A L ECOSYST

TI EM
ES

S
B

CREATED BY MONSTROUS INHABITATION

Special Reference Work
A compiled volume of information for players of Classic Fantasy Role-Playing games, including:
Speculative origins on monsters, guidelines for creating encounter tables and designing
monstrous and magical biomes.

By Courtney C. Campbell

Copyright 2022 — Hack & Slash Publishing

All Rights Reserved

Cover by Karl Stjernberg

Editing by Sándor Gebei
Illustrations by Courtney C. Campbell, Jeshields, Bodie H., Direquest, and Zach Moeller
Extra writing by KingSillyGoose, Lucas Zellers, and Google+
INTRODUCTION
I did not write this book alone.
A long time ago there was a place that no longer exists. It was a complete failure in
all respects save one. It brought the architects of the old school renaissance together.
The name of that place was Google +.
I was looking for a way to create more interesting ecology articles, in the style of old
Dragon magazine articles. So I began with Aboleths and began working through an
A-Z list of monsters. Posts would go up on Google+, asking for creative ideas about
the monsters and people delivered. I wrote about a thousand words of ideas, and
collected and presented the other collected ideas for prosperity on my blog where
many of them are still there to this day.
I had an inkling I might someday make a work like this, so long before the closing of
Google+ I made sure to contact every contributor individually, and ask if they were
willing to let me use their work. Some requested money and were paid, a few refused
to have their work included (and their entries were removed), but the vast majority
were glad to have their work included.
It’s here I’d like to thank them for their contributions and work:
Adam Taylor, Andy Barlett, Patrick Stuart, Andrew Shields, Richard Grenville, Nadav
Ben Dov, Jacob Hurst, Joshua Blackketter, Harald Wagener, Luka Rejec, Reynaldo
Madrinan, Christopher Hatty, James Stuart, Nathaniel Hull, Nobilis Reed, Arnold K.,
J. Alberto Abreu, Eric Duncan, David Brawley, Evlyn M., Dyson Logos, Justin S. Davis,
James Aulds, Noah Stevens, Dave Younce, Dennis Laffey, Jeffrey Turner, John Payne,
Jose Carlos Dominguez, Jeff Russell, Jensan Thuresson, Alex Joneth, Michael Fuller,
Seth Clayton, Beloch Shrike, Noah Marshall, Chris Tamm, Scott Martin, RJ Grady, Ed
Hackett, Louis Swallow, Zach Marx Weber, Peter Kisner, Scrap Princess, Tim Groth,
Matthew Bannock
Sadly, since the fall of Google+, many things have changed. Some of the contributors
are no longer with us, some are no longer part of the community, and the original
posts are lost to time. Several of the names you may recognize, as they are creators
in the table top role-playing space. Some contributors commented only once, others
had a hand in adding something to every entry. Life has moved on and been kind to
some of us and difficult to others. Any of the contributors should feel free to contact
me with any thoughts they have!
That said, I am excited to finally have the trilogy of On Downtime and Demesnes,
Artifices Deceptions and Dilemmas, and Bestial Encounters caused by Monsterous
Inhabitation finished. It is an alternate Dungeon Master’s Guide, Player’s Handbook,
and Monster Manual, suitable for use with any fantasy role-playing adventure game.
It explores the things most frequently ignored in those books. Rather than providing
procedures for play, they talk about how to construct campaigns in ways that
organically drive play forward.
I once had someone ask me “how to use” the information in this book, and that
question befuddles me to this day. “Monsters” are animate creatures. If they exist
there must not only be reasons and causes, but also myths and legends. It’s hard to
create all this on your own, so this book is a boon in campaign design by providing a
variety of those ideas from many different voices.
There are so many ideas on each page of this book, it’s often difficult to read or even
look at. So much creativity and strangeness, ready for you to use to make your
campaigns a lot more magical while making them more understandable, approch-
able, and tractable at the same time.
These ideas are the way I run campaigns, and the books were created as a reference
for me. The fact that they are useful for other people is just a wonderful bonus. I’m
glad to present the final volume, and hope you enjoy using the ideas to create memo-
rable and enjoyable campaigns.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.......................................................... 4
ABOLETH.................................................................... 8
BASILISK.................................................................... 13
BUGBEAR................................................................... 15
CACELIA.................................................................... 18
CENTAUR.................................................................. 20
CHIMERA.................................................................. 22
COCKATRICE............................................................ 24
CYCLOPS.................................................................. 28
DEVILSWINE.............................................................. 30
DISPLACER BEAST...................................................... 32
DJINN...................................................................... 34
DOPPELGANGER....................................................... 36
DRAGON TURTLE........................................................41
DRYAD...................................................................... 42
EFREETI..................................................................... 44
ELEMENTALS............................................................. 46
FLAILSNAILS............................................................... 51
GARGOYLES............................................................. 55
GELATINOUS CUBE................................................... 57
GIANTS.....................................................................61
GNOLL..................................................................... 65
GOBLINS.................................................................. 66
GRIFFON.................................................................. 69
HARPY...................................................................... 70
HELLHOUNDS........................................................... 72
HIPPOGRIFF.............................................................. 74
HYDRA..................................................................... 75
INVISIBLE STALKER..................................................... 80
IXITXACHITL.............................................................. 82
JERMLAINE............................................................... 88
KOBOLD................................................................... 92
LAMMASU................................................................ 98
LIVING STATUE.........................................................102
LIZARD MAN............................................................ 103
LYCANTHROPY.........................................................104
MANTICORE............................................................106
MEDUSA..................................................................107
MERFOLK.................................................................109
MINOTAUR...............................................................110
NIGHTMARE.............................................................115
NIXIE.......................................................................120
OGRE.......................................................................121
ORC........................................................................ 122
OTYUGH................................................................. 128
OWLBEAR................................................................ 132
PIXIES...................................................................... 135
PSEUDO DRAGON.................................................... 136
RAT.........................................................................140
RHAGODESSA..........................................................146
RUST MONSTER........................................................ 147
SALAMANDER.......................................................... 148
SHADOWS..............................................................149
SPRITE......................................................................151
STIRGE.................................................................... 152
TROGLODYTE...........................................................160
TROLL......................................................................162
UNICORN................................................................167
VAMPIRES................................................................ 172
WHITE APE............................................................... 175
WYVERN................................................................. 176
XORN...................................................................... 183
YETI......................................................................... 186
ZORBO....................................................................190
SLIMES, OOZES PUDDINGS & JELLIES.......................... 193
GIANT HAMSTERS FROM SPACE................................ 203
BIOMES.................................................................. 206
CREATING ECOLOGIES............................................. 214
 BOLETH
“We give a name to a thing, and the name
limits it. There are creatures before names.
We are foolish to think they are limited.”
— Obadiah, Taurian speaker

Nomenclature: Uobilyth, spawn of Piscathces, Agnathans, Pleco

Description: Aquatic respirating, psionic fish-people
Things that are known:
• They do not display emotion or empathy
• They resemble large (20´ long and 3 tons) rubbery blue-green fish possessing
only caudal fins
• Their mucus allows air-breathers to extract oxygen from water. It also prevents
them from extricating it from the air
• They have three slit-like eyes, stacked vertically, each a solid color
• They have two pairs of tentacles — two thin ones that are 10´ long and resemble
a mustache, and two broader, flatter tentacles that resemble pectoral fins.
Outside of water, they use these tentacles to literally drag themselves around.
• They have tube-like orifices along their body that secrete slime
• They have powers of illusion and mind, able to trick and dominate other creatures
• They are assumed to take slaves, though what is done with living captives is
unknown
• Their mouth is a giant sucker on the outside
• From corpses it has been discovered that all aboleth are hermaphroditic
• They can breathe both air and water
• Their purposes and reasoning are inscrutable even to the hyper-intelligent

Rumors and other waves in the ocean:

• Secrecy is of the utmost importance to the aboleth. It is a biological imperative on
the order of reproducing in mammals
• All written language descends from ancient elder Aboleth glyphs. If an aboleth
were to become angry and erase the root glyphs to protect them from lesser
minds, then language based on those glyphs would correspondingly vanish

8
• No one has ever killed an aboleth ever. Those who claim to have killed one have
fallen victim to an illusion
• The description we have of an aboleth is an illusion. To see their true form would
drive the viewer mad
• All knowledge of encountered aboleth
comes from the weakest members of
the tribe, expelled for being too weak
to even survive mental interaction
with an average aboleth
• They are long lived, the
weak living 1,000 years
and the oldest perhaps
being immortal
• What they use slaves for
is unknown; some possibilities have been
raised from reports:
ºº They are used in constructing grand cities
ºº They live on the shore and fight each other
endlessly for an unknown purpose
ºº They keep slaves because slaves are for
eating. If we weren’t meant to be slaves,
why would we taste so delicious?
ºº Bonding with slaves improves their own abilities. A strong slave makes them
stronger
ºº They need mental fields in addition to physical substance Slaves are subject to
deranged biological experimentation
• They pursue the ancient art of super-science, eschewing magic in all its forms
• Aboleth slime is a potent narcotic, and they treat their slaves much better than
their previous life. This has proven to be a surprise for more than one ‘rescuer’
• They do not track time by days and nights, for the sun does not penetrate so far
beneath the ocean. They instead track time by tidal cycles and patterns, a
method poorly understood by land-dwellers
• Their mental powers and illusion magics stem from not wanting hordes of crazed,
loving, degenerate drug addicts bothering them. It’s a defense mechanism
developed to protect them
• An aboleth is selected to be a ruler, which is in contact with all other aboleth of
the city at once. His mind knows what they know and increases in size to match
• They are said to be magic resistant
• They are worshiped as god-kings by many of the lesser sea creatures like tritons
and sahuagin.

9
• Their eyes are actual physical manifestations of a pineal gland that acts as a
light-sensor. This is actually where the strength of their psionic powers comes from
• They do not come from a single world but instead raid many worlds across all
dimensions. This means that there is only one aboleth culture
• The aboleth are able to inscribe glyphs that contain eldritch energies.
• The aboleth were the first creatures that existed from all else. They know this
because every aboleth remembers it
• They exude toxic slime via both their tentacles and their large abdominal tubes
• They are not actually creatures but simply biological robots doing the bidding of
a secret oceanic society
• They aren’t simply biological robots but an out of control weapon granted to a
foolish race bargaining with the Crossroad God of Unsatisfying Bargains. Once
they received their psionic, mind-controlling, amphibious, armored, magical
bio-weapon, they couldn’t control it, leading to their own demise
• Greed actually is the source of their creation. The desire for wealth, capitalism
itself, is not just an idea. Societies that used capitalism discovered it had actual
physical form. Once a society accepts capitalism, aboleths became freed from
their cage on the Platonic Plane of Ideal Forms
• They are actually just tapeworms feeding on the gut we all inhabit. This theory is
in general discredit because it comes from the seers of Kashgar, a kingdom far
from the sea
• They were once human who desired to extend their lives. The enlargement of
their organs was the only way to accomplish this, and eventually it drove them
into the sea. This was long ago and the depths have changed them and made
their thoughts and minds grow stranger and stranger; hating the light and land
denied them, filling them with the desire to eradicate every hint from their past
biology
• They are living fossils
• Their flesh is prized by dragons
• They can easily control anomalocaris and other invertebrates, but the control of
vertebrates is more difficult. Chordates have some inborn resistance. They are
frustrated at the rise in dominance of vertebrates because it has reduced the pool
of available subjects and size of the invertebrate thrall species.
• They are a race of degenerate aesthetes who enslaved people they thought had
the ability to make great art
• They are followed by skinless men who babble insane poetry. If they speak to
you, it drives you mad and you attempt to unscrew your own head
• They are immune to death and disease because they can psioncially control
bacteria, viruses, and even the cells in their own body

10
• They permanently dominate thralls by absorbing them into their body, completely
taking over their circulatory system and birthing them 3 days later with their
psyche completely destroyed
• Aboleth possess racial memory, back to the earliest member of their race
• Aboleth are immortal, and the world they were born to inhabit is no longer the
world they exist in, leading to the decline of their dominance
• Some aboleth are amphibious or can fly
• They actually evolved from frogs and their jelly has developed from a way to stun
prey with goo. Suggesting this to an aboleth would be a unique way to commit
suicide!
• Aboleth are actually a small group of leeches that fed from the body of a god. In
thanks, they work tirelessly to bring her back to life
• Their psionic powers evolved from their ability to control simple fish to protect
their lair
• Some aboleth are said to enter a deadly death frenzy near dissolution
• They are very wary of illithids because they have no memory of their existence.
One day they simply were when they were not before. This gives illithids the
singular distinction of having the ability to make an aboleth nervous
• Actually, aboleth are a dying race. They have created the illithids with the best
hopes they will take their place. They are a new vibrant race created from the
aboleth themselves
• Neither of those are true, the aboleth and illithid meet and immediately fight for
superiority
• The Illithids are from the end of time, beings created by the aboleth. Upon
discovering that the illithids are part themselves, they decided that they refuse to
be eclipsed. They seek alliances suddenly with other races for this reason, to
assist them in the war against the far future
• Aboleth are related to the illithid (psionic, four tentacles, intelligent, slimy skin,
underground, Lawful Evil)
• The aboleth are the progenitor of many monsters: cloakers, mimics and other
bizarre creatures under the ground
• Aboleth are said to absorb the memories of everyone they eat. This defines their
culture
• They come from Piscathces, the Blood Queen. She no longer cares for her
creations. The aboleth possess this knowledge and it liberates them
• They were created by a god to protect his tomb while he rested waiting for the
surface to wipe itself out. Being good servants, aboleth have taken steps to make
this happen
• The aboleth have been asleep and are really bothered by this terrible monkey
infestation that happened while they were asleep

11
• Aboleth ruled all the world until man created gods. They strive to reconquer the
world and will stop at nothing less then the destruction of all gods
• They have no religion and such, but exposure to the elder evils causes them to
respect their force in daily life
ºº Bolothamogg (Him Who Watches From Beyond the Stars): They leave gaps
and space in their architecture to respect him. He is also known as Yog-Sothoth
ºº Holashner (Hunger Below): They construct protrusions and use the black bile of
the world in their construction. He is also known as Shudde M’ell or Tsatho-
ggua
ºº Piscaethces (Blood Queen): Red domed windows of red crystal show their
respect. She is also known as Cthulhu or Shub-Niggurath
ºº Shothotugg (Eater of Worlds): Pools are added, filled with magical, multi-
colored liquids heavier than water. Swirls and vortex patterns adorn the floor.
He is also known as Azathoth
ºº Y’chak (The Violet Flame): Pillars of violet flame that burn underwater are
created. These are used to pass information between the members of the city.
He is also known as Nyarlathotep or Hastur
• Aboleth are not actually ancient or long lived. They are only recent creations, the
function of hyper-evolution. They are literal living cancer
• Icebergs do not drift. They are ice vehicles constructed for the transport of
aboleth cities
• Again, they are not immortal. They are in the process of de-evolution and
regression. Now they can only walk on the land with difficulty, and each genera-
tion is less bright than the one before. They continue to keep slaves because they
always have, but no longer grow. It is the last grasp of a society trying to
maintain power before they become nothing but simple, albeit delicious, fish
• They are actually the creation of all races. Expelling us onto the surface was for
the sole purpose of producing a better slave. We “rule” the surface, in the same
way a pig “rules” a pen
• They no longer take all their slaves, leaving some in communities to recruit new
slaves

Valuable resources:
• Aboleth Mucus can be kept, stored, and sold as an alchemical grenade

12
 ASILISK
“I can’t say if it’s a wild sculpter, ‘cause if I had seen it I
wouldn’t be here now, eh?” — Montague Norahiem,
ne’er-do-well

Nomenclature: Wild sculptors, “the last eyes”, basilískos, little prince, ruler of
rocks
Description: Basilisks are eight-legged reptilian monstrosities whose shining gaze
turns their prey to stone

Things that are known

• Basilisks are sometimes confused with the cockatrice
• Basilisks are the ultimate ambush predators, requiring only a single glance to
rapidly petrify their prey

Rumors and other scratching in the stone

• Wallows where hunting basilisks lie break up rocky soil and allow plant life to
flourish. These wallows are the second thing basilisk hunters learn to look for, the
first being exquisitely-rendered statues of amputees
• The petrifying gaze of different basilisks produces slightly different types of
porous stone from the flesh of their victims, including sandstone, limestone, shale,
granite, and marble. This usually coincides with the basilisk’s camouflage for its
preferred environment; for example, basilisks in volcanic regions have black-
and-red coloration and produce pumice from their victims
• Since basilisks can be raised in captivity and trained as
guard animals, their eggs are prized by those with wealth
to guard. Adventurers with skill and courage to retrieve
eggs from basilisk nests can always find a willing
buyer, if not a legal one
• Once petrified, basilisk victims are
completely unaware of their surround-
ings until the moment they are restored,
so that hundreds of
years may pass
without their
knowing

13
• Even while petrified, basilisk victims are alive and aware of only their own
thoughts as time passes without sun, moon, springtime or harvest to mark it. Even
a short time in this absolute darkness can drive a victim mad
• The eyes of a victim are never petrified. Victims watch in horror as, piece by
piece, their own stone bodies are ground into powder by the basilisk’s merciless
jaws and eaten
• Rival basilisks fight for dominance by gazing into each other’s eyes. Usually only
the weaker basilisk is petrified, but in rare cases, both creatures are petrified. The
site of such a matched pair of statues is considered blessed or lucky
• A basilisk’s victim does not age while it is petrified. Certain religious orders will
seek enlightenment in this stone sleep
• In the ancestral keep of a royal family in the east, there is a room full of petrified
kings who trusted their descendants to unpetrify them with basilisk oil in a future
where their power and wealth have been multiplied by time. They will come
again and claim the new world as their own
• The petrified kings will never rise again. Their children have abandoned their
trust, and the iron jars of basilisk oil ran dry long ago
• The odor of a weasel or, in a pinch, that of a kobold or gnoll, is the weakness of
the basilisk
• Basilisks are, at most 10" in length, which is why they are so dangerous
• If killed, the miter on the head of a basilisk turns into pure gold
• Basilisks hatch from the egg of a chicken hatched by a toad.
• Basilisks walk upright, heads bobbing as they run
• It is the ruler of all serpents and commands any in its name as serpent king
• The ashes of a burnt basilisk can be used, via a simple process, to turn silver into
gold

14
 UGBEAR
“In the dark of the forest lies death that stalks man.”
— Slive, entrepreneur

Nomenclature: boogerbear, bogeyman, budy, bugge, bogill

Description: Large, stealthy, furred creature
Things that are known:
• They are squat, man-sized or larger creatures covered in fur
• They have large greenish eyes with no pupils
• They have wedge-shaped ears on their heads
• Their hides range in color from light yellow to yellow-brown, and their fur from
brown to brick red.
• Their mouths are filled with needle-sharp teeth
• They have preternatural skills at stealth and observation
• They travel alone or in packs
• They have an exceptional sense of smell

Rumors and other whispers in the trees:

• Bugbears will consume food, but they don’t need it to live. They actually survive
off the emotions of fear or terror
• Bugbears record their history in scars on their body
• The skin and fur of a bugbear can change color to match their surroundings
• Their fur absorbs light like a polar bears and where there is little or no light their
coloration becomes pitch black
• Sometimes after stealing a family member, they leave severed fingers or teeth to
be found
• Bugbears live in nomadic communities
• They collect mementos of their hunts

15
• Bugbear is not actually a specific type of creature it’s actually an elder hobgob-
lin. Goblins grow into hobgoblins, and hobgoblins grow into bugbears
• This is especially disturbing, considering bugbears have a ravenous appetite and
will eat anything nearby. Including goblins
• They are known to worship various dark gods: Hruggek the Morningstar, of
violence and death; Grankhul Two Open Eyes in Darkness, of hunting and
surprise; and Skiggaret the Black Claw, god of fear and despair
• Some people say that if you get close enough, bugbear eyes do have tiny
pinpoint red pupils
• Some bugbears in winter regions are said to have blue or white fur
• Bugbears have an unnatural ability to use weapons much larger than another
creature their size could wield
• They are excellent climbers, with an astounding grip. In fact, it is unknown for
anyone to ever be able to remove anything from the hands of a bugbear
• They are actually humanoids who have been corrupted by their bestial nature. Instead
of a werewolf, they struggle constantly against the beast in their monstrous form
• This is because they were rejected by god(s) and in revenge they seek to strangle
the faithful and civilized
• When they stand still and silent, the faintest breeze can cause their fur to rub
together, causing a sound like bugs skittering across a floor, hence their name.
This is what you hear before you are surprised by a bugbear
• Their fur is actually bugs. Thousands of bugs
• Bugbears actually use some sort of pheromone or psionic invisibility that allows
them to walk around and right in front of other creatures
• It’s actually much worse than that. Only clumsy or surprised bugbears are ever
seen. The most skilled are so adapt at hiding that they operate freely in human
and demi-human society. They adopt a single human to bedevil, continually
reminding the human of some petty vexation or minor enemy, until by degrees the
human blames that for all their life problems. They then reveal themselves and
feed as the human dies from the sight from an apoplectic fit. The bugbear then
eats the person and adopts their identity, appearing as a monomaniacal grouchy
old man or woman
• Elves are immune to this, being whimsical sociopaths. For this same reason they
never mention anything about the bugbear to anyone who can’t see them
• They are at home in the wilds, needing no roof or bed for comfort
• They love to construct ambushes, but not from a distance. They want to spring
out, choke, and smash
• Wet bugbears look like wet cats. They are only so imposing because their hair is
so poofy
• Bugbears are actually a peaceful forest-loving race that once really pissed-off a
gnomish PR firm

16
 • Bugbears are the offspring of goblins raped by ogres and giants. They are born
clawing their way out of the goblin mother. They are all evil creatures, because it
takes a pretty degenerate giant to screw a goblin
• Bugbears are actually ogre corpses animated by the spirits of dead goblins
• They spawn from the friction between the underworld and the overworld. They
are tasked with scaring everyone away from the underworld
• They will not do anything in combat to save their allies, even though they attack
in a coordinated manner. They believe that the strong will survive and those that
survive are strong
• Though strong, they are lazy. Who better to work for them but slaves?
• They are often referred to as having a ‘strange gait’. It is true. This is the result of
the fact that they have an extra pair of ethereal legs that they use which is the
key to their stealth. Watching them move at full speed without making a sound
makes them appear to have a very strange gait indeed
• Their feet are nothing so supernatural, just plain padded soft underfeet. When
they hunt, they do so on all fours like all silent large predators
• Bugbears are often misrepresented. They are actually half-insect half-bear and
they are quiet because their feet are the silent scurrying feet of insects
• Bugbears actually have giant pumpkins for heads (not pumpkin-shaped heads)
• And inside those pumpkin-shaped heads are seeds. . .
• The bugbear is actually an insect torso on a bear’s lower body, like some twisted
centaur
• They are the creepy uncles of goblin-kind. All of their kin find them disquieting

Variants:
Kardan: Bugbears with dark-grey fur, that silent as death. They possess the ability
to appear as any object: a clock, a tree, a stand, anything.
Wikkawak: A local name for the arctic breed of bugbear
Murd: A swamp variety of bugbear. These rural cousins of regular bugbears are
fearful of reptiles, and they have the ability to turn into a viscous tar
Stalker: A variety of bugbear that thrives in cities and towns
Koblak: A stillborn bugbear that lives. Their eyes are huge even by bugbear
standards, and they can see through doors, stone, and earth. They are immortal and
undead. They are very resistant to any sort of attack, unless the weapon is coated in
fresh grave dirt. Children and men slain by such a beast soon rise again as a mali-
cious spirit

17
 ACELIA
“There’s a white worm in the basement of the Collin’s
estate, and they worship it like a god!” — Magdaline,
madwoman

Nomenclature: White worm, worm women, white god

Description: An annelid of the deep earth
Things that are known:
• They are blind, white annelids that can swallow a man whole

Rumors and other vibrations in the sand:

• Even though cacelia lack eyes, they can sense their surroundings because they
have a diamond eye within their brain that lets them see into the astral and
ethereal
• Every school child knows cacelia are just immature purple worms
• Vicious rumors have spread that a cacelia can turn
itself inside out, revealing a human torso, its rear
dissolving into a mass of tentacles. This is clear
defamation, and the League of Aligned Taxonomy
resents this heresy
• The cacelia attacks by spewing crustrations from its
maw. These grapple and attack the prey, dragging it
into the worm’s great maw
• The moist skin of a cacelia hides hard scales, and its
skin secretes a poison that causes rapid bleeding
• These worms emit a soothing psychic emanation,
that soon finds them surrounded by cultists
• The bones of the worm are hard to identify,
containing traces of human and bovine features
• The skull of the cacelia is thick, blunt, and covered in
ridges, which it uses to dig through the earth
• They hunt in areas of loose soil, where they burst from the ground and attack their
prey
• They feed extensively on livestock, sometime having whole nests under farmer’s
fields
• Cacelia are actually the result of sexual obsession. Rapists and other sexual
maniacs find their organ grows, until they are nothing but a ravenous white worm

18
• They have a skull shaped like a salamander, with nine holes on either side
• The oil of the white worm is very valuable, both for its general and alchemical
uses
• Upon killing a white worm, they completely dissolve into water
• The white worm is a guardian of gates of death
• The white worm is neither alive nor dead, beyond the effects of life and death
• Some white worms spit acid or discharge electrical bolts

19
 ENTAUR
“It ‘twern men on horses. It was men with horses for
legs.” — Wart, Squire

Nomenclature: Horse folk, keepers of the old ways

Description: Six-limbed creatures with a human torso sprouting from the shoulders
of a horse

Things that are known

• Centaurs live in nomadic tribes that cross the world along ancestral routes that
take generations to repeat

Rumors and other road stories

• The pride of centaurs is as strong as their memory; they repay every slight or
honor given them for generations after
• They are so wild as to be near-incomprehensible to the urban or industrial human
• Centaurs have old wisdom about the natural world and can be convinced to give
that wisdom in trade
• Centaur lore is passed down through stories in the old Sylvan tongue; these
stories are difficult for outsiders to learn, but not impossible
• Centaurs fight to the death in unarmed combat to claim their mates, leaving the
losing centaur to rot in the sun
• Asking to ride a centaur is a grave insult. The honor of riding a centaur is given to
only one biped in a thousand, and they will never consent to be saddled. If you are
given this honor, you must be very careful where you grab hold when they jump
• The waystones along centaur paths are holy ground — no predator will take prey in
the shadow of such a stone. Spending three days and three nights at a waystone
will give the pilgrim a great revelation, letting them see the world as it truly is
• Some centaur paths cross between the worlds, taking them among the farthest
stars or through the deepest fairy forests. Centaurs who walk these strange ways
may return changed, with bodies like deer or manes of pure moonlight.

20
“I once knew a centaur-taur, who had the torso of a human sprouting from the
shoulders of a horse, sprouting from the body of an ox where the horse’s back legs
should be.”
“That’s nothing. I heard of a centaur-taur-taur, who had the torso of a man, the
shoulders of a horse, and the shoulders of ox, all sprouting from the body of a giant
elk where the ox’s back legs should be.”
“I remember when I was like you and knew so little of the world. Then I met a
centaur-taur-taur-taur, who had the torso of a man, the shoulders of a horse, the
shoulders of an ox, and the shoulders of an elk, all sprouting from the body of a
dragon where the elk’s back legs should be. It had the dragon’s wings, too, so that’s 14
limbs in all.”
“I give up, friends. It’s centaurs all the way down.”
-Conversations Around a Caravan Fire by Studs T’hulain, adventurer

21
 HIMERA
“A disease of the mind, perhaps a bit of indigestion. A
fancy for fools.” — Ilx, Naif Merchant

Nomenclature: Triaeon, dewmist,

Description: A rumor of an imaginary beast, one of the mind
Things that are known:
• It has the head, mane and legs of a lion; the body of a goat; and the tail of a
dragon

Rumors and other tales of the wyld:

• A mountain in the ancient land of Lycia had a volcano at the peak which nour-
ished lions, a pasture on its cliffs that is attractive to goats, and the wild grasses
and rocks at the bottom were infested with serpents. From this mountain comes all
chimeras
• Chimeras are especially vulnerable to arrows, unable to avoid any launched from
while in the air
• Sometimes black dark magics merging the flesh of life produce a horrible heresy
which manifests as a terrible beast, whose only weakness is time. This is the
chimera
• The wise Yang Chu tells us that there are four chimeras that prevent the soul from
rest: Age, Rank, Reputation, Riches. Those possessed by these desires are
followed by the four chimera. The chimera of life to death brings ghosts, the
chimera of power and rank brings killing men, the chimera of integrity bringing
light and fire, and the chimera of wealth bringing chains and punishment
• Chimeras are the manifest creations of the astral. They are star-forms sent into the
world to penetrate it, and enlighten and align the world to the order dictated by
the stars
• Chimeras attack with phantoms and dreams, distorting countenance of creatures,
and causing visitation by etheric ghastly visions
• A chimera is a substance that is separate and distinct from reality, eternal, and
anathema to gods
• The chimera sits at the end of every universe and is either the first or final cause
• The chimera is actually a three-legged bird-lizard; the goat and serpent heads
are simply effective camouflage to scare away predators

22
 • A chimera is a machine woven with silken spider webs by intelligent spiders that
they ride within
• Chimeras are a hidden disease. Upon slaying a dragon, the corpse bursts open,
and from within a lion attacks. When the lion is killed, his corpse in turn bursts
open, and in the interior is the demonic chimera. With its suits of flesh ruined, it
attacks with ferocious frenzied fury
• Daydreamers manifest their creations as chimera; lugubrious beasts, they attack
the dreamer for daring to make them manifest
• Echidna had nothing left but pieces when she went to forge the chimera
• The chimera is the sister of the hydra; they are two breeds of the same creature
• Chimeras are secretly people who have been infected by other variations of
itself, turning into creatures much more terrifying than a lion with a snake and
goat head
• Chimera are serpents with two front legs and a whip-like tail
• Chimeras are all immortal and cannot die from natural causes
• The breath of a chimera is so hot that it melts all arrowheads and sets all arrows
aflame
• All chimeras are female
• The chimera is just a word unknowing primitive creatures applied to a working
forge
• The chimera is representative of seasons of growth, harvest, and death
• Tales of chimera with goat heads and snake heads are just the ramblings of fools,
who mistake the chimera’s wings for a goat head and its lionized tail for a snake
• Why would one fear a goat? The lion and the dragon are there to protect and
shield the goat head from harm
• The chimera is a pale, sickly beast, barely able to breathe and reliant on the
kindness of other creatures for survival

Valuable Resources:
All parts of the chimera — bone, teeth, claw, and fur — are useful for illusions and
dream magics

23
 OCKATRICE
“Those are stone hens up in that den. You’ll be a work of art
coming out.” — Ophid, country rustic

Nomenclature: Stone hen, rockbird, cocatris, calcatrix, ichneumon, basilicok,

basilikos, cocatriz, velchukruk (“lil peckers” in Stone Giant), skoffin
Description: Advanced reptilian arcane hen
Things that are known:
• Its gaze or touch can petrify people, even after death
• It can fly short distances
• It is immune to poison
• A cockatrice has the head and body of a rooster, bat wings, and the long tail of a
lizard.
• A male has wattles and a comb like a rooster
• The much rarer female appear the same, lacking wattles and a comb only
• It has red or black eyes
• It is about the size of a goose or turkey
• It lays eggs

Rumors and other noises in the wild:

• A cockatrice is actually a dragon, possibly born from a dragon mating with
something other than a pure dragon
• Once the cockatrice has caught the scent of prey, it can unerringly track
• Any toad or snake incubating a cock egg will produce a cockatrice
• The weasel is immune to their petrifaction
• The sound of a rooster’s crow will kill a cockatrice.
• A mirror will not stone a cockatrice, but it will violently attack the reflection (or
any other live cockatrice) until dead or exhausted
• Its hiss can route all serpents, reptiles, and vipers
• It doesn’t actually petrify, but withers plants, scorches grass, and bursts stone
from heat and its deadly breath
• Its blood is poison that spreads when struck, up the weapon into the body of the
person holding it

24
• The bite doesn’t kill but passes on hydrophobia to the victim
• They are impossible to kill by stabbing. Perhaps this is due to poison, or perhaps
their skin is resistance to piercing weapons
• The beak and claws of a cockatrice are made of iron
• A cockatrice has three tails, not a single snake’s tail
• It is the mortal enemy of the crocodile
• They are filthy, stupid, and vicious animals
• If in a city, they can kill many with their poison breath. A cockatrice that has done
so can only be ousted with the power of the gods
• The cockatrice doesn’t actually turn anyone or anything into stone. It has venom
that causes calcium to multiply and crystallize, replacing flesh. The stoning that
results from this causes a porous appearance versus the statue-like look caused
by a medusa or gorgon. It is this calcium that they eat
• The crowing of a cockatrice will curdle the milk inside a cow
• A pregnant sow will birth deaf piglets if exposed to the crow of a cockatrice
• The feathers are quite magical and useful for arrows and quills, but they must be
used quickly
• The cockatrice is actually a passive grazing animal and not a predator at all.
Their deadly gaze is for insects, not man
• A cockatrice grinds the stone it eats using hard diamonds stored in its stomach
• Sometimes called the “excuse bird” it is often credited with ills it did not cause.
They have never been known to eat homework or cause a late snow or poor
harvest
• This name offends them and they retreat into their study of geology, hiding in
caves
• Cockatrices are actually very wise and know many profound and secret thoughts
of the origin of things, learned from the earth itself
• They often correspond with wizards under the guise of being a geothaumatolo-
gist or ignohistorian. They pay for their research by providing the locations of
gems and raw magic
• These locations are the subject of many treasure maps
• They are not natural creatures; they are created from a rooster of superior
chickens and a still living snake plucked from the head of a medusa
• They don’t actually consume stone, but eat it in order to help them digest food
• It is actually a being of extra-dimensional origin. It is a normal hunter and
scavenger on its home plane, but on ours it is deadly. It has an envenomed beak,
and its feathers contain toxic material. It petrifies organic matter, leaving behind
crystallized salts

25
• Cockatrices are quite fecund, but poisoned easily by toxins in this planar environ-
ment. Those that survive all learned to bury their crystalline eggs underground
• They have a particular vulnerability to strong acids, sonic vibrations, and metal
poisoning
• It has a strong affinity for natural forces
• Cocksatroises was once widely accepted as the plural of cockatrice, now there is
debate that it refers to an intelligent breed of cockatrice whose eggs were
incubated by tortoises
• Victims do not turn to stone but are nearly instantaneously fossilized. The tap from
the beak pulls the victim out of sync with its time frame, stealing all the motion
from the target’s life. This motion is lost to the universe, funneled into another
• The result of this is every time a victim is refleshed and recovered, that is stealing
energy from another dimension. Do that enough and you might be noticed
• They are used to herd stone giant children and keep them safe
• They were designed by the wizard Vora Elgath, a wizard and friend of the stone
giants who found them peaceful company
• A cockatrice is not a separate creature but is in actuality an infected chicken This
mutated form can only survive on venom, kept on hand by their stone giant
keepers
• They are actually the cursed offspring of Ur Kardar, a dragon foolish enough to
attack a god. He lost and his eggs were all turned to chicken eggs. A trickster
god coaxed the dragonish aspects to the surface by changing how they hatched,
the cockatrice becoming his favorite assassins
• That trickster god’s clerics can attune to the cockatrice and command its actions;
possessing it for a time and petrifying their foes
• The flesh of a cockatrice is quite delicious
• They are vain, bullying creatures and constantly battle for status among them-
selves
• Females lay 1 to 2 eggs a month at the waxing of the moon. The eggs are
brownish-red, flecked with rust-red speckles, and have hard brittle shells. They
hatch in 11-19 days
• They love to line their nests with shiny, sparkly items. The more shiny their nest, the
higher the status among cockatrices
• Cockatrices have the option of petrifying; They do not automatically petrify by
touch
• The feathers of a cockatrice can turn creatures to stone for a long time after their
removal or the death of the cockatrice
• The females keep a harem of males and kick their young out at six weeks
• They are the damned combination of a basilisk and its mortal enemy, the rooster

26
• They grow a crowstone inside their vestigial gizzards ranging in size from a grain
of sand to marble size. This cloudy colorless gem is a potent cure for poisons and
venom. Swallowing the rank tasting stone is the most effective application. The
larger the crowstone, the more effective it will be
• Cockatrice feathers are useful as magical quills because of their durability
against caustic substances
• Cockatrices do not always turn you to stone. Some turn you to gold, disintegrate
you, liquefy your bones, or turn you into a thrall. Some change your alignment or
polymorph you
• The saliva of a cockatrice can turn stone back to flesh

Variants:
• Pyrolisk is a cockatrice that causes opponents to burst into flame
• Cyrolisk is a cockatrice that freezes opponents solid
• Aqualisk is an aquatic cockatrice that eats coral and breathes water
• Perfidalisk is a cockatrice that causes wounds that do not heal
• Regalisk is cockatrice the size of an elephant
• Bicockatrice is a cockatrice with two heads
• Somnolisk causes a deathless sleep
• Miasmalisk breathes a killer venom that spreads out like a fog

27
 YCLOPS
“It’s not an eye it’s a time-sphincter.”
— Olabuk, mad mage

Nomenclature: One eye, logos-bound, tartaro, siklops, psyclops, kyklopes or

kuklopes
Description: Giant men with a singular eye
Things that are known:
• Giants that have one eye

Rumors and other shadows in the corner of your eye:

• Their primary food source is man
• They forge bolts of lightning
• They act as host to annelids, until their lifecycle advances enough to be able to
feed from humans. At this point, the cyclops discharges them through their eye
into unwilling human hosts
• Cyclopes have vestigial eye sockets with their eye in the center of their head. This
is because in order to become a cyclops, one must remove their eyes
• Cyclopes have white marble orbs in place of eyes. These are quite valuable and
stealing one from a living cyclops is a feat of great daring
• The eye of the cyclops is unique in that it isn’t covered by a lid. It rests as a sphere
in the center of the forehead, hence the meaning of the name ‘round-eye’
• Cyclopes are excellent engineers, working and constructing factories which
produce tekno-steam marvels. They name themselves after elements and
machines: bright, thundering, forge, etc.
• They build extremely sturdy walls alternating stacking bricks to produce solid,
impenetrable barriers. This brick stacking method is known as cyclopean
• Their creativity spills over into agricultural areas, cyclopes being the first beings to
develop agriculture. Legend says that every time they taught it to men, the men
slew them
• Cyclopes can control the weather causing winds to bring them ships and dash
them against rocks below to feast on the human corpses
• Cyclopes are noted teetotalers, becoming enraged at the thought of drunkards or
dipsomaniacs

28
• Cyclopes cleanse their lands of all other life, having firm and immutable borders
that they defend vigorously
• Cyclopes are, at best, as intelligent as a well-behaved dog
• The single eye grants all cyclopes great mental powers, not the least of which is
prognostication, allowing them to see and change the future
• The cyclopes are deeply fearful and mistrusting of magic. They are known to skin
and mount the corpses of halflings on wooden stakes near their lairs, for they
believe the innate qualities of the halflings ward them from arcane energies. The
skin is then brine-cured and dried so that it may be crafted into spell-protective
clothing
• Cyclopes develop strong sentimental bonds with their livestock and designate
individual animals as personal pets that they spare from slaughter. The death of a
beloved pet sends a cyclops into a destructive tantrum of blind rage. Cyclopes
often injure themselves during these tantrums, as they are prone to kick or punch
the stone walls of the caves they inhabit.
• Some cyclopes are jealous of the other races which possess two eyes instead of
one. These cyclopes scoop an eye out from a slain victim and then nail the eye to
their own skull, fracturing the bone just enough to keep the eye in place while
avoiding damage to the brain. The cyclopes will try new eyes or add additional
eyes to their skull in a fruitless pursuit of
enhanced sight
• The cyclops is no man-like
creature, but instead manifests as
a stormy sky, and when
approached, it reveals a malign
milky sphere, a great eye; to
witness the destruction it brings
• Cyclopes are bound by
sorceries of the Pythagoreans,
doomed to live 216 years
backwards

29
 EVILSWINE
“Ain’t every day your food tries to eat you.”
— Ropherius, militia butcher

Nomenclature: Pig demons, orcs, beastmen, feral worts

Description: Pigs that walk as men, or perhaps men who are secretly pigs
Things that are known:
• They are shape-shifters, appearing as either pigs, men, or pig-men
• They cannot change their form under the light of the sun
• They consider human flesh a delicacy
• They are immune to normal weapons
• They have the ability to bewitch, bewilder, and bind humans as servants and
slaves

Rumors and other noises from the pen:

• All leaders of men, kings of nations, and priests of gods are secretly devil swine
• They lair in forests and marshes because they are grown as fungi on rot-pits built
by existing devil swine
• Devil swine aren’t devils at all. They are demons that represent human vice run
amok. Each one is a personification of a cardinal sin: Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Pride,
Sloth, Lust, Wrath. Humans that fall victim to these are transformed into devil swine
• Devil swine never fight fair. They are fond of ambushes
• Their brains reside in their stomach, and they become increasingly agitated as
they become more and more hungry
• They have the ability to summon and control peccaries, small omnivorous wiry
boars with short straight tusks
• They don’t charm humans; they show them their true selves. Their minds are so pure
of id that it breaks down any civilization humans have convinced themselves they
possess, gaining control of their minds as an extension of the devil swine’s own needs
• They have white skin because the outer layer of their skin is a constantly shedding
layer of decaying flesh
• Devil swine don’t charm men; they are infected with a luminous fungal growth that
they spread. This infection is sentient and controls both the devil swine and men
• When you run from suidae, they gain boldness and the character of a man. It is

30
 important to show no fear. The slightest hint will give them the power of men
• Devil swine are invisible to anyone aiming a ranged weapon
• Devil swine are the most filthy of any living creature
• Though they speak and walk on two legs, there is no taming the wild and chaotic
nature of the devil swine
• They carry a curse, because they have been the only animal to wound a god
• Devil swine create new children by using their tusks to remove bark from trees; the
resultant pulp grows into a devil swine by the next new moon
• Any contact with a devil swine will curse you with a malign disease
• The devil swine is actually the ancestor of man, the legendary pig-monkey
• The body of a devil swine doesn’t contain meat, only unwholesome moistures
and humors
• It’s not moistures and humors that fill the body of the devil swine; once slain their
bodies become formless lard
• All devil swine suffer from constant copremesis
• Devil swine do not talk through their snouts, but rather through long slits across
their necks, from when they were slain as pigs
• No more than one devil swine is allowed to die on any day, so killing just one will
drive them all away

Variants:
Devil swine are shapeshifters, but are not ‘true’
lycanthropes. But there have been tales of
them being able to share or extend their
shape-changing magic to dogs, snakes,
and rats also, allowing them to take the form
of men, so long as they serve the devil swine

Combat Tricks:
Food spray: The devil swine sprays out all
the food that’s in its mouth along with bile,
stomach acid, and a bit of wine.
Leg run: Instead of taking any other action,
a devil swine in combat can drop to all fours
and run through the legs of the target

Valuable Resources:
A bezor extracted from a devil swine is
said to be very powerful, and the
rendered fat of their bodies can be a
useful base for candles, salves, and waxes.

31
 ISPLACER
BEAST
“Are you a good enough warrior to hit where your
opponent isn’t?”
— Alonvis, Empyrean Knight

Nomenclature: Dirlagraun, phase cat

Description: A feline jungle predator with the wit and will to kill for sport.
Things that are known
• Displacer beasts project illusion magic from their skin, always appearing 3 feet
away from where they actually are. This ability persists even after the beast’s
death, so that their pelts are prized for cloaks and armor
• Displacer beasts are solitary creatures, living and hunting alone except to mate or
raise young

Rumors and other visions in the underbrush

• Wearing the skin of a displacer beast causes the weak-willed to develop a split
personality; they come to name and fear their illusory selves. Scholars believe this
is because displacer beasts walk on all fours and so occasionally overlap with
their illusion, whereas humanoid creatures are upright and narrow enough to
remain completely separate from it
• A displacer beast always appears to be 3 feet away from where it is, but it can
be in any direction from the illusion, even above it
• Displacer beast hunting grounds are littered with dense undergrowth, sinkholes,
and other natural traps, giving the beast the advantage over its prey.
• They hunt anything in their territory they perceive to be a threat to themselves or
their food supply. Once that’s done, they hunt anything that looks smart enough
to be afraid of them
• Those who walk in displacer beast territory should always do so in pairs, and
boast loudly to each other of their own prowess in battle. Either the beast will be
convinced to seek easier prey or intrigued and keep its distance to hear these
stories to their end
• Displacer beasts sometimes fish with their tails, brushing the surface of the water
with the black-furred tips like the landing of small insects, then snapping up with
their tentacles the fish who come to feed

32
• Long, spiraling rents in tree bark show the path a displacer beast took to the high
branches of trees where they make their lair. Because these rents leave trees
open to diseases and invasive insects, dryads and other tree spirits will go to
great lengths to keep displacer beasts from hunting within their territory
• Blink dogs, feywild tracking hounds with the ability to teleport over short dis-
tances, were bred to serve in ceremonial displacer beast hunts by archfey nobles.
This custom has been largely abandoned, but may still appear in more isolated,
traditional parts of the feywild
• The memory of a displacer beast is generations old; they keep the lessons of their
sires and their sires before them. This is why all displacer beasts have an instinc-
tual enmity with blink dogs and will attack them on sight
• Displacer beasts were bred as soldiers for war, and they got smart enough to
wonder why they had to take orders. Even the memory of their creators is now
scat on the jungle floor
• Displacer beasts are not native to the planet; they are a transplant from another
world nearby
• Displacer beasts aren’t natural animals, but a unique type of fae
• This fey ancestry means they were taught warfare by redcaps and are occasion-
ally ridden by them
• This training is what caused them to rebel against the fey and be banished into
the prime material
• Displacer beasts love the flesh of goblinoids, far preferring goblins, orcs,
and the kind as targets
• Anyone who kills a
displacer beast can
remove its heart and
within lies a pure
shard of evil

Valuable
Resources:
The pelt and skin of a
displacer beast can
be turned into a cloak
or hide armor. This is
very valuable.

33
 JINN
“That’s the thing about wishes. You get what
you ask for, not what you want” — Aruzax,
Ghazan engineer

Nomenclature: Spirit, sand devil, mazakeen, hidden watchers, genie

Description: Spirits with ties to elemental energy
Things that are known:
• They are mortal
• They eat, breed, and mate like men do

Rumors and other visions in the lamp:

• If struck with misfortune and disease, the
cause is likely a djinn
• Djinns cannot enter the prime material of their
own will. Every djinn in existence was
summoned by a wizard
• A djinn is unperceivable to the senses by
default. You can only see a djinn if they allow
you to perceive them
• The djinns bathe themselves in the finest of
wines. Teams of servants are tasked with
keeping a djinn’s bathhouse well-supplied
with a rotating stock of rare vintages from
across the planes. The djinns often drink from
the same tubs they bathe in, sending
themselves into a euphoric stupor. Djinns
do not become intoxicated by alcohol
as mortals do; these stupors allow the
djinns to experience powerful hallucina-
tions that put them in contact with the
divine
• They often take the form of animals in
the wastes or areas that are unclean.
The presence of one of these possessed
animals ensures the area will be foul
until it is driven off

34
• Djinns take great interest in carnal experiences with the mortal races, particularly
humans. They throw drug-fueled parties that last for days within their palaces,
where mortal party-goers often become so intoxicated that they do not sleep for
long periods. An offering of bodily or sexual nature goes a long way in negotiat-
ing with the djinns. Despite strong interest in casual and fleeting encounters, the
djinn love deeply and are known to maintain long-term romantic relationships
with the mortal races, sometimes with multiple partners at a time
• It is very difficult for humanoids to spend time around the djinn. Prolonged contact
with one of their kind causes whispers in the brain and other madness
• Mold, mildew, and disrepair are all signs of the djinns. They like to lair in dingy,
poorly kept, and dark places
• Djinns must eat as humans do, but they prefer rotten flesh and bones
• Djinns fear iron for it renders them powerless
• Djinns live beneath the earth, seething with jealousy at man. They sneak up from
their secret cities to poison wells, abduct children, causing illness, and getting
revenge against those they believed have wronged them
• Djinns are only invisible because humans lack the sensory organs to detect them
• They will frequently paralyze humans while they sleep in order to wake and
communicate with them safely
• Though they may shift their bodies into almost any animal, their preferred animal
is a snake. They are unable to take the form of a wolf, due to spiritual law
• They are actually just shadowy forms and cannot exist physically
• Djinns are renowned as soothsayers as their long life spans make them privy to
many secrets
• There are seven djinn kings, and each has complete dominion over one day in a
week
• They have been known to sneak into houses at night and steal people’s sleep
• They have extensive mastery of various craft-skills, and they are rumored to
possess the ability to turn barren lands fertile
• Although they appear human, they are actually just forgotten and itinerant
human souls bound to elemental energies
• Djinns are agoraphobic. They are so accustomed to their servants and the
familiar, often luxurious circumstances of their homes that they develop a
deep-rooted fear of the outside world and the unknown. They believe that pain
should be avoided at all costs, and unfamiliar environments can quickly become
vectors for pain and anxiety. Djinns therefore employ agents to carry out their will
beyond their extravagant confines. These agents are often mortals, though spirits
are sometimes recruited as well

35
 OPPELGANGER
“But you see, I’m not the Duke of southern Ostland at all.”
— Last words heard by the knight Fineous, as replayed by the
crypt necropticon

Nomenclature: Double goer, doppelgänger, etiäinen, vardøger, ankou, ka,

metamorph, skin-walker, mimic, therianthrope
Description: Metamorphs
Things that are known:
• They are shapeshifters that infiltrate humanoid societies
• They are bipedal, probably
• They can read minds

Rumors and other doubles in the shadows:

• They derive ecstasy from the emotions of fear and confusion. They thrive on
disrupting intimate relationships
• They start their lives by taking over tribes of small dumb humanoids, before
moving on to larger, more complicated power structures
• They are humans who receive training from a rare akashic clan. They are trained from
birth, given strange potions all in service to their clan. They are the ultimate ninja
• Prestige among their races is dictated by the complexity of their schemes. The most
powerful of them simultaneously impersonate dozens of separate individuals
• Master doppelgangers can emulate any forms: fire, fog, any organic or non-
organic substance
• There are no doppelgangers. They are actually you, located in another place or time
• They dwell in a place called the black lodge, where they are trapped, until
released by a demon or the entrance of a naive humanoid
• They have no shadow or reflection
• They are actually born of rare human children, having no race or culture of their own
• They are actually elven children switched with human children. There is no such
thing as an elf, just a face the doppelganger chooses to show us
• In combat, they can change in a dazzling burst, making the opponents uncertain
which is the dopple and which is real

36
• Doppelgangers all suffer from amnesia; they don’t know who they are or what
they are doing. They are just doing what comes instinctually and seems like a
good idea at the time
• They are actually extra-planar and are summoned and bound by wizards
• That isn’t true, the wizards create them like homunculi and claim they are from the
outer planes
• They bargain with states and other socio-political entities, asking for strange
deliveries and indebting themselves to work as spies for short periods
• All rulers of men have been replaced by doppelgangers. They live among us
• They have a compulsion to impersonate and believe they are who they imper-
sonate. They will become hostile and kill anyone who attempts to make them
confront their delusion
• No doppelganger ever dies. When killed their consciousness is reborn in a new body
• They can’t actually survive in civilization for very long because they are just too
alien. They lose their forms both mentally and physically
• They detest others of their own kind
• Doppelgangers are actually very timid creatures having no sense of worth,
believing themselves to be a non-entity. They take other forms in a desperate
attempt to please others and escape their emotional turmoil
• A long time ago, they made an ancient pact with an otherworldly intelligence.
They serve this great outer power in exchange for their abilities
• Doppelgangers may come from any place at any time. They all exist as transient,
detached driftwood through the corridors of time
• The outer intelligence that controls them stores all their souls in an ever-changing box
• Doppelgangers are actually magical plants created by wizards. They grow in
pods that hang from vines where they ripen like fruit
• They are social parasites, stealing identities to give themselves purpose and meaning
• Doppelgangers gain more pleasure from mental pursuits than physical ones
• Doppelgangers view humanoids with contempt, seeing them as aggressive and
egocentric creatures who will never truly know each other
• They are stunted elemental creatures. They steal forms and identities to experi-
ence life. In their own form the world is grey and lifeless
• Doppelgangers follow certain people, watching their thoughts like television. They
get caught up in their lives and make sure to follow all their favorite characters
• Shape-shifting is their religion, and they will ascend once they have assumed
every perfect shape
• Doppelgangers often live in the wilds as animals
• They all live in a great link, a giant pool where they all exist together in liquid form
• They can only hold their shape for 18 hours before they must revert to liquid form

37
• Doppelgangers are mentally unstable. They quickly adopt any odd habits or beliefs
picked up by anyone they contact, which then quickly spread back to their conclave
• In fact, doppelgangers that infiltrate non-doppelganger society for a long time
eventually adopt the culture and mannerisms of the locals until they forget they’re
doppelgangers. They either are the subject of a raid from a doppelganger clan
or have an emotional breakdown when they discover they are a monster
• Some of these doppelgangers see the mental instability as a mirror to their
physical malleability. They isolate living aesthetic lives trying to quell their inner
turmoil by rejecting their ability to shape-shift
• What is beauty to the formless? They only find beauty in their own form when they
are isolated from all other races. They wear their disguises with disgust. With no
home to go to, they have to wander, disgusted by their forms, terrified by exposure
• When they mate with each other, they produce a doppelganger. When they
mate with humans, they produce changelings
• They are thought forms made from concentrated hate and frustrated desires of
one or more people and aimed at an individual which is an object of loathing,
fear, unrequited lust or one that you wish to subjugate
• It is the double of a person in particular (or more rarely a tribe, corporation, or
idea), the master of its face. It is created with the sole purpose of destroying,
humiliating, or replacing that master
• But the doppelganger is filled with complexity and incoherence. It creates a
double that is self-directed and strongly willed. It borrows features from its
hate-donors, shifting faces freely on the way to meeting its master. It pursues its
own bizarre agendas as long as they don’t conflict with the inevitable showdown
• Once the master is destroyed and its mission complete? The funny thing about hate
and lust and loathing is that they don’t just disappear. It is now free to explore the
meaning of its existence. Very often, it seeks out those who created it, its wrathful parents
• They are actually from elsewhere, visiting humanoids and capturing them for study
• Doppelgangers are like honeybees, led by a queen. The personality of the hive is
based on the personalities the queen has copied
• They were originally humans, modified by wizards to be concubines and spies. At
some point, the goose got away from the gander
• Doppelgangers are actually an advanced ooze that has recently picked itself up
and left the dungeon. They just can’t seem to maintain their humanoid form, so
they borrow it from others to prevent returning to an ooze like state
• This has caused a rift in doppelganger society: some wish to pursue a hedonistic
lifestyle, while others become morose and philosophical, turning violent and
loving to inflict pain on those weaker than themselves
• They are secretly a strongly religious culture. They perform rituals in private to
help remind themselves of who they truly are
• They are not just men. Werewolves, mimics, trappers, cloakers, all are doppel-
gangers in different stages of their life cycle

38
• They stole the source of true names and fled where only the damned go. They
have returned, paying another price — their own visage. They imprinted the book
on each of their souls, allowing them to take any form. You may have them do a
task for you, but you must give your name to the book, allowing them the right to
use your own face
• They are violently territorial sociopaths. They do not experience guilt or remorse.
They are driven to succeed and control everything, driven by their utter solitude
• Doppelgangers don’t burn
• They pool their memories in clansmen who become memory wells
• These memory wells allow doppelgangers to take on the skills and knowledge of
those people’s minds contained within
• When unconscious, they revert back to their natural form
• Certain elder doppelgangers can consume the brain of a creature, gaining
access to the memories and personality of the victim
• Doppelgangers believe that the world and everything in it is alive and all
existence is a competition, a test of physical and mental superiority
• They are failed alchemical creations, the detritus of attempts to create artificial life
• Their origin is human, undeniably. Altered by magic, alchemy, or surgery in some
bizarre fashion
• Blood from a doppelganger exhibits life-like traits. It ripples and avoids hazards,
oozing away from them
• Doppelgangers eventually replace every building, person, and object in a city
with one of their kind
• They do not sweat or produce other skin excretions
• They are the liquid sea-formed soldiers of chaos, walking among the stone of the
land to destroy law and all its stable forms. That war never ended
• They often collect rubbish. Small rocks, bits of string, screws, pieces of metal
• Their natural skin appears greasy, but it’s actually dry to the touch and feels
leathery
• Doppelgangers are able to alter their voice to reproduce any sound
• They are immune to charm, and their ability to detect thoughts operates con-
stantly
• After death, their natural form quickly petrifies
• They evolved in a dungeon environment to take advantage of large groups of
unorganized men. A party with more hirelings than it can keep its eye on at once
is particularly prone to a doppelganger infestation
• They lust and desire the wealth of humans — wealth they are unable or unwilling
to create themselves
• They can only reproduce with the aid of humans and leave their children among
human children like the cuckoo

39
 • They do not sleep
• They form their clothing and weapons from their own mass
• They are the stuff of life that first came forth, protean and ever-shifting. Originally
it took on the many varied forms, learning to be born, hold a shape, and die.
Now it has appeared again, perhaps to herald the end of the race of men
• Doppelganger society is founded on honesty and truth, being unable to lie to
each other
• Doppelgangers actually avoid each other because they are the only race they
can’t read, leading to severe distrust
• When they age, they take the form of large structures, forest glens, or other giant permanent
structures and become powerful psionic beacons containing repositories of memories
• This large structure will then birth new doppelgangers
• They respond to their targets, always displaying what each expects to see
• They are each born without a face of their own. They either break off and
worship their own lack of identity or, as is more often the case, just steal one
• They are creatures without a conscience. They just kill and replace people on a
whim, not from malice but simply from habit and temperament
• Their natural form is non-viable. They must change form to breed
• The doppelganger isn’t a separate creature, but your own dark side, released. It
kills your mind, in a very real sense taking over your body and becoming the evil
that lurks inside you manifest
• Doppelgangers exist only as a curse. They do and accomplish what the original
desires, yet cannot itself accomplish
• They are creatures of balance. When a creature, perhaps descended from the
divine, drifts from its nature, a doppelganger appears and reasserts the balance
by their actions. This always ends in misery, and the balancing creature can only
be killed by destroying the original creature
• A religious order is the source of all doppelgangers. Once sought, the god curses
the joiner. They must seek out, defeat, and re-assimilate the doppelganger to be
inducted. Often they die or fail. Once a great many had, they bound together
and brought down the order that created them. They now seek to bring down the
god himself
• They are robotic killers from the future to kill those who will disadvantage their creator
• They are servants of the gods who kill those who interfere with worship and their
god’s divine supremacy
• They are dreams that survive their dreamer’s death
“Thus it appeared, I say, but it was not. It was my antagonist—it was Wilson, who then
stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he
had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment—not a line in all the
marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute
identity, mine own!”- Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson

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 RAGON TURTLE
“The real question is what dragon is out there fucking
a turtle?” -Albedos, Imperial researcher

Nomenclature: Shellbeasts, living islands, sea dragons, bowsers, turtola, drag-

turte, Lónggui, turtonator, blast turtle, world titan
Description: giant sea turtles
Things that are known:
• They are giant turtles who live in the sea

Rumors and other waves on the beach:

• Some dragon turtles are so large that their shells are mistaken for islands
• Dragon turtles very much enjoy the taste of salt. They often suckle on salty
boulders or the anchors of shipwrecks to satisfy their cravings. When agitated or
defending their territory, dragon turtles can spit these heavy objects from their
maws at high speeds to cause tremendous damage.
• Some dragon turtles live as long as 5,000 years. Such dragon turtles have lived
through the rise and fall of many a great empire and know of the oldest secrets
and treasures otherwise lost beneath the waves. Even the most capable elven
scholars seek out these dragon turtles for the ancient knowledge they can provide
• The dragon turtles are the long-abandoned pets of the old golds imprisoned
beneath the ocean floor. The lair of a dragon turtle is likely to contain a portal to
these ancient prisons of unknown horror
• Some dragon turtles are
known to hurl fireballs
and kidnap
princesses

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 RYAD
“Look, it’s none of your business what I do with
my trees!” — Orane, suspicious homeowner

Nomenclature: Softwood, receptive oak, tree sprite, wood witch, hamadryad

Description: A spirit in the female form, bound to a tree
Things that are known:
• They are female spirits bound to trees

Rumors and other knots in the oak:

• Sometimes, when a man is very, very lonely, he finds a strong tree and carves a
gash in it for his relief. It is this seed that the dryad grows from
• The lifespan of a dryad is inexorably bound to the tree’s life. As long as the tree
lives, the dryad will continue to live
• All dryads have a black heart and only desire the destruction of man
• Dryads lair exclusively within oak trees, Daphnaie within laurel trees, Epimelides
in apple and fruit trees, Caryatids in walnut trees, and Meliae in ash trees
• If you impregnate a dryad, the child grows in a seed pod from the tree
• Dryads cannot leave the sight of their tree.
• It isn’t true that dryads are tied to the lifespan of their tree; they are tied to its
existence. Woe betide anyone who uses the lumber of a dryads tree to build a
house or ship, for where the wood goes, so does the dryad
• The dryad exudes spores, so wherever she walks or sits, mushrooms known as
dryad saddles spring up
• Dryads play at being rare, but every tree possesses one
• It is impossible to physically love a dryad for the very act itself would burst the
heart
• They can send bees to communicate messages in the distance. To refuse the
council of a dryad’s bee is to incur their fury and wrath

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• The dryads are born only with one purpose: to attend to the goddess of the hunt
as her companions and attendants
• It is always possible to identify a dryad oak, for the tree will be large, and woven
laurels will rest in its branches
• Their leaves and features change to match the seasons
• They often take in attractive men who are fond of nature to be their mates and
guardians
• They have the ability to bewitch the minds of humanoids, bending them to their will
• Dryads can tree-walk; they can enter any tree and exit any other tree, which
means as long as they are within sight of a tree, they are within sight of their tree.
This is why they know the forested lands so well
• All children birthed by a dryad are female

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 FREETI
“It walked right out of the metal, with skin that shined
like bronze, and wielding a blade, bright-red with
killing heat” -

Nomenclature: Fire demon, bronze men, men of bronze

Description: Beings of fire and bronze
Things that are known:
• They are fire spirits manifest

Rumors and other flames in the kiln:

• Efreeti are made from a mixture of bronze, basalt, and solidified fire
• They are frequently employed in the creation of magical weapons, not only being
excellent steelsmiths but masters of enchantment magic as well
• Just as most life originated in water, efreeti are life that originated from fire
• Efreeti must hold at least 100 ounces of gold on their person at all times; other-
wise their strength weakens, and they become easier to imprison by magi or
sorcerers. This gold can take any form, though it’s most commonly carried as
loose coins, jewelry, or carved trinkets
• All efreeti come from a single city, known as the city of brass, which exists
simultaneously in every universe
• Efreeti consider themselves too honorable to ever speak a lie. Though they may
deceive in other ways or refuse to answer certain lines of questioning, they will
never knowingly speak falsehoods
• Efreeti are intolerable narcissists who cannot bear to acknowledge that they may
ever fall short. The names and noble titles they grant themselves are exceedingly
verbose and change upon a whim. Those who are able to determine and
pronounce an efreeti’s full name and title when addressing it have a significant
advantage in any negotiation with the creatures, for the efreeti become near
entranced upon hearing their own name said out loud by another
• Efreeti make their lairs in decorated palaces, villas, or ornate temples of polished
stone. They adorn these lairs with countless mirrors so that they may always gaze
upon their own fantastical presence. The efreeti commonly enslave goblins or
other lesser creatures and foist upon them the single task of keeping the mirrors
polished to a dust-free shine

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• There is great enmity between fire elementals and efreeti, because the efreeti will
not hesitate to enslave and imprison fire elementals for their own ends
• Being made from fire, they can never have qualities granted by water, such as
connectedness and empathy; every efreet is a psychopath
• The tongue of an efreet will tie itself in knots if the efreet is ever forced to speak
the plain truth
• Efreeti are the spawn of those people who have died in a fire. Their spirit bonds
with the fire, and the result is a powerful efreeti
• The fire in their nature represents passions, and they spend every waking moment
in a carnival of decadence, ravenously desiring only to fulfill their physical needs,
gluttony, mind-altering drugs, lust, and worse
• The efreeti have no power, no magic ,and no strength; they are masters of lies,
illusions, deceptions, and the long confidence game, all in order to impoverish
nations

45
 LEMENTALS
“The earth itself stood against us. Fire walked. What
can we do against such enormity?” — Cadrene
Sergeant Allanso Illon, shortly before his execution

Nomenclature: Mephits, primordials, weirds, furies, atronachs, daedra, genie,

reactionals, eternals
Description: Raw motive elemental energy
Things that are known:
• They are made entirely of their elemental material
• Except when they are not
• When summoned, they may turn on their creators
• They are immune to their own element and resistant to all but enchanted weapons
• They may be kept at bay using magical circles of protections
• They do not eat, sleep, or breathe; or not at least as we understand it

Rumors and other fundamental elements in nature:

• There are core planes. They are Wood, Water, Fire, Metal, and Earth. The
para-elemental planes are Flowers, Mirrors, Liquor, and Paper
• That isn’t true. The core planes are obviously Earth, Water, Air, Fire, with para-
elemental planes of Mud, Dust, Smoke, and Magma, and the quasi-elemental
planes of Lightning, Steam, Radiance, Mineral, Vacuum, Salts, Ash, and Dust
• The elemental realms are far-off and inhospitable places in the material world
• Elementals come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and types, from animal forms
to alien dukes, princes, and kings
• Elemental spirits can be summoned to bring the elements in question to motive
life. They are bound by ancient pacts they long to be free from
• Elementals can control the substance of their element. Fire can be cool or many
different colors, or it can be solid. Earth can be transparent or liquid
• The elements are suits that extra-dimensional spirits wear
• Elements were before us and remember themselves from that time. It is matter
that is enlightened and understands itself
• All elementals come from a single contiguous source that touches our plane in dif-
ferent places, but it all comes to our realm from the same place
• Fire and earth are allied. Earth shelters fire, and fire allows earth to move

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• Water and air are allied, creating weather. They only allied in response to the
alliance between fire and earth
• Gnomes are actually the element of earth that has decided to live, walking the
earth as wizened, stooped things
• Salamanders are the form fire takes when it wishes to live
• Sylphs are the spirits of wind, and Undines are the spirits of water
• Air and water were stymied, unable to take form due to how fluid they were. Until
they stole dust from the earth and heat from fire and together crafted flesh
• Elementals affect your humors, making you sanguine (air or blood), choleric (fire or
yellow bile), melancholic (earth, or black bile), or phlegmatic (water or phlegm)
• The four planes are integrated in some Byzantine complex cycle of renewal
linking them all together. Although incomprehensible, it does mean that each
elemental plane is not purely made up of only its element
• Earthquakes, volcanoes tornadoes, and tsunamis are actually powerful elemental
creatures that come to the material plane to retrieve what they need to reproduce
• They are aliens from another planet known as Elementron. They have visited our
planet and taken the form of the elements that they found. Now they battle for an
esoteric energy source known as elementergon that only they can understand
and use. They only desire to collect it, return to Elementron, and continue the only
thing they care about their endless war
• Aliens from Elementron are sometimes known as deceptimentals and autorocks
• Planes overlap. Under certain circumstances, you might find yourself shifted
between them
• The elements create certain feelings in people. Fire generates all-consuming
hunger; water is fatigue, exhaustion, and a wearing away; earth feels like growth,
tingling crystalline growth; air feels like a chaotic place of sound and motion
• The elementals personify those characteristics
• They are alien and their motivations are impossible to parse
• Elemental planes don’t exist. Magical energy is invisible, and casters clothe them
in an elemental to provide functionality. Like a prism splits light, they take the
energy of magic and split out an element
• Djinni and efreeti are adventurers from elemental planes exploring ours
• The planes are the divine cosmic energy, split from the world by the gods. They
were expelled in all directions. If the world were healed, the prime would again
be whole
• The elementals are “hired” out to spellcasters, because each elemental on the
prime material plane serves as an anchor. If enough of a certain type of elemen-
tals existed on the prime, perhaps a single elemental realm could remerge
• A single elemental realm remerging would be a disaster of incalculable proportions
• Elementals are actually animus spirits that inhabit all objects

47
• The gods before were slain by trickster demons. The current gods are quite vigilant
against their return. To avoid their pogrom, the trickster demons split themselves
among many small shards at a time, placing a tiny sliver inside an elemental. Every
time an elemental is summoned or used, a small piece is left behind. The tricksters
are smuggling their way into the prime, one small shard at a time
• The elementals are physical manifestation of the unraveling in the world
• Elementals are the ghosts of dragons
• Elementals are the pure creative divine energy of a dead god
• Upon death, your soul diffuses into the world. Casters strip out slips of your soul
and animate them ahead of schedule
• Proto-creatures unable to wait until the world was finished entered it too early.
Spell-casters attempt to snatch them up and re-purpose them until the lazy gods
finish the leftovers. This may damage the overall pattern
• Elements vary on local culture, based on what people believe the world consists
of. They are made of various conflicting groups:
ºº Mutare (Change/Birth/Rebirth)
ºº Continuitas (Tradition/Unlife/Death)
ºº Mentem (Dark/Mind/Knowledge)
ºº Puera (Feminine/Cunning/Beauty)
ºº Lumen (Light/Joy/Physicality)
ºº Vir (Masculine/Directness/Utility)
• Elementals are the spirits of men who have died from those elements, suffocation,
burning, drowning, or being buried
• Real elementals take a shape and stick to it: hellhounds, djinns, mephits. Those
elementals that wizards summon are just unformed raw material known as hipster
elementals, who were raw material before it was cool
• Mages thin the boundary. Firmament, raw creation, enters our realm and lives.
This creates both elementals and undead
• Elementals are from certain types more frequently because pure sources are
easier to draw magic from
• Weak mages who thin the boundary indiscriminately create trash, sewer, or
blade elementals. Rural sorcerers might conjure ents or shambling mounds
• Necromancers do this intentionally to raise the dead; however few are as skilled
as they believe. They downplay the numbers slain by uncontrolled undead
• Strange elementals formed from the space between what is and could be are
sometimes formed, being smarter and more unique than their siblings
• Dragons will kill all those who weaken boundaries between worlds
• Elementals are the organs of dead gods. Air comes from lungs, stone comes from
bone, water comes from blood, and fire comes from nerves

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• Elementals that retain their form eventually grow in sentience
• Elemental planes are actually just demi-planes created by creative pseudo-mortal
gods who were masters of wizardry
• What you summon may not be what you expect: a horned snake with bark scales
with eyes that beam moonlight or an organic mechanical hybrid that shudders in
its movements and bleeds oily black ichor
• They have no souls; its soul and body form one singular unit
• There are also elemental planes of good and evil, meaning that demons and
angles are nothing more than elementals of those planes
• This means that there are no fewer than 16 different combinations, good and evil
interacting with each plane. Fire, earth, air, and water; cold, mud, magma, and
dust; barren, pain, darkness, and endings; light, pleasure, fertility, and beginnings
• Elemental planes are just like material planes but rich in material and magic
• Elementals are the foundations of the universe, the building blocks of reality itself
• Elementals only exist for what states matter can take. Earth is solid, water liquid,
air gas, and fire plasma
• Elementals are constraints on infinity itself. Without elementals home planes set in
the inner sphere, infinity becomes troublesome, loses definition, and you find
yourself simply one among uncountable billions of billions
• Known alignments are not the only kinds. There are elemental alignments, held
by animals and raw elementals
ºº Air alignments travel, leaving when things no longer suit. Herd animals are
examples
ºº Earth alignments wait, patiently out-waiting whatever trial assults them.
Hibernating animals and animals that trap or ambush their prey are examples
ºº Fire alignments consume, devouring and using all they can reach. They are
also prone to anger and rage. Lions and wolves are examples
ºº Water alignments hoard and steal. Rats, crows, and small monkeys are
examples of creatures with a water alignment
• They have a hankering for currency, but not of the material sort. . .
• The plane of air is said to be filled with a Djinn Sultinate, huge airships, and
piracy among the floating isles
• The plane of earth is filled with slaves who endlessly toil in mines for their
masters. These factions are in constant, endless war. In these lawless lands, coin
is to be made among old mining towns, forgotten cathedrals, or lawless freeholds
• An endless desert filled with sultanates of brass, fire, sand, and steel, the plane of
fire is a realm filled with obsidian planes, silt seas, and the deadly forces of the
sultanate
• The undersea city of glass is a mecca in which all that matters in the plane of
water transpires. Guilds, factions, whole cities, and betrayals lie within its walls

49
There are archomentals, known as the princes of elemental good and evil
ºº Cryonax, Ice
ºº Imix, Fire
ºº Ogrémoch, Earth
ºº Olhydra, Water
ºº Yan-C-Bin, Air
ºº Uzrith, Earth
ºº Alyolvoy, Water
ºº Behn-Hadar, Water
ºº Chan, Air
ºº Entemoch, Earth
ºº Sunnis, Earth
ºº Zaaman Rul, Fire
ºº Bwimb, Ooze
ºº Chlimbia, Magma
ºº Ehkahk, Smoke
• Extremely powerful wizards can summon swarms of elementals
• Some elementals are amalgamates, mixtures of two types, like a burning tornado,
or a freezing earthen beast
• In fact, the basic types are only the basic ones in the broadest types. There are
actually thousands of different types.
ºº Air: blizzard, zephyr, storm, south wind, pestilence, fog, howling, gust
ºº Earth: plains, dirt, desert, mud, graveyard, dungeon, sand, mountain, crystal,
metal
ºº Fire: cinder, lava, forge, pyre, tinder, hearth, flare
ºº Water: ice, bog, river, sweetwater, blood, whirlpool, sewer, geyser, bile
ºº Wood: thorn, forest, fungal, rose, gallows, moss, vine, rot
• There are four classes of elementals
ºº Lesser (summoned by staves)
ºº Greater (summoned by devices)
ºº True (summoned by spells)
ºº Legendary (summoned by ritual)

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 LAILSNAILS
“Bwaak!” — A mage who thought it would be a
good idea to polymorph a flailsnail

Nomenclature: Conchlias tribualis, conch hydra, spellshields, spiral defenders

Description: Terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs tri’bula caput
Things that are known:
• What sorcery is this?!
• They are 8´ tall on average and have a lifespan of about two decades
• Their shells are covered in kaleidoscopic colors
• The shell also reflects magical spells
• They eat lichen and algae using a radula
• They are immune to fire and poison
• In spite of their abilities, they are essentially blind

Rumors and other reflections of magic:

• The shell not only reflects magic but can distort it
• The shell can also completely nullify the use of arcane energy
• Whatever the case, it is a very useful property to have in a shield or suit of armor
• They didn’t exist until a strange energy surge caused all those doodles in the
margins of old manuscripts where knights cowered from snails to come to life.
Now they wander seeking truly honorable and chivalrous opponents
• They go through estivation where they seal themselves into their shells, protected
by a hardened plug of mucus
• They don’t like light
• Salt is as effective as it is against any gastropod. However, at 8 feet high, an
attack with 20 lb. of salt is equivalent to an oil flask
• Like all snails, they have ‘love darts’. It is as it sounds
• The ‘heads’ (which are actually just appendages) can smash through wooden shields

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 • They are completely
non-aggressive
because they are
actually the sensory
apparatus of a cacogenic
god
• They are an ancient war-
machine of the elves, long
fallen into disuse. The tough-
ness, the protection of the shell,
the resistance versus magic, and
the ability to engage multiple
opponents were all used to fight
underground
• There were only 12 survivors of a great demon
purging of elves, and they were flailsnails — The
ancestors of all living flailsnails today
• The snail itself is just a ‘ride’ extruded from an extra-dimensional portal inside the
shell. While the extra-dimensional travelers explore, the flailsnail attacking
people is simply an autonomic defense
• Sometimes they are left ‘idling’, free to roam with no rider
• It is a fleshcrafted masterpiece, representing war. It is big, resists being ended or
affected by magic, crushes all in its path, and moves in unexpected ways
• All flailsnails are the result of a wish for a perfect mount by a goblin paladin (or
whatever passes for one these days)
• Myconids routinely alter giants snail this way as protection from malicious
kobolds
• They are a crossbreed between a giant snail and a very unhappy cleric
• They are the result of magical pollution. This is why we can’t have nice things
• There are rumors of a rudimentary civilization of flailsnails underground, aping
the culture above in a crude attempt to worship their creators
• This city is said to be ruled by a shelled flumph, worshiped as a flying god
• It is the result of a wish from a greedy fighter. (“I want to have five attacks a
round, magic resistance, immortality, the ability to walk on walls or ceilings, an-”
“That’s quite enough for one wish, mortal”)
• Diseased doppelgangers degenerate quickly. The nerve disorder strikes without
warning, so they craft a magic shell that prolongs their painful existence
• They are automated organic repair drones. What do they repair? Dimensional
rifts. It’s not like the gods have time to do so

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• Their mucus repairs dimensional rifts and can be useful as a protective ointment in
many ways
• They are designed by wizards to be protections for giants. They attach to the
giants back and provide protection from magic and attack anything that
approaches the flank or rear
• Once worshiped by primitives, the modern design of the mace or morning star is
inspired to this day by their appendages
• Their appendages are nature’s way of saying “Do not touch.” They are clearly
labeled and easily avoided
• Wizard pirates entered a contest for “fanciest and most functional ship figure-
head”. Flailsnail won
• They are pests, optimized to devour whatever is available. Novice adventurers
are in great availability
• They were originally an engineered slave species called ‘scrubsnails’ aboard
starships of titanic proportion, working to clean the waste overflow from the engines
ºº The engines of these ships were mutagenic reactors running off the raw energies
of chaos, because that’s the best way to power an intergalactic starship
ºº This caused an infestation of mutant microbia, rat- to dog-sized pests. The
scrubsnails were modified with weapon appendages to combat this threat
ºº This combination of weaponized snails, mutagenic ‘God Engine’ reactors, and
mutant microbes was a perfect storm of safety and performance improvement
ºº The resulting damage to the starship caused it to seek planetfall for repair.
Many of the weaponized snails went missing at this point. This information was
recovered from the records of the Omnipus Unity ST-D :: 13-4321

53
 • The flailsnails are scavengers happily scooshing slowly round dungeons and
caves scraping crud and slime from the floor. This includes slimes, oozes, jellies,
and puddings. This is the source of the snails’ immunity to those creatures and
where it gets the weird energy for their shells
• They crawl giddily, seeking desperately to catch a hidden moment or secret
glimpse as vengeful peeping toms
• The shells don’t reflect magic; they focus it. But the prisms necessary have been
long lost. The shells are nearly impossible to be created naturally, so growing
them via biological organism is the quickest method
• As an added bonus, wizards who use them to focus magic have found they
double as a food processor
• They are actually vat-created sex toys gone rogue and mutated. Six protrusions,
slick ooze, shell for kung-fu grip
• They can assign various properties to their mucus and slime at will. It can be
sticky or slick, flammable or acidic, or even have more rare properties besides.
But never more than one property at a time
• They write great epics in their slime trails
• A great wizard having deciphered the slime trails learned that it is no epics, but
simply the names of those people they once knew when they walked the earth as
men
• The flails aren’t actually bludgeoning weapons. Much like the sundew, they are
sticky paralyzing tentacles that begin to digest prey. Once struck, the snail can
withdraw into its shell, drawing the victim inside
• They don’t actually eat algae. They like to knock their targets prone and then saw
them to pieces with their radula

Valuable resources:
The shell can be turned into a shield that reflects all magic

54
 ARGOYLES
“I’m pretty sure that one wasn’t there yesterday.”
— Egon Burr, Obsward Castle Seneschal

Nomenclature: Stone men, roof demons, stone guardians

Description: Creatures who resemble statuary designed to ward off evil
Things that are known:
• When still, gargoyles resemble statues
• They are immune to non-magical weapons

Rumors and other stones on the parapet:

• The stone from which a gargoyle is birthed determines the type of evil it most
enjoys. Obsidian gargoyles delight in cooking their victims over open flame.
Marble gargoyles prefer to break bones one at a time for as long as possible
before a victim is killed. The more fragile slate gargoyles are capable of crude
necromantic magic that they use to rot the minds of mortals
• In a nod to their original purpose, all gargoyles can vomit a fountain of rainwater,
suitable for drinking and bathing
• Gargoyles turn from flesh to stone,
sometimes at will, sometimes tied to the
cycle of the heavens
• Damage a gargoyle takes while
animate is healed when they turn back
to stone, but destroying the statue
irrevocably kills the gargoyle
• The claws of a gargoyle can trivially
rend stone and steel

55
• Every gargoyle carries a geas, causing them to compulsively perform some
action, or responding with rage when their specific trigger is tripped
• Though gargoyles enjoy working for powerful forces of evil, they will never align
with dragons due to their inherent, longstanding hatred for the creatures. The
mage that created the first gargoyles was maimed by a dragon, and this infliction
has been magically infused into the thin personalities the gargoyles inhabit
• While in their flesh form, they can shift their bodies into different shapes and
forms, which become permanent when they return to stone
• The only way to kill a gargoyle is to drown it
• Gargoyles craft musical pipes out of the bones of their victims. When played,
these pipes mimic the sounds of pained screaming. Gargoyles use these pipes to
lure do-gooders to their lairs for ambush
• Gargoyles are birthed when despicable acts of evil are committed near or within
the buildings upon which they were constructed. Sorcerer-kings have successfully
created gargoyle armies by building entire districts of stone and then spilling the
blood of innocents in the streets
• Gargoyles are actually speakers for the heart of stone, and act as its guardians
and hands working within the world
• Gargoyles are created to defend but hated by their creators
• Gargoyles are crafted by kobolds, under direction of dragons to act as spies
• Gargoyles aren’t monsters but a broadcast network for wizards. They transmit
messages and handle routing local enchantments
• Gargoyles are the final reward for dwarven seneschals. After serving a castle or
building for hundreds of years, their final reward is to calcify into an immortal
guardian of the place
• Gargoyles are statues animated by gods to protect their temples and riches

56
 ELATINOUS
CUBE
“There is a great concordance in the universe, where many places
possess the same result but with quite different causes. . .”
— Mordecai, Gahzan royal scribe

Nomenclature: athcoid, kyboid, qulare, geldra

Description: Coagulated viscous transparent hexahedron
Things that are known:
• Cubes may produce a pseudopod to attack
• The touch of the gel causes paralysis
• They absorb matter. Living matter is digested; non-living matter is eventually
excreted
• The do not move very quickly
• They are able to detect and respond to heat and vibration; and they can alter
their size to fit through cavities as small as one square foot
• They weigh upwards of 15,000 pounds

Rumors and other ripples in the jelly:

• They are not actually cube-shaped; they just expand to fill the available space
• It maintains its shape due to filamentous internal fibers. When killed, these decay
and it dissolves into a wet mess
• They asexually reproduce by budding
• In point of fact, they do not bud, but instead leave small gelatinous polyps
• Cubes are highly intelligent creatures
• If you try to trip a gelatinous cube, it is said to tear the fabric of reality
• It’s nonsensical to try and trip a gelatinous cube, but if you string razor-wire
across a hallway, you can instead fight weakened gelatinous slices
• Trying to slice a gelatinous cube apart won’t work, because it will just join and
reform again like a jelly
• If you cut a gelatinous cube, the surface begins to bud madly, covered in
disgusting polyps, each a baby gelatinous cube
• They were created exclusively to make pit traps more deadly. They are less an
independent creature and more a substance created just for pits

57
• They are simply giant paramecium that have evolved to encompass their local
space to compensate for their blindness
• They have a deadly aversion to salt. Its use dries them out
• They are devoid of any thought, simply being a manifestation of earth (making
them immune to mind-affecting effects)
• When they meet, they join, doubling in size, but later separate into two normal-sized cubes
• They travel by sliding like a slug
• They travel by rolling from side to side
• Actually, their skin has a variety of properties, and they slide by changing the
molecular surface of their surface to increase or decrease resistance, sailing
along dungeon corridors
• They don’t actually move at all; they are all absolutely stable in relation to the
universe and the universe moves around them. The result of all simultaneous cube
movement is geography
• The paralysis effect also anesthetizes prey
• The acidic digestive properties are contained within movable elastic cavities
inside the cube
• They are said to evolve from grey oozes
• They feed on emotions, which strengthen them
• If you feed the gelatinous cube different types of fungi, it grants
the cube different powers, from regeneration to auras to
magical effects. People who have experimented
with this idea universally end up dead
from the plague

58
• They can be found underwater but are more visible and have their paralysis abili-
ties diluted
• Gelatinous cubes aren’t really an ooze or jelly at all, but a broodmother of
goblins. They bud, producing the menace. When goblins age, they crawl into a
depression and liquefy. When enough do this, it can create a new cube
• The creature either has a very rapid adaptation process or dungeons have been
around for a long, long time, on the order of 100,000 years or more
• It is said that their are races mad enough to become gelatinous cube riders. They
wear a ring that surrounds them in a bubble of force and tempt the cube to
absorb them. Once within, they direct the cube by slamming the bubble, causing
it to move in the desired direction
• They are avatars of Mechanus, a quasi-living engine designed to scour chaotic
organic material from the surface of the earth
• Cubes aren’t actually living creatures at all, but a square vacuum held between
the interfaces of seven dimensional bubbles. Touching the surface of these outer
bubbles is what causes the paralysis, as you experience shock. It’s not actually
digestion, but the exposure to a freezing zero-pressure vacuum which causes it to
break apart. This is also why metal and stone are unaffected
• When killed, it maintains its shape and paralytic properties
• They were originally designed as a healing aid and sanitary measure, to prevent
disease and rot. They eventually escaped and evolved into their current form
• If you cut off a piece of a cube and cook it with a base such as quicklime, it
renders the anesthetic properties inert. This produces a bland, nourishing, protein
rich, translucent brown aspic. It is highly valued in subhuman tribes
• Alchemists have a need for gelatinous cubes as an enhancer to extract magical
essences
• Gelatinous cubes are actually leftover material from the construction of the sky,
making it theologically relevant
• They smell of boiled cabbage
• They are created by gathering minor demons (imps, quasits, etc.) and casting flesh to
ooze upon them. The resulting gunk is treated with aboleth slime and purple worm extract
before being poured into a mold, most commonly a 10-foot square wooden mold
• They are not silent; when they attack they yell “Cube!”
• Gelatinous cubes can be captured and altered into other forms and creatures
• It’s an advanced trap, a container for minds. It intends to lure the party into a trap
so that it can exchange minds with one of them
• They communicate with each other by slamming on the ground, sending shock
waves back and forth
• The cubes aren’t the size of the corridor because they expand to fill the space.
The cubes adolescent stage is a rarely encountered volcanic cube that hollows
out new dungeon corridors, perfectly fit for gelatinous cubes deep within the earth.

59
 • On death they ossify and turn into giant cubes and shapes of bone. Sometimes
their sides harden and pit, and giants collect them for use in divination and games
• They have a membrane (skin) that holds their insides in. When killed, everything
inside leaks out

Variants:
Umber (or dung) Cube: It is said that using these to dispose of waste in an earth
closet causes this mutation. This is identical to the normal cube, except the stench
within 10´ is nauseating. They also carry many diseases
Volcanic (or fire) Cube: This is a larval form of the cube. Being more dense, it
has between 4-6 hit dice. It does not paralyze but is resistant to physical damage,
taking half damage from melee attacks. It is also immune to fire and has a fire aura.
These are never found except in the deepest corridors far away from wandering
characters. It breaks down the nuclear bonds between the material, fueling its terrible
growth
Grey (or psionic) Cube: Certain otherworldly experiments on crossbreeding cubes
have given them psionic powers. In addition to their normal features, they have
psionic abilities
Ebony (or black) Cube: Crossed with black puddings, these cubes are no longer
transparent, but much more acidic. Their strikes also do an additional die of acid
damage and have a chance of degrading armor and weapons
Electric (or yellow) Cube: Can discharge an electric aura every 1-4 rounds
doing damage and causing targets to be stunned.
Frost (or dirty white) Cube: A hybrid of brown mold, these cubes grow when
exposed to heat and have an aura of cold doing subdual damage to anyone within 10´
Spell (or pink) Cube: This brain cube is brilliant and can cast spells
Stunjelly (or dungeon) Cube: This is a cube that adapts by not being transpar-
ent, but by taking on the appearance of nearby walls. It smells of vinegar

60
 IANTS
“Yes, I would say we have a big problem” — Todis
Aldan, neo-empyrean archaeologist

Nomenclature: Titans, big folk, goliaths

Description: Large humanoids
Things that are known:
• They are large creatures that resemble men
• They vary in height from 8´ to the size of small mountains
• They are fond of throwing things

Rumors and other rumbles of distant footsteps:

• Many people differentiate giants by the terrain in which they live. That really has
little affect on the nature of the giant
• They are hated by certain breeds of gem dragons
• The terrain actually differentiates the race of giant. Cloud giants are elves, fire
giants are dwarves, etc.
• Fire giants are actually ancient dwarven gods. They fled their home plane where
they were the smallest creatures and came here. To their surprise they were much
larger than even the largest creatures here
• Giants traditionally live in sky castles. There, they mine the clouds for silver
• Giants are all living on a clock. As they age they gradually turn to stone
• Stone giants are giants that have found a way to overcome this curse
• They are a proto-stage of titans or gods
• Gigantic ruins suggest they may have at one time ruled the world
• Certain giants, like fire giants, are the result of ancient arcane experiments that
ruined their civilization
• The giants are nature’s only response to the giant dire cow
• Giants are bestial creatures, collections of the worst emotions of man, too large
to be contained in his small form. They enjoy eating the flesh of creatures that
beg not to be eaten. Instead of cooking their food, they torture it for flavor
• Giants consume as humanity does, just proportional to their size. This is beyond
any sustainable rate, leading to fighting with other races

61
• That consumption is intentional, the giants being the harbingers of the apoca-
lypse, bringing famine and leaving destruction in their wake
• The giants are a rare species whose size determine their intelligence. Once they
were wise titans whose heads touched the clouds
• Giants are good eating
• Their toe jam is surprisingly sweet and delicious. Served with giant toes, it is a
royal delicacy
• They were cursed by the Mother Maggot and have been shrunken and debased.
Hill giants, ogres, and other brutes are all that is left of their once majestic race
• Giants retain magic enough to extract the energy they need for food. Some
giants of course have simply adapted to eating anything, usually stone. This
works out fine until the weather patterns start to change as the mountains are
ground down to nothing. Eventually they move below ground and begin to
consume the earth
• They are the result of gods mating with mortals. They carry traits of their divine
fathers, often seeing themselves fit to rule. However, this is a terrible idea, as they
are a nexus for forces both mortal and
divine that prevent them from being
balanced or reliable
• All giants are slaves to their addictions,
either alcoholism or worse
• Giants are a first draft of creation,
messy and still mixed with the primal
elements. They envy and hate the pure
humans who are free from elemental
bondage
• Giants are simply men of fame and
power. As you accomplish more and
more deeds, you absorb the energy of
shrines and artifacts of the ancients,
and your stature grows. Eventually,
this could lead to divinity
• Giants are animist avatars
that become associated with
an area. They manifest around
large natural structures,
mountains, volcanoes, storms,
hills. . .
• Some manifest around
temporary things e.g. Fog
giants in the morning mist that
fade away as the sun rises

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• Like most fantasy taxonomy, the sages have only covered the most common
breeds. There are cactus giants who stand still in the desert, coral giants who lie
in wait in oceans, giants of waves of grain. . .
• They survive by drinking the blood of men. The magical force inside the blood
provides hundreds of thousands of calories. It is also why giants have developed
such a keen sense of smell
• Everything large fades. The largest fade the quickest. Giants were the first to
leave the mortal realms, followed by ogres. Now humans and demi-humans are
fading, and the time of goblins is coming. Following them, even smaller creatures
will dominate. Giants are only the echo of the past and regret; tales of a world
more filled with magic and truth than the one that exists now
• Giants are fed not by food but by their elements. They are guardians of the
natural world, a literal physical defense mechanism
• They kill humans, of course, because humans are locusts, all-consuming creatures
outside of the natural order
• The giants are hired by the gods. They are masters of reality building and
dimensional manipulation. They come from a realm beyond that knowable by
humanity. After a lifetime of service, they retire, content to be revered as creatures
of ancient wisdom in the shadow realms they once helped construct
• Giants are a form of lycanthropy
• A little known subset of arcane lore stipulates that any elemental subject to
summoning by the wizard is allowed to return and engage in some form of
obscene congress to obtain key genetic materials. Once completed, the elemen-
tal returns and gestates a humanoid. The resulting humanoid is a giant, a creature
that one day the elementals hope will replace all life with their own chosen race
• Giants are actually domestic spirits. Ettins come to vent wrath upon those who anger
you, ogres of rebellion, and true giants of emotions more powerful. Fire giants are a
miasma of rage, mountain giants depression. They are emotions made manifest
ºº This is also the reason giants are so human-looking, they are simply manifesta-
tions of what lies within all men
• Because giants are simply psychic projections, you don’t fight them by dodging
them physically. You manifest a psychic projection of a giant version of yourself to
fight them. These projections may or may not look like giant bad-ass robots
• This is why dwarves and halflings get their bonuses versus giants: because they
are so full of themselves and overconfident
• When the wickedness of humanity becomes too great, it bleeds over into the fey
kingdoms. They, being wise and long lived, collect and concentrate this evil until
it reaches an intolerable level. They birth this destruction into a giant form which
then haunts the kingdom that created it. Giants are the conscience of man
• They are prideful and arrogant creatures
• Tiny dimensional beings wanted to visit, so they took a friendly meat form of the
enormous humans they saw. They overdid the size a little. Oops

63
 ºº They began by trying to pretend they were normal sized, but that didn’t work
very well. Now they are stuck and regret their initial miscalculation. They keep
trying ways both physical (hunching over) and magical to become smaller.
Many have just become bitter, frustrated, and angry and lash out
• Wizards who lost control of incantations like ‘enlarge’ and ‘flaming sphere’ often
found themselves stuck in strange magical forms. Those that were stuck this way
were hunted and eagerly vivisected by their peers
ºº This led to the current situation today, those crusty nutjob social pariahs who
couldn’t even master magic and then were hunted by their peers were off to a
misanthropic start. Things did not get better as time marched on
• Giants come from a fallen other world. In this far realm, everything was much
larger, and giants were unaware of their size
• A great disaster came as gravity became heavier, and all the giants’ plants died. The
few giants that remain are brutes, who stoop while they scavenge what is left. Only
the smallest and least capable were able to survive by hibernating, only waking to
consume and destroy huge amounts of food and human lands before sleeping again
• They are recruited as siege weapons and can catch rocks. This is often a surprise
to the catapult team that targeted them with the rock
• Giants do not actually have a stable size. When you face a giant in the distance,
they appear to be huge monstrosities But if you face one bravely in combat, you
discover it is not so large. The giant shrinks even further when struck, until finally it
shrinks down upon death to a mere eight or nine feet tall
• Giants keep giant animals as pets. Giant goats, beavers, and hamsters mainly
• Giants are said to have magical powers to control the weather, levitate, hide
themselves in fog, or more
• There are six true giants; all the rest are reflections
ºº Cloud, fire, frost, hill, stone, storm

Combat Tricks:
The sweep attack: Hit multiple man-sized targets and knock them back or prone
The throw: Pick up a single man-sized target and hurl them
The bite: Pick up a single man-sized target and bite off their head
The rock hurl: A ranged attack
The earth stomp: Stomp the ground causing everyone within a radius to make a
saving throw or fall over
The shout: A scream that stuns all targets in a cone
The hot air: A blast of wind that knocks targets over, extinguishes flame, and
prevents ranged attacks. For giants over a certain threshold of hit dice (or cold-
natured) can also be a freezing attack

64
 NOLL
“They stopped fighting to eat Aeolta in the middle of the fight.
We might not have won otherwise.” — Horace, sellsword

Nomenclature: Hyenamen, fleshgnawers, yeenoghumen, flindservants, hunger-

men, laughing death, tantekurash, fangs of Yeenoghu
Description: Upright, humanoid hyena-men
Things that are known:
• They live in nomadic pack societies in plains or foothills, surviving as hunter-gath-
erers and scavengers

Rumors and other shrieking hysterics:

• No two gnolls have the same pattern of spots or stripes. These patterns are as
unique as a fingerprint
• Gnolls cannot see creatures clearly, only their shadows. They use these shadows
to determine the power and strength of their opponents
• Gnolls gather and hoard such shiny objects as they can carry with them like
seashells, broken glass, and precious stones. They guard these small hoards
jealously. Gnolls treat the priceless and the worthless with equal devotion and
would kill as swiftly for a bit of broken glass as they would for a fist-sized ruby
• Female gnolls can consume the still living, and then mate fervently with a
summoned demon. After this mating, they immediately give birth to a litter of
demon-gnolls, who mature within the day. This ritual can be performed continu-
ously as long as their are living victims available to feed the matron
• If a demon infested gnoll kills a creature, immature gnolls who feed on that
corpse become adult gnolls at the setting of the sun
• A gnoll never keeps his word. In fact, the surest way to survive an encounter with
a gnoll is to make it promise to kill you
• Gnolls often exhume fresh graves to eat the heart of the deceased and gain its power
• Meeting a gnoll’s gaze allows wild magic to crawl through your eyes and steal
your soul. Their laughing barks in the night are captured souls trying to escape
from the gnoll’s clutches
• Not all gnolls are touched by evil; some are avatars of nature and serve the
interests of fey and the natural world
• A gnoll’s laughing howl is the fragment of an ancient spell. If all the fragments
could be heard and understood, the spell within could grant any wish

65
• The brutality of gnoll torture is ecstasy, causing some slaves to turn and follow
their masters into battle
• A child who wanders into a gnoll camp is lost for certain, for if it is not killed and
eaten, it will be claimed by a gnoll mother and raised as her own. No one can
say which of the two will happen, or which of the two is worse
• Gnoll packs constantly battle. If a pack lord is defeated, he is dragged onto a cairn
of stones and his still-beating heart is eaten from his chest in front of all his followers
• Those who accept wildness for its balance among all things may pass through
magic and become centaurs. Those who thirst for violence and chaos may be
cursed to become gnolls
• Gnoll psyche requires a pack, and they will adapt to a ‘found’ pack and its
morality if separated from their own kind
• The title for gnoll leaders is “Hogger”
• Gnolls are both anthropophagous and necrophagous
• Gnolls are actually a very chill and relaxed people, but demand a fight before
they can relax and be more civil
• Gnolls consider pickled chicken eggs a delicacy of sublime euphoria. They will
go to any length to acquire them. Sadly vinegar is toxic to gnolls and their
presence causes chickens to go insane. This puts making the eggs themselves out
of reach
• Gnolls love gold, as the touch of it to their skin causes them to experience a mild
buzz, but despise the actual labor of mining gold. This leads gnolls to enslave
others to create working mines, or raid areas known to possess large amounts of
gold
• Gnolls hate manual labor and are fanatic stans of torture. Not only do they use
torture to force other creatures to serve their will, every gnoll has extensive
knowledge of torture techniques and lots of opinions about the effectiveness and
quality of different types. It is these differences of opinion that cause gnoll clans to
war with each other
• Gnolls were once the wisest creatures to walk in the darkness when the world
was new. Then they looked and had compassion on the lower creatures who
could not smell the worm in its tunnel or hear the fish in its pond. So the gnolls
used their great wisdom to speak to the sun and convinced him to come nearer
and brighten the earth. But the blinding light of the sun’s gaze and the shattering
scream of his voice drove them mad. Now gnolls wander the low places of the
earth as wretches and vagabonds, for no good deed goes unpunished

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 OBLINS
“Can’t get rid of ‘em ‘less we get rid of nasty thoughts.”
— Unknown

Nomenclature: gobblin, gobeline, gobling, goblyn, gobino, and gobbelin

Description: A monstrous creature, small and grotesque, malicious, and full of
greed

Things that are known:

• They are never more than half the height than the most intelligent creature they
know of.

Rumors and other echoes of gibberish:

• Some say goblins can fly, using wings. Sages have never found wings, but some
skin that stretches between their arms and body allow them to fly. Still others
claim these are nothing more than matted cloaks, not part of the goblin body
• Goblins are creatures that haunt a specific place or country
• Goblins are born every time an evil thought or idea occurs. Once the mind is done
with it, the thought seeks out a pile of filth and animates it, becoming a goblin
• They are a fungus that grows on the unburied dead
• Goblins are a myth; the name is simply a slur for a tight-knit guild of craftsmen
who make and sell tumblers, beakers, and cups — they are Gobloters
• They rest in hollows made in rocks and earth, making it dangerous to have
unpacked and wild earth
• The belief that they rest in hollows is wrong; those are actually access points to
the world where goblins live. It’s how they enter the prime material plane
• Because goblins primarily take items from all humanoids, locating a goblin
market will give access to many unique, rare, and hard-to-acquire items
• The problem with goblin-grown fruit is the uncertainty of what soil they fed,
hungry thirsty roots?
• The only thing more delicious to a goblin than horseflesh is man-flesh
• Goblins are both mechanically and magically inclined, but their thoughts run
counter to all right-thinking people
• Goblins are manifestations of chaos, limbo made manifest, and they are driven
mad by the structure around them

67
• Goblin isn’t a name for a race; certain creatures are just born too ugly. This physical
grossness corrupts their spirits, turning them into the spiteful creatures we all know
• Goblins are invisible to everyone; only their target of mischief can see them
• Goblins have terribly sensitive feet; this is why smart goblins wear stone shoes
• Goblins are actually sentient toads. They have grown larger and more disgusting.
This is why they all wobble when walking
ºº This is actually why their voice sounds so cracked and broken; they are just
croaking words
• Goblins are clearly tiny narrow creatures whose limbs look just like sticks, and
whose heads look like piles of refuse
• Goblins, like moles and other burrowing animals, can burrow through earth and
stone; this is why all gnomes know the goblin speech
• Goblins are disturbed by cleanliness. Where humans have a disgust threshold,
goblins have the opposite. Goblins are repulsed by areas that are well-kept and
are free of germs, dust, bacteria, fungi, mold, rot, filth, refuse, and insects
• Goblins are so hard to catch and kill because they move through the most difficult
lands as if blessed by the god of swiftness. Briars, bushes, trees, boxes, limbs,
rubble — none provide any impediment to their speed.
• Pious men and women are blind to the presence of goblins
• They will flee from the crowing of a cock because they fear the coming of the day
• Fully half of all grown-ups and one-sixth of all children can never see goblins,
even when capering in front of their noses
• Goblins have no language, communicating in grunts and shrieks like monkeys
• Goblins are a special promotion mission for demonic larvae. It’s a test to see how
much chaos they can cause, to see if it’s worth promoting the demon
• Goblins speak a tonal language with dense, layered meaning; it is nearly
impossible for non-native speakers to achieve fluency
• Goblins will beg, cower, and plead at the slightest hint of aggression; they don’t
even have a word for “courage” in their language
• Goblins have a face-saving culture based on honor and shame. They live in a
complex class system with a thousand and one courtesies and privileges due the
ranks above them
• Goblins are the most persistent threat to an organized society. An adventurer can
have no higher calling than to slay goblins and only goblins
• Goblins build clumsy, ramshackle shelters because that is the limit of their ability
• Goblin numbers are far higher than anyone can believe. There are millions of
goblins for every humanoid. If they ever were to swarm, it would be the death of
the world

68
 • Goblins can make more from twigs, string, and other refuse than a skilled architect can
do with quarried stone and mortar. Their ingenuity is limited only by their resources
• Goblins are agile and quick because their marrow is like rubber—their bones
bounce
• Every time your focus drifts, it gives birth to a goblin
• Goblins aren’t evil, just filled with energy; they are unable to feel fear or pain,
and have no impulse control
• Goblins range from slight and nimble to broad and ponderous; the only way to
know whether you’re dealing with a very large goblin or a very small dwarf is to
pull on its beard
• Goblins are masters of poisons because each goblins blood is a unique type of
poison. The most deadly become “poison mothers” for the tribe, as they are tied
up and fed as their blood is drained to become poison for other members of the
tribe

Variants:
Redcaps: Some goblins stain their bodies and clothing with human blood; they are
aggressive and violent
Hobs: These are masters of deceptions, pranks, and tricks, following a target and
helping luck turn against them
Erlking: A forest goblin that stalks children for not giving them respect when they
enter their land
Trasgu: This is a nervous goblin with holes in his palms who move things around at
night while making spoooooooky noises

Combat Tricks:
Slippery: When an attack misses against a goblin, they have scrambled out of the
way and may move anywhere nearby: behind a table, on top of a helmet, hanging
on to the wizards backpack. . .
Goblin shaman: Goblin shamans can summon swarms of stinging insects, entangle
players in writhing vines, and curse enemies with misfortune. When they do any of
these things, goblins heal and gain morale
Leader strike: When a goblin leader strikes an enemy, it provides all of the goblins
surrounding that person the opportunity to strike
Poison blades: Goblins coat their weapons in mild poison. Goblins with goblin
poison cause people to become sick when struck, causing nausea
Riders: Goblins tame and ride wolves and horses
Valuable Resources
Goblin bezoars are said to be of great use for enchanting potions, able to reduce the
cost of crafting and increase the power of the tonic by intensifying ingredients. Like all
things goblin, this is not without side effects

69
 RIFFON
“They say the griffon can’t live without her man, but I seen
more than one man broke by the loss” — Edgar, houndsman

Nomenclature: Bird-horses, grifforse, gracks, fonhorse, griffin, gryphon, shirdal

Description: A creature that is a mixture of eagle and horse
Things that are known:
• They can fly
• They can be ridden by men

Rumors and other currents in the sky:

• Griffons are bred and raised exclusively by cyclopes who live near gold mines
• Griffons will only lay their eggs in a nest filled with gold nuggets
• There are different breeds of griffon, depending on the bird or horse used:
corvid-griffons, hawk-griffons, and more
• Corruption will cause a dragon to be born with a lizard-like head. These are
exceptionally dangerous and must be killed, as they corrupt the land and animals
around it
• Griffons are amazing mounts
• In order for a paladin to bond with a griffon, he must trade hearts with the
griffon, tying their lives together
• Griffons have the ability to summon storms and winds with their wings
• Griffons pair for life. If their mate dies, they will go for the rest of their life without
taking another mate. If they bond
with a rider, they will never
mate
• The claws
and feathers
of a griffon
possess
healing qualities,
said to heal mortal
wounds and allow
the blind to see

70
 ARPY
“I just had it, and she swiped it right out of my hand. Now
I gotta go make another sandwich!” - Mort, druid

Nomenclature: Karens, harpyiai, harpyia, hounds of Zeus, air hags, xanthippe,

termagant, scolds, fishwives, sea eagles
Description: a creature that is a mixture of woman and bird
Things that are known:
• They can fly

Rumors and other conversations with the manager:

• Sometimes, women who used their beauty to manipulate men, when their
physical beauty fades, become bitter and resentful and transform into a harpy
• Birds who are fed human milk mature into harpies
• Harpies are what naughty boys and girls who talk back to their parents will turn into
• Harpies use the disemboweled corpses of their prey as natural incubators for their
eggs. When harpies mate, their murderous bloodshed only increases as they seek
to gather enough fresh corpses within which all of their eggs may hatch. When the
babies are born, the parent harpies nourish them from the same corpse, feeding
them the flesh, sinew, and bone marrow that has not yet decayed
• Their faces are always ragged with hunger, and they only desire to fill their gullets
and abate the constant pain
• Harpies decorate their lairs and mark their territories
with the bones and desiccated entrails of their victims.
They construct foul gore amalgams called “flesh
scarecrows” using the body parts of various corpses.
When working in the service of hags, as they often do,
the flesh scarecrows are animated by the hag’s magic
to serve as mindless servants or protectors
• They are spirits of the wind and lurk nearby
humanoids to steal food or other items at hand
• Harpies don’t actually lack for male affection it’s
just that the men are usually married or want to
keep the relationship on the down-low,
leading to the traditional harpy mood

71
• There is no force on the earth below or the sky above that rivals a harpy’s wrath
• Harpies hold grim, primitive torture festivals during the waxing moon. Multiple
victims are saved for a single night of sadistic debauchery, wherein each
participating harpy is assigned a single victim. The harpy that causes their victim
to scream the loudest and longest until death is determined the winner and
granted the reward of first rites to eat the still-warm hearts of every victim before
the remaining meat is divided amongst the rest of the tribe
• They live in an environment of filth and stench, and they contaminate anything
they come near
• Harpies are an essential part of the ecosystem, for it is their wings that stir the
winds to blow
• Harpies are very nimble, and their feathers are said to deflect the blows of
weapons
• It is uncertain if harpies pick twisted black knotted trees as nests, or whether the
harpy nest causes trees to become twisted, black, and knotted
• Harpies are born when women ensorcell men in falling into love with them, by
skinning a freshly buried corpse and wearing it as a belt while entreating the
devil for aid. After one day and night, she ties it around the man whose love she
desires, and when he wakes, he willingly marries the now cruel and evil harpy
• Although beautiful, all harpy songs are death to those whose souls are soothed
by the music
• People do not regret their debauchery among the harpies, but their friends and
family that they leave behind mourn the person who once was
• Harpies are like vultures, but instead of seeking meat, they seek to snatch the
soul at the moment of death
• Harpies are the children of gods and responsible for
bringing and removing the nighttime
• Harpies love to torment the blind, moving things
around them, and snatching things from their
hands, and when the blind seek
help, people tell them it’s
just the swift storm
winds

72
 ELLHOUNDS
“No, Prince Erik, the hellhounds Neves released cannot be
ignored for your spring retreat.” — Lambert, exhausted
seneschal

Nomenclature: Nessian warhounds, demon dogs, garmr, death hounds

Description: A hound of fire and flesh
Things that are known:
• They are intelligent hounds
• They have the ability to breathe fire

Rumors and other flickers in the fire:

• Hellhounds are the guard dogs of hell
• They have pitch black fur, are larger and stronger than normal dogs, and have red eyes
• A true hellhound is bound with a collar and chain of hell-steel that trails along the ground
• They have the ability to step through shadows
• Hellhound pelts are permanently stained with the blood of their kills
• The “fire” that hellhound breathes is actually a form of acidic bile
• Hellhounds are what happens when a fire gets bored and decides to go explor-
ing
• Warlocks who have sold their
souls to devils can only take
one form, that of the
hellhound
• Hellhounds are
spawned in pairs, as
servants to devils, and
when the keymaster
reaches the gatekeeper, the
devil is summoned
• Hellhounds can only sleep in graveyards
• Although cruel and vicious, they are
exceedingly loyal and protective
• Everyone sees a hellhound once in their life, soon
before their death

73
• They smell of brimstone and burn areas through which they pass
• Hellhounds are just rumors spread by ignorant peasants who didn’t know how else to
describe a mechanical dog
• They hunger for the flesh of human children
• You can breed a hellhound by feeding the burnt flesh of a unicorn to a trained hound.
Soon a hellhound will grow inside its guts, until it bursts free, killing the host and eating
its flesh for sustenance
• Hell hounds are the only way to banish demons without magic. They can consume the
demon, banishing it from the prime material
• Hellhounds are what happen to wolves that feast on goblin and greenskin flesh

74
 IPPOGRIFF
“That ain’t no eagle ‘griff; it’s a roc if ever I seen one! By the
gods, I thought you was gonna pull that hackamore rope in two
before the music stopped. Hop down off that colt’s back and let
him breathe a little. Boy howdy, wait’ll I tell the rest of the hands
about this.” — Joe Cooper, hippogriff tamer,

Nomenclature: Hippogryph, hipogryf, hyppaegriiph, hjiyp’o’th’jryfph

Description: A creature with the front half of an eagle and the back half of a horse
Things that are known:
• Hippogriffs are born of a mare and a griffin and are prized as steeds for their
impossible swiftness

Rumors and other whistles on the wind:

• Hippogriffs display a lot of regional variation among species depending on their
habitat. For example, a smaller breed with pinto coloration and the body of an
osprey lives in an isolated northeastern archipelago. This breed gathered wide
acclaim and an enthusiastic following after a series of nostalgic penny novels
was published with the creatures as a centerpiece
• Hippogriffs have such magic they can carry a rider safely to the moon and back
• Hippogriffs have excellent insight and can determine whether a potential rider is
worthy. This is why it is always good to show courtly respect to a hippogriff—it
doesn’t hurt your chances
• Only a champion pure of heart and about a holy quest may ride a wild hippogriff
• Wild hippogriffs are nearly impossible to break to saddle or reign, since being
thrown from their back at altitude is fatal. Some skilled horsemen specialize in
taming wild hippogriffs and do so with a complex system of adamantine tethers,
nets, and the featherfall spell. These horsemen are called windbreakers
• Hippogriffs are little better than carrion eaters, great big vultures with a mean
streak a mile wide. They’d just as soon kill ya as look at ya
• Since hippogriffs prefer large, open spaces of ground but can also ascend to
inaccessible heights they often congregate on high mountains or buttes
• The ancestral home of all hippogriffs is a butte in the far plains so high that when you
first see it, you can walk toward it for a whole day and it will not seem to have changed
size. Hippogriffs were thought to be a myth until witnessed by the first person to reach
the top of the butte without the aid of rope or piton. The hippogriffs honored his
courage and skill by carrying him and saving him the dangerous climb down. He was
the first hippogriff rider; all others learned the art of riding a flying steed from him

75
 YDRA
“At first I thought it was a snake, den two snakes.
‘da third head gave it away.”
— Holfandun, Othlandic cook

Nomenclature: Reptilia hydroza, many-headed reptile, chthonic water beast,

hydroraptor, water serpent
Description: A water reptile with multiple heads
Things that are known:
• They are reptiles
• They often live in swamps or near water
• They have multiple heads

Rumors and other serpents in the swamp:

• Hydra isn’t a separate creature. They are actually reptile elementals
• Each hydra starts off as a genius. However, when they are forced to regenerate or
grow a new head, their intelligence is forced to be split between each surviving head
• Something about the regenerative powers is easily influenced by the elemental
planes. When fire influences a hydra, you get a pyrohydra, and when ice does,
you get a cyrohydra
• Hydra does not refer to a specific creature but rather a mutation or disease that
grants extra heads
• There are rarer elements that affect hydras, from chronohydras to mirror hydras,
radioactive to vacuum hydras
• There is always one head that plots against the others. It strives to secretly
acquire aid, which is difficult being that it is attached to the other heads
• Hydras are not quadrapeds. They are actually bipedal
• Several varieties of hydras exist: winged dragon types, slow moving swamp
types, serpent types, and even types that walk like a man
• There is a dimension of snakes, and hydras are just ancient reptiles who contain a
genetic code that grows a mobile portal to that realm
• Killing the snakes just allows more to work their way through the portal, but
whatever you do, make sure to close that gate. If a hydra body ends up wedging
it open, a whole circus of snakes can pour out

76
• Hydras only have a single head, but it is displaced throughout time. That is how
so many heads appear from a single neck
• A hydra’s heads are not actually heads. They are just tooth and spiked tentacles
that appear to be heads. Its actual head is in its tail
• That is a particularly nasty rumor that has no truth to it. Its brain and organs are
all safe inside the armored body, and its real mouth is a sucking orifice in its belly
• Hydras don’t really ‘grow new heads’; they are just actually better regenerators
than trolls
• That said, each part of a hydra cut off will grow a new hydra. Once there was
just one, chopped into a million pieces by brave heroes
• The hydra isn’t a predator at all. It’s a freshwater filter feeder, needing many
heads to siphon plankton, small fish, and algee from the water. They are the most
peaceful of swamp creatures
• Hydra isn’t a creature, but the titanic form that the apocalypse comes in, each
head devouring a part of the world
• It isn’t just the heads but all limbs that grow back, hence the origin of the hydra-
centipede
• Not only is their breath poisonous, but also their blood and even the tracks they
leave on the ground
• Hydra is simply a word to describe the endless hordes of reptile peoples in the
swamp. They are the hydra, stealing and raiding from the edge of civilization
• The hydra is a boneless creature, supported by hydrostatic pressurized vesicles
• Hydras don’t eat meat; they actually drain all liquid from their prey. They are
hydroraptors (water-thieves)
• Hydra heads once cut off leave stumps that regrow new (or multiple) heads. This
can be cauterized by fire
• They can also be effectively cauterized by electricity or acids, which can work
much faster than fire and reduce the risk of blood poisoning
• Hydras are actually squid
• A hydra’s tongues can predict the weather by changing colors
• If cauterized, the heads never grow back
• Hydras are docile herd animals, raised for food. They have multiple heads due to
breeding practices to increase the yield of the head which is used to make
delicious soups and jellies
• They hydra will continue to grow heads as needed, but when it reaches the high
teens, its blood pressure goes too low to maintain consciousness. Slowly, as it
rests, many of the heads are reabsorbed after a number of hours
• The above is a lie, because as magical beasts, the hydra has nothing so prosaic
as blood. The growth is caused by the salty tears of innocent slaughtered
animals, slain without propitiating the spirits of the forest.

77
• Hydra eggs are quite valuable
• The hydra is no reptile, but a mobile aggressive plant
• Hydras, experiencing aggressive unpopularity due to their “All mobile things are
food” international relations policy, have a strong preference to lair in dismal out
of the way places
• The hydra has only a single brain, meaning psionic attacks, charms, and other
features do indeed only need to be applied once against the hydra, not against
each head
• The former piece of information is an ancient propaganda piece by the hydra
ministry of public relations. Don’t be caught off guard!
• Hydras love riddles; in fact, it has one for each head. If you can solve all the
riddles, it will allow you to have its hoard. Answer incorrectly, and the hydra will
attempt to make you into dinner
• Yuan-ti are servants of the hydra, each desperately hoping to be blessed with the
honor of becoming a hydra itself
• Hydras are the weaponized result of possibility harvesting. The hydra is just a
single large snake, but each head is simply the altered positions all manifesting at
the same time. This means on any give round a hydra has 3-18 heads
• A multi-headed hydra only has one head, inside the mouth of which is another
head, like a matryoshka doll. It’s heads all the way down
• Hydras are living beings with fractal DNA
• Someone once made a wish to never be lonely. Every hydra ever is the result
• The hydra has a regenerative organ deep within its body. It is coconut-sized and
gristly and is called a terratocopia, shaped like a strange, juicy sea-shell.
• Many people, especially elves, believe that powered terratocopia is the cure to
any ills. Especially erectile dysfunction
• Each hydra is not a separate beast but an individual sensory organ of a much
larger creature. They are extensions into this dimensional realm and learn about it
much like babies, by taking the things within it and consuming it
• A hydra is like a rat king but for dragons
• Hydras are an endangered species. This is purely coincidental and has nothing to
do with the terratocopia or any culture’s specific believes about said organ
• A maiden per head surrounding the hydra works as an effective method of
neutralizing the beast. Spread in a circle equidistant from the hydra results in
confusion
• The hydra is a natural apex of Lamarckian evolution. The regeneration abilities of
the lizard are taken to extremes and produce a succession of multi-headed
beasts, not immediately or obviously related to the hydra
• All hydras are related to the ur-hydra and as such are psionically linked

78
• Hydras gain immunity to an attack that removes a head, making the single or
double-headed hydras the most dangerous
• Hydras aren’t monsters! It’s the name of a refreshing summer pastry with ice-
cream filling and seven raisins served at the forty-four courts of the vile queen
Ayuwainya
• Each head believes itself to be the main head and is conflicted between protect-
ing the body and eliminating its competition
• There are no hydras, but there are anti-hydras, with one head and multiple
bodies
• Hydras are kept as pets by ettins who give them each one name per head
• Hydra, reproduce asexually by budding
• Hydras have horns that are not used in combat. The females’ horns are shorter
than the males’
• They can see in the dark with no problem
• The hydra isn’t a reptile but is actually a type of land jellyfish, distantly related to
coral
• Hydras are magic creatures that require no food. They kill out of inborn aggression
and pleasure. Soon even this grows dim, and they become insanely aggressive
• Hydras are actually a larval form of medusae
• It’s actually the other way around: a medusa that lives long enough becomes a
hydra
• Hydras are former pets flushed by elven owners once too big for their aquariums
• They hydra is actually a normal river serpent, affected by a terratic virus. It
reproduces by shedding the virus in waters where it prefers to live. Eventually, it
becomes ill and overwhelmed, resulting in a frenzied, demented final stage
characterized by staggering regenerative powers. If it survives long enough, its
whole body sloughs away and collapses in a mass of aggressive tumors
• Fish & Game designed and introduced the hydra as a simple fish control measure.
The fact that they aggressively eat every native species, including humans, was
an unfortunate side effect
• Hydras are actually mutated fish or possibly plesiosaurs
• Hydras fling themselves at knights and other monsters, because when they have
too many heads, they can’t move to feed themselves and starve

79
“The hero Arthix promised the Lord of Thambar that he would nullify a particularly
troublesome seven-headed hydra that dwelt in the bottom of a well and guarded a
gem called ‘the Heartstone’ that the Lord coveted. Arthix asked for the loan of seven
of the Lord’s tenderest and most desirable concubines. These he chained in a circle
around the well, each one the exact same distance from the well and an equal
distance from each other — like numbers on a dial. The hydra crawled up from the
well with each head looking in a different direction as was its custom. Each head saw
a writhing, shrieking, delicious concubine and each head strained to pull the beast
towards that desired morsel, but each head was equally strong so the beast remained
stationary. Arthix snuck in, stole the Heartstone and buggered off. One of the concu-
bines managed to wriggle free of her chains, and, likewise, buggered off. The head
that had been eyeing her turned its attention to the next concubine in the circle. . . sud-
denly that concubine had two heads looking at her, and the hydra pulled itself in her
direction, devoured her and then devoured the other five concubines in turn. The Lord
of Thambar was furious. The escaped concubine followed Arthix back to his boat and
professed her undying love for him. After they escaped the island together, she
chopped off his head with his sword while he slept, threw his body overboard, sailed
for the mainland and used the proceeds from the Heartstone to live life on her own
terms rather than having to be a concubine for the Lord of Thambar. The Lord of
Thambar was furious, but wasted his time looking for Arthix (who was fish food).“
- Stephen Poag

80
 NVISIBLE
STALKER
“There was nothing here. . . and it killed him.” — Olish, stunned cook

Nomenclature: Invisible walker, soul spirit, invisible assassin, deadly wind

Description: A stronger, more cunning variant of air elemental often summoned to
do the bidding of arcane practitioners

Rumors and other whispers under your breath:

• Invisible stalkers are more defined by what isn’t known about them. The exact
number of invisible stalkers in the world is unknowable, for they have no distin-
guishing physical characteristics. You can never confirm the absence of an
invisible stalker, only its direct presence
• Invisible stalkers are often called upon as assassins, servants, or messengers.
Certain stalkers have gained a reputation for these tasks and can be distin-
guished by their signature. These stalkers are given names by the common folk,
and different names by the arcane practitioners who commission them. For
example, the folk of the inner mountains whisper of The Death that Walks Behind,
called Neco Tergum by wizards, who know it by the smell of sulfur and the red
embers that sometimes accompany its presence
• However, a stalker’s signature may be copied. It may be that Neco Tergum,
Brachium Fortis, and Ultima Vox are not names but roles played by any invisible
stalker called to the task
• Creating an invisible stalker is as simple as whispering a secret between two
people in a corner
• Although invisible to the naked eye, invisible stalkers radiate a tremendous
amount of radiation, making them visible by any other means — infravision,
darkvision, astral or etherial vision — making them quite detectable for anyone
who doesn’t rely on sight in the visual spectrum
• You can actually see invisible stalkers just fine, but as soon as you aren’t looking
at them, you forget they were there
• Invisible stalkers are the dying breath of dragons

81
• Although no magic can make these creatures visible to the naked eye, there are
ways to mitigate their power. Old kings, fearful of assassination, would burn
green leaves at night so that currents in the white smoke would mark invisible
stalkers in the room. Others would burrow deep underground in caves or
abandoned mines where the air is stale and still to better feel the stalker’s
movements
• They are large and unwieldy creatures, and this constantly creates disturbances
in their environment, making it difficult for them to hide in spite of their invisibility
• They are shape-shifters that create weapons from their very bodies
• As elemental beings, invisible stalkers can control air at will. Exceptionally
powerful ones can control the breath in a person’s lungs, suffocating them or
directing their body and their speech like a puppet. Many have met an invisible
stalker so disguised without ever knowing it
• Invisible stalkers are persistence hunters, tirelessly tracking their prey until it is
caught, or until the magic that binds them to the task is dispelled. You can escape
an invisible stalker once, but you can’t escape it forever
• One invisible stalker is actually a combination of two to five air elementals,
whose merged consciousness makes them cunning enough to track their prey in
earnest. Old wizarding books warn of an invisible stalker who called itself
Legion, for it bore many air elementals within it and could possess other creatures
at will
• Invisible stalkers are a scam. It’s just air elementals
• Invisible stalkers are never sent by an external force. They are created by guilt,
and when formed they will punish the guilty who created them. People are the
architects of their own misfortune
• In order to create an invisible stalker, mages must catch the wind as it escapes
from an elder mage’s ears whose memories are fading. If they don’t do this, the
invisible stalker escapes and causes great disruption
• As soon as the invisible stalker completes its task, it can finally cease to exist. The
very nature of living as an invisible stalker is suffering eternal. They desire this
cessation of existence more than any worldly treasure. This is why you can’t bribe
an invisible stalker
• Invisible stalkers are a government program that’s designed to ensure compli-
ance. They recruit special forces who aren’t invisible but use the idea of an
invisible stalker for their operations
• One wizard wrote the name of his hated enemy on one thousand slips of paper.
The wizard summoned an invisible stalker and bade it carry those names as it
tracked his enemy and kill with a thousand thousand paper cuts

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 XITXACHITL
“There’s no debate about how to say the name!
Don’t be absurd.” — Nenemith, sage

Nomenclature: Intelligent rays, demon rays, devil fish

Ixitxachitl is pronounced:
• ish-it-SHACH-itl
• iks-it-ZATCH-i-til
• ik-zit-zah-chih-tull
• iks-it-ZAK-itl
• iks-it-SHAK-it-ul
• ih-SHIK-sha-chi-tul
• iks-iks-a-CHIH-tul
• ick-ZIT-sah-chittle
Description: Evil intelligent clerical manta rays
Things that are known:
• They are highly intelligent and wield malicious divine powers
• They live underwater
• They are shaped similar to manta rays
• Their lairs are often hidden quite well
• Members appear to be vampiric in nature

Rumors and other storms in the deep:

• They have their magical powers because they sacrifice to the old and forgotten
gods
• They sacrifice not just the flesh of men and treasure, but also sculpture and
metal-works. In times of scarcity, they must occasionally sacrifice one of their own
number
• They are particularly deadly to rangers. Crikey!
• They dislike having their name mispronounced
• They kill and sacrifice opponents because they desire to turn their life energy into
magic items

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• Evil is
subjective.
There are
greater things
below in the deeps
that thirst and hunger.
If their need becomes
too great, they could
consume all life. The
ixitxachitl serve a need,
feeling the god-beasts
and leviathans of the
sea, keeping them in sated
torpor. The lives sacrificed are
for a greater purpose
• Each carries an energy; when more than
20 gather the barriers between the prime material and the realms of the old gods
weaken, and they feed their gods directly by draining the life from those they face
• They are mercenary, hiring out their services to any deity meeting their horrific
demands
• Vampiric ixitxachitl are conduits for the Great Administrator, She Who Waits
Beneath The Sands. They gather blood and funnel it to her vats, to be turned into
pucks, shaped like pontefract cakes
• Any who consume these pucks is turned into a wooper (an infant ixitxachitl)
• The ixitxachitl are actually just sentient coral. They aren’t evil but seeking revenge
for the destruction of coral by surface dwellers. They are focused on finding a
way to flood the world
• Ixitxachitl like poetry, haunting organ music, and whale song
• Ixitxachitl can be tanned into scrolls. These scrolls allow the spell on them to be
reused up to 1d12 times, but there remains a small (~5%) chance that the spell will
be changed from whatever it is to summoning vampiric ixitxachitl
• Ixitxachitl have one six-fingered hand on the end of their long, prehensile tail

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• The vampiric ixitxachitl vary in size. The smaller they are, the more of a knack
they have for traps and mimicry. They will often disguise themselves as treasure in
order to access secret places. They favor disguising themselves as one of the
following: Bag of holding that can hold up to 2000 coins. After that, it explosively
vomits them out. Tricorn hat, Book dust jacket, Girdle of uncomfortable looks
• Ixitxachitl believe sea cows are sacred manifestations of their deities and must
never be harmed
• Vorpal ixitxachitl have poisonous spines on their tails. On a natural 20, the spine
pierces the heart of their enemy, causing instant death
• They create forbidden alien intelligences as recreation
• They are arrogant and self-important to a fault. Anything that does not concern
their world is of no importance at all to them
• In the deep heavy ocean trenches, portals are refined by the crushing pressures
of the deep. The dark intelligences of that place send their scouting spells through
to see what the thin space is like, alien astronomers exploring our airy realm.
Their magic is more durable than our weak magic. If the portal closes before the
spell returns, it cures taking on intelligence and independent life. It maintains a
thread of connection and can draw energy from its ancient source. The ixitxachitl
have not forgotten their original purpose and they secretly labor to build cham-
bers for when their masters arrive to claim this realm
• They worship dark gods like Demogorgon
• Ixitxachitl worship the death cult of Skulli, the six-flippered manta of destruction
• Ixitxachitl explosively expel their guts to entangle foes. This is why ixitxachitl
become vampiric: they need living blood to regrow their intestines
• Ixitxachitl implant their eggs in the posteriors of their victims. There the eggs hatch
into little mantas that eventually emerge from the victim’s mouth
• Ixitxachitl aren’t aquatic. They are amphibious. Out of water they are called
cloakers
• Stupid wizards. Valek the sea wizard wanted a magical cloak. He wanted it to
see and warn him of incoming attacks. He wanted it to channel divine magic to
heal him and refill spells. He wanted it to help him swim like a creature of the sea.
Imagine his surprise when it grew weary of his endless pedantic speechifying,
stabbed him, and swam off. It dug into the glimmering cosmic connection infused
by Valek, found a patron and had but one wish: a mate
• Male ixitxachitl paint their flippers with gaudy patterns of green, red, and mauve
to woo females. They also enjoy wearing kilts
• They are not cruel. They just don’t understand that other creatures besides ixitxachitl
are sentient. They treat the whole world as if it exists for their use and pleasure
• Despite looking like manta rays, ixitxachitl actually taste like beef

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• Lochsbaed, a cruel sea goddess, subjects all sahuagin clerics to judgement when
they begin to attract attention with their spell demands. The failures become
ixitxachitl, scales cast from her divine body
ºº This is true, and the ixitxachitl are literal scales, seeking to construct her body
on earth. When a critical mass of failure is reached, she will be drawn to the
frame of her scales and her avatar will cleanse the earth, boiling them with
blood and death
• When the moon is full the ixitxachitl can fly through the air in bubbles of sus-
pended water. This makes them more difficult to hit
• They originally are space creatures and came here clinging on the hulls of
spelljammers
• They dissolve into hundreds of pearls when slain
• They are parasites of the cosmic life force, sucking divine energy. The most
refined become vampiric. Every god wants them killed, but a cult is studying them
to learn how they steal energy from the gods without worship
• The vampiric ixitxachitl are actually ancestors, the source of their clerical spells,
and summonable through pheromonal and ink gestures from the Great Swimming
Grounds beyond to act as champions and protectors
• A defected drow faction moved to the deep sea, worshiping an ancient mon-
strosity they crafted with atrocity and deep magic. They worship it, granting it
power, and it flakes off ixitxachitl like dead skin. Now, however, it favors the
ixitxachitl more than the drow
• A city of bloodthirsty killer cultists worshiping evil was flooded by a group of
powerful adventurers. However, some were saved with new bodies granted by
underwater darkness spirits
• The ixitxachitl do not serve gods. They take divine power from lost underwater
temples. The vampiric ones serve as hosts for stolen divine sparks
• There is a caste of four-armed engineers and builders among the mantis folk
called the fixitxachitl
• They are symbiotic with evil halflings that live on tropical islands. They surf the
large ones and use the small ones as frisbees for sports. The dead ixitxachitl are
made into hide shields and armor. Their spines are wonderful spear tips and
daggers. What’s the exchange? The halflings make sacrifices at a dark altar. All
ixitxachitl magic is fueled by that altar
• The ixitxachitl are pure vegetarian nature-lovers. Their clerics are really druids
and the vampiric ixitxachitl use mouth daggers to perform sacrifices to balance
the ocean
• Ixitxachitl are hunted by the penguin folk to be made into cloaks and jackets of
warmth and spell resistance

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• An aboleth from the elemental plane of water (or more likely, mucus) crafted a
magic item that devours its victims. When successful, they are transformed and
excreted onto the prime material as ixitxachitl. The aboleth does this without
concern but the thought of destroying the item might appeal to mortals
• They are obsessed with acquiring slaves that can function underwater
ºº Although they can raise dead, they are unable to control them, due to the
enmity of the gods of death (e.g. Orcus)
• Ixitxachitl are the larval stage of the space manta, sailing through the folded
planes of the multiverse, spreading their dark blood cult to primitive worlds
• The vampiric liches of Sonburnne wanted to invade their elven rivals across the
sea. However, the sea was too dangerous to sail so the elven navy prepared with
magic and arms for every incursion. They experimented with various options,
transforming soldiers into rays, event transforming some of their own vampiric
number. They eventually abandoned the plan and the tests, discarding them into
the ocean. Some lived. They blame the elves
• Riverine ixitxachitl enslave elementals to carve maze-like branching canyons and
canals in which they raise their young
• For the mermaid festival the princess trained her ray friends to form a bubble and
force out water to reduce the pressure. She would show off a hot air balloon
underwater and use it to sing her solo. But an evil sea witch had cursed her rays.
As they approached the crowd, they turned black and scattered, stabbing and
casting and sucking. The problem was solved, but the sea witch achieved great
fame as a result. All the other witches wanted to know the curse, and the witch
was able to sell it and retire in style. Enough castings have assured the remains
drift around the sea, forming a people of her own. A few have begun to question
where the witch got her curse
• The ixitxachitl are not sea creatures at all. They live in a city on the dark side of
the moon, traveling to the sea on moonbeams for their coming of age rituals
• The truth of their origin is that they are simple shed skin from greater evil gods,
who would sooner invent a creature to eat them than listen to their endless pleas
• Dried ixitxachitl brains are used to make the traditional elven soup of wisdom which
grants a bonus to intelligence and wisdom. With each serving you risk addiction
• The females breed annually and are seeking to improve the race by engaging in
a selective breeding program
• The Zzar wizard house was trying to build a godzilla-class undead monster.
However, the tank began to bloat and rot. They repurposed local rays to eat flesh
once it was ripe, but the profound necromantic energies had unpredictable
effects. Not only did some of them become vampiric, but they began to grow a
vague malign intelligence. One of the Zzar necromancers staged a coup using
these as foot soldiers, then using the brainjuicer increased the intelligence of his
minion. It worked too well. They ate him and escaped. It has been speculated
that they continue to have the goal of building a leviathan of the deep to
rampage across the surface

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• They come from one of the seas of the moon or from within the great reservoir
inside it
• Certain varieties have adapted to thrive in sewers
• Ixitxachitl are forbidden from dealing the killing blow to a creature. This is why
they swarm, because there is some question as to who the killer is. A lone
ixitxachitl will prefer to injure and leave a target bleeding. Vampiric ixitxachitl are
created when they knowingly take the life of a victim
• Vampiric ixitxachitl are treated with suspicion by other ixitxachitl and are wor-
shiped by kuo-toa
• Aberrant mermen or triton mages have grafted ixitxachitl to their backs, learning
to adopt either form and increase the arcane powers they wield
• Powerful ixitxachitl know the spells Desalination, Wall of Coral, and Squirming
Doom
• The name ixitxachitl is a cruel joke played on outsiders, seeking to twist their
tongue into perfidious knots. The malicious creatures have a different name for
themselves
• The ixitxachitl grow an extra eye for every sentient creature they kill
• The ixitxachitl are not vampiric. This is poppycock based on magical thinking. Much
like the mosquito, ixitxachitl females need mammalian blood to produce eggs
• The ixitxachitl believe that negative emotions are destroying the balance of
nature. They seek to provoke other creatures to draw them out. This is why some
ixitxachitl are vampiric. Others feel ‘drained’ after being drawn out. The ixitxachitl
are only acting as supernatural psychotherapists. “Survivors” of ixitxachitl
“attacks” report that they feel more positive and motivated about themselves,
and they feel less depressed or angry
• Ixitxachitl may only be turned if their name is pronounced correctly
• They will burrow underneath the sand to hide or surprise opponents
• They can swarm creatures, losing their individual attacks but doing automatic
damage

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 ERMLAINE
“Arrrgh! Untie me!” - Slive

Nomenclature: Little men, gremlins, bane-midges, jinxkins, smurfs, atomites,

minimi (sing. minimus), troublemaker, twik-men, dinkos, globbos, scrabblers, rat-
brothers, flappies, flabbies, squeakies, squnities, verminites, trapsters, point-heads,
mouselings, minimen, tiny terrors, minscules, manikins, rodent riders, peewees,
diminumen, jermies
Description: Small troublesome fae who associate with rodents and other small
creatures

Things that are known:

• They are fey creatures
• They associate with rats
• They dwell in warrens beneath the ground
• They shave captives

Rumors and other noises in the walls:

• They are actually gremlins called by an incorrect name. Being given a separate
name, they desperately sought to differentiate themselves from gremlins to
maintain their existence and avoid being absorbed into other beings
• Their natural language sounds like a high pitched squealing or keening
• Rats gnawed loose the bonds of a bound fey prince once. The prince bestowed
upon the simple creatures a boon; when they were killed in great numbers, from
a mass grave would rise a jinxkin, which would avenge the fallen by undoing the
strength of all would-be oppressors. With multiple mass graves, multiple jinxkin
arose, and they bred true.
• During the Great Winter, when the rats and their hunger outnumbered the people
a hundred to one, the whole city had to be abandoned when the jinxkin rose up
in numbers and force.
• Every time a person says or does a mean thing a jermlaine is created from that
thing. This is why they are so terrible
• Jermlains shave their victims because hairlessness is a sign of weakness. Elder
jermlains are honored for their braided back and armpit hair. Shears are consid-
ered cursed, and all shaving of victims is done with a dull knife

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• They do not do much damage when they strike, which is good. The poison and
other alchemical substances used have their full potency however.
• Once an elven army rose up in hubris to take the City of Brass. The rulers of that
city twisted reality itself to turn the invading elves into vermin. The jinxkin resulted,
their minds enfeebled towards history and sense of self, but still expressing all the
malice that the City of Brass felt from the invading fey.
• The excrement of jermlains is a peculiar pink paste. It can be used to treat skin
complains, cuts, bruises, and protect from insect bites and allergies. It restore an
additional hit point per day
• The fae have many defended gates from the Ardenwald to Prime. One of their
favorite auto-immune systems to put in place is the jinxkin infestation. It is enough
to keep normal people away; it commandeers local rodents (and there are
ALWAYS local rodents); and it is only mildly murderous. The jinxkin pay for their
fey powers by making gifts of hair to their eldritch masters, to show that they are
performing as intended (and should stay in the energy budget). This hair gives the
fae a sense of who is lurking around their portals.
• They seek a new king with a birthmark that, according to prophecy, is hidden by hair
• They often dwell in cities and aristocrats and criminals are very interested in
buying the secrets they gather, especially their own
• Fey nobles usually have a pouch or two of banemidge eggs. When they are
treated poorly in an area, they toss a handful of eggs into the local water supply.
Like mosquitoes, the banemidges rise and cause mischief. They need hair to
reproduce; some populations shave so the pests will die off. The banemidges
usually survive because humans are so reluctant to shave everywhere . . .
• They must eat hair in order to reproduce. It is unpleasant, but allows the males to
perform. Females make elaborate macrame items or knit clothing from hair to
attract mates
• They scavenge for treasures off dead bodies. If you are looking for someone that
has disappeared, they are the people to talk to
• They are highly allergic to dander; shearing their captives makes them less likely
to irritate their skin
• They burn the hair after soaking it in rancid-smelling oils to serve as an aphrodisiac
• They are prodigious collectors. That slightly chipped silver button on your trousers
is worth a small fortune to the right jermlaine
• They will ally with humans, especially if bribed. They have a strong tendency to
betray those they help
• Jermlaines love wild hair, and they don’t excrete feces but instead multi-colored
rays of light
• Children love the taste of jermlaines
• Jermlaines lay eggs

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• The reason jermlaines have saggy skin is that they are actually a breed of
gnomes that was struck by a magical illness that shrank their bones but not their
skin. Gnomes become quite hostile if asked about this
• Jermlaines reproduce by constructing hair effigies and breathing life into them
• Jermlaines are born from the filth and detritus left behind by adventurers. They
are iron ration scraps, bits of 10’ poles, torn scrolls, warrior blood, and rogue
sputum imbued with crafty hatred by spirits of the underground who loath, and
resent intrusion
• When a fairy fountain is corrupted, the energy does not stop gushing out. If the
conduit is broken, the energy saturates the “groundwater” energy of the area,
corrupting things that are not meant to sit in the wash of alien energy. Things are
changed. The banemidge vermin are the least of the worries from such a site. The
main way to end the problem is to either cap the energy source, or rebuild its
proper flow path
• Jermlaines quadruple in hit dice (but not size) if they eat human food after
midnight
• If jermlaines get wet, they begin to duplicate
• The skin color of jermlaines reflects their temperament
• The idea of smurfs is fae propaganda to portray them in a positive light
• Rats carry fleas that carry plague. Rats also carry mites that become banemi-
dges. When anything with hair travels through the Ardenwald and gets back to
Prime, they have traces of the parasites of that alien place on them. Without
natural predators, the banemidges emerge and latch on to a hot-blooded and
plentiful population of rats, then proceed to become a real problem. The banemi-
dges are the primary reason travel to the Ardenwald was forbidden, even to
elves. After a century of determined efforts to rid a kingdom of the banemidges,
the prospect of tracking more in became a capital offense.
• They are actually sentient fay fruit. Archfay sometimes use jermlaine in their
potions. They taste bitter
• The juice of jermlaines is delicious, and the high lords of the elves pay ridiculous
amounts of money for it
• Some jermlaine, domesticate species other than rats, like frogs, bats, and lampreys
• Princess Kavastra was too kind, and she hated seeing rats poisoned and trapped.
She approached the fey in the nearby woods and asked if the population could
be managed in a kinder way. The fey provided rat herds to balance the needs of
the Jermlaine with those of the men, and all was well. A century later a descen-
dant of Kavastra demanded the rat herds be repurposed for spying, assassina-
tion, and war. The hard-eyed fey replied, “Do as you will. Teach them what you
want them to know.” It didn’t end well.
• Some ride small animals into combat like foxes, chihuahuas, or rats
• Leprechauns actually breed jermlaine as pot-of-fool’s-gold guardians

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• They have wellness anxiety and despise germs, which they are small enough to
see. This is why they shave all their captives before dragging them into their lair
• They use the hair gathered from captives to build nests. They need it to retain
heat to hatch their bejeweled eggs
• Jermlaines are elementals from the Plane of Frustration they waylay, trick,
embarrass, drain, and eventually kill. Their offerings are collected by the leaders,
feeding back to a sphere in their lair that becomes a gate back to their plane
when they’ve harvested enough suffering
• Rats worship them instinctively, and in return they get protection and food
• They actually are just obsessive wig artists and like throwing wig parties. The best
wig at the party wins the Fuzzy Sceptre of Jermlainishness for a month
• They are obsessed with numerology and particularly the number 23
• They are passionate about interpretive dance their firelight dance parties are
profound
• Jermlaines are actually the most beautiful of the fay but project a glamour of
ugliness to keep away humans. The hair is used to produce glamour powder
which causes people to wince at their ugliness
• A mirror of burnished silver will reveal the true form of a jermlaine, or capturing
one and putting it inside an iron cage for three and thirty days
ºº The pygmies of the Nil-shuth Valley know this and capture them for the
pre-marriage arrangement. The arrangement is a formal and ritualized limited
term where the men lose innocence and become men. The jermlaines are not
amused by this
• The wizard tower Alcanth had a testing-ground below, where young wizards had
to succeed against trials of their hearts, minds, muscles, and magic. Each wizard
crafted a homunculus to add to the stable of threatening creatures used to train and
test apprentices. In a weird turn of events, when the Alcanth wizards were at war
with the eladrian, some of the fae made friends with the homunculi, who turned
traitor and gave the wizards up to the elven knights before eloping with the fae.
However, the story did not end happily. When the fey knights discovered what their
underlings planned to do, they were uncomfortable. So, they banished all their fey
helpers back to the Ardenwald and abandoned the homunculi (and the weird
hybrids from their loving unions) in the ruin of the wizard tower. A few hundred
years later, embittered magic fey construct colonies were heading out with legions
of rats, finding the only way to blunt their misery was to spread it
• They can use specific frequencies of light to transport themselves instantly.
Rainbows are sure signs of jermlaines
• Gnomes are steeped in fey energies. They know the languages of burrowing
creatures. They are widely disliked. They tend to spend a lot of time in their secluded
homes, amusing themselves with magic and illusions, and getting cozy with rodents
about their size. They won’t talk about jinxkins. Not even with other gnomes.

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 OBOLD
“It is the worst and best thing about living beneath
the earth. The endless responsibility and pleasure of
slaying the revenge of the stone.” — Smoke

Nomenclature: Cobalts, koboldi, knockers, the bold

Description: Underground demons spawned from earth

Things that are known:

• They are small
• They hate gnomes
• They have an aversion to melee combat
• They are sensitive to light
• They have facility with traps and mechanical objects
• They can see in the dark

Rumors and other knocks in the mines:

• They are actually halflings. When a dragon swallows a halfling whole, the
resulting egg hatchlings are kobolds
• Kobolds are related to kabouter, common garden gnomes
• When moving alone through tunnels, kobolds are capable of dilating time,
allowing them to reset traps faster than humanly possible
• Kobolds have a secret penchant for tipping cows. On adventurers
• A secret breed of kobolds in the eastern mountains, called Perkmandelz, can turn
invisible and run around with a lantern, imitating a subterranean will ‘o wisp
• Kobolds are not scaled. Those are actually dermoliths: little stones that grow in
kobold skin, letting them blend in with their rocky habitat
• They are immune to petrification because they are already petrified creatures
• Kobolds collect coins quite quickly and quietly congregate in clammy caves to
count and cackle
• Kobolds feel compelled to count a loose pile of coins lying around. Then they
store it in a small sack with the value written on the outside. The reason for this
compulsion is unknown. It does irritate dragons who just want to sleep on coins,
not little sacks filled with sacks of 100 coins each

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• A kobold can count 50 coins in a combat round
• Kobolds are the animate leavings of slain dragons
• They lust and revenge themselves against man-races, trying to reclaim the glory
of their dragon creators
• Kobolds and dwarves are related, which is why they are often found as dungeon
maintainers
• Kobold horns are noted aphrodisiacs among orcs. Kobolds themselves cannot
breed until their horns grow back
• A kobold’s horn is regenerative, and a whole new kobold can grow from one
horn. This explains the difficulty at eliminating the infestation. A single kobold can
break apart its horn and grow a whole new batch of fresh kobolds
• Kobold horns grow all over their body
• Kobolds wouldn’t be the problem they are today if it wasn’t for the early kobold
genocide attempts. The bodies were hacked to pieces and the horns often
became shattered. Each kobold then became hundreds
• Trapmaking is the highest art among the ‘bolds
• Kobolds have serrated beaks, not teeth
• “This is absolute nonsense. The Kobolds of Underpnod have mobile, wrinkled
faces, like disgusting little monkeys or withered, wizened halflings.” — Vaziry of
Pnod
• Kobolds are untamed feral dwarves, murdering and eating trespassers and
hoarding ancient treasures
• Kobolds work for death and keep the damned as slaves to toil in the mines
• A dwarf is a civilized kobold that lives among humans and speaks a human
language
• Civilized kobolds (“dwarves”) no longer burn in the sun, but they cannot see in
darkness. Kobolds and “dwarves” are both misshapen little old men with flinty,
inhuman eyes, knobby joints, and at least one exaggerated facial feature. Beards
are optional
• Kobolds turn to stone in the sun and are often collected as garden ornaments
• Kobolds are to goblins as gnomes are to dwarves
• This being the case, they are smaller, lighter, and unlike gnomes being focused on
trickery, they are more direct than goblins. They use magic that causes explosions of
spellfire, telekinetically hurled objects, and tunnel collapses. Even with their magic
potential, the kobolds themselves are small scrawny things that rarely go into combat
• Kobolds are very good with animals and often train small and medium creatures
like boars, spiders, and giant weasels as mounts
• They create their homes using telekinetic magic used while in a meditative trance.
This allows them to function as if they were humanoid sized
• Kobolds have remarkable singing voices; however, they are unlikely to share this

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 with outsiders due to their terrible stage fright
• Kobolds are to gnomes as drow are to elves
• The viciousness and cruelty of kobolds has absolutely nothing to do with height
envy
• Kobolds are castaways from another dimension, pulled into ours by the smelting
of ore. They emerge under darkness from the slag heaps
• They breathe stone, swim through air, and walk on water, They need air to drink,
but wind is a very dangerous current. Near slag heaps you will occasionally find
drowned kobolds. Cave systems and mining tunnels are more like gentle rivers
and much safer
• They collect metals that they can find, hoping their shamans can use them to find
a way home
• Kobolds have multiple rows of teeth which grow and grow until they die. Perhaps
they are the humanoid descendants of sharks?
• Kobolds like the color blue
• Kobolds sometimes live in the forest and have adapted to survive. They defend
and mark their territory well, with guerilla patrols, snares, traps, deadfalls, and
other deadly protections
• One reason for the effectiveness of kobolds is their shamans focus on divination
magic, and their easy access to communication methods (familiars, magic) and
crystal balls (dug from the earth).
• In southern lands, they are seen as less evil (koboldi) and can be entertaining,
due to the fact that they are always aroused and can drink to bacchanalian
excess
• They fill mines with foul air, poison gas, toxic minerals, or worst of all, koboldium,
the burning metal
• The kobold god has a harem of chosen kobold maidens. Many semi-divine
kobold warriors are born, whose skin blunts weapons and when slain, curse the
killer
• Kobolds are not only mechanically inclined but also alchemically skilled with
black powder, incendiaries, mines, and poison gas
• The entrance to a kobold lair is always disguised
• One fated night, long ago, a very drunk, lusty, and desperate gnome had
relations with a giant salamander he ‘surprised’ and took advantage of. The
resulting spawn from this rape was several hundred kobolds
• They speak the language of insects and all crawling creatures. This is why the
most poisonous and deadly don’t mind being dropped by them through muder-
holes on passing adventurers
• Kobolds speak no languages. They capture poisonous insects and torture them till
they are only filled with rage and evil, then they release them through murder-
holes on passing adventurers

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• Kobolds have no noses. That is why they smell terrible
• Kobold tails are a delicacy. Even kobolds themselves think so
• Kobolds feast on dragon corpses. This is the reason for their magical nature
• Kobolds have very specific dietary needs. This is why they are never found away
from underground complexes and tombs
• Kobold shamans smear gold, silver, and copper coins on their skin, forming a
heavy, glittering, armored layer as a ritual to fuel their spells and magical
abilities
• A kobold that has lived an extended life and died of natural causes is reborn as
what the kobolds call an Earthen One, who can pass through any type of earth.
This includes metals
• Kobolds specialize on setting traps because eating tendons from the flesh of a
living creature while they scream is the greatest delicacy.
• The first kobolds emerged from the torn tooth sockets of the titans that tried to
destroy the world. The pain and death of those great forms was too great to be
contained, and the kobolds were forced from their gory, cracked jaws. Their
word for themselves is “homeless,” and their mission is to harvest parts to build a
new titan home. The trouble is, they don’t know how, and all they remember is
pain. So they collect that in jars. But they can’t actually collect it. So they hurt
people and wave glass at them. It’s their religion.
• Kobolds have a flying relative — the Urd. Urd are tougher, more intelligent, and
nastier. Their existence has nothing to do with the depredations of the kenku
• Kobolds will hate gnomes until Garl Glittergold ceases his never-ending teasing
and trickery of Kurtulmak
• Kobolds are bastard children from wild bacchanalian parties among the wood-
lands keepers, being a cursed combination of druids, rangers, animal compan-
ions, fey liquor, and practical jokes
• Kobolds are the immune system of an animistic living earth. The scar tissue from
gouges and wounds on the surface takes the form of kobolds defending their
mother
• Kobold eyes, when plucked and dried in the light of a full winter moon, will
become semi-precious stones. If dice are made from these stones, they are
magically loaded that shift +1 in the direction you prefer when you roll them.
• Kobolds who do enter melee often have tail attachments that they use to wound
opponents. These have been know to throw black power, alchemist’s fire, or
substances even worse
• They hate gnomes because gnomes are cheaters; dirty, nasty, lying, cheaters.
Illusions aren’t fair; traps are. Using illusions to win prank contests isn’t fair. You
can’t win if you’re dead
• Stupid wizards. The combination of a ring of wishes, a German shepherd familiar,
and some inadvisable things said about the usefulness of said familiar led to the
kobold removing the ring from the wizard’s fresh corpse. The last charge is the

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 cause of the piles of kobolds everywhere
• Kobold lariats are woven from the skin of sentient creatures. They are fascinated
by hides
• If a kobold is skinned, the hide dissolves into sand in 1-4 days, no matter how it is
preserved
• Kobolds were originally swarming, agile, flexible, and mechanical boarding
constructs for spelljammer ships. A bribe of being both made of flesh and fertile
to breed was made. Their original creators, furious, rounded up all they could find
and marooned them on a quarantined planet. Releasing them is a capital offense
• Kobolds are fleas that have fed on the blood of dragons
• In ancient times, when all races were reptilian, kobolds ran the oppressive
empire. All other races did their bidding. To this day they seek to manipulate and
control the other races
• In the far future, humanity seeks to save themselves from a seared sky and fouled
earth. They built a time gate and sent a group to save humanity from itself. Upon
arrival they became sick and only their young survived. In three generations, all
was forgotten, leaving a primitive culture seething with hatred for humans
• Kobolds are the progenitors of the elves, banished from the surface and forgotten
by their children
• Kobolds wear lederhosen and make beer from rock
• If a kobold becomes wet, he flies into a rage. A great artform is creating intricate
dust and soot patterns on their skin to mimic scales
• A kobold can transform into mist on nights with a full moon. This is how they
migrate from cave to cave. The mists are cursed and many believe can cause
migraines, ague, and loose bowels

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Combat Tricks:
Agile: Kobolds are small and flexible They can move in, around, and under other
creatures bypassing them easily and immune to any bonus attacks gained via
opportunity or due to fleeing
Mob attack: Kobolds receive bonuses to hit equal to the number of kobolds in
melee with a target.
Bombs: Kobolds can throw bombs with various alchemical effects (alchemist’s fire,
smokesticks, tanglefoot bags, etc.)
Trappers luck: Kobolds can attack a player and do no damage but move them
into a nearby trap
Magical blast: Kobolds can generate and throw energy orbs that focus their
magical force. The type of energy is dependent on the strain of kobold
Earth step: Kobolds can meld with the earth, allowing them to disappear into the
ground. They move incredibly quickly this way, reappearing anywhere within 100´
Painful stabs: Kobold attacks do little damage but really hurt. When striking, after
rolling damage, they can choose to do only 1 point of damage but apply a circum-
stance penalty to that target’s combat rolls (attack and damage) until healing is
recieved
Sluggish step: Kobolds can cover the floor with bags of their sticky poop. These
cause people moving in those squares to move at half speed. Kobolds themselves are
unaffected, of course.

Valuable resources
“The element Cobalt is actually named after Kobald, an earth spirit. The miners who
dug out and smelted ores to find useful metals, which included the cobalt ore, which
was poisonous with arsenic and ruined other metals, blamed Kobald when things
went wrong because the spirit didn’t want them down there.
When Georg Brandt found out what was actually poisoning the miners and ruining
their ore, a new element, he named it after the spirit in tribute to the men who dug it
out.”- Patrick Stuart

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 AMMASU
“The offer she makes you seems like a good idea, but so
does the worm on the hook to a fish.”
- Aldervile, neo-emperian speaker

Nomenclature: Lamia, manticores, nagas, sphinx, shedu, lilith, empusa

Description: Creatures that have the head of a human and the body of a lion, goat,
deer, or snake, said to eat children

Things that are known:

• Humans are their prey
• They are intelligent and have powers of illusion
• They like to live in arid desolate places
• They have the heads and/or torsos of humans, with animal lower bodies
• They can see in darkness
• They bait and trap men, using them for sex, sport, and supper

Rumors and other secrets whispered in the wild:

• They aren’t evil monsters, just superior beings who view our children as a
delicious source of tender veal
• Their morality is complex, beyond human understanding. Amashotep’s seminal
works, Beyond Good and Evil, Also Sprach Lammathustra, Ecce Lammia, and
Antilamia address the vast subject
• It is a well kept secret that there is no separate species as lamia; it is the curse of
all human females one night a month to become one
• They are fond of associating with various other half-breeds, such as harpies and
centaurs. Whether this is due to distant relations or some other reason is unknown
• They aren’t any special — lions are just super horny and have no problem mating
with human females. Lucky to survive, this rape is rarely mentioned. Lots of
half-lion monsters though
• The gods dream secrets, and these secrets slip into the world. They find a feline
form, because those receive and transmit secrets. The forcefulness and power of
the secret can sometimes mutate and warp the feline
• Were a mortal to unravel the secrets of the leonine dreams, then immortality, even
godhood, may be within reach. Two gods in the pantheon ascended in this way,
and a secret order pursues this murderous quest

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• They are actually Zensunni post-buddhists, explaining their preference for arid,
dune-filled environments
• They are likely jerks
• They keep dustworms as pets, from which they harvest mysture, a substance used
to make lions and snakes grow human-like faces and intellects.
• All lions are inherently evil. They lust after human flesh, and when they consume
enough, they become a monster. Manticores come from the flesh of old men;
young women produce lamias, and kings produce sphinxes
• They are a species that breeds true, and they suffer no defects from incest. The
meaning of this is uncertain
• Demons don’t just tempt men: sometimes noble lions fall prey, and the demonic
corruption causes this horrific change
• The lamia-kind are neither good, nor evil, being beyond such matters. Some follow
chaos and others law. Mortals try to ascribe morality to their actions, but they are
simply angelic messengers of the balance, disinterested in the fate of men
• A lamassotto is an underdark version of a lammassu
• That Which Prowls stalks the trade routes and celebrates melding the creatures of
the wasteland and the humans who trespass into it.
Some of the survivors swear loyalty to That Which
Prowls and assist in playing out the long,
incomprehensible, sadistic game of cat and
mouse with humanity that may end in the
elevation or destruction of the world.
• They are truly vegetarians and
child-like, playful beasts. Guarding
wastelands and other desolate
places, however, poses them as
a threat to the Lords of Law. The
end result is that they are
portrayed as a vicious, blood-
thirsty, childnibbling beast
• A male lamia is called a lamio.
Rare creatures with silvery hides
and prodigious. . . manes. The
lammassu is a protector of lamia
• They are not half-lion; all of
these creatures are simply
torsos on swarms of countless
insects, each representing the
soul of a living creature
• Simply another form of an
aberration of chaos, like satyrs,
centaurs, minotaurs, and platypi

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• The Goddess of Trees was struck ill and barely managed to escape the battle of the
gods, stumbling into civilization. There she was cared for by the awed and ignorant
human savages. She saw their lives up close; the way they turned to meat and
away from the energy of the sun and the plants. She saw how they kept cats to eat
meat that threatened what they wanted to protect. And, as we all know, the war of
the gods caught up to the village, and the terrified villagers betrayed the Goddess
of Trees to the Master of Forges. Her dying curse was that humanity would become
the mice, and their hunters would bear the cruelty of their faces
• The spectacular orgies of the Arch Magus Wyvaria tended to focus on reptiles.
Lilariasha tended to use shape-changing (mercifully) or just gear (best not to think
about it) for coupling with spiders. But Vashtoor. . . he had a thing for lions.
There’s a reason we’ve killed all the wizards we could catch.
• The Kingdom of Farragut does a spectacular trade in lamia-sized slippers. They
are fascinated by wearing soft, woolen booties while at home
• Their internal organs are suffused with magic—their guts can be used to make
magical bowstrings +2 of distance and deceit
• They are not actually lion-headed creatures. They are penanggalan, which many
people believe are vampires but are actually a type of sky demon. If they feast
on the flesh of men, a body eventually grows to support them. This body is feline.
If they feast on other creatures, they become other creatures. Horses and steeds
make them into centaurs, felines and cats into manticores, etc.
• Lamias have no digestive systems; in fact their bodies are purely mechanical
support systems for their heads. Their heads are the last remnants of an ancient
empire that depended on machinery for survival. They were cursed by the gods
for the misuse of their physical bodies and now suffer, eternally
• Lamias and lammasu can remove their own eyes. When they do so, they loudly
utter prophecies. No one knows the accuracy of these prophecies; it’s hard to
listen after you’ve just seen something rip out its own eyes
• They are difficult to perceive, and viewing such creatures is difficult on the mind,
draining sanity or wisdom
• No matter their form, they detest combat. Much better through spell, word, or
deed to have lower forms do their fighting for them
• Each is violent and aggressive because when they tear themselves into existence
a dark shadow is created at the same time. This shadow form hunts them to
destruction
• Each is a different manifestation of a pure emotion or ideal, lammasu’s are
intelligence, lamia’s jealousy, manticores are anger, etc.
• All of these are in fact guardians of thresholds, doorways, and portals. It is impos-
sible to cross one without being within their vision. This is the root of their knowl-
edge and power
• They are all just different lineages of rakasta bloodlines

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• It is the name for a female vampire. Their powers of mentalism are so strong, that
the only memories are those of a beautiful woman crossed with a deadly predator
• They are actually enlightened ascetic beings who have chosen to remain behind
in earthly form
• House cats were ordered to play nice with humans so that they could serve as a
spy network and witness of human deeds to the dark judges that await them.
When enough intelligence about humans reaches them, these strange leonines
transform in a more human direction, shaped by the nature of the insights the cats
send them about what humans really are
• The leonines are assigned by the cosmos to shepherd the human race, but they
chose servants of the wrong temperament. They were unable to agree on how
best to handle humanity. Those that insisted on control, pushing and goading
humanity to achieve its destiny, became male. Those who preferred seduction,
trickery, and thinning the herd became female. Their task is a failure and the
disappointment of the cosmos is palpable
• Leonines once ruled the world. Humans could only ascend by wielding chaos
magic and crushing human frailties into the animal perfection of the world’s rulers.
By forcing human flaw and personality in to permanently shatter the balance of
these once-regal beasts, they destroyed their ability to work together
• At the end, the heroes faced Gozer, who insisted they choose the form of their
destruction. All Rae could think about was Mr. Mittens, his innocent and wise house
cat. Since then, the leonine form of the destroyer has gained in power and aggres-
sion in the corners of the world, as a millennial-long agenda of destruction unfolds
• The foundation of the world is not stone, but secrets. The leonine guardians of the
world are tasked with protecting it. However, their society is matriarchal. The
men dislike their servitude and the discrimination against them. Some slipped out
of their enclaves (a man’s place is at the hearth) and try to support and encour-
age the seekers of secrets, the faster to erode the world’s underpinnings so they
can transcend to the next world. Meanwhile, the ladies seek out the races that
are addicted to riddles and puzzles, and finish them off as cruelly as they can
— still, they cannot quench the thirst for mystery that humans stole from the cats
long, long ago
• The priests of the Rakasta are gifted by their feline goddess with more and more
leonine features as they are infused with more and more cosmic and divine
energy, eventually becoming immortal. Therefore, when slain, they must contex-
tualize and motivate their existence as they re-exist. They go insane a little, but
the better they manage their obsessions, the more lucid they remain

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 IVING STATUE
“ “I don’t know why they carve them like that. They
know it’s just going to come to life!”
— Benedict, angry knight

Nomenclature: Stone men, wizard’s guard, tableau vivant

Description: Statues animated by magical energy
Things that are known:
• They are statues that have come to life
• They are immune to poison, charm, sleep, and hold spells and do not eat or
breathe

Rumors and other cracks in the stonework

• Living statues only happen when someone truly falls in love with a statue
• It’s just a scam. Living statues are people who paint themselves and their clothes
as a statue to trick rubes
• They aren’t people, just magical energies that animate the inanimate
• The expense of creating the statue is too great, which is why animated armors are
in vogue for wizards
• Living statues are difficult for barbarians because, well, there are a lot of
non-living statues
• Living statues are giant body suits that oozes use to move around
• Many living statues are hollow. Rock living statues are among the most dangerous
because the motive force that animates them turns their interior into molten rock
• Statues walking around the woods or hanging around lakes is a sure sign you’ve
got a wizard problem
• It is simple and affordable to create living statues who mostly follow orders and
don’t really leave or rebel that much. They run between 3,000 and 13,000 gp to
craft, and you’re not really a successful wizard if you don’t have a living statue
• Living statues can change the material they are made out of by consuming a
different material. More than one wizard has come home to find that their crystal
statue has become a clay statue
• Living statues are just another sign of the downfall of society
• The dark secret behind living statues is that each requires a trapped soul. The soul
is needed to power the statue but is held helpless, immobile, insensate, and
aware

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 IZARD MAN
“ “Shame that they just happened to be on our land
before we got here.” — Melbert, gambler

Nomenclature: Lizard men, swamp folk, scale men

Description: Reptillian humanoid
Things that are known:
• They are reptiles that walk upright

Rumors and other sounds in the swamp:

• Lizard men are cold-blooded. They have discovered that the warmer their eggs
are when being hatched, the more intelligent the lizard-men are
• Lizard men are amphibious and can breathe both above and below water
• Lizard men are undecided if orcs or humans taste better
• Lizard men, due to their lizard brains, don’t experience emotions urgently. Fear,
hunger, sorrow, all are treated with quiet detachment
• All lizardfolk can regrow their limbs
• Lizardfolk are the ultimate paranoid survivalists, convinced the entire world is
about to collapse, and treating any event as if the end times have arrived, which
is why they react so violently to unexpected events
• After several interviews with lizard men who join adventuring parties, it generally
seems that they display no long term fondness for their friends or their well-being.
In several cases, they had consumed the body of a fellow adventurer because it
would go to waste otherwise. Their motivations seem exclusively mercantile
• Some lizardfolk communicate their emotions and feelings via scent glands and
pheromones
• Lizardfolk were the original people, and they carry on the old traditions, not
ignorant of more modern techniques, but in rejection of them
• They serve their old masters, creatures of creation, and base chaos beyond the
understanding of the lesser races
• Like all lizards, they have two

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 YCANTHROPY“Yeah, I’m fine. It didn’t bite me.” — Kald, were-toad

Nomenclature: Werebeast, versipellis, loup-garou, werwulf, lukanthropos,

weriuuolf, gerulphus, garwalf, wariwulf, varulfur, warwoolfes
Description: A shape-shifting transmissible condition
Things that are known:
• They can change form between an animal and human in a cycle governed most
frequently by the moon
• They have a vulnerability to silver

Rumors and other howls in the night:

• You turn into a were beast when you consume human flesh, becoming a wolf or
other predator
• If you’re a wolf-friend, wolf-trainer, wolf-speaker, or other person who consorts
with wild animals, it’s the same as having lycanthropy. It’s an illness that gets into
your brain and makes you become and like wild things
• The real lycanthropy is alcoholism. Man by day, monster by night
• Lycanthropy is a symptom of war, for they are men when they are home, but
monsters when they are warriors
• The devil possesses people and curses them with lycanthropy
• Certain hidden tribes have a moon week, where they spend an entire week each
year transformed into animals
• To become a true person, you must enter a marsh, shed your clothes, and live
with the wolves for nine years. If during this time you abstain from tasting human
flesh, you may return from the marsh and become human again
• Lycanthropy isn’t a disease or anything of the sort. Just a few natural herbs and
medicinal plants, and you can take the form of a wolf, or something even stranger
• The act of changing form damns your soul
• You don’t need any fancy herbs to turn into a wolf. Just pile your clothes on the
side of the road and piss in a circle around them. You’ll turn into a wolf, lickety’
split
• You need a skin of the animal you wish to change into
• A werewolf is what happens to a divorced man

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• The dreaded beerwolf is a tyrant who must be resisted
• Lycanthropy is no physical illness, but a disease of the mind, where one believes
one can turn into an animal and back, but sadly it is simply a delusion they hold
that they cannot be shaken from
• The real thing that transforms you into a werewolf is serial murder
• The werewolf is a double who leaves the body of man unchanged and seeks out
into the night to express forbidden desires
• The physical body doesn’t change; instead victims of lycanthropy have their
minds and senses transferred into the body of a wild wolf nearby
• You can always tell a werewolf because their eyebrows meet and they have
curved fingernails, low-set ears, and a loping stride
• If you cut a lycanthrope in human form, the wound will be filled with fur
• In wolf form, werewolves have no tail, so they run with a strange three-legged
lope and trail their fourth leg behind them
• Lycanthropes are frequently blamed for the exhumation and devouring of recently
buried corpses, but the culprits are much more frequently graverobbers and
ghouls
• To change form, you must collect rainwater out of the footprint of the animal,
enough to drink a whole glass
• If on certain Wednesdays or Fridays you were to sleep and let the light of a full
moon bathe your face on a summer night, you can
gain the powers of a werebeast
• Addressing a lycanthrope three times
by their birth name will cure it of the
disease
• A werebeast isn’t an animal
at all. It’s a disease where a
recently deceased corpse rises
in the form of a predator and
searches battlefields to drink
the blood of dying soldiers
• When werebeasts turn into
human form, they hang their
skins nearby. Burning this skin is
the only way to kill the beast

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 ANTICORE
“There’s somebody that can help, but you aren’t going
to like it.” — Ula, sorceress

Nomenclature: Mantichora, manticora, mantiger, merthykhuwar

Description: Lonely monsters that spread misery in the world
Things that are known:
• They have the face of a man and the body of a lion

Rumors and other rants on the night air

• They devour their prey whole, leaving nothing behind
• Their voice sounds like a melody from pipes
• They have grey eyes
• When a man is successful, not as a leader, but as someone in the middle, and
accumulates great wealth for himself, but no family or relationships, as they age
they grow wings and a tail. They grow bitter from this transformation and blame
others for their problems as they lie about in rich lairs
• Manticores have a weakness for alcohol
• The interior of a manticore’s mouth is filled with rows upon rows of teeth. There is
hardly room for anything else
• They just like watching people suffer and go to any length to do so, for they are
very bored
• They like to ally with other evil creatures, to use and sacrifice them to their own
ends
• They have a delicate palate and
can talk at length about the
different flavors of men
and humanoids and
which are superior
• Their skin can be
used to make
armor and
cloaks,
sometimes with
the tail
attached

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 EDUSA
“What are the snakes for?“
— Peterson, area simpleton

Nomeclature: Gorgon, snake-lady, maedar

Description: A humanoid monstrosity with a head covered in snakes, whose gaze
turns all who see it to stone

Things that are known:

• They are humanoids whose gaze turns people into stone

Rumors and other faded etchings:

• Medusae weep tears that turn to diamonds in their eyes. A medusa’s heartbreak is
a king’s ransom
• All medusae suffer from a curse, to have everything they see petrify. It afflicts young
women who bargain with devils and demons out of fear of losing their beauty
• Medusae and maedar are actually just a type of humanoid. They don’t literally
turn things to stone, but instead have a superior culture and judge those from other
cultures very harshly, leading to the legend of a ‘petrifying’ gaze
• Medusae have been known to lead soldiers into battle. With their face always to
the enemy, they can never mistakenly curse those who follow or protect them
• Neither medusae nor basilisks are immune to the petrifying gaze of the other;
capturing a basilisk first is one way to hunt a medusa
• A medusa’s severed head is still capable of petrifying those who look on it. One
such head was used by a great warrior to petrify a kraken. You can still make out
the shape of the kraken in the great stone spire it left in the bay
• A warrior sect from the desert lands swears its acolytes to an oath of invisibility to
better hunt medusae. These warriors cover themselves head to toe in cloth and
armor and veils, and will let no outsider see their face once they have taken the
oath. They are known far and wide for their prowess in battle
• “Medusa” is the name of an individual, not a species; she is the most famous
example of a creature called a gorgon. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant
and uneducated
• Gorgons are a distinct creature, a metallic bull-like construct unrelated to medusae.
Anyone who says otherwise is elitist and boring at dinner parties
• Medusae are made when people are cursed for their vanity. Since no creature
may see them without being turned to stone, not even themselves, their beauty
goes unseen forever

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• Medusae are made when jealous or vengeful gods punish beautiful women for arousing
their passions or stealing the attention of others
• With the snakes on their heads hidden by a veil or a hood, a medusa may hide
her true nature so long as she never looks another creature in the eye. Many have
entertained medusae unaware
• Medusae are a variant of lizard men; no petrification but scaly skin, and an
eruption of serpent cysts covering its body
• If a medusa lives long enough, her entire lower body becomes that of a serpent.
She grows to tremendous size dozens of meters in length
• The ‘petrifying’ gaze of a medusa is just shock and wears off shortly
• The deadliest poisons in existence come from medusae
• The medusa’s gaze is petrifying because it’s a side effect of her having vision into
the astral and ethereal simultaneously. When you meet her eyes, those forces
align, leaving only a stone shell where you were
• Medusae curate their own legends, spreading rumors of their unparalleled
beauty and vast hoards of treasure to lure in foolish adventurers and trap them in
the horrifying statue gardens they make with their petrifying gaze
• Because they are cursed with such a terrifying visage, medusae despise beauty
above all else. They petrify beautiful creatures and hoard the statues so that their
beauty can never again be fully enjoyed by anyone save themselves
• Because they are cursed with such a terrifying visage, medusa love beauty
above all else. They petrify beautiful creatures and hoard the statues so that their
beauty will never be lost
• Medusae are uniquely skilled at intrigue and power. They frequently like to rule
from afar, as a distant noble or hidden spymaster
• Medusae can unpetrify their victims using their blood or saliva. A skilled healer
may also be able to do the same if a medusa’s blood or saliva is available
• Medusae are particularly sensitive to sound, finding loud or disruptive noises
damaging
• Anyone can become a medusa; pride and hubris cause the snakes to grow
• The actual true form of the medusa is a writhing mass of tentacles on a lumpy
meatball-like body, covered in eyestalks and mouths filled with jagged sharp
teeth; they are spawns of the deep elemental earth
• Some medusae are said to be able to pass through stone as easily as they walk
• Medusae mate and lay eggs in clutches, after hatching they are fully grown and
mature at the age of five
• Medusae are brilliant archers, crafting wonderful bows and knowing ancient
techniques
• The medusae love beautiful objects and collect paintings and objects of art rarity
and exquisiteness

109
 ERFOLK
“Froth and beauty are a trick. Once you join them it’s
all teeth and drowning” — Oceanus elf of Manaan

Nomeclature: Mermen, mermaids

Description: A combination of fish and man
Things that are known:
• They are humanoids who live within lakes, seas, and oceans

Rumors and other sounds of the waves:

• Merfolk are very narcissistic and all are in love with their swimmer bodies
• They are all disciples of the flood dragon and wish to bring his waters to the
surface world
• Merfolk rumors are just slander against the coast people who dive for pearls and
work the loom
• Merfolk can weave a special type of sea-silk that is said to have amazing qualities
• Merfolk have secret powers of sorcery that allow them to manipulate the weather
of the sea and sky
• Merfolk are extremely xenophobic, preferring to not even be known to their
neighbors. They recognize the existence of other races and wish to have no
discourse, communication, or trade with them
• Every merfolk is talented with a musical
instrument
• They are amoral, concerned only with beauty
and purity
• They are all bros who like to
drink brews and hang out while
they wait for Dagon to destroy
the world
• Merfolk frequently sit upon sand
bars and atolls, enjoying the sun
while combing their hair
• Beware the mermaid that comes
holding in dexter hand a wreath
of coral, and in the sinister a
mirror

110
 INOTAUR
“What lairs in a maze is good hunting.” — General Zaroff

Nomenclature: Tarus, taurian, bull-man, brutal beast

Description: Taurine humanoid with the head of a bull
Things that are known:
• They are fond of mazes
• They are terrifically strong

Rumors and other twine in the maze:

• It is very important that the labyrinth the minotaurs inhabit contain no furniture.
They must be bare of decoration
• They are actually terrible at mazes. If they were any good, they’d all be living in
sunny little villages, eh? No minotaur has ever escaped from a maze, and they
are all a bit sore about it
• They fight and slay all intruders because they are endlessly seeking someone
worthy to end their eternal vigil over the infinite labyrinth
• Any mortal that isolates themselves over a long enough period will slowly change
and shift into the form of a minotaur. Dwarves who do so turn into particularly
powerful minotaurs, larger and more powerful than the default beast
• It isn’t only isolation that causes the change in form. It’s also stubbornness. This is
the origin of the phrase “bull-headed”
• Minotaurs are all autistic, hence the predilection for mazes
• Sometimes this happens quite quickly. The most infamous incident was Tartocrate
the philosopher who transformed in the middle of a debate. His bewildering and
confusing argumentation made of layers of unassailable facts manifested as a
maze around him
• Minotaur shamans wear human masks for their ceremonies
• All minotaurs are hermaphrodites that can reproduce by parthenogenesis
• Though known for the axe, this is actually confusion of the word labrys, consid-
ered to be more than just a word describing the narrow mazes they inhabit. They
actually prefer daggers and poignards, weapons much more suitable for tight
quarters
• The labyrinth is the eternal equilibration matrix of the universe, and minotaurs are
its defense vectors, much like white blood cells

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• They are actually mechanical and scientific geniuses, and the labyrinth is a
training ground for their young. They are so aggressive because they are
arrogant teens, who know their species is vastly more intelligent than other
humanoids. And what they do in the labyrinth is never spoken of once they
escape
• It is said were-minotaurs lair in the tangled groves of Kalabrinthia
• The construction of labyrinths is an insane compulsion that overcomes them, until
such structures reach a certain size. After these unknown criteria are met, they
abandon their maze
• There’s just one minotaur and just one labyrinth, but the labyrinth is very, very
large, and the minotaur is very, very good at playing dead
• The labyrinth is a physical representation of their crazed mind and changes and
shifts with their schizophrenic thoughts. An entrance or exit only appears during
the rare dawns of lucidity and it never lasts long. Once slain, the labyrinth is
disconnected from reality, and as a chaotic thought it is transported to the plane
of Limbo, where it will slowly degrade over time. . .
• Minotaurs aren’t evil, just virile and well hung, causing writers and chroniclers
(mostly male) to depict them as monsters, helping to exterminate them across
Priapia
• The first minotaur was an unsanctioned and terrible union between a god and a
woman. It was not a god of men, but one of beasts and the wilds that took her.
This abomination at birth bred true with both beast and man. The labyrinths are
their temples to their father, their savage rites honor their animal nature, their war,
weapon, and brew craft, homages to the race of their mother. They are the true
hybrid, both man and beast, mortal and divine
• The labyrinths of particularly devout minotaurs can serve as gateways to other
realms
• Minotaurs are builders cursed into terrible shapes and obsessed with labyrinth
building as punishment for cutting corners when building the temples of Zoes the
Munificent and Magnificent in Phthyria Minor
• Minotaur horns are indestructible. It is not possible to take one as a trophy. Other
parts, however. . .
• A minotaur feels compelled to peel the skin and pull the nerves and muscle fibers
apart in their prey. They do this because they know the soul is aware of the body
for days after death, and it clouds its travel into the far planes, leaving it adrift.
Such suffering feeds the taurian’s dark heart.
• Having the head of a bull, they also have the teeth. In order to swallow flesh, it
must be in large chunks, hence the popularity of axes among their kind. They also
have trouble digesting it, giving them foul breath and a terrible temper
• The (sunny?) disposition of the minotaur gives it an aura of inspiration, improving
the morale of all bovine attacks and defenses within 35 feet
• They are usually quite pleasant and docile, but at some point they all turned
anthropophagous. This is attributed to the spread of mad minotaur disease

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• The minotaur is a weak subspecies of a beast called a majotaur which is 13 feet
tall and breathes smoke and brimstone from its nostrils
• The devil-man city of Trumachi is the source of all minotaurs. The future king
would not pay homage to their throne, instead wanting to cast down the
battlements and shatter the dark tower. The king’s sappers who wore hides of the
bull were fused to their trappings. They entered the devil maze beneath the tower
and found that the tower went into them. Curses shot, crackling and ricocheting
through their ranks. Both the high king and the city are hollow ruins, and the wash
of monsters fills the ancient guts of the broken, unassailable fortress
• All minotaurs are actually vegan
• Minotaurs have no sense of smell
• The Hurrian sages disagree, claiming it is by smell and hearing alone that the
beady-eyed beasts navigate their mazes
• The Samnitians go one further, claiming minotaurs have the ears of bats and use
echolocation
• They await the end-times, heralded by the coming of the great two-headed
bull-man
• The bull god Dongbah insisted that all bulls be given free range. When economy-
minded humans (who cared about not having their children trampled and so on)
began to pen them up, Dongbah punished them by creating prisons to herd
humans, to see how THEY liked it. Now Dongbah is quite unintentionally the Gaol
God, and the wardens are vestigial symbols from his pastoral history
• They all actually have the scrotum of a snake, but few know this
• Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, minotaurs never eat beef
• The archmage Alsaziar was an arms dealer, specializing in organic siege
engines. The minotaur was his greatest success, the ultimate berserker warrior
that breeds true. The only way he found to control them was to lock them in
mazes. Inevitably, Alsaziar was slain, and his island was left alone for many
many years. A thousand years later, the minotaurs emerged, eyes brimming with
magic and insanity of dark mazes, wielding massive shackles as weapons. Their
mazes had grown dull, and they now sought new entertainments
• The Daedelmar fleshcrafters blended men with horses to guard the plains and
blended men with bulls to guard the mountains. They explained that all that was
required was a burning heart of anger and a gut that trembles with lust for
man-flesh. In the aeons since this event, minotaurs worked their way in and along
the roots of the mountains and they are nothing but one large connected maze,
bound by magic where it is not bound by stone
• They are considered a delicacy by the Paztecas, eaten with pasta al dente
• The bellow of a minotaur can attract cows from up to 3 miles away
• Minotaur milk is said to be liquid gold, prized in the markets the world over
• Their tails are components of magical whips
• They don’t construct mazes but actually live in labyrinth-like towers

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• There is a rare subspecies of minotaur, the ‘dwarf’ or ‘pygmy’ minotaur; whose
body is that of a halfling and head is that of a calf
• Emperor Flanyeer enjoyed board games, so he created the grandest game as
creatures and men were coerced into costume to play at a life-size board.
Mages would gain favor for creating the most spectacular pieces. Magus
Dulwither created the minotaur which was considered a superb creation till it ran
amok, killing and eating several other pieces. Dulwither made several other
minataurs to protect him, and that was the downfall of the empire. They smashed
and destroyed that city, and now they still play the grand game, making up their
own rules.
• They all have a third eye hidden under the skin on their foreheads, which allows
them to see the true path through any maze or labyrinth
• Savage tribes wear masks to take on aspects of the spirits. When a tribe nears its
end, those who go into the last battle or journey take the form permanently, and
some always survive the death of their people
• When ranchers moved in, spoiling the land of the peaceful halflings of Vestilech,
they protested. The protests were of course ignored. The halflings captured the
horsemen and painfully mated them with large stud bulls, using powerful curses
learned from the spider folk. The monsters that were made fear halflings as
elephants fear mice, but hate humans with a burning passion. It was not long till
the minotaurs managed the herds, treating the halflings with respect. The
halflings are now long dead, but the minotaurs still tend the herds
• There is no such thing as a minotaur. It is just tribal shamans wearing masks
• Boiled minotaur tongue is an aphrodisiac, sold in the markets of Farkathae, hence
the rarity of said beasts today
• The first of them were spelunkers. Shamans would mark the known routes on a
bull hide magically melded with the explorer. They would become bigger,
stronger, and have their explorations marked on the hide. Some few got trapped,
the hide unremoveable, and with time became terrible beasts under the earth
• They are a nasty joke perpetrated by the god of fertility while drinking in a bar
where strippers rode a mechanical bull
• Some star-crossed lovers were involved in a theater production practicing out in
the woods with fae watching. One of the fae enchanted the dour pimp of the
group, giving him a bull head. He was not a good sport, and he ended up
slaying all the fey with his magic sword and grumbling off. That’s how it all
started. . .
• They all have electromagnetic sensors in their horns, which is how they navigate
in pitch blackness
• They do not breed true. They are the product of human rape or curses placed on men
• Shulabu of Hulum created a chimeric creature, combining a minotaur and a
gargantuan mantis shrimp, creating a deadly aquatic predator

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 • A prank by a fledgling god is the beginning of it. Bulls were struck with lightning,
holding great transformative power. The resulting creatures, minotaurs, were so
fascinated by the lightning that they ever strove to recreate its complex patterns,
digging out labyrinth after labyrinth
• In the beginning was Minotaur, firstborn son of the All-Father, the Great Bull of
Sky. When he rebelled against All-Father and ate the fruit of the tree of knowl-
edge, All-Father exiled him from the Pasture of Ease and split him into men and
cattle so that his stolen knowledge would be scattered and lost. Now and again
All-Father sends another divine minotaur son to see how the mortals live on the
lost Earth. Some become bitter with their lot, others not. The greatest of the
messiah minotaurs ascend bodily back to the All-Father with their judgements,
while others fall from grace and become demonic reavers
• They are all human, blessed by the evil Baphomet with strength and power
• Minotaurs like delftware and collect it in preference to all other valuables
• Minotaurs are actually cyborgs — robot heads mounted on the slain bodies of
humans. For cost-cutting reasons the Elven Transhumescence Corporation
decided to mount the hardware in a bull’s head because the extra space allowed
for cheaper, off-the-shelf equipment
• The minotaurs of southern Tauriscia are organized in several crime syndicates
collectively called the Corno Nostro. They are primarily active in smuggling dairy
products, drugs, and fermented mare’s milk

Combat Tricks:
The doubled shaft: Double crossbow at range, fires two bolts at once for double
damage, one to hit roll, plus a chance to knock the target down. One round to reload
Charge: Minotaurs receive double benefits from charge
Impalement: On a successful charge that is a critical hit, the target is impaled on
the horns, taking gore damage every turn they are held. They must succeed at a
grapple (against the minotaur’s full hit dice) to escape
The push: Minotaurs are experts at knocking people back and down. If their only
action, they get a large bonus, or they may attempt it as part of a normal attack. The
penalty is that they are terrible at grappling, being hoofed, top-heavy creatures,
acting as if they had half their hit dice
Vengeance at Death: Upon being reduced to 0 hit points or less, the minotaur can
make one final attack with a bonus to hit, doing double damage against the nearest
melee target
Savage ferocity: Every time the minotaur attacks and misses, he becomes more
angry, getting a cumulative bonus on damage and temporary hit points until the end
of combat

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 IGHTMARE
“You can die in your dreams; to actually walk in the realm
itself is the height of foolishness.” — Ui-teh, Taurian Speaker
“I beheld a nightmare from up close upon the tree pits of
Haly Karoek. I admit, beheld is not the right word. . . It
smelled so noxious that my eyes watered ceaselessly!”
— Nightmare survivor, Phrain Tharbos

Nomenclature: Hell horse, darkfire mount

Description: A dark horse, often aflame
Things that are known:
• When seen, they appear as horses
• They are often highlighted or colored with flame
• They are known to fly

Rumors and other terrors in the dreamscape:

• Nightmares are regular horses, raised on a special diet of salt, from the para-
elemental plane of salt, collected near the negative energy side
• They are the dreams of demon lords that have settled into darkness and then race
out as steeds of flame, each one an ember or spark designed to engulf the world
• They are souls of those who have failed their demon master, bound to the corpse
of a horse, condemned to serve someone more competent
• They are the results of drunk bets made between wizards
• They are birthed from the raw detritus of creation, warped to only destroy
• They seek tragedy and ruins, decayed battlefields and mass graves, because
that is where celestial and infernal stallions carry the dead to the afterlife.
• Sometimes wishes are horses and beggars do ride. Witches are responsible for
binding infernal energy into a stable mount capable of reproduction. This product
of internal wishes reproduces by mating with the terror dreams that are inspired
by its existence
• They are a status symbol of the wicked, those who have torn free a piece of fire
and ambition used to flee hell itself. They believe they’ve acquired freedom,
when in fact the escape was a test. Those who do are horrific enough to lead
demons against the last bastion of good on the prime
• They are capable of bearing a rider while leaping into the dream of a victim

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• They are the used up, cast-off casualties of horses from the chariot that drew the
sun across the sky. Burned and worn, they smolder still. They are tangentially
real, disconnected from the divine, malicious, yet still able to travel between
dimensions
• A nightmare is a witch’s infernal bond. When she bargains with demons from the
underworld, the nightmare is created, but the demon chooses the master of the
horse, not the witch. Slaying the nightmare severs the witche’s infernal power
• They are fallen Ki-rin
• Nightmares are the beasts created when wendigos attack horses instead of men
• Nightmares are actually the souls of children who died in a fire set intentionally
for malicious purposes. They feast on the wicked, insane beasts driven by
madness and eternal burning flame
• They are bred by giants in a remote land, fed only human flesh and blood to
obtain a precious human soul. They are then killed and the souls sold to demons,
who ride them for eternity. The horses are quite intelligent and constantly seek to
escape
• The nightmare is a dream of a wicked man, potent and unfulfilled. They lack
control, and their personal ambitions release ethereal miasma. This mist can
become different kinds of aberrations; those related to majesty and freedom
become mares of the night. They are ridden by champions of evil because they
seek those who have the drive their creators lack
• They are loyal, cruel and don’t feel any remorse to leave a master who is a
failure
• Nightmares, hellhounds, and smoke raptors are all created by the lord of the hunt
— after cultists found his avatar and corrupted him from a hunting god, to a god
of death
• True nightmares are only born on the field of battle. Enraged spirits of the slain,
trapped by their fury, pour into wounded horses, setting them ablaze with their
wrath
• They aren’t evil, just elemental. They have escaped from the stables of a volcanic
titan. Their skin is cracked and folded like fresh lava. The flames at their hooves
are from the objects they touch, not the horse itself
• They are the adolescent form of a night hag
• They can only be tamed by someone who isn’t a virgin
• Sometimes when riding through the dreams of victims, they leave their riders
behind. Other times they never leave, preferring to possess their victims instead
• Nightmares are unconcerned about sexuality. When they refuse to be tamed by
‘virgins’ they mean those who have never slain another sentient creature
• They will thoughtlessly abandon a rider for a crueller one
• They are the smouldering remains of the hopes and dreams of a valkyrie while
transporting a soul to Valhalla

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• Nightmares are literally nightmares of slumbering titans. Killing the titan will slay
the nightmare
• Nightmares are only corporeal in the dream realm. They are the shades of
innocent horses that are slain by cruel riders
• They are neither intelligent, nor alive. The sage Gno Ko No asserts that night-
mares are the infections parasitized bodies possessed by larval efreeti
• According to Wagghy Baroeka, savant and najib of the Nazraheem, the
nightmare is a vampiric horse. The vampirism is caused by a blood curse of the
seven fates of the three crystal moons and increases the strength, speed, and
blood lust, but only mares attain the full stature
• The stallion counterpart to the nightmare is the zombie stallion, rotting and
possessed by a lust for herbivore brains
• Daymares are worse; they are not bound by night
• A nightmare can teleport through the bad dreams of anyone who has ever
beheld it
• Shulao of Chuffre claims the nightmares were an abortive experiment by the Vilai
who sought to create telepathic horses
• Shulao of Tancra disagrees; the nightmares were originally created from several
species of animals, including donkeys and beavers, as familiars to permit the
wizard Li Vilai Kreisers to communicate at a distance through their dreams. The
mares eventually got loose, but some creatures, such as the nightbear and the
nightskunk, remain docile
• It is a corruption of their proper name, Knightmare, the gift of the moon goddess
to her paladins
• They are the spirit of wicked riders who have trampled to death the innocent and
then burnt at the stake as punishment
• People riding on nightmares are all too commonly controlled by the nightmare.
Nightmares are not the steed but the rider
• The dreamstuff nightmares are made of ignites in the waking world. Anyone who
weathers the most terrible dream a nightmare can deliver is immune to any harm.
• They come from the stable of Oneiroi, gods of dreaming, found on the wild plane
of dreaming and the astral plane
• Dwarven efforts to create a rideable nightmare pony have only resulted in
delicious new barbecue sensation
• They are composed of ash and flame; when it is slain it falls to smouldering coals
• Fire giants, famed hellhound-trainers also train nightmares expertly. The prices
are exorbitant of course
• They are invisible, translucent and colorless. It is only the fear of the victim that
colors them black and flame
• Nightmare herds graze on the far side of the moon; trapped on earth they are
driven to madness

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• Alzamrum, the antimage of Chuffre, claims nightmares are demons that possess
animals in the night. They ride them through the air, scaring people
• Nightmares have hooves of pure gold. They use fire-jet nostrils to melt rare
metals out of ore, which sustains them. They are aurophages, eating gold in
preference to all other substances
• They are all female and mate with other equines (unicorns, pegasi, and celestial
mounts preferred) and bear only female foals
• They go into heat only during the hottest part of summer. The female subsumes
her flame, becoming a plain majestic black mare. Her beauty attracts mates.
After birthing, the foals are abandoned, and they must find sentient raw flesh to
eat in order to survive
• A paladin’s mount is an ordinary horse transmuted atom by atom into celestial
matter. Hell, ever original, copied the idea
• Greater nightmares grow wings not unlike those of crows, which they then use to
fly. Ordinary nightmares simply stride across the sky, slower than actual flying
creatures, like pegasi, rocks, and the screaming stars of Phelogeon
• They are actually shape-shifting goblin shamans
• They are all created by the ritual “Nightmare” which targets a single individual,
or the powerful “Plague of Nightmares” which the Academages of Askamandria
claim was responsible for the fall of the Gloaming Empire of Suskandahar
• They are the steeds of fallen paladins who have no immunity to their tormenting
flaming hooves
• They are possessed by a fiery demon, because hell creatures need steeds too
• Nightmares can torment victims by taking the shape of “psychic smoke” and
invading the dreamer’s mind. The creature feasts on the terrors of the sleeper,
leaving a dried out fear-stricken husk
• They are actually a species of sheep
• Hairshirts made from their hide remind all those akashics and pain seekers of the
ultimate fire that waits ‘pon all flesh
• The aquatic nightmare has flippers instead of hooves and gives off steam instead
of fire, called “notte di mare” in ‘Talish
• Each nightmare has only one eye, the other a soul gem, hiding trapped behind
the dreamer who dreamt it. All nightmares have a blind side because of this
• They seek damned souls of the troubled and disturbed. Souls are carried to
various planes of torment or enslaved by the gods of horror to spawn new
monsters to torment the waking world
• There is a whole realm of nocturnal horror fauna, but only a few leak into our
world. Pre-human races and damnable cults try to call them
• There is a rare unicorn/nightmare hybrid. It poisons water with its toxic horn and
enters the dreams of virgins to tempt them to death
• Nightmares are obviously and frequently used as riders to traverse the planes

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 • Any person who wakes from sleep in the presence of a nightmare is unable to
move until it leaves
• Their teeth are stained pink

Combat Tricks
Flaming hooves: Their hooves may burst aflame! This means they do flame
damage in addition to normal damage
Flaming stampede: Nightmares may overrun their opponents. On a successful
stampede, the target takes damage from both hooves, as well as double flame
damage
Flame stomp: By slamming their hooves into the ground, nightmares may produce
a flaming burst. This affects all opponents to the front or front sides of the nightmare.

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 IXIE
“You hang out down by the river with watery
tarts, you get what’s coming to you.
— Margrit, town harridan

Nomenclature: Water women, foamys, nixe, nikker, nykk, nykur, niads

Description: lady of the lake
Things that are known:
• They are women who are always in the presence of water

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

• They are actually dragon-like serpents. Traditionally this has not negatively
impacted their ability to seduce men
• They play enchanting melodies on coral violins, drawing women and children
into the water to drown
ºº That’s just witch-hunter gossip. The songs are completely harmless and attract
all sorts. It’s a real family event
• They sometimes choose to love a human but grow despondent without free and
regular access to a body of water
• They can teach musical techniques that can cause the trees to dance and the
waterfalls to stop, but require three drops of blood, a black animal, and a gift of
either alcohol or tobacco in exchange
• The name of a nixie is a deep secret for saying their name aloud will slay them
• They can feel where people will die in the water. This brings them great sorrow,
and they will call out when they feel it
• They aren’t dragons or serpents but sea horses
• They can take the shape of any animal, but being an aquatic people,
their depictions of land animals are often entertainingly wrong
• If they do shape-shift into a land creature or walk about
above the water, they must receive a kiss from their true
love within three days and nights or they will dissolve into foam
• If shape-shifted into a human form, the hem of their
clothing will always be wet
• They have no ears, only slits on either side of their head
• They have the ability to grant minor wishes, and thus are
quite bothered by their neighbors

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 GRE“Call it an ogre and scalp it.” — Craven, bounty hunter

Nomenclature: Ogress, hongrois, zimwi

Description: Large hideous humanoid
Things that are known:
• They are anthropophagous

Rumors and other echoes in the cave:

• They are the true servants of Orcus
• Ogres mix the blood of their victims with root grind to create a paste which they
use to paint their nails. Ogres who maintain a deep shade of red on their digits
garner more respect amongst other ogres, as it suggests strength and capability
• They are irrationally afraid of lances
• They come from Og, the homeland of the giants
• Ogres are just disabled children that live outside of town because of societal
rejection
• The sign of a true ogre is albinism
• Ogres frequently have the ability to shape-shift
• Ogres are so large because when they have sex with a woman, the woman is
absorbed into the ogre’s body. Their size is a measure of their enormity
• Some ogres have more refined palettes than others. These ogres will cut into their
human prey, salt and season their wounds, and then impale them live on stakes
within their lair. They believe that the meat seasons more efficiently while it is still
breathing, struggling, and screaming
• Ogres are created when a person of evil spirit dies without committing any crimes
• Some ogres are killed by their own insatiable appetites. These ogres become so
large that movement slowly becomes impossible. Often, these ogres succumb to
heart failure and leave massive, bloating corpses that become habitats for small
scavengers and dangerous fungi. The only ones that are able to maintain their
immense size are the ones who successfully recruit servants such as goblins or
kobolds to regularly bring them food

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 RC
“They are superior to men, in all ways, except one.”
-Gorgonson, Avatar of War

Nomenclature: Orc, ork

Description: Brutish, green-skinned humanoids
Things that are known:
• They despise men and are hated by elves

Rumors and other rumbles in the wilderness:

• There is no difference between man and orc. Orcs that live in cities become men,
just as men who live in the wild become orcs. It is a dark secret, full of shame, and
hidden from the elves and dwarves
• It is said that sudden shock or extreme stress can cause a human to become a
half-orc
• Orcs are giant aggressive plants
• Orcs are from another world, near the end of its life-cycle. They were the only
race to flee to our world, proof that brute force is the ultimate survival trait
• Orcs are the reincarnation of wicked dwarves
• Orcs are creatures of fae, born male
• Orcs are the cancer of the world, corrupted growths festering in unseen places.
They have no gods before them, gods being a projection by other races. The
“one eyed” they worship is their singular purpose, to grow until the whole world
suffers and dies
• The orcs are a forgotten placeholder, a bookmark that was never removed due to
the god’s own destruction
• Orcs are what happens when teen mothers drink during pregnancy in a fantasy world
• They are the next devolutionary step, one step further down from the result of
elves breeding with apes to make humans. They are the coming dominate race, a
cosmic secret only a few know
• Orcs are not a separate race but elves wearing masks
• The brain chemistry of an adult orc is unstable. They require proteins from intelligent
creatures to survive, and these proteins are better absorbed in the adrenaline rush
of life or death. Stress, both physical and mental, retards the breakdown process,
as does intense anger and hatred. The only hope for a peaceful orc is self-mortifi-
cation, extreme exercise, and a complex or possibly magical diet

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• They are simply angry over centuries of bigotry
• Orcs are an escaped modular-adaptive life-forms, They mimicked the most
successful species, which at the time was neanderthal man. They evolved into
their current stable state, their natural traits (fear of magic, power worship,
shamelessness and fecundity) outgrowths of it
• “Orc” is just a derogatory term for people suffering from force-field mutations
• Orcs are cruelty of dreams and foul thoughts made flesh. They cannot be slain,
for doing so only creates more orcs. Their elimination requires unconditional
human peace
• Orcs are the result of humans consuming troll flesh. It is all too easy to feed a
large army with troll flesh, no matter how dire the consequences. Halflings turn
into goblins. Elves turn into bugbears, gnomes and giants find the flesh deadly to
consume. Mermaids turn into sea hags
• Orcs are the reflection of man from a once-distant dimension merged with ours.
Neither can achieve their potential while the other exists, and this is knowledge
only the orcs have. Killing humans is a deeply spiritual duty for an orc, even if it’s
not something they mention often
• Orcs are symbiotic with humans, linked by the whim of the gods. Every human has his
opposite orc when one dies, the other dies as well. Should a linked pair meet,
they merge to create a new creature, a ‘half-orc’. Sages say, a true neutral
half-orc is destined to end the conflict, though the nature of the reckoning is debated
• Orcs are mutant elves, caused by the influence of iron on their reproduction
• Orcs are an alloy of goblins and humans. When they are burned together in a
cramped space, the adaptability of humans is fused with the violent tendencies of
goblins. Orcs lord over goblins because they consider themselves the next step
up. There are rumors orcs could be ‘broken down’ into their base components,
but goblins, orcs, and men all agree this is likely a terrible idea
• Orcs are scaled, cyclopean, fish-lipped monsters. They fire a ray beam from their
single terrible eye, based on the color of the orcs
ºº Some say that this is because orcs were slaves to the eye tyrants, the first of whom
was a mad sorcerer, who gave up his humanity to become a floating head. He
then created many different cyclopean creatures, orcs being the lowest
• A druid once desired peace, so he created a spell to remove all negative
emotions, motives, and energies from humans and demi-humans. Sadly, his drug
use had addled his brain and the casting was corrupted. Instead of removing
emotions, he made them manifest in the world. Worse still, humanoids retained
all their basic motivation. Every orc is the hate, envy, lust, greed, violence,
gluttony, and sloth of a living humanoid made manifest. Every time a human is
born, a new orc is born

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• Elves are divine spirits made manifest in flesh. They reproduce by cultivating new
natural spirits. Sometimes this process gets corrupted and an orc develops. Like
elves, they take form fully grown of spirit melded with matter. However they can
use any matter and spirit to propagate. They murder and rape to ensure both
new spirits and the raw material to install them in. They are born with the impulse
to reproduce obsessively. After much pillaging, they either die or begin to settle
• Older orcs focus on other things: refining their spiritual potency and eventually
becoming demons, seeking out stasis and calm in nature, or perhaps becoming
brood mothers who birth new warbands. Any orc will tell you it is foolish to
depend on elves for anything, much less the future of the species
• Orcs are an experiment by halflings to create pig cheese. Results were mixed
• Orcs are descended from pigs. Or a culture obsessed with pigs. Breeding pigs,
powering things with pig sacrifice. Suddenly people began giving birth to pigs.
Or pig people. They were quietly enslaved and sacrificed and worshiped. This
tenuous situation lasted only a while, then revolution began, and the orc as we
know it today emerged
• Orcs are manifestations of the wild places, boars and pigs and savagery sprung
from something much more ancient than man
• Orcs are the rational, revolutionary potential of mankind, freed from gods and
their endless mechanisms of control. They aren’t angry or violent by some intrinsic
nature; they just have no patience for god-fearing, reactionary, bigoted humans.
Better to put them all down
• Orcs are a symbiotic race, host to a strain of fungus granting them toughness and
increased strength and aggression. It makes them hunger for human flesh, but
only to complete their nutritional needs. They are nihilist humans, derived from an
intelligence not freed from the needs of the fungus
• Orcs are mud men that have coagulated into solidity. Their anger is at their
inability to flow and merge with the foul waste that birthed them. Slaying an orc
causes it to crumble like damp earth
• Sites where many orcs have died become spawning pits for mud men
• You can use Faunal Succession to tell the length of time a body has been dead, for
different creatures live off of it at different times. So it was with the titans, for the
lizards feasted first, then dwarves, then elves, then humans, and finally the orcs
• Orcs are the result of casting reveal invisible on invisible servants. They aren’t
supposed to be here and they know it
• Orcs are demonic foot soldiers and come in a variety of forms
• Orcs are invisible spirits that ride and corrupt the flesh of the dead. When risen,
their flesh reforms, horribly, becoming an orc

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• Orcs are a common result from exposing humans to the energies of the under-
world till they are driven mad. One human becomes a hundred orcs as their
personality splinters and manifests in reality. The leaders and spellcasters are the
larger chunks of the original personality. The original shattered human can be
unthinkably powerful, and is often well protected, because it is said if you kill it,
all the others will cease to exist
• Orcs are what happens when you feed elves after midnight
• Orcs were the largest and most organized bandit gang in the world, transcend-
ing cultures and borders. It has long ago collapsed, but many hold to their
traditions, pig-like masks, savage dress, and horde tactics
• Orcs are a tool of the gods to curb population growth. When successful, they turn
on each other, leaving areas depopulated
• Paladins sometimes raise orc troops but must provide an opponent. Sport is not
enough; their violent nature is too much: starting riots over slurs, bad calls, or
injuries. Respect for brute force and eye for an eye runs deep
• Orcs are from a twisted mirror of the real world. In the dark world, they fight and
murder and die in ‘cities’ of the real world. When an orc dies, another bursts from
its skull 9 days later. They are summoned into this world by sorcerers in foul
rituals, but they are never under the sorcerer’s control. They only answer to the
orc king in the heart of the dark world. The orc king wishes for nothing more than
to be freed from his prison
• They are frankenstein bipedal pigs; their eyes hide no intelligence, and they are
surrounded by an aura of flies. They are said to follow, ant-like, a massive queen
orc
• Orcs are perfected elves, without vanity and with motivation. Everything that orcs
are is what elves were meant to be
• Orcs are all little pieces of different gods, eternally at war with each other
• Orcs are the broken parts of a singular large being. Their low-level species-wide
telepathic bond allows one orc to fill in for another that is absent. Their odd
bumps and pits are indications of the marks where they join
• Orcs are a natural phenomenon that exists outside the natural order to support it.
They clear away the dead brush and allow new, stronger creatures to take hold.
Comfort and stagnation call to them, their presence an irritant. They will not leave
these blights till they are burned, any more than you would leave rotten food in
your cupboard
• Orcs are the shameful creations of dwarves

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• To understand this, you must understand dwarves. To reproduce, they carve each
other from different kinds of stone (granite, marble, basalt). This is why the
dwarves dig: to make more dwarves. But that is also their downfall, because
sometimes they dig too deep. Throughout the ages, several dwarf clans
attempted to ‘improve’ on the species. Gnomes were forged from clay, sand-
stone, and limestone. Azers were cast from molten bronze, but once completed
moved to the plane of fire, never to return. Orcs are made from pig iron and
turned on their creators, driving them out and killing those left. They opened the
passages to the deep and sealed the entrances and forge new orcs to this day.
They raid for iron and more iron to propagate as far and deep as they can
• Orcs are created slave soldiers. All their traits that would be non-adaptive for
their environment make them better soldiers and less threatening to their creators
(stupidly brave, easy to bully, Malthusian fecundity, fast life cycle). “Following
orders” isn’t an excuse but a genetic imperative. Excess orcs are sent away to live
off the enemies’ land or abandoned. Female orcs are breeding machines that
rarely leave their pits. They must be supported by human races, since the orcs
aren’t capable enough farmers to feed themselves
• Orcs are simply humans exposed to unhealthy space radiation. This causes them
to give into their base desires and wish to drain the id from humans via crude
eldrich trepanning. Those who survive become orcs themselves, but sterile.
Sometimes matriarchs gain enough id from humans that they become sated and
give birth to horrible creatures
• Orcs are driven by an inescapable vice. Wrath is the most prevalent, as they tend
to kill those who are not wrathful themselves. Greed, pride, lust, and envy exist in
smaller numbers, accounting for orcs of subterfuge and cunning. Slothful orcs are
the most rare
• Each race was crafted from a different element. Humans from water, elves from
wood, dwarves from metal, gnomes from earth, and orcs from fire. Halflings are
not original, crafted perhaps from the void. When the creators craft a species
from air, it will mean a fundamental change in the world
• Half-orcs are sometimes called ‘forks’ because of their split from both human and orc
• Half-orcs aren’t orcs but the spawn of humans and animals
• There are no orc females. They procreate by impregnating females of other
species. Birth usually kills the mother. The offspring is always full-blooded orc
• Orcs are the insurance plan of the gods against the outsiders. You wouldn’t bet
on humans, dwarves, or elves to save the world, but a horde of orcs?
• There are only female orcs. In fact, elves have 1 male and 2 female sexes, with
the other female sex being orcs. A pairing of two elves always produces elves,
but a pairing of orcs and elves produces either a male elf or a female orc. There
is a very low chance of an elf/orc coupling producing a male elf, so most
outsiders don’t even realize that they are the same species
• Orcs just are. Nobody made them. They have no destiny. Their rage comes from
the fact that the gods hate them and keep trying to kill them like they are weeds

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• Before the empire collapsed the Orchulli clan took to banditry and cannibalism in
order to survive. Once discovered, they were locked in their house and burned
alive. Later, tunnels were discovered beneath the cellar. It was assumed that this
was an escape route, but it just led deeper and deeper into the dark, joining the
natural caverns below. The clan mated and bred with what they found below
and have been returning to the surface ever since
• Ancient scrolls contain the ritual to make elves into orcs, but as the population of
elves thinned, the knowledge was lost. So the ritual has been adapted to work on
humans, and even mud in some cases. A poorly worded wish may be the origin
of female orcs
• Orcs are autistic, with limited socializing, language, and tool use, but well versed
in aggression and tactics. They long to find their place in the pack and respond
poorly to traits they perceive as weak, such as tenderness and kindness. Some
may form attachments to pigs and wolves stronger than to their careers or others
of their kind
• Orcs are not cultured. Here are a variety of ways orcs are born
ºº They spring forward fully-formed, able to speak and kill
ºº Any man painted with blood and committing murder that stays away from the
sun for a full day becomes an orc
ºº Any orphan who drinks from a sewer will change into an orc
ºº After battle, orcs excrete an iridescent black sphere. When it’s soaked in
blood, an orc hatches. When soaked in demon blood, a dozen orcs are born.
ºº Soak the ground of an ancient tree in blood, and for every wound the tree
sustains, it will bud an orc in revenge
ºº When the teeth of demons are hurled to the ground, they explode and orcs
with weapons made from bone leap to battle
ºº Dogs made to drown in salt water and then left in the lake cause orcs to spawn
from the foul water
ºº Orcs have disgusting long spined tongues. After battle, orcs use their tongue to
infect the corpses. Several hours later, newborn orcs eat their way out
ºº They are cooked in unholy cauldrons
ºº Everyone dies, only they really don’t. Once you reach a certain age, you
change and become an orc
ºº Marking any corpse with a dark, evil rune will cause the ground it is buried
under to produce orcs
ºº Humans who eat the flesh of the dead become orcs

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 TYUGH
“I hate these things!”
—Arcaila Moreu, adventuring sellsword

Nomenclature: Gulguthra, otyugh, neo-otyugh, shit pile, refuse

Description: A tripedial thorny tentacled beast with dun-colored rocky flesh, a
gaping maw, and a set of three eyes on a mobile stalk. It is notable that it is usually
covered in fecal refuse

Things that are known:

• They live in and eat refuse and fecal matter
• They also eat people

Rumors and other gurgles in the refuse:

• They are particularly sensitive to their environments, picking up traits from
wherever they happen to live. Swamp otyughs cause rotting when they strike,
cave otyughs can seep acid through their skin from the acidic water
• They often have psychic powers
• They don’t actually feed on refuse, but on residual psychic energy from pain and
terror. This is best communicated through refuse in ancient battlefields, mass
graves, and dungeons
• They are all unwanted children, abandoned by their parents
• They are the discarded, diseased, and sick heads of a hydrae
• They aren’t an animal or creature as such, but instead giant semi-sentient
colonies of bacteria living in monster dung
• They aren’t live children abandoned by their parents, but instead children who
died and did not receive a proper burial
• Alchemical waste and detritus ends up somewhere and becomes an otyugh.
Neo-otyughs occur when this process is performed on purpose
• They are the rage of a planet manifest against those who dump their waste
instead of sorting and cycling it again
• They are the droppings of the many-handed Setebos, the god of rage and blind
violence
• It is the result of a vicious magical poison, transmuting the filth in the imbiber’s gut
into a baby otyugh, eventually bursting free through the rear orifice
• They are sentient creatures produced from hemorrhoids by the curse of a witch

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• The otyugh has a more primitive form, the paleo-otyugh, with tentacles that have
spines and a fear of fire
• Some otyughs have been known to shoot beams of fire or light from the tentacle
containing its eyes
• They have a rare third stage of evolution known as the ultimo-otyugh, powered
by the massive consumption of methane. This large, armored form drifts through
the air from place to place, attacking all life with beams of light and fire, gouts of
flame, and streams of noxious poison
• They are secretly star spawn from beyond the outer crystal barrier of the heav-
ens. They mine refuse for methane, stored in a hyper-pressurized extradimen-
sional space until they can blast away from the surface of the earth on a pillar of
fire.
ºº These star spawn explode when killed. The historian and philanderer Mocko-
ropius says that it was the explosion of a single one that took out the entire
shimmering spire quarter of Massansopolis in the year of the cancer rat
• All otyughs may use the methane they collect to levitate
• It is the final fate after death of all those who were annoying and abrasive to
existence
• Refuse to an otyugh is profound, the degree to which it is rejected and shunned is
the beauty and purity of it. Adventurers are outcasts themselves, proving irresist-
ible for most otyughs
• Otyughs communicate via modulated smells, which is why they collect dung
• The otyughs view the world through a strange lens, with an aesthetic sense
completely reversed from our own. They attack out of strong revulsion, as we
would a spider or insect
• They are the shit of the gods, proof of their existences
• They are what happens if you try to raise the dead long after it is safe to do so
• Otyughs are demi-gods elevated by sentient anthropomorphic dung beetles
worshiping offal pits in the mists of early time. Each settlement of beetles raised
their own god, and these gods turned out to be capable of breeding true. Back in
the day, the biggest settlements pumped enough sincere worship into otyughs
that they could grant spells to the high priest of the settlement
ºº Goblins discovered this by accident, and many goblin tribes have a guardian
otyugh they worship and feed with sacrifices. This is the source of some goblin
shaman, spellcasting ability
• A grove of powerful swamp druids defended a border against incursions for a
thousand years, constantly animating the swamp itself to defend against intrud-
ers. The composite residue built up in the swamp has been responsible for
shambling mounds, otyughs, and a variety of carnivorous plants.

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• A goblin hero once saved a lesser demi-god from a dark fate. The bemused and
grateful god said the goblin could have a mount. The goblin wished for some-
thing stable and not too fast (he was easily travelsick) that could grab and break
stuff, was heavily armored, could peek around corners, and was not too dainty.
Oh, and it could wade through anything. His name was Otyugh, and his mount
was named Otyugh too
• Lizardfolk shamans were getting pounded by constructs their civilized wizard
neighbors built to go into the swamp and root them out. Frustrated, they pooled
their collective energies and tried to figure out how to make constructs of their
own, to bring the power of the swamp to bear against civilization. This was the
best they could do. However, the fecundity of the swamp allowed them to
manage something the wizards never could with their constructs—otyughs can
reproduce
• A furious court wizard cursed the courtier who used intrigues to oust him, making
him clearly visible to all as the spying, muckraking, lecherous, disease-riddled
piece of shit he was. Unfortunately, he also told the courtier to go screw himself,
so the resulting monstrosity could reproduce without help
• Otyughs are slaves brought from another dimension to do heavy lifting and swamp
work, by the Makers Before Time. With the fall of the Makers, no one else had the
knack or inclination to tell the otyughs what to do, or to send them home
• Modron, trapped on Prime lose their crispness and gain infections and unsightly
growths, becoming otyughs. Driven mad with shame and pain, they degenerate
to animal intelligence
• Otyughs are the individual sperm of the god of rot, filth, corruption, and fertility.
• Otyughs are massive, striding constructs of swamp pixies playing Godzilla. They
are inside the armored torso, giggling madly as they smash stuff
• Otyughs are larval eye tyrants
• Giant otyughs exist, one was sighted in Sham Padmoen. They rise from the
decayed souls and corpses of dead giants outcast from their society
• Otyughs are the result of civilization. For every intricate sculpture, every profound
play, every elaborate painting, every organized government, and even the
ordered philosophy of law, there is an otyugh. They recall the work of their birth:
those born of music can emit a deafening scream, those of painting a mesmer-
izing display, those of sculpture a petrifying aura. They bud from themselves, full
of loathing and hate for themselves and all men and their works. Their existence
is suffering. They desire nothing but to devour all of civilization. A ruined, filth and
decay covered dungeon is as to ponography for them, a brief glimpse of the end
of all things
• Otyughs are beautiful creatures turned inside out
• They are exceedingly intelligent, with a highly literate culture. However, all their
communication is olfactory, and their writing is in smell-coated excrement pellets,
making their works unknown to men

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• They are said to run a prison known as the otyugh hole, where if one can survive
a week, internal reserves of strength might be found
• They have been known to swarm in large enough piles of refuse
• They are dungeon overlords, who hold a shadow council to decide the contents
of every underground realm in the land
• They often act as ‘watchdogs’ for tribes of primitive screwheads
• The watchdog bit is an excellent cover for their rulership over tribes of primitive
screwheads
• Smart and organized societies integrate the otyugh into the cycle of waste disposal.
This often makes them the best person (thing?) to talk to when things get lost
• They have a tendency to form unions and then strike
• The type of waste they eat determines which special abilities they have

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 WLBEAR “Fuckin’ wizards.” — Ubiquitous

Nomenclature: Urstrix, owlkin, wildkin

Description: A hideous fusion of owl and bear
Things that are known:
• They are a combination of bear and owl traits in the form of a ferocious beast

Rumors and other hoots in the night:

• Owlbears are all erudite scholars and only act like bears to get people to leave
them alone to read
• Owlbears don’t sleep, and are berserk, frothing mad their entire lives. They are
birthed whole by a magical plant pod
• Owlbears are incapable of feeling fear
• Owlbears are excellent swimmers and water hunters
• Owlbears hibernate. This makes them a seasonal threat, encroaching on civilized
territories during harvest season
• Owlbears are unwilling to eat food that doesn’t struggle. They like to play with
their food
• It’s actually a bearowl
• They are actually just lonely, and the terrifying “owlbear hug” is simply a cry for
love. They don’t know their own strength
• Some people race owlbears. Sometimes they don’t race, so much as eat the
jockey
• Once they have a scent, they won’t stop till they catch their prey
• They are surprisingly intelligent, building and protecting bee hives and termite
mounds for sources of meat and honey
• Owlbears are actually just bears. Only people with poor vision, idiots, and liars
say owlbears exist
• In spite of being creatures of motive humors and warm blood, they lay eggs
• They are called owlbears because the wizard who made them was named ‘Ser
Claude Grand Panjandrum Owlbear’
• Owlbears are super intense and unpleasant at parties

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• Some owlbears are so furious that their furiousness fills their form, fabricating foul,
fasciate rods of furious fury, a vortex gone too heavy, too radical, too extreme to exist
• Others drink decaf
• Owlbears don’t have eyeballs, but reflective blank tubes in place of eyes instead
• Owlbears are able to move without making any sound
• Once the love of an owlbear dies, they grieve and sing a dirge until death, killing
any who interrupt their song
• Owlbears build their nests in trees and drop down onto interlopers
• Owlbears hide in cherry trees by painting their nails red. Have you ever seen an
owlbear in a cherry tree? Works pretty good, eh?
• Owlbears are the mortal enemies and opponents of griffons and other raptor-
crossbreeds. Griffons know the owlbears will eat them and so proactively gang
up and attack owlbears when they are discovered
• Owlbears are a myth. They are actually a kobold psy-op. They construct
owlbear body puppets from wood and drive them around to scare away humans
• Owlbears are summoned as harbingers for more dangerous magical creatures.
When the most abominable and unlucky owlbears arrive, crying out in their
hoarse and dismal voices, it is an omen of the approach of some terrible thing
• Owlbears, oddly enough, are just owls infected by werebears
• Owlbears are grown from tree pods by nymphs to protect the forest
• Wild animal attacks are a constant threat to travelers on forest roads. Among
these, owlbear attacks are rare but devastating. To avoid owlbear attacks, follow
these safety instructions:
ºº Never leave food where owlbears can reach it; use a length of hempen rope
to hang rations from high branches
ºº Never stand between an owlbear mother and her owlbearlets. Owlbear
mothers will do anything to protect their young
ºº Always keep your potions and reagents securely locked
ºº If an owlbear does spot you, wave your hands in the air and make as much
noise as possible. This will convince the owlbear to move on to easier prey
ºº If an owlbear attacks you, curl up in the fetal position and remain motionless so
that the owlbear will mistake you for carrion and move on
• Owlbears are sometimes found dead at the foot of large cliffs. This is because
they occasionally forget they are not owls and therefore cannot fly
• Owlbear tracks can be distinguished from regular bear tracks by the length and
width of their claws. Bears have blunt, small claws on their forepaws, whereas
owlbears have long, sharp talons
• Owlbear tracks look nothing like owl tracks because owls don’t have bear feet

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 • Owlbears are omnivores and will only attack people if they are desperate or
provoked
• Owlbears are most active at dawn, when they forage for edible plants and look
for a place to spend the hotter parts of the day; and at dusk, when they look for
nocturnal prey animals and dig in soft, wet loam for worms and grubs
• Owlbears prefer to sleep in low branches if they can find a tree that will bear
their weight
• An owlbear’s feathers absorb the sound it makes as it walks, making it an
extremely stealthy predator
• It is impossible to sneak away from an owlbear; they have excellent hearing
• An owlbear’s mating call will sometimes attract either an owl or a bear. This is
especially awkward if it does not also attract an owlbear
• Despite the danger they pose, owlbears are a beloved creature, often used as
mascots by taverns, children’s entertainers, sports teams, and the heraldry of
certain nobility

Combat Tricks:
Hootroar: Everyone within hearing range must save or become frightened
Bearhug-owlbite: If the owlbear can grab a target, they can automatically hit with
their bite attack as long as the target is held (in addition to the crushing damage from
the hug)

Valuable Resources:
• Owlbear hide can make a supple and easily enchantable leather garment
• Owlbear eggs allow talented people to raise them as loyal guards or mounts
• Owlbear feathers can be used in the creation of ink pens for magical scrolls
• Owlbear teeth and claws will fetch a good price at market

Variants:
Deranged: These owlbears are a bad mix, the combination of owl and bear driving
them to madness. They are misshapen and much stronger than a normal owlbear
Berserk/Raging: Sometimes during an owlbear’s life, they are subject to a terrible
disease. As their brain degenerates, they are nothing but fierce, frothing fury
Spotted: In northern, lightly wooded areas, you’ll find the rare spotted owlbear
Horned: This owlbear variation uses their horns in battles for status against other
male owlbears; this grants them an extra goring attack each round
Arctic: This type of polar owlbear has stark white feathers and is adapted to live in
areas of extreme cold
Siege: This owlbear has been enchanted and bred over generations to become
larger, more muscular, and much more aggressive. Though popular as pets and
mounts for their size and strength, they are rarely legal to own, and most are put
down when found as being “too dangerous”

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 IXIES
“Always a price!” — Molly, young witch

Nomenclature: Faries
Description: A small michevious fae
Things that are known:
• They are small and have wings

Rumors and other glitters in the

underbrush :
• Pixies have powerful hypnotic powers and can
enthrall humans or creatures much larger than
themselves if they band together to concentrate their
influence. Such hypnosis is usually used to enforce
days-long rituals where unwilling participants are
forced to dance for the pixies’ satisfaction
• When a hag murders a child in the land of the fae, a
pixie is spawned that contains a fragment of the child’s soul. In most cases, these pixies
have no memory of the murdered children who birthed them, though occasionally,
when presented with items relating to powerful anchor memories of the child’s life, a
pixie may recall confusing, painful details about its previous life and death
• A creature who drinks the soul of a pixie when it is slain extends their natural
lifespan by ten years. There is no ailment that cannot be cured by drinking
enough pixie souls. The unseelie fae trade in pixie souls and often use them to
negotiate with mortals
• Pixies are actually blue, have no wings, and just want to be left alone
• Pixies have unreliable long-term memory. A person who befriends a pixie one
day may find themselves the target of that pixie’s ire
just days later through no fault of their own. Pixies
may also offer random or irrelevant information to
some creatures that they have mistaken for other
creatures

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P SEUDODRAGON

“Just don’t upset it. It’s not big enough to eat you, Slive.
It is big enough to put you to sleep and tear out your throat.”
— Orphic, human engineer

Nomenclature: Wizard drake

Description: A small dragon the size of a large bird
Things that are known:
• They appear to be small dragons
• They are known to have a poison sting

Rumors and other scales on the dragon:

• Pseudodragons ally with wizards to create their starting hoard. The pact between
the pseudodragon and the wizard grants 50% of all earnings to the dragon
• Pseudodragons are simply manifestations of a caster’s superego. A caster
realizes when his mind begins to slip and tries to save itself by physically mani-
festing. It rarely does any good, meaning the presence of a pseudodragon is a
good sign that the wizard is about to go off the deep end
• If you welch on an agreement with a pseudodragon, they will make your life
miserable, allying with your greatest enemy and sharing all the darkest secrets
• The common lore about ‘pseudodragons’ is completely incorrect; they are actually
firedrakes. The ‘sleep poison’ is actually magma injected into the body, which is so
painful that few can remain conscious
• They are psionic creatures with powerful telepathy
• Though popular, they are quite annoying as pets. They have a rabid Napoleon
complex; they attack and posture any opponent, claim to have kidnapped
anyone who fits the definition of damsel, sit on piles of coins and refuse to budge
until coaxed away. These annoyances ensure only the most anti-social wizards
keep pseudodragon as pets
• Pseudodragons are actually fae that are bright enough to realize that if they
chimerically represent themselves as dragons, demi-humans and humans will be
too stupid to realize how intelligent pseudodragons really are

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• They are actually cats, and just project a draconic image into the minds of those
nearby
• They molt, just like other reptiles. An intact skin is a powerful alchemical reagent
• They are actually attracted to spellcasters who are filled with youthful exuber-
ance. Their death not only physically injures their owners but increases the
amount of poisonous cynicism in the world
• In fact the link with the pseudodragon between the wizard and his familiar is
much stronger than other familiar types. When one body dies, the other becomes
a shared vessel; if one soul is destroyed, both are
• Pseudodragons are cats affected by drakkengheist weed. It looks like catnip but
turns cats into pseudodragons. Lions that eat the weed turn into dragonnes
• They have a short lifespan (15 years), but upon death they reincarnate into full
dragons
• Pseudodragons are considered to be plaugebearers by proxy: they eat all the
cats nearby; the rat population goes uncontrolled; and clerics become over-
whelmed with diseases
• Pseudodragons are not the only pseudo-species
ºº Pseudomedusa are tiny worm-haired dark fey; they paralyze with a touch
ºº Pseudobeholders (ahrimana) are tiny demons. They have one eye and no
mouth and long slashing talons and wee wings
ºº Pseudoghosts are little people who cover themselves in sheets and try to scare
away the living
• Far away in the dark west where only the moon lights the land, there was a great
mystic called Kadem Beastshaper. On a bet, he cut a dragon’s egg from a
dragon’s womb and tied it in a mithril mesh. The resulting spawn was a pseudo-
dragon. To the surprise of all, the first reproduced by parthenogenesis and soon,
many were released to the wild
• Pseudodragons are just as fecund as their larger cousins, leading to the creation
of the Tressym and other winged beasts
• There is some discrepancy about the powers a pseudodragon confers onto its
master. That is because it is their choice which powers are transferred
• Pseudodragons are necessary for some wizards who explore dark and forbidden
avenues of research. After having seen dark outer horrors, they become unable
to sleep. The venom of a pseudodragon is the only soporific strong enough to
allow the wizards to get the rest they need
• You must be a virgin in order to have a pseudodragon familiar. If you are not a
virgin, you are restricted to dragon familiars (and the requisite cost in horseflesh)
• Speaking of, pack animals and pseudodragons do not get along
• Sometimes they capture fairy princesses for ransom. As above, so below

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• They are shards of a dragon’s ego, the tiny part of the greed that longed for a hoard
of relationships and interconnectedness in community with others. It is proportionately
tiny to the greed for power and wealth, but just as jealous and greedy
• Pseudodragon wings can be enchanted and mounted on a helm. If they are, they
provide protection from mental detection, attacks, and deafening sound
• Pseudodragons are magical constructs, homunculi or imps of the greatest dragon
casters in their war on mortals. They can cast a powerful enchantment on men,
that makes humans minions of dragons, inserted into the target while they sleep
from the poison of the pseudodragon
• The Queen of the Fay long ago gifted a tribe of sprites with pseudodragon mounts.
The tribe was killed by their giant-dragonfly-riding rivals, and the pseudodragons
survived beyond their original purpose. They long for companionship and do not
know their own history. They have a great enmity against dragonflies
• The fey created the pseudodragon as a small-scale practice sculpt before
beginning work on the mighty dragon. The creature pleased the gods, and they
built the dragons as commanded. Too proud to hide their process, they released
the model to live on its own
• They are not true dragons but cold-blooded creatures, requiring many hours in
the sun and sticking firmly to tropical locales. If they are in a cold area, they
hibernate in hives in great numbers
• Pseudodragon teeth are actually frozen tears
• Pseudodragons are very reclusive because their scales, teeth, and claws are very,
very sweet, tasting like candy if removed or eaten
• A wicked wizard of a foul disposition served at court for decades, annoyed with
the intrigue of romance and politics. For decades, he transformed the unfaithful
into small decorative pets to be given to their heartbroken ex-lovers as a way to
dull his irritation. They could not be caged always and they continued their
cheating ways. Soon the court was overrun by wild pseudodragons, and finally,
he created a massive winged panther to keep the population down. The kingdom
is now long fallen, but there are still flirting, simpering pseudodragons flitting
through the long-ruined halls
• They have the ability to alter the color of their scales to blend with their environ-
ment This is also used in mating and is under control of the dragon
• The greatest entertainment produced by the wizards of the shadow kingdom was
the pseudodragon. Originally crafted for performing in shadowbox theaters and
puppet houses, the little villains were such a hit that they were sold as household
pets. They were often the divas in these ancient tales, and their vanity and taste
for drama remains to this day
• The mighty fae demigod the Lord of the Vasial Woods gifted the pixies with
pseudodragons to be herd dogs for their sprite flocks

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 • When the mighty dragon Bastaal was burning through civilized lands, adventur-
ers managed to capture her three offspring. The wizards worked a mighty ritual
to miniaturize them, and the little dragons were ransom; if Bastaal ever attacked
civilization again, her spawn would be slain. In the meantime, the little dragons
raged, but eventually grew docile over the centuries. They mated, and their
spawn were affected by the neutralizing magics; a dozen generations later, they
were reduced to pseudodragons. They are pests, but the memory of Bastaal
staved off actively hunting them for a millenia. Now no one remembers where
they are from, and they are actively hunted as vermin. Is Bastaal still alive
somehow, out beyond the darkness? Could she return if her children’s cries reach
her?
• Pseudodragons aren’t dragons. They are called pseudo because they are
actually just winged lizards of no special intelligence or skill
• A mighty and wicked wizard cast a massive spell to summon a brutal dragon. Her
experienced and powerful foe cast a counter to the spell. Both went sideways in
the magic-sotted arena of their duel, and the summoning spell snatched this little
twerp from somewhere. The winner kept the little dragon as a keepsake and was
surprised to find it was pregnant. The legend of the one who slew the wicked
wizard only identified him as the man with the tiny dragon pet, so eggs of pseudo-
dragons are in high demand among wizards thirsting for reputation
• They are not telepathic at all, just good at reading non-verbal communication
and assessing situations. They may understand as much vocabulary as a
10-year-old child
• The pseudodragon is the shape of the animate dreams of the patron god of the fae
• Pseudodragons love the inauthentic. They are drawn to queens and wizards of
glam and glamour
• They only look like dragons because of convergent flying hexapod evolution.
They are closely related to other creatures like the arumvorax than dragons

Combat Tricks:
Distraction buffet: By flying right at a target’s face and flapping and scratching,
a pseudodragon can cause the target to experience one round of confusion
Tripping targets: Pseudodragons are quite apt at tripping targets, and if not flying
and in the target’s space, they gain a bonus to trip a target (offsetting the penalty for
their tiny size)
Infernal sprite: Pseudodragons are preternaturally agile. When flying, they can
apply a large dodge bonus to their armor class versus a single target
Vicious bite: On a successful bite, the pseudodragon can latch on

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 AT “The problem with rats is that they thrive
anywhere. They fill up wherever they are, until
some of them end up in a corner. Then you have
cornered rats. Only a matter of time.”
— Nunthil Van Dorminscant, reagent’s aide

Description: Medium-sized, long-tailed, furred mammals

Things that are known:
• They have poor vision
• They live anywhere
• They have litters of up to 20 and breed prolifically
• They have a lifespan of up to 7 years
• Certain infections, cults, and sorceries can grant humanoids rat-like traits or even
turn them into rats themselves
• Somewhat surprisingly, nearly every person of note ever can relate a story about
how they had to clear a basement out of rats immediately before they became a
person of importance

Rumors and other scratches in the sewer:

• Before monsters, rats were smaller
• The rats became dire and grew to enormous size because they broke through to
the underworld, finding new stores of food and room to grow. Some grew to the
size of wolves or even bears. Others feasted on the blood of demons, becoming
monsters in their own right
• Cultists worship rats because they see the wealth it has brought the rats to break
into the underworld. They seek to master the dark so that they may serve gods
instead of kings. Perhaps to drink and eat of the blood and flesh of the gods
instead of subsisting on moral scraps
• Some cultists have managed to become like the rat in the moonlight or through
magic, allowing their inner rat to consume what is human, leaving only a human
skin. Others have taken what is good of the rat and grafted it to their flesh,
becoming the standing rats, the man-rats, inheritors of the new world
• The sign of rats is sign that there is something beneath the depth. Where does the
rat live? In the rat hold. That is where the secrets lie

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• The sailors of Suul say that rats are the progeny of a drowned and bloated god
that came from the sea. That is why no sailor will kill a rat and why they seek the
damp and dark
• Rats are the physical manifestation of urban property, exhibiting a strange
gravitational energy towards other emblems of poverty: rotten clothes, empty
wineskins, and the lowest value coins
• Rats have grown as the world around them has been corrupted
• Rat-kind has exploded for another reason, feeding off the magical detritus and
runoff of society. Over generations of tainted meals of the dead, mutated cast-off
experiments, and other arcane energies, rats have become stronger, larger, and
smarter and even learned to walk and talk.
• Rats are the physical incarnation of things badly made or scrambled in the
making. Many of them bear mutations or unhealing, oozing sores. They are
masters of argots and broken codes. They are drawn to tar, the stars, and the arts
• “Radagast” is a filthy word in the slang of rats and the double secret name of
their hidden shadow pontiff — Radagast the most Reviled
• While rats increased in size and strength, their cousins, the mice, have gotten
smaller and sneakier
• The traditional guardians against rats are of no use against these smaller mice,
who are too small to be pounced upon. These vermin, no larger than a grain of
sand, form swarms that portray locusts as cuddly pets. They have the ability to
strip a grown man to bones and buckles in under an hour
• The alchemist’s guild, sole breathers of the hellscotties, trained fire-breathing
dogs, denies any rumor that they are responsible for the pipmice
• A wererat is more dangerous and scheming than a hoard of enemies, able to
blend into human societies, trading brute force for cunning, as smart as a man no
matter the form they wear
• The teeth of rats never stop growing. They must gnaw constantly or their teeth will
grow too long, killing them. This is only part of the truth. It is not the teeth, but the
rats that never stop growing. Given the space and food, they grow ever larger
and ever hungrier. They never stop gnawing. They
never stop eating. . .
• Wererats were not originally human. A
mad alchemist wondered if lycanthropy
could be reversed and humanoid
animals could be created. His lab rats
agreed with the procedure, but not with
their situation. Investigating into the
circumstances of his death make it
clear he did nothing to prevent their
infection from spreading

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• The ability of rats to spread and share information defies analysis. One heretical
sect of mathomages holds that rat-knowledge is both so fast and so ubiquitous
that it must be a branch of god-knowledge
• Giant rats arrived in the belly of a ship that raided mega-fauna from a long lost
land. Accordingly, when enough gather near water, it flows in the opposite
direction, making them useful in the construction of plumbing, river locks, and traps
• Ratkin are descended from King Ferdinand the Rat. They are bold, love battle,
and bands of young Ratkin are nearly always raiders or mercenaries.
• A ratkin never builds a home, only squatting once tragedies empty established
homesteads
• Rats and ratkin are known to build strange and beautiful piling sculptures from
rubble. They eat anything and work well in a group. They are capable of
executing complex tactical maneuvers with no communication, having learned
such maneuvers from their oral histories and ancestors
• Great works of ratkind are The Squeak, Dawn and We Discovered an Uneaten
Sandwich. Tales of the ratkind include How David the Rat Pinned the Great Stoat
and Stole Back the Sun, and Why Nettleskin Rat Kept Knives in Her Fur
• Rats are given a bad rap; they are really just happy, polyandrous, hippy sneaks!
• Ratmen are immune to organic poisons
• All rats spy for the Rat King who seeks one day to be pretty
• Rats are the reincarnated forms of sinful people; the larger the rat, the worse the sin
• Ratkin are the eventual results of incestuous relationships between noble families
• The Rat King is a demi-god of filth. His senses are distorted, explaining his
fondness for copper
• Ratmen are the result of children abandoned on dirty city streets, only able to
regain their humanity if they find their parents
• Rats are the agents of entropy, seeking copper dipped in blood. Were they ever
to collect one million pieces, it would mean the end of the world. . .
• The remarkable nature of rats is not due to the rat at but the fleas that infest them,
resulting in many and varied mutations, from the common dire, to fire-breathing,
regeneration, acid saliva, and worse
• The swarming rats in narrow cave warrens are actually bats who found flight
impractical. They retain only vestigial wingflaps, but their sonar is acute and
weaponized
• Dire rats are the result of a rat who has consumed enough of its brethren. Then
when the dire rat consumes enough humans it becomes a ratkin. Ratkin perpetu-
ate this process by feeding small human children to the dire rats
• A dire rat is a ratking; rats pushed so closely together that they merge and
become one giant rat
• Pungent cheese wards ratkin as garlic does vampires. Centuries of using cheese
to trap rats has caused them to associate the scent with danger

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• The fleas on rats brought black death with them, but the fleas on dire rats are
much more terrible. To survive a fight with a dire rat is to die a slow tortured death
soon after
• As a rat’s teeth always grow, so to, do the dire rats. But wood does not wear
them down. Instead dire rats gnaw on stone. Ratkin gnaw on human bone
• Some sages purport that men evolved from monkeys. The dwarvelves (hairy,
bearded elves who like forging mithril and gems) hold that this is obviously not
true, for there are no monkeys in the Fantastickal Lands of Middle Oerop.
According to dwarvelvish lore, a madman from the far north, from beyond the
Maw of Whitefear the Bear God and beyond the razor winds of Iron Boreas
came seven thousand years ago
ºº The madman, called Piripetros by the dwarvelves of Morgolindon and
Petropirireis by the dwarvelves of Taudrakshka, offered to save the dwarvelven
holdings of their rat plague in exchange for half their gold and half of their
most beautiful princesses. The dwarvelves agreed and with his magical Fluting
Alpenhorn he summoned the rats from the deep holdings
ºº But the avaricious dwarvelves then slammed their doors shut and refused to pay
the madman who howled and puffed and roared in rage. He departed into the
Flat Lands of Grass with his rat horde and there gifted them with uncanny
prowess and knowledge (but not wisdom) and from these rats came the plague
of MEN
ºº According to the few remaining dwarvelves, therefore, rats are the larval stage
of the locust creatures known as men
• There are rumors that in the old alchimitorium where the white wizards perished
researching the plague dragon’s corpse a race of intelligent six-limbed rats have
arisen, with an additional set of manipulating hands hidden in pouches inside
their mouths
• Dire rats acquire intelligence by eating the brains of slain creatures. Eventually
they become intelligent enough to realize this and seek out areas of frequent
slaughter, like dungeons that attract adventurers
• Ratkin include capybaras, chinchillas, nutrias, guinea pigs, hamsters, gophers and
doppelgangers
• Rats are elemental sponges, acquiring the magical properties of their surround-
ings. In filthy human cities they carry diseases. In gorgeous natural elven tree-
holds they poop edible caffeine berries. In dwarven duggings are often bred on
a diet of gem-dust to produce beautiful pearls which are then sold abroad
• In halfling communities there are very few rats because they are used to make the
famous three-bite-pie
• Death wizards first bred semi-intelligent dire rats so they wouldn’t have so much
trouble with buying fresh slaves and captives from humanoid villages
• A dire rat’s soul is worth one fifth of a man’s soul and three-quarters of a woman’s
soul, according to Pulchraphobos’s seminal work, The Balance of Souls

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• Orcs will buy bundles of rats at sixteen silver pence the half-dozen. Or at two
silver pence for a single rat. Math is not an orcish strong suit
• Several species of dire rodent have prehensile tails which can grow into a new
rodent if severed
• Dried and ground skyforest rat gonads protect from mummy rot
• Ear-rats are popular familiars among wizard-scouts, who use them to listen in on
distant conversations
• A rat is a bat without wings. Rats can crossbreed with bats, resulting in winged
monkey-rats. There is no monkey in a flying monkey, just a lot of nasty rat
• Rat bites can cure old age. . . or at least prevent it
• Dire rats are otherworldly rats that come from the domain of the Mater Milia, the
rat spirit. They are her agents and children and normally live in her halls where
they gnaw at the pillars of the universe. They may breed with normal rats and
create giants rats
• Wererat skins are used to make Face-masks of Animal Charming
• Old colonies of rats become more organized and develop group intelligence and
cunning and even enslave other small species and build structures
• In dungeons rats scurry in between walls, under floors, and through air vents.
Some adventurers have tried to smash through walls to have rats swarm out and
attack them
• A ball of rats are a colony whose tails become knotted and they act as one. Very
rare in wild, in some magic rich areas dozens of these balls form. Some even
form huge sphere, as large as a child or even larger
• Normally, big rats eat smaller rats. Humanoid rat men and wererats may keep
rats and giant rats as pets and food. Pony-size colossal rats or larger may serve
as mounts
• Rats beneath an alchemist guild in the ruined city of Gnash-Toril bred a gargan-
tuan rat who burst up from beneath the earth and destroyed buildings before the
city’s wizard kings destroyed it
• A rat’s intelligence is inversely proportionate to the amount of rats in a certain
range from it. Lone rats, well out of range of other rats, sometimes even develop
psionic abilities like telepathy and telekinesis.
• Among all natural creatures and races, rats are the best at sensing magic and
following residual amounts of it. In fact, this sensitivity is borderline addiction, as
rats just love feeling surrounded by magic. The reason hubs of civilization tend to
have quite so many rats is because the same hubs tend to house a wizard’s guild,
or several, and those draw rats in from miles and miles away
• Among all creatures, the ratkins have been blessed, along with the roachkins, to
inherit the Earth at the End of Days. So spake Ratatushtra
• Ratpyres are pyrokinetic blood-drinking ratkin

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• A ratkin that drinks a human potion of healing is afflicted with a voracious appetite
and a propensity towards obesity — this is why ratkin-kings are all huge and round
• Rats originate from the elemental plane of filth. There, rats are easily fed and
treated as a versatile domesticated creature. Generally, dire rats are guard
creatures, giant rats are food (or sometimes pets), and regular rats are pets,
trained to eat some of the more pestilent creatures of the plane
• When they migrate to the material plane, they tend to migrate to the places most
similar to their home dimension: the sewers of large cities

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 HAGODESSA
“It’s kinda a bop.” — Rhagodessa victim

Nomenclature: Dancing spider, sick jag, rags, wind spiders, jerrymunglum

Description: Primeval arachnids the size of a horse
Things that are known:
• They have a powerful poison

Rumors and other threads of story:

• Rhagodessa are often used in gladiator matches against pit fighters or other giant
beasts. They seem to fight most fiercely against arachnids like giant scorpions,
their instinctual enemy
• Rhagodessa are found in old-growth forests, where they form huge webs
spanning acres at a time. Even the slightest vibration in one part of this web can
be felt by a rhagodessa anywhere else in the web
• The webs are also a conduit for psychic energy; rhagodessa sap the knowledge
and wisdom of their victims to deter their escape.
• Exceptionally old rhagodessa may possess knowledge of nearly everything in the
world, or secrets lost from the beginning of time. They may be consulted as
oracles if they can be convinced not to simply eat the supplicant
• Not actually a spider, a rhagodessa has twelve legs and a scorpions tail
• The poison of the rhagodessa is so painful that the body experiences violent
spams. The victims of the Rhagodessa venom are dancing, giving it the nickname
the dancing spider
• In reality, the poison is so deadly, you don’t have time to dance before you
liquefy
• Rhagodessa actually aren’t venemous
• Rhagodessa hate other spiders more than life itself
• The heaviest part of a rhagodessa’s body is the pincers on its head, which make
up nearly a third of their body weight. These pincers are powerful enough to
snap a deer in half with one bite
• A creature bound in rhagodessa silk must answer truthfully any question asked of it
• Rhagodessa eggs are considered a delicacy in elvish cultures. They are served at
feasts celebrating the coronation of queens or the defeat of hated enemies

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 UST
MONSTER
“Man, I just bought that armor!” — Horace, sellsword

Description: Strange quadrupeds whose antennae rust metal

Things that are known:
• They have the ability to dissolve metal items
• It has a tail with an end like a paddle

Rumors and other cracks in the armor:

• Rusting items is the way they feed
• Rust monsters can not only smell metal, but they can determine how much metal,
and where. They are also intelligent enough to be trained to do so, making them
invaluable for dwarven mining operations. Their habit of releasing them to the
wild in the prime of their life is less well-regarded by their neighbors
• They have to eat the rust to get sustenance from the item
• Everyone knows that rust monsters are just the larval form of rust dragons
• They are actually pacifists and will never willingly harm another being, as long as
they aren’t made out of metal
• When killed, it shrivels up into a little plastic poorly colored version of itself
• Rust monsters are shockingly fast, able to sprint for up to two minutes, and have
double the walking pace of a normal unencumbered human
• Metal is nice, but magically infused metal is
much nicer
• The rust monster was originally a gift,
created by the wizard Xagxan, to the elves
as a playful magical curiosity. It was
almost 40 years before the elves
discovered that it had secretly
been eating the metals in the
treasure, ruining jewelry thousands
of years old. Since that day, all
elves have sworn to drive the rust
monster to extinction

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 ALAMANDER “Look, it wasn’t in the wood when I put it in the
fire, so it must of come from the fire, see?”
— J. Peterson, area simpleton

Description: A lizard with an affinity for elemental fire

Rumors and other embers on the wind:
• A salamander’s voice is like the roar of a wildfire, its breath like black smoke. Its
body carries the heat of a forge, and everything it touches is burned forever with
wounds that will not heal
• Salamanders are kept as pets by the lords of hell, who cultivate their bloodthirsty
nature and use them to torment lost souls
• Salamanders escape into the upper world through active volcanoes, emerging
from the cooling lava flows to claim the new land as their own
• Salamanders forge weapons for themselves by molding iron ore in their hands
the way a master potter molds clay.
• Salamanders do not feel pain. The heat of their body erases all other sensation.
This makes them nearly unstoppable warriors
• The blood of a salamander is a deadly poison. However, anyone who drinks it, if
they survive, can never again be hurt by fire
• There is no such thing as a salamander. All the stories about them began with a
finger-sized newt that only appears after heavy rains
• Noble salamanders consider their own larvae a delicacy. The richest and most
powerful salamanders have stables of lesser, subservient salamanders that are used
only for breeding so that the ruling salamander may consume the offspring. These
breeding salamanders are kept in squalid conditions just barely suitable for life
• Salamanders that find their way to the Material Plane wreak fiery destruction on the
environment. They secrete a viscous, highly flammable oil from their skin that they
pour into waterways. These waterways are then ignited, creating dazzling rivers of
fire that destroy entire ecosystems, leaving only charred remains in their wake
• Salamanders have a seething hatred for themselves and other members of their
kind. They are relentlessly paranoid and engage in constant infighting to maintain
dominance over one another. High-ranking salamanders hang the dessicated
heads of former rival salamanders from their sashes to display their capability.
• Salamanders frequently amputate their own limbs or tails and then quickly regrow
them, hoping that the replacement limb will be stronger than its predecessor. These
cast-off parts are melted into a sludge and then fed to salamander juveniles.
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 HADOWS
“They all came out of the shadows and just drained all
the strength from him. Like a bunch jerks.”— Sad Dato, warrior

Nomenclature: Shades, darkfolk, mistmen, shadow servants

Description: A being of elemental shadow that drains life from the living
Things that are known:
• They are animate shadows
• They have a connection with other planes of existence
• They can drain the strength from a living creature and turn it into a shadow

Rumors and other shifting in the dark:

• Shadows have a connection with the ethereal plane, which is why they are hard
to spot
• Shadows are banned from the ethereal, forced to inhabit its dark reflection, the
plane of shadow, with the advantage that they can travel at the speed of
darkness within this space
• You can claim shadows are undead or not; the only thing you will get for your
trouble is to get embroiled in an endless debate
• The secret to the shadows’ ability to hide in shadows is that they cease to exist
while people are looking for them, and only re-emerge into reality once not seen
• The most deadly weapon against a shadow is lasers, holy lasers
• You would think that bright light would drive off shadows, but it only defines their
form
• Shadows have a seething passion to destroy all light and life for creating a
cacophony of noise that disturbs the restful nature of the shadow, driving them
mad
• Shadows feed on energy from the negative elemental plane. They only drain the
strength of living creatures for pleasure
• They are desperate people from a dying material plane and drain the strength
from living creatures because that is their only way to reproduce
• The shadow is a living hypercube which occupies all shadow space and no
shadow space simultaneously, which is why they can fit through any space. They
simply choose to exist wherever there is an absence of photons

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• Once someone becomes a shadow, there is no way to return them to their human
form, which is, of course, untrue. The problem comes that in order to restore a
creature from their drained shadow form, they must steal the life from elven
children, which is why the elves take shadow infestations so seriously
• Shadows gather in places that are ignored by people. A farmhouse people walk
by, an unvisited grove in the woods, an attic, a dark closet. If ignored, they will
create a nest and begin to plague the local area
• Shadows don’t feed on strength; they feed on terror which drains the life from the
victim in the form of their physicality, targeting whatever physical statistic is weakest
• Some shadows grow powerful and strong after stealing many souls until it becomes
a much more dangerous creature
• If you are restored to life after being drained by a shadow, your dark half still seeks
you and wishes to put you to exquisite torture
• Warlock patrons will assign shadows as servants to promising candidates

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 PRITE
“Sure it looks like a pretty girl, but watch out for the teeth”
— Slive

Nomenclature: Pixies, faries

Description: A tiny mischievous fae
Things that are known:
• They are fay creatures
• They appear like tiny humans with wings

Rumors and other glimmers in the grass:

• Sprites have no physical form, being naturally invisible, so every sprite you see is
just an illusionary projection
• Because there are so many of them, witches and warlocks prize them for sentient
sacrifices; easy to acquire, few if any laws protecting their safety, and easily
overpowered with minor magics
• Sprites have the magical ability to know the true nature of a creature, as well as
its current emotional state. They use this information to improve the quality of
illusions and to manipulate the simple-minded (i.e. humans)
• Sprites have refused all other fay traits and gifts for mastery of battle. They train
their entire lives from birth to be deadly warriors, and few can win a conflict with
a prism of sprites
• Sprites aren’t humanoid at all but an evolved magical form of a preying mantis
• Sprites are immune to poison and love its delicious subtle flavors and tastes. They
always have a lot on hand and always seek to acquire more, trading for salt,
clay, and soft metals
• Sprites are omnivorous and will eat anything without
compunction (broken glass, sand, etc.)
• Sprites are very judgemental and elitist
• Sprites are biological machines known as preservers
that desire to wrap everything in webs to keep it
from decaying
• Like all fae, they don’t experience emotion, making
them quite dangerous as pets

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 TIRGE “It’ss the dream of the mosquito, issn’t it. Jusst a nightmare
for everyone elsse.” - Shellmoss, Ghazan Speaker

Nomenclature: Bloodsuckers, spear-beaks, strix, striga/strigae, bloodbirds, devil

birds, vampire owls
Description: Small flying parasites
Things that are known:
• They lair in narrow dark places
• They drink blood
• They are about the size of a housecat
• They have leathery bat-like wings, a short tail, and barbed legs

Rumors and other silent flutters in the dark:

• They steal genetic material
• Stirges build bee-like hives, where they store their blood. After time passes, it
coagulates into dark honey
• They collect diseases, which live in pockets along their proboscis
• They are quite intelligent, often setting up near exits or not bothering heavily
equipped and prepared parties, instead seeking out the wounded
• They attack with a distinctive buzzing sound that travels quite far. Considering
they only take some of their prey’s blood, the noise often draws those wishing to
scavenge on their leavings
• They aren’t parasites, but symbiotic creatures that live on and with underdark
horrors like hook horrors and umber hulks.
• The stirge is not a grown creature but larva. It collects blood for the coming
change and enters a pupa stage for less than a week. It emerges from its old shell
as a combination of the creature and insect-like features of the stirge
• A character can also attempt to dislodge a stirge by tensing their muscles. Each
round they must succeed on a constitution check. On the third round, the stirge
bursts from the blood they have taken in. It is a common game among barbarians
• Goblins are quite fond of adding stirge to stew, the more bloody the better
• They are also popular with the blood-drinking undead

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• They are often kept as pets or allies, intentionally or unintentionally, by other
creatures, attacking a minute or two after the creatures they are allied with. They
often are able to feed and flee this way before any attention is paid to them
• They are the spawn of an insane vampire who desired living servants
• Stirges were once humans who were transformed as punishment
• They are viewed as harbingers of war and strife
• Blood drank from a stirge sac can heal the injured. What is less commonly known
is that it is also highly addictive
• They can sense mutations and diseases and will avoid those with tainted blood
• Certain types of blood are extremely attractive to stirges and they favor those
targets over all others
• Stirges are lulled to sleep by mournful polyphonic dirges
• They were originally crafted by vampiric wizards to throw hunters of the undead
off track
• They were the minions of evil wizards who bred them by the millions and
released them against enemy armies arrayed against them
• The stirge uses blood to fuel a bizarre alchemical process in its bloated para-
abdomen. This process is how the gas it uses to fly is produced
• Stirges are a cross between a leech and a bat and have no relation to insects or
mosquitoes
• The stirge is actually an insect; what appears to be hair are actually just sensing
fibers
• The stirge is a larval form of a stirgeon, a highly intelligent creature, specializing
in the science of blood. Many underdark denizens consider it superior surgeon to
even the xixchil
• Chirurgeons use stirge cages to drain excess humors from patients. Varieties of
stirge such as blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm are known
ºº Blood stirges are the only ones who can fly and are fond of liver
ºº Phlegm stirges swim and try to drain the lungs and brains of their victims
through the nose
ºº Yellow bile stirges propel themselves with jets of burning gasses and are very
quick. They eat as fast as they move, devouring a spleen in 1-5 rounds. This
can be fatal
ºº Black bile stirges are wormlike and live in earth, soil, and rock, looking to enter
bodies through the anus or urethra, then eating the gall bladder. Victims
become despondent, sleepless and irritable, but they live
• Stirge eggs are laid in carcasses when the stirge feeds
• When a stirge attacks, they attempt to squeeze between the armor and the skin
• Stirges are annoyance made manifest. They will take whatever form of vermin is
most suitably annoying

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• They are just subterranean hummingbirds and completely harmless. Their abilities
and appearance have been exaggerated because they spook adventurers very
easily when they dart into torchlight, and no one is going to admit once they get
back home that they were scared by a tiny harmless bird
• Stirges are technically tiny pterodactyls
• Stirges will continue to feed, even after satiation. If overfed, their membrane
ruptures, leading to sacks of pig blood as a common tactic against stirges
• Stirges are the key ingredient in instant blutwurst, a beloved winter dish of the
Dzhungaznian dwarves of Dheoghnunn
• Stirge eggs pickled in brine are known as stony mountain caviar
• Stirges have three wings and an organic flywheel to assist them in flying, hence
their excellent maneuverability
• Stirges are collectivist creatures that serve Law and preferentially target chaotic
and individualistic creatures
• Telling people that stirges eat your blood is simply adventurers whitewashing the
truth for the townsfolk. They actually have a razor-sharp maw and specialize in
eating your face off
• Stirges are sentient assemblages of stringy worms, cooperating for the greater
good. They attempt to get ingested to take control of their victims, turning them
into reckless adventurers who will get eaten by a dragon. It is in the dragon’s
duodenum that a stirge matures, laying eggs that hatch into dragon-dung-worms
• Stirges stir subconscious sexist sentiments, seducing silly sirens, sylvans & semi-
humans scavenging stony sepulchers
• Stirges are bio-engineered syringes, given small wings to be at hand for the
enterprising surgeon. Their progenitors have long since died off, and they have
adapted to take the blood of anyone nearby in an attempt to discern their health.
Sadly, without the help of an authorized medical representative, all the tests are
inconclusive and must be repeated
• Every time a mortal dies from a supremely selfish act, a swarm of stirges is born.
Kings of greed spawn dire stirge queens, who brood thousands more
• Jungle goblins use stirge bones in the fruit gruel they feed their children for crunch
and marrow; this is similar to the plains goblins feeding their children tiger nails in
a bowl of rotten goat crud
• Stirges do not drain blood. They don’t drain anything. The needle mouth is
actually an ovipositor
• Stirges are magical creatures used to obtain the essence of others for sympathetic
magic. Bat-like stirges exist and seek out hair; this is the source of the old urban
legend
• Stirges are the physical form of malaria-spirit
• Stir-inges are magical syringes made from stirge ovipositors

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• The belief that stirges deposit eggs with their proboscis is wrong; they actually
deposit mutagenic sperm, which impregnates the host tissue. This creates a
‘stirgiform grub’ which absorbs genetic information from its host before erupting
from the body
• Stirge guano is red and grainy. When dry, it hardens into a clay-like substance
that is flammable and useful as fertilizer
• The stirge secretes a substance to maintain the blood pressure in the vascular
system to allow it to easily drink. This substance plus the desiccation of the body
make fully drained corpses very flammable
• When the first demon army came to wage war in the marshes, the mosquitoes
fed and were changed
• Kabraxis, the Demon of Lust, has a thousand detachable members that swap
fluids with whole crowds of worshiping cultists during a ceremony. Some of them
can’t fit back on the demon, as more are constantly growing. Any site with stirges
is a site where cultists had congress with their dark master
• They are aberrant bats that lair in the thousands underground. Their digestive
system is extremely efficient, causing them under normal circumstances to only
need to feed a small sip
• The psychic wizards of Marnbayzie got so proficient playing darts they needed
to make the game interesting. They created darts that could fly of their own
accord, with enough mind to give mentalists another venue for winning. Lazy and
stylish, the foppish wizards eventually adapted the darts to fetch them drinks,
drawing from the bar and squirting into cups
• When STDs, madness, mutation, and furious former lovers finished with the order,
enough of the stirges survived to spread and become a real problem. Still, a
wizard wearing a yellow and silver robe may find that stirges still have enough
racial memory to want to fill their cups for them. Better hope wine is handy
• The first stirge were created when a profoundly powerful wizard used a power
word originally designed to turn dragon teeth into warriors. Crippled and desper-
ate, the wizard cast it on a still-living dragon, whose needle-sharp teeth tore
loose with wads of gum tissue and bone, desperate and insane with agony,
stabbing and drinking to assuage the pain they still felt through the sundered
nerves
• The chupacabra is a ground-based, large relative of the stirge
• The dragon was immortal, and captured, and its teeth suffer and feed still. If the
dragon dies, perhaps all the stirge die too. If the stirge ever proliferate to a
certain point, perhaps the dragon will become strong enough to escape and
reunite with them
• A min-maxing wizard character was not content to only throw 3 darts a round, or
to be stuck without armor. After decades of casting animating magic on the same
darts, eventually they were imbued with the magic. The final step was when the
wizard fell into the pool that animated inanimate objects, and the darts came alive

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• “It’s not armor,” the player protested, strapping cages to chest, back, arms, legs.
The cages filled with the now-living darts, who returned to their master. Until the
DM had enough and an ogre mage charmed the lot of them and drained the
enterprising munchkin dry. Now they are feral
• Stirge are the carrier pigeons of the Stygian Suburb. Their wings are uniquely
suited to carry demonic script, and they are instinctively eager to please demons.
Swarms gather in the palaces where the demons hold massive social events like
gala balls, feasts, and hunts
• The strix is a vampiric bird, a cousin of the stirge
• The stirge is the only form a shape-shifting witch can take
• It is the height of fashion for demons and tieflings to have “blood buttons” with a
few drops of a friend or enemy’s blood in the center; the stirge pecks the button
the demon chooses, then homes to that demon with the message
• They attack sleeping victims without them noticing, for a stirge bite is painless
• Kyvash War College is famed for its Biomunitions Chair, funded by the Zephrox
Mercenary Guild. One of their more popular sub-projects was sponsored by the
neogi, who wanted a way to weaken eggredex beasts (who were immune to
poison and mind control) to make them easier to capture and sell to wealthy
nobles. The stirge nest was portable, and the blood the stirge took weakened the
strange circulatory system of the eggredex beast (who operated on hydraulic
principles) so they could be folded and taken quietly. When the eggredex beasts
went extinct, the stirge were re-purposed for “scorched earth” campaigns to
deter resettling in the dimension wars
• Stirges are frequently mistaken for vampires based on their method of feeding
• Garlic and holy water infuriate stirges, causing them to fly into a rage and attack
until death
• Stirges are actually the attack helicopters of a particularly repugnant brand of
sprite. Their fuel is blood. Don’t believe it? Twist off the head, and in the chamber
between the eyes there is an extraordinarily furious blue person half the size of
your pinkie. These sprites are on a religious quest to kill nosy people, and they
are an off-shoot of the species that manages will-o-wisps remotely with psychic
powers. Their rivalry is legendary
• They patiently track prey, waiting. Once a fight begins, they attack everyone,
feeding on the wounded. As soon as the fight is over, they retreat again, up into
the trees, following and waiting again

Mr. Gygax the demiurge

Happily created the stirge
It’s like a mosquito
Except you’re finito
If your paths should ever converge
— Dungeons and Digressions

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• Stirges hunt people by softly calling out their name. This rhythmic chant entrances
the victim, putting them into a stupor and making them unaware of their environ-
ment. The stirge then has free reign to do what they wish to the victim
• When the zerg first came to this world, bats were caught in the creep. Most died.
A few survived, but the fast and loose mutagenic properties of the creep tied
them to the hive mind and warped them into monsters
• Sites that have heavy stirge infestations often keep small mammals in cages at
the top of poles around town to deter them feeding on humans and to provide
target practice to the locals
• The greatest of the vampire necromancers weaponized his blood, so that every
drop shed would twirl free, spinning out wings and starvation, and attack on his
behalf. He was eventually slain, but his creations thrived and grew large. They
are able to breed true; they share the same blood, after all
• Stirges have rubies for eyes
• The dire strige is the size of an elder pot-bellied pig, has six wings and a blood
draining proboscis at both ends
• In the warrens of Moloko, they murmur of the hydra stirge created by the mad
mage Mulana of Mulenbach
• “I have invented a biomechanical creature based on the stirge, which is attracted
to naphta or rock-oil, the raw ingredient required for the activation of the
phlogiston in the internal explosion engine. I believe this oil-irge will lead to a
time of great plenty and good for all dwarven-kind, freeing us from toil and
bringing us a period of peace, plenty, and oneness with nature.” - Ishtvan
Shentdizely of the Blackrock Dwarven Corporation
• They were designed by alchemists as autonomous blood sample collectors but
have since escaped and bred true. The ancient scent lore of the alchemists can
still be used to tame and direct the stirges if the lore could be discovered and
deciphered
• Stirges can’t withdraw their proboscises from padded armor and will bloat up
like honeypot ants
• Rothe blood is toxic to stirges and they avoid anyone with the musk of the rothe.
That is unfortunately true in general
• Stirges originally were fruit eaters, but they were trapped in a cave after an
earthquake, opening a path to the underworld. They were forced to adapt to
drinking blood to survive. Sadly this trait bred true and almost all the harmless
fruit eaters are dead
• Stirges quickly succumb to bad air, like canaries
• Fire-roasted stirge is best when served fully bloated; otherwise, it’s dry and
chewy
• Stirges always travel in flocks which are multiples of 8. This is because they are
the tips of the tentacles of an ethereal octopus creature, which partially extrudes
itself onto our plane to feed.

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• Stirges actually prefer red wine over blood
• Tying stirges together is a favorite goblin pastime
• A healing stirge is an enchanted stirge that injects the stored blood into your
body. You have to pierce your skin and squeeze the blood sac to get the blood to
inject. This bursts delicate membranes in the stirge’s head but heals you
• Bound together stirges are used to play a goblin children’s game called sip-sip.
The players run in circles easily avoiding the stirges but usually crashing into one
another and making an easier target for the “sip-sip”
• Stirge-owls serve the underworld goddess and her minions. Everyone from her
gatekeepers to her vampire throne-bearers use stirge-owls as messengers and
shock troops. Underworld stirges can both be larger than normal and hit crea-
tures immune to non-magical weapons
• Stirge beaks make excellent quill tips for scribing scrolls
• Stirge eyeballs are heavy and shiny and make good sling bullets
• Stirges are used by Drawangari doctors to purge bad humors from sick people. A
wild stirge bite has a chance of having a cure disease effect on the victim
• Some less scrupulous Drawangari doctors reuse stirges rather than dispose of
them as per custom. These “recycled stirges” have a chance of curing disease
and chance of causing disease
• In enlightened Drawangari city states, authorities have taken to providing
single-use neutered, short-lived may-stirges pre-filled with troll blood to tee
addicts
• Halflings of the Upper Blue Dowager clans of Peenkemoende have taken to using
trained carrier stirges to harvest troll blood, which is used by humanoid and elven
addicts to get a high and temporary regeneration (though as the saying goes,
“shoot tee and you bee fick ass troll”)
• Black-and-blue market dealers often mix troll blood with chicken blood to
increase their margins, though this generally destroys the regenerative properties.
On the market this product is often called chee-tee
• Stirge enzymes convert blood into a thin, ichor-like fluid and can be used to kill
vampires, as they rapidly convert the blood a vampire has ingested into stirgeon
juice
• Boiling a stirge that is well fed makes a delicious blood pudding

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Variants
Phase Stirge: In addition to the standard phase characteristics, they can drain
blood from targets up to thirty feet away, without needing to touch the victim
Jungle Stirge: Twice the size of a normal stirge and has a paralyzing venom when
it strikes
Desert Stirge: A flightless hopping creature that attacks its prey somewhat like a
large flea. They can burrow beneath the sand and travel with a movement rate of 6"
underground
Ghost Stirge: A stirge that died from lack of blood. They ooze ectoplasm which
sucks the life from targets as well as draining blood as normal. They return to life
again and again until their remains are bathed in warm blood
Two-headed: This variety has an additional head. This grants an additional attack
as well as reducing the chances of surprise
Enraged Stirge Whip: This creature does not feed with a proboscis, but instead
has four long whiplike limbs that attach and drain blood from multiple creatures. The
whips have AC 3 and 10 hit points each. It normally attaches itself to a cave wall or
surface before attacking. It can attach itself to a surface with an effective strength of
20. It flies and is small instead of tiny. They hunt in packs
Swamp: These are much smaller than normal (about the size of a half dollar), but
they travel in huge swarms. They hunt at dusk

Combat Tricks
Flock blindness: When three or more stirges affect a single target, the target’s
vision is obscured for the round, causing them to act as if they are blinded
Armor crawl: On a hit, the stirge may worm its way under the armor. This protects
the stirge from damage, giving it the AC of the victim’s armor and ensuring that any
hit that hurts it, hurts the victim for an equal amount
Eye stab: Some Stirges are unsatisfied with blood and drink fluid out of the eyes.
They land on the target on the first turn, move to the eye on the second, and on the
third turn make a strike into the eyeball. The victim must save or become shaken by
the pain, and the eye is seriously damaged, causing partial blindness

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T ROGLODYTE

“Aaahhhhgh” — The most common utterance before
being killed by a troglodyte

Nomenclature: Trogs, slope-heads, cave-men, neanderthal

Description: Primal humanoids who live deep within the earth
Things that are known:
• They can see in the dark

Rumors and other echoes in the caves:

• Troglodytes are just what you call apes that live in caves
• Troglodytes have a complex, detailed, and ritualistic society, performing service
that keeps the black blood of the earth flowing. If their observances were ever
disturbed, the world would have a heart attack
• People in those troglodyte caves, they died out thousands of years ago. Those
are just simple people taking advantage of free housing and land to make ales
and wines
• Troglodyte literally means “one who dives into holes”
• In order to create a troglodyte, you must put a mushroom in a box
and bury it in a cave

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• Troglodytes have nothing to do with living underground. They are just hermits
who live in lonely places, who have reactionary views that are not very favorable
to the people of their time
• Troglodyte depends on your perspective. The sea elves and coastal people view
inlanders as troglodytes; gnolls view hags as troglodtyes, dragons view lind-
worms as troglodytes — it’s just a fancy way to talk down to people with different
values
• Troglodytes are the fastest of any humanoid and eat only reptiles. There is no
evidence that these facts are connected
• Each tribe of troglodytes tends to a different world dragon, acting out its will
upon the underdark
• There is fierce debate among scholars as to whether troglodytes have scales or
hair, being that all the samples are so matted the sages can come to no agree-
ment on the matter
• They guard the giant stones, covered in jasmine, for they are the paths through
which the yin energy flows through the yoni of the earth
• There are secrets that are lost through the eras, entire hidden histories, and this is
what the troglodytes collect and guard
• Troglodytes have no brain and do not experience emotions; they are just savage,
sallow shadows of men sent against the surface world by the fearful denizens of
the deep earth
• Troglodytes are born when idle fops who need to exert no effort to survive lay
about. Not needing to do anything due to obscene wealth, they quickly become
sub-human troglodytes
• Troglodytes are attracted to castles. They create and widen caves beneath
fortresses, expanding areas and honeycombing the ground, where they form
nests like termites. An untended castle that doesn’t clear out their troglodyte
infestations is doomed to collapse as the tunnels beneath eventually fail to
support the weight of the structure. This is why so many castles are large ruined
piles
• Troglodytes are humans that long ago were trapped underground and have
adapted to its strange radiations
• They are just a simple, primitive cave people who enjoy their way of life and do
not want to see it ruined by invaders. They relentlessly attack any who approach
their tribe
• They have an affinity for blunt weapons, doing much more damage than one
would expect
• Troglodytes are rare, but a magma vein has opened near a glacier that contains
many frozen troglodytes, tens of thousands. Soon they will be much more
common
• Their entire language is based on tones that are inaudable to human ears (though
not to elven ears or the ears of small folk)

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 ROLL
“You should kill them, then burn them or boil them. The sword is
never enough.” - Huyiz, the one-armed mage

Nomenclature: Rubberbeast, underbridge ogre, trollteri

Description: Ugly regenerating monsters
Things that are known:
• Trolls regenerate damage that isn’t caused by fire or acid
• They are hungry

Rumors and other limbs regrowing in the dark:

• There is only one troll. Every time he is cut, he grows
• Trolls are always ugly. They may be weak or nice but never fail to carry a hideous
visage
• The trollplague is what it is called when trolls realize each part begets a whole
• They are magic taken physical form. Their nature makes them cause harm or
damage to living creatures. They are often the detritus from a spell designed to
harm other creatures
• This means that they are not vulnerable to fire and acid but are instead vulnerable
to the type of harmful spell that was used in their creation. It just happens that this
is often fire and acid
• Trolls are the byproduct of a wizard successfully extracting an immortalized cell line
from a swamp giant. After testing and experimenting on the cells, it languished in a
sealed beaker in an abandoned laboratory for hundreds of years. Found, it was
imbibed as a potion and rapidly caused the line of trolls we know today
• Beware the limb replacers. Though having a severed limb replaced with a
magical replacement or a wonder of mechanical engineering is expensive, troll
limbs attach readily and are much more affordable and simpler than whatever
you are likely paying for
• Severed troll parts that are prevented from reattaching to the original grow into a
clone of the original. They share a telepathic bond
• Healing potions don’t use troll blood in their manufacture. They are troll blood
• Troll regeneration is a byproduct of their fecundity.
• They are heavily influenced by their environment, taking on aspects of the terrain and
creatures near where they live

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• Original trolls were a cross between the fae and the earth creatures, both noble
dwarven and base goblin. But some worshiped chaos and evil and gained the
dark art of regeneration from a demon lord, and it caused their hunger to grow
until it drove them to cannibalism and anthropophagy. The brain prions drove
them mad, and they wiped out the non-chaos worshipers. The most pure of the
troll vanished first, perhaps they were somehow spared
• The mad wizard Rolleg cut the hands and feet off trolls and linked their stumps
together to create a living fence. Anyone can apply this technique; simply hold
the stumps together until they fuse. Collars or muzzles must be applied to prevent
them from chewing off their own body parts
• Trolls are reflections of the attitudes directed to them. Most people react with
horror at their visage, so are immediately attacked. If greeted warmly, they are
kind and playful
• Trolls are vicious thieves, and their very presence causes food to spoil

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• Frozen troll chunks buried in the enemy’s fields is a nice surprise for farmers in the
morning
• Trolls are the acne of young, evil treants: twisted branches that just need to come
off right now. This is why trolls are gnarled in shape and often covered in moss
• Trolls are just normal giant spellcasters such as shamans and witch doctors. Their
coloration and skin comes from the plants they use to connect with the natural
enviornment
• Trolls would be immortal if not for cancer. Tearing out growths and polyps and
ganglions with their teeth births new trolls. In some cases trolls burst from the mother
and immediately set to fighting. Young trolls hide, spying on older ones, moving
closer and closer until admitted into the clan. Some never adjust and live apart
• Lord Agamazar broke the defenders of Castle Vizgrom by chopping parts off
captive trolls and shooting them into the town with catapults. Unfortunately,
Agamazar was torn to bits by enraged trolls later that day, so his victory came
with a steep price
• Trolls aren’t natural creatures; they are the result of a series of flawed magical
rings of regeneration cursed into being long ago
• When reflected in a mirror, a troll is a startlingly beautiful humanoid. If pulled
through the looking glass, they will trade places with the ugly one. In every other
way, they are identical, including outlook, alignment, and disposition
• Some trolls divine the future in entrails, using their own and stuffing them back in
the hole before they close
• Fire and acid don’t actually kill a troll; they merely send pieces of the creature to
another plane of existence. Once the entire creature has been transported, it lives
on in the other plane. And on those other planes, other types of attack may be
needed to send them to yet another plane
• Aristocrats frequently swallow severed troll fingers as a macabre form of dietary
control. Don’t trust the ones sold by your average village apothecary, though.
Those are usually just shaved baby rats
• Trolls are the discarded mucus and wax of Orcus, constantly refreshed by the
ethereal transmission of material from the demon’s orfices. The only way to stop
the regeneration is to slay Orcus, or at least convince him to be more hygienic
• The technique of hulling trolls is quite well known, but some mad kings have taken
this a step further and begun the sexy new field of troll sculpture. Futurists predict
someday the next step will be troll architecture
• Trolls are the essential animated cancerous essence of the Mother of Life. As
such, all trolls are female and parthenogenetic
• Troll women are astoundingly beautiful, sometimes called dryads or nymphs

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• Trolls are the counterpart to elves and dwarves; however instead of representing
the spirits of youth and magic or earth and greed, trolls represent the spirit of the
dead
• Trolls can only regenerate in the dark. In fact, they need to regenerate constantly
to simply stay alive, since their bodies are so unstable. That’s why they turn into
stone in the daylight
• Trollism is a virus, similar to vampirism, which lives in the blood of infected
creatures. A creature that injects the blood of a troll may become a troll itself
• So long as trolls drink and eat enough mortal (non-troll) flesh, they retain the
native intelligence and appearance of that race. Trolls exiled from troll society
into the wilderness slowly decay into their vicious, wild form over a period of
weeks or months
• Trolls have difficulty thinking, but some environments (such as cold or the dark)
can make the troll more intelligent
• Trolls and vampires have been locked in a secret war for the flesh and blood of
mankind for millennia, for they were spawned by twin demon queens and hate
each other with a deathly passion
• Trolls are something people become because of their spiritual health. That’s why
they have language and not culture
• Trolls are fond of contests where the loser’s head is ripped off and a new one
regrown. Something is frequently lost in the process, although the trolls that have
had their heads removed are hard-pressed to recall what it is
• High trolls are usually referred to as “trulies”, for they believe themselves truly
blessed — possessed of immortality, eternal youth, beauty, vigor, and regenera-
tion. . . and an aversion to sunlight.
• The accursed royal blood of the Night Elemental Lord Agalloch tainted the heroes
that slew him when he bid to take over the Prime Material. One was tainted by
the essence of wind and air, turning to stone in the sunlight and becoming the first
of the troll kind. The second was tainted by the essence of water and vital fluid,
turning to fire and ash in the sunlight and becoming the first of the vampires. The
third was tainted by the essence of earth and stone, vaporizing into thin air when
exposed to sunlight and becoming the first of the stonewalkers. The fourth was
tainted by the essence of fire and flame, liquefying into a puddle of fetid water in
the sunlight and becoming the first of the nightmares
• Lycanthropes are loathed by all the bearers of the elemental blood curse, for
their blood is infused with the essence of the moon and stars, giving them greater
power when in moonlight, but no drawbacks in sunlight. The lycanthropes are
truly the children of Orion the Hunter, born to hunt the blood-cursed and to keep
the lands of the Prime Material safe for mortals and their works

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 • Trolls were once peaceful, but asked the fae queen for a boon of immortality. It
was granted, allowing them to draw from the life force of any thing they ate.
Soon those traits began to affect the trolls; as they became dumber and more
cow-like, they realized their error and changed their diet. Now they seek out the
most intelligent and aggressive creatures they can find, though this has done little
for their relations with other races
• The trolls are so adept at climbing that some have been known to create wooden
homesteads for themselves inside the canopies of dense forests. Some of these
canopy-dwelling trolls are clever enough to build tripwire traps that drop heavy
stones down on their victims from the branches above.
• Some trolls mix their own blood with the urine of their victims to create a foul
concoction that is capable of sprouting carnivorous plants when poured over
fertile soil. The trolls propagate these plants to defend their lairs from trespassers
• Trolls are so unafraid of death that their corpses are more likely to rise as zombies
after they are slain. Some have witnessed troll zombies going about their daily
activities as they would have in life; mindlessly preparing fires and chewing and
swallowing food that falls right out of their decayed chest cavities
• Some trolls carve patterns and markings into their own flesh in worship to their
gods. Due to their regenerative capabilities, these wounds scar and heal over a
matter of days, allowing the troll to continuously carve new markings into itself as
a regular ritual. If the gods decide to reward this worship, the troll is blessed with
enchanted flesh that it can use to cast powerful spells of necromancy

Variants
There are many variations of trolls: rock, ice, swamp, etc. These specifications do not
grant them elemental powers or resistances, but indicate differences in size, intelli-
gence, and culture. They frequently receive bonuses in their home terrain

Combat Tricks
Betrayal: Trolls will often dig deep pits in their lairs and happily dive into victims
and pull them in, both falling to the bottom. The damage from the fall is little worry for
the troll
Division: Trolls have been known to detach a limb and throw it behind its victims.
This prevents the troll from rending its opponents, but the limb receives a separate
attack used to trip the party member
Improvised weapon: Trolls like to grab creatures two size categories smaller than
them and wield them as weapons. The damage applies to both the target and the
weapon, of course

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 NICORN
“Unicorns aren’t real. And if they were, they’d kill you.”
— Apocryphal

Nomenclature: Holy steeds, mount of purity

Description: Pure white horses with a single horn atop their head
Things that are known:
• They are always white
• They have horns
• They are known to shift through space
• They are immune to charms and enchantments
• They are susceptible to the charms of young women

Rumors and other restful notes in the glade:

• Unicorns gain their power from the chaste and pure of heart. The bond they form
with a holy individual, such as a virgin or paladin, is for life
• However, if they should succumb to sex or sin, the unicorn becomes mad with
rage. It looses its horn, its hair turns black, its hooves burn with hatred, and it hun-
gers for flesh, becoming a nightmare
• Unicorns are a special type of fairy shape-shifter, that can only reproduce with
virgins. They gain their trust and intimacy, often by playing hard to get, and then
bed them, consensually or not
• It is as they say: the unicorns need maiden riders. This is wondrous when it
begins, but once bonded with the unicorn, they are separated from the realm of
man. Tending constantly to the needs of another fickle creature, loneliness, and
the need to hunt evil begin to wear. The youth given to the maiden rider from the
unicorn becomes a heavier and heavier weight every year. Eventually, the riders
become hostile, bitter, and weary
• A unicorn is a dream of instability and madness, more powerful than you, and
completely unpredictable
• Unicorns are warlike fae sustained by bloodshed, righteous fury, and fanatical
zeal
• Their alliances with paladins are not out of a desire for justice, but merely made
as the most expedient way to shed the blood of the guilty

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• Some Unicorns are even said to use their allies to not only create warlike churches
of justice, but also nests of evil creatures to ensure that there will always be
vengeance to be had
• Unicorns are prepubescent centaurs. They are only into virgins until they undergo
puberty, a rather traumatic metamorphosis involving a great deal of wine
drinking and celebration in lost and hidden caves
• There is a rumor that their centaur torso is the torso of the virgin they eventually
deflower, but it is much more likely that Bacchus himself shapes their form.
• Unicorns are the dreams of virgins seeking aid, their desire to escape giving form
to spirits in the wild. They exist beyond the call, but cannot properly breed.
• Unicorns must drench their horn in the blood of a pure maiden once a year or
they lose their powers.
• A true unicorn horn is pure platinum. That’s why they are no longer found. Bone
horns come from fish. Any new sightings are either lies or a sure sign of an
invasion
• Unicorns don’t need virgins so much as they need women who have rejected
men.
• The souls of great saints become angels. That is a fate out of reach of the nice
lady down at the corner market. Occasionally, however, their wishes will find a
place upon death, becoming a brilliant white horn on the forehead of a stallion
or mare. The horse then seeks others who remind them of the horn giver, pure and
compassionate

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• Unicorns are horses infected with a brain worm. This worm spends its first life
stage as an egg in the soil of a cemetery, but once hatched it crawls up on the
tallest blade of grass it can find and lies in wait, hoping to be swallowed by a
suitably large herbivore. Most herbivores know this and will not willingly feed in a
cemetery, but horses can sometimes be led there and forced to feed by unknow-
ing masters
ºº Once eaten, the worm lodges itself in the brain. It develops a large horny
proboscis which protrudes from the host’s forehead
ºº It needs a human brain, one filled with zeal, preferably laced with innocence
and suppressed desires. Thus, it will be drawn to virgins and paladins. It will
remain with its intended next host, testing it to see if its brain will be a truly
delectable treat and its body a suitable host, all the while using its rather
powerful psychic abilities to create chaos and danger
ºº Once the host is found suitable, the fabled “horn” will be used for its intended
purpose, leaving the horse body vacant and dead and the new host body
almost intact apart from a ruptured ear canal. The creature will now revel in
the last and shortest stage in its life by influencing its new host to abandon all
former principles and fall to hedonism and debauchery (coincidentally, the
unicorn will be gone at this point, furthering the theory that unicorns will
abandon unworthy masters). Soon, the host will meet his or her fate somehow,
at the hands of the law or through an act of despair, and will be buried in a
nearby cemetery, its brain case ripe with eggs. . .
• Just as clerics channel the power of their god into Prime, so does the unicorn
channel cosmic power. The horn is an intricate multi-dimensional array that
reflexively converts power. This makes it very sensitive to auras and vibrations
from intent and mindset. The presence of intense selfishness or delight in pain
causes feedback that stings in the unicorn’s bones.
• Salvressa Greengoat was a powerful druid mocked by wizards. They claimed
they could weaponize animals to serve them in destroying their foes, and she
could only use them “out of the box” as it were
ºº She decided to prove them wrong. She thought of the most painful experience
she had ever had, and she decided to incarnate it. She remembered the
penetration and disillusionment of her first sexual experience, and she pro-
jected it out into a steed
ºº First, the light and the cuddling and the freshness of idealism. Then the
construct of romantic love contrasted with the rutting and grunting and
abandonment of mating. The piercing pain, physical and emotional. And she
unleashed it on the world
ºº Salvressa Greengoat was never famous for her monster-making (and this was
her only attempt)

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• Voskohr the Defenestrator is an evil lich with a thousand windows in his multi-
dimensional tower. The only way in is to insert a unicorn horn into the door lock, and
each horn only works once. He figures if someone wants an audience with him, they
have best be prepared to slaughter something pure to get a foot in the door
• Drunk fae at revels decided they would do away with the rider as they imitated
jousts the humans hosted. They put the lances directly on the horses. It did not
work out. Surviving unicorns became disapproving icons of probity and virtue,
considering themselves object lessons in the pitfalls of drunken animal-tampering
• The unicorn’s horn is actually pure magical energy. It’s why the horse is white and
so difficult to hit; the energy repels nearby materials
• For that matter, the unicorn isn’t an actual horse. It’s just magical forces, swirls
and whorls of energy, and shapes more strange that all float together in the
approximate shape of a horse. The body is like the tail of a coat, dragging along
the ground
• The Thickwood is impossible to navigate. Brambles coat everything, climbing
trees and spreading across the ground. They release fog that eats firelight. The
only way through is to follow the glimmer of a unicorn’s coat, and the shine of the
light its horn projects. They were created as guides to carry the allies of the fae
through the darkness
• When the Thickwood was destroyed and the ground it once covered was salted
and burned, surviving unicorns were faced with a crisis of purpose. They decided
to take their role as guides metaphorically, and they sought out those hemmed in
and befogged and led them to clarity and safety
• A unicorn’s bones are stitched with sigils that collect and concentrate emotions
— namely righteous wrath and compassion. The horn is capable of either
directing a release of pent-up energy or conducting a tracery of a multi-dimen-
sional glyph that gives form to those energies
• Orcus had a phalanx of wicked goat mounts, shaggy and topped with skirling
cathedrals of bone horns. A few of these defected one of the many times Orcus
was (temporarily) slain. Their new patron, a forest goddess, fused and straight-
ened their horns and granted them light and grace. They are intense rivals with
their former kin
• An entire cult of Orcus, the Crooks, has as its purpose the ambition of discovering
whether a hybrid of unicorns and devil-goats will yield something useful to their
master. So far, no success staging experiments; unicorns can apparently die at
will
• The horn of a unicorn can cure any disease. It may also infect you with parasites
that have odd effects
• Each unicorn has glyphs inlaid in its horn that reveal a prophecy uttered by their
divine patron. These can only be read after the horn is separated from the unicorn
and given special treatment — unless the diviner has a healthy dollop of fey
blood and the approval of the sponsoring god

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 • The city state of Belleraes has some really weird morality laws involving sex out of
wedlock and legal marrying age. Many a visitor has fallen afoul of their castrat-
ing carpet-knives and twisted legal system. This culture was shaped by about five
centuries of a fad among the nobility. Every legitimate noble had to have unicorn
decorations, and at least once a year eat the meat of unicorns
• Every part of the unicorn was used: bones for end tables and writing desk inlay,
hair for pillows and helm crests, eyes dipped in glass and inserted in statues or
head trophies, hide for clothes or upholstering loveseats, marrow for Virtuous
Salsa, and so on
• Unicorns have been out of style for at least three hundred years, but laws passed
to ensure virtue and virgins are still on the books and existed long enough to
shape this society indelibly
• Unicorns focus on virgins because “purity” is the same as “unmixed.” They need
naivety, people whose ideas have not been challenged and shaped by conflict
with other ideas. They need spirits that have not deeply twined with other spirits.
They are avatars of loneliness, colorless and solitary. Compromise is their poison.
ºº Because of this, their minds project a flickering “horn” of singularity that can
penetrate anything

Combat Tricks
Horn parry: The unicorn may make a saving throw versus petrification when it
charges. On a successful save, it is able to deflect any weapon set against a charge
Rear up: The unicorn can forgo an attack with its horn, and instead rise up on its
hind legs to attack with its hooves

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 AMPIRES
“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.”
- Dracula

Nomenclature: Leeches, licks, bloodsuckers, overbites, fangers, fangs, lonely ones

Description: Undead creatures that feed on humans
Things that are known:
• They are repulsed by mirrors and garlic
• Sunlight damages them
• They can be slain by being held under running water
• A wooden shaft through the heart will paralyze them
• They are resistant to non-magical weapons
• Once ‘killed’ by normal means, they simply turn into gas and retreat to their coffin

Rumors and other absences in the mirror:

• They are actually intestinal parasites that infect corpses. The victims harbor all
sorts of weird physical characteristics, but the actual creature is a small, wander-
ing gut worm. The gaseous form trick is pure parlor magic, just a common
flashbang that allows the worm to escape
• Vampirism is used by the powers of Law to isolate and neutralize dangerous
Chaotic influences. It is very attractive to a certain kind of power-mad maniac.
Immortality and power. And the cost? Ha!
• But what happens when a dangerously dynamic champion of Chaos becomes
vampire? By the nature of the curse, they are tied down, they are dependent on
their environment, they are bound by day and night, they are beyond life, and
can no longer learn and grow. They have stopped being a dynamic threat and
become a static irritant — they have been encased in a cyst which protects the
larger world from their influence. Perhaps they pollute a small corner of it, but
they are effectively neutralized as champions of Chaos
• Vampires become terrible forces for conservatism. Unchanging. Eternal. They are
Law’s way of making Chaos serve it, and only we poor mortals suffer for their gambit
• They are just the fiction-made-manifest of a sage who writes pot-boilers in his
spare time. Unfortunately the one with the vampires was written in a magic book,
which causes anything within it to become real, as if it had always been real.
Destroying the book causes all vampires to cease to exist

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• Seven vampires carry the throne of the underworld goddess. She sends them to
promote suffering in the world and reminds us of her wrath
• A spirit of the underworld possesses the corpse, making a mockery of the victim,
corrupting and exterminating the departed soul. Once slain, it is banished until it
can regather its power. Each devil or demon can have one such champion in the
world at a time
• Werewolf corpses make particularly good hosts for vampires
• They are all sludge vampires
• Vampires are just ghouls that feed on immortal flesh. The powers of the vampire
are just side effects from their diet
• Vampires are a trick your mind plays on you to cover up its own secret workings.
Every time you think you’re fighting a vampire you’re actually fighting something
else you don’t want to look at. And if you have a sufficiently powerful personality,
you can get others to share your delusion, blaming the “vampire” for crimes
nobody wants to confess. The mythology of the vampire gets more baroque the
more crimes it must stretch over
• Vampires are part of an infection. They are a hive mind, a single viral organism.
The source is nearly immortal, and the ones it infects are quite strong. Those that
the infected infect are pale shadows of thinking creatures
• Vampires are a fictional cover for the lizard overlords
• The blood that vampires drink is sent directly to hell. Not only does this make your
soul more likely to go there after you die, but the genetic material in it (call it essence
if you want) is mixed and used as a starting compound for building demons
• Vampires are the ultimate narcissists and for this reason they have never united to
rule the world. They only “reproduce” when a vampire is foolish enough to think
they can create and control another vampire, who almost always manages to get
away when their own hyper-narcissism kicks in. If one vampire seems to domi-
nate another, it is a sure bet that the “slave” is merely trying to get close for the
ultimate betrayal. Thus the whole idea of vampire families, splat-sects, etc. is a
paranoid fever dream of churchly witch hunter manual writers. Vampires are solo
monsters, powerful, but their own worst enemy.
• The Vampire is even worse than the most terrifying nightmare. It is an idea that
takes over the mind, inducing secrecy and obsession. People infected with the
idea find themselves engaged in absent-minded bloodletting. Left unchecked,
they begin filling bowls, barrels, and other containers with blood. It is unclear
what their purpose is, and they are always unaware of their actions
• They are the guardians of the debts incurred by wishes. Wishes always have a
cost. If that cost remains unpaid, a vampire extracts the balance. They prey on
children, stealing into their rooms, in recompense. The only way to stop them is to
stop the debt

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• All vampires are actually simulacra. A plasmic being infects and replaces a body’s
cells. Eventually the entire being is replaced on a cellular level, and it gains a
consciousness. The vampire has no idea that its real identity is already dead. The
soul is truly gone
• These plasmic beings have a cellular structure that cannot stand up to the rigors
of UV light. Other weaknesses are attributed to superstitions of the former identity
• The specific powers and limitations of a vampire are linked to the qualities and
lifestyle of the host spirit. The landed elite are tied to their home of origin; their
pale skin no longer tolerates the sun; and their thin noble blood reacts to garlic (a
natural blood thinner) poorly. Poor vagabonds, by comparison, suffer constant
wanderlust, are empowered by the sun and road, and resist the elements
(including elemental spells). While frequently not as traditionally powerful as their
noble kin, the rest of the spectrum of vampirism is aided by a shroud of igno-
rance.
• Vampires are simply young liches, struggling to hold on to the vestiges of life. The
blood brings the semblance of life. As the years progress, it takes more and more
blood for the same effect. As the lich slips into the embrace of undeath, his need
for humanity fades away, along with the taste of blood
• Wishes and other means of immortality always produce vampirism
• If you refer to them as Draculas, they will spare you

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 HITE APE
“What the—” — last words of Wigmund, the not-so-wise

Nomenclature: Girallons
Description: Huge apes that have four arms
Things that are known:
• They usually have four arms

Rumors and other howls in the jungle:

• Long ago, they were peaceful until cursed by wizards, who they now hate with a
passion that burns, turning their eyes red
• These are simply normal apes with albinism
• They are almost as smart as humans, which isn’t saying much
• Some brave and foolish people raise white apes as mounts
• As the white ape fights more and more battles, their scar tissue gets bigger,
making them harder to hit and their resistance to pain greater
• There is no maximum size to a white ape. They do not experience natural death,
and as they grow older they become larger and larger
• They are fearful of the sun and howl incessantly when exposed to light. This
makes them excellent guard creatures
• In spite of their white fur, they have no affinity for ice or cold, nor any weakness
to fire
• The danger isn’t that they have four arms. It’s that they are fifteen feet tall. That’s
where all that muscle comes from, being the size of a house
• White apes thirst for human brains, for with every human brain they consume,
they become more intelligent. The most powerful apes have skulls bulging with
dozens of brains and produce incredible super-science devices
• They are just peaceful, zen-like creatures
• They have a disturbing habit of absconding with damsels
• There is said to be a gorilla city, deep within the jungle, led by a powerful psychic
ape

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 YVERN
“I have it on good authority from the duke of the Puttenber-
gen’s vizier, Jochrim ibn Oberwaldski, that the wyvern is the
protean and horrendous manifestation of dwarvish gold-lust
also known as the dwarrowwife.“
- Lujek, starter of the final wyvernwife wars

Nomenclature: Wyrmspawn, dragon-birds, whyverns, wiverns, scorpion dragons

Description: A bipedal winged reptile with a poisonous tail sting
Things that are known:
• They can fly
• Their tails contain a poison sting
• They are related to dragons

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

• Wyverns are from the elemental plane of poison, which is filled with roiling
clouds and bright candy like surfaces
• Wyverns are part of a family of creatures known as xyverns, yyverns, and zyverns
organized in a complex hierarchical structure, each serving a different purpose
• A xyvern is almost like a wyvern, but with pteranodon wings and a confusion
venom
• The wyvern is a chimeric creature, combining parts of a turkey, fruit bat, gecko,
and scorpion. There are some who say it also possesses the forearms of a snake.
• Wyverns are the cursed remains of a bird race, who must kill a certain number of
sentient beings before the curse is lifted. Every
wyvern carries their total
secretly, hoping for the day to
become free once more
• The wyvern is the adult form
of a cockatrice
• They eat their victims whole,
but bones and metal aren’t
digested. After a kill, these are
vomited up near the wyvern nest
• That’s inaccurate; wyvern is a
term for a giant turkey

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• Wyverns are drawn to small enclosed spaces, much like cats are drawn to
baskets and boxes
• Wyvern tails are actually their heads, and what looks like the head is just mimicry
designed to fool and confuse predators.
• Wyverns are the natural animal competitors to dragons, resistant to both breath
and dragon magic. Nowadays, however, they either live in dragon-free environ-
ments or become servants by those same dragons
• Attempts to breed versions that are magically resistant so far have been a failure
but have produced a number of interesting wyvern variants
• Wyverns are flying lions with bat wings, but have no tail, no sting, and no poison.
It is a legend based on the siege and fall of Castle Juniper in the Moon Moun-
tains where goblins rode wyverns flinging poisoned spears
• Wyverns are inbred dragons
• Wyverns are the homunculi of dragon arch-wizards
• Wyverns are the result of fairies dreaming of dragons. In their ignorance, they
come out a lot like wyverns
• Wyvern testicles and ovaries are powerful magical components. Wyverns know
this and mistrust wizards
• Wyverns are excellent mounts. If they won’t cooperate when they are alive, they
make excellent mounts as undead creatures
• Wyverns reproduce by stealing the stings of scorpion men. This infuriates them.
Many forge replacements of brass and steel and devote their lives to hunting
wyverns.
• It’s pronounced wai-vern
• It’s actually pronounced wii-vern
• No, it’s derived from the latin for viper and the “Wy” has a long ‘i’ sound
• The wyvern is the heraldic symbol of the black hobbits of Overhill. Nobody has
ever seen a wyvern in or around Overhill, but the black hobbits speak of the
wyvern in a reverent voice. “When the end times come,” they say, “the winged
lord will send the wyvern to swoop us away, and Overhill will be no more.”
• Wyverns grow from the fetus of a bat magically implanted into a scorpion egg,
ensconced in the egg of a snake, ensconced in the egg of a turkey, and hatched
in a nest of poison ivy
• Wyverns are rainbow-colored monsters that emit a sonic attack that causes
ecstasy. The sound is a high pitched wheezing
• Wyvern ecologies are only written by sages who are jerks
• Wyvern is actually a term locals use for agile dinosaurs
• Wyvern eggs can feed twenty men for a day. Or ten hobbits
• Wyvern eggs can be used to poison two hundred men. Or five greedy hobbits

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• A wyvern is not bipedal, but actually tripodal. The third leg is presumed to be a
powerful aphrodisiac
• Wyvern poison causes death by priapism. This causes males to save versus the
poison at a penalty
• Wyverns are color blind
• Only because wyverns have no eyes
• In the souks of Salahalabarbalhalas, the powered purple ‘juice’ of a wyvern is
sold as a powerful cure-all, antidote, and aphrodisiac. It can be snorted for a
powerful high with a side effect of complete poison immunity, assuming it doesn’t
kill you
• Sadly, ‘wyvern juice’ is made from hobbit urine and agave syrup, a horrible
tasting mixture that may not do what it says on the tin
• Actually, real ‘wyvern juice’ is collected by cooling the head of a wyvern to the
freezing point of rock oil and chiseling out the venom glands, producing 300 gold
worth of juice, or 330 gold if milked by a hobbit maiden
• Only males produce wyvern juice
• Wyvern wings are cyclically considered the height of fashion, most recently
because the queen wore one during the funeral of her husband
• All wyverns are hermaphroditic
• Wyverns are actually giant mutant mollusks, gastropods. Their shells are con-
tained in their stomachs
• Unsurprisingly, they taste like chicken
• They are helpful natural creatures, feeding only on poisonous vermin. Slaying a
wyvern does irreparable harm to local communities
• Wyverns are temporal tesseract creatures: There is only one wyvern, but instead
of being distributed amongst the manifold universes, they manifest everywhere.
Part of the reason of their chimeric appearance is that changes in physical
representation also bleed across the manifolds. If you manage to find the
ur-wyvern and kill it in all the universes at the same time, you will get rid of
wyverns. Otherwise, they will continue to spring into existence evermore. Don’t
be surprised if a wyvern remembers you the first time you meet it
• Wyverns are endangered creatures that are too ugly to live. They are so ugly that
if a wyvern sees its reflection in a mirror, it will flee
• This information comes from Aphandor, the famous explorer, who was killed by a
wyvern and eaten while wearing four-mirror armor
• Wyverns are a cross between magpies and turkeys, a terrifying bird without fear,
that likes mirrors, shiny objects, and gems
• Wyverns have no soul
• Wyverns have five souls. They are twisted, suffering, and blinded souls, but for
every one banished, the wyvern loses the properties of that soul

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• This means undead wyverns are practically unturnable, being that they count as
five undead. Luckily it’s five times as hard to create undead wyverns
• When wyvern wives whisper wonderful whimsical wild-tales, witches wish
warlocks would woo them
• When a witch and warlock mate, a duck will give birth to a wyvern
• People stung by a wyvern and resurrected have said that they died in bliss
• Using wyvern dung instead of bat guano for a fireball creates an exploding
acidic sphere instead
• Wyvern guano in general is a useful ingredient for incendiaries, acid vials, and
cart bombs
• Wyverns are the angels of the goddess of pleasure and poison, Whyt. Wyvern
venom is one of the most pleasurable experiences imaginable, and many an
adventurer is a secret YV addict. Actual deaths from wyvern venom are caused
by the overdose burning out all the nerve endings, resulting in a comatose,
hebephrenic husk of a being
• Priests of Whyt turn into wyverns over time by replacing their body parts with
animal grafts. The wyvern’s brain as such is human in nature, but beyond the
acuity of spell casting
• In cyrilics a wyvern is written as уивэрэн and is believed to be the forerunner of
the hut of Baba Jaga
• The city of Nrevywis very adamant in its claim that the name being reverse for
wyvern is nothing but a coincidence. Since the scroll of independence from the
king’s rule spells out the city’s name exactly like that, there is a strong reluctance
to change it and risk losing said independence
• It doesn’t help that the city walls are home to a nest of 144 wyverns that never
attack the city itself. In fact, nobody ever saw the wyverns do anything other than
fly around — as long as they’re unprovoked
• The Wyte Guard of Nrevyw wears wyvern-wing cloaks
• A wyvern transplant is never rejected by the host body and always naturally
grafts to any creature to which it is attached
• Wyvern bile and cerebrospinal fluid stop troll regeneration
• Repeatedly asking a wyvern “Why?” will cause it to storm off in disgust
• Wyvern poison is used as bitters in dwarven cocktails (like stormy stout)
• At night, wyverns transform into beautiful dwarven maidens
• Well, not exactly. Wyverns are dwarven females, and the dwarves greatest
shame. They are never encountered because they are kept hidden away. The
dwarves of Kamolovarupa keep them chained and massaged by drone dwarves
to continually produce new little dwarves

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• Mating with wyverns is unpleasant, which is why dwarves drink so much, and
why the sting causes priapism and arousal
• Mentioning this fact is a good way to have a dwarf kingdom go to war with you
• Wyverns are always hidden behind elaborate stone walls and floorboards
• Wyverns shed their wings annually, growing a more elaborate pair every year
• You can determine the age of a wyvern by counting scale segments
• A wyvern has three cloacas. One for solids, one for liquids, and one for gasses
• Wyvern gas has a weakening effect, used as an experimental sedative at the
Barovia Strahd Asylum
• Very old wyverns are very large and can no longer fly, making them popular
sport for hobbits
• A wyvern is heraldry come to rampant and perilous life. It manifests as a vast,
winged shadow with talons and stings and filled with fear of open spaces. It is a
protean creature of shifting parts
• In its youth, a wyvern is quite intelligent. They can be bargained with and
sometimes even made to keep their word, but with the insane pain from molting
and growing new wings, their sanity wanes
• A wyvern is a cognate of viper, an insane poisonous snake grown beyond all
reckoning
• A wyvern is the promise of an unknown monster, constantly morphing and
changing forms. Its chimeric form is just a metaphor
• The Keeper of the Seven Seals keeps seventeen sea-wyverns in his ornamental
oy-pond
• An oy pond is a more dangerous version of a koi pond
• Wyverns steal limbs from Heraldic Dragons for their adolescents’ grafting
experiments. Thus the legless Amphiptere, the wingless Wyrm
• Wyverns are trying to turn themselves into pompous four-legged dragons
• Wyverns are building some gigantic ur-horror composed only of claws, horns,
and leathery wings
• Dragons are mutable creatures and obsessed with eugenics. They curse all their
not-quite-dragon spawn with distinctive, baleful powers and weaknesses to
ensure they are not classified as true dragons. The bane of wyvernage is saved
for the worst: those that talk back and won’t eat their villagers
• Wyverns were once sea serpents. When the triton community undertook major
prayer, fasting, and sacrifice, their plea culminated with a quest. Their goddess
took pity on them and cursed wyverns with wings, so they could only haunt the
world above the waves

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• Wyvern were first created as draconic bonsai; an academy of powerful wizards
had a tithe of dragon eggs come to them every decade from subdued dragons,
and they had competitions to see who could make the most interesting protodra-
conic form. They have a LOT to answer for in this draconic-monster-infested
world
• Wyverns first arrived as parasites on the hides of vast space whales
• Wyverns are battle suits for small translucent rodents like hamsters. One eye
pushes back, and they follow the corridor to the skull “bridge.” An orc warlord
came to know this secret and nearly conquered the world before being burned
down; so far, no one else knows the secret, but they DO know that old Scrag-
latchiar the Conqueror left the secret of his success carved on a wyvern skull
hidden with his treasure, and orcs have never stopped looking for it
• When the world was still cooling, the King of the Faerie gambled with one of the
first dragons. The dragon lost his arms, his magic, his cleverness, and his magnifi-
cent breath; the Queen interrupted the game and spotted the dragon a poison
tail loaded with fey-killing venom. The King of the Faerie lost interest in the game
(and the inevitable revelation he was cheating), and the crippled dragon (named
Wyvern) re-entered the world in shame
• They all come from a cursed mirror being broken in the grove of a mad druid. The
results of removing this curse from an individual wyvern are unknown. Would it
become broken glass? Or several other monstrous creatures and elementals?
• Wyverns are the keepers of all knowledge, the words of lore written upon their
scales in the ancient language of serpents
• Wyverns do not breathe, nor do they have lungs. They absorb air through their
membranous wings, spending most of their time high in the jet stream
• Wyverns have no legs, only arms and wings
• They are the flip side to a stirge, a beast created to extract. Wyverns were made
to inject
• They compete in the ecological niche of eagles, but being featherless makes
them immune to the parasites that plague those large birds
• Wyverns try to bite off each other’s tails before mating. Their eggs will hatch
before the tail grows back
• Corkmelon is used to disable the sting of a wyvern, making it safer to trap them in
nets. Slashing their wings also helps

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Variants
Two-tail pygmy wyverns have a poison, which if survived will cure any ill. This
permanently makes you less healthy, but can be used to save your life. The problem
is, a single sting can kill, and they generally attempt to stab you with both tails
Undead wyverns (skeletal and zombie) are not easy to create, considering the
number of creatures’ souls used in their formation
Great wyverns have grown to the proportions of the largest dragons. No longer able
to fly, they can spit the acidic poison from their mouths

Combat Tricks
Tail spear: A wyvern can grapple an opponent with its mouth, doing normal bite
damage, and then fling that opponent up in the air. Once airborne, they then strike,
impaling the creature on their tail. If they successfully bite, grapple, and then throw
(bull-rush) their opponent, their tail strikes with a bonus to hit and the target saves
versus poison at a penalty. This exposes the wyvern to a variety of attacks, and all
opponents get a bonus to hit the wyvern for a round
Flying strike: Wyverns fly down to their opponent, stabbing them with their tail,
and then trampling them on the ground. They must charge their opponents with an
aerial dive. Once in range, they attempt to strike with their tails. Hit or miss, they then
attempt to overrun their opponent. On a successful overrun the opponent is trampled
and takes damage per hit die of the wyvern
Wing buffet: A single target standing on the flank of an enraged wyvern can be
buffeted with a wing. If hit, they take damage and must make a save or be knocked
prone. It may do this in addition to it’ normal attack

What is the difference between a dragon, drake, wyrm,

and wyvern ?
Whatever you want it to be. Traditionally, however, dragons are organized via color.
Chromatics for evil dragons, metallics for good dragons, and gemstones for neutral
dragons. Most terrain-oriented dragons (shadow, lava, etc.) are closer to monstrous
drakes, though may usually be assumed to be evil. Drakes are very similar to
dragons, though usually bestial, not being able to speak, cast spells, or reason.
Wyverns have only four limbs (two wings and two legs) and have poison stings.
Wyrms are reptilian beasts that have non-functioning, absent, or vestigial wings.
Linnorms are a specific type of wyrm that can fly in spite of not having wings, related
to dragons, being a much more primitive, aggressive, barbaric, and greedy version.
They have a venomous bite.
In the end, they are all just words for the same thing.

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 ORN
“They think, you know, that we are being simple or perhaps
superstitious when we say that the stone is alive, that it
breaths and speaks and eats. But they don’t live underground,
do they?” — Torsav, Duaru warchief

Nomenclature: Grinders, greedy creepers

Description: Trinary earth creatures
Things that are known:
• They can phase through earth
• They eat gems and precious metals

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

• The xorn are a trinity of creatures, each based on a certain type of rock: igneous,
sedimentary, and metamorphic. Other lesser types exist but are less skilled at
navigating impure rocks and often become stuck
• They are the result of a bet between two xeno-chimarologists on the possibility of
crossing machines with monsters. Hence they are a cross between a concrete
mixer and refuse pile
• They are drones, simple machines, sent out by outerworld creatures
• They seek draconic soul stones, usually found embedded in the brains of a
dragon
• Xorn are stupid, and will take any gem. They sort them by consuming them
• Give a xorn an Ioun stone and you will create an intelligent magic-using xorn
• They are the end result of teleportation mishaps, their misshapen limbs caused by
the warping of space and melding of a mind with solid stone
• Dwarves use salt-rocks to distract xorn from gemstone deposits. Too much of the
salt-rock causes the xorn to become pickled, stuck, and barely able to move.
Cooked over magma, they make a rare treat for the dwarves
• Legend says that if a xorn is exposed to enough pressure, it will turn into a
multi-faceted, multi-hued gem worth the sum of all the gems it ever ate
• Miniature xorn are said to have depopulated worlds, stripping all the heavy
elements from living creatures like a disease
• Gemstone deposits are just bellies of xorn who have died long ago
• Xorn settled underground long ago, spawning gnomes, dwarves, kobolds, and
other underground humanoids. They are ashamed of this story and will deny it

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• Xorn are fused hermaphrodites. Each is not a trinary creature, but two creatures,
one male and one female, fused, both halves of the same xorn
• Crystal, lava, ice, and metal xorn were all eaten long ago, leaving only the
gemstone xorn we know today
• Few creatures capture the hate of a dragon more than a dwarf, and xorn have
that honor. It is said that a xorn once wandered into Xyphnecrop’s great treasure
hoard and consumed his entire collection of rubies, before snacking on the gems
embedded in his gross underbelly. When the dragon awoke, the xorn was long
gone, though it would be a millennial more before the laughter at his fate ceased
• Xorn are from the elemental plane of gluttony and avarice. They have been
accidentally summoned by fat and greedy sorcerers
• Xorn were once servants of the creatures that lorded over the very dragons
themselves. When their crystal palaces were struck with disaster, the xorn were
knocked lose, sent throughout the planes. Those landing on the plane of elemen-
tal earth fared much better than others, sniffing out and examining any gems in
the hopes that it will lead them once again to their masters and their crystal cities.
They eat the gems to collect building material to bring home
• Xorn only eat crystals, not true gems
• Xorn are the embodiement of rage from mother earth and stone, sent up from her
igneous womb to return that which was unearthed and stolen
• Xorn attack by extracting calcium from living creatures
• Xorn are matter shorn of manners, some of the most rude creatures in the universe
• Xorn are forlorn creatures
• Xorn aren’t creatures, but in fact silica-based plant life
• Xorn are filled with xorn pearls, various geodes harvestable upon death
• Xorn are unable to reproduce, because they lack a soul. They steal greedy hobbit
children to reproduce
• Samishi of Sulspicc claims that xorn are simply the larval stage of another larger creature
• Xorn actually have four arms and legs, but are phasic creatures, the fourth arm
and leg are out of phase with the rest of the prime material plane. This has the
side effect of a fourth attack happening after the first attacks occur
• The excrement of xorn are gem-dust bricks
• They have a motile and sessile phase.
• Their armor reacts strongly with sugar, dissolving rapidly
• They are the offspring of clockwork constructs and golems
• Xorn are in reality the plaque on the teeth of colossal demons, being shed like dandruff
• Xorn are the bio-mechanical creatures used to make space within the hollow
world. Once finished they were banished to the elemental plane of earth, a
considerable act of mercy, considering it is their idea of paradise. Those that
force them back into the prime material plane are sadists.

185
• Xorn do not exist. They are a myth used by thieves that are very bad at disguise

186
 ETI
“She had those damned crazy eyes. I don’t got nothin’ else
to say about her or any of ‘em.” - Zauzikhoo Khalimas

Nomenclature: Frost monkey, ice ape, white death, hunters, snow giants, Abomi-
nable snowmen, the horror that walks the mountain
Description: A white, furred, giant ape-like creature
Things that are known:
• They live in cold, arctic climes
• Their gaze leaves men not what they once were

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

• Some things are lost in the mountains what a man does, what he must, to survive.
Many will not pay that cost, and they freeze to death. Those that do are trans-
formed in both shape and spirit, possessing only rage and pure madness
• The emotions of a yeti are so strong that they are contagious. Meeting their gaze
is glimpsing the deepest, obfuscated recesses of your soul. Apart from the terror,
it causes your human nature to traumatically rebel against your animal flesh
• The fear that results from gazing into a yeti’s eyes is the realization that each yeti
is in fact their far future selves, returned and sent to slay themselves before the
horror of their transformation into the yeti occurs. Sadly, this does not cause the
yeti to cease to exist
• Yeti fur is actually a wiry red-orange, yet invisible in the snow. Nearby tribes will
often have colors considered strange by foreigners. However, bright orange huts
are a sure sign you are in yeti territory
• The urine of a yeti is thick and viscous and warm. It turns snow into hardened ice,
melting it, and the water refreezing in the cold. This is why there are so many
deadly slick traps near yeti lairs
• When the lost, spiritual, or weak-willed die in the mountains, they dream they are
a beast, walking the land as a yeti. If you gaze into the eye of a yeti, you can see
the dreamer, but also their dream reflection of you in their eyes. This is knowledge
forbidden, and those that see it can lose their minds, becoming mad forevermore
• Yetis do not have brains. They all worship Ithaqua and Wendigo, and madness,
chaos, and an icy fear lurk behind their eyes, and it is this you see that drives you
mad

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• Yetis are bailiffs of terrible evils frozen and hidden in the mountains. They try to
prevent people from visiting their prisons by yelling, throwing things, and scaring
people away, but no one ever listens
• The yeti and the abominable snowman are two sides of the same species. During
interglacial periods, men turn into yetis. Except in rare peaks, where the torturous
elements conspire to create and awaken an abomination. When the winter
comes and the cold descends, the yetis are subject to this cold and become
abominations themselves
• Yetis, although as intelligent as a normal man, able to speak and reason and act
as any creature can, are touched by the fae realms and live only in the moment,
unthinking of the future or the past
• Yetis are not as intelligent as their abominable snowmen cousins and have none
of their psychic powers, save one. Their blue, blue, paralyzing eyes are the only
psionic power they possess
• Yetis are adept at swimming in arctic waters and dive deep feeding off the
plankton filtered through their fur
• Yetis are not creatures. They are the parasitic spawn of the elder kind who sleep
beyond the universe, burning with the fire of infinite darkness. Their eyes are
portals to their masters, and to look upon them is to lose one’s self. Those who die
from this gaze are drawn through the portal to suffer eternally at the hand of the
darkness in the universe
• The glare in the eye of the yeti is lust. The hugs are a prelude to something
horrible, and it is that thought that drives men mad
• Yetis are 4 feet tall, and very angry for short people
• Yetis are hyper-intelligent, smarter than any other living creature. They act like
beasts because they take the minimum effort to survive, maximizing every ounce
of brainpower on greater cosmic mysteries. They care for no creatures, not even
themselves, convinced this world is just an illusion attempting to distract them
from greater cosmic mysteries. It is this otherworldly intelligence far beyond that
of mortals or even gods that is seen when one gazes into their eyes
• Yetis don’t naturally live in frozen wastes. Their life there is a choice to separate
themselves from worldly things
• A yeti is winter manifest; It is the cold embrace of winter. Those that fear the
frozen cold are frightened of its spirit, and the cold chills of fear grant the yeti
power over them
• Yeti theater is melodramatic and wildly sentimental. It features long, tragic, repet-
itive musical interludes which are absolutely not songs and which are never
woven into the narrative
• Yeti shamans make a trade; they lose a portion of their boundless fury in
exchange for an understanding of the spirits. Their ‘damned crazy eyes’ only deal
3-18 damage, and they can cast faerie fire, speak with dead, and preserve
manflesh once per day each

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• Yetid are thoughts of a peculiar intensity, wandering the mountains high. They are
hallucinations brought on by oxygen deprivation. Possibly they are the self, cast
out by the mind and made flesh
• If the character looks into the yeti’s eyes, then the full weight and significance of
the revelation grips them. It is a calling and a geas. Save versus spells or get
another class at level 1. Roll 3d6:
ºº 3: Barbarian. you have seen the wild and it is you. No more shoes
ºº 4-5: Ranger. You can keep your shoes
ºº 6-9: Druid. The wild has shown you things
ºº 10-12: Monk. Duh, mountaintop
ºº 13-16: Cleric. You must bring the word to the people
ºº 17: Thief. But they can’t hear it while they’re distracted by fripperies
ºº 18: Yeti. You can’t come down from the mountain until you’ve passed the
revelation on to someone else
ºº The nature of the revelation is left to the Dungeon Master and player to discuss,
but it must be heretical, troublesome, and right
• Yetis are beasts that only live during the ages of ice. They estivate for millennia,
frozen in glaciers, polar caps, far beneath the ice. They wait for the intense hot
period that occurs briefly before the ice age starts
• When the yetis come down the mountain, things are about to get much worse
• Yetis are fire spirits, trapped in cold places lest they set fire to the earth and sky.
Their fur is sooty smoke or pale mist. Eyes are holes in the smoky covering through
which primal fire, maddening to mortals, projects
• Yeti is a pasta shape associated with the cannibal tribes of high Dolomites
• There are beach yetis, marsh yetis, and perhaps others, each a tyrant of its own
territory
• There are rumors of sewer yetis, but no man has ever seen one
• Yetis are bundles of sticks and fur, animated by rage spirits
• Yetis have a propensity to rip your arms out of your sockets if they lose in a game
• Yetis are the wandering, tortured souls of extinct volcanoes. As such, they are
immune to fire, and disintegrate into ash when slain
• Yetis will guide travelers through frozen mountain passes if approached with the
gift of a mirror and hairbrush
• Perhaps their anger is due only to bad hair days
• Yetis have a mortal phobia of mirrors and hairbrushes, blasting out the call of the
yeti if confronted with them. The yodel causes all within 100´ to save versus spells
or become forever warped by the haunting trills and falsetto growls of the yeti
yodel
• All yetis are functional hermaphrodites

189
• Yetis are obsessed with salt
• Yetis worship Cryonax, their progenitor and evil para-elemental lord of the ice
realm. Without this holy worship, they lose powers of ice and cold and are less
aggressive
• Some are blessed with tentacles like their lord
• Yetis are the harbingers of snowstorms and blizzards
• They are accomplished snow sculptors, focusing on the abstractions of good and
evil
• Yetis refer to themselves as “Ch’rrawr’grrah’hwtech”, which in the yeti tongue
roughly translates to “the true folk”
• Yetis are self-absorbed liars.

190
 ORBO
“They don’t like us, but they like us to eat. “
- Ralfish Dortkud, Nezumi spy

Nomenclature: Zorba, sorbers, dirt bear

Description: Small bear-like creatures with fangs and claws and black beady eyes.
Things that are known:
• It hungers for the flesh of humans and humanoids
• It has the ability to absorb the traits of objects and items around it, as well as
draining magic items of their energy
• It looks very much like a koala bear

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

• Its dying curse is to leave adventurers with the shameful Mark of Zorbo, a Z on
their forehead, which to those in the know is occasion for ridicule and mirth.
• They are said to give birth to one or two live young every three years
• Zorbo are created by pickling koalas in mysterious alchemical concoctions for
seven days while performing a ritual known as “chanting the seven mately groans”
• Killing a zorbo with a melee weapon traps your weapon in the corpse 4 out of 6 times
• Zorbo were originally designed to go in steel cages, fired from siege engines.
They would take on the aspect of steel, and when the cage burst on impact, they
rampaged. They were the winners of a contest, where a wizard submitted his life
form. Unlike golems, they were cheap to breed. Because they had a meat form,
they were relatively easy to feed and house. And when they became burrs
digging through infantry ranks, that put a smile on the commander’s face
• Zorbo are children of the Gum-Tree God, tending the gardens of creamtime.
• Some zorbos absorb brains, and they are called zorbies
• Zorbos are universally double jointed
• Zorbo claws make excellent mace heads, maintaining their absorbing power
even after death
• Zorbo were created by religious xorn. They prayed for something they could hunt
through the earth, after seeing what joy their underdark neighbors took in the
practice. The original zorbo were holy creatures, reserved for hunting through the
earth on xorn holy days. The trick for the xorn was to catch and kill the zorbo
when it was formed of the most delicious material — adamant, always put in its
path. . .

191
• Zorbo are shape-changers who manifest entropy and chaos. Their shape of a
koala bear is simply a mask of skin streched across their void flesh
• The hunger for humanoid flesh comes from their millennial long origin as the pets
of demons. Favored most by the succubi, they all long for the delicacies of their
past
• Zorbo are unable to climb backwards; like squirrels, they must face forward to
ascend
• Groups of zorbos are known as blots. There is much disagreement among the
sages on the plural of zorbo; many different kinds have appeared in academic
texts on the subject
• Once a stage magician offended the god of magic. The god cursed him, that all
his illusions were factual. Knives went through things. His touch transmuted. The
climax of the curse saw his pet bear actually turned to steel, and it ripped him
apart in front of a duly impressed crowd. If a wizard sees a zorbo, that is a sign
that the wizard has offended the god of magic and must atone very soon or else
all magical effects become more real than they should, climaxing in the wizard’s
death
• It is incorrect to say that zorbo absorb traits. They are reflected with a slight delay
• A herd of earth elementals carefully gathered for a religious ritual, but kept in
close proximity with the mutagens and toxins that were also to be part of the
ritual, contracted a disease. Delirious, they escaped and somehow were able to
breed with all the local wildlife. The zorbo is but one unfortunate consequence
• Zorbo are actually plants that masquerade as animals. They wait to be eaten,
and once they are, they absorb the animal, finally free to walk as living creatures
do
• Sanglee the Lesser conquered a region and prohibited weapons. Revolt after
revolt showed that the people were still getting their hands on refined steel to
make armor and blades. Sanglee approached his grandfather, a completely
insane wizard, and asked for something that would let him take weapons from
the people without tipping them off to his presence. The zorbo was the result, his
grandfather’s last (and most eccentric) work. The screams of rust monsters and
furry beasts echoed long into each night
• All did not end well for Sanglee. The zorbo did in fact wipe out all the metal it
could get its furry claws on. So, the locals developed unarmed and simple
weapon fighting, giving them a serious edge when they faced Sanglee’s
metal-wielding troops with their war-zorbos
• Zorbos live in extended family groups called greeks. They like playing chess
• When zorbos kill a creature, they drag the corpse to a special chamber under-
ground, where a giant cocoon sits. They shove the corpse into the cocoon and
spin more silk to seal it close. Eventually, these wake and become a giant meat
golem

192
• Zorbos are a weapon — mutant dropbears bred to bankrupt a magic-glutted
kingdom by foreign enemies
• High fashion was supplied with color-shifting furs, and Zellman knew he had to
up his game. He would produce furs that could change their textures! He never
did figure out how to do that, but he did create the zorbo in his painstaking
decades-long experiments. They were so cute they became a status pet among
the nobility, who had special bare stone rooms for playing with their absorbing
pets. When the empire fell, the zorbo escaped into the ruins, and still haunt them
now
• A zorbo is actually just an animal skin that covers a seething, buzzing colony of
chaos beetles
• Dwarves created the zorbos. They trained them to follow certain cracks and
fissures, absorb the best of what was there, and return. Their small size and the
purity of their recon made them the mascots of the Helliriak Clan. When the clan
fell, the mascots became status pets and delicacies for the goblins that followed.
• Zorbo population is steady because their waste is often coated in diamond dust
and occasionally contains rare jewels
• Zorbo skin and flesh are in high demand because they are used in the construc-
tion of bags of holding
• The Adamant Idol was the toughest construct the world had ever seen. It was
worshiped as a god, and it conquered nation after nation. As the faithful prayed
to their defending god, that night a pod of zorbo arrived. The faithless bitterly
laughed, that their god chose to mock them before watching their destruction,
but the confused faithful bundled the creatures up and took them along. During
the battle the next day, the zorbos took on the toughness of the Adamant Idol and
destroyed it with its own grade of weaponry now in their claws and jaws. The
survivors tell the tale once a year. Priests have a pet zorbo in each temple, living
in a specially carved nest that looks like a suit of armor, symbolic of their god’s
protection
• The nose of a zorbo is often considered a delicacy, especially in the court of the
Crimson King
• A zorbo, once slain, turns into an inert, solid lump of obsidian
• Back when beholders had an eye that could see meat, even through barriers, the
fey used zorbos to sneak up on them and bite off that eye stalk. Eventually, it
stopped manifesting
• Zorbos reached this planet on the hull of spelljammers. No one knows where they
originated, but they delight in absorbing (and holing) spelljammer hulls. It gives
them magic resistance

193
SLIMES, OOZES
PUDDINGS &
JELLIES
“They don’t eat us and excrete us. They eat us, and then we become them.”
— Reynard Illvar, former templar, patient in Ostoff Sanitorium

Nomenclature: Blob, slime, jelly, pudding, glop, goo, gook, gunk, muck, sludge,
muk, gloop, gleep
Description: There are four main categories of blobs. Blobs refers to the entire
grouping of monsters:
• Oozes are fast-moving blobs, moving as fast as an unarmored man. They strike
with a pseudopod lashing out and slamming into an opponent doing damage
with acid and force
• Slimes are very, very slow-moving blobs, moving perhaps no faster than 1 foot an
hour. They climb on high places and drop on unsuspecting adventurers. Their
attack turns adventurers into slimes themselves
• Puddings are slow blobs that move along ceilings, walls, and floors. They attack
by slamming acidic pseudopods against their opponents and engulfing prey.
Certain attack methods and energy types can cause puddings to split. Puddings
often have uneven opaque bubbly surfaces
• Jellies are sluggish blobs that move along floors. They attack by slamming acidic
pseudopods against their opponents and engulfing prey. Certain attack methods
and energy types can cause some puddings to split. They often have smooth
translucent surfaces

Things that are known:

• Blobs are mindless
• They have no fixed form
• Immune to poison, sleep, paralysis, polymorph and stunning
• They deal acid damage
• Blind, making them immune to gaze attacks, visual effects, and illusions
• Immune to any sort of critical effect

194
Rumors and other gloop in the slime:
• Blobs are actually the larval stage of shape-changers like mimics and doppel-
gangers
• That isn’t true. Mimics and doppelgangers are actually the larval stage of blobs
• Every life form has bones of a different substances. Elves have hollow bones
made from the strongest wood. Dwarven bones are made of stone. The bones of
gnomes are made of gemstone. Blobs are viewed as an abomination because
they have no bones
• Black puddings will always attack the magic-users first. They also have an
annoying tendency to say “It’s the black pudding!”
• They are sentient, but not alone. Each is one cell inside a gigantic brain, seeking
to convert enough of the world to think once again
• They are cells, but not as we think. They are the white blood cells, the immune
system of the universe, struggling to clear the plague of disease that exists on the
surface
• While slimes are more effective, jellies, puddings, and oozes engulf their victims
and slowly digest them
• They are not intelligent, lacking a brain, but they are highly skilled at seeking out
the optimal routes to secure prey
• All blobs have the ability to fit through any opening merely inches wide, some-
times even through doors or tiny cracks. Some blobs have specialized attacks
from these hidden positions
• Their fluid state makes them difficult to hurt
• Blobs are actually complicated plants, and they move just as plants do, only
much much faster. They are not intelligent, just hungry and able to react to
stimulus
• Alchemists and tinkerers love to use dead blobs to engrave fine detail work into
items
• Blobs are actually a by-product of culinary warfare. Blood pudding, haggis,
mustard jelly, and other foods were adulterated with troll’s blood and then
animated for a unique taste sensation; sadly, this caused them to combine and
become mobile. Immediately, they after they engulfed the cooks. They were then
hacked apart, and now there are the many different types of blobs that roam the
world
• Jermlaine, giant rats, and slugs all survive by excreting substances that repel
blobs from their lair
• The above is actually false, and the small creatures that live in a blobs habitat are
actually the spawn of the blob
• They are colonies of cells
• Blobs are invaders from an outer universe or plane. Coming to the prime material
causes them to lose their natural form

195
 • Blobs are a physical manifestation of the primal hunger, a starving extra-dimen-
sional entity that has thrust itself into this world, seeking satiation. It is this reason
when one is distressed by fire or pain, they all appear to suffer, across the whole
universe
• Blobs are actually the manifestation and end result of seed spilled, disposed of.
For eggs are not the only thing the sperm of man can use to create life
• Blobs were an attempt to create synthetic hydra blood. They are not acidic, but
instead secrete an enzyme which causes organic material to pull apart from itself,
as a priming mechanism for the hydra during regeneration. Humanoids, however,
suffer as their flesh is sundered apart
• Blobs are the result of an alchemical reagent that acts or reacts with a base
material
• Water, air, the medium is immaterial. Some say that they move more slowly
underwater. The immunity to fire (which burns poorly under the waves) is a great
boon to some oozes.
• They are preternaturally silent
• Some reproduce asexually by budding
• They flow towards the nearest food source, regardless of its size
• They are nothing more than the excrement of Zuggtmoy
“My concept was that both [grey oozes and gelatinous cubes] were accidental
creations of careless wizard alchemists that dumped various failed magical and
alchemical experiments down the drain or into some cess pit. These admixtures
affected single-celled life forms, thus eventually engendering the various jellies (and a
gelatinous cube is one of those), oozes, puddings. The slimes were generated in
similar fashion, the waste affecting normal slime.” -Gary Gygax
All blobs have immunity to acid. All blobs are mindless. Those immune to weapons
will be affected by magic weapons. Magic weapons will not prevent splitting from
occurring. Those that dissolve metal or wood force weapons to save when striking the
ooze. Magic weapons add their bonus to the save.
The list opposite is everything you need to run any of these. Pick an armor class,
damage values, size, and various other factors according to your needs. These are,
after all, mutable blobs of matter.

196
 Slimes
Color Immunities Description
Rivolta Stool Electricity Created from excrement
Difficult to see. Composed of
Translucent Slime Weapons
acid. Dissolves weapons
Jale Slime ???? ????
Appears as crude creatures or
Polymorphic Slime None objects. When touched or struck,
spasms out, engulfing target
Creates zombies as slaves
Olive Slime Weapons
Charms targets
Turns into green slime in 1-4
Green Slime Weapons, Spells rounds. Can be scraped,
amputated, frozen, or burned
Harmless in water. Acid burns
Violet Slime Acid, Cold
after leaving water
Black Slime Cold Aquatic green slime. Flammable
Drains life energy. Undead,
Corpse Slime None
turned as a 4HD creature
Causes acid damage when
Gray Slime Light, Sunlight
exposed to light
Hard to spot. Freezing damage.
Shadow Slime Cold Can only be scraped off on the
first round
Dissolves flesh, leather, and
All but holy water or
Blood Slime cloth. Cannot be scraped away.
symbol
Kills in 1-3 rounds

Oozes
Color Immunities Description
Frosted Slush Melee Chill aura freezes flesh
Weak version of black ooze.
Ebon Ooze None Made from tar. Weapons get
stuck, targets get stuck
Made from lava. Melts weapons.
Pyroclastic Flow Fire, Melee
Heat aura
Steals spells (and uses them)
Arcane Ooze Magic
against nearby casters

197
 Dolm Ooze ??? ????
Crimson Ooze Blunt Urban. Draws blood from target
Multiple attacks. Edible. Can
Amber Ooze Fire
infuse into target, sapping its will.
Rubbery, can curl into ball and
bounce attack. Improves AC by
White Ooze Weapons
5, hits 2 targets in room at
random. Weapons bounce off
Ranged fire gout attack, If
Flaming Ooze Fire
extinguished dies instantly
Hypnotizes opponents. Coordi-
Prismatic Ooze Acid only
nates other oozes
Dissolves metal, including
Gray Ooze Magic, Fire, Cold
weapons. Psionic
Dissolves wood. Paralyzes.
Weapons do only 1 point of
Crystal Ooze Cold, Fire
damage. 75% undetectable in
water
Melts clothing and armor. Sticks
in globules after attack. Use
Choleric Ooze Acid only
electricity or spend full round to
move freely
Causes euphoria, laughter
staggers target. Sticks in globules
Sanguine Ooze Fire
after attack. Use cold or spend
full round to move freely
Causes madness, confuses target.
Sticks in globules after attack, use
Phlegmatic Ooze Cold
fire or spend full round to move
freely
Paralyzes targets. Sticks in
Melancholic Ooze Electricity globules after attack. Use acid or
spend full round to move freely
Spreads disease. Engulfs targets.
Slime Mold Fire Appears to be inanimate mold.
Gains a bonus to surprise
Undead Ooze Cold Expels skeletons from its body
Mercury Ooze None Causes mercury poisoning
Cold damage when struck.
Ice Ooze Cold, Blunt weapons Freezes opponents. Difficult to
spot

198
 Entropic Ooze Negative energy Devours souls. Energy drain
Dissolves metal and flesh. Turns
Emerald Ooze None
opponents into emerald oozes
Transparent. Can discharge
Air Ooze Electricity
electric burst
Sticky. Releases toxic fume aura
Toxic Ooze Acid that causes loss of health and
sickness
Shadow Ooze None Strength drain. Grabs opponent
Heat aura damages anyone who
strikes the ooze. Can create
Bloodfire Ooze Electricity, Fire
flame burst. Fire spells near ooze
are increased in power
Any contact infuses blood with
Conflagration Ooze Fire fire. Can confuse, sleep, or hold
opponents
Turns targets into zombies by
Necromantic Sludge Turns spells seeping into victim’s skin and
animating corpse
Atomized absorbed organic
targets, granting hit points to the
Nightseed Ooze None nightseed along with access to
spells and psionic powers.
Vulnerable to sunlight.
Fire, Piercing and slashing Molten core. Covered in sharp
Obsidian Ooze
weapons spines
Attack grants a bonus to victims
Cold, Electricity, Healed
Pearl Ooze AC 24 hours but drains a level if
by force effects
a save is failed
Petrifies opponents. Looks like
sandstone. More effective fighter
Sand Ooze Fire
with a greater number of sand
oozes.

Puddings
Color Immunities Split Description
Piercing, Slash- Animated soil, earth, and
Alluvial Bog Fire
ing, Electricity dirt. Enveloping attack
Pudding made from blood
Crimson Pudding Fire, Melee Cold
and flesh

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 Can nauseate, has
Pierce, Slash, weakening aura (vapors),
Horrid Rice Pudding Blunt weapons
Fire and can entangle
opponents
Dolm Pudding ??? ??? ???
Toxic, turns into solid silver
Silver Pudding Weapons Cold (75%) or platinum (25%)
upon death
Plant matter, looks like
spinach tapioca. Always
Verdurous Pudding Blunt, Piercing Electricity
huge or larger, intelligent,
not necessarily hostile
Ochre Jelly None Electricity Actually a pudding
Black Pudding Cold Electricity Dissolves metal
Dissolves organics. Cannot
White Pudding Cold Electricity
dissolve metal
Dissolves leather in 1
Dun/Brown
Cold Electricity round, metal in twice the
Pudding
time as black
Dissolves organics and
stone, not metal. Petrifying
Stone Pudding Fire Fire
touch. Slowed by stone to
flesh
Gargantuan Dissolves metal and
None Slashing, Piercing
Pudding organics
Energy drain. Weakness to
sunlight. Victims slain
Vampiric Pudding Cold, Electricity Cold, Electricity
become zombies under its
control
Similar to silver pudding,
When fire is used,
Metallic Pudding Fire Weapon attacks
produces irritating acid
fumes
Glues opponents on
Lightning and
Marble Pudding Cold successful hit. Hard to see,
weapon attacks
giving a bonus on surprise

Jellies
Color Immunities Split Description
Undead jelly made from
Bone Jelly Cold, Piercing Blunt, Electricity
bones

200
 Ulfire Jelly ???? ???? ????
Ultraviolet Jelly Fire, Cold Slashing, Piercing Invisible. Levitating
Solidifies into gold when
Golden Jelly Weapons Cold
killed
Lightning damage, 3x
Azure Jelly Electricity Slashing Piercing
speed, extra attacks
Transparent. Paralyzes.
Gelatinous Cube Electricity Does not split Cold slows but does 1/2
damage
Slowing cloud. Force
Weapons, attacks (magic missile)
Mustard Jelly at will
Electricity cause it to grow. 1/2
damage from cold
Paralyzes, resembles
Only when
Stun Jelly Electricity stone wall, smells of
reproducing
vinegar
Will catch on fire (is
immune to the damage).
Tar Jelly Fire Force Spells All attacks versus tar jelly
become stuck in tar,
giving jelly a bonus to hit
Tough armored skin.
Whip Jelly None None
Multiple attacks
Fires plasma rays,
Electricity, constricts, engulfs.
Plasma Jelly Bludgeoning, Slashing, Sonic Magnetic pulse that pulls
Piercing, Cold metal closer to the
creature
Always huge or bigger.
Absorbs and engulfs
Flesh Jelly None Slashing targets to heal self.
Nauseating aura.
Spreads disease.
Edged weapons do half
damage. Paralyzes.
Stunned by electrical
Phase Jelly Blunt Does not split attacks. Can phase into
stone, stone-affecting
spells will force them out.
Multiple tentacle attacks.

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 Spells cast cause it flash,
All magic but forcing a save or causing
Shining Jelly Lightning
cold, Fire heals anyone viewing it to go
blind
Saps hit points from
Normal target permanently.
Earth Jelly weapons, Cold Fire Dissolves metal and
Heals flesh. Hard to detect
against stone
Saps Wisdom on a failed
Air Jelly Cold heals Force, Electricity
save
Blessed attacks work
Cold, Physical normally, not causing the
Dark Jelly None
attacks, Electricity jelly to split. Drains
Constitution
Sets materials on fire.
Melts metal objects.
Fire Jelly Piercing Fire Double damage from
cold. Half damage from
bludgeoning attacks
Bludgeoning Hard to see in water.
Water Jelly Electricity
Piercing Double damage from fire

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GIANT HAMSTERS
FROM SPACE
“Silly? Only because you’ve never died to one!” — Apocryphal

Things that are known:

• They are giant-sized hamsters. . . from space!

Rumors and other winds in the phlogiston:

• They are the remnants of childhood imaginary friends long forgotten
• Deep in the deepest depths of deep deep space is the sorcerous space station of
Peng. There, the sorcerous sorcerer of Peng has performed many countless
uncounted innumerable experiments for years uncounting, seeking to perfect the
perfect titanic battle creature with which he can wreak his revenge against the
universe. A universe that cast him as a lunatic, a madman!
• He is, without doubt, a gifted master of the mastery of genetic splicing. However,
he suffers from a scarcity of subjects save for his pet hamsters. With their many
offspring (and siblings), he works feverishly to perfect his creatures
• He is also, without doubt, a hapless idiot when it comes to security. And so, many
of his creations escape from Peng and somehow end up scattered across the
universe
• The goal of the program was to develop a breed of giant space hamster that
could infiltrate enemy positions and operate individually behind the lines. The
program was headed by an overly obsessed G-gnome operative
• The program was a complete failure, until, in a horrible accident, the G-gnome
heading the program was transformed into a giant space hamster herself. During
her operative period, she took the code name “Nebula”. While she herself was a
very successful hamster agent, her refusal to mate with “natural” giant space
hamsters meant the program ended with her
• They are the imaginary friends of an infant godling!
• Every time a rules lawyer makes a GM cry, a different space hamster is born!
• The evil summoner Farfegnu was attempting to summon the horrible Hgythracola-
bartphamat from the depths of a demon hell dimension when he was interrupted
by the escape of his young daughter from her succubus nurse. Instead of sum-
moning Hgythracolabartphamat, Farfegnu reached into the pink bedroom of
Alexandra Tuppin who had just dressed Twinkles, her pet hamster, in a tiny pink
princess hat with a flowing diaphanous ribbon

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 • Twinkles was ripped from Earth and appeared in Farfegnu’s Seclusion where to
everyone’s droll surprise mammals from Earth are 25 times the size of local
mammals. While Farfegnu was horrified by the cute giant, his daughter was not
and the girl and giant hamster lived in happiness for many years. Until a party of
adventures invaded the seclusion slaughtering everything in its path except
Twinkles, who, having drunk a concoction of broken potions, was able to fly off
into space in search of his home world dressed in a dainty pink hat
• A space wizard did it
• It started as a harmless business venture, custom pets, that got a little out of hand.
ºº Ok. A lot out of hand
• The rare intelligent giant space hamster breed, an ancient race of religious
star-faring traders, wait for the day that Cuddles, the Chosen Hamster of Blood
will lead them to the land of endless pellets
• Crystal spheres are actually hamster balls. Notorious escape artists, some
hamsters escape them, then drift in the void looking to eat, mate, and poop. Their
poop, by the way, provides a fantastic hull for a cigar-shaped interstellar vessel.
• Space hamsters are the degenerate remnants of the oldest, most important
interstellar race. Having constructed the transportation hamster tunnels we know
as the wormhole network, they traveled to many worlds to spread the squeaking
joy of their own religion. After a catastrophic religious war (clockwise hamster
wheel rotation vs. counterclockwise), only the mightiest (or most overlooked)
hamster heroes were left, made nearly immortal by their fluffy sciences. Their
mental faculties proved not quite so resilient, so after many millennia, all that was
left was the animalistic giant space hamsters of today
• Normally, stellar radiation has unpredictable and dangerous effects on living
tissue. For unknown reasons, it always has the same effects on hamsters: rapid
growth, increased intelligence, and eventual development of psionic ability
“Go for the eyes Boo, GO FOR THE EYES!!!” -Minsc to his Miniature Giant Space
Hamster Boo

Variants:
There are many giant breeds, including:
• Subterranean — digs through soft rock, sometimes called dirt.
• Saber-toothed
• Rather wild — slightly left of wild, right of haggard
• Invisible — but only when no one is looking
• Sylvan
• Jungle
• Miniature
• Armor-plated
• Yellow musk

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 • Ethereal — also, translucent skin!
• Carnivorous flying
• Two-headed lernaean bombardier
• Tow-faced lagan
• Fire-breathing, phasing, doppelganging
• Great horned
• Abominable
• Tyrannohamsterus rex
• and the Space Hamster of Ill-omen

Other more rare breeds include

• Spotted
• Club-foot
• Terribly dire
• Feathered
• Hopping
• Slithering
• Burning Vorpal
• Night
• Meek & Friendly
• Voracious
• Steel
• Many-hatted
• Hamstornado

205
BIOMES
Biomes are simply contiguous zones of monster inhabitation. The creatures within a
biome are adapted to live and thrive there. Biomes are characterized by both their
terrain and climate. We are only concerned with the player-facing indicators of
biomes, not any concrete or scientific classification. It is of no importance during the
play of a single adventure that the biome resemble a realistic one. Considering the
number of alpha predators adventurers encounter, the assumption must be that they
are drawn to the players due to their loud noises, colorful hats, and obnoxious
personalities.
The goal is not to create a dull environment, but one that is unusual and fantastical.
You should have normal areas as well as exceptional ones, but concerns about yearly
average rainfall are not relevant to play. We are constructing biomes for play, not
world-building an actual planet. Your rivers can go any way you want them; you can
have a swamp right next to a desert; and you should ignore the critique of people
who would rather develop simulated real biospheres, and instead have fun with your
friends at the table.

Climate
Köppen climate classification is most appropriate for fantasy games. First we will
examine the real-world climates and then address fantasy climates. We will bypass the
letter classification system, along with significant technical complexity. When designing
for your campaign, only have a small selection of biomes (climate+terrain) that the
players will traverse. Do only that which is necessary to enhance the veracity of play.

Tropical Climates
Tropical climates have an average temperature greater than 18 ºC (~65 ºF). It is
divided into four classifications:
• Rainforest, characterized by precipitation daily, every month of the year.
• Monsoon, characterized by a dry winter, and a summer season heavy in
precipitation.
• Savanna, separated into balanced, wet, and dry types. Balanced savannas have
equal periods (6 months on Earth) of dryness and rainfall. During the dry period
almost no precipitation occurs, and the vast majority of the yearly rainfall occurs
in the wet season. Alternately, savannas can have lengthy dry seasons with short
wet seasons, or vice versa.

Arid
Arid climates are frequently non-intuitive. Many areas in the ocean are deserts due to
lack of rainfall. Arid climates are split into two categories and may be considered
either hot or cold.

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 • Desert: a hot desert is just as you imagine when you hear the word, Death Valley,
the Sahara, etc. This category is over the value of potential evapotranspiration. In
layman’s terms, more water is used or evaporates than precipitates. Most
frequently this is due to heat. But deserts also exist in colder areas that are dry for
other reasons. Cold or polar deserts are denoted if the average temperature in
their coldest month is below 0 ºC (32 ºF). Cold (or polar) deserts are generally
found in mountainous areas.
• Steppe: This climate is similar to a desert, where evapotranspiration low. But that
doesn’t simply refer to evaporation, but also how much water the climate uses.
Because of the slightly higher rainfall, steppe terrain has much more flora and
fauna biodiversity, increasing the use of water, pushing it above the evapotrans-
piration ratio. These are transitional areas between deserts and wetter climates.
They support relatively dense fauna and floral populations (to the limit of their
rainfall), which are frequently subject to starvation or dehydration in irregular
periods of drought.

Continental
Continental is the living climate. Tempered, having full seasons and variety of tempera-
ture and rainfall. Most civilizations, flora, and fauna live here, and the biosphere is very
dense.
• Warm Summer: This climate has summers with average temperatures over 22 ºC
(72 ºF) but can get much hotter. The coldest winter has a temperature below 0 ºC
(32 ºF) but can be more severe. It is the meeting place between polar and
tropical air masses, leading to violent weather like thunderstorms and tornados.
Winters can have high winds, heavy snow, or ice lasting on average up to four
months.
• Cool Summer: This climate is cooler, with summers that average below 22 ºC
(72 ºF), but can reach highs in the high 20’s. Winters are long, cold, and severe.
Snow, frost, and ice cover the ground for around 8 months of the year. Cool
summer continental zones are much larger than warm summer zones, frequently
covering the vast interior of continents.
• Boreal (Sub-arctic): This climate has long, very cold winters, with short cool
summers. Summers average around 10 ºC (50 ºF) with a high of about 26 ºC
(~80 ºF). Over half the year is below freezing, and temperatures can regularly
drop to -50 ºC (-58 ºF). Most of the ground is covered in permafrost, and
dwellings need to be insulated against the cold weather. The frost-free period
usually lasts between a month and a half to three months at most.

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Temperate
Temperate is a cool, dry climate. It has a narrow temperature range with warm humid
summers and temperatures that typically stay above freezing in winter. Rainfall is
spread fairly equally throughout the year.
• Mediterranean: This climate is pleasant and characterized by warm, dry summers
and cool, mild winters. They experience only summer and winter, the fall and spring
too mild to be noticed. Traditionally these are narrow areas near coasts, either near
warm waters in higher latitudes or cooler waters in more moderate latitudes.
• Humid Subtropical: This climate has warm and moist summers, mostly due to
tropical waters approaching the coast. Summers are warm, moist, and wet. This
is the inverse of Mediterranean climates, where winters are wetter. Winters
remain mild, and they are frequently subject to hurricanes when warm tropic air
mixes with the cooler northern temperatures. Examples include Florida (south-
eastern United States) and Japan.
• Oceanic: This climate is bullied by polar fronts and vortices. This leads to cool,
overcast weather; cool summers; and mild, cloudy, and wet winters.

Polar
Polar climates are characterized by their extreme cold temperatures.
• Tundra: These regions are generally very dry; they have long, cold winters, high
winds, and have below freezing temperatures for up to 10 months a year. They
are mostly treeless, consisting primary of tundra, due to the fact that the ground is
permanently frozen.
• Eternal Frost: This climate is so cold that the annual accumulation of snow and ice
is never exceeded by ablation. Functionally it is a sheet of solid ice. Only very
specialized forms of life can exist here.

Fantastic
Fantastic climates are magical, mythical, miraculous climates. These are not transitory
states that can pass through certain areas (like ‘magical weather’) but rather influ-
ences that are constant, providing a unique climate. The following list is not proscrip-
tive, but descriptive and can be added to, the only limits being your imagination.
• Anarchic: This climate is broken and blasted. It’s characterized by high winds,
constant thundering storm clouds, and roaming mutated beasts of chaos. Forces
of chaos corrupt the local life, turning them into destructive warbands, and
weather is extremely random, though never with any accumulated precipitation.
• Animist: This climate awakes the inner spirit of every object and creature, which
manifests and becomes active. It’s quite chaotic as every plant, animal, and
object within slowly wakes up and gains an ego. Weather is as normal, but
expect the grass to complain about being trod on, the ground to be resentful, and
commentary from the local wildlife on anything and everything. Areas that have
an animist climate over a long period of time will be excessively political with
complicated Byzantine procedures, politics, and rules.

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• Corrupted: Negative energy has corrupted the land here. Plant life is feeble or
dying. The sky is overcast, and carrion feeders are attracted to the area. The land
is broken and the ground is fallow. Mist billows everywhere, and if it rains, it
could rain acid, blood, or frogs. Swarms of insects move across the land, stinging
and biting. Piles of bones and bodies spawn skeletons and zombies. Buildings
and materials decay at a greatly accelerated rate, and the very air is filled with
miasma, bringing both physical ailments and wearing down the will and
motivation of all living creatures.
• Decay: Everything in this climate is in a state of advanced decay. Flora and fauna
are blighted with injuries and degenerative disorders. Fungi and mold are
rampant, and spores in the air make it hard to breathe. Unknown microbial
horrors, hive creatures, and mind-altering particles make travel dangerous. There
are heavy mists and spore-storms, and the entire area seems constantly covered
in hazy twilight.
• Giant Creature: This climate consists of a gigantic animal or creature that
supports an entire ecosystem. This could be a giant turtle as large as an island,
the corpse of a dead god, or a living insect the size of a small mountain range
that other creatures live within. The creature may be alive or dead, and this can
have serious consequences for those involved.
• Luminescent: All flora and fauna and even minerals in this climate are run through
with streaks of vibrant or neon color. It may flow and shift and change, or perhaps
brighten and darken in specific patterns. The flora and fauna in this area may have
a symbiotic relationship, or may have deleterious effects on non-native life.
• Music: Everything in this climate produces some kind of vibration. Though many
of the vibrations are between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, some are higher or lower.
Some areas have pleasant tinkling; rivers produce beautiful melodies, and
flowers pure clean notes. However, some areas and items produce disturbing
frequencies, causing people to become incapacitated, sick, or even possibly
setting up deadly vibrations that can eventually kill the victim unless neutralized.
Natives to this climate have learned to master these. Weather comes in the form
of musical crescendos, dub-step thunderstorms, screamo windstorms, or chant-
like fog.
• Primal: This climate represents an influence of the platonic ideal of the area.
Primal forests always have a golden sun shining through the trees, with vibrant
colors and a ground carpeted in moss. Primal swamps are always dark and
gloomy, light sucked in by the bent and crooked trees, and a marshy bog that
sucks at your feet. Time seems to pass unnaturally in these areas; night never
comes, or perhaps day never arrives. The land is characterized by its constant
and unchanging nature.
• Radiant: Positive energy has infused the land here. The air is clear, and reflective
surfaces shine bright. The sun seems larger and brighter than normal, and objects
are frequently backlit by halos. Plants grow incredibly rapidly, and colors seem
much more vibrant than normal. Fluids are thick and viscous, and objects seem
plump, and everything is much warmer than usual. It is difficult to sleep, and
fauna seem vibrant, creative, and full of energy.

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Planar Weakness
This climate is caused by a weakness between the planar boundaries the effects vary
by the type of planar crossing
• Astral: The barrier being weak causes the spirit of flora and fauna to separate
from the body, rendering their silver cord vulnerable to separation. It is possible to
move through the air, using your astral form to drag your body along. Storms and
bad weather affect the mind of the subject, causing them to project thoughts, be
subject to psionic attacks, experience déjà vu, or subject to an Emotion spell.
• Etherial: This climate is frequently covered in a thick fog, completely blocking out
the sun. Solid objects are translucent, and with concentration one could pass
through them. Sound is muted and eerie, and it is difficult to determine direction,
greatly increasing the chances of becoming lost.
• Elemental: This climate is characterized by the elemental climate breaking in. Fire
will have lava flows, and gouts that shoot flame, and the air will be filled with
soot and ash. Water will cause flooding, rain, and storms. Air will be blasted with
wind and dust, making flying difficult or impossible. Earth will be mountainous
and rocky, stones rolling down hills and being shot from the earth.
• Mirror: Objects become reflective and shadows dance at the edge of your vision.
Creatures are duplicated, but reversed in some way, backwards, upside down,
or appearing as a negative. It’s possible to get lost and find yourself in an
alternate reality, a “mirror world” where everything that you know is different.
• Shadow: The sun is obscured and long shadows cover the land. All light levels
become darker, and it is physically draining to travel through this area. Many
creatures are shadow versions or imitations of their usual self. The air is cold and
saps strength from your body.

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Terrain
Terrain is the second part of a biome. A particular climate plus terrain will create a
unique biome ready for monstrous inhabitation.

Alkali Flats
This is a dried out desert lake, frequently covered in salt or silt.

Badlands
This is a dry terrain that has been severely eroded, leaving steep slopes, minimal flora, and
lack of any particulate cover (dirt, dust, regolith, etc.). It is very difficult for fauna to
cross.

Bay
This is a small recessed body of water, connected to a larger body of water. It is
frequently a site of naval urban developments.

Beach/Coast
This is flat low-lying piece of land next to the ocean. The soil is frequently fertile, and
is characterized by a gently sloping resource rich landscape.

Caldera
This is a large volcanic crater, usually after the mouth of the volcano has collapsed.

Canyons
Canyons are formed when water cuts through a mountain range. They usually are
very deep and have very steep sides. Though usually caused by water, not all
canyons have water flowing through them.

Caves/Cavern
This is a natural void in the ground. Many campaigns include entire continent-sized
areas covered in caves. There are various kinds of caves (lava tubes, fracture caves,
Talus caves), but the type of cave isn’t relevant to its use as a terrain.

Crystal
This terrain is made up of large crystal spires. The ground is polished translucent
mineral, and there are many caves and crevices.

Desert
Not the climate, but a terrain characterized by sand, blown into dunes, little vegeta-
tion, rocks, and dry, cracked earth. Can contain an oasis, which is a fertile area
caused by a source of fresh water.

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Fleshlands
Everything in this terrain is made from living flesh. Pulsing towers with veins rise above the
landscape. Moist rugated caves lead to fleshy intestine-like caverns. The ground is covered
in viscera-like plants. Pools and lakes of blood, bile, mucus and worse dot the landscape.

Forests
These are areas dominated by flora and filled with fauna. Usually consisting of thick
tree cover and other vegetation, and a surfeit of druids. They go through all the
various seasons.

Glacier
This terrain is covered in large ice masses. These masses frequently move under their
own weight and are a mixture of water, rock, and snow.

Hill
This is a rise in the local terrain, usually with a distinct summit. It is characteristic of
uneven land, with many peaks and valleys. Specific types of hills include:
• Buttes, isolated hills with steep vertical sides with a small flat top
• Mesas, as butte above, but the top is wider than the height.
• Mima mounds, small mounds or humps grouped together.

Jungle
Similar to forests, but more dense, containing tangled vegetation that has completely
overgrown the land.

Magical Terrain
This is another terrain type infused with a magical energy that sustains either a
magical effect or creature. It may have a physical or visible effect (sparkling motes,
wavy air, flowers sprout where people walk) and certain creatures may not be able
to exist outside this area. This is applied as a modifier to other terrain types.

Marsh
Low-lying land that is frequently flooded during high tide or wet seasons, but even
when not, the land is soggy, waterlogged, and filled with silt, mud, tar, and peat.
Areas that will not support heavy bodies are called ‘bogs’.

Mechanical
Instead of organic terrain, the land and all surfaces are made of metal or a machine.
This could be circuit boards and technology, like early virtual reality cyberpunk
visualizations, or a creation of iron, steam, and copper. Or it could be a gigantic,
ancient structure such as a crashed generation ship.

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Mountain
This is a large protruding landform that rises prominently above the surrounding land.
These are steeper than hills and are frequently formed by tectonic or volcanic activity.
Frequently, they form ‘ranges’ where mountains rise in a line and are connected by
high ground with mountain passes in-between.

Ocean
This is a large body of water that covers a huge area. They have extremely varied
flora and fauna. In fantasy campaigns, the oceans are usually colonized by various
intelligent water-breathing species. This can make travel by boat significantly more
dangerous than in the real world.

Open Plain
These are flat areas of land that lack trees, and have wide vistas. They cover over
30% of all land on Earth and are very common.

Plateau
These are wide expanses of flat land, usually elevated, and surrounded by hills and
mountains.

Prismatic
This terrain is characterized by the land, flora, and fauna being made of colored force.

Rainforest
This is a forest filled with gigantic trees, so large that they cut off the sunlight into the
undergrowth, leaving wide and clear spaces to travel. They are made up of broad-
leaf or coniferous plant life.

River
This is a naturally flowing freshwater watercourse. They generally flow towards
bodies of water, but anyone who is overly concerned with the direction of water flow
is likely an asshole.

Swamp
This is a marsh that is forested with wetland trees and vegetation.

Tundra
This terrain (not climate) is generally made up of spongy lichen and moss several feet
deep. It is difficult and tiering to cross.

Valley
You have mountains and hills, valleys are the terrain between them. They range
between V and U shapes and have bottom depressions that can be quite large.

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CREATING ECOLOGIES
To use these in play, you must have an area map. Designate several types of terrain
on the map. Each of these terrains is considered a zone. Assign contiguous climates
over the zones. Discard your concerns about realism. Does the direction of the river
flow matter when you have a screaming tree forest?
This leaves you with a biome that’s a combination of a terrain and a climate. Now
you have to begin the work of preparing the ecology for player interaction. Take note
of the following guidelines.
The more hostile a biome is, the less depth the biome possesses. Creatures evolve to
fit specific niches in biomes, and in hostile biomes this radically reduces the density of
the biome. The idea is to not be comprehensive, but consider what your players are
likely to interact with or find important.

Encounter density
For each biome the absolute maximum number of creatures you want to have identifi-
able to the players should be seven. Any more than seven creatures will appear to the
players to be effectively ‘many’ and will disperse the characterization of the biome. To
the perspective of the player, the contents of the biome will be random.
It’s important to consider this is only useful for environments the players spend a lot of time
in. In general, if the players are going to spend less than 10 hours in an area, it’s not worth
taking the time to do this, and random encounter tables will suffice. But for campaigns that
take place in a limited area (e.g. West Marches style, Hot Springs Island, or Isle of Dread)
that is explored over a long period of time, it can add great depth to the campaign.
A minor area (15+ campaign hours) can have three relevant creatures; a major area
(30+ campaign hours) is good with five, and an area that is involved in the entirety of
the campaign is manageable with seven.
The spirit may feel that this is narrow, but the truth is in a game there will only be
around three to five encounter checks, and many of those will not involve active
encounters with a creature. So, unless the players have the opportunity to encounter
creatures again and again, they get no sense of the biome.

Biome traits
Biomes also have ‘non-encounter’ creatures which can sometimes appear. These are
like tags that are applied to the biome, rather than encounters worth taking up table
time. This includes such things as “Stinging insects”, “Caribou Herds”, “Carrion birds”
et. al. When designing a biome, consider the list of the following areas in the
biosphere to create these tags. Each one could be replaced with a magical or
supernatural version with a minor effect. Do not fall into the trap of filling out or
determining every one of these, choose two or three per biome to give them flavor of
mechanical effects. Predators are not included, neither are humanoids or sentient
creatures, since they are more appropriately used as the creatures in the encounter table.

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• Flying insects • Invertebrates
• Ground insects • Crustaceans
• Pollinators • Fungi
• Large herd animals • Trees
• Song birds • Plants
• Raptors • Vines
• Reptiles • Parasites
• Rodents • Spiders
• Fish and aquatic life • Moss, slime molds
• Amphibians • Worm
• Bacteria • Hidden dangers
• Fruiting plants • Magical effects
• Previous inhabitants • Animal graveyard
• Unique weather • Gigantic dominating ruin
• Minerals, metals, stones (ancient engine, corpse of a
god, etc.)
• Mystical/Planar gateways
• Monumental construction
• Regolith composition
• Sinkholes/Environmental
• Petrification/Fossils hazards
• Monoliths • Living terrain (walking forest,
• Floating land Pando organisms)
• Unusual colors • Flaming jets
• Vapors and miasmas • Pools of oil/grease/bile etc.
• Mists and fogs • Lava tubes, ice tunnels, subter-
ranean access
• Insect nests (termite mounds, ant
colonies, wasp nests, beehives • Faces, either carved or real
etc.) • Gigantic creatures the biome
• Organic replacements (antler or exists within/on
keratin trees, hair grass or • Mechanical or robot assimilation
plants, etc.)
• Magical barriers

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Player-facing encounters
Once you have your climate, your terrain, and your special tags, effects, and
characteristics, you can select your creatures. Select the appropriate number of novel
encounters, using the monster sections to design unique creatures that inhabit your
setting.

Preparation
Most referees do not have time to create a full field guide for the players to peruse
before entering an area, but thankfully the structure of the game already provides us
with a method of transmitting this information. Rumors. You can take your biome-
specific information and fill the rumor tables with relevant and possibly false rumors
and information. This allows you to set up expectations which you can then fulfill or
subvert in play and allows players the opportunity to use their personal skill in
preparing for the various biomes. Because you now have so many options for rumors
(normal campaign rumors as well as biome rumors) you can give players rumors on a
regular basis and encourage them to seek out more on their own

Encounter die
In order to create player-facing interactions for 1. Encounter; gain 1 stress point before the encounter
2. Spoor
these creatures, we overload the encounter
3. Environmental event
die. In normal campaigns, a die is rolled, and
4. Stress; gain 1 stress point
if it is in a certain range, an encounter occurs, 5. Background administration
and if not, it does not. An overloaded encoun- 6. Stress triggered! Take mental damage equal to your
ter die tracks certain conditions on other die level times your stress points
rolls. Here is an example of an overloaded
encounter die from Perdition.
Environmental effects would be special effects depending on where the party
happened to be located. In a crypt it could be a ‘rising mist’ for example, or ‘wolves
howling in a forest’. Background administration would be things like torches going
out or potion effects ending.
For these biomes we are going to overload the encounter die so every time the
encounter die is rolled, they encounter some aspect of the creatures in the area. This
will create a matrix, so that every time an encounter die is rolled you will encounter
some aspect or feature of the monster. Again, these are descriptive not proscriptive,
there is no need to use every entry for every table, and instead you should craft
relevant tables for each encounter.
This allows the players to gather information on monsters long before the actual
monster is encountered and lets them plan and gain information for themselves as
foreshadowing the eventual encounter.
Consider an encounter chart for a minor biome. You expect the players to spend
about 4 sessions in this biome (about 16 total hours) so you’ve selected 4 monsters
kobolds, carnivious vines, trolls, and blink dogs.

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 X 1 2 3 4
1 Kobolds
2 Carnivorous Vines
3 Trolls
4 Blink Dogs
Now we consider a great many things. We think about how each of these creatures is
present and interacts in this biome. This includes many things, including their lairs,
effects of their interactions, sounds and territorial markings, tracks and spoors, victims,
signs of the encounters interacting with each other or the biome, and other indications.
Let’s begin with signs and traces of the encounters.

X 1 2 3 4
1 Kobolds Primitive traps

2 Desiccated
Carnivorous Vines
Victim

3 Broken/bent
Trolls
trees

4 Spotted,
Blink Dogs
mottled hair
Then we can move on to territorial markers which is useful since all of these creatures
mark their territory in various ways.

X 1 2 3 4

1 Lizard and Dragon

Kobolds Primitive traps
drawings on rocks

2 Desiccated Small rodent

Carnivorous Vines
Victim skeletons

3 Broken/bent Skulls set on piles of

Trolls
trees rocks

4 Spotted,
Blink Dogs A strong urine smell
mottled hair
Finally, we can round out our short table with sounds. Larger tables can have more
monsters and more interactions. The fewer signs, lairs, tracks, etc. the more likely you
are to encounter an actual creature. Smaller tables with fewer entries work better for
minor areas; major areas can afford the extra complexity.

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 X 1 2 3 4
1 Kobolds Primitive traps Lizard and Dragon Distant yipping
drawings on rocks
2 Carnivorous Vines Desiccated Small rodent *silence*
Victim skeletons
3 Trolls Broken/bent Skulls set on piles of long low moans and
trees rocks cruel laughter
4 Blink Dogs Spotted, A strong urine smell Barking and
mottled hair howling
Keep in mind, players cannot see your side of the table. If you roll two 4-sided dice,
and get two fours, they will only hear barking and howling. Are those dire wolves?
Werewolves? Hellhounds?
Every time an encounter is rolled, they encounter some aspect of the monster instead
of “nothing”. Instead of only interacting with an encounter only on a roll of 1, now
every time an encounter roll is made, they acquire some piece of information, either
one that provides new information or one that confirms what they already know.
Keep in mind that you can play with the table itself. The players may begin to track
rolls (which is perfectly acceptable) but just like in dungeon mazes, you can place
identical entries to confuse the players. If you have both ettercaps and spiders,
‘webbing’ and ‘people in cocoons’ will show up in both tables, confounding players.

Infestation rules
A common function of biomes is when players decide to set up a castle or settlement.
One of the requirements is clearing a biome. Extensive rules for doing this during
basic play are covered in On Downtime and Demesnes, but can be expanded using
this encounter table instead. Consider the density of the monster population in an
area, and assign it a die value between 4 and 12. Each creature has a number of
population points equal to the die value. So a creature with 6 population points uses
a 1d6. Each time the creature is encountered and some are slain, remove a popula-
tion point. Each time a lair is found and cleared, remove 2 population points. At the
end of every month, roll the appropriate die.
If the total is under or equal to the amount of remaining population points, increase
the total population points by one. If it is over the amount of remaining population
points, reduce the number of population points by one. If the number of population
points is reduced to 0, then the monster is considered cleared from the hex.

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