Bastionjam Showcase: Cosmic Orrery - Odd Beings

Some of us from the Eclectic Bastionjam decided to do a "showcase", where we'd take a look at each others' works and present them on our blogs or elsewhere. As part of this showcase, I will be reviewing one of Cosmic Orrery's entries: Odd Beings

I really enjoyed this book. I am a sucker for good bestiaries, and this fits that bill. It is short and sweet, each entry feels evocative, and fitting to the setting, but not so specific that they couldn't be used in other settings, and each adds something interesting. These aren't just statblocks and reskinned goblins. Each entry has a unique hook; they are self-contained adventure seeds, unique ways for your players to interact with the game. I'll comment on a few of my favorites below:


Parasitic Shop
This is the second entry. It's basically a mimic, if instead of mimicking a single piece of equipment or a chest, it mimicked the entire shop! One could very easily turn this into an entire quest, baked into some kind of mystery or investigation, with the shop itself leading to a hidden, oozey dungeon (which Cosmic Orrery strongly implies in the text).

Ghost Parliament
Clearly, I am a fan of afterlife courts. The ghost parliament could be a fun way to have your cake and eat it too, in regards to character death. A character dying doesn't have to be the end of that character, but the beginning of a quest to rescue them from death. But making it a court, rather than just an evil dungeon, gives the party so many more ways to approach the conflict. Or, they can just get into a courtroom brawl.

Paperman/Matchstick Boy
These are two separate entries, and on their own they're each interesting in their own right, but they fit together in a way that is not stated explicitly, but to me seems as though it must have been intentional (they were placed back-to-back). You could imagine a story of a paperman, like a robot or AI, emerging from a wealthy manor, learning and growing alongside a sickly child with a cold and standoff-ish family, their only friends prior to the paperman being the characters in the novels they've read in their extensive library. Oppositely, a troubled child from the other side of the tracks meets a matchstick boy, who preys on their fear, anger, and hurt, leading them on a path towards evil. Somehow, someway, the two meet and bring some sort of fulfillment to each other's lives. In the meantime, hijinks ensue, the city drowning in compromising letters once thought lost, and of course, fires run rampant.