Island Hopping

Herron, Master

A tall and unsmiling man - unsmiling because he is an introvert, and finds people difficult, not because he is unfriendly. He likes the sea and the wind, and solitude, and his boat, the Gywngalet, and he likes bringing people and cargo from the mainland to the Lantern Berth. His services are relatively cheap.

It takes a day and a night to sail from the capital to the Berth, north along the coast, and then out into open sea. You and your companions are making the passage for your own reasons. Herron will usually stay awake for the whole trip, but he will advise you to sleep on the deck and tell you not to worry. The breeze is warm, and you doze easily, lulled by the movement of the waves. 

When you wake, Herron is gone, and the Gwyngalet drifts without direction. It is early morning, and the colours of the morning are just starting to illuminate the sky. You can still see the ragged dark outline of the Lantern Birth, and the twinkling of its red and blue lighthouses, on the horizon.

The Gwyngalet

A fleet, shallow-keeled craft with a handsome square-cut sail and brightly painted sidings. Its timbers are pale yellow, nearly white, and the windows of its small cabin are bordered sections of colourful stained-glass. There are oars for manoeuvring without wind, and the sail is slighter larger than standard for a craft this size, giving the Gwyngalet an excellent sailing speed. 

It will bear you well enough close to the shore, but its light frame and poor displacement cannot withstand the rough seas further out. It has a cargo storage on deck - a simple cleared area that can be covered with a tied-down and waxed tarpaulin. The cabin sleeps 2 comfortably or 6 uncomfortably. In the summer and spring you can sleep on the deck, beneath the stars.

It has ample store for rations, water, and trade goods, and would make a fine boat for island hopping, if indeed the islands in the sunset exist. 

Aboard are 2000s worth of trade goods (textiles), 50 rations (including a cask of drinking water), and the ropes, tar, canvas, and tools to maintain the craft. 

If you pull into the Lantern Berth, you will be asked to account for the disappearance of the Master - Herron was well known and respected on the island. 

The Horizon

As you survey your surroundings from the newly empty boat and try to collect yourself, you see something supposed to be impossible. Out to sea, past the Lantern Berth, so far out that they could be visual distortions or tricks of the pre-dawn darkness, are two dim shapes rising from the water.

All have heard the stories of the islands beyond the Berth, and of their fantastic inhabitants - and all know that the islanders swear that they are real. But, to your knowledge, none from the mainland have ever actually seen them. 

Out at Sea at Dawn Ravenscar, David Baumforth

Food!

Princess Mononoke

Glaugust is here, one of the prompts is from Vyra is about food. 

I have had a hard time writing anything good for the blog recently, partly because I've had fiction writing to get done, partly because my job is overwhelmingly busy at the moment, and partly because I was trying to finish the weird dungeon that just went up, and struggling through misgivings about it. 

The wise and kind Purplecthulhu has correctly identified that a vibe shift is in order. 

Food

The Barony:

• Most people eat a salted meat oat porridge day to day as travel rations. This is most likely what 'rations' represent, if you have bought them in the Barony. You fry them in oil and then add water, or cook them in milk, or mix an egg through. Usually the oats and the meat come separately, and there are beloved mixtures of both that give subtle changes in flavour. Popular additions that can be found in the wilds while travelling: honeycomb, herbs from the roadside, berries, nuts, etc. etc. 
• For non-travel food, fish and seafood are a huge part of diet, so much so that settlements further inland are thought to be malnourished and deprived because they don't have easy access to them. Most fish is cooked with citrus, which grows in the northern Barony, or apples, which grow further south. Always eaten with fried bread. 
• Potatoes exist and are beloved. The miracle of the soil. 
• Expensive meals are mostly sweets and pastries, both of which are a delicacy in the capital. The Baronials are extremely fond of them. Common: Turkish Delight, candied fruits, and laboriously constructed and ornamented pastries. Fine-milled wheat flour exists, but is uncommon and expensive, associated almost entirely with sweet pastries. Most bread is dark, salted, and eaten toasted. 
• Alcohol in the Barony, like in the White City, is mostly harsh, clear white spirits, which are heated before you drink them. Beer and wine don't really exist as we know them, but there are various, usually sweet, 'specialist' alcohols made from fermented fruit. They will all get you extremely fucked up. 

The Steppe

• People in the Steppe eat lots of meat. They cut it into chunks, rub it with salt and spices, skewer it, and cook in over a flame. They are especially fond of interspersing chunks of fat along the skewer, so that it partially melts on the fire. 
• Most cooking, if you have the time to cook, is in stew pots. They are known for spicing their food to levels unacceptable to Northerners. Most stews have a meat and potato base, but they have other tubers in the south as well, which often take the place of potatoes. Then lots of salt, lots of oil, lots of spice. 
• 'Rations' in the south are probably jerky, black bread, and maybe hard white cheese made from horse or dog milk. Expensive rations might include imported dried fruits. 
• Steppe nomads living by the sea will fish, but they don't have the same relish for seafood as their northern neighbours. 
• Expensive Steppe meals will be hospitality banquets, featuring whole roasted animals, tubers cooked a hundred ways, buckets of 'popped' and salted maize kernels, strong red wine, and bitter green salad leaves (a local type of roquette hardy enough to survive in the cold). 
• Other than their strong wine, Steppe nomads are obsessive about clean, fresh, cold water. They have a hundred ways of talking about it, and ascribe it healing properties and sweeping health benefits, often to the amusement of others. 

Further South

• The Southern Nomads are said to eat people, prepared the same way the Northerners prepare horse and cattle flesh. The two kingdoms don't get along - this might be a myth.
• Certainly not a myth: the Southern Nomads produce the only hard candies in the world, and trade them with their neighbours for extortionate amounts of money. They have an aniseed-ish taste, keep well in paper wrapping, and are each worth their weight in silver.
• Apparently they also make wine out of spinal fluid and petroleum? That can't be true. 

The White City

• Rice is the staple crop, grown in the northern empire and exported everywhere in enormous, centrally controlled caravans. 'Rations' are going to have a sticky rice ball base, and will probably layer on plantains and spiced meat or fish as a filling. A larger, sit down meal will have these same ingredients, but more of everything and not rolled into a ball.
• Seafood is just as important in the Empire as it is in the Barony. They love fish, olive oil, octopus, pepper, cress, spinach. 
• The white spirit that the Baronials drink was invented here, and drinking is a serious past time. You only ever drink it hot. Water is cold, alcohol is hot. Many apartments in the white city will have a dedicated room and stove for drinking together. 
• They ship ice from the south for their water, at enormous expense.

The Mountains

• The mountaintop walled gardens are the only place in the world where tomatoes, strawberries, peaches, and roses grow. You can steal them and try to do it elsewhere but it won't work. Something about the mountaintops sustains them. 

BONUS: a real, non-elfgame recipe!

My favourite liver pasta. You need:

• A courgette
• A beef or lambs liver
• A jar of kimchi
• Pasta

Slice the liver very finely, and then fry it brown in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Cut up the courgette into thin, quartered slices, and fry that in with the blood and oil/salt mixture. You want the liver and courgette browned but not burned, and lots of blood and oil in the pan.

Mix through the kimchi to taste, and simmer the whole lot until it's piping hot. 

Mix through pasta, keep in on the high heat for about thirty seconds, allowing some liquid to cook off. 

Serve with cold sparkling water, unless ye be a heathen tap water drinker. 

The Worst Place in the Capital

Somewhere in the butchers' district of the Capital there is a nondescript iron door in the side of one of the meat processing warehouses. The local bravos (the 52 Girls) know it, but won't discuss it. If pressed they will tell you that on the other side of that door is...

The Worst Place in the Capital

The iron door is locked at all times, and the keys are kept by two senior members of the Baroness' spy service. Once every three or four mounts one of them will arrive with a bound prisoner, and enter with them. An hour or two later they will leave, without the prisoner. 

A locked iron door will not stop any determined adventurer. 

On the other side of the door is a tiny wooden room, in the shape of a cube - 5ft to a side (tall characters will need to stoop); wooden floors, ceiling, and walls; three sets of thick leather restraints bolted into the wall; and nothing else. 

There are 4ft tall wooden doors on the other three walls. You are now in the Box Maze.

The Box Maze

A series of small rooms, each 5ft - 10ft wide and long. Each has its own unique contents, the monsters move between them. A 'reveal': there are more boxes above and below - the structure is 3 dimensional. This is not obvious to the people moving through its 'ground' layer.

The walls of the boxes are variously timber, paper, or iron. Timber walls can be battered down, and paper walls can but cut or even pushed through. Some walls have been disguised to look like another material. Note that this only applies to interior walls of the structure, all exterior walls are iron and cannot be battered down. 

All tunnels are 2.5 ft wide, and share their walls with the rooms they border. Their exterior walls are iron. They can only be traversed single file. 

Walls interior walls that are shared between rooms can be of two materials, ie iron walls with timber cladding, or timber walls with paper glued to one surface. 

You cannot sleep anywhere in this dungeon; a strange mental static makes it impossible. The entire dungeon counts as dungeon depth 3. 

All ceilings are 5ft high, all doors are 4ft high. If you have to stoop (most humans), then you roll to hit at -1.

The box maze is tiny, and sounds travels. For every fifteen minutes spent in the Box Maze, or whenever the PCs make a loud noise, roll on the following encounter table:

• 1 - 5: Nothing. Silence and dead air, smells of filth. 
• 6 - 12: Stealthy movement close by. It stops if you stop, and starts again when you resume your own movement. Further rolls on this table are at +2.
• 13 -16: 2d6 Ghoul Cats, lead by a Hunter Chief. They are either stalking the PCs slowly and silently, or running through the space at high speed, fleeing something else. 
• 17 - 19: A Maze Demon. The specific Demon will depend on the room it is encountered in. 
• 20: The Machete Gang enter the maze. You can hear them yelling to one another and laughing; cheerful, aggressive, unhinged, completely unafraid. Further rolls of 20 result in a combat encounter with the gang as below, and further rolls on this table are at +2. 
• 21+: A combat encounter with the Machete Gang - they hack through the walls and kick down the doors. If they have been killed or have fled, this is instead d4 Hunter Killers who have slunk up into the Box Maze from the lower warren. 

The scale of the Box Maze is much tighter and smaller than typical dungeons. A single square on the above map is 2.5 ft at a side. 

Rooms - Ground Level

1. Entrance. Wooden walls, with four sets of thick leather restraints bolted into them. The smell on entry is foul; a mixture of rot, dust, mildew, and shit. A lit and filthy lantern in a corner gives poor illumination. 
2. Bone Storage. Wooden walls. Bones from around 30 human and maybe 200 cat skeletons, stacked neatly by type against the walls. 
3. Mirror Room. Paper walls, stretched between wooden frame. Lit with a lantern. About twenty large shards of mirror have been propped against the walls. They are dirty and some of them are cracked, but they give good reflections. Entities will refuse to be summoned into this room, and if forced to will take 1 psychic damage per turn. Wooden ceiling - if you cut through it you will find yourself in rooms 8 or 9 of the second level. 
4. Bone Tools. Paper walls. A crude table made from an overturned crate, with a sharpened light paring knife on it. The knife has been used to make hundreds of tools out of human and cat bones. You can find d8 of each of bone whistles, lockpicks, and shivs (light weapons that break on a critical miss or a max damage roll), as well as cutlery, awls, needles, and buttons. There is also 20d6 silver worth of carved bone rings. The passage to the north is accessible by cutting through the paper. The room is unlit. 
5. Water. Iron walls. Full of 30ish buckets and tubs or iron and wood. The wooden ones are caulked with human and cat fat. All are full of water which smells gaggingly foul, but is potable. An iron grate in the ceiling drips bloody water constantly - runoff from the slaughterhouses above. 
6. Story Room. Paper walls, painted onto with bright, primary oil colours. It seems that five different artists have been given different sections of the walls to work on, but all of them were using the same paint. Painty human foot and boot prints on the wooden floor. The scenes are mostly of the sun and sky, with a few diagrammatic paintings that show the correct methods for building an animal snare, for gutting and dressing, and for tanning leather and rendering tallow. Lit with four lamps, one in each corner. A row of glass jars along the northern wall are filled with urine.
7. Pigment Room. Iron walls. Unlit. Four piles of luridly bright powdered pigment heaped against one wall, one red, one blue, one green, one yellow. There are also two large iron dishes, one full of fat and one full of petroleum. The pigment is valuable - about 200s per INV slot. If you touch the eastern wall, it is hot to the touch.
8. Heat. Iron walls, iron ceiling. Unlit. The room is about 40 degrees Celcius most of the time, but sometimes the ceiling glows red hot (which sheds a very dim light) and the temperature raises to 80 degrees. 1 in 20 chance of the room currently burning each time you enter - if it is, anyone inside takes d6 damage per turn until they leave. There are two horribly burned human bodies in here - the occupants of the maze use the room for executions. 
9. Oubliette. Iron walls, unlit. The entrance is trapped with large and very sharp bone caltrops, scattered across the entrance. If you have a light source you will see them, but entering at a run will incur d3 piercing damage. There is a pile of bedding or clothing bunched into a corner, and two cat cadavers lying by it, bound up in sinew cords. If you search the bedding you will find a pair of very beautiful lead and diamond earrings worth 250s, and a small leather satchel with 3 doses of sedatives and 1 curative inside.
10. Butchery. Wooden walls. The floors are covered in offal and blood, and reek. There are 8 dressed and skinned cadavers, 2 human and 6 cat, hanging upside down from iron hooks in the ceiling. There is also a heavy wooden table with a lit lantern, a cleaver, and a paring knife lying on it. Bloody cats skins lie folded into a corner. If you go through the wooden ceiling you will end up in room 2 or 3 of the upper level, depending on where you cut. 
11. Nest. Unlit, wooden door, steel walls. Chewed paper cubby holes line the walls, cat filth mires the floor. There are 4d10 harmless Ghoul Kittens staring out at you from the openings, and d3 Ghoul Cats led by a Ghoul Cat Den Mother (stats as Hunter Chief). They are defending their young and are unbreakable. 
12. Glass Nest. Unlit, wooden door, steel walls. Chewed paper cubby holes line the walls, cat filth mires the floor. There are 4d10 harmless Ghoul Kittens staring out at you from the openings, and a single Ghoul Cat Den Mother (stats as Hunter Chief). She is defending her young and is unbreakable. Scattered around the entrance are cat-shit-smeared shards of broken glass - if you cross them wearing soft or no shoes, or if your are knocked prone on them in light or no armour, you take d3 damage and save CON against a random disease.
13. Snares. Paper walls, lit with two small lanterns. The walls are lined with crude string and wire snares, obviously designed to trap Ghouls Cat. There are d6 rations worth of dead cat caught in them, but the meat is tainted and, even after cooking, eating these rations will provoke a CON save against a random disease. There is also a 3 in 6 chance that a live Ghoul Cat is caught in one of the snares, spitting mad and terrified. It will attack you at -4 if you come near it. 
14. Record Room. Iron walls, unlit. The walls are painted with thirty different common Aronial first names, and tally marks against each. Most names have 5 or 6, a few towards the start of the list have between 20 and 30. There are 6 glass jars full of petroleum in this room. There is also a thick, floor-to-ceiling iron pipe in the north-east corner that has been broken open, and which flows with bloody water once or twice a day. 1 in 20 this is happening when you enter the room. 
15. Refuse. Iron walls, unlit. Completely stuffed with decomposing corpses (human and cat), smashed furniture, rusted iron machinery, and rotten timbers. Mould and rust stain the floor. It smells of blood but also more strongly of rot. Searching in the refuse for an hour will yield d10/2 silver. If you're pushed into it, or press in without being careful, you must test CON or be caught on an edge and take d3 slashing damage which exposes you to disease. 
16. Drugs. Paper walls, no entrance, unlit. A wicker basket in the centre of the floor contains 12 dried out cat amygdalas. These count as stimulants, but provoke a WIS check if you ingest them. On a failure you become non-verbal for an hour, and lose 1 WIS permanently. Also two jars of drinkable water, and a wooden bowl full of black sludge that smells strongly of liquorice. This is a strong sedative, strong enough to allow you to sleep in the box maze (the only way to do this, regular sedatives won't cut it). The bowl has d3 doses remaining. If you sleep in the box maze, and you enter the dreamlands, you can try to talk to the Cat King as he used to be, before he went mad. He will repeatedly tell you to leave this place forever, and is of little other use. 
17. Conclave. Wooden walls, lit with 3 lanterns. This is where the Maze Demons gather to discuss the governance of their room-territories. It is swept and clean. There are four wooden daises along the four walls of the room, and a central circle made from thick red paint. In the centre of the painted circle are neatly folded (but dirty) judges robes, a jewelled sceptre (silver and opal) worth 450s, and a crown made from twisted wire. 
18. Leather. Wooden walls, lit with two lanterns. 4d10 cat skins stretched on wire and timber frames. A table with a paring knife, and several smaller frames for stretching tendons for rope. There are hot metal pipes running across the ceiling, and the room is warmer than most of the others. If you go through the ceiling, you will find yourself in room 4 of the upper levels. 
19. Fortress. Iron walls, unlit. Currently unlocked, but the iron doors both have iron bolts on the inside, solid enough to withstand determined assault. There are three muskets in this room, propped against the wall, one of which is loaded and ready to fire. 
20. Books. Iron walls, unlit. This room has a tiny opening in the ceiling, through which the meat plant workers dump books and other paper waste every few days. These are brought to the Paper Maker at 22. If you search the stack you will find nothing of value. The books are, of course, highly flammable. 
21. Library. Iron walls, unlit. Where the books that are worth keeping are stored, for the pleasure of the Paper Maker. There are probably 200 books in this room, d6 of which are worth 10s apiece (rare editions; the Paper Maker has a specific but developed taste). To find the d6 that are worth something, you would need to search for 30 minutes. 
22. The Paper Maker. A large iron room, lit by four lanterns in the corners. Dominating the entire centre of the room is the Paper Maker (details below), a long-limbed giant for whom the room is a hideous confinement. He wears an iron mask with a lock on the side, and has finger painted his own skin with bright and colourful fools motley. There are two pits in the floor that lead down to the lower level, where the Maze Demons bring the waste that they produce. If you harm the Paper Maker in any way, all surviving Maze Demons will converge on this room and fight you to the death. 
23. Wardrobes. Two identical rooms with paper walls, lit by lanterns. They each contain clothing and armour hung on racks. The clothes vary; there are lots of rags, but also richly ornamented jackets and other pieces from the Baronial elite. Each room contains d3 costumes or pieces worth 40s, jewellery worth d6x10s, d3 sets of light armour, and 1 in 2 chances of one set of medium armour. Each room also has a floor to ceiling mirror installed on one of its walls, enough to upset entities, but not enough to stop them from being summoned. 
24. Stocks. Paper walls, unlit. Two heavy wooden stocks, stained with blood, unoccupied. They are not secured with locks, but with thick iron bars that slide through the iron islets and are not reachable by the one restrained. A heavy bone saw hangs on the wall, as described in the entry for the Maze Demons. 
25. Blood. Paper walls, unlit. 4d10 glass jars full of blood, source unknown. It has settled and clotted. Probably used for food. There are also 4 undried cat amygdalas and one larger amygdala, each in their own jar. The cat amydalas let you attack once more per turn than you would normally be able to, but reduce your WIS and INT by d3 permanently once the effects wear off (the end of the combat). The larger amygdala has the same effect, but lasts for a day, after which you must save WIS or die as your heart bursts in your chest. If you survive, you still suffer the WIS and INT loss. 
26. Paper Lanterns. Paper walls, painted white. Lit by a single lantern in the centre, which, unlike the others in the maze, is directional. There are a number of thin paper sheets that can be held in front of the lantern and projected onto the walls - some of them blocks of solid colour, but others scenes of the outside, of the sun, of mountains and of the sea. If you start projecting images like this, any Maze Demons who witness you do so will become non hostile and remain that way. They may follow you around, but they won't attack you. If you take the lantern from the room, all Maze Demons who know this will attempt to kill you on sight. 
27. Strong Box. Iron walls, unlit. A large iron lock box dominates the centre of the room. It is locked, and the Maze Demon who claims this section of the maze holds the key. Inside are 2d10 human heads in various stages of decomposition. 
28. Cat Pen. Iron walls, and iron doors with bolts on the inside. A natural fortress. Three iron pipes run from floor to ceiling, each with a living Ghoul Cat chained to it by the neck. None of them have enough slack to get to one another (the room is 5ft wide, the chains are very short), and all are frantic with terror and anger. They will attack anyone who enters within their range. 
29. Glass storage. Paper walls, lit with a single lantern. Hundreds of carefully stacked, intact glass bottles and receptacles line the walls. Four small bottles at the entrance are filled with petroleum, and one is filled with milk (1 ration). 
30. Clay works. Iron walls, lit with two lanterns. The iron floor has been pulled up in sections, revealing pits in the earth beneath. These are shallow and full of brackish water, but are obviously clay pits. Lumps of wet clay sit around the lip. There are approx 150 small, unfired clay bowls and vessels sitting around the walls. 
31. Oil Room. Iron walls, unlit. The floor is covered in about 0.5cm of thick and foul smelling petroleum. It leaks from cracks in the ceiling, and also covers one wall. 

Rooms - Upper levels

1. Cat King. Paper Walls. This room is filled with half eaten and rotting cat carcasses. It is inhabited by the terrible Cat King (see below), the reason why you can't sleep in this place. There are ten dishes set out, each full of milk. Lit by two lanterns. 
2. Butler's Room. Paper walls, unlit, bedding piled in a corner, a nice suit hung on the wall. A rapier under the bedding. The Maze Demon whose territory includes this room is the butler for the Cat King, and refills his bowls. When they do so they wear the suit. 
3. Coloured Glass Store. Paper walls, unlit. About twenty stained glass windows, smashed into shards, which have been rearranged on the floor to resembled a large, sliming face. The leadwork has been twisted into a corner. 
4. Queen's Nest. Unlit, paper walls. Chewed-paper cubby holes line the walls, cat filth mires the floor. There are 6d10 harmless Ghoul Kittens staring out at you from the openings, and 2d6 Ghoul Cats led by the Cat Queen (stats as Hunter Chief). They are defending their young, and are unbreakable. 
5. The Queen's Larder. Three barely decomposed human bodies, neatly chopped up (limbs and heads removed, gutted, quartered) and variously nibbled on. 
6. Hidden Jeweller. Paper walls, unlit. 6d20s worth of silver and gold jewellery lying on a solid wooden table, all of which has been painted over with thick oil paint in bright, primary colours. Worth twice its value with the paint on it to a collector. 
7. The Dreaming Room. Paper walls, unlit. A large glass jar holds 10 doses of the black sedative from room 16 of the ground floor. The Butler does their best to dream with the Cat King, and to record the dreams. There are walls drawings and notebooks full of shapes and meandering images, and also prose accounts that sound like it always sounds like when you try to record a dream. You can nearly taste the frustration. It looks like they've been at this for years.
8. The King's Hoard. Paper walls, unlit. 300+6d10 silver in cash, 200+4d10s in fine jewellery, pushed against the walls of the room. 
9. The King's Executioner. Paper Walls, unlit. A single Hunter Killer, decked in exquisite-if-mismatched armour that has been cobbled together from different human suits of plate (as Hunter Killer, but armour as plate). Sits coiled and dozing around the Butler if they haven't yet been killed - the two will fight together if angered. 

The Lower Chamber

A stone-vaulted chamber, with no doors or other means of egress. The only way in or out are the two tunnels from the Paper Maker's chamber, which both open into the ceiling of the larger of the two chambers. The entire space is buried waist deep in sludge and foulness, and home to four feral Hunter Killers, who occasionally creep up into the maze to hunt cats and people. 

It is unlit, and the conditions mean that most people will be rolling at -1 to hit while sloshing through the filth. You are also exposed to disease while down here, and without Prophylactics must save again each time you take physical damage. 

BESTIARY

Pin Leeches

Horrible vermin that live in the maze. A pin leech is a black worm about 5cm long and a 1mm wide, that can move very quickly by violently whipping its head around and pulling itself along like an inchworm. 'Leech' is a misnomer as they don't suck blood; instead they burrow into dead or unconscious bodies and eat them from the inside. They hate light, and will usually keep out of sight in the crevices and walls of the Box Maze, but if they sense carrion thousands of them will swarm out and begin to feed. 

If at any point a someone falls unconscious, or is wounded badly enough that they cannot move, AND they are in partial or total darkness, the pin leeches will emerge and begin to devour them. For each turn in these conditions, they take d3 worm damage. Another character can stand over them with a torch to prevent this, and holding a torch over the body will disperse any leeches already attached. 

Cat Ghouls

Ghouls in the Barony are not a specific type of monster, they are simply people who eat other people, and who have grown to enjoy it. Cat Ghouls eat other cats. They are mangy, filthy, staring, spitting, yowling, murderous bastards. Each is about the size of a doberman. They are not intelligent, but possess excellent hunting instincts.

Cat Ghoul, HD1, light slashing claws, unarmored, speed: twice human and never takes falling damage or tests for feats of balancing of acrobatics, disposition: the most psychotic cat you've ever met, who has learned to treat humans as prey animals. 

All Cat Ghouls can heal themselves fully by eating the corpse of another Cat Ghoul. 

Cat Ghoul Hunter Chief, as above but HD3, attacks twice from ambush, deals +3 damage to characters who are at 50 percent or less of their HP, and can speak common in a horrible, yowling cat voice. It will mostly just talk about wanting to torture you to death, but might also taunt or try to scare you from another room if it knows where you are. This is very unsettling, and also noticeably weird - even the smartest Baronial cats shouldn't be able to talk outside the dreamlands. 

Maze Demons

Look a bit like demons, but aren't. They live in the maze, and have had their minds badly affected by it over the years. All the Maze Demons know one another and vie for territory, resources, and carrion. Rely on stealth and ambush to kill things - ideally when their targets are occupied fighting something else. They usually cover themselves from head to toe with clothing, armour, bandages, etc. - if you peel it all away you will find an emaciated and bug-eyed human being.

Roll up d6 Maze Demons to populate the Box Maze. They each have d3 HD, and a random combination of armour and weapons, rolled on tables below. Maze Demons with the same armour and weapons live and hunt together as a family. Give each Demon or Demon family its own territory in the maze (divide the rooms evenly between however many you have) - this is what you encounter on the appropriate roll. 

Maze Demon

HD1-3, random armament (roll below), random armour (roll below), movement: like a human and like a spider and like a worm, disposition: like a human/spider/worm, also murderous and calculating. 

Maze Demons are just as intelligent as humans, and most of their time is spent thinking about how to use the maze and its traps to kill things. They are immune to poison and disease, and know about every trap in the maze, so will only trigger them if forced to by someone else. 

Most of the time they move very slowly, and very quietly. 

This Maze Demon is armed with:

1. Nothing, will try to strangle you if it can.
2. A light butcher's knife. 
3. A pair of crude light claws, bound to the hands and made from multicoloured shards of stained glass. They shatter, first one, then the other, and are rendered useless, on a critical miss, or if they deal max damage. 
4. A long length of iron piping, as a two-handed medium club with -1 to hit. 
5. A lasso and a light cudgel. The lasso is a ranged weapon useable at 10ft, with -1 to hit. If it hits you, you trip and fall prone, where you remain until you spend a single attack cutting (if you have access to a slashing weapon), or a whole turn undoing, the rope. If you are crit with the lasso it instead tightens around your neck, and you take d3 damage and 1 point of fatigue per turn it remains there. 
6. A rusted medium cross knife, taken years ago from an unfortunate bravo. It breaks on a critical miss, but can still be used as an improvised weapon after it does.
7. An elaborately papier-mâchéd heavy mallet. The papier-mâchè has been applied over the top of a very real, heavy, and solid iron mallet, which functions as expected. 
8. A large medium bone saw, which rolls to hit at -1 in combat, but which, against restrained targets, automatically crits, and treats every roll on the death and dismemberment table as 'saw off a limb or head of your choice'. Losing your head is fatal; losing a limb is immediately fatal if you fail a CON save (shock), and, even if you pass, very swiftly fatal thereafter if you can't stop the bleeding. 

This Maze Demon is clothed in:

1. Layers and layers of filthy rags. Foul smelling, unarmoured. 
2. A strange, foreign-looking iron helmet, and what appears to be a large curtain or heavy blanket. AC 12, -2 on initiative because the helmet has a closed visor.
3. Makeshift leathers made from stolen belts, cinched tight around limbs, with odd pieces of scrap iron woven through them. Looks extremely uncomfortable to wear, but gives protection as light armour. The whole has been soot-darkened black.
4. Elaborate, and elaborately painted, papier-mâché armour. Very beautiful to look at. The colours are something like fools' motley, and the face mask is of an animal. Exquisite craftsmanship, which anyone with Artist templates will know immediately on looking at it. Would be worth 200s to a collector if it can be retrieved intact. Protects as medium armour once, and is ruined afterwards. 
5. A butcher's apron and gloves, and an odd, featureless wooden mask. As light armour. 
6. A suit of rusted and squealing plate that its wearer can barely move in. It has been painted in bright colours, just like the papier-mâché armour listed above. Protects as heavy armour, but squeals loudly when its wearer moves, and reduces movement speed by half. 
7. Diseased and stinking blood and excrement. Unarmoured. If it grapples you or deals damage with an unarmed attack, you are exposed to a random disease. 
8. Naked. Movements are usually slow and languid but sometimes drops into a fast, jerky crawl. Accompanied by odd visual distortions around the limbs and face. You cannot see the face, even looking directly at it. You cannot say why, but you cannot see the face. Unarmoured, immune to psychic damage, cannot be surprised, always knows your location if you can see it. 

The Machete Gang

16 violent, cruel, and frightening men who haunt the maze in a pack. Unlike everything else in here, they can leave whenever they wish, and have normal lives 'on the outside'. The other monsters are afraid of them, and will always avoid them. They have stats as men at arms, but are unarmoured and carry medium machetes. While at least 10 of them live, they do not test morale. When more than one of them attacks a single target during the same combat round, all of them get +1 to hit, and their hits additionally deal 1 fear damage. If you ever lose your nerve per morale rules, their machete attacks additionally deal +1 damage and impose a -2 penalty on the death and dismemberment table for the duration of the combat.

Hunter Killer

Hunter-Killers are large (like 8 foot long) weasels, about as strong as a bear. They are so-named because lords, merchants, criminals, and other worthies sometimes train them as attack and hunting animals. They are infamously good at getting into houses, castles, and strongholds thought secure, where their ferocity will make short work of unready foes. They are not intelligent in any general sense, but they can be sicced on enemies, or released in a feral state to tear whatever they find to pieces. 

Hunter-Killer

HD3, unarmoured, bite (d8!, crit range +1), speed 3x human, disposition in the wild: territorial predator, will retreat if seriously wounded, unless you are a threat to its young. Disposition if trained: attack dog, will keep biting until it is killed. 

Hunter-Killers have sharp, hard, ripping canines, powerful jaws, and instinctually attack weak points like the throat and groin. A Hunter Killer's bite attack damage explodes on maximum damage roles. 

A Hunter-Killer can fit through any gap the size of its head, which is about the size of a human's. They move completely silently, and can smell living prey within 50ft, and blood within 200ft. 

Once they have subdued or killed something they usually drink the blood from the corpse, leaving horrible, drained cadavers that will betray their presence to anyone familiar with them. 

Cat King

8 Cats tied together by their tails, and joined together in psychic misery. They are mad (cat brains are not made for joining together like this), and actually barely even conscious any more. The King cannot move, because the cats all pull in different directions, but has 7HD (one of the cats is actually dead already), and is unarmoured. For every turn you spend in the same room as him, you must save CHAR or take (x)d2 psychic damage, where x is the number of cats still  surviving. Every time the Cat King is hit with a melee attack, a cat is killed. All attacks made against the king are at -(x). 

If you speak with him in dream, he will tell you to leave him and the box maze for your own safety. 

The Paper Maker

The Paper Maker is an elongated ogre or giant of some kind, locked in the maze by parties unknown as a punishment. He has a crude iron helmet fastened over his head, and spends his time tearing up books, chewing them up, and making papier-maché armour and weapons. He also enjoys painting very much, and has tried to teach the Maze Demons his love. Can't speak any more, but will defend himself if attacked. If you leave him rations (at least 5) or alcohol he will assume you are a new Maze Demon come to take care of him, and will offer you one of his creations: an exquisite suit of painted papier-maché armour, worth 250s. Stats for the armour are as detailed in the Maze Demon entry. 

Paper Maker

HD8, unarmoured, giant fists (d10x2), speed: immobile in the iron room, can't even straighten out, disposition: mute, but friendly and curious. 

Under the Skin - Two Church Assassins

The Worm of God, virtue name: Insight

Angels become stranger and more difficult to relate to the longer they live. Eventually their attachment to humanoid puppet-bodies diminishes, and unique preferences begin to assert themselves.

Its name is a secret in the church, and those that discover it and then speak it become host to the worm. This begins in the blood: formerly disconnected cells slowly begin to accrete, to pattern themselves. Eventually the worm instantiates itself somewhere in the vascular system. It exits the body in the kindest and least painful way that it can, and then begins to sing the hymns of God. Each new utterance of the name begets another worm inside the body. It takes them a few days to exit from the veins, so if you don't know that you're doing this when you say it, you will probably die.

The worms are blood red, wet, about 10cm long, and have 'heads' that bifurcate. Somewhere inside this simple mouth-part is a resonating membrane that they can tune to different drone frequencies. They sit up on their tails and sing, forever. They are tended by priests in a hidden praise garden somewhere underneath one of the great cathedrals in the capital. You can feed them with blood. They start to scream (a high-pitched, discordant, distorted noise) when they get hungry or dehydrated.

There are thousands of worms in the garden. Very occasionally they will work together to communicate with their priest attendants, using their thousands of voices to approximate speech, and make known the will of the ancient angel whose body they comprise. 

The method of assassination is actually one of the most straight forward - a piece of paper is sent to the victim, printed over and over and over again with the secret name of the angel. Nine times out of ten, the target will read the name out loud, not knowing what they do. Priests come to collect the singing worms in the aftermath. 

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The Divine Aeronaut, virtue name: Contingency

By now a very old man, but still smiling and laughing, still fit and strong and limber. He keeps his grey head cropped and shaven. He wears a thick leather flight suit and glass goggles over his priest's vestments, and when he kills people he usually does it with a rifle, from a distance, before swooping in to take the head with his hacksaw.

The flying machine was built by him during an extended trance-vision many decades ago. It is the only one of its type in existence, and all attempts at remaking it have failed. It is a bit like a wooden armature build around a human body, with large wings of lacquered paper stretched between wooden struts. When he began his work for the church he mostly used it to glide from tall buildings, or to cover long distances quickly. These days his facility with the harness lets him fly more like a swallow, flitting between buildings, vertical take offs, flying out of the sun. When he walks it is with a slight limp, and a slight hunch - he is an old man after all - but when he flies he laughs with joy and his face looks young again. 

HD4, light armour, Flying Armature, Rifled Musket, hammer, hacksaw, buckler, speed: as old man, flight speed: as eagle, disposition: absolute zealot without any fear of death.

Flying Armature: A baroque Leonardo da Vinci style flying machine, heavier than air and strapped to the limbs, that allows The Aeronaut to fly literally like a bird. It does not make physical sense, and the functioning obviously includes some sort of angel or entity somewhere. Officially, it is a miracle of the church, and completely the property of its sainted owner. Only someone else with genuinely unshakeable faith can make use of it, and without decades of practice it will allow flight as a hang glider at best. If you can get it working it can carry the combined weight of two people and 30 slots of equipment while gliding. Unlike most gliders, the Flying Armature can gain altitude on its own, and so can be used to fly indefinitely (although unlike the Divine Aeronaut, you won't be able to vertically take off in it). If it crashes for any reason it is ruined forever, and can never be rebuilt.

Rifled Musket: Another relic of the church, and has the hunting name SUSPENDED IN LIGHT. Stats as a musket with twice normal range, and a larger-than-usual bore giving it 2d10 damage. Elaborate sights and exquisite craftsmanship give +3 to hit and damage rolls in the hands of the Divine Aeronaut, and +1 to anyone else. 

Elder Killer: Rolls melee attacks and damage at -1, and takes +1 damage from all physical sources. Has +1 expanded crit range on all attacks. Moves totally silently when he wants to. Encyclopedic knowledge of scripture, medicine, and the true history of the church.  

The Divine Aeronaut will spend his free days flying as high as he can in the kind light of the sun, which he associates with the goodness of God. 

If he is trying to kill you, he will use the Flying Armature to take a good shooting position, then try to kill you using SUSPENDED IN LIGHT. If you have shooters of your own, he will shift position after each shot. He can fight pretty well with the hammer he keeps on his belt, but it is not his preferred mode. If you are his God-given target, he will always come to your corpse in the aftermath to take your head with the hacksaw, such that he can show his work to the accounting angels who wait for his return. For this reason, a crit against his target never denotes a headshot - usually he will aim for vitals, the heart or spinal column if he can.

Hunter-Killer

A single monster derived from discussion in the purple server, because my brain is a fog of nothing interesting at the moment.

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Hunter-Killers are large (like 8 foot long) weasels, about as strong as a bear. They are so-named because lords, merchants, criminals, and other worthies sometimes train them as attack and hunting animals. They are infamously good at getting into houses, castles, and strongholds thought secure, where their ferocity will make short work of unready foes. They are not intelligent in any general sense, but they can be sicced on enemies, or released in a feral state to tear whatever they find to pieces. 

Hunter-Killer

HD3, unarmoured, bite (d8!, crit range +1), speed 3x human, disposition in the wild: territorial predator, will retreat if seriously wounded, unless you are a threat to its young. Disposition if trained: attack dog, will keep biting until it is killed. 

Hunter-Killers have sharp, hard, ripping canines, powerful jaws, and instinctually attack weak points like the throat and groin. A Hunter Killer's bite attack damage explodes on maximum damage roles. 

A Hunter-Killer can fit through any gap the size of its head, which is about the size of a human's. They move completely silently, and can smell living prey within 50ft, and blood within 200ft. 

Once they have subdued or killed something they usually drink the blood from the corpse, leaving horrible, drained cadavers that will betray their presence to anyone familiar with them. 

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Significantly informed by the way, way scarier version made from the corpses of dismembered teenagers in this (excellent) book. 

GLOG class - Harpooner

 

The Harpooners are to the islanders of the Lantern Berth roughly what the Errants are to the Nomads, or the Mercenaries are to the Barony. They are a class of warriors, not aristocratic (it is traditionally orphans that are instructed in the trade), but respected and thought to embody the most important attributes of their society. For the islanders, these attributes are: directness, discretion, composure, and the strength and skill required to kill monsters.

The Harpooners are something like a fighters cult, and they have both public-facing and unseen duties. They work professionally aboard the whaling boats, and they are indispensable in that role, but they are also relied on to settle disputes in their communities. At sea, they submit themselves to the authority of the captain, and so are humbled; but they are the captain's killing arm and steady executor. They kill monsters - what matter the tired conflicts of humans? Make a decision and move on. If they rule that another islander is deserving of corporal punishment, death, maiming, or exile, then their charge is brought before the magistrates, but for disputes of lower importance, and especially those around money and debts, the rulings of a Harpooner are considered sufficient. 

Harpooners have other duties. It is well known that they hunt and kill criminals who evade the court's justice. It is equally well known that they kill troublemakers from outside the island, although everyone will feign ignorance of this. They also keep tabs on the bands of relic-hunters who venture into the Old Capital ruins (often by accompanying them on their expeditions), and make sure that they do not dig too deep, or disturb anything that they shouldn't.

HARPOONER

Gear: harpoon, 50ft of hemp rope, silk cord, waterproof pouch (fits 1 inventory worth of gear), light knife, medium machete. One roll on the special gear table.

Skills: sailing, and one of: carpentry, scrimshawing, singing, literature.

A Sailor, Slayer
B Killing Arm
C Eater of the Dead
D Psychopomp

Sailor: While unarmoured, you swim and climb twice as fast as a normal human, hold your breath for twice as long, and can leap twice as far, vertically and horizontally. You can choose to completely ignore pain in your hands. You can tell your position and facing by the stars or by the position of the sun. You can predict the weather accurately within six hours.

Slayer: When throwing a harpoon, you roll with +[templates] to hit and to damage. Every turn spent doing nothing but steadying your aim, to a maximum of [templates], increases your crit range by 2. While unarmoured you move completely silently. If attacking someone unaware of your presence, you may stop them from making any noise for [templates] rounds of combat. You take -1 fear damage from all sources

Killing Arm: Your crits now do 4x damage instead of 2x, and if a foe has any rules about weak spots or location damage, your crits always count as having hit them. Your crit range increases by one for each of the following your target has been convicted of by a magistrate: murder, rape, kidnapping, poisoning, kinslaying, arson, sabotage of a boat, stockpiling of food or wealth in times of famine or economic hardship. If you kill a foe in a single blow, your enemies must test morale.

Eater of the Dead: For each of the following corpses that you completely consume, you gain +1 max HP (to a maximum of 20): another PC with at least as many templates as you; another Harpooner with at least as many templates as you; a murderer sentenced to death in a court of law; any monster larger than a human, with at least 8HD. You take half damage from poison, radiation, and chemical burns.

Psychopomp: You may judge a criminal's innocence or guilt at your sole discretion. You yourself are immune to all laws (others do not know this unless they can see your soul somehow), and also to fear damage. At 5, 10, 15, and 20 max HP gains from your Eater of the Dead template, you add +1 to your STR, DEX, and CON scores, which can take you past 18.

Special Gear

1. d3 Iron Grenades. They are designed to be thrown into the sea, but work just as well on land. Crude mechanical fuse is inbuilt, and will be a dud 1 time in 3. 2d6 damage to uncovered targets within 30ft. 1 slot
2. d6 Chemical Flares. Small rockets wrapped in red wax paper. Ignite with any flame, and it will fire straight upwards and illuminate a wide area. Export of the White City. You don't know what colour you'll get until you fire it. 1 slot
3. Imperial Jelly Stinger-Knife. Recently harvested. As a knife that does 1 damage, but injects a poison that does an additional 2d8 if the target fails a CON save. Poison is potent for another 7-d3 days. 1 slot
4. 15 days of dehydrated dry rations in waterproof wrapping. 1 slot
5. A list of the names of 8 condemned murderers. 4 live on the island, 4 in the Barony. no slots. 
6. An ancient and beautiful pistol, with a handle of carved whalebone. It is loaded. 1 slot.

Harpoon: as a javelin, securely attached to 50 feet of rope. When you throw it, and it hits, it will lodge securely into the hide of beasts. 

Silk Cord: can only be used on humanoid enemies unaware of your presence. If you hit with it you also automatically grapple your opponent and deal d8 damage - for each turn the grapple remains unbroken, you do another d8.

Like this (before they start growing huge and weird).

Whalers, Slayers

 Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and the Dying, Turner, 1840

The people of the Lantern Berth are fishers and sea people. They are unafraid to sail in open water, unlike the settled societies of the mainland. The red and dreaming sunlight does not get inside them so much - or perhaps they are already full of it and can be lead no further into its strange seemings. They swim naked in the sea year round, and harvest food, strong strands of kelp, and other needful things from the reefs that cover the shallows close by their home. They also hunt the monsters that live in the deeper places, mostly whales, but also serpents and demon-fish. They do this in small boats, by hand, with harpoons, broad-bladed lances, cudgels, and long machetes, and they eat the meat of the titanic corpses that they leave in their wake. The transition into adulthood is linked to the hunting of monsters, although not in any way that is straightforward of measurable to an outsider. When they call you 'friend', it means 'someone who I can trust in the small boat'. This doesn't come easily.  

An Islander whaling party will consist of 2d3 small boats, each manned by d3+4 Hunters, a Harpooner, and a Hunter-Captain. 1 in 2 chance that each small boat will include a Youngblood on their first hunt.

Each small boat will have 10 harpoons attached to floats, and 5 lances in the hold. These are communal weapons, taken up by whoever needs them in the moment. It will also have 30 rations, bandages and alcohol, d4 iron grenades, and a 1 in 2 chance of a single dose of antiseptic in a watertight chest. 

A Hunter is HD1, unarmored, and armed with a machete and a cudgel. They are all blooded veterans, and take -2 fear damage on the hunt while their Captain lives. All can steer the boat and know their way home, all can use the lance and the harpoon. They can swim twice as fast as a normal human, and hold their breath for twice as long.

A Harpooner is as above, but is 2HD, gets a +2 bonus to hit and damage rolls with a harpoon, and is immune to all fear damage related to the hunt while their Captain lives. Captains are well respected but Harpooners are a mythical archetype on the Lantern Berth, analogous to Errants on the steppe. Their hands are death, red with gore, slayers of monsters. 

A Hunter Captain is as above but HD2, armed with a machete, a leather crop (to flog their men if they tire at the oar), a pistol (to shoot mutineers), and a spyglass. They are immune to fear on the hunt. They sight the movements of the behemoth, and direct the actions of the crew. Often, groups of small-boat Captains will elect one of their number to be the Hunter Chief, who coordinates the others and takes legal responsibility for deaths in excess of what is considered usual.

A Youngblood is statted as a hunter, but is not allowed to throw a harpoon or touch a lance, and takes full fear damage. A Youngblood is expected to watch and make themselves useful in the boat. Surviving and following orders calmly, quickly, and competently are their only goals, and vastly more important than skill at arms.

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The Hunt

Mechanics

Boats have 25hp and are unarmoured. The speed of the boat is the basic unit of speed during a hunt, and assumes 6 on the oars. Fewer than this and the boat travels at half speed. Fewer than 4 and the boat travels at 1/10th speed. Even a single person rowing is enough to get back home, it will just take a while. 

If a boat is destroyed, then all equipment is lost and all people inside are now in the water. Other boats can pick them up - a boat can hold 20 people at maximum, but any more than 10 will make all combat from the boat impossible. 

A Monster can be faster or slower than a boat. If they are slower, you automatically keep pace with it during the hunt and can place yourself relative to the monster as you wish. If faster, the monster controls the pace of the encounter, and can disengage and reengage at will. Many will simply disengage if you let them. 

If you can get harpoons with floats attached into them, then Monsters will start to take exhaustion. Each harpoon attached this way gives one exhaustion per minute. If a Monster ever has exhaustion greater than its HD, it can no longer move, and lies still on the surface (though it can still make attacks). 

Most monsters can dive and breach. If they dive without harpoons attached, you have lost them. If they have harpoons attached, they cannot dive for long than 10-[harpoons] minutes. When they breach they can do so underneath a boat, dealing d10 damage to the boat and themselves, and provoking a roll on the mishap table (see below). 

Combat

A harpoon does d6, a lance does d8, a grenade does 2d6. 

If a boat is alongside a monster, those inside the boat may attack with lances. If they roll max damage or crit while doing this, the boat that they are in is covered in a single stack of Gore. See the mishap table, below. 

Grenades have 'sea fuses' prepared back on the shore - these are mechanical and temperamental, and a grenade will be a dud 1 in 3 times. Grenades sink about 1m beneath the water before they explode and deal damage to everything within 10ft, including boats (but not people above the water if they detonate below the waterline). 

Combat with sea monsters is not a precise affair. Monsters add HD/10 rounded up to their to-hit rolls, instead of their HD.  

Mishaps

While in combat with Monsters, various occurrences (mostly monster attacks) will will require you to roll on the Mishap table. You get +1 for each stack of Gore in the boat, and -2 for each member of the crew doing nothing but ensuring things are tidied away and shipshape (someone doing this cannot engage in combat). If there are more than 10 people in the boat, this shipkeeping becomes impossible. 

Roll a d20 and consult the table below. Randomise which sailors are affected.

• 1-5: A close thing, but no serious damage, for now. 
• 6-7: A sailor looses their footing and knocks themselves senseless. They take d2 damage and are knocked into the sea. 
• 8-9: A free rope catches at pulls taught across the top of the boat. d3 sailors take d2 damage and are knocked into the sea. 
• 10-11: A solid impact; something tears off. The boat takes d6 damage.
• 12-13: The boat rocks and water rushes across the shallow deck. d6 sailors are washed overboard, but take no damage. 
• 14-15: A terrible, crunching blow to the timbers. Water starts to leak in, before being quickly plugged with tar and rags. The boat takes d12 damage.
• 16: A sailor slips onto a lance and cuts themselves badly. They take d6 damage. 
• 17: A sailor is caught in a taught rope and pulled onto the point of a harpoon. They take d10 damage. 
• 18: Someone kicks the sea chest by accident, and sets off the sea-fuse of one of the grenades. All grenades explode simultaneously, but only deal 1d6 damage each instead of 2d6, due to being locked in an iron box. All other items in the chest are ruined, and the boat takes on 1 Gore per person killed in the explosion.
• 19: The boat flips like a coin and takes d6 damage. All sailors are washed into the sea. 
• 20: The Boat is gashed and useless, and no longer seaworthy. It starts sinking rapidly. The boat is destroyed, and all sailors are now in the sea. 
• 21+: As 20, but d6 sailors additionally take d8 damage as the boat comes apart in sharp splinters, lashing ropes, and tangled steel debris. 

Weather

No captain of any experience would willingly put engage in a hunt in bad weather, but occasionally needs must. Each turn, roll a dice: in squalls, this is a d12, in storms a d8, in hurricanes, a d4. Every time you roll a 1, roll on the mishap table. Storms give all rolls on the Mishap table a flat +1; Hurricanes give you a flat +2.

Monsters

When a monster is spied from the Lantern Berth a crew is assembled to hunt it. Monsters do not frighten the islanders; a hunt is a cause for celebration; this is how youths transition into adulthood. 

Roll a d10 for your monster:

• 1: An Abomination.
• 2-3: A lesser monster: even chances of an Elder Shark, Giant Squid, or Emperor Jelly. 
• 4-6: A Whale.
• 7: A pod of d6 Whales.
• 8: A hunting pair of Assassin Whales. 
• 9: An Island Serpent.
• 10: A Monster Fish. 

Abomination

An odd mass of flesh and cartilage, not obviously alive, and lacking internal organs. Abominations wash up on the shore now and then, drifting out of the open ocean to the west. They are a bad omen, and are often diseased and purifying, home to millions of parasites, and uneaten by scavengers and other sea life. This is less a hunt and more a duty or garbage disposal. Abominations are usually harpooned from afar, towed into shore, dragged to furnaces, and incinerated.

HD15, unarmoured, no attacks, cannot move, mindless. If you attack one at close quarters you have a 1 in 2 chance of being exposed to a random disease, and are additionally attacked by hundreds of wriggling, worm-like parasites: save DEX or take d6 damage, and 1 damage per turn until you or someone else can spend an entire turn clearing them off you. 

Elder Shark

Sharks are common in the waters around the isle, and reef divers swim with lightweight spears to ward them off. An Elder Shark is very large and quite intelligent (for a shark), and many of them have grown to hate humans. They are still among the most direct of the true monsters, and are considered a predictable hunt; good experience for Youngbloods before tackling whales or worse. 

HD15, armour as leather, Jaws (2d8, can only attack someone in the water), Ram (shark and boat take d6 damage, boat tests for mishap), swims more slowly than a boat, but with sudden bursts of speed, disposition: murderous, vengeful, direct. 

Giant Squid

Called the 'Soldiers of the Evening' by islanders, and thought to make up the army of the sea itself. Their tentacles are lethally strong, and their beaks sharp, but they are slow, visible, and relatively fragile. Considered a fine first hunt. At night they shine brightly with blue phosphorescence - their soldiers 'uniform'.

HD10, unarmoured, tentacle x4, speed: slow, disposition: curious, will flee if given the option.

Tentacles attack at a distance of 30ft. If they hit a boat they do d8 damage, if they hit a person in a boat they do d4 damage and pull them into the water, and if they hit a person in the water they do d4 damage and pull them down to the beak, which does an additional d8 damage. 

Emperor Jelly

A non-conscious mass of transluscent flesh surrounded by thin nets of fine, stinging, tentacles that stretch for nearly a mile. They are greatly revered for their great beauty and forbearance, and because they kill other monsters with an almost contemptuous ease. Not dangerous to approach and kill, as long as you don't go in the water. The long, long approach to an emperor jelly, and the almost ritualistic ease with which they are dispatched once you get there, have a profound religious significance to the islanders. 

When they drag Jellies back to shore, specialist butchers with thick aprons and gloves harvest the stingers to make poisoned needles, darts, and arrow-heads that remain potent for about a week after the monster's death. 

If for any reason a sailor finds themselves in the water while attacking an Emperor Jelly, they must immediately test CON each turn they remain in the water, or be killed. 

HD8, unarmoured, no attacks, speed: slow, disposition: mindless. 

Whales

The Princes of the Sea. The Whale is by far the most noble monster to hunt, and its killing gives prestige above all. It is not the most dangerous, but it is the most human - Hunters swear that whales know kindness, mercy, wrath, and vengeance. They are killed for blubber, meat, and oil. Many in the Barony think them mythical. 

HD25, armour as leather, Great Jaws (2d10, can only attack a boat or someone in the water), Swallow Whole (one sailor in the water saves DEX or is removed from play. If the whale is killed, and their belly opened, the sailor may save CON with disadvantage to survive the ordeal), Tail (d6 damage to a boat, roll mishap) , Ram (d10 damage to a boat and to the whale, roll mishap), speed as boat, disposition: mercurial, calculating, mirthful, merciless.

Singing: Every sailor must save CHAR to attack a whale for the first time. Harpooners are immune. 

Young whales: as above, but HD15 and unarmoured. Every pod will contain 1 young whale per 2 adults. 

Ancient Whales: as above but HD35 and armour as chain. In addition, an Ancient Whale mirrors all psychic damage back onto to person or entity it originated from, deals fear damage equal to its physical damage, deals a single point of damage to everyone aboard a boat that is spattered with its Gore (its blood is boiling hot), and can speak (although it will not deign to talk to murderers). Will never appear in a pod; there is 1 in 6 chance of lone whale being an Ancient. 

Assassin Whales

Strange creatures that appear in pairs, and who hunt Hunters for sport. They are smaller than whales, but vicious and intelligent. A preferred tactic is for the two Assassins to attack a single boat at once, destroying it, mangling its crew while they are helpless in the water, and moving on to the next. The islanders call them Husband and Wife, or simply the Bastards. 

HD15, armour as leather, Ram (d10 to boat, d6 to Assassin Whale, roll mishap), Wash Over (requires both to use this attack on the same boat, all hands aboard test STR at disadvantage or are washed overboard. If washed overboard, take d6 fear damage), Cruel Jaws (2d10, can only be used on sailors in the sea), Torture (can only be used on sailors in the sea, and only if both Assassins use the same attack on the same person. 3d10 damage to the victim, d10 fear damage to anyone watching), speed: faster than a boat, disposition: motivated and intelligent murderers. 

Island Serpent

Serpents are mysterious beings. To begin with, they can speak, although some contend that they can only mimic, and do not form true thoughts of their own. They are so poisonous that merely brushing against their spines can kill in seconds. They do not appear to eat, though the islanders will tell you that what they eat is the truth. Or maybe what they eat is dignity, or freedom, or happiness, or innocence. They are hated, and when they are killed their long, heavy bodies are affixed to scaffolds at the edge of the harbour, and left to rot. 

HD20, armour as chain, Bite (can be used against sailors in boats, or in the water, 2d6, save CON or take an additional 2d8 poison damage), Crush (2d10 against a boat + roll mishap, 2d10 against a sailor in the water), 

Screaming Obscenity: When its head is above water (any turn not swimming), the Serpent will be screaming a barrage of lies about things that its hunters care about. This is usually not very intelligent, but it can be awful. The serpent is an excellent mimic of human voices, and has somehow heard your loved ones speaking. Everyone who can hear it takes d6 fear damage per turn. Islanders know to fill their ears with wax before a hunt (everyone who does so is functionally deaf), and anyone who does so has the damage reduced to d3. 

Poison Quills: If a sailor critically misses when attacking an Island Serpent in melee, they must save CON or take 2d8 poison damage.  

Monster Fish

Extremophiles of the deep places. Fish is a misnomer; no one knows what they really are. They come wreathed in sheets of brightly coloured chemical steam, poison, shrieking winds. A tumult and a fury. Their eyes are burning lances. When the monsters of the deep emerge, the islanders gird themselves for war. There will be no Youngbloods on a hunt against a Monster Fish. Harpooners measure rank in their strange warrior cult by the number of successful hunts they have sailed against the deep things.

Monster Fish have been known to beach themselves periodically on the Lantern Berth, sometimes en masse. There is no worse omen. 

HD35, armour as leather, Bite (2d8 against sailors in the ocean), Ram (d10 against the Monster Fish, 2d10 against the boat, roll on the mishap table), speed: as boat, disposition: mindlessly hostile.

Excitation: The sea hisses and boils around its terrible form - anyone in the water takes d4 boiling poison damage per turn that they remain there. In addition, all combat with a Monster Fish counts as taking place in a Hurricane, as the liquid around them vaporises into air and the thick chemical clouds are whipped into a frenzy.

Harrowing: The Monster Fish can gaze at a single target per turn. They may save DEX to avert their eyes (make themselves blind); if they are unable to they take damage equal to the damage die and type of the most damaging weapon that they have to hand. They may instead choose someone next to them suffer this damage. 

Swallow Whole: In place of its usual attacks, a Monster Fish may choose to swallow whole a sailor in the sea. They save DEX; if they fail they are annihilated. 

Biological Furnace: When you strike a Monster Fish in melee, you take d3 radiant damage. Your skin blackens, puckers, blisters, and falls away. You are additionally exposed to a random disease, which can include the Anathema. 

A Thing of the Elder World: A Monster Fish may roar when it makes an attack. Those aboard the boat it attacks (if it attacks a boat, otherwise only the single sailor attacked is affected) must save WIS, and on a failure immediately lose their nerve at detailed in the morale rules. Immunity to fear damage does not protect you from this. Everyone else in the combat takes d6 fear damage, and resistances and immunities apply as normal.