Three new tables, or "Oh shit, I didn't plan for this"

I read too much of Daniel Sell's Blog on the buses, and then write down too many ideas for Troika! games I want to run. Organising players can be like herding cats.
While I wonder where my next fix of weird fantasy tabletop mania will come from, here are three silly tables for strange happenings.
If there are things on here that seem unexplained, that is usually by intention- Troika! is a game of weird things. Most of the names of places or people or things I'm dropping into lists are places or people or things that I want to play with or develop later. These things are, naturally, best saved as entries on a random table. Logic.

Agents of Balance you must deal with...

11. The Holy Hermaphrodite, ready to birth the components of a next world.
12. A knight with a twin bladed sword and no horse.
13. A two headed dragon, cursed with ever-tearing indecision.
14. An immortal wanderer, watching the world decay around her.
15. One of Bast's wise cats, who walk between worlds on unknowable whims.
16. A priest undergoing a terrible crisis of faith.
21. A weary Moonwarden, who believes himself corrupted.
22. A failed messiah, left mourning his people.
23. A professional Broker Envoy, in well over their head.
24. An intelligent golem, made from the Origin Clay itself.
25. Representatives of Law and Chaos, bound together as one (roll next table)
26. The captain of a ghost ship which sails the waves between worlds.
31. A powerful sorceror, plagued by a lack of confidence and believing himself a charlatan.
32. The preserved head of an ancient prophet.
33. The patriarch and matriach of the local pantheon of gods.
34. The Prince from a story you read as a child.
35. An angel, midway through the dlow process of Falling.
36. An enlightened holy man, travelling the world to spread his Word.

Representatives of Law and Chaos who are summoned to debate...

11. Punch and Judy.
12. A jester and an austere judge- the judge talks nonsense and the jester is measured and wise.
13. A white dwarf and sprawling nebula, both pulsing in binary.
14. An aged tree and a lit lamp. Both are silent and incommunicable.
15. A nun and a prostitute.
16. A burning bush and the sprouting flame, both only communicating in memories and physical sensations transmitted psychically.
21. A wise lammasu and cruel chimera.
22. An inhalation and exhalation, each experienced as a stretched out moment of revelations
23. Two wyrms, red and white and fighting one another.
24. Two knights, identical but furious at any suggestion of that.
25. A figure of molten metal and another of crystalline glass.
26. Two madmen- one expressionless and muttering monotone binary. One babbling glossolalia animatedly.
31. A box and its contents. The box is carved with questions, the contents broadly represent answers.
32. Sleep and the dreams inside it.
33. The wild night and your warm home.
34. The summer day and your cold, hard grave.
35. A coiled serpent and authorative, disembodied voice.
36. A black haired woman and gold-skinned man.

Envoys that might be sent to fetch your aid...

11. A squire, harrassed and flustered and very afraid.
12. A trained raven, sassy and barely comprehensible.
13. A very smart monkey, relative to other monkeys.
14. A wise dog, who can only whine imploringly and look where they want you to go.
15. A spirit of air and fire, enslaved by a wizard many years prior.
16. A wicked imp in an enchanted collar.
21. A small cat who is more than he seems.
22. An animated man made from twigs, barely still held together when he reaches you.
23. A wire fetch, sturdy but not able to communicate accurately.
24. An object nearby which spontaneously animates into sentiency.
25. A tattered corpse, unusually spry and talkative.
26. A skeleton that has been travelling to you long enough for the flesh to fall from his bones.
31. A mysterious knight, all clad in jet and gold.
32. A hungry child, promised food if she delivers the message to you.
33. The ghost of an orphan, afraid of the living.
34. A beautiful courtesan, sent under duress.
35. A dryad, sickening to be so far from her tree.
36. A gold shower. Dramatic, but a terrible communicator.

The Salt-demons of the Yammerstills

"Ol' fort Yama? Somewhere under yer feet, I dareseh. It's a tragic tale, crumbled under a giant's club. Yama himself'd offended the giant's wife, see?"

"Yama's Keep? Oh, long time gone. Stolen brick by brick, taken by merfolk. I mean it! They crawled out of the sea, and their briny footprints made all the bogs here now."

"No, no- the knights descended into anarchy. Fort Yama was too small for all the mouths to feed. They probably stole everything worth a damn and left the stones to fall into the swamps."

"You want to go where? Oh, you won't find that easy. Go to the salt caves, have a look down there. Billson from the inn does a fine tour of the salt caves."

Fort Yama fell hundreds of years ago, sinking into the marshy ground of what is now the Yammerstills, on the sphere of Daldria. The knights there were champions of civilisation, bringing order to a whole barbaric continent and helping found many of the towns still standing today. There are many legends about its fall- many stories, and many untruths. The popular one this year is that old Yama himself went mad, and gifted the fort to a foreign princess who had it towed away. Last year they said a dragon ate all the knights and shit out the hills that must now cover the old fort. The opinion over in nearby Ristallin is that the fort was never in the Yammerstills, that the grand arches and towers of their own fair town proves it was once known as Fort Yama.

The truth is not something the marsh-farmers of the Yammerstills could wrap their boggy heads around. Old Yama, founder of the order, discovered the truth that his sphere was one of many- a wiseman with a crooked staff showed him the great sky, swirling with worlds and weirdnesses. Yama had brought order to his world- now it was these others he must reach. He had his court magician working day and night to open a breach to such a world, and kept his knights in close reach so that they may rally and march into the unknown at a moments notice.

Things went wrong. Perhaps the magician didn't perform the spell properly. Perhaps the gateway he opened led to a sphere already fully descended into chaos. Perhaps some malign entity influenced happenings. Reality in the fort began to erode, with space itself loosening like molten wax from the aether. The knights battled strange alien creatures and vivid hallucinations as the fort's foundations crumbled as though a millenia had slipped by. The court magician knew little of the forces of chaos, but what he knew was enough for him to realise what this foothold might mean for the rest of the sphere. He advised Yama; Yama gave the order.

The spell he cast cost him his life. It covered everything in the fort in sea salt, briefly purifying the water in the bay nearby. The salt grounded the interdimensional energies so that Yama, choking on the salt as he did, had chance to close the portal. The fort sank into the swampy marshland.

Today, the Yammerstills are a poor trader's outpost, built on the hillsides in the bay. They are a simple people, providing necessities for sailors heading north and farming their sweet marsh-potatoes, for the most part unaware of the salt-crystal caverns underfoot. Until recently...

Strange white figures have risen from the hills. Perhaps roused by the outbreak of another interplanar working of magic, the old magical servitors of Fort Yama were warped by the portal, and fused with the salt by its closing. They toil away in the corridors and halls below, ordering the items left in the fort in order of their magical "radiation", continually cleaning the strange halls. These Salt-Demons, as the locals are calling them, can dessicate a man with their sharp embrace. They can lift huge weights with no sign of fatigue. And they are coming to quietly dry out and organise anything that smells of another sphere...

Marrandale Birthdays

It's been a long walk over the dry and chalky plains of Marran, but just as the turf starts to soften a touch underfoot you see it ahead- Marrandale, with its quaint thatched rooves and picturesque poofs of smoke curling from the chimneys. Looking forward to a night spent anywhere but on ground as hard as stone you press on.
As you reach the town gate, however, you see trouble. A small boy of no more than five, armed with a flint knife and facing down three great dogs that snarl and slobber. You draw your sword and race to intervene before the babe is shredded by the great beasts, only to feel a sharp sting on your forehead as you get near.
"Piss off!"
The cry comes from a set of men and women in the traditional and puritanical dress of the Marran plain settlements, who you now spy crouched behind a bush by the walls.
"What the damned devils are you doing watching this happen?" You cry to the villagers who just cast a stone at you.
"It"s the boy's bloody birthday!"

Long ago, Marrandale was dreadfully poor. The dry plains had spread over farmland, causing a long and hard famine to settle over the land. The coyote from the hills hassled their flocks, and any travellers in small number. It was a hard place, as hard as the ground outside. It did not reward sentiment.
Elsewhere in the world, elsewhere in thr multiverse, birthdays developed as a celebration. "Congratulations!", as though a reward for surviving another year. But in Marrandale where the children were too many and the food too few, they became a trial.
What began as an act of desperation became a proud and noble tradition, weeding out the weak and unlucky. Even to this day Marrandale residents of all ages arm themselves and hole up on their birthday, ready for all manner of challenges both physical and abstract- ready to prove they are worth feeding for another year.

Improper Prophecies

Mud squelches underfoot, the audible unease of the swamp itself at the direction you have chosen to take. The low, dripping passageway is coming to an end and the wan light of the pale sun is visible. As you step out, parting the sickly-looking hanging plants over the exit, your foot sinks inches into another puddle- but before you can struggle to suck it back out you freeze, eyes locked on the warped mockery of a bird's shape ahead of you…

There are ways, of course, to sample one’s future safely- mediums, seers, psychics and all manner of other arcane matters market themselves just so. Many of these art forms may be choked near to death by the many inaccuracies and charlatans within them, but still one may be given a relative notion of what the future holds at a reasonably small risk to oneself. But for a truly, startlingly accurate glimpse into the future? Why, one must invariably work for such an insight, and pay quite the cost…

The silks and hangings around you seem to swirl; the thick incense-smoke is beginning to choke you. You focus blearily on the squat figure before you, whose toad-like complexion seems to grow greener every minute… the room is spinning, though you can hardly tell… and in that strange whirl of invisible motion you see it like a pinprick that fills your horizon. You struggle to focus on it for a moment, until suddenly you are in it, and you see…

There are the prophets, the real prophets, whose gifts are almost always really curses. There are the interstices between temporal frequencies, those freak occurrences that split the unwary mind in twain but provide insight to those prepared to stare them down. There are the patterns and forms that ripple back through time from future happenings all the time, that with long and maddening research one may grasp the true import of. And there is the counsel of alien beings whose concepts of existence does not include such strange distinctions as ‘now’ and ‘then’, whose weird worldview threatens to unseat one’s very Self from the throne of free agency.

Finally it is in your grasp, and you grip it, shake it and stare at it. The smoke that moves listlessly beneath the glassy surface seems almost to stir- but no forms yet take shape. You curse and swear, and shake the thing again. This time there is no mistaking it- the figure of a man appears in the smoke within. Success! You peer a little closer into the object, finding yourself drawn closer and closer until the smoke-shapes are as reality, and you are but a wisp of yourself…

To toy with causality is no small thing, and the many checks and balances of the multiverse can tend to snap rather brutally back into place when dragged out of kilter. Still though- perhaps this is your last recourse. Perhaps you simply must know what is in store for you. Perhaps the fate of existence itself depends on your preparedness. Or perhaps you really just can’t wait so long.

2d6	For the Truest Prophecies you must seek out…
11	The dread Herrongeist, a six-legged monster of a bird who dwells in the darkest swamp with one foot in the present and another in the future. The only thing the Herrongeist enjoys more than providing prophecy is the taste of fresh eyes from an intelligent skull. Approach with caution.
12	Sweet old Mother Marrana, who is cursed by apparitions of the future dead who beg their fates be averted.
13	The great Library of Geft, in which all the histories of all men may eventually be found written. To find one set of records may take a lifetime’s searching.
14	The Blacksphere, an orb of captured nebula-gas. The malign intelligence within will answer any question with a smoke-vision, but attempts to trap the asker’s mind inside…
15	The Chimera-on-the-Fence, a composite creature of split loyalties to Law and Chaos. Her maelstrom of a mind sees all things at once, a madness with occasional spurts of prescient lucidity.
16	Lady Geraldina of House Matherrin, the young would-be-heiress whose various social slipups have forced her parents to exile her to the attic, where she has grown terribly bored and fond of embroidering her relatives death-scenes as morbid tapestries.
21	The forest-dwelling Skank of the Greater Ridge, a madman and prophet who blurts facts only true in parallel worlds. Prophecy is a process of deduction with the Skank.
22	The mummified head of Simon the Wretch, an immortal who was captured by a cruel sheikh and tortured for years. His mind went so far in fleeing the horrors of the present that it reached the future, where it now dispassionately relays information back to the present.
23	The Sinking Window, a glass pane in the tallest room of a long dead sorcerer’s tower which can be focussed like a lens through history.
24	The Black Deck, a set of common looking oracle cards with a history of accuracy. They were last seen heading to an inquisitor’s hearth, though rumour has it they didn’t make it to the flames.
25	Mistress Lucille, a patient and saintly woman whose dedication and focus one day paid off. She requires absolute concentration and a good deal of time to make a true prophecy, and has been known to fudge details if she gets bored.
26	The Madwoman of Marrendale, who reads the future in the webs and legs of her pet spiders.
31	The Guild of Weavers, where all who spin the yarn of fate meet. The Guild can be petitioned for a sneak peek at the future, but the paperwork they require is mountainous.
32	Funnyman Dannel Casserin, a bard-comedian from the courts whose jokes are noted for their increasingly portentous nature. Anything he says that gets a laugh will very quickly come to pass.
33	Templeton-Jones Eleven, a living fragment of the Cosmic Engine of Daldria. T-J11 doesn’t properly prophesise, but rather generates probability. He’s very good at it, too, but intensely melancholic down to being the last part of a machine that could have answered The Question.
34	Armoria, a warrior-princess of the Icy Wastes whose people would revolt if they knew she whispered with the Fractal Angels in her sleep. The Angels’ knowledge has saved them many times from war and famine, but their full motivation is not yet known.
35	Old Ned, a horse who can communicate with hoof-clops and is owned by a farmer who still hasn’t noticed the desperate chained intellect in those deep, mysterious horsy eyes.
36	The Tappletura-Bush, a plant whose powerful hallucinogenic berries grant brief omniscience for 1d3 hours. Focusing too long on any one thing has the risk of teleporting you into the scene.
41	Trickmaw, a grey parrot with an excellent memory. Used to be owned by a powerful psychic who talked to herself incessantly.
42	The Fractal Angels, weird creatures who can only be contained in our reality for moments at a time. Communication must be made in such a way as to be comprehensible to a being from the 6th or 7th dimension, but if you can manage it they will tell you anything. Talking to them has been known to drive people insane.
43	The Fissure under the Sun, a great crack beneath an old temple. The fumes from the ground are said to allow one to remember in both directions for 1d6 hours. It can be very unsettling, and makes normal conversation difficult for the duration.
44	Samaul the Weary, a man so old he has seen this universe end once already and lived through most of this second iteration again. He claims it usually diverges at some point, but until then his memories of how it played out the first time are pretty accurate. Does tend to exaggerate.
45	Cristan Crossing, a remote crossroads where travellers meet their future selves of misty nights.
46	Ash the Dawdler, notorious opium-fiend of the shanty town. He isn’t credited as genuine by many who know him, but there are many regulars in the taverns and alleys who’ve been left pale and shaken by his words.
51	Ewwyrd the Distraction, a minor god from a distant sphere. He will happily jaunt backwards and forwards through time- but only to gleefully deliver bad news.
52	A Manual of Motions, a tome by the late and lunatic astrologer Stefen Dower. The Manual has instructions for scrying with total accuracy using the motions of the moon and stars. Only one copy remains, locked securely in the Church of Our Lady in the Moon.
53	Dalia Moongazer, a dreamy young girl who can see the future in the moon’s reflection on water. She will be really, really upset if asked to look at anything violent, sexual, or otherwise inappropriate.
54	Frank Downing, a charlatan who makes only makes one true prediction every year.
55	Ser Michael Morestone, senior lecturer in the Tower Libray. Morestone’s life’s work is a mathematical formula which can answer any question. He’s currently depressed and despondent because he used it to discover he’ll never make tenure.
56	The Eyes of Gammorh, perfect marble spheres which must be planted in one’s eyesockets. Once used to stare unflinchingly into the future they blink and are gone.
61	Urbania’s Compass, which points in the direction one must travel in. While following the compass through a crowded place the fragments of conversation overheard will constitute an unexpectedly straightforward prophecy. Overuse will invoke the displeasure of the patron goddess of metropolises.
62	The Blind Tutor, who cannot see anything in the past, present or future, but can talk someone through the process of seeing it themselves- it will take 1d3 weeks to attempt a prophecy.
63	The Witching Pool of Warrenwren, a muddy puddle in the centre of an abandoned but strangely preserved village. When stirred clockwise its reflection shows the future, and counter-clockwise will reveal the past. If the surface is disturbed too much, of course, the bloated corpses at its bottom will animate and seek to add you to their number…
64	The Ravensingers of Weald, a coven of witches whose most powerful magic is an ongoing song that a listener can get lost in, experiencing visions of the future as part of the ebb and flow of the music. At any given time three Ravensingers must be singing their song, and the coven takes this duty in shifts. Should the song end their very direst prediction will come to pass...
65	Farly the Tumultuous, who stared into the unformed Chaos beneath the world and saw in it the shape of all things to come. That image is burned in his brain, impossibly and irreversibly, and Farly may be compelled to draw a portion of it as a crude prophecy.
66	The Heavens, a set of grand halls where the record keepers of Law abide. By finding their personal record-keeper and their extra-temporal records, one may glimpse their actions and experiences still to come.

Prophecies in-game

It isn't easy giving a glimpse of the future in an RPG. In works of fiction and the preconceived structure of a computer game flashes forward are much easier to manage- prophecies in a collaborative story are naturally harder to pull off. I like playable prophecies- scenes that are set ahead of your current narrative position, but that the players can get involved with and have some agency in. They are, admittedly, a total pain to plan and pull off. Your player might know she attacks with her silvered +1 longsword in three months time, only to have the longsword stolen in the next session. Causality is a cruel mistress like that.
You can get around it by having all components featured in the prophecy as prerequisites for it to come to pass, or by only showing things in the prophecy that players will not be involved in. Show them the king being crowned- hell, show them their characters arriving in a new place- but don't show them anything specific that their double-dratted and thrice-damned free will might mess around with.
Prophecies are great until they're 100% railroad.