The Waxmaker: Beehive Incarnate

Between the Granite Halls and the Hillplains, a great road stands. Dusty feet of a thousand of Mankind’s finest and lowest alike have walked it, to meet the marvels of the Lord on the Hill and bring back news of such beauty. But sometimes dust gets muddy with water, when the wind blows from the Black Swamps to the north and brings dark clouds; and sometimes dust gets muddy with blood, when the highwaymen dare the Lords’ Cordon from the south and bring hunger and steel.
But neither blood nor water was found near the caravan. Only beeswax, and the footprints of many coming in and few coming out. No blood, no corpses and no signs of a fight, only molten wax and a swarm of bees hovering upon an abandoned wagon…

Unknown from the Internet.

Mud and Blood:

Zulal was born in the ghettos of the Ironmurk, the only city of the Scintillating Bay. He learned the value of life and death at an early age, and was forced into the Wilds almost as soon as he could walk. Nobody thought he could survive. He learned the art of bushcraft and learned to pick his fights. He learned the essence of death, and was touched by the Arcane Winds moved by a Feral Murkdweller in the middle of Nowhere. That’s where he noticed it. The winds didn’t touch him alone, and were not made by the feral. They were all-touching, and the fish-man was but a mere spectator pretending to be the director of the play. The bees showed the way the wind blew. The hive showed to truth. The hive was the truth.

He is always accompanied by The Swarm. The Swarm will always follow him closely. The Swarm cares for him, just like he cared for the Swarm when he gave it life.

The Swarm cares.
Wax Golem by epicprivate.

The Swarm:

The Swarm appears as a small army of melting wax men. This is not what the Swarm really is.
The Swarm is the mind behind the Wax Simulacra. It sees everything the Simulacra see, and care for the Hive as a whole. Every member of the Hive is protected by the Swarm. Outsiders are hated. Those that are hated are killed and fed to the Hive.
The Swarm doesn’t fight. It cares for the Hive and provides food for it. The Simulacra do just that: they jump at the enemy, absorbing it and slowly suffocating and crushing him to death. The suffocations takes 5 turns.
The Simulacra are weak to heat. Being near a strong heat source makes impossible for them to fully engulf a man. Attacking them with weapons has a 50% chance of making the same damage to the engulfed victim. Attacking them with fire sets them on fire, killing the Simulacra in 3 turns but risking setting the engulfed creature on fire afterwards.

He's watching you.
Wax Head from Dark Souls 3.

The Hive:

The Hive is a small house on an hilltop, kissed by sun and the moon, and just big enough for a small hunter to live in it.
Actually, that is just the entrance to the Hive. The real Hive is beneath it: the hill itself has been carved and emptied, and giant pillarcombs keep it in place. The hive is mainly inhabited by bees; other insects can be found but are not welcome. Most of the ceilings and walls are covered in beeswax, while the floors are usually covered in dead insects, rotting honey and loot from those unfortunate enough to have met the Swarm.
There are 3 main floors on the Hive: the wooden house, the Upper Cells, and Worker Bowels.
The wooden house is just that: a wooden house, cabin-sized, on top of an hill. Under a rug, a small trap door and a ladder lead down to the Upper Cells: a small maze of corridor, running around two main rooms: the Chamber of the Queens and the Observatory. Scattered around there are a few other laboratories and cages, of little consequence. The cages are always empty. The Swarm never takes prisoners.
The Observatory is a big circular room, with a large hole in the middle encircled by a wax railing. It overlooks the middle of the Worker Bowels, and is the only actual opening to it. There are no stairs and no rope to get down.
The Worker Bowels are a different deal. There are no stairs leading down. There are no real rooms, only ever changing walls of fresh beeswax. Most of the Swarm rests here. The pillars upon which the Hive is based on rest here. The treasures that Zulal and Rory have accumulated throughout the years rest here. The bones of the unfortunate victims of the Swarm rest here.

The Hive.
Houses on the Hill by Pablo Picasso.

The Road:

If found wandering around, Zulal will approach the party amicably, even if he is clearly a problematic individual. A beggar covered in rags head to toe, talking to insects and air. He will try to stop the party and entertain small talk, offer lunch, ask for help and anything else to keep them in place were they are for some time.
The Swarm will never be far, and will arrive very soon. Zulal never leads by more than half an hour of march away. Upon the arrival of the Swarm, Zulal will declare himself as That Which Was Born of the Wind, and will pretend surrender of body, soul and belongings of everyone else while the Swarm marches over consuming people alive.

A Magician in a Beekeeper’s Hat:

Zulal is a Level 2 Pack Rat, which spent both his Advancement Points on Spells. He is an Hexer, who is Doomed to see the Swarming Souls of the Self each time the Arcane Winds blow the wrong way.

Despite coming from Ironmurk, he is no Murkdweller, but a purebred Troll. He hates those slimy lizard with all of his darkened heart, and if there are any in the party he will immediately irradiate hostility and will make sure to gut him personally like the half-fish he is, after the Swarm has arrived.

He is a magician. His Grimoire is a small collection of wax candles, held together by an iron spiky ball that impales them all; they don’t burn and are not consumed by heat. It contains 3 Spells: Wax Simulacra (turns bees into wax golems), Luciforms (draws flames away from their source and around the caster), and Goliath (turns the caster into a crazed Xenomorphesque monkey).

Like this but with troll tusks.
The Pain from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

He will always cast Wax Simulacra each day just before preparing his lunch, so he functionally has only one Spell Point each day (unless caught before 11 am). He will avoid direct confrontation and will avoid using his last Spell Point unless really pressed to or unless meeting a Murkdweller.

When his hand is forced, he will cast Luciforms to catch all the flames that could menace his Swarm and then order the assault. He will use the flames to shield himself from any who get too near. If he is caught away from the Swarm, caught in the morning or meets a Murkdweller, he will cast Blackblood and rush towards his enemies holding a Hikkalan Sword (all Hikkalan weapons are decorated with removable boneshards, which remain in the hit target making wound treatment harder)  which he looted from an exotic caravan. He never wants to resort to Goliath, since using it reminds him of the circumstances where he found it, among the crazed Goblins of the Black Swamp, worshipping their cruel Orc-like shaman as a God.

After the fight, if there are any Murkdwellers, he will take out his ritual kukri made from a single metal bone of an Iron Leviathan, and gut them on the spot, making sure to scatter their entrails around as much as possible. He will try to do this while they are still alive, if possible.

Fucking fishman.
Kuo-Toa from the Forgotten Realms.

Magical Engines, Mechanical Arcanas:

Hexer (Occult Profession):
Hexers use Occult Catalysts to control the flow of fate. Creating a Catalyst takes 10 minutes. Catalysts can either be Totems or Dolls. Both can either reduce or increase the Difficulty of any check by 1. Totems work in a 30’ area, affecting everyone (friend or foe); while Dolls only work on a single target. Dolls require a small quantity of blood from the target to work, which can be gathered with an attack (inflicting 1 Affliction). Catalysts always weight like 1 item.

The Swarming Soul of the Self (Doom):
Your body numbs and your vision becomes multi-faceted, as if you were starting to see from a million different eyes. All over your face cracks open, like hornets nest, from which a swarm of insects flies out, holding your soul inside them. You control this swarm for the next 1d20/2 (d10) hours, during which the swarm slowly disperses as you feel your body once again. After the Doom is over, you retake control of your body. While in swarm form, you can’t carry more than a single Item worth of weight, and can’t make complex actions like using a weapon or picking a lock.
Scar: the cracks from which your soul swarmed out remain on your face, and hornets can sometimes be seen fling out of them.

The only good fishman is a gutted one.
Scene from The Simpsons.

Wax Simulacra (Spell):
A single insect is focused on by the caster, imbibing the power of the Swarm in it. The insect bursts, leaving a wax cocoon behind. The cocoon grows into a humanoid shape in the following hour, becoming one of the Swarm. It moves with the will of the Swarm, and is not bound to the caster.
It can be empowered, to have the cocoon grow instantly.

Luciforms(Spell):
The caster chants the song of Fire and raises his hands, causing all flames in a 500’ radius to raise themselves, flying a dance around him. All possible fire sources (including fireplaces, torches, and lanterns) in the radius have their fire removed. Each fire starts circling around the caster, who can at any time snuff one out or throw it towards any enemy. Throwing it requires an Action, any number can snuffed out with a single Action. After 10 minutes, all the remaining fires go out on their own.
It can be Empowered, causing 3 flames to rise from each fire in the area of effect, and allowing the raised flames to last 8 hours.

Goliath(Spell):
The skin of the caster turns dark gray, while his veins blacken and swell as if they contained liquid charcoal. For the next 10 minutes, the Strength score of the caster is 18. Every time he receives any kind of weapon damage, a gush of blackened blood sprays outwards all around him, inflicting equal damage of acidic nature to anyone in a 5’ radius.
It can be Empowered, growing black spines and a dark carapace on the caster. It now counts as having Heavy Armor without any of the maluses associated to it (and splashes acidic blood as if it was naked, even if he doesn’t receive the same damage).

Really, FUCKING FISHMEN
Murloc Raid art by Blizzard.

Dungeons & Dummies: Blood & Power, or How to Master the Arcane Arts

*DISCLAIMER*: this whole project and especially the magic rules look suspiciously like the SEACAT rules in the Ultraviolet Grasslands by Luka Rejec. This is totally by accident, unless Mr Rejec read my mind and ate my dreams of making the best ruleset ever, which I cannot in good conscience totally exclude (would explain why I stopped dreaming about games and started dreaming about everything bad I’ve done in the past year or so).
Anyway, check out the Ultraviolet Grasslands. They’re better than anything BWG will ever make.

If my words don't convince you I'm sure this cover will.
UVG Introduction by Luka Rejec.

If I don’t break down crying this time you’ll have a complete game perfectly working. Mostly working. Almost working.
This is how I run Magic and Spells. It's heavily inspired by Logan's Maleficarum, check it out if you haven't already.

I'm pretty confident this rules could be easily adapted to other ruleset if one wanted to. Feel free to do to so, and let me know if they were any trouble for your players.

These rules are somewhat dangerous, and if followed I'm pretty sure nobody in their right mind would ever try to cast spells, especially considering how lethal small blunders can be in my system. Usually, my players are not in their right mind so those rules just make everything much more interesting.

Wizard and his Skull Grimorie.
Occultist from Darkest Dungeon.

Point Me to the Spells:

Spells are ways to tap into the arcane and conjure the unthinkable out of sheer nothingness. Characters can cast any Spell that they want, as long as they have access to them.

Digression: Arcane powers are not occult powers. I make a big distinction in my games between them, but this is not actually very important and if you feel that it's  not suited for you games you can easily ignore it. It's almost totally a fluffy distinction (that is somewhat enforced by the rules by occult Profession but you can easily handwave it).

Spells are procedures, of both actions to perform and thoughts to hold to. These are stored in various forms and ways, usually very personal and diverse. A collection of up to 3 Spells is called a Grimoire. Grimoires can be books, collections of rat skulls, inscriptions on metal plates and so on. Each Grimoire weights like 1 item.

Casting a Spell requires an Action and a Spell Point. Characters have no Spell Points by default, but can gain some if they have Levels. Casting a Spell from a Grimoire that wasn't written by you takes an extra Action to find and fully understand it.

A character can always forego the use of a Spell Point by taking an Affliction. This always consumes an extra Action, and always risks causing a Doom.

Digression: Dooms are explained below. It's basically a very fancy way of calling a miscast, but they are also much more since they last like scars and I run by assuming people is scared shitless of magicians and other who dabble in Arcane matters.

Spells can be empowered by expending and extra Spell Point. Empowered Spells have different effects.

Extra digression #1: my basic assumption is that magic is a fundamentally unknown and extremely scary/showy business. I check for Morale and hostility when a spell is cast, with both enemies and hirelings having a chance of running away. Magic is something so esoteric and outside a normal person's possibilities that casting a spell is felt like a contact with something totally unnatural and beyond reality. I plan on expanding on that someday with my spin on level drain shamelessly stolen from Basic Red.

Extra digression #2:I have not thought about spell research rules yet. I actually do not want to include them, because spells are not something to be researched in the safety of your home but something to be found in the depths of the Heart of Darkness that are the Wilds and the Dungeons. People come back changed. Magic is a possible reason.

That's a little bit what happens here.
Source unknown.

The Dooms of Parnassus:

Dooms are unleashed when one fails to harness the Arcane energies. They are destructive for the unfortunate ones who fall prey to them, and for everyone around them.

Dooms have an immediate, terrible and short-lasting effect, and a permanent magical scar that lasts forever. The scars are unnatural and unnerving, and make most people uncomfortable just by looking at them. Those who know the nature of those scars are usually very hostile or very friendly to the unfortunate marked ones, depending on their attitude to Magic.

Digression: these are basically miscasts, magical mishaps or however you prefer calling them. They are meant to change the rules of the game for a certain time and force you to live with the consequences of the terrible sin of Magic. They leave permanent scars that forever mark you as Magic User, and even to those oblivious to the existence of Magic still feel very off and scary.

Each creature mad enough to try their hands at manipulating the Arcane has its own Doom. The first time you would be victim of your Doom, randomly roll for it. Every subsequent time, you always fall victim to that Doom you first rolled.

Digression: note your doom on your sheet. This is to speed up play, but it's not something I'm 100% behind. It would be silly to have people with a thousand different magical scars though, so maybe it's better like that.

Whenever you risk unleashing your Doom, make an Intelligence Saving Throw. If you pass it, you don't fall victim to it, otherwise the Arcane energies flow beyond your control and take hold of your very being. When you unleash your Doom, you lose the spell you were trying to cast.

You risk unleashing your Doom if at least one of the following is true:
-You cast a Spell you’ve never cast before
-You take an Affliction instead of using a normal Spell Point
-You cast a Spell from a Grimoire not written by you
-You cast a Spell that must be explicitly cast as part of a Ritual

Digression: lots of possible causes. They don’t cumulate, you still make a single Saving Throw and that’s it. It wouldn’t feel fair to make you roll for failure.

Dooms are no joke.
Panel from The Demon n.10 by Jack Kirby.

Here are 2 example Dooms:

The Calcareous Trumpets of Light:
Your eyes blacken and melt, leaving your eye sockets empty and each occupied by a bone tube with a small pearl in the back of it. The pearl progressively grows in the next d10 (d20/2) hours, becoming new eyes perfectly identical to the old ones. While your eyes are reforming, you are completely blind: you can only see calcareous deposits (like bones), ignoring completely all the other objects and materials in sight. You are effectively blind except you can see items made of bones, and creatures with bones in their body (which are the only thing you can see). They still need to be lit as usual to be seen.
Scar: Your original melted eyes remain on your face, like mascara ruined by crying. It can never be washed off.

The Left Hand of Fate:
Your left hand shrinks, as if dried, and feels like charcoal to the touch. It becomes independent from you for the next d4 (d20/4) hours, animated by an arcane wind. It has 1 of 4 objectives chosen randomly each time (d4, d20/4):

1. Injure you and others, it attacks once each 10 minutes inflicting an Affliction (either on you or on somebody near you).
2. Prevent metal items from being used, +1 to the Difficulty of each check involving metal items, and they are always subject to Wear when used.
3. Steal heat from this world, it throws itself (and you) on every fire and heat source in close proximity, you take an Affliction and make a Dexterity Saving Throw to not fall in it and catch fire.
4. Bring everyone back to the Void. It will whisper spell fragments, causing everyone in a 120’ radius to risk unleashing their Doom if they try to cast a Spell. You have to make an Intelligence Saving Throw every hour to not involuntarily cast a random Spell from your Grimoire. If you do, you immediately unleash the Doom of a random creature up to 120’ away from you.

You can’t do anything that requires 2 hands until the Doom is over.
Scar: your left hand comes back under your control, but its appearance does not revert.

Digression: your eyes go DOOT DOOT (you can only see the bones of your friends, no facial expressions or clothes, and you can’t see anything else at all) or your hand wants you dead (in many funny ways). Both are pretty bad things in the middle of a dungeon. Both are scary to witness and both leave ugly scars that you will probably want to hide from others and from yourself, if you’re anything like me. So both are pretty good Dooms overall.

Rituals require patience and courage.
The Condemned from CHIN CHIN'S RETURN by Filthy Frank.

The Ropes of Ritualism:

Spells can be casted as parts of a Rituals. Spells casted in a Ritual never unleash a Doom if the ritual is completed correctly. A Ritual requires a day (8 hours of work) of preparation for each Spell Point used in the Ritual, and requires the participants to invest at least 3 Spell Points each day in it. For every 3 extra Spell Points invested each, the final spell gets an extra Spell Point.

If any of the participants invest Spell Points by getting an Affliction, they risk unleashing their Doom. If that happens, all the progress of the day is lost, and the Doom is normally invoked. No more than 1 Spell Point can be invested that way, however by instead receiving a full Injury 3 Spell Points can be inserted.

The Ritual can be sabotaged, attacked or interrupted. If so, when the Spell is cast, every participant risks unleashing his Doom, and the Spells risks being subverted or corrupted.

Digression: no explicit rules for corrupting spells or disturbing rituals, because I want to see what people comes up with when the local cult is unleashing Cthulhu. Maybe a spell corruption table would be nice, but I’m too lazy for it right now.

At the end of the Ritual preparations, it can be performed anytime as long as the group preparing it does not move away from where it was prepared. Performing a Ritual takes an hour for each Spell Point to be casted. Some Spells can only be casted safely as part of a Ritual.

In order to cast the Spell as part of the Ritual, it must have been fully and properly copied on the Grimoire of one of the participants, along with specific instructions for the Ritual casting of that Spell (which take up space as a single Spell). Spells that can be only cast safely as part of a Ritual don’t have an additional set of instruction for that.

Extra Digression #3: expect Ritual-only spells to use a lot of Spell Levels and have scaling effects accordingly. If they are cast outside a Ritual, they should be limited to a single spell level (and cause your Doom). Also expect some to have a minimum number of Spell Points to be casted, because you can’t just summon mini-Cthulhu.

Magic items are the keys to the door of greatness.
Pyromancer from Dark Souls.

Conduits and Catalysts:

Some items can become conduits for Arcane powers. These items are known as Catalysts. Catalysts can take any form and have any function (including no function at all, like a wooden stick that blows bubbles out of one end).

Catalysts are difficult to recognize as such. They have no discernible quality until activated, except for maybe some eccentricity left by their maker.

Activating a Catalyst usually requires knowing its true nature, and focusing on it to control the flow of Arcane energies. They are usually imbibed with Spell or similar reality-defying effect. They require an Action to be activated if you know their activation method.

Once activated, a Catalyst can either be used to channel its powers (usually it has a limited number of uses) or it can be drained of power to receive a single Spell Slot. Drained items can’t be used anymore. Some Catalyst are only used to store Arcane powers, and have no practical use beyond that.

Catalysts of immense power.
Venerable Dreadnaught from Warhammer 40k.

Digression: this is the true reason why seasoned wizard go around with useless magic junk. Even a belt that shows sparkles when you wear it becomes a source for that single extra spell you will use to defeat your archrival.

Extra digression #4: Ancient Catalysts of course tend to house ancient forgotten dangerous spells, so they are really sought after, while “newer” ones are rare and usually do just stupid stuff (if they actually work at all). No crafting rules for now for the same reason as spells. Also, make something up for uncovering the true nature of Catalysts. I guess a “Discover True Nature” spell would be in order. I was actually planning of making it part of my level drain rules, but since they aren’t there yet I guess you’ll have to make do.

I wonder why the fuck I’m still alive:

Spells and other Dooms will come as I write mage guys. You had no idea in what shape those few simple concepts were before I wrote this post, so please bear with me. I will dump a few other subclasses, then I will probably start writing actual interesting stuff now that everybody knows how I roll.

Dungeons & Dummies: The Professionals (4 Specialist Subclasses + 1 Occult Profession)

Specialists are guys you call when you need to get the job done. Ocean's 11 kind of jobs. They are the masters of the mundane, their abilities make them better at exploiting mundane items and make the best out of difficult situations. While they might no be able to kick like a mule or take hits like a heavyweight champion, they are absolutely vital to any expedition.

The right guys for the wrong job.
Frame from Ocean's 11.

Packrat:
Packrats get maluses every 4 items carried instead of every 3.
Capstone: Packrat get maluses every 5 items carried instead of every 3.

Digression: I expect packrats to be an integral part of every party, since I expect people to try and avoid being over encumbered as much as possible. They are as useful as a pack animal but better since they can do much more and don't run away as easily.

Tinkerer:
Tinkerers can make small devices and traps with a mundane item, in 10 minutes. They can set up to 5 activation conditions. The devices trigger the item used in their construction (such as a sword for attacking). They break after 1 use. Any check is made as if the Tinkerer made it.
Capstone: devices get Durability 0. They get Wear instead of breaking.

Digression: MacGyver + an IRA bomber + me playing with LEGOs. A dream come true. Given enough time and items, I'm pretty sure this guy could make a big mess on its own. Or he could mess up activation condition and get bonked in the head by his own clockwork device. Either way, this is bound to be funny.

Expert:
Experts get an extra Skill Point per level.
Capstone: Experts instantly get 3 extra Skill Points.

Digression: boring but very practical. Classic skill monkey. Neeeext.

Taskmaster:
Taskmasters can help and coordinate people to complete their duties. They can get another person to participate in any Action (using an equal amount of time and actions), getting themselves +1 Skill as long as the assistant has a relevant skill.
Capstone: Taskmaster can manage small teams easily. They can get others to bring their expertise in anyone's task, as long as all three of them (Taskmaster included) commits the same amount of time and actions.

Digression: I think I never wrote explicit Aid Another rules. If I ever do, I should remove the Taskmaster or heavily rework them to focus on that mechanic. However that sounds complex and I want to avoid classes being good at "standard" actions, so I feel that having somebody explicitly able to do this is a better idea overall. 

Occult Profession time!

They're a bit like that, but alive and very dumb.
Poppet image from Wikipedia.

Woodlord:
Woodlords have learned to hear the whispers of the wood, hidden in its veins and bark patterns,  spoken through its inner rings. They have observed and listened to the conversations of the wood long enough to whisper back, convincingly enough to make a little wood mimicry animals.
They can take 10 minutes to whisper to a small piece of wood, like a plank or a stick, infusing energy and life into it. The awakened wood is known as a Poppet. Poppets live for 1 hour, after which they crumble apart in sawdust. They also die if hit with a single Affliction. Poppets have 2 actions, and each can carry 3 items worth of weight. Many Poppets can coordinate to accomplish complex tasks or carry more weight; if the weight ever exceeds 3 item per Poppet they all break down under the item they're trying to carry.

Digression: disposable, single use companion to be used as cheap retinues whenever they're needed. They can run into traps, trigger mechanisms and so on. Remember however that they weight much less than a normal character, and as such can't be 100% trustable when they walk over pressure plates  (which might be easily set to trigger for the weight of a normal human). Basically, Pikmin if you hated Pikmins.