Your character is victim to a terrible curse that will eventually consume them. To create a character, write a short paragraph describing them, and pick out traits. Rate the traits 1‍-​3, where 1 is a significant aptitude and 3 is a near‍-​supernatural affinity. The referee may veto characters deemed inappropriate for the game.

Once you’ve described your character, decide which curse afflicts them. (see below)

All characters should have a driving goal (an easy one: to become free of the curse), and‍ ‍‍—‍ if there are multiple players‍ ‍‍—‍ a reason to know of and cooperate with the other player characters.

You will start with 12 six‍-​sided dice. Whenever your character attempts a difficult, uncertain task, the referee will ask you to roll for it, rating its difficulty 1‍-​3. 1 is a task of moderate challenge, 2 a task of definite peril, and 3 is one sure to end in tragedy. If one of your traits assists you in the task, you may select and reroll as many dice as the trait’s rating.

Three things may happen to any dice: ‍-​ It shows 5 or 6, and counts as a success. 6 is particularly special. ‍-​ It shows 3 or 4, and does nothing for you. ‍-​ It shows 1 or 2, and is a fumble, and the die is thereby cursed.

If you can count at least as many successes as the referee’s difficulty rating, you perform the action, and you may describe what happens. Otherwise, the referee describes what happens.

Then, you may pick up any dice that are not cursed. The cursed dice remain on the table in front of you.

However, before the successes are counted, you may turn dice showing 6 on their side, so that they shows 3 or 4. If you do this, you can also uncurse one cursed die for each, turning them so that they shows 3 or 4 as well.

When you can invest no dice into your actions, you are forever lost to your curse.

A few possible curses are:

• Withering. As time goes on, you fade away. Do you crumble into dust or transcend into an ephemeral spirit? The withered may count any number of cursed dice as successes. After the action is done, roll those dice. Those that come up as successes are uncursed. The others are now gone forever.
• Petrifying. Whether by the gaze of a gorgon or a terrible bone disease, your body is slowly hardening and locking into place. The petrified may take one cursed die, turn it to a success, and petrify it. Petrified dice can never be uncursed or turned. However, whenever you invest dice into a similar action, you can treat the petrified die as though you had rolled it as well.
• Overgrowing. With skin covered and body filled with fungus, creeping insects, or something more sinister, you are host to an malign parasite. The overgrown may roll cursed dice on any action. Those that roll a success can be counted as such and lost, or turned to another face. Those that roll a fumble become overgrown and lost to you. If you have any, one overgrown die is rolled whenever you roll cursed dice: if it rolls a fumble, curse one noncursed die; if it rolls a success, the same, but gain an additional cursed die.
• Possessing. You are corrupted, and spend episodes acting under a twisted influence, be it a demon or a psychosis. The possessed may count a cursed die as a success, letting it be possessed afterwards. When the referee deems appropriate, a possessed dice may be added to your roll, and the referee will propose a modified action that you may take along with any successes the possessed dice roll, or you may refuse both. When a possessed die fumbles, it is lost forever unless you turn a success to render it once again cursed.

while sleeping this morning i had a creature idea

angels are beings of pure intelligence. i mean this in a very specific way: they have no senses except for the ability to sense what they’re thinking

but this sense is generalized. if you’re thinking the same thing as an angel, they can detect your thinking. if you believe the same things as an angel, they can detect your mind

because an angel believes in truth and goodness, in a way they’re only able to see the good in people

angels are capable of advanced feats of deduction, as this is the only way they’re able to understand the world

for a basic example, if they sense you, then clearly there’s another mind near by. they would obviously deduce that you exist in space, and start making guesses about your motivations and context. when one of their guesses is correct‍ ‍‍—‍ that is, they briefly think something you know to be true ( “the year is 1659”)^note[Invalid example which caused confusion.] are thinking (“i’m looking at a room made of stone”), then they’ll sense that, getting confirmation

this is the only way to communicate to an angel

the opposite is also true; being near an angel lets you sense their vast, pure mind as it overlaps with yours. unfortunately, mortals tend to be less used to the kind of anticipatory, guess‍-​and‍-​check cognition an angel requires, which cripples their ability to communicate back and influence the world

one of the most significant angels is an exception: the lying angel knows everything

this doesn’t make them omniscient; rather, it make them antiscient

they know the earth is round, and they know the earth is flat. they know the truth and every lie. rather than the vast purity of other angel’s minds, the lying angel is chimerical paradox

but this means that the lying angel can sense everyone

it was very difficult to example how the lying angel works to the chatroom where i posed this idea. skipping over a lot of back and forth quibbling, i arrived at this attempt:

so the limitation of a base angel is, well, limited information

imagine an angel that knows the true nature of the world on like, a deep physics level

they’re not going to have a lot of information overlap with e.g. cave men who have wild animist theories of how the world works

even the basic shit cavemen would have access to that’s self‍-​evidently true (“the sky is blue”) well… angels can’t see, so

similarly for morality. virtue ethics and deontology are old ideas, but utilitarianism is newer, and humanism, veganism, etc. wouldn’t always be widespread

the lying angel has none of those limitations‍ ‍‍—‍ it’s not merely able to dimly sense the most enlightened humans, it can sense every human down to their every driving desire

so‍ ‍‍—‍ if we assume its plethora of beliefs stop short of first person imperative statements‍ ‍‍—‍ that means it would be able to tell exactly which people are most inclined to do what it needs be done, and who would have their doubts assuaged and motivations redoubled if at the right moment they brushed up against a vast, superhuman mind that echoed their every conviction (after all, you’d only see the parts of the lying angel that agree with you…), and seemed to always judge which fork of a dilemma is best

if the lying angel has an agenda, you have to believe this would be rather conducive to it

(this does prompt the thought that most angels could be like, virtue elementals, achieving not much more than reinforcing the best qualities and hinting at some holy truth, and coaxing an angel into self‍-​awareness might require special circumstances)

the year was a bad example

when i wrote that passage, i was thinking about like, the shape of the room they’re in and the sort of things they saw

but i was i edited the passages i went with year because it was quicker to express and i didnt want to bog down the explanations with some meaningless specifics

so to be clear about it, the thing i was imagining was the angel cycling its thoughts to detect the thoughts of the other person

the initial idea was something like

if thought = thought, angel senses that

if belief = belief, angel senses that

but thought = belief is not sensed

and a normal angel wouldn’t be able to easily cycle through beliefs, nor would it want to

importantly, and this is what tripped one guy up, the lying angel can distinguish between its antiscient beliefs and its angelic awareness. it believes “there is a person standing on X” for every point X in space‍ ‍‍—‍ but it can tell which of these believes overlap with actual human believes, and thereby discern where people are

barring double‍-​think, though, the only way the liar would be able to react to this information is once its beliefs are “confirmed” by overlap, it stops believing in its antithesis‍ ‍‍—‍ which implies the true strength of the liar is abilities to relax into a state of chatic antiscience and back again.