OSR: [Creature] gains +1 HD every time it...

I like the idea of conditional creatures. Here are 10 creatures that gain HD (Hit Dice, corresponding to HP, attack, saves, etc.), prompted by G+ people.

...Eats a Condor.

-Onno Tasler

The Bird-Eating Stump-Toad

HD: 3
Appearance: a fat grey-brown toad the size of a cow with strangely human limbs and small, cruel eyes.
Wants: to eat condors, to remain unharmed.
Armor: as leather
Move: normal, can hop 10'
Morale: 6
Damage: 1d6 bite, swallowed on a 6.

It wants to eat condors. It wants to eat condors so badly. It licks its hideous warty lips whenever it sees them circling overhead. Their nests are in cliffs it cannot climb. The toad will pay anyone for fresh condors, dead or alive. It eats them messily. It can provide secret information (the toad can hear very, very well) and dig tunnels. It will not serve; it will demand to be served and deign to offer a reward. If The Bird-Eating Stump-Toad reaches 6 HD, it splits in two. The new toads will target the species it sees first (condors, humans, etc.)

...Hears Profanity

-Brian Ashford

The Decorous Sisterhood
HD 1
Appearance: a stern nun in a black and white habit. Wields a wooden switch.
Wants: to serve the Authority, maintain moral order, and strike the wicked.
Armour: as plate+shield. Also, are you really going to hit a nun?
Move: normal, but can glide (as a charge attack over terrain).
Morale: 12
Damage: 1 HP on a hit, but target must Save with a -4 penalty or be Stunned for 1 round. It also really stings. Targets cannot be reduced below 0 HP, but at 0 HP, are automatically stunned and can do nothing but yell.

A single Decorous Sister is usually found maintaining a shrine or an orphanage. She will appear completely harmless and may enlist the PCs to help with a simple quest. Should any of them swear, she will strike them with her wooden switch (automatically hits) and repremand them. Should they continue (likely, given that a nun just hit them with a wooden switch), she will hit them again and summon a second Sister (a 1 HD creature). This process could continue indefinitely until the PCs have been swatted into submission.

...Gets Hit.

-Brian Ashford

Corpulent Callowfex
HD 2
Appearance: a morbidly obese velociraptor with hairy moles. A diseased lizard with tufts of grey hair.
Wants: to bite things
Move: 1/2 normal
Morale: 8
Damage: 1d6 bite, 1d6 claw.

A backwards castoff from an orthogonal timeline. Don't worry about it too much. Nobody understands time travel anyway. It needs to die to live. Every attack that hits it give the Corpulent Callowfex +1 HD instead of dealing damage. At 4 HD, it begins to look much more sleek and cunning. At 6 HD, it gains 2 additional claw attacks and can move at normal speed. At 8 HD, it will begin to speak, cast spells, and act like the renewed and triumphant apex predator it truly is/was/will one day be. You should probably run. Or tie it up - anything that isn't an attack doesn't trigger the HD gain.

...Has its Life Spared After Being Defeated by the Party.

-Iacopo Maffi

Craven Stalker
HD 1
Appearance: a thin, bony humanoid with huge bulbous eyes and long bent fingers. If it weren't for its needle teeth it would be almost pitable.
Wants: to feast on the hearts of the PCs.
Move: normal, but can move through shadows (as an instant teleport). It will not reveal this ability.
Morale: 12 (appears lower)
Damage: 1d6 bite.

It's not a creature. It's a curse. Someone called this thing into being and sent it after the party. It takes  lot of blood and a lot of time to call a Craven Stalker into being. It will hunt the PCs and attack in a ridiculously inopportune way. One or two attacks will cause it to beg to surrender. It will promise treasure, riches, fame.

It will lead the PCs to these things and to incidental danger, danger the PCs are certain the Craven Stalker could not have forseen. It was an accident. A tragic mistake. Their own incompetence or greed. It will do this two more times, gaining +1 HD each time. Poor creature; it doesn't know any better, the PCs think.

When it reaches 3 HD, the Craven Stalker begins laying Suspicions. Each Suspicion is a tiny red egg dropped into the ear of a sleeping PC. It grows slowly, driving the PCs apart or causing them to murder each other. The Craven Stalker will feast on the remains - particularly the hearts. It will secretly, stealthily, hound the remaining PCs, introducing more and more Suspicions until the PC lives an isolated life of pure paranoia, dies of a heart attack, or takes their own life.

...Collects a Molar.

-Chris Wilson

Tooth Fairy
HD 1
Appearance: tiny humanoid with a large head and gossamer wings.
Wants: teeth.
Move: 2x normal, flying.
Morale: 4
Damage: 1 (prod) or remove 1 tooth.

Tooth Fairies are harmless, mostly. They lay their eggs in teeth, producing a 1 HD new Tooth Fairy in 1 week. They can be bottled, trained, or tricked. They aren't very bright. Boneyards are infested with the things.

...Spends a Day in the Sunshine

-Gregory Blair

The Hidden Filth
HD: 5
Appearance: a squamous black mass of tar, eyes, and tentacles.
Wants: everything
Move: 1/4 normal
Morale: 12
Damage: 1d4 bludgeoning per round per HD

The PCs shouldn't have unlocked that ancient tomb. They shouldn't have broken those primordial seals. But they did, because they were shiny, and they went back to town to sell the metal and get drunk. And while they were gone the Hidden Filth slithered out.

It was trapped underground long ago. It drinks sunlight like a fire drinks gasoline. Plants? Amateurs. The Hidden Filth grows and spreads. It will slither into some secluded but sunny place and begin to grow. Every day, it gets a little bigger. Each day, it gets a little harder to kill.

...Has One of Its Parasites Cut Off.

-Steven De Waele

Parasite Dragon

HD 3
Appearance: a rail-thin dragon, dry, flaking, with pulsing black veins and mad rolling eyes. Each limb is coated in a single coiled parasite, a fat lamprey-like slug-fish-worm with tiny grasping spider legs. Two worms coil around its torso like a lover's arms. Another slides along the tail. A final worm wraps around the dragon's scrawny neck and burrows into its chin, hanging down like a goiter.
Wants: blood, magic, magical blood
Move: normal.
Morale: 8
Damage: Each parasite (there are 8 total) spits 1d6 acid damage in a 20' cone if threatened. Can also bludgeon for 1d8 damage. Other attacks: as a dragon. Breath is only phlem until the dragon reaches 6 HD.

Killing the dragon without killing the parasites is difficult. They want to keep their host alive. The parasites are as wise as any human but are completely remorseless and eternally hungry. Cutting them free will make getting to the dragon's flesh easier, but each dead parasite restores 1 HD to the dragon, and the dragon is completely and murderously insane.

...Is Mistaken For the Mayor.

-Peter Webb

HD 1
Appearance: the Mayor, of course!  Yes, I remember now... but didn't the Mayor have blue eyes and not... egg-yolk yellow?
Wants: adulation, proof that humans are idiots
Move: normal (strides)
Morale: 6
Damage: 1d4 bludgeoning. Die size, number of attacks increase as HD increases.

Hello Citizen! Why yes, I am most definitely the Mayor! Observe my many shapely limbs. Truly, I am a good mayor, who passes may bills, and not a creation of a secret underground race at all. No, definitely. I deny this. I have no recollection of being constructed. None. My birth was a normal human birth in this VERY TOWN yes. Present your infants to me. Yes. I am the Mayor.

The Dopplepollster is unconvincing. It feeds on contempt. Its creators are certain that humans are idiots. Every time someone mistakes the Dopplepollster for Mayor, it gains 1 HD. When it reaches 10 HD it will go on a murder spree (stats as something horrifically murderous) while screaming "YOU FOOLS, I AM NOT THE MAYOR." It will then repeat the process in the next en-mayored town or city, starting over at 1 HD, unless killed. It usually starts at festivals, balls, or events where killing it immediately would cause a scandal.

...Is Lied To.

-Alex Chalk

HD 5
Appearance: a green-silver sphinx, meticulously clean, with a beak like a parrot and eyes like sunken nuclear reactors. It purrs in 3/4 time.
Wants: only the truth.
Move: 2x normal
Morale: 9
Damage: 1d8 bite/1d6 claw/1d6 claw, or eye-wither (50' range, 2d6 damage, Save or gain a stutter for 1d10 days).

The veritasphinx lives in libraries, archives, and research facilities, sometimes against the will of the owners. It is difficult to remove. It will pick a vital passageway and guard it. Anyone passing by must state their intentions truthfully. If they lie in any way, the Veritasphinx shouts "LIE" and then licks her paws. She wants the whole truth; omission will provoke follow-up questions. She can sense embarrassment through 10" of lead.

For every lie, a 1 HD parrot-kitten pops into existence just out of sight. When the liar leaves, if they are unrepentant or troublesome, the swarm of kitten-parrots will descend and devour them. Half the kitten-parrots only tell lies; half only tell the truth. They can be tamed with math.

...Eats a Wizard.

-Luka Rejec

Wizard HydraHD 3+1d6
Appearance: a horrible shapeless mass of dry skin with oddly jointed necks and fat paddle feet. It has HD heads. Each head carries the distorted face of a wizard it has devoured with its enormous lower mouth located on its torso. The heads moan and wail; the blind torso-mouth only dribbles.
Wants: to eat wizards
Move: normal
Morale: 12
Damage: 1d6 bite (swallowed on a 6, if swallowed, Save or die.)

What horrible accident spawned the wizard hydra? Who will save us from this menace? Each head casts the spells it could cast in life: rays, beams, healing. It lurches and gurgles, blasting everything it sees and devouring any wizards it can find. Every wizard devoured becomes a new head; every head brings fresh terror. Roll randomly for the spells or use the Beholder spell list.


OSR: How Much Is A Spell Worth?

Everyone seems to have different answers. Here are the 3 main ones:

1. Spells are Expensive
A copy of magic missile is worth as much as a farm.

2. Spells are Cheap
A copy of magic missile is worth as much as a chicken.

3. Spells are Not for Sale
Spells are eldritch bargains or self-taught or untranslatable. They cannot be sold or transferred.

We're going to set aside option 3 and look at the first two scenarios.

-Spells are transferable (from brain to book, from book to book, etc.)
-Spells cannot be copied trivially but can be copied (so you could turn one spell into two given time/expense/risk)
-Spells are not unique (so there are multiple copies of light out there.)
-Spellcasting from memory (not from a scroll or wand) requires expensive and/or time-consuming and/or dangerous training. This means spellcasters are relatively rare.

Sell a Spell
Anything that can be sold will be sold. Plan for your PCs to pawn the gear and items of their dead comrades or sell spare scrolls they loot from dungeons.

You can make spells a separate category of item, where trade in them results in favours and kickbacks rather than gold, but they become less valuable as loot and less easy to incorporate into the core loop of OSR games.
The Souls of Acheron, Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl

Data Point 1: Medieval Utility

How do the "classic" wizards described above fit into a semi-medieval setting?

Take magic missile, the iconic direct damage spell. Assume that most battle-wizards could be trained to cast it once per day. Assume also that both sides in a conflict have access to battle-wizards.

A typical army would have a few blocks of archers or crossbowmen with a specialized and well-protected group of wizards at the back. The wizards would have minders, hangers-on, and bodyguards. Starting to sound like a typical group already. I'd imagine most battle-wizards would be very low level. Anyone sufficiently powerful would be targeted first (and therefore dead) or hanging out with the commanders and other nobles or working very hard to not be near a battle.

A crossbow bolt that can't miss introduces a strange dynamic to medieval warfare. Ordinarily, as a knight, you want everyone to know who you are. Chivalry demands it. You wear a fancy hat and distinct colours and make yourself visible to both friend and foe. Does heraldry become a liability with perfectly accurate spells? 

"You can't shoot spells at a Duke, even if he is the enemy," rapidly becomes "Oh no, we're losing, shoot the Duke!" so an army would want to keep a few powerful wizards in reserve to deal with the other army's powerful wizards. "Powerful" in this case could mean "can cast fireball once per day" or something, not "destroy an entire army by sneezing or summon a legion of elementals."

And I'd imagine the Second Estate, seeing that warfare is their profession and sole reason for existence, would not look kindly on battle-wizards. They would tend to be misused, undervalued, or simply left behind before a battle. A monopoly on force is great, but it needs to be protected.

Conclusion: a single low-level wizard is valuable in battle but not disproportionately more valuable than a bunch of trained archers.

Data Point 2: The Dead Wizard Economy

Level 1 wizards in pretty much every OSR system typically start with a spellbook and a few spells. Like many level 1 characters they die a lot.

If spellbooks and spells are extremely valuable, the dead wizard economy throws all the other economies out of balance. The total cost of 1 spellbook plus starting spells cannot be disproportionately larger than the starting gear of another level 1 PC.

Here's how the other classes I'm using compare. Starting equipment in your games will vary.
Barbarian 7.5gp
Fighter 7gp
Knight 22.5gp
Monk 6.5gp
Summoner 0.5gp
Thief 3gp

Conclusion: Eyeballing it, a wizard's gear can't be more expensive than 100gp and should probably be closer to 10gp.

Data Point 3: Real Life

I'm not sure why, but a wizard's spells feel like an expensive bit of military or specialist hardware. The trained operator is more expensive, but the spell feels like a $1,000 minimum item, like an infra-red camera or a drone or a radio system. More expensive than a VCR, less expensive than a fighter jet.
Archeage, Sungryun Park

Spell Price List

Using this currency system and comparing to this price list:

A standard spellbook, with nice vellum pages and a waterproof bag, costs 30gp.

Spells from 1-6 on a wizard's spell list (low level or level 1-3 spells in another system) can be sold for ~10gp to another wizard.

Spells from 7-10 on a wizard's spell list (mid level or level 4-5 spells in another system) can be sold for ~30gp to another wizard.

Emblem spells (high level spells in another system) can easily fetch 300gp, and may require a special auction or a negotiated agreement before the sale is finalized.

Spell values should be adjusted based on the local market and the utility of the spell. "Sort and Fold Socks" isn't likely to fetch a high price. Customized spells, ancient spells, and spells that suit a particular buyer's needs will all fetch higher prices.

Chartered Wizards PCs can "sell" spells to their college to pay off their Wizard Student Loans. The rates are very good; 2x the rates listed. The wizard doesn't see any of the cash though.

Outsider Wizards PCs are expected to donate unneeded spells to members of their own school (outsiders need to stick together) but can otherwise sell spells normally, including to Chartered Wizards and colleges.

Outlaw Wizards PCs can sell spells to anyone, but owning or casting a spell from an Outlawed school is punishable by horrible death.

Buying Spells

A bargain-bin wand might cost as little as 5gp, but the quality of the spell inside and the power of the wand will be very dubious and will not be known to either the buyer or the seller.

A college might sell a Chartered Wizard a specific spell if they are in good standing with the college and have been making regular payments on their Wizard Student Loans. Wizards in general are very jealous of power; selling spells is not in their nature. Outsider or Outlaw wizards are happy to cast spells for a fee, but selling the spell itself is dangerous and risky.


1d500 Backstories to Inflict on your Characters

This post brought to you by a whiskey so cheap it doesn't even have a website, and root beer.

Normally, you might start a D&D group in a tavern or a prison or a convent. You might connect characters by a lifepath system or a few shared events. Instead, consider rolling on the table below several times for each character before race, class, stats, etc. are determined. The results are life events, things that just happened, or reasons to go adventuring. The effect on your players will probably be a dismayed "WAT", but so it goes.

Side Note: Consider rolling once or twice on this table, then on Bastionland's Failed Careers table.

Alternatively, these events could be inflicted by a Splitter.

Alternatively, use these for NPCs the PCs have encountered. It might explain why they are so weird.

Side Note: entries on this table were taken from The Toast's "How To Tell If You Are In A Novel" series. Normally I try very hard to ensure everything on a table is consistent within a given genre. I didn't bother here. Adapt as needed.

You could use this table as a really dull party game by having people guess which author contributed each entry. I wouldn't bother.

Face Sketches, Thomas Wievegg

1d500 Backstories and Events Stolen from The Toast

1d500Backstory Inflicted
1 You spy on people through keyholes and get exactly what you deserve.
2 You have been rejected on your wedding night.
3 You get made fun of sometimes. It’s hurtful, and you’d do almost anything to teach your tormentors a lesson. Almost.
4 You have committed several murders, yet somehow you are also the sanest and most sympathetic person you know.
5 You have earned the personal ire of a Witch-king. This ends poorly for you, and everyone in your country.
6 Your love has been soiled, and the object symbolizing it tainted, quite tainted!
7 Everyone is relieved to learn that your boyfriend is not secretly your brother. He’s not even your cousin. Whew.
8 You are a woman who has been described as any of the following: spirited, willful, indifferent, aloof, or outdoorsy.
9 You are an unusually supportive roommate with a knack for springing surprise kisses at the worst possible moment.
10 You flippantly rejected the romantic proposal of a nice man who had done a lot for you.
11 You are beginning to suspect—oh, but it is impossible to believe!—that your twin is not dead at all!
12 Your name alliterates with your father’s, your brothers’, and all your immediate male relatives’.
13 You find that you are never too busy to tell complete strangers about your all-consuming plans for revenge.
14 You have left many men crying.
15 Your best friend is decades older than you and mildly forlorn. 
16 Right now you’re busy getting dressed for a party to which you were pointedly not invited.
17 You are the last survivor of your people.
18 Your pure and radiant beauty is the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
19 Everyone in the neighborhood, including your mother, has ranked you and your sisters in order of hotness.
20 Your only friend is a prostitute with a terrible wracking cough, and you have never had anything to eat even once.
21 A woman who is not your mother treats you like her own daughter. Your actual mother is dead or ridiculous.
22 Occasionally you and your romantic interest go dance in a field with some villagers.
23 Your closest companion is a pet lamb named Miranda that you bring with you to church and to bed.
25 You can tell magical creatures apart by their distinctive speech patterns.
26 You can assign fearsome properties to even the most mundane objects. 
27 You are frequently and hilariously confused by homophones.
28 The most prominent pieces of furniture in your home are a fainting couch and a large vase of half dead ferns.
29 An adventure has gone poorly and you and your siblings are once again stuck underground.
30 The leading cause of death in your country is dragons. The second leading cause of death is ennui.
31 You hate everyone, except for one woman you are incredibly attracted to. She hates you.
32 You and your siblings have again endangered the family baby.
33 You befriend a band of charming and loyal pirates.
34 Every time you see an unfamiliar place—particularly a dark, dank one—you feel the need to explore it.
35 You’re just drunk enough to tell the truth, and she’s just drunk enough to like it.
37 It does not surprise you when animals can talk. It surprises you when they have something sensible to say.
38 The sight of gigantic bugs stealing children barely turns your head these days. 
39 You once tried to have sex with a panther.
40 You are a wizard and practice magic. Even tourists who do not speak your language know how this will end: badly for you.
41 Your ancestors are all somewhat more alive than usual.
42 You once did a kind thing. Someone knows, but will never reveal it.
43 You love the girl too much to marry her. Ironical, no?
44 You and your husband are having separate affairs and it’s very pragmatic. 
45 There are three men in your life: one true love, one tempting but rakish acquaintance, and a third distant possibility.
47 At least half of the people you know are mad. If you are not yet mad yourself, you are probably well on your way.
48 You are wan. So very wan.
49 Your past always comes back to haunt you. Also, maybe, a ghost.
50 There’s a man in the bed next to you, but at least he’s dead, so you don’t have to worry about making small talk.
51 There are but two forms of criminal justice in your town: capital punishment, or a public scolding from the Duke.
52 A foreign king takes you into his service, but does not take you seriously. 
53 You are a younger brother who stands to inherit nothing.
55 You and your twenty or so best friends all want to marry the same man. This causes you no problems whatsoever.
56 A girl you have only just met tells you a secret, and you despise her for it.
57 You are a man. Complicated historical forces have forced you into a marginalized life, possibly one of inadvertent crime.
58 You have developed a tortured, nihilistic philosophy all your own over the course of your years at sea. It is terrible.
59 A man proposes to you, then to another, lesser woman when you politely spurn him. This delights you to no end.
60 Three and a half hours seems like a totally reasonable time to tell a story.
61 All you can think about is how goddamn insufferable your presence must be for other people.
63 You greatly enjoyed spending time in the city with your aunt, who was of dubious morality.
64 You feel the need to prove something.
65 Your parents are alive, and are preventing you from getting married. You are heartbroken.
66 The man you might be divorced from comes back, and you go to bed with him. It’s hot until it’s not, so you kick him out.
67 You are a woman, and no good to anybody.
68 Your mysterious boyfriend proves to you that you can trust him by taking on your appearance.
69 Life is but a series of increasingly dramatic decisions made in the rain.
70 Your hair is parted in the middle and braided in a childish style that belies your wickedness.
71 All of your happiest childhood memories include your mother convulsively crying.
72 You are beginning to suspect that your twin is posing as you about town and exchanging love-tokens with your betrothed.
73 You went to a place once. Decades later, you return under very different circumstances.
74 You have no real friends, only rivals masquerading as friends who want to steal your lover.
75 You have always hated her laugh, high and reedy and boisterous and throbbing with panic. 
76 Your parents were really hoping for a son instead of a daughter, which is why they named you Brucey.
77 You are in love with a beautiful woman with white hands. She cries all the time.
78 You are a man. If you’re a woman, you are the love interest of the man, and you are dead.
79 You are somehow renowned for your prowess in battle. 
80 You may live in a ridiculous world full of lies, but you hold fast to the important lies of fairness, mercy, and human dignity. 
81 You are geographically separated from your spouse, so you may as well sit in a hole until you can be together again.
82 Ever since you returned from the North, you take enormous pride in being both unmarried and ugly.
83 You never tell anyone anything.
84 You have tried to kill yourself, and you have been stymied in the attempt. 
85 You’re wearing an expensive coat that your wife paid for. You hate her for it.
86 You are so over your new husband. 
87 You are the disappointing son of a cold-hearted woman with thick arms.
88 Your father and mother have died at least once in the last year.
89 All the animals you know are underfed, black, and vaguely eldritch. They all hate you.
90 You have in your possession an envelope of negatives that, if made public, could ruin the rising career of a young starlet.
91 You have never danced, not even once, not even in your dreams.
92 You lost a hand while escaping from the realm of the Enemy.
93 You have been gut-punched within the last 24 hours. You still feel it in your teeth.
94 There was a traumatic event in your childhood involving beach caves.
95 You successfully defend yourself against accusations of having slept with your lord’s wife.
96 You receive word that an old friend is coming to visit. You suspect it’s out of spite, and sneeze voluptuously. 
97 For the first time in your life, you’re not rich and it feels utterly exotic. 
98 There are 14 women in your life you call “auntie” and you’re not sure if any of them is actually your Aunt.
99 You speak slightly more kindly to people below your station than is strictly necessary. 
100 You’ve just been hit in the face. You wake up alone, in the dark. It was a lousy party anyhow; you were ready to leave. 
102 No one understands your suffering. It is unclear whether you are in need of a lord or the Lord.
103 You have an incredible amount of homoerotic tension with a beautiful  knight.
104 You join the priesthood to get over your ex, and end up having sex with her in a church.
105 You buy the rumour that your best friend is able to prevent pregnancy through sheer force of will.
106 You have interrupted a game of wist to introduce the players to your ward.
107 You spy on a charming and beautiful lady in her bedchamber. She coughs. You take this as a sign of her devotion to you.
108 You love to talk of nothing. It is the only thing you know anything about.
109 You have kept a secret from your daughter that explains her entire life. She dies.
110 You recently remodeled something.
111 You speak in dialect when you want to connect with your childhood friends, but every word sounds false. 
112 To you the air here always smells sweet, like honeysuckle and impurity.
113 You were exceedingly clever once, but unfortunately none of your friends noticed.
114 You have murdered a magical dog for the crime of making you happy.
115 After careful consideration, you have decided not to become a Dark Lord.
116 Despite having less sexual experience than a house fern, you fall into throes of ecstasy at your first encounter.
117 You are young, though you find yourself growing up very quickly.
118 You are forced to leave your home and journey in search of something, you know not what. 
119 The Devil seems like a perfectly reasonable person to ask for advice.
120 You are about to break your marriage vows for someone you know to be unworthy of you.
121 You never walk. You trudge, lumber, plod, or slog, but you never walk.
122 Every time you see your neighbors, the encounters decrease in friendliness and increase in dark foreboding.
123 Your only quirk is your pierced ears, which you allowed yourself to get after you got engaged.
124 You know your best friend has stopped caring for you, indeed if she ever did.
125 A strange man comes to you and asks you to find a sheep, or a woman calls and asks for ten minutes of your time.
126 The most genuinely charming male of your acquaintance is actually a woman.
127 Your mother is younger than you, or at least appears to be so?
128 Your life is a daily reminder that success and survival belong to the deeply unpleasant.
129 You have been pronounced a social success by the greatest bitch in Paris.
130 Your martyrdom doesn’t go as planned. 
131 You’re a woman of about thirty years of age who is still beautiful.
133 Somebody you have never met has been nursing a grudge against you for years.
134 Your younger neighbor is drunk and advising you to marry for money. 
135 A woman in an absurd hat is being an absolute bitch to you; there is nothing you can do about it.
136 You have lost track of your twin again.
137 Conveniently, your ex-lover looks enough like his sister that you can transfer your flirtations to her.
138 Your only relief is that your father and mother never lived long enough to see you fall so short of your early promise.
139 You have a terrible secret. The man you love has an even more terrible secret. 
140 A mountain is out to get you.
141 Your fondest family memories involve the moors, and the faintest sense of dread.
142 You wed your husband alongside four other women and their beloveds in a modest quintuple wedding.
143 Your friends are fighting for liberty and likely to die. 
145 You see little blue men. You haven’t been drinking. They are happy to change that for you.
146 You are having an affair with a married man. His sister knows, and hates you.
147 Your friend picks up the handkerchief that your lady has dropped. You demand retribution for this act of betrayal.
148 Everything in your life hinges on a legal trick.
149 Your fate was determined by a nursemaid with an unaccountably grand flair for the dramatic.
150 Someone you have just met is dying for absolutely no reason.
152 Everyone looks at you in judgment and scorn.
153 You allow your daughter to become educated, and this causes great trouble for everybody.
154 You have been careless with something priceless—your heart.
155 You are an older woman with not just a past, but several.
156 You once fulfilled an ancient prophecy and overturned gender expectations at the same time.
157 If anyone hates you, it’s only because you’re so beautiful. And you can’t help it if you’re beautiful.
158 You have a friend who is your complete opposite. If you are quiet and insightful, they are bold and brash.
160 A grizzled old priest tunnels into your jail cell and spends eight years teaching you the finer points of political philosophy.
161 You have just swept someone a magnificent, yet insolent, leg.
162 If you are an adult, you’re most likely a phony, and your intelligence cannot compare to that of your younger peers.
163 No matter how bad things get, you can always rely on the fact that no one you know will ever offer to help you.
164 There’s a woman you’d like to sleep with, so you decide to tell her an off-putting story about murder, castration, or bestiality.
165 Your best friend is a notorious flirt and not as pretty as you. 
166 Your father's character flaws lead to you becoming betrothed to a man you’ve never met.
167 Your nephew is emasculatingly thin, and probably a murderer.
168 It isn’t possible to love and to part, though you wish that it was.
169 There is a secret in your family, that if you were to find it out, the shock would kill you.
170 You discover that you have been flirting with your own brother and think, eh. I could do worse.
171 Much of your time is spent writing long, abusive letters to people you love from places you hate.
172 You have a pet that has, at least once, turned into a human being.
173 You are a woman and at the age of fifteen, the consciousness of your beauty bursts upon you in a sudden instant.
174 Once, you had some illusions about the world, but now they are lost.
175 A man once taught you how to love by beating you gently with his calloused hands. Now he is dead.
176 Your wardrobe is made entirely out of silk, especially your shoes. 
177 You are over 75 and you hate every person you’ve ever met, or else you’re 14 and you’ve just seen something horrible.
178 You will believe literally anything written in a letter.
179 A disrespectful maiden becomes your only friend after you kill the man who killed her first boyfriend.
180 You suspect your twin is lost at sea.
181 Your sister is homely and it pleases you. 
182 If you ever take to living as you play piano, it will be very exciting indeed.
183 The word that best applies to you is scrappy; never, not once, have you given up on someone or something without a fight.
184 You like to wear a red hunting hat, but you tend to remove it around people you know.
185 You have two first names with an absolute maximum of four syllables.
186 People always make fun of your hair.
187 Your feelings about peasants are warm, passionate, and a little condescending.
188 There is a 50% chance you are married because someone’s father died.
189 A beautiful and shallow woman that you hate is your best friend for reasons you cannot explain.
190 An old-timer has given you advice; you did not take it.
191 You could be cast as a tree nymph in a play about Greek mythology.
192 A number of better-established people went way out of their way to help you. You did not show appropriate gratitude.
193 You’re always starting things that you can’t seem to finish.
194 You have a favorite cow.
195 You are a victim of erotolepsy and have been ensnared in a marriage not of your choosing by a manipulative scoundrel.
196 A shocking marriage of convenience takes place within your social circle.
198 You have had bottles of wine opened with a sword for him more than three times.
199 You are amazed to discover your long-lost brother in an unruly mob, but he does not want you to recognize him.
200 Your deepest secret is already known by the one person you are most invested in keeping it from.
201 You are blind in one eye. Just to be safe, you have killed everyone.
202 Your patience is wearing thinner than your mustache.
203 If only someone would die, you’d get everything you’ve ever wanted.
204 You’re having an affair and it’s terrible.
205 Everyone you hate understands you perfectly.
206 If you had to pick your greatest skill, it would probably be lying.
207 Most of your problems have probably been caused by prideful boasting or Vikings.
208 It’s not that wouldn’t murder your wife—it’s just that you wouldn’t bludgeon her with a statue.
209 You keep a photo on your mantel that proves your guilt in a capital crime.
210 You are crippled by gambling debts, but that hasn’t stopped you from spending every penny you have buying brandy.
211 Someone is describing a horrific injury in immense detail, and you are delighted.
212 You fell down the stairs, dramatically.
213 You are either ruddy, stout, or flint-eyed.
214 The further south you go, the more firmly the North becomes fixed in your heart.
215 You long to escape to the seaside. 
216 You feel you must prove your worth by stabbing something terrifying.
217 You remain chaste throughout a series of tribulations and are rewarded with a husband whom you have never met.
218 A man confuses your expression in the middle of an argument for that of an expression of love. Later, you marry him.
219 You are indifferent to the murder you’ve just committed.
220 You’ve run out of wine.
221 You could not succeed in seducing your maid if your life depended on it.
222 You have literally run off with a goat.
223 You tend to dismiss odd noises, prophetic ramblings of mad men, and the death of small animals en masse with a shrug.
224 You’ve become so worried about The Great Schism that you’ve developed brain fever.
225 The adults in your life keep information about you, your family, and your current circumstances a secret from you. 
226 You have nothing more than a passing interest in the paranormal. And why would you?
227 You had a best friend once. Now they are your greatest rival. 
228 You are the beautiful only daughter of an invalid.
229 You have big dreams, but no skills to speak of.
230 You are an incorrigible womanize. You are squandering your sizeable inheritance on loose women and card tables. 
231 You have a dream vision. There is absolutely no symbolism involved.
232 You are an unusually helpful lady-in-waiting. Your gaze lingers for no appreciable reason.
233 You are blackmailing a powerful but shady man.
234 You chew at your lip to show you are full of thought or lust.
235 Your father is absolutely terrible with money. No one has ever told him this.
236 You tend to ramble and have a habit of painstakingly describing everything and everyone around you.
237 No matter how many life-threatening situations you find yourself thrust into, you refuse to change your behavior.
238 A wizard has roped you into a quest because one of your ancestors invented golf.
239 You have forsworn your life of piracy for an unreciprocated romantic friendship with a tender lord.
240 You went to the beach once and now you can’t stop thinking about the Sea.
242 There is lace at your throat and wrists and disdain in your eyes and heart.
244 You stand at the extreme verge of gentility. 
245 In this random and absurd world, your only consolations are sex, philosophy, and puns. 
246 You have shed aliases like the layers of an onion.
247 Shadows make you anxious, and you avoid them just in case they are concealing someone who means you ill.
248 Someone is crushing your spirit. You try as hard as you can not to inconvenience them while they do it.
249 You are a beautiful, demure widow.
250 For the last several years, you have been pretending to be blind and/or deaf in order to cause pain to a woman in your life.
251 You are ridiculously talented at one very specific thing.
252 You change your name and grow some facial hair– you are now unrecognizable to all your old friends and acquaintances.
253 The magistrate’s daughter is promised to another. You despair.
254 You once did a terrible thing. Someone knows, but will not reveal it.
255 Your enemy has made a miniature wood-carving of you being sodomized and nobody asks him why.
256 You were weak once, long ago, in a land where the sun shone. Now everyone you know is dead.
257 You are a woman and a young man declares his interest in you by staring at you in a public place. You find this charming.
258 Chances are good that you were poor, abandoned, or suffered a devastating loss in your childhood. Maybe all three.
259 You self-identify as a henchman.
260 All of your pets seem to hate you.
261 Someone trusted you to post a letter that may or may not contain high treason.
262 If only there were some way – some hope – if only someday you might forget!
263 You had to learn the hard way not to follow the lights in the marsh.
264 You come from great wealth, but it doesn’t help the ennui.
265 You have one friend; he is thirty years old and does business with your father and you are going to marry him someday.
266 You are supposed to be some sort of Asian, you think, and this fact makes everyone just a little bit uncomfortable.
267 You are being pursued by a bear.
268 You created a mythology around your family that was three parts exaggeration and one part straight up lies.
269 Someone you know has died in a tragic and semi-ironic manner that was so very appropriate to their personality.
270 The people of your house are dead and you are living a desperate existence as an outlaw. 
271 Woe betide anyone who tries to fuck with your ponies.
272 Your married girlfriend gave you a dead bird as a token of her neverending love for you. You carry it with you always.
273 You are the beloved of many shepherdesses.
274 You deliver both insults and speeches exclusively in tight alliterative verse.
275 God’s grace descended upon you once, in the form of an gigantic, murderous war eagle.
276 The ladies who had once closed their ranks to you on suspicion of your base birth now rush to celebrate you.
277 You are poor now. So very poor. 
278 No one at this decadent court suspects you of being what you really are – sincere.
279 Someone disagreeable tries to persuade you to join a game of cards.
280 You have escaped disaster, and things have for the most part ended well, and yet you cannot shake a sense of dread.
281 You’re kind of a paranoiac in reverse — you suspect people are plotting to make you happy.
283 Your mother has taken a false name and hidden herself from you. You will never question or complain about this decision.
284 You are indentured to a temperamental sorcerer.
285 You have between two and four  siblings with whom you get into jolly and/or dreadful scrapes. They all love eating buns.
286 You have an encyclopedic knowledge of the local seabirds because they are your only companions.
287 You don’t know where this sidekick came from, but you suppose you’ll keep them around.
288 You are being chided by a magical bird.
289 Important events in your life are always preceded by a storm, or at least a stiff wind.
290 You don’t have gout but could probably get it in a week if you wanted to.
291 You don’t get lucky a lot, although people are constantly hugging you from behind.
292 At least one of your front teeth is missing, and you think you look marvelous.
293 You have an enemy who claims to love you. You are competent at embroidering, but not accomplished.
295 You have committed many wasteful murders to cover your tracks.
296 You are a blonde who is neither icy nor languid, which makes you unclassifiable.
297 You say something arch yet generous about another woman both younger and richer than you.
298 You have a habit of painstakingly describing the outfits of everyone around you.
299 She’s dead now, of course. Isn’t she? Isn’t she?
301 You are abroad. The landscape speaks to you in a way that none of the people do.
302 Everyone agrees that your best friend is a wicked, but remarkable woman. Only you know just how wicked. 
303 You are young, yet you know one thing, if you know anything: dragons are dicks.
304 You have hastily married someone you know to be unworthy of you.
305 You brought your sword and chainmail shirt to a swimming contest. They came in handy.
306 You are caught in a storm and contract a violent head-cold.
307 Your father is only capable of showing his love for you through fiery murder-suicide attempts.
308 Nothing has ever happened to you except one thing, decades ago.
309 You are a skeptic, and there is literally no justification for this.
310 You have strong opinions about rainscald.
311 Your survival hinges on the arrangement of poorly-maintained paths through a remote swamp.
312 Your boyish charm and feminine hips have attracted the attention of a wealthy woman and/or a homosexual criminal.
313 The love of your life has never once told you the truth, either about his intentions or his identity. 
314 You are a lady novelist who travels by yourself.
315 Your childhood best friend is an emotionally unstable liar. 
316 You are enduring secondhand heartbreak, which is the best kind of heartbreak.
317 You have been betrayed by a base chamberlain.
319 You’re a shriveled up old maid and you are evil.
320 Everyone in the world except for you is sexually repressed. This is the root cause of at least half of your problems.
321 You feel an unnameable, shameful aversion to your mother, whose limping gait you are afraid you will come to adopt.
322 An older woman pines for you.
323 Someone you know has fallen ill. Not melodramatically ill, just interestingly so.
324 Your husband has violated the strict moral code around which you have organized your life. 
325 You’re only seventeen, but the right side of your head is covered in millions of little gray hairs.
326 Everybody in town knows more about your family history than you do.
327 You are a successful playwright in the prime of his life. Naturally, women love it when you mansplain to them.
328 You would seriously never kiss anyone if not for your clumsiness/bad luck/generally poor sense of direction.
329 You strike a bargain with an impossibly malevolent spider demon. This ends poorly for you.
330 Your father is hilariously witty, but prone to frightening rages. 
331 You think nothing of contracting inheritable life debts with villains.
332 Though history may deem you a nobody, you are acquainted with everybody who’s anybody.
333 Gentlemen are always falling prey to the irresistible way in which you arrange your skirts.
334 You can no longer delight in any of life’s joys, not even whores.
335 You are a pagan, and this is very sad.
336 You are slightly less posh than the family you married into. 
337 It is easy for you to sympathize at a distance.
338 She wanted you to love her more than you loved that first drink in the morning and so she had to go.
339 You walk home with a man you have only known for six months from church and catch a cold as a result of your moral laxity. 
340 You are a political man engaged in a rather complicated relationship with your much older mentor. 
341 You will never escape your childhood.
342 Your name is Derace, Orfamay, Moose, or Rusty, but you’ve asked to please be called Steelgrave.
343 Your “Pre-Pubescent Boy” disguise is having the unnerving effect of attracting many ladies.
344 You’ve been standing in the snow for hours now, just waiting to say something really cutting to a bureaucrat.
345 The only thing you really know about life is that, no matter the meaning of the next, love is the meaning of this one.
346 Your exhaustive knowledge of whimsical riddles has saved your life on multiple occasions.
347 You are not an orphan, but have just said that you are to a man who is altogether too interested in this fact.
348 In a dirty business, you have kept your hands clean. Almost.
350 All the ingenues at court are simply wild about you. You could not be more indifferent. Also, your name is Hugh.
351 Everyone you have ever loved, been related to, or looked at flirtatiously during the summer parliament has died in a feud.
352 You have one dream, and it is very small, and everyone around you wants to crush it.
354 You comb your hair publicly. 
355 Your mother and father are both alive, but you keep thinking of them in the past tense.
356 You’re having an affair and your husband throws a dead bird at you, bloodying your breasts, to let you know that he knows.
358 In your youth, you had one bosom friend. You devote the better part of your adult life to making him miserable.
359 An improbable plot device leads to you sharing a bed with a rogue.
360 Your wife and your mistress have either never met, or they are best friends. 
361 You are a human being that has, at least once, turned into a pet.
362 Groups of children unnerve you in a way you cannot define. 
363 You find the sun disappointing and the moon insipid. When you were young, the world was lit only by the stars.
364 Your mother is ever so slightly insane.
365 You have managed to convince your husband you were not cheating on him by showing him a bathtub. 
366 You think you have had a revelation. In reality, you have gotten yourself in a muddle, and later it makes you miserable.
367 You thought you were the cat in this particular game; in fact you have always been the mouse.
368 You are driven by a single, indiscernible desire.
369 You are a man. You have soft hands, and you went to college, and you are useless.
370 You dream of a contemplative life in a monastery.
371 You sleep feverishly or not at all.
372 Your headstrong offspring refuses to obey you. You despair.
373 No fewer than five different shamans have uttered prophecies about each member of your complicated love polygon.
374 You are relieved when your husband announces he is leaving you, but this relief is too inconsequential to speak of.
375 You have made out with a handkerchief belonging to an old man.
376 You can only fall in love at the command of a dying deer.
377 You’ve seen a ghost once or twice, but neither time were you particularly impressed.
379 You’re having an affair and it’s wonderful.
380 You have become exceedingly ashamed of what your conduct has been.
381 The only thing flashing more violently than the diamond pin on your lavender greatcoat are your eyes!
382 You have been left alone to face social consequences despite your intrinsic goodness.
383 You don’t believe her story or her money, but you believe those legs. 
384 You attempt to befriend someone slightly above or slightly below your social station and are soundly punished for it.
385 You’ve met an aristocrat who is about to change everything for you.
386 You have no legs and your name is alliterative.
387 There’s a woman in the room that you trust about as far as you’d trust a snake. But like all snakes, she can be charmed.
388 A fever has led you to believe you are married to your cousin, who may or may not be trying to poison you.
389 Your hat is tilted at a particular angle that suggests both your fastidiousness and duplicity.
390 To your deep shame and embarrassment, you — in your youth — played the viola.
391 A grove of trees reminds you of the woman you love.
392 Something dreadful happened at the rest stop.
393 Olives and wax: you never go anywhere without ’em.
394 You are a powerful but shady man being blackmailed.
395 If someone upsets you during a meal, you slide silently to the floor and remain under the table.
396 You speak in cryptic sentence fragments whenever the need arises.
397 You go wandering somewhere very cold, and almost freeze to death, but are saved by the arrival of a crew of explorers.
398 You have always wanted to meet elves, and when you finally do, they are intolerably silly.
399 Your greatest joy is exchanging barbs with the Steward.
400 You are a horribly disfigured man with a vendetta against society.
401 You spend hours ranting about how the fairer sex cannot be trusted, yet you have never been faithful to anyone.
402 So you met your soul mate at age ten, who doesn’t?
403 You never fall in love. Do you have any idea how rare this is?
404 There is scandalous gossip about you. All of it is true.
405 Your entire family is stunningly average, aside from one eccentric relative who’s always up to something kooky.
406 You paid dearly for your laceratingly funny insult to a powerful man.
407 A Dark Lord fancies your jewelry.
408 You spent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of a hen’s expression when it lays an egg.
409 A charming man attempts to flirt with you. This is terrible.
410 You are very happy, but there is a fearful trembling in the ground and in your heart.
411 You are incredibly good at describing any room you are currently in.  You do not know how to describe emotions.
412 The highest compliment you can pay a woman is to not sleep with her.
414 You can’t shake your inherent distrust of inanimate objects. You have your reasons.
415 You have enraged a family of wizards, who like to stand on your roof and sing all night.
416 Shrill violins do not bother you.
417 You have angered a tree. This ends poorly for you.
418 Your gaze is like the driving rain: hard and unyielding, chilly and bitter, and probably liable to cause consumption.
419 You have a very muted reaction to losing your limbs.
420 Your younger sibling is a real thorn in your side, but secretly, you value them above all else.
421 You and your cousins once beat a man to death over a piece of driftwood.
422 Your greatest wish is to someday see the ocean or have a pair of shoes you can call your very own. 
423 You never kiss the women you trust, and vice versa.
424 You twirl your mustache disdainfully, enchanted by your own wit.
425 A chance meeting with a noble stranger has destabilized your conception of the world. 
426 You make a terrible decision, fueled by the effects of alcohol, that casts an unremitting pall over the rest of your days.
427 You are probably not over the age of twenty-five. You may even be under ten.
428 One of your children is crushed to death by a humongous helmet on the day of their wedding.
429 You have to talk some sense into this violent, impoverished stranger you met on a footbridge.
430 You are being driven slowly but inexorably mad by a society determined to crush your spirit while smiling blandly.
431 You don’t have any bad qualities at all, unlike some people.
432 Is it just you, or is your young ward suddenly looking irresistible?
433 A woman of ill repute has hidden herself in the rooms of a noted dandy. You have never heard of anything so shocking.
434 You have never known one or both of your parents, but through a series of mishaps, at least one of them reappears.
435 You’re loudly criticizing a dangerous man, and he respects you for it.
436 You have perfectly floppy hair. 
437 Your celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervor had are thrown away on your milksop of a husband. 
438 You regularly attend dinner parties where each guest tells one carefully crafted and eerily perfect short story.
439 It is as old as the hills! Old, older, oldest! It is as old as the hills, and it has turned its eyes upon you! 
440 You realize that you have mistakenly agreed to marry a man who reminds you of a windowless drawing room.
441 You are in love with your cousin.
442 You dislike washing yourself, and dogs, and noise.
443 Yours is a still and terrible fury that cannot possibly be tamed.
444 You never bleed; the only time you did, the blood that fell from your wound arranged into the shape of your wife’s face.
445 A close relative was horribly disfigured in a hunting accident. Everyone agrees she had it coming.
446 You are being horrible to a blood relative. They drop dead.
447 You discover you have a half-brother. You resent him for being stronger and healthier.
448 Your husband was completely unsatisfactory.
449 You have been recently aghast.
450 You are a mother and, in a moment of despair, exclaim that you would die for your child. Society takes you up on the offer.
451 The bees are buzzing in the garden, and something small and magical is rather indignant with you.
452 A member of the aristocracy once condescended to give you some advice.
453 You are plotting a “bed trick” with your waiting gentlewoman.
454 You drink to forget. You’re so successful at it, you no longer remember what it is you wanted to forget in the first place.
455 You have started a bloody multi-generational feud by stealing cheese.
456 You have a mystical connection with nature that makes your horrible, undeserved death all the more tragic.
457 Everything has been resolved in the bleakest way possible. Your only hope is that you will take this secret to the grave.
458 You loved the house more than you ever loved him. You know that now, at the last.
459 Literally ten hundred men are in love with you, so fresh and unused to the cynical methods of court.
460 As a child, you found yourself in a near constant state of existential threat, often caused by your parents’ party guests.
461 You are adept at recognizing handwriting.
462 You have a love/hate relationship with a grotesquely malformed creature that you are repulsed by, but also pity.
463 You are arranged to be married to someone sickly.
465 You are a brilliant and high-spirited woman, and therefore you are doomed to a tragically early death.
467 You begin all adventures by donning your “going-out things.”
468 Someone puts your most embarrassing secret into their novel as a fictional event. You are angry, but can never tell why.
469 You enjoy composing cruel poems to make your sisters cry. 
470 A sweet, poor girl is desperately in love with you, and you neither appreciate nor deserve her.
471 You could be cast as a background character in an Agatha Christie adaptation.
472 You draw horrifying shipwrecks and lightning-ruined oak trees in your spare time. 
473 Your friends are a terrible influence.
475 Incriminating letters never seem to be right where you left them.
476 It is easier for you to be attracted to people when their class is indistinguishable.
477 A murder happens somewhere in your social circle. You carry on, more or less as you always have.
478 You watch helplessly as your little sister falls into the arms of a wicked man. 
479 Your personal style can best be described as “librarian up to no good.”
480 You give off an air of mysteriousness that men find enviable and women find irresistible.
481 Literally the only “hiding place” that ever occurs to you is under the master’s bed.
482 What appears to be politeness and common decency is fueled by lust.
483 A simple misunderstanding in the afternoon leads to three untimely deaths in the evening.
484 A dragon has ruined your life.
485 Seriously you are obsessed with buns, they play a very big role in your life.
486 You've discovered an old document. Most likely a journal, but possibly a map or letters written by a dead family member.
487 You’re sad all the time, for no reason (the reason is later revealed to be Secret Gayness).
488 All the women you know have died in childbirth. All the children you know are orphans. You are an orphan.
489 You have trust issues, but not the kind where you don’t trust anyone; instead, you trust everyone, and way too easily.
490 An aging beauty of nearly thirty has pronounced you an original.
491 Your grandson wants to live his own life and it is ALL YOUR FAULT.
492 You explain metaphors at great length, yet your listeners still do not quite grasp them.
493 You are either brusque and indifferent or overly affectionate to dogs.
494 You appear extremely agitated.
496 You are cold, and you are going to die. You find this faintly interesting.
497 The love of your life is either your childhood sweetheart or a man you met fifteen seconds ago.
498 As an infant, you were very nearly whisked away down a gutter while sitting in an umbrella during a rainstorm.
499 You are a woman with graying hair and you still have a sex drive, though you’d never call it that.
500 Your enemy is dead in the dust at your feet. Now you are finally free to respect him.

Side Note: It's nice working with source material that has a sensible gender ratio. Trying to find events in the Byzantium series with women in them who weren't named Eudoxia or Theodora took a while. Trying to find women in the Historia Francorum who weren't murderous crones or pious saints was a challenge.