LOWLIFE SUMMER
29 days ago
– Tue, Jun 02, 2026 at 11:09:43 AM
Welcome to Summer! Here's the news...
Sean's father, the pianist Philip Aaberg died last week, so Sean has been going slower than usual. Sean is taking care of himself & family.
This time of year is full of birthdays! Sean is turning fifty on the seventh & our youngest son James turned sixteen last week.
Still, Sean has been busily writing material for LowLife, he is particularly excited about the direction the magic is going - splitting the difference between actual occult practice & gaming fun - in particular is the names of spells & going from understanding them as a root principle & then branches with particular & idiosyncratic names like Psychotic sky, Iron Shirt & Plague of Zombies.
The idea is that magic users create their own spells that are very personable & so they don't have generic names or outcomes, they are all highly specific to reflect the nature of the magician & how they came up. Imagine their spellbooks like the sketchbooks of artists or the black books of graffiti writers!
Mustafa Bekir has been working hard on the map of Bödengärd & it's looking amazing. We'll post that up when we have something presentable to show you.
Meanwhile, Katie has also been sidelined by this death, but she is working on getting the Backerkit for LowLife together. We expect it to launch by the middle of this month.
x SEAN & KATIE
LOWLIFE ATTAINED!
about 2 months ago
– Sun, May 03, 2026 at 10:04:13 AM
Wow! Thanks for everyone believing in this project, in GOBLINKO. LowLife means more than "A DUNGEON DEGENERATES role playing game", it represents the energy to launch GOBLINKO into the direction of this role playing game & all the expansiveness it entails.
In the ten years since we started work on Hand of Doom, we've been through a lot. We've taken every major change as a learning opportunity, we've learned a lot. Sean has spent a tremendous amount of time studying game design, writing, marketing, psychology, the occult & more... he's read more books in the last three years than he has in the twenty prior!
We're bringing all this & more with LowLife & again, thank you deeply for supporting this project & knowing that we'll bring it.
Best.
SEAN & KATIE
TOWARDS BRÜTTELBURG
2 months ago
– Fri, May 01, 2026 at 11:27:25 AM
TOWARDS BRÜTTELBURG
The farmlands surrounded & fed Brüttelburg, the biggest city in the eastern provinces of the Würstreich. She knew little about the city except that good people should avoid it. Despite those feelings, or maybe because of them, she felt drawn to it.
The road wound its way through the fields & soon she saw the top of Brüttelburg looming in the distance & mountains further to the east of that.
The city was archaic & abnormal, a majestic merger of rock formations & man-made construction topped off with a series of towers that looked to hold rounded furnaces that belched pink smoke.
Brüttelburg was layered in three parts like her sister’s wedding cake. Each stratum had a massive, monstrous maw that served as an entry to that area. Wide stairways led up & through each of these mouths. Brüttelburg was more than just a big city, it was a sepulchral, pulsating megalopolis, a living thing.
As Mina wound her way on the road to Brüttelburg followed by Rudolf, through collapsed stone battlements & enormous megalithic structures placed there by some forgotten race the city filled more of the horizon.
Flag-topped, pointy towers jutted out of the top & red shingled roofs covered every surface that sheltered the city from the weather. Mina found herself staring in awe at the city, It looked like it had been summoned out of the ground. She couldn’t believe the immensity of Brüttelburg. It was the biggest thing she had ever seen.
Mina approached the first step of the entrance, past clusters of peddlers selling their wares & every other kind of person slowly making their way inside. She was reminded again of the city’s enormity, losing count of the wide, stone steps as she made her way in.
Occasionally the air would shift out of Brüttelburg & the smell of concentrated, cramped people, human & animal waste was almost overpowering. The stench stung Mina’s eyes, she tried to breathe only through her mouth to give her nose a break. The summer sun was cooking the filth. Rudolf sniffed the air furiously, it was almost too much for the dog.
Brüttelburg was the oldest, biggest city in the Würstreich. It had been built on the ruins of an ancient, alien structure. The epic & imposing masonry had a feeling as if it was grown or magically manipulated & then filled in & built on top of by the newer occupants.
The city had an eldritch, mysterious, tomb-like nature to it. The tribal Valhal avoided the place calling it “die Krypta”, letting it lie dormant for centuries. Emerging from the Valhal, the Würst actively dismissed what they saw as any kind of superstitious motivation so they claimed the city as their own.
Once inhabited, Brüttelburg grew rapidly. The city operated as a Bulwark for the spread of Imperial power. The Würst stood on the shoulders of giants & discovered many of their secrets.
From Rats in the Rathaus, forthcoming in the Weird Stories of the DUNGEON DEGENERATES by Sean Äaberg, series coming soon!
Brüttelburg was built on the ruins of a more ancient city & civilization that the Würst Empire won’t acknowledge. Brüttelburg is divided into three layers: The Understadt, The Middenstadt & The Obenstadt. Under, Middle & Over. These layers of the city correspond roughly to the classes that dominate each, but there is a little bleed over.
Under the city is a messy labyrinth of tunnels which begin as the Understadt Dungeons but quickly give way to a series of sinuous ancient tunnels carved into the stone that are too complex & convuluted to be controlled. Because of this, the passageways are home to unnumbered abominations that make their dwelling in the dark.
THE UNDERSTADT
The Understadt is the home to teeming throngs of the underclass & their fleas & lice. The Unterstadt contains most of Brüttelburg's factories.
The light of the sun never reached this forlorn, claustrophobic area & fresh air was just as rare. The scum & filth of the Würstreich coalesce there, filling that soupy recess in the cyclopean ruins, an urban abscess.
The Unterstadt is damp & stagnant, choked with the smoke from constantly burning torches. It is made out of rotting ghettos, blood soaked slaughterhouses & indefatigable factories that spew as much smoke & pollution as they do products.
Some areas have been flooded, others taken over by things that see in the dark & have mouth’s full of sharp teeth, others collapsed & empty.
The Empire viewed it as a lost cause & do not patrol the Unterstadt. This lawlessness allowed for both Goblins & the pagan Gütter to carve out niches for themselves.
Gangs & private security patrol the streets making it secure if you belong & dangerous if you don't. The Unterstadt also contains several graveyards, because they refused the fees & indoctrination into the Imperial Necropolis.
The Understadt does have running water, piped up from the springs that have been accessed by the tunnels under Brüttelburg but it costs money, so it is not as common as it could be.
Your average Understadt peasant eats a diet heavy in beer, sausages & bread with little vegetables, finery or variation.
THE MIDDENSTADT
The Middenstadt is a more refined, restrictive zone above the Understadt. The Middenstadt is much more organized & less chaotic than the Understadt. The streets are lined with neat & tidy shops that cater to the whims of the Würstreich’s middle class who cling to their precarious position with surprising ferocity.
It is because of this devotion to their station that the Middenstadt is more heavily policed than the Understadt & the Oberstadt. This is insisted upon by the Middle Class Würst that occupy the Middenstadt to keep the rabble under control & keep their position in the pyramid secured.
There are state police & private police to maintain order in the Middenstadt. The Understadt is policed by the Schläger, who are basically glorified thugs devoted to law & order that they enforce happily with their truncheons & the Würstreich law: The Fleishwolf.
The law is so Byzantine that no one can be fluent in it, but the gangs of Schläger are lead by an UberSchläger accompanied by book dwarfs that are chained to the Fleishwolf & a lawyer (Blutsauger) that reads from the book to whoever is being punished. When punishment has been dealt, the whole affair is sealed personally by the attending UberSchläger.
Your average Middenstadter eats a diet heavy in actual identifiable cuts of meat, circular pretzels called Orobrotzel, beer, cider, wine & spirits, vegetables, baked goods & even breakfast & desserts.
While the Middenstadt is safer than the Understadt, it is not without its controlled chaos. The Middenstadt has its own varieties of drugs & the ubiquitous Scratch, while used is looked down upon.
The residents of the Middenstadt go whole hog on a variety of festivals because they can afford to & they have plenty of steam to blow off & extra income to blow. There are also frequent fireworks displays that echo the Würstreich’s military power for all to see.
KURBISMORD
Sports are popular in the Würstreich, the more violent the better! A game called Kürbismord is unique to the Würstreich.
Kürbismord is played with two teams of 13 players with an active on pitch team of 7 going up against each other on a field & trying to get a pumpkin into a well in the center of the field with their feet, hands, whatever.
Points are scored by the team landing the pumpkin into the well, but it is not frowned upon to seriously injure the opposing team. The game ends when the pumpkin breaks, so games can range from seconds to hours in length.
Rival supporters have petty street fights over these sporting events, while the matches erupt into riots in the Understadt with entire blocks being torched & anything that is not bolted down stolen & everything clean, dirtied.
THE BOMBAST
Würstreichers love the drama & spectacle of the Bombast, an opera-like event where fantastically costumed singers & accompanying orchestras perform a narrative piece of music depicting a glorious mythological epic or a tragic love story.
Cannons shoot food & small presents into the audience, enormous pipe organs belch out colored smoke, crackling fireworks launch out over the crowd’s heads & there are even some surprises all in the confines of enormous theatres which are also called Bombasts. While everyone loves the Bombast, only the Middenstadt can support the operation of its own Bombast theatres.
THE OBENSTADT
The Obenstadt rises high above the Middenstadt. It is very difficult to enter the Obenstadt & once you’re in, it isn’t heavily policed although private guards are on call all the time.
The Obenstadt is dominated by the Alchemical Towers. Towers that hold are topped off with spheroid laboratories that peer down over the city & belch pink smoke.
The Obenstadt is full of well-tended gardens, meandering pathways & the manors of Brüttelburg’s elite. The heads of church & state live there in comfort separate from the rabble they rule over.
Your typical Obenenstadter eats a diet heavy in the finest cuts of meat, beer, wine or spirits & fresh vegetables, some are so decadent that they try the fad diets that arrive from the West of the Würstreich.
Food & other, less mentionable things are imported from far & wide to satisfy the limitless hungers of the ruling class.
It is helpful to think of Brüttelburg refining itself upwards, the dungeons on the bottom are a hellish maze where anything goes & they are ruled with an iron fist, the Understadt is a cramped hive of sweat & sewage, the Middenstadt has more elbow room & better taverns & the Obenstadt is wholly untouched by the rabble below, in fact there are whispers that they want to replace humanity altogether.
My goal with LowLife, a DUNGEON DEGENERATES TTRPG is to deeply explore the Würstreich & the surrounding lands of Bödengärd. A role playing game allows for that kind of dialing into the detail that isn’t possible with the linear confines of a board game.
We’re down to the final hours of the campaign & my goal at this point is to build the nest egg so that I really concentrate on this project this summer & dump my best, undivided energy into it. So, back & share this project & thanks for allowing me the privilege of producing this work.
X SEAN
THE THING IN THE FILTHWAYS
2 months ago
– Thu, Apr 30, 2026 at 09:23:59 AM
Olaf & Max are the central characters used as an example in LowLife, a DUNGEON DEGENERATES role playing game.
Turds, trash & body parts bobbed in what once passed for water. Rats watched from the shadows. Their cold, reflective eyes glinted in the weird light that emanated from Max’s hand.
The waste from the massive but clean & orderly city of Überheim flowed into the Filthways below. The stagnant air was humid, septic. Olaf & Max tried not to breathe deep, fearing that something nasty would grow in their lungs. They had to stop to catch their breath but gagged on the thick, miasmal stench. The dull eyes of the dead-again Alive-Again stared wide & empty.
They had just finished chopping through what seemed like hundreds of the Alive-Again. Their already rotting bodies gave way to Olaf’s cleavers like butter & the pieces went flying.
The walls dripped with condensation & a foul mold grew in the cracks. Even with their high ceilings, the tunnels felt controlling, ominous, like the veins of a rotten animal.
The Filthways of Überheim were a disgusting contrast to the prosperous & peaceful polis they served. “As above, not so below this time.” Noted Max.
“You’re right, but I prefer this to above.” Said Olaf wiping the syruppy, black blood of the Dead-Again off his face.
Max wasn’t comfortable around weapons & didn’t want to stand in front of anything where confrontation loomed. He had barely gotten over the shock of having his nice, presentable clothes drenched in the stinking muck.
Max was more than content in staying back & lighting up the stone walls of the sewers with the weird magical light he was able to conjure. His nose trickled blood as he concentrated.
Olaf, on the other hand, lived for the feeling of his blades going through flesh & bone. He was very comfortable with the accompanying mess. It meant he was doing what he was supposed to do.
If Olaf swung hard enough & at the right angle he could chop through the bone too. It was extremely satisfying to dismember body after body, it reminded him of his job as a butcher.
He quietly muttered an old butcher’s poem he learned while still an apprentice. “Your blood, my blood, does it matter? It’s all meat. Everything is good, as long as the knives cut.”
“Poetry at a time like this?”
“You look like you’d like poetry.”
“I’m too nervous for poetry.”
As they waded around the corner they came face to face with the thing that had been pulling the unwary into the sewers & dismembering them.
The creature was horrible, a mix between a crab, a hairless chimpanzee & a very angry man. The thing made a nauseating blubberous, bubbling sound. It clamped its claws & chewed the air as it waited to engage the two.
“A face that a mother would leave at the edge of the woods.” Said Olaf.
“Poor bastard.”
Max & Olaf braced themselves.
In that moment the creature concentrated, it looked almost civilized, like it was trying to speak…
We'd like to hit 666 backers for this thing! It just seems right. So please, share this project with your people, on your socials, reddit. Discord, email list, wherever. Let's build the horde & gain the number of the beast!
THE SNAP BACK
2 months ago
– Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 10:27:30 AM
The first thing I thought after learning that I had had a stroke, was, “This doesn’t happen to me.” I was partially paralyzed, on oxygen, intubated, with hoses coming out of my head, my groin, my stomach. It was a lot.
Being intubated, I couldn’t speak so Katie came up with a letter board that I would use to communicate. I had to point to letters with the arm that could still move & hope that whoever I was talking to could keep up with me.
Later, after learning from Katie & various doctors about the situation & how dire it had been, we came to the conclusion that avoiding the stroke was impossible & that the lucky thing about it was that I was still alive & even though I had died & basically every bodily system failed on me. Most of them came back online.
I never got a concrete “why” I had the stroke. No one, not the doctors or informed family could give me a definitive answer. I know that I had a number of factors but they lacked the overarching narrative that I always look for, that I always create.
Around twenty years ago I read Richard Cavendish’s book “The Black Arts”. This was probably the best overview on magic I have seen. His theory that all magic is essentially "black" because it is rooted in the human desire for power, selfishness & the manipulation of reality really stood out. He argues that the distinction between "white" & "black" magic is largely illusory.
I was thinking about Richard Cavendish’s concept that the Universe corrects, frequently overcorrects for the bending of reality that is required for magic & then I found myself struck down, in the hospital, immobilized.
This idea resounded to me, & especially after I had the stroke. I saw that all the magic I did in Eugene in order to be successful probably led to a massive “Snap Back” which resulted in a stroke which killed me & reduced me to zero, after having been at 150% for a decade.
I didn’t put it together while I was doing it, but I was using myself, my hard work as the necessary energy to trade for being able to bend reality. I was my own sacrifice, burnt offerings.
I don’t write about my occult practices/studies very often because it is so easy to dismiss them as insane ramblings or wishful thinking. However, I am trying to be honest here, with you. Centrally, I don’t “just believe” these things because I want to. No, I have witnessed these things in my life.
I began toying with pragmatic magic when I started to understand how luck worked & saw my own luck increase as I performed certain tasks. I threw away any pennies that I found, I burned incense as an offering, I found the patterns in reality & emphasized them, I used the same numbers, words, colors, repeatedly.
I gave back to the Universe an appreciation for creation, in turn I increased my lucky breaks. It was small things, like parking spots opening up for me, police leaving me alone, timing being perfect, being able to find things without looking for them.
Eventually, I started seeing the characters in my art appear in reality, repeatedly. It would make sense that each artwork was a spell.
Science grew out of occult studies, because understanding the nature of reality went against the teachings of the Catholic Church. If we go back to Francis Bacon & Isaac Newton we come to the truism of physics that every action has an equal & opposite reaction.
Space is a closed energy system. The Snap Back is an inescapable law of esoteric physics. I warped the probability around myself to draw in luck. With that energetic shift, I created a vacuum of probability. The stroke was simply the universe rushing in to violently equalize the pressure.
While I was writing the magic system for LowLife, it wasn’t coming from conjecture or just as some kind of nerdy world-building exercise, it was an attempt to put into words what I have actually experienced.
Ultimately, anyone offering an easy way out, a magical fix, or a sudden stroke of luck is selling you a debt that will eventually be collected with interest. The Snap Back is the reason life, that LowLife is a grinder. Every time someone tries to rise above their station using unnatural means, the world breaks their legs.
A million years ago I was given a shout-out in a Punk zine that talked about not seeing me at shows for a bit. The writer talked about the candle that burns bright, burning out faster. That was thirty years ago, I was 18.
However, this isn’t a cautionary tale of flying too close to the sun. I still think that you need to run the engine ragged & really push it, it’s just very important to know that you end up doing real damage.
X SEAN
