Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Kenkus

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

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

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

They are

Kenkus

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

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

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

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

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

Dire Corbies

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

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

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

Dire Corbies

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

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

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

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

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

Killer Copper Pieces: Mister Mittenbiter

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

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

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

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

He is

Mister Mittenbiter

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

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

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

Killer Copper Pieces: Gostreochors

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

They are

Gostreochors

 

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

 

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

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

Killer Copper Pieces: Kinsutes

Among the three poisonous servants of the sorcerers number these:

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

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

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

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

They are

Kinsutes

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

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

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

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

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

Killer Copper Pieces: Himantopodes

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

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

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

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

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

They are

Himantopodes

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

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

Himantopodes don't take falling damage.

Slush Pile 17

Previously:

Slush Pile 1

Slush Pile 2

Slush Pile 3

Slush Pile 4

Slush Pile 5

Slush Pile 6

Slush Pile 7

Slush Pile 8

Slush Pile 9

Slush Pile 10

Slush Pile 11

Slush Pile 12

Slush Pile 13

Slush Pile 14

 

Slush Pile 15

Slush Pile 16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Syphilisybils with pythonic sores on their brains
-emberyo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A substitute human sacrifice - a doll stuffed with offal

Caste system based off the food pyramid...

More Interesting Guys

Friend of the blog deus ex parabola has written about interesting guys: https://as-they-must.blogspot.com/2026/05/interesting-guys-theory-of-examples-of.html

& so has bad doctor: https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2026/05/on-humans.html

More of that:

Sindles

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.

Alicornic Artifacts of the Abrogancian Anecumene

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.

Killer Copper Pieces: Glossgallers

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.

Killer Copper Pieces: Sceadtwains

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.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Wightsnakes

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.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Maggot Golems

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.

The Golden Mask

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.

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Some time ago friend of the blog theisticgilthoniel asked for "freak versions of the Dawn War pantheon" - I suppose this qualifies for that.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The old worshipers gather in their old ways, and new worshipers turn treacherous to the image of Man across the spectrum of dracolatry.

Here there were dragons, and here there may be dragons again.

It was only ever a mask.