Forgotten foes: illujan and ogdoad

Back in 2004 Fiery Dragon released Counter Collection: Gold web enhancements that included open game content replacements for slaad and yuan-ti. The illujans and ogdoads are features of Fiery Dragon's largely unpublished Karathis campaign setting. These monsters were handily archived by the Wayback Machine, so they're not lost on posterity. Unfortunately, no other publishers used these monsters despite their being open game content. Since they're almost two decades old now, I don't see that changing any time soon.

Time for some interesting trivia to justify making this post beyond plugging that link:

• Illujanka is a great dragon/serpent in Hittite myth that was slain by a storm god.
• The Ogdoad were primordial deities in Ancient Egyptian myth. They were paired deities of male frogs and female serpents. (For comparison, Pathfinder introduced chaos serpents called proteans.)

Mummy lords and horcruxes

The mummy lord, among other names, is a fairly common archetype in fantasy gaming (not as common as others, but nobody's perfect). Whereas the standard mummy is a mindless shambling tomb guardian, the mummy lord and its ilk are intelligent, remember their mortal lives, and typically have a number of additional powers such as spellcasting.

Particularly, they often have a rejuvenation power of some kind. This is typically tied to some kind of horcrux with an appropriate mummy theme, such as the mummy's tomb, the mummy's heart, and/or the mummy's canopic jars. (Obviously Egyptian-styled mummies are being used as the point of reference here, but feel free to devise ideas for non-Egyptian mummies.)

Below are a few examples of mummy lords and similar variants I've seen in both official books and 3pp, as well as some of my own commentary.

• Book of Templates - Deluxe Edition 3.5 (2005) presents us with the "true mummy." This is similar to the 5e mummy lord but not quite the same thing, namely in that they aren't necessarily evil and their touch doesn't curse foes with mummy rot. Unlike the 5e mummy lord, their rejuvenation and mental faculties are linked to their three "sacred vessels" (i.e. canopic jars, one for each mental ability score). If any of the jars are destroyed, then the true mummy will lose their immortality and will slowly mentally deteriorate into a "desecrated true mummy" that is more or less the same as the mindless shambling curse-spreading mummy in the MM (which is contrasted from the true mummy as a "lesser mummy"). The mummy has a sympathetic tie to the sacred vessels that aids in locating them and using magic to view or visit them, and the vessels may be drained of their spiritual energy reserves by thieves to power necromancy spells (which is labeled an evil act). The true mummy's rejuvenation is technically a fast healing power that works even if the body is destroyed, which is stated to function only if the true mummy is in possession of its sacred vessels. This implies that the mummy doesn't heal if they're stolen but still intact, opening the possibility for the mummy's to be destroyed and its sacred vessels stolen, leaving it in limbo where it isn't actually gone for good but can't restore its body until the sacred vessels are returned (nor is it specified if all the sacred vessels need to be stolen or only one does to halt the fast healing). I'm not sure if this implication was intended by the writer or not, as "possession" maybe was supposed to mean that the vessels were intact rather than physically present with the mummy. That said, a seemingly destroyed mummy being revived by the return of its sacred vessels is an interesting plot hook by itself, a possibility not offered by the other variations on rejuvenation.
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 4 (2013) presents us with the "mummified creature," which is basically a more intelligent mummy created to serve more complicated purposes than simply guarding a tomb. It doesn't spread mummy rot and the mere sight it doesn't scare the living. Aside from the lack of any rejuvenation power, it is comparable to the true mummy above. It's basically just a middle rank between the standard mummy and the mummy lord below.
• Advanced Bestiary (2014) presents us with the "dread mummy." It's comparable to other takes on the mummy lord, with the notable exception that it is able to raise its slain foes as zombies and/or mummies themselves and that it lacks any kind of rejuvenation power.
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 5 (2015) presents us with that game's take on the "mummy lord." It is more or less the same thing as the 5e mummy lord, aside from a few minor differences in powers such as being able to take control of nearby undead. If destroyed, then the mummy lord's body will be rejuvenated within its tomb unless its remains are purified with specified magic. The text doesn't specify what happens to a rejuvenating lord if its tomb is destroyed. Does the rejuvenation fail? Does the rejuvenation restart if the tomb is rebuilt?
• The 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (2016) presents us with the mummy lord, which most should be familiar with. Its rejuvenation is tied to its heart. As long as the heart is not destroyed, the mummy lord's body will rejuvenate next to it. The rules don't specify if the heart needs to be inside the body or not, though the implication is that you can store it inside a canopic jar or something.
• Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars (2020) presents us with mummies based more closely on The Mummy movies and derivatives than the standard D&D mummy. These mummies are normally intelligent (albeit typically evil and/or insane) and drain life from the living to assume a living form. Its rejuvenation is tied to its 2d6 (average 4) canopic jars (the heart is always inside the mummy's body). Unless all the jars are destroyed, a slain mummy will reform over 2d10 months within its original sarcophagus or place of burial if the sarcophagus was destroyed. Furthermore, destroying a canopic jar will permanently weaken the mummy; if all the jars are destroyed, then it is restored to full power but will not longer rejuvenate if destroyed. It is explicitly compared to the D&D-derived lich included in the same book. This variation essentially combines the rejuvenation powers of the true mummy and the Pathfinder mummy lord.
• Addendum 10/6/2022: A blog post on OSR mummy rules that covers the basics and so forth. I don't know how I missed this!

I like the idea that maybe different mummies may have different horcruxes based on the nature of the mummification ritual that created them, so that defeating one's rejuvenation requires either research or trial-and-error. I also like the possibility of a seemingly destroyed mummy being revived by the return of its missing canopic jars.

Signing off...

Renaming true dragons, revisited

So a feature of the D&D jargon that I've never been fond of is it's idiosyncratic taxonomy of dragons. I've ranted about this at length in previous posts, years ago. I guess it's time to revisit that with what I've learned in the meantime.

Basically, my problem is this: as of 5e (but a variation of this is true for all editions), the term "dragon" is used both for the general creature type as well as a subset thereof. 

The most recent 5e SRD offers the following idiosyncratic descriptions:

[A]n arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage not only to dragons but also other creatures of the dragon type, such as dragon turtles and wyverns. [...] Dragons are large reptilian creatures of ancient origin and tremendous power. True dragons, including the good metallic dragons and the evil chromatic dragons, are highly intelligent and have innate magic. Also in this category are creatures distantly related to true dragons, but less powerful, less intelligent, and less magical, such as wyverns and pseudodragons.

I don't like the "true dragon" jargon because it's arbitrary, provincial, and confusing, especially to people who aren't D&D buffs. They're not true dragons, they're what folklore classification systems label "Western dragons" (although it doesn't actually make sense to call them that in the fantasy settings) plus a bunch of D&D-specific baggage like a Smaug-esque intelligent disposition and magical powers that vary by edition. Furthermore, the D&D canon includes a bazillion varieties of true dragons, much less their "lesser dragons" and "dragon-kin" cousins. 3pp like Legends & Lairs: Draconic Lore, Octavirate Presents Vol #4: The Forgotten, Pathfinder et al have introduced a bazillion more. At the very least, 5e could have used a slightly less confusing terminology like Witcher's "draconid" for the entire taxonomy including both "dragons" and everything else.

D&D can't even keep its own taxonomy straight, either. This is especially frustrating because it's not just an in-universe taxonomy, but actual game rules with implications for in-universe physics. Why is a dragon turtle considered a dragon but a hydra isn't? Why does an arrow of dragon slaying work against the former but not the latter? What's the criteria being used here? Hydras are giant reptiles with multiple heads and the magical ability to regrow severed heads. They're labeled dragons in folklore classification systems in reality.

The problem stems from trying to mash together myths from all over the world and pretend that they make sense together. In reality, dragon myths varied from region to region. No culture that I'm aware of had myths where the dragons were divided into different kinds based on their anatomy. Western dragons, eastern dragons, lindworms, etc didn't coexist in mythology, so nobody needed special terminology to distinguish them. They were all dragons. Not true dragons, not lesser dragons, not dragonkin... just dragons.

Even Tolkien didn't bother to develop elaborate taxonomies for his dragons. At most he offered functional and practical names like "fire-drakes" (dragons that could breathe fire) and "cold-drakes" (dragons that did not breathe fire).

Given all the various changes across the many editions and spin-offs, the distinction doesn't even provide much meaningful information anymore. It's an artifact of unplanned game development that later developers tried to retroactively justify and make sense of. Trying to keep track of the bazillion varieties of dragons by arbitrarily sorting them into categories based essentially on body type of all things is pointless. As Overly Sarcastic Productions points out, they're not products of natural evolution and their nature varies wildly between stories (such as "Prince Lindworm").

As far as I'm concerned, dragons are dragons. They can look like anything the storyteller wants and don't need a special invented name for every possible configuration. I think it's perfectly fine to use functional descriptive names like "winged quadrupedal dragon," "winged bipedal dragon," "wingless limbless dragon," "wingless bipedal dragon," or "wingless quadrupedal dragon."

Signing off...

Eyeballs part 2: The Evil Eyes of Augrah-Ma

©2010 jistsomeguy

The Evil Eye is a monster from The Iconic Bestiary: Classics of Fantasy, reprinted in Forgotten Foes, and adapted in the first edition of Blood & Treasure. It is a substitute for the closed content Beholder. The Evil Eye's concept is simple: it is a giant flying eyeball that shoots various magic beams and is connected to a mysterious being known only as Augrah-Ma. The origins of the evil eyes and the nature of Augrah-Ma are left deliberately vague for the GM to fill-in as desired.

As the book explains:

An enormous floating eye, apparently ripped raw from the skull of some giant beast, hovers in the air before you. Lengths of optic nerve writhe and thrash behind it like tails, fading away after several feet into thin wisps of white mist. That same white mist is visible in the eye’s dark pupil, as though through a window to some distant world. 

The so-called evil eyes are also known as the Eyes of Augrah-Ma. Legend has it that Augrah-Ma himself (itself?) is some great and dark power; perhaps demon prince, perhaps a god, perhaps something else entirely. His presence is so inherently baleful that the very forces of nature prevent him from entering any of the known planes. It is said that the Augrah-Ma lurks in the emptiness between worlds. The evil eyes, though they seem to have independent minds and often pursue their own agendas, are said to literally be Augrah-Ma’s eyes, allowing him to see and influence events in the material plane. 

Most evil eyes seem obsessed with the destruction of spellcasters, and the acquisition of magic items. They rarely make use of such items themselves, but sages theorize that they constantly seek some means of allowing Augrah-Ma to enter the world — and to make themselves supreme in his order, rising above all other evil eyes. As such, evil eyes oppose one another as often as they cooperate.

An evil eye is about 8 feet in diameter, with its “tail” of optic nerves running an additional 3 to 9 feet, depending on the individual. These tails are fully prehensile, allowing the evil eye to manipulate objects as well as human hands. Some are perfectly white, some yellowed, and some bloodshot. An evil eye’s iris can be of any color, from standard blues, greens and browns, to inhuman violets, golds and reds.  

Evil eyes have no concern for any living being other than themselves (and sometimes other evil eyes). They are capable of fighting with their optic nerve “tails,” but prefer to remain at a distance and make use of their gaze attacks. Unless an evil eye believes itself outmatched, or believes it can bargain with or intimidate potential foes, it attacks without provocation. This is partly due to their obsession with acquiring magic, but also because they enjoy the kill.

The writer Ari Marmell offered further commentary:

You'd expressed some questions about the source of the evil eyes. I deliberately left the idea of where they come from vague, to allow DMs to choose whichever option best fits their campaigns. Here are a few possible suggestions, though:

• They are literally the eyes of Augrah-Ma, that he (it) has somehow detached and sent through the planar walls to the Material Plane.

• They are the eyes of sentient beings sacrificed in Augrah-Ma's name. The magic of the sacrifice causes them to burst from the skulls, grow to their current size, and develop a mystical connection to the trapped entity.

• Augrah-Ma once had an army of demonic servants, all of whom were enormous in size. They were all wiped out by the forces of good (or perhaps a rival evil), but Augrah-Ma reached through the worlds, ripped the eyes from their bodies, and gave them a new life of their own, now fully bonded to him.

Of course, plenty of other ideas could work as well, but these three should get you started. :)

And here is one such suggestion offered by a fan:

Have an idea for the origin of the Evil Eyes- there is a plane out there that is made up of eyes (call it the elemetal plane of eyes) and Augrah-Ma is an intelligent part of that plane (several sections have hive minds). It wants out and thus sends parts of itself to other plane to observe and determine which would the best for invasion. The problem for Augrah-Ma is another section of the EPE doesn't want it to leave. So now you can use both the evil eyes and either the beholder or a beholder variant. I wouldn't want to be the people living in such a plane that they are warring over...

Blood & Treasure offers further expansion on the concept at its blog.

So there you have it. I hope these references prove helpful to anyone who seeks to use them.

Whatevermancy and suffixes

In this post, I wanted to discuss what would be possible ways to refer to practitioners of different kinds of magic as proscribed by the typical rules of the English language. I wanted to discuss how fantasy gaming bucks the English language, too.

We are all familiar with necromancers, right? Evil dudes dressed in goth fashion who raise zombies and stuff? Well, according to the Oxford dictionary necromancy is "the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future."

How did that happen? I'm guessing thru the principle of "by extension," but I can't be sure.

Anyway, the -mancy suffix relates to divinations rather than all-purpose magical manipulation. Its derived suffixes include -mance (verb), -mancer (agent noun), and -mantic (adjective). Therefore a necromancer is someone who necromances, that is, practices the necromantic arts of necromancy or communing with the dead.

I don't expect anybody to pay attention to the dictionary meaning. But if you ever want to... a possible alternative to describe fantasy-style "necromancy" might use the suffix -kinesis ("movement"), -sophy ("wisdom"), or -urgy ("working") instead. As in necrokinesis, necrosophy, necroturgy, necrourgy, necrurgy or thanaturgy (I have seen all these forms mentioned online before). By extension, a practitioner would be a necrokineticist, necrosophist, necroturgist, or thanaturgist. The use of the necro- versus thanato- prefix is a subtle one: necro- relates to death and dead tissue, whereas thanato- relates to the concept of death in general.

Other suffixes are available, too. I have seen necronaut, necropathy, necroscope, and necrovoyance all used before.

• According to Wikipedia, a necronaut (from necro- + -naut) is someone who travels thru the afterlife.
• In the 1990 Nightlife roleplaying game, necropathy (from necro- + -pathy) is the power to speak with the dead; presumably patterned after necromancy, empathy, and technopathy.
• In the Necroscope novels by Brian Lumley, a necroscope (from necro- + -scope) is someone who speaks with the dead; as opposed the novels' version of a necromancer, who forcibly extracts information from corpses by dissecting them (which the dead feel due to the necromancy).
• Though strictly grammatically speaking, a necroscope would be an instrument used to examine the dead. Such an instrument appears in Netflix's The Order, here called a "necrophone" (from necro- + -phone). As the name implies, it is a magical telephone that lets you speak with the dead.
• The word necrovoyance (from necro- + voyance) is listed on The Free Dictionary as a synonym for necromancy. It is presumably patterned after clairvoyance.

The -kinesis suffix relates to movement, the -mancy suffix to divination, the -naut suffix to traveling, the -path suffix to feeling, the -scope suffix to examining, the -sophy suffix to wisdom, the -urgy suffix to working, and the -voyance suffix to remote viewing. These may have further derivative suffixes.

For example:

• A telekineticist is telekinetic. S/he practices telekinesis and studies telekinetics, the movement of faraway objects with the mind.
• A necromancer is someone who necromances or necromanticizes. S/he practices the necromantic arts of necromancy, communing with the dead.
• A psychonaut practices psychonautics, the art of navigating travels through the mind. S/he studies psychonautical charts.
• A telempath has telempathic senses and practices telempathy, experiencing the feelings of others at a distance.
• A necroscope has necroscopic senses. S/he practices necroscopy, observation of the dead.
• A philosopher is a student of philosophy.
• A theurgist is some who theurges or engages in theurgic acts. S/he practices theurgy, the evocation of spirits.
• A clairvoyant has clairvoyance, the power of remote viewing.

Feel free to do your own independent research too. This post is not exhaustive in the least.

Categorizing magic systems is an exercise in madness

There are countless ways of classifying magic systems, and all of them are arbitrary because magic doesn't exist. The Net Wizard's Handbook offers spectrums of controllability and prevalence. The Templin Institute offers spectrums of hardness and learnability. John H. Kim offers a comparison between magic in game systems and magic in folklore beliefs. There are countless other articles that I could link.

In a way, I'm wistful for the old days when writers didn't put ridiculous amounts of effort and emphasis into designing magic systems. On the other hand, we did get Ars Magica and that's possibly one of the best magic systems ever designed.