A Very Incomplete Periodic Table of Elementals

This is something that Saker Tarsos and I started a long long long long long time ago and never got even close to finishing. The periodic table is big, a lot of the elements aren't that interesting, and also working on this was a good reminder that I know embarrassingly little about chemistry and therefore couldn't really leverage this to its greatest effect. Many of my entries are a mix of my poor understanding of the chemistry, real-world applications, any historical or mythological significance of the element, or random stuff that popped into my head. I haven't re-read these in probably at least a year so I'm sure they're full of mistakes. It is unlikely that I'll ever finish this, although I'm realizing we missed some good ones so maybe I'll come back to some of them. Any suggestions also appreciated. A lot of the entries are repetitive for reasons I've already kind of explained. Each entry starts with its symbol, name, period (I think that's what it's called...), and then the creator (ST is Saker, MC is me). Hopefully some of these are not terrible.

EDIT: Blogger is being obnoxious and making it inexplicably difficult to edit new entries in, but look to the comments for Nerdhogg's entries until I can figure out why this isn't working.


H Hydrogen Nonmetal ST They have witnessed the beginnings of the Universe, and the experience has left them terribly scarred. They meld with others to forget themselves, or flee to the upper atmosphere to get away from it all. They have an explosive temper when in large numbers. Those that remain in the troposphere will combine with Oxygen to become standard Aristotelian water elementals, or with Carbon to become Hydrocarbon Moleculars.

He Helium Noble Gas ST Self-reliant Helium elementals seek to rise above the troubled memories of their creation, for they were either smashed together from bits of Hydrogen in the forges of the gods, or spat out from angst-filled Uranium or Thorium elementals in their fits of self-harm. They are calm and collected, regarding themselves as being above asking other elementals for help. They have long memories and are thus wise and knowledgeable if questioned, but hard to locate.

Li Lithium Alkali Metal MC They are migratory beings, traveling along bolts of light between the positive and negative planes. The gods designed their routes as a circuit, which they channel to power their divine machines. It is thought that mortals were designed from those same circuits, which explains why some mortals find emotional balance and comfort in their presence.

Be Beryllium Alkaline Earth

Be Boron Metalloid

C Carbon Nonmetal

N Nitrogen Nonmetal

O Oxygen Nonmetal MC Ethereal and ubiquitous elementals of life and death. In their purest form they enrich and refresh those around them, but in less pure forms make the air heavy, crackling with ozone. In sufficient quantities they can produce powerful winds, suppress flames, or feed them. While they provide energy and strength, they also oxidize metals and carbons, draining and corrupting the host. Some cultures accept oxygen elementals as spirits, above good and evil, and embrace their gift and their curse, while others see them as parasites and vampires, and others still as weapons to be harnessed.

F Fluorine Nonmetal MC Pinkish-white creatures. Known as the celestial sword-and-shield, they can pierce the heavens, but they can also harden and form a protective barrier around objects. They are able to take a form like heavy water elementals, and naturally repel water.

Ne Neon Noble Gas MC Normally colorless, odorless, inert gaseous beings. They dislike interacting with other elementals or materials of any kind. Some will dance across the skies, but most traverse the cosmos, preferring the vacuum of space to atmospheres. When forcibly extracted from the air and caged in glass tubes and electric containers, they produce a bright reddish-orange laser light. Such neon lanterns are highly valued for ornamentation and are seen as a sign of wealth.

Na Sodium Alkali Metal

Mg Magnesium Alkaline Earth ST Born from tumult, they carry within themselves the slumbering rage of stars. They form themselves into wicker-wire forms of dull metal that burn with intense heat and light should they suffer insult.

Al Aluminum PT Metal

Si Silicon Metalloid

P Phosphorus Nonmetal

S Sulfur Nonmetal

Cl Chlorine Nonmetal

Ar Argon Noble Gas MC Gaseous, blue-green glowing creatures found mostly high in the sky. They do very little, but also keep very much from happening in their presence. It is nearly impossible to start a fire around them, and most magics are silenced. For this reason, their presence is often requested for diplomatic meetings or to maintain order at neutral grounds.

K Potassium Alkali Metal

Ca Calcium Alkaline Earth

Sc Scandium Trans Metal MC Sporty, silvery, yellowish-pink metallic elementals with auras like sunlight. They forms objects like baseball bats and lacrosse sticks from themselves. They're more interested in playing than fighting, but have no problem throwing down, especially if their favorite team is insulted.

Ti Titanium Trans Metal

V Vanadium Trans Metal

Cr Chromium Trans Metal

Mn Manganese Trans Metal

Fe Iron Trans Metal MC Large, bulging muscles, thick veins with perfect blood flow, the prototype of bodybuilding. Despite their unwieldy size and musculature, they are surprisingly flexible and adaptive, and are one of the more prosperous and abundant of the periodic elementals. They are seen as allegories of technological advancement and progress, both for good and ill.

Co Cobalt Trans Metal

Ni Nickel Trans Metal MC Silvery-white with a gold tint, and often covered in veins of greenish salts embedded in pores. They are hard and highly ferromagnetic. While valuable in their own right for their strength and magnetic properties, and as a measure of the value of a currency, they are known for their trickster behavior, misleading miners towards useless veins of fool's copper. As a result, they are often seen as an omen of bad luck, or gifted as an insult.

Cu Copper Trans Metal MC Sometimes they take humanoid form, usually feminine, but mostly they form as bundles of wires in relatively simple circuits. Although relatively soft, they are durable to environmental conditions and highly electroconductive, and are in fact the most abundant of the electroconductive periodic elementals. Blue blood courses through them, rich in oxygen and prized by deep aquatic life. While their skin is metallic and reddish-brown or pinkish-orange in color, they develop a greenish layer of rust when exposed to air. While many find this rust attractive and embrace it, others diligently scrub their skin. They are toxic to bacteria and fungi, and are therefore often sought after for the natural sanitation they provide.

Zn Zinc Trans Metal

Ga Gallium PT Metal MC Silvery-blue metallic elementals covered in blue and violet LED lights along circuit-lines. They have what appears to be a microwave in their solar plexus, which is actually a powerful ion beam cannon. They can sense infrared radiation on their skin. They have a low melting point and will seamlessly transition from liquid to solid and back based on the temperature in their environment or the temperature of those touching them. In addition to being superconductors, they can make other metallic periodic elementals weak and brittle by touch.

Ge Germanium Metalloid MC Nanofibrous beings invisible to the naked eye and infrared. They collect like string in a pocket, but the jumble is not random, it is a mathematically impossible circuit. The fibers weave throughout molecules, bending them into super-dimensional polymers. The weave bends light, magnifying and contorting sensory stimuli, interfacing with life and transmitting the signal directly into the brain. The circuit is like a superconducting transistor, amplifying the signals it collects from light and from the molecules in its weave, like an exponentially growing singularity.

As Arsenic Metalloid MC On some worlds they are the most fundamental elementals of life, treated like gods or demigods or progenitors. On our world, they are often seen as an harbinger of death. They come in three forms; the most common being gray and brittle and the most electroconductive, another form yellow, soft, and waxy and the most poisonous, and a third form black, glassy, and brittle and mostly inert. They are sometimes merged with lead elementals to strengthen them, but are most often employed as assassins, given their toxicity to many carbon-based lifeforms.

Se Selenium Nonmetal

Br Bromine Nonmetal

Kr Krypton Noble Gas MC Thick, flowing lines and beams of gaseous laser, mostly white but sometimes red or other colors. They are ethereal and can take on many forms as a gestalt of laser, although they often take a roughly humanoid form when dealing with humanoids. In addition to lumination, they can produce stunning flashes of light, which also serve as perfect photographic memories. Their gaseous form is heavy, and has a tranquilizing effect on oxygen-breathing lifeforms in their vicinity if i close proximity or tightly enclosed.

Rb Rubidium Alkali Metal

Sr Strontium Alkaline Earth MC Silvery-yellow metallic humanoids with a CRT monitor for a head, covering their entire face up to their mouth, which bares humanoid but inhumanly large, strong teeth. They are immune to X-ray radiation, and by lifting a glass visor over their face, can emit harmful X-rays. They can also project burning-hot crimson fireworks from their hands, and are phosphorescent in the dark. They were once bountiful and highly sought after for their ability to safely project messages streamed at electromagnetic and magical frequencies, but in recent years have been replaced by newer tools, and have significantly declined in number. They have a bit of a chip on their shoulder about this.

Y Yttrium Trans Metal MC They form in lung fluids as a silvery, crystalline cluster, like a cancer. They spread throughout the body, turning the host into a superconductor. The host's skin becomes phosphorescent. They emit light from their orifices like a cathode-ray tube. Nerve clusters light varying colors like a circuit of LEDs. Electrodes develop over the surface of their body. Outside the host, they cannot survive unless they merge with rare earth metal elementals, although there is no known method of testing whether a rare earth metal elemental is carrying the yttrium infection.

Zr Zirconium Trans Metal MC White-gold metallic elementals, resistant to heat and corrosion. By smashing their bodies they can create powerful flames from the particles, but they are otherwise better suited as workers or defenders in hot, radioactive, or corrosive environments.Each Zirconium elemental is born as a pair with a Hafnium elemental, but the Hafnium elemental is often absorbed into the Zirconium elemental shortly after birth/creation.

Nb Niobium Trans Metal MC Crystalline, normally gray creatures, although they can take on many colorful, iridescent forms. In addition to electromagnetic powers, they are also able to strengthen many other metallic elementals into steel alloys. Niobium elementals sexually reproduce. Their litters count in the dozens, but most are killed or consumed by other elementals long before reaching full maturity.

Mo Molybdenum Trans Metal

Tc Technetium Trans Metal

Ru Ruthenium Trans Metal

Rh Rhodium Trans Metal MC They appear like a sleek automobile, usually like a sports car, and are white-gold in color. They are highly resistant to corrosion, and their fumes are actually just recycled air that has had toxic or dangerous substances filtered out. For these reasons, they are often prized as mounts (although they are intelligent and will take umbridge with this description of their relationship with their driver), or called upon for assistance in toxic environments.

Pd Palladium Trans Metal MC They are a lustrous white-gold in color, and appear as a feminine humanoid. They are engineer-soldiers, masters of craft and warfare, their natural armor and weapons always at least one age advanced as compared to the rest of the setting, and always banded and studded like jewelery. They offer their knowledge to enlightened societies, but are keenly aware of the consequences of such knowledge. They teach the concept of discrete time, but acknowledge the anxiety it may induce. They provide medical and dental care as they fill the cavities caused by sugar refinement and clean the air polluted by their technologies. They are generally well-meaning, but cannot accept complacency, even if comfortable.

Ag Silver Trans Metal

Cd Cadmium Trans Metal

In Indium PT Metal

Sn Tin PT Metal MC Soft and silvery-white, with a liquid crystal display somewhere on their body, often as their face or on their chest, and studded with artistic punches outwards from their skin. They are able to shift between a metallic beta form, and a non-metallic, crystalline, gray alpha form. They are electroconductive, weaker than rare metals but useful for their ubiquity, and are resistant to water corrosion.

Sb Antimony Metalloid MC Silvery, crystalline elementals with striking, beautiful eyes accentuated by naturally-forming kohl. They are both invisible and immune to evil eyes. They are naturally brittle, but can harden lead elementals, particularly against fire and acids.

Te Tellurium Metalloid

In Iodine Nonmetal MC They are scouts and medics, able to perform a wide variety of chemical and spectral analyses on an environment and regulate endocrine systems in many lifeforms. They have a blackish-purple color, and vary in shape, but mostly humanoid or aquatic. They often have a briney, salty smell like the ocean. When set aflame, they glow a brilliant violet.

Xe Xenon Noble Gas MC Although technically an invisible gas, they emit bright and colorful lasers, and tend to be showy. They are like an EDM or disco DJ, producing shows of laser light, but also their lasers can alter the neurochemistry of their partygoers, giving them energy or sedating them.

Cs Cesium Alkali Metal

Ba Barium Alkaline Earth

La Lanthanum Lanthanoid MC They appear as komuso monks, but are more like ninja in disguise. Their heads are covered in a flammable mantle, covering their gas lighter heads. They are capable of producing powerful, focused arcs of flame, but are soft and vulnerable in a direct fight.

Ce Cerium Lanthanoid

Pr Praseodymium Lanthanoid

Nd Neodymium Lanthanoid MC They are naturally silvery metallic elementals, but are often found in a glassy form of pinkish or bluish color. In their metallic form they are powerful magnets, often constructing metal shells around themselves in the shape of microphones, automobiles, and computers. In their glass form they project infrared laser beams, and have mastered the art of transmitting information onto hard disks via lasers. Between their magnetic properties and laser-transmission properties, they have become prized librarians or mentats of powerful alchemages. Nonetheless, they are not only drivers of alchemagic, but also of nature magics. In their glass form they often take a shape reminiscent of roses or other flowers, and in fact have the ability to enrich soil and promote plant development.

Pm Promethium Lanthanoid MC Small, phosphorescent creatures. They are radioactive, can be used to produce energy, and have x-ray vision.

Sm Samarium Lanthanoid

Eu Europium Lanthanoid

Gd Gadolinium Lanthanoid

Tb Terbium Lanthanoid

Dy Dysprosium Lanthanoid MC Silvery metallic elementals that can change their shape using magnetostriction, literally restructing themselves through application of ferromagnetic force. They often have one or more metal-halide lamps on their body, which hum and radiate red, green, or white light and give off heat. They have the ability to produce infrared laser beams, are resistant to radiation, and have fine-grain control over electromagnetism.

Ho Holmium Lanthanoid MC Naturally silvery-white, they are fragile beings, corroding to yellow and pink and often partially aflame. They do not live long, but they live their brief life to the fullest and are known for their magnetic personality. In fact, they are the most magnetic of any of the periodic elementals. Even when taken against their will, they are prone to Stockholm Syndrome.

Er Erbium Lanthanoid

Tm Thulium Lanthanoid

Yb Ytterbium Lanthanoid MC Shining and silvery, with an emerald green aura of flame and radiation surrounding them. They can control their radioactive output to be (relatively) safe, and can harness the energy for X-Ray vision and imaging. They are masters of precision, from their internal atomic clock to the strength and sharpness of their self-cut blades.

Lu Lutetium Lanthanoid

Hf Hafnium Trans Metal MC Born as a pair with a Zirconium elemental, it is almost identical in appearance except for having a filmic iridiscence. It shares many of the abilities of its sibling only stronger. Most Hafnium elementals are absorbed by their Zirconium sibling shortly after birth/creation, so they are more rare. Hafnium elementals can be summoned by an occultic/alchemical ritual involving the mass sacrifice of Zirconium elementals.

Ta Tantalum Trans Metal

W Tungsten Trans Metal

Re Rhenium Trans Metal MC Silvery-white and honey-comb patterned. They are durable creatures, resistant to melting and when melted resistant to boiling. Their guts extend from their body like a hernia, in the form and with the function a jet engine, dripping gasoline and jet fuel.

Os Osmium Trans Metal

Ir Iridium Trans Metal MC Yellowish-white, metallic, with humanoid female traits. They are (arguably) the densest of the elementals, hard, and almost entirely resistant to burning, melting, or corrosion. They are often utilized by the gods as messengers, shot ballistically on beams of rainbow across the cosmos. In their pure state they are brittle and generally shatter on arrival, but are nearly indestructible and unstoppable along their rainbow trajectory. Occasionally they are used as ballistic, planet-killing god-weapons.

Pt Platinum Trans Metal MC Silvery-white elementals known for their rarity. It is considered a sign of wealth to employ platinum elementals or to have a concentration of platinum elementals within a kingdom. In addition to their electromagnetic abilities, they are also known for their ability to act as catalysts for various alchemagical transmutation spells.

Au Gold Trans Metal MC Although soft, these reddish-yellow metallic beings are some of the most useful and sought after of the periodic elementals, complicated by their relative rarity. The malleable elementals are often shaped by alchemists, wizards, and craftsman into exotic forms as fashion accessories. They are also highly electroconductive, making them useful weapons, but also useful for electrical transmission. They can also reflect electromagnetic radiation, and even have anti-inflammatory properties that make them useful to apoptomancers. They are also often used as the benchmark for a currency, where the value of the currency of a kingdom is measured by the quantity and quality of gold elementals in service to the kingdom.

Hg Mercury Trans Metal

Tl Thallium PT Metal MC Like tin treants with a subtle green aura. They harness light, integrating cognitive processing and circulation into one photoreceptive mechanism. They can see in infrared and are poisonous to the touch, making them excellent nocturnal assassins. They hide in forests, waiting for nighttime passersby to brush into them, sealing their fate. Their favorite snack is hair.

Pb Lead PT Metal

Bi Bismuth PT Metal MC Iridescent, rainbow-colored, metallic elementals with a stair-step crystalline structure that psychedelically bends and warps like a four-dimensional MC Escher painting. They are healers, treating digestive discomfort and certain infections. While not humanoid in form, they will often bond with an intelligent lifeform that is beautiful on the inside and out, worn like exotic jewelry, but also painting their eyes and nails, an aura like splotches of shimmering paint builds along the surfaces surrounding them, disappearing as they pass.

Po Polonium PT Metal

At Astatine Metalloid

Rn Radon Noble Gas MC Gaseous elementals that are normally odorless, colorless, and tasteless. They are also highly radioactive, making them silent and dangerous killers, but too slow and too unwieldy for singular assassination. When cooled to a solid state, they have a yellow or orange-red radioluminescence. They mostly reside safely underground, although accidental deaths sometimes occur around hot springs where radon elementals bathe.

Fr Francium Alkali Metal MC Native yet unstable elementals, they spend most of their lives as astatine, radium, and radon elementals. They are highly radioactive, making their francium form more like a last-ditch kamikaze effort.

Ra Radium Alkaline Earth

Ac Actinium Actinoid

Th Thorium Actinoid

Pa Protactinium Actinoid

U Uranium Actinoid MC Silvery-gray metallic elementals with neon-green circuits that glow under UV light. They are normally weakly radioactive, and take the form of small, innocuous lizards. When enriched, they grow to monstrous, kaiju proportions, wrecking havoc physically and radioactively in the environment. Some have learned to harness the power of the enriched elementals to produce energy and magics.

Np Neptunium Actinoid MC In the shape of a horse, their color varies from silver to dark purple, yellow-green, green-blue, light reddish-pink, or dark green. They are nuclear powered and able to move on land or in the sea (transforming into a hippocampus), and are prized as mounts even amongst the gods. They may self-destruct in a highly radioactive nuclear fission explosion.

Pu Plutonium Actinoid MC They usually have a dull gray shell of oxidation, although sometimes yellow or olive-green, but in their purest state they are silvery-gray. They are highly radioactive, but containable and fissible. At a high cost, plutonium elementals can be summoned or birthed, and used for massively powerful explosive alchemagics or as a source of alchemagical energy. They are sometimes in humanoid form, but often phallic and with aerodynamic features.

Am Americium Actinoid

Cm Curium Actinoid

Bk Berkelium Actinoid MC Feintly silvery-white, metallic elementals that reflect mostly in infarared. They are weakly radioactive, but generally not a passive danger.

Cf Californium Actinoid MC Silvery-white metallic elementals soft enough to be cut by a blade. They are radioactive, and have the ability to activate other radioactive elementals. They can also harness their radioactivity into a "sixth sense", an ability to sense the radioactivity and other chemical properties in an environment.

Es Einsteinium Actinoid MC Naturally silvery-white and metallic, they glow hot blue with nuclear energy. They usually take the form of or are covered in cubic crystals, although sometimes they take on a hexagonal crystalline structure instead. Most are unstable, synthetic creations, like short-lived kamikaze bombs. A rare few are wrapped in a paramagnetic field which weakly attracts metal, but is more so a containment suit for the elemental. However, even within the containment suit they are soft elementals and not suited for much more than being a bomb.

Fm Fermium Actinoid MC These elementals are birthed in the aftermath of disaster, particularly nuclear disaster. They are short-lived and radioactive, a brief after-image of holocaust.

Md Mendelevium Actinoid

No Nobelium Actinoid MC Rare and myserioud elementals, with properties similar to ytterbium elementals. In our universe they are radioactive and rapidly decay. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.

Lr Lawrencium Actinoid

Rf Rutherfordium Trans Metal

Db Dubnium Trans Metal

Sg Seaborgium Trans Metal

Bh Bohrium Trans Metal

Hs Hassium Trans Metal

Mt Meitnerium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to cobalt, rhodium, and iridium elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.

Ds Darmstadtium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to nickel, palladium, and platinum elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.

Rg Roentgenium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to gold, silver, and copper elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable. To summon a Roentgenium elemental is to summon nuclear death.

Cn Copernicium Trans Metal MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to zinc, cadmium, and especially mercury elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable. They are gaseous in our universe, and when they bond with gold elementals they become volatile.

Nh Nihonium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to boron, aluminum, gallium, indium, and thallum elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable. It is believed that in a sufficiently heavy enviornment, these elementals could be made stable in our universe, and much could be learned about the extra-universal/dimensional elementals from examination within these heavy, stable islands.

Fl Flerovium PT Metal MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to lead. In our universe they are radioactive and rapidly decay. They are superheavy, but at room temperature are gaseous, creating a heavy, suffocating field. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.

Mc Moscovium Unidentified

Lv Livermorium Unidentified

Ts Tennessine Unidentified

Og Oganesson Unidentified

Weird & Wonderful Loot

This is a followup to my last post with (not actually) Four New Weird & Wonderful Fantasy Species (there were five, I forgot the gray humans). I'm doing a one shot in this setting later this month, so I wanted to come up with some ideas for cool loot to help me build out the world. Most of this is not specific to the setting (which I still need to properly name) and could work in probably any science fantasy setting.

Several of the items refer to the core elements of the setting. I like to play with the idea of elements; I think it says something about the world when it's not just the typical Earth, Air, Fire, Water type stuff. It's intrinsically hard to do, since these types of elements are so intrinsic to human civilization and our world (before anyone gets pedantic about it- Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, Metal isn't all that different either).

In this setting, there are four elements, which each correspond to a color and to a shape. That's mostly irrelevant to the rest of this post but I'll leave it here anyway:

Ectoplasm - Translucent - Star Fractal
Phlogiston - Pink - Perfect Circle or Sphere
Yeast - Brown - Spiral
Lymph - Gray - Hypercube

But as I said, I think these loot are mostly setting agnostic, even though they hopefully evoke some sense of a coherent setting.

And now, the list of 20 Weird & Wonderful Loot:

1. Ectograph Machine: A handheld box and viewing lens powered by ectoplasm. When a button is pressed, a bright and disorienting flash of light captures the image of anything within the viewing lens. The process drains the essence of the objects in view and transfers this essence onto a metal plate. The ectograph machine is more powerful in the hands of those with an eye for composition.


2. Magic Gyroscope: A magic ball the size and weight of a bowling ball. By chanting and rotating the ball in a defined indoor space (such as a room), the space can be rotated. The wielder rotates with the room, everything else flies and tumbles about.


3. Gelatinous Suit: A surprisingly lightweight suit of soft, white, squishy, congealed lymphatic tissue that protects the wearer from physical harm and disperses kinetic force. Excessive use leads to the suit being absorbed under the skin permanently.


4. Hyper-Active Dry Yeast: Drop a packet of this into a body of water (or down a creature's throat) and it will immediately begin to ferment into a zymo-zombie. If it lives, it can be fermented.


5. Phlogiston Bolt: 3d6 explosive crossbow bolts made of pure phlogiston. If they explode onto anything combustible, it also explodes, and so on. Don't get hit while carrying them...


6. Lymphagen: A magical lymphatic fluid which, when absorbed by the immune system, coalesces and mutates any contained pathogens or antibodies into an immutant (immunogenic mutant). The immutant destroys the host from the inside, then physically explodes out of the host's body in their last moments of consciousness as a monstrous being covered in sticky white lymphatic fluids.


7. Ectogramophone: An old timey-looking video phone powered by ectoplasm. The dead dimension exists orthogonal to time as we understand it, and so it stands to reason that anything that will die, will exist in the dead dimension. You may communicate with anyone who ever has or ever will die, if you have their number. However, the dead are notoriously bad at answering their phone.


8. Jitterbug Bagpipe: A meatsack full of lymphatic fluid and intestinal pipes. Unlike regular bagpipes, the jitterbug bagpipe can be used to produce beautiful music. The music induces joy, a healthy appetite, and good health.


9. Karma Palm: 1d4+2 open-faced hands of light, psychically controlled by the wielder up to 7 ft around themselves. Can be used to push, smack, and press for 1d6 turns.


10. Karma Fist: 1d4+2 closed fists of light, psychically controlled by the wielder up to 7 ft around themselves. Can be used to punch for 1d6 turns.


11. Karma Eye: 1d4+2 eyes of light, psychically controlled by the wielder up to 7 ft around themselves. Can be used to see or shoot karmic laser beams for 1d6 turns.


12. Anti-Metal Armor: Armor that has been rusted and dephlogistonated. The rusted-looking armor is immune to all explosives, and rusts any other metals that touch it.


13. Mustard Bomb: A sack of meat fermented in a "special" yeast. The stench of the rotten, putrid meat is noxious, and at close ranges the methane produced by the fermentation may be deadly.


14. Vorpal Band: A set of rings combined into a shape like brass knuckles, made of a dimension folded in on itself. Pulling on each ring draws a unique weapon, including a vorpal garrote, vorpal disc, vorpal whip, and vorpal stake.


15. Mapmazer: An interactive scroll upon which a space can be mapped. So long as the mapping is accurate, it may be used to test routes in already explored regions of the mapped space and see the contents or occupants of rooms or corridors. In order to use the mapmazer, one must trace through the map like a maze. Normal rules of mazes apply, and mazing oneself into a corner can wreak all sorts of devastation within the space of the map, or alert other occupants to the users presence.


16. Escape Rope: A magical rope that allows a group of up to 20 to immediately escape a dungeon. There is a group-size in 20 chance that instead of exiting the dungeon they instead are transported to 1d6:
1. Somewhere else in the dungeon only a little closer to the entrance.
2. Somewhere much deeper and more dangerous in the dungeon.
3. The dead dimension.
4. A sexy place.
5. A not sexy place.
6. A place of madness and eldritch horror and OH GOD WHY!?


17. Rare Candy: A strange candy that makes one grow a year older (or equivalent for their species) and gain a level. On 1 in d100 the rare candy induces an extreme mutation, like an evolution into an entirely new species. Each time one consumes a rare candy in their life, the die size decreases (1 in d100, d20, d10, etc.), unless they evolve, in which case it resets. After an extreme mutation, they return to level 1 and lose all class abilities beyond first level abilities but keep any other attribute bonuses, saving roll bonuses, or other special abilities.


18. Good Vibes Machine: Everyone knows that a dungeon has bad vibes, but not many people know why. I don't know either, but what I do know is that a Good Vibes Machine (tm) will solve all your problems. After you've cleared out a dungeon, plant one of these gizmos right into the hot corpse of the boss monster, and this dungeon will be cleared forever. FOREVER. Over time, a bunch of cool cats will find their way into this dungeon; it'll be like the Brooklyn of the Underdark, and maybe it's also your new base and you're like a legend bro.


19. Mr. H: A mechanical man. He has limited functionality, but can be used for simple tasks like carrying stuff or one single complex task as programmed using punch cards (sold separately) which allow him to take the place of any number of other hirelings.


20. Magic Mercury: A bubbling, shimmering, colorful liquid that looks, tastes, and sounds like pop rocks candy dropped in coke in an endless loop of explosive carbonation. Induces extreme psychedelia for 1d20 hours, except where on a 20 the effects are permanent. Under the effects of magic mercury, one gains Heavy Metal vision. Everything looks like Frank Frazetta art with neon highlights and every sound twangs with an electric guitar or thunder. One cannot help but become the 1970's-80's pubescent male fantasy action hero they see in themselves. As a rule, it is impossible to fail at any task that would make the user seem uncool, unless the results of failure are so cool that it would be uncool to succeed, in which case the user necessarily fails. Cool is determined by the GM. None of this is actually happening, and at the end of the fantasy and/or on death, the GM and/or group as a whole retcon what actually transpired over that course of actions (they can still have succeeded, but not in as impossibly cool a way).

Four New Weird & Wonderful Fantasy Species

This setting just recently came to me, completely spontaneously. Obviously I'm putting a lot of work and thought into it, but it's encouraging to me how organically it's all coming together, given how I was nearly ready to stop blogging altogether.

My main inspirations for this setting so far are Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. I wasn't even certain at first whether I wanted the setting to be science fantasy, "traditional" fantasy, sci-fi, or pseudo-contemporary, but those novels (Children of Time in particular, which I just finished recently) did such a wonderful job of creating Weird and interesting non-human species that were nonetheless relatable, that I wanted to do likewise. I've written about plenty of fantasy species, some of which I think have been fairly successful, but it can be difficult to find the balance between making them Weird enough to be interesting, but not so Weird as to be inaccessible. I'm really happy with these and with the direction of this setting, so I hope other people get a kick out of it too.

I will break this into several posts, but this first post will focus on the species themselves. Subsequent posts will go into greater detail about the world, the factions, magic and technology, maybe a small bestiary, etc.

I may or may not write up any game material for this setting, but if I do it will probably be in either TNT, OSR, or FATE. I'm actually going to be running a one-shot in this setting for FATE in a couple weeks. Originally I had thought that I'd prefer this setting in TNT or OSR, that style of game, but actually I'm starting to think a system like FATE might be perfect for this setting. I'll talk about the one-shot itself in another post but one of the player's character is going to be something really cool that interacts with the setting and scenario in a way that I think would be a lot harder to do in one of those settings but could work well with FATE aspects, and I'm very excited for it because it's pretty fucking Wild.

One final note, since I have once again rambled for far too long. When I gave this writeup to my players, they by their own acknowledgement didn't fully "get it" until we actually talked it out, after which they were all really into it. On the one hand, I was really happy with their response when we talked it out, I could tell they were genuinely really into it, but also I'm disappointed that the writing wasn't sufficient to get them excited from the get-go, and that makes me less excited to share this post, if something core to the idea is getting lost between my vocal or conversational presentation of these ideas and the written presentation. So on that note!

One of the novels which inspired this setting and these species

The Goop

The primordial soup itself, as a single, viral-like super-organism distributed across all the oceans of the world. The goop has no coherent motive except to perpetuate its own existence. It is apathetic, but generally peaceful towards other life. Every few geological cycles it enters an omnicidal state of apocalyptic proportions, but that's neither here nor there. It propagates on land in the form of gooplings; fey-like pseudo-organisms composed of a semi-solid mass of goop, water, ice, and oceanic animal muscle fiber, held by composites of carved bone and coral.

Gooplings come in many sizes and shapes; humanoid, centauroid, city-sized turtles hosting colonies of shrimp, crustaceans, and other creatures. The goop communicates through viral-like genetic and epigenetic encoding, waves, and vaporization. Gooplings can produce speech, but it is generally warped and incoherent, as if underwater. Gooplings have little sense of self, nor fear of mortality. Even in their destruction, it is rare that they are not inevitably returned to the goop. A goopling may sacrifice itself to merge into another organism and take over its body; but then it is no longer part of the goop.

Hu

An evolutionary offshoot of humans that adapted to fill the ecological niche of ants. Hu are ant-sized, have an armadillo-like exoskeleton, and other features of burrowing mammals in miniature. While any single hu has little autonomy or intelligence as we think of it, each hu colony has a distinct human-like personality, albeit one that expresses itself through group behaviors and pheromone messaging. Hu have an innately motivated religious reverence towards the humanoid form, which they seek to emulate instinctively.

Hu  colonies stitch together the corpses of various animal species into Frankenstein Abominations vaguely resembling humanoids, although the results are often grisly and chimeric. The abominations are mechanically and bio-electrically powered and maintained by an ever-rotating crew of hu, who receive and transmit pheromonal signals emanating from a queen. In this way, abominations are like remote-controlled bio-mecha for a hu colony. So long as an abomination remains within the reach of its colony, it can maintain operation indefinitely. Colonies of a sufficient size will have many abominations, sometimes hundreds or even thousands, where the queen delegates responsibility to special operator-class hu.

Freakazoids

Eccentric organisms created by an ancient, advanced AI. They were designed with mechanics that have not, would not, and likely could not occur in nature, such as wheels, treads, and engines; all biological. As an example of their biomechanics, freakazoid wheels are usually pseudo-organisms, with their own nerve clusters and circulatory systems, which grow around a freakazoid's appendage, and latch on like a leech for nourishment when not in use. Freakazoids have exceptional speed and mobility, and immense strength. They have insectoid exoskeletons or some other kind of hard exterior, crossed with various animal features and a vehicle, like a cat bus, a raptor bike, a lizard train, or a shark tank.

They reproduce mostly parthenogenically and have almost no sexual dimorphism. To freakazoids, gender has more to do with whether they are car-like, bicycle-like, mechanically-propelled or combustion-propelled, etc., than anything correlating with biological sex. Freakazoids are perfectly capable of functioning in society, and often will do so out of necessity, but they much prefer independence. Each freakazoid has its own internal logic, and they can perform magic-like feats by studying their own freaky science.

Pterosaurs

Pterosaurs originally come from another realm and filled a similar ecological niche as humans. They are strikingly similar to humans in appearance; even with hair-like pycnofibers. The most obvious differences between a human (or a gray human) and a pterosaur are that they have a wider variety of skin tones and patterns, a longer and more angular skull, a small crest along the back of their heads, and short, slim, vestigial wings, more like the webbing between human fingers.

Pterosaurs are generally slower-paced and quieter than humans, more careful and contemplative, and less prone to religion, superstition, cognitive dissonance, and other cognitive biases. This may be in part because pterosaurs are only sexually active during their mating season, where males will peacock their crests and wings and play-fight with each other. However, pterosaurs are still a romantic people, more so on average than gray humans, even when not in mating season. Pterosaurs also tend to take many romantic partners, and while they acknowledge biological sex during mating, otherwise place little emphasis on the cultural construct of gender when it comes to romance, which they see as distinct from mating per se.

Gray Humans

The closest living descendants of humans. They have cloudy gray eyes, and a layer of gray pigment under their skin, which otherwise varies in color like true humans. Gray humans are a socially- and emotionally-driven species, and their interpersonal interactions are often volatile. While generally accepted as an intelligent species, gray humans tend to engage in superstitious behaviors and are plagued by various other forms of cognitive bias and cognitive dissonance, and are often described by freakazoids as "glitchy".

In an evolutionary sense, gray humans have been on the losing end of a competition with the pterosaurs for longer than the current era. However, one advantage they have is their determination, especially in the face of adversity. Their aforementioned "glitchy" behaviors and emotional volatility make them quick to act and adapt in crisis, and more willing to face seemingly insurmountable tasks to their conclusion, which has benefited them technologically and allowed them to survive in inhospitable regions.

I was about to throw it all away...

Tl;dr This is a long post about nothing.

Am I still creative?

I was on the verge, like no joke a day or two away, from posting that I was going to quit blogging. Over the last several months my life has changed pretty significantly for the better. However, as I have somewhat tongue-in-cheek already discussed, I have as a result struggled creatively. Over these last several months, my home game has come to a screeching halt (we've only played I think twice in this time). Almost everything I've posted was a finished draft I had on hold for exactly this kind of circumstance, a mostly finished draft that I gave some kind of unsatisfying finish to, or stuff that I did think were cool ideas but didn't give them the effort they deserved. I haven't done any javascript stuff, which I miss, and I'm a significantly better coder now than I was a few months ago, but I just haven't had the time to do anything particularly cool with it for the blog. Would also like to do some more RPG-applied machine learning stuff since I really have no excuse not to do that now that that's literally my profession 0.o.

I had also even before that become really disengaged with the community, which didn't help. I'm almost never on discord anymore, G+ is long over, I lurk on reddit a bit still but rarely post, I still follow a bunch of blogs and try to comment but I rarely discover new blogs unless one of the other bloggers I follow blogs about them. It seems like a lot of people have moved to twitter, and I have a twitter, but I just really don't like twitter. There's been this whole zine thing which several months back I would have been all over but now I just don't want to. I still get a few awesome individuals who will occasionally comment on my blog posts which I deeply appreciate. I don't feel as bad when a post doesn't get many views or comments anymore because I feel less engaged in general, but it always helps to get some kind of engagement.

The blog was beginning to feel like a chore. I wasn't feeling motivated to create. I felt like I was getting diminishing returns for my efforts in every sense. My fellow blogger friend semiurge discussed once, somewhere, that he felt that creativity was something that happened to him passively, and I used to feel that way, but it has been feeling effortful for me for quite some time, and as a result I haven't been prioritizing it at all.

Revival?

Then randomly, just over the last week, I've been starting to feel a bit creatively energized again. We'll see how much of that actually translates to the blog, but it's nice. I get random ideas that pop into my head again and I write notes. One or two ideas I've been sitting on for a while are starting to come together more organically. I'm still struggling to get my home game together but I'm going to be starting another group with some work friends which will hopefully energize me.

I had said that after I got my career together that I'd start prioritizing commissioning art and potentially publishing something, and it took me longer to get my career together but it happened, and now it's taking me longer to get the rest of my life together but it's coming along, and I'm hoping maybe I'll soon get back to that place where those things seem plausible for me.

I've found that whenever I do these kinds of posts about things I want to do, or my mental state, that putting it out there into the world makes me more likely to actualize it. I don't want to abuse this superstitious placebo effect, but I'll briefly preview a few ideas / priorities. Feedback may affect how likely or how quickly these things happen.

Setting and/or System Idea with three possible names

This idea is one of those "darlings" that I've spent way too much time thinking about and wanting it to be my magnum opus and pinning too much of myself on it to the point that it cannot ever be what I want it to be and trying to make it that is just making it worse, so I'm trying to just give up on that and let it be something much more ad hoc and small scale. Instead of telling you at all what it's supposed to be about, I'll just tell you the three titles I'm considering and hopefully the titles speak for themselves. I might also try to fold it in with It's Okay to be a Monster.

Title 1 (original)

KILL YOURSELF: The Karma-Punk RPG

Title 2 (originally a different idea very loosely inspired by my thoughts on Feast of Legends that I'll probably fold into this)

Free the System: An Absurdist World of Corporate Fantasy

Title 3 (just came up with it the other day)

Maximum Recursion Depth, or Sometimes the Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing

A few Weird species for an undetermined setting

Weird fantasy, and specifically Weird fantasy species, are hard to get right. I was going to try to hyperlink all my attempts but there are too many. Some have been successful (at least imo) and others not so much. But here we are again. Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves is one of my favorite novels of all time, and has a really interesting trinary-gendered, totally inhuman species. I recently read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, and it was excellent. He does such a good job of creating a species that is very Weird and inhuman, yet presented in a sympathetic way. It is partially what has reinvigorated me to try to create some new species that are truly Weird, but that hopefully can be relatable and playable. Here is a very brief preview of these species. I haven't really decided on any other features of the setting yet, it can be anything I guess.

(Tentative Names)

The Goop: The primordial soup as a singular, viral-like superorganism that create water-goop-carcass vessels to traverse on land. Some are as large as cities and contain whole ecosystems inside themselves, others are chimera held together by carved whale bone and coral.

Hu: An evolutionary offshoot of humanity that has evolved to fill the ecological niche of ants and use pheromone-signalling and an ever-rotating maintenance crew of hu to remote-pilot Frankenstein abominations.

Freakazoids: Created by an advanced AI. They are biological but have mechanics and design principles not found in nature like wheels and treads and combustion engines, and look like freaky animal-cars, animal-bikes, etc. and do freaky science.

Unnamed Pterosaur Humanoids: The most human-like and imo, at least so far, least interesting. They're basically meant to be the closest thing to a human-surrogate since some people need that. I'll try to make them interesting without making them too "Weird". They lay eggs and have some peacocking stuff with their vestigial wings. I dunno I'm open to suggestion.

River Speciation Table

I'm a bit late to this, but I really enjoyed the concept of Le Chaudron Chromatique's Island and Random Encounters Speciation Table, so I finally got around to doing one myself. This is rather time consuming, it would be nice to come up with a faster way to do this (maybe one day I'll do a javascript version if I ever get back to doing that kind of stuff). I chose to use the Old-School Essentials (OSE) Wilderness Encounter Tables, specifically the Lake, River section. It was surprisingly robust for this purpose. I do think that bestiary is very basic, but for the purposes of something like this it works well. I might want to do another one some day though with a weirder bestiary, like Numenera or Gamma World. That being said, I think if it were too weird, the speciations might seem too arbitrary to be interesting. But I would like to find a way to inject a little bit more Weird into this. But for now, I'm happy with this.

I would also potentially like to flesh these species and this setting out further, but alas, just writing this up took a while, so I'm just going to roll with it as is. I think it's pretty cool, but with a little bit of Weird & Wonderful personal touch it could be even cooler.

Initial Environment:

1. Lizard Person
2. Water Termite
3. Giant Shrew
4. Nixie
5. Killer Bee
6. Sturgeon
7. Large Crocodile
8. Hobgoblin
9. Driver Ant
10. Fire Beetle
11. Panther
12. Giant Scorpion
13. Crab Spider
14. Gold Dragon
15. Boar
16. Thoul
17. Giant Leech
18. Black Widow Spider
19. Human
20. Basilisk

Adaptation and Speciation:

1. Lizard Person (Hyper HD)
2. Water Termite (Saves)
3. Giant Shrew (Nixie)
4. Nixie (Dwarf)
5. Killer Bee (Hyper Morale)
6. Sturgeon (Black Widow Spider)
7. Large Crocodile (Hoarder)
8. Hobgoblin (Giant)
9. Driver Ant (Large Crocodile)
10. Fire Beetle (Nixie)
11. Panther (Basilisk)
12. Giant Scorpion (Lizard Person)
13. Crab Spider (Nixie)
14. Gold Dragon (Dwarf)
15. Boar (Stunted Hoarder)
16. Thoul (Basilisk)
17. Giant Leech (Hobgoblin)
18. Black Widow Spider (Attack Type)
19. Human (Large Crocodile)
20. Basilisk (Giant)

Final Table:

It seems like Nixies and Crocodiles were perhaps the two biggest winners in this evolutionary history. The nixies in particular I'm happy about since they bring a bit of magic and weirdness to this setting, but the idea of crocodile ants is also intriguing. If I were to put my Weird & Wonderful touch to this I'd probably collapse the basilisks, dragons, crocodiles, and maybe even lizard people into a shared origin. Some of the species seem a bit redundant, like the Lizard People and the Basilisk People, and to a lesser extent the giant hobgoblins, although they arguably take on more of a troll-like niche. We'll see, hopefully I'll come back to this.

Warhammer Kroxigor. Not quite what I have in mind for the Sapient Crocodiles but they're cool.

1. Dire Lizard Person (++HD)
2. Fortitudinous Water Termite (+Poison Save)
3. Giant Burrowing Nixie (Tanuki-like Nixies that shapeshift into a Giant Shrew form)
4. Misty Nixie (microscopic Nixies that cluster into gas-like mist; more like fungus or bacteria than animal)
5. Dire Killer Bee (++Morale, known for being hyper-aggressive)
6. Black Widow Fish (Sturgeon-shaped, chitinous, swimming black widow spiders, look kind of like horseshoe crabs. Poisonous)
7. Large Dracodile (Large Crocodile that has evolved pseudo-dragon characteristics as a form of intimidation, including hoarding behaviors)
8. Giant Hobgoblin
9. Crocodile Ant (Hive-minded micro-crocodiles)
10. Burrowing Nixie (Like Giant Burrowing Nixies but regular-Nixie sized, and bio-luminescent)
11. Climbing Basilisk (Smaller and softer-skinned than regular basilisks, but faster, more agile, capable of climbing, more willing to fight up close. Weaker / less reliable stare powers)
12. Spitting Lizard Person (Feral lizard people with hardened skin and venemous close-range spit)
13. Weaver Nixies (Climb, produce mucous-like "silk" from river water, decomposition, and magic)
14. Dwarf Gold Dragons (They lost the position of Apex Predator from the Basilisks, as they were too big and caloric to be sustainable in this ecosystem. Why didn't they leave?)
15. Ravished Boar (Creepy skinny bony boars with odd and counterproductive behaviors; barely eat or make any effort to sustain themselves. Some weird genetic mutation; probably on the way to extinction)
16. Basilisk Person (Humanoid basilisks with sub-human cognition but powerful basilisk strength and abilities. May eventually become the army of a Dark Lord)
17. Vampire Hobgoblins (Mer-Hobgoblins with leech-like mouths)
18. Black Widow-Maker Spider (Black Widow Spiders with venom that is explosive rather than neurotoxic)
19. Sapient Crocodile (Large crocodiles that have evolved human-level intelligence and have developed a civilization equivalent to late stone age or early bronze age humanity. They utilize tools and weapons with prehensile hands and their mouths. They trade with other intelligent species from beyond their local ecosystem.)
20. Giant Basilisk (They won over the Apex Predator position from the Gold Dragons, who were too big and caloric to be sustainable in this ecosystem)

It's Okay To Be A Monster: RPG Rough Concept

Sadly I have not had much time to do or think about RPG stuff lately, but I had kind of a rough week and so naturally I am now feeling creative. This is an idea I've been sitting on in various forms for a while, but it recently mutated (pun intended even though it's not obvious why it's a pun yet) and I like where the idea is heading so I'm just going to write this poorly conceived stream of consciousness version of it now and we'll see what happens.

In some ways on-face it seems maybe more like a PbtA or storygame in that it has a very central theme. That being said, I'm conceiving of it with OSR or that style in mind and I think for reasons I can't totally articulate that it's better that way but there's no reason why someone else couldn't do it a different way.

The core idea is that characters do not die per se; everything is fail forward, for better or worse. Everything is mutilation and mutation and metamorphosis and mind-shattering (maybe Mutations & Mutilations is a better name for the RPG? I'm open to suggestions). There would be lot's of random roll tables for all of these. If you would die, you are reincarnated, or become a ghost, or transcend to some other plane of existence that is perpendicular to the rest of the party. If you would go insane, you enter an alternate state of consciousness, or are consumed by an eldritch being and become the eldritch being, or something like that.

The idea is for the game to be recursive. If you would be critically mutilated, mutated, mind-altered, metamorphosed, etc., you can still be part of the party and progress, just differently. If one player dies or goes insane, they may gain awareness of or access to other realms and dimensions that they can share with the rest of the party that they wouldn't have been able to get to otherwise. It's not just that these things are fail-forward as a fail-safe, but they're the primary means of progression and digression (again, recursive; it is the gameplay loop, not just a way to keep the loop going).

The storygame "theme" of it is that rather than being about body horror or psychological horror or existential cosmic horror, it's about acknowledging these disturbing and sometimes awful changes and accepting them. You could go Adventure Time with it or Always Sunny (the latter being more so why I think it would work better for OSR-style play, if you're following me), or somewhere in the middle.

It's about making mistakes and doing things you regret and accepting them and growing from them and moving forward and then probably doing it again even after you thought you learned better, but in a goofy, ridiculous, tabletop RPG sort of way.

I don't really have the juice right now to write up or consolidate pre-existing tables, but I think the core aspects would be to have these tables, and to have the connective tissue, probably another set of tables, so that once a mutation, mutilation, massacre, etc. occurs, it generates some sort of plot event as well (access to / awareness of a new dimension, a new NPC, a new mcguffin, etc.).

Monster Hunting Special Forces

I originally had planned this as an r/d100 Let's Build series, but other than the awesome semiurge I didn't get any takers, so here it is as a Weird & Wonderful Table. I've written 20 (so I think that's 8 new entries compared to the reddit post), and also included semiurge's entries as BONUS.

Also, I say this in the reddit post as well, but to clarify, this is not related to the Monster Hunter videogame series! These are ideas for "character classes" (or at least cool NPCs) built around a unique method to take down a common fantasy or tabletop monster. It was somewhat inspired by the Vamprie Hunter D novels, but also takes inspiration from other series with unique methods of monster fighting such as Attack on Titan, or to a lesser extent Goblin Slayer (more so for its focus on tactics than for its unique methods per se).

source

1. Ibian Jiraiya (Vampire Hunters): The Ibians are frog or salamander-like humanoids from another dimension or universe who have held a single colony, the city of Ib in the land of Mnar, for at least ten thousand years. Their soldiers, the Jiraiya, are known for being completely silent, and for mastering water magics. Their water magics make them uniquely suited to vampire slaying, as vampires are vulnerable when submerged in water.


2. Holy Maiden (Vampire Hunters): Ibian golems, designed as the ultimate Vampire Slayers. Made of an exotic marble-like material, they appear as ornate iron maidens with an uncanny smile on their face, which turns into a laughing scream, projecting beams of holy light (which may also be Mu / Null energy or the projection of a white hole). When they strain themselves, they shed tears of blood. They have the intelligence of a golem, or sometimes an angel or ghost from heaven. They are powered by a vampire, trapped in a hibernating state as if in a coffin, needles draining their blood to power the maiden. An operator must occasionally blood-let into the maiden to keep the vampire alive. A more powerful vampire yields a more powerful maiden, but requires more blood, a more sophisticated operating system, and is more likely to go berserk. If a maiden is on the verge of going berserk, it will try to pulp the vampire inside for one final, explosive burst of holy light.


3. Ibian Dhampir (Vampire Hunters): Half-vampire, half-ibian. Ibian dhampirs are unique in that they have absolutely no vulnerability to being submerged in water, in addition to being less vulnerable to the other weaknesses of vampires. Additionally, their vampiric powers operate on lunar phases, being virtually mortal on a new, crescent, or quarter moon, and nearly equal to a full vampire during a gibbous or full moon. Even during this time, they maintain their immunity to water submersion.


4. Vaporist (Dragon Hunters): Witch doctors, plague doctors, and other learned specialists. They gather or cultivate herbs, fungi, bacteria, and viruses which agitate the unique properties of dragon lungs and guts associated with their element-breathing biology. They collect these ingredients into mounds which they set afire, vapors rising up to the dragons, or compress them into pellets that can be ignited from firearms or set alight and launched from bows, cannons, and ballista. They are also trained in butchery and knifework, and often carry cutlery carved from dragon bone or an equally hard and sharp material. As the effects of the vapors kick in and the dragon falls to the ground, they position themselves to slice open the plummeting dragon across their bellies, leveraging the dragon's own force and velocity against it, spilling their guts which smash into the ground at high velocity.


5. Blink Master (Dragon Hunters): Beastmasters with a specialty in training blink dogs. The dogs are trained to draw the attention of the dragon, or lie in wait to ambush a charging dragon. They herd it towards the highest ground they can find with the best cover, in an attempt to force the dragon to charge towards the ground. As the dragon charges or exhales its elemental payload, the blink dogs teleport-pounce up to the dragon, dodging the breath attack, and collectively work to immobilize the wings and bite and claw at the dragon's vulnerable points such as eyes, belly, and throat, blinking around the body as needed or off to safety as the dragon crashes to the ground. Some blink masters breed their blink dogs to be immune or resistant to specific elements, or to be empowered by certain elements, making them better suited to hunting specific kinds of elemental dragons. Some extremely high-level blink masters use (barely-)tamed hounds of tindalos rather than blink dogs.


6. Dazzler (Beholder / Basilisk / Gorgon Hunters): In every way trained to disorient and disable vision. They wear jewelry of reflective glass, shiny clothing and armor, and lights, learn blinding spells and spells of flashing lights, or carry magic items or wands that do likewise. They use the beholder's many eyes against them, disabling their eye magics and making it difficult if not impossible for them to aim their disintegration rays.


7. Sundancer (Beholder / Basilisk / Gorgon Hunters): They wear the skin of a displacer beast, carefully butchered to maintain its light-bending magical abilities against monsters. They dance through the disintegration rays of beholders; their position is always a foot or two away from the stare of a basilisk or gorgon. As the monsters look in vain, the sundancer dances ever closer, until it reaches close enough to lash at the monsters eyes with its weapons or the tentacles of the displacer beast skin.


8. Soulbinder (Lich Hunters): Priests, clerics, and exorcists, who collect heaven-bound souls. Often, they sell indulgences to the poor, offering them a chance at heaven so long as they allow the soulbinder to borrow their soul for a time. Liches draw their necromantic powers from the nether-portal where their soul would be, instead safely stored in its phylactory. As they use their powers, the portal widens, and eventually it grows wide enough for the soulbinder to lodge a borrowed soul into it like a plug, significantly impairing the lich, and temporarily turning them into a mortal. If the lich is not killed quickly enough, the soul will be thrashed by the necromantic energies and the lich will be undead again. However, if it is killed in time, the new soul will block out the original soul held in the phylactory, at which point the under-used soul will quickly wither away, and the soulbinder may safely retrieve the borrowed soul.


9. Dungeon Custodian (Dungeon Hunters): Consume alchemical concoctions containing, or naturally produce in their bodies, an enzyme that makes them immune to the acid of a gelatinous cube. They enter a cube, usually naked or with rare articles of clothing immune to the cube, and operate it from the inside, manipulating its simple intelligence towards the custodian's aims. They sweep through the dungeon in their cube, cleansing the dungeon of monsters. Custodians will often carry capsules containing condensed gelatinous cubes within them, to use in emergencies if the dungeon does not have any gelatinous cubes in it or their current cube is destroyed.


10. Spiral King (Mind Flayer / Psionic Hunters): Master mesmerists and tacticians, their name a reference to the King from Chess, and the fact that they are powerful psychics whose psionics are fully dedicated to the construction and maintenance of their psionic mind castles, making them the ultimate anti-psychics. Any psionic attack traps the psychic in the Spiral King's mind castle, where the castle itself assaults them from all angles. Even as they try to escape, they find themselves in infinite spiral staircases, recursively looped like an MC Escher painting.


11. Nightmare Wendigo (Mind Flayer / Psionic Hunters): When humans or certain other creatures dying of starvation succumb to cannibalism, they transform into wendigo; skeletal, bestial, white-skinned or white-furred, supernatural monsters of rage and consumption. When a psychic on the verge of brain-death cannibalizes the mind of one of their own, they may become a Nightmare Wendigo. They are stark-raving mad, but often functional. Their affect is unsettling and most others are uncomfortable around them, but otherwise they are capable of reason. However, when in the presence of psychic beings, and especially when a psychic being such as a Mind Flayer attempts to feed on their mind, their physical body transforms into a wendigo, and the wendigo's shadow ravages the mind of the psionic attacker.


12. Noble Dhampir (Vampire Hunters): A lineage of dhampirs descending from the most powerful vampires and most exceptional humans, usually selectively bred but occasionally inducted. They are often bred or chosen for the strongest resistance to vampire weaknesses, greatest vampire abilities, restraint towards bloodlust, or other supernatural or exceptional mundane abilities. Those inducted into the Noble family are some of the most dangerous and powerful beings in the world, usually indoctrinated to hate vampires and their vampire heritage.


13. Lightning Golem (Giant Hunters): These metal golems are built by artificers with special training, and are not magical in nature. Given the intricacy of the work, the knowledge necessary to maintain them, and the cost, they are rare. It ends up being more sensible to make a smaller number of massive lightning golems scaled to fight giants and kaiju than to make many smaller, human-sized or large lightning golems. The artificers either make a deal with, or capture a lightning elemental, and force it into circuits of usually copper, silver, or gold within the Lightning Golem, and through means not well understood, the elemental animates the golem. Often the artificer will build an electric-proof cage within the golem from which a pilot can (partially) control the elemental.


14. Meta-Alchemist (Elemental Hunters): Everyone is familiar with the elements; Earth, Water, Fire, Air, but these are actually the outward expression of two deeper philosophical principles of cohesion and combustion. The meta-alchemists have, through deep thought, transcended the planes, and have access to the sulfuric hellfires and the mercurial ichor of the gods. With these elements, they can snuff flames, steady torrents, crumble the earth, and thin the air.


15. Slinger Grenadier (Giant Hunters): These hunters are masters of the shepherd sling. Their slings are magically enchanted with haste or similar spells, allowing them to spin far faster, and launch farther and more powerfully, than would otherwise be possible. Depending on the size of the sling and bullet, it can shred enemy lines, leave explosive craters, and puncture giants and armored monsters. Even the weakest enchanted slings require great muscle strength and training to use effectively, and the most devastating slings are positioned in-place like artillery and operated by a team.


16. Necroborg (Undead Hunters): These necromancers hone their abilities towards the integration of life and un-death. They blend blood and blight, wearing skeletal armors and integrating undead appendages and organs into themselves. Zombies bite, and necroborgs bite back. By ingesting undead tissue, or siphoning blight through claw-syringes integrated directly into their bloodstream, the necroborgs steal the eldritch energies of their undead foes, or turn them to their will.


17. Necro-Demolitionist (Undead Hunters): Divine channelers who invoke a so-called deadman's switch suite of spells. They use a potent combination of abjure undead and turn undead to create a simultaneously pulling and pressing, violent force; an implosion followed by an explosion proportional to the number of undead compressed within it. Another spell they cast triggers as a fresh corpse is being blighted, blocking the eldritch energies partway through the transformation, causing an explosive necromantic pulse. If any other fresh corpses are also being blighted, the necromantic pulse blocks their blight, creating a chain reaction of corpse explosions and necromantic pulses.


18. Zombie Rancher (Undead Hunters): Cowboys of the blight. They use carefully controlled divine spells to compel the migrations of lesser undead, usually skeletons and zombies. Often they are utilized merely to divert the path of an undead scourge like digging a trench to change the course of a river. Some kingdoms have reached a level of capital and industrialization that they have employed zombie ranchers who use their spells to create logic-gates from the zombies, turning scourges into un-living computers. Less advanced but sufficiently wealthy kingdoms instead divert scourges towards their enemies, but that is a dangerous game, as the scourge grows larger, and the number of zombie ranchers rarely grows in kind.


19. Werehound (Werewolf Hunters): A "breed" of werewolves, "domesticated" (enslaved) for generations and bred to be the ultimate hunters. They have exceptional speed and sense of smell and are capable of keeping werewolves in their sights, or tracking their scent into the day, when they are at their most vulnerable. Except for when they bloodlust, their feral instincts are attenuated compared to werewolves, but they are formidable fighters in their own right, and are trained in group hunting tactics and to hunt with humans.


20. Cold Iron Jack (Fey / Werewolf / Forest Hunters): Lumberjacks and huntsman equipped with tools of royally-enchanted cold iron. The cold iron is devastating to magical beings, especially those of the forest, such as fey and werewolves, and can give a lumberjack the strength to chop through a tree in a single blow and the will to laugh in the face of Darkness. The cold iron is only as powerful as the royalty, or more generally the civilization, that empowers it.

source

Semiurge BONUS:

1. The Knights of St. Gumbly (Giant Slayers): An order of mountain goat-riding halflings and children who specialize in the use of the javelin and grappling hook. As per the teachings of their founder they believe that giants are the embodiment of rapacious sin, and so slaying them while practicing strict temperance is their moral duty. Their preferred tactic is to climb up their targets’ bodies to strike their soft head bits.


2. The Ash-Eater Lodge (Treant, Dryad, Druid, Etc. Slayers): Civilization’s hunger for fuel is always ravenous, yet the forests hold their bounty jealously. The rangers of the Ash-Eater Lodge wield their advanced knowledge of ecology as a weapon, collapsing predator populations, poisoning the earth, putting pockets of resistance to the torch, and otherwise softening the defenders of the woods for their harvest.


3. Ironcrackers (Demon Slayers): Veterans of the campaign against iron-walled Dis, specializing in the use of occult siege weapons. Holy water cloudburst bombs, cannonballs of sacred salt, and horns of Jericho all number among their arsenal.


4. Poor Unfortunate Souls (Witch Hunters): Pitiable and practically indispensable members of witch hunts. People who by accident of malefic influence of birth are lightning rods for curses, shielding their comrades from the same.