April seems so far away...

Mondays...

TIZHERUK says "HIYA SNACK!"

Geek Wisdom

Inuit Monsters of the Frozen North for Dungeon World

ADLET
Group, Intelligent
Talons (d8 damage) 6 HP 0 armor
Close

Adlet are a race of people in Inuit legends said to have the lower body of dogs and the upper body of humans. Typically, they're believed to be the offspring of an Inuit woman and a dog, brought about through an unnatural mating. The Adlet are typically portrayed as aggressive savages who will attack men when they cross paths.
Instinct: Devours
• Hunts

INUIT 
Group, Intelligent
Spear (d8 damage) 6 HP 0 armor
Close
Special Qualities: Tribal Hunter-Gathers

Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions. The Inuit have traditionally been fishers and hunters. For the Inuit there was a set way of doing things: Maligait refers to what has to be followed, Piqujait refers to what has to be done, and the Tirigusuusiit refers to what has to be avoided. If an individual's actions went against the Tirigusuusiit, Maligait or Piqujait, the shaman might have to intervene, lest the consequences be dire to the individual or the community. Instinct: Hunt
• Survive
• Guard Community
• Welcome peaceful strangers

QALUPALIK
Group, Stealthy
Claws (d8 damage) 6 HP 0 armor
Close
Special Qualities: Aquatic, Immune to cold

Qalupalik is an Inuit mythological creature. It is a human-sized marine goblin-demon that lives at the bottom of the sea, with long hair, green skin, and long fingernails. The myth is that qalupaliks wear an amautiit (a form of pouch that Inuit parents wear to carry their children) so they can take babies and children away who disobey their parents to become qalupaliks. The story was used to prevent children from wandering off alone, lest the qalupalik take those children in her amautik underwater and keep them forever. Qalupaliks are said to make a distinctive humming sound; therefore, they can be heard before they appear. Instinct: Steal Children
• Lives in the Inuit marine Underworld
• Charms children
• Make a distinctive humming sound


MAHAHA
Solitary, Planar
Nails (d10 damage 1 piercing) 16 HP 0 armor
Close
Special Qualities: Immune to Cold, Immune to non-magical weapons

Mahaha is a maniacal Inuit demon that terrorized parts of the arctic. This creature is described as a thin sinewy being, ice blue in colour and cold to the touch. Mahaha’s eyes are white and they peer through the long stringy hair that hangs in its face. This demon is always smiling and giggling. It is strong, very strong and it is always barefoot. Mahaha is usually seen with almost no clothing on yet it never seems to be bothered by the cold. This cold demon takes pleasure in tickling its victims to death with sharp vicious nails attached to its long bony fingers. Many elders have remarked on the expression of the dead victims Mahaha leaves behind. It seems all of the victim have a similar expression on their dead faces – a twisted frozen smile. Although this demon is twisted and evil, Mahaha is easily fooled. Most of the stories told about Mahaha end with it being fooled. Usually Mahaha is tricked into leaning over a water hole to take a drink and is pushed into the open water and swept away by the currents.
Instinct: Tortures


SAUMEN KARS (TORNITS)
Solitary, Large
Claws (d10 damage) 16 HP 0 armor
Special Qualities: Immune to cold

The Inuit Yeti or Bigfoot; these solitary creatures are nomadic, roaming the wastes to settle temporarily where they are lucky enough to find food, shelter, or both. They are omnivorous, but the climate dictates that the lion's share of their diet is meat, and Saumen Kars consumes the flesh of any creature but their own kind.
Instinct: Preys on humans
• Hunts

SEDNA AVATAR
Solitary, Divine, Magical, Planar
Skeleton talons (d10+2 damage 1 piercing) 25 HP 0 armor
Close
Special Qualities: Divine, Primary Inuit goddess, Does not suffer fools, Aquatic, Immune to magic, Immune to non-magical weapons, Commands dead spirits

Sedna is the Inuit Goddess of the Underworld and the Ocean. The Inuit believe the afterlife to be located at the bottom of the sea; which Sedna rules. Sedna started existence as a simple Inuit girl. Sedna was killed by her father. Varying legends each give different rationales for Sedna's murder. Yet, in each version, her father takes her to sea in his kayak, chopping off her fingers and throwing her into the sea. In each version she sinks to the bottom of the sea; to be worshiped by hunters who depend on her goodwill to supply marine sea creatures to hunt. She is generally considered a vengeful goddess, and hunters must placate and pray to her to release the sea animals from the ocean depths for their hunt. She is often depicted with a fish tail, like a mermaid. Inuit souls are sent to her for a year after death before they are reincarnated back into their tribe.
Instinct: Punishes
• Rules Inuit underworld and oceans
• Commands sea creatures and the dead
• Inuit Goddess; appears as an arctic mermaid with skeleton talons

SIXAM IEUA
Solitary, Divine
Arctic curse (w[2d10+2] damage) 12 HP 0 armor
Close, Far
Special Qualities: Heal travellers, Bless weapons to hit demons, Mute

A rare type of Inunit guardian shaman found in Dan Simmons’ novel “The Terror”. The shaman of a community of Inuit was not the leader, but rather a sort of healer and psychotherapist, who tended wounds and offered advice, as well as invoking the spirits to assist people in their lives. His or her role was to see, interpret and exhort the subtle and unseen. The Tuunbaq can be pacified by the throat singing of an otherwise mute Sixam ieua (special Inuit shaman), rendering it as close to docile as it can be made. This entire shaman group has had their tongues removed to gain their special powers and usually refrain from all forms of physical violence against human beings. Instinct: Protect
• Guide
• Heal
• Bless
• Inspired by Dan Simmons' novel "The Terror"'

TIZHERUK
Horde, Large
Bite (d6 damage 1 piercing) 7 HP 0 armor
Near
Special Qualities: Aquatic

In Inuit mythology, the Tizheruk are large, snake-like sea creatures that are believed to roam Alaska's waters. They are described as having a head 7 feet long with a tail ending in a flipper, for a total of 12 to 15 feet long. Tizheruk were said to snatch people from docks and piers.
Instinct: Snatches
• Consumes

TUUNBAQ
Solitary, Large, Planar
Bite (b[2d12] damage) 20 HP 1 armor
Near

Special Qualities: Impervious to non-magical weapons, Demon, Immune to cold
The Tuunbaq is an Inuit Demon, a devourer of souls and eater of flesh. The Tuunbaq is encountered as a large polar bear with an extended if not elongated neck, and is impervious to non-magical weapons. The Tuunbaq can be pacified by the throat singing of a Sixam Ieua (special Inuit shamans), rendering it as close to docile as it can be made. The Tuunbaq was created by the Inuit Goddess Sedna to murder the other Inuit pagan gods, when it failed she exiled it to the far north and Sedna taught special shamans how to confine it there. Instinct: Consumes souls
• Haunts
• Ancient Demon of Frozen Wastes
• Players killed by Tuunbaq may not be restored unless it is destroyed
• Inspired by Dan Simmons novel

Consider the age in which we live...

Consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians…. A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind.… A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures and buy perpetual-motion machines to power their war rockets.

-Fritz Leiber

Crypt Seer

Crypt Seer	Solitary, Stealthy, Construct
Teleports	16 HP	0 armor
Close, Far
Special Qualities: Undead Construct

A rare variant version of the Crypt Thing, the Crypt Seer inhabits a distant and dangerous location; usually a crypt deep in a dungeon. It will answer almost any question or teleport a party home in exchange for a rare (often magical) item the party has which it covets. Talkative and entertaining it will never answer a question truthfully that it has not been paid for with a offering by the party. It appears as a skeleton in tattered robes with glowing blue eyes. Items given to a Crypt Seer in payment will vanish mysteriously; sometimes reappearing later in a distant hoard.It normally waits in an alcove or on a chair provided for it. 

Instinct: Demand offering

• Answers questions for offerings
• Teleports hostiles to nasty locations
• Guards
• Lies unless paid

Carlin Wisdom

Ideas are like Stars (Song makes me think of my Dad)

Mystery of Ambrose Bierce

"Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia!" -Ambrose Bierce

Long before he met his, Ambrose Bierce wryly described the nature of death as “not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.”

Toward the end of his life, Bierce had become completely disenchanted with this world. Having never reconciled with his wife (who sued him for divorce in 1904 and died in 1905), Bierce was miserable, having also outlived both of his sons (one died as a teenager as part of a lover’s triangle, and the other from pneumonia aggravated by alcoholism).

Alone and aging, “the thought of turning into a doddering old man waiting out his final years was reprehensible to him.” With the Mexican Revolution raging south of the border, the 71-year-old Bierce left, ostensibly to observe or participate in the war. His last letter was posted in Chihuahua, Mexico on December 26, 1913, after which there are no confirmed sightings.

Witty, prickly, bitter and brilliant, for 50 odd years, author and newspaperman Ambrose Bierce eloquently chronicled the latter half of the 19th, and first few years of the 20th, centuries. From moving descriptions of Civil War events, to scathing rebukes of the worst of the Gilded Age, all interspersed with tales of the supernatural, Bierce’s unique voice has left us with a body of work rivaled only by the greatest American writers. Yet despite his virtuosity with a well-turned phrase, perhaps the most enduring aspect of Bierce’s life is the way he died – because nobody knows for sure how he met his end.

Tuunbaq for Monster-of-the-Week

Tuunbaq (Inspired by the Dan Simmons novel The Terror)
Description: Polar Bear with long neck
Type: Destroyer
Power: Consumes Souls (killed players may not be restored)
Weakness: The Tuunbaq can be pacified by the throat singing of a sixam ieua (special Inuit shaman), rendering it as close to docile as it can be made. May only be killed by weapons blessed by a sixam ieua.
Attack: Bite 5-Harm
Harm Capacity: 12

The Tuunbaq is a Inuit Demon, a devourer of souls and eater of flesh in the frozen wastes. The Tuunbaq is encountered as a large polar bear with an extended if not elongated neck, and is impervious to non-magical weapons.

New Monster (from Dan Simmons' The Terror)

Tuunbaq	Solitary, Large, Planar
Bite (b[2d12] damage)	20 HP	1 armor
Near

The Tuunbaq is a Inuit Demon, a devourer of souls and eater of flesh. The Tuunbaq is encountered as a large polar bear with an extended if not elongated neck, and is impervious to non-magical weapons.The Tuunbaq can be pacified by the throat singing of a sixam ieua (Inuit shaman), rendering it as close to docile as it can be made.

Instinct: Consumes souls

• Haunts
• Ancient Demon of Frozen Wastes
• Players killed by Tuunbaq may not be restored

Netflix film Spectral

MotW Movie Alert
Ever wanted to play MotW with a black ops background?
Spectral is a fun Netflix sci-fi aliens homage film with the classic setup of a MotW mystery.(What the hell? How do we kill it? Let's do it!)
Could be inspiring for a GM to rip off for a cool adventure...
Worth checking out for MotW Netflix fans!

Spoiler Alert! Monster reveals plot of Netflix film Spectral!

You have been warned!

Bose-Einstein Condensate Specter (Inspired by the Netflix film Spectral)
Description: Invisible Apparition (Detected by low light technology) 
Type: Destroyer
Power: Incorporeal
Weakness: Halted by iron shavings and ceramic materials, harmed by energy weapons, killed if central machine destroyed or shut down.
Attack: Freezing Touch 7-harm, Intimate, Ignore Armor. 
Harm Capacity: 7 

Apparitions made of Bose-Einstein Condensate, which explains their ability to move through walls and freeze people to death, but also why they are halted by iron shavings and ceramic materials. They are produced by scanning humans on a molecular level and utilizing advanced 3D printing to replicate them in Condensate form. The human test subjects' brains and central nervous systems were then removed and hooked up to a central machine which keeps the condensate copies (or "apparitions") alive. 

A Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter of a dilute gas of bosons cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (that is, very near 0 K or −273.15 °C). Under such conditions, a large fraction of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state, at which point macroscopic quantum phenomena become apparent. It is formed by cooling a gas of extremely low density, about one-hundred-thousandth the density of normal air, to ultra-low temperatures. Due to the unique properties of the condensate, it was shown by Lene Hau[1] that light can either be stopped or slowed down significantly to the velocity of 17 meters per second, resulting in an extremely high refractive index. This state was first predicted, generally, in 1924–25 by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein.

Cool image by Jodie Brandt

Snow Serpent says "Hello"

Newhon Snow Serpent

Newhon Snow Serpent	Solitary, Large
Bite (d10 damage)	16 HP	2 armor

A furred snow serpent is an immense snake covered in thick white fur. They range in length from 60 to 80 feet long, with a head sad to be “as big as an elk” or a horse. At one snow serpent skin was said to be as long as a ship’s mast was tall. They are hot blooded, mammals not reptiles. Snow serpents dwell in the frozen wastes of Nehwon. They also can be found on the higher altitudes of snow and ice-covered mountains peaks. There they feed on various specious of mountain goat and antelope (as well as any luckless travelers who happen to fall into their clutches.Snow serpents are ambush predators, counting on their coloration to render them effectively invisible amid the snow and ice of their home. They will often coil up into depressions or under overhangs, and then strike at any unwary prey that wanders into their range.Afterwards, the snow serpent will find some place secluded to sleep off and digest its meal. As prey is scarce in the mountains and icy wastes, snow snakes will try and take any likely prey item they encounter.

 Instinct: Consume prey

• Hunts

 Snow Serpent greets Lunch guest in the Cold Waste

Credit this one to Fritz Leiber

Paramental	Solitary, Planar, Terrifying, Amorphous
Bash (d10+2 damage)	19 HP	4 armor
Close, Forceful
Special Qualities: Formed out of local city structures

Paramentals are the elemental spirits of inanimate forces. It is unclear whether they are drawn to cities because of the large quantities of "city-stuff" or created by them. When manifesting, they draw their physical substance from the materials nearby. Paramental entities are quite hostile to those unlucky enough to draw their attention, "about midway in nature between the atomic bomb and the archetypes of the collective unconscious." The one example featured in the novel "Our Lady of Darkness" was a brown humanoid, with an eyeless triangular face and long chin that tapered to a snout. 

Instinct: Destroys

• Manifests
• Arcane construct

“From his window there thrust itself a pale brown thing that wildly waved its long, uplifted arms at him.  While low between them, he could see a face stretched toward him, a mask as narrow as a ferret’s, a pale brown, utterly blank triangle, two points above that might mean eyes or ears, and one ending below in a tapered chin … a questing mouth that looked as if it were sucking for marrow.”

 --from Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness (1977)

The Long Fall

Your players may have faced a Rat Cult and/or a Spider Cult but a Rat-Spider Cult?
My conversion notes and the classic one page dungeon "The Long Fall"....

Happy 2017 my fellow Dungeon Worlders!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7cav44145d9c3JzeEJoVEd5X0E

Quotes for 2017

“Everybody matters or nobody matters.”― Harry Bosch by Michel Connelly

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”  -Lin Yutang

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

“Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.”  -Samuel Johnson

“That's justice," she said, nodding at the statue. "She doesn't hear you. She doesn't see you. She can't feel you and won't speak to you. Justice, Detective Bosch, is just a concrete blonde.”

― Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde