1d10 martial arts manuals found in the Stygian Library

17 Nov, 2025

For use with Loch’s duelist.

On Wrestling

Brittle papyrus rotulus held together by dusty oaken rods. The proper style of wrestling, as dictated by Sthenelos, transcribed by Phaon, and translated by Marcus Oppius.

1. Stance: Slippery. So long as you are naked and oiled, your AC cannot be lower than 14. Your AC cannot be lower than 16 versus an opponent who fights with sheer might, and an opponent who takes you to the ground is immune to this style’s effects.
2. Stance: Sheer might. So long as you are naked and oiled, your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 damage. You overpower an opponent who attempts to take you to the ground, dealing 1d8 instead, but only 1d4 to a slippery opponent.
3. Stance: To the ground. So long as you are naked and oiled, add your strength to your to-hit bonus. Add it twice versus a slippery opponent, but an opponent who fights with sheer might overwhelms you and is immune to this style’s effects.
4. Lesson: Oratory. So long as you are naked and oiled, you cannot be ignored or disrespected.

Tactical Response and Operations Standard for Law Enforcement Agencies, Fourth Edition

Letter-size, spiral-bound handbook compiled by the National Tactical Officers Association. Red-inked underlines and marginalia detail a style entirely irrelevant without explosives and automatic ranged weaponry.

1. Technique: Suppressive fire. Instead of expending half a magazine of ammunition per round, anticipate the enemy’s movements and only expend triple bullets per round. This can be done even with a weapon which lacks a magazine, and you reload for free regardless of the firearm.¹
2. Technique: Close-quarters shooting. You can fire a gun at someone you’re grappling with without penalty.
3. Technique: Ricochet. Shoot an unseen target without penalty by ricocheting the bullet around a corner. A missile that can ricochet around corners under normal circumstances is perfectly aimed, bypassing the need for an attack roll.
4. Lesson: Demolitions. You can always identify the weakest point in a building’s construction and know precisely how much explosives will damage something the way you intend. This knowledge can be utilized equally to safely demolish a skyscraper or jury-rig cover in a firefight.

Martial Forms of Catarina as Chiseled in the Stone

A series of water-eroded figural images carved into a barnacle-covered stele. A granite-panoplied warrior showcases her style upon a spur of bare rock in the middle of the ocean, unshakeable.

1. Stance: Unshakeable. You can’t be knocked off your feet or moved so long as both feet are planted upon solid earth. While standing in place, you gain a +2 bonus to your AC.
2. Technique: Topple. If someone misses an attack against you, knock them prone and immediately attack them in return.
3. Technique: Crush. Freely step on a prone target’s extremity to hinder them: kick their hand to disarm them, pin a foot to prevent them from standing up. If wearing stone panoply, the extremity is instead crushed beyond recognition, a mangled sack of flesh and bones and blood.²
4. Lesson: Stone panoply. She whispers to you: “Adorn yourself, O Beloved, in granite and basalt, in marble and slate.” Whenever you stand on bare stone, you can sink into it and emerge an hour later wearing it as a suit of armor. Stone panoply acts as heavy armor that confers resistance to all mundane weaponry. It is also literally stone, with all the weight and properties that entails.

A Vindicaeson of the Newble Sckoole of Self Defens: A Semple Arte of Graet Ymport Called 'Vulger' bye Sowtherly Fools Hew Haeve Forgoten Black Edricke

A grubby pocket-book bound in black leather. Written by Cinioth of Albernlaste, who remembers the dread demesne of the deathless king in the north and teaches a style meant to prevent him from ever again carving himself a kingdom.

1. Stance: The posaeson of the Legs and hoelding of the Hands and levell of the Blayd wich strikes feer in the Hart of the Dred Wyzard. You gain advantage on saves versus spells while in this stance and wielding a silver blade. Drop out of it to immediately deflect a spell cast upon you upon its caster, adding any of your own MD that you’d like in the process.
2. Technique: The cutt of a Newble Blayde for the sevring of a Wyzard’s magick frum its Crowne and the thefte for his own Purposes. If you successfully attack a magician with a silver blade, attempt to steal their MD. The magician wagers however many MD they want from their pool (minimum one) and rolls them as if casting a spell. Compare their [sum] with the damage dealt by your attack. If your damage is higher, you steal their wagered MD; otherwise they retain their MD.³ So long as you have their stolen MD, a magician can never replace them (e.g., a four MD magician from whom you steal two becomes, essentially, a two MD magician until you use your two new MD).
3. Lesson: The Arte of crafting Holy Oyles to keep the bliss-full slumbr of the Resting Dead and bannish the Dead Hew Walk. You know how to prepare a tincture of herbs and oils which can prevent a corpse from being raised from the dead for ten and one generations. So long as you have committed no sin since your last confession, you can flick it from your fingers to repel the undead (as holy water).
4. Lesson: The Arte of smelling the bael-full Corps-Smell and haring the sylent Dead Hew Walk. You can smell a human corpse from two hundred feet. If you stay perfectly still for a full minute, you can hear the difference between a dark room which is silent and a dark room in which someone is not making a sound.

KILLING-ARTS of the Triune Gilgamesh

A series of clay tablets, one third of a set: STATECRAFT and LAMENTATIONS are the other two arts of the Gilgamesh. Cuneiform writing details a style of killing meant for a warrior with three heads and six arms.

1. Lesson: Three heads. You possess panoramic vision and cannot be surprised so long as two of your heads are awake and alert. You have advantage on initiative rolls if all three of your heads are awake and alert. Soporifics affect only one head at a time.
2. Lesson: Six arms. You can attack a new foe once per round with every weapon you wield over one, up to a maximum of two additional weapons (and thus two additional foes).
3. Lesson: Six hands. You can dual-wield medium and heavy weapons. Ultra weapons wielded with a third hand no longer suffer disadvantage.
4. Lesson: One will. You are immune to possession and enchantment, lest it be threefold strong, and you roll versus harmful magic thrice and take the best result.

One Sword and One Man, One Spirit

The first of ten treatises written by Aio Madhavacharya, who roamed the kingdom during Silver Vikramarka's ascendancy with only a sword as his companion. The two had with them only their clothes—his linen, hers wood—and each other. Upon their return home, they put to paper the style which came to them upon the road.

1. Stance: Wanderer. A forced march does not exhaust you, and you can sleep outdoors in inclement weather without penalty.
2. Stance: Accompaniment. Your sword is always at hand when you need her. Once per round, reroll a missed attack; she jumps to your aid.
3. Technique: Flowing water cut. Like the trickle of water which carves the canyon, with proper technique anything can be cut. An iron lock, the enemy’s sword, the stone tomb seal—cut cleanly through any single object with a single stroke. Particularly magical objects are owed a save.
4. Lesson: Animism. You can speak with all swords. Only ancient or notable blades really have much to say.

For the Birds

Violent account of a bravo captain’s betrayal by her closest companion and the bloody path she walked on her way to regain control of her gang. Racy prose details an ostentatious style fit for hardened killers.

1. Stance: Opulence. So long as you are wearing more expensive and flamboyant fashion than all your enemies combined, they must check morale before rolling initiative. Additionally, they shall never frighten you nor break your morale.
2. Stance: Knife games. You score critical hits on a roll of 18–20. On a 1, roll an attack against yourself.
3. Technique: Feud. Proclaim your dominance over a foe to gain a to-hit bonus against them equal to your level; they gain an equal bonus against you. Should you hit them with an attack, deal additional damage equal to your level. You cannot use this technique again until you defeat and humiliate the targeted foe.
4. Lesson: Hunting-calls. So long as you wear their colors, you can whistle to nearby corpse-birds via short, four-word-maximum commands in a language only you and they understand; they respond to you in this same shrill language. They will not die for you, but little else is off the table. Executions are a favorite pastime.

Regicide

A lengthy strip of stitched-together deerskin whose edges are inwoven with a dozen tokens made of feathers hammered into keratin. It is the autobiography of the first man to kill a king, a man whose handprint is the central ideogram. A thousand ekphrastic tangents cohere into a single whole: a style for the statesman who orders the deviant, who binds that which is change.

1. Stance: Possession. A book is a pattern and a pattern is an image. Let it wash over you; understand it. Take on a regal bearing; drape yourself in finery. Give up control to a truly royal will.
2. Technique: Nightmare. In lieu of an attack, speak a waking dream. A target who can hear you takes 2d8 damage. It always hits, but roll an attack regardless—on an 18–20, it is a critical hit which deals 2d12 damage instead. Their heart stops for just a beat; an old nightmare remembered, a beak longer than their outstretched arm. The war machine, redirected.
3. Technique: Nomadology. Speak aloud a truth yet unknown to you, but nonetheless coherent to the pattern. Should metallurgy, adornment, or decimal organization solve a problem solvable by ten humans working for ten hours each, it is solved in an instant, and your eyes burn with a terrible majesty.
4. Lesson: Idealism. You now possess not just language, but Language. You can make yourself known to any thing that has the capacity for imagistic thought, and they cannot deny you.

Self-Musing

A handheld wax tablet upon which is scratched hardly twenty lines of messy text: one man’s terse musings, a withdrawal into himself. His style of fighting mirrors his style of living: but one among many, a duty accepted.

1. Stance: Shield wall. So long as you are holding a shield, you also gain the AC bonus of any adjacent allies who wield their own shields.
2. Stance: Front-line support. Adjacent allies add your to-hit bonus on top of their own.
3. Technique: Hold the line. Make a free attack against an enemy that approaches within your reach.
4. Lesson: Brothers-in-arms. Spout the tablet’s philosophy in a public forum over the course of a day and 1d4 wayward youths will be drawn to your cause to take up arms. They have only the combat training you give them and are dour conversationalists, but they follow your orders blindly. You can never have more than four brothers-in-arms at a time or else they begin to have the free time to find holes in your shared philosophy.

Secrets of the Children of Saveriu Compiled

A mismatched set of paper artifacts all compiled in a plastic briefcase. Diagrams of firearms on translucent sheets of paper, essays written in a cramped hand, letters drafted on loose leaf paper—all of which, together, teach a forbidden, dangerous style of killing at a distance.

1. Stance: Reflexive orientation. You can always right yourself in a disorienting situation (e.g., falling from a great height, being pulled quickly underwater, fighting in zero gravity).
2. Technique: Sharpshooting. In lieu of an attack, carefully assess a chosen target; your next attack against them is a critical hit.⁴
3. Lesson: Sci-fi engineering. You have a science-fictional sense of structural and mechanical engineering and can apply that knowledge as such.
4. Lesson: Gunsmithing. So long as you have the tools, you can construct an air rifle in eight hours from nothing but its base materials.

Two more styles exist in my drafts, but they must be kept secret for now.

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