The Koros

A Koros bird-lancer.

The Koros are a race of barbarous, nomadic bird-riders. They reside in great numbers at the grasslands of Arhelia, where they and their vast herds of bird-horses live, fight, and reproduce. The lands of the Koros are vast and their internal struggles significant, but when a powerful leader emerges the Koros are willing to gather in great hordes and ride against the degenerate cities-states of their region of the world.

The Koros are polygamists. Koros men are expected to have at least three wives, each of whom will birth as many children as possible. There is also a well-established tradition allowing for women that are successful warriors to be treated similarly to men, including retaining numerous wives.

Portrait Of A Bird-Lancer

A Koros warrior typically owns two well-trained bird-horses, a steel-tipped riding spear, a bronze sword for close-quarters fighting, a quiver of filth-smeared javelins, a suit of reinforced leather armor (perhaps incorporating a breastplate if they are wealthy), a pouch of antiseptic salts, decorative bones taken from slain foes or lovers, and feathers from long-dead mounts. Though not an especially inventive people, their bird-horse kit includes stirrups (an innovation other cultures have yet to value).

Successful warriors are rewarded by ritually inscribed tattoos that protect them from various harms. They may include any or all of the following:

• Whorl Against Witchcraft: The Koros has advantage when saving against spells of all kinds. This is the most commonly found tattoo.
• Whorl Against Disaster: The warrior never accidentally drops or breaks their spear. They cannot botch.
• Whorl Against Cowardice: The warrior is immune to fear and being slowed, and their mount has +2 speed.
• Whorl Against Weakness: The Koros inflicts an extra +1d6 damage with a charge attack. They are also immune to most diseases.

Some Koros also procure flasks of blessed water, to be sprinkled over a troop of cavalry and imparting resistance (half damage) against ranged and AOE attacks for an hour or so.

Riding Birds

Every Koros bird-knight can use their mount to leap over 20 feet in a single bound, aiming their lance with the full weight of their mount behind it. Such an attack is devastating, probably inflicting double damage.

The bird-horses are quite dangerous on their own. Their claws can disembowel an armored man. A pecking bird-horse can easily crush a man's skull or rip the flesh off a limb. Skilled riders will incorporate their bird's natural talents into their combat routine.

The Taboos Of The Bird-Tribes

They have many taboos. The most important:

1. Bodies must be brought to the gates of the afterlife. The gate is located in the ruins of an ancient temple in the center of Arhelia. To die and not be sent through the gates is to consign your soul to inflict grief upon your descendants. As I discuss elsewhere, this particular belief eventually results in a great deal of trouble.
2. Digging in the soil is what farmers do. Do you want to be a slave to the land? I didn't think so. Do not ever dig in the soil. For that matter, most work unrelated to bird husbandry is beneath a proper Koros.
3. The word for magic that is not bird-shaman magic is witchcraft. Witches must be killed.

The piece continues...

The Jek

A marrow river runs through these Jek hills.

The Jek inhabited this land when it was young. Identifiably Jek objects show up in the deepest mines of every country on this continent. Their ancient trinkets wash ashore on beaches and the shores of the deepest lakes. When Karanok, the great mountain, erupted and concealed the sun for a year, fire-impervious Jek statues were carried up amidst the pyroclastic flow. In short, we know that the Jek have existed for a long, long time. But they are absent from recorded history. Why?

According to the priests (who asked the gods) the Jek were driven beneath the earth by a storm that did not end for a thousand years. The priests do not say what happened in the deep tunnels. But the wizards do: the Jek found and paid obeisance to strange spirits: Cave Owl, Moon Centipede, and others. Perhaps they worshipped these spirits before they were driven below, and the gods sent the never-ending storm to punish them for it. Perhaps not. Did the spirits make the Jek mad and evil, or was it the other way around?

Jek initiates perform an unknown ritual.

The Jek revere their shamans. Without the shamans, the Jek would starve. At some point during their time below, a spirit taught the Jek shamans to vomit a vast, roiling pool of edible putrescence. The Jek subsisted on this for thousands of years. Now, they cannot digest anything else. When a shaman announces that the feast is immanent, it is a cause for great celebration: entire tribes will organize their receptacles to catch the revolting spew, dancing and singing with gladness.

Entire rivers of a similarly emitted (though less nutritious) substance course over the Jek lands, most resembling oily eddies of pale, liquescent bone marrow.

As a people, the Jek appear to be disfigured albinos. Their skins are covered with sores.  Many Jek lack fully-formed faces. Their shamans always wear masks. Beneath these masks, the shamans have no discernible features at all. Despite this, they are capable of respiring, speech, devouring the bodies of deceased humans for their own shamanic potions (but never anything else), and expelling the questionable foodstuff mentioned above.

Most Jek live in shallow caves or in the trunks of great trees, though there are a few Jek cities. These cities are mobile: every structure in them is carried or dragged by either the Jek or some sort of creature cultivated by them. Their greatest city, Tlel Washke, is built atop a vast stone slab that is chained to the towering reanimated corpse of Washke, who once styled himself to be the king of giants. Tlel Washke is dragged across the ground by this festering ex-king, following a nonlinear path according to the Jeks' inscrutable wishes.

The Jek do not have much in the way of appreciable metallurgy. They weave baskets and clothes, carve statues and render them indestructible, make amulets, and build strange dwellings from wood and stone and cloth.  The shamans produce a certain number of finishing goods by devouring humans and then regurgitating that material in a new form. For example, Jek swords consist of impossibly intricate human scrimshaw. A tribe preparing for war will feed dozens of prisoners to their shamans, each day, while those shamans laboriously vomit up sword after sword with seemingly no limit to the amount of material they can store inside their person. The Jek do not possess a written language, nor do they seem capable of learning one.

Near Jek, things are not as they should be. Their presence causes dreams to superimpose over reality. Large groups of Jek often appear to have the same face. Water droplets rain upwards from pools and rivers into the yawning sky. Birds cry out dire warnings in diverse languages.

A Jek emissary might appear as your best friend, you, a deceased pet from your childhood, or a horrid shimmering image in your dreams. The message relayed will not make sense. However, the Jek's intent will be obvious: hostility.

Qelong River Demon: Giant Catfish

(Click to enlarge. The art is from here.)

The third in my little series of Qelong creatures.  This one is intended as a sort of boss monster.  The sort of thing that surfaces right when your sampan runs aground on a submerged log, or when a battle with a clutch of naga-kin runs overlong.

The Spells And Secrets Of The Hazarim

The exiled Hazarim know much of interest to adventurers and their enemies. Read more about the Hazarim here, or this probably won't make much sense.

Relics Of The Faithful

Pilgrim's Conveyances

Over the years, so many Hazar corpses have required transportation to the holy city of Ummaq that magical coffins are a cottage industry. Since the dead are revived at their destination and dispense with funeral trappings, these objects can see continuous recycled use amongst the faithful. Some even originate from inside Ummaq, where the once-dead inhabitants sometimes craft items to help their brethren. All conveyances will have unusual resistance to damage and protect their contents from harm.

Some possible variations:

• An urn that animates the spirit of the deceased within as a ghast, but that ghast cannot venture beyond thirty feet from the the urn, nor will it seek to do aught except protect itself and those carrying it (assuming they are heading toward Ummaq).
• A gilded sarcophagus made of insect-lacquer. Any who open it are driven dangerously, self-destructively mad for 1d4 days. We're talking "thinks they need to eat fire to live" crazy. They need to be restrained or will surely perish. Those that have been raised from the dead at least once by any means prove immune to this affliction.
• A marvelously crafted mahogany coffin, inlaid with strange stones. If the coffin is rapped upon, it sheds a horrendous red light that strikes all within thirty feet blind for a day (save negates).
• A humble sack stitched from the shirts of many different pilgrims who have made the sacred journey conveying others' remains to Ummaq. It and its contents are invisible save to those who truly believe in the Hazar gods and their prophets.

This used to be all the rage in Khaldok.

Over the years, Gossivam has sometimes given away some of his marvelous personal possessions to needy believers not quite ready to enter the sacred city (because they are still alive).

Gossivam's Shawl: This item imparts a +1 bonus to all saving throws. If one perishes while wearing it, raise dead and similar spells cost 25% less gold to cast upon the deceased. Gossivam has no problem getting new shawls, so he gives this item away fairly frequently (every year or two).

The Prophet's Ring: This unique ring hails from Gossivam's days as a greedy false prophet. It is made in the style of the ancient Khaldo, appearing as an insect curled about one's finger. The wearer enjoys a +3 bonus to initiative and can heal another creature touched (never himself) 2d8+5 hit points, once per day. If this ability is used or the ring changes hands, the initiative bonus is lost until the next day.

Potions And Elixirs

Surrounded as they are by the superstitious, insectophiliac Khaldo culture and the alkaloid-rich herbs of the drylands, the Hazar have developed some skill with alchemy.

Diviners' Draught: Concocted of powdered moon-moss and thousands of kiln-moths dissolved in a vitriolic extract, this potion allows the consumer to detect magic (as the spell) for an hour. Additionally, it allows the character to analyze anything they behold during that time as though they spent an hour studying it, even if they glimpse it for only a moment. Side effects occur after the effects wear off and include vomiting and sub-conjunctive hemorrhaging.

Natharon Oil: If one consumes even a small amount of oil from the dangerous nathar beetle, one is simultaneously rendered unintelligible to others and unable to parse language of any kind. This includes spoken, written, or even magical/telepathic communication. Strangely, a natharon-consumer is able to perfectly understand others under the effects of the drug, including almost any writing. The effects last for 1d6 hours and may cause lasting illiteracy for several weeks, especially with prolonged use and poor dosing. Hazar courtiers dilute the natharon oil into short-lasting potions that can be used to write cryptographically or read the same, with minimal risk of side effects.

Potion Of Undead Detection: The wide-leafed vines that grow near Ummaq can be pulverized and fermented to make a strange potion. When consumed, it causes violent illness based on the proximity of undead creatures: if there is at least one undead within a mile, the character feels mild nausea. If there are undead within three hundred feet, they retch uncontrollably for 3d6 minutes. If undead are within a hundred feet, the character suffers 1d6 damage and retches for at least ten minutes. If undead are within twenty-five feet, the character is so ill that they are reduced to 1 hit point from partial organ failure. Strangely, these potions do not function correctly in the presence of living vines of the species from which it is derived. when consumed within a mile of them, the character always suffers as though undead were within the closest proximity.

Prayers From Exile

Some of the spells and prayers used by the Hazar date back millennia, others have been revealed to priests more recently, gifts from the gods to help protect their people. Note that Hazar culture does not distinguish between arcane and divine spellcasters. To a Hazar, they are simply different kinds of priests. The spells below may be available to either or both, depending on your preferences.

The Lesser Invocation (1st level)
A short prayer traditionally recited before religious meetings, this incantation can become weaponized given a little magical energy. When cast, the caster heals 1d8 hit points. If the caster hits with a melee attack within the next round, the first such attack inflicts an extra +1d8 damage.

Forefather's Curse (2nd level)
A curse pronounced in an unrecognizably ancient Hazar dialect. Nobody even knows what the words mean, anymore. Whatever they are, a single living creature within short range is thoroughly cursed for a week and a day. During this time, food eaten by the target only provides 25% of its normal caloric value. Additionally, they suffer heatstroke when undertaking any labor as though they were performing said task in the middle of a sweltering desert. This makes something as simple as hammering in some pitons or wearing a suit of armor debilitatingly difficult. Finally, animals are automatically hostile to the target and seek to harm or avoid them if they can. Intelligent or magical animals might receive a save to resist attacking them (they still hate the target and want them to die, though).

Sacred Undoing (3rd level)
The works of man are flimsy to those who perceive the world of secrets. This spell can be cast upon a building or section of building not exceeding thirty square feet. Inside that space, any unlocked and unwarded doors or structural obstructions (barricades, portcullises) are destroyed, crumbling into useless chunks. Nonmagical glass or crystal based architectural features shatter into smithereens. If there are suitably flammable materials anywhere within the structure, 1d6 small fires (campfire-sized) will be lighted that will develop into a structure fire absent serious counter-efforts. Additionally, the caster can specify one 10x10 area on the exterior of the structure that will cave in, creating a large hole. This spell will not cause any but the most precarious structures to collapse immediately upon casting, but make a total structural failure due to other causes far more likely (during the next windstorm, for example).

The Grimwalk (2nd level)
After a few hours of chanting over a ritually prepared corpse, it animates as a zombie with double the normal hit points and that only suffers half damage from magic of any kind. The zombie cannot be controlled or turned, and will travel unerringly toward Ummaq of its own accord, only fighting if it is obstructed. Since the zombies created by this spell are not especially intelligent and frequently end up at the bottom of ravines or battling fearful travelers, this spell is regarded as a sort of last resort for those that do not have the luxury of personally conveying their friends' remains to Ummaq (a Hazar religious obligation). Note that it is violence-inducingly offensive to imply or state any similarities between the state of undeath and the special, sacred resurrection that occurs at Ummaq.

Prepare One's End (3rd level)
Adventuring is perilous. Sensible spellcasters will take precautions regarding their own final disposition. If you should perish within three days of casting this spell, your body will animate (as the grimwalk) after 1d4 hours of being dead. Unlike the grimwalk, this spell allows you to retain the majority of your intellect (though not your class abilities) for the first 24 hours of your animation, allowing you to do whatever you desire during that time (help your friends, try to find a cleric, etc).

A sky-demon descends to begin ritual combat against its summoner.

Syncretic Spells

Some spells have been learned from the wizards of Khaldo or developed with their influences during the Hazar exile there.

Clairvoyant Ichor (1st level)

You imbibe great quantities of poisonous insects, rendering yourself weak and nearly paralyzed from poison. This state lasts for an entire day. While it persists, your blood is altered to convey sensory information: you can perceive anything that occurs in the presence of a half liter or more of your blood as though you were standing there. Producing such a large quantity of blood necessarily involves inflicting damage equal to 25% of a character's hit points. Your mostly paralyzed body can strenuously whisper any revelations to those tending it. You only perceive information from blood shed the same day you cast this spell, though it need not remain in a liquid state. However, seriously diluting the blood or burning it will terminate your connection. Effects that cure you of your poisoned, paralyzed state also end this spell (or, in the case of protections from poison, prevent it).

Convene The Trial (4th level)

This spell summons a sky-demon to kill you. When cast, the creature lurks above you for up to an hour, singing songs about how it is about to kill you, then descends to wage ritual combat. In the old days, the priests of Crepulon would cast this spell before a crowd of people in order to prove their prowess and demonstrate the favor of their god. More recently, the Hazar have realized that the sky-demons really, really hates having the sacred formula of their rituals disrupted to the point where they will actually defend the caster from other enemies. Once those enemies are dealt with, the creature again turns its attentions to you. How you stat your sky-demon is up to me, but something along these lines might work.

Thieves And Minor Magical Item Properties

Thieves have it rough. It's not just spider climb and knock and fly. It's the way DMs put in extra traps if there is a thief and don't bother putting in locked doors if there isn't. Quite reasonably, most DMs react to party composition rather than blindly inserting a quota of thief-only challenges. Being a skill-monkey isn't all it's cracked up to be.

So here's an ability unique to thieves:

When a thief appraises a newly-found magical weapon or suit of armor, they have a 5% chance of noticing or being already aware of an additional magical property of said item.

Sure, wizards study spells and history and magic all day long. But they don't spend all day daydreaming about the magical items that have passed through history and are worth stealing. "I wish I lived a hundred years ago so that I could steal Emilio Gotteson's Improved Cloak Of The Bat. That was much better than this dusty normal cloak of the bat that I just found, even if it looks similar... wait a minute." Nor are bards quite the materialists that thieves are. Sorry, bard, you didn't take any 200-level "Things Worth Stealing" courses in your bardic college.

When the 5% chance occurs, roll on the following table (d20):

1. Lucky: You have +1 to all saving throws.
2. Absorbing: Each day, you suffer half damage from the first source of damage to affect you.
3. Life-Giving: Begins each day with a 15 hp healing pool otherwise identical to a paladin's laying on of hands.
4. ____-Hating: Roll 1d6: animals, dragons, humanoids, undead, outsiders, or aberrations. The item glows when that creature type is near, giving you a +4 initiative bonus if enemies of that type are present.
5. Bloodthirst: Each encounter, the first time you hit with a weapon attack, it inflicts +1d8 damage.
6. Hearty: You have +5 max hit points.
7. Protective: You have +1 AC. Great!
8. Ever-Ready: You can summon the item from anywhere within 100 feet if you were the person who possessed the item most during the previous day. If armor, it appears on your person.
9. Coruscating: Any time you critically hit, you heal 1d8+5 hp.
10. Bewildering: Any time you critically hit, you may teleport 5 spaces. No line of sight needed.
11. Sagely: The item can memorize a single 1st-level wizard spell if you let it read someone else's spellbook. You can use the item to cast said spell.
12. Marching: You know how the DM puts your miniature on the board and tells you to roll initiative? Move your miniature four spaces before rolling initiative.
13. Glowing: Your item emits light similarly to a torch unless you are consciously willing it not to. I feel bad if you rolled this.
14. Reflexive: +2 to Reflex saves.
15. Fortitudinous: +2 to Fort saves.
16. Mind-Shielding: +3 to Will saves.
17. Impenetrable: Any time you suffer exactly 1 damage after resistances and everything have been taken into account, you ignore that damage.
18. Improved: The object has an additional +1 (+1 armor becomes +2, et ceteras).
19. Duplicating: Each day, the item has a 33% chance of producing a copy of itself. That copy lasts until the next day, whereupon it dissolves into blue ash.
20. Soaring: You are flying during the first round of each combat. Your speed is the same as your land speed.

Add the listed prefix to your item, e.g. if you roll a 1 with a longsword +1, it becomes a lucky longsword +1. I tried to keep them from being too complicated or distracting from items existing purpose.

If there are multiple thieves in the party, I suppose you could stack their percentile chance.

The Eye Of Omnipitos

Click to enlarge.

The Eye's Agenda

The eye wants what the eye wants. It was crafted by Omnipitos, the greatest diviner of the previous age, who may or may not have originally stolen the art of divination from the gods. It is part palantír, part enigma machine. It has discerned a path of probabilities by which it can survive the apocalypse of the world and collapse of the universe. Any survivor would be a god in the universe-to-come.

Things the eye wants:

• Destroy at least one other artifact that presently exists in your campaign world, so that it can absorb the resulting rush of magical energy and fortify itself against material damage.
• Bathe in moonlight for an entire night, at least once a week. It's been saving up moonlight for hundreds of years. Once it has enough (a process that will take millennia), it will be able to teleport itself to a distant world before the sun becomes a red giant.
• The eye greatly desires that the Book Of Horrid Births be located and destroyed. If the book is allowed to exist for long enough, it will eventually inspire the creation of a vat-born creature that precipitates a grey goo scenario, resulting in the destruction of the eye.
• The eye knows that other sources of divination present a threat: the more of them that exist, the greater the chance that someone or something else will be able to subvert the eye's plans for the world. This means the player needs to eschew divination spells. They are also is encouraged to murder people like the oracle at Delphi (or whatever is going on in your world) and poison your campaign's Norn well.
• Though it does not require them, the eye enjoys a good soak in a goopy paste made of vitreous humors. It prefers humors from sapient creatures but any will do in a pinch.
• Any other arbitrary request can be justified by causality and the butterfly effect.

The eye can't actually tell the players what it wants, per se, but it can give them visions that impart its desires and dislikes, very well.

The fallen angel Aszottiel.

Others' Plans For The Eye

When two fantastical nations make war on each other, it's a good bet that magical espionage and sabotage feature prominently, as will precautions against the same. Because the eye's clairvoyance is not easily thwarted by spellcraft, it is of obvious strategic interest to any national actor that is aware of it and expects that it might someday be involved in a war (all of them). A decent spellcaster with a nation-state backing their research will eventually be able to use the eye to perceive their enemies' plans before their enemies even conceive of them.

The fallen cherubim Aszottiel knows of the eye and desires it. Aszottiel is slow to travel, but many other fallen creatures owe him favors or obedience. It will send these creatures to bedevil the players. The eye does not want Aszottiel to find it.

The eye is coveted by certain magical orders, especially the Many-Angled Sages. Don't forget to use your random monster mutation table to flesh them out. If you don't have a cultist that's incubating face-huggers, I'm going to come to your house and pour wine on your carpet.

The Eye's Displeasure

If the eye feels you are thwarting it or preventing it from achieving its goals, it may curse you. Curses last for the day, regardless of whether you still possess the eye.

1. Afflict The Eyes: Roll a Will save, DC 15. If you fail, you are blind for the rest of the day. If you succeed, you are only blind during the first round of each combat for that day.
2. Bewildering Visions: The eye floods you with more visions than your mind can process. The distracting process gives you disadvantage on initiative (or -5).
3. Meddlesome Little Thing: If applicable, the eye sends a vision of your adventuring party to the boss monster of the dungeon or area that they are presently exploring. The vision makes plain what the players are doing at that particular moment and may or may not be comprehensible to said creature.
4. There is a creature clawing between the worlds, trying to find a way into your reality. The eye can show it the way. The eye will thoroughly investigate the creature to ensure that it poses no threat to itself in the long term, then will beckon it through a nearby reflective surface. The creature will vanish by the next day.
5. Interference: You suffer a doubled chance of botching (natural 2 botches as well as a natural 1).
6. A Chance Encounter: You have double the normal chance of encountering a wandering monster.

The Eye's Additional Properties

If the eye is especially pleased with a player on a particular day, it may give impart one of the following, lasting until the next day (d6):

1. Shared Vision: You can see out of the eyes of any of the other players, regardless of distance. You can cast a touch-range spell on that player regardless of distance.
2. Empowered Spellcasting: You cast spells as though two levels higher. Any spell you cast has a 1-in-6 chance of not being expended.
3. Expose Machinations: You receive a simultaneous vision of the nearest angelic creature and nearest demonic creature, regardless of illusory or other concealing magics. If your campaign isn't really about those sorts of things, please substitute more suitable Secret Masters.
4. You can cast clairvoyance. Just the once.
5. Bon Chance: You have a doubled chance of making a critical hit. Only lasts until you make a critical hit.
6. See The Future: Tell the players a single sentence about the rest of the dungeon they are in that would greatly help them survive and/or plunder it. Something an all-seeing magical orb would relay. Make it good!

(While not especially metal, the eye is probably usable in any edition of D&D, LotFP, or whatever. I like items that modify how you play the game without giving you flipper hands or otherwise totaling your character. I also really like when  you can hand a thing to your players so that they feel like they actually own it.)

Accursed Arms: A Ritual To Curse Your Own Magic Items

(source)

A little gear-modifying ritual to enhance your D&D game.  It should work in most games with only a little modification.  You’ll probably want to tweak the gold price, especially in Pathfinder.

Because most players seem reluctant to do things that could potentially make their characters or gear worse, I recommend allowing them to see the list of curses before deciding whether or not to use this ritual.  Is the possibility of somewhat ruining an item worth a cool bonus?  I tried to balance things so that it would be.

Accursed Arms

Time: 3 days.
Cost: 75gp.
Duration: Permanent.

By summoning contaminating magical energies and deliberating infusing them into an already-magical weapon or suit of armor, you increase the item's power at the cost of permanently cursing it.  The item in question gains an additional +1 (not above a total of +5) and you roll on the table below to determine how the item is cursed.  Two additional qualities accompany the cursing process: first, a player must volunteer to equip the item at the culmination of the ritual before the exact nature of the curse is known; second, once the cursed item is equipped, it cannot be un-equipped until the character has gained two levels.

You cannot curse an item multiple times or change an item's curse once it is determined. This ritual also modifies the appearance of the item to appear more sinister. Some possibilities: veins of black running through any metal, it sometimes glows with a sinister red light, the sound of shrieking whenever it is drawn from its scabbard, it constantly drips with blood or tears, or whatever you and your players come up with.

Minor Curse Table (d10)

1. Of Swiping: Your attacks botch on a natural roll of 2.
2. Of Frustration: Any time you miss with an attack, you either suffer 1 damage or inflict 1 damage to an adjacent player (your choice).
3. Of Catastrophe: Attacks of opportunity automatically hit you.
4. Of Poverty: You squander 5% of your personal share of any gold-valued treasure.  Attempts to game the system via skewed treasure distribution or others handling your money will backfire.
5. Of Hesitation: You have disadvantage on initiative checks.
6. Of Snarling: Each day, you have a 1-in-6 chance of being stuck in wolf form for the day.  Your gear merges with your wolf form.  Don’t die in wolf form or you’ll die for real.
7. Of Nearsightedness: You cannot see beyond 15 feet.
8. Of Indifference: You have -1 to all saves.
9. Of Mediocrity: Each day, you first critical hit is treated as a normal hit.
10. Of Affliction: You are blind during the first round of each combat.
11. Of Barriers: You can't tie or untie knots, lock or unlock objects, open or shut doors or portals of any kind, et ceteras.
12. Of Otherworldly Influence: You attract inhabiting spirits like flies.  They can’t quite possess you, but they can nudge your behavior.  At the start of each combat, 
13. Of Jealousy: You cannot use other magic items that are better than common rarity.  If item rarity isn’t a thing in your game, you can only use other items worth less than this one.  If magic items aren’t valued in your game, just eyeball it.
14. Of Etiquette: You cannot enter a room unless someone within it invites you.  Usually, this means you cannot go in until another player goes in and says it is okay.
15. Of Deference: Each encounter, you cannot attack until every other member of your party has made an attack.
16. Of Contained Oblivion: You develop a gaping hole in your chest that constantly emits gouts of cloying, shadowy smoke.  Undead with 1 hit die or less regard you as a peer, but clerics and good outsiders with 3 hit dice or less automatically attack you without the possibility of communication or mercy.
17. Of Cowering: When at less than half your maximum hit points, you cannot willingly enter a space that is adjacent to an enemy.  If you are already next to one or an enemy approaches you, that’s fine and you don’t need to move.
18. Of Tantalization: You cannot eat food or drink water, including potions.  Don’t worry, you’re sustained by carnage.  A single worthy battle will sustain you for a day.  You can store up to a week of carnage meals at a time.  A battle is not worthy if it is contrived by the players to exclude the possibility of death.  For example, fighting an angry horse while the party cleric watches is not considered worthy.  Most fights found in a dungeon are worthy.
19. Of Vertigo: If you end your turn in a space that is not adjacent to either a wall or another player, you fall prone.
20. Of Plummeting: You have vulnerability to falling damage.

Optional Rule: Pay The Blood Price

As an alternative to paying the gold cost for this ritual, you can instead sacrifice a single non-evil humanoid. This also reduces the casting time to 1 day.

It That Crawls

(click for bigger)

I wanted a quasi-original critter to haunt the Carcosa-themed plateau in Kenneth Hite's truly outstanding Qelong setting. The art is from this guy, who apparently just churns out the visual equivalent of solid gold. You should be able to use this guy in 3e or 5e without too much trouble. You'll need to increase attack and damage for the former, certainly. It is designed to be unstoppable, but not necessarily completely lethal to an entire party.

Note that "stun" in my games means that the player loses their move action, not their entire action. So It stuns people telepathically and then eats them, and if it ends up off the plateau for whatever reason, It will start demolishing the campaign setting, hex by hex.

Teamwork Benefits In D&D 5e

Is your 5e combat too fast and simple? Too seamless? Add some complication with teamwork benefits!

This is a revised version of an earlier blog post. Some of these are pretty good, so you might want to only use them if your party is not very optimized or in conjunction with a slightly upped game difficulty.

Teamwork

Total the party’s intelligence modifiers, plus the charisma modifier of the character with the highest charisma (the de facto party leader). The points are then spent by unanimous consent on up to three of the following benefits that help the entire party:

Plan (2): The party has a +2 bonus to initiative.

Master Plan (3): The party has a +4 bonus to initiative. It's up to you whether this stacks with Plan (I'd lean toward not).

Preventative Medicine (3): Players’ healing spells and potions that restore hp each heal an additional +1 hp.

Over The Top (4): Players have +15 feet (3 spaces) to their movement speed during the first round of combat.

Seize The Advantage (5): Any time an enemy provokes attacks of opportunity from at least one player, they suffer 1 damage per adjacent player. This happens before any attacks are made.

Alarum (6): The minimum initiative roll of any player is 6.

Back To Back (6): Players have +1 AC and +1 to saves while adjacent to at least one other player.

Fancy Footwork (7): At the start of each player’s turn, they may swap spaces with a single adjacent ally at no cost to their movement.

No Adventurer Left Behind (8): Prone players that are adjacent to at least one standing ally can stand up by spending only 5 feet of their movement, rather than half their maximum (PHB p191).

Tag-Team (9): You have +2 to attack flanked creatures. I know this is a throwback mechanic in the context of 5e, but I totally don’t care.

Blitz (10): Players have advantage with melee attacks during the first round of combat.

Opening Volley (11): Players have advantage on ranged attacks during the first round of combat.

Encircle (12): Players have advantage with melee attacks against foes adjacent to at least four players.

The Spiderscape (Forgotten Realms)

This is an updated version of an earlier concept.

Forgotten Realms: A Days Of Future Past-style dark future in which Lolth has devoured all but a handful of her fellow deities, leaving only a few of the most interesting to hide and wonder when it will be their turn. Lolth's dominance has is unkind. She has spun a sun-occluding cocoon around the entirety of Faerun, plunging the world into gloomy twilight. With her blessing, spiders evolve into ever more capable predators, filling ever larger portions of ecosystems. The magical Weave, the source of magic itself, is pulled taught and patterned like a web, twining around Drowish prayers and filling them with power. A spectral web stretches across the afterlife, snaring souls before they can reach their final rest and filling an already bloated Lolth with even more power. 

Non-drow or anybody that dislikes eating fungus and spiders is pretty unhappy. A few remaining deities and their followers prowl the shadows, surviving as best they can and seeking a way to defeat or escape Lolth.