Case Files of the Knights of St. Phanourious: Pinemarten, Ontario - Session 1

QUIA QUOD STULTUM EST DEI SAPIENTIUS EST HOMINIBUS ET QUOD INFIRMUM EST DEI FORTIUS EST HOMINIBUS

After several delays due to me being a busy bee, me & the boys have finally started our Delta Green campaign. 

Our party is:
Bart "Codekiller" Regis
Manhoman "Dr. House" Kamaroff (portrayed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola)
Auggy "Shillelagh" Ashe

(With one more knight set to join us, when he's not giving his girlfriend a ride from the airport.) 

They're not your typical Delta Green, because I will be FUCKED before I use someone else's lore for MY games - they are Knights of St. Phanourious, a British Catholic secret society that gets stuck with the occult bitchwork of the Commonwealth.

They've been sent to the northwestern Ontario town of Pinemarten, where news of a spree of decapitations has made it through the grapevine to the knights' superiors, so they've been dispatched to investigate and solve the problem.

Pinemarten is about a workday's drive away from Toronto. Oh, there's other places in Ontario I could have used as a reference? I don't care. You are telling a man in the fires of Perdition that Purgatory is just a breath of God's love away. I'm down here for a reason.

Lakeside location, population of a couple thousand - a former booming mining town, nowadays scraping by on pensioned retirees, all-seasons tourism, logging, and a hub of remote-working techies who moved out here during the VOID lockdowns.

There's been a freak snow-storm the last few days. Everything is buried under many feet of snow. Getting anywhere, especially anywhere out of town, is a slog.

The knights roll up to the cottage (more of a luxury house) where the decapitations were reported. Strung between trees above the driveway is a(n AI-generated) banner announcing the First Annual Rodnovprom Associate Artists' Retreat. A perfunctory attempt has been made to cordon off the place.

Making their way inside, the knights find a trio of corpses in isolated positions in the house, all neatly decapitated (and getting pretty ripe) - their nerves and brain-matter "unspooled", for lack of a better term, into decomposing fans stretched out from their necks. They find no signs of forced entry, but outside find indents in the snow, each 5-10 feet apart, as if something about human-sized had lain down in the snow - though their are no footsteps or other such tracks between the indentations.

They stumble upon a duo who'd been hiding in a closet for a while - urban romantasy series authour Sam Fishbourne, and Rodnovprom PR specialist Nelya Stasiuk. They're both thirsty, hungry, tired, smelly, and don't seem to know much about what happened to the others - they stumbled across Jaythan Daniels' (zoomer influencer & sports-betting analyst) corpse and hid. Nelya gives them some info on Rodnovprom's operation in Pinemarten: they're turning the old mine into a grow-op for psychedelic mushrooms for pharmaceutical applications, and Nelya sees it as a spiritual, enlightening mission.

The party takes Nelya and Sam into their custody for further questioning, and drive into town. They come across a diner, the Lucky Mouse, and bring the pair inside for food and coffee. Auggy orders one of everything on the menu, and the waitress - an old Filipina  lady named Alice Ortiz - pours them coffees with a shot of vodka added when she notices how rattled they look.

Local person of houselessness Moroz stumbles into the diner, mumbling to himself about how he "got out" and how "it's all one thread". Nelya notes that Moroz did some design for the Rodnovprom website before losing his mind from drugs. He reacts poorly to Bart addressing him in Surzhyk, which prompts Bart and Manhoman to violently restrain him and drag him out to their van - and also get the address of the local cop, Debbie, from Alice. Nelya and Sam take this opportunity to bolt out the back.

Manhoman force-feeds Moroz a xanax to chill him out, and they interrogate him some more, not getting much actionable info in the process.

They drive to Debbie's house, and witness her arguing with her daughter on the porch. Debbie claims the argument was about "family business", which Bart intuits to mean literally a family business, and one that's not above-board if she's being so evasive about it. They plant the idea that Moroz, in a drug-fueled frenzy, may have been responsible for the decapitations. Debbie complains about being busy handling a horse theft from the property of local rich person Chloranthy Williams-Wynn, but gives Bart her number.

They follow after Marlin to an abandoned skating rink, and bust down the door. The gang of rowdy teenagers within tries to scatter, but Manhoman fires his revolver into the ceiling and tackles Marlin, force-feeding her xanax like he did Moroz. She too is hauled to their van. Moroz recognizes her as the one who sold him drugs, but she claims to have only sold regular-ass downers, and that he probably had some latent mental illness that was activated by a bad trip.

The party settles on the plan of breaking into Rodnovprom's restored mine, but Marlin warns them that the place has serious security - the Norsefire company. They negotiate for her gang's help in breaking in, and she agrees that if she takes out rival teen gang leader Stan Koontz for her then she'll go along with the plan. They drive to Stan's hideout, the Copperbottom Theater, and after getting there zonk out Moroz and Marlin with more xanaxes. The front door's locked, and the doorman asks for a password, so Manhoman acts like a violent maniac, claims to have killed Marlin, then shoots the lock off the door. They enter, intimidate some teens with Bart's excessively high-lumen flashlight, and find Stan watching auteur director Richard Brace's gladiator movie Blood on the Wheat. Manhoman tries to convince Stan's guys that Stan hired him to kill Marlin, which none of them buy. Bart texts Debbie on his Blackberry device that Stan had kidnapped and drugged Marlin. The session ends here, with the party debating what to do with the semi-conscious Marlin to convince her mom that Stan really had done that.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Kenkus

They can love, much as we love, but they have no love-poems. No poetry at all. They do not have stories of vengeance, whether laudatory or cautionary, only reciprocation in kind.

They are seen as ill omens - imps, trickster-spirits, servitors or victims of the king of the valravens. Where their black feathers are found is thought to be inauspicious ground.

This is a self-fulfilling attitude. They mirror what is done to them. Perhaps they have no choice but to mirror what is done to them. Where their territories and humanity's overlap is all but certain to become a theater of war, wherein every battle and tactic used tilts attrition in their favour.

They are

Kenkus

HD: 1/2 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon (as little guys, small weapons must be wielded as medium weapons, and so on up the ladder)  SAV: 8 MOV: Glide as kite, climb as monkey, hop as crow INT: As exceptionally hidebound person ML: 5
No. Appearing: 4d4

Corvid See, Corvid Do: Kenkus can perfectly mimic any physical action they've seen before. If they've seen you tying a rope they get your same skill level in rope-tying. If they see you wielding a weapon they get your proficiency in it and any to-hit bonuses that come from skill instead of the weapon being a magic sword or whatever. And so on and so forth.

They can also perfectly mimic any sound they've heard before.

(An encounter with kenkus is like the manga Sarumane, or like a mini-version of the also-manga HunterxHunter's Chimera Ant arc)

Sensitive Ears: Any especially loud noise (a big gong being banged, a gunshot in enclosed quarters, and suchlike) will cause kenkus within 30 feet to take 1 point of non-lethal damage. However, kenkus can never be surprised unless you are hiding your presence preternaturally.

Dire Corbies

Kenku thought is inextricable from their mimicry. It is mirrored, literal, direct. And yet - there is already adaption in it, generalization in applying the movements of the other's body to their own.

There is a glitch in the kenku thought-process, kicked off when they push beyond echopraxia into anticipation, extrapolation, and abstraction, which results in a mental and physical transformation. Their brain throbs against their skull as it demands more energy and growth to match these more complex processes, and their body grows with it.

Most kenkus who reach this point die, from the strain and the stress and rejection by their community which cannot understand their new demands. Those who survive - also called daikenkus - become these:

Dire Corbies

HD: 3 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon or 1d4/1d4 talons SAV: 11 MOV: Fly as crow, run as person INT: As smart though hidebound person ML: 7
No. Appearing: 1d3, accompanied by 2d4 kenkus

Corvid See More, Corvid Do More: Dire corbies' capacity to imitate exceeds the physical. They can copy mental skills and abilities they've witnessed being used now too. If a dire corby hears you speaking a language, it becomes fluent in that language. If a dire corby sees you casting a spell then it can cast that spell too - only the once, though, with the same amount of MD as you used. And so on and so forth.

They can also perfectly mimic any sound they've heard before.

Being deficient in their own subjectivity, dire corbies are obsessed with novels, plays, and conversation, modelling their own personalities and mannerisms off of those encountered therein.

Sensitive Ears: Any especially loud noise (a big gong being banged, a gunshot in enclosed quarters, and suchlike) will cause dire corbies within 30 feet to take 1 point of non-lethal damage.. However, dire corbies can never be surprised unless you are hiding your presence preternaturally.

Killer Copper Pieces: Mister Mittenbiter

He walks through town with his dapper hat and his dapper coat. He's got a refined bearing and an easy stride.

He is tall - maybe the tallest man you've ever seen. He's got no gums - but you won't see this until his grin stretches wide and the lips peel back to show long, long teeth planted right in his jaw-bones.

When he comes across lone children he pinches their chin and turns them this way and that. Most he doesn't bother with, not worth his time, not worth his trouble. In some he sniffs out the seed of kindred-spirit, and kidnaps them to initiate into his gang of pickpockets, muggers, and murderers.

The unluckiest few he takes into his hands and he bends and breaks and nibbles away at them, until they're unfit for any path through life but as beggars. He'll come back for them, years down the line, when they're thoroughly steeped in despair, and he'll eat their souls and leave their empty bodies in the gutter. He does the same to those in his gang, tearing the ghost from them as they hang from the gallows and the gibbets.

He is

Mister Mittenbiter

HD: 5 AC: 15 ATK: 1d8 cane smack and 1d8 bite, plus Mutilator SAV: 12 MOV: As ogre INT: As evil man who is used to manipulating children and obsequious social inferiors ML: 6
No. Appearing: 1 plus 1d6-2 nasty children (stat as goblins, equipped with shivs and razors and other such improvised weapons)

Aura of Gentility: It's not mind control, it requires no save, but Mister Mittenbiter is surrounded by a feeling that he's better than you and he can do what he wants - if you are accustomed to feeling that you are better than others, you feel that he is an equal.

Mutilator: All of Mister Mittenbiter's attacks that deal damage also deal a wound. He is a brute well-acquainted with how to hurt and mangle.

Killer Copper Pieces: Gostreochors

Horses will eat baby birds. They're still herbivores - it's an opportunistic thing, an accident really. If you had as long a face as they did, would you be able to see what was in front of your mouth while grazing? 

 

These horrible waterfowl would eat a baby bird on purpose and not feel even a little bit bad about it. There's an evil in them that goes beyond the cruel indifference of nature.

They wait on the surface of water bodies, rears hanging in the air as they nibble on plants and little critters below. Their rears bear a striking resemblance to the face of a drowning person, aided when they flail and slosh about, and their cloacal flatulence mimics the desperate gasps and screams of such a person as well.

They're clever enough - or instinctually-programmed - to use overturned boats to add to their charade, and sometimes use their victims as props too.

 

When you go to help these "drowners" they'll wrap their necks around your legs and hold you under til you stop struggling, honk-laughing at you while they do. Idiot. Moron. You deserve to die, and they deserve to kill you.

They are

Gostreochors

 

HD: 1 AC: 12 ATK: 1d4 bite + automatic grab with strength 14, Assblast SAV: 6 MOV: As goose INT: As crueler than usual goose ML: 8
No. Appearing: 1d8

 

If you fall for gostreochors' ruse they get a surprise round on you.

Assblast: Fleeing gostreochors will attempt to projectile poop in your eyes and wounds. When a gostreochor fails a morale test, save or contract a disease as its poop gets in your eyes and wounds. Having a shield grants advantage on this save.

Killer Copper Pieces: Kinsutes

Among the three poisonous servants of the sorcerers number these:

Take one unwanted by their family, by force or guile or sale, young or old, healthy or sick - it does not matter.

Put a coin in their mouth. Make sure they do not swallow it yet. Wrap them in a sable shroud, so tightly they cannot escape it on their own - break their limbs if you must. Pour sow's milk over their face until they can barely breath. Abandon them on a mountainside.

If all goes well then the land will not know what to do with them, and they will be transformed into a black boar. This boar will be compelled to sniff out valuables and scarf them down, and when its belly is full of them it will return to you. Then you may cut it open and retrieve the wealth it has swallowed, but you must then provide it with a doll - it doesn't matter how raggedy or fine - and allow it time to wallow with its dolls while the slit in its belly heals.

It's really not worth trying to skip out on your end of the bargain.

They are

Kinsutes

HD: 3 AC: 13 ATK: 1d12 gore SAV: 9 MOV: As wild boar INT: As desperate person ML: 5
No. Appearing: 1d4

Shapeshift: A kinsute can change back into its human form, but it will always be wearing an article of black clothing and have a pig's nose. Also, if presented with an object of any significant monetary value while in human form it must test morale or revert to boar-form and attempt to consume it. In human form their stats are pathetic, don't even bother with them, they pretty much only take human form to beg for their lives or sneak around poorly.

Kinsutes can sniff out valuables as a truffle-pig can snort out truffles.

A kinsute's belly will be filled with 4d6 sp worth of valuables. However, killing a kinsute transmutes the valuables in its bellies into reeking black sludge. Valuables in a kinsute's belly will otherwise be fairly preserved. They will resist anyone but their creator trying to cut open their belly with all their might.

If denied its dolls and doll-time, a kinsute will double in size, HD, damage, speed, etc., and seek to devour its creator as it as it once did valuables.

Killer Copper Pieces: Himantopodes

When the Great Horde of the Heathens came to golden Kitezh, a third of the city chose to surrender to the Horde, a third of the city chose to put their faith in God to save them, and the final third couldn't choose to commit to either.

One third of Kitezh was slain, and one third was protected - which was the prayerful and which the surrendered is not remembered. Of the third who couldn't choose: being lukewarm, God spat on them.

Their skin became like cracked leather, their bones frayed and splintered. Their teeth fell out, replaced by a single fang protruding from the roof of their mouth, and the flesh of their face became as clay.

They are worthless creatures, able only to wriggle in the dirt and scrape for the roots of grasses - when they take hold of another creature, though, they become fearsome. Their tentacular legs can take hold of any mount, and they draw frothy reins of phlegm and spittle out from the mouth of their steed. They tap veins with their fang for blood, and when they exhaust their ridden-thing they delight in marching it off a cliff - bonelessly and harmlessly bouncing away themself.

The accursed third of Kitezh curse all of God's creatures.

They are

Himantopodes

HD: 1 AC: 14 ATK: 1d8 spear or 1d6 bow, 50/50 chance of being armed with either SAV: 7 MOV: As crawling person, or as mount INT: As person ML: 6 while mounted, 4 while dismounted
No. Appearing: 3d4 (1/3rd on horses, 1/3rd on people, 1/3rd on miscellaneous creatures)

Hellish Visage: Himantopodes make a sport of shaping their faces into the scariest shit they can imagine. On encountering himantopodes, hirelings and animals must test morale or be frozen with terror for 1d6 rounds.

Himantopodes don't take falling damage.

Slush Pile 17

Previously:

Slush Pile 1

Slush Pile 2

Slush Pile 3

Slush Pile 4

Slush Pile 5

Slush Pile 6

Slush Pile 7

Slush Pile 8

Slush Pile 9

Slush Pile 10

Slush Pile 11

Slush Pile 12

Slush Pile 13

Slush Pile 14

 

Slush Pile 15

Slush Pile 16

In captivity there is at least one species of poison dart frog that will, instead of killing its competitors, allow them to breed - and then harvest their young to feed to its own tadpoles

insectuoise - a greenish-blue mineral of a bulbous and rugose shape - the mirror of amber, instead of trapping insects of bygone days, under particular conditions it will hatch into insects not yet imagined on this earth - the mineral is coveted by the entomologers, who prophesy a new age of chitin
-things like moths with longship-prow heads
-erythrism: congenital condition of abnormal redness in an animal's fur, plumage, exoskeleton, or skin
-marcor: a wasting or withering of the flesh
-moggy: a cat, a human girl-child or young woman, a slattern, a scarecrow, a calf, a mouse, a cake made with ginger and treacle
-synastry: concurrence of starry position or influence upon two people, similarity of condition or fortune prefigured by astrology
-vicariance: fragmentation of the environment
-chalazae: part in egg white that holds yolk in place
-hight: to call, to name, to command, to enjoin, called, named
-scrofulous: has scrofula, having a diseased and run-down appearance, morally contaminated

Talking sword which relays the commands of a god
-guy with division symbols for pupils who slices really good
-people with stone wings, can't fly, myth of divine punishment - kulshegus
-guy who's a big face stuck onto a wall with root-tentacles
-were-dumbass who's a sabretooth tiger on land and a walrus in the water but in-between is just some guy with long teeth...
-two guys sharing a heron costume, one standing on stilts, the other sitting atop the other's shoulders and manipulating the beak - unnervingly-effective, likely due to spirit-possession
-guys who are hanging silk cocoons, their pale little faces poking out between the strands

ok... bard class... but it's a muppet... you're a muppet... and you can kick off musical numbers...

dragons precede modern notions of species-divides and so on... that's why they blend reptile and great cat and bird, why their very breath is poisonous, and why they spend so much time laired in remote locales - the modern era is as poisonous to them as they are to it...

blackjack-esque racing/chasing mini-game... plus that pirate pop-up game for inserting obstacles

The Knights of the Ladybug are charged with monitoring portals between worlds

Horror scenario beginning: A whale is beached, and bursts - strange tracks in the sand leading away from the carcass
-post-financial, de-industrial solution to control over Arctic waters - control-parasite that can inhabit wide variety of oceanic life, use them as living, self-reproducing drones to damage sensitive equipment on vessels
--OR the whales are fed-up and are now beaching themselves the world over and birthing humanity's end
-A mummy is found where a mummy should not be. Its scientific examination releases something awful.

Peninsula under quarantine, experiencing cattle mutilation-esque murders wherein the organs of victims have been removed - secretly peninsula is used as reservoir of healthy organs for wealthy outsiders to prolong their lifespans, organ-harvesting developed into ritualistic hunt

"angel DNA" - what Bigfoot allegedly possesses, genetic information unlike any other on Earth

Virus that un-vestigializes human vomeronasal organ, intended for mass pheromonal control of population

"Events in time are sticky, like sap - this is the primary cause of synchronicity. Time as a whole - eternity - is like amber" - delirious brain-thought, good line to give kook character
"We are children of this age, weaned on chaos and strife"
"evil horses, accomplices of swirling waters"
-the horse whose rump extends to carry a hundred children to drown, the serpent, the centipede
"In Genesis it is stated that the first creatures were brought forth by the abyssal waters - they came into being as nightmares"
-the badlands - hell without fire

A treasure - magic sword or armour or somesuch - found in a monster's lair in the hexmap, if borne to a dungeon elsewhere, wins respect & recognition by the undead faction within the dungeon (which shares the treasure's particular animal-motif) as the righteous heir

Wicked witch of the woods is really a weasel princess - bonded with an aurumvorax - who decades ago had her aurumvorax kill the girls bullying her for being hunchbacked then fled

Blight afflicting redwoods in the Pacific Northwest, liquefying them into a flood of sludge

Apparently-human fetuses found in piure-like organic sacs within stones... beware the ones that have gone bad...

Death-machine powered by the ectoplasm of the ghost it's going to make you
-chakram shaped like a snowflake, fractal + vorpal edge

Andersonville scenario...(?) I think this is referring to Andersonville Prison - shout out to Tasting History

Been coming around on martians-as-orcs... like true bonafide sorcerers raise their armies by tearing down chunks from the heavens, and command obedience from the aliens that come with them with the vague promise of being sent back home after their term of service... probably have to change up what planet/species you're drawing from every so often so they don't figure out that the prudent move is to shank you immediately and burn your books to spare their countrymen

A village where, due to lack of arable land, all but a family's firstborn have their souls "plucked" via the sacrifice of hair to the local deity, turning them into emotionless servitors

Monster: Accumulated biomass of a cave - bugs, guano, bones, etc. - shuddering to conjoined life, taking on the form of beasts painted on the caves walls, imagination lingering like a skin waiting to be filled

In this land, Death lost at a game of his choosing so badly that he left it in shame entirely. There are catacombs of the living to imprison the Things People Become When They Get Too Old.

Trees dressed as white mares and ridden to the night sky
-the lady-who-is-a-great-waterbug taking the children who would drown in her river's terrible floods
--young men of the watermeadow join the band of her fionin and live wildly, roving in a shining copper boat - each year in her service they grow shorter, and so the land is also known as the Land of the Little Men

Syphilisybils with pythonic sores on their brains
-emberyo

A henge with the still-living bodies of something or other buried and pinned beneath the stones
-a horned man who lives in caves and cuts his beard to make it hail

Room filled with haze of spores - open doors allow haze to spread beyond room - wet rags over mouth & nose improve save - those affected by the spores are unable to visually perceive depth, making them vulnerable to the room's pit traps - is this any better than just having a persistent mist or somesuch? counterplay of rags allows better use against enemies

A flower that blooms on the bodies of the dead. If they died full of anger and regret, the flower will be stained red.
-vengeful bees what feeds on these

Language of dungeon humanoids, unknown to outside world, is based on sounds made by dungeon monsters in spoken form, tracks left by monsters in written form. Meaning is symbolic associations of those monsters. E.g. a sound reminiscent of a skeleton's clattering teeth could mean both "death" and "white", written form is five slightly splayed lines mimicking feet-bones.
-alt.: glyphs based on Widmanstätten patterns

Why do all zombies and skeletons know how to use swords and stuff? Why can skeletons walk around without muscles? Necromancy is primarily concerned with the memory of life, advancing as a necromancer means becoming able to draw out more memory with less meat, and being discriminate in what you draw out - beginners can only raise fresh corpses, which hunger as they did in life though they digest nothing, if one wants undead warriors they must be made from living warriors, etc.

Spiders and octopi share some ancestry or other such relation
-amputation-regeneration cult of octopus god

The defining landmark of this area is:
-the big glowing ghost-tree
-the other moon that shouldn't be here and is falling to a cataclysmic end
-the big river that flood randomly
-the hill that crawls and births monsters
-a desert area where big dust storms or locust clouds or whatever sweep down from the north every so often so to get to the ruins up there without getting worn down too much you need to gamble with smugglers for the locations of their hidey-holes or track the great brown wyvern to its lair so you can shelter under the dung piles or whatever in a strand of safe havens and time it so you get to the desired hex when everything's clear and not covered in locusts or dead locusts in the aftermath that attract the Worm Tide and the sweep is more or less predictable, it's regular + or - a watch, and you can see it coming from a ways off

The Old Baatorians, being unable to die, dealt with enemies of their own kind by absorbing them
-aesthetic of the yugoloths: cenobites basically, amputation and eyes sewn shut and flaying and all that, subtraction and bindings, ideal yugoloth is an orb of annihilation

Every night the wizard descends from his tower to the shore of the lake brandishing his golden reins with their leaden bells, and the surface of the lake boils as he calls up the winged worm who sleeps at its bottom, to fly upon it and extort the people of the valley with threats of floods and storms and wet sicknesses

A gang of robbers who ride flying bucks granted to them by a pact with the devil, riding far from home after alighting off a particular hill so they are never caught

Awful nasty things: Like pigeons and they poop all over the place but it's not their poop it's bits of them that've goopified and if you get it on you you'll start to goopify too

The guards of the partridge princess's palace wear a sheet of paper painted with eyes over their face - it lets the partridge princess see whatever they see, while allowing the princess to manipulate what they see to keep them loyal
-hill giants that ambush like trapdoor spiders, hiding in wait under boulders

Palanquin-bearing muscle-cult who make their erstwhile lord heavier and heavier to make themselves stronger for lifting him

Spellbooks... ink... having too much magic in you turns you into pigments, a towering symbol-creature who paints a pocket-world into being around you

Yamulpiiki, the city that's an aircraft carrier, a thermal-swept plateau home to nesting quetzalcoatlus sorts, aerial domination of the surrounding region
-Ipizet Freel

Rabbits pulled from the bags under your eyes, snapping things of deprived delirium

Tripartite AI modelled after Hera-Athena-Aphrodite, with human operator as Eris-Paris

Lychee-skinned gibbons tearing out their heart-seeds to chuck at you
-the orange, white, and black of tigers are not one being but three creatures in symbiosis, and weaker for it

Satirical folk-song about marching boots, decrying the conditions they're trod in, rise up against the soldiers and their general - straw sandals of the peasantry try to join in only to be put down as the boots need leather from livestock for their patchings

Temperature-dependent sex determination... hot-or-cold-or-temperate bi/trimodal gender in reptile-people...

Ok so the ruins have phallic architecture like road markers and whatnot but you can tell they were some fucked up guys who made it because the dicks are all wrong

Dungeon-cannons with screwable barrel-lengths so they're easier to carry... very long fuses so you can hide behind a corner while the thing fires - it will almost definitely explode, and you don't want to be near it when it does - best aimed down narrow corridors & other such chokepoints

Ideas in your head that make your skull blossom like a flower
-bees for these too... perhaps rather humming-birds...

Legend that coffee was discovered by goatherds noticing their herd acting jittery after grazing on coffee-shrubs - adventurer practice of driving herd of goats before you into the dungeon, double effect of pacifying carnivores and discovering which edibles will kill or mutate you

A substitute human sacrifice - a doll stuffed with offal

Caste system based off the food pyramid...