Obsidian Golem

Most golems are created to serve as security systems and tomb guardians.  They are built to last and built to crush—not always in that order. 

Obsidian golems, on the other hand, are made to cut people the hell up.

Obsidian is brittle, so it has a lifespan, as weapons (and constructs) go.  Obsidian also comes from volcanic areas, and people who live near volcanoes have to have a certain comfort with transience and uncertainty.  In other words, the mage who is making an obsidian golem is probably making it because obsidian is what’s handy, not what’s best or most durable. But that doesn’t matter, because the mage who’s making an obsidian golem has other things in mind than crafting an eternal protector. The mage who makes a golem out of volcanic glass intends that golem to be used—with all the bloodiness and pain of a macuahuitl. 

Don’t believe me? Look at those abilities: Bleed damage.  Jagged Body (Ex).  Obsidian Spray (Ex).  Death Throes (Ex).

Sure, Bestiary 6 says, “Obsidian golems often are used as deterrence against tomb robbers.”  But you can bet we’re not talking lonely pyramids far from civilization.  We’re talking tombs or mausoleums in active necropolises located in or near major cities.  Victims of an obsidian golem are meant to leave a bloody spectacle, and the few survivors are meant to have an agonizing tale of horror to recount to other would-be thieves.

The most famous authority on surgery in the last age was also a necromancer.  More cosmopolitan than his magical colleagues—and well aware of their propensity for grave robbing—his tomb relies on finely crafted constructs for protection, rather than flesh golems or the unquiet dead.  The obsidian golem that guards his corpse was actually his surgical aide during life, its sharp fingers serving as ideal scalpels during the necromancer’s lectures.

Having been caught sneaking into a forbidden temple, adventurers are forced to play ōllamaliztli for the nobles’ entertainment.  If they lose, they will be sacrificed.  If they win…well, the high priest has an obsidian golem positioned at the shrine at the entrance to the locker room to ensure that the blood price is paid either way.

A shaitan lent a portion of her power to aid in the creation of an obsidian golem.  Now she wants it back.  She hires adventurers to smash the construct and free the animating spirit shard inside.  In the intervening decades, however, the golem ended up being buried in ash after a nearby volcano erupted.  Amid the shattered remains of the lava-damaged city, two xorns of unusual size now regard the golem as theirs, and they are loath to give up their prize.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 6 141

Last Tuesday was my “Best of 2017” show on The New Indie Canon, featuring my favorite new and important songs from this year.  There’s only about half an hour left to grab it, so stream/download it now till midnight (Monday, 12/18/17, U.S. Eastern).  And thanks for listening all year long!

Lead Golem

(Illustration by Ertaç Altınöz comes from the artist’s DeviantArt page and is © Paizo Publishing.)

Now this is a golem I can get behind.  (Longtime readers know that I am very skeptical of new golem types.)  Such an unreactive metal is the perfect thematic fit for the notoriously magic-resistant constructs.  Its low melting point means it’s easy to mold into useful forms.  The use of lead predates the ancient Egyptians, so you can stock them in dungeons of any age.  Finally, of course, lead is flat-out dangerous, even poisonous.  Sounds just right for a CR 10 golem.

Lead golems are notoriously hard to enchant.  Only dwarves construct them with any regularity, using them to guard trade secrets and prevent industrial espionage. After the crafting of a certain magical lens goes awry—and after much political deliberation—a beleaguered thane reluctantly sends for some adventurers. He confesses that, because of the accident, an umbral stain pollutes most of the hold’s lower levels.  What he doesn't know is that the adventurers’ cleanup efforts will be hampered by a tarnished scitalis, a colony of moulder dwarves, malfunctioning lead golems, and the ever-shifting shadowy stain itself.

An ancient lead golem knuckle-walks like an ape—and indeed, it resembles a crude gorilla.  It also shows an antipathy for elves…a strange trait, given that elves supposedly arrived on the continent of Davish only recently.  Exploring the tomb that the lead golem guards may upend the published histories of elves, apes, and men alike.

The famed alchemist Nicolas Flamel has cornered the market on lead throughout Paris.  This has caused the work of the stained glass artisans to grind to a halt, and they cry foul at Flamel turning lead into gold while their pockets remain empty.  As Paris is still reeling from Marcel’s rebellion against the Dauphin, the glassmakers are forced to hire outside agents to confront Flamel and demand restitution (or at least bring him to the bargaining table).  Adventurers who investigate his workshop find a secret warehouse guarded by tengu rogues and the beginnings of an army of lead golems.  Clearly, this is bigger than a guild war—Flamel must be stopped before any more of the things can be enchanted.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 127

Guardian Scroll

The guardian scroll is a very Harry Potter-movie kind of monster.  I mean that very much as a compliment, both to it and the HP franchise.  Before Sorcerer’s Stone, if you sprang a guardian scroll on the PCs your players would be like, “You’re attacking us. With paper. Yikes.”  Post-SS (and especially post-Chamber of Secrets), it’s a lot easier to sell the image of a strangling, slicing, animate paper monster.

It’s also the kind of monster that has the potential to make PCs’ lives very difficult, irrespective of its CR.  Nine times out of 10*, if PCs encounter a guardian scroll anywhere that’s not a moldering dungeon or pyramid, it’s because they are Doing Something They Shouldn’t Be—consulting the Forbidden Section of the library, sneaking into the College of Wizards, stealing from the daimyo’s painted scroll collection, robbing the Pirate King, etc.  Perhaps the guardian scroll is a threat, perhaps not.  But fighting off a guardian scroll is almost certainly going to be a noisy affair—one that will cause other interested parties to come running (preferably aimed with pikes and spells).

*The 10th time is when the PCs’ enemies send them a guardian scroll in an assassination attempt.  Speaking of which, in a world where sepia snake sigils and explosive runes exist, it’s a wonder anyone even reads their mail.

The Shogun of the Brilliant Sunrise Prefecture is an avid collector of painted scrolls.  He is also an avid employer of guardian scrolls, many of which fold themselves into gorgeous paper cobras, cranes, and chrysanthemums before attacking.

The priests of the Bookbinder are known for wearing linen scrolls as stoles that drape over their chasubles.  Typically the scrolls are scribed with a sacred verse or a poem, and careful observers can detect praise, insults, or veiled warnings in a cleric’s choice of scroll.  The high priests’ stoles are often guardian scrolls, which explains why priests of the Bookbinder have longer lifespans than many of their ecclesiastical peers.

Adventurers are sent a guardian scroll by an enemy.  But as the scroll tube is not addressed to them specifically, they have the chance to pawn it off on someone else—assuming they suss out the nature of the construct within before it attacks.  Forcing the enemy who sent the scroll to either open the tube himself or be publicly seen refusing to do so could win them prestige in the cutthroat world of court.  That in turn could mean entry into the king’s intelligence service and/or lucrative charters to explore otherwise off-limits dungeons.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #79 82–83 & Pathfinder Bestiary 5 138

The guardian scroll (including a more magical variant with spell-like abilities) originally comes from the Mummy’s Mask Adventure Path, which I rather dug.  For one thing, it was an AP I got to enjoy as it unfolded.  (I fell way behind my Paizo reading during Reign of Winter and Wrath of the Righteous and had to scramble to catch up, which is never as fun.  I’ve had the same problem recently, so I committed myself to keep on track during Strange Aeons no matter where I was in Giantslayer/Hell’s Rebels/Hell’s Vengeance.)  For another—and forgive me if I’ve mentioned this before, because I feel like I’m repeating myself—there’s a part of me that always resists pyramid/mummy setups because they’re so stereotypical, so it was nice to have an AP that executed those things so well I couldn’t help but be won over.  (The undead invasion that kicked off the second MM entry went a long way toward achieving that.)  Finally, after two or three APs that involved Really Big Stakes—the fates of Magnimar, Irresin, and the Worldwound/all of Avistan, respectively—it was nice to have an AP that kept it simple: stop a badass mummy. Sometimes you need a palate cleanser.

Gray Goo

As a phrase, “gray goo” was never meant to be a literal blob of gray goo—it was simply a shorthand way of discussing a potential problem in nanotechnology.  But once you start tossing around terms like “replicators,” “nanobugs,” and “ecophagy”…well, the image of flying, flesh-eating dust is pretty hard to shake.  And that makes gray goo a pretty amazing monster for Pathfinder as well.

Now, given that I spent most of the last entry fretting about whether grays are too sci-fi to fit into Pathfinder, it probably seems weird that I’m like, “All right, nanites!” 

But whereas grays carry all this cultural baggage with them, gray goo is just straight-up terrifying.  It’s also incredibly useful from a game perspective—it’s a flying, high-CR ooze-like construct swarm, making it a useful threat at a time in your campaign when puddings and jellies just aren’t going to cut it.  If you’re already messing around with robots and androids, gray goo seems like a logical fit.  And in the experience at the gaming table, is there that much difference between gray goo and, say, a living disintegrate spell in the Eberron setting?  Not really.

So bring on the nanites!  Just be sure to triple-check your coding before you let them loose…

On board a mining facility that straddles the back of a comet, adventurers race to rescue cryogenically frozen elf children before the hurtling ball of space ice crumbles to nothingness.  But after an outer dragon streaked past one of the habitat pods, the benign nanite swarms inside became warped by the alien presence.  Now swirling mists of gray goo, the malfunctioning nanites seek organic life to incorporate and reconstitute.

A clockmaker has achieved the seemingly impossible.  Not only has he created mechanical men, but these clockwork beings can create smaller clockworks of their own, and so on till the constructs vanish from sight.  But the clockmaker’s children grow frustrated with their father’s human frailty and paranoid about carrying out his will—and so they will meet any perceived threat with an attacking cloud of nearly invisible, tiny, flesh-tearing gears.

On one world, archaeologists excavate a stone pyramid guarded by living sandstorms.  On another, colonists explore a metal ziggurat buzzing with the hum of a gray goo storm.  The monuments are one and the same—a single pyramid split across two dimensions, housing a godlike being that cannot be perceived on either.  And it is hungry…

—Numeria, Land of Fallen Stars 50 & Pathfinder Bestiary 5 130

For my U.S. readers, normally this is the part where I would encourage you to vote tomorrow—that no matter where you live, no matter which candidate you support, and no matter which party you belong to, I support your right to vote encourage you to act on it.

This isn’t the year for that.

This week more than 300 gaming professionals, including weschneider, Mark Moreland, Sean K. Reynolds, Jason Bulmahn, Jeff Grubb, Wolfgang Baur, Keith Baker, Andy Collins, Bruce Cordell, Mike Selinker, Mike Mearls, Chris Pramas, and scores of other authors, designers, and developers whose work I love wrote a letter supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and denouncing Trump’s. 

I stand with them.  And you should too.

For my readers who are Republicans, I apologize for bringing the contest even here, to a place where you probably wanted some respite from the shouting.  But this is not a normal post.  This campaign has not been normal.  And the actions of Trump, his surrogates, many of his supporters, and much—not all, but much—of his party this year (from blocking Supreme Court appointments to engineering widespread voter disenfranchisement based on race) have been completely unacceptable in a functioning democracy.

There comes a point where you have to draw a line.  I would rather lose readers than stay silent.  It is not enough to vote tomorrow.  You need to vote for our future.  You need to reject hate and lies.  You need to vote Democratic all the way down the ballot.  This year, it's the only acceptable choice.

Devastator

In pop culture, the name “Devastator” carries certain weight—literally.  Devastator was the first super-robot (gestalt to you fans out there) in the Transformers line, formed when the Constructicons combined.  Other giant robots would come along (I always thought Bruticus and Predaking were terrifying) and neither the individual Constructicons nor Devastator were the brightest tools in the shed…so you’d think familiarity would breed contempt.  But Devastator’s place in our mental mythology was secured by his appearance in The Transformers Movie, when the hushed voice of the otherwise jaded, I’ve-seen-it-all Kup whispers a horrified “Devastator” as the giant bot takes shape.  This was soon followed up by a shot that puts the audience in the Autobot defenders’ POV as Devastator rips open their defenses while Megatron calls for slaughter.  From then on, Devastator’s iconic status was assured.

So if you’re going to use the name “devastator” in your game, you better deliver.  Pathfinder’s devastator does, with a CR 22/MR 8 Gargantuan war machine powered by the soul of a corrupted and imprisoned angel being tormented for all eternity.  It’s got immunities and damage/spell resistance galore, its attacks are +5 unholy anarchic weapons that deal every kind of damage, it has nasty spell-like abilities like implosion and an at-will blade barrier, its aura boosts demonic allies, and the thing even absorbs good magic to gain temporary hit points. 

It. Is. A. Nightmare.

In fact, it’s so grim and grisly it feels like something more out of the Warhammer or even the Warhammer 40K universes rather than Pathfinder.  Even the Bestiary 5 art seems like Warhammer art—no surprise, since Helge C. Balzer also does work for Games Workshop.  And that’s perfectly appropriate for a construct this mythic and monstrous.  When you want to shrink the hope of Good and Man down to a single flickering candle flame…and then introduce a hurricane to snuff that flame out…the devastator is the way to go.

One final note: Remember what I said about every cannon golem having a name? That goes triple for devastators.  (In fact, the full entry in Pathfinder Adventure Path #78: City of Locusts outlines the three named devastators known to patrol Golarion’s Worldwound.)

Obviously, devastators are meant to lead demonic invasions.  Since I assume you can handle that, here are three more unusual scenarios involving devastators:

When the army of demons and oni burst out of the Shadow Realm, their first target was Rotaru, the jinushigami whose forest lined the slopes of the Sleeping Mountain.  After three days and nights of fighting, the outsiders fed the exhausted elder kami into the eternal burning furnace of a devastator prepared especially for his tree-trunk frame.  Now not only do the demons have a new weapon of war for the second phase of their invasion, but as long as the mountain spirit is imprisoned the Sleeping Mountain will smoke, blotting out the rays of the sun so the dark spirits can frolic.

There was a time when demons were common in space, their ships knifing through the blackness like horrible flaming sharks.  Driven back and sealed within the Pain Nebula, demons are no longer a threat, but their many war machine creations are.  Demon moons not tied to any one planet or star float from system to system, their surfaces pockmarked with scars and furnaces.  Some of these carry undead, shadows, oozes, degenerate races like morlocks, and especially constructs.  Nearly every demon moon is patrolled by at least one devastator, and true demon worlds may have dozens.

Taniyar was an angel rescued from the metal gizzard of a devastator after a century of torment.  She spent twice that long recovering in a celestial hospice as her body and mind were restored.  Only the healing of her mind didn't take.  Now she longs to return to the only home that makes sense to her, the excruciating cage at the heart of a devastator.  Adventurers investigating either an incident of vandalism and theft at a heavenly library or the disappearance of Taniyar herself will eventually track her to the Junk Plane, where she has just used the stolen plans to finish constructing a new devastator.  The construct will be her agonizing home for the next millennium as she smashes world after world.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #78 90–91 & Pathfinder Bestiary 5 77

I had Devastator as a kid, but early on I broke the hard-to-transform Hook so I almost never got to play with him fully constructed.

Crystal Golem

Note: The “Crone Queen” entry went up earlier today, so be sure to check it out too.

I’m not sure where the association between psionics and crystals came from in D&D—it seemed firmly in place by Dragon #281’s exploration of the 3.0 psionic rules (which was pretty much the apex of my paying attention).  (Out-of-game, I’m assuming the answer is pulp sci-fi novels and the ’70s in general).  But vestiges of that connection linger in Pathfinder’s psychic magic, giving us the crystal golem.

These are not golems to dis either.  They basically throb with psychic energy, acting as metamagic amplifiers for any psychic caster within 30 ft.  (That can lead to some interesting tactical choices on both sides of the table if, say, a psychic bad guy and his crystal henchgolems go up against psychic PCs).  Crystal golems can also punch into the Ethereal Plane.  Oh, and they have the ability explode head.  I repeat: explode head.  THAT IS A REAL THING THEY CAN DO.

Given that I grew up game-planning what I would do against the laser-shooting sphinxes of The NeverEnding Story, crystal golems that hum with such energy that they can burst crania don’t seem that outlandish.  So I’m on board with these guys!

A series of meteors slam into the Anchorite Peaks, cracking open to reveal dazzling geodes—and crystal golems.  The fact that the gemstone monsters are constructs and not biological or elemental creatures suggests that the meteor strikes are no natural phenomena. 

Dwarves who fight aboleths and other psychic threats sometimes learn psychic talents of their own…talents that often get them ostracized from their communities.  Rather than upset their superstitious neighbors, these dwarves dwell in the lowest chambers, holding lonely vigils against threats in the dark.  Rather than rely on nervous (and easily dominated) guardsmen for assistance, they craft crystal golems to be their backup instead.  In contrast, duergar (particularly duergar tyrants) embrace both psychic magic and crystal golems, but their shoddy craftsmanship usually manifests in the end result, leading to golems that are more brittle (DR 8 instead of 10) or more vulnerable to shatter (slowing the golem for 4 rounds instead of 3).

The Star of Bessaly is a famous asteriated ruby whose star seems to float in the air above the surface of the stone.  A Shermod merchant prince announces his plans to make a gift of the gem to the dowager queen—and set in the brow of a rose quartz statue no less.  The gift is a trap.  The Shermod prince is a rakshasa psychic assassin, and the Star of Bessaly powers an especially fearsome crystal golem.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 126

I had a babysitter named Crystal.  This was a thing that could happen in 1982 in Oklahoma.

The psionic-focused Dragon #281 is actually an issue I’ve found myself going back to several times.  The three psionics-focused articles were great teasers for the then-new Psionics Handbook while still being complete, interesting pieces themselves.  It’s also got a Fool Wolf story—pretty much the only fiction in Dragon worth discussing after 1995—and “Subterranean Scares,” a bestiary of weird Underdark monsters that I’ve referenced several times in this space.  Worth looking for.

Clockwork Familiar

Toads aren’t that cuddly.  Weasels smell.  And vipers are so déclassé.  It makes you just want to throw in the towel and build your own familiar—specifically, a clockwork familiar.

Usually designed to look like dragons or birds or spiders (that’s the way we do it in the Wild, Wild West), clockwork familiars are an Improved Familiar choice that leverages the advantages of having a construct at your beck and call rather than a flesh-and-blood creature.  (They can't, for instance, be healed normally and rust is a problem, but that just makes them all the more obedient to their masters.)  Even better, their owners can customize them by incorporating temporary magic items into their bodies, granting them both an ongoing effect as long as they possess the item and a more powerful ability if they choose to drain the item’s charge.  This flexibility endears them to wizards who plan for contingencies (which is every wizard who hopes to live long).  It’s never a bad thing to have a portable detect magic source on hand—especially one that can talk to you—and a clockwork familiar’s stored potion of invisibility, fly, or gaseous form could easily be the difference between life and death for its master.

A journeyman wizard’s master has passed away.  The adventurer is first notified of this when his master’s clockwork familiar comes looking for him.  Long neglected by the ailing wizard, the familiar has barely survived the arduous journey to reach the journeyman.  The battered, half-mad construct attacks the young mage, seeing him as the heir to not only the master’s books and wisdom, but also his failures.

Knowledge of the crafting of clockwork was snuffed out in Oyroa when barbarian hordes overran the City of Miracles.  But the clockworks themselves remain—shiny brass ravens, badgers, bees, even delicate bejeweled carp.  It is considered an auspicious feat for a caster to coax one of these creatures into her service.  And not all of the familiars are benign.  Some still act on the instructions of mages long dead, others have been perverted by the animating spirits inside them, and all are potentially dangerous.

Most clockwork familiars are bespoke creations.  But some cosmopolitan magocracies have artificers who can help a mage with the construction.  Fabriker Nicholas Sturmhandt is renowned for his clockwork constructions, particularly his ambulatory birdcages (with mechanical signing birds inside) and the clockwork familiar kits he supplies wealthy wizards.  Darker rumors suggest that he also specializes in creating clockwork gnomes…and that real, quite unwilling gnomish victims are essential to the process.  Getting into his compound to investigate will be difficult, as Herr Sturmhandt has several clockwork familiar lookouts—far more than any one mage could ordinarily bind.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #63 86–87 & Pathfinder Bestiary 5 57

Philadelphia, I am dominating your station.  #mydayjob

After two weeks off, The New Indie Canon is back!  Today I’m going to take you from the Low Anthem’s “To Ohio” to the Violent Femmes’ “I Held Her in My Arms,” with stops along the way for Beverly, Spacehog, Into It. Over It., the Sun Days, some SXSW teasers, and more.  Stream it.  Download it.  Love it.

Celedon

(Illustration comes from artist Rogier van de Beek’s DeviantArt page and is © Paizo Publishing.)

Given that I’m on record being suspicious of new golem types, it's probably weird that I’m so into other kinds of animate statues.  (No doubt it’s because living statues were a classic element of the Mentzer era-Basic Rules red box for D&D.)  And that goes double for religious statues.  (See my rather involved “Graven Guardian” post).  So celedons are right up my alley.  Based off of living statues from Greek mythology (so that’s a hard “c,” as in “cat,” for you pronunciation sticklers), the celedon is an animate statue able to defend its god’s interests, use its god’s special ability, and sing its god’s praises.

It’s interesting that, unlike most constructs, celedons aren’t created by mortals.  They're created by the gods themselves…and I find it striking that a monster meant for such low-level encounters (a single celedon is CR 1) is nevertheless directly touched by a deity.  That means adventurers who fight or even ally with a celedon could be drawing much more attention than they realize.  It's also striking that celedons are a kind of hedge against imperfect humanoids, an acknowledgement that we aren’t good enough or reliable enough to protect a deity’s most sacred sites.  Given that religion is about faith, how does it impact the faithful if they ever realize the faith in a worshipper-divine relationship only goes one way…?

Novice adventurers are meant to deliver a poisoned relic to a remote and little-used sepulcher.  They are even made to memorize the prayer that the records say is the key to pacifying the guardian celedon.  There’s only one problem: The celedon was created before the Conclave of Senna, when the liturgy was translated into spoken Common.  The prayer needs to be sung—and in the original Draconic—or the orthodox celedon will assume the adventurers are thieves or apostates and attack.

A god devoted to martial perfection takes all hardy worshippers who trust in his instruction.  His celedons are emblematic of this fact.  In order to enter his training dojos, the worshipper must trust the guardian celedon to strike him or her with the flat of its blade.  Those tough enough to only be staggered may pass (incidentally bypassing the entranceway’s alignment-triggered magic missile trap courtesy of the celedon’s prophet’s touch ability).  Those who try to dodge the test or are stunned by the blow have a dicier time, courtesy of the same trap.  Once enrolled, worshippers may find the same celedon later teaching blocks and falls, copying prayers or fencing diagrams, or leading the choir during services.

In the church of the Prismatic Lord, it is an article of faith that the god of magic descended from on high to bring the arcane arts to man.  And so the original Prismatic Lord may have…but the current prismatic lord is an ascended mortal who took up the mantle of godhood only a few centuries ago—a fact he has been very careful to obscure.  When young adventurers seem on the verge of discovering the new god’s mortal birthplace, he sends a celedon to befriend, distract, or kill them—whatever it takes to get them off the scent.  Of course, if the celedon finds out the truth about its god, its resulting (and quite explosive) crisis of faith might kill the adventurers anyway.

Adventures find a remote town peopled only by celedons.  They are all that remains of an obscure goddess’s faith in this region (her mortal adherents having packed up long ago after a terrible plague ravaged this peninsula).  The celedons are eager to have a new audience to sing the praises of their lady to. But having mortals in their midst underscores the sad puppet show that is the town’s daily life, and one or more of the celedons may become angry enough to draw blood over this fact.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 52

Apparently I decided to write four adventures seeds…because I don’t even know why.  Also, apologies for the weekend posts, but I’m trying to work on the backlog a bit so that I can get January’s posts up to a more respectable number.

Alter Ego

I never really got into psionics.  To a vanilla D&D player like me, they were a complicated sci-fi system bolted onto a fantasy game that was already more Overcomplicated than Advanced.  And even when they did work and were coherently fit into a setting (like in Dark Sun and…um…Dark Sun), the point management and clinical language of the powers definitely felt alien in Vancian AD&D.

That said…sometimes some of that language—especially the terms borrowed from Georgian and Victorian-era psychology—transform concepts we take for granted into honest-to-God monsters.  So in Pathfinder, an alter ego isn’t just a concept—it’s Mr. Hyde sprung to life!  And with a strong dash of OCD providing drive and motivation, an alter ego can have a big effect on its real counterpart’s reputation in a short time…and that’s assuming it doesn't just kill the original first.

But these obsessive ectoplasmic creatures don't just have to be the result of trauma.  Dungeon crawls, planar adventures, and even random treasure tables are always throwing magical looking glasses or mirror dimensions in the PCs’ way.  The alter ego gives you a quick way to stat up such a character while clearly answering all those thorny questions about “Does my double have my gear?” and “Why does it hate me so much?”, etc.  So the next time you’re GMing on the fly and a mirror of opposition comes up on the treasure table, you can roll with it instead of rerolling.

Annie Scythetooth is an annis hag known throughout the Lakelands…and that was almost her downfall.  Adventurers combed through the local folktales to track her down and nearly succeeded in exterminating her.  The trauma of that encounter caused an ectoplasmic double of herself to be born, bubbling out of her cauldron like stew coming to life.  A rejection of the brash and boastful nature that got the hag in such hot water, Annie’s alter ego is paranoid, fearful, and terrified of discovery.  Ironically, this makes her even more dangerous than Annie, who, as a child murderer, at least had reliable habits and diet.  Annie’s double, meanwhile, hides her existence by murdering nearly everyone she comes across and filling the woods with complex hedge mazes and deathtraps.

According to the scrolls, alter egos arise from moments if incapacitation.  In Sir Gerald’s case, it was decapitation.  Fortunately, the headsman botched the job, failing to sever the neck cleanly, allowing Sir Gerald’s own healing magic to sustain him as his friends rushed to his side.  (The trial and execution were a sham from start to finish, with the crooked judge, bailiffs, and barristers fleeing the scene rather than finishing the job.)  But the trauma was more than enough to leave a psychic residue, creating an alter ego of the paladin.  This version has no faith in the institutions of law, including the local constabulary and the church.  The resulting obsessive construct is a dull-eyed, puppet version of a freedom fighter, doing his best to make life miserable for the local institutions, but without any of the passion or derring-do of a true rebel.

A mesmerist has found a magical mirror that he believes can draw out the dark side of the viewer.  Happy to capitalize on his discovery, he has set up a clinic where those with troubled pasts and dark rages can literally confront their worse natures.  He even went so far as to have his patients room with their alter egos…until the murders started. Now the mesmerist is desperate to hide the evidence or lie his way out of his situation (all the while continuing to produce doubles to refine his technique) while alter egos of some of the most dangerous men and women in the city run free, committing all kind of out-of-character acts (some noble, some vile, some bizarre) while wearing their real counterparts’ faces.

—Occult Bestiary 4–5

I did not just cave into temptation and buy a bunch of Dark Sun books online.  I did not cave into temptation and buy a bunch of Dark Sun books online.  I did not…

Yes, this is last Thursday’s entry.  It is now Tuesday.  I kind of suck.

But hey, it says “most every weekday” on the masthead for a reason.  I’ve been pretty good about the “every,” but some weeks I need the “most.”  You guys feel me on that, right?

My absence caused Alex to ask:

A 15-day gap!? Are you doing okay?

Thanks, man!  (Or woman?  With Alexes you can never tell.)  I’m doing fine, thanks!  It’s just the usual—demanding career, a chronically ill loved one (who logged some more hospital time over the past three weeks), the radio show, and I’ve been refocusing on my fixing my sleep and exercise schedule.  For the past few weeks, that’s meant not typing blog posts past 11 PM and offering myself a little forgiveness when they get tardy.  I’m engaged in a project to return some sanity to my life, and part of that is giving myself the room to not always be so on point in every aspect of my life 24/7.

Also I was in Atlanta this weekend.  Not as hot as advertised.

While we’re on the subject of personal stuff: Michelle Panik was my classmate, then my roommate, then she regained her senses and moved to California.  She was just named the runner-up for Feminine Inquiry’s Fall Fiction Contest.  I don’t think the story is out yet, but you can find FI here and the rest of Michelle here.

Meanwhile, Kate Miltner and I were in a wedding party a few years ago, and we hit it off immediately, if mostly over Facebook.  Kate’s been looking at the history of Internet trolling, and her research got a big write-up over on Slate last week.  Here’s the link.

Back to monsters:

Adam Daigle—you know him as thedaigle—put up a post on the Paizo Blog about scary-movie-inspired Pathfinder monsters.  Check it out here.  There’s also buzz about the forthcoming Bestiary 5 here. 

And reader Alaizia took a look at the final adventure seed for Spring-Heeled Jack and wrote:

I really like that last one, wish there could be a game built around that ^_^ with more things for it.

I think there is, and it's called Pathfinder!  One of the reasons I do this blog is to highlight the fact that Pathfinder works for more than just Golarion…and even for more than just late-medieval/early-Renaissance-inspired fantasy.  You might need to tweak some skills and whatnot, but with a copy of the Core Rulebook, Ultimate Combat (for the gunslinger), and Ultimate Equipment (for some more modern weaponry) you can go pretty far in most eras.  For a private school campaign like the one above, I’d also go for the Advanced Player’s Guide (the school’s chemistry wiz could be an alchemist; inquisitors, witches, or oracles make good villains) and the Advanced Class Guide (for the brawler, swashbuckler, and investigator).  Try it, add some skills to reflect the modern era, and go nuts.  Or steal the idea and import it into d20 Modern or Monsterhearts or something.   I won't tell!

Tiberolith

Tiberoliths are crude but very effective constructs, the primitive antecedents of the golems that PCs know today.  This is apparent in their stone construction (hence the “-lith” in the name), the use of vegetable sinews, the strange (al?)chemistry of acids and electricity that power them, and their rudimentary protection against spells.  Tiberoliths might be all that is left of an ancient civilization or even the key to unlocking it…assuming it doesn't smash you to pieces first.

To open a gate to another world,  adventurers must complete a ritual in the center of a henge—the core component of which involves tying a willing participant onto a stone altar.  Once the final knot is tied and the ritual begun, several of the henge’s half-sunken stones suddenly pull themselves out of the ground and attack.  Apparently the rites to quiet the site’s tiberoliths did not survive with the rest of the ritual.

An ancient society’s constructs all run on the same primitive dynamo.  In order to activate a walking tower, adventurers must first harvest three of the puzzle box-like contraptions from tiberoliths—ideally before they have expended all their shockwave attacks, otherwise the adventurers will have to jumpstart the dynamos with lightning.

A tarnished bronze dragon has taken up residence in the ruin of an ancient civilization.  Not keen on having his research interrupted, the dragon was pleased to discover the ruin’s tiberoliths ignore him but move with stolid efficiency to crush any humanoid intrusion.  The bronze, meanwhile, studies the ruins with interest, finding conflicting signs of both human and giant or cyclopean habitation.  In the damp ruins, the bronze’s tarnish seems to be less a spiritual metaphor than a physical reality, as its scales have turned brown and green.  The bronze pays no mind, even ignoring the steadily growing goiter it has developed that pulsates with the same blue glow as the tiberoliths…

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 259