D6x6 Simpering Serpentmen

This post is dedicated to friend of the blog purplecthulhu, who came up with the idea.

Click the button below to generate your serpentman:

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

D6	This serpentman has
1	a rattling tail which vibrates in infrasonic frequencies, inducing artificial terror in those who hear it.
2	a fractally-branching tongue which allows it to manipulate matter on an incredibly-fine scale.
3	had its ribs surgically spread into wings and studded with anti-gravity nodules which allow it to fly through the air.
4	replaced its venom-sacs with nanomachine-factories which kill those injected with them and reanimate their corpses as cyber-zombies.
5	impossibly-deep abyssal crevices through which alien stars can be glimpsed instead of pupils in its eyes.
6	the haunting husks of the shed skins of its past selves orbiting around its head, dispensing bon mots.

D6	This serpentman was
1	a slave-handler, and its hypnotic indoctrinations still work across all mammals from remnant programming.
2	an everyman-type who lucked its way into the modern day.
3	a biomancer whose magic crafted new living tools and soldiers for the serpentmen's empire.
4	a priest of the serpentmen's coiling crypto-gods, and a bureaucrat within their religio-political deep state.
5	a warlord who learned the perfected stratagems & martial techniques of their time.
6	a ritual assassin that the serpentmen used to constrain their violence to regulated arenas and casualties.

D6	This serpentman survived the general extinction of its kind
1	by wandering for uncountable eons in the timeless astral plane, going mad and clawing its way back to sanity several times over.
2	by flinging its spirit forward in time and possessing a snake mating-ball of sufficient biomass to reincarnate the serpentman - driving one snake in the ball to devour the rest and metamorphose into its new body.
3	by being ensconced in a cryogenic vault. The serpentman re-routed much of the facility's power to its own hiberna-pod to maximize its chance of survival, at the expense of its fellows.
4	by bargaining with an aristocratic house of medusas, to be petrified in its time and returned to flesh when the world had forgotten its kind.
5	by encoding itself in the genome of an upsurging lineage of mammals, leaving epigenetic triggers in place so that when conditions were right a descendant-individual would mutate into the serpentman, complete with inborn memories.
6	by pretending to be stuck in hell for a while, in fact leaving itself a back door and an empty vessel of a body to reclaim.

D6	This serpentman schemes
1	to steal an artifact which can, with enough blood sacrifice, tear a time-portal through back to the time of the serpentmen's reign, through which they will lead a trans-temporal invasion.
2	to insinuate itself into a clan of outlaw-cannibals as a fleshly deity, and through them sate its hunger for warm meat.
3	awaken a lost doomsday weapon of its people, then use this weapon to cow the world into submission so it may rule as an absolute tyrant.
4	to murder a team of archeologists who are close to uncovering the history of the serpentmen, then frame some other group for their murder.
5	to uncover a cache of skin-changing infiltrators, which it will command to take over the followings of various sun-gods and through them re-terraform the world into a more serpentman-friendly climate.
6	to spread printings of tablets looted from serpentmen ruins, which contain highly-contagious memes which will alter cultures to be more amenable to the serpentman.

D6	This serpentman views the modern world
1	with fetishistic interest in all its idiosyncrasies.
2	with an aimless rage that could be re-directed to specific targets without much manipulative effort.
3	with a deep despair which could be exploited to drive it to total inaction.
4	with bewilderment - it desires interpreters to make sense of things.
5	as a garden that's been left untrimmed and has become overgrown - in need of their drastic tending.
6	as something like a dream, experienced whimsically, which they will wake up from shortly.

D6	You might loot off the body of this serpentman
1	a very stylish hat made of psionics-enhancing fibers.
2	a hologram-belt that can project illusions of things it's scanned.
3	a whistle which when blown rouses any sub-sapient reptiles that hear it into a slaughterous rage.
4	a spray-gun full of acid.
5	a pair of ulfire-tinted goggles which allow their wearer to perceive the invisible and ethereal.
6	a bottle of pills which maintain their consumer at a biologically-ideal temperature for 24 hours.

D20x5 Vampire Hunters

Click the button below to generate your vampire hunter:

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

D20	This vampire hunter came to the hunt
1	after their spouse was turned by a jealous bloodsucker.
2	being initiated into their family's tradition.
3	after they lost a child to a hungry bloodsucker.
4	after being attacked while stargazing in a park.
5	while working at a blood bank that was used as a pantry by bloodsuckers.
6	as an urban explorer, after stumbling on a hibernating bloodsucker.
7	while they worked as a farmhand, and witnessed livestock being drained dry.
8	thanks to a mystic vision after a nervous breakdown.
9	as the dissatisfied former servant of a vampire who turned on their master.
10	after investigating a prospective client's suspicious finances led them to the discovery of immortal undead.
11	because they were a serial killer who didn't like the competition.
12	as a conspiracy debunking podcaster who stumbled onto a vampiric conspiracy they couldn't debunk.
13	as a vampire blood addict, unsatisfied with the pittance they were given by their dealer.
14	wanting to be turned into a vampire, attempting to coerce one into turning them.
15	after being raised in a blood cult that worshiped a vampire as an angelic being.
16	as a historian who came across primary source records which couldn't be explained in any other way than by the existence of immortal bloodsuckers.
17	by way of an abusive mentor who hoped to use them as bait.
18	while working as an EMT, after seeing a turned victim burned to death by the sun.
19	while working on a tanker ship which was unbeknownst to them transporting a vampire, which preyed on the crew.
20	while they were homeless, defending their community against predators of various stripes.

D20	This vampire hunter lives
1	in a houseboat anchored in the middle of a river.
2	in a cabin in the arctic circle for the sunny half of that region's year.
3	a totally cloistered life, ordering everything online, doing all their investigation online, only leaving their home to hunt.
4	in an old church that was partially-converted into a nightclub that was never opened.
5	on the road, in a tricked-out RV.
6	inside a steel panic room in a dilapidated house they've largely withdrawn from.
7	in a shed in a suburb they picked for having one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country.
8	bouncing between squats and communes, trying to convince crustpunks to bash vampires under the pretense that they are fascists.
9	in a trailer by a marijuana grow-op they use to raise funds for their hunting.
10	in prison most of the time, for their many and varied crimes.
11	on the couches of fellow hunters, as a sort of mercenary paid in places to stay.
12	by camping on public land.y
13	a double life, with a normal job by day, hunting by night, and abusing stimulants to sustain their ability to do so.
14	on donations from people they've saved.
15	in the alley behind a YMCA.
16	off pawning the property of their prey and gambling.
17	in a ruined castle which belonged to one of their quarry.
18	in the sewers, a local legend.
19	out of a garage in a slumlord's house, who is willing to overlook a lot so long as the rent comes in on time.
20	in a shack in the middle of a heavily booby-trapped field.

D20	This vampire hunter's missing
1	their empathy for anything that looks human - they love animals though.
2	their canine teeth - pulled out with their own pliers.
3	a chunk out of their neck - the scar's got ragged edges.
4	a credit score - they're trying to stay off the grid as much as possible.
5	an eyeball - that socket's been caved in.
6	some veins, tendons, and flesh from a wrist - that hand's stiffer than they'd like.
7	any extended family - they've been picked off by vampires over the years.
8	a good chunk of their memories - the result of a blow to the head.
9	their fingernails - chewed away from stress.
10	their hair - shaven off to remove a potential grip.
11	one leg below the knee - torn away.
12	their ability to make small talk - they get very serious, very fast.
13	their hygiene - their thoughts are occupied by other things.
14	a normal sleep cycle - they're able to sleep and wake up pretty much wherever and whenever.
15	any hope for the future - they're depressingly nihilistic.
16	a strong immune system - they're prone to sicknesses.
17	any fear for their own death or injury.
18	a lot of blood-iron - they're chronically anemic.
19	solid risk assessment - they're prone to lashing out at anyone who gets close to them.
20	a few of the fingers off their hand - bitten off.

D20	This vampire hunter's preferred weapon
1	is a silver-edged scimitar.
2	is hawthorn stakes with reinforced cores of carbon steel.
3	is a string of garlic bulbs wielded like a whip.
4	is an axe with a reservoir of holy oil within its handle that can set its head ablaze.
5	is bombs, set off remotely.
6	is a high-powered UV spotlight.
7	is a squirt-gun filled with holy water.
8	is homemade grenades loaded with crumbled communion wafers.
9	is syringes of their own poisoned blood.
10	is a revolver they got blessed by a monk, priest, imam, and rabbi.
11	is a boar spear.
12	is a harpoon gun.
13	is a shotgun loaded up with bits & bobs.
14	is a sledgehammer with nails welded to it.
15	is an oil can wielded with a flare gun.
16	is a dwindling supply of claymores (the explosive kind) they got off an ex-military buddy.
17	is a macuahuitl edged with pliered-out vampire teeth instead of obsidian.
18	is a pair of uzis.
19	is spools of razor wire.
20	is a Shaolin spade.

D20	This vampire hunter believes vampires
1	are unfortunate victims of a mutagenic virus.
2	are descendants of the Biblical Cain.
3	are hemophagic alien invaders.
4	are biological robots performing blood tests and experiments on people.
5	are possessed by demons.
6	are in control of several branches of the government.
7	put additives in processed food to keep people stupid.
8	are a curse created by the Aztec empire in its waning days to keep the blood sacrifices flowing.
9	are a natural and ancient sub-species of homo sapiens that evolved to prey on other humans.
10	are the feeding appendages of higher-dimensional ultraterrestrials.
11	are infected with a bloodborne bacterial hivemind.
12	are Mother Earth's answer to human overpopulation.
13	are corpses animated by unrestful ghosts.
14	used to be much more varied, but that Western vampires ate all the other kinds in a dark mirror of colonialism.
15	are only weeks away from using FEMA to herd people into blood-harvesting camps.
16	are kind of hot, but would never admit this.
17	tell stories about how cool and dangerous they are as a hunter.
18	come from a parallel Earth, and are invading this one since they drank up their own.
19	are critters from the inner surface of the hollow Earth that wear human skins as disguises.
20	are the adrenochrome-harvesting servitors of shadowy billionaires.

Notes on Notes on Watching Twin Peaks in a Dream, Recorded First Within Said Dream and Then Reproduced Within the Waking World of Slightly-Less Transient Appearances

I have been watching David Lynch's hit TV series Twin Peaks lately - it's pretty good. I have apparently been watching so much of it that last night I dreamed that I was watching Twin Peaks, while writing down my impressions & analysis of the show. There were some similarities between this dreamed Twin Peaks and the Twin Peaks of the waking world. I have reproduced those notes here to the best of my recollection. There will be some spoilers, both of the waking and the dreamed:

Mixture of Buddhist and Transcendentalist mythology (this was the first note made, and the one most clearly remembered - what is Transcendentalist mythology? I couldn't rightly say, but it made sense at the time)

Evil is just one part of the Black Lodge - it also encompasses fear, suffering, guilt, etc. Though a smaller share than the Black Lodge, the White Lodge holds some evil of its own, stemming from love & joy.

Room with red drapes is bardo, souls pass through White Lodge or Black Lodge, which are inextricably linked (see floor), based on their karma - as previously noted, it is not only evil souls but those overcome by shame, vengeance, etc., which pass through the Black Lodge.

Chevron floor - arrows of progress - the Lodges are not without time, the Arm evolved, but time there is a function of the resolution of contradictions between White and Black, like chess frozen between moves - the Wheel of Samsara as a reciprocal or circular saw, cyclical yet linear in progressing through the formlessness of wood/Nirvana.

Theme of the past only being escapable through the destruction of the present - town of Twin Peaks destroyed in Armaggedon-esque battle with the furious spirit of its own abandoned mine. Spirit taking form of eight-legged dragon suggests both devil and Sleipnir, mount of Odin - hung in world-tree.

Odd that my parents made a cameo appearance in the show as themselves, yet never mentioned this.

Dale eats handfuls of finely-ground raw meat paste from fridge - one of his eccentricities or delicacy of Twin Peaks? - perhaps "creamed meat" to juxtapose creamed corn of garmonbozia.

The Fireman's real name is The Dispatcher - promoted?

The dreamer living inside the dream is Lynch, as Gordon.

Audrey trapped in Black Lodge seems like retread of Cooper storyline.

Giant airport in the mountains outside town dwarfs town itself - commentary on liminal spaces? - subplot of dueling Japanese assassins in airport seemed totally disconnected from happenings in Twin Peaks (the town).

Spike Lady - unclear if she was always Spike Lady and became a ghost or became Spike Lady when she became ghost - with Albert uncommonly positive depiction of spousal kidnapping, bigamy, and necrophilia (is it necrophilia with ghosts?).

D6 Bug-Bears

Not bugbears, but bug-bears - half-bears, half-bugs:

1. Cicadiak: Hibernate as cub-grubs beneath the earth for decades, possessing nearby lifeforms with their dreams. Squirrels and suchlike will hide their hoards nearby, wolverines will bury their kills above the cicadiaks, and humans find themselves anticipating a great and feastwise festival to be hosted at the site, most not quite realizing this festival has never before been celebrated, and seems to have come from nowhere. At the proper hour the cicadiaks will moult into their adult forms, emerge in a great swarm to gorge on the food proffered for them, and deafen many with their roared mating-songs. Once they've laid their eggs underground the adults will perish, though their flesh is too full of parasites to be safely consumed by any survivors of their depredations.

2. Assassin Bearg: Parthenogenic killer queens, birth shapeless offspring which they lick into customized murder-shapes. They become obsessed with those who harm their cubs, even in self-defense, setting ever-better-adapted creations after their scent-trail.

3. Sun Bearab: Roll about large balls of soil, mulch, and waste, which they cultivate as mobile terrariums for their preferred snacks. Bear disconcertingly-long, prehensile tongues, which they use to snag prey and drag them to their terribly-strong jaws. Sun bearabs are the favoured animal of the Burning Hate, and one is often found in his temples, its ball adorned with sneering sun-discs.

4. Blister Beartle: Dominate beehives with their uncanny pheromones, causing the bees and their hive both to grow to unseemly size. The blister beartle, a hideous and hideously lazy creature, is then supplied with as much honey and larvae as it can eat - which is quite a lot. Should the creature be slain, its host-hive's population will usually return to ordinary bee-size within a generation. Usually.

5. Polar Bantis: Largest of the bug-bears. Snow-white in winter and able to remain perfectly motionless for long periods of time, lending it frighteningly-effective camouflage. Flashes out with speed-blinding sickle-claws when prey approaches. During the summer it mottles into a dull grey and hibernates with similar stillness, becoming nigh-indistinguishable from a boulder. Can produce hybrids with cicadiaks in the regions where their territories overlap - these hybrid bug-bears' dreams induce widespread visions of an oncoming eternal winter, leading to despair, war, and so on which leave a surplus of carrion for the creatures to feed on.

6. Gallanda: Obligate cannibals - they can only properly digest their own cub-grubs, as well as the galls which grow around these cub-grubs, which themselves can only survive in bamboo. Often used as a visual metaphor for self-defeat, and for parents who squander their wealth so it can't be passed on to their children. The bamboo-galls produced by gallandas are beautiful and easily-carved, and thus coveted commodities - however the bug-bears guard their larders/groves/crèches with berserker ferocity.

They don't look like this.