Diseases Are Undead

In the wonderful world of Dungeons & Dragons there are some things that are contagious.

You can catch being a ghoul. You can catch being a vampire. You can catch being a wight. You can catch being a wraith.

You cannot, to the best of my knowledge, catch any of these things in the real world which we all inhabit. You can, however, catch a cold.

I cannot quote you the precise page of rules or fluff that says you can also catch a cold in D&D, but it probably exists somewhere therein.

Which makes you wonder - right? You can catch ghoulery, you can catch the rhinovirus - maybe there's some overlap there.

In reality, where everyone who is reading or writing this definitely lives, contagious things are generally micro-organisms - bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, prions, etc. - which can hop from one body to another, through the air or by close contact and fomites or whatever else. In D&D, the generally-assumable world of D&D from monster manuals and setting gazetteers and suchlike that I'm familiar with, undead can spread because they're full of negative energy, which is the opposite of the positive energy which animates and invigorates living things, and when such an undead kills a living thing their negative energy can overflow into the now-energy-absent corpse to reanimate it as another undead. Something like that.

Besides undead, a D&D world, or at least D&D-ish world, also has gods and magic and other planes of existence and and dragons that can fly with wings that are quite small relative to their body mass so on and so forth, so I don't think we should or need to assume contagious disease works quite the same as in our world, our real world wherein we all currently exist. There could be fruitful gains from doing otherwise.

So I propose that contagious diseases are undead. Not all of these diseases are ghoul fever, or vampire flux, or whatever - you could simply re-fluff everything from the common cold to the black plague to your own invented nastiness as this undead phenomenon.

The ones you don't catch directly from getting scratched or bit or sucked off by a skeleton, those come from tombs. Graves. Catacombs. The dust of past civilizations.

Full of regret, loaded with resentment, pregnant with ghosts, every civilization bears a sickness - the negative energy of its collective animus. When a civilization falls, it loses its positive counter-balance to this animus. When a civilization falls this animus is fermented and concentrated in its ruins. Those who delve into these ruins without the proper protections become patient zero for the new-and-old disease within - new to the surface world, old with hatred beneath.

This is why the ruins are yet ripe with plunder for your party - only a small party could slip through the quarantine around them, and few sane rulers would risk their armies diving into a sickbed.

Buboes, polyps, sores, a bloodied cough, and so on? Footholds that the dust of ancient and unleashed undeath have on your body.

Some examples:

Tauthops, unleashed from the kurgans of the grassy steppe, cures the tendons of the infected like the bowstrings of the nomads who were buried within. Somewhat like tetanus, in that the affected are wracked by tension - and then the tension releases, launching the infected through the air - always in the same direction, until they dry, splinter, and burst. Every splinter carries the disease, and so pits are dug in the path of the advance of the infected, and soft leaves or blankets are piled atop them, to give them some comfort in their final hours and contain the splinters they release when they finally burst.

From the half-sunken sepulchers of the swampside port, profaned into curse-fended warehouses, there came the magpie sickness, a compulsion to swallow the shiny things one saw - and worse still when one swallowed enough for the stomach to split, for the blood and the bile and the sickness would mix to make a new maw from the fissured abdomen, which would spake unspeakable things.

Low on funds, the god-king cracked open the cliffside tombs of his divine ancestors, arrayed in the gold-gilt of their grave goods. He paid his mercenary-debt, but set loose the dog-gnaw, sores like those left by the fangs of a cur or baboon, which took the vital young before the toothless old, and left his holy kingdom bereft.

D6x6 Unaccountable UFOs

Click the button below to generate your UFO:

Special thanks to Spwack for the generator generator here: http://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D6	This UFO looks like
1	a golden bullet surrounded by a halo of distorted space, which moves by rapidly stretching into a cigar and snapping into its new position rather than flying conventionally.
2	a platinum horseshoe spinning around a shining orb.
3	both a spider and a spiderweb at once, limned in emerald-green, plucking its way through the air.
4	a fluttering metallic wedge weightlessly dripping an oily, blistering sheen.
5	a cluster of bismuth cubes constantly changing in size and orbiting the largest among them at that moment.
6	a shimmering quicksilver shape that shifts between a crescent and a disc like the moon changing phases reflected on the surface of a rippling pond.

D6	This UFO has been observed
1	flying in formation with flocks of birds.
2	diving into bodies of water.
3	buzzing hospitals with the highest birth and death rates in the country.
4	positioning itself between the Earth and the Moon.
5	hovering over locations where disasters would later occur.
6	tracing the paths of ancient eel weirs.

D6	If people get near this UFO
1	it phases out of existence, reappearing later somewhere else.
2	it zaps them with increasingly-large & -charged balls of plasma until they go away.
3	they explode, and their exploded bits mutate into independent organisms.
4	they are lifted into the air and scanned by it, before being placed gently back onto the nearest red surface.
5	they experience symptoms similar to severe scurvy, and are compelled to sing an atonal song.
6	they become catatonic, and come to hours later with dream-like implanted memories of the time they spent out of it.

D6	The public response to this UFO
1	has been to blame it on Iran, and launch a sort of popular crusade against it on lake-boats launched into the Pacific Ocean carrying hunting rifle-bearing militias - most lost or losing heart before coming within 10,000 miles of the Arabian Sea.
2	has been an explosion of social media influencers claiming to be UFO whisperers.
3	has been to hold impromptu rave parties wherever it's spotted.
4	has been general apathy.
5	has been a renewed support for NASA & all things astronautical.
6	has been to form a cult worshiping it as a new god, and hunting down and publicly executing astronomers who were assumed to have been hiding the truth of the UFO-god.

D6	The official cover-up for this UFO
1	is that it is a new style of holiday blimp.
2	is that it is an optical illusion created by a solar flare refracting through the atmosphere.
3	is to say that anyone who notices it is actually revealing their bigoted anti-government views.
4	is that it is an unusually large & ugly bird whose magnetic navigation sense has been disrupted by improperly-broadcast 5G.
5	is that the fluoride put into local water is contaminated with datura extract.
6	is that it's a cloud of gas released from permafrost by global warming.

D6	This UFO is really
1	the astral projection of a psychic, though otherwise unremarkable, giant squid.
2	a Project Blue Beam hologram.
3	a 300,000 year-old chrononautical craft from the Jebel Irhoudian civilization on a one-way jaunt into the future.
4	the machine-body of a Procyonian energy-being, who has traveled many light years only to be disappointed that all the TV shows it loves have ended or been cancelled.
5	an experimental autonomous military drone that's gone rogue.
6	the feeler of an ultraterrestrial entity, groping around for a warp in space-time it can pull a larger portion of its body through.

D6x6 Lonely Lake Monsters

Click the button below to get your lake monster:

Special thanks to Spwack for the generator generator here: http://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D6	This lake monster looks like
1	a classic plesiosaurian.
2	a ningen out of Japanese urban legend, a pale and flabby mermaidish thing of giantish stature.
3	a great serpent, or eel, or worm, no feature distinguishing enough to comfortably identify it as one or another.
4	some bastard offspring of nautilus and sea urchin, tentacled and spiny.
5	the ambiguous rotten sludge of a globster, bones juxtaposed in exo- and endoskeletal positions.
6	a limbless, eyeless toad or newt of gargantuan size, a warty gaping hulk.

D6	This lake monster is
1	a shadow-organism which slipped through a crack in the lakebed to a deep aquifer-biome.
2	a forgotten god, and without regular contact with humanity it has dwindled in power and lost its human form.
3	the result of an epigenetic metamorphosis implanted in early humanity by agents unknown, and triggered in an unfortunate swimmer by an improperly-disposed-of Cold War-era bioweapon.
4	an extraterrestrial entity whose impact into the planet first carved out its lake.
5	something that was originally an actual hoax, but initial belief in it provided the "skin" for a Qlippothic unentity to wear in reality.
6	the monstrous child born to a cursed local family of some renown, spared infanticide by its pitying aunt.

D6	The lake where this lake monster dwells
1	sits in a maar, and is unusually warm & sulphurous.
2	was extended into a jagged line by water seeping into a tectonic rift.
3	is regularly roiled by winds into devastating waves.
4	is far deeper than it is wide, plunging to lightless and lifeless depths.
5	is home to a libertarian crew of pseudo-seasteaders who maintain a settlement on a clutch of lashed-together boats and pontoons and adrift docks.
6	is choked with algae bloomed from agricultural run-off.

D6	Reports of this lake monster are typically blamed on
1	an escaped circus elephant that went for a swim.
2	a crashed hot air balloon.
3	the homemade submarine of an eccentic millionaire.
4	a tree toppled and blown into the lake by a heavy wind.
5	fish that got out from a now-defunct fish farm which once operated in the lake, the stock of which were given an experimental growth hormone.
6	inconsiderate scuba divers.

D6	This lake monster exhibits the anomalous ability
1	of an infrasonic groan that drives those who hear it into a paroxysm of thirst, driving them to shove their heads into toilets or leap into the lake to slake it.
2	to control the water around it, as well as the watery weather - clouds & fogs & suchlike, but not so much winds.
3	to inject people with a virus that turns them into subservient hybrids.
4	to subconsciously influence people who sleep near its lake through their dreams.
5	of being able to exhale a cloud of suffocating poison.
6	of psychic shapeshifting - not actually changing its physical form, but changing in the perception of others into any organism that inhabited its lake.

D6	This lake monster is studied by
1	a tweed-clad & stuttering local folklorist who is secretly a serial killer who drowns their victims (mostly tourists) to appease the monster.
2	the ex-hippie leader of a group of gross old swingers, who believes the monster to be an avatar of the feminine power of water and the age of Aquarius.
3	a marine biology student who doesn't quite believe in the monster, but thinks promoting it is a good way to raise awareness of aquatic ecosystems.
4	the research team of a biopharmaceutical company, operating illegally in the belief that the profit they could make off the monster far outweighs the risk of bypassing government regulation.
5	a rising star artist who exclusively paints glimpses he's caught of the monster.
6	a Catholic priest who believes it to be a devil which slipped out of a river of Hell, and seeks to exorcise it.

Ultraman to Dungeons & Dragons to Ultraman Lifecycle

Perhaps, as a reader of a D&D blog, you are already familiar with the theory that some of the plastic toys that Gary Gygax was inspired to make D&D monsters off of were bootleg toys of Ultraman monsters - bulettes being based on a toy of Gabora, for example.

You may be less familiar with the theory that there was an Ultraman monster inspired by a D&D monster - probably because I just made it up.

However I am not making this up in the same sense as the mentally-unwell lady who once told me that I had been disassembled by lasers which also removed my memory of that experience - without prompting, without evidence - but in the sense of revelation given to one of God's holy fools who sees the connection between A and E and leaves the busywork of B, C, and D to others.

To cut to the chase, I think the Ultraman monster Mother Deents was inspired by aboleths.

Evidence A:

Evidence A-2 - refer to eye colour

Evidence E:

Evidence E-2 - Higher definition image, Mother Deents getting throat-chopped by Ultraman

Aboleths were invented for I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City published in 1983, and the Ultraman episode featuring Mother Deents airing in 1998. I'm not going to do any real research, but apparently Fighting Fantasy books were big in Japan in the mid '80s, so it's not beyond possibility that a costume designer for Ultraman saw an illustration of an aboleth.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

D12 Weapons in the War on Christmas

Joyless atheists, christians who seek to excise syncretic contamination, jews who are tired of getting chinese food every year around that time - war can make strange allies, and perhaps none stranger than the War on Christmas. These are the arms they wield against that holly jolly holiday:

1. Aerosolized Herpes Simplex Virus: Rigged to proximity dispensers placed by mistletoe arrangements.

2. Soy Milk: Mixed with 11 secret additives to make it indistinguishable in flavour and texture from full-fat cow's milk, yet retaining all phytoestrogenic properties to weaken Santa's masculine hyperborean vril.

3. Extra-Cancerous Firelog: Nobody is slipping down a chimney lined with creosote from these logs without picking up a few tumours.

4. Resonant-Explosive Ornament: Seemingly-ordinary glass Christmas ornaments, carefully designed to burst into anti-personnel shrapnel when exposed to the sonic frequencies of caroling.

5. Thermite Stocking Stuffers: React poorly and immediately with coal put into the stockings of naughty children.

6. Magnetic Audiovisual Injector: A device which overwrites micro-sections of video cassette tape with subliminal and subversive anti-seasonal messages. Declined in usefulness with the end of popular use of VHS and suchlike formats, though many collectors have unwittingly been turned into Manchurian agents.

7. Archeo-Feline-Scented Santa Suit Rentals: A blend of pheromones collected from modern day felines with a chemical regression applied to make the blend match the smell of the primary predators of the ancestors of homo sapiens sapiens. Even brief exposure will cause an intense panic response in the limbic system. Application to Santa suit rentals quickly creates a negative Pavlovian response in children.

8. Oneiric-Medium Memetic Viruses: Implanted into children's unconsciousnesses at select facilities. The natural fading of the memory of dreams protects the children from the effects of the viruses, while anyone seeing them while they are sleeping will receive the full impact.

9. Rooftop Punji Stake Pit: If the fall & two-foot long stakes don't kill any large flying mammals landing on the roof, the mashed organic matter laced with Chronic Wasting Disease prions slathered on the stakes will. May require some attic renovation.

10. Propaganda Pamphlet Distribution Blimp: Treated for cold-weather operation. Strafe the North Pole dropping communist, anarchist, and Georgist propaganda translated into Elf. Unclear what economic system Santa's workshop operates under. All spies have been returned candied or encased in icebergs.

11. Evil Advent Calendar: Contains chocolates made with cocoa produced with the least-ethical methods possible. Believed to disrupt Santa's naughty-nice sense.

12. Spider-Silk Gift Ribbons: Sticky, impregnated with lethal dose of spider venom. Stiff microfibers lining the weave maximize odds of breaching skin and making blood-venom contact.

D6x6 Crooked Crawling Claws

Click the button below to generate your very own crawling claw:

Special thanks to Spwack for the generator generator here: http://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D6	This crawling claw has
1	had the flesh between its metacarpals severed, with extra fingers grafted into the gaps.
2	an exceptional size, because it is the hand of a giant.
3	several arms and elbows stitched to the stump of it wrist like a prehensile "tail".
4	no flesh, only cracked bones and dripping webs of ectoplasm between them.
5	finger- and palm-prints that have deepened and keratinized into hard and unsettling whorls.
6	thick black nails and matted fur, because it is a gorilla's hand.

D6	Beware! For this crawling claw
1	can hijack one of your hands with its antipathy!
2	is rife with disease, and the slightest scratch could infect you!
3	will explode like a hand-grenade when destroyed!
4	can climb any surface, like a gecko!
5	can feel out the shape of your footprints and track you over many miles!
6	can fire the joints of its index finger like bullets!

D6	This crawling claw was created
1	to be a fancy back-scratcher, but it scratches too much and won't stop til it's scratched all the way through your back.
2	as a spy, to hide in small spaces, listen in through its fingertips, then later write down what it's heard.
3	by a negative energy bomb that caused most of the bodies affected by it to rot away, with the energy concentrating in and reanimating a singular part of those bodies - besides crawling claws, hopping feet, rolling heads, slithering intestines, flapping skins, and suchlike were created.
4	to fight in tandem with another undead, tripping enemies up from their blind spots to create openings for its partner.
5	when someone suffering from alien hand syndrome hacked off their rebellious paw.
6	as a dextrous labourer with the capacity to defend the products of its labour.

D6	This crawling claw moves
1	like an unusually-coordinated flopping fish, slapping and wriggling about.
2	like a freshly-severed limb twitching with the last of its nerve impulses.
3	with arachnid speed and precision.
4	fluidly, joints bending in ways that would be agonizing for the living.
5	like a starfish, fingers splayed and swaying.
6	by curling up into a fist and rolling about.

D6	Without eyes, this crawling claw primarily detects the living
1	based on their body heat - coals or recently-worn clothes can fool it.
2	by the sound of their breathing, and those breathing raggedly will be targeted before those breathing calmly.
3	by the radiance of their life-force - it can perceive those close to death only dimly.
4	by the vibrations of their heartbeats - if you keep off the ground it'll have a tough time picking up yours.
5	by the scent of their blood, which it sniffs out with new pores that go right down to its marrow.
6	through something like radio, extending its fingers into the air to act as antennae.

D6	When left idle, this crawling claw will
1	tap out half of a song as if before a piano.
2	curl up stiff and rattle like a dead bug in a breeze.
3	scratch at nearby furniture like a cat.
4	trace out the letters I L O V E Y O U over and over again.
5	balance atop a single finger and slowly spin.
6	cycle through various profane mudras and vulgar gestures.

Twelve More Module Ideas

Like so: https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2024/12/twelve-module-ideas.html

1. Chaos in the Quarantined Quarter: Their wealth did not buy them an escape from the seal placed to keep the rats and their plague in - it remains within with them, while the rats have become clever and cruel and the plague makes people strange.

2. Talons of the Colossus: A great bronze statue, humanoid yet inhuman, and hollow within - two warring cults reside in each leg, and even they fear to dare the mechanisms higher in the body.

3. Voyage of the Undying: The ship returned from the land beyond the sunrise overgrown by a silver tree - from its blossoms comes a curse of wretched immortality.

4. Rift to the God's Sepulcher: An earthquake has devastated the region, and opened a rift to a cave network where a primeval god and its children were once worshiped - rife in sacrifices, and stalked by the degenerate thing the god has become.

5. The Monastery of Miscarried Malice: The monks of a rich and learnéd monastery succeeded in a ritual to split their sins from their souls - now monstrously embodied, their sins run amok.

6. The Palace Past the Blazing Caul: A wildfire whips across the land, but through its heat-shimmer a marvelous palace can be glimpsed - some who have leapt through the flames have returned burned and burdened with treasures.

7. Legacy of the Lighthouse-Keeper: The lighthouse-keeper left behind a journal, and nothing else - throw a fistful of the herbs which grow atop the beach-dunes onto the beacon-fire, it says, and a path will appear out to a shining castle in the surf, full of wonders.

8. Festival of the Fantastical Fungi: For one week every hundred years the greatshrooms erupt from the bowels of the earth to cloud the skies with their spores - their inner chambers hold myconid menaces and precious effluvia.

9. Beneath the Old Silk Market: The old silk market was opened in the morning for business to find the flagstones flipped over to reveal tunnels beneath them, splatters of blood and threads of sticky silk leading below.

10. Lake of the Mutagenic Meteor: The meteor created a lake in its impact crater overnight - its glow has mutated the lake-life, and the first round of miners sent for its anomalous ores refuse violently to return.

11. It's Free Masonry: A flood has swept the earth away from the base of a stela crafted by an ancient and advanced civilization, revealing it to be only the tip of a much larger buried complex.

12. The City That's Always Today: The city was legendary in its day, now merely infamous - it repeats the same day, every day, always ending in its doom of black rain - seek its riches, but do not become enmeshed in its patterns or you too will become stuck in its cycle.