We Interupt This Blog for a Very Important Message

It's National Coming Out Day. All you have to do is look at the news to see the pain LGBTQ people are put through every day, and yet there are slimebags like Carl Paladino that STILL incite anti-gay violence and harrassment.

As a straight ally, I am SICK OF IT. My wife is bisexual. Many of my friends and clients are LGBTQ. The thought of anyone DARING to treat them as anything less than human is enough to make me violent.

2010 has to be the year it stops. Every gay youth that kills themselves in despair, every person beaten, raped or murdered for being who they are, every lost job, every slur, every time the word "gay" is used disparagingly, all the stupid jokes... every last bit of it is a stain on the soul of Humanity. There must be no more tolerance for hate.

You don't have to be LGBTQ to come out today. I'm prepared to fight for my loved ones, my friends, my fellow human beings... if you feel the same, announce it somewhere today. Twitter, Facebook, your blog, with a can of spray paint, wherever. And the next time you witness heterosexism or homophobia, remember that silence is no longer an option.

Creature Feature 10: Glorpers

As undead horrors go, glorpers out-rival vampires for verisimilitude - they are entirely indistinguishable from the living. The only give away is the caution they must show against moderate impacts, and the appalling results should their caution fail. A glorper's body is a barely-contained mass of necrotic jelly, under intense pressure beneath the thin wall of force created by its own will to remain human. For this reason, glorpers move slowly, are terrified of dogs and children and avoid crowds and slippery surfaces. Some impacts will only partially burst them, and with enough feedings they can reconstitute the loss, but severe events like falling down stairs or being trampled will disperse them beyond what their will can reform. If the remnants of such unfortunates are not properly cleansed with purified water, they will remain conscious of their state for all eternity.

COMBAT:
Once a month a glorper must feed on enough subdued humans to satiate the necrotic jelly that forms it - otherwise the jelly destabilizes and the glorper cannot hold itself together. It feeds by draining constitution points as it seeps necrotic jelly onto the victim, melding with their own flesh and absorbing it. The glorper can let them live, but rarely does as few wish to spread their condition.

A glorper's jelly infects those that contact it with the condition. Each day they match their will against the infection; when they have failed enough times to equal their constitution they have fully succumbed and are now glorpers themselves.

Glorpers attack sleeping victims, always. If forced to fight, they will do so from a distance as they try to flee. A glorper is capable of launching one of the following as a missile each round - both eyes, the tongue, or as many fingers as it wishes. All burst on contact and risk infecting the target. The eyes do not leave the glorper blinded, but do instantly blind the target with no save for one day. The tongue makes the target mute for a day and nauseous for 5 rounds. Each finger does acidic damage. These limbs must all be regrown over the course of a month.

Any blow disables a glorper, but also splashes necrotic jelly five feet in each direction. Any blow dealing more that half its hit points will completely splatter it over a 10-foot radius. Pure water will dissolve it without this effect, in a one-to-one ratio.

Creature Feature 9: The Redshifter

A Redshifter is an extraplanar entity that warps gravity and time. Time slows the closer you get to one. The creature itself is almost pure red, and the area surrounding it and anything or one approaching it become increasingly red, while the rest of the world gets bluer as you approach it. This effect is caused by light slowing down as it nears it, and speeding as it escapes.

This means that the entity has already done anything you see it doing. From nearby, you see those further away doing things they haven’t done yet. The being itself seems able to warp this effect at will. Additionally, the creature can create a gravitational focus in front of it to pull objects towards it or to “slingshot” them away by letting them orbit the point, then releasing them. It cannot select what is pulled and what isn’t, other than itself. Finally, sound completely vanishes within 30 feet of the creature.

Redshifters are best described as “alien.” Their actions are unpredictable and impossible to comprehend. They are equally as likely to attack as ignore entirely, but on the few occasions more than one has been recorded, all have sought to slay one another.

Art by Steph Cherrywell

COMBAT:
 A Redshifter affects time. Mechanically, this means a few things. Initiative is rolled, but is severely warped - every five feet of distance from the creature subtracts 1 from the roll. If the creature is not yet 30 feet from its last place of cover, players likely aren’t even aware of it yet and if they are, they are under blind-fighting rules until time catches up. Only those within 15 feet see it where it currently is. All others remain under blind-fighting rules, missing if they specifically target where they see it. If further than 15 feet away and ACTUALLY blinded, they simply stand no chance of striking it, as they can’t infer its “next” move based on where it last was, and it makes no sound.

Once a a round, the creature can force one attack or other action involving it to be rerolled. The first roll never happened - this is merely a reflection of how confusing navigating time around the creature is.

The Redshifter can use its gravitational focus to hurl small stones or other objects at deadly speeds. It can also reflect ranged attacks back at the attacker. This is harder to do accurately the longer the range (and therefore higher the speed) of the missile. Even rays and some other magic attacks can be thus deflected, but they require the most effort.

The other use for the focus is to disarm or even bodily drag foes forward. When created, all creatures and objects within 45 are dragged forward 10 feet. The Redshifter can’t maintain a single focus longer without risking being struck from behind.

Since this gravitational focus is not selective, it usually leaves a tight ball of debris in its wake, which falls to the earth afterwards. It is possible to fire a missile of some type at the Redshifter while its creating a focus to deflect or drag something else, and strike the Redshifter unerringly.

Creature Feature 8: Opossum of the Grotto

(With thanks again to Kitty Lowrance)

Some say it’s only a myth, and others say it’s a real place. Still others believe it exists somewhere at the heart of every great swamp. It is a grotto, rising from the mist and the sludge to shelter a lone, albino opossum.

There are many who devout their lives to searching for this opossum, for it is said to be very wise and very magical. Some say it even holds sway over life and death, and can ferry souls back to this realm that seemed utterly annihilated.

However, to when the Opossum’s boon, one must first accept the Kiss. By kissing the Opossum, one is bound beneath an unbreakable geas to complete a task of the Opossum’s choosing. One cannot know what task they will be forced to do prior to the Kiss - if they are told to commit an atrocity they will have no choice but to carry it out. For this reason, only the foolish and the truly desperate seek the Grotto, and most die wandering the swamps long before they ever do.

COMBAT:
If attacked the Opossum will defend itself as an extremely powerful necromancer that favors direct attacks over summoning undead. However, it can and will summon various swamp creatures to aid it - will ‘o’ wisps, shambling mounds and rogue trents being most common. If slain, the Opossum’s influence over all those under the Kiss will briefly lift, until it returns in a new location months later, set on revenge.

Creature Feature 7: The Structured

Originating somewhere in the planes of pure Order is a great construction - a structure so perfect and untouched by entropy that mortal minds ache simply contemplating it. The forces that rule there loathe the state of the other planes - in truth the very existence of other planes less structured than their grand conception is proof that existence could be further improved on. Thus, the massive “city” is ever seeking to manifest within and restructure other realities.

On the front lines of the eons-old invasion are the Structured. The Structured are part-construct and part-organism, having been left less-than-”perfect” by the forces of the Still City to let them better operate in non-structured environments. Structured rarely, if ever, resemble the creature they once were - in fact multiple beings may have been combined, or one being may have been split into many. Usually the structured resemble platonic solids made of some species of flesh, with sensory organs on some surfaces and at least one limb or appendage of a metallic structure. This is usually a multi-purpose weapon.

COMBAT:

Structured capabilities vary by the purpose of the individual, but all usually have the following abilities. A Structured can emit an energy blast every three rounds, with the effect of either locking the target in a brief stasis, dispelling any magical effects, or dealing damage as body tissue is reorganized at an atomic level. The result of this last use is a non-healing wound that is covered in tiny blocks of carbon and other base elements. Note that none of these attacks are magical in nature - in fact, the Structured are surrounded in a permanent anti-magic field extending one foot in all directions.

Structured are always equipped with a gripping mechanism that can neatly remove flesh. All Structured are also capable of performing Restructuring - using materials taken from other life to repair themselves - and can even built simple new Structured in only a few rounds. Structured made from non-living tissue are small, weak and usually lack intelligence. A team of 5 can usually turn a living being into a full-powered new Structured in a half-hour’s time.

Creature Feature 6: The Waxen Image

Waxen Images are golem-like constructs made of living wax surrounding a specially-built lantern that acts as a skull. The lantern contains a blue flame - the driving essence of the creature - and is often magically shielded to prevent simple “create water” spells and the like from snuffing it out.

When created, a variation on the standard summoning spells is performed. Whatever the result of this spell would have been, is instead encoded into the Waxen Image and it takes on both the appearance and any special powers of that creature. Thus a Waxen Image of a cockatrice shares that monster's death gaze, and one of a lamia would resist magic. Even natural abilities, like sharp claws or venoms, are supernaturally replicated. Most Waxen Images have up to four forms imprinted, and may shift through them at will.

In addition to the powers of its stolen form, the Waxen Image heals damage rapidly by resealing cuts. Severed limbs become inert but can be reattached instantly. Only fire does lasting damage, melting away and annihilating the creature’s form. Still, it will attack until all wax is gone from the lantern.

Creature Feature 5: The False Moon

The False Moon is a rare type of giant arachnid, of the "Harvestmen" or "Daddy Longlegs" family. It’s also a chameleon: Its tremendously long legs and the smaller portions of the body shift tone to blend in with the night sky, while its most prominent feature - the great round orb of its rear thorax - is an almost perfect mimic of the moon, distorted to show the proper face to all directions. It’s bio luminescent and can even cast “shadows” over itself, or darken portions out to achieve the proper phase.

The False Moon primarily dines on stray wolves and other nocturnal creatures that are easily confused by it, but it will also stalk travellers moving after dark. It tries to wait for overcast nights when its competition is hidden, then attempts to mislead prey by making it appear they’re going in a different direction than they thought. It will repeat this behavior for nights, and eventually show itself even when the real moon is present, all in an effort to wear its food down.

COMBAT:

When a False Moon has tired of playing with its food, it will approach (the vision of the moon getting steadily bigger is disconcerting enough). Once close enough, it has enough reserves of what is dubbed “Lunar Venom” to spray the contact poison once. If the victim cannot resist the moderately strong drug, they will lose all willpower and become completely open to suggestions from the soft, whirring “voice” of the False Moon. This is usually a way to make prey hold still as they are eaten, but it can be used to make a party member turn on friends, in a sluggish zombie-like manner.

Another tactic of the False Moon is to stoop down, pick prey up with its mandibles, and stand at full leg extension - roughly 70 feet. It then releases the victim and watches them plummet.