Creature: Feed me corpses

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2015. More posts in English here.

Source

Yes, this monster is called Feed Me Corpses, it's not like anyone will really be around it enough to see the necessity to name its species. Is it even a species? And your players will probably call it whaetever like “that gross white cat” or “whiskers”, so why bother with a fancy name? “Feed Me Corpses” is it, and only you and I know it.

Now let's get to business.

If the party encounters Feed Me Corpses, it will look like at first like a weird white domestic cat. It will start following them closely and it won't make any effort to hide himself. Whoever looks back could see it. If Feed Me Corpses feels threatened, it will back up a little, but it won't go way. If it's attacked, it won't defend itself.

It will follow the party just for eight hours if nothing dies in that time lapse. After that it will disappear, but may reappear later (at least a month must pass by).

However, if something dies while Feed Me Corpses is following the party (including itself) , it will never stop doing it unless it grants a wish or is killed three times, as will be described below.

Whenever something dies near the creature, after the dust has settled, it will eat one of the resulting corpses (picked at random). The proccess is horrible to behold, given that the little critter dislocates its own jawbone to swallow the corpse whole. This process takes some minutes and, once it's done, it will whisper “thanks, it was delicious”

If someone tries to prevent it from eating a corpse, it will easily comply and just move to the next nearest victim.

Once the it has devoured thirteen corpses and each time it eats another one it will whisper “thanks, you can ask for your wish ”. If anyone asks him a wish directly, Feed Me Corpses will vomit a piece of bone about the size of a human eye. A text stating the wish, the name of the one who asked for it and the sentence “to be delivered in three days, keep this bone with you at the cost of your soul” will be engraved on the surface of the sphere. After it has done this, the creature will disappear although it can appear again (at least a month must pass by).

The result of this is that the person's soul is transferred to the bone. The ramifications of this are many, but the one of the most evident is that magic or other effect that explicitly affect the soul will not have effect on him/her unless they are casted on the bone. Another important effect is that if the bone is broken or destroyed, the person whose whose soul is on it will die. Also, if the person is more than a mile away from the bone, he or she will fall into a coma.

Once the three days have passed, the wish will come true, but the person's soul will remain in the bone.

If a person didn't have a soul to begin with, his/her wishes will be ignored.

If Feed Me Corpses is slain it will laugh furiously and say “You, sir/lady, are indeed a fool” and then, a new double-sized version of itself will come from some nearby place and eat the corpse of the previous one. In rules terms, it starts with 1 hit dice and will gain 3 each time it is slain to a maximum of 10.

If the creature was to be slain three times, the fourth version will attack the person that killed it and anyone who helped him/her. It will never stop trying to kill them. If it's killed again, it will laugh again, die and then reapear with the same size, eat the previous corpse and go back to chase the prepetrators. If it was killed by different people, it will add them to its to kill list.

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

1d12 contents of the colossal fish's stomach

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2017. More posts in English here.

If a fish swallows the whole party, what do they find inside?

1. Giant crabs. They give the fish indigestion.
2. A princess of an undersea kingdom, looking for a way out. Her father would pay generously anyone that returns her to her home.
3. A civilization of short tritons.
4. A giant tapeworm.
5. Judging by the silhouettes they look like Pinocchio and Gepetto, but they are just two hobos camping.
6. A tribe of shrimpmen looking for a way out. They are pacific, but not trusty.
7. Puddles of toxic plancton. They make the fish sick.
8. Remains of a pirate galleon and its booty. Only the captain, Roder Doublebeard, survived. Now he has gone crazy and declared himself King of the Fish.
9. Extra-tough sharks adapted to live in the stomach acids.
10. A valuable and rare coral. It's part of the creature's gut flora.
11. Whalers swallowed by the creature. Now they are investigating the best way to kill the fish from insisde to sell its corpse.
12. A colossal fish hook. It is quite disturbing...

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Symmetrical dungeons

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2017. More posts in English here.

Lately [T. Note: back in 2017] I've been drawing the last version of the palace from the adventure "el Zoo del Sultán" and remembering how it is structured. Here is the previous sketch that I've been showing lately:

So much symmetry is not common in dungeons and, of course, it wouldn't work in every dungeon/location, but regardless of what it might seem at first glance, it can make things more interesting. Personally I like it a lot because it's a way to test more the spatial thinking of the players.

If the players notice that there are repeating patterns, they can predict things and detect incongruencies that can be clues. And that's one of the best feelings that these kind of games can give: arriving to an unknown place, finding out its rules and using them for your own benefit.

In an asymmetrical dungeon one is generally imited to making a map that allows for better navigation, but the map is rarely predictive except to find the occasional secret room. On the other hand with a symmetrical design you can introduce elements that careful playeres can use to take advantage. Some examples that I use in the palace itself are:

• If in one section there is a secret door in a certain spot, there can also be one in the same place on the other symmetrical part.
• If there is somsething different in one of the halves, there can be a reason for it (a great way to signal secret doors and traps).
• If on one side a room is smaller than in the other one, it's possible to deduce that there is a secret part.
• Observing carefully an area that can be accessed easily but reflects another that is harder to access allows to gather intelligence about it.

And, as I say, this also increases fun because it reinforces intentionality, the ability of the player to make decisions known the consequences of what they are going to do. It's no fun to be in a place or play something whose rules change constantly without warning. It's ironic, but sometimes moving things a little bit to the side of predictability can also make them more interesting in a lot of cases. Of course you must excercise caution, as like in any other exploration environment, you have to strike ea balance between how much information the players have to help them decide what to do and how much they have to discover by themselves (why explore if you already know everything, right?).

In conclusion, just some thought regarding level design and the valuable role that symmetry can play on it. What do you think? Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Colossal monsters

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2016. More posts in English here.

Good morning, sir. Would you be interested in
adding more giantic monsters to your campaigns? Sir?

Greatings, munificent readers. Everybody likes the idea of taking out the tarasque, but, for some reason, not so many of us do. Probably because giantic monsters can wear off if the characters are killing dragons with wings the size of a carabel all the time. And it's an understandable feeling, but I think there are more ways to use colossal monsters other than the meat-grinding.
This kind of beasts can add a respectable degree of flavor, wonder and playable depth to a campaign setting, and even then they are not that usual. Probably one of the causes is our own perception: the biggest thing we can find today on land is an African elephant and any thing of that size or bigger comes to our minds as something to awkwardly and slowly level everything on its way, like a dinosaur, a giant or the tarasque itself that, as Nirkhuz points out, fucking-kills everything in its wake.

But a good part of that is linked to our perception as land-based beings: something that big that also has to be supported by earth defying gravity is doomed to be awkward and slow. But that doesn't have to be true in other enviroments such as the sea or the sky. After all, a dragon is always much more graceful in the air than in land.

That was one of the things I think I took into account when writing Criaturas del Vacío Celeste [my bestiary of beings from floating islands]: I tried to fill it with creatures that are simply too massive to appear in any other place. Some of them are even legitimate buildings like the machine island or the gelatinous pyramid, or islands like the spheric turtle or the geo-dragon.

And I think I fancy them because, as I say, they add more texture to a campaign setting. The fact that one can live on top of a living creature raises many questions about it's relationship with its inhabitants or, on a more tactical level, a 165 feet tall pyramid made of corrosive jelly and with tentacles is going to require a lot more planning and unconventional resources to be defeated. Just direct violence won't cut it.

And really I think they shouldn't be a challenge just for advanced players. In fact, the other day I was discussing that, if one of these days I started a new fantasy campaign, the first encounter would probably be a giant, to make it clear from the beginning that there are usually challenges that cannot be resolved just by violence, that sometimes it is even reasonable to run away and that I am a merciless jerk that likes dead characters. But that last point goes beyond the scope of what we are discussing here.

It would be cool to run a campaign full of giant creatures roaming around or even one where the players fight mostly or only stupidly big things (hey, it worked for Shadow of the Colossus) because it makes you think a lot more about the logistics of such encounters: how to climb them, how to make them fall, where their weak points are... And about the nature of the world: how do you build a city in a world where the average monster can demolish a wall as if it was nothing? What kind of weapons and armor have they specialized into? Who makes all that giant-thing-slaying gear? What role does it have in their cultures, their daily lives or their way to make war? And, again, those are some of the questions I asked when I imagined a campaign played using Criaturas del Vacío Celeste.

But what I want to say at the end of it all is... take the tarasque out and as soon as possibl. Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Ask your region

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2013. More posts in English here.

Are you making a fantasy region and have the concept, but you don't know where to start to flesh it up? Tell me about it! You can try answering some of these questions:

Geography

• What is the most common type of terrain?
• What makes it different from the tearrain of other places?
• What other terrains are there and why?
• What are the most important reference points when you travel?
• What means of transportation are available?

Biology

• What is the most common fauna?
• And flora?
• Are there monsters?
• What creatures or plants are the most representative of the place?
• What are the most notable threats?
• Is there more than one intelligent race?

Society

• How many cultures are there?
• Are they nomads, barbarians, rural, urban...?
• What is their main source of resources?
• How technologically developed are they?
• What inventions are the most cutting-edge for them?
• What do they consider good or bad?
• What gods do they worship?
• What are their myths?
• What do they think of slavery?
• How do they regard other cultures or ethnicities?
• What is the difference between sexes?
• What is the difference between classes?
• What language or languages do they speak?
• What do they eat?
• What do they wear?
• How do they pass the time?
• What creatures do they tame?

Politics

• What are the political divisions?
• What factions can be found?
• What are their relationships?
• Who are the real rulers or the ones in the shadows?
• What do they seek?
• What type of government to they have? Monarchy, plutocracy, gerontocracy, tiranny, democracy, manteocracy, teratocracy...
• What do the people think of their rulers?
• Does someone opose the rulers from the inside?
• Are there lawless factions?

Magic

• Is there magic?
• How does it work?
• How widespread is it?
• Who controls it?
• Is it hard to learn?
• How is it regarded in society?
• Is it linked to religion?
• Is it intertwined with technology?

Architecture

• What type of buildings are common?
• Which buildings are considered wonders?
• What types of past ruins are there?
• Who built them?
• What type of decoration is used nowadays?
• And in previous ages?
• How are cities distributed?
• How big are they?

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Creature: antihydra

This is a translation of a post and this other one originally published in 2013. More posts in English here.
 
Long necks that end in human heads emerge from the reptilian body of this creature. The more heads it has, the more intelligent it becomes, and it is well known that some have mastered a rudimentary form of language (it is appalling to hear all its heads speaking almost in unison) and even the secrets of magic. Although usually they don't have more than five heads that don't do anything but cry continuously and sometimes bite, while its true head, barely a beak at the end of its body, looks for flesh non-stop.

But do not fear, as the antihydra is incapable of generating heads by itself. Instead of that, it has to look for humans to tear them away with its powerful claws —fear those claws those of you that want to live!— and then attach them to its body and let a new neck grow below them.

In the meanwhile, a horrible growth also takes place on the beheaded body of its victims, if it doesn't devour them before. The bodies develop a new, ohpidian head—horrible and poisonous, and under the total control of the antihydra that "created" them. This can become a problem, as a antihydra that controls a lot of these creatures will probably also have a great number of heads, making it able to conceive more effective ways of using the victims.

Of course, if a head is chopped from the hydra, it won't grow again unless it finds a new one, thinking otherwise would be ridiculous. What is true is that, if the head is separated with a good chunk of the neck of the monster, it will still be able to act independently, and with time it will develop limbs and organs, and it will finally grow to become a new antihydra. Or so go the stories.

Diagnostic: fire. And lots.

When you meet it, the antihydra is (1d20):

1. ... just roaming.
2. ... devouring corpses after a battle.
3. ... waiting for new servants to form after a battle.
4. ... sleeping.
5. ... fighting 1d6 humanoids.
6. ... fighting 3d6 humanoids.
7. ... completely hidden.
8. ... hidden, but showing the most beautiful of its heads.
9. ... hidden, but showing the most horrible of its heads.
10. ... being captured by dark dwarves.
12. ... badly wounded. 1d3 severed heads.
13. ... on flames.
14. ... making a deal with witches.
15. ... chasing someone or something in particular.
16. ... looking for the answer to a complicated riddle.
17. ... regurgitating undigestible things: bones, armor, jewelry, etc.
18. ... looking for new heads with wild fury.
19. ... singing the most horrible song you can think of. With a chorus.
20. ... singing a song so beautiful that its hard to get near it.

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Spell: Doom Skull

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2012. More posts in English here.

A spell for La Puerta de Ishtar. Beware: it can be too hardcore.

Level: 3

Effect: The person that is made the target of this spell will inevitably die in the same way as the victim of the sacrifice performed. The time it will take for the target to die is unknown, although it usually isn't less than three days nor more than thirty. The circumstances surrounding the death can be very diverse: if the target is doomed to die by stabbing, it may be the work of some bandits, they may stab themselves by accident, or a lover may betray them. The only way to avoid the terrible fate is to recover the charmed skull of the sacrificial victim and destroy it so the grim fat turns against the sorcerer that casted the spell.

Casting: The sorcerer must seek a victim that loved the target of the spell in any way--it may be romantic love, but also a family bond, an intimate friendship or even a bond between teacher and student, as long as it is strong. Once the victim has been found, the sorcerer will end their life following the appropriate ritual. The way the victim ultimately dies is irrelevant, save for the fact that the target will die in the same way, and also because the skull must be kept intact.

Once the sacrifice is over, that skull must be extracted and cleaned to carve the name of the target and the appropriate curses on its surface. The flesh must not be boiled out, as this would ruin the properties of the bone, but rather flesh-eating beetles must be employed to this end. The skull shall be placed in an altar surrounded by two lights fueled by the fat of a two-headed goat. Every day the skull shall be fed a piece of meat from a person that was born a slave but died free, by placing it in the skull's mouth. This shall be done until the skull suddenly turns into dust, as a sign that the target has perished.

Learning: The sorcerer that wishes to learn this spell must seek a cave not far away from Samarra, near the point were the Zab meetas the Idigna. This is the skull cave, named like that on account of its walls, almost totally covered by skulls. The sorcerer must go in alone, carrying the bones of someone he loved himself, and walk through the tunnel that descends to the deepest chamber. While they walk, they will keep hearing screams and cries from the cursed skulls, that moan without moving their lips, as if they did it from the inside of those that come to this place. Once in the deepest point of the cave, the sorcerer will fed the skulls that dwell there with the bones and finally place the skull they carry in an empty spot on the wall. Then the skull will explain in whispers how to cast the spell, only to start crying like the rest when it finish.

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Random encounters at sea

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2012. More posts in English here.

One per day of sailing.

1-25. A boring day at sea.
26-50. Land ahoy! (Use this and this table or your own table of islands).
51. Pirates under a false flag.
52. Ship infected with the plague.
53. Sharks.
55. Prostitutes ship.
56. Ship full of fleeing slaves.
57. Bloodthirsty pirates.
58. Arabian vessel.
59. Galleon full of treasure.
60. Dwarf steamboat.
61. Kraken
62. 1d6+3-headed [scylla.
63. Swirls.
64. Slavers galley.
65. Sea serpent.
66. Blue dragon.
67. City-ship of the sea elves.
68. Ship of exiled nobles.
69. Ghost ship.
70. Triton attack.
71. Tritons seeking trade.
72. Recent shipwreck.
73. Witch's vessel.
74. Dolphins.
75. Northern riders.
76. Mermaids.
77. Sea nagas.
78. Sea lizardmen.
79. Whales.
80. Undead whales.
81. Library ship.
82. War galley during maneuvers.
83. Harpies.
84. Migrating carnivorous birds.
85. Northern lights.
86. Ship with cargo fulll of alchemical materials.
87. Area of strange stars, there is a chance of getting lost.
88. Manatees.
89. Runaway/refugees ship.
90. Holy ship headed towards the holly war.
91. School of fish, easy to catch.
92. 1d3 sea serpents.
93. Noble's leisure boat.
94. Natives on canoes.
95. Flock of blue dragons.
96. Fool's ship.
97. Sea hydra.
98. Tigercampus (tigers with lower body of fish).
99. Sea medusa.
00. Cthullhu has awakaned!

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Class: Hell's superstar

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2016. More posts in English here.

Source

For D&D and its simulacra.

You have a voice so sweet that the best clubs in Hell fight for having you. Well, not really, not yet. But you are just starting! As you go up in level, your fame in the Underworld also increases and your connection with it, in addition to your superior musical skill, grants you powerful spells.


Levels

Based on the mage, remove the spells and add this:

Level 1:

• You have a familiar manager.
• You have +1 to all reaction rolls with demons, witches, spirits and other Underworld creatures.
• You know how to sing and/or play an instrument.
• You get three random spells.

Level 2:

• You get two random spells.

Level 3:

• You have +1 to all reaction rolls and +2 with demons, witches, spirits and other Underworld creatures.
• You get two random spells.

Level 4+:

• You get a random spell each even level up to level 20.

Level 9+:

• You can form your own band and add a member each odd level from here on (including this one).
• You can go on tour.

Familiar manager

You need a familiar that gets you gigs in Hell, makes connection and all that. It has the shape of a small animal, an imp or anything similar. It could do small tasks like scouting ahead for you if it wasn't always busy talking to a lot of people and only contacted you through long ranged telepathy.

It is probably better this way, though, because if your familiar died, you would lose 1d6 levels of thsi class and you could not throw more gigs, much less go on tour, until you got a new one. If you have a band, but you don't have a familiar, there is 1/6 chance that a random member will dessert you each week, as everything is just going to shit, yo.

Once per level you can ask a special favor from your manager: cool clothes, a lot of money, help from Hell itself, to be taught an extra spell... Then you roll 1d20: if the result is lower than your level, your fame alone was enough to get whatever it was that you wanted. Otherwise your manager has had to pull some strings and ask his contacts, so you now owe it a favor. It can ask you to throw a last time gig, to meet a devil producer specially important and be really charming to him, or just to do destructive things that are somehow part of the grand plan of Hell to devour the Earth, like killing that paladin that has been so nice to you lately.

The DM can veto favors that are too much even for the Underworld's girlfriend.


Spells

This might sound somewhat lazy, but I would just use the spell list of the Noise Wizards from Goblin Punch, it is really good and fits the theme. I could make up a bunch of spells that would be basically the same, but why if we already have them?


Gigs

In the smae way that a fighter must spend time practicing with the sword to go up in level, the thief opens doorknobs again and again or the cleric destroyes her knees by praying non-stop, you have to devote time to your thing. And your thing is giving shows.

To throw a gig you need at least a week to plan it, get ready and perform. You will spend a good chunk of that week in the Underworld, but it is a business trip, so it's mostly safe and not ery interesting, as you will only go to the hotel and the club, mostly.

Also, throw 1d20*100. If the result of the d20 is higher than your level, you have lost that much money in transport, food and all that. Otherwise, the result is all benefits! Yay!

If you have a week where you have nothing to do, you can go again to the Underworld as many timse as your level and it is conceptually similar to a wizard researching spells. You always have the chance to win or lose money and, if you roll a 1 in 1d6, you learn a new spell. You can only learn a new spell like this once per level.


Band

From level 9 you can form a band. Each level you can choose to add a wizard musician, an assassin coreographer, a fighter groupie or a rogue roadie that will act as henchmen, going with you in adventures besides gigs. Roll 1d6 to know what level they have when they join.


Tours

If you declare a tour, for as many weeks as your level, a gang of demons, devils, witches, spirits, anti-paladins and the sort will start follownig you in a frenetic state that will make them glad to jump on your enemies. The exact configuration of the audience changes eeryday, but the total DG of the creatures will never exceed your level times ten. But watch out, they are not crazy, so if something is obviously dangerous for them, they won't get in trouble, but it is also possible that there will be really tough demons in the audience... You can't control them directly either and, in the end, their actions depend on the DM.

You must perform at least once a week during this period, which takes at least half a day and requires an appropriate location. If you fail to do this once, your audience will feel disappointed. If you miss a second week, the tour will not just be over, but you will also have to make a Charisma roll, or the audience will attack you and your companions with very ill intent.

Once the tour is over, everyone goes back home with their hearts full of good music.

Thank you for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Your region needs a map? Make it like this (2)

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2013. More posts in English here.

Here we go again with me politely ordering you to imitate a map. Today I want to comment one for the Sto Plains in the Discworld. The artist is SM9T8.

Unlike balloons, it gets bigger if you prick it with your pointer.

The pros ar very similar to the ones we discussed with the Andalusia map.

It combines physical and human geography, of course, but what is interesting is how well the terrain is represented without beimg annoying. And of course, the forests, God, I've fallen for the forests. I would have never thought of laying them on top of the terrain just with less opacity. I suppose I am too used to traditional fantasy maps. By the way, this one also indicates marshes, which is always a good thing.

I always say it: roads and rivers. That's what people use to travel, after all. In this regard this map is also outstanding, as it shows which currents can be navigated or not, and wich land routs are the most important. Why does this stuff matter? Because on main roads and sailable rivers there will be, obviously, more civilized people and it will probably be more safe. Unless you are avoiding the law... Although in this case I think that the red roads are not necessarily bigger, but just the ones where coachs can travel. I guess it will probably have todo with the post service and there will probably be passenger wagons. It's a nice detail knowing that you can get to Landre more or less comfortably by coach, but not to Llamedos.

A peculiar trait of this map is that it shows semaphore lines: a series lf towers were a guy gets on too and signals the next one where there is another guy looking. And then the chain keeps going. It's pretty much a more refined version of using torches to warn nearby fortifications. But as I was saying, having it marked on the map how far could you send a message quickly (although not discretely) comes in handy, especially because it can play against the PCs, making their reputations travel fast.

Just they way I like it, it distinguishes different types of geographical features with a typography that makes them easy to tell appart. But, just the way I don't like it, you have to make a little effort to know if a city is big or not. Maybe ir would work better having icons with different shapes.

Speaking of names and typography, I see that some roads have names and that is really cool. My policy is naming everything to make it easy to know what you are talking about, and you know what? It's probably also the policy of the people that use those roads. That's why I think any road of a certain length should have its own name kust like rivers.

How ever, for me, it's still lacking some things to be perfect: nature places of interes, fortifications or which cities have harbors. But nonetheless it does have a scale, which is always and pro, and even a necessity.

Thanks for readimg. Valmar Cerenor!

Alignment as Class

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2018. More posts in English here.

"Lalalala, I'm neutral"

Greetings, munificent readers. To OSR enthusiasts, the concept of race-as-class is something normal. For ACKS fans, even class-as-race-as-class is the usual, with elf warriors being a class. That's why I was thinking about extending a bit the concept and meditating about things like equipment-as-class or, even, alignment-as-class.

About this last one, Nirkhuz, great defender of alignments, pointed out at some point that a lot of people say that systems that use alignments have them as a layer on top of the rules and that it can't be an objective measurement. However, as he also pointed out, it is objective as long as things are cathegorized by it and there are effects and elements that depend on alignment. "Protection against evil" is there, on the spell list.

That's why I devoted a little more time to think how the characters alignment could be objectively reflected without having to take into account what the DM understands as good or evil, chaos or law. As such I pondered the concept of alignment-as-class, going a step beyond--it's not that you can have "Chaotic" as a class (even if it sounds cool) rather than that, I thought of another thing.

The idea would be to have 21 classes, three per each one of the basic classes in a trifect of law - neutrality - chaos. They would be the following:

• Knight, warrior, marauder.
• Cleric, druid, cultist.
• Mage, wizard, sorcerer.
• Vigilante, specialist, thief.
• High elf, wood elf, dark elf.
• Mountain dwarf, hill dwarf, deep dwarf.
• Halfling sheriff, halfling traveller, gollum.

Of course there are traces of this idea since the brown booklets of OD&D or in more recent games like Dungeon Crawl Classic. But I want to take it further as a thought experiment. I don't have anything concret for now, but, by Gox, I'm going to drop all my general ideas on you.

Given that they are for all intents and purposes different classes, not just different names for the same class or simple variants, each one would have its own advance tables, even for stuff like saves. And probably the usual thing would be that, while the neutral classes would be the average, chaotic classes would advance more quickly, while lawful ones would be slower, but they would get biggest benefits on the long term.

For example, chaotic classes would have a (relatively high) chance of developing mutations each time they level up. And let's say that 10% of them wouldn't be necessarily beneficial. There would be both physical and magical mutations--humans and gollums would have the same possibility of getting both (more physical for marauders and more magical for sorcerers), but dark elves would only get magical mutations while deep dwarves would only get physical mutations.

On the other hand, lawful classes would have the chance of acquiring extraordinary powers en exchange for quests, like the batyr, the steppe paladins of whom I already spoke here or the version of the paladins based on them that Nirkhuz made here. And, probably, they would have the chance of imposing taboos on themselves, because that's always fun.

Going on, about class types, variations would be relatively simple. Spell-casting classes would have different lists for each alignment, the sneaky ones would get bonuses to different skills (look at that thief with +666 to backstab or the vigilante with +9000 to climb walls). Martial classes would have a bonus if they use certain weapons and styles of combat. For example, knights would have a bonus while using swords, while marauders would favor axes a lot more. And, of course, non-human classes would have bonuses to adapt to their respetive environments--gollums would even have infravision.

As you can see, it's only some loose ideas for now, but maybe it's something I could develop more in the future. What do you think? What type of campaigns and setting do you think it would fit? What else could be done to distinguish further classes on the same subgroup? Who would NOT want to play a gollum? Thanks for reading me. Valmar Cerenor!

The egg of all spiders

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2015. More posts in English here.

At first glance this looks like a big egg (ostrich-sized, two hands are needed to grab it firmly) made of what appears to be gold, skillfully carved with images of children playing with big spiders. On closer inspection, the material feels more like ceramic and seems relatively fragile.

Never touch the egg.
If any female humanoid (regardless of age or physical condition) touches the egg, she will get pregnant with spiders. It's not a real pregnancy., but during 1d4+2 days she will feel progressively more awful, her belly will distend and grow and, eventually, a myriad of spiders will come out through the usual way. This process is harmless, but painful and horrific. A female can be affected by the egg several times.

If any male humanoid touches the egg, from now on he will find any food utterly disgusting. He will be able to swallow a meal only through sheer willpower. After 1d8 hours, he will lose his mind and will try to feed any female "pregnant" with the egg by any means necessary. He will first use edible stuff, but if there's none nearby he will try to make her swallow even rocks and dirt. He will tie or find some other way to immobilize the female if she resists. He will still be able to think straight about any other regard and he will be utterly confused if anyone were to suggest that he is not doing the right thing.

The egg has no effect in any other creature.

Never shed blood on the egg.
If blood ever touches the egg, it dissolves, like when hot water is poured over ice. The resultant liquid is highly corrosive, specially to organic matter.

If enough blood is applied, the shell will open to reveal that is full of a black fluid, which smells like decomposing meat. The egg will only retain its horrible properties if more than half of it is filled with this liquid.

The black fluid is harmless outside the egg (but see below) unless ingested, as it is highly toxic.

Never break the egg.
The egg can be broken by force and it is as fragile as pottery.

If the egg is broken, it will emit a loud shriek and any creature nearby will be totally disoriented for a moment. Also, any person that has ever touched the egg will bleed from the body part that made
contact with it for 2d6x10 minutes. Finally, any humanoid fetus in two square miles will mutate horribly and will make its way out of the womb biting and eating. These creatures will try to eat any flesh in sight after they have killed their mothers.

Never spill the egg's fluid.
If the fluid gets in contact with air, all arachnids in two square miles will gather around the egg and drink it. They will mutate and start to secrete more black fluid and some nasty matter, the former to
refill the egg, and the latter to repair the shell. To obtain the energy needed to perform these activities they will consume almost all organic matter in the proximities, dead or alive. After that effort, they will die exhausted.

Miscellany of strange, curious and magic books - 2

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2016. More posts in English here.

I threatened with coming back and by God I'm gonna do it!

An interesting thing about medieval and modern poetry are the romanceros. Poems circulated around, be it in oral form or in loose pages, but a lot of people compiled the ones they liked in a book. Sometimes all of those got compiled in a single anthology. Does this remind you of something?

In D&D that would be a great way to see how spells are transmited. Maybe the wizard learns it or they find it in a loose page (what would a scroll) and they copy it into their book. And printed spellbooks can come out in the same way.

But this whole system has a big problem: there can be many mistakes if a spell is copied and copied again so many times. And at some point it can develop a great flaw that no one noticed. I'd like to see more wizards thst try to get as many versions of the same spell as they can to compare them until they find the most correct version before they try to cast it risking a face explosion. Tip: if it is a compilation of spells just from one author, however got them will likely be more careful than if they were compiling spells at random. There will also be experts that may be consulted.

As they exist in real life. Mostly that's how philology was born--to get the most perfect version of the homeric works, and afterwards, the most perfect version of the Bible to interpret it. Later it would cover other topics, of course, but let's think about a fantasy setting--a scholar would probably pay good money for a version of a sacred text he didn't know about to complete his map of how it's been transmited and copied.

Speaking of the transmission of sacred text. Have you heard about the Septuagint or the Bible of the Seventy? To translate the Tanakh into greek, seventy rabbis got together in a Insland off the coast of Alexandria to do it in the most accurate way possible, so they would do justice to the word of God. Sabotaging a similar event or trying to steal the translation before it arrived or stopping others from doing so can be a great way to introduce and adventure.

About translations and sacred languages I could talk a lot about our friend Alfonso X of Castile. One of the main reasons his famous translators school (which can be ground for a lot adventures by itself) translated texts into Castilian and not into more prestigious languages of the time like Latin, Arabic or Hebrew was because all of these were lithurgical tongues of a religion and he wanted to avoid it.

The court of a wise king is a great opportunity for enterprising bookhounds, as they can basicaly sell almost any books that comes from antiquity: mathematics, science, literature... And also the king himself produces his own books. Alfonso X invented the d8 and he uses it in some of the games from his... Book of games.

A wise king also gives his capitol and atmosphere of city of culture like Bohemia under Rudolf II or London under Elizabeth I with John Dee. In those time and places it would be dirt easy to buy and sell books on alchemy, kabbalah and esoteric matters... Most of them fake.

And, related to this, books with secret codes. We have already talked about the Voynich manuscript, but there are other things, although there are generally very exaggerated, like saying that Plato's books have a secret code based on the harmony of the twelve musical notes. Hidding something in a secret code is not as reliable as hidding an esoteric knowledge through symbols, like alchemy books that used emblems and symbolic carvings. Also, this kind of initiatic books have another funny trait and it is that everything at the beginning is boring fluff to discourage the curious and screen those that are really commited to reaching the knowledge.

Speaking of which, have you heard about the Fama Fraternitatis from the Rosicrucians? It was a sort of manifesto of the order that appeared in the 17th century making a call to the intellectuals of Europe. It was probably a joke made by some funny university students, but people took it seriously and it produced an explosion of similar texts across the continent. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be Rosicrucian.

But going back to the topic of secret codes, I want to tell you an interesting anecdote that could take place in games with a more recent setting. Two investigators were detained by the Spanish police while they were obtaining data for an ethnolinguistic atlas of the Iberian Peninsula, as the Spanish civil war was not so long ago and authorities were convinced that they were soviet spies and their phonetic symbols were actually the cypher they were using to gather data.

Some more details... Someone brought to my atenttion the blog of an illustrator that makes great Cthulhian illos as if they were pages from a horrible tome, take a look, it is House of the necromancer.

On the other hand, I already talked about living books or with living parts back in the day, but I have found something new reading The Invisibles. What if you found the head of a dead prophet that was still saying prophecy?

Books of prophecy like Nostradamus' are interesting and could have a good market. Tell the Sybil about it:

Centuries ago, concurrent with the 50th Olympiad, not long before the expulsion of Rome's kings, an old woman "who was not a native of the country" (Dionysius) arrived incognita in Rome. She offered nine books of prophecies to King Tarquin; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquin at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she burned three more and repeated her offer. Tarquin then relented and purchased the last three at the full original price, whereupon she "disappeared from among men" (Dionysius).

Or it could also be very interesting to get the records of an oracle with all the prophecies said by the pythoness crossed with the people that recieved them, so you could take advantage of them.

There is also a thing about books really fucking big:

Aren't they great? I haven't seen one THAT fucking big, but I've gotten my hands on an illustrated edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (with the pictures of Delacroix), Spanish in one page and Italian in the other, with big letters. It looked ready to eat smaller books it had to share the shelf with. There goes a picture I took:

Another interesting thing about the transmission of texts and their wisdom are posthumous books like Saussure's Course in General Linguistics or Da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting, that were compilated and published by their students after their deaths.

And I don't want to end without telling you about the "pliegos de ciego" (blind man leaves), that were pretty much proto-newspapers. Blind men wandered around telling macabre stories in verse so people could hear them and give them some coins and, usually, he carried printed copies to sell. Has anyone said that an adventure about tracking a certain blind man to get their story for a rich colectionist is a good idea? Because they ar right.

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

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Content overload: when is more... more?

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2016. More posts in English here.

Greetings, munificent readers. I am a stern defender of the notion that more content is always more content. A game or RPG product with more and better ideas will have more personality and give the DM more potential margin of maneuver. It seems obvious, or some may think that less is more, but the thing is complicated.

Because I mean content that is worthwhile, fresh valuable ideas that can be immediately brought to the game table and that are not vague, topical, reiteratives or obvious.

And I don't actually talk about super epic or mysterious stuff. Something like "these villagers challenge everyone who comes to a contest of crossing a river with a pole and they don't respect any group that doesn't show some skill" is already providing flavor and, especially, it is something the players can find enjoyable to interact with.

When I say "content" in this post I mean that (or super epic and mysterious things too, of course) and not long useless paragraphs, descriptions of dragons that are exactly like dragons from other fantasy world, long dissertations with no real game content or pretending that "a church is a place where people go to pray" and similar descriptions are something that people wants to pay money for.

This is the type of thing that makes that, for example, books that could perfectly be 100 or 150 pages long end up hitting 300 and becoming a snorefest (that and the fact that you can sell a book with more pages for a higher price, but that is only an added bonus).

Am I saying then than short manuals are good and long manuals are related to Satan and are here to ransack our villages and steal our cows? Nothing further from the truth--as I said at the begining, more content is always more content. But if your content is dissolved in an ocean of "meh" it won't shine as much as if it was all concentrated and the reader receaved more or less interesting ideas constantly.

Or, as the guys from Extra Credits put it, awesome per page. No matter how long or short is your product if you can keep the awesome per page high throughout it. And by awesome per page I mean the ammount of useful, interesting and, well, awesome things that you can find in any given page. That is pretty much what guides my efforts towards a maximalist RPG writting style: don't hold back, make it as big as possible, but also as awesome as possible. Creating RPG content is not a battle that can be won only be numbers, each piece of information should count.

As I read not so long ago on Goblin Punch about random tables, if you make a random table with 20 results and you realize that only four of them are actually really good, you shouldn't doubt about removing the other sixteen. Leave it and go to teh next. If you keep on working and practicing, it will come a day where all twenaty results will be gold or at least silver or other form of precious metal.

In the same way, if you realize that about half of your product is meh (and I hope this doesn't happen, but it comes even to the best), don't be afraid of cutting it in half, no matter how it hurts. Don't doing it because you say to yourself that it isn't really that bad, or that you would have lost your time or because you personally like it would be a disservice to yourself and your project

And yes, I know that the awersome, or great ideas are a subjective matter, but I think that any game designer worth their salt should have a good eye to almost always know what things are useful on the short or long term, interesting, add value to the product and make it easier for the average DM to start their games. But for this reason it is also really important to let others read your product, to ask for opinions and to test it, test it until your dice bleed. At that moment stop testing and contact your local religious figure.

Personally, I think that it is ironic that the most valuable content is likely to be the one that is not absolutely necessary to play, but enriches the game in other ways. After all, something really interweaved that has to always be taken into account reduces the options of the DM instead of giving him more. I talk about, for example, mechanics or setting elements that are absolutely necessary for the game to achieve the design goals you envisioned. If there are too many of these, only the most dedicated will be able to push the proverbial rock up to the summit of the learning curve. But on the other hand, pieces of setting or little optional or modular mecanics are additions that rise the awesome.

And I think that this is something that I have more or less managed to avoid in Criaturas del Vacío Celeste with the always helpful rumor tables, that offer variation and give options to the DM with a solid base to step on. And I am trying to do mostly the same with Sukero City and its modular mechanics and implicit and fragmented setting.

At the end of the day RPG products are just tools for the end designer: the DM. They give him (or her of course) something to work with, introduce new elements to his "mental ecosystem" and, if they want to emulate a certain genre, they give him something to take the first step withou having to do all the planning and investigation by themselves. Offering something that doesn't help at all or too little is very close to a scam.

And I think this is the actual problem people have with long books, that they see that their awesome per page is too low to make it worth looking into it until they can find the goodies. And also because their content is to interweaved, so it doesn't pay off, as the learning curve is too steep for something that you won't be able to apply outside that product.

I don't know about you, but I buy things I am never gonna use as-is to open them up and take pieces and parts, and I think it's a healthy approach and not a way of disrespecting the produc. Although I know that therea are people that appreciates a game much more for their resolution mechanics and for how the mechanics are used as a metaphore. In that regard I have to admit that games more storygamey, less mainstream (kiwi flavored as opposed to strawberry) and more focused on innovative mechanics, have a good eye for the awesome per page and their books usually are as long as they need... and sometimes less.

But I think that they are guilty of having very little content you can reuse, a lot of times due to their fondness for improsivation. I don't have anything against games that let you improvise all or a good chunk of the material, but I think I am going to apply the words of mr. Treze to this: "the more I prep, the best I improvise". No improvisation comes from nothing but, as I have already said, from the "mental ecosystem" of the people that take part in it, that is always enriched by new things. Saying that you can improvise something totally new without inspiration from any source and no previous frame of reference seems to me as feasible as a perpetual motion machine.

Quality content will always enrich that ecosystem and will give us tools that we can reach to arrange better games and have a better time. So, in my opinion, we DMs shouldn't demand shorter books, we should demadn that, no matter how long they are, they are worth every cent we pay for them and every second we invest in reading them.

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

60 historical titles and charges

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2013. More posts in English here.

If the radio-series Cuando Juan y Tula fueron a Siritinga has taught me something that's that grandiose titles are always cool. To that effect I present you this 1d60* random table with high-and-mighty-sounding titles and charges from different cultures and that can be used as "the <title> of <place>". For example "the elephantarch of Qenthadan". How cool.

1. Abott
2. Mayor
3. Archduke
4. Archon
5. August
6. Autocrat
7. Baron
8. Basileus
9. Burgomaster
10. Caliph
11. Chieftain
12. Caesar
13. Comendador
14. Count
15. Consul
16. Corregidor
17. Dicator
18. Duke
19. Dux
20. Elephantarch
21. Amir
22. Emperor
23. Strategos
24. Etnarch
25. Factotum
26. Governor
27. Grand master
28. Hegemon
29. Jarl
30. Kaiser
31. Khan
32. Master
33. Magister
34. Magistrate
35. Maharaja
36. Manteocrat**
37. Marquis
38. Bishop
39. Padishah
40. Pope
41. Patriarch
42. Prefect
43. Prince
44. Purpurate
45. Raja
46. Regidor
47. King
48. Satrap
49. Senator
50. Lord
51. Shah
52. Sultan
53. High priest
54. Thalassocrat
55. Tyrant
56. Viceroy
57. Vizier
58. Viscount
59. Tsar
60. 1d6+1: 2:diarch, 3:triarch, 4:tetrarch, 5:pentarch, 6:hexarch; 7:heptarch

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

*To roll 1d60 you have two options: printing this template, adding numbers and gluing it, or b) rolling 1d6 for the tens and 1d10 for the units.
**The ruler of a manteocracy, that is, a government made of magic-users.

Please don't start your settings like this

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2013. More posts in English here.

The world of Perenryn is a planet of 510 072 000 km2 in area of which 70.8 % is watter. It's equatorial radius is 6378.1km and it's gravity is 9.780327 m/s². It's average temperature is 14.05ºC and it's rotation period is of 0.99726968 d. It rotates every 365.2564 around the star Juquetas.

It has two moons, called Empolit e Inaignon. Empolit's area is 38 million square kilometers and Inaignon's is 33 square kilometers. It takes aproximately 28 for Empolit to go around Perenryn, while Inaignon takes 42.

Juquetas, the sun, is actually a binary star made of Juquetas A and Juquetas B. A is the brightest one, a yellow dwarf, while B is a younger orange star, although not too much.

The planet the closest to Juquetas is Clevat, of 7.5 x 107 km2 of area, 5.43 g/cm2 of density and axial inclination of 0º.

After it comes Ghalyecer, a blue planet of 1,850º of inclination, 777.96 days of orbital period and an excentricity of 0.093315. Locals think that it is the home of the god of boredom Oldinaris and, at night, it is observed by insomniac to try and fall asleep. It has three moons: Smidwar, Thraiqim and Choisden, that is also the name of the minor goddess of long and unnecessary descriptions, consort of Oldinaris.

The third planet from Juquetas is Shaylend. It's escape velocity is 10.36 km/s, it's albedo is 0,65 and it's atmospheric preassure is 9321,9 kPa. It has no moons. Some scholars suspect it does, though, but nobody really cares.

The fourth planet ys Perenryn, that, if you remember is our world. After it there is an asteroid belt.

Now let's discuss the gas giants and dwardf planets.

[... 8 pages later]

And now that I have given you that rant that won't be relevant ever again, we can discuss the actual setting.

Please don't. Valmar Cerenor!

Creature: Father Gnoll

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2017. More posts in English here.

By Dan.

Father Gnoll is a powerful gnoll that inhabits a maximum security prison for gnomes deep in some desert. The warden of that prison is actually Mother Gnoll, who holds a draconian rule over both the interns and the guards, of whom Father Gnoll is the leader.

Once a year, Mother Gnoll orders the guards to get rid of all rubbish that they force the gnome to make during the year as a form of torture. The guards, as much as prisoners as the guarded, don't let go the opportunity to bring violence and hate to the whole world. And also sculpture made from dried poop and metal wire.

It is perfect to torture your players while staying seasonal! More info at Monifate.

Stats for D&D:
Armor: 0[20]
Move: 12'
HD: 7
Attacks: Flail (2d6 and paralysis if a save is not made)
Morale: 11
Treasure type: F, I (AD&D) / XIV y XVII (LL) / Q y M (ACKS). And rubbish, lots of rubbish (see below). All in his magical sack.
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
He can use the following powers once a day: darkness (10'), detect magic, read magic, read languages, detect invisible objects, invisibility, hold person, suggestion, polymorph and fear.

He is accompanied by 2d6 gnolls of 13+1d3 PG, armed with whips and with 2d4 gp and 1d6 platinum pieces.

All of them speak common, gnoll, gnome, dwarf, orc, goblin, kobold and their alignment languages if applicable.

If the PCs spend a turn searching among Father Gnoll's rubbish they will find (1d10):

1. Note from a gnome, explaining where he is and asking for help.
2. Pieces of children hands.
3. Actual christmas presents, but really battered.
4. Skulls of different sizes and from different races.
5. A map with the different places he was planning to go to. The house of a loved one of the PCs is marked.
6. A piece of paper where it is written "naughty kids: all of them".
7. A bloodied ham-cutting knife.
8. A witch lottery ticket. You only have to go to Sukero to claim the prize (if any).
9. Master key of the prison cells.
10. Woodcut of Mother Gnoll where you can clearly see that she is actually a powerful demoness.

Thanks for reading and merry Christmas. Valmar Cerenor!

Content in RPGs: bones, fat and skin

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2018. More posts in English here.

Bring me the fat!

Greetings, munificent readers. These days I've been thinking about what types of content are in a RPG (at least as a game, not as an activity). Beyond the classical division of setting/system I propose one made of three parts: bones/fat/skin.
Bones are base and general mechanics that articulate the game and stablish its structures. A combat system is bones, for example.

Fat is pre-made content to be used in the game, the moving parts that add opions: inventory, classes, spells, monsters, traps... For a in-depth discussion of what is fat and how are fatty games, I reccommend this article.

Finally skin is the aesthetics or appereance of a game, including background, flavor text, pictures, etc.

If you fight in a game, that's a bone. If you use a sword with different numbers than an axe, that's fat. If the sword has the names of all your ancestors written with runes, that's skin.

That way, games can be describes as more or less bony depending on the number of rules they have. More or less fatty according to their libraries of content. And more or less skinny depending on how ornate it is, etc. Even games with "loose skin", for example, if they have illos of creatures that never show up in the bestiary.

I think it's a pretty apt distintion, as it solves the slippery and sticky problem of the fat: is a spell like Sleep setting or system? Of course it's part of the system, being a mechanical piece, but the fact that it exists it's also telling us something about that world's setting.

And none of the thre types of content is purely system or purely setting in an RPG, given it's holistic nature. If elves, in that setting, wear armor made of sea dragon, even if they are mechanically identical to plate armor, good luck trying to get rid of them with "Heat metal", for example.

On the same token, bones modify the setting in more subttle ways. This can be clearly seen in generic systems (that are, in the end, just a skelleton, with some optional fat), that usually include optional rules for different settings, genres ore tones (all of that part of the skin). Because, for example, how deadly the combat is has a huge impact on how the game world is.

It's interesting that geneneric systems with more fat also have more optional rules, and given that they are relatively mobile, you can guess that those rules are a bone type close to the fat.

On the other hand, in the same way that many classic generic games are just bone and fat, many narrative games are only skin and bones: a base mechanic and background, ready for the group to introduce fat together making it up in real time.

Of course this brings another problem: what are NPCs? Because, of course, they are also content. Of course their stats are fat (even if second grade, as they are not an integral part of the system), but what about the rest? How much is background? To what extent the way NPCs interact outside combat, even without explicit rules, is bone? This is the kind of question that don't let me sleep at night.

But, even then, I think this is a good paradigm to comprehend what RPG material is composed of, to classify better its content and see how to enrich our own games. What do you think? Do you think the cathegories are appropriate? Do you think that fat is the best thing in the world and there is never enough? Leave some comments down below and thanks for reading me. Valmar Cerenor!

Your region needs a map? Make it like this

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2013. More posts in English here.

(If it is medieval fantasy, only for the DM eyes and if you want it to be of use to other people, pf course).

Source. Click to behold it in all its glory.

That's it, there is barely anything else to say. Look at it and do it like that. What you say? Ok, I will bother you for the rest of the post telling you why you should.

• If it isn't a map for tourists, it looks like it. Think about it, what PCs do in a RPG is not that different to what tourists do. For the players, it is practically the same without having to walk.
• It combines very elegantly geographical and political features. It gives you a good idea of the elevation and it includes the administrative frontiers and important settlements. But it especially...
• It includes rivers and roads. If you are traveling through a place where, in addition to bad weather and brigands, there are orcs and the undead, you'll be thankful about not getting lost. What is the easiest way to achieve that? Rivers and roads.
• It shows places of geographical or ecological interest: nature parks. In our case, it would be something similar, but the parks would know how to defend themselves.
• It shows archeological sites. It shows archeological sites. It shows archeological sites.
• It shows international airports. In our case, unless you are playing a Final Fantasy rip-off that's not very useful, but it gives us an idea of how to use icons for ports and fortifications.
• The distinction between a simple town and the capital of the province should be made clearer, but it is obvious which one is the capital of the whole region, right?
• It uses different color and typography for different elements, which is common in "real" maps, but not as much in game maps which is a shame. Seriously, it makes everything easier.
• In that regard, the index of nature parks to the right also helps to make everything look less cramped.
• All colors contrast enough to make it legible enough.
• It has scale, which is nice, but if I used the map, I would take advantage of the measurements to put some hexagons on top of the map... Which I have already done...

And I think that's mostly everything. Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!

Ofidogriff

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2012. More posts in English here.

I had the idea for this creature not long ago reading X1 - Isle of Dread. I wondered what was a colony of griffins doing on a jungle covered island and how could I replace them. And with the help of Wachinayn from Other-selves I got this.


Clasification: dragon.

Like this, but with eagle
parts instead of chicken.

The ofidogriff, besides its name, has only one thing in common with creatures like the griffin or the hippogriff: some of its body parts are those of an eagle or bird of prey. The rest, however, corresponds to a huge constrictor snake.

They can fly kilometers away from their nests looking for prey. When they find some from the heights with their fine eyesight, they dive and take them dowm with their beaks and claws, making sure that they are helpless.

They grab them with their tails and constrict them to suffocate them midflight. Once in the nest, they swallow them whole and, if necessary, gegurgitate some for their chicks.

This behavior is due to the fact that their nests are far from any place settled by big creatures besides them. These semiintelligent creatures dwell in ashen planes where old dragons used to come to die long ago. Each one of their clans sleeps hanging from the ribs of the same dragon skelleton than their forefathers. And it is in the same skull that they were hatched and fed. The fiefdom of a ofidogriff clan is sacred for others and only in rare cases will they attack each other. It is way more common that they will support extrnal invaders.

There is a certain feudal relationship between all these clans, based on the fact that ofidogriffs from clans that occuoy bigger dragons, are also bigger and stronger themselves and can thus rule the others. The desire to take hold of a bigger dragon is one of the rare things that can iniciate a war between ofidogriffs. The biggest ofidogriff of the clan that occupies the biggest dragon is king of all it's kin.

There are however rumors about some recent problems with a certain lich thst tried to raise the royal skelleton. He probably failed, otherwise all ofidogriff clans would be very angry right now.

Thanks for reading. Valmar Cerenor!