DRYH: At The Crossroads - Setting Details

The Crossroads

The Crossroads may appear anywhere two ways meet. At an intersection where roads cross one another. At a ford where river and road meet. On the threshold of any window or door. And in any Crossroad the Dealmaker may be summoned or may appear.

The Crossroads Nightmares

Old Scratch - Pain ?

Old Scratch appears as a shrewd, dark haired fellow with amber eyes, perfectly white teeth, and a finely groomed goatee. He is always seen in an impeccable white shirt, and matching vest and trousers of dark worsted wool and a fobbed pocket watch at his belly. His black leather shoes shine like glass.

Old Scratch is known as the Dealmaker and is often encountered during the Thirteenth Hour, and he will typically only talk Deals. He wastes little time on anything else. He offers no goods or services, only asks what is desired, then names a price to obtain it. Scratch never fails to fulfill a bargain. But he also never fails to collect its price.

Old Scratch's Pain rating is not known.

The Devi - Pain 3 [5 at the Crossroads]

It is rumored there are seven of these temptresses beholden to Old Scratch. They appear in whatever form is most appealing to the one they appear to and ply virtue and vice alike. The Devi are Scratch's collectors and enforcers.

The Hound Master - Pain 4 [6 at the Crossroads]

The Hound Master is a tall gaunt man with the image of a skull painted on his dark face and a green glint in his eyes. He always manifests shirtless in a tattered black suit with tails and top hat. Two great Black Dogs accompany him at all times, increasing his effective Pain rating to 6. The Hound Master commands the Black Dogs of Hell and can summon as many as he likes at will.

Special: The Hound Master has a terrible reputation both in and out of the Mad City. Minor Nightmares will avoid the Hound Master and his Black Dogs, fleeing from his presence for dear life. Lieutenant level Nightmares not directly allied with Old Scratch will viciously and immediately attack him on sight. When being attacked by other Nightmares, the Huntsman's Pain increases by 2 + 1 for each additional Nightmare beyond the first to a maximum Pain rating of 12.

If a major Nightmare attacks the Huntsman, he can blow his Horn to summon Old Scratch himself.

The Hound Master's Horn: The Huntsman bears a bronze bugle etched about with runes that seem to devour any light that touches them. At need he can blow this horn to summon Old Scratch. It is rumored that his ability to add pain against other Nightmares comes from this Artifact.

Black Dogs - Pain 2 [3 at the Crossroads]

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.

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Paradox Square

Paradox Square is an open triangle of ground at the center of the Mad City. It is here that Sheriff Tock enforces the Rule of Law and makes examples of those who would break it.

The Gallows

In the center of the three sided Square stands the Gallows. It always has at least one arm and noose assembled and standing on the platform even when justice is not being meted out, but it also always has just enough arms and nooses to accommodate the number of souls set to hang.

The Clock Tower

The Clock Tower acts as bot the Headquarters for Sheriff Tock and his Coppers but also doubles as a maze of cells and dungeons that go deep into the earth below. Set in the corner of the Square, the Tower is topped with a giant clock that chimes the Thirteen Hours.

Paradox Square Nightmares

Sheriff Tock - Pain 6/8/10/12

Sheriff Tock is a figure in functional coat and pants with a simple shirt and sturdy boots, but his face is a clockwork parody of a giant stop watch with endlessly turning gears that give the impression of grinding teeth in a smiling mouth and eyes constantly whirling with sinister intelligence. Sheriff Tock carries a blunt revolver in his belt and wears a shiny star on his lapel.

Outside of Paradox Square, Tock has a respectable Pain rating of 6 but certain conditions can increase that rating. He gains 2 pain for each of the following. He is in Paradox Square. He bears a Warrant of Arrest for the Awakened he is confronting. It is the Thirteenth Hour.

Coppers - Pain 4

Coppers are clockwork policemen made entirely out of gears and struts of copper and act as Tock's Lieutenants.

The Headsman - Pain 5 [7 on the Gallows]

The Headsman performs all Lawful Executions in the Mad City. Appearing as a burly shirtless man in simple wool pants and a black faceless hood, the Headsman is only encountered during a Lawful Execution or when summoned by Tock. Though Executions in the Mad City are done exclusively by hanging, the Headsman is never seen without his massive black axe.

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The Labyrinth

The Labyrinth makes up the bulk of the Mad City, with it's twisting streets and shady districts and towering peaked roofs that block the stars. Virtually the whole of the Mad City is stuffed into the labyrinth.

The Narrows

The streets of the Labyrinth are tight and twisted and not easily navigated. These are the Narrows.

The Peaks

The peaked roofs of the Labyrinth is at once a playground and a hunting ground. Up among the crooked rooftops and canted windows and broken balconies where the stars can be seen by all, Nightmares dance and leap and fly.

The Theatre

A rundown building that takes up a whole block, the Theatre is the demesne of the Blood Queen and her brood.

The Silent House

An Opium Den of some repute, the Silent House caters to every vice known in the Mad City and the City Slumbering both. Here there are no rules. But there is a ruler.

The Tower of the Moon

Home to Mistress When and her Menagerie, the Tower of the Moon is not a neutral place for Nightmares, but outside the Bazaar it is the most neutral-ish. It's Mistress has no laws against violence or duplicity in her Tower - so long as those things aren't turned against her - but the Nightmares who frequent the Tower of the Moon have, if not an actual truce, at least an understanding.

Tinkertown

Tinkertown is a district of crafting and dark sciences on the very edge of the Labyrinth hard against the Hammerwall that divides Rattown from the city proper.

The Labyrinth Nightmares

The Blood Queen - Pain 3/6/9

The Blood Queen is first and foremost the Nightmare to Nightmares.

In all her incarnations she appears as a bloodsoaked female. In the First Watch [from the first through the fourth hour] she manifests as a little girl [Pain 3]. In the Middle Watch [from the fifth through the eighth hour] she manifests as a stately woman [Pain 6]. In the Last Watch [from the ninth through the twelfth hour] she manifests as a gnarled crone with jagged nails and teeth [Pain 9]. No one even whispers about what she becomes during the Thirteenth Hour or what Pain she brings then.

Blood Gift: Any Human who drinks of the Blood Queen's blood is instantly transformed into a Vampir Nightmare with a Pain rating 2 less than the Blood Queen's own Pain rating at the time they drank from her - 1/4/7 during the twelve hours of the Watch or higher if created during the 13th Hour.

Special: Vampir created during the Thirteenth Hour are not in thrall to the Blood Queen or subject to her commands.

Special: The Pain Rating of Nightmares who come within sight of the Blood Queen drops two points and remains reduced while in her presence. Only the Raven and Mistress When are known to be immune to this effect. The Blood Queen's Vampir add one pain to their rating in her presence and tend to congregate near her unless ordered to do otherwise.

Vampir - Pain 1/4/7

Vampir are pale humanoid Nightmares created by the Blood Queen from raw human stock and conform closely to the Vampires of popular human lore. Vampir of Pain 1 are rare, usually created in emergencies and afterward given to higher pain Vampir as servants or destroyed outright. Vampir follow a close hierarchy based on pain rating (further delineated by age within each pain rating).

Two Vampir of higher than 7 pain are known to exist. They do not answer to the Blood Queen, but there is nothing to say they would refuse her either.

Journey Men - Pain 6

Bare wisps of lean, tall, man-shaped shadows in shadowy finery, the Journey Men are the emissaries of the Major Nightmares, carrying messages between them and seeing to tasks involved when two Major Nightmares must meet on neutral ground. It is whispered that the Journey Men act as Assasins when the Major Nightmares do not want their own hand seen attached to a thing.

Special: Physical barriers are no obstacle to the Journey Men. They are able to flow up and over and through cracks to get where they are going. They are, however, unable to enter the Bizarre Bazaar.

The Barber - Pain 5

The Barber appears as a shrewd muscular man with a bald pate and a massive handlebar mustache in simple clothing and always carrying a wicked looking straight razor. Little happens in the Narrows that the Barber is unaware through his network of Urchins.

Urchins - Pain 1 1/3

The vast majority of Urchins are child sized, rumpled and anonymous. They move singly, in pairs, small groups, in their constant spy game. Urchins will rarely act directly against an Awakened 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.

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.

The Night Callers - Pain 1

The Night Callers crowd the rooftops of the Peaks, leaping from one to another, 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 rooftop to rooftop.

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.

The Haj - Pain 7 [9 in the Silent House]

The Haj is the Lord of the Silent House and appears as a massively built man in broad silk pantaloons and sash with the massive head of an elephant with gilded tusks and three eyes [with the third set high in the center of his forehead] that glow a flickering amber.

Special: The Haj is able to cause complete silence and complete darkness to blanket everything within the Silent House at will.

The Rakshasa - Pain 4

The Rakshasa resemble tiger headed men of massive stature and keep the peace in the Silent House acting as the Haj's guards and enforcers.

Special: When there are more than one Rakshasa in an encounter the first two are counted at Full pain rating if they are within the Silent House

Mistress When - Pain 9

Mistress When is a shaper of flesh and seller of souls, a striking beauty whose features match the expectations of whoever gazes upon her. Considering her position, most expect exquisite.

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 scattered throughout the Mad City tormenting broken Denizens and wishing for death.

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 clock chimes 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 at the chiming of the first hour.

The Wretched - Pain 3

The Wretched are women of the Menagerie who have grown beyond their station to become Mistress When's Lieutenants. The Wretched always manifest as gaunt women in proper modest garb with their lower jaws ripped away and black blood constantly seeping out of the wound that remains. All animalistic aspects from their time in the Menagerie are gone, but a twinkle of mad lust and invitation remains in their eyes.

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 Peaks. 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.

The Eyeless - Pain 0

As their name implies, these men and women have no eyes, but sallow amber flames flicker in their empty sockets and their skin seems waxy and almost fluid.

The Smith - Pain 5

The great convex face of the Hammerwall that bulges into the Labyrinth is a hive of industry and metalwork. It is here that the Smith of the Hammerwall plies his trade. Stout and bearded The Smith is a construct of every known metal meshed together in clockwork perfection, the Smith is fearless when wielding his great hammer.

In any conflict with the Smith, should Pain dominate, regardless of success or failure and in addition to any other applicable complications, the Awakened is considered Armorlocked. One or more limb is encased in a thick sleeve of iron by the Smith's hammer and immobile.

The Alchemist - Pain 7

Tall and gaunt, the Alchemist is a faceless figure in dark robes who wields unparalleled power in the form of potions and darting wisps of light. The Alchemist can transmute any substance into any substance he chooses.

Cogs - Pain 0

Denizens of Tinkertown, Cogs are clockwork people who assist the Smith and the Alchemist in their endeavors.

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 a Nighmare whose Pain rating equals or exceeds the Awakened's current Exhaustion dice.

Regardless of the effect, the toy immediately fades away.

The Fallen - Pain 0

Many who meet their end in horrible circumstances find their way into the Mad City just before that last moment, escaping one horrifying end for another. Special: No matter how hard you kill them to death, the Fallen always get back up.

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The Catacombs

Beneath the Labyrinth of the Mad City lies the Catacombs, a warren of sewers and tunnels that burrows deep beneath the Mad City and plays host to fiefdoms that do not recognize Tocks authority above.

The Nethers

The Nethers are shadow districts squirreled away in the catacombs. There are literally hundreds of them, though the best known are the Shadow Nethers, the Straw Nethers, and the Spider Nethers. These confederate kindgoms don't particularly seek dominance so much as strive to remain independent of the rule of others. The rules Above don't apply within.

The Catacombs Nightmares

The Naga - Pain 8

The Naga appears as a gigantic black snake with the head of a woman. The Naga is subtle and silent, prone to trickery and deceit.

The Hartshorn - Pain 6

Three shadowy human figures in rugged tasseled buckskins, tall and lean, with the skulls of great stags hovering where their heads should be, wander the Catacombs. Tricks of the mind are the demesne of the Hartshorn, weaving the mists and damp into illusions of loss and pain in the minds of their prey.

The Protean - Pain 5 [7 When Enraged]

The Protean is a large man whose dead grey skin is a mapwork of intersecting scars. Standing head and shoulders above most men, the Protean is powerfully built and carries a perpetually mad look in his eyes. When he is enraged, his scars glow the color of old blood. It is unclear whether the Protean is an actual Nightmare or a very old Awakened.

Inklings - Pain 1

Masters of the Shadow Nethers, 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 seeing everything that happens beneath the the Mad City.

When Inklings 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.

Scarecrows - Pain 3 [5 When Burning]

Scarecrows hail from the Straw Nethers and appear as their namesakes, lanky human figures of straw stuffed into tattered clothes with heads of wood or gourds or old skulls. Scarecrows are territorial, and while it is rare to see one they typically will attack on sight.

Special: If a Scarecrow is lit on fire it is doomed, but it's Pain rating jumps to 5 while it still lives.

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Rattown Wharf

Rattown Wharf is a jumbled shanty town of taverns, shipwright shops, and low slung warehouses clustered on the edge of the black sluggish harbor upon which the Mad City is built. Ships of questionable seaworthiness come and go, loading and unloading even more questionable cargo in the hours of eternal night.

Just beyond the docks and piers and jetties the bones of sunken vessels make passage out into the deep all but impossible, but somehow the tattered ships make it in and out of that jagged labyrinth, though only their captains and crew might have any idea how.

Not even for the Thirteenth Hour does activity in Rattown abate.

Rattown Wharf Nightmares

The Raven

The Catspaw

Plague Rats

Barnacle Boys

Drowned Men

The Bizarre Bazaar Nightmares

The Haggler King

Hagglers [denizens]

Raggle Taggles

Clockwork Insects

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