Monsters of the Mythic Underworld

These monsters are natives of the Mythic Underworld.  The Dungeon beneath all dungeons.  The darkened halls that we all visit in our earliest nightmares.  The liminal ur-space that borders Hell as well as your grandmother's cellar.

These monsters don't necessarily have a full history, biology, or psychology.  (This is probably because I couldn't come up with anything good.)
That's okay.  They're still good monsters.

I've mostly not bothered with full stats.  Assume AC as chain, improvise the rest.  You'll be fine.

a False Hydra by NisseLindblomArt

Buggy Birds

Level 1

Actually an insect, a buggy bird is about the same size and shape as a heron.  They look majestic in profile, but a bit ridiculous the rest of the time.

Pedants will point out that, actually, they should be more accurately called "birdy bugs".  This is why the traditional punishment for pedantry is Impalement by Buggy Bird.

Spend one round retracting their head, inflating their chest, and cooing.  On the next round, they attack for 3d6 damage and make a horrible BWEAGH noise.

Attercop

Level 2  Dagger 1d6

About the size of the smallest guy in your high school class.  Tusks like a boar.  Nose like a skull.  Each eye is a gem worth 10s.

Can shoot webs from their hands and swing from them.  Can shoot webs onto foes, entangling them.  Can create bungees and slingshots.  Can spend two rounds shooting a web to two points, and then create a line between them.  Can create inelastic webs if needed.  Capable of huge leaps.  Can climb up sheer walls.

Can the DM think of a new way to use this ability every turn?  The DM can, because the DM can google spiderman as well as anyone else.

Attercops hate spiders.  They hate being compared to spiders.  They hate anything spidery.

Attercops don't lay eggs or weave webs.  (Although they do weave tripwires, alert wires, ropes, and nets.)

Attercop is a last name.  They are an example of what happens when a cult successfully completes their master plan.  They are irredeemably evil, and believe that everyone else is prey.  But they are a family in the Legal* sense.  If you marry into the family, you will gain their mutation and skewed perspective.  If one of their sons disowns them and everything they stand for, you will lose it.

*I mean legal in the sense that the Authority recognizes your marriage, and therefor the universe does as well.

Demonoid

Level 3  Weapon 1d8

Rapacious -- The demonoid makes two melee attacks against its target.  The target makes one melee attack against the demonoid.  All three of these attacks happen simultaneously.

A demonoid is what happens when a demonic possession is never cured.

This is not to say that the demon that is possessing this poor man is the same demon that originally possessed them.  It is far more likely that the original demon sold the body after they tired with it, and so on and so on, over the long years, until the body ends up in the possession of some idiot.

'Orrible Gregory

Level 4  Claws 1d8/1d8  Climb

They look like bipedal crabs with the heads of fat-necked vultures.  They are famously ugly, but adore cute things.  (Their babies are famously cute.)

Can replace one of their claw attacks with a hook pull, which pulls the target creature adjacent.  Str/Dex negates.  30' range.

Their tendons can be harvested for use as ropes.  They take up 1 slot, but are twice as long (100').  They will rot in 3 days unless preserved.  They hang out near ledges, bridges, and dark cave entrances.

Replaces hook horrors, which are kind of lame.

Zephrus

Level 5  Grab  Fly 10

The most well known of the wind golems.  It looks a bit like a complicated octopus made from ropes, prayer ribbons, and metal coins.  At the center, something like a dream-catcher woven around a brass ring.  

Once it grabs someone, it starts casting scatter to the winds.  Everyone has one turn to react, but if the target is still in the zephrus' grasp at the end of that time, they are teleported to a random room.

A zephrus "in the wild" will teleport you to a random room on the same floor.  A zephrus that is created for a particular purpose will probably teleport you to a furnace, a cage, or a pit next to a wyrm's nest.

There is at least one story that tells of a thief who painted himself gold, held very still, and tricked a zephrus into teleporting him into the vault.

If killed, the brass ring of the zephrus can be used to cast scatter to the winds simply by passing an object through it.  (Object size must be between a chest and a large human.)

Ancient Eldrox

Level 6  Grab/Grab/Grab
Fly slowly
Casts as a level 4 transmutation wizard.  You can cut off tentacles fairly easily, but it takes no damage until you crack its obelisk by dealing at least 6 points of bludgeoning damage it.  If they grab you,

Basically just a flying obelisk with a bunch of tentacles coming out the bottom.  Smart people avoid reading anything on it.

At the start of its turn, all held creatures take 1d12 damage from biting and/or neck-wringing.

They're very evil, but their machinations are directed elsewhere.  Humans have little ability to help or harm their plans.  Because of this, they're also kind of friendly. 

They usually start off by essentially asking you a trivia question.  If you get it wrong, they decide that you are useless and will be hostile.  If you get it right, they will decide that you are useful.  They will give you a small reward (fancy boot, bottle of pear cordial, a kitten) and ask if you want to be friends.  This is a pact of mutual non-aggression and nothing else--they will still be suspicious and weird.  If you give them a gift, they will give you a slightly better gift from their stash.  They will not be out-socialized by a mere human.

"YOU MUST ACCEPT THIS GIFT!  FAILURE IS AN INSULT!  I WILL NOT BE INSULTED!"

They may offer to rent you by implanting an embryo inside you.  (It will puppet your body for 1d3 sessions in a distant location, during which you'll have to play an alternate character.)  Afterwards, the embryo will remain with you, visible inside your abdomen (because it can make your skin translucent), where it will let you cast a random spell per day. and happily dispense Forbidden Knowledge.  If anything weird happens while you're sleeping, it can kick your kidneys to wake you up.

The unborn eldrox will be sad because you are not smart enough, nor big enough, to carry it to maturation.  Although it could attempt to grow to maturity inside you, it knows that such an attempt would probably result in the death of you both.  If only you could somehow get much bigger and smarter, we might be able to make a deal. . .

Panoptigore

Level 7  Def plate  Sword 1d12
Can cast ganonball and fear.  2 MD.

An floating, armored giant with a single eye and no legs.  Magnificent cape.

Gaze Attack -- If you meet the gaze of the Panoptigore, you instantly create a side combat.  The side combat lasts 1 round and takes place inside the Panoptigore's eye, a spherical space 50' in diameter.  All of these sub-combats occur instantly, and are always 1-on-1 fights.

If six people lock eyes with the Panoptigore, then six separate 1-on-1 fights occur instantly.

New Spell: Ganonball
A ranged attack roll that does 2*[sum] damage.  Opponent can reflect the ganonball at a new target by beating your attack roll with an attack roll of their own.  (If it can make an attack roll, it can reflect a ganonball.)  Ganonballs can be hit back and forth as long as people keep rolling higher than the previous roll.  All this back and forth is resolved instantaneously.

d7 Goblintown Arena Fights

Once, there was a dream called Goblintown.  My players were imprisoned gladiators there, the only humans in an entire city of goblins.

Greasy, giggling, cruel, playful, clever, stupid goblins.

Anyway, here are the fights that your party might go up against in Goblintown. 

The fights are semi-lethal.  The audience wants there to be a clear winner and loser, but they don't particularly care if anyone dies or not.

Whenever you drop unconscious (or pretend to), your opponents have a 0-in-6 chance of stopping to coup-de-grace you.  This increases by +1-in-6 if you have previously killed a teammate of theirs, or if you are unpopular.  Choosing to deal non-lethal damage gives you a -2 Attack penalty.

If you "kill" an opponent by bringing them down to -3 HP or less, they will die in 1d3 rounds.  If you "kill" an opponent by dropping them to 0, -1, or -2 HP, they will probably survive the battle.

Things that make you unpopular with goblins:

• using the same tactic twice
• always being cruel
• always being kind

If you are unpopular, goblins will pay the Arenamasters to give you disadvantages.  Examples:

• Replacing your weapon with a turnip on a string.
• Making you fight naked, with a funny puppet on your genitals.  (Enemies will target this.)
• Getting you really drunk (expanded crit fail range) and making you fight while wearing a pig head.

Things that make you popular with the goblins:

• Showing off, e.g. saying "I don't need this sword to FUCK YOU UP!" and then throwing your sword into the audience.
• Good insults.  (Criterion: did most of the players laugh?)

You can escape from your shoddy jail cell (the walls are literally made of garbage) but you have no where to go.  Everyone is goblins, every third person recognizes your face (and will happily recount your exploits/defeats), and the surrounding wilderness is much more lethal than the arena.

Above the circular arena are the audience stands, the announcer's box, and Gorp son of Gorp's skybox.  Above that is a bunch of catwalk and rigging.

Below the arena is a bunch of empty space, mechanisms, and the beast elevators.

Anyway, here are some random fights that you might get matched up against.

looks like Gorp, Son of Gorp to me
by Redeve

1. Flying Cows

The party is put atop of a huge platform, 20' in diameter and 10' off the ground.  Suspended from the rigging are two cows, each at the end of a 50' rope pendulum.  Each is ridden by a goblin (dressed like a human and armed with a bucket), and each can make a charge attack every other round.  (One cow attacks each round.)

You can climb on a cow with a combat maneuver.  If you hit a cow hard enough, you can get the cow spinning, which reduces the damage that it does.  Bigger impacts can tangle the cowlines, trivializing the encounter.

2. The Pope

Three goblins, dressed in a very crude approximation of the human pope.  Face painted pink (like a human's) and with a bunch of garbage wrapped around his fingers like rings.

You'll have to fight another team during this fight.  During the fight, the Pope will shout commandments.  Whoever doesn't follow them gets shot by the two goblins under his robe (each wearing a crossbow).

No looking at me!  (Everyone fights with eyes closed.  First person to open them gets shot.)

Everyone pray!  (Everyone makes Initiative checks to drop into a prayer position.  Slowest two people get shot.)

Everyone be nice!  Everyone has to stop fighting and hug each other.  Anyone who is mean gets shot.

Okay now fight some more!  Resume fighting.

Gimme some money!  Whoever gives the least gets shot.  (NPCs each donate 1d20-10 (min 0)).

Eat this bread!  Drops a loaf of bread on the ground.  Everyone has to take a bite.  Lasts person to take a bite gets shot.

The floor is lava!  Last person standing on the floor is shot.  (Climbing on the pope is okay.  There's also a couple of chairs around here, but not enough.)

3. The Dragon

Basically just a big pile of garbage on wheels.  Piloted by a trio of goblins who ride around on top of the "head".

HD 3  HP 30  AC leather  No obvious forms of attack
Move slow  (and can't turn around very fast either)

Secret Attack #1 -- Frontal Flame Thrower
1d6 in a 20' cone, usable every 1d4 rounds

Secret Attack #2 -- Rear Flame Thrower (Hilarious)
1d6 in a 20' cone, usable every 1d4 rounds

Secret Attack #3 -- Bag of snakes
Usable twice.  30' range.  Garbage wings glued to each one.

Secret Attack #4 -- "Claws"
1d10 damage, save vs Tetanus.

Halfway through, the wheels will break and the goblins will call for a timeout to fix it.  Respecting the time out will increase their reputation.  Ignoring the call for a timeout will reduce their reputation (unless they can do it in a funny way).

4. Death Match

The PCs are forced to fight another team.  Only one person can win, everyone else, including their teammates, must lose.

It'll essentially be a team-vs-team fight that must transition into a free-for-all. 

Once at least 50% of the combatants are downed, the goblins will release a couple of methed-out warthogs covered in chili powder.

5. Death Cake

The PCs are delivered an enormous cake in the dead of night.  It's big enough to hold a person.

The cake contains 2 huge centipedes.  As soon as this is discovered, a crane pulls down one of the garbage walls, revealing the audience, which now erupts into applause.

6. Chicken Fight

The PCs are forced to fight another team.  The only caveat is that you are not allowed to harm anyone unless you are riding on someone's shoulders.  (Bottoms can still do non-damaging things, like shoving or spitting.  Triple-stacked PCs are theoretically possible but come with enough penalties to be inadvisable.) 

If the PCs have an odd number of people, they will be loaned a teammate from a third team.  (Letting them die with make permanent enemies out of the third team.)

After the first round, the arena begins to fill with a choking fog.  It comes up to a person's thighs.

After the second round, the choking fog comes up to a person's neck.

After the third round, it covers the bottom people.  They are blind and must hold their breath.

After the fourth round, a bunch of trapezes are dropped from the ceiling.  Goblins will hoist you 20' up in the air if you grab hold of a rope.  From now on, the rules are reversed: the tops must hold onto the rope while the bottoms kick each other.

7. The Other Dragon

Two teams will work together to kill a sludge dragon.  However, the winning team will be the one that delivers the death blow.  They will get the money and prestige-the losers will be stripped and spanked by Gorp, Son of Gorp.

This fight is a Big Deal, and will be accompanied by fight promoters, coffin makers, and interviewers.  ("Do you think you'll enjoy being eaten by the dragon?")

A sludge dragon would normally be a pretty fierce opponent, but luckily, this one is heavily intoxicated.

Drunk Sludge Dragon
HD 10  Def Plate  Atk 1d6/1d6/2d6
Move as dwarf  Int drunk  Mor drunk

Drunk -- Triple the range of fumbles.

Breath attack -- Usable every 2 rounds, and used preferentially to the claw/claw/bite.  Effects are a bit random, however, so roll a d6:

1 - Watery vomit.  No mechanical effect.  The first time this happens, a goblin in a dead clown costume is also ejected(and disappointing Gorp, Son of Gorp, who was promised a surprise clown--he loves surprise clowns.)

2 - Hurbek the Mighty, a level 2 dwarf.  He deals 1d6 damaged to whoever he collides with.  He will join the fight against the sludge dragon.  He swears so much he is nearly incomprehensible.  If this result is rolled a second time, the dragon belches painfully.

3 - Sludge.  20' radius, 50' range.  Dex negates.  Anchored to the ground until successful Str check.

4 - Bile.  30' cone of acid, 1d6 damage on the first turn, 1d5 damage on the second, etc.  Dex for half.  Can be washed off with water (or vomit).

5 - Broken cutlery.  3d6 damaged to one poor bastard who gets hit by the whole pile, and 1d6 damage to the dragon.  Dex for half.  Anyone digging in it will find a decent spear.

6 - Fire, somehow.  It must be sick.  30' cone of fire, 2d6.  Dex for half.

Wyrms

On the Taste of Wyrm

When Emperor Mando first tasted the meat of the purple wyrm, he declared it to be unrivaled among the bestial meats.  His bounties on the great wyrms made them a rarity east of the Elterspines, and you can still wander among the enormous bones of the failed Amaranthine Ranch in Mount Baldero.

While the emperor and his family claimed that the flesh of the wyrm was delicious, everyone who has eaten wyrm in recent time reports that the flesh is as vile as gall.  The sole exception to this is Queen Chessaline, who attended several wyrmhunts in her youth and has spoken highly of the meat.

The first theory claims that the taste of wyrmflesh was exaggerated by the sycophants and courtiers that thronged the palace like feathers on a cock.

The second theory maintains that there is something quixotic in wyrmflesh, which is only pleasing to the nobility, while those of common stock will merely be repulsed.  After all, it is not meant for them.

from Elminage Gothic

On Dragons and Wyrms

Dragons are enthroned among the blues and whites of the clear sky, and their bodies are filled with purest fire.  In their chests, the heaviest organ is their heart.  They speak dismissively of their cousins.

Wyrms dwell in the earth, and their bodies are filled with poison.  Their heaviest organ is the liver, which is of an incomparable solidity, being nearly as dense as lead.  They speak constantly of dragons, and of the theft of their birthright.  Where dragons can be roused to wrath, wyrms are melancholy and obsessive.

While dragons will collect, catalog, and display their collections, wyrms will compulsively swallow their hoards.  It is believed that the gold in their bodies leaches into their blood, and is the source of both their great poisons and their great bitterness.

The other behavior unique to wyrms is dust-eating.  They compulsively swallow vast amounts of silts and clays, only to regurgitate it when they become too bloated to breathe.  In some parts of the world (primarily sections of riparian Underworld), vast tracts are composed of this regurgitant.  It is a fertile soil, but nothing woody will grow upon it.  Wyrmlands are filled with enormous recumbent ferns and mottled fungi.

The Inheritance of Wyrms

To believe the drooling stories of wyrms is to believe that they once soared through the sky on a dozen black wings.  They could turn the winds to poison, and their shadows burned anyone they passed over.

The wyrms will tell you of how the dragons stole this from them, although the theft seems to be less of a robbery and more of a wrongly-assigned inheritance.  Dragons, they will tell you, were originally meant to be small, clever companions, much like cats.

And then the wyrm will sigh, and jealousy will seep from the cold tonnage of their livers.  They will eat you without ever thinking of you, fixating only on this great injustice.  Every time a wyrm bites, or crushes, or poisons, the wyrm will imagine that it is harming a dragon.

It is the hateful equivalent of calling out the wrong name during sex.

Culture

Wyrms dwell in the wild places of the world.  Both Celestialists and the naga regard them as semi-divine creatures, and so have some passing interactions with them.  Notably, the princes of Abasinia must be knighted by Glauroch, the Conqueror Wyrm, before ascending to the throne.

Glauroch knights them with his tail spine, which is as long as any sword, and twice as thick.

Wyrms are intelligent and wise, but they are also melancholy and quick to hate.  They cannot easily be reasoned with, and most successful interactions with wyrms involve nurturing resentment towards a third party.

Biology

Like bedbugs, wyrms practice traumatic insemination.  That's what the tail spike is for (contrary to most published bestiaries).

Once they reach adulthood, wyrms are almost always solitary.  During periods of loneliness, they will seek out members of the opposite sex that they encountered in their juvenile years.

Wyrms undergo a form of metamorphosis, changing between three different color morphs: white, red, and purple.  These changes seem to be driven entirely by respect.  A wyrm that is respected will darken to purple, while a wyrm that has especially low self-respect will eventually become pallid and thin.

None of this applies to tatzlwyrms (green wyrms) who appear to be a separate species.  Other wyrms consider them to be closer to common serpents than to themselves.

They live about twice as long as dragons.

by Ville Sinkkonen

Combat Stats

All wyrms can burrow though dirt about as fast as a man can walk.  Stone is difficult, but not impassible.  They have terrible vision, but incredible hearing (and tremorsense).

All wyrms have a particular poison.  These poisons never affect anyone who is currently poisoned, or any creature that is poisonous.  These poisons apply to both their bite and their breath attack.

Wyrms are immune to all poisons, but ingested poisons cause a pleasant intoxication the first 1d3 times a wyrm consumed a new poison.  Cure poison spells deal damage equal to [sum] without any Save allowed.  Bezoars (antivenom) deals 1d6 damage if eaten, while a carbuncle deals 1d6 damage each turn until the wyrm is dead.

Def plate  Bite 3d6+swallow
Burrow 4  Int 10  Mor 10

Breath Attack -- Usable every 1d4 rounds, and affects an areas within 50'.  The air is as opaque as fog for 1 round.  This inhaled poison is slow, and does not take effect until the end of the target's next turn.  However, the poison is especially potent, and all targets Save at a -4 penalty.

Whirlpool -- Usable when burrowed in dirt, after a minute of preparation.  Creates a whirlpool 100' across.  Creatures who fail a Movement check fall 20' and are subject to a free Bite attack.

Tatzlwyrm (Green Wyrm)
HD 7

Tatzlwyrms cannot burrow.

Tatzlwyrm Poison - As sleep.

Albicant (White) Wyrm
HD 8

Albicant Poison - 1d6 damage, ongoing until Con save.

Rubicant (Red) Wyrm
HD 9

Rubicant Poison - 2d6 damage, ongoing until Con save.

Amaranthine (Purple) Wyrm
HD 10

Amaranthine Poison - 2d6 damage, ongoing until Con save.  While you are poisoned, the Amaranthine Wyrm can read your surface thoughts and remember your memories.  You get -4 to hit it, and it gets +4 to hit and Save against you.  Each round, it has a 1-in-6 chance to remember something extremely useful from your memory.

Aura of Authority - All authority is diminished within 200' of a purple worm.  Characters get a penalty to all d20 rolls based on their social status.  -4 for beggars and weirdos, -3 for decent folk, -2 for respected gentry, -1 for nobility, and no penalty for royalty.

Glauroch, the Conqueror Wyrm
Stats as an amanranthine wyrm.  Max HP.  All damage from non-royalty is reduced to 1.  Wizard.

d6 Dungeon Merchants

I've been playing Crypt of the Necrodancer and I've realized that I like the idea of bumping into merchants in the middle of a dungeon.

Among other things, it makes the dungeon able to replace one of the functions of the city, without making it any safer.

from Crypt of the Necrodancer

1 - Dungeon Bugs

Something like long-legged roaches, each as tall as a child.  They scamper like children, and laugh like goats with a mouth full of dice.  They're friendly, but callous.  You'll find them on the ceilings of rooms,

They taste terrible, and so are largely ignored by predators.  They have little interest in any task requiring their attention for more than a few moments, and are all competing with each other to collect enough shiny crap to attract a mate.

No one has ever seen a female dungeon bug, or knows what happens when a dungeon bug gets hitched.  The dungeon bugs themselves might not even know.  They rarely talk about their secret nests, except to boast of them.

A voice from the ceiling, "By the seven fucks, no, you don't want to go that way.  Two silver and I'll tell you which way is most goodwise!  And a refund if you don't thank me when you go to bed tonight!"

"That's my corpse!  Look, I marked by it by biting off the earlobe--I have it right here.  I was saving it for later, times like these.  You can have the pockets, though, for 20 silver.  Eat my eyes if I can go any lower.  Just eat em!"

"Just climb down this shaft and head towards the smell of seaweed. That's my cousin's store!  You can buy a pickled piercer for a penny!"  (The Pickled Piercer costs 30s.  You can buy a barrel of pickled goblins for 200s, though, which counts as 100 rations.)

2 - The King of Hens

A ponderous thing with pale skin like a drowned man.  A full head taller than a tall man.  Thin limbs, stretched and slightly bent, like ghastly taffy.  The hands are huge flippers, like hands that have been run over by a cartoon car.  They open and close slowly.

The feet are chicken feet, and they are strong.

The chest is huge, and the belly is stretched to bursting.  It is wearing the remains of a red robe, fallen off the shoulders and only held on by a belt around the waist.  It is filthy and matted, but it was once silk.  It's back, chest, and arms are all covered with lashes, both old and new.

The face is shambles, perhaps from unlucky birth, perhaps from a creative torturer.  The face has little to do with a chicken's, and even less to do with a human's.  It is, at least, a bit beaked, where the cleft palate climbs into the sinuses.  The dark, watery eyes are entirely unlike poultry, however.

The King of Hens is accompanied a quartet of small, loud women.  They are the king's court.  They will announce what is for sale today, and what the prices are.  If you agree to buy something, one of the hags will stay with you while the other three lead the creature around a corner.  After listening to a few minutes of cracking whips and ragged sobs, they will return with a bloody egg.  Inside the egg is your purchase.

Suggested Items (Roll a 1d6 twice)

1 - A nutritious egg.  (Counts as a ration.  DO NOT INCUBATE IT.)
2 - A random curse. Latches onto the nearest person when the egg is broken.
3 - Black sugar.
4 - Midnight wind.

3 - The Hive Dead

A cyclopean door.  On it, someone has written "Put the sword on the ground and step out of the room.  Wait until they offer the right payment.  Stay away from their holes."

Inside is a cavernous room.  The center of the ceiling is dominated by a huge crack, going upwards.  You seem to be at the bottom of a very deep abysm.

The walls are studded with holes, each one about two feet wide.  The holes are roughly circular, and are arranged roughly as honeycombs are.  (This is the most efficient way to stack circles.)  There are several hundred of these holes on the back wall of the room, and several hundred more up inside the ceiling crack.

Each hole is home to an undead.  They are not visible in the gloom, but they are watching the center of the room with an unblinking intensity.  When an item (or items) is placed in the center of the room, an undead will approach it after 1d6*1d6 minutes, and place a roughly equivalent item across from it.

If you enter the room and take the offered item, you have just sold your original item.  If you wait another 1 hour, the undead will return and reclaim the item it offered as a trade--there is a 50% chance that another undead will appear after 1d6*1d6 minutes and make a similar offer.  If you reclaim your original item, the deal will be cancelled, the dead will be offended, and all future responses will take twice as long.  If you take both items, all 660 corpses will attack you.  (Stats as zombies, Int 10, movement as human.)

Some items that might be offered:

• The bones of a horse.
• A suit of plate mail in perfect condition.
• The lost crown of a local principality.
• A spellbook (contains 3 pyromancer spells).
• A large package of ancient tea.  (Worth 1000s).

If anyone dies in the room, the undead will command the dead to rise.  The fallen character will arise as a new undead, painfully gag down all of their coins and gems, and dig a new hole in the wall.

4 - Charlie Pox

He looks more like a flock of freckles than anything else.  He appears on your belly, using your bellybutton as a mouth.  He's cheeky and talks fast.  He'll crack jokes to put you at ease.

Buy something why don't ya!  I've traveled all this way!

This is Charlie.  You probably caught him from a rat bite or something.

• Mustard! 3s
• Lockpicks! 20s
• Picture of a Duck! 30s
• Magic Ring! 500s (Alternate Self Ring)

The purchase will be produced from your own body.  If Charlie likes you (and Charlie likes most people), this will be orally.

If you try to hold Charlie hostage, you'll get sick.  Real sick.  Best just to buy something and let him pass one.  The prices aren't even that bad, don't ya know!  He's doing you a favor!

Once he's gone, all he leaves behind is a patch of freckles in the shape of a winking smile and a mild cold.

5 - Sir Gavin Ghastlecrumb

A brute in a suit.

Picture a man shaped like a gorilla.  Wrap him in the most expensive clothes that money can buy.  Give him a fierce beard and a brilliant top hat.  Make him love violence the way that scared soldiers love their mothers.  Make him loud and brusque and ambiguously British.

When you find him, he's spooling intestines from a naga, draping them over a fire, and eating them, all in a single continuous assembly line.  He has a little silver fork.  (It's a regular fork.  It just looks small in his hands.)

He hopes you will give him a reason to kill you, and will tell you as much.  He is a devout Hesayan, and if you are also a member of the flock, he cannot attack you unprovoked.  He has his afterlife to consider.

Why is he selling things?  He has too much loot to carry.

• 16 swords.  Must by all of them.  50s
• A magic bird that can learn any song, and will invent new ones besides.  100s.
• A duke's son from a nearby city, worth 1000s in random.  300s.

The other stuff in his bag is equivalent to a dragon's hoard, but he's not selling it.

Stats as a giant.  If you miss him with a melee attack, make a Str check.  If you fail, Gastlecrumb breaks it.  If he fails a Save, he can choose to lose 10 HP and reduce the effect of whatever he just saved against.

6 - Machinduma

A coiled machine sits alone in a dark room.  It looks like the polished extrusion of some massive crustacean, with gently fluted crests and warped gullies.  The front is the tallest part, and you must slip between some flying buttresses to reach the "front" of the machine.

You can only see the seams if you look close.  (Those who have seen both will recognize similarities to the Egg of Drume.)

There are two alcoves here, set into the machine like eye sockets.  Above them, you can read the words "One is taken, the other is improved."

If you put two objects into the alcoves, the chambers will slowly recess and then close off.  Out of the two objects, the more valuable one will be taken by the machine.  The less valuable object will be returned in an improved form.

Shitty swords will be made excellent.  A magical sword will be made amazing.  A non-magical item may be made into a magical one, but the enchantment will be a trifling one.

A living creature that is improved will be given a random beneficial mutation.

If you do a lot of exchanges with the Machinduma, and if you show a certain ambivalence for human life, it will start offering you fetch quests.  It will extrude soft white disks with writing on them, which dessicate and crumble away from the warm, bloody interior of the machine.

People that are taken by the Machinduma are not lost.  You will see them again, in a different city, at a different time, on some different business.  They will have a different name, and they will not recognize you.  They will have a different history and speak accurately of a different home town (very far from where they are now).  They are always fetching an item.

The Machinduma has stats as four ogres in full plate, fighting in tight square formation.

See Also

d6 More Dungeon Merchants

Dream Merchants

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Stuff to Buy

The Metal Earth has finally birthed a book.  Check it out here.

Patrick has translated Gawain and the Green Knight, which seems like an immensely Patrick thing to do.  You should buy it in order to one-up that one guy who won't stop talking about how much Appendix N he's read.

Cosmic Monster: Geminoids

This is a continuation of my series on the non-Euclidean, this time a non-Euclidean monster.

Imagine a 2-dimensional world, full of 2-dimensional castle and 2-dimensional people.  Now imagine a person standing to the left of that world, so that their body doesn't intersect with it in any way.  Now imagine that they have a couple of paper puppets, and that they insert into the 2-dimensional world, making them stand on top of that 2D castle as if they belonged there.

Now you know what a geminoid is.

completely inaccurate
a 2-dimensional drawing of a 4-dimensional fellow
and the geminoids should be larger relative to the puppeteer

They look like twins, with a strange look about them.

Their shapes are crude, with odd ridges and flat spots, like wax pressed into the shape of a human.  They seem like imitations, because they are.  They wear thin cloaks to obscure their clumsy shapes.

They are hand-puppets, pieces of a much larger creature that is projected into our world.  The puppeteer cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.  It is sideways to our world, and you cannot reach it any easier than Mario can turn sideways and leave your television.

Beneath their cloaks, they do not wear much.  They are always hot to the touch.  The puppeteer, floating in the vacuum of the void, struggles to radiate heat.  There is no air there.  And so the hand-puppets must manage the temperature of the entire beast.

Sometimes the puppeteer relaxes, and turns the puppets slightly sideways.  One arm might shrink to a stump; another arm might grow thick and untextured.  A normal-seeming eye might relax into a colored spot on featureless skin, like a giant freckle.  If you pull back the hood of a sleeping geminoid, this is what you will see.

(I will speak of geminoids in the plural.  This deception is for your players.)

Their arms are as bony as their fused ribs.  Their legs are thick, calloused things, made to support more weight than you'd expect.

If you watch closely, you will notice that geminoids don't seem to breathe.  Their extra-long breaths form condensation in cold places, but their chests don't rise and fall.  This is because the lungs are in the puppeteer, not the puppet (although the puppeteer must still breath through his hands).

Inside a geminoids spindly body, you will find almost nothing except muscle, bone, and circulatory system.  Some of these will seem illogical or impossible, such as an artery that forms a loop with itself, and connects to no other part.  (Their heart and lungs are located inside the puppeteer--you will not find them.)

what looks like levitation is really just a geminoid raising its hand behind the scenes

If the attack deals low damage, this may indicate that they are striking you with their puppet-limbs, like you would expect a skinny fellow to do.  If the attack deals high damage, this may indicate that the geminoid has curled themselves up into a ball and flown at you, as if hurled telekinetically.

Geminoids can hit you a lot harder than you think.  (A hand-puppet curled up into a fist can hit you a lot harder than a man the size of a hand-puppet.)

Geminoid
HD 6  (HP 24)  Def chain  Slam 1d10 each
Move *  Int 10  Mor 4

If you define them according to the format of a game system, geminoids have a lot of abilities.  But once you grasp the concept, it's really simple.

Shared Body -- Geminoids share an HP pool: 24 points.  They also share their weight, which fluctuates depending on how much of the overall creature remains in the void (which has no gravity).  They share a blood supply and a mind.  They function as two creatures against AoE damage, but against spells that target creatures, treat them as a single creature.

Flight -- One geminoid can fly anywhere within 20' of the other geminoid, provided the other geminoid remains on the ground.  (This is equivalent to the puppeteer using one hand to pull themself higher while reaching with the other hand.)

Exit -- A geminoid can leave our dimension.  This looks like the creature being sucked down its own bellybutton, and then shrinking until it is just a small sphere of flesh the size of a basketball.  It looks like new types of skin are flowing from the asshole on the back of the basketball and swirling down the bellybutton on the front.  Smaller and faster and then it is gone.  (This is equivalent to the puppeteer taking his hand-puppet off the stage.)

The puppeteer needs to have both hands in our dimension in order to hold on.  Without at least one geminoid to anchor it, it will come untethered, and starve to death in the void.

A geminoid can grab a character and pull them sideways into the void.  This requires one turn to grab, and another turn to pull them sideways.  The character gets a Cha save to resist, and if they are holding on to something, they also get a Cha save.  If they are tied down, the geminoid must break the ropes before it can pull them sideways.

Once a character has been pulled into the void, they gain 5 Trauma and begin to suffocate and overheat.  There is no light in the void.  The geminoid can attempt to throw them away or pass them to the unborn twins (see below).

Entrance -- A geminoid that is in the void can enter the world the same way it left.  It can appear anywhere within 20' of its twin, even on the other side of walls.

The puppeteer may carry items on its extradimensional body, similar to a bag of holding.

Unborn Twin -- Every geminoid has 1d3-2 (min 0) immature buds.  The yare the unborn twins gestating in the void, like unfinished hand puppets.  If it needs reinforcements, the geminoid can put these unborn twins into the world, effectively doubling the number of geminoids.  The unborn twins have the same stats and abilities as their siblings, they just look wet and unfinished (because they are) and have AC as unarmored.

Full Entrance -- The puppeteer has no reason to ever enter our dimension.  It has no reason to.  Besides, it is too Thick to exist here, much like a puppeteer can never put their whole body atop a paper-thin diorama.  (The only reason I can think: it might need to pass its body through our dimension to hide on the other side from a larger predator.)

Still, nothing is preventing the puppeteer from pulling its whole body sideways and materializing in front of a stunned party.  This would make it look like an inside-out octopus, with each of its four tentacles connected to an inside-out human.  Viewed from the side, its head looks like a three-dimensional version of a CAT scan of the human head, magnified to monstrous proportions.

These would be inappropriate structures for Super Mario World
A geminoid's true body is an inappropriate body for our world.

Extradimensional -- The puppeteer can see if you are carrying a bag of holding.  It can rip it open and steal its content without you ever knowing.



Biology

When describing geminoids and the puppetmaster, remember that they are not natives of the Void.  (True natives have no interest in an incomplete dimension, and would actually struggle to affect it in a systematic way.)

This is because they were human before they were aliens.  They have adapted to the liminal spaces between worlds, like penguins, pelicans, or flying fish.

It is believed that the first proto-geminoids were created by mishaps while investigating extradimensional spaces.  (Beware the bag of holding.  Never allow the extradimensional space to detach from the burlap and attach to you.)

They are not a true species.  They are created by the induction of a fourth-dimensional uterine prolapse during the first trimester.

Psychology

Their minds are completely human.  They are not Outsiders.  (But they know strange things.  They have met Outsiders.)

When they are born, they seem almost like a regular pair of twins.  The puppeteer is still undeveloped at this point, and they seem like two creatures instead of one.

The easiest way to test a newborn is to attempt to separate it from its twin.  Newborn geminoids cannot be moved more than a few feet away from their twin.

If you forcibly try to separate a pair of geminoids, you might rupture their sac-like body.  Their blood will spill out into the Void, and the two babies will blanch, weaken, and die. 

More likely, though, you'll just succeed in pulling the baby sideways.  It will volute in your hands, shrinking through a thousand stages of deformity in the second before vanishing.