Lunarma

Space grells!  Okay, not really…no philosophers here, just mindless predators…but it’s a close enough description to get all my D&D-playing fans excited, right?

What lunarmas are are space predators—picture the body of a spider crab hovering in midair and dangling clawed tentacles.  Oh, and they implant their eggs in helpless victims—and yes, the larvae will eat their way out.  Also an acid breath weapon.  And their carapace is barbed, which cuts down their huggable factor.  Good times!

If you want a mindless, science fiction double feature menace that must be killed to be stopped—they can survive on wood and dust if they have to and hibernate for centuries—lunarmas fit the bill.  But there are hints in the Bestiary 4 text that lunarmas don't just appear—that they've been planted…or left behind…or even aimed.  And that makes for another kind of adventure altogether.

Usually descending into the dungeon is the difficult part.  This time it’s the going up that’s hard.  When a cave-in blocks an adventuring party’s route home, they have to try a forking path instead…and in the process, awaken a hive of hibernating lunarmas.  Now it’s a race back to the surface, with the adventurers simultaneously trying to outpace the lunarmas and prevent them from reaching the surface, where their devastation will only spread.

In the right circles—typically only the most open-minded sages and explorers—flumphs are known as messengers and scouts in the war against aberrations and aliens from beyond the stars.  Hence their being targeted by a biological weapon: the lunarmas.  When an adventuring party’s patron is contacted by the sole survivor of a shattered flumph colony, she hires adventurers to dispose of the lunarma menace and then try to trace the aberrations back to their designers…which might eventually lead them to vespergaunts and worse.

Formians despise lunarmas, for they are not immune to the aberrations’ egg-implanting abilities.  Nevertheless, they are not above using them to serve their purposes.  Should a planet of mammals resist formian colonization too strenuously, members of the myrmarch caste will direct lunarma-seeded asteroids to be sent to the surface in hopes of softening up the locals for a new round of colonization in a decade or so.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 185

Pathfinder fans, if you’re curious about grells, a good source is Lords of Madness: The Book of Aberrations, which made #13 in my “The 18 Most Rewarding 3e D&D Books for Pathfinder GMs” list.

Since we covered lunar dragons on Friday, ohgodhesloose reminded us of Spelljammer’s moon dragon.  Don't let your werewolf get near one.  In turn, I am likewise required to name-check the D&D Master Rules’ Pearl, the Moon Dragon, Ruler of all Chaotic Dragons.  Not having an official good/evil axis, “basic” D&D was always fuzzier on alignment than AD&D or Pathfinder…but while it’s not a 100% guarantee that Pearl was bad news, the fact that she always traveled with a retinue of max-hit point brown, red, green, and black dragons was not a sign of a very pleasant monarch.

Radio show!  Proof you can go from Holychild to Harry Belafonte in just one move.  (Suck it, Pandora algorithms!)  Also commemorating 10 years of the Hold Steady’s Separation Sunday, and apparently I just remembered that I like Big Audio Dynamite.  Stream or download it here.

(Link good till Friday, 5/15, at midnight.  If the feed skips, Save As an mp3 and listen in iTunes.)

Lunar Dragon

Presumably the most numerous of the outer dragons, lunar dragons are radiant, shimmering beasts seemingly fascinated with the lives of the planet-bound mortals they orbit around.

Beyond that…?  We don’t know.  That’s one of the awesome things about the outer dragons: We are given so little description of them that the field is wide open for you to leave your mark upon.

Maybe lunar dragons are capricious but basically benevolent protectors of their moons and the planets below.  (One would certainly imagine a lunar dragon in the Forgotten Realms setting acting this way.)  Or maybe their temperaments and alignments might wax and wane with the phases of the moon, swinging from chaotic good to evil and back.  Maybe they are tasked to keep races planetbound, or help guide them to the stars.  Maybe their visits to mortal artists is what drives these folk to new heights of inspiration…until the dragons’ alien presence renders the poor souls mad (hence “lunacy”).  Maybe every moon has its own patron moon dragon guardian or perhaps whole clutches of them congregate on particularly icy or beautiful or remote spheres.  It’s all on the table.

Hunting lycanthropes, adventurers come across a lunar dragon feasting on a wereboar.  Under the light of the full moon, the lunar dragon is gregarious, generous, and benevolent.  But the shadow that passes over the moon passes over the dragon’s heart as well, and in the dark of the new moon she is cruel and vicious.  She consorts mainly with fey, who are well used to such mercurial swings in their own folk.

Each of Tennaro’s 12 moons has its own guardian lunar dragon, scales tinged with the dust of his or her particular rocky sphere.  Jasuphex is an active beast that regularly swims with the tritons of Merrow.  Despite the warlike red of his scales, Utaro is a pacifist who meditates with the contemplatives of his moon.  Eltanux’s moon is lifeless, but he scries on mortals from the world below, occasionally intervening on behalf of his particular favorites.  And Vetaneth’s greed has gotten the better of her, as her hoard is filed with the hulks of treasure galleons she has plucked from the seas, the sky, and the void seemingly indiscriminately.

A clutch of lunar dragons are the rulers of a city on the dark side of the moon.  Attended by catfolk scholars, warriors, tumblers, and servants, the lunar dragons study the stars for portents and otherworldly invaders.  While travelers are not particularly welcomed in the hidden city, they are not unknown either, and occasionally can be put to good use.  Currently the lunar dragons are offering adventurers a bounty on twin void dragons—known and hated for preying on oma calves—and on one of their own, a silver-winged lunar dragon beauty who participated in the genocide of all life from her small moon.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 66–67

Catfolk on the moon?  Looks like someone’s paying homage.

Regarding yesterday’s post, goluxexmachina wrote:

Shouldn't completing the pentagram be possible at level 19 with an Int of 36?  Granted that's really high, but if you can get it super high it's possible even earlier I think. On the other hand, even at 20 it requires an Int of 28...

Sure, there are tons of ways to crunch the numbers and spell slots, especially once you start messing with high Intelligence scores, whether naturally or magically boosted.  I was keeping it simple: At 20th level pretty much any wizard can cast four memorized 9th-level spells a day and then trigger a wish (presumably cast the day before and worded to trigger after the other spells are cast, or triggered from an item specifically crafted for this event).  But each wizard’s path toward attempting this feat might be a little different—you don't get to Level 20 without taking a few risks and amassing some pretty unique items, artifacts, spell lists, and followers/familiars.  In any case, Lorthact doesn’t intend to allow any mage within his sphere of influence to ever aspire that high!

Have a good weekend, everybody.

Lorthact

To get the full story on Lorthact, you’re going to need the Inner Sea Bestiary—essentially he was a consigliere to several archdukes until the Whore-Queen of the erinyes caught him plotting above his station, and now he hides out in Korvosa.  It’s no question that his influence is one of the things that make Korvosa such a dark mirror of the agathion-blessed Magnimar, and in particular you can feel his stain all over the dark teaching methods of Korvosa’s magic college, the Academae.

But if your campaign’s not set in Golarion even his generic stats paint a picture of a pretty terrifying opponent.  His party piece is that he can steal spells and even school abilities from wizards.  (Not only that, but the school abilities remain stolen as long as Lorthact retains them!)  He also exists somewhat out of the time stream, making many divinations useless against him.  And time stops?  He ignores those.  (#sorryaboutit)  Add to that a host of spell-like abilities (many of them empowered or quickened), his ability to drain intelligence with every weapon strike, and the usual risks of taking on an infernal duke, and your adventurers have one hell (ouch, sorry, even I’m wincing at that one) of a devil to face.

In a standard campaign, Lorthact could make for an amazing final encounter—the devil whose behind-the-scenes influence has been making the party’s life a living hell (there’s that word again) since their very first adventure (or maybe even earlier, if any of the PCs were once wizard’s apprentices).  In a mythic campaign, he might be the third-party spoiler that robs PCs of crucial abilities at just the wrong time, when whole worlds hang in the balance.  Either way he’s the devil you can’t know…until it’s too late.

There has never been a senior mage able to “complete the Pentagram”—a term for casting gate, prismatic sphere, time stop, power word: kill, and then releasing a previously prepared wish (in other words, 20th level)—in the history of the Emerald Academy.  This is because the Chair of Shadow Magic is actually a thrall of Lorthact, and together the two ensure that no mage ever reaches that august level of power.  (Archmages are identified and eliminated even sooner.)

The Intelligent Artifice behind the inevitable race, the Mōnarch has diverted the crafteries into forming siege weapons and strange constructs instead of inevitables.  When queried, the Mouth of the Mōnarch replies that “all is progressing in accordance with the Plan.”  The author of that plan is Lorthact and the infernal consigliere is putting his new patron’s resources to good use.

A nation imprisoned in ice.  The Holy City ripped from the ground and sent into the sky.  An elven queen crucified on her own Throne of Thorns.  And the fey queen who has engineered it all promises to reverse everything in a heartbeat the instant she is handed Lorthact’s crown.  The fact that Lorthact’s crown is formed from the very horns of his head is a detail she’ll leave adventurers to wrestle with.

—Inner Sea Bestiary 26–27

Lorthact’s stats come courtesy of Jason Nelson.

Remember this photo?  The episode Mike was filming that night airs tonight at 9:00 PM Eastern on CNN.  There’s a tiny chance you might see me poolside!  But you won’t.  #iamnotphotogenic

(Also if you actually live in Baltimore, check out the front page of The Baltimore Sun where my coworker Aaron and his son Noah make an appearance.)

Lorelei

I had to memorize Die Lorelei in 8th grade—a task I hated at the time—so having surmounted that poetical obstacle I’m rather attached to Heinrich Heine’s image of the Lorelei as a bewitching maiden.  I’ve even referenced the Lorelei a few times in adventure seeds here on this blog.

Then Bestiary 4 comes out, and with it the stony, anemone-like lorelei.  Suffice it to say, this is not Die schönste Jungfrau of my imaginings, and I have real trouble imagining her combing mit goldenem Kamme through her rocky tentacles.

That said, my personal preferences don't always line up with what's best for the game.  Example: I always loved D&D’s doglike kobolds, especially as portrayed by Ken Rolston in GAZ7: The Northern Reaches, but 3.0/Pathfinder’s draconic kobolds offer up far more story and role-playing avenues.  When it comes to loreleis, we already have several beguiling fishy maidens of one sort or another; we don’t need another one.  Going back to the lorelei’s etymology to create this horrific but charming rock creature is the right move.

One other thing to call out about the Pathfinder lorelei is its power over the undead.  That’s an interesting hook to add to a creature that’s already so good at causing the kind of destruction that easily fosters undeath.  And now that we have so many aquatic undead to choose from in the game, you can stitch together pretty memorable combos with a lorelei and duppies, floodslain (see Belkzen, Hold of the Orc Hordes), or even an immature sea bonze.

The path up to a waterfall is lined with corpses crudely nailed to the rock walls so they stand like sentinels.  This is the collection of a lorelei.  She uses speak with dead to plunder the corpses’ secrets, and then ventriloquism and whispering wind to make the dead “talk” to other passersby.  Her aims in doing so, while varied, are always antagonistic, whether she is spreading rumors about a scandal in the nearby village, convincing hikers their trailmates are plotting against them, or simply shrieking to scare victims into falling down the sheer cliff face.

Not all loreleis have the upper tentacle in dealing with the undead.  The graveknight Malcus Ebonheart responded to a lorelei’s attempt to charm him by nailing her with ensorcelled spikes to the prow of his ship.  The magical spikes keep the lorelei alive despite her water dependency; the other thing that keeps her alive is her prompt use of water and fog magic at the graveknight’s command.

Loreleis produce by budding—and sometimes it goes wrong.  Rather than grow from a separate piece of flesh, the lorelei Mantua’s daughter was born from the side of Mantua’s head and remains there still as little more than a stunted growth.  Shandra seeks a way to kill her mother without losing her mother’s healthy body, and she will eagerly murmur this to anyone who will listen while Mantua is asleep.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #60 86–87 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 184

More on the lorelei can be found in Pathfinder Adventure Path #60: From Hell’s Heart.

Heehee.  I said “fishy maidens.”

A number of folks wrote in to remind me that AD&D had a living wall—originally from the Ravenloft setting, I believe, though it made it into the Monstrous Manual.  It’s actually a supremely nasty monster filled with trapped souls whose abilities it can use to attack.

Given that the MM is one of the few 2e books I own (and probably the only hardcover), maybe I should have remembered it…but I stand by my original assessment that Pathfinder’s living wall way more resembles the Magic: The Gathering card than it does Ravenloft’s necromantic horror.

Looking for the locust swarm?  We covered it back here.

Living Wall

When Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997, I recall a lot of fears that D&D would suddenly be featuring Llanowar Elves and Scryb Sprites.  Thankfully that never came to pass, either in the world’s oldest role-playing game or Pathfinder…but when I opened my Bestiary 4 to the “Living Wall” entry, I almost wondered if it had. 

There are differences of course.  The good news for PCs is that this wall doesn't regenerate—ha, just kidding; it has fast healing 1.  And it has a number of resistances.  And it can link with its fellows to better withstand damage.  Oh, and it will still crush you into a pulp—that’s definitely happening.

Um…anyone got any Scryb Sprites handy?

The skull of the nephilim Ja’om was used in the construction of the living wall at Abendiggal—a calculated insult by Abendiggal’s goat priests, directed at Ja’om’s sire, Jashketh Shedu-Father.  The Shedu-Father may be a demigod associated with peaceful entreaties and oral contracts, but even he has a limit to what he will bear.  His factors seek adventurers who will infiltrate Abendiggal, rescue Ja’om’s skull, and ideally cast down the goat priests and their summoned schirs.

A living wall protects the entrance to a dungeon.  Luring the wall away from its post reveals the hidden trap door.  Leaving the trap door open for too long completes a mystic circuit that calls allips to attack poky investigators.

Kasatha society has been seduced into the worship of the Black Emissary.  When they die, their bodies are supposedly added to their local temple’s Wall of Remembrance.  In truth, they are hacked apart and made into a gruesome corpse concrete that is the first ingredient for a living wall.  These living walls turn kasatha temple complexes into ever-shifting deathtraps.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 182

I only experienced the bombshell that WotC was buying TSR belatedly and third-hand.  I was in college at the time, and my engagement in the hobby was pretty much at its lowest ebb ever—I even got lazy about regularly buying Dragon Magazine.  (I would later go back and pick up the issues I'd missed at back-issue prices, so the six months it ceased publication were actually a kindness to my wallet.)  So I was utterly flummoxed when I did find out about the merger…I think either one of my more hardcore gamer friends told me or I just discovered it when I picked up a random issue of Dragon and went, “Bwaaah?!?”

You know what I’m super pleased about?  My new reader numbers took a major hit during my surprise two-week “vacation” after my old computer got injured…but as of last week we’re reliably back to adding more than 200 folks a month.  Better yet, last Friday we hit a milestone: 3,000 followers.  I think actuallywut gets the nod for putting us over the top.  Thanks all!

Living Topiary

There are two kinds of GMs in the world: GMs who hear “living topiary” and think that’s awesome…and GMs who hear “living topiary” and think nothing at all because a bush shaped like a lion just ate them.

In all seriousness, while living topiaries may sound a little silly (like getting attacked by Disney World after lights out), their stats make them anything but.  When you combine Hedge Stride (Sp) and Move through Hedges (Ex) with the healing Assimilate (Ex) ability—especially if you do it somewhere that PCs have limited mobility, like a hedge maze or thick undergrowth—you get a combatant that can take a lot of damage and then vanish, only to return again and again until the party is ground into the dirt.

Obviously, living topiaries are easy to find in creepy greenhouses and on the grounds of arcane academies and anywhere druids hang out.  Try these options on for size as well:

The Sundered Labyrinth was never meant to be a maze—or a deathtrap.  Designed by the saint Olivia of the Green, it was intended to gently guide the walker to its heart while encouraging contemplation.  But when Olivia was murdered by fiendish leucrottas, a mysterious rift scarred the labyrinth and the serene magic of the place turned dark.  The elephant-shaped topiaries, meant to represent important philosophical thinkers, have come to life and now hunt those who try to walk the Sundered Labyrinth’s twisted path.  Assuming adventures survive the plant creatures, they may still have to contend with Olivia’s slayers.

A leanan sidhe received her comeuppance when a one of her sculptor thralls managed to trap her in one of his creations.  Now petrified inside a statue of herself, the faerie can only glare with impotent hatred upon the world.  The power of her resentment and mythic might is so strong that it has leaked out and infused her surroundings, giving form to living topiaries that stalk in cat shape around her statue.

In the genie-blasted wastes of the Anvil, life persists despite the boiling heat and magical feedback.  The few hardy plants that remain in this region are so infused with sorcery that when their oases run dry they refuse to shrivel up; instead they gather themselves into living topiaries and lope across the plains looking for fresh water…or blood, if it comes to that.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #47 80–81 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 181

Paizo’s ear for collective nouns strikes again: 5–7 living topiaries are a boscage.

A full ecology and customization options can be found in Pathfinder Adventure Path #47: Ashes at Dawn.

I'm pretty proud of the recent run of shows I've had, including this one. Give it a listen if you like—it's pretty summery!  Including a mini-"Dancing in the Streets" set for Baltimore and a shout-out to the Baltimore City Paper staff, as well as lots of Bowling for Soup.

(Link good till Friday, 5/8, at midnight. if the feed skips, Save As an mp3 and listen in iTunes.)

Leanan Sidhe

The leanan sidhe (literally “fairy-lover”) exemplifies the dangers inherent in faerie gifts: that they are rarely gifts.  There is always a price, an exchange.  The leanan sidhe also personifies the costs artists pay to follow their muse—sometimes sacrificing fortunes, health, and even their lives in the process.  And the leanan sidhe illustrates how narrow the line is between fey and other monster types with their almost vampiric feeding habits.

Speaking of which, where a leanan sidhe is found is likely a symptom of how aggressively she feeds on life energy.  A leanan sidhe who is a reclusive nature spirit behaves like a dryad, gathering around her the pleasing and talented thralls who happen to come her way.  Her tokens may even be bargaining chips to convince these servants to protect sites of natural beauty.  Other leanan sidhe act more like vampires, heading into urban societies—high, bohemian, or both—to from cliques, salons, or schools around themselves from which to draw ample talent for entertainment and feeding.

In a low-magic or historical campaign, facing a mythic creature like a leanan sidhe might also be a good way to introduce high-level/more magical play.  A Celtic or Anglo-Saxon party might have had a grand old time with clan politics, hewing goblins, and fighting Romans, but when they run afoul of the sidhe suddenly their world is changed forever.  And of course on some worlds a leanan sidhe might be the Leanan Sidhe, a singular entity in the vein of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files…in which case her class levels and mythic ranks might go even higher.

To learn a masterpiece, a bard and his friends must track down a musician currently in the hands of a leanan sidhe.  Not only will they have to convince the musician to give up the fey’s tokens before her life draining kills him, but they will also have to defeat her “lapdogs”—former slaves she had infected with lycanthropy once she was done with them.

Disguised as a college chambermaid, a leanan sidhe has managed to bring the Chair of Transmutation under her sway.  Seemingly rejuvenated by her possets and tender ministrations, the man has become addicted to her various blessings and the great flexibility they give him in spell selection and recovery.  Meanwhile, she quietly stokes his rivalry with the Chair of Abjuration, coaxing him into experiments that undermine the wards protecting the college.

A leanan sidhe becomes enchanted with the masses sung at a temple famous for its chanters.  Her zeal for the music is such that she attempts to convert to worship of the faith, but she soon becomes frustrated by the dogged silence of human deities.  The mercurial fey decides that the priests have been mocking her all along, and by the time adventurers arrive at the scene the rectory is rife with factions, accusations, and bloodshed, with the leanan sidhe egging on her various charmed and blessed servants into greater and greater acts of debauchery.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 180

Intellectually I’ve always known I’d get a bigger response if I included pictures (something I’ve hesitated to do because of rights/permission issues).  But still…wow.