An expansion for Sceletus

Prelude

The Skeletons aren't alone in the dark and forbidding Necropolis. When you listen closely, behind the echoing click-clack of bone feet against cobblestone alleyways you can sometimes hear a faint slithering, as fungal tendrils reach out and gradually consume slightly more of the necropolis.

The factions of the Necropolis call it "The Green" and the only thing they can agree on is that it must be contained and it can't be allowed to consume the city. 

What's inside?

This booklet contains an entirely new range of living entities for the skeletons of the Necropolis to encounter. It includes methods of interacting with them (whether that is harvesting the fungal blooms, fighting off the more savage varieties, or negotiating with the more intelligent entities that organise the hive mind). Also within are a new range of powers and abilities that character might pick up during their encounters with the Green.

This booklet is a supplemental source of information about a new antagonist for the player characters in Sceletus. It isn't specifically a story module or a game scenario, but rather a range of new ideas and potential story hooks that can add depth and richness to the setting. 

DM Essentials #103: 10 Relics of a Fallen House

In most games, the items the party finds are just loot. A few coins, a +1 sword, maybe a potion. The players update their inventory and move on.

But the dead know the truth. Not everything left behind is treasure. Some things are evidence. Some are confessions. Some are promises that were never kept. A locket that is always cold. A key that fits no lock but turns anyway. A cup that cannot be filled. These relics carry the weight of what was lost, the guilt of what was done, and the quiet desperation of those who cannot rest.

DM Essentials #103 gives you ten ways to make a simple found item feel heavy, strange, and unforgettable. They are not magic items with stat blocks and attunement—they are story hooks disguised as loot.

What's Inside?

The Relic's Weight (Short Essay): Why some things should have been buried, how an item remembers its owner, and what happens when the party keeps what they should have left alone.

10 Relics in the Ashes: Each one gives you a situation, the truth behind it, and a way for the players to respond.

- The Locket That Remembers a Death – A silver locket, cold to the touch. Inside: a woman's portrait. She was murdered. She sees through the silver.
- The Key That Opens No Door – An iron key that fits any lock but turns only in one that was bricked up a century ago. Behind that door: a room that was never meant to be found.
- The Cup That Was Never Emptied – A wooden cup. Any liquid poured into it vanishes within an hour. The ghost of a soldier who died of thirst still drinks from it every night.
- The Cloak That Hides a Wound – A grey travelling cloak, stained inside with old blood. The blood belongs to a deserter. The cloak is the only thing keeping him alive.
- The Knife That Was Never Used – A hunting knife, still sharp, never bloodied. It was forged for a murder that never happened. It whispers to its carrier.
- The Coin That Was Paid Twice – A gold coin from no known king, heavier than it should be. It was paid to a ferryman for a soul that did not cross. The debt is still owed.
- The Bell That Rings at Midnight – A small bronze bell with no clapper. It rings once every midnight. It has announced a death every night for a hundred years. It does not know the house is empty.
- The Book That Writes Itself – A leather journal. Every morning, new handwriting appears—confessions, pleas, warnings. The scribe who witnessed a murder is still writing from beyond the grave.
- The Ring That Remembers a Finger – A copper ring that fits any finger too perfectly. It was cut from a corpse. It wants to tighten.
- The Mirror That Shows the Dead – A hand mirror. When you look into it, you see yourself—and someone standing behind you. A woman buried alive still looks into it from the other side.

Quick Reference Table: Roll d10 and get a full item hook in seconds, including the surface interaction, the hidden truth, and the primary skill check.

Who This Is For:

- DMs who want loot that tells a story instead of just adding numbers
- Players who think a locket is just a locket until it starts whispering in their dreams
- Anyone who understands that the heaviest things are never made of metal

ENTER THE ARCVERSE

More DM Essentials, adventures, and settings at the link below.

The ashes are cold. The house is fallen. The relics wait. How long until someone finds them?

An expansion for Sceletus

Prelude

The Necropolis is a vast city on the edge of reality, orbiting a black hole and pulsating with the dark necrotic energies of oblivion. The skeletons who inhabit this city are the remnants of experiments conducted by secretive necromancers who haven't been seen for hundreds of years. Left behind, but not left alone, many of these skeletons have banded together in organisations with their own agendas for the city. These are the basic rules you need for introducing these organisations into your Sceletus stories.

The Loyalists

Still believing that the Necromancers are out there, the Loyalists strive to live according to the rules that were left behind. They work to maintain order in the Necropolis and prevent dangers from destroying their home.

The Ascensionists

Giving up hope on the Necromancers, the Ascensionists believe that there is something more to the unliving state of skeletons. They experiment to achieve immortality, or at least harness the necrotic energies of their home into magical and mysterious effects.

The Rebels

Trying to forge a new path of independence, the Rebels work to subvert the other factions and establish a new independent kingdom free from the rule of outsiders or the past.

What's inside?

This booklet contains a rough overview of each of the factions, including statistics to include members of these groups in your games, new abilities and skills to learn from them, and story seeds that might be used to add richness and depth to the interactions between these groups and the player characters. 

Fight Card Showdown combines the high-octane action of a fighting game with the edge of your seat strategies of a TCG.

• 54 cards, ranging from Input Cards to Attack Cards to Character Cards.
• 6 characters to choose from, each with their own unique passive ability and list of special attacks.
• 2 player 2v2 combat where the tide of combat can shift in an instant.
• Use Input cards to move around the field, dodge your rival's attacks, or activate special moves.
• Easy to play, but difficult to master.
• In a pinch, tag in your secondary character to set up a feint or protect a weakened ally.

Don't miss out on your chance to try the next evolution in fighting card games today!

T he Bonemaster might be called the Game Master, the Referee, or the Narrator in another game. They could be called the Dungeon Master, but that term is trademarked, and there aren’t really many “Dungeons” in the Necropolis where Sceletus sessions take place, so it doesn’t make sense to call them that. This is a realm of undying energies, animated corspes, and strange otherworldly carrion creatures that feed on the darkness, so the name of Bone Master has been chosen to reflect this.

A Bonemaster is a guide to the Necropolis. They don’t necessarily have all the answers, and in some cases they probably don’t have many answers at all. It’s not the Bonemasters role to create a story and lead the characters through it, nor is it their role to act as an antagonist to the other players. Existing is hard enough for the skeletons in this game… they’re pretty low on the undead food chain, and once they start getting noticed by the other creatures of the Necropolis things don’t get easier for them.

This game is released under a creative commons license, and all images used in this game are public domain (mostly sourced from https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/)

DM Essentials #102: 10 Gnome Warder Encounters

In most games, the deep places beneath the hill are just tunnels. Maybe a few monsters, maybe a treasure. The party clears them out and moves on.

But the gnomes know the truth. Not all things beneath the hills are friendly. Some are ancient, sleeping, sealed away by runes and offerings and prayers. The Warder is the gnome who ensures that what sleeps below does not wake. They are quiet, watchful, and carry a burden that no one else in the burrow fully understands. They listen to the stone. They feel the cracks spread. They know that the seals are failing.

DM Essentials #102 gives you ten ways to make the gnome warder feel ancient, isolated, and desperate. They are not heroes—they are guardians, and their duty may cost them everything.

What's Inside?

The Warder's World (Short Essay): What sleeps below, why the seals were made, and why the warder cannot ask for help.

10 Encounters in the Deep Ways: Each one gives you a situation, the truth behind it, and a way for the players to respond.

- The Sealed Door – A stone door covered in runes. “You should not be here.” The party has wandered too close.
- The Cracking Rune – A seal failing. The warder cannot repair it alone. Something presses from the other side.
- The Listening – “It moved. It has not moved in a century.” Something is waking.
- The Offering – A drop of blood, a silver coin, a whispered name. The offering placates what sleeps below.
- The Lost Key – The key to the deepest seal is gone. The party has days to find it before the seal breaks.
- The Dreamer – The thing below has marked the warder. “It knows me now.” Break the connection, or watch them fade.
- The Sacrifice – A memory, a finger, a year of life. The stone demands a price. Will the party pay?
- The Tunneller – Something is digging up from below. Go down into the dark and stop it.
- The Confession – “The seals were not made by gnomes. They were made by something else. Something that is still down there.”
- The Breaking – The seals fail. The warder turns to the party. “Run. I will hold it as long as I can.”

Quick Reference Table: Roll d10 and get a full encounter hook in seconds.

Who This Is For:

- DMs who want ancient threats and moral choices about sacrifice
- Players who think a sealed door is just a door until something starts scratching from the other side
- Anyone who understands that the price of safety is sometimes paid by those who stand alone in the dark

ENTER THE ARCVERSE

More DM Essentials, adventures, and settings at the link below.

The stone cracks. The cold wind blows. The warder listens. How long until something answers?

Long forgotten on the edge of realspace and the vast void of umbral darkness is a realm of eternal twilight where the period that passes for day is lit by dying red supernovae, while the period that passes for night is when the accretion disc of a nearby black hole fills a quarter of the sky with blackness so dark it hurts the eyes to look at it. 

This has never been a realm of prosperity and wealth, it has always been one of the dirty secrets of the planes. It is a vast ruined city known only as the Necropolis in the tainted texts of the mortal world. A place where necromancers would test their experiments, ready to unleash on the mortal planes. In these nights, the necromancers are rarely seen, and a vast army of skeletons try to exist in a semblance of normalcy amidst the ruins and horrors of the pas

This is a game where everyone plays undead skeletons, trying to find their place in the world and trying to gather a bit of comfort and stability as everything seems to be slowly crumbling around them. As they gather strength, they gain the attention of more powerful creatures and shadowy figures of the necropolis, but hopefully they don't catch the eyes of a necromancer who might view them as the target of a new dark experiment.

Sceletus plays out as an exploration of the Necropolis, with various quests along the way. It isn't designed with a spercific storyline to follow, the exploration is the key. Characters start fragile, and are quick to make, over time they get a little less fragile, but a couple of hits can render almost anyone close to death's door if they haven't prepared.  

This game is released under a creative commons license, and all images used in this game are public domain (mostly sourced from https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/)

How do the characters meet without it feeling forced? Why would strangers stick together? What actually happens to kick off the story? And how do you make it all feel exciting instead of like a boring orientation?

First Session Toolkit gives you the answer to every one of those questions — with random tables you can roll on in seconds and GM guidance that explains why each piece works.

Inside you'll find:

• d20 table: How the party meets (20 alternatives to "you meet in a tavern")
• d20 table: Why they stay together after the first scene
• d20 table: The inciting incident that launches the adventure
• d12 table: First scene locations that aren't a tavern
• d10 table: The first NPC they meet and what that NPC wants
• d8 table: Immediate complications that force the party to act together
• d6 table: Built-in party tension seeds for natural roleplay
• The 3-beat structure of a strong session one
• What every player needs to feel before the session ends
• Session zero vs session one checklist
• A worked example showing how to stack the tables into a complete session in five minutes

System neutral. No stats, no DCs, no edition-specific mechanics. If your game has dice and a GM, this works.

Prep a first session in five minutes. Improvise one on the fly. Or just grab the one table you need tonight.

Interior illustrations created with AI image tools.

This document revisits all the ships and craft in Mongoose Traveller 2^nd Edition's High Guard: Aslan. I present each ship or craft in turn as correctly as I can within the design rules as found in High Guard Update 2022 and the fuel rules from the Small Craft Catalogue, as well as any errata that has been posted or noted on the forums, following the printed design as closely as possible.

After the corrected ship, I will offer my take on how I think the class could be designed using the full rules available. For some designs I will also include alternate designs and variants that I hope you may find useful or interesting. I try and include notes on issues with the designs and my thoughts on them.

Xamitlan: Jungle of Legend is a supplemental book for the 2014 5e rule set, created to introduce a mythical island home to a lost civilization into your campaign. This book is filled with customized subclasses, specifically-tailored magical weapons, diverse jungle threats, and genre-spanning temple locations to be explored at the adventuring party’s peril.

Explorers live in endless pursuit of the next great discovery. Xamitlan, a remote jungle said to be home to both fabulous riches and powerful arcane artifacts, may very well be that discovery. Whether they are seasoned frontiersmen, plucky academics, or simply veteran killers for hire, all who set foot in these primal lands will find themselves tested like never before. Will they find fame or fortune in this ancient land, or will they become a cautionary tale for the next group with a treasure map and a dream?

This book offers Game Masters a litany of unique and dangerous threats to challenge their players. It also offers players a series of powerful character creation options that specifically equip them to combat those threats, focusing on the skills of exploration, cinematic heroism, and survival.

WHAT YOU GET FROM THE JUNGLE

• 13 cunning subclasses that transform your heroes into famed explorers
• 88 new magical items paramount to surviving in a brutal jungle environment
• 24 original spells crafted from the ancient magic of a primal land
• 3 all-new diseases and 2 original status effects to vitalize combat and exploration
• A storied pantheon of eight gods thought long forgotten
• 15 jungle creatures, 13 dinosaurs derived from those found in the Americas, and 8 predatory plants to turn a quest for discovery into a fight for survival
• 8 temples spanning the touchstones of Mesoamerican religion, full of confounding traps and deadly encounters
• A new game mechanic where your players can tame and ride dinosaurs into battle, with 6 additional magic items to outfit your prehistoric mount
• A final twist that redefines the world of Xamitlan and serves as a launching point for new stories

CREDITS

Designed, Developed, Written, Edited, and Directed by W. M. Rhodes and K. H. Rhodes for Mortified Gaming

Paper images designed in part by efe_madrid / Freepik

Map border image designed in part by brgfx / Freepik

Brand images designed by grimdorables

Maps created with Dungeon Scrawl (https://dungeonscrawl.com)—used under CC BY 4.0 license.

Some art assets within Dungeon Scrawl maps contributed by:

Angry Golem Games—(https://angrygolem-games.com)—used under CC BY 4.0

Mark Gosbell—(https://markgosbell.itch.io)—used under CC0

Maps created with Inkarnate (www.inkarnate.com)—pursuant to terms of service and created during Pro level subscription.

Note: This product contains computer-generated images, but the narrative and written words are entirely handcrafted.

Here are two maps for Outside the Wire, first campaign which is in the Fort Qalat Region. There are both color and Black and white maps.