Helloween: Straight Out of Hell

In the final days of the Great Disaster, the weapons deployed by the Ancients were horrific beyond the understanding of those who survived their usage. So terrible were these weapons that in places reality itself was torn asunder. Passages to other universes, with strange physics and metaphysics, were opened. From some of these portals, even stranger things emerged. The jacks-o-war were among these beings, summoned forth straight out of a hell plane. Although the portal to that hellscape has long since sealed itself, the jacks-o-war remain. Worse, they are able to reproduce within the ruined world left by the Great Disaster.

Jacks-o-War

The jacks-o-war are green uniformed beings, humanoid in form, but almost skeletal. Their hard skin is like black metal, except for their rotting jack-o-lantern heads. They are armed with weapons of war – metal batons, grenades, and sometimes even firearms. They are capable of emitting a sickening orange radiance within a 20’ cone before their heads, with a 20’ base. All natural living creatures within the radius take 1d3 damage each round (DC 15 Fort save each round negates). Although they are not immune to critical hits, they are immune to the secondary effects of most of them. That is, they take increased damage, but even caving in their rotting pumpkin heads does not kill them, or seemingly inconvenience them in any way. Their metallic skin grants them a DC 10 Fort save to completely negate any severing of limbs, broken bones, or the like.

Jacks-o-war cannot heal or repair damage, but like the un-dead they are inexorable, requiring neither food nor rest. Shamans, sages, techno-wizards, and AIs knowledgeable about such things believe that the jacks-o-war consume the souls of those they kill. They will pause for 1d5 rounds over any fresh corpse; perhaps this is when and how they feed. In any event, a body that is successfully recovered once a jack-o-war has paused over it has a permanent reduction of 1d5 points of Personality, in addition to the normal effects of recovering a body.

Jacks-o-war reproduce by locating a pumpkin field, or a field of similar gourd-like plants. There they shine their sickly radiance upon the plants, and over the course of 1d6 hours 1d5 pumpkins transform into new jack-o-wars, per jack-o-war shining over their field. The rest of the plants wither and die.

The judge can adjust the difficulty of an encounter by the weaponry available to the jacks-o-war, as well as by their numbers.

Jack-o-war (DCC): Init +0; Atk metal baton +3 melee (1d6+1) or metallic claw +3 melee (1d4+1) or grenade +0 ranged (2d6/special) or assault rifle +0 ranged (1d10/special) or orange radiance (special); AC 18; HD 3d8; MV 30’; Act 1d20; SP infravision 60’, orange radiance, crit resistance, cannot heal, feed off souls, poison immunity, reproduction; SV Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +7; AL C.

            Grenade: 2d6 damage, -1d6 per 5’ away from point of impact.

            Assault Rifle: An assault rifle can target 3 creatures, or do 3d10 vs. one creature (Reflex DC 10 for half). Criticals do 6d10 damage. -1 to initiative, ranges 1 00/200/300, ammo capacity of 30 (a burst uses 10 shots), and a weight of 12 lbs. Without ammo, they are very expensive clubs (1d5 damage).

Rules for assault rifles and grenades (handheld bomb) taken from Crawl! #8.

Jack-o-war (MCC): Init +0; Atk metal baton +3 melee (1d6+1) or metallic claw +3 melee (1d4+1) or photon grenade +0 ranged (6d6) or lazer rifle +0 ranged (heat 6d6) or orange radiance (special); AC 18; HD 3d8; MV 30’; Act 1d20; SP infravision 60’, orange radiance, crit resistance, cannot heal, feed off souls, poison immunity, reproduction; SV Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +7.

            Photon Grenade: TL 4; CM 4; Range 30’ radius; Dam 6d6. Photon grenades are high-yield incendiary devices useful for both blowing things up, setting them on fire, or bringing down force screens via massive heat-based damage.

            Lazer Rifle: TL 4; CM 4; Range Line of sight; dam Heat 6d6; Power C-Cell (5), F-Cell (10), Q-Cell (U). Lazer rifles fire focused beams of coherent yellow-white light, causing heat-based damage. Lazer rifles consume double the power cell charges of lazer pistols, and hold up to two power cells.

Rules for lazer rifles and photon grenades taken from Mutant Crawl Classics.

Jack-o-war (Umerica): Init +0; Atk metal baton +3 melee (1d6+1) or metallic claw +3 melee (1d4+1) or percussion grenade +0 ranged (2d6/special) or assault rifle +0 ranged (1d10/special) or orange radiance (special); AC 12; Armor Die d7 (inherent); Fumble Die d4; HD 3d8; MV 30’; Act 1d20; SP infravision 60’, orange radiance, crit resistance, cannot heal, feed off souls, poison immunity, reproduction; SV Fort +5, Ref +2, Will +7; AL C.

            Grenade: 2d7 damage, blast radius 15’, Ref DC 20 for half damage, 10% chance of failure to explode.

            Assault Rifle: An assault rifle can target 3 creatures, or do 3d10 vs. one creature (Reflex DC 10 for half). Criticals do 6d10 damage. -1 to initiative, ranges 1 00/200/300, ammo capacity of 30 (a burst uses 10 shots), and a weight of 12 lbs. Without ammo, they are very expensive clubs (1d5 damage).

Rules for assault rifles and grenades taken from The Umerican Survival Guide.

Zekulon Orange

You will notice a number of gas masks on the album cover. Zekulon Orange is a thick poisonous gas which obscures vision as well as poisons targets. For every 10’ away a target is in a cloud of Zekulon Orange, attacks against it have a -1d shift on the dice chain. These clouds are mobile, drifting along at a rate of 10’ per minute, with a typical radius of 30’, reaching to a height of 20’.

Creatures caught within Zekulon Orange take 1d4 damage per round, and must succeed on a DC 15 Fort save or take an additional 1d3 points of temporary Strength damage. Worse, Zekulon Orange clings to skin and synthetic materials (including rubber and similar substances), staining in green and causing the effects of the poison to continue even outside the cloud for 1d5 minus Luck modifier rounds.

Battle Standard of the Jacks-o-War

This has no special powers, but if you want to ensure that you are the target of all the monsters’ aggression, playing “capture the flag” is a good way to go about it. If the battle standard is destroyed by any means, all jacks-o-war within sight must make an immediate Morale check. If they succeed, however, they need make no further Morale checks no matter what happens. They will try to kill you until either you die, or they do.

Give it a listen here.

(And, yes, I am doing these because of the time of year.)