Two Men Down

Roderick and Claude the Ranger dropped yesterday at the hands of slime hounds in the catacomb levels below the sewers of Kaladar in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord Lands of Ara campaign.  While these were two NPCs, followers of Vivuli the assassin and Uncle Junkle the bard, the loss still hit hard.  The party was a bit stunned, actually, because we completely underestimated the pack of seven dogs that attacked us in the tunnels.

Seven dogs covered in filth and disease didn't exactly strike fear into our hearts after disposing of three green dragons and a half dozen winged Balrogs over the last two sessions.  We did have a string of terrible rolls, including several critical fumbles resulting in dropped weapons, as well as Innominus rolling a 6 for damage on his nightly d30 roll in an area attack that hit all the dogs in the surprise round before combat proper started.

Still, we figured we were going to dispatch these critters handily and I even advised Innominus against blowing a Bless or Prayer spell on the second round because I was sure these things couldn't have many hit points left after they all took 6 damage on the first round.

That all changed in a heartbeat when they started spewing acidic bile at us, scoring a hit on Roderick that did 35 damage!  We were all sitting around silently digesting that tidbit when Carter asked us, so did that kill him?  35 damage?  Did it kill the 5th level thief with 5d6 HP?   Yes, yes it did.

The vicious Arandish Slime Hound

Nothing like a 35 damage breath attack to put the fear of the lord in a bunch of 5th through 7th level Labyrinth Lord characters!  Plus the dogs turned out to have HP in the 30's.

While Roderick and Claude are going to be raised, they are out of commission for two weeks game time - which could well be a year of real life time at the rate we are going - the last 4 of our game sessions have only covered three days in game time I believe and we meet every other week at the soonest.

Playing with the expectations of veteran players is a great way to introduce a little fear into a game.  I don't know if Carter made these slime dogs up or if somebody else did (their breath weapon had a recharge mechanic which makes me think these are someone else's creation - that is just too 4e for Carter) but either way they were an awesome foe because they seemed like something in the 2 to 3 HD range (they were described as normal dogs but covered in slime and disease as they had been living in the sewers) but turned out to be quite a handful indeed!

I am actually thinking about house-ruling the Labyrinth Lord / Old School style "you are out of commission for 2 weeks following a raise - 1 HP - cannot fight or undertake any strenuous activity" Raise Dead into my 4e game.  I have managed to kill a PC quite a few times in that game but then they get raised with no real consequence at all.  2 weeks of game time is simultaneously not that outlandish of a penalty for coming back from the dead, and a real nuisance for a game like mine in which all kinds of stuff is happening outside of the PCs control and will continue to happen during the 2 weeks that a player is out of commission.

Of course the PCs in my 4e game are all experienced time travelers at this point so that might throw a little wrinkle into this :)

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).

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh

I am purchasing a Cthulhu mug as a reward to myself for sticking through a rough first year laboring for a new company and getting a work from home position that should both be more lucrative and allow me more time to geek out on D&D.  Cheers!

I already own a raven mug made by Ziggy which is among my most cherished positions, being capable of imbuing stout beers with magical properties (I have proven this on many occasions through a rigorous and very scientific method).

I can hardly wait to get my paws on the Cthulhu mug.  My only question is what sacrificial victim shall provide the blood for my first offering?

As a side note, a really cool campaign idea could be lifted from my conversation with Ziggy's shipping clerk:

"...surreal cabalistic magic, swashbuckling Gypsies and noblemen, overly principled merchants, and incestuous Moorish lesbians, all intricately wrapped up in stories within stories..."


For a frame of reference, my conversation with Ziggy's shipping clerk wherein I "haggle" for a $5 increase in price:

• Kevin Runey
  

  
  

  Hey Carl, here is a second Cthulhu mug which is actually larger and studlier than the one that we put on Etsy, and just as fine in general quality. (Ziggy just snapped this picture with her iPad.) If you like, we could just sell this one to you locally (without the shipping charge) and let someone further afield order the one that's already posted. If you want, I could take some higher-res pictures and email them to you, or show it to you in person downtown or somewhere.
• 

  10:13pm
  

  Carl Nash
  

  
  

  I want! I want! I will take not a penny less than $35 for this larger and studlier version. What is more convenient - a home invasion or a Kiva pickup?
• 

  11:37pm
  

  Kevin Runey
  

  
  

  I suppose whichever is more convenient for you. And we do like your style of haggling—how can we resist? Something like that shows up in The Saragossa Manuscript. Ever see that one? It's a very trippy black-and-white film, set in Napoleonic Spain, based on a contemporaneous Polish novel, with dialogue in Polish and English subtitles available. Supposedly it was one of Jerry Garcia's favorite movies. Hey, with surreal cabalistic magic, swashbuckling Gypsies and noblemen, overly principled merchants, and incestuous Moorish lesbians, all intricately wrapped up in stories within stories, how can you lose?

Check out Ziggy's Etsy store, she is awesome and her creations are magical.

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.

Snake Man Biology Pt. 1 - Introduction

I introduced the Snake Men in my 4e campaign in Session Numero Uno through the wild tales of a swamp trapper who told of a "city made of gold" that he and his friends had discovered, which he claimed was inhabited by snake men.

A handful of sessions later the party was in an alien spacecraft made of pure energy and they were accessing the data logs of several linked satellites in stable planetary orbit.  In the course of observing several billion years of planetary formation they also caught a relative blink-of-the-eye in time highlighted by a meteorite slamming into the exact center of the formation of alien spacecraft, forming the depression now filled by the swamp.  Yes, the many minareted and domed city which stood on the meteorite was made of gold. A circular rocky ridge in the center of the swamp, thrown up by the impact, conceals the city of gold. Mushroom life sprouted across the meteorite shortly after the crash, and from the mushrooms sprang tadpoles which metamorphosized into snake men.  To the party's horror they discovered that all of the humanoid races of the planet had their origin as experiments released by the snake men scientists into the swamp.

When the party thought to look for the visual evidence of the swamp trampers finding the city, they observed two snake men meet the three trappers on the top of this ring.  A snake man held up its hand and two of the trappers disintegrated into dust.  The third trapper soiled himself as the other snake man grasped him solidly for a moment before releasing him.  The party's informant fled promptly.

Curious, the party kept investigating that moment in time through satellite footage and discovered that the outbreak of the white death plague could be reliably dated to shortly after the return of this swamp trapper to the settlement.

Several sessions later, the party had crossed the mountains and was exploring the verdant rainforest beyond.  They found an artifact of the snake man, a flying laser shield meant to be worn by a snake man warrior.  This shield revealed that the snake men had four small organs that could interact with four circular depressions on the inside of the shield, like four sensitive finger-tentacles that stick out of the snake man torso.

Using ritual magic to look into the shield's past, they watched its creation by snake man scientists, all of whom had four arms.  The scientists tended to mats of mycelial tissue which they grew in molds in the shape of the shield and many other items (I just realized that the use of the word "mold" in the sense of a 3-dimensional negative shape that you pour or push a substance into to form a sculpture could be confusing when the substance that fills the mold is mycelium!).  When the molds were full of mature mycelium the snake  man scientists activated a complex arrangement of pearls and gemstones that transferred energy through shadow and turned the mycelium into many different substances, gold in the case of the enchanted flying shield.  The discovery of this shield was the first step in the party's current understanding of how to manipulate energy through shadow, the foundation of a true understanding of magic.

When the party began to piece together the history of the city states of the great human civilization on the other side of the mountains they realized that the influence of the snake men had crossed that great natural barrier long ago.  They discovered the fingerprints of the snake men in the blood tattoo magic that raised their hackles.

Even Manu Jablitu, the ancient technomancer lich who has become number one on the party's most wanted list for quite a few sessions in a row now, was first encountered because his services were procured by the snake men to solve a dimensional instability.  A while back the players in my Mutant Future campaign discovered an alien installation in a strange dimension that had a machine in it containing the entire 4e probaverse in a controlled singularity.  A player running PCs in both campaigns looked at the machine and infamously said "I'll flip some switches".  I asked him to roll d100 and he rolled a critical failure "01".  As a result, the machine began powering down and the stars started going out in my 4e campaign and many monumental constructions of the ancients that drew their power from the stars no longer worked.  The snake men were pissed and Manu Jablitu was brought in to fix things, but interestingly the 4e party managed to stabilize the probaverse without resorting to reprogramming the machine like Manu Jablitu intended to do.  All Manu Jablitu has done since is rise to near mythological status as the party keeps encountering more evidence of the crap he has done in the past.  Much of which was done under the patronage of the snake men, evidently.

I bring all this up because last session Beautiful Bob used the psychic enhancing module in the radiant energy vortex that he was accessing from the energy bath of the lich Pay-Gon to split his consciousness into 16,000 pieces to simultaneously accept a telepathic information feed from the 16,000 intellect-equivalent crystal gas mind the party encountered.  It may take him a while to process, but Beautiful Bob actually received the entire genome of both the warrior or "snake man prime" caste and the four-armed scientist caste in this telepathic transmission from the crystal gas mind.

I plan to write several posts about the biology of the snake man now that the party would definitely know the ins and outs.

Pai-Gon's Hexagonal Experiments

Poking around in the arch-lich Pai-Gon's work room whilst trying not to draw the ire of the incredibly powerful crystal intelligence bound into the tree of human arms flesh golem thing, some members of my 4e group decided to open up some random sealed ceramic containers.

Pai-Gon's Work Room

These containers were roughly cubic, with each face of the cube being a hexagon and some odd faceted angular faces making up the difference.  Each container was stacked six high with the sealed opening facing out into the room, in three rows six containers long.

Each container held one of Pai-Gon's experiments, left to bathe in the mutating and energizing radiation emitted by the Huwawa Complex after Pai-Gon mysteriously disappeared.

I made some random tables to determine the contents of each jar.  They proved to be very stimulating in play, causing quite a few "what the fuck" moments amongst the players as they had no clue what they were getting themselves in to.

Roll on each chart.  4e Plant, Animal or Insect refers to an organism native to the "prime material plane" or whatever you want to call the normal plane of existence that D&D is played in.  Planet X refers to an inhabited planet in another dimension/plane of existence that has a considerably different periodic table and physics.

Chart 1: Physical Environment inside the container (d20)
1-3: Fresh Water
4-5: Salt Water
6: Acidic Liquid
7: Basic Liquid
8-9: Acidic Soil
10: Ph Neutral Soil
11: Basic Soil
12: Silt/Inorganic Mud
13-14: Organic Mud
15-16: Clay
17: Solid Rock
18: Crystal
19: Metal
20: Metallic Gas (some heavy metals in Dimension X have a gaseous state)

Chart 2: Subject of the Experiment (d20 - containers with plants have a magical light source and magically regulated growing conditions, containers with animal and insect experiments also contain appropriate food species - many containers are much larger inside than their external dimensions would suggest)
1-4: 4e Plant (roll d10: 1-2: Fungus, 3-4: Flowering Plant, 5-6: Succulent Plant, 7-8: Bush, 9-10: Tree)
5-7: 4e Plant / Planet X "plant" hybrid
8-10: Planet X "plant" (roll 2d6: first d6: 1-3: Carniverous, 4-6: Chemosynthetic, second d6: 1-2: Mobile, 3-             4: Anchored but moving parts, 5-6: Stationary)
11-12: 4e Amphibian (roll d6: 1-2: Frog, 3-4: Toad, 5-6: Salamander)
13-15: 4e Insect (roll d6: 1-2: Crawling, 3: Jumping, 4: Digging, 5-6: Flying)
16-18: 4e Insect / Planet X "insect" hybrid
19-20: Planet X "insect" (roll d6: 1: Crawling, 2: Jumping, 3: Digging, 4-5: Flying, 6: Teleporting)

Chart 3: Broad area of Pai-Gon's interest that the experiment falls into (d20) (combine with subject matter and environment to determine purpose and exact contents of each experimental container)
1-2: Protection from Damage
3-4:  Controlling Agression
5-6:  Controlling Emotion
7-8: Protection from Fire
9-11: Love
12-13: Dispelling Magic
14-17: Plant Propagation
18-20: Insect Breeding
21-30: Shadow Plant Analogs (I put this entry in the chart because we use the d30 houserule - once a session replace any roll with a d30 roll.  What exactly a shadow plant analog is might be a subject for an entire post on its own I think)

Chart 4: Current State of the Experiment (d6)
1-3: Experiment existing in stasis and performing as designed by Pai-Gon
4: Stasis failed due to Huwawa field, contents destroyed
5:  The experiment succeeded but the intended results have run wild for thousands of years
6:  The experiment failed but a secondary organism in the controlled environment has mutated and thrived (flies included as food for a spider experiment might still be thriving, or a plant included as food for an insect experiment has mutated and taken over the container, etc.)

Obviously these charts are going to give suggestions of categories, not specific results:  It is up to the DM to interpret what an acidic liquid environment, Teleporting Planet X Insect experiment about Love that has succeeded but run wild means, exactly.

My party ended up with worms that burrowed through solid rock and consumed magic, a green gas spore cloud that left sickly mutant flowering plants springing up wherever the spores encountered moisture, a burbling pot full of mud with a fire-resistant salamander in it and a crystal matrix that served as an artificial growing medium for a Planet X insect grub.  Hammer the warforged barbarian opened the container of magic consuming worms, much to his disgust as he realized that they were consuming the very magical lifeblood that flowed through his constructed body.

Hymns to the Dark Master - Y Chromosome

O Ya

Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'um

Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'up

Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'um

Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'up


Um ba ga 'nday eyop

O Ya

Um ba ga 'nday eyop

O Ya

Um ba ga 'nday eyop

O Ya

Um ba ga 'nday eyop


Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'um

Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'up

Um ba ga Yup ba gaday eyop

Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'um

Um ba ga Yup ba gaday eyop

Um ba gaday ya um ba ya d'um



Um ba ga 'nday eyop

O Ya

Um ba ga 'nday eyop

O Ya

Um ba ga 'nday eyop

O Ya

Um ba ga 'nday eyop