The Shadow of the Torturer

“I was sitting there, as I said, and had been for several watches, when it came to me that I was reading no longer. For some time I was hard put to say what I had been doing. When I tried, I could only think of certain odors and textures and colors that seemed to have no connection with anything discussed in the volume I held. At last I realized that instead of reading it, I had been observing it as a physical object. The red I recalled came from the ribbon sewn to the headband so that I might mark my place. The texture that tickled my fingers still was that of the paper in which the book was printed. The smell in my nostrils was old leather, still wearing the traces of birch oil. It was only then, when I saw the books themselves, when I began to understand their care.”

His grip on my shoulder tightened. “We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized. We have books bound wholly in metals of unknown alloy, and books whose bindings are covered with the thickest gems. We have books cased in perfumed woods shipped across the inconceivable gulf between creations—books doubly precious because no one on Urth can read them.”

“We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too whose leaves are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here—though I can no longer tell you where—no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.”

― Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

The Book Of Horrid Births

Spontaneous generation is a nonmagical, scientific fact.  If the correct ingredients are combined under auspicious circumstances, a living creature will result.  The simpler recipes yield simpler creatures.  Combine the dead flesh of most creatures and warm air, you'll eventually end up with maggots.  With sophisticated recipes and ingredients, more complex organisms can be generated.  By combining and modifying recipes, you can creature stranger, less natural-seeming creatures.  Neither magical expertise nor special knowledge are required.  Follow the recipe correctly and creatures shall result.

Simple Recipes

Scorpions: By bathing correctly sorted strands of straw and fresh basil in bright sunlight for a day, you can create a swarm of small scorpions.  They will inhabit the area of their birth and behave generally like scorpions.  Their stings inflict great agony on most creatures, while repeated stings can potentially kill smaller creatures.  The scorpions will treat their birth-spot as their home and will be loathe to leave it.

Eels: Large clumps of rotting vegetable matter and moving fresh water are necessary, as are some drops of ichorous slime extracted from predacious sea-fish organs.  Once that is obtained, you can produce a tremendous number of carnivorous eels with gleaming pink eyes.  The eels produced by this recipe have somewhat unstable physical forms, and will seek to rectify their situation by consuming the more stable flesh of other living creatures.

Bear Cubs: Grave moss, desiccated vineal plants, moonlight, and caustic bile all combine to produce a creature very similar to a large bear cub.  The cubs produced by this recipe will regard the first creature they behold as their mother and become incredibly devoted to them.  Sadly, the recipe is imperfect and the bears will rot rather than age.  However, they can withstand a tremendous amount of decomposition before finally dying.

Complex Recipes

Eyeless: With a vat of combined fats and a steady geomantic current, you can give birth to a creature that resembles a fully-grown human in most ways.  The chief exceptions are that it does not possess a soul (not having been created by the gods) and, perhaps as an extension of that, does not possess eyes.  The creature begins its life amicably enough, grateful for its creation.  Sadly, any initial empathy or gratitude grows cold and resentful over a matter of weeks as the eyeless increasingly resents its flawed nature.  Eyeless make use of terrifyingly effective echolocation.  They are sterile.

Wall-Slug: With powdered river-stones, aqua regia, starlight captured in spheres of mirrored glass, and spore-dust from a foul species of mushrooms, you are able to create a true horror.  The resulting entity is an invertebrate creature composed of iridescent, biliously glowing slime that prefers to reside and travel on vertical surfaces, ignoring gravity as we understand it.  The creature will attack its creator immediately but can be induced to fearfully avoid them for 1d6 days at a time by reducing it to half its max hit points.  The creature possesses weak gravimetric muscles, passably effective x-ray vision, and can emit clouds of caustic vapor.

Amphisbaena: Terrestrial slime, barley harvested at the height of summer, manure, and quicklime must all be combined and baked under extremely hot conditions in order to produce the amphisbaena. This serpent boasts a head on each end and eyes that shine so brightly that it is difficult to see in their presence.  The creature whispers blasphemous secrets to its creator regardless of distance.  Each day the amphisbaena conveys a secret of some kind to their creature regarding a completely arbitrary topic chosen by the DM, though the creature reliably reveals the details of a spell that their creator could cast at least once per week.  There is also a cumulative 1% chance per week that the whispers drive their creator permanently, violently insane.