Monster Monday: Quicksilver Ooze, the Fastest Slime in the Dungeon

Today's Monster Monday is the quicksilver ooze, a fast-moving slime that eats treasure and poisons your blood.

Most oozes move so slowly that a canny adventurer can avoid combat with them entirely by simply walking away.  Good encounter design, or at least the element of surprise, is required to make many oozes a viable threat to a party.  The famous gelatinous cube, for example, is best employed as a surprise (its natural transparency and tendency to conform to the dimensions of a typical dungeon corridor means some adventurers literally walk right into it) or in conjunction with traps (personally, I'm a fan of the ol' gelatinous-cube-at-the-bottom-of-a-pit-trap goof).  Oozes are slow bags of acidic hit points - it's a niche they fill well.  But sometimes you want to use an ooze outside of their niche.  That was the idea behind the bombardier ooze, which can engage adventurers at range by shooting out gobs of acid.  The idea for the quicksilver ooze came from a similar place: what if there was an ooze that you couldn't outrun?

photo by bionerd, via Wikimedia

I called it the quicksilver ooze because mercury (aka quicksilver) is runny and already looks like some kind of sentient alien slime.  To make the monster more than just a fast ooze, I did some research (i.e. read the wikipedia article) on mercury and gave the quicksilver ooze some of the attributes of the element.  The ooze is temperature sensitive - slowed by cold damage and hastened by fire damage - because one of mercury's most famous attributes is its sensitivity to temperature (hence its use in thermometers).  Its slam attack, of course, gives its victims heavy metal poisoning.  And because mercury dissolves and amalgamates many other metals, including gold and silver, I decided this should be one of those mean monsters that eats your treasure.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Green Man, Guardian of Wood and Field

Today's Monster Monday is the green man, a powerful plant spirit from European folk mythology.  The green man acts as a guardian of nature and a protector of communities that show proper respect to the wilds, but also as an avenger against those who despoil the wilderness and threaten his sacred groves.

via Wikimedia

Unlike most other nature spirits - such as dryads and nymphs - a green man does not avoid human settlements, and in fact it is not uncommon to see a green man visiting a rural planting festival to bless the year's crops.  But for all his tolerance of humanity, a green man's wrath is to be feared like none other.  He commands a withering array of plant magics capable of turning the whole forest against any who cross him.

via Wikimedia

The green man is a common decorative motif, especially in the British Isles.  Its origins remain uncertain, but many have attempted to connect it back to pre-Christian beliefs and nature deities like Pan and Silvanus.  Others have seen connections to the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight, wherein King Arthur's nephew does battle with a jolly green giant.  The green man is also connected to the Jack-in-Green, a leafy figure that appears in some rural English folk festivals.  Is the green man an echo of Europe's pagan past, preserved through time by folk memory and sculptural motifs?  Or did sculptors just like carving leafy faces?  This may remain an unsolved mystery, like the question of why there are so many medieval illustrations of knights fighting snails.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

The Power of Water: 5 New Water-Themed Spells

When it comes to elemental magic, fire has it easy.  Fire burns.  It's direct and easy to understand.  Utilizing the other classical elements in magic - water, air, and earth - requires more outside the box thinking.  Oftentimes cold, electricity, and acid fill in for water, air, and earth, allowing spellcasters to deal direct damage with something other than fire.  From a game design perspective, cold, electricity, acid, and fire are just different flavors of the same thing; switching the type of damage that an elemental spell does rarely has an in-game effect.  But if you are trying to play as a spellcasting character who specializes in water spells, you might find it jarring that the only way you can do damage is with ice.  Water is one of the most powerful forces on earth.  Don't spellcasters deserve more water-themed spells?

Photo by Malene Thyssen, via Wikimedia

The following five spells are designed to showcase the power of water: aquatic sheath allows swimming creatures to move and fight on land; evaporate dries up liquid, destroying potions and damaging water elementals; splash puts out fires and damages fire elementals; water jet blasts enemies with a concentrated burst of water; water shield protects an area from fire spells.

The following text is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.  This content is designed for the pfrpg.

Monster Monday: Basan, the Japanese Death Chicken

Today's Monster Monday is the basan, an obscure Japanese giant chicken monster with death-breath.  The creature bears a passing similarity to the cockatrice, although instead of turning its victims to stone, the basan breathes out plumes of cold ghost-fire.

Basan illustration for Ehon Hyaku Monogatari by Takehara Shunsen (1841), via Wikimedia

The basan comes to us via Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (Picture Book of 100 Stories) published in 1841, and Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) published in 1776.  Both were Japanese bestiaries compiling folklore and ghost stories that greatly influenced the Japanese yōkai tradition.  The basan itself was said to live in the mountains of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands.

When converting this beast into a monster stat block, I briefly considered making it some sort of undead cockatrice because the descriptions of its unburning ghost-fire made me think of negative energy attacks.  In the end, I kept the negative energy angle and made the basan a living creature that was affected by negative energy in the same way that the undead are.  Despite its outwardly comical appearance (giant chickens are almost never unfunny), the basan needs to be an eerie monster, hence its connection to the plane of negative energy and its association with undeath.

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

Monster Monday: Planticore, a Leafy Beast

The goat was a problem, so he let it go.  It must have sensed its fate.  Broussilos would just have to hope that the wine would be enough of an offering.  He adjusted the thick straps that held the amphora on his back and continued his arduous trek up the mountain.  The Spring of Laersippos was hidden near the peak, guarded by a fierce manticore.  Local legend said the beast could be placated with the right gift, but no one was quite sure what that gift was.  A short bronze blade beat against Broussilos' thigh with every step: purely a measure of last resort.  The wine sloshed rhythmically in its container, like waves against the side of a ship at anchor.  If it wouldn't buy him passage to the spring, it might at least be enough to buy his safe retreat from the mountain.  

The brush grew thicker, wild vines choking out all else.  They pulled at his sandals, slashed at his linen greaves, and even caught on the amphora as if they, too, thirsted for wine.  Broussilos pushed through a plait of hanging tree branches and came face to face with the manticore.  It was upside-down, its huge man-like face purple and bloated, spiky beard matted with week-old blood.  Its wings were splayed out on the ground, pinned in place with serrated thorns as long as a man's arm.  Probing creepers grew into every nook and gash in its hide, twining about its bare ribs, hungry for decaying flesh.  

All in all, it was a very dead manticore.  

Broussilos could hear the burbling of the spring muffled by a mat of dense vegetation.  He took two steps toward it.  A great rustling of leaves marked the emergence of another great beast.  It was a cruel mockery of a manticore, its face all of knotted wood, its wings of veiny leaves.  Its leonine torso was woven of twisting brambles, and its swishing tail bristled with javelin-like thorns very much resembling those which peppered the corpse of the real manticore.  It growled, its voice like a thick cedar straining against a gale, and its amber eyes fixed on the intruder.

"I don't suppose you'll be wanting this wine," Broussilos began, unslinging the heavy amphora.  The beast's reply was an angry rattle of branches.  Then the vines all around snaked toward him, rearing up to grab at his limbs.  Bursts of nettles spattered his skin with burning poison.  "Very well then."  Broussilos cracked open the amphora's beeswax seal with the pommel of his sword and dumped the wine into his face, swallowing as much as possible and letting the rest spill over his body.  He tossed the half-empty container to the side, gripped his sword, thews tensing, and threw himself at the leafy monster.

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Today's Monster Monday is the planticore, which - as you might imagine - is a manticore made out of plants.  My wife threw the name out as a joke, and I took it and ran with it.  Planticores bristle with thorns, and they can even swallow people whole and crush them in the wicker cage of brambles that is their belly.  They can bend nearby plants to their will, unleashing plant-based magic against their foes while hovering safely above the action, bombarding the area with a barrage of thorns.

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

Monster Monday: Anomalocaris, Top Predator of the Cambrian Seas

Today's Monster Monday is anomalocaris, an odd-looking predator that moved through prehistoric waters with a row of oar-like fins, grasping prey in its barbed claws and drawing it in toward its circular mouth of serrated plates.  You can think of it as a 'dire shrimp'.

via Wikimedia

Life-restoration of anomalocaris

Anomalocaris is the world's first apex predator, dwarfing most other creatures of the Cambrian seas (541–485.4 million years ago).  Of course, it didn't take much to be the biggest back then - anomalocaris was about a meter long - so I've also included a giant anomalocaris the size of a rowboat that should prove to be more of a challenge for low-level adventurers.

It is certain that anomalocaris fed on soft-bodied animals like worms and pikaia (a free-swimming creature thought to be the ancestor of all vertebrates), but there is some debate as to whether it also ate hard-shelled creatures like trilobites.  Giant fossilized turds containing broken bits of trilobite exoskeleton seem to indicate that anomalocaris (or some predator almost as large) was eating trilobites, but some paleontologists have questioned whether anomalocaris' mouth parts were strong enough to crush such shells.  It may have subsisted on worms that it sucked out of the sea floor.  In any case, the anomalocarises statted up below are assumed to have strong mouth parts capable of gnawing on stalwart adventurers.

anomalocaris painting by Ratianidze, via Wikimedia

Anomalocaris, looking decidedly Lovecraftian

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

Monster Monday: Qiongqi, the Flying Tiger

The journey to the Mouth of the East had been grueling.  Dry wind beat against their face wraps, stinging cracked lips and nearly blinding the camels.  It blew night and day, growing stronger the closer they got to the Mouth, a narrow pass between two towering mountains.  By the end, they couldn't even pitch their tents for shelter - one man who tried was blown away, clinging to a scrap of oil cloth, never seen again.  As soon as they made it through the Mouth, the silence was deafening.  It took an hour for Anachi's ears to adjust and for feeling to return to her wind-beaten face and hands.  She pulled down her face wrap and let the sun wash over her, relishing the steady desert heat that she knew from experience she would soon be cursing.

Then the stench of the camels hit her.  She wrinkled her nose and drew the wrap back over her face.  "Jashan, I am going aloft.  You have command of the caravan until I return."

"Yes, my lady."  Jashan patted the talwar at his hip and brought his camel to the head of the line.

Anachi reined hers to a stop and slid off.  She unrolled a carpet that had been wrapped in canvas and draped across her camel's back.  After some consideration, she also drew forth a small chest of purple heartwood, bound in silver.  This she fastened to the carpet with four delicate chains running through brass rings punched through the rear third of the carpet.  Finally, she placed a rectangular mask over her eyes, plates of rock crystal fitted into the narrow eye-slits.  She sat cross-legged in the center of the carpet and bade it rise into the air.

The dry desert stretched out below her, bound by the Copper Teeth mountains to the north and the mighty Ranbalahs far to the south.  She flew ahead of her caravan, looking for signs of the seasonal stream that would be their first water stop.  Out of nowhere, a blast of wind nearly threw her off her carpet.  She tightly clung to the front tassels as it rolled madly in the air, struggling to right itself and rapidly losing altitude.  Once her stomach returned to its proper place, Anachi began to tug at the carpet with experienced hands, coaxing it into a level flight path just as a shadow passed over her.  In a flurry of feathers, fur, and claws, the huge beast brought her and her carpet down hard against a red sand dune.

A mighty tiger's head was peering down at her, white and orange, with intricate swirls of deep purple between its black stripes.  Long yellow tendrils trailed away from its blue nose and its thick brows.  Harsh sunlight shone through a pair of tremendous white wings with pinion feathers longer than Anachi's arm.  "None may pass through my desert without paying tribute," the tiger growled.  "This carpet will do nicely, I think, and the chest.  And four of your camels."

"Camels?  What camels?" she bluffed.  A stupid bluff, but she had not yet recovered from the tumble and the fall.

"Is that not your caravan back towards the Mouth?"

"Ah, of course.  But," she changed the subject, "you do not want this carpet."

"It is magic," the beast boomed.  "And pretty."

Both were true, although the Tazhenti designs in orange and blue were faded from the carpet's overuse.  "Without the carpet, I will not be able to find water for my caravan.  We will all die."  This was only a partial lie; Anachi knew the locations of the desert wells, oases, and streams, though the ever-shifting sands made navigating to them difficult without seeing them from the air.

"I could just kill you all and take everything for myself."  The beast lowered its face, its hot breath seeping through Anachi's face wrap.

Anachi lifted her flight mask and met the beast's eyes.  "Hardly likely.  If you eat a whole caravan, no one else will pass through here until a brigade of Gaori soldiers comes to kill you.  And anyways, this is a flying carpet.  You can already fly."

"It is still pretty.  I will lay on it."

"Unlikely.  You wouldn't fit."

The tiger lifted its plate-sized paw off the carpet and began taking mental measurements.

"In any case, it's clear that the carpet is worth more to me than it is to you, so let's take a different tack, shall we?  I'll give you six camels, plus a basket full of-"

"What is in the chest?  Something magic.  I'll take that."  He nudged past her and sniffed at the box still chained to the rear of the carpet.  "And the six camels."

Anachi put a firm hand down on the lid.  "This is a royal gift from the Shaltana of Bayman to the Court of the Blue Emperor!  It is worth more than goods of seven caravans seven times the length of mine!"

The beast sat back on its haunches and folded its wings.  "I will have it."

"But-"

"I will have it or I will kill the lot of you and have it anyways, and damn the Gaori soldiers."

"But-"

"And you can keep your smelly camels."

Anachi looked at the creature's teeth and claws, then at the silver-bound chest, then back at the creature.  Silently, she drew a key from a thong around her neck, undid the chains, and unlocked the chest.  From within, she produced a hunk of white jade the size of an ostrich egg, polished smooth and snaked all over with gilded sigils, glittering in the sunlight.  Reluctantly she held it out to the beast.  It sniffed the stone smugly, then clutched it to its furry breast with one massive paw and leapt up into the air.  It beat its wings once, twice, thrice, and was gone.

Jashan leapt off the back of his camel and slid expertly down the side of the sand dune to come to a stop at Anachi's side, gleaming talwar clasped in one hand.  "My lady.  Are you hurt?"

Anachi could no longer mask her broad smile.  "Jashan, I have bought our safe passage.  I gave my teleportation stone to the qiongqi!"

Jashan looked at his mistress as if he were examining her for signs of heat stroke.

"You still have yours, right?" she asked, ignoring his unspoken questions.

The tall black-skinned man shrugged off his pack and pulled out a gilded stone identical to the one Anachi had just traded away.  "My lady, I'm afraid I don't follow..."

"When we get to Char Gao, we can hire a band of adventurers and teleport right into the monster's treasure hoard.  We're rich, Jashan!  Well, richer."

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Today's Monster Monday is the qiongqi (pronounced chyong-chi), a flying magical tiger that loves to ambush caravans and hoard treasure.  It comes to us from the Shan Hai Jing - The Classic of Mountains and Seas - a Chinese text from the 4th century BC that is full of accounts of fabulous beasts and peoples.

Composite from two photographs

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