Beetles & Birds

Beetle Milk Mead 

A beverage favored in the west of Gnydrion, beetle milk mead is made from the fermentation of a sugary liquid ("the milk") produced by a species of beetle native to the titanic trees of the coastal forests. These colonials insects have members of their community who function as living casks for their hive. They gorge themselves on food and store the liquid they produce in their abdomens so they distend to an incredible degree, having the appearance when full of plump fruit with a diameter as wide as the length of the first digit of a man's thumb. The milk is harvested from the engorged beetles and fermented. The resulting liquid is sometimes added to beer to sweeten it but can also be mixed with the local liquor to render that more enjoyable, as well.

The beetles are farmed by placing thick slices of the bark of their favored trees into beetlehouses. This practiced has allowed the production and enjoyment of beetle milk mead to spread to places where the trees do not grow.

Quaklu

Quaklus are the ubiquitous saddle birds of the Northwest region. It is assumed by most learned folk of the modern age, that the birds are a result of the puissant science of the ancients, though the pedants of the hwaopt have alleged that the quaklus are a distinct lineage from the creatures of humankin's homeworld and so must have been taken from some other world in the past.

Whatever their origins some quaklu, considered atavistic in the modern parlance, are more than just cunning animals and are capable of speech.  The accidental acquisition of such a gifted fowl is considered an unlucky turn due to their willingness to make their thoughts and wishes known--and unwelcome trait in a riding beast.

Return to Planet Funhouse Dungeon

Back in 2016, I wrote a post suggesting that there had never really been a sci-fi rpg equivalent of old D&D in the sense there had never really been a gonzo, promiscuously borrowing from all sorts of media sci-fi game of exploration that is generic. I think that statement is still largely true, if we limit it to games that really capture the gaming zeitgeist. Currently, horror science fiction hybrids seem to the order of the day.

It's true that gonzo/less serious science fiction has never been its most popular form in other media, but I feel like it's as popular as it has ever been with Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, and less popular but still big budget movies like Jupiter Ascending and Valerian.

The think, though, that the best model for a game of this sort is a show from nearly 60 years ago: the original Lost in Space. Sure it was aimed at kids and the amount of money spent on episodes left it with special effects like something from a decade earlier in comparison to Star Trek, but the mix of the lack of concern for serious science fiction (or logic at times) that came from making a kid-focused so combined with chasing the aesthetic of the popular Batman tv show, created encounters with the "unknown" that would be at home in any old school goofy dungeoncrawl.

A vending machine that can deliver androids to order--but then you have to pay for them. Faceless aliens in besparkled bowler hats. A space prospector that look like a miner forty-niner (complete with mule) but is blasting away to find an element that can create (or bestow) life. Space hillbillies. The Great Vegetable Rebllion.

Of course, Lost in Space has a bounded setting--and I think this is important. The Space Family Robinson are lost and marooned for most of the show on first one planet then another. This makes there adventures closer to a dungeoncrawl or at least wilderness crawl of a specific area. Of course, we never see the Robinson's methodically exploring, but there isn't a lot of ten foot pole poking around in Sword & Sorcery fiction either. If you want that sort of thing nothing stops you from doing it. 

In any case, I think the appeal of a science fiction campaign limited to one world, like Vance's Planet of Adventure or Lost in Space, but a world that is pretty gonzo as appeal.

How Do You Like Your Sci-Fi?

I posed this question this question as the title of a blogpost the irst time on February 15, 2013. It's a topic that TV Tropes--unsurprisingly--has some thoughts on. This scale is a bit granular and more detailed (and perhaps a bit more judgey). Here's my sort of summary of the basics of both of these:

Hard: So, on one end we've got fairly plausible stuff that mostly extrapolates on current technology. This includes stuff like William Gibson's Sprawl series and the novels of Greg Egan (from the near future mystery Quarantine to the far future Diaspora). A game example is this category would be somethig like GURPS Transhuman Space.

Medium: Getting a little more fantastic, we arrive in the real of a lot of TV shows and computer games. One end of this pretty much only needs you to believe in FTL and artificial gravity but is otherwise pretty hard. The fewer impossible things you're asked to believe (and the better rationalized the ones you are asked to believe in are), the harder it is. Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean Le Flambeur trilogy falls here, on the harder end. The middle of this group adds in something like psionics (Traveller gets in here, and a lot of science fiction novels, like Dune and Hyperion). The softer end throws in a lot of too-human aliens and "pure energy" beings (Babylon 5, most Star Trek).

Soft: Here lies fantasy but with a science fiction veneer and context. Some Star Trek (the animated series, particularly) comes in here, and Farscape. This is also the domain of Star Wars. Simon R. Green's Deathstalker cycle turns up here, too.

Ultra-Soft: Some Star Wars tie-ins in other media come in here, as do things that include magic (or similar fantastic elements} mixed in with an otherwise soft sci-fi universe: This would include superhero sci-fi properties (the Legion of Super-Heroes and Guardians of the Galaxy) and comic book epic sci-fi (what might also be thought of as Heavy Metal sci-fi) like Dreadstar, The Incal, and The Metabarons. It's possible it stops beings science fiction on the mushiest end of this catgory and just becomes "fantasy."

So what consistency of sci-fi is your favorite--particularly in regard to rpgs?

The Howling Dark

Bedlam is one of the worst duties you can pull. Some guys think the Company's punishing them, but that would require them to take notice of us, wouldn't it?

Anyway, only the small ships go to Bedlam and they slow down toward the end so you spend longer in sleep than on a lot of runs. They have to do it that way, because Bedlam is all inside. You drop out into a big cavern. It's all caves and passages. If there's a surface or a single star in that whole reality, nobody has seen it.

The Company and other corporate partners are mining that rock. That part's not too bad. Gravity pulls you toward it, like somehow you were inside a rotating hab and it's all spin gravity, only it isn't spinning. It's weird, but no weirder than other places. What's bad about Bedlam, what drives the miners and support staff crazy, are the winds and the dark.

No sun, no stars. No light. Except for the lightning we put in, it's totally black. 

And those winds--they don't make any sense. Where are they coming from? Where do they go to? They come screaming through those big tunnels and its like a banshee behind you. You can't hear anything. Can't think even. People go deaf from it, true, but the ear protection helps with that part. There's something else, though. The tech guys say it's infrasound--sound so low you can't hear it with the ears. It gets in your head, though. Effects the brain. Causes paranoia, hallucinations. Drives people crazy.

At least they say it's infrasound that does it. I wonder. Ask anybody that's been there are they'll tell you the whole place is thick with, well, malice. I think that place hates us, and it's out to get us all.

In the Shadow of the Space Gods

Amrit is a fluid substance found within the spacetime called Asgard. In its found state it is a thick, clear fluid containing a faint, white, internal luminescence. Amrit is psychoactive, leading to intense entheogenic effects, but in a refined form its constituents are an essential component of rejuvenation fluids, anti-aging compounds, and thousands of other medical uses. 

Your mission is insert into Asgard and retrieve as much amrit as you can without inviting the attention of the local inhabitants or otherwise impairing the safety of your team or causing the loss of Company equipment.

Local Reality: Volume relatively small, perhaps no larger than a jovian planet. No breathable atmosphere. 

Largest observed body is an irregular asteroid, estimated to to be 640 km along it's semimajor axis/widest diameter, and approximately 27 km along a perpendicular axis. Appearance likened to a mountain floating in space. Several structures or settlements are visible on the surface. Asteroid is surrounded by an undulating amrit fluid disk (in fact, actually a sphere, but with its greatest concentration in the disk), perhaps 1 km thick at the asteroid, and tapering toward the periphery.  Fluid is clear but slightly luminescent, possibly from contain organism.

Inhabitants: Amrit fluid disk appears to be inhabited by various lifeforms perhaps analogous to marine life on terrestrial worlds. The asteroid body appears to be inhabited by giant, luminous humanoid forms (approximately 500 m tall) that appear to be dressed in some sort of armor or environmental suit (though the possibility remains this is some sort exoskeleton). Their number is variable, with two being the minimum observed and six being the maximum. The giants spend most of their time immobile. but they have been observed to walk short distances or raise their limbs or gesture. They do appear to broadcast to each other, tight beam, along a psychic frequency. This communication resists translation. Attempts to do so have resulted in AI or biologic analysts developing intense religious mania.

The structures on the asteroid would only seem to serve the giants with difficulty, so it is felt they house smaller beings, or are not buildings at all.

Hazards: Simple observation of the asteroid and its inhabitants can lead to paralyzing, pathologic sense of wonder, akin to various psychosomatic culture shock syndromes known from Earth. At it's most intense (in perhaps 20-25% of observers) this can take the form of a transient psychosis like Jerusalem syndrome. Theogenic shielding and pre-medication can ameliorate these effects. Auditory hallucinations of a choir is often an early warning sign.

Fear (perhaps what could be termed "holy dread") often afflicts crew when they see the giants. This impairs mission function and team cohesion. Crewmembers have been known to mutiny under the intense belief that harvesting amrit is effectively sacrilege, and the "gods" (giants) might be wrathful. Reassurance that the giants have never been definitively shown to take direct action against harvester crews is likely to be of benefit without the activation of in-suit sedation.

Team leaders should be aware that indirect action by the giants has led to loss of crews by undetermined means. These losses have appeared to be preceded by the shift of the giant's attention to the crew's actions. Our best recommendation is to keep crew action routine and efficient, quelling any abnormal or "showy" behavior.

All The Lost Come to Mother

Here's the bad news: You're lost.

Faster-than-light travel is supposed to work like this: The ship's caster makes the sigils that get displayed on the ship's hull. The caster encodes multidimensional state vectors into a compressed, symbolic code so routing information can be read by the transdimensional machinery of an extinct, alien civilization allowing shortcuts through spacetime.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, and it works pretty well most of the time. 

There are the other times, though, when ships wind up someplace other than the intended destination or just disappears entirely. At times the casting is probably to blame; the internal state of the caster has always been a hard to control variable. Sometimes there's just a glitch--an act of God or gods in the machine, you might say.

You experienced one of those other times. You’re lost in a distant part of the multiverse, a long way in space and time from where you wanted to be or where you’re from. You're alive, which makes you better off than some, but the chances of you getting home again are slim.

Now here's a bit of good news: You've been found. A lot of the lost wind up limping into the Ring. Nobody knows why; something to do with local spacetime, I think. It's like the place where objects bouncing through the conduits come finally to rest. Anyway, Mother has taken you in, like she does all the lost ones that show up on her doorstep. This is Mother's station. 

Now, Mother opened the door, but you've got to find a way to make a life for yourself here. We all earn our keep. The Company will be glad to give you place to live, credits to spend, and a job to pay for both. You'll want to stay in this sector, it's mostly humans and humanoids--oxy-breathers from a rational, four dimensional universe--around here. The aliens in other parts of the station, well, you have to be prepared. And you won't be. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The job? I'm not going to lie to you, it will be dangerous. It's important work, the Company will tell you that, but it doesn't always make sense from the boots on the ground perspective, you understand. You'll see a lot of weird stuff out there, but keep your head, do the work, and you'll come home. Probably.

This is a follow-up to this post.

Weird Revisited: Aboard Aureate Majestrix on the Occasion of the Panarch's Anniversary

The airship Aureate Majestrix is a wonder, even by the standards of airships. It was carved by the hands of the Ancients from a single, massive stone of an unknown variety. Fitted with mirrors which serve as sails, it is pushed to its destination by concentrated magical energy beamed at it. Long ago, it was claimed by the Panarch, and now it is operated mainly to transport those of means from Imbis to the Panarch's capital. Today, it carries various dignitaries, courtiers, and seekers of influence to the celebration for the anniversary of the Panarch:

by Jason Sholtis

A hohmmkudhuk stone-shaper whose name is actually Mmungmatukt but he is not offended when called "Mung Matuk." His clan wishes to send a new Princess to establish a descendant warren in wilderness controlled by Omunth-Ech and wishes the Panarch to support their settlement. Mung Matuk bears a tableau vivant in stone that enacts a fanciful version of the Panarch's victory over the Great M'gog and the Gog Horde as a gift.

Yreul Dahut, Galardinet Officer of the Daor Obdurate armed with customary punishment rods. Her presence suggests there is a defector from her city-state's tyranny among the celebrants, and one formerly highly placed, as the Obdurs are notoriously frugal with state funds and disdain public spectacle.

Pwi dwek Abth, hwaopt senior scholar sent by the Library to record the events in that pedantic and overly detailed way hwaopt are famous for. He wears heavy perfume to mask his odor in deference to the "simplistic and unrefined" olfactory preferences of humans, but it is not quite sufficient to the most sensitive noses.

Zira Si, ostensibly a demimondaine in the entourage of--well, one noble or another, depending on who you ask. She is actually a powerful Green sorceress and prized agent of secretive Yzordadreth, Mountain of Wizards. When her mission is done, her confederates will swoop in under cover of darkness and spirit her away on a swift-winged and silent thrykee, and no one will remember she was ever there.

(more from this world.)

The Lake of Vermilion Mists

On shores of the Lake of Vermilion Mists nearly-naked, female divers inspect their haul of rare, ultramarine scintilla. Here and there their bodies bear what appear to be wave-like, mauve tattoos, darkened to the color of fresh bruises in the lake’s lurid, roiling glow. The marks are actually scars from the lash of urulu tentacles. The divers become tolerant to the hallucinogenic effects over time but not the pain, so they try to snatch the scintilla when the urulu are lost in pre-mating combat dances.

The urulu do not seem to value the scintilla or pre-scintilla clusters, but they zealously guard their territory and do not communicate or trade with humans or other sophonts as far as is known. Indeed, humankin long held them to be merely animals, despite their rituals and tool use, but the view of hwaopt academics that they are in fact sapient is the current prevailing theory.

There is a black market for the urulu toxin. Unscrupulous procurers use desperate addicts as lures to provoke ururlu to the shallows where they can be ensnared and their tentacles milked.

The urulu, despite their vague resemblance to cephalopods of Old Earth, are air breathers. The lake is no lake in the traditional sense, but instead a large depression filled with a thick, red mist, with currents of darker or lighter shades, and the occasional flash of static discharge. It is unknown where the mist is natural or a product of ancient ieldra magic, but there is no other body of its type known. 

Werewolf Trooper!

 

Art by Jason Sholtis

The werewolves were supreme in the 32nd century. Only the destruction of the moon final broke their reign.

Wednesday Comics: Prism Stalker

Image Comics has really been putting out some solid science fiction series. So many, in fact, that its hard to keep up with them all. I was clued in to Prism Stalker by Anne over at DIY&Dragons.

The ad copy compares it to the work of Octavia Butler (which I can see) and David Cronenberg (which is a bit iffier, so far). It tells the story of a young woman from a less technological advanced world, devastated by a plague whose people are refugees and indentured servants in wider galactic society. She impresses a visiting recruiter enough that she's taken for training in a special unit being taught to harness the reality-warping power of an alien world where the mysterious native species is "resisting" the civilizing forces of galactic hegemony.

The art is great and the story would make a good film, I think.

Weird Revisited: Four Nonhuman Species, Briefly Described

The original version of this post appeared the first of July in 2016.

They are all inhabitants of the same distant world.

Art by Jason Sholtis

Ylthlaxu: There are few of them left, and for that, a great many sophont beings are grateful. When they emerge from the shadows, tall and skeletally thin, too often it is to feed. Their tendrils snake out from their face that is not a face and devour the brains of humanoids. It is very unpleasant to see. They once commanded a vast star empire by mental domination, and they are accustom to being obeyed. They reproduce by turning other beings into more ylthlaxu by introducing a mutagen into the bloodstream and nervous system of their victims.

Skarzg: Sometimes they run on four legs, sometimes on two. They are gaunt things, like greyhounds the size of men, if greyhounds had rubbery, scabrous hides, and long snouts faces full of nightmare teeth. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. They live like animals, but they have the power of speech and are cunning and cruel.

Trell: Blueskinned, four-eyed giants from another world, the Trell came in great flying cities where the parties and symposia seemed not to end. They are now somewhat fallen and decadent--and sometimes more savage--than before. They can be hedonists or ascetics, but their personal desires tend to outweigh the desires of lesser creatures. Every non-Trell is certainly a lesser creature. In times past, they were often trendsetters and propagators of cult religions and faddish notions. Now, their dwindling race mostly keeps to their crumbling sky cities and celebrates the past.

by Ken Kelly

Ieldra: One of the native species of this world, ieldra are now only a remnant of what they once when when their sacred groves dotted the land and their queens fought Nest Wars for glory and territory. They remind humans of insects in many ways: antennae, large eyes, and peculiar movements.  Ieldra may be immortal, and their life stages are marked by instars named for the seasons. Summer wildings, their honey-colored adolescents, are savage things left to hunt and laugh and sometimes kill in what sacred groves and hidden grottoes are left to them. They seldom work stone or metal, but instead shape living things.

Clerics of the Far Future

Clerics of the Latter Ages do not serve the many gods of Old Earth, those protectors of cities and ancient ruins and the old knowledge of humankin. They are not priests. In fact, had they not been set upon the path the communications between the gods and lesser spirits would have driven them mad. They could hear, but could no more return the correct responses than any of their kin who were deaf to the unending, unanswered transmissions.

What saves the cleric from such a fate is the holy symbol. These devices made or found by the Ancients and brought back from the stars allow a cleric to enter a state of communion with the transcendent, the Divine. The signal of the Divine clarifies or attenuates the babble of the gods and spirits, and opens the way for clerics to command them, wielding their borrowed power as a conduit for Divine will.

Some scholars claim that the holy symbol merely provides contact with minds no great than the gods of Earth, only located on other planes or worlds.  Some even hold simply places mind of the cleric in an altered state, that a holy symbol only facilitates self-deception. Clerics are above such speculations. They have the surety of faith.

Despite their unbelief, wandering clerics are given shelter and support by the priesthoods as they can aid in determining a god's wishes at times when even priests may be at a loss.

Sword & Planet Character Name Generator

Art by Clyde Caldwell

After way more intensive review of Barsoomian names in Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books and adding a dash of Gardner Fox's Llarn novels, which pretty closely mimic Barsoomian morphology, I have come up with a series of generators for Martian names, as accurate as I can make it. Well, there's one name from the series it can't generate, but by the time I discovered this, it was too late. Anyway, it's pretty close to getting them all. Check it out.

Note the in the structures given for the names multiple "elements" typical mean a new word for males names, but is more likely to be a multi-syllabic "single" name for females, but since this isn't always the case I've elected to leave the dividing up to you. For example: EES is the structure of Djor Kantos, but also Carthoris and Vanuma.

Scavengers of the Latter Ages

art by Shahab Alizadeh

Here are some further refinements/elaborations on the idea I presented in a previous post for a 5e (or any sort of D&D really) game that was actually far future science fiction replicating fantasy.

• The Distance Future: Millions of years certainly, though exactly how long is obscured by the mists of time and the humankin's fickle devotion to data storage formats. It is possible that biologic humanity even disappeared at one point but was resurrected by its nostalgic offspring. Scholars are aware that more than one civilization has come and gone and the Height was long ago.
• A Neglected Garden: Earth was once an intensively managed paradise, maintained by nanotechnology and AI that were integrated into the natural world. Most of the animals were heavily modified by genetic engineering and technology, and some were of exozootic stock. Even humans were integrated into this network, and everyone born still carries the nanotechnological  system within them. Though technological spirits and godlings still live in nature, they no longer heed humans on any large scale, at least in part due to the fact that few humans can activate the necessary command codes.
• Diverse Humankin: Through genetic engineering, different clades of human-descended biologics have developed. The reasons for the modifications from baseline seen in these "races" may not always be apparent. Perhaps some were just art projects for some creative god?

Art by Laura Zuccheri

• The grist: Commoners speak of "magic users" in dim memory of the fact that everyone of Earth is a "user" in the computer science sense, but wizards know there is no such thing as magic, only grist, the layers of nanotechnology that envelope the world. Everyone uses it to a degree, but few have the aptitude to develop the skill to employ the grist to work wonders.
• The ether: The underlying grid of spimes and metadata, which supports the nano and once integrated it with the internet, is known as the Etheric Plane or Ether. Wizards and other magic users are aware it plays an important part in their spells and also in the powers of gods and incorporeal intelligences, but they are like mice within a palace, ignorant of its total function and potential.
• The Outer Planes: Civilization at the Height was not confined to the Primal Earth, but extended through the stars. Some of the posthumans that went to other stars disassembled planets to convert to computronium, then huddled close to stars for power. Their civilizations sometimes became very strange, perhaps even went mad. Many of their networks still connect to Primal Earth through ancient but robust relays. Humankin of Earth are often in grave danger when they venture into such places.
• Treasures Underground: Earth's current society is built on the detritus of millennia. Current humankin seek to exploit it in rudimentary ways, and more advanced civilizations of earlier times sought to do so in more advanced ways. The tunnels they dug still exist, but so do the guardians they put in place and the dangers they encountered.

Two Towns

These settlements go in this world, but certainly could be placed elsewhere.

Tuskinth: A village whose primary industry is nonnig husbandry. it specializes in the so-called healing breed of furry nonnig, whose purring and warmth is said to have a calming influence on the nerves which aids in healing, and of course, nonnig of any breed are highly nutritious and flavorful. The nonnig yards are composed of hill-mounds surrounded by small moats (the nonnigs avoid water). The nonnig breeders can be recognized by the mail gauntlets they wear on their left hands, to protect themselves from the sting of the mound wyrms that form a symbiotic relationship with the nonnigs and protect them from predation with the warrens. Some nonnig breeders may keep small mounds of scintilla-sniffers on the side, but the practical folk of Tuskinth look down upon treasure-seekers.

Harfo and Sons is the most prosperous of the breeders, though many in Tuskinth would opine that only the old man, Grenz Harfo has any particular head for nonnig-breeding. His eldest son, Halx, is a handsome dullard, and his youngest. Festeu, is a idler and wastrel. Of note, he does own a rare (outside of the Daor Obdurate) telesthetic hound. The poor beast is quite mad, made so by an over-sensitivity to human anxieties resulting from over-breeding. Its shrew-like snout is has a-quiver and dripping, and it's whip-like tail sways nervously.

Horbizond: Was the name of an ancient city, and also the current modest village that squats in a meager portion of it. The people of Horbizond dress in the decaying finery of the ancients and appoint their over-sized but crumbling homes in an equally ostentatious fashion. They live in holy dread of the Prismatic Man, an angular, crystalline visitant, who materializes at random intervals to isolated folk of the town. The actions of the Prismatic Man are various and strange. He has at times pointed with a glassy finger to hidden treasures. Other times, he has emitted a chiming that the hear perceived as some spiritual wisdom. Then there are the occasions when he has seemed to produce rays of color from his palms that struck an individual dead. If there is any rationale to whom the Prismatic Man favors and whom he destroys, the folk of Horbizond have yet to discern it. In fact, they believe it would be blasphemous to do so. The Hwaopt Library is willing to pay for detailed observations of the Prismatic Man, whose nature and purpose they are eager to discover.

The Return of Descriptions in Need of Hexes

Edd Cartier

Between Inaust and Rynaw on the Old Panarch Road, a hired coach rumbles past pulled at breakneck speed by a velocipede team. One wonders what mission drives the passengers to brave the dangers and discomforts of the road at night with marauding Gog bands in the vicinity, an ogre slain nearby within a fortnight, and the uncanny croak of a nyctoghoul heard in the distance.

In a clearing in Unthran Wood, a flame-colored thrykee has fallen, bleeding and broken-winged, dying. Skeleton Men pirates move out from their flier, stalking cautiously toward the creature with weapons drawn. The thrykee's saddle is empty. Citrine scintilla glint in the grass, forming a loose trail out from it and toward the surrounding trees.

Enrique Alcatena

Beyond the old fortress of Eneb-Draath, at the edge of the Sanguine Desert, youthful bands of tribesfolk howl and dance around fires built amid the fearsome, angular shadow of their war machines, their war gods. Drunk on liquor made from desert lichen and machine ichor, they whip themselves into a battle frenzy. The tribes claim descent from the First Men who were born in the void and reared solely by machines, and so view the ancient and derelict things left from the First Men's war with the ieldri as their birthright.

These are from this world.

Skarzg

Art by Jason Sholtis

Large monstrosity, neutral evil

Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points 84 (8d10 + 40)
Speed 30 ft. (40 ft. on all fours)

 STR 18 (+4) DEX 13 (+1) CON 20 (+5) INT 7(-2) WIS 9 (-1) CHA 6 (-2)
Skills Perception +2
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 12
Languages Skarzg
Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)
Keen Smell. The skarzg has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on smell.
Regeneration. The skarg regains 10 hit points at the start of its turn. If  it takes acid or fire damage, this trait doesn’t function at the start of the skarzg’s next turn. The skarzg dies only if it starts its turn with 0 hit points and doesn’t regenerate.

Actions:
Multiattack. The skarzg makes three attacks: one with its bite and two with its claws.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d10 + 4) piercing damage. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 14). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained and the skarzg can’t bite another target.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (2d4 + 4) slashing damage.

Skarzg are rapacious predators, animalistic but cunning. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. Their origins are lost in the mists of time, though some believe they were brought to this world by the Ylthlaxu who used them in sadistic hunts. They now roam free in the wild places, though thankfully, not in great numbers.

Some Science Fantasy Hexcrawl Influences

I spent the rpg-related portion of my weekend getting copies of the Azurth Adventures Digest ready for mailing (There are still copies available. Get yours today!). My work on the Ghostlight Fen thing got delayed, so it seems like a good time to talk about influences of the as yet nameless setting of which its a part.

Lord Valentine's Castle (Robert Silverberg): A distant planet settled by humans and other species long ago. Despite a science fictional underpinning, it operates much like fantasy with mostly primitive technology and things like the Lady of Sleeps that promotes moral behavior by sending dreams and a competing King of Dream that sends nightmares.

Planet of Adventure (Jack Vance): A Planetary Romance (or Planetary Picaresque) which stands above the myriad of planetary romances due to Vance's wit, interesting alien species/cultures, and quirky minor characters.

The Coldfire Trilogy (C.S. Friedman): A science fantasy that (like Silverberg's Majipoor) feels more like straight up fantasy. Friedman adds the innovation of a rationalization for the existence of "magic" (not unlike Jorune).

The Prime Mondeign stories (Rob Chilson): These are in the dying earth subgenre, perhaps a bit more science fictional than Vance's stories (something a bit like a more rationalized and less computer gamey Numenera). These stories haven't been collected, but you can read one of them, "The Wortling," here.

The Spire by Simon Spurrier and Jeff Stokely: A Medievalish society of various aliens and mutants on a planet long ago settled by humans.

A Fae Mist O'er Hangs the Ghostlight Fen

The Ghostlight Fen presents a feature common to this world, but a greater danger in this place, the substance the current human inhabitants often call "magic" but their ancient progenitors called "fae." In the parlance of the original human colonists fae is a system, perhaps even a network, that spans the entire planet and can manipulate matter and energy in accordance with the will of the user. The indigenous species are born knowing how to manipulate this system in various ways, but other can learn to control it. Control is the keyword, and the system is psychoactive and will respond to unconscious mind as easily as the conscious.

Indeed, theorists in ancient times speculated that the fae was a created rather than natural phenomena and the demons from the unconscious of its creators destroyed them, leaving only their creations (the ieldri and others) behind.

Fae permeates and surrounds the world, but in some places it collects and goes awry. Some of those bad places were caused by overstressing the system, as the ieldri sorcerers did in their desperate war against the ylthlaxu. Others may be places where it has just broken down with time. The Ghostlight Fen seems to be one of the former type.

This dysfunction manifests itself several ways, but most particularly: peculiars and visitants. Peculiars are small, discrete areas of reality distotions generated using these tables. Visitants are more pseudo-encounters of weirdness using these tables. The chance of coming across these in a given hex in the Fen per day is as follows:

Green Fen Hex: Peculiar - 20%, Visitant 5%
Pink Fen Hex: Peculiar - 60%, Visitant 30%

Spellcasters and Fae: All arcane spellcasters (not just sorcerers) are subject to something akin to a wild magic surge. After casting a 1st level or higher spell, a roll of a 1 on d20 requires a d100 roll on the table in the 5e PHB. In green hexes, this roll is only required for the first spell cast by an individual caster per hex. In the pink hexes it is required for the first spell of each spell level cast by an individual caster. Clerical casting is only affected in pink hexes and in the manner of green hexes for arcane casters.

Inspirations: The concept of the fae was inspired by C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy, but also borrows from the some of the rationalizations of magic in Hite's Trail of Cthulhu: Rough Magicks, details of  Forbidden Planet (1958), and Roadside Picnic.

Reskinned Monsters of Ghost Light Fen

Here are some monsters that will likely appear in upcoming posts on the Ghostlight Fen hexmap. Some of those, I'll probably give "official" stats at some point, but they can pretty easily be approximate (or replaced) with some existing monsters.

by Wayne Barlowe

Skarzg
Sometimes they run on four legs, sometimes on two. They are gaunt things, like greyhounds the size of men, if greyhounds had rubbery, scabrous hides, and beaked faces full of nightmare teeth. They are very hard to kill, and they will eat anything. They live like animals, but they have speech and are cunning and cruel. [Treat as a troll.]

Gog
Four-haired, fur-covered savages. Their faces are noseless and their skin hangs somewhat loose, which might have the effect of making them appear a bit comical--to someone unacquainted with their propensity to violence and rumored anthropophagy. The variety found in the Ghostlight Fen have indigo colored pelts. [Treat as orcs, with chiefs like bugbears.]

Matagot
Otherworldly creatures with disturbingly human faces and pantherine bodies. They are not to be trusted. [Treat as a Rakhasa, though on the lower end for hit point.]

by Tom Kidd

Bandaryegs
Arboreal, lemurine creatures whose sneak-thievery is nuisance but whose mockery and incessant whispering has uncanny effects on the minds of humans. [Treat as a monkey or similar small animal, but that have an ability like the 5e spell vicious mockery and a troupe may cause an effect similar to dissonant whispers.]