So here's the map for The Dig, a minidungeon on Hex 0905 of the Frogstar Peninsula hexcrawl.
I'm planning on sticking the map on the right side of a page, so the elongated shape won't be too annoying.
Basically, morlocks and their chelinausca master were digging a secret subterranean highway nearby when they noticed a bunch of humans excavating fossils a nearby hillside. They've decided to kill all the humans. Rocks from fossil beds (and oil reservoirs) are pretty much impregnated with about 1000 ghosts/cu. ft., so it wasn't too hard for the chelinausca necromancer to agitate the ghosts into forming a life node, which is causing the fossils to spontaneously reincarnate as organic ghost manifestations. Their biologies are built from their own memories, so some details aren't quite right. Anomalocaris, for example, is twice as big as it should be and can fly for some reason.
In addition to morlocks and a couple of chelinausca, here are some critters that are running around.
TRILOBITES
of course trilobites can curl up |
MARRIA
just floating mouths |
of course, they were ridiculously tiny, but what if they were tall and walked around on little leaf legs? |
when I die, I hope my bones remain in an interesting position in 500 years sorta reminiscent of one of Scrap's drawings. |
MOTHERFUCKING ANOMALOCARIS!!!
when anomalocaris was discovered, they thought it was three separate beasties |
they thought the mouth was a pair of shrimp that had died near each other and the mouth was some sort of jellyfish |
and the body was some sort of leafy plant you can still see the jellyfish-shrimp-leaf in old illustrations |
so the grabby spike fangs look pretty horrible but you may be thinking: "whatever, it's got a butthole for a mouth, how can it hurt me" to which I say "impaling tongue spikes" based on a true a story |
OPABINIA
opabinia had 5 eyes and a central mouth tentacle-pincer YES, SIR ANOTHER PERFECTLY NORMAL EARTH ANIMAL |
EURYPTERIDS
|
but you don't know that they came 100 million years later that's like nothing, honestly |
I'm not even sure this one is an eurypterid
that's probably a scuba-diver, though
OTTOIA
FUN FACT: this is not a penis |
AAAAAAAAAAGH |
HALLUCIGENIA
someone drew an anthro version of hallucigenia this actually makes more sense that what we think hallucigenia really looked like |
THIS WAS A REAL THING |
YES, A PERFECTLY NORMAL EARTHLING CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT DOES IN COMBAT? |
Fun times. Way back when Dragon magazine had a whole bunch of Burgess shale creatures made huge and statted out for Bughunters (remember Bughunters?).
ReplyDeleteAnyway if you want to see a space marine fighting a hallucigenia as illustrated by DeTerlizzi - http://annarchive.com/files/Drmg204.pdf
I wanted to see a space marine fighting a hallucigenia by Deet, thanks!
DeleteRecent thinking on Hallucigenia holds that earlier ideas have the thing upside down, and that it is somewhat related to the modern velvet worms. This page includes a fun animated Hallucigenia of the more recent conception.
ReplyDeleteThat Dragon article is awesome, even if the scan isn't that great. I'd never heard of Sanctacaris or Yohoia before, even if the last sounds more like it should be in a scenario with pirates. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe Hallucigenia pictures are way outdated. But more accurate modern reconstructions still look very weird.
ReplyDeletehttp://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NrAvioSFDhc/U0q7sRt9AzI/AAAAAAAABu8/EpibRTA1OAc/s1600/hallucigenia_illustration_03__by_dirk_wachsmuth_sg.jpg
Oh, and Opabinia's mouth was located behind the proboscis, not at the end of it.
True, probably, yeah. I've been following hallucigenia reconstructions. But this is happily more of an "inspired by" dungeon rather than an actual museum.
DeleteStill, nice picture. Thanks for posting a link.