Blindheim > Bullywug + Cambion, Heavy

Still redoing the monster manual...

BULLYWUG BLINDHEIM

Page 35 of the 5th ed Monster Manual brings us to the bullywug, a boring petting-zoo-people reskinned goblin which should not exist. They should be replaced with the blindheim, from the old Fiend Folio. It's a frog guy and it looks at you and you go blind because they looked so fucked up.

They are a kind of Slaad--the gods of frogs--and come in all sizes and kinds--any sufficiently pious frog or toad (they aren't biologically distinct) can be transformed into a blindheim via acts of consequential service to their kind.

There is one good detail in the 5e bullywug entry. So they hang out with trained frogs, including giant ones--this isn't the good detail, this is a stupid thing that D&D always does but decent fiction writers and films almost never do where they lump together similarly-derived zoomorphic monsters in a way that would appeal to like a toy collector but in practice only ends up diluting the effectiveness of the archetypal images involved--the good part is that they use the giant toads' gullets to carry stuff, including people. I'm gonna have goblins do that.

CAMBION

The Cambion in classic demonology is like a changeling baby but with succubusses (which is more fun to say than succubi). Ever since at least the original Monster Manual 2 it has always grown up to be yet another generic horned devilperson that can do things like charm or poke you with a spear.

Blah.

Their conception is according to at least one source weird:

1. Succubus fucks guy, gets cum.

2. Succubus gives cum to incubus.

3. Incubus puts cum in human woman.

Between steps 1 and 2 and steps 2 and 3 there are several intriguingly tasteless adventure hooks or hentai plotlines. The only interesting thing I found in research about it after it's born is that it's extremely heavy.

So...

Cambions are not found as adults--as adults they either become full-on demons or grow into tieflings (so you can have PCs whose "parents" are succubusses which is fun). As an encounter, what you get is a gross child between 1 second and 5 years old--generally a punishment for excessive lustfulness.

The Cambion has a fuckton of hit points (82, like it says in the book) and good AC (19, like it says in the book) it bites for like d8+4 damage with its creepy teeth but its main gimmick is heaviness.

It gets heavier the longer it's in one place or in contact with a given creature, and cannot move except of its own volition.

The goes in for the kid-grapple (I would say it charms you into a hug, but I already used that for lava babies)  crawls onto you, begins to bite, and each round grows heavier--the first round it requires a strength save of 18 to stay upright, then 20, then 22 etc. All the while it exerts pressure on the floor equal to an attack with a strength equal to the save--shattering wooden planks, then stone tile, until it begins to be so heavy it will actually pull you into the ground, through all the dungeons of the earth, and down to hell to meet its parents.
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Solidly Platonic

So modrons are the little geometric monsters from the Plane of Order Gary Gygax dreamed up while he was drunk staring at dice, and which I think first appeared in the AD&D Monster Manual 2.
Tony DiTerlizzi and Monte Cook later steampunked them out (before steampunk was even a thing) for Planescape and made them playable characters, but the core of their deal remained: they were creatures of ultimate order, hierarchical, and lawful.

So, I was thinking about how this could be turned into something that actually affects how you use them in play, rather than just being like another jerk that hits you for d8+2 only this time the DM does a robot voice. And I figure: Modrons know the rules. They have System Mastery.

Like Plato or those guys who used to write in to Dragon that castles wouldn't exist in a world with the AD&D spell list: they believe all that currently is is the one and only possible consequence of the principles by which the world operates. And they believe they know those principles. Like if you know the principles of the universe you should know how many feathers a chicken has--the world's not that complicated and Heisenbergian uncertainty doesn't exist.

Practically speaking, this means: they know how many hit points they have, how many you have, how many Cone of Cold does, how many xp they are worth. They'll say stuff like "Humans: if you slay me, you will advance 27/100ths of the way toward reaching another tier of skill but if you allow me to show you where the Jewel of Epoch lies, you will advance 7/20ths toward reaching another tier of skill and be less injured should you face the Epsilon Beast, which, if successfully slain will bring you 63/100ths of the way toward reaching your next tier of skill".

Their only problem is they only know the system. Anything that would require a DM call they just can't do. If you jump on top of one of their heads and they have to try to hit you with one of their dumb spears without hitting themselves they're just like fuck doesn't compute. If they're running down a hill from an erupting volcano on their clanky legs and you're like "Dude just roll it's a volcano and you're a sphere" they'll be like "Cannot! Maximum move speed is 10 feet per second". Until WOTC publishes it, they can't do it--if you thumb wrestle them, they'll always lose--and, in a deep irony, they can't play chess.*

Also some of them look like the bad geometry angel from Evangelion.

___

*Wait I guess they could play if you literally walked through each second of the game but they couldn't abstract a game of chess to some kind of int/perception roll or whatever and do it because that'd be a GM call.

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Temple of Elemental Bickering

Elementals are boring. A clear framing of the problem and some good solutions for the basics of the problem are here on Chris Hogan's blog, but the underlying problem--which generates the others--is they lack personality.

To take a 3000-foot view, there's just too many conflicting conceptual demands on them--on the one hand, earth air fire and water are supposed to be interesting because together compose everything. On the other hand, the metaphysics of D&D (and Shadowrun and RuneQuest and Elric and RIFTs and other games that use them...) have other Primary Forces with way more personality like war gods and Tiamat and Cthulhu. The dullness of their powers and appearance and behavior comes out of the fact they don't really have a thing.

Taking a tip, like yesterday, from a dead Milesian philosopher--this time Anaximander, here's one: the elements are always fighting each other. Every time you summon an elemental, things go out of whack.  They live on their planes, but they have reluctantly agreed to let ours be neutral ground with no one element predominating. Magically bringing a sentient quantity of any element onto our plane fucks that up.

You summon a fire elemental, things go ok for 2-3 rounds, then the earth begins to rebel, the water and air, too. You can make a table for each element, like tremors start, the moisture in your body begins to increase and slow you down, the wind picks up or it gets hard to breathe.

Any elemental monster on our plane will eventually attract three counterparts to tear it apart. Water weirds bring xorns and dust devils and firesnakes.

Rather than being personified like scheming gods, the elemental consciousness is chemical--they just seek a balance. It may be too much of a stretch to imagine them as complex villains while keeping to their extraordinarily simple (and thus easy to grasp) themes, but making them always and inexorably react to each other at least means each one implies something else--and that's a big step toward making them move from just a ball of numbers wizards whip out once in a while to adventure fuel.
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Bulette…or not

Back to redoing the monster manual...

The bulette never convinced me--the hulking, silver kaijulike creature in the late miniatures have their appeal but (as I've said before) I can't really picture them eating a knight. So fuck 'em for this game.

The silt shark from Dark Sun on the other hand, does the same thing with more charm. I imagine it parting the sand with the prow of its frictionless, pointed face. I love the subtle claws they did on the fins.

And god do players freak the fuck out when they see a silt shark come up. Something about the single fin in the sand seen on the successful perception check--or the toothy suddenness of the attack in the wake of the failed one.

Sharks aren't terribly complex creatures--and I have no desire to make them any moreso. The one twist I added was based on the whole drop of blood thing--like rhythmic footsteps calling sandworms, killing anything in the desert risks bringing more. And, of course, killing a silt shark spills silt shark blood--and risks bringing more. Plus the kinds of predators hungrier for metal than meat.
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They Are Like A Shadow In The Afternoon

So I was going through the Monster Manual redoing all of the monsters…then I got to blights.

I hate blights. So boring. I mean: I'll use a creeper vine if I got nothing else, or this grabbing tentacle grass Moebius drew…

But they're just not interesting to me. I mean--moving plant monsters.
The Alan Moore idea that the plant monster doesn't know it's a plant is interesting. But that kind of thing doesn't really translate to gains at the table for the thing as a foe. I mean--one of them could be that way and you could build a whole drama around this Arcimboldo fucker who keeps trying to live a normal life and terrifying the village. But I already did that with the Hollow Bride--which I like much better.

Anyway point is I have no will to improve or examine blights--and for that I apologize. In compensation, here are like 60 plant monsters people made up when I first hit my blight block.

Seriously--they're good. I like Anthony's fetus in a pumpkin.

So, I am defeated and will just skip to the next monster…

Bugbears. Fuck.

What do you do with that? It isn't a bug it isn't a bear. I always think of this guy:

I got enough going on in my life that making that scary seems like some whole extra masochistic suck.

Bugbear:

noun

1.

any source, real or imaginary, of needless fright or fear.

2.

a persistent problem or source of annoyance.

3.

Folklore. a goblin that eats up naughty children.

-Dictionary.com

So this is like a farmer-scaring monster. Which would be fine if we didn't already have goblins, hobgoblins, trolls, ogres…it's a crowded niche.

Josh Billings said, in his book "Animated Natur"

Natral History has its myths and its ghosts, az well az enny boddy else, and foremost among these iz — the buggbear. 

The bugg bear iz born from an imaginary edd and iz hatched by an imaginary process. 

They are like a shadow in the afternoon, always a good deal bigger than the thing that easts it. 

They are compozed ov two entirely different animals, the bugg and the bear but generally turn out to be pretty much all bug. 

They are like the assetts on a bankrupt broker, the more you examine them, the smaller they grow. 

I have known them tew cum out ov a hole like a mice, and grow in tew minnits az big az an elephant, and then run back agin into the same hole they cum out ov. 

They are like a young wild pigeon in their habits, the biggest when they are first born. 

They are common to all country s and all peoples, the philosophers hav seen them az often az the children hav, and ben as badly skared by them. 

They are az innocent az a rag doll, but are az fall ov deviltry az a jack lantern. 

Bugg bears are az plenty in this world az pins on the side walks, but noboddy ever sees them but those folks who are alwus hunting for them. 

So he was drunk.

Here's a picture of one from the play The Buggbear:

Obviously drawn by someone drunk.

I need a drink. Hold on…

Keepp holding on.

Ok, on further reflection and my third Dr Peper, Dr Pepper Imean and rum. That sounds dumb: "Rum and Cherry Dr Pepper "I mean, I have decided this:

The buggbear is likt hat ogre cannibal guy up there with the saddle shoes on.

So the bugbear sneaks around and eats babies. And had some kind of bad gremlin magic.

You can only see him if you are drunk. But--the more drunker you are the bigger he does become. And the higher level spells he can cast. Also he could eat gooses.

See!

Alright.

Thank you all for your time, next time is bullettes!

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Behold, He Is To Thee A Covering Of The Eyes Unto All...

-Genesis 20:16

Still redoing the Monster Manuual,--FINALLY A GOOD MONSTER!

Beholders are wonderful and terrible, of course--and the several variations that the Monster Manual lists just spread the terror thin. Before you get to the actual Eye there's all these preparatory minor terrors like Spectators to worry about. Fuck that. Also, the eye-themed lair actions seem misguided.

Here's a beholder-lite (and sort of a lair action) that makes sense to me. Y'know the gas spore...

…the monster that notoriously looks just like a beholder but is hollow and filled with murder?

I assume these are bio-engineered by the beholder itself as decoys in its moist and stygian alchemical pits.*

(Also, I figure beholders--what with telekineses and no hands and therefore likely thinking of their entire environment as part of their body--are philosophers.)

But where do the Beholders themselves come from? 

Do you remember that issue of Thor where he went to look for Odin's missing eye and he found it and it shot fire at dwarves and told Thor stories? Well that's obviously a beholder.

Beholders are the cast-off eyes of gods--that's why they're so rare.

When psychotic white elf alchemists get ahold of beholders, they do this with them...

*Scrap Princess has a great idea: the gas spore is a cordryceps-like fungus that takes over the eye.

OH WAIT HOLY SHIT: the Beholder itself is what happens when the fungus takes over a god's eye and the gas spore is what happens after thousands of years when it finally gets totally fungusized.

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Behir In Name Only

Ok, first: announcement: So James Raggi had me rewrite his classic Death Frost Doom module (the one I started my own campaign off with) to create a new deluxe version with more new stuff in it (and less old stuff) with Jez Gordon ilustrations. I feel good about it "…this feels like the essence of D&D crushed into diamond. Overworld and Underworld. Pure myth. "

It is currently available as part of the Bundle of Holding charity thing, where you can get this along with the Labyrinth Lord Advanced, and +Dyson Logos 's Dyson's Delves (awesome maps) and much more--all together for like 8 bucks or whatever. Only available for a week.

If you have any questions about what the differences between the old and new Death Frost Dooms feel free to ask in the comments--I definitely think the rewrite is worth getting even if you have the old one, as there's a lot of new content you can scrape fro other dungeons.

Ok, now on to the main course, continuing to vandalize the 5e monster manual.

Behirs. Behirs are basically crappy semidragons as if D&D needed more of those dating back to AD&D Monster Manual 2. However, the new 5e illustration is very cool and salamandery, and I did was black-in the shadow to make it look nice and slimy.

I completely, if lazily, overhauled this monster:

The behir is now a familiar-type monster maybe a foot and a half long.

"Behir" is a nice, pseudo-Arabic Jack Vance-style name--so I figured chaos wizards of the Dying Earth thousands of years into the future send Behirs back in time to whisper spells into the ears of sorcerers while they sleep.

The Chaos Wizards hope to place the right spells with the right wizards at the right time in order to carefully manipulate timelines so that futures where they rule come about.

Since these effects are subtle and have a butterfly-wing-theory-like effect on the future, practically speaking it seems like the wizard's just getting random spells each night. Which, in game terms, they are.

This very speedy revision of the Behir is based on two way better ideas you should read:

1. False Patrick's Shaman class-which chases spells in dreams using a cool mechanic which you can totally port over if a PC gets hold of a Behir.

2. Arnold Punch's idea about where faeries come from.
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Basilisk, Littler

Still fixing up my Monster Manual.

The spread on pages 24 and 25--with a competently done basilisk and a really quite nicely rendered behir about to petrify and electrocute each other, respectively--illustrates the problem with both of them.

They're both big lizardy things.  And since the game has dragons in it, big lizardy things risk eat into the terrifying and isolated psychological space that should belong to dragons alone.

I basically deal with this problem by making them really small.

A basilisk is just a sort of incredibly dangerous iguana--not so much a monster as a natural curiosity (thus Vornheim's basilisk fights, which take place in a closet). Also somebody--can't remember if it was wikipedia or Pliny the Elder--told me they're vulnerable to weasels and I believe them.

Otherwise the basilisk is an awesome monster with a cool name, plus I've already used like 3 of them in my campaign so I can't and don't want to change them much.

That crude sharpie drawing in the lower left is a sketch of some pre-lapsarian state of mythical equipoise where the medusa, cockatrice, catoblepas and basilisk stood mutually blocked from each others' gaze by the Egg of the World, which they all looked at, waiting to kill whatever emerged. How the clinamen that resolved this stalemate was introduced I haven't figured out yet.

(And yes, taxonomy pedants, we all know behirs--being salamandery--are amphibians).
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Ontologically Ambiguous Banshee

click to enlarge

Out of the A's in my 5e Monster Manual, and onto: The Banshee.

Made some minor changes (I took a sharpie to the original illustration, stuck some hooks in her hair, threw on some random legends from wikipedia) and some bigger changes:

-The banshee wail breaks all glass and crockery in the area. So your potions will dribble all over your scrolls--though you may not notice right away and when you get home from the dungeon (do you have a home?) you'll be like "Fuuuck", and your roomate's like "What?" and you'll be like "I fought this Banshee and…""And all your sandwiches have Fire Giant strength now." "Yyyyyyyup".

-…or maybe you won't because maybe you'll just be dead because I changed it so you hear the banshee howl once and save or you're unconscious and then again and save or you're dead. Like Silver Banshee in the Superman comics it has to know who you are in order to kill you.

-Now Banshees do not suck: they are fine, gothic and creepy--but ghosts and ethereal undead in general suck in D&D because basically you just hit them with magic or magic weapons and that's not spooky. So I gave a lot of thought to how you'd deal with something ephemeral and semi-real

I put together that idea from the Silver Banshee about the banshee having to know who you are to kill you with something I got while I was reading Heidigger about how things only definitely exist relative to a perceiver and how the banshee is a kind of ghost so that means it's there but not there at the same time and so it's only relatively extant and we can only say we understand a thing's existence to the degree and in the ways we can test it…ok anyway:

Any quality of the banshee only exists so far as the first person in the party to test that specific quality is concerned.

So, like, only the first PC to hear the banshee (probably an elf) can hear it. Only the first PC to see the banshee can see it, only the first PC to physically attack it can hit it physically, only the first to use magic on it can use magic on it, only the first to make telepathic contact can make telepathic contact, etc.

So, very likely, you'll have the party having to cooperate to fight a foe they aren't certain is there--and the banshee can only focus on one party member at a time.

This lasts until the next night (only goes out at night, natchrly) or until one of the characters dies (the condition persists while a PC is unconscious)--in which case the next PC to test the creature can interact with it on the "taken" level.
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In othier news, f you liked hearing Mandy's Warhammer army of choice yesterday, Mandy did a post on her tumblr about what she wants to see more of in video games (nsfw)...

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Azer--"…as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff"

-Isaiah 5:24

More messing with the fifth edition Monster Manual.

Aaaaaaaaaaaanother sucky "A" monster. Possibly the absolute bottom of the barrel, the Azer is supposed to be a flaming beardy dwarf from the plane of fire. It's like the kind of idea a disembodied butt with wheels would have if that butt worked for TSR in the 80s and hated people who played D&D and could hold a pen and sucked.

Anyway, here's mine:

Click to enlarge

The Azerites are the victims of a cruel and innovative goblin joke dating from the 8th Agon: dwarf prisoners were given a hallucinogen that made them both susceptible to suggestion and immune to flame, then their faces were set alight and sent charging at their fellows.

While under the influence of the burning Serums of Liao, the Azerite is not only borne into a manic fury, but perceives all non-dwarves as goblins.

The early Azerites became addicted to the Serums, as did their descendants. These pyrolatrous tribes have only two moods:

1. Berserk
and
2. Quiet, tragic, coal-socketed staring at anything inert enough not to drive them berserk.

On the right-hand half of the yellow statblock you'll see d4 things that happen while you fight ignited Azerites (wood things explode in sparks, etc) next to that you'll see a list of 8 titles of various Azerite warriors, the 8th is simply called "Serums of Liao" because the serums are actually more important than the identity of the dwarf who bears them. "The Path" is likely the honorific for their Bad Fire Wizard. The rest maybe have extra weapons or drugborne powers related to their names.

Below that is a list of short term goals for a randomly encountered group of azerites-- 1-4 are things they want to sacrifice to the flames, 5 and 6 ("all die in flames and battle"(including them) and "convert infidels" are self-explanatory.

The "Lair Actions" beneath are proper Lair Actions but also just things you might find going on in there. I suppose I could call them "Lair Features" but it's my monster manual so whatever.

Also replaced the hammer with an axe because why would you ever not?
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(sigh) Ankhegs

First, obligatory Red & Pleasant Land preview. It is actually back from the printer...

…not quite available to order yet--but soon. Soon. Sooooon.

Anyway, on with fucking up the Monster Manual...

So obviously: fuck ankhegs.

They're big boring insects, in every sense. Unlike real animals or mythical monsters, it hasn't got a stable, imaginable core and unlike other totally made up Gygaxian monsters like the beholder it's never had an illustration that stuck this particular image and not that one into anybody's brain. It's a handful of minor gimmicks glued to a pair of awkwardly mated syllables.

But, again, I got this. Check it:

So I changed the name because "ankheg" sounds like the last name of a session keyboardist in an 80s band with a yellow and dark blue album jacket. Rick Ankheg from the Wild Shoulder, y'know, the guys who did "Domes of Passion"? No? Anyway now it's Ankhara.

I made them non-boring so they'd be less boring and obviously redrew them as riding beasts which you can see and why am I even telling you that. But ok, here's the main thing:

The riders are not masters of the beasts, nor even are they Bravestarr-and-Thirty Thirty-like equals: the ankheg controls the rider. Like so many insect empires, they seek to enslave humanoids--uniquely, however, they don't want anyone to know.

So for all your party knows, there's just a ranged panoply of warriors striding boldly across the weatherbeaten plateau atop their chitinous mounts, rearing headlong at the face of a twisting column of  bleak, grey dust. And a violence rings out as the party and the strange cavalry join and mutually assail each other. Then the party slaughters the warriors smugly, but are left tired, bleeding, needing aid. Then and only then do the insects reveal they were the masterminds all the time.

They drag you back to their immensely-sophisticated cave-temple (they can't do the fine carving, so they rip human arms off and slide them over their own pokey arms like gloves) and then let their young batter you psychically by turning your own spoken language into awful insect reverberations (like  locust sounds in a night that only happens between your own ears). If you escape you might walk into sticky honeywax muqarnas falling from the ceiling or a pit where rival subqueens fight using only the limbs of men or find the precious paper they make from spit.

They are at war with driders.
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Animated Objects Re-Done

1ST:
My D&D book--Red & Pleasant Land is going to arrive back from the printer Thursday or Friday, at which point it will be available to buy from here. It's something like 200 pages Some preview pages...

More on that project here.

2nd:
I was going through my 5th Ed Monster Manual, fixing it up. These entries are grouped under this here tag.

Today's monster, the Animated Object is entirely suitable for a Red & Pleasant Land game, both being pretty Alice In Wonderlandy…

Click to enlarge

The thing about Animated Objects is they get goofy real fast. In the 5e Manual they've got animated armor (which is fine, sure), flying sword (guh), and rug of smothering (kinda dumb but the mechanics are fun because it's hard to get your friend out without accidentally stabbing them--which the rules acknowledge).

A good animated object scene is at the end of Willow when Bavmorda or the goat witch accidentally animates the table and it's all wrought iron and creepy.

In addition to the Donald Barthelme passage--which I think is more about the psychology of the psycho wizard who makes animated objects than actual animated objects--I also tried to list off all the good ones:

. Chandeliers: Man, the chandelier is the whole package--attacks from above, crawls around like a big lobster, sets you on fire, multiple attacks including grapples. Don't fuck with chandeliers, man. Still a little goofy though.

2.Teacups on the other hand suck. They're just included because in any situation where stuff starts talking teacups seem to talk a lot. I gave them Int 16. Maybe teacups are smart because they're always listening while people chitchat.

3. Armor: Classic

4. Axe: I figure it  has a real big blade and rolls across the floor. That's not too goofy.

5. Lantern: It rolls up, then explodes.

6. Bola: The step over themselves like daddy-longlegs then hurl themselves at your feet as you flee.

7. Clothes: Sounds silly at first but this is actually pretty horror movie if it animates the clothes you're wearing--or your hair.

8. Chain: Another classic.

9. Bottle: It rolls up and explodes, too. Maybe spraying you with glass.

10. Shoes: Again, if you're already wearing them: horror movie. You will pay an executioner to cut off your feet.

11. Jewelry: I figure jewelry is a stealth killer. You find it in some pile of treasure then it waits until you're asleep and rips one of your nostrils open.

12. Belt: Deserves a special mention because it can cut you in half.

13. Rosary: Cheap irony is still irony and iron is fucking metal.

14. Pack of cards: They probably just know stuff--like who won all that gp in the last poker game. Plus paper cuts.

15. Chess set: A stealth killer, like jewelry. They crawl down your gullet if you snore.

16. Orrery: They roll up and grab you like a bear trap.

17. Net (with hooks): a little less goofy than a rug of smothering.

18. Ring: Lose a finger.

19. Glove: Lie low until they make you cast the wrong spells.

20. Stained glass window: The two-dimensional figures strain forward into scraping assassins. Like that scene in Young Sherlock Holmes.

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…and Gygax Saw The Angel

"...and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face."

-Numbers 22:

Redoing the Monster Manual some more…

click to enlarge

Angels (split into deva, planetar and solar and all barely distinguishable) come right after the aboleth in the manual and have a similar problem--since they, too, strongly rely on a monotheism for their impact. Plus they're good which means there aren't a lot of reasons to fight them. But I got this.

Ok:

Our plane of existence is sentient. It knows it exists and can see itself.

It's also, naturally, 4-dimensionally aware--it can see all of time at once, and thus all of cause and effect.

So there's none of this "noticing something's wrong and sending an angel down from heaven to address it" that's strictly 3-dimensional thinking. The Prime Material Plane is and has always been aware of any potential problems.

What possible problems could there be? The Plane is existence itself, right? (Echo of an old philosophical problem: why would God need to do anything like a miracle or sending an angel down if the universe works exactly how he wanted it to work?) Surely everything that happens in it is part of the Plane.

Well, almost: The Prime Material Plane can see all of itself as a kind of 4-dimensional sculpture from the inside, with breaks in it where threats from other planes intrude on or threaten it. It can't see those other planes directly, they are not of its substance). The plane can just see where they are interfering with it--the same way that from the inside of a tin can you can't see who's kicking it, but you might see the dent.

So, from the beginning of time, angels have been seeded by the Plane itself to be in exactly the appropriate moment in space-time to address these "dents". Angels are not sent, they simply arise at the right moment.

This conveniently means the angel isn't necessarily a totally useless good guy in the game so much as something dedicated to maintaining the integrity of the Plane. So if players are involved in anything that frays the barriers between planes, then they have to deal with an angel. For example, an angel might mature and manifest at the exact moment the players are about to cross a barrier to the Astral Plane or summon an particularly powerful elemental creature.

Notes in red on the picture:

1. Over by the red 1 I put the three most common manifestations--(i.e. where angels come from): a human can discover they are an angel (typically a paladin that reaches 21st level at exactly the right moment),  a statue can come to life (not unlike a gargoyle's relation to a demon), or an animal can evolve into an angel.

2. Angels in the game typically have a whole laundry-list of resistances and immunities which I simplified to a more mythic rule: Angels can't be hurt by anything from our plane. I'd assume most magic is mostly manipulating things from our plane (fireballs, shadows) but summoned demons (and the weapons they carry and that grow from their bodies) aren't, and a lot of magic items aren't. Clerical magic that manipulates stuff from our plane (lightning, ice) can't hurt them, but anything that channels divine power directly can.

3. Rather than use the Deva, Planetar, Solar hierarchy--which is just one of those "Remember when you fought these guys 4 levels ago? Well here's a tougher one!" hierarchies and replaced it with the Hebrew one--10 ranks of angels from Ishim to Chayot with corresponding HD levels. Added bonus is that tradition assigns many of these angels freaky characteristics like the Chayot has six wings and is covered in eyes. Bonus to using Hebrew mystic names: you can name them ominous things like "Angel of Six Roads" "Angel of Hypothermia" "Angel of Subtraction".

4. Angels carry shields (I know because St Michael does in all the paintings). The shield makes the angel immune to all divine magic. It only works for angels and demons, so stealing it doesn't steal the power, it just deprives them of it.

5. I also figure there are weird things that just happen around angels. Call them Aura Actions? Like animals start singing, etc.

Most of the given combat profile is fine as far as it goes (it's a tough guy with wings), though I decided the flaming arrows and sword that fights by itself were dead cheesy.

I think each individual angel should probably be custom-made with extra powers for its purpose and where it appears. Add slightly modified demon traits if the specific situation doesn't suggest abilities on its own.

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The Metapsychotic System of the Aboleth

Still redoing my Monster Manual...

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I never really liked the old aboleth, they seemed like ham-fisted attempts at Lovecraftiana, but I like the new illustration, especially when I added in a tiny guy for scale.

Other things:

-Beefed up the physical stats across the board and added a swallow attack to reflect the increased size.

-I never liked the "covers people in slime to enslave them" gimmick--it made it seem too much like the aboleth A) Gave a fuck either way about people B) Had physical tasks they actually needed people for--neither of which seems too Lovecraftian.  You don't want them to be just mean psychic whales. The Manual, however, has a schtick which suggests being unable to breath air is just a disease transmitted as a side effect of being near the aboleth-- which I like very much. I also decided that it drains color out of nearby fish.

-The manual has some good "regional actions" and "lair actions" (things you'd expect to happen around an aboleth)--slime everywhere and delusions--I transferred these from the next page so I could see them all at once plus added a few more.

-I gave the pools in the aboleth's lair the ability to dissolve people into liquid memories--stolen from a Legion of Super Heroes comic and Genesis Pits--stolen from the Invid.

-Noted also they're related to the Philosopher species somehow--mind flayers, etc.

-I added 4 kinds of possible lairs and some allied species--cannibal mermaids and sea elves.

I figure aboleths are some kind of lesser Old One or spawn thereof, not actually the big cahuna but something close. They probably each have names and take slightly different forms.

Interpreted as Lovecraftian, Aboleths (and, no matter how you interpret them, the next creature in the Monster Manual--Angels) introduce the concept of belief systems.

Now, systems...

There is a terrifying difference between strings of random phenomena and systems.

From True Detective:

Marty: Shit, man, this dude in New Orleans cut up his girl, felt remorse, tried to piece her back together with Krazy Glue.

Rust: That's just drug insanity. Ah, that's not this. This has scope. Now, she articulated a personal vision. Vision is meaning. Meaning is historical. Look, she was just chum in the water, man.

I believe there's a plastic sack of thick and greyish liquid hanging from a steel pole at the foot of the bed. That's a belief.

I believe it's the nutrient gunk the doctors gave Mandy when she came out of the hospital and when she has her feeding tube in, she has to have it or she'll die. That's a belief system.

A belief just sits there. A system makes demands. You put in an input and out comes an output and you have to do it. So a bad system is very bad.

So they find the dead girl in True Detective, she's been systematized:

"Ideas what any of this means? [Scoffs] I don't know."

"And it's all primitive. It's like cave paintings. Maybe you ought to talk to an anthropologist."

"[Sighs] Lot of trouble this guy went to. Seems real personal."

"I don't think so. Was iconic, planned and in some ways, it was impersonal. Think of the blindfold."

…and that's why it's scary. The system the psychotic is working on here is bigger than a personal reason to kill one person. And that system is enigmatic. It implies two scary things:
-This could happen again
-You may have walked into the system and not even know it

What happens when you're in an enigmatic system? Well suddenly everything you do has a secret meaning you don't know about. Your every action is suddenly loaded with potentially awful significance. As is everything around you.

This is Lovecraftian--and Lovecraft was, as is often noted, not real great about recording or modelling the variety of human personalities. His creatures and intimations doom us all equally.

Kenneth Hite's remarks on such systems:
"…the purest form of cosmic horror, what Lovecraft summed up as the 'idiot god Azathoth,' or what Tim Powers evokes with the djinn in Declare— an intelligence so foreign, so inaccessible, that it can only appear mad or idiotic to us despite its immensity. "

The aboleth, being the closest thing in the Manual to an Old One, has to incarnate this immensity. This is much harder in D&D than in Call of Cthulhu. In Cthulhu there's already an implied understanding of the relevance of psychotic systems to the players: the players know they will discover a murder or a distortion in reality, the players know this will be the work of a thing or the agents of a thing, the layers know there will be knowledge (books, cryptic markings) and these will relate to the thing, and they know the thing, when confronted, will be terrible. A paranoia about being embedded in an awful system is right there on the character sheet from the moment of character creation: Cthulhu Mythos: 1%.

In D&D, the intimations that surround a Lovecraftian leviathan are cheek by jowl with intimations of marauding goblins and intimations of Tiamat and intimations of Loki and every other horror-myth-complex around. If the clues don't all point to Cthulhu, the cosmic horror loses its totalized and totalizing quality--its underneath-everythingness--which is the source of the horror.

And these systems don't match: Loki cares about humans (tricking them), so does Satan (temptation)--Cthulhu doesn't.

I can't think of any easy answer to write into the entry--the only answer would have to be in the GMing. The GM has to build up the alienness slowly, with attention to where the players are at, moodwise. 

Metaphysically, I have maybe the beginning of an idea--In A Storm of Wings, M John Harrison creates the Sign of the Locust, which seems to be an insect cult.

The Sign of the Locust is unlike any other religion invented in Viriconium. Its outward forms and observances - its liturgies and rituals, its theurgic or metaphysical speculations, its daily processionals - seem less an attempt by men to express an essentially human invention than the effort of some raw and independent Idea - a theophneustia, existing without recourse to brain or blood: a Muse or demiurge - to express itself. 

Which turns out to be what it is: there are alien insects from another world who are slowly supplanting our incompatible human reality with theirs--re-dreaming the whole world so it always was a different way.

True Detective also suggests the killers believe themselves to be in contact with another world--rather conveniently, Carcosa--which we have a supplement all about.

So the aboleth--unlike the demon, devil, quasit--does not belong. Not just to the planet, but to this version of history. It's an intrusion from a completely different interpretion of the planet--from a Carcosa-Earth or a Kadath-Earth.

The Old Ones are non gods, from the wrong Earth, and they are in a war of philosophy. The realm of their adherents--the sea elves and cannibal mermaids--is the water and there is more water than land. The sea is different, and divisions disintegrate there. The total incompatibility of the story of the aboleth-reality with what happened here in ages past during the long wars between all the bearded, spear-carrying gods is real--but they're working on it.

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Redoing The Monster Manual: Aarakocra

Listen 5th Edition, now that I'm moving in, there are gonna have to be some changes around here.

Let's start with A...

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So as-is Aaracokra are hawk people who are good and hang out in the Elemental Plane of Air. Which is the most boring and unevocative of the incredibly unevocative elemental planes.

Changes:

-Attacks do more damage (this'll probably be an ongoing theme here. I recently came across a character optimization board who complained the monsters in Vornheim--the ones the D&Dw/pornstars girls made mincemeat of--were too hard. Which rather throws the whole philosophy of optimization into doubt. Or just the girls are hardcore as fuck.)

-I made them more a neutral weird wetland species. See: Stiltspear in Iron Council. New picture by me, from the old Redoing the Fiend Folio series.

-Took the giant egg table out of Dungeon Dozen--I figure each group of Aaracokra guards one big egg, and, hey, 12 results--so when it hatches is also what's in it. They keep hoping it'll hatch in the right hour so it'll be a reborn king.

-Also gave them 12 hour-dependent powers. They probably have to sing to get them to work.

-Changed most of the details, though I like the idea of them having an enemy and all I could think of was tigers because hip hop.

-Replaced the tale of the Aaracokra looking for the Rod of Seven parts with Borges story about the Simurgh looking for their king, the Simurgh. In the end, they discover they are the Simurgh. Maybe they Aaracokra don't know that all that has to happen is the egg hatches at the right hour and their king appears. Anyway, I got a while to figure it out, since the players aren't anywhere near a swamp right now.

Next up: Aboleth.
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