Marilith

I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here.  For CR 17 demons, mariliths don’t seem to get the respect they deserve.  They’re constantly described as the Abyss’s generals, queens, and genius tacticians, but they always show up in published adventures as (to quote the Bestiary once again) “governesses, advisors, and even lovers.”  In other words, always the penultimate baddy and serious threat, never the final boss. 

Some of this may be adventure setting (marilith generals are out general-ing across the Planes, whereas marilith viziers are more likely to be where the PCs are), some of it may be unfamiliarity (as mariliths don’t resemble Biblical or Tolkien-esque archetypes, instead owing more to Kali for inspiration), some of it may be simple numbers (a CR17 marilith doesn’t seem as final as a CR 20+ balor or great wyrm)…but it’s hard not to also not as least flirt with unconscious sexism as an explanation.  (I don’t want to push this point too hard—3.5’s Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss does label them as Archetypical Overlords, for instance—but I’m not wrong either.)

So let’s think about this again.  The Abyss’s generals.  Demons don’t take orders.  That’s what being a demon is.  So the creature terrifying enough to not only impose its will upon them—not just a handful of demons, but a whole army’s worth, and not just in a single encounter, but over the course of an entire military campaign, according to a strategy—must be a terrifying creature indeed.

Enter the marilith.  Six arms all wielding magic weapons, constant unholy aura, at-will greater teleport and telekinesis, blade barrier, and more (we haven’t even gotten to the feats).  Now give her some class levels, beef up her weapon choices and feat selections, and put her in a setting where her telekinesis and blade barrier will do the most damage (fiendish armory or chemical factory anyone?), and you have a “final” boss that players won’t forget ever…with “final” in quotes because the first time they try, she’s going to get away, and then she’ll come back with her army in tow…

Xxavarshill is no ordinary marilith.  She sneak attacks from hiding, surrounds her quarry in a blade barrier to prevent escape or aid, and then dispatches her victim in a flurry of sword strokes.  Reports of her exploits hint at training as a rogue, assassin, ninja, or master spy (and possibly more than one of these).  But all this is to be expected from a creature created to slay would-be demigods of good just before their ascension—preferably in front of as many witnesses as possible.

An paladin order’s strike against Kushpal, the Sin Cyst Fortress, has backfired.  Now Kushpal’s marilith general has opened a way between the worlds practically at the front door of the order’s high chapterhouse and sacred library, with demons pouring through.  But the artifact holding open the way comes with a price: the bloodstone circlet (which occupies two hands) must be wielded by the general, not one of her adjutants, and is powered by her unholy aura and that day’s summoning ability.  If a small team could strike her while her defenses are thus reduced, they might take out her, the portal, and a large percentage of the invading horde in one stroke.

Only one tactician ever breached the walls of the primal dwarf holdfast Arvadüm, now held by duergar as they attempt to resurrect the Shattered Titan, an adamantine golem of surpassing might.  That genius tactician also did something else no other demonic leader has successfully done—she retired.  Prying from her the secret of the Breaking of Arvadüm means finding her in her secluded mountain retreat, a planar realm carved from the homeland of the azatas and guarded by apostate drow, a winterwight, and the wailing ghosts of dryads locked in their dead, frozen trees.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 63

Yesterday’s post went up so late I didn’t have time to inflict my musical choices upon you all.  Now I shall!

Despite being on staycation, I made an entire radio show just for you!  And I filled it with new Dungeonesse, Professor Elemental, and a Jonathan Coulton Christmas song!  That's how much I love you.

(Music starts at the 3:45 mark. If the feed skips, let load in your browser, Save As an mp3, enjoy in iTunes. Link good till Friday, 12/7, at midnight.)

Marid

In print, marids seem to be the least talked-about genies—djinn are frequent allies; the efreet are frequent antagonists but their City of Brass is a common planar destination; and 3.5’s dao had their terrible Great Dismal Delve while Pathfinder’s shaitans have popped up in a number of Darklands adventures.  Which is a shame for PCs, since marids are relatively benevolent, if as capricious as the ocean itself.

As the Bestiary notes, “[m]any marids become dancers, storytellers, performers, or other types of artists,” when traveling—all careers that allow them to indulge their whims and conceal their identities.  Able to travel the waters of the multiverse, they may be potential goldmines (er…oyster beds?) of information.  On their own turf (coral castles and kelp forests, to be precise), they are gracious hosts—largely since they can afford to be thanks to their natural power (CR 9, the best of any genie, with shahzadas at CR 14), watery mastery, magical might (though their wishcraft is weak), and the wealth of many worlds’ oceans at their disposal.

That said, marids are impetuous, stormy, and can be quick to anger, especially if insulted.  And those that do lean chaotic evil can bring powerful magic and allies to bear on the situation, assuming they don’t drown offending parties outright.

A troupe of acrobats has set up shop in Tailor Square.  One of their newest acts is a gymnast who does high wire acts, then dives safely into a seemingly impossibly small barrel of water.  She is actually a marid, and the acrobats are high-level shadowdancers.  They are practicing for the heist of the queen’s rod of office and a tapestry depicting a sea battle, both reputed to be magical. 

A nation of tritons wishes to repatriate back to the Plane of Water.  The proposal outrages a sizable percentage of the marid shahzadas (primarily because their royal leave was not asked, but they do have valid concerns about the plane’s power balance being upset).  Impartial mortal adventurers are sent to find a tojanida memory keeper who may recall old treaties between the two water powers; meanwhile piscodaemon and sahuagin insurgents seek to drive the races to bloody war.

Adventurers stranded on a desert island become pawns in an escalating game of risk and ruin played by a marid gunslinger and a shark-toothed larabay bard  (Isle of the Shackles) who wants their skins for his drums.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 142

I’m on staycation!  I’ve never done one of these before, except Christmas breaks, so we’ll see how this one turns out.  I’m going to try to keep up the posts, though.

More on genie culture, including marids (with bonus erroneous description of them) can be found in Pathfinder Adventure Path #21: "The Jackal's Price."

Any Al-Qadim/Planescape fans want to weigh in on how those settings handled marids?

And yes, I’m as eager as you to figure out what’s up with that marid gunslinger.  Anyone inspired to write a backstory?

Marai

Marai are lesser rakshasas who have a little something extra up their sleeves—specifically rainbow-colored, energy bolt-hurling serpent limbs.  Secretive students of esoteric magicks, they are likely to be spell-trap setters and hit-and-run ambushers, doing everything they can to keep from fighting face to face.  In fact, when met in straight-up combat, a marai might just flee after a single flurry of energy bolts—prey that can fight back aren’t any fun for the duplicitous rakshasa, and it would be a shame to squander this incarnation on mortal foes destined to die anyway…

A maker of clockwork constructs has gone missing.  A marai has captured him, forcing him to craft animate clockwork limbs that the marai can wear.  Unfortunately his exploits have kept him too long away from the court of his rakshasa master, who comes looking for the marai at the exact same moment as the clockwork maker’s rescuers.

Adventurers fighting serpentfolk discover the snake-men have an unusual ally—a particularly serpentine marai who has been living among them, claiming to be a serpentfolk sorcerer blessed in the egg with magical might.  (While initially suspicious, the snake-men have since been convinced by the marai’s spell-spitting limbs and knowledge of Undercommon.)  The rakshasa Viper actually seeks to enter and study the demiplane that the serpentfolk guard—he is fascinated with extradimensional spaces, and the traps in his quarters include a portable hole and two giant bags of devouring.

The Sunrise Seat is a carving-bedecked temple so large it is practically a ziggurat, with new rooms being discovered all the time.  (The temple fell into disuse during an orc invasion, then mudslides covered one quarter of the complex.)  The marai Sudeep Ranj spends every night in the temple, creeping in and out under a cloak of invisibility in order to study the secrets the loremasters and mystic theurges have unearthed that day.  But the temple has also attracted the attention of an asura, a stealthy adhukait named Katari and Zoonha, who wants to see it resealed.  Now the god-mocking rakshasa and the god-loathing asura set traps and ambushes to drive the other out, with the poor bewildered scholars caught in the middle.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 228

Advanced marai viper colors: mauve, puce, coral, taupe—y’know, I’m going to need some Pantone color chips for this…

Manticore

Lion mane and body!  Bat wings!  Quill-throwing tail!  Humanoid face!  Iron jaws!  Who doesn’t love the manticore?

But!  How to make it interesting? Or even iiiiinteresting?

For me, the hooks are in the Intelligence and the alignment.  At Int 7 and Wis 12, the manticore can certainly speak Common and hold its own tactically with at least the average commoner or low-level NPC warrior.  So is the manticore attacking your characters a hungry beast?  Eager for tribute (especially iron to gnaw on, to help it build up its jaws and spikes)?  Working for a lamia or some dark lord?  A mount for a cavalier or antipaladin?  Or even just lonely and looking for some conversation and theater (with or without the “dinner” prefix)?

And what’s to say a manticore couldn’t be a citizen in a cosmopolitan or high-magic campaign?  As lawful evil monsters, they’re as likely as an archon, axiomite, or blue dragon to show up on a lawful neutral plane, and the local inevitable enforcers might not take too kindly to them being slain.

Nine times out of 10, of course, manticores are going to be just brutes.  But time number 10 will be interesting for your players…

A manticore fires its spikes at adventurers but does not attack—and in fact calls out a greeting.  Having devoured a number of knights (their shields and pennants line the walls of its lair), the creature has become fascinated with heraldry.  It wants the party to seek out a herald to immortalize it an escutcheon.  Finding one willing to cater to a manticore will be tricky, and the magical beast will likely demand they leave a party member behind as collateral.

The plateau of Gorm is the entrance to a lost world that is somewhat more mythic in scope.  The first challenge is surmounting the escarpment, which is patrolled by hungry dire (advanced) manticores.  While they don’t ask riddles as a sphinx might, they do ask pointed, seemingly nonsensical questions even as they attack, as if entranced or guided by an intelligence outside their own.

Merrisart and Grimmane are a lamia and manticore couple that have ruled Sharptooth Pass for seven years.  Together they have fathered half a dozen spike-tailed daughters.  Merrisart has begun to tire of the filthy beast, however—in his jealousy the manticore has devoured one too many of her charmed lovers—and she is now looking for a way to dispatch Grimmane without alerting their children to her complicity.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 199

What do I know about manticores?  Goddamn near everything.

Dragon Magazine #153 features Spike Y. Jones’s “The Ecology of the Manticore” with some great Thomas Baxa art and (I think) one of the first appearances of his one-armed bard, Brendan Farwanderer.  (The same issue also features the introduction of the fabulous “The Voyage of the Princess Ark” series, which by now you’re probably sick of me mentioning.)  Look for it!

We also featured a manticore way back here.  (Apparently all my manticores have “Mane” in their name.  Whoops.)

And did anyone else notice that yet again we have a creature that can and does breed with sphinxes? 

One would assume this is involuntary on the sphinx’s part…(which means I might as well rename this blog Sphinxes in Refrigerators)…but then again she has twice the hit points and is CR 8.

Which means we’re either talking multiple manticores for one sphinx, upon which I would prefer not to dwell, or…and let me be clear, I’m not engaging in any sphinx-shaming here…apparently the gynos get down. 

You go, lion-riddle-girl!

Since we’re already doing shout-outs, the final word on manticores comes from Ninja Sex Party, whose eponymous ninja was my college symphony conductor.  Flawless Cartwheel Achieved!

(As a bonus, here is the “Not cool, Manticore” live version.)

Manta Ray & Stingray

Stingrays don’t mean to be lethal—but in self-defense, they certainly can be.  Manta rays meanwhile, are majestic creatures that make ideal animal companions for aquatic creatures or even water-loving PCs.  Advanced specimens might even get a glide speed or a Flyby Attack, given their propensity for leaping into the air.

A party of adventurers awakens stranded on a sandbar, stripped of their armor and with the tide coming in.  The beach is only 50 yards away…but even the most cursory examination reveals crossing the water between means crossing the spawning ground for hundreds of irritable stingrays.  And how did the adventurers get here?  Were they shipwrecked?  Shanghaied?  Or is this only the first challenge of some dark game?

Not brave enough to attack human fishers and sailors themselves, shoal goblins spook manta rays into slamming into the men.  The goblins then set upon those knocked down or borne into the water.

Mako is an undine rogue who specializing boring holes into and otherwise sabotaging ships, making them vulnerable to sinking and salvage later.  Following the call of his watery nature has given him just enough druidic training to attract a stingray companion, who serves as a guard should anyone try to sneak up on Mako as he works.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 232

Okay, I’m weeks overdue on a mailbag post—syringesin and nikkeatsrocks, how I have neglected you!  But today’s shout-out goes to controlledescent, who left me fan mail that made me go “Dawww,”—PS: CD, tell us more about the side treks you whipped up—and believethehyperbole, who gave my radio show some love (which pretty much never happens on Tumblr!).  I repeat: “Dawww, you guys!”

Thanks for the notes, thanks for the Likes, and if you’re looking for more ways to help, tell your friends!  A link in your chat/Facebook status or a reblog can have a big impact.

Time for some shameless promotion.  After all, this is a Pathfinder/Dungeons & Dragons blog.  So I think a video by Dungeonesse totally fits, don’t you?

Nice work, J.

Mandragora

There’s a wealth of folklore about the mandrake root—the most common being of its fatal shriek and the typical harvesting method (dog tied to the stalk, that when called pulls out the root and bears the brunt of the scream).  (But seriously, check out some of the others—in the Bible, it’s an aphrodisiac; in Germany, the product of hanged man’s seed (and yes, that means exactly what you think it means).  Pathfinder’s mandragoras only nauseate, but they’re still nasty little blighters, with poisonous slamming strikes.  And since mandragoras are good for spell components and have ties to demons, killing one might be just the start of the adventure.

Wizard Calev Messert has no time for folk superstitions about harvesting mandragoras with dogs—novice adventurers will do just fine.  Nor is he troubled if the mandragoras kill some of them in the process—he has no plans to pay them for their troubles, and is already planning instead to poison them and reanimate their corpses as undead.

Execution in Whitemarch comes in three varieties.  A simple hanging serves for horse thieves and the like.  Knights, gentry, and other important personages languish in jail until the king’s headsman makes his rounds.  But truly heinous offenders are left to hang in the gibbet at Carter’s Crossroads.  The last man to die there was no man at all, but the tiefling serial killer Barnaby Quicksaw.  Now mandragoras fed by his decaying viscera grow in the brambles beneath the gibbet.  Due to the rocky soil at Carter’s Crossroads the mandragoras have to struggle to uproot themselves, so the next public display will likely be in full swing when the shrieking plants attack.

King Willowfayeth of the elven nation of Intseneer has been driven nearly mad by the revelation of drow in his sacred woods.  Determined to drive them out, he has commanded his alchemists, wizards, and druids (coaxed by a few strategic “disappearances”) to summon demons to harvest for ichor, which in turn yields crop after crop of mandragoras.  For a while the mandragoras served as almost living mine fields, but the affair has since turned into a fiasco—the mandragoras are now germinating in the wild, the drow have grown adept at casting deeper darkness to slow the plants, and their raid have freed the summoned dretches to escape into the woods and wreak havoc.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 185

As a further note, I’d fully recommend taking that last line of the Bestiary 2 entry—“The newly created mandragora is hostile, even to its creator”—as a suggestion, not Gospel.  If it’s better role-playing to have a mandragora hate even its creator, go for it.  (For comic relief is one option, or that might be a good way to save a low-level party’s bacon if you need a convincing way to help captured PCs avoid a TPK, for instance).  But if you need guards for a mage’s tower and are tired of homunculi, you can do a lot worse than mandragoras.

Manananggal

What is it about Southeast Asian/Oceanic countries and their separating monsters?  Whatever it is, it’s pretty cool. 

The manananggal is similar to the slightly better known penanggalen, only instead of being a separating head trailing entrails, it’s a separating torso with batlike wings.  For game purposes, the main distinction is that the penanggalen is a template monster, better suited to serving as an NPC and scalable according to level, whereas the manananggal is a straight-up CR 7 beast.  Its vulnerability to light blades gives your party’s rogues, bards, duelists, and other light-on-their feet types a chance to shine in combat, and its obsession with pregnant women offers some dark plot material. 

Best of all, you can choose to play up either their foreignness or their similarity to vampires.  The manananggal can be a torso-detaching surprise welcome to Western-style adventurers (or even more cosmopolitan Eastern parties) on their first visit to the islands.  But with bat wings and a hatred of garlic, they’ll fit into a classic Gothic Transylvanian setting just as easily.

A tiefling adventuress needs help defeating a manananggal that is preying on local pregnant women, draining them of their blood.  She has an ulterior motive, however—as a priestess of the demon queen of stillbirths and deformities, she is secretly outraged that the manananggal has been feasting on women whose births were destined to be tiefling and half-demon spawn in her dark mistress’s image.

No house in Rostoyovar is ever without a garlic braid hung by the door.  Vampires rule the mountain nights, spawn of the vampire count Lord Premotyev.  But as the count is jealous and cautious, he only rarely sires true vampiric children.  Rather, he imparts only a fraction of his gift, breeding bestial vampire spawn and the dreaded “wing witches” whose ticking calls are more dreaded than any wolf howl.

A dueling society that is often dismissed as a fraternity of layabouts and dandies (and worse yet, lends its approval and trousers to female inverts), the Twilight Blades are known both for their skill at swordplay and their refusal to follow the norms for said swordplay.  Their reluctance to engage in duels of honor per Martine custom (and their chair-toppling, curtain-ripping acrobatics when forced to do so) has many onlookers brand them as cowards to boot.  In reality, they are fierce fighters, defending Martine’s innumerable bridges and skyways from the manananggals and vargouilles that plague the canal city’s nights.  Their nocturnal habits cause them to be up all hours, to sleep late, and they see no point in fighting duels with humans when they serve the greater good in secret—an attitude the society’s twin leaders, Tito Vigoli and his boyish sister Titania, loudly encourage.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 190

Radio show time!  Long-time readers/listeners know that the musical quality of my shows and the technical quality are inversely proportional.  So get ready for some awesome: Blood Diamonds remixes Ellie Goulding, Flock of Dimes channels Robyn, and I…muddle through as best I can.  Seriously, though, this one’s a keeper, so download it!  

(Music starts at 4:12. If the feed skips, load in Firefox or Chrome, Save As an mp3, enjoy in iTunes for best results.)