1. Orcs, Grey or Green. Grey Orcs live in colder climates up north, or mountainous highlands. Green in forests and verdant hills. Grey warriors wear mail and wield steel weapons, while green are primitive but skilled in poisons and witchery. These are middle-road fantasy orcs: tusks, muscles and bristly manes; can be hot in a beastman kinda way or butt-ugly pig people. Greys are nobly savage while greens are savagely noble. They can get along with humans alright but old enemies to dwarves and elves. More an alt. PC race than an enemy.
2. Orcs, White. Driven deep underground long ago. Have abandoned their old gods for Demon Princes, partic. Baphomet, Demogorgon, Kotschie, or Obox-Ob. Followers of rival princes fight each other as often as anyone else. Champions and chiefs always sport at least one demonic "gift" (significant mutation---six arms, ceratinous armor, acid tongue, etc). Metalworkers, masters of crafting Arcane Tattoos.
3. Orcs, Pink. Creations of the Arch-Wizardess Cyrell the Chaotic. Their genetic matrix is highly unstable: virtually all have at least a minor mutation (us. extra eyes or teeth ridges over limbs etc.), 50% have major mutation. Flesh rubbery and soft. Explode when slain, which gives them unwarranted confidence. Cyrelle grants her followers stylish black leather armor and fine weapons; feral examples will fight with what they can scavenge.
4. Orcs, Ochre. These Orcs' liverspotted yellow flesh is overgrown with pustules, many as big as a fist. When popped these spheres release acid (if damaged, d3 splash 5 ft). Some also vomit acid (d6, 5ft). Many orcs become so swollen with pustules they cannot wear armor and live in constant pain. Primitive, us. fight with greatclubs or stone axes. Those who become champions often wear Otyugh or Troll-hide amor, which resists acid spills better. They grow in gigantic, dangling batches of birthing cysts like grape bushels. Probably a wizard created them but none willing to take credit.
5. Orcs, Violet. Symbiotic relationship with large gilled shelf-fungus called Dream Polypore, brackets of which grow mainly off shoulders and back, staining skin purple. Fungus constantly emits trickles of smoke-like purple sporeclouds, which Violet Orcs can manipulate to show minor illusions or exhale hallucinogenic exhaust once per day. Have their own language based on thought-forms half-glimpsed in the haze. Makes hiding tough for them. Dreamy, peaceful, they see a heightened version of reality. If encountered may trade potions or other herbal magic items. Maybe a good PC option, but wearing armor problematic---only decent as Druid or Sorcerer.
6. Orcs, Red. Base 2HD. Vomit a shower of their own blood, which is as flammable as gasoline. Their skins are resistant to flame. Usually well-equipped, they favor scale mail, the voulge-glaive and two-handed falchions. All Red Orcs descend from a batch created by a wizard centuries ago and consider themselves to be a single nation: they will fight for anyone's pay, but not each other. Beneath their disciplined facade each is capable of entering a truly terrifying but always fatal rage, gaining +4 Str/+10' Spd and taking 1d4 dmg/rnd from their own boiling blood until, steaming, it squirts from eyes and nostrils and they collapse dead.
7. Ogrillons. Also known as "Orcres" thanks to my players. The product of an Orc and Ogre mating. Most are Med. size (< 8 ft) but a few (10%) reach Lg. size. A degree of ogrish natural armor, and powerful natural weapons including thick bonespurs protecting/reinforcing fists and tusks able to gore. Suffer from the ogres' Hunger Curse only slightly less. Most orc tribes regard them as abominations but a few use as shock troops. Sometimes hags breed them as they eat slightly less than Ogres so you can keep a few more around.
Showing posts with label It's My Own Invention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label It's My Own Invention. Show all posts
Sunday, May 6, 2018
Friday, April 20, 2018
1d12 Hirelings
1. Esquival the Freshmaker - Obese baker with dreams of being a knight. Surprisingly tough, but gets winded easy, -4 Svs vs Exhaustion from travel. Treat as always carrying a Medium Load. Excellent income means he comes with a coat of scales (let out to acccomodate his bulk, only +3 armor bonus), longsword, sturdy wood shield and enough supplies for a week in the wilds. Pay as soldier.
2. Zelga the Begger - Former Guild-Thief. Maimed (foot sawed off) as punishment for prior thefts. Reduced to begging in the town square. Speed reduced to 20ft and -2 AC but Skill Focus in Perception/Disable Device. Starts out with no gear but cloak, crutch and beggar's bowl. She will accept the lowest level of pay despite her skills.
3. Pol - A draper's son, claims to be 17 but clearly younger. Ran away or disowned. Literate and excellent with figures. Useless at physical labor. Offers himself as a clerk (skilled pay) but will take job as linkboy. Has a dagger, pot of tar and a few torches.
4. The Dragon - Fire-swallower. This former circus performer is well-muscled but recalcitrant. Has an oroborous tattoo over chest and stomach. Lost his taste buds long ago. Does not start with gear, shirt or shoes. Can be hired as unskilled labor (in which case he won't fight) or as soldier (skilled brawler but will eventually demand equipment).
5. Jon the Bargeman - Tall and hiresut with knotty, powerful muscles. His broken bargepole makes for a quarterstaff. No one his age should be as strong as he is. Sharp-eyed, rarely speaks. Hire as labor or combatant--will do either without complaint. Mourning his wife. 15% chance every day he departs without a word.
6. Brian the Chicken-Infested Peasant - A former crofter, Brian suffers from a curse that causes chickens to spontaneously appear inside his clothing. This is definitely uncomfortable for him (the chickens claw, bite and often immediately shit) but a boon to any party that will adopt him. Brian produces 1d4 chickens every day unless he is naked or constantly observed (the chickens only appear when no one's looking). The fowl are violent-tempered and immediately try to escape. Brian dearly wants the money to pay for a Remove Curse and might do anything to get it. He has no equipment.
7. Llewyn of Blauders - Llewyn is a skilled rogue who was born into a minor religious sect. A total pacifist, he refuses to carry weapons or participate in combat even to save himself. Nonetheless Llewyn is an excellent acrobat, trap-disabler and has a talent for making himself scarce. Pay as an expert hireling with hazard pay. He has leather armor, thieves' tools, a bag of marbles and a collapsible 10-foot pole.
8. Arecilia Dantwidge - This pale, death-obsessed young woman is a noble scion and terrible poet looking for "experience." She wants to witness combat, poke dead bodies, and examine monsters up close. She will make a game effort at being a hireling but has no idea how to do basic things like start a fire, dig a pit, etc., tires easily. Can be a clerk, linkgirl or unskilled labor. Has a wardrobe worth 35 gp, purse of 100 gp and set of masterwork daggers. A gang of bounty hunters hired by her parents will arrive to collect her in 2d4 weeks.
9. Vaughn Meachum - An ex-miner and mason with many useful skills. Stonecunning as a dwarf, able to recognize metal veins, coal seams etc. Starts with a shovel, which he wields with deadly skill, and a manual of architecture and engineering. He is in fact a budding revolutionary and will attempt to secretly organize the party's hirelings against them.
10. Chauncey St. Claire and His Amazing Pigs - This swineherd (Com3, Skill Focus Handle Animal) has a staff, wallet and three puckish pigs he has drilled to near-perfection. The pigs are watchier than watchdogs, excellent at foraging and can fight viciously as a coordinated team. Give them 8 tricks, teamwork feats, alertness and trapsense +3. Chauncey will expect to be treated as a full party member and also a stream of constant flattery to his handsome and clever animals. He will not brook sending his pigs alone into danger. The animals actually know no loyalty and will will eat anyone left alone and vulnerable, including Chauncey.
11. Ebard the Touched - Once a teller of false fortunes and seller of fake relics, Ebard has since become known as a wild-eyed mountebank. A wallet of food, some torches and a ratty old robe are all he brings. He claims that dreams and visions have summoned him to the deep chambers of the earth, there to sublime his mortal existence before an immensity he calls The Caller in Dreams. He will perform any task so long as a party takes him into the deeps beneath the earth. Once below he manifests supernatural abilities--either give him the Oracle class or Sanctuary and Know Direction as (Sp)s. Ebard will continue to serve the party faithfully until an encounter with a Gelatinous Cube, Ochre Jelly or other ooze---whereon he will charge forth to be devoured by the thing, crying "as I dreamed! I go to join the world-mind! This mortality is over!"
12. Jack Ville - The son of poor but proud farriers, this well-muscled youth desires experience and to collect some interesting stories before settling down. No equipment and knows none but his father's trade, but will shoulder his burden however tasked. The joke with this guy is he is exactly what he appears to be. See how long it takes for your players destroy his innocence, for science.
2. Zelga the Begger - Former Guild-Thief. Maimed (foot sawed off) as punishment for prior thefts. Reduced to begging in the town square. Speed reduced to 20ft and -2 AC but Skill Focus in Perception/Disable Device. Starts out with no gear but cloak, crutch and beggar's bowl. She will accept the lowest level of pay despite her skills.
3. Pol - A draper's son, claims to be 17 but clearly younger. Ran away or disowned. Literate and excellent with figures. Useless at physical labor. Offers himself as a clerk (skilled pay) but will take job as linkboy. Has a dagger, pot of tar and a few torches.
4. The Dragon - Fire-swallower. This former circus performer is well-muscled but recalcitrant. Has an oroborous tattoo over chest and stomach. Lost his taste buds long ago. Does not start with gear, shirt or shoes. Can be hired as unskilled labor (in which case he won't fight) or as soldier (skilled brawler but will eventually demand equipment).
5. Jon the Bargeman - Tall and hiresut with knotty, powerful muscles. His broken bargepole makes for a quarterstaff. No one his age should be as strong as he is. Sharp-eyed, rarely speaks. Hire as labor or combatant--will do either without complaint. Mourning his wife. 15% chance every day he departs without a word.
6. Brian the Chicken-Infested Peasant - A former crofter, Brian suffers from a curse that causes chickens to spontaneously appear inside his clothing. This is definitely uncomfortable for him (the chickens claw, bite and often immediately shit) but a boon to any party that will adopt him. Brian produces 1d4 chickens every day unless he is naked or constantly observed (the chickens only appear when no one's looking). The fowl are violent-tempered and immediately try to escape. Brian dearly wants the money to pay for a Remove Curse and might do anything to get it. He has no equipment.
7. Llewyn of Blauders - Llewyn is a skilled rogue who was born into a minor religious sect. A total pacifist, he refuses to carry weapons or participate in combat even to save himself. Nonetheless Llewyn is an excellent acrobat, trap-disabler and has a talent for making himself scarce. Pay as an expert hireling with hazard pay. He has leather armor, thieves' tools, a bag of marbles and a collapsible 10-foot pole.
8. Arecilia Dantwidge - This pale, death-obsessed young woman is a noble scion and terrible poet looking for "experience." She wants to witness combat, poke dead bodies, and examine monsters up close. She will make a game effort at being a hireling but has no idea how to do basic things like start a fire, dig a pit, etc., tires easily. Can be a clerk, linkgirl or unskilled labor. Has a wardrobe worth 35 gp, purse of 100 gp and set of masterwork daggers. A gang of bounty hunters hired by her parents will arrive to collect her in 2d4 weeks.
9. Vaughn Meachum - An ex-miner and mason with many useful skills. Stonecunning as a dwarf, able to recognize metal veins, coal seams etc. Starts with a shovel, which he wields with deadly skill, and a manual of architecture and engineering. He is in fact a budding revolutionary and will attempt to secretly organize the party's hirelings against them.
10. Chauncey St. Claire and His Amazing Pigs - This swineherd (Com3, Skill Focus Handle Animal) has a staff, wallet and three puckish pigs he has drilled to near-perfection. The pigs are watchier than watchdogs, excellent at foraging and can fight viciously as a coordinated team. Give them 8 tricks, teamwork feats, alertness and trapsense +3. Chauncey will expect to be treated as a full party member and also a stream of constant flattery to his handsome and clever animals. He will not brook sending his pigs alone into danger. The animals actually know no loyalty and will will eat anyone left alone and vulnerable, including Chauncey.
11. Ebard the Touched - Once a teller of false fortunes and seller of fake relics, Ebard has since become known as a wild-eyed mountebank. A wallet of food, some torches and a ratty old robe are all he brings. He claims that dreams and visions have summoned him to the deep chambers of the earth, there to sublime his mortal existence before an immensity he calls The Caller in Dreams. He will perform any task so long as a party takes him into the deeps beneath the earth. Once below he manifests supernatural abilities--either give him the Oracle class or Sanctuary and Know Direction as (Sp)s. Ebard will continue to serve the party faithfully until an encounter with a Gelatinous Cube, Ochre Jelly or other ooze---whereon he will charge forth to be devoured by the thing, crying "as I dreamed! I go to join the world-mind! This mortality is over!"
12. Jack Ville - The son of poor but proud farriers, this well-muscled youth desires experience and to collect some interesting stories before settling down. No equipment and knows none but his father's trade, but will shoulder his burden however tasked. The joke with this guy is he is exactly what he appears to be. See how long it takes for your players destroy his innocence, for science.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Dungeon Entrance
Given time, this loose collection of ideas will hopefully congeal into a good-sized dungeon module. For now working title is Stonehold of the Shaper. It's a classic "explore the wizard's lair" scenario: there was a powerful wizard, he was a very bad man, he has died in a spectacular and public fashion (or has he...) and his sanctum with all its treasures and strangeness lies open to plunder.
~~
The stonehold lies inside of a massive plateau of limestone, carved out of living rock over decades by a clan of contracted dwarf masons. These are probably the guys who gave your PCs the lair's coordinates: they were sworn to silence, but only so long as the Wizard lived. Getting inside the plateau is a matter of walking across the tableland, a landscape of scrub grass and stunted windblown oaks. Then the plateau's west cliff face must be scaled downwards some 40'. In the cliffside is a sunken, smooth hole six feet in diameter like a knothole in the sheer stone, virtually undetectable from above or below.
Obviously rappelling down the cliff in heavy armor would be nigh-impossible, unless you run one of those campaigns that skips over such annoying details. Carrying out something as large as a chest of treasure is likewise going to present serious difficulties. The cliff towers a little more than 100' high over the grassland below. If your players want to hire some laborers to build scaffolding or a crane at the top of the cliff I would have it take little more than a month for the necessary materials to be moved out to this remote location, via riverboat partway then mule train to the plateau. It would then require a few weeks for building; during that time other treasure hunters might attack the worksite, but there won't be any activity coming in or out of the entrance.
There is at least one secret entrance into the Stonehold directly from the tableland, although I haven't figured out where to place it yet. Another interesting feature of the plateau is a collection of stacks of massive granite blocks, stacked into short pyramids. The light-colored granite cubes are 5x5x5 feet and each weighs approximately one ton (it should probably be more but we'll assume a fairly low density granite...) There are dozens in all, and although the PCs can't know this yet they cluster directly above the area in the Stonehold called the Arena. The granite blocks themselves might be valuable to somebody but appraising and moving them would obviously be a serious undertaking.
Once the PCs reach the hole in the cliff, they'll find that it leads into a smooth funnel of scraped limestone which slopes six feet down into a short drop at one end of a roughly cubical hollow in the plateau. This chamber is 40x40x40 feet. Against the wall opposite the entrance is a fourteen foot high band of polished flecked black granite, set into the limestone. In the center of this wall is what at first appears to be a giant, projecting sculpture of wetly shining gold.
The smooth gold surface looks like a man's head, half-sunk into the granite, eyes shut and expressionless. It measures 10' high from bald crown to chin. The first time someone comes 30' or nearer its eyes open to show smooth gold orbs and the golden mouth moves as fluidly as flesh, or as if the gold were still hot from the smelter. It will ask the PCs a series of riddles, up to four, opening for one person at a time after each answer (right or wrong) and then admitting as many people as want in after the fourth. Rather than provide you with a series of riddles I would suggest a DM should think about his players and tailor the questions to them. For example for my players, I would ask something like:
(The answers "Def Leppard" or "a deaf leopard" would be correct)
The head doesn't introduce itself or anything, it just asks questions. It's not intelligent. Of course, the PCs could just attack the head---but although its made of soft gold it's heavy enough to blunt and damage any weapons continuously beating on it. If the PCs attack it with tools, given a few hours' work they might crumple and finally dislodge the giant head (its total weight is probably close to two tons). Of course they'll have made enough racket by then to be heard throughout the Stonehold.
After a question is answered (right or wrong) the face stretches its mouth impossibly wide apart like The Wall album cover [EDIT: Actually I seem to be thinking of the film poster], the silky wet gold of its lips pulling away from teeth above and below to create a large entryway, through which can be seen the first chamber of the Stonehold proper. Once a person (it doesn't have to be the one who answered) steps into the mouth, it snaps shut like lightning, leaving the hapless entrant trapped against a giant tongue. The aperture to the Stonehold squeezes shut as the construct's gold mouth-juices wash over the entrant.
If the answer to the riddle was correct, the person is shunted out through the sphincter in the back of the head, and lands on the floor of the Stonehold coated in gold saliva but otherwise unmolested. Their voice will be audible if they call back to people in the entry chamber, and vice versa.
If two or more people try to step into the mouth simultaneously any time before the fourth riddle, all but one (pick randomly) will be spat out.
If the answer was incorrect, the mouth also closes over the entrant. They are trapped and washed in sticky gold saliva as before, but the fluid isn't inert. They must make a Fortitude save (DC 15). A failure causes a complete physical transformation as the former PCs' mind is destroyed and body remade into a golden aberration, head replaced by a whipping tendril, limbs or more tentacles randomly erupting from a twisted humanoid form that looks made of beaten, slickly shining gold. In game terms it will either have HD as the PC's level or at minimum 3, plus a tentacle and two claw attacks (multi-attack assumed), and DR 5/bludgeoning from their metallic hide. Armor and other worn gear is destroyed; nonmetallic gear (bedroll, scroll-case, probably rations) is ruined from soaking, but metallic or preserved objects (a sealed jar of oil, a sextant etc.) may be recovered.
The aberration is then spat back out of the giant mouth and immediately attacks the party. It will fight until slain. Following its demise, the giant head simply asks another riddle and awaits an answer.
If the Fortitude save is made, the entrant is ejected out the sphincter in the back of the head. They are however partially transformed into a new creature called a Golden One. Unlike a full mutation, this does not explode any worn equipment though some gear may be lost due to being soaked in vinegar-y gold saliva.
As a Golden One the mutated person is changed into a hairless, shining gold version of themselves with jet black eyes. Any prior imperfections in their physique are erased, their new flesh of gold beautiful in contour and proportion. Their type changes to Living Construct (see the rules on 3.5's Warforged), and they will no longer suffer physical drawbacks from aging. If their Charisma was 12 or lower, they gain plus-two charisma; they also gain plus-two natural armor and a natural slam attack (d4 Med creature, d3 small).
Transformation into a Golden One incurs a DC 17 Will save. On a failure, the transformed person's alignment changes to Chaotic or Neutral Evil, and they become a willing servant of The Formless Many. They will seek to spread chaos---wild magic, hedonism, social decay--by whatever means necessary. The mentally transformed Golden One gains the following supernatural abilities: Detect Law at will, Charm Person 3x/day, True Strike 1x/day. If the Golden One is at least third level they also gain Glitterdust 1x/day, and at eighth level they gain Chaos Hammer 1x/day. Relevant casting stat is INT or CHA, whichever is higher. On a successful save, the new Golden One retains their ego/personality but does not gain any (Su)s.
If a PC gets transformed into a Golden One who serves the Formless Many, take that player out of the room or pass them a note. Explain their new personality/allegiance to them. Ideally they should pretend to have been only physically transformed and remain with the party, biding their time to spread disorder or advance the cause of the Formless Many and its earthly cult. However some players may not like the idea of playing a "traitor," and if that's the case I suggest allowing them to treat their transformed PC as a casualty and roll up a new character, while the newborn Golden One retreats deeper into the Stonehold as a now openly-hostile NPC.
The face will impassively and implacably ask its riddles three times, each time admitting only one person to step through and discover their fate following an answer. The fourth time, it will ask a final riddle and then admit as many people as want to step into the mouth. On a correct answer, they all get squished together and then shunted out through the sphincter, nothing hurt but their dignity.
On an incorrect answer, multiple entrants must all make fortitude saves. Those who pass are shunted out the back as individual Golden Ones and make their Will Save as normal. Those who fail are transformed into a single combined Aberration and spat out the mouth. Begin with an Aberration of 3 HD minimum, then add at least 2 HD per person fused (or HD equal to level whichever is higher). At 5 HD the Aberration is Large, at 8 HD Huge and so on. For each person in the fusion it gains an additional tentacle or claw attack and +2 natural armor. This final monster's appearance is of multiple bodies, stretched and welded topsy-turvy together into a trunk of gold flesh crowned with branching tendrils and staggering on two human legs barely adequate to its weight.
What if on the fourth riddle, people give separate answers and then enter together?The Golden Head is only programmed to accept one answer at a time, so in this situation randomly determine which answer it accepts either by rolling d3+ or via eenie-meanie-meiny-moe.
~~
The stonehold lies inside of a massive plateau of limestone, carved out of living rock over decades by a clan of contracted dwarf masons. These are probably the guys who gave your PCs the lair's coordinates: they were sworn to silence, but only so long as the Wizard lived. Getting inside the plateau is a matter of walking across the tableland, a landscape of scrub grass and stunted windblown oaks. Then the plateau's west cliff face must be scaled downwards some 40'. In the cliffside is a sunken, smooth hole six feet in diameter like a knothole in the sheer stone, virtually undetectable from above or below.
 |
| kind of like this but more barren up top |
Obviously rappelling down the cliff in heavy armor would be nigh-impossible, unless you run one of those campaigns that skips over such annoying details. Carrying out something as large as a chest of treasure is likewise going to present serious difficulties. The cliff towers a little more than 100' high over the grassland below. If your players want to hire some laborers to build scaffolding or a crane at the top of the cliff I would have it take little more than a month for the necessary materials to be moved out to this remote location, via riverboat partway then mule train to the plateau. It would then require a few weeks for building; during that time other treasure hunters might attack the worksite, but there won't be any activity coming in or out of the entrance.
There is at least one secret entrance into the Stonehold directly from the tableland, although I haven't figured out where to place it yet. Another interesting feature of the plateau is a collection of stacks of massive granite blocks, stacked into short pyramids. The light-colored granite cubes are 5x5x5 feet and each weighs approximately one ton (it should probably be more but we'll assume a fairly low density granite...) There are dozens in all, and although the PCs can't know this yet they cluster directly above the area in the Stonehold called the Arena. The granite blocks themselves might be valuable to somebody but appraising and moving them would obviously be a serious undertaking.
Once the PCs reach the hole in the cliff, they'll find that it leads into a smooth funnel of scraped limestone which slopes six feet down into a short drop at one end of a roughly cubical hollow in the plateau. This chamber is 40x40x40 feet. Against the wall opposite the entrance is a fourteen foot high band of polished flecked black granite, set into the limestone. In the center of this wall is what at first appears to be a giant, projecting sculpture of wetly shining gold.
The smooth gold surface looks like a man's head, half-sunk into the granite, eyes shut and expressionless. It measures 10' high from bald crown to chin. The first time someone comes 30' or nearer its eyes open to show smooth gold orbs and the golden mouth moves as fluidly as flesh, or as if the gold were still hot from the smelter. It will ask the PCs a series of riddles, up to four, opening for one person at a time after each answer (right or wrong) and then admitting as many people as want in after the fourth. Rather than provide you with a series of riddles I would suggest a DM should think about his players and tailor the questions to them. For example for my players, I would ask something like:
"I'm hot and sweet, known to be hysterical
They never hear me coming, though my spots are inimical
I'm a master of stealth and silent off the branch I fall
Which is just as well, because I can't hear at all
What am I?
They never hear me coming, though my spots are inimical
I'm a master of stealth and silent off the branch I fall
Which is just as well, because I can't hear at all
What am I?
(The answers "Def Leppard" or "a deaf leopard" would be correct)
The head doesn't introduce itself or anything, it just asks questions. It's not intelligent. Of course, the PCs could just attack the head---but although its made of soft gold it's heavy enough to blunt and damage any weapons continuously beating on it. If the PCs attack it with tools, given a few hours' work they might crumple and finally dislodge the giant head (its total weight is probably close to two tons). Of course they'll have made enough racket by then to be heard throughout the Stonehold.
After a question is answered (right or wrong) the face stretches its mouth impossibly wide apart like The Wall album cover [EDIT: Actually I seem to be thinking of the film poster], the silky wet gold of its lips pulling away from teeth above and below to create a large entryway, through which can be seen the first chamber of the Stonehold proper. Once a person (it doesn't have to be the one who answered) steps into the mouth, it snaps shut like lightning, leaving the hapless entrant trapped against a giant tongue. The aperture to the Stonehold squeezes shut as the construct's gold mouth-juices wash over the entrant.
If the answer to the riddle was correct, the person is shunted out through the sphincter in the back of the head, and lands on the floor of the Stonehold coated in gold saliva but otherwise unmolested. Their voice will be audible if they call back to people in the entry chamber, and vice versa.
If two or more people try to step into the mouth simultaneously any time before the fourth riddle, all but one (pick randomly) will be spat out.
If the answer was incorrect, the mouth also closes over the entrant. They are trapped and washed in sticky gold saliva as before, but the fluid isn't inert. They must make a Fortitude save (DC 15). A failure causes a complete physical transformation as the former PCs' mind is destroyed and body remade into a golden aberration, head replaced by a whipping tendril, limbs or more tentacles randomly erupting from a twisted humanoid form that looks made of beaten, slickly shining gold. In game terms it will either have HD as the PC's level or at minimum 3, plus a tentacle and two claw attacks (multi-attack assumed), and DR 5/bludgeoning from their metallic hide. Armor and other worn gear is destroyed; nonmetallic gear (bedroll, scroll-case, probably rations) is ruined from soaking, but metallic or preserved objects (a sealed jar of oil, a sextant etc.) may be recovered.
 |
| So this, but like a 24-karat sculpture |
The aberration is then spat back out of the giant mouth and immediately attacks the party. It will fight until slain. Following its demise, the giant head simply asks another riddle and awaits an answer.
As a Golden One the mutated person is changed into a hairless, shining gold version of themselves with jet black eyes. Any prior imperfections in their physique are erased, their new flesh of gold beautiful in contour and proportion. Their type changes to Living Construct (see the rules on 3.5's Warforged), and they will no longer suffer physical drawbacks from aging. If their Charisma was 12 or lower, they gain plus-two charisma; they also gain plus-two natural armor and a natural slam attack (d4 Med creature, d3 small).
 |
| Like this, but naked-er and more uncomfortably sexy |
Transformation into a Golden One incurs a DC 17 Will save. On a failure, the transformed person's alignment changes to Chaotic or Neutral Evil, and they become a willing servant of The Formless Many. They will seek to spread chaos---wild magic, hedonism, social decay--by whatever means necessary. The mentally transformed Golden One gains the following supernatural abilities: Detect Law at will, Charm Person 3x/day, True Strike 1x/day. If the Golden One is at least third level they also gain Glitterdust 1x/day, and at eighth level they gain Chaos Hammer 1x/day. Relevant casting stat is INT or CHA, whichever is higher. On a successful save, the new Golden One retains their ego/personality but does not gain any (Su)s.
If a PC gets transformed into a Golden One who serves the Formless Many, take that player out of the room or pass them a note. Explain their new personality/allegiance to them. Ideally they should pretend to have been only physically transformed and remain with the party, biding their time to spread disorder or advance the cause of the Formless Many and its earthly cult. However some players may not like the idea of playing a "traitor," and if that's the case I suggest allowing them to treat their transformed PC as a casualty and roll up a new character, while the newborn Golden One retreats deeper into the Stonehold as a now openly-hostile NPC.
The face will impassively and implacably ask its riddles three times, each time admitting only one person to step through and discover their fate following an answer. The fourth time, it will ask a final riddle and then admit as many people as want to step into the mouth. On a correct answer, they all get squished together and then shunted out through the sphincter, nothing hurt but their dignity.
On an incorrect answer, multiple entrants must all make fortitude saves. Those who pass are shunted out the back as individual Golden Ones and make their Will Save as normal. Those who fail are transformed into a single combined Aberration and spat out the mouth. Begin with an Aberration of 3 HD minimum, then add at least 2 HD per person fused (or HD equal to level whichever is higher). At 5 HD the Aberration is Large, at 8 HD Huge and so on. For each person in the fusion it gains an additional tentacle or claw attack and +2 natural armor. This final monster's appearance is of multiple bodies, stretched and welded topsy-turvy together into a trunk of gold flesh crowned with branching tendrils and staggering on two human legs barely adequate to its weight.
What if on the fourth riddle, people give separate answers and then enter together?The Golden Head is only programmed to accept one answer at a time, so in this situation randomly determine which answer it accepts either by rolling d3+ or via eenie-meanie-meiny-moe.
Saturday, June 3, 2017
More Things Underground
Stonechilds
In singular they're called "a Stonechild," pronounced like you'd think but for some reason the plural form is "Stonechilds" as in "Rothschilds."
They're slow, so the only way they can catch prey is through numbers and ambush tactics. They typically lurk wherever large boulders and rocks congregate, lurking in a loose ring until some victims wander into the middle. Some scholars (the few who care to even take up the subject) suspect they were brought over at some point from the Elemental Plane of Earth, while others argue they are a native form of mollusc.
Disguised, a Stonechild looks like an ordinary stone, about the size of a large man's torso. This is actually their shell, though it looks and feels like rough granite shaped by aeons of wind and rain, often even sporting colonies of moss. The shape may be oblong and more forward-projecting or more balanced. From out of this shell when the Stonechild emerges protrude two stout, tortoise-like legs, which waddle furiously in splayed posture. Despite the effort both their speed and balance is poor.
From near the front or sides of their shell protrude two grey pipelike arms ending in blunt, four-fingered hands, the forearm and wrist swollen-looking, the skin rough as sandpaper. The arms are long enough that their fingertips can just meet if they reach around the front of the shell, but the Stonechild's body configuration makes wielding a weapon in two hands impossible. They carry stone maces, which some speculate the Stonechilds form naturally inside their shell analogous to how clams form pearls. The head of the mace can take many forms: sometimes a simple orb, othertimes a little pagoda of layered flanges. It is quite heavy and quite effective at breaking bones. They wield it one-handed with the other arm held out for balance or to catch them if their flat feet stutter.
Stonechilds are only about as high as a man's waist. Thus they usually swing for the legs, and full-on a blow from one of their clubs can disable a man's leg even through armor. They bring their targets down to their level with repeated savage blows. Then the Stonechild opens its mouth: a heretofore unseen crack in the stone pops up with a hiss of escaping steam and the squelch of mucus strings and a vomitous smell. Enormous teeth line the void with a thick tongue, the entire front section of the Stonechild's shell apparently devoted to its mouth. When their victim is well pulverized, preferably beaten into a kneeling position with head conveniently lowered, the lead Stonechild opens its maw and bites off the victim's head. Simple and effective. Brains really do seem to be the most prized part of any prey. They will work whatever chunk they tore off in their giant mouths with slow grinding and cracking, spitting out lumps of twisted metal armor and fragments of bone for days. They can go a long time between meals. They are just clever enough to leave any valuables from previous victims strewn around the scene of their next ambush.
They can speak. Terran, which lends some credence to the notion that they are outsiders, and in some cases a few crude phrases in the common tongue. Sometimes as they encircle prey, in their droning buzzing voices they pretend to be robbers. They say they'll the victim pass if weapons and goods are surrendered. At least until their ring gets close enough to charge (10' for their stumpy little legs). Sometimes Stonechilds just open those huge, flat-toothed mouths of theirs and scream for no apparent reason.
It's speculated they reproduce through eggs, which grow a suitably-sized rock shell over and around them as the fleshy creature inside actually finishes gestating and growing over centuries. As the abominations are thoroughly exterminated anytime a colony is found anywhere near civilization, much of their ecology is left to speculation. They are dumb and their senses limited enough you could play Jane Goodall with a circle of them if you really wanted, but it would be one boring adventure.
Under-Men
Products of breeding experiments, they are a subrace of Man. Perhaps once human slaves of the Illithids, crossbred with a tribe of blind Morlocks. Perhaps their gracile, sculpted bodies were the product of some feverish Drow fleshcrafter-aesthete. Maybe it was some asshole wizard who's name is now deservedly lost to time. In any case, they got loose and bred true and now they are a viable if gross underground culture.
Tall and wane with knotted muscles, they rarely stand to their full height but hunt and root through their caves and tunnels stooped, necks projecting vulturine from tensed shoulders. Their skin is an almost purplish grey, unkempt bristly hair soot-black. There may be some nods to decoration: headbands made from cave viper hide, hair stood up with animal fat. They have recessed noses, the nostrils almost slits, and heavy brows beneath which the eyes are intense black orbs, almost all pupil; the eyes barely work anymore. If you shone a torch in one's face he would see you as no more than a hazy ghost haloed in alien luminescence. Their mouths tend to project out from the face; any alien object will get a quick tongue-bathing to determine its nature.
They stalk the corridors and cliffs under the earth by probing the stones with fingers and feet. Their grey skin, corded veins standing up beneath as from intense dehydration, is tremulous. Their shoulders quiver, their too-long and somehow too independent fingers dance over everything and feel everything in an unsightly way. They have replaced vision with vibration, their tactile senses increased a hundredfold. They'll feel your footsteps in the stone even though you think you're being totally silent. You can't disguise your weight, the gentle easing and pressing of mass as clear to them as if you were touching skin. Their feet are long, balanced to keep the heel off the ground, with toes nearly as articulated and long as fingers; it's through the pads of these delicate extremities they can feel every shift in the movement of their prey. Their feet are their eyes and they take precious care of them. Pain overwhelms their senses: they avoid melee combat at all costs. Stone axes weighted for throwing, the hafts bone or stems of the ironshroom, and sinew-drawn bows are their weapons. Some wear carefully hardened mud-armor, always decorated with a spiral symbol in drawn ash. The spiral represents the winding endless underground; it is both holy symbol and map of their world. They use it on their boundary-stones. A drawn symbol may seem bizarre for a sightless culture but they remember they themselves were once sighted Men, and they know you can see it. At the center of every Under-Man community is a pool or sump with fresh water. This is their lifesource, their shrine and their retreat. They rarely sleep (once every 48 hours, roughly) but when they do they need the muffling of the numbing cold water on their hides; they sleep floating on their back in the still water and enjoy a respite from the constant bombardment of their heightened touch.
Most Under-Men are cannibals (in the sense of eating other human subspecies and sapient underground denizens). The few who aren't tend to live nearer to the surface, where they can trade with explorers or benign communities such as the Svirfneblin. These nearer tribes can make excellent guides for explorers from the surface, although your booted footfalls will be so annoyingly loud---the crunching, the thumping---that only an Under-Man gifted with patience can do the job.
Most, however, consider noisesome intruders only good for eating. They will stalk you by your vibrations, well outside the range of lantern or torch. At an opportune moment--when your party has just triumphed over some great beast perhaps--their flint-headed arrows will sail into your light, black missiles announcing the Under-Mens' arrival. They approach shooting steadily, a bend of cavemen boxing in dangerous animals, and when close enough throw their stoneheaded axes to break your skulls. At last remove a few will have longspears to try and keep the enemy's "beaters" from closing in on the killers. If their crude weapons can't break an enemy's armor they will withdraw, clambering up rough walls to escape and return to their slow hunt, awaiting the next chance to strike. They can do this again, and again. They're endurance hunters on their own ground, and they can see every move you make echoed in glancing impacts off the vaulted walls.
---
I got the name "Stonechild" off a monster name generator. There's really something to those monster name generators, you know? I'm not so good at coming up with things ex nihilo but having only a name provides a kind of prompt that gets the creative juices flowing. Under-Men weren't inspired by anything directly I THINK although False Machine should definitely be mentioned. It's similar to something he wrote years ago that I can't find but I think I made the idea my own (more quotidian, less poetic, I think that's basically my stock in trade) I can put this up with a minimum of gall.
In singular they're called "a Stonechild," pronounced like you'd think but for some reason the plural form is "Stonechilds" as in "Rothschilds."
They're slow, so the only way they can catch prey is through numbers and ambush tactics. They typically lurk wherever large boulders and rocks congregate, lurking in a loose ring until some victims wander into the middle. Some scholars (the few who care to even take up the subject) suspect they were brought over at some point from the Elemental Plane of Earth, while others argue they are a native form of mollusc.
Disguised, a Stonechild looks like an ordinary stone, about the size of a large man's torso. This is actually their shell, though it looks and feels like rough granite shaped by aeons of wind and rain, often even sporting colonies of moss. The shape may be oblong and more forward-projecting or more balanced. From out of this shell when the Stonechild emerges protrude two stout, tortoise-like legs, which waddle furiously in splayed posture. Despite the effort both their speed and balance is poor.
From near the front or sides of their shell protrude two grey pipelike arms ending in blunt, four-fingered hands, the forearm and wrist swollen-looking, the skin rough as sandpaper. The arms are long enough that their fingertips can just meet if they reach around the front of the shell, but the Stonechild's body configuration makes wielding a weapon in two hands impossible. They carry stone maces, which some speculate the Stonechilds form naturally inside their shell analogous to how clams form pearls. The head of the mace can take many forms: sometimes a simple orb, othertimes a little pagoda of layered flanges. It is quite heavy and quite effective at breaking bones. They wield it one-handed with the other arm held out for balance or to catch them if their flat feet stutter.
Stonechilds are only about as high as a man's waist. Thus they usually swing for the legs, and full-on a blow from one of their clubs can disable a man's leg even through armor. They bring their targets down to their level with repeated savage blows. Then the Stonechild opens its mouth: a heretofore unseen crack in the stone pops up with a hiss of escaping steam and the squelch of mucus strings and a vomitous smell. Enormous teeth line the void with a thick tongue, the entire front section of the Stonechild's shell apparently devoted to its mouth. When their victim is well pulverized, preferably beaten into a kneeling position with head conveniently lowered, the lead Stonechild opens its maw and bites off the victim's head. Simple and effective. Brains really do seem to be the most prized part of any prey. They will work whatever chunk they tore off in their giant mouths with slow grinding and cracking, spitting out lumps of twisted metal armor and fragments of bone for days. They can go a long time between meals. They are just clever enough to leave any valuables from previous victims strewn around the scene of their next ambush.
They can speak. Terran, which lends some credence to the notion that they are outsiders, and in some cases a few crude phrases in the common tongue. Sometimes as they encircle prey, in their droning buzzing voices they pretend to be robbers. They say they'll the victim pass if weapons and goods are surrendered. At least until their ring gets close enough to charge (10' for their stumpy little legs). Sometimes Stonechilds just open those huge, flat-toothed mouths of theirs and scream for no apparent reason.
It's speculated they reproduce through eggs, which grow a suitably-sized rock shell over and around them as the fleshy creature inside actually finishes gestating and growing over centuries. As the abominations are thoroughly exterminated anytime a colony is found anywhere near civilization, much of their ecology is left to speculation. They are dumb and their senses limited enough you could play Jane Goodall with a circle of them if you really wanted, but it would be one boring adventure.
Under-Men
Products of breeding experiments, they are a subrace of Man. Perhaps once human slaves of the Illithids, crossbred with a tribe of blind Morlocks. Perhaps their gracile, sculpted bodies were the product of some feverish Drow fleshcrafter-aesthete. Maybe it was some asshole wizard who's name is now deservedly lost to time. In any case, they got loose and bred true and now they are a viable if gross underground culture.
Tall and wane with knotted muscles, they rarely stand to their full height but hunt and root through their caves and tunnels stooped, necks projecting vulturine from tensed shoulders. Their skin is an almost purplish grey, unkempt bristly hair soot-black. There may be some nods to decoration: headbands made from cave viper hide, hair stood up with animal fat. They have recessed noses, the nostrils almost slits, and heavy brows beneath which the eyes are intense black orbs, almost all pupil; the eyes barely work anymore. If you shone a torch in one's face he would see you as no more than a hazy ghost haloed in alien luminescence. Their mouths tend to project out from the face; any alien object will get a quick tongue-bathing to determine its nature.
They stalk the corridors and cliffs under the earth by probing the stones with fingers and feet. Their grey skin, corded veins standing up beneath as from intense dehydration, is tremulous. Their shoulders quiver, their too-long and somehow too independent fingers dance over everything and feel everything in an unsightly way. They have replaced vision with vibration, their tactile senses increased a hundredfold. They'll feel your footsteps in the stone even though you think you're being totally silent. You can't disguise your weight, the gentle easing and pressing of mass as clear to them as if you were touching skin. Their feet are long, balanced to keep the heel off the ground, with toes nearly as articulated and long as fingers; it's through the pads of these delicate extremities they can feel every shift in the movement of their prey. Their feet are their eyes and they take precious care of them. Pain overwhelms their senses: they avoid melee combat at all costs. Stone axes weighted for throwing, the hafts bone or stems of the ironshroom, and sinew-drawn bows are their weapons. Some wear carefully hardened mud-armor, always decorated with a spiral symbol in drawn ash. The spiral represents the winding endless underground; it is both holy symbol and map of their world. They use it on their boundary-stones. A drawn symbol may seem bizarre for a sightless culture but they remember they themselves were once sighted Men, and they know you can see it. At the center of every Under-Man community is a pool or sump with fresh water. This is their lifesource, their shrine and their retreat. They rarely sleep (once every 48 hours, roughly) but when they do they need the muffling of the numbing cold water on their hides; they sleep floating on their back in the still water and enjoy a respite from the constant bombardment of their heightened touch.
Most Under-Men are cannibals (in the sense of eating other human subspecies and sapient underground denizens). The few who aren't tend to live nearer to the surface, where they can trade with explorers or benign communities such as the Svirfneblin. These nearer tribes can make excellent guides for explorers from the surface, although your booted footfalls will be so annoyingly loud---the crunching, the thumping---that only an Under-Man gifted with patience can do the job.
Most, however, consider noisesome intruders only good for eating. They will stalk you by your vibrations, well outside the range of lantern or torch. At an opportune moment--when your party has just triumphed over some great beast perhaps--their flint-headed arrows will sail into your light, black missiles announcing the Under-Mens' arrival. They approach shooting steadily, a bend of cavemen boxing in dangerous animals, and when close enough throw their stoneheaded axes to break your skulls. At last remove a few will have longspears to try and keep the enemy's "beaters" from closing in on the killers. If their crude weapons can't break an enemy's armor they will withdraw, clambering up rough walls to escape and return to their slow hunt, awaiting the next chance to strike. They can do this again, and again. They're endurance hunters on their own ground, and they can see every move you make echoed in glancing impacts off the vaulted walls.
---
I got the name "Stonechild" off a monster name generator. There's really something to those monster name generators, you know? I'm not so good at coming up with things ex nihilo but having only a name provides a kind of prompt that gets the creative juices flowing. Under-Men weren't inspired by anything directly I THINK although False Machine should definitely be mentioned. It's similar to something he wrote years ago that I can't find but I think I made the idea my own (more quotidian, less poetic, I think that's basically my stock in trade) I can put this up with a minimum of gall.
Friday, June 2, 2017
Things Underground
Blueflames
They wait in the dark. Weapons clenched between fingers and carpals, musty leather over steel over bones charred a perfect black. Waiting like soldiers on revue. No one knows how long they might choose to stay in a particular spot, when they move or why. If they sense living flesh before your light touches them, then the first thing you'll see is coronas of unnatural sky-blue lighting up in the darkness ahead. Their black skulls swivel and bob in a pulsing teardrop of blue fire, empty orbital ridges and grinning jaws intermittently submerged in light. The fire crackles, smells oddly clean like what's left when a coal burns out. Their feet barely make a sound except when they run, heelbones striking stone click click click.
Most of them balance weapon and shield. Various styles of sword, battle-axes, maces, warpicks. One out of four or five might carry a two-handed sword or polearm. They coat the planks of their shields with pitch, then scrape a death's head off the black, a negative in oak or lindenwood of their grinning visages. Brigandine, mail, munitions plate, whatever their armor style it will be given a black coating. Strapped over the rags of rotted clothes, hanging loosely off their fleshless frames.
They are warriors still. They might consider you worthy to join them, but they have standards. Weak opponents (and those who are clearly not of the martial profession) will have their remains discarded contemptuously into one of the many abysses or chutes of the underworld. Those who fought well will join them to fight again. Other than this behavior they display no more intelligence than the factured, bound spirit of any animated skeleton.
They attack in bands of 4-6 (the leader of a band of six will wield a two-handed weapon and sport an extra HD). Apart from selecting the moment to ignite and strike they show no interest in tactical advantage, usually pairing off with opponents individually. Occasionally they will lower their heads and lash out with licking fire. Occasionally, pointlessly, they raise their weapons to their faces in a martial salute, as if in preprogrammed gesture.
Waxmen
Stupid, stupid, stupid slimes. How could such things come to be? A protean predator, semisolid and translucent as waxpaper or sugar paste. It forms and spreads in dull cellular repetition upon cold stone floors in the dark. You can see its glitter at the edge of your torch like a puddle of powderized glass. It looks like any other mysterious stain underground, until you come within a yard: then the thin membrane stands up like a wave in timelapse photos and seizes your legs. It spreads up, and binds to your skin quick as gorilla glue, and eats your hide with an embrace of dissolving acid. You'll be too busy wriggling and shrieking to get it off yourself, but a determined friend might save you with a lot of scraping.
Bad enough to get killed by a slime. The victim's indignity has just begun: now they are the mindless creature's conveyance. They've become a Waxman.
Waxmen essentially look like slumped, rounded and lumpen people in profile. Their gluey, glazed-translucent skin hangs down in pseudopod-like danglers, like runny drops frozen just before dripping off the larger mass. But you'll probably notice the bones first. Skulls, ribs, humera, femurs, radii and tibia hang disjointed, suspended in slow-motion dissolution within the gelatinous body. Eyes extend from the skull on pale nerve tethers. Lungs slough apart and intestines sag within the chest. The skin and muscles are gone and most of the small bones eaten away but the rest is exposed like a person taken apart and diagrammed. The eyes and brain always go last, for some reason.
Some people say that the person Waxmen once were lives on, but thankfully that isn't true. The bones simply give structure to the mature ooze, facilitate something like walking, allow it to reach out with gelatinous tendrils framed by disconnected arm-bones. Stabbing the organs inside does nothing. The "flesh" sweats an acid that smells like sulfur and burns at skin, but mostly they damage by blunt force, bludgeoning to death with their tendrils. If the loping, clumsy attacks actually manage to kill something the Waxman "vomits" a part of itself over the dead victim, whose decaying body provides a substrate for the next puddle-like iteration to slowly form over, like hoarfrost over blackening flesh and exposed bone until all signs of the victim pass away and there is only the spread of slime.
Phantommen
A skeleton outlined in a bulky manlike profile of color, shifting green to orange in blinking pulses. It lights up the underground like a lantern wherever it goes, and wherever it goes its open jaws cry tonguelessly. The shriek of a maniac, remorselessly annoying, monotonous in its panic. It intermittently pauses, as if the thing had to breath (it doesn't).
Phantommen are almost ethereal, but not quite. What they are is ghosts sheathed in ectoplasm, giving them their blobby, cartoonish outlines. Wherever they pass they leave a briny-smelling mildew or wetness (even if you couldn't hear their screaming from far off you could easily track their wet footsteps). They always run, and they don't let walls stop them. The first time you'll see one it will emerge shrieking at a full run right out of a solid stone wall, leaving a man-sized coating of slime. Then run right through you with a cold bracing shock, leaving you well-covered in clammy mucus. They will pass back through you and back again two or three times more, because Phantommen are assholes. Then they will actually start trying to bludgeon you to death (do their victims rise as more Phantommen? No one has the resolve to study these annoying specters and find out).
Fortunately, other than leaving you wet, shivering and smelling like a log rotting in an estuary, the Phantomman has no way to attack in its ethereal state. It must briefly become solid in order to strike, and it does so clumsily, giving a skilled warrior a window to hew it down (hewing a Phantomman of course, sprays more gak-like ectoplasm everywhere).
Banehands
Imagine a Hobgoblin (well, the Paizo version---so, hairless, vaguely reptilian with catlike clefted mouths and bat-ears), with flesh of a deep blue, scaled and cracked like old pavement over the shoulders, forearms and other swells of muscle. Now squash that image so the creature is squat, slightly taller than a Dwarf with a barrel profile and apish, swollen arms. Give it a bow-legged stance and a frown to match its scaly jowls and deep red eyes. Now dress it in stuff you'd find at a 15th-century Goodwill with stained leather armor and a weapon on its belt.
Believe it or not, this thing is yet another type of Fairy.
Banehands are roustabouts and braggarts as many of the Fey Kindreds are wont to be. They will typically be found in remote places, ruins and heights, particularly abandoned fortresses or towers from which they can play at Lord of the Manor. They congregate in large gangs of about thirty and typically operate much like any other clan of brigands. Like all fairies, Banehands horde human coin and other wealth which they have no use for. but prize weapons, armor and liquor of any sort as the finest spoils. Unlike the other things on this list they can be bargained with and probably won't attack without favorable odds (blustering is always fine however).
They favor small, round shields and wide falchion swords or battleaxes and on average will have girded on a shirt of mail. They lack the severe allergy to metal that plagues other fairy-kindreds although by the same token they are no more resistant to injury than mortal man.
The Banehands' gimmick is that they can bestow a minor curse on their enemies (Doom, as a spell-like ability), performed with a gesture of their weapon-hand which glows with a crystal blue light as they enact the curse (hence the name!) They can use this ability once per battle. Their leaders usually have four HD and have Fumble (-20 to target's next d20 roll) as an additional once-per fight ability. Although the typical Banehand's curse isn't that potent, they do aggregate: so a single Banehand can inflict a -2 penalty on attacks, saves and skill checks on a target, and the next makes it -4 and the next -6 and so-on. Typical tactics are to isolate a target, render it nigh-defenseless with curses and then have a laugh pushing the poor sod around until they get tired and just take his stuff.
For all that they talk a big game ("Fool of a mortal, FALL before my FEY MAGICS!"), Banehands have little stomach for any fight their curses can't make easy. They also be bribed if the party is willing to trade some spare weapons or a keg of ale. They may even make for somewhat decent henchmen for the right Chaotic PC who knows how to flatter their self-image as warriors and lead them to plunder.
---
Out of these, Blueflames and Waxmen I came up with all on my own while I got the names Phantommen and Banehands off a random monster name generator. I imagine these being 2 HD mook monsters on par with gnolls, except possibly for Banehands who are probably funnier if they are a bit shit.
They wait in the dark. Weapons clenched between fingers and carpals, musty leather over steel over bones charred a perfect black. Waiting like soldiers on revue. No one knows how long they might choose to stay in a particular spot, when they move or why. If they sense living flesh before your light touches them, then the first thing you'll see is coronas of unnatural sky-blue lighting up in the darkness ahead. Their black skulls swivel and bob in a pulsing teardrop of blue fire, empty orbital ridges and grinning jaws intermittently submerged in light. The fire crackles, smells oddly clean like what's left when a coal burns out. Their feet barely make a sound except when they run, heelbones striking stone click click click.
Most of them balance weapon and shield. Various styles of sword, battle-axes, maces, warpicks. One out of four or five might carry a two-handed sword or polearm. They coat the planks of their shields with pitch, then scrape a death's head off the black, a negative in oak or lindenwood of their grinning visages. Brigandine, mail, munitions plate, whatever their armor style it will be given a black coating. Strapped over the rags of rotted clothes, hanging loosely off their fleshless frames.
They are warriors still. They might consider you worthy to join them, but they have standards. Weak opponents (and those who are clearly not of the martial profession) will have their remains discarded contemptuously into one of the many abysses or chutes of the underworld. Those who fought well will join them to fight again. Other than this behavior they display no more intelligence than the factured, bound spirit of any animated skeleton.
They attack in bands of 4-6 (the leader of a band of six will wield a two-handed weapon and sport an extra HD). Apart from selecting the moment to ignite and strike they show no interest in tactical advantage, usually pairing off with opponents individually. Occasionally they will lower their heads and lash out with licking fire. Occasionally, pointlessly, they raise their weapons to their faces in a martial salute, as if in preprogrammed gesture.
Waxmen
Stupid, stupid, stupid slimes. How could such things come to be? A protean predator, semisolid and translucent as waxpaper or sugar paste. It forms and spreads in dull cellular repetition upon cold stone floors in the dark. You can see its glitter at the edge of your torch like a puddle of powderized glass. It looks like any other mysterious stain underground, until you come within a yard: then the thin membrane stands up like a wave in timelapse photos and seizes your legs. It spreads up, and binds to your skin quick as gorilla glue, and eats your hide with an embrace of dissolving acid. You'll be too busy wriggling and shrieking to get it off yourself, but a determined friend might save you with a lot of scraping.
Bad enough to get killed by a slime. The victim's indignity has just begun: now they are the mindless creature's conveyance. They've become a Waxman.
Waxmen essentially look like slumped, rounded and lumpen people in profile. Their gluey, glazed-translucent skin hangs down in pseudopod-like danglers, like runny drops frozen just before dripping off the larger mass. But you'll probably notice the bones first. Skulls, ribs, humera, femurs, radii and tibia hang disjointed, suspended in slow-motion dissolution within the gelatinous body. Eyes extend from the skull on pale nerve tethers. Lungs slough apart and intestines sag within the chest. The skin and muscles are gone and most of the small bones eaten away but the rest is exposed like a person taken apart and diagrammed. The eyes and brain always go last, for some reason.
Some people say that the person Waxmen once were lives on, but thankfully that isn't true. The bones simply give structure to the mature ooze, facilitate something like walking, allow it to reach out with gelatinous tendrils framed by disconnected arm-bones. Stabbing the organs inside does nothing. The "flesh" sweats an acid that smells like sulfur and burns at skin, but mostly they damage by blunt force, bludgeoning to death with their tendrils. If the loping, clumsy attacks actually manage to kill something the Waxman "vomits" a part of itself over the dead victim, whose decaying body provides a substrate for the next puddle-like iteration to slowly form over, like hoarfrost over blackening flesh and exposed bone until all signs of the victim pass away and there is only the spread of slime.
Phantommen
A skeleton outlined in a bulky manlike profile of color, shifting green to orange in blinking pulses. It lights up the underground like a lantern wherever it goes, and wherever it goes its open jaws cry tonguelessly. The shriek of a maniac, remorselessly annoying, monotonous in its panic. It intermittently pauses, as if the thing had to breath (it doesn't).
Phantommen are almost ethereal, but not quite. What they are is ghosts sheathed in ectoplasm, giving them their blobby, cartoonish outlines. Wherever they pass they leave a briny-smelling mildew or wetness (even if you couldn't hear their screaming from far off you could easily track their wet footsteps). They always run, and they don't let walls stop them. The first time you'll see one it will emerge shrieking at a full run right out of a solid stone wall, leaving a man-sized coating of slime. Then run right through you with a cold bracing shock, leaving you well-covered in clammy mucus. They will pass back through you and back again two or three times more, because Phantommen are assholes. Then they will actually start trying to bludgeon you to death (do their victims rise as more Phantommen? No one has the resolve to study these annoying specters and find out).
Fortunately, other than leaving you wet, shivering and smelling like a log rotting in an estuary, the Phantomman has no way to attack in its ethereal state. It must briefly become solid in order to strike, and it does so clumsily, giving a skilled warrior a window to hew it down (hewing a Phantomman of course, sprays more gak-like ectoplasm everywhere).
Banehands
Imagine a Hobgoblin (well, the Paizo version---so, hairless, vaguely reptilian with catlike clefted mouths and bat-ears), with flesh of a deep blue, scaled and cracked like old pavement over the shoulders, forearms and other swells of muscle. Now squash that image so the creature is squat, slightly taller than a Dwarf with a barrel profile and apish, swollen arms. Give it a bow-legged stance and a frown to match its scaly jowls and deep red eyes. Now dress it in stuff you'd find at a 15th-century Goodwill with stained leather armor and a weapon on its belt.
Believe it or not, this thing is yet another type of Fairy.
Banehands are roustabouts and braggarts as many of the Fey Kindreds are wont to be. They will typically be found in remote places, ruins and heights, particularly abandoned fortresses or towers from which they can play at Lord of the Manor. They congregate in large gangs of about thirty and typically operate much like any other clan of brigands. Like all fairies, Banehands horde human coin and other wealth which they have no use for. but prize weapons, armor and liquor of any sort as the finest spoils. Unlike the other things on this list they can be bargained with and probably won't attack without favorable odds (blustering is always fine however).
They favor small, round shields and wide falchion swords or battleaxes and on average will have girded on a shirt of mail. They lack the severe allergy to metal that plagues other fairy-kindreds although by the same token they are no more resistant to injury than mortal man.
The Banehands' gimmick is that they can bestow a minor curse on their enemies (Doom, as a spell-like ability), performed with a gesture of their weapon-hand which glows with a crystal blue light as they enact the curse (hence the name!) They can use this ability once per battle. Their leaders usually have four HD and have Fumble (-20 to target's next d20 roll) as an additional once-per fight ability. Although the typical Banehand's curse isn't that potent, they do aggregate: so a single Banehand can inflict a -2 penalty on attacks, saves and skill checks on a target, and the next makes it -4 and the next -6 and so-on. Typical tactics are to isolate a target, render it nigh-defenseless with curses and then have a laugh pushing the poor sod around until they get tired and just take his stuff.
For all that they talk a big game ("Fool of a mortal, FALL before my FEY MAGICS!"), Banehands have little stomach for any fight their curses can't make easy. They also be bribed if the party is willing to trade some spare weapons or a keg of ale. They may even make for somewhat decent henchmen for the right Chaotic PC who knows how to flatter their self-image as warriors and lead them to plunder.
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Out of these, Blueflames and Waxmen I came up with all on my own while I got the names Phantommen and Banehands off a random monster name generator. I imagine these being 2 HD mook monsters on par with gnolls, except possibly for Banehands who are probably funnier if they are a bit shit.
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