Bodil's Gap Playbooks: the Seiðkona

Swarming out of the underbrush, three brigands bar the way of a lone traveller riding an ill-kept road, their swords already drawn as they make their demands. With a word and a gesture from the rider, their leader's hand becomes a magpie's wing, his sword clattering to the ground as his fingers twist into feathers...

Propped against a craggy boulder on a wooded hill, an old man's body leans stiff as an oak plank, guarded by the watchful eyes of owls. Silent and invisible, his spirit roams free of his flesh, slipping down the long slope to spy on the marching column of warriors beyond the treeline...

At the rubble-choked entrance of a collapsed mine, a young woman calls out to the earth for strength. Her body spasms as a spirit of rock and soil enters her, then surges with strength as she begins to lift boulders the size of a wagon wheel with her bare hands, tossing mountains of stone aside to clear the way down into the dark...

On a cliff overlooking the sea, a hooded figure watches a fleet of ships approaching, sails taut against the wind that drives them toward the mouth of the fjord. The wind twists in the man's grip as he invokes the spirits of the sky, shifting the gale to drive the invading ships past the fjord's mouth and to crash on the jagged rocks at the cliff's base...

The Seiðkona

Bodil's Gap is a setting with several different kinds of magic, each with its own traditions and practitioners. Among these styles, seiðr is the most subtle and varied, and of its practitioners, the Seiðkona is the undisputed master.

Seiðr is the magic of spirits, and its practitioners find power by bargaining with otherworldly beings or channeling their own vitality to work their magical art. It is a magic of curses and enchantments, of spells to transform and alter the world, changing the properties of people, places, and objects to suit the Seiðkona's whims. Unlike a Wizard, it does not pick spells, but uses a variety of moves to produce magical effects.

Plague your Foes with a Thousand Curses

Not for the Seiðkona, the vulgar hurling of fireballs or lightning bolts; in battle, the art of seiðr is best used to harass enemies and support allies with a variety of debilitating curses. With a word and a gesture, a Seiðkona can curdle the luck of an enemy for a moment, dulling their next strike, fating them to greater harm, or confounding their ability to resist the tricks and maneuvers of those battling them more directly.

With greater skill, a Seiðkona can begin to transform an enemy's very body, twisting parts of their anatomy into animal shapes to hamper their ability to fight—forcing them to drop their shield from a hand turned into a dog's paw, stumble about on a goat's leg, or swallow orders issued from a bird's beak, for example. Other moves allow a Seiðkona to send a fragments of waking nightmares to distort what their victims see into confusing and deceptive dreamscapes; or conjure angry ghosts into the bodies of their enemies, forcing them to struggle for control over their own limbs.

Most flexibly, a Seiðkona can shape their Seiðr Invocation into any curse or enchantment they can describe, so long as they can work around the requirements of their spell—for the magic can be quick, or enduring, or without cost, but never all three.

Command the Spirits

Apart from the magic they can work under their own power, the Seiðkona is also able to bargain with or command spirits. Whether binding the ghosts of the dead to their will or treating with the spirits of the wild for favours, a Seiðkona is at home in the twilight realm between human civilization and the otherworld of invisible powers.

With their influence over the spirit world, a Seiðkona can bind a spirit to watch over a place and magically report back, or to defend such a place against any intruders the Seiðkona deems unwelcome. They can wrest answers from even unwilling spirits, or invite a spirit to possess their body in exchange for power and the use of the being's own native abilities. A particularly charming Seiðkona may even persuade a spirit to accompany them as a companion, offering its skills and aid to the Seiðkona for as long as the bargain between them remains unbroken.

Using the Seiðkona

This playbook is intended for cunning spell-casters who manipulate their foes with curses and transformations, and for those who wish to forge a relationship with otherworldy forces. If it can be summed up in a single image, that image is Baba Yaga, working magic in her hut guarded by three horsemen who are the Day, the Night, and the Sun. Use it instead of or alongside playbooks like the Wizard or Druid to present a spell-caster whose magic is folkloric and primal.

Bodil's Gap is currently in playtesting, and the playtesting version of the Seiðkona playbook can be found here. If you have any insight or feedback, leave a comment or send an email to brazenhead@zoho.com.

Up Next

I realize that last week I said I would do the Goði next, and obviously I haven't done it this week. Originally I was intending to present the setting's custom playbooks in alphabetical order, but I've since decided to do them in the order they were designed, since the older playbooks have had more revision time. To that end, next week I'll be talking about the Rúngaeti playbook, a different kind of spellcaster who gains their power by mastery of the runes.

Bodil's Gap Playbooks: The Dýrsark

At the forefront of the charging army, a hulking warrior froths at the mouth at the sight of his enemies. Just before the two armies clash, he howls a blood-curdling war cry that sends lesser fighters scattering in fear...

On the deck of a ship, the sea serpent's coils wrap around the creaking mast and the armoured figure of the ship's captain, its fangs snapping inches from her face. Limbs flooding with furious strength, the shield-maiden takes the worm's head in her hands and tears it jaw-from-jaw even as one fang sinks into her arm...

Alone in the snowy forest, a wind-blown traveller is beset by stalking wolves led by one of the Sunchaser's spawn, their teeth snaring his cloak and biting at his arms and legs. The sword drops from his hand as his flesh warps and spasms, the mighty form of a bear overtaking his own as bestial rage fills him...

In the leaping flames of a burning hall, a warrior prowls between blazing pillars and clouds of smoke, seeking her rival. Flames lap at the warrior's skin, but the cold touch of a valkyrie on her shoulder makes her impervious to the fires she stalks through, ruddy light gleaming off her bared blade...

The Dýrsark

Of all the playbooks designed for Bodil's Gap, the Dýrsark is the most martial, embodying the warrior archetype of the berserker. A Dýrsark is a whirling beast on the battlefield, cleaving foes left and right while in the grip of an intense battle rage, and their presence is a powerful demoralizing force for their foes. 

Dýrsark is a warrior playbook first and foremost, but it isn't the simple and straightforward style of combatant best represented by the Fighter playbook. In its approach to combat it embraces a strong supernatural undertone, and even a Dýrsark who chooses wholly mundane moves is distinguished from the Fighter by its bestial fighting style and powerful battle frenzy.

Fight like a Beast

The defining feature of the Dýrsark is its berserker fury. At any moment a Dýrsark can work themselves into an intense rage or battle frenzy, and this altered state allows them to strike harder; shrug off powerful blows; and even ignore fear, exhaustion, or bloody wounds to carry on fighting. This power is not without cost, however, for whenever a Dýrsark emerges from their berserk fit, the strain of their exertions leaves them dazed.

This battle frenzy is not the only hallmark of the Dýrsark, however. To control the well of bloodlust that they carry within, every Dýrsark channels this rage by emulating one of the ferocious beasts of the Gap, adopting either the cunning of a wolf, the strength of a bear, or the viciousness of a wild boar. This almost totemic inspiration so fundamentally alters the way a Dýrsark does battle that it shapes their fighting style both in the grip of their rage and out of it. 

Mechanically, a warrior who becomes a Dýrsark can never again use the normal Hack and Slash move; instead, whenever they engage foes in melee they must use the move associated with their particular bestial inspiration. One who embraces the Wolf's Cunning is adept at fighting alongside their allies, hounding and maneuvering their foes to better employ pack tactics and grant the advantage to their comrades. One who embraces the Bear's Strength is able to bring overwhelming force to bear, shattering their enemy's defenses and weapons and delivering blows of incredible power. And one who embraces the Boar's Viciousness is a force of unbridled aggression whose every blow leaves ragged and debilitating wounds, able to maim and dismember with cruel ease.

The greatest expression of this bestial fervour for battle, however, is demonstrated by the Dýrsark whose fury overcomes even their humanity. Those who sink deep enough into their rage twist and warp, their very flesh changing to suit the unreasoning aggression within. While in the grip of their battle frenzy, these warriors physically transform into the beasts they emulate, taking on the shape of wolf, bear, or boar to run wild and do battle red in tooth and claw.

Win the Favour of the Valkyries

Across Bodil's Gap, the choosers of the slain stalk battlefields and slaughtering grounds wrapped in cloaks woven from the cold flames of the aurora, seeking out the glorious dead for the armies of the gods. Many are those killed at a Dýrsark's hands, and the favour of the valkyries is quickly won by those who continue to provide them such a wealth of slain warriors to choose from.

The benefits of this favour are great. The influence of a valkyrie's attention can dull swords and cool flames that threaten a Dýrsark as they wade into battle, while the touch of a valkyrie's shimmering cloak can render a Dýrsark totally immune to fires of all kinds. In tense moments of confrontation or imminent violence, the whisper of a valkyrie in a Dýrsark's ear can guide them towards their enemy's weakness. And in dire circumstances, the favour of the valkyries can twist the strands of a Dýrsark's fate to bring them the stroke of luck they need to survive.

Those most powerfully blessed by the valkyries can even channel the strength of the einherjar—those warriors ascended to the halls of the gods to fight on eternally—to shout with the force of a gale and the blast of a sounding horn; or to fight even beyond their own deaths, ignoring their own fatal wound so long as foes remain on the battlefield.

Using the Dýrsark

This playbook is intended for mighty warriors guided as much by instinct as by strategy, for those beloved by the gods of battle, and for those of a barbaric or savage bent. If it can be summed up in a single image, that image is Beowulf tearing off Grendel's arm with his bare hands. Use it instead of or alongside playbooks like Fighter or Barbarian to present a warrior right out of the sagas.

Bodil's Gap is currently in playtesting, and the playtesting version of the Dýrsark playbook can be found here. If you have any insight or feedback, leave a comment or send an email to brazenhead@zoho.com.

Up Next

Next week I'll be talking about the Goði playbook, a priestly servant of the gods and leader of the community, dedicated to a particular divine patron and able to call on miracles in their name—at the cost of a sacrifice in blood.

Introducing Bodil's Gap

In the shadow of the mountain peak, the gigantic skull of an ancient creature frames the gaping portal to the Troll-King's hall between its mighty tusks, the darkness within lit by the solitary pinprick of a delver's torch...

Cresting a white-capped wave, a longship races the gulls towards the rain-lashed shore, its red-and-white sail silhouetted from behind by the flash of lightning within the storm clouds rolling in off the sea...

In a smoke filled hall, two masters of poetry and song trade riddles for the amusement of their host and his guests, until the thunderous sound of a gigantic fist rings against the barred door...

Standing on the barrow-top at dusk, the wizened crone lights her torch of juniper wood and prepares to draw out the buried brigand whose avarice knows no end even in death, her knife blessed to cut even the flesh of ghosts...

Ravens caw as two mail-clad warriors land on the tiny island, each stepping off their own small boat with swords drawn and shields raised, confident in the knowledge that only one of them will leave the island alive...

For the past year or so, I've been working on a major design project, and I'm finally ready to start showing it off to the wider world. To that end, this is Bodil's Gap.

Bodil's Gap is a folkloric fantasy campaign setting for Dungeon World inspired by viking-age Scandinavia and its neighbours. It focuses on the adventures of the men and women living in the geographic region of Bodil's Gap, a frontier land removed from the old world by the broad expanse of the sea, much like viking-age Iceland was a remote frontier removed from the familiarity of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

Themes: 

Civilization and the Wild

Bodil's Gap boasts a harsh landscape framed within the confines of two towering mountain ranges and divided north from south by the restless waves of a vast and might fjord. Even centuries after the first settlers landed on its shores, large stretches of it remain barely explored and almost entirely unsettled. Brave men and women must carve their places from the wilderness, and defend their homes and families from the ravages of an often hostile world. Dealing with the dangerous nature of the wilderness and its contrast with the safety and comfort of civilization is one of the major themes of the setting.

Honor and Glory

Ingrained in the society of the Gap is a strict code of honour by which people are expected to live their lives and by which they are judged by those around them—a code entirely founded on forming and upholding a good reputation in the community. Because of this code, insults are a matter of life and death, crimes are often repaid in blood, and a feud between two people can quickly come to encompass entire families. Human drama leads to conflict, and conflict almost always leads to violence in one way or another. Dealing with that conflict is another of the major themes of the setting.

Spirits and Folk-Magic

Magic is present everywhere one cares to look in Bodil's Gap; it is fundamental and intrinsic to the world itself. It lies close to the skin of everyday life, and can be felt in countless small ways, from charms that really do bring good luck to funeral rites that keep angry ghosts from troubling the living, from spirits that shepherd their flocks of rainclouds around the sky to trolls that dwell in the local woods and harass travelers. Human affairs constantly brush up against the world of spirits and magic, and dealing with that contact is the last major theme of the setting.

Features

Bodil's Gap is an enormous undertaking, and beyond the setting itself there's a lot of mechanical content that I'll be talking about in future posts. For now, I just want to lay out some of what you can look forward to:

• Six new playbooks custom-designed for the setting, including a wide variety of different thematic magical traditions separated out from the too-broad umbrella of the Wizard:
• Dýrsark: A warrior who fights under the influence of a berserk rage or other battle trance, beloved of the valkyries and liable to undergo a bestial transformation while in combat.

• Goði: A priest of the gods and goddesses who created the world and its people, particularly devoted to one or more patron divinities from among the pantheon, and endowed with divine power by those patrons.

• Óttimaðr: A practitioner of giantish sorcery who draws their power from the Realms of Fire or Ice, or from the Realm of the Dead, but who must take care lest their power draw the attention of the giants themselves.

• Rúngaeti: A master of the runes, each privy to only a few of those divine letters of power, and able to speak spells or inscribe objects with their mastered runes for a variety of effects.

• Seiðkona: A witch and shaman who deals with spirits, bargaining with them for magic and favours or binding them to serve and obey.

• Skald: A master of sagas and riddles who invokes the powers of legend to force the present to conform to the shapes of ancient songs and stories.

• Seven new compendium classes.
• A massive bestiary of over a hundred monsters created new or adapted for the setting
• A bunch of new and reworked equipment, including some new systems for customizing arms and armour
• A bunch of universal moves made custom for the setting

Moving Forward

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to elaborate more on some of these topics and on the setting itself, starting next Friday with a look at the Dýrsark and continuing every Friday after that. Stay Tuned!

Announcing Buriel's Bounty

After quite a bit of hard work, my first publication is finally for sale! 

Buriel's Bounty is an adventure for Dungeon World, and specifically for the Sundered World campaign setting produced by Awful Good Games.

Something I've always loved about A Sundered World is how gonzo its setting, the Remnants, is. All that remains of a sprawling cosmos are myriad islands floating in the Astral Sea, dumped there by the dissolution of the barriers between planes and the shattering of mortal worlds, godly dominions, and stranger realms into countless pieces. It's a churning soup of fragmentary landscapes both earthly and unearthly, the corpses and leavings of gods and primordials, and raw elemental power. Nevertheless, people still find a way to survive, plying the Astral Sea in ships great and small and dwelling on whatever islands can support life—whether that be a fragment of Arcadian paradise, a near-barren ball of ice, or a dead titan's severed head.

The ongoing revitalization of those relics of a bygone creation was something I wanted to emphasize in my adventure, which played a key part in its design.

The Corpse Kiln

In a way, new life emerging from the death and destruction of the old is what A Sundered World was already all about, and the Corpse Kiln that features prominently in Buriel's Bounty exemplifies that.

In English we use clay to mean flesh all the time, but the Corpse Kiln makes that literal. By the deific power of its creators, it fires the lifeless meat and bone of human corpses into a malleable and robust clay blessed by divine fertility. And as a forest grows strong on the fertile ashes left after a wildfire, so too do the fires of the Corpse Kiln create life, for the clay it produces can be shaped into mortal men and women of living terracotta.
Of course, in a ravaged world like the Remnants, nothing can be easy. Before the Sundering, the Corpse Kiln was the tool of a living god who cared for his creations. Now that god is dead and the Kiln is in the hands of his last surviving angel, driven mad by untold centuries of grief. Once more it fulfills its purpose of creating new life, but the clay creatures that emerge from it are not the progenitors of a new race beloved by their creator, but the first soldiers of an ever-expanding army bend on slaughter and domination.

In the wrong hands, this divine relic is a force of limitless destruction, but if it could be wrested away from the mad angel and his terracotta thralls, perhaps it could be turned towards the restoration of this Sundered World. Is such a thing possible? In the words of Dungeon World, play to find out.