Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Muscaliets

Plump sunburst-noses, skin like a pig that's been singed bare for butchering, long shanks with broad paws, like you'd stuck the feet of a mole on the legs of a frog, and the teeth - bucked and layered down the throat, able to grind down any animal or vegetable matter as if it'd been tossed into the guts of a machine.

 

They feed on the fire of the earth itself, its hot molten life-blood, and are lambent with their glutted heat. Pushed to the surface away from their favoured fare, by greater predators or tectonic shifts or whatever else, and they become a locust-nightmare, sweeping over the land with gnashing and fire.

They are

Muscaliets

HD: 1/2 HD AC: 14 ATK: 1d4 nibble SAV: 5 MOV: As rabbit, dig as mole INT: As starving beast ML: 5
No. Appearing: 2d12

Body Heat: The radiant heat given off by a muscaliet's body inflicts 1 slot of exhaustion per round that one spends within 10 feet of it. All such exhaustion slots can be cleared by gulping down cool water or somesuch similar method. This effect is not cumulative if you are within 10 feet of multiple muscaliets.

Explosive: Upon death a muscaliet explodes, dealing 2d6 damage to everything within 10 feet (save for half). This effect is cumulative if you are within 10 feet of multiple exploding muscaliets.

Indonesian TTRPG Bandwagon: Orangladangs

Like so: https://afraidofencounters.bearblog.dev/indonesian-ttrpg-blogwagon/

It is said that the people of the forest can speak as we do, but choose not to out of fear that if we knew we would force them to work. This is not a baseless fear.

A long time ago an orangutan's daughter fell sick. The forest she knew had been felled for crop-land, so she could not find the plants that would heal her daughter. She found a human and begged him for help, and the human feigned concern until she brought him to her daughter and then he tied ropes around their necks.

The man, already wealthy, grew rich indeed off the labour of orangutans - once he realized their value as slaves, he placed bounties on their parents, and took their children to work on his plantation. They grew up knowing nothing but bondage and drudgery. The fiery colours of their fur faded to the greenish-white of gravemold. Their flanges sagged, their bellies sagged, even as they walked upright their shoulders sagged and lowered their knuckles to drag through the dirt. All the life that had left the rest of them went into their eyes - bloodshot and frenetic things that began to whip about so quickly as to blur.

One day, the plantation's slaves came across the man's daughter, sleeping in the shade of a mango tree. After a few moments of debate they crushed her head in with a rock for her indolence, and got back to work. The man fell into despair, but the work continued. By that point they had become something other than orangutans.

Through a combination of strength and indefatigable obsession, a single one can do the labour of five men, and needn't stop for rest. Fear and pain can no longer coerce them - only the threat of mutilation which would inhibit their ability to work, and the offer of a potion made of wine and certain foreign drugs. Intoxication by this potion is the closest they can come to rest, to remembering the sweetness of fruit and honey, of the freedom of the canopies - and that it contains alcohol is considered proof of their natural inferiority and iniquity.

That man has been dead for many, many years, but they continue their work. Sometimes they are slaves, and sometimes they are masters, for they are consumed by the crop, the yield, the product, by productivity, and loathe to see a plantation mismanaged. The forest is no longer their home, but it remembers its love for them, and so they come out of the trees at night to kill and put under new management.

They are

Orangladangs

HD: 4 AC: 14 ATK: 1d6 machete or other farm-tool plus Poison, or if unarmed 1d4/1d4 paw plus rend 1d8 if both paw attacks hit the same target SAV: 8 MOV: As ape INT: As brutalized near-human ML: 7, or 11 if currently engaged in labour
No. Appearing: 1d4 in the forest, or 2d4 on a plantation

Poison: They remember the roots and the leaves and the saps and the juices but where once these things were used to heal they are now used to harm. A weapon wielded by an orangladang is slathered with a dose of one of the following poisons (1d4):
1. Hobbling-Crackle: A blueish crust. Save or else roll 1d4 (1 - right arm, 2 - left arm, 3 - left leg, 4 - right leg) - take additional 1d6 damage and affected limb becomes stiff and paralyzed for 1d6 hours as fluids in tissues crystallize.
2. Screaming-Waking-Nightmare: Grey and bubbling. Save or go mad as per Confusion for 1d6 rounds
3. Pecked-And-Stung: Yellow and resinous. Save or else for the next day all encounters with non-mammalian animals have the lowest possible reaction roll.
4. Be-Still-Heart: Blush-pink, slick and dripping. Save or else for the next hour you must test constitution whenever you take a strenuous action (swinging a sword, running, etc.). After three failed constitution tests your heart stops.

Forest's Unforgotten Love: Surprise on a 4-in-6 in the forest.

Get Your Freaks On - Mothership: Unconfirmed Contact Reports

Another monster manual review.

I have been advised by a trusted source to add more of an introductory blurb to these posts, so here I am doing that:

Back in trade school, when I wired my first furnace and it worked, I was quite pleased with myself - until the instructor (a man who had made the big bucks until his arm became paralyzed in a motorcycling accident, and now was paid peanuts to babysit shitheads like me and hotbox his truck) came over, looked at the rat's nest I'd made of the wiring, and said "Take some fucking pride in your work". Since then my wiring has been much cleaner.

Blog posts are one thing, and works you expect other people to pay you for are another - you should take pride in the latter, be able to take pride in them. Unconfirmed Contact Reports is listed at the price of $29.00. That is about 8.5 Sapporo Super-Dry tallboys (if you buy them individually), or what some would call 'a night of moderate drinking'. It's not cheap, and it's got stiff competition for my money.

Full disclosure: I have not played Gumshoe, I have not played Mork Borg, I have not played D20 Modern. I have however played Mothership, and enjoyed it. Unconfirmed Contact Reports is not third-party material - it is made by the same people as the main RPG, people who can make good things, things that work. Did they bring that capability to this book, or did they slack? Let's find out:

The 4YourEyez Algorithm

 

Off to a bad start. The basic idea - a computer virus with the contradictory compulsions to both spread and cover up any evidence of its own existence - is a good seed. Monstrous like cancer, like the parasite that kills its own host. That it infects 1% of all electronics is a neat worldbuilding detail. But it doesn't go beyond the seed.

 

Every entry in this book is a single page. The actual, gameable text (and that's pushing it, as I'll touch on in a bit) is about 1/6th of the 4YourEyez's page. The rest is blurbs of "flavour text", and a picture of a post-it note that has a sub-title with the text on the post-it note. Are they flavourful? They have the appearance of being flavourful, but like Lacroix it's a faint resemblance. Basic, useful stuff like how it tries to get rid of you if it knows you know about it is missing, as is what clues you into its existence - is it just looking at the code of an infected device?

 

As for the pushing it of the gameable text, it commits the sin of "maybes" - maybe the 4YourEyez is a mindless program, maybe it's the work of some conspiracy, or a rogue AI. You get to decide! Well how about you pay me to write the fucking book then?!

 

Two goblins. 

 

Angels

An old spacer's tale about angels popping out of warp-gates or somesuch in space, instilling in people a sense of some grand cosmic conflict between good and evil. Kind of reminiscent of Frailty, but the strength of Frailty is in doing its own thing, and not indulging the liberal, secular mores of the majority of its audience - God is real, demons are real, God wants you to kill demons and killing demons is the right thing to do.

 

One of the flavour blurbs has 'Hail victory' in it. Are these Nazi angels? The problems with 4YourEyez repeat here - vagueness, a layout which seems to hate usable material (text, flavour or otherwise, doesn't even start until 2/3rds of the way down the page). Again, too, the seed is good, but it's being thrown into empty space without soil or water or light.

 

One and a half goblins. 

Belladonnas

They're the alien monsters from Pitch Black - a fine inclusion, but again the execution is lacking. We're told strong light damages them, but not how much damage. We're told they've got a mind-dulling toxin, but in their stats the toxin just does straight damage (and it seems that for my life up until now I've had a totally-wrong definition of toxin). It doesn't really need that much, if you've seen Pitch Black you know what's up, so the layout and flavour text issues don't bother me as much - but come on people, I glanced over the page and those two things jumped out at me, this is stuff that should've been caught on the first read-over.

 

As I was thinking about how to approach this review, I got to considering a Robert Eggers quote:

"A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them. They have mastered the Star Wars or Star Trek universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies. Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That's why it's excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They're always asking you questions they know the answer to."

I'd feel confident claiming that I have read more books about monsters and watched more monster movies than most people who are alive, have lived, or will ever live on this Earth - it is fair to say I am a fan of monsters. But what insight or ability does this actually give me? Could I make a monster movie, or even create a decent prop or script for one? Are my tastes any more refined than those of a pornography addict who's been jacking it so long he can now only get off to transgenic donkey-octopus hybrid skydiving bukkake videos?

 

I can point out what seem to me to be obvious flaws in design, but not why those flaws are there - I've never published any RPG materials. What was the workflow for Unconfirmed Contact Reports? Who answered to who, who kept track of what? I skipped over the list of the, uh, what do you call them? the staff? for this book, because I find that stuff boring, but looking back now I recognize a few of the people on it, have talked to a couple of them in the past.

 

I'd like to get my hands on the "making of" materials behind this book - concept art, emails, personal recollections, notes from brainstorming sessions, and so on and so on - behind every book I have and intend to review. Every work is about its own production, as it's said. Would anyone give me this stuff, or agree to an interview about it, when most of what I've written about it is the verbal equivalent of trying to grab them and shake them by the shoulders? Much to consider.

 

Two and a half goblins. 

The Body Politic

It's kind of like that Clive Barker story about the rebellious hands with which it shares a name. Got an oddly-elaborate backstory compared to the previous entries. The Body Politic is a high-concept monster that could really use more than it's got. Alright, so the Body wants to infect more people to spread organ-democracy (and who is the "we" in this? the brain? a flavour blurb mentions the left hemisphere of a woman's brain being removed - does the Body support Descartes's conception of the soul?) and also just seems to want to torment the people it infects - potentially a funny satire of democracy, but again it needs more.

 

One and a half goblins. 

The Brown Stream

I've got nothing against more abstract "monsters". If you want to put a freaky film in a monster manual then more power to you. The Brown Stream however is more of a plot hook or a background detail than even an abstract monster however.

Zero goblins.

?????

There's no name for this entry, and no stats. 

Okay, turns out from the index this entry is called "C-Level", and they're statted as a regular human. If this is how it is in the actual book and not just this free copy I found online then that's either a stupid choice or a stupid mistake.

 

"There's no need for conspiracy when people with shared goals act within their own self interest. Only profit." - in the words of the prophet William Blake: "To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.".

 

The product of an imagination frozen in 1979... it's the corporations... that's what gonks don't get... it's all the corporations... Arasaka, Militech... you're talking about systems?.. it's their system, and we're all living in it... the corporations' that is... capital? yeah, Night City... capital of dreams that you wake up from and you're in a rusty bucket full of shit... because of the corporations... we're gonna wake the people up... from the corporations... with a nuke to their consciousness... and also an actual nuke... until they realize that corporations..? yeah, they're not so good as they seem in their ads... Karl Marx..? might as well be talking about techno-necromancers from Alpha Centauri with the street preachers... cuz that old century shit ain't gonna protect you from the corporations...

Zero goblins.

Cabin 102-B

It's like the room from Room 1408 but it's not just in a hotel it can be in a spaceship, any spaceship, and the first time you see it you have to do a sanity check. The room 1408 stuff is implied in a flavour blurb.

One quarter of a goblin.

Chronopods

These guys are the heptapods from Story of Your Life/Arrival, but, heh, get this: these ones? Not so nice. Plot device time powers. Unclear what they do or why and where they do it at.

One and a half goblins. 

Demons

Space cenobites. I think one of the later Hellraiser movies already had those. Again, I don't hate adapting monsters from other works, but they still need a little spit and polish.

 

One and a half goblins. 

Dorians

Pathetic bioroid used to store bad memories. Fun concept, simple enough to fit into the absurdly limited gameable text yet distinct enough to be a worthwhile addition. Feel like they'd fit better in a fantasy setting, where you could handwave something about how they have to be independent humanoids instead of a hard-drive, or at least a brain in a vat.

Three goblins.

The Drowning

O pitiful shadow lost in the darkness, O evil spirit born of those drifting between Heaven and Earth - another solid concept - flickering multidimensional hyperspace ghosts who seek to cling to the solidly-planted like drowning people.

 

Three goblins. 

The Engineer

A serial killer whose killing-way is to pose as a ship's engineer, stay away through a hyperspace jump, then use the time the rest of the crew is in their cryo-pods to render the ship unfit for human habitation. Players are also serial killers - either they don't know about him, so they're fucked, or they do know about him, so him and anyone else they suspect of being him are fucked. I do like the idea of including humans as monsters (and not in the 'humans are the real monsters' silly sort of way) and one of the books coming down the review-pipe has several great examples of this.

One and a half stars... wait, shit... ninja stars, one and a half ninja stars, that are also starfish because these are mer-ninjas...

Entity LKA-5

It's like the Thing, but it can't infect people (but it can detach parts which grow into their own Things), which is good because raw-Thing would be disappointingly-impossible to actually face down. What happens if this guy eats the Body Politic?

 

Two goblins. 

Family Meal No. 5

Another evil video, like the Brown Stream but much better - this one turns you into a man-eating pig. Could use a bit more oomph, like how could you watch it enough to be seriously affected by it unless you're a captive audience?

 

Two and a half goblins. 

Freighter 54

Haunted spaceship, would've been better as an adventure location.

 

One quarter of a ghoul. 

Good

This sucks, zero goblins.

Ghouls

Oh nice like Pandorum but they can do the Samus ball.

 

Three goblins. 

Granny

It's some kind of a space-witch that hides in a hole and makes you want to feed it anything you can get your hands on - including yourself. There's no mechanic for it so I guess it just works. No motive and no modus operandi given beyond this. Poem in flavour blurb seems to imply it's maybe an auto-cannibalistic graea-type? I can't even get worked up about the lackluster anymore, I'm just disappointed, especially because this book has shown it can get it right.

One goblin.

Greys

Two poems in the flavour blurbs? Really? These are radioactive little green men who molest you.

One goblin.

Hatchetman

So it's like Adam Smasher but, you know, lamer... protestors and union organizers, the two greatest threats to space-capitalism... which we have for some reason.

 

Two goblins. 

Headjackers

Spike zombies but not quite like the spike zombies from Splinter.

 

One and a half ghosts. 

Husks

Invasion of the Body Snatchers plant duplicates. "Formed after the 'host' was absorbed" - absorbed by what exactly we are never told.

 

One ghoul. 

Hyperspace Raiders

Jin-roh/Helghast guys who live in hyperspace, and ooo they love hyperspace, they want you to love hyperspace with them. Unclear what relation these guys might have to the Engineer, if any.

 

Two goblins. 

Incubus

Oh hey it's the alien from Alien. A quote repeats here from the C-Suite page, unclear if that is intentional.

 

One and a half goblins. 

Little Gods

Okay..?

 

One eighth of a goblin. 

Mother

Geigertacular. This is more of a geographical feature than a monster, it's only listed feature being that it produces succubi, which we will have to wait another sixteen pages to find out what those are because of slavish adherence to alphabetical order.

Half a goblin.

 

Monolith

They tried to make it look, like, georganic or something but it just looks like a dragon dildo. Not much else to it.

Half a goblin.

 

Nomads

They're space whales and they want to fuck spaceships. This could have been good, but it wasn't.

 

Three quarters of a goblin. 

 

Noocentric Transmission

Not a monster, but a phenomenon - a mass mind-swap between humans in an area and another species. 2/3rds of the flavour blurbs on this page were actually good and handy for once.

 

Two and a half goblins. 

 

Omnivore

 

Oooh shit they got the predator from Predator too, better hope he doesn't run into the alien from Alien, or they might make TWO underrated movies about it!! Too many adaptions makes you into Rick & Morty, which is a show I actually like, but then you're Rick & Morty instead of whatever you were going for instead.

One and a half goblins.

Ooidopolis Picocivilization

 

Scrap Princess once wrote a micro-civilization grenade which was much better than this page. Arnold-sama once wrote about micro-civilization walkers which were much better than this page. You can't just go like "oh hey lookey here at this kooky high concept sci-fi idea" and expect people to clap. This isn't the '40s anymore. Put some elbow grease into it.

Half a goblin.

Possessed

Okay, they're like alien spirits or something that possess people, and uuuhhh come ooon. Any confidence I might have been lacking in my critique following the Robert Eggers quote is gone. I'm right, and I'm right about the very lowest hanging of fruit - have your monsters actually do something! Be something! Ghost of Mars - if you'd just copied that like you'd copied Alien and Predator and so on, you'd actually have something instead of this heap of nothing and shit you picked from between your teeth.

Zero goblins.

Pure Love

They're happy people and being happy makes people want to kill them but they just hug you and killing them makes you cUhRaZy. Should've cribbed from the Army of One from that Junji Ito story you damn lonely onlies.

 

Zero goblins. 

 

Root Language

Fuck off, you're not cute. The gameable text, about an infection that reduces your vocabulary and sanity, is repeated four times, each repeating time as if the authour's being affected by the infection. You're not writing Pontypool Changes Everything here pal.

 

One quarter of a goblin. 

SS High Gold

 

It's Starkiller Base from the new Star Warses, leave a Hellstar Remina-esque shelter behind when they destroy a star.

One quarter of a goblin.

The Sea of Silence

I guess it's like Solaris or something? I haven't seen Solaris. Like the haunted ship, better as an adventure location than a monster manual entry.

Half a goblin.

 

Sally in the Screen

 

Brain-uploaded digi-ghost of a young girl, does a Bloody Mary thing. Wants out and wants friends.

 

Two and three quarters goblins. 

 

Spore Clouds

 

I'm tired of fungal horror. It's time to leave the fungal aesthetic in the past and explore new appearances. This one's basic and inoffensive.

 

One and a quarter goblins. 

 

The Stain

Ooze but it retains identity and partial forms of everyone it's eaten. Nothing fancy, and it doesn't need to be.

Three goblins.

Star Shades

These just feel like a redo of the angels, but with lasers.

 

One goblin. 

Stickmen

It's a weird grotty art installation dude who makes things break down and get filthy around him and can teleport when unobserved. Shade of SCP-173, but also kind of its own thing. Doesn't seem to do anything but random violence, but that's okay when it's got style like this.

Three and a quarter goblins.

Succubus

Finally we find out what succubuses are - alien agent saboteurs who look human but all have the same face as each other. Also if you tell them what they are they freak out.

 

Two and three quarters goblins. 

Throat Leeches

 

I like throat leeches! Throat leeches will make it into the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors (as sub-entries to another monster, but still). These ones are good, good level of grotty, but entry should have included a treatment.

Two and a half goblins.

Unpersons

Invisible Mans from teleportation accidents. Hate scientists.

 

Two goblins. 

 

Vitalizing Field

Kind of like the Marker and necromorphs from Dead Space, but more free-for-all which is a nice twist.

 

Two and a half goblins. 

Whitevine

Kudzu what kills you.

 

One and a half goblins. 

 

Womb

Alien idol what makes you pregnant - with what we're not told.

 

One quarter of a goblin. 

 

The World Worm

 

Good imagery in this one, very cosmic horror. Worms that eat iron and await a later age of the universe.

Three and a half goblins.

You

It peeves me when I type "you" into the internet site bar thing and instead of taking me to youtube it takes me to google search results of which the first result is the TV show You, which I would never watch before and will never watch even less now that it's associated with a minor irritation in my mind. All that being said, this one's an evil, nasty doppelganger, and it's just there for some reason.

 

Two and a half goblins.

Zombies

Sure, why not.

 

Two and a half goblins.

 

Honourable Mention

 

There's a page of five mini-entries at the back, archetypes that can be reskinned as whatever. Bland but good to have, like white rice or something.

 

AND

 

They didn't do any flesh-labyrinths. Good job keeping a handle on that.

 

+ 3.5 goblins.

Get Your Freaks On - D20 Modern Menace Manual

Another monster manual review.

Oh... roach thralls aren't in this one. Love roach thralls. Roach thralls get eight goblins.

Acid Rainers

Take your obvious name and get out of here. Acid rain ain't what it used to be because of the sulphur levels in tanker fuel... not that it changes a thing in the end. I like when elementals aren't just blobs of their element... being an air-jellyfish isn't an enormous step up from that, but it is a step up. Reminds me, pleasantly, of that book about the stuff in the sky. "In very cold weather, however, a large chunk of an acid rainer’s corpse may freeze and plummet to earth, where it is usually mistaken for an abnormally large hailstone." - do more with this, this isn't good enough... the lapis exilis... two and a half goblins.

Alien Probes

UFOs what makes crop circles. Their attack is a blinding, burning light, which isn't a weapon so much as an intensification of their info-gathering tech. Nothing to write home about, but milkable stats/ideas. Two and a half goblins.

Giant Anacondas

Big snake one goblin, and that's just because I like the premise of Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (there's an anagathic flower that people want to get but the snakes got it first and because they never stop growing it made them very big indeed).

Animated Object and Wild Boar

These don't get ratings because they bore me. They don't even get bolded names.

Bodaks

There has never been a bad bodak illustration:

 

They always look good as hell. Anyways these ones are cursed alien ghosts who do alien stuff but eviler. The classic killer gaze plus they can be distracted by seeing stuff that reminds them of their living life. Three vampires.

Bogeymen

This one's a template rather than a monster proper... it turns people into slasher villains, but is a little overly-specific, like restricts them to literally slashing weapons. I think this would have been better as a menu of slasher abilities you could apply. One and a half goblins.

Cat Folk

They're cat people that can turn into cats - regular-sized cats. These guys suck. Half a goblin. 

Charred Ones

Arson ghosts and they're revenants sometimes. Three quarters of a ghoul.

Chemical Golems

They're really more big toxic homunculi... One and a half goblins.

Chimpanzee

Fuck ooooff

Crawfordsville Monsters

Hell yeah. Potent image in both visuals and description. Basically star vampires but not from space - invisible flying giant air amoebas, visible for a while after they eat, and human activity is forcing them out of their aerial habitat to places where they're gonna eat people. Four goblins.

Crawling Claws

A group of crawling claws is called an applause, hee hee ha ha. One and a quarter skeletons.

Demonic Machines

Stephen King-esque. Two goblins.

Dimensional Horrors

Guardian monsters that appear near dimensional rifts, can drag people they grab between dimensions. A bit of flavourful punching up would go a long way with these guys, like making them more like the Absentia guys. One and three quarters goblins.

Dinosaurs

No, no I'm not doing this

Doom Hags

Basic, vaguely Blair Witch Project-esque. Apparently the witch in that was a tree. One and a half goblins.

Dread Trees

Utilitarian. Got fruit that smell really good and knock you unconscious. Can only move at night. One and a half skeletons.

Drop Bears

This hurts you, Shepard. One and a quarter goblins.

Elohim

Fire Johnnies who used to rule humanity before they were betrayed by one of their own and hunted down. Two goblins.

Etoiles

Aliens that look like weird metal Christmas ornaments, can control electricity, enslave people by injecting them with nanites, and want to take over the world. Three goblins.

Fiends

They're demons and devils. Special mention to the harriken, who can detach its head and replace it with some other guy's head to assume their form, and can't be killed unless its own detached head is destroyed, and to the kwevencha, which is a spider guy who loves to scheme but is too dumb to scheme well so makes overly-complex schemes and kills underlings who try to sanity check it. Three goblins.

Fraals

Grayliens. One skeleton. 

Gardhyis

Invader alien guys who can control shadows. Half a goblin.

Ghouls

Template in this one. Interesting distinction between old ghouls and new ghouls, new ghouls being victims of mutant strain of streptococcal gangrene. One and a quarter goblins.

Grimlocks

Convergent evolution of several eyeless chthonic sorts. American ones, in classic chud style, have gained a taste for long pig. One and a half goblins.

Half-fiend, Half-fraal

Euughhh

Harpies

They're sirens here too. One and three quarters ghouls. 

Hippopotamust I be bothered with these banal entries

Infesters

 

Get their ass J. Sakai. They're parasitoid lamprey critters that eat their way into you then make you tough and strong but also a cannibal until they burst out of you. Two ghouls.

Intellect Devourers

The classic bodyjacking braindogs, only they're aliens this time. I like the seven day time limit on their bodyjackings, feels like it'd lead to investigable cases. Three and a half goblins.

Jynxes

They're gremlins. One goblin and three quarters of a vampire.

Kinoris

Oh, they're kobolds I guess, they're hollow Earth dinosaur alien kobolds. One and a quarter skeletons.

Kroaths

Big biotechnology armour frog alien guys who dissolve when they are killed. Advanced tech even compared to other aliens, but mostly a big blank. One vampire.

Litter Brutes

Pollution-avenging garbage golems. One skeleton and a quarter ghost.

Luciferans

No! No! You can't have these guys and fiends! Fuck off! Fuck you! Zero goblins.

Malleable Creature, Maniac, Giant Man-o'-War - useless, useless, useless

Mapinguaris

Giant ground sloths. Stinky. Feels like they should be able to dig good. One goblin.

Megalodon...

Mongolian Death Worms

No wonder Genghis wanted to get out of there with these things around. To touch it means death. Two goblins.

Monitor Lizard - you found me in my concrete sea, a dry pool's ghost is haunting me

Montauk Monsters

They show up when you fuck with space or time and they fuck you up. They're really tough, and they can fuse you into nearby matter which is cool. Two ghouls.

Mothfolk

Ultraterrestrials on an interdimensional migration. They could really use some spice. Three quarters of a skeleton.

Neothelids

Confusing as to whether there is one or more neothelids. No relation to mind flayers in this. Slipped between dimensions because of nuclear. They don't even eat brains... eugh. One goblin.

Night Terrors

Nightmare guys that attach to sensitive people. Can only be seen the person who they've attached to, but are also bound to only feed on them. One and a half goblins.

N'sss

Alien big metal jellyfish. Nobody knows why they're here. Just say why they're here! Tell us what they do! Why waste words on worthless mystery?! Why would you ever think it was a good idea to do otherwise?! Half a goblin.

Revenant, Robot - okay, sure

Rods

Rods are so charming. These ones are alien pests that hate psychics. Less charming, kind of dumb. Half a goblin.

Rogue Tulpas 

Killing spirit produced from disturbed yet talented mind. If creator is killed they keep going on their last order. One and a half vampires.

Sasquatch

Abandoned fraal-slaves. There is literally no reason whatsoever for this entry to be separate from the yeti one - it explicitly says that yetis shouldn't be confused with sasquatches, but in neither entry does it say why they wouldn't. One goblin.

Satanic Ichor

The prince of darkness from Prince of Darkness. I respect just doing a movie guy as a tabletop monster, except in the case of Cold & Dark, where movie and videogame guys were like the only guys in it. Two vampires.

Scorpions

 

A scorpion is a small crustacean. A scorpion is a small crustacean. A scorpion is a small crustacean.

Sea Serpents

Nothing new to the table but I do like sea serpents. Two goblins.

Sesheyans

They're like alien bat-amish. This entry confused me, and when I'm confused I get scared. Nothing is mentioned of how or why they're on Earth, only that they find humans weird. Zero goblins.

Sewer Sludges

I prefer other sorts of sewer monsters - albino alligators and such - but this is fine too. One goblin.

Huge Shark - AAahahahahahhAAHHHHAHAHHH you already did megalodon AAAAAAAA

Skin Feasters

Skinless undead that can eat other people's skin to return to a semblance of its mortal life. Simple, solid, three and a half goblins.

Cobra snake... hoop snake... what is pain to me today shall be pain tomorrow upon you...

Star Doppelgangers

It's The Thing from The Thing but nerfed. Two goblins.

Thought Eaters

Don't try to make thought eaters look cool... that's even less cool. Otherwise as normal. Half a goblin.

Thunderbirds

About what you'd expect from a secularized thunderbird. Even in these modern settings, don't really like such localized monsters. Three quarters of a goblin.

Toxic Sludges

More slime. Engineered to break down petrochemicals, now they eat oils in your skin, and your skin. One and three quarters goblins.

Udoroots

Psychic carnivorous sunflowers. So many random monsters in this thing have serious cold resistance. Phaerimm - the whispering sunflowers - there's fine Lovecraftiana in D&D if you look long enough. One and a quarter vampires.

Whisperers in the Dark

Psychic gestalt-ghosts attracted to the living, that can draw in the living, but are inimical to them, and absorb them into their miserable being - powerless in sunlight. Two and a half ghouls.

Yetis

Standard. One goblin.

Zaps

Mischievous electrical elementals. One goblin.

Zeikunes

It's not really explained what these guys are or what their deal is.

 

Goofy ass starfish whatevers. You had enough word count for hippopotami and like five types of dinosaur but not to make these guys interesting? They dissolve people's organs then slurp them out. One and a half goblins.

D20 Business Ideas for Elite Entrepreneurs

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a hero. Not a “hero” like one of those virtue-signalling cucks who saves a bus full of other peoples’ children, but a real hero, like Achilles. People will remember your name in 3,000 years. Because you made an app.

Before the day is done I will make one million dollars - here's 20 business ideas for entrepreneurs:

1. Comedy club/Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym called Rear Naked Joke.

2. It's a food truck that does wraps, but it's also a mobile theater with a built-in projector, and it's called That's A Wrap.

3. A bar with mini-golf called Teeing Double ("talk about driving drunk" -t. Phlox).

4. Micro-houses but for like, pickleball courts, they're micro-pickleball courts - We Like Short Courts.

5. Old Scratch: Faustian nail salon for men.

6. A dating app for furries called Nuzzlr.

7. A bowling alley that is also a skating rink... Balls & Blades (special thanks to the boys for that one).

8. Access to public toilets - it can be difficult - so this one's like a CamelBak, like one of those backpacks you can drink out of, through a tube, but there's also a tube that goes up your urethra (or into a cup around your urethral area) and you pee in the tube and it goes into the backpack, but there's a membrane in the backpack which keeps your urine separate from your drink, and a membrane that grows the pee area and shrinks the drink area as you drink more, through like... hydraulics or something - this one's called Go On The Go.

9. Okay okay so it's like a Madame Tussauds, but we're leaning into the uncanny valleyness of the wax guys, they're scary wax guys and it's a haunted house, but get this: it's also a bee-keeping operation, and the wax guys are made with wax from the bees and the bees are loose in the haunted house which makes it extra scary. You have to sign a waiver to get in... the Bugout Building.

10. Bittersweat - coffee shop that's also a gym - serves protein coffees, and then when you're amped up from the caffeine you can hit some reps because there's like, leg presses built in the chairs and stuff.

11. Keeping the heat off... that's only gonna get more important as the world burns. So this is drones, and they've got a parasol and a mister and they hover around you and use AI-powered executive solutions to optimize thermal regulation... Misteaze.

12. It's a skate park that's also a wave pool. Visitors are given skateboards that are also surfboards. This one's called Never Board.

13. It's a drug, and it's the Ozempic-killer, because it doesn't just burn fat - it turns fat into hair. It's also the cure for baldness. Chub2Chad.

14. Hot yoga studio, but it's body positive and the heat comes from ovens because it's also a bakery that makes fresh cinnamon rolls... Downward Spiral.

15. A shooting range, but it's like a DIY shooting range because you can't bring guns, you make your own guns at the in-house machine shop, you put together pipe guns and shoot them, there's classes on how to make your own improvised firearms. Shoot For The Tsars.

16. It's like a holistic WeWork - it provides combined living and working space for professionals, using all-natural, sustainable temperature control and water systems. It's cave rental, it rents out caves for people to live in, and it's called Chthopia.

17. Okay, alright, this one's good - so there's those monthly delivery box things, and then there's those closed system terrarium videos that are popular on Youtube... so with this each month you get delivered a closed system terrarium, but it's also like a gatcha game because who knows what the ecosystem in there's gonna be like by the time you get it. Maybe ants took over. And the terrariums are modular so you can put them together and have the ants battle the pillbugs or whatever. I'm calling this one Forevergreen, or I would if that name wasn't already fucking taken by some piece of shit 2025 American Christian independent animated fantasy short film written and directed by Nathan Engelhardt & Jeremy Spears... okay, instead it's called Little Blue Marbles.

18. Augmented reality glasses that apply filters to people you see so they comply with Sharia law or whatever the veil stuff is for - TaqiyYou, or TaqiyYeah... I'm split on this one. I'll throw in a freebie: it's like a niqab, but also one of those Chinese lion dance costumes. Strength in numbers.

19. Concreter - an appliance that's the opposite of a blender, you put in whatever food-fluids and it performs operations to transform these into various solids - still edible.

20. Okay, so - daycare? Expensive. Because uhhh I don't know, overhead costs? Whatever. Have you ever seen those videos of the orangutan caring for the tiger cub, or the dog looking after kittens? Animals can have strong maternal instincts, strong enough to look after babies of a different species, and we're putting those instincts to waste making cute videos instead of turning a profit. This one's a daycare that's also a zoo, the children are looked after by the animals. And obviously parents will want their kid looked after by a cool animal like a tiger so they don't grow up to be gay, so we can charge a premium for that. This one's called Mama Bears until I think of a better one.

Get Your Freaks On - Mork Borg: Forty Fiends

Another monster manual review.

They were trying to charge $25 for this one... ha ha, come on guys.

Tar Imps

Ugly-cute. They explode when wounded, and it's funny to imagine a swarm of them setting each other off... yes, I think I will steal that, and them being little guys means it's more feasible to throw them around and stuff to control their blast radius. Worth what may or may not be a significant amount of money if taken alive, I don't know Mork Borg, so that's another neat complication. Two and a half skeletons, and a quarter of a ghost.

Swamp Lucrus

They're undead minotaurs, and if they hit you they can blind you until you eat its eyeball. I like that - debilitates you, but forces you to commit to killing it regardless. There's flavour text for these entries but it's generally ass and useless. Two skeletons, half a goblin.

Rachita Wickers

Evil wicker men, but like, man-sized wicker men instead of giant ones. I prefer evil scarecrows for man-sized farm-type enemies, wicker men should be big and shove you inside them and be on fire. And their origin feels mean-spirited. Half a goblin.

Leagan

Okay so it's called Leagan... and it's the resurrected tentacle of a monster slain by a guy named Leagan... these Mork Borg guys are really pushing it... Half a goblin.

Pyroneck Heads

Stupid name, you're not cute Mork Borg. Fiery flying skull is a good monster archetype, though feels like this guys could use a bit of punching up, get a bit more fire to them. Two skeletons.

Bone Felons

"Felon(n.)

c. 1300, feloun, "one who deceives or commits treason; one who is wicked or evil; evil-doer," used of Lucifer and Herod, from Old French felon "evil-doer, scoundrel, traitor, rebel, oath-breaker, the Devil" (9c.), from Medieval Latin fellonem (nominative fello) "evil-doer," which is of uncertain origin, perhaps from Frankish *fillo, *filljo "person who whips or beats, scourger" (source of Old High German fillen "to whip"); or from Latin fel "gall, poison," on the notion of "one full of bitterness." Celtic origins also have been proposed.

Another theory (advanced by Professor R. Atkinson of Dublin) traces it to Latin fellare "to suck" (see fecund), which had an obscene secondary meaning in classical Latin (well-known to readers of Martial and Catullus), which would make a felon etymologically a "cock-sucker." OED (1989) inclines toward the "gall" explanation, but finds Atkinson's "most plausible" of the others."

Neat. Bone felons (another stupid name) are just skeletons. Zero goblins.

Inviats

Skull-headed plant guys who whip your fingers off. The Dark Souls-esque flavour blurbs are... maybe starting to hit? One and a half ghouls.

Skein Phantoms

Flying gestalt undead reanimated by the alchemical smog that leaks out of a magic spreading forest. That's neat, and coming up with new neat undead can be tricky. Two goblins.

Liflegurs

I really like the art for this guy:

Confusing lore - they're suicides, but also linked to evil gods or something? They vampirize your health. Two goblins.

Fungal Geists

They're guys who fall into pools and then there's a fungus god or something who turns them into fungus guys and now they worship him and seek more converts... I like the idea of a monster tied to a specific terrain feature. One and a half ghosts.

Musty Bloaters

It angers me how they do splash damage for this monster. These guys are also from the fungus god. Zero goblins.

Slimy Gorgers

Oooouuuuuugghhhhh you fucking piece of shit:

 

Minus one goblin.

Scabaltars

These guys ate fungal geists so now they're fungus guys too. Japanese people are always starving and in their desperation turning to eating a mermaid or marebito or something, becoming immortally cursed in the process. Half a goblin.

Quins

Evil anti-jesters, used to be regular happy jesters but the king was depressed and tortured them. I feel like you could do much more with evil anti-jesters than was done here. One goblin.

Ink Cursed

They should be paying me $25 to read this crap, my eyes are getting sore. These guys' lore is neat - there's a countess who doesn't like when people try to marry her or get horny for her so she makes them eat curses she writes out with blood-ink and they're turned into these guys.

Void Creeps

Good countdown attack - three hits and you're sucked into the void. One and a half ghouls.

Hive Sprites

Little fairy dudes, you can't make 'em good, I've never seen a good little fairy dude monster. Zero ghosts.

Nechrubel Apostles

Feels like the Kiss-looking guys niche was already filled by the ink cursed... anyways, whatever, they're cUhRaZy because of an evil god, and they do Event Horizon stuff to themselves. I know it's a "minimalist system" or whatever but why even have stat blocks for half these guys? They're all pretty much the same. Half a goblin.

Contorted The

Yes, that's how they wrote it. This process is making me more confident as a writer, if this is the stuff that people are willing to attach their real names to, that people are willing to pay real money for. They're tree zombies, half a goblin.

Nordaygs

Tree-beasts that the tree zombies ride. Quarter of a ghost, quarter of a goblin.

Radixion

It's a giant tree guy. Unclear if there's supposed to be more than one. These tree monsters are dragging worse than the fungus monsters. Quarter of a ghoul.

Grapnels

Some of these illustrations look AI-generated, but not in a bad way - slopkino. That's two places now with magic poisonous fog... they're like, squids or something. One goblin.

Spiries

These guys live in the same poisonous fog as the grapnels, which is a different poisonous fog than the skein phantoms live in. Nothing really to them, half a goblin.

Meat Curs

"For 2d8 hours they vomit blood sporadically and lose 1 HP when they do" - the fuck is sporadically? Why would you not just write "once an hour" or something? I'm going to subtract another goblin from these chuds. Quarter of a goblin.

Chyoks

Crows mutated by eating the dead left behind by the evil expanding forest. They kind of do the Otachi thing. Don't hate these guys - what a relief. Two ghouls.

Sheer Hounds

Dumb, dumb name. They're dog-people, but their illustration makes them look more like lizard-people. Half a ghoul.

Vierm Grubs

Are you not supposed to read this text? This is shit I would do as a bit! Ow! Ouch my eyes! They're just giant fucking maggots, did you need to hurt me for that?! Minus one goblin.

Fang Frogs

Killer frogs. One goblin.

Hanox Cattle

Killer cows. Three-quarters of a goblin.

Acid Apes

Don't hate this name. Another slopkino illustration. "Acid jungles", nice. They just punch you, they don't do anything acid-related. Two goblins.

Clotsuckers

I kind of like the whole "the world is going to hell" thing they've got going on, world falling apart and monsters rising everywhere and so on and so on. These guys are blood-sucking octopi. One and a half goblins.

Zoparlas

Burrowing, swarming lizards. These entries don't have numbers encountered so I guess the swarming is more, like, implicit or whatever. I liked the tunnelers from Fallout New Vegas those guys were good. Quarter of a skeleton.

Shank Fowl

Killer vultures. Whatever. Half a goblin.

Hounds of Yannwin

This has got to have been forty monsters... come on already... Killer dogs. Zero goblins.

Worm Mares

Horse-snakes. Their special attack is dragging people underground, which is decent. Their origin is good too. Their bite can give you a disease but this is noted in the disease section and not in their entry. Two ghouls.

Baltoaca

Sea monster that can fit in bodies of water that should be way too small for it, which is a neat gimmick. It's also bulimic. Two goblins.

Trunker

Fucking stupid-ass name. It's a godzilla that can disguise itself as a tree, and breath out red mist that makes you scared. One and a half goblins - you know what? Make that one and a quarter goblins. Fucking Trunker.

Eskacadas

These are what the giant maggots grow into. Big beetle-men who punch eggs into you. Two goblins.

Flesh Abominations

Swiggity swooty they're coming for your booty - this guy can absorb your rump. One and a half goblins.

Nandejara

He's like a big strong angry guy, and if he punches you your armour fuses to you. Dumb backstory. One goblin.

Blaora Horundi

Wait a minute, this isn't a monster - it's a disease! I'm done, I'm free!

Get Your Freaks On - The Book of Unremitting Horror

This is likely the first, and less likely the last, in a series of monster manual reviews/strip-mining operations, because there's ~84 more monsters I need to reach 100 in the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors and the tree of creativity's gotta be watered with the blood of inspiration.

The Book of Unremitting Horror is uuhhhhh I'm gonna get too bored to do these if I have to do boring stuff like tell you what a book is.

Short fiction. Bleh. Skipping that. 

Bleeders

A reference to a "Calapechi Sect of Prague" which doesn't seem to have existed... according to a Google search... how Sam Krissian...

They're ghosts that cut you but it's really cathartic so you can get addicted to cutting yourself chasing the original high. Interesting suggestion of a Delta Greenoid becoming dependent on a bleeder to stay sane and having to hide it from their colleagues. Two goblins.

Blood Corpse 

Stupid name. They're zombies that are addicted to drinking blood. They come from someone dying in the throes of a strong compulsion. I like that they drink blood through their fingers, that's neat. One and a half goblins.

Blossomers

Kind of more of a ritual than a monster - a way for demon-cults to make evil children with an evil cannibal orgy. Identifying cannibal cultists from dental records cross-reference with their meals... good visceral investigation idea. The evil children are pretty boring, could've used more interesting details. Three goblins.

Clooties

Had a beer called Clootie Dumpling once... it was good. These monsters are not as good. They're like, uh, water fairies that have hooks for hands that go into coastal Scottish villages at night just to bum around, and they can carve up your soul, but they don't attack anyone unless they're looked at. I feel like this one would be better if it was fake, like if there was a murderer dressing up like a clootie and using people's superstitious aversion to avoid getting caught, idk. Bad sign for a monster if it's better fake. Zero goblins.

Death Tapper

'Fug' is the stuffy atmosphere of a poorly ventilated space - I like learning new words. I do not like these bugs, which inject you with a disease that makes you shit yourself to death a few hours later, they are boring. Zero goblins.

Dementia Larvae

Guys that saw something really spooky then mutated into monsters. Gross. They really don't like being reminded of when they were human. Three and a half goblins.

Dream Tearer

Horse-like bites. Shows up in the dreams of people with interesting minds, kills them. Only way to fight them is if you know a ritual to make it manifest. One goblin.

Drowners

Water spirits that hypnotize people then drown them. Two goblins.

The Empty One

Baby-faced god of serial killers. Doesn't exist yet, has no stats. Zero goblins.

Feral Drowners

You can't have drowners and feral drowners in the same book... unbelievable. They're stinky rape goats who drown people. They're also supernaturally scary and get stronger when they scare people. I do not spend much time around goats, but I have crossed paths with them, and they never struck me as particularly horny creatures. Half a goblin.

Kooks

Melon heads, mountain childers - I like this archetype of monster, nasty child-things that can turn children into more of them. Four goblins.

The Man in the Bar

He's a guy that shows up in bars and makes sad people cry themselves to death. One goblin.

Motherlodes

Monsters that eat whatever and then give birth to hybrids of what they've eaten, which are usually stillborn. Not much more to them than that. Three goblins and a ghoul.

The Mystery Man

He's an evil god who wants to scare people. I respect just having 'evil god you can't do anything about' as a monster. Two goblins.

Organ Grinders

Murder-cyborgs that like dismembering people. Created by failed or flawed summoning rituals. They are lazy, and lubricated by blood. They are hard to kill and upgrade themselves if they are defeated. Three goblins.

Outsiders

They're shadow people and men in black. Can't have shit in Eiriel. They make people more emotional and are followed by Forteana. Two goblins.

Ovvashis

Demons that prey on homeless people and smoke their souls in a little bone pipe. They've got magic bags that can produce whatever their victims want. Two and a half ghouls.

The Practice

They're cenobites from Hellraiser but with surgery instead of sadomasochism. That's actually pretty scary. Four goblins.

Residue Daemons

Demon born from the trauma of particularly bad murders. It has a psychic attack that also grants clues about its origin and nature, that's neat. Two goblins.

Scourgers

Shapeshifting spy-demons with itchiness venom. One and a half goblins.

Shatterers

Another monster from failed or flawed summoning rituals. Can turn invisible and bust through magic. Half a goblin.

Sisterites

Computer succubi. One and a half ghouls.

Skitches

Parasites that infest you like a tapeworm then burst out of you. Half a goblin.

Sleep Hags

Eh. One goblin.

Snuff Golems

Born from a snuff film, goes on to make its own snuff films. Can make little copies of itself. Weak to water haha. Two goblins and half a ghoul.

Soliloquys

Start off as little guys, but snack on your bits until they grow into a doppelganger, then ruin your life so they can eat your heart. Neat. Two goblins and a ghoul.

Strap Throat

A banshee. Wisconsin mentioned. I appreciate the specificity. Lotta S monsters. Two and a half goblins.

Torture Dogs

Have a poison that links their victim's mind with theirs. Not much else to them. One and a half goblins.

Mask Relay 37: The Everlixir Visor

Previously: https://rolltodoubt.wordpress.com/2026/08/11/hallow-hearts-glaugust-and-mask-relay-36/
Nextly: https://sunderedshillings.blogspot.com

A half-ellipsoid of smooth, clear glass. There are no apparent means of strapping it on, but press it to your head and it will attach over your face with an uncomfortable pull of suction, then fill up with a bubbly liquid like off-colour champagne. This liquid can be breathed, and spoken through with an unnatural affect to your voice. Taking the mask off can't be done by hand - you'll need a tool for leverage, and it'll hurt, and it'll leave a gross red mark. The liquid immediately evaporates when you do.

Press the lip of a potion to the mask and it will osmose through the glass, mixing with the mask's liquid. From then until you take the mask off, you can come under the effect of that potion by swallowing a gulp of the liquid. Only one potion can be mixed in at a time, and the mixed potion dissipates when you take the mask off. Mixing with a potion discolours the mask's liquid, rendering you half-blind.

The mask is not magically strengthened - a targeted blow will shatter it, as will getting caught in an explosion or somesuch.

Slush Pile 18

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

Slush Pile 17

Conquistador-industrialist-priests harvesting the fat of the conquered to paint the faces of their automaton-saints
-hominy made of teeth instead of corn

What appears to be an island is really the back of a great asp-turtle - the asp-turtle reaches its long neck over its back in the night to snatch up sailors camped upon it
-aspicasp, venom gelatinizes your flesh

A bird which plunges into the earth then grows into a tree with eggs as its fruit

Huckster starts monster hoax to draw adventurers to town - it goes horribly wrong

Those Who Dress Entirely In Corn
-The Forest of Assassins, where everything wants to kill you
-"the froth and noxious blast of a corrupt heart"
-wooden heads and asses' ears and copper in their voices
-secret society tattoo that's only visible when you flex really hard - secret society of bodybuilders/martial artists
-"What can be known, first must be buried"

Horror oneshot set at a Downlow Pride party, and everyone's wearing masks, but there's like a fuckin, a killer or something who's wearing a mask too
-evil book club, because one of the ladies keeps bringing in her own books for them to read, which are evil and have driven them all inSaAanE

You're paratroopers, you play as a squad of paratroopers, you're American or Rwandan paratroopers or whatever, and you thought you were paratrooping into the territory of the Enemy but you did not land in that territory but a very bad and strange territory and you have to find your way out

Creature that feeds on consciousness - exudes "nectar" made of positive memories and sensations and suchlike of prey to entice hunters to feed it more victims

Cult whose lives are tied to the statue of their deity - they are hard as stone, but any damage to the statue is reflected on all of them

At the end of his reign, the king drowns himself to be reunited with his sacred wife, the dragon from the sea

These people pour coffee on their swords before battle to awaken the spirit of the steel

Narcissistic & fearing assassination, a nobleman orders his surgeon to transform the faces of his courtiers into mirrors of his own

The Infinite Abyss is, in a planar sense, free real estate, but only those with an overwhelming ego and strength on the scale of a natural disaster can carve out their own layer of it
-The Howling is a medium or unspace which connects all layers of the Abyss. It is essentially an endless, unmoderated message board. It is the reason every demon lord hates every other demon lord.

Names for things: Lahasam, Seobex, Illa Vadenar, Talmer Iffre, Lantham, Holy Muss, Pxtou, Caolao, Secodorem, Mawuz Brin, Gattaband, Shinshir, Begor, Ichepu

Taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilized or preserved in the paleontological record
-Crozzle: To shrink or shrivel from exposure to heat, and other things besides

Men who inherited (or conquered, or stole, or whatever else) kingdom from giants - look like children on massive thrones, swaddled in traditional robes much too large for them, followed by crowds of train-bearers

Big tetrahedronal instrument played by three musicians at once

From nightmare: pimple/boil so big that popping it exposes bone
-guys who got partially infected by mutagenic virus, wrecked by experimental treatment, then shipped off to the moon - no longer register as human on scans, leading to belief that moon-base is haunted

Misheard(?) from a tour guide: "It is also the one thing remaining from when this was all a great silence"

Civilized nations are distinguished from barbarian nations by hosting a campus of the Saecularium - a true university born from the merger of the Ecclesia Indomina (a sort of clerical union negotiating with gods on behalf of humanity) and more mechanistically-inclined wizards from the Church of Wonders

A sort of strangler fig but its hosts are human

Graves dug up, the corpses floating into the night sky / corpses squashed in hydraulic presses, squeezed for some essential salt, awful squatted & crumpled zombies left as byproduct-servitors

Gang of brigands who wear rags and apply ointments of poisonous herbs to make themselves appear as diseased beggars, use pretense of begging for alms to get close then draw daggers and such

Hermit who lives in a whale-bone tent along a shore - he dreams of being a whale, and has become obsessed with swallowing sailors whole

"Cudgies" - derogatory term for followers of Saint Cuthbert of the Cudgel - Leveller/Digger/Hussite types, serious, practical, and productive sorts who hate decadence, indolence, and spoils of conquest
-"Saints" understood in this paracosm with an obvious afterlife and so on to be those who deliberately will never return as outsiders, be absorbed as an attendant of a god, reincarnate, etc., whose living example and will shall forever remain immutable and authoritative

Rat-man warriors by code of honour only allow themselves to wear their incisors down by gnawing on the edges of their shields on campaign - to remain docile too long is death - those who manage to gnaw their shields through entirely are promoted to the ranks of berserkers & given two-handed weapons

Pseudo-carnivorous ivy, grows among ruins and scree and suchlike, pulls it up into structure-seemings that collapse onto and crush explorers into delicious and nutritious paste

Species of river dolphine or riparine micro-whale that shapes their territory into weirs and such, amenable environment and traps for prey
-whale wizard-lich in orbit, encased in ice

Anti-city weapon that spreads along the roads linked to it, bubbling them into lasting intraversability - those on the roads at the time carbonized beyond recognition

Peach-crab - mobile fruit, crustacean-like segmented, legged & clawed seed that carries around its fruit-flesh on its back, picking off bits to eat and fuel its journey to a planting site

Screaming ultra-entropic locust zones, mobile technorganic hellscapes that migrate across and overtop other ecosystems, degrading their biomass into fuel that is vapourized and sucked into shuddering engine-masses that power the whole thing
-A library that is also a gigantic wasp hive, created by giant wasps that pulp everything in the area and turn it into books - literally turning the territory into its own maps (and atlases, encyclopedias, biographies, etc.) - infested by parasitic ecosystem of glow-worms that eat nonsense and excrete illumination, book-worms that are able to burrow into fiction like it's a physical space, humans who've tattooed themselves with the text of books as camouflage against the wasps, and so on
-An entirely two-dimensional ecosystem composed of organisms of stark light and shadow, projected onto the world below by an alien moon, with odd symbiosis with the three-dimensional life it's projected on - e.g. two-dimensional pollinators unaffected by wind courted by Möbius-strip flowers

A specialized priest, tattooed with heaven on his belly, tasked with consuming all the sacrifices offered to his god - lipomas sprout across his flesh and hatch into hymn-singing cherubs

He-Man class - do classes even need levels?
-Thing class... you're The Thing from The Thing...
-class where you have to write a letter to Princess Celestia telling her a lesson you learned about friendship after every session
-XP stands for Xenia Process

In a world with an underdark-equivalent, and therefore much more extensive and lush cave systems, cavemen could be some real lasting players - chthonic neaderempires - chronic daylight deprivation leads to "slowing time", twelve hour sleeping thirty six hour awake cycle, mushrooms and fatty fish sources of vitamin D

Okay so it's elves, it's an elf-take - elves are insects, they're all one big hive, but their queen died a long time ago and they metamorphosed into immortal forms until they can find the princess-heir, drow and wood elves and so on are different castes that split after the death of the queen, they're a dwindling species because they can't reproduce and most of them have given up hope of ever finding the heir, changelings are like those spiders that sneak into ant nests but instead of ants it's humans and they're from a faction of elves who think they can make their own princess by experimenting on humans
-elves call themselves the seldarine and consider themselves to be gods - drow are hated for subordinating themselves to the god Lolth, to the seldarine denying their own divinity

Dungeon origin: Culture wherein if a master is killed by their slave, all their other slaves will be killed alongside that slave and interred with the master to serve them forever in the afterlife - slaves faked mass suicide with poison that mimics death, awakened in the master's ancestral tomb, and set about robbing and desecrating everything - imprisoned slave faction (undead?) vs. angry undead noble ancestors faction vs. modern day imperial graverobbers trying to balance the deficit faction

The God of Mountains is ringed by the Valley of Mercy, a divinely-created landform which protects the rest of the world from the obscene weather events created by the GoM

Ok so it's the Ex-Presidents from Point Break but also Madame Tussaud wax statues and also voodoo dolls and like a candle but instead of a wick they've got a film reel spun through them and they've got some freak shit fictional character knacks while it's burning them down

Viral-induced epilepsy via genetically-engineered viruses to program brain responses to light patterns (feels like I've done this one before but whatever)
-okay so it's this plus cognitive atrophy from LLM overuse and it's guys with VR headsets flashing lights in their eyes based on whatever instructions they mumble to it to manipulate their movements and mood

Part of the world where carrion has become so abundant wild dogs and wild pigs hybridized into the same species, gnawing their gametes into the marrow of corpse-bones that hatch into puppiglets

What if a jiangshi... but from sky burial... and they hop, but hop very high up, and then come down like a diving falcon... or a mario with talons on his feet...
-koi polloi
-a species of sentient art-works somehow able to compel people to create and re-create them

The War of the Noses: an ancient conflict between the saiga-men and the tapir-people which reduced both sides to wretched beasts and littered the land with ruins and the wreckage of war-machines
-deafened smith, big red candle atop his head dripping into his ears and styling his moustache, he plucks its flame and tosses it into his forge

Bytopian outsiders are defined by a duality, the usual relationship of which can be inverted - e.g. the shadow or reflection which casts the body or which can be cast separated from the body, a weeping silhouette whose tears rise into a cloud and is then outlined by rainfall from the cloud, etc.

Vial of blood. Any amount of water which gets so much as a drop of the blood in it will be infested by sharks.

A sinkhole-pond, very deep, a place where leeches churn the water, bloated with the ichor of something at its bottom - it is not wholesome fare for the leeches, and they will latch onto you not to drain your blood, but to regurgitate that ichor and spare their stomachs from invertebrate agony
-anglerfish-like chthonic ambush predator, lure mimics torchlight
-giant fucking apes, gigantopithecus type shit, and they live on a flying island and descend to the lowly earth on really long vines from really big trees to monkey around

Some kind of miracle-matter made from laparotomizing doppelgangers

Silent Hill-y horror scenario, town in B.C. engulfed by wildfire that strangely doesn't spread into the town itself (though makes it nigh-unbearably hot and smoky), trapping the people who wouldn't or couldn't evacuate, fire doesn't burn down over time and strange things emerge from it and the town warps as the smoke infuses it
-scenario seed: radio-tagged endangered species specimen begins making impossible movements
-you're cast and/or crew on the set of a remake of an allegedly-cursed film and things start going very wrong

From the lands of shadowy dream through the gate of horn comes fulfilment and through the gate of ivory comes deception - similarly from the sun-bright waking lands come dreamers through the marble gate and the brazen gate, and wiser figments of dreams know through which comes whom

Okay so it's water levels, it's a water level, but it's sand levels, and the dungeon's an hourglass, and you can flip it when the sand's too much

Better Louis has escaped and I don't know where else to put this

The sirens' names are Molpe, Thelxiope, Himerope, Aglaophonos, Peisinoe, Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, Rhaidne, Teles, and Telchtereia

D12 Fucked-Up Little Gods of Various Communities

Inspired by the movie version of Children of the Corn, which is alright... preferred In The Tall Grass as far as Stephen King adaptions set in fields of tall plants go... and also inspired by conversation with theisticgilthoniel on the GLOG discord:

1. The Lord of Drewfurk: A mummified corpse with limbs that branch like a tree's, interred in a shrine atop a mound surrounded by a moat in which multi-tailed lampreys swim. The corpse's many fingers and toes are tied with knots of cord, the patterns of which are cross-referenced with reams of scrolls to interpret the god's will. The primary directives of the Lord of Drewfurk involve rites of husbandry, of animals and men, producing mooncalves and other such prodigies. If the god is pleased with these spawn the ground will shake and treasures shall be revealed. If the god is displeased the ground will shake and structures shall collapse and people shall be maimed.

2. Numinous Offosa: A scintillant waterfall which springs from the rocks of a bluff. Birds fly into Offosa and are never seen again, though from time to time a reed basket carrying a teratoma floats out of the mist at its base, and these are swaddled and cared for as infants until they rot. No one in the area dares to eat fowl, and hunters surrender their catches of such to Offosa. So long as the waterfall is well-fed, it flows clean and plentiful. In times of crisis a sacrifice is dressed in a feathered costume and given to Offosa, and a little while after this a person in the prime of life and bearing some supernatural gift sails downstream in a reed boat.

3. Master Bhelstey: A flower-headed man, blind and deaf and mute, who must be led about by a young boy. This boy is meant to speak for Master Bhelstey (though it's an acceptable breach of duty for him to sneak in some of his own whims from time to time), and is the only one permitted to bleed Master Bhelstey for his sap, which brings verdant growth wherever it falls (anyone else who tries meets a terrible fate). One day, soon after beginning pubescence, this boy will become the next Master Bhelstey, and his interpreter will be chosen via tearing the petals from the husk of the old Master Bhelstey.

4. Our Lady Samaritana: A giant shed snakeskin kept in a temple in the family complex of the village headsman. Those who crawl through the length of Lady Samaritana will be reborn - their wounds smoothed over, their illnesses eased, their age sitting lighter upon them. They will also be that much more serpentine, commensurate to what was restored to them. Village elders wear long hooded robes so that outsiders are not alarmed by their appearance. When one has passed through Lady Samaritana enough times, they are fully transformed into snakes, and then milked of venom and decapitated. The blood and poison from this is then mixed with wine and shared about in a crystal bowl. Those who have served the village are believed to gain prosperity from the drink, while those who have betrayed the village will writhe and die in agony on the spot.

5. Sir Plowshare: A sword with a ten-feet-long blade, so rusty that not a speck of clean metal can be seen through it, the grip long since rotten away. The sword is paraded between households each new year in a joyful drunken festival. Those whose eyes and hands are anointed with rust from Sir Plowshare are not capable of violence, nor of suffering from witnessing or having participated in violence - this includes everyone permitted to reside in the village. When the village needs to be forcefully defended, a volunteer breaks their teeth upon Sir Plowshare and howling wields it against all foes, and afterwards they are cast out into the surrounding woods to survive off scraps and forage.

6. White-Lightning-Black-Thunder: An enormous dog of wrinkly aspect, buried up to its neck in a mountainside. The dog is worshiped by a clan of charcoal-burners, bandits, trappers, and hermits, who dance around it while fluting and tossing garlands of wildflowers over its ears. If one sneaks up on White-Lightning-Black-Thunder and plucks a hair from it, they will be able to curse anyone who then hears the god's howling (which can be heard anywhere on the mountain). This is easier said than done, and the god can tear an armoured man apart as a man tears apart a roasted chicken wrapped in tinfoil.

7. Grandmother Vine: A sprawling, kudzu-like growth. Those who consume the seeds of Grandmother Vine become progressively more imperceptible to those who have not while within her expanse, and increasingly less able to go without her seeds without suffering dreadful pangs. Those who've consumed many of her seeds over a long period ("deep in the green" as they're called) speak of a paradise invisible to all save those who've been most blessed by Grandmother Vine. No matter how she spreads, there are never enough seeds growing on the god to sate everyone.

8. The Mistress of Moo-Moon Manor: A horned woman who resides in a floating palace on a moon made of curdled cream which appears in the dreams of those who pray to her. Those who please the Mistress are allowed to reside with her in her palace, enjoying all manner of ease and luxuries while their bodies sleepwalk through the toil and drudgery of waking life. Those who displease her are cast out into insomniac reality, where they desperately care for the sleepwalkers in the hope of their banishment being rescinded.

9. Wolkuld: A giant, eyes a bleary white with flesh always shadowed, which can go about bodily or as a gentle breeze or tremendous gale. It is as a child, and if it is watching you it must be indulged by playing children's games with it or it will wax tantrumly. Wolkuld also hates and fears those who do not smile at it, and those who smile at it with a full set of teeth - those who live where it frequents remove their teeth in a pattern unique to each family. Few tell strangers the rules their god follows, as protection and as opportunity to loot what is left by their angered god.

10. The Calamitous Jade: A boulder of lavender jade, its upper half smooth and its lower half pitted, bound altogether in twists of red cow-hide - cast down from the heavens in storied days to crush a rampaging demon. The celestial spirit of the stone and the lingering dregs of the demon mingle and contend within it, lending gambler-wise blessings and curses to those who petition it, leaning one way or the other depending on obscure currents both empyrean and chthonic. The balance between the Jade's aspects is maintained by the god's husbands, each a sturdy man picked every eight years in a contest wherein they must smash a lesser stone before it. Bigamy, of course, being illegal in these parts, their noses are cut off and their foreheads branded with the mark of shame after the ceremony.

11. Ribokiyo, Father of the Forsaken: Somewhere up the mountains, along the road to nowhere (and to old ruins haunted by ghosts who've forgotten their human shapes) lies the village of Monkey Point. Its inhabitants make a living farming rice and yams from rubble-backed terraces, and sometimes selling amulets and supplies to fools seeking to plunder those old ruins. It's a hard living - they are well-acquainted with hunger and the white clay of mourning. In times of hunger in Monkey Point there is a tradition to give infants to the mountain, and to propitiate the spirits of these infants so that they do not turn their wrath on the people of the village.

But one year this propitiation failed and the infant-spirits possessed the body of a monkey, which grew huge and bled from the pores of its face, attracting a mask of flies. This possessed monkey sired itself on the wild boars, and carp, and deer of the mountain, allowing its possessing spirits to be reborn into pitiful half-lives.

Eventually, word of the beast's iniquity reached Owua temple, and a noble monkey came to seduce it and anchor it via land descent to the wolf-saint Amartza. The beast was enshrined as a wrathful guardian deity and fertility idol, the infant-spirits coming to reside in a bliss-realm within a gem set in its diadem. It remains as such to this day, awaiting the defilement to loose it from its binding.

12. The Idol of Urahank: A fragment of a marble statue, of an eye and its socket, carved in such detail that one can see the veins in its sclera, set in a crude frame of bent and grafted living trees. The fragment bears a fraction of the power of the god it once depicted, as well as the divine punishment levied upon them. Worshipers of the idols draw on this power to perform minor miracles of a scattered portfolio, an organ of theirs crumbling to dust in payment (a random organ, sometimes a fingernail and sometimes their brain), and segmented furies sometimes come to enact the ordained punishment upon the idol, only to be confused by its lack of recognizable organs, whereupon they can be plied with libations and turned onto another in the punished god's stead.

Case Files of the Knights of St. Phanourious: Pinemarten, Ontario - Session 3

Previously:

Session 1

Session 2

In which the party learns the valuable lesson to look before they leap.

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

We start off at the Hibernation Station motel after a restful night. The party exchanges texts with Marlin, who in return for them taking out rival gang leader Stan Koontz offers them the service of either a couple useless fuckheads who got too high on the gang's supply (who she is indifferent to the life or death of), or her in-house arsonist. They take the arsonist, and further promise to never come near Marlin or her family again in return for her leaking the identity of her mother and co-drug kingpin Debbie's contact at Rodnovprom - a technician by the name of Yosef.

They drive out to link up with the arsonist, but notice they are being tailed by a muddy pickup. Manhoman opens up the back of their van to try and intimidate the pickup driver, assuming that they're a teen gang member, but the passenger of the pickup rolls down their window and shows off their own gun. It is at this point that the party regrets letting their drugged-up hostage Moroz go, on the basis that at this moment they could have thrown him under the pickup's tires. It's not all cold pragmatism though - Manhoman reveals that he slipped a scrip for more xanax into Moroz's pocket before he was released, as otherwise letting him go through benzo withdrawals would have violated Manhoman's Hippocratic oath. Rob attempts to lose the pursuers, but ends up driving into a snowdrift on a tight turn.

Before they can push the van out, the pickup pulls ahead of them and a weather-beaten Slavic man gets out and offers to help them out of the snowdrift. My accent is rudely mocked as sounding more Italian than Slavic. Using the friendly facade the man (who introduces himself as Jerry and the pickup driver as Tom) pries into the party's identities and actions. He reveals himself to be acquainted with Nelya, the Rodnovprom PR lady they rescued and then kidnapped from the chateau where the unnatural massacre occurred.

After some shenanigans involving Manhoman hitting on Jerry and showing off his heirloom pistol, and Bart insisting that he has blueprints to the Steam Deck in the back of the van, Tom and Jerry drive off - but not before the party notices a bit of hay in the back of the pickup. The party gets the van out and follows Tom & Jerry unnoticed to the Rodnovprom mine.

Unable to follow into the mine facility due to a fence and security kiosk, the party goes to rendezvous with the Marlin-gang arsonist at Pinemarten's old baseball diamond, where the mining company teams used to play. The arsonist, Justin, is annoyed at having to wait so long, but shows off the goods - various incendiaries and bangy things and so on and suchlike. Not wanting to compromise their secret identities, the party introduces themselves as variations of their code-names, including "Coderescuer" and "Dr. Home". They cook up a plan to sneak into the Rodnovprom mine and cause a big boom distraction so they can sneak inside and kill whatever head-eating spookum they believe lurks within.

The plan goes off with significant hitches. Everyone but Auggy and Justin get caught trying to sneak up to the fence through a wooded area. Rob books it, while Manhoman holds his gun to his own head and Bart tries to convince the security guards who come over to get them to fuck off to come a little ways that a-way to talk. Auggy boosts Justin over the fence, using his kevlar vest to cover the barbed wire atop it.

Neither Bart nor Manhoman are willing to budge, and it seems inevitable that this attempted trespassing incident will come to violence - which it does, when Rob shoots one of the security guards, Manhoman shoots the other, but the one Manhoman shot shoots Bart, knocking him unconscious. The party dispatches both security guards - Manhoman carving one's eyes out - and the guy in the checkpoint kiosk sounds the alarm.

Six more guards come racing out of the central mine facility building. It is remarked how odd it is that a pharmaceutical company operating out of a small Ontario town has such a significant security force.

Manhoman stabilizes Bart, Justin and Auggy set off the explosive diversion in a dumpster while Auggy sprays the security goons with his submachine gun, and Rob rams the van through the checkpoint gate and into the mining facility complex.

Rob manages to not run over anyone, and crashes into the side of the main building, totaling the van. At this point, with 15 minutes left in the session, I call it early so as to have some time to think up some ways that this isn't an immediate total party kill - which only takes a few minutes, because this actually works perfectly and I'm a genius. Tune in next week or maybe the week or month after for how our intrepid heroes get their bacon out of this fire, or don't.