Periodic Table Day: The Rock Lords

Hey folks! Today is Periodic Table Day 2025, and as a result, a bunch of us in the Prismatic Wasteland server have decided to grace your table with some elemental-themed gaming goodness! For my contribution, I decided to reach back to my childhood and make something for Black Sword Hack based on my own childhood, and some songs I just couldn’t get out of my head…

What's the most musical field of science? Geology, because of all the rock!

It is well-known that in the great battle between Law and Chaos, the High Elementals and the Beast Lords have declared neutrality. Their children, however, are under no such obligation, and freely offer their boons to those mortals with the will to seek them. While each of the Five Elements have their own proclivities and pacts, we will focus today on the spawn of the High Elemental of Stone, the Rock Lords. 

Of the Children of Stone, Shale the Sedentary is the least active. A staunch proponent of law, Shale finds great comfort in the fact that he is his father’s favorite. Ruler of the sedimentary rocks, his host contains the fossilized creatures of eons past, making him a favored patron of Lawful-aligned necromancers.

Making a demonic pact with Shale grants the power of Burden, rendering the target sluggish in both thought and deed for d6 hours. On a 1, you are slowed instead. 

All that dies has its bones claimed by the earth

Oryn Once-Flow finds themself in a difficult position among the Rock Lords. Being a bastard child of Fire and Stone, they have always been the black sheep of the family, and the transitory state of their subjects (ranging from their herald, Nightglass, to the Pumicelings) leaves them caught in the lurch between Law and Chaos. Oryn teaches that only by mastering the turbulence within oneself can one achieve true peace.

Making a demonic pact with Oryn Once-Flow grants the power of Congeal, turning d6 cubic feet of a body of liquid  the invoker can see into a solid. On a 1, your blood congeals instead, dealing d6 damage. 

You slow, you stop, and you calcify.

Everlyn, Lady of the Metamorphics, was always the black sheep of the family. Never the son her father wanted, and frustrated by her father’s inability to change with the time as the world neared its end, she rose up against him, only to be struck down and grievously scarred in the process. It was there, at her lowest point, that she realized who she was, and began to realize just how futile change from the inside was. Now, she leads the outcasts, those deemed malformed and deficient by society, as she harnesses her new allies among the powers of Chaos to make ready for true upheaval. 

Making a demonic pact with Everlyn grants the power of Fluctuate, forcing a target into a messy and painful process taking d6 minutes, at the end of which they assume a new form of similar structure and mass. On a 1, that process is instead inflicted on you.

Family is a crucible all its own.