Four Beasties

The Charlockian Lion

An ebon-furred beast whose hide cannot be pierced except by wooden weapons, whose poisonous breath can kill a grown men or an elephant, and from whose neck it is said a still more horrid monster will spring should it be decapitated.

I can't believe someone made this.

Duododongo

A two-headed triceratops that lays waste to entire mountainsides in its hunger for human flesh and fire (it eats both with glee). It can kool-aid man through an entire regiment of infantry or castle wall. It is said that the only way to defeat this creature is to teach it chess and then defeat it. One head wants to learn chess, the other thinks chess is stupid.

Tlön The Round

Tlön The Round was a debased heresiarch who founded a religious sect a couple hundred years ago that was chiefly based around the worship of platonic solids. After he tried to summon the moon (so close, yet so far) some adventurers threw him into a bottomless crevasse.

Transformed somehow by that experience to resemble the object of his veneration, Tlön eventually hovered out and has spent the past decade killing people that vaguely resemble the adventurers who threw him in. He is only visible to one person at a time, can imagine objects and creatures into existence, and is embarrassingly bad at mid-battle repartee (think Dubya in a rap battle with a Bronte sister).

The Fractal Hydra

The fractal hydra is but a single snake, but she exists in many times and places, often simultaneously. When you march into her cave, you'll see a big-ass boa constrictor hanging around atop some skeletons or basking in cave-slime. She smelled you coming and is very, very hungry.

Her bite induces spasms and worse: her bite wounds have emit live snakes for several minutes. And we're not talking nice, friendly snakes. No, these are very pissed.

Any creature that injures the hydra for so much as 1 hit point of damage is cursed: at their moment of death, the fractal hydra will emerge from their abdomen. She couldn't possibly fit in there, and the players probably thought that the fractal hydra was long-dead, but it's time for round two. Surprise!

The Tias: Soulbound Gems As Magical Keepsakes

tldr; there are dozens of magical gemstones, each with a soul-bound princess trapped inside of them. Each conveys a small bonus, while collecting several conveys a cumulative set bonus.

The Ishnindah is not one of history's actors. She lurks in the background, plying her trade with the stoic fools of each era. Her footprints stretch across millennia, backwards and forwards.

Though she has lately preferred body parts as payment, there was a time when she preferred maidens of royal extraction. Want a spell that causes an enemy to only gain nutrition from cannibalism? Turn over a princess. The Internal Struggles of three centuries ago were largely an arms race of purchasing death-hexes from the Ishnindah. The royal families of the great cities mined their extended family trees for suitable candidates, turning them over by the dozen. Much magical lore was accrued from these transactions (the Ishnindah's well of magic does not run dry), though it was largely destroyed later, when the faith of the Idolatrous Lords waxed supreme.

The Witching Ways
The Ishnindah confounds analysis. But we know very well what happened to the princesses given over to her: their soul were trapped in gemstones, used to power their magics. There are at least fifty of them, each made by the Ishnindah and traded away. Over the centuries they have fallen into the hands of many adventurers and monster troves. In my game there is a flat 5% chance per incidence of treasure that a tia is among them.

The gemstones are called "tias". Keeping them in your possession only counts as one magical item, total. I use a trinket slot. If you use the absurdly granular Pathfinder 17+ item slot system, please stop. If you persist, maybe use the amulet slot.

The Tia Stones

Each tia stone conveys a small magical bonus, while the total number of tias equipped by a character conveys a cumulative "set bonus".

Set Bonuses (total mumber of tias: bonus)

• 3: You have resistance (half damage) against acid and poison.
• 5: You have +1 to all of your saving throws.
• 10: Your spells inflict +1 damage.
• 20: +2 to all saving throws.
• 35: Your spells inflict +2 damage. 
• 50: You cease aging, gain +3 to all saving throws, and can infallibly detect lies and detect magic as per those spells.

Individual Stones

I really dug deep for these t-named gemstones. You should come up with your own, too.

• Tia Topaz: You heal 1d6 hit points from healing spells of 1st-level or higher.
• Tia Tigerseye: You have a +4 bonus to Sense Motive checks.
• Tia Turitella: You are immune to slow and similar effects.
• Tia Tanzanite: You have resistance (half damage) against electricity.
• Tia Tourmaline: You can cast cure light wounds twice per day.
• Tia Titanite: You can cast a weak version of dimension door, once per day. It functions as the normal spell, but with a range of only 100 feet.
• Tia Tektite: You ignore the first incidence of ability score damage, each day. If that doesn't match your rules set, it instead makes the player immune to the first debuff to affect them, each day.
• Tia Tortoiseshell: You have +1 AC.
• Tia Turquoise: Outsiders and spirits have disadvantage when attacking you.
• Tia Tsavorite: You have resistance (half damage) against attacks of opportunity.
• Tia Thomsonite: You have +3 initiative.
• Tia Tugtupite: You are immune to bleeding effects. You have +5 max hp.
• Tia Taaffeite: You can cast meld into stone once per day.
• Tia Tinaksite: You are immune to damage and suffocation from non-magical heat and fire. For the purposes of this tia, magma and other geothermic heat is magical.
• Tia Tyuyamunite: You shed a ghostly green light within a short radius. You are immune to blindness, magical or otherwise. If, for example, your eyes were gouged out, you could still see so long as you had this tia.
• Tia Tsumebite: You can see through barriers of 1 inch thickness or less, including fog and many doors. You can't see through lead or other unusually dense materials, though.
• Tia Tsumcorite: You are immune to color spray, prismatic spray, and any other "color-based" spell. You have +2 speed.
• Tia Trona: Your fire spells inflict +1d6 damage.
• Tia Triphylite: You cannot be knocked prone.
• Tia Tridymite: You do not suffer any ill effects from excessive atmospheric pressure or the lack thereof. You are immune to decompression sickness. You can also hold your breath for up to a week.
• Tia Tremolite: You have fire resistance (half damage).

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...

Motes Of Unlight

A nearly full gloom lamp, used to harvest unlight.

Unlight is a poisonous, bewildering form of mostly-undiscovered energy that permeates our reality. The metaphysical properties of this energy are poorly understood. Indeed, many a careful wizard has ruined their experiment with unexpected (and violent!) interactions with minute amounts of unlight. Like an ant frying under a magnifying glass, the wizard wouldn't have any idea what went wrong.

You can't see unlight under normal circumstances. It just isn't concentrated enough for the eye to detect it. Most adventurers only see it when somebody casts a darkness spell. Even that involves only a minute amount of unlight, just enough to repel the photons in the area affected. More concentrated motes of unlight will drift about like water in zero gravity, unaffected by wind, breaking apart into wisps of inky darkness. Any solid matter that touches unlight is stained black and oxidated, resulting in the destruction or at least ruin of most nonmagical objects.

Sources Of Unlight

Unlight seems to exist nearly everywhere, at least in very small amounts. The few intrepid wizards that know about the energy have detected the strange emanations under every circumstance imaginable. Some suspect that unlight is an unknown form of the negative energy that provides motive force to undead, or at least related to it. No experiment has yet proven this.

The more concentrated forms of unlight are occasionally found in nature: adult phase spider venom contains a high concentration. Certain wraiths seem to leave a trail of it and emit a particularly large burst when slain. I suppose a sufficiently dedicated wizard could farm wraiths by feeding people to them (wraiths usually transform their victims into more of the same). I can't imagine that having a happy ending.

If your campaign has some sort of primordial creature from the outer darkness that existed before creation, it's likely suffused with or even the source of unlight. It may have left behind nodes of the stuff in temples or forgotten places.

If you talk to the right djinn, it can explain how to make a a lead-lined "gloom lamp" that will slowly accumulate unlight over time. A night hag could probably sell you a canister of the stuff, as could the Ishnindah.

A drear clock keeps perfect time.

Of Strange Utility

Okay, there's this weird energy that's kind of everywhere. But what can you do with it? Aside from transform fungal or arachnid creatures into true horrors. Well, there's always magic items.

Night-Stained Armor

If you bathe a suit of armor (leather, metal, whatever) in unlight enough times (alternated with mending spells to keep the suit from being destroyed), it will become the color of squid ink and feel noticeably chilled to the touch. Such armor renders the wearer invisible (as the spell) to creatures more than 30 feet away so long as one remains motionless.

Noculator Zombie

If you can stabilize liquescent unlight (not too difficult for a spellcaster of 5th level or higher), it is possible to transfuse it into the inert circulatory system of a zombie. Such a zombie has resistance against fire (half damage), +2 to their speed, and is invisible when more than 30 feet away from a creature. The zombie will dissolve after a month or two.

Drear Clock

One can craft a remarkably accurate clock powered by a leaden chamber full of unlight. Such a clock keeps perfect time (rare in a medieval society) and only needs refueling once a century. For reasons that are unclear, the clock enrages any good-aligned outsiders that notice it. Such a creature must succeed at a Will save or immediately seek to destroy it. The clock doesn't radiate evil or anything, the outsiders seemingly can't help or explain themselves. More usefully, divination is difficult near the clock. Divination spells of 5th level or lower cast within 100 feet of the clock or targeting within that vicinity simply fail to function.

Gloomstones

A suitable refractory stone (spinels work well) that bathes in the interior of a gloom lamp for a few days will transform into a glittery black stone that seems to shimmer constantly. It's difficult to look at and trying for too long will give you a headache. Aside from jewelry, wizards like to crush gloomstones into gloom dust and snort it. It doubles the range of all darkness-related and shadow-related spells. Spinels are kind of expensive (they are probably considered rubies in your game world), so it probably consumes about 50gp of dust per casting, assuming you already have access to unlight.

Gloomstones!

Inherent Risk

Any or all of the issues below might affect characters handling or exposed to unlight.

•Creatures that are exposed to unlight lose a day off their natural lifespan per day exposed to the stuff. In essence, you age twice as fast. Their bodies do not visible age, they just stop early.

•Overfull gloom lamps have a nasty habit of going critical. If you forget to empty one for more than three weeks, it will sit there fuming out little tendrils of darkness until somebody actually touches it. Then it will explode, sending shards of lamp everywhere (3d6 damage, Reflex half), 2d6 cold damage, and causing them to suffer the effects of a nightmare spell as though it were cast on them each night, for 1d8 nights. During this period, the player also ceases healing naturally.

•A creature foolish enough to consume unlight will die a terrible death. The immediate effects will include terrible chills radiating throughout their circulatory system and blindness (the eyes turn entirely black, and may dissolve completely). After a day or two, the body will boil off into strands of cobweb.

•Touching concentrated unlight will stain skin for a year and a day. If wizards were more involved in the criminal justice system, I could see this being a decent way to mark criminals.

The Sun Devourers

Click for a larger version, friend!

I really, really like these guys. It's just a basic feature of Aztec mythology that the progenitors of mankind were also skeletal star demons that want to eat people and end the world. I used them in an earlier post as one of the things that will go wrong if you lock up the wrong archangel for too long. Don't lock up archangels or you'll regret it!

Tenebrous Monstrosities

This once placid myconid is now officially Up To No Good.

Fungi and arachnids exposed to concentrated unlight will quickly develop unseemly characteristics. Other creatures sicken and die, but they seem weirdly increased by their exposure.

Any monstrous spider or fungus can be affected. And sure, yeah, there are not a ton of fungal monsters in the monster manual, but the internet has some that you might like.

Once one of the eligible creature types has been irradiated with a dose of unlight, it develops a result from the table below over the course of a day or so. All effects are permanent, and multiple exposures will not result in further change. Also, you may want to give groups of identical abilities off here to keep things simple.

Tenebrous Mutation Table (d10)

1: The creature's intelligence increases to 20 and it's alignment changes to evil.

2: The creature exudes a shroud of inky spores in a 15-foot radius similar to a deeper darkness spell. The spores do not inhibit fungal or arachnid creatures.

3: Any creature struck by the creature's melee attack has their speed reduced to 2 until the end of their next turn as strands of semisolid darkness cling to them and inhibit their movement.

4: The creature's size increases in size until it is huge (10 feet by 10 feet). It gains +50 max hit points and automatically succeeds on the first saving throw it rolls, each encounter.

5: The creature can pass effortlessly through walls and doors of less than a foot in thickness unless they incorporate significant quantities of lead, gold, or another heavy metal.

6: The creature is invisible during the first round of each combat. This isn't an all the time thing, it's more like the unlight kicks in when it gets agitated enough for a fight.

7: The creature permanently bilocates. It occupies two spaces, but is the same creature. Damaging one damages the other, et ceteras. The two creatures can travel any distance apart but will be pulled into other planes together if one passes through a portal or plane shifts.

8: The creature gains resistance (half damage) against spell damage. It can also exhale a 5-foot wide, 25-foot long breath weapon of disintegrating darkness, inflicting 5d6 disintegration damage, Reflex half. It can do this three times per day but not two rounds in a row.

9: The creature grows a horrid mouth full of inky teeth in an unlikely location on it's body. The mouth makes an extra attack with the creature's normal attack bonus, each turn, inflicting something like 2d8 damage on a hit.

10: The creature sprouts a set of asymmetrical wings capable of propelling it through air, water, or interstellar void. It also develops the ability to reproduce via fission and to digest any organic material, if it did not possess those abilities before.

Black Words: The Ishnindah's Spells

Whence comes the Ishnindah?

You need better spells. The Ishnindah has them. Her spells are unfamiliar and dangerous, but probably better than whatever you can research or borrow from the gods. Luring the Ishnindah is not an easy thing. Nor is it wise. Still, adventurers do lots of dumb things and this could easily be one of them.

Attracting The Ishnindah

One cannot find the Ishnindah. One can only hope to attract her by assembling things that she finds appealing. Smoke from simmering blood. Severed hands. Liquid nightmares (difficult to extract!). Moonless nights. Arhythmic drumming. Mutes. Assemble enough of these in one place for long enough and she will eventually show up.

Her Blasphemous Words

The spells of the Ishnindah do not reflect the magical traditions of any known species in your campaign world, nor evince the channeling of divine energies associated with magical prayer (at least, not of any deities with which your players are familiar). They are alien and dangerous. The players can learn and cast them, anyways. It's up to you whether you wish to restrict them to any particular class.

She is happy to teach them to players, but may require payment in the form of their body parts. Eyes, tongues, fingers, hands, it all depends on the Ishnindah's mood. Adventurer Protip: Anything less than a wish isn't going to restore body parts traded to the Ishnindah.

Spells

Invoke The Other-Gnaw (1st-level)

This spell masticates a target within short range. There is no apparent source of the chewing; the target evinces deep bite marks all over their body without an apparent source (treat it as force damage). The bite marks are dissimilar to any recognizable species or even phylum. The damage inflicted by this spell should by whatever is appropriate for a 2nd-level spell in your game (in mine it would be 3d8, Fort half). One important caveat: each time you cast this spell, there is a cumulative 1% chance that you will be devoured completely by teeth similar to those used by the spell. The caster's flesh will be bitten off and disappear into midair. By the time the teeth are done, absolutely nothing will remain. Even drops of blood will be lapped up by invisible tongues.

Osseous Seed (2nd-level)

This spell afflicts a target with virulent organic poison. The poison inflicts a cumulative 1 damage on the target at the start of each day, until they die or a neutralize poison spell is cast upon them. If the target should perish, a tree of bones will grow from the corpse. It derives energy from moonlight and will grow at the rate of a normal tree but without decay and to a potentially limitless size. It will only bloom on the evening before the end of the world. The blossoms will drive any creatures that see them violently, irrevocably mad (no save unless they have ten or more hit dice). There are entire planets out there that have had their mass completely converted into osseous trees in this manner, over millions of years. Vast skeletal constructs drifting through the void, covered in heinous flowers.

Moon-Glaze (2nd-level)

This spell coats a single weapon with a crystalline substance supposedly similar in substance to the otherworldly flora of the moon. The sharper-than-obsidian edges of the crystalline coating give the weapon a +1 critical chance (if it would normally critical on a 20, it instead would critical on a 19 or 20). Alas, the strange material is fragile, and passes its fragility on to the weapon it coats: if you roll a natural 1, 2, or 3 with an attack, your weapon will shatter into a thousand tiny shards. If a weapon would plausibly be immune to shattering in this manner, the spell fails. Like, if you cast it on your holy avenger +5, that sword is probably going to transubstantiate the glaze into water vapor. I wouldn't let this spell work on any item that is already keen or of +3 or greater enchantment. Moon-glaze will oxidate off a weapon in about a week assuming continued exposure to an earthly atmosphere.

Putrid Claws (2nd-level)

Upon casting this spell, your hands agonizingly twist into jagged caricatures of human fingers, sporting quasi-mineral spurs and crystalline edges. Your claws inflict 1d6 damage + your level on a hit. Any creature that you injure with said claws will be wracked with fever, unable to sleep that night unless they are restored to full hit points or receive a cure disease spell. You cannot cast spells while you have putrid claws, and the effect lasts for 1d4 hours (you cannot end it early).

Address The Audient Void (3rd-level)

This spell enters a willing target into a peculiar arrangement with a mostly-malicious otherwordly intelligence. Casting this spell requires an obsidian mirror worth at least a thousand gold, a troupe of at least ten amoral kymbala players, 1d30 human sacrifices (the exact number is unknown to the caster, they must keep sacrificing until it works), and a goat. The character so affected is wracked by pain and internal distortion, resulting in a constitution score that is halved or reduced to 5 (whichever is worse). Thenceforth, every 1d4 weeks for the duration of their natural span of years, an unusually powerful byakhee with hit dice equal to the character's level will sail forth from the sky or the shadows of a particularly angular corner. If the character is alive, the byakhee will seek to kill them (the character should probably seek to defend themselves). If the character is dead, the byakhee will raise them from the dead (as per the spell) and depart without further fuss. This effect can be ended via a remove curse spell, but only if the recipient is willing. Theoretically, the character could be encased in some sort of spherical or non-angular subterranean area that would prevent a byakhee from reaching them, but this would most likely result in negative outcomes.

The Unseeing (3rd-level)

While this spell is memorized but not cast, you possess a random extra-sensory perception. Upon uttering the single syllable of this spell, you lose that sense and all natural flames within a 1000-foot radius are extinguished. Only flames of a less than 3-foot radius are affected. If a fire is magical, blessed, or in any way metaphysically unusual, then it is unaffected. For example, the holy fire in a shrine that was kindled by the prophets of yore from the Original Flame will not go out, but the candles and torches in the temple foyer will. A volcano and its environs would completely unaffected. On the other hand, a small town would probably have a lot of trouble defending itself in the middle of the night if the attackers had night vision and knew this spell.

Accursed Atavism (5th-level)

The target of this spell must make a Will save or be doubly cursed. First, they lose the ability to use or comprehend tools. Their understanding is reduced to about that of a household pet. For example, they understand that a sword causes pain and is dangerous, but cannot comprehend how to use it. Such a character can still benefit from armor that they are wearing or that others put on them, but will drop objects held in their hands. Even using a doorknob is a stretch. Second, they lose the ability to eat or derive nutrition from anything except for raw flesh. This probably exposes them to digestive problems and parasites, since the spell does not convey any improvements to their ability to consume those substances. A remove curse spell will suffice to end this effect.

True Aklo (any level)

The Ishnindah has taught you several words in True Aklo, a language whose existence is part of the fabric of reality and that can be used to open your mind to the cosmos. It also drives you pretty crazy: if you have access to this spell, you must make a Will save each day or suffer a minor form of madness (I like this madness table). This is an unusual spell: you can memorize it at any level you are capable of casting, but cannot ever cast it more than once per day. When you do cast it, it causes you to magically gain one casting of a random spell from your class that is one spell level higher than the one that it was memorized at. For example, if you memorize and cast True Aklo as a 2nd level spell, you gain a random 3rd-level spell from your list. This higher-level spell that you gain cannot be used in conjunction with metamagic or any other weird stuff like that. If you memorize True Aklo as a 9th-level spell, you are driven homicidally mad for 1d100 days, then disappear forever.

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.)

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.

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.

Death-Haunted Pathfinder Prestige Class

I'm no great fan of Pathfinder or of boring prestige classes, but since it remains so popular I thought it might be fun to make a special class as an alternative death penalty. Any time a player would lose a level due to raise dead or a similar spell, they may instead opt to swap a level from one of their classes for one of the death-haunted prestige class below. Alternatively, since Pathfinder's raise dead spell drops you two levels, it might be best to just allow a player to swap one level at a time. Whichever and whatever you prefer.

I'm hardly an expert at Pathfinder, so any tweaks you want to make are probably a great idea.

Death-Haunted

Requirements

To qualify to become a death-haunted, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Special: You must have perished and returned to life as the result of magic. Levels in this class are only obtained due to level substitution caused by the raise dead spell.

Boring Statistics

Hit Dice: d8.

Class Skills: Knowledge (religion), move silently, perception, sense motive, stealth.

Skill Ranks: 4 + Int modifier.

Table: Death-Haunted

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Reflex Save	Will Save	Special
1st	+0	+0	+0	+0	Haunted, Cold Resistance
2nd	+1	+1	+1	+1	Poison Resistance, Leaping
3rd	+2	+1	+1	+1	Ghastly, Chill Of The Grave
4th	+3	+1	+1	+1	Final Action, Friend To The Dead
5th	+3	+2	+2	+2	Ghostly, Moderate Fortification
6th	+3	+2	+2	+2	Rotting, Nigh-Undead

Class Features

Haunted: Your physical presence is changed by your contact with death.  Your skin is alabaster-pale, you become prone to staring lifelessly, and you barely cast a shadow.

Cold Resistance: Due to your increasingly otherworldly metabolism, you have cold resistance 3.

Poison Resistance: You're blood is like fifty-percent ectoplasm at this point. On the one hand, it conveys poison resistance 3. On the other hand, you create and attract undead mosquitos.

Leaping: Your interactions with the laws of physics are somewhat modified due to your repeated brushes with death. You have a +10 bonus on acrobatics checks made to attempt jumps or long jumps.

Ghastly: Your flesh is semitransparent in moonlight or in reflects, dogs howl in the night whenever you are near, and you flinch every time you see a holy symbol (any holy symbol).

Chill Of The Grave: Your touch is cold enough that your unarmed attacks inflict an extra 1d4 cold damage. Creatures that strike you with an unarmed or natural attack suffer 1d4 cold damage, also. You keep insisting that you aren't slowly becoming undead, but it's starting to look pretty bad. The cleric keeps staring at you when they think you aren't looking.

Final Action: Any time you are killed by a non-disintegrating source, you can still take action until the end of your next turn. Furthermore, the creature that kills you provokes an attack of opportunity from you. Under no circumstances will your additional action allow you to avoid your immanent death (healing is ineffective).

Friend To The Dead: Unintelligent undead with less than will not perceive you to be a threat. You are under the effect of a permanent sanctuary spell that only affects undead. If you end the effect, it automatically recasts itself after 10 minutes have passed.

Ghostly: You are semitransparent in any light other than sunlight. You need consume only 1/5th the food, water, and air that a being of your race would normally require. You do not leave physical footprints (though you do emit wisps of ectoplasm similar to cobwebs, resulting in you breaking even when others are tracking you).

Moderate Fortification: Any time you suffer a critical hit or a sneak attack, you have a 50% chance of negating the extra damage.

Rotting: Okay, maybe you're starting to be more dead than alive. You don't need to eat, drink, or respire, and many of your bodily functions have stopped working entirely. You've got an ectoplasm-rich ichor in lieu of blood. Your body weighs half of what it normally would. Chunks of your flesh have fallen off or have holes in them, revealing gleaming white bone beneath. And -I would only tell this to a friend- you don't smell so great.

Nigh-Undead: Your cold and poison resistance both increase to 5, while your fortification increases to strong (75% chance of negating critical/sneak attack). Unfortunately, you are dazzled in direct sunlight, cannot derive benefit from most potions or other imbibed magical items, and the starting attitude toward you for good aligned NPCs and animals is automatically unfriendly.