Fungus Forest Reviews

The first few reviews for the Fungus Forest pay-what-you-want adventure location are starting to roll in.

Needles at "Swords & Stitchery" gave a very detailed and enthusiastic review.  I loved all the ideas presented in the review about how to integrate the Fungus Forest into different genres - great stuff!  You should read the whole review but the last paragraph has a nice summation:

"So why all of the serious fungal talk about the Fungus Forest adventure? Well because it happens to include a full OSR monster tool kit for creating your own fungus monsters and encounters;"Ready Reference Appendices: Formatted in black and white with printable margins to enable home printing for easy in-game reference; Appendix I - Random Fungus Generator; Appendix II - Magic Mushrooms of the Fungus Forest; Appendix III - Fungus Forest Bestiary (30+ unique entries); Appendix IV - Printable Fungus Forest Map." This makes inserting the Forest and its monsters into your old school campaigns a snap! Do I think you should grab this adventure? Yes! Today,now, and start using one of the most underappreciated types of horrors for your game today. A hearty five out of five. "

A second (much shorter) review was posted on DriveThruRPG by user "Zero C":

"I am vey impressed! I picked this up for a look, even though I haven't played OSR rules since the 1990's. I discovered this 71 page adventure site is well-written, well-formatted, and nicely illustrated."

But don't take Zero C and Needle's words on it - download the Fungus Forest and see for yourself!  "Pay what you want" means you are welcome to download for free if you can't contribute anything.  I guarantee it is a great value for the money :)  Full color cartography, art and layout including "The Ring of the Restless Dead" from cave C13 (pen & ink drawing by yours truly colored in Photoshop):

Fungus Forest - Pay What You Want

The Fungus Forest is available now as a Pay What You Want .PDF on DriveThruRPG.com.  Check it out and download now!

The Fungus Forest is an OSR Compatible adventure location designed for use with Original, Basic and Advanced Editions of the world’s most popular fantasy role-playing game (and their modern simulacra).

Pay what you want for this sprawling 100+ cave complex suitable for low level play.  Please download for free if you cannot pay anything; we want this thing in the hands of gamers, not mouldering away on a DriveThru bookshelf.

Features:

• Unique creatures and magical items, including six feuding Fey factions that will try to pit the party against their rival factions.
• Compatible with most editions of the game; stats are provided in a simple, system-agnostic format with both ascending and descending armor class listed. 
• Maps: 2-Page overview map spread of the caverns; four quadrant maps of sections of the caverns; inset map of the Tiny Tunnels of the Dark Fey; printable black & white single page version of the overview map.
• Full Color art and layout.  
• Ready Reference Appendices: Formatted in black and white with printable margins to enable home printing for easy in-game reference; Appendix I - Random Fungus Generator; Appendix II - Magic Mushrooms of the Fungus Forest; Appendix III - Fungus Forest Bestiary (30+ unique entries); Appendix IV - Printable Fungus Forest Map.
• Bookmarked & Hyperlinked: Fully bookmarked .PDF with a clickable Table of Contents
• Two Formats Available: 2-Page Spread or Single Page .PDF formats available for download.
• Print Edition Coming Soon: The Fungus Forest is currently .PDF only but a print edition is in the works, loaded with more art!

Thanks to osrcompatible.org for the "OSR Compatible" declaration, used under a Creative Commons CC-BY license.

OSR Logo by Stuart Robertson used under a Creative Commons CC-BY License

Fungus Forest (upcoming release)

I am getting close to releasing a product that started kicking and clawing its way to freedom way back in 2009.  I drew a map for the now defunct megadungeon.net project and Lee Reynoldson made an awesome key for the map.  We have kicked around the idea of publishing it in a few different forms over the years but in 2016 the stars aligned and I finally got off my butt and started tackling the editing, art and layout.  Several intensive weeks of work later, we are so close I can taste it!

This is a big project; there are over 100 keyed locations on the map, with 101 unique key entries (some entries covering multiple caves).  Lee wrote a really terrific text for low-level play; each of the Fey factions that live in the magical Fungus Forest will try to pit the party against their rival Fey factions.  Every creature in the Fungus Forest is a unique creation of Lee's (which is a big selling point in my opinion); the Bestiary in the appendices contains nearly 40 new creatures.  And of course, there are tons and tons of magical mushrooms.  You can never have too many magic mushrooms.  It took a LOT of editing work to get the sprawling original 60 page Google Document print-ready, from making sure all stat blocks and abbreviations were standardized to compiling the appendices and of course going over the text with a fine-toothed grammar comb.

I also wanted to make individual quadrant maps in addition to the main overview map, and of course I wanted more art than the couple few monster pictures I drew... so I talked my wife into doodling some awesome mushroom sketches in pen and ink, which I am coloring in PhotoShop.

On top of that, it turns out that doing interior layout is WAY more time consuming than I ever imagined.  I have learned a ton about Adobe InDesign throughout this process and I am very pleased with the way things are shaping up.  A few sample spreads (not necessarily final layout but probably pretty close on these particular pages):

Oh good, we are in the Tomb of Horrors

I just realized that my character in Carter's Lands of Ara campaign is knee deep in the Tomb of Horrors right now.  I have never played or read the classic Tomb of Horrors 1e module, but I have certainly encountered plenty of references to the granddaddy of all deathtrap dungeons.  Well imagine my surprise when I finally tracked down a copy and had a strong sense of déjà vu as soon as I began to look at the map and read the key.  I recognized the long tiled hallway to an archway filled with green mist, and the giant skeletons that popped out of chests, but just to make sure I flipped a few pages... yup, there was the room with spheres on the walls and the room with the four-armed gargoyle statue with one arm broken off.

Our party has been exploring the frickin' tomb of horrors!  No wonder we have been frustrated by that dang dungeon!  We are chasing an ancient vampire, or possibly his not quite as ancient descendant vampire, and this dungeon below the sewers of Kaladar is his home.

I stopped reading the module and had only skimmed it up till that point, but somehow just knowing that we are in the Tomb of Horrors is a mild spoiler.  We had already realized that we needed to proceed with extreme caution in this place, so I don't think it will cause any difference in gameplay.  Still, the knowledge that we teleported ourselves deep into an  unknown section of the tomb of horrors and are trying to work our way back out to an area we have already explored is terrifying!  

Hallucinating Jungle Dogs - Jivaro Tribe pt.2

Dogs are extremely important to the Jivaro, for aid in hunting, protecting the garden crops from rodents, and protecting the house from intruders by warning barks.  The Jivaroan term for dog, Naiwa, is the same word used for jaguar. The Jivaro received dogs as a gift from nunui (earth spirits), so they fall into the women's realm.

When a new litter of pups is born, one of the women of the house sleeps with the bitch and litter to keep the puppies from being possessed by a malevolent spirit.  The woman will breast feed the puppies along with the bitch.  When the puppies mature, they are given the most powerful hallucinogen the Jivaro know (Datura sp.) so the dogs can find a beneficial spirit in their visions to give them power and possibly even make them invulnerable to normal injury and death (although they can still be a victim of sorcery).  

If a man wants to take a dog hunting, he asks one of his wives to accompany him to handle the dog.  The woman, through her connection to nunui, is better able to control the dog and also brings good fortune to the hunt, silently singing to nunui for success in getting game.

At night the dogs are leashed to the bed in the women's side of the house and their slightest barking results in the household head seizing his weapons and preparing to defend the family.

Jivaroan Dog/ Dog of Nunui (other statistics as normal dog)

(variable power depending on the strength of the spirit acquired during Datura hallucination)

Roll 1d6:  1-2: Weak Spirit, 3-5: Normal Spirit, 6: Powerful Spirit

Weak Spirit Dog

HD:2

AC:4 (15)

Bite: 1d6+1

Normal Spirit Dog

HD:3

AC:3 (16)

Bite: 1d6+2

Powerful Spirit Dog

HD: 4

AC: 2 (17)

Bite: 1d8+2

Special: Immune to non-magical weapons and normal injury

Evil Spirit Dog / Demon Dog (Iwanci Naiwa)

Occasionally, despite the best efforts of the women, a puppy is possessed by a malevolent spirit.  In this case, the dog will run away into the jungle and seek to cause harm to humans.

HD: 4
AC: 2 (17)
Bite: 1d8+2 +poison (save vs. death/ CON save DC 12 or reduced to 0 HP)
Special Abilities: immune to non-magical weapons and normal injury; invisibility (twice a day); change self (once a day - can appear as a human or jaguar, in human guise can communicate in a gruff, barking voice); move silently and pass without trace (at will)

Nunui and the Bloodsucking Manioc Garden - Jivaro Tribe pt.1

The Jivaro (headhunters of shrunken head infamy) live in the foothills of the Andes in the western Amazon.  I will come back to their head shrinking, magical soul possessing ways in a later post, but today I want to talk about their vampiric manioc gardens.

The Jivaro's land starts where the mountain waterfalls give way to tributary streams and rivers that are unnavigable because of rapids, and ends where the rivers begin to flow more slowly and can be traveled by canoe.  They live in scattered houses, each containing a polygynous nuclear family and occasionally a married daughter and step-son who have no children.  Each house is situated in the middle of a large cleared out garden, on a hillock near a stream.

The garden is the province of the women of the house; the men clear the garden by felling giant trees (which in turn take down many smaller trees as all the trees are connected through their canopies by vines) but the women weed, plant and maintain the garden.  The primary food crop is sweet manioc, grown for its large tubers.  Manioc is not only the primary food, it is also provides the exclusive drink for adults and weaned children - the Jivaro drink manioc beer in prodigious quantities (3-4 gallons a day for adult males, 1-2 gallons a day for adult females, ~ 1/2 gallon for 9-10 year old children).  The beer is typically weak, as it is usually drunk before it has fermented long enough to reach maximum alcoholic content (which takes 4-5 days).

The Jivaro also believe that the manioc plant has the innate desire and ability to suck the blood from any person touching it.  To protect themselves and their families from this ability of the manioc, the women turn to a type of earth spirit called Nunui.  Nunui appear as 3' tall, very fat women wearing black dresses.  Nunui are responsible for pushing plants up out of the ground and plant growth in general.  Nunui like to dance in clearings in the forest, and often many of them will come to dance in a newly cleared garden.  However, there is usually only one nunui associated with each garden once it has been planted.  The nunui stays underground during the day, and at night dances in turn with each manioc plant.  Nunui demand a well-weeded garden to give them the room they need to dance with the manioc.  The women also sing special songs to nunui, to give them respect and warn them when they are coming early in the morning to the garden to avoid frightening nunui away.

The female head of household will also hide three magic stones (unworked pieces of red jasper), known as the stones of nunui or the stones of manioc, in the garden - these magical stones are the babies of the nunui and ensure that the nunui will stay in the garden, the crop will remain plentiful and the women can call upon the nunui to make the manioc drink only the blood of trespassing enemies.  The woman gets the stones of nunui after a nunui reveals their location to the woman in a hallucinogen-induced vision.  Each vision only reveals the location of one such stone, which the woman must then immediately go out to find and place in the garden.

Vampiric Manioc
Anyone moving through a stand of manioc must save vs. spells each round (or make a CON save DC12 for 5th edition types) or take 1d6 damage from blood loss.  The plants are otherwise normal plants and can be easily cut down or uprooted.  Carrying a cut branch of manioc (or sticking it in one's belt) grants a +2 to this save.

Stones of Nunui/Stones of Manioc
Three pieces of magical red jasper.  Detect Magic will reveal the form of a baby inside them.  They are the babies of nunui and serve both to tie nunui to a garden and also as a conduit which allows their possessor to tap into the power of nunui to control the vampiric properties of manioc (and possibly ask other boons of nunui as well).  The women that tend the garden and the husband of the house are rendered immune to the manioc's blood drain if there are stones of nunui in the garden and the women regularly sing this magical song:

Don't suck the blood of my husband

And also don't suck the blood of my daughter.

When you want to suck blood,

Suck the blood of my enemies.

When my husband comes, 

he will look very beautiful and very clear.

But when our enemies come,

They will come very pale

And in the form of demons.

And you will know

Who will die,

Who will die.

And when they enter this garden,

They will have their blood sucked.

All, all I can call,

Even the plantain itself.

I am a woman of Nunui.

Note that children are not excluded; they are instructed not to play in the garden lest their blood be drained!

Bororo - Tribe

Bororo Indians of the Amazon

I am currently reading Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strausse, coming to this book after reading his Mythologiques series, which introduced me to the Bororo.  English language Wikipedia is particularly uninformative on the Bororo, but I found some other websites and even some full text scholarly articles online that filled in some of the gaps from the Levi-Strausse reading.  I have an ongoing Google Document (shared below) that I am using as a research file, dumping links, sources and information into it as I read (I cite the source above the information gathered from that source -  some information  is paraphrased and some is direct quotation from the source material with some deletions/abridgment).  Here is the link: Bororo Research Document 

Quick RPG Takeaways:

The division of each Bororo village into 8 clans, four each in two opposing moieties (Cera and Tugare) makes for ready made inter-village tensions and adventure opportunities.  Despite a traditional hierarchy of the clans, each clan negotiates its own fortunes in each particular village and strives to gain more power in the form of access to new magic and clan roles.  I particularly like how each clan has unique/proprietary decorative ornaments and magical markings to use on weapons and as body paint.  I see each clan pattern bestowing a minor magical property onto the decorated spear, ornament or body (e.g. +1 to AC; +1 to hit and damage; double normal weapon range; +2 to STR; +2 to DEX; +1 attacks/2 rounds; cast a cantrip 3x/day; cast a 1st level spell once/day; etc.).  Bororo believe in reincarnation as part of a complicated transmigration of souls (Bororo souls also pass into animal bodies after death and before returning in reincarnation to a new human body).  Each Bororo shares the name of and is thought to be a partial reincarnation of a dead ancestor.  I think encountering "normal" animals with a Bororo transmigrating spirit could be fun (perhaps human intelligence and one or two minor magical powers for these animals), and then meeting the same spirit reborn into a young Bororo could be good fuel for gaming.

Bororo Encounters:

PCs will either encounter the Bororo out in the jungle/on the river, or at the Bororo village. The Bororo spend more than half their time on average outside of the village.  

Roll 2d6: 2-7: Encountered in Village; 8-12: Outside of Village  (Wet Season add +1 to the encounter roll during the beginning or end of the wet season, add +3 during the peak; during the peak of the wet season bororo spend most of their time on higher ground away from the village)

8-12+ Results: Outside of Village (more common in wet season)

• 7-8: Hunting (more men)
• 9-10: Farming/Gathering (more women and children)
• 11: On the River (more men)
• 12+: Walking through the forest to a faraway destination (equal sexes/ages if visiting friends/relatives, more men if raiding).  

Clans encountered outside the village = one or two of eight unique clans, each clan with its own: proprietary names; tribal roles; magical decorations/signs on weapons and utility tools; magical stories and songs; personal adornments/body paint.  

# Encountered outside the village = 2d6 (6's explode, add +1 clan per 12 encountered, e.g. three clans represented if 13-24 Bororo are encountered outside the village, 4 clans if 25-36 encountered, etc.)

Bororo Village

(The following largely after Levi-Strausse):

A typical village plan:


The village will have at least one hut representing all eight clans, and it is more common to have several huts per clan, representing sub-lineages of the clan.

# Houses per Clan (d6): 1: 1; 2-3:2, 4-5:3, 6:4

# Encountered per House: 2d6 (3d6 during village feast or clan ceremony)

Quick Village Population guide: Large: 300 Average: 150  Small: 100

The village is divided in two by an imaginary line between the Cera moiety to the north and the Tugare moiety to the south. Clan houses form a ring around the men's house in the center of the village. The central plaza is the bororo. Many important rituals are regularly performed in the bororo, especially funerary rites which can continue for months after a death.

The four Cera clans are arranged across the north end of the village circle, from east to west as follows: badegaba cobugiwu (upper chiefs); bokodori (large armadillo); ki (tapir); badegaba cebgiwu (lower chiefs).  

The four Tugare clans are arranged from west to east as follows: iwaguddu (the azure jay); arore (larva); apibore (acuri palm tree); paiwe or paiwoe (howler monkey). 

Moieties and clans are exogamous, matrilineal and matrilocal.  When a man marries he crosses the line separating the two moieties and goes to live in the hut belonging to his wife’s clan.  But in the men’s house he continues to have his place in the sector assigned to his own clan and moiety (his mother’s clan/moiety). The men’s house internal arrangements mirror the village at large - to the north the Cera men and to the south the Tugare.  

Clans are divided into subclans and lineages.  Each clan is ranked and certain positions in the village can only be held by members of particular clans (e.g. Village chiefs must belong to a clan of the Cera moiety).  Each clan has unique emblems, privileges and taboos related to the technique and style of manufactured objects, as well as proprietary ceremonies, songs, proper names and access to medicinal plants (e.g. Tobacco is associated with Bokodori clan, other aromatic plants smoked in a similar fashion include an anonacea controlled by the Paiwe clan).

Men cannot talk to women of the other moiety in public - even husband and wife would not bandy about in public, only being seen together in public when they leave the village to hunt, fish or gather together (which is seen as private).  

 Clothing/Personal Appearance:  Men are usually naked except for penis sheath, but sometimes (and always on festive occasions) wear elaborate ornaments made of fur, multicolored feathers, or bark painted with various designs.  Women wear a slip made from white bark (black when they are unwell) and a high girdle/corset, also made of bark, but dark in color.  Feminine ornaments consist mostly of cotton straps colored with red urucu, and of pendants and necklaces made from jaguar’s fangs or monkey’s teeth, worn only on feast days.

The Rise and Fall of Hakken Aksa-Dak

I died on Monday in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord campaign.  Not the usual haul-the-body-out-and-get-raised kind either.  I got the wrong end of the old school Teleport spell and materialized some undisclosed number of feet straight down into solid rock.  I have been thinking about it a little and I don't think there would be any body to speak of or recoverable remains even if an attempt was made to excavate for it.  Just little specks of blood and flesh and bone embedded in solid stone.

In many ways this was a very fitting way for Hakken Aksa-Dak (a.k.a. Dak), the Steve Buscemi of dwarves, to meet his end.  I tried to roleplay Dak's low wisdom (6) and decent intelligence by constantly coming up with risky harebrained schemes and throwing myself into any possible trap head first.

 Way back in Stonehell in our earlier adventures this resulted in Dak being blinded by poison gas from a trap.  Not deterred, I removed the container of poison gas from the trap and used it and the fact that I was already blind as a weapon.  Dak spent several sessions blind in Stonehell; when the party encountered monsters they would point me toward them and I would charge ahead, screaming bloody murder and releasing blinding gas.  It turned out to be a remarkably effective tactic.

More recently the party has been exploring a vampire's lair in the deepest dungeons underneath the free city of Kaladar.  Confronted with a glowing red magical archway, I had my dwarven compatriot Yor (Yor for a better tomorrow!) tie a rope around me and I went through.  I was expecting deadly poison gas at the minimum because I had tried this tactic in an earlier section of this lair when confronted with an archway of glowing green mist and it turned out to be a save vs. death gas (luckily I saved).  Instead what happened is all my gear right down to my beard ring of protection was sucked from my body and I had some hazy sense of a misty cavern that I was being tugged to, and then Yor pulled me back out of the archway (naked).

I did fight an encounter completely naked and wielding a borrowed hand ax that session.

Losing all my gear rankled a bit, but we could not figure out a couple puzzle rooms in the dungeon and were stuck... unless we wanted to go through that damned archway and end up naked on the other side with no gear.

Last session I had the bright idea of bringing a high enough level wizard to have the Teleport spell memorized down to the arch to send him through (naked).  The idea was he would quickly examine the area that the arch led to, trying to mark it for a future Teleport destination, then Teleport out to safety.  We persuaded/conned NPC Tim the Enchanter into this duty; he was eager to make up for the fact that his master in the wizard's council had recently been revealed by the party to be a balrog!  Poor Tim walked through the gate, ended up in a misty cavern, and was attacked by something he didn't see which drained a level before he could Teleport out!

Once back at the wizard's tower Tim and four other high level wizards scried the misty cavern with a crystal ball for an hour until they had a reasonably good lock on it to Teleport the party down there.  There was a 10% chance of a missed destination "Low" result, which basically meant instant death in this situation, and we knew that.  The "High" result wasn't as big of a risk as the misty cavern was quite large; in fact, two party members did arrive 10' in the air and dropped to the ground.  While 10% chance of unraisable death is pretty iffy odds to be putting the whole party through, for once everyone else seemed ready to join in Dak's foolish plan.

 Remarkably, three out of the eight total party members that the wizards Teleported down arrived too low and instantly died.  Dak, Arthurius (follower of Innominus the cleric), and Muckley (dwarf henchman of Dak) all met their ends in this unceremonious manner.  A vampire attacked the remaining party members and was promptly destroyed in one round by Yor (thanks to his nightly d30 roll, his girdle of giant strength and his ancient Noffellian blade Mellion).  The vampire turned out to be a lacky, not the vampire master we had been seeking.

Dak is Dead.  Long live Flipwayter, Dak's trusty follower, who shall pick up the mantle.  Hopefully the party finds the real frickin' vampire and all Dak's old gear so Flipwayter can really keep the name of Dak alive.  In particular, Dak's family heirloom refilling flask of dwarven whiskey will not go unused... as Dak would have wanted.

I am looking forward to next session, a quick turnaround (for us) as we are meeting up again next Monday.  Dak may have died, but his hairbrained scheme did get the party down to the lowest section of the dungeon which we had not been able to access before. As long as we kill the vampire, get the loot and find a way out it will not have been for vain!  If we happen to save Ara from demonic invasion (another story) in the process, so much the better.

200 Word Sorcerer

I submitted an entry to David Schirduan's 200 Word RPG Challenge.  I already revised my submission once and David posted the revision, and since then I have revised it a couple more times - I am not going to keep resubmitting my revisions, at this point I am mostly just messing around with it because it is a fun exercise in conciseness.  What can I take out and what can I add.  Having read many of the other submissions I have no illusions about winning anything (nor are the prizes particularly exciting) but the process of writing a 200 word class/supplement was a great challenge and got my creative juices flowing. Some of the entries are pretty impressive in that they both give novel rules without reference to a common starting point like D&D (which I relied on) and also are very evocative in describing a setting or milieu.

I don't think my D&Dish sorcerer hack stands up well to some of the other entries, but I still like it. My latest edit is a .PDF with full color background image that I created of a burning hand / embers.

Temple of the Dragocroc - Isometric Graphing

All hail Dragocroc!  I hadn't been exposed to isometric graph paper until I saw some Dyson Logos posts that inspired me to check it out.  I found a website with printable isometric graph paper and printed some out.  I present the Temple of the Dragocroc in isometric pseudo-3D view. This started out as doodling without a plan, and as consequence I have gone past the edge of the graph grid in a few places.  I am going to keep working on the original drawing but I also scanned it in and messed around with it a bit in Photoshop just for kicks (Photoshopped scans at bottom of post, unaltered scan of work in progress immediately below).

Work in progress - this is what I have done with pencil, pen and marker so far (no Photoshop)

There is 10' of liquid demonblood flooding the inside of the walled structure. I hinted at the towers and walls extending down past the interior surface area to suggest that it was a liquid surface, but this will be more obvious when I finish up the outer walls and color in the surface of the blood. I am thinking of using colored pencil for the demonblood surface to get some good color swirls going on.  The blood spills out of the mouth of each of the Dragocroc statues down past the tower level immediately below them, landing on the third level up from the bottom, flowing through a channel system to waterfalls that cascade down each face of the tower.

The four Dragocrocs that make up part of the 5th tier of the temples are stone statues inlaid with jade mosaic.  The red eyes are unnaturally large glowing rubies (single rubies each ~10' long, each 1/8 of the heart of the real Dragocroc (powerful demon bound below).  If the ruby eyes are replaced in the heart of the real Dragocroc,  the demon will arise, drink its stolen blood to restore its power and utterly destroy the entire structure and surrounding countryside before embarking on a murderous rampage.) 

The only entrances to the structure are on the fourth and fifth tiers.  Archways open into the tower face on the fourth tier below each Dragocroc mouth.  Each archway leads to a staircase that ascends the inside wall of the tower, giving access to the fifth tier and the walkways on top of the Dragrocroc statues.  Open archways at the base of the tail-spire give access to an empty stone room with a sacrificial alter in the center and an engraved circular trench around its perimeter, the Blood Circle.  The blood of approximately 20 human sacrifices is required to fill the circle.  If the sacrifices are performed under the light of a full moon, the Blood Circle can be used as a powerful summoning and binding focus and a teleportation circle (giving access to the dungeon levels inside the blood-drained and bound Dragocroc demon imprisoned below).  20 ritual spellcasters are required to use the circle for summoning and binding, and 20 sacrifices is the minimum needed for this use.  Every multiple of 20 sacrifices beyond the first 20 increases the power of the circle when used for summoning and binding.  Priests of Dragocroc carry amulets which are linked to the Blood Circle.  Chaotic individuals who hold an Amulet of Dragocroc can sacrifice 1d8 HP of blood to the medallion to teleport without error (including all personal gear and up to two other individuals, unwilling individuals can save to resist) from unlimited range to the circle on the 5th tier.  There is a 1 in 6 chance every time anyone who is not a Priest of Dragocroc picks up an Amulet of Dragocroc that the amulet attacks as an 8HD monster for 1d8 damage and teleports the victim to the circle (save to resist).  

The real Dragocroc is a powerful demon, summoned and bound by a cult which stole its blood to power their magic.  Priests of Dragocroc draw their spellcasting ability from the stolen blood.  They must drink fresh Dragocroc blood once between full moons (at the full moon) or permanently lose all spellcasting ability and go insane (1 in 6 chance of also becoming a were-dragocroc, transforming into a humanoid dragocroc under the light of the full moon, filled with a burning desire to destroy the Priests of Dragocroc).  Any Priest of Dragocroc who suffers this fate will be killed on sight by the priesthood.   Only fresh blood spilling directly out of a Dragocroc statue mouth works, so every full moon every Priest of Dragocroc returns to the temple to drink from the waterfalls.  The potent demon blood provides two extra benefits to the priesthood while powering magic; all damaging spells do an extra 1d8 damage and all undead under the control of a Priest of Dragocroc have +1d8 HP, +1 to initiative and +1 to hit and damage.

Here are two stages of me messing around with this in Photoshop - I don't like the effect and will finish the piece with pen, markers and colored pencil.