Glaugust Challenge 3: The many qualities of night air

Space is full of invisible aetheric vapors everyone knows this. Not just light or sound comes out of there but mists and vapors as well. When the sun is gone all the stars can exude their strange little substances onto the surface of the planet and that is why night is all surreal and dreamlike. Here are some situations that occur when certain qualities collect in large amounts.

1. Pitch- The dark vapors of the void drip down onto the streets and drown them, an anti-light with the properties of water or the stuff in a lava lamp. Unlike normal darkness it has a waterline, check the window in your attic and you can see the sea of black below. There are things swimming in it which cannot leave it. It is advised to bar your doors and keep the curtains closed. Your house is now like a diving bell, a bubble of oxygen-visibility in an ocean floor of miasma. Don't let it bubble out, or you'll drown.

2. Haze- The illusory phantasms of the night congeal around corners and below beds, at the edges of lamp posts. If your game has encounter tables, flip a coin. Heads it isn't real, 2 the result is actually one of if not the worst options. Otherwise just lie all the time about what kind of things the players see, letting them pop illusions like soap bubbles until they hit something that's real. 

3. Doze- The in-and-out oblivion of a nap in a closet or under a rock. When you are flooded with Doze, everything seems not-quite-real. Is it almost morning? Have only 5 minutes passed? In Doze, you can advance the clock as much as you want, and describe your location arbitrarily on your character's turn. If you are in a space with a monster, you can leave by closing your eyes and re-opening them to be somewhere else. 1-in-3 chance that was a dream though, and you wake up right where you thought you left.

4. Warmth- Night under the blankets, with fireflies and a soft breeze. You can bottle this if you're a cold-hearted cynic, but for most people it comes upon them suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving them a little more at peace than it found them.

5. Frog- It's frogs. Frogs everywhere, but you can't see them. They don't really do much but you might have trouble sleeping unless you can block the noise. Frogs are liked because it means there isn't anything else out there. Not actually from space they just are a metaphysical anchor in nightly manifestations of ambient phenomena.

6. Crisp- Everything is sharp and clear under the starlight. It's like you can see the entire world from where you are. You can navigate perfectly but so can everything else, so long as you are under the open sky. Rather than rolling for random encounters, roll 2. They both see each other as well as the party. Territorial beasts might avoid each other, allied groups might gang up on you, enemies might ignore you to fight their rival.

7. Drone- It grows in cities. Amplifies the sounds of the streetlights and the fans, the steam fogging the streets, the lights blackening the skies above. Everything seems a little foreign, liminal, confusing. If you are on hexes or a grid, crossing from one to the other has the player roll a d6 or d4. On a 1, all is well. On a 2, they actually move to the hex/square to the right, even if it should be impossible. On a 3, the one after that, and so on, clockwise (and maybe sometimes counter-clockwise, change it up). Animals and natural creatures specifically hate this, but urban monsters and federal agents are unbothered, or can choose what direction to go in.

8. Cold- Moves you a layer down the spaces of the world. No one's here but you. Doors don't open, fires don't light. The chill is omnipresent and pervasive, but the space is finite. Leave Cold behind and turn around, all is as it should have been. But if you don't know you're in it, you might freeze before you can think to escape. And maybe you aren't really alone.

9. Must- clogged with the detritus of life. Spores and rotting leaves and that autumny smell. If you are loved by natural things it is rejuvenating, but agents of civilization or urbanity are repulsed. It is said that life originated on this wind, coming down from the stars to quicken primordial soup upon a barren rock.

10. Doubt- It scraps its claws across the nerves of thinking beings. Are they doing the right thing? Are they on the right track? Should they even be here? Should they even try? All but the most maniacally devoted may be made to question. You can talk to most monsters, if they can speak, and reason with them. The black wind of doubt can ignite a long night of the soul and crush your resolve, but if a wicked thing can be brought within it then it may be the catalyst of redemption.