Gongi, Uncommon, True Neutral, Any Road Throughout Jeosung at Night
There are desolate moments in an adventurer’s life, dark nights when death comes knocking and looks down on one’s soon-to-be corpse, waiting with a compassionless stare and a slight hint of impatience. In those moments, an adventurer’s true soul reveals itself. It may come in a simple stare back at death and a smile, like meeting an old friend, or it may emerge as a pitiful cry and begging for forgiveness. But Death isn’t a judge and doesn’t take sides, that is the job of others in the afterlife.
However, not all desperate moments in an adventurer’s life are so dramatic. Sometimes, what seems insurmountable emerges next to a warm campfire, surrounded by fellow adventurers, and accompanied by a dreadful sense that the adventure may simply soon come to an end. Failure is often anti-climactic but it leaks into an adventurer’s soul and takes ahold of the breath, the heartbeat, and can feel very much like death, except that death is part of the job while failure announces its end.
Bamsoolea is known as the faint light in the night. It appears with the tiny sound of jingle bell, on a road, while no one’s watching. No one has ever seen it move and yet, in its calm presence, there is a vibrance to it that makes it feel like it constantly needs to be somewhere. This spirit takes the form of a wooden pull-cart covered with a thatched roof and adorned with a lantern at the front, hanging from a flexible bamboo stick. Charms and other shamanic items are attached to all parts of it structure. Incense is always burning and the soft smell of mugwort adds to the calming presence of the cart. Inside of it is a diverse selection of edibles, random items, weapons and jesa: anything that may allow to turn the tide on an adventure. There is a life to it that can be felt when standing nearby, and the lantern is the only moving part as it turns and seems to “look” at the approach of onlookers. Its movements seem to follow the actions of its temporary customers, sometimes looking at specific items, as if recommending them, and often turning towards the deposit box at the back of the cart, as if to remind the buyers that nothing can be taken without an exchange.
When picking an item from the cart, buyers are expected to give something in return. It can be money or it can be any other possession that matches the value of the item.
Content of the cart, prices and value of exchanges are left at the GM’s discretion.
SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES
Unnoticed. No one has ever seen the cart move, appear or disappear. One moment there is nothing, and the next here it is, announcing itself with the sound of tiny bells. Once all transactions are completed, it will disappear only when no one’s watching, announcing its departure with the same sound of bells. There are a couple of reports gathered by the Seongsucheong mentioning groups of adventurers taking turns at keeping their eyes on the cart to continuously take advantage of the goods it offers. However, it always lead to a lapse in attention, either those adventurers fell asleep for a brief moment, or they were taken over by a fit of sneezing, which in both cases lead to the bell sound and disappearance of the cart.
Bound. Every item in the cart is magically bound to it until payment is made. If someone tries to take something without paying, the item will disappear as soon as the perpetrator steps out of the glow of light surrounding the cart, only to re-appear at its original place. Should the adventurers insist, the cart will move into its Immaterial state.
Immaterial. Once the atmosphere around the cart charges with negative intentions, the cart becomes immaterial. Any action taken against it, i.e. continuously trying to take items without paying or outright attacks on the structure of the cart, the perpetrators will no longer be able to touch its physical form. It will turn semi-transparent and while its image will stay in place, anyone trying to touch it, or its content, will pass through it. From that point on, no one will be able to interact with the cart’s physical form and it will disappear, unnoticed, as soon as no one pays attention to it.
Lottery of the Desperate. For adventurers in such a desperate situation that they can no longer afford any type of payment, they can pick-up a “Lottery Charm” hanging on the right beam at the back of the cart. The lottery charm will become bound to the adventurer. It can’t be discarded, transferred or sold, and as long as the debt is not paid, any valuables that can be used to repay it will disappear as soon as it comes into the possession of the adventurer, or one of his party members present during the roll of the dice.
The player whose character picks-up the charm must roll 1d10, 1d6 (per item) and 1d4. The results are as follow:
- 1d10 is the base amount owed,
- 1d6 is the multiplier, applied per item,
- 1d4 is the currency (1 = Gold, 2 = Silver, 3 = Copper, 4 = nothing)
If the player rolls a 4 on the 1d4, there is no amount due, but that result only applies on a single item, and the player will have to roll again for the other items. Let’s look at how the lottery works in action:
Ex.1: if the player rolls a 6 with the 1d10, a 3 with the 1d6 (for 1 item) and a 2 with the 1d4, the total amount owe is 6*3 = 18 silver.
Ex.2: If the player chooses to take 3 items, then the rolls should look like this: 1d10 (rolls a 4), 3d6 (rolls 1, 6, 3), 1d4 (rolls a 1), then the total amount owed is 4*(1+6+3) = 40 gold.
Tips for GMs: The best way to use the night cart is to make it appear when the players find themselves in a real bind that may jeopardize the entire adventure, making it less fun that it’s supposed to be. Bamsoolea only appears at night and on a road, so make sure that if you want to use it to help out your players, they should be taking some kind of rest not too far from a road. Finally, you must take note of the value owed by the adventurers if they choose to pick-up a lottery charm. While it should be the players’ responsibility to let the GM know when the valuables they receive later on disappear towards the debt, it’s also import that GMs keep an eye on it in case players forget.
NPCs & Spirits
The Koryo Hall of Adventures draws on Korean history and culture. The NPCs & Spirits series offers a range of NPCs, Series and lore to build on top of the Adventurer’s Guide to Jeosung book.
