Last time: The World's Largest Rewrite: Floating Heads, Mother Fungus, Cellipedes
#60: Horse. OK, yes, I jumped into this exercise without really thinking about how to handle the various mundane “monsters” in the OSE bestiary. I don’t want to overlap with mules and camels, so I’m going to dive deeper into the Monster Overhaul, my manual of choice, to populate this one.
The book includes an entry for a “grey horse,” a strange constructed thing in the shape of a horse that challenges travelers to make clever rhymes, eating their rations as punishment if they fail. The grey horse seems too benign to be a prisoner, and too capricious to be one of the jailers. I’ll treat it as an invasive species, but without explaining how it got here (the grey horse just shows up in places where it is not wanted).
#84: Normal Human. Ah yes, the most dangerous monster of all; the Normal Human. OSE defines them as “Non-adventuring humans without a character class. Artists, beggars, children, craftspeople, farmers, fishermen, housewives, scholars, slaves.” But they are also implicitly not bandits, or pirates, or nobles, or any of the other “monster” types in the OSE bestiary that are obviously humans, but have their own entry. Essentially this is what the modern game would call a commoner.
I think we have some Normal Humans here who are guilty of Abnormal Crimes. They’re probably not individually dangerous to adventurers; even the typical serial killer is more of an opportunistic-but-ordinary person, rather than someone with high levels as an assassin or something. These Normal Humans are like the prisoners in Con Air or the mooks in the Batman Arkham games. They are weak, but numerous. And they likely have some powerful leaders among them as prison bosses; maybe NPCs with classes, maybe actual monsters.
#106: Shark. Shark!! The shark brings us back to the submerged section of our dungeon. We want to distinguish a bit from the other monsters that have flooded (literally and figuratively) into the prison. Picking randomly among OSE’s three sharks, we get the bull shark, which can ram and stun prey for three rounds. This is a nice twist that you don’t really see from beasts in modern D&D. I like the idea of the bull sharks ramming prey as they pass through a transitory space like a submerged hallway. The hallways are navigable for the sharks but too narrow for the sea serpent, who is the alpha predator in the seawater sector. Stunned swimmers sink deeper into the depths, so attempting to rescue them presents further risk for their allies. The crabs clean up what the bull sharks don't eat, at the bottom of the halls, amongst the bones of failed prison escapees.
#70: Lycanthrope. I usually choose a subtype randomly, but in this case I am going to simply pick the devil swine, because (a. they’re much more evocative than the other, more standard lycanthropes, and (b. they’re evil, so they’re the easiest to explain as prisoners of celestials. OSE describes them as follows: “Corpulent humans who can change into huge swine. Love to eat human flesh. Lurk in isolated human settlements close to forests or marshes.”
A devil swine has 9 HD (!) and a charm ability. So these guys are not minor brutes, but instead dangerous bosses, and with their charm ability, probably a powerful faction in their own right. I imagine they’ve been strategically charming other prisoners to take over the prison and eventually try to escape. Relative to some of the other very archetypal monsters we have featured so far, “shapeshifting mind-control pigs” could really surprise players.
Another nice detail on lycanthropes is as follows: “Horses and some other animals can smell lycanthropes and will become afraid.” The grey horse and the mules are both aware of the devil swine and could help the players avoid them, or at least anticipate their presence.
#22: Chimera. Another folklore classic. OSE doesn’t provide any suggestions beyond a visual description. The Overhaul gives us more to work with, including a roll table that produces a chimera with a goat for the left head and hindquarters, a leopard for the center head and forequarters, and a newt for the right head and tail. It breathes poison gas and has no wings. Created by a wizard who is also probably interred here.
#26: Cyclops. It’s interesting to compare the OSE cyclops to one from a more modern-style monster manual. The OSE version hews close to the Odyssey; it raises sheep, is slow-witted, and possesses the ability to curse people. All straight out of the Greek lore.
The 2014 5E monster manual, by comparison, shunts this information into the flavor text, abstracting it away from the source myths. Consequently, aside from its poor depth perception, the 5E cyclops has almost nothing to distinguish it from the statistically similar hill giant, which is a shame, particularly because 5E has an abundance of interchangeable brutes like this taking up space in the book.
The Overhaul parsimoniously groups the cyclops with the giants, so we’ll roll there to get some more of an idea of what to do with this dude. The “Why fight these giants?” table produces “They keep growing larger. Soon it won’t be possible to harm them.” So this cyclops was getting bigger and bigger with no end in sight, and the magic of the prison keeps that magical growth in check. The cyclops may even be a willing prisoner here, worried that the prison’s weakening structural integrity will reboot their uncontrollable embiggening.
#7: Beetle, Giant. The fire beetle (a fantasy firefly) and the oil beetle (a fantasy bombardier beetle) are the famous ones here, but rolling randomly tilts me toward the Tiger Beetle (a fantasy… uh, tiger beetle). OSE tiger beetles “hunt robber flies, but sometimes eat humans.” The bit about robber flies is useful, as we haven’t placed those guys yet.
The real-life tiger beetle has a number of gameable features we can steal, including antlion-like larvae that burrow into the sand to trap prey; an ability to charge very quickly toward prey, but with the need to stop and visually reorient; and the ability to mimic the sounds of toxic moths so that bats won’t eat them. We can tie these guys to both the robber flies and the bats when we get those results.
#100: Rock Baboon. Once again I’m charmed by old-school D&D’s “animal, but slightly weird” approach, contra modern D&D’s harder division between mundane animals (lumped together in the back of the manual) and fantastic monsters. The rock baboon is a pretty straightforward monster per the OSE entry, but I do enjoy that they “communicate with screams.” Same, rock baboon, same. How far can we take that?
Perhaps relative to other creatures in the dungeon, the rock baboons are particularly good at communicating important information over relatively far distances. The primary danger when encountering a single baboon or a small group is that they will alert the rest of their troop, even if they are far away. The baboons could even be useful allies if befriended, facilitating long-distance communication (filtered through baboon-speak, of course).
#134: Wolf. The most interesting bit about wolves in the OSE entry is that they can be trained, and that goblins ride dire wolves. So we have two possible routes here; wolves trained by the wardens to police the prison, and wolves ridden by the goblins we haven’t seen yet. The next entry better serves the prior option, so I’m going to go with the latter and assume these are goblin-affiliated wolves. We’ll put the wolves near the hobgoblins and leave the door open for a greater goblin zone in the prison.
#10: Blink Dog. Apparently we’re in the dog block. In addition to their signature teleport ability, blink dogs are lawful and hate warp beasts. I think it makes sense to consider them servants of the jailers. Their blink ability would make them well-suited to capture, corral, or pursue prisoners without the prison’s physical barriers limiting their movement. Perhaps they’ve been left to their own devices since the prison has gone to rot. A first encounter with the blink dogs will probably involve them shadowing PCs or observing them from afar to take their measure. They could be powerful allies for PCs who earn their trust by containing monsters or stopping escapes.
