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.