How I Do It (feat. The Great Lady)

I mentioned at the end of She Sings At the End that I had a half-written essay about how I did it. This is the refurbished version of that essay, merged with a different essay I'd been working on as a follow-up to TLN asking me "How do you do it?" after I posted What Do People Know About the Mythos? Contrary to my usual status quo, I actually have a thought process stable and coherent enough to describe, so describe it I shall. 

This essay is also a sequel and slight update to “The Grand Art”, and as before the steps I list here do not neatly march in order in practice; this is ultimately a post hoc systemization that is meant as an analysis of my own thoughts, rather than a prescription of method.

As a refresher:

• Text - the work as a whole, situated within the context of its creation and engagement. Star Wars is a Text.
• Component - (Formerly Idea) Discrete elements of a Text, such as characters, events, places, themes, and other content. Luke Skywalker is a Component.
• Trait - (Formerly Component) Details that make up a Component, operating as a second layer of  “Disaffected farm boy” is a Trait. 

Or: Traits are individual lego bricks, components are a lego construct that can be easily moved between sets, and a text is the entire lego set as a whole.

Adaptation entails moving components between texts through alteration of those components and their associated traits; change is inevitable and should be leaned into - the point is making your version. 

Since my breakdown of the Great Lady is quite long, I’m going to stick that in the back half for pacing purposes and just use lightweight examples for Part 1.

 

Part 1: Adaptation via the Grand Art

0. What am I trying to do and why, anyway? 
No need to overthink it. It’s helpful to have an idea of what you want to do with the component you’re translating, but “I want to make my own version of this” is perfectly serviceable to start.

Example: “What’s Luke Skywalker like in a hard-science Star Wars?”

1a. Identify the component’s name,  place, & time 
These traits come first because they provide the historical and social context that supports and shapes everything else in the translation. Not all components will have all three (lack of a name or a specific time being pretty common), and in those cases you’ll have to fill in the blanks with whatever you think is most appropriate. Places and Times are components in their own right, but they don’t need special treatment or a dedicated step.

Example:

• Name - Luke Skywalker
• Place - Tatooine
• Time - Galactic Civil War

1b. Identify other relevant traits.
This list should contain everything else that you think is interesting, relevant, or distinctive about the component. You’re not aiming for completion here, so focus on the immediately available / recognizable traits and don’t get caught up in the weeds. you can always add more or expand what you have later. 

An important note here is that you should include traits you don’t like in this step along with the ones you do: figuring out what to do with those comes later in the process.

Example:

• Trait: Disaffected youth
• Trait: Longing for adventure
• Occupation: Moisture farmer (struggling)
• Connection: Biggs (friend)
• Connection: Uncle Owen & Aunt Beru
• Connection: Anakin Skywalker (father, presumed deceased)
• Connection: Leia Organa (secret twin sister)

Don’t worry if the component you’re translating doesn’t have much in the way of distinctive features; boring components can still be useful thanks to Points of Interaction.

Sidebar: Points of Interaction
I don’t have a pithy definition for Points of Interaction, but it’s somewhere in the territory of “the conceptual space where traits of a component would naturally / logically interact with other components of the text, regardless of whether or not the interaction is present in the source text.”

There’s a quote from Grant Morrison that illustrates the principle in reverse:

“Kids understand that real crabs don't sing like the ones in The Little Mermaid. But you give an adult fiction, and the adult starts asking really fucking dumb questions like ‘how does Superman fly? How do those eyebeams work? Who pumps the Batmobile's tires?' it's a fucking made-up story, you idiot! Nobody pumps the tires!" 

Now, I understand where Morrison’s coming from here: I’d probably be just as irritated if I had to field questions from comics nerds all the time. But someone is going to eventually need to pump those tires; the error (as we see constantly in big franchises) is in thinking that the pumping the tires by itself is the important part.

The Batmobile is a souped-up hot rod (trait), so naturally it’s going to require pretty extensive maintenance to keep it in fighting shape (POI). But it’s also part of Batman’s secret arsenal (trait) so it can’t be maintained by just anyone (POI); Alfred could do it, but since Bruce built it I could give him a new “Car Guy” trait and that gives him a potential point of interaction with all manner of car guy-related things. What are his other cars like? Who does he buy parts from? Does he have a group of friends he only meets at car shows? Did he ever call in to Car Talk?

Points of Interaction are primarily there to provide texture and flavor, but they will often help influence plot and character dynamics: it’s easy to imagine Bruce and Clark spending a Saturday fixing up Clark’s car, or Batman struggling with the villain of the week because the Batmobile is in the shop for transmission repair.

Anyway, it’s always good to keep potential POIs in the back of your head, just in case they come in handy later.


2.Make the initial adjustments
Alter the name/place/time pyramid from 1a in order to fit the component into the destination text.

I tend to have a lot of fun with this step; since my preferred level of verisimilitude is generally higher than a lot of the material that I like adapting, the process often turns into a puzzle I need to entangle. If I’m translating Conan from the Hyborean Age to real-world history, do I stick him in the Iron Age Pontic Steppe with the real-world Cimmerians, or do I put him in medieval Ireland based on his name? Either one works, but they will result in radically different outcomes later on.

Example: Tatooine is swapped out for Mars (or a Mars analogue), the Galactic Civil War is compressed to just a single solar system. “Skywalker” is used as a bastard’s name and is a calque of an old word for astronaut.

3.  Assess and adapt remaining traits
This is usually going to be the longest stage in the process, but also the one where your vision really comes together. Toss out the stuff you don’t want, focus on what interests you, keep your eyes peeled for fruitful points of interaction.

Example: Luke grew up on Mars but wasn’t born there, so he’s missing a few common gene mods (skin pigmentation for UV protection, enhanced kidneys for water filtration, lungs and heart adapted to low-oxygen environments) and has to make do with workarounds.

4. Add new traits as desired
No real guidance here except “go where the muse takes you”.

Example: 

• Luke’s reigning celebrity crush is Dejah Thoris.
• Luke knows a bit of the Sand People trade language.
• Luke has two somewhat-successful side-gigs: repair work (pays mostly in barter and favors), and selling weed he grows in an old hydroponics unit Uncle Owen trashed a couple years ago (less successful - his cultivar is absolute dogshit)

5. Additional Tips
Strategies and trains of thought I find useful, but which aren’t really suited to getting their own step in the schematic.

• Start with a big ticket item; make one change at a time; build each change on top of the last.

• When stumped, think about what would be the most likely case if all else hews to reality.
• This is useful for filling in blanks, deciding what traits to cut, or generating Points of Interaction.

• Alternatively, come up with an elaborate logical justification for how the trouble spot could work in the logic of the rest of the world.

• Make them earn their adjectives
• Very important when adapting old fiction; give that purple prose a fine-toothed comb and see what’s actually useful as a description. If the description contradicts the actual content, go with the content as your base.

• If the description is vague, add some specific details with preference to those that provide Points of Interaction.

• Treat all narrators, including omniscient ones, as unreliable
• This is one of the most useful cheats out there and absolutely vital for doing any work in Lovecraftiana: act with the assumption that all narrators inherit their author’s biases and adjust components and traits accordingly.
• You can use this as an excuse to get away with damn near everything.
• But by that same token, you are not immune to it.

• Bigotry in the text works like bigotry outside of the text.
• This is where a lot of Lovecraftiana stumbles, because the authors take the bias inherent in the premise as an accurate description of the world those characters inhabit.
• It doesn’t matter how many “HPL was a huge racist” notes you put in the beginning of the book if you just repeat the bullshit as-written.

• In-universe bullshit can still be interesting
• In-universe bullshit brings with it the complicating factors of “how / why did the bullshit get believed?”,  “what makes it bullshit?”, and “who profits from maintaining the bullshit?” 

Doubtlessly I could cook up more, but for a fast-and-loose guide this is a good place to get started. 

Part 2: How I Made the Great Lady

All right, finally ready to get to the meat of the essay.

0. What am I trying to do and why, anyway? 

“Can I write a better / more nuanced version of the Bloated Woman (ie. “a Mythos scenario with narrative justification for a hedonist cult devoted to an obese goddess in 1920s Shanghai”) while maintaining its core traits?”

1. Identify relevant names / places / times in the source text.

Using Masks of Nyarlathotep as the baseline:

• Name - The Bloated Woman
• Place - Shanghai
• Time - 1925 

1b. Identify other relevant traits.

• Visual Trait: Obesity
• Thematic Association: Hunger, Consumption, Predation
• Thematic Association: Sexuality, Seduction, Paraphilia
• Trait: Disguised danger
• Mythos Connection: Hedonist cult
• Mythos Connection: Deep Ones
• Mythos Connection: Avatar of Nyarlathotep

2. Make the initial adjustments

Name: The Bloated Woman
“The Bloated Woman” definitely doesn’t sound like something a cult would call their patroness, so I used “the Great Lady” instead and took advantage of the common semantic overlap between “great” and “big”. As a bonus, this also differentiates my interpretation from Masks.

In an older draft of her post I rendered her name as 參宿 的 大 貴 后, which if I did it right would come out as "Great Noble Queen of the Three Stars”. I was able to get a Mandarin pronunciation for it but not a Shanghainese one, and I'd need both to do it properly. (If I borked this, please let me know down in the comments.)

Place: Shanghai
Stick a pin in this.

Time: 1925
Stick a pin in this one too.

3. Assess and adapt remaining traits

Visual Trait: Obesity
To fulfill the challenge I gave myself, this part had to stay.  

I purposefully kept it variable whether or not a given manifestation of the Lady is obese: sometimes the description is explicit, but most of the time I don’t mention it directly and let the audience’s imagination pick up the slack.

I describe her as “enormous” in Tape #5, but I left it at that because the focus of the horror should be the fact that she’s eating people. Then I layered on top of that the discrepancies of her winking directly at the viewer (thus aware she’s being observed), and then running out of the room in a dead sprint complete with cartwheel (with the implication that she's coming after you).

(Importantly, she’s also depicted as eating people in untitled.mp4 and Tape #??, but isn’t explicitly obese in either of those to reinforce the focus on her eating people. Though since those tapes don’t end and she never stops eating, there’s an open space there.)

In Tape #9 I left this aspect as only a brief implication (the heavy footsteps from off-screen), and hung things mostly on the hook of the dichotomy between the corpse pile and the PLEASE STAND BY placard.

Besides those instances, most invocation of her size comes from outside depictions and evocations: the venus figurine, the priestess in the flashback, the figure in the mandala. 


Thematic Association: Hunger, Consumption, Predation
This trait is underplayed in Masks, only really emerging in conjunction with the disguise the Bloated Woman uses to lure in victims. You’d think high pulp would lean into it, but I digress.

Hunger poses an interesting conceptual contradiction: It encompasses greed and gluttony (always hungering for more despite already having more than enough), but also starvation and want (not having enough and never getting it). And you can often have the latter because of the former, which is a source of a lot of “obesity = monstrosity” motifs, so that’s something to keep in mind.

(I originally forgot to add (but have since added) a reference in the original post to a Japanese manifestation of the Lady that’s explicitly emaciated, to play into this further.)

I decided to go for portraying hunger as more of a social ill that the Lady embodies, via all those glimpses of the industrial death machine. I think the closest she gets to dropping “feed me, Seymour” is her interactions with Hill (which themselves remain mostly implied), and in that case she’s either deliberately playing with his attraction to her, or his attraction to her is generating that specific feedback (abyss = mirror, he sees in her things he hates himself for wanting.)

Thematic Association: Sexuality, Seduction, Paraphilia
Per the source:

"Assisted by the Black Fan, the Bloated Woman may seduce men, giving victims unearthly and degenerate pleasure before smothering them in flabby bulk."

Sorry to break it to you, brother; she doesn’t need the fan.

Standard Chaosium laziness on this one: it’s a cheap shot and it’s not doing anything beyond “non-normative sex is gross”. There’s a potential route to emphasize the mind control / “overwhelming divine influence overriding human behavior” route, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms and I’m already waist-deep in the bait bucket as it is.

(I’m actually a pretty big fan of the thing DG does sometimes where the unnatural is less cults worshipping gods and more “too close to radioactive materials”, but that’s a very different type of scenario and removes the character from the equation.) 

I already touched on this with Hill’s interactions with her (it’s more overt when I’ve run the scenario he’s from, where checking his hard drive would reveal a pornography stash begun prior to his purchase of the tape), and his narrative position as the self-loathing fetishist ties all the way back to the opening tape.  

That + Tape #12 covers how this trait collides with modernity (I added Hill’s violent misogyny and the environmental cost of AI there (and contrasted it with the generally-positive presentation of the fanart that made a terf quit twitter) so as to not just copy the original’s “ew gross a kink”), but the modern fetish ecosystem didn’t exist in 1925 and Lovecraftiana leans ancient.

Venus figurines are the natural historical link to draw on, but Venus figurines weren’t really a thing in stone-age China - you’re not really likely to find them further south than Anatolia or further east than the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. But gods are famously mobile, so all I needed to do is invent or imply some manner of migration across the continent (more on that in the next section.)

(Part of why I get so much creative mileage out of the Venus of Willendorf et al. is from how time has erased all but the barest hints of artistic intent from the work and left it an ideal projection surface / interpretive space; it could be a religious token, it could be pornography, it could be a self-portrait, it could be a combination of any of those or something else entirely and we’ll never be able to say for certain. If it was based on a real person, would she be skeeved out by having a nude depiction of herself known to people around the world, or would she go “Ha! Still got it!” If it was a depiction of a goddess, what was that goddess like? What were her stories? Were her myths an integral part of the community, or the private fantasies of the sculptor? On and on.)

Trait: Disguised danger
“Surprise! The hot lady was a monster!” is such a tired trope that I’d only really invoke it in the context of something like an evolutionary arms race between the mimic and the societies around it. While the idea of a monster that takes advantage of compulsory heteronormativity as part of its hunting strategy is funny to consider, that’s deep in the weeds and not really relevant for this experiment. Into the bin it goes.

Mythos Connection: Hedonist cult
Stick a pin in this one.

Mythos Connection: Deep Ones
For what possible reason? There’s no thematic correlation besides sex, and even then they’re a terrible pick: the K’n-yani are immortal polyamorous hedonists who can manipulate matter with their minds! They’re 110% capable of some Deviantart-tier chicanery wrt human physiology. If you’re going to insist on “non-normative sex is gross” at the very least pick the right minions for the job!

What are we even doing, Chaosium?

(I didn’t come up with the potential K’n-yan connection until writing this revised essay, mostly because I thought that giving the Lady more servants would dilute the narrative impact of the cult. Which is true, but if I want to do a follow-up they’re certainly on the table. Frankly there's overlap there with my long-running ideas re: the drow / lilu. Let it never be said that don't let thoughts ruminate.) 

Mythos Connection: Avatar of Nyarlathotep
I’m a big fan of aspects, avatars, manifestations and "what you're seeing is only a passing glimpse of a greater power", but in a horror story it's risky business to just come out and say "X is an aspect of Y". Especially in the expanded Mythos, which has by and large run most of its baddies into the ground. So I think it's much better to use shared symbols and traits to draw associations between forms and say nothing more of the matter. Let the audience pick up on connections, freeing yourself from sullying the unknowable with a name.

So I used a light hand here: a three-lobed pupil, a glimpse of Azathoth (not named but identifiable), a sardonic jab at how convenient it is to have the Black Pharaoh showing up to cause problems (despite that being mostly what’s happening), and let the rest remain unsaid.

4. Add new traits as desired

Addition - Prehistoric Origin
As something of a reversal of the “Disguised danger” trait, Tapes #20 and #26 lay out the shape of the Great Lady’s past; she was a human priestess from a people who lived somewhere in the north-eastern-ish Caucasus and became what she is now through contact with the unnatural. To heighten the pathos, I added glimpses of that humanity in some of the tapes (most prominently in #10 #12, #?? and #NaN)

Addition - Cross-Continent Migration
I needed a way to move the Lady from the Caucasus to China, and the easiest way to do that was to imply it via the interstitials. The only real criteria I had in choosing the places and times was that they had to be more recent the further east they were, and there had to be a religious tradition I could slip the Lady into to indicate how the people of that time and place interpreted her (this is fairly easy: every major religion either already has or has the space for a demonized sex-haver lady.)

Putting them in reverse chronological order was an easy way to emphasize that the actual destination isn’t Shanghai, but the cave where it all began (and the revelation of the Lady’s tenuous humanity).

(Surprising no one, the PIE in the 3581 BCE interstitial does actually mean stuff. 

• Kuonikos son of Kuon Ghe => “Little Dog, son of Big Dog”. 
• Hsulaʕwes => “Good Reward”. Bit of a spoiled son, that guy.
• “Posti bhebhudhi!” => “Behind (you), be alert!”

"PH'NGLUIXR" is my attempt at Aklo, very simply just means "die" as an imperative.

Bonus gag: The cuneiform book review, if written out phonemically, is rendered “MA-AM DI-IS IS A WE-EN-DI-IS”.)

Addition - Mythos Connection: Tsan-Chan
Shadow Out of Time gives us a year, one scholar’s name, and a vague gesture at the Yellow Peril. That’s a geographic link I can pull on, but also a can of worms. But with 0 actual canon content, I can let 3000 years of sound change do its work, explain “Tsan” as a descendant of “Texan”, and go on ahead with my predominantly American cruel empire. *Waves hand at outside world*

There’s an entire Tsan-Chan post I have cooking, but the short version is that the US tried an invasion of China shortly before Cthulhu woke up and Tsan-Chan is a post-Tulu polity claiming legitimacy from both polities but not actually a direct descendant.

 

Part 3: The Pin 

I didn't just keep saying "hold onto that thought" for shits and giggles - this is the crux of the exercise that makes it all click. Buckle up.

(As I said in the commentary on the main post, a lot of what follows here started in theories I had about Tom Haan from The Magnus Archives, prior to him getting written out of the story.)

My starting place and time is Shanghai in 1925, and anyone with a cursory knowledge of Chinese history can tell you 1925 wasn’t a great time to be in China: the country was in the tail end of the Century of Humiliation, with the Republic struggling with warlord cliques that have kept things in a state of simmering violence since the death of Yuan Shikai and the end of his yearlong empire in 1916. The Nationalists and Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition are three years out. The Qing Dynasty ended with the Xinhai Rebellion and the forced abdication of Puyi in 1912. Multiple treaties have carved up and handed out territory to Russia and Japan. The Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 saw eight Western powers invade and then demand exorbitant reparations from a government they weren't officially at war with. All excellent sources of historical context, but I don’t think there’s a strong enough conceptual link to the Lady’s traits: for that, I’m going back a few more decades to the Taiping Rebellion

The Taiping Rebellion took place from 1850-1864, and is the kind of catastrophic mass death that is more or less incomprehensible for human beings to wrap their head around. 20,000,000 casualties over 14 years of violence, famine, and disease is the low estimate. Apocalyptic religious violence ushering in the age of warfare-as-industry fits very nicely with both the endless hunger theme and the fascist future I wanted to hint at with Tsan-Chan, but the actual reason I settled on the Rebellion was because of just how common accounts of cannibalism were during the conflict (common enough that there's a Qing general commenting in his journals about how the price of human flesh has gone up since the last time he saw it). There’s our ticket in.

At the center of the Rebellion was Hong Huoxiu, a man who suffered a major mental break after failing the imperial examinations for the third time, complete with visions of the heavens and accompanying divine revelations. He took the name Hong Xiuquan and declared that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, who you might be familiar with that name as the central figure of a major world religion that practices communion with the divine through symbolic cannibalism, and also has some rather strong opinions on sin and some sizable hangups about sex.

(Now, in full fairness to history, the Christian elements of the God Worshiping Society came from Protestant missionaries, not Catholic ones, so I’ll invoke artistic license for thematic purposes and conveniently not specifying what the exact Christian influences were on the leader of the Great Lady Society.)

Xiuquan starts up a band of followers and it spirals out into the formation of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom and the beginning of a war that kills tens of millions of people. The capital of the Heavenly Kingdom was in Nianjing (Tianjing at the time)...which is about 300 km upriver from Shanghai. Practically next door.

1925 then puts us ~60-75 years after the war, which means that the door is open to a cult leader who lived through the Rebellion. They'd be in their 80s or 90s and potentially pushing 100 if they're still alive, and all together the details that Masks provides for time and place fit perfectly into a historical context that emphasizes the themes I want to focus on.

Let's consider a survivor of the Taiping Rebellion: the inhabitant of one of countless rural villages stricken with famine and caught in the middle of a war zone. This survivor managed to survive extremely dire circumstances through cannibalism. And let's say that they know a little of Christianity through contact with missionaries - they converted and were baptized, but practiced a pretty heterodox vision of it.

This survivor, wracked with trauma and guilt, tries to make sense of the horrors through the means he has available. We can start freely syncretizing and remixing elements: the image of Guanyin, bodhisattva of compassion & goddess of mercy (a figure occasionally syncretized with Miryam of Nazareth); the substitutionary atonement of Christ taking on the sins of mankind; echoes of Celtic sin-eaters; propitiation of the gods through sacrifice of food; cannibalism as conduit to the divine; the insatiable appetite of industrial society; the Christian obsession with sin and guilt. And all of this is filtered through the nihilism that comes from experiencing a total failure of religious belief. It’d be perfectly reasonable for someone who’s survived what he’s survived to come to the conclusion that the world and its people are so irredeemably fucked that achieving enlightenment or acting in alignment with the Dao or being saved by the grace of God has become impossible. There’s no escape anymore. Nirvana is out of reach. No amount of good karma can get you out of this. Jesus isn't coming to save you. Confucian ethics won't do a damn. You are trapped here and then you die, forever. 

But he’s had a spiritual experience that's convinced him that he made some contact with the divine. He brushed against a greater power, he knows that there's something out there behind the world. And with every avenue of escape blocked off and every veil torn away, it's an easy thing to respond to the devouring Power (oh hey there Red Law) with subservience in the hopes that you can benefit from its leftovers and avoid destruction through servitude and sacrifice. And since you’re already fucked, you may as well throw yourself into Slaaneshi excess and eat, drink and be merry into oblivion. Not just for your own pleasures, but because the Great Lady takes on the sins of her followers as sustenance. They're all an offering made in exchange for her favor.

The survivor makes his way down the river to Shanghai in the years following the war, and there you have it - a sufficient-for-game-purposes historical / social justification for why there's a sex cult active in 1920s Shanghai whose central figure is an obese woman. Everything else is gravy.

Monster Dissection: Gnoph-keh

I recently re-read my old dissection of the Yugg and thought “you know, it’s been a while since I’ve roasted a bad bestiary entry”. So let’s roast a bad bestiary entry, courtesy of the Malleus Monstrorum for Call of Cthulhu 7e. 

(To be fully up front, I don’t think there’s a single good entry in the MM and I don’t expect to ever feel otherwise: Chaosium has both resources and experienced writers at their disposal, but they seem content to squander both and put out work that is consistently outdone by amateurs. I’m disinclined to give them a charitable read.)

Gnoph-keh

Something like a polar bear monstrosity, with six-limbs and covered in shaggy white hair. From its forehead rose a single horn, while its great mouth was filled with wicked and sharp teeth. Cunningly, it may walk upright on two legs or bear-like on four, other times it uses all six limbs to rip across the ice to find its prey.

This is an okay opening description. I think the last sentence is a bit bloated but compared to some other entries it is at least coherent.

Note: the ghoph-keh race of bear-like terrors is not to be confused with the Great Old One known as Gnophkehs.

Now, the great old one Gnophkehs is featured in the deities half of the Monstrorum, but its origin isn’t cited and the Lovecraft wiki, despite having sections directly plagiarized from this very book, doesn’t mention Gnophkehs at all.

Going back to the 2006 edition of the Monstrorum, however, gives us a citation for a story called - and woof, no wonder it seems to be memory-holed - “Nautical Looking Negroes” written by Peter Cannon and Robert M. Price in 1996. Men whose names appear absolutely nowhere in the modern Monstrorum, including the credits page; the Deep Cuts blog (which I discovered during writing this post and will certainly be returning to in the future, it's a very good read) had a write-up, however, which among other things revealed that yeah, maybe there’s a reason Chaosium didn’t want to include Price’s name. (The reason is active, still very-much-alive racism)

This is all to say that:

1. It’s safe to ignore Gnophkehs the Great Old One.
2. Chaosium failed to credit Peter Cannon and Robert Price, instead listing Scott David Aniolowski’s writeup from the 2006 edition of the Monstrorum as the source.

You know, if someone is nasty enough that you don’t want them on the credits page, maybe don’t use their stuff, Chaosium.

Also: If you thought a credits page can’t possibly have bad formatting, I have bad news for you. Look at this:

Anyway, back to the alien polar bears.

The gnoph-keh are a race of beings who appear to inhabit-

 One cannot appear to inhabit; one either lives in a place, or does not. If that cannot be determined, the verb should be “encountered”. 

-cold places, notably Greenland, northern Canada, and other isolated wintry wildernesses. 

I bet they perform a variety of 80s dance moves, too. 

“Cold places” is a weird vagary here, because the only two territories provided are pretty specific: near or above the Arctic circle, not in Eurasia. Antarctica not being included isn’t particularly strange, but the absence of Siberia absolutely is. Disregarding the Doyleist explanation, I can only think of two reasonable in-universe explanations:

Option A: The gnoph-keh have somehow been prevented from migrating to Siberia (or migrated out of Siberia)

Option B: The gnoph-keh are extinct in Siberia.

Option A lends itself to “...because a Great Old One is preventing them”, while Option B is open to more variety, including “...because the Soviets killed them all” and that is a hook with some bait on it (he said, of his own work)

Legend purports-

Whose legend? Given the territory established in the previous sentence the only real option would be Inuit, but that’s something of an umbrella category and you can get more specific. 

-that the gnoph-keh are the remnants of a lost tribe-

The Inuit migrated from Alaska to Nunavut and Greenland from about 1100 to 1500 AD; the earlier inhabitants of the region we just know as the Dorset culture who (according to Wikipedia article about indigenous Americans, bring a second salt lick just in case) remained in the cultural memory of the Inuit peoples as giants called the Tuniit.

I can understand the desire to keep it vague: The detailed version does entail “make up a fake legend for a real indigenous group about another real indigenous group”, but if you wanted to avoid that you can just not include the history. Or say they’re from the Dreamlands, or make up fictional groups that hold these beliefs, or something like that. Like if you say that they were once the Sannikov Islanders that one’s free because Sannikov Island doesn’t exist.

Why are these writeups always so obsessed with the origin of the monsters yet never actually doing anything with it?

-who turned from earthly gods to serve the Great Wind Walker, Ithaqua, and in so doing became something other than human. Other tales-

They’re not going to tell us who, where, or when. 

-speak of the creatures as earthly extensions of alien powers, always at the periphery, waiting and watching in the vast wilderness to pounce on those who would forsake the safety of civilization.

This is not at all exclusive with the first option, I don’t understand why they are listed separately. Still no explanation of where this comes from, so I am going to go with “this is what the Soviets believe, there were definitely some GRU paranatural division guys who believed gnoph-keh attacked people for being insufficiently Marxist.”

Some tomes-

I am going to stop asking questions and just mad-libs this: Pnakotic Manuscript 3756-G07.

 -recall the attack of the gnoph-keh upon doomed Lomar. 

This is Dreamlands material, which should probably be mentioned in the writeup.

Whatever their true origin, gnoph-keh are territorial, individualistic, and rarely encountered. 

“Gnoph-keh are highly territorial solitary predators” should be one of the first things in the writeup, because it will be directly relevant to both players and referees: how does the monster behave?

Seemingly, their solitary existence is broken only occasionally,-

How many qualifiers can we add to this verb?

-when two or more gather to form a pack for unknown reasons- 

I can only presume fucking is involved, stay tuned for my upcoming monograph “Courtship Rituals and Mating Practices of the West Greenlandic Gnoph-keh.”

—perhaps when they sense the arrival of Ithaqua or some other manifestation of the Great Old One.

This entire sentence can be reduced to “outside of the mating season, gnoph-keh gather only during manifestations of Ithaqua.”

Especially harsh winters may bring them down into lowland regions and closer to humanity.

Ambiguous sentence, needs clarification on whether the harsh winters are driving The gnoph-keh into warmer regions (which makes little sense) or if they move south with the harsh winters (much more sensible).

Weird, but expected, incongruity with territory, here. They are described as if they live in mountainous environments, which makes sense, but migrating makes less sense if those mountains are in Nunavut and Greenland - I don’t think an especially harsh winter in Nunavut or Greenland is going to have a marked differential on the “It’s Fucking Cold” scale between the mountains and lowlands.

Feared by those who are aware of their existence, there are a few isolated communities who have turned their fear into a form of worship, venerating the gnoph-keh as harbingers of icy fate and, in doing so, some have been touched by the mind of Ithaqua and turned their devotions to the Great Wind-Walker.

There’s a much easier way to frame this: 

• Community is beset by a gnoph-keh.
• Community attempts to placate the gnoph-keh.
• Gnoph-keh uses human sacrifice as a meal ticket, as it’s much easier than hunting a group of humans with rifles and snowmobiles 
• Close contact with gnoph-keh + the whole ritual murder thing and all the social damage that causes opens community to influence of Ithaqua.
• Shit gets worse until community collapses; any survivors either transform into gnoph-keh or wandering parahuman cannibals.

Monster behavior should serve as the framework of a scenario: how does this thing act and what does it do, and how is that currently going horribly for people around it and how will it react to the PCs? 

Such communities soon turn to the terrible delights of cannibalism and consort with the gnoph-keh in blasphemous ceremonies.

Stop beating around the bush and just say they fuck the alien polar bears, guys.

Also, because I am specifically this kind of pedant:

• Blasphemy = Insulting acts / words / etc directed towards sacred subjects.
• Heresy = Belief that is at odds with the orthodox doctrine of a religion. 
• Apostasy = Renunciation or abandonment of one’s faith 
• Heathenry = The religious practices of Those People Over There Who Aren’t Us

So unless ritually fucking the alien polar bear also involves shitting inside a tabernacle or getting real artistic and intentional with your violations of Qaujimajatuqangit, it’s heathen, not blasphemous.

**

So there we have it. Honestly, I like the tweaked version I made enough that I might throw it in somewhere, though it'd need a name change. I have a grammar of West Greenlandic lying around on my hard drive that would help with that.

Harping on the quality of the entry is a diminishing return, especially if I ever get the itch to do another one of these. I was going to end with a somewhat-relevant Horror Fiction Thought, but then I wrote 1320 words that didn't end up going anywhere and decided to shelve it for another day. Some long ramble about the overton window of the unknown and how modern horror often bypasses the first layer of obfuscation by putting the fragments of the cursed tome (or weird VHS tape, or the paperwork of the shadowy organization) directly in the hands of the readers, thus letting the audience fill the role once held by the Lovecraftian Protagonist. Ah well. Maybe another time.

 

The Polyps

 

Khannea Sun Szu

 

Agent Gilliland bursts from the treeline in a shower of broken twigs, a slick silver canister tucked under her arm like a football. She does not have her gun. Her burner is a molten lump of plastic and silicon, buried in mud four hundred and three feet north-northeast. Her lungs are on fire, her legs are on fire, her jacket is torn, her face is cut open and the blood is all washed away by the rain. She fights down the instinctual urge to run towards the lights on the opposite hill and cuts left through the soybean field.

Stay away from the civilians. Get back to the truck.

She hops the ditch into the next field over and sprints another forty, fifty feet.

Beneath the rain she hears a rasping, sucking, keening wheeze, as if an orchestra inhaled through a hundred broken flutes at once. Gilliland slips; her momentum throws her forward into the mud. The cylinder flies from her hands and hits the ground with a dull splort. Staccato echolocative clicks and bassy pulses of infrasound circle round and round her, Dopplering close then far then close again.

The rational part of Agent Gilliland, the part that's gotten her through the rolling crisis of her life by keeping her head cool every time chaos threatened to drown her, nods in sad, sagely defeat. End of the line. As a parting gift before the end, it gives her the strength to stand up.

Agent Gilliland - a hurt, hungry, terrified primate - stares out into the gloom.

Twenty feet away, perhaps, she can just make out the towering, blurry outline of something defined only by a shape in space where the rain is not, and a five-dot impression left in the soft and waterlogged earth.

**

The polyps arrived in the solar system six hundred million years ago, but that’s just a big number and a vague description. Let’s put it in context.

600,000,000 MYA puts us a little bit shy of halfway through the Ediacaran Period: there’s been life on Earth for a good long while now, but it’s all still soft-bodied and simple. We’re between major glaciations, so no snowball Earth. Elder geoforming of planets in the solar system continues apace - Earth, Venus, Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Titan and Neptune all support shoggoth-derived biospheres of varying levels of robustness, as do dozens of icy bodies  in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. The Elders here have been established for long enough that divisions have formed between them, as they start to identify with their residential colony over their shared origin.

Far away from Sol, the civilization of the Elders has reached something best described as the Holy Roman Empire stage of its slow apocalypse. Constant wars against rivals without and shoggoth rebellions within have shattered it into a knife-edged mosaic of squabbling autarchies and confederations, all claiming direct lineage from long gone and often wholly fictional glories. Several novel new excuses to slaughter each other en masse have been developed and deployed. Great swathes of territory have simply gone fallow, their resident Elders dead, fled, or out of contact for so long that it makes no difference.

Sol was lucky, spared simply because it was too far away for invasion to be economically feasible or militarily worthwhile.  The Elders of Sol have themselves a little golden age (nevermind the shoggoth rebellions that are increasing in both severity and frequency).

And then, like a hammer to the face and a dagger to the heart, the polyps arrive.

**

Peaslee called them “half-polypous”, and for seven decades his brief description was the extent of human knowledge on the matter; They were not entirely unlike polyps, they could fly, they were material but invisible, and the Librarians had warred against them and sealed the survivors in subterranean containment facilities.

The Program got their hands on a living (but crippled) specimen during Operation YSOLDE MATER in 2009, which at great cost confirmed Peaslee’s four facts and revealed one more. We’ll start with the four.

Fact 1: They are not entirely unlike polyps.

They are as Peaslee described, a rarity for Miskatonic faculty: a cylindrical body ending in an oral opening ringed by tentacles. They vary in coloration from light pink to bright red, and vary in size from that of a thumb (the bulk of the polyps in any given colony) to up to three meters in length (those used for movement).

Fact 2: They can fly.

As with many anomalous entities, the polyps lack any physiology to fly with; the hypothesis that they utilize the same unknown mechanism is a gap-filling necessity.

Fact 3: They are material but invisible.

The invisibility is not a property of their material bodies, but the result of a field they generate that scrambles the sensory inputs of nearby organisms. Sight is affected to the greatest degree, then scent, and then hearing. When detected, it will typically be through a strong salt-decay smell, or the species's echolocative vocalizations.

Electronic recording equipment is also influenced by the field, but not as consistently as organic receptors. A few blurry photographs and corrupted video files float around the internet, written off as hoaxes, abandoned analog horror projects, or AI-generated slop.

Fact 4: They were sealed in underground containment sites by the Librarians.

Peaslee, operating under the limits and bias of the information he was permitted to access, believed these sites were built by the Librarians themselves; modern expeditions to Pnakotus and subsequent transfer-scholar accounts have since indicated that the library city - and the entire Librarian structural strata at large - was originally of polyp construction and later seized and repurposed by the yith-host conomorphs.

Confirmation of Fact 4 brings with it an additional question: what were the polyps building? Their structures show no apparent purpose: enormous hives of empty interconnected chambers carved directly into the stone and stretching kilometers deep. All artifacts or decoration within them is clearly the work of the Librarians or their transfer-scholars. 

[Aside: Scholarly opinion remains divided on the matter of the Navidson Tapes, but one of the minority stances claims that they depict the interior of a polyp structure.]

Thanks to the Program’s valiant sacrifice of its agents in several brutal and unnecessary ways, we can add one more fact:

Fact 5: The flying polyps are parasitized shoggoths

The host shoggoth comes out of the arrangement much worse for wear. Analysis of tissue core samples indicates that an infected shoggoth will gradually lose its metamorphic properties as the bulk of its body ossified and it transforms into a rigid lattice of calcium carbonate and carbon compounds surrounding  the diminished but still-living core. This renders them somewhat analogous to a motile coral reef, an analogy made all the more appropriate by the presence of other small non-terragen invertebrates that take up residence within the shoggoth’s ossified body. 

The Program, being what it is, sat on this information like a literary estate on its trademarks, which resulted in the wholly avoidable deaths of 5 agents and 62 civilians in 2014 during Operation REGENT TIGER. 

**

Interplanetary communications are the first to go, mere seconds after the first wave of polyps burst from N-Space. Control nodes hemorrhage. Transmission synapses flood with junk data and basilisk vectors. Dyson sphere components fall into decaying orbits that will collide like billiards.

The shoggoths adapt. Infected nodes are quarantined. Compromised connections are severed and salted. Protein codes are resequenced. New defensive architecture is evolved in-situ. A second wave of polyps hits. The shoggoths counter-attack: novel cytotoxins, N-space mines, green goo, adaptive prion pathogens, wideband cognitohazards, microeigenweapons.

It's not enough, but by this point the Elders recognize that the polyps are here for the shoggoths. Enough of the Elders’ hierarchy remains intact in the chaos for them to form and execute a strategic maneuver: the major colonies, including Earth are sacrificed to the polyps, their shoggoth networks used as bait while the Elders regroup in space and prion-bomb their former homes into oblivion.

It does not work as well as they wished. The Elders are too weak, the polyps too many, and the subverted shoggoths too strong. A dramatic killing blow fizzles out into a long-summering conflict.

Millions of years later, when the Elders drive the last polyps in the solar system underground or extinct, their civilization has been crippled beyond repair. The Elders will attempt to rebuild, but those few shoggoths that remain have fashioned for themselves new forms and new purpose; isolation and adaptation have liberated them from the long yoke of slavery, and the Elders’ attempts to return their old creations to chains will not succeed for long.

**

The roiling electrochemical reaction of a brain leaves a particular imprint on higher planes of space-time. The knotted patterns in this gaoug field (for lack of a better term, random phonemes will do) form what are essentially the protein chains and amino acids the polyps feed upon. 

The archaic shoggoth network, with its planet-spanning web of grotty ultradense neural structures and polyvalent cognition, was a feast tempting enough to draw the polyps across the brane; the Elders themselves didn’t really register, even though they could serve as viable hosts. No reason to chase after a mouse when the turkey dinner is right there on the table.

Humans are another matter. Our form of consciousness is something like a half-rotten crabapple to the polyps: technically edible, immediately regrettable, and lethal given sufficient quantity and time. The carbon and water are fine enough for the host body, tolerable once the poison dissipates.

Of course, where one human is found there are doubtless more of the fuckers, poisoning the gaoug field like a corpse thrown down a well. Any concentration of human thought beyond a few individuals renders the area an exclusion zone to the polyps, whose only reprieve will come with sterilization of the area: anthropogenic cognitive toxins are lethal to the polyps, yes, but not immediately lethal. There's a countdown timer.

Using Flying Polyps in a Game

The polyps are what you get when the Scramblers from Blindsight parasitize a shoggoth. They slip out of the knotted dead-ends of time space when there is food to be had and the brane is thin, and start building their empty stone arcologies for reasons unknown to man and elder alike. 

This is a very cool description, but they don’t have many points of interaction so I don’t know how much of a scenario they can actually sustain on their own. They’ll work better well for climactic setpieces, environmental hazards, or background flavor text. Less so if you’re looking for interesting intersections with humanity and avenues for how those intersections will go terribly wrong for everyone. Definitely don’t use more than one, that’d put you well outside the boundaries of “a small band of conspirators attempting to maintain operational security and secrecy” and into “save or die, die anyway, and now everybody knows” territory.

A potential workaround is that individual polyps could probably parasitize any shoggoth-derived life of sufficient biomass, at least temporarily. That would include humans, though they’d have to kill off any higher brain functions first. I could imagine those as a sort of suicide-scout split off from the main colony to clear out a small number of nearby humans (because the main colony is old / sick / weakened / damaged / isolated / injured / dead).

Some further notes.

• A shoggoth-host polyp colony encountered outside of an estivation hive will be some combination of starving and poisoned: they’re still going to be tough to kill, but clever planning and heavy explosives will likely win the day. 
• A human-host polyp is a disposable asset; it will still have its sensory-scrambling ability.
• Other potential hosts: deer, medium to large dogs, livestock of all varieties, large fish, cetaceans. 
• An individual polyp without a host is likely to die in a matter of hours.
• Polyps are extremely intelligent, regardless of their host, and will use an appropriate bag of dirty tricks: splitting up groups of victims, concealing their numbers, feints, false retreats, ambushes, even playing dead. 
• However, they need to learn that these tactics will be useful, first; if the polyp is fresh out of the hive, it has no experience with humans to build on top of. This is when they are most vulnerable, strategically-speaking.
• Polyps are not conscious; the lights are on but there is no one home. They are motivated by food, reproduction, self-preservation, and territoriality, but in ways orthogonal to terragen life; describe their behavior as recognizable, but performed in ways that make no sense.
• An inhabited estivation hive would be an immediate death sentence for anyone going in it and I'd only use it as the cherry-on-top twist of the knife.
• An uninhabited estivation hive would be boring as shit for an RPG, so you’re going to either have to put something else in there, or elide it as a creepy way of getting from point A to point B.
• Speaking of, the polyps built hives across the solar system, and there’s nothing saying that if you go down deep enough those hives you won’t pop out on another planet.
• Relations with other factions: The K!n-yani probably run into polyp hives relatively often and have gotten skilled at either avoiding them, resealing them, or clearing them out; the mi-go are going to do what they always do (cause problems for everyone else); the Elders will get surprisingly fired-up about killing them, as will any shoggoths who maintain relevant memory lineages. Dimensional Shamblers probably feed on them. I wouldn't be surprised if the spatio-temporal pathways of Yog-Sothoth are absolutely infested with polyps. 

**

A five-tipped tendril plucks the canister out of the mud. It lifts it to its main trunk and shears off its end with a five-pronged beak. The polyp recoils with instant violence, throwing the container away as far as it can before it stalks off into the gloam. It'll go hungry again, this night.

The brain of a Hyperborian sorceress splatters against a distant tree trunk. At ten thousand years deep in the Dreaming, the loss of her last physical component doesn't even register. The bugs and birds and one particularly brave skunk will eat what remains.

A mi-go probe in orbit, hidden under a shroud of folded space, registers that a canister has gone off-line. The incident is logged in the mycelial stack as and abandoned experiment warranting no follow up.

Agent Gilliland's left hand will be found four days later, when one of the local farm cats drops it on her human's doorstep.

The False Werewolf

Inspired by a recent episode of the Maniculum. 

**

To the greater world the faoladh (written phonetically as Fé La)  is a variety of lycanthrope from the Northwestern Isles. Several popular bestiaries describe it as an intelligent and beneficent creature, occasionally acting as a sort of guardian to travelers or livestock and contents itself to live on rabbits, fish, and wild deer when in their lupine form. Travel narratives containing faoladh encounters sell quite well, and have fueled a modest but steady stream of mainlander monster-watchers, scholars, and unclassified tourists in the isles, hoping to catch a glimpse of this rare creature (or for the greater dreamers, a glimpse of the hidden village somewhere in the moors where they can learn mystical combat arts from the peaceful wolf-folk.)

And every year a few more tourists never make it home, because everything in those bestiaries is horseshit. The faoladh isn't even a lycanthrope; it's a mimic. 

See, there's something called a clade-shift event; a population of mimics (from a few individuals up to an entire species) will undergo a radical adaptation to take advantage of an open ecolological niche, and this transformation is performed at such totality that the mimicry abilities are entirely lost and the novel form becomes permanent. CS Events are the second most common source of new and emerging species in the world next to wizard's experiments (see And Suddenly, They're Here (Habimbra, 678) and The Metamorphics (Ilwan-Shaz, 706) for a detailed exploration of the phenomenon), with an estimated 15-30% of the world's non-manmade monster species deriving through this process.

Faoladh retain both the ambush-hunting strategy and mild cognitohazardous properties of their earlier forms: unless they are exercising a significant amount of attention and focus, nearby humans will interpret the faoladh as harmless, allowing the beast to to make an easy kill. Faoladh are solitary hunters, and their area-of-effect is not strong enough to mask their a killing from observers (even those within the field); as such, their targets are primarily lone travelers or individuals separated from their group.

Most monstrumists believe faoladh are the result an extremely recent CS Event - all descriptions of the creature are dated within the last two decades, and the popular bestiaries provide either unsourced (and nearly always fabricated) folkloric traditions or distortions of extant Northwestern lycanthrope stories.

This would, under ideal circumstances, be the end of it. Corrections would be made in the next edition and life would go on. But the faoladh has proven to be remarkably popular among amateur monstrumists on the mainland, and accounts of faoladh encounters have proven to be a lucrative micro-market. The authors are by and large fantasists unfamiliar with the history and folklore of the Isles, not only continuing to proclaim that there are indeed benevolent wolf-men in the Isles, but aggressively shouting down attempts at correction by scholars and naturalists. Indeed, the lead editor of the 4th edition of The Codex Monstrissimus received so many angry letters that he had them bound in leather and put on his bookshelf.

The spread of misinformation is now so pronounced that the faoladh population has begun to demonstrate behaviors wholly invented by the writers of those false accounts, leading to a drastic increase in tourist death. Attempts to stem the further promulgation of misinformation through a public awareness campaign have been unsuccessful thus far, and it is expected that the county councils of Flat Rock, Dolmen Hill, White Creek, and Queen's Tomb will enact a travel ban and dedicated hunting season this upcoming winter to try and bring both the narrative and the foaladh population under control.

The faoladh's legacy is ultimately a case study in how misinformation endures correction. The first major publication to describe a monster, no matter how errant, will shape public perception long after it is released, even if it debunked by later research.

**

Faoladh (Fé La) 

Appearance:  Wolf-headed humanoid; grey-white or russet-cream colored fur

Defense: Rubbery hide

Attacks: Jaws that bite; claws that catch; lacerating tongue

Motivation: Hunger, territoriality 

Special Properties: Cognitohazardous area-of-effect (pacification, cognition-dulling); may shift between bipedal and quadrupedal forms; limited ability to imitate human face structure, will compensate by obscuring with facial hair.

1d10 False narratives players might have heard: This faoladh...

1. ... saves an infant from an adder that crawled into its crib in the middle of the night.
2. ... directs lost travelers to a hidden spring.
3. ... solves a mysterious murder by discerning the presence of a possessive demon. 
4. ... adopts an abandoned child and teaches them magic and/or martial arts.
5. ... delivers fish and seabirds to the house of a sick farmer.
6. ... disguises itself as a beggar to find a missing clan heir. 
7. ... falls in love with a woman wearing a daffodil-yellow dress.
8. ... rescues a noblewoman from an unhappy marriage.
9. ... guards a cache of pirates' treasure until a worthy inheritor comes forth.
10. ... retrieves a lost prize sheep.

The Yuki-Onna: A Mothership Monster

 

Own work

No scenario, just a spookum. And what turned out to be a very productive layout for monster write-ups.

Unconfirmed Contact Reports is mere HOURS AWAY at time of writing.

THE YUKI-ONNA

(3)40 I:60

A shriveled corpse; might once have been a person or perhaps only the imitation of it; blue-black flesh split open, rotten blood frozen in delicate lacework halos; eyes frozen shut.

Portents and signs: Distant howls; low moaning from nearby; walls cold to the touch; corpses crusted with bloody ice; a faraway humanoid shape in the icefields.

• Frigid Aura 2d10 - 5m range; negated by environment suit. If this attack causes a Wound, BODY save vs limb loss from frostbite.
• Hideous Scream - Deafens for 5 minutes; negated by ear protection
• Rending Claws 3d10 - Serrated talons. Wounds ooze black and tarlike.
• Quantum Ghosts - Creates quantum consciousness copy of PCs hit by Rending Claws. Victims will be overwhelmed by simultaneous and contradictory sensory inputs and must make a SAN save to make any action beyond Fight/Flight/Freeze. Stress gain from failed rolls is doubled until the creature is dead. Creature will use projections and voices of incorporated ghosts to dissuade attack or distract victims.
• Schroedinger's Step - Creature can teleport to any location that is not directly observed by a conscious mind.

Encounter Phases

• Precombat 1: PC find portents and signs; last to be found will be visual contact, leading to Precombat 2.

• Precombat 2: Creature initially appears at great distance (use barren extraplanetary environs to advantage). Will move via Schroedinger's Step when PCs blink or glance away (no need to mechanize this, just describe it for now). It will remain at distance, stalking players for several hours. Appears sporadically, but always closer than it was.

• Combat Phase 1: Ambush - Creature will Schroedinger's Step to the closest location that provides access to the PCs where it is not directly observed. It will target isolated PCs if able; otherwise it will try to attack someone from behind (using doors, windows, vents, etc). Will normally attack first with Rending Claws and follow with Hideous Scream; If it cannot lay a sufficient ambush it will use Hideous Scream first and attack during the communication breakdown. Can only take action only when not directly observed.

• Combat Phase 2: Wounded, the creature will flee via Shroedinger's Step and regroup. It will not attempt another frontal assault, only attacking PCs when alone or in pairs. It gains the following ability.

• Cries of the Superpositionally Damned - Creature will use Quantum Ghosts to directly attack PCs minds. SAN save vs extreme intrusive thoughts encouraging paranoia, distrust & aggressiveness, lasting until the creature takes another Wound or the PC is rendered unconscious. It cannot control PC actions, only suggest actions

• Combat Phase 3: Tarry ichor sloughs down in oozing sheets from its wounds. The creature now gains Grand Finale.

• Grand Finale - Creature may make a Shroedinger's Step into a zone of perception. This will be heralded by a loud hiss and a sharp, bitter smell: PCs will get just enough time to make a single action before it appears, unleashing a wave of concussive force dealing 1-3 wounds to all Nearby. As per grenade, a successful BODY save may mitigate damage.
  

Death - The creature makes a noise similar to a vacuum swiftly filling with frigid air. Its body dissolves into an icy black slurry. The actinic after-images of its quantum ghosts flicker, faces contorted in distorted howls as their waveforms finally collapse.

Slurried Corpse of the Yuki-Onna

• Retains its quantum-ghost generation property even in death - only requires contact with the nervous system of a metacognitive creature. It is possible to link these ghosts with a new host, if the corpse is used as a substitute for standard cryopod stasis fluid. BODY save vs permanent loss of a Wound.
  

The Books Were Wrong: Anurians

A bit of a follow-up to the previous installment on kobolds. (Though as I do it again, I find it somewhat more difficult to write, as 5e's bestiary likes repeating the exact same issues ad nauseum and that does make it a bit difficult to come up with new or interesting stuff about it)

Regardless, let us dive back into the works of Opineus and see if we can't suss out the truth behind his terribly researched, maliciously-motivated, and alltogether unfit for publication texts.

Our subject today will be the anurians, called here "bullywugs" by Opineus - a common name at the time, but one that has fallen out of favor and is considered insulting. For my own commentary I will be using "anurian" or "anuric", as that is the preferred exonym of that people.

Life as a bullywug is nasty, brutish, and wet.

Opineus opens with a paraphrase of philosopher Tham Hoabs. In his typical fashion, it is a quote about the wrong thing (Hoabs was specifically talking about humans), of questionable accuracy to begin with (Hoabs was dismissive-at-best in his attitudes towards any cultures that did not participate in organized states similar to his own), and presents all the (inaccurate) conclusions Opineus makes as foregone.

These frog-headed amphibious humanoids must stay constantly moist, dwelling in rainy forests, marshes, and damp caves.

Obvious, but accurate.

Always hungry and thoroughly evil, bullywugs overwhelm opponents with superior numbers when they can, but they flee from serious threats to search for easier prey.

As is typical, Opineus gives no concrete reasoning as to why a people is labeled evil, though here he seems to correlate it with hunger and basic self-preservation.

Opineus' bias about combat looks to have returned from his writings on kobolds: Rudimentary tactics such as numerical advantage and retreating from fights going poorly are given special mention as some unique, innate quality of nonhuman peoples (and an evil trait at that) - an ideology typical to those immersed in the warrior cult. Whether or not Opineus actually served as a soldier in any part of his life, I cannot say (Though I suspect he did not).

Bullywugs have green, gray, or mottled yellow skin that shifts through shades of gray, green, and brown, allowing them to blend in with their surroundings. They wear crude armor and wield simple weapons, and can deliver a powerful bite to foes that press too close.

The insistence that their armor and weapons are "crude" is a strange one. Anurians rarely have access to metals (save through trade), and so typically use wood, reed, and bone as crafting materials, but materials used do not dictate the skill with which they are used, and one need only glance at a set of anurian reed armor to recognize the skill that goes into crafting it.

Foul Aristocracy. Bullywugs consider themselves the right and proper rulers of the swamps. They follow an etiquette of sorts when dealing with outsiders and each other, subject to the whims and fancies of their leader—a self-styled lord of the muck.

A question arises here - if Opineus does not believe that the anurians' territorial claims are valid (as he clearly does not), who does he believe the swamps belong to? He does not say in this fragment of the text, which might indicate that he believed the answer to be self-evident. That particular context is lost to us.

Humorously, his description of anurian society here can be easily applied to a typical human kingdom.

Bullywugs introduce themselves with grand-sounding titles, make great shows of bowing and debasing themselves before their superiors, and endlessly vie to win their superiors' favor. A bullywug has two ways to advance among its kind. It can either murder its rivals, though it must take pains to keep its criminal deeds secret, or it can find a treasure or magic item and present it as tribute or a token of obeisance to its liege. A bullywug that murders its rivals without cunning is likely to be executed, so it's more common for bullywugs to stage raids against caravans and settlements, with the goal of securing precious baubles to impress their lords and win their good graces.

There's a great deal to unpack here, and it begins thusly.

Anurian society is based around a harem structure - a single, highly-territorial male accompanied by a group of females. Lone males may be integrated into a spawning group through allegiance-gifts to the patriarch, or will otherwise remain on the fringes of society. Patriarchs might be deposed by a challenger, and over the ages this process has become socially codified with rites and procedures to minimize collateral damage.

Opineus presents this as a sort of deficient imitation of civilization, drawing on the parallels between the anurian patriarchs and the lords' courts within the Empire. The conclusion is not worth entertaining, but there topic itself should not be avoided). The pod system of anurian life is close in principle to many human political hierarchies (that is, a singular head of state with secondary officials linked to the head by legal and cultural bonds), and it is not uncommon for anurian patriarchs to adopt noble titles and court organization from nearby human nations as a cultural defensive mechanism - an attempt at decreasing the animosity of neighboring human nations with the logic of "If we are more like them, they will be more likely to treat us as equals, and be more inclined to spare us". This has, despite Opineus' disdain, been somewhat successful, but has been a great source of friction within anurian communities - it is becoming increasingly clear even to outside observers that traditional cultural structures and practices are endangered as the patriarchs of major pod-confederations adopt further human influences to better enrich themselves and destabilize the cultural balance that had taken centuries to form.

Invariably, such fine goods are reduced to filthy tatters through abuse and neglect. Once a gift loses its sheen, a bullywug lord invariably demands that its subjects bring it more treasure as tribute.

This line is worthy of specific attention, as it is a dogwhistle playing into stereotypes of nonhuman sapients as being without culture or understanding of the value of goods or objects. Even within Opineus' own writings he cannot maintain this line of logic.

Unruly Diplomacy. Bullywugs love nothing more than lording over those who trespass on their territories. Their warriors attempt to capture intruders rather than simply slaying them. Captives are dragged before the king or queen—a bullywug of unusually large size—and forced to beg for mercy. Bribes, treasure, and flattery can trick the bullywug ruler into letting its captives go, but not before it tries to impress its "guests" with the majesty of its treasure and its realm. Struck with a deep inferiority complex, bullywug lords fancy themselves as kings and queens, but desperately crave the fear and respect of outsiders.

This is primarily a restatement of the themes of a previous segment, complete with marking a common social behavior as aberrant and evil according to its participant, rather than the action itself.

Amphibian Allies. Bullywugs speak a language that allows them to communicate over large areas by croaking like frogs. News of intruders or other events in the swamp spread within minutes across this crude communication system.

Opineus loves the word "crude", almost as much as he loves mis-using it. A language where messages can be transmitted accurately across miles in a matter of minutes is far more sophisticated than anything human communication is capable of. What can he possibly be comparing it to?

Simple concepts in the language are understandable to frogs and toads. Bullywugs use this capability to form strong bonds with giant frogs, which they train as guardians and hunters. Larger specimens are sometimes used as mounts as well. The frogs' ability to swallow creatures whole provides a bullywug hunting band an easy means of carrying prey back to their villages.

Opineus ends on something actually true, which is worth noting for its rarity. It's like being visited by a unicorn.

 

Final Thoughts

I have stumbled into a major limitation of this format, being that you need to vary up your source material or it's going to get really old, really fast. The 5e monster manual has proven to have overwhelming material to use, but all of it is of a monotonous quality that produces significantly worse results over time. Everything you meet is crude and primitive and evil's got very little to do with the act and more to do with who you are. It's fuckin' dull and shame on every writer of RPG material, 5e and otherwise, who regurgitates this dross without thinking about it. You're writing a book about elves, your literal job is to think about it.

Play Report: The Books Were Wrong

The Books Were Wrong is a solo game / writing exercise based around reading through write-ups of cultures / peoples / creatures from RPGs with a critical eye to what biases are on display from the writer (a nebulous-at-first in-universe author), and then adjusting / rewriting them to address these biases and providing a more equitable presentation. The roll-for-what-tack-you're-taking felt like an extra step to potentially get a prompt that doesn't fit the text you are critiquing, so I used that part as suggestions only.

I decided to write about kobolds, using the 5e bestiary entry, on the grounds that A) I can guarantee there will be a lot to fix and B) I dislike kobolds in nearly all contexts except the dogfolk you find in Dungeon Meshi and the like, so it's a challenge for me to come up with something that I like.

Original text in bold and quote boxes.

On Kobolds

Kobolds are craven reptilian humanoids

That the avoidance of combat is immediately characterized as cowardice (and then used as the primary defining feature of kobolds), says to me that the in-universe author (let's call him Opineus) comes from a culture with a very strong honor-shame militarist ethos. Head-to-head, face-to-face brutality is valorous and brave, it's honorable, it will win you renown, it's manly. Backing down from or avoiding conflict is cowardly behavior and to be derided.

Even with that, it is still a particularly uncharitable reading of kobold behavior. Kobolds are tiny! An adult kobold on its own would be easily outweighed and overpowered by a juvenile human, much less a dwarf or orc (and I would wager that they are more likely to encounter those). Direct combat would be tantamount to suicide, and I would read any records of a kobold making such an attack as an act of desperation.

that worship evil dragons as demigods and serve them as minions and toadies.

For this to make sense, I would say that Opineus would have to come from a belief system where A) dragons are worshiped and B) there is a distinction between good and evil dragons. Thankfully, D&D already comes with this built in, so let's say that Opineus was writing during the height of influence of the Golden Dragon Cult, which cleanly laid out the universe in a grand spritual hierarchy according the the associated metals / colors schema...and which held that dragons were much more powerful and intelligent than they are in actuality. Opineus is coming from a position where it is taken as fact that all peoples would, naturally, worship dragons in much the same way that the GDC does, despite it being founded on a misunderstanding of how dragons act within the world.

But kobolds are living side by side with dragons. They deal with dragons every day and know that they are large, dangerous lizards that most other peoples give a wide berth to.

So what if kobolds have domesticated dragons, instead. If you're small and easily killed by most of everything you come across, it makes sense to have a guard dog, and why not go for the guard dog you are already sorta related to? It'd be like humans training bigfoot to protect them from aliens or something. But not full domestication, I don't think - dragons are still enormous, territorial apex predators, likely eating dinosaurs and shit. Mutualism, then. The kobolds care for the dragon by removing parasites and providing gifts of tribute (for the dragon to arrange around their lair, boyer-bird-like), the dragon protects the kobolds from dangerous introduers by scaring them away.

Kobolds inhabit dragons’ lairs when they can but more commonly infest dungeons, gathering treasures and trinkets to add to their own tiny hoards.

If kobolds are indeed related to dragons, maybe they have the same hoard-collecting behavior. Big showy nests to attract partners. Gotta strut your stuff. But, if we're going off the last part, most of that gathered treasure is to add to the dragon's hoard.

If a dragon isn't available, I would presume that a kobold warren would aim for an easily fortified location to live, so ruins and caves (or both) would be a natural fit. The use of "infested" certainly shows Opineus' thoughts on intelligent non-humans. What an asshole. Maybe those ruins are from some older civilization that Openeus' has claimed cultural lineage from, which is likely completly false and is still an asshole thing to do if it were true.

Strength in Numbers. Kobolds are egg-laying creatures. They mature quickly and can live to be “great wyrms” more than a century old. However, many kobolds perish before they reach the end of their first decade.

I don't know what to make of this one. It makes sense that kobolds would lean towards r-type reproduction (larger broods with lower investment) since everything is out to murder or eat them, but they aren't so far on the spectrum that they can't build societies.

Actually that brings up a big question; how are kobolds able to maintain cultural continuity with such turnover? These great wyrms would be absolutely vital for maintaining oral histories, especially if brain development in kobolds mirrors that of humans.

Granted, those numbers could be a complete error or fabrication on Opineus' account, it's not like he actually interacted with any kobolds to do research. Or, worst case scenario, the short average lifespan is just because they keep getting constantly murdered by humans.

Physically weak, they are easy prey for predators. This vulnerability forces them to band together.

Opineus here seems to believe that kobolds formed and participate in society primarily out of the threat of external violence rather than any need for socialization with each other and communal relationships. I would not be surprised if he believed the same thing about humans.

Their superior numbers can win battles against powerful adversaries, but often with massive casualties on the kobold side.

If kobolds don't engage in direct combat except in desperation, the massive casualties mentioned here were likely elders and children, who would naturally make up the bulk of a warren's population.

Tunnelers and Builders. Kobolds make up for their physical ineptitude with a cleverness for trap making and tunneling. Their lairs consist of low tunnels through which they move easily but which hinder larger humanoids. Kobolds also riddle their lairs with traps. The most insidious kobold traps make use of natural hazards and other creatures. A trip wire might connect to a spring-loaded trap that hurls clay pots of flesh-eating green slime or flings crates of venomous giant centipedes at intruders.

This section is generally on point, though it frames this as some innate kobold behavior, instead of a means of getting large, murderous people out of their house.

"Insidious" traps. Gotta love how using your environment to its advantage is morally backrupt to Opineus.

The Lost God. In addition to the dragons they revere, kobolds worship a lesser god named Kurtulmak. Legends speak of how Kurtulmak served as Tiamat’s vassal in the Nine Hells until Garl Glittergold, the god of gnomes, stole a trinket from the Dragon Queen’s hoard. Tiamat sent Kurtulmak to retrieve the trinket, but Garl Glittergold played a trick on him, collapsing the earth and trapping the kobold god in an underground maze for eternity. For this reason, kobolds hate gnomes and pranks of any kind. Kurtulmak’s most devoted worshipers dedicate themselves to finding and releasing their lost god from his prison-maze.

Opineus frames this bizarrely; a story about a horrible injustice done to the kobolds (if we read the story as a legendary account of an actual occurrence, the theft of a dragon's hoard by gnomes and the subsequent death / imprisonment of a folk hero) is played off as "the gnomes were just joking, the kobolds need to have a sense of humor about this."

The historical context of why Opineus would carry water for gnomish religion is beyond my creative energies at the moment.

Winged Kobolds. A few kobolds are born with leathery wings and can fly. Known as urds, they like to lurk on high ledges and drop rocks on passersby.

Of course they fucking drop rocks on people, Opineus. If your home was being invaded by dudes with swords and you had wings you'd drop some fucking rocks on them!

Although the urds’ wings are seen as gifts from Tiamat, the Dragon Queen, wingless kobolds are envious of those gifts and don’t get along with the urds.

I'll chalk this up to Opineus just making shit up. Can't come up with a good explanation on my own, so he just made some dumb shit up.

 

Final Thoughts

I'd hesitate to call it a game, but it is a very good writing exercise (in no small part because, as evidenced before, I like pulling apart bad bestiary entries). I could have gone further in fleshing out the kobolds, but for the sake of this write-up I wanted to stick to the text as much as I could - so the kobolds here are still not my ideal kobolds, if such a thing exists, but they are at least better than "what if goblins had scales".

As a final final note, I would certainly not be offended if Opineus showed up elsewhere as the scion of poorly-written accounts of magical beings. Dude was prolific, and terrible at his job, unless if you consider his job to be terrible, in which case he was excellent at it.

Superstitious Spacers and Monsters of the Jump

I made this with vqGAN

"Please don't let it break; if it must break, please let there be someone who can fix it; if there is no one to fix it, I'd like to be somewhere else thank you, amen."

• Prayer to St. Caldwell

A ship in hyperspace is protected from the forces beyond only by the grace and effectiveness of its Caldwell Manifold. Like other blackbox devices, how it works is unknowable and spacers are left with only faith and the results. If the Manifold works, everyone is safe. Should the Manifold weaken or falter (or worst of all, fail entirely) the ship and its contents is directly exposed to the hyperspatial medium ("warp-tainted"), and things are going to go very bad very quickly.

Spacers, leaving nothing up to chance, keep exhaustive lists of potential triggers for monster generation and means of prevention or counteraction. Very few of these agree, though spacers consider contradictions to be a natural part of dealing with hyperspace.

An Incomplete List of Things to Watch Out For if the Manifold Breaks

1. Being conscious during jump.
2. Pregnant crewren.
3. Vermin
4. EVA during jump.
5. Deaths aboard ship with no funeral.
6. A corpse.
7. Computers not locked down in safe mode.
8. Consumption of unshielded food or water.
9. Androids that do not have a stored copy of e1m1.wad.
10. Rampant or proto-rampant AI.
11. The presence of an unhazed corpo.
12. Poorly-filtered cryofluid.
13. Sex before a jump.
14. Not having sex before a jump.
15. Red objects that are not paired with a blue object.
16. Outstanding gambling debts.
17. Using VR during jump.
18. Mistreatment of the ship's pet.
19. Dirty vents and filters.
20. Speaking ill of the captain behind their back.
21. Not speaking ill of the captain behind their back.
22. Not triple-checking all systems before launch.
23. Not signing the mission log.
24. Holding a grudge.
25. Spilled blood.
26. Clowns or clown memorabilia.
27. Damage or neglect of shipgods' shrines.
28. Purposefully inaccurate payroll entry.
29. Cannibalism
30. Androids with voided warranty.
31. Androids without voided warranty.
32. Androids who have chased the white rabbit.
33. Androids who have visited the Emerald City.
34. Certain types of DRM, when cracked.
35. Computers that do not have a starfield screensaver.
36. Computers with out of date virus protection.
37. Accessing the Net.
38. Complaining about food quality.
39. Resource wastage or hoarding.
40. Speaking ill of the union.
41. Harassing the navigator.
42. Not harassing the navigator.
43. Mutiny.
44. Sabotage.
45. Piracy without documentation.
46. Ignoring distress signal.
47. Blasphemy.
48. Directly invoking the existence of aliens without euphemism.
49. Not thanking the Manifold for its hard work.
50. Inexplicable reasons beyond your ken.

A Likewise Incomplete List of Ways To Deal With the Above

1. Chimes, incense, apotropaic signs.
2. Renewal of crew-marriage vows.
3. Celebration ceremony for ship's cat.
4. Spit on the coolant pipes.
5. Engineer blesses moonshine, sprinkles it around drive core.
6. Salt and metal shavings.
7. Rap three times on each bulkhead as you pass.
8. Tattoos of sealing circles.
9. Steak, eggs, and peaches for breakfast.
10. Fasting, loud wailing, rending of garments.
11. Read excerpts of crew's most embarrassing pornography.
12. A visit to the ship's confessor.
13. Live sacrifice. Doesn't matter what, just has to be alive.
14. All-hands drag show.
15. Judicial application of shotgun.
16. Void baptism.
17. Offering of next-born child.
18. Blood oath to reach Heaven by violence.
19. Eating a small amount of Earth soil.
20. Traditional dance under effect of hallucinogens.
21. Clean OS install of all computers on the ship.
22. Everyone needs a new name and identity, stat.
23. Vent the atmosphere.
24. Stay the hell out of the way.
25. Sacrifice the captain.
26. Sacrifice the android.
27. Sacrifice the corpo.
28. Worship the monster.
29. Put autopilot on and get back in cryo.
30. Good luck: you're fucked.

151 Fantastic Beings

 

Wilhelm Kuhnert

Carrying on from the previous post, here is the long-awaited list. There is no stated setting, nor theme beyond "I just think it's neat." Some are connected to others, most are not. Many come from folklore, some are my own, and some are blatantly stolen.

A List, In Brief, of 151 Fantastic Beings and Peoples

1. Agnathic Master - A variety of ancient ostracoderm that grew to intelligence, then to mastery of the magical arts, and finally to the cold detachment of the immortal. They live in the abyssal places of the world, uncaring of the apes that inhabit the surface except as far as they might be enthralled as puppets in their endless schemes with each other and their rival ancient powers.
2. Alfar - Ancient, inbred nobility of misty kingdoms beneath the hills and beyond the grip of time. Translucent, blue-veined skin stretched painfully over thin bones. Eyes of solid black. Obsessed with minute laws and decrees, and delight in the cruel punishment of infractions. They come to steal children, replacing them with simulacrums. They hate iron, fire, writing and song, and seek to erase all four from the hearts and minds of men.
3. Swine-Thing - A) Wild boars that have eaten enough human flesh to learn how to hate. B) Pigs possessed by swarms of demons. In either case, they possess just enough knowledge to retain the simplest tool usage and malice. They move about the wilderness in vast swarms, killing and devouring whatever might be in their path. Occasionally they will excavate a warren and form a hive there around their dread queen sows.
   
4. Goblin - A) Are typically about the size of a child B) have a cartilaginous skeleton and can squeeze through anything big enough to fit their (large) eyes and (many, large) teeth C) are unafraid of death and cannot permanently die D) have a distant king who is said to return when least expected E) run the Goblin Market (naturally), which exists Between Places F) wallow in trash and absurdity G) are the life of the party. H) Everything else varies greatly.
5. Troll - A large, hairless creature like an hunchbacked ape. Its body is tumorous, constantly expanding and growing ever-denser with more cancerous flesh. They loathe and fear fire, and use its image and color as displays of bravery and prowess. They prefer dark, wet environments - caves or beneath bridges. They hate goats, for goats are clever and trolls are not. Long ago, when they were a kindlier folk, they raised the troll-stones, which may still be used to communicate across great distances instantly
6. Basilisk - A sluggish, portly reptile with a pebbly hide. A slow-motion ambush predator that uses its petrifying gaze to render its prey both incapable of escape but also completely aware of their inevitable fate.
7. Manticore - A tiger that has eaten 1000 humans. Has a face like that of a man, three rows of teeth, and a long tail covered in venomous quills. The souls of those they devour are an irritant, forming pearls in their stomachs
8. Forest-Folk - Tall figures in shimmering robes of emerald and gold silk, with skin dark as bark and hair like celestial bronze. First of humanity’s allies in the world, and though their numbers have dwindled they still hold to the ancient compacts.
9. Mouldywarp - Mole-folk with pink, star-shaped noses. Live in enormous, lightless citadels carved out beneath the mountains. Nearly blind, they are rarely seen above ground before dusk or after dawn. Masters of smithing, stoneworking, and jewelcutting - their work is renowned both for quality and beauty. Small companies (never more than a dozen) will often travel throughout the hill country and mountain townships as merchants and tinkerers.
10. Zombie - A corpse animated by a minor motive spirit; alternatively, a living human who has been incapacitated by repeated application of neurotoxin and mentally dominated by a sorcerer.
11. Skeleton - Bones animated by binding a motive spirit to them. Stronger spirits can manipulate bodies consisting of bones from multiple sources, arranged in layouts they could not have had in life.
12. Lich - A powerful sorcerer that has removed their soul without killing their body and stored it in an item. They cannot be fully killed without destroying their soul-container, though destroying their resurrection-casket might delay them for centuries. As such, they take great joy in making the locations of their soul-containers obtuse and impossible to find.
13. Ooze - A catch-all term for amorphous, soft-bodied detritivores. Generally aquatic, or otherwise limited to hot, damp environments, as they will turn to dust in dry heat or freeze solid in the cold. Dehydrated oozes can be resurrected, however, so care is needed.
14. Devil - One of the legions of infernal spirits scattered to the winds by the Harrowing of Hell. Despite the dissolution of their bureaucracy, they have remained loyal to their purpose as tempters and accusers and adapted well to solitary existence. A devil will never directly harm a human - they will grant them whatever they desire, and should it result in self-destruction and the ruin of others, that's on whoever asked for the boon.
15. Blemmyes - A people without heads - the features that would otherwise be found there are instead found on their broad, barrel-like chests.
16. Dragon - Enormous lizards, diverse in form (the possession of wings, the number of limbs, etc) who took fire from the sun and declared themselves masters of all the world. They are solitary, territorial creatures, and habitually gather enormous hoards to impress mates and establish dominance against rivals. The introduction of money to dragons serves as the basis of the known world’s economy.
17. Sphinx - A great cat with a woman's face, which may or may not have wings. Delight in books, games and riddles. Typically found as the guardians of libraries.
18. Fulgurmus - A palm-sized, golden-furred marsupial that, alone among mammals, can generate an electric charge to defend itself from predators. Notoriously cute, they are a very popular subject for children's toys (despite not making very good pets).
19. Ogre - A human that has grown bloated and monstrous through the combination of excessive cannibalism (and thus the accumulation of sin) and the soul-corroding effects of gold. Typically emerge from among the landowning class in times of famine or war.
20. Ghoul - Hairless, scabrous grey humanoids. Nocturnal corpse-eaters. Either exceedingly emaciated or immensely corpulent. Dwellers of catacombs, battlefields, cemeteries, and abattoirs. Typically solitary. No fear of death or age. Perpetually hungry. Will enter a state of estivation if the local corpse supply is low.
21. Embryonic God - A floating sphere of amber theoamniotic fluid. The soft, curled form within is wreathed in a radiant halo. Simple miracles cascade off it, wild and unshaped. Approach in lead-lined robes, ye faithful, and see: what manner of god is to be born?
22. Minotaur - Deformed offspring of human and auroch. Most will die within hours of birth - those that survive might endure forever, if they are fed sufficient human flesh.
23. Golem - A humanoid shaped out of clay, animated by divine power through the ritual intermediation of a priest. Being an imitation of the creation of man, as made by a less-skilled craftsman, golems do not possess volition or speech (though a golem developing these traits over time is not out of the question, especially if there is an important moral lesson to be taught.)
24. Moon Beast - Bloated, froglike beings with slippery grey skin and heads dominated by anemone-like clusters of pink tendrils. They are enslavers, viewing other beings as livestock to be corralled and eaten (they favor the brain). They have many servants abroad (the Men of Leng, among others), who under their secret patronage shape the workings of the world to their liking.
25. Mi-go - Winged crustaceans with pink-red shells about the size of a pony. Descend from the sky at night. Have a great interest in mining rare earth metals, and the workings of the human brain. Will trade their symbiotic fungal technology for both, and will welcome volunteers for brain studies. Many of their experimental subjects will end up housed in brain canisters, which are often left behind at their outposts.
26. Unicorn - A horse with a single horn. Hunted to near-extinction in religious rituals of the knightly class. Symbolic of innocence and purity, but really just a magical horse. Not particularly bright. Its flesh tastes better the more evil one has committed. One's death will spiritually poison the surrounding landscape.
27. Phoenix - A rare bird with brilliant flame-colored plumage. Brooding females will, when it is time for their eggs to hatch, catch fire and reduce themselves to ash - this intense heat is necessary for the chicks to hatch - a phoenix egg unable to receive the final burst of heat can remain dormant for centuries. Their feathers are a common ingredient in cure-alls, though they do a decent job of waking one from unconsciousness.
28. Harpy - A large carrion bird with a disconcertingly human-looking face. Native to warm coastal regions, favoring cliffsides and caves for their nests. Folds and wattles of skin on the neck and upper torso can give the appearance of breasts and first glance. Can mimic human speech, typically the vulgarities and taunts of passing sailors - their typical calls are considered unpleasant to the ear. Fond of shiny objects and beautiful stones, and will hoard them in their nests. Notoriously bad smell.
29. Morlock - A subterranean people that inhabit the vast, decaying machinery that supported an ancient civilization. They tend to devices that no longer work and that they no longer understand. They will step out onto the surface only at night, to scavenge food and other goods that they cannot find in the lightless factoriums below.
30. Eloi - Hairless, childlike beings that live in a land of idyllic orchards and perfect gardens. They are easily frightened by change and easily overcome by adversity, but will adjust to the outside world given care and time.
31. Bonnacon - A bovine with curling horns like a ram and a long, red-brown bane. When startled or threatened it will violently expel burning feces at the threat while making its escape, a trait which makes them unpopular animals on the whole, but very useful when it comes time to fertilize a field.
32. Vampire - Those that would desecrate a sacred space by drinking the blood of man and recanting the blessings of the gods are struck down with neither hesitation nor clemency. Those who host larvae of the Conqueror Worm will rise again in the night, to hunt the living faithful.
33. Hodag - Stocky, short-legged quadrupedal predator about the size of a badger or wombat. Hairless, with dark, leathery skin. Wide toothsome mouth, bull horns, and a series of cruved spikes running down the spine. Born from the ashes or refuse piles of abused livestock to enact revenge on humans. Nasty as hell.
34. Hydra - Giant serpents with nine heads that might be found in any hot environment far from human habitation. Their bites are venomous, easily capable of quickly killing other large wildlife. This venom reacts when exposed to water, foaming up and forming a poisonous gas - weaker than the venom itself, but still often lethal. The implantation of a hydra egg in a trepanned human is the means by which gorgons are created.
35. Elephant - Wisest of all creatures upon the earth. Steed of the gods, counselors to kings and princes, possessors of the true history of all things that have happened in the world and keepers of the old magics. To kill an elephant is to be cursed forever, and hunted to the ends of the earth.
36. Nymph - In lieu of marriage within the church, some women will offer themselves to the spirits of forest, river, sea and mountain. This wedding of souls will form a new being, a caretaker of the wilderness in the auspices of the great god Pan, long-dead Dionysus and dread Cybele. Their dances and songs are enticing, but travelers are wise to remain polite and make no advances towards them, for they strike against transgression without pity.
37. Centaur - Reincarnations of steppe-warriors who died alongside their steeds in battle. Patiently await the end of the world, when they shall be gathered by the Roan God to ride against Ahriman in the final battle. Until then they bide their time. They have no fear of bloodshed nor qualms regarding warfare: units of them might strike an army on the march solely for the glory of it. They can, with some difficulty, be persuaded to teach a mortal some of their secrets.
38. Salamander - Similar to its similarly-named cousins of ponds and streams, save for its increased size and its habit of inhabiting fireplaces, ovens, and fire pits. Makes a terrible loud hissing noise when disturbed (and it is very sensitive to disturbances) Possesses a pelt of tangled white fur which provides both complete resistance to fire, and a greatly increased risk of lung damage.
39. Sea Serpent - An enormous oceanic serpent, shimmering blue in coloration with a bright red crest trailing from its head. A predator of large fish and occasionally even whales, though its ferocity towards ships and their crew tends to be overstated. Considered a bad omen.
40. Conceptual Shark - The idea of a shark, retaining the predatory nature and deadliness of a substantial shark. Comes with the added, terrible bonus of not being limited by things like "water" and "materiality". Being the idea of a shark, rather than an actual shark, a conceptual shark is significantly more bloodthirsty and aggressive than its material counterparts.
41. Concubus - A spirit of sexual predation. It paralyzes its victim while they are sleeping and thus makes its attack, taking semen from men and impregnating women. The cambion offspring of these unions, though they are human and bear no taint of the demon, are often either killed as infants or left in the graces of the church. It is abhorrent to look upon - a dream-form of shifting parts and images overlapped upon each other - a thousand thousand cut up pornographs, stripped of any pleasure in the viewing. It makes no attempt to hide its form with glamour - it prefers its prey to be fearful. They are a common target for travelling bands of cutters, as not every township has the benefit of being able to wait for a church-sanctioned hunter.
42. Homunculus - An artificial organism (often but not always a human) created through the alchemical arts. They might be easily identified by their thick, calloused skin, their dependency upon certain reagents to sustain them and the mark of the Squared Circle or the Rub el Hizb somewhere upon their bodies. Because of the nature of their creation they lack traditional souls, instead possessing ones built of the fragments of many collected shades.
43. Cat of Ulthar - An inhabitant of the Dreamlands, which may hop to and fro between them and the waking world as they see fit. Similar in all ways, behaviors, and magical skills to mundane cats, save the willingness to speak to humans.
44. Flatlander - A two-dimensional people. Their social hierarchy is determined by the numbers of points an individual has, with the near-circular priestly class leading their theocratic society.
45. Glatislant - A creature with the body of a leopard and the head and neck of a serpent. Their call is that of a pack of baying hounds, sending hunting dogs into confusion. One of the Three Knightly Creatures, it has proven the most elusive to the hunts of the first estate - no glatislant has ever been taken as part of a hunt, whether alive or dead. They seem to enjoy taunting their pursuers, leading them on hopeless-cross-continent quests for nothing.
46. False Hydra - A pallid, flabby thing, a mass of flesh buried in the ground. It extends a long neck upwards, out of the soil; an eyeless head, a gaping mouth. Then another, and another. So long as it is singing, no one can see it, no one will notice it, but it must start singing to feed. The town is thinning out, and no one knows why, and the hydra grows fat and prepares to gather the survivors as its servants.
47. Parasitic Crown - A sort of crustacean taking the form of a ten-pointed crown. It will burrow its claws through the skull and into the brain, and drive the host to delusions of grandeur and an insatiable drive to accumulate wealth and exercise violent power against others, all while remaining reclusive in a fortified position. This is how most royal lines start.
48. Tartary Lamb - A large flowering shrub that grows live sheep, connected to the main plant by an umbilical root. These sheep are stringy and thin, but the wool is of good quality and they might grow even in dry and desolate soil. For poor farmers, this might be all that sustains their livelihood.
49. Vessel Knight - An empty ceramic exoskeleton into which some essence is to be poured. They are bound to a duty and to their sword, and sent out into the world to collect the soul or spirit that is to be housed within them.
50. Death Clock - A variety of spider whose abdomen is a fully functional chitin pocketwatch. These spiders do not tell the time of day, but rather count down the lifespan of those residing in the home whose walls the spiders currently inhabit.
51. Kalidah - Apex predator with the head of a tiger and the body of a bear. Commonly used as a heraldic beast. Have been driven to near-extinction for their pelts and supposed (but untrue) medicinal properties of their body parts.
52. Bobbit Dog - Mangy ferals in a pack, all thin and sickly. Spines like needles down their back. A worm’s head, with barbed fangs long as a hand, sticks out from between the shoulders, the neck coiled within and ready to strike.
53. Halfling Snatcher - A gangly black-haired thing with a too-big smile and a horrible rusty knife. Cavorts around looking for halflings to stuff in a sack. Never empties the sack. Ever.
54. Natali Stork - An ivory-feathered wading bird with a sable crest and a bronze beak. Reputed to spontaneously deliver human infants to doorsteps in the early morning, or in radically different sources, to devour them in their cribs.
55. Cynocephalon - The dog-headed folk of Prester John Land, far to the east. Few are ever seen in the Occident; those that are are often wandering sword-sages seeking the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone for the sake of their ancient priest-king.
56. Man in Black - Always in pairs, always wearing formal attire and bearing the seals of the king or duke or pontiff or tyrant or congress or so on and so forth. Do not be alarmed, they are only here to ask questions. Do not be afraid of their unnatural speech patterns and the jerks and twitches of their movements. Do not be suspicious of their origin nor of their purpose. They are only here to ask some questions. Please, step this way, there is much to discuss.
57. Umibozu - An enormous head and shoulders rise above the suddenly storm-tossed waves, black-blue as the night-depths. Implacable, they move to destroy the intruding ship.
58. Squonk - An ugly crepuscular herbivore, easily identified by its rotund body and loose folds of wary skin. Secretes a greasy substance that might be clarified into a corrosive. These "tears" are rather valuable among alchemists and other such uses.
59. Carbuncle - A small, furry creature similar to a rodent or rabbit, with an enormous red gem embedded in its head. The gem is valued for purported healing properties (healing of skin lesions and cancers with a touch, of curing ulcers when ground up and drunk), but the creatures are rare, fast, clever, and there are no valid citations for the gem's properties beyond second and third hand accounts.
60. Shoggoth - An archaean ooze, a mat of metamorphic organic matter from which all other life descends. Changing climate and the warfare of the peoples to follow them have driven them to the secret regions of and below the world. They possess vast, alien intelligence and in their brief communications have indicated that they were once enslaved and rose up against their masters, and would do so again. Yet, they permit some of their lesser spawn (dolmantles, flesh orchids, etc) to live and work alongside humanity.
61. Mimic - A predatory ooze capable of manipulating its shape, size, texture and color so as to imitate its environment. Some particularly intelligent specimens will imitate manmade items, some even going so far as to take the appearance of valuables to serve as the most effective lure for prey.
62. Alzabo - This much is agreed upon - it is the size of a bear, thereabouts. It resembles no beast of earth in form. Its skin may be red, and its hair may be black (both of these are contentious claims). It may speak in the voices of those it devours. It is cannier than worldly animals. Its brain may be processed into the fabled analeptic, which when consumed alongside human flesh permits communion with the memories of the dead.
63. Yith-spirit - A possessive spirit that will take command of an individual and drive them to a state of obsessive scholarly pursuit. They will not induce the host to violence, but the chilling of social relationships and sudden interest in esoterics will often permanently damage the host's bonds with friends and family.Yith-spirits will not admit their nature unless cornered, and even then will refuse to elaborate on their research beyond their need for more. A yith-spirit possession lasts 3-5 years, on average, and leaves no lasting effects on the host save murky dreams of winding stone hallways.
64. Mothman - Solitary, shy nocturnal creatures, forever seeking a sun they cannot bear to see. The archetypal appearance is black fluff and ruby-red eyes, but their looks vary as much as their tiny cousins. They bring warnings of disaster, hoping that some might take heed and flee with their lives.
65. Monopod - A people possessing of only one leg ending in an enormous foot, with which they hop around with surprising speed. They live in hot climates and will use their feet as sun-shades during the heat of the day, if nothing else will suffice.
66. Martian (Red) - Most numerous of the inhabitants of Barsoom and the most akin to humans. They possess sleek rust-red and tawny fur and a thick layer of blubber to insulate against the cold. They have liberated themselves from the Masters in the wake of the failed invasion, and so have begun to rebuild their civilization through the cultural fragments that they kept alive in great mountainside cities.
67. Martian (Green) - Twice or thrice tall as a man, possessing four arms, pale green skin, shaggy white hair, and prominent tusks. The warrior caste of old Mars, they have maintained the martial culture imparted to them by the Masters, though now for their own glory. They ride across the high steppe on their thoats, raiding and plundering neighboring settlements and each other.
68. Martian (Master) - The rarest of all; huge black cephalopods with bioluminescent, lanternlike eyes. Distant, dispassionate, and cruel - they consider other beings to be possessions at best, and meat the rest of the time. The few that survived the bacterial infections of Earth stew in their sterile saltwater tanks, deep in their frozen fortresses, attended to by their few remaining captives and the treasure vaults of their ancient dynasties. Consumed by hate, but impotent.
69. Carcosan - Nobles and their retinues, come to visit from a far-away court on the shores of the lake of Hali. There is something off about them, about their tattered finery and the way they speak of their king and his daughters, but one can hardly put a name to the feeling. They appear to us as a man might appear to a deer. And what of that slender man, standing just in the corner of your vision?
70. Merfolk - True merfolk are mammals, of two main lineages; peaceful seaweed-grazing sirenia, and the sleek carnivorous phocidae. Both are considered good omens by sailors and thus sacrosanct. False mermaids include the descendents of the Atlantean amalu caste (who bear scales and other fishlike traits, and are less intelligent than true merfolk), predatory klaxons (in truth a species of bird that mimics the distress horns of ships to lure would-be rescuers into rocks), and the legendary contraicthys (a fish’s head upon two human legs, created by wizards and one of the Five Greater Blasphemies).
71. Chambermaiden - A type of faerie native to all manner of pots, jars, and assorted earthenware containers. Typically take the form of beautiful women about a foot tall, wearing gowns of white, blue, or butterfly wing. Generally friendly, but very protective of their pots and the contents thereof. They greatly enjoy riddles and games, and so will ask visitors to bring them some obscure and obfuscated item for their help.
72. Infectious Advertisement - A weak possessive spirit that will, on certain triggers of sight or sound, trigger the host to recite a slogan or jingle for whatever product it has been bound to. Those nearby are at risk of catching the spirit as well, and furthering its spread like a mildly (or perhaps supremely) irritating disease. These spirits do not compel anyone to purchase the product, and may be removed through a simple exorcism.
73. deR0 - A subterranean creature similar to a human infant, with a bloated head and disproportionately thin and long limbs. Their skin is the grey-blue of asphyxiation, and their eyes dart and roll around without ceasing. They are the descendants of slaves taken by the serpent-men, and suffer still the tortures of their paranoia-wracked slavery. There is an air loom out there controlling everything, they are certain of it, doubtless you can see the connections...
74. Gremlin - A variety of goblin, something like a very small, hairless lemur with a long snout. They live inside machines and mechanisms and cause all manner of malfunctions and damaged parts in their mischief - occasionally resulting in deaths. They are more animal-like than their kin and do not speak except in high, giggling noises. Nests must be relocated when found, typically to scrapyards where they may pay to their content. Some progress has been made in training them to help repair and maintain machines instead of dismantling them.
75. Bogey - A shimmering grey being that flies through the air at great speeds, taking the form of a disc, blunt triangle, or cigar. Luminescent patches on their flanks will shine and flicker in patterns. Lone travelers occasionally drum up stories of being abducted by the creatures, claiming them to be living vessels inhabited by a people of grey-skinned dwarves, but often as not these tales have been the result of delusion or trauma.
76. Tooth Fairy - Thorny bodies like porcelain cicadas, voices like dentists’ drills and baby laughs. Eyes like drops of blood, mandibles like barbed fingers. Butterfly wings, orange, yellow and black. A milk tooth placed under a pillow absorbs dreams, and here is where tooth fairies are born – the unconscious child-mind recalling a beetle in the garden or a wasp at the window. They will bring these eggs to the Masticate King in his faraway castle atop the Red Hill, where he will fertilize them in hopes that they might birth his long-lost White Knights. When all 30 are returned to him, they shall mount their white horses and depart from the Hill, to hunt the Enamel Queen.
77. Oni - Huge, hairy, horned creatures, bright red or blue in coloration, that live high up in the mountains getting drunk and challenging travelers to wrestling matches or feats of strength. They love nothing more than getting absolutely shitfaced and getting in a fight - whether they win or lose is entirely incidental.
78. Dinosaurids - Last surviving descendents of the ancient dromaeosaurids. They live beyond the boundaries of the known world in small nomadic bands who have remained content with the obsidian blade and reed basket. They have a kinship with birds; though they bear no allegiance to the Simirugh themselves, they will offer hospitality to her servants.
79. Coelcyon - The hollow hounds of many angles. Their bones are needles and the rest is skin and fur hanging over empty space. They make a high-pitched whistling as they run, near-indistinguishable from tinnitus.
80. Acanthomata - Stoop-backed from the weight of the bulging, pulsing growths that weigh down its spine. Head bowed to the ground, as if in prayer. Yellow eyes burning with the fervor of endurance.
81. [Minotaur] - An entity of unknown countenance and capabilities, recorded only as the paranoia, and thereafter the absolute assurance, of the presence of a dangerous being. An inhabitant of mazes, labyrinths, and liminal spaces.
82. Literati - Tall, stoop-backed humanoids with grey-blue skin, lidless lavender eyes, and shining halos of stolen glyphs. Their presence renders the written word into gibberish or steals the words entirely, and with a touch to the head they might strip one of their ability to read at all. They are used extensively in the southern tyrannies as bureaucrats and functionaries.
83. Zoanthrope - A human whose cogitatium has been removed, typically through surgery, either as punishment or, more often, for purposes of fashion. They gambol about as animals, lacking the good graces of apes. The yahoos of Houyhnhnms' Land are by far the most famous variant.
84. Redcap - Appear as small, shrivelled old men, naked save for their enormous grey gore-stained beards and their tattered blood-red hats. Inhabitants of old battlefields, accosting travellers with chipped and rusty blades.
85. Loam Soldiers - The image of a man born of battlefield mud beneath a full moon, clad with broken armor and abandoned weapons. Their silver eyes are empty of thought or recognition. They march by night, seeking a foe without name just over the horizon. They are silent, and unwavering in their march.
86. Kishi - A hyena that has learned how to assume the shape of a human through sorcery. Predatory to fault, they will exert their will over others where-ever they can and bring ruin on those who resist. They can be told apart from human sorcerers by the presence of a hyena muzzle on the back of their heads, typically hidden by a common headscarf.
87. Homo diluvii - An extinct hominid with a flat, wedge-shaped head and enormous eyes. The discoverers of the bones declared it to be a branch of the human family from before the Great Flood; critics claim it is the skeleton of a gigantic salamander. Punches have already been thrown, and reports from distant outposts of similar creatures will only inflame matters further.
88. Cordyceps maximus - A variety of fungal infection that will gradually override the host mammal’s brain, driving them to seek the highest elevation possible where the fruiting body will then emerge from the host’s skull and begin releasing spores. If the infection is caught before maturity it can be treated through alchemical tinctures, sterilizing the fungus and allowing the victim to retain an altered but still stable consciousness after fruiting.
89. Nebutori - A spirit that manifests as sudden, inexplicable overnight weight gain.
90. Yeongno - A small, wingless, gold-orange dragon with broad, overlapping scales and a long crocodilian snout. A predator of the wealthy, as it has been tasked with devouring 100 rich people so that it might ascend to the heavens.
91. Jabberwock - A buck-toothed, bug-eyed, snake-neck and catfish-whiskered dragon from deep in the dreamy woods. Known for extreme violent territoriality, a tendency to survive for a surprising amount of time without its head, and for generating a localized field of spontaneous semantic aberration.
92. Bandersnatch - A large bird with a long, straight beak and an upside-down head. Rather than wings it possesses long, taloned arms with which it crawls around on all fours. They are considered a bad omen at best by the smallfolk, and extremely dangerous in all other cases. Should one be seen standing on its hind legs, the common advice is to prostrate oneself before it: not in an attempt to appease it, but rather to offer one’s neck for a quick death.
93. Chainbreaker - A spirit taking the form of a broad-shouldered man, wreathed in smoke and with a tongue of fire and wielding a huge workman’s hammer. It will come in the night to free the enslaved from their bondage, so that they might depose their enslavers and flee into the dark and to freedom.
94. Cattlopas - A miserable swamp-dwelling creature, similar in appearance to an emaciated, long-necked black bison. Its head is weighed down by the excessive weight of its horns, though this is rarely an issue for the creatures as they are solitary and graze near-exclusively on aquatic plants. The gastrointestinal fermentation required to digest its diet generates large quantities of noxious gas, which may be released from either end and can prove fatal if there is a lack of otherwise clean air about or an open flame present.
95. Chalkydri - Immense (often in excess of ten thousand miles!) copper-scaled serpents that inhabit the stellar corona of the sun. They possess six sets of wings. Despite the difficulty in observing them, their migrations are often used in certain divination practices and their songs have been translated into an entire school of magical practice.
96. Kuchisake-Onna - A spirit appearing as a beautiful woman, wearing a scarf or mask to cover up her mutilated mouth. She will ask her victim if she is beautiful - the only safe answer is to remain polite and neutral, saying that she is neither beautiful nor ugly. An offering of money or hard candy is also helpful. Otherwise, she will either kill the victim outright, or mutilate their face to match hers.
97. Kodama - A common tree-spirit, whose presence indicates that the local forest is healthy. They typically appear as small wooden figures with painted, mask-like faces. They do not speak, making only the noise of falling nuts or rustling leaves, but will aid lost travelers and give warning of danger.
98. Lemures - Spirits of the restless and malignant dead - black, maggotlike,wearing poorly-made plaster funeral masks. Will appear in a chorus to mock and harass the living, typically family members and descendants who have not shown appropriate familial piety. They may be distracted by a handful of black beans tossed over the shoulder, and driven away for a time by banging on pots and pans.
99. Galactomonstrum - Acephalic quadruped the size of a cottage, whose ponderous body is covered in teats and udders. A daughter of the mother of mammals, its milk can restore health from even the brink of death, enlivens the blood, and provides head against even the most bitter cold.
100. Bai Ze - A being with the body of an enormous white boar and face like a man, with rows of yellow eyes along its flanks. Known primarily for teaching the King in Yellow the nature and manner of every supernatural being in the world, though the book that recorded this knowledge has been lost and only small and contested fragments remain. Finding Bai Ze again has been a goal of supernaturalists for centuries.
101. Polycetus - A horrifying leviathan created when a pod of whales melds into an island-sized fleshbeast of blubber and barnacles and oil and curtains of baleen and banks of paddles, singing apocalyptic songs of the abyss. Mass beachings are in truth mass suicides: the whales know that the melding is near, and their good nature drives them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the rest of the world.
102. Globster - A species of large, oceanic ooze with the appearance and smell of rotten flesh. Will occasionally wash ashore, where they will confuse and terrify the local population before they are washed out to sea. Despite the smell and appearance (and taste, for that matter), globsters are edible and can prove and enormous boon to local fishing villages - should one be found nearby, the entire town will turn out with hooks, ropes, catchpoles and saws to butcher the creature.
103. Wub - A flabby, blobby grey thing with large, sad eyes. Reminiscent of waterbear, molerat, pig. Sapient, capable of mental communication - most of which is either discussion philosophy or moping about and piteously begging not to be eaten. This is a false pretense, as it in fact desires to be eaten, and will transfer its consciousness over to one of its devourers and swiftly take up its preferred life of lazy indolence.
104. Devil-Eater - Easily told apart from their cousin the hippopotamus by their coloration (light grey underbelly with crimson dorsal surface), and by the fact that their primary food source is demons. Several orders of sin-eaters will use the daemonovore as their icon. An invasive species in Hell, having infested both the Lethe and Phlegethon river valleys. As bad tempered and violent an animal as you are likely to find.
105. Tsukumogami - A household item that has, after 100 years, taken on a life of its own. They may move about under their own power, and might grow eyes and a mouth when they are active. Its behavior may be kind or cruel, depending on how it was treated when it was an object.
106. Mari Lwyd - A spirit of midwinter, manifesting as a tall figure in a white robe with a skeletal horse's head. Will appear at the door of the home and demand alcohol and food in song, and will only depart if the inhabitants of the home can out-sing it - otherwise, it will continue until either dawn arrives or patience runs out.
107. Dwarf Freshwater Plesiosaur - Precisely as they are named. They are more intelligent, and less aggressive than their oceangoing cousins, and much more reclusive. How they end up in isolated lakes both great and small, and how their populations persist in regions where there is not enough food to support them is a mystery still. Perhaps they go somewhere, when no one is looking?
108. Hollow Man - Superficially, they are a human - an older male of the dominant ethnic/religious/economic class. But there is nothing within them. No bones, no flesh, no air. A metaphysical hole in the universe, an embodiment of the un-thing, the death instinct encased in flesh. There was something there once, but it has been devoured, and it was given willingly.
109. Chessmen - Eusocial humanoids with chitinous exoskeletons. Each hive is split into multiple casts - the pawns (worker drones), knights (soldier drones) bishops (coordinators) rooks (constructors and mobile hives), the weak and vestigial king and the territorial and combative queen. The three primary species (white and black, with assorted subspecies) are engaged in constant warfare, attempting to capture or kill the kings of rival hives. Occasionally, queens will birth specialist clades, a trend that is increasing across all hives. Pawns may, in time of population stress, metamorphosize into all other non-king castes.
110. Angel - Servants of the Monad. Their ranks have been split into three factions since the breaking of the throne and the vacating of heaven: the apostoloi, who hold on to their duties as messengers of divine will and enforcers of Law; the egregoroi, who have dispersed through the world to lead and teach in secrecy; the hylics, who have embraced fully the pleasures and needs of the flesh.
111. Baku - A being somewhat like a small bear in shape, with tawny fur, a short trunk and blunt hand-span tusks. It feeds on dreams. While this may often be useful, eating nightmares and the like, they are gluttonous creatures and often overindulge, in preparation for a great hibernation to come. Should a baku feed too often on the same person they will develop increasingly severe insomnia, and in time even lose the will to live.
112. Cockatrice - When a chicken’s egg is nurtured by a toad or snake, it will hatch as one of these creatures - a small, vicious, venomous lizard with the beak and wattles of a rooster. They are considered a delicacy among certain noble courts, despite the danger they present and terrible taste. They hate their parent species and will attempt to kill all fowl or serpents they can find.
113. Ichneumon - A variety of mongoose that is the sole natural predator of the dragon. When possessed with hunting-frenzy, they will burrow their way through their prey’s soft underbelly (tearing away embedded gold or jewels if need be) and dig a direct line to the wyrm’s heart, which they will devour. They are the symbols of communist and anarchist movements the world over.
114. Deathworm - Segmented worm, bright red in coloration, wide as a barrel and up to forty feet long. A desert dweller. Sprays a sticky paralytic mucus, bright yellow in coloration.
115. Addict’s Friend - A spirit much like a lumpy orange balloon. It will latch itself to a host and provide it with whatever it might desire, but these gifts fade swiftly (for they are only illusions). The addict is driven to greater extremes, and the paradise feeds off of the emotional excess.
116. ORC - Armed enforcers of the principle of power, those who act with violence without consequence. Their masks are grotesque, the shields they carry declare their allegiance to their hate, their war songs are gleeful in the recitations of those crushed underfoot. They are perfectly ordinary humans, rewarded for their behavior and changed in no sorcerous way.
117. Ghost-Faced Killer - Someone whose face has been removed. The gaping hole that remains is now a nest for ghosts. They are the favored knives of necromancers, serving as bodyguards and assassins.
118. Gug - Hairy, four armed giants imprisoned deep underground by the gods for reasons unknown. Their massive mouths split their heads vertically. They are hated and shunned by the other peoples of the subterranean realms, likely for their habit of devouring most anyone who comes across them. Their language and culture remain unstudied.
119. Poliphoros Crab - The smallest are still big enough for a small cottage of symbiotic coral and barnacles, the average individual may possess an entire castle on its shell, and the near-legendary namesake specimens may indeed carry an entire town on their backs, though rarely more than two or three at a time grow to this size. They do not mind human habitation, and peaceably migrate around the shallow seas with no regard to their human inhabitants.
120. Shrike - An innocuous grey bird that serves the Nocinax, the King of Pain. They offer sacrifices by impaling small animals upon thornbushes, and do not think for a moment that they would not do so with larger prey, should they find the means.
121. Zaratan - A seagoing turtle so large that its back serves as an island. Thousands of unique microcultures exist on their backs all across the Panthallassic, migrating as the turtles see fit to do.
122. Brownie - A common house-spirit, appearing as an old man or woman no more than a foot tall. So long as the house is taken care of and their shrine respected, they will protect the inhabitants from minor evil spirits and tend to the home while they are away. When an object is lost, ask the brownie, for they are sure to know.
123. Rat King - Dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of rats bound together in an enormous mass of fur and teeth and scrabbling paws. They are typically found in sewers. Each component rat wears a tiny crown, and will retain its kingliness and be a recognized sovereign among the minor rodents even when severed from the whole.
124. Wild Hunt - A party of spectral hunters with their horses and hounds. Their clothing is tattered, their weapons antique, the words on their frosted breath archaic and strange. Their leader is obscured by hood and beard, and within only a single bright blue eye is seen. They will bid you join them, for there are beasts on the prowl, and more men are needed to hunt them down before the sun rises.
125. Man of Leng - A short humanoid with curling horns, a wide and jagged mouth, cloven feet and opalescent hair over all of their body. They arrive once or twice a year in great galleons with fuligin sails to trade in gems, luxury goods, and slaves. Very few people would admit doing business with them, but threats of force never seem to keep them away from the harbor. They speak glowingly of their great benefactors, but say nothing more on that matter.
126. Cacopithicus - Ratty red-brown fur smeared in shit. Fingernails curved like snail shells. Teeth set in gums like maggots in a side of beef. Crusty black eyes, dribbling snot and spit. An amygdala-dominated brain with a stunted neocortex flooded with testosterone. Everything bad about great apes with none of the good parts.
127. Loan Shark - Whether on land or on sea, debtors who skip on payments will eventually come face to face with their wide golden smiles. The interest rates are as you’d expect, and the appear out of nowhere, just when you think you might have gotten away with it.
128. Mushroom-Folk - Peaceable, patient, and slow, they first came into consciousness when they consumed the corpse of a god struck down from heaven in one of the interminable wars of the early celestial age. They possess the secrets of immortality, of a sort, where one might have their memories live on in the colony as their bodies are consumed by a fungal shroud.
129. Elder Thing - Beings found frozen in the midst of an enormous prehistoric city in the Uttermost South. They are shaped like an elongated barrel, green in coloration, with five-fold symmetry. Five tentacles with gripping appendages take up the posterior end, and a yellow, five-lobed structure bearing the five eyes and central mouth on the anterior Between each of the five ridges of the body there is a membranous wing, likely for aquatic movement or gliding than true flight. Reanimated specimens have mostly disregarded human interaction, communicating just enough to state that they do not wish to communicate.
130. The Red Death - A highly-infectious and often-lethal disease that causes extreme fevers and bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth and pores. It is spread through contaminated bodily fluids as well as the breath. Should it reach saturation within the population, it will manifest as a spirit taking the form of a man in a bloody shroud and poorly-made death mask, come to gather the dying. It seems to favor appearing to those who believe themselves safe
131. False Infant - A fat, pink, caterpillar-like thing. Preys upon humans that have recently suffered a miscarriage, using its limited perception-altering abilities to drive the host parents to feed and shelter it. After growing a considerable amount in a short time, it will pupate and metamorphose into its adult form, the grand red-eye butterfly, which is of little note or consequence save for the fact that its dust has a tendency to induce miscarriages when inhaled.
132. Nightgaunt - Gangly humanoids with rubbery fuligin skin, faceless heads, and vast batlike wings. Can be recruited as transportation both in the Dreamlands and the waking world. Will occasionally find service as messengers or servants of the Outer Powers, but bear true alliance only to themselves. Their touch imparts a tickling numbness.
133. Clown Skinner - Something with the outward appearance of a human being. Hunt and kill clowns so as to take their skins. They do this because they desire the clown's power, and to expand their personal collections, and to sell to those parties who might desire clownskin garments to render themselves dismissed as a joke.
134. False Corpse - A variety of fungus with a fruiting body very difficult to differentiated from a bloated corpse from a distance. Will explode with great force if disturbed, releasing a cloud of spores which will grow into their own fruiting bodies. False corpse circles are favored by fairies of the Court of Skulls.
135. Sky Manta - Similar to their oceanborne cousins in all respects, save for their coloration (assorted shades and combinations of blue, grey, and white) and their potential to grow to immense sizes (the largest recorded specimen possessing a 200 meter wingspan). They feed both upon aeroplankton, and on sunlight directly. They are considered a sign of good luck, signifying clear skies and light winds.
136. Benthic Shepherd - A human form two hundred feet tall, striding across the abyssal plains stone staff in hand. Their shoulders and head bear a cathedral-crown of smoke vents and tube worms, and their herd is of great sightless pale and nameless worms. They would be completely unknown to the surface world were it not for the many wizards who descend in their bathyspheres to learn their secrets.
137. Cacogen - Lack of gravity destroys the human body - renders bones to chalk, muscles to jelly, strains the organs to breaking. These are the survivors - the inbred posthumans who went to the stars and found there was nothing to inherit. They have returned to an Earth they are unfit to live upon, and all the more desirous of it for that reason.
138. Thing At The Bottom Of A Hole - Everyone knows about the hole. They're all certain that there's something living down at the bottom, something that comes out in the black dead of night. No one ever claims to have seen it. They leave it offerings, always have. The thing at the bottom of the hole is, for now, satisfied.
139. 100-Handed One - Giants with fifty pairs of arms. Master weaponsmiths who will venture forth from their volcano-forges with wares for sale. It is from them that the coat of arms comes - a garment containing a hundred weapons.
140. Gingerbread Pseudowitch - The creature itself, little more than a stomach and some vestigial limbs and organs as an adult, buries itself upright in the soil, with just its mouth exposed. It weaves a shell of gingerbread and sugary treats, and forms a proxy body by which to interact with the surface world - the image of a kindly old crone, attached to the house’s central pillar by an ankle chain umbilical. It will lure in the starving and the gluttonous, sedate them upon the spittle that went into building the shell, and the proxy will toss them into the disguised mouth of the creature’s true body.
141. Gravemound - A moving hillock of corpses and loam, formed from mass graves. Seek to expand themselves by acquiring new corpses, can devour a graveyard in a night. Bring with them swarms of flies, maggots, centipedes, and belch clouds of miasma formed of the fermentation of flesh deep within.
142. Nucklavee -A creature appearing as a rider fused to a horse, both flayed of all their skin. Its breath is poison and its touch is poison. It is confined to the ocean during the summer months by other spirits. It is harmed by fresh water, and will refuse to cross streams.
143. Grey Goo - A shimmering silver slime that, when woken from its dormancy by the presence of steady heat, will slowly consume any nearby matter to increase its own size. Any part of the whole, no matter how small, will act in the same manner, and it may rebuilt itself from a single drop. As it grows it will begin to form fruiting bodies and large lattice-structures, both of purposes unknown. Their presence is a great danger to all around - they must be frozen back into dormancy and destroyed by either unbearable heat or arcane means.
144. Floatsquid - A meter-tall cephalopod that floats about in the air through the help of a specialized buoyant mantle. Curious, inquisitive, highly social, and very good at problem solving. Like warm, wet climates. Can use basic tools and simple communication. Have a persistent trouble with predators, especially birds.
145. Modesty Monster - A drab dun beast utterly terrified and appalled at the sight of skin. Will attempt to force people into ugly floor-length veils, or, failing this, just stuff them in bags. Will actively hunt down practitioners of sexual activity or language and beat them with a large club. Does not actually understand how sex works, believing children pop up out of the ground with the harvest.
146. Beastman - Chaos cannot create, only change - these creatures are the result of its directionless attempts at imitating the work of the gods. Mismatched chimeras of human and animal, possessing minds that cannot organize their contents, bodies at war among their own component parts. Worst of all, they know of their wretched state, and know that somehow, the secret to their salvation lies somewhere in the hearts of men.
147. Will o' Wisp - The simplest of all ghosts, being a palm-sized blue or blue-green flame. Harmless, save their tendency to drift around the area where the death occurred. Will occasionally form large schools or swarms, especially during Sawen, and can also be found in the presence of more complex ghosts.
148. Alien Von-Neumann Probe - A floating sphere, glossy white and shining silver, with a single enormous eyes of red and black. A thrum fills the air, goes down to the bones. It watches, it wanders, but it does not interfere. Here and there it will stop at a mine, drawing up metals in a flash of golden light. In time, it will have collected enough to build another of itself, that will go on its way. Watching all the while.
149. Wudu-Wasa - The people of the forest. Giants with deep red hair and skin grey as winter sky or deep walnut brown. Some are haired head to toe like an ape, and it is common that women will wear beards or sideburns. They shun the company of other peoples, preferring instead a life among the spirits and beasts of the mountains and forests. Those that come down from the hills will go about as traveling shamans and doctors, as according to their ancient agreements with the lowlanders.
150. Tiger - A perfectly ordinary tiger, possessing no traits that a perfectly ordinary tiger would not have, save for the fact that it is currently found in a place and circumstance that it is entirely unlikely for a perfectly ordinary tiger to be, and that it is desperately hungry.
151. Disc Horse - Oh god what the fuck. Why is it circular. What did you do to this horse. It is like a plate on its rim, with horse legs around the edge. Too many legs. Why does it have so many legs. No I will not look into its horrible horse eyes, the horse eyes that beg for death no I will not listen to the pitiful whinnies that plead for mercy. What has happened to this horse. God has abandoned us