Two Approaches to Sharing the Screen

In my last post I discussed sharing the screen with three rotating DMs in a single campaign. A conversation with +cole long on G+ got me thinking about some of the problems with rotating, how we were dealing with them, and what alternatives there were. Here I discuss an obvious problem with DM rotations, and two different ways of handling this problem. They would give rise, I think, to campaigns with very different flavor.

When I refer to DM rotation, what I mean is that everyone in the group plays, and everyone has the opportunity to DM, all in the same campaign. This can be contrasted with co-DMing, where the roles of DM and player are fixed in the traditional way, with two or more people in the role of DM cooking up together the campaign world and adventures. Rotating has some advantages over co-DMing, since playing and DMing have distinctive pleasures, and it's nice to get to regularly experience both in the same campaign. In our campaign, I find that I learn a lot by playing under the other DMs in the group as they work their magic (and sometimes fail to work it). Also, since we spend less time "on" as a DM, there's less burnout, and a more equitable sharing of the preparation. (We're three years in and going strong.) But most of all there's the sheer pleasure of making a thing together. It's a higher degree of creative unity than a traditional fixed role arrangement provides. We build a campaign world together, all as players and, at least potentially, all as DMs. It's a lovely thing.

The two approaches I have in mind arise as responses to a special problem that DM rotation presents in light of two elemental joys of D&D. The first joy arise from genuine player agency. In the kind of game I like to play, a great deal of the fun comes from the fact that the world is open to the players. As a player, I want to be deciding where I go when and what I do when I get there. This is why, for me, the ideal campaign will always have the structure of a sandbox. It need not involve a literal hex crawl across an open map--maybe it centers on court intrigue and planar travel--but it needs to involve equivalent combination of structure and potentially infinite open endedness. The world is our playground with the limits set only by our shared imagination.

Another of the great pleasures of D&D is the uncovering of secrets. By design, an informational asymmetry exists between the dungeon master and the players. This is the source of great fun. When my group stood on the parapet of Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper, looking down beneath the waves at the tower below them, there was a sense of tension and anticipation on their part. They were embarking on a thrilling journey into the unknown. As DM I shared in that pleasure from the other side. It delighted me to see them deliberate about how to enter the Spire (e.g. should they take the stairs down from the bell tower, or plunge down to the base of the keep and enter from another level? etc). Similarly, knowing about the mad laboratories in the inner precincts of the dungeon was fun for me from the get go, and it would have been fun even if they had left the dungeon without having discovered them, or had left for the moment to return in a year's real time. From one side the pleasure in question involves involves cooking up secret wonders, and mapping undiscovered countries; from the other side it comes from the sense of anticipation, from exploring, probing, discovering.

The problem with rotating DMs is that these two elemental pleasures come into tension under this arrangement. For example, suppose I cook up the Submerged Spire and the players partially explore it. During some other DM's turn, the players (including me) decide they want to go there. How's that going to work? If I have to share the map and key of the Submerged Spire with the other DM, then I reveal my secrets to him. But now I'm also a player going into the Spire. I have to pretend I don't know what's coming and that's no fun. Indeed, the point generalizes; it's not just about maps and keys. Suppose another DM sets in motion a chain of events. We have learned that the white pods of the Moon Lich have crashed into the Screaming Hyena Jungle, somewhere near the lost City of the Archivists. Is this an advance force, scouting for an attack? Does the Moon Lich seek something slumbering within the lost city's precincts? Presumably the DM who introduced this event knows or has some ideas. But suppose we don't figure it out for now, and we switch DMs. And suppose then we head off to the jungle. You see the problem.

It seems to me that there two ways of handling this problem, each of which comes at a cost. The first involves sacrificing some player agency. Here the general approach is to collaborate on a campaign by dividing and conquering. Each DM is encouraged to take responsibility for some portion of the setting by introducing locations, central NPCs, and chains of events that are his own. While there is room for endless cross fertilization, borrowing, and mutual influence, these elements, once introduced, are the presumptive property of the DM who introduced them. If you're going to the Submerged Spire, then I'm your DM. If you're going to try to go up against the minotaur Malveraux who slaughtered Pierre's character, then Winston is your man. This can be accomplished on the side of the players by having a norm that they will only interact with something that belongs to one DM during that DM's turn. This is a cost because the balkanization of the campaign world introduces an artificial limitation of player freedom. (This is the approach my group uses. It works well, and is a viable solution, but I definitely feel the loss of agency that it introduces.)

The alternative approach that I've been thinking about this week resolves this tension in a different way, by sacrificing, to some extent, the pleasure of keeping secrets. Here the central concept is campaign canon. Something is canon if it's an established fact that has been encountered in play. For example, if the players have been to the second level of the Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper, then the map, layout, and contents of that level are canon. Similarly, if we have learned that the white pods of the Moon Lich have landed in the Screaming Hyena Jungle, then that too is canon. On this second approach, what passes from DM to DM is canon only. Supposed the PCs don't explored the bottom level of the Submerged Spire that I created during my turn. Suppose that they return at a later time, during another DM's turn. At that point, the DM works with the map and location as it exists in canon, but is free to put whatever he wants beyond the last closed doorway. Then, when I go as a player into my own dungeon, I have no idea what I'll find. Player agency is thus perfectly preserved. But it does come at the cost of wiping clean the geography of the undiscovered country that each DM may have created. The secrets count for nothing when the DMs rotate; canon is everything. Longterm slumbering secrets would not really be a viable option, since everything is always up for grabs. Here we see the same problem resolved in the opposite direction from the divide and conquer approach.

I haven't tried this second alternative, but I think it could be a real blast. It would be great fun to see another DM take something I made and spin it out in a direction that I never anticipated. I suspect that it would naturally produce some interesting dynamics. For example, it would certainly encourage DMs not to prepare too far in advance. I suspect it would also lead DMs to introduce evocative hooks that he would enjoy seeing other people develop. I bet there would also be a premium on elaborating canon in a surprising way, and I might expect a competitive dynamic to develop with DMs vying to take one another's material in a strange and wonderful direction. But then I don't know, since I haven't tried it.

The Protocols

Getting Started

On either approach, you will need to start with what I call a campaign frame. The campaign frame consists of three things.

(a) A paragraph long description of the setting that captures the aesthetics, genre inspirations, and main themes of the campaign world.*

(b) A campaign map. This can be a hex map for a sandbox, or a looser world map of some kind.

(c) A barebones description of the campaign base and its immediate environs.

*For example, "A sword and planet campaign set in the final days of the dying sun. Vast graveyards from the Draftsmen Wars dot the landscape, their technological horrors slumbering, as a dwindling mankind turns ever inward, languishing in highly mannered, hierarchical societies. Imagine it as sort of a fusion of Jack Vance's Dying Earth and Rifts."

The Divide and Conquer Protocols

(1) Everyone is a player, and everyone has the opportunity to DM.

(2) A schedule will be fixed in advance, giving everyone a chance to DM who wishes to do so. Alternatively, volunteers can be solicited towards the end of a DM's rotation with preference being given to those who have not DMed before, or have not done so recently.

(3) Once a DM has introduced a major setting element, including an adventuring location, NPC, or chain of events, that element is considered his.

(4) Players may do anything they like in the world, except interact in a significant way with the property of a DM who is not behind the screen without first seeking his permission.

(5) A DM's typical rotation will have an expected length suitable to your schedule and the number of DMs who wish to participate. In our group, the expectation is 6-8 sessions per rotation. When the upper end of that limit is being approaches, players and DM will voluntarily allow adventures centering on the current DMs property to wind down.

The Canon is Everything Protocols

(1) Everyone is a player, and everyone has the opportunity to DM.

(2) A schedule will be fixed in advance, giving everyone a chance to DM who wishes to do so. Alternatively, volunteers can be solicited towards the end of a DM's rotation with preference being given to those who have not DMed before, or have not done so recently.

(4) When DM rotations occurs, all that is carried over to the next DM is campaign canon. Canon is defined as fact that has been established through play. DMs are free to treat what is not yet canon in any way they like.

(5) Players may go anywhere and do anything with any DM.

(6) The length of a rotation can be fixed by arbitrary fiat, or by social consensus. I would suggest starting with the presumption of 6-8 sessions per rotation.*

*In theory, using the Canon is Everything Protocols, you could rotate DMs as frequently as you like, even every session. I suspect that this would produce an experimental quality to the game that would probably be a buzzkill once the novelty wore off. It would also be a bitch to rotate in new PCs every session. How did they get there?

Sharing the Screen

My face to face D&D group rotates between multiple DMs in the same campaign. We've been doing it for almost three years now. It all started when I moved in next door to Winston. He's the man behind the screen. Winston heard that I played D&D from my wife, and told me that he was reconvening a group of neighborhood folks who used to play. He had been homebrewing a campaign world for the group. He offered us three things: a map of the campaign world "Elmontare" (el-mon-TAR-ee), a minimal description of the setting, and a first adventure to set the tone. He explicitly conceived of this as a framework. From the start the plan was to switch off DMs. Everyone would play, and everyone would have the opportunity to DM. Through our collaboration, and shared adventures, Elmontare would become a living breathing thing. We would build it together.

When he gave the minimal description my heart sank. Owing to some sort of apocalypse past the distant edge of human memory, an advanced, decadent, and evil civilization was destroyed and the region reverted to pristine wilderness. In this wilderness, our people grew from infancy to maturity. We have no name, for we are the only humans of whom we know. We are hunter gatherers who live in relations of social harmony. There is no a currency, and our economy combines stoic independence and sane communal arrangements, with barter around the edges. It is largely matriarchal, being ruled by a queen, advised by a female priesthood (druids) devoted to our sole deity, the All Mother. In short, the setting was about as far from Vancian shenanigans and murder hoboism as you could conceivably get. There's no such thing as money, and the only (human) spell casters are druids. Oy vey.

But our first adventure convinced me that this could work. At the age of 17, those who chose to enter the ranks of the warriors (i.e. adventurers) underwent a secret ritual initiation. After a long day at the sweat lodge, the elders fed us brew laced with potent hallucinogens, and, while we were each suffering our own private spirit visions, we were taken on a wild ride through the air to some wilderness region beyond the edges of our tribal civilization. We awoke on a raft floating down a river, wearing only loin clothes. A set of instructions informed us that we could only return bearing the pelt of a great grizzly bear. So after psychedelic visions we were plopped down with absolutely nothing in the middle of a wilderness hex crawl. It took us a full SEVEN sessions to find and kill the bear. The adventure was very challenging and had the eerie flavor of a primeval wilderness filled with inhuman dangers. It was a blast. I learned a lot about how to do a wilderness adventure from it, but that's a topic for another time.

Noah is the dude with the hat

Noah, the next DM up followed suit. His adventure had us working on loan to another clan during fishing season, providing security for the fishing operation. Once again, a definite wilderness terrain was introduced that we got to know over several sessions. After the group blew it through some poor tactical choices, the fishermen were slaughtered, and we ended up waging a guerrilla war behind enemy lines. The world was developed through the introduction of a clan structure to our tribe, and some delineation of the economic basis of our existence, as well as by the introduction of a well defined wilderness area, and some new humanoid threats.

I was up next, and found myself facing quite a challenge. I doubted that I could pull off the kind of wilderness adventure that they had done so well. And the setting was just not the sort of thing that got my creative juices flowing. I never in a million years would have come up with it. My first apparently bright idea was to take the whole thing in the direction of Imaro. I asked myself why our society had no wizards. Maybe there was a taboo against magic, and a lot superstition about witches. Cults of freaky, demon worshipping witches as villains in a tribal setting seemed like a lot of fun. But from the beginning, I could see that the players didn't like it. Although I thought of myself as acting in good faith, in reality I had done something very different than the second DM. What I had done was introduce elements of paranoia and bigotry into the society, and internal sources of evil. This wasn't building on the frame as Winston had presented it; it was changing the basic premises to make the setting something (different) that I wanted it to be.

So I gave it up and switched gears entirely. What I needed to do was to make the game mine, without introducing something that would stretch or alter the minimal premises of the framework. Winston had shown me on the map where the coast line had extended before the apocalypse submerged half of the continent under water. Ancient evils slumbering under the sea--I could work with that. My solution was to plop down the Shattered Isles from my Wilderlands setting off the coast of Elmontare. They were a set of islands that were once the geographical high points of the evil civilization that was destroyed in the apocalypse. The PCs went wavecrawling and explored the demon haunted ruins of an evil Aztec type ancient civilization. The group has been to the Shattered Isles twice now, the last time diving beneath the waves to explore the Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper. It's been a big hit. The lesson is that you can always find ways to introduce something that suits your fancy, perhaps by locating it in a unexplored region (across the sea), or in the distant past, or, in my case, both.

Over time, some very nice effects have emerged from alternating DMs. The first thing is that we learn from and inspire one another. I can't tell you how much I've learned by watching Winston DM. The rotation also introduces a nice competitive culture. When I took the PCs under the sea to explore a freaky vivimancer's castle, I laid down a gauntlet. Winston responded by taking us into the heart of the apocalypse, traveling through the strangely altered wilderness, and into the endless dwarven mines that had been ground zero of the radioactive comet strike that ended the previous civilization. Since we're only DMing three months a year, we have loads of time to prepare. And it's fun to sweat it a little bit, like, "Man, what crazy shit am I going to bring to top this?"

There are also certain accidental effects of the arrangement that are worth mentioning. Perhaps the most significant is that adventures don't tend to take a completely open-ended, player driven form. This is because we each have some ownership over the themes we've introduced. When it's my turn, it's just not cool for the players to go after the minotaur priest Malveraux that Winston introduced as part of a brewing threat, even though one of our PCs died on his gore-drenched horns the previous session and we're itching for revenge. As a result, there also tends to be a bit of hard-framing to get things started. That's not to say that there isn't tons of meaningful player choice. If Winston introduces a bear hunt wilderness crawl, or if I induce the PCs to go on a wave crawl by dangling some juicy hooks, after we're off and running it's all maximal open-ended player agency. But there's a certain amount of, "It's my turn; here's what we're doing." This isn't inevitable, but I suspect that there is a natural inertia to the arrangement that will tend in this direction. It's likely that the DMs are going to stake claims to different parts of the world, including different areas and different trajectories of events, and this will necessitate a certain amount of steering at the outset of a session.

Other accidental effects include a sort of episodic feel to the game, which necessarily involves rotating party members, and adventures with different styles and themes. We also play fast and loose (Gygax would hate this!) with the campaign timeline. It's not entirely clear that the adventures are happening in the sequential order that we're playing them, although to make strict sense of player advancement, equipment, and so on, they would have to. No one is keeping track of how many years its been since such and such happened, or what season it ought to be. We often pick up old themes from a (real life) year ago as though only a month of game time had passed. Again, I think you could avoid this if you wanted to, but there is a certain natural tendency for things to go this way. I, for one, don't find it to be a bad thing.The combat round is famously abstract in early D&D. Why not do the same with the campaign timeline?

The last three years have convinced me that sharing the screen is one pretty great way to do things. My advice would be to give it a try if the opportunity presents itself. Don't shy away, even if differing tastes and interests involves figuring out how to fit your style into a setting very far from your default. If you're going to share the screen, you have to be willing to give up a lot of fussy control. But if an obsessively over-preparing, Vance loving, swords and sorcery guy like me can do Elmontare, then anything is possible.

        

A Bestiary for Ruined Ghinor

This is the bestiary for Ruined Ghinor. When a post contains a creature, I will also include it here, in alphabetical order.

Kora

Apparition Shrimp
No. Appearing: 1d6
Armor Class: 2

Move: 9'

Hit Dice: 2

No. Attacks: 2 Pincers

Damage Attacks: 1d6 

Intelligence: Animal

Alignment: Neutral

Size: M 

Special: +3 to surprise underwater

Apparition shrimp are massive shellfish (4' long) that have been changed by feeding on the mutagen infused carcasses of Luminous Jellies. They are usually found near the underwater wreckage of ancient magical sites. They have translucent, ghostly blue shells, and long wicked razored appendages. Owing to their transparency, they are difficult to spot underwater, and frequently are able to surprise their prey. They often travel in packs and can be aggressive.

John Blanche

Blink Tiger

No. Appearing: 1-3

Armor Class: 2

Move: 15'

Hit Dice: 5+5

No. Attacks: 3 Claw/Claw/Bite

Damage Attacks: 1d6/1d6/1d10

Intelligence: Animal

Alignment: Neutral

Size: L
Special: They blink every round making it difficult to strike them (hence hte low AC). Each round, on 1-3 on a d6 they strike from the rear at +4

Blink Tigers are fearsome predators of the Screaming Hyena Jungles. They are great cats, with a lustrous black coat and yellow stripes, must prized by nobles throughout the Wilderlands. They constantly flicker in and out of existence, moving in a disorienting mayhem of shifting locations. Like other great cats, they are lazy but cruel hunters, considering themselves kings of the jungle. 

Alberto Carrera Avila

Cenarach

No. Appearing: 1-3

Armor Class: 6

Move: 12'

Hit Dice: 3+3

No. Attacks: 1

Damage Attacks: 1d6 + poison (save or die)

Intelligence: Average

Alignment: Chaotic

Size: L (5' high spiders)

Cenarachs are a product of the blending cubes and mixing vats of the Sorcerer Lords. They are a horrifying blend of human and arachnid. Their human form is bent over backwards. From the base of its spine, eight spider's legs emerge. The top of their head opens into a spidery maw, and above it are set eight small black eyes. Although they can breath comfortably in both land and water, they cannot swim, and can only travel on the seabed like crabs. They are filled with a hatred towards the unmarred human form. Their lairs are filled with aquatic webs, in which nestle the white pods that hold the corpses serving as food for their implanted eggs.

David A. Trampier

Cerebral Malice
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Appearing: 1d6
Armor Class: 4
Move: 18'
Hit Dice: 6
No. Attacks: 2
Damage Attacks: 1d8 or domination
Intelligence: Very
Alignment: Chaotic
Size: M (size of a large dog)

These creatures are great hunters, able to follow the psychic signature of an individual who has passed through any terrain up to one week. They receive their sustenance by absorbing the brain matter and psyches of intelligent creatures. When they do so, for d6 hours they acquire the ability to speak, taking on the voice and memories of the one consumed. Their method of attack is most disconcerting. In addition to their vicious claws, they are able to dominate the minds of men. Once per round, they may attempt to seize control of a victim who must save vs. magic at -2. If dominated, the individual will follow their every command. They can control up to four victims at once. They are not native to the earth, hailing from the bleak corners of space.

Compass Worm 
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Appearing: 1d6
Armor Class: 6
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: 3+1
THACO: 16
No. Attacks: 1 Bite (2 in frenzy)
Damage Attacks: 2d4+1 + Blood frenzy
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Chaotic
Size: M
Special: As soon as any of the worms tastes blood (does damage), all worms in a 30' radius enter a wild, thrashing frenzy, receiving an additional attack per round. 

Compass Worms are five feet in length. Their otherwise featureless head ends in a maw ringed by sharp teeth. They are filled with a hatred of sapient life and an uncontrollable lust for blood. They have an unerring sense of direction, and potent alien senses that allow the worm to “see” in darkness, and detect invisible or hidden creatures. Compass Worms are valued for their frightful force as guardians, and also by all those sorcerers who have reason to tread in twisting labyrinths or the dark places beneath the earth. Compass Worms dwell in a place the Book of Six Circles refers to as “The Sightless Labyrinth”.  Although the text is vague, it seems to be a place of claustrophobic darkness, in which cramped and twisting passages are laid out in a non-euclidean geometry.

Stillenacht

Dismemberer
Frequency: Unique
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 4
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: 8 (40)
THACO: 12
No. Attacks: Claw/Claw+ichor grab, or breath weapon
Damage Attacks: 1d8
Intelligence: Medium
Alignment: Chaotic
Size: M  
Special attacks: Once per day ichor spray doing 3d6 to everyone in a 10' cone, save vs. breath weapon for half. When striking with his claws, on a natural 20 the Dismemberer will pull a victim's head into his weeping ichor for 2d6 additional damage.

In ages past, the Dismemberer was a master architect. He raised for the sorcerer lords mansions to suit their whims, constructed like puzzle boxes, with secret gardens, jeweled libraries, and glittering towers. But in his arrogance, he slighted Sarpedon the Shaper, and so entered his protein bathes and blending chamber. He no longer remembers why he builds, but build he must. So he fashions a cathedral to his long dead master from rude materials, fastened with an ichor secreted from the weeping surface where his face once was. Embedded within the walls are the tanned limbs of his victims. From the walls of the nave, a choir of tortured faces peer, and the entryway is decorated by torsos from which spring a bewildering farrago of limbs. He dwells on the Island that is his namesake, one of the Shattered Isles.

Ctenophoric Maiden 
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 6
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: 2
THACO: 17
Attacks: 1 Stinging tentacles (10' radius) or psionics
Damage Attacks: 1d10
Intelligence: Very High
Alignment: Neutral
Size: M
Special: The Ctenophoric Maiden may use the following mind powers once per hour: (1) Levitate, (2) Hold Person, (3) Magic Missile (2d4+2).

Ctenophoric Maidens are beautiful women from the nose down. Immediately above the nose, their face ends, bulging into something resembling the medusa jellyfish from which they were originally spawned. They are possessed of a cold and calculating intelligence, and wield fierce mental powers in the service of their strange ends. They may also attack with their writhing tentacles that carry deadly stings, which they may focus either on a single target, or use as an area effect weapon (10'). Ctenophoric Maidens were originally spawned in Sarpdon the Shaper's vats during the twilight of the Sorcerer Lords. They enjoyed a brief period of popularity during which they were in great demand. But the fad among that jaded crowd quickly passed to other curiosities and aberrations. Most of the Ctenophoric Maidens were thoughtlessly destroyed or casually sent into exile. It is rumored that a community of Ctenophoric Maidens has survived into the present day, hidden among the shattered isles. If so, it is a highly secretive enclave.

Jelly, Luminous

No. Appearing: 10-60

Armor Class: 8
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: 1-3 depending on size
THACO: 18
Attacks: Tentacles + poison
Damage Attacks: 1d6 + save or lose 1d4 con
Intelligence: Nil
Alignment: Neutral
Size: Small

Luminous Jellies are shaped as beautiful transparent bells, within which luminous geometrical patterns emit a phosphorescent glow. Their stinging tentacles are dangerous, and they may attack moving entities, especially if they come close. Luminous jellies feed off magical energy and are usually found clustered around some magical artifact or depository of power. If someone should be unfortunate enough to cast a spell, or employ a magical object within 100' of a colony of Luminous Jellies, they will all swarm hungrily to the new source of nourishment in shining, deadly waves.

Janjetov

Jelly, Muscle

No. Appearing: 1

Armor Class: 10
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: Variable (4-12)
THACO: 15
Attacks: 1 Slam
Damage Attacks: 1d8
Intelligence: Nil
Alignment: Neutral
Size: Small to Large
Special: For every HD over 8 add 1 to damage. Victims struck by such large Muscle Jellies must save vs. paralysis or be stunned for 1 round.

Muscle Jellies are the byproducts of abandoned muscle culture vats used by the practitioners of bio-occult science. When these vile vats of perpetually roiling muscle fibers are allowed to stew for months unattended, they will coalesce into mindless and aggressive Muscle Jellies. The longer they are left unattended, the larger they will grow, reaching their maximum size at 12 HD. They move and attack by growing powerful pseudo-pods. On the plus side, they are delicious when grilled. During the age of the Sorcerer Lords, especially tender Muscle Jellies were intentionally grown for consumption at huge feasts. This gave rise to a short-lived profession of gladiatorial butchers. 

Gary Chalk

Lunar Spawn 
No. Appearing: 1d20
Armor Class: 6
Move: 15'
Hit Dice: 1+1
THACO: 18
Attacks: 1 painful touch
Damage Attacks: 1d6 + cumulative -1 on all rolls for 24 hours
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Neutral
Size: M

Lunar Spawn are lunar entities. To the human eye, they appear as billowing, incandescent clouds, coalescing momentarily into membranous wings and cerebral appendages. To the ear, the beating of their wings is the cracking of frozen panes of glass, their cry the chiming of bells. They bring with them the cold of empty voids, and the desolation of crystalline spires, rising without life or purpose from blasted lunar expanses into a perpetually black sky. They care little about the ways of man, although they are drawn like moths to the warmth of our life force and the integrity of our psyches. Unfortunately, the brush of their wings and the touch of their dangling appendages are deadly to the human psyche.

Nervous Engine
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 9
Move: 10' (See below)
Hit Dice: 100 hp total
No. of Attacks: 3 per node (See below)
Damage Attack: 1-10/1-10/1-10
Special Attack: Spell
Special Defense: No
Intelligence: High
Size: See below

A Nervous Engine is a complex network of nerve fibers running from a cerebral crown, consisting of a fleshy ring of fused heads. These nerve fibers terminate in spatially distant nodes. Each node is a cluster of sense organs and dangling ganglia. These organs cluster in corners, and can be hidden behind fixtures if desired. The nodes may be installed within a 1000' radius of the crown, although nerve fibers must be run from the crown to the site of each node. The total hit points of the nervous engine is divided between crown and nods. Up to nine nodes may be installed. Each node possesses 10 hp of the total, with the crown possessing the remaining amount (minimum 10 hp). Should the fibers connecting any node to the crown be cut, that node automatically dies.

Only a specially prepared subject may don the crown. To do so, a ring of removable flesh plugs must be installed in the wearer's skull. When the wearer removes the plugs and dons the crown, its tendrils make direct contact with his brain. This enables him to sense through the organs of all nodes. He may also direct the dangling ganglia to attack, which can extend 30' from the sense organ cluster. They attack by transmitting agonizing electrical pulses into the nerve fibers of the victim. Finally, the user may cast mind affecting spells through the organ cluster targeting any perceived victim. If a node is destroyed while a user wears the crown, he must save vs. death magic or suffer 10 hp damage as well.

The creation of a Nervous Engine is a ghastly affair. Like, the Sanguinary, they are generated through the 7th level vivimancer spell Create Organ Golem, found in the second part of The Hidden Metamorphoses. This requires a working laboratory of at least 3000gp value. Five victims must be procured and placed into long term deep slumber, usually through use of the 3rd level vivimancer spell Slumber. The victims must be arranged in a circle, with their heads dangling into a protoplasmic bath infused with the royal jelly of giant bees. Through painless surgical incisions, the brain casing of the subjects are exposed to the fluid. Within two weeks, a tough and fleshy growth will sprout form within their skull cavity, beginning to fuse the heads. At this point, their bodies will begin to rapidly waste away, sloughing off in two more weeks. In the process, all their hair is shed, and cauliflowers of neural matter sprout from every orifice. When the heads are fully fused into the cerebral crown, the neural fibers may be drawn out, and the distal nodes cultivated. The whole process of growth takes two months of active tending.
Q

Russ Nicholson

Quiet One 
No. Appearing: 1d6
Armor Class: 5
Move: 15'
Hit Dice: 4+1
THACO: 15
Attacks: 3 claws
Damage Attacks: 1d6 + special poison
Intelligence: Medium
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: M
Special: Owing to their unnerving silence, they are at +2 to surprise rolls. Anyone struck by their claws must save vs. poison or be rendered silent as if struck by a silence spell.

The Quiet Ones appear on our plane as long tangles of segmented legs and joints, ending in wicked hooks. They only come when summoned, entering our reality by unfolding their twisted limbs and pulling themselves rapidly from the mouth of the summoner. Their name is doubly earned. For they move, strike and die utterly without sound. But their hooks are also covered in potent venom that is at once excruciating and simultaneously renders the victim silent as though subject to a silence spell. Their psychology is strange. At times, Quiet Ones seem to delight in rending flesh, although at other times they are stubbornly impassive, and move into battle only with goading. Owing to their superficial similarity to the Tessellated Carvers of the Archivists, some have speculated that Quiet Ones are one of their servitor races. What silent realm of agony they hail from is not known. They are favored by all those who seek to kill their enemies in silence, and are often mastered by those searching for a potent weapon to employ in a duel against other sorcerers.

R

S

Walter Oltmann

Sanguinary
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 7
Move: 12
Hit Dice: Variable
No. of Attacks: 2
Damage Attack: 2-12/2-12
Special Attack: Blood Drain
Special Defense: No
Intelligence: Semi
Size: Variable

A Sanguinary is a swaying, pulsating, web of arteries and capillaries, roughly humanoid in shape. Its spoor is a rust-colored dappled pattern of droplets it leaves on everything it touches. Sanguinaries vary in size, beginning with 1/2 the hp of their former host. They attacks by pressing their twisting and writhing capillaries against the flesh of a living victim, which drill beneath the skin in search of blood. When it scores a hit, it adds any hp it deals in damage to its own total up to a maximum of twice its starting total. It may continue to drain blood after this point, which pours in spurts from its engorged tendrils.

Sanguinaries are ruled by their ceaseless thirst. They required 5 pints of blood per day, and without blood perish within 3 days. For this reason, they willingly serve any master who provides (and withholds) their gruesome sustenance. They are created through the 7th level vivimancer spell Create Organ Golem. This spell is contained in the second part of The Hidden Metamorphoses. It requires a working laboratory of at least 2000gp value, a living victim, a tub of elemental earth, and a pint of aboleth semen. The technique involves first liberating the intact cardiovascular system from the living victim. Needless to say, this process involves terrible life sustaining magics, and requires mastery of anatomy, surgical precision, and an iron stomach. Once the cardiovascular system has been removed, the bleeding heart along with its veinous root system must be carefully buried in the elemental earth that has been fertilized in advance with the potent semen from the Aboleth. If the heart bulb is properly tended for a month, it will sprout a strange growth, blossoming within a fortnight into a Sanguinary ripe for the harvesting.

Sapless One
No. Appearing: 1d8
Armor Class: 7
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: 3+3
THACO: 17 (incorporeal touch ignores all armor)
Attacks: 1 touch
Damage Attacks: 1d4+1 + energy drain
Intelligence: Medium
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Size: M
Special: If they succeed on a to hit roll, the victim must save vs. death or lose a level and suffer partial permanent amnesia. At night or in shadowy places Sapless Ones receive +4 to surprise rolls.

The Sapless Ones are the shades of those who died alone and forgotten, left to rot without proper burial and funeral rites. Those who were cunning in life eventually win passage through the Verdigris Gate into Ushanpor, the great city of the Brass Sepulcher. There they slip from doorway to doorway, past desecrated temples, rank gardens, and silent bazaars to congregate listlessly with their kind in filthy courtyards, where they find brief solace in company with those who share their plight. Over time their memories fade, and with them their dreams, hopes, and personality. They remember only that they do not remember, and driven mad by a dull aching lack, long for whatever would fill it. They lack substance, and although they are filled with an envious hatred of the living, they are desperate to serve those who can provide it. 

Delano-Laramie

Slaver Squid
No. Appearing:
Armor Class: 2
Move: 12' (fly)
Hit Dice: 6
THACO: 14
Attacks: 3 tentacle or special
Damage Attacks: 1d10
Intelligence: Genius
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Size: L
Special: Every other round they may forgo other attacks to unleash waves of agony. Everyone in 100' must save vs. spells or take 3d6 damage and suffer paralysis for 1d4 rounds. Once per day they may also cast darkness 15' by injecting their black ink into the fabric of spacetime.

Slaver Squids are lunar cephalopods whose skin is colored like the starry night's sky. They have a mind that cuts like razors and believe that all lesser species--such as man--are fit only for servitude. Their alien culture is organized through a cruel and byzantine hierarchy. They work tirelessly to build an army of slaves from the many worlds, using them to erect a pearly ziggurat as a great memorial to their dead god, Kalipash-Or. The Slaver Squid will try to enslave any humanoids it encounters and transport them to the Ziggurat.

Stillenacht

Still Prelate 
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 2
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: 7
THACO: 13
Attacks: By spell
Intelligence: Exceptional
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Size: M
Spells per day: Darkness (x2), Cause Fear, Silence 15' Radius, Hold Person, Blindness (x2), Dispel Magic, Insect Plague, and Monster Summoning II (summons 1d6 Compass Worms).

Still Prelates are gaunt figures. In the place of a face, a dense manuscript is set, supported by an elaborate iron cage drilled into their skull. They are silent and malicious figures, who revel in pain and suffering. When they cast spells, their manuscript flips open to the relevant page, and the runes inscribed thereupon glow green. Little is known about these strange figures. They are denizens of the Sightless Labyrinth, and are able to command the entities that reside there. Perhaps they are spiritual leaders of the religion that prevails in its non-euclidean corridors; perhaps they are manifestations of the maze's hatred for life; or perhaps they are what remains of those who were banished there from the earth in earlier times, when men still knew how to open the ways to many worlds. Should they be slain, the manuscript may be extracted from their head. It contains the spells listed above, plus the ritual that binds Compass Worms. However, to consult this text, one risks madness.

T

Chris Burdett

Tentacled Guardian 
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 2
Move: 15'
Hit Dice: 8
THACO: 12
Attacks: Spear/Tentacle/Tentacle
Damage: 1d6+2/1d4+2/1d4+2
Intelligence: Average
Alignment: Neutral
Size: L
Special: On a successful tentacle strike, the victim make a dex check or be constricted and recieve automatic damage until dropped.

The tentacled guardians were among the most fearsome of Sarpedon the Shaper's blended monstrosities. They are cowled figures rising from a mass of think tentacles that supports them as a throne. They may rear up to 12' tall, and are capable of condensing themselves to pass through narrow apertures through which a slender man could fit. They are usually bound by fearsome magics to permanently guard a particular place, and serve as faithful and relentless guardians. They are often equipped with ancient magical weapons and arcane items. 

Kora

Threnody Crows
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 5
Move: 12'
Hit Dice: 6
THACO: 14
Attacks: By spell
Intelligence: Genius
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Size: M
Spells: The Threnody Crow may cast at will: Invisibility, Darkness, Charm Person, Suggestion, Sleep, Improved Phantasmal Force, Confusion, and Fear. Once per day he may cast: Phantasmal Killer, Hallucinatory Terrain, Mass Suggestion, Mass Confusion.


Although it is found on no map, there is a land that borders all the waking worlds. It goes by diverse names: The Half-Remembered Kingdoms, Juxtaposition, The Unbidden Shores, Wishery, and countless others in tongues no man has ever heard. Within its perplexing and shifting geography, there are some places more than others where nightmares roost. The sand strewn isles of the Sea of Palimpsests is such a place. It is here that one may find the Threnody Crows that the Fourth Circle binds.

Threnody Crows are beautiful in the wrong way, with pearly white eyes, feathers black as midnight velvet, and the head of a crow. They wear rotting finery, and carry ornate instruments, usually stringed. They are great singers, for they have as many mouths as hopes they have betrayed, and their every note is thus a harmony. They are themselves formidable sorcerers, weaving great illusions through their dark threnodies that maze the minds of men and give substance to our nightmares. They are wise but fickle, and could never be bound, except that they rejoice in the novel sights of the waking worlds, and in sewing destruction and misery.

U

V

Vothak 
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Appearing: 1-2
Armor Class: 1
Move: 20'
Hit Dice: 8
THACO: 11
Attacks: Claw/Claw/Claw/Claw/Bite
Damage: 1d8/1d8/1d8/1d8/1d12
Intelligence: Animal
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: L
Special: If their bite hits by 4 more than needed, they will swallow whole a creature of man size or smaller. The harsh stomach acids of this fiend will do 3d12 damage per round, automatically. From within the stomach, one may only attack with medium sized weapons (longswords and smaller), but one need not roll to hit.

These pale, leathery horror hail from the lush white bowers of the Dangling Jungle in Wishery. The offspring of Martian nightmares, these eyeless hunters are well suited to their inverted home. Their sucker covered feat allow them to climb any surface, and they are comfortable in any orientation. They move with a brutal speed, and attack with four razor sharp claws. Most terrible of all is the bite of their massive maw, filled with needle like teeth. They appetite is limitless and they strike without mercy. Only a superior show of force can turn them aside from chosen prey.

W

X

Y

Z

The Complete Vivimancer

+Gavin Norman 's The Complete Vivimancer is available from RPGNow for $10. The book is written for Labyrinth Lord, but could certainly by used with any retro-clone or classic edition of D&D. Having had the chance to carefully read through it, I can tell you that it is pretty damn sweet.

The text introduces a new subclass of magic-user, the vivimancer. The vivimancer takes inspiration from the opening story of Jack Vance's sublime The Dying Earth. There we meet Turjan of Mir as he struggles to master the forgotten principles of life that will enable him to produce intelligent beings from his vats.

Turjan illustrated by George C. Barr

Turjan's melancholy failure leads him in desperation to seek the help of the legendary sage Pandelume in the land of Embelyon. There we meet two of his vat grown creations, the perfect Floriel and the tragically flawed T'sais who can only experience the world as a hostile and malevolent prison. T'sais is herself the subject of a story in that collection. Although these stories had a tremendous influence on D&D, introducing the fire and forget system of outrageously named spells that is rightly referred as Vancian spellcasting, the obsession with mastering life through vats of creation has not similarly been taken up, until now. However, this is not the only influence on The Complete Vivimancer, for there is also a heady dose of body horror and malevolent fleshcrafting in the spirit of David Cronenberg. As it turns out, Vance and Cronenberg make for an attractive cocktail.

This is Cronenberg's take on pregnancy

Unlike the dreary specialist mages of 2E forward, the vivimancer has his own unique spell list. This he shares with the classic 1E illusionist. But unlike the illusionist, the vivimancer has very few spells that overlap with the magic-user, and even these tend to function quite differently. The unique spell list and the tightly unified bio-occult theme of the class do a fantastic job giving us a viable alternative to the magic-user with an entirely different flavor and feel. Indeed, Norman arguably succeeds to a far greater extent than the original illusionist class did, which always felt like a quirky restricted magic-user. In The Complete Vivimancer he has shown us how the logic underlying the classic illusionist can be carried to completion with panache, flowering in potentially limitless strange and wonderful forms.

And the spells. Oh man. There's one that warps people's bones, and others that allow the spellcaster to take someone's face, or transfer a pregnancy from one (possibly unwilling) subject to another. Even the ones that echo magic-user spells have a sublime twist. For example, Bind Symbiotic Familiar creates a parasitic or fungal familiar that grows on the flesh of the vivimancer. But where the vivimancer really shines is in his laboratory. Starting at fifth level, the vivimancer is able to create beings of animal level intelligence with the spell Vats of Creation. There are spells that speed up the reproduction and growth of plants animals, and others that subject them to mutations, and so on. At the highest levels the vivimancer is able to create intelligent beings, including clones of himself. The ninth level spells are all unique to the class, and are simply superb. For example, Cannibal Holocaust, causes an unnatural and irresistible hunger for human flesh to overcome everyone in a 400' radius. The spell is clearly intended to raze whole city blocks, and reduce civilization to mad savagery.

One interesting consequence of the vivimancer's emphasis on laboratory creation is that domain level play will begin for the vivimancer much earlier, starting at 5th level. He will quickly be in a position to begin crafting a mad seclusium, replete with carnivorous mushroom, parasitic murder worms, or whatever lush fever dreams the player's imagination births. Having wizards obsessively pursuing mad projects and constructing unique lairs early in a campaign is appealing to me, and it is interesting to see this style of play built into the class.

One other place where the book shines is in its section on magic objects. There's a Cerebral Spider that sits on your brain and shields you from scrying. There's a translucent Hive Seed, from which springs a colony of giant insects. There are salts of dessication that dry up a living being, which can be reconstituted with water at a later time. And there are a whole series of lenses that perform diverse functions, from seeing around corners to microspoic vision. These magical objects, as well as many of the spells could easily be nicked by a DM who did not want to introduce the vivimancer as a separate class, but was just looking for some very cool spells and magical items to insert into his game. The PDF is absolutely worth acquiring even for this more limited purpose.
Go and buy it.

Golems, Organ

Organ golems are the product of hideous techniques recorded in the second part of The Hidden Metamorphoses, a heretical text dealing with the occult principles of life. Their creation involves extracting intact organs from living mammals and developing them into autonomous entities of diverse utility.

Sanguinary 
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 7
Move: 12
Hit Dice: Variable
No. of Attacks: 2
Damage Attack: 2-12/2-12
Special Attack: Blood Drain
Special Defense: No
Magic Resistance: No
Intelligence: Semi
Size: Variable

A Sanguinary is a swaying, pulsating, web of arteries and capillaries, roughly humanoid in shape. Its spoor is a rust-colored dappled pattern of droplets it leaves on everything it touches. Sanguinaries vary in size, beginning with 1/2 the hp of their former host. They attacks by pressing their twisting and writhing capillaries against the flesh of a living victim, which drill beneath the skin in search of blood. When it scores a hit, it adds any hp it deals in damage to its own total up to a maximum of twice its starting total. It may continue to drain blood after this point, which pours in spurts from its engorged tendrils.

Sanguinaries are ruled by their ceaseless thirst. They required 5 pints of blood per day, and without blood perish within 3 days. For this reason, they willingly serve any master who provides (and withholds) their gruesome sustenance. They are created through the 7th level vivimancer spell Create Organ Golem. This spell is contained in the second part of The Hidden Metamorphoses. It requires a working laboratory of at least 2000gp value, a living victim, a tub of elemental earth, and a pint of aboleth semen. The technique involves first liberating the intact cardiovascular system from the living victim. Needless to say, this process involves terrible life sustaining magics, and requires mastery of anatomy, surgical precision, and an iron stomach. Once the cardiovascular system has been removed, the bleeding heart along with its veinous root system must be carefully buried in the elemental earth that has been fertilized in advance with the potent semen from the Aboleth. If the heart bulb is properly tended for a month, it will sprout a strange growth, blossoming within a fortnight into a Sanguinary ripe for the harvesting.

Nervous Engine
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Appearing: 1
Armor Class: 9
Move: 10' (See below)
Hit Dice: 100 hp total
No. of Attacks: 3 per node (See below)
Damage Attack: 1-10/1-10/1-10
Special Attack: Spell
Special Defense: No
Magic Resistance: No
Intelligence: High
Size: See below

A Nervous Engine is a complex network of nerve fibers running from a cerebral crown, consisting of a fleshy ring of fused heads. These nerve fibers terminate in spatially distant nodes. Each node is a cluster of sense organs and dangling ganglia. These organs cluster in corners, and can be hidden behind fixtures if desired. The nodes may be installed within a 1000' radius of the crown, although nerve fibers must be run from the crown to the site of each node. The total hit points of the nervous engine is divided between crown and nods. Up to nine nodes may be installed. Each node possesses 10 hp of the total, with the crown possessing the remaining amount (minimum 10 hp). Should the fibers connecting any node to the crown be cut, that node automatically dies.

Only a specially prepared subject (usually the vivimancer himself) may don the crown. To do so, a ring of removable flesh plugs must be installed in the wearer's skull. When the wearer removes the plugs and dons the crown, its tendrils make direct contact with his brain. This enables him to sense through the organs of all nodes. He may also direct the dangling ganglia to attack, which can extend 30' from the sense organ cluster. They attack by transmitting agonizing electrical pulses into the nerve fibers of the victim. Finally, the user may cast mind affecting spells through the organ cluster targeting any perceived victim. If a node is destroyed while a user wears the crown, he must save vs. death magic or suffer 10 hp damage as well.

The creation of a Nervous Engine is a ghastly affair. Like, the Sanguinary, they are generated through the 7th level vivimancer spell Create Organ Golem, found in the second part of The Hidden Metamorphoses. This requires a working laboratory of at least 3000gp value. Five victims must be procured and placed into long term deep slumber, usually through use of the 3rd level vivimancer spell Slumber. The victims must be arranged in a circle, with their heads dangling into a protoplasmic bath infused with the royal jelly of giant bees. Through painless surgical incisions, the brain casing of the subjects are exposed to the fluid. Within two weeks, a tough and fleshy growth will sprout form within their skull cavity, beginning to fuse the heads. At this point, their bodies will begin to rapidly waste away, sloughing off in two more weeks. In the process, all their hair is shed, and cauliflowers of neural matter sprout from every orifice. When the heads are fully fused into the cerebral crown, the neural fibers may be drawn out, and the distal nodes cultivated. The whole process of growth takes two months of active tending.

Hidden Gems

Wayne of Wayne's Books posted a lovely picture of a map he found in an old RPG product he bought, and this led Chris Kutalik to write about a dungeon that he found in the Runequest Vikings supplement. I too discovered a wonderful hidden gem in a secondhand RPG product. The item in question is the original Empire of the Petal Throne, which I snagged on eBay a few years back, missing only the box. I think I bought it from someone in England.

It's my favorite RPG possession. Tekumel is simply a wonder: a post-apocalyptic, sword and planet setting, with a strange near-eastern flavor--the quirky high-water mark of the early hobby. But even more than this, I love my copy for the alterations the previous owner made. The changes are clearly a labor of adolescent love, and a product of passionate engagement with Tekumel.

The EPT book was spiral bound. In my copy, the previous owner had bound looseleaf pages into the text at points at which he wanted to insert home-brewed material. He did so in a systematic and planned fashion. I know this because some of the planned inserted sections remained blank. Like this one.

Here he had clearly intended to insert some magical weapons and armor of his own, but never got around to it. Similar blank sections can be found in the section on scrolls and, more interestingly and appropriately for Tekumel, in the section on taxes. (This shows an understanding of the setting.)

But there are inserted pages that are chock full of home-brewed elements. In EPT, Barker allow PCs to pick from numerous possible former professions for would be adventurers. He writes that "most of the above-listed skills are self explanatory", and only bothers to discuss the mechanics of the skills e.g. alchemy, that might actually be of some use to adventuring types. However, this was not good enough for the previous owner who provided the mechanical effects of the remaining humdrum professions. They are hilariously useless. My favorite is the skill possessed by the paper-ink maker. (Click on the images to enlarge.)

The real gems, however, come in the monster sections. First off, he went through the entries and added the proper Tsolyani accent marks to all the creature names. He also inserted pictures of many of the creatures not illustrated in the text. Below, you can see a central illustration from the original text, and then his smaller amateur additions surrounding it. The illustrations accurately reflect the descriptions. As far as I know, some of these things have never been illustrated, until Jeff Dee started on his recent Tekumel illustration project. But, Mr. Dee, I'm sorry to say that this author beat you to it by several decades!

From the section on humanoids:

From the section on flyers:

From the section on water creatures:

However, by far the best of his original illustrations come in the following piece below that is a mix of aquatic and underworld creatures. They're all nice, but I draw your attention especially the depiction of the Hli'ír, a foul creature of the underworld, about which the description in the EPT book says, "These mad creatures are hideous to look upon, and anyone who does so may go insane." Naturally this presents some problems for the artist, which our anonymous author has elegantly circumvented below. 

The second sort of alteration the owner made to the bestiary section was to insert pages and pages of new creatures, including faux Tsolyani names, descriptions, stats, and sometimes small illustrations. He made additions to the section on animals, the section on humanoids, and especially the section on underworld creatures. Indeed, for underworld creatures he produced not one but two supplemental encounter tables of creatures of his invention. They are predictably wacky, with a sort of Fiend Factory vibe. They include an inflated piano with teeth, and various floating body parts, some quite helpful. 

                                

In tribute to this adolescent labor of love, I have transcribed the author's non-human races and underworld creatures below, glorious typos and all.

Non-Human Races

1. Baldoneá "The Underground Ones" (Can see 60' in dark.) NA:1-100 HD:1 AC:6 T:A M:9" In Lair: 10% 10-110 Treasure in Lair: Type F (45%) These are a mixed assortment of beings crossbreded through many, many years. All are stocky but of different heights. All are humnoid shape, some have dog like faces, others long noses & beards. All are of a sickly green skin. They cannot bear daylight & very rarly venture out at night. They have a great hate of all top side living things & will do there best to kill them. None of them use magic, but there is a 10% chance a leader (30HD) will carry an ancient artifact a 3' long steel stick with a black tip (stun stick). Each hit roll 5d6 if over targets hit points knocked unconcusse for 1-4 hours. They will try to capture you alive, for they are always hunting for more food! They will keep you in cells until it's your turn. It is said they bred a fat type of their race just for eating.

2. Hómug "The Clone" NA:1 (15% 1-10) HD:1+3 AC:9 Treasure: Type B (50%) M:12" In Lair: 30% 3-22 Treasure in Lair: Type E (35%) There are few of them, around 1,000 for they bred only once every 10 years. They are telepahic wit a range of 1 mile. They are human sizes with black skin, hands webbed, bald head, pointed ears, face looks like a prune with 2 black pip eyes. They have the power to clone others. To do this they must be in physical & telepahic contenction for 1 hour. To help do this they have a drug which paralizes people for 1-3 hours, this is produced in their big toes which have tiny stings, needle like, it takes 1 week to grow a stinger. They have 2 altogether. They are ambitious & seek power so they try to take over high people & dispose of them afterwards.

Underworld Beings

Supplemental Table 1 (1d12):

1. Bérékn "Sleep" NA:1-3 HD:4 AC:1 Treasure:Nil M:Nil Its shape & appearance is that of a boulder. It is woken by movement within 2" must throw S.T. vs. hypnosis or fall into a deep sleep for 4 turns. (When Bérékn goes back to sleep, movement will wake it.)

2. Bobózer "Bouncer" NA:2-14 HD:1+1 AC:6 Treasure:Nil M:10" In Lair:10% 10-30 Treasure in Lair: Type A (10%) Grey colour. They move & att. by bouncing 1"-15" high & landing 10" away from start. They land on victim 75% Surprise on 1-4.

3. Chóplin "Continuous Music" NA:1 HD:6 AC:4 T:Nil M:15" fly In Lair:5% 1-4 Treasure in Lair: Type A (10%) These beings hover up near the ceiling on seeing a party they start up their piano like music (5,6 for W.M. [Willhelm Mozart?) & will follow party until killed or party killed. Large gas bags.

4. Cillión "Friendly Eyes" NA:1 HD:1 AC:8 T:Nil M:12" fly A pair of floating eyes joined by a mouth (speaks all mod. lang) will join a party on 1-5. On a 6 will flee.

5. Criahónu "Helping Hand" NA:1 HD:9 AC:2 T:Nil M:15" A hugh hand (only attacks if attacked) This hand will come up to you & nudge you. It will carry up to 4 persons on its back following you directions for 5 turns. It will defend you by attacking the attacker.

6. Criahónd "Hand of Fate" NA:1 HD:9 AC:2 T:Nil M:15" This hand acts the same as the above but as soon as it nudges a player he picks that player up (50%) or slaps player (50%). If it picks up it will 30% squeeze player or carry player off for 4 turns (test for squeeze each turn) & dump player on the floor and move off.

7. Drón "Multipling Stick" NA:1 HD:2 AC:8 T:Nil M:6" A walking stick with arms 5' tall. (Only killed by fire. If hit by weapon will break in half per hit and attack as new.)

8. Eastingál "Licker" NA:1 HD:3 AC:6 T:Nil M:6" A walking head with  hugh tongue. This creeature loves to taste & if you have armour on it will start bitting you to get at it. (Must score a hit to bit you.)

9. Festáne "Floating Skull" NA:1 HD:5 AC:7 T:Nil M:6" A skull on a moving spinal column which sways before it attacks. (ST vs. hypnosis.) If it scores a hit on back of player it will attach itself to spinal cord & suck it out in 3 rounds (always attacks). 

10. Fréastónd "Serpent Guard" NA:2 HD:2 AC:6 T:Nil M:12" Mens troso with snakes body. Use clubs to attack. (Always attacks)

11. Gréahéna "Mad Dogs" NA:1-5 HD:3 AC:6 T:nil M:15" In Lair: 10%:5-20 Treasure in Lair: Type B (30%) These creatures are completely mad in nature. They run in random directions. Attack if they run into anything then run on again.

12. Hásnt "Wandering Chest" This chest rest in corridors & rooms. Once touched it starts to run in a random direction. If it runs into figure it causes 1-2 pts. damage without throwing on the to hit table. Can only be killed by fire. If it can be captured or cornered you have a chance to open its lid 40%. If yo do htis it will also die.


Supplemental Table 2 (1d12):

1. Abéston "Magic Doorway" NA:1 HD:7 AC:3 T: Type C M:Nil These doors will protect its treasure from all who come within 100' (At that distance it can detect you.) It will set up an illusion of a wall as if it is a dead end, believed 40% lasting 3 turns at a distance of 70'. If that fails at 50' it will send a wall of stone. If that fails it will send wall of water 30' away. If that fails it will become invisible for 3 turns. If you stand before it, it will plead for its life & open its mouth showing any treasure it has deep in its throat. It will then tell you to go in & collect it as he can not bring it out. It opens its mouth 4'x4' throat is 15' deep. It will get as many as possible in his mouth before clsoing it, sealing any players in, which he will attack by swishing his tongue around his mouth AC:5 Dam:1-6. He cannot att the figures outside. If he is killed only from outside he opens mouth automatically.

2. Bastión NA:1 HD:5 AC:3 T: Type A (40%) M:9" In lair:10% Treasure in Lair: Type C (20%) This creature is only found in rooms & appears as a stone idol. If touched it will attack at once 40% picking up a player (if score ot hit) & throwing him at other players 1d6 each (if score to hit).

3. Bridlión "Flaping Lion" NA:1 HD:6 AC:4 T:A (10%) M:12" In Lair:10% Treasure in Lair: Type B (30%) This creature is red in colour with a yellow lion like head. It has 4 legs & 2 wings which it flaps continuously but cannot fly. It attacks by bite which does 1d10 dam & ST for poison.

4. Cárn "Walking Octopus" AN:1 HD:5 AC:6 M:9" These are hugh brain set atop of a set of 8 tenticles. Will always attack 30% will lash at players with 4 tenticles. Other wise it will try to entangle figure in tenticles (score a hit to succeed). Which then will pull you under its brain & it will such 5% of Int per round (If int goes below 0 figure killed). Can only stop this by killing it.

5. Grey Sqaargs "The Guard" NA:1 HD:6 AC:1 T:Nil M:6" Squat huminod automations created long ago. They glow a pale blue enough to light a 20' radius. It is 5' tall and hairless. (No spells unless attack spells will work against it.) It iwll not let you pass & if you attack it will attack back with 2 fists doing dam as a monster equal to the party's HD attacking it. E.g. 3 first level=3 HD. 

6. Jeherrin "Clay Ones" (Speak common tongue) NA:1-100 HD:1 hp AC:9 M:3"/6"swim These creatures are small mud or clay lumps, which rise into a point. They live always underground as sun light turns them to dust. They never attack & are wary & cowards, always try to flee. Will help if you are very kind to them.

7. Cronsonal "Cave Wright" NA:1-10 HD:4 AC:5 T:A M:9" in Lair: 50%:1-20 Treasure in Lair: D (30%) Large, humaniod cave or tunnel dwelling creatures (White Dwarf 16 page 10). Can jump 20' & can sink its claws into rock, so easily climb & hold on.

8. Nadánán "Cyclops" NA:1 HD:8+4 AC:3 T:A M:15" In Lair:50% Treasure in Lair: E (40%) A giant with a single eye in its head. Fights 50% with club +5 dam or 2 hands +2 dam each.

9. Hundró "Death Kiss" NA:1 HD:3-3 AC:5 M:6" A tall 7' skinny man shaped creature with the look of death upon it. It looks like it has 2 black eyes, its skin is clamy white. If it scores a hit it grabs figure in an unbreakable hold & next round kisses figure if it scores a hit which need ST vs. Poison or die, Drained which the Hundro half its victims hit points.

10. Búmm "Droppers" NA:1-3 HD:1-1 AC:8 M:6" A black raggy looking creature, no eyes or limbs. It just looks like a rag. They hang to ceilings & drop (automatic hit) on movement below. They wrap themselves around heads of victim & suffucate victim in 3 rounds after hit. All hits on Búmm do half damage to victim as well.

11. Ghost NA:1 (10% 2-11) HD:- AC:- M:12" A spectural shape of a human which is luminous in colour & is see thru. They cannotu be attacked normally but can be driven off by prays & holy symbols & amulet of power over undead. It cannot touch party but can only hamper by jumping out to scare etc. The ghost cannot speak but can grown & moan. It cannot touch or move anythink physical. (Can make themselves invisible at will.)

12. Moss Men NAL1-10 HD:2+2AC:7 T:Nil <:10" A moss covered humaniod shaped being with no apparent facial features or fingers. (They always attack non moss men.) IF they hit dice fore area, this is now completely moss (if weapon hand drop weapon as now has no fingers). Once every part of a man hit he coolapses for 1d6 rounds & then is a complete mossman for life. But if manage not to be completely covered & get away from home moss by over 5 feet then after 1d4 rounds moss goes back to normal. (Missile fire has no effect & clubs do half damage.)