Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Magma Elemental

A fusion of Fire and Earth, magma elementals burn with the energy of creation.  But creation also involves a lot of false starts and failure, which may explain why these creatures are most notable for vomiting.  The good news: It’s lava vomit, and what GM doesn’t love that?  (Seriously, there may be no more perfect sentence in any rule book than, “At the GM’s discretion, this puddle of lava could start secondary fires.”)

Accomplished conjurers defy the stereotype of the absent-minded wizard, keeping their towers in meticulously good order.  This is because those who don’t never survive to become accomplished.  Wembly Davin had just summoned his first Small magma elementals when a stray breeze knocked some papers across his summoning circle, disrupting it.  The newly freed elementals immediately set fire to his lab and have since escaped to menace an entire district of Strangeport.

Regular temblors keep Mount Boroburo ever smoking, and the constant flow of lava draws magma elementals from their Para-Elemental Plane.  Typically they take forms roughly approximating local creatures, but the occasional manifestation of more extreme shapes, including behirs and brain collectors, may point to dark doings on the volcano.

A shugenja has a vendetta against the monks of Seven Falling Waters, after her aged grandfather died in their care.  When ronin mercenaries fail to defeat the fists of the vigilant monks, she turns to magma elementals, reasoning that they will make the monks suffer for each blow that lands.

Daily Bestiary 2 118–119

PS: If you use magma monsters and your players were in college around 1997, you are asking for Dr. Evil impressions.  I’m not saying this to dissuade you—that may be exactly why you should use them.  But forewarned is polearmed, and all that.

You know what I forgot to pimp yesterday?  My radio show!  Where you can get anything you want, including (in honor of Thanksgiving, of course) all 18 minutes of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.”

Plus another Thanksgiving classic from Too Much Joy, the 20th anniversary of Ween’s “Push th’ Little Daisies,” and killer new songs from Amy Cook and Ra Ra Riot.  Download it.

(If the feed skips, let load in Firefox or Chrome, Save As an mp3, and enjoy in iTunes. Link is good till Friday, 11/23, at midnight.)

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