Werewolf

Lycanthrope

Cruelly afflicted, the lycanthrope, or werewolf, is unfit to mix with our society. The stricken creature twitches and bends, staring into thin air, bestial even when adopting an ordinary shape. They make their dens in blood-streaked rooms with broken windows, alone or in wretched, hierarchical packs, or—worse—are caged and used for sinister purposes by weird malefactors. The condition lasts 7 years. Their malady synchronizes the shape of their lives with that of the moon.

Only during the night of the new moon and the day after can the werewolf wear a complete outfit of clothes, use human language, or imitate the selves of their former life—or at least drunk, forgetful distracted versions of those selves. Some even manage, during these 24 hours, to provision their dens with mounds of steaks or pay rent. Calm: 1, Knowledge: as former life -2 (minimum of 0).

During the 7 days and nights when the moon is waxing crescent, clothes become intolerable, and speech becomes increasingly impossible. It becomes irritable, growling at any presence like a guard animal. Its memory of the previous month returns over the course of the day and it will begin to hunt animals. Calm: 0, Knowledge: Animal.

On the night of the first quarter the werewolf schemes, looking for human victims for the coming feast days. It will be capable of both memory and forethought until the moon wanes gibbous. Calm: 0, Knowledge: Animal.

As the moon waxes gibbous for a week the creature’s demeanor is casually criminal and cunning. It will prowl by night, crawling along the rims of rooftops, eating fellow citizens.  Calm: 0, Knowledge: Animal.

During the night of the full moon the lycanthrope is ravenous, eager for flesh and homicidal beyond all reckoning, she also physically transforms in the night, taking the form of a wolf with 45 teeth until the sun rises.  Calm: Negative, Knowledge: Animal.

The week the moon wanes gibbous the subject is amnesiac, but filled with an inchoate remorse. It will avoid the light and whimper in corners. Calm: 0, Knowledge: Animal.

On the night of the third quarter the werewolf lies unable to eat, moaning with a pain it cannot describe. Calm: 0, Knowledge: Animal.

As the moon is waning crescent, the beast becomes anxious and obedient. It will begin to bathe and groom itself to the degree it is able, some simple words and phrases come back to them during the 7 days. Calm: 0, Knowledge: Animal.

Typical Lycanthrope

Calm: See above

Agility: 5

Toughness: 8 (Starting toughness is always at least 7 for lycanthropes)

Perception: 7

Appeal: 1

Cash: 0

Knowledge: See above

Calm check: 4 (if the character only sees signs they’re dealing with a strange cannibalistic human or murderous wolf) 8 (if the character realizes they face a werewolf)

Exceptional lycanthropes can have Agility as high as 6, Toughness as high as 10 and Perception as high as 8.

Special Abilities:

Invulnerability: Lycanthropes can’t be reduced below 0 Toughness by ordinary means, including firearms, crushing, falling, fire, etc.

Bite: Does damage as an ordinary physical attack. Anyone bitten while the lycanthrope is a wolf will begin to take on the characteristics of a lycanthrope over the following week, gaining all the creature’s special abilities and, over the coming month, the curse modifies the victim’s characteristics as follows— Agility +3, Toughness +6 (minimum of 7), Perception +5, Appeal -1(minimum of 0), Knowledge -2 (minimum of 0/Animal). Calm is 0 until the night of the full moon, at which point it is negative until the new lycanthrope feeds on human flesh, then it follows the lunar pattern above. A dose of wolvesbane will stop the transformation (and induce nausea and vomiting) if it is administered before the victim eats human flesh.

Weaknesses:

The lycanthrope fears silver as an ordinary animal fears fire. Weapons made from silver harm a werewolf as easily as they might harm a normal human.

The herb known as wolfsbane (aka Aconite, monkshood, devil's helmet, etc) repels lycanthropes and swallowing it causes Massive Damage to the werewolf as an intensity 9 attack.

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Those Who Dwell In Tears And Disputation

DEMONS

(useful for any game, but made for Demon City)

Demons come from the negative universes and their variety is not comprehensible or finite. Their ranks have numbers and the numbers are inside the meaning of them and the means by which they traverse the way between their places and ours. They desire first always to tempt and then to deprave and then to destroy. They prize most that prey that takes to bait.

Animals will avoid demons in any form unless they are specifically under the demon's influence. 

The summoning and banishment of demons is a matter of ritual and careful timing, requiring great premeditation. They can be controlled only by mortals who know their true and individual names, and even then any demon will follow the letter of a request while perverting the spirit toward goals of their own devising.

Here's one...

Those Who Dwell In Tears And Disputation (Demons of the Sixth Order)

The Demon of the Sixth Order is a parasite—it comes in unseen places, summoned by slow steps, extruded from the antiplane, a growing thing. Resentments make it strong in this world, and when it is large enough it will speak.

It eats ironies and destroys through a council of inversion: this must become that, tenderness into contempt, desire to disgust, generosity and empathy into jealous protection of the self. The decay into antithesis will seem reasonable--to protect this child you must keep it safe from other children, obviously.

The demon drinks the distance between the purity of the intention and the grief it inculcates. It runs its fingers down the necklines of its pawns. Its movements are impossibly fluid.

The true names of these demons have six letters, such as Xith'Ix and Hollow or else they have 10,000,000,000,000,666,000,00,000,000,001 letters and require entire languages to express. They are summoned when a sufferer curses--unknowingly and in earnest--the names of six comrades respectively on six successive moonless nights, or else in a ritual requiring the tumors of six diseases from six creatures of land-dwelling species, each dropped living into six successive baths of six compounds containing six ingredients each, and eaten by six unloved souls.

These demons can be detached from their victims via exorcism after slaying the entity's physical form (the thing will begin to re-grow if only one of these steps is taken). The rituals of exorcism (from any culture) inevitably take 6 hours and the incantations must be spoken by six virgins. The corpse of the slain demon must be encased in six successive carbon vessels, each encompassing the last like a Russian doll, and buried 6 feet below the earth.

(stats for Demon City)

Calm: 10

Agility: 4

Toughness: 1-10 (see below)

Perception: 7

Appeal: 0

Cash: 7

Knowledge: 9

Calm Check: 7

Special abilities:

Demonic: Demons don’t need to breathe or digest, don’t age, and are immune to poison, etc. and cannot be mentally controlled with psionic abilities. Animals will avoid demons in any form. Firearms can hurt but never kill demons, they must be dismembered.

Sixth Sense: All demons are supersensitive to danger, hostile emotions and signs of past trauma or the supernatural.

Immunity: Only physically hurt by carbon.

Parasitic Permeation: The demon generally begins its manifestation on Earth in the home of the summoner--with Toughness 1, all special abilities at Intensity 1, and mentally attaches itself to a host (the host must be present at the summoning but after that distance is irrelevant). Both stats grow by one point each time the host harms an innocent in any way, up to a maximum of 10. At its largest size the creature's coiling bulk will completely fill a room.

Selective Visibility: A victim that unwittingly summons a Demon of the Sixth Order will be unable to detect it until the creature harms a friend.

Despoiling Touch: The demon intensifies the target's most basic positive trait and forces it to dominate their personality until it becomes unwholesome. The target may make a Calm check to resist vs the Intensity once per minute if allies are around, and once per day if alone.

Envelopment: Any victim who can be made to destroy the person they love most can be enveloped into the body of the demon--one round after a successful grapple check--becoming a part of it.

(Possibly) Necromancy: Those Who Dwell In Tears And Disputation may have access to other Necromantic spells (any number), which they will use at Intensity 9.

Weaknesses:

The holy symbols of any faith cause a demon to make a Calm check or flee until they are out of sight. The intensity of the Calm check is equal to the degree of fervor of whoever is wielding it (1-5 based on Calm, 0 for nonbelievers, 5 for fanatics). In the case of an incidentally encountered symbol (a glimpsed church steeple, for instance) the intensity is 2.

Touching a holy symbol, including holy water, does damage to a demon as an ordinary physical attack.

Speaking the true name of demon causes it great pain, and the creature must make a Calm Check against the speaker’s Calm each round to avoid obeying the attacker.

Demons of the Sixth Order cannot leave the building where they are summoned.

This kind of demon can only be slain by with weapons made of diamond, graphite, or some other allotrope of pure carbon. High-carbon steel won't do it.

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The Demon City Vampire

FIRST:

Do you like cats? You do.

There is a charity raffle for a no-kill feline shelter with fabulous prizes including signed by me copies of Vornheim and Death Frost Doom the raffle is here, check it out.

Now, the Demon City vampire...

The vampire’s curse is manifold, but the overarching principles are:

-Like addiction incarnate, the vampire is first of all drawn to despair—as carrion birds to an open wound. So long as it does not sense despair, it will not—and need not—feed.

-The vampire can do nothing to alleviate despair in a living being other than murder it.

A dead thing but animate, the taste of hopelessness borne in blood gives the vampire such life as it has. Some do nothing but sleep in windowless basements in ruined factories or dying warehouse districts, emerging when wrong turns bring misery seeping past the baseboards. Others leave the city, bury themselves beneath lonely fields, and do nothing for decades. 

Some—especially the youngest—alleviate the tedium of immortality by mixing with the living from whom they’ve seceded—and, unavoidably, given the ubiquity of despair, must kill every night. They are well aware that they are literally killing out of boredom.

Some whisper of a colony in the deepest Antarctic, spawn of a single fatal 19th century expedition, undiscovered by anyone, hungerless, unkillable, far from human misery, never feeling the cold, content to forever explore the bright ice, sophisticated now, with a language grown their own.

Joining them, if they do indeed exist, would be complex—the vampire cannot cross open, moving water while awake, restricting most to either hunting in the districts in which they were created, or relying on enslaved humans.

Typical Vampire

Calm: 1

Agility: 4

Toughness: 7 (Starting toughness is always at least 6 for vampires)

Perception: 5

Appeal: 3

Cash: 0 (if isolated) 4 (if social)

Knowledge: 3

All vampire stats can go as high as 10 as the vampire ages.

Calm check: 8

Special abilities common to all vampires:

Invulnerability: Vampires can’t be reduced below 0 Toughness by ordinary means, including firearms, crushing, falling, fire, etc.

Undead: Vampires don’t need to breathe or digest, don’t age, and are immune to poison, etc. and cannot be controlled with psionic abilities.

Sense despair: Range is 100x the vampire’s perception score in feet, though the detection is imprecise if the potential victim isn’t seen, like hearing a sound without knowing the source. Range is doubled if it is the despair of a virgin.

Bite: Does damage as an ordinary physical attack, Lost Die unless delivered on a sleeping, grappled or willing target.

Create spawn: If a victim is so despondent as to welcome the vampire’s bite, the vampire can create a new vampire by draining the victim completely. Over the following week, the new creature gains all the typical vampire’s special abilities and weaknesses and, over the coming months, one point at a time, modifies the victim’s characteristics as follows— Agility +2, Toughness +5 (minimum of 6), Perception +3, Appeal +1. Calm is reduced to 0 until the new vampire feeds (or Calm goes negative if it was already 0), at which point it has a Calm of 1 or its starting score whichever is lower.

In addition, elder vampires may possess some or all of the following abilities:

Enslavement: Vampires with Appeal of 6 or higher can essentially control any human or less powerful vampire (Calm check to resist). They can also force them to forget any stretch of time. The victim is allowed another Calm check each time the vampire’s request is more extreme than the last or violates a new boundary (for example, a victim would be able to check if asked to harm someone, then again if asked to kill, then again if asked to harm a friend, then again if asked to kill a friend).

Animal Enslavement: As Enslavement above, but with animals.

Shadow movement: The vampire can move without a sound in dark or shadowy places, and requires a perception check against at least a 6 to be seen before it strikes.

Transformation: The vampire has an alternate animal form which it can take at will—but the transformation can only take place when the creature is unseen. The animal form has the agility, toughness, perception and appeal of whichever is higher—the animal form or the original. Typically any given vampire only has one alternate form and typically this is a bat, wolf, rat, scorpion, spider or firefly. There may be a breed of amphibious vampires that can cross heavily polluted water which can change into a manta ray. These alternate forms all have pitch black eyes and are eschewed by genuine animals unless the vampire exerts an Animal Enslavement ability.

Weaknesses common to all vampires:

A vampire cannot willingly alleviate the suffering of a living being, except by killing them.

Sunlight causes damage to vampires each round as an ordinary physical attack.

The holy symbols of any faith causes a vampires to make a Calm check or flee until they are out of sight. The intensity of the calm check is equal to the degree of fervor of whoever is wielding it (1-5). In the case of an incidentally encountered symbol (a glimpsed church steeple, for instance) the intensity is 2.

The smell of garlic works the same way.

Touching a holy symbol, including holy water, does damage as an ordinary physical attack.

Vampires may not cross running water open to the air, no matter how narrow the stream. For these purposes “open” means “the fixed area where the water runs has been exposed to open air through which sunlight or moonlight could penetrate” (the water stores the essence of the light which harms vampires) thus a vampire could walk on a sidewalk that had a sewer beneath, but not over a bridge, and they can cross frozen rivers. The distinction between a very wide bridge and an open-ended tunnel through which water flows is relevant here—if the inner reaches of the tunnel never see natural light, the vampire may cross the ground above it. 

A vampire may be killed by a wooden stake through the heart. Aiming specifically for the heart in combat would typically lose the attacker a die unless the vampire is grappled.

Vampires cast no shadow, have no reflection, and cannot enter a human’s residence without being invited.

In the presence of a despairing human of any gender the vampire is attracted to, the vampire must make a Calm check vs the target’s Appeal to avoid immediately attempting to bite them. The vampire must check each round the target can be sensed in any way if the victim's Appeal exceeds the vampire's Calm.

Vampires at 0 Calm frequently contract Arithmomania in addition to any other psychological problems—causing them to pause and count any spilled quantity of rice, balls bearings, nails, etc dropped in their path.

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The Demon City Patreon is here

The Fetch

A ghost for any game. Mechanically not too special, but its ecology should keep players busy for at least an hour, since it has to trick characters into hurting each other.

Fetch

A fetch is the ghost of a lost soul that takes a form identical to its victim in order to replace them. Being bound to a given location until they can successfully bring about the death of a human and take its place, the fetch searches for the weakest mortal it can find and attempts to sow fatal confusion.

Friends of the victim who are unaware of the nature of the fetch take psychological damage as if they'd just seen their friend commit whatever atrocity the fetch just has or take whatever wound the fetch has appeared to take.

If a fetch is tricked into imitating a form tattooed with a spell of banishment, its ectoplasmic skin will begin to dissolve and the ghost will be exorcised.

Typical Fetch

(Demon City stats)

Calm: 2

Agility: as target 

Toughness: as target (but see below)

Perception: 2

Appeal: as target

Cash: 0

Knowledge: 3

Calm Check: 5

Special abilities:

Serial Ectoplasmic Form: Fetches condense into bodies that are identical to those of their victims in most ways (voice, mannerisms, etc) and are vulnerable to mundane attacks. However, if this body is slain, the Fetch’s invisible and its incorporeal soul remains until exorcised.

In combat, the fetch is normally indistinguishable from the victim.

Weaknesses:

A fetch is always bound to the specific geographical location where it died (a building, a graveyard, a lake, a hospital, a neighborhood, a dungeon, etc) and cannot leave until it brings about the death of a victim and thereby replaces it permanently.

A fetch cannot directly physically harm the target it has imitated and must usually employ deception to cause it to be killed by some other party. Its most common tactic is to use the new form to kill one of the victim’s friends, get “caught” by other companions, then flee and conceal itself until these companions kill their “dangerous” friend.

A fetch cannot adopt a new form or become incorporeal until its current target has left the area the fetch haunts or that body is "killed".

Most fetches cannot bear the sound of bells due to association with church bells—in some cases, the feared sound is different and is associated with the way the creature died (for example, a victim of a drunk driving accident may not be able to stand the sound of a beer can opening).

If a fetch adopts a form tattooed with scriptures of banishment, its new skin will burn and the fetch will be exorcised.

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Foetal God.....(+DIY D&D Gen Con Party)

For any old game, but I wrote it up specifically for Demon City. I gave it D&D stats, too...

The Foetal God. My latest painting for Demon City.

It would require an effort on an industrial scale and layers of orchestrated deception within that effort, great vats, sacrifices that would beggar cemeteries, coordinated acts of rogue archaeology, postmodern mathematics, and multinational teams of experts in the deadest languages. All the more remarkable as it could serve no conceivable purpose.

The young god will stagger, unviable, seething, needlessly empathic, feeling everything, bending quantum fields to the edge of rupture, shrieking in ultrasonics whose sublime recursions and architectonic structures echo out in depthless potency and ignorance.

Thinking nothing, reactionary, capable of anything, exposed and nihilistic--why would anyone bring such a thing about?

Demon City Stats:

Calm: -1 (Always insane)
Agility: 2
Toughness: 10
Perception: 1
Appeal: 0
Cash: 0
Knowledge: 0

Calm check: 10

D&D stats in italics:
HD: 17
AC: 16
Speed: As human

Causes Save vs Fear on sight


Special Abilities
(Wallowing newly and unwilling in the morass of being, the Foetal God telegraphs its every move--these are all initially rolled as Agility-based actions.)

Physical Attack

The God is strong enough that anything outright grappled, thrown or crushed in its hands or jaws takes Overwhelming Damage (roll dice equal to the attacker's stat--in this case 2--and take the highest). (D&D: Str as Hill Giant)


Touch

The God can reform matter with a touch, but does so as an infant with no talent or focused intention. Each hand merely begins to transmute touched things into the last thing touched with that hand, so if it was a sidewalk, part of the target becomes smeared with a line of jagged concrete, if it was a dog, part of the target becomes a chaotic web of fur, organ, and fang. Aside from any common-sense effects treat this as normal weapon damage. (D&D: d10+10)

Scream

When wounded or frightened, the protogod screams, causing a storm of ontological static to ripple across an area extending from Foetal God in a 50' radius. An unsuccessful Scream action still indicates a scream has happened, just that a number of random nonvital objects in the area are affected (Host: describe something disturbing), a successful one indicates an important object or character is included along with this background damage--decide randomly. The Scream's effects on any given object or character are (roll d10)

1 Target is horrifically scarred or deformed. Damage is gruesome but cosmetic. Characters lose 2 points of Appeal (D&D: 4 pts of Cha), to a minimum of 0.

2 Target becomes its own shadow.

3 Target briefly nonexistent and devoid of relativistic movement, sinks 2 inches into ground or whatever is supporting it. Will have to be cut out.

4 Target begins to melt into a plasm of primordial constituents. Damage calculated as if hit with an ordinary weapon. (D&D: D10+10)

5 Target begins to dwindle out of existence. It does not exist next turn, then returns for one turn, then ceases to exist for two turns, then returns for one, then three turns, then returns for one, etc. until the Foetal God is destroyed or the effect is negated by some exotic means. During nonexistence no-one remembers it ever existed.

6 Target appears to be destroyed but reappears out of sight 100 feet-1 mile elsewhere. Host's choice.

7 Target is perfectly cloned. Clones of characters will become disturbed NPCs.

8 Target continues to exist but is ignored by all sentient life. This continues until the Foetal God is destroyed or the effect is negated by some exotic means.

9 Living targets (only) briefly share the mind of the Foetal God. They lose a point of Calm (D&D: Save and effects as if vs Confusion) if they fail a test against a 10, but on a successful test they can control the God's action for one turn. Getting this result twice and succeeding at least the second time allows the target to imprint their will on the protodeity long enough to reverse the effect of a single previous action by the God.

10 Target reverts in time to a noticeably earlier state--for, say, a car, this might turn it into molten metal and unprocessed rubber, for a character this usually means dialing back to a time before the acquisition of some current skillset or acquired knowledge, etc. When in doubt how bad to make it, make a Random Severity Roll (that's d10 --10 being the worst result, in this case something short of death).

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Ok for the DIY D&D Gen Con Party....

We got our location for that. It'll be Friday night, the night of the Ennies and after said Ennies, as I mentioned, there will be a party, thrown by D&D With Porn Stars and Satyr Press. We have our location, it within a leisurely walk or short cab ride from the Con and the place of said part will be emailed to you on the day of.

If you'll be at Gen Con on the 18th: email zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm and I'll put you on the list.
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Get this game finished by donating to the Demon City Patreon right here

D4 Dungeon Jerks With Weird Treasure

1. Othiqqa Abbefesque Welles-Weaning, an unscrupulous vendor of spirits, seeking to acquire the rare rum of Eliator in bulk saleable quantity and they heard someone down here knew how to get there. Accompanied by bodyguards--two 3rd level fighters and one thief/scout with backstab x3. In the Maze of the Blue Medusa, the Bondye Reparee or however they're fucking spelled are onto them as non-numinous beings and will kill them on sight. Such agents are the equivalent of Rogue Traders in 40k--their liquor licenses and credentials are worth 3,000gp in Vornheim. She will also pay twice normal prices for any unusual liquor the PCs bring her.

2. Cormorris Rill, umbramancer. Weary, bent, he of the tattooed skull and grey monocle. 6th level wizard specializing in illusion magic and shadow-themed negative energy type stuff. He seeks to enslave the various shadow creatures of the dungeon, and to steal strange artificial light sources for his experiments. Along with him: a hypnotized chameleon woman guide and a vicious wardog named Spit.  Carries a vial of liquid shadow and a map showing the location of every room and door within 200' of wherever he's encountered.

3. Rolling spore: An organic fungoid sphere 5' across with cold, pink and velvety skin. It emits a peachy aroma that inebriates anyone failing a save for 5 minutes. Slicing it open (20 hp, AC as leather) spills wretched monster-attracting goo on everything (roll 3 encounter checks now) and reveals its heart which can be used to grow 4 more.

4. Poorly-animated backpack moving spiderwise on tethered weapons (longsword, shortsword, climbing axe, staff) while still attached to and dragging around a lifeless corpse. The disturbing result of a falling-out between a sorcerer and her hired retainer. The assortment can attack with one weapon at a time (whichever one isn't being used as a "leg"). Following the drag marks and blood trail back leads to a few more of them and the entire party's loot--6 people worth of gear plus a spellbook containing 4 unique spells levels 1-4, 1800gp in gems, rings, holy symbols, and other typical adventurer tat. The sorcerer has one Sleep spell in her before she dies. Or maybe a Fireball. If the party doesn't trace the thing back immediately to its lair, the smell attracts more monsters.
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In The Half-Court

(shockingly, not about basketball)

Me and Patrick are working on some kind of Anti-Camelot project...
Part One
Part Two
Part Three:

Humans say there is no law in the Half-Court of the Half-King where the half-elves thrive, but there is--and it is that everything must happen sometimes.

Crimes must be punished half the time--but half the time they must not. Treaties must be half-honored, women half-respected, children half-raised, dangerous magic half-banned. The genetic chimeras prowl the half-sown fields and swim the hot and then cold again waves.

The passionate and unreliable King Thanacharis would call himself True Neutral--but this in no way suggests the abstractedness of the modron, serene remove of the druid, or the selfishness of those who give no fucks. His knights come on hybrid horses to fuck your mom and send her roses, then eat her whole and buy you shoes. Their net goal is to cancel themselves out, like youtube comments. Wildly that and then wildly this--seeking zero, signifying nothing.

Any half-elf is welcome in the half-land. Half choose to live in that half-enlightened land of half-seelie and half-unseelie laws, and half prefer to remain diasporic, welcomed widely, but home nowhere.

They are trouble half the time--which is a lot if you think about it.

Strange Characteristics of the Half-Knights
Roll d100 until the knight's characteristics cover overlapping domains (14 and 15 for example, or 3 and 90, or 9 and 11) or the knight becomes too complicated to keep track of

1, Invulnerable Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning
2, Invincible at night
3, Invincible by day
4, Invulnerable from the right
5, Invulnerable in half-light
6, Invulnerable every other round
7, Invulnerable every other day
8, Only there half the time
9, Touch reduces/raises you to half hit points
10, Half-mad, half-genius
11, Left hand cures the same amount of damage the right deals
12, Radiates indecision
13, Friendly every other round
14, Zebra-skinned of dark and pale
15, Two beings, divided down the center
16, Despised by their own mount half the time
17, Knight on one round, wizard the next
18, Immune to anything middle-gray to black
19, Immune to anything white to middle gray
20, Immune to anything a cold color
21, Immune to anything a warm color
22, Invulnerable when attacking a position
23, Invulnerable when defending one
24, Obedient to their liege on alternate days
25, Chivalrous one round, corrupt the next
26, Can only roll 1s and 20s
27, S:18  I:3 W:18 Cn:3 Ch:18 D:3
28, S:3  I:18 W:3 Cn:18 Ch:3 D:18
29, S:18  D:18 Cn:18 I:3 W:3 Ch:3

30, S:3  D:3 Cn:3 I:18 W:18 Ch:18

31, Every other word is elvish the other half are common

32, Takes two steps forward, two back, never gets anywhere
33, Smites as a standard paladin one round, as an oathbreaker the next
34, Aura of healing one round, damage the next
35, Immune to magic and magic weapons one round, immune to ordinary weapons the next
36, Blessing aura one round, Curse aura the next
37, Aura of healing on the left, aura of damage on the right
38, Immune to magic and magic weapons on the left, immune to ordinary weapons from the right
39, Blessing aura on the left, Curse aura on the right
40, Blind on one round, x-ray & dark vision the next
41, Invisible by day, Faerie Fire'd at night
42, Silence aura one round, causes painful din the next
43, Smells corrupt and then sweet
44, Always accompanied by twin (roll again, characteristics divided between them)
45, Conjoined twin (roll again, characteristics divided between them)
46, Halfling sized on Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 12' tall otherwise
47, Follows opposing gods on alternate days
48, Prudish at night, lascivious by day
49, Aquatic by day, air-breather at night
50, Prudish by day, lascivious at night
51, Air-breather by day, aquatic by night
52, Paralyzed on the right side
53, Deformed on the right side
54, Darkness aura one round, blinding light the next
55, Always honest for 5 minutes, then always dishonest the next 5
56, Reckless one round, prudent the next
57, Follows the etiquette of a knight for 5 minutes, then the etiquette of a lady for 5
58, Paired knight and squire--they switch roles every minute
59, Elf on the left, human right
60, Elf left, orc right
61, Always wins initiative, then always loses the next round
62, Veteran (+10 to hit) one round, novice the next
63, Attacks then flees, then attacks, then flees
64, Ugly and then beautiful on alternate rounds
65, Spreads disease one hour, healing aura the next
66, Heat aura left, cold aura right
67, Manic depressive
68, In front of you one round, behind you the next
69, Always inside at night, always outside by day
70, Outside by night, inside by day
71, Invulnerable from the front
72, Invulnerable from the back
73, New armor on the left, ancient and worn armor on the right
74, A wealthy lord for one minute, a beggar for the next
75, Harnishly realistic for one minute, a terrifying enchanted fey creature the next
76, Sleeps for five minutes, awake for five
77, Dual wields: one sword normal, the other held in "icepick" grip
78, Only attacks creatures on the right side
79, Only attacks creatures on the left
80, Alive for 2 rounds, dead for 2
81, Sick for one round, causes sickness the next
82, Blind for one round, causes blindness the next
83, Dead for one minute, death aura the next
84, Drunk for one round, causes drunkenness the next
85, Transposes positions with foe every round
86, Swaps weapons with foe every round
87, Swaps abilities with foe every round
88, Swaps hit point totals with foe every round
89, Swaps goals with foe every round
90, Only takes half damage
91, Deals half damage on one round, then double damage the next
92, Left half undead
93, Left half stone
94, Left half glass
95, Left half glass, right half stone
96, Left half magma
97, Left half ice
98, Left half magma, right half ice
99, Only appears for five minutes at dawn and dusk
100, Left half unarmored body, right half empty armor

In large battles, legions are formed of knights aberrant all possessing the same characteristic and paired with another.

Although the Half-King may or may not, GMs may wish to pair individual half-knight antagonists with partners with half-knights with complimentary vulnerabilities to present more of a challenge.
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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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Die Eisen Hexe and The Twisted Man

Die Eisen Hexe and The Twisted Man are members of the Stadt's General Enforcement Squadron Anti-Malefactor Technical Key Unit: Nonlicensed Superhuman Terrorist Watch Elite Reich Kommandos (GESA-MTKU:NSTWERK). 

They were defeated when attempting to prevent a bank robbery by the gang of mutant terrorists known as The Electric Gang but rescued by members of The Frightful, who battled the rebels to a standstill.

(The target numbers are if you're playing where you just roll 3d20 instead of using the Marvel Superheroes chart. 1 success=Green, 2=Yellow, 3=Red.)

DIE EISEN HEXE (the Iron Witch)

F Ty (6) --(target: 17)

A Gd (10)--16

S Pr (4)--18

E Ex (20)--15

R Rm(30)--14

I Am (50)--12

P In(40)--13

Health 40

Karma 120

POWERS

Sorcery--Amazing. Mostly transmutation and curses. There's always a way to break the curse, she'll brag about it.

TALENTS

Occult

THE TWISTED MAN

F Ex (20)--15

A Am(50)--12

S Rm(30)--14

E In(40)--13

R Ty (6)--17

I Gd (10)--16

P Fe (2)--19

Health 140

Karma 18

POWERS

Twisting space--you can't escape from him or where he is without an In (40) Reason FEAT and an Ex (20) Agility Feat. He can drop people into these spaces if they're grappled. Anything that distorts his body distorts the space round him--make an Agility FEAT to avoid it.

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You Will Not Find Its Like Elsewhere, Sir!

Some news before the meat of the post:

Review

"

It's gorgeous, it's thought-provoking, it contains some of the most interesting and strange dungeon rooms ever published...Maze of the Blue Medusa is a masterpiece and will likely be held up as the new gold standard of megadungeon book design, both for its excellent writing and its hyperfunctional layout

"

Another review

"

I feel as someone who is a part of this community and a game designer to acknowledge the importance of this thing.  You should know it, and the rest of us, too....Blue Medusa goes way, way beyond Deep Carbon and Pleasant Land.  

"

A question from a perplexed soul that readers might help answer:

"

 ...how on earth is a party of 4 level 5 characters supposed to survive this?!

"

Now, on to a D&D widget:

Unusual Animals Available in the Market Today...

(in a big city, d4-1 of these will be available on any given day, in a small town, d4-3)

Roll d20

1, Lucky Chicken--This chicken is lucky. Survives danger like it has 12 hit points. 5gp.

2, Riding Goat--Trained by goblins, dyed with purple spots. Does an extra +1 damage on a gore or a bite (otherwise as wardog) but if you run into any goblins and they make a check they might get it to respond to their commands. 20gp.

3, Escape Goat--If a goat should slay a troll, it inherits the victim's regeneration abilities. This is one such individual--it regenerates at d4hp per round. 200gp.

4, Sexy Hawk--God you look good with that hawk on your shoulder. +2 charisma when attempting seduction. 60gp.

5, One-eyed Hawk--First it's a bargain second it's secretly mega-obedient, like collie obedient. (-2 Wisdom/Perception checks). 20gp.

6, Marbling horse--Or at least that's what the idiots here call it. It's actually half-zebra (thus: a zorse or zebroid)--tawny with thin black stripes. As medium warhorse, just more interesting -400gp.

7, Squealing mule--Shrieks bloody fucking murder whenever anyone comes near it with drawn steel. Probably useful if adventurers park it outside a camp or dungeon--complete pain for anyone else. Cheap-- 10gp

8, Adolescent panther--Not in any sense trained. At all. 4hd. 450gp. 475 with cage.

9, Messenger pigeon--Pretty good at its job. 10gp.

10, Truffle pig--Finds truffles! Never go hungry! Ok, kind of: truffles are low on nutritional value but make rations tastier. Assume a week's rations last 20

5 longer per truffle found. 20gp

11, Riding boar--Trained by dwarves, fur spiked with lard. . Does an extra +1 damage on a bite (otherwise as wardog) but if you run into any dwarves and they make a check they might get it to respond to their commands. 20gp.

12, Paranoid songbird--Sings pretty much only when unfamiliar creatures are nearby. Unlike the squealing mule, the intruder is unlikely to realize the bird is acting as an alarm. 10gp.

13, Canary--great for detecting poison gas. 1gp.

14, Oddspotted newt--this rare, tiny, small, fragile, brightly-colored species survives by immediately crawling into the darkest narrowest place it can find. Good for finding hidden seams in the architecture. 400gp.

15, Eastern leopard-cat--merchant selling it just thinks it's a fancy domestic cat left by sailors from Yoon-Suin. Which it is. However, it also has literally nine lives. Well, eight. It used one getting here. 10gp.

16. Frog prince--Appears to be simply a fascinating, indigo-patterned frog, medium-sized. Unbeknownst to the merchant it is frog royalty--other frogs, toads, bullywugs, blindheims, slaads and batrachians of all kinds will defer to it and pay it homage. 8gp.

17. Thrusting pheasant--Trained to peck and chase anything smaller than itself. Does no damage but irritating enough to grant advantage to anyone else attacking the same target. Allegedly bred for fairy-catching. 10gp.

18. Blue-sided viper--1 hp, save or take 2d20. Not trained or trainable. Handle with care. 300gp.

19. Amusing bunny--overweight and dalmatian-spotted, it loves to gambol, hop and romp. Anyone possessed of such a bunny will be at advantage to charisma checks of the sort where a basically decent person tries to determine if you yourself are a decent person. 5gp.

20. Literal skillmonkey--likely a variety of capuchin, it has either pick locks (1-2) or pick pockets (3-4) as a 3rd level thief focusing on those skills in whatever system, Dex 17 for these purposes. 125gp.

Nyctites Are...

Nyctites are benighted--not fallen but failed souls, collateral damage in divine conflicts. A Nyctite is what happens when you are granted immortality by a god that then dies.

The body and essence of the ex-saint go on as promised--bound to each other, but bound also to empty concepts, they are not undead, but their ability to grow and change is held forever in a trauma of psychoclastic stasis.

Everything they believed is wrong, and they hold to it, molding themselves into a negative image of it--like a fossil formed by the piled shells of parasitizes and dirt.

 

Nyctites form, in aggregate, nuclear shadows of their absent gods formed in the awful convulsion of the Nyctocaustic event. Ever-seeking derelicts of belief, they are curious about everything, but have faith in nothing. Unwilling to cede the personal power derived from conglomerated ideas they now know haven't worked for eons, their restlessness might render them true artists if only they could commit to anything long enough to get something done. As is, their projects are curiously incomplete.

Nyctites take care never to obey the strictures and superstitions and homilies of their former lives, even incidentally--Nyctites of Unamm-Tathra, Lord of Fists never raise their hand as dawn is breaking and never strike a blow, Nyctites of Ferox the Incinerator avoid ecstasies during electrical storms and look askance at reptiles thatmove by night, Nyctites of the Mistress of Sacs never drink from anything larger than their own heads.

Likewise their abilities are dominated by the theme of lacunae--a Nyctite possesses access to divine magic and abilities as a Paladin or Cleric of the level they were when their god fell, however:

-they have access to any spell that their canonizing god would never have granted during its lifetime

-they have access only to those spells

-they may use as many as they want per day

-they may never use the same spell twice

 Typical Nyctite

AC: 12 (semi-substantial)
Hit points: 25 (as 5th level Cleric)
Saving Throws: Everything but Wisdom
Damage Immunities: Necrotic damage, Radiant damage

Vulnerabilities: Double damage from domains associated with their former master

Atk: +5 By weapon type (whatever weapon would be blasphemous in their dead religion)

Abilities: Any cleric spell up to 3rd level that would violate their former faith at will, never the same spell twice

This adventure-- Galleries of the Nyctites --features Nyctites of a slain nature god, possibly Rallathil.