Writober! Green Knight! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, throughout October. But I’m borrowing the prompts for short essays. Today’s prompt is “Green Knight”.

In Shadowdark’s Game Master’s Guide to the Western Reaches we see several references to Green Knights.  Several encounter entries mention a Green Knight which is found in the Monsters section. They are “Armored knights wearing cloaks of green leaves and helms of twisted branches. Legends say that when they are wounded, flower petals fall instead of droplets of blood.” They are neutral and have a “Horn of Gede” that grants damage immunity for a short time and an Oath ability granting advantage in special circumstances.  In addition, there is a page on “Green Knight Training with Sir Alerin” where the knight can give a character a task and if the character completes it they receive a benefit.

But this is a lot different than the King Arthur/Celtic based Green Knight–and that’s OK. This green knight can be all about nature (many of Sir Alerin’s tasks help the environment) and the “monster” entry leans into being honorable with the “Knight” ability.

That mythical Green Knight has a few key properties:

• Magically transformed into a half-giant. Nothing in the Shadowdark version touches on this.
• Tests others for their faithfulness and honor. Sir Alerin’s tests don’t focus on these traits.
• Has some supernatural ability (at least temporarily) so that when his head is lopped off he is able to reattach it. The “Horn of Gede” ability could explain this, but in the stories no horn is mentioned.
• In another telling of the tale the Green Knight defeats a sprite by reading a scroll. Nothing in the Shadowdark version relates to this.

So that’s more confirmation that the mythical Green Knight is different than the ones in the Western Reaches.  Here’s a new stat block for the mythical version:

AC 15 (plate mail), HP 39, ATK 2 bastard sword +7 (1d10) or 1 Challenge, MV near, S +4, D +0, C +3, I +0, W +3, Ch +1, AL L, LV 8
Challenge. Once per day, make a challenge to a fellow knight. If your intentions are pure, attacks by the challenged knight have no negative effect on you for 1d4 minutes
Read Scroll. 1/day, can read a magic scroll to cast a spell.

Here are our previous Writober posts so far:

1. Torch – Rules for magic torch items (each is a single use magic effect spell like alarm or detect magic).
2. Skull – Goblin shaman who can turn victims’ skulls into ways to store spells.
3. Fiend – Lists of talents that Devils & Demons typically have for making your own.
4. Shadow – Easy ways to make other creatures into shadows.
5. Contagion – Discussing the purpose of diseases.
6. Valkyrie – A new 3rd party class.
7. Toadstool – A new 3rd party ancestry.
8. Witchlight – Alternate sources of “witchlight”.
9. Luck Token – Alternate ways a GM may allow a luck token to be used.
10.  Rage – The signature ability of a Barbarian class.
11. Altars – Ways to amplify priest spells into rituals when using an altar.
12. Pit Trap – Several ideas to spice up the good old pit trap.
13. Death Slug – Looking at the Death Slug’s deadliness and how that’s similar to old-school and low fantasy games.
14. Evil Eye – Various types of “Evil Eyes”: magic items, monsters, or curses.
15. Morzo Moth – A look at the Morzo Moth’s talents/actions makes one see the variety of the Western Reaches book’s monsters.
16. Diamond – Three subtopics: diamonds impacting economy; as spell components for rituals or spells not-yet-accessible; and a enhancements for magic weapons.
17. Slime – Game-able aspects of mundane slime as well as a green slime monster for Shadowdark.
18. Wyrdling – Shows how different and fun Shadowdark can be with this unusual class as an example of how much design freedom a creator of GM has.
19. Stingbat – Renaming (or even not giving creatures names) re-establishes the sense of wonder players had when fantasy was new to them.
20. Poison – A list of how poison is used in the core book, grouped by use & types of effects, plus a few new ideas.
21. Grumby Billows – A tribute to Shadowdarklings, the online free character generator (and more!) for Shadowdark.
22. Blood – Varying & unsual ways to use blood in your game.