Three "Beholders"

 The GLOG Discord Beholder Challenge ought to take off. Here’s a couple. 

MAZUT

The entire body serves every purpose. The Liminals scale perfectly with size, every part is hand, eye and brain, and no part is vestigial. Even a pound of Liminal primoplasm is a Liminal, unlike a pound of human flesh. Liminals used to rule the world. Certain extremist groups posit they still do. 

They have a very distinct smell, like chlorine, which definitely startled the first scientist to synthesise chlorine. Their goo is psychoactive and can form complicated internal “machinery”, though adequately studying that process has proven historically impossible. With enough mass, a Liminal is able to project “rays” for communication over long distances, and for killing at shorter ranges. 

Can they be killed? Yes, division is the way to do it, division and poison. During the uprising against them, we got very good at killing Liminals, because we had to do it a great deal.

Liminal (Typical)

12HD (72HP), AC8 (Special), Morale 9 (Confident, but self-interested) 

These things used to rule the world. A huge mass of colour-shifting, semi-translucent slime, reeking of bleach. Shapes and forms bubble in its depths. 

No. Appearing: 1 (More than 1 consists a STAR-Class Social Emergency)

Movement: Like a subway train that can corner on a penny. 

Senses: Excellent normal vision, heat vision, x-ray vision, can also see like a microscope with 3m, and like a telescope otherwise. No sense of smell or hearing. 

Morality: Immensely curious, places no value on life, myopic. 

Intelligence: Superhuman mathematics, memory and recall, excellent lateral thinker, brain not geared for language. 

Attacks: 

• Ray (+1 per Round for each 3HD). 3d6 damage. Invisible in bright light, ignore conventional armour, near-silent, and widely feared. Some Liminals have learned how to make some really weird Rays. 

• Engulf - Target creature with less HD than the Liminal must save or be enveloped in it, suffering the effects of Acid and autohit Rays. 

Acid - Unprotected contact with a Liminal’s body deals 1d8 damage per round, no save. 

Inchoate Primoplasm — Unless a source of damage either kills individual cells or seperates some part of the Liminal’s mass, it does 0 damage to the Liminal. Fire damage is reduced to 1 per dice and blackens the outermost layer of the Liminal. Pieces of a Liminal separated for more than a week form a fork of the source Liminal’s personality, and are, for all intents and purposes, a new Liminal. 

Electroabsorption —Electrical damage heals a liminal for an amount equal to whatever it would have taken. Liminals consume electrical energy for food - they especially seem to like the delicious electrical taste of sentience.  

Raycom —Liminals can send and receive radio signals. Modern science hasn’t quite yet made the connection between their ray-communication and our radios, but it’ll be a fright when they do. Liminals can create structures to move air in a way that produces “speech”, but it’s difficult and they hate it. 

Lumine —Liminals may glow at will, any colour they like, up to 10000 lumens per 3HD. They can also project infrared and ultraviolet light. 

Intracombination — Two Liminals can combine their HD pools, consciousnesses, memories and personalities. This is an absolute last resort survival tactic. This is how they made the Great Liminal that turned the eastern end of Supranor into a wasteland and buried whole cities in an acid tide. 

 

FIRMAMENT

The Sun is just as vast as the World, conjecture the Scribes, and it must have its own eunomy and systems of nature. The phoenix of the Sun serves the same function as the eagle of the World, and so on. The search for the Worldly counterpart of the noble and fearful Radial will likely remain unfulfilled for a long time. 

A Radial looks like a gigantic spoked wheel, something like a chariot or a cartwheel, that is engulfed in eye-searingly bright flames. They say confidently that they gave humanity the idea of the wheel, and the resemblance is vice versa. Very few reside anywhere but the Sun, and meeting one on the surface of the World is an event to be recorded in the history-books. 

The report of Maqsud Wafiya, a Scribe who encountered one by chance on a mountaintop, repeats a tale he was told by them - of their creation by the Sun, and the descent of the first of them to become a god of an unwholesome kind. 

Radial 

10HD (50HP), AC17, Morale 11 (Megalomaniacal, but ultimately aware of mortality) 

Massive flying wheel engulfed in flames. Long tendrils of flame and sparks of golden lightning exude from the outer ring. The place where the spokes meet is a white sphere of pure light. 

No. Appearing: 1 (1d6 on Solar Surface) 

Movement: Either an agile hover or a comet-like flight with a wide turning circle and long slow-down time. 

Senses: Excellent sight, excellent hearing, no sense of smell, taste or touch. If it were somehow engulfed in the dark, blocking its own glow, it would be blind. 

Morality: Arrogant in excess, doesn’t comprehend even the idea of politeness, follows the ways of the Sun. 

Intelligence: Genius, but with terrible lateral thinking skills. 

Attacks: (3x any combo of Flame Whips and Comets or 1x Ardentise) 

• Flame Whip - Hits AC10 within 10ft of the Radial, does 3d6 fire damage, ignites hit target. 

• Comet - Hits AC10, does 1d8+4 damage, 500ft range increments. 

• Ardentise - Target creature (possibly including the Radial) suffers 2d6 nonlethal damage, then, for the following minute, gains +2 to hit, moves twice as quick, glows, and has a fear and hatred of darkness. 

Magic: 6MD | Most Radials can invoke at least a few Solar Spirits, favourites include Scorch, Lightning, Reveal, Woodwork, Melt, Supernova and Beam.  

INVISIBLE HANDS

In the grim darkness of like next fcking tuesday, the world is fucked up the wrong’n and new gods have been born from the fentanyl-laced fatberg of human sin. The Economy is saved only by delving into the endless catacombs of subterranean industry where resideth both treasureth and horrorth - hereinafter called The Dungeon. 

Radicarian, the new-god of old-things, the past, fear, macropredators, carpentry, the Tree and similar things, is just as interested in the Dungeon as the rest of its brawling, spitting siblings - perhaps even moreso - after all, the roots and foundations of things are underground, and always will be underground, until all that is solid melts into air. The most notorious kind of monster Aligned to Radicarian is the Fossil. 

The Radicarian forces can turn people into what the denizens of this future call cro-magnons, cavemen or neo-brits - massive, slablike parodies of homo-erectus who have escaped the pains of complex language and computer use for the ultimate cosmic goal of conservatism: hit with stick, grunt when sad, shit in hole. 

Fossils, due to their ability to inspire terror, often gather village-cults of cro-magnons and other Radicarian-Aligned creatures, who fulfil their animal desires to be showered in blood offerings. 

Fossil

10HD (60HP), AC4, Morale 6 (Surprisingly Skittish) 

Resemble the fossils of precambrian life, hovering upright still trapped in their stony prisons. Every Fossil is unique, but the first one you’re going to meet looks a fuck of a lot like an Anomalocaris. 

No. Appearing: 1 (1d6 in the Underground Forest)

Movement: Slow but inexorable hover. 

Senses: Blind, excellent smell, can sense vibrations in nearby matter, can smell fear. 

Morality: Hungry wild animal overlaid with imprisoned serial killer.  

Intelligence: Smartest guy at the bar. Able to be patient and set traps. 

Alignment: Radicarian 

Attacks: (Phobia Ray then Panic Ray then Crush) 

• Phobia Ray - The fossil projects a glowing white ray. Creatures must save or be afflicted with a randomly rolled Phobia until they next Carouse in town. Phobias cause Stress accumulation when exposed to the fixation of the phobia. Phobia Rays are blocked by anything that blocks visible light. 

• Panic Ray - The fossil projects a crackling black ray. Target creature must save. On a fail, 3d6 stress and you flee, freeze or fight (Fossil’s choice). On a success, no stress and you flee, freeze or fight (Your choice). Panic Rays are blocked by a meter of concrete, any thickness of lead, or emotionally significant fabric (such as a hand-me-down coat from your father, or a childhood blanket, or a shawl your grandmother knitted for you when you were born). 

• Crush - The fossil rams a target. Hits AC10. Deals 2d6+6 damage in normal melee, or 4d6+6 if in confined quarters where the Fossil can paste you against a wall. 

Dread Rays - The Fossil is always projecting invisible rays which cause sourceless dread, causing 1d6 Stress accumulation every ten minutes, while it’s present in the same section of Dungeon as you. Dread Rays penetrate everything except lead and emotionally significant fabric. 

Made of Stone - If it wouldn’t damage stone, it does minimum damage to the Fossil. 

Sticks and Rocks - Any item using technology more advanced than metalworking fails when you’re within 300ft of the Fossil - compasses spin, guns fizzle, grenades cough, radios produce nothing but monstrous roaring, computers show foliate static, &c. 

Belongs in a Museum — If you can somehow defeat the Fossil while keeping it intact, it’s worth $10000 to the Collector back at the Mall. 

Timehatch — If the Fossil is soaked in a total of 100HP of blood from sapient creatures, it hatches into a Redivivus, losing its Alignment but gaining a new statblock. Blood from creatures Aligned to Prisma counts for double. 

One Monster, Five Rooms - Sea Star Temple

 This post is a challenge from Garamondia, and utilises the Monster-making d666 we wrote up together. The challenge was → 1d2 Monsters and 1d4+1 Rooms.

I recommend you give it a shot. 

In the port of Ki-wa, where the river joins with the Sea of Carij, an old god has given an old priest a new blessing. Born from the humours of his brain and of divine word, a Guiding Star has been loosed into his inner-city temple, and now all the dense and raucous streets around have been driven silent. The zilaths of the city demand some travelling hero go in there and destroy it. Capture the flamen alive, too, for we must know which god did this.  Rituals go both ways, and if men must pay obeisance to the gods, the gods must not curse the busy ports of men. 

THE TEMPLE

NORTH and WEST of it are civic insulae, SOUTH of it there is a square full of jacarandas and a wizened olive tree (sacred). EAST there is a canal, though a patch of muddy waste-ground and a 10ft drop keep the canal and temple from meeting productively. The mud is cursed (see Room 3) 

The priest is called Ikua. Flamen Ikua operated the small and currently-unpopular temple of Zancaba, the power of purification, pain, love and boiling water. It’s unclear if Zancaba sent the Guiding Star, or if perhaps her divine rivals, responsible for the dilapidated state of the old temple, did so. Flamen Ikua has 1HD and is dressed in cloth rags. When you arrive at the temple, roll 1d4 to determine where he is (he will never be in the Narthex). Ikua is currently semiconscious (like he’s horribly concussed or unbelievably drunk) and extremely optimistic. He cannot perceive the star and is curious where everyone went. He can probably be healed by a more competent priest than himself. 

0: Narthex

Large arched doorway designed to be used by many people at once. Flanked by serpent statues. Cyan tiled floor, and orange clay walls, lined with pegs. On the pegs, abandoned clothes belonging to worshippers who fled. Searching the clothes turns up 7sp, 1gp and a small iron ball covered in spikes in a purse of its own (decent as a sling bullet, unpleasant to hold, one spike has a hole to pass a cord through).

Dead body tucked calmly into the NORTHWEST corner. The body is that of an old man dressed in the faded black of an artisan. He sits with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes turned into two blackened holes in his head, apparently from his eyes combusting. Nobody has been brave enough to move him. His name was Sethre. If you secure him a proper burial (he has no descendants to do this for him), his spirit will grant you 40XP. 

There’s a door EAST into the Prayer Room (Room 1), and a locked iron gate going NORTH, which leads to a curving stairway down to the Cellar (Room 4). The key to the gate is on a leather loop on Flamen Ikua’s humble cord belt. If you rolled that Ikua is in the Cellar, the gate is opened on arrival and the stairs are accessible. 

1: Prayer Room

Takes up the whole bottom half of the orange clay temple building. 

In the middle of the room, the old stone floor is subtly trenched by the passage of hundreds of feet across centuries - this trench runs WEST to EAST, to the huge curtain of hanging glass beads that leads to the Holy Bath (Room 3). A faint, rhythmic thumping can be felt in the feet, if not heard. 

Against the NORTH wall, a venerable wooden dais with a podium, a dusty scroll rack, a discarded palm-frond hand-fan and a lyre. The podium has a sharp gold spike on it, pointing upwards, worth 5g. It’s held to the wood with an iron nail. There is a secret lever inside the podium that begins or halts the flow of hot water in the Holy Bath (Room 3). 

The scroll-rack contains a number of scrolls detailing local creation myths, civic histories, marriage records from back when the populace came here to get married, and a single magic scroll of Heat Metal, just in case! The magic scroll is cunningly disguised as a boring story about the origin of mint plants. 

Against the SOUTH wall, a row of wooden seats, then an area behind some wooden screens (ebony, worth 25g), in which you will find two sets of boxes. One set of boxes contains ritual implements (fly-whisks, rattles, bone whistles, and other sundries, 10g all told) and the other contains slightly old and past-their-best ritual herbs (ten minutes of searching reveals a dose of sorcerer’s spice, which gives the imbiber a temporary MD). 

In the SOUTHWEST corner, a ladder ascends 30ft up the wall. Any strong pull would rip the bronze rings holding the ladder free of the wall, causing it perhaps to fall into the room. Climbing the ladder goes to the Rafters (Room 2) 

2: Rafters 

The upper part of the building consists of a slightly ramshackle room above the rafters. The floor is made up of boards laid over the rafters, and diffidently nailed down. Any strenuous activity by anyone that weighs anything has a 2-in-6 chance of snapping or dislodging a board and throwing you 30ft down onto granite. 

The NORTHWEST corner is the Flamen’s sleeping quarters - a feather mattress and patterned blanket of decent quality, along with a brass spitting jug and a few copies of the scripture of rival temples (know thy enemy! Or, well, know what thy enemy is doing to beat your arse). There are a few amateurish charcoal drawings stacked under a brick by Flamen Ikua’s bed.

The EAST side of the room is a storage area for the temple - the assigned ration of candles, grain, spare sandals, salt, sealing wax, honey, wine, &c. (Ki-wa is a particularly involved palace economy). 

3: Holy Bath

Largest part of the building - roof is a wooden lattice overlaid with palm branches to form a shaded chamber. The atmosphere here is humid, and steam hangs in the air thick enough to reduce visibility significantly. The walls are covered in a blue-and-white mosaic, depicting scenes of frolic and history. The only exits aside from the door from the Prayer Room are climbing the water-slick walls, or going SOUTH to the drainage trench. 

On the EAST wall, there stands a shrine to Zancaba - a huge brass statue of a masked woman carrying a large brass jug and a lash. She is decorated with paltry offerings of flower garlands, soapstone statuettes of recently-distant spouses, and hanging iron spheres covered in spikes. The spiked spheres (once blessed by one of her Flamens), serve as a holy symbol of Zancaba, allowing a priest to turn ritually polluted people, birds and faithless spouses. 

The centre of the chamber is dominated by a deep, cylindrical indent, lined with brass. Hot, steaming water (painful to the touch) pours from the huge jug carried by the statue of Zancaba, as if by magic (it is not, see Cellar), filling the massive bath. Bathing here purges ritual pollution, curses and gives another save against ongoing works of sorcery. It also deals 1d6 boiling damage to you. Failing to observe the right ritual has a 2-in-6 chance of angering Zancaba, a powerful demon goddess. In Ki-wa, only Flamen Ikua knows the proper ritual (they’re extensive and change with the moon phase). 

At the SOUTH side, a sluice gate connects to a deep stone trench that runs SOUTH out of a small brass grating decorated like a demon’s toothy mouth. This connects to a little ditch outside that dumps outflow from the bath into the muddy patch above the canal. The mud out there is full of so much built up profanity that standing in it for more than a few moments is liable to curse you. Ikua should have dealt with this, but failed to, due to being one old man with no extra funds. 

4: Cellar

Dark, extremely humid, smells of smoke, with a thin layer of (normal) mud on the floor, and black tiles on the walls. The ceiling is covered in a thick layer of soot.  

The EAST side of the room contains an elderly mechanism of bronze and wood, which draws water from the canal, passes it through a huge steaming kettle-like boiler, then draws it further up when commanded to by the secret lever, in order to fill the bath. The boiler is heated by a magic coal, head-sized and permanently burning. It’s a treasure anyone would pay 100g for, but it’s heavy, obvious, on fire, and temple property. 

White tiles on the SOUTH wall depict the scene of Zancaba’s entry into the world, breaking free of the Earth-mother’s eye as a single scalding tear of rage. 

THE MONSTER

The Guiding Star is usually perched on Flamen Ikua’s head, body flat against the small circular hole in his forehead which it was born from. 

Guiding Star

9HD (45HP), AC12 (Special), Morale 13 (Divine Certainty) 

A huge, fibrous brittlestar with five radially symmetrical limbs, filamentous and internally luminous. It’s hot like a lightbulb and dripping wet. 

No. Appearing: 1 (2d6 in prophet’s graveyards) 

Movement: Slow levitating flight assisted by grasping limbs. 

Senses: Detect Divine Influence, Detect Good and Evil‚ Detect Greed, Excellent Smell & Taste - Deaf and Blind. 

Morality: Mission from a higher being (incomprehensible to people, usually, but in this case the star seems aggressively territorial of the temple). 

Intelligence: Excellent architect and mathematician, supremely intelligent, cannot effectively communicate with humans, grasps no mortal language. 

Attacks: 3x Grasp and 1x Beam, or 2x Beam, or 1x Grasp and 1x Enlighten. 

• Grasp - 1d6+3 piercing damage from limb-bristles, reduced to 0 by any armour more persuasive than padded cloth. Hit targets are grappled and lifted off the ground by the deceptive strength of the star. Subsequent Grasps on the same target hit AC10 until they’re freed of all grappling limbs. 

• Beam - Projected from the centre of the Star, feels like stargazing, does 3d6 damage to exposed skin and 1d6 damage to anything else. 

• Enlighten - A target hit by 3 or more Grasps is dragged face-to-face with the centre of the Star. If they fail a save, they either submit to the will of the Star and become its servant, or roll on the Revelations Table. 

Blinding Light - Looking at the Guiding Star without being chosen by at least one god to do so burns out your eyes (no save) - usually nonfatally. If you are chosen by some kind of a god, the Star will relay to you instructions, directions, and a powerful blessing. 

Glowing Weakpoint - Attacks aimed at the dead middle of the Guiding Star only need to hit AC5, and deal triple damage. (however, there comes the question of figuring out where the middle is with your eyes shut.)

The Guiding Star is a sort of beholder-type monster, and can be employed in place of such, I suppose. 

I used the Monster Table that Garamondia and I put together to make the Star, ending up with:

FORM: STARFISH

DANGER: BLINDNESS 

MIEN: LIGHT-BRINGER

HABITAT: HUMAN BRAIN

DRIVE: HOLY MISSION

WEAKNESS: WEAK POINT