How do the druids get around?

1. Riding dire wolves
2. Riding bears or giant boar
3. Riding some bitchin' ungulates (elk, deer, rams, or buffalo)
4. Riding giant birds (owls, eagles, axebeaks, or thunderbirds)
5. Riding large saber-toothed cats
6. Riding dinosaurs
7. Riding in chariots pulled by friendly creatures (reroll 1d6)
8. Taking the shape of an animal (reroll 1d6)
9. Riding or taking the shape of a spirit animal at the head of a great flock or herd (reroll 1d6)
10. Committing ritual suicide only to be reborn from the egg or belly of a beast (reroll 1d6)
11. Taking the form of a cloud, whirlwind, sandstorm, or thunderhead
12. Soaring through the air, carried aloft by friendly winds
13. Dispersing into a flock of crows or other birds
14. Dispersing into a swarm of vermin or bats
15. Carried by wood, earth, and stone elementals
16. Teleporting through doorways carved in the trunks of trees
17. Teleporting between mystic circles marked by rune-carved standing stones
18. Walking faerie paths no others can find
19. Walking the secret tunnels that burrow through the shadow world
20. Running tirelessly on all fours faster than horses, like nature intended

What are the druids up to?

It's hugs, right? (It's never hugs.)

Druids don't want to live in harmony with nature - they want to tear down civilization before nature gets pissed off and kills us all. Here's 30 ways your local circle of druids is trying to do that.

1. Teaching barbarians how to attack fortifications and pillage cities.
2. Arming a humanoid tribe with captured weapons so they can better kill the druids' enemies.
3. Sacrificing dogs, bulls, and horses by cutting their throats on a great stone altar.
4. Carving intricate knotwork in standing stones to create hidden pathways between distant lands.
5. Spying or casting spells remotely through faces carved in the bark of distant trees.
6. Harvesting mistletoe with a golden sickle from the branches of an oak tree beneath a full moon.
7. Using animals to pull up mandrake roots which kill with their screams when unearthed.
8. Burning prisoners alive in great wicker cages shaped like men or beasts.
9. Killing a sacrifice in three ways at once, by hanging, impaling, and drowning in a peat bog.
10. Brewing a terrible plague in a cauldron filled with dragon blood.
11. Teaching the trees to talk and move and hunger.
12. Protecting a rural village in exchange for the first born of each family to raise as their own.
13. Attending a war council of great animal spirits.
14. Forgetting language and becoming lost in the shapes of beasts.
15. Ambushing travelers along the forest trails, leaving their heads at the edge of town.
16. Placating the demon bound in the old black hawthorn with a gift of blood.
17. Heralding the new season by dancing and leaping naked over a great fire kindled by bones.
18. Reading the future in the movements of birds and death throws of the disemboweled.
19. Searching for a lost artifact that summons earthquakes, floods, storms, and locusts.
20. Preparing magic elixirs to transform people into enormous feral monstrosities.
21. Hunting legendary beasts and eating their hearts to gain their power.
22. Animating the ancient stones to serve as their guardians and warriors.
23. Blessing or cursing the fertility of a noble lineage so the prophesied child takes the throne.
24. Applying warpaint that grants the strength of beasts and the heroism of the ancestors.
25. Gathering to decide on a new archdruid – lots of fights, scheming, politics, and kinky shapeshifter sex.
26. Completing a ritual so an ancient hero can be reborn from the womb of a wolf.
27. Bringing tribute to a great dragon, currying favor to get help sacking a major city.
28. Freeing the animals from a menagerie or colosseum to rampage through the streets.
29. Summoning the forbidden spirits of murder and decay out of desperation as the end times near.
30. Burning EVERYTHING. The garden of Earth is strangled by weeds; it must be cleansed in flame to give new life a chance to grow.

50 Random Encounters for Phandelver

I've been running Phandelver in a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting inspired by the Pacific Northwest. The included random encounter table for traipsing about through the wilderness seemed a little bland, so I made it weirder.

YOU ARE A DIFFERENT COLOR SO CLEARLY YOU HAVE MAGIC POWERS HAHA RACISM

1. Herd of elk protected by a great spirit
2. Thunderbirds on patrol or fighting serpents
3. Uncegila the smoke dragon causing havoc
4. Dragon cult seeks Uncegila to make sacrifice
5. Mother grizzly defends territory and cubs
6. Awakened black bear tribe lead by a spirit bear shaman
7. Hunting pack of wolves and direwolves
8. Reclusive sasquatch family scrounging for food
9. Mad sasquatch loner attacks with psychic assault
10. Black beast of the woods in congress with witches
11. Murderous parliament of owls
12. Werebear paladin metes out justice
13. Werewolf lumberjacks looking for sport
14. Hermit or witch gathering herbs for potions
15. Awakened trees and shrubs attack logging camp or hunting lodge
16. Druid circle with awakened animals plot destruction of a city
17. Vegepygmies and fungal zombies controlled by the Gravemind
18. Circle of myconoids offer hallucinogenic visions
19. Giant spiders whisper from the treetops
20. Giant centipedes crawl from beneath a rotted log
21. Thousand-year-old salamander prophet lives in swamp
22. Fox or coyote spirit plays cruel tricks
23. Inuksuk stone golem gives directions or aid if addressed correctly
24. Wendigo brings winter, madness, and hunger from the north
25. Vengeful ghost of a miner, elf, or ancient one
26. Seductive river spirit wants a child
27. Hag, vermin spirit, or backwards-talking dwarf invades dreams during next rest
28. Extra-dimensional wanderer descends from northern lights
29. Radiation spirits and irradiated ghouls haunt toxic crater
30. Ash zombies and pyrokinetic wraiths around burned ruin
31. Ancient war machine lurches to life
32. Hideous mutant or demonspawn crawls from the earth
33. Fungal goblin ambush with explosive traps and snares
34. Fungal goblin patrol with mole rat hounds
35. Fungal goblin brood mother with entourage in search of lair
36. Bugbear catches scent and tries to pick party off one by one
37. Orcs trying to repair rusted hulk of an ancient warmachine
38. Orcs escorting captives or purchased slaves
39. Inbred hillbilly ogres hunt with dire boars
40. Human bandits lead by a powerful adventurer
41. Human bandits possessed by primal spirits
42. Human hunters or fur trappers offer to trade
43. Wood elf scouts riding giant owls
44. Wood elves fishing or gathering berries
45. Cannibalistic winter elves on wild hunt
46. Dwarf and golem mining silver or panning for gold
47. Dwarven merchants or traders traveling with caravan
48. Mole people emerge from vault to scavenge
49. Changeling thieves steal supplies for tree fort
50. Rival adventuring party (use one of these or make up your own)

There are two different reality TV series currently airing about finding Bigfoot. My action this round and for the rest of my life is to attempt to disbelieve the illusion.

If you're lost, ask a helpful inuksuk. It usually knows the way.

In about eight months I won't have seen the sun for about eight months. So there's that to look forward to.

Uncegila is a Lakota myth from the Great Plains. The Kalapuya of Willamette Valley had a dragon too, but that dragon didn't have a name that I could find and it didn't fight Wolverine, which is a pity.

This is from the wrong side of the world but I don't care. Wherever there are ungulates, lo, so too must this thing be.

Ripping apart Phandelver, getting freaky with its bones (Part 1)

As you might have heard, the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure from the 5th Ed starter set is pretty cool for an intro adventure but needs a lot of work. This is the adventure meant to lure back bitter old timers and introduce a new generation to D&D, so it had better be good. Also, the new Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual aren't out yet, so creating new adventures from scratch is... more difficult than usual. Also also, it has the rare privilege of being an adventure out when there's only the one adventure, making it a shared experience like I haven't heard since Meepo became the star of the Sunless Citadel. So let's see what we can do with this thing!

5E really likes showing cropped portions of larger images. I dunno man.

I've started up a game with some co-workers and we're two sessions in. Character creation took about an hour and a half, which isn't great, but then we only had the one Player's Handbook and I'd added some house rule races on my laptop (more on those later). We also didn't have character sheets - I made some myself, but the office printer hates me - so there was a bit of writing and re-writing on lined paper to get everything organized. I think if we had more copies of the book and if I'd had my shit together we could easily cut that time in half, even with all the players being new to the system. Regardless, actually getting to play the same night we made characters was a welcome change from past editions.

Here's the sheet I made. See if you can guess what parts of the game I don't care about by omission!

Click to embiggen.

I: The Setting
I decided to make the setting a little more overtly post-apocalyptic than D&D assumes. The forest past the baseball field where I went to college grew out of a reclaimed landfill - the trees and ferns and fallen leaves hid most of it but sometimes you'd be walking through the woods and see an old washing machine or grocery cart sticking out of the underbrush. I wanted that sort of setting, where everything looks natural and pristine on the surface but dig down even a little and you start finding the ruined hulks of a lost age. It all happened long enough ago that no one remembers the specifics, but if players want to figure out how the demihumans are the product of genetic engineering, and the monsters are radiation-scarred mutants, and the demons and magic are from when the particle accelerators tore a hole in reality and the bad stuff slipped through, it's there in the background. I figure scavenging for relics and scrap metal is a profitable line of work the way delving is an assumed career path in core D&D, and a lot of the dungeons are actually subway tunnels or bomb shelters.

For Phandelver, I read that the big city of Neverwinter just a few days to the northwest is a smoldering wreck after the nearby volcano that had been dormant forever finally blew its top. Living in Portland Oregon, that reminded me that hey, Mount Hood hasn't erupted in forever either...

Still there... waiting...

...so now the area around Neverwinter gets near-constant rain from October to May, the elves all eat salmon and blackberries, and the woods are infested with Sasquatch. (The ancient ghosts may or may not ride fixies.)

Also I renamed Phandelver to Demonsgate. I ran with the "town built on the ruins of another town" thing and turned it into "town built on the ruins of another town built into the bones of an ancient demon that's been sleeping near death for centuries". The Forge of Spells (which is kept pretty vague and never really gets used in the adventure) becomes the demon's heart, which the bad guys want to defibrillate so they can have their very own rampagin' kaiju to command and live inside. (Needless to say this will fuck over the town something fierce.)

II: The Hook
Every campaign I run begins with one of the following:

• Washing up on shore after a shipwreck.
• Breaking out of prison.
• Being hired to rob a bank.

Okay that's a slight exaggeration but not really. The bank job is mostly for one-shots and very short campaigns with pre-gen characters, the sort where a certain amount of conceptual buy-in is assumed for the sake of expediency. The shipwreck and prison break are great because (a) if you sink a ship or throw everyone in chains after a campaign has been going for a while it's railroading, but if everyone starts out screwed it's backstory, and (b) no matter how dysfunctional a group of PCs you have you can pretty much count on them working together to survive and earn their freedom.

Phandelver on an island seemed like more reskinning than it was worth, so I went with the prison break.

Always looking for ways to make the big villains cooler and more despicable, I decided the Redbrand gang were called that because they had red marks on their chests from where their leader cut out their still-beating hearts and kept them in jars to ensure loyalty. The wizard started as a dandy named Glass Staff, on account of his glass staff, but I renamed him Glassjaw, on account of every time he uses the magic of the staff to pluck out an organ while keeping it alive another patch of his skin gets vitrified.

Sort of like this.

The party warlock sees this guy's whole left arm and shoulder and jaw (natch) are made of mirrors when she's brought before him, and he cuts out her tongue and gives it to a guard as a memento. Between her missing tongue and the guards kicking the cleric in the ribs every time he starts to pray for new spells, there's no way the party can just blast the guards to pieces with their mind lasers as they're all bound and carted off to the orcs and sold into slavery.

(Visually, orcs in my campaign are Uruk-Hai, because of course they are, but conceptually they're more like the Charr from Guild Wars. Instead of bloodthirsty warmongers they're really really competent bloodthirsty warmongers, to the point where they've already killed their own gods with giant magical cannon and the biggest thing keeping them from conquering everything is that their homeland is under constant attack from the vengeful ghosts of the people they've already slaughtered. None of this has really come up yet, but if the party ever makes it out to Wyvern Tor in the sandboxy part of the adventure the orc camp there is going to be built into the rusted chassis of a battlewagon.)

In Orc Jail (not as much fun as Space Jail), the party meets a dwarf named Gundren Rockchewer. (Much more evocative than Rockseeker. I guess he tried to dig a tunnel to escape using only his teeth? He'd have broken his teeth somehow regardless - dwarf names are written in runes meant to last forever, so their names are destiny.) After Gundren gets bought out of slavery by his brothers he sends his prison buddies a care package. The orcs pass it along. (They're not savages.) That's where the campaign starts.

The package contains a cake... a fairy cake. It's got magic baked right into the batter. It's a cake of holding. One bite and all the player's gear falls out on the floor. They also find a message in the cake: Brothers and I have struck it big. Meet us in Demonsgate. Shiv someone on the way out for me.

Shivving happens. The warlock gets her tongue back. They try to free the other slaves but there's too many orcs... they resolve to come back when they're better prepared. They steal some riding boars (these orcs aren't pig-faced, but their mounts are) and ride back to town.

That was the end of the first session. Not much time after character creation but a good start.

Next up: Demonsgate and its denizens. Also a fish bomb.

Advanced Demons & Devils: Gluttony and Pride

Been wrestling with demons of my own of late, so my initial promise of "more tomorrow!" has turned into "more sometime!", but enough of that. Let's make some fiends.

Fig 1: Warpig from Warmachine - Hordes, ready for war.

Gluttony:

Most literally you have the demons of Gluttony who eat people, corpulent monstrosities with an insatiable hunger for living flesh. The gourmands who eat only particular sorts of mortals properly seasoned with fear or despair are variations on this theme, as are the breeders who raise souls in captivity and construct vast mechanical abattoirs to assist in the slaughter. Gluttony doesn't lend itself to subtlety - a slow reveal leading up to the brutal dehumanizing gore is great, but eventually you're going to want to pull back the curtain on your blood-spattered machine for pigs (see also this, and of course this). Gluttony devils that spoil crops to cause famine, or spread flesh-eating diseases (contained by draconian quarantine), or inspire cannibalistic hunger (like the Wendigo), or promote consumption of a different kind by inventing and distributing addictive new drugs all work too, but sometimes you just want to lay on the squick. Sometimes the scariest thing a loquacious charmer can want is to just fucking eat you.

The magic of gluttony is necromancy, which prolongs life by consuming the vital essence of others. Fiends of gluttony have attacks dealing necrotic damage, which rots the body like so much meat, or slashing damage, which evokes the butcher's cleaver. Orcs are their mortal agents, Orcus is their master. Realms of gluttony include living landscapes where the ground itself can eat you, smog-choked ghettos in the sunless allies between factories full of screams, and arctic wastelands with howling winds and steaming blood on the snow.

Pride:

Fig 2: Sexy Mancandy Graz'zt

Fiends of pride are among the most powerful, but also the fewest in number - faceless hordes of demons embodying the ego over all just wouldn't work. Unlike most other denizens of Hell, fiends of pride are never easily categorized by subtype - each is a singular specimen of divine intelligence and great physical prowess utterly blind to their own faults. They scheme endlessly to advance their own agendas, even at the expense of Hell's goals overall. Fiends of envy try to expose their plots to create openings in the infernal hierarchy, but pride cares for nothing but itself. Inevitably these schemes are not to corrupt or destroy the mortal world but to ensure more power for the fiend in question, with an end goal of godhood as an absolute minimum. In battle, the devils of pride act as generals, maneuvering armies that number in the millions like pieces on a game board, while the demons of pride are champions calling out their opponents to single combat. They never cheat, unless they have to or think they can get away with it, and their word is their bond, unless it isn't.

Those with a martial bent are peerless duelists and commanders. Their warlocks claim to master all schools of magic equally, but illusion and transmutation are obvious favorites for their ability to enhance their own capabilities (or at least seem to). The elements of pride are lightning and thunder, expressions of raw power that can be seen and heard for miles. Realms of pride include glittering palaces carried through ash fields the backs of a million slaves, mile-high towers rising above blankets of acidic cloud over terrified villages, and whole cities built within titanic marble statues of their rulers.

Demons and Devils (Part Deux)

Continuing yesterday's post on fiends, plots, and fiendish plots.

Mortal cultures have countless names for the lower planes - called Hell, Hades, the Abyss, Sheol, Gehenna, and Tartarus, to list but a few. Some planes are united by an overarching hierarchy; a few are so riddled by interconnecting portals they might as well be coterminous. But most are disparate worlds tumbling in loose philosophical orbit through the Astral Sea, united only by the lethality of their environments and the active malice of their inhabitants. The latter have been divided into two broad categories: demons, which seek to destroy mortal life, and devils, who want mortals to destroy themselves. While both factions count both inhuman geniuses and mindless drudges among their numbers, demonic plots focus more directly on results, while devils specialize in manipulation and subterfuge.

Warlocks from the ancient and decadent Empires of Sin organized the fiends into the following sub-categories by agenda:

Rage demons gotta rage

Wrath:

Demons of wrath are the most common, the bloodthirsty hordes that people imagine will ravage the world when the end times come. From the mightiest balors to the lowliest dretches, wrathful demons are straightforward adversaries bringing agony and terror. Lesser demons go on bloody rampages as soon as they can slip from their summoner's control, while demon lords hatch schemes to destroy whole cities in magical conflagrations or open planar gateways to unleash the fury of endless infernal legions.

Devils of wrath specialize in creating conflict, breaking alliances, and encouraging war without restraint as the most direct and profitable solution to all problems. Hellish mercenaries offer their services to expansionist despots and tyrants in need of "peacekeeping" forces. Devlish masterminds offer strategic advice to fascist regimes and inspire the invention or discovery of lethal new weapons.

Demons of wrath charge forward with such hateful ferocity they tear themselves apart with every attack. The massive blades and bone spurs erupting from their bodies cleave through everyone nearby with each swing, the difference between friend and foe lost in a haze of bloodlust. Devils induce a similar state in others with gaze attacks causing madness, rage, and pain that can only be alleviated by harming allies. The element of wrath is fire, which spreads out of control before burning itself out.

Lower planes ruled by fiends of wrath include blasted fields of shrapnel and carnage, lakes of molten iron, and rolling siege engines the size of nations.

Pazuzu, you ungrateful gargoyle! I put you through college!

Envy:

Demons of envy specialize in possession. Whether out of self-loathing or a simple desire for greater power or skill, mortals can invite demons into their dreams and give up control of their bodies. Most envious demonic schemes involve possessing an influential mortal and establishing a legacy of infernal influence and tainted bloodlines (which are easier to possess in the future).

Devils of envy specialize in Faustian bargains, taking advantage of mortal shortsightedness to trade temporary boons for future deeds with dreadful consequences. Long-term schemes involve shaping cultures and economics to encourage vanity, inequality, and discontent. Information brokers also offer to unearth mortals' darkest secrets for their enemies, again for prices that end up being much dearer than they first seem.

Brutish fiends of envy have attacks that encourage feelings of inadequacy and helplessness by crippling limbs, stealing and copying spells or martial techniques, or sundering critical weapons and implements. Carefully worded curses are favorite tools of the more cerebral. The element of envy is acid, which scars and disfigures the vain and ruins equipment.

Realms of envy are copied after pristine grottoes and heavenly cities, but seething with barely hidden corruption and decay. Beautiful facades sink into virulent swamps, while outside the crumbling city walls a thin carpet of loam conceals mile-deep pits of silverfish and worms.

So Many Monsters: The Other D&D

The other D&D would be Demons & Devils, natch. Dragons might be (in) the name of the game but in my campaigns and I suspect a lot of others fiends are a much more common high level threat. Having giant fire-breathing monsters roaming the countryside or even waiting underground makes you wonder why humanity hasn't been eaten already, but when you're tromping through a literal hellscape an endless parade of horrors seems acceptable, nay, expected. Moreover, the Great Wheel and its big bads - the archdevils and demon lords - are the closest D&D comes to a shared setting (aside from its monsters, as mentioned). A core D&D book won't tell you about the elven kingdom of Figglinflower (it assumes you'll want to make up your own world, which is awesome) but you might hear about Dispater and his iron city on the second layer of Baator. Priorities!

Which is why it's such a shame that so many core demons and devils are some combination of bland, interchangeable, and just plain stupid. Like, if a cultist summons and loses control of a hezrou, what sort of mischief will it get up to compared to, say, a nalfeshnee, or a glabrezu? What sort of plots would you expect from the followers of Kostchtchie? (And for that matter who the hell reads the folktale of Koschei the Deathless and thinks "Hmm, that's a cool name, but what it really needs is more consonants"?) Later editions improve on this a bit - Grazzt, Demogorgon, and Orcus all get chances to shine, along with maybe Lolth and Dispater - but there's still a whole lot of meh.

Like look at this vrock. This is from 3rd Edition, which at least made it look like a demon. This is about as cool as a vrock gets:

What's your deal, vrock? What powers do you have? What sins do you embody? With what foul rites do you want us frail mortals to debase ourselves? Can you even talk? Looking at this picture I have no idea. It's not just the art either; reading the description I still have no idea. It's a demon. It wants chaos and bloodshed, I guess. Ho hum.

Compare the vrock to this similarly bird-headed demon from Warhammer:

Bestial, pitiless, but clearly intelligent. Rife with forbidden knowledge. Evocative of ancient civilizations, something Old Testament. Almost certainly a powerful spellcaster, and not just from reading the blurb. I imagine it whispers Faustian bargains for arcane power with the voice of Tom Waits. (And this isn't even Warhammer's A-game. A comparison like Jubilex vs Nergal, or any number of dumb brute gods vs Khorne, would be even more one-sided. Granted, the vrock is pretty much the bottom of the barrel on the D&D side, but so is a servant of fucking Tzeentch for Warhammer. Lord of "change"? What even is that? Fuck that guy.)

On a semi-related note I'm kind of ambivalent on the whole demon / devil split. The Blood War is pretty sweet in theory: all the planes fight each other over their differences in ways that reflect their similarities. So the Good planes fight with rhetoric and friendly competition, the Lawful planes fight with influence and proxies (and the occasional righteous crusade), the Chaotic planes fight with what are basically glorified cattle raids, and you never really hear about any of that because the battle everyone always talks about is Evil fighting itself with horrific atrocities and genocide. It's a rare example of alignment not being stupid and opens up lots of "enemy of my enemy" possibilities adding complexity to what could be boring, monolithic evil. On the other hand the art and descriptions are so inconsistent on what's a devil and what's a demon (or yugoloth, or demodand, etc) and what they each want that the distinction's pretty arbitrary, and as mentioned there aren't many on either side with much going for them so it's hard to get too jazzed about fitting them into factions.

As much fun as it is cribbing from Dante's Inferno and its various circles I prefer a Hell with no outer borders, one where Asmodeus can declare himself prince of darkness but there's always some upstart demon out past the edge of the map and an endless variety of torture pits and gnashing caverns to harrow.

Kinda like this, but with more stuff in it

It's been years since I ran a Planescape game (unfortunately) but if I did I think I'd center the lower planar factions around the seven deadly sins. Maybe not the most original idea but it gives each group an accessible hook and something to base plots around. I'll be posting a field guide to Hell next time. Expect a lot of images looted from Warhammer, because Warhammer makes this shit look easy. (Except for Tzeentch. What. An. Asshole.)

You won't believe these 10 WEIRD FACTS about carrion crawlers!

Adventurers that aren't already paralyzed HATE him!

1. Carrion crawlers were bred by the vivitheurges of a long-dead empire to consume the effluvia of their magical research and refine it into more useful chemicals and narcotics. The strains of grub producing heroin, aqua regia, and other such miracles have all died out, but one breed has survived, adapting to feed on carrion instead of rarified plasma and excreting its "milk", a potent anesthetic, from its tentacle-udders to incapacitate prey.
2. If left on their own carrion crawlers will metamorphose into regular ol' giant psychic boring beetles before they reach two feet in length. Larger specimens are uniformly the result of goblin meddling, with intricate runes of chaos branded on their leathery backs by skilled warp-witches to prevent the final molt. Crawler breeding is a proud tradition among goblin-kind, with frequent "cattle raids" between clans to capture prized specimens, and the most talented breeders command great respect amongst their peers. All agree on the importance of clearing the grubs' droppings, and that while the crawlers will eat most anything, a diet rich in domesticated cat helps promote a long and healthy life.
3. Drow priestesses ride carrion crawlers in their great undulating feast-palanquins, the sedia gustatoria. The priestesses' movements are limited to small gestures and condescending sneers, so weighed down are they by jewelry and towering headpieces, while the crawlers, pampered and bloated, move less than a mile per day. Idleness is the virtue of their station, and the priestesses take great joy in testing others' patience.
4. The paralytic effects of a carrion crawler's touch are not from any natural venom or toxin. Rather, carrion crawlers are psychics, though their minds are too primitive to project any thoughts or emotions beyond a vague sense of revulsion. (This is why maggots are so unsettling despite not posing any physical threat. It's a defense mechanism.) Direct tentacle-to-skin contact amplifies the emotional response a thousandfold, drowning out the brain's own signals in a wave of vermiphobic horror. The implications of elves being immune to this mental paralysis are left to the reader, as are any links between carrion crawlers and those other betentacled psychics, mind flayers.
5. Derro harvest carrion crawler paralytic fluid to use in their gaslighting experiments. Subjects the derro wish to drive mad are restrained, blindfolded, and starved while the fluid, thinned enough to cause only local anesthesia, is painted on their extremities. These extremities are then cut off and fed to the ravenous prisoners in thin slices. When their blindfolds are removed, revealing a bloody plate and a sewn-up stump, subjects are left in a state of mind much more susceptible to further treatments.
6. The Sisterhood of the White Worm is a monastic order inspired by the carrion crawler, which its nuns believe is the most compassionate creature in existence. The Sisterhood believes in a god of infinite mercy and forgiveness who wants to free all living things from the suffering of mortal life - the carrion crawler, likewise, grants the liberation of death without pain. Only after completing enough good works (bloodless assassinations of doctors and midwives) will the nuns go willingly into the White Worm's embrace.
7. Carrion crawlers eat carrion, naturally, but only to breed. The faint glow that surrounds crawlers living in the deepest tunnels of the underworld comes from the grubs feeding off darkness itself - darkness, of course, being not just the absence of light but a living force with will and (apparently) caloric value. This makes carrion crawlers a vital link in the underworld food chain (crawler steaks taste acrid and rubbery, but it beats starving), as well as a natural defense against invading shadows.
8. The touch of a carrion crawler doesn't just freeze you in place - it freezes you in time. The effects usually don't last long enough to make a difference (plus, y'know, you can still get eaten), but while paralyzed the body is suspended between moments - you don't need to breathe, you'll never starve, and any poisons in the body won't take effect until the paralysis ends. In some underworld cultures, hunters and soldiers feed carrion crawler venom to their families in lean times so they'll "rest" for days and avoid the pangs of hunger. The legend of the Sleeping Prince tells of a young boy stricken with fever, whose father had the court wizards design a bed that would drip carrion crawler venom onto his body and keep him frozen in slumber until a cure was found. That was millenia ago - the king and, indeed, the entire kingdom has gone to dust, but the machine still functions, and the boy still sleeps.
9. Due to their great appetites it is sometimes said that carrion crawlers have bottomless stomachs. This is true. Carrion crawlers were created by a mad wizard (of course) who believed in a prophecy: that his soul was doomed to an eternity of torment unless he could recover an artifact buried with a certain corpse. Unfortunately he had no idea which corpse or even what the artifact was. He made the carrion crawlers to feast on the dead, and he put a small portal in each one's stomach to sent indigestible materials to his palace of trash and filth. The carrion crawlers have spread to a thousand worlds and eaten countless bodies, but the wizard is still searching.
10. Maggots grow spontaneously from the flesh of men and beasts, gifts from the nameless god of filth and vermin that waits at the end of time. Carrion crawlers grow from the flesh of slain immortals - dragons, titans, and the most noble of fey. Some day the gods will die too, and from their flesh will grow the nameless god to remake the universe in its own image.

omnomnom

On Hybrid Freaks and Questing Beasts

For today's entry in my slow but relentless zombie march through the Monster Manual we have the catoblepas and chimera - plus a special guest appearance by THE MIMEOPLASM!

THE MIMEOPLASM! (pronounced THE MIME-O-PLASM!, as loudly and obnoxiously as you dare) is a card in Magic: The Gathering that copies the stats and abilities of other creatures. It's an ooze with a T-rex head for an arm, which is delightful.

Reading up on the chimera (what, do you not?) the myths are pretty consistent that it's a mix of goat and lion plus something reptilian - a snake, or sometimes a dragon. But the number of heads can range from one to three, it may or may not have wings, and it may or may not breathe fire. In genetics it's an organism with someone else's cells inside, in archaeology it's a fossil made from multiple species, and architecture it's an ugly statue that doesn't keep the rain away (that would be a gargoyle - thanks, Wikipedia!). So in broad usage a chimera is any sort of weird hybrid, and in the original mythology it's still kind of dodgy and inconsistent.

It could be an ooze with a T-rex arm, is what I'm saying.

I like the idea that some creatures in D&D are set species and with enough research you can learn goddamn near everything, but for others like the chimera all you can know for certain is that they're all different and weird. If we're going with the conceit that crazy wizards made these monsters because they're crazy, it doesn't make much sense that they'd all use the same stock.

Warhammer plays with this a bit:

Some kind of tiger-dragon-eagle thing maybe? Whatever it is it's pretty sweet.

So does Theros, the latest Magic card setting based on Greek myth. I like that none of the heads are quite one thing or another, but that it still looks like one creature and not a collage of parts.

But we can do better! Thanks to the limitless power of poverty imagination we can't afford don't need a specific custom miniature or image to describe our monsters. They can change from encounter to encounter or round to round:

DM: You see a gaunt, mange-covered amalgam of hyena, vulture, centipede, and - deadliest of all - MAN!
Player (rolls): I stab it in the back.
DM (resolves damage): It's still alive. It grows a serpent head from the wound and bites you. Save vs. poison.

Good times.

Back in 2010, when 4th Edition was new(ish) and Wizards still gave a damn(...ish), this article established a thematic link between the catoblepas (magical warthog with a death gaze described by Pliny the Elder, but probably just a wildebeest) and the Questing Beast (monstrous product of incest heralding doom described in Arthurian legend, but probably just a giraffe). The idea being that the catoblepas would show up, curse you or a nearby sympathetic NPC, and then wander off, and you'd have to venture out into the thrice-forsaken swamp to kill it before the foretold doom came to pass. And yeah that's pretty sweet. Having some reason to go out and slay the killer hellbeast that should by all rights be left alone is something I can get behind, even if that reason did end up being the Raven Queen yet again. (Seriously 4th Edition, are you even pretending there are other gods?)

Personally though I find most groups are willing to latch on to any plot hook you dangle in front of them with even a shred of bait, and just establishing that a creature is out there is often enough to pique someone's interest. One trick that's worked well in the past to both motivate players and make the hunt itself more interesting is to add a second competing party of adventurers to the mix - you see it all the time in dungeons, but not often enough on monster hunts. Rival parties are great.

Even more than wandering monsters, rival parties corral the natural tendency to play slow and cautious, scrutinizing every possible option and retreating whenever someone gets hurt or runs low on spells. With a group of rivals competing for the same loot or the same kill, every delay becomes a chance the other guys will get there first. At the same time the "empty" wilderness hexes or dungeon rooms become more interesting, because there's always a chance you'll be ambushed (or an opportunity to ambush someone else). Plus the inevitable monster fight has the added strategic wrinkle of needing to hold something in reserve and worry about the trip back. No one wants to relive the opening to Raiders of the Lost Arc.

"The fact you can't take the hit just makes me want to punch you even more"

To that end here are 1d12 SHADY MONSTER HUNTERS and their often sketchy motivations:

1. Whole mob of peg-parted Ahab types all after the same serial limb-gobbler. Most of time spent looking for leads, hiding leads, and spying, each hunter more grim and paranoid than the last.
2. Dandy out for a spot of adventure, accompanied by vast entourage of guides, porters, weapon caddies, battle butlers, and aides-de-camp. Armed to the teeth with the latest gadgets and a complete disregard for the well-being of underlings.
3. Devil-blooded torture artists looking for a creature tough enough to act as the canvas for their latest masterpiece. Always eager for an audience but participation is mandatory.
4. Unhinged golemancer gave up everything to finance building a great colossus that could avenge a devoured spouse. Controls the machine from inside its mechanical guts but will hop out to make repairs without regard for own life. ("Fighting Girlfriend" inscription optional but encouraged.)
5. Amoral circus folk seek photogenic beast for capture and training. Carnies include a lobotomized ogre strongman, a naga blade-dancer, and a deadly pyrokinetic midget.
6. The monster is the offspring or favored pet of some petty local deity. Clergy of another even more petty deity want to kill it to show the world their miracles are the best. Priests hunt the creature with great zeal but are slowed by all manner of onerous taboos and observances.
7. Badass mercenary company of big damn heroes with no concept of overkill or collateral damage. They don't play by the rules but they get results! (Obviously the company that hired them planted a mole to bring the creature back alive and kill the others to avoid leaving witnesses.)
8. Sweet, dimple-faced prodigy of the dark arts accompanied by a small army of threadbare taxidermied horrors. Wants to dig the bones of a beloved pet from the creature's stomach for reanimation.
9. Hunting party of dark elf royalty astride jeweled cassowaries. Suitably impressive trophies will earn their house favors and influence for some fantastically convoluted but deadly intrigue. Frequent stops along the trail for rampant debauchery including incestuous coke orgies and ritual cannibalism.
10. Cryptic extradimentional zookeeper assisted by slowly dissolving eyebrowless clones and what might conceivably be called a hunting dog. Well equipped with stasis bombs, mono-wire bolas, and shrink ray canisters for easy transport.
11. Noble scion accused of murder demands Trial by Kaiju rather than face a bribed jury. Returning with the head of the monster the only way to prove the support of the gods and avoid execution.
12. Local adventurer's guild sent initiates off to loot the monster's hoard as part of a demented hazing ritual. Lost, badly wounded, numbers depleted, the survivors will still murder you in your sleep for so much as a copper piece.

Skeletons! All my life I've been hated by skeletons!

So I've stopped updating, obviously - for the usual reasons of time and other obligations but also for the unexpected reason of Blogspot hating me. Every comment posted in reply to someone else got mysteriously eaten by the void, and it didn't make sense joining a community of CLOSETCASES when I couldn't actually, y'know, say anything. I get enough "you just need to learn to communicate more" in real life without it following me onto the internet.

Plus most of the blogs I frequent have either dried up or moved onto G+ hangouts. I've been Facebook-free for almost a year now after having my identity stolen and going into full luddite hermit mode, and a more different social media account isn't really something I'm interested in. So what's left?

"Blogs appear and grow in strength from strange gaps in people’s lives.  The golden age of Noisms was when he was trapped in a Japanese office all day with nothing useful to do. Jeff got a job, James M disappeared. When the life changes the blog changes and as people move into new phases the blog either disappears or becomes much less regular or less intensely imagined. And blogs need to be regular and vibrant in order to really fulfill their potential as blogs. A blog that liveth not, is not a blog."

 Forsooth.

Beautiful thing about the internet though... every once in a while something long dead and buried will spontaneously reanimate for no damn reason. (That is not dead which can etc etc.) I would never have thought this would become a thing almost four years after I made it, but then boom, 59k hits and its own giant-ass forum thread.

It's true: writing about the nerdy minutia of a dying hobby through obsolete channels for an audience of no one is a colossal waste of time. But fuck it, I'm playing D&D anyway and I like writing about it, so let's give this another go. Maybe whatever replaces Twitter will stumble across this site in another four years and be confused.

LESS TALK MORE PLANTS THAT EAT YOU! ROLL A D30!

1. Big ole’ venus flytrap-style chompy mouth
2. Covered in thorns that break off in skin and continue injecting poison
3. Spooky tree with a gnarled bark face and lashing claw-like branches
4. Angry molesting tree with dozens of flailing tentacular limbs
5. Sticky fibers on leaves trap prey while pheromones attract other predators
6. Vines or roots pull toward a central pitcher plant ‘stomach’ in the ground
7. Bludgeons with heavy mace-headed branches
8. Stalks spring out and retract at great speed, impaling like spears
9. Lashes with sawblade-edged leaves causing massive blood loss and amputating limbs
10. Leaves conceal pit trap with sharp pungi spike roots
11. Whip-like tendril lashes out to inject mutagenic venom
12. Rolls over people like a giant tumbleweed
13. Flings heavy spike-shelled coconuts with uncanny precision
14. Seed pods open to fling thousands of poisoned flechette-style needles
15. Hurls overripe fruit which explodes on impact releasing noxious, intoxicating, or volatile fluids
16. Spits gobs of corrosive combustible pitch
17. Clouds of tiny airborne seeds released; seedlings grow rapidly in lungs if inhaled
18. Pollen clouds laced with deadly neurotoxin
19. Flowers change color in hypnotic patterns, implanting (heh) suggestions of suicidal behavior
20. Mirror-leaves reflect and amplify sunlight into burning solar deathray
21. Releases pheromones to induce homicidal rage; plant absorbs blood spilled in the resulting carnage
22. Roots manipulate soil to cause sinkholes, quicksand, or earthquakes
23. Sticky burs latch on to passers-by, then a few minutes later, explode
24. Scent of flowers causes deep slumber filled with terrible, prophetic nightmares
25. Plants bulbs in fresh corpses, reanimating them as floral zombies
26. Fruit increases the eater’s strength and inspires fanatical devotion; a sizable cult offers the plant regular sacrifice
27. Grows swarms of vicious thorn-covered piranha goblins from unfertilized seeds
28. Pods grow doppelgangers of any whose blood the plant has tasted
29. Trunk trembles to agitate enormous hornet’s nest inside
30. Whole plant grows from the back of a titanic forest creature with roots burrowing into its brain