For  Invisible Hands . Texas is burning.  Dust Bowl, Alexandre Hogue When it all went wrong, it went very wrong here. All the violence and fear and hatred that could accumulate in that largest of states went off like a loaded gun, along with all of the actual  loaded guns that were just sitting around.  The earth shattered, bleeding black from open stone veins, and what was once dead was made living again; a grand parade of dead men and dinosaurs, all dripping with petroleum. The Crude Sea , dark and thick and reeking, parts the state into islands, the earth's memory of the interior sea that once cut the nation in half. Lift your eyes over the horizon, if you're able- s moke columns rise in every direction, pillars holding up a white-hot sky where the Lone Star blazes big and bright, a cruel sun which permits no nightfall. When the weather isn't bad, it's worse. When it's not hot, it's pouring down sheets of rain and pitching hailstones the size of baseballs to ...

 Here we are, back to my personal monster manual. No further elaboration required. Cockatrice 3 HD (12 HP ), AC as leather , 7 morale A disease among dire fowl, a retrovirus that, instead of causing cancer, causes strange atavisms. Feathers fall out, and scales take their place. A tail grows, along with teeth and claws. The sickness is worse for people. Like most horrors of the flesh, the old snakes must be to blame. Movement: Like a velociraptor. Faster than a man, and a much better jumper and climber. Morality: Not improved by disease. No longer just territorial and mean, Cockatrices  are outright homicidal. Intelligence: Still birdbrained. Attacks: +3 to hit , two claws ( 1d6+1 , test HRTS or catch Stone Sickness .) Stone Sickness: Check HRTS every morning. On a fail, lose 1d6 points from all physical stats as your soft tissues ossify. Once a stat goes below 3 , you are completely unable to move. Hit 0  and you mercifully die. After three successful HRTS tests, you're ...

  It was one of those ideas that seems good when you've been living on black coffee and Yonah white. They obsessed over it.  A dozen Giant laborers taken out into the wilderness, blindfolded and sworn to secrecy, but clearly not sworn enough because Saskia  had heard one talking about the strangest job he ever had, some kind of dungeon or oubliette built around one spherical cell. Then there was that vault robbery, thousands of Moons of gold bullion taken from the Church like it was nothing. Everyone had heard about that, even ten years later, but only Jochem  knew that it had been an inside job and with that bullion there was a certain gold-banded box that must have held something terribly valuable. He didn't remember who he heard it from, but he was never shy about making bets. Neither him nor Saskia  knew how or where they had connected these two events. Maybe he whispered it into her ear, a sweet nothing to which she responded with how she'd kill anyone who ...