My last few weeks have been dominated by the Ultraviolet Grasslands kickstarter. We’ve hit $70,000 in backing, so I’ll be coloring the whole book. We’re making cool dice with Q-Workshop and I need to revise all the designs for the engraving process—they’ve been super helpful and understanding about it all. Saker Tarsos is keen to start on a digital DM screen for the UVG. That’s great. I’ve made a video for the UVG kickstarter with the kind donation of music from the Ljubljanskish stoner prog jam band Jegulja. That’s cool. I’ve finished Chapter 4 of Red Sky Dead City, and that beast has now grown to … a lot of pages and art. Thanks to all the heroes over there.
To say that the last few weeks have been pretty madcap is an understatement. Yesterday I decided to relax a bit by writing up a small bronze age adventure, but that’s … well, it looks bigger than initially planned and not relaxing enough anymore, so I hunted around and found this d100 table of tables that’s been hanging around my hard drive for a while.
What follows is super self-indulgent. You’ve been warned.
I hijacked a d100 chaotic democracy on a discord server, it happens. I’ve reduced real names to initials for privacy. It starts to get strange around table 30.
A Hundred Strange Tables
- Large dining table. Ivory top, legs of an elephant. Walks.
(DungeonsPossums) - Heavy iron table with legs cast to resemble clustered spears. The top is inlaid with nickel and copper in a scene depicting the construction of a great city of towering buildings that no one can seem to place.
(MTL) - Small coffee table, surface made entirely of lacquered eyes. Legs and edge are carved pink marble, like muscle fibers. Eyes blink independently.
(Comrade Pollux) - Coffee table menacing with spikes. Slides towards the shins of people standing near it.
(coffee tables are bullshit)
(AG) - A table made entirely out of smaller wooden tables glued together.
(Spiraxo) - Slab of man-meat, stiched into a long flat rectangle.
(CG) - Shards of a broken mirror floating together above a cerulean mist. Mental images can be projected onto the mirror by touching a shard.
(DungeonsPossums) - A long feasting table comprised of oak which is haunted by all of the animals ever served on it. At dinner hour, it sounds like a cacophonous zoo.
(MTL) - A side table made entirely of tea biscuits shaped together with elaborate joinery. If you steal a piece your mouth will fill with hot tea 30 seconds later and continue to do so even if swallowed or spit out until the biscuit is returned precisely.
(Comrade Pollux) - Circular table of gorgeous iridescent glass, undulating like a rippling pond. Surface is so uneven that anything placed on it tips over.
(Luka) - A table made of cheese and grit.
(MTL) - A woodworker’s table made entirely of loose sawdust. Place a design on the center of the desk and a piece of wood in the vice and it will slowly reshape the wood as if being sanded furiously into shape.
(Saker Tarsos) - The Random Table: a chart hastily scribbled on a piece of paper and nailed to the wall. Nearby is a 20-sided die. If you roll the die and consult the chart, a table will appear in the room of similar structure and substance to the result rolled on the chart.
(CG) - A prism of frozen milk, with shadowed serpentine forms crawling within. If poisoned food is placed upon it, 1d4 will emerge, destroying the food and attacking from that point
(CG) - The charred stump of an ancient tree. Cooked food eaten off of it heals for double. Appears to travelers in need. Found within is a smoldering ember of the trees heart, still seeking revenge against its destroyer
(MTL) - A flat sheet of mirror-polished bronze on stout oak legs. Anything reflected in the surface can be pulled through it, originally intended for lavish feasts from single instances of each dish.
(CG) - Made simply of yew, suited for two at most. If sundered, each half will regrow to fullness after 1d10 weeks.
- Made simply of you, suited up for two. If sundered, each half will spurt fifteen gallons of blood then regrow to fullness after 1d10 hours.
(ZS) - Long and teak, and trapped. Switch hidden in one leg; kick that and blades spring out of its long sides.
(ZS) - Collapsible. Unfold it fully and a bowl of fresh salad appears on its surface. Feeds one.
(ZS) - Carrom board. Every carrom man you pot cuts a wound in your opponent.
(Saker Tarsos) - Invisible table, but casts a shadow. Placed in an inconvenient area to maximize the possibility that you’ll stumble into it or trip over it.
(MTL) - A simple but stained and nicked butcher’s block. Place any body wrapped in butcher’s paper on the table. When unwrapped the body is completely butchered and neatly stacked.
(DungeonsPossums) - A hastily-constructed, cursed end table used by beastmen to play their warped version of chess upon. Constructed of filthy and charred boards pried loose from the burnt ruins of a town they sacked, with the round piece markers scrawled into the top with the tip of a purloined iron nail in a pentagon shape. When a game of beastman chess is completed on the tabletop, the pieces burst into flame and smolder slowly to ash regardless of the material they’re made of—the last revenge of the lost villagers.
(Spwack) - Timelocked hunk of mahogany, floating unsupported. Will be one of the things that survive the heat-death of the universe. Impossible to relocate. Never scratches or stains.
(ZS) - Rich mahogany. Any food served on this table comes alive. Diced carrots sprout fine roots; shoots spring from your wineglass; that slab of steak begins to pulsate, a cancerous blob of bone and pseudopods.
(DungeonsPossums) - Sodden plank, never quite dries. Taken by bubble-headed divers from a faraway land from a ship marked MYFLOW. Creaks in the morning; drips onto the floor at night.
(MTL) - Patio table, iron, rusting, fleur de lis markings for the top grate. Smells strongly of the sea and, when touched, evokes the feeling of warm bread, good wine, and strong sorrow.
(DungeonsPossums) - Filthy, uncleaned picnic bench. Covered in pigeon guano and a handful of crusty food smears from meals long ago.
(DungeonsPossums) - Iron slab.
(Luka—the following entries get super weird. Enjoy.) - Body of a half-gir folded and plastified into shape.
- 777 eyeballs of heretical goat-priests of Karpay preserved in god’s amber.
- Unfolded dragon’s wing, turned to brass by the song of a cupra-siren.
- The door of a ‘21 Cygon Starhowler on melt-slag cinder blocks, it still vibrates with the memory of the photon races of Chun in ‘29. The one with the three star pileup.
- The desiccated, leathery heart of the last ice-whale, studded with pearls and cow’s teeth.
- Interlocking hands that belonged to the children of Pithoi Kwa, severed by the holy curse of the prophet Aqbus to convince the Free President to set her people free. The bones are preserved in glassy amoeboidium.
- A gelatinous cube, flash-frozen and cut to shape. Don’t take it out of the ice bar.
- A plane of pure force, edges marked with warning stickers.
- 9000 puppy dogs’ tails woven into delicate knotwork. Perfect for a delicate teatime.
- Slab cross-cut from the penis of a medusa-petrified titan.
- Dust kept in place by the oneirostatic field of a dreaming nur-brain implanted in the great bone leg.
- A star condensed into a table-shaped monolith of pure neutronium by the will of the cosmic alchemist. If the will slackens, get ready for some fun gravity waves.
- A delicate eggshell ceramic table so fine it rings with aetheric melodies every time a bone china cup is laid upon it.
- Plastified guts of seahorses wrapped around a nautilus heart, strumming with the hurt of banished oceans.
- One of the sixty-four tablets of Mukuki’s divine commands, upturned and defiled daily in the drinking symposia of the Ikukumian creed.
- Forty-three quarterling skulls crushed into shards and bonded with the sap of the soulbinder trees, that the lost souls may rhee every time a toast is made.
- Liquid amber ale held in form by a momentary lapse of reason.
- A pine-and-ivory contraption, once an instrument, now a quaintly hipster table.
- Slab of lead plate glass on three unicorn horn legs.
- Planks from the Maiden of the Unbroken Seas still rich with the fear of the first voidsailors to leave the toroid of the Earth and enter the inner heavens where the Green Aeon lives.
- The gong upon which the gavel of judgement rang to bring about the doom of the last and first men who raised themselves up to challenge the ultrahumans of yore and after.
- A great shell of seven colors, tightly whorled and ornately patterned in what almost seems to be chant 5:8 from the Book of the Sounds of the Time Without Gods, “on kapi kapi topli kapi tuata tamta gorata huza huza tapi kapi on on lipo lipo mata kapi,”—roughly, “and without fear the guest who knows the end has already and always cone and it will be was good.”
- The shield of Nu Apra, last axe hero of the Far Marmorians.
- A great wheel overlaid with beaten copper and inlaid with aksulite date shell, said to be from the wagon of Bahal Seyes, whose second horde destroyed Aksul of the Far Marmorians.
- Twenty windpipes coiled in ornate patterns by the cartilage sculptors of Near Marmoria for the wedding of Bisti Apra and Kwatu Apra in the time of the approved resurgence. Foot operated bellows bring forth romantic dirges.
- Wrought whorled steel forged from the seven cannons of Bahal Osmim, which destroyed the Black Sky Wall of the Domelites.
- A great mother-of-pearl prestige plate looted from the garlanded glowing jelly garden of Domelia.
- Compressed, shaped, and petrified, the bodies of the Six Eternal Virgins, who ruled Domelia from the time the True Gods left the Toris of Earth. The stone skins still bear the tattoos inscribed into the Virgins detailing the 27 true titles of Bahal Osmim.
- The flat tubular bell of the Sound-kwesarch of Nauul Ka, bound in frozen unicorn’s ichor for the First Freedommaker, Bahal Parvatu.
- The gravestones of the twin-heresiarchs, the Blue King and the Brown King, of Inhil Sap. Bound in ironglass jelly for Bahal Parvatu.
- The sixty crowns of the Tyrant Cities, forged into a coffee table for the Second Freedommaker Bahal Dervi.
- The glorious eye of heaven undimmed forged into a nihil-matter shield to celebrate Bahal Dervi who brought the shadowy land of Fra Sephra into the world of being.
- The tungsten pages of the Book of Beöm unfurled and overlaid on a great bachannal table at the behest of the kind first and second husbands of Bahal Dervi.
- A cross-section from the cervical vertebra of the divine worm, the god-magus Lu Braai of Tikklopi, stood upon three solar blades for the Third Freedommaker Bahal Triti.
- Ash from the Glassing of Gu Hwayi, when the para-atomics of Bahal Triti chased the devils of temptation and consumption out of earth and brought the Ironmesh Provinces of Uhwaya into the friendship federation.
- The cloak of the last child emperor of Pri Doldo, Sky Flower Flesh, spread like a table cloth across the cube-cut petrified bulk of its body.
- The coffin of the Fourth Freedommaker Bahal Avatri, who contracted the blood thirst and was immolated in the hellfire of rectification then bonded in a display coffin to remind future Freedommakers of their sacred duty to release all thinking creatures from the clutches of the great iridescent lie.
- The glacis shield of the doomed walker of Fifth Freedommaker Bahal Yati, salvaged during the investment of the Gurduli Conglomerates by Greatborn Diva Pitri.
- The Plaque of Foundation, preserved in flow-zircon, showing where the solar lance of Diva Pitri penetrated after skewering the last Economarch of Gurduli. The plaque was presented as an ascension gift to Sixth Freedommaker Bahal Sayati.
- The head of Catman Hones embedded in adamant and azurite after the Red Lance Horde brought the Catarchy into freedom.
- A god screen framed in gold and embedded in flow-quartz, salvaged by Diva Pitri from the smouldering Tomb Tower Palace of the Necromachy of Dulthay.
- The great crystal ball of the gazer queens of Bismalhaq, cut in half by the solar lance of Diva Pitri during the Dayhunter Rebellion which ended with the Amatrians and the Perimegrines joining the federation after heated dinner discussions and a small foray to see the star cannon of Bahal Sayati.
- The ant farm of Bahal Sayati, preserved in adamant with each ant preserved in pure gold, and the soil replaced with grains of jet. The Freedommaker’s lifelong passion became its greatest gravegood – still on display in the Museum of All Freedoms and available for small cocktail parties at reasonable rates (under 600 slaa per diem).
- The right hand of the martyr of Mur Amaika, Ul Adad, preserved in carbonite, stood upon the iron-cast spines of their six sworn sisters.
- The vault door of the Troglomonarchs, engraved with a poem for Bahal Seyes by Diva Pitri.
- The holy swaddling robes of the seventh Freedommaker Bahal Seyes, spread and reinforced by liquid dreams of eternity.
- The Engine of Existence, dismantled and preserved in emerald glass, levitating, presented to the Freedommaker after the Red Lances liberated the Existentialists of Rulk.
- Rulkite shells, hollowed out and bonded with keralite, overlaid with the leathery belly skins of the Four Great Warriors of Rulk.
- The Clock of the Chronarch of Agonies and Bringer of Release after Diva Pitri broke the kingdom of the Eternal Return in the war of the twin suns.
- The solar wings of the High Guard, amputated and bound in siren’s tendons, then bonded in a wheel of opal and tanzanite for Bahal Seyes by Diva Pitri.
- The armor of the Sailing City of Nul Chami, beaten into banquet table after it was run aground on the Atoll of the Twopiece to join the friendship federation by Diva Pitri.
- The crushed and citronite-bonded fragments of the vagrant egg of the Two Piece Queen-King of the Seven Atoll Cities.
- A greasy slab of lignite shaved off the holy Brown Stone of the Steam Cabal after Diva Pitri brought them to Bahal Seyes.
- The unraveled nervous and circulatory systems of the Seventh Freedommaker preserved in a flattened ovoid of force and filled with a life-preserving gelatinous ooze, to present a warning to future Freedommakers that their holy duty is first to Friendship and the Good People of the Federation. Upon this table the Freedommaker eats every breakfast.
- A ceramic and carbonite and corundum life-preserving sarcophagus fashioned into a display table with six biomechanical legs. Within, safe, sleeping, and dreaming of insectile sheep, is the radiantly beautiful and heavily pregnant mother of the eighth Freedommaker Bahal Osmim. Her name is Yil Siva and her brain has been carefully calibrated to know and see only pleasure.
- The iridium and platinum quantum brain of the Optimarch of Qui Gharcsh, beaten into a wide disk and nailed to an ebony slab. The first gift of Diva Pitri to Bahal Osmim.
- The great and holy radiant axe of Far Marmoria, bound in shadowstuff and dragons bile, with five legs of neutronium.
- The holy gecko of Luth, frozen together with its divining pond, after the thread of Luth Qua Qul was cut by Diva Pitri for Bahal Osmim.
- A coil of seven golden regal ropes stood upon their noose ends with persistent rope tricks.
- A slab of salt precipitated from the tears of seven hundred lamenting aristocrats after the Three Kingdoms Campaign of the Red Lances, which Bahal Osmim named “the best in Diva Pitri’s life”
- Twelve plastic-bonded dismembered false-clones of Bahal Osmim. From this table his lunchtime buffet is served each day.
- A disk of pure music which releases pacifying tunes when struck.
- A great mirror of steel and diamond and hungers assuaged. Within the mirror, each delicacy is always seen, offering the reflection of hungers sated.
- A great slab of star stuff, kept in place by the heart beat of Diva Pitri. Should the beat cease, a maelstrom of darkness will eat the Bahal Cloud Palace.
- A mile-long slab of blood-stuff with walls of cartilage and chitin, upon uncounted insectile feet, fed by sun and stream and holy dream, the sides are lined with teats that offer nutritious pablum to the delicately grateful folk of Poy Bahal.
- A simple table of fragrant wood and biomanced human ivory, upon which Diva Pitri studies and writes, delicate long-fingered mahogany hands flicking through the demands of federation she so kindly administers for the Bahals and the Peoples’ Seniorators.
- A brass clockwork table that dispenses healing, life-extending drafts on demand.
- A divine mimic bound by love, loyalty, and linked psyche to Diva Pitri, masquerading as an ivory and steel chess table.
- A pure white block of marble, inside a materializer which can create food on demand.
- A 600 metre table of granite, buried beneath a mound of earth and grass and trees. Within the table, Diva Pitri’s solar-drive equipped phylactery.
“Iä, Iä, Diva Pitri Fhtagn!”
Now, if you’d like to listen to some music: here is an excellent Spotify playlist created by Eric Levanduski, inspired by the cat-filled weirdness of the UVG. Yeah, the UVG has a bunch of playlists now … none of them made by me! O_O Wow.