Bodil's Gap Compendium Class: The Dragon-Cursed

Leaping down onto the beach, a raider rushes to overtake the settlement's defenders, eager for plunder. A lucky slash from a fisherman's knife slices across his cheek, but with a hiss his skin splits and peels to reveal glittering dragon's scales underneath, barely marred by the knife's passage...

Her boat mired in the mud by a river spirit whose burbling laugher mocks her, a merchant fumes. When the spirit's face appears over the boat's side, she lunges, arms outstretched, and her fingers twist into draconic claws as they dig into the spirit's flesh...

His shield long-since shattered, a mercenary swings his notched sword on the field of battle, driving back one attacker even as another thrusts a spear from behind, catching him in the back. The mercenary's blood boils as it sprays from his wound, splashing onto his attacker in a searing arc, and the spearman screams as his flesh burns...

Standing on the mouth of a dwarven tunnel, a treasure-seeker peers into the gloom for any sign of the stocky delvers. The mad chittering of massive beetles echoes up the tunnel instead, and the treasure-seeker unhinges her jaw to fill the tunnel with a cloud of toxic gas, her breath streaming into the darkness like a poisoned wind...

The Dragon-Cursed

In Bodil's Gap, dragons are cruel and rapacious creatures of toxic nature and influence, and their greed and hunger both seep from them like poison. Treasures that a dragon has brooded over become cursed by the dragon’s nature, and in turn their influence can spread that curse to those who behold them. Lust for gold warps into jealous possessiveness, and those who amass too many such treasures and spend too long admiring them risk changing into dragons themselves. Others may be cursed by their own ill-deeds; their own native greed and bloodlust making them no better than beasts. Whatever the source of a person’s misdeeds, to share the nature of a dragon is to slowly become one.

A Dragon's Poisoned Form

A character can become dragon-cursed by interacting with dragon gold incautiously; a dragon's treasures exert a strong influences on the mind, and if a character fails to control themselves, that influence can overtake them. However, though becoming one of the dragon-cursed is an affliction, for adventurers it can be an affliction with upsides—if one is willing to embrace the power of their curse and ride the fine line between man and monster.

Sufferers of the Dragon-Curse find their thoughts twisting in the presence of gold and other treasures, and the drive to claim and greedily hoard is strong. It can be a distraction, dragging their attention towards plunder even when other matters are more pressing, and it can make dealing with others more difficult. One of the dragon-cursed must always be vigilant in exerting their self-control.

When a person's dragon-curse warps their flesh and not just their mind, it starts in the skin. When one of the dragon-cursed is wounded, their skin splits open to reveal draconic scales underneath, leaving them with the Scarred debility as their monstrous appearance makes their curse obvious. So long as they remain Scarred, they benefit from the armour of their scales, but rest and treatment can banish their debility for a time—until they are wounded again, or voluntarily call on their curse to defend themselves.

A sufferer may also find that their hands begin warping into claws when they lash out in anger, and that this transformation has become tied to their earlier one—scales emerge as the claws do, and the claws grow in response to wounds even as the scales erupt from beneath the skin. And as long as the Scarred debility lasts, neither will recede again.

The breath of a sufferer of the Dragon-Curse can sometimes become a plume of acrid poison, and calling on this power to spew lethal fumes will likewise draw the transformation to the surface. And while transformed, a sufferer may find themselves more at home in a dragon's typical haunts—they may breath water as air, and endure in deadly environments like the boiling head of a volcanic spring, an icy mountainside, or the crushing depths of the inner earth.

Using the Dragon-Cursed

This compendium class is intended to be both a danger and an opportunity to play a character who is a little monstrous and a little conflicted. Dealing with dragons is dangerous, and the risk of becoming Dragon-Cursed is only one facet of that risk. It also offers some combat and survival oriented abilities that may supplement characters whose base playbooks offer fewer such abilities. If it can be summed up in a single image, that image is the dwarf Fafnir killing his father Hreiðmar for his share of the cursed weregild paid to their family at the death of their kinsman, and under the curse's influence transforming into a great linnorm to guard it.

Bodil's Gap is currently in playtesting, and the playtesting version of the Dragon-Cursed compendium class 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 taking a break from mechanics to write about some of the adventures that have taken place in the ongoing playtest game, starting with some unrest in a city on the brink of crisis.

Bodil's Gap Playbooks: The Goði

On the steps of a temple raised with her own hands, a priestess cuts the throat of a horse with her knife and flicks the blood across the faces of the people gathered around. The crowd roars as they prepare to march to battle, confident in the favour of the gods now marked upon their skin...

Amid the croaking of ravens, a stooped figure paces the blood-soaked battlefield searching for a lost companion. Finding the other warrior lying mortally wounded, he places his hand against the wounded man's cleft ribs and calls on the vitality of the gods. With a hiss and the scent of burning ash wood, the warrior's wound begins to close under his rescuer's touch...

In the streets of the city rival clansmen clash, overturning booths and wagons in the marketplace with their brawling. Planting herself firmly among them, a young woman calls on the authority of the Goddess of Law to lay down a geas upon the assembled fighters, forbidding them from raising arms against one another until after the next þing...

On the crest of a hill, a man draws back his bowstring, a prayer to the God of the Sky on his tongue. His arrow crackles with the power of a lightning bolt as he holds the string taut, and when he releases, it lances down to land among his foes with the explosive force of a thunderclap...

The Goði

The Mortal World exists as it does through the efforts of the divine. When ancient giants still ruled in the shadow of the World Tree, it was the gods and goddesses who threw them back into the Primordial Realms of Ice and Fire, and who slew their progenitors and fully third of their numbers. In the aftermath, it was the three brother gods who shaped the Mortal World from giant's flesh, and so doing became the Wild Gods of Mountains, Sea, and Sky. And it was the the three sister goddesses who made humankind from ash and elm wood to people the new land, and who taught them their first lessons, becoming the Hearth Goddesses of Law, War, and Craft by doing so.

The gods and goddesses still watch over the mortal world and its denizens, and it is the role of the Goði to be their agent in the mortal world. A Goði is responsible for managing the community's relationship with the divine, and in return they are granted the favour of the gods and the ability to call on divine power in times of extremity or need.

Every Goði has access to some generic powers, but much of what an individual Goði can do is also determined by their choice of Divine Patron. Bodil's Gap is a setting under the purview of six deities, each with their own domain and powers; by pledging oneself to a particular deity or subset of deities over the others, one Goði can wield wildly different abilities from another. Many of a Goði's powers also rely on an expenditure of divine power that can only be gained through sacrifice. When in need of another boon from the gods, a Goði must turn to offerings to ensure the goodwill of the divine still rests with them.

The Power of the Gods

Every Goði's most basic powers stem from their particular Divine Patron. The simple attention of a god or goddess grants every Goði a simple, passive ability, and the power to call on greater divine favour to imbue themselves with a particular blessing. A devotee of the God of the Sea, for example, finds water posing less of an obstacle in any form, and may call on even greater power to breath below the waves as though in open air. A follower of the Goddess of War, meanwhile, is never burdened by armour no matter how heavy, and may call on greater power to strengthen their own strikes while turning aside the blows of their enemies.

Greater favour allows a Goði to call on yet greater powers. A follower of the God of the Mountains, for example, can gain the endurance of a stone, shape the bones of the earth with a word, follow the scent of gold, or call boiling magma from the inner earth to swallow their foes. A worshiper of the Goddess of Craft can repair or even improve objects with a touch, make divination about a person from the things they touch, grant objects the lightness of a feather, or work in magical materials to produce tools and items of great power.

Some abilities are also open to a Goði regardless of their particular patron. A talented Goði may heal the injured, grant good luck to all those who partake of a feast made from the beasts they sacrifice, bless a person by flecking them with sacrificial blood, or even summon one of the servants of their divine patron, whichever god or goddess they be.

Authority in the Community

Because of their important role as an intercessor with the divine, a Goði also wields a great deal of influence among the folk of Bodil's Gap. A Goði is often called on to oversee oaths and promises, and can wield their influence to ensure such promises are kept. They can call on the community to assemble for a festival or rite, or to bring tithes and offerings to support a higher cause. They can raise an altar or temple to serve as a locus of power for their rites and offerings, and they can draw fellow adherents of their particular patron to become their followers and acolytes.

Using the Goði

This playbook is intended for characters who are a combination of leader and wonder-worker, calling on the favour of higher powers to support their allies and their community at large, while also having access to some more direct divine abilities. Like the Óttimaðr, Goði is a playbook without a single root image, stemming more from my desire to rework and re-theme the generic Cleric for a non-generic setting. Use it instead of playbooks like Cleric or Paladin to present a warrior and leader empowered by the gods of a wild land and its people.

Bodil's Gap is currently in playtesting, and the playtesting version of the Goði 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 one or two of the Compendium Classes for Bodil's Gap, starting with the terrifying Dragon-Cursed.