Heigh Ho!

Rackham does the best Wagnerian villain dwarfs.

Given that messing around with fantasy games has been a hobby of mine for a couple of decades and I have a very particular sort of brain I have sought out all the words in English that refer to the things of significance to the kinds of games I like. I've long since worked out the rather telling etymological origins of whatever words I find most interesting - wizard comes from Middle English wysard and is much like dullard or drunkard but wiser, warlock comes from Old English waerloga - oathbreaker, and enchanter comes from the Latin incantare and so on. One of the interesting things I discovered recently is that the OED attributes the origin of dweomer (which only ever appeared as an element in compounds pre-Gygax) to Old Norse dvergmal - dwarf-talk. Little details like this are very telling in that they suggest a secret history of things long-forgotten. So dwarfs were actually deeply associated with magic and their very speech was magical.


Dwarfishness is sublimated male sexuality. They epitomise that archaic bargain between the attenuated male mind with its focus on extricating function from materiality and the spatulate female mind with its encompassing of social and environmental context. Dwarfs cannot conceive of the expansive thing that surrounds them but are digging and honing pointedness of purpose and covetice. The Rumpelstiltskin story typifies this bargain and appears in a large number of permutations. The story is that of the covenant between the sexes. One sex can do stuff that the other sex needs but claims mating rights in return. The other sex utilises social chicanery to evade the terms of the covenant. Hilarity ensues.

There is a way of looking at males as parasitic entities*. The fact that their investment in offspring is the lesser means they are compelled to go to greater lengths to demonstrate their fitness. Their gonads dictate this strategy - to infect viable females with endearing offspring that they will dedicate their lives to protecting and perpetuating the male's germline. Some males have this attenuated focus turned up too high: I once encountered a boy who couldn't speak but could focus for hours on rattling random objects around in a plastic container. I didn't know for sure but suspected he probably wasn't popular with girls. Such focus needs to be diluted with a little bit of context awareness.

When Dwarfs are thwarted they lose their shit. This is their schtick and sets their narratives in motion. This is what dwarfs are like and it matters not whether they are the kind of dwarf that is like a corpse that lives in the earth and hides from the sun or the kind that vies with the gods in superhuman romance epics the thing that binds them together is that autistic focus on the thing that consumes them and their tendency to fly of the handle when denied it.

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Traditional Scots English is replete with terms describing dwarfs and dwarfish creatures. There are actually many more synonymous terms terms than exist in modern English. There is an extent to which the terminology is quite revealing of a negative attitude towards dwarfism and associations of sickness and deformity. I think it could be safely asserted that most of the terms refer to humans suffering from malnutrition or various disorders stunting growth but there are some that definitely refer to the mythological entities in question. Many refer to specifically deformed or squat or sickly or sinister dwarfs and obviously many are merely spelling/pronunciation variants;

Ablach, Ablich, Aiblach, Aploch, Awtus, Blastie, Bod, Boodie, Bottrel, Buntlin, Crile, Croil, Crok, Crowl, Croyl, Cryle, Dachan, Dreegh, Dreich, Droch, Fere, Herie, Knurl, Knurle, Knurlin, Knyaff, Nauchle, Nirb, Nurrit, Piz, Pizie, Pizzie, Setterel, Shaird, Shard, Sharg, Shargan, Shurf, Skeyf, Snauchle, Urf, Urling, Warf, Wratack, Wraul, Wroul, Wurl, Yurlin

(Incidentally this reminds me of one of my favourite ever OSR blog posts from the long extinct  dormant Valley of Blue Snails blog and which old Dogsbody almost certainly derived from this article about mediaeval bynames. Fantastical racism is something I very much enjoy. ) 

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Dwarfs covet treasure. It is what they do. There is an extent to which it can be said that they are the embodiment of that notion. As a result of this fact and of the fact that dwarfs have been around a long time and have histories tangled up with that of treasure there is a very real chance that individual hoards and individual articles belonging to individual hoards have some kind of dwarf yearning after it and swearing bitterest vengeance against those who would keep it from them. As such, for every hundred groats worth of treasure found in a hoard there is a 1% chance that there is a dwarf that feels very strongly that he has some claim over it. This chance is much greater for legendary treasures of dweomercraft (and certain other things) 20% of which have a dwarfish claimant. Depending on their natures, dwarfs might be willing to negotiate or in some cases make bargains but, dependent upon their nature, they may just start killing . It is not always clear how they know that their beloved hoard has been unearthed but they will tend to turn up in 1d20 days.

Avaricious claimant;

1. Trolde - eldritch mysteries

2. Svartling - devices of artifice most cunning

3. Trow - funerary trappings, barrow-hoards

4. Pech - beast fells, objects of horn and bone, bronze weapons

5. Blastie - fine fabrics and magical garments

6. Shargan - weird pets, strange creatures

7. Knockerman - rare ores, uncut gems

8. Bodach - figurines of domestic gods, ornate vessels and silverware

Fell Dwarfs

  



Grewsome Trolde: Corpse-worm white haunters of the burrowing dark. Loathsome and long-buried odium incarnate creeping through the endless night of the underworld. Dead-eyed and reeking like grave-sod they are, gnawing like rats at the world's root. Trolde seek an unspeakable mystery in the blackest chasms and shun the light that shuns them in return.

Max. Charisma 3. Equipment options:

1. Gloom Lanthorn - of battered lead, burns black bile , foils infravision 30', 20 groats

2. Iron Guthook - d6 dmg, 5 groats

3. Nadder-Stane - perforated stone through which it is possible to detect invisible 1/day with 1% cumulative chance of seeing a vagrant enormity which sees right back, 300 groats

4. Brither Bulhorn: sinister grey snail exudes 1 dose of sleep poison per day, it takes 3 turns for the snail to apply the poison to the weapon, 100 groats

5. Fenris Cur: Feral, gaunt and haggard, hairless, earless, snarling hell-jackals AC: 7 MV: 180' (60') HD 1/2 dmg: 1d3 ML: 4, 100 groats for 3

6. Ethercap's Bile: grants +3 STR and -6 INT for d6 rounds before 6 turns of debilitating vomiting, 50 groats for 3 doses

 Svartling: Blue-black and bristly smithy-workers of the shadowy underworlds, forever forging chains to bind the hated uplanders to despicable thraldom in their endless mines. Beauty to them is the hammering clangour of the rhythm of artifice and the colour of bruises and iron and soot. Of old they were the craftsmen of the gods but they are fallen into shadow. 

Max. Charisma 5, Equipment options:

1. Iron Mole-mask - +1 AC, +1 to saving throws vs. fire, 100 groats

2. Orichalchum Habergeon - (mail coif) +1 AC, +1 to saving throws vs. lightning, 120 groats

3. Adamant Warhammer - 1d6 dmg. +1 vs. heavy armour, 50 groats

4. Aureal Lodestone - Drawn to gold within 5', poisonous: -1 WIS per week to user, 180 groats

5. Unbreakable Manacles of blue-black steel - 150 groats

6 .Heavy Windlass Arbalest: ROF 1/2 dmg d10, 80 groats

Dun-Trow: Solitary stunted things in stone towers long-abandoned. In the brochs and duns of the bleak emptiness long forgotten and forsaken they squat, shaggy and a-glower. They inhabit a sullen brown world of sullen brown desolation. Their only occupation is hobbling about on twilit paths to the secret places of their hoarded trinkets and dancing the quaint awkward mysteries of their birthright.

Max. Charisma 7. Equipment options

1. Noxious sphagnum brew - of sovereign virtue 'gainst the pox, allows second saving throw, 60 groats

2. Toadstone - poison antidote, +2 to saving throw, 150 groats

3. Wulver-skin - Stinking black fur, +1 to AC, +1 to saving throws vs. cold, 80 groats

4. Ancestral blackthorn cudgel - 1d6 dmg, 20 groats

5. Flint Skean - Stone sacrificial knife - d3 dmg but can strike invulnerable spirit entities, 50 groats

6. Copper Eft Amulet - Coiled newt, verdigris encrusted, acts as a mystic key into seemingly impassable brochs, 60 groats

　

Pech: Little grey stone-ghosts from an archaic epoch. The pech are uncouth and woady, craggy-browed and unlovely - weird shades in earthy guise. They bear inscribed upon their bodies curious designs, the sigils of ancestral beast-gods and sacred trees and things unknown spiralling and coiling on the flesh. In chambers beneath the lonely hills they forge weapons and panoply of gilded bronze but guard their secrets with bestial ferocity.

Max. Charisma 9. Equipment options;

1. Leaf-shaped ancestral bronze sword: 1d6 dmg, can harm otherwise invulnerable spirits, 100 groats

Cruths (mystical tattoos);

2. Badger's Rage: +1 dmg 1/day, 100 groats

3. Salmon Leaping: win initiative 1/day, 100 groats

4. White Bull at Bay: heal 1 dmg 1/week, 80 groats

5. Heron's Vigil: only surprised on a 1, 1 hour/day, 80 groats

6. Sagacious Birch: Read Languages 1/week, 120 groats

　

　

　

Petty Dwarfs

　

Though it may seem I'm appropriating the nomenclature of the Noegyth Nibin, in truth those are actually Petty-Dwarves. I'm using the now largely obsolete pre-Tolkien plural and am nothing if not pedantic.

　

Blastie: Diminutive drunken gaberlunzies, tattered and lumpen. Blasties hide in the shade of mannish edifice and wheedle and gripe after scraps. They have made an art of grimacing drolleries and tumblings to elicit guffaws and alms from the bigger folk who might otherwise fear and hate and enslave them for their ugliness. Articles of finery suggestive of unobtainable gentleness and grace awake a covetous fire in their humble hateful hearts.

Max. Strength 10, Equipment options;

1. Juniper Spirit - Makes men maudlin yet malleable, +3 to reaction for potential hirelings, 3 doses for 30 groats

2. Firewater - Spit fire, d8 dmg. 10' range, ignore armour, 3 doses for 50 groats

3. Awfish Whisky - heals d2 dmg but crippling cramps (as hold person) for 1 turn, 40 groats for 3 doses

4. Tattermantle - +1 to reaction among roguish types, -1 to others, 20 groats

5. Hurdy-gurdy - CHA check to successfully play rousing tune, +2 morale if successful, -2 if unsuccessful, morale bonus only applies while tune is being played, penalty continues for 1 turn, 70 groats

6. Itching powder - DEX check to apply, -1 to AC and hit rolls for 1 turn to whosoever should be affected, failed check backfires, 30 groats for 3 doses

Shargan: Scrawny, scabrous and greedy cellar-dwelling gimps. Perhaps merely descendants of vile and debilitated humanity, the shargans occupy the desolate periphery of the mannish world, peddling articles of tin and repairing broken crocks. They keep caged menageries of vermin who are their beloved hateful children and furtively covet the comely and the innocent and everything that glitters.

Max. Constitution 10. Equipment options;

1. Fess-cat: Unnaccountably fierce grey feline, AC6 MV: 240' (80') HD 1/4 dmg: d2 ML: 10, 100 groats

2. Gangrel-bitch: loathsome, stinking she-dog, AC: 7 MV:150'(50') HD: 1/2 dmg: d3 + horrors ML: 5, 120 groats

3. Flaycruke : Tatty raven with dead eyes that yet see, speaks , AC: 7 MV 300'(100') HD: 1/4 dmg: 1 ML: 8, 150 groats

4: Gnattery Sow: Small, black and furious, forages successfully almost anywhere and can be milked for nourishment for one dwarf, AC: 8 MV: 120' (30') HD: 1 dmg: d2 ML:6, 100 groats

5.Duleskin Crabbe: In an urn full of gravel and brine, can pick locks 10% 1/day, 30 groats

6. Yellerish Warbler: Quaint songbird of irksome purplish brown hue, gives warning of encroaching danger, surprised only on a 1, 40 groats

Knockerman: Featurelessly drear and stony grey mine-sprites. Dull of countenance and bleakly impassive save for glimmerings of trenchant prankishness and the lust for mineral wealth in their hard eyes. Stone they love and veins of ore they sense like invisible radiance surging from the earth-deeps. Their desire to assist human miners has faded to a vague resentful murderousness.

Max. Wisdom 12. Equipment options;

1. Brazen Ear Trumpet: Detect sliding stonework 1-5 on d6, 80 groats

2. Tinker Hammer: Detect stone traps 1-5 on d6, 60 groats

3. War Mattock: d10 dmg, +2 to open doors, 50 groats

4. Lantern Helm: 20' illumination, adversely affects light-sensitive entities, +1 AC, 60 groats

5. Bane-Ore:Greenish lump repels cave vermin 20' (morale check), 120 groats

6. Signal Hammer: Tapping conveys signal through 100' of stone, d4 dmg, 10 groats

　

Chimbley Bodach: Old men of vigorous and vehement decrepitude smothered in coal-dust and misery. Of old they may have had some role in noble servitude to the ancient heathen godlings but they are reduced to living in abandoned chimneys and seething with the peculiar resentment held by the obsolete for those who still participate in the world-in-motion. Their thieveries are exceedingly petty and indiscriminate.

Max. Intelligence 10. Equipment options;

1. Ninkip-in-the-Cauldron: Apparently dead cat, knows the way 20% of the time

2. Blinding Smut: hurled in the air requires save vs. dragon breath or blind for 1d4 rounds, 50% chance it backfires.

3. Iron Earshank; 1d4 dmg, 1d10 vs. individuals without helmets, 80 groats

4. Mordant Pizzle-reek: A clay pot full of acrid foulness, acts as stinking cloud, 20' radius, 150 groats

5. Shuck Whistle: Wandering monsters arrive in d4 rounds, 50 groats

6. Smetchy Mantle: dull black tatty rags, allow surprise on 1-3, 30 groats

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There are or were also Dweorgs or Dvergar, the ancestral and undiminished craftsman of the  morningtide of the world but they come not into this tale for they were man-high and comely to look upon and did not stink.

This is an appropriately dark and corrupted take on dwarfishness
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* In the case of males of certain species of angler fish they have actually evolved to become tiny appendages attached to the female.

Elves

As I have promised I am going to present my conceptualisation of elves for the Middenmurk setting, or rather, for the “Northern Marches” – the ad hoc term I will use for the (semi) civilised lands nearest to the Middenmurk dungeon. As a matter of course I am assuming that the Middenmurk will be flexible like any other Megadungeon, having certain assumptions about flavour and texture associated with it but fairly much unattached to a specific setting so people can stick it where they want it. Which is a way of saying I’m not making a sandbox but I am doing bits and pieces of setting stuff.

So, I conceive of elves of the Northern Marches as being very much unlike the elves of Tolkien’s legendarium and, as such, fairly much different from elves as presented in D&D and role-playing games in general. The starting point for the approach I am making is the idea of elves as being objects of fear to peasants within the Mediaeval paradigm. Elves are fundamentally supernatural entities from beyond the fields we know that visit the world of the everyday to cause trouble for inscrutable reasons. Elves can be helpful but are associated with sickness and ill-luck, with nightmares, curdled milk, blighted crops and, worst of all, stolen babies.

The word elf is etymologically connected with the word oaf, which is associated with the idea of the changeling child; weird, uncouth, fey and shunned by the community. In this context elves can be seen as a kind of mythic explanation for a variety of intellectual disabilities, developmental disorders and mental illnesses. They can also be the explanation for manic creativity and savant abilities and psychopathic disregard for the well-being of others.

The idea of entities that will come in the night and steal your child is a deep-rooted and primordial fear. I guess this makes elves the perfect primitive psychological projection of the unknown other.

I am fond of the idea that elves are different and otherworldly, but not necessarily graceful and beautiful. They are merely different. They exist in a kind of strange parasitic relationship to human communities, possessed of uncanny secrets of the otherworld and with great capacity to help mankind, but a capriciousness and proclivity to inflict harm with casual detachment.

Additionally, and significantly, elves live among human beings like cuckoos. Elf PC’s will be changeling children or foundling urchins or uncanny strangers who are tolerated for a while by the superstitious peasants of the Northern Marches. They will always be on the margins of society, however, and always be a little odd. The association of elf and oaf – a word derived from elf - informs my conception.

Devil’s in the Details: Elves (oafs, changelings, hogboys, wights, Yule-lads, Fae)

Yes, I am well aware that James Maliszewski has already presented elves in this format. I have the utmost respect for James and think him a capital fellow, however, his Eld are from a fundamentally different paradigm to my elves (though they are similarly quite sinister) and I think there is space enough for both to exist (and let’s face it, James is the king of the OSR blog-o-sphere and I am a swineherd from the outlying provinces).

As I did with dwarfs I am presenting some aspects of elves as being analogous to real-world human psychological and developmental disorders. I do this in the interests of remaining faithful to the original subject matter as I see it, i.e. within a Mediaeval paradigm, these disorders are explained by and attributable to supernatural agents. Any offence caused by this approach is unintentional and I apologise in advance.

Many Elves (d20 thrice)

1. Speak in a raspy whisper.
2. Fear the colour red, won’t touch it and refuse to wear red garments.
3. Laugh at funerals, cry at glad tidings and show no compassion.
4. Make strange bestial noises, seemingly without being aware of what they are doing.
5. Have the ears of an ass, which they hide beneath some kind of headgear.
6. Appear to be perpetually adolescent, but with ancient eyes - or - appear wizened with age, but bright-eyed and hale.
7. Have a tail like a cow’s, which they conceal beneath clothing.
8. Have a strange floral or herbal fragrance.
9. Don’t tend to come in out of the rain or in any other way avoid discomfort.
10. Skulk around bone-yards, crossroads and other such ill-omened places
11. Feel compelled to build cairns of stones and little idols of sticks at random places.
12. Have the eyes of a falcon and stare at people in an unsettling manner.
13. Eat insects, snails and spiders.
14. Occasionally go into a trancelike state where they murmur in a long-forgotten tongue and rock back and forth.
15. Creep around at night and do odd jobs for people.
16. Dislike iron and avoid touching iron objects.
17. Have teeth which are disconcertingly sharp.
18. Periodically give away money and valuables.
19. Have skin which is cold to the touch.
20. Sing songs of unearthly beauty.

Some Elves (d16, 1d3 times)

1. Have a vacant, open-mouthed, idiotic expression.
2. Have no sense of privacy or modesty.
3. Have a sharp, feral, countenance.
4. Fear the sun and shroud themselves in layers of cloth to avoid its rays.
5. Harass and ride livestock to amuse themselves.
6. Take delight in frightening people with cruel pranks.
7. Cast a pale shadow.
8. Tend to attract the attention of various small animals.
9. Habitually sleep in ditches, up trees, or under hedges.
10. Are androgynous.
11. Creep around at night and peer through windows.
12. Crave butter and cream and will pay almost any price to get hold of it.
13. Are very lustful and seductive.
14. Move with feline grace.
15. Destroy things for no apparent reason.
16. Are very tall and gaunt or small and childlike.

Common Travelling Gear (d16 thrice)

1. A hazel switch
2. A small pouch containing (1d6) 1. Henbane 2. Dried Elf-Cap Mushroom 3. Datura 4. Mandrake 5. Belladonna 6. Diviner’s Sage
3. A stone that looks like a toad
4. A tall dunce’s cap
5. Ragged finery, tattered and befouled
6. An ancient bronze dagger.
7. A bone flute.
8. A sprig of mistletoe
9. An old shillelagh
10. A shortbow and quiver of arrows
11. An archaic corselet of bronze scale armour
12. A staff inscribed with ancient secrets in runes or ogham
13. A rote or lyre
14. A lock of human hair
15. A collection of elf-shot
16. Golden chains from a barrow-tomb

Devil's in the Details: Dwarfs

Yes Dwarfs! Unlike halflings, dwarfs have proliferated in a wide variety of different media and mutated into something resembling drunken Scotsmen with ridiculously short legs played for comic relief. I've decided to go for a different tack that honours some elements of their maggots-in-the-body-of-the-world-giant mythological origins at the same time as mixing in some dung-age mediaeval grittiness. A little bit of itinerant Ashkenazim, a little bit of circus carney and a little bit of character from a Tom Waits song is how my Dwarfs are going to be.

Many Dwarfs (d20 Thrice)

1. Go about turbanned and veiled, refusing to reveal their face to anyone not of dwarfish descent.
2. Have harsh, gravelly voices.
3. Are (1d2) 1. as tall as humans, but tend to stoop 2. As short as halflings, with outsized heads, hands and feet.
4. Have eyes that (1d2) 1. glow like coals when they are angry 2. Are dead white.
5. Mistrust everyone to the extent that they require blood-oaths, pacts and documentation to ensure fidelity before embarking on any mutual endeavour.
6. Have deeply poetic souls.
7. Are feared and distrusted by animals as if there was something unnatural about them.
8. Become obsessed with a single topic such that they are prone to talking about it whether others are interested or not.
9. Go into decline when thwarted, muttering and rocking and dealing out savage beatings.
10. Have thin scraggly beards (if male) or thinning hair (if female).
11. Have gnarled, bony fists.
12. Act like sly street-hustlers.
13. Dress in the colourful garb of an itinerant street performer.
14. Bury hoards of gold an secret caches and never dig them up.
15. Are zealous ancestor-worshippers and must spend one day a week muttering prayers over old bones.
16. Are very gaunt, all bone and sinew.
17. Have the brand of a thief burnt into their face.
18. Never laugh or smile, leer strangely or snort instead.
19. Smell of (1d4) 1. Brimstone 2. Iron 3. Fresh Earth 4. Wet Dog.
20. Are albino.

Some Dwarfs (d16, 1d3 times)

1. Consider themselves to be a kind of elf.
2. Speak the language of the hills, enabling them to predict the weather with 70% accuracy.
3. Have strange taloned feet, which they go to great lengths to conceal.
4. Use a crutch, even if they don't need to.
5. Are terrified of fish, won't eat it, and will not ever go in the water when there are likely to be fish around.
6. Are able to, once per day, hone a weapon to sufficient sharpness that it will do +1 damage in one encounter.
7. Consider themselves related to wrens, beavers and newts and will fight to protect them as for close family members
8. Have secret names, knowing a dwarf's secret name allows one to force them to reveal the whereabouts of their gold.
9. Practice usury and are banned from other professions.
10. Seek to replace as many teeth as possible with gold ones.
11. Have an ancient warcry which they shout before battle.
12. Practice sky burial with their own people.
13. Smoke thick black cigarillos.
14. Speak with thick slavic accents.
15. Harbour body vermin, causing them to scratch incessantly.
16. Have a persecution complex.



Common Travelling Gear (d16 thrice)

1. Blunderbuss.
2. Bundle of goods for market (d6) 1. furs 2. pots and pans 3. documents revealing shady dealings of local notaries 4. stolen silverware 5. high-grade steel ingots 6.
3. Hefty tome chronicling the woes of the dwarfish people.
4. Accounts book, ledger, writing paraphernalia.
5. Phylactery containing ancestral bone relic.
6. Musical Instrument (1d4) 1. tin whistle 2. tabor 3. cittern 4. serpent
7. Phrygian cap.
8. Hazel dowsing rod.
9. Journeyman's tool Kit for (1d4) 1. masonry 2. carpentry 3. leather-working 4. Blacksmithing.
10. Vial of deadly poison (aconite).
11. Shapeless dun-coloured smock.
12. Falchion and Buckler.
13. Kettle Hat .
14. Collection of self-penned love-poems.
15. Thick, knotty shortbow
16. Pouch of uncut gems.

Devil's in the Details: Halflings

Ok so I'm jumping on the bandwagon led by Aaron Kesher and followed by a variety of talented others. I have an issue with halflings being a little twee and Tolkien-specific but I am going to include them in the Middenmurk because I want to have the basic trappings of BECMI D&D as a touchstone of familiarity against which all the weird psychedelic stuff can be contrasted.

Unlike the other races which have a fairly significant representation in fiction, computer games and other areas of culture, halflings are very D&D specific. Most of the words that have been devoted to halflings over the course of their existence has occurred within the covers of D&D supplements (as well as on the web, of course). Because of D&D, halflings have mutated from hobbitses to something more lean, mean and kewl. I like hobbitses, but, in keeping with old-school sensibilities and the psychedelic dung-age atmospherics I am trying to evoke, I have an idea of halflings as being small rustic embodiments of earthy human traits - honest, hearty, gluttonous and rude, like one of those buffoons in a Brueghel or Bosch painting.

Many Halflings (d20, thrice)

1. Do wear shoes, curly ones, ridiculously long.
2. Constantly make fum of humans and dwarfs for their clumsiness.
3. Have short-person syndrome and are all in-your-face about it.
4. Are very, very florid.
5. Eat upwards of nine meals a day at particular times with associated etiquette for each. "You can't have spatchcock with nuncheontide". Must purchase thrice normal quantity of provisions in order to keep up.
6. Are exaggeratedly steatopygous.
7. Whistle tunelessly all the time.
8. Have no inside voice.
9. Are rowdy and shadow-box imaginary foes.
10. Laugh for far too long when anything humorous occurs.
11. Regale others with tales of their ancestor's heroism and horticultural prowess.
12. Wear striped leggings.
13. Have bowl haircuts.
14. Are superstitious to a ludicrous extent, spending 1d3 turns each morning performing rituals to ensure success in the day's activities.
15. Smoke very large pipes.
16. Try to scare off enemies by rearing and plunging.
17. Dress like Landsknechts when they can afford to.
18. Often try to resolve conflicts with drinking sessions, including with hostile monsters.
19. Collect and hoard any and all items of even meagre value to sell later on.
20. Speak with west-country accents.

Some Halflings (d16, d3 times)

1. Celebrate some kind of religious festival almost every day and observe appropriate customs.
2. Pose as if for a trophy photo with every slain enemy.
3. Take credit for things they didn't do.
4. Run amok after battle, taking 1d4 turns to calm down.
5. Invent mocking names for everyone and everything around them.
6. Cheat at games.
7. Cry at the drop of a hat.
8. Strut around like a cock-of-the-walk whenever they have the slightest success.
9. Have a diet that makes them fart, burp, sneeze, cough and hiccup noisily and often (10% chance it will ruin sneaking attempts)
10. Show no fear.
11. Start fires as part of their combat strategy.
12. Always try to find a high perch from which to pelt missiles at enemies.
13. Sulk when slighted.
14. Attempt to recruit as many hirelings as possible, regardless of race, species or appropriateness.
15. Try to get opponents to surrender rather than kill them.
16. Are very inquisitive about elves.

Common Travelling gear (d16 thrice)

1. Hat with spoon in it in case of invitation to banquet.
2. Helmet shaped like a funnel.
3. Caltrops (2d10)
4. A book of thrilling tales.
5. 1d6 Maps of various degrees of usefulness.
6. Large and bulky set of pots and pans.
7. Satchel of medicinal herbs of dubious efficacy
8. 2d4 different knives, all wickedly sharp.
9. Set of bagpipes of unusual manufacture.
10. Liripipe hood
11. Several different grades of rope and string
12. Small keg of strong drink.
13. A variety of gambling accoutrements.
14. A large and bulky crossbow.
15. A wheelbarrow.
16. A sarcastic blackbird.

Others;
Kobolds, Elves, Slaves of Shkeen, Jann, Orcs, Gnomes