The Green Law of Varkith PDF
The Green Law of Varkith PDF
The Green Law of Varkith PDF
All text and images for The Green Law of Varkith are © 2016 by Magpie Games.
All rights are reserved.
Y
our ship cuts across the waves, and for a moment you think about the enor-
mous things asleep at the bottom of the ocean, vast forms that once stalked
the world and ruined entire civilizations. But the water sluices past quickly,
the harnessed race-whales at the front of the ship pulling it forward like a batter-
ing ram. You look up, the light playing across the surface in an endless cloud of
glimmering points, and…there it is. Faint, small, but there. The Green City. Its
buildings a strange jagged line along the horizon. The statue, barely visible, but
still there, enormous and green in the sun. The mountain, towering over the whole
of the island.
A new world awaits you in the city. A place of many peoples, many creations,
many hopes, many opportunities. Varkith is like no other city in this entire world.
A place where you can make your dreams come alive if your sword is sharp and
your words sharper.
You’ll found a guild with others like you, and you’ll find a place to start out, some
tiny little hole in a larger building. You’ll start off insignificant and weak, and no
other guild will care about yours, but you’ll work, and struggle, and argue, and fight.
And soon, your guild will own its own room, and then its own building, and then
its own street. Other guilds will start paying yours tribute, and then no one will care
when you came here, or what color your eyes are, or whether or not you have tusks.
All they’ll care about is your guild’s tokens, your guild’s power, and you.
INSPIRATION
The Green Law of Varkith is inspired by many different sources. It owes a large
debt to the campaign setting of Planescape, and to the game Planescape: Torment
in particular. China Mieville’s Bas-Lag books are also strong inspirations, Perdido
Street Station in particular. The Etched City by K.J. Bishop and the Ambergris books
of Jeff Vandermeer (City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek, and Finch) also lent grist to
the mill for the invention of Varkith, among others.
• In The Faces of Guilders, you’ll find the unique rules for the ten different
primary peoples of Varkith: the iron-tattooed D’horvae; the powerful, noble,
and haughty Orkari; the immigrant, alien, and tireless Krktri; the strange,
unnerving, and decaying Fellegrith; the pious, monstrous, tentacular V’ss’liga;
the large, artistic, and colorful Halarth; the hairless, glowing, pale Siccyx; the
dark-skinned, opportunistic, and pragmatic Isqu; the ethereal, haunting, and
beautiful Ym; and the diverse, passionate, and barely accepted Freed Ones.
• In The Streets and Their Lives, you’ll find the most important places in
Varkith, and the most important guilds in Varkith. The city has countless
small guilds, scattered all throughout the city; these are only a small sample of
some of the most powerful and influential.
• In The Poison in the City’s Veins, you’ll find a few fronts to give you some
ideas of the threats and strife running through Varkith.
• In The Paths to Greater Glory, you’ll find compendium classes for some of
the most elite and specialized individuals in all of Varkith.
• In The Works of Beauteous Artifice, you’ll find the most important and
impressive relics and artifacts of Varkith’s innovative spirit.
• In The Creatures of Sewer and Sky, you’ll find some of the monstrous
denizens of the city, be they vermin or dangerous predators.
• In The Truths of the Island City, you’ll find advice and tips for a GM
running a game in Varkith.
I
n a world like this one, Varkith is still fairly new. There are other kingdoms, em-
pires, theocracies, and domains spread throughout the world that are by far and
away its elder. But it is certainly not a young city; it’s been around for centuries
now, growing, developing, becoming its own entity. Its past is a reaction to the
world around it; its future may be the future of the entire rest of this sphere. Only
time will tell, but for now, Varkith seems to be the most dynamic, profitable, and
perhaps even powerful place in all the world. This is the story of how it got there.
THE DESOLATION
Of all the heroes in this Time, many of the greatest, strongest, and most violent
were of the Orkari. It is an oft-debated question as to why; whether the Orkari are
naturally predisposed for such epic heroism, or maybe they could channel more
ambient world-energy into themselves, and therefore were naturally stronger.
Perhaps their culture simply sent more of them in the direction of heroism, or per-
haps (as some Orkari argue) they are just a fundamentally more powerful people
than the others of the world. Regardless, Orkari heroes were prevalent, powerful,
and destructive. And none more so than the Five.
The Five was a band of Orkari heroes. Each one of them was an individual, com-
pletely different from the others, unique and strange, but all of them powerful.
Their names were abandoned after the events of the Desolation and the Green
Lady’s stand, and now they are known only as the Five. They had accomplished
some of the greatest deeds of the Time of Heroes. They slew the Cloudscale
Dragon. They captured and tamed the Infernal Boar, before ultimately gutting it
and consuming it at one of their feasts. They bore weapons stolen from many a
different god. And they were ever determined to further prove their prowess.
When word reached the Five of this free city, Varkith, this island place of wonder
and wealth, that no hero had touched...they saw it as an affront. A jewel, held out
of reach. There wasn’t anything there to truly tempt heroes—no terrible monsters
to slay, no gods to defeat, no unique treasures to loot—hence how Varkith had, up
until now, passed beneath the notice of heroes too consumed by their own hunt
for glory to care about economics and trade routes. But the Five took notice, and
for whatever reason, decided that this would be their crowning glory. Taking from
Varkith all that they could want. Proving their heroism. Bending the free city to
their will.
They set off on a boat made of glass. Word had reached the burgeoning city by this
point, and it had rallied what defenders it could. Those places that profited from
trade with Varkith contributed their own forces to the cause, and a sizeable army
stood ready to defend Varkith from the onslaught of the Five.
The Five did not care. They came on anyway, and the battle was one of the bloodi-
est the world had seen.
V
arkith might be a product of the guilds that shape it, but the guilds are a
product of the varied peoples that inhabit the Green City. Their histories,
culture, beliefs, and practices are just as important as anything else for un-
derstanding Varkith.
This chapter includes information on all of the different peoples of Varkith,
both in description and in mechanics. When creating a PC for The Green Law
of Varkith, choose your race from these options instead of the default playbook
options. You can use one of three methods for doing so:
• The default “Base Dungeon World Traits” mirror the way races are done in
Dungeon World—each race has a particular small tweak or move for the classes
available to members of that race. Simply choose your race and one of the
classes available to it, and note that move.
• Heritage moves use the rules from Jonathan Walton’s Dark Heart of the
Dreamer. For the full details on those rules, you should absolutely pick up
that book (which you should already own!). Generally speaking, the heritage
moves detail unique or specific actions that help to characterize those races.
If you’re using heritage moves, then members of every race of Varkith can be
any class.
• Finally, the custom moves are the third option. These custom moves are
specially designed for each race, and for the setting of The Green Law of
Varkith. If you are a member of a particular race, then you get the associated
custom moves. If you are using these custom moves, then members of any
race can be any class.
THE ORKARI
The Orkari appear as blue-skinned, pig-snouted, tusked, burly, and muscular
humanoids. Their appearance is, according to their legends, a divine boon from
old gods, after the early Orkari subdued those gods and demanded reward. Their
strength, toughness, and magical power is legendary, although the stories may have
more to do with propaganda than truth. Regardless, they are immediately identifi-
able.
It is very important to the Orkari that they are called by their proper name.
Blueskins is, at least, generally inoffensive, if improper. Ork, however, is completely
unacceptable to them—shortening their people’s name changes its meaning
drastically.
HISTORY
The Orkari were always a mighty, highly individualistic people. They fought
amongst themselves regularly, for dominance and for ever greater power. In the
mythic times before the Time of Heroes, many of them held that consuming
the blood of other Orkari would grant them the strength of those others. Such
beliefs have long since been debunked, but the Orkari still hold within them the
drive to compete and conquer, to overcome each other and other peoples around
them.
In the Time of Heroes, a disproportionate number of heroes were Orkari. They took
to that existence readily, rampaging throughout the world, slaying monsters,
collecting artifacts. They accumulated masses of wealth and even followers. Those
that survived and took an interest in retirement were often the creators of fortresses
and keeps, places that would form the centers for new kingdoms. They became the
elite of the world.
The individual Orkari, and the people as a whole, were certainly not without
challengers. As their numbers effectively crafted an empire out of countless
individual Orkari kingdoms, the only challengers to Orkari supremacy were the
D’horvae. The Eight Cities War, so named for the eight cities where the fighting
was the worst, left many dead and much destroyed. Though their individualistic
nature most often led the Orkari to stand against each other, in the face of such
a unified threat they, too, united. The war between the Orkari and the D’horvae
was one of the largest of the Time of Heroes, spawning many a legend. And
at its end, the Orkari stood over flaming towns and broken battlements, with
D’horvae bodies at their feet. They had won, and the stories would be written by
them moving forward. Their dominance would not be meaningfully challenged
until after the Green Law was passed.
PRESENT
The Five who caused the Desolation of Varkith were all Orkari, and even to this
day, there is some lingering resentment in the city. But the Orkari are both mas-
ters of winning battles...and of crafting the tales told of those stories after the
fact. The Five repented, and became the Green Lady’s truest servants, her first
eidolons. Without them, in so many ways, the Varkith of today would not exist.
And of course, the wealth and influence the Orkari possess made their presence
in the city a necessity, one that led to their current position as a people—en-
trenched at the top of the ladder.
Thanks to their history, the Orkari are, in general, wealthy, powerful, honored, and
in charge. In Varkith, they have less power than they might have in other places
simply due to the systems in place...but they are still on top of the heap. More Ork-
ari are leaders or members of successful, wealthy guilds than any other people. Not
every Orkari is rich or in command, but they as a whole have a great deal of power
and privilege within the city, and they know it. The Orkari would only join fledg-
ling guilds if they believe that those guilds present them a greater chance at glory or
success—otherwise, they have access to some of the greatest guilds in the city. Nearly
any guild knows to accept an Orkari, especially when that Orkari comes from a fam-
ily with wealth and power. Orkari don’t like to call upon their family’s resources, but
a guild can still profit enormously from associations with such families.
HERITAGE MOVES
• Bull through opposition and danger.
• Demand and receive respect for status.
• Smash apart a wall or object.
CUSTOM MOVES
Hardy and Strong: Whenever you make camp or otherwise rest, regain back
to your maximum hit points, not just half of your maximum.
The Smell of Power: Whenever you try to Parley with someone from a weaker
guild, first Defy Danger with Cha; the danger is that they are irrationally
predisposed against the Orkari.
Shall Not Be Denied: When you smash through vulnerable scenery to get at
something you want, roll+Str. On a hit, you break through whatever is in your
way, and get what you want. On a 10+, choose one. On a 7-9, choose two.
• You hurt yourself in the attempt; take 1d8 damage.
• You leave something behind or take something with you.
• You make something else in the area unstable and dangerous.
On a miss, you run right into something stronger or more dangerous than you.
THE D’HORVAE
The D’horvae appear as small humanoids, about four feet in height on average. They
are often well-muscled and taut, athletic—the dominant D’horvae culture values
purity and strength of body. All D’horvae have jet black eyes, and their bodies carry
patterns of scar-like tattoos upon their flesh. Sometimes the tattoos are jet black.
Other times, they are pink, purple, or red, and sometimes even stranger colors, like
blue or green. But all D’horvae have these scars, in patterns unique to each.
Every D’horvae is born with their own tattoos already set into their skin. As they
grow, so do the patterns, twirling and twining around arms and across backs,
twisting along cheek bones and even up and down fingers. There is no way a
D’horvae could ever pass as anything but, unless they hid every inch of their skin.
Some have tried that tactic, and while it may have worked, it leads to a cold life.
HISTORY
The D’horvae of old were not heroes. They crafted their own small city-states, and
entrenched themselves. They could reshape the stone itself with their bare hands,
and they made glorious works of art. They thought they would be able to outlast
any of the dangers of the Time of Heroes in their stone homes.
But they were wrong. The heroes threatened them wherever they had homes. Rumors
of D’horvae wonders and craftsmanship led greed-driven heroes to attack them and
plunder their hordes. The Orkari were the worst, regularly smashing into D’horvae
holds and leaving only destruction behind. Even when the Orkari settled down into
their own keeps, they would still make it a regular practice to raid the D’horvae.
Eventually, D’horvae heroes did truly rise and unite the D’horvae city-states in battle
against the heroes, and the Orkari especially. And so did the Eight Cities War begin.
At its end, the D’horvae lay defeated beneath the Orkari. Their stoneholds were
devastated. Their people captured, slain, or driven into exile. And the Orkari
heroes tapped into deep magics to make their victory complete, to exact a price
upon the D’horvae for all the pain they had caused in the war. The Orkari Scar-
mages inscribed the “sin” of the D’horvae into their flesh for all time, into the very
essence of the people. They would never be able to hide their “shame.”
Any time from that point forward that D’horvae attempted to shape the stone
with their hands, they failed. Any time they tried to form a new stonehold, they
would be stopped, most often by gleeful Orkari warlords. They were a people left
without a home, and without hope. And so many of them came to Varkith.
PRESENT
The powerful curse of the Scar-mages had a secondary effect upon the D’horvae.
The Scar-mages intended to ensure that no D’horvae could ever remove their tat-
toos, but the result was instead that the D’horvae’s skin was toughened. They were
made resistant to even terrible harm. This natural innate toughness, however, only
fed into the D’horvae’s new place in the world. With the curse of the Orkari upon
them, the D’horvae were forced into roles as menial laborers, doing the tasks the
Orkari had no desire to do themselves.
Even past the end of the Time of Heroes, the D’horvae still find themselves in
such roles. So ingrained is the notion that the D’horvae are meant for labor that
most other peoples do not question it; it’s easier that way.
HERITAGE MOVES
• Shrug off a mighty blow.
• Move quickly through tight spaces.
• Hear the rumors of your people.
CUSTOM MOVES
The Mark of Sin: When you go unarmored, your natural tattoos will grant
you 1 Armor.
The Place of the D’horvae: Whenever dealing with a non-D’horvae from the
upper crusts of Varkith whom you wish to take you seriously, you must
Defy Danger with Charisma. The danger is that they look down on you.
Marked and Still Unseen: When trying to pass unnoticed in a public place,
roll+Cha. On a hit, anyone who does see you looks straight over you, seeing
you just as a D’horvae servant. On a 7-9, the GM chooses one:
• Someone publicly insults you; take it, or draw attention to yourself.
• Someone makes a demeaning demand of you; do it, or draw attention to
yourself.
• Someone remembers you; anything goes wrong, they’ll pin it on you.
On a miss, your pretense of being an unassuming D’horvae embroils you in a
difficult situation.
THE V’SS’LIGA
The V’ss’liga have green, grey, or blue skin. The texture of their touch is scaly and
faintly slimy, somewhere between a fish’s and an octopus’s. They have squid-like or
fish-like heads, often varying in particulars, from number of tentacles to placement of
eyes, but always strange and unnerving. They speak in warbling, multi-toned voices.
They all know the Elder Tongue, a speech of their strange divinity, and in that
tongue their name is V’ss’liga. Translated, it loosely means “The Unslumbering.”
They appreciate that other species without access to the divine tongue might not
be able to speak their true name, though they do find it distasteful. Calling them
squidheads confuses them, but that hasn’t stopped other peoples of Varkith from
using the term as a derogatory insult.
HISTORY
The V’ss’liga have always existed on the surface of the world in small numbers. They
would wash up periodically on shores, greeted with distaste and mistrust by whom-
soever they met. They would preach about their strange gods, and their bizarre be-
liefs. And almost always, they would meet terrible ends, lynched or slain as monsters.
Those few who actually garnered followers would form strange cults, which, again,
would not last long against the heroes that took them as worthwhile opposition.
The truth of what they are, where they come from, is unknown even to them.
They have their beliefs, claims of a deep ur-dream that connected them all in their
slumber beneath the waves. Claims of greater old gods, similarly asleep, waiting for
the right moment to awaken and bring to the world their own divinity. They speak
of enormous cities in dream-lands and sunken on the floor of the ocean.
None have been able to verify the truth of their claims, and even the V’ss’liga
themselves admit that they know these things only as dreams ingrained in their
beings. But the V’ss’liga are nothing if not faithful—they believe, truly and deeply,
in their abyssal gods, and that they are the smaller siblings of those great beings.
Time will tell if it is true; so far, the world has not supported their claims.
PRESENT
Of late, more and more V’ss’liga have been appearing. Enough to make them a
known quantity in the world as a whole. Still strange, but at least comprehensible.
They exist all over the world, forming their small strange cults. They even join
other existing religions, tweaking doctrine and belief structures to fit their own
beliefs. And Varkith, more than anywhere else, provides them the opportunities to
preach, learn new belief theologies, and prepare for the coming of their gods.
HERITAGE MOVES
• Pray to and receive guidance from abyssal gods.
• Unnerve and provoke fear in a non-V’ss’liga.
• Draw upon divine power to endure.
CUSTOM MOVES
Unnerving: When you Parley through unnerving strangeness or fear, you
can roll+Wis instead of +Cha.
Implacable Faith: When you preach about your faith to a listening crowd,
roll+Wis. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1. Spend your hold 1 for 1 to
make the crowd:
• Bring someone forward and deliver them.
• Give you small tithes and offerings.
• Rally against someone or something.
• Return quietly to their lives.
On a miss, the mob turns on you.
Dreams of the Future: Whenever you Make Camp or rest, you experience a
dream of the future. Ask the GM a question and roll+Wis. On a hit, your
vision will answer the question, though mired in dream logic and strangeness.
On a 10+, ask a follow-up question, and the GM will answer honestly. On a
miss, your dream shows you that the answer to your question is what you fear
the most.
THE HALARTH
The ancestors of the Halarth, the Arthanuel, are enormous, four-armed, insect-
eyed giants from a place far across the sea. They stand at 10 feet tall, and their
entire beings are infused with a primal magic. Though they may not look as
strange as V’ss’liga or Krktri, the Arthanuel may be more truly alien.
The Halarth are not Arthanuel, but are descended from them. Two of their arms
are vestigial, and their size is nowhere near that of their forbearers. But they still
have the compound eyes, the strange coloration, and the unique way of seeing the
world. The Halarth can more easily blend themselves into the rest of mortal soci-
ety, but still they wear the signs of their lineage openly upon their skin and faces.
The Halarth is the name this people has taken up for itself, made its own. Calling
them “giants” is a sometimes improper callback to their connection to the Arthan-
uel; calling them “bugeyes” is an insult to their form.
HISTORY
Reports of the Arthanuel’s island are hazy at best, couched in mythical language,
in strange dream-like accounts, in tales that cannot possibly be confirmed. Their
numbers were identified as anywhere between two hundred and two hundred
thousand, depending upon the account. Most Arthanuel never left their island
home, where they crafted works of art blending the mundane and the mystical—
statues that were always facing you, no matter what angle you viewed them
from, or paintings that inserted the viewer into their canvases, among many even
stranger wonders. Very few non-Arthanuel individuals could even make it to their
island, let alone make it there and make it back, and so the Arthanuel and their
story is largely relegated to myth and strange tales.
There were some Arthanuel heroes who did leave their home. They became
some of the greatest heroes of the time, greater even than their Orkari con-
temporaries. They took up the art of combat and slaying, using their strange
power and might to incredible effect. They left more stories of the Arthanuel
and their power scattered throughout the world. And during this time, the
Halarth began appearing.
The Halarth would appear, to simplistic observation, to be the half-children of
Arthanuel (hence their original name, Halarth, “half Arthanuel”). But there are no
records of Arthanuel ever having children, or even engaging in sexual activity with
non-Arthanuel individuals. Stories of the Halarth instead either describe them as
simply appearing, as if they wandered in from the mists; or they are simply born,
the children of Isqu or D’horvae or Siccyx, but somehow Halarth instead of their
parents’ race.
PRESENT
By the time of the creation of Varkith, the Halarth were well instantiated across
the world, and the Arthanuel were appearing less and less. And for the Halarth,
Varkith offered an impressive opportunity—patronage of their art on a level never
before possible.
They could form guilds concerned solely with the creation of art. They could join
up with existing guilds, acting to transform those guilds’ works into new kinds
of art. They could find the money and resources to support them without having
to cater their every whim to those of the rich and powerful. The Halarth could
express themselves in a way that hadn’t ever been accessible to them, unlike the
strange stream-of-mind creation of the Arthanuel on their home island.
The Halarth flocked to Varkith in droves, and transformed the city into a bastion of
art and invention. More works of artifice pour out of Varkith than nearly anywhere
else in the world, a large portion of them directly the result of the efforts of the
Halarth. While they are still odd and a bit flighty, every guild is more than happy to
have at least one Halarth among its ranks, to help add the touch of art necessary to
boost a guild to its next level.
HERITAGE MOVES
• Create a beautiful piece of art.
• Perfectly perform a complicated task within your skillset.
• See the truth of the world underneath the facades.
CUSTOM MOVES
Arthanuel’s Hardiness: You have the natural toughness of the Arthanuel in your
blood. Add +4 hp to your maximum hp.
Compound Eyes: When you Discern Realities, you can always ask, “What here
is not what it appears to be?”—even on a miss. You take +1 forward when
acting on the answer, as usual.
The Craft: Choose your craft: dueling, melee, precision, song, exploration
and cartography, social engineering, magic, prayer, movement, pain. Once
per session when you engage in an act of your craft before an audience,
roll+Cha. On a 10+, hold 2. On a 7-9, hold 1. Spend your hold 1 for 1 to
name an NPC member of your audience and choose one.
• This person must meet me.
• This person must have my services.
• This person loves me.
• This person must give me a gift.
• This person admires my guild.
On a miss, you gain no benefit, but suffer no harm or lost opportunity. You
simply perform very well.
THE SICCYX
The Siccyx are white-skinned, with pure white eyes (no pupils or irises); they see the
world in a strange spectrum of colors and light only perceivable to them. They are
small in size, smaller even than D’horvae, like miniature humans. They have no hair
anywhere on their bodies. Upon their skin, they etch words—sometimes this might
make them look faintly similar to the D’horvae, but where the D’horvae’s tattoos are
strange, swirling patterns, the Siccyx are clearly covered in linguistic symbols of the
HISTORY
The Siccyx have some of the most extensive records in the world. Though many
sages of other peoples still believe that the Siccyx may be falsifying their records,
the Siccyx historians present it as ironclad fact. They came from the moon of the
world, before it was destroyed in an enormous battle (a whole other legend—a
band of heroes discovered the moon was an egg, and killed it before whatever was
inside could hatch, or at least so claims the story). They had emigrated entirely,
leaving nothing behind on the moon, and found themselves intoxicated by this
world, if for one reason above all—the written word.
The Siccyx are enamored of and changed by the written word. They came to write
words upon their own bodies, and experiencing a strange effect—those words
would become imprinted upon them, within their essence. They would come to
understand the nuances of language and meaning on a level invisible to most other
peoples. For some Siccyx, such inscriptions had a near narcotic effect.
They took up writing, and rules, and bureaucracy, and laws, with enormous fervor,
spreading throughout the world. Some very few of them became notable heroes,
wizards capable of wielding powers in strange ways thanks to their understanding
of the words involved, or clerics utterly devoted to the religious texts. But most
of them became clerks, individuals who supplemented others, who facilitated the
operation of the world’s burgeoning bureaucratic systems. Heroes were happy to
have a Siccyx who managed their assets, wealth, and holdings, so they could go on
further quests to plunder.
The Siccyx were not drawn to Varkith in particular, as so many other peoples were,
but came there naturally. Varkith was a place of new law, new bureaucracy, new
rules, and as others moved into its confines, so, too, did the Siccyx.
PRESENT
The Siccyx adapted quickly and easily to Varkith, filling in many of the admin-
istrative roles with an adeptness and will distinct only to them. They exist at all
levels in Varkith, holding positions throughout its structure, and in many of the
most important guilds in the city. The Lawkeepers especially feature an inordi-
nate number of Siccyx scribes and bureaucrats, maneuvering and changing the
34 THE GREEN LAW OF VARKITH
THE FACES OF GUILDERS
HERITAGE MOVES
• Confuse and mislead with winding paths of language.
• Decipher any text, ancient or modern.
• Temporarily learn a new skill by writing it upon your skin.
CUSTOM MOVES
Dance of Words: When you mislead, distract, or trick someone with your words,
roll+Cha. On a hit, you do it. On a 10+, choose three. On a 7-9, choose two.
• They believe it for some time.
• You avoid further entanglement.
• You create an opportunity.
• You expose a weakness or flaw.
On a miss, you lead them to believe something you probably shouldn’t have,
and you’re caught up in it now.
Lawyer to the Core: When you Spout Lore about the laws of Varkith, take +1
forward to act on whatever you say.
The Power of Text: You can understand any written language.
THE ISQU
The Isqu appear as regular humans—two arms, two legs, two eyes, ears, nose,
mouth, and so on. Their skin ranges in color from a golden brown to deep umber.
They generally keep their hair longer but tied into tails—they are traditionally a
seafaring people, and their cultural styles moved to match.
The Isqu will answer to “human” without difficulty, and though many attempt to
draw their ire by referring to them as “Ickies,” doing so will mostly make the Isqu
laugh.
HISTORY
The Isqu are the dominant tribe of “human” in the world. There are a few others—
the Drik, the Eckravay, the Pellecost—but the Isqu are the widest spread and most
common. There are many theories for their dominance, but the most likely answers
have to do with Isqu traditions. The Isqu have always been tied to the sea, and have
owned and operated the greatest number of independent naval vessels of any people.
As a result, they were one of the most widely spread of all the human peoples, and as
a whole they were safe from any particular cataclysmic event.
Even beyond that, though, is the Isqu mindset from ages past. In the Time of
Heroes, the Isqu proclaimed worship of a single god—the Worldly. The Worldly
protected them on the seas, gave them wind when they needed it, and carried
them onto the land. The Worldly was benevolent and kind.
And then, the Worldly died. It’s unclear exactly how, or when—there was no
single apocalyptic event, no great battle in which heroes decided to slay their
god. It seemed to be a slow death, according to the Isqu priests, as the Worldly
simply stopped responding to their pleas over time. Eventually, the Worldly was
completely unresponsive, and the Isqu were alone...except in their dreams.
The same priests of the Isqu who previously claimed to commune with the
Worldly now claimed to experience dreams of a dark place, a dead place—a hellish
world where the Worldly was now master. The Worldly had died, and become a
god of the dead—the Deathly. And the Deathly wants to drag their people down
into its new realm, a cold place of pain and doom.
This is the fate that the Isqu are taught awaits them. When they die, the Deathly
will reach up and snatch their souls and bring them to the Dark Realm. And
because of that, the Isqu will do anything to remain alive. Their entire culture
and mindset is structured around survival, more than anything else. They pursued
hedonistic pleasure, as well—to take advantage of their bodies and their lives while
they still have them—but staving off death for another day means a victory for an
Isqu.
PRESENT
Varkith would never have existed without the help of the Isqu and their boats, and
the coming of the Green Law didn’t change the city’s reliance upon them. Their
ships facilitate the city’s life. And many of them have come to love the city. It is the
ultimate port town, a safeway between other locations to which they can return after
every journey. The guild system allows them to band together for their own survival,
standing against much larger threats successfully, and the city offers whatever plea-
sures they could want to fill their lives with before the Deathly steals them away.
The Isqu are in fact one of the largest populations in the whole of the city, build-
ing homes there for when they retire from the sea, or when they come in from a
trip. They operate many of the guilds, especially those concerned with the ocean,
waterfront, or trade. They’re a constant presence in Varkith, and the city would
not survive without them.
What’s more, new generations of the Isqu, born and raised entirely in the city,
have developed a new relationship with the place. Instead of the sea calling them
home, they feel the call of the city. Some older Isqu are disquieted by the call
of the city on their children and grandchildren, but there’s little they can do—
Varkith already has its hooks in the younger generation.
HERITAGE MOVES
• Escape from bindings or terrible danger.
• Call upon a friend or family member in the right place in the city.
• Make a friend through shared hedonism.
CUSTOM MOVES
Survive: The first time in the campaign that you roll the Last Breath move, roll
+2. The second time, roll +1. The third time, roll +0. Continue in this pattern,
rolling -1 on each successive Last Breath roll throughout the campaign, to a
maximum of -3. When you do finally go to the Black Gates, you do not meet
Death. You meet the Deathly, instead. The Deathly does not offer traditional
bargains, but it hungers for souls to pull down to its dark realm. You might be
able to save your own soul by offering to procure a replacement soul or two
for the dark god. If you don’t mind dooming someone…
Escape: When you Discern Realities, you can always ask, “What is my best
way to escape?”—even on a miss. You take +1 forward when acting on the
answer, as usual.
Live: When you throw yourself into hedonism and debauchery, roll+Cha.
On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose two. On a miss, choose one.
• You recover during your debauch; heal 1d8 hp, or a single debility.
• You make a new friend; name them, and they’ll do one minor favor.
• You learn something important through gossip; ask a question, and the
GM will tell you the answers you hear.
• You don’t get into a fight with anyone; you haven’t made a new enemy.
THE KRKTRI
The other peoples of Varkith often have enormous difficulty telling individual
Krktri apart. They all look like humanoid figures, all of them a generally uniform
five and a half feet tall, with bodies made of dirt and swarming with ants. Depend-
ing upon a Krktri’s mood, the ants may be like a moving sea of small bodies across
the surface, or they may be simply like a thin layer of gently waving hair. Krktri
easily tell each other apart by the color of their dirt, and the color and shapes of
their ants—red, black, and blue ants are by far the most common colors—but
such discernment is beyond most residents of Varkith.
No other species in Varkith can say the true name of the Krktri—they lack
the necessary mouthparts. Krktri is a close approximation, but the Krktri are
content with the easier term of Colony, as well. Calling them “Ants,” however,
HISTORY
Krktri have been in the world for as long as any other people, or so they have
explained recently. They existed across the world, communicating among
themselves via long and arduous messenger paths. Each Krktri in these earlier
times looked like an ant colony to the other peoples of the world. Underground
tunnels, with ants and queens and eggs. No humanoid mortals could tell the
difference between a true Krktri in its natural form, and a regular ant colony,
but there was a difference. The Krktri was the mind and will that arose out of
the whole of the hive, but it had no means of communicating with the other
peoples of the world. Indeed, for a long time, the humanoid peoples of the
world seemed to the Krktri just as unintelligent as the Krktri must have seemed
to them.
Eventually, however, some few enterprising scholars and some clever and curious
Krktri made the connection. The scholars realized that these ant colonies acted
completely differently than others, seeming to exhibit a kind of intelligence—and
the Krktri realized something quite similar about the scholars. And thus, did the
collaboration begin. Amid the devastation of the Time of Heroes, those scholars
worked with artificers and even the Krktri themselves to create the first new
bodies for the Krktri. Latticework skeletons of metal with runes inscribed upon
them provided the structure for walking Krktri, capable of locomotion and even
communication with the other peoples of the world. Mostly, this happened in
secret, and the real innovations that made widespread growth of the Krktri people
only happened with the coming of Varkith.
PRESENT
Varkith is home to the greatest number of Krktri body construction factories
in the world. Their techniques are honed to perfection, and the bodies they
make are the most effective and useful for the Krktri. They stand at a reasonable
height, and their magical construction keeps dirt clinging to them, giving the
composite-ants of the Krktri plenty of material to burrow and tunnel through.
They are hardy and functional, with vocal runes characterized by buzzing tones,
but effective and versatile, even at communicating emotion. And the Krktri
living and working in Varkith have created many a guild to churn them out and
even ship them to other Krktri still living as in-the-ground colonies throughout
the world.
HERITAGE MOVES
• Work tirelessly to expertly craft something.
• Explore a space by sending out composite-ants.
• Swarm and distract an opponent with composite-ants.
CUSTOM MOVES
Millions of Eyes: When you Discern Realities by sending out swarms of
composite-ants, you can deal 1d4 damage to yourself to take a 10+.
Replenish the Swarm: “Healing yourself ” is a matter of reconstructing your
dirt body and birthing new ants in your colony. When you make camp and
consume a meal, roll+Con. On a 10+, you heal fully. On a 7-9, you heal
half your maximum hp. On a miss, your body is damaged and your colony
depleted; you won’t be able to heal until you’ve had it repaired by artisans. You
can never heal debilities without attention from skilled artisans.
Tireless: You do not ever need to rest. You can work tirelessly, and take +1
forward when you work for at least 12 hours on a single problem.
THE FELLEGRITH
Each Fellegrith looks like a corpse, in varying states of disrepair. None are skele-
tons, but the corpses are often less than fully intact. They do not decay any further
once they become Fellegrith, so a Fellegrith’s body appears with signs of decay no
more prominent than those found on a body about 5 to 8 days into decomposi-
tion. Most Fellegrith are human corpses, though there are some Orkari, D’horvae,
Siccyx, and Halarth corpses. Many of the Fellegrith died from drowning, and their
bodies are bloated appropriately.
HISTORY
The Fellegrith first appeared as a result of the actions of mad warriors in the Time of
Heroes. Some group of them, drunk upon their own power and glory, began pledg-
ing to undertake ever greater quests. Since this was a band of heroes, their boastful
plans began to spiral into madness, until one of them decided to go on a quest to
find the land of the dead and free from it all the souls who were trapped there. She
would bring back to life all who had died, and forever rid this mortal world of death.
The Tusked Blade, she was called.
She truly did undertake the quest, and found herself before the Black Gates of
Death. Even that alone was an achievement, and she would have earned accolades
if she had simply turned home. But the Tusked Blade was committed to her goal,
and she struck at the Black Gates to tear them down. Even as they towered hun-
dreds and hundreds of feet above her.
Her power was great, and her commitment endless. She hacked and struck at the
Gates, not needing to eat or drink or sleep in these lands of the dead, and eventu-
ally she did make a crack in the wall. The first face to greet her through the crack
was Death’s own, and it beckoned to her. She went with it, without fear or regret
or worry, to her eternal rest.
But since that time, souls have been able to slip free from the lands of the dead.
They come from all across the spheres, the dead of countless worlds. Being in the
land of the dead transforms them into strange creatures, but still they come for
another chance at existence. They find their way back to the land of the living,
and they dive into corpses wherever they can find ways in. And in those bodies,
they become new creatures, not the body, or the escaped soul, but something
different. A Fellegrith—so named for the untranslated name of the Tusked
Blade.
It took a long time for the Fellegrith to be understood as different from simple
undead. They truly are new things—their bodies might look decaying and undead,
but they possess nothing of the minds of the original inhabitants of those bodies.
They are newly alive, in their own way. Some theorize that it might be possible for
a soul from this world to return here and find its own body...but the likelihood is
so small, it is practically impossible. The Fellegrith are born amid corpses, and this
leaves them strange to most of the world.
PRESENT
Varkith presented new opportunities (and hope!) for the Fellegrith. They could
find new lives and acceptance in the Green City. They could form their own guilds
to support themselves, and once other guilders began to recognize the advantages
of a tireless corpse-worker that can put itself back together, they began to accept
Fellegrith into their own guilds. In Varkith, prejudice often falls by the wayside in
favor of profit, and the Fellegrith were helped—at least, slightly—by that truth.
But they are still viewed by many with a certain disdain. They are no longer
spurned or turned away at the door, but they are uncomfortable to look at, and
not invited into polite company. Few invite the dead to the occasions of the living.
The Fellegrith have had to form their own social clubs, or bonds with the other
estranged and outcast peoples of the city—the Krktri and the Fellegrith get along
particularly well.
HERITAGE MOVES
• See beyond the world of the living.
• Unnerve or frighten with rotting form.
• Repair your undead flesh.
CUSTOM MOVES
Stitching and Sewing: You do not regain hp by eating or resting. Instead, you
have to repair yourself with stitches, glues, and scavenged flesh. Repairing
yourself requires you to have repair materials. You can buy three uses of repair
materials for 20 jade pieces. You can spend uses of repair materials to heal
yourself as follows:
When you repair yourself in the midst of a fight, Defy Danger with Dex to do
it. On a hit, you can spend as many uses as you want and heal appropriately. On
a 7-9, in addition to whatever other costs the GM might choose to impose, you
must spend an additional use of your repair materials.
Spirit-Body Symbiosis: You are a combination of a soul with a corpse—and
you are more than both, but still tied to each. You can see, touch, and speak
to ghosts, specters, and undead. (Mindless undead still won’t speak to you,
because they’re mindless.)
A Corpse’s Strength: At character creation, add 1 to either your Strength, your
Dexterity, or your Constitution. You may add an additional 1 for every 5 max
hp you sacrifice, but only at character creation.
THE YM
The Ym appear as beautiful, smooth, pristine, and oddly ethereal. No blemishes
ever grace their forms, their hair is always perfect, and their eyes are always
striking...but they also always appear fuzzy, as if being viewed through a
transparent screen, or a haze. Their forms are dreamlike, because they are
dreams. They are generally humanoid in form, with skin of whatever color
catches their fancy, and sometimes odd touches, like sharply pointed ears, or
cat’s eyes, or six long, slender fingers.
Wisps, or Dreamlife, they are sometimes called—and to them, names are transient
things that they gladly put on like different costumes. They do not mind such
terms. Only calling them “Gas” makes them narrow their eyes in a glare. They are
far more than air.
HISTORY
The Ym do not come from this world. They are strange beings made of idea and
magic, flowing and without clear form or boundary. Some mortals could visit this
realm through dreams, touching upon it lightly with their minds, and the Ym
would set up their own means of observing this world out of curiosity. But rarely
did the Ym cross over, not least because the Ym dissipate when they come to this
realm—their forms are inherently unsuited to such physical realness.
Throughout the Time of Heroes, however, Ym were pulled from their world into
this one. To keep them in this world, heroes and sorcerers trapped them with-
PRESENT
The Ym come to this world because they are fascinated by its wonders, its mag-
ics, its ideas and colors and joys. And nowhere serves these desires better than
Varkith. Nowhere else in this sphere is as diverse and multitudinous in offerings,
and nowhere else in this sphere is there as strong a presence of crystal artisans,
churning out new crystals for incoming Ym. Many still travel the world, but
more are perfectly happy to find lives for themselves in Varkith, where they can
take advantage of all the city has to offer.
HERITAGE MOVES
• Alter your projected form into a new, generally humanoid shape.
• Repair your projected form from any hindering injury.
• Perceive the dreams of a sleeping mortal.
CUSTOM MOVES
Undying Crystal: You can always reform your projected body, unless your crystal
is shattered. When you go to 0 hp, do not make the Last Breath move. Instead,
you will reform with a quarter of your maximum hit points (round up) in about
6 hours, as long as the crystal is left safe and untampered with. If you have no one
to guard your crystal when you go to 0 hp, roll + nothing. On a 10+, your crystal
is left generally intact, and you reform in a relatively safe position. On a 7-9, you
reform in a dangerous position. On a miss, your crystal is damaged. You reform in
a dangerous position, and your maximum hp is permanently reduced by 5. If ever
your maximum hp reaches 0, your crystal is shattered and you die permanently.
Shapeshift: You can alter and adjust your form as your will dictates. If you
are a druid and you attempt to shift your shape as per those rules, hold an
additional 1 on any result, even a miss. If you are not a druid and you attempt
to shift your shape, say what new generally humanoid shape you want,
and what special physical capability you want to have in that form. Then
roll+Con. On a 10+, you take that shape, and you have that capability. On a
7-9, you have that capability, but the form is unstable. Every time you use that
capability, you must Defy Danger with Con to maintain your current form,
or you can choose to revert to your default form. On a miss, taking on this
HISTORY
Heroes, particularly magical ones, loved adding accoutrements to their equipment,
their arms and armor, and their entourage. Familiars were an easy way to do that.
Find a normal creature, fill it with magic, bind it—the heroes could create capable
servants, batteries of magical power, even creatures with new and useful capabili-
ties to aid their quests. They did not think much of their familiars beyond being
tools. After all, they were just animals, and would be nothing more if the heroes
hadn’t intervened.
Eventually, some more experimental heroes attempted to breed familiars with
each other to see if it would produce better familiars. And it did—whatever
magics mutated them in the first place would be enhanced and strengthened
in progressive generations of familiars. The familiars grew more powerful and
smarter as time went on, and that only made them all the more desirable to the
heroes.
It should have come as no surprise to the heroes what happened next...but those
who throw themselves into violent encounters for a living are never strong at
PRESENT
The Freed Ones are the newest significant population in all of this world, let
alone Varkith. They won their freedom only relatively recently, in the scheme of
things—within the past one hundred years. In outskirts around the world, wiz-
ardly types still use familiars. In civilized places, the practice has been abandoned,
but wizards and indeed all citizens will often look down upon the Freed as nearly
animals in nature.
Varkith offered the Freed the best chance at actually obtaining the equality and
status they sought. Their numbers would matter in Varkith, and they could use
the laws of Varkith to help them achieve their own ends. People might be preju-
diced against them, but in Varkith any guild they formed would be recognized;
they could overcome prejudice and ultimately triumph.
The Freed are all over Varkith now, living throughout the city. They made it their
home with surprising speed, and they have even started to investigate how to up-
lift the other animals of the city into Freed status (though those projects are largely
kept secret—they wouldn’t want the people of Varkith panicking when they hear
that the rodents are going to become intelligent).
HERITAGE MOVES
• Rally your people into a mob.
• Move inconspicuously through the city.
• Take advantage of the physical attributes of your animal body.
CUSTOM MOVES
Suited for Magic: You have a keen connection to magic. Take a +1 forward on
Spout Lore when it’s related to the type of magic you were made for, and once
per session, you can cast the wizard spell detect magic.
Distaste: When you travel through the city, roll+Cha. On a 10+, you talk and
wend your way through the city, no problem—take +1 forward. On a 7-9,
your words protect you a bit, but you still draw the ire of at least one indi-
vidual who doesn’t like your kind—thrash him single-handedly, though, and
your path is clear. On a miss, a band of individuals have decided to make their
prejudice toward your kind known.
Animal Body: When you create your character, choose three animal features
to call out specifically. They could be your wings, your claws, or your webbed
feet. Whenever you use one of your animal features to Defy Danger, take
+1 forward.
V
arkith is all about guilds, from top to bottom. They drive the vast majority
of change throughout the city and serve as the primary social infrastructure
for Varkith. All citizens are required to be a part of the guild system, whether
they like it or not, as commanded by the Green Lady and the Green Law. Not
everyone likes the Green Law, but all who live in Varkith abide by it.
Regardless of what one thinks of the Green Law, guilds provide citizens of Varkith
the opportunity to build something, to work together to create something powerful,
lasting, and important. At the same time, guilds also bind disparate people together,
making them dependent on each other in a meaningful way, creating parties of
adventurers bound by far more than a random meeting at a tavern. Guildmates are
family by contract, and everyone knows that the best contracts are written in blood.
This chapter is all about how to make the guild system come alive at your table.
These rules embody the whole of the guild system and work together to create a
unique and emergent experience…but you can’t pick and choose which rules to
follow and hope the system works. If you’re going to use the mechanical guild
system (and if you’re playing The Green Law of Varkith, you absolutely should),
then you have to use all the rules in this chapter.
GUILD BASICS
Guilds are all defined much like characters. They have a purpose that describes
their stated goal and function, and a style that describes how they go about do-
ing things; a rank, roughly equivalent to a PC’s level; and five different stats to
• To keep the city’s streets safe. • To craft intricate and lovely ballads.
• To procure magical items and • To negotiate legal matters on behalf
artifacts for sale. of other guilds.
• To act as mercenaries for other • To produce the best tasting food in
guilds in their own conflicts. the city.
• To experiment with magic and • To traffic in rare and valuable
science to develop innovative ingredients and specimens from
products. across the world.
• To collect knowledge and • To create valuable maps of Varkith’s
information for sale to others. many neighborhoods.
Your guild’s style is a general sense of how it goes about achieving its purpose.
This isn’t official; it’s not recorded anywhere. But it’s part of the reputation that
your guild gathers through its simple, everyday actions.
To choose a style, pick two adjectives that you think are associated with your
guild. Pick adjectives that describe the poles of your guild’s reputation—if you
pick Bloody and Violent, then it means your guild is only ever known for being
dangerous, while if you pick Honorable and Violent, then it means your guild is
known to keep their word, but also to use violence regularly.
Here are some sample styles:
• Secretive and Bartering • Destructive and Boisterous
• Mystical and Gleeful • Sincere and Direct
• Violent and Surgical • Conniving and Corrupt
• Affable and Cutthroat • Murderous and Stealthy
• Monstrous and Dark • Persuasive and Professional
After you choose your style, decide what your guild’s markers look like. Remember
that markers are a social currency exchanged between guilds to represent owed
debts, but they are still physical objects; each guild’s markers are distinct to that
guild. Pick something distinctive to your guild that is no bigger than your palm.
Grace, Justin, Marissa, and Mark are building a guild together. They have
their PCs all ready—a Thief, Bard, Fighter, and Wizard, respectively—and
they’re hashing out what purpose they want for their guild. Ultimately, they
settle on something that should combine their skill sets: “To provide high-
GUILD TURNS
During a guild turn, the guilds all take actions. Guilds act in order of rank, work-
ing down from the highest rank to the lowest, with ties broken first by Influence,
then by Senses, then by Power, then by Might. This means many NPC guilds will
take their actions first. The GM should have them take action as below, and only
mention what, if anything, the PCs hear about it openly. If the PCs are the target
of any of those actions, then they know all the important details.
On its own turn, a PC guild gets to take a single large-scale action for free. The
players should discuss among themselves what exactly their guild will do for its
action, and come to a joint decision. If they want to take multiple actions, they
can do so by spending additional coin out of their guild’s coffers. Each addi-
tional large scale action requires an increasing amount of coin. The second action
on a guild turn requires 1-coin. The third action requires 2-coin, and the fourth
action requires 3-coin, and so on. These prices are cumulative—to take three
actions on a guild turn costs a total of 3-coin, and to then take a fourth action
would require a total of 6-coin.
Each action a guild can take takes the form of a move. The PC guild can choose
exactly what move to trigger, but to do it, they have to do it—they have to de-
scribe what their guild is actually doing to take the action. If there is no way their
guild could take a particular action due to fictional circumstances, then they can’t
make that move.
After all guilds are finished, they gain some Coin gained per
amount of coin. PC guilds can gain coin Territory
guild turn
depending on what their Territory is. The
chart at right shows how much. -1, +0, or +1 1-coin
NPC guilds gain an amount of coin equal +2 or +3 2-coin
to their Influence rating + their Territory +4 and up 3-coin
rating. The GM tracks this coin, along
with the NPC guilds’ other actions, and only informs the PCs about what they’ve
heard or seen with their limited perspective on the plots and schemes of the larger
guild. See page 64 for more on tracking NPC guilds as the GM.
COLLECT INFORMATION
When your guild uses spies, agents, and open ears to collect information, roll+-
Senses. On a hit, ask two questions. On a 10+, ask a follow-up question.
• What moves is __________ making?
• What opportunities can we find in ____________?
• What should we be on the lookout for?
• Who could offer us ______________?
• Who could use our services?
On a miss, you get word of another guild making dangerous moves in your direc-
tion without any time to prepare before they strike.
PERFORM A RITUAL
When your guild tries to perform a powerful magical ritual, you must first
gather the necessary components; the GM will tell you what is needed. Then,
roll+Powers. On a 10+, it works and only costs you a bit more in resources; spend
1-coin or give 1 marker to another guild for their aid. On a 7-9, it works, but you
must either spend a great deal in resources to supplement the ritual (3-coin) or
it has effects you didn’t anticipate or consider. On a miss, the ritual goes terribly
awry, and has effects you never could have predicted.
RESIST ACTION
This move doesn’t require you to use up any of your actions on a guild turn. It’s a
reactive move—what a PC guild uses to resist the actions of NPC guilds. When
NPC guilds try to act upon you, they won’t roll dice, because they’re still repre-
sented by the GM. Instead, your PC guild will trigger this move to resist (unless,
for some reason, you choose not to resist!), and roll to find out the results of the
NPC’s move against you.
When your guild resists another guild’s action, roll+Territory. On a 10+, you
resist their efforts without ill effect. On a 7-9, they receive a minor benefit from
their efforts against you, depending upon the move they made. On a miss, they
receive a major benefit from their efforts against you, depending upon the move
they made. (See NPC guilds and actions below for more on minor and major
benefits for particular moves.)
COIN
Coin is a measurement of wealth for guilds. 1-coin is roughly equivalent to 1000
Jade Pieces. If a guild ever wanted to break up its coin into money for its individ-
ual members, it could, but doing so is frowned upon—individuals aren’t supposed
to have that much money, under the Green Law, after all. Similarly, however, if
individuals make enormous sums of money, they can convert it into coin.
Coin has several uses during the guild turns (besides purchasing additional
actions—see page 56). First of all, you can spend 1-coin on any roll to add +1.
Choose whether or not to spend coin before you make the guild move, not after.
You can spend up to 3-coin on a single roll in this fashion.
Secondly, coin can be spent to permanently increase your guild’s stats. All it
costs is 4-coin, and you can permanently raise any stat, except for Territory, by +1.
A PC guild’s Territory can only go up by seizing it from other guilds.
MARKERS
Markers are physical representations of the favors that guilds owe each other.
When one guild gives another a marker, it means that the giver owes the receiver,
and can return the marker to cash in the favor. Some guilds accumulate power
Members Of Effrict, Effrict & Sliver And The Butchers’ Society Exchange Markers
through coin...others collect markers. The most powerful guilds do both. When
you call in a Marker with another guild, choose one:
• Take up to 2-coin from the other guild as compensation for previous services.
• Use their Might instead of your guild’s when making a violent attack on a
guild turn.
• Get their help when seizing territory; add their Might to yours when
violently seizing territory during your guild turn. (Only one guild at a
time can help you seize territory.)
• Use their Influence instead of your guild’s when taking advantage of the
legal system during the guild turn.
• Use their Rank instead of your guild’s when encountering another guild
for the first time.
• Take a +3 to Parlay with a member of their guild.
• Get a valuable lead on something you want.
When you call in a marker, you get the benefit for a single roll or favor; it’s not
ongoing support unless you spend multiple markers. And when you spend a
marker…it’s gone. You can’t call in favors and expect people to still owe you.
OTHER CHANGES
In between guild turns, PCs will take actions that will often gain them more coin or
territory, or hurt other guilds. That’s perfect, and exactly as it should be. The PCs’
guild is special compared to any of the other guilds in the game; the PCs are unique
agents who are climbing their way up from the bottom. For all that Varkith is about
A LONG EXAMPLE
The Elegant Shields are having their first guild turn. They still have stats
of 0 Might, 0 Senses, 0 Influence, -1 Power, and 0 Territory. They have
2-coin, and 1 marker with the Lawkeepers.
Grace, Justin, Marissa, and Mark discuss what to do on their guild turn. They
decide they’ve already started making enemies out of the Philosophers Guild,
so they might as well pursue that course as far as they can. They’re not sure
exactly what vulnerabilities the Philosophers have, so they decide to discern
the strengths and weaknesses of the Philosophers' Guild. Their PCs go
out on behalf of the Elegant Shields, scoping out the different Philosopher's
operations throughout the city, looking for any opportunities to strike. They
also reach out to lower-level members of other guilds to see if anyone knows
what the Philosophers are up to.
Justin rolls the dice on behalf of the Elegant Shields, and adds in the Shields’
Senses stat of 0. He gets a 7—just enough to ask one single question. The PCs
(as a group) decide to ask, “Where are they vulnerable?” The GM tells them
about a part of the city, the Undercroft, a sort of sunken basement over in the
northwest corner of the city. The Philosophers tried to move in and created
a new library there, but they’ve had a hard time keeping it secure, especially
with their attentions and funds directed elsewhere. There aren’t many
philosophers there, and it’d be a prime target for an opportunistic guild.
Grace, Justin, Marissa, and Mark talk it over and decide to make a move
now, before anything changes and their info ceases to be pertinent. They
spend 1-coin to take a second action. This time, they want to be bold and
seize territory through force! They don’t really have anyone in their guild
besides them yet, so they describe gearing up—along with a friend or two
hired with that spent coin—to take that Undercroft library by force.
Grace rolls this time, adding their Might of 0 and a +1 for following what
they’d learned from the discern strengths and weaknesses move. She rolls a
9, and adds the +1 for a total of a 10! That means that not only do they take
the Territory, shifting their Territory up to a +1 and the Philosophers down
to a +2, but they also only take 1 point of damage to their other stats! They
decide to take it out of their Senses—even though their contacts pointed
them to the Philosophers’ weakness, word got out about how they’d gained
that information, and their sources are way quieter now. They’re going to
have to build up other contacts if they want their Senses to go back up.
The GM describes their attack on the library as a complete success,
with the Philosophers fleeing before them, and the Elegant Shields sigils
held up on the walls of the Undercroft library in no time. Although, of
course, there are plenty of other guilds looking at the library as a nice
tasty bit of territory, themselves…
NPC GUILDS
This section is for the GM to know how to run NPC guilds during guild turns.
NPC guilds don’t just sit silently while PC guilds are the only ones to take action—
they have their own schemes and endeavors that drive them to change Varkith. Run-
ning these NPC guilds makes Varkith a living place, full of dangerous and powerful
groups with their own agendas. It ensures that even as the PCs launch their own
schemes, the landscape is ever shifting, and they’ll have to keep moving to adapt. It’s
exciting, and ensures everyone is playing to find out what happens next.
That said, NPC guilds operate a bit differently from PC guilds, to keep the atten-
tion on the protagonists of the game.
After you select a purpose and style, assign the new guild a rank. The guilds rank is
going to determine their relative political power in Varkith and how many points
they have for their stats. Think carefully about what rank the new guild should be.
The higher the rank they have, the more of a threat they will be to the PCs, and
the more important they will be in the overall scheme of Varkith.
The five ranks are again:
• Corporation: Rank 1—a total of up to +2 in stats. There are many, many
guilds that never make it past this level. If you are unsure of what rank to
make a guild, you can’t go wrong with Corporation.
• Establishment: Rank 2—a total of up to +4 in stats. These guilds are up-and-
comers. They are moving toward real power, but they aren’t there yet.
• Conglomeration: Rank 3—a total of up to +6 in stats. These guilds are the
middle-class, powerful enough to be relevant to the overall scene of Varkith,
but not so powerful that they are particularly dominant or invulnerable.
• Institution: Rank 4—a total of up to +8 in stats. These guilds form the
bedrock of Varkith—major parts of the city depend upon them, and the
political power they wield is mighty.
• Council member: Rank 5—a total of over +8 in stats. These guilds all hold
seats on the Green Senate. There are only a small number of Council Member
guilds, and guilds that lay claim to such seats are extraordinarily powerful.
The Indefatigable Bookmakers can’t have their stats add up to more than +4,
in total. They probably have a high Powers for all their secrets and weirdness,
and a high Senses would fit, as well. A good Influence would work, and they
probably don’t have that much Might.
I assign them a +1 in Territory, so that they can have a +1 in Powers, Senses,
and Influence, with a +0 in Might. They aren’t really the type of guild to take
to the streets with knives and clubs anyway.
Finally, give them 1-coin to start. Think about where they store their riches—in
a vault, in a mysterious vase, in another dimension—and how they bring money
into the guild. Most guilds find some coin in their core activities, but it’s not un-
common for them to have illegal side operations that end up being more profitable
than their original purpose!
The Philosophers' Guild, angered though they are, need to build back
their strength. They’re interested in making business transactions.
They’ll target the Lawkeepers—the GM thinks this must be a deal where
the philosophers are offering to exchange legal counsel to the Lawkeepers
to win a few cases from which the Lawkeepers will be able to seize valu-
able assets and pay the Philosophers in return. The Philosophers Guild has
a higher Influence, so they gain 2-coin, while the Lawkeepers gain 1. That
means the Philosophers have 4-coin, and the Lawkeepers have 2.
The Envoys, however, decide to take advantage of the Elegant Shields’
relative weakness and strike hard at them, attempting to seize the Under-
croft library by force. The GM tells Marissa to roll to resist their attack.
She rolls +2 for the Elegant Shields’ territory—but she only gets a total
of a 6! That’s a miss for the Elegant Shields, so they have a choice: lose 1
Territory or a number of stat points equal to the Envoys’ +2 Might. The
PCs agree to lose the 1 Territory, keeping in mind that they haven’t yet
acted—they may have a chance to win it back. The Envoys’ Territory is
now +3: the GM describes how the people the Shields had hired to make
the library a safe and effective base are slowly replaced by Envoys, until
the Envoy moles simply kill the rest in a sudden and deadly strike.
Finally, the Lawkeepers act. They’re still an Establishment, one rank high-
er than the PCs’ rank of Corporation. The Lawkeepers don’t really want to
get tied up in the rest of this madness, so they decide to collect informa-
tion. After all, their job is ostensibly to monitor the city for illegal activity.
The GM decides to give them +1 forward to their Influence, for their +1
Senses. He decides that the Lawkeepers confiscated valuable illegal goods,
which they can use to barter for additional Influence and bribery.
V
arkith is a beast of many layers. The people live in one layer, but the city
itself lives in its streets. The places through which countless citizens pass on a
daily basis. The open-air wine halls where deals are made. The corners where
watchful eyes glare at the competition. The open markets where anything is sold or
bought. This chapter is all about those streets, and the large, powerful creatures that
call them home: the guilds of Varkith.
LOCATIONS
Varkith is a huge city, spanning the entirety of the island on which it was founded.
You can find nearly anything you’re looking for, somewhere in the city, and more
than once if you’re smart. These locations aren’t anything close to a definitive list—
they’re just some of the most important landmarks in the city, places anyone is
likely to find themselves.
THE STATUE
The Green Lady herself. Or at least, the greatest standing monument to her. It tow-
ers over the city, visible from nearly any part, if only the very top of her head. It has
stood for centuries, and whether due to excellent construction or magics woven into
its very form, it has withstood time and the weather with barely any damage.
The base of the statue is an open plaza that has, from tradition and
pragmatism, become a congregating place, full of people throughout the day.
Carts of food glide in, pulled by myriad beasts of burden, and sell food to
the milling citizenry. The entire square is maintained carefully by the Green
Senate. It’s one of Varkith’s nicest pieces of architecture, and a must-see
location for any visitors to the city.
THE DOCKYARDS
Varkith is an island city; the sea is a part of its lifeblood, and naval trade is critical
to its existence. Its docks have always been developed, full of traffic and commerce,
except for during (and right after) the Desolation. Now, they stretch all along one
coast of the island, with piers made of yellow-wood extending out into the water.
Looking out across the docks, one can see rows and rows of strange ships from all
across the world; pulleys and beasts of burden to lift crates onto and off the ships;
and dockworkers, mostly Fellegrith, Krktri, or Halarth, burning under the sun.
When you look for a ship to buy on the Dockyards, roll+coin spent on the ship,
at least 1. On a hit, you find something. On a 10+, choose two. On a 7-9, choose
one. By default, the ship has the tags slow, unarmed, and old.
• The ship you find is fast, and has the tag fast instead of slow.
• The ship you find is armed with strange weaponry, and loses the tag unarmed.
• The ship you find is new and well-built, and loses the tag old.
On a miss, the best ship you can afford is shoddy and old, obviously unarmed,
and costs an additional coin—the seller won’t budge on price.
When you use your ship to trade with other lands during a guild turn,
roll+Influence, adding:
• +1 if your ship is fast. -1 if your ship is slow. -1 if your ship is old.
On a hit, your ship brings back 1-coin. On a 7-9, your ship is damaged and will
require repair; you can’t send it to other lands until you spend 1-coin to repair
it on the next guild turn or take the old tag (if the ship is new). On a miss, your
ship is destroyed or lost on the trip if it is unarmed. If it is armed, then the ship
is simply damaged, as per the 7-9 result, but your cargo is lost at sea.
TEMPLE ROW
Varkith has always been a city of competition, ever since the Green Law. Guilds
struggle against each other endlessly. Individuals vie for position within their
own guilds. And that constant struggle expands into all facets of life—including
religion. In a world with multiple gods, multiple pantheons even, each one
represented by its own guild, they must compete with each other for the limited
supply of the faithful.
Temple Row is a symptom of that competition. An entire street, lined with dif-
ferent monasteries, cathedrals, chapels, sanctuaries, and places of worship. They
sprang up around each other in direct competition, each one attempting to lure
in passersby, keeping them from the other temples. Many of the most successful
places on Temple Row have additional territory, additional temples throughout the
city. But Temple Row is where they compete with each other, head to head. Any
god worth their salt has a guild with a temple on Temple Row.
The street is a mad wonder to behold. The architecture is inspired by divine will
and otherworldly sight. Some buildings look like their walls never stop shifting,
like liquid. Others barely even look like buildings, instead appearing as strange,
shifting, mirage-like waves of distortion with no clear entrance. Still others
were enormous edifices, seemingly too big to be supported by their small bases,
towering up with byzantine spires and gilded gargoyles. All of them feature their
holy people standing on steps and in doorways, decrying their faith, their gods’
will. To walk down Temple Row is to look upon the faces of gods, and to con-
stantly be asked to choose which one you believe in the most.
When you walk Temple Row with your eyes and ears open, roll+Wis. On a
hit, one of the gods or temples on the row has something important and useful
to tell you. On a 10+, take a +1 ongoing as long as you follow their advice. On
a miss, the row is overwhelming, and you find yourself in one of the sanctuaries
with no memory of how you got there.
THE MOUNTAIN
For the longest time, Varkith was built around the mountain. In its shadow,
or jutting up against its base. The Mountain was an unconquerable monitor
over the whole island. But of course, the innovative spirit of Varkith takes the
unconquerable as a challenge. It was only a matter of time before they found ways
to build up the side of the mountain. To build into it. And now, the Mountain is
its own mass of streets like ledges, of rooms and homes built into the rock, carved
out by imported stone-eater worms.
The Mountain is the single biggest set of homes in the whole of Varkith. Pulleys
and lifts take citizens up and down from their homes (operated, of course, by
THE HIVERUNS
The Krktri are some of the newest citizens of the city, relatively speaking. And
due to their strange natures, the difficulties in comprehension between them and
the other citizens of the city, they are often the most downtrodden, the poorest.
Krktri-only guilds often serve needs that no other citizens think exist, and their
strangeness is enough that many established guilds actively keep them out of
business or working merely as low-paid and indefatigable labor.
But that capacity for unity extends to more than simply building together.
The Krktri banded together to change the city, even across guilds, buying up a
defunct neighborhood in Varkith and transforming it. They tore down the old,
decrepit buildings, and crafted new ones, forming a hive structure of smooth
stone and spherical chambers. These hives are hyper-efficient and sturdy, but
they’re also so strange and cramped to many other denizens of the city; few
besides the Krktri like to go there. Those Krktri guilds that own these structures,
or Hiveruns as they have come to be called in the city’s parlance, charge a very
small fee for rent, meaning that new and poor guilds may find their own homes
within the Hiveruns’ halls. But no respected guild would ever set up shop in the
Hiveruns. At least, not for long.
When you come to the Hiveruns to speak to someone, any Krktri PCs take
+1 to Parley, while any non-Krktri take -1 ongoing. Any Krktri NPCs are
grateful that you have come to them, instead of making them come to you.
When your guild sets up shop in the Hiveruns, roll with Senses. On a 10+,
you find a previously unclaimed corner at a reasonable price. On a 7-9, you’ve
got to push someone out to claim your spot or pay a coin for information on
newly available lodging. On a miss, your enemies were expecting your arrival
in the Hiveruns; they’ve paid a local group of Krktri to ensure you don’t find a
home here.
THE HEAPS
For all that Varkith is based on the principle that anyone and everyone receives an
equal shot at success, the truth is, of course, far more complicated. Some guilds
cannot compete with the upper echelons of the city; they lack the required resources
to even make the attempt of arriving at that level, and the more powerful guilds
actively work to keep their lessers down. These small, poor guilds will likely never be
able to afford more than the most basic lodgings, territory, and resources. The Heaps
is the result of the inequality.
The Heaps are buildings upon buildings, erected terribly close together, with the
thinnest of alleyways between them. Citizens and guilds are crushed together in
the Heaps, in an attempt to secure the greatest amount of housing in the smallest
GUILDS
There are hundreds of guilds in Varkith, many of which are no bigger than three or
four people, and never own more than a single room in a larger building. But some
guilds affect the whole of the city—their tendrils of influence creeping in every-
where—and treat countless other smaller guilds as vassals. It’s these large guilds that
the PCs must be wary of on their rise to power.
CORPORATIONS
THE DIABOLIC UNION
Drive: To fight for the rights of the disenfranchised
Leader: Ebhert Inders, demon
Rank: Corporation—1 Sense: +1 Might: -1
Influence: +0 Powers: +1 Territory: +1
Coin: 1 generated per turn.
The demonic population of Varkith is very low. Demons are already non-native to
this world, and they saw a disproportionate level of violence and destruction during
the Time of Heroes. True, many of them were terrifying monstrosities intent upon
sovereignty over all the world, but many others were nothing of the sort. Since then,
these few demons have been trying to reestablish themselves, and they have made some
progress in Varkith. The Diabolic Union is a sign of that progress—a guild made by
demons, originally for demons, to help them get a leg-up in the city. The Union was
originally funded by donations from those demons it helped, after they had become
more successful. But now, the Diabolic Union has expanded its remit. It helps peoples
of all kinds, trying to fight against the inequality that it sees within the city.
The Diabolic Union is still primarily led by demons, of course, and their plans
are never entirely straightforward. They do truly hope that by helping the disen-
franchised citizens and peoples like the Krktri or the Fellegrith, they will be able
to upset the entire order of Varkith, transforming it into something better. Ulti-
mately, they would be happy if the entirety of the guild system came down. But
FACES
• Friction Voice, Krktri freedom fighter and guerilla acting on behalf of the Union
• Mogott Trink, Fellegrith recruiter and moderate voice in the Union
• Athlxys the Demon Mind, V’ss’liga and discoverer of new demons to join the
Union
Effrict, Effrict & Sliver is a new thing for Varkith: a law firm. A group of
bureaucrats, broken out of other guilds, to serve the niche they had created.
Guilds need help navigating the tangled mess of Varkith’s ever-growing rules and
systems. They need help figuring out what rules apply and which can be safely
ignored; and they need help in dealing with the Lawkeepers to keep themselves
above the law. Effrict, Effrict & Sliver is here to help. They’ll handle all that
pesky bureaucracy for you, so you don’t have to.
FACES
• Jasper Frey, koala Freed One and expert wordsmith
• Beach ip-Seyva, Siccyx legal clerk and spy ensconced within E, E & S
• Pexekarius Wordhammer, Orkari official E, E & S manager of summons and
legal notice serving
FACES
• Embodied Trap, Ym creature transporter and hunter
• Mirko Dim, downtrodden Fellegrith creature handler
• Saccharine Rain, a cold-hearted Krktri dissectionist and part preparer
ESTABLISHMENTS
,
THE ARTIST S COLLECTIVE
Drive: To push towards ever greater excesses of artistic creation
Leader: Askanazjic, Halarth sculptor extraordinaire
Rank: Establishment—2 Sense: +1 Might: +1
Influence: +0 Powers: +1 Territory: +1
Coin: 1 generated per turn.
The Artist’s Collective bills itself as the guild for those with aesthetic judgment.
They are driven by the need to create beauty, and they seek nothing less than
to create the ultimate, perfect work of art. It is their god. The members of the
Collective could go on for a very long time about their aesthetics and their drive
to create the divine art; they believe their duty is holy. They create lesser artworks
to make the money they need to support the Collective, but all the while they are
saving and collecting money for their ultimate project. Even though the members
of the Collective have endless debates about exactly what form their ultimate
project should take.
A movement a few decades ago changed the Collective, enabling them to pursue
the creation of their art in new ways. Guerilla artists spread throughout the city,
taking whatever supplies they needed to craft their art under cover of darkness.
The Artist’s Collective gained a whole branch that acted as a de facto thieves
guild, stealing anything from gold to clay to bodies for the creation of new art.
And so the Artist’s Collective is to this day, continuing to take whatever action is
necessary to support their artistic endeavors.
FACES
• Gheedra Kephric, D’horvae painter, tattoo artist, and con artist
• Chitterclaw, squirrel Freed One and second-story man interested only in excitement
• Ahaila Mar-Crane, Isqu mosaic maker and true believer in the Collective
THE LAWKEEPERS
Drive: To profit from the status quo
Leader: Mindelus Heavyfist, Orkari chief
Rank: Establishment—2 Sense: +1 Might: +1
Influence: +0 Powers: +0 Territory: +2
Coin: 2 generated per turn.
The Lawkeepers formed beneath the Jadethroats. There were only so many
Jadethroats—according to their own internal rules, their numbers had to be
limited to prevent them from becoming too powerful. As such, they only ever
concerned themselves with the most severe rules infractions of the most important
laws of the city. The Lawkeepers, then, was a guild designed to pick up the other
cases. To enforce the ever-growing general bureaucracy of Varkith.
The Lawkeepers hold councils, where members of all guilds are welcome to voice
grievances and demand new legislation—miniature versions of the sessions in the
Green Senate. They have inspectors who go throughout the city and ensure guilds
are conforming to the laws. They have carved out a pleasant, bureaucratic niche
for themselves the city’s ecology, and they don’t want anything to change.
The Lawkeepers’ power in the city comes from the mandate given to them by
the Green Senate, to enforce low-level laws and adjudicate cases as necessary. But
their power to actually enforce laws has never been very strong. Though they
have offices throughout the city, if any other guild really did push up against the
Lawkeepers, it’s unlikely they would be able to last out for long.
FACES
• Words Wrought In Steel, rigid Ym Lawkeeper and rule enforcer
• Wist il-Beht, Siccyx Lawkeeper, records-taker, and bureaucrat
• Xanthic Echo, young and inexperienced Krktri patrolman
The League for the Reform of the Criminally Minded sets itself up as a place with the
best intentions. Its guild members include healers, and its buildings are designed to be
comforting. Its goal is to make those who break the laws of Varkith into productive
citizens again. Normally, they are simply stored in one of the city’s prisons, or in the
Tomb. But the League has petitioned the Green Senate for the rights to have those
citizens paroled into its care. And so far, it has seemed to have great success. Reformed
criminals stay as part of the guild, working off the debt they incurred through myriad
tasks, but in general the League helps and supports all the people of Varkith.
Except, the reality is, of course, not that simple. The League doesn’t reform the
criminals nearly as much as it seems to. Instead, it simply teaches them how to
be better criminals. It teaches them how to hide their actions, how to cover their
USING GUILDS
There are a lot of guilds in this chapter! They’re here mostly as reference—
prebuilt, juicy, interesting guilds for you to pull from at will. But if you’re
looking for a starting place to figure out where to bring these guilds into
play, look at the list and compare it to the PCs’ own guild, trying to find
one one for each of the following categories:
• An adversary—a guild that will directly oppose the PCs’ guild and their
interests, whether because their purposes are too similar, or because they
simply butt heads over similar territory.
• An ally—a guild that presents an opportunity for both to work together
for their mutual advancement. At least until the benefits to backstab-
bing the PCs' guild outweighs the costs.
• A power—a powerful guild that might brush up against the PCs’ own
guild, showing what a large guild can do and what it wants, and giving
them additional opportunities and challenges.
You should feel free to introduce more guilds throughout play, especially
through guild turns and hard moves. The PCs should never feel like they
run the only guild in the city!
FACES
• Elongated Tune, Krktri break-in master and frequent freelancer from the
League
• Scale, a Freed One chameleon and pickpocket eager to advance in the League
• Qbthim the Soft-Footed, a V’ss’liga public “reformer” and trainer of new
thieves for the League
The Sisterhood of the Forge is devoted to one thing above all: artifice, the kind
that stories are told about. They create new devices, yes, crafting innovative tools,
especially those that make their own work easier. But they are mostly concerned
with producing the kinds of artifacts about which legends are told. They believe
that through practice and struggle, they can craft mythical objects with regularity,
instead of with the infrequency of the legends themselves.
FACES
• Shayen Wannic, D’horvae fire tender and hopeful Forge Sister
• Quaholatarjaya, mad Halarth Forge Sister and inventor
• Formful Thought, Ym crystal-craftswoman and traditionalist
The Slayers Alliance kills. That is its purpose, and that is what it excels at. Mem-
bers of the Alliance include some of the most terrifyingly effective killers the
city of Varkith has ever seen. It’s not an assassin’s guild—not exactly. The Slayers
Alliance makes their purview the slaying of monsters. Of dangerous creatures and
powerful, nightmarish entities. They take contracts for work in the city, and they
take contracts for work in the world at large—theirs are some of the only Varkith
citizens willing to take their work beyond the confines of the island city regularly.
The truth is that the Slayers Alliance came together to give warriors and the battle-
minded an excuse to indulge their urges within the purview of Varkith’s laws. So
long as the Slayers Alliance continues to offer its service and doesn’t overstep the
rules, the other guilds are more than happy for its presence—like a living weapon
they can direct at will, as long as they have enough coin.
Of course, as times change and the monsters the Slayers Alliance so endeavors to
slay become more and more scarce, some of the Slayers are talking about opening
FACES
• Nerje Craytor, upstart D’horvae slayer and assassin pushing for guild reform
(to allow for assassination of citizenry)
• Boken Hakkart, top-notch Fellegrith slayer sent after the worst monsters that
crop up in Varkith
• Hate as Razor, Ym slayer and scout, organizing hunts after other monsters and
creatures to drum up work
CONGLOMERATIONS
THE ACADEMY OF SECRETS
Drive: To take information and hoard it
Leader: Tips, a magpie Freed One
Rank: Conglomeration—3 Sense: +2 Might: +1
Influence: +0 Powers: +1 Territory: +2
Coin: 2 generated per turn.
The Academy of Secrets collects knowledge and information, but not to share it
with everyone, like the House of News, or to use it to create new wisdom, like the
Philosophers Guild. The Academy requires its members to take any information
they desire. All information must be taken, the Academy holds, and so it takes.
The Academy’s locations are secret. The Academy’s agents are stealthy. Discovering
one of them is possible, and indeed, smiled upon by the Academy—taking
the knowledge of their existence or their location is something they very much
approve of. Stealing secrets from them might lead to an offer of employment.
But the Academy doesn’t entirely hoard the information it collects. The leaders of
the Academy, known as Spymasters, are more than happy to use their garnered
secrets to blackmail others. To bend the city to their will, making sure secret
nooks and crannies are built into construction projects, or secret routes are built
through the sewers for their agents to travel. If a guild is ever looking for dirt on
its competitors, the Academy of Secrets is their best bet.
FACES
• Sand il-Sassymyn, scarred agoraphobic Siccyx secret taker and archivist
• Brenkel Cort, Fellegrith spy, Academician, and infiltrator extraordinaire
• Hope Unseen, overprotective Ym trainer and teacher of new Academicians
FACES
• Mlehaut the Careful Carver, V’ss’liga precision butcher who loves her job
• Nakaleus Bonescaper, ambitious Orkari butcher bone craftswoman
• Belev Sec-Siga, corrupt Isqu butcher salesman
The Culinary Priests believe that in taste lies holiness. In consumption lies glory.
They believe they can bring about a state of divine rapture through the perfect
meal, connecting their customers with the unity of creation. The net result is that
the Culinary Priests craft meals of incredible taste and quality, using a vast panoply
of foods from throughout the world. Eating a meal from the Priests is not only a
great honor, but often a life-changing experience. Their meals are practically con-
sidered mythical artifacts in and of themselves.
The Culinary Priests, unlike so many other guilds in Varkith, operate largely
without subterfuge. They pursue their culinary experiments wholeheartedly,
and that is all they care about. Everything they do is designed to facilitate those
experiments. But of course, that unthinking devotion to their cause leads them
to take action other guilds wouldn’t even contemplate. They will pursue their
strange foodstuffs at any cost, whether they’re trying to obtain essence of granite,
or filet of Ym-dreamstuff.
The Culinary Priests’ meals are valued throughout Varkith, and markers for their
guild are regularly traded in exchange for such exquisite delicacies as only they
can make. And the Culinary Priests are more than willing to trade large sums in
exchange for the most exotic of meats and foods.
FACES
• Heavenly Taste, an Ym Priest and sous-chef to Veth il-Crays, looking to take
Veth’s position
• Salt Rose, an up-and-coming Krktri Culinary Priest always looking to
experiment with new foods
• Vidden Caqoric, a D’horvae food seller, preparer, and designer of new culinary
implements
The Temple of the Grand Gods started from weakness. Many small gods, with
their small constituencies, would never have been able to achieve the power to
thrive in Varkith on their own. So they banded together, combining their guilds
into a single larger entity. The Temple of the Grand Gods devotes its places of
worship to serve all of its constituent religions.
Each individual god who is part of the Temple gets a shrine dedicated to him, her,
them, or it, guaranteed, in every sanctuary the guild owns across the whole of the
city. The main priests of the Temple dedicate themselves to the whole, instead of
to any particular god. They’ve worked out a labyrinthine and intricate pattern of
doctrine to fit all the gods into a single ecclesiastical tapestry.
In fact, very few outside of these priests could possibly comprehend that tapestry
and all that it encompasses. But they care not. Everything incorporated into their
doctrine belongs to them, according to their strictures. The understanding of
worshippers is not necessary for them to facilitate worship.
The Temple of the Grand Gods has reached a point in its life when it no longer
needs to request weaker guilds and gods to join its artificial pantheon. Instead,
it is now a predator, looking to weaken and conquer other godly guilds, taking
over their worship and integrating them into itself. Whether it will succeed is
questionable, but many interested in the divine find the Temple of the Grand
Gods to be a dire threat to their sphere.
FACES
• Cxexyl the Polytheist Speaker, V’ss’liga proselytizer and fervent believer
• Dirmytt Sep, secretly unbelieving Fellegrith custodian of the Temples
• Creen ip-Salys, Siccyx donation collector and priest of Hamdite, God of
Accountancy
INSTITUTIONS
THE ENVOYS
Drive: To collect successful contracts and Masks
Leader: Sym Al-deesa, an Isqu sorceress
Rank: Institution—4 Sense: +1 Might: +2
Influence: +1 Powers: +2 Territory: +2
Coin: 3 generated per turn.
The Envoys are a guild made to serve other guilds. They act as go-betweens.
Communicators. Representatives for any who can pay their fees. They ensure that
antagonistic guilds are isolated from each other, that the powerful have worthy
representatives they can send in their stead, that diplomacy is kept civil and safe.
Over the years, the Envoys have mastered many ways of conducting
representation, including magical techniques allowing those who purchase their
services to actually puppet the mouths of the Envoys from safety. Imagine,
an Envoy who submits her body to be controlled, remotely, as a proxy for
her employer. She could be the perfect courier, or the perfect safe means of
communication. The Envoys police the use of their members strictly to ensure
they are not used outside the boundaries of their contracts, and no guild would
be so brash as to violate those contracts—the exact way in which the Envoys
create new puppets is an unnerving secret, and rumors abound of contract
violators who were forced into such servitude against their will.
Lately, the Envoys have been using a new technique. Masks, perfectly contoured
to match the faces of the Envoys’ clients. The Envoys create the mask and weave
the client’s intent into it, allowing the Envoy who wears the Mask to take on a
piece of the client’s mind, bearing that client’s needs, concerns, and wants into
a negotiation along with that client’s style and mannerisms. The Envoy, to some
extent, becomes the client.
FACES
• Deva sana-Wiev, Isqu and most famous and well-respected Envoy in the city
• Bocourricisis, eccentric Halarth master Mask maker
• Fthkorat the Faceless Summoner, greedy V’ss’liga Envoy broker
The Servants of the People are a relatively young guild—which makes their rise
to power all the more impressive, and important. The guild is devoted to helping
newcomers to the city, and helping the guildless. Most often, the guildless either
find themselves folded into an existing guild as very low-level servants, or they are
caught by the Lawkeepers and thrown out of the city or into prison. The Servants
try to prevent this from happening by bringing the guildless into the Servants
itself, right up until they can find a guild that better suits them.
All of those who were helped by the Servants have paid it back to them, tenfold,
out of gratitude. And this money quickly accumulated, allowing the Servants to
become a large guild with a shot at a Council Member seat. The Servants would
like nothing more than to unseat one of the older, stodgier, staid guilds from the
Senate, so they can effect real change to help the newcomers to the city.
There are plenty of guilds who would love nothing more than to see the Servants
fall, and would happily employ other guilds to such ends. But the Servants and those
they’ve helped are only growing in prominence throughout the city, and they will use
that power to defend themselves, even hiring guilds for their own protection.
FACES
• Vask the Unnamed, an Orkari spurned by her family and devoted to the cause
of helping the guildless
COUNCIL MEMBERS
THE DOCKYARD COOPERATIVE
Drive: To control what comes in and out of Varkith
Leader: Senator Viscan Truth, an Isqu, former captain and privateer
Rank: Council Member—5 Sense: +2 Might: +2
Influence: +2 Powers: +1 Territory: +2
Coin: 4 generated per turn.
So many of the first guilds of Varkith were aimed at the docks, working to unload
cargo, or repair ships. After all, the docks have been a constant part of Varkith’s
success, and it was only natural for early guilds to find their fortune on the water-
front. But over time, those guilds competed and vied with one another, sometimes
violently, sometimes indirectly. Ultimately, they were winnowed down to only the
strongest, most successful guilds...and then those devoured each other. The Dock-
yard Cooperative is the final result.
FACES
• Paka Tiv-Qadik, an Isqu dockyard manager looking to start a new guild or
hook onto one other than the Cooperative
• Weskajnmicika, a Halarth shipwright and smuggler of illegal drugs into Varkith
• Thinskin, an amphibious Freed One and unhappy low-man on the totem pole
The House of News positioned itself as counter to the Philosophers Guild when it
was first formed. The Philosophers Guild shared its knowledge, but only with those
who devoted themselves to the learnings and to the Philosophers’ school. The House
of News, however, devoted itself to sharing information all across the city, wherever
possible, whenever possible, as soon as possible. It would free knowledge from the
careful cages in which those like the Philosophers Guild would lock it away.
The House of News wouldn’t have been able to rise to power without the Infovore,
the enormous, strange creature whose body is spread all throughout the city’s
underparts, in walls and tunnels and pipes. Nobody knows where the Infovore
came from, but most believe that the founders of the House of News planted it in
FACES
• Fenton Wynam, put-upon and exasperated Isqu Varkith News current events editor
• Haggard Poem, an experienced and mildly corrupt Krktri maintenance worker
on the Infovore’s nodes
• Meyathoraxina, a Halarth reporter whose art form of choice is “the truth”
The Jadethroats are the descendants of the original Five. By some reckonings, they
were the very first guild of Varkith. They serve the Green Lady above all, and as the
Green Lady tied herself to Varkith body and soul, so do they. They are Varkith’s
elite law enforcement agents, charged with enforcing its most critical rules in the
most dire of situations.
Such service requires sacrifice. Each Jadethroat is so called for the spike of jade sent
piercing through their throats upon initiation. They lose their voices to the spike, and
forever it protrudes from their necks. This is a sacrifice to the Green Lady, a way of
honoring her own voicelessness. Most of the Jadethroats carry around slates with which
to communicate, and woe betide any in the city who show impatience with their
inability to speak quickly. Jadethroats are respected in many places, feared in many
others—for they have a power passed down from the Green Lady, a power that makes
them capable of the enforcement that is their purpose. They can use the city’s eidolons.
When powerful heroes came to Varkith after the Desolation and the passing of the
Green Law, thinking they could challenge her and her city, either she or her Five slew
them with ease. She had their bodies taken apart, the most powerful pieces sewn
FACES
• Lyra Siddim, Isqu Jadethroat and brutal oppressor
• Kremmenathor, Orkari captain of the Jadethroats and honest servant of Varkith
• Nahalanydra, naïve Halarth eidolon craftswoman and repairwoman
The Philosophers Guild is one of the oldest guilds in all of Varkith, the result of
scholars and sages coming together in the aftermath of the Desolation to devote
FACES
• Pointed Ears, cat-like Freed One and parsimonious master magical historian
• Khelsric Vantor, ambitious novice D’horvae philosopher scribe
• Quillick the Virtuous, Orkari philosopher-warrior and proselytizer of Virtue
I
n The Green Law of Varkith, the primary source of fiction is the interactions
between the guilds. Letting the powerful (and not-so-powerful) organizations
bounce into and off each other will generate plenty of material for your group.
Guilds are active, fluid things, and their struggles and machinations will drive PCs
to react as your group plays to find out what happens. As such, steer clear of using
traditional Dungeon World adventure fronts when you start running a game of The
Green Law of Varkith. Fronts change the focus of the game from the machina-
tions of the guilds to preventing terrible disasters that might befall the city.
But if you’re interested in having traditional Dungeon World fronts, here are a few
that bring in threats beyond the basic guild system. You’re best off introducing
these fronts after a few sessions, when the players have gotten to know and care
about the city. These fronts will introduce dangers to all of Varkith that might
require guilds to band together to deal with...and might turn the PCs into the very
heroes the Green Law is designed to forbid.
DANGER: CICATRIX
Type: Power-mad Wizard (impulse: to seek magical power)
A Halarth sorceress who suffered blows of bigotry and hatred. Her eyes were taken
from her by knives, and her vestigial limbs were cut from her. The Lawkeepers did
find those responsible, and enacted punishment upon the criminals. But that did
not take away her pain, and her hatred, and her need to ensure that nothing like
it would ever happen again. She renamed herself Cicatrix, after the scar tissue she
bore, and she seethed in the dark.
And in her blindness, she was able to tap into a magic that had been lost to her kind
ever since they were first separated from the Arthanuel. She found a way to tap into
an endless spectrum of vision, seeing colors beyond description, worlds hidden just
out of sight of this one. Her blinded eyes were capable of seeing more than ever
before, and she could bend the world to her will.
With her new sight, she crafted art the likes of which had never been seen in
Varkith or the world at large; its equal could only be found on the island of the
Arthanuel themselves. She formed a whole guild around herself, a young guild,
growing rapidly in power but still no match for the greatest of Varkith. And she
led them in the creation of more and more art, each piece of which unlocked more
of her sight and her magic.
Soon, she will be able to see so deeply into the world that she will be able to
change it fundamentally with as much ease as sculpting...and then she can reshape
it to ensure that what happened to her cannot happen again.
The guild that Cicatrix grew around herself, the Many-Hued Seers, is made up
largely of Halarth, with some individuals from other peoples, most of whom have
some means of seeing far more than normal. Krktri, whose eyes can cover entire
buildings, or V’ss’liga, who see in dreams what others cannot even imagine.
The Seers are artists and wizards, all, and all seek the guidance of Cicatrix. The
art she creates transfixes them, teaches them that they have so much to learn, and
drives them on to greater heights.
Cicatrix cannot teach them all her own sight as quickly as she learned it—they
lack the necessary grounding in pain and blindness. But they make progress, and
as they do, they produce their own works of strange, magical art, each one a small
door in the walls of the world opened up to madness from beyond. And each one,
beautiful and transfixing to all observers.
The Seers grow in number daily, and the most powerful people in Varkith seek
their works more and more. To have one of the Seers’ pieces is the height of status.
And as their works spread throughout the city, their power only grows still further.
The majority of the Seers' funds have gone into the purchase and maintenance of
the Gallery of Seeings. It is a display of the Seers’ best works, where people of the
city can come to both behold their glory, and peruse them for purchase.
The structure is simply a single large, open space, formerly a warehouse. Sculptures
set up in the open to be walked around, paintings hung from the walls to be ex-
amined. The number of pieces in the Gallery remains constant—as the Seers make
more, they sell more. Eventually, as the number of Seers grows, they might have to
expand the Gallery entire, but they can remain as they are for quite some time.
The problem, of course, being that having these strange pieces, crafted with other-
worldly vision and imbued with a mad sort of magic, all held in a single location
leads to a weakening of the walls of the world. And there are always things beyond
the world that would love to get inside, searching for opportunities. The strange
misshapen sculptures in the Gallery may provide them with the best chance
they’ve ever had to get into this sphere.
The Gallery has become a place where nightmares may become real, whether in
the art pieces themselves, or in the madness of those who spend too long staring at
them.
The Things From Outside are horrible eldritch creatures, abominations from
between the worlds who consume entire planes and lay their young in dying
worlds. They watch all spheres across the entirety of existence, ever searching
for ways in, for precious morsels to consume. This world is strong and vibrant,
far too powerful to be easy prey for their attentions...but they are sensitive to
any opening, and the workings of Cicatrix and her Seers are exactly the kind of
cracks they search for.
They cannot touch the world directly, not yet. But they can appear in the minds
and dreams of those who open their eyes too widely. They can visit those who
splinter their minds upon the sublime, mad works of the Seers. They can send
messages, and promise more power and inspiration. And when the art of the Seers
or the strangeness of the Gallery opens the cracks wide enough, then they can
come through. And when they do, this world, no matter how young or strong that
it is, will fall to their power.
The Grave-Eyed Swords come across the sea from the island of the Arthanuel,
following their leader, Blade in Light that Cures. Blade in Light used his scrying
tools—crystalline mobiles and flexible glass maps—to look out upon the world
and see the rise of the contorting darkness that threatened even the Arthanuel
on their home. He saw the past, present, and future, and he saw that Varkith’s
free-wheeling structure could damn the whole world as it allowed evil to incu-
bate within its confines. So he gathered together Arthanuel and showed them
his visions, and told them of his plans. And together they named themselves the
Grave-Eyed Swords, and they built their vessels and sailed forth.
Their armada of carapace boats with sails made of gossamer insectile wings is swift
and powerful, much stronger than any other navy present in the world today.
It will take them time to arrive at Varkith from across the sea, but they come
onward, an unstoppable juggernaut of a fleet. They will capture every boat and
colony they come upon along the way, instilling their own order and beginning to
make progress against the darkness they fight.
And finally, their boats will come upon Varkith itself, and they will invade the city,
casting forth powerful magics and deploying ancient, dangerous weaponries. They
will save the city by conquering it, or they will save the world by razing it to the
ground, even as tears spill from their compound eyes.
GRIM PORTENTS
• Cicatrix unveils a new work in the Gallery—“A Vision of Worlds Beyond” —and
through it, the Things From Outside make contact with her.
• The Arthanuel fleet detects the crack in the world, and news of their coming
reaches Varkith.
• The Seers sell “A Vision of Worlds Beyond” to the Green Senate itself, where it
is prominently displayed to the leaders of the city.
• The Grave-Eyed Swords arrive at Varkith and invade the city as citizens
throughout Varkith are driven mad by the Seers’ art.
• The Swords attack the Gallery in an all-out battle against Cicatrix and her Seers,
but Cicatrix is bolstered by the Things, and slays Blade in Light that Cures.
• Cicatrix takes from the bodies of the dead Arthanuel and creates a new art
piece that opens a portal for the Things From Outside; she becomes their
powerful new emissary.
STAKES
• Who will be corrupted by the Seers’ art?
• Will the Grave-Eyed Swords invade or destroy Varkith?
• Will Cicatrix ally with the Things From Outside?
IMPENDING DOOM
• Destruction (the Things From Outside have entered the world and begin to
devour it, piece by piece.)
The Awakened V’ss’liga have seen the true face of the Dreamer. But they are not
enchanted by it. They do not see its divine glory. Unlike most of their brethren,
when confronted with the power of this rising god in their dreams, they reacted
with disgust. Hatred. They realized that this Dreamer was coming to rob the
world of its own identity. It was not something to be honored; it was an enemy.
It was not a true god, not like those they worshipped in their own temples; it was
something else.
They consider themselves Awakened compared to their kin. Awakened to the
truth. And they pursue all chances to keep this creature away from the city and
weakened. They aren’t quite sure of how to do that, however—but it doesn’t
matter when a firebrand like Ecktherkis V’rrigan is leading them. Ecktherkis has
dictated that any who dream of the Dreamer and do not immediately deny the
creature in fact lend it power, and must be convinced to deny it...or be destroyed.
The Awakened V’ss’liga come from all manner of guild throughout the city, and
they meet quietly and secretly at nights. They are not a guild of their own—any
such structure would only hinder them. Instead, they simply gather more numbers,
using threats of force to convince further V’ss’liga to join their cause, or to cow other
peoples into getting out of their way. The Awakened are some of the most violent
V’ss’liga in all of Varkith, and their fervor is dangerous to the entire city.
The Zoologists of Varkith would love nothing more than to see one of the V’ss’li-
ga’s abyssal gods arisen, that they might defeat it and dissect it. The things they
could learn! The advancements they could make to arcane lore! They could uncov-
er the very secrets of divinity themselves!
For a long time now, the Zoologists of Varkith have been investigating how to raise
up one of the V’ss’liga’s gods, with the help of some few enterprising V’ss’liga them-
selves. They have made little progress. For whatever reason, they were unable to find
a means by which to access the dreaming minds of these creatures. Some in the guild
believed it was because the dreamers must not exist, but the majority agreed that
continuing to try was worth the effort.
But of late...as the Awakening V’ss’liga have arisen, and the Dreamer nears wake-
fulness...the Zoologists have made great strides. They believe they understand
enough now to begin taking much greater steps. Using a combination of thauma-
turgical ritual with dissected brains of V’ss’liga corpses, coupled with the appropri-
ate power sources and bindings, they believe they may be able to both revive the
Dreamer, and chain it.
Of course, to do so will require them to obtain all those necessary components.
The brain matter...the ritual ingredients...the appropriately translated texts...all
of it. Many of which they already have, but many more of which they still must
obtain. And they must move quickly, before the opportunity passes. They will
strike at the Dockyard Cooperative and steal incoming crates of goods. They will
employ the Slayers to hunt those creatures reachable in Varkith. They will hire
the Artist’s Collective and the League for the Reform of the Criminally Minded
to steal what they need from still further guilds. And they will deploy their own
agents and forces directly to take whatever else is accessible.
DANGER: LULLABYE
Type: Chosen One (impulse: to fulfill or resent their destiny)
A newcomer to Varkith. A young V’ss’liga, risen from the oceans, walking out onto
its shores as many have before. She was taken in, watched over by those guilds who
make it their business to attend to such immigrants (in hopes of earning profits
on their later success). As is usual for a V’ss’liga, she was asked for her name, and
she supplied it: Lullabye. An unusual choice for a V’ss’liga, but not so out of the
ordinary as to draw any attention. And eventually, she left her caretakers to find
her way in Varkith.
GRIM PORTENTS
• V’ss’liga throughout the city, and the Awakened in particular, dream of
Lullabye—the Dreamer pointing them to their “messiah.”
• The Awakened hunt and chase Lullabye to kill her so she cannot summon the
Dreamer, and the Zookeepers take notice.
• The Zookeepers intervene and kill many of the Awakened, taking their bodies
and capturing Lullabye.
• The Zookeepers of Varkith begin experimenting upon Lullabye’s mind. She
kills them and escapes into the city, injured and alone.
• Lullabye, delirious with pain and anger, awakens the Dreamer to punish
the city that has so mistreated her; it stalks toward Varkith, unbound and
uncontrolled.
• The Dreamer looms over Varkith eternally, and the city is lost to a mad,
endlessly warping nightmare.
STAKES
• Will the Dreamer awaken?
• Will the Zookeepers be able to bind the Dreamer?
• Will Lullabye accept or fight her destiny?
IMPENDING DOOM
• Rampant Chaos (The Dreamer undermines the very rules of reality in
Varkith and transforms the entire island into a mad and chaotic ever-shifting
nightmare.)
The Envoys (page 95) do not operate like nearly any other guild in Varkith. They are
a go-between guild, serving other guilds in their interactions with each other. They
have made themselves valuable to most of the guilds throughout Varkith, and that
value has given them power. And they are always looking for ways to increase their
utility and their capability...even in directions less than ethical. They have learned
to copy memories and personalities of important leaders they represent, and how to
even appear as those individuals at any time. No other guild would suspect them of
doing it...but the power is there, and who would know if they had done it?
The Guild Coalition is, for the Envoys, the next step up. It would make them
directly one of the most powerful guilds in the city, and it would give them access
to still more guilds throughout Varkith. They would have chances to copy more
faces and minds, and to increase their own power exponentially. And if they were
willing to go that far, they could even replace members of their fellow ally guilds
with their own disguised guildmembers, taking over the whole of the Coalition
covertly.
Yes, the Guild Coalition is perfect for the ambition of the Envoys.
The Temple of the Grand Gods (page 94) is already geared to be favorable toward
the Guild Coalition. It is a coalition in its own way, a collection between multiple
small gods and religions who pooled their efforts for survival and for a better shot
at success in Varkith. The Temple’s strategy has proved effective in so many ways,
from successfully pulling in tithes from large swathes of individuals, to exposing
worshippers to new gods they might worship (and therefore tithe money toward at
Temple meetings). The Temple’s own success with the coalition model is viewed by
them as proof that it was divinely inspired, and the Temple believes that the Guild
Coalition is the next step.
Through the Guild Coalition, the Temple of the Grand Gods hopes to wield
additional resources of might and force to undermine the other religious guilds
The Lawkeepers (page 87) are a mundane peacekeeping and bureaucratic force
in the city of Varkith. They do not deal with catastrophic threats to the city, or
terrible criminals—those are the purview of the Jadethroats. The Lawkeepers
concern themselves more with day-to-day functioning of the city and the Green
Senate’s laws.
At first glance, the Guild Coalition would completely undermine many of the
fundamental laws of Varkith. But the Lawkeepers are aware of the power such
an organization could wield, a power that would let them secure the laws of the
city that much more effectively. They would be able to maintain and control
Varkith in unprecedented fashion if they could wield control of the Coalition, or
something like it.
But in its current structure, the Coalition threatens them. It is uncontrolled,
outside of their purview. The Lawkeepers will throw themselves into conflict
against it, until they can learn how to put their own hooks into it. Or until they
are subverted by the sheer power of the combined guilds.
The different guilds of the Coalition are building it together, even as they finalize
their plans for making the Coalition real. Using magic and artifice, they will build
it tall. Taller even than the statue of the Green Lady that surveys the whole of
the city. They believe the physical presence of the tower will send an important
message to the city.
Places take on the meaning and power that the people who build them, who
use them, who live in them, grant those places. The Coalition Tower, even in its
infancy while it’s still being built, is no different. It has begun to take on the power
and meaning of the Coalition. It is hungry. It is dark. The Coalition Tower breeds
a thirst for more. For dominion.
When the Tower stands tall over the city around it, it will not be long before its
essence begins to seep into the air of Varkith.
GRIM PORTENTS
• Building on the Coalition Tower commences as the guilds submit notice
to the Lawkeepers of the Coalition’s formation. Lawkeepers work to block
progress on the Coalition.
• The Academy of Secrets subtly takes control of key Lawkeepers.
• The Lawkeepers cease to block progress while smaller guilds throughout the
city prepare for battle against the Coalition.
• The newly formed Coalition consumes an array of guilds from Varkith,
ranging from weaker religious guilds to other schools of knowledge.
• The Envoys take over the leadership of the other members of the Coalition.
• The Envoys take control of the Coalition Tower, and tear down the statue of
the Green Lady.
STAKES
• Will the Coalition take control of Varkith?
• Will the Envoys take control of the Coalition?
• Will any other guild be strong enough to stand against the Coalition?
IMPENDING DOOM
• Tyranny (The Coalition owns Varkith now, with the laws of the Green Lady
falling before the laws of the Coalition.)
T
he Green City has become a thriving and diverse metropolis, but the entire
purpose behind its unique structure was to prevent the rise of new individuals
with incredible power—new heroes. Despite the Green Lady’s designs,
however, new paths to power crop up regularly, even within the system meant to
prevent them. One would be a fool not to take advantage of these opportunities...
even if it means edging perilously close to breaking the Green Law.
THE JADETHROATS
The Jadethroats are an elite guild, of sorts. They were, to some historians’ reckonings,
the very first guild of Varkith. They serve the Green Lady above all, and as the Green
Lady tied herself into Varkith body and soul, so do they. They are Varkith’s elite law
enforcement agents, charged with enforcing its most critical rules, including the Green
Law itself. Each Jadethroat bears a spike of jade in their necks, piercing their larynxes
and leaving them voiceless. Many carry slates to communicate, and the people of the
city know to be patient with the Jadethroats—they are not to be ignored.
Jadethroats can call forth the city’s eidolons, crafted corpse-bodies made from
former heroes and those who grow too powerful. They can control those eido-
lons, wielding them like weapons in battle, and the eidolons are strong enough to
threaten any other guild in the city. And the Jadethroats haven’t even yet had to
call out their strongest eidolons, made of the bodies of Arthanuel heroes.
Becoming a Jadethroat is a lifelong commitment. On paper, it’s just joining a guild,
but in reality it is changing your body and devoting yourself to their order, forever.
CONTROLLING AN EIDOLON
Controlling an eidolon gives you a powerful weapon, represented by its
stats and equipment and bonuses. But that’s not all. Things that might have
been issues while acting as a simple mortal cease to be at all difficult when
you’re acting through an eidolon. An Isqu might have trouble jumping the
gap between two buildings. An eidolon will simply step across. An ordinary
D’horvae might have trouble when up against five thugs with blackjacks. An
eidolon will simply sweep them away, no Hack & Slash roll required.
Keep in mind the scale of action when thinking about whether an eidolon
triggers a move. If an eidolon is doing something far beneath its power
level, then it just happens—no move required. But if the eidolon is
throwing itself up against a dangerous situation—say, trying to punch
a dragon—then moves are absolutely appropriate. And the eidolon will
allow PCs to trigger moves in situations when they wouldn’t even have
had the opportunity before.
Or at least, that is what it is meant to be. The split loyalties of many more recent
Jadethroats, their greed or their love of power, is one piece of Varkith’s ongoing
corruption. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes the spike without truly
joining the Jadethroats, seeking control of the eidolons for their own selfish ends.
When you take a spike of jade into your throat, you lose your voice and
may take The Voice of the City instead of your normal move the next time
you level up.
AUTHORITY
Being a Jadethroat means the people of Varkith pay attention when you try to
communicate with them. When you order or threaten an NPC using your
status as a Jadethroat, roll+Cha. On a 10+, they do what you want. On a
7-9, they can instead choose one:
• Call your bluff.
• Back away with their hands up.
• Barricade themselves securely in.
• Give you something they think you want.
On a miss, they don’t take kindly to your misuse of authority. You’re in a
clever trap or situation that spirals out of control before you can react.
PERSISTENT EIDOLON
Your connection to a particular eidolon becomes stronger than iron. You can
control that eidolon even from enormous distances, as long as you are both
still in the city. If it is ever destroyed, you immediately take its maximum hp
in damage, but you can form this bond with a new eidolon at your will. Once
you form the bond, you cannot break it until the eidolon is destroyed.
THE COLOSSI
You can call forth the Arthanuel eidolons, if you choose. When you call forth
an Arthanuel eidolon, take 1d4 damage from the strain, and create an eido-
lon as usual, but with the following changes:
Look: Enormous and terrifying.
Stats: Assign 6 points to the eidolon’s Str, Dex, and Con.
Weapon: Choose two from the list.
Defenses: 5 Armor HP: 25 + Con
If you summon an Arthanuel eidolon, it always draws the attention of the city,
and the other Jadethroats. Expect to have to explain your use of such incredi-
ble force, especially if the target of the Eidolon is anything short of an existen-
tial threat to Varkith itself.
THE STREETSOULS
The city has a life all its own. The people flowing down the streets are its blood.
Their words are its thoughts. When the citizens of Varkith sleep at night, some-
times they can feel the city’s essence, tap into that life force pulsing throughout
the city. Touch it directly. The soul of the city is there, for those who know how to
look.
The Streetsouls know exactly how and where to look. They bond themselves into
the city, inscribing maps of its streets upon their flesh and leaving their blood in
secret caches in walls and tunnels. They become a part of Varkith on a deep, essen-
tial level, and that power means they become better protectors and citizens than
maybe even those charged with such duties.
Existing Streetsouls live in myriad guilds, spread across the city, and join together
only in secret to keep their city alive and well. When they find someone they be-
lieve could join the city, they start that person on a path to becoming a Streetsoul,
but they only start someone on the journey. It’s up to the candidate to finish.
To become a Streetsoul requires leaving a piece of yourself in the eight soul-points
of the city, the places where the city’s life is strongest. Finding out what and where
these soul-points are is part of the task set before any prospective Streetsoul—fail
to find the points, and you do not know the city well enough to be bonded to it.
When you leave a piece of yourself in the 8 soul-points of the city, you may take
Soul of the City the next time you level up instead of your normal move.
STREET-FOOTED
You can navigate through the streets of Varkith with unmatched speed. When
you undertake a perilous journey through the streets of Varkith, you
always get there with incredible haste, and you can lead others in the same
fashion. You always get the option “The path to it is quick” on the move Soul
of the City. You will win any race or conflict of speed in the city unless it is
against another Streetsoul.
V
arkith is a center of industry and innovation, a place where magic and
artifice are pushed in new, incredible directions by the countless guilds and
peoples of the Green City. The works of the people of Varkith, at their best,
are the equals of the great artifacts of past ages, for good and for ill. But unlike
those ancient artifacts, these aren’t ensconced within deep, ancient tombs…but are
instead held in vaults of powerful guilds. They aren’t hidden away; they’re prepared
for use. Their power is in the hands of those who would reshape the city.
STEEDCARTS
The world is full of possible beasts of burden, from the purple bloodbeetles of
Ning to the Ghivrai “ooze-oxen” of the Bardoen Swamp. But all livestock come
with their own problems and difficulties: bloodbeetles tend to be ravenous in their
carnivorous hunger, and ooze-oxen leave quite the mess in their wake, especially
during a hot summer day.
DRIFTCLOAKS
Goods need transport, but so, too, do people. Enhancing the speed and methods by
which individual citizens can traverse the city is a consistent source of income for the
city’s guilds. Anybody who offers a better way to get from the Hives to Temple Row
with greater speed can make a killing. So far? The best in the city are driftcloaks.
Each driftcloak is sewn using soul-shavings from temporarily captured air
elementals, thought-wisps, and other such ethereal creatures. They’re designed
to catch the air itself, as well as shifting magical currents, to toss the wearer up
into the air, buoying them along as if weightless. Citizens wearing driftcloaks can
climb to the rooftops and take to the air, soaring across the city with a directness
and speed unmatched by any method so far…save dangerous or experimental
methods, like the Dread Smith’s teleport cubes—the Green Senate banned those
after the cattle-fusion incident created a mess in the shadow of the Green Lady.
It takes a bit of skill and effort to master how to use the driftcloaks. Each driftcloak
is also slightly different—no guild has yet mastered any means of mass production
for such ethereal garments. But there is no argument that, especially for the non-
magical citizens of the city, driftcloaks are the best means of traversing Varkith with
speed and grace.
When you fly across the city with a driftcloak, name your destination and
choose two.
• You get there quickly, faster than anyone on foot.
• You get there safely, without hurting yourself along the flight.
• You get there intact, avoiding damage to you or your cloak.
When you Hack & Slash while in the air, use +Dex instead of +Str. When
you Hack & Slash at a grounded opponent while in the air yourself, deal
+2 damage.
When you survey the city from the air, tell the GM what you’re looking for
and roll+Wis. On a hit, you find something that catches your interest and
fits your inquiry. On a 10+, you may ask a follow-up question. On a miss,
something you were trying to avoid spots you instead.
PHANTOMLICE
The phantomlice are a new creation in Varkith, but one that threatens many a
guild’s means of communications. The House of News, in particular, would like
nothing more than to destroy all the phantomlice in the entire city. But for the
other guilds, the ones who don’t have their own magical or artificial means of
communication—the phantomlice change the game entirely.
A phantomlouse is perfectly crafted, shaped ghost cell, existing in two places
at once. Built on the miniscule, weak, and nigh-unusable souls of insects,
each phantomlouse is remade to vibrate through its metaphysical form,
transforming ethero-magical motion into minute, whispering sound. Speak to one
phantomlouse, and your words are carried across the interplanes to the second,
causing it to vibrate and speak your words back through its twinned self.
Imagine instantaneous, immediate communication between two points, anywhere
across the city. Imagine the utility, the coordination. No more would the House of
News and the Infovore hold any kind of monopoly on the transfer of information
through Varkith.
Phantomlice are exceedingly difficult to produce, and prohibitively expensive to
obtain; their cost is the only reason they have not yet changed the face of Varkith.
But they exist, with more and more crafted by soul-smiths each month. Different
guilds have stolen the plans from each other, so no one guild has a monopoly
on their design, and all are attempting to perfect their prototypes or even find a
way to mass produce them. And there may be uses for them that not even their
craftsman have anticipated…
When you communicate with someone holding or wearing the twin of
your phantomlouse, you can talk to them as if they were in the same room,
triggering any appropriate moves.
When you use your phantomlouse to tap into others’ communications
across the ethereal plane, roll+Int. On a hit, you overhear something useful
and valuable. On a 10+, take +1 forward to use the information you’ve
overheard. On a miss, you burn out your phantomlouse and alert those to
whom you were listening to your surveillance.
When you use your phantomlouse to listen to the voices of the ethereal
plane, be they ghosts, souls, or other, roll+Int. On a hit, you open a line
of communication to whatever ethereal being you name. On a 7-9, the
effect is temporary, unstable, or dangerous. On a miss, you inadvertently
let something through; it possesses your phantomlouse and changes it to its
own purposes.
YRDESCUE’S EXTRACTOR
A rod, about as long as a human arm, with many different controls along it, ranging
from jeweled buttons to twist-switches to toggles. It’s a difficult device to truly
control, considering that Yrdescue had purposely replaced her mind with a four-
dimensional metamagic matrix so she could better understand and manipulate
the forces of the universe. She designed it so it was intuitive to her, but to any sane
being, it seems like the most horrifying and mad musical instrument imaginable.
The end of the rod is a single geodesic sphere of a bluish metal. But when
activated, tendrils and arms emerge from its surfaces, each one tipped with a
different appliance. While it provides an impressive display when turned on in the
open air—tentacles all writhing
and twisting about—the real
usage of the device involves
activating it within another
living being.
Its intended use: Place the
geodesic sphere into the mouth
of a living being. There is an
adjustment toggle to change
the sphere’s size so it should
fit into the mouth of any
given creature. Then, activate
its extraction procedure. The
arms and tendrils will work
their way throughout the body
of the creature, penetrating
its tissues, hooking into
its critical systems and the
primary ties between its spirit
and its corpus. After enough
time has passed, the extractor
should be adequately attached
to the being to remove it
entirely. A solid yank may be
necessary, here. Its organs and
vital systems, captured and
protected in an ethereal flow
by the extractor, should be
weightless (unless one has used
A Crustacean V’ss’liga Holds
the device improperly). One
Aloft Yrdescue’s Extractor
can then study its systems and
V
arkith is a place of the old and the new. Strange new creatures grow amid
its sewers and streets, or take on new forms and shapes better suited to the
city’s labyrinthine, trash-strewn alleys. Old creatures hide within its darkest
recesses, eking out existences completely different from when the island was free
of the Green City. But all are there in Varkith, posing their own dangers.
CHIT TERSWARMS
Qualities: horde, tiny, stealthy 3 hp
Attack: mandibles: d4 damage, hand, 1 Piercing
Beetlerats. Insectoid rodents. Furred, but with chitinous plating, six legs, and
mandibles extruding from a rat’s maw. Compound eyes, and pink rat’s tails.
Disgusting creatures, living in filth and the sewers, but more than capable
of tearing all the flesh from a living being when acting as a full swarm. Their
MOVES
• Swarm and tear with mandibles.
• Surge from crevices.
• Flee into shadows.
With so many people and beliefs all mingling in a single place, it’s no wonder
that there are countless gods strewn all throughout the city. Most are just strong
enough to have bodies, but nowhere near powerful enough to gather more
strength—remnants of some old world belief, carried over the seas, and changed
in the city’s crucible. These little gods occupy many of the same corners, niches,
and crevices as the city’s other vermin. Little receptacles of belief, always trying
in their own way to garner more faith, but struggling to pick up even the
smallest scraps of faith.
They are all different in form—some bull-headed, others shaped like masses of
tentacles, still others made of glass or stone or tar. They band together into small
pantheons, and vie with other pantheons and vermin for territory, for power, and
for life. They’re often quite knowledgeable, especially over their own miniscule
domains, and giving them just the smallest prayer can be enough to earn their
goodwill. But angering one of these diminutive pantheons has left more than one
unwary citizen devoured in some religious sacrifice—they can be much deadlier
than their size would suggest.
MOVES
• Enact a small miracle.
• Strike with weak divine fury.
• Share secret knowledge in exchange for prayer.
PLAGUELINGS
Qualities: group, tiny, divine, magical, intelligent 9 hp
Attack: tentacles and thorns: d6 damage, close 1 Armor
The plaguelings are relatively new to Varkith’s vermin population, but they’re
dangerous in a way that the other trash-dwelling monsters aren’t. They’re larger,
and they grow bigger the more they feed—the biggest on record to date still aren’t
larger than halflings, but more and more of the larger ones have been appearing
throughout the city. Their bodies are strange and shifting, flowing, piles of virulent
sludge with tentacles and thorns sweeping out wildly. And anything they don’t kill
and consume, they infect with their own plague.
INFECTION
When you become infected with the plagueling’s disease, start a count-
down clock with six segments, with the first one marked off:
• 0-3 o’clock: The infection is in your body, but not yet affecting
you deeply.
• 3-6 o’clock: The wound is disgusting and won’t close, but you can
still function.
• 6-9 o’clock: Black veins are visible beneath your skin, extending
from the wound, but you are not yet unduly impaired.
• 9-10 o’clock: Moving becomes difficult. Take -1 ongoing to all Str,
Dex, and Con rolls.
• 10-11 o’clock: You are in constant pain and agony as your body
turns to a strange sludge. Take -2 ongoing to all rolls.
• 11-12 o’clock: You are dying. Lose 1d6 points of Constitution, daily,
until you are reduced to 0 Constitution, at which point you die. When
you would be reduced to 0 Constitution, make the Last Breath move.
The disease clock advances every time you rest or make camp without
having cured it; whenever the GM chooses to advance it as a hard move; or
whenever you would suffer more damage from an infected creature.
Curing the disease is possible, but far from simple or easy—the disease is
primordial and deeply dangerous. Simple spells won’t work on it. To cure it,
you’ll have to find someone with the knowledge of how to fight the infec-
tion, or you’ll have to perform your own ritual.
The sickness turns flesh to grayish sludge, spreading veins of corruption deep into
the infected creature’s body. It kills, and when its victim finally sloughs off this
mortal coil, the virulence within them transforms into another plagueling, pulling
itself free from their flesh.
So far, the plaguelings have not been prominent enough or dangerous enough to
truly start an epidemic—they’ve remained in hiding in the sewers and alleys of
Varkith. But that potential is there, and the healing guilds of Varkith have begun
to take note of the danger these creatures pose to the city.
Instinct: To infect others with its plague
MOVES
• Squeeze through cracks.
• Slurp around strikes.
• Pour diseased flesh into open wounds.
RAZORBIRDS
Qualities: horde, tiny, flying, organized, construct, 5 hp
hoarder, magic-seeking
Attack: razor wings: d6 damage, hand, 1 Piercing
Razorbirds were one of the earliest inventions in Varkith, made to carry messages
across the city. They provided aesthetic beauty as Glassfinches—named for their
strange, shifting glass bodies—and as they flew the light would bend through
them to cast fantastical patterns of rainbow colors upon the ground below. Like so
many such creations, however, their nature and purpose soon slipped out of the
control of their creators. They grew alive, and learned to seek out magical items,
squirreling those devices away like magpies. They drew power from those items
and poured it into stolen shards of glass to create new members of their flocks.
When they were threatened by other vermin and angered citizens of Varkith, they
sharpened the edges of their wings and talons to become razors.
Most citizens of Varkith now understand that, when brandishing magic, they must
keep a weather eye out for razorbird flocks. Those who take to the air, especially,
watch for these glinting, deadly creatures.
Instinct: To steal items of magical power
MOVES
• Sweep down from the skies without warning.
• Shriek for help.
• Slice and tear with razor wings.
TRASHGHOSTS
Qualities: solitary, small, stealthy, terrifying 10 hp
Attack: spectral touch: d8 damage, close, ignores Armor 1 Armor
Trashghosts are perhaps the most dangerous of the city’s vermin, but are still widely
thought not to be predators because of their weaknesses. They inhabit piles of trash—
steer clear of those, and one can avoid them. They do not stray far from where they
lurk, and always return to their original position. They are not intelligent, and react to
the guilt of those who pass by; the guiltless should have nothing to fear from them.
Of course, in Varkith, there really is no such thing as being “guiltless.”
Trashghosts are fragmented spectral remains of the dead, pieces of broken souls
reassembled by a kind of ethereal attraction. They have no true will, no true mind,
and they only animate the same kind of scattered remains like themselves. But they
MOVES
• Rise up without warning from trash.
• Take on the face of a victim’s greatest fears and regrets.
• Pull the life from an entangled victim.
PREDATORS
HUNTER WORMS
Qualities: solitary, devious, amorphous, stealthy 14 hp
Attack: needled maw: d10 damage, intimate, hand, close,
2 Armor
ignores Armor, 1 Piercing
Whisper worms are used throughout Varkith for labor and work. They regularly
grow large enough to be used as beasts of burden, to pull carts or other vehicles.
The Worm Cultivators Clan is even working on growing them large enough and
silent enough to be used throughout the city at night, eating up the rubbish and
refuse spread throughout the streets.
Using the worms for so many purposes means that there’s more than a few strays in the
city. Over time, they have changed to suit their environment. They’ve grown slimmer
and faster, more capable of slipping through the tight quarters of the city’s streets. The
ventilation holes covering the hide of a normal whisper worm have grown into suckers,
actively pulling sound out of the air, making them not only silent, but actual voids of
sound. They’ve grown strong and precise, with needle-fanged maws that tear precise
chunks of flesh out of their prey. They’ve become perfect for city-wide survival.
Entire guilds have sprung up around the need to kill off the hunter worms, and
conspiracies abound about why they have yet to fully solve the problem. Maybe
they are ensuring the need for their own guilds. Maybe they aren’t truly slaying
worms, but instead controlling and training them. Or maybe they’re actually using
the worms to attack people in the city. Even taking money for it.
But these are just rumors and insane conspiracy theories, of course. Of course.
Instinct: To strike and consume vulnerable prey
146 THE GREEN LAW OF VARKITH
THE CREATURES OF SEWER AND SKY
MOVES
• Erupt from a hidden place in the city.
• Silence sounds around them.
• Strike with needle-sharp fangs.
JADETHROAT EIDOLONS
The Jadethroat eidolons are the bodies that protect Varkith, sewn up and
changed, jade threaded into them so that the Jadethroats can summon them
up from their hiding places throughout the city. For most of your game,
the Jadethroats are likely to be NPCs, and are likely to use the eidolons as
weapons against the PCs. When you need statistics for an NPC Jadethroat
Eidolon, first pick how powerful this eidolon is. The following page num-
bers correspond to pages in the core Dungeon World book.
• If it’s a basic eidolon, then it’s either a Guardsman (page 317), Knight
(page 319), or Soldier (page 321) baseline
• If it’s an Arthanuel eidolon, then it’s either an Ogre (page 272) or Hill
Giant (page 272) baseline
• If it’s a truly powerful Arthanuel eidolon, then it’s either an Angel (page
307), Barbed Devil (page 307), or Chain Devil (page 308) baseline
Once you know what baseline to use, then choose between one and four of
the following to make that baseline into an eidolon:
• Add +4 hp
• Increase its damage die size by one step
• Add +2 damage
• Add +2 Armor
• Add 2 Piercing and messy
• Add a move referring to a magical ability of the eidolon
THE URSALOK
Qualities: solitary, huge, terrifying 24 hp
Attack: enormous claws and jaws: b[2d10]+3, 4 Armor
reach, near, forceful, messy
The Ursalok. The Plague Bear. An ancient creature from the earliest times in the
world. A huge ursine monstrosity, strong, deadly. Filled with an undying plague.
The essence of disease. The beast drips fetid, rancid flesh. Exudes putrescence.
The Ursalok is a primal creature, from the earliest days of the world, and the
MOVES
• Spawn Plaguelings from its own flesh.
• Find “healthy” denizens and infect or destroy them.
• Consume plague-ridden life to heal itself.
UMBRAPHAGE
Qualities: solitary, large, magical, planar 20 hp
Attack: burning heat and light: d10+1 damage, close, reach 4 Armor
Umbraphages are rare in Varkith, and nonexistent anywhere else in the world.
But when they appear, it’s generally with all the force and danger of a natural
disaster.
They are creatures of light and heat, almost impossible to look directly at for their
sheer intensity and brightness. Reports suggest vaguely humanoid shapes with
additional limbs, but between the danger the umbraphages pose, and the difficulty
perceiving them, no one has been able to establish more details.
They burst free of torches or lanterns or magical lights, and grow rapidly in
size as they pull darkness into them. They create flames wherever they walk,
growing brighter and brighter, consuming whatever darkness surrounds them.
And when they have finally been hurt enough, by sword and by spell, they
disappear back into their fire, vanishing into whatever strange plane of light
they must come from.
MOVES
• Create blinding light.
• Give off incinerating heat.
• Disappear into a source of light.
The Misty Charger is Death. One of them, at least. There are so many versions
of Death spread across the myriad cultures of the world, and of Varkith, and
none of them quite agree. Just like with their gods, sometimes the belief drips
through into reality. But Death is inimitable and true, more resilient to the
power of belief.
Nobody knows, then, why exactly the Misty Charger appears in Varkith, one of
the only Deaths to appear often and openly in this world. Some combination of
the city’s melting pot of beliefs? Its enormous collection of cultures? Perhaps the
strange experiments and inventions going on within its boundaries?
Regardless, the whinnies of the Misty Charger periodically echo out upon the
streets of the city, and the horse gallops down upon black hooves to charge
across cobblestones. A black equine form surrounded by thick mists, which pour
out of its nostrils with each breath. Inhaling those mists takes the soul out of the
body, bringing it along with the Charger on its course. And the Charger never
appears without seeming to chase down one person in particular—the only
pattern to its appearances—pursuing someone who has previously escaped from
the brink of death.
Only twice has the Charger been “killed,” and then it only dissipated into mist,
to return later. Most citizens believe that the Charger will simply be a constant
presence in Varkith, taking lives...and they’re fine with it, just so long as it doesn’t
try to take their lives.
Instinct: To end the lives of those who’ve cheated death
MOVES
• Charge from the night sky.
• Exhale the mists of death.
• Show someone their death in its eyes.
MOVES
• Smell and feed on death.
• Pass through physical barriers like they don’t exist.
• Tear through attackers with serrated razor arms.
R
unning a game in The Green Law of Varkith is still fundamentally running
a game of Dungeon World, and you should be familiar with those Principles,
Agendas, and Moves as much as possible. They’ll serve you well, even in this
strange metropolis. But here are some additional principles that should help guide
you to portray Varkith in a way that best suits the themes and rules of the Green City.
PRINCIPLES
These principles are just like the same in Dungeon World. They don’t replace any in
the core text, but expand on the principles you’ll find in that book. Keep them in
mind as you run a game in Varkith. The principles are:
GUILDS OR FRONTS?
The last principle above points at an important piece of running The Green Law
of Varkith—should you use Fronts as presented in Dungeon World? The systems
for running NPC guilds, as presented in The Jade Powers, in many ways outright
replace the use of adventure fronts in Dungeon World, even as there are several
adventure fronts presented in The Poison in the City's Veins.
When running The Green Law of Varkith, use the rules in The Jade Powers to
help simulate the actions and beliefs of the NPC guilds and powers throughout
Varkith, along with your own off-screen thinking. Use adventure fronts,
however, whenever you need to represent threats from outside of Varkith’s
own system of guilds and politics. For example, a danger based on the arrival
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The Green Law of Varkith isn’t just a setting or a toolbox for Dungeon World. It
isn’t even a particular tone or setting of its own, built atop the Dungeon World’s
skeleton. It’s more like a harmony, a counterpoint tune meant to entwine and
adjoin with Dungeon World’s original melody.
Dungeon World is, first and foremost, about heroic fantasy adventures into strange
places. You’re unattached rogues, unbound by authority, capable of doing what’s
necessary, breezing in and out of towns along with your work. The Green Law of
Varkith is about building your own guild while largely staying within the confines
of this single crazy city. Sure, there’s adventure to be had here, but it’s not quite the
same as you’d find in a regular Dungeon World game.
And yet, you’re still playing Dungeon World. You’re still using those classes,
those basic moves, those rules, to play in Varkith. Of course you’re going to find
monsters to slash. Of course you’re going to find weird artifacts in crypts buried
under the city.
The push and pull between the two tunes of the game, between Varkith and
Dungeon World, is the balancing act of a game set in the Green City, and it’s
something you’re going to have to keep in mind, whether you’re a player or a
GM, the whole time. But if you can successfully walk the line between the two,
and find a place for stories in which you slay a monster, then come home to pour
your hard-won coin into your guild—so you can take over that building on the
other side of town—only to find that you’ve been censured by the Green Senate
and the only way to undo the edict is to engage in a legally-sanctioned conflict of
champions—that’s where Varkith will sing for you.
There’s plenty of inspiration and pieces for you to pick up from here, to put into
other games, absolutely. If you have a hankering to put the Krktri in your next
game of Dungeon World, please do! If you want to set your game in the far regions
of the same world as Varkith, in the places where the wilds are still untamed and
there are places to explore, go for it!
Will you use such wonders as Captain Toth’s Icy Elixir, or Dr. Iso’s Knife
of Connective Processes?
Will you survive the strange fauna of Varkith, from the reaper mantises
to the chitterswarms to the terrible Ursalok?
In this new Chaos World setting, written for the Dungeon World game system,
you’ll play the members of a newly formed guild in Varkith, trying to make
your way as the little fish in a city full of predators. This book contains ev-
erything your group needs to play a game of Dungeon World in this thriving
city, including new rules for running guilds in Varkith; rules for ten different
peoples, the primary denizens of Varkith; adventure fronts and dangers for use
in the later parts of your Varkith campaign; a city’s worth of monsters, magical
items, and compendium classes for this strange city; and more.