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Signs and Portents

Table

His Majesty the Worm · p.153

Open source p.153

Drawtarot — minor arcana

🂠 deck

Signs and Portents

deck

draw a card · HMTW — Tests · players’ deck · minor arcana + the Fool · 57 cards

Card values I-XIV within a suit.

Card	Result
I	Rip Van Winkle: Time moves strangely in the Underworld. You return to the City a full 100 years after you left. Your children are old and your lovers are dead.
II	The Blood-Red Star: A comet hangs over the City: a menstrual smear across the sky in both night and day. Its sickly red-brown light causes sleeplessness in the City. Everyone you meet is haggard and bleary eyed, barely holding onto sanity. You can’t sleep either. Begin the next Crawl Phase Stressed.
III	Mists: Emerald-colored fog rises out of the mouths to the Underworld, blotting out the sun. This phase takes place in an unnatural, unending night.
IV	The Ancient Quarter: A district of the City that hasn’t existed in centuries reappears from the mists of the ages. Its residents are antique and deeply confused about where they are and how they got here. Draw an additional district, per the rules in Appendix D: City Creation. This district becomes a part of the present City.
V	The Blood Rain: Red clouds, swollen like pustules, begin raining blood. The blood flows in rivulets down the streets, pollutes cisterns, stains everything. It’s gross.
VI	Dreams: Dreams begin wandering through the City. A husband begins having the dreams of his wife. A hay merchant suddenly begins having the dreams of his neighbor, a clothier. The archbishop begins having dreams of the inbred princess locked in the Tower of Forbiddance. Each player must tell one secret to another player, which their adventurer dreams about.
VII	The Slime Catastrophe: Some thoughtless adventurer brought a baby green slime back into the City. It quickly grew in size, swallowing the food of the inn, the horses, the stables, and entire city blocks. Before it was vanquished with a fire, it ate an entire district. Remove one random district from the City.
VIII	The Mushroom Forest: Yellow mushrooms with pink gills erupt from the fal gstones of a random district. They stand as tall as columns, choking off traffic and commerce. That district’s special City Action cannot be used this City Phase.
IX	The Thing in the Water: Fishermen pull forth the corpse of some stupendous white thing from the waters of the Grey. The ocean sings a pitiful song for the next week. The song elicits a feeling of devastating ennui. Several named GM characters walk into the ocean and are never seen again.
X	Dog Suicide: All the dogs of the City commit suicide overnight: they throw themselves off of bridges, smash themselves through glass windows, drown themselves in the Grey.
XI	The Black Miracle of the Statues: Every graven image in the City begins speaking terrible blasphemies. In a fit of iconoclasm, the Cult begins smashing all representative art. Statues, paintings, idols, mosaics, figureheads, children’s toys, etc., are all fuel for their holy bonfires. Religious fervor is increased in the near term.
XII	The Honey Cult: An adventurer brought black honey to the City. All who eat of it profess to see terrible and wonderful visions of a pregnant woman. They rave about the Nascent Horde. Something about their ravings causes a deep anxiety inside of you.
XIII	The Child of Silence: A giant infant crawls down the streets. The thing is surrounded with an aura of impenetrable silence: no sound whatsoever carries in its presence. It seems to be hunting the guild. The guild can hide and forestall this doom, though the Child of Silence will doubtless cause some terrible harm if left unchecked.
XIV	What Is Dead May Never Die: The dead haunt the City. Until the guild finds the source of the undead in the Underworld and quells it, no City Actions can be performed. If the plague of the dead is allowed to continue, the Underworld will breach onto the surface, devouring the City (as it has devoured so many cities before).