Google docs version here.
Michael Hutter
GENERATING AN OCCULT GALLERY
Use D20s to generate the Gallery. Record the color of the dice as well as the number showing. The color determines the architectural style of the room and the art displayed within it. It also determines the special properties of any guardians spawned in that room.- Red: Classical/Neoclassical. Giant Guardians with double hit dice and damage dice, but -2 to hit versus human size targets
- Blue: Cubist. Guardians ignore successful attacks that roll an odd-number to hit, except area attacks
- Yellow: Art Deco. Guardians armed with Thompsons and Browning Automatic Rifles, dealing D10 damage and using the Covering Fire rules
- Orange: Surrealist. Guardians deal damage directly to flesh, but make a reaction roll each round to see if they even attack
- Green: Anti Art/Post Modernist. Guardians deconstruct one of the target’s items on a successful hit.
- Purple: Realist. Guardians have the same abilities as the players
- Brown: Medieval/Gothic. Guardians cast Bleeding Curse, Cure Wounds and Darkness at will
- White: High Modernist/Brutalist. Guardians get +4 AC, no Grit but double Flesh
- Black: Futurist. Guardians incredibly fast, always attack first
The entrances where the Gallery connects to the rest of the Underworld, or the surface, have donation boxes where patrons can drop money or items of value. They also have little pamphlets with cryptic descriptions of the exhibits inside, and vague suggestions about where they can be found.
Unless otherwise stated, passages between rooms are ten feet wide, well lit, with double doors that are unlocked and open.
GUARDIANS
Stealing or breaking anything from the Gallery summons 2D6 magical automata called Guardians. The second D6 is how many Turns they take to appear in the room where the offense occurred. Their powers and appearance are determined by this room they originate from, but they all share the same basic characteristics.4 Flesh (1 dice), 4 Grit (1 dice), AC 12 (No vital organs), Saves 16+
Fists or Sculpted Weapons (D8, +1 to Hit and Damage for each $1,000 of art carried or broken by the party)
Guardians are automatically aware of the thief or vandal’s location, and pursue them until restitution is made or the offender is slain. Giving back ALL stolen art gets them off your ass, but vandals must place money or items equivalent to the value of the broken art in a donation box at a gallery entrance.
CHAMBERS IN OCCULT GALLERIES
1: A painting gallery. The subject matter has an occult twist, but the paintings are not themselves magical. They are worth $100 per inventory slot, and there are 2D6 slots worth of paintings in the gallery.2: A sculpture gallery. The subject matter has an occult twist, but the sculptures are not themselves magical. They are worth $50 per inventory slot, and there are 4D6 slots worth of sculptures in the gallery.
3: A small theater. A few seats face the wall, where a film is being projected through a window in the wall. The genre and contents of the film depend on the room’s artistic style. Anyone who looks at the film must Save vs Magic or get stuck watching, unable to turn away until the film is complete. Roll a D6 for how many turns are left before it loops. If the film were recovered from the projection room up a flight of stairs in the back, it would be worth $1,000.
4: The lights in the room are off, but come on as the characters enter. One wall of the room is a window, which looks out into an enormous gallery. Giant paintings and sculptures are visible across the room. Giant people look at the exhibits - including the one the players are inside. (Viewed from the other side, the “room” is a box on a plinth, surrounded by velvet don’t-touch ropes)
5: A reference library. Filled with art history and theory, technical manuals, and coffee table books filled with photos and pictures. D4-1 members of the Occult Artists Collective are in the library, studying with coffee, alcohol, adderall or all three. In addition to artistic reference texts worth $300, the library has a couple random grimoires from page 140 amid its shelves. Visitors are free to read them, but not to damage or remove them from the room. In addition to the Guardians, the room is protected by D4 LURKING LAMPS (pg 222). They stay disguised as furniture unless someone tries to steal a book.
6: A sculpture gallery. There is a statue depicting a member of each faction in your Social Underworld. The statues are worth $200 per inventory slot, and take up between 1 and 3 inventory slots each depending on the weight of the materials (eg paper mache is 1, aluminum is 2, concrete or marble is 3)
7: A garden, with ornamental plants appropriate to its artistic style. D4-1 members of the Occult Artist Collective are here. Reading, drawing and painting, eating a meal or staring at their phones. The roof of the garden is glass. Above it, creatures like giant jellyfish and squirming tumbleweeds float through a brightly lit but sunless sky.
8: A water feature. A fountain disgorges a crystal clear liquid into a pool, which flows out through canals and into drains in the floor. The canals are five feet wide, and crossed by bridges. The room is full of statues. Plants, animals and humans in various poses, all life size. Mechanically, the crystal liquid functions as Liquid Limestone from page 127, but the end product is made of a material appropriate for the room’s artistic style (eg marble statues for a classical room, granite for a medieval room, concrete for a brutalist room).
9: An interactive exhibit. The walls (whose architectural style is determined by the room’s die color) are covered in graffiti art. The floor is littered with cans of spraypaint, ripe for use. An engraved sign in the center of the room invites the viewer to “TAG AWAY, YOU RAPSCALLION YOU”. If anyone tags the walls, a big, slow Maintenance Golem (pg 204) peels itself off the wall and lumbers towards them, ready to beat them to a pulp. It stops short of killing its victim, ignore any Bleeding Out, Dead Man Walking or instant death conditions inflicted by its blows. (The artist is making a statement about the danger of capture and punishment as an essential part of graffiti art)
10: The walls are broken up by curtained windows, stirred by a breeze from the other side. The sounds of battle can be heard. The windows look out over a fantastical city in the midst of a riot. Buildings are on fire, masses of people flee or fight in the streets. On the other side, the windows are too high for the robed figures in the streets to reach, but enterprising adventurers could climb down to join the fray if they so desired.
11: A painting gallery. All the characters in the paintings are people the player characters have killed. When they murder someone else, the victim appears in a painting. The contents of the gallery are magic and worth $1,500 all together. However the collection serves as evidence of the players’ misdeeds, they must be careful who buys them.
12: The room is unlit, except by large windows. These windows look out over a barren moonscape, beneath a cosmos filled with beautiful but totally unfamiliar constellations. If a window takes 20 points of damage, it breaks. Everyone in the room must save vs Hazards or be sucked out into the airless void. Regardless of whether they succeed or fail, anyone who holds their breath takes 2D6 damage directly to Flesh as expanding gas ruptures their lungs. Anyone who exhales begins asphyxiating.
13: A performance art exhibit. The room is completely dark. It smells like dissolved minerals and exotic biochemistry. Something enormous slithers in the dark, climbing the walls and and floors and ceiling. It brushes against the legs of those passing through the exhibit, clicking and whistling. It only attacks those with active light sources. (The creature is a Child of the Abyss from page 223)
14: A performance art exhibit. The artist has transformed themself into a living room. The walls are soft skin, the furniture bone, the lights bioluminescent eyes. This animated parlor is intelligent, aware of their surroundings, and happy to talk with people standing inside them. If roused to anger, the room has 30 Flesh and casts spells as a Vivimancer (page 193)
15: An interactive exhibit. The entrances to the room are airlocked, with plastic tunnels leading into a central plexiglass box filled with slimes (page 126). Each entrance has D6-1 HAZMAT suits which protect the wearer against the slimes completely, along with decontamination showers. In order to cross the room, the display invites the viewer to don a suit and “swim with the slimes”.
16: A performance art exhibit. A Pain Engine (page 204) endlessly disassembles and reassembles the Technomancer who refurbished it (page 192). The artist is eager to impress visitors and will perform (and then reverse) mutilations on themself on request. If the visitors attack or interfere, the Engine goes after them instead.
17: A room full of paintings, drawings and sculptures. There are 2D6 inventory slots worth of goods, each slot worth $150. D4 of the artworks are mimics (page 222) which attack thieves.
18: A cafe. It serves coffee, pastries and sandwiches, but also absinthe, vermouth, and other treats enjoyed by young bohemians. The cafe is staffed by a couple Useless Civilians, who count on the Guardians for protection. 2D6-2 members of the Occult Artist Collective are here at any given time. There are D6 inventory slots worth of good liquor behind the bar, each worth $100.
19: A gift shop. A single Useless Civilian surfs the internet, watches movies on their phone, works on their porno commissions, and occasionally rings up merch for the rare customer. They count on the Guardians to protect them from robbers. In addition to prints, sculptures, and other assorted tchotchkes, the shop sells scrolls. There are 3D6 for sale, each a random spell. The cost is $100 per spell level.
20: A room displaying D6 objects d’art. The objects function as magic weapons and items, rolled on pages 138 and 139 or chosen from pages 143-147.
Coin: The entrances to these rooms are unlike the passages that connect the rest of the Gallery. They have front doors like a house or apartment. Locked when unoccupied, or when the occupants are asleep.
The coin is an apartment, shared by the Occult Artists Collective who inhabit the gallery. Roll D4-1 to see how many are home when the players visit. The apartment is small, cluttered, overcrowded, and full of half finished art projects.
Roll a couple times on the Treasure in the Undercity, Contraband, Occult Treasures or Things to Burgle tables on pages 134-135 to see what items of value are in the apartment. These items are not under the protection of the Guardians, but the artists will run for help, phone their friends, and even fight back if cornered.
Other: The walls are hung with paintings. Some depict cityscapes, others interior scenes. Some change when you aren’t looking at them, with figures moving in and out of frame.
The paintings are portals. Climbing through one, the user emerges from a painting depicting the gallery on the opposite side. Where the paintings all lead is up to the DM.
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