We've had some pretty great chapters from The World Below: Delver's Guide shared with us so far, but we've got a big week ahead and lots more to come. Here's a taste of how we'll finish up February...
Crafting
Delvers don’t mine ore, farm weevils, and hack up bug corpses just to have their new wealth gather dust in some treasury — life is short, and you can’t take your riches with you when you die. Dwellers in the World Below gather these materials for a purpose: making useful, valuable, beautiful goods for themselves, their companions, or their settlement. Or so they don’t starve to death. That’s important, too, but outside the scope of this chapter.
What’s inside its scope is a guide to making the categories of equipment listed in The World Below.
Works of Art The Tools category is versatile enough to cover objects made simply for the pleasure of creating or viewing them: ornaments, or works of art. Use the Artistry Skill instead of Technology for the crafting process, set a difficulty of 0 and let all extra hits define quality. Give such items the Eye-catching tag. Oremap gems and War! Miniatures already do this — but it would be generous to suggest that all works of art are Exceptional, so only add this tag if the artisan has hits to spare.
This chapter introduces the new category of Trade Goods. These are a step above raw materials: cured hides from anthropoid creatures or reptiles, faceted and polished gems, or textiles woven from fungal fibers. Trade Goods include things that are beautiful and ornamental: scrimshawed bone or ivory, clay sculptures, polished stone beads, or War! figurines. Trade goods are not useful items in their own right, but they’re a step above unprocessed harvested material and they’re more valuable in barter exchanges.
The Crafting Process
The existing Kalm Crafting section of The World Belowcovers the creation of mundane and magical items during the Kalm season. The following systems are more detailed, but they allow characters to craft items during stories, not just during Kalm. The final section of this material adjusts the Kalm Crafting rules to complement this new material.
Crafting new mundane equipment requires:
Materials
Skills
Tools
Time
Materials, and the quantities required, are covered in Harvesting. Many materials confer specific tags to equipment fashioned with them: the best artisans either go hunting for the right materials themselves or contract a group of delvers to do it for them.
Except for the specific tags they possess, it’s safe to assume any material (within reason) is suitable to make any type of weapon, armor, or tool. A long blade can be made of polished stone, gemstone, bone, or chitin just as easily as metal. While it’s hard to envisage a blade made from textiles or clay, a little creative alchemy makes it worth considering. What to make an object out of is largely a matter of the player’s aesthetic desires, but the Storyguide has final say on whether a given pairing of material and purpose makes sense.
The Storyguide is, as always, encouraged to use the sourcing of materials for an item as a story hook. “You’re going to need chitin for that armor you want, and the local tunnel locusts’ carapaces split and fracture too easily for your purposes. You’ll need to go further afield…” Players are encouraged to do this, too: tell the Storyguide you want the majestic, jade-colored horns of a specific beetle for your weapon, or that you want to use the same fungal fiber your grandmother worked with for your new cloak.
The Skill involved in crafting is often Technology. A Kaosist or other magician might need Esoterica to work with arcane materials or processes, at the Storyguide’s discretion. Technology pairs with Dexterity for most crafting, with some exceptions:
Use Might for forging or other processes where brawn matters.
Use Cunning if the artisan is jury rigging a temporary solution (this is temporary: such fixes usually only last for one use of the object, or at most until the end of the session).
Use Intellect for complex constructions (such as a Qeobaca Tunneller) or anything that has to be precisely calibrated (like a Moth Ore Polisher or Stratigrapher’s Identifiers).
Base the difficulty on the examples below. This is the difficulty to make the item with one fewer tag than it usually has. For example, a basic pair of chitin gauntlets usually has the Worn and Concealable tags. A crafted pair start with either Worn or Concealable. Gauntlets that don’t have the Worn tag are clumsily made and can be knocked askew or fully knocked off; those that aren’t Concealable are bulky and attention-grabbing, and can’t be mistaken for anything but a weapon.
The artisan can keep working after they hit this basic threshold, adding up to two more tags for 2 hits each. This is an important difference between making and buying items: goods for sale are always of a certain minimum quality. A homemade version might be of lesser quality or greater, depending on the skill and time investment of the artisan.
Note that not every item from the equipment list in The World Below is shown here. The ones that aren’t included have tags that make them magical — and they can’t be made without those tags. Specific weapons within each weapon type (e.g. a Dreamcrafted Fortunate Gemstone Flail) are also magical, because they possess these same tags. See Magical Crafting for which tags this applies to and how to craft items like this.
Once an artisan has crafted the item, without tags, they can choose whether to continue. Adding a tag requires an additional 2 hits. Using Crafting Tricks costs the number of hits for that Trick. A mundane item can carry one more tag than the baseline difficulty to create it. Some preexisting example items may be exceptions to this rule, but it’s a good guideline for player characters’ crafting endeavors.
The right tools are essential. An artisan can get by with the bare minimum: a character can craft weapons, armor, or tools using an alchemical lab, guild mining kit, Mud Town construction equipment or similar tools. It isn’t easy — they’re designed to dig out tunnels and identify ores, not sharpen a bone blade — but it works in a pinch. Crafting with suboptimal tools adds +1 difficulty, and the artisan discards all hits above those needed for a successful roll.
A set of portable artisan’s gear suitable for one crafting process — metalwork is different from leatherwork, which is different from bone carving, which is different from gem polishing — is a tool. Characters obtain these tools in the normal ways. Or, of course, they can craft their own; it’s a circular way of doing things, but it allows them to add Enhancements and tags to their tools. Crafting with a set of portable gear adds no bonuses or penalties to rolls.
For the purposes of choosing what type of crafting tools are needed, select the primary material involved. A bronze sword might have a hilt of carved, bejeweled bone, but the task the artisan undertakes is still metalwork.
Metals
Leather/hide
Chitin
Bone
Clay (and other types of dirt)
Stone
Gemstones
Textiles
Alchemical substances
A well-stocked workshop is an artisan’s dream. It requires a stable home and time, though. Creating and stocking a workshop is a new Kalm activity, detailed below. When first created, outfitting a workshop for an additional craft requires one additional Kalm Development action.
Kaotic Retaliations
Storyguides are free to use the below Kaotic Retaliations as alternatives to those found in The World Below.
Minor Kaotic Retaliations Table
Kaotic Void No Retaliation occurs. You have been spared. Only achievable with powers that enable you to adjust your Retaliation results.
Under the Skin The caster has small, worm-like creatures under their skin. While painless, the disturbing image causes the caster to suffer +1 difficulty to social actions until they’re removed.
Deep Winds Cold winds fill the area. All present suffer the Exposed status effect until they leave the immediate area.
Glittering Kaos A vein of Kaos rocks reveals itself within sight of one of the caster’s foes.
Fungal Rot Natural fungus within medium range of the caster rots and becomes unusable.
Nature’s Bane No animal will willingly get within short range of the caster for the rest of the scene.
Forgetting Something The caster forgets a small memory or detail about something decided by the Storyguide (e.g., a fact about a rare fauna, memory of a childhood journey, etc.).
Item Colocation A single piece of the caster’s equipment (chosen by the Storyguide) swaps places with a piece of equipment of equivalent size from someone else within long range.
Minor Makeover The caster suffers a minor cosmetic change decided by the Storyguide (e.g., eyes/hair change color, height increases/decreases by less than an inch, etc.).
Trust Rewarded The character within short range with the highest bond to the caster gains 1 Power Advantage on their next physical action. If there is a tie, the characters roll off, with the winner gaining the Advantage.
Foot Fungus The caster leaves a trail of small fungus behind them for the rest of the scene. Any attempts to track the caster gain 1 Power Advantage.
Mental Fog The caster’s thoughts become muddled, causing them to suffer a +1 difficulty to mental actions until they next rest.
Clarity The caster’s mind is clear, granting them 1 Power Advantage on their next mental action.
Taste Like Kaos The caster’s sense of tase is unreliable until their next rest. The Storyguide should describe how things taste until then.
Lost and… The caster’s sense of direction is mixed up, causing them to suffer +2 difficulty to actions involving direction or finding things until they next rest.
Found The caster finds something small they were looking for or had lost. It should be able to fit in a pouch or pocket and must be worked out with the Storyguide.
Helping Hand The caster’s left hand (or appendage, for characters without hands) forcefully points toward something useful within long range.
Life Giver The caster suffers 1 injury. The nearest character with a bond to the caster heals 1 injury. If they are uninjured, nothing happens.
Life Taker If the caster is injured, they heal 1 injury and the nearest character with a bond to the caster suffers 1 injury. If the caster is not injured or no one in long range has a bond with them, nothing happens.
Kaotic Blessing The next Kaotic Retaliation the caster suffers this scene is reduced by 1 severity (Major to Moderate, Moderate to Minor, Minor to no Kaotic Retaliation).
Dreaming Behemoth
What an astounding sight! I have never seen this cavern before, and I’ve lived here all my life. What marvelous flora and fauna! This is a treasure trove of resources… what’s that rumbling? Are we moving? Wait, this thing is alive?!
The Dreaming Behemoth is a gigantic undead creature that supports an entire ecosystem of creatures inside it. It hibernates for several Kalms and wakes to move to another area to feed. No one knows what it eats or what it really looks like. Some speculate it is an undead dragon or some sort of gigantic worm, but it’s harder to determine when the creature is buried within stone and silt and the only hint is how it looks from the inside. They only know it moves faster than anything that size rightly should as once it wakes, it moves from one stratum to the next without warning. There is a theory that the body of water running through the middle of the cavern is not outside moisture but a byproduct of the Behemoth’s decomposition. It may mean the Behemoth is also edible.
Template: Horror Drive: To feed and sleep once more. Primary Pool: 12 (Clipping Through Passages, Digging, Surviving) Secondary Pool: 10 (Fighting, Leadership) Desperation Pool: 6 Enhancement: +2 Authority, +2 Digging, +1 Close Combat Defense: 4 Integrity: 3 Injuries: 10 Armor: 3 (Magic Resistant, Kaos Forged) Initiative: 6 Qualities: Consume,Extraordinary Speed, Frightening Presence, Ground Affliction, Malleable, Natural Weapons (Claws: Brutal, Deadly, Piercing), Reanimation (All creatures within must be killed and its own injuries reduced to 0), Stable, Unusual Anatomy (Gigantic, An Entire Ecosystem Exists Within), Vulnerability (Fire) Antitheses: Beast Master ×2, Consume ×2, Dream Manipulation ×2, Emerge ×1, Spawn ×2 (Arachniida, Fungal Undead), Summon Swarm ×1, Wave of Destruction ×1(Digestive) Special: Whenever the Behemoth senses it is under attack, a twisted version of its body’s reanimated autoimmune system attacks invaders. If something gets close to its claws, it attacks them, but otherwise it uses its claws to dig.
Again, these are just excerpts from our next three manuscript previews coming Monday, Wednesday, and Friday next week! There's a lot of stuff to cover, and much strangeness ahead!
Remember, we survive best as a group, so please conintue to spread the word and invite others into our circle of light. Spread the word in your social circles and on your social media, and let's see if we can continue on down our Stretch Goal path and hopefully expand the Advent of the Silt adventure for backers!
I'll be back on Monday with our next huge chapter!
