A glance at "Bestiaries: Creatures of the West and East"

Back in the late 2000s Stephen C. Klauk wrote two bestiaries, Bestiary Malfearous and Bestiary Nefarious, for his decades-old homebrew campaign setting Amberos. In addition to a lot of original monsters created for his setting, it includes a number of substitutes for WotC IP monsters. These include the serpentine aspii in Bestiary Nefarious and the octopoid menten in Bestiary Malfearous, who are described as mortal enemies in their similar quests to remake the world in their own image. Nice.

The two books are also each several hundred pages long. Damn. If only I were so creative and dedicated...

Anyway, the aspii are immortal serpentfolk that use alchemy to transform others into hybrid slaves, and the menten are octopoid aliens from the Realm of Madness that feed on minds (not physical brains, but the energy of the mind itself).

The aspii are similar to other serpentfolk I've covered previously, and share traits with all of them. The true aspii are giant semihumanoid cobras (similar to the illujan lords and anguineum ophiduans) with snakes for arms (similar to the inphidians from the Tome of Horrors series). They create hybrid slaves through both alchemical transmutation and more conventional crossbreeding.

The menten are semihumanoid octopoids that use modified tentacles are arms and legs. They were created by someone else to conquer the material plane by devouring or converting the inhabitants. There are several degrees of slavery, including being mind-wiped, used as raw material to make a horrifying "flesh engine", or taken to the Realm of Madness and transformed into "thrallkin" who form the lowest rank of the true menten species.

Unfortunately, aspii and menten don't seem to be Open Game Content. Not that I mind considering the other substitutes available, but the bit about them having similar goals and therefore being mortal enemies was actually pretty clever and I'm surprised nobody else thought it up. I'm definitely borrowing that bit.

The D&D "gorgon" is probably not based on the Greek bronze bull

I've seen a few articles, blogs, and vlogs claiming that the the D&D "gorgon" is based on the mythological "khalkotaur." This is complete bunk, in several ways. I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

Firstly, the D&D "gorgon" is clearly based on the catoblepas by way of Edward Topsell, who infamously confused the catoblepas with the gorgon Medusa in his 1607 bestiary The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes and propagated further in works like Curious Creatures in Zoology.

Secondly, there's no such mythological monster as a "khalkotaur." That name is fakelore propagated by Wikipedia. There are the Tauroi Khalkeoi, or Bronze Bulls in English. (Not to be confused with the similarly named torture device, which itself may be mythical too.)

Thirdly, we have no evidence whatsoever that the D&D gorgon was inspired by the bronze bulls. They look and attack completely different: the former has iron scales and breathes petrifying fumes, the latter is made of bronze and breathes fire. Any similarities (i.e. both are metal bulls with breath weapons) appear to be pure coincidence.

Fun fact: Hacklopedia of Beasts includes an entry for the D&D gorgon, which not only gives it bat-like wings in contrast to typical depictions, but mentions that the monster is also known as "burakog" and "khalkotaur." And all this time I've just been calling it an iron bull.

The origins of D&D monsters?

The monsters (and planes) of D&D are often drawn from myth, folklore, or literature. I keep finding myself trying to refer back to such sources, so I've decided to keep a list of them. If anyone is reading this, then you might also find this useful.

• https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60560
• http://www.hahnlibrary.net/rpgs/sources.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20180810053344/http://rpg.crg4.com/origins.html
• https://www.scrollforinitiative.com/2021/02/01/where-do-dd-monsters-come-from/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/969gcc/the_mythological_folkloric_or_literary_source_of/
• http://www.superdan.net/gaming/dnd3/dndmisc/outer_planes.html

Horcruxes and voldemorts

In past posts I lamented how archaic words like lich and phylactery have had their previously versatile meanings changed and shrunk by the vagaries of Gygax and his imitators. This means that I can no longer use them in their original meanings without confusing people who grew up on a diet of iterative fantasy. Not that it will actually stop me from using those words in their original capacities, as other authors have done before me, but it is annoying that my readers won't understand my meaning.

I recently discovered that voldemort is now a word. It derives from French vol de mort, meaning (roughly) "flight/theft of/from death." According to French speakers, this is grammatically sound but more appropriate for the technical speech of a police report (e.g. "theft of corpse"). A less stilted phrase would be Le Vol de la Mort, meaning either "the theft of death" or "the flight of death." Flight as in the flight of a bird or plane, not fleeing.

I would like to thank J.K. Rowling for coining this word. Prior to this, the fantasy genre didn't actually have a word for an evil wizard who cheats death. The word lich was used for this purpose due to Gygax's popularization, but as I have said before I consider that usage to be clunky and parochial. The benefit of voldemort is that its literal meaning relates to cheating death, and it's a well known fantasy word in the popular imagination.

The same goes for horcrux, also coined by Rowling. I've seen it used in NOS4A2 to refer to objects created to contain souls other than those of evil wizards, so its meaning is thankfully versatile. Prior to this, we only had phrases like "soul jar" and "zombie bottle" that weren't well known in the popular imagination.

These new words, voldemort and horcrux, are versatile. They can refer to Koschei and his hidden heart, Sauron and his cursed ring, Voldemort and his horcruxes, Arthas and his vampiric runeblade, etc. I should like to use them in my own writings from now on.

There are two types of zombies in folklore

During my research into zombies and zombie folklore (research links provided below), I discovered that there are actually two types of zombies in folklore. The process for creating a zombie splits the body and soul into two linked entities, the zombie cadaver and the zombie astral. The zombie cadaver is the stereotypical zombie slave, whereas the zombie astral is the captured soul of the zombie. It is kept in a vessel called a "zombie bottle," which will release the zombie astral if broken. The zombie astral may be compelled to perform tasks for the bokor who captured it. The zombie bottle may also be sold as a good luck charm.

The more you know!

Cacoastrum, cagaster, iliaster, iliastrum, et al

While reading Mongoose's Infernum, I came across mention of "iliaster." One google search led to another, and I found myself referring to Paracelsus, Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell, Carl Jung, and so on. The search results have been screwed up by extraneous anime garbage, but I managed to find the origin and etymology of these words.

Iliaster and cagaster, also known as iliastrum and cacoastrum and other permutations, (the former sometimes spelled with a "y" at the start) are neologisms from the work of medieval alchemist Paracelsus. I've been completely unable to determine what they actually represent in his works due to a lack of reference material (fuck you internet), but I have been able to determine their etymology.

Iliaster, iliastrum, yliaster, or yliastrum et al comes from Latin hȳlē ("fundamental matter") + -aster/-astrum ("incomplete resemblance") or astēr/astrum ("star"). Possibly a play on the resemblance between the latter. Therefore, it means something like "matter of the stars" and/or "matter-like." Wikipedia calls it a synonym for prima materia.

Cacoastrum, cagaster, or cagastrum et al comes from Greek-derived caco- ("bad") and/or Latin cacō ("to defecate") and the same suffix as above. Again, possibly a play on the resemblance between the two. Therefore, it means something like "an ill star" and/or "shit of the stars." The former sense was used as a term in medicine relating to germ theory.

Fiction goes in completely different directions:

• Infernum used iliaster as the name for the power source used by demons and angels, which was only produced by God and human souls.
• To Reign in Hell used cacoastrum as the name for the substance of raw chaos and iliaster for the stuff of order.

I did consider using the neologisms in my own worldbuilding, but it's been so long that I don't even remember my original ideas. Oh well.

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.

Druids, dryads, and hamadryads

So I wanted to touch on dryads in this post. Two things: the etymological relationship between druids and dryads, and the mythological relationship between dryads and hamadryads.

In the past the word dryad was used to mean druidess, i.e. a female druid. By virtue of the transitive property, one could argue that a druid therefore could be a male wood nymph or nymphus. I've never seen anyone ever do this, but if you want a male dryad that isn't a satyr and care about the inflection of Greco-Latin loanwords then druid might fit the bill.

In Greek myth, a hamadryad is a type of dryad whose life is bound to a specific tree. If the tree dies, then so does the hamadryad. In fantasy tabletop games, this unique of hamadryads has been folded into dryads in general. This results in attempts to integrate hamadryads to rely on distinguishing them from dryads through any number of arbitrary means that have nothing to do with the original myths.

I generally have little interest in any of these modern distinctions, except for one I found in homebrew. One homebrew page I read introduced a fascinating distinction between dryads and hamadryads for gaming that reflects the original myths. Here the hamadryad arose as the personified soul of a tree, as in myth and the dryad of the Monster Manual. Meanwhile, the dryad was the child of a hamadryad and a father of another race such as human, elf, fairy, or satyr. A dryad could choose to live as adventurer like her father's race or could bind to a tree and live identically to a hamadryad in a manner consistent with the MM's dryad. I like this idea and would like to use it in my own worldbuilding sometime.

© 音楽ナスカ

Resource links:

• https://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphaiHamadryades.html
• https://www.1d4chan.org/wiki/Hamadryad
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8773/
• https://www.latin-is-simple.com/en/vocabulary/noun/8774/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20190923154852/http://www.chqhost.com/LairFiles/races/dryad.html
• http://aidanem.com/word-family-tree.html
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/druid#English
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dryad#English
• https://www.google.com/books/edition/Druids/9yITDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=dryad+druidess&pg=PT27&printsec=frontcover

Okay, I guess I'll give my opinion on that Extra Credits video

So Extra Credits released a video claiming that "evil races are bad game design" and got massively ratio'd.

There's a lot to unpack about the video because it conflates a lot of things that aren't actually related. So I'm just going to present a massively simplified argument:

Firstly, our elf-games are violent murder simulators that require players to mow down hordes of mooks. The game is designed that way. Most tabletop roleplaying games are designed that way. If you don't like it, then play a game that isn't a violent murder simulator.

Secondly, while you could easily play a game where you go around scalping human bandits... orcs are just cooler. The use of orcs in fantasy has nothing to do with anti-black racism. Using orcs as your mooks of choice doesn't even imply that they're "inherently evil." The "orc baby dilemma" is a really old argument dating back to UseNet.

There's no way for the players to know that there are good orcs unless the GM goes out of the way to tell them. It's extremely inconvenient to stop and tell the players the backstory of Orc Mook #294 when they're just playing for the sake of violence.

Lastly, it's entirely possible that the "pretty" races like humans, dwarves, elves, etc are just racists the whole time. The game books might be giving hugely biased accounts, I don't know?

Congratulations! Your LIZARD evolved into BASILISK!

In previous posts I've talked about "monster evolution," the concept of monsters evolving into other monsters and non-monsters evolving into monsters. This concept has roots in real life myth, particularly qi cultivation by animals in Eastern beliefs (and I'll have a post on that someday). Right now I wanted to apply the idea to the basilisk (and cockatrice, assuming they're not the same).

Traditionally, the basilisk is believed to hatch from a cock egg incubated by a snake or some such. Of course, how often does that actually happen? Are alchemists the only ones responsible for the basilisks running around? Setting aside the messiness of the folklore, one suggestion I saw was that ordinary lizards could become basilisks by growing large enough. This is not unlike stories in East Asia of koi and snakes becoming dragons by achieving sufficient feats (which I discussed in a previous post), and coincidentally by some accounts the basilisk is a dragon itself.

Why do I like this idea? Well, I don't always like the idea of inventing pseudo-naturalistic ecologies for fantasy genre monsters. It always has weird assumptions and cascade effects. What niche does the monster occupy? Is the monster an invasive species or a native species whose demise harms the ecology? How do magical powers interact with natural selection? And so forth. I prefer to sidestep all that.

Have a nice day!

What is ichor?

 In Greek mythology, ichor is the blood of the gods. It is sometimes said to come from the ambrosia and nectar they consume, a feature of several Proto-Indo-European-descended religions, which they must continue to consume or else lose their immortality (or alternately their ability to function). Although in the case of the Greek gods specifically this was less than clear cut.

Ichor has gone on to have additional meanings beyond the Greek origin. In now archaic medical usage it refers to "watery discharge from a wound."

In the video game series Command & Conquer, "ichor" is the Scrin's name for Tiberium. You can probably guess why.

In some urban fantasy fiction, "ichor" is a term for the blood of vampires. This may be seen in Marvel's take on vampires and elsewhere online.

Sometimes authors who don't know any better use it as a synonym for blood, especially the blood of demons and Lovecraftian monsters. Author Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," calls the term "the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate."

And sometimes ichor is the urine of the gods. I think I'm gonna be sick...

Names for soul jars

I’m currently on a kick where I think of multiple aliases for a concept such as a monster or magic item. In this post, the phylactery of the lich.

The word “phylactery” has several meanings according to wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phylactery

Here are some other names for the same concept: soul jar (used by tv tropes), horcrux (coined by J.K. Rowling from random syllables, though that hasn’t stopped fans from inventing their own etymology), animarium (coined by myself from Latin anima and -arium), secret heart (used by Palladium), spirit jar, soul gem, etc.

The basic concept of a soul jar is simple: it contains someone’s soul. Why it does is, of course, highly variable. It might be a funerary object as with the mid-Eastern Han Dynasty. It might be a prison. It might be a means of enslaving the soul’s owner as with Afro-Caribbean zombies. It might be a way to cheat death as with Koschei the Deathless, Voldemort, and the D&D lich.

And that’s basically everything I can think of right now. 

Dark elves and racist coding?

(Note: This post was originally composed in August 2019 and was not posted until February 2021. It may come across as "politically correct." The statements I make here do not necessarily reflect my views as of this writing. I decided to leave it unaltered for archival purposes.)

Dark elves are a bit more difficult. D&D in particular depicts its "drow" as literally dark-skinned in contrast to other elves, and has traditionally linked this to their evil nature by writing backstories where they were cursed with black skin for their wickedness. This is disturbing because the same logic was used to justify the historical enslavement of black Africans in the Americas. Pathfinder tries to soften the blow by claiming that drow were mutated by magical radiation when they refused to evacuate during an apocalypse out of pride, but this doesn't actually solve the underlying issue and in this case specifically the drow are still depicted as being metaphorically punished for some perceived sin. Fantasy gaming depicts light-skinned elves as the original or purity, whereas dark-skinned elves are an aberration or corruption.

For example, EverQuest Next depicts dark elves as being even further mutated by dwelling on the setting's equivalent of the shadowfell, developing unusual skin tones, bone growths like horns and spikes, and increased aggression. (Although during development they had various ideas for other skin tones: here, here, and here.)

Many other fantasy works such as The Elder Scrolls, Warhammer Fantasy and WarCraft try to avoid the negative implications by depicting dark elves as dark-skinned and non-evil or as light-skinned and evil. Although non-evil drow exist in obscure D&D lore, the fandom seems quite resistant to addressing the controversial underpinnings of the drow. I can only imagine why.

Still, even settings in which dark elves are distinguished only by darker skin but are otherwise not stigmatized still have racist sounding terminology. Imagine if human cultures were referred to solely by their skin color: white humans, yellow humans, black humans, brown humans, etc. Does that sound like a nice shorthand to label people? Because that is precisely what a lot of video games, novels, and anime/manga are doing with elves.

Given my distaste for the traditional depiction of drow as being cursed or mutated with black skin as punishment for wickedness or pride, I would prefer to adopt Raging Heroes' "burnt elves" backstory wholesale. How exactly does that make my burnt elves different from the standard drow and their disturbing implications? Firstly, these burnt elves are literally charred in body and soul; whereas the elfish skin tones could be anything, so nobody is named by their skin tone. Secondly, this scarring of the soul is the cause of the burnt elves' subsequent behavior (wicked or otherwise) rather than a result; an inverse of the traditional drow being punished with dark skin for their sins. Thirdly, these burnt elves are the descendants of the victims and instigators of the ethnic violence that scarred them in the first place; thus they serve as a metaphor for the cycles of abuse/violence and its harmful effects on society. They have a theme with critical examination, not just thoughtlessly tossing ideas together without considering the context.

My elves are different?

(Note: This post was originally composed in August 2019 and was not posted until February 2021. It may come across as "politically correct." The statements I make here do not necessarily reflect my views as of this writing. I decided to leave it unaltered for archival purposes.)

For the longest time I have struggled with devising a new, creative take on elves. I am bored of lazy Tolkien clones that do not even understand the underpinnings of Tolkien's own creation. Tolkien went to a crazy amount of effort to detail the origins, mythology, culture, psychology and physiology of his elves. Fantasy gaming mindlessly copied surface-level details while ignoring the complicated explanations of why the elves were like that.

Indeed, one of the most important and basic aspects of Tolkien's cosmology that is forgotten in fantasy gaming is the concept of fëa and hröa (soul and body). Tolkien's elves may reincarnate after death, because their souls are bound the world. However, time in Middle Earth operates on the logic of ages, with each successive age being progressively boring and bland. Since the elves are bound to Middle Earth, they are subject to this deterioration as well. The elves grew resentful of their inevitable fate. Sauron played upon this resentment to convince their master smiths to forge the rings of power specifically to arrest this cycle. Obviously, that didn't work and Middle Earth ultimately deteriorated into the horrible modern Earth.

Earlier editions of D&D payed lip service to the concept of different souls by specifically that elves are not subject to raise dead and resurrection spells but must instead be revived through reincarnation spells. This was discarded around third edition in A.D. 2000 and elves became subject to standard revival effects, presumably because it was really inconvenient for players.

Anyway, my efforts seem fruitless since many other authors already devised creative takes on elves over the last several decades since D&D popularized the surface-level Tolkien clones.

• RuneQuest depicts elves as plant people, not unlike some folkloric imaginings of wood nymphs. 
• Warhammer depicts elves as prone to inhumanly excessive emotions. 
• Magic: The Gathering depicts extremely vicious wood elves in its Lorwyn setting, nothing like the popular hippie stereotype. 
• The Dragon Prince depicts elves with horns and ethnic groups based on their elemental magic affinity, such as "moon", "sky" and "stars." (D&D does this too, but here the magic system gives it weight)
• Warcraft depicts various elf ethnic groups created by magical mutations. (These are far more extreme than the largely cosmetic D&D ethnicity.) There are night elves, high elves, blood elves, void elves, fel-corrupted elves, and more.
• The miniatures company Raging Heroes wrote a backstory for elves in which they were depicted as one soul sharing two bodies, one a tree and the other an animal; dark elves were created during a war that burned their groves, leaving their surviving animal halves horribly burned and their souls permanently shredded.

At this point, probably the best I can do is just mix-and-match elements based on the work of other authors. Pick what bits that I like and stick them together, while making sure the result looks holistic and not lazy patchwork.

There are basically only three flavors of elves: high elves, wood elves, and dark elves. Virtually every depiction in the fantasy genre is a variation on one or more of those three. By keeping myself restricted to detailing those three for the most part, I can save myself a lot of work that would otherwise be wasted on convoluted backstories for the bazillion different elfish ethnic groups. Three ethnic groups are much easier to write as distinct than a bazillion.

Research books on vampires

Since I like to research vampires and related creatures sometimes, I have collected a list of useful research books. Rather than keep it to myself, I have now decided to share it with anyone interested. 

Bane, Theresa. Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology. McFarland, 2010.

Bunson, Matthew. The Vampire Encyclopedia. Random House International, 2001.

Curran, Bob. Encyclopedia of the Undead: a Field Guide to Creatures That Cannot Rest in Peace. New Page Books, 2006.

Guiley, Rosemary. The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters. Checkmark Books, 2005.

Hallab, Mary Y. Vampire God: the Allure of the Undead in Western Culture. SUNY Press, 2009.

Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Visible Ink Press, 2010.

Regan, Sally. The Vampire Book. DK Pub., 2009.

Most of these should be available as ebooks on Amazon, Apple, or Google. Isn't technology great?

What I find interesting about these books is that they include references to vampire-like creatures from across world mythology, including creatures you might not ordinarily associate with vampires like the Chinese húlijīng or "fox fairy".

Uses for dragon’s blood and other body parts

Stumbled upon some interesting articles on the use of dragon’s blood and other body parts as ingredients. Hopefully this might inspire anybody who reads this.

• https://www.blackdrago.com/topics/parts.htm
• https://mythenthusiast.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/the-uses-of-dragon-parts-in-mythology-and-folklore/amp/
• https://intothewonder.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/twelve-uses-of-dragons-blood-plus-some-other-useful-dragon-parts/amp/
• http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2014/10/on-what-to-do-with-dragon-corpse.html?m=1

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