Slush Pile 5

Secret police for secret laws - kept secret because if people knew they could be broken, they'd be incurably tempted to

You know you've entered the underworld when your compasses stop pointing North, and start pointing Down

The easiest gates to the Plane of Fire are scars - and not necessarily scars from burns - passions and flames, ashes and traumas are closely aligned - the sort of scar and the circumstances of its scarring influence what part of the Plane you enter into

Modern horror seed- urban renewal scheme (hyper-gentrification) offers devil's bargain to homeless people, free food/housing/drugs but they get vivisected & incorporated into hostile architecture to scare off & attack other "undesirables" - like Urban Alchemy but more blatant - bloodshot eyes staring from grates, raw, twitching muscles encased in concrete shell close a nook to crush the sleepers taking shelter there

Desert wine brewed from honeypot ants - a delicacy too sweet for most beyond the sands

Gross decadent delicacy: botfly larvae grown in the bodies of slaves

Drug that people think is from smoking leaf - actually from smoking the tiny caterpillar cocoons laid on the leaves - high is from connection to "imago-consciousness" that guides the caterpillar through metamorphosis

The rogue with a heart of gold literally has a heart of gold. Someone is going around stealing rogues' hearts and replacing them with gold hearts that make them decent people. They are trying to monopolize vice.

Enemies in dungeon are broken, animated statues - stompy torsos with nothing but legs, arms dragging a shoulder and silently screaming head behind them, etc. Getting a complete statue together de-enemizes them, turning the statue into a neutral, potentially friendly NPC - being broken drove them to violent madness.

One thousand origami cranes folded for a wish - the wish manifests as a dungeon made of razor-edged paper full of origami treasures & monsters - like Dave Made A Maze

Dungeons entered not by finding their physical entrance in the world, but by discovering & enacting an occult ritual - make a ring of copper mirrors that capture the light of sunset to create a gate to the Rosy Pillars

Mendicant Grasshopper - knees bent backwards, forehead pressed into the ground until the skin's flayed, bowl held up by broken arms - begging for everything you have, pursuing with great leaps

Dungeon - something like a leper colony, the inhabitants infected by a disease that warps their flesh & prolongs their life - the disease is in fact a demon, or envoy of the great old ones, or some other such malignant being, sealed within the bodies of the infected, torturing and tempting them to let it out. The colony was once exclusively a monastery of willing ascetics, but their population has been winnowed over the years and in desperation the infection was spread to others. The colony's fallen to chaos as some betrayed by this arrangement conspire to release the demon and be cured.

The Cyclopean Order's fanaticism only ever deepened in their wars against the western pagans. First they cut out their eyes to avoid the temptations of the world, then they set pieces of living stone into their brows. Did this reveal some new facet of the faith to them, or was there another reason they retreated to their fortresses, repelling all that sought an audience with them?

At "room temperature" (as universes & dimensions go), time is a liquid, ever-flowing, and terribly toxic (this toxicity is what we know as entropy). When crystallized, time becomes a hyper-cuboid arrangement of moments, the armature of which true adepts may flit along like lightning - an index of all that is or could be (more properly: a fraction of The [INDEX]). This is one of the narrow roads to infinity, though how precisely to freeze time is a matter of great contention & speculation in occulture. The Azure Pelican School of alchemists claim to possess a teardrop-chunk of crystal time at the heart of their academy.

Monster - Lost Divers - antique diving suits, tubes no longer connected to an air supply, but to something else, deep beyond in the abyssal darkness - sever the tubes and the things inside the suits will seize and mutate into non-viable forms, but take care to avoid what leaks out lest you meet the same fate.

Monster - Chitinous Cataphracts - lost in the desert, the crusaders became maddened by thirst and the relentless sun. They sought shelter within the bodies of iridescent scarabs, eating their way into the shells like worms. The scarabs were no strangers to parasites. Corrosive ichor fused human flesh to insect armour, slaved reason to unreasoning hunger.

Dung castle of the chitinous cataphracts - spherical dungeon in a big ol' ball of poo - gimmick of dungeon puzzles/navigation is constant rotation - if at first a path doesn't reveal itself, get the tilt right

Marvelous & maddening paintings made with meteorite pigment, containing the mineral-memory of what those meteorites witnessed in the darkness between the stars - murderous mystique surrounds them, an exile from the void who walks about in human skin seeks the paintings out, believing them to reveal the doorway back home

Hydra cults seeking a narrow road to infinity through the endless generation of flesh - consumption of troll-blood tinctures and many-headed mooncalves. The cults are a pyramid scheme, the lowest rungs subjected to growth and experimentation that inevitably leads to fatal errors - if they're lucky. The leaders treat these members like a garden, plucking the most promising fruits for transplantation into their own bodies.

An entire planet that's been terraformed into a gigantic record - magnetic ores seeded and tectonic plates rearranged into grooves & ridges. The sun's and planet's magnetospheres are the record player, set in motion by the circulation of days and years, broadcasting the celestial music of its eons-old message into the universe.

Mini-dungeon - a very small dungeon, perhaps inside a gooseberry blossom, but not one you shrink & enter, rather one with tiny pixie & bug-adventurers already exploring it which you may observe and help or hinder based on your observations for little treasures - the tiny adventurers may try to appeal back, with you taking the role of capricious gods

Sekolah cultists bury their dead with onyx pebbles placed in their eye sockets. You've broken into an aristocrat's mausoleum and found the pebbles on his corpse - this is very inconvenient for the cult, as it may reveal their membership and conspiracies through the decades. They've convened a hunt, put in their shark-tooth dentures, and come for you. Watch your back, and stay away from the water.

Culture quirks:
-Read omens in the colours and consistencies of their vomit. Drunkards and the seasick are oracles to them.
-All their names are unique to each person, believe you share the burden of sins of everyone else with your name. Very poor will offer to name their child after you for some bread.
-Certain taboo words, curses, names of spirits are spoken only through ventriloquism.
-Corpses are treated completely without reverence, dumped in mass graves a little ways out of town.
-Each profession and position in society has its own hairstyle, minor criminals are shaved, major criminals have their scalps scarred with acid.
-Torturing birds is a respected art form.
-Fear the moon, refer to it only by oblique euphemisms (e.g. “the silver dish we forgot after feasting”).
-Treat horses as legal free citizens, above serfs but below land-owners.
-Members choose half their name, and are assigned the other based on reputation and achievements or failures (e.g. White Lion Tumbling for a prideful yet clumsy person).
-The laws one is expected to follow depends on one’s religion. Each temple is a courthouse. Atheists are homo sacer.
-Meat is reserved for warriors. All others are expected to follow a vegetarian diet.
-Children are considered the property of their parents (or whoever their parents sell them to) until they reach adulthood.
-Alopecia is the height of attractiveness. Plucking all the hair on one’s body is a common fashion.
-Gifts of one’s own blood are exchanged between friends, often drawn by thorny vines pulled through the ears.
-Nails are lacquered with spices, and shaved into one’s meals.
-A mask is worn on one’s belt for every occasion.
-Weave all the hair they cut off into a communal braid.
-Howl to communicate over long distances.
-Believe showing one’s anger to others opens you to their curses.
-Marker of status is the wideness of one’s hat brim. Very rich have servants and tamed insects to hold up the brim of their mighty hats.
-Believe the minute characteristics of the colour and shape of the bags under one’s eyes reveal one’s personality.
-Exchange children at birth between families.
-Superstitious admiration for spiders and centipedes. Jewelry often shaped to look like species of those.
-Warriors kiss the corpses of those they kill to mollify angry ghosts.
-Believe that property can’t truly change ownership from the person who made it. Nominally make no sales, only rent what they make.
-Believe the wheel to be the most sacred of shapes.
-Refuse to gossip near bees.
-Trust nothing that comes from the southwest.
-Consume large quantities of fermented frog.
-Consider slapstick dances the height of comedy.

City quirks:
-The city’s aristocratic families live in towers carved into the dormant fruiting bodies of an enormous fungus beneath it that feeds on its waste. The timing and effect of their sporulation is the subject of perennial wild speculation, doomsaying, and conspiracy-theorizing.
-At the city’s center is an enormous, broken clocktower. Citizens instinctively match their pace to its irregular ticking, and visitors are subconsciously tripped up by it.
-The city’s built on swampland, and plagued by biting insects. Buildings are mandated to have sufficient space within their walls to house bats, which are venerated as little medicinal deities.
-The killing of animals is forbidden within its walls. Abattoirs cluster around ramshackle colosseums where animals are goaded into slaying each other for corpses to harvest and the amusement of the crowds.
-The punishment for every crime committed within is a term of slavery under the municipal government, from a perfunctory moment in shackles to a lifetime
-The roads seem to be paved with cobblestones, but these are in fact a sort of snail that has evolved to live like coral. They feed mainly off the city’s dumped waste.
-The main wall is in fact a petrified giant curled up in the fetal position.

Astronomical puzzle based on orrery or teleportation changing the position of stars relative to you the observer, and you noticing that the hemisphere shown has changed and how

Modern horror monster - mummy wrapped up in VCR tape, a public access TV cult icon killed literally or figuratively by more advanced media - monster exists in its limited, recorded routine, can "regenerate" damage by "rewinding" or "fast-forwarding" to a part of its routine wherein it's whole, but this limits its future actions.

A fateful venom - coveted by death-fearing fools - is the only thing that can kill those injected with it. All other wounds and ills are suffered, but their lethal effects are held at bay. The venom is beyond agonizing, and takes its sweet time to wrap up.

Dungeon - Devil's got a riverboat with a boiler that burns up damned souls - monsters & merchants & other NPCs are those tempted aboard the boat into a diabolical bargain - find the loophole in the deal to set them free and solve encounters without violence, saving that for the big red man himself

In the secret language of sorcerers, a gift of an air mephit docked of its wings is a warning that the recipient is rising too far in their ambitions - like Icarus, they are advised to fly within their proper bounds

Calendar ghouls are what remains of a cabal of blasphemous mages who attempted to expand on God's design on their own eighth day of creation: Savarach. The attempt failed catastrophically, the day exploded into slivers of seconds and minutes and hours, and the mages became unstuck from time, lost in mazes of potential and eddies of unreality. Only on certain eves and equinoxes do the stars align and allow them to walk the world, preying on history itself to sustain their presence.

There slumbers the serpent

It dreams of an egg

The egg is the dream

Cradled in cold coils

From the egg it emerges

Tongue tasting itself

For the serpent is being and void

The serpent is all that could be tasted

And all that could not

In hunger the serpent devours

And is devoured

And slumbers

And dreams

Who is reciting this?

-DNA is a record of the history of organisms, and of the organism-of-organisms from which all spring. Merrshaulk is an idea, or an entity, or an energy, or something beside or including all the above. Organisms which come into contact with Merrshaulk have their DNA twisted from a double helix to an ouroboros, and are reborn as yuan-ti.

Slave revolt passes around occult knowledge of how to weave silicate-edged long grasses into swords - razor-sharp, yet breaking after a handful of uses - who among the fattened masters could believe that grass could be a threat, let alone slaves?

Deer were cursed to shed their antlers after their season by a god of the hunt who feared what they'd become. Insulated from divine influence, a stag will grow a tree of antlers, a mountain of horns - with time, tines to pierce the moon, and bathe the world in its silvery blood.

The exorcists of Tumeld-Maer are, in their final initiation, placed in a coffin and buried in the dirt. Once the worms gain a taste for them, they are disinterred and granted their license. Thereafter they may spill some blood upon bare earth and call upon the worms to devour those less favoured.

Noble prisoners were kept in the highest towers of the prison, in cells too narrow to lie down in - if the prisoners leaned to rest, the circling ravens would peck at their flesh through the window-bars. The prisoners made promises to the winds, and bargained with the King of Birds, trading eyes and hands and cleverness away for comfort. From this exchange, harpies were born.

Thomas Edison, after the failure of his spirit-phone, produced a batch of lightbulbs with filaments of corpse-hair. The illumination of these bulbs was said to be able to pass through the veil of lower dimensions and into the afterlife, a wavelength that shuddered along axes we can't conceive of. Though the bulbs largely disappear from the historical record after Edison's death, credible testimony suggests G. H. W. Bush consulted with a box of them before participating in the assassination of J. F. Kennedy.

Of the frost-giants and their wintry palaces nothing more remains - save for the braids of their white beards, woven into belts by their conquerors.

The cathedral of the hunters has for its hall and arches the ribcage of the great dragon which was their worthiest prey - its descendants, much-shrunken kobolds, fetch wine up and down the pews, and whisper of fiery vengeance.

"This is not a place of honour
The honour of this place is yet to be won
Something man-made is here, and it is dangerous
The danger was not sufficient for our time
If you are not us, it will be sufficient for yours
The danger will be unleashed only if you are worthy
Worthy by the standards of our culture
We considered ourselves the greatest culture of our time
Our culture will live again in the one that unleashes the danger"
-Inscription around the base of the Headless Mountain (repeating, many antecedent-languages)

Only werewolves transform with the cycles of the moon - other were-beasts follow other cycles, and not necessarily celestial ones. Werelions change with the rising and setting of the sun, werebears with the seasons of glutting and fasting, wereleeches with the spilling of blood into the earth, and wereravens with the echoes of the calling of their dead god, to name a few.

Magic item - a sledgehammer which when slammed against a surface creates cracks that are rifts to a rather unpleasant plane - the grey wastes or the nine hells or whatever - not necessarily a direct weapon, but one that creates potentially ruinous environmental hazards.

Magic item - a mace with flanges that are butterfly wings in stained glass - whatever it kills, whatever it smashes, becomes a cocoon that will someday hatch into a random organism or item - not all beneficial.

Kuo-toa, sahuagin, locathah - a lot of fish-men... maybe each is more like a different sect that a different species? Locathahs are hippie-ish, live and let live, come and go with the tides, kuo-toa are fanatically, individualistically totemic, each finding the object representing their highest self, sahuagin have a militaristic-monastic order of consumption, or whatever.

Hags make a ritualistic drink not totally dissimilar to kuchikamizake, made from the flesh of children they've fattened on candy, chewed up, and spat into cauldrons.

In the foothills of the Appalachians there's a tower of tin and spiraling copper, a spindle that weaves striking lightning into shining fabric. The electrochemical operations of brains within range of this spindle get caught up in its work, becoming tessellated in its tapestry. A mind thus caught might experience a million years in a moment, compressed into nigh-instantaneous arc and branch. In this way one of the narrow roads to infinity might be laid.

A wizard killed in the middle of casting a spell with somatic components might have their hands twist off their wrists and become a particularly perverse kind of crawling claw - ones which constantly perform profane mudras and forms for themselves a lair of chaotic magic.

Degenerate gnomes who live in the pouches of imported marsupials - these guys are sickos.

Dungeon - an Amazon distribution center, of the multiverse - ally with the nascent union to defy the interdimensional overlords, navigate shelves stuffed with horrors from beyond