Troika Dungeon Jam: Pairs

Pairs is an independent production by Franc and is not affiliated with the Melsonian Arts Council.

For the Troika Community Jam 2024: Dungeon.

Four pairs of paintings, stuffed into this space between walls. Dust blows out when the facade is peeled back, coating your face.

They are facing each other, so that the paintings must be removed and pried apart to reveal the image. Soft breaths and whispers can be heard from between the sandwiched portraits. 

• pry apart: The paintings came to sentience over countless aeons, knowing nothing but the suffocation of total darkness and the proximity of another. To them, life is a gift and it is torture, and to live is to love. Separation induces a whirlwind of emotions. For each pair, roll on the reaction table below. 
• inspect paintings: When a painting's contents is inspected, the first preference is to make it an interesting piece of lore or a clue relevant to your game. Otherwise, peruse the public domain portraits on the next page.

2d6	Reaction
2-	With a great wet sucking noise the lovers embrace so tightly as to defeat metaphysics. The paintings come apart empty. Between staggers something new. See Beast with Two Backs.
3-5	Shell-shocked by light and space and distance. One begs to be torn to shreds and burnt. The other pleads to be made flesh and blood.
6-8	Inconsolable unless put back together or calmed down.
9-11	Barters information (all false). In return they want to be displayed side by side somewhere safe, bright, and warm.
12+	The rumours are true! The Outer World is real! The pair of paintings begs to join their saviours in their travels. They want to see everything.

Beast with Two Backs 

 Cut open old tubes of flesh-coloured oil paint, coil the gelatinous oblongs of aged pigment around each other, and toss in several wrongly-shaded features: eyes, ears, noses, and limbs. The Beast stamps around like a blind toddler having a tantrum. 

Skill: 5

Stamina: 18 

Initiative: 4 

Armour: 1 (unfeeling) 

Damage: 2 attacks, as Unarmed 

Special: If both attacks hit, Test Luck or be stuffed into a painting for 3 Turns in a dimly lit realm of paint. Inhabitants moan softly from misrendered mouths. The real world is a moving painting that you can observe and shout words through. If you try to climb through it too early, your body comes out blurry and wrong like an undried first draft.