Cosmic Monster Families

In the Faerie Queene, the baddies hang out and are related.

It's as if all the people trying to stop you were part of the same facebook group that you couldn't see. As if they were all part of the same family, and some of them were gods.

Bad for reality, interesting for stories, very good for games.

There are two main ways this happens, different in each half.

In the first half some of the magical villains are related to Night, who is an old woman. If they lose a battle or get frustrated they can go to her in person and as for aid. We also get scenes where more 'human' or less mythic villains meet up in a soap-opera style, as if they were all part of the same shared universe that went on behind the scenes once the heroes had left

In the second half many of the creatures are more directly monstrous, they are often said to be descended from the same mother, 'Echidna', though she doesn't turn up on screen and they don't call on her for help. We also get a look at the renaissance versions of the actual Greek gods, Jove & Co.

D&D has toyed with aspects of this before, having all Dragons be descended from Tiamat, all Orcs from the main Orc god and all Dwarves from the Dwarf god, but they have never (I think. No doubt you will inform me if I am wrong) gone all the way with it, which is interesting.

.............




THE MAIN IDEA

Linking monsters and monster races to a specific line of supernatural descent, in which living beings and species aren't just created by higher powers, but are children of specific higher powers, creates a cosmic-level meta-feudalism that would impact gameplay in an interesting way.

If everything is descended from everything else, then if you make allies or opponents of any particular being or species, it’s possible that they will essentially 'tell mummy', meaning that any significant action would mean offending, or pleasing, a specific meta-being.

And of course this would set off ripples of reaction in the meta-feudal structure. If you piss off one particular power by hurting its children then the same actions could please some other power opposed to the first, so you gain yourself an unexpected, conditional, and perhaps secret ally. Very much in the manner of Greek heroes or other Culture Heroes.

My imagined hierarchy for this system would go something a little like this;

LEVEL ONE - Prime Powers; Chaos, Time (these guys don't have stats)

LEVEL TWO - Literalised World Elements; Night, Sea, Sky, Sun, Fire, Death, Moon, Earth

LEVEL THREE -

A - Mega non-breeding monsters; Godzilla, The Kraken

B - Mega Monster Mothers; Tiamat, Behemoth, Shelob, Echidna.

C - Literalised Human Experience Elements; Panic, Fear, Love, Revenge, Thought, Craft, Harm, Thunder? (These might be considered Gods but read on to see why they may not be.)

LEVEL FOUR

A - Classic singular monsters, *The* Manticore, *The* Catoblepas, maybe *The* Peryton, possibly *The* Dracula.

B - Humanoid species; Orcs, Gnolls, Lizardmen, Dwarfs, Humans etc.

C - Non-Humanoid animalistic monster species.

..........

The idea here is that for everything that either wants to kill the PC's or that is simply in their way, that particular thing, or that species, has a specific mother and a specific father.

Now that mother and father might not necessarily be sympathetic to their children, they might be total dicks, or they could be giant monster mothers with (as is traditional) uncounted young. So if there is only one Manticore, and its literally the child of Spite itself shagging Shelob, then neither Spite nor Shelob might actually deign to notice that you killed or assaulted their child.

However, it’s a quality of complete dicks that they will often take more offence than they actually feel. So if you kill Spites child, even if Spite didn't really like them then they might come after you anyway.

And even giant monster mothers might notice if you start hewing through a large number of their young, and D&D heroes tend to do that.

And of course, Thought hates Spite, because Spite was such a dick all those times, so if you piss of Spite, then Thought might throw you the occasional low-key assist.

Add to that, the Greek-style conceptions due to cheating; if Thunder has been boning Air behind Earths back, and Air gave birth to a Super-Eagle, then Thunder may well want to protect it, but Earth will hate Thunders illegitimate children. So to rob the Super Eagle of its powers, bring it to earth.

And of course that old Greek and Renaissance standby, the child of rape. A child that might be protected by or hated by, one or more of its parents, depending on how they feel about it.

Constructing an actual monster-Power identity family tree would actually be pretty difficult, if you wanted to do it all in one go. There might be procedural ways to do it? Let me know in a comment or something if you want a method and I will give it a go.



..............

WHAT KIND OF GAME WOULD THIS ACTUALLY WORK IN?

A mythic 'original heroes' situation in which the PC's are the very first quasi-superheoric culture heroes to take on these monstrous or primal powers that threaten humanity, and win.

Myth, symbol, nature and eternity would inter-penetrate in a very material way . You could walk to the edge of the earth because it hasn't been sphered yet, reach the sky if you climbed far enough or find the palaces of Dream and Death beneath the ground. A place where, if you talk to the moon, or the sea, or the night, there is a small, conditional chance that they will turn round and talk back.

I'm imagining a Neolithic level of technology, a culture without religion as we understand it, where humanity (or just 'the people' really, the 50 or so people you know to be people) are always fleeing the ghosts and zombies of its own dead because no-one knows how to lay them to rest (you need to invent religion by talking to the Abrahamic Sky God or literally going to visit Death yourself).

A culture without fire (you have to steal it), possibly without sin, it could be that one of the PC's is the first to actually kill a family member and the sky god is so pissed he brands them and releases the harpies himself (maybe the first harpies ever). Probably you can talk to the animals, and the wind, or you can if you have a language skill, because the Sky God hasn't got pissed and 'Babel'd' things yet.

And of course, if the PC's manage to murder or overturn the higher powers then it turns out that actually those dudes were the Titans, and the PC's were the New Gods all along, and what they are up to is actually the mythology of a new world.

If you were to meet other humans then you might not realise that they *are* human.  You know what 'the people' look and sound like - they look and sound like you and your kin group - but these things look different, sound different and smell different. you might not have the physical context to be certain what it person, spirit, other or monster. The idea of 'human' is a concept you would need to invent.

The idea of not being able to conceptualise something until you find it in the world is a problem - especially as it relates to the crafty problem solving at the heart of D&D. Not being able to smelt metal until you go and talk directly to Craft sounds reasonable, but what are the borders of what you can and can't invent? Can you invent archery? Levers? Beekeeping?


BORING STUFF

I would probably run it as if years passed between sessions and the PC's gradually aged, with degradation rules for very old age. Wouldn't kill them between sessions but death would become more and more likely as their increasing status would mean there is more and more stuff they would have to do.

Possibly hack the tribe rules from Wolf Packs and Winter Snow.

Allow PC's to breed, if they make a kid then it gets a mix of their stats and becomes a possible future PC.

PC starting ages begin around 14-15, people not expected to live much past late 30's. You can start older and the advantage is that the oldest person in the tribe has a dominant status, everyone respects age, of course you will die sooner.

Classes would be very basic 5E; Fighter, barbarian, rogue, with the magic stripped out or stripped down.

Races; preferably everyone is human and part of the same immediate kin group. Could maybe allow skins of the different races as half-breeds with human sub-species; Neanderthals/Dwarves, Halflings/Homo Florensis, Half-Orcs/mum shagged a magic animal, Elves/mum shagged a magic tree.

Treasure would be knowledge and food. If you discover a sustained means of increased food production then your tribe increases, and of course you are the legendary figure that invented that (or stole it from the powers).

Rhymes Older than Gods

This is all from the Oxford DIctionary of Nursery Rhymes;

[Line breaks added by my and Umlauts and other things I can't easily repoduce removed in transcription as adding them back in was a bitch.]

Image by Darrell Raw
https://500px.com/photo/49365130/reaching-by-darrell-raw

LADYBIRD

"Ladybird, ladybird,
Fly away home,
Your house is on fire
And your children all gone;

All except one
An that's little Ann
And she has crept under
The warming pan."

Child's warning to the ladybird. Traditionally the insect is set on a finger before being addressed. This is what the present writers used to do, and what a woodcut of the reign of George II depicts. When the warning has been recited (and the ladybird blown upon once), it nearly always happens that the seemingly earthbound little beetle produces wings and flies away.

The names by which it is popularly known in this and other countries show that it has always had sacred associations: 'Lady-bird' (from Our Lady's bird), 'Marygold', 'Gods Little Cow', 'Bishop that burneth'; the German 'Marienkafer' and 'Himmelskuchlichen'; the Swedis 'Marias Nyckelpiga', the Russian 'Bozhia korovka', the French 'Bete a bon Dieu', the Spanish 'Vaquilla de Dios', and the Hindu 'Indragopa.'

The rhyme is undoubtedly a relic of something once posessed of an awful significance. It is closely matched by incantaations known in France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden, sometimes even to the detail of the name Ann:

Goldchaber, flug uf, uf dine hoche Tanne,
Zue diner Muetter Anne.
Si git dir Chas und Brod,
's isch besser as der bitter Tod.

Another German version is:

Himmelskuchlichen, fleig aus!
Dein Haus brennt,
Deine Kinder weinen alle miteinander.

And in France, where the words are also addressed to the cockchafer:

Vole au firmament bleu,
Ton nid est en feu,
Les Turcs avec leur epee
Vont te tuer ta couvee.
Hanneton, vole, vole,
Hanneton, vole.

Varieties of the Coccinella are found in most parts of the world, and are almost everywhere regarded as friendly. To kill one is unlucky. This would seem to rule out the hypothesis that a witch or evil spirit is represented and that the rhyme is a form of exorcism. (A much-practised method of ridding oneself of witches was to tell them that their dwelling was on fire.)

A theory in Germany is that the rhyme originated as a charm to speed the sun across the dangers of sunset, the house on fire symbolizing the red evening sky. In the Rosicrucians the beetle is compared with the Egyptian Scarab and the rhyme thought to be a remnant of beliefs associated with Isis. It has also been pronounced to be a relic of Freya worship. In England country children also employ the insect for divination."

SNAIL

"Snail, snail,
Come out of your hole,
Or else I'll beat you
As black as a coal.

Snai, snail,
Put out your horns,
I'll give you bread
And barley corns.

This chant is comparable to 'Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home' (q.v.) in its inexplicableness and probable antiquity. The rhyme was said, or sung, or sometimes the snail was held at arms length and swung round. Douce says (c. 1805), 'It was probably the custom, on repeating those lines, to hold the snail to a candle, in order to make it quit the shell. In Normandy it was the practice at Christmas for boys to run round fruit-trees, with lighted torches, singing these lines:

Taupes et mulots,
Sortez de vos clos,
Sinon vous bruerai et la barbe et les os.'

This conjuration of field-mice and moles was still eployed in France in the present century, the summons sometimes being lengthier:

Taupe et mulot,
Sor de mon clos,
Ou je casse les os;
Barbassione! Si tu viens dans mon clos,
Je te brule le barbe jusqu'aux os.

On the first Sunday in Lent (la Fete des Brandons ou des Bures) the peasant walked through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted straw, accompanying their threats with discordant tin horns and cat-calls, in order to be rid of the pests. A similar motive may have provoked the threat to the snail.

Chambers (1842) remarks 'In England, the snail scoops out hollows, little rotund chambers, in limestone, for its residence. This habit of the animal is so important in its effects, as to have attracted the attention of geologists, one of the most distinguished of whom (Dr. Buckland) alluded to it at the meeting of the British Association at Plymouth in 1841. The ... rhyme is a boy's invocation to the snail to come out of such holes.' Chambers adds that in Scotland good weather is prognosticated by the creature appearing to obey the injunction,

Snailie, snaile, shoot out your horn,
And tell us if it will be a bonny day the morn.

Whatever is the significance of the snail to engender such invocations, it must lie deep in the history of the world. The diversity of languages in which the rhyme is found is almost unparalleled. JOH quotes equivalents from Denmark and Germany; a writer in _Notes & Queries_ (1851) from Naples and Silesia. Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco (1886) adds verses from France, Tuscany, Russia, Roumania, and China. The call is also known in Spain.

The English rhyme is found in print from 1744 onwards, and may have been referred to by Shakespeare. In The Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.ii) Mistress Page tells how Mr. Ford, considering himself a cuckold, 'buffets himself on the forehead crying, "Peer out, peer out", meaning, appear horns. A version of the rhyme still known is,

Peer out, peer out, peer out of your hole,
Or else I'll beat you as black as a coal."


There is more information in the notes for both entries but there is a lot of it and its dense.

Points of curiosity.

• Both Living Things. Not pure objects or integrated natural events like rain or whatever.
• Both Haptic Rituals. Both are small enough to hold in, or on the hand. And on the hand of a child. And they are common and slow enough that a child can get hold of them easily.
• Both Transform. The Ladybird looks like a slow, plodding, earth-bound, but colourful thing, then turns into this flying dot with blurs for wings and disappears out of vision into the air. The snail is hard and smooth, regular, fluidly geometrical, like a perfect stone. But inside is this cthonic *thing* strange, alien, mysterious and slimy.
• Air and Earth. One from deep in the earth, but appears on the ground. Could be a stone but isn't. It's ritual involves threats and bribery to get what you want. The other beautiful, appears on earth but transforms into air, its ritual is sad but noble. This is a "good" avatar of something.

d6 Encounters by Louise Bogan

1. MEDUSA

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,- a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.


2. THE ALCHEMIST

I burned my life that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I had found unmysterious flesh-
Not the mind's avid substance-still
Passionate beyond the will.


3. HOMUNCULUS

O see what I have made!
A delicate precious ruse
By which death is betrayed
And all time given use.

See this fine body, joined
More cleanly than a thorn.
What man, though lusty-loined,
What woman from woman born,

Shaped a slight thing, so strong,
Or a wise thing, so young?
This mouth will yet know song
And words move on this tongue.

It lacks but life: some scent,
Some kernel of hot endeavor,
Some dust of dead content
Will make it live forever.


4. FIEND'S WEATHER

O embittered joy,
You fiend in fair weather,
Foul winds from secret quarters
Howl here together.

They yell without sleet
And freeze without snow;
Through them the broken Pleiades
And the Brothers show,

And Orion's steel,
And the iron of the Plough.
This is your night, my worthy fiend,
You can triumph now.

In this wind to wrench the eye
And curdle the ear,
The church steeple rises purely to the heavens;
The sky is clear.

And even to-morrow
Stones without disguise
In true-colored fields
Will glitter for your eyes.


5. THE DAEMON

Must I tell again
In the words I know
For the ears of men
The flesh, the blow?

Must I show outright
The bruise in the side,
The halt in the night,
And how death cried?

Must I speak to the lot
Who little bore?
It said why not?
it said Once more.


6. THE YOUNG MAGE

The young mage said:
Make free, make free,
With the wild eagles planing in the mountains
And the serpent in the sea.

The young mage said:
Delight, delight,
In the vine's triumph over marble
And the wind at night.

And he said: Hold
Fast to the leave's silver
And the flower's gold.

And he said: Beware
Of the round web swinging from the angle
Of the steep stair,
And of the comet's hair.

The Glass Rooks (a sketch)

This began as my attempt to put together a project that took advantage of Christian Kesslers multi-level multi-coloured three-dimensional mapping system that exchanges colour for depth. Its the same one that I mentioned in 'The Glass Dungeon'.

It slowly turned into something else, probably not anything better than 'The Glass Dungeon', but a different mood and feel at least.

For a while I've had the vague feeling that I wanted to do a game or an adventure that was set in, and mainly about, the feel of evening, darkness and dusk.

Now this is a terrible idea for an adventure, especially a D&D adventure, which is better if its about activity, movement, anarchic restless scrabbling striving and desire, but I continue with it none the less becasue if you don't create anything at all for a long time then if you feel the need to write anything at all then of course you have to write it.





THE GLASS ROOKS

Rooks do an interesting thing. At the end of the day, when evening falls, all the Rooks in an area will fly to one particular field or flat area near their roost. They will gather in there from many miles around and they will pool themselves, sitting on the ground together, waiting for the last to gather in.

They wait there cawing to each other and then, after the last Rook has arrived, at time, they take off almost as-one and, in a huge stream of black birds, they flow across the darkening sky to their roost, usually a copse or wood of tall and ancient trees.

No-one is sure why they do this, or at least why they do it this way.

The idea is, a wizards tower or secret place made from, or accessed through, a gigantic flock or murmuration (that's starlings really I think) of rooks.

Obviously you can only get there at evening, and maybe the place itself exists slightly outside time so that it can access any evening in that place.

The ghost of a sorceress, a memory of a woman, moving over the fields at dusk and through dreams at dawn.
Something like this poem by Louise Bogan:

"The woman who has grown old
And knows desire must die,
Yet turns to love again,
Heats the crows' cry.

She is a stem long hardened,
A weed that no scythe mows.
The hearts laughter will be to her
The crying of the crows.

Who slide in the air with the same voice
Over what yields not, and what yields,
Alike in spring, and when there is only bitter
Winter-burning in the fields."


And knowledge of birds or of the patterns of birds somehow being important. The paths and patterns of birds in the air, Geese, Starlings, Gulls and Rooks, forms and kind of maze or history book, repeating and renewing itself, even if the environment changes. Paths in the the air and in time itself. An ancient pattern in the skies.





THE ROOKS

The Rooks are of black glass, they are prisms and under clear white light each carries a spot of rainbow counter-shadow at its core. At night, under moon or lamplight, they have an iridescent rainbow sheen. From a distance you can barely tell that they are glass, unless you're looking for it.

They live in the hinterland, dull country where nothing ever happens, and that slow. Maybe in an alarmingly flat fenland, a place with no hills, riddled with invisible dykes and brooks that trap travellers, with the unearthly stillness that flat land brings. Over maybe twenty miles of land, a handful of villages. They fly around and eat just like normal rooks. It's not clear if they breed, no-one has ever found a glass rook egg, so presumably these are still the original ones.

The glass is pretty tough but can be smashed. You need to pin the rook down on a blacksmiths forge and swing a heavy hammer straight dead-on, it shatters into fragments of of clear, white crystal glass. Feather fragments in the glittering mess. But the Rooks are valueless, hard to catch, most blows jut glance off and they enjoy escaping cages, in which case they simply fly back to the flats and roost.




THE PLACE ITSELF

It's a little like the webway from 40k except its like a cave whose walls are formed from a cloud or tessellated circling black-glass rooks and the whole thing is hanging in a kind of prismatic or incredibly bright-white dimension so if the rooks are ever damaged or removed then this terrible light shines in. A shadowed pilgrimage through the realm of the Prismatic Demons. Shadow and evening in this adventure always being good, and bright white light being bad.

A prison of radiating light. A gateway between worlds might be broken into from both ends.

The idea is that the palace, or tower itself, changes shape and configuration depending on what you do. So the whole thing is about the size of a comic that you can lie flat on the table, with a map on the right page and encounters on the left page.

Each map is multi-levelled, using Christians colour method rather that a diagrammatic method. If distances don't seem to match perfectly then that's just becasue it exists in non-space so its invisiblly non euclidian, but still accurate relative to itself.

So depending on what encounter you have, or what you do, you turn the page, in the game this means the Rooks forming the structure of the reality briefly fly apart and you find yourself momentarily hanging/falling through this terrible dimension. Then they come back together in a different format, which roughly measures up to the one before, so room 12 is still room 12 but now its a dining parlour with dense escher-rook wallpaper instead of a glass cavern, so the things you will find there will have to match the nature of the new reality.

And you need to master and understand the kind of ways the environment can change to win the adventure, so you can make environmental changes to, for instance, suddenly trap a threatening monster in a room with no immediate access to yours, or trap it in a locked room, or drop it down a shaft.

But every time you change the environment there is the possibility of something from outside getting in. And the nature and form of the outsiders re-interprets itself according to the perceived nature of the environment.

It could become any of these:

A cylindrical tower or keep in which the outer wall is an impenetrable storm of permanently-circling birds.

A country house - layered, square, maybe the rooks are its wallpaper and in the grain of its wooden floors.

A Theatre - big central open space & lots of little rooms arranged in rings around. Maybe the rooks are like bird-masked stagehands that invisible assemble the theatre-set around you.

A dungeon - made from stone birds, or the birds are embossed into the stone, or are fossils in every stone.

A river / waterfall.




NPC'S/Monsters

Crystal lepers like escapees from Ballards Crystal World book.

Likeable comedy nuns

Sun monks, wolves with robes and masks like moons that let them speak but force them to obey.

Ape Roundheads with masks like burning suns that force them to act as men, lead by Gorilla Cromwell.

At the centre is a Prismatic Demon imprisoned there by the Sorceress. This is its domain and only its imprisonment by the Rooks allows it to exist at all. It's trying to outwit the PC's and escape but they need it for something. And in true Ggardner Fox style, it needs to be outwitted or trapped in each configuration of the place for them to win. It only needs to win once.



That's all I got for now.

huge and mighty forms that do not live Like living men

Turns out Wordsworth was kind of a raw dude.

            "In thought and wish

That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,

I was a fell destroyer. On the heights

Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied

My anxious visitation, hurrying on,

Still hurrying, hurrying onward; moon and stars

Were shining o’er my head; I was alone,

And seem’d to be a trouble to the peace

That was among them. Sometimes it befell

In these night-wanderings, that a strong desire

O’erpower’d my better reason, and the bird

Which was the captive of another’s toils

Became my prey; and when the deed was done

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathing coming after me, and sounds

O undistinguishable motion, steps

Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

Nor less in springtime when on southern banks

The shining sun had from his knot of leaves

Decoy’d the primrose flower, and when the Vales

And woods were warm, was I a plunderer then

In the high places, on the lonesome peaks

Where’er, among the mountains and the winds,

The Mother Bird had built her lodge. Though mean

My object , and inglorious, yet the end

Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung

Above the raven’s nest, by knots of grass

And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock

But ill sustain’d, and almost, as it seem’d,

Suspended by the blast which blew amain,

Shouldering the naked crag; Oh! at that time,

While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,

With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind

Blow through my ears! the sky seem’d not a sky

Of earth, and with what motion moved the clouds!

………………….

A rocky Steep uprose

Above the Cavern of the Willow tree

And now, as suited one who proudly row’d

With his best skill, I fix’d a steady view

Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,

The bound of the horizon, for behind

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin Pinnace; lustily

I dipp’d my oars into the silent Lake,

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my Boat

Went heaving through the water like a Swan;

When from behind that craggy Steep, till then

The bound of the horizon, a huge Cliff,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Uprear’d its head. I struck and struck again,

And, growing still in stature the huge Cliff,

Rose up between me and the stars and still,

With measur’d motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling hands I turn’d,

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the cavern of the Willow tree.

There, in the morning-place, I left my Bark,

And, through the meadows homeward went with grave

And serious thoughts; and after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days, my brain

Work’d with a dim and undetermin’d sense

Of unknown modes of being; in my thoughts

There was a darkness, call it solitude,

Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes

Of hourly objects, images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms that do not live

Like living men mov’d slowly through my mind

By day and were the trouble of my dreams."

Curse the Prince!

Pluvial sits upon the broad and wasted plains of Ennui, highly fertile arable land fed by the flooding of Lethe. Not farmed at any time, its muddy shoals left to rot.

Justice

In Pluvium, they don’t call you for jury service, they call you to judge.

The most important factor is that person judging a crime is in exactly the same mental state as the criminal was when the committed it. So, drunk, angry, desperately in love, insane, enraged, jealous or suicidal. Whatever you need to commit that crime, that’s what you need to judge it. The courts of Pluvial send all over the city, and sometimes all over the world for someone in the exact right state of mind to judge a particular crime.

Killing your husband or wife is generally ok, if they were really annoying. Suicides are always found guilty in-absentia during very quick trials. Theft is rarely prosecuted as you never get a conviction.

Religion

Any god may be worshipped, but prayers are allowed only to request from a particular god those things the god is unable to give. From the Devil – pity, from the Buddha – engagement, from Thor – calm, from Zeus – chastity. Faith is encouraged so long as you are in the middle of losing it.

Holidays

Weekend trips are laid on to Cythea, a black naked island in a stormy sea, strewn with creaking gibbets, populated only by wasted and highly political lesbians with a culture of forced nudity in all weathers.

Society

Casual conversation with friends must include some cursing or disparagement of the Prince, he listens at doorways secretly hungering for the amused condescension of the people. If the Prince hears you mocking him, he screams, rolls on the ground clutching his head and staggers away shaking and cursing you. Then he writes a poem about you. If the prince doesn’t hear you cursing him he leaves silently and you disappear the next day.

Conversations begin and end with frightened cried of “curse our worthless Prince!” and “curse the rhymes!”

Alcohol is encouraged but pluvial law says to drink at all you must drink at least 7 units in the first ten minutes or face arrest. Beyond that point you are on your own. Regular drinking tests are administered. Taste is ignored but impurities are added to guarantee particular kinds of hangover. Drinks are named after the depressions and headaches they provoke.

Art and the Media

Portraits are allowed only if the subject is decapitated before they are painted. Famous portraits are required to family tombs, though they can take a while to complete.

Art is only of the dead.

Porn is only of the dead.

Porn is required reading.

Other art is optional.

Most of the newspaper is porn and you have to read it once a day.

Pluvial ID is a copy of todays paper and some questions about its contents. This makes you a citizen.

Everyone is familiar with recent obituaries and editors try to sneak in useful news under descriptions of the recent activities of the just-deceased. For instance, this recent label to a picture of a headless corpse fucking a starved, dead, naked pensioner.

“..while attending the recently-built bridge across the lachrymose tributary, Monsieur R- was decapitated by a falling stanchion from by what he described, a few moments before its collapse, as

 ‘a really excellent piece of engineering!’

The papers artist Mademoiselle G- states of the wound,

‘I couldn’t have done better myself’.

The bridge is now closed and pedestrian traffic is asked to divert around the Rue De Smiles or ‘just throw yourself in the river’. Curse the Prince.”

Pluvians tend to look at your hands while they talk to you, in case they need to recognise your pornographically-arranged corpse in tomorrow’s paper.

A common Pluvian ‘joke’ amongst familiars is “I thought I saw your thumbs in the paper!” Sometimes an expression of happy surprise that you are alive, meaning ‘It’s been too long’. But also, sometimes a coded criticism from an older relative for not visiting enough.

All Pluvian plays and fiction are comedies, all set in a better version of Pluvia, a-

‘Babel of endless stairs, arcades

It was a palace multifold

Replete with pools and bright cascades

Falling in dull and burnished gold’

In these fictions loving couples live happily ever after, caring families stick together, decent Priests praise kind rational gods, wars are short and glorious, cares are few and no crime goes unpunished under the blue and golden sky. The Prince of Carcasses commands this because he wants his subjects to dream of that perfect world. Every morning, when they wake up from that dream, and remember who and where they really are, just for one moment they understand how he feels every day.

He's finally stopped talking about women at least

Pluvial – city of the Prince of Carcasses

The life of a skeletonised beggar in Pluvial is not so bad. The arthritis from the semi-constant rain is gone so you can stand straight up at least. You get (have) to dress up for the balls as well. You still have to bend, caper and dance madly as the prince goes by. He likes to scream in rage-black madness at the sight. It’s easier, at least, than simply being old.

Skeletons and flensed bodies animated by poetic backwash do most of the menial work and Tomb conversion. They don’t really get tired. The free labour has destroyed what’s left of the economy, which runs mainly on prostitution and words.

Ancient men must bend at 90 degrees and crackle around in single file tapped out in held canes cut only from lumps of the darkest wood. No pine. No beech.

The blind are commanded to gawp and loll madly in the streets, regardless of how they feel about the matter, though some have taken to exchanging braille pocketbooks which they read secretly by fingertips whilst moaning at the tapping of dancing skeletons they cannot see.

Young children are allowed out if they look suitably thin, ghastly and/or starving-gamine. Average, plump children, the middle aged, the robustly proportioned and those with good skin and bright eyes, tend to get their jobs done in the morning and mid-afternoon when the Prince of Carcasses sleeps. Or on Tuesdays which he has banned as ‘gauche’ and now ignores as a matter of form. (Or simply expands Monday and Wednesday by 12 hours each to meet in the middle.)

Women by decree must be beautiful or old. Old women must be pitied and wept over wherever they go. Grey locks and ragged hems caressed as periapt’s of Age and Loss. But not actually helped in any physical way, for instance, picked up off the ground, or given somewhere to live.

Social events are sometimes licenced if sufficiently symbolic of decay. For this reason, aging prostitutes in flaking greasepaint are in much demand, bussed in en-masse in broken coaches drawn by pale and plaguy mares. They un-liven retirement parties and camouflage happy weddings with broken decorations and pre-weathered paint that cracks on application to the wall. Burghers hold covert barbecues on tomb-top roofs when the sun peeps out from round a cloud.

The sewer system is excellent. Or at least capacious. Labyrinthine. Cathedral-Naved, baroque, knotted like lost string and several times deeper that the city is tall. Presumably the stuff is going somewhere. Though drainage does descend below the water table and keep going, which seems strange. In a way, it’s lucky it rains so much. The constantly running water means that despite much encouragement, tuberculosis has yet to take hold. White foundation, diet books and re-useable blood clots can be bought at local shops.

Men have been hired to paint the sky the colour of bruises and rot, to no effect. Enquiries of their progress have not yet been made.

Crime has been encouraged in song and handy ratways built across the tomb-top roofs in hopes that assaulters, housebreakers and masked bandits will transit silently in the night. Lack of anything to actually steal has limited opportunities for crime but numerous anonymous try-hards still make the nightly effort, climbing around, passing each other on the midnight eaves, sometimes mugging each other in a sad, ritual way.

Once, someone broke into the Princes garret (he lives alone in a broken-down tenement made especially for him.) The Prince found evidence of the crime and the resulting breakdown kept him out of everyone’s hair for two weeks. Regrettably it also resulted in several poems. The experiment has not been repeated.

The Prince of Carcasses

Loathsome, tiresome, heroic only in the smallness of his self-awareness, the Prince of Carcasses throws himself down in the muddy soil next to a tomb, bounces off the marble top and lies writing, undulating like a snake, gripping the cold sides and pushing his head backwards into the mud.

He is weeping a woman’s name. Dull-faced footmen stumble forward holding copper tanks of rocks and rainwater.

“Oh the thunder!” cries the Prince “black consuming horror of endless night!”

On cue three footmen ring the largest cauldron, hoist it up and shake it back and forth. The rolling rocks counterfeit the sound of storms.

A second crew holds up a huge black velvet circular shade on dull brass poles, designed specifically to blot out the sun. They place the Prince of Carcasses in the centre of his carefully ordered blot. A third stands by the moaning man as he crawls, he holds out an iron sieve on a pole and delecatly shakes cold rainwater over the princes weeping face.

“Oh monstrous ice-hearted woman with a daemons eye!” cries the Prince. He waves and makes a writing sign. A servant sighs. Paper is brought. A pen. Another woman will die soon.

The Prince of Carcasses is searching for a woman who can appreciate the grey churning depths of his ennui and the dark silent tragedy of his fallen soul. This will never happen. The Prince of Carcasses is a snivelling privileged little shit who happens to have a magical talent.

The Prince loves women. He doesn’t really pay much attention to what they do or why they do it or what they say, or what that means, or how they act when not around him. But he loves them. He is hungry for them and drawn to them. They pin him with arrows of burning desire. He shakes and shivers in their wake. Turned ankles corkscrew his heart.

When the prince can no longer hold back the red gurgling of his onrushing love, he writes a poem. The woman becomes immortal. Her body dies.

No-one knows what the women involved think of this as he steals their voice at the same time. They are silent forever.

Depending on how the prince felt about them, the women become different kinds of undead. Those he watched and worshipped from afar usually transform into pearly floating ghosts and beautiful wraiths. Those he was sexually obsessed with slowly rot. Zombies. He watches as their naked flesh decays. Knowing no-one can ever comprehend the storm of emotion in his poets’ soul. Who knows the poets spleen!

The Prince of Carcasses has had all the buildings in his city replaced with graves. All the buildings are buried or disguised as statues and tombs. He has taken the tops off drains the make the gurgling resonate and commanded greyness and continual rain. This has had no effect.

He has replaced all forms of entertainment with games of solitaire played with incomplete packs of cards in empty wood-panelled rooms. You can also listen to music, so long as it seeps out of a building several doors down. He also advises you to stare at the sky when it is blank.

He likes cats and is kind to them, possibly recognising the only other form of life as self-centred and indifferent as himself.

The Prince always hungers for witty conversation, his own. He does, however, need someone to talk at. If you visit with the prince he will not listen to you. When you are gone he will compose satirical verse about your stupidity and cloddish indifference, it will be believed. He is a genius after all.

Despite his tendencies, women often still attend the prince. He pays well, the city is poor and there are no jobs. No-one destroys the poems. They are too beautiful. He publishes them. Poetry is the cities remaining export.

Fungal Ambassodiles

There is a food chain of decay. A sun-linked chain made by plants. A red chain of animal flesh. A dark chain of dead and dying things. The doomed feasting on the ruined who ate the dead. A pyramid of ghouls. Crocodiles survive every extinction. They are a final link of the negative chain. Slow. Patient. Waiting for the world to make a mistake. The river-dwellers eat the things that ate the things that ate the world. They live on.

And the unusual character of the Crocodile, and it's tidal metabolic tick, lend it strength.

There is a fungal life that rules the flesh. Consuming insects, crabs and shrimp from the inside. It saw the crocodile and struck. It found the target lodged. The slow churn of the crocodiles flesh left no purchase for infection. It's infinite calm and brass-cogged cogitatative mind refused the touch of fear. The fungus was trapped. If could only infect the crocodile to a limited extent, could never consume it totally. The crocodile was likewise pinned. It could never fully eradicate the fungal life wrapped around it's scales and mind. Perhaps the only creature alive that would not go irrevocably insane when being consumed by a semi-intelligent fungi.

They learned to live together. They became something new.

The Fungus warms the crocodile from within, and cuts the rope that binds it to the sun. It fixes flesh and lends long life. In return it rides inside a king. A massive, close-to-deathless deep-dwelling apex-killer.

Not a king actually, an Ambassador.

For several excellent reasons.

One - They speak fluent Myconid and almost nothing else does.

Two - The endless conversation between fungal dream-state and crocodile-brain lends them a talent for other languages.

Three – Connection to no particular racial or political group.

Four – Utterly reliable, impossible to bribe.

Five – Cold, quiet crocodile minds have a flair for Realpolitik.

Six – They are their own bodyguard, a regenerating quasi-psychic crocodile the size of a truck is difficult to scare.

Seven – They seem to love the work.

Eight – even though they are the living expression of a continual conflict/symbiosis between a near-immortal reptilian mind and an almost-alien fungal intelligence, they are actually less insane than most of the things they represent.

Intelligence. Calm. Probity. Reliability. Subtlety. Immense patience. The fact that its a fucking tank with teeth. Gigantic fungal Crocodiles are the Ambassadors of the Underdark.

And the embassies. Inside the Crocodiles mouth (or stomach) is sovereign territory. A large male can carry three to five adults in its mouth in reasonable discomfort. Like a close cab. The passengers nest like baby gators. You will be utterly safe within. (Diplomatic immunity.) Unless the political situation outside changes. Should this happen, you will be swallowed. Though it will take some time for you to be digested.

There are tales of still-functional half-digested diplomatic corps being vomited into high-level talks. Reaching out shaking skinless hands to sign treaties in bubbling blood.

Inside the mouth, things are usually calm. Politically important dignitaries can be carried through the darkest war zones in sticky comfort.

Two voices. One, deep, low, sardonic and bass. The other tiny, fast, verbose, polyphonic and irreverent. But one mind. One would quite like to eat you, the other to infect you. Though they will only express this wish in the most charming Wildeian small-talk.

It is possible to persuade one voice of an Ambassodile to hide something from, or deceive the other. But only so long as the silent overmind finds it amusing.

Mad fungal moths sometimes perch in its back in rows like teeth-cleaning birds. They are messengers, flapping wetly through the empty caves to whisper political secrets in the Crocodiles ear.

Its gut holds secrets and gold. Bits of treasure here and there, but also secrets and incriminating works. The Underdark equivalent f the Nixon tapes are probably inside a Crocodiles stomach somewhere.

Should the PC's actually kill one (or more likely find one dead) they will be in much more danger from the secrets they find in it's belly than they were from the creature itself. Like a trippy conspiracy movie.

Ultraviolet Butterfly

You can see them. The sombre'st, darkest, fugue-like deep-ocean blue. The midnight blue between midsummer stars.

 

The bodies lie below. Paper-thin parchment skulls and wasted uneaten limbs. Rare to see abandoned flesh unused. The butterfly’s throng the walls. The blue is giving you waves of euphoric sorrow. A tragidean high like heroes feel before the axe comes down. If you look to closely at the butterfly wings, gaze the unending edge, your bloodvessels will crimp and burst in your head. The butterflys will eat your eyes and nest inside.

If one flits across your yellow-white light it looks like the shadow of a butterfly caught on a wall, but alive, pressed in living dimensions and pinned, momentarily, in mid-air.

The freshly-dead heads are burning. A soft, dim low-light infra-red, emitted from the mouth and sunken eyes. Like a coal glowing in an empty skull. A blood-clot ruby red. A dead-star-red.

Inside are jewels. Pick-up the skull and turn. Ignore the tears streaming from your eyes. Ignore the petrified childhood dreads cracking their coverings in the back of your head. It's just the butterfly’s bipolar-blue-glow. Inside the empty head, eaten out, they lay their chrysalids. Glimmering ruby-bright lozenges, irregular jewels. At their centres, knots, vaguely pulsing tangles of slight light. The jewels defend themselves with lust. Designed to drive a predator to unexpected doom, they embue anyone touching them with crazed, gothic self-destructive horny lust for any available partner. Be careful when you pick them up.

The caterpillars that will hatch from these glimmering seeds are jewels themselves. Perfect segmented prismatic rainbows of liquid light. Magnificent luxurious slowly ambulatory gem-beasts. Twisting and turning curlicues upon themselves.

The bite of the magnificent caterpillar is the most dangerous and sacred of all. A madness-bite. Instant schizophrenia.

These insects are immeasurably valuable and dangerous at every stage of their development. Much sought by decadent deep-dwelling peoples.

Many a throne-room, netted with silken silver nets, is lit with the butterfly's death-dark blue. Less a colour, almost a living liquid that sloshes immeasurably slowly from surface to surface. It's long looping wavelengths almost fingertip tangible.

The butterfly's blues light causes bipolar behaviour. Mood swings, mania and depressions. The kind of nobles that willing fill their arbours with this blue either don't notice, don't care, or actively enjoy the results. They believe deeply that the butterfly’s can sense noble blood*. More than one feud has begun when two nobles pricked their fingers in the butterfly room and waited, with dark blood beading on their outstretched hands, waiting to see where the first butterfly would land to feed.

The fact that looking closely at the butterfly's wing can kill you in one stroke is considered a handy shibboleth. Keeps the scum out.

The chrysalids are worn as pervy jewels and used as drugs, for obvious purposes.

The liquid-crystal-caterpillars are the most prized of all. Schizophrenia, amongst it's drawbacks, sharpens some aspects of pattern recognition and heightens the threat-sense. For normal people the horrific life-damage done by even temporary madness makes it a poor deal. For the murderous rulers of knife-edge subterranean states, things are a little different.

In a world where almost everyone you know is probably plotting against you to some extent, believing yourself to be under threat is less of a hardship. The obsessive correlating of the tiniest tangential evidence, the half-sensed look, the sly event, into tangled webs of paranoia, this is actually useful. Those webs really do exist. They really are trying to kill you. Being crazy about it just lends you energy and perception. Another advantage is that deranged bouts of terror-strewn violence, random executions, wild accusations and frantic source-less witch-hunts keeps everyone in the right state of apprehensive fear. If a normal person goes crazy, they fuck up their own life. If a tyrant goes crazy, they fuck up everyone's life.

Being known for occasional periodic violent insanity can be handy for a rulers reputation.

They wear them as living earrings. This has created a fashion in Drow society. Fake costume-jewellery crystal caterpillars. (The trick is to look for the tiny scars on the nape of the neck.)

*They can't.

Gilgamash

A clanking patchwork of clay and stone. The rough form of a man formed by a hundred hands*. The statue pieces that make his body are ruined scraps from the fallen idols of cities lost beneath the earth.

The hands arranged to strike down gods that eyes were carved to see. The chest a daemons, weirdly shaped. One leg of marble made to hold up worlds, the other treading snakes as ancient foes. The curling serpents carried still upon the toes, and worn with endless tread but writing still. The nose, patrician emperors the chin, a saints, the hair, arranged from naiads, nymphs and fools.

This creature questing endlessly and lost within it's memories halls. But filled with fiery purpose to some end, and knowing absolutely it was made for some great act. Or condemned for crimes it can't recall.

It may be right.

(mashed up collective memories of a dozen cultures could perhaps be useful to adventurers.)

*Ok, probably not a hundred.

A Deadly Foe Indeed

And one I do not wish to face again.


FOUR A.M.

The hour between night and day.
The hour between toss and turn.
The hour of thirty year olds.

The hour swept clean for roosters crowing.
The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.
The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars.
The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace.

Empty hour.
Hollow. Vain.
Rock bottom of all the other hours.

No one feels fine at four a.m.
If ants feel fine at four a.m.,
we're happy for the ants. And let five a.m. come
if we've got to go on living. 






No watch rolls encounter dice but the last, and they roll two.
 

TERRA BORGES

Terra Borges

A challenge by Noisms to create a campaign world based on a random selection of animals/monsters. I used borges 'Book of Imaginary Beings.'

This is what I got:-

Odradek

Chonchon

The Chinese Phoenix

Goofang

Griffin

The Tigers of Annam

The Norns

The Lunar Hare

Valkyrie

Roperite

Every species is intelligent and has a culture.

So, there were years of Strange Global Aurora when every sky was lit by colour. When it ended, mythical beings had returned from space, animals had taken strange new forms, much of humanity had been poisoned by evil sorcerers and a dark thread existed hidden in the world.

A Dark, Hidden God

The Odradek's look like a spool of thread, they are the dark hidden gods of the setting. No-one notices them as they harrow the empty spaces between the moments. They eat the thread of the Norns. Odradeks live in a government of touch, their tribes are Carresments and the Empress of all the Odradeks is the Ambulatrix. Odradek names are shaped of the silence between spoken syllables, magic spells are actually Odadrek names. That is why they sound different to each person. The words change but the indrawn breaths and micromutes between each phenome are always the same. Few people know this. Each Odradek can consume a small part of reality, when you speak its name, that is what happens. This looks to most like magic, but really is just the twisting and expulsions of the meta-weave as it struggles to repair and re-balance the world. Like flushed skin after a strike, or like bleeding after a cut.

Chonchons are the only remains of one third of humanity.

It's not a bad as it looks, really.

 They were created when evil sorcerers poisoned all of mankind to war against the FengHuang. They can only be seen by each other, unless they wish it, making them deadly predators on the other creatures. Despite this, most Chonchon have gone back to Human-style societies because it makes things more interesting and they get to live in functional groups. The Chonchon have invisible cities inside mountains of smokey volcanic glass. They have visible tribes who trade with FengHuang, Griffins, Norn, Lunar Hares and Roperites . The visible tribes police the occasional predators of the unseen tribes who use their invisibility and magic to prey on other species. Chonchons might be invisible magic flying heads but they are still human. They care about the same kinds of things, have politics, art e.t.c. The original evil Chonchons thought that by transforming mankind en-mass they would produce an army of monsters. They were wrong, humanity transformed fell back into strange versions of the patterns of their original selves. The epic pettiness of mankind saved it from disaster. Chonchon historians generally regard the change as a good or neutral thing. They have a very positivist/whigish attitude and believe that most of human history was just a long run up to the inevitable point when people lost their bodies, grew wings and learned magic.

PC Chonchons will probably be from one of the visible tribes who are assigned to interact with the outside world. They may have a special mission or be the equivilent of rangers, sent out to learn, grow character or keep a general watch on things happening outside.

The Chinese Pheonix, or FengHuang. 

Can't really see the third limb in this picture.

 These are man-sized birds with long necks, a third claw comes from the middle of their chest and can manipulate objects. These birds of perfect harmony used to live on earth in the early ages of ancient China. They disliked the nature of growing civilisation and migrated to live in the Sun. They bred there until migrating back to earth in a mass coronal ejection. This brief tide from the sun spread strange Aurora across each horizon of earth, from this fell perfect intelligent birds who could only act in correctness with each other. FengHuang roll a natural 20 for Wisdom every time. The Return of the FengHuang woke the Griffins, Tigers, Goofang and Valkyries. The FengHuang need only what birds need, but they value harmony above all else. This leads them to trade pieces of their wisdom to other species in order to produce a more perfect world. Their version of perfection may not match that shared by others. When they trade wisdom by giving information, it cannot be retrieved. This means that old FengHuang that interact too much with the world can gradually be reduced to something near the level of an average, intelligent bird. This has happened to many since the FengHuang returned from the sun.

PC FengHuang are probably these 'fallen' birds. They will go on adventures in order to regain their wisdom. They do this the same way anyone gains wisdom, by putting themselves through a wide series of strange and important events in the hope that this will lead to personal growth. As they become more wise, FengHuang can see more of the nature of the world, but they are less able to use this knowledge. XP gains them strange powers, but using these powers loses them XP.

Goofang or LibertyFish are fish that swim backwards. They are huge man-sized intelligent lungfish.

FOR JUSTICE!

They move backwards to avoid the fates woven by the Norns. This means they have true freedom. Goofang always save against magic so long as they move backwards. When they are moving backwards, they always fail initiative. Their flippers are very flexible, they can hold items in their tail-fin which they can use to manipulate things behind them or arc over their bodies to do thing in front of them. They have big goggle eyes on the sides of their heads which means moving backwards isn't as much of a chore as you would think. Almost 360 vision. They can prance around in quite a delicate manner on their forefins. They can swim, but slowly, as they will try to do that backwards as well. All Goofang are heroic bastards, they cannot stand the idea of another intelligent creature captured or enslaved and will happily leave their vast mud-tribes in order to ensure liberty and do good. They are like the knights or paladins of Terra Borges

Griffin These are just Griffins.

 

The guy with the Lyre is probably just an employee to provide mood music while fighting is done.

They start as dog sized from the egg. As they grow through man size they can use their front talons to grasp and hold objects but as they get bigger their talons harden and extend. They lose intelligence as they level up and gain hit dice. Eventually they become potential monsters. Young griffins are quite civilised and urbane, they wear clothes, spectacles, read and smoke pipes. They can walk about on their hind legs if they wish and glide a bit. Griffins live in FengHuang or Chonchon cities. They are big into culture in their middle years and usually have salons and the like. May well go adventuring for the aesthetic experience or to discover lost or new forms of art.

The Tigers of Annam are the judges and maintainers of alignment. They are also Tigers, so they can fuck you up. Pale Blue True Neutral Tigers that hunt divergent actions. Ultra-clever but utterly pitiless like real tigers. They know about the threefold alignment model and believe in it. If you step outside the narrow confines of your alignment (I.e act in an interesting way) then they can sense it and will come after you. They have the intelligence of a supercomputer but the emotional and self-awareness of a forum troll. Anything that cannot be explained in the most reductive terms, they cannot understand.

NORN-FU

 The Norns are human women who survived the Chonchon poisoning. They can needle-out strands of the world and re-weave it. Norns know Kung Fu but with thread. Threads can do different stuff depending on how they weave it. Like Wonder Womans truth telling lasoo thread, healing thread, hunting thread, thread of invisibity thread for finding of things. Thread takes exactly as long to weave as actual thread and once its been used once then that's it, weaving for them is like Vancian spell selection. They need to think in advance about what they will weave. Odradeks ar natural enemies of the Norns. Norns work by tying things together, ideas, places, people, space, time. Odradeks do the opposite. Norns know that Odradeks exist but do not know what they are and cannot find their true form. Think of them as deamons. Two natures of the Thread, the Norns creating, and the Odradeks feeding off its destrucion. Two different kinds of magic.

Lunar Hares come from the moon of course.

Dude knows Alchemy.

They returned when they saw the FengHuang come back from the sun, riding their coronal flare. Silvery man-sized Hares that know the alchemy of the moon. Alchemist/cleric/scientists. Of course these guys are also from ancient China, they moved to the moon around the time of the first Emperor. Now they are back and can do Medieval-style-but-it-works medicine and science.

Valkyrie's are lone hero’s who exchange their lives with those who die in heroic circumstances. If someone dies hard doing the right thing but has noble work left undone then one of the selectors of the dead will choose to swap places with them. The soul go's off to wherever but the body gets back up with a completely new personality (usually female). Valkyries cannot bring their memories of the afterlife with them but they know what they are and have a deep sense of purpose. If your character dies,and if they were noble, they can get straight back up with a new personality.( 80% chance female). Valkeries always start out as brave, puer and good, but they have never faced the temptations of the physical world before and can get corrupted fast.

Roperites are crazed, evil miniphants that hunt with prehensile, looped proboscis. Cruel, smart, wolf-like predatory elephants the size of ponies.

An evil that cannot end.

They range around in packs and strangle things with their fierce noses. They have a power structure, and keep slaves and rule cities and have tools. Imagine if Wolves were also Mongols, or if wolves were intelligent and could use tools and one of them was like the Wolf Genghis Khan and lead them in gleeful warfare against the rest of the world. They are, obviously, enemies of the Goofangs. The Goofangs and the Roperites have like a Mongols/Teutonic Knights thing going on except its elpholves and backwards lungfish knights.