STAKEWOOD TREE
“The day that Captain Weathermay died Yakov Dilisnya was with Nicolae Valentin and myself. Lest some misunderstanding be provoked by one or the other with their talk of gods at dawn and in the Mists, they were being kept away from the populous and nowhere was farther away than my expedition into the jungle. The diversity and the peculiarity of its species was astonishing. Our guide was in the middle of correcting my hopelessly inadequate system of classification when a tethered stake, much like a harpoon, struck the translator square in the chest. Nicolae caught the man as he fell, not realising that he was beyond saving, the stake having pierced his heart. Yakov stepped forward boldly, shielding them even as he conjured about himself a thin film of faintly glowing mist. Our guide stepped behind me, called forth from thin air four rats of extraordinary size, and gestured frantically for me to cut the tether. This proved to be hideously difficult and no sooner had I begun than two more missiles burst forth from high in a tree, each staking a rat which promptly vanished. Our guide conjured more rats and unleashed, strangely, a verbal tirade, laced with the word Kali, against Yakov for having conjured a cloaking mist. Despite the concealment it afforded us two more stakes struck home, the one sending a rat squealing back to whence it came and the other forcing a gasp from Yakov’s lungs. Nicolae rose, declared our translator dead, ordered us to withdraw, and turned to the freeing of Yakov. Three more rats were heard to perished before the pair managed to join us at a safe distance where the grisly task could be attempted of extracting the tendrils that were coursing through Yakov’s body and threatening to root him to the ground. For you see our assailant was a tree.”
-Charlie Wescote, Ship's Biologist of the HMS Retriever, giving evidence to the board of inquiry investigating the death of Captain Weathermay, discoverer of Sri Raji
Teeny Tiny Tales of Terror: S is for Sinister
SPELLSTITCHED
“As seasoned troops, the survivors of the first invasion were kept close to the Darkonese border. The unpleasant assignment took an ugly turn after a few weeks. Whenever we would raise our heads up out of the muck to assume the slightest offensive posture, a flock of Drakov’s beloved Zweifalk, only no longer living and partially stripped of their plumage, with eldritch runes inscribed upon their bared flesh, would swoop down, seeking to main and terrorise. Magically and mundanely, with fell enchantments and with claws and beaks, each would seek to steal our sight, their frightful presence often sufficing to put our bravest to ignominious flight.”
-Gustov Petroff, hawksman and horse smuggler wanted for desertion from the Falkovnian army, describing his posting to the Drogash front
“As seasoned troops, the survivors of the first invasion were kept close to the Darkonese border. The unpleasant assignment took an ugly turn after a few weeks. Whenever we would raise our heads up out of the muck to assume the slightest offensive posture, a flock of Drakov’s beloved Zweifalk, only no longer living and partially stripped of their plumage, with eldritch runes inscribed upon their bared flesh, would swoop down, seeking to main and terrorise. Magically and mundanely, with fell enchantments and with claws and beaks, each would seek to steal our sight, their frightful presence often sufficing to put our bravest to ignominious flight.”
-Gustov Petroff, hawksman and horse smuggler wanted for desertion from the Falkovnian army, describing his posting to the Drogash front
The cure for what ails you
SKIN KITE
The great spinning pin wheel of beautiful young women, breathtakingly dressed, and of richly endowed men, decadently clad, flew apart as shrieks shattered the ballroom’s decorum. No, not yet another case of thankless and spiteful Borcan servants poisoning the punch. A fetching beauty, well attired in our latest fashion, but of entirely suspect nobility, her nouveau riche family owning a scrap of land outside of Ilvin, was making a perfect spectacle of herself, her arms flapping about hysterically, somehow reminiscent of a wounded duck. Granted, not without reason. For the most hideous hunk of skin you could ever imagine, which would have looked out of place even on a Vistani crone or a caliban, hung between her neck and her bosom like half sheered wool. Ivana would not have invited her to Misericordia, let alone let her in, looking like that, so evidently something unspeakable had just befallen the poor thing. The devilishly handsome, if somewhat unimaginatively clothed, Peter Mournesworth of Mordent, who is beginning to carve out for himself quite a reputation as an incorruptible force for truth and justice on both sides of the Musarde, stepped boldly forth, offered a brief, dignified apology to the strickened whelp for what he was about to do, then seized most shockingly and most violently that piece of ‘flesh’ and tore it free. As with one arm he caught the swooning, bloodied girl, who he passed foolishly into the ever lecherous hands of Ivan Dilisnya, with the other he fought to hold and to fend off a thing that struggled with all the savagery of a landlocked sea devil, at last pinning it under his boot and cutting it to ribbons with his very long sword.
-Extract from the society pages of Port-a-Lucine
The great spinning pin wheel of beautiful young women, breathtakingly dressed, and of richly endowed men, decadently clad, flew apart as shrieks shattered the ballroom’s decorum. No, not yet another case of thankless and spiteful Borcan servants poisoning the punch. A fetching beauty, well attired in our latest fashion, but of entirely suspect nobility, her nouveau riche family owning a scrap of land outside of Ilvin, was making a perfect spectacle of herself, her arms flapping about hysterically, somehow reminiscent of a wounded duck. Granted, not without reason. For the most hideous hunk of skin you could ever imagine, which would have looked out of place even on a Vistani crone or a caliban, hung between her neck and her bosom like half sheered wool. Ivana would not have invited her to Misericordia, let alone let her in, looking like that, so evidently something unspeakable had just befallen the poor thing. The devilishly handsome, if somewhat unimaginatively clothed, Peter Mournesworth of Mordent, who is beginning to carve out for himself quite a reputation as an incorruptible force for truth and justice on both sides of the Musarde, stepped boldly forth, offered a brief, dignified apology to the strickened whelp for what he was about to do, then seized most shockingly and most violently that piece of ‘flesh’ and tore it free. As with one arm he caught the swooning, bloodied girl, who he passed foolishly into the ever lecherous hands of Ivan Dilisnya, with the other he fought to hold and to fend off a thing that struggled with all the savagery of a landlocked sea devil, at last pinning it under his boot and cutting it to ribbons with his very long sword.
-Extract from the society pages of Port-a-Lucine
Last edited by cure on Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The cure for what ails you
SKIN THIEF
-I asked with a shiver: “What sort of man skins another alive?”
-Vail replied: “A torturer, a mad man of science, or no man at all.”
-Uneasily, I asked: “A Fey?”
-Vail, as he reexamined the half-eaten remains, answered absently: “Something highly dexterous and reasonably intelligent, that can tie knots. There are stories of certain Fey fraying men alive, but none to my knowledge of the victims being eaten alive too. The same is generally true of sadists and crazed doctors. Also there is the fact that the killer, to string up the victim like this, must have above average strength.”
-Vail drew my attention to the raw meat of the neck and I whispered: “Teeth marks.”
-He added: “Not at all human, indeed almost ursine, and perhaps bearing poison, notice the slight discolouration. Further, the half dozen black hairs clinging to the raw flesh are not human either.”
-I summarised: “We are looking for a man-eating beast, black haired, strong, dexterous, preternaturally intelligent.”
-Vail responded: “While that is true, I doubt very much that a single witness will have seen the creature that you describe. What is missing from our crime scene?”
I observed perplexedly: “His clothes. What would a beast want with his clothes?”
Triumphantly, Vail cried: “Not just his clothes! His skin, Colonel his skin! And why would a bestial thief take a man’s clothes and his skin?”
The Skin Thief, Colonel Oliver Pendleton
-I asked with a shiver: “What sort of man skins another alive?”
-Vail replied: “A torturer, a mad man of science, or no man at all.”
-Uneasily, I asked: “A Fey?”
-Vail, as he reexamined the half-eaten remains, answered absently: “Something highly dexterous and reasonably intelligent, that can tie knots. There are stories of certain Fey fraying men alive, but none to my knowledge of the victims being eaten alive too. The same is generally true of sadists and crazed doctors. Also there is the fact that the killer, to string up the victim like this, must have above average strength.”
-Vail drew my attention to the raw meat of the neck and I whispered: “Teeth marks.”
-He added: “Not at all human, indeed almost ursine, and perhaps bearing poison, notice the slight discolouration. Further, the half dozen black hairs clinging to the raw flesh are not human either.”
-I summarised: “We are looking for a man-eating beast, black haired, strong, dexterous, preternaturally intelligent.”
-Vail responded: “While that is true, I doubt very much that a single witness will have seen the creature that you describe. What is missing from our crime scene?”
I observed perplexedly: “His clothes. What would a beast want with his clothes?”
Triumphantly, Vail cried: “Not just his clothes! His skin, Colonel his skin! And why would a bestial thief take a man’s clothes and his skin?”
The Skin Thief, Colonel Oliver Pendleton
The cure for what ails you
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Nathan of the FoS
- Fiendish Enforcer
- Posts: 5246
- Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2003 3:39 pm
- Location: San Francisco CA
Salt shadow [Ravenloft Gazetteer IV]
"Do you know what they take from this mine, elf?" the giant asked me, its voice low and weary.
"It is a salt mine," I answered. "All know it."
"Do you know what they leave here?"
For that I had no answer.
"Cruelty breeds cruelty, death makes death, darkness cleaves to darkness, salt seasons salt," he said, making a sort of song of it. "They leave their lives and their shadows here." Flinging the stone in his hands into the cavern, he and I listened to it skip across the floor and rattle down a shaft.
"Do not enter unless you wish to do likewise."
Jameld of Hroth to Laurie and Gennifer Weathermay-Foxgrove, private correspondence
Spider, sword [Monsters of Faerûn]
Something large and black hurtled past me and struck Janis full in the back, knocking her to the jungle mould. At first it was simply a nightmare of black limbs, but in a moment I could see it was a spider the size of a large dog. I thrust it through; it was horribly long in dying, but I killed it at last, and I believed I had prevented it from biting Janis at all.
I had, but it had been to no avail. The arachnid had pierced her torso in several places with its cruelly sharp forelimbs limbs in its first leap; she must have died at once.
Tales of the Outlands, Erik Naswrond
Swarm, scorpion [Sandstorm]
Alwen disappeared from view, her shout of surprise causing all of us to turn and hurry to where she was. She had stepped on what seemed to be solid stone and plunged through into a cavity or catacomb of some kind, land on her feet but turning her ankle rather badly.
That was not the worst of her predicament, though; when I thrust down a torch to illumine her surroundings we saw the whole floor shift and move around her heavy boots, slick with the ichor of the scorpions she had crushed and the venom of those who struck at her. If she had fallen in any other position she would have been killed immediately.
Rudolph van Richten, working notes to Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead
"Do you know what they take from this mine, elf?" the giant asked me, its voice low and weary.
"It is a salt mine," I answered. "All know it."
"Do you know what they leave here?"
For that I had no answer.
"Cruelty breeds cruelty, death makes death, darkness cleaves to darkness, salt seasons salt," he said, making a sort of song of it. "They leave their lives and their shadows here." Flinging the stone in his hands into the cavern, he and I listened to it skip across the floor and rattle down a shaft.
"Do not enter unless you wish to do likewise."
Jameld of Hroth to Laurie and Gennifer Weathermay-Foxgrove, private correspondence
Spider, sword [Monsters of Faerûn]
Something large and black hurtled past me and struck Janis full in the back, knocking her to the jungle mould. At first it was simply a nightmare of black limbs, but in a moment I could see it was a spider the size of a large dog. I thrust it through; it was horribly long in dying, but I killed it at last, and I believed I had prevented it from biting Janis at all.
I had, but it had been to no avail. The arachnid had pierced her torso in several places with its cruelly sharp forelimbs limbs in its first leap; she must have died at once.
Tales of the Outlands, Erik Naswrond
Swarm, scorpion [Sandstorm]
Alwen disappeared from view, her shout of surprise causing all of us to turn and hurry to where she was. She had stepped on what seemed to be solid stone and plunged through into a cavity or catacomb of some kind, land on her feet but turning her ankle rather badly.
That was not the worst of her predicament, though; when I thrust down a torch to illumine her surroundings we saw the whole floor shift and move around her heavy boots, slick with the ichor of the scorpions she had crushed and the venom of those who struck at her. If she had fallen in any other position she would have been killed immediately.
Rudolph van Richten, working notes to Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead
[b]FEAR JUSTICE.[/b] :elena:
Hoo-boy. As you might imagine, that's a task and a half. I don't think I'll be able to devote the time to creating full summoning tables, but in my monster files I have added some additional summoning/creation notes here and there. I'll look into providing some of that in the final Teeny Tiny Tales of Terror file (which, as a note, is currently over 100 pages long). What I definitely won't be able to do is offer full errata for every monster. I've mentioned this before, but most of 'em are so mechanically screwy that "errata" would end up practically having to be completely re-written entry. It actually gets depressing when I work on 'em. (I'm trudging through the shadow fey right now, and across the board their stats are just an incredibly convoluted mess.)cure wrote:Any chance we might get Summoning Tables, if not by domain, then at least of what is available out of the Mists.
Denizens of Dread's one entry of Shadow Asp available via Summon Monsters III is just a tad thin.
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vipera aspis
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 351
- Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2005 8:38 pm
- Location: Chicago
I know that some of the monsters are likely not written about in some of these so, are there any you would like to see done more then others? I now its a tough call but, what would you like to see? And will you make a tales of terror misc. thread to cover the unfinished ones A through Z?
my bones among the rocks and roots
Ultimately, I'd like a blurb for every one. Doesn't matter to me the exact order in which you guys approach them; I take them first-come, first-served. Just focus on monsters that particularly inspire you.
There may be a final thread for stragglers who were accidentally overlooked or were added late in the game, but it'll be short. Right now, everything up through the letter R is done (and T is too), with the sole exception of the MM chuul, since I just tacked it onto the list.
There may be a final thread for stragglers who were accidentally overlooked or were added late in the game, but it'll be short. Right now, everything up through the letter R is done (and T is too), with the sole exception of the MM chuul, since I just tacked it onto the list.
SWARM, LEECH
“The plan had that madness about it that bespeaks divine inspiration. And besides, surrounded as I was, I could do nothing else. I managed, despite being grazed by a javelin, to afford myself the Sanctuary of Brigantia. But neither would it save me from the entire horde nor was it intended to. Next I had to appear to accidentally stumble and fall, while in fact slipping, into the pit. My performance seemed unconvincing to me, but there was no time to dwell on that. For I was now up to my neck in leeches, which, Brigantia be praised, were ignoring me for the moment, was sinking fast, and was assured of dying in their loathsome midst if I did not complete my second spell. Desperately fighting down revulsion and bile, I summoned a raven just beneath the lip of the pit and pointed towards the surrounding forest, praying both that the goblins would mistake it for myself mystically transformed and that it would lead them on a merry chase before vanishing into the night. Filling my lungs with air, I vanished from sight and started counting. When I surfaced, my worst fear was realised. Not far above me, outlined against the star filled sky, was the shape of my enemy. But miraculously there was only one. Recalling the little of its tongue that I knew, I commanded it to fall which it obligingly did, landing beside me and hastening my climb out of the pit, which it would never leave. I gave the distracted horde the slip, but I did not so easily escape the last of the leeches. Indeed they have never ceased slithering through my dreams.”
-Melissa of Linde in pleasant dinner conversation with Inquisitor Mannenn
“The plan had that madness about it that bespeaks divine inspiration. And besides, surrounded as I was, I could do nothing else. I managed, despite being grazed by a javelin, to afford myself the Sanctuary of Brigantia. But neither would it save me from the entire horde nor was it intended to. Next I had to appear to accidentally stumble and fall, while in fact slipping, into the pit. My performance seemed unconvincing to me, but there was no time to dwell on that. For I was now up to my neck in leeches, which, Brigantia be praised, were ignoring me for the moment, was sinking fast, and was assured of dying in their loathsome midst if I did not complete my second spell. Desperately fighting down revulsion and bile, I summoned a raven just beneath the lip of the pit and pointed towards the surrounding forest, praying both that the goblins would mistake it for myself mystically transformed and that it would lead them on a merry chase before vanishing into the night. Filling my lungs with air, I vanished from sight and started counting. When I surfaced, my worst fear was realised. Not far above me, outlined against the star filled sky, was the shape of my enemy. But miraculously there was only one. Recalling the little of its tongue that I knew, I commanded it to fall which it obligingly did, landing beside me and hastening my climb out of the pit, which it would never leave. I gave the distracted horde the slip, but I did not so easily escape the last of the leeches. Indeed they have never ceased slithering through my dreams.”
-Melissa of Linde in pleasant dinner conversation with Inquisitor Mannenn
The cure for what ails you
SPIDER, SHADOW
A shadow was all I needed to slip from sight. And with two I was unstoppable. But in Pont-au-Museau I had made powerful enemies, with far too many eyes, so I boarded a boat bound for Silbervas and made a remarkable discovery. The tales that we Falkovnians told each other were true, the city had a tenebrious twin. I could slip back and forth between streets and buildings teeming with life and their lifeless shadow doubles. No thief could have asked for more. Effectively, I could take from anywhere whatever I wanted and withdraw to the shadows from whence I came. But I was not alone in this. An immense spider, too large for some of the city’s streets, shared my talent and my modus operandi. Was Silbervas big enough for the two of us? I didn’t begrudge the spider the souls and it did not begrudge me the wealth. But we drew attention to one another. My robberies sometimes concluded in murder, its killings often occasioned theft, and so the tale was born of a murderous - sometimes monstrous - thief, striking from the shadows, against whom no one was safe. This was publicity that neither of us needed. So we took to hunting one another. But most of our best strategies and tactics were of no great use against a brother so alike. It was true that I could flank it and hurt it badly, but a single bite of those poisonous mandibles threatened to undo me. So I took the road for Aerie and acquired a devastating bite of my own.
-The Spider: memoirs of a predator, unfinished manuscript
A shadow was all I needed to slip from sight. And with two I was unstoppable. But in Pont-au-Museau I had made powerful enemies, with far too many eyes, so I boarded a boat bound for Silbervas and made a remarkable discovery. The tales that we Falkovnians told each other were true, the city had a tenebrious twin. I could slip back and forth between streets and buildings teeming with life and their lifeless shadow doubles. No thief could have asked for more. Effectively, I could take from anywhere whatever I wanted and withdraw to the shadows from whence I came. But I was not alone in this. An immense spider, too large for some of the city’s streets, shared my talent and my modus operandi. Was Silbervas big enough for the two of us? I didn’t begrudge the spider the souls and it did not begrudge me the wealth. But we drew attention to one another. My robberies sometimes concluded in murder, its killings often occasioned theft, and so the tale was born of a murderous - sometimes monstrous - thief, striking from the shadows, against whom no one was safe. This was publicity that neither of us needed. So we took to hunting one another. But most of our best strategies and tactics were of no great use against a brother so alike. It was true that I could flank it and hurt it badly, but a single bite of those poisonous mandibles threatened to undo me. So I took the road for Aerie and acquired a devastating bite of my own.
-The Spider: memoirs of a predator, unfinished manuscript
The cure for what ails you
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Nathan of the FoS
- Fiendish Enforcer
- Posts: 5246
- Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2003 3:39 pm
- Location: San Francisco CA
Seawolf [Stormwrack]
They capsized our longboat and tore Merwyck in pieces in the first moment. I believe they were confused by my small stature, or possibly they thought me no threat, as they did not attack me at first; I killed one, I think, with my knife, but the main work was done by Jollyn and the others with their harpoons. When we got one up onto the ice I saw it was not a shark, nor a whale, as I had first supposed, but a sort of seal-wolf, with flippers rather than feet but improbably canine in its head and upper torso. Could it have been produced by biomancy? They say the Winter Wizard rules these waters.
Wanderers of the Waves, Nasran Waterwick, halfing whaler (as told to Larraby Quift, author)
Selkie, dread [Fiend Folio]
He hid that seal's hide, and the selkie became his bride and then the mother of his children; bright-eyed, smooth-skinned, dark-haired, and they could swim like fish--or seals, or their own fair mother. But she never smiled.
Came one day when he returned home from the sea, his little skiff full of fish, and found his home burned to ashes, his wife gone, and his children hewn in pieces. Ah, how he beat his breast and cried for woe! But when he searched among the ruins, he saw the mantle-stone lifted, and the selkie's skin gone. Then he knew that she had born her slavery in silence for many a long year, 'til her seal-skin had once again come into her hands; then she had taken her vengeance, and returned to the sea.
The Selkie, traditional Mordentish
They capsized our longboat and tore Merwyck in pieces in the first moment. I believe they were confused by my small stature, or possibly they thought me no threat, as they did not attack me at first; I killed one, I think, with my knife, but the main work was done by Jollyn and the others with their harpoons. When we got one up onto the ice I saw it was not a shark, nor a whale, as I had first supposed, but a sort of seal-wolf, with flippers rather than feet but improbably canine in its head and upper torso. Could it have been produced by biomancy? They say the Winter Wizard rules these waters.
Wanderers of the Waves, Nasran Waterwick, halfing whaler (as told to Larraby Quift, author)
Selkie, dread [Fiend Folio]
He hid that seal's hide, and the selkie became his bride and then the mother of his children; bright-eyed, smooth-skinned, dark-haired, and they could swim like fish--or seals, or their own fair mother. But she never smiled.
Came one day when he returned home from the sea, his little skiff full of fish, and found his home burned to ashes, his wife gone, and his children hewn in pieces. Ah, how he beat his breast and cried for woe! But when he searched among the ruins, he saw the mantle-stone lifted, and the selkie's skin gone. Then he knew that she had born her slavery in silence for many a long year, 'til her seal-skin had once again come into her hands; then she had taken her vengeance, and returned to the sea.
The Selkie, traditional Mordentish
[b]FEAR JUSTICE.[/b] :elena:
SWARM, HOARD SCARAB
Out of the darkness loomed a ship, wrecked as improbably as our own, a sand dune claiming its stern. With the fiery heat of the day not far off, we were glad of the shelter. It had been stripped, not only of supplies and materials that might have assisted its crew in escaping the blasted wastes, but pretty much of everything of value. We slept in the relative coolness of the cargo hold and were all visited by the same dream, that of a mound of gold with which we might overfill our pockets. The second watch, and Annabel with it, snuck off in search of the captain’s quarters where the prize supposedly lay. Sand had burst through the portholes and had half filled the cabin. A small skeleton with a twisted neck and perfectly clean bones, in life probably a cabin boy, was the only obvious inhabitant. Just beyond his feet, lying thickly upon the sand, twinkled more gold coins than any of the sailors had ever seen. As in the dream, one threw himself upon the pile. His joy was not long lived. The treasure stirred to life and before the poor fellow could escape it, he was covered by burnished golden beetles that devoured him alive. And between his choked, stifled screams, could be heard the laughter of a child.
-The Wreck of the Albatross, Juno Lutuem, Darkonese adventurer
Out of the darkness loomed a ship, wrecked as improbably as our own, a sand dune claiming its stern. With the fiery heat of the day not far off, we were glad of the shelter. It had been stripped, not only of supplies and materials that might have assisted its crew in escaping the blasted wastes, but pretty much of everything of value. We slept in the relative coolness of the cargo hold and were all visited by the same dream, that of a mound of gold with which we might overfill our pockets. The second watch, and Annabel with it, snuck off in search of the captain’s quarters where the prize supposedly lay. Sand had burst through the portholes and had half filled the cabin. A small skeleton with a twisted neck and perfectly clean bones, in life probably a cabin boy, was the only obvious inhabitant. Just beyond his feet, lying thickly upon the sand, twinkled more gold coins than any of the sailors had ever seen. As in the dream, one threw himself upon the pile. His joy was not long lived. The treasure stirred to life and before the poor fellow could escape it, he was covered by burnished golden beetles that devoured him alive. And between his choked, stifled screams, could be heard the laughter of a child.
-The Wreck of the Albatross, Juno Lutuem, Darkonese adventurer
The cure for what ails you
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Gemathustra
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 578
- Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2003 11:31 pm
- Location: The Cleft of Dimensions
We already have a blurb for the hoard scarab on page 1...
"Arrogant mortal! You are in my world now and you will never leave this attic alive! I will destroy you, and then I will possess she whom you love the most. And there is not a single thing in the world you can do to stop me!"
*poke*
"OW!"
-Dracula
*poke*
"OW!"
-Dracula