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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Wizlocks



Attempting to elude assassins and old age, Mologon the Magician decided to clone himself.  Although he was a potent wizard, he was an utter novice at cloning.  His creations spilled from the vats, spitting spells and afterbirth, and strangled Mologon with their own umbilical cords.

Creating creatures is simple, as any wizard will tell you.  Creating creatures that you can control is very difficult, and this is where Mologon failed.  But creating creatures that can breed true is much more difficult, and so it is very surprising that he succeeded there.

Wizlocks are born from spherical eggs.  They resemble crystal balls filled with a thick mist, or perhaps miso soup made from milk and glitter.  They procreate asexually, with each adult wizlock laying 2-3 eggs a year, during full moons.

Since there is no genetic recombination, and since the genetics of wizlocks are so unstable, they each inherit the mutations of their ancestors.  Each generation they get weirder, and farther from their progenitor.

They resemble Mologon himself. . . except with mutations.  Although they have genius IQ, they are too distracted and insane to ever actually put it to good use.  The only thing they use their great intellect for is debating minutia (such as who pooped in the bread basket, and the forensic methods by which it could be determined) and critiquing PC spell-casting.


They are shattered echoes of a great wizard.  Like what dementia leaves behind after it devours another hero.  They're half the height of a human, so that we can kill lots of them without feeling bad.

They desire the trappings of wizardry, but they have forgotten their functionality.

Treasures and Madness:

  1. Tiny bottles, each filled with a different color water (mundane).
  2. Wands made from hair and hardened mucus.
  3. Hand puppets resembling wizlocks.
  4. Stuffed mice and toads.  Sometimes with wheels and pulled by strings.
  5. Hippogriff sculpture made from trash.
  6. Chalk pentagrams drawn on the center of each and every room.
  7. Hands painted white to resemble gloves.
  8. "Alchemy lab" made from clay bowls, clay spirals, painted thermometers, etc.
  9. Solid bricks, painted to look like books, carefully shelved amid a huge "library".
  10. One of their number who has been bullied into playing the part of the demon.  He's been painted red and has had horns affixed to his head.  He'll run around yelling "Evil!  Rape!  Doom!" in the demonic tongue, attacking PCs and fellow wizlocks both.
  11. Scrolls written in cyphers, obscure languages, and bizarre dialects.  The actual content involves stupid stories, e.g. "Moop and Moopy fall in love and have all the babies, chapter 1 the sequel".
  12. 1d3 actual scrolls or potions.

What's interesting about this tribe of wizlocks?


  1. Have smaller wizlocks on leashes.
  2. Two-headed.  Harder to sneak up on.
  3. Just a head.  Movement halved.
  4. Macrocephalic.  Psi blast (as mind flayer) for 3d6 damage.
  5. Deformed skull shaped like a wizard hat.  Not actually wearing a wizard hat.
  6. Centauroid, made from a human top and a black cat bottom. +50% speed.
  7. Octopoid, with a human head atop an eight-branched superbeard.
  8. Amorphous.  Add up all of the wizlocks in the encounter and smoosh them together into a big, roiling, yammering blob.


Wizlock
Number appearing: 2d6
HD 1
AC as unarmored
Attacks tiny daggers (1d4)
speed as human
Morale 6
*Each tribe of wizlocks has a different spell or ability.  Each of them can cast it once per HD.
  1. magic missile
  2. color spray
  3. eye laser
  4. ice breath
  5. sonic screech
  6. special power (d3) + roll again
    1. permanently invisible except for eyes
    2. flight 150'
    3. magic absorption (75% spell resistance, gain 1 HD whenever they resist a spell, max 3 HD)


Spells wizlocks probably can't teach you directly:

Eye Laser
Level 1 Wizard Spell
R: 200'    D: 0
Make a ranged attack roll with +4 to hit.  Target takes 1d6 damage and catches on fire, if flammable.

Ice Breath
Level 1 Wizard Spell
R: 20' cone    D: 0
1d6 damage, save for half.  Also extinguishes all fires torch-sized or smaller.

Sonic Screech
Level 1 Wizard Spell
R: 20'    D: 0
All creatures in 20' take 1d6 damage, save for half.  The caster automatically succeeds on this save.  Glass in that radius has a chance to shatter as well: 50% for thin potion bottle-glass, etc.



Quotes:
"You hath pierced my eldritch eye with your vulgar assault!"
"Ontology recapitulates your defeat!"
"Wizard wizard wizard wizard SPELL!" *casts spell*
"SKREEEEEEE!"
"You are too strange to be a familiar!"
"I will bite you with my spells!"
"Leave before I summon the froghemoth!"
"Scrollbabies!  Erghk!"

If you kill enough of them and throw them in a hot tub, you are like 90% of the way to making your own cloning vat, so I guess they're pretty valuable in that respect.

if you average out all of the pictures on this page EXACTLY
you'll know what a wizlock looks like

3 comments:

  1. I have a new favorite RPG blog. It's this one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So, do you ever reply to comments? Or just post updates?

    ReplyDelete