Wiki Category: Creature

The Tola’at Teacher is a bright bug who produces a brighter scarlet dye in Bavel’s commercial city of Mattanah. It’s also known as a “learned little worm” who pupils its pupae, teaching them how to read and learn speech acts.

A few tola’at also tutor Mattanah’s citizens by biting people’s heads with their tiny teeth. Due to this illegally increasing literacy, it’s no surprise that the Bavel Macrostructure wants to crush these grubs into red paste.

The Tola’at Teacher is based on the לעת shoresh family, which governs instruction, tola’at, worms, scarlet, bicuspids and more.

Kind: Bug
Shoresh: תלע
Gematria: 500
Size: Tiny
Habitat: Urban, Hills, Desert
Threat: Lv. 1
Rarity: Golden (Common)
Liability: 5 (or 2DN high – low) Merit: 1 Law: 1
Base stats: DOM 1R, VIG 1R, GRA 1R, CRE 2R, WIS 3R, PEA 2R, BLE 2R
Plot Armor: 0
Speed: Slow (Crawling)
Equipment: Generic blackboard (Tiny), Generic chalk (Tiny) Generic book (Tiny)
Loot: Scarlet Dye
Skills: Languages +2R
Behavior: Rational, gentle. Often flees when attacked unless cornered.
Combat Actions: Bicuspid Bite (Success Margin +1DN damage)
Speech Acts:

• Scarlet Letters
  • Shoresh: לעת
  • Cost: 1 Merit or 1DN Liability
  • Rolls: User’s CRE vs. target’s PEA. No roll needed if target waives resistance.
  • Effect: Choose target: Target gains +2R when performing next offensive speech act.
  • Duration: Effect ends after the target performs the target speech act, or within one day, whichever happens first.

The Dibbuq Censor is a common evil spirit that the Bavel Macrostructure uses to inspect and censor its subjects’ thoughts.

Bavel creates Dibbuqim in a lab attached to its censorship office, near a shipyard along the Perat River. The exact process is unknown, though the spirit looks like a pastiche of a sea cucumber, a remora and a lumpsucker. Black censor bar stickers surround its figure.

The Dibbuq takes its powers from the דבק and בדק shoresh roots. (Bidduq can mean censorship.) Despite its abominable appearance, the Dibbuq is fairly intelligent, though clingy. They often explore the world in platoons, meticulously auditing the thoughts of people around them. When they see a breach in a dissident’s indoctrination, they race in pursuit and spit glue at him. After the target can’t move, the Dibbuq’s tentacles cleave to the target’s head. Then sharp teeth inject a contagion that infects the brain, controlling it by “repairing” all thoughts into obsessive devotion toward Bavel.

Milhamah RPG stats

Shoresh: דבק
Gematria: 106
Type: Spirit
Rarity: Lv. 5 (Golden) or Lv. 27 (Onyx)
Size: Medium
Liability Points: (2DN * 2) or 20
Merit Points: 1
Law Points: -3
Stats: DOM 2D, VIG 2D, GRA 2D, CRE 1D, WIS 2D, PEA 2D, BLE 1D
Skills: Surveillance +3D, Wilderness +1D
Domain Tags: Fastening, Searching, Studying, Learning, Investigating a Crime, Trapping, Rebuke
Standard Equipment: Check-up Glue
Habitat: Mivdaqah Shipyard Censorship Lab, Coasts, Bavel strongholds
Personality: Obsessed with details and may take a long time investigating during patrols. Often travels in groups. (For number, may roll 3DN, subtract second-highest number from highest)

Basic Attacks:

• Cutting teeth (בדק): Qal stance, Razor-sharp teeth attach to a target and rotate like a blender.
  • To Hit: DOM or VIG while touching.
  • Damage: Success Margin +0D slashing damage.
    

Speech Acts:

• Bonding Glue Gun (דבק): Qal stance, Spews sticky glue that can stop a target in its tracks. Its odor also has a side effect of making creatures easily suggestible to brainwashing. However, the goo also can heal tissue or repair certain items.
  • The Norm: On average, this speech act has a cost of 1 MP, takes one item with relevant semantic domains to prepare, is instantaneous to do and covers a radius of around 3 feet. It is normally easy (1S minimum required) to control well.
  • Noncombat To Hit: A character may apply the bonding glue on a living target, using (CRE or WIS)+Medicine; or a nonliving target, using (CRE or WIS)+Crafting.
    • On success: heal 1 Wound (Living), or repair 1 Armor (Nonliving)
    • On natural success: heal 1 Wound and 1DN LP (Living), or repair 1 Armor and 1DN LP (Nonliving).
    • On failure: The glue fails to bond to the wound or damage. On botch, the glue makes the target immobilized, or the glue backfires and immobilizes or brainwashes the user for around 6 hours.
  • Combat To Hit: A character may fire the glue at a target forcefully. Roll CRE-1D.
  • Combat Damage: Success Margin +1D bashing damage. On a natural success, target must roll a GRA save or be immobilized or brainwashed (attacker’s choice) for around 6 hours. Failure to hit means missing, and botching can mean the attacker hitting himself, hitting the wrong target or hitting something with bad consequences.
• Sensory Censorship (בדק) Qal or Pi’el stance: Projects a cloudlike zone with a censorship mosaic illusion that obscures surroundings, muffles sounds into silence and tests the targets’ sanity, resulting sometimes in causing silence or confusion. 
  • Noncombat: Creates a field with a 6-foot radius in which all creatures and objects are silenced. Takes one minute to enact at normal cost (1 MP). While in the field, characters who rely on vision to perform actions do so at -2D. When a creature enters the field, they must overcome a PEA+1D save or else be confused or silenced (attacker’s choice).
  • Combat To Hit: Roll CRE.
  • Combat Damage: Success margin -2DN psyche damage. On a natural success, target is confused or silenced (attacker’s choice, no save allowed)
  • Failure: The mosaic barely pixelates or obscures the senses, or the target isn’t fooled. On botch, the user may censor himself.