White Water Wyrm and Wyrmlings

[creatures and text by Lee Reynoldson from Fungus Forest, art by moi]

White Water Wyrm A thirty-foot long beast with huge bulging eyes that are perfectly adapted to the darkness of its cave and its waters. It has rubbery white flesh, proto-gills and lungs, diminutive fins and semi-functional limbs. It secretes an oily substance that paralyses those that come into contact with its skin (Saving Throw at -1 penalty to avoid paralysis for 3d6 turns) or are exposed to the water around it (Saving Throw each round at +1 bonus to avoid paralysis for 2d6 rounds). It is also asexual and without another of its species gives birth to batches of White Wyrmlings.  It feeds on its own young, forcing the Wyrmlings to flee the lake and inhabit the underground river system. It is a dangerous predator in the water, but it can, and does, waddle onto land from time to time. White Wyrmlings Offspring of the White Water Wyrm. These vile looking things resemble aquatic tapeworms with teeth. They thrash about a single victim in a swarm. Anyone who succumbs to the paralyzing poison that seeps from the Wyrmlings' skin or from their bites will be eaten. If they are successful in paralyzing a victim, they will devour him in just four combat rounds. If left to feed they will not attack anyone else. If the party tries to rescue their paralyzed comrade the swarm will retaliate. If a swarm is reduced to four or less HP it will swim away.

White Water Wyrm AC: 3 [16] HD: 5 (24 HP) Move: 4; 16 Swim Attacks: 1 Bite (2d6) Save: 16 Special: Immune to poison; Secretes poison (on contact: -1 to Save, paralyzed 3d6 turns; in water: +1 to Save, paralyzed 2d6 rounds) XP: 600

White Wyrmling Swarm AC: 9 [10] HD: 2 (9 HP) Move: 12 Swim Attacks: 1 Swarm Frenzy (Poison) Save: 18 Special: Poison (Save or paralyzed for 2d6 rounds); Devour paralyzed victim in 4 rounds; Immune to poison XP: 50

The Fungus Forest is an old-school adventure location suitable for low level play, available at DriveThruRPG as a pay-what-you-want .PDF (please download it for free if you can't afford to contribute anything, we want this in the hands of gamers!).  

Fungus Forest (C)2016 by Lee Reynoldson and Carl Nash

Gorilla Art

I recently finished a fun piece of commissioned art, depicting an Experimental Ape from Michael Curtis' upcoming Stonehell 2.  I drew the Ogre Face Arch (the image on the Stonehell tee-shirts) and Coal the Black Bear in the original Stonehell Dungeon, and was very happy to oblige Michael with a new piece.  I never spend any time on artwork unless I have some specific project motivating me, but I always enjoy the hours spent when I do pick up pen and lay it to paper.  I ended up using kind of an unusual technique in this drawing, so I wanted to post about the process here.

I looked over the list of potential illustrations and "Albino Apes with Cybernetic Type Implants" caught my eye.  I introduced bionic chimps and orangutans into my Mutant Future campaign (War Chimps and Warangutans) and they were a big hit with my players.  I have had soft spot for great apes with cybernetic implants ever since. Once I claimed that picture as mine, Michael sent me the following details:

"Experimental apes are double-sized albino gorillas that have two additional arcanitech arms grafted to their bodies below their natural upper limbs. These magical/mechanical arms possess great strength (equal to that of an ogre). These arms also deliver a powerful electrical shock. Any target struck by either of the arcanitech limbs must make a save vs. spells or suffer an additional 1d8 points of damage. Experimental apes are conditioned to be fiercely loyal to the Plated Mage and the Mage-Engineers, and seldom flee from combat. Attempts to charm them rarely succeed and experimental apes gain a +4 bonus to all saving throws against mental domination."

This presented an interesting challenge to me, as the easiest way to depict something as albino is to show it in bright light as mostly white, but I wanted to do a more shadowy drawing since the apes would be encountered underground in a dungeon environment.  I first did a few gorilla studies to get in the mood and shake off any rust from my art muscles.

I wanted to use pen and ink but kept struggling with the fact that I really would need a nice white ink pen and dark paper to draw the image I saw in my head.  Then I hit on the idea of drawing the image with black ink on white paper and reversing it in PhotoShop.  I reversed the larger sketch I had done so far as a quick proof of concept.  Of course the image looks like a negative because the shadowing is in reverse (particularly obvious in the face), but I mostly wanted to see how the fur/hair looked and I liked the effect:

To avoid the appearance of a negative image once I reversed my final piece, I wanted to create a negative image to use as a reference point for my original drawing.  In other words, I would draw a negative image in the first place, so when it was reversed the shading would be correct but all the pen work would be white and the background would be black.  I spent some time collecting various pictures of gorillas, standing gorillas, crouching gorillas, leaping gorillas.  The whole time I was looking for a good reference picture that I could easily insert bionic arms onto, which made the choice a bit more difficult.  I finally settled on an action shot to use as a reference image for the drawing that looks like the gorilla just took a swat at something:

One slight stumbling block was that the left arm of this gorilla was cut off; I could have just winged it, but at this point I had such a large collection of gorilla images that I picked a different image of a different gorilla with its left arm out in a similar fashion and literally just Photoshopped the other gorillas arm over the arm in this picture.  Here is the 2nd gorilla image I used for its left arm:

Next I added a second set of arms by copying the first set of arms, rotating them and moving them down below the armpit.  Then I turned the image into a negative to use as a reference while drawing.  Here is the resulting negative image of a four armed gorilla:

I printed this out, and drawing directly onto the print out, I transformed the lower set of arms into robot arms and added some bionic parts to the torso.  This printout is what I used as a reference while drawing the final image:

My purpose in using a negative reference image while drawing with black ink on white paper was that I would be able to scan and create a negative image of my final drawing; this way the inked fur of the gorilla would be white instead of black.  I hoped this would create the albino effect I was looking for while still allowing me to draw a mostly shadowy, low lit image.  So in other words, I went to some great lengths because I didn't have a good white ink pen and black paper!  My plan was to only reverse the image of the ape itself and leave the robotic arms the way I drew them, since I didn't have a negative reference image for them and also because I thought it would be an easy way to make the metal arms stick out as different from the rest of the ape.  After some work on the drawing I scanned it in to reverse it and see how the process was working - I immediately realized the image I had chosen as a reference image was too shadowed to create an obviously albino ape even if the fur cross-hatching itself was white.  The shadowed areas of the ape were just too dark and made it seem like a normal ape with a bright light shining on some of its fur:

I ended up adding a lot more fur detail than was visible in the original reference image in the chest, stomach and rear leg. I went back in with a pencil in addition to the pen, to lighten up the ape in relation to the background.  Even the most shadowy areas got at least some light pencil fur added.  Several times I called it done, scanned it in and reversed it and decided I still needed to add even more pen and pencil work.  Finally, I decided I had done all I could do and was running the risk of muddying up things if I kept adding more fur.  I added some more pencil shading to the robot arms and scanned it one more time to reverse it and do some more touch up work in Photoshop.  For reference, here is the original (un-reversed) scan of the final drawing and then the reversed image at that point.  I found it very interesting how the entire time I was drawing from the negative image the head just didn't look right, but the second I reversed it, it looked awesome!  My mind had a hard time looking at the original (unreversed) drawing and processing where the eyes were I think.  I just had to trust that I was following an actual negative photo of a gorilla face and as long as I faithfully shadowed where I saw shadow everything would work out okay once I reversed the image.

Original *unreversed* Drawing (pen and pencil)

Negative of the final drawing - before separating the bionic arms out and leaving them unreversed

I carefully went in and selected just the bionic arms to put them in a separate layer of the Photoshop document and leave them un-reversed.  this also allowed me to use a Photoshop effect (Outer Glow) to make it look like the arms were glowing - I was hoping this would evoke the electric shock they could deliver.  I also fixed up the feet and left hand a bit in photoshop since I was unhappy with the way they looked when scanned in (I had made the mistake of drawing an outline around the feet in pen which ended up being a glowing white edge around the toes, and the shading I had done on the left hand I was never happy with).  Finally, I had to figure out what to do about a background.  I didn't really have the time to draw a background (my wife and I recently had our first child, and between working ~55 hours a week and spending as much time with baby Leo as I can, I really don't have any "free" time these days) so I played around with some different things in Photoshop.  I added a gradient to suggest a surface at the bottom, and played around with different ways to crop the image.  I settled on a black circle around the ape, with a slight gradient to gray toward the bottom right, and the ape itself protruding past the background in places to suggest that it was coming out of the page at the viewer.  I know this is kind of cheesy but as soon as I tried it out I really liked the effect it had in this case.  Ultimately I probably didn't save any time versus drawing in a background by hand onto the original drawing and rescanning, because to add the photoshop background I had to carefully carve the entire image out of the black background so it could be on a separate layer from the circle gradient (otherwise I couldn't add the gradient and have the ape look like it was standing on top of it).  This took quite a while as I didn't want it to be a sloppy select job.  I had to go in pixel by pixel in some cases to remove everything except the ink strokes I wanted to keep around the edges.

I have to say though that I am very pleased with the end result - and I can't wait for Stonehell 2 to come out!  Maybe some of you will get to sick one of these bad boys on your players (or meet an untimely demise at their robotic hands if you play on the other side of the DM's screen!).  Final image:

Experimental Ape - Carl Nash 2015 - Pen, Pencil & Photoshop

Carl's Creatures pt.3 - Temple Toad Temon

This is your garden variety six legged toad demon bred by were-toad cultists in the mutating energy of the Huwawa complex.  It is large enough to swallow a man whole or carry two riders if specially constructed saddles are used.

pen and ink by moi

I am going to try statting up one of my 4e creatures in a more old school D&D style here:

Temple Toad Demon

MV: 12 (15' vertical 40' broad jump)
HD:11d8+15
AC: 3 (blessed weapons do normal damage; holy water deals 1d8; 1/2 damage magical weapons, fire and acid; immune to normal weapons, cold, charm, sleep, paralysis, lightning)
MR: 50%
THAC0: 9 (or as a 14 HD creature)
Attacks:  Kick 2d12 (can kick two targets simultaneously if both are behind the toad); Bite 2d12+10 (swallows man sized or smaller targets whole on 25+ dmg - swallowed victims take 4d6+10 acid damage each round, can only use small weapons and do 1/2 normal damage to the toad); Tongue (range 35') +4 to hit; target is pulled to the toad which makes a free bite attack at +5 damage)

Special:
Temple Toad Demons are partially obscured by thick noxious fumes which constantly spill from popping blisters and warts on the toad demon's skin.  Unless holding their breath, attackers in melee range suffer -2 to hit and damage.  At the end of any round that these fumes are breathed a save vs poison must be made or the victim is dazed for 1d4 rounds and cannot take any actions beyond falling to her knees (and retching if a Constitution check is failed).

Stat My Wife's Dinosaurs

My wife doodled some dinosaurs (and a crocodile and pterosaur) at work and I saw the page of doodles laying around.  I asked her if I could post them on this blog and she acquiesced.

Non-commercial rights granted to use these drawings in your personal game.  If you want to stat up and name any of these critters on your own blog, feel free... provided you comment here with the link.  I think Dinosaur 9 could be a magic using dino-assassin turning un-invisible after the attack, or perhaps a chameleon dino mid-paper emulation.  But that's just me.

Emma's Dinosaurs (and a crocodile and a pterosaur)

- All Commercial Rights Reserved - Emma Nash 2013 Pen and Ink - 

Dinosaur 1

Dinosaur 2

Dinosaur 3

Dinosaur 4

Dinosaur 5

Dinosaur 6

Dinosaur 7

Dinosaur 8

Dinosaur 9

Crocodile 1

Pterosaur 1

Snake Man Scientists and Servitors (part one)

Snake Man Scientist:  A four-armed sterile caste that occurred through random mutation shortly after the Prime genome was expressed from a clutch of Temple Servitor eggs on Celestia, the Snake Man Scientists propagate their species by cultivating the mycelial egg mats which hatch under the correct conditions.  Unlike the Primes who emerge from the egg in amphibious tadpole form, Snake Man Scientists burst from their eggs as a tiny version of their adult form.  Several molts are required before they attain their adult size, and the coloration of each of these molts identifies several juvenile stages.

Snake Man Servitor:  The result of many years of controlled breeding and experimentation by the Snake Man Scientists, the Servitors are bipedal, four-armed and covered in brilliant purple and violet scales.  The Servitors are an attempt to recreate the original Temple Servitor created race that served the pan-universal religions of the Celestian temple cultures.  Despite the origins of both Snake Man Primes and Snake Man Scientists as mutant variants of the Temple Servitors and the bloody rebellion that freed them from temple servitude, creating their own servitor race was a high priority of the Snake Men.  Ancient Snake Man Proverb:  Treat others as you would not desire to be treated yourself :)
Servitors are bred with a servile nature and an unfailing belief in reincarnation into Prime form upon death.  Servitors are quite intelligent and serve both as lab assistants to the Snake Man Scientists and ranged fire support on the battle field.  Unlike Snake Man Spawn (which are never outfitted with weapons or armor to denote their inferior status compared to the Prime and the Primelings of their line), Servitors wield blast cannons and wear energy armor into battle.

As a side note I stumbled upon this DeviantArt page by JGood8 which seems to contain drawings of the snake man scientists lifted directly from my cranium.  I figure if he can telepathically invade my mind like that, I can post his drawing here - at least I linked to him!  And I will gladly remove this picture if requested, but I had to post it.  This is EXACTLY what a 3rd molt juvenile Snake Man Scientist looks like, on the left in color:

Snake Man Spawn

Snake Man Primes constantly emit spores that grow into mycelial mats which produce fruiting bodies and ultimately tadpoles that eventually metamorphosize into the adult snake man form (see Snake Man Prime post).  These are referred to as snake man spawn to differentiate them from the Prime of their line.  Snake man spawn are marginalized and live in constant fear of being slaughtered by their own Prime or a Prime of another line.  When a snake man spawn is killed, all line allies within 50 gain a temporary +1 bonus to hit and damage until the end of the encounter (stackable up to +5 for other spawn, no limit to the bonus the Prime of the line can gain in this manner).  For this reason Primes enter battle in the middle of a vast convoy of their spawn, who lend their life energies to the Prime and their clone brothers even in death.  It is not uncommon at all to see a Prime cutting down swathes of his own spawn to get pumped up before a battle.  Spawn are not given battle armor or weapons, relying on the snake man martial arts (heavy on tail sweeps, knockdowns, strangulation, punches and elbows) and their deadly venomous bite in combat.

Snake Man Primeling

Snake man spawn have no rights or protections in snake man society, and are considered only barely above the created Servitor race that assist the snake man scientists.  Only if a spawn survives for long enough to be one of the 100 oldest spawns of the line, one of the next in line for Primehood, does it receive any rights at all.  The 100 oldest spawn of the line are referred to as Primelings and they are never allowed to be in the same vicinity as the Prime of their line, so that if the Prime falls the line will not fall with him.  Primelings begin to develop a tumor in the left shoulder that becomes the fetal twin sister that will awaken upon the Prime transformation.  Even though the twin remains nascent and unconscious until the Prime transformation, they do lend some psionic abilities and protection to the Primelings that sets them apart from the other Spawn of the line.  Primelings are also outfitted with magic armor and weapons in the style of their line. Primelings are trained in the snake man weapon arts by the Prime of another line.  Each line has a traditional relationship with another line that shares the same weapon style, the Primes of each line training the primelings of the other.  Killing a Primeling is considered a mortal insult to the Prime of the line, and a duel to the death between the Primes involved usually follows.

Snake Man Primes

Snake Man Primes are the warrior and dominant caste of snake men.  They only have male snake sexual organs.  There are 7919 lines of Primes, a number that has not changed since the original mutation in a batch of temple servitor eggs on Celestia birthed the species.

Each line has a Prime, the eldest living member of the genetic line.  When the previous Prime is killed (a Prime is effectively immortal and will not die of natural causes) the next oldest member of the line becomes the new Prime.  Only the Prime of each line can reproduce; upon achieving Primehood the four organ tentacles constantly emit spores that grow into a fleshy mycelial mat in the presence of energy and moisture.  These mycelial mats produce fruiting bodies with a water filled pod on top.  Connections through shadow to Shadow DNA (sDNA) cause mycelial tissue in a specialized node to turn into animal flesh and a tadpole is formed which swims up the stalk of the fruiting body and lives in the pod, eating algae blooms in the water if there is light present or pieces of the fruiting body itself which decay and fall off in the absence of light.  A fully grown tadpole bursts from its pod and wriggles to a dark place to metamorphosize into the adult snake man form.  Each snake man is an exact genetic clone of the Prime of its line with whom he shares a telepathic link of unlimited range.

When a snake man becomes Prime a set of genes are activated which cause a dwarf female conjoined twin to grow along the arm and left shoulder.  One eye opens in the palm of the left hand from which the female twin can see.  It takes many years for the newly developing female twin to achieve adulthood, and many more years to fully access the memory of the previous female twins.  A fully mature female twin has full access to the memories of all her clone-sisters before her.  Even newly forming female twins have powerful psychic abilities which add to the battle prowess of the Prime.  When a Prime raises its left hand in battle and the eye of the twin opens, enemies cower and flee.  Over long centuries the female twin's continued growth causes a hunchbacked deformity that saps the physical strength of the Prime even as the psychic powers of the twin continue to expand exponentially.  The lines of the Primes are ranked according to the longevity of the Prime of the line.  The oldest Primes are completely dominated by their female twins in normal life, existing in a kind of vegetable slumber while the twins hone their mental skills.  The 10 oldest primes have not stirred for over 20,000 years.  If roused the combination of deformed male Prime warrior and ancient female psionist would be perhaps one of the deadliest combatants in the multiverse.

Pterosaurs

I have always been fascinated by pterosaurs.  I loved all manner of dino-critters when I was a wee lad, memorizing the names of several bookfulls before I was in kindergarten.  It's probably no surprise that I like to stick dinosaurs into the RPGs that I preside over even if genre and convention would dictate otherwise.  As soon as the PCs in my 4e game crossed the great mountain range and descended into the seemingly endless jungle beyond, they ran into a group of allosaurus.  When they first encountered the volcanic island  at the confluence of the of the major tributary rivers of the Zamonas, they saw winged dinosaurs soaring on the thermals overhead (yes, I know that pterosaurs are not actually dinosaurs, but come on).

I get to geek out on dinosaurs this week in my prep work for my 4e game, because the players time jumped into the past at the end of last session.  As far as I am concerned, if your PCs time travel into the past, there better be some dinosaurs on the other side.  Conveniently I just bought myself a cool book on dinosaurs which I am going to spend the evening looking through, but first I did some internet searches on pterosaurs.

Often Google image searches of real life monsters like pterosaurs or deep sea critters yield some incredible results.  Feast your eyes on this awesomeness (image lifted from this website about pterosaur flight).  It is a dimorphodon.

I ended up sketching the dimorphodon picture in my game notes, along with a Quetzalcoatlus (the largest pterosaur ever discovered, with a wingspan that may have stretched greater than 30').  Then my wife got home from work and colored my pen and ink sketches, so I figured I should upload the end result.

Quetzalcoatlus 

Fire Breathing Pterosaur

I added a bit of a Pelican like pouch to the beak, because this is the ancestor of the dragons of my world.  A colony of chemosynthetic, heat-resistant bacteria live in and coat the inside of the beak, digesting minerals that the Quetzalcoatlus scoops into the beak-pouch and emitting a flammable gas as a by-product which is stored in special sacks along the neck.  The heat-resistant bacteria also coat the gizzard, and the fire-breathing pterosaur swallows live embers and keeps them in the gizzard until blowing them out mixed with the gas to form a fiery blast. 

Dimorphodon

Killer Toothed Pterosaur

My wife thinks her version is colored "much more realistically" than the original artist's.  She does have a lot of experience handling raptors so maybe I will believe her. 

Carl's Creatures pt. 1 - Thraxian Hive Soldier

I collect monster manuals.  I never use them, but I collect them.  Every now and then I might page through one looking for inspiration, but that really doesn't happen often when I am actually running a game, which I have been doing pretty solid now for the last three years.  So why do I buy monster books if I never use them?  I dunno.  I guess I like monsters.

My campaign worlds always end up becoming more and more bizarre through a process of accretion.  I make up some weird ass shit, my players do things I didn't expect, I riff of their actions and come up with more weird ass shit, and pretty soon there are so many original creations in play that the standard D&D monsters just don't get into the game anymore.

I make up at least 95% of the creatures that my players encounter in game, be it Mutant Future or D&D 4e (the two games I am currently running).

I end up scribbling out crude illustrations for most of my creations, and I thought it might be fun to share some of them with y'all.

- Disclaimer -  I am making no effort to present these according to the standard stat block for either Mutant Future or 4e.  I use THAC0 for my Mutant Future critters, at least in part because I don't use HD (instead writing down a HP range when creating creatures).  I may not use the correct syntax for the 4e creations.

Carl's Creatures

part one

Thraxian Hive Soldier 


(for Mutant Future or any pre-3e version of D&D)

(I love this picture, because it started out as a quick sketch so the players could get a better idea of what the alien bugs looked like, and then one of the players at the table doodled on it and shaded it.  Apparently, Thraxian Hive Soldiers are polka-dotted!)

HP: 100-150
AC: 2
THAC0: 9
Movement: 150'
Attacks: 4 or 1
Damage: 2d6 x4 (tentacle arms) or 4d12 (bite) or by weapon (see below)
Saves: Level 12

Thraxian Hive Soldiers can survive in a vacuum without sustenance for years, if that gives you a better picture of these tough son-of-a-bugs.  Although fond of and brutally effective in hand to tentacle combat, Hive Soldiers also carry disruptor pulse weapons.  These resemble a large circular shield grasped with all four tentacles (these contain an extremely dense and heavy power core, and each weapon weighs nearly 200 pounds!), concave side facing the target, which emits pulses that molecularly destabilize the target.

Disruptor Pulse Weapons: Range 1000', half damage to 4000', damage: 5d6, special: Save vs. Energy Attacks or the target suffers an additional 5d6 damage at the beginning of its next turn.  This continues until the save is made.  When not in use these weapons are slung over the back of the first body-segment of the Hive Soldier.

Little is known of Thraxian Hive Society; it is unclear if the bugs are telepathic, or use scent and chemical markers to communicate, or if they are simply so single-minded of purpose and unified in goal that they can act with incredible synchronized precision without any need of communication at all.