#ramowrimo

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RaMoWriMo #6: Herpemsa

Seed: Euryale + feedback

The first medusa were created from priestesses of a goddess of art tricked into serving a violently hedonistic rival cult, converted to ensure their souls were damned and that they would not return to their first goddess. While not all of their descendants stayed in the service of the cult, many did, and ones which served with distinction received powerful gifts of prophecy and strength, elevated beyond normal medusa to become euryales, distinguished by their powerful snake-like lower bodies.

However, some displease their patron goddess, most often by turning to some other deity’s worship but also by failing at an important task she set or something else entirely. These are the Herpemsa; made more snakelike, but in the least convenient ways. Their body from the chest up is a very large snake’s, their legs fuse into a tail, and their arms shrivel. The overall effect is a gruesome. ungainly-fat snake with a small stretch of human torso and hair made of smaller snakes. They are thus deprived of anything that could be used to create art, excepting their voices, which are raspy and dissonant but remain capable of coherent language.

Herpemsa lose their petrifying gaze, which some consider a blessing and others a curse. They retain the ability to petrify, however; their bite turns anything to stone rapidly. In what was probably an unintended side effect of the additional curse, they gain a detailed empathic communication with snakes of all types. 

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RaMoWriMo #5: Jungle King

Seed: Korir-Kokembe + “president”

The Jungle King (called a Korir-Inkosi in the language native to its jungles) is generally agreed to be related to dragons, though much of the similarity is tenuous. In appearance, it initially seems to be a living tree-trunk shaped into an enormous snake-like body. When it moves, its many legs may become apparent, but at rest they lie flush with its body.

Like its more pedestrian cousin the Korir-Kokembe, the Jungle King has a symbiotic relationship with insect swarms. Unlike them, the king’s insects do not live in its gullet but throughout its woody body, and its connection is both less flexible and more magical in nature. The hornets which it carries emerge whenever it is injured, and when it wishes to take flight they all emerge at once and it follows them into the air amid a cloud of buzzing bugs.

It derives its name not from this, but from its other unusual abilities: tree-walking and tree-speaking. Jungle Kings, while sleeping, appear to be dead trees, and this is more than superficial; they can, with a period of focus and concentration, exchange themselves with a fallen tree in any place they remember well, or speak and sense through any tree they have exchanged with in the last decade. And while they are among the least intelligent of the dragon breeds, of about average humanoid intelligence, they have excellent memories.

Their ability to converse and coordinate, and the usual dragon’s gift for language, makes them the foremost diplomats and power brokers among the jungle’s powerful residents. When a dispute threatens to damage the jungle itself or an external threat emerges, a Korir-Inkosi will arrive or be called to mediate or organize. It’s not uncommon for one to mentor a druid to aid them in these efforts, or to deputize a trusted druid to act in their stead.

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RaMoWriMo #4: Shrieking Eel

Seed: Giant Moray Eel + “assistance”

Shrieking eels are immortalized for their terrifying noise when attacking, and rightfully feared for their prodigious size, but the most serious danger they present is that, unusually among eel species, they hunt in packs and are preternaturally good at it.

The simplest method they use is a corral; most of the pack will circle a group of small prey rapidly, preventing it from finding a path outward, while they take turns lunging in and grabbing out a meal before returning to the corral. Other strategies include one or two eels acting as a distraction to draw a larger prey’s attention and then drive it toward the remainder, and when dealing with a serious threat, timing attacks so that the target will be hurt even if it kills one of its assailants.

Opinions are divided on whether shrieking eels have language, telepathy, or both. The option of “neither” is a fringe view, as few credit the idea that such sophisticated coordination could occur without communication. Opinions also vary on degree of intelligence imputed to them, though it is universally agreed that they are at least as smart as a very clever dog.

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RaMoWriMo #3: Sunshark

Seed: Hammerhead Shark + medicine

Sunsharks are believed to originate from the Positive Energy Plane, though this is difficult to confirm as they are hard enough to see on the Material Plane. They swim through air, water, and other fluids freely, which supports this idea; an elemental origin or one on the rim of the Great Wheel would not be so flexible.

Sunsharks are remarkable in being as clear as glass, without even signs of internal organs. They do not appear to need food, though whether they subsist on light, heat, or some other intangible we can’t detect is unclear.

For the most part, sunsharks are harmless, but they can be violently territorial in some circumstances. All recorded instances of this occur defending a lasting fire, steady bright light, or magical field, and when they fight for territory they fight until death, which brings a dangerous burst of radiant energy.

The main source of conflict with sunsharks, however, is not their behavior but ours. The meat of a sunshark, while glassy in appearance, is as edible as any other sharks, and is flash-cooked by their death blast. That might be enough to make it a delicy from rarity, but on top of that it provides strong rejuvenating and strengthening effects if eaten before it begins to decompose. This has led to a small industry of hunting them for profit.

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RaMoWriMo #2: Spore Ghost

Seed: knowledge + Phantom Fungus

The Spore Ghost is one of the stranger species found in the dark caverns of the world. It is an animate fungus, primarily, but is generally classed as a lichen, as it is a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and another creature. Unlike any other lichen, however, the secondary species is not a plant or animalcule, but a ethereal spirit.

The fungus portion of the lichen is a durable stalk, three to five feet in height when mature, which is ambulatory but moves very slowly, rarely more than a few hundred feet per hour. It has active camouflage which adjusts quickly to its surroundings, though in artificial environments its silhouette stands out. Unusually for fungi it has no noticeable fruiting body; its spores can exit its body only through the ethereal plane.

While the main fungus body can acquire most of its nutrients by simple absorption, for reproduction it cannot. This is the portion of its life where the symbiote is necessary. The ‘ghost’ is anchored to the spores of the fungus, where the rudimentary mind of the fungus gives it an uncontested mind to possess. When it is fully grown, though, the spirit roams further afield, pushing animals and people to approach the fungus and linger nearby. This allows the spores to pass through the ethereal and into the hapless victim’s skull, where they can germinate in the brain tissue. This can rapidly progress as a degenerative disease, shutting down more and more of the brain’s function until the target succumbs and the brain begins to rot, at which point the fungus will approach, crack the skull open, and allow the new fungi to grow. Where exactly in this process the spirit reproduces is unknown.

If you suspect your local area may have acquired a spore ghost infestation, best practice is to hire a local mage or priest to place a dimensional lock over the infested area, which prevents the creatures’ reproduction. If this is done when a spore ghost has already begun its reproductive cycle, its biology will become confused and it will waste all its energy reserves trying to propagate, leading to death within two to four weeks.

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RaMoWriMo #1: The Sewer-Stomach

Seed: Garbage + Hungerer

Those vile enough to practice fleshwarping or unfortunate enough to have to deal with its products know of Hungerers: disgusting, insatiably ravenous piles of flesh made from living lamias. Even less well known are their larger, filthier derivatives, the “sewer stomachs”. Believed to be invented by a fleshwarper inspired by a Hungerer and a rat king, they manage the difficult feat of being more revolting than either.

The newly-created sewer stomach is about 30ft on a side and ten feet in height. It has five to ten heads, with around twenty mouths and six functioning eyes between them. Slow to move and barely sentient, the sewer-stomach most commonly is placed in a large basement at least thirty feet in height and at least five times the area of the stomach itself. It is then used as an open sewer and a trap for the unwary.

While the first sewer-stomachs were most likely created by depraved wizards, the most common use of them in the present day is by organized crime. The sewer-stomach devours anything and everything except lead, thick glass, and certain varieties of stone, and is too stupid to give witness, so it is a perfect method for disposing of evidence, generally murdered bodies but also most other incriminating particulate matter.

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RaMoWriMo #0: The Profit Hound

Seed: economics + dog

The Profit Hound is found only in places with developed economies which use hard currency; systems based in exchanging letters of credit or barter are immune to its predations, though subspecies which adapt to feed on abstract currencies have been conjectured.

They can hide near-perfectly in any collection of loose coins, though healthier hounds require large denominations or very large piles to hide effectively. When they are threatened or ready to attack, the coins flow upwards into the rough shape of a dog, varying in size from small terrier to large mastiff depending on health and composition; the total value, not number, of the coins that make them up is in direct proportion to their strength and resilience. As they are injured, their coins will transmute from more valuable to less and eventually be shed; greedy attackers will often attempt to sever their limbs while they are still composed of gold, but this is not recommended as they will regain control of those coins if they restore partial contact.

Their other notable feature is the ability to smell out profit. Interestingly, they don’t appear to be catching the scent of money; a vault which holds a king’s random but has sat untouched for centuries does not attract them until they see it directly, while a successful merchant house which continuously trades its profits for further goods will quickly attract every profit hound within ten miles.

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Random Monster Month

Conversation I had Friday evening:

Scott: I think monster space is mostly tapped out. Put tentacles on thing, put teeth on them, what else is there?

Me: No, there’s tons of space for new monsters. Pick a random monster in this book (Pathfinder Bestiary 1) and a random noun from the dictionary and you can get a new and interestingly different monster.

Alicorn: No way, sometimes you’ll get something like “economics dog” that isn’t interesting.

Me: So that’s going to be a dog made of a living pile of coins, plus...something I can’t put in words about attacking people’s desires and wallets.

So anyway, I’m going to do this every day for the month of November. Stats probably not included.