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Ex Libris Mörk Borg A directory of content, tools, and resources

Mörktober2022

Ekstasis

Concept: “Dance! Dance because there is no tomorrow!”
Content: Dancing for omens.
Writing: Desperate mechanics capture the frenetic energy of ecstasy. 
Art/design: Text and visual elements suggest an out of body experience.
Usability: Best performed in a wide open space. 

Erroneous Revelations

Concept: “He experimented a lot with divination, mainly trying to make it easier, often at the cost of accuracy.”
Content: A scroll to bring about an unlikely future.
Writing: Hilariously un-prophetic.
Art/design: Serious layout belies decidedly humorous contents.
Usability: Specificity adds to the hilarity. 

Face of Wry Prophecy

Concept: “A mannequin masque locked in an airy smile.”
Content: A fatal game of masque roulette.
Writing: Compelling core mechanics make a tense social minigame.
Art/design: A menacing masque hovering over cursed text.
Usability: It’s all bonus HP until someone’s dead. 

Fiery Joust

Concept: “A patch of scorched land... a dueling circle... reclaimed by local villagers but for much less dignified purposes.”
Content: Bare-Knuckle boxing for fun and profit.
Writing: Effective mechanics and engaging lore.
Art/design: Some poor scvm with a block of text for a head.
Usability: Great little downtime event to while away the Miseries. 

Flail and Wail

Concept: “The terrible piercing wail of that thing - harder to forget than seeing it attached to that chain.”
Content: A flail-child. With piercing wails
Writing: The opposite of parenting advice.
Art/design: A crying cherub in motion and suspended from a handle and chain, emanating violent yellow soundwaves.
Usability: Created by trained professionals. Do not try this at home. 

For the Moon

Concept: “Worshipers of the celestial sphere... crafted this helmet as a gift for their prophet ‘Moönface’”
Content: A glowing spheric helmet with an attractive quality.
Writing: Amusingly understated and delightfully literal.
Art/design: An elegant moon prophet belies a ridiculous helmet. 
Usability: Don’t get caught in the wrong orbit. 

Foundations

Concept: “Some of these (necromancy) weirdos do it with buildings.”
Content: Raise a house (from the dead)
Writing: Less-defined mechanics make this a concept open to interpretation.
Art/design: Recently resurrected tomb surrounded by boxed text.
Usability: The larger they are, the harder they’ll fall. 

Helm of Aura Protection

Concept: “'Isn’t that just tr...’ ‘Yes.’”
Content: A real pain in the head.
Writing: Factually accurate mechanical depiction of migraines.
Art/design: Too bright (for migraines), mostly black for everyone else.
Usability: Truly shocking headgear. 

Helm of the War Wizard

Concept: “Th[e] crescent moon and stars on this helm glow in the dark.”
Content: A glowing arcane catastrophe waiting to happen.
Writing: Ignore failed powers, until the last star burns out...
Art/design: A hilarious blend of serious Norman style helmet and pointy wizard hat.
Usability: Best if scvm don’t know what happens once the stars burn out. 

Horns of the Axelord

Concept: “The engraved skeletal hand smells of burning herbs.”
Content: Present hand. Start mosh. Eat fingers?
Writing: Unapologetically Metal.
Art/design: Gritty backdrop, splattered skeletal horns, poster quality layout.
Usability: You didn’t need those fingers anyway. 

Inevitable

Concept: “DEATH COMES FOR ALL AND NONE SHALL ESCAPE ITS COLD EMBRACE”
Content: A gray pony and a mute child.
Writing: A hilariously sardonic twist on the classic reaper.
Art/design: Death peers out at you from between the text boxes.
Usability: Easy to use. Makes an excellent quest giver. 

Kill & Reuse

Concept: “The spiders in Sarkash are big, mean, vicious creatures... So when you manage to kill one you tear it apart and use all its parts.”
Content: A spider arts and crafts project that will get you hooked.
Writing: A viscerally consequential variant on the traditional grappling hook.
Art/design: An artisan's shop. Harassed by boxed text.
Usability: For AFTER the spider encounter. 

Knowledge is Power

Concept: “The great library of Galgenbeck is ruled by mole-like characters... It only makes sense that they would feed on bookwörms.”
Content: Worms that travel through books, figuratively.
Writing: A monster that encourages literacy. Laudable.
Art/design: I couldn’t spot the bookwörm in the backdrop.
Usability: Design that makes it easy to search for bookwörms. 

Larceny

Concept: “...the riches have been untouched for centuries... the reward would be unrivaled.”
Content: Stolen coins and the details of their curse. 
Writing: Demonstration of the pettiness of the shadow king’s line.
Art/design: Shadowed halls containing boxed text.
Usability: It can be hard to spend stolen coins. 

Legion

Concept: “a cursed undead shepherd kept alive by the powers of his 5 sheep”
Content: An extremely dedicated shepherd.
Writing: Provides context and history for a singular kind of undead.
Art/design: A legion of sheep behind boxed text.
Usability: Go for the sheep. 

Mesmerism

Concept: “People flock to his stall everyday and buy all his wares, and yet nothing seems to be happening... Why do they keep coming back then?”
Content: A different sort of alchemist, running a different sort of shop.
Writing: A engaging take on the snake-oil salesman. With an included hook to intrigue your scvm.
Art/design: A dingy street alchemist's lab draped in boxed text.
Usability: His wares could be worth quite a lot to the right buyers. 

Moaning Bulwark

Concept: “This shield licks its’ lips and breathes heavily.”
Content: A balefully sensuous moaning shield.
Writing: Simply stunning. No really. That’s what it does.
Art/design: Definitely conveys moaning.
Usability: Make it (moan) don’t break it. 

Negotiation of Fate

Concept: “Powerful runes capable of altering one’s fate in exchange of their vitality.”
Content: Trade life for luck.
Writing: A simple, evocative, (and miserable) tradeoff.
Art/design: A willing supplicant waits before the carved runes.
Usability: Strong visual design makes for an easy, engaging read. 

Obsidian

Concept: “Master jewelers have a story they like to tell their apprentice about obsidian.”
Content: Rules for crafting obsidian weapons and fueling them with souls.
Writing: Self-contained and loosely defined to be adopted to your setting. 
Art/design: Jewelers hard at work behind some box text.
Usability: Some sorcery is required, use at your own risk. 

Osseus, the Graftsman

Concept: “A being with an obsession with bones and a knack for surgery.”
Content: A bone merchant and skeleton grafter.
Writing: Mercantile, with all prices listed and product descriptions included.
Art/design: Bordered black and white plain text.
Usability: Prefers live skeletons. 

Paleblood Unguent

Concept: “A phial of glowing white liquid that flows toward the stars.”
Content: A pale-one blood unguent.
Writing: Deepy serious, mildly transgressive, yet oddly satisfying.
Art/design: The light of the unguent escapes the flask, falling upwards above the text.
Usability: Put a little angel on you. 

Parasite

Concept: “If you ever drink the water of Lake Onda...”
Content: A thirsty little throat parasite.
Writing: Some serious slow-burn body horror.
Art/design: Thirstworms hiding in their natural habitat—behind the boxed text.
Usability: Mechanically more disease than monster honestly. 

Penumbra

Concept: “They owed their success to magic rings stolen... but as quickly as they became legendary... they mysteriously disappeared...”
Content: A ring of shadows.
Writing: A powerful artifact balanced by a powerful drawback.
Art/design: A magical assassination obscured by rules text.
Usability: Whatever you do, don’t fail (with the ring on). 

Phantoms

Concept: “These are the ghosts raised from the graves of the forgotten dead.”
Content: A table of local haunts.
Writing: Creative mechanics turn ghosts into environmental effects.
Art/design: A haunted figure stalking some box text.
Usability: Can be applied to most any location in the Dying World. 

Presage

Concept: “As you put on the cape, feathers start growing from under your skin...”
Content: A cape to become the bird of your dreams (or at least omens).
Writing: A surprisingly flexible and self-regulating magic item with gut-wrenching descriptive text.
Art/design: Some winged angel, tastefully protected by some boxed text.
Usability: Make sure to emphasize the bone-crunching transformation. 

Punishment

Concept: “Swinging that much metal at the face of anyone is sure to cause some damage.”
Content: Entirely too many flails (9) on a stick.
Writing: A flail with a short evocative history and a unique combat reaction.
Art/design: A breathable, clean layout hides a dirty and cluttered armory.
Usability: Push your luck to deal extra damage (possibly to yourself) 

Roll the Bones

Concept: “Roll as many d20 as you would dare – THROW THE BONES!!!”
Content: A push-your-luck osteomancy mini-game.
Writing: An engaging and highly variable results table with mechanics that simultaneously reward and punish you for more dice.
Art/design: Bones rendered in stippled newsprint with a sleek serif font.
Usability: Bonus points if you use bone dice. 

Rotblack Bob

Concept: “A floating head, its’ pores exhuding hot sludge and enthusiasm”
Content: A follower with a real head for social media.
Writing: A satire made even more poignant given its Twitter origins.
Art/design: An overly enthusiastic head exudes charm (or something) onto the text below.
Usability: Easy to navigate, spacious, and legible. 

Ruined Reflections

Concept: “Somewhere hidden in the ruins of the Palace of the Shadow King a mirror stands in the center of a chamber... Before it sits the severed head of Baol Rulg”
Content: A mirrored reflection of possible futures. A potential omen. A severed head.
Writing: A descriptive cinematic encounter with unusual furnishings.
Art/design: Focal central illustration. Staggered text elements. Considerate use of yellow and pink. 
Usability: Spacious and legible. 

Scorned Sir Lort’s Bloodgaol Blade

Concept: “On a 1: Sir Lort’s dreaded head flies off, rolling away..”
Content: A sword with a zombie head on it.
Writing: Simple, elegant, and effective mechanics.
Art/design: A gorgeously filthy incapacitated head on a greatsword. 
Usability:  Gorgeously hand-drawn. 
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