Mindslaver Mold

Unexpectedly late night due to a surprise family visit and other stuff.  Will try to sneak in some mindslaver mold ideas in the morning.

Mi-Go

Mi-go are creatures of contradictions: Plant type creatures that look and fly like arthropods, fungi vastly smarter than most men, surgeons and scientists given to galactic conquest, technologists whose devices can mirror most magical effects, creatures without organs who collect brains.  They worship dark Outer Gods (Shub-Niggurath especially) from the void of space and war with elder things and other creatures from beyond the stars.

In a campaign that already features otherworldly or Lovecraftian threats, mi-go simply raise the stakes, as they have numbers and technology on their side.  Heck, they even like hill-country caves—you could stick them in the Caves of Chaos without raising a sweat. 

Then again, the introduction of mi-go could make your campaign take a hard left turn.  Imagine this: Your party’s paladin is charged with retrieving the body of a deceased prelate for interment  in the Holy City.  The trip there is the usual—a few lizardfolk, a troublesome hag, some peat bogs.  But when they arrive they find the prelate autopsied, his brain removed and sitting in a strange humming jar, and insect-like fungi buzzing in an argument about which moon to deliver the cargo to.  Suddenly your campaign just got weird.

Speaking of weird, I think the mi-go’s fungal nature is also a great way of uniting the old weird of Lovecraft with the New Weird of folks like Jeff VanderMeer.  If you fell in love with Ambergris but want an even darker setting for your campaign, have mi-go ally with myceloids in one of your fantasy cities and let the harvest begin.

Tainted, possibly fiendish satyr servants of Shub-Niggurath have started capturing women of every species, apparently determined to breed their way back to the Time Before Time.  Adventurers who try to confront these foul beasts find that they are increasingly well armed, smearing glowing alchemical goo over themselves to bolster their strength and using pitchforks that spit lightning and worse.  The satyrs are being supplied by mi-go, who worship the same dark deity.  Interestingly, some of the same stone circles that the satyrs use to slip into Faerie also open to strange pulsing caverns below stranger skies.

Clockwork creatures aren’t the next step forward in construct design.  They are in fact cunning traps waiting to be sprung.  Their designs were carefully seeded throughout the world by mi-go, who need only hum a few bars in their strange language to direct the clockwork machines to do their bidding.

The Corpse Train is a hurtling monument to death—a lightning rail car that spirals across the tidally locked planet of Duwalin, shuttling corpses from Gloomside to the sunbaked desert of the Kiln.  This gruesome transport is necessary to keep the necromantic energy of the Glooms from raising the corpses as zombies or other undead.  Adventurers are often called upon to keep the giant train free from ghouls, ghasts, and worse, as every stop, no matter how brief, invites the living dead.  But they face an entirely new threat when mi-go take over three whole cars and begin harvesting brains, testing weapons, and performing breeding and grafting experiments even as the train rockets ever onward.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #46 86–87 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 193

Obviously, both the Carrion Crown and Iron Gods Adventure Paths have a lot to say about mi-go and their technology, especially the full description in Pathfinder Adventure Path #46: Wake of the Watcher as well as PAP #88: Valley of the Brain Collectors.

I’m finally doing something about my lack of firsthand Lovecraft knowledge!  Or I will soon, at least—my brother got me the gorgeous new Klinger annotated collection for my birthday (along with a copy of Eldritch Horror and Jean-Christophe Valtat’s Luminous Chaos).

Memitim

 (Image comes from artist Brynn Metheney’s page and is © Paizo Publishing.)

“Soldiers know memitims as the angels of death,” the Inner Sea Bestiary reads—and no wonder, given that the average memitim is sporting both black wings and a scythe, as if wanting to be doubly sure you get the message.  These psychopomps gather in flocks called dirges over battlefields (or more likely, over whatever gray waypoint links said battlefields to the realm of death, be it the Ethereal or some other liminal space), ready to mow down the various soul-stealing predators that are attracted to such scenes of mass devastation. 

Like most psychopomps, memitims are by and large uninterested in PCs…unless the PCs’ actions interfere with their duties.  But if your campaign features large battles or sources of planned mass death—abattoirs or engines that run on life or souls, perhaps—PCs may run into one of these masked legionnaires.

Hoping to prevent the death of a gold dragon at Sebastian’s Field—and the subsequent harvesting of its soul for evil purposes—adventures ring Friedar’s Bell of Recall.  The terrible artifact traps the souls of all who hear it on the mortal plane, giving the adventurers time to race to the dragon’s side and either resurrect the beast or give it last rites.  But their route from the chapel to the corpse is blocked by a memitim scandalized at their use of the great bell within hearing of so many hundreds of dying soldiers and dragons.

Adventures are hired by an unusual patron—a bone-winged shinigami—to retrieve an errant soul from a night hag’s possession.  What neither they nor the clerics of the god of justice (who set up the original meeting) know is that the shinigami is a rogue.  The soul can testify to the reaper’s corruption, and when the night hag found out she used it to blackmail the outsider.  if the adventures are successful in recovering the soul, they will be intercepted by a memitim determined to uncover the shinigami’s corruption and send the soul on its way.  Fast-talking adventurers might ally with the memitim; more obstinate ones might find themselves fighting both scythe-wielding spirits at the same time.

Forced to wager their souls in an otherworldly game of chance, adventurers must defeat the schemes of the other players, including a devil, a powerful bogeyman, and an undead sphinx.  The “game board” is a battlefield where the adventures must prevent too many lives from being snuffed out.  All is going well until a dirge of memitims arrive, their terminal auras threatening to bleed out all the wounded on the field.  To win the wager—and save their souls—the adventurers must drive off the deadly psychopomps.

—Inner Sea Bestiary 39

Memitims owe their inspiration to biblical lore; Wes Schneider statted them up for the Inner Sea Bestiary.

No radio show to post since I was away this weekend, but thanks to everyone who submitted to the contest!  I’ll try to have all the entries judged this week (especially since we get to the mist drake on Thursday)—we’ll see how well work and life cooperate.

Marrowstone Golem

My skepticism of fantasy metals and minerals is well established.  (Never mind that it makes no sense.  Some poor author introduces, say, biron—“It’s like, twice as magnetic as iron”—and I’m all, “NOPE!”…yet apparently I can talk for hours on the mating habits of sphinxes.  So basically I’m a petulant child.) 

That said, a mineral that radiates darkness or death is a pretty well-established fantasy trope.  (Off the top of my head Forgotten Realms has darkstone and sickstone, and mordite has popped up in at least three novels of The Dresden Files.)  So lazurite/marrowstone isn’t an unreasonable creation.  Plus the marrowstone golem (statted up by Russ Taylor for the Inner Sea Bestiary) is actually pretty cool.  A golem that radiates a necrotic field and raises its victims as ghouls and ghasts is a pretty dope construct, especially as a guardian of a powerful undead creature or a demipower of death.

Two further pieces of interest: In the Golarion setting lazurite loses its potency outside the necropolis where it is mined…except when bound into a marrowstone golem.  If marrowstone is similarly located in your campaign, marrowstone golems become a fascinating combination of ambassador, evangelist, and weapon for the undead nation that possesses them.  (Imagine an undead city-state falling to crusaders, only to send out its marrow golems in all directions, like mindless, contagious Kal-Els from an evil Krypton).  Second, the ghouls created by a marrowstone golem are free-willed and may even retain their class levels…so while the golem will always hew to its master’s instructions, the colonies of undead it creates might not.

Marrowstone golems don’t exist on Hearth…but they do exist in the Greymoor, Hearth’s waterlogged version of the Ethereal Plane.  They guard temples to a power of mists and the restless dead who no longer seems to exist.  But the ghasts these golems have created are now the Greymoor’s primary inhabitants.

A mohrg has become addicted to the necrotic field of a marrowstone golem.  He leaves the golem’s side only when his unnatural desire for murder is too strong to ignore.  In any other city the mohrg’s movements would have been tracked and the creature dispatched, but the mummy-worshipping drow of Daxil have no City Watch.  Folk too poor to afford private guards will sometimes band together to hire foreign mercenaries to aid them, though—even surface dwellers, if they get desperate enough.

During the sack of Tesh Kumar, the Hand of Plague sent four marrowstone golems out of the subterranean city (all the ghast hierophant could spare from the defense of his inner sanctum) to continue Tesh’s legacy.  One golem lies buried in rubble in the earthquake-racked Caverns of Sapphire.  One has been destroyed, but not before overrunning the svirfneblin settlement of Tukh with diminutive undead.  One of the marrowstone golems is now trailed by a coterie of ghoul religious fanatics—half of whom are trying to maintain their faith in the Phoenix despite their transformation, and half who have eagerly embraced Most Black Yasmet.  And one remains unaccounted for…

—Inner Sea Bestiary 17

FYI, biron is also attracted to poetry and repelled by leeches.

What, too soon?

Edit: Thanks for your patience with this entry.  Original post:

Alas, no entry today—travel and festivities ate up my writing time.  Thanks for your patience.  I’ll fill this in soon.

Speaking of festivities, any day you go to your professor’s retirement party and two women’s studies profs come up to you and say, “You don’t remember us, but 15 years ago you DJed our party and you were awesome” is a good one.

Keep the contest entries coming.

Manitou

As was foretold in the prophecy, no entry today—my work function ran late and I have to be up at 6:00 a.m. to drive to Massachusetts.  (Any Williams College students want to hang out tomorrow?)  I'll try to catch up over the weekend.  In the meantime, SUBMIT TO THE CONTEST.

Mana Wastes Mutant

Finally, a monster that answers the question: Where do mongrelmen come from?  And: What happens if my game world goes all Gamma World?  And: Where can I get some really good acidic pustule action?

Mana Wastes mutants are found in spell-blasted lands, primal or (especially) dead magic zones, and places where magic has otherwise caused truly great devastation.  In Golarion, that’s the Mana Wastes (duh); in Eberron it would be the Mournland; in the Realms it would likely be in areas particularly badly hit by the Time of Troubles or the Spellplague.  The mutants are deformed but resilient creatures, permanently warped by the devastation they were born into but better able to survive because of their mutations. 

Whether you’re trying to do a fantasy version of Mad Max, your world’s version of a nuclear reactor just blew up, or you simply need a warped subterranean race where every member is a little different, Mana Wastes mutants are the bile-spewing horrors for the job.

It is an article of faith in Coravelle that the mutants of the Blasted Reach are mindless barbarians.  Moreover, sages say that none of them—not a one—have any magical talent.  So when a mage rises in the desert—a mystic theurge, no less—it sends Coravelle’s learned folk into a panic.  Meanwhile, out in the Blasted Reach mutants begin to flock to the theurge’s banner.

The pit fighter Groth Barnard’s body and mind were ruined when the Académie Luminaire boiled a quarter of the city in acid and magical fog.  Sickly and often vomiting acid, Groth takes out his anger at the world by smashing opponents (and anyone else who crosses him) with his elephantine arm.  He will also try to kill any mutated catfolk he sees on sight, as packs of the creatures tried to feed on him in the first days after the catastrophe.

When an elven aethership misjudged the jump out of the Astral and speared a duergar space citadel through its fission core, the results were a catastrophic.  Now only the first three levels of the citadel and the aethership’s botanics deck are uncorrupted.  The non-mutated survivors struggle to survive against waves of mutated survivors and particularly foul spriggans (whose presence in the radioactive nightmare no one can explain).

—Inner Sea Bestiary 28–29

The module Wardens of the Reborn Forge has even more Mana Wastes mutants if you’re looking for stat blocks to steal.

For what I presume are copyright reasons (the Mana Wastes being Golarion-specific IP), the OGC refers to this monster as a “Mana Wasted Mutant” (emphasis mine)—a name so 1994 I’m expecting Linkara’s ’90s Kid to come out shouting it while riding a snowboard.  “TO THE EXTREME!”

Also, if you’re looking for the mammoth flea, look here.

Apparently Paizo is on Tumblr now.  Welcome to the party!  Since you’re late, you have to play the cleric. 

(I’m pandering with that joke.  I actually like playing a cleric.)

My next few days could be problematic (for mostly good, fun reasons), so bear with me if entries are late/absent.

Finally: I AM HOLDING A CONTEST.  THE DETAILS ARE HERE.  I’ve already received two submissions, and they’re good, so you’ve got some competition.

Maenad

Maenads are what happens at 3:00 a.m. when the party turns ugly.  Maenads are what happens when the god of revelry and wine packs up to go but the god of madness sticks around.  The maenads of myth may have started out as Dionysus’s followers, but by the time they tore Orpheus apart they were stark-raving mad and murderous.  Maenads are what happens when you get blackout drunk and wake up covered in someone else’s blood—and with that someone’s flesh filling your stomach.  (Eat your heart out, The Secret History.)

Pathfinder’s maenads are interesting because they are not simply caught up in the throes of ecstatic abandon—they are engineering mass madness with abilities that undermine the mind while bolstering the body.  This makes them outright perpetrators of violence rather than accessories or victims.  And as creatures that can live for thousands of years, they are more akin to fey or outsiders than most monstrous humanoids—nearly supernatural spirits of rage given very physical form, whose long-term goals bend always toward the taboo and debauched.

Satyrs and fauns have nothing to fear from maenads…though the wild women tend to bring out the worst in these libidinous fey.  When a satyr betrothed to a fey princess is seen in the company of maenads, adventurers are sent to reclaim the boy before he commits a crime that will bar him from the Cherry Petal Throne.

Like his divine father Osis, a falcon-headed half-celestial was betrayed and torn apart.  Also like his forebear, he might be reborn if his disparate pieces are reunited.  Most of those pieces are in the clutches of a revel of maenads, who enjoy feeding upon the youth’s constantly regenerating flesh.

Male maenads, while rare, are not unknown.  The berserker lodge known as the Grave Wolves holds terrible rites that include devouring human flesh.  Those who survive the experience (cannibalism is a notorious vector for filth fever) and who do not turn to ghouls are rewarded with power by their lodge’s mysterious patron—turning them into male maenads who forgo metal weapons in favor of attacking with their poisoned nails and teeth.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 4 191

Looking for the lurker above?  It’s here with the other stages of the lurking ray life cycle.

If you want your maenads to wield thyrsi (singular: thyrsus) like the maenads of legend, stats for the sibat (Ultimate Equipment) or the elven branched spear (Melee Tactics Toolbox) should do the trick.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention D&D 3.5’s maenads from the Expanded Psionics Handbook, which I thought were a very neat concept.  You know normally I’m not a fan of taking an established monster’s name and putting it on a different monster.  But there’s a counterargument to be made—that using an established monster’s name can offer a hook for anchoring a new monsters identity or features.  Take the water wraith, for instance.  It’s no wraith; it’s a giant color-changing lizard.  But the name “wraith” suggests the stealth of its movements and how unnerving its color-changing ability is.  The wraith name works.  Similarly, 3.5’s maenads—crystal-dusted humanoids able to channel emotion into a focused outburst of physical strength and a scream of rage—bore little relation to the maenads of myth, but the maenad name gave them a certain emotional heft and weight.  In advertising terms, they were borrowing brand equity—and it worked.

So yeah, 3.5’s maenads from the EPH were cool.  They also made cameo appearances in the Player’s Guide to Eberron, as survivors of an Atlantis-style disaster, and in the Dark Sun-reviving Dragon #319, as temperamental refuges from a crystal demiplane.