They can love, much as we love, but they have no love-poems. No poetry at all. They do not have stories of vengeance, whether laudatory or cautionary, only reciprocation in kind.
They are seen as ill omens - imps, trickster-spirits, servitors or victims of the king of the valravens. Where their black feathers are found is thought to be inauspicious ground.
This is a self-fulfilling attitude. They mirror what is done to them. Perhaps they have no choice but to mirror what is done to them. Where their territories and humanity's overlap is all but certain to become a theater of war, wherein every battle and tactic used tilts attrition in their favour.
They are
Kenkus
HD: 1/2 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon (as little guys, small weapons must be wielded as medium weapons, and so on up the ladder) SAV: 8 MOV: Glide as kite, climb as monkey, hop as crow INT: As exceptionally hidebound person ML: 5 No. Appearing: 4d4
Corvid See, Corvid Do: Kenkus can perfectly mimic any physical action they've seen before. If they've seen you tying a rope they get your same skill level in rope-tying. If they see you wielding a weapon they get your proficiency in it and any to-hit bonuses that come from skill instead of the weapon being a magic sword or whatever. And so on and so forth.
They can also perfectly mimic any sound they've heard before.
(An encounter with kenkus is like the manga Sarumane, or like a mini-version of the also-manga HunterxHunter's Chimera Ant arc)
Sensitive Ears: Any especially loud noise (a big gong being banged, a gunshot in enclosed quarters, and suchlike) will cause kenkus within 30 feet to take 1 point of non-lethal damage. However, kenkus can never be surprised unless you are hiding your presence preternaturally.
Dire Corbies
Kenku thought is inextricable from their mimicry. It is mirrored, literal, direct. And yet - there is already adaption in it, generalization in applying the movements of the other's body to their own.
There is a glitch in the kenku thought-process, kicked off when they push beyond echopraxia into anticipation, extrapolation, and abstraction, which results in a mental and physical transformation. Their brain throbs against their skull as it demands more energy and growth to match these more complex processes, and their body grows with it.
Most kenkus who reach this point die, from the strain and the stress and rejection by their community which cannot understand their new demands. Those who survive - also called daikenkus - become these:
Dire Corbies
HD: 3 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon or 1d4/1d4 talons SAV: 11 MOV: Fly as crow, run as person INT: As smart though hidebound person ML: 7 No. Appearing: 1d3, accompanied by 2d4 kenkus
Corvid See More, Corvid Do More: Dire corbies' capacity to imitate exceeds the physical. They can copy mental skills and abilities they've witnessed being used now too. If a dire corby hears you speaking a language, it becomes fluent in that language. If a dire corby sees you casting a spell then it can cast that spell too - only the once, though, with the same amount of MD as you used. And so on and so forth.
They can also perfectly mimic any sound they've heard before.
Being deficient in their own subjectivity, dire corbies are obsessed with novels, plays, and conversation, modelling their own personalities and mannerisms off of those encountered therein.
Sensitive Ears: Any especially loud noise (a big gong being banged, a gunshot in
enclosed quarters, and suchlike) will cause dire corbies within 30 feet to
take 1 point of non-lethal damage.. However, dire corbies can never be surprised unless you are hiding your presence preternaturally.
He walks through town with his dapper hat and his dapper coat. He's got a refined bearing and an easy stride.
He is tall - maybe the tallest man you've ever seen. He's got no gums - but you won't see this until his grin stretches wide and the lips peel back to show long, long teeth planted right in his jaw-bones.
When he comes across lone children he pinches their chin and turns them this way and that. Most he doesn't bother with, not worth his time, not worth his trouble. In some he sniffs out the seed of kindred-spirit, and kidnaps them to initiate into his gang of pickpockets, muggers, and murderers.
The unluckiest few he takes into his hands and he bends and breaks and nibbles away at them, until they're unfit for any path through life but as beggars. He'll come back for them, years down the line, when they're thoroughly steeped in despair, and he'll eat their souls and leave their empty bodies in the gutter. He does the same to those in his gang, tearing the ghost from them as they hang from the gallows and the gibbets.
He is
Mister Mittenbiter
HD: 5 AC: 15 ATK: 1d8 cane smack and 1d8 bite, plus Mutilator SAV: 12 MOV: As ogre INT: As evil man who is used to manipulating children and obsequious social inferiors ML: 6 No. Appearing: 1 plus 1d6-2 nasty children (stat as goblins, equipped with shivs and razors and other such improvised weapons)
Aura of Gentility: It's not mind control, it requires no save, but Mister Mittenbiter is surrounded by a feeling that he's better than you and he can do what he wants - if you are accustomed to feeling that you are better than others, you feel that he is an equal.
Mutilator: All of Mister Mittenbiter's attacks that deal damage also deal a wound. He is a brute well-acquainted with how to hurt and mangle.
Horses will eat baby birds. They're still herbivores - it's an opportunistic thing, an accident really. If you had as long a face as they did, would you be able to see what was in front of your mouth while grazing?
These horrible waterfowl would eat a baby bird on purpose and not feel even a little bit bad about it. There's an evil in them that goes beyond the cruel indifference of nature.
They wait on the surface of water bodies, rears hanging in the air as they nibble on plants and little critters below. Their rears bear a striking resemblance to the face of a drowning person, aided when they flail and slosh about, and their cloacal flatulence mimics the desperate gasps and screams of such a person as well.
They're clever enough - or instinctually-programmed - to use overturned boats to add to their charade, and sometimes use their victims as props too.
When you go to help these "drowners" they'll wrap their necks around your legs and hold you under til you stop struggling, honk-laughing at you while they do. Idiot. Moron. You deserve to die, and they deserve to kill you.
They are
Gostreochors
HD: 1 AC: 12 ATK: 1d4 bite + automatic grab with strength 14, Assblast SAV: 6 MOV: As goose INT: As crueler than usual goose ML: 8 No. Appearing: 1d8
If you fall for gostreochors' ruse they get a surprise round on you.
Assblast: Fleeing gostreochors will attempt to projectile poop in your eyes and wounds. When a gostreochor fails a morale test, save or contract a disease as its poop gets in your eyes and wounds. Having a shield grants advantage on this save.
Among the three poisonous servants of the sorcerers number these:
Take one unwanted by their family, by force or guile or sale, young or old, healthy or sick - it does not matter.
Put a coin in their mouth. Make sure they do not swallow it yet. Wrap them in a sable shroud, so tightly they cannot escape it on their own - break their limbs if you must. Pour sow's milk over their face until they can barely breath. Abandon them on a mountainside.
If all goes well then the land will not know what to do with them, and they will be transformed into a black boar. This boar will be compelled to sniff out valuables and scarf them down, and when its belly is full of them it will return to you. Then you may cut it open and retrieve the wealth it has swallowed, but you must then provide it with a doll - it doesn't matter how raggedy or fine - and allow it time to wallow with its dolls while the slit in its belly heals.
It's really not worth trying to skip out on your end of the bargain.
They are
Kinsutes
HD: 3 AC: 13 ATK: 1d12 gore SAV: 9 MOV: As wild boar INT: As desperate person ML: 5 No. Appearing: 1d4
Shapeshift: A kinsute can change back into its human form, but it will always be wearing an article of black clothing and have a pig's nose. Also, if presented with an object of any significant monetary value while in human form it must test morale or revert to boar-form and attempt to consume it. In human form their stats are pathetic, don't even bother with them, they pretty much only take human form to beg for their lives or sneak around poorly.
Kinsutes can sniff out valuables as a truffle-pig can snort out truffles.
A kinsute's belly will be filled with 4d6 sp worth of valuables. However, killing a kinsute transmutes the valuables in its bellies into reeking black sludge. Valuables in a kinsute's belly will otherwise be fairly preserved. They will resist anyone but their creator trying to cut open their belly with all their might.
If denied its dolls and doll-time, a kinsute will double in size, HD, damage, speed, etc., and seek to devour its creator as it as it once did valuables.
When the Great Horde of the Heathens came to golden Kitezh, a third of the city chose to surrender to the Horde, a third of the city chose to put their faith in God to save them, and the final third couldn't choose to commit to either.
One third of Kitezh was slain, and one third was protected - which was the prayerful and which the surrendered is not remembered. Of the third who couldn't choose: being lukewarm, God spat on them.
Their skin became like cracked leather, their bones frayed and splintered. Their teeth fell out, replaced by a single fang protruding from the roof of their mouth, and the flesh of their face became as clay.
They are worthless creatures, able only to wriggle in the dirt and scrape for the roots of grasses - when they take hold of another creature, though, they become fearsome. Their tentacular legs can take hold of any mount, and they draw frothy reins of phlegm and spittle out from the mouth of their steed. They tap veins with their fang for blood, and when they exhaust their ridden-thing they delight in marching it off a cliff - bonelessly and harmlessly bouncing away themself.
The accursed third of Kitezh curse all of God's creatures.
They are
Himantopodes
HD: 1 AC: 14 ATK: 1d8 spear or 1d6 bow, 50/50 chance of being armed with either SAV: 7 MOV: As crawling person, or as mount INT: As person ML: 6 while mounted, 4 while dismounted No. Appearing: 3d4 (1/3rd on horses, 1/3rd on people, 1/3rd on miscellaneous creatures)
Hellish Visage: Himantopodes make a sport of shaping their faces into the scariest shit they can imagine. On encountering himantopodes, hirelings and animals must test morale or be frozen with terror for 1d6 rounds.
In captivity there is at least one species of poison dart frog that will, instead of killing its competitors, allow them to breed - and then harvest their young to feed to its own tadpoles
insectuoise - a greenish-blue mineral of a bulbous and rugose shape - the mirror of amber, instead of trapping insects of bygone days, under particular conditions it will hatch into insects not yet imagined on this earth - the mineral is coveted by the entomologers, who prophesy a new age of chitin -things like moths with longship-prow heads -erythrism: congenital condition of abnormal redness in an animal's fur, plumage, exoskeleton, or skin -marcor: a wasting or withering of the flesh -moggy: a cat, a human girl-child or young woman, a slattern, a scarecrow, a calf, a mouse, a cake made with ginger and treacle -synastry: concurrence of starry position or influence upon two people, similarity of condition or fortune prefigured by astrology -vicariance: fragmentation of the environment -chalazae: part in egg white that holds yolk in place -hight: to call, to name, to command, to enjoin, called, named -scrofulous: has scrofula, having a diseased and run-down appearance, morally contaminated
Talking sword which relays the commands of a god -guy with division symbols for pupils who slices really good -people with stone wings, can't fly, myth of divine punishment - kulshegus -guy who's a big face stuck onto a wall with root-tentacles -were-dumbass who's a sabretooth tiger on land and a walrus in the water but in-between is just some guy with long teeth... -two guys sharing a heron costume, one standing on stilts, the other sitting atop the other's shoulders and manipulating the beak - unnervingly-effective, likely due to spirit-possession -guys who are hanging silk cocoons, their pale little faces poking out between the strands
ok... bard class... but it's a muppet... you're a muppet... and you can kick off musical numbers...
dragons precede modern notions of species-divides and so on... that's why they blend reptile and great cat and bird, why their very breath is poisonous, and why they spend so much time laired in remote locales - the modern era is as poisonous to them as they are to it...
blackjack-esque racing/chasing mini-game... plus that pirate pop-up game for inserting obstacles
The Knights of the Ladybug are charged with monitoring portals between worlds
Horror scenario beginning: A whale is beached, and bursts - strange tracks in the sand leading away from the carcass -post-financial, de-industrial solution to control over Arctic waters - control-parasite that can inhabit wide variety of oceanic life, use them as living, self-reproducing drones to damage sensitive equipment on vessels --OR the whales are fed-up and are now beaching themselves the world over and birthing humanity's end -A mummy is found where a mummy should not be. Its scientific examination releases something awful.
Peninsula under quarantine, experiencing cattle mutilation-esque murders wherein the organs of victims have been removed - secretly peninsula is used as reservoir of healthy organs for wealthy outsiders to prolong their lifespans, organ-harvesting developed into ritualistic hunt
"angel DNA" - what Bigfoot allegedly possesses, genetic information unlike any other on Earth
Virus that un-vestigializes human vomeronasal organ, intended for mass pheromonal control of population
"Events in time are sticky, like sap - this is the primary cause of synchronicity. Time as a whole - eternity - is like amber" - delirious brain-thought, good line to give kook character "We are children of this age, weaned on chaos and strife" "evil horses, accomplices of swirling waters" -the horse whose rump extends to carry a hundred children to drown, the serpent, the centipede "In Genesis it is stated that the first creatures were brought forth by the abyssal waters - they came into being as nightmares" -the badlands - hell without fire
A treasure - magic sword or armour or somesuch - found in a monster's lair in the hexmap, if borne to a dungeon elsewhere, wins respect & recognition by the undead faction within the dungeon (which shares the treasure's particular animal-motif) as the righteous heir
Wicked witch of the woods is really a weasel princess - bonded with an aurumvorax - who decades ago had her aurumvorax kill the girls bullying her for being hunchbacked then fled
Blight afflicting redwoods in the Pacific Northwest, liquefying them into a flood of sludge
Apparently-human fetuses found in piure-like organic sacs within stones... beware the ones that have gone bad...
Death-machine powered by the ectoplasm of the ghost it's going to make you -chakram shaped like a snowflake, fractal + vorpal edge
Andersonville scenario...(?) I think this is referring to Andersonville Prison - shout out to Tasting History
Been coming around on martians-as-orcs... like true bonafide sorcerers raise their armies by tearing down chunks from the heavens, and command obedience from the aliens that come with them with the vague promise of being sent back home after their term of service... probably have to change up what planet/species you're drawing from every so often so they don't figure out that the prudent move is to shank you immediately and burn your books to spare their countrymen
A village where, due to lack of arable land, all but a family's firstborn have their souls "plucked" via the sacrifice of hair to the local deity, turning them into emotionless servitors
Monster: Accumulated biomass of a cave - bugs, guano, bones, etc. - shuddering to conjoined life, taking on the form of beasts painted on the caves walls, imagination lingering like a skin waiting to be filled
In this land, Death lost at a game of his choosing so badly that he left it in shame entirely. There are catacombs of the living to imprison the Things People Become When They Get Too Old.
Trees dressed as white mares and ridden to the night sky -the lady-who-is-a-great-waterbug taking the children who would drown in her river's terrible floods --young men of the watermeadow join the band of her fionin and live wildly, roving in a shining copper boat - each year in her service they grow shorter, and so the land is also known as the Land of the Little Men
Syphilisybils with pythonic sores on their brains -emberyo
A henge with the still-living bodies of something or other buried and pinned beneath the stones -a horned man who lives in caves and cuts his beard to make it hail
Room filled with haze of spores - open doors allow haze to spread beyond room - wet rags over mouth & nose improve save - those affected by the spores are unable to visually perceive depth, making them vulnerable to the room's pit traps - is this any better than just having a persistent mist or somesuch? counterplay of rags allows better use against enemies
A flower that blooms on the bodies of the dead. If they died full of anger and regret, the flower will be stained red. -vengeful bees what feeds on these
Language of dungeon humanoids, unknown to outside world, is based on sounds made by dungeon monsters in spoken form, tracks left by monsters in written form. Meaning is symbolic associations of those monsters. E.g. a sound reminiscent of a skeleton's clattering teeth could mean both "death" and "white", written form is five slightly splayed lines mimicking feet-bones. -alt.: glyphs based on Widmanstätten patterns
Why do all zombies and skeletons know how to use swords and stuff? Why can skeletons walk around without muscles? Necromancy is primarily concerned with the memory of life, advancing as a necromancer means becoming able to draw out more memory with less meat, and being discriminate in what you draw out - beginners can only raise fresh corpses, which hunger as they did in life though they digest nothing, if one wants undead warriors they must be made from living warriors, etc.
Spiders and octopi share some ancestry or other such relation -amputation-regeneration cult of octopus god
The defining landmark of this area is: -the big glowing ghost-tree -the other moon that shouldn't be here and is falling to a cataclysmic end -the big river that flood randomly -the hill that crawls and births monsters -a desert area where big dust storms or locust clouds or whatever sweep down from the north every so often so to get to the ruins up there without getting worn down too much you need to gamble with smugglers for the locations of their hidey-holes or track the great brown wyvern to its lair so you can shelter under the dung piles or whatever in a strand of safe havens and time it so you get to the desired hex when everything's clear and not covered in locusts or dead locusts in the aftermath that attract the Worm Tide and the sweep is more or less predictable, it's regular + or - a watch, and you can see it coming from a ways off
The Old Baatorians, being unable to die, dealt with enemies of their own kind by absorbing them -aesthetic of the yugoloths: cenobites basically, amputation and eyes sewn shut and flaying and all that, subtraction and bindings, ideal yugoloth is an orb of annihilation
Every night the wizard descends from his tower to the shore of the lake brandishing his golden reins with their leaden bells, and the surface of the lake boils as he calls up the winged worm who sleeps at its bottom, to fly upon it and extort the people of the valley with threats of floods and storms and wet sicknesses
A gang of robbers who ride flying bucks granted to them by a pact with the devil, riding far from home after alighting off a particular hill so they are never caught
Awful nasty things: Like pigeons and they poop all over the place but it's not their poop it's bits of them that've goopified and if you get it on you you'll start to goopify too
The guards of the partridge princess's palace wear a sheet of paper painted with eyes over their face - it lets the partridge princess see whatever they see, while allowing the princess to manipulate what they see to keep them loyal -hill giants that ambush like trapdoor spiders, hiding in wait under boulders
Palanquin-bearing muscle-cult who make their erstwhile lord heavier and heavier to make themselves stronger for lifting him
Spellbooks... ink... having too much magic in you turns you into pigments, a towering symbol-creature who paints a pocket-world into being around you
Yamulpiiki, the city that's an aircraft carrier, a thermal-swept plateau home to nesting quetzalcoatlus sorts, aerial domination of the surrounding region -Ipizet Freel
Rabbits pulled from the bags under your eyes, snapping things of deprived delirium
Tripartite AI modelled after Hera-Athena-Aphrodite, with human operator as Eris-Paris
Lychee-skinned gibbons tearing out their heart-seeds to chuck at you -the orange, white, and black of tigers are not one being but three creatures in symbiosis, and weaker for it
Satirical folk-song about marching boots, decrying the conditions they're trod in, rise up against the soldiers and their general - straw sandals of the peasantry try to join in only to be put down as the boots need leather from livestock for their patchings
Temperature-dependent sex determination... hot-or-cold-or-temperate bi/trimodal gender in reptile-people...
Ok so the ruins have phallic architecture like road markers and whatnot but you can tell they were some fucked up guys who made it because the dicks are all wrong
Dungeon-cannons with screwable barrel-lengths so they're easier to carry... very long fuses so you can hide behind a corner while the thing fires - it will almost definitely explode, and you don't want to be near it when it does - best aimed down narrow corridors & other such chokepoints
Ideas in your head that make your skull blossom like a flower -bees for these too... perhaps rather humming-birds...
Legend that coffee was discovered by goatherds noticing their herd acting jittery after grazing on coffee-shrubs - adventurer practice of driving herd of goats before you into the dungeon, double effect of pacifying carnivores and discovering which edibles will kill or mutate you
A substitute human sacrifice - a doll stuffed with offal
Enormous-eared and duck-footed, with a mottled bluish-green hue to their skin. Prone to romance and melancholy, as they can only reproduce by fusing into trees - the hard-rinded fruit which blossom on these trees splitting to disgorge newborn sindles.
They are generally bog-dwellers, who walk upon mud and peat as if it were solid ground, and farm the seedroach - a delicious vegetable creature whose bite turns any other animal into a seedroach tree - for which they are viewed with suspicion and blamed for misfortunes like witches.
Tcharans
Tcharans' brains are fluid and distributed throughout their bodies - one could live on a while after decapitation - however they store memories by crystallizing their own flesh, and within a lifetime become nothing but crystal. If memories are avoided they're remarkably long-lived - tcharan drunks can live for centuries in wretched alcoholism. The memories within a tcharan's crystalline flesh, when broken off, can be "read" with a special sort of lamp.
They are plagued by comprachicos who take their extremities for curios - some of a wizardly bent even believe that by manipulating a tcharan's flesh (and therefore memory) they can change the past.
Bilbeks
A bit of beetle, lobster, and armadillo, they can roll up into balls and roll around. They can also intuit the laws of physics to create extraordinary devices, but using this intuition attracts the attention of The Thing That Stares Back. A terrible fate is inflicted if its attention is not avoided, so bilbeks will use drugs and auto-hypnosis to enter a fugue while using their intuition - for this reason each of their devices is unique and often unintuitive, with the rare exception of the pneumatubes they use to propel themselves around their settlements.
Bilbeks tend to be fussy and particular, their settlements isolationist and madcap-traditional - only hard-won, hands-on experience being able to use and maintain the complex technical systems that keep them operating.
Poma-Godes
Paired symbiotes - one thorny and teardrop-headed, one noodley, with opposite, complimentary personalities and capabilities paired when they are young in something like an arranged marriage - e.g. a quick thinker with a planner, a people-pleaser with a warrior, and so on. A poma and a gode are only sapient in symbiosis. Pomas are sometimes kept in other lands as draft animals, and this is outrageous to poma-godes, who seek to unite these animals with their gode soul-mate.
Tend to come off as aloof and flaky - to a poma-gode, the only social relation they really need to fulfill them is their other half. Their social unit is not the family, but the eugenics committee.
Inarmes
Upside-down guys who used to live in giant trees, with hoof-like hands for cracking nuts and hand-like feet for dangling. Being upside-down, they are prone to turning the world on its head, and becoming heretics and revolutionaries. There's probably ones still living in trees somewhere who are normal.
Gargorians
Burly, four-armed, and stiff-faced, with a single lock of hair growing from the top of their heads. A good way to get your ass kicked is to yank on this lock of hair as if you were trying to uproot a turnip.
Gargorians eat all their food slathered with a painfully spicy and sour paste of fermented peppers, and claim to be from the land of Gargor, or descendants of Gar and Gor, or some other such formulation. It is unclear whether this is meant as a joke or serious esotericism due to their perpetual poker face.
They are well-known for their chain-wielding warriors and their quadrumudratic mages.
Vliopes
They are born as something like five-legged starfish, and assume a more-or-less humanoid form based on limb usage, their limbs specializing with age. Vestigial features remain into adulthood such as eyespots on the hand and graspers on top of the head.
Vliopes are convinced they are unconscious, artificial automatons, as a sort of species-wide variant of Cotard's delusion, though like someone with hysterical blindness reacting instinctively to an incoming object they usually avoid dangerous outcomes of this belief.
The cognitive dissonance inherent in vliopes makes them prone to periods of stability in between freak-the-fuck-out levels of upheaval, both personally and socially. Vliope art, when they make it, is always avant-garde.
Dyujyas
Pale, soft-bodied, and wet, they must cover themselves in clay and mud or else dry out in the air and sun. Their bodies' exudate keeps the stuff pliant, and each clan has their particular body-suit design - seniority in a clan is signaled by shaping of the mouth-piece, with elders granted deeper and boomier voices.
Dyujyas have comfortably-plodding minds, leaning to rote and ritual over revelation - they make for commendable servants and bureaucrats, and their grasp of procedure makes them subtle and effective saboteurs. They tend to come out not so much on top, but never on the bottom.
Alsinados
Tallow-skinned and fond of bright tattoos, with features that tend to draw a strong line across the face - a jutting chin and jaw, a canopial brow-ridge, a long and narrow nose, and suchlike. Their ribcages are cavernous, their overhang home to bats - all alsinado tops are crop-tops, and they tattoo around their navels. Alsinados adore their bats, and share their crepuscular schedule, hating the height of noon and the depth of night. Their women can unhinge their ribcages and clang them together with a terrifying racket. Done communally this lets them echolocate.
Alsinados are proud and pious, prone to crusades both great and small - their bats clear away disease-carrying pests, and they take this as a sign of divine favour.
Korpulas
Bounding monopods with mouths that are a pair of bony plates in their spring-like necks, talking in a clacking staccato and chewing by bouncing their heads up and down comically.
They are vassals of the noble winds who rule the middle air and control the weather, and their herds of tremendous hyraxes are painted in swirling patterns to honour them. Fewer korpulas are born every generation, and they lament the loss of their masters' favour. The old trade-circuit loyalties are fading in favour of factions based on how to regain this.
In emergencies a korpula can inflate their head into a balloon and drift a great distance away, but this is uncomfortable and undirectable and can only be done once in a long while besides, as the tissue regains its normal shape.
There once was a peaceful and prosperous kingdom called Abrogance, and the king of Abrogance was wise and just and ageless.
The means of his agelessness were the hagging childers, his best-kept secret until the kingdom's final days. And the final days of Abrogance were terrible indeed - for the king's agelessness inspired envy, and imitators, and the price of immortality is never cheap.
Abrogance was wondrous and mighty in its time, and many today claim its legacy. In all cases these claims ring farcical. The true legacy of Abrogance is clear, in the wasteland of its Anecumene, and in its artifacts of alicorn - the marvelous material of unicorn horns.
The Bacchanalian Baroness's Drinking-Flute
A drinking vessel which accentuated the poison-purging property of alicorn to the point that poisons drunk from it pushed past being neutralized to being beneficial - for example the cardiotoxic venom of the blacksnake would actually improve the health of one's heart if drank from the drinking-flute.
The baroness to whom it belonged was an infamous lush - and from the flute alcohol became a life-extending, liver-strengthening elixir of charm and confidence. In the end, she bought her own baloney and led an uprising against the king, and for this treason was put to death.
The Innocence-Devouring Dentures
A set of pearly false teeth which, when used to devour the innocent, made its user innocent in turn, restored to child-like vivacity.
The nobleman who commissioned the dentures dined daily on pure-white lambs, and died when someone snuck into his meal a piece of a goat that the village idiot had fucked.
The dentures turned black and corroded and bit their way from his corpse's jaws - they gnash through the Anecumene's earth like a rabid mole even now.
The Brooch of the Viperine Wet-Nurse
A modest thing, as the jewelry worn in the noble manses of Abrogance went - the alicorn hidden within its design.
A
gift given to one of lower station. It poisons the milk of the one who
wears it - it is a poison of the soul. One weaned on the poisoned milk
grows twisted, cruel, small-minded, yet long-lived and inured to all
other poisons and injuries. The brooch is a weapon aimed at heirs, to
ruin the houses they inherit.
The Defiler's Athame
Like the Brooch, an artifact which deliberately profaned the alicorn in its making in order to invert its properties to a terrible end.
Alicorn wards off disease - the profaned alicorn of the Athame made its wielder into a disease, their flesh and their will festering in the wounds it left, pustulent clusters of little faces leering from lacerations. The defiler for whom the Athame is named is one of the few survivors from the golden age of Abrogance - or, at least, his eyes, his smile, and his malignance survive.
The Goutuous Duke's Lancing-Needles
Alicorn can purge poison from a drinking vessel - why not, then, from any vessel?
The duke was shrewd in business and delightful in conversation, but suffered greatly from a number of illnesses. He commissioned this set of needles from a single unicorn's horn, to purge the painful fluids from his boils and joints.
The needles worked wonderfully, and soon the duke was the image of health and vigour. Virtue as well, as he began to give generous alms and weep over the evil that allowed the creation of his needles.
One day, when his creditors came, they found the duke seated on his throne, his flesh torn away to reveal his opalescent skeleton beneath, sheepishly grimacing as he offered up his viscera, the long and slippery bits sliding through the bones of his fingers.
The Cat's Collar
In the ruins of the summer palace of the king of Abrogance there is a cat. She wears a collar inlaid with opalescent alicorn, and her coat is thick and spotless. She spends her days lazing in the sunbeams which peek through the cracked walls, and chasing the shadows of mice.
The collar protects her from all things which would do her harm, from Hunger and Time and Death. The collar would do this for no other, because it was made for the cat with love.
The cat is lonely - yes, even cats can get lonely - she has been waiting for her friend to return for a long time. The collar does not protect her from Hope.
Tucked away where you wouldn't expect them, grit-slicked and pearlescent, combining the vagaries of organic growth and the sensitivities of architecture - hanging orbs and onion domes, conch shell spines and chandelier tubes. There's a beauty to them that even beasts respect - no bird-droppings splatter them. These are their anchorholds.
Wet-eyed, whimpering, stretched-out faces and tongues rasping across cracked lips. Torturous posture walking on their elbows and their feet, paws clasped in prayer. They pray for themselves, and for the god they were damned with. Being damned, their prayers are worthless. They need yours.
Ruins speak to the culture they once practiced. Now they have only this, their only worthwhile pursuit.
They will lick the tendons from your heels and drag you away, drop you into the cell they've drooled for you and seal it up. With deprivation of sleep and meals and a constant channeled droning they will break you down until you hope for their salvation as much as they do. You will pray the rest of your days in the dark, food and water kissed down your throat by long, sharp tongues. They have a tremendous debt to pay.
They are
Glossgallers
HD: 2 AC: 12 ATK: 1d4 Tongue Stab (30-ft. range) SAV: 6 MOV: As three-legged dog INT: As desperate, driven person ML: 7 No. Appearing: 2d4
Tongue Stab: Their radula-tipped tongue launches out like a chameleons. Save, or roll on the table below as it pierces something important (1d6): 1. Blinded in one eye until healed. 2. Hand disabled until healed. 3. Leg disabled until healed. 4. Heart struck - triple damage. 5. Stomach - stunned for round retching, must eat additional ration that day. 6. Throat - can't speak until healed.
Is the flesh stronger than steel? Perhaps, perhaps. Certainly more fearsome.
These assassin-creatures of the fleshworkers are born from an induced twinning - the twins are then made to devour each other in the womb. One twin eats the other's flesh while the other eats the first's shadow. Then, it is born - one being, two bodies, one of flesh and one of shadow.
Unactivated, they resemble the human they would have been born as, their other body resting as a shadow in the light should. Activated to kill, and they are like an over-buttered bag of popcorn - soggy, wrinkled, warped and split, innards spilled onto outtards. Their shadow-self rises as an illusory duplicate, connected to their flesh-self by a black thread that wriggles along the ground like a worm.
Their leash (besides the indoctrination from a young age which should be practiced with all assassin-creatures) is the promise of return to and maintenance of their human form, to their ordinary life. Only their creator can do this. Masterless ones exist in the margins, bundled up like lepers - honed killers pushed to the edge.
They are
Sceadtwains
HD: 3 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon SAV: 9 MOV: As human who is really good at parkour INT: As trained assassin ML: 6 No. Appearing: 1d3
Peekaboo: A sceadtwain that's just been put into kill-mode gets a 4-in-6 chance of getting a surprise round. The sceadtwain's master must be in earshot to give the signal.
Bilocation: An activated sceadtwain has two bodies - one illusory and one physical. The bodies must remain within 30 feet of each other, and are connected by a black thread along the ground. If this thread is severed, the illusory body winks out of existence and re-emerges the next round from the physical body's feet. The thread can't be severed by cutting - it is itself a shadow - a solid obstacle must completely block the connection.
A sceadtwain can switch which body is illusory and which is physical once per round as a free action, including in response to an incoming attack. If something physical is within the illusory body when they swap, the sceadtwain takes damage as if telefragged.
There's snakes in these here parts, horrible snakes, yellowed-off white like old bones - they don't swallow their prey live like other snakes do, they like them ripely putrid, holding the strangled corpses tenderly in their coils until they start to reek, and leak.
There's barrows too, old and haunted (of course) - and they hold the most delectable corpses of all (to the snakes). But to end up in a snake's belly is the foulest defilement of them all, so the barrows' stones and walking bones endeavour to keep the reptiles out and far away.
But sometimes a snake has its day, and seizes its well-aged barrow-corpse delicacy. Then it is reborn - the merger of ancient hero (in the classical sense) and serpentine voracity.
They are
Wightsnakes
HD: 6 AC: As armour in human form, 15 in snake form ATK: As weapon in human form, Constrict and 1d4 bite plus Haunting Venom in snake form SAV:12 MOV: As human in human form, as big snake in snake form INT: As classically-educated person ML: 8 No. Appearing: 1d3
Shapeshift: Once per round, as a free action, a wightsnake can shift between their human and snake form.
Constrict: A target hit by constrict is automatically grappled by the wightsnake. A wightsnake can constrict an already-grappled target to automatically deal 1d8 damage to them. It takes a combined strength of 30 to pry a wightsnake off a grappled target. Attacks aimed at a constricting wightsnake have a 2-in-6 chance of hitting their constricted target. A wightsnake can only constrict one target at a time.
Heroic Panoply: If you roll up a wightsnake with more than 21 HP
then they've got a magic weapon. If you roll up a wightsnake with more
than 26 HP they've got a magic weapon and a piece of magic armour.
Haunting Venom: A wightsnake's venom is full of ghosts. If bit, save or roll on the table below (1d6): 1. Necrosis: Take an immediate extra 1d6 damage. 2. Hungry Ghost: Ordinary food won't sustain you - only offerings left for the dead will. Save again every day thereafter or until the poison is purged. 3. Possession: Randomly change your character to another class and personality. Save again every day thereafter or until the poison is purged. 4. Marked by the Grave: You are affected by magic as if you were a corpse rather than a living thing. Save again every day thereafter or until the poison is purged. 5. Poltergeist: A small item in the vicinity is flung at a random member of your party. Save again every hour or it happens again. 6. Fearsome Moaning: You will not be able to sleep restfully that night. Save every night thereafter until you succeed or the poison is purged.
There is an edict, centuries old, which declares those who eat the deadened flesh of their own kind to be cursed - that that flesh by right belongs to the scavenger-god Yeenoghu and her priests.
The accursed wallow and groan and spread across the earth as a fevered stain. Their hunger is bottomless, but it has an apex - each tithes a portion of every mouthful of choked-down putridity to the one who changed them, and to the one who changed them in turn, all the way up the chain until the collected feast gathers in the belly of the mountainous ghoul-king, in his palace of teeth and filth.
And even the king can never be satisfied. From his palace he whispers in the dreams of malefactors and maleficarum, of this unwholesome technique:
Take a carcass which vultures have not torn and hyenas have not tasted, and lay it in a structure where crows have not alit and jackals have not tread. Whisper to it in the dark for three days and three nights, eating only fistfuls of dirt and drinking only your own tears and urine.
Should everything go properly, the ghoul-king will lend a portion of his power and a maggot will spawn within the meat, inscribed with the Unspeakable Name. This maggot will spawn more, until a great white mass rises in the shape of a man.
These larvae are not given freely, not meant to be servants - this is only a ploy.
Once one reaches maturation it will moult into a usurper of the scavenger-god, and the ghouls shall glut upon the world entire.
They are
Maggot Golems
HP: 100 + The Heart of the Swarm AC: 12 + Writhing Mass ATK: 1d8/1d8 slams, or 1d4 gnawing flood (hits all in melee range automatically) SAV: 10 MOV: As ogre, or flow as wave of maggots INT: According to orders, literal-minded ML: 12 No. Appearing: 1
The Heart of the Swarm: Maggot golems do not roll for HP with HD as normal (if HD value is needed, use 8). Each maggot golem begins with 100 HP. When a maggot golem takes a hit, it loses HP as normal, and has a percentage chance of dying immediately as its core maggot is destroyed based on how much HP it has lost (e.g. if a hit brings a maggot golem down to 67 HP it then has a 33% chance of dying immediately).
Writhing Mass: Maggot golems take the minimum possible damage from human-scale weapons (e.g. 1 on a d6), plus whatever bonus damage a weapon might get from enchantment. Area of effect attacks, siege weapons, and the like do damage as normal.
No Flesh Leaves The Abattoir: Maggot golems that come across a corpse are compelled to devour it. They must remain motionless for one round per HD of the corpse, and heal 1d6 HP per round. It may attack those within range as normal.
Also, wounds dealt by a maggot golem are prone to myiasis.
I awake at the bottom of my laparotomy soup and blink the crust from my eyes - did I drink my fill, or did it evaporate around me? The problem with drinking your fill is that you never remember doing it. Regardless, goodbye horses.
🌞
Some time ago friend of the blog theisticgilthoniel asked for "freak versions of the Dawn War pantheon" - I suppose this qualifies for that.
🌞
The cosmos is roughly 3,000 years old. There are still some who would kill you for disputing this.
It is also objectively true. Since the end of the god-king Zarus and the rise of Sigil, the city of at the center of everything - since the re-Ordering of the cosmos - it has been about 3,000 years. Speaking of a "before" is fraught, as any number of scholars will tell you. The cosmos will likely not grow much older than 3,000 years - Sigil is broken, and the last days are upon us.
🌞
The foundation of every empire is energy, is control over the flow of energy - over grain and oil, sunlight transformed - over the sun itself.
Zarus's greatest coup was his seduction of the sun away from the prior Order - he persuaded the sun to wear a mask, a beautiful golden mask beaten in the shape of a human face. The nature of this seduction, as with all stories of Zarus, depends on the teller. Did he disguise himself in a scaly skin, or kidnap the sun from the sky? Did he promise the sun a place of honour in his new Order, or was he simply a better fuck than the hoary old reptiles who bathed in the sun's rays? Regardless, it is universally agreed to be more consensual than what Zarus did to the moon.
With their sun stolen, the old Order's defeat became inevitable.
🌞
The sun was given a human face, and a human name - Pelor - but it was only ever a mask.
Only the least gods are like a person. Proper gods are many persons - like stars in a constellation.
Pelor Indefatigable, an armoured warrior who bears her child the world upon her back in an endless march, fending off the rats of Long Night.
Sharp-Eyed Pelor, who strikes the iniquitous within her sight with arrows of sun-stroke.
Pelor Bank-Lounger, who shelters her children - all the people of the world - in her mouth.
Pelor Plumage-Bearer, whose peerless colours seduce starlight into a great mating ball about the earth, making the day-time.
Pelor Basilaklas, who races across the sea of Night too swiftly to be sucked down into its darkness, his magnificent crown lighting the way.
Lustrous Pelor, who sweats droplets of molten gold in his dances and grants the metal a share of his beauty and power.
Pelor Everborn, who sheds her old flesh at every dawn and thereby defeats age and death.
🌞
Woe to the conquered, for only death will end the humiliations the conqueror will heap upon you.
From out of the solar temples come the wondersome, thundersome parade-beasts, delight of children wherever they march. Dressed in hide and fur and feathers, with goofy gawking too-human eyes that seem apologetic for their own existence.
In their howdahs are the idols of god-king and sun, borne along in their marriage procession.
🌞
This Order is broken, and things long-buried seep up through the cracks.
This Order was never perfect, and remnants lingered in the peaks and valleys and unscrubbed corners.
A starving village devours itself foot to mouth, and a great fanged and scaled hoop rolls off into the night. A tomb is cracked open to the sunlight, and warriors rouse from dreamless torpor at its warmth. A warlord's mistress gives birth to an egg, and the warlord makes himself a king with that egg at the head of his hosts, a tide of serpents slithering before them.
The Order of the Oviraptor was formed to take care of this seepage and these remnants. They are a secret order, with permission to kill who they must to remain a secret, to keep the secret of their mission. Any creature can be cruel, but hate is a thing for the warm-blooded.
🌞
Love, too, is a mammalian trait.
The sun does not love us. The sun shines upon all, impartial. His marriage to Zarus was a thing of convenience. And Zarus is gone.
Class: Sword-Saint Template A: Lotus Blossom Floating On A River Of Blood Template B: Tiger Among Mice Template C: The One Who Dyes The Sun Red Template D: The Blade Whom Gods And Devils Fear
Class: Abjurer Wizard Template A: Apprentice-Protector Template B: Initiate of the Veil Template C: Knight of Seals Template D: Master of the Gate and Key
Have recently watched and enjoyed Cuckoo, Wormtown, and the Mothman Prophecies. Have also been reading Tonari no Jii-san. As the premise of the Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's was ripped off from Summertime Render, I intend to similarly rip off these works for what I am work-in-progressingly titling Airce, Alberta.
The supernatural threat of Seven Mysteries revolved around the Branch of Mag Mell - an ultra-terrestrial plant - the duplicates it could create by consuming humans, and the hypnotic control these duplicates could exert over humans who'd consumed beer brewed with parts of the Branch. In the end, this stuff didn't amount to as much of a threat as I'd intended - the duplicates were no stronger than the humans they were made from, and the Branch was passive, and in the process of dying before the campaign even started.
Parasites - gross, creepy, interesting. They can have complex life-cycles, environments, etc. - another of the things I want to improve on from Seven Mysteries is to increase the dynamism and complexity of the scenario, give more to investigate and reward investigation - centering it around a parasite could give that.
Sacculina is a parasitic barnacle that preys on crabs, castrating male crabs and altering their hormone balance to make them perform female behaviours such as stirring the water to better distribute ejected sacculina larvae. More complex human social behaviours lend themselves to even more interesting parasitic manipulation.
So - Airce, Alberta is a resort town in the Rockies, and a natural reservoir for a particular parasite. However, as Banff and so on become more unaffordable, more people are going to Airce, overwhelming both its infrastructure and its delicate ecological balance. Also the whole area is technically the private fief of a Scottish lord because themes and such. I'm also thinking of a way to put in a cell of Japanese communist exiles.
Humans are not the primary host of this parasite - they are the intermediate host. Humans are like the snails infested by Leucochloridium paradoxum, whose eye-stalks are inflated into pulsating brood-sacs to get birds to eat them (birds being the primary host, who then distribute the parasite via their feces).
The primary hosts are some kind of cryptid that lives in the mountains and caves around Airce - probably a bigfoot or sasquatch of some kind... but that's kind of boring... I will consider...
I like bright light as a weakness of the parasite - the sun, flashes from cameras, etc., revealing or repelling hosts. Light's accessible but also take-away-able, lends itself to creative play & counter-play. Believe friends of the blog Louis and Arnold-sama have been working on light-themed dungeons for some time... Perhaps implies that the parasite lives in the eyes - further implies they perhaps spawn in a mountain lake that mimics the salinity and so on of vitreous fluid. For association with light and Mothman Prophecies, I like giving them a moth-like aesthetic.
Ah - Bergmann's rule - the colder the environment, the larger the organism. The sasquatches aren't the primary host - they're what becomes of advanced intermediary (that is to say, human) hosts. They get bigger and hairier to drive them up the mountains, and into the feeding grounds of the primary hosts. Things like wolves or bears in the forest. Going out there at night is dangerous. Tormented human minds in animalized bodies. Tear apart deer and moose and mice and whatnot and arrange their carcasses in ritualistic sculptures.
I like the idea of there being a "queen" parasite whose host is able to command the other hosts. Yes, like Resident Evil 4. Situation: that aforementioned Scottish lord who legally owns the area Airce sits on runs this pretendian Wicker Man cult thing that secretly worships the parasite, and publicly holds festivals alluding to its existence, the bigfoot-esque transformed hosts, etc. The First Nations people who used to live in the area and have some knowledge of the parasite are pissed off at this, but private security keeps them away.
Anyways, the Scottish lord guy kept an indoctrinated queen-parasite host in order to control the other hosts - perhaps his own child - and would periodically have another host eat the queen-parasite host to transfer it before they went intractably yeti-mode. The latest transfer was interrupted, and the queen-parasite was stolen by an unknown party. Yeah, that seems like a good spark for the powder keg. There's secret tunnels around town and runic graffiti the cult uses to surreptitiously communicate and a lot of the senior staff at the resort places are part of it.
You can extract a longevity serum from the parasite or something. That's why the cult worships it. Yes I return to the same few themes over and over again (woop woop wanna fight about it?).
Climate change fucks up the spawning ground/releases more of the parasite into the water supply. Yes like The Thaw yes like Fortitude. Yes like Aterrados the parasites in the water & snow exert some psychic influence so people thinks there's ghosts but it's the Germ, son. Lake Mungo.
And another faction - aliens. These guys are the higher-tier faction, where even knowing they're on the board, let alone what they want and how to negotiate with them - even if you'd want to negotiate with them - requires advanced research. They might not literally be aliens, but fill that niche. Somewhere between Men in Black and BOB.
Anyways, the aliens probably first planted the parasite on Earth and now that it's getting out of control they're like aw geez oh man my space-boss is gonna kill me better put my star-coffee down and get down there and find out what's going on. Maybe the aliens eat them or something? Probably too close to the cult's motivation.
Okay - for the primary hosts - they're lake monsters. Alberta has Kinosoo already but that's on the other side of the province. Airce's lake monsters are rubbery, they can squeeze through pipes and such and drag bodies down the toilet. Because of ecological disruption or the parasite population boom or somesuch they're getting more aggressive, coming down the mountain and into people's homes to devour the infected.
I keep mentioning parasites being in the water but that could be kind of lame without real strong foreshadowing to not fuck the players over before they even realize something's amiss, if I don't also include an accessible cure (which would make it lame). Stick tweezers into the super-dilated pupils and yank the caterpillars out. Shine strobe lights into their eyes and hope the larvae chew their way out the right way around. Maybe whoever turns the party onto the town just straight up tells them "don't drink the water". Maybe the water's a risk factor but drinking/bathing in it isn't close to a guaranteed infection. Maybe the cult manufactures a recreational drug, eyedrops or somesuch, to spread the parasite. They've also used the queen-parasite to push infested tourists into risky behaviours so their bodies could be harvested for the longevity serum. Harvesting the longevity serum kills the host. Maybe the infestation-drug is also a healing potion so the daredevil host tourists take the drug and think they're invincible and then they fall into a ravine and snap their necks.
There's a gang of daredevil host tourists or ski instructors/chairlift operators or whatever and they're like the gang in Point Break except instead of robbing banks they break into chalets and rob people.
If the parasite is allowed to reach maturity within the intermediate host (which probably by definition means they're not intermediate hosts, idk parasitology too well) you get a mothman. This is like the worst case scenario for the aliens... probably. It's happened, and the mothman is like a psychic parasite messiah or something. His is the voice you hear through the water.
About five sessions until the campaign my buddy's running for us finishes - five sessions until I make my pitch for a follow-up/spiritual successor to my Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's campaign (this time with prep).
This is brainstorming for that. It's probably already a TVTropes page but whatever:
1. Paranoid Apocalypticism: As seen in the decent horror film Wormtown. The inhabitants believe the outside world has ended in some fashion, and you're probably a dirty barbarian raider.
2. Amish: Catch-all term for intentionally isolated communities with restricted technology. Might literally be Amish, might be de facto ruled by an anti-government militia, whatever.
3. Natural Disaster: Had a lot of snow for a while this past winter in Ontario. Had a dream like that as a kid - aliens prepping the Earth for invasion by making it snow so much everywhere it became impossible to get anywhere. Could be snow, a landslide, forest fire, flooding, whatever, but the town's now isolated for the next however long.
4. Brainworms: As seen in the manga Tonari no Jii-san. There is some sort of mental influence preventing the wider world, and perhaps most of the inhabitants of the town itself, from realizing anything is amiss - to which you are to some extent immune.
5. Domed: As seen in Under the Dome. You're under a dome now. No getting in or out.
6. Transplant: Whole town's been transported to another time, place, dimension, whatever. Maybe solving whatever's going on will transport it back, maybe it won't. Not my problem.
7. Quarantine: Like The Crazies and probably other things too. Whole
town's under quarantine, might be a real disease at play, might be a
cover-up.
8. Hostage: Town's being held hostage by terrorists or whatever. Government moving in would set them off, your bumbling band of chucklefucks won't.
9. It's All In Your Head: Kind of like uh From Beyond. Whatever's happening in town is happening out-of-phase with ordinary reality, or in a psychic realm or something, point being you need to be in tune with it to even perceive it, so trying to get the authorities involved would make you seem like a crazy person. 9.5. It's All In Your Head 2: It really is all in your head, but aliens or the government or government aliens are putting it in your head to make you do their bidding or as a joke. As seen in Boku ni Korosarero.
10. Memetic Threat: Talking too much about the unusual stuff going on in the town gets you disappeared.
11. Corruption: The townsfolk don't want authorities coming around and noticing things. Maybe they've falsified the amount of elderly in town so they can keep collecting their pensions. Trying to draw attention to the town makes you enemies.
12. Brandon's Green Agenda: Fuel is too expensive to travel readily, and 15 Minute City regulations prevent a lot of movement anyways.
They come from unknown leagues beneath the sea to perfect their art. At first they struggle and bleed without the water to buoy them. At last they stand proud, and strike faster without the water resisting them.
They are not warriors, not soldiers, not invaders, but rather seekers - chasing that mirage which fades more the closer you approach it, the pinnacle of martial arts, of strength: to be unrivaled under heaven.
They are
Boxtopi
HD: 4 AC: 14 ATK: Boxtopunches SAV: 9 MOV: As human, as octopus in water INT: As human-equivalent, but alien thought process ML: 8 No. Appearing: 1
Seeker's Code: Boxtopi are not mere killers. They want to test and be tested, learn and become stronger.
A boxtopus will set up a 20' x 20' arena somewhere it knows that strong opponents will have to pass through - a chokepoint, a bridge, a crossroads, etc., or else it will entice opponents with a prize for defeating it.
However, this is not a lawless battle to the death. A boxtopus will insist on fighting one-on-one, within the bounds of its arena, without weapons, without ambushes. Fight according to these rules, and the boxtopus will spare defeated opponents, and only use one Boxtopunch per round. Break any, and the boxtopus will fight to the death, using three Boxtopunches per round. Knocking the boxtopus out of its arena without breaking the above rules counts to it as an honourable victory.
Boxtopunches: All boxtopunches do 1d6 damage, in addition to a random effect per below (1D8):
1. Jaw-Splitting Uppercut: Critical range of 18-20.
2. Blade Hook: Save or be disarmed of your weapon or shield.
3. Cross Rush: Save or be knocked prone.
4. Slicing Non-Elbow: Save or be blinded until you wipe the blood from your eyes.
5. Hammer Tentacle: Save or be knocked back 5'.
6. Supercephalopod Punch: Save before the attack roll - if you fail, your AC counts as only 10 against the attack.
7. Sucker Punch: Really more of an open-tentacled slap. Save or have a piece of armour or other worn equipment stripped off you.
8. Tip Jab: Strikes first regardless of where in the initiative order the boxtopus is.
Special thanks to friend of the blog purplecthulhu for inspiring this (sub-)post.
1.
There is a monastery out towards the western edge of the known world,
where it is taught that the primordial substance of the cosmos is
poison. God, they say, creates the world with every inhalation - drawing
the primordial poison within Himself, creating the space for life - and
then destroys it when He must exhale. The visible body of God is the
mountains which hold in the Valesea, that great bank of toxic fog on
which balloon-ships ply their trades, and the monks' wind-magics assist
God in letting the world live a little longer by buffeting the Valesea
back down His throat.
That's all to say that
these monks take breath and breathing very seriously. It is the central
metaphor through which they understand the cosmos. If they were to come
into contact with the noble monkeys of Owua Temple they would either get along very well - or else they wouldn't.
They also keep cats, for the company and to shave brush-tips from their fur.
Because the monks' breath is potent, their words have more power than words usually do. Because the cats breath the same air as the monks, their purrs and hisses and meows and yowls have more power than these sounds usually do.
The monks' words and the cats' cat-sounds echo and mingle, and these minglings tear the vellum pages from books left open, wrapping the pages around themselves into shapes with the litheness of the cats and the greatness of the monks' self-regard - they come to resemble tigers.
These page-torn tigers stalk the deserted galleries, the cliff-side hermitages, the winding pilgrim-paths, tearing the breath from the lungs and blood and muscle of those they pounce upon. The monks consider this a sort of collective punishment for leaving books unattended.
2. Once upon a time there was a tiger who lived happily in the forest with her mate, eating men and deer.
Then a prince came to that forest on a hunt, and slew her mate, and took his pelt.
That tiger wept over the flayed carcass of her mate, and swore that she would avenge his death on the prince many times over.
A day came after that when the prince came across a beautiful woman - he was smitten at first sight and was soon wed to her.
The prince and the woman enjoyed many happy years together, and had several children, all of whom grew up happy and strong.
One
night, as the woman was stroking the pelt of her mate, she decided she
had held her rage back long enough. She shed the human skin she had worn
for so many years, and roared for her children to do the same. Together
they ate the prince alive, and most of the way succeeded.
Seeing
this happen, the servants of the prince rescued him and sealed the
tigers within his manor, setting it alight as they fled.
Many
years again after that a hornet-queen would make her nest among the
charred timbers of that manor, to enjoy her generations. Then winter
came, long and cold, and the queen despaired at the deaths of her
children, far more sweeping than she could have anticipated or imagined.
The burnt bones of the tiger felt a tigerish sort of unpity for the other mother losing her children. Her blackened skeleton still bore heat within it - of the fire, of her hatred for the prince - and so she bid the hornet-queen to nest among her ribs, and spread papery hive-stuff where skin and tendon used to lie.
Together the two childless mothers rose, and ran from the ruins, full of venom, full of flame. The hornet-queen would have new children, glowing like cinders, flying sorties from the empty eyes of the tiger. The tiger would be dead no longer, with new flesh of paper, and hornets crawling through her veins, able to hunt the new children of that prince who'd survived her revenge, and their children, and their children after them. She had been dead for many years after all.
3. The noble winds who are lords of the middle air keep paper kites
for hunting and other amusements (the paper made by menial tornadoes who
tear up the trees and pulp them) - and sometimes also for war, when
they skirmish with the King of Birds over where the boundary between
middle and lower air lies.
Each polytomy (a
pseudo-kinship group of winds of complimentary compositions which is
entirely intuitive to atmospheric beings and totally opaque to the
animal) of noble winds has its own distinctive kites - they are made in
the shape of lower predators.
The polytomy which
flies tiger kites is especially cruel to humans, because they believe
themselves to be former humans, ascended to the heavens with the aid of a
dragon. For sport they pluck people up from among their companions, and
see how their catches arc and twist as they fall to their deaths.
Some
of this polytomy's catches are never seen to come down - the sane
surmise that the noble winds have dropped them somewhere distant and
more entertaining, but occultists and other such mind-freaks believe
that by some esoteric contest the noble winds have allowed these people
to replace one of their ranks.
4. The caterpillars of monarch butterflies feed on milkweeds, taking those plants' toxins into themselves.
In an essentially similar fashion, the caterpillars of the martikhoras butterfly feed on tigers, thereby taking those beasts' ferocity into themselves. They accomplish this by being adorable to and playful with gibbons, who let them hitch a ride when the apes go to fuck with tigers for fun - the caterpillar uses the gibbons' distraction to take its nips from the tiger.
The caterpillar does not retain this stolen tigerish ferocity into adulthood - it sheds it into the papery casket of its cocoon. The butterfly emerges beautiful and harmless, and the cocoon becomes a hollow, whispering thing in the image of a tiger. Killing a martikhoras butterfly marks you indelibly, and their cocoons will seek you out wherever you hide.
5. Back in the days of the ever-living, murder was an intricate, extravagant art - one could not kill with mere blades or bludgeons.
The Zooetrope is a relic of those days. It is a paper lantern, and, of course, a zoetrope, though an unusual one - rather than display an animated image through the contours of its own rotation, it projected this animated image by way of a shadow puppet. This puppet, of course, resembled a tiger.
This projected tiger killed not by rending the flesh, but rather the shadow, bypassing any armours, wards, and suchlike its target might bear. The Zooetrope was an unwieldy weapon, requiring a performer to manually spin it while it did its work - and its tiger-puppet did not discriminate, so the performer had to keep the thing lit and spinning while evading an immortal-killing projected shadow as well.
6.
The politics among the harem of the Drowned Emperor were vicious,
because his interest in ruling was far outstripped by both his lust and
his obsession with death and its magics - and so there was much power to
be seized, and many competitors for it.
Though none would, in the end, inherit, the harem vied subtly yet violently to place their children in the Emperor's favour - often by having more favoured children murdered.
The preferred tool for these murders became the paper-screen tigers - painted assassin-beasts which could slide along walls, under doors, through cracks, hide in tapestries, and suchlike. Against these killers the best defense found was the creation of paper doll substitutes for hunted children, imbued with stillborn souls.
Though they began as simply predators and prey, the struggle between tigers and dolls evolved into its own intrigues. Rules and courtesies were formalized, feuds and alliances formed, lines were crossed and blurred with interfolding.
When the Empire fell, flooded by the rivers of the underworld, the tigers and dolls could no longer be told from the other - and it did not help that they were huddled together atop arks made of the sodden bodies of their dead.
The slough that was once the borderlands of the Empire is home to their descendants yet - they retained the craft of making themselves, and work as hunters, midwives, and more.
Devils from the Stars
Loosely inspired by the above.
John W. Campbell Jr. once established the following criteria for an ultimate weapon:
1. It must absolutely wipe out all opposition.
2. It should be of such nature that no resistance to it is possible.
3. It must be such that the opposition cannot turn it against the original wielder.
4. It must annihilate all opposition, yet must not harm friends.
5. It should not damage any useful or constructive forces.
6. It should be of a catalytic nature, self-propagating, such that, once
loosed, even the destruction of the original source cannot defeat it.
7. It will render all present weapons inoperative.
8. Its power should be such that no power in the Universe can stand against it.
9. Its effect should not depend on surprise, so that even pre-erected defenses cannot defeat it.
10. It should cost very little to use.
11. The field where it has once been used should be permanently
uninhabitable by the opposition, but freely accessible to friends.
He concludes that the only possible weapon which fits the criteria is friendship.
Dogs are now man's best friend, but would we call the transformation of
wolves into dogs ‘friendship’? Would the wolf, seeing a pug dying of Pug
Dog Encephalitis? There’s another possibility for Campbell’s ultimate
weapon: domestication.
If their name for themselves (or at least the part of themselves tasked
with domestication projects) were expressed as air vibrations
pronounceable with human organs, it might sound like “baatezu”. They are
devils from the stars, and they want to possess our souls.
We’re the lightest blip on their radar, given 99.999%+ odds of wiping
ourselves out millions of years before we begin to pose a credible
threat to them by cogitation-engines wider than the sky, that in opaque
digestion gulp starlight and excrete predictive simulations stretching
to the end of the Stelliferous Era. Nevertheless, they maintain some
presence here. What might be encountered on this little blue marble is
not even a finger of their force. If you peeled off the slightest
microscopic sliver of skin from the tip of that finger, zoomed in on
that sliver with the most powerful instruments available, extracted one
mitochondrion from one cell of it, and carved off a fraction of a
nucleobase from that mitochondrion’s genetic code, you would have a more
accurate picture of the scale of their operation here.
They are underfunded. They are undermanned. What technology and
forms they’re allowed are primitive enough that they can be manufactured
locally, and won’t cause worry if they fall into enemy hands. With one
authorized request they could scour life from this planet down to the
last hydrothermal vent in an instant. They are the overseers and
enforcers of the human domestication experiment, or else visions of what they
hope to make humanity into:
show-dogs, hunters, guardians, sniffers.
D6 +1 Swords
This (sub-)post is a goof. Just thought I'd warn you in advance.
1. The +1 Sword of +1 Sword: When held in one hand, another sword miraculously appears in the other. This additional sword lasts only as long as the first is held.
2. The +1 Sword of +1: It gives its wielder +1. Not to anything in particular. Just +1.
3. The Plus One Sword: Its wielder is allowed by cosmic law to bring a guest with them to any event they're invited to.
4. The +1 Sword of +1 Sword of +1 Sword of...: Gains +1 to hit and damage each round it is wielded. Eventually, it cannot be swung without hitting something, and likely bisecting it. Eventually, it cannot be moved at all without cutting everything. The +1s never go away.
5. The +1 Sword: Gives you another one of everything on your body - fingers, nose, etc.
6. The Sword of Pelus Wan: This sword belongs to the knave Pelus Wan. He really wants it back.
A Verdant Wasteland, An Invisible Flame
"Know, O modern Man, that between the years when the sands buried Irem
and the years of the rise of the sons of Narmer, there was an Age
undreamed of, when a glowing kingdom lay spread across the Sahara like a
green blanket beneath the stars ... Hither came the Acheuleans, the
Richat-raisers, seaweed-eaters, fungus-communers, stone blades in hand,
warriors, scientists, slayers of the cet-men, with gigantic triumphs and
gigantic hubris, to leave ruins that would be an enigma for all the
generations to come..."
Four Cursed Treasures
1. The Elongated Doll
A doll with a painted porcelain face and a ruffled dress. Its neck and limbs are twice as long as normal human proportions. A child's teeth have been planted in its gaping mouth.
You can take ownership of the doll by feeding it a drop of your blood. Thereafter if you are wounded you can transfer the wound to the doll, which appears on its body as a crack, stain, or similar flaw. Each time you transfer a wound to the doll there is an x-in-20 chance that the doll comes to life, expands to roughly human size, and begins stalking you with murderous intent, with x being the total amount of HP in damage you've transferred to the doll.
Stat the living doll as a bugbear.
2. The Imperious Crown
Forged from heavy black iron. A pair of dragons coil around its temple, their teeth clamped on the other's throat. It's rimmed with spikes that dangle rubies on thin chains like drops of blood.
While wearing the crown you can override the will of anyone who is sworn to serve you (hirelings, retainers, etc.). They will follow your orders without regard for their own well-being, but the suppression renders them dull and lacking in initiative until they spend a few months out of your company.
If you are ordered about, made to bow, or otherwise show deference to someone else while wearing the crown, you must visit a greater humiliation upon that someone within the week or the crown stops working for you forever and everyone you used its power on will be bound to serve them instead of you. You will relive the moment in your dreams with increasing intensity every night of that week. 3. The Parting Edge
A once-straight razor, now bent crooked. Its handle is bruise-blue demonbone.
While useless as a conventional weapon, the true use of the Parting Edge is as an abstract weapon. When swung between a creature and something it owns, that ownership is severed. This severance is total. If someone's ownership of their house is severed, they will lose not only legal ownership but also knowledge of its layout, any keys, etc. Severing the ownership of a swordsman over his sword will also cut away his skill with it. Magical ownership can also be severed: of a summoner and their summoned servitors, of a dryad and her tree, of a lich and its phylactery, and so on.
Each swing of the Parting Edge comes with a cost: the user must sacrifice a personal connection of their own, something on the scale of a sibling, a dear friend, membership in a sacred order, and the like. A person, organization, or so on who the user has sacrificed a connection to will become at best ambivalent towards them, with no possibility of improving the relationship thereafter. If they don't offer a connection up the Edge will take their most treasured one.
4. Zlavazenye
A greatsword wrapped in five shades of blue velvet ribbons. Each ribbon is sewn with a different phrase in gold thread. Unwrapping a ribbon grants the sword +1 to hit and to damage, though each ribbon comes with its own condition of use and penalty if not met.
The
cornflower ribbon bears the phrase "In defense of the innocent". If unwrapped without its condition being met,
this ribbon will wrap itself tightly around your head. It can be shifted slightly with some effort, so that it either blinds you or deafens you, but if torn off entirely will take with it one of your eyes and one of your ears.
The azure ribbon bears the phrase "Against outnumbering foes" . If unwrapped without its condition being met, your off-hand will shrivel into a bleached, chalky thing of gnarled, mingled flesh-bone.
The cerulean ribbon bears the phrase "To overthrow a tyrant" . If unwrapped without its condition being met, the ribbon will immolate itself with a blue fire which destroys all your possessions and worldly wealth save for Zlavazenye.
The lapis lazuli ribbon bears the phrase "On holy ground". If unwrapped without its condition being met, a second mouth grows upon your stomach which will regurgitate any food you consume which was not gifted to you by a stranger. Also, if you lie it will blurt out the truth.
The navy ribbon bears the phrase "To smite the inhuman". If unwrapped without its condition being met, great horns will sprout from your head, weighing you down into a perpetual hunch and preventing you from running.
If
all five ribbons are unwrapped then the wielder will be utterly annihilated - body and soul - and the angel whose
body is Zlavazenye will be freed to end the world as it was once
commanded to.
The Isle of Exiled Kings
Nothing here stands against the blasting winds that was not built up
by the hands of mankind. The grasses lie flat against the heath, the
sheep kneel as they nibble on them, the shepherds squat in trenches
below them, or in the wind-shadows of the graves and cleits. Even these
dwarfs of architecture seem to brush against the limit of what the wind
is willing to tolerate. Towers have been attempted, but they are swiftly
toppled. No lighthouse lasts long enough to lead ships in to safe
harbour.
The ships must come regardless. There is a convention,
old enough to have attained a near-natural force of continuity, that
kings in exile must be sent here. Many die by accident or "accident"
along the way, but enough make it that there is a sustained population
of former monarchs on the Isle.
Even the sea sends its
troublesome sovereigns here: sharks, whales, kraken, things with crowned
heads and uncalloused skin. They don't last long on the beaches. Like
the terrestrial kings they are buried with all the meager honours the
isle can offer. Like the terrestrial kings they are unearthed when their
flesh goes soft, to be spread on bread like cheeses.
Every
encounter here is almost like a story with a moral about treating people
right no matter how they might appear - the old man in rags was a king
in disguise! The old men are kings, but the rags are no disguise. They
wear what they're able to eke from the unforgiving land by their own
efforts - wool, poorly woven, coarse burlap made from the roots of the
Isle's grasses, which grow dense to clutch every grain of soil from the
snatching wind, or else air-desiccated fish-leather for the poorest and
smelliest of all.
They have nothing to give you, nothing they can
promise, nothing except for what they remember from their time on the
throne. Most are unused to negotiating, to asking and offering instead
of taking. This can work in your favour: they may not be aware of the
full value of their knowledge. This can work against you: they may not
be reasonable in request and response.
D12 Therianthropomorphs
1. Koaloids: Simple creatures that aspire to nothing more than
tending their eucalyptus groves and drinking a foul sort of beer brewed
from fecal pap.
2. Aye-aye-kin: Fearfully misunderstood
scraggly pariahs. Their long finger is a living wand (and it’s said that
wands were originally derived from an aye-aye-kin’s finger) that casts a
random spell bound to them at birth. Hidden in the hills and the
forests are doors, the aye-aye-kins’ forgotten meeting places and
treasure hoards, that can only be opened by the tap-tap-tapping of their
magic finger.
3. Snailmen: Born the size of a normal
snail, never stop growing throughout their lives, and their shells grow
faster than their bodies do. The young life of a snailman is one of
preparation, ensuring they have all they’ll ever need on hand once their
shell grows beyond their ability to move. Some gather soil and seeds
for cabbage farms sewn in their inner chambers, some become wealthy
masters of a household made from themself, sending servants to be their
hands in the world, and yet others become a one-snail brigand fortress
taking tolls along a road.
4. Jellyfolk: Diaphanous
dancers with venomous skirts. They spin and leap in time with the music
that coils in the deep, inspired dervish-like by wisdom of the bitter
waters. In the embrace of their trailing tentacles one can find ecstasy,
in its oldest sense.
5. Cariboumen: Fierce and
unsentimental warriors and mushroom-sages of the merciless north. Live
in migratory school-herds that each practice and perfect their own style
of martial arts, with techniques like Tine-Pierces-Heart and the
Moon-Tossing Shoulder Throw. They hone these against each other, win
prestige, and cull the weak and foolish in annual, deadly tournaments
that attract fighters from the furthest reaches of the earth.
6. Man-o’-Warriors:
Sail-backed, jelly-fleshed corsairs. They are their own ships, capable
of merging and splitting from dinghies to dreadnoughts. Believe the
surface of the ocean is their rightful domain alone, that those of the
land, sea, and sky upon it are trespassers to be dealt with as they
please.
7. Pongopeople: Shaggy orange cousins of humanity,
exiles from a forest home destroyed by human greed. Reduced to a single
tribe clinging to the edge of extinction, wandering the world to find a
peaceful place they can plant the last seeds of long-gone trees.
8. Mothmen:
Sometimes, when the moon loves a caterpillar back, it will metamorphose
into a mothman rather than a mere moth. Mothmen see by the light of the
soul, and so are attracted to great passions and suffering more than
lanterns. Because of this ability they often find themselves in the
employ of Heaven, logging virtues and vices so that angels have more
time to listen for the shadow of an echo of the voice of God in the
cosmic background radiation. A mothman born from the love of a blood
moon is a predator much unlike the rest of its kind, driven to cause
disasters and stoke the light of souls to sup through its hungry red
eyes.
9. Coyotefolk: Possessed of an idiot savant
inventiveness, given to wild tinkering and wilder lies. Half-decent
shapeshifters that can wriggle out of their furry hides looking like
anything they want, but their poorly-hidden laughter or too-wide toothy
grins always give them away.
10. Potookin: Subtle and
occulted folk, living reapers and watchers at the crossroads. They guard
the borderlands of the living and the dead, tasked with making sure the
inhabitants of both are in their proper place at the proper time. They
scoop up ghosts in their wide, wide mouths, lead heists into Hades to
rescue trapped mortals.
11. Pandapeople: A race of
philosopher-kings, whose exceptional purity extends their lives across
millennia. This purity comes paired with exacting prudishness, and an
infuriating stoicism. Even the trees can’t remember the last time a
pandaperson was born. Though they know many things, and can intuit the
truth of many things they don’t, persuading a pandaperson to impart even
the least bit of wisdom can be like pulling all your own hairs out one
at a time. They refuse to take any action that might even indirectly
lead to the loss of life, and eat only pieces of bamboo that can be
taken without killing the whole plant.
12. Gullthings:
Awful cacophonous pirates, shipwreckers, and thieves. Live along beaches
and rocky shorelines in pebble-forts mortared with their own droppings.
Covetous, gross, and cowardly more than truly cruel.
Hurshamit-Ur, Where Life Is Wagered
Between life and death there are many in-betweens: a death in pieces,
necrotic toppling like an arch without a keystone; a death of the mind
while the body lies catatonic; a death of the spirit which leaves only
lurching flesh.
As with life and death, so too with the lands of the living and the lands of the dead.
On the nights of the new moon, when no light shines on the Bay of Shades
save that of mourners' lanterns, a city appears in those waters darker
than any wine. On those nights the desperate and the destitute row out,
dead throats rip with raucous laughter, and hearts beating and still
alike share the heights of elation and the horror of losing it all. For
you see, the dead have no needs, yet they want, more than those
who yet live know. They hunger, but do not starve. They tire, yet know
no rest. Above all else, they want to be alive once more, to taste and
fuck and feel the sun on their skin. In Hurshamit-Ur, they can win this.
The city's old, maybe the oldest that's been tread by human feet. When
kings are buried in sumptuous tombs with all their treasures, it's
because they know of what awaits in Hurshamit-Ur. They might lose all
their wealth in a night, and scrounge for more until they fade away
entirely, because in Hurshamit-Ur life itself can be wagered, more
precious than any grave good.
The docks of the city reek of fresh, butchered meat. It's far too
coveted to be allowed to rot. In the docks the little prizes can be lost
and won. Beggars and ghouls squat on the stones and throw dice for
nibbled-off fingers and fistfuls of silver. Cold-fleshed whores lean
from bordello windows and offer a night you'll never forget for just a
cup of blood. No one lingers at the docks except those who've already
lost everything they're willing to give, and those who've learned to
take advantage of newcomers.
Move inland, and you'll come to the gates. Garish jaws of red and black
where throngs are vetted by demons in smiling gold masks. Are you in
good health? Is your blood clean of disease? Do you have much of a life
to return to? All these things will impact what you're worth. The demons
watch, keep order, offer loans only the truly foolish would take, but
never play.
At the center of the city is a tower. At the top of that tower lies
Hurshamit, the once-god, master of this city which bears his name. Its
existince and its power stem from his maiming so many eons ago. In his
veiled, silken bed he awaits the gambler who brings such stakes that
could cure his injury. The prize Hurshamit offers in return is his own
divinity.
They Probably Want to Kill Each Other as Much as We Do; or: Some More Fantasy Peoples & Their Weapons
Most oozes are too stupid for weapons. Some are not. Beware the clever ooze.
Dumby Yummy:
A simple weapon - something that seems tasty but on the inside isn't.
Typically filled with a high concentration of sugar or salt to desiccate
& rupture membranes, but there are more exotic payloads like a
strong base to react with an ooze's acid or a catalyst for rapid
vapourization.
Moldsurgent Spores: Derived from russet
mold. Lodge in an ooze, and reprogram it to sprout off its mass as
useless imbecile humanoids, like vegepygmies but worse, and more racist.
Burburbelly Quilt:
Burburs - natural predators of oozes. Butcher 'em, use
biomantic/alchemical means to keep their digestive tracts alive, weave
the digestive tracts of several burburs together. Then throw this living
quilt over your oozy enemies.
Membranoresonant Ripplethumper:
It's like the T-rex footsteps in Jurassic Park but it's a giant metal
rod slammed into the ground repeatedly by hydraulic engines you (an
ooze) power by sliding through them. Tuned to the specific properties of
your ooze-enemies' membranes to cause them to rupture and spill their
precious fluids onto the vibrating ground. Probably only useful in ooze
race wars. Goodamn Demoslimes, letting the white puddings into our big wet country...
Mirror Tube Gun: It's a corrugated metal
tube lined with mirrors - you stick one end on the surface and the other
end is like a shuttered lantern. You point it at green slimes or
whatever other slimes are vulnerable to sunlight - even if you yourself
are such a slime - and if it is daytime up above they will die.
Dragons
Hook Bolas:
Big, heavy, made of metal - tears right through wing-membranes, wraps
around bone so it's not easily removed. Get enough of these thrown at an
enemy and they'll be grounded for you to pick off at your leisure.
Thermite Supplement:
You sneak it into your enemy's food and hopefully it gets caught within
their teeth. When they go to breath fire it'll ignite the thermite -
they can withstand the heat of their own flames, but crank that up a
couple thousand degrees and their face will melt off.
Coin Parasites: Not parasites of coins - parasites shaped like coins. Get 'em into your enemy's hoard and they'll suckle the blood out of your enemy's belly as they sleep. Not to kill, but to weaken, perhaps even infect with the rare disease that can survive within the fiery flesh of a dragon.
Skeletons
Against the living
Skin-suit:
They make these out of your friends and family that they already got.
Get their buddy to lace them up at the back. It's almost like you're
killing them yourself this time! It's a psychological weapon.
Radial Rondel:
Don't need marrow. Hollow out those dusty old bones, stick some blades
in them. Flick of the wrist, snap of the leg, and they'll come sliding
out to stab you in your face when you least expect it.
Ribhinged Crossbows:
Splay out every rib in a skeleton's 'cage and string them up row upon
row with tendons, bolt some tillers to your spine, and so on - you've
got twelve not-so-great crossbows. Twelve not-so-great crossbows still
makes you a one-skeleton volley.
Against each other
Skullbomb:
It's their own skull. They don't need it to think, and don't need their
eye-sockets to see, which is good because the fuse comes out one of
them. Lots of shrapnel packed towards the front, hopefully it hits the
other side more than their own. Is it a suicide attack if they're
already dead?
Extremely Bad Milk:
Calcium - good for bones. Regular milk - contains calcium. Extremely
bad milk - has something other than calcium, which is bad for bones.
What it has is so other than calcium that it leaches out calcium from
the bones it's poured on, weakening them to uselessness. May come from
goblins.
Umber Hulks
More
like umber hunks, am I right? We like to joke around here at Archons
March On. These guys burrow, they're bugs, and their eyes are confusing.
We probably don't want to fuck them.
Squirming Bell:
Corkscrewed brass device as big as a keg. Not as heavy as you might
expect. Within it are worms, chambers, tunnels, pins lining those
tunnels, and membranes those pins will strike when pressed against. The
worms within are sensitive to sound and changes in pressure (such as
those produced by nearby digging), which will send them wriggling down
particular tunnels, setting off particular pins. This in turn produces a
shockwave which is tuned to liquefy and collapse the exact mix of stone
and sediment the Bell is buried in. The worms will have to be replaced
afterwards as they are also liquefied by the resonance.
Panoratos Helm: Full of mirrors. Lets them see all around themselves, and make anyone looking at them meet their Maddening Gaze.
Grit Aspergillum: Filled with grit - special grit, very bad grit. Flung in drifting clouds - clouds that drift away from the flinger. Gets caught in your spiracles, gets caught in the soft joints between the hard bits of your shell - suffocates you, wears them down.
Things That Made Me Not Want To [REDACTED] Myself & Others This Winter Season
I am a nice man, with happy feelings - all of the time.
But when the weather gets colder and the days get shorter, sometimes I need to practice Mindfulness, and Manifest Gratitude, to keep that pep in my step.
(Ah! But now the seasons are turning and the birds have returned their music to the air!
"But this humanity in God [...] is natural death. 'God Himself is dead,' it says in a Lutheran hymn, expressing an awareness that the human, the finite, the fragile, the weak, the negative are themselves a moment of the divine, that they are within God Himself, that finitude, negativity, otherness are not outside of God and do not, as otherness, hinder unity with God. Otherness, the negative, is known to be a moment of the divine nature itself. [D]eath itself is this negative, the furthest extreme to which humanity as natural existence is exposed; God Himself is [involved in] this."
"that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?")
Music
Have been merely absorbing music by osmosis - a slow process - for a while. Decided to go out and get my own for a change. Some of what I would put as the better findings:
& some AI music courtesy of suno.com that I am too embarrassed to share - which makes this next one even funnier:
Laparotomy Soup
"Laparotomy" of course being another -otomy that begins with L, but out of respect to a dear friend I, semiurge, have changed it to a different word. I have been soaking deep in the Soup.
I'd call myself a man-child, but I'm no man, or child for that matter - I am a walking corpse too cowardly to finally lie down and die.
I had more written up for this, but I find it now unnecessary. If you know, you know - if you don't, perhaps the knowing is not for you.
The cozy glow of nostalgia draws us back down the rut of a beaten trail, but sometimes we reach it, brush that mirage away, and find what drew us back still glimmers like starlight in a vast and moonless night.
Posting My Old Drafts Into This Post
It feels GOOD to get them out. I'm not even working on most of them I'm just putting what I've already written here.
A Certain Youtuber
Again - if you know, you know.
Deep-watched his whole body of work recently. Wildly funny... even sometimes insightful. Kinda lost me by switching to making just awful vtuber stuff, but hasn't done that in a year - perhaps, if he kept up certain habits, he is dead.
I suspect that his then is similar to my now.
Saying "It Doesn't Matter" To Myself
I like to pretend I'm Owlman when I say it.
Youtube Poop
Of course you are no doubt aware of my famous series of investigative video essays, dear reader, and I intend to continue that series in the days to come, however finishing them has been like trying to complete a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with pieces the size and colour of cinderblocks, or trying to do your A's to B's to C's and all the way down to Z's but finding your A leads to G and back around to D and someone's misplaced the middle-third letters and split W into VV.
In the meanwhile I have found enjoyment in making shorter, less well-researched, and much less effortful videos - a sampling:
My Friends :^)
Friendship, laughter, and love are three of the few things that make the endless parade of indignities that is this life tolerable.
Some Tea My Beautiful Fiancée Got Me For My Birthday
This is some bomb-ass Chinese shit. Got a tea-kettle too. I enjoy the ritual.
Editor's Note: The tea is too bomb-ass. The tea is bombing my ass. It has kept me awake for about 38(?) hours, and while I have been writing at a much faster pace than usual I was struggling to count how many hours were in a day 25 words ago.
Can You Practice These Methods In Your Own Life To Achieve A Better, Brighter Day To-day?
No. I am a cyst, a self-contained, self-sucking ouroboros full of pus & piss. Find your own rose in the cross.
