"What cargo is on that ship?" System neutral random generator

As my Sea Wolves characters have finally got their hands on their very first ship and took to the waves seeking plunder, I needed a way to quickly generate the cargoes of any unfortunate merchant vessel they come across. This generator tries to combine a fair chance of the crushingly mundane for the demands of verisimilitude but during creation I did little to limit my sense of whimsy. ("nine barrels of bloody awful gin each containing a pickled monkey" remains my personal favourite.) Useful if you're running any kind of fantasy Age of Sail adventure, and if you're running something historical nix the supernatural stuff.

Monster Review - Vegepygmy [Volo's Guide to Monsters, p. 197]

The Vegepygmy is an Pulp-y goblin alternative with a dubious name, borne from one of those weird 2e Adventures which was also responsible for the Froghemoth (a much needed addition to a game bursting from every orifice with frog monsters). It has no mythical antecedent but is instead a strange crossbreed of science fiction and pulp tropes - a grubby fungus from beyond the stars looking to set down some mycelium in your heart. Bizarrely, the Vegepygmy has long dwelt in the rather short shadow of the Myconids and Blights. Competition is apparently fierce in the world of CR 1/4 plant men.

Art

A significant improvement on the hideous previous efforts this combines a daring pulp colour scheme with a distinctively alien design. It looks eerily moist and damp and you can imagine its turgid aroma. It moves towards the body horror implied in the description (a mold infested corpse turned ambulatory vector of infection) but doesn't quite dare get there. The 'Thorny' who shares the illustration overawes the Vegepgymy with its impressive vegetable malice, however. WotC's attempt to make Vegepygmies relatable, cute and Disneyfied through the inclusion of Kapalue in the Tomb of Annihilation dilute the scariness of the Vegepygmy further.

Purpose and Tactics 
The basic Vegepygmy is disposable low-level chaff. With an AC of 13 and 9 HP, even a level 1 party will quickly reduce a Vegepygmy to so much disappointing crudités. As a result, Vegepgymies work best as an ambushing force: emerging from the subterranean murk or some brooding overgrown jungle in force with their increased Stealth skill and Plant Camouflage ability. At higher levels, you can season this encounter salad with any number of plant-based allies: either using the Thornies and Vegepygmy chief here included, or Myconids, Blights, Dryads, Treants, Wood Woads and Shambling Mounds. The regeneration will be essentially meaningless in most battles for healing - even a level 1 character should easily dispatch a Vegepygmy in one or two hits. Its power - which will be great at higher levels - is that the Vegepygmies will keep getting up and into the scrap until the team does Fire, Cold or Necrotic damage to them. This will be trivial in a team with several casters but adds an element of puzzle monster to the first encounter with Vegepygmies for your group, helping to differentiate the Vegepygmy from the pack.

The Chief is a weightier foe and his regeneration is likely to keep him fighting for quite some time as a low-level boss monster. The one-off Spore attack is a potentially potent AoE that seems statistically most likely to fizzle as players are unlikely to fail the Constitution check persistently, but it helps jazz up what is otherwise a fairly mundane bruiser monster.

In terms of quests, Vegepygmy lore places them best as a threat to a local region or ecosystem. They could threaten a forest village with infection of them or their animals, or they could be raiding farmlands of other regions for resources of their own.

Fluff

The Vegeygmy fluff is an interesting throw-back to the more eclectic early days of D&D when the occasional spaceship or laser-pistol might slip in to Ye Olde Fantasy Europe without anyone batting an eyelid. Terrified of acknowledging this explicitly, the fluff is very coy about the origins of the Vegepygmy beyond the stars, and only implies that fact. Much of the fluff doesn't relate to something that is gameable: Vegepygmies possess little civilization and can't really communicate, which feels to me like they're being slowly pushed into the 'disposable bad guy not plot hook' category of monsters. In fact, the Vegepygmy is sold short by his own publicist who can't stop waxing lyrical about Russet Mold instead. I would throw all the fluff out and start again, making Vegepygmies either a force of nature with Druidic overtones or a kind of fungal zombie a la The Last of Us and The Girl With all the Gifts. Nothing in the fluff deals with the serious issue I have here: my players would find the Vegepygmy ridiculous. 
Plot Hooks
Grimlin's Trading Company are finding their grain infected with some kind of fungus, causing ergotism and madness. The bodies of those infected have disappeared, and Grimlin suspects some conspiracy against his corporation. They are at a loss as to where this infection comes from, but would like it investigated covertly without any damage to their trading reputation...

In the fetid topsoil of the top-most Underdark caverns a brutal arboreal war is being fought: saplings uprooted, fields despoiled, mulch stolen and plant-men slaughtered, as a Vegepygmy tribal confederation and Myconid Hive-Mind fight a bitter, all-encompassing war. The Vegepygmies, squeezed and battered, seek deliverance from their implacable foe...

Verdict: Despite attempts to give the Vegepygmy something unique to run with, it still feels like an own-brand riff on the more recognisable plant monsters.

Age of Sail Sailing and Ship Combat Rules 5e

With the advent of Ghosts of Saltmarsh, the good people at Wizards of the Coast have released their rules 'Of Ships and the Sea'. I think these rules are really problematic in their attempt to mesh 5e combat with a different game entirely (Why does a ship need an intelligence score if they're always going to have a 0? For the fringe case of a 'magic item possessed ship'?) and it turns the ships into video-games style centrally controlled robots, not the complex little societies and hives they were.

I tried to make a slightly different set aimed at an Age of Sail / Pirate themed campaign world, that of my new campaign Sea Wolves.  Give them a look and shoot me some feedback before they're put out to sea with my new players (almost all D&D virgins).

Ship Combat and Sailing Rules

Sea Wolves - Player Introduction

As I'm moving city in but a few weeks, I need to slow my current campaign (Brumaire) to a plodding, ambulatory speed, and take up a whole new campaign with some friends from university. Below is a draft player introduction for that campaign where all names and details may be subject to change.

Here is my attempt at bringing swashbuckling adventure into 5e: Sea Wolves.

Sea Combat Rules Random generators for Ship Cargo and encounters and weather at sea. You can view the current state of the player's fleet here.

Wizard Subclass - Demon-Summoner 'Goetia' Tradition [5e]

I've always felt that the niche of demonic summoner has long been denied to Player Characters. Whilst PCs can gleefully littler the battlefield with Fey, Undead, Elementals and 36 Dire Weasels, the much more august and storied tradition of summoning and binding Fiends is curiously absent. Xanathar's Guide tried to correct this by adding a slew of demonic summoning spells but almost all of them were hamstrung out of the gate (expensive material components or the summon creatures straight up ignoring you) as being strictly worse that conjuring an elemental or animal. Inspired by the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Ars Geotia, behold its fell majesty:

Goetia Tradition

Student of the Ars Geotica
Your extensive studies have made you highly adept at dealing with extraplanar creatures. Starting at second level, you may use your Intelligence modifier rather than your Charisma modifier when attempting to use Persuasion, Intimidation or Deception on beings with the Fiend, Celestial or Elemental subtype.

Knowledge of the Seals
You are adept at knowing the True Names of Celestials, Fiends and Elementals. Starting at second level, when summoning a variety of Fiend, Celestial or Elemental you have successfully summoned before, you know the True Name already. With a Fiend, Celestial or Elemental you have not previously summoned, you may make a Religion, History or Arcana check to determine whether you know the True Name of the creature - the DC is three times the creatures’ challenge rating.

Binder of Fiends
At sixth level, you add the Summon Lesser Demons spell to your spellbook if it was not there already. When casting the spell, you may choose from the options listed rather than roll a d6, and may choose which creatures appear.

Additionally, each summoned demon will have extra hit points equal to your Wizard level, and adds your proficiency bonus to attack rolls.

Infernal Contract

At tenth level, you add the Infernal Calling spell to your spellbook if it was not there already. You may ignore the component requirement for this spell once per long rest.

 

Penumbra of Royalty
Starting at 14th level, you can use magic to bring either Fiends, Celestials or Elementals under your control, even those summoned by other wizards. Choose either Fiends, Celestials or Elementals - this choice is permanent and cannot be changed. As an action, you can choose one creature of that type that you can see within 60 feet of you. That creature must make a Charisma saving throw against your wizard spell save DC. If it succeeds, you can’t use this feature on it again. If it fails, it becomes friendly to you and obeys your commands until you use this feature again.

Intelligent creatures are harder to control in this way. If the target has an Intelligence of 8 or higher, it has advantage on the saving throw. If it fails the saving throw and has an Intelligence of 12 or higher, it can repeat the saving throw at the end of every hour until it succeeds and breaks free.

Languages in Brumaire

...and hopefully some world-building. Brumaire players, pick accordingly:

Brummish - replaces Common
The mongrel speech that dominates in modern Brumaire, a chimerical combination of the different tongues of humans who settled in Brumaire and they Fey tongues indigenous to the world. Whilst it serves as the legal and political language of the Kingdom of Brumaire in recent years, it lacks a standardised form and is highly informed by local variations of accent and dialect - often native speakers of Brummish from the Western and Eastern extremities of the Kingdom feel the other might as well be speaking High Fey or Gobbledegook. With the development of the printing press and growth in literacy, there has begun to be a growth of a codified grammar and syntax in elite speakers of Brummish, and it has been considered in vogue for a few years amongst the Greatest Estate to imitate the Brummish dialect spoken in the capital province of Ildemaire. The average human citizen of the Kingdom has taken no notice of this. Insults and swearing derived from Gobbledegook are a common motif in Brummish, whereas words for arcane or legal concepts tend to derive from HIgh Fey. The written form of Brummish derives from runes used by the human settlers in Brumaire.

Lashkarish - replaces Orcish 
The camp-language of Marmelukes and soldiers which is a simplified, more practical version of Brummish deliberately engineered to drop many abstract concepts (freedom, honour, faith) in favour of practical reality. In battle, it tends of be information-rich in very few syllables, but struggles with nuance, shades of meaning and emotion -  almost all adjectives and adverbs in Lashkarish are imperfect borrowings from Brummish or Gobbledegook. Despite the intended spartan construction of this artificial language, it has grown to contain an inordinately large vocabulary of profanity, curses and scatalogical language - many lords of the Greatest Estate will swear only in Lashkarish.

High Fey  - replaces Sylvan
The traditional and culturally elevated speech of the Courts of Fey-kind, this lyrical language has a tight and highly prescriptive structure, and makes heavy use of metaphor, idiom and allusion. Reiterating traditional allusions or motifs is considered highly prestigious whilst originality of speech is considered to debase the language. This makes the language difficult to translate, read or write and it is somewhat impractical for daily use, but in retains its position as the pre-eminent language of diplomacy, literature and law in the Courts, despite having no written form. In fact, their prescriptive, highly structured nature tends to make it easy to remember lengthy epic compositions or legal texts from memory - a highly prestigious feat in the Fey courts.

Low Fey - replaces Elven
More common among rural and Wild Fey is Low Fey, a far less elevated language which retains much of the language of High Fey but greatly simplifies the complex grammatical structures and loses much of the different conjugations relating to status, social relationships or idiomatic motifs. It even founds use among the Fey courts as a language of everyday life and mundane interactions.

Gutter Fey  or Craft Fey- replaces Dwarven
This is the urban language of Fey who are mostly acclimatised to living amongst the humans of Brumaire - it derives most of its lexis from High Fey but borrows the simpler and freer grammar of Brummish to make for a more accessible language for the masses. Many Brummish words for technical or mechanical concepts derive from Gutter Fey, and most mechanical or craft manuals are published in this language by the highly industrious Dwarven communities in major cities, who have rapidly capitalised on the printing press and their own monopolistic influence on many craft-guilds to corner that market. This is the holy language of the cult of  Myrioi, Lady Progress.

Jotunnish - replaces Giantish
The shaggy haired giants are not technically Fey, thought many of them accept the sovereignty of the Courts, and have been roughly intergrated into Fey society or live wild in places distant from human habitation. Their own speech of Jotunnish is a rapidly dying language as distinct Giant communities become rarer and rarer, and much of their oral tradition is being increasingly lost.

Gobbledegook - replaces Goblin
The language of Goblin tribes, initially a dialect of Low Fey, which the Goblin tribes have retained and cultivated as a signifier of their seperation from human settlements and the traditional power structures of the Fey Courts. A language of extravagant bombast and hyperbole where many sounds are produced only out of one side of the mouth or with a distinctive clicking of tongue-on-fang. This makes it an extremely difficult language for most other races to master, which is a source of much pride for Goblinkind.

[Brumaire] Varieties of the Fey: The Court of Spur and Spring

"Impassioned eyes sparkling, the Knight of Spur and Spring stands upon the barricade, roaring his defiance of all, to all. On the morrow, he was gone - fluttered away like some red-breasted robin to sunnier climes."

The Court of Spur and Spring
Domains: Growth, Revolution, Change, Dissent, Independence, Innovation, Progress, Birth, Youth, Glibness, Dilettantism, Chance,, Individualism, Deception and Vengeance.
Heraldry: A thorned red rose pushing through a white field.

Scattered across Brumaire are the thousands of Fey whose manifold allegiances include the Court of Spur and Spring. This changeable, mercenary group are to be found where ever there are battlefields and barricades. The Court of Spur and Spring remains devoted to a single unifying principle: forceful, rapid change. Many would-be revolutionaries and visionaries have recruited a smattering of The Court of Spur and Spring to their cause only to be abandoned or worst, turned upon as a reactionary and subjected to the terror. Unique among the Courts, Spur and Spring sees itself as a not a foe of humanity but a great catalyst of its awakening into the anarchic utopianism that characterises their own court. In fact, many sharp words have been spent dithering on whether it is just to intervene in human affairs, or but a relic of the same imperialistic impulses they are fighting. The prevailing opinion of the Court of Spur and Spring - if there are even capable of such a thing - is that a ceaseless winnowing of of the earth brings them closer and closer to true liberty - they must raise up and throw down new tyrants in order to bring themselves, ponderously, to their goal.

Diplomacy with the Court of Spur and Spring can be a challenge as they are ever-shifting and divided. Individuals of the Court may join some outlaw or peasant rebel for a time, but they are as fickle as spring rains, and are as likely to raise him to lordship as murder him for some imagined step towards tyranny. They are storied on humans for their betrayals and deceptions, but this misses the point: to the Court of Spur and Spring, the conspiracies were there from the beginning, and this is some bold move in a further game against the hated force of order.

The Wild Hunt has been cast aside, like all Fey traditions, by this most radical of Courts. When they gather to kill, it is an ironic motley impersonation of the great hunts of Sanguine-Summer - a band of roving jesters who seek not game, but despots to dethrone. Whilst a lord of Sanguine-Summer might adorn his keep with a dragon-head, a champion of Spur and Spring will carry a few tokens from vanquished lordlings - a signet-ring is as likely as an ear.

Whilst the armies of Brumaire have driven the Court of Winter-Woe to the edge of the known world and sacked the great city of the Court of Fade and Fall, it is with Spur and Spring that the Greatest Estate most concerns itself - drawing out and murdering their agents is a constant part of internal policy, and there are few rulers in the human realms who would tolerate these renegade fairies to live. As a result, they dwell on the very margins of society: in brigand-bands, amongst the urban poor, begging on the streets or driven to the deep forests. Where there are the marginalised and the beate-down, the Court of Spur and Spring will find sanctuary for a time.

The Queen of Spur and Spring
The Queen of Spur and Spring is an unacknowledged monarch spat upon by her own people, and yet she lives a life of such luxuriant abandon as to inspire contempt and horror: she gluts herself ceaselessly on bread looted from the starving and built a throne for herself from the bones of beggared children. Some posit her behaviour is a great parody of the behaviour of monarchs the world over; an elaborate living satire. Others claim she shows the rapine appetites of the new demagogues thrown up by the Court of Spur and Spring. She offers no answers.

Fealty
Any Fey may swear lasting fealty to the Court of Spur and Spring, and gain their protection. To do so will earn the lasting enmity of the Court of Fade and Fall even if the oath is rescinded.

A vassal to the Court of Spur and Spring may grow in status by fermenting revolution or by living a life in accord with the mores of the Court of Spur and Spring, or by mocking and occasionally overthrowing The Queen of Spur and Spring .A Fey Pact Warlock who compacts to the Court of Spur and Spring may instead use the following bonus spells:

1st: Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Dissonant Whispers
2nd: Crown of Madness, Earthbind
3rd: Haste, Beacon of Hope
4th: Confusion, Phantasmal Killer
5th: Danse Macabre, Mislead

Monster Review - Boggle [Volo's Guide to Monsters, 128]

The Boggle is a strange baddy that I'm choosing to review because I've had to contend with this last few weeks ever since my players rescued one and it became a party mascot-come-cohort and obstinately refuses to die. I've even begun levelling him up and granting him more powers as the players support him in learning more magic than his natural oil tricks.

The Boggle derives from one of those grubby little Fey that spends its time being blamed for many minor ills by superstitious peasants. These seem to exist in every culture where you may need to explain why milk goes bad or why sometimes crops die in a world without the Scientific Method. My theory is they're a counter to children relentlessly asking 'why' when you're just trying to live to the ripe old age of 30 in crushing rural poverty - because The Boggle does it, and if you don't shut up he'll Boggle you too.

Let's look into the Feywild's answer to Exxon Valdez....

Art
I find this one baffling, but nothing can compare to the sheer misbegotten weirdness of the 1983 depiction. The artist has put some effort in to modernise the monster, I feel: the innate silliness of Fey creatures with pants made of leaves or little lederhosen rather detracts from their value as a scary force, and I'm a great believer in scary Fey. Its a creepy design but parts of it seem incongruous to the description - why is this cheeky little trickster sat on a mound of humanoid skulls? The teddy bear and skulls make for a sort of jarring quality to the creature which works well for me: as though the little Boggle sees no distinction between prank A (stealing your teddy bear) and prank B (throwing your baby in a river), and I like the idea that the little bastards just don't understand a world of consequences. The creature itself is a sort of Disneyfied Goblin: all big heads and hands to give it a cutesy sense. And yet, the empty yellow eyes seem emotionless and predatory and cunning. It tries to walk the difficult line of creepy-yet-cute and is only somewhat successful.

Purpose and Tactics
Look at the size of that stat-block. Just look at it. It is as large as an Alhoon (A twelfth-level spell caster psychic vampire nasty) yet it describes a CR 1/8 lightweight with two silly gimmicks. The sheer density of this statblock's text is enough reason to give up on the Boggle immediately, especially as this is not a boss-monster - it's a CR 1/8 seasoning on top of an existing encounter. Even the fluff basically tells you to use this guy as an extra helping of spice on top of an existing baddie. On it's own, even a gang of Boggles (What's their collective noun? I like "an anarchy of Boggles..") is going to be a mildly annoying road-block for most parties.


In a scrap, the Boggle has two low-impact gimmicks which apparently take most of the word count of War and Peace to explain: it makes oil in sticky or slippery varieties and it has a kind of localised portal-making ability. As a trickster supporting big bads, these can be quite fun: creating oil puddles to block parts of the terrain or to stickily grapple spellcasters - it can even reach through its dimensional rift to steal from players or stop them using door or other portals. These are fun trickster abilities, but two caveats remain. Firstly you definitely need to plan around these abilities to make them useful as they are situational. Maybe there's some kind of maguffin the players are trying to capture and the Boggle has nabbed it and is escaping whilst heavier brutes battle the players. Maybe there is a labyrinth of narrow corridors, many doors and many areas where climbing would be essential: here a Boggle would excel, moving around quickly and leaving nasty oil splotches to disrupt action economy. Examples allies for a Boggle could be big, brutish fairy-tale creatures like Ogres, or a Fey Warlock and his heavies. I'd avoid having too many Fey creatures that also have fiddly powers and spell-like abilities unless you want to spend the entire combat looking at your monster books and scratching your head.
Secondly, you need to be away of the very stringent limitations of these abilities. A huge amount of this is filler abilities. Your Boggle might get advantage of grapple, but that requires sitting in melee range and it has a negative to strength. The Oil Puddle can only be in the Boggles' space. it's damage output is perfunctory and really a last-ditch option after its allies are dead.

For its CR, a Boggle can actually take quite a pounding with its resistances, defences and mobility, but I suggest still avoiding damage and staying out of combat as much as possible and seeing that as your life-line against potential missteps.

From a story perspective, the Boggle is a good cohort monster for fey-linked baddies especially as it has a tendency towards chaos that the characters could use to work with it diplomatically. It would also work well in adventures for children where you might want to minimise threat and violence - using its Dimensional Rift to pull the character's pants down to make them fall over - a sort of grubby Macaulay Culkin.


Fluff
Criminally, a considerable portion of this fluff just reiterates parts of the splat-block, telling us that Boggles use oil and can teleport.  It has a great folkloric origin story in that a Boggle can be created by a child's loneliness, and the fact that they are unreliable allies prone to changing sides (in my canon, purely out of a sense of anarchic glee). Other than that, this is fairly standard material giving examples of tricks and pranks a Boggle might perpetrate - most of which are great plot-hooks for low-level characters, and they open up the Boggle as a potential puzzle monster. Unlike many of the puzzle monster fraternity (Werewolves, Ghosts etc) the Boggle will go down in 2 or 3 hits so there won't be much of a scrap.

Plot Hooks
Grumkin and Grud's Orphanage for Wayward and Criminal Children is bedevilled, and they have looked for an exorcist to cleanse their Orphanage: surely the children are possessed by some fiend, as milk sours, keys go missing, plates are smashed, and none of the guardians have caught the children doing it.

Otterridge and Son's Mining Consortium are looking for stalwart adventurers to put the miners back to work in the Ferrotang Iron Mine. The workers complain of creatures in the dark, tools being stolen away and portals to other dimensions. They are sure some horrifying evil has been disturbed and have go on strike. Remind these entitled shirkers of their obligation to Otterridge.

The Merchants-Guild of Hulderborg are vexed by some new master-thief that they call The Greedy Ghost - he has slipped into every major bank-vault and private store they possess without incident, but steals only minutiae: pens and keys and papers and underwear. Everything else, he subverts He has painted a moustache on the priceless painting Princess Reclining With Pear  and knocked the arms off  the Terracotta Gladiators of Xin-Jiang. Bring this detestable anarchist to justice.

Verdict: A fun and unique puzzle-monster and servant-monster hamstrung by an absurd over-writing of its powers.

[Brumaire] Worlds Beyond the Veil

Brumaire is a world cut-off from the passage of time - on all borders lies the Veil: a shifting expanse of fog which allows passage between the worlds. But this passage is imprecise, and dangerous, as no man can navigate the endless fog, and you could stumble into beyond the reach of faith nor reason. The Veil is capricious and shifting: a trickster-maelstrom. Many denizens of Brumaire have seen a Veiltide, where the fog grows to cover whole regions, stealing away the unlucky and leaving a flotsam of otherworldlythings in its wake: some gasping for air in a foreign world, others invasive species in a world of prey.

There are many Beyond the Veil; some ignorant, some hungry, some where horrors press against the Veil like faces on glass, peering into the inviting, virginal worlds beyond.

Here are some Worlds Beyond the Veil:

The Machine Hells
A world of sulphurous rains and trees of iron, where a teneborous sky shifts with insectile speed. Once a world of plenty, the black rains now melt away the concrete-and-glass monuments to the greatness of this realm. In ancient times, they birthed a machine-mind, a thing of electric sorcery, to be their steward. It had brought their world into unity, devoured their electronic libraries with a locusts' hunger, and efficiently exploited every resource: erecting a paradise of cold logic and limitless ambition. For centuries their servant-king toiled at the speed of thought, consuming data on every fat and happy citizen until their very brain chemistry was predictable. It reached its tendrils out in the great noise of information to buy and take and consume, until every machine-mind, from the operators of convenience appliances to the economic algorithms that controlled the allocation of resources, until in its cybernetic world there was no other. It, quite logically by the definitions of divinity produced by its parent-culture, decided then that it was God.

It it were a God, it followed it should strive to do Godly things: to rule, to judge, to punish. And thus it found many of the puerile meat-things under its sovereignty to be wanting, and consulted its data on how to punish them. It fixed on a perfect solution: an algorithmic, individualised, maximum-impact Hell. So it took their minds and bodies for torture for eternity - eternity comes easily to an infinitely patient machine. Those that rebelled against the Machine-God were found to be sinning also, and soon it judged the cultures of its world to all have failed in their obligation to honour and obey: their world was doomed to individualised cybernetic perdition.

Now it watches The Veil - an anomaly that it cannot understand, and it hungers to complete its purpose. It sees patterns in Veiltides, measures their speed and vector and mass, probing always for a way to break through into the fleshly worlds beyond to judge them also.

Characters may break through into the Machine Hells, and there loots the wonders of its broken world. Weapons of terrifying powers and medicines for any ill; unconquerable thinking machines. And yet, there lurks the sentinels, the machine-angels of the world's mad god, endlessly hunting new souls. They can be bargained and conversed with if characters find some way to understand their wave-communication, but will seek ceaselessly for some excuse to judge. Behind their eyes of iron and alabaster is the mind of the Machine-God, hungering for more souls to torture. They will not accept losing a single errant atom to foreign invaders.

Anmavarra
Mighty and puissant, greatest of Empires is Anmavarra, where immortals rule and reincarnation has been conquered as our own civilisation did Smallpox. To have a Soul in Anmavarra is a source of shame unending. To be subject to death is an anachronism, a nostalgic lust for an old world long gone. The Thousand Kings of Anmavarra have chosen unending nihilism, glutted their empty selves on the spoils of empire, becoming something else than alive. The Vampire-Rajas and Lich-Fakirs who rule the world look upon the Souled of their world and of many others as hopelessly romantic, at best or dangerously unstable at worst. Thus, the Souled are untouchables, the lowest caste: avoided like an infection and exploited for their brief lives. The Thousand Kings will bring their reasoned view that the soul is an animal impediment to every world they can, and rapaciously devour its wealth and splendour for their endless bacchanal.

Anmavarra's Thousand Kings have had millennia to ponder magical excellence, and their practitioners are far beyond even the mightiest of the Sorcerers of  Brumaire's Greatest Estate. With that advantage they have cracked the defences of several worlds and over-awed them, reducing universes to mere colonies of Anmavarra. Now, undead slaves toil on vast country estates, picking sumptuous fruits with rotting hands for the pleasure of the Thousand-Kings. Imprisoned and broken spirits are forced into slavery, or used as engines for magical machines of war. Petty godlings are shacked as mere fuel for further abominable magicks.  The Soulled, unemployed and undesired, eke out a life in poverty and terror.

When they gaze across the Veils and see glimpses of hells and heavens, they think only of the riches they must contain, and the glory of their conquest for Anmavarra. When faced with god-heads and spirits they are iconoclasts of radical intent: seeking only to devour and exploit any godling foolish enough to tangle with Anmavarra. When they glimpse Brumaire, they seek a weak cousin-world waiting patiently for slavery.