Excerpts From A Second-Hand Necronomicon

pictured: actual real-life selfie of me writing this self-indulgent post about some dead wizards my players stomped in prior campaigns

The Necronomicon, by Abdul Alhrazed, Astronomer-Necromancer (early 3rd sun)
(Corrections Courtesy of  Sarkomand, The Sorcerer-King, The Omnipotent!) (4th Sun)
(test results of queens-consort neroikos) (late 3rd ranging to 4th)
(With advice for a modern audience by Magister Verdurus in the age of the 5th sun)
Introduction
Rejoice, seekre of knowledge, for ye hold in your hands the lyfe's worke of Abdul Alhrazed(or more likelie, a copy of my great work). Belief me when I say I holde no ill wille towardes the race of menne nor womenne nor childrenne, butte sought only to understand lyfe and deathe, and wishe to spread this knowledge to all mortals, and even immortals such as the Alves(poor bastard was writing this before the intersolar war, ignore everything he says about Alves)

Though a broade subject, let it first be said that Necromancy is notte a art of deathe and darkness, but of LYFE and LYGHTE! The Soul is what we speake to, and grant new fleshe, so that the dead may once againne gaze uponne the sunlit realms. Ifn the ruling bodies of a land prove querulous and recalcitrante in accepting our blessinges, remembere that it is notte these foolishe kings and wytches, butte the elements and world, who are your true enemie. Air, Earth, and Water- all seek to expel our SOULS from our bodies, and reclaim our crude materiel bodies to their cold grasps. The ignorance of men may be rectified in time(dubious), butte the enmitie of the elementes is eternal and unrelenting, and to denie deathe, one must assert that LYFE and LIGHTE, the FYRE of the SOUL, is eternallie dominant over the elementes! (again, 3rd-sun scholar, he had never even heard of the purging flame of riikhus)

Before ye proceed, I would firstlie recommende seeking out the Haibane Yazata (he means a Vulch. Bird-person, endemic to Saresare) for though they are filthie and loathesome of aspect, they are mortal psychopomps entrusted with a deep empathie for the soul, and can teach ye muche of calling forth the spirits of the deceased, and perhaps most importantlie, of putting them back to rest. Do notte call up what ye can not putte down....  
Chapter One- Missing Parts
Ye have doubtless hearde of mightie menne and womenne fighting battles after taking fatal wounds, and the simple reasonne for this is that a bodie is merelie a vessel, the lantern holding the lyghte of the soul. A strong soul need not leave its bodie if it can endure painne and impairment. I examine the following issues with missing organs, butte advise ye, my student across time, to use bodies that died peacefullie(Ironic)(irrelevant) and to follow these instructional sketchings to inform ye barber-surgery and confirm all organs are present before proceeding.

1.  The Brainne- This soft cushionne exists so our fierie souls might be comfortable and dreaming in our crude bodies of fartinge mudde. With no brainne, a bodie will be discomfited and confused, unable to differentiate between things within the world. Bodies with no brainnes are suitable onlie for mindless-seeming slaves to obey magickal commandes to the lettere, or as hosts for souls that ye fear would be too powerful to release into the world with a full bodie. (a truly powerful soul has no need for a body at all, but they may want one badly. my queen will have a proper one, soon enough...)The better the brainne, the better the feeling and control of the bodie, and so a certain lust for brainnes may manifeste in undead with withered or damaged brainnes, out of agonizinge desire to heal themselves, not maliciousness. Thinke well before e'er raising a Skeleton, and pay ye embalmers well!
2. The Skull- a Skull is a beacon for appropriate souls to inhabit a bodie. Ye may find yourself infusing headless corpses with the confused souls of wyrmmes of the earth, squiddes of the sea, and snailes of the both, and other boneless blasphemies if ye are luckie, and if unluckie, ye may call forth the dead of the First and Forgotten Sun, the nameless nightmare dreamers of whom i wille not speak(in this text at least)(alluding to later work, Nameless Cults)
3. The Heart, And The Bloode- The power of a bodie resides in the heart and the bloode, and dry bones lacking either will be of limited strength. Rotten bodies and those chopped and hewnwill likewise be of limited power, relying on strength of spirit. A bled bull inhabited by a standard spirit will be of little use as a plow animalle, while a childe's dry bones inhabited by a mightie warrior of ages past will have the strength of ten menne. (small bodies enable flight with a sufficiently strong soul. stitched giants tend to be unable to so much as twitch. souls spontaneously generate and incubate within bodies, however, allowing for artificially gestated souls to be matched to special projects.) (Vampirism of the first-order is a curse that affects the soul itself, second-degree vampirism is the disease spirit offspring of a first-order vampire attaching themselves to living hosts.)
   
4. Liver- Thinke of the liver as a prism for the soul, amplifying desire in the basest senses. Love, hunger, fear... A bodie with no liver is a colde thinge, alienated from humanne desires, and driven onlie by ideologie and logick. (Not necessarily a bad thing for a minion) Alves do notte have livers so do not fret if ye cannot find one. (Wrong, Alves DO have withered vestigial lily livers, as do Elves. It's Snakemen who don't have them at all.)
5. Stomach And Viscera- The lacke of guts allows for spirit-flight more easilie, butte the cold earth, even a sprinkling of sand, will oppress passage of a bodie without them, explaining the popularitie of subterranean graves even in lands where the skull-moon does notte go. Beware the so-called 'purifying saltes' that will strike the gutless bodies like an onager-stone (Feels more like slingstones, I'd say)
   
6. Bladder- A parallel of the guts, butte for water. A bodie with no bladder may not resist the flow of water, making rain paralyzing and even streams impassable without a bridge. The ocean will devour bodies without bladders in a flash! (not so bad in darkness and deep, deep ocean. Unfortunately, there are aquatic grues. Sunken necropoli are rarely worth effort)
7. Lungs- A parallel of the guts and bladder, butte for air. The wind itself will be a bodies' enemie, a thousand invisible daggers on everie breeze, and everie incense burner an impassable wall! (M'shesh breathes the Black Wind and is my personally recommended intermediary)(incense aside, wind is manageable assuming you wear clothes, but this was before the covenant of lightning. Day clouds=almost as bad as sunlight these ages. If your minions start falling apart for no reason, check the lungs)
   

Chapter Two- Species And Souls

1. Humannes-It is important to knowe the culture of a soul, so to avoid offense and reach agreements...(Forget all this, see Appendix B, for 'Boozehound Brigands' whose souls will serve perfectly well in most situations, provided their liver is intact enough to get sozzled and you can understand some archaic Common)
2. Dwarves- I have notte met many of the stubborne folk of stone, butte their own necromantic artes are based on ancestral bloodlines and ornate crypts where the dead remain vigilant, to one day defende the living in a time of ultimate peril. It speakes to their fortitude that their dead can cling to such wounded bodies for so longe... as suche, I would not seek to raise a Dworf for fear of the obstinate ideologie and prior obligations sure to rise up...(induced vampirism excellent at altering priorities. Bizarre inorganic dietary options emerge) (Sounds like Sarkomand accidentally recreated nascent Svarts, though in a mineral-deprived, feral state.)
3. Alves- While one may raise the Bodie of an Alf with a different soul(initial experimentation with soulless, elf-homunculi resulted in the occasional spontaneous possession of the bodies by hyperbolically competent alves when the iron moon passed by. security risk, all elf-clones destroyed.), the Alf-soul will likelie alreadie be departed to a Lunar Mirror and rejoining the circle of lyfe in a new bodie. Alves are an enlightened people who do not mistake the container for the content, and are most tolerant of the so-called 'undeade' so longe as they are not gruesome and abhorrent to their sensitive ears (this is not true of Elves these days, and if it is true you're probably dealing with a post-collapse Alf who should be slain and their dark-stained soul sent back to the Iron Moon.)
4. Haibane Yazata(vulch)-The spirits of the sacrede yazata are very strong, but they scavenge lowlie bodies on their own should they choose to return to lyfe, and compelling them to take a bodie they do not consider abandoned is follie. I found this out the harde way when my instructor, Nasir, took an Arrow to the Gut and slowlie perished despite my offers of assistance, and I hope that his lessons are expressed in this booke...(Ignoring this lengthy eulogy, know that the vulch can set to rest undead with their humming and singing, but not Skull-Moon undead. Also know that the Church of the Bell Exorcist is derived from their songs, and their instruments are both of great use to necromancers, and of terrible danger to the undead.)
5. Ningen- A race of gentle and fishie giants of the sea, their spirits flow like water back to the sea upon deathe, and are most difficulte to call back from the depths, and the sea, being of salt and water and a great profusion of lyfe, is most inhospitable to the long-term condition of the bodie. As such I was unable to restore the fallen princesse of the Ningen despite my best efforts, and have notte heard from the sea-folk again since my unfortunate failure, and so my knowledge is most limited on this subject.
6. Snakes- The great mother of serpents Yg, a friendlie(HA!) black-haired priestess of whom helped editte this booke into the commone tongue, of course discovered necromancie and many other wonders beside in those forgotton Ages, butte has kept their secrets within her libraries and amonge the snakepeoples and their ancient crypts that survived the Age of Dragonnes. Suffice it to say that you should notte meddle with the affairs of serpents, (HA!) butte Dragonnes are fair game in the eyes of Yg. Beware that dragon souls are most unreasonable, and their bodies are large and unwieldie for other Spirits to use, butte rewarding if a suitable match can be found.
7. Beasts- When raising the spirits of beasts, carnivores for savagerie and domestic spirits for obedience are -(Stop reading his ramblings, use queen bee souls!) (Unless you're really into making your minions double as literal honeypots, when it comes to bugs, ant souls are the ideal mix of unthinking obedience and natural cooperation. Don't use Dogs unless you're Yuban, but cat-souls are good if you want a natural predator that you don't have to pay much attention to. Bird souls too, oddly enough.)
8. Plants- It is relativelie easie to raise a plant into a state of preserved stasis, as seen in the eternal forests of the alves, butte nearlie impossible to restore one to any semblance of lyfe. They are too close to the cycle of elementes and the Sun for their souls to be of great use, and a humanne soul within a tree will have greate difficultie moving such heavy limbs. (Also, while they're great to pillage for stashed corpses, do not ever bring undead close to a grave-tree. Those things are near elementals in terms of their hatred for undead) 

• Ghouls- Ghoul Fever is a fundamentally elemental process- life consuming life, as life is wont to do, but only ever consuming and assimilating, not reproducing. Ghouls maintain their organs by devouring the dead, and as such are not found in violation of the elemental covenant. I think, carefully managed, that Ghouls will be the perfect servants for the west fortress, and further proof of how far I have exceeded Abdul's understanding of the opposition of elements to the undead. Also works on Dogs- the Jackal God is displeased, but powerless to oppose me.
• goblins, ogres, and other alfspawn- highly morphogenic bodies proved useful in biomancy, but nearly useless for necromancy, as their souls were suggestions at best, vestigial, embryonic things. I could have taken the time to name them, but compliance was low. all were terminated after security risks grew too high. alf biomancy and abdul's necromancy are increasingly useless in my true task of freeing my queen from this accursed tree and into one of these dozens of bodies that so resemble her
• Blight Fungus(?)- A wonderfully horrid crossbreed between undead fungus, darkness, and disease spirits led to the creation of a virulent life-mimicking corruption that spread via air and contact, and reacted very positively to necromantic energies (and poorly to flame and salt). I suspect all fungus may be a First-Sun life-form, explaining how lightly death touches it. Souls in infected bodies quickly lost morale, sanity, and finally their grip on the mortal realm entirely as their host bodies decayed into festering masses. A side effect arising from second-stage decay of blight itself results in airborne ghul-fever and the subsequent consumption of the infected- an immune response from the elemental covenant, I expect, and a damper on its spread. Though the City of Bells seems unfit for further experimentation, I have met with xxxx-xx-xxxxx who in turn has communed with a being of outer darkness xxxx for further alteration of the stuff. The neighboring desert country and the disgruntled 'Circle of Aldha' therein seem very promising for further collaborative research. 

Chapter Three- On the Dead of the Skull Moon
I belief we whomst've'd necromanced are so reviled for the superficiale resemblence of our art to that of the dread Skull Moon, and its hideous beyeings thereof. While it is true that the soul of a locust within the bodie of a manne, afflicted with confusion, pain, and unnatural hunger, may be a disturbing sight, it is still a living soul within a natural bodie. Butte the 'souls,' such as they are, of the Skull Moon Dead are all extensions of a singular idiot will that seeks to devour all goode sunlit lyfe, and devour our're warm souls to adde to the the pallid glow of the stonie bones of that fell moon. The necromancer reshuffles the cards dealt by lyfe, butte the moon is unlyfe itself! The difference could notte be more clear...

skull-dead- Looking down on the dry city of annu nki, I sometimes am at a loss as to how to continue my work, and I merely note the dead and the dehydrated in hopes of inspiration and a superior catalogue to Aadul's meagre bestiary- the slaughter and progressive stages of undeath I witnessed from the slaughtered brigands who had the temerity to seek shelter at my gates...
day 1-crawling claws, flying heads, gutsnakes, crawlers, skinkites, muscle slugs, skulletons. weak, easily dispatched pieces of the whole. a grotesque necessity of making do with bits and pieces of entire bodies, an emphasis on stealth and assassination. under the light of skull, dismemberment is recruitment.
day 2-drowned, hangmen, butchers, bloatfloats, zoonbies. upper levels of cathedral sealed and warded against fliers with both strength and thumbs, wells sealed to prevent amphibious entrance. the dead are starting to show task-specialization.
day 3-tomb-bursters, plaguehosts, gravemoles, maggoteers. noise and stench absolutely grotesque. the stage is set to pillage the locked-away dead as well as the living now, and poison the land, barren though it be. i have no fear of conspiring disease spirits.
day 4-the winter moon is come, a brief conjunction, skull ascendant. unfrozen, rot oozes, redbogs. decay, frost, the dead raising the dead. i sent forth my own organ-takers and crypt wights, all lost despite cloud cover. The very soil and snow crawl with animated blood and unidentifiable flesh sloughs that extinguish burning oil due to sheer mass- thank my queen for the tree's desiccating roots that destroy these liquid threats.
day 5-devouring cages, coffin-crawlers, skin-flayers, swallowers, red pythons. amalgamation of yesterday's crude masses into singular forms, the accoutrements of crypts repurposed into war machines. my acids are distilled, and poured down the walls en masse. the moonspawn smoke and wither to nothing, but they have no self-preservation and press the accursed stone of the cathedral itself.
day 6- dust wraiths, hair-horrors, smoking ones. even my strongest countermeasures begin failing, as beings reduced to ash and dust simply refuse to stay dead in the glaring light of the will of skull. every gate warded with a hundred knives, and my failed dolls sent out as sacrificial lambs, though they join the horde themselves. even with their twisted forms, they still count as human for the reanimation process. 
day 7-the taker of skulls- gigantic amalgamate skeleton with a hundred skulls & arms 20 feet long with 5 hands on each end. I lured it into the crypts and the roots of the immortal tree that holds my queen prisoner showed the impromptu avatar that without the light of skull it was nothing but bones to be scattered and buried. the sun finally comes and the skull moon flees.

Chapter 4- The Jealous Elementes
The humanne bodie is composed of  a balance of air, water, and earth, with sunlyghte composing the animating lyghte of the soul. While a soul can impose masterie over these elementes, once deathe has occured, the elementes will seek to reclaim the bodie via the forces of decay, and in some cases, via brutishe calamitie of lyghtning, earthquake, tornado, volcano, flood, and so on. It is told to me that these elementals are somehow in service to the sun, and that the dead are in violation of some pact, butte how could this be, when the sun is merely a great lyght wrought of iron and magick and set in the sky by Alves and Dwarves, which is predated by far by the elementes?
That aside, the division of elementes into sunlit and dark, anthropomorphic or formless, is of greate interest to me and I would lyke to return to the subject(he never does, but the academy library on heleologos has various excellent works on the subject of elementals both shadowed and sunlit)  in its own right beyond these simple charms, which should be performed for all bodies set to be raised.
The Warding of Sky-Obtain some pan-pipes, and perform the following piece(a reversed vulch-lullaby) to communicate to the air that the bodie is not dead. Convincing the animated bodie to breathe will aid greatlie in the longevetie of this ward. (speed of the piece should vary based on ambient wind speed.) (Any instrument using breath will do, including singing of sufficient quality) 
The Warding of Sea- Next, or perhaps during the warding of sky, the bodie should be washed thoroughly, and given to drink an elixir of wine, bloode(preferably of a live enemy), and spit(preferably of a live lover), to convince the elemente of water that the bodie is still alive and engaging in drinking, fighting, and loving.
The Warding of Stone-Upon the leg and toe-bones, certain runes should be scrimshawed, with minimal rending of the flesh to access the bones. The runes Stability and Balance aid greatlie in giving a bodie a proper walk, as opposed to an unsightlie shuffle, and a drum should be beaten as the bodie is gifted with a new soul, to beat the cadence of living movement that the bodie should learn as quicklie as possible, and convince the grim and listening earth that the footsteps uponne it are that of a living being, full of vigor and lyfe.
(such trifling wards are of no matter if one commands the elements as easily as the dead, of course)

Appendix A- Undead Categorizations- Naturally, the painless, faithful, and pacifistic undead of M'shesh are not listed here
Skeleton- Barely cognizant due to lacking a brain, but possessed of an indomitable will that refuses to abandon even such a terrible body.
Zombie- Not much better than a skeleton, but stronger, and able to move in dead silence. Angry cat spirits account for the stealth

Ghoul- All consuming hunger for flesh, a paralyzing touch, sane when well fed, bestial otherwise. Would be the perfect soldiers were it not for their distractible nature and corpse-obsession. Dogs extremely dangerous when infected. A grey area between the living and the dead.

White One(long since bastardized to wight)-Similar to a zombie, but death-pale, ice-cold, better preserved and so capable of rational thought. Their soul is too powerful to be driven out save by weapons that can strike the soul directly, and their touch is the touch of a soul trying to devour another soul. Such power! Such force of will! 
Shadows- Reflections, barely alive.Not sure if actually derived from living things or just stupid simulacra that convinced themselves they deserved to be real. (could this be an account of successfully reanimated goblin-kin?)
Wrath(long since bastardized to wraith)-An imprint of incredible ill-will. Not the soul of a person, but an impression of hate, not enough to live on its own, but enough to kill and try to claw its way into full life. I think my retainer Oza casts one of these as her shadow naturally, ha ha!
Ghosts, Spirits, Etc- This is the full soul, of course. As a full soul, it can take bodies for itself. What terrible geas binds the soul to the world even after the body and all else is long gone? That won't happen to me. For I will never die!
Mummy- Somehow related to whatever went wrong in that temple-town of M'shesh, these shambling brutes are helped along by a bound disease spirit aiding their strength. Really, not much more than a dirty, spice-scented zombie. Buried the lot of them under the sand-moon.
Vampires- The curses involved are too elaborate to expound upon in a charity appendix in someone elses book, but a proper viewpoint sees eternal life and a bamboozlement of vengeful elementals as a blessing, not a curse, no matter how M'shesh wails at the thought of her dead devouring the living. A vampire who is depressive and not exuberant is defective.


Appendix B-  Boozehound Brigands
Ruznur Zcun- Mountain bandit of a bygone age who graffiti'd his name in a cave wall. Limited familiarity with modern accoutrements and believes alcohol to be a magic spell. Do not mistake this ignorance for stupidity. My go-to big game hunter.
Admiral Torgrin- Much happier if promised a ship. Allowing him to call forth his own damned crew will inevitably result in a mutiny, but setting him in charge of any other crew results in faster mutinies. Understands dwarvish Boompowder, piracy/privateering, and naval strategy.

Scutty Pyotyr- Vint-Savoth bandit and ex-werewolf. Good at controlling dead with carnivore animal souls. Doesn't mind animal bodies. Will probably escape into the wilderness sooner or later, more effort than it's worth to keep around once he gets wanderlusty.

Tecs Vulsus- Mercian Riikhite- will do any task so long as you twist it into being a holy crusade against heretics and the second coming of the 4th sun. Treats cognitive dissonance with alcohol. Recommendation- Pretend to be a Mokkhus Cleric, ie, somber, lawful, insistent he not stay too long in the living world(and discover, for instance, that Riikhus is dead and Mokkhus has been 'missing' for 200 years)

Failures of Nalil- Moonland berserkers who were not chosen for demonic ascension by their damned and blasted Carnage Moon, and are waiting for a second chance, which you can falsely promise. By now all the names I knew are devoured by their moon, but if you find one name, you should be able to find many more from that one, and simply turn them loose to cause murder and mayhem.

Butler Jeeves- Alf-raised fellow of impeccable service, even when utterly soused. Knows a variety of dead folk who have no outstanding engagements and will serve in a domestic sense without much complaint, due to their servile upbringings and alcoholic inclinations.

As a parting note- always remember that though society spurns our art, you are never alone. We dead masters of bygone times are just a ritual away, and all too willing to return and share our wisdom with neophytes beginning their journeys.

World of the Wolf Moons, Painted In Broad Strokes

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yx1_Mw3o4Xv5L9a7ZY49Hqlo55becgL6MWbZiZvyUr4
edit from the future- That there link is to the nightmare glog, which pretty much unabashedly sucks.You can go here if you want an even bigger-picture view of the setting, though.

Stuff to Do The thematic elements of the game are somewhat divided by geographic location. As
players this is good to read to get an idea of what sounds nifty and where you'd like to adventure.

Noonlands

The Noonlands, King's Point and Queen's Coast are where you'd go for political scheming between rival kings and queens and their Lords and Ladies in their castles scattered throughout the land. Overt violence is rare, but not at all unheard of, and there's plenty of fleeing to mountain monasteries to hide from wicked knights and plots to steal the pope and similar nonsense. People are the interesting part of this landscape. King's Point is where the seedy criminal business and stupid plans come to fruition, whereas Queen's Coast tries to hold itself to higher standards of refinement and upstandingness.

Heliologos is where you'd go to have wizard-school shenanigans among a bunch of wine and sun-drenched islanders, with new entertainments coming in monthly from the Beast Islands and stranger things coming from the Astral Gate, if you can get access to it. Good if the entire party is wizards, or if the party wants to blow off some steam with a weird cross-world adventure.

Geth is in the Noonlands and has a lot of politicking between the offspring of the Caliph. And within the old city below, it also has a heavy criminal and 'heist' element in the underclass- rooftop runnings and sewer crawlings alike. And below the city that is below the city, is a Megadungeon, a layer cake of the Geths of old, buried but not dead. The entire campaign could take place within Geth, if a citycrawl is what was wanted.

Daylands
Roads lead to established setpieces, generally villages and fortresses. Going offroad leads to strangeness. These are frontier regions, with warring barons in keeps and castles every 10 miles or so claiming land for King, Queen, Prince, or even themselves.
Vint- A port city that the Blood Moon has never risen over directly. Doesn't believe in the Scourge, attributing it to peasant superstition and baronial mismanagement. Vint is a city of sea merchants who build boats and sell boats and use their many boats to extend military power down the coast. Vint is a city in denial, blind to the creeping scourge rats in the sewers and the serial killer nobles in their ranks, and you should go here if you want to be a street-sweeping vigilante out to either clean up the city and wake up the ignorant populace, or to do dirty deeds that must be done and let the city stay blissfully ignorant of its own problems.

Savoth is a foresting city, and while they see the Blood Moon every so often, their Scourge incidence is pretty low and they do not fear their forests from which they get their wood. Savoth is a craftsmans city, producing goods so Vint can trade them. Foresters who aren't from small villages are generally from Savoth, and it's a good frontier outpost for adventure. Go here to boast about slain beasts and make boisterous friends in taverns, and to meet people too radical for Vint.

Prince's Spit has masked knights and swashbucklering duels and 2nd-story streets over swamp canals and foreign embassies and parties constantly and lots of romantic intrigue and all in all it's a good place for upper-class drama queens and poets and lower class gossips and rumormongers. Go here if you wanna be fancy and political, but don't want to leave your rapier and history of wrongs at the door like you would in Queen's Coast.

The Canal of The Bog- A line of castles watching over a crumbling canal across the Daylit kingdoms, ruled by lords fair and foul, in a terrain that even the rustic swampfolk admit is a little unpleasant. Feudalism and swamp banjos- come here if you've been reading the feudalism posts at coins and scrolls and want some of that, and/or if you want to go on swamp adventures and roll for diseases and rusty armor all while trying to retrieve a prize pig from probably a witch or something. It's like redneck king Arthur.

Neth- The closest thing to vanilla 'The Nightmares Underneath' style play. Invest in institutions, gain in social class and advance through the 3 walls of wood, stone, and iron to the mountain court of the New Caliph, maybe do light wilderness exploration and town roleplaying, and make most of your money retrieving anchors from nightmare realms and selling them to sketchy dudes while patting yourself on the back for vanquishing a nightmare. Meet weird desert cults, little oasis villages, exotic nomads, but rest assured that so long as the nightmares do not grow unchecked, you can protect the Law from the onslaughts of chaos

Random Villages and Random Beast Islands of the Daylit Kingdoms- Each village has a few interesting NPCs, a few interesting bits of local history, maybe a dungeon, maybe a monster, maybe a cruel overlord, maybe a poisoned well, maybe this, maybe that. Go muck about in the towns and villages if you like 'a stranger comes to town' style plots and exploration without it being a grueling expedition through empty wastes.
Around Vint and Savoth, it's more 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'
Around Saresare it's more 'Arabian Nights'
Naturally the beast islands are more 'gulliver's travels' with a bit of Pirates of The Caribbean , on account of the necessity for boats.

The Moonlands
Wilderness crawling with very few established areas. Charts and random rolls determine what is over the next hilltop, and the ruling forces are Moons and Monsters, not Men. Beware!

It's scary out here. In the daylands, villages are notable if they have a monster nearby. In the moonlands, monsters are everywhere. No one knows what all is out there in the moonlands, because nobody with a lick of sense takes one more step away from their place of safety than they have to. The Moons hang, low and leering, not for hours, but for weeks- Helios isn't coming to chase them off, they only leave when they're good and ready. And without the moons, there are only the stars, and you need a torch to see- and the dim light of Helios chasing off a Moon in the nearby Daylands only does you any good if the moon was vaguely in your direction- you can go to sleep 4 times without seeing even indirect sunlight, some times.

Vint-Savoth- Scourged nobles, twisted and strange, in castles long forgotten by the wars of men. Villages swallowed by the woods, or turned to moon-worship and druidry. Primordial Wolf-Spirits that have never seen a man, and aren't impressed. Foresters too experienced for their own good patrolling a frontier overrun by monsters. And the Blood Moon, never too far away. Come here if you seek darkness and the beast within man, but stay away if you fear the forest.

Wurderlands.
War. Wonder. Murder. Wander. Weirder. Border. Etymology unclear. There are grim fortresses, some still manned by men and guarding villages, others lost to the dark and lying in wait. There are roving barbarians, disciples of Demurge, the cruelest god of man, but still one of men's gods. Those turning foolishly to the gods of the outer dark will find the torments of Demurge soft-handed indeed. The moon of Winter hangs heavy in this realm, and sources of flame are essential. The Worderlands are a vast wilderness of strangeness and pockets of civilization too far apart to be said to be of any united civilization.Come here if you have grown weary of civilized men, their lies and laws, and seek strangeness and solitude, and perhaps if you seek something that can be found nowhere else.

Black Dunes-Though the sand is not actually black, this desert lies in perpetual shadow- the dim light of Helios in Saresare is blocked by the mountains. It is said this is the land of Death, and those seeking death are sure to find it. Come here if you have business in the underworld, otherwise stay away- your time in the lands of shade will come soon enough, mortal.

Legless Jungle- An abominable and otherworldly place known only by the ramblings of madmen and the unlawful depravities of strange cults that claim asociation. Lurid and fleshy fictions of that place are spun by transgressive storytellers, and occasionally strange golden worm-idols are sold in markets, allegedly from that place, but it is beyond the realm of conventional knowledge. If even one in a hundred stories are true, there is no sane reason to go here.

Auroral Reaches-Strange heights indeed, locked behind a frozen sea. These mountains have few clouds, just shimmering lights, and are tall enough to reach the drifting moons, and perhaps the sky beyond, if one is mad and skilled enough to make the climb and leave the realms of Man behind. Come here if you seek audience with the celestial and divine.

Deep Islands- Beast Islands locked in sheets of ice far from the light of helios, or simply dark and treacherous places where luminescent fish are kept in water-filled jars in the absence of oil to burn for light. Those who dare the black sea are brave indeed, but it is not a place without a certain morbid charm, and the islands, dotted like stars, range from monster-haunted spits of rock to thriving whaling towns- though the term is inept, for it is not whales that swim in the black sea. Come here if you have a stalwart crew and a need to find what is not only unmapped, but so far off the edge of the map that you may as well have sailed off the face of the sea.

BEYOND
Old Empire- The emperor being Ice, or Darkness, or the King of Moons, depending on who you ask. The ice was there before, and it will be there after. Perhaps there's something out there, Beyond.

Nightmare GLOG Hack Player's Guide & Ramblings

Here's my own GLOG hack. Pretty much a hack of Lungfungus's Valiant,  crossbred with The Nightmares Underneath(TNU), and stripped down in general.

EDIT FROM THE FUTURE

It's hot garbage, don't read this crap!

Or read it to steal choice ideas but take it all with a strong grain of salt, once I hit actual play there was very little I actually liked!

It's just a bunch of filters and scribbles in GIMP but I wanted something to make the file less words words words

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yx1_Mw3o4Xv5L9a7ZY49Hqlo55becgL6MWbZiZvyUr4
Ended up going pretty simple on the mechanics, and leaving a lot of signposts around saying 'go read this' or intentional holes like 'so how long DOES a lantern burn.'


Hopefully this
1. Makes it easier to get into because there's not loadsa bloat
2. Emphasizes that the game exists between the GM and players, not so much in the text, creating a sense of wonder and mystery rather than the staid rehashes many simple OSR compatible retroclones fall into

Rulings not rollings, that sorta thing. I was gonna write about my grand game design manifesto and the roles of novelty and mystery, then realized I don't actually give a shit about explaining it and would rather just talk about the game.

MAJOR DEPARTURES FROM THE GLOG AND MORE STANDARD RETROCLONES
You have HD and roll for HP. You reroll them after rests though. So you have good days and bad days, but a rousing speech and a square meal can usually get you in better shape.

Once you run out of HP you start taking Con damage. Hits that deal over 1/2 your con maim you.
This is pretty much straight outta TNU, and gives a better sense that HP=/=meat points. TNU calls them disposition which was a mistake because that's like 9 more letters, but mechanically it makes it easier to describe hits from things that either aren't all that lethal sounding, or are absurdly lethal sounding, only having to worry about 'real' injury when the meat points of Con come into play.

You also deal damage based on HD. I mentioned in an earlier post why I like this.

No more vancian memorizing spells- you have your spells, you have your magic dice, you use your magic dice to cast spells, and that's all. There's already mishaps and dooms limiting wizard power, plus spells are a lot more weird and less powerful in general than in, say, D&D. Also this just means that anyone with a spell and some magic dice can cast the spell, which I like. The niche of the sage is great power at great cost, rather than the loathed niche of the D&D wizard which too often slips into 'the class that gets to do all the cool stuff and monopolize problem solving tools.' Also, the line between 'spell' and 'magic item' are blurrier than usual- Magic Missile could be a haunted lantern as easily as it could be a weird math formula in a book, usable by anyone willing- just not at the mighty levels of magic a sage commands.

Also, ~4-9 choices for templates (renamed to traits) that you can gain in any order, though you're still limited to 4. I hope the traits are all distinct and incomparable enough that there's no feeling of 'optimal builds, ' just picking what style you like best.

Some assumed setting stuff, but nothing too obtrusive apart from the specialist classes near the end.