Monster Monday: Asag, the Rock Demon

Today's Monster Monday is the asag, a rock demon of Sumerian mythology that could wake the very stones of the earth and add them to his army.

The Asag (á-sàg, meaning 'disorder'), appears as an antagonist in the ancient Sumerian story lugal-e, also known as Ninurta's Exploits.  Asag is a hideous creature of rock chosen as the champion to lead the Mountains in revolt against the Plains.  He has sex with the mountains to produce an army of rocks, which he uses to destroy the cities and creatures of the plains.  When the gods receive word of Asag's campaign of destruction, they select Ninurta - god of thunderstorms, floods, and war - to defeat him.  Ninurta sends his magic talking and flying mace, Sharur (the earliest legendary weapon preserved in myth) to scout out the situation, and Sharur reports back that Asag is a foe beyond even the might of Ninurta.  Not to be discouraged, Ninurta goes to face Asag anyways.  Asag pelts him with stones, delivers mighty blows that cut deep furrows into the earth, uproots forests, and assails Ninurta with landslides, forcing the storm god to retreat.

With their mightiest champion defeated, the gods despair.  The cities of the plains lie open to assault by the hideous Asag, whose very presence causes fish to boil alive in their ponds, and his army of unstoppable stone progeny.  Sharur flies off for one last desperate consultation with Ninurta's father, the god Enlil.  Enlil suggests that Ninurta soften Asag up with a divine rainstorm.  Ninurta turns the full power of his storm on Asag and just barely manages to hold him off while the hard rains do their work.  Finally, Asag's body is softened enough that Ninurta can drive his spear into it.  He strikes Asag right in the family jewels, delivering a mortal wound and taking away the demon's ability to produce more rocky offspring.

With the revolt of the mountains finally crushed, Ninurta orders the stones of the earth, punishing the rocks that were most loyal to Ninurta (like basalt, which is sentenced to become molds for goldsmiths, and limestone, which must be used as foundations for buildings on muddy ground), and rewarding those rocks which remained neutral (like lapis lazuli, which would be valued and used in art and dyes, or diorite, which would be turned into statues of kings and gods).  Finally, he tames the wild streams of the mountains and causes them to flow down into the lowlands and irrigate the fields, filling canals made with the rocks that were Asag's children.

The asag I have statted up below might not pose a challenge for the mighty Ninurta, but it should definitely make for an interesting battle for a group of seasoned adventurers.  With spell-like abilities like wall of stone, expeditious excavation, transmute rock to mud, and spike stones, the asag can define the area of battle and shape it to the adventurers' disadvantage.  And because it can awaken nearby rocks as earth elementals at will, it will always have an army of rocks to do its bidding and run interference for it while it softens up the adventurers from behind with thrown rocks and stone call.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Magmachelon, the Lava Turtle

"There's something!  Right there, in the lava lake!  Did you see it?"  Teleon Ostremachus pointed at where he had seen a mound of rock and glowing orange crystals briefly break the surface of the bubbling lava pool.  The other members of the expedition glanced around blankly, trying to see where he was pointing.  

"Right there!" he said again, conjuring a glowing pink hand over the molten rock, one finger pointing straight down at the place where the mystery object had breached.  

"There's nothing there," said Felten, the expedition's official artist.  

"Of course there's nothing there now, but there was!"

"So what are we-" he broke off as the crystaline mound broke the surface again, twenty yards to the left."

"Get it!  Getitgetitgetit!"

Gerias, the designated trapper, wove a quick spell, and the thing in the lava was pulled up as if by invisible threads until it hovered five feet or so above the lava's surface.  Globs of molten rock ran in slow-motion rivulets down the squirming creature's body, dripping off like thick molasses.  When most of the thing's body was free of lava, Gerias encased it in a transparent sphere of force and drew it over to hover in the middle of their makeshift camp.  The few straggling drops of lava made a little pool at the bottom of the sphere.

It was Teleon's second research expedition to the Elemental Plane of Fire.  His study of the fauna here in the previously ill-documented Black Rock Chaos would make him rich and famous if all went well.  So far, he had made contact with a small tribe of azers, observed a subspecies of salamander native to the Chaos, and run afoul of a swarming elemental force he dubbed 'flame sprites'.  This creature, though, was entirely unlike anything he had yet read of.  Its body was a semi-flattened ovoid with an equatorial ridge, tapering slightly toward the anterior.  It seemed covered with a thick, rocky carapace from which protruded glowing orange crystals.  Three sets of stiff paddle-like flippers made futile circling motions, searching for purchase, as the beast hung suspended in mid-air.  Three chitinous plates at the front served as jaws for a triangular mouth lined with thick, spiky teeth.  

Teleon was furiously taking notes in his field journal.  "Are you getting all this, Felten?"

The expedition's artist was in a panic.  "Umm..."  The edges of his sheets of parchment were blackened and curling inwards.  "I think I wasn't holding my sketching pages when you cast that protection spell on us."

"Oh figs!"  Teleon ripped three pages out of the back of his field journal and thrust them at the artist.  "Get drawing!"

"Um, Teleon?"  This time it was Gerias, looking worriedly at the sphere of force.  The beast was spewing a stream of lava out of its mouth, rapidly filling the force sphere.  The molten rock hardened into a black shell on the interior surface of the sphere, obscuring their view of the creature.  

Teleon sighed.  "Release it, then recapture it.  We can't lose this thing!"

Gerias dismissed the capture spells and the semisphere of lava collapsed onto the shelf of pitted black rock.  Another jet of lava spewed forth from the creature's mouth, coating Gerias in molten rock.  The trapper screamed and fell to the ground, pawing at the patches of sizzling lava clinging to his flesh as the expedition's cleric ran over to aid him.  The lava creature glowed brighter, steam venting from its bony plates, then burrowed into the black rock, disappearing from sight.

Teleon swore quietly to himself.  

Today's Monster Monday is magmachelon, a turtle-like creature that swims through magma and solid rock and shoots jets of lava out of its mouth.

I made this creature years ago in the game Spore (pictured above), because that game's creature creator was far more entertaining that the actual gameplay.  The idea of this lava turtle creature stuck in my head, and now here it is statted up for Pathfinder!

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.