – Goldsmiths

On April 3^rd, 1998, a new column appeared in Pyramid Magazine for the first time: “Suppressed Transmission” by Kenneth Hite.

Let’s unpack this.

Pyramid, which premiered in 1993, was a gaming magazine published by Steve Jackson Games. It had been preceded by the legendary Space Gamer (1980-85) and Roleplayer (1986-93). The original Pyramid ended its run in March 1998, but only because SJG was taking the unprecedented step of offering Pyramid as a subscription website.

Today, this is likely to elicit little more than a shrug. At the time, though, it was a hugely controversial decision. Pay money?! For a website?!

But Pyramid was the last of the generalist RPG magazines. (Dragon had finished its transformation into a complete house organ. White Wolf and Challenge were already gone. Shadis would be out of print by the end of the year.) Going to an online subscription model would allow it to survive. And survive it did, each week delivering a half dozen or so articles and reviews.

Note: Some of my earliest professional sales were made to Pyramid Magazine during this time period. Check the Bibliography for more information.

And right from the beginning, Hite’s “Suppressed Transmission” was there.

To describe Hite’s column as a “hit” honestly feels inadequate. A common “joke” at the time was that the majority of Pyramid’s subscribers were only subscribing so that they could have access to “Suppressed Transmission,” but I’m not really sure it was a joke. No matter where you were hanging out in the online RPG community, each new column would immediately spark furious discussion. It sometimes felt like we were all just waiting for the next column to drop. It rapidly established itself as something between a tentpole and a shibboleth.

Sheer popularity alone, however, doesn’t fully describe the impact of “Suppressed Transmission.” It was a huge influence for an entire generation of game designers and game masters, mainstreaming — at least in the RPG field — a slew of ideas and influences which had previously existed out on the fringe.

“You know about the suppressed transmission, of course?”
– Slacker

Okay, enough beating around the bush. What is the Suppressed Transmission?

There is, in truth, an ineffable quality to the column that can make it difficult to capture exactly what makes the column so special. But the short version is that Kenneth Hite has a voracious appetite for:

• Conspiracy
• Secret History
• Horror
• Alternate History

He takes these four elements and, like a master alchemist, mixes them into potent elixirs — “suppressed transmissions” ready for broadcasting into your campaign.

So that’s part one: Hite has collected a treasure trove of the most amazing and crazed material, and he shares it freely with the reader while inventing even more besides. For example, when the world went mad for the “truths” revealed by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I was underwhelmed largely because Kenneth Hite had already revealed those “truths” to me… and a dozen other Grail conspiracies besides, all trussed, roasted, carved, and served up for the game table.

The second thing — and this can be quite hard to communicate to anyone who hasn’t actually read one of the Suppressed Transmissions — is the sheer density Hite achieves. Reading these columns is like having a firehose aimed at your brain. In a four-page essay, Hite can deliver mind-blowingly brilliant concepts for a dozen — or more! — full-fledged campaigns. A Suppressed Transmission collection is like a neutron star, and every paragraph neutronium.

For example, in “Six Flags Over Roswell,” Hite takes the Roswell alien crash in 1947 (conspiracy) and looks at what might have happened if the crash had really taken place at six different points in time (alternate history). Not only is every one of these variations pure gold, but for most you can just as easily frame a campaign around the event itself (PCs are Union spies racing their Confederate counterparts to investigate the crash), the immediate aftermath (psychic alien body-jumpers are infiltrating the Mexican government), or the strange other-world that results (the covert war of the Wizards of Menlo Park or the steampunk Republic of Texas).

Or all three.

In “Justinian and Arthur,” Hite introduces the concept of “high historical fantasy.” From Procopius’ Anekdota he takes the claim that Justinian and Theodora, Emperor and Empress of the Byzantine Empire, were secretly possessed by demons. Then he observes that King Arthur was essentially Justinian’s contemporary, and from Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur he takes the Roman War in which Arthur fought an emperor who “had gotten with him fifty giants which had been engendered of fiends.” Sure, the emperor in Malory is Lucius, but that’s easily swapped out, and then:

Set [the PCs] out on the wild frontier between Arthur’s Britain and the Byzantine Empire. (No, there wasn’t any such border in Real History. I’ve got news for you; there weren’t any demons in Real History and there probably wasn’t any King Arthur, either.)

As the PCs find out more and more about Justinian’s demonic plans, they can work with Arthur’s spies, be harassed by the Unseelie Court of Morgan le Fay, and generally skulk around dodging fiend-engendered ogres Nazgul enforcer types. […] Finally, they uncover Jusinian’s plan — to find the Holy Grail and pervert it for his diabolical ends! Warning Arthur just in time, the PCs must keep the Grail safe from Justinian’s demon-giants and distract Belisarius (or convince him that Justinian is a demon; no small task given that his wife is in the same coven as Empress Theodora) so that Arthur can defeat the evil Romans and save the day. This is the sort of thing you can call “historical high fantasy;” it has the advantages of historical games (evocatively familiar and wonderful names and places, conveniently assembled background materials for research at your whim) without the disadvantages (having to do research to get things perfect, having to stay true to history, having to risk a player who knows more about the period than you do). When you add the cool fantasy trappings like giants, monsters, demons, magic swords, sorcery, and poison, you got game.

Oh, and do take the time to read Procopius. The bit with the demon-Emperor’s disappearing head is a hoot.

This is the sort of thing that Hite does all the time, taking 2 + 2 + 2 and somehow making it equal 187 (which means “the beginning of great enlightenment” in New Age kabbalism).

But it’s more than that.

As Hite takes you on wild romps like:

• Who Killed Kit Marlowe?
• A Night To Embroider: Who Sank the Titanic?
• A Dish Best Served Cold: The Antarctic Space Nazis
• Six Degrees of Francis Bacon
• Patterns in Amber
• Things To Do In Gaming When You’re Dead

The real suppressed transmission — the transmission hiding within the transmission — is that Hite is showing how he creates campaigns and adventures. Every column is an exemplar of how he sources material and then combines it, twists its, inverts, bissociates it, and builds upon it to create pure gaming gold.

As you work your way through a Suppressed Transmissions collection — and I do recommend taking it slowly; this is material best savored rather than binged (no matter how tempting the binge might be) — you can feel Hite reprogramming your brain.

And we haven’t even gotten into his alphabets (here’s 26 bite-sized, themed bits of awesome to inspire your adventures) or his how-to essays that peel back the curtain to look at each of the four pillars of Suppressed Transmissions (conspiracy, alternate history, secret history, and horror) in detail.

It will probably come as no surprise at this point to learn that I consider “Suppressed Transmission” to be a major influence on me as a creator and as a GM. Despite this, until recently, I haven’t talked about the column very much. The primary reason for this is that it simply wasn’t available: When the online version of Pyramid was shut down in 2008, the archives became unavailable and the published collections went out of print.

Sadly, for the most part, this remains true. Hite wrote over three hundred “Suppressed Transmission” columns, and the vast majority of these remain available only to those of us who were subscribed to Pyramid in its final days and downloaded the archives before they were taken offline.

But at some point in the not-too-distant past, Steve Jackson Games has brought Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast and Suppressed Transmission 2: The Second Broadcast back into print. These two collections include several dozen of the original columns, each of which has been festooned with detailed footnotes and extensive commentaries that somehow manage to make them even more awesome.

In conclusion…

… what the heck are you waiting for?

Grade: A+

Author: Kenneth Hite

Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Price: $29.99 (each)
Page Count: 128 (each)

Go to Table of Contents

DENIZENS - DAY	Location
Fletchers (x4)	Area 1
Fletcher	Area 2 or 3
Vladaam Researcher	Area 3 or 4
Vladaam Mage	Area 5
DENIZENS - NIGHT	Location
Vladaam Researcher	Area 4

Fletcher: Use commoner stats, MM p. 345. Proficient in fletcher’s tools. Wear Vladaam deot rings.

Vladaam Mage: Use mage stats, MM p. 347. See Part 13: Red Company of Magi.

Vladaam Researcher: Use acolyte stats, MM p. 342. See Part 13: Red Company of Magi.

Guildsman District
Vanguard Street – K8

AREA 1 – WORKSHOP

This workshop belongs to the Red Company of Fletchers and does not generally sell goods directly to the public.

PASSWORD: “Bloodfury” will get the fletchers to sell +1 dreadwood arrows.

SECRET DOOR — DC 16 Intelligence (Investigation): Wooden panel that slides aside. A staircase leads down to Ghul’s Labyrinth (which has a distinctive, cream-colored stone clearly older than the rest of the building).

There is a 10% chance of an iron coffer containing 500 gp, 40,000 sp, and 50,000 cp with instructions to have the Ithildin couriers ship it to the Red Company of Goldsmiths on Gold Street.

AREA 2 – WALKWAY

This is a grated walkway that passes over the grove in Area 3. A wrought-iron, spiral staircase at one end of the walkway leads down to the floor of Area 3, which is twenty or thirty feet below.

AREA 3 – DREADWOOD GROVE

Three long grooves in the domed ceiling glow with a fast-cycling yellow-blue light. The grove is filled with a dozen stunted, twisted trees with barkless, lusterless black trunks with red veins that seem to pulse with thick, turgid blood.

LIGHT: The light is magical, creating a bio-sustaining atmosphere in which plants can be grown. It has been modified to speed the growth of the dreadwood trees (which normally don’t require sunlight); the effect is disquieting if observed for any length of time.

DREADWOOD TREES: A dozen dreadwood trees grow here. Make a Wisdom saving throw (DC 12 on the walkway, DC 25 in the grove) or turn aside with loathing and fear.

AREA 4 – DREADWOOD SEEDLINGS

Long, high tables of stone (designed for Ghul’s orcs) now keep two dozen dreadwood seedlings, ready for transplant to the main grove (or a new grove) when needed.

AREA 5 – DREADWOOD FLETCHING

DOOR: DC 14 Dexterity (Thieves’ Tools)

A work area for creating dreadwood arrows. It contains supplies for both traditional fletching, processing dreadwood, and dreadwood horticulture.

AREA 6 – BLUESTEEL DOOR

A bluesteel door leading deeper into Ghul’s Labyrinth. (See Ptolus, p. 391).

The guild does not know the password for this door.

DREADWOOD

The dreadwood tree is a stunted, twisted thing. Its barkless trunk is a lusterless black run through with red veins which seem to pulse with thick, turgid blood. About such a tree there is an aura of the unnatural profoundly disturbing to the mortal mind. Any who would approach a dreadwood tree must succeed at a DC 10 Wisdom saving throw or turn aside with loathing and fear. This DC is increased by +1 for every additional dreadwood tree in the area, up to a maximum DC of 25.

If the wood of the dreadwood can be harvested and treated with the proper alchemical substances, its red veins can be made to pulse even in death. Those near an object crafted from dreadwood suffer a -1 penalty on Wisdom saving throws. Those handling an object of dreadwood or entering a room built of it suffer disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws and must succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened as long as they are near the dreadwood and for 1d6 rounds thereafter.

A dreadwood tree does not require sunlight in order to grow and many are found deep beneath the surface of the earth. In fact, the dreadwood’s manner of sustenance remains a mystery much studied by arcanists and druids alike.

(Fantasy Materials)

DREADWOOD ARROWS: Those near a dreadwood arrow suffer a -1 penalty on Wisdom saving throws. Those handling or shot by a dreadwood arrow have disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws and must succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for as long as they are near the dreadwood and for 1d6 rounds thereafter.

A +1 dreadwood arrow costs 1,500 gp per 50.

DREADWOOD QUIVER: Not a quiver designed from dreadwood, but rather designed to hold dreadwood arrows so that the owner is not perpetually affected by the dreadwood kept within it. Cost: 150 gp.

Go to Part 11: Guild – Founders’ Workshop

Go to Campaign Status Documents

Another element that you can keep track of using your campaign status documents is literally just the miscellaneous continuity of the campaign.

Obviously, there are lots of ways that you can (and will) use to record the continuity of your campaign. A detailed campaign journal, for example. Or an updated set of scenario notes. Or a restocked dungeon. Or notes scribbled in the margins of an NPC’s briefing sheet.

But sometimes you just need a quick reference to help you keep the events of the campaign organized in your mind and consistent at the table, or there may be miscellaneous stuff you need to keep track of, but which you just don’t have any clear place in your notes to write down.

It turns out that the last page of your campaign status document is the perfect place for that.

EXAMPLE: NPC EXPEDITIONS

During my Ptolus campaign, the PCs were exploring a vast dungeon known as the Banewarrens. At the same time they were doing this, however, there were several other factions who were also sending NPC adventuring groups into the Banewarrens pursuing a wide variety of agendas.

So I needed to not only keep track of what the PCs were doing in the Banewarrens, I also needed to keep track of these various NPC expeditions and the changes they were making to the dungeon. (So if I determined that, for example, the Pactlords of the Quaan found the body of a fallen comrade and removed it from the dungeon, I would need to update the dungeon key to reflect that the body was no longer there.)

I quickly realized, however, that there were some significant problems with this approach: If I needed to figure out what, exactly, the Pactlords had been doing – for example, if the PCs captured a Pactlord agent and interrogated them – then I would end up sifting through the updated room keys like a detective trying to reconstruct events that I had worked out weeks or months earlier. (And some of these clues would have been obliterated from the record by subsequent changes to the key.)

I concluded that what I needed, in addition to the updated room keys, was a literal log of the NPC expeditions. For example:

---

NAVANNA – FIRST TRIP
10/06/790 – 5 AM

• Inspects door to purple wraiths, but does not open.
• Passes through Area 10.
• Heads down to the creature vaults. (Will remove the body of the pain devil and take it to the NOD4 apartment complex.)
• Goes to warding generator.
• Enters Outer Vaults. Passes through Area 12/13 and spots new construction in Area 10. Places a clairvoyant mark on the wall for Aliaster. (This doesn’t work, since you can’t scry into the BW, but she doesn’t know that yet.)
• Goes to the warding generator in Area 6.
• Gets caught in the trap in Area 5 and is badly wounded.
• Leaves the Banewarrens.

GOAL FOR NEXT VISIT: Break through into the weapons vault.

---

(The “Goal for Next Visit” was basically just a way of encoding the line of my thought for Future Justin. It remains important, of course, not to prep so far in advance that you end up throwing out a bunch of stuff that gets contradicted by play.)

This format also let me start pre-running these expeditions, which meant I could also seamlessly trigger this NPC expeditions in the middle of a session. Which, in turn, resulted in more dynamic play as the PCs could react to the expeditions in real time.

If the expeditions were modified during play, I could just note that in my campaign status document. Either way, these expedition “logs” were then archived in the campaign status document for future reference as needed.

EXAMPLE: SESSION SUMMARIES

I don’t always keep detailed campaign journals. (In fact, I usually don’t.) But it can still be useful to tie a little figurative string around your fingers to remind yourself of what you’ve done before.

I’ve found this to be particularly true for open table campaigns, where a long-absent player will often ask me what their previous expeditions were or if they know another PC at the table (i.e., have they gone on an adventure together?).

(Yes, it would be nice if they kept their own notes for this type of stuff – and many players do – but the whole point of having an open table is to encourage more casual play in the first place.)

So what I’ll do is write short summaries of each session, limiting myself to no more than two or three quick sentences. For example, the session summaries for my Castle Blackmoor open table look like this:

---

Session 10: Drake, Tolliver, Gio, Tana, Havel. Journey through Tanglefuck. Fight a flying machine. Gio strips down to swim under the Pool.

Session 11: Drake, Eilidh, Gio, Tana, Tolliver. Return to Level 3. Recover +2 plate of giant strength. Baron Fant revealed as vampire. Eilidh turned by Fant. Eilidh’s sister Rue joins the rest of the group to search for her sister.

Session 12: Towby, Wazoo, Walton. Three W’s make plans for the church. Particularly making plans for the re-consecration of the Church.

Session 13: Anutar, Tana, Tolliver, Drake. Extensive mapping on Level 2. Enter the dark dwarf forge, kill most of them, and emerge with the elven mithril crown bound in taurum.

Session 14: Anutar, Drake, Hublin Mandrill, Tana, Tolliver. Drake met Hublin on caravan back from Great Kingdoms. Finish clearing out dark dwarf forge. Kill men working for the balrog Ascutiel.

Session 15: Hublin, Johnny, Lana, Ashton, Rue. Hobbit children are now vampires; rescue three out of six hobbits who had been sent after the kids. Ashton and Lana die.

Session 16: Tolliver, Sid, Johnny, Lunara. Followed Sid’s maps down to Level 4. Chased by bandits, werelions, and Baron Fant back upstairs. Attacked by hobbit child vampire; Tolliver turned it. Removed corpses from the cages.

Session 17: Gio, Tana, Zaxxon, Illenya, Sid. Find obsidian charm that grants sight of gasoline-slick alternate version of dungeon. Kill werelion.

---

But I’ll often find this useful for campaigns run with dedicated tables, too. For example, this list of previous scores from a Blades in the Dark campaign:

---

Score #1: Steal shipment of ekrosi from the Gaddoc Rail Station impound warehouses for the Fog Hounds.

Score #2: Lady Sharrah has them meet with Maw of the Void cultists in the Lost District to receive delivery of the Flayed Skin of Sevraxis in exchange for an Iruvian dusk candle.

Score #3: Raided the Midnight Gold for evidence against the proprietor, Drav. Killed him, released his ex-wife’s hussy-obssessed ghost.

Score #4: Broke Vestine Vale (Roland’s banker) out of Charterhall jail. Mission goes badly pear-shaped; failed to do side job for Gray Cloaks (stealing ethereal railgun). Attracted interest of Roethe.

Score #5: Delivery of ekrosi to Rubbo’s Boys at Kellis Tower goes awry when Grey Coats ambush the couriers. Managed to deliver drugs without Grey Coats identifying them, but with several deaths.

---

These particular campaigns took place years ago, and only the dimmest memories are stirred by these quick references. But at the time, they were just enough of a reminder to refresh our collective memories.

KNOWN FACTS

I love improvising new lore and setting details during a session. It’s fun, it’s rewarding, and it’s a great way to flesh out a world.

Some of the stuff you improvise is just ephemera – it has its moment in the sun and then drifts away. Other stuff will have a clear place in your notes where it can/should be recorded. But sometimes it’s a detail just random enough that it has no place to live, but is still compelling enough to be preserved and reincorporated into the campaign.

For that stuff, there’s the “Known Facts” section of my campaign status document. This is literally just a bullet-pointed list of stuff

(This can also be a repository for stuff that probably could be added to my notes somewhere else, but it’s just convenient to store it here until I’ve accumulated enough material to make updating stuff worthwhile.)

For example, here are the Known Facts from that same Blades in the Dark campaign:

---

Rat ‘n Crown. Bar in Crow’s Foot where Nissan and Marlene intimidated drivers from 1^st score.

Kites, a hawker crew in Crow’s Foot. Cyrene spread rumors they were responsible for the 1^st score.

Red Mark Bounty is 6 Coin.

Big Lock vs. Fishing Lock.

Iruvian Dusk Candle. Suppresses the ghost field.

Blood Wine.

Triplicate of the final letter in your name is the “hip” thing kids are doing.

Lady Sharrah. Mansion in Six Towers. A fief-witch of the Dimmer Sisters. Multiple spirits in her body.

Lost District: Echoes. The Big One. Faceless market.

Physickers: Wear bandoliers filled with unguents, etc. Different orders marked by different colors.

• Fungal treatments. Including mushroom cocoons.
• Nightshade ears. A fungal replacement for damaged ears.

Charterhall Jail: 3 tiers (padded cuffs, overnight cells, and the literal shithole in the basement with leaking sewage). Under the domed roof is the armory and interrogation rooms. Cupola on top of the dome.

---

You can see here that, for example, I don’t actually know what “blood wine” is yet. I’ve just mentioned it, and it felt like something that might be drunk in a future scene (or perhaps casks of it stolen for the black market).

In some cases, a Known Fact (or collection of facts) will accumulate enough details and/or additional lore to forge some dedicated place in my notes. For example, perhaps I end up with enough novel foods and drinks that adding a Duskvol Menu to my setting notes will be worthwhile.

In other cases, I’ve had the Known Facts section of my campaign status document grow large enough that it became unwieldy to use. In those cases, I have found that separating it into separate categories can be helpful. For example, here’s a selection of the Known Facts from my Castle Blackmoor campaign:

---

GREAT KINGDOM

• King Robert rules from palatial estates on the Inner Sea of the Royal Demesne.
• 750 miles from Blackmoor along the coast to the river of the Royal Demesne.

DWARVES

• Northern Dwarves.
  • Hold of Iron Hand. Vast lowland kingdom carved out by the dwarven king Iron Hand.
• Southern Dwarves. Technically found in the Mountains west of Blackmoor. Tonisborg is apparently home to many of them. Speak with Massachusetts accents.
• Clan Crowns. Clan crowns can’t be replaced, even if lost/destroyed.
• Elder Metal. Electrum adulterated with copper. Various small artifacts passed down form the Elder Dwarves; their purpose now lost.

ELVES

• Elves. Wake up amnesiac, with no memory of how they entered this world.
• Elven Crown. Allows access to Elven spaceship through Elf Stump (and similar sites). Bound in taurum by dark dwarves prevents that function and inflicts amnesia on elves. [Possibly use Metamorphosis Alpha?]

VAMPIRES

• The vampires of the First Coven drank of Baldr’s blood, hoping to gain his eternal youth and vigor. The goddess Hel twisted the gift.
• Vampires can be killed with: Stakes of mistletoe through the heart (Baldr’s weakness), rays of sunlight, fire (like the pyre of the Ringhorn), or by being submerged in the waters of the ocean.

EQUIPMENT

• Dragon’s Milk. Flash-burn oil. 2d6 (take highest) damage; 2d6 (take lowest) duration. Costs 10gp. (Havel has alchemical instructions from the Great Kingdom.)
• Graysilk. Material woven by dark dwarves. Very difficult to see in normal light (2 in 6).
• Giant Weapons: Cost x10 normal weapons. Deal 2d6 damage. (Usable with giant strength effect.)
• Silvered Weapons. Light +25gp, One-Handed or Ammo +75gp, Two-Handed +150gp.
• Wine skins. Have 12 drinks in them.
• Gorget. Same price as helmet. +1 to AC vs. vampires.
• Lodestone: 10 gp.

OTHER

• Language of the Ancients. “Ocun” means forbidden or in error or rejected.
• Deera. Hugh’s sister is missing somewhere in the dungeon.
• Pixie Scars. Glow blue. Barbarians who use captive pixies for scarification.
• Troll Ash: Can be sold for 1d6 gp per dead troll. Used for rejuvenating face cream; possibly snorted as a mood-altering substance (makes you act like a troll?).

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The equipment listed here is a good example of where this material comes from in actual play. Almost all of these items, or details, were the result of players asking specific questions or seeking specific equipment. (With the exception of graysilk, which was something I improvised when describing a random encounter with dark dwarves.)

Similar equipment sections have, in the past, eventually been transferred to the equipment list that players use while creating their characters. (And it’s likely that this one would have been similarly transferred, if COVID-19 hadn’t killed this particular open table.) You could similarly imagine me either improvising enough vocabulary from the Language of the Ancients, or perhaps sitting down one day and deliberately fleshing that material out, that it would make sense to create a dedicated document for it.

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