1

1 - Barricade the door of the place the PCs are sleeping in, and then set it on fire, preferably by throwing molotovs in their window. They carry crossbows to snipe the players as they flee, and they always put something sharp under the window in case the PCs jump.

2

2 - The food is poisoned with a powerful emetic. As soon as the players begin to succumb, call for a Con check. Those who pass spend one round vomiting, while those who fail spend 1d6 rounds. The assassins attack when the PCs are the most vulnerable. The fight is complicated by all the innocent people running around screaming. At least one of the assassins is impersonating a cook, and attacks with boiling soup, pepper bombs, and/or meat cleavers.

3

3 - Lassoed on the road. The assassins approach from the opposite direction while on horseback. Each will attempt to throw a lasso around the neck of a different PC and then gallop off. The ropes are tied to their saddles, so they can fight and drag someone at the same time. They supplement this dragging with crossbow bolts at the first opportunity.

4

4 - They attempt to split the party. Someone tries to lure the PCs into a room, preferably a basement. "I'm selling some cheap drugs, come see them." "My son is very sick, can you help him?" "Let's go have sex somewhere private." Then the door is slammed shut and quickly locked, and the lured PC/PCs must deal with assassins (whose eyes have partially grown accustomed to the dark, half the penalty for fighting in darkness) while those outside must deal with assassins trying to shoot them from outside. All assassins involved have escape routes.

5

5 - Challenge one of the PCs to a duel outside of town. Insist that the non-dueling PCs travel without weapons as a sign of good faith, and will strip down to show that they are not carrying any weapons either. As soon as they are out of town, they all pull weapons from a nearby bush and attack the PCs.

6

6 - Guerilla tactics in the streets. First, they fire a couple volleys of poisoned crossbow bolts from a rooftop before fleeing. Then the attempt to run the party down with a carriage (or at least some horses) before quickly fleeing. If none of these tactics work, they'll get impatient and attempt murder in broad daylight (unless that seems infeasible, in which case, they'll switch to a different plan).

1

In the walls, watching through a painting.

2

In a baby carriage.

3

Buried in the garden, breathing through a snorkel and watching through a periscope.

4

On the rooftop, camouflaged as a chimney covered in pigeons.

5

In a rain barrel, watching through a knothole. The water is just a tray, 6 inches deep.

6

In a cunning disguise, right next to you.

1

Con save or Resolve: {be reduced to 0 hp | Roll on "Biological Mutations" } !

2

Roll 3d6 damage across 3 rounds on a failed save, or Roll 1d6 damage across 1 on a successful one.

3

Slow.

4

Hallucinations: Resolve: {{Wrong tool / wrong verb.

|Wrong target / wrong noun.
|Misinterpret the situation.
|See things that aren't there.}
|Nothing.  Describe the scene naturally.}

5

Berserk. +2 to melee attack and melee damage, must melee attack closest person each turn for Roll 1d6 turns.

6

Paralysis + invisibility for Roll 1d6 minutes.

1

Moonya Greymorning - She is heralded by by the arrival of a flock of death's head moths, which fly into the hair of the condemned person(s), grab on really tight, and then die.

She wears compound eye goggles and has moths tattooed over her whole body. She wears only grey and white, and when she moves quickly, sleep powder sloughs off her (as she is absolutely coated in the stuff). When she takes damage, she turns into a swarm of moths, and automatically reforms at the start of her next turn. She can also use this ability to fit through small holes, etc. She is accompanied at all times by three cat-sized moths (stats as psuedodragons) and rides a moon moth (basically Mothra).

Her default strategy is to put the entire town to sleep by having her moon moth sprinkle sleep dust over the whole place. Then she moves in and starts cutting throats, humming lullabies the whole time.

The moon moth is huge and high HD but it has not attacks except for sleep powder (which it favors). It can be lured by large amounts of milk presented in a circular pool.

2

Immortal Joe - Six feet tall, slabs of muscle and fat. Twitching, sweating, constantly mumbling to himself. Deeply psychotic. His eyes constantly dart and stare at all the bizarre psychofauna that his wizard vision won't let him un-see.

He is shirtless and if he's not covered in his own feces, he coated in someone else's. He wields a sledgehammer. Although he does not know it, he is the son of Mishrut, a forgotten god of iron, and because of that he only takes damage from attacks that deal 3 damage or less.

He is heralded by himself, when he shows up and shouts "Hey assholes! I'm gonna fuckin' kill you something fucking good, ya fucks hear? Fuck!" and then runs off to hide in a ditch somewhere. He is both impatient and bad at tracking time, and so he doesn't even wait the required 12 hours--he just shows up after 1d12.

3

Goma and Goruma - Twin harpy sisters that fight with bows. Is that too simple? I mean, they fly, shoot arrows goodly, sing lure-songs, and shit on you with horrible, magical poops.

They are heralded when they shit on you and shoot a couple of arrows just to show you that they are serious, before flying off to get drunk on stolen brandy.

In combat, they use lots of clever tactics. Nets, false harpy dolls perched on rooftops, lassos. If the party tries to lure the harpies into a building where their flight is useless, the harpies will use their song to lure the party back outside and probably off a cliff or something.

4

Tabby the Cat - This is just a cat with too many rogue levels. She has three similar looking sisters (with 1 rogue level each). Her husband is a lion, but Tabby is too proud to ever ask for his help. He comes along with her on missions 50% of the time, but spends his days eating sheep and slow shepherds. Also naps.

Tabby is assisted by a mouse named Brigadier, who is only loyal because Tabby is holding his entire family hostage. Cats are jerks.

She is heralded by the headless corpse of a dog, which appears in the bed of each condemned person.

5

Red Molivia - She is actually a bagsaint, a lobotomized servant of the Cauteri priesthood whose skin has been entirely replaced with what is basically a wool sock for her entire body. Except in Molivia's case, they forgot to lobotomize her (which oddly seems crueller). Her bodysock is red plaid.

She is a wizard who wields a war pick she calls Brainspike. She has two gimmicks: summon demon (she can't control them, and can barely control what type of demon she gets) and magic jar, both usually cast in conjunction.

She is heralded by a large amount of red string, which the condemned with vomit out, probably over dinner. (This is custom spell of hers.) She is raising money for the reclamation of Cauterus and is desperate for a real relationship (friendship, romance, anything). She is kind to animals. Her spellbook is a piece of red, knotted string; when untied, it can be pulled to reveal a long extradimensional scroll.

6

Dolly Darkly - She is actually a tattoo that has learned to be human sometimes. In tattoo form, she can run around your body and stab you for 1d6 damage each round, usually in the eyes, neck, or groin. You'll have a hard time hitting her unless you take off all your clothes. If you kill her while she's on you, you'll permanently have a tattoo of a dead woman on you, you asshole.

In human form, she's just a normal looking woman with dark hair and green eyes. The only odd things about her are a mildly disconcerting lack of detail in her features (although you have to look close) and a tendency to fall back into cheesecake poses when she isn't paying attention. (All the sailor-approved poses.)

She can slurp herself onto your skin as long as she has even a square inch of skin-to-skin contact. No save. She can jump off just as easily. She bleeds ink. If you kill her in her flesh-and-blood form, you can have her gear (dagger +1, grappling hook + 20' rope) which can be pressed into your skin to form a tattoo, and plucked out of your skin with similar ease.

She is heralded by a tattoo of a skull that appears on your left palm overnight. It is both painful and itchy.

7

Sangelise the Dragon Eater - She's in a band called the Dragon Eaters. Her and four bards. She is heralded by a concert that she puts on, in which the last song is always a custom-written song that is explicitly about killing you.

She is accompanied at all times by Goldenbrown, her pet dragon eater (dire mongoose). They also have a band wagon painted in psychedelic mandalas and chromatic noise.

The wagon is actually part of the whole gimmick. She plays her guitar atop it, and the whole thing is rigged with booby traps: flamethrowers, snake shooters, mancatchers, walls that will fall on you, etc. Woe to anyone who tries climbing it.

Also, inside the wagon is a zombie dragon, because Sangelise belongs to that rarest of breeds: she is a necrobard. She is only doing this assassin thing ironically, and has been quietly killing other guild assassins over the years. Is actually an elf (with mutilated ears) and will probably need to end this assassination gig soon before someone notices how slow she's been aging.

8

Iron Marjack - He was once a wizard until they cut his tongue out, and then he was a monk until they cut his arms off. Both times, his only crime was pissing off the people in charge of a powerful, conservative institution.

So now he talks through a silver tongue. It's tones are dulcet, except when it clicks against his teeth. Spikes fountain from the stumps of his shoulders, part of the breastplate he wears. And he controls two enormous brick hands, each the size of a park bench.

Treat him as a multiclass wizard/monk who only uses kicks and who favors evocation spells. Treat the giant, flying hands as multiclass clay golem/Bigby's crushing hand. He can fly by surfing on one of the hands. He likes playing tricks, like getting you to stand on what you thought was a park bench but is actually a giant crushing hand made of bricks. But he also likes sharp tactics, like getting one of the hands to fly above the party and crush open a coffin full of weighted flechettes.

Remember that if Marjack can't see, neither can his hands.

He is heralded by a monkey paw, which is delivered to each of the condemned. He is perfectly, horribly in love with Sangelise, who despises him. His hobby is the construction of doll furniture, which he conducts with a second set of tiny hands, made from tiny bricks.

9

The Guildmaster

That would be Maddening Sebastian.

He dresses like a lion tamer and owns a private menagerie. It is him that the House of Glass and Gossamer belongs to, and has for generations.

Most of his animals are naturally poisonous. The ones that are not poisonous have been made to be.

His gimmick is illusions. Once per round, he can cast either mirror image, disguise self, or phantasmal force. He usually fills an area with crazy shit before stepping into the scene himself, probably disguised as your favorite barkeep or something.

His animals will probably start attacking before he does, but his beasts are so ridiculous looking that the players will probably have a hard time distinguishing them from the illusions. Pigs wearing nightgowns, giraffes with knives on their feet, bears wearing spiked armor. And the animals behave erratically, too, probably from all the viper venom seeping into their brain from their prosthetic fangs.

This all sounds like the work of a crazy person but its actually all the work of a dry and calculating mind that is just really good at engineering a situation to be as bewildering as possible.

He is a master swordsman and duelist. He gets +2 AC when defending against other swords. His sword is coated in blinding poison (which he uses to blind anyone who seems to be seeing through his illusions) and the darts in his hand crossbow are coated with reverse gravity 1d6 rounds poison.

You'll only ever see him after killing a few of his guild assassins, and he says "If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself!" before swirling his cape around him and ninja-leaping out the nearest window.

He may also want to hire you.

10

Goren Kriegod signals his approach by circling the town on his elephant. He yells; the elephant trumpets. He attacks by ambush, after having smuggled his elephant into town aboard a ship disguised as cargo, or paying people to look the other way while moving the elephant down midnight streets. So yes, his entire strategy is "elephant sneak attack". He attacks by throwing molotovs and harpoons. He is a high-level monk.

11

The Velvet Knight is a man inside velvet-covered heavy armor. He is heralded. by the smell of roses, as he hides potpourri near his intended targets. He uses his velvet-cushioned steps to sneak up on people. He makes his assassination/sneak attack attempts with a greatsword that has been pained matte black. His shadow is a shadow, and it fights alongside him. If things appear to be going badly for him, he reveals his trump card: his associate has taken a hostage and now has a dagger to their throat. He is a high-level assassin.

12

Grandfather Fern is a high-level druid. He is heralded by tiny birds, who bring a blood-soaked fern to each of his intended targets. His entire shtick is that he dominates local domesticated animals and gets them to attack the party. He's really good at this, and can do it from a distance, without the usual restrictions of the dominate spell. He usually watches the chaos from a nearby tree, wearing his ridiculous stick and leaf camouflage. If he gets really desperate, he'll start dominating wild animals, too, but he feels bad about this.

13

Lady Nightingale is a high-level assassin. She is heralded by a severing ring finger, which she will arrange for the PCs to discover inside a flower. She attacks with two cassowaries (HD 3, AC leather, claws 1d6 exploding) that disguise themselves as her dress. Her snake tattoos are actual snakes that have been glamoured.

14

The Pangolin wears a apiked adamantine pangolin cloak. The spikes are poisoned, and anyone stabbed must save vs hallucinations. She is heralded by violence, and always carves her challenge into the skin of someone/something that the PCs care about (such as the hide of their favorite horse). She can use her pangolin cloak to roll up into an armored ball and pursue the players, but is incapable of rolling up stairs or hills. She is capable of crashing through wood and plaster walls while in armor-ball form. (If worn by anyone else, it loses this wall-smashing ability, although the wearer can still roll around inside a spiked adamantine ball.) If she suspects defeat, she will self-destruct: players must choose between an easy roll to escape the scene versus a difficult roll to defuse the bomb.

15

Dreadmite is capable of shrinking herself to any size, the result of winning a bet with a leprechaun. She is heralded by extremely tiny letters written on extremely tiny objects, such as a lengthy proclamation of assassination written onto the back of a cockroach, which is then placed inside the PC's coinpurse. She will attempt to crawl in one of the PC's ears, where she will then take them hostage. She will attempt to get that PC to lure all of the other PCs into extremely dangerous situations in the hopes that they will die. She can hear, but not see, everything that goes on. If this plan goes to shit, she will just stab the PC in the brain with her spear (save or die, success results in unconsciousness). And although no one has seen it and lived to see the tale, Dreadmite is capable of growing to giant-size as well. In mite form, cut her HP in half and give her a ridiculously high AC. In giant form, just double her HP and use giant stats.

16

Yersina Yersina - A woman who famously killed and ate her five twins (fellow sextuplets), Yersina is known for her saffron robes and shaved head. Her tongue is split. She has six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. Whenever she takes damage, she splits into two identical copies. So if you cut off her nose, then two noseless Yersinas will be standing in front of you.

She uses this to her advantage in combat, and will often cut herself a few times to make more duplicates before launching into combat. It is possible for her to duplicate herself so much that she completely fills the room she is in, and crushes herselves (and anyone else in the room). After ten minutes of beginning to use this power, all of the Yersinas shrivel into grey stains except for the one with the most HP (if there are ties, roll randomly). She fights with a bident.

She is heralded by the delivery of an apple, freshly split down the middle and held together with a black ribbon. Inside the hollowed out apple is a small envelope, containing a bisected worm

17

Wizened Grudlow - Horrible old man with a clock for an eye and a silver hand. He stinks of cinnamon. All creatures within 100' are affected by slow, no save. He uses this ability to kill people, often by setting them on fire (since the victims effectively have half as much time to put it out). He also has an easy time staying out of reach. He is heralded by the deliver of an envelope full of sand, broken glass, and a bit of twisted brass (the remnants of a smashed hourglass), together with a proclamation of assassination. Is a mid-level fighter.

18

Timelord Larpok - Throughout the day, you will start having flashbacks to an alternate past. This is because Timelord Larpok is jumping back in time and fucking with you, all of which leads to a dramatic showdown at sunset.

The basic idea is that the PCs start accumulating various disabilities and mutilations and no one notices at first. Then someone points it out ("Hey, Olaf, have you always had one arm?") and spurs a moment of bilucidity ("Of course, I lost it when I was a kid and. . . wait, no I didn't. . . wait, yes I did.)

Then you, the DM, will have a flashback scene to the player's youth, where Timelord Larpok is trying to kill their child self. Resolve this with a single dice roll, so that the player can discover if they indeed lost their arm in that unfortunate rockslide or if it was merely maimed. Everyone, it turns out, has a weird memory of the Time Lord trying to kill them in their youth. A sweaty, rushed, distracted Time Lord.

What did the party member lose? Success / Failure
Resolve: {One eye. (-1 to melee, -2 to ranged.) / Both eyes.
|One hand. / One arm.
|One leg. / Two legs.
|Their nerves (-4 to initiative.) / Their mind. (Gain a phobia of Timelord Larpok.)
|Their confidence. (Lose one level of class abilities.) / |Their will to live. (Lose all class abilities.)
|A semi-vital organ. (Reduction to max HP.) / Their life. (That PC is dead. The player controls an NPC immediately.)}
No one else will remember anything else except the altered history. In all cases, the altered timeline-memory will end with Timelord Larpok promising to kill them at sunset. All their (altered timeline) life, they've wondered which sunset, but now it is becoming clear.

After the PCs have spent the day running around trying to prepare for sunset while gradually turning into a party of cripples (a process that nobody else notices, the characters are dimly aware of, and the players are keenly aware of), Timelord Larpok will appear and try to kill them. He is a high-level wizard who does not fight very intelligently. He is an obese man who has dyed his skin neon pink. He flies through the use of his jockstrapping, gas-jetting body harness, which is the only thing he wears.

19

The Third Satan - Because Centerra has several prime antagonists, who rise and fall with the calendar. He/she does this just for shits and giggles. Even though he is forbidden from interacting directly with humans, a few dead adventurers are so minor that they don't really count. (Satan will not show up if the PCs are in good standing with the Church, but how likely is that?) Satan is heralded by himself/herself, who just walks up dressed impeccably (as a noble/dominatrix/pirate captain/whatever Satan feels like that day) and announces their intention to kill the players after 12 hours.

Satan has all of the powers and abilities of Superman, except that his/her kryptonite is holy stuff. Satan leaves once he/she takes a single point of damage (which amuses Satan and endears the PCs in Satan's eyes), or if he/she gets bored (this takes two hours and makes Satan irritated, unless there is significant cleverness involved). He/she begins combat by standing outside of wherever the PCs are and insulting them until they come out and fight. Satan does this mostly just to see what the PCs will do. If they do nothing, Satan will start burning stuff down, starting with the building they are in.

20

Skeletrox - Iron-plated skeleton duelist. He is accompanied by a pair of clumsy skeleton archers that he has assembled from the mismatched bones of the people that he has slain. His biggest gimmick is that he loves to burst out of ridiculous ambush locations. [d4] 1 = water barrel, 2 = newly plastered stucco wall, 3 = the roast pig being served for dinner, 4 = the ground where your boots tread.

He is heralded by skull with magic mouth cast upon it, pulled by a pair of crawling skeleton hands (which attempt to strangle the PCs as soon as the message is declared).

21

The Great Tremolo - a.k.a. the Puppetmaster. You can probably figure this one out.

The herald is the discovery of a collection of dolls, each crafted to exactly resemble one of the party members, and each with a noose around their neck.

The puppetmaster kills people by puppeting them. You'll be talking to the barmaid and all of a sudden she'll start talking about how she can't control her limbs and scream for help while she tries to stab you. Cutting the invisible steel strings above her is not as difficult and noticing them. (The puppet strings are looped over a pulley-laden cloud, constructed for this purpose.)

You can find the puppetmaster by following the strings. And the puppetmaster is a weird dude in an alley with an organ grinder and a monkey that is actually a clockwork monkey. But of course, this isn't really the puppetmaster, this is just another puppet, and when you attack him you will realize this when his chest pops open and 4 attack puppets pop out (each one is statted similar to a different 1 HD mephit).

You can keep following the puppet strings to try to find the real puppetmaster, but it's puppets all the way up.

22

The End. Ancient old man who is so old his eyeballs fall out sometimes. Normally can't walk and has people carry him around, but can take drugs that make him as strong/mobile as if he were middle aged (these last 24 hrs, though they become less effective with repeated use, after using them for a week straight they stop working (so they would only last 12 hrs after 3-4 days)). Excellent sharpshooter with crossbow (only misses on a 1). Wears ghillie suit. His skin has clorophyll in it, so he doesn't need to eat when he is in sunlight. Prone to falling asleep. Dislikes cities, and will avoid fighting the PCs there. Uses smoke bombs to escape.