Tripurasura

Our first asura!  (Took long enough!)  As the Bestiary 3 indicates, the greater asuras are the accidents, mistakes, and abortions of the gods of creation, now determined to undermine all the gods have created.  The diminutive tripurasuras are their creations, blasphemous little imps designed to gather recruits and raw materials.  They are an excellent choice for an unusual “shoulder devil”—one with little interest in souls themselves but a lot of interest in snuffing out the flame of faith, and whose communes amount to divine eavesdropping and theft—in other words, not communion at all.

The tripurasura Arup currently hides in the knapsack of Benjan Weaver, having led the young boy out of the seminary and into the practice of arcane magic.  He has grown tired of the lad, though, and seeks to return to his true master, an ill-tempered water naga.  As soon as he can convince Benjan to abscond with the relics from his mother’s chapel, Arup plans to abandon him…or better yet, engineer his death at the hands of some adventurers.

A gang of gnomes travels from town to town, offering their services as handymen and exterminators.  Actually disguised tripurasuras, they are particularly good at convincing town fathers to repurpose old houses of worship to other uses.  They also excel at capturing and killing “pest” birds like crows, sparrows, and whippoorwills—which just so happen to be the forms taken by psychopomps like nosois.

The magocracy of Velosus sees religion as a crutch of the weak.  Only rural communities have small shrines or temples, and houses of worship are banned outright in the capital.  Meanwhile, tripurasura familiars are common among the wizard class—a bit of a status symbol, actually, and a clear sign that one adheres to logic, reason, and intellectual discovery rather than blind adoration or navel-gazing.  The little asuras encourage this self-congratulatory attitude…and indeed, they may have helped engineer Velosus’s irreligiosity in the first place.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 26

Velosus owes its inspiration to Mystara’s Glantri, of course.

Reader feedback!  I was psyched that jenna-darknight was psyched about treants.  And meanwhile, some of you picked up the T. rex gauntlet I threw down yesterday.  Check out this one from risqueybusiness:

A T-Rex has been Awakened, and its first sentient experience was with a magistrate, traveling to his new position. The magistrate taught the Dino the law in exchange for not being eaten (for is Law not the most precious of gifts?). The problem is, now the creature seeks to spread its infantile (yet expanding) understanding of Justice to whoever it meets, and its next target is [in the path of the PCs].

Fortooate weighs in:

When an eccentric old dwarf invites the party to his private island kingdom, they are surprised to find that his money and experimental restorative magics have turned fossils into new life... but when his creations begin polymorphing into virile males, and the utahraptors gain control of several ancient headbands of vat intelligence +6...

Meanwhile, dr-archeville brings the Law & Order clang:

In the Saurian justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the tyrannosaurs, who investigate crime; and the triceratopses, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories…

Inspiring knightdisciple to ask…

So does that mean the Velociraptors are the Defense Lawyers?

…and evocatively named thefingerfuckingfemalefury to exclaim:

SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE THIS A THING Give me a comic about dinosaurs practicing the law please :D

And ohgodhesloose adds:

There’s a great little book out there for the Broncosaurus Rex RPG that has a dizzying amount of adventure hooks and ideas for tyrannosaurs that can be adapted for a fantasy campaign.

The entire exchange and links to all of the above readers’ blogs can be found here (except Fortooate, who hangs out here).