Editing DRYH: Ashes of Gods - Setting Details (section)

=MINOR NIGHTMARES=
''Minor Nightmares are the least powerful Nightmares, usually under the direct control of Lieutenant Nightmares and by proxy Major Nightmares. DRYH uses the term Minion instead of Minor.''

==Willow Women - Pain 1 (6 during a Forced Gaze)==
Lithe and flexible and tall, the Willow Women are fair skinned with extremely long limbs and hands and feet and toes and fingers and their hair drops down all about them in a curtain of fine pale braids, like the hanging branches of the willow tree, hiding their faces and most of their form. The Willow Women will not willingly move aside their braids and look directly on another being and tend to keep their heads down and their faces hidden, but if someone were to part those pale braids, stark black eyes with no color or whites would stare back. Anyone caught in that naked gaze faces Pain 6 in a confrontation that cannot be avoided. In this special encounter all 6s rolled for Pain count towards Madness instead when determining dominance.

Not only do the Willow Women never speak, they have no mouths to do so.

'''Special:''' The Willow Women typically do not engage in conflict, but if defeated they (each) add one madness die to the character's next roll, whatever that roll may be, at which time the Willow Woman passes from existence forever. This die does not count against the total madness dice allowed to a character, but any madness dice that come up six during that roll count as two sixes for the purpose of determining strength. Further, any madness dice in the pool when the Willow Women were defeated do not fall off until the end of the next roll. These dice do count against the character's allowed total since they are his own dice, just hanging around for one more roll.

If other characters added dice to help the main protagonist defeat the Willow Women they share his fate on the subsequent roll as well.



==Inklings - Pain 1==
Made of shadow, inklings resemble children in form but with huge hands and feet and great grinning maws full of shadowy teeth. Inklings are three dimensional in form, but being made of the stuff of shadow they are somewhat translucent, except for the inside of their mouths beyond their shadowy teeth. That is black as never.

Silent as death, Inklings are never seen unless they wish it, but they are everywhere, watching from the shadows and - via the Fool - acting as the Raven King's eyes in and out of the Mad City.

When Inklings attack, they attack they attack in swarms. And though they are utterly invisible while they are ensconced in shadow, they do have to leave the shadows to attack. Their hands have no grip and their teeth have no bite if their bodies are in shadow.

Only during the Thirteenth hour are Inklings truly vulnerable, taking on the form of mute children wandering derelict. During the Thirteenth Hour an Inkling's Pain rating drops to zero effectively turning them into mere Denizens. For better or for worse, Inklings caught in this state within the confines of the Bizarre Bazaar do not revert back to their Nightmare form at the end of the Thirteenth Hour.



==Black Dogs - Pain 2==
Massive black hounds with slavering jaws and glowing green eyes, Black Dogs hunt at the behest of the Hound Master. They can scent guilt and fear and track their prey tirelessly. When they have brought their prey to ground, their Howls call the Hound Master to their location.



==Scampers - Pain 0==
No one has ever seen a Scamper, but many have heard them, their little feet skipping or dragging across the cobbles, childlike laughter or sobs ringing out from the gutter, the alley, the next street over, the alcove just passed. Investigation will never turn up a Scamper, but will instead lead to a toy set in the middle of a street or gutter or alleyway siting in the middle of its own little puddle of light all alone as if under a streetlamp that just isn't there.

The toy might be anything - a teddy bear, a doll, a jack in the box - battered and well loved and oddly compelling. Picking up the toy will have one of two effects; characters with Discipline equal to or exceeding their current Exhaustion dice immediately lose all exhaustion. If, however, the character's current Exhaustion exceeds their Discipline, the toy summons the Jack. 

Regardless of the effect, the toy immediately fades away.



==The Night Callers - Pain 1==
The Night Callers crowd the Rooftop Jungle, leaping from one building to another with fearless abandon, shouting to one another as they go through their constant game of motion. They are of a size and shape with little children but have the faces of birds and beasts and might have fur or feathers or tails to match the face, though their main limbs remain more human than beast. For instance while one might have feathers on it's arms that hang down like wings, they are still arms, not actual wings. Not that that makes them any less mobile as they flit about from spire to spire.

In particular, when the Night Callers spot one of the Awake in their domain, or other surface dwellers climb up, they let out an odd warbling cry that brings more of their kind and - perhaps more importantly - summons the Nightling Gale. [See Special]

'''Special:''' If sufficiently threatened, the Night Callers are able to summon the Nightling gale outside the Thirteenth Hour. They must roll their collective Pain versus the current exhaustion of all Awakened present on the scene. Dominance does not play into this roll and players do not have to roll any dice.



==The Menagerie - Pain 1==
What happens to Nightmares who grow up? In the Mad City, where Time is sluggish with paradox and reluctance, they never should. But in Mistress When's capable hands, they do. The Menagerie is what happens to the Night Callers who leap too close to her tower. The girls anyway. The broken remains of the few boys who do survive her malice can be found throughout the Mad City tormenting broken Denizens in dark holes and cracks and wishing for their own deaths.

The girls are another story. They remain mostly young but grow tall and straight where they ought and plumply curved where she demands. Their animal faces become idealized porcelain masks of the same animal, but can never be removed. Tails and feathers and fur become part of a costume made more of skin than anything else.

This is Mistress When's Menagerie, traded, loaned, even gifted to Nightmares to do with as they will, to butcher and harm, to flay alive and subject to all manner of torture until the clocks sound the Thirteenth Hour, at which time the contract ends and the Menagerie returns to Mistress When, broken but terribly, terribly whole. Ready to be given to new Nightmares again at the beginning of the first watch.



==The Broken Ones - Pain 2==
Male Night Callers who survive Mistress When's tortures flee, broken in body and spirit, their animal flesh torn away, never to regrow, open wounds exposed to the air, faceless faces terrifying to behold. Beast shaped masks of blood. Gone are the nights leaping between the Rooftops of the Jungle. The Broken Ones live only to visit the same torture that was visited upon them on others, though they are often too weak to manage it effectively.



==Rag Girls - Pain 1==
Rag Girls are pretty little orphans with pock marked faces in tattered dresses made from scraps and old rags dragging a little rag doll in one hand as they skip and dance about chanting vile versions of Ring Around the Rosie that seems like it might be as much about various venereal diseases as plague. 

They seem mostly harmless until they are right upon their marked prey, whom they will follow for blocks with no hint of threat. But when they draw nigh their rag dolls dissolve into wickedly sharp tools of rusted metal in their grubby little fists and their faces become something translucent that shows the sharp and empty outline of the skull beneath the skin.



==Plaguerats - Pain 2==
Smaller than the Catspaw, Plague Rats are even more ratlike than the Paws are catlike, but still move mostly upright and have some humanoid characteristics. Though they do not actively provoke the Catspaw, Plague Rats have no interest in order, shakedowns, or protections. They simply do as they wish and slink away into the shadows.

The Rats are not terribly brave unless they know they have numbers or their prey is otherwise helpless.

'''Special:''' Should Pain dominate in an encounter with Plague Rats, one Pain die lingers with any characters involved in the encounter. That pain die is added to the Pain rating the characters face in their next confrontation.



==Barnacle Boys - Pain 2 (6 when being skinned)==
Vaguely shaped like small boys but covered head to toe in a carapace of thousands of living barnacles, the Barnacle Boys hang out on the docks and piers and jetties collecting information for the Catspaw and the Night Callers alike, as well as for any Awake that can pay their price.

When crouched down against a piling or the base of a dock or storefront, Barnacle Boys all but look like a bit of crumbling foundation. They are also very agile and adept, able to use their bony growths to quickly shimmy up pilings and walls to the rooftops of the Wharf and even up to the Rooftop Jungle.

If attacked and defeated, Barnacle boys break and get smaller, but as long as one barnacle remains, they live and will regrow.

Barnacle Boys have a vicious unreasoning hatred for Plague Rats and will attack them on sight.

'''Special:''' The barnacled hides of Barnacle Boys are worth much in trade to certain factions within the Bizarre Bazaar. It should be noted, that removing a Barnacle Boy's hide is the only way to actually kill it, so they tend to be alive and screaming throughout the process. Pain 6 to skin one.



==Raggle Taggle Gypsies - Pain 1==
Mischievous denizens of the Bazaar, the Raggle Taggle Gypsies flit about the crowds in scraps of colorful billowing silks and sashes, never stopping long in any one place, and are ubiquitous simply by virtue of the fact that they are literally everywhere. Though newcomers to the Bazaar might be tempted to worry about thievery, the actual purpose of the Raggle Taggle Gypsies is more subtle, and often more dangerous. Anyone entering the Bazaar with even one current exhaustion die are subject to become a target for their antics.

Converging on their mark in packs to gain the cumulative affect of their Pain, the bulk of the Gypsies act as a whirling distraction while one of their number places a stolen item on the protagonist's person. Infused with the bizarre madness unique to the Raggle Taggle Gypsies, the rightful owner of the stolen item immediately knows who has it and believes that they stole it.

'''Special:''' The First Rule of the Raggle Taggle Gypsies is Do Not Talk About the Raggle Taggle Gypsies. Any attempt to describe these ubiquitous denizens of the Bazaar will be met with amused disbelief and appreciation for a fine tale that might earn a mug in a friendlier place than the Mad City. Despite the fact that they seem to be everywhere, apparently only the Awake are actively aware of them.



==Urchins - Pain 1 1/3==
The vast majority of Urchins are child sized, but may sometimes be equivalent to teens or adults. Clad in WWI-WWII era garb with gas masks from that era covering and completely concealing their faces. They move singly, in pairs, small groups, or mobs but always calmly and in precise order. Urchins will rarely act out so long as their perceived routine is not interrupted or hindered in any way.

'''Special:''' Urchins bring one extra pain die to their total Pain rating for every three of them present. This trumps the normal rule for adding pain for groups of Nightmares.



==Hermit - Pain 1 (+ special)==
The Hermit is an old balding man in a simple robe with bushy mustaches and liver spotted scalp and hands. Those huge, impossibly bony hands clutch a gnarled staff crooked at the top like a shepherd's staff, from which crook hangs a simple bronze lantern. In any confrontation, the Hermit may dash his lantern to the ground encircling himself and one other in a ring of fire. Other characters are unable to add their discipline to the character in the ring of fire and the Hermit's Pain rating increases by whatever Exhaustion dice are in the character's pool before the encounter (if the character adds an exhaustion die for the encounter itself, that die does not count towards the Hermit's Pain rating).



 
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