Planar Adventures for Dummies

Friday, August 16, 2019

Mephits

Mephits are elemental imps, serving the same simple role of messengers and spies. They are one of those throwaway monsters that shows up in most monster manuals but nobody pays attention to and whose backstory is constantly changed by the writers.

In AD&D the mephits were imps summoned from the lower planes to animate elemental forms. Later they were tweaked so that they were created on the lower planes, and typically had a low life expectancy since they were often used to send insults.

Starting with 3e, mephits were no longer tied to the lower planes. This change did nothing to make anybody care about them more. Curiously, Necromancers of the Northwest gave them a detailed ecology as a web enhancement for The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire. In this ecology, mephits may arise spontaneously on the ethereal plane, born to two mephit parents, or created by magic as servants. Mephits that are born or generated lack an elemental affinity, though they might be able to gain one later.

Derek Holland suggested a few new varieties of mephit, such as gilded mephits, number mephits, and shadow mephits. He further suggested a new disturbing origin for mephits: children cursed by magic and enslaved by villains. This creates a moral dilemma for our heroes.

Relevant links

Puppeteer parasites

Puppeteers are a monster based on the common scifi trope of the puppeteer parasite. Puppeteers were initially a blatant rip-off of the aliens from The Puppet Masters. When they first appeared in the 3.0 Psionics Handbook, they were depicted as ray-like creatures capable of gliding short distances like the aliens in the story. In the d20 Modern rules, they were depicted as louse-like and fed on the blood of their hosts. In the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook, they lost their gliding ability and were depicted as slug-like instead. A variant known as the "flesh harrower" was introduced, which is a blatant rip-off of the aliens from Stephen King's Dreamcatcher.

Puppeteers were originally created by the mind flayers, but since the latter aren't OGL they were replaced with the phrenic scourges when Dreamscarred Press (the same authors who wrote the 3.5 psionics revision) wrote their own adventures and adapted psionics to Pathfinder. Dreamscarred Press provided further details on the puppeteers, such as the "hive brain" variant in the adventure Uncertain Futures.

Here are some in-character factoids about puppeteers to inspire your imagination:

Puppeteers were created by the phrenic scourges for the purposes of infiltration and subversion. They are not particularly intelligent and require the occasional oversight from their masters.
The species is divided into several specialized castes. The most common are puppeteer, flesh harrower and hive brain.
The hive brain is responsible for reproduction and communication.
The puppeteer comes in at least three body types for better camouflage: slug, louse and manta ray. The manta ray form is capable of gliding short distances.
Puppeteers subsist by siphoning harmless amounts of blood from their host. If multiple puppeteers attach to the same host, the blood loss will become harmful.
Some puppeteers act as brood mothers who asexually spawn immature larvae, provided they have a source of biomass on which to feed.
Some puppeteers may produce spores which grow into a red fungus known as byrum. If the byrum is consumed by a potential host, it will germinate within the digestive tract and fatally emerge as a flesh harrower. This has earned the moniker "shit weasel".
The most intelligent and psychically formidable puppeteers are the "mind maggots". Unlike their kin, mind maggots act on their own initiative and require no orders. Indeed, some have rebelled against the scourges in favor of working as arcane familiars. Their fatal flaw is arrogance: even as a familiar they will still nudge their host in the direction they believe is correct. (see statistics in Monster Encyclopaedia II)

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Monster evolution

A fascinating concept I encountered in some Japanese GameLit was monster evolution. The idea is that D&D monsters "evolve" (or more accurately metamorphose) into other monsters with increasing CR. This works similar to evolution in collectible monster games like Pokémon or Digimon. I suppose that technically this is metamorphosis, as evolution is a distinct scientific term.

The evolution is not necessarily a linear progression, but might branch into multiple different paths. The evolution might move in reverse, with higher CR monsters reverting to the form of lower CR monsters for whatever reason. Monsters might appear more or less humanoid as they evolve.

Evolution might form part of a life cycle a la metamorphosis, or it might be an independent indication of CR. Monsters might metamorphose into lower CR monsters as part of their life cycle, such as the tenebrous worm metamorphosing into the lower CR gloomwing.

GameLit seems to have plenty of examples. In That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, goblins evolve into hobgoblins, ogres evolve into ogre mages, and orcs evolve into high orcs. In Overlord, skeleton mages evolve into elder liches evolve into overlords. In The Rising of the Shield Hero, some animals evolve into cute monster girls.

There are examples in mythology of dragons coming into existence this way: Fafnir the dwarf became a dragon due to cursed treasure, a koi fish who spent a century trying to jump the Dragon's Gate waterfall became a dragon, and the Korean imugi became a dragon after a fallen star granted their wish.

I enjoy the opportunities opened by the concept of monster evolution, as much or even more than that opened by spontaneous generation. I hope to be able to detail some more ideas in the future.

Make dragons magical again!

The recent release of Pathfinder 2e has reinvigorated my interest in dragons, mostly because PF2 has doubled down on having a bazillion different kinds of dragons with their own pseudo-naturalistic ecologies. On the one hand, I'm perfectly fine with using random generation tables to create dragons. On the other hand, I'm pretty sick of dragons being reduced to glorified dinosaurs.

Dragons are found throughout world mythology. There are primordial chaos dragons like Apepi and Tiamat. There are many-headed dragons like Hydra. There are she-dragons like Echidna and Chimera. There are tons of weird magical features, too. A dragon's hoard might be cursed, causing misfortune to thieves or turning you into a dragon yourself. Dragons are often seen as omens of disaster, or conversely as benevolent gods who bring life-giving rain. Dragons are often invulnerable, except for some tiny weak spot the hero must find through wit. Alternately, they have regeneration that requires cleverness to overcome, such as the Greek Hydra or the British knuckers.

Dragon body parts may have a variety of effects. Consuming a dragon's heart grants knowledge of the language of the birds. Dragon's blood is a possible ingredient in the elixir of life. Bathing in dragon's blood confers invulnerability, assuming you survive the bath since dragon's blood is often toxic, corrosive, flammable, or all of the above. If it doesn't cause "dragon trees" or monsters like amphisbaena or scytale to sprout. Sowing a dragon's teeth like seeds might cause hoplites to sprout from the ground.

There are a few stories of dragon's having precious stones in or on their bodies that contain their power. The draconite stone is extracted from the head of a live dragon and has magical properties. The pearl of a Chinese dragon might have the power to generate food. In some Korean tales, falling stars contain wish-granting jewels (Korean yeouiju, from Sanskrit cintamani) that may grant a serpent's wish to become a dragon.

Mythology is full of weird stuff like that. It's a great way to make dragons feel magical again.

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

tribes of the centaurs, part 6: the fused riders

During my research, I have come across mentions of centaurs which resemble a rider fused to his horse rather than a human torso replacing the horse's head. These include the Black Devil of Yucatan and Shoshone myth, the Nuckelavee of Orcadian myth, and the the todorac (plural todorci) of Slavic myth.

The Black Devil is described slightly differently by region: "A jet-black Centaur in the mythology of the Mayan Indians of the Yucatan" and "A jet-black stallion of Shoshone Indian myth. The Black Devil has fiery red eyes and sharp teeth. It is said to stalk and eat humans." I could not find any other references to the Black Devil in my research. I notice slight visual similarities to the cadejo of Central American folklore, which sometimes appears in forms resembling black horses.

The Nuckelavee is a grotesque monster resembling a fusion of horse and rider without skin. It has flippers instead of hooves, a single huge eye in the horse head, arms that reach to the ground, and its human head is huge and hangs off its neck. It causes all sorts of misfortune such as plagues and disasters, but as a sea monster it may be repelled with fresh water. It seems fairly well-known in English during my research. It appears in Pathfinder as a fey monster.

The todorac (Cyrillic: Тодорац, plural Тодорци) is a demonic horse/rider fusion that seems inexplicably associated with Saint Theodore Tyron's Day. I couldn't find much information on them in English, but they appear to have an article on the Serbian Wikipedia. They appear in a folk motif in which a girl in a mill or cemetery is threatened by one with having her organs wound on an iron reel.

Sources

Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth by Carol Rose
The Black-man of Zinacantan by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
"Cult of the Saint in the Balkans" by Mirjana Detelic

Giants that aren't physically large?

In Norse mythology, a jötunn was not necessarily gigantic. They could be excessively beautiful or ugly. For that matter, they did not have to be humanoid. Norse mythology includes giants with multiple heads or the forms of freakish or giant animals like Sleipnir, Fenris, and Jormungandr. Other mythologies didn't limit themselves either. Greek giants had weird features like snakes for legs and the heads of lions, among other things. The size of single giants wasn't consistent either: they didn't change their size, it just never seemed to impede them.

I touched upon these topics in previous posts. In this post, I want to imagine some kind of comprehensible taxonomic distinctions for giants that accounts for all these diverse depictions. Groups referred to as "giants" or "titans" in world mythology include the Greek titans and gigantes, the Norse jotnar and vanir, the Hindu asuras, the Persian daevas, the Arabic jinn, and the Irish fomorians and firbholg. Generally, giants in world mythology are distinguished by great stature (literal or metaphorical), a primordial origin, and an enmity with the gods.

So the D&D definition is just needless pigeonholing, as D&D is wont. Instead, as I previously did with trolls, I propose a list of criteria that may be used to define giants. A giant will not necessarily have all the traits on this list, but they should have several of them to avoid excessive debates about what qualifies as a giant.

Great stature. Often literally referring to great (albeit inconsistent) size, but other times referring to incredible beauty or ugliness, or multiple such traits. Anything of great physical size will not necessarily be a mythical giant, even if that is otherwise the literal definition of the word giant.
Chaotic. Often, but not always, acted in opposition to the gods, as with the Norse jotunn, Hindu asuras, Irish fomorians, and Greek gigantes. Where the gods represent order and civilization, the giants/titans represent chaos and disaster. May be composed of or descended from a prior pantheon that was overthrown, even related to the current pantheon.
Primordial. Often the first race to come into existence or be spawned/created by the primordial gods, predating the world itself even. Thus, they are typically considered to have a divine lineage even if they are not otherwise considered gods (the definition of god is fuzzy in myth). For example, the jotuns were the first beings to arise in Norse myth, and the jinn were the first race created by God in Arabic folklore.
Elemental. An elemental affinity is common too. Giants in fantasy gaming almost always have some kind of association with an elemental environment like the clouds or the mountains. The Norse jotuns come in several varieties including frost giants and fire giants, and the Arabic jinn were created from "smokeless fire" and "scorching wind." Various thunder gods in some Native American cultures may also qualify under this criteria.
Not necessarily humanoid. Often have some humanoid features like the Greek gigantes having snakes for legs or the Norse Hel being literally half-alive and half-corpse, but other times appear in the forms of gigantic animals like the Norse's eight-legged horse Sleipnir, the giant wolf Fenris, the world-encircling serpent Jormungandr, and the giant eagle Hræsvelgr (the Villains Wiki labels them "Beast Jötunn" or beast giants), or wholly monstrous freaks like the Greek Typhon being an amalgamation of monstrous features. (Other monsters like the biblical Behemoth and Leviathan would also qualify under this criterion. Indeed, their names are used as improper nouns and synonymous with giant.) Addendum 9/27/2019: Also note the wechuge from Dane-zaa folklore.
Intelligent. This is just an addition I made myself to keep from including any and all kaiju under the giant umbrella. Giants are generally intelligent beings, or at least intelligent enough to speak and do various menial tasks on their own initiative. (This is unrelated to the D&D Intelligence score.) So the various other monsters of Greek mythology like Cerberus, Chimera and Hydra are not considered giants despite their size since they aren't intelligent: they're just vicious beasts with great destructive potential.
May (or may not) be dragons. There is a fair amount of conceptual overlap between giants and dragons. In world mythologies, they are both generally primordial beings of chaos that oppose the gods of order. They are generally considered distinct entities... except when they are not. The Greek she-dragons, even though depicted as nymph-dragon-centaurs, are not labeled giantesses. The Greek giant Typhon is not labeled a dragon despite possessing similar dragon features to the she-dragon. The Norse Jormungandr is labeled both a giant and a dragon, born to giant parents in the form of a dragon.

Of course since we are dealing with mythology and myths are notoriously fluid, I doubt these criteria are perfect. I fully acknowledge that, and I believe the real problem is that fantasy gaming tries to impose arbitrary taxonomies on fictitious concepts. However, having multiple criteria to select from should make it easier to justify labeling Hræsvelgr a giant but not all giant eagles: in that case, Hræsvelgr is still a primordial being of chaos whereas the giant eagles are not. Unlike a lot of gaming taxonomies I could name, that distinction does not feel wholly arbitrary. Although this ambiguity problem vanishes if you allow a monster to be labeled as multiple types. So Hræsvelgr would be [giant] type because of his lineage, size, and sky powers, and [beast] because of his form. Hence, beast giants!

Speaking of beast giants, I wonder how they contrast with the beast lords and elder beasts I mentioned in other posts. Would they be distinct, or different titles for the same beings? For example, the Norse Garm is considered the exemplar of canines, yet elsewhere the race of Moongarm's are labeled giants. In the interest of simplicity and reducing confusion, I would happily consider them synonymous.

Additional links

Addendum 10/29/2019

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Mythology demons and fantasy gaming

If you are a student of world mythology, then you might have noticed that the definition of a demon is fairly nebulous. In modern English it refers to evil spirits generically, particularly those who possess people or torment souls in Hell. Every religion has evil spirits, and aside from being "evil" (i.e. their whole shtick is to cause disaster, disease, or other unpleasant things), they don't have anything in common.

D&D's demons, or fiends if you want to use the game jargon (I won't), are closely based on medieval Christian conceptions of demons. That is, they live in Hell and torment the damned. They may or may not be fallen angels. They want to enter the mortal world to cause bad things, typically by possessing hapless victims or making pacts with wicked people.

Demons in world mythology are extremely diverse beyond this stereotype. The appellation of "demon" itself is more accurately a description of behavior than of origin. Although mythologies with underworlds and hells typically described them as being inhabited at least partly by demons, demons are by no means limited to living in hell. Plenty of demons inhabit the mortal world and have no connection to hells or the underworld. They simply exist.

This may be seen in the origin of the word "demon" itself. It comes from Ancient Greek, where it referred to the personified spirits or deities of the human condition and abstract concepts. There were generally two types, the benevolent eudemons and the malevolent cacodemons. Few of them appeared in myths, but in an amusing coincidence both types were often chthonic or underworld deities as well. In English, the word "demon" used without qualifier refers to the equivalent of cacodemons. This shift in meaning came about as a result of Christianization, which demonized all pre-Christian spirits when converting the pagans.

Although plenty of gods and spirits in mythology can cause great suffering, what distinguishes cacodemons specifically is that they cannot be placated. Many gods were amoral and their attitude toward you was proportional to your interactions with them. The Greek gods were psychopaths, rapists, and had insanely fragile egos, but their wrath could be placated by offerings and obedience. Even eudemons can inflict horrible punishments if you piss them off. Cacodemons cause suffering because they can and nothing will drive them away short of exorcists.

In ancient times, diseases were believed to be caused by demons. Then they were believed to be punishments inflicted by the gods for bad behavior. Then they were believed to be caused by imbalances of humors and miasma. Then germ theory cast away these superstitions and showed that diseases were caused by tiny invisible pathogens, not punishments or humors. Ironically, the ancient belief in demons had far more in common with germ theory than any belief that came between them. When you get right down to it, how much difference is there between a demon possessing your body to cause illness and a pathogen swimming in your bodily fluids to cause illness?

Despite their malevolence, cacodemons in mythology are sometimes known to serve protective roles. The wind demon Pazuzu had a rivalry with the miscarriage-causing she-demon Lamashtu, so amulets depicting his likeness were used to protect pregnant women and children from Lamashtu. The gorgons were so terrible that their visage turned onlookers to stone, but amulets depicting their likeness were used to protect the temples of oracles. The logic here being the ancient "fight fire with fire."

There some evidence that so-called demons were worshiped in addition to being feared. The distinction between demons and gods was itself sometimes fuzzy. Presumably this operated on the same logic as the psychopathic Greek gods: praise them to appease their wrath. (For example, statues of Pazuzu depict him with a phallus the size of a snake, or even literally a snake. This despite him never being associated with virility except in his supposed protection of pregnant women.)

Something I wanted to do was to adapt these diverse depictions of demons to fantasy gaming. Demons are not simply alien creatures from the lower planes, but personifications of the abstract. Diseases are caused by demonic possession, natural disasters are caused by demons of the skies and seas, the visages of certain demons may ward away their rivals, and Death itself is an ambivalent chthonic demon who reaps souls without judgment or malice.

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