It appeared in the night, a strange ziggurat jutting up from the forest, beckoning like a gold-dripping finger. Many fear this sudden intrusion and assume the devil is involved but you know an opportunity when you see it. Anybody willing to spend a fortune on golden buttresses is packing some serious quality items inside.
or
The Foul One's work is afoot. You are awakened in the night by your local bishop, your order, perhaps even the booming voice of one of your strange gods itself. There is a task before you: repel the master of the moon-shewn cathedral and, if possible, raze her to the ground. It would also be meet to return to the local church any items of occult power or great value, purely for safety of course.
or
You have been after a particular item, for personal reasons or because you were contracted, for a long time, and have reason to believe it lies within Watchtower Rambling. You have traced its movements, the predictable devastation and horrible miracles it leaves in its wake, the unexplained vanishings of bandits and lessers across the countryside...You had all but given up, and now here it is.
or
You awake, fully vested with whatever power is available to you (MUs have spells and shit), whole and healthy, standing still alongside the rest of your party. You are all fully armored and armed, set behind a rope. On the rope hangs a tin-seeming, gold-looking metal sign embossed with some alien message. This all comes as an enormous surprise to you, and you may find some of the fellows you stand with to be strangers. None of you know how you got here. None of you know the way out.
--------
Not everything in Rambling may be a fantastic, alien, or magical, and indeed most things will be old and mundane. There is nothing truly normal or boring here, though. Picture every room as if a 1980s movie's idea of a professional inventor became a hoarder.
Many exhibits are alive and will animate. This includes exhibits which seem as if they should not be able to animate, such as hanging plesiosaur skeletons, vivisected models of cyclopskind, and wax sculptures, which are a type of Gargoyle. Almost all will be hostile. There are many kinds of creature on display here, including the following...
- Walking marsupial dolphin
- Frogs with human faces
- Vacuum beetles who eat flesh and can propel themselves through suction, and form airtight seals.
- Blind albino cave psychics. They fight like kung fu masters, but their thoughts are drowned out by others, so they are almost reasonless.
- People filled with holes and spikes like iron maidens. Not like they've been in one, but as if they were living iron maidens, and they open their fleshy peel to envelop you, like a vampire squid
- A slime-like blob with lycanthropy, who transforms into a paste of wolf parts in the moonlight. If you escape its burning hunger, you are now a were-oozewolf. This effect keeps rolling over the more generations is undergoes.
- An adventurer suspended in sand who is many crabs. The crabs will hold hands and link legs to approximate a man, and he attacks with gentle hugs for 1d12.
- An ox turned to stone
- The mummies of a hundred nations. Most aren't undead. Most undead aren't able to animate unless you fuck with them. Most animate are not evil. All are fucking terrifying and dangerous to you even if they don't intend to be.
- Wax figures of spiders, cut in half
- Animated furniture possessed by demons, chained in place in a model room, treat all as wooden golems
- The original fly.
- Pit God. His jaw elongates the length of his body to snap from afar. Apelike with bloody mantis-like hands and small ratty legs and tail.
- Antimaggots who spin skin
- A green guy
- A purple guy
- A woman you cannot look at directly for her color swirls and whirls and is sickening and seizure inducing. No save
- The empty space left behind by dead cloud jellies
- Fuck apes. They will fuck you if they kill you. If they can't kill you, they will find things which can and lead those things to you. They will also try to destroy all your shit and make your life hell.
- A scorpion-like creature with a mirror on its tail, whose image reverses your personality
- A clockwork octopus which all good people call a clocktopus but which is actually a type of minor cherub
- Jars of eyes which blink messages using complex sequences. They tell much of recorded history but flit from subject to subject wildly and random.
- A skeletonless baboon. Twice as strong, will slither up the rafters and hang waiting if freed.
- A hairless opossum with seven foot limbs. Fights like a weasel but with a 15' reach.
- A freakish mutant wolfbat thing frozen in time. Too heavy to fly, if freed from time it will crawl along ground snapping at ankles and slashing with claws.
- Pieces of an immortal giant, separated by rooms and floors and bolted fast in place, which will crawl to one another if they can. Treat organs like mace if they batter past you, if giant reassembles your path is obvious
- Animate castings in brass of the ancient Pelephoroneanes Spear Kings. AC as plate+shield, +3 to normal spear damage, immune to normal weapons
- The paintings which crawl, and also btw eat, 1d6 each round until shaken, dead/consumed victims join the image of the painting
- A hairy caterpillar creature the size of a nurse shark, whose 'hairs' are all also legs, every surface is legs, just legs. 60HP, guileless, if forced to defend itself it will run over you like a car for 4d10.
- The final pig
- An ice golem
- A frozen cadre of cavemen, who all have John Carter style double strength and leaping powers
- Lightbending gravity eggs which can never hatch because of the weight of themselves, the forever babies within are PISSED about this.
- A tongue golem
- Living examples of all of the Kevarikan zodiac. Each carries a spell effect with its presence, which changes entirely in different combinations with its fellows. Assembling all of them lets you create a new star in the sky but no one knows this so no one has tried.
- Undying zombies (not undeads, but the cool kind of zombie) waiting to be freed, eager to resume their duties: constructing Watchtower Rambling
- Troll princess held in place by the steel grating she healed around
- Ultima Thoul. Double damage and triple HP of normal thoul, no save on paralysis
- Scale model and fully functioning city in miniature of ancient Lirrkusk, filled with tiny alive guys. 1hp 1 damage each.
- A hundred vampire kings dead and staked to the ceiling.
- A talking cat. A huge bitch.
- Disembodied head of a steel gorilla, floats seven feet above ground, occasionally alive, never useful
- Sphinx without jaw, rendered powerless. If you let it to a surface it can scratch glyphs into then it will pose you a riddle, regaining its power.
- Haunted forest trapped in a dragon's eye
- Rat kings
- Alligator king
- Elder tapir. Eidetic memory. Voiceless.
- Hollowed out wasp god
- Pangaean crawler. The ultimate blob.
- Pedestrian mimics, as themselves
- Secret mimics, posing as (roll again), sometimes several together to achieve the illusion
- Hidden mimics, not on exhibit but a component of an exhibit, like a pedestal
- Ancient children with no belly buttons or gender. Alignment-changing gaze.
- Isopods
- Monsters who resemble what incorrect Victorians thought dinosaurs looked like
- Accurate dinosaurs
- Jurassic Park dinosaurs
- Normal men sawed through at the waist, whose innards slop and writhe against the bars of their enclosure, otherwise dead
- All tortoises
- Teacup pigs with teakettle boars
- Pantaloon bird
- Manticore fly, a cat who inflates and hackles up false appendages to appear as a manticore
- Lichen which talks, growing on bloody canvases
- The ashes of an extinct simian kingdom
- Firefish, walking catfish who burst into flame when dry, unharmed. Burn as a torch.
- Arm baby
- Plants made of light
- Ossified gelatinous cube
- Petrified dryad
- Fossilized cat dragon skeleton covered in aware slime mold
- Invisible screamer, in infrared soundproof glass.
- The greatest party ever held, under vacuum glass, perfectly preserved forever, waiting to pick up mid-toast should air be restored
- Kaiju butterfly collection
- Vegetable amphibians
- Fire-eyed raccoon. Steals all food from you magically when you look at it.
- Questing beast
- Reassembled ur-virgin
- The shadows of destroyed heroes, which look like art but animate and approach you in magical light or magical firelight
- Archdeacon in formaldehyde
- Dolls made from mutant human children, moving with coal-fired hearts
- Anemone-like semihominids.
- I guess a Thark
- Githyanki cat. Stoic.
- Nowhere spider. Catches and eats imaginary things, useful in spell research.
- Rabbit sex god. Treat as Level 14 Magic-User.
- Orangutan mermaid
- Elf but red
- Dwarfly proportions but truck sized
- Canopic oracles, opening a jar utters a prophecy, 'salright? 'salright.
- Wandering faces, who crawl like spiders and flap like bats and cover your face in the night, smothering you and taking control of your body with long nerve tendrils, on model figures of hosts and indistinguishable from the same
- Manmade hyena
- Spidergoats
- A race of archers frozen in time, who awaken if you interact with them
- A race of scholars frozen in time, who awaken if you say something wrong nearby
- A race of ravenous furry muppety creepydoodles frozen in time, who animate in darkness, their eyes glowing like light bulbs
- An adventuring party made entirely of races and classes not represented in the current adventuring party
- An adventuring party made up entirely of unseen races and unheard of classes
- A mist, purple as madness, which roams this wing but nowhere else. Shows you how everything around you died.
- Plants which follow you if you notice them
- The living thing whose footprint is the form of dragons in the world of men, Birishaptore, peeking out from a room far too big for the space allowed it, through an opening he cannot escape from
- Seven runestones, each which represent a word. Arranging these in any order creates a completely new expression. Some of these are magical (roll 2d100, on two 100 results the phrase is magical)
- Nails which disappear when driven into a surface, but they make a thing whole. These may be used to heal a tree or to turn a castle with a wooden door into one solid wooden piece.
- Boomerang shoes, which retrace your footsteps to where you woke up today.
- Longship made of fingernails, can be Resurrected into 10,000 men
- Chasity belt which de-ages you to the point you lost your virginity
- Barrel of apples from another dimension
- Pouch of gnome dust
- Fingers of many nations
- Shrunken heads of star giants, piled loosely in middle of the room
- Fountain of mortality
- Shirt made from werehog skin, in moonlight turns to human skin
- Altar to a sea god which absorbs endless amount of seawater.
- Amontillado
- Tom Swift's electric rifle
- Clay like the Puppet Master had in Fantastic Four
- The Crusher of Hoon, a great man killer used by the executionists there
- A clock which stops time when music is playing
- Tapestry of classic alien abduction scenario
- A pen filled with angel blood, which only writes the author's sins, though they are always oblivious of this
- Lexicon of fourteen dead languages with a translation guide between them, also inscrutable
- Hive mound of the fire fairies
- Sarcophagus adamantine
- Flesh magnet, which draws you inexorably, -1 to your saves for every HD you possess.
- Goblin crown jewels
- Ice-9
- Senmurgh skin rug
- Horrible masks which give you Charisma 0 and +10/-10 AC
- Reverse Last Crusade Room: one of these pitchforks belonged to the lord of Hell. The right one will burn away in your hand but will transform you into a vicious demon.
- An powerful orb which shows scenes of sweaty men chopping wood and only that
- Giant dental tools, rusted
- The grave marker of a great king
- Da Vinci submarine
- Sculpture of a fox which is only there sometimes
- The only really bottomless pit
- An organ which summons bats
- A pipe organ which summons vampire bats
- Bottled thunder
- A medicine which soothes all burns and heals all burn scars
- Children's toys of a strange and outworld kind
- Trumpet which blows quiet, silencing the din around you
- Cloak of visibility, which makes you look as a being of shimmering daylight
- Metal ring which shapes other metal that hand touches
- A red paste which is iron strong but voice controlled
- A stove which cooks everything but witches
- Tripod walker craft
- Clone tubes
- Body vats
- Kirby Fork, striking it swirls the fork with kirby dots which remain while it vibrates, anything the dots touch dissolve like sand through your fingers
- Goggles which let you see Hell
- Teleporter circle on the ceiling
- A Downball
- Wax figure of the Fear Father
- Stuffed world turtle
- Gnoll pornography folio, save or vomit, gnolls -2 to save because they get off on that
- Treasure map to a solid diamond garden which lets you walk out of worlds
- Small star, turned into lead
- Recipe which makes you hunger for flesh of your own kind
- Cuckoo shield, where the bird emerges to chime the hour
- Powdered mountain, just add water
- Candles made from immortal tallow
- Pure war (concentrate)
- Invincible string, which can never be cut burned or knotted
- Ever-Miss Arrow
- Always-Tie Tiles
- Magnetic chalk
- Eggshell bracers
- Fear flavor. Anybody tasting something coated in fear flavor becomes abjectly phobic of that thing, be it mashed potatoes, agua, or Jeff.
- Anything compass, which points to what you ask it to
- Beer goggles, let you see like the Predator but for alcohol content/how drunk someone is
- Everlocked cabinet, large enough to hold a man, impossible to open with normal means, there is music inside
- A bowl which fills itself with blood, endlessly, bottomlessly, spilling over the sides, slowly, forever
- Ancient underground war walker, coal powered
- A mounted collection of elf horns
- A white pool of cloud blood
- A magical gate to the Rocketway of the Sky-Thieves
- Bonsai hells
- Apollo spacesuit, +2 to AC
- Complete dinner set of the Noxivores, devilishly proper sound eaters from beyond two suns
- Toys of all cultures (NSFW)
- Castlevania laser whip
- Book of Alien Erotica
- Book of Alien Mathematics
- Book of Alien Biology
- Book of Alien Languages
- Book of Alien Cooking
- Personal letters from a man who never lived
- Documents from war trials over crimes which occur as you read them
- The walls that once held in all of the time, riddled with graffiti
- A collection of Magic Mouths that share last words of the universe's bastards, but they rarely cite their sources
- A sculpture garden which grows like a regular garden. You can pick a bouquet of Venuses.
- An oral history of the Sky-Thieves, trapped within a conch shell
- The complete history of Watchtower Rambling, updated magically
- A complete catalog of all within Watchtower Rambling
- The Library Which Walks
- The Skeleton Key of Watchtower Rambling
- Ghost exits, ripped from the exterior of the building and put on display
- A scale model of Watchtower Rambling
- The Great Glass, which sees across time, space, and thought
- One of the 100 Plague Cards of the Godly Game, capable of bringing about horrible catastrophe if united and drawn from
- Tome of the New World, a book which allows you to create a new plane by writing into it. Its pages are nearly full and may be stepped into, representing countless dream worlds ruled by fearsomely and destructively satisfied masters
The Vestment
A brittle-seeming thing, like pages of an old book or translucent deathflesh of old insect molt. The whole thing seems ready to crumble, as it has for decades, remaining permanent as stone. To the eye of a craftsman it is inexpert work. To the eye of a tailor it is bulky, formless, like a small ceremonial tent. To the eye of the naturalist it seems that what it was cut from belonged to some insect thing nature has no truck with, with altogether more limbs and orifices than Godly beasts. To the eye of a drunk it looks like the wearer is being shagged by an enormous flea and hummingbird simultaneously.
She
calls, constantly, not just to one but to any who are wise men, whose
pride lets them consider themselves so, or whose shame drives them to
aspire to wisdom.
The Vestment is a fixed,
permanent thing in Creation, and flytrap of minds. It copies the minds
of those who wear her and keep them within her folds. These copies
whisper to each other and become wiser, more powerful, devising their
own magics. The copies create new minds to test their theories. They
speak to minds from centuries ago, from eons ago, across planets, across
stars. The new minds also make new minds, and copies of the copies, and
echoes of the oldest and strangest and most dangerous voices, whose
thoughts have no tongue, whose urges are all stronger than any magic
made to express them.
Within the Vestment are
also the minds of her kind. There were others like her once, her
children, long since consumed. To touch her own mind, the oldest mind,
which constantly calls to everyone around her, is to wake that mind,
which, fat with power, will begin a new seeding. Then the wearer will
undergo a physical change using secrets known only to her, and begin
issuing eggs from its mouth to gestate in the apostles and rivals
surrounding the wearer.
The lure of the
Vestment builds over time. Every day someone spends in its presence
makes them more certain they must possess it. They will try to wear it
at the same time as the wearer, if they must. Saints will kill to
possess it after a number of days equal to the character's Wisdom. Even
knowledge of the Vestment and the rumors about it are strong enough to
compel one to seek it, which is why its records were once burned.
What
would you die to know? You have but to ponder it and, wearing the
Vestment, and you will know it. However this knowledge comes with voices
and urges you must overcome in order to even act of your own will, with
a penalty to the save equal to how many times you've relied on the
Vestment, and the difference by which you fail equaling the number of
rounds/actions it may take using your body before your mind reasserts
itself. Wearers quickly lose themselves in the Vestment, slaves to alien
and extraterrestrial desires. The more you use it, the older the
voices, the more of your mind you lose, and the greater the danger of
waking her: the hungry, sleeping locust mind within, who tumbled through
galaxies.
The Closet
It
looks like an antiquated magician's cabinet, the kind a charlatan uses
to falsify the power of the beyond. It has a painted moon on it. It is a
lie twice. Stepping into the cabinet, shutting the door, and setting
his assistant to task, the trickster waits within for swords to skewer
him alive! It's a trick, of course. The showman is perfectly safe, and
the swords never come near him. The crowd applauds.
It's
a trick, of course. The swords pierce his brainpan, spill his insides,
sever his spinal cord. The trickster is a dangling puppet of meat and
impulses. When the swords are withdrawn, he crumples like a toy with its
strings cut. When the door is opened, he stands up and walks out
unharmed. The magician is fine.
It's a trick,
of course. The magician can no longer tie his shoes. He no longer sees
the color red. He no longer clots. He no longer sings. He cannot sleep.
The cabinet protected him from mortal danger, but it did not protect a
part of him from being killed. All injuries sustained in the cabinet
bear out in some fashion. Every time you hurt the cabinet takes a part
of you, kills it, and uses that to heal you.
Nothing persists indefinitely, and everything comes from somewhere. The cabinet does what it was built to do, exactly, and only.
It
is worse when magic is concerned, because magic knowledge which changes
the world. Not only will this alter the magician's mind, it will alter
their relationship to the world. The huckster has forgotten his
children. His native tongue. The concept of mercy. The taboos against
cannibalism. He cannot touch glass, physically, as he repels it like a
magnet. Each strand of his hair is alive and behaves independently. He
hears prayers from another world. His soul has forgotten its home, and a
dark thing just took it.
If these effects are
known, they cannot be controlled. At first, the act of using the cabinet
feels empowering, like a drug. You lose all fear. You shed all pain.
But all we have is necessary, and the lack of them is soon keenly
realized. By then of course the ache sets in. The lure. It is like a
drug to shed a part of yourself and be made whole, strong, vital.
It's a trick, of course. Death is preferable.
The Machine
It
doesn't have any obvious source of power. Its levers don't seem to have
an effect on its work. It shows no rivet or toolmark. It is filled with
fire, but it is never fed any fuel. There is a great ringing piston
which rises slowly and clangs down with a horrible peal. When you find
it, it is switched off, and the floor around it singed from its heat.
Activating it will always draw blood. Lose 1 Constitution.
Its
cycle takes a long time, the better part of a day. When the piston
slams home, it presses a shape into the world. It is a printer of
nightmares, and its work is slow but it is constant. It will first make a
memory of a thing, an image or a sensation. It will next make a fear in
you, a terror of this thing. With the next ring of the piston you will
dream of it when you next sleep.
From there it
is inevitable. You will experience fantoms, minor illusions here and
there. No one else will see them and they will think you are mad. Clang.
You feel its presence everywhere. You may see it in your reflection, if
it is a thing which can be seen and not only a sound, an absence, a
dread. Clang. You are sure it is here now, bodily, following you, even
if it does not have a body. This is a constant concern, and if you go a
round without this affecting your actions the DM will remind you it is
out there, right behind you, waiting to strike.
Clang.
It is strong enough to come for you now. You can drive it away, or even
kill it, but your death knell now tolls. Clang. The world is changed.
You are gone, claimed by the thing while still in your childhood. Time
rewrites itself without you. Your great achievements now belong to
another. Your magic spells are only fortuitous miracles. Your children
call another person mommy, because she was. The thing is still out
there. Now, it always has been.
The Machine
progresses through this chain for every living creature who has seen or
heard the Machine. It advances this track of horror randomly, so that
everyone is at different stages of this experience. It can be switched
off, but its heat grows the longer it runs. Turning off the machine
means you suffer 1d8 damage from the heat, compounding additional d8 for
each time the piston hammers home. This heat will wilt plant life but
will not ignite flammable objects. It is not a true heat. It is the heat
which unmakes life for fuel and solidifies fear as its product.
When every living creature who has seen or heard the Machine is dead or replaced, the Machine turns itself off. It waits.
The Skin
This
is an enormous ancestor of a tiger, stretched out and turned into a
luxurious rug, hung up on the wall. Those who lay the skin out on the
ground and step onto it experience a sensation like falling down a deep
tiger-shaped shaft forever, though they stay exactly where they are.
They cannot trust their perception of the world around them, for all
their senses are getting their input from somewhere else.
Atop
the tiger it seems as if one has been taken to a night with new stars,
red sky and redder rock, which they are plummeting toward. It takes
roughly three minutes for them to fall. If only the fall were the only
problem. Strange trees, swaying, reach up toward you. They're getting a
lot closer a lot faster and you know they mean you harm, that their
boughs are laden with death. If you get close enough to see that those
are not trees, they are faces, then it is too late to step off of the
rug.
Otherwise, you have complete power over
yourself and everything else which is on the rug with you. This does not
apply to the world of your senses, falling and faces. But for the body
you left behind, which you pilot blind, you have an omnipotence. The
problem is, none of the effects and abilities you will into being leave
the outline of the tiger skin rug. You may flicker afire, transform into
a living tiger, gain eyes that shoot daggers, but none of those daggers
fly farther than the edge of the rug. Any spell or beam or weapon you
would cross that threshold with vanish, and are visited upon your
falling body in face space. You may defend yourself accordingly.
If
your body in any part crosses over the line set out by the shape of the
tiger skin, you are wrenched violently from your place. You forget all
your experiences, anything you said and did or saw, and you lose all
your abilities. I do mean all: if you had spells left today, you don't
now. You certainly forget the strange vision of face space.
If
you stay on the rug for three minutes, where your perception of time is
decidedly skewed, you fall far enough that the faces can reach you.
Your body here explodes violently from within, with far more blood than
you should have. The skin will remain immaculate.
You
can will yourself off of the rug magically while in its effect, but you
cannot control where you end up, and there is a 50% chance you will
appear wherever that is as a tiger.
The Gun
This
weapon is a small bit of metal which fits in your hand. It is shaped
like a toilet paper roll. There is a dial at its base which can be
turned right or left. Turning the dial right means that the cylinder
shines a wide beam and a target unattended object in the beam vanishes.
This is keyed to the wielder's will, so the cylinder may be slightly
telepathic. This may be used on living/undead/animate/whatever
creatures, but they get a save.
Turning the
dial to the left shines out a different-colored beam. In the light of
the beam, one thing which the cylinder causes to vanish reappears,
exactly as far away as it was when it vanished, wherever the beam is
pointing. At this point living/whatever creatures must make a save vs
Death to survive reappearing.
This item has
1d100 uses remaining, and no one can know how long they have when they
find the cylinder. Attempting to use either beam after the charge has
run down traps the user in the cylinder (they may save at -1) and then
renders the cylinder inert. Its power source is from another time and
universe.
The Carriage
This
is the Smokey and the Bandit car. 77 Trans-Am. It gives you shield
bonus to your defense while riding in it, its own AC is like Plate, and
it has as many hit points as a Gold Dragon. It never needs fuel.
Otherwise, it behaves exactly like a car, and if a car can't do
something or drive somewhere safely then neither can the Pontiac.
The Sky-Thieves
Magpie-minded
men from another world, the Sky-Thieves have journeyed across a dozen
worlds and realities gathering gems and weird, pretty shit. They have
kept a lot of trophies from those who opposed them. They are relatives
to terrapins, perhaps. They extend their head and limbs from large
carapaces churning with bio-fire. The Sky-Thieves have adapted organic
jet packs for short distances. They do not speak, even to one another,
but they are incredibly clever. They can read, everything. They work
together. They are fierce warriors, if slow on the ground.
They
will let you live if you give them a treasure, but they will not let
you leave. Eventually you will run into them again, and again.
Eventually you will run out of treasures. Eventually you will go on
exhibit, or, worse, into storage where no one will ever find you again.
The
Sky-Thieves may pass through the great clock face on Watchtower
Rambling like a rippling pond, but they may not take anyone or anything
else OUT with them. They are slaves to enchantments from their old home.
Dispelling this effect simply traps them as well.
Escaping Watchtower Rambling
There
are no exits at all, and the building actively resists just blowing out
the walls, putting another room impossibly in your way. There are
undoubtedly ways to use the things found within Rambling to escape from
it, but there is only one sure-fire way to ensure an exit: Setting a
lure.
Turn the big crank at the top of the
tower, in the clock room, to change the time and strike the hour. This
slips the tower to a different time and place in the universe. Then,
with all your haste, make for the entrance. The tower plays fair here,
freezing in anticipation of new arrivals. Entrances present themselves,
but cannot be opened from within. Only beings coming into the tower can
allow anyone to exit through normal means. You've got to get to the door
before they enter and the exit is done. You've got to stop them from
closing it, and from entering the tower which automatically shuts the
door. This may mean killing them.
Docents
HD: as Fighter
Saves: as Halfling
Attacks: as Thief
Advances: as Elf.
- If you die in Watchtower Rambling, you have two options: wait for your party to stumble upon and awaken a creature suitable for PC use, or have your character reappear after 1 day as a Docent. If they die again, another Docent replaces them.
- Docents collect spell slots like a MU or Elf but they do not cast spells. They use spell slots to heal either a number of d10 equal to the spell slot used, or to exercise Expertise.
- Docents have omniscient sense of Watchtower Rambling at all times, but they may only answer questions if they are specifically asked. When asked, they will burn a spell slot and speak mechanically (the DM speaking through them) in detail, with no tricks or double speak, about what was asked. They will do this and then open the floor to questions. The level of spell slot burned is equal to the number of minutes the players may engage the Docent's knowledge directly. If the knowledge requires knowledge from outside Rambling, the Docent may not know it. If questioned on anything wholly belonging to the outside world, the Docent has no knowledge of it and the spell slot is not used.
- A number of times per day equal to the Docent's level, it may decide it is unaffected by one of the exhibits. Basilisks won't petrify, sabretooth tigers won't attack, black holes will not destroy.
- If a Docent crosses the boundaries of Watchtower Rambling, they are killed. They may only be raised as a Docent, and if outside of Rambling they will immediately die again.
- A Docent begins play with no weapon or armor proficiencies.
- A Docent speaks all languages.
- At level 5, a Docent gains proficiency in all weapons and armor in Watchtower Rambling.
- There is only ever one level 8 Docent, known as the Curator. Docents may not attack or disobey they Curator, but if he is killed, then your Docent may reach level 8 and become Curator. Curators can order all Docents as if they were under the effect of an unbreakable charm spell, and may animate any dead being as a Docent. Docents retain the wounds they had in death but are otherwise fine, and may magically speak intelligibly.
- Docents may reach level 8.