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Places to Go, Things to Kill

Pale Tzamma

Tzamma (singular Tzam) are spirits of testing and tribulation. Pale Tzamma are tricksters with a great love of riddles, puzzles and conundrums of various sorts. They reward the clever and punish the stupid, sometimes so harshly that only they see the humour in it. They know the answers to many mysteries and secrets, and may reward someone who passes their tests with answers to their questions. They are very powerful and use a variety of magical tricks to confound the minds of those they encounter. A pale Tzam looks like a chubby Gnollish woman with grey fur and clothes made of oak leaves, and they are often found near bodies of standing water. Weapons are usually useless against them unless enchanted.

A common trick that a pale Tzam will play is giving someone a dream in which several events (traditionally three) happen which then repeat themselves in the real world the next day. The third event dreamed does not occur though. Instead, the dreamed event is intended to influence the person to look in the wrong direction or expect the incorrect kind of threat while a totally different and far more serious problem develops.

Dark Tzamma

Dark Tzamma are also spirits of testing and tribulation, but are more severe than their pale cousins. Dark Tzamma test fortitude, character and will, and they hold no mercy in their hearts. They are often bound as guardians of tombs and holy places, where they test whether those who approach are worthy of what is within. Dark Tzamma can inflict unspeakable pain with a glance, mutilate and heal with their bare hands, and can transform even the most mundane object into one of power as part of their tests.

A common test a dark Tzam will perform is to transform a nearby object into an innocent looking child of the same race as the test subject (the child lacks cognitive activity and soul, though neither is immediately apparent; it is essentially a moving dummy). The tzam will then give them a choice - either kill or do not kill the child, with stern penalties for choosing the incorrect course of action Depending on the kind of test the tzam has been asked to provide, either action may be correct, or the test may be about how the applicant reaches the decision (quickly and decisively; as the result of reasoning; consulting others for advice, etc). Solving this correctly may require some knowledge about who summoned and bound the tzam in the first place, and what qualities they instructed it to test for.

Dark Tzamma appear as genderless coal-black humanoids with pearl-white pupil-less eyes. They wear wreath of laurels around their heads, but are otherwise naked. They are immune to mundane weapons.

Augermen

Also known as Door-Spirits, augermen are the servants of the God of Gates. They are capable of shape-changing as needed, but their "true" form is a lean grey humanoid without gender whose face is a featureless mass of honeycombed orifices and with six, unnaturally long fingers on each hand, each one ending in a long claw. Their only clothing is a belt of jangling keys of all types. Despite their terrifying appearance, augermen are not malignant except when ordered to be by their master. Augermen possess many powers. They can step through a doorway into any other doorway. They can find a way into and out of even the most tightly sealed location. They can create portals in time and space with a flick of their claws (this is how they defend themselves, sending their attackers careening off to far away lands and worlds) and they can pass through barriers that would bar any other traveller. They are capable of bringing others with them if convinced to do so.

Augermen have a relatively straightforward method of summoning and obtaining services from, though they are almost impossible to bind. One requires a container with an extremely complex lock that one does not know how to open. This cannot be simply a mechanical lock that one does not know how to pick, but the actual mechanism of the lock must include a puzzle or challenge, preferably inobvious. The container contains the payment for the augerman, usually a key of some sort (more valuable locations are preferred). Placed under the light of the full moon, it may attract nearby augermen (there aren't many, but they get around), who will come to open it and take the treasure inside. If the lock was sufficiently challenging, they will offer to perform a single service for the summoner. Augermen will not destroy the container in the process, as they consider this shameful.

In the rare case that the augermen cannot open the box for some reason, they will begin bargaining with the summoner, offering more and greater services in exchange for the secret of how to open the box. The high priest of the God of Gates in Kaddish, one Versullus Halia Terminus, occasionally uses this to reinforce his power over the cult of the God of Gates and the augermen. Past examples of unopenable chests have included a solid block of glass with the key to the city granary inside, feeding the key to the outer glacier wall of Kalak-Who-Blinds' palace to a worm which then cocooned itself, and injecting the chemical mixture required to unseal the Tomb of Mestinves the Wyrm (which turned out to be poisonous) into the bloodstream of a slave.

Places to Go, Things to Kill

Raphikbez (Skin Horses)

Raphikbez are an unwholesome predatory membrane that inflate themselves to resemble horses. A uninflated raphikbez appears to be the complete outer skin of a stallion without a mark or cut on it. The raphikbez produces a toxic, lighter-than-air gas in its inner cavity that lifts it off the ground, where it is borne along by the wind. The eyes sockets are empty pits leading to the interior of the raphikbez, through which it can spray this gas on those who approach it. The gas smells of almonds, has a faint yellow colour, and paralyses or kills those who inhale it. Attacking a raphikbez with a sharp weapon risks cutting it open, which will release the gas in a highly pressurised spray on the attacker, but which will slowly deflate the raphikbez. If an attacker can deflate it without being killed, raphikbez are relatively easy to deal with - they can be slashed apart or burnt.

Along with the gas, raphikbez have several other defenses. Their "legs" are actually tentacles hanging down off the body, culminating in solid hooves which they can flail at attackers. The "teeth" in the mouth are actually needles, which it can spray at attackers and which bear the same venom. Raphikbez are slow, and vulnerable to winds and storms which disperse their venomous gas and carry them off until they can use their hoof-tentacles to grip the ground. Raphikbez are scattered across the plains, and occasionally one will approach what appears to be a herd of horses, only to discover that it is a cluster of raphikbez waiting for the unwary.

Rodir

A rodir is a woman with the lower body of a centipede that reproduces by fornicating with the recently killed. Rodir above the waist appear as beautiful women, often halflings, while everything below the nazel is a mass of centipede legs, with this portion of the body extending up to 4m long. Rodir are solitary creatures for the most part, and bear pikes to defend themselves. They hunt down lone men travelling the plains and kill them before mounting them and harvesting their semen. The rodir then lays eggs fertilised by the corpse, and guards them until they hatch. Juvenile rodir appear to be giant centipedes, up to 0.5m long when they hatch. The mother gathers them and sticks them to the undercarriage of her body, where they remain under her guard until the humanoid portion of their bodies begins to form. At this point, they are released to make their own way in the world. Many are slain.

If a rodir comes under attack, the young release themselves from her and swarm to her defense, biting attacks with a convulsive, agonising, flesh-dissolving poison. A female rodir may have up to a hundred young wrapped around her and on top of one another under her lower body is a swollen, writhing mass of chitinous legs.

Rodir predominantly inhabit the temperate rainforest of the Forest Dreamers. The Forest Dreamers will give over some of their recent dead to the rodirs in exchange for their protection, though such alliances are tenuous and depend on the constant supply of new cadavers (at least one a month).

The Hrov Gomaich (The Child Eater)

The Hrov Gomaich is a traditional boogeyman that mothers on the plains frighten their misbehaving children with. Legend describes it as a great cat the size of a bull with compound eyes like an insect and night-blue fur that lurks in valleys waiting for naughty children to pass. When it hears the selfish cries of such a child, it stalks them until they have gone off to do some mischief, whereupon it seizes them and carries them back to its lair to devour.

Plenty of people claim to have seen the Hrov Gomaich, though only when by themselves, and no one can verify its existence. Many treat it as just a old wives' tale, though its name is bandied about whenever a child goes missing. It is said that if one is stalked by the Hrov Gomaich and realises it, one can recite a nursery rhyme (itself known as the "Hrov Gomaich") and name another child, who the Hrov Gomaich will devour instead. Children found reciting the rhyme are beaten until they stop doing so, though the rhyme continues to be transmitted down the generations.

Places to Go, Things to Kill

Headless Wolves

Created by witches in the service of the Headless God as familiars, headless wolves are undead monstrosities that roam the foothills between the northern mountains and the plains. Headless wolves appear as great, black wolves whose heads have been cut off crudely, the wound still dripping blood. Extending from the protruding stump of the spine is a cluster of bone tentacles sewn together from the fingerbones of the witches' victims.

Each tentacle is tipped with a long spike which serves as both sense and weapon. Headless wolves cannot see, hear, smell or taste in traditional senses, but their spike-senses send out pulses of magical energy which reflect back at the wolves and help them find their foes. With multiple probes active, a headless wolf can received a 360-degree picture around themselves, making them almost impossible to sneak up on. They attack with the spikes by stabbing and slicing opponents until they are weakened. They then entangle the victim and drag them back to the witches.

Headless wolves are often encountered in packs, and they are rarely more than a day or so from a witch cave.

Bonegrinder

To combat the magical weapons and creatures of the Kaddish, the Children of Night (the civilised ancestors of the modern Hill People) created necromantic monstrosities. As a culture composed of three species (elves, gnolls, and hobgoblins) who are primarily carnivorous, bones and other waste products of meat production were easy to obtain.

A bonegrinder when not in use appears to be a black, shriveled heart with what looks like long black strands of hair sprouting from its arteries and veins. The heart beats slowly, perhaps once a minute, and the strands pulse in time with it. In this state, the bonegrinder can be handled safely, and destroyed quite easily.

The bonegrinder becomes a threat when placed near exposed bones. These can be charnel, or even merely a bone exposed through a cut or stump in an otherwise living creature. At this, the strands of the bonegrinder reach out and its magic comes to life.

Bonegrinders liquefy bone and reshape it within seconds, then animate it with the goal of serving as a living weapon. The shapes vary in their exact specifications, but there is a progressive evolution depending on the amount of bone available. Small bonegrinders resemble snakes, with the heart squeezed and buried within a protective shell. Larger ones resemble animals or men, though often with massive teeth, horns, spikes and claws or extra limbs. The largest ones, the full and intended form, resemble rolling juggernauts bigger than a house and covered in bony protrusions and armour.  

Attacking the armour exterior of the bonegrinder does no damage to the bonegrinder itself. Its only use is to expose the heart buried somewhere inside, which must be struck at specifically to kill the creature. However, bonegrinders can only affect bone they are touching, so if pieces of the creature are struck off, it must move to reclaim and spend a few seconds reattaching the cloven portion.

Only a few bonegrinders are left, unliving remnant weapons of a centuries-old war. They roam about, seeking living beings to kill and add to themselves. Fortunately, none have ever approached the great remains of the Carnean Worm, whose spine stretches for kilometres in either direction.

Ant-men

Ant-men are individuals who have had horror-ants attached to them. They appear to be perfectly ordinary individuals unless inspected closely. The ants, about half a centimeter long, hide in the hair and other out-of-the-way places, latched onto the skin by their pincers. A single ant-man may carry several horror-ants, even thousands and tens of thousands if he has been infested for some time. An ant-man's will is no longer his own, instead he carries out the nefarious will of the horror-ants.

Horror-ants come from the surface of the Hivehome in the Dreamworld, where they milk nightmares from the spirit-bodies of dreamers to feed themselves. The Hivehome uses them as a defense, to prevent parasitic nightmares from penetrating and contaminating the hive. Since they live on the border of the Dreamworld and the real world, a few often slip through when creatures from the Dreamworld are summoned, or when dream creations are brought to life.

In the real world, the ants seek out the same strong emotions to feed on, for which purpose they create ant-men. An ant-man's consciousness is caught in a horrific nightmare from which he cannot awake (the psychedelic venom of the ants produces this), which overlays his senses. His friends and family appear as horrific monsters, his home is the gaping jaw of a slavering beast, and his own body is covered in the most disgusting things he can imagine. Ant-men are dangerous, raving lunatics, and even after the ants are removed, the psychological damage will remain.

The venom removes all pain, increases strength and speed, and the ants will feed their own magical energy to the ant-man to power his magic if he knows any. The purpose of all of this is to have the ant-man be violent, anxious, and agitated, attacking others and fleeing from them equally.

Cuisine

A good cook is welcome wherever they go, and there is a robust trade in kitchen slaves even amongst cultures that lack kitchens per se. The geography, botany and differing digestive requirements of the various species and races of the Dawnlands mean that professional chefs must accommodate palates of all types.

The Orthocracy of Kaddish

There is a joke that the Kaddish can't taste anything but mint and salt, as these are the bases of traditional Kaddish cooking. Peppermint, created by the sages of Kaddish long ago, is grown in giant latifundia and shipped back to the city in quantities larger than the entire fruit harvest of Dwer Tor. The Kaddish drink mint tea, often sweetened with honey or beet sugar, at every meal and throughout the day. Humble entrepreneurs make a living with streetside stalls selling mint tea and applejack, but grand teahouses serve as public spaces where collegia hold meetings and orthocrats resolve disputes. Teahouses often serve as public houses as well, serving wheat and sumac beers, applejack, yellow tea (ephedra tisane), cannabis tea and light foods.

The Kaddish eat the most plant material of anyone, and plainsdwellers may be amazed to learn that it is possible to willingly get a meal in the Orthocracy that contains no meat at all. Sweet potatoes, wheat, onions, olives grapes, apples, and a variety of legumes are grown. While animals are cultivated, meat is often in short supply, and secondary products like cheese and milk are far more common. The three most common kinds of meat are rat, dog and chicken, all easily raised in the limited space available to an urbanite. Eating rats are normally distinguished from regular rats (though these are eaten in emergencies), and are specially raised as livestock.

A poor man's diet in the Orthocracy consists mainly of fried sweet potatoes and onions slathered in salt and fish sauce, with applejack and mint tea. This may be supplemented with fried bread, olives, and the occasional bit of cooked dog during festivals. For elves, the Burnt and Dragonmen, roasted rat takes the place of fried sweet potatoes, but they also eat these heavily salted and slathered in the same salt and fish sauce.

The vast majority of the Kaddish cook in the home, using a simple pot suspended over a pit fire, so boiling and roasting are the most common forms of preparation. The Kaddish eat with their hands, and drink soup directly from bowls, so food is expected to be prepared by the chef so that it can be held comfortably in the fingers. Bowls are the main form of cutlery, serving as plates and cups as well as their regular use. A new innovation is to use a "bread carpet", which involves using a piece of flat bread to pick up pieces of food, keeping the hands clean.

Exemplary dishes and condiments of Kaddish cuisine include:

Fish sauce - made from fermenting and salting fish. So popular that it is one of the few exports from Kaddish that the Salt Men will trade for. Similar to garum or nam pla. Every family has their own special recipe.

Applejack - made by freeze-distillation in the wintertime. Kaddish applejack is sour, and the best kinds are mixed with honey and cannabis. The Kaddish trade this with the nomads and Hill People, where it is extremely popular, and it serves along with beer as the drink of the "common man".

Sea-dog - a dog boiled in a broth made of sea water, onions, cumin and its own organs (mainly the liver, heart, and lungs). The boiled dog is removed from the broth (which is reused), roasted and then served on skewers. A popular food at festivals.

Revolution Soup - A classic meatless dish, it is a thick, salty pea-based porridge, with curds of cheese thrown in to thicken it up, and cumin and onions used for flavour. It has patriotic connotations, as legend claims that the first revolutionaries ate this as they marched on the capital. Travellers often carry it with them, since it "cannot go bad because it has already gone bad". Considered inedible slop by non-Kaddish.

Dwer Tor

Dwer cuisine involves a few quirks. Voidmen do not eat fish (though capable of doing so, it is a long-standing cultural taboo from their time in the Kingdom of the Falling Stars), and this has carried over to dwarven cuisine through the close association of the two peoples. For their part, Dwarves are capable of eating parts of animals that would be fatal or dangerous for others (particularly livers - Dwarves tolerate high doses of Vitamin E well). Halflings have broadly comparable nutritional requirements to humans, and often eat fish simply because it horrifies the upper classes.

Dwer cooking is the most complex and rich in the Dawnlands, as they have access to ingredients that cooks in the Orthocracy would love to experiment with. Trade with the Salt Men brings peppers, ginger, cinnamon, oranges, and molasses, though these remain luxuries of the elite castes. Their own agricultural conditions provide rice and wheat, and several enterprising optimates have begun trying to cultivate peppers and oranges (they mainly produce sour oranges suitable only for cooking due to climactic conditions). Meat is common, as the Dwer trade freely with the nomads and Hill People for cattle, sheep and goats. Particular delicacies include horse, beef, and game birds from the Great Forest.

The Dwer have elaborate kitchen set-ups, and elaborate cutlery (forks, spoons, knives, chopsticks, skewer sticks, plates, cups, bowls, etc.). The deme system means that a single kitchen often serves an optimate's entire household, a single ecclesia, or an entire neighbourhood of helots. This means that the standard of cooking is very high, and the group being serviced often pools together to afford rare or unusual foods that they would otherwise not find.

Drinking is commonly done in public houses distinct from the eating galleries, as intoxication is not considered a public good to be provided by the state to its citizens. Wine is the drink of choice, followed by imported Kaddish beer. While the Kaddish prefer wheat beer and applejack, the Dwer palate finds mead made from sumac and honey more acceptable.

Exemplary dishes and condiments of Dwer cuisine include:

The Palace of the King - eaten at festivals, this is a slab of beef with skewers of other meats stuck into it vertically, as if they were pillars. The "roof" is often small cuts of pork sliced to resemble roofing tiles. This is presented to the table, and persons are served in order of lowest status to highest, with the roof tiles going to children and the poor, the pillars being distributed amongst the middle ranks, and the beef slab going to the highest status individual, who may choose to share a portion of it with a honoured companion.

Dwarf Pie - a dish that is fatal to non-dwarves, often eaten by dwarves of the optimate and thaumate class as a casual food. Its filling is made from ginger, molasses and fried livers, with bear especially being prized (bear liver is dangerous, even occasionally fatal, for non-dwarves to eat).

Fried Ancestor - the flooded quarries and the lake that Dwer Tor is built on are rich with fish, and many halflings believe that these are where the souls of their ancestors go when they die. The ancestors give themselves to the halflings to sustain their bodies until the day they are free from the reign of the dwarves and voidmen. "Fried ancestor" is therefore a half-serious, profane joke name for fried fish, which the halfling helots eat in abundance. The most common condiments are a dash of wine vinegar, a little salt, and lots of yogurt with dill.

Oranges - no one else eats oranges with any regularity, and they are often brought as gifts by ambassadors from Dwer Tor to impress their hosts. The Dwer mostly eat them raw, and then candy the peels (a technique taught by the Salt Men). The sweet kind are imported by the Salt Men. Locally grown oranges are sour, and are used to make ceviche by halflings, but the only market for them otherwise is the Foreigners' Quarter, where expatriate Kaddish are experimenting with fermenting them to make alcohol.

The Kadiz and the Hill People

The Kadiz and the Hill People eat similar foods, based mainly off the foods the Children of Night ate. The Plains of Kadiz are mainly karst, moor and chalk heath, which provides a variety of grazing habitats and verdant herbage, but which makes it hard to practice agriculture. Prior to the rise of the Cities of Night, the plains were more heavily forested, but slash-and-burn practices deforested much of the area, and the topsoil has blown away exposing the limestone underneath.

The single most common food is beef, followed by goat, mutton, grouse, duck and rabbit, as well as venison and reindeer. The plainsdwellers cull their herds in late autumn, killing off any animals they do not expect to survive. This usually provides them with enough meat to survive the winter, which is smoked and dried into jerky and pemmican so that it will last. When eaten fresh, the meat is often marinated with berries, or cooked with a dry peanut, mustard, salt and sumac rub.

The nomads eat most food with their hands or with the long knives they carry, and occasionally with long, flat wooden spoons. Food is cooked in iron pots, which they obtain from Dwer Tor or from the Kaddish, and served in wooden bowls.

The Kadiz and Hill People drink copious amounts of applejack traded from Kaddish, as well as araka and kumis. A popular practical joke is to offer unfermented mare's milk (a powerful laxative) to someone pretending that it is kumis. Cannabis grows wild across the plains, and the nomads use the oil as butter, especially at feasts where it helps one to consume more. It is often mixed with sunflower halva and honey as a dessert, ensuring that one's guests are too besotted to attack while everyone sleeps off the meal.

Exemplary dishes and condiments of the Kadiz and Hill People:

Kadiz Lamb - spiced lamb coated in fat and crusted with ground peanuts and mustard paste. Eaten straight off the bone, and popular enough to be found in the Orthocracy and Dwer Tor from time to time.

Boiled Apples - the Hill People rarely eat apples directly, but they feed them to their pigs and other livestock, and use the apples to make applejack and apple vinegar. The semi-sedentary nature of the Hill People means they can tend their orchards more easily than the nomadic Kadiz, and the two groups trade for the fruits and the wood. The Kadiz consider eating raw apples mildly disgusting (it is directly comparable to eating pig slops or cud), and always cook or prepare them. The most popular method is to peel and boil them until they are soft, which is a popular treat for children.

Two-Legged Mutton - famously, the Hill People are cannibals, something that the Kadiz never took over when they merged with the traitor clans. For the Kaddish and the Dwer, the distinction between the two groups is minimal, and so it is assumed that they are all man-eaters. In general, elves and hobgoblins only eat major muscles (arms and legs, ribs) and a few organs (the brain, the lungs, the heart), while gnolls will strip the flesh from the body and then crack the bones. Eating children is not generally acceptable unless one is really desperate - the consumption of humanoid flesh has religious elements that mean that great warriors and leaders are preferred (the Hill People see it as a way of honouring and preserving their memory).

Yellow Tea - While this is occasionally drunk in Kaddish, often mixed with mint tea, the Kadiz nomads and Hill People use it as the preferred non-alcoholic beverage of choice, often drunk at the end of a meal to sober up. It is made of ephedra, which helps deal with hunger pangs and the cold, both of which are all too common on the plains. While it is widely acknowledged that drinking too much is bad for you, this does not actually stop anyone from drinking lots of it, and every so often someone will simply keel over dead from a heart attack caused by excessive amounts of ephedra. It is also a common drink before raids and battles, drunk to fortify one's self against fear.

Places to Go, Things to Kill

Yamon the Dreamer

Yamon is a squat, hairy man of indistinct race. His ears are just pointed enough to suggest elvish heritage, his skin has the sallow green complexion of a half-orc, and he is covered in short, downy hair like a gnoll (though sparser and browner). Many who have met him compare him to a half-ape. Yamon is actually quite peaceful. He speaks all languages, and he greets everyone he encounters as his friend unless they initiate violence. He wears only a loincloth no matter the weather, and bears no other tools or personal effects, to dissuade people from foolish attempts to rob him. Yamon is immortal, very old, and very clever.

Yamon claims to be the first man to ever speak, and to access the dream world in sleep, and the first magician to harness that power, from whence all other magic descends. He does not know how old he is, but he was ancient before the first elves and humans arose, and he named the mountains back when they were islands in a great sea. He has traveled the entire world at one time or another, but has been in the Dawnlands for the past few thousand years.

Yamon is only dangerous himself if provoked, but he brings danger with him, and because of this he spends most of his time alone, wandering the world. When Yamon sleeps, his soul does not go to the dream world, but rather brings the dream world to it. The land in all directions as far as the eye can see begins to twist and change as the dream-essence seeps into it. The longer Yamon sleeps, the greater the changes become, and the greater risk than when he awakes, the changes will remain. At these times, one can cross from the dream world to the real world and back. The creatures of the dream world will not attack Yamon, but anyone else nearby is at risk.

Yamon has spent some time amongst the Forest Dreamers, who proclaimed him a demigod and were able to cope with the blending of real and dream world, but he found being worshipped stifling, and has run away from his responsibilities.

Temporal Butcher

An experiment in soulforging gone awry, temporal butchers were an attempt to blend time itself with living creatures. The entities created by this process were driven insane, and fortunately broke loose before the process could be completed, which would have made them even more powerful and menacing. Temporal butchers are found in old and forgotten places, and only at certain meaningful points in time (during conjunctions of certain stars, the birth of a great hero, the high holidays of religions that will not be invented for another ten thousand years), spending the rest of the time in a state of drawn-out semi-existence, spread across nonadjacent moments from the moment of their creation to the end of their existence. To an ordinary person, a temporal butcher appears to exist as a flickering shape that winks in and out of existence, often for extended periods of time.

Sorcerers and shamans can bind temporal butchers, but can only exert that control during the periods when the temporal butcher "exists" in a meaningful sense. Though brief, temporal butchers are extremely effective at what they do - cutting time itself apart.

The effects of this vary. They can make someone effectively immortal by cutting the moment of their death out, or kill someone quickly by cutting out the intervening life between the present and the moment of their death. When enough of these moments are collected, the temporal butcher splits into two copies of the original, a painful and disturbing process for them, but one they are compelled to do nonetheless. Temporal butchers appear able to affect only the future, not the past or present, and as moments pass by, they lose their power over them. Temporal butchers can see the past and future, but are insane and are unable to interpret it in a coherent way for others, though a controlling sorcerer may force them to answer simple questions.

Temporal butchers appear as hunched, orange-brown creatures with prognathous faces and long delicate claws on each finger. They have pale white eyes without pupils, and are given to rambling in tongues long forgotten and yet to be invented. Sages who have studied their statements notice that most temporal butchers at one point or another mention Thranisphane with fear. The greatest concentration of temporal butchers is on a (landlocked) mountainside in the northern mountain range, where they appear to be waiting for an island civilisation known as the "Vayr" or "Veyal" to emerge sometime in the future. No one has been able to establish why.

Khorkoi (Red Death Worms)

A khorkoi is a 1-2m long red worm resembling unspooled intestines. They are known for two attacks, both unusual and unpleasant. The first is the ability to spit an acidic venom onto prey, which stains anything it touches yellow. The second is the ability to give off an electrical discharge affecting anyone within about 3m of them. The shock is strong enough to stun, and even occasionally kill. The khorkoi uses these to hunt, stunning, then dissolving its prey before the simple mouth parts suck up the nutrient stew. Khorkoi are not intelligent, but fortunately they are also not very common. Most people on the plains have heard of them, but very few have seen one and lived to tell the tale.

Places to Go, Things to Kill

Shoulder-Hunters

Shoulder-hunters are psychic predators capable of traveling a league in a single step, with a potent gaze attack. A shoulder-hunter preys strictly on solitary, intelligent creatures capable of feeling fear. When it spots a suitable target, its moves silently up behind the victim, causing the hairs on the back of the victim's neck to twitch, or a sudden spasm to run up its spine from the shoulder-hunter's psychic emanations. This is identical to the feeling of being watched or observed. When the victim turns, the shoulder-hunter psychically projects the most horrid, frightening thing the victim can imagine and amplifies the fear even further, using the victim's own mind as a weapon against it. The goal is to frighten the victim to death, whereupon the shoulder-hunter consumes its dying mind and begins searching anew.

Even if not initially successful, shoulder-hunters can act as endurance predators. The same victim may be repeatedly frightened, over and over again, with the goal of preventing sleep, causing adrenaline to pump into an exhausted body and burning the victim's nervous system and metabolism out until it dies.

Shoulder-hunters can be defeated through confronting them. If one can grasp a shoulder-hunter firmly, facing one's fear and retaining control of one's wits, a shoulder-hunter is extremely pliable to imagination. Imagining one dead will kill it easily. More nefariously, one may imagine the shoulder-hunter as one's servant or assassin, and it will be forced to conform to this image, at least temporarily.

Man-Eating Cattle

Man-eating cattle resemble the ordinary wild cattle found across the plains. In fact, the two species often co-exist as man-eating cattle protect the regular members of their herd from predators. Normally only a few members of a herd will be man-eaters, perhaps four or five out of every hundred or so.

What separates man-eating cattle from ordinary cows are their appetites. Man-eating cattle love the taste of humans and elves above all else. Though if no people can be found, man-eating cattle will prey on rodents and rabbits, they tend to naturally move their herds closer and closer to human settlements, hoping an unwary rancher will try to capture them.

Man-eating cattle possess a long, sticky tongue coated in poison. When a man approaches within 2m of them, they will suddenly lash out with the tongue. The force alone can be enough to stun someone, but the poison causes agonising spasms. If a bull, the man-eating cow will often gore the now helpless victim before its lips peel back to reveal a massive jaw lined with razor teeth, with which it tears chunks from the flesh of the still-living victim. If a heifer, the man-eating cow will stamp and kick its prey to break bones before digging in.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;500765Man-Eating Cattle

Best The Tick episode ever.

Quote from: The Butcher;500927Best The Tick episode ever.

There's a Tick episode about this? To the torrents I go!

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;500936There's a Tick episode about this? To the torrents I go!

Finally found a YouTube link: http://youtu.be/fddFt-vDNfg

The Tick...now that brings back memories of my childhood.

Ekhm. Also, really, man - eating cows? Even my mind is not that twisted.

Quote from: Rincewind1;500954The Tick...now that brings back memories of my childhood.

Ekhm. Also, really, man - eating cows? Even my mind is not that twisted.

One of the ways I come up with monsters is I imagine "If I were a cattle-herding nomad in a patriarchal culture, what would I be afraid of?" and then I add poison or spikes or unnatural size etc. to it.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;500967One of the ways I come up with monsters is I imagine "If I were a cattle-herding nomad in a patriarchal culture, what would I be afraid of?" and then I add poison or spikes or unnatural size etc. to it.

A wild thought then - perhaps instead of/in addition to actually making those man - eating cows, make farmers speak myths about one man - eating cow, that is actually some form of a powerful daemon stalking the land?

Quote from: Rincewind1;500970A wild thought then - perhaps instead of/in addition to actually making those man - eating cows, make farmers speak myths about one man - eating cow, that is actually some form of a powerful daemon stalking the land?

I've got a ton of ideas for one-offs, what I really need are ideas for monsters that form populations of threats, even if those populations are small.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;500974I've got a ton of ideas for one-offs, what I really need are ideas for monsters that form populations of threats, even if those populations are small.

Sure, sure, I understand - the man eating cow is a bit bizarre, but not (too) laughably bizarre. I'll leave you to your work then. I presume you considered some variation of "Skaven" as city predators?