High Strangeness

Magic on the Land

Aarth Hum

People with good hearing perceive a low, menacing hum from the Aarth below. No one knows the tone’s source, but it sounds as if the world’s roots are rubbing together.

Bizarre Aerial Phenomena

Assorted aerial phenomenon often are witnessed in the skies above the Baelrics, or the Alusian Isles, and above ancient sites, holy lakes, and other liminal places. The variety of effects is staggering.

Angels
Animated Cloud Faces
Ball lightning or colorful plasma bolts that dance among clouds
Beams of light (“God” light)
Blood Rain It tastes of blood and stains like blood
Circular holes punched through clouds
Cloud rings
Dancing colored orbs
Extra Saelarrs
Faerie Sky Ships
Fata Morgana
Flying Metal Cauldrons
Gates to other skies.
Luminous objects that dance about the heavens
Mysterious sky cities
Rains of small, living animals (frogs, fish, etc.)
Saints
Self-directed sun dogs
Single beams of light from Aarth to sky, or sky to Aarth

Bottomless Lakes

These bodies of water are gates to the realms of Pagan gods. Sacrifices thrown into the water sink till they emerge in the mirror world of deities.

Crystal Caves

Caves are common in the Baelric Hills, but scattered among those are a smattering of crystalline caves. These are associated with gates to other worlds, prisons for ancient wizards, periods of missing time, faeries, and the ghosts of Pagan bards and druids.

Deadspace Traps

Found in abandoned structures, these insidious places are gates into liminal, dead worlds that exist between the planes of existence. The slip into deadspace occurs randomly, and the victim gets disorientated and finds himself in the same building, yet one that is different. The deadspace version of the structure has lost its luster and much of its color saturation and the person trapped here is alone, even if they were a part of a larger party. If the building is occupied, its deadspace version is empty. The victim cannot leave the premises, and if he tries, he encounters mirrored versions of the initial deadspace. Sound here is muffled, the victim grows hungry and frightened, and within a few days he begins to see shadow people lurking around the corners and in the dark. The victim’s inevitable ending is never pleasant.

Entombed Animal

The party intersects with a boulder that begins shaking, or a rock wall that is vibrating, and it breaks open to reveal an adult animal formerly entombed in the stone. The creature may expire soon after being released, or it may attack. It may be a modern creature, or it may be from an extinct species. Everything about this defies logic.

Faerie Circles

These occur where enormous trees have benn uprooted and mushrooms have grown around the trunk’s old perimeter. These rings are hazardous because they can serve as gates for marauding faeries, or they sometimes can gate away people foolish enough to enter their perimeter. If the missing human ever emerges from the faerie ring, it may be months, years, or even centuries later. Or, the mortal might reappear soon after he left, but instantly age, crumble to dust, and blow away.

Fog of Silence

The cursed fog from the Sea of Silence rolls in and it is accompanied by d3 (x) murtra. These creatures move silently hidden in the fog to ambush mortals and take them back to the lake to turn them into wave walkers.

Giant Chalk Cuttings

Not magic, but this practice of making monumental images on hillsides is ongoing and ancient. The community digs out strips of topsoil and backfills them with chalk rubble. These colossal figures are best seen from the air or at a good remove, but the images can’t be percieved properly if you too close or are on site. These cuttings usually depict giants, horses, dragons, mermaids, and a variety of other subjects. Local communities care for these places and maintain them, even though the origins of this tradition are lost to time.

Gravity Distortion

Gravity distorts, and objects roll uphill, vertigo strikes the characters, everything seems askew.

Grim World

The party temporarily slips into a disturbing, alternate world. This place is a grim, twisted version of the reality they know, yet without people or animals, and full of shadowy predators. This weird world setting may drive the characters mad, but it usually only persists for up to an hour.

Haunted Forest

Anguished cries ring out through the surrounding forest, punctuated with fits of laughter or weeping. If any NPC breaks off from the group to investigate, they will disappear forever and their voices will be added to the haunting wails. PCs who follow the voices simply are seperated off from their party and suddenly find themselves lost d6+4 miles away in a random direction.

Haunted Hill Fort

The party intersects with an abandoned hill fort that dates back to the Stone Age. The people that lived here sacrificed enemies and buried them around the hill’s perimeter, dooming the ghosts to guard the fort. Ages have passed, and these aggressive ghosts have forgotten most of their humanity but still protect this place.

Kui-kor Stones

These stone tools are artifacts from an ancient, long-extinct Stone Age people, the Kui-kor. Only the best scholars will know about these lost people, because all that survives is their rock-paintings and stone tools. These items appear as hand-sized stone tools (chipping stones, hammers, axes) or weapons (arrow heads, spear heads). Some are larger (menhirs, altars), and of various sorts of stone (blue-stone, flint, obsidian, etc.) These elder proto-magic items often have powers that seem useless, but only because their power has decayed over the long ages or their intended uses have been antiquated. Modern magic defenses are useless against their magik. Kui-kor stone powers sometimes are activated when the item is touched, or it is struck by moonlight, but this is more a loose guideline than rule. Each stone will have one or more powers:

Awaken the character’s passion to discover and follow all points of Aarth energy or star gates
Detect dimensional warping and bleed over
Dowsing
Dulled cutlery/edged weapons instantly become sharp again.
Insanity
Instill new and unusual quirks in the person who activated it.
Lunar sensitivity to the moons’ cycles and locations.
Nearby rocks animate and dance randomly.
Prophetic visions.
Random healing of old wounds.
Visions of being followed by ghostly Kui-kor.

Lost Time

The party knows they have lost several hours or days of time. It is unnerving, but the characters are at a loss to explain this discrepancy.

Mazes

Megalithic Aarthwork mazes are scattered about west-continental Kainded. Functionally, the mazes serve as gates to conjure travelers from maze to maze, facilitating travel across Aorlis. These mazes vary in intricacy, size, and level of decay, but they all share a similar magical legacy. The oldest mazes are believed to be Kui-kor in origin, but some were built by Stone Age humans. A few of these mazes are salt carvings on hillsides; Others are built of simple mounds and ditches that now are all but indistinguishable when seen from ground level; Some have been preserved as garden features on great estates; and a few have been bricked into walled mazes. If someone walks the maze while emptying his mind, images of other mazes will come to him, and he may transport there. If the mental images aren’t realized fully, then the translation may not work or the mage may disappear forever! He simply is gone, neither dead nor alive. The mage may take whatever he can carry, as well as anyone holding hands with him. If the mage triggers the maze, the result may vary: the maze might malfunction, failing to operate and injuring or killing the would-be traveler; the mage seamlessly will teleport to another maze of his choice; the mage may be teleported to a maze adjacent to the target maze; teleported to a random maze anywhere in Kainded; or he may wink out, never to be seen again. The translation, as it is called, always comes as a momentary black out. Some mazes are more reliable than others, and some have unique quirks. Such quirks, for example, might be: time delay for the translation (hours or days), translation without equipment or clothing; translation with impaired memory, etc.

Missing People

People around the party go missing. This doesn’t affect the PCs, but NPCs fall away one per night. No one can pinpoint when it happens or where they went. The NPCs are gone forever.

Mysterious Fog

Dense fog envelops the characters, and characters’ relative positions are rearranged within the fog. Alternately, the fog randomly teleports a party member 30’ in a random direction.

Observed

An intense sensation of being watched and followed assails the party.

Periodic Places

The party stumbles into a liminal territory that only is present at certain times of the year, or perhaps every ten or hundred years. These locations guard secrets, or are prisons for ancient powers. If the party is inside the place when its time elapses and it disappears, then the characters disappear as well. They are gone till the periodic place returns, however long that takes. For the party, no time will have passed, making this an effective method for time travelling into the future.

Phantom Nighttime

Phantom nighttime temporarily descends on the party for about an hour. The characters may suspect lost time or a plane shift, but it is not. Rather, this appears to be some sort of forest-induced illusion. The darkness and nocturnal predators are quite real.

Pratean/Noirite Ruins

Antediluvian ruins are usually not obvious, and only trained eyes will recognize them for what they are. The fallen stones may be imbued with ancient memories, and giant grave goods may buried there. Explorers often get light-headed or nauseated when they come upon these sites, and characters with mental illness or obsessions could suffer seven flair ups.

Randomized Paths

Paths rearrange themselves randomly and the party becomes hopelessly lost. Dependable travel is impossible, and the party ends up leagues from where they intended.

Sky Quake

The sky roars with a weird, apocalyptic booming. Sometimes called sky quakes, no source for the sound may be seen. Some think this event is trumpets of Doomsday or the Last Judgment. Everyone is unnerved or afraid by this event.

Spectral Army

A spectral army marches by nearby during the night. These semi-transparent soldiers are dressed in historically accurate kits, and their residual images are accompanied by distant yet appropriate military sounds. This residual army cannot interact with the living.

Spectral Piper

A spectral piper’s mournful song in the near distance splits the night. It has a haunting melody and it may follow the party for 2d6 nights.

Spoiled Places

Some locations have been awash with ongoing death, sadness, despair and horror to the point that reality’s fabric essentially is ruined. Once this happens, the walls between worlds grow thin and Hell draws closer. The spoiled place may even become co-existent with Hell! To escape, one must go down to go up, because reality has flipped. Unlucky explorers easily can get trapped in Hell this way.

Strange Separation

The party hears cries of anguish in the surrounding forest punctuated with insane laughter and weeping. If any of the characters break off from the group to investigate, then they disappear only to have their voices added to the cries of anguish. NPCs who disappear this way are never seen again. PCs who break away simply are cut off from their party and find themselves suddenly 3d6+4 miles in a random direction from their last known location.

Strange Perspective

Perspective and volume suddenly distorts around the party, and with disorientating effect. Angles seem off, three-dimensionality seems in flux, and near proximity seems far and far seems near. This effect only persists for about an hour.

Tidal Islands

Such islands exist when the tide is in, but when the tide recedes the island becomes part of the mainland. The intertidal zone may be a causeway, or it may be a treacherous, silty salt marsh.

Time Slip

The party slips into another time, albeit the same place. The slip is often measured in centuries, and after about an hour, the characters will revert to their correct time period. The experience is genuine and quite disconcerting.