YELLOW QUEEN
Equal parts mystic folklore and flesh, ruler of the Yellow City, smooth-limbed and whisper-voiced, a creamy advanced jaundice complexion and a face hidden behind a brocaded veil to be disposed of on her next wedding night.
Summoned by sects and cults to offer her a new groom that they might hear her rattled whispers of fortune and future.
She does so love them, her collection of suitors, though none have endured the consummation of their union unspoiled.
YELLOW CITY
A hazy metropolis the pale yellow-green colour of powdered bile. The features of the inhabitants seem extended somehow, their skin spongy, and they taste of soap.
Being half dream-scape, obtaining directions in the Yellow City is a hopeless task. To make your way you’ll need to focus on whatever it is that you desire to find.
For every attempt to find a place/thing/service, the player who rolls highest on a d20 must make an INT check, but if the player who rolled lowest fails a WIS check, roll on the Hindrances in the Yellow City table before you get there.
If the INT check itself is failed, roll on the Lost in the Yellow City table.
Much like a dream, anything encountered on those tables will become your new focus until they’re resolved or someone rolls a 1 or 20 in the process, in which case you may choose to move on (or re-attempt a failed INT check).
However, anyone that has been wronged without some manner of closure will likely intrude on you later.
Alternatively, guides can be employed, though their services are not free.
THE CHIMING CHAPEL
The immense palace bristling with bell towers where the Yellow Queen wanders her chambers amongst smouldering piles of incense, forever veiled and awaiting her next suitor.
BLACK EMPRESS
Smiling under a chittering black mass of beetles (or so it seems in the dark), the jealous false-sister of the Yellow Queen who wishes for marital celebrations to end and the mourning night to wake.
She can tell the past but there is always a price.
Her sarcastically sulky, smarmy, oil-tongued people live and travel through the shadows of the Yellow City, waiting for the night, calling out their Yellow neighbours.
LIGHT
Within the Yellow City time doesn’t abide by normal schedules, turning a corner might as easily turn morning into moonless night.
Lamplighters are therefore one of the most important and most harried occupations in the city, tasked with ensuring that the smoking lamps of streets and houses never go out, because we can’t have the shadow people moving out of their dank corners can we?
The position of the lamps are however untouchable, immutable, and while you may think you’re doing a good thing by moving a lamp closer to eliminate the shadow people’s lurking space, the people of the Yellow City will shriek in terror and beat you with fish until the lamp is returned.
Torches, lanterns, and candles are considered obscene and you’ll be drenched in buckets of spoiled condiments and pâté on sight.
THE FLORISTS AND THE BAKERS GUILD
The seething rivalry between the Florists and the Bakers Guild is as old as the city, though more recently the Bakers Guild have come to accuse the Florists of scheming in league with the Black Empress. After all, funerals require flowers, not frothy cakes, and the Necroflorists in particular are ever so shadowy aren’t they?
Both sides remain ever eager to conscript others into their elaborate sabotages, offering rewards of secrets and their more covetable creations.
REMOVING OBJECTS FROM THE YELLOW CITY
When leaving the Yellow City, if you have stolen, requested more than your fair share of a reward, or purchased an outlandish item (so buying a sword is fine, but not so much if you focussed on finding the Returned Ironmonger, who forges blades in the image and essence of his near-death terror), you’ll need to make a WIS check for each instance. Unless you fail the check, you’re unable to ignore the unreality of the item and it decomposes/melts/fades/floats away as a cloud of thin-legged moths/otherwise disappears as dreams so often do.
If this happens to 5 or more items at once they’ll amalgamate into a mocking representation of your greed, separate from the Yellow Queen and free from her influence, with HD equal to the number of items. It will escape cackling wildly into the night if it can; only to keep coming back to upset your plans when most inconvenient/embarrassing, or simply to keep ruining a good night’s sleep.
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This is bloody brilliant xx
Thanks Maria!
Aaah, it’s nice seeing more of these body horror tables.
Dang dude, this is wonderful! I want to run this now as part of my citycrawl games.
Thanks! If you run it I would LOVE to hear how it turns out x
I can drop this right into my Yuin-Su reskinned for Sword & Sorcery!
Ran this tonight’s part of my behind the looking glass. Wonderful. The party first ran into a Necroflorist, then later 5 ladies in waiting after some words were exchanged they ended up fighting the ladies I gave them daggers skinned as razor fans and a poisonous bite. Almost took out to PCs and the players loved it. Then when they were looking to get rid of the bodies a hand with a violet daisy reached out for a shadowed alleyway. Amd a voice set we will take care of that for you.
Oh hell yeah that’s wonderful xxx