WURMS: A continued DECLARATION against SCRAP PRINCESS, who knows NO DECENCY nor FORMAL DANCES

There is a voice crying out in the wilderness, babbling nonsense with locust-stained lips, scratching chaos into the dirt beneath her.  This is SCRAP PRINCESS, who is shunned by the WISE and feared by the BRAVE.  Her writings consist of nothing but NONSENSE and THE EGGS OF GAWPING SERPENTS.  Wise men shun both, lest they be afflicted by POLYPS and SNAKEBITE.

//////

The opposite of a dragon is a wurm.  Like dragons, they are also hoarders and destroyers, but they tend to seek the metaphysical, rather than base metals.

Wurms are brothers to whales.  They are most closely related to certain breeds of malformed horses native to the Londeep Swamp, which feed on algae and bird's eggs.

They are hairy, limbless things, like pink-skinned slugs or shaggy worms.  They do not fly, but instead burrow.  Their features vary, but in most cases their faces tend towards the mammalian, and sometimes even the simian.  They have flattish faces, with forward facing eyes, and their teeth are often blunted.  The smallest of them is a furlong in length.

They lay fertile eggs, but compulsively devour their young.

HD 12+  AC plate  Bite 2d8 + swallow
Move human  Burrow 1/2 human  Int 10    Mor 7

*Slurp (30' cone, save or be pulled into mouth)
*Aura  (100', unique to each wurm, see below)
*Attendants (2d6, unique to each wurm, see below)

THE LAUGHING WURM

Its skin is bright gold, and it weighs 484,000 lbs.  Its expression has been described as fatuous.  It enjoys eating elephants, and this is how it does it.  First, it breaks the elephant's legs.  Then it sucks on the elephant for about 18 hours, like a gobstopper, until the elephant's skin comes off.

It lives in the Tau Solen, where it churns the rivers into pinkish foam.

The Laughing Wurm consumes joy.  That is why it is so happy.  All creatures in its aura must make a Charisma check each turn.  On a failure, they lose 1d6 Wisdom.  If their Wisdom reaches 0, the PC stops and sits down, overcome by regret, nostalgia, and nihilism.  Wisdom lost in this way is recovered as soon as they leave the aura.  They regain 1d6 Wisdom if an ally dies or is swallowed (first time only) or if something motivating occurs (first time only).  Creatures in the aura are unable to benefit from it.

The Laughing Wurm is surrounded by 2d6 despondent ibises (1 HD each).  Initially inert, they will attack once they wurm is bloodied.

When the Laughing Wurm is killed all creatures in 1000' must save or celebrate together for the next 1d20 hours.  Expect to spend the time dancing with wolves and kissing ibises.

The Heart of the Laughing Wurm is a tiny, shriveled grey thing the size of a fist.  It can be used to make a make any sentient creature suicidal.  (50' range, creature saves, failture means that they will attempt to kill themselves in the next 24 hours.  The heart is not used up by a successful save.)

picture unrelated
by Marco Nelor

THE VERDANT WURM

The Verdant Wurm is bright, grassy green, except for its teeth (which are white) and its gums (which are red).  Its expression has been described as incredulous.  It enjoys impersonating a grassy hill, something that it is very bad at, since all the adjacent hills will be dead.  It weighs 660,000 lbs.

The Verdant Wurm consumes life.  That is why it is so vibrant.  All creatures in the aura lose 1d6 HP per turn (half on a successful save).  For each HP lost in this way, a butterfly is born from the Verdant Wurm's back.  They attack as a swarm.

The Verdant Wurm begins surrounded by 2d6 butterflies.  They are not true insects, and lack mouthparts or reproductive organs.  They have only a single leg, like a razor blade.

When the Verdant Wurm is killed, its stomach spills open and a forest grows explosively.  All creatures in 1000' must save or take 1d20 damage from being speared, tossed, or crushed.

The Heart of the Verdant Wurm can be used to restore a creature to life.  Creatures restored to life in this way will return larger (+1 Str), dumber (-1 Int), and with shaggy green hair.

Other Wurms

Slow, Conquerer, and Heartstring.  TBA.

SCRAP PRINCESS ENGINEERED THE ST. PIERRE SNAKE INVASION

I'm not saying that she bred all of the snakes personally, but she definitely was in St. Pierre, throwing snakes at children.

ANYWAY

Dinosaur
Psychosaurs

These are hyper-evolved dinosaurs from an alternate timeline.  They're giant flying dinosaur heads with psychic powers.  They refer to humans as "foolish mammals" and like to cut our heads off, then make fun of us when we die.

Wherever there is one psychosaur, there is always another, because they travel through time almost exclusively to create advantages over other psychosaurs, and to foil other psychosaur plots before they become manifest down the timeline.

Displacer Beast
Beast of Singular Intensity

Once you enter its floor of the dungeon, you become instantly aware of it.  It's like you've been using a singular computer monitor your whole life, and then suddenly, a second monitor flares on beside it.
Once you are aware of the Beast of Singular Intensity, you cannot back away from it.  You can approach it, and you can circle it, but you cannot leave until it is dead or placated.  This whole floor of the dungeon is annular, and the concentric rings are full of other creatures who have chosen to circle the Beast rather than face it.

It looks like a cross between a cobra and a cicada.  It rises from a mossy pit.  It has no eyes but it has many Eyes.

Dog
Terrible Tumor

Sort of like an angry baby that is growing out from the base of your neck.  It whines and harasses and if it gets really frustrated it will start throttling you.

You can't remove it without killing yourself, and any damage it takes is mirrored onto you.  For example, if you cut off its arms, you can no longer move your arms.  If you bind it, you can't move either.

What does it want?  Liquor (you get drunk, too, since you share a bloodstream), to dabble in the darkest of magics, to commit unspeakable perversions, and to scare people.

Djinn
Flim

Creatures of fireless smoke, flims are utterly powerless.  They look like they can fly, and yet they can barely crawl.  They are so fragile, a determined Corgi could kill one.  They have terrible eyesight and weak voices and although they can carry small things like papers and gems, they must take breaks.

Neither Good, nor Evil, nor Neutral, they're just sort of there.  They struggle to understand and affect the world around them, and so they tend towards depression and lethargy.  They sigh a lot.  You could do a lot to help one, and it would be grateful, but then what?

Dolphin
Orb Snail

Picture a sphere on the bottom of the harbor.  The sphere is about seven feet in diameter, and it appears to be made from rock or shell.  It has semi-hexagonal scutes, like a turtle's shell.

On the side of the sphere is a crusted gap, big enough to fit your head inside but not your shoulders.  It is from this hole that the orb snail can extrude an organ.  Here is a list of the possible organs that the snail can extrude.

• A muscular arm, good for grabbing things and drowning them.
• A muscular foot, good for gripping the ground and creeping along.
• An turgid eye on an enormous stalk.
• A sphincter-like mouth, capable of spitting a weak acid.

If Gygax wrote this, it would probably kill adventurers by rolling them over on hills.  And while yes, orb snails can kill you like that, they much prefer to just drown you.

It is actually a species of turtle.  Everyone is wrong.

Dragons

They deserve their own post.

Dragonne
Hog Dragon

Bred by goblins in order to debase and humiliate dragons.  Obese, foul-tempered, slothful, and immensely strong.  Stats as a dragon, except Defense = Leather.

Stench -- Can produce a stinking cloud every 1d4 turns.  Within 50', the stench is so strong that materials become soft.  Metal becomes rubbery.  Stone becomes like mud.

It's weaknesses are its temper, its appetite, and its tireless stupidity.

Dragon Turtle
Angeloid

A soft, flying thing, all gossamer and molasses.  Like panes of brown and yellow glass being shuffled.  A face that is eternally flopped to one side or the other, like a dog's.  It wants to take you places, show you things.  It will trade things, but it only deals in intangibles.  It'll identify a magic item if you feed it all of your memories of your father (lose a point of Wis).  It'll carry you anywhere you wish to go if you let it wrap your courage in an eggshell and carry it away (-4 vs Fear).

Dryad
Gurgans

Horrible, shriveled man-things.  They squat, lurk, snivel, sneer, grovel, and beg.  They're horrible and pointless.  They own nothing useful; they never know anything relevant.  Killing them gives you a negative amount of XP.  Their livers are painful and distended and they can curse creatures by spitting on them.  If you kill one, you may turn into one yourself.

They're usually found sleeping in front of a doorway that the party needs to get through.  Or they demand to be carried to a different part of the dungeon.  Or they demand food and compliments.

If these demands are not met: curses.  If you attack them: curses.  If you ignore them and make them feel the suffocating weight of their own crushing loneliness: curses.

SCRAP PRINCESS PLAYS FOURTH EDITION

When the world finds out what you've done, Scrap, they're going to stop inviting you to the yacht parties that the OSR throws every month.  They're going to cut you off from the Cocaine of the Month Club, too.

READ THESE REVELATIONS AND TREMBLE, O UNTIDY FALSITY

Devil
Heavenly Bureaucrat

So:

Zulin rules the world from his golden Heaven, and yet his clergy do not claim that he is omnipotent.  He is certainly not omniscient.

This is an oversight, and it must be corrected.

Heaven is a vast and unknowable mansion, filled with gardens and apartments where the faithful dead enjoy eternity.  It's also a vast and incomprehensible maze of offices and archives, because long ago Zulin decided two things.

First, all of the world must be observed, cataloged, and judged.  Sins must be observed.  Souls must be tracked.  Prayers must be quantified and tabulated, weighed against the current and prospective sin markets, and then the summary given to the Angels of Judgement.

Second, he had absolutely no desire to do any of this.

Zulin exists in his own part of the labyrinthine mansion, where he is currently engaged in what is best described as an eternal tea party.  He entertains and is entertained.  He is attended by gods and godlings from Centerra, the planet's interior, the moon, and other such ultraterrestrial locales*.  Importantly, he is also accompanied by several of his greatest foes, who are unable to leave due to the chains of etiquette (which bind even gods) and who Zulin is unable to defeat (because he would be overpowered).

Once, perhaps, the Bureaucracy of Heaven was knowable, in the sense that a single mind could see it all, or at least hold a mental schematic of how it all fit together.  But it's outgrown that.  It outgrew that a long time ago.

The Goals and Means of the Bureaucracy

At this point, you can surely see that heaven has a great need for spies, bureaucrats, census-takers, writers of ethical protocols, judges, lawyers, and art critics (to judge the beauty of artworks made to glorify Zulin, and quantify the amount of sin that such an artwork compensates).

Heaven does not know how many grains of sand there are.  It does not know how many hairs are on your head.  It does not know the dreams of every babe nested at its mother's breast.  But they are trying to find these things out.

Angels are absolutely rubbish at counting sand.  That fact hasn't stopped Heaven from trying, though.

For the most part, angels are summoned creatures.  They exist for a day or an hour, performing some task, and then vanishing with a contented sigh.  So while they might count a million grains before their happy death, that only amounts to about a shovelful.  (And a small shovel, at that.)

The true power of Heaven lies in its Law: the ability to dictate the laws of nature, the truth of any terrestrial fact, and their power over men and their souls.  While Zulin is objectively the master of these considerable powers, their actual enforcement goes to the vast and unknowable offices of heaven, which are staffed by living humans, of course.

So after that angel has tabulated a million grains of sand, who do you think it reports to?  She is a woman in a white robe, with a sun-disk wired to a her skull, and a small serpent living her her sinuses that verifies her sums with an approving nod.

The First Bureaucrats

Mathematics was rewritten in order to make calculus possible.  The laws of mathematics were codified, and all the heretic possibilities were imprisoned far from Centerra, in order that 2+2 would always equal 4 (as opposed to all of the regional variations).

The principles of economics were invented.  Then logic.  Last grammar.  These things were delivered to the priests in the form of gold-inscribed mirrors, and the priests were then taught to teach these things to the children.

After a decade had passed, the Heavenly Examinations began to be held in every provincial center.  The minds that shone brightest during these examinations--the inventor, the artist, the mathmatician, the scientist--were taken up to Heaven to become its first bureaucrats.

(Maybe this is why everyone on Centerra is so fucked.)

The Church's examinations have slowed, but never really stopped.  There is still an examination held in Coramont every year, where the quick-adding, powerfully-adept children are taken up to Heaven for blessed employment.  But they are a minority.  A drop in the ocean.  How could they be anything else, when Heaven is a place with no restrictions on population, and a great need for able hands to hold an abacus?

The families there are old and strange and specialized.  While they know a great deal about a particular thing, they know very little about everything else.  For example, while the Department of Tabulation knows the sums of the sand on a great many beaches, many of its bureaucrats are unaware that there is anyone living down there at all.  As far as they know, the vast bureaucracy of heaven exists for the singular purpose of enumerating sand.  And they are entirely satisfied with this view of the world.

(Do not think them mad, dear reader.  They are as sane as you are, and no less perceptive.  Who are you to judge?  You know as much about the purpose of life as they do.  And while you might know a great deal about the evaluation, purchase, and distribution of wine in the UK, I suspect you know very little of the arcane workings of the machine that you are reading this on.  Perhaps the Truth is to be found in there?)

I won't go into any more broad details.  The races of heavenly bureaucrat are too varied for easy classification, and too bizarre for swift elucidation.

Instead, here are a (partial, very partial) list of Scrap Princess' vile misdeeds.  All readers are advised to bring a bucket adjacent, lest her wanton prurience drive you to vomiting all over your no-doubt tastefully decorated home.

Note 1: Nearly all of these guys can summon angels.

Note 2: Additionally, each department has "interns".  Souls serving their sentence in Purgatory.

Note 3: These classifications might seem like each department has a defined, organized domain and hierarchy.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Each task has multiple competing departments assigned to it, and the Gordian knot of authority clauses sometimes means that a department ends up serving its own sub-department (and other such explosions of apparent nonsense).

Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Geryon (Arch Devil), Dispater
Ministers
The higher ranking bureaucrats of heaven are all heads of their respective departments, which is nearly the same thing as saying that they are the heads of their respective families.  They jockey against each other for access to the Office of Natural Law, where they have the swiftest means to dispatch their enemies and recruit more resources for theirselves and their department.

For example, a 10% decrease in the rate of sedimentation would vastly decrease the amount of free sand grains in the world, leading to less need for the Department of Tabulation, leading to more effective petitions by other departments for diversions of human resources.  The pendulum of power swings thus.

Changing the natural laws in order to improve sedimentation constants may also be accompanied by a concomitant rise in kidney stones and renal failure.  This is none of their concern.  Suffering is a normal and expected part of mortality, and if it ever gets out of hand, they can expect the Department of Tribulations to issue an injunction.

This is why we have such things as tornadoes and syphilis, by the way.  A loving god wouldn't create those things.  They're Unforeseen Consequences (one of the smallest and most understaffed departments).

How many more of these do I have to do**?

Barbed (Lesser Devil)
Bureaucrat of Weights and Measures

Looks like a guy in a robe and a pointy shoes with a giant scale strapped to his back.  Accompanied by a cylindrical brass 'golem' that weighs a very specific weight.  His job is to weigh things and record whether they weigh more or less than his brass cylinder.  He must also destroy things that are the improper weight.  Can alter weights, distances.

Bone (Lesser Devil)
Bureaucrat of Tabulation

Looks like a guy who is entirely laminated with counting beads.  Has the powers to shoot beads, which is a little underwhelming.  Also has the power to audit one character sheet per round and investigate the numbers there.  If he finds any mistakes, he can imprison your character for as long as it takes you to find the errors and correct them.  (DM: six seconds of real-world time equals a combat round.)

Enrinyes
Bureaucrat of Maculate Conception

Soft, pink androgynous person, pristine and slick inside their tight robe.  Ensures that the appropriate sperm reaches the egg, and that spontaneous conception occurs according to design.  Also responsible for making sure the womb catches the proper type of soul.  Can pick two people of roughly compatible biologies and summon up their hypothetical offspring to fight them.  Can also stir your flesh like a spoon in a vat of multicolored paint.  Also capable of shrinking down and swimming in you like a frisky salmon, but this option is distasteful.

Horned
Bureaucrat of Continuance

Ensures the smooth passage of time.  Makes that time is uniform within a time zone.  Carries out conversions at the borders of time zones, so that travelers between them never even realize that they are passing through them.  Makes sure that everything doesn't happen at once.  Keepers of the Doomsday Clock.  Sentinels against the dinosaurs gnashing their way up the timelines.  One of the many reasons that PCs shouldn't attempt to time travel.

Like like men and women with bellies full of flashing sand, each grain beating out a different tempo, which together allows the bureaucrat to keep perfect time.  Powers are varied, and powerful.  Their wounds heal quickly, arrows slow in their flights, and many of their opponents die of old age.

One of the largest and most powerful departments.  The Minister of Continuance is Apocalypse, the only Minister that is not human.

Ice
Bureaucrat of Imagination

Their job is to judge the objective value of a piece of artwork.  They use a complex system of reference books to calculate this value, which is measured in Good Deeds.  These measurements are then passed on to the Department of Morality.

They are strange people, with flowing robes that shift colors and abilities every round.  They fight through a system of counter-attack.  Every action brings a reaction.  Learning these reactions is key to defeating them, but by then it might be too late.

Lemure
Bureaucrat of Dreams

Soft men, with soft skin and soft voices.  Vestigial faces cover vestigial minds.  They are dressed very, very well, and they move very, very politely.  This is why they are so easy to kill.

They sit at the bedsides, invisible, intangible.  On their tablet, they listen to the murmurs of your animal soul and record your dreams with their stylus.  These dreams are brought back up to heaven for classification, sorting, and interpretation.

This is a very important job.  Revelations of the future are most often first seen in dreams.  This is how Heaven knows so much about what is going to happen.  These are also the guys sent down to kick over the dreidel when your cleric casts augury.

Pit Fiend
Bureaucrat of Morality

A head full of eyes and a dossier filled with your sins.  Metal-skinned men who can blast down a door with a word, or limit the actions of everyone at the table.

They do not perform the collection or the sentencing of a soul (that's the Department of Death and Eternal Life), but they certainly measure it.  They are responsible for keeping track of you and all of your good deeds and sins***.  They don't have time to watch everyone personally, all the time.  But they use methods of deduction and interrogation to collect the information they need.  They hardly ever make mistakes.

A soul has value.  Knowing where it will end up after it dies is therefore a useful fact, and those who control the dossiers on those particular soul are worthy of a fee per soul.  And so dossiers are traded within the Department of Morality.  Not individually, of course, but most likely bundled into vast portfolios of thousands of mortals of similar moral bent.

-----------------------------------

*Scrap also eats cereal out of a shoe.  Like, the same shoe every time.  I don't even think she washes it.  I don't know where the other shoe is, who is eating out of it, or why we don't know about them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Scrap did something horrible to them to make them disappear.

**Also I met I guy at a gas station once who told me that once Scrap got drunk and made out with a  seagull, was also drunk.  The guy didn't buy anything except one of those heinous nut-covered donutoids though, so his ability to Discern Realities is probably pretty suspect.

***They would shoot vomit out their metal noses if they ever saw Scrap, though.  They were never trained to handle her.  (She would be a Level Nine Depravity Locus in their system of classification, though, if their system didn't stop at Level Eight.)

SCRAP DOESN'T KNOW WHAT PIGS ARE

This is a response to this is a response to this is a response to this.

Evidence 1: A Story That Is Probably True

Scrap Princess is visiting her friend's farm.

"This is a nice farm," Scrap says, taking a sip of her Red Lion through a straw.  "Your sheep are so robust."

"Yes," the friend says.  The friend is sitting in a plastic chair with a kiwi bird in her lap.  She is petting it, so she feels relaxed and not very talkative.

"Wait!" shouts Scrap, so shocked she nearly drops her meat pie.  "What are those people doing!?"  She points at two pigs who have trotted out behind the house and begun eating a kiwi fruit.

"The pigs?" the friend says, confused.  The kiwi bird flinches at the noise.

"Hey!" Scrap shouts at the pigs.  "You people can't just crawl naked onto someone else's farm and eat their kiwi fruits!"

"Scrap, those aren't people!  Those are pigs," her friend explains, but Scrap is not listening.  The friend looks down at her knuckles.  Why doesn't anyone ever listen to her?

The kiwi bird isn't listening either.  It's gone cross-eyed with concentration, focusing on the giant egg growing inside its belly.

an unknown species, according to Scrap

Evidence 2: More Opposite Monsters

Carrion Crawler
Baby Jumper

Looks like a long-legged infant, but is actually a type of hairless monkey.  Has a tail that shades towards blue at the tip.  If it touches you with its tail, you must save vs uncontrollable rage.  (You must attack something each turn 1d6 turns.)  They like to force groups to attack each other, then gang up on the last remaining survivor.

Hunt in family groups of 1d4+1.

Catoblepas
Golden Hind

Literally a small, beautiful deer made out of gold.  Everyone who sees it falls in love with it, and the people who send you to hunt it have never seen it, or else they wouldn't want you to kill such a beautiful, innocent thing.  When you kill it and bring its pelt to them, they will weep and pay you the gold they promised you, and then quietly loathe you for the rest of their lives.

The tricky thing about hunting it is that the whole forest will try to stop you.  Trees will drop branches.  Gnats will choke your eyes.  Sparrows will fly down the throats of your hunting dogs and choke them.

Centaur
Bully Horseman

Whenever you roll a random encounter in a labyrinth, roll a d6.  On a 1, the Bully Horseman shows up on the second round of combat, grabs a random PC, and attempts to run off with them atop his shoulders.  He'll bring them back after giving the a tour of some of the (potentially) hazardous rooms in the dungeon.  His voice is panting and apologetic.

He looks like a huge man with the head of a horse.  Corpulent inside his black toga.  Anyone who kills him becomes the next Bully Horseman.  Anyone who injures him feels their head becoming (temporarily) more horse-like.

Centipede
Giant Worm

Huge, herbivorous, harmless, gross.  Put it on your wandering monster table.  Watch what your players do when they encounter it.

Cerebral Parasite
Flesh Driver

This is a small worm-spirit that infects a body part.  Roll a d6: hand, foot, finger, mouth, bellybutton, genitals, eye.  That body part then grows to monstrous size, while the rest of the body shrinks to the size of an appendage.  (It can also grow tentacles if it needs more mobility.)

Basically, if it infects you hand, you turn into an appendix riding around on the back of a rampaging hand monster.  (Infectious fingernails, mouth in the center of the palm, etc.)

If you cut off the original body (which is usually dangling off the back like a keychain, still sentient and screaming), you kill the worm and everything returns to normal.  The severed body part is still severed, though.

Chimera
Elephant Men

These are six dudes.  They all suffer from skeletal deformities, but they wear elephant masks to hide the worst of it.

One dude is armed with two big ivory spears.  He is the leader of the group.  His name is Cornu.

Another dude is armed with two bladed fans.  He has the best hearing and he is the scout of the group.  He can run fast and jump high.

The third dude has a tower shield and an armored belly.  He's really good at protecting his brothers.

The fourth dude just carries around a big snake.  He is a stealthy contortionist and has a powerful sense of smell.

The fifth dude is armed with a log and big iron boots.  He's the brute, and is always kicking down doors and crushing skulls.

The sixth dude has a lasso.  Everyone forgets about him, and he is sad and resentful.  His brothers don't think they need him and always give him pointless tasks, such as "keep the flies off us".  He should have picked a better weapon.

Cockatrice
Gallomox

This is a snake with an extremely unsettling head (sort of like a chicken skull).  When it bites its own tail, it is capable of playing itself like a flute--it has holes on its back and it uses various yoga poses to cover them up.

It knows different songs, and each has a slightly different effect.  Each effect is some variation of "blow something up".

I want to go on record and say that I find no part of this picture arousing.

Coatl
Slunk Bird

A quadrupedal bird with an enormous, axe-like beak.  It observes travelers from a distance and attacks those who don't commit any crimes.  Everyone knows this (and DMs should tell their players this when they first see the owl-like eyes watching them).

If you don't commit any crimes, it creeps closer.  When it reaches you, or when it is attacked, it will kill you with its magic powers (most involving crushing, imprisonment, and ice).

CrabCrayfishCrocodile
Boiler Boys

Soft-shelled arthropods that walk on two legs.  They're flesh colored and look like they have whiskers and goggles if you squint your eyes and huff a little glue.  They're about three feet tall.  They collect treasure and they never share it, so people like to kill them and take it.

They have only one attack, and that is the giant acid gland at the heart of each one.  When they wish to die, they contract the gland, which pumps acid through all of their rapidly-dissolving veins, and then jump at their enemy.  They land with a splash.

HD 1  AC leather  Acid Suicide 1d6 + 1d6 acid per round until washed off.

Demon
Friendly

They are like the angels who weren't quite structured enough to be angels.  These are the angels who never went to church, never learned to tell a sin apart from a good deed, and have little understanding of how the mortal world actually runs.  Famously, they can't tell pigs apart from people either, which is handy if you ever want to trick one.

They're not evil, they're just extremely confused about what good is, and they never listen to you.  You might be able to convince one of them otherwise with an especially dramatic display.

Demogorgon
Metagorn

Metagorn appears as a headless baboon accompanied by two snakes.  All three of them are Metagorn, and unless all three are killed simultaneously, Metagorn can swiftly recover.

Metagorn approaches people and urges them to make plans.  An unplanned life is not worth living!  You must tell Metagorn your plan, and then you must execute it.

The problem is that Metagorn requires a high level of detail (how many steps will you take to cross the room) and doesn't understand that you don't necessarily know whats in the next room.  If you deviate from your plan, Metagorn with make you conform to your plan, even if it means killing you and puppeting your corpse.

The smart thing to do is to make a plan with Metagorn to lock yourself in your current room and organize your packs until Metagorn gets bored.  Anything else is suicide.

If you follow through with your plan to Metagorn's satisfaction, you can suggest who Metagorn should help next.

Jubilex
Orthogon

Prefers to travel through objects.  When he does that, the object becomes clean and straight and perfect.  Like if you staring at a highway, and all of a sudden the highway got a little straighter, all the potholes filled in, the paint got fresh, and then a moment later it all went back to normal--that's Orthogon.

Manifests as an androgenous alabaster statue exactly 2m tall.  (This bothers him, because what's so perfect about humanoids?)  Hates inbetween states and gradients.  A person should be either healthy or dead, nothing in-between.  And so mostly healthy people are healed, while heavily injured people are killed and turned into beautiful corpses.

If Orthogon gets really pissed, he starts turning things into cubes composed of their base matter.  For example, a human would be turned into a cube of flesh, a cube of bone, and a cube of ice.  Which are then stacked.

Manes
Tayles

These look like armless, headless people.  Both genders, usually not naked.  They follow you around.  Whatever you do to other people, they try to do to you.  Intelligent but they have a hard time communicating.

Orcus
Anbless

She loves children.  She appears as a normal-sized woman wearing a 30' long dress.  She flies, of course, otherwise it wouldn't make any sense.

Anbless carries her children in the fabric of her dress.  They wander around in there like patches sewn onto the surface.  Think of her as a cat lady, except with children.

She kidnaps children and takes them away from abusive parents, which is all of them.  She tkeas them to her private heaven, called Kinderhalla, where they enjoy games and candy and playground for all eternity!

Except they do not enjoy timelessness, and so the children age into puberty.  Anbless kicks them out as soon as she catches them making out.  Repulsive little beasts.

Children who are kicked out usually die trying to find their way back to civilized lands.  Those that do are cursed to live a half-life.  Everything is cold and bitter and dreary compared to Kinderhalla, and they have no useful skills.

People who object to her methods are turned into children themselves.  If that is not possible, they are killed.

Succubus
Power Wife

Sort of like if Supergirl was violently committed to the idea of marrying you so could conceive a child of destiny.  You'll also be required to live with her and live a good, decent wholesome life in a good part of the world, next to a good school.  All of this precludes adventuring, of course.  You'll have to find a decent source of income, but the power wife will help.  She's kind, pleasant, and uncomfortably powerful.  She'll help you live a long, fulfilling live (without adventuring).  After you are dead and the child is grown, she'll move on to her next angelic assignment.

Can switch genders as needed, depending on the type of conception required.

Type I Demon: Vrock
Type I Friendly: Corpok

A pile of bird bones arranged into symbolic structures.  Hovers through the air with the sound of many flapping wings.  All creatures within 50' gain flight.

If three of them sing in unison for 3 rounds, all things nearby are flung skyward.

Believe that the earth is corrupt (since demons live under it) and the sky is heavenly (since angels live there).  They think everyone should just live in the sky.

Type II Demon: Hezrou
Type II Friendly: Crysanth

Cultivators of extensive flower labyrinths, sometimes planted atop clouds.  Flower people, with blossom heads and long, sensitive tongues.  The touch of their tongue confers temporary telepathy, which is how they communicate.

They believe that flowers are good, butterflies are tolerable, and beetles are evil.  There is no room for anything else in their cosmology, and so nearly everything else must be destroyed and somehow used to plant more flowers.  They fight with extremely painful swords (if one brings you below 10 HP, you must save vs unconsciousness) and illusions.

You can escape their predations only if you can impersonate a flower.  This means a pleasant smell and a lovely flower, at a minimum.

Is that such a bad world to want?  An empty planet covered by beautiful, peaceful flowers?

Type III Demon: Glabrezu
Type III Friendly: Mantlebru

A small, dapper man who always seems to be emerging from a hole on a flat surface.  His hats change when you aren't looking.

He will clean you up and give you fashionable clothes.  You must wear the clothes.  If you get them dirty he will kill you.  He will tell you all of these things in a polite, direct manner.  He fights by screaming until things blister, pop, and melt.

Don't go into his hole.  It's a peristaltic velvet tunnel that will crush your bones like a fistful of straw.

Type IV Demon: Nalfeshnee
Type IV Friendly: Tinglethree

Looks like a winged pig (a type of animal that I find sexually unattractive) that cannot fly.

He is the friendly most concerned with keeping you humble.  He has been watching you and has become concerned that you are winning too often, and it is making you proud.  You should lose the next 1d6 fights.  Yes, I think that would be best for all of us if you did that.

Can cast the dreaded mass reduce person and permanent reduce person.

Type V Demon: Marilith
Type V Friendly: Paxora

These are one-armed warrior women whose ankles end with flaming shoes.  They can fly and they are magnificent dancers.

They firmly believe in utter pacifism.  No one must fight.  They will escort you out of the dungeon peacefully.  Then they will help you break your weapons on a rock.  Then they will use their magic to clear some land so you can be peaceful farmers for the rest of your natural lives.

They believe in these values so much that they will kill to uphold them.  (It's okay to kill for peace because once you've killed everyone who isn't peaceful, there will only be peace forever and that is worth it.)

Type VI Demon: Balor
Type VI Friendly: Kylor

They appear like extremely tall women.  But not grossly elongated, merely long and graceful.  They make you feel like this is the way the human body plan should be, and you are just stumpy imitations.  They have the heads of deer.

They have concluded that you are part of the Problem and must be destroyed.  The only way to convince them otherwise is to convince them that your identity is no longer the same.  Only by changing your character as much as possible will you pacify them.  (If you pacify them, you can suggest who else is part of the Problem.)

Like a belt of gender reversal and a helm of opposite alignment would be a good start.  Better to give yourself a new name and speak in a different accent.

They fight by opening portals between their antlers and summoning things and people that you have already fought in the past.  They also fight with a hammer that shatters armor and enchantments on a hit.

Yeenoghu (Demon Lord of Gnolls)
Yarrock (Friendly Lord of Dogs)

Announces your doom in retribution for all the war dogs that you've allowed to die.  Kills you by flooding the dungeon with dogs.  Add 2d6 war dogs to every room in the dungeon.

Appears as an enormous man with the head of a mastiff.  Served by obedient berserkers, naked except for their spiked collars.

Not only are these not my preferred species, but they appear to be underage as well.

NO I FUCKING DON'T

This is a response to this.

I'm going to imitate an imitation that started when I made an suggestion about writing the opposites of monster manual entries.

I'M GOING TO PROVE THAT I DON'T FUCK PIGS BY WRITING THE SAME THING AS SCRAP.  I'M GOING TO WRITE SUCH GOOD ENTRIES THAT SHE'LL HAVE TO RETRACT HER ASSERTION RE: THE ALLEGED PIGFUCKERY.

Yes, this is a joke post but many of these are def usable.

by Dave Simons

So here are some monsters and their opposites.

Aerial Servant
Floor Lord 

Like a genius loci, they are bound to one place.  They look like enormous angry faces coming out of the ground.  They can cast command at-will, dominate person 3/day.  They use their powers to convince people to jump into their mouths, so they can eat them.  Usually accompanied by 1d3 enslaved humanoids from the wandering monster table.  HD 10, but easy to kill because you can probably just pour boiling oil into its mouth.

Ankheg
Stompadon

Looks like an elephant, only much bigger.  It has elephant heads on all four sides.  It rules the Plains of Yabin with a single immutable law: everything must be flat.  If something is not flat, it will be chased down and stomped until it is flat.

Except for birds.  It's okay with birds.

HD 10  Def leather  Stomp 2d8 + trample
Move elephant  Int 6  Mor low

The Plains of Yabin are inhabited by clover farmers who have learned to lie very flat on the ground when the Stompadon might be looking in their direction.  Sometimes they attempt to build tunnels but they must be built very strong, because the Stompadon is always walking around and he has a very particular way of walking.

Giant Ant
Royal cannibals.

Already did this one.

Ape
Elves

Because apes are sort of like our hairy, brutish reflections and elves are sort of like our elegant, hairless reflections.

but

I can sort of see another angle, where apes are creepy because they're basically humans that look a little too bestial, but you could come at it from the other side and have animals that look a little too human.

So, there is a village called Husherman's Hill.  All of the animals that are born there are slightly too human.  The cats have hands, the cows have human mouths, and sometimes a dog will have a whole goddamn human face.

The animals run the town.  They are led by a old dog with a old man's face.  He is the most horrible bastard in the world.

When outsiders approach, the animals all try their best to be animals, and a few slave humans are brought out in order to shoo the foreigners away.  "You can spend the night in the inn, sure, but not any longer.  We're fearful you might bring the plague in."

Savvy players will realize that the town has been subtly modified for animal convenience.  An abundance of dog doors, cat scratches on all the baseboards, a dinner table in the barn instead of a feed trough, etc.

From Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
great movie but fuck that dog-man-thing

Axe Beak
Sword Tongue

These are like if birds had a sloth edition.  Slow, aboreal.  Hunts food with a sharp tongue that they shoot out like a harpoon.  Can pull a man into a tree in the blink of an eye.

Baboon
The opposite of a baboon is a baboon.  They're already this terrible mix of clever and bestial, social and violent.  They have both thumbs and fangs.  They kidnap wild dog puppies and raise them to be loyal hounds.  You can watch videos of them playing with their babies and you can watch videos of them eating baby gazelles alive (who scream a lot).  Baboons are fucked.

Note to self: replace wolves on an encounter table with baboons at least once.

Badger
Goodbelly

A goodbelly is a thing that looks like a happy, baby pig with long legs like a deer.  Put it on your wandering monster table.  When it is encountered, it will run away.  If you can catch it and eat it while it is still alive, it will cure light wounds and remove disease.

They're slick little fuckers, though.

Baluchitherium
Strabulo Swarm

A strabulo is a small, carnivorous shrew.  The best way to kill a pack of them is to lock them in a small room and wait for them to eat themselves to death.  This takes about an hour.

It is unknown how they survive in the wild with such crazy metabolisms.

Barracuda
Zark

A zark is a zombie shark.  They are used to stock dungeons because they can chase people down hallways, in a horrible, clumsy, gnashing manner.

Also good for when the party thinks they are safe as long as they don't go in the shark tank, but then the wizard gives the signal and they all come flopping out of the water like ghastly seals, chewing their own gums to shreds with eagerness.

They probably roar, too.

Basilisk
Galateas

A galatea is a race of beautiful stone women.  It turns out that if you carve some stone to look sufficiently sexy, it will come to life.  Galateas are sexy living stone statues that really good at carving more of themselves.

Often hired to build beautiful structures, their immortality often leaves them as gloomy keepers of abandoned places, knowing all of the dungeon's layout but only caring for its statues.

BeaverBearBeetle
TreeMouseButterfly

Or as the elves call it, the Nirfling.  They're born from mice that eat discarded cocoons. Smaller than your thumb, they don't fly as much as they tumble their way through the air with their bushy whiskers.

Valued by elves for their ability to find candy and sweet breads, and their assistance in creating the same.

Valued by dungeoneers for their ability to pick locks.  However, after picking each lock, a Nirfling will crawl inside the lock and take a nap for 1 hour (part of their territorial habits).  It can be lured out early only with the offering of a fresh-baked cookie.

Beholder
Terophidian

Ha.  Already did this one, too.

Black Pudding
White Ceremites

A class of small ceramic golems.  They appear to be made out of soft white clay, but they harden upon death.  The resultant ceramic is about as hard as adamantine for a round, as hard as steel for a day, and then normal fired clay afterwards.

They can shatter their own heads at will in order to kill themselves into more useful shapes.  With enough of them, you can build pretty much anything.

A popular command: begin strangling someone and then self-destruct.

Another: grab your opponent's sword and belt and then self-destruct.

Blink Dog
Stare Cat

These are predatory cats.  When they hold your gaze, you are unable to let it go.  (Gaze attack: if you look at them while they are looking at you, you are unable to look away or willingly interpose an object for as long as the stare cat looks at you.)  They use this ability to give their fellow cats the ability to ambush you from behind (+1d6 damage).

They're about the size of a bobcat.  Stats as wolves, otherwise.

Boar
Excitemen

The Excitemen are are victims of a contagious excitement.  It is dangerous to be around them for too long, but you may be able to turn their considerable attention to something advantageous.

Despite their great excitement, the excitemen are not particular effective.

When killed they collapse into a rainbow-colored goo that lights up in the presence of sound, the color corresponding to the tone.

Brain Mole
Gun Worm

Originally bred by elves to be fired from their revolvers.  It's a 3' long worm, slightly spiraled.  It flies about 200' per round, and prefers to make fly-by attacks (bore-through attacks) each round.  It flies through walls and floors and flesh without slowing, leaving only holes to mark its passage.  In regular dungeon combat, it is so swift that it can only be hit with readied actions.

Brownies
Yeah, tickle boys for sure.

Buffalo
Chicken

Bugbear
Stronglings

A race of fey about the size of a child.  Obsessed with building and measuring their strength (which is easily estimated by the length of their beard).  Construct crude weightlifting gyms out in the forests, usually as simple as a row of stones of increasing weight, with a clear area around them.

In combat, they favor tactics that allow them to use their brute strength to their advantage: sudden, muscular assaults.

They are fond of forcing a surrender by putting their foes into submission holds, usually with their legs locked around the necks of their opponents.  (Then they can ride them around on their errands.)  If you have a strongling riding you, be aware that they can pop your head off with one squeeze of their monstrous calves.

From 2nd Ed Monster Manual.  By DiTerlizzi?

Bulette
Seawolf

The opposite of a landshark is a seawolf.  Unfortunately.

or

Angelbird
When it smells blood, it flies over and tries to rescue the injured combatant who is the most innocent-looking.  It abducts them back to its nest and will keep them there for days, nursing them and keeping them safe from all threats (especially their dirty, blood covered companions who keep wanting to bring them into murder caves).

Despite its appearance, it is actually Fairy/Dragon type.

by DenaJawawr

BullCamel
Cow Egg

Occasionally, a cow will lay an egg.  We do not judge the cow harshly for this, for the resultant eggs are very valuable.

If kept warm and intact, the egg will whisper secrets into the ears of anyone who sleeps next to it.  (Get visions of likely future events with 75% accuracy.)

If broken, a random creature within 100' must save or die.

No one is quite sure how to get them to hatch.