Born Without Sin (GLoG Class: Artificer)

My humble Glåugust submission. A class that is neither a fighter, a wizard, a cleric, nor a thief. 

 

Pompeo Batoni

"I shall not bore you with a catalog of her virtues and beauties; you would have to see her and hold her to judge her justly. Her bitter blade was an ell in length, straight and square-pointed as such a sword's should be. Man-edge and woman-edge could part a hair within a span of the guard, which was of thick silver with a carven head at either end."

"Her grip was onyx bound with silver bands, two spans long and terminated with an opal. Art had been lavished upon her; but it is the function of art to render attractive and significant those things that without it would not be so, and so art had nothing to give her."
Shadow of the Torturer [108]

Review: Into The Wyrd & Wild - Monsters

Archons March On is reviewing monster manuals. Someone on the GLoG server mentioned he could look at Into the Wyrd & Wild, by Charles Ferguson-Avery. That reminded me I had a half-finished review of that book in my drafts folder. There's no time like the present, so I've restarted work on it.

While I finish my test drive of the book's Wilderness Dungeon procedures, I decided to cast an eye over it's extensive list of monsters. 

I'm not the first to review this product. Skerples from Coins and Scrolls has levelled a rather scathing critique at it. Despite having playtested the book on multiple occasions (unlike Skerples) I don't really disagree with his conclusions. Into the Wyrd & Wild does lack the tight procedures and gameable random tables that are otherwise the cornerstone of the OSR.

In fact, the book is basically a cargo cult of Patrick Stuart's Veins Of The Earth. Down to the statblock design, exploration procedures, and layout of its maps. And like most mimicries, the original does things better. But I still enjoy it. It helps that I sympathise with Charles' work, given that this blog is mostly me aping other creators I like. This very post uses a format taken from somewhere else.

Anyway. With that preamble done, let's look at some monsters.

KILLING TIME - Unknown Armies Hexcrawl

CARAVAN PALACE are a cabal of camel-riding shepherds in the Australian outback, descended from the Afghan cameleers that spearheaded the exploration of the sunburnt continent. These wizards and their families run the Caravanserai, a combination sheep station, tourist trap, and ethnic enclave in the back country of South Australia, 600km north of Adelaide.

When a monster starts killing their livestock and the cops don’t lift a finger to help, the sorcerous vaqueros saddle their dromedaries, count their charges, and get ready for a bug hunt.

D20 Fantasy: Garden Of Thorns

The dying woman spoke. Fulan frowned, unable to make it out through the fluid filling her lungs. He rose, wiping his blade on a dead orc's buffcoat. To her credit, the adventurer did not cower as he approached. The warrior squatted in front of her; bare feet protected from the malpais by a quarter-inch of gnarled calluses. The outlander's eyes met his, bloodshot and hateful. She gurgled the word again, loud enough for the entire warband to hear.

"Cannibal". 

Fulan threw his head back and laughed, the cruel sound echoed by the other soldiers who spoke her foreign tongue. He moved to strike her with his cimeter, but she did not flinch. With a grin, he severed her potion bandolier; scooping up the bottled spells and beholding their contents, ignoring the string of fresh epithets and curses the owner levied at him. 

Mummia from Hogman's Plain. Mellified man from the Hot Lands. Troll's blood from the Peat Bogs. Changeling skin, Umber eyes, Naga fangs, Medusa hair, Minotaur horn. She drank the corpses of thousands, yet cried over his sacred rites. Were these not men? Did they not think, speak, love, and hate?

His eyes flicked to her defiant face, then to the barrels of carmine she'd been transporting. Payment for services rendered, for powder and shot delivered to the hated dogmen. His calloused thumb brushed against his own musket. He was sorely tempted to spark his flinted skin, to watch her face explode into vaporised meat and leave her ruined corpse to the beak things and bonehounds and ghuls. But it wouldn't be right. She had fought well, nearly punching through his ambush with fire, faith, and steel. 

So he knelt before her and began to cut.