I Did it Before it Was Cool

It being this.  I changed the name of the feature about half way through it so heres the listings for my...

Monster Monday posts
Creature Feature posts

Sorry I've dropped off on Monster Mondays, but I've had less time to sit and hypothesize sense the campaign started.

EDIT: ;)

Monster Monday: Mummy

The Dark Country is not the only land that has seen the Sword Brothers.  Almost two centuries before the founding of Nightwick Abbey, the Sword Brothers fought a series of terrible wars in the Desert Lands.  They carved out a small kingdom for themselves, but eventually were forced to leave and abandon the kingdom they had won.  Scholars say that this is when the first Mummies appeared in the lands where the Church holds sway, but pagans say that they had seen the creatures much earlier.

Apparently, the Sword Brothers learned a strange embalming technique during their time across the Sea.  They reserved this rite for those exalted among them who died due to the workings of the Adversary.  The exact qualifications for this are hazy, and most Sword Brothers were placed on a shelf in the catacombs once their life was finished.  Even most High Masters only received a sarcophagus to hold their bones and not the full embalming process they took from the Temples in the Sand.  

For whatever reason, though the Church firmly believes it is due to the unholy nature of the embalming itself, these cadavers are prone to being possessed by the spirits of the dead.  Usually the spirit is of the body's former inhabitant but it is not uncommon for a mummy to be possessed by a strong willed individual who died decades after the body saw the rites of burial.  When this happens, the mummy is filled with a sort of base intelligence.  It is as malevolent and brutal as it is stupid.  They seek revenge on those who wronged them in life.  This is, for most mummies, a very long list.  They carry out this revenge in the most blunt way possible.  They crash into the house of their betrayer and throttle him or her before leaving into the night air.

Unfortunately for the mummies, many animate after all of their foes are long dead.  Though they sometimes carry their revenge out on the descendants of their enemy, most have intellects that are too dim to be able to determine who these descendants might be.  Instead they attack any creature who roughly resembles those they knew in their past life.  This can be as simple as sharing a hair color, or being a bit taller than average.  Mummies always mistake such minor similarities for the real thing, and act accordingly.

Or at least they would if they were able to.  Most mummies are buried in catacombs and barrows and remain there unable to escape.  These mummies are so full of anger that they attack any living creature who crosses their path.

The natives of the Dark Country know that the meticulously embalmed creatures brought from the Desert Lands are not the only form that mummies take.  For centuries, perhaps even millennia, worshipers of the Old Gods have made terrible sacrifices in bogs and lakes.  If the god is displeased by such a sacrifice, the corpse animates and becomes a creature that resembles a mummy in everything but appearance.  These creatures are commonly used in folk medicine and witchcraft, though the Church frowns upon such things if they find out about them.  Across the Sea, the Desert Nomads tell of mummies of great magical strength and intelligence.  These mummies are still guided by the powerful hate which grips their kind; however, they enact their revenge more slowly and methodically.  These creatures, it is said, wish to revenge themselves upon the whole, living World and will not rest until it is tramped beneath their linen-wrapped foot.

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Today is the saddest day of the year.  I've always hated how the showing of horror movies and the general Halloween spirit come to a dead stop on November 1st.  In honor of this fact, I will more slowly ease out of the Halloween spirit on this blog.  The above entry is designed to take some of the typical conventions of a mummy movie and place them in a context that works for Medieval Europe.  

I'm an idiot by the way.  First, other blogs have been using Creature Feature as a title for articles on monsters.  Second, I missed a chance for alliteration by not tying the name into the fact that I make these posts on Mondays.  This has been corrected.

Creature Feature: Werewolves

Villagers across the world tremble at the thought that a werewolf might be in their midst.  They walk unseen during the day appearing as a normal man, but at night they skulk in the woods awaiting a slow passerby to devour.  They are among the most cunning of the demons' servants.  They are both monster and man.  Their sinister pact with creatures of the Pit has afforded them their terrible ability to transform into a half-human beast.

But perhaps it is not their fault.  Many have speculated that perhaps lycanthropy is a disease, and not a gift of the Devil.  Many farmers have screamed their innocence and refused to deny the crimes they so obviously committed until the stake that was to be their funeral pyre was tied to their backs.  Clearly these deluded souls are unaware they have given in to such turpitudes due to some moon caused madness.  This lunacy makes them forget their real nature and fervently deny that they are a monster.  The community has found them guilty of these crimes, and what other explanation could there be?

The Church says these souls are not to be pitied, however.  If they were truly righteous men God would not have stricken them with such a terrible illness.  If it is indeed a disease, then it is one God visits upon those who already have wicked hearts in order that they might reveal their true nature.  More likely though, they or their ancestors made some hideous pact with the Adversaries.  In exchange for a promise to help unmake man and his works, the demons offered the werewolf terrible powers.  Their acceptance of this bargain damns them to Hell, even if they cannot remember their crimes.

If loggers are to be believed, the Witchwood is swarming with these creatures.  They pick off lone hunters and lumberjacks at night when they are their most vulnerable.  As such, woodsmen are loathe to leave their camps after dusk, and never do so without a cross and sprig of Wolf's Bane.  The woodsmen who stay behind often speak of how they doubt the efficacy of such items, but none would deny them before they had to venture out into the dark alone.  

According to their campfire tales, werewolves are so thick in the Witchwood that they have formed whole villages.  Here they live in a mockery of mortal life.  They have houses where they sleep during the day before hunting at night.  They have shops where they sell not but tools made from hunter's bones.  They have anti-churches where they preform devilish orgies in half-animal states.  Some say they live in these villages alongside orcs and goblins.  Others say that orcs are simply werewolves who transformed to long and got stuck that way.  These people are usually looked at oddly, then dismissed.  It is common to tell such tales when a new logger arrives, especially if he has some reason to go out into the woods at night.

For some reason, werewolves are associated with the moon.  No one knows why particularly, they just are.  According to poems often recited by wandering troubadours, werewolves only hunt in autumn, and only if the moon is bright enough for a man to read by.  Those whose loved ones have gone missing in the winter or under the new moon have obvious reason to dispute this "fact."  Some say that their bloodlust waxes and wains with the moon, though their seems to be little evidence of this.  Still, the werewolf's association with the moon persists.

There are accounts of men who can turn into other beasts.  Western men and settlers claim that there are certain pagan warriors who can turn into a bear.  There is a legend in Lichgate of a thief so bold that he stole the bones of St. Gax right from the high altar.  To punish him, God turned him into a half-rat creature.  He and his gang of rat-thieves still live in the sewers of that city, or so inn keepers tell patrons.  Wereboars have been reported lairing alone in the woods to the West.  Supposedly they grow to enormous size, and only return to human form when slain.  However, these creatures are not nearly as well attested as Werewolves.

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I hope to do more creature features this week, instead of just my usual Monday morning one.  Expect them, like this one, to be vaguely Halloween themed.  It is my favorite holiday after all.

Creature Feature: Medusas

Many legends are told about the snake headed women called the Medusas.  Obviously, few have seen the creature and lived to tell the tale, but peasants say that the crumbling statues found amongst the many ruins which dot the world are a tribute to their existence.  According to the tales which woodsman tell around their campfires, Medusas are women cursed for their vanity or -- depending on the teller of the tale -- their infidelity.

Such creatures, it is said, lair in the deep places of the world where the Sun's light does not reach.  On moonlit nights they come to the surface world to find a mate, but are always disappointed when their prospective lovers are turned to stone by their ghastly visage.  They wonder the World immortal, cursed to never again know the touch of a lover, the smooth skin of a human being.

Some bards claim that this is far from the truth.  Yes the Medusa lives underground and yes it only leaves during the night hours, but it does so under the new moon, when not light shown.  According to these lurid yarns, Medusas attempt to blind unwary travelers on such nights. Once blinded, they are taken back to the Medusa's chthonic abode.  There they serve as slaves to the Medusa for the rest of their miserable days, performing -- at her bidding -- the most horrible of acts.  It is usually said that men are the subject of such attacks, though if the bard feels the crowd is raunchy enough, and is willing to risk burning, they are known to tell other tales as well.

The Church is wary of such stories.  The existence of these terrible monsters is undeniable, for they are attested in the works of the great scholars of the Empire.  However, the Church disagrees with the common people over the nature of the Medusa's curse, as well as a great many other things.  Those who take up God's call and go into the wilderness to do battle with the forces of Chaos claim that Medusas are part of a whole race of creatures who live in a great underground city ruled by a strange serpent god.  Such stories are often dismissed, as few would believe someone who claimed to see a Medusa, and those that do speak of such a city are almost universally mad.

Medusas are quite popular figures.  Art depicting them may be found across the world.  Such art often depicts Medusas in more or less humorous ways.  It is not uncommon to see a lord's hall decorated with statues of Medusas who supposedly saw themselves in a mirror or friezes depicting some of the more bawdy legends.  Medusas are also commonly used as symbols of infidelity, and many a scorned tavern keeper has named his establishment "the Medusa's Head" after his wife ran away with a rich merchant.

Creature Feature: Goblins

Goblins were Dwarves once, or at least that is what Human scholars say.  According to this narrative, the Dwarves -- who are known for worshiping little else than gold -- uncovered a demon whilst dinging one of their halls.  This demon demanded worship, as many such demons do.  The Dwarves who refused to submit their wills to a chaotic entity were devoured, and those that accepted the demon's price became Goblins.

Goblins vary wildly in appearance due to their chaotic natures but they are universally squat and hideous.  Some Goblins can grow to be just under the average height of a man.  These creatures Humans call Hobgoblins and Goblin Kings are almost always taken from among their number.  Besides size, there is little that distinguishes Hobgoblins from their smaller cousins, and all Goblins are invariably cruel and malicious.

Goblins are known to love precious metals and beautiful things.  Their small statue prevents them from having the muscle needed to establish a large hoard, but they do pick up golden trinkets whenever they can.  Treasure seekers who decide to plunder known Goblin lairs are often disappointed to find that Goblins tend to deface these beautiful objects.  Statues of saints are often found with makeshift horns attached, or simply decapitated.  Gold coins with old imperial rulers on them are slashed to make the face and name unrecognizable.  It seems that only gems or other items of more or less natural beauty are free from the Goblins' wrath.

While most scholars will say that Goblins only live underground, every peasant whose ever had sheep go missing or a cow mysteriously slaughtered will tell you that they at least range forth at night to carry out their wicked schemes.  Under the cover of darkness, when men shun the woods and the fields, they strike.  They are fond of the taste of livestock, but prefer children if they can get them.  According to the wet nurses of the World, they are especially fond of naughty children, whose flesh they savor above all else.  The veracity of this is obviously suspect.

Some have wrongly asserted that Bugbears and Orcs are subsets of the Goblin race.  While it is true that Goblins, Bugbears, and Orcs often come together in large bands dedicated to pure chaos and that they cohabitate in the more haunted places of the World, they are in fact three separate types of creature.  More astute scholars will note that such hordes and places often contain undead in varying numbers.  While there are a few who would assert that all of these malevolent beings are lost souls escaped from Hell, most scholars point to the Goblins' Dwarven background as evidence against this idea.

Creature Feature: Orcs

This is the first entry in what I hope will be a continuing set of articles in which I take a monster and explain how they fit into the world of Nightwick.  I decided to start with orcs since they're a fairly common creature in any D&D campaign and they've grown a bit stale for me and I seek to spice them up.

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Orcs are ungodly combinations of man and beast whose penchant for rape and murder is well recorded.  Though most artistic renderings show them as having a porcine aspect, orcs vary wildly in appearance due to their chaotic natures.  Rather famously, the orcs of the White Lady are typically goat-like in aspect, though porcine, bovine, and simian ones are not unheard of among their numbers.  Orcs who are not in the employ of some fouler creature tend to rally into tribal groups based around the particular animal that the group resembles.  Groups of orcs large enough to contain multiple animal types are often rife with infighting.

Church scholars and even many wizards and secular thinkers believe that orcs are an unnatural race.  Necromancers, witches, fairies, demons, and other wicked beings use foul magic to shape and twist unlucky humans into orcs.  Orcs, therefore, do not procreate as other creatures do.  No evidence has ever been recovered of orc females, and few orcs have genitalia at all.  Those that do are universally male.  Though it is rare for a victim of an orc attack to survive, whenever a child of an orc and a human woman is born, it is always a malformed and particularly evil orc.  No females have ever been found among these orcs either.

Orcs, regardless of whether or not they are in a dark wizard's retinue or members of a tribe, are drawn to the evil places of the world.  From these locales do they range.  Those unfortunates who have met orcs in the places they dwell tell stories of devil worship and depravity the likes of which not even Froglings are capable.

Some scholars have asserted that orcs and goblins are related.  Most think that this is patently false, and that the two races only work together because of their shared hatred of humanity and its works.

Edit: Removed some particularly humorous spelling mistakes.