The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City

Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch (also, nerve runners) are tiny, fish-like creatures that burrow into their victims towards the victim’s brain. They are thin and flat, and usually live in swamps or ponds. They spawn once a month. During spawning ‘season’, the fish will attempt to lay their eggs in their victim. On a successful attack by the fish, the target must make an evasion roll or the bandersnatch has attached itself to the character’s flesh. The character has two rounds to pull it off (fortitude roll) or it has successfully burrowed into the victim. It does d6 points damage while burrowing in automatically. If the victim fails a fortitude roll (independent of any attempts to pull the creature off), the bandersnatch has successfully burrowed in and now does d10 points damage per round. If the victim fails another fortitude roll, the bandersnatch has reached the spinal cord (the victim will be unable to walk). Another failed fortitude roll (made each round) indicates that the bandersnatch has reached the brain, and the victim is dead. It will lay 10+d10 eggs, from which 2d4 nerve runners will hatch in seven days. The bandersnatch itself will die on laying its eggs.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Borogoves

Borogoves are small, rodent-like creatures, furry, and green, with large, flat tails. These membranous tails expand when the borogoves eat, filling with an extremely light gas and expanding to six or more feet across, lifting the borogoves into the air. Their feet are very tiny, serving mostly to move them from mouthful to mouthful. They have long snouts. Borogoves will generally not attack unless provoked.

Crazy crabs

Crazy crabs are crab-or lobster-like creatures, mottled brown and pink, with unevenly-sized legs and claws. They breathe air, but may remain active underwater for two days and can remain inactive for months. Crazy crabs prefer meat and will swarm living creatures.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Cyclopeata

These gigantic creatures feed on trees, water plants and creatures, and other large animals. The Cyclopeata reproduce asexually by leaving huge, rock-like eggs two to three yards wide. These things are huge. A cyclopeata averages 120 yards long, 40 yards wide, and sixty yards tall. Their legs alone (they have about sixteen, eight pairs) are three yards wide, and their “stumpy” tail can extend another fifteen yards.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Echos

There are strange angles that reflect not the world, but distortions of it. Viewing such a reflection can return an echo of the viewer: the echo will be an almost identical counterpart of the character and will have the same abilities (with perhaps one or two different abilities which, if not opposite, will be strangely similar). However, the echo will be malevolent. It will be Evil. If the original is Ordered, their echo will be Chaotic. If the original is Chaotic, their echo will be Ordered. The echo will always work in opposition to the original, even if both are Evil.

An echo cannot be permanently killed while reflected in a mirror or other reflective surface. Echos will always try to ensure that there are mirrors nearby. Their lairs are reflection-filled junkyards. If an echo is killed while reflected, the echo’s reflection will take form when the echo feels it is safe to return. The echo will return one level higher. At the first new level and each odd level thereafter, the echo gains a new specialty according to the nature of the reflection.

Enveloping grasp: The echo can grow forward in hideously lengthened shapes to attack and move, bypassing any obstacles as long as some reasonable route exists to their destination. Their combat movement is multiplied by their echo level, and they gain +2 to attack. Often gained if killed while reflected in a funhouse or large concave mirror.

Eyelink: If killed while reflected in someone’s eyes, the echo can view the world through that person’s eyes, no matter where that person is.

Facial reflection: The echo may reflect and hold a person’s face. While their body remains the same (the original body they are an echo of), their face, hair, and head become a perfect duplicate of the person they’re looking at. They can then hold this reflection for as long as they wish. The person whose face they’re reflecting will usually notice it since it happens immediately, so this power is most often used against captives or sleeping individuals. Often gained if killed while reflected in a hand mirror or bureau mirror.

Insubstantiality: The echo can fade to a translucent, insubstantial form. This form is difficult to see at night and makes it easier to hide in shadows, behind windows, and around corners during the day. There is a penalty of the echo’s level to any attempts to see the echo. The echo can also walk through transparent and translucent barriers at half movement. This will include not only glass but thin ice, rice paper, and gauzy fabrics. If lights and shapes are visible through the barrier, the echo can move through it. Often gained if reflected in dusty or misty mirrors, or hazy bodies of water.

Invisible corner: The echo can turn around any corner into an extradimensional space. The echo ceases to exist in the “real world” and can neither see nor be seen, but can hear and be heard as if they still were at or in that corner. Often gained if killed while reflected in a faceted crystal or mirror.

Mirror motion: The echo can travel from mirror to mirror as long as the mirrors are in line of sight or the same building. Often gained if killed while reflected in a mirror, especially a full-length mirror.

Quicksilver motion: The echo can take a mercury-like form and move at 24 through any terrain or passage, however small. The liquid form cannot attack. It has +2 to defense and is immune to non-magical weapons. Often gained if killed while reflected in liquid.

New form: The echo returns from the mirror with the form of another person who had been reflected when the echo died. The echo can switch between their new form and their old form by stepping into a mirror, then stepping out in the new form.

Refracted damage: Half of all damage done to the echo goes to the original instead. Often gained if killed while fighting their original, and both are reflected.

Shiver: The echo can break into up to charisma smaller, identical bodies, each with identical clothes, weapons, etc. If the echo splits into two bodies, each will be half the size of the other with half the survival. Each will attack as normal, although size will likely reduce the damage of their weapons as normal. If a shiver dies, that shiver’s survival is lost as normal, and can be healed as normal. Often gained if killed while reflected in a faceted crystal or broken mirror.

Shadowcast: The echo may become a two-dimensional shadow and move about walls and other mostly vertical surfaces at movement 18. The shadow must remain in contact with the point where the vertical surface meets the ground, but can otherwise move about, foreshorten, and lengthen, as desired. The shadow cannot attack. It has a +4 to defense and is immune to non-magical weapons. Often gained if killed while reflected in obsidian or other jet-black material.

Fire spiders

Fire spiders are huge, white, spider-like creatures with red eyes and slavering teeth. They appear mostly in caves or dense forest.

The webs of fire spiders burn flesh. Each fire spider can shoot one strand of web each round, up to three yards away. If the target fails an evasion roll, the web sticks and thus continues doing damage even after the initial hit, for d6 points per round. It will do this for d4+3 rounds. Characters can devote their attention to removing the web strand and are allowed an evasion roll each round. A successful reaction removes the web and no damage is taken that round. The webs burn hotter in water. If a character attempts to put the fire out by jumping in water, the damage is increased to 2d6 per round.

Greythorn vines

These tall, grayish-green fuzzy plants sport six flailing vines extending from a central bulbous axle on a thick stalk. Each vine ends in a bulbous, spiked, star-like appendage. The stalk rises from a fuzzy grayish-green mound of roots. The greythorn may attack up to three targets with one vine each, or may attack any one target with two vines.

Headless men

The headless men, or acephali, are strange creatures of the dry city with, as their name implies, no head. Their eyes, and their huge mouth, are in their chest.

Any three or more headless men may, instead of attacking, emit a silent scream that causes terror in all other living creatures within range. The range is ten yards forward for each headless man screaming. Victims must make a fortitude roll or run directly away from the headless screamers. Headless men may scream once per hour. The scream of the headless men also creates a great wind. Those within the path of the wind who are holding papers or similar light objects must make an evasion roll or the papers blow away out of their hands at least to the end of the scream’s range.

The headless men appear as muscular men. Their gaping mouths contain large teeth but no apparent tongue. Their eyes, where nipples would normally be, are slightly larger and blink slightly less often, than a human’s. They generally use spears to attack any who withstand their terror attack, though they may use any weapon. Because of their peculiarity, they do not wear armor, nor any clothing above the waist.

Hooded dasher

Hooded dashers are flat, silvery, jellyfish-like creatures that live among gently rolling hills. If both front claws successfully hit an opponent, the victim must make an evasion roll or the dasher has crawled upon them and also attacks with the rear claws, and bites them as well.

Jabberwocks

Jabberwocks are winged, dragon-like creatures, slate grey, with tough scaly skin and eyes of fire. They appear on dry plains or in the dry cities of the mist. Anyone meeting a jabberwock’s gaze loses 2d10 survival from desiccation. If they die from the gaze they turn to grey ash, falling apart at the slightest touch. Any wishing to fight the jabberwocky without meeting its gaze must make a perception roll each round.

Jubjub birds

The jubjub is a vulture-like creature with grey feathers tinged with a metallic green at the edges, mottled black on the underside. They usually live on rocky cliffs.

Jubjubs rarely attack large creatures, doing so only if the nest is threatened or if they need a corpse for laying eggs. The nest of the jubjub is lined with bodies. The young eat the grubs and worms which form on the corpses.

Adult jubjubs have a paralyzing scream which they may use once per day. It affects a cone three yards wide at six yards. Targets are allowed a fortitude roll to avoid paralysis. Paralysis lasts 2d4 rounds.

Memory moss

Memory moss appears as a thick bright green moss growing in small patches on man-made structures, usually stone walls.

Memory moss has only one attack: it can shoot small astral tendrils out towards anyone within ten feet. If the target is within three feet, physical tendrils come out as well, giving the target a penalty of 2 to the reaction roll. Victims are allowed a willpower roll to avoid short term memory loss: the moss eats their memory of what they were just doing, and they forget the last d4 minutes. Memory moss may attack one potential victim at a time.

Anyone eating memory moss will acquire some of the memories that the moss has eaten, but must make a perception roll or go insane for d20 hours. They must also make a health roll or lose d6 survival.

Mist wraith

Mist wraiths inhabit deep swamps, and their tentacles can reach 30 to 100 yards. Most adventurers attack only the tentacles, which have 2d6 survival points each. A mist wraith which loses one tentacle is unlikely to risk more.

Mist wraiths may attack with up to six tentacles at a time, and may extend one tentacle per round. (At their center, they may attack simultaneously with up to twelve tentacles.) The tentacles can “hear” rough sounds, at a perception penalty of four.

On a successful attack, the target must make an evasion roll or be caught by the tentacle, losing d4+1 survival points per round thereafter. The defense of the tentacle while it is holding a victim is reduced to +3.

Mushroom walker

These mottled brown and orange upside-down mushrooms with woody, ambulatory trunks are the scourge of the swamps of the Chaotic Mist.

The tough, woody mushroom walker can eject three kinds of spores: protective spores, hallucinatory spores, and reproductive spores. It may eject protective spores once per round for up to four rounds, whereupon it may eject protective spores once every four rounds. Protective spores are a chronic ailment of strength 3, that cause d4 survival points of damage per round from choking.

It may eject hallucinatory spores given three rounds of not ejecting any other spores. These are a chronic poison with a strength of 2 and an action time of one round, that cause extreme hallucinations of fear. Affected characters are likely to see extreme versions of what they fear from the mist or from swamps: mold zombies, quicksand, thousands of poisonous spiders, huge spiders, poisonous snakes writhing all over their bodies, suffocation, leeches covering their bodies.

It may eject reproductive spores four hours after deciding to. Reproductive spores are chronic poisons with strength zero, that cause d4 injuries per day. Six days after death, the corpse of the victim will sprout d4 more mushroom walkers.

If it detects movement over a period of three rounds, it will usually eject hallucinatory spores. If it is attacked, or the second round after it ejects hallucinatory spores, it will eject protective spores. After ejecting protective spores, it will usually eject reproductive spores.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Not flies

Not Flies are attracted to nothing. They have the head of humans and perpetually look as if they are about to say something. The look on the face of the Not Fly requires its opponents to make a willpower roll or lose concentration and not do anything for a round.

Unlike normal flies, which are attracted to and feed of animal dung or human waste, Not Flies are attracted to nothing and they feed of the waste of time. When nothing is getting accomplished, or nothing is getting done, Not Flies are sure to swarm about, leaving as soon as something is accomplished.

Anyone who dies in the vicinity of a Not Fly is likely to bear a swarm of 2d20 Not Flies, each with the corpse’s likeness, in 13 to 24 hours, depending on how little is getting done during that time period.

Oblivion fleas

Oblivion fleas infest people who are dreaming, and suck away their dreams. Those bitten by a swarm of oblivion fleas are allowed a willpower roll. If successful, the fleas could not suck their dreams away. If unsuccessful, that character is infested with oblivion fleas, which will try to suck the character’s dreams every time the character sleeps (as well as infect the sleeper’s companions).

Not dreaming incurs the same penalties as not sleeping; even though the character might have received a full night’s sleep, it is as if the character hasn’t slept at all.

Pink horror

Pink horrors are the pink of burnt flesh healed over. They have fiery red eyes set upon two short, limber stalks, twelve pod-feet with fat sucker-pods, and a triangular head with a heavy, hooked beak.

Three times per day, a pink horror may make a called shot bite for poison in addition to its other attacks, and will usually do so if a potential meal has fallen or is very bloody. The chronic poison has a strength of 0, an action time of 2 rounds, and its effect is to paralyze the victim. The pink horror will not bite unless biting to poison.

Pink horrors are generally of low intelligence, however, some exceptional Horrors may have average intelligence.

Pink trumpets

Pink trumpets are a crawling vine that grows to cover the ruins and dead trees of the Chaotic Mist. Their trumpet-like, bright pink flowers hang down from the masses of vines that overrun wall, ceiling, branch, and stone. The acidic juice of their flowers digests wood, bone, and stone, very slowly over time.

Once every six rounds, per level, they can shoot a cone of acid that does d6 points of damage to anyone within a cone one yard at the start and three yards at the end, four yards long. Victims can make an evasion roll for half damage.

If disturbed (or attacked), the vines will move to strangle the source of their discomfort. On a successful attack (at –4), the victim must make an evasion roll or a fortitude roll to avoid being caught in the vines. Caught victims will take d4 points damage automatically each round thereafter until the vine patch is destroyed (or the victim destroys at least 4d6 points of vine in a four round period).

Prayer bees

Prayer bees are creatures of pure sound, brought forth by strident prayer. Out of the Dry City they are attracted to any loud noises, especially prayer meetings. The Prayer Bee sounds like a swarm of bees, though if a victim listens closely they might hear the high-pitched mumblings of the prayers or other monologues the Prayer Bee has eaten.

Prayer bees may be attacked with magical weapons (+1 or greater needed), or by creating silence. Each round of normal silence, the Prayer Bee loses one survival point; each round of magical silence causes the Prayer Bee to lose two survival points.

Prayer bees attack with pure noise. Their standard attack is a powerful noise attack that causes 2d4 points damage to armored individuals, 3d4 to those wearing plated armor, and d4 to those wearing padded, leather, or no armor.

The Prayer bee may instead, however, send forth a destructive cone of sound three yards long, one yard wide at the start and two yards wide at the end. All items within the cone must make a fortitude roll or shatter.

Or, the prayer bee may send forth a thunderclap of immense sound in a deafening cone seven yards long, one yard wide at the start and three yards wide at the end. Any characters in the cone must make a fortitude roll or be deafened for 2d4 rounds. Characters deafened by the prayer bee’s deafening cone will be at a penalty of 1 to attack and 1 to defense.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Raths

Raths are darkish, chimp-like creatures, but thinner. They have low intelligence, and some tribes or individuals within tribes may use clubs or spears. Many also continue to fight unarmed. Their long arms are very strong.

Raths gain a bonus of 2 to damage due to their strength. Raths have their own language, and are attracted to shiny objects left unattended.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Scissormen

The scissormen herald the coming of the Dry City. They appear as paper-thin (and may be mistaken for playing card men, usually red-clothed jacks). They carry huge scissors, which they use to attack. They prefer to hunt children and young women.

Scissormen are rarely surprised and have a bonus of 3 on perception rolls for surprise. Outside of the dry city, victims who are hit by their scissors must make a willpower roll or they are cut out of this world and into the Dry City. All that remains is a paper-like outline covered in the words of the victim’s life. Inside the city, the victim mindlessly rushes about searching for nothing they can vocalize. If the victim and the victim’s words are brought together, the victim returns to normal.

Scissormen can become invisible, if they are away from bright light, by turning to their sides and remaining still. Scissormen can travel from the dry city through open books. They can return to the city through the cut-out words of their victims.

Dead scissormen float to the ground as children’s drawings.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Spinnerett

Spinneretts are balloon-shaped creatures with flaps and baffles and six tentacles hanging down two or three yards. They have a tail which acts as a rudder in the wind, so they may move in any direction except directly against the wind.

Spinneretts achieve buoyancy with hydrogen, and any flame attack has a 10% change per point of damage of causing one to explode. When a Spinnerett explodes, anyone in a radius equal to twice its diameter must make a fortitude roll or lose 3d6 survival points. Those who succeed take half damage.

Up to three tentacles may attack in unison, only two may attack a single medium-sized individual.

Once per day, a spinnerett may drop a three yard diameter web from their tail area. Anyone hit by the web (evasion roll) must make a health roll at a penalty of one (cumulative) for each round that they remain trapped by the web. A successful fortitude roll gets them out of the web.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Toves

Toves are scaled, lizard-like creatures with many wings and no legs. They inhabit areas where a small bit of sunlight shines through the mist, usually a meadow or clearing. Their mouths are a corkscrew-like appendage able to dig through dirt and tear through flesh. They can act cute and cuddly (to those who like lizards, anyway) when multiple creatures are nearby, but attack in droves (at least six toves) if they encounter a lone creature.

Toves attack by burrowing. A corpse that has been fed on by toves will be riddled with holes.

Trivial pursuits

Trivial pursuits (or trivial tasks) are the pathetic ghosts of people who died while desperately worried over some trivially inane task.

Trivial pursuits possess their victims to complete their task. Victims are allowed a willpower roll to avoid possession. If possessed, the victim will complete the task, which can include things like going to the bathroom, making a shopping list, or writing a thank you note. Most trivial pursuits are sated once their task is completed. Some (perhaps 10%) are doomed to continually perform the same task over and over; they will leave the victim once the task is completed in either case.

The Chaotic Mist and the Dry City: Violents

The violet, deliciously-fragrant clover-like flowers of the violents carpet some forests of the Chaotic mist. The sticky flowers emit an intoxicating smell. Those walking through a carpet of violents must make a health roll or be affected by the delicious but deadly fragrance of these plants. The odor of the plants is a strength zero sleep poison, with an action time of three rounds. It causes those affected to sleep for 2d6 hours.

If the affected creature falls within a carpet, the violents will begin to grow over the creature, doing one point of damage per hour. If the affected creature falls outside of a carpet, there is still a 30% chance that the carpet was able to attach some flowers to the creatures feet and legs, which will begin to work in d6 hours. After that time, they will act as above, doing one point of damage per hour.