Tripurasura

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

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

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

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

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 26

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

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

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

Fortooate weighs in:

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

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

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

Inspiring knightdisciple to ask…

So does that mean the Velociraptors are the Defense Lawyers?

…and evocatively named thefingerfuckingfemalefury to exclaim:

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

And ohgodhesloose adds:

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

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

Triceratops & Tyrannosaurus

Image courtesy of artisticlicensetokill; see below.

These are the big ones: the two dinosaurs everyone knows (especially since they’re so often pictured dueling each other).  If dinosaurs exist in your world, it’s not a question of if the party ranger is going to want one of these as an animal companion; it’s when.

Meanwhile, though, let’s give you some excuses to sic them on your players.

The kasatha matadors of Barsca laugh at the notion of bullfighting.  These nimble, four-armed jumpers instead test their skills against enraged triceratopses.  Criminals and outsiders who wish an audience with the Saber Chief are often expected to take part as picadors.

A kapre wishes to drive adventurers away from the as-yet-unspoiled Rainbow Falls.  The wooden-faced plant entity blows smoke on the adventurers and exposes them to its confounding aura, then drives a tyrannosaurus into their midst to scatter them.

After being awakened, a tyrannosaurus uses its newfound intelligence to ensure a more reliable food supply through banditry, extortion, and mercenary work.  Its most recent contract is with Crescent Mining, a company of wereboars currently gutting the jungle east of Portage Lagoon.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 86

My original adventure seed for the tyrannosaurus was, “A tyrannosaurus has been awakened—and taught the law.”  If any of you brave readers are up for it, I would love to see your adventure seeds starring T. Rex, Esq.

Treant

The tree-like treants need no introduction—which is refreshing, because this far down the alphabet, we’re mostly dealing with mostly new or second-tier monsters that need a little explanation.  Thankfully, with treants we can spend more time on our favorite activity: reinvention.

Because let’s face it, the models for treants are J. R. R. Tolkien’s Ents, with all that centuries-old perspective and “Hroom”ing.  But what if treants aren’t always slow, ruminating things?  What if they proactively act to defend their forests?  What if they are expressions of the land’s will (and ire)—Great Birnam Wood come to high Dunsinane Hill, as it were?  (See also the terrible eyeless tytans of Weis & Hickman’s Elven Star.)  What if their treespeech allows them to command entirely new realms of information?  (The plant creatures in A Fire Upon the Deep come to mind.)  Just for one campaign, banish Treebeard and see what happens…

Long fostered in the urbane capital of Victoriana, Dyfed Hartsbane was determined to bring the customs of the southern court to rustic Penrhyn when he ascended to the Oaken Throne.  But after he failed to shed his blood upon the Birch Altar or offer his body to the forest (and the dryad priestess therein), the trees themselves rebelled.  Animated as treants, they now encroach upon Penrhyn Castle, tromping through crofter’s homes, smashing barns, and tearing down walls along their way.

In the Brightback it is not only the lizardfolk that go on walkabout.  Even the trees travel, herded by hardy treants the way a shepherd might sheep—a fact that makes the already mythic landscape seem as fluid as a dream.  Humanoid explorers might go to sleep in a shady glade only to wake and find the trees have vanished in the night, or camp in a barren ravine only to be shaded under verdant boughs in the morning.  But care must be taken around these treants.  While some are peaceful, all have strange religious beliefs that humanoids easily offend…and some are avid hunters, who find that humanoid blood makes their gum tree herds all the more lush.

The skyport of Verdancy is prized by captains and quartermasters for restocking—serving up strong spars, healthy citrus, fresh water, and clean air aplenty.  But the skyfarers all speak softly and carefully around Verdancy’s masters: the treants.  More terrifying than any mercane debt collector or ceratioidi crime boss, the treants are information collectors whose plants hear every rumor, who dwarf even giants as they stride through the streets, and who occasionally gather to smash voidships to flinders, without a word of explanation given.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 266

Ever have an official pronunciation that flies in the face of your personal pronunciation?  I cannot get behind “tre-ant.”  For me, treant rhymes with Ent. 

There is plenty of precedent in gaming for flat-out evil treants.  “Basic” D&D’s AC9 Creature Catalogue featured the gakarak, an ancient treant who tried to kill any humanoid entering its forest that wasn’t a druid.

Also, let me once again rave about John Nephew's PC1 Tall Tales of the Wee Folk, which offered treants as player characters (along with centaurs and sprites and the owl-like hsiao greyhound-like pookas) because why not and size be damned!

I was not expecting such a big response for totenmaskes.  My sympathies go out to knightdisciple’s paladin.

Totenmaske

The Germanically named totenmaske (“death mask”) hails from the wild and woolly early days of Pathfinder (#3: The Hook Mountain Massacre, to be precise).  I’m especially fond of it for avoiding the default undead physiognomy.  It’s not a pale corpse by any means, but a vibrantly green, moldy, fleshy…thing…with a flesh-shaping power set that recalls the Morlock Masque from the X-Men comics.  (That power set, by the way, is terrifying to me (as I bet it is to most players)—I’d rather lose a +2 weapon to a rust monster than have one of my PC’s faces turned into a lumpy mess.)  It also features the obsession with sin that many early Pathfinder monsters had, going out of its way to sample the pleasures, sensations, and vices of the flesh.

Speaking of which, don’t let the Teutonic name box you into only using totenmaskes in your fantasy Switzerland.  Their carnal natures recall the monsters of both Near and Far East—you could imagine them serving as minions of rakshasas, partnering with doppelgangers, or competing with various greedy oni and other spirits.  Wherever there are sensations to steal, a totenmaske might be wearing someone’s skin.

The Monastery of the Stern Horse Master serves the parish of Wineapple—or did, before a totenmaske moved in and began consuming the friars one by one.  So far its predations have gone unnoticed—the monks have their own cells and spend half the week silent, so it has gone unchallenged as of yet.  The totenmaske knows it should move on before it is discovered, but it has become obsessed with the sarcophagi in the monastery basement, and spends hours examining the death masks it has found there…for what reason it cannot say.

Among the beggars of Shaipur, the reshaping touch of the totenmaske is considered lucky…or at least practical.  (Local custom looks in favor on giving alms to lame beggars, whereas able-bodied ones are beaten as lazy sinners).  The more unscrupulous beggar clans have been known to expose young ignorant recruits to a captive totenmaske’s touch before assigning them a corner.

The Z’karti are dirt drow—a derogatory name for clans driven out of their ancestral homes, who must eke out a living in the barren levels perilously close to the scorching surface.  Along the way, the Z’karti also lost their gift for fleshwarping, and their new chief is determined to rediscover the secret by studying totenmaskes.  He has found a colony of the undead creatures but has so far failed to catch them, and many of his men are marred in both body and spirit by the totenmaskes’ attacks.

—Pathfinder #3 82–83 & Pathfinder Bestiary 2 269

Radio troubles have multiplied.  Not only could I not get into the station on time, but every DJ’s show this week had major sound quality issues.  If you’re intrepid, here’s the link; otherwise, this one’s skippable.

Toshigami

The blossom kami!  How sweet.  But wait, this is a flower spirit from Japanese mythology—so it can’t be that simple, right?

Of course not.  The toshigami is also a spirit of time (and the New Year, according to Wikipedia).  Which means this is no simple shikigami or kodama, but a CR 15 hasted, finger of death-casting tree spirit that can age you with a touch. 

Now aren’t you glad it’s neutral good? 

As creatures of time, these kami necessarily take a longer view of existence than most PCs, but their willingness to dwell (and even find love) among humans makes them surprisingly urban for such powerful spirits.  If there’s a city park of surpassing beauty in your campaign, you can bet it is protected by a toshigami—good to know, if you need healing away from the local temple’s watchful eye; more problematic if you’re the type of PC that throws fire spells around too freely.

The city of Eshu has grown around the Blushing Glade, the once wild hillside now a small park of cherry trees surrounded by cobbled streets.  But a planned thoroughfare threatens to uproot the glade entirely.  The park’s toshigami marshals a defense, and while her kami and fey allies are few in number, their ability to charm or distract workers has slowed progress on the road.  At the toshigami’s side is the samsaran whom she has loved through three lifetimes.  Opposing her is the provincial governor, secretly a kuwa, who wants to see every pink petal burned.

The temple mount of the ruined elven city of Kyver may be one of the most beautiful sights in the world, with cherry trees poking up through the cracked floors of the ruined houses of worship.  It is also an exceedingly dangerous place to visit.  The mount is home to several banshees who hate each other as much as they hate mortal visitors, as well as a suspicious toshigami.  The banshees avoid her petal-strewn lair, and her ability to cast restoration and cure moderate wounds can be a godsend to travelers.  But if her trees are harmed or she suspects visitors of siding with one of the banshees—all of whom guard sites of divine power—she will attack without mercy.

A bythos finds calm in its lair, a Möbius strip realm that moves the traveler through all four seasons in a matter of hours.  The aeon’s majordomo is a toshigami who directs her medusa oracle servants in repelling (or petrifying) intruders.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 164

Reader and medieval/art historian jenna-darknight doubledand tripled down on yesterday’s saga suggestions:

Egilssaga is pretty good for a more political campaign if you’re looking for Norse flavor too.  The Volsung cycle is better if you want something more traditionally epic, and the Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál are good grounding in the mythology.  The Æsir got an entry in 3.0’s Deities and Demigods too, so they even have portfolios and shit for you to use.

On a more game-related, dig-through-the-archives level, I’ll also plug Ian Malcomson’s article “Dark Ages” from Dragon #257 as a must-read, as well as (once again) Ken Rolston’s GAZ7 The Northern Reaches.  I’m also kicking myself for leaving two copies of the 2e AD&D Viking Campaign Sourcebook on the shelf at my local game store, only to have them both(!) gone when I returned.

Tor Linnorm

Okay, don’t be fooled.  The “tor” in “tor linnorm” is only accurate if you realize that particular tor is perched on the lip of a lava-spewing volcano.  That’s like calling a blue dragon a shocker lizard—it’s kinda true in the very strictest sense, but try pointing that out to the survivors.  (They should be called caldera linnorms or tephra linnorms instead.)

Tor linnorms are the most powerful of the non-unique linnorms, outmatching even tarn linnorms.  As always with linnorms, be ready for the multistage breath weapon, the poison bite, and of course, the death curse—boiling blood in this case.  If there’s one saving grace, it’s that tor linnorms are so hungry for adoration (or at least displays of fear) that you can actually keep it from killing you if you talk well enough…for a little while at least.

The tradition of hurling virgins into volcanoes had its genesis with certain tor linnorms, who liked to keep the maidens as servants and worshippers until they died of fright or succumbed to the heat.  A brijidine has made ending virgin sacrifice her bailiwick, and she seeks mortals who will slay a tor linnorm that has come out of hibernation and resumed the ancient practice.

The Annals of the Antler Champions have been stolen!  The theft is part of a pattern: Someone has been robbing libraries and abducting bards in the shadow of the Smoking Peaks.  The culprit is a slag giant matron.  Long ago she became the thrall of a tor linnorm, and now it is her whole village’s job to keep the beast entertained.  Her tribesmen etch the tales she recovers on sheets of burnished brash, which she then reads to the voracious (in more ways than one) dragon.

The conversion of Eisland to the faith of the Dove has the priests of the Northern Host up in arms.  But as both sides argue around the hearth and aboard their longships, an older faith sees the opportunity to take back the icy island.  Dark druids ally with moulder dwarves to rouse the tor linnorm Scyldrak, spurring him to attack the Althing in the hopes of wiping out Eisland’s leadership in one fell swoop, pantheists and monotheists alike.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 185

Dark Ages/medieval Iceland is crazy interesting, and its late conversion to Christianity means we have a lot of records from that time, as well as great surviving sagas.  Njal’s Saga was assigned in my ninth grade history class, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in a Norse-style campaign, even if the first part does read like Viking stereo instructions.  If you’re the least bit patient, it’s so worth it. (And it’s a Penguin Classic!)

Tophet

Tophets owe their existence to the King James spelling of a particularly grim region of Jerusalem (Wikipedia has the details).  As constructs, these pot-bellied statues display an efficient and economical ruthlessness, being at once guardian, jailer, and executioner.  PCs used to cutting their way out of acidic monster stomachs may find a conductive metal gut a bit harder to escape from.

In most adventures, tophets will act in the same manner as other constructs, coming to life to bludgeon PCs (with the added bonus of being able to swallow them as well).  And you can expect most dungeon designers to take advantage of tophets’ fire resistance and construct nature as well, adding fire pits, burning braziers, lava streams, and even airless vacuums into the mix.  Below I’ve tried to offer some more unexpected encounters…

A despotic king hires troublesome adventurers for a retrieval job: They must find his tophet.  The king sent the tophet—its belly stuffed with a revolutionary leader—into the desert to bake its charge in the broiling heat.  He has since discovered the condemned man concealed a powerful ring on his person.  He needs the tophet back…but the construct has vanished, its tracks obscured by the sands.  In fact, the iron glutton fell into the pit of a giant ant lion and has since been claimed by a rampage of particularly large hissing desert drakes.

Most adventurers would be mad to climb inside the maw of a tophet.  But that’s just what thief and magus Cobbler Devish proposes.  The Fiend Duke is expecting a shipment of the rotund furnace guards from the Sortilegeum, and anyone riding inside would bypass all his magical defenses…provided they could escape once the vessels are installed.

A tophet’s design is at the whim of its creator.  Images of fat kings are common in the desert lands, while beyond the Drakewall roly-poly monks, wrestlers, and foo lions are more common.  The witches of Hekkanov craft theirs to resemble ogres, and often boil victims inside as if the constructs were animate cauldrons.  There is also at least one tribe of boggards that worship a bullfrog-shaped tophet of otherworldly origins like a god.  This cruel idol seems to gulp its victims at random intervals, particularly when a comet hangs in the southern sky.

—Pathfinder #21 86–87 & Pathfinder Bestiary 3 271

Pathfinder #21: The Jackal’s Price includes more historical background on tophets, plus some variants besides.