The Grand Hospital of Humakuyun, d8 Unclean Spirits, and d12 Things the Nurses Want You to Do

On the shores of the northern sea, at the confluence of the roads which travel east and west, sits Humakuyun, last stop before the wilderness. While infamous for its dreaded assassins, Humakuyun-on-the-sea is also widely loved for its lively parties and its beloved hospital. The Grand Hospital of Humakuyun is a veritable pilgrimage site for doctors, alchemists, and nurses, and a regular destination for adventurers. Whether you have been subjected to a horrible folding curse, been bitten by a venomous snake, or contracted the red death, the nurses of the Grand Hospital will accept you with wide open arms (though they might not hug you, depending on how leaky your buboes are).

The Grand Hospital is the only place in the east where you can get real medical attention. You might be able to rest and recuperate in other places, sure, but only at the Grand Hospital will most maladies be addressed. The building is kept completely clear of any foul odors (seeing as, of course, plague is spread through miasma), fastidiously cleaned of any stinky filth by a veritable army of servants clad in distinct green robes. When resting and recuperating at the Grand Hospital, you receive a +1 hp per day bonus to daily healing, and have no risk of contracting disease or being possessed by an unclean spirit. Resting and recuperating in most other environments brings with it associated risks. Injury makes oneself more susceptible to intrusion by unclean spirit or plague.

Resting and recuperating in any spiritually unclean or filthy location (graveyard, sewer, pigsty, deep underground, building built atop any unclean location) prompts a save vs. ritual uncleanliness (save vs. death) or you are taken by an unclean spirit or disease. Until the disease or spirit is purged from your body, you cannot heal anymore. Being subjected to a curse also makes you susceptible to unclean spirits. Roll on the table below to determine the nature of the possession.

1d8 Unclean Spirits and Diseases

1: Spasmodic Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a stiff many-legged thing. Causes random uncontrollable spasms. When this spirit possesses you, roll 1d20; any time you roll the number produced, you go into uncontrollable spasms, unable to act.

2: Dysentery: Diarrhea! Slower movement and faster fatigue; dehydration requiring double the water, rest, rations. Disadvantage on saving throws against disease.

3: Heavy Shoulders Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a wide-eyed long-trunked ape-thing sitting upon the victim's shoulders. Move encumbrance status up one step: from unencumbered to encumbered, from encumbered to heavily encumbered, from heavily encumbered to immobile.

4: Sweating Sickness: Intense fevers and sweats. Too uncomfortable to wear armors or thick clothes. Inability to focus on anything, no attack bonuses and must roll for any spells cast.

5: Stolen Sight Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a dark black glistening insectile thing clinging to the victim's face. Forces the victim to see a horrible dream at all times, unable to stop it by closing their eyes and unable to see their surroundings.

6: Consumption: Difficulty breathing, coughing up blood, rapid weight loss. Steady loss of 1 point of STR and CON every week, and unable to run (automatically captured if in a chase).

7: Pitiful Wrath Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a small crawling mammal-thing, two humanlike faces on either end of its body. Every so often, the victim makes a reaction roll to determine their current emotional state, with low results as more negative emotions and higher results as more positive emotions.

8: The Red Death: Horrible red buboes leaking pus and blood. Physical frailty, difficulty breathing, bleeding from eyes, eventual bleeding in lungs. To be detailed in a further dedicated post.

Intense disease and curses take time to heal even at the Grand Hospital. Constant attention, priestly cleansing rituals, wafting of sweet smelling plants, exorcisms, sacrifices, application of poultices or imbibing of potions all take days, weeks, months. There is a base number of weeks that different levels of plague or curse take to heal (1 week for very basic diseases such as the sweating sickness (influenza), 3 for more involved afflictions, 6 for certain curses, 12 for the worst plagues and curses), and every week after that span of time, the patient makes a saving throw vs. death, recovering more or less fully on a success.

The nurses and doctor-savants and alchemists of the Grand Hospital are always in need of something. Since they expect to see an adventurer again in the future anyway, they often ask new arrivals to go retrieve some item, manuscript, herb, or piece of information for them.

1d12 Things the Nurses Want You to Do

1: Go to the Hinterbog in the east and retrieve the skin of a bright yellow frog; you will know it by the shape of the spots on its back, forming a six-pointed star. Do not lick them! They will make your tongue swell up.

2: Go to the Wall of the Conquering King and ask the Wallmasters how they deal with the thin air in the mountains.

3: Go into the Holy Cedar Forest and snatch up a mossling, just one... and be sure to figure out how to not catch the mosslings' ire, at least not on yourself. How you do that is up to you.

4: Go to Temple Town and retrieve the toes of mummy-saints. Don't take more than one toe from each mummy-saint! We don't want to anger our forefathers... nor the high priests of the fire temple.

5: Go to the Great Desert to the south and bring us a baby sandworm. Please keep it alive, if you bring us a dead one we won't pay you. How you keep it alive for the hundreds of miles between the city and the homes of the sandworms is for you to figure out.

6: There is a snake-vampire living in a copse of evergreens to the east. Go get cursed by him, and come back for us to examine the effects and determine a cure. Do not kill the vampire, that might ruin our findings.

7: Travel to the edge of the satrapy of Numistan, where the red-frond flowers grow. Harvest their stamens and bring them back to Humakuyun, but be sure to keep them out of the sun.

8: Consume this entire barrel of lizards all by yourself and go about your normal business for a week and then report back.

9: Visit the distant leper colony on the edge of Great Desert and remove all your clothes except for this amulet we will provide. Report back on what happens.

10: Travel to the rotting corpse of the slain giant in the territory of the client king to the northeast and harvest part of his liver. We have heard it grows back unceasingly and want to understand it.

11: Go into the Land of Darkness, cross the northern sea if you must, and return with as many individual pine needles as you can. Ideally store them in animal skins.

12: Drink nothing but this mixture of silver and water and sleep in a circle of salt for one month. Report back to us every week.

On Assassins, Geckos, and Leprosy

My very bad and scribbly attempts at drawing examples of Eggsmen in their cloaks, hats, and masks.

The city of Humakuyun is home to the headquarters of the Order of the Egg, the most extensive such organization in the whole of the Enlightened Empire. They are sanctioned murderers, a clan of criminals given a wide berth here in the east. The only person they fear is the Kanarang; not even the King of Kings himself scares them. They make themselves identifiable with tall flat-topped hats and wear masks that hide their true identities. They give themselves new names, for their old names are forfeit when they take their first blood.

An oviraptor, the symbol of the Eggsmen

The Eggsmen have a crest in the form of a oviraptor clutching to a clutch of cracked eggs. They were founded centuries ago as a raptorial clan in the realms of the ancient Dinosaur Kings, granted official license to keep rival family lines in check and regulate the law of death by bringing all assassination into one association. Only their clan could kill with impunity; the only other given that right were the armies of the Dinosaur Kings themselves. When the Conquering King marched his armies into the northern valleys, the raptor assassin clan saw the writing on the wall and betrayed their lords. The Eggsmen sent messengers with missives to kill the Conquering King back to their senders, their eyes torn from their sockets.

In the generations since, the clan has become a secret society, one that accepts initiates of all peoples and nations. Its saurian leadership has receded into the secretive depths of its most exclusive circles, while its network has expanded to reach far north, south, and east. The Enlightened Empire, otherwise opposed to such criminal networks, has allowed the Eggsmen to continue to operate solely because of their reach, influence, and... usefulness.

It is rumored that the patriarch of the Eggsmen is still a dinosaur, wrapped up tight in linens and silks, their sharp-toothed snout peeking out from behind the curtains that only the grandest of guests or the deepest of initiates get to see.

The assassins of the west resent the Eggsmen for having state sanction and for their influence. It is not uncommon for western assassins to try and steal Egg secrets for their own gain, or try to take out high-ranking Eggsmen... the reach of the westerners is fleeting and clamoring, however.

Source: Iguanamouth, A Book of Creatures

A favored weapon of the assassins is the humble gecko. Geckos, especially the ones from the shores of the southern seas, spread leprosy. Their wrinkly skin festers with disease, and reminds fearful hearts of the melting of their own skin. The assassin releases the lizard into their target's chambers, and leaves it to fate. It is a slow and painful death, but one that gives the assassin many options. They can kill the target while they are at their weakest, leave them to fester alone, or push for their exile to a leper colony across the mountains. A social death is still a death, after all.

Leprosy

Coming into physical contact with a transmitter of leprosy prompts a save vs. disease (poison). You must make this save for every potential vector if in contact with multiple (for instance, multiple geckos). On a failed save, you have contracted the disease. It takes 1d4 weeks to begin to show effects; after that amount of time, you take 1d2 points of damage to CHA and CON per week, and -1 to save vs disease/poison per week. You are also able to transmit the disease yourself. Cure disease only cures one week of leprosy; it takes serious intervention to heal the disease.

(Hex 19,15)

Terrain: Rocky arid wasteland in a wide valley between looming mountain peaks.

Main Feature: A quarantined leper colony, connected to the satrapy to the north by only a few isolated mountain paths. Its ostensible head is a long gone leprous priest named Zurva Baba, his tattered robes eroded down by desert wind. They have small gardens on the edge of the isolated oasis they cling to.

East: Camel graveyard. Home of a desert hermit who despises the leper colony nearby. Haunted by disembodied screeching at night.

(Hex 15,10)

Terrain: A hilly and rugged land coated in a consistent covering of deciduous trees.

Main Feature: An abandoned village, only recently depopulated by disease. Its houses still stand, empty and forlorn. It is crawling with geckos, coating just about every surface. The statue of the goddess of the morning star that sits in the town's shrine has an angry look about it, deprived of sacrifices for several months.

Burgeoning Worm

 Yknow for a blog named "Save vs. Worm", not a single worm has graced my posts! It is time to rectify that!

(Oh and warning for body horror and parasitism here)

Diagnosis: You're a Wizard

 While I might not be the biggest fan of all of the prestige classes and feats and characters options and whatnot in 3e (and by extension in pathfinder), there are a good few options from that period of DnD's history that I am absolutely enamored with. I've never actually played 3e or 3.5e for any lengthy period of time, but I've ended up accruing a not insignificant number of 3e books over my years of interest in the hobby, mostly monster books (by far my favorite kind of RPG books and also my introduction to tabletop gaming, before I even knew what tabletop gaming was). One of the most interesting ones that wasn't a monster book, however, was the Book of Vile Darkness, the only Dungeons and Dragons book to be released with a parental advisory sticker on it warning about adult themes.

Adult themes like... demons and killing things and being eeeevil. Ignore the self confident parental advisory sticker, the Book of Vile Darkness was just over the top edgy saturday morning cartoon goth evil stuff. And I LOVE THAT. I love that aesthetic so so much more than if the book was actually serious adult content. So hey, here is one of my favorite prestige classes from the book, written up for Old School Essentials! (considered making a GLOG version but realized I'm not familiar enough with the GLOG to do that). It's a spooky time of year so why not have a bit of a spooky class. Oh, also I did attempt this once before on my old blog, but that one was written for 5e and hopefully this one will be better. I might do the same thing with some other character options from that period of DnD that I like... which isn't a huge amount, but there are a few!

The Cancer Mage
A class for use with Old School Essentials (or any similar ruleset)

Requirements: Minimum CON 9, Must be Neutral or Chaotic in alignment
Prime Requisite: CON and INT
Hit Dice: 1d4
Maximum Level: 14
Armor: Leather only, no shields
Weapons: Dagger

A cancer mage with at least 13 in one prime requisite gains a +5% bonus to experience. If both CON and INT are 16 or higher, the brineman gets a +10% bonus.

Arcane Magic
Not going to write out all of the OSE rules for magic here, just suffice to say that they can cast spells like magic-users, can use magical items, etc. However, they can only start casting spells at second level, and cannot do magical research.
Back-stab
When attacking an unaware opponent from behind, a cancer mage receives a +4 bonus to-hit and doubles any damage dealt.
Cancerous Companion
Beginning at level two, a large tumor endowed with intelligence grows on the cancer mage. They have a personality distinct from the mage, but the two share all ability scores and saves. The cancerous companion is able to see in all directions around the mage out to a radius of 30 feet, and will alert the cancer mage of any danger they see. At level four, mind-affecting spells (such as charms, illusions, etc.) have a 50% chance of only affecting the companion. At level six, the radius that the cancerous companion can see out to is expanded to 60 feet. At level nine, the cancerous companion is able to cast a spell that the cancer mage just cast at no spell slot cost for the cancer mage, once per day.
Contagious Touch
The touch of the cancer mage spreads disease. Whenever the cancer mage touches a living animal (spirits, demons, constructs, undead, plants, and fungi are not affected), the creature must make a saving throw vs. poison or contract a random disease that the cancer mage is currently carrying. Beginning at level five, the cancer mage is able to select which disease a target is infected with.
Disease Host
The cancer mage is host to every disease that they have come in contact with. They begin play carrying only one disease, randomly chosen from the table below. Any disease they come in contact with over the course of the game should also be kept track of. Although the cancer mage visibly shows symptoms of these plagues, they are not able to die from them.
Roll 1d8
1. Bubonic Plague
2. Chicken Pox
3. Dancing Plague
4. Leprosy
5. Measles
6. Polio
7. Rabies
8. Smallpox
(These diseases can easily be switched out for more setting-appropriate ones, I just wanted to use some ones from real life so as to not rely on any setting-specific things)
Skills
Cancer mages can use the following skills, with the chances of success shown below:
Hide in Shadows (HS) (Begin at 10% chance of success, increase by 5% each level)
Move Silently (MS) (Begin at 15% chance of success, increase by 5% each level)
After 11th Level
A cancer mage is able to establish a secretive coven to initiate others into the close relationship with disease that so defines the mages. They attract 1d10 level one cancer mages, thieves, and magic-users, who will learn spells and techniques from them. 

Source

Cancer Mage Character Progression
XP to Level 2: 2,600
Fighting Advancement: as Magic-User
Saving Throws at Level 1: 
    Death/Poison: 11
    Wands: 15
    Paralysis/Petrify: 16
    Breath Attacks: 16
    Spells/Rods/Staves: 12
Spell Advancement: as Cleric

Source

Also, since this is considerably pared down from the original 3e cancer mage, I chose to turn some of the class features that the class originally had into spells, so here are those!

Children of the Night
Level: 2
Duration: 4 turns
Range: 100'
The caster calls forth a number of small creatures from the dark recesses surrounding them. The creatures summoned follow the caster's mental commands, but do not follow the commands of any others. The creatures that can be called forth include: 
5d6 bats
3d6 cave locusts
2d4 killer bees
2d6 giant black widows
2d6 pit vipers
3d6 giant rats
1d6 rhagodessa
2d4 robber flies
3d6 spitting cobras
5d6 stirges
1d6 giant toads

Viral Agent
Level: 3
Duration: 1 day
Range: 5 miles
The caster endows a disease that they host in their body with intelligence. They must sacrifice a point of intelligence when casting the spell. They are able to communicate telepathically with the disease while it is within the spell's range, and the disease will inform them of what their host experiences. If any other person(s) are infected with the disease, the caster is able to receive information from all such hosts. 

Insect Armor
Level: 2
Duration: 3 turns
Range: The caster or a creature touched
The target of the spell is covered by crawling insects for the duration of the spell's effect. This grants them a +4 bonus to their armor class, and the ability to climb on walls and ceilings. This armor class bonus is, however, negated by any attack which would hit a large part of the subject's surface area i.e. a large hammer strike, as the insects crawl out of the way to defend themselves from the damage.

Can you believe people are making halloween masks of covid?? A little insensitive if you ask me, even if I do love these horrible slimy goblin lookin critters

Disease Form
Level: 5
Duration: two weeks (can be cancelled at any time)
Range: The caster
The caster transforms into a microbial disease, and is able to infect anyone that comes in contact with them. Any items that the caster has on their person does not transform with them. Any living animal (this does not affect spirits, demons, constructs, the undead, plants, or fungi) that comes in contact with the caster while they are in disease form must make a save vs. poison or contract the caster. After an initial incubation period of 24 hours, the caster in disease form begins dealing 1d3 damage to the host's CON per day. If CON reaches 0, the host dies. Each day that the caster is in disease form, they can roll 1d20, hoping to roll higher than the host's current CON score. If this roll succeeds, then the caster takes control of the host for the remaining duration of the spell. Any living animal that comes within 5 feet of the host contracts the caster as well, but the caster is only able to control one host at a time.