D6x6 Fungi from Yuggoth

Mi-go? You-go - click the button below:

 

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

D6	These fungi from Yuggoth have
1	layered, lace-like skirts like a bustled dress.
2	a crown like entangled antlers of yellowed ivory, pocked with weeping sores.
3	quivering, asymmetrical puffball-growths studding their bodies.
4	bioluminescent splotches flashing across their skin in colours you have no name for.
5	liquid shadows that do not act like mere occlusions - sometimes rising to coil around the one that casts them, sometimes ranging about to lurk in the corner of your eye.
6	a growth on their "chest" or "abdomen" that vaguely resembles a face, which they contort and throb when attempting to communicate with humans.

D6	These fungi's Yuggoth
1	is a wormhole into a lead-grey, ultra-entropic cosmos where detritivores digest even the very fabric of space-time.
2	is a rogue planet which wandered the universe for eons - captured by the gravity of our Sun, its light awakening the planet's inhabitants from long crypto-biosis.
3	is an intergalactic macro-ship which they've parasitically infiltrated.
4	is itself a Great Old One, which the fungi have effectively lobotomized & ridden from the apocalypse which consumed their original solar system.
5	is a throbbing cyst in reality, enclosing the para-causal system that the fungi draw on for sustenance & empowerment.
6	is the spherical, three-dimensional extrusion of a higher-dimensional super-being - these fungi are extrusions of the same, only smaller and less aware of it.

D6	These fungi from Yuggoth can
1	implant a psychic bud into someone's spine that compels those around the implantee to gangstalk them.
2	fuse together into living portals that allow instant transportation across gulfs of space.
3	cause the bodies and souls of those who drink their ichor to drift between the waking world and the Dreamlands.
4	emit a hummadruz which degrades memories and other records of their presence.
5	forge the iridescent lagh metal which even the immortal fear.
6	discorporate themselves into a semi-sentient infection that can afflict both animals and plants for wide area control.

D6	These fungi from Yuggoth come to Earth
1	to harvest collections of brains from seemingly-disparate individuals - sometimes animals - which when arranged properly together share a psycho-geometrical harmony that amplifies the fungi's more abstract technologies.
2	to observe the dimensional rifts that form where gravity well and primitive consciousness meet, and to extract the hybrid substances that encrust the interstitial null-space of these rifts.
3	to open the way for greater entities, and thereby gain tokens and concessions from the same.
4	to nudge human development in subtle & esoteric ways, which may not bear fruit from millions of years yet.
5	to combat the influence of their ancient enemy - the god-state of Tindalos.
6	to measure the distortions caused by the entities sleeping or bound or latent within its space-time.

D6	These fungi from Yuggoth have a base
1	on the dark side of the moon, where they are waited on by kidnapped and immortalized Apollo mission astronauts, while those astronauts' clones lived out their lives on Earth.
2	orbiting around the sun - they could, at any moment, use it to provoke a solar flare that would wipe out technological civilization.
3	at the North Pole, within the Rupes Nigra, allowing them to manipulate electro-magnetic signals across the planet and beyond.
4	beneath a cornfield somewhere in Midwestern America, where an occult government faction swears oaths of service to them in return for alien knowledge - the corn of the field above is infected with a smut derived from the fungi from Yuggoth themselves.
5	off the beaten path on Mount Everest, where wealthy supplicants come with offerings in the hope of winning favours and blessings of warped flesh.
6	on a small, artificial island somewhere in the Pacific, built from a genetically-modified, electro-magnetism-disrupting coral. They are worshiped there by an eco-terrorist sect.

D6	When these fungi from Yuggoth attempt to communicate with humans
1	they ape the mannerisms of particular pop-cultural individuals.
2	they come off as psychopathically callous.
3	they prefer to use changeling-children raised by them, who've got one brain hemisphere removed and replaced with a fungal organelle.
4	they avoid pronouns and suchlike, suggesting they have no sense of self.
5	they tend to stumble over terms of community, family, connection, and suchlike.
6	they use the Elder Futhark, which were taught to the ancient Scandinavians by them, therewhen cemenenting the "Nordic" alien archetype as a cover-up of the horrid truth.

D6x6 Space Hunks

By the coercion of bad doctor.

Click the button below to get your space hunk:

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

D6	This space hunk comes
1	from a nation of orbital installations in the shimmering ring of a gas giant. Those who lived above the ring duelled with those who lived below in beautiful vacuum-dance duels to the death.
2	from the goon-cubes of a totalitarian social-democratic world, where the satisfaction of animal needs was held to be the highest virtue.
3	from an interstellar host bar where the hosts were grown from scratch to match the tastes and whims of particular clients.
4	from a colony of mega-aesthetes who created a brief civilization in a comet as it sublimated away in sunlight.
5	as a creche-prototype from a planet of sapiosexual geniuses, who considered him a hideous failure.
6	as the last survivor of a planet that was destroyed by a cosmic warlord in a fit of jealous rage after being cuckolded by one of its ultra-handsome inhabitants.

D6	This space hunk wears
1	ceremonial armour of golden plates and delicate chains that defend little and expose much.
2	baggy, near-frumpy, yet inexplicably-expensive clothing.
3	an anti-gravitational mankini that shifts in ripples between glowing neon colour schemes.
4	a tailored, holographic suit emitted from his bow-tie.
5	a veil of living silk that coils around his body from an eyebrow-ring down to a toe-ring.
6	chrome ribbons and bangles lined with blinking LEDs.

D6	This space hunk's most hunkadelic feature
1	is his popping abs - where the abs pop, more surge up from beneath.
2	is the slender yet defined curve of his ass, each twitch powerful and purposeful.
3	are his soft, plump, pouty lips placed upon a jawscape of chiselled, angular mathematical perfection.
4	is his strong brow and piercing gaze.
5	are his mighty, meaty pecs.
6	are the sculpted curlicues of his body hair, each more fragrant than any flower.

D6	This space hunk has
1	no belly button - he hatched from an egg.
2	compound eyes like cut gemstones, and finger-long lashes that curl along chitinous segments.
3	twin heartbeats like steady drums, and a constant, cozy warmth.
4	a tail that is as strong as it is dextrous - which is very.
5	three tongues, each tipped with three prehensile lobes.
6	pincers on his hips which assist with leverage in love-making.

D6	This space hunk is
1	fond of animals & plants (or their local analogue) and refuses to harm either. Subsists entirely on ultraviolet light and ice. He makes really annoying sounds when he's chewing ice.
2	a huge gamer & space-sports-gambler.
3	a fanboy of Earth-culture, but gets many times, places, and people confused. Do not ask him about Emperor Hitler.
4	a hobbyist literary critic, but one who's actually good and not like one who just gives a synopsis and their sentiments.
5	seeking a fellow hunk to merge eternally with, so that the virtuous cycling of their yang energy will birth a new and vibrant star.
6	the lead guitar in a space-rock band which has never received any allegations of anything untoward.

D6	This space hunk
1	ejaculates puffs of glittering stardust - don't get this in your eyes!!
2	has euphoric sweat that gives a nice buzz.
3	is mildly telepathic, and can share sensations with those he touches.
4	is biologically incapable of feeling possessive of someone.
5	can do that E.T. thing where he can make a part of him glow and heal minor injuries but instead of the tip of his finger it's his penis.
6	doesn't sleep, and must regularly extract chemo-fluid from a gland instead. Drinking this fluid lets you experience the dreams he didn't have.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Session 1

As this: https://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-seven-mysteries-of-st-fiachras.html

The session was run using a cut-down version of the esteemed deus ex parabola's G24 system. Modifications may be made as the need arises. 

The party - the private investigation firm: the Private EyeNTJs - were strapped for cash, fishing for crumbs lost between the cushions of their office's couch for sustenance, when they received one final mission that could save their financials. The immortality-seeking multi-millionaire Johnson Bronson was missing, and his mistress Olga Russkihunnipottz wanted him found. His last known location? A sleepy little town on the coast of Newfoundland called St. Fiachra's.

Comprising the elite ranks of the Private EyeNTJs are:
-Walter Watts, a good ol' Southern boy who lost his fortune on horse gambling and whiskey.
-Sheriff Shorty, whose parents operated an underground freakshow in New York which he snitched on & thereby escaped.
-Billy "Big Rig" Riggus, the son of a roofer who died in the line of duty. Mocked in the roofing company locker room, Billy decided to follow his dream of doing good.

They rolled into town on a dark & stormy night in their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire, bantering about Big Rig's grandma's lamb marrow bunt cake.

They came up on an inn, the only lights on in town at this hour - the Bannock & Boobrie. Frightened by the inn's mascot's resemblance to Toucan Sam, and assured that in an rpg one can do anything, Big Rig smooched the other two members of the EyeNTJs 200 times on the lips (if you're too woke for lines & veils this could happen to you).

The inn's owner, a gracefully-aged woman who went by Miss Marble, welcomed the party (they, being gentlemen, tipped their hats in return) and seeing their sorry state offered them a free round of beers and a spare room. Watts recognized Miss Marble as the heiress of the Marble shipping fortune, and realized that she's aged very gracefully indeed for a woman who should be in her 90s. Being a Southern gentleman, he makes a pass at her. Big Rig shakes her hand in gratitude, and even through his rained-on chill notices Miss Marble's hand is cool to the touch.

The party leaves for the bar-room & collect their pints. A few local figures are hanging about. A big bearded teddy bear of a man comes up and introduces himself as Finnigan O'Flannagan. He says he hopes they enjoy their stay and don't cause any trouble in the peaceful & prosperous St. Fiachra's. A blue-afro'd man with a Star Trek visor calls over and tells them to stop letting the lame-o locals bother them. The party decides to split up and talk a bit to everybody.

Sheriff goes to sit with O'Flannagan and Trudy Knowles (the actual sheriff). While initially hostile, she and Sheriff bond over their dislike for the big city. While asking about Johnson, Sheriff intuits that Trudy is lying about never having met the guy.

Meanwhile, Big Rig sits with the blue afro'd Quasar Mike & his companion Pepto-talk. Pepto, a radical beatbox poet, regales them with the following lines:

What we supposed to do when the rich take our shit,
When I go to my grandma's my cap gets knit!
Capitalism? More like crapitalism!
Maaan FUCK Donald Trump

before excusing themself to go to the bathroom, as speaking truth to power triggers their IBS. After they go, Mike rants to Big Rig about the Procyonians - psycho-electrical beings from a remote solar system who come in two types: blue, who are good, feed on the plasma of interstellar space, and want to enlighten humanity so we can join them in fully-automated luxury gay space communism, and red, who are evil and feed on the plasma in human blood. He goes on to accuse auteur director Michael Bay of stealing his notes on the Procyonians to write his blockbuster Transformers film franchise. In a moment of clumsiness Mike knocks over Big Rig's pint, but while leaning over to clean it up whispers that the party should meet his group, the Blue Giant Crew, at their flophouse on the edge of town the next day to discuss Johnson's disappearance.

A crash of glass resounds outside and the party rushes out to find that the windshield of their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire has been smashed in. They see small figures scampering away into the storm but decide not to pursue, suspecting these figures to be gremlins. They find a tarp to cover the hole in their windshield, and find it was smashed by a large stone with a hole worn through it.

Returning to their drinks (and a refill for Big Rig), Watts goes to talk to the local priest, Father Donnchad. Watts finds Donnchad's hand to be as cool as Miss Marble's. They discuss theology and Johnson Bronson - Donnchad claims not to remember Johnson in particular, as rich people were always coming into town to try and buy out the secret to the town-folk's longevity - some, such as Miss Marble, even deciding to stay. When asked about the windshield, Donnchad says that local children have become prone to mischief and vandalism ever since a sickness starting spreading through St. Fiachra's, as the community is psychologically unused to infirmity.

The Private EyeNTJs took a huddle, to theorize & discuss their next moves. They agreed that the town was full of heretics, but couldn't decide whether they were good heretics or bad heretics. They decided that the local beer was bad news, and luckily Watts had a full canteen of water to sate their thirst. Their going theory as to what caused the strange sickness afflicting the town was that Johnson Bronson was using a Chinese weather sickness machine on it. They reiterated their company goal of bringing an analytical, logical mindset to Southern congeniality and manners, though it's revealed that the "NTJ" of the company's name has nothing to do with Myers-Briggs, but rather that the "J" stands for the initial of Watts' Aunt Jemima.

Not wanting to risk going out into the storm with a busted windshield and potential gremlins about, the party went to their room for bed. 

Checking their room, the party found it had been meticulously cleaned. The only objects of interest (besides the two beds, more comfortable than any they had slept in for weeks) were a cross hung up on the wall, which had branches arrayed along its top, and the bible in the bedside table, which had unusual revisions mostly to Genesis and Revelation which emphasized the garden of Eden.

They cycled watch throughout the night, with a duck call as their signal if trouble came a'knocking. Fortunately, nothing happened and they were able to rest up.

Come morning, the party sought to figure out their breakfast. They didn't have a penny to their name, and being factual & logical Southern gentlemen refused to resort to thievery. Big Rig remembered he left a banana under the driver's seat of their 1993 Ford Aspire, and he and Watts went to grab it. Miss Marble notices Watts carrying the big rock that had smashed in their windshield and recognizes it as a hag-stone, something used to ward away fairies.

They find the banana had partially rotted, and squeeze out the banana bits but keep the peel. They consider going to the Blue Giant Crew for food, but debate whether Pepto-talk had slipped out of the washroom and been the one to wreck their car.

Growing hungrier, and without a dime to their name, the party headed to the Blue Giant Crew flophouse on the edge of town. The cold autumn wind blew in through the hole in their windshield, but any bugs that might've slipped in were kept at bay by Watts' bug repellent candle. They found Quasar Mike ripping a bong atop a moldy beanbag chair on the porch of a dilapidated manor. Ushering them inside, they found the interior of the manor as wretched as the outside, and suspiciously leftist. Quasar provided the party with a family-size pack of blue Vegan Puffs™. He said that Pepto-Talk was around, but had engaged in another session of political beat poetry and was therefore evacuating their bowels through a hole in the basement.

He also regaled them with further confusing details on his Procyonian theory, and although he confirmed that Johnson Bronson had made it into town before disappearing insisted that the man had been converted into a red Procyonian and was responsible for the disappearances in the area, having fed on people for their plasma. After Quasar Mike showed the party his terrible artwork, the session drew to a close. 

The last ~1/3rd of this session went beyond what I prepped. Got a better feel for prep material => playtime now.

D20x5 Derelict Spaceships; Or: Space Hulks

Click the button below to get your derelict spaceship:

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

D20	This derelict spaceship was
1	a shipping vessel with a belly of modular compartments stuffed with rare elements and alloys.
2	a swift courier carrying information too dangerous to broadcast, on cubes of imperishable adamant.
3	a pilgrim-vessel bringing the faithful to a place of cosmic importance.
4	a once-unconquerable dreadnought outfitted with the cutting edge of its past time.
5	a terraforming vessel bubbled with microbiomes.
6	a pleasure craft which sequestered the ultra-rich in unimaginable splendour.
7	a scientific vessel measuring galactic anomalies.
8	a veteran warship bearing scars from many battles.
9	a nomadic habitat for lifelong spacers.
10	a prototype propelled by an experimental drive.
11	a cyclopean asteroid-miner, half-digested hillocks of ore still borne in its gut.
12	a cryopod carrier with a hold full of frozen colonists.
13	an explorer charting unseen frontiers.
14	a historical artifact preserved for its legacy.
15	a key minister's extravagant personal transport.
16	a troop-carrier used for planetary invasions, loaded up with drop-pods.
17	a medical vessel bringing miraculous treatments to colonies without the infrastructure for them.
18	a cycler making regular transport-rounds within one system.
19	a tug for stellar megastructures.
20	once the flagship of a now-thoroughly-discredited ideology.

D20	This derelict spaceship might be found
1	by its distress beacon’s message, garbled to an inhuman pitch.
2	by overhearing rumours in a scavengers’ den.
3	on a swiftly decaying orbit around a stormy gas giant.
4	by investigating mission logs that ended abruptly.
5	in a prodigious leak of government cover-ups.
6	in a neglected corner of space where there shouldn’t have been any traffic.
7	halfway embedded in an icy comet that should have mutually vapourized it on impact.
8	parked on the severed, skeletal arm of a spaceport.
9	based on hints in an old shipman's song.
10	by its minute occlusion of a solar system's star.
11	stuck in a Lagrange point among other interplanetary detritus.
12	by buying a drink for its deranged last survivor.
13	by the bizarre digital censor-shadow it casts on star-maps.
14	by following notes on a discarded cocktail napkin in a station's recycler-pile.
15	with a preserved, genetically-programmed blood sample drawn from a navigator-caste who was onboard it.
16	landed on a volatile-rich moonlet.
17	by stumbling into the warp-sinkhole it left behind.
18	based on the testimony of the last band of survivors to escape it.
19	based on the guilty confession of someone responsible for its disappearance.
20	by folllowing coordinates that insert themselves like a memetic virus into innocuous statements and computer code.

D20	A deadly threat present on this derelict spaceship is
1	its onboard artificial intelligence, glitched to violent paranoia with sporadic control over the ship’s systems.
2	the xenospore-infested corpses of its original crew, driven by coopted intellect to spread and fester.
3	a mercenary kill-team dispatched to cover up an oligarch’s scandal the ship is implicated in.
4	an opportunistic predator native to the void between worlds, extracting minerals and organics.
5	magnetic mines placed by a paranoid crewmember.
6	a killer robotic skeleton able to steal and wear other's flesh as a half-living disguise.
7	a deranged cannibal who's survived eating the rest of its crew.
8	a swarm of technorganic nanomachines fusing flesh and machinery like a hell-cancer across it.
9	the semi-incorporeal, ultra-terrestrial entity summoned by a cult which hid among its passengers.
10	the experimental automated spacesuits it was outfit with - now wandering husks rattling with the bones of their once-occupants.
11	an extraterrestrial knight who practices a bizarre (from a human perspective at least) form of chivalry, using the ship as a trial-ground.
12	a poltergeist which haunts it - the maddened gestalt of its crews' minds torn from their flesh by some obscure electro-magnetic phenomenon.
13	its surgery-bot, whose programming was damaged by radiation, making it obsessed with turning living creatures into art.
14	a tribe of degenerate mutant clones, meant to be emergency back-ups for dead crewmembers - gone horribly wrong.
15	a self-mummified psychic who survived the ship's general failure via mentally-imposed torpor, seeking to lure people in and break their will so they can take a new, healthy body.
16	that the genetically-modified plants used as a supplementary food/oxygen source aboard it networked & gained sentience as well as a hatred for animal life.
17	the alien from Alien, but like a bit different - maybe it's got tentacles instead of claws and the stabby-tail, and lays eggs in your brain that make you hallucinate, for example.
18	a great amoebic slime, hiding in the ducts and the interstitial spaces aboard the ship - an ambush predator waiting for the right moment to emerge and absorb.
19	a hungry gang of rival salvagers.
20	a cabal of vacuum-adapted post-humans who view the presence of their less-evolved kin as an insult.

D20	What makes this derelict spaceship difficult to navigate
1	its own brittle, decayed structure, which any solid shock risks breaking.
2	is its malfunctioning artificial gravity generator, which changes its direction unpredictably.
3	are the bulkheads separating and sealing off its various sections, which can only be safely opened with keycards scattered about.
4	is its fuel leaking into various sections, creating pockets of poisonous & explosive gas.
5	is that its automatic locks between pressurized and depressurized sections aren't working properly, meaning opening the wrong door could get you sucked out into space.
6	is its warped hyper-geometry, tesselated out by a flaw in its drive.
7	are the pools of acid which dripped out of its batteries.
8	is its unintuitive layout.
9	is that its spectrum-opaque chassis makes it impossible to scan from the outside.
10	is the disruptive radiation emanating from its reactor.
11	is the web of silk-steel alloy disaster-webbing unleashed across the ship to hold together fractured sections.
12	is that attempting to connect to its internal mapping will glitch out your system and feed you nonsense.
13	is that some immense force has bent it out of shape.
14	is that all the signs are in some language there's no publicly-available translation for.
15	is that its lighting is glitched-out, and blindingly-strobbing.
16	is that its wiring has become fucked-up, and parts that shouldn't be electrified have become electrified.
17	is the plasmatic fog which has gathered in its passages, restricting line of sight.
18	is its misleading signage, likely mistranslated.
19	are the big holes punctured through it by meteorites.
20	are the tangles of dangling wires, tubing, and flex-ducts lining its hallways.

D20	Besides the usuals, salvaging this derelict spaceship
1	will get you a lot of money, like, a lot a lot of money.
2	will earn you a hell of a lot of rep with scavengers, which you can use to make them back off claims or work with you.
3	will get you an experimental weapon which can wreck just about anything without exotic defenses.
4	will get you blueprints which can be used to greatly upgrade your own ship.
5	will grant you an intact module which you can transplant whole onto your own ship.
6	will bring you to the attention of a corrupt space-sheriff looking to shake you down.
7	will net you a contract from a corporation impressed by your results, who want you to retrieve the important parts of one of their own lost vessels.
8	gains you some exotic materials that would be worth some serious favours to the right buyer.
9	will get you an anomalous power-core that keeps working regardless of interference or resource draw.
10	will get you the experience you need to become an expert in dismantling spaceships with minimal risk to yourself.
11	will get you some primo blackmail material on some powerful corporation, government, or NGO.
12	can get you a handy, tanky, crab-shaped cargo-loader robot.
13	can get you a lot of goodwill and favours from the friends and family of those lost on it.
14	will get you a signal-spoof which allows you to disguise your own spaceship as the wreck to remote detection methods.
15	gets you an alien artifact that does weird shit.
16	can net you a canister of bio-nanites that can heal just about any wound and replace limbs and organs by flowing into and merging with your flesh.
17	provides clues that make up a sort of map to an even bigger, juicier haul.
18	can get you some cool and expensive cybernetic implants.
19	can get you a smuggled crate of good-ass space drugs.
20	will get a self-righteous squad of space-police on your ass.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's

My group's usual DM seems like he could use a break... been brainstorming something to run... which is this:

A sleepy little coastal town in Newfoundland - and yet:

1. St. Fiachra's elderly population (these days most of its population) exhibit remarkable health! Locals attribute this to its spring-water - and in fact a health spa fed by St. Fiachra's spring operated on the island until the '80s - but outside reporting tends to claim that their diet rich in fish and seaweed is to thank for this.

2. Befitting a town founded by Irish immigrants, St. Fiachra's is awash with fairy-lore. Big circles of mushrooms sprout across it, said to be portals to the otherworld. In a darker vein, the town is rumoured to be haunted by a fetch, a sort of doppelgänger who appears to people before dragging them to hell!

3. St. Fiachra's high incidence of reported strange phenomena like lost time, astral projection, lights over the ocean, and crabs doing un-crab-like things has attracted a stream of aficionados of the weird over the decades - spiritualists and Forteans a while back, nowadays more UFO-seekers. They congregate in a bohemian flop on the edge of town, and tend to get on the locals' nerves.

4. The people of St. Fiachra's practice their own peculiar sect of Christianity, which among other things rejects the book of Revelation, and instead teaches of an eighth day of creation when God will restore the garden of Eden and return humanity to our prelapsarian glory. The whole town has been under an interdict from the Catholic church for over a century!

5. Visitors to the town often report being frightened by noises that seemed to come from underground. Locals joke that these noises are made by the sluagh na marbh - the "host of the dead"!

6. The region around St. Fiachra's has had one of the highest disappearance rates in the province in 2025. The latest & highest-profile of these disappearances was immortality-seeking multimillionaire Johnson Bronson.

7. The sole exception to the town's otherwise-impeccable health - a disease of yet-unknown cause has been spreading in St. Fiachra's. Symptoms vary, but tend to include lethargy and confusion. The disease's spread has coincided with a spike in xenophobia in the once-tourist-friendly place, problematizing its study. The prevailing theory is that it is something like Minamata disease, caused by contamination of the town's fish supply by the nefarious communist Chinese.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Witherstinks

The first step of a hundred journeys begins with digging two graves for an eye.

I have mentioned this monster manual project - my Hoard of a Hundred Horrors - before, and I figured I should get the ball rolling on actually posting some of it before Halloween hits.

There's no overall theme to it besides "monsters I like". Some are original creations. Some are from folklore. This one is stolen from White Dwarf magazine's Fiend Factory - created by Mr. Jonathan Jones. He called them witherstenches. I think my name sounds better.

They're dire skunks, essentially.

They are

Witherstinks

HD: 3 AC: 12 ATK: 1d3/1d3/1d6 Claw/Claw/Bite + Withering Stink SAV: 8 MOV: As a dog runs across ground - as a dog walks burrowing through it INT: Clever beast ML: 6 outside den, 8 within
No. Appearing: 1d4 - if more than two are encountered this will be a pair of mates and their kit(s)

Withering Stink: Those within 30' of a witherstink must save vs. Constitution each round. The first failure and you are stunned for a round. The second failure you are stunned again, and drop whatever you're holding & fall prone as you retch. The third failure you fall unconscious and begin suffocating until removed from the area. Those exposed to this withering stink will not be permitted into civilized places until they've had a thorough bath.

Stink Gland: If you've got a relevant skill (butchery, anatomy, hunting, medicine, etc.) you can attempt to extract a dead or unconscious witherstink's stink gland. Success gives you a fresh gland. Failure destroys the gland and deals 1d6 damage to the witherstink if it's still alive.

A stink gland can be thrown to release a cloud of similar size and effect to the Withering Stink ability, which dissipates in one hour, or in ten minutes in strong winds. A stink gland can be sold for 5 silver pieces to parties who would be interested in such stink-bombs. Finally, if you anoint yourself with the contents of a stink gland, then quanloses & their sting-hosts will be passive towards you for an hour, not attacking unless you attack them first. Glands go bad in 1d4+2 days unless packed in salt, which preserves them until use.

Other Such Moneyed Interests: Their pelts, being abominably smelly and likely infested with fungi, are worthless. Their meat, likewise, will bring you only bowel-clenching misery should you eat it. However, their kits are adorable, and with its stink gland removed a kit is worth 50 silver pieces to those with disposable income & an interest in cute animals.

Miscellanea:

• Witherstinks collect the bones of their prey in their dens, gnawing them open to expose the marrow but not indulging in the stuff themselves - instead they allow various fungi to sprout on the bones, such as fungus which screams when unfamiliar creatures enter the nest, or fungus they can consume to treat parasites, or fungus which has a pleasing appearance to prospective mates.
• The noseless monks of the order of St. Janicaspo raise witherstinks, believing that the mortally-offensive stench of the world's sins are made apparent to all by the creatures.
• The perfumers of Gherriot knew how to work witherstink glands into the finest perfume. Bottles of the stuff are damn-near priceless. Their secret was entombed along with the perfumers in their guild-hall.

(In my wildest imaginings, when the Hoard is complete I would release a pdf with an illustration for each monster, along with associated lairs, dungeons, spells, classes, etc. We'll see.)

D6x6 Benighted Bridge Trolls

Click the button below to get your bridge troll:

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

D6	This bridge troll is
1	a wrathful guardian deity turned bitter and mean from people's preference for luxury and commerce over the true way.
2	a rogue psychopomp, meant to guard the boundary between life and death, but now obsessed with a more prosaic liminality.
3	an exiled runt of Jotunheim, using the bridge to shelter from the petrifying sun.
4	the spirit of the bridge itself, made carnal by the blood spilled upon it.
5	a wandering monster who settled down when it found its niche.
6	a displaced god of the land - its temple put to the torch, its priesthood routed - it's become twisted and petty from the disrespect.

D6	This bridge troll has
1	the head of a goat, with a spooled grey beard and great long horns which bend the troll into a stooped, genuflecting posture with their weight.
2	a ponderous head like a prize-winning gourd left to rot, the flesh saggy and be-sored - its body inhumanly muscled, the cords slithering under the skin and over the bones like a mass of worms.
3	a grossly overgrown and knobby skeleton, their warped bones pressing osteoderms through their thin, cracked flesh.
4	the bluish, bloated flesh of a drowned corpse, teeth and jaws fused and frozen into a bone-cracking grin, and a monkish pate of long and greasy black hair.
5	the warty, sagging bulk of a squatting toad, combined with the warty, betusked bulk of a warthog.
6	spidery long-lean limbs, a drum-taunt protruding gut, and beady-black, squinting eyes.

D6	A fellow-traveller in ousting this bridge troll is
1	an elderly knight in rusty, dented armour, wanting to pay a last visit to distant relatives.
2	a furious peasant fed-up with all taxes and tolls.
3	a chubby, incompetent sheriff on a last-chance mission from their lord to save their position.
4	an albino wizard sheltering in a toppled litter, their servants fled from or slain by the bridge troll.
5	a troll-crossed lover wishing to pursue a courtship across its span.
6	a smuggler & bandit posing as a legit merchant with an urgent delivery to make.

D6	The bridge this bridge troll trolls
1	was shaped from the roots of the clonal colony of an ancient tree - it is older than the nations of any who now walk across it.
2	is a solid structure of greasy black stone, quite unlike any other formations in the area - attempts to scrutinize it scientifically or magically return only a sense of telluric malevolence.
3	is a ramshackle construction, standing as much atop the ruin of past breakage as on sound engineering principles.
4	is an elaborate rope-way which allows many passengers and cargo-danglies to pass at once.
5	is made of slabs of concrete of some forgotten recipe, a span of brutal simplicty.
6	is a quavering thing of bone-white bricks joined with cracked and chalky mortar, all stained with the leavings of rain.

D6	This bridge this bridge troll trolls spans
1	a crevasse which gapes into unspeakable depths, and slavers out a cold and stinking mist.
2	a broad and green-black river, its steady surface belying the treacherous and currentous depths beneath.
3	a narrow stretch of rapids in the depths of a razor-edged valley.
4	the foamy spread between an isle and the mainland.
5	a sulphurous crag with a bubbling, incandescent runnel of lava crossing its bottom.
6	a glimmering, one-way rift into another plane of existence.

D6	This bridge troll demands the toll
1	of a delicious man-thing - however its eyes aren't so good, so it'll probably accept a shaved sheep or somesuch too.
2	of a song it's never heard before - though those of poor quality enrage it.
3	of a riddle it can't answer - and it's grown quite good at riddling.
4	of a fistful of pretty, shiny things - and its fist is quite large.
5	of a sundered weapon taken from one of its enemies.
6	of a demonstrably magic something-or-other, which it will promptly attempt to destroy - it hates magic.

A Galeb Duhr By Any Other Name Would Be Just As Rocky; Or: Galeb Duhrs & Galeb Don'ts

Today we are getting to the bottom of a mystery. We're getting the mystery to bottom. We are going to get gay with mystery.

That mystery? The name of the galeb duhr.

For context: a galeb duhr is a rock monster from D&D. It was invented by the esteemed Mike Smith for the 1982 Monster Cards - premiering alongside the thri-kreen - and made its way into full D&D monsterdom in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' Monster Manual II. The galeb duhr is able to animate rocks, and enjoys deep-toned music.

The greatest minds of the greatest game have, to this day, been unable to discern why they're called "galeb duhr" - an apparently-nonsense appellation - yet sometimes when you send the biggest trucks under a bridge, all you get is a sheared-off cab. Sometimes, when you're faced with a real pickle, you need a pickled brain to figure it out. Without further ado, let's break it down:

The first part, "Galeb" - in Macedonian, galeb means "seagull". If you've ever been to the ocean, you know that seagulls like to perch on rocks. The very similar Serbo-Croatian "golub" means pigeon - further, "gileni golub" means "clay pigeon", as in those used for skeet shooting. Clay is a type of rock.

 

Two ships which saw use in Yugoslavia were named Galeb - the Galeb-class minelayer, which originally served in the imperial German navy, and the Peace Ship Galeb, a banana boat which made its way from Italian hands to the Germans, and finally, like the minelayers, to the Yugoslavians. In the geological cycle as well, all stones return to the magma from which they were born. The molten mantle within the Earth then is the burning heart of Yugoslavia, which may yet erupt again.

Could Michael Smith have been hinting that he is truly a Michal Kovac?.. maybe... maybe even probably...

 

The second part, the omega to galeb's alpha - "Duhr" - the closest match, a truly fortuitous match, is the Pohnpeian duhr, meaning to ring, to reverberate, for ears to ring, to make skin crawl. Recall that the galeb duhr enjoy deep-toned music, which would do all those things. Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands - and is also homophonous with "Pompeiian"... relating to the city of Pompeii, a city transformed to stone by a volcano...

 

To those still doubting - fresco research performed by the Fresco Research Institute discovered that the famous "Pompeiian red" used in Pompeiian art was actually, originally yellow, transmuted by time and obscurity into its current form. So too must the etymologically-unveiled galeb duhr seem unintuitive, logically-leaped to our eyes - and yet no less brilliant for it.

And onwards, always onwards, to the less-perfect though no less-harmonized possibilities - dürr is both Azerbaijani for pearl, and German for desiccated, barren, scrawny, haggard - suggesting the simultaneously organic and mineral nature of the pearl and the galeb duhr, as well as the stony hills which the creature is likely to inhabit.

 

Dour, a fitting word for the sullen, solitary lifestyle of the galeb duhr - an English word, derived from either or both of the Latin durus - meaning hard - and the Sottish Gaelic dùr, meaning dull, obstinate, stupid, and also stiff, rigid (again suggesting stone). From the latter we also get the modern English "duurrrrrr" - an exclamation for stupidity, and then on to Homer Simpson's famous "d'oh!". Perhaps, continuing on this English tangent, duhr is also simply "dirt" with the t shorn off the end. Simple as stone.

Anagrammatically, "duhr" becomes "hurd" - a surname for the descendants of herdsmen. Recall too that the galeb duhr are the herdsmen of stones.

 

In Sanskrit (not totally dissimilar to "sand-grit") a dhur is one-twentieth of a katha, which is a unit of land measurement somewhat like the Japanese koku. Katha can also mean a recitation of a Hindu religious story and a genre of such storytelling - this meaning is believed to have inspired the Tagalog katha, which in that language means story, invention, creation, idle talk - even though the Philippines are quite the swim from India. The foundation of the land is stone, and the galeb duhr are no doubt lovers of talk and long stories to pass their geological lives.

 

In Maltese there's a dhur too - there meaning to appear, to seem, and also the back - as in the anatomical back. To seem to be a back, to appear from the back - is this not evocative of the stony camouflage of the galeb duhr, passed by when imagined to be a mere boulder? Truly, the detective's work is simply to see, to see without preconception and distortion. 

 

Dhuhr in Arabic means the noon prayer. I don't have anything for this one - however! dhuhr refers specifically to the Islamic noon prayer, and I found this post on reddit.com which suggests that the jinn are stones: https://www.reddit.com/r/Quraniyoon/comments/1283okw/i_had_a_crazy_idea_jinns_are_rocks/... and need I even say at this point what else are made of stone..?

 

Uhh English class essay writing closing paragraph: I'm right about the etymology of the galeb duhr. Mystery solved. You're welcome.