From an Ancient Bestiary

I was going through some boxes in the attic when I found my old school notebook from when I was nine or ten years old. It contains what is probably the first bestiary that I've made, scrawled in between homework. It is... rather silly, really. Apparently I was enamoured with deadly poison and big numbers at the time. And the word "super".

This is no RPG bestiary, mind you. Just some hand-drawn monsters with short descriptions of capabilities. For your enjoyment, I have scanned the pictures and noted some fun facts from the descriptions. Hope you like really shitty art.

 

Winged Knight
His right hand has been replaced with a hurricane-strength wind cannon and he is apparently wearing heavy armour, yet he can still fly. His sword is also "super-sharp".

 

Carp Knight
This one had his right hand replaced with a water cannon capable of cutting steel, his fish-scales are as hard as his armour, and he can swim at a maximum speed of 300 km/h.

They are not present in this bestiary, but I distinctly remember there were more types of these knight, the Knights of the Labyrinth. There were the Four-armed Knights (with two arm-cannons) and the Tentacled Knights (with a normal upper body and a lower body dissolving into a mass of tentacles) and maybe even more that I don't recall. They all hail from the Enchanted Labyrinth, a dungeon that we explored with my brothers before we knew about any RPG rules and systems, using just make believe.

 

Three-humped Dragon
I like how this dragon is more of a chimera, mixing bits of a camel, hippogriff, goat, lion and an actual dragon. His three humps allow him to survive without food and water for up to three years and he can fly at a top speed of 300 million km/s, which is a thousand times faster than light. It is not written anywhere, but I'd like to imagine that this dragon can survive in the outer space and migrates between solar systems.

He also doesn't breathe fire, but rather shoots lightning from his horns.

 

Unicorn Devil
Probably my favourite creature of this bunch, simply because he looks so silly.

The unicorn horn secretes a "super-deadly" poison. I told you it's coming. The devil horns are even stranger, with a note saying they have "magic rope". Can they manifest some animated rope, or what exactly is going on? It's a mystery.

He is also noted as being super strong and tough, wearing no armour and needing none.

 

Mud Devil
This is both a devil and an alien, hailing from the solar system of Sirius. His whole body is made of living mud, which lets him pass through cracks or grating. He's also in love with lasers, because both his sword and his staff can shoot lasers.

 

Alien of Jupiter
Or I guess Jovian?

He can fly (presumably via psychic powers) and shoot ball lightning from his antennae (seen in action on the picture). His robe is also indestructible.

 

Tiny Ghost-Ghoul
His tentacles have venomous suckers, though not super-deadly this time. However, the weapons are enchanted to kill instantly.

Being a ghost, he can also phase through walls and fly. No information is given on how tiny he truly is, but given that I had once considered it necessary to mention his size, he is probably really small.

 

Elastic Ghost-Vampire
Now this one has a fun form of attack. His whole body and all the hands can stretch and twist. He reaches through a wall to grapple a victim, and once the victim is immobilized, bites them and drains their blood.

 

Poison Daisy
Not only does this flower have venomous teeth, she is also thorny with any scratches resulting in an infection. Thankfully, she is rooted in place, so just keep your distance.

 

Serpent Sapling
It's a coniferous tree sapling which can slither around on its single overlarge root. It can also shoot needles imbued with super-deadly poison. And it's so small and inconspicuous it can easily hide. Oh joy.

 

Guardian Robot
I don't know what is he guarding, but he might be better off switching lines of work to a killer robot. His right hand-cannon fires rockets while the left hand-cannon produces a death ray. He can also stomp for a shockwave, shoot lightning bolts from his antenna (Why did I like electrified antennae so much?) and if all that fails, bite off your limbs. His visor pierces invisibility and the material of his body ignores intangibility.

Finally, he can slide out wings and fly, with a maximum speed of 300 million km/s. Now I must imagine a chase scene where this robot is attempting to capture some adventurers riding three-humped dragons, plummeting through outer space at FTL speeds.

 

Sunfire Monster
Not much is noted about this creature, except that it attacks with flaming fists that burn with the heat of 11 trillion °C. Funnily, our Sun at its very hottest, in the very core, only has a temperature of 15 million °C.

Oh, and he also ignores cold of up to -100 °C, but given how he would pretty much instantly turn the whole planet into a ball of plasma, that shouldn't be a problem.

QHW, Day 13: Elements

Water Child
Souls and elementals are not that different. Both are spirits, one possessing a living body, the other an unliving one. Sometimes, an elemental can be sired by a human "parent". When a small child dies by drowning, their radiant, young soul full of life may imprint itself upon unliving matter, upon the water filling their lungs. A water child is born.

Water children are not undead. Just like a new life is created in the womb of a mother, a new life emerges from the lungs of a drowned child in a torrent of animated water. They have no form in the real world, but in the spirit world they appear as the child they once were, soaked wet. Even though they are always immaterial, they leave wet footprints in Reality where-ever they go.

Water children are confused and scared, haunted by shards of memories they inherited. They remember having a family, and they want their family back. They want their friends back, too. Water children cannot leave their new, watery home for long, and so their friends and family must come to them. Water children will seek to lovingly drown anyone they knew in their past life.

HD 1
Def unarmoured, immaterial
Atk loving hug that fills lungs with water
Wants to return to "their" life, to find friends

Elemental Powers: Air, Fire, Water

Continuing from the previous post, here are the other three classic elements.

From Avatar: The Last Airbender.
I still haven't actually watched it.

All aeromancers have good stamina and singing voices, though whether that's an aspect of their powers or the result of the many breathing exercises needed to master them is up for debate.

d66	Air Powers
11	You don't need to breathe and can actually keep breathing out, with up to a gale-force strength.
12	Slowly float or walk in the air.
13	Dash while in the air, performing double jumps and impossible feats of acrobacy.
14	Call winds that will quickly carry you and your companions over long distances. Needs a lot of space to take off and land, not enough control for combat flight.
15	Build up pressure, then release it for a massive jump. Jumping between buildings is easy, jumping over a building takes a little while.
16	Build up pressure, then release it for a shock wave that sends everything around you flying.
21	Empower your voice, letting you speak like through a megaphone or scream with a sonic boom that shatters glass and eardrums.
22	Manipulate the air in your vocal cords, mimicking voices or sounds.
23	Still the air in a small area, damping all sounds or creating outright zones of silence.
24	Stop the air in a small area, creating invisible walls and cages, or holding a creature in place.
25	The winds carry sounds far further for you, letting you whisper or listen at range.
26	Manipulate the air friction of anything you see, slowing or speeding up its movements and falls.
31	Your strikes can project slashing winds.
32	Push the air to create a strong directional blast of wind.
33	Pull the air around anything you see to hurl it in a direction of your choice. Works better on lighter objects.
34	Manipulate air around thrown weapons, directing them around corners and attacking from far further away.
35	Surround yourself with swirling winds, deflecting ranged attacks and confounding nearby foes.
36	Surround yourself with slashing winds, inflicting a thousand minor cuts on anyone nearby.
41	Surround yourself with a tornado. Very long build-up.
42	Sense air movements within a room. Precise enough to dodge a blow from behind or fight blinded. Your range expands greatly when you sit down and meditate.
43	Call a wind that grows stronger over time, up to a hurricane-force after half an hour. The wind power resets if you change its direction.
44	Discorporate into wind for a single heartbeat, pretty much teleporting a short distance. Very disorienting when spammed.
45	Force air out of an area no bigger than 3 m in diameter, creating a bubble of vacuum.
46	Change the temperature within a small area. The change slows down as you go further from normal temperature, but no real limit until you kill yourself with it.
51	Cause a rapid spike or drop in the air pressure, resulting in vertigo, fainting, or even blood vessel ruptures.
52	Selectively heat up the air around you, blurring your movements and creating distracting mirages.
53	Create elemental-like constructs from wind.
54	Form an orb of pressurized air that can be thrown and then triggered like a concussive grenade.
55	Filter gases and pollution from air. Also enhances your smell, as you can concentrate it and push it in your nose.
56	With a touch, induce rapid oxidation in materials.
61	Hyperoxigenate the air in a room, which can help some, but works as a poison for most.
62	Attune to a town-sized area over several days, gaining control over temperature, pressure, the winds, ...
63	Hold your breath to become as light as a feather.
64	The wind lightens your steps. Run as fast as a horse and across twigs, fresh snow, or the surface of water.
65	Move as silently and invisibly as a breeze. Any strenuous action (such as attacking) will break this trance-like state.
66	For a single breath, you can move with inhuman haste, though it will leave you winded.

Also from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

All pyromancers possess a certain level of resistance to fire and heat, from never getting sunstroke to swimming in plasma.

d66	Fire Powers
11	Direct and move flames. The larger and hotter they are, the more tenuous your control.
12	Throw explosive fireballs.
13	Breathe fire in a wide cone.
14	Shoot sticky flames from your palms, like a flamethrower.
15	Spit globs of fire and make them sticky or explosive at will.
16	Any fire you concentrate on burns faster, hotter, stronger.
21	Heat vision, in both senses of the word. You can see in infrared and shoot heat rays from your eyes.
22	Create a miniature sun. It moves at a snail's pace, but burns pretty much anything.
23	Surround yourself in a great aura of flames.
24	Sweat superheated plasma at will, coating yourself in flames.
25	Fire jet flight.
26	Teleport by stepping into a flame and emerging from another within 100 m.
31	Create elemental-like constructs from fire.
32	Create smoke-clones. They cannot deal damage and pop when touched, but you can have a lot of them.
33	Conjure a weapon (blade, bow) made of fire.
34	Touch an object to imbue it with fire. It can be triggered at will to explode.
35	Touch a weapon to infuse it with fire, coating it in searing flames.
36	Anything you stare at will go up in flames. Takes longer for less flammable things.
41	You have flame for hair and bleed superheated plasma.
42	You can raise the temperature of your body enough that your touch will melt metal.
43	The more heat and fire is nearby, the faster and stronger you are.
44	Make nearby fires emit excessive smoke. Move the smoke as you will.
45	Transform into a huge fire bird. You can fly and burn stuff, but are very vulnerable to dousing.
46	Form an ember in your hand that can be thrown like a grenade.
51	Cause walls of flames to erupt from the ground.
52	Concentrate on creatures or objects to grant them fire immunity.
53	Snuff out any fire in sight at will.
54	Conjure many slow-moving orbs of fire. They will home in on enemies at a walking pace.
55	Explode, then reform from the flames. Very exhausting to spam.
56	When you touch a flame, you can see and speak from other fires within 1 km.
61	Sense heat within a city block, the higher the temperature the clearer the awareness. Body heat is barely perceptible.
62	Absorb fire and concentrate it in your cupped hands, then release a devastating plasma beam.
63	Call a pillar of plasma from the sky. Has a long wind-up, but extreme destructive power.
64	Loop fires, letting them burn indefinitely without requiring further fuel. It's very exhausting to loop many or big fires.
65	Consume flammable materials to fuel your inner flame. As long as it burns bright, you don't need to eat and sleep, and never run out of stamina.
66	As long as you stand in flames, you feel no pain nor fear nor hesitation. All mind-affecting or emotional effects are burned from your mind.

From Naruto.

All hydromancers are quite adept at swimming and diving.

d66	Water Powers
11	Move and direct water with concentration. It still has the surface strength of water, though, so no grabbing people with water-tentacles.
12	Strengthen the surface tension of water, until it works like an elastic film that lets things bounce off of the surface and traps creatures who were underwater.
13	Breathe water and swim as fast as a motorboat.
14	Walk or surf on the surface of water, faster than a car can go.
15	Any surface you can see and concentrate on will start leaking water.
16	With a single glance, you can fill a creature's lungs with water.
21	Annihilate water with a touch. This is an instant, clean removal that leaves behind only vacuum.
22	Raise or lower temperature of water within eyesight. You may not affect steam or ice.
23	Breathe superheated steam.
24	Create elemental-like constructs from water.
25	Manipulate the viscosity of water, making it air-like, solid, sticky or slippery.
26	Touch the surface of water to raise waves. Anything from a ripple to a sudden tsunami is possible, depending on the size of the body of water.
31	Purify water with a touch. Touching a bleeding wound turns all of the victim's blood to water.
32	Create whirlpools. Pretty useless unless you have a big body of water, then you can ride in a huge waterspout and throw people around.
33	You regenerate rapidly by absorbing water. Regrowing a limb would take half a swimming pool.
34	Sense all water within a city block. The cleaner it is, the clearer your vision of it. Blood is faint but noticeable when you concentrate.
35	Stomp the ground to trigger the sudden eruption of a new geyser. Cannot be used multiple times in one location as it greatly strains the ground water reserves.
36	Transform into water at will. You are nigh-invulnerable and can flow even up the walls, but cannot talk or see. You may only turn back if all your water is in liquid state and together.
41	Transform into fog at will, but only for a few seconds at a time.
42	Generate fog. The more damp the environment, the denser the fog and wider your area of effect. You can see through the fog, unlike you enemies.
43	A 100 m radius around you is always affected by a rain of your choice, from drizzle to torrential rain or sleet. You cannot stop the rain completely, though.
44	Open a portal to the Plane of Water, no wider than 1 m in diameter.
45	Drink unlimited amounts of water with no ill effect, then vomit it back up at will.
46	Constantly draw and absorb any water-based fluids within 10 m. Stronger when you concentrate, enough to harm people through dessication.
51	Shoot a short beam of high-pressure water from your palms, like a water jet cutter.
52	Control a slowly floating orb of water, 3 m in diameter. It falls apart when you can't see it or lose concentration and nothing stops people from walking/swimming out of it.
53	Call or banish storms. Takes a while, though.
54	Leave behind an after-image of water. Basically when you punch somebody, they get punched again by a splash of water, plus your movements are blurred, but rather loud with all the splashing.
55	Create walls and simple objects out of ice. Requires water or humidity, so cannot be used in dry and hot environments.
56	Cover yourself in a power armour of ice. Requires water or humidity, so cannot be used in dry and hot environments.
61	Cause a mini-blizzard in a 10 m radius around yourself, blasting everything with snow and ice.
62	Flash-freeze all water within 10 m radius. Won't directly kill anything bigger than a mouse, but will chill creatures to the bone and likely trap them in ice.
63	Form a hailstone, then shoot it out. Depending on how long you keep growing it, it can be anything from a tiny grain through bullet to a cannonball.
64	Your senses are greatly enhanced while underwater, allowing you to hear infra- and ultrasound, track by scent, or see clearly even in dark waters.
65	Scry through reflections, displaying any other reflection on the same body of water. For example, when you touch a lake, you can make it reflect what is happening on the other shore.
66	Your deviant hydrokinesis works better on bodily fluids than clean water. You may puppet a creature around, or painfully extract blood through your victims' pores.

 

Elemental Powers: Earth

I like elemental powers. They have a strong theme, inbuilt factions and intuitive interactions. However, all too often they are boiled down to shoot fire, shoot ice, superstrength and flight/telekinesis. Not bad powers on their own, but why should every hydromancer shoot ice? That shouldn't even be the primary use of water manipulation!

I think powers should be diverse and distinct. When you have three hydromancers where one controls water, one ice and one steam, they are already more interesting thanks to their unique styles. Specialized, limited powers are more fun that all-encompassing ones, especially when those are still used only to shoot ice in the end.

Anyway, rant over, have some earth powers. The rest are hopefully coming soon.
 

From Naruto.

d50 Earth Powers
All geomancers have a great sense of direction, as if their understanding of the earth energy flows granted them an intuitive knack for geography.

1. Slowly levitate unworked earth-based materials within eyesight.
2. Move metals with concentration. Choose one metal that you have much better control over.
3. Create elemental-like constructs from an earth-based material (sand, stone, metal, clay, ...; choose one).
4. Create stationary tentacle-minions that can grapple or throw rocks at your enemies.
5. Animate statues with a touch.
6. Call a huge magma golem. It takes a while to arrive, clawing its way up from deep within the earth.
7. Grow blades of glass from anywhere on your body at will.
8. Grow metallic scales when attacked. The more brutal the assault, the stronger the scales.
9. Surround yourself with a small sandstorm, blinding and harming your foes. Also works with glass shards.
10. Transform into sand. You may fire sandblasts and heal by absorbing sand. However, you lose control of any wet sand and may only turn back if all your sand is dry and together.
11. Transform into living metal and even reshape your form at will, but you move as if in slow motion.
12. Transform into night-invulnerable but immobile diamond form. Prone to suddenly form-lock you when spammed.
13. Surf on sand, faster than a car can go.
14. Touch two pieces of metal to fuse them.
15. Call an earthquake. Normally, this shakes the room and creates small cracks or fissures. However, you may meditate for hours to bring about a city-wide earthquake.
16. Stomp the ground to crack-open a deep rift. Also works when you kick a wall.
17. Sense tremors of the earth within a city block. Footsteps require deep concentration to hear.
18. Understanding of geomantic energies allows you to build structures imbued with preternatural hardness and beauty.
19. By raising menhirs and dolmens at certain places, you can alter the flow of geomantic energies and bring great fertility to a region, or make it barren.
20. Feng shui mastery allows you to make any structure into a confounding labyrinth. People will get lost even in a two-room apartment. Stops working when the structure is damaged.
21. Tend to a feng shui garden. If you die, get buried there and not a single stone is amiss, you come back to life. You also don't age and need to eat or sleep in your garden.
22. Raise or lower ground, creating pillars and pits. Cooldown depends on how big the change is.
23. Conjure crystal spikes shooting up from the ground.
24. Grow a crystal shell around yourself or anyone you touch.
25. Discorporate and meld with the ground to possess a small area, moving the earth within as you wish. You may not move beyond the area without releasing your control, though.
26. Fall unconscious and possess a new body formed of earth-based materials. You cannot go too far from your real body.
27. Sink your arm into the ground to grow a gigantic stone arm from somewhere you can see.
28. Petrification/fossilization/crystallization through touch.
29. Tunnel through soil and unworked stone at a walking pace, closing the tunel behind you.
30. Shape an earth-based material (sand, stone, glass, clay, ...; choose one) into weapons and armour, imbuing them with increased strength.
31. Construct a rough "mecha" around yourself from boulders and rocks.
32. Breathe out massive clouds of dust.
33. Projectile vomit asphalt.
34. Spit big globs of magma.
35. Absorb soil to grow in size and power, shed it to return to human form.
36. Absorb metal to fill in injuries and replace missing body parts. Your metal prosthetics work normally, yet keep their hardness. You may even slowly reshape them.
37. Minor geokinesis allows you to pick up and throw boulders with ease.
38. Transmute soil into morass and sand to quicksand. The change is much slower for bigger areas. You can walk on such terrains with ease.
39. Transmute metals (though only about 10 cm³ per day before you start feeling faint) and knead them like clay.
40. Transmute earth to sharp but fragile crystal.
41. Rearrange earth on a large scale. Rough walls and structures take hours, new hills and cave systems take days.
42. Your strength and durability is greatly increased as long as you have skin contact with natural earth (no worked stone or metal).
43. With a touch, start an explosive growth in bones - but only dead bones, or more specifically calcium. Can be delayed.
44. Induce rapid erosion with a touch, turning stone to sand and soil to dust.
45. Annihilate metal with a touch.
46. Explosively shatter any glass or crystal with a glance.
47. Touch an object to make it either repel or attract metal for a short while.
48. Raise the gravity in an area no more than 5 m across severalfold.
49. You have gemstone eyes that cannot be harmed, unbreakable metal bones, or perfect porcelain teeth. Pretty minor as far as powers go.
50. Your skin is cold and marble-like, your wounds crack rather than bleed. You feel no pain and mundane damage is non-lethal for you.

 

Also from Naruto.

Frog Princess

I always thought elementals are neglected and unappreciated. We have so many different types of angels and demons and undead - but elementals are just "living" lumps of material. Their only distinguishing feature save for the obvious elemental abilities is their size. Why should every fiery creature be a demon? Make some of them fire elementals!

Elementals are not just matter animated in human shape, they are spirits like angels or fairies, with vast amount of different species. Some are animals, some are civilized people. Some live in the brains of elementalists.

Elementals are to unliving nature what souls are to living creatures. The spiritual part of every rock, river or wind. Unlike souls, they tend not to spend most of their time in their worldly shells. It takes them quite some effort to don and move their real world bodies, and only magical compulsion or great offense will usually make them.

But we're not here for the rant or metaphysics. Let's talk about princesses...

He he he, no.

Gorgeous women with frog heads, walking on water during daybreak and nightfall. Their moves as graceful as a dancing mountain spring. Their voice a calm and beautiful forest brook. The sound of tiny droplets raining from their skin. No dirt or muck could ever stain their beauty.

Unfortunately, there's the smell. They always smell like a murky, decaying pool of water.

Frog princesses are daughters of Hegarra of the Great Swamp, the Frog Queen and lesser elemental dragon of water, the eighth wife of Tethys. They oversee all murky, foul and polluted water. Hegarra is a neglectful mother, bored by the endless and meaningless bickering of her courtiers, unhappy in a marriage that never brought her any attention or affection from her husband, and disinterested in the day-to-day lives of her countless offspring. Frog princesses hate their mother, because it was her who gave them their portfolio and dominion over water no one wants.

Take the head...
by DoctorRat

...and the rest of the body.
Found here.

Being of noble blood (direct descendant of a lesser elemental dragon is quite something) yet lonesome and lacking protection, they are a common target for air elemental assassinations in the Cloud War*. They hate air elementals for all of their many sisters killed, and should you propose an alliance against an air elemental or payment for services in air elemental heads, they will likely gleefully agree.

They hate that most other spirits see them as a lever against their mother, or a path to her good graces. They think everyone lies to them and tries to use them, and unfortunately they are often not wrong. Thus they like to materialize in the real world when they can, as it offers some repose from the constant threat of the War and intrigues of Elemental Courts.

Frog princesses yearn for true love, for unconditional, trusting, dependable, everlasting love, for something they have never known. They hate humans. They think all a man will ever care for is their beautiful appearance, not their true selves. They think that women steal the hearts of men away from them. They hate children the most of all, for all frog princesses are born sterile and looking at a child reminds them of what they cannot ever have. When told what an emotional clusterfuck they are, they will very likely lash out in anger.

They are ill-tempered, vengeful, mistrustful, and romantic to a fault. They also take revenge very seriously, even if it's not their own revenge. Some people write their plights on a piece of paper and sent it as a paper boat on a swamp pool (or at least shout really loudly in a swamp) in hopes of a frog princess taking interest and helping them find their vengeance. So remember, should you make a frog princess fall in love with you, she would die for you. But should you break her heart, she would rather die than see you get away.

Frog princesses avoid direct confrontation, but when forced into one, they lick their foes with their long, frog-like tongues. The saliva of a frog princess is venomous, causing nausea, vomiting, and slow dehydration. Drinking water only worsens the nausea, forcing the poor victims to the floor, vomiting bile and blood. When they manage to poison an enemy or two, they try to escape and let the venom do its work. They sometimes poison the wells or other sources of water, especially when avenging a (real or imagined) slight. They like watching from afar as their enemies slowly die.

Frog princesses normally walk naked, for any clothes will limit their preternaturally agile movement and various transformations. In the presence of humans, though, they tend to use a glamour that grants them illusory clothes, as well as a human face. They can turn into a puddle of water, or a frog. They command frogs, grime and poison. A circle of at least three frog princesses may invoke a ritual which curses a whole village with unending rains, or a plague of frogs.

Lady of the Swamp by Naomi Savoie

Frog princess

HD 3

Def plate (body made of water)

Atk lick for poison (1d4 Con and vomiting), or grapple and drown

Save 8 Morale 5 (10 in love)

Special change shape, glamour

Motivation to brutally avenge all slights, to find true love

Don't believe the cute face!
It's all an illusion!

*) Long story short, water elementals put clouds on the sky and air elementals saw that as an invasion. The resulting war drags on since the Beginning.