Saturday 30 March 2013

A is for Annabel's Grave


I have always been a bit lackadaisical about posting to this blog, so I am going to try A-Z April posting thing, for my own benefit more than anyone else’s. I used to be a very productive writer, but that was when I did it for a living and if I didn't write I didn't eat. Self-discipline, that's what I need, and though this A-Z thing is pretty cheesy it's as good a place to start as any. So, 26 things, gameable things, and they are going to be about the Known Space Traveller setting I never really got anywhere with (see previous posts), but nickable for anything sci-fi.

Annabel's Grave

472 Aquila E334113 9 Low Pop


Annabel Wozniak is the poster girl for the anti-cybernetic movement. A hotel manager from Warsaw, Poland, she was run down and nearly killed in a grav-car pile up in 2253 and what little was left of her was left paralysed. Cebus Cybernetic Corporation offered her a new lease of life as the living control computer for the staff of a luxury space liner. The on-board stewardbots were efficient enough on their own, but still in that 'uncanny valley' that made passengers uneasy around them, Annabel was to give them a bit more of a human touch by intermittently remotely controlling them. It worked well, one human brain in a tank could manage a staff of half a dozen, vastly cutting costs. With a direct link to a computer expert system Annabel was given a medbot, then a couple of maintenance bots and then it started to go wrong.

Being virtually present in her many robot shells was no substitute for being fully alive, and she became increasingly eccentric, mothering the passengers, then bossing them about, arguing with the chief engineer and then getting antsy with the pilot and captain of what she insisted was her ship, her very body. She secretly used her engineer bots to put in a few circuit boards here and there and one day seized control of the autopilot, annexed the navigation computer and life support and froze all the controls. Annabel was in command of the ship, and its passengers.

The mass kidnap wasn't easy, the stewardbots had to do some violent crowd control, and the medbot had to put most of the surviving passengers and crew into a drug induced coma. She radioed her hopelessly unrealistic demands – a real human body for her brain to be transplanted into and a million credits per passenger – and then engaged warp drive. She was pursued to this then uninhabited system, and after an unsuccessful boarding action she was forced to crash land into the ice capped sea on the dark side of a tidally locked planet. And there she lays to this day, a gruesome monument to a failed experiment in Transhumanism. Cebus Cybernetic went bust due to the lawsuits and fines, and the ship was too deeply sunk to profitably recover.

The current settlement is a landing field and stopover just over the dayside of the terminator line run by HappyCorp Waystations. It has a population of 25 humans and 50 barely autonomous robots. HappyCorp renamed the world Annabel's Garden, and then Unicorn Garden, but on most maps and in the minds of the starfaring public it is still Annabel's Grave, and this raises all kinds of un-Happy and macabre associations. The port has few visitors, the projected colony and mining operation has fizzled from lack of interest, the irritating muzak plays for no one but the bored staff and forlorn cook-bots stand silently rusting in the food court, spatulas at the ready for a HappyBurger take out order that never comes...

Adventure Seeds

  • Cyber-psychologist Professor Julia Yamato wants to dig up Annabel and see if the addition of so many expert systems and multiple bodies could have contributed to her flip out.
  • Father Hennig Kosminsky, interstellar Jesuit, wants to conduct a mass for a lost Catholic soul driven mad by ungodly cyberneticists (or possibly recover the tech for use with his plan for an immortal infallible cyber-Pope).
  • Annabel's great-niece Danielle is sure she is alive down there and wants her great-aunt's life support turned definitively off, so at least she will find peace.
  • The bots are acting funny – is it the ghost of crazy Annabel seeking to inhabit another machine body?
  • HappyCorp PR are serious about this Unicorn Garden business – they have found an ex-Cebus Cybernetics scientist to implant the brains of horses into pink fluffy robot unicorn bodies to gambol around the icy wastes and burning deserts and act as a tourist attraction.
  • The crew of a freighter just come into port reckon they saw a battered old space liner zooming through space, but they out ran it. Kept sending peculiar signals about their starship not having its vest on in the subzero cold of space.
  • A sinister black ship has entered orbit, the vessel of Alpha Geek Omicron 2652, the Transhumanic Cybergoth popstar. The silicon-crazed loon has decided the homicidal cyborg stewardess is destined to be the love of his life and wants to reactivate her.  

Friday 29 March 2013

Lhankor Mhy


Another cult updated for Legend/RQ6. The Legend specific bits are in red the RQ6 bits in blue

Lhankor Mhy is the Orlanthi god of knowledge. He stood by Orlanth's throne as his Lawspeaker when he ruled the world during the Storm Age and accompanied him on his epic quest to rescue the sun from hell.

He is worshipped by the 'Knowing Men', the scholars and lawyers of Sartarite and other Thelayan cultures. They are quite emphatically scholars, not scientists or sorcerers, and can be relied on to waffle endlessly about the minutiae of history, legal precedents and ethics, but few among them create anything truly new or experimental. In fact knowing a fair bit about the Empire of the Wyrm's Friends and the Middle Sea Empire they are downright leery of anything new, regarding innovation as a sure path to disaster. The new Red Moon goddess and her 'progress' crazed followers are on the road to Hell, no doubt about it.

They are supposed to be impartial and uninvolved in politics, advising all impartially. This doesn't preclude fighting amongst themselves though, and any sizeable temple is a rat's nest of cliques, academic rivalries and backbiting.

Followers

There are two sorts of followers. The temples run a few classes for ordinary members of the populace, usually in Literacy (local language), which are paid for at the usual rate, up to 50%.

A few, usually younger people, are accepted as Apprentices if they have Literacy skills of 50% or more and pass a test, rolling INTx5% or less. If they fail they can always reapply next year. Apprentices are expected to work full time for the temple and spend at least 50% or their time in class, studying any number of cult skills at half price. The rest of the time is spent doing a variety of unexciting tasks like copying scrolls and books, cleaning, helping in the refectory and even farm work where the temple has lands attached for its upkeep. Their little free time is spent doing the usual damn fool things students do in all times and places.

Apprenticeship lasts around six years, but bright apprentices who make suitably large donations to the temple can take their exams early.

Apprentices can learn the following Folk/Common magic at half price:
Legend: Bearing Witness, Detect Magic, Detect Gold, Detect Silver, Mindspeech, Understanding
RQ6: Appraise, Find Magic, Find Gold, Find Silver, Mindspeech, Translate

Initiates

To become an initiate one must have 50% in five temple skills. At least one must be Literacy (local language) and another must be a Lore skill. The other three are chosen from: Any other Lore or Literacy, Theology (Lhankor Mhy) or Devotion (Lhankor Mhy), Oratory, Insight, Evaluate or Bureaucracy.

Other skills or requirements may be required by individual temples; Hevduran Dege temple in the Holy Country for example allows sword combat skills to be part of the curriculum and the Jelenkev School in Heortland requires some knowledge of sorcery, being dominated by Aeolians.

Initiates are the grad students of the temple. The cleverest are invited to stay and work as teachers and researchers or have to leave and find a trade . Either way they donate at least 30% of their income or time to the temple.

They get training in the Teaching skill at half price, and can enrol in classes in other cult skills at the same discount.

Initiates get access to the following Divine Magic, and may know up to ¼ or their POW in Divine Magic.

Divine Magic
Legend: Absorption, Amplify, Behold, Dismiss Magic, Mindlink
RQ6: Absorption, Behold, Dismiss Gnome, Dismiss Sylph, Dismiss Magic, Mindlink

Initiates who have proved their orthodoxy and have 50%+ in Theology or Devotion may learn sorcery. The priests of Lhankor Mhy know their god invented sorcery and that the charlatan Zzabur stole his notes to cook up the Blue Book. Sorcery as practised by anyone outside their cult is literally soul destroying, the only spells permissible are those that have been sanctified by the cult through the use of the mysterious Alien Combination Machine, and then encoded in secret scrolls.

An initiate may know a maximum of ¼ their INT in Sorcery spells on top of this, but an apprentice who knows more sorcery than divine magic is usually regarded as religiously suspect (except at the Jelenkev School) and their Exhort/Pact rolls are at one step greater difficulty.

The skill studied is Grimoire (Torvald Fragments) or Invoke (Torvald Fragments). The precise number and nature of the spells available at different temples varies, depending on what ancient texts they have in the library, but the following selection is in the largest publicly known collection.

Spells
Legend: Analyse Magic*, Enhance Intelligence, Intuition, Object Reading*, Sorcery Resistance*, Dismiss Confusion*
RQ6: Analyse Magic*, Intuition, Sorcery Resistance*, Dismiss Confusion*, Enhance Intelligence, Object Reading*

* New spell.

Otherwise almost any spell is possible, the library stacks in Lhankor Mhy Temples are disorganised to say the least, Temple strongrooms have forbidden books that no one dare translate or use (Tap spells for example) and plenty of scholars have private collections they will let their colleagues see one day, but not just yet, not while they are still working on them. It is widely suspected that Minyarth Purple has a copy of Abjure Ageing somewhere he isn't sharing with anyone.

Each time a non-sanctioned spell is cast, 1d4-1% in lost in Pact (Lhankor Mhy) or Exhort (Lhankor Mhy). Use of totally banned spells like Tap, Demon Summoning, and the creation of undead reduce this to zero immediately. Once it reaches zero you are deemed souless and excommunicated, and in the most serious cases the Brain Flayer will be invoked (see later).

Acolytes

Acolytes must have Teaching 50%+, a literacy skill at 75%+, a lore skill at 75%+ and Theology (Lhankor Mhy) or Devotion (Lhankor Mhy) at 50%+ and must have contributed one previously unknown fact to the temple library, as adjudicated by the Priests. The libraries are so full that these contributions are often mindbogglingly obscure scraps of trivia of no possible use to anyone, but if it isn't in there, it still counts.

Acolytes may gain up to half their POW in Divine Magic and a third of their INT in sorcery spells, making them potentially very powerful and versatile magicians.

Divine Magic:
Legend: Heal Mind, Mind Blast
RQ6: Heal Mind, Mind Blast

Sorcery:
Acolytes may go beyond Torvald's Fragments and use the more obscure spells sanctified by the temple. Typical choices are Telepathy, Spirit Resistance and Mystic Sense.

Priest

Priests must know one Lore to 90%, one Literacy skill at 90% and one other cult skill (may be another Literacy or Lore) at 90%. They must have been an acolyte for at least five years and have written one book deemed worthy of inclusion in the temple library. These books are often indexes, bibliographies and compendia culled from existing books, but deemed worthwhile additions if they cut down the number of dusty scrolls and tablets one must dredge through to find the fact you are looking for.

They may gain up to ¾ of their POW in Divine Magic, and half their INT in Sorcery, a powerful magician by anyone’s standards.

Priests usually live full time at the temple, receive fees for teaching and advice, often sit alongside the greatest tribal Kings and the High King of their realm in court, or even sit in judgement on his behalf. They can ferret through all the secret libraries, lead expeditions to discover lost knowledge and generally rule the roost, though there are always eccentrics who get fed up with it all and become Wild Sages doing protracted field research and only seeing their colleagues once a year (or even less for those who consecrate their own shrines).

There are three positions they covet – Provost of Apprentices, Chief of Loremasters and Chief Priest. No one makes it to Chief Librarian, as they call their High Priest, without going through one of these jobs first.

Divine Magic:
Extension, Consecrate

High Priest

Every major temple has its own high priest, called a Chief Librarian. Often eccentric and obtuse quite simply because they can be and get be and get away with it, they are elected for life by the priests and acolytes and by dint of dubious sorcery and comfortable and cloistered living they can live to a very ripe old age. The various Chief Librarians rarely get on, endlessly disputing each other's religious dogmas, organisational practices and right to receive fees from subordinate temples. Fortunately these turf wars are conducted through long and tedious court cases, snarky letters and thick books full of obscure references.

They can have as many divine spells as their POW allows, and up to 2/3 of their INT in sorcery spells, and have access to the Alien Combination Machine that allows sorcery spells to be consecrated to Lhankor Mhy. They generally have 110% or more in a Lore skill and one other cult skill and several books to their name.

Divine Magic
Legend: Excommunicate
RQ6: Fortify Library, Excommunicate

Lhankor Mhy and Sorcery

It is widely known that the cult dabbles in sorcery. Traditionalist Orlanthi regard this as deeply suspect, but the sages are unwilling to give it up as it is so damn useful, and, after all, their god did invent it. Lhankor Mhy priests are well aware of the hostility and get very defensive about it, going to great lengths to reassure people that their sanctified spells are without any risk and that nothing remotely God Learnerish, Malkionist or horror of horrors Lunar is going on.

Relations to other cults

The doctrines of Lhankor Mhy insist that knowledge cannot be denied to anybody. The cult has no qualms about charging high prices for their advice and for teaching, they aren't a charity, but an outright no is unacceptable. As a result their temples sometimes have members of other knowledge related cults as tenants or even parts of the faculty. In Pavis the Lunar Irripi Ontor cult has an entire branch of the central temple, in Jonstown the Lunars have an annexe within the temple grounds, but are refused entry to the library. The cult has less of a problem with Buserian cultists, but will not allow any foreign sorcerers on their premises under any circumstances.

In southern Heortland the cult has pretty much been entirely supplanted by the Aeolian Saint Ankormy the Scholar, who have almost entirely gone over to sanctified sorcery, and even written grimoires for other Aeolian cults to use.

Oddities and eccentricities

Each temple has its own unique features, but all follow a few basic doctrines. Apprentices are not allowed to marry until they have become initiates. All initiates must have a beard, preferably grey, a requirement female members get round by wearing false ones. Members are required to preserve written knowledge, even at risk to themselves. Wild Sages, those who opt out of the temple hierarchy and go off to study in the field, are prone to all kinds of manias and peculiarities, though the idea that a rival sage is out to get them or steal their work is often not purely paranoia.


Saturday 23 March 2013

The Seven Mothers



This cult goes back to some of the earliest material published by Greg Stafford about the world of Glorantha. It first appeared in Cults of Prax and has been elaborated on since in a number of publications for the Heroquest system, most recently Pavis: Gateway to Adventure. This is my take on an update on the cult for the RQ6 system.

The Lunar Provincial Church

The Lunar pantheon has many gods, some of which were old gods which were 'pre-incarnations' of the Red Goddess, some mysteriously enlightened and incorporated into the Lunar Way, and yet others were former mortals who achieved the status of 'Immortal' through their faith in the Red Moon.

Out in the Provinces most of the theological niceties go out of the window and barbarian converts are first inducted into the Lunar Provincial Church, aka the cult of the Seven Mothers, as the 'gateway drug' for the Lunar religion.

This combines the worship of the oldest Lunar Immortals, the coven of conspirators who first awakened the Red Goddess; Queen Deezola, Yanafal Tarnils, Irripi Ontor, Jakaleel the Witch, Danfive Xaron, Teelo Norri and the mysterious 'She Who Waits'. The Lunar authorities hope their similarity to the famous seven Lightbringers of Thelayan myth and legend will at least get the barbarians through the temple door.

Followers

Followers must have their names entered on the 'paper lists' (often actually birch bark), which are burnt each full moon. A lay member may ask to be entered on the 'wood lists', kept for five years, in return for a donation of 5L.

Followers may be trained at half price in Speak Lunar, Read/Write Lunar, Theology (Seven Mothers) and The Lunar Way up to 50%, and may be trained in Folk Magic for a fee. Followers also get Folk Magic healing and a service of First Aid and Healing skills if available.

Destitute followers also get access to the poor fund – daily onion soup and potato bread, and red berries when in season, and they can sleep under the outer portico of the temple if it has one. By no means all temples actually provide this, many on far off frontiers have limited access to the charity funds from the Heartlands that provide this, but they do this as often as possible.

Initiates

To become an initiate one must have been a Follower on the lists for 49 weeks in total, and have 50% or more in five of the following skills; Speak Lunar, Read/Write Lunar, Theology (Seven Mothers), The Lunar Way, any one combat style, any one craft, any one lore, Folk Magic, Insight, Influence, Evade, First Aid, Customs (Lunar Empire).

Initiates are expected to give one week in every four working for the temple or 25% of their income a month (paying Imperial taxes counts as part of this contribution), but they can become a Lunar Citizen if they pass an exam in Speak Lunar, The Lunar Way and Customs (Lunar Empire) – add the skills plus INT and roll under on a d100.

This is very much a 'pick and mix' religion, taking bits and pieces from the six cults (She Who Waits has no cult) as practised in their full form in the Empire proper.

They can learn Theology (Seven Mothers), Exhort (Seven Mothers), Trance, Binding (Five Spirit Moons), Invocation (The Book of Red Light), Shaping and The Lunar Way at normal cost.

Training in Speak Lunar is free, and in some cases Initiates will be trained as guards, learning the combat style Lunar Guardian (Formation, Scimitar, medium shield, Rhomphia, Bow).

The Lunar Way skill gives a bonus equal to the crit range to any Exhort, Binding or Invocation skill of any cult in the Lunar Pantheon.

The initiate may have a maximum of ¼ his POW, CHA or INT in lunar magic, whichever is the highest, with Miracles being limited by POW, Spirits by CHA and sorcery Spells by INT.

Example: Cassia the Convert has POW 15, CHA 8 and INT 13. She may learn POW/4 = 3.75= 4 total lunar magics, as her POW is highest, but only CHA/4 = 2 may be Moon Spirits and INT/4 = 3 may be sorcery spells. She could have any combination within these limits.

Folk Magic
Initiates may learn any folk magic their priest deigns to teach and they can pay him to learn, but no special discounts are made on any spell.

Spirits
Jakaleel provides only intensity one Five Moon spirits to Initiates, and an initiate may bind only one of each type. Binding skill is required, as is 30%+ skill in Speak Lunar to instruct them.

Full Moon – manifestations of the Divine Intellect of the Red Moon - +10% to Insight or Oratory. Those who carry them must always have a silver full moon charm.
Half Moon – spirits of vengeance and balance - +10% to a combat style or +1 step damage bonus or +1 AP. Those who carry them must always dress in black.
Hollow Moon – spirits of madness – can possess a target and cause a passion of their POW as a %age in paranoia, mania or depression. Those with these charms must always wear red.
Waning Moon – spirits of innocence and fertility - +10% to Willpower, +10% to Healing skill only at night. Anyone carrying these spirits must sleep upon the earth.
Waxing Moon – wild hunting spirits - +10% Track, +2 steps damage bonus vs one prey type, +10% Perception. Any hunter using these charms cannot ever give up a chase until they prey is caught.

Miracles
Various of the Seven Mothers provide the following miracles. Exhort skill is required, and 30%+ in Customs (Lunar Empire) is required to understand the prayers and references.
Aegis, Dismiss Magic, Dismiss Sylph, Dismiss Undine, Dismiss Gnome, Dismiss Shade, Dismiss Salamander, Heal Wound, Madness, Soul Sight

Spells
Initiates get a 'cut and paste' grimoire called the 'The Book of Red Light' with basic spells used by all the various Mothers. Must have at least 30% Read/Write Lunar to study any of these, as well as the Invocation skill.
Banish, Intuition, Spell Resistance, Damage Resistance

All initiates are subject to the Lunar cycle – the spell casting roll under the full or waxing moon is one grade easier, and any under the dark or dying moon is one grade harder, and the spell effects are enhanced by 20% or reduced by 20% respectively.

Acolyte

Acolytes must know Theology (Seven Mothers) 70%+ and have at least one of Binding, Exhort or Invocation at 50%+, plus three other cult skills 70%+, including the Lunar Guardian combat style. Acolytes must have performed some service to the temple, such as converting unbelievers or defeating the foes of the Red Moon, and must have passed the test for Lunar citizenship.

Acolytes are expected to work full time for the temple, usually as missionaries, and are paid a salary. They may learn Speak Lunar and Read and Write Lunar for free in their spare time (not that they get more than a week per month) and may learn Oratory for free as well. They are often also taught the local language and customs to their temple base where these are different to their own. Acolytes are sometimes given responsibility for outlying shrines or attached to the households of Lunarised notables in their area as 'special advisers'.

They may learn spells as an initiate, with a maximum number equal to half their POW, INT or CHA stat as appropriate.

Spirits
As before but the Acolyte may have intensity two spirits, and may summon an embodied Lune.

Miracles
Acolytes gain access to the following:
Exorcism, Heal Mind, Consecrate (only usable on nights of the full moon), Summon Lune

Spells
Store Mana, Regeneration, Evoke Lune

Priest

Priests must have served the temple for five years and have Theology (Seven Mothers) 90%+, two other cult skills at 90%+, Oratory 50%+ and The Lunar Way 50%+. They work full time, but have access to all the funds and resources of their home temple and have considerable political clout with the local Lunar authorities.

They may learn up to three quarters of their POW, INT or CHA stat in Lunar magic, but gain access to only a few extra miracles. Learning the more advanced spirit summonings and sorceries requires joining one of the other many Lunar cults, an easy task for one so steeped in Lunar lore.

Miracles
Excommunicate, Truesword, Chaos Gift

Chaos Gift is used only very sparingly, the Lunars have enough of an image problem over their acceptance of chaos as an inevitable part of the fabric of the world as it is, without their followers sporting hideous mutations. But when the shit hits the fan and the peasants are descending on you with pitchforks then you do what needs to be done.

Chaos Gift
Duration (variable), Rank Priest, Resist (none)
The Priest temporarily gains use of a Chaos feature, rolled randomly on the table in the Legend creatures book. Once this spell has been used the Priest will for ever after detect as chaotic to any spell and ability that can detect such, and the user automatically gets an improvement roll in The Lunar Way as he appreciates what it truly means to be chaotic, yet part of the world.

On a critical roll the priest may choose which feature he gets, on a fumble the GM decides, and he can choose a very negative one.

Duration
Dark/Dying Moon – will not work at all
Crescent Moon – 1 combat round per point of intensity
Half Moon – 1 minute per point of intensity
Full Moon – 1 hour per point of intensity

High Priest

This is currently Yvar Ascorius of Vanch, who reports to the head of the Seven Mothers Council. He is currently in Tarsh, distantly overseeing the spread of the church among the unspeakably stubborn Sartarites, while fending off 'helpful' suggestions from the Lunar Army (kill 'em all and let the Moon sort 'em out!'). The casualties amongst his missionaries are appalling, his only consolation that rival missionary orders are doing just as badly.

Joining other Lunar cults

Once a member has become a Lunar Citizen a whole pantheon of possibilities opens up. The Binding skill taught by the cult is identical to that used by the Jakaleel the Witch cult, Theology (Seven Mothers) and Exhort (Seven Mothers) can translate into half the rating in the Theology and Exhort skills of other cults worshipping the same Immortals or a quarter of those taught by the moon cults of Gerra, Natha, Rufelza and Verithurusa, and the Invocation skill into one quarter the Invocation skills used by Deezola, Irripi Ontor, Jakaleel the Spindle Hag and Yanafal Tarnils cults.

Relations to other sects

The Seven Mothers cult is seen as plebian and rustic by most well to do heartland Lunars, a crude bowdlerisation of the magnificence of the Red Moon, and relations with the 'pure' Moon cults are a bit sniffy as they can't fathom why they can't be allowed to just wade in and have the barbarians all wailing to Rufelza straight away. 

Announcing you are a Provincial Church member anywhere north of Holay is pretty much to admit you are a bagpipe tooting, cattle stealing, tattooed yokel who has learned just enough manners to not urinate on the floor in public. The cult is still strong all over the more out of the way parts of the provinces though, and temples are found in Talastar, Holay, Aggar, Tarsh and the uplands of Vanch and Imther. Any barbarian with half a brain soon joins another Lunar cult if he wants to get on.

Lunes

Lunes are the elementals of the Red Moon, fragments of glowing red light. Their attacks leave the skin blistered, raw and bleeding. Lunes summoned under the dark or dying moon have half size, under a crescent moon two thirds size and under a gibbous moon three quarter size, only under a full moon are they at full size and power. Stats are as per p 351-2 of the RQ6 rulebook.

Victims who are engulfed must match their Willpower against the Willpower of the Lune. On the table below the score 0 for a fumble, 1 for a failure, 2 for a success and 3 for a critical, the target subtracts from the Lunes score with their own roll at the same scale.

-3 The target fights off the lune's mind warping effects easily, it flees and refuses to attack that person again.

-2 The target takes physical damage and is also affected by strange insights and visions of the surface of the Red Moon. They must roll vs Willpower again or inadvertently gain 1d4+1% in the Lunar Way skill

-1 The target is affected physically and must roll vs Willpower or lose 1d3 INT regaining one per hour.

0 The target is physically attacked and must roll vs Willpower or be demoralised for INT rounds and lose 1d3 INT, regaining one per hour.

1 The target is physically attacked and demoralised, all skill rolls are one step harder for INT rounds, and 1d3 INT is lost, to be regained at 1 point per week. Must roll vs Willpower or run like blazes away from the Lune.

2 The target is rendered catatonic for INT rounds and goes mad for INT weeks. When they recover they have gained 1d4+1% in the Lunar Way skill, as well as losing 1d3 INT, regained at one per month.

3 The target goes permanently insane and must roll vs Willpower again or gain a chaos feature. If they are ever cured they are demoralised by the light of the Red Moon and the sight of her servants, a passion that starts at 1d10+10%, and is added to every time the character is defeated by the Red Moon or her followers. If affected all skill rolls under the moon at night are one step harder. This fear can be lifted by joining a Lunar cult, though there is nothing they can do about any chaos feature gained.

A person reduced to 0 INT is incapable of speech and reason, cannot use any tool or implement and merely babbles incoherently while wandering around in a dazed state. They recognise their friends and foes and are liable to stare gormlessly at the Red Moon for hours, weeping, howling or muttering.