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Thursday, December 6, 2018

Jotuns versus trolls

In Norse and Scandinavian mythology we have jotuns and trolls (including their various cognates in the Scandinavian languages). They never coexisted in mythology, with jotuns being Norse and trolls being Scandinavian. This is because of Christianity, which caused the Scandinavians to forget their Norse myths and develop new myths to replace them. The replacement of jotuns with trolls is one such instance of this.

To put it bluntly, trolls are just a later incarnation of the jotuns. They aren't distinct species. Of course, this hasn't stopped modern writers from trying to force them to coexist in the same stories. I too am guilty of this.

Having jotuns and trolls in the same story sounds redundant, doesn't it? When you get right down to it, the only difference is that jotuns are always gigantic whereas trolls may range in size from giants to dwarves (in the dictionary and folkloric sense, not modern fantasy gaming's definition taken from Tolkien). In fact, trolls seem to be closer to more generic conceptions of fairies and nature spirits as compared to other cultural mythologies of Europe (e.g. the "wood nymph with a hollow back" is considered a type of troll). So you could easily argue that jotuns are a subset of trolls, specifically the biggest.

Of course, since we aren't making any pretensions of being accurate (insofar as that ever made sense for myths that weren't consistent in the first place) then maybe we could devise different criteria for distinction? Trudvang Chronicles, for example, maintains the distinction that jotuns are elemental beings whereas trolls are not. However, trolls are commonly considered giants in fantasy gaming. Could this be reconciled?

I think that, mirroring the evolution of Norse mythology into Scandinavian mythology as a result of Christianity, the trolls could be explained as degenerate jotuns that have lost their elemental power and sometimes shrunk in size. One side effect of this is that trolls are photosensitive, often turning to stone under sunlight.

Although it isn't mentioned nowadays, jotuns were originally thought to turn to stone under sunlight. This explains both why they aren't around anymore and why a lot of rock formations resemble faces (in reality, the human brain is simply wired to see faces where none exist). Since trolls are an evolution of the jotuns in folklore, they inherited this weakness.

However, not all trolls myths describe them as photosensitive. Depending on the country of origin, the trolls in stories may be entirely photosensitive, not photosensitive, or photosensitive only sometimes. In fact, aside from the names being cognates there are seemingly no traits that all trolls in all Scandinavian tales share in common.

Of course that's really annoying to us modern folks with our anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive taxonomies, so lets just pretend that for the purposes of our modern stories and games that all trolls have common properties selected from a single list. That list is:
  • Tufted tails
  • Horns (and/or tusks and/or other bony growths)
  • Huge noses (and/or ears and/or other cartilaginous growths)
  • Photosensitive (variable severity ranging from being nocturnal to dying)
  • Turn to stone upon death (and/or entering any comatose state)
  • Like other giants, may have extra limbs and/or heads


Trivia: The "wood nymph with a hollow back" has a number of different names in the Scandinavian languages. 
  • elverpige (elver "an elves" + pige "a girl", "a she-elf")
  • ellepige (elle "an alders" + pige "a girl", "a dryad")
  • huldra ("the fairy")
  • skogsrå (skog "a forest's" + "a fairy", "a dryad")

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Reorganizing and reinventing goblins

Goblinoids are a standard monster in fantasy gaming. They also have legions of less effective imitators and an unfortunate history of being pigeonholed. I cannot change that, but in this post I can wax about my personal ideas and discoveries for making goblins less boring and stale.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

History of the Manticore in Art

"The Manticore" ©2001 Leo Winstead
While the above image is what fantasy gamers typically think of when they hear the name, the appearance of the manticore has varied wildly in art over the past centuries. The only thing that remains consistent about the various depictions of the manticore, at least in pre-modern art, is that it has the body of a lion or tiger and the face of a human being. Modern art has further confused matters by dispensing with the human face, but I will ignore those depictions for simplicity.

Friday, November 30, 2018

That's not a wendigo! It's the wild hunt!

As I recounted in my last post on the wendigo, modern popular culture has twisted the wendigo from a carnivorous demon of cold with highly variable physical features to what can only be described as a "zombie were-deer." This is not the first time that the wendigo myth has been mutilated by settlers, and it is possible to trace the changes over the years in the media.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Ghouls, Vampires and Zombies

Although originally fairly distinct in their original mythologies, these three creatures have been blurred in modern popular culture. The modern idea of the zombie as an infectious flesh-eater is actually due to conflation with ghouls and vampires.

The ghoul was originally a type of demon or genie that consumed corpses and could disguise themselves as human. Some stories depict disguised ghouls marrying humans and having children with them, before inevitably being discovered when their spouse investigates their unusual behavior.

The vampire was originally a reanimated corpse or ghost that predated on humans, stealing breath, consuming flesh, etc. They spread sickness and disease, including vampirism.

The zombie was originally a corpse reanimated by an evil sorcerer to use as slave labor. This was culturally relevant because these tales circulated during the height of the Colombian slave trade.

There is overlap between ghouls and vampires in some instances, such as if the vampire is actually a corpse possessed by a demon. Folklore is often vague, so it is difficult to tell when this is the case unless explicitly stated.




Thursday, November 22, 2018

Tribes of the centaurs, part 3: the other centaurs

Although commonly depicted with equine halves, centaurs have since been expanded to cover a variety of animal halves. Some of these have precedent in mythology, while others are wholly modern inventions. These include the bull-centaur, fish-centaur, winged centaur and leonine-centaur, the subjects of this post. More below the break...

Tribes of the centaurs, part 2: the horse-centaurs

As I explained in part 1 of this series, Greek myth posited that the centaurs are divided into a number of tribes. The ixionidae are descended from Ixion: his son(s) the Centaur or centaurs sired the hippocentaurs (horse-centaurs) on the Magnesian mares. However, there were a few tribes of hippocentaurs without a common origin. More below the break...

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Why can’t the physical elements have mental and spiritual counterparts?

The title of this post comes from "Limyaael's Rant #323: Elemental Magic". This is a very good question to ask. All too often elemental magic systems feel the need to introduce a fifth element for "spirit" or something along those lines. A number of writers for tabletop games have wondered this question and provided their own answers to it.

The Nephilim roleplaying game published by Chaosium, as well as the derivative sourcebook Enlightened Magic, posits a system of several elements including air, earth, fire, moon, sun, and water. These are explained as possessing both physical and spiritual aspects within both the environment and living things, to the degree that each directly corresponds to a gaming attribute: air to intelligence, earth to constitution, fire to strength, moon to charisma, sun to wisdom, and water to dexterity. Elemental magic uses any element to create effects on the environment and living things; the alchemy rules from the latter book specifically divide into three circles of physical, mental and spiritual effects that rely on any of the elements.

S. John Ross wrote "Elemental Magic for GURPS" which posited five elements of earth, water, air, fire and aether, each of which were divided into living and non-living aspects. As in the historical theory of the four humors, this system posits that living things are composed of a mixture of all the elements. Each of the elements manifests differently in living things: earth as flesh, water as soul, air as intellect, and fire as passion. Aether corresponds to the space and time in which living things exist, making it simultaneously physical and non-physical. This is both clever and simple, so I am surprised "space-time" is not used as an element by more writers.

The "Five Cities World" by Garblag Games uses an... interesting elemental magic system. I cannot make heads or tails of it.

Friday, November 16, 2018

Ecology of the Cyclops

The cyclops in fantasy gaming is fairly boring. It is just another giant monster that is out to kill you. This is in contrast to their place in Greek mythology, in which they were the allies of Zeus who forged his lightning bolt and helped him overthrow Cronus.

Why are giants distinct from humanoids?

One of the problems encountered by D&D is that it shoves a bunch of monsters from unrelated world mythologies and expects them to play nice. Giants are a perfect example. D&D arbitrarily limits creatures of the giant type to giant humanoids, ignoring the diversity of giants in myth. Furthermore, there isn't an actual distinction between giants and humanoids besides giants being humanoids of at least "large" size in the game rules. Why are they not a humanoid (giant) tag?

In mythology, giants were distinguished by having fairly clear origins. Norse giants were the children of Ymir and ranged from humanoids, to multi-headed humanoids, to giant animals like Fenris, Jormungand and Sleipnir. There wasn't a clear distinction between giants and half-giants, either. Greek giants were the children of Gaia, and similarly included non-humanoid monsters like Typhon and Leon. The Fomorians, who might have been giants but it's difficult to tell, had only vague origins in the wilderness. And so on.

D&D's giants don't have a clear reason to be giants. Even Trudvang has a better distinction by making them into elemental beings leftover from the creation of the world. (Which I am totally using, by the way.) So my idea for giving them a distinct origin, which justifies being their own type, is to treat them as the children of the primordial titans or primal creation or whatever the equivalent is and that is why they have an elemental affiliation too. Humanoids are either their degenerate descendants (a la Warcraft), created from weaker stock or such (e.g. in Sumerian myth humanity was made from the blood of Tiamat).

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Monsters as manifestations of the elemental fields

One of my inspirations for reinventing elementals was the ancient roleplaying game Nephilim. Originally published in France from the early 90s for three editions before the publisher went under, it was briefly translated and adapted by Chaosium in the mid 90s. Nephilim operated on the conceit that the world was the result of the interactions of six elemental "aethyrs" generated by the sun, planets and moon. The sun released rays that reflected off the moon and the planets of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. Thus produced the elements of Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Moon and Sun.

Monday, October 15, 2018

Hobgoblins and bobgoblins

Dungeons & Dragons uses "hobgoblin" to refer to a bigger, meaner variety of goblin, but in the dictionary and folklore this is not the case. A hobgoblin, in the dictionary, is just a synonym of goblin, bugbear, bogeyman, etc. In English folklore, a hobgoblin is smaller, nicer variety of goblin; the exact opposite of the usage in fantasy gaming.

Why is this? It all goes back to Tolkien, who himself noted that the usage was incorrect. But Gygax and friends never got the memo, so now we got stuck with it.

The prefix "hob" has a number of possible etymologies. It may derive from the German halb meaning "half," a diminutive of the name Robin or Robert, a part of a fireplace, or a Welsh spirit of the hearth. The latter makes them similar to many heart spirits in a number of cultures and stories, such as the lares and penates of Roman myth and the character Calcifer in Howl's Moving Castle.

Somebody apparently went back to the original sources to give us the cartoon character Bobgoblin, a friendly goblin. Similarly friendly goblins may be found in a number of other cartoons, such as LEGO Elves: Secrets of Elvendale.

Goblins, LEGO Elves: Secrets of Elvendale

Ecology of Chaosiic aka Ei'risai

The ei'risai originally appeared in The Iconic Bestiary: Classics of Fantasy by Lion's Den Press as an open game content substitute for the slaad which are considered product identity of Wizards of the Coast. The name chaosiic was applied by their reprint in Forgotten Foes by Tricky Owlbear Publishing. This post will discuss the chaosiic in terms of Stormbringer's order and chaos conflict, not the Dungeons & Dragons alignment table as I consider the latter nonsensical.

Friday, October 5, 2018

The problem with para- and quasi-elements

The para- and quasi-elements have never been the most logical parts of planar geography. For example, steam is positively charged water and salt is negatively charged water, while ice is air plus water. Mimir.net went a step further and introduced quasi-para-elemental planes. Para-elements as logical mixtures of the elements was explored by Dark Sun. Air plus water made rain, air plus fire made sun, earth plus fire made magma, earth plus water made silt. The quasi-elements would be dramatically different depending on what logic is actually used, since they do not use the same logic.
  • Ice, water and steam make sense as the phases of water.
  • Radiance, fire and ash make sense as the stages of burning. You make sparks, sparks set the combustibles aflame, flame burns the combustibles to ash.
  • Lightning, air and vacuum are not on the same spectrum.
  • Mineral, earth and dust are not on the same spectrum either.
I have seen a few alternate versions of the para- and quasi-planes.

Pathguy suggests:
  • Dust is between Air and Earth. "Negative Earth" is Grime.
  • Steam is between Fire and Water. "Positive Water" is Rainbow.
  • Mist is between Air and Water. "Negative Water" is Ice.

The 3e MotP suggests that the quasi-planes would follow the logic of positive border being dangerously dynamic and active, whereas the negative border would be drained of life and color.
  • Air: the positive border would be storm, the negative vacuum.
  • Earth: the positive border would be earthquake, and the negative would be slag.
  • Fire: the positive border would be firestorm, the negative cinders.
  • Water: the positive would be maelstrom, the negative stagnant.

In general I prefer some variation of the elemental chaos for the actual geography. While the para- and quasi-elementals themselves seem cool, as geography they are just silly. 

The plane of water: The sky of the plane of water is analogous to the plane of mist, rain or vapor. One example of its inhabitants is the niln or "vapor horror" from Tome of Horrors. The land of the plane of water is analogous to the plane of cold or ice, though it is not necessarily cold. The sea of the plane of water is the material plane sea, where the planes merge.

Supplements: Dark Dungeons, Slayers Guide to Elementals, Tome of Horrors Complete, Tome of Horrors 4

Links:
  • http://smileylich.com/dnd/collective/Collective_Q15.html
  • http://expeditiousretreat.blogspot.com/2015/05/enter-elemental-borderlands.html
  • http://www.pathguy.com/inner.html
  • https://mimir.net/mapinfinity/quasi.html
  • http://aveneca.com/cbb/viewtopic.php?t=106
  • https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/environment/the-planes/
  • https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DarkDungeonsSRD/Out_of_This_World#h5o-12
  • http://blogofholding.com/?p=3908
  • http://crushingskulls.blogspot.com/2011/04/quasi-elemental-planes.html

Undead rejuvenation

A number of undead monsters have a trait often named "rejuvenation." When re-killed, they will not stay dead but will instead rejuvenate after a period of time unless special conditions are met. This makes them particularly difficult to deal with...

The undead that typically rejuvenate in the SRD/PRD are the death knights/graveknights, ghosts/revenants, liches, mummy lords, and vampires. Death knights, liches, mummy lords and vampires are tied to particular anchors (e.g. panoply, phylactery, canopic jars, coffin) and typically will not stay dead until said anchor is destroyed. Ghosts and revenants will not stay down unless their unfinished business is solved.

This is further extended in various third party products. For example, the Unhallowed from Creature Collection Revised cannot be destroyed until confronted with their crimes on hallowed ground.

In Polyhedron #150, the Shadow Chasers mini-campaign setting extended this to all undead creatures. The example in the sample adventure were bog-standard skeletons that would keep rejuvenating unless coins were placed in their eye sockets. Mercifully, this was dropped when the setting was republished in d20 Modern.

Harpies versus sirens versus mermaids

Originally the harpies, sirens and mermaids were all clearly distinct. Sirens and mermaids were conflated in medieval bestiaries and fiction, with sirens acquiring fishy features and mermaids acquiring enchanting songs. Harpies and sirens remain distinct in popular culture, except in Dungeons & Dragons where harpies have gained the enchanting voices of sirens for no apparent reason.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Presentism and pseudo-medieval fantasy

Presentism is the projection of modern values and knowledge onto depictions of the past or of pre-industrial civilizations in fiction. It is frustratingly common for writers to write historical and fantasy fiction with the assumption that their characters hold modern values and scientific views. This is complete nonsense, of course.

Sources for Greek monsters

There were a number of third-party supplements exploring Greek mythology. These include the The New Argonauts, Relics & Rituals: OlympusMythic Vistas: The Trojan War, and Mazes & Minotaurs. They include races, classes and monsters from Greek mythology. I will be relying on these a lot for my posts on Greek monsters.

No, the plural of sleipnir is not sleipnirs

Paizo does it again: they multiplied Sleipnir into an entire race of eight-legged horses (a la Pegasus in Greek myth). And, of course, they are typed "magical beast" instead of giant (or half-giant?) even though Norse myth did not make a distinction. To add insult to injury (the latter is the injury, not the former, since they falsely claim to be accurate to myth), they applied the English plural suffix -s to make the plural sleipnirs. As you can probably guess, this does not match Old Norse noun declensions at all. As far as my research could determine, Sleipnir was a name (derived from a root for "slip", "slipper", and "slippery", referring to him slipping between the nine realms) and never had a plural form. If I had to guess from other nouns with the same ending, the plural would probably be sleipnar. These sleipnar would then be the descendants of Sleipnir. Speaking of which, Sleipnir never had a surname, but it probably would have been Lokason or Lokison.

Ecology of fire salamanders

Salamanders are the prototypical fire elemental, having been codified by Paracelsus in his writings on elementals. Contrary to the fairly limited depiction they get in D&D, I imagine salamander folks as being quite variable in appearance and lifestyle. Although commonly depicted as being serpentine centaurs, I think they should come in a variety of anatomical configurations including lizard centaurs, draconic centaurs and humanoids.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

No, "gegenees" is not the singular form

Pathfinder, like its parent Dungeons & Dragons, likes to take monsters from real world mythology and mutilate them into bestiary entries. As Paizo produced more bestiaries, they quickly started scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Case in point: the gêgeneês (Greek γηγενεης), only briefly mentioned in the myth of the Argonauts, get an entry in Bestiary 5. For the most part they are barely changed from the myth, since there was not much to begin with, except that Paizo gives them tusks, blue skin, and mistakenly uses the plural of their name as the singular and plural forms.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Ecology of the minotaur, part 2: the curse of the maze

In my first post on minotaur ecology lore I promised to fit the diverse portrayals of the minotaur into a cohesive narrative but seemingly gave up halfway through. I will try to fulfill my promise starting in this post. More entries in the series will follow, hopefully...

ichneumon, or, “assassin's bane”

The ichneumon, meaning "tracker," is a fabulous account of the very real mongoose. The ichneumon is the enemy of reptiles, especially venomous predators like the basilisk, cockatrice and javelin snake. It hunts venomous serpents and crawls into the bellies of sleeping crocodiles to feast on their innards.

©1998 Jonathan Hunt


From here I’m going to speculate on possible uses in a gaming context. I take inspiration from the "assassin's bane" in Creature Collection Revised.

The ichneumon specializes in poison control because it is immune to poison and sniffs out nearby poisons. When it smells poison, even within a plant or animal, it becomes visibly agitated. The beast is quite popular among the nobility for this reason, much like drinking horns made from griffin talons, and is colloquially called the “assassin's bane.”

Ecology of the ale rune wives, honey bee nymphs and mandrake roots

As we should all be well aware of by now, fantasy gaming takes monsters from myth and folklore and often twists them into something unrecognizable. Pathfinder is just as much of an offender as D&D, but the authors have the audacity to claim they are truer to the "source material" when they are not. In this post, I would like to focus on a trio of related monsters: the alraune, mandrake and thriae.

Monday, October 1, 2018

The titans are the parents of the gods

D&D and Pathfinder took the titans from Greek myth and mutilated them until they were unrecognizable. Apparently the titans are the children of the gods. When some titans rebelled for whatever reason, the gods smacked them down; this teaches no moral message that I may discern. Those titans ("empyrean titan" in the 5e MM) who did not rebel were allowed to pillage the land at whim; this teaches that the gods are dicks. Even if killed by a high-level party, their parent will resurrect them. Let's try something else, shall we?

Basilisk and cockatrice variants

In my previous post on basilisk and cockatrice ecology I mentioned that basilisks and cockatrices come in elemental variants, with the famous petrifying variants being the black scaled variety. In this post I will list and explore more variants beyond the elemental variety.

Aligned weapons

In the 3.x era, aligned weaponry raised some logical questions since it meant that when angels and demons fought their damage reduction did not work against each other, yet when demons and devils fought their damage reduction did work against each other.

5e has dropped 3.x's convoluted damage reduction mechanic in favor of a unified mechanic for damage vulnerability, resistance and immunity. Aligned damage no longer exists, although some effects deal damage to particular types: an arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage to dragons and otherwise harmless holy water inflicts radiant damage to fiends and undead.

I feel that removing the concept of aligned damage was unnecessary if alignment's place in the rules has essentially been replaced by types, and some monsters like vampires and werewolves still resist non-silvered weapons. Furthermore, the mechanic of extra damage makes it easy to derive different degrees of harm to provide more granularity and avoid logic gaps.

For example: fiends might be resistant or immune to damage from mortal weapons but not fiendish weapons, whereas celestial weapons not only ignore their resistance or immunity but deal extra radiant damage. In practice, this means that a fight between demons and devils would deal damage normally to both, but a fight between angels and demons would result in even greater damage to both.

So you can both use your xibalban blade to cut an otherwise invulnerable demon as well as splash it with holy water or brush it with a blessed dagger to cause burns.

Disease as a spirit

I have been considering switching to Mythras and Classic Fantasy (a variant of RuneQuest) for some time, since I feel it is a better fit for my campaign setting than the idiosyncrasies of D&D. Among other things, Mythras is based on the premise that the fantasy world has fantasy physics as opposed to D&D operating on the premise that the fantasy world operates like modern science describes the real world with magic crudely tacked on. For example, Mythras treats disease as a spirit rather than a pathogen. More information below the break.

Poison as an element

D&D has a weird relationship with real science. The D&D world is based on the premise that it works like modern science describes the real world to work, and then tacks on magic to explain any deviations from real physics. The problem with this is that the rules get real physics wrong: for example, D&D portrays poison in a way contradictory to reality. More information below the break.

Obsolete scientific theories in fantasy physics

As part of my intention to design a fantasy setting where nature is part of magic, I looked to obsolete scientific theories in the real world. Over the course of history, people have believed in a lot of stuff that was later proved false. In the fantasy world, however, these make a great alternative to real science and should help make for a more consistent fantasy setting.

Fantastical languages

As part of the nature and magic dichotomy, fantasy roleplaying divides speech into mundane languages and spells which let you talk to animals and inanimate objects. As part of removing the magic/nature divide, languages will become more fantastical and interesting. Here are some examples of new magical languages.

My genies are different

D&D makes genies out to be some kind of competition for the gods, which I am going to throw out right now. In my setting, genies are just elemental humanoids and just like player races they can dramatically vary in power. This is taken from Arabic folklore on the subject, in which genies or "jinn" (depending on romanization scheme) are considered to be just another race created by Allah. Now I shall launch into a tirade on the subject and how it relates to D&D.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Demons, devils, fiends and filler

D&D invented demons, devils and daemons to fill spaces in the alignment grid. While the conflict between the lawful devils and the chaotic fiends did make for an interesting spectacle, the daemons (or yugoloths in later editions) were pretty boring since their entire shtick was being mercenaries for the other two. The distinction was also undermined by the demons and devils lacking any kind of unifying aesthetic or motif. In fact, all three were created using the same random number tables in Appendix D.

Demons in Mongoose Publishing

In 3.x/d20/OGL, demons or "fiends" were divided into a number of subtypes or races such as "demons" and "devils." In the original Dungeons & Dragons setting these were called baatezu and tanar'ri, but of course those names are closed content. Not to be deterred, some publishers developed substitutes. Mongoose Publishing in particular published numerous books dealing with demons. These weren't consistent with one another due to different writers, but they build on recurring ideas.


Encyclopaedia Arcane: Demonology (reprinted and updated in Encyclopaedia Arcane Compendium, Volume I) introduced the concept of demonic broods, families of demons descended from demonic royalty and named for their founder. These included the baate, tanar and tzaretch (the latter in a web enhancement). The baate and tanar are clearly substitute names for the demons and devils from the SRD.

The Slayer's Guide to Demons further stipulates that the suffix "ka" is appended to brood names, since the name consists of the name of their founder and the "ka" suffix means brood. Therefore, the tanar'ka are literally the brood of Tanar, the insectile van'g'ka are the brood of Van'g, the shadowy jar'taska'ka are the brood of Jar'taska, and the disembodied nuyul'ka are the brood of Nuyul. (I prefer to write the names as vang'ka and jartas'ka because the excessive apostrophes are unnecessary and caca is Spanish for "excrement".)

The Book of the Planes, The Book of Hell, The Planes: Zahhak, and The Planes: Feuerring all went on to explore parts of the lower planes. The Book of the Planes introduced a generic lower plane named Infernum. Initially it referred to the lower planes generally, but when expanded on in The Book of Hell it became the first layer of the lower planes from which the other lower planes were accessible. The Book of Hell introduced the concept of "noble devils," houses, corruption points, "iliaster" harvested from the damned, etc. The Planes: Feuerring explored some of the geography of Infernum, particularly the titular "ring of fire" separating it from other planes. The Planes: Zahhak detailed a minor lower plane ruled by despair (named for a dragon in Persian myth).

All of this musing on demons reached its peak in the custom campaign setting Infernum. Infernum introduced demons as player characters, recycling many concepts introduced in the prior books like breeds, houses, iliaster, etc. These were spread across three volumes: Book of the Damned, Book of the Tormentor, and Book of the Conqueror. The setting was based very closely on Dante's Inferno, in that it aimed to depict the Hell of Christian mythology rather than generic fantasy.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

A brief guide to mind flayer substitutes

So Mind Flayers are considered product identity by Wizards of the Coast and third-party publishers cannot mention them. Months ago I posted a brief post about how my setting would replace them with several races that worship the big Cthulhu himself, but in this post I would like to discuss substitutes in an out-of-character fashion.

Fantasy physics and real world biology

I have written before that I have a preference for pre-modern science in my fantasy settings, mostly because very few settings do aside from Exalted and RuneQuest. My homebrew in progress has an animistic cosmology, morally ambiguous law/chaos conflict, spontaneous generation, four humors, diseases caused by evil spirits, and no binary distinction between magic and mundane skillsets. In contrast, D&D and its derivatives are the poster child for gratuitous biology explanations.

Children of Chaos

The slaad are an iconic element of Dungeons & Dragons, but unfortunately they are closed content. Not to be discouraged, publishers have devised multiple substitutes.

Reinventing the Plane of Air

This post collects some random ideas I had in the past for reinventing the plane of air. These are unfinished notes right now, but I hope anyone who reads this can be inspired to have adventures on the plane of air, or as I like to call it: "Cloud Cuckoo Land."

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

A brief list of OGL serpentfolk

Over the course of my studies I have encountered a variety of serpentfolk in d20 3pp. Here is just a list, by no means exhaustive:
  • Samat (Nyambe: African Adventures)
  • Illujan: Lord, Spawn (Fiery Dragon Counter Collection Gold)
  • Ophiduan: Anguineum, Hominis, Semiferum (The Iconic Bestiary: Classics of Fantasy)
  • Sli'ess (Slavelords of Cydonia)
  • Ssanu (Arcanis)
  • Naga (Rokugan)
  • Serpentfolk, Nagaji, Vishkanya (Pathfinder)
  • Asaatth, High/Low Gorgon, Ophidic Giant, Savant Hydra, Heartclutch devil (Scarred Lands)
  • Bleak Mamba (Lethal Lexicon)
  • Inphidian (Tome of Horrors)
  • Scalefolk (Monster Encyclopaedia)
  • Sevren, Sesheck (Bleeding Edge Adventure #2: Beyond the Towers)
  • Lernaeati (Monsters of Porphyra)
  • Penitents (Slayer’s Guide to Yuan-ti)


Karathis Illujan links
  • http://fierydragon.com/downloads/ccgold_illujan_we.pdf
  • http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?32348-Karathis-setting
  • http://www.fierydragon.com/
  • http://karathis.2xs.de/

Monday, September 24, 2018

History of gorgons: the myth of medusa

The gorgons of Greek myth underwent changes over time. Gorgons were initially depicted as terrifying monsters with wings, claws, tusks and serpents for hair (including beards); at one point Medusa was depicted as a centaur. Their name literally translates to "terrifying." Oddly enough, their image was used in protective amulets and they were considered protectors of oracles. The logic appears to go that the best defense against evil is something equally terrifying.

Saturday, September 22, 2018

Fauns versus Satyrs

Although originally separate beings from separate cultures, fauns and satyrs were conflated and syncretized by the Roman Empire. Nowadays some self-styled experts try to claim that they should be treated separately when writing fantasy fiction, but I find this unnecessary. That said, I do think they could be given more diversity within fiction.

Friday, September 21, 2018

Tribes of the centaurs, part 1: The Ixionides

In Greek mythology, centaurs were much more diverse than modern writers give them credit for. This will be the first in a series of articles exploring the diversity of centaurs in mythology and how this may be recycled for gaming purposes. The myth of the centaurs, like most Greek myths, has many variants. This post will explore one, specifically their origin.

The centaur problem

What I call the "centaur problem," by analogy with the mermaid problem, refers to the anatomical difficulties brought up by centaur anatomy. There is a vast disparity between human hips and equine shoulders, and typical depictions of the centaur ignore the plethora of problems brought up by the junction between the centaur's human and equine halves. In this post, I will briefly explore the anatomy of centaurs in art and myth, the anatomical difficulties of the junction, and an attempt to explain the junction.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Mandragora, mandrake, man-dragon?

According to Wiktionary, one definition of mandrake or mandragora is "a kind of tiny dragon immune to fire." Ostensibly this is because mandrake may be falsely analyzed as a compound of man and drake. Wiktionary provides no source for this definition so I used Google Books to find where this etymology came from...

Monday, September 17, 2018

D&D aberrations, celestials, fiends, etc in a Moorcockian context

D&D took the chaos/order alignment trope from Moorcock and then added good/evil onto it, even though this is unnecessary. I decided to go back to the original Moorcockian model for my setting, but this means that the various monsters like aberrations, celestials and fiends need to be re-contextualized.

For those who are not experts on Moorcock's multiverse, the epic conflict is between law and chaos. Neutrality is a law because it demands a balance between law and chaos. Chaos rejects this because it is chaos, and law decides to enforce the balance. At some point law goes overboard and decides the only way to preserve the balance is to destroy chaos, which violates the balance in the other direction.

This conflict is fairly easy to understand but is at odds with the conventional D&D alignment system, which has law/chaos playing second fiddle to good/evil. The Moorcockian alignment system doesn't define good or evil in cosmology terms, except insofar as imbalance is evil because it is anathema to life.

The typical terminology for the Moorcock alignments is lawful, chaotic and neutral, but this terminology is inaccurate since it neglects the subtleties I mentioned previously. In a world where chaos is ascendant, there is little functional difference between law and neutrality; in a world where law is ascendant, the reverse is true. The generic fantasy setting is the former, and the characters are nominally associated with law/neutrality. This isn't to say that harmful manifestations of law cannot appear in a world where chaos is ascendant, but it is vastly less common than harmful manifestations of chaos.

The various spiritual entities would have different alignment associations compared to the standard.

  • Aberrations would represent chaos, full stop. While different groups of aberrations might behave in a seemingly lawful manner, that is due to chaos' inherent tendency toward diversity.
  • Celestials would represent balance, law and neutrality. They are active in that they actively fight for the balance.
  • Elementals represent neutrality in its purest form. They are generally reactive to imbalances, and actively maintain conditions suitable to life (e.g. the weather).
  • Fey would represent chaos, but to distinguish them from aberrations they are tempered by the presence of neutrality and law.
  • Fiends would represent any kind of imbalance, whether toward law or chaos.


Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Autochthones and Gegenoi

In Greek myth, the giants and other races were spawned by Gaia. There are even a few different names for this: autochthones, gegenees, spartoi13th Age borrows this same concept to explain where its depiction of orcs come from: they spring fully-formed and holding weapons from gashes in the earth, then go forth to destroy civilization as Gaia demands. This concept is really useful because it sidesteps having to worry about things like orc non-combatants and so forth. So I would like to apply that concept to most monsters, at least the humanoids, beastmen and so forth that parties are typically expected to slaughter as a matter of course.

Monday, August 27, 2018

Converting monster types from 3.x to 5e



Aberrations
The definition of aberration has changed between 3.x and 5e. As of 5e, it only refers to monsters from the realms of chaos (e.g. Limbo, Far Realm). So any aberration that is literally an alien remains an aberration. Those which are merely strange are placed into another type: e.g. will-o-wisps are undead and naga are monstrosities. (Although I hate the monstrosity type, so in my house rules naga become dragons instead.)

Magical beast and monstrous humanoid
The magical beast and monstrous humanoid types have been deprecated. You might think they have been replaced by the monstrosity type, but this is not the case. Although many are placed in monstrosity, several magical beasts and monstrous humanoids from 3.x have been classified as other types: e.g. stirge, blood hawk and giant eagle are beasts; pegasus and unicorn are celestial; fire snake and gargoyle are elemental; blink dog and hag are fey; aarakocra, grimlock, kuo-toa, jackalwere, sahuagin, thri-kreen, and quaggoth are humanoid. The new type should be determined on a case-by-case basis. (I personally hate the monstrosity type as a catchall because that encourages lazy design.)

Outsiders
The outsider type has been deprecated as of 5e and replaced with more clearly defined types including aberration, celestial, construct, elemental, fey, fiend and so forth. Sometimes the new type is easy to determine: demons, devils, rakshasa, etc are fiends, angels, archons, couatls, etc are celestials, proteans are aberrations, genies are elementals, etc. Note that some of the subtypes may need to be dropped, e.g. archons no longer exist in 5e being replaced by angels. Other types the type may be different that you expect because of changes in 5e cosmology: e.g. the eladrins/azatas and guardinals/agathions are now typed as fey.

Sometimes the new type is not easy to determine or there may not be a good equivalent. For example, the only type that seems applicable to kami would be fey. In another example, aeons and psychopomps seemingly have no appropriate type so the only choice would seem to be "monstrosity" because it exists to hold monsters that cannot fit into other types (which I think is stupid and indicates the type mechanic is broken and needs fixing). However, if you are using a simple Moorcockian chaos/order/balance alignment system rather than the retarded good/evil/whatever system, then aeons and psychopomps make sense as celestials since they defend the balance (which is good in Moorcockian cosmology, whereas law and chaos are evil).


Friday, August 24, 2018

Distinguishing constructs, elementals and undeads

The monster types mechanic in D&D has always been iffy due to the arbitrary definitions and distinctions between the monster types.

For example, the [fey] type is an amalgamation of many different concepts from mythology and folklore. It include Greek rustic gods (dryads, nymphs, satyrs), Celtic nobility of the Otherworld (seelie and unseelie courts), Celtic tricksters (sprites), fairytale hags, the ghostly fairy dogs of the British Isles (blink dogs, yeth hounds), and “celestial fey” invented for Planescape (eladrin, guardinals).

Another example would be the distinctions between the [construct], [elemental], and [undead] types. Although they are self-explanatory, it is very easy to devise monsters that straddle more than one of them or stretch the definition. This reveals weaknesses of the mutually exclusive tagging system.

Creature Collection Revised features the [elemental] “strife elemental.” The strife elemental is a personification of an abstract emotional concept rather than a physical classical element. What else would you type it? [demon]? [monstrosity]? Those are poor fits.

Forgotten Foes features the [elemental] “junk elemental.” The junk element is a spontaneous personification and animation of an artifice, in this case thrown away junk, rather than a simple classical element. It clearly straddles [construct] and [elemental].

Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore features the [elemental] “last breath.” The last breath is an air elemental animated by the spirit of a dead person, the animated literal last breath. It clearly straddles [elemental] and [undead].

Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie features the [undead] “siege undead.” (Monsters of Porphyra reprints it as “besieged undead.”) The sieged undead is constructed like a construct from the parts of a corpse, separating the skin, muscles and bones into three separate constructs with other materials (like sand, wood, nails, and wire) to fill the gaps. It clearly straddles [construct] and [undead], if not wrongly typed and more sensible as [construct] to begin with.

Creature Collection III: Savage Bestiary features the [construct] “spontaneous golem.” (Monsters of Porphyra reprints it as “spontaneous construct.”) The spontaneous construct arises naturally (or supernaturally) from crafted objects like pelts and gallows, but never deliberately created. It clearly straddles [construct], [elemental], and [undead], for all the same reasons mentioned prior.

The idiosyncracies of vampire killing

Vampires are difficult to kill because they do not stay dead due to special traits variously known as "misty escape" and "rejuvenation." When killed in combat they transform into mist and retreat to their coffin to recover. However, if you interpret the rules too rigidly you get a number of strange possibilities...

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Ecology of the hyena, thoa, and leucrota

Nomenclature: akabo, alazbo, crocotta/crocuta ("saffron, hyena"), curcrocute ("cur hyena"?), cynolycus ("dog-wolf"), hyena, leocrocotta ("lion-hyena"), leucrocotta ("yellow-white hyena"?), leucrota, lupus vesperitinus ("wolf of the evening"), luvecerviere ("wolf that attracts deer"), lycopantherus ("panther-wolf"), rosomacha ("wolverine"), yena, zabo.

Description: wolves of the evening that attract deer, deadly enemies of men and dogs, mimic the sound of human voices to lure prey.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Ecology of blink beasts

Blink beasts are so named because they employ an unusual mode of travel, or “blinking.” The simplest application of blinking is short range teleportation, as in the MM entry. More advanced applications replicate the effects of conjuration and transmutation spells relating to planar travel like blinkdimension dooretherealnessplane shift, and teleport.

Famous examples of blink beasts include the blink bunny, blink dog, and blink mammoth.

A rough start on blob monsters and other gelatinous desert foods...

Fantasy gaming has turned jello into a monster. I should not be surprised but... really? Really? You turned a freaking jello mold into a monster? Jesus Christ...

Oozes suffer a similar naming problem as dragons, elementals and giants do, but to a far lesser degree because all monsters of the ooze type were listed under the heading “ooze.” I would have preferred if the other monsters were similarly organized, so we would have headings like “dragon, chromatic,” “dragon, turtle,” “dragon, wyvern,” “giant, hill,” “giant, ogre,” “giant, troll,” “elemental, genie,” “elemental, fire,” etc rather than the confusing mess we got.

Anyway, in this post I wanted to address the family of blob monsters. Boy is it way more complicated than you would think...

According to the Milieux Bestiary, “Oozes are even more simplistic [than vermin], covering gelatinous masses, jellyfish, and slimes” (emphasis present in original text). This is the first time I have seen cnidarians placed into the same category.

According to the Hack & Slash blog, the type is labeled "blobs" instead. These blobs may be divided into jellies (including gelatinous cubes), oozes, puddings and slimes.
Oozes are fast moving blobs, moving as fast as an unarmored man. They strike with a pseudo-pod lashing out and slamming into an opponent doing damage with acid and force

Slimes are very very slow moving blobs, moving perhaps no faster than 1 foot an hour. They climb on high places and drop on unsuspecting adventurers. Their attack turns adventurers into slimes themselves. 
Puddings are slow blobs that move along ceilings, walls, and floors [Roger says: "cohesive and rounded, moving by continuous traction."]. They attack by slamming acidic pseudopods against their opponents and engulfing prey. Certain attack methods and energy type can cause puddings to split. Puddings often have uneven opaque bubbly surfaces

Jellies are sluggish blobs that move along floors [Roger says: "watery and flat, moving by pseudopod"]. They attack by slamming acidic pseudopods against their opponents and engulfing prey. Certain attack methods and energy type can cause some [jellies] to split. They often have smooth translucent surfaces.

Kobold Quarterly #13 posits that shoggoths are the ancestors of the black puddings and gibbering mouthers. Derek Holland posits that shoggoths may be the ancestors of all life on Earth.

As of 4th edition the gibbering mouther was expanded into a whole family of "gibbering beasts" including the gibbering abomination, gibbering orb, gibbering ooze, etc.

The 13th Age Bestiary expands the gelatinous cube into the singularly bizarre "gelahedrons," also known as gelatinous platonic solids. These include the gelatinous tetrahedron, gelatinous cubahedron, gelatinous octahedron, gelatinous dodecahedron, gelatinous pyramid, gelatinous sphere and so forth.

The 13th Age Bestiary also introduces the shoggoth-like chaos beasts and elder beasts, of which the hagunemnon is an example.

The demon lord Juiblex claims dominion over all blob monsters, warranted or not.

Outside of fantasy gaming, we have amazing video games like Slime Rancher. Not only that, but the slime is a monster girl. Let that sink in for a minute.

Links

Friday, August 17, 2018

Ecology of the thessalhydra and thessalmonsters

In a previous post I introduced the Hydra into my campaign setting as the singular monster from Greek mythology and explained the generic hydra monsters as being its severed members. This is due both to my respect for the original myth and my disbelief that any ecosystem could support hydras. Here I include my take on the thessalmonster family...

Although the hydra is a unique dragon that haunts the swamps of Lerna, its severed heads have given rise to the hydras that terrorize the world beyond its territory. Although their essential nature as a perpetually diluting bloodline remains constant, along the way the hydras have undergone various mutations such as the cryohydra, electrohydra, hydralisk, pyrohydra and schism hydra. One such mutation is the thessalhydra, which has itself given rise to the thessalmonsters.

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Ecology of phase vermin, dimensional horrors et al

Ethereal or phase creatures are distinguished by their "ethereal jaunt" trait, which enables them to rapidly "phase" in and out of the ethereal plane. The most famous ethereal creatures are the ethereal filcher, ethereal marauder and phase spider. Many other kinds exist, often variants of material species like horses and rats, while others are unique to the ethereal plane.

Ethereal venomous vermin, such as phase spiders and phase rats, are so common that they have earned the classification of "phase vermin." (It also pokes fun at the fact that these monsters are generally annoying stupid gimmicks.)

Friday, August 10, 2018

Species names for the four elements?

The concept of elementals seems to have been invented by the famed alchemist Paracelsus. There were four elementals, one for each element: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders. (Paracelsus seems to have invented the concept of gnomes.) In D&D, these subtleties were discarded. Instead of unique names, elementals were referred to as air elementals, earth elementals, etc. Furthermore, the original names are recycled for other creatures in the game.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

Monster types are a stupid rule

I have said it before and I say it again: the monster type mechanic in D&D is stupid. The monster type mechanic is both poorly defined, nonsensically rigid, biologically insane and makes no sense from a holistic world building perspective.

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Ecology of the intellect devourer, part 2

Since mind flayers are not open content I had decided to replace them with various open content analogues. I try to spend effort on making each of them distinct from one another rather than variations on the same idea. I gave the tentacle horror aspects to the phrenic scourges (who will appear in another post) and the brain-eating aspects to the intellect devourers. I have expanded the intellect devourers into an entire family of monsters as you can see in the last post of this series. More information below the break...

Monday, August 6, 2018

Sexism in monster design

Long story short, some of the monstresses in fiction are more than a bit sexist in their portrayal of feminity itself as a symbol of horror. Masculinity is played for horror, but not as often. In psychological and literary analysis these are labeled the “monstrous feminine” and the “monstrous masculine.”

The monstrous feminine

The tropes are monstress as temptress, monstress as womb, monstress as temptress and womb, monstress as bride, and monstress as desirable.

The monstress as temptress attempts to seduce the hero in order to kill him, such as the succubus. She derives her horror factor from turning what should be attractive (sex with a woman) into something harmful (death by sex). A variation on this is that the monster is not actually a woman or female but merely disguises itself as one (e.g. Pathfinder's vouivre). The most Freudian example would have to be the vagina dentata ("toothed vagina"). This motif was traditionally used to warn men not to sleep with strange women, although what constitutes "strange" may have in fact referred to foreigners... so extra points for xenophobia?

The monstress as womb, like the previous trope, turns something traditionally seen as desirable into something horrible. The monstress is monstrous because she gives birth, typically to horrible monsters. This goes all the way back to the "mother of monsters" that may be found in myths around the world. What is less commonly known is that these monstrous mothers often had equally monstrous husbands in a bizarre example of monstrous gender equality.

This trope is a horror-specific relative of the "mystical pregnancy" trope, although that trope in particular may be played for hope instead to horror. The birth of Christ and numerous imitations are one such example of a happy pregnancy. Far more often, however, a "happy" mystical pregnancy may be an episodic event that is quickly forgotten and the work completely ignores any emotional fallout to the mother afterwards.

A couple examples of such monsters in role playing game bestiaries include the "dark womb" from the Creature Collection series (reprinted as "Chorion hag" in the Monsters of Porphyra series), which clones other creatures to create slaves; and the drakainia from Pathfiner (a misspelling of Dracaena or "she-dragon"), which adds an additional element of sexual assault by forcibly impregnating prey with her embryos.

On a related note, many monsters that do not derive their horror factor from the monstrous feminine have unequal gender representation: in many cases, males are assumed to be the default and females are reduced to literal baby factories (if they appear at all).

The monstress as temptress and womb is the most Freudian trope and as the name implies it combines the previous two. One commentator summed it up as "[w]omen exist just to trap men into having babies who will then destroy their hitherto awesome lives." Too many monsters to count are described as an all-female race that keep men of other races as sex-slaves and food, like a praying mantis or black widow spider without the logical non-evil basis those species have for their behavior. Less commonly these monstresses impregnate their unwitting husbands, who then die as their offspring eat their way out (e.g. Pathfinder's jorogumo). The nibovian wife, from Numera, exemplifies this because she initially appears to be a normal woman seeking a husband except that her offspring are actually aliens that attempt to kill their "father" right after being born (an irrational modus operandi that raises numerous questions and seems pointlessly sadistic on Monte Cook's part).

The monstress as bride is a very old recurring motif in fairy tales around the world. A happy variation, the "loathly lady", depicts the hero marrying a hideous hag and being rewarded for it when the hag melts away to reveal a comely maiden. A tragic variation is that the hero marries a beautiful woman then, through his own stupidity, reveals her as a reluctant monster and destroys their previously happy marriage (e.g. Arabic ghoul, Japanese snow woman, Celtic nymph).

The monstress as desirable is a recent development where the monstress is considered desirable because of her monstrous femininity rather than despite it. The colloqual term for this on the internet is "monstergirl." However, such "positive" depictions can easily objectify women either intentionally (since monstergirls are literally a sexual fetish) or by mistake (if the author genuinely does not realize the implications of their writing).

The thriae (the Pathfinder monster, not the Greek nymph) is a "positive" mirror of the monstress that kidnaps men for reproduction. They convince men to become their sex-slaves voluntarily and then keep them as pampered studs for the rest of their lives. An entire caste of thriae dancers exists specifically to give lap dances. This is sexist against both men and women, reducing them to nothing more than their roles in reproduction and domestic housekeeping.

The sirens (again, the Pathfinder version) are driven to couple with musicians and commit suicide if their prospective lover spurns or leaves them. This is sexist against woman because it depicts her life as being worthless without a husband to spend it with, and it falls into the tired old cliche of "lifelong soulmates you literally cannot live without."

The monstrous masculine

These tropes have male counterparts, but those are far less common since men have traditionally dominated storytelling for millennia. In the internet age they have massively grown in popularity.

The monster as tempter is a monster who attempts to seduce innocent maidens in order to despoil their purity and/or eat them. This goes all the way back to the incubus, the male counterpart of the succubus. It is present as the wolf in the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood and the titular villain of Dracula. Here the threat comes from the danger of rape, a motif traditionally used to discourage women from travelling alone or trying to leave their villages. It still has resonance today due to what the media decries as "rape culture," although what this means is highly variable by which country you live in. In more violent parts of the world rape is not considered a crime, whereas in more equitable parts of the world both women and men may face irrational disbelief when they claim to be victims of rape. Ironically, rape is most likely to be committed by a friend or family member of the victim rather than a stranger as the old stories imply.

The monster as penis is monstrous because, like the monstress as womb, he takes the innocuous male sexual function and turns it into a symbol of fear. The earliest examples include the father of monsters as the husband of the mother of monsters. This includes the penis dentatus, a male counterpart to the vagina dentata. Don't believe me? The Journal of American Folklore recounts the tale of "The Man with the Toothed Penis". The scifi horror movie Alien bases its monster on the male genitalia (designed by the late H.R. Giger) and it kills its prey by impregnating them with it killer offspring or by literally impaling them with its toothed tongue or spear-tipped tail (all of these are clear phallic symbols). The horror game Silent Hill 3 includes a boss monster labeled "Split Worm" which closely resembles a toothed penis and abstractly symbolizes birth.

A positive example of this occurs in the surreal artsy indie game The Void (aka Tension, Turgor), which may be analyzed as an allegory for sex and conception. To the writers' credit, it may be interpreted as an allegory for the creative process and for feminism.

The monster as tempter and penis is possibly the single most misogynistic trope out of all these. Oddly enough it seems to be mostly modern as far as I can tell, being a particularly violent manifestation of the oft-maligned "mystical pregnancy" trope. It is exemplified in the B-movie Species 2. The titular monster rapes his female victims and they die giving birth to his monstrous offspring. You cannot be more on the nose than that, I suppose.

An example of this in a role playing context is the minotaur.

The monster as bridegroom is typically a simple gender flip of the loathly lady motif. A beautiful prince is trapped in the form of a hideous monster and only the princess can save him with true love. This is exemplified in tales such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Frog Prince".

The monster as desirable depicts the monster as desirable because of his monstrous masculinity rather than despite it. Like its female counterpart, this trope has taken off only within the last century or so and mostly in romance novels. Traditional monsters and other non-human creatures like vampires, werewolves, demons, dinosaurs, centaurs, dark elves and so forth are typical choices in such fiction. This has a substantial LGBT following as well. Colloquial terms include "monsterboy", "monster boyfriend", and "you sexy beast".

Friday, August 3, 2018

Sexual cannibalism as reproduction

An idea I got the other day was that some monsters could reproduce by sexual cannibalism. Not simply eat their partner during or after sex, but eat their partner in order to inseminate their eggs.

According to the quasi-canon Dune Encyclopedia, the male sand-worm consumes the female, inseminates her eggs inside his body, then lays the egg case himself. The female does not survive the process, but she does not need to.

According to a suggestion by Derek Holland, the thessalmonster could reproduce by "hemiclone." Every thessalmonster is an asexual female who fertilizes her eggs by eating another monster. The offspring will be a hybrid of thessalhydra and whatever the "father" was, leading to the many varieties like thessalgorgon, thessalisk, thessalmera, thessalnaga, thessaltrice, etc. Every thessalmonster only passes on the traits of the thessalhydra to her offspring, so the traits of past "fathers" are not inherited by subsequent generations.

How big were giants anyway? How do half-giants even make sense?

Despite the general obscurity of giants in general, half-giants are a thing in fantasy role-playing, fiction and, to a lesser degree, myth and fairytale. What is often ignored are the physical barriers to their conception, namely the massive size disparity between giants and humans, nymphs or whoever the partner is. By analogy to the mermaid problem, I label this the "giant problem."

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Ecology of the Argusoïd

Argus Pantopes was a hundred-eyed giant from Greek myth. As far I could determine his name translates to "bright/shining all-eyes," which is less a name and more a literal description of his appearance.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Ecology of the minotaur: cults and herds

While many minotaurs are solitary monsters that endless haunt the halls of their accursed mazes or aimlessly rule over them like the beast in Beauty and the Beast or the ogre in Puss in Boots, others form social groups.

Cults of Baphomet

The traditional depiction of minotaur "society" has most commonly been the cult of Baphomet, who fantasy gaming made into the god of minotaurs. In traditional gaming lore, a minotaur or group of closely related minotaurs live in a maze. Since they are an all-male race of cannibals, they reproduce by abducting human females, raping and impregnating them, then eating the poor girls once they no longer serve a purpose. According to 5th edition, minotaurs were originally (and still are being) created by subjecting human cultists to a ritual that made them minotaurs and their descendants inherited this without needing to perform the ritual over every new birth.

As I said before, I do not want to treat the minotaurs as just another race of beastfolk and I feel that a convoluted ecology makes them less magical and drags them further from their mythological roots. So at least in my setting, the cults of Baphomet have to perform the rites whenever they wish to make a minotaur. Because of the profound physical and mental changes, adult initiates will demonstrate a weaker self-preservation instinct compared to those transformed as children or unborn. Although the ritual may hypothetically be performed on women, the orthodox cult seems to only recruit men.

Herds

Herds are a social structure introduced in the third party product Maze of the Minotaur: Masters & Minions, Horde Book 2. There minotaur herds are structured in a manner reminiscent of lion prides and to a lesser degree beehives. The social statuses or castes afford to minotaurs include bull lord (the leader of a herd), minotaur (which I label "brave" to distinguish it), minotrice (female minotaur), minotrice maze mage and tauron (underdeveloped minotaurs used for manual labor). Due to influence from Mazes & Minotaurs, in my setting the castes display various degrees of anthropomorphism and mutation.

Now you may have noticed a contradiction. Masters & Minions gave the minotaurs a naturalistic ecology (at least more so than their disturbing AD&D ecology) and I previously criticized naturalistic ecology as being unnecessary. Well, now I am being a hypocrite and including both cursed minotaurs and a naturalistic ecology in the same setting.

To be honest the herd ecology is not really natural: it is being artificially maintained above and beyond the standard curse. Normally the curse is never so consistently prevalent across generations as to create a self-sustaining race. Alternately, these herdfolk are bovine beastfolk that suffer the curse of the minotaur. Either way it results in the herd society as laid out in Masters & Minions. I would not sweat the details too much.

To be detailed...

  • Tribes (Herdfolk)
  • Minoans (Golden Minotaurs)

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Ecology of the Phrenic Scourge

Of all the substitutes for the mind flayers in third-party products, my favorite has to be the Phrenic Scourge.

Nomenclature: aquane, brilkoun, durlans, mind eater, nyarl, ochthichthuruch, paretiophage, psycholus, starspawn of Cthulhu, thought ripper, the worm that walks,

Description: writhing masses of seafood with prodigious psychic powers and dark designs on the hero's love interest

Friday, July 13, 2018

Mythological and folkloric roots of hungry dead

Zombies

Zombies originate from Haitian voodoo. Evil sorcerers use magic to capture the souls of the dead, reanimate their corpses and use them as labor slaves. This was especially terrifying to the Haitians: at the time they were enslaved by the colonists and thus it made sense they especially feared being enslaved after death. Haitian folklore has attributed other supernatural powers to zombies, such as transforming into smoke to get around barriers.

A similar belief appeared in Chinese culture, where funeral directors were once believed to use magic to reanimated dead bodies to make them easier to transport to their homelands where they would receive last rites. The reanimated were called 僵尸 jiāngshī meaning “stiff corpse.”

D&D zombies and skeletons are more or less identical to the Haitian zombie.

Ghouls

Ghouls originate from Arabic folklore, where they are a type of genie that haunts graveyards and consumes corpses. They are said to have traits of donkeys, like pelts, tails, hooves, and large ears.

The wendigo from the folklore of the Algonquin peoples bears similarities to the ghoul due to their carnivorous nature, though the wendigo is sometimes claimed to be a human transformed or possessed by a wendigo as punishment for cannibalism.

Ghouls appeared in some of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, where they were attributed to kidnap human children and replace them with their own (similar to the changeling, a European fairy) and to transform humans into ghouls through some manner of black magic (similar to some stories of the wendigo).

D&D ghouls drawn some inspiration from Lovecraft's ghouls, but are mostly conflated with the "ghouls" from Night of the Living Dead.

Vampires

In 20th century fiction and beyond, both zombies and jiāngshī would be attributed ghoul- or vampire-like hunger for the flesh or vitality of the living. Meanwhile, ghouls would be conflated with zombies as a kind of flesh-eating undead creature. These modern monsters bear more resemblance to the vampires of folklore than to the zombies and ghouls of folklore.

The modern vampire retains the hungry nature of its predecessors, but has acquired overtones of power and sexual lust. This movement started with Dracula, was refined by Interview with the Vampire, and reached its nadir in the Twilight books. That being said, the folkloric vampire has made resurgence in counter-cultural fiction.

D&D vampires are taken straight out of Dracula.

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Some lore and ideas concerning lycanthropes

Lycanthropes are an interesting part of D&D history. What follows are some ideas of mine for fleshing them out.

Ecology of the intellect devourer (aka mind eater)

In this post, I decided to expand on the intellect devourer. It is a standard D&D monster, but has surprisingly little detail attached to it. There are few variants, no consistent ecology, and not enough done with the premise.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Influence from Stormbringer

I have been doing some research on the Moorcock's Multiverse wiki and learned about the obscure elements of the Eternal Champion series' expanded universe. This gives me some more ideas for exploring my own take on the concept.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Filler monsters and races, or, making demikind more colorful?

Game bestiaries commonly suffer from filler. Filler monsters exist to pad out the book and most of them never get used. There are loads and loads of humanoids, making the fantasy world seem crowded with a village of yet another unique race dotting the land every few miles. Many monsters are also redundant, such as the countless varieties of catfolk, ratfolk, birdfolk, and other beastfolk. Most undead are just a variation of other undead, such as a half-dozen different types of ghosts who drowned or burned, and do not really deserve separate statblocks. Ideally, things like beastfolk and undead should be constructed using a toolkit.

Filler monsters are particularly prevalent in Pathfinder. Rather than providing options to customize existing monsters, the Pathfinder Bestiaries add loads and loads of monsters that exist to fulfill niche concepts that could have been adequately covered by variants of the existing monsters. Rather than making the chromatic and metallic dragons more diverse through additional options, we got loads and loads of wholly separate families of dragons like "imperial", "forest", "void", "occult", etc. Rather than making the existing demons and devils more diverse, we got loads and loads of wholly new families of fiend to fulfill random niche concepts like "hindu", "japanese", "fear demon", etc.

There are fairly simple historical reasons for this. Earlier editions of the game lacked CR or class levels for monsters, so the designers filled out the challenge ladder by inventing new monsters. Furthermore, monsters were not subject to customization and the writers were OCD, so whenever a new idea was needed they made up a whole new monster for it rather than a variant. The game also conflates race with culture and decided to split races into sub-races with different outlooks rather than have one race with different cultures. Again, earlier editions condensed race into class, and only later editions separated the two. The label of "demi-human" to the other PC races speaks volumes.

This leads to another problem: humans are the only race with ethnic diversity. Other races too often feel like funny looking humans. Too often whole races are pigeonholed into a single monolithic culture. Humans feel redundant when fantasy races steal all of their cultural uniqueness. Every member of the party acts exactly the same regardless of their race or implied culture.

With the monsters it is simple to condense them into families which include representatives at every CR, whether due to class levels or other monster building choices. The Fantasycraft game has a novel mechanic for scaling the same monsters at all levels. With the races we have our work cut out for us. We need to make fantasy races more culturally diverse within a single race without resorting to making up sub-races (or maybe separate racial and cultural traits into distinct packages), and we need to make fantasy races psychologically distinct from humans to justify them not being human or else devise some kind of explanation why everyone has human psychology.

With regard to demikind all having the same psychology, I have entertained the idea that they are all distantly descended from fey who became mortal or something. Alternately, maybe humans are distinguished by their mental flexibility compared to other demikind (that and their bizarre cross-species fecundity) and that explains why non-human cultures separated by great distances in time and space have changed little since their original division.

Critique of demikind

"Demikind" is a term for humans and near-human races in D&D, like elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings. The core races, basically. "Demihuman" was the term prior to 3rd edition, and remains the case in OSR. I have seen a few major criticisms of the core races:
  • Race is cosmetic. "Everyone plays their character the same way regardless of race. They all speak the same language (common), they all share the same morals and beliefs, they all eat the same food and they usually share the same motives."
  • Humans are boring. Humans "contribute nothing to the game-world." They are "the race that doesn’t really have anything particularly strange or unique about it; the one that doesn’t really seem to have a niche or anything they’re particularly good at."
  • Cultures are monolithic. "When you pick a race in D&D, you’re also getting a pre-packaged culture with that choice. This happens because all races in D&D that are not human have a single monoculture that is assumed to be true and consistent across both space and time."

Relevant links:

Thursday, June 14, 2018

History of gorgons, part 2: the catoblepas

As I explained in my previous post in this series, the “gorgon” in the monster manuals is actually a unique syncretism of various mythological monsters including the catoblepas, gorgon (medusa) and bronze bulls. In this entry, I will be examining the history of the catoblepas proper in the context of medieval bestiaries and fantasy gaming.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Etymology of the dracolion, dragonne, dragony, and lion-dragon

The dragonne, a monster appearing in some monster manuals and the Tome of Horrors, is not a unique invention of the game. Its name actually originates from medieval heraldry...

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Revising the great wheel: exemplars

The problem with the exemplars in Pathfinder is that there are 1) too many of them, and 2) they generally lack signature motifs. Here I aim to fix that:

Pathfinder uses the Nine outer planes (wheel model), which I leave unchanged for this exercise. Although even then I feel it is too many.

The exemplars of the upper planes are the goodly celestials also called angels. (Angels are not a specific race anymore.)
  • Heaven (LG): archons, which appear as the traditional winged humanoids of Christian art.
  • Nirvana (NG): agathions, which appear as animal-headed humanoids.
  • Elysium (CG): azatas, which appear as celestial fairies and toga-clad giants.
The exemplars of the middle or moderate planes lack a unifying name. (Go figure, they play second fiddle to good and evil anyhow. Stupid D&D baggage.)
  • Utopia (LN): inevitables, which appear as fantasy robots.
  • Purgatory (TN): aeons, which appear as amorphous clouds with limbs.
  • Limbo (CN): proteans, which appear as serpentine things.
The exemplars of the lower planes are called fiends. They’re instantly recognizable.
  • Hell (LE): devils, which appear as angelic humanoids with only slight horns or other surreal features to reveal their nature.
  • Abaddon (NE): divs, which appear as emaciated and rotting demonic undead. (“Daemon” is too similar to “demon.” Stupid baggage.)
  • Abyss (CE): demons, which appear as chimerical monsters out of the Ars Goetia.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Renaming true giants

As I mentioned before, words like athach and ettin are synonyms for "giant" that were co-opted by fantasy gaming for completely different meanings. Furthermore, the D&D rules make an arbitrary (and confusing) distinction between "giant" as a monster type and an entry in the monster manual. In earlier editions this was a distinction between "true giants" and "giant kin" (or demigiants?), but later editions simplified the terminology and made it as confusing as it is now.