Howling Across the Chasm

When the time comes for describing the monster the GM looks up and to the left, searching for the words,  and the hands come out and begin delineating and caressing the invisible contours of this thing they are imagining. The players are transported, to some extent, by this performative enactment of monstrosity. It is not merely the actual description of the monster but the struggle for description that bears the aesthetic reward. There is a moment of shared mythopoieia where the GM is delving in their visual imagination and the players are doing the same and the fruit of that description, the mental image and conception of the thing is born in everyone's mind, fresh and immediate and consensually realised. Then the players take that emergent image of the monster and embed it in the situation they find themselves in and it becomes a threat or an opportunity, a mystery or an unmitigated calamity unfolding.

That such a thing can occur at all in the context of aesthetically mediated group-bonding rituals is wonderful to me. That it occurs all the time, as a matter of course is even more so. The storytelling instinct and the competitive instinct and the yearning for group one-heartedness humans possess innately makes this miracle commonplace, to be taken for granted. 

There are two distinct kinds of excitement I am interested in that can arise from the moment of description. The first of these is the dawning familiarity/dread response: "You see a wrinkled sphere hanging in the gloom atop which writhe a number of short tentacles and from the midst of which there glares a single baleful..." "Fuck, Beholder! Run!" The second is the unfolding mystery response which makes me think of my own first D&D session - I encountered a rust monster and a carrion crawler, neither of which I had any notion of beforehand and both of which made a very strong impression on me such that subsequent encounters engendered in me the dread response, the thrill of which was all the keener from the disastrous initial meetings.

I am a bit jaded about settings and scenarios that only use established, folklorically entrenched D&D beasties. There is an OSR tradition of using such creatures in novel combinations and in new ways which is laudable but not what I am chasing here. There is also the accumulated technical knowledge of ways and means of dealing with monsters that brings with it a certain kind of slick satisfaction - even if that satisfaction is derived from huddling in a grimy corner trying to bless the last crossbow bolt before the rakshasa finds you and provides a tragic finale to your travails. These things have their own particular aesthetic appeal but I would like to investigate other ways.

The other way I have always striven to pursue is to try to reboot the process. To begin anew with whatever descriptive powers I can muster to break through to the freshness of things as-yet-unimagined. From whence will inevitably commence the diminishment of novelty. If it can be engineered that this slow death of wonder can be made to pass through phases of notoriety or fond familiarity then all the better. 

_____________________________________________________________

Foreshadowing

In published scenarios it is not uncommon for there to be examples of the literary device of foreshadowing. Rumours and portents precede the thing towards which the PCs are being guiltily ushered (often in direct contravention of accepted orthodoxies regarding railroading). Conversely, wandering monsters are almost never foreshadowed save as plausible inhabitants of certain habitats. If you go traipsing through the Accursed Principality of the Dead and encounter Spindle-Ghaists tripping bonily along the very nature of the place has done the work of priming the players' expectations for something gaunt and necrophilous, but there is scope for introducing other means of telegraphing intention to ramp up dread. Wandering monsters are usually just there, a sudden unpleasantness to add artful disarray to a situation that was probably going terribly awry in the first place.

So, as a means of fleshing-out the environments through which the PCs travel and of producing a sense of foreboding it would be aesthetically pleasing to have signs that precede the appearance of wandering monsters. Something like;

Dost thou wander the Lackly Veil? Roll each morning and evening upon this table;

1. Reek of burning hangs in the air and trees bear jagged wounds. Distant screams as of animals in pain. (Ugsome Boors)

2. Cruel honking geese harry and harrass, following at a distance, regarding with sinister sidelong glances or darting in to bite. (Aglæcwif)

3.The land about seems suddenly gaunt, pinched and harrowed as with years of hunger. Something rumbles from afar. (Grunzel-gullet)

4. Twittering starlings shrill and flock, innumerably multifarious, surging and warping on the northern wind. (Sceadugenga)

5. Huge footprints as of some elephantine behemoth have torn the countryside. Morning fog lasts too long. (Pukelin Tark)

6. In a mournful quiet, sparse and wiry grass grows in old lime-pits and red clover nodding in the breeze. (Marlebrute)

etc. 

Following such a foreshadowing and assuming something in the manner of an onward trajectory or feckless tarrying (rather than immediate withdrawal and/or other countermeasures) there is a 50% chance that the next wandering beastie corresponds to the foreshadowing (or if multiple things have been foreshadowed 25% or 16.7% or 12.5% each or whatever). The aesthetic intent here is the establishment of linkages, of apparent depth in an essentially procedural reality where depth can be hard to come by. 

I dislike the idea of determinism and the removal of agency but keenly love doom and foreboding. It would be nice to have the PCs discussing intently whether to go on up the Worm-Road knowing they'll probably meet the Pukelin Tark that tore out Pieter's lungs or go back around the hills where the starlings flock and risk forgetting their own names.

_______________________________________________________________

So there's this thing:

Monster Reaction Table 

Roll Result 

2 Friendly, helpful                        

3-5 Indifferent, uninterested 

6-8 Neutral, uncertain                  

9-11 Unfriendly, may attack 

12 Hostile, attacks                       

The reaction table is the vastly underused social mechanic I tended not to use. I saw it as an excuse to skip past the important funny voices component of the game. I now see it as an armature upon which vast quantities of setting-specific colour can be hung, fluff crunchified, fashionable curly shoes and ruffs and virtuosic sackbut performances rescued from obsolescence.

More on that later (or maybe never if you're lucky). It suffices to say now entities have a hostility rating, ranging from -9 (St. Cumbertwilde on her Sanguine Ass) to +17 (Vehement Rutabagas). PCs can have some effect on this with gentle croonings or bribes of food etc. but the general rule is that different things exhibit different behaviours. I recall the thing of most interest to me in the crowd-sourced Grognardian endeavour - Petty Gods - was the concept of individualised reaction tables. Reaction need not be a consistent spectrum but a set of behaviours specific to the behaver and modified by affordances particular to its predilections.

_________________________________________________________________

So that the discerning GM may interlard their nattering with a few choice phrases without resorting to the stultifying tedium of boxed text I have chosen to give descriptions of these beasties in collections of fragments. Of course, the danger that the fragments themselves may infect said GMs' tones with the recitative droning inflection typically derived from reading shit out may be circumvented through judicious insertion of an implied et cetera after the suggested phrases and the use of (hopefully pre-sparked) imagination. There are plenty of details in these fragments conducive to dramatic description.

For a while it's been floating in my head as an alternative approach to the verbose gibberish I usually employ but Jacob Hurst's Dire Boar Den Information Layout Thingy has encouraged me to experiment.

- Also, no more descending armour class. I relinquish orthodoxies reluctantly but recognise finally that I'll be able to maintain the mechanical parsimony I desire at the same time as not doing that little mental calculation every time. It isn't an enormous effort but any means of doing away with unnecessaries appeals to me.

Pilshach Oobit                                                       

Brutish Earth Sprites

Foreshadowings:

- Moldiwarps emerge from their diggings to sneer and gloat.

-The land is strewn with boulders that seem curiously out-of-place and haphazardly arranged.

- Sensitive souls get the sensation they are being regarded with ill-will from among the stones.

-Everything seems heavy and trudgingly onerous. 

Appearance: Four-foot tall lumpen boulderish demon-thing

Elemental Menace: unearthly brutality of essence, alien hate, archaic loathing, weird dark thwarted intensity, hollow black sockets like holes in the world

Guttural Musicality: Singsong droning dirge, thunderous barking, quaint unaccountable ponderous dancing

Catastrophic Tumbling: sensation of vast weight and incredible force, quaking earth, embodiment of disaster and panic

---------------------------------------

Upon Investigation of the Remains: They appears to be made of boulders and blood and bits of lambent silvery ore, 1d6 x 10 groats' worth apiece

To the Scholar of Paynim Lore (Heathen Language + INT check): The Oobits are sung of in the old songs as guardians of the thresholds between the earthly realm and realms of impenetrable density where the mountains dance and the sky is made of stone. The Dun-Trows know something of their ways and the uncouth mummery of the festival of Burian-Kirk is said to recount the parting of the Pilshach and Pulchrie Oobits in the long-ago springtime of the world.

----------------------------------------

Hostility: Intensely Inimical, +7 to reaction rolls

_______________________________________________________________

Oobit -  (1d6) AC: 18 HD: 4 #Att: 1 chomp or special dmg: 1d8 MV: 6 AL: C

Special: Tumbling: The Oobit must dance quaintly and sing gutturally for one round prior to this attack, 1d20 dmg, save vs. paralysis or be knocked prone

_______________________________________________________________

Mallagrugous Welkintrout                                            
Supramundane Piscatorial Monstrosity

Foreshadowings:

- Minnows or frogs fall in a rainstorm

- A fishwife goes irrevocably mad, gesturing violently at the sky, ranting about a redness in the north

- A missing child is found dismembered in a tree, unspeakable glistening mucus drips down.

- There is a dismal reek that passes in the night. Perchance a wet flapping is heard.

Appearance:

Abysmal Foetor: Like;  - the dredgings of an ocean trench,  - a whalefish disemboweled, - the open grave of a rancid giant, an eye-watering awfulness at a hundred paces.

Glaring Fishy Eyes:  dead-eyed gloating malice, alien curiosity, otherworldly hunger, startling wrongness

Fanged Pugnaciousness: hideous array of vicious fangs, horribly ragged maw, snapping jaws, bristling with dagger-teeth, talon-fins and wing fins flailing

------------------------------

To the Scholar of Inimical Otherworlds (Alchemists' Argot + INT Check): The thing probably originates from the ocean-skies of the Outermost Firmaments, beyond the poison-blue Empyrean of Night Everlasting. It can only have flown down to tellurean realms at the behest of a thaumaturge of considerable puissance.

To the Desperate Hooligan: The talons and fangs may be salvaged for use as shoddy weapons (i.e. breaking on a 1) doing 1d4 dmg. They smell very bad. Those struck need save vs. poison or be sickened (see below).

------------------------------

Hostility: Very Nasty, + 5 to reaction rolls
_______________________________________________________________

Welkintrout -  (1) AC: 15 HD: 3+7 #Att: 1 bite dmg: 2d6 MV: 6, Fly 24 AL: C

Special: Ungodly Stench, Save vs. poison within 20' or -3 to hit from vomiting. 
Uncleanness, Save vs. poison when struck or be infected with debilitating pustulent odium -1d6 CON per day unless a further save is successful, two consecutive saves needed for recovery. 

_______________________________________________________________

       

The Tatzelwurm of Bastardly Hark                        
Creeping Squamous Odium

Foreshadowings: 

- Crickets shrill with fiendish triumph at the dying of the day.
- The trees and plants hereabouts are pallid and sickly. Hemlock blooms with fervid vitality.
- Dull-eyed lizards watch from  mossy niches.
- Carven deep in trees and stones is the figure of a twisting snake. Corroded fragments of chain  are found in the vicinity.

Appearance: Two-legged dragon-thing the size of a man

Baroque Grotesquerie: Weird ornate scaled anatomy, spiny and tattered, bristles and hooks and talons, undulating nastiness, awkward crawling and creeping, writhing worm-tail

Demonic Malevolence: Horrible gloating and hissing, gnashing and spluttering, drooling virulent spittle, tormented snarling

-----------------------------------------

Hostility: Inimical +4

--------------------------------------------------------

To the Historian of the Empire (Imperial Tongue + INT check): Of old in this region it is told an Imperial outpost was held to ransom by a poisonous serpent that demanded a seasonal tribute of maidens. By the actions of avaricious knights and by grasping clergymen caught up in bloody internal strife was it laid low. Now only yammering shades haunt its empty hall.

To the Canny Tracker (Language of Beasts or Lowlander Tongue + WIS check): Following the furrows and poisoned weeds back to its foetid lair the hoard it stole in ages past can be found. The Tatzelwurm's venom is on it such that anyone handling it recklessly saves vs. poison at +2 or goes down like a pollaxed steer for 1d4 rounds. 

The Hoard consists of;

- Three Falchions of Dwarfish Temper with scabbards and baldricks chased with gold -250 groats apiece but of Svartling make - Blæingr, Brusi and Baldrekr shall seek out the bearers of these and flay them alive.

- Two Silver Reliquaries bearing the bones of Heretic Saints (Bombasticus and Gnoldo) - worth 200 groats apiece but representatives of the One True Church are 50% likely to denounce the bearers and call for their excommunication.

- Ducal Signet Ring - worth 120 groats for the gold alone but potentially substantially more for the Imperial Crest (sadly of a lost and discredited house)

- 1298 groats in assorted solidii, guilders, stivers and half-crowns

________________________________________________________________

Tatzelwurm - (1) AC: 16 HD: 5+2 (hp: 27) #Att: 1 dmg: 1d10 + poison MV: 9 AL: C
Special: Poison: Save vs. poison or flop around haplessly moaning for 2d4 turns
Threshing Flurry: When reduced below 10hp the Tatzelwurm will writhe its spiny form about in a snarling frenzy causing opponents within 10' to save vs. dragon or suffer 1d8 dmg from its barbed anatomy.
Curse: Three times a day the wurm can bestow a curse causing a character to be consumed with the lust for gold, save vs. spells each time another withholds gold or attempt their murder within one day.

___________________________________________________________

Ark Raven                                                                

Antediluvian Avian Hierophants

Foreshadowings: 

Vast webs of intrigue perpetrated by jackanapes and boobries under the tutelage of corrupt abecedarians ensorcelled by demented druidical priestesses commanded by a cabal of unseelie princes et cetera. Behind all of it, eventually, will be Ark Ravens.

-In the dim vaults of their ancient seclusion are mouldering nests of tomes and scrolls, tablets and runestones and ogam-staves and myriad other glyphic artefacts in crumbling strata from inconceivable aeons, forgotten now by all save the waddling scions of the elder world.

Appearance: Featherless flightless birds, four feet tall

Features: 

Waddling Decrepitude: Wizened awkwardness, nearsighted, shambling, wrinkled hide, raspy croaking voice, mouldy stink

Aura of Ancient Wisdom: Hard bright eyes, vast store of sarcasm, cruel and mocking laughter, riddling speech, immortal pragmatism and patience

Hostility: Harsh +2

------------------------------------------------------------

____________________________________________________

Ark Raven - (1) AC: 12 HD: 2-7 #Att: 1 dmg: 1d4 MV: 12 AL: N 
Special: Enchantments：1/rd at will; charm person, sleep, cause fear, hold person, bestow curse, charm monster, geas, mass charm. 
Uncanny Foresight: rolls d12 for Initiative rather than d6

___________________________________________________________

To the Scholar of Obscure Lore (Imperial Tongue, Heathen Tongue and The Language of Birds + INT check): There are faded legends of prophets and the fathers of the fathers of pagan kings who spoke to a birdlike race that lived in the deeps of the earth since before the stars were kindled. It is said they taught wickedness to the elves and avarice to the dwarfs and folly to feckless manlings newly woken in the world. They shall come again.

Manifestations

In a dead lighthouse upon a rocky bluff in a sea of sedges and rushes and mud are half-a-dozen Caitiffs of the Conqueror Worm, their faces burnt black by the sin they have seen. They have a stone in a chest that is poisoning their minds. They crouch and yammer in the ashes of their uttermost ruin knowing what is imprisoned beneath their feet.

-The men are merely normal men but completely degraded and mad. They will shriek like demented children as they attack with cudgels and hunting knives. Their stone will destroy a point of wisdom every 1d20 days to those in its proximity.

Below, in its sanctuary of fell geometry is a man-thing of translucent obsidian that shimmers and buzzes with something vaster and more attenuated than fear , whose liver shines with fell incandescence and to whom the world is virulence unbearable – The Emblem of Yeterel, the 1st incarnation.

-Disturbing the intricate system of diagrammatic wards and glyphs in chalk, fishblood and sprinkled sand that surrounds the it allows the world without to penetrate its sanctuary/prison and annihilates the entity like a man in a nuclear firestorm with a sound like the echo of nightingales and a fragrant wind.

The 2nd incarnation is a grey stone wall nigh twice the height of a man and apparently endless, way out in the desolate forlorn. It seems right to sit by the wall –its immanence discourages vitality and the exercise of volition. After three days the third incarnation comes over the wall.

-The wall appears a league or so to the north of the dead lighthouse. Those who come close to the wall (20') must succeed in a wisdom check or settle down by the wall. Each day they may make another wisdom check to leave.

3rd incarnation: the Crocus Waif is like a tow-headed maiden in a flimsy green tunic, a simpleton, slack-jawed, willowy and vulnerable. She will wither and fade after a day. Whosoever lays hand upon her in the meantime will become afflicted with an infernal flux.


-The waif is bereft of volition, a listless thing in the form of a beautiful girl that will wander mindlessly southward falling down in ditches and getting tangled in briars. It will not resist anyone's approach, men will tend to be very interested in assisting/exploiting it, anyone that touches the waif will contract the infernal flux, becoming crippled (slowed) with diarrhoea after 6 hours and for 1d4 days thereafter and will lose a point of Con each day.

4th incarnation: From the filth of the afflicted will rise a garden of moss and grass and blooming crocuses which will spread in abundant proliferating fertility for six days. Those who tarry among the blooms become inspired.

- Save vs. spells when among the crocuses or start weaving.

5th incarnation- the weaving plague: Feverish intensity of inspiration engulfs those affected leading to a spontaneous display of virtuosic basket-weaving that becomes a contagion, The baskets are weirdly ponderous or delicate and seemingly without purpose but the impulse to produce them is irresistible until after thirty-seven days the sixth incarnation manifests.

- Each afflicted individual glazes over and murmuring softly produces 1d12 baskets per day unless physically restrained, seeking out canes, twigs, grass and the like as construction materials. Seeing a basket requires a save vs. spells to avoid the contagion. If after the thirty-seven days there are more than two hundred and fourteen baskets in existence the next manifestation incarnates and the weavers snap back to conscious normality under the sixth incarnation.

6th incarnation: There appears one night luminous filaments of stuff like webs of extravagant horror among the stars. A faint tinkling sound accompanies this phenomenon.

-There is no going back now

Out of the north the next day comes the final form of Yeterel like a long-leggety bull-thing with the face of a man distorted with toxic joy and magnificent contempt. Dismal choirs rejoice unseen. Crocuses bloom. The soil erupts in luxuriant corruption where his hooves tread. He speaks in seven voices and in seven languages of the mastery he will bestow upon those who aid in the creation of his dukedom of uttermost crimson, and of the locusts and black honey and bone-dust he will shower upon his most hateful slaves.

-Yeterel will suffuse the world with his abominable essence, all creatures of chaotic alignment with less than 1 HD** within 10 leagues must save vs. spells at -2 or be in thrall to Yeterel and troupe toward the master on a demented crusade, stopping only to swarm upon and disembowel the innocent.

Stats as a centaur with 32 hp. immune to all attacks but for those performed with saintly relics. He will direct his thralls to construct a terrible domain. Those who declare obeisance will be spared but called upon to scour the world for crippled minstrels and troubadours to scream his praise and red-headed children to drown in boiling tar.

Yeterel, with all his weird manifestations, is but a fruiting body of something buried deep in the inconceivable beyond. In the end Yeterel will fall but the wounds his manifestation iflicts upon the world will fester. Something else will come after.

 For black honey, the honey of necrosis, see Kanaima shamanism (in the real world)
** Jackanapes, Knockermen, Geryon Fleas, Cynocephalides, Fenris Curs etc.

----------------------

This is taken from my grubby blue book of stuff I scrawled in on lunch breaks in the forest over the last couple of years.

Some Entities

The Crakie Bugge comes from two dialect words, Crake, which is an old Scots dialect word meaning crow and Bugge, from that family of cognates from England and Wales, Bwg, Bug, Bogey, Boggan, Bauchan, Puck, Pooka etc. and refers fairly generally to an unpleasant fey entity. SO Crakie Bugge is a Crow-Bogey, feathered malice and gleaming eye. When he sees you he turns his head to the side to regard first with one eye then the other. He carries a Doloire, a waggoner's axe. Crakie Bugge might be persuaded to let you go if he can chop off a limb to take off to his master. He is Naberius' Igor and errand boy.

Rampant Faunlings are unhinged priapic manifestations of a kind of inexorable primordial necessity of lust. They fuck and kill and kill and fuck. They are red, not bright red like stereotypical devils but the deep vital brick red of men in Minoan/Mycenaean art. They do not know how not to run. I have depicted this one with a  wurfkreuz in each hand. A wurfkreuz is a throwing cross from renaissance Germany, like a Gothic version of the shuriken, far larger and heavier and more uncompromising. A very similar weapon is the hurlbat, though they are more axelike in form. Faunlings love them. When they come it is as running hooves in the dark and whirling, spinning steel and demented laughter before they are upon you, red and sinewy and stinking, trying to bear you down, trying to take you alive.

Glisterfraggen are the people of some far-off realm of soot and coal. Deep black and pulverescent, implacable and not-quite alive in the same sense as others are. Glisterfraggen see the fleshy quick as peculiar elemental anomalies, far too impure, too mixed and too compromised materially to be of any value themselves. It is a curiosity to them that humans and their ilk are so structurally unsound as to be disrupted substantially by the mere intrusion of a little steel into their bodies . They themselves are not so fragile and seem interested in demonstrating this curious anomaly in others. This one I have depicted with a sallet and earspoon and heavy gauntlets but the armour is a mere frippery bestowed by its master.

The Toad-Skald is a poet of the Upper-Hells. It occupies a realm somewhere between entity and instrument,  sometimes appearing far more bagpipe that batrachian. It is the result of the unfortunate metempsychosis of some satirist that dared criticise the Tributary Messiah of Drecklenburg. Those who see it are treated to the recital of a paean of praise to the seven-hundred-thousand Queens of Hell. Its voice is like unto a myriad of merry pipers blowing as hard as they can and smites upon the ears like an enthusiastic truncheoning. The paean in its entirety would last a thousand years but no earthly listener has survived the first verse.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once I was at a Celtic festival in some shitty-little rural Australian town with a vaguely Scottish name and an imitation henge. I was performing in a two-bit gladiatorial performance, much to the chagrin of my bleeding knuckles. What was the Celtic connection really? It was tenuous is what it was but those who love to play semi-violent dress-ups will do whatever they can to demonstrate their bellies and their skills, and people who organise festivals will jump at whatever opportunity they can get to draw people in. Sweaty nerds bleeding from the knuckles can be mildly diverting.

One of the defining characteristics of Celtic festivals is the pipe bands. At this fairly small festival there would have been about a dozen. They did not take turns. They merely positioned themselves at what they saw as a reasonable distance from one another and all played simultaneously. Up until this point I had been quite fond of the bagpipes, a good friend of mine played them when we were teenagers and he would courteously absent himself from the family home and walk the paddocky hills far away as he played. This was good, the pipes could then be heard as snatches borne on the wind and echoes against the mountainsides. It was precisely what can be described as beautiful, reminiscent of Tolkien's "fierce joy, beyond the walls of the world, as poignant as grief".

At the festival the pipes were all competing and there would be these zones as I walked through where two, three or four bands could be heard where the sound would cease to be sound but become an "eardrum shredding audial pain" (to quote an earlier death-metal lyricist version of myself). It was so bad. My aspie sensory sensitivity made me want to crawl away and do groaning. It made me feel hatred for all mankind and especially the Scottish. Since then I have not liked pipes much. It was this that inspired the Toad-Skald, this and Brueghel. Always Brueghel.

The Fells

Long time no post, here are a couple of things I've been working on in a reasonably presentable form. I'm not sure if this is the direstion I should be going in at the moment. I feel like taking things in a transhuman primordial biotech science fantasy direction but I'm sure the urge will pass.

THE FELLS

The Fells are the haunted uplands that lie beyond the border of the northern marches in the outlands, the Land-Beyond-The-Empire. The Fells embodied the Wildness of the Wilderness, fear, loneliness, strangeness and danger. The Horrors of the Middenmurk lie beyond.

Events that might befall travellers

1. Stinking Mires: 1d4 retainers start to sink, Successful Strength check by a PC within 3 rounds to rescue from drowning

2. Knuckerholes: Foul pit opens in ground, Random retainer falls in on 1-2 on 1d6 for 1d6 dmg

3. Dreary Fog: Saps meaning from the world, Save vs. Spells or -1 to Wisdom

4. Desolation: Great vistas of bleak emptiness. Morale check for Retainers

5. Darkling Woods: Forest of shadows, tangled roots and branches like scratching fingers in perpetual darkness, -1 to attack, missile fire impossible.

6. Creeping Chill: A bitter cold that seeps into the bones and saps the will. Con Check or -1 to Strength.

7. Witch-lights: Ghostly candles in the distance, Hirelings must make morale check or wander off into darkness.

8. Miasma

9. Cairn: Monument of piled stones, 10% chance of finding offering. Leave offering to receive bonus for 1 day. roll d3 1. +1 Strength, 2. +1 Constitution, 3. +1 Charisma.

10. Shrine: Pray for one turn and receive; 1d3 1. 2 hp 2. +1 Saving Throw for 1 day, 3. Pilgrim retainer that will accompany character for a week.



Creatures

The dreadful influence of the Middenmurk has made the Fells a place of nightmares. Creatures lurk there that are embodiments of the wild elements of the accursed landscape.


Things Rumoured to Exist in the Fells.

Dead Lord Crethering, Hrulf the Unbegotten, Aelfrick the Weirman, Netherus Cramp, Pentecost the Harbourmaster, The Stork-Woman, Old Braithie, Flendel and Briggs, Webba of Auld Skerrick, Trammel, Gristlebairns, The Alabaster Sow, The Ragged King, The Lang Man of Osterwick, The Hound of Kelmsley, Candlewrack, Uncle Nigh-to-Earth, Father Bracken, Broadbasket Shamwell, Minser Corbie, Eponymous Brock, Irongrin Skoathe, Flinties, The Feculent Dowager, Mill-wights, Privy-wights, The Lost Seneschal, The Seven Sisters of Fyldewocky, Murdoch Hillstrider, The Thicketty Man, The Maid in the Millpond, Mother Mansrot, Auld Rinkrank, Sir Umberton Nunsputter the Thrice-cursed, The Dawn Bear, Rufus Bombastus – Lord of the Eastern Wastes, The Miracle Swine, The Oracle Thrush, Knuckerbrides, Hoary Clooters, Bleakenswick Hares, Drusus the Vain, Asphodel the Blighted One, Maddock and Caddock, Anvilkine, Epiphany Fowl, Gossamer Cockerels, Avatars of Lassitude, Splinterfoxes, Whiskery Concubines, Nefarious Conflagrati, The Beast of Crippswich Hollow, Aunt Ailith, Eadgyth Coppertongue, Wickerboys, Treacle the Catamite, Tarn Shucks.

Roll d8s for Passion, Element and Form

Passions:

1. Cursed: drains 1 level on successful hit
2. Raging: Causes double damage
3. Tricksy: Charm person 3/day
4. Ravenous: Swallows whole on a 20, d6 dmg per round until the monster dies
5. Idiotic: +1 HD -2AC (penalty)
6. Pestilent: Cause Disease on successful hit.
7. Insidious: Surprises on 1-4
8. Tyrannical: Cause Fear 3/day

Elements

1. Barrow: regenerates 1 hp per round while in its lair
2. Weed: entangles on a successful attack and hits automatically every round thereafter, Strength check to break free
3. Cave: +2 AC
4. Mist: Protection from normal missiles
5. Toad: Extra tongue attack, if successful the next attack automatically succeeds.
6. Horse: Double speed.
7. Dog: Savage Bite, +2 dmg, -1 Morale
8. Fen: Drags opponent into a bog on a successful attack if a Strength check is failed, victim must succeed in a Strength check within 3 rounds or drown

Forms

I. Ogre: A brutal giant, save vs. paralysation on successful hit or be knocked out for 1d4 turns (treat as hold person)
AC: 7 HD: 3 Dmg: d8 ML: 9


II. Hag: A sorcerous crone,

Special
1. Fly 150’ (50’) on a broom or pitchfork, or in a cauldron
2. Rides a giant angry billygoat familiar MV 150’ (50’) AC 7 HD 3 Dmg d8
3. Curse 3/day, save vs. spells or suffer effects; Weakling! – half strength, Idiot! – half intelligence, Fool! – half wisdom
4. Murder of Crows: 2d4 dmg to anyone in light armour or less, range 200’, 3/day
5. Iron claws: 1d8 dmg
6. Devoted Slaves: 1d6 Degenerate Heathens AC 7 HD 1-1 dmg d6 ML:7


AC: 8 MV: 60’(20’) HD: 2 Dmg: d6 ML: 8

III. Bogey: A terrifying hunter; Sleep (faint dead away) 1/day, Ventriloquism 1/day
AC: 7 MV: 120’(40’) HD: 1 Dmg: 1d4 ML: 6

IV. Grim: An ill-omened guardian of forbidden things, presence causes blight
AC: 4 MV: 120’(40’) HD: 1 Dmg: 1d6 ML: 4


V. Beastie: A terrible shaggy thing,
AC: 6 MV: 180’(60’) HD: 5 Dmg: 1d12 ML: 9


VI. Shade: A nightmare from beyond, drains 1 point from an ability score per successful attack; roll 1d6 to determine which ability score a shade will drain 1. Strength , 2. Intelligence , 3. Wisdom, 4 Dexterity , 5. Constitution, 5. Charisma
AC: 7 MV: 120’(40’) HD: 3 Dmg: 1d6 ML: 9


VII. Wose: A wild creature of the woods, Hide 33%, Sneak 25%, 10% chance of possessing a Talisman

Wose Talismans, roll d6
1. Toadstone – Invisibility 1/day
2. Shrunken Head – +2 to attack rolls
3. Mad-Cap Mushroom – +2 dmg for 6 rds
4. Ancient Torc – +1 HD
5. Ram’s Horn – Summons a beastie of the same element 1/day
6. Hideous Idol – seeing the idol requires a save vs. spells or blinded for 6 turns
AC: 7 MV: 120’(40’) HD: 1 Dmg: 1d4 (cudgel) ML: 8


VIII. Gargoyle: A stony idol animated by foul magic, Invulnerable to normal weapons

General Appearance

1. Squamous
2. Serpentine
3. Simian
4. Bird-like


AC: 6 MV: 90’(30’) Fly 150’ (50’) HD: 2 Dmg: 1d8 ML: 12

On Ogres

As I’ve stated before, I do not want to use a standardised monster list for the Middenmurk campaign - predictability is the enemy of monsters. Instead I want to develop tools for the construction of interesting and evocative antagonists. I will however draw inspiration from ideas about various mythic archetypes as a means of establishing parameters or a field of possibilities within which a monster can be defined, rather than nailing it down. I really want to avoid over-determining that which should be made of the stuff of legend.

To my mind, the quintessential monster is the ogre. I was inspired to write about the ogre in part because of comments made in Zak Smith’s excellent blog, see this post. Zak characterises ogres as a primitive and brutal and unsettling reflection of humanity, “ like a brother with some tragic, moany, drooly and brutal mental problem.”

I like this. It captures some of the disturbing nature of the monstrous. There is an extent to which humanoid monsters draw from our familiarity with ourselves and subvert it. The thing is scary because it is a reflection of the monstrous within us or it is scary because it is a hideous parody of us, too close for comfort.

There are a variety of different ways I can see to approach the ogre. My conception would probably be the synthesis of a variety of different approaches to produce something satisfying rich and complex

-As a mythic personification of cannibalistic bandits in the vein of Sawney Bean and Christie-Cleek. or generic horrible inbred hillbilly cannibals. Essentially, ogres are cannibalism with brute force rather than cannibalism with subterfuge like ghouls. Ogres are the essence of ravenous predation, big hungry bellies on legs who smell the blood of an Englishman.

-As a personification of desolate wild hill-country. Wildernesses with rugged rocks seem to me to suggest, through the process of paraeidolia, big and powerful figures. These ogres are why people disappear in lonely places.

-The cruelty of boys who torture animals given form. Merciless sadism, the petty tyranny of the insignificant wielded against the powerless, made manifest. In this sense I see violence in company as being characteristically ogrish, (Zak subscribes to solitary ogres) hooting and laughing and trying to outdo one-another in the extent of their cruelty. Gang-rapists too, with their competitive atrocities and the acquiescence of the weaker individuals evoke this idea of collaborative evil.

-In a similar sense, cruelty on a different scale informs my conception. The acts of Gilles de Rais and Vlad the Impaler and of modern serial killers sexually addicted to the rush of violent acts are at the outer limits of what is horrible about humanity. In my experience ogres are not generally attributed with such capacities. I think it is only fitting that such atrocities are common among ogres. They are elemental cruelty, it is what they do.

-The tyranny of the powerful is ogrish. Ogres are bullies who are empowered by their own native strength to impose their will on others. An ogre is like a pack of jackbooted fascists knocking down your door and ruining your life.

-There is evidence for the Palaeolithic past of humanity being an exceptionally violent milieux. Observations of hunter-gatherer cultures in modern-times have recorded an exceptionally high death-rate from constant small-scale warfare, far-outstripping that of notorious warlike modern cultures. Evidence suggests that the further back one goes into human pre-history the worse things get.
Modern humans have many paedomorphic or neotenous characteristics. As the late evolutionary biologist Steven J. Gould wrote "Man, in his bodily development, is a primate foetus that has become sexually mature". Compared to other animals we are playful and sociable even in adulthood. Contrast chimps, who make companionable pets when young but become extremely dangerous and immensely strong in adulthood. Ogres can be seen as like humans who have made an extreme transition into bestial adulthood, or as representatives of an archaic lineage like Homo heidelbergensis, hyper-robust and savagely violent, or as demonised fictions about dawn-raiders from an alien tribe, or as products of a hideous culture manifesting the "abuse begets abusers" cycle, or as Anti-Rousseau-ian ignoble savages.

I think you get the idea. Ogres are horrible. They are precisely as horrible as we have the propensity to be but without all the redeeming features I’m told some humans have. If PCs are going to kill stuff without remorse I feel it is necessary to make it fairly unpleasant.

Very Silly

I was absolutely delighted to discover that Joesky had statted up and produced a very detailed description and ecology of the Woosie, based upon this little drawing I did at his request. Here is his description.

I'm working on elves and fanatics at the moment. Elves are going to be weird and a little creepy, as you'd expect from the kind of people who'd steal your child and replace it with one of their own.

Fanatics are how I am going to translate clerics. I like crusading zealots filled with divine inspiration to be wielding pitchforks and threshing flails, frothing at the mouth and pronouncing prophecies of doom. Religion in the Middle Ages wasn't always nice and I find traditional D&D bland pantheism to be far too tolerant.

Monsters for Joesky

The inimitable dungeon brawler, Joesky, requested that I draw the cruels and the woosies from the C.S. Lewis quote I posted recently. Being a generally agreeable fellow, and well-disposed toward Joesky because of his unparalleled awesomeness, I decided to do the drawings. Here are the results. A Cruel;



And a Woose;



I might stat 'em up for Labyrinth Lord one of these days.

But such people!

A great crowd of people were standing all round the Stone Table and though the moon was shining many of them carried torches which burned with evil-looking red flames and black smoke. But such people! Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures whom I won't describe because if I did the grownups would probably not let you read this book - Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins. In fact here were all those who were on the Witch's side and whom the Wolf had summoned at her command. And right in the middle, standing by the Table, was the Witch herself.

Yes, I acknowledge how the condescending narrative asides C.S. Lewis uses grate upon my nerves now. But when I was eight this was the most exciting passage of prose I had ever encountered, that list of monsters inculcated in me a love of monsters that still abides. I have been collecting lists of monsters ever since and consider this blog to be, in part, a response to this very passage.

Horrors of The Vermin-Pits

Whatever world the Middenmurk exists within, it is the bad place, the source of nightmares. I envisage it as being a dungeon that was delved too deep and ruptured the boundary between the worlds so that a badness was unleashed. Things crept into the dungeon from elsewhere and were unleashed upon the world, harbingers of pestilence and death – demons from beyond the world.

It is important to me that there is nothing in the Middenmurk that is too familiar. Everything should be new and different, whether or not goblins and ogres and dragons exist in the campaign world (my default position is that they do not) down in the hole are other things, entities that do not have names and histories. I am aware that there is an extent to which I will be making a trade-off, sacrificing the preconceptions and assumptions associated with familiar icons of the genre in order to be able to take advantage of the shock of the new.

This particular angle arose for me from a couple of sources. James Maliszewski’s assertion (based on a passage from OSRIC) that the primary activity of D&D was exploration, and Philotomy Jurament’s characterisation of the dungeon as The Mythic Underworld. These things captured my imagination and led me on what is essentially an atavistic exercise. I am essentially trying to recapture that ephemeral essence of what was so enchanting to me about the game, and fantasy in general, when I was young. What was, and is, intriguing to me about dungeons is the mystery, they are perfect repositories for the projection of fears of the unknown, of darkness and predation.

I remember with fondness the exhilaration of being new to the hobby and encountering carrion crawlers and rust monsters for the first time. I intend to produce a set of random monster generators and other associated tables to generate novel content in an attempt to capture that sense of exhilaration.

One of the other concepts I’ve become intrigued by in old school play is the open world. All the DM needs to provide for the players at first level is a dungeon and a town or two and perhaps a rough concept of the world around, the world can grow to accommodate the actions of the players according to their actions. This intrigues me and appeals to me. The agency of the players in this respect is very important to the development of the world. In a similar sense, I hope to provide tools to allow the players and DM to collaboratively stock the world with elements which are brought to life and rendered significant by the interactions of PCs. Essentially, I hope to provide scope for emergent phenomena to spring forth from the interaction of complex systems. I don’t think this is anything new and believe it to be something that happens in normal play all the time. The unpredictability of setting PCs loose upon the world causes all manner of interesting shenanigans to happen. I do, however, intend to make the collaborative exploration of the unknown geography and inhabitants of a mythic underground foregrounded in this setting.

As a DM it’s nice to have all the elements prepared and ready to run so that the work is minimised. It can also be a lot of fun to have free rein to craft your world. I’m trying to tread that middle road between by preparing lots of nice tables for random generation or selection of content, a distinctive look and atmosphere and various other tools to make the process of crafting a grim-dark psychedelic hell-pit dungeon easy.

Vermin-pits

Vermin-pits are frequently found in upper levels of the Middenmurk, they are unwholesome places, filled with organic detritus and festering with disease. Many crawling, biting and stinging creatures lurk in these caves, having crept in from some dimension of creeping horrors. Tunnels are often natural caverns, the burrows of some enormous otherworldly thing, or if hewn by intelligent beings, long since overwhelmed by the swarms of extra-planar vermin that infest these accursed places.

Here is the prototype of the vermin generation tables, as with all of these tables it is suggested the DM generate the creatures ahead of time.

DM rolls for Special+Element+Form and also rolls for atmospherics if they can't think or somethink cool. e.g. (rolls) Invisible-Gloom-Toad, follows at a distance never coming close. Damn! That would be comical if it wasn't creepy. OK, it is comical.

Default No. Appearing is 2d6.

Special

Roll d10

1. Flying: MV 150’ (50’) (360’ (120’) if already flying.
2. Leaping: Initiative Reach bonus in first round of combat
3. Chameleonic: Surprise on 1-4
4. Venomous: Save vs. poison or paralysed 1d4 turns (Save or Die if already poisonous)
5. Festering: Save vs. poison or contract disease (i.e. mummy rot)
6. Giant: Double hit dice and dmg
7. Armoured: + 3 AC bonus
8. Spitting: Corrosive drool 30’ range, 1d6 dmg
9. Invisible: -4 to hit
10. Hypnotic: Save vs. petrification or paralysed 1d6 rounds

Element

Roll 1d10

1. Gristle: +3 hp
2. Chitin: +2 AC bonus
3. Cinder: extra fire attack 1d6 dmg/HD
4. Glow: thrice per day can project a concentrated flash that blinds for 1d4 turns
5. Fungus: when struck releases a cloud of spores 20’ radius save vs. poison or suffer confusion
6. Muck: Stinking aura, save vs. poison or lose 1d6 Strength for 10 rounds
7. Gloom: Darkness 15’ radius 1/day
8. Blight: save vs. poison or contract disease (treat as mummy rot)
9. Phase: If initiative is won, this creature attacks, then phases out before it is struck back
10. Lightning: extra lightning attack 1d6 dmg/HD 30’ range 3/day

Form

Roll 1d12

1. Rat: AC: 7 MV: 90’ (30’) HD: ½ Att: 1 Dmg: 1d2 Morale: 5
2. Bat: AC: 5 MV: Fl 240’ (80’) HD: ½ Att 1 Dmg: 1d2 Morale: 5
3. Serpent AC 7 MV: 60’ (20’) HD: 1 Att: 1 Dmg: 1d2 + paralysing poison Morale:8
4. Beetle AC 5 MV: 60’ (20’) HD: 1 Att: 1 Dmg 1d4 Morale: 8
5. Spider AC: 8 MV: 90’ (30’) HD ½ Att:1 Dmg 1d3 + paralysing poison Special: Web 1/day as M-U spell Morale: 8
6. Ooze: AC 9 MV: 30’ (10’) HD 3 Att: 1 Dmg: 1d6 Morale: 12
7. Leech: AC 7 MV: 60’ (20’) HD: 1Att: 1 Dmg: 1d2 + 1d2 blood drain/rd until dead. Morale: 10
8. Fowl: AC 6 MV: 60 (20) Fl 240’ (80’) HD: ½ Dmg: 1d3
9. Toad: AC: 8 MV 60’ (20’) HD 2 Att: 1 Dmg:1d4 + Swallow small creatures on a 20. Morale: 7
10. Lizard: AC: 6 MV 90’ (30’) HD 1 Att:1 Dmg: 1d3 Morale: 7
11. Fly: AC: 4 MV 60’ (20’) Fl 240’ (80’) HD ½ Dmg: 1d3 Morale: 8
12. Swarm AC: 9 MV: 120’ (40’) HD:3 Att: special Dmg: 1d4/round 10’ radius Morale: 11

Atmospherics

1. Smells of ozone, brimstone, blood, decay or ripe fruit
2. Is associated with half-heard eldritch whispering
3. Is albino white, blood red or sulphur yellow
4. Has striking metallic striations
5. Appears to dance weirdly
6. Pulsates unpleasantly
7. Is associated with apparently purposeful glyphic marks
8. Follows at a distance, never coming close
9. Has extra eyes that glitter with malice
10. Makes a hideous scratching/hissing/tearing/buzzing noise

The Vermin-pits need lots of extra tables for room contents, hazards, smells, textures, miasmas and treasure, of course. I expect to produce tables for Fell-warrens, Abyssal Deeps, Necropolises, Verdant Gulches and various other unpleasant domains of the Middenmurk.

Additionally, information about whatever world these creatures came from (e.g. cinder-world, phase-world, muck-world)would be cool.

Pictured is a festering-phase-serpent, a Grinzelwurm, poisonous, contagious and otherworldly, hisses horribly as it phases between worlds.