- The world hangs by a thread of fate. To sever this golden cord is to plunge all of creation into chaos. A world without gods or their justice, where rebirth is the only possible salvation...
And to be reborn, one must die.
Blackbirds is a Dark Fantasy horror tabletop roleplaying game, powered by the Zweihänder system.
The gods are dead, butchered by a cabal of mortal Oligarchs in a mad quest for godhood. Their horrific act rent the fabric of reality, allowing corrupt magic to undermine the world’s natural order, filling the lands with supernatural horror, merciless violence, and endless war. And soon, the Oligarchs will return to the mortal plane and remake it as they desire.
The players take the role of Blackbirds, people whose very beings have become entwined with the weft of Fate following the deaths of the Norns, and who will have important roles to play in the coming days.
Blackbirds contains examples of the following tropes:
- Attack Failure Chance:
- Critical Failure: In general, rolling a natural 100 or a high multiple of 11 on any skill test will result in a critical failure as well. A natural 01 or a low multiple of 11 will instead result in a critical success. One during spell casting may summon Daemons of Chaos, render you impotent, render you and your party and your distant relatives impotent, or merely give you an insanity point. Guns tend to simply blow up.
- Attempting to cast a Vitiation or a Spell requires a skill test, and critically or sublimely failing this test can cause some horrible effect to the target or the caster, depending on the spell. For example, attempting to magically empower a nearby weapon will instead destroy it on a Critical Failure, or destroy all nearby equipment on a sublime failure.
- Body Horror: It would frankly be easier to list the monsters that this didn't apply to. A few highlights:
- Most forms of The Undead are visibly rotting away, with the Striga also having monstrous fleas emerging from their mouths.
- The Wolfen literally shed their human skin, and the intermediate phases between human and wolf often have their human body twist in nightmarish ways as their wolf head emerges form their human mouth.
- The Elfwrought are humans twisted by the Aes art of Fleshcrawl, transformed into abominations like the vaguely-canid Cu-Sith and the many-legged Elfmount.
- The Barkborn are humans transformed by the warped influence of Yggdrasil's blackened, blighted stump, transformed into plant-like insectoid horrors.
- Deal with the Devil: The one of the setting's main magic systems is Theurgy, whereby a Theurge bargains with an Outsider to exchange some service for magical power.
- Death of the Old Gods: The gods of old are dead, slaughtered by the Oligarchs in their bid for godhood.
- Evil Weapon: There are several of them, most of which are Outsiders in weapon form.
- The Sinew Arc is an Outsider in the form of a bow made of jointed bones. In order to use it, the wielder must pierce each end of a living person's limb with each end of the bow, which tears out the tendons of the limb to serve as the string and the bones to serve as an arrow. The Arc is sentient, evil, and communicates its desires through nightmares that also serve as a form of torture to make its wielder do as it wants.
- The Sisters are a pair of daggers which are supernaturally easy to conceal and lethal to those not expecting an attack. They also are able to tell their wielders if killing someone would in some way improve the wielder's life. Each one is also a Clingy Macguffin that becomes harder and harder to get rid of the more they have been used. Each dagger is an Outsider in the form of a blade, which choose separate people to corrupt and manipulate until the wielders are willing to kill even without reason. The two wielders inevitably come to a confrontation with unspeakable bloodshed, cruelty, and tragedy as a result.
- Gracious Compliance was forged from the body of an Aes diplomat by the ancient people of Corbellus before their downfall. The mind of the Aes lives on in the weapon, and is a deceitful, treacherous thing that seeks the death of all mortals.
- Harping on About Harpies: Harpies were once servants of the death god Corvus, tasked with collecting the souls of the dead who are unable or unwilling to pass on, and sheperding them to the land of the dead. With Corvus's death, harpies have no place to bring the souls they collect, instead hoarding them in their nests. They are also capable of seeing the Imprint of Fate upon Blackbirds, leading to the harpie becoming oddly fixated on them, often attempting to kill, aid, or request the help of any Blackbird they find.
- Kraken and Leviathan: The Kraken is merely a massive and ferocious squid, but the Leviathan is something far more than that. The Leviathan is a colossal sea monster, so large as to devour a n entire ship in a single gulp and so mighty that even the direct intervention of an Oligarch or and Outsider Lord can affect it at all, and even they can only do so temporarily.
- Magic Misfire: Attempting to cast a Vitiation or a Spell requires an skill test, and critically or sublimely failing this test can cause some horrible effect to the target or the caster, depending on the spell. For example, attempting to magically empower a nearby weapon will instead destroy it on a critical failure, or destroy all nearby equipment on a sublime failure.
- Our Vampires Are Different: The Striga are oversized, intelligent, parasitic arthropods who kill humans and puppeteer their corpses, using them to masquerade as human and collect blood. Over time they grow larger and larger, until they fully shed their decaying shells and transform into the enormous Titan Casks.
- Religion is Magic: Aside from Theurgy, the other source of magic available to mortals are Wortcunning Spells, which take the form of prayers and rituals dedicated to the old gods.
