Outlandish Weapons

Some may remember this post from long ago, where I wrote about farm tools and various other improvised weapons. This post was meant to follow it but time and circumstance necessitated several circumambulations of the stablished earth betwixt that time and now, and various vicissitudes observed and experienced, so the original is barely recognisable. The names and pictures are what counts, though. Good names can be dusted off and reconditioned.

At about the time I wrote the Terrible Weapons post I got hold of a couple of Umberto Eco books that were highly influential on me; The Infinity of Lists and The Book of Legendary Lands. These books are essentially works of curation in which Eco exercised his very considerable erudition in gathering and presenting historical fragments to illuminate their influence on the cultures we inhabit. The result of my exposure to his scholarship and ideas caused me to rethink my approach to things.

Firstly, Lists is about lists, and the use of lists throughout history. I am especially interested in the fundamental importance of lists in rpgs. D&D is, at its core, a game about curating worlds and narratives from menus of options: its bestiaries are lists of monsters, its grimoires are lists of spells, players' handbooks are lists of heroes and weapons and equipment and skills, DM's guides are full of lists of traps and treasures and NPCs and terrains and techniques. The preceding sentence was a list of some of the lists in D&D. Lists of options suggest abundance and dynamism, even those you don't use enrich the sense of more wonderment and excellence receding beyond the horizon. Lists.

Legendary Lands is about the places historical people made up and either believed existed somewhere beyond their borders, enjoyed pretending to believe, or kept in some other manner as a cultural idea worth thinking on. This gave me a couple of things: The first was the sense that I could profitably work with a setting that was immediately adjacent to the real world, set in a vague epoch prior to the dawn of history, as did Howard and Tolkien, and didn't have to make up names for lands (which is something I don't like to do). The second was the names of the lands themselves and the power source of the adjacency of real-world histories and languages and cultures. Meropis and Atlantis, for example, are from Ancient Greek literature, Hy Breasil is from Mediaeval Irish literature. Their geography is already suggested by the sources and their psychogeography also. Drawing from these sources allows ersatz essentialism sans faux-nomenclature and allows access to more and better lists.

The outlandishness of these weapons refers both to their strangeness and to their origin from beyond the Septentrional Suzerainty or the Occidental Imperium (or whatever the generic centre is that provides the ground against which the estrangement of otherness can be contrasted). The weapons require that the character use them is able to speak the language of the realm of their origin. So language, conventionally a relatively useless appendage to the old-school PC, could be said to have with it some knowledge and understanding of culture. Here, the assumption is that if you speak the language you can use the weapon properly. You could, of course, wield the weapon without the language, but it wouldn't be special, certainly, the merlouns and babewyns won't listen to you, and you'll almost certainly inadvertently incinerate yourself with a Magonian Phlogiston Globe.

Open in another tab so you can read the inscriptions. My alchemical symbology is on point.

1. Merloun of Annwn: Raptor bred by the Faulkners of Annwn, whose falconry is unsurpassed in any realm other. AC: 20 (O) MV: Fl 200' HD: 1/2 Att: divebomb d6 dmg (automatically hits) Save: T7 ML: 11 AL: L

2. Mezzoramian Hornbow: Extraordinarily strong bow of horn, antler, hardwood, sinew and perchance blasphemous paynim magicks. STR bonus adds to the damage it causes. Range 70/140/210, d6 dmg, over 3 dmg and it's butted against the bone, d3 dmg to pull the barbed arrow out (-2 to everything per arrow stuck in).

3. Lemurian Keris: Wavy-bladed weapon of outlandish mottled steel. d4 dmg, each wound bleeds 1 dmg/rd until bandaged.

4. Flambard of Lyonesse: Flame-bladed greatsword, extraordinarily sharp. Flourishing the flambard in gleaming moulinets causes opponents of lower level to check morale or flee (unless of significantly superior numbers). d12 dmg.

5. Arimaspian Akinakes: Shortsword of Arimaspian arsenical bronze. Those wounded will be weakened. -1 STR per wound. 1d4 dmg.

6. Atlatl of the Antichthones: The indigo Antichthones, who dwell beyond Taprobane, fling their flint-tipped spears exceeding far by the cunning of their ebon spear-throwers: d6 dmg. Range: 40/80/120. Over 3 dmg and there are shards of flint stuck in the wound, -1 to everything until wounded receives assistance from a Chirurgeon.

7. Choromandaean Gimel: Throwing stick of the savage Choromandae that flies with its own murderous intent. Goes round corners in search of its quarry. Ignores cover (even if complete). 1d4 dmg. Range:  30/60/90.

8. Atlantean Orichalcum Parazonium: Dagger-sword of ruddy golden hue. Puissant against the cacodaemoniacal denizens of supramundane realms. d4 dmg, d12 against cacodaemoniacal denizens of supramundane realms.

9. Dwergish Blunderbore: Preposterous gonne of the Dwergish folk. It goes off with a staggering bang that knocks wielder over if to-hit roll exceeds wielder’s strength. Ammunition is whatever bits of crock, nails, stones or low-value currency the wielder can get their hands on. 3d6 dmg + knockdown as with wielder to 10’, 2d6 to 20’, 1d6 to 30’ spreading in a cone 20' wide at 30' range. ROF 1/3.

10. Amazonian Sagaris: Horse-headed hammer-axe of the Amazones, it is exceeding swift and deadly when used from horseback or chariot - double damage at the charge, helmets knocked off automatically. d8 dmg.

11. Quicklime of Palaisimundus: Pouch of alchemically-refined caustic powder, slung in the faces of enemies causes blindness and burning lungs. Save or -4 for d6 rounds, backfires disastrously on a 1. 10 doses. Wear gloves.

12. Werrebowe of Elphame: Knotty bow of yew, exceeding strong and springy. Flings its peacock-fletched arrows preposterously far. Range 300/300/300, d8 dmg.

13. Shillelagh of the Little Folk: Blackthorn cudgel, buttered well and kept in a chimbley for seven years so it is as hard as iron. Stunning blow puts foe out of action, reeling idiotically, for one rd/lvl on a roll of 20. d6 dmg.

14. Bident of the Anthropophagi: Gigantic eating-fork of the cannibalistic Anthropophagi. Once hit, opponent must sustain the same damage to tear bident from flesh. d8 dmg.

15. Naphtha Flasks of Iram: Combustible spirit held in vessels of crockery or crude green glass. Ignited and thrown, it shatters and the naphtha burns green and evilly. 2d6 direct hit, 1d6 within 5', 1d6/rd thereafter until fire is put out. 10/20/30.

16. Antediluvian Fanged Club: Heavy bludgeon set with the petrified teeth of the terrible beasts of the Earth's savage dawn: the Krackenback, the Ziphius, the Apophis, the Illuyankas: d20 dmg. One terrible monster will attack the possessor each day.

17. Arcadian Syrinx: Panpipe of the maenads and tripping capripeds, the music of which is contagiously frenetic and strange. Disastrous frenzy ensues in the vicinity of its playing. All combatants, friend and foe, gain advantage on their attacks.

18. Flail of the Skiapodes: Terrifying spiked flail, flailed in a flailing motion by the one-legged leaping skiapodes. Two attacks per round, flail self on 1, d8 dmg.

19. Meropian Vitriol: Glass phial of mordant humour distilled from the sublimated rage of ascetic Meropian Philosopher-priests. Disastrously corrosive: d12 dmg on first round, d10 2nd rd, d8 3rd, d6 4th, d4 5th, d2 6th.

20. Babewyn of the Cynocephalides: Unmanageably vermin-infested gurning ape kept by the dog-headed men. It steals and shrieks and flings its dung. Once you have one, another will arrive every d6 days. Everyone is itchy from now on : AC: 15 (5) MV. 40' HD: 1 Att: 1 bite, d4 dmg Save: T1 ML: 6 AL: C.

21. Soliferrum of the Hesperides: Iron javelin forged in crucibles of the sunset-realm and marked with the glyph of the sun. Ignores all armour. d8 dmg, 20/40/60.

22. Angon of Urheim: Iron-shanked spear of the house-carles of Urheim. If thrown at a shield it renders it useless automatically and the opponent cannot attack the next round. d6 dmg.

23. Hoggspjot of Thule: Heavy and hardy hewing spear of the reivers of Thule. Wielder may hew opponent's mundane weapon in half on a successful strike. d8 dmg.

24. Agarthan Firelance: A spear from subterranean Agartha with a pair of incendiary devices mounted on either side of the point. The wielder may light the fuses to produce gouts of blazing green sparks and smoke to dazzle, scorch and dishearten their opponent. An opponent who is deterred by fire will be at -4 to hit for the 5 rds. A successful hit also may cause clothing to smoulder and burn at GM’s whim. 1d8+1 dmg

25. Fire-Blackened Stick of the Troglodytae: A stick, sharp at one end and hardened in a fire, kept by the loathsome Troglodytae in their reeking grottoes, the uspeakable filth thereof makes the wounds vulnerable to corruption. Save or festering ensues: -1 CON/day, save each day thereafter, two saves in a row indicates recovery. Each wound festers independently.

26. Tourney Sword of Ys: A sword specialised for harness-fighting with heavily-armoured men-at-arms. It is a stiff and narrow spike with a grip-knob for half-swording, armour-piecing quillons and a flanged-mace pommel for desperate bludgeoning. +3 to-hit against plate armour. d8 dmg

27. Claidheamh-mòr of the Sith: Greatsword of the Seelie-Wights, extraordinarily wieldy depite its size and conducive to vehement flourishing , successful kill means attack roll and full dmg can then be applied to another nearby enemy.

28. Dart of the Pygmies: Long, fletched, barbed hurling-javelin wielded by the Pygmies in their battles against the Storks and Phoenicopteruses of their homelands. The Darts are poisoned with the virulent lycoctonum which they carry in little crocks. d6 dmg 20/40/60 save or fall frothing in agony, d20 dmg from poison, miss next round. 6 doses

29. Carnyx of Hy Breasil: Brazen discordant howling of the Carnyx fills the enemy with fear and panic. Anyone not of Hy Breasilian ilk: ML Check each round. 1st failure lose initiative. 2nd in a row: Wavering - no actions this round. 3rd in a row: Flee in panic.

30. Hyperborean Harpoon: Cold-forged harpoon for the hunting of the Raudkembingur and Troluals of the boreal seas. d8 dmg. Gets stuck inside if it causes 4 or more damage and wounded one bleeds great gouts, d4 dmg/rd until wrenched out, STR check to wrench out for d8 dmg. Range 15/30/45.

31. Shamshir of Serkland: Supremely sharp sword of superb craftsmanship rewards the nimble wielder with unmatched flickering speed and deadliness: d8 dmg. Wielder may use both STR and DEX bonuses to modify attack and dmg.

32. Jawbone of a Rantipike of Nod: Seemingly simple asinine mandible allows one attack per level each round . 1d4 dmg.

33. Stone-maul of Trollmark: Heavy and unwieldy and fell, the stone maul carries in it some of the malevolent puissance of one whose petrified remnant this is. It has incised in it a sigil of gealdorcraeft: the Stafur til að vekja upp draug. It can strike invulnerable spirits, attacks only every second round and causes 2d8 dmg.

34. Shotel of the Blemmyes: Sickle-sword of the acephalic Blemmyes who wield it along with their great wicker pavises. Ignores shields: d8 dmg

35. Magonian Phlogiston Globes: Crystal spheres, scorchingly hot, 1d4 dmg to anyone who tries to throw them with bare hands, 3d8 fireball of 10' radius, white-hot, failed save = blind, - 4 for 1d4 rds 10/20/30

36. Firkin of Stitchback of Cockaigne : Potent ale of Cockaigne cures what ails you up to the point where you sober up, each mug cures 3 hp for one hour, over three mugs also reduces dexterity by one per mug over three. Firkin has 20 tankards initially. Weight: 10 items

Six Words and Seven Winds

Six Words

So it probably surprises no one who is even vaguely familiar with me that I like words. One of the primary sources of inspiration for me when I write Ampersandy stuff is Joseph Wright's incomparable tome from the turn of the twentieth century, The English Dialect Dictionary. And when I say tome I actually mean tomes, because it's a six-part beastie and runs to somewhere around five thousand bountiful pages. And when I say tomes I actually mean pdfs. I would love to own a hard copy of the thing but that is not only very expensive but of less utility than a searchable pdf. Much as perusing the thing is great, being able to search a specific term and find synonyms in twenty different English dialects is my favourite way of enriching my nomenclature*.

But the serendipitous acquisition of intriguing words is also great. I've always said that you can look at any page and find something gameable. I shall now attempt to prove this to myself with a few random examples, one from each of the six volumes (and probably draw them because I like to make things as time-consuming as possible).

Several hours later;

This one is going to be easy. There are so many names for this kind of bogeyman (bugbear is the least awesome one). Note how in the examples in the Somerset dialect there is the form béol-bag'ur. I like that one.

Béol-Bag'ur. Evidently sufficiently evil that he must wear purple death's head pants.

This is a random process and this was a suboptimal page but herbalism is good. Fumitory is said to be not just good for removing freckles but good for eye ailments and poisonous. Gameable. 

Fevertory: looks poisonous

This is also easy, and the fact that it's from Devonshire means that's two opportunities for bad West-Country accents already. Obviously the Hinderling is a particularly useless kind of hireling, and the notion that there are kinds suggests a taxonomy of hirelings. I cannot stress enough that hireling taxonomy is grossly underdeveloped.

Ornately ensatcheled rustic hinderling

Pirrie-dog looks like a corruption of pariah dog. This one is also easy. It's an annoyingly parasitic kind of dog

Also gameable. PCs need pets. The pirrie-dog is meek unless its master be harmed, it also probably steals provisions.

I like guns in the game and this one gets points for being a proparoxytonic trisyllabic compound from the Shetlands.

Because it's a fowling piece, this shimylick is ornate and doesn't do a lot of damage. Aristocrats covet it, though.

There are a lot of words for sickly, underdeveloped, malnourished people in the dialects of the 19th century

Yurlin: yet another kind of wretched little fellow. I do not know what he is reaching for but I want to play him. He is wearing green winingas.

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Seven Winds

I was reading this post by Arnold and I got to thinking about the winds that have names, like the Sirocco, or the Mistral. There's a wind in Western Australia called the Fremantle Doctor that brings cool relief when things are unpleasantly warm, and a wind that blows across the Great Lakes called the Witch of November that I can't imagine is very pleasant. Wikipedia has a great list of named local winds.

So I wrote about these winds. The only one of these I know well is the Scrafflehorn, which led me frequently astray when I was young. It is very difficult to resist.

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Seven Winds are held to be of special significance by the Magonian Tempestarii, who, by the secret art that is theirs, do call them from out of the very firmament. Likewise, among certain cunning folk of more meagre realms the art of Whistling Down the Wind is known.

In each tradition, the production of certain tones is required. The Magonians have developed, through queer metallurgical and sonic arts, a type of ocarina of yellow-grey metal, and playing certain melodies upon it brings down the wind. Hedge Wysards merely whistle with their fingers, or upon an ancient eaglebone flute. Times and seasons needs must be right or the wind will disobediently dissipate and all be becalmed.

1. The Gaberliltie: Lyrical and gentle breeze that blows across sunlit streams and sends the yellow willow leaves in tumbling cascade. It undermines the dictates of the waking wit, suggesting rather slumber in shady places where dreams of distant music fill the fancy. It is ever a cause of tardiness and distraction.

- The Gaberliltie will cause folk to go missing for a time, but only in daylight. Their excursion will be spontaneous and seemingly harmless as the Gaberliltie beckons them towards dappled shade and running water to wile away the day.

- A magician may use this wind to carry a snatch of song, to bear a piece of parchment, to lead an unsuspecting person astray by day

2. The Scrafflehorn: A warm wind, fragrant with the mingled perfume of flowers and of distant smoke, that comes on certain autumn evenings. It wakes in the hearts of those too young to stray abroad at night a wanderlust to do just that, and to run with the wind, encapsulated within an unseasonal warmth, always in the eventide and always away from safety toward some manner of trouble.

- The Scrafflehorn abducts innocent people with a kind of beckoning entrancement and they eagerly go forth unaware of the danger. In the night are sudden chasms and smugglers and nobles on ignoble trysts and innumerable dangers besides.

-A magician may use this wind to carry seditious words, to bear a piece of cloth, to lead an innocent astray at night

3. The Knaurthaw: Laments among barren boulders and among the wiry brush of forlorn and distant places. It whistles and mutters interminable and does not cease for maddening weeks.  And it is a hermit wind that scorns populated places in favour of the utterest desolation. But the lonely find in it some bitter solace, that like the restless soul within them the Knaurthaw grieves without cessation, and solely for the sake of grieving.

-The Knaurthaw afflicts wanderers in desert places with loneliness and madness. It is difficult for those afflicted to determine that it is the wind that is doing this but the suffering caused by the delusions and savage melancholia is real.

-A magician may use this wind in a wilderness to carry threatening message, to drive a little boat, to drive a lonely person mad.

4. The Rackletongue: Inordinately perverse and malicious wind that with fitful gusts seeks to upset the order of things. Fine garments are thrown by it into the mire and inkpots upset upon inspired poetry. It has about it a sullen vindictiveness, that any should strive to remain untouched by disorder aggrieves it and it punishes them with innumerable petty slights.

-The Rackletongue acts like a petulant intent on causing as much distress as possible and it seems to know what is important. It is not especially strong but it targets that which is valued.

-A magician may use this to carry an angry message, to drive a large boat, to break things from afar

5. The Lournagh: Cold sorrow manifest as a wind off the mountains. It carries with it the stark essence of those elevated regions of inimical stone and sky. The uncaring nature of the Lournagh suggests, to those sensitive to such things, the uncaring nature of the cosmos-at-large.

-The Lournagh is not a strong wind but it is frigid and saps the will to live. Numb emptiness prevails where it blows. It tempts with oblivion and the meaninglessness of everthing.

-A magician may use this wind to freeze a person, to carry a desolate message, to induce self-destructive despair

6. The Rambaleugh: Fearful tempest that tears reckless and unbound from boreal wastes in search of ruin to wreak. It carries with it sudden squalls and sleet and heedless brutal violence. Shouted words are snatched away in the howling, and familiar geographies rendered obscure by the blinding tumult.

-The Rambaleugh is perpetually enraged in its stupid kind of way and will smash everything, if need be, to sate that rage. Unlikely things are borne aloft by it and dashed to pieces on the rocks

- The magician may recklessly ride this wind or use it to destroy things

7. Uncle Withershins: An unwholesome exhalation as of the last breath of a moribund earth before the death rattle, Uncle Withershins is more malefic and defined a personage than the other winds. He blows through the underworld, among catacombs of immemorial decay, and bears with him the redolence of rank odium. His gentleness is leprous, no noxious vapours are dispersed, but borne along slowly in a haze. Miasmas, especially, are his gifts, and ill-tidings.

-Once Uncle Withershins is loosed upon the world he will blow where he wishes. Wherever he blows suffering increases.

-A magician can bestow Uncle Withershins with prophecies of doom to promulgate to those who least deserve it, and to seek out miasmas to inflict upon the populace

Quick Windy Glossary

Gaberliltie: troubadour or travelling minstrel
Knaurthawing: discontented grumbling
Lournagh: sorrow
Magonia: fabulous land held by mediaeval French people to be among the clouds**
Rambaleugh: tempestuous
Rackletongued: harsh, blunt
Scrafflehorn: rascally youth
Tempestarius: weather-worker
Withershins: anticlockwise. Opposite of deosil

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*Of course I could just make up words for things. It is perfectly ok if you make up words so long as you don't show them to anyone. Unless you're a philologist and have spent decades creating your own language. That's ok too.

** Written about by Agobard of Lyons in 815, source here. Mediaeval Aliens!

"But we have seen and heard of many people overcome with so much foolishness, made crazy by so much stupidity, that they believe and say that there is a certain region, which is called Magonia, from which ships come in the clouds. In these ships the crops that fell because of hail and were lost in storms are carried back into that region; evidently these aerial sailors make a payment to the storm-makers, and take the grain and other crops. Among those so blinded with profound stupidity that they believe these things could happen we have seen many people in a kind of meeting, exhibiting four captives, three men and one woman, as if they had fallen from these very ships. As I have said, they exhibited these four, who had been chained up for some days, with such a meeting finally assembling in our presence, as if these captives ought to be stoned. But when truth had prevailed, however, after much argument, the people who had exhibited the captives, in accordance with the prophecy (Jeremiah 2:26) "were confounded … as the thief is confounded when he is taken."

A Sojourn Among Antediluvian Archæotheria

This started with nomenclature, as so many things do. I started writing a response to Scrap Princess's post about Dinosaur naming conventions in the fantasy genre. Then I got carried away.

Essentially, I attempted to cunningly misinterpret a Stegosaur, an Azdarchid, a Theropod and a Plesiosaur.

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I have an Instagram now, on which I am recording some of my illustrations. Please follow it. I am engaged  in a project exploring the conventions of representation in mediæval bestiaries and am still (and increasingly so) obsessed with epistemology and delusion and pretending, with Umberto Eco's historical omnivory, with prosody, time, the Anabasis, Heart of Darkness, Eddison, Melville, lists, sentences that go on and on,Classical historiography, evolution, Harryhausen, melancholy, nomenclature-which-I-think-I-mentioned, the sweet futility of existence, the poetics of et cetera, people getting killed by monsters etc.

I cannot remember why I think the bone marrow of giraffes is hallucinogenic but that gets a mention.

Some of the Meropians are named for Archaic Greek potters, whose talent it was to enclose voids in burnt earth made beautiful. I am not sure what this suggests.

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A Sojourn Among Antediluvian Archæotheria

The image is sufficiently large as to warrant opening in a new tab

(What follows are the notes of the transcriber)

And lo! Who has not heard of those half-a-thousand phalangites from the seven city-states of the Omphalian Autarky who, returning burthen'd with spoils from campaign against the Lemurians, did fall afoul of cacodaemoniacal tempests, doubtless vengeful sendings of those initiates of foul dæmonologie who reign over the immemorial swarming verdure of thrice-curséd Lemuria, and, finding themselves most mournfully marooned upon an alien strand beyond Taprobane and Palaisumundus afar, did suffer the depredations of unnamed tribes, and of the untamed elements themselves, that with immoderate vehemence did scourge the waylorn woeful wanderers with agonies innumerable, and with miasmatic airs laid low the mighty, such that in the span of forty days few only survived in confraternity of hardihood to overcome unspeakable perils and return, to what ingratitude and upheaval and what eventual ascendance escapes the bounds of this tale?

Of late, an Archivist of House Mirkinnen, trading favours for secrets that she may assure the betrayal of the unjust that is ever the stock-in-trade of those crepuscular whisperers, made available a fragment attributed to a nameless Meropian Scribe, claimed to be a student of Dropides the Metagnomist, and, asserting its claim as a lost chapter of that tale of phalangitic exile and return, did profit mightily in the exchange, such is the eager appetite for the outlandishness of that history

It was understood then, as it is understood now, that the inhabitants of quinqueremes are but poorly endowed with discernment, else why would they, in contravention of good sense, condemn themselves to bodily and to spiritual peril aboard such inadvisable vessels, to plough the deeps of unknown oceans in search of endless war? Little wonder is it, then, that gathered in those floating enclaves as far from the influence of such wise personages as do universally scorn foolhardy misadventure as they are from the rectilinearity and orderliness of civilised lands, and as far, indeed, from the immutability of land itself, starving and straining among the phantasmagorical changeableness of ocean, little wonder that such misapprehensions arise as to the nature and the order of things.

Thus, it is necessary to take the teratological revelations gleaned from the recovered chapter as being perchance the ravings of those too long in the habit of disgorging confabulatory concoctions as edicts of unfailing veracity. Mayhap the ordeal had temporarily bereft them of their senses, or strange fruit gobbled greedily by starveling sailors had, as does the henbane or the thornapple, bestowed strange fancies in their minds. Mayhap the scribe himself in old Meropis had gorged himself upon the marrow of the cameleopard that plunges the senses into radiant abysms beyond right knowing. Each of these circumstances is more likely than that what is said is true. Nevertheless, having disavowed claims of veracity, and not rendering salient the stark possibility that the fragment was a brilliant forgery, I relate to the reader what was claimed to have transpired upon the interior plateau of that unnamed island.

Fragment 1: The Crenellated Beast

On the third day after the massacre among the bowers the skiapodes gave up their pursuit. We had, by this time, ascended above the scree into a place of thickets and thorns where we could rest. There was, nearby, a stream that ran upon a rocky shelf to a waterfall, and the spindrift and spume thereof, caught by the wind and borne about, filled the place with a misty uncertainty. It was at the edge of this stream and among this mist that, in the extremity of their exhaustion, the men beheld a thing like a great lumbering ox, but that he bear upon his back series of fortifications like those upon the walls of a fortress. In size he was greater than the great olifant who is likewise burdened by masonry when in warlike array he trumpets his challenge and tramples underfoot the massed legions of mankind. Greater and more terrible was this crenellated beast, and most terrible of all his twenty-cubit tail that bore upon its end the likeness of a morgenstern, that bludgeoneth even as it pricketh, so the saying goes, and with a sweep of this tail it smote Agathon, the lover of Teuthras, such a ponderous stroke as to hurl him bodily through spindrift and spume and over the precipice itself. There Teuthras plunged also, in extremity of woe, for had they not, against the designs of fickle fortune, escaped together the captivity of the Androphages and a dozen likelier dooms? Thus was the Plunge of Teuthras that in later days became proverbial. (Transcriber's note: No record of the proverb remains)

Fragment 2: The Haunter of Precipices

Following the theft of the fruit by the feathered jackanapes we ascended the second tier and came into a region of sheer chasms and ridges, a land cleft as by the primordial titans of an elder aeon, who with colossal strokes did split the world irrevocably asunder and thus allow the reign of chaos unending that, of a surety, prevailed still in this place. The necessity of traversing the chasm floor beneath such beetling heights wore heavily upon the men, inured to so many privations but exposed, in this place, to a growing terror of what might espy them from far above and stoop upon them in the barren streambed where they walked. They all remembered the report of lost Hegesistratus: of that great carrion fowl he had seen circling above the carnage following the disastrous battle with the Antichthones, and of other like shapes, greater by far than any mortal bird, incised upon the stones of their holy places.

The second day in the chasms they all saw it, climbing along a narrow spine of stone in a manner reminiscent of the vespertilio that hangeth inverted in shrine or grotto and flitteth forth by dark of night. For it climbed upon its taloned pinions as well as its taloned feet, and those wings were of hide, but greater than the azure sails of the argosy flying before a zephyr, and they sagged in loathsome grey folds as it crept. Of a surety it espied us from those red eyes at the moment we saw it. For all cried aloud at the terror of the thing. But it did not come nearer then but crept over the far edge of its stony tower and out of sight. All saw, though from afar, the horrific delineation of its terrible crimson head, though what mad god devised it none could say.

Though they kept to the narrowest ravines, the fear of the thing ate at the men and, in his anguish, Euphronios ascended alone an escarpment he thought an egress from the region of chasms. While he climbed, weeping, and Glaucon railed at him for a fool, there came a shriek unlike the cries of earthly fowl, and in it was mingled the hissing and bellowing of those serpentine and those bestial denizens of unfriendly Earth whose mischief has been ever the undoing of the world. The clamourous echoes in that stark and labyrinthine place resounded to such a cacophony that the waking nightmare of the thing that came upon cinerous wings and took Euphronios in its talons was not incongruous but fitting, for each perceived the world, in that moment, as does a sleeper in the torments of a night-terror. It bore him aloft, and he cried out in sorrow to Glaucon below. All saw it, plumed and scaled and inexplicably furred, bear him to its eyrie and rend him as the gastrel rendeth the slayworm, and its horrific brood raised their heads to received his proffered flesh.

Fragment 3: The Imperator Fowl

The third belt of verdure had been a more difficult barrier to traverse, in part due to its density and in part due to the chittering fowl that attended us nightly in great abundance and groped at us with curious fingers, snuffing, perchance, some victual and seeking to purloin it as had the treacherous plumed jackanapes a week before.

After the squalls of the previous days the soil of the clearing was soft and muddy and bore the many and varied pawprints of the feathery denizens hereabouts. But they were furtive in the daylight, and the clearing was empty when we crossed it. Near the middle, where there grew a few ferny thickets, Cynaegirus saw the tracks of a far greater creature, alike to those of the pilfering fowl of the forest but huge and deep. "Indeed, among these diminutive subjects this must be an Imperator grown fat upon tribute" - such was the jape. For desperation necessitates a ready mirth,  or hearts would burst asunder at the strain, but likewise  came fear and decision was made to abandon open ground for the sheltering tangle on the far side of the clearing. As we ran there came a shrill warbling from far behind and a response from ahead, a strangely liquid and a harmonious sound to come from so great a creature but such it was.

 It came, trotting gigantic upon its hindlimbs, this Imperator Fowl, like unto a pullet grown titanic, or, even more so, the regulus that is hatched by an aspic from a cock's egg and embodies the very principle of virulence, so loathsome it strikes dead those who behold it. More loathsome still this Imperator Fowl strutting vast, his plumage like a habberjock, his crested head more fell by far than aught bethought  by civilised man. For he had an hundred teeth, long and gleaming sharp, his maw was great and jaws heavy. He bit Mnesikles in half as he ran, and Taxis and Tleson he slew, and Kleitias left  screaming dismembered to put down resistance imposed by Smikros and Sophilos, who sought in vain to spear the beast. He trod them mightily into the sod with his great paws and raked them with talons such that fair Smikros and brave Sophilos were torn to tattered shreds upon that muddy field.

The rest escaped into the tangled woods but saw the great Imperatrix come stalking after her paramour, and they warbled together in the language of their abominable kind, and ate the men they had slain.

---

Fragment 4: The Lacustrine Enormity

And there was upon that lake an island, and visible there an edifice of stone, like unto those structures attributed to the ancestors of the ancestors of the barbarous Choromandae, who build nothing now save it be with mud and leaves. Decision was made to seek if there be any dwelling there, for no other structure had we seen upon this plateau and perchance amidst such bewilderness the rites of hospitality prevailed yet. The raft was crude, but the work of Hegesander the shipwright, even in the uttermost reaches of the unknown, was sound, and it bore the dozen of us who yet survived to the island.

The millenial abandonment of the island and of its temple was made apparent by the accumulated dung of the thousands of fowl who made of it a monumental rookery. But its structure was largely intact and we were able to shore up a bivouac and feast on stolen eggs. These fowl, fanged and uncouth like the rest, were nevertheless winged and not of preposterous size, in their raucous company we stayed the night.

In the morning, as we prepared our embarkation, a great head was seen out on the water, borne on a long neck like a serpent. This head was, again, abominably bestial and predacious, with yet more terrible teeth than aught we had yet seen in his place, that its maw was fairly crowded with fangs. It beheld us patiently with dark eyes, and in each man's heart, seeing the great size of this creature revealed and glimpsing the ponderous girth yet submerged, there fell the sense, inevitably, that we would none of us survive the crossing back.

At this Hegesander, the eldest among us and traditionally taciturn, strode out upon the raft and began to declaim in the epic mode;

O, Creature! Than whom none swim
More sinuous in dreadful dank
And dreary depths, and who,
In days afore, in epochs long forgot
Did sate a hunger horrible and huge
On those that built this fane forlorn,
This fallen folly. Beseek thyself!
For in each bestial heart there must abide
A wakeful wit, lest nature in its schemes
And devious devices dupe thee ever,
And appetites immense unsated be.
Nay! Thou knowest what I speak
Though ye be dumb, and doubtless,
Did ye bargain for the bones of bigger beasts
than I. And we, though weak
And weary, with spirits sore beset,
In westering lands unnumbered allies have
Whose hard harpoons and hateful hands and hearts
Shall see thee slain, who rends this raft to ruin
That is not thine. Only this I ask:
Eat only me. My brothers
On this barque, shall bear my bier
Unburdened by my body,
That shall be thine,
In far Meropis, and the sun shall shine.

This said, Hegesander, whose face and voice had been transformed for a time by the nobility of his words, renewed his grimness of countenance and busied himself with casting-off. The rest, uncertain of the outcome of this crossing but transfixed by the purpose of abandoning this island despite the danger, went all aboard the raft. The head went down into the deeps and scarcely a ripple remained. 

We rowed all in silence, aware of the terror that lurked beneath. Young Praximon wept, for Hegesander had saved him in the sea-battle against the reivers of Thule, two years ago but an age now, for in their folly they had abandoned a world where heroisms might perchance prevail for one where impetus of implacable circumstance brooked no opposition. Nonetheless, they rowed across unmolested and, nigh unto the far shore, the thing rose up and took Hegesander in silence, and they saw, with wonderment, the calm visage of the shipwright borne into the depths betwixt those terrible jaws.

(Transcriber's note: Praximon, after he had usurped the throne of the Archon Sostratos, had a mausoleum made for Hegesander, descriptions of the mausoleum reinforce the testimony of the author of the manuscript for the mosaics and statuary within depicted fanciful creatures and scenes resembling those referenced within the narrative.)

In Flambergast

Far beyond Pricking Moray another citadel smoulders. In the cinders of Flambergast, ever-burning outpost of Empire long-retreated, a silence reigns. In the silence is a great white horse with a broken back, it has no ears or tail. In the horse is a man older than the world and kingly. In his mouth a key. 

The horse comes terribly maimed and fierce. Its touch is bane and induces intrusive memories of being sewn by elders into a hide and left by a thunderous cataract among dismal wastes, there to be assailed by visions of descendants falling into internecine savagery and the ritual cannibalism of infants, betrayals of the most beloved under torture and couplings with sooty extraneans in barbarous gardens beyond the south.

Draugr-Steed: AC: 16 MV:80’ HD: 6 (32hp) #att 1 bite dmg: 1d8 + level drain ML: 10 AL: C

The steed is undead and thus is immune to sleep, charm and hold and other spells that affect minds and the living functions of living beings.

-From the ruins of the draugr-steed rises the man wide-eyed and bloody. He seems old but hale, white haired, dark skinned and tall.

-There is a profound sense of the numinous about him, characters with a WIS over 12 have burning visions of the man bearing witness to the drowning of the world from a mountaintop and placing a key of bronze in his mouth.

-Those touched by the man are assailed by the inescapable knowledge that everyone and everything they have ever loved will be swallowed by a deluge, that nothing can save them and that the sun will shine upon the surface of the water indifferent to their fate. Everything they experience from that moment forth will be tainted by that vision.

The Man: AC: 15 MV: 40’ HD: 7 (40hp) #att 1 touch dmg: level drain ML 12 AL: N

-The man is immune to magic but not to conventional weaponry.

-The key in his mouth may be used to unlock the heart of the Keeper in the Apple-Garth

-His bones are marked with runes describing the six of the seven rituals needed to unleash the drowning of the world. These can be read and unleashed as scrolls by any witch who takes it upon themselves to boil the flesh off of them and read the runes inscribed thereon: 

Skull: Matriculation of the Hollyhock Demiurge (MU 8) 

Range: Skin

Area of Effect: Caster

Duration: Until the sun dies

You must eat a wildcat alive at dawn. You are transformed into a smiling marble godling, flower-wreathed and priapic, all about you (30') sleep, charm and hold at the nightingale twittering that emanates invisibly from somewhere in your vicinity. This effect is continuous so that a save must be made every round while within range.  In addition to this the unyielding marble that is your flesh will blunt and break any weapon save maces and hammers and the like. There is a need to consume a larger living thing each morning or the transformation is reversed at noon.

 Left Thighbone: Unravelling the War-Skein (MU 7)

Range: Whisper

Area of Effect: Instruments of violence borne in the hands of those who hear the whisper 

Duration: Until the weapons are melted in a foundry or the keepers are dead.

 Every weapon sings a bright and shimmery song of violence (+3 to hit, triple damage), it must make blood flow each turn or it will turn against its keeper with all the wrath its keeper can muster.

Pelvis: Offering to the Incinerated One (MU 8) 

Range: horizon

Area of Effect: Living souls within the horizon

Duration: Until the lives run out

With an athame must be inscribed a glyph into the face of each sentient offering - d4 dmg. At the incantation and every 1d6 rds thereafter a horrible blackened thing will approach in the minds' eye and guide the caster through a parallel reality of burning canals on the backs of shrieking silver-green dolphins. The caster is then able to enter the souls of the living and to steal the quintessence of their being (which manifest as fragments of radiant jade embedded in effigies of dung) , taking 1000 XP each round to be their own. After each d6 round jaunt an offering will go shrieking into fiery doom until there are no more and enchantment is done.

Right Shinbone: Dance of the Timeworn Vestiges (MU 9)

Range: Chanting

Area of Effect: One person

Duration: While chanting continues

A door opens inexplicably in the chest of the subject and out come all those who the subject has loved and betrayed to cavort in a damnable pageant of unspeakable degradations. Should the subject strike out against them they will crumble to ash at 1hp but any damage inflicted will be visited sevenfold upon the subject at the end of the spell's duration by the subject's own guilt manifest as flailing viscera from the door in their chest. Should the subject survive the ordeal they must still save vs. spells or experience level drain.

Across five vertebrae of his lower back: Xanthic Apotheosis (MU 8)

Range: Horizon

Area of Effect: Caster

Duration: One day per caster level

The caster steps willingly into an alembic of cosmic energies and is transformed instantaneously (but subjectively over a period of many years) into a serpentine emblem of incipient monarchy. The caster must remain enthroned in basilisk-form inside the alembic until the spell expires, during which time the caster is vulnerable to all attacks as normal. The landscape around the caster caustic substances begin to precipitate on every surface, killing life slowly but inexorably. Each day the caster is present within an area  causes a cumulative 1 hp of dmg to everything.

On the bones of his left forearm: Profanation of the Sanctuary (MU 9)

Range:Self

Area of Effect: Caster

Duration: One round per caster level

The caster vomits a darkness like ink that spreads in a pool and keeps pouring forth whether the caster wishes it to or not. Whatever enchanted being or thing is touched by the stuff may have the enchantment in it snuffed like a candle flame. Magic-using creatures get a saving throw vs. spells and items get a saving throw based upon the level and class of their creator (who becomes aware of the profanation as a sickly shudder). The caster receives no saving throw. Assume the pool spreads five feet per round on flat ground.

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Nothing beside remains

Grimmel-Dobbies and Layout

Here's another image from my Middenmurk bestiary. Grimmel-Dobbies comes, as usual, from a couple of dialect words and essentially means Pond-Fairies or Pond-Bogeys, they are essentially my version of the Welsh Gwragedd Annwn. They live in Lake Nenuphar (Nenuphar means water-lilies) and do not remember that they were inundated centuries ago. As far as they are concerned their realm was ever thus and there is no such thing as water. There are stirrings among the feuding houses, though, and a heresy is afoot. What will happen when the Aspidochelone returns? What does the Murmuring Marsgum know? I don't know. I just want to make things as much like a coiled spring as possible. Or like seeds planted in fertile ground or some other tedious metaphor.

Please disregard slight watermark. Depicted individual is a Harpoon Squire. There will be a glossary.

The Dobbies feature in an adventure I am writing but don't have any real job to do save to distract and waylay the protagonists. Actually everything in the adventure is about distraction and sidetracking so I guess maybe they play (or could play) a central role.

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I like layout. I like the way visual information can be unfolded onto a page in such a manner as to produce a thing that rewards prolonged visual scrutiny. Like this from Racinet's Le Costume Historique;

Anyone who doesn't have a copy is missing out. It behooves me to say that several of the reconstructions are bullshit but I've actually developed a penchant for historical apocrypha

There are so many things in this image and in all of Racinet's imagery that you can profitably pore over, that spark imagination, that offer narratives. Admittedly there is a fiendish amount of work involved in this kind of thing but every detail, every bit of fluff offers opportunities. Old Forkbeard there with the red shield has a plume on his helmet that has just got to offer some kind of reaction bonus with other heathens.

See the wickerwork armour with the big backplate shield thing, awesome.

My Taschen copy is in three languages with tiny, tiny text and doesn't explain itself as well as it could but is nonetheless so resonant with ideas and psychic energy it acts as a doorway to endless creative meanderings .

Astragalomantic Ontogeny

I have been playing with layout and proceduralism. There are ways of dragging more information out of every dice roll. Doing this has an aesthetic appeal for me. Every time it is necessary to roll a dice to produce a relatively uninteresting result, like how many of something there are, I want to see more interesting results generated. I am also erring on the side of terse description though I can't see that lasting very long.

This is a mockup and not finalised but contains the kernel of the ideas I am pursuing. The 21 dice icons at the bottom represent a character (3d6 x 6 + starting wealth), every page will have one, the numbers will also be used to determine aspects of the character's destiny and help to facilitate immersive and internally consistent procedural narrative generation in ways that have as yet not been determined.

Astragalomantic parsimony dictates that every roll is laden with consequence. Open in a new tab or you can't see anything;

Astute observers will notice this is a B/X goblin with mild reskinning

Terrible Weapons

For a very long time I've thought that there was a problem with equipment in D&D. Essentially, a fighter starts with a perfectly decent weapon at the beginning of first level and very soon afterwards acquires the best armour available in the mundane world. By second-level there is not much that interests the fighter on the standard equipment list save more of the same.

I love the idea of having a more comprehensive weaponry-based reward mechanic and also of doing things to generally makes the setting more grubby and/or silly. To do this I am adopting a series of different options which may see initially complicated but will all make sense eventually; bumping up prices on the list, offering more varied gear, having a continuity of options stretching out through the levels and the price ranges and using the "fluff is crunch" principle -that I got from the very clever Roger the GS here, initially, I think.

Price Range: The vanilla price range for weapons is tiny and you can afford whatever you want early on. Using a copper standard it is not incongruous to have poor-quality make-shift weapons available for a handfull of coppers and beautifully made pieces by master artisans available for hundreds or thousands. Justifying this mechanically requires some chicanery but it ain't hard.

Varied Gear: History presents us with a vast range of different tools for inflicting injury. As well as this there is imagination and ingenuity (which I refuse to utilise unless I have exhausted other options). To reflect this variation I offer a series of descriptors with very simple mechanical advantages to apply to weapons. e.g.;

shoddy: breaks on a roll of 1*

hefty: always strikes last unless wielder has a STR of 13 or more

unwieldy: always strikes last regardless

short: always stikes last unless the combatants are grappling in which case always strikes first

long: always  strikes first unless the combatants are grappling in which case is cannot strike

armour-piercing: +1 to hit against medium and heavy armour

articulated: ignores small shields, always hit self on roll of 1

In addition to this kind of thing there will be special stuff like; Many-Tasseled Partizan of Majordomo Braglantore: +1 to morale of nearby Lawful troops, -7 reaction penalty with Castigated Testudines. The Fluff is Crunch principle can be invoked to create advantages/disadvantages as well (and see below). Using such descriptors you can produce a 1 groat weapon that is shoddy, hefty, unwieldy and short and a 10,000 groat weapon that is something tales are told of, all without resorting to sorcery.

Continuity of Options (trickle feeding the goodness): This is important. There is a continuity of options in D&D but the amount of choice/player agency that goes into the processes is insufficient. Magic Weapons are usually the only option after first-level and they are hidden in holes. I don't have anything about magic weapons, I am writing an adventure in which there is a magic weapon but is it overdone ? (Yes) My solution is to have equipment lists beyond first-level - equipment lists are, after all, a reward mechanic. Your bloodstained gold does off you the prospect of advancement but in the short term should also offer you the possibility of more satisfactory tooling up for havoc.

So at the beginning you'll have a few options from the Rabble List, with Kavel-Mells and Dunnuks and Sluff-Spades and everything will be terrible and break constantly so you'll be especially excited about getting enough purloined copper to afford a proper Pigsticker from the Auxiliary List and will trek across dangerous territory to buy something that doesnae always break. After this come the Elite, Splendiferous and Ludicrous lists etc.

Fluff is Crunch: a gavelock may well be heavy and unwieldy but it is still an iron crowbar which could be used for leverage and breaking stuff, a draige is attached to a big piece o' chain which has many purposes, a clotting beetle used for breaking sods in the field could be argued to convey some advantage against the Sinister Sod of Metheglin Meugle. I like that most of the things in the equipment table have no mechanical description but are merely plot tokens to be negotiated with the GM on a case-by-case basis.

The Rabble List

1. Yowing Knife: the tool with which slates are trimmed - d4, shoddy, unwieldy. 5 groats
2. Cruke: shepherd's crook - d4, long, shoddy, 3 groats

3. Clotting beetle: a long handled hammer for breaking clods in the field - d6, hefty, shoddy, 10 groats

4. Maddock-hoe: a digging tool, a mattock - d6, hefty, unwieldy, 7 groats
5. Barnet: a cart whip - d2, articulated, long, 12 groats
6. Threshal: threshing flail - d6, articulated, unwieldy, 10 groats
7. Brummock: short curved knife for hedging - d4, short, shoddy, 4 groats
8. Fourgeon: wooden fork - d4, shoddy, 5 groats
9. Hod: spatulate trowel for wrangling mortar- d4, short, shoddy, 5 groats
10. Snathing Axe: small axe for snathing - d6, short, shoddy, 8 groats
11. Huggie-staff: staff with iron hook for fish, d6, long, unwieldy, 7 groats
12. Kent: spiked staff used by shepherds for leaping ditches - d4, long, shoddy, 1 groat
13. Muckrake: for raking muck - d6, shoddy, unwieldy,  6 groats
14. Battledore: a flat wooden paddle instrument used as a mangle substitute - d4, shoddy, 3 groats
15. Kavel-Mell: sledge-hammer for breaking stones - d8, hefty, unwieldy, 15 groats
16. Sluff Spade: wooden spade with metal-reinforced blade - d6, hefty, shoddy, unwieldy, 5 groats
17. Hack-hook: curved hook with a long handle for hedging: - d8, long, shoddy, 12 groats
18. Cluncheon: a cudgel - d4
19. Flesh-axe: cleaver, d6, short, shoddy, 8 groats
20. Tendle Knife: a knife for cutting firewood or turf like a billhook - d4, shoddy, groats
21. Oxter-staff: a wooden crutch - d4, shoddy, 2 groats
22. Drowning Knife: large blade on a pole for cutting ditches - d8, unwieldy, shoddy, 20 groats
23. Meathook: a meathook - d4, short, 3 groats
24. Klot: A hoe used to scrape up mud - d6, unwieldy, shoddy, 7 groats
25. Beaming Knife: tanner's knife - d3, short, 4 groats
26. Prong Spade. digging fork with three thick prongs - d6, unwieldy, shoddy, 10 groats
27. Draige: iron hook on a chain for pulling down burning thatch - d6, articulated, unwieldy, 12 groats
28. Dunnuk: dung fork - d6, unwieldy, shoddy, 15 groats
29. Clip-shires: iron shears - d3, short, shoddy, 12 groats
30. Gleavie: barbed eel spear - d6, shoddy, 13 groats
31. Gavelock: iron crowbar - d6 hefty, unwieldy, 15 groats
32. Mash-mungle: an instrument used in brewing to stir the malt - d4, shoddy, 1 groats
33. Lang-saw: a saw - d4, shoddy, unwieldy, 18 groats
34. Grafe-hook: sickle - d4, short, shoddy, 5 groats
35. Broacher: A very large, sharp-pointed knife - d6, shoddy, 10 groats
36. Brand: a flaming torch - d4, on fire, 1 groat

* It should perhaps be noted that I am aware stuff didn't break so frequently in real life but I am concerned with genre emulation here. It is, after all, the Dung Ages.

It occurs to me that I'd like to use a perverse version of the Chekhov's Gun principle to incorporate procedural world-building into the initial character creation phase (more on this another time maybe) such that purchasing a sluff spade precipitates events into reality such that you might have to save a peasant family from the aftermath of a bonnacon's fecal onslaught or purchasing a battledore generates a spectral Washer-at-the-Ford who needs help with laundering the clothes of those she loved and slew. Such fairytale nonsense appeals to me but these "weapons" are so useful they probably don't need such stuff.

Edit: My old post on using a copper standard is of relevance here.

Howling Across the Chasm

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

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

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

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

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

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Foreshadowing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

etc. 

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

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

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So there's this thing:

Monster Reaction Table 

Roll Result 

2 Friendly, helpful                        

3-5 Indifferent, uninterested 

6-8 Neutral, uncertain                  

9-11 Unfriendly, may attack 

12 Hostile, attacks                       

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

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

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

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

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

Pilshach Oobit                                                       

Brutish Earth Sprites

Foreshadowings:

- Moldiwarps emerge from their diggings to sneer and gloat.

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

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

-Everything seems heavy and trudgingly onerous. 

Appearance: Four-foot tall lumpen boulderish demon-thing

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

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

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

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

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

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Hostility: Intensely Inimical, +7 to reaction rolls

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

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

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Mallagrugous Welkintrout                                            
Supramundane Piscatorial Monstrosity

Foreshadowings:

- Minnows or frogs fall in a rainstorm

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

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

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

Appearance:

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

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

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

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

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

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Hostility: Very Nasty, + 5 to reaction rolls
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Welkintrout -  (1) AC: 15 HD: 3+7 #Att: 1 bite dmg: 2d6 MV: 6, Fly 24 AL: C

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

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The Tatzelwurm of Bastardly Hark                        
Creeping Squamous Odium

Foreshadowings: 

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

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

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

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

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Hostility: Inimical +4

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

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

The Hoard consists of;

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

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

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

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

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

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Ark Raven                                                                

Antediluvian Avian Hierophants

Foreshadowings: 

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

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

Appearance: Featherless flightless birds, four feet tall

Features: 

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

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

Hostility: Harsh +2

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

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