Gossivam's Lamentations

The Sleeping Empire

No people have suffered like the Hazarim. Their empire once spanned from the sands of Llarsh to the emerald waters of the Dying Sea. For a time, this sufficed. But several disastrous centuries served to reduce the empire until only the capital remained, surrounded by semi-independent villages. When the Khaldo came from the north with their great army, it is held that the city burned for twenty days.

The Khaldok Exile

For the insolence of the Hazar judge-king who refused to surrender, the Khaldo king decreed that the Hazar people would be destroyed forever. Of the four-hundred-thousand Hazars in the city, a mere twenty-thousand survived and were taken as slaves. Most were eventually brought to the capital at Khaldok, where they commanded a fine price due to their literacy.

Over the centuries, the Hazar remained enslaved but grew ever more useful and prominent amongst the Khaldo aristocracy. Their advice was sound and their divinations potent. A sort of sycophantic class of palace slaves arose, whose lives were more or less indistinguishable from the Khaldo royalty whom they served. They incorporated many of the strange Khaldo practices, including their preoccupation with dreams and spell-enhancement via the ritual handling or consumption of poisonous insects. Some even began to worship the strange Khaldo deities: Crepulon, whose eyes are the stars and whose hands are fish; Esshss, whose numberless legs are exceeded only by his even more numerous children; and broken-winged Chinnu, whose blood is nutritious enough to sustain her and, at least symbolically, her worshippers.

Gossivam, The False Prophet

After several centuries of exile, a man arose amongst the poor who claimed he could perform the ancient, now-lost art of raising the dead. He was not the first man to claim this, nor the first to be proven false when his arts were challenged. The crowd intended to beat Gossivam to death for his lies, but a stranger in their midst revealed himself to be an emissary from the long-neglected Hazar gods. "Though he was untrue, I have made him true. Do not kill this man," the stranger commanded. He departed on a whirlwind of flame, as the prophets of old.

Gossavam arose from the ground, his wounds closed. He spoke with newfound presence: the wisest of the free Hazar would come with him to the ruins of their old capital, Ummaq. There, they would set about their godly work. One by one, led by infallible miracle, Gossavam and his faithful disinterred the corpses of the ancient judge-kings and returned them to life. Only missing is Zakar-shum-Wai, the first judge-king, who was devoured by a whale.

Each of the judge-kings was brought back in a state of decay befitting their sins in life. Marunhal, the fourth king famous for butchering his wives, was hardly more than a skeleton. Juvenae II, who twice foreswore his regency, appears as whole as during his first life. Regardless of the state of their body, each retained the wisdom and experience gleaned from their years as ruler, and exhibited a holy dedication to Gossavam and his sacred mission.

The Eternal City

Ummaq, the sacred capital of the lost Hazar empire, lived once again. Most of the revived judge-kings also possessed the gift of life-giving, and set about its use with vigor. By the thousands, the lost citizens of old Hazar returned to life, though most displayed signs of decay in accordance with their failures during life. The city rebuilt itself. The long-fallen Walls Of Astrovar were rebuilt under the watchful eyes of old Astrovar himself, with many of the same engineers and servants who had helped him during his first life. This time, sustained as they were by sacred prayers and guided by holy purpose, they required neither sleep nor food. The wall sprung up almost overnight.

When the Khaldo sent their army to tame their unruly subjects, they found a city girded by stone and guarded by soldiers that could not be slain. Their army's careful sorties experienced terrible losses before giving up. The Khaldo have embraced a face-saving fiction, claiming the city as a tributary.

In Khaldok, the exiled Hazar slowly became aware that their ancient capital was reborn. Pilgrims ventured to behold it with their own eyes. The walls were indeed a sight to see, but none were permitted within. Gossavam himself waited by the city's gate, turning away the living.

"Only the dead may enter," he said. "Bring me your righteous dead and I shall return to them their breath, that they may reside with us, forever." He was as good as his word. Hazar brought before him were returned to life, whereupon they entered the city walls and were never seen again. As with the others, their state of decay upon revival reflected their moral decrepitude.

The Exile Ends

Eventually, it became the universal Hazar custom to send their deceased to Ummaq. A cultural sea change occurred: what righteous man would fear death, when he was awaited by the holiest prophets, the wisest kings, and all his friends and family who had gone before?

These days, most Hazar turned their back on the Khaldo, keeping themselves as separate as possible. Meanwhile, the palace Hazar cling ever tighter to their power, seeking to distance themselves from their poorer, more religious kin. In many ways, the powers of the Khaldo government are now largely wielded by a bureaucracy of semi-integrated Hazar. Still, many a palace Hazar sees to it that his bones will be discreetly conveyed to Ummaq upon his demise.

The grounds outside Ummaq are tended by an order of benevolent monks, who seek to protect those traveling to the holy city, while maintaining a state of such moral rectitude that their bodies will pass into Ummaq without blemish.

Elsewhere, the Hazar are valued for their knowledge of science and lore. Small Hazar communities can be found in many larger kingdoms throughout the region, providing their services while still maintaining their traditional beliefs.

Seemingly immortal himself, Gossivam still stands at the gates of Ummaq, reviving the dead and ushering them within. None who enter Ummaq emerge, ever.

Qelong: Aakom-Tainted Vulture

(click for larger)

A simple monster for use in Kenneth Hite's Qelong. For large groups of monsters I prefer relatively simple game mechanics to keep things from slowing down. I could run a fight with twenty of these things and not break a sweat. You may wish to adjust the amount of aakom poisoning depending on what rules you are using.

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.

The Kitab al-Bulhan (The Book Of Wonders)

The real-life Kitab al-Bulhan is an amazingly illustrated treatise on astrology and geomancy. It looks like I'd expect a spellbook to look. It depicts constellations, sinister-looking djinni summonings, and what I presume to be semi-magical fauna.

If you are going to have your wizard find a scroll or spellbook, you are honor-bound to make a handout along these lines.

If you go with spellbook, you might want to include a few extra options: so long as they hold it in their hands while casting a summoning spell, the summoned creatures have +2 attack. Perhaps you should also include a ritual whereby one can summon a perilous djinn and interrogate it? Yes, definitely.


Whispering Djinn Answer Table (d10)

If you spend 100gp on rare incenses and various metal powders, you can spend six hours to conjure an invisible spirit possessed of significant metaphysical knowledge. You attempt to coerce magical secrets out of the inherently hostile creature, with varying results (reroll redundant results excepting 1s):

1. Thou Hast Erred: You summon a djinni, all right, but your binding is imperfect. The djinni is able to spontaneously combust your body, inflicting 5d6 fire damage, Will DC 16 for half. If you survive, you can hastily dismiss the creature before it repeats the effect.
2. Accursed Theology: At great length and with persuasive eloquence, the djinn claims that the gods of your world are mere spirits, either misguided or malicious, and that the world is the product of a single, remote deity who does not walk the world. Unless you can somehow erase this knowledge or the authority of its source from your mind, you permanently have advantage against divine magical attacks and resistance against healing spells. Potions still work fine, though.
3. The Secret Language Of Insects: Given a little time to zone in on the precise dialect, you can communicate with insects or the gestalt intelligence possessed by swarms of insects. They are completely hostile to mammalian life, but respect certain rules of propriety with regards to the exchange of gifts and services. If you displease a swarm of insects, they will have no problem at all reciting blasphemous secrets to drive you stark-raving mad, usually for days at a time.
4. Ingots Of True Flame: The fires of the mortal world are ghostly shadows of the flames that dance beyond creation. An ingot of true flame is dangerous for material creatures to possess, but has its uses. A dedicated pyromancer can fashion true flames with a wood-burning kiln, 100gp of esoteric woods and spices, and a day or three of unsleeping chanting and tending. The result is a wefting knot of constantly-reshaping red metal that superheats and destroys most non-magical things that it contacts, but that can also be used to empower fire spells. Whenever a spellcaster casts a fire spell while possessing the ingot, one of the dice of fire damage is maximized and the ingot has a 1-in-6 chance of being destroyed. How one safely handles the ingot is left to your imagination.
5. The Adverse Words: The beings of the material world are fragile. You learn a complicated series of otherworldly phrases that amplify entropy in whatever creature you recite them at. The targeted creature suffers 1 disintegration damage per full minute that you recite these words, or per hour if you merely think them. The creature must be within 100 feet of you and within your line of sight, though if they are within 25 feet line of sight is not necessary. The words lend themselves well to extended recitation: if necessary, you can chant these words for days at a time.
6. The Elevation Of Metal: In the world beyond worlds, there exists a realm of purified matter only somewhat removed from the divine world of the gods. All alchemy may be viewed as a process attempting to purify matter and return it to a divine state. You have learned the secrets of purifying metal such that it approaches one of the earlier stages of metaphysical purity. With this process, you can spend three days and 100gp on a metal weapon or armor, imparting the "Empyrean" prefix, e.g. "Empyrean Chain Mail +1". In weapons, the empyrean prefix causes the weapon to inflict +1d6 damage against non-elemental outsiders. In armor, the empyrean prefix imparts a +1 to all saves.
7. The Inverted Zodiac: Though most educated spellcasters are passingly familiar with the zodiac, there is a secret zodiac consisting of stars and other stellar bodies not visible to beings in a normal state of mind. By consuming 50gp of carefully chosen hallucinogens and invoking stellar entities for an evening, you can perceive the horrifying astral archetypes and cast an accurate horoscope for a willing ally. Roll 1d4: on a 1, the targeted player has a -1 to all d20 rolls for the next day. On a 2-4, that is how many times a player may add a 2 to a d20 roll during the next day; this can even occur retroactively to make a player succeed at a roll that they would otherwise fail.
8. The Virtues Of Herbs And Beasts: Many strange beasts and plants inhabit the earth, and many stranger still beneath and beyond it. You have learned the salubrious value of several strange creatures, many of whom you are able to create as needed via spontaneous generation. Rather than brewing potions of healing the standard way -whatever that might be- you lure, conjure, and create creatures whose bodies naturally contain potent healing alkaloids. The short of it is that you are able to brew healing potions for a cost halfway between the normal purchase cost and the normal sell cost. For example, if potions of curing cost 50gp in your game and can be sold to NPCs for 25gp, you can create them for 37.5gp. The process of rapidly spontaneously generating and then slaughtering strange beasts and plants is horrifying to behold, messy, and probably heretical.
9. Phylactery Against Misfortune: You inscribe potent spells against bad luck and other ill occurrence in tiny symbols on a thin scroll, wind it up, and place it within a sacramental box. The custom inks and other ingredients cost 100gp in total. When worn as an amulet, the scroll provides a +1 bonus to all saves, until you roll a natural 1 on a d20 roll or an enemy critically hits you. If that occurs, the roll is treated as a normal failure and the amulet loses its magic.
10. Motes Of Unlight: You learn the secret of harvesting motes of "unlight", a poisonous, bewildering energy that negates light and confounds proprioception. These motes can be stored in a specially prepared Gloom Lamp costing 200gp. Every 1d6 days of harvesting, the lamp will be sufficiently full for use. When activated, the unlight floods a 15-foot radius around the lamp for the rest of the encounter, blinding and slowing creatures within that radius for 1 round, Fort DC 16 negates. Alternatively, the unlight may be expended to restore a semblance of life to a recently dead, relatively cohesive humanoid cadaver, lasting for approximately five minutes.