Last time: Grey Horse, Devil Swine, and Normal Humans
#109: Skeleton. We’ve already met our mummies, zombies, wraiths, and wights, so we have a pretty good number of undead knocking around the prison. Skeletons, like zombies, make sense as minions of more powerful undead. We placed the zombies with the mummies, but let's save the skeletons as servants of an as-yet unseen monster. I’m going to place them near the salt water aquatic monsters, to provide some variety there. The bones of failed escapees, animated by some dark magic, drifting up from the depths amidst the seaweed, to clutch at ankles, join us, join us...
#132: Whale. Yeah, OK, let’s do this. OSE includes a killer whale (AKA orca), narwhal, and sperm whale. Rolling randomly gives us the sperm whale. A brief aside: It is interesting to see how OSE stats suggest a different concept of the world than a modern D&D system. A sperm whale has 36 HD and 162 (!) HP. A red dragon, the strongest of the chromatic dragons, has 10 HD and 45 HP in OSE.
Compare that to 5E.2014, where an adult red dragon has 256 HP. The 5E MM doesn’t stat whales, but the roc is similar in HD to the whale in OSE, and that is about even with the dragon in 5E. It feels like modern designers felt it was important that the dragon was not only the most dangerous monster, but also (among) the biggest monsters. No such compunction in OSE.
The sperm whale is so big that it is hard to place it in the dungeon; it is very much intended as a wilderness monster. So let’s embrace that idea and put it outside the dungeon, but strongly associated with it. The sperm whale’s signature abilities are to ram ships and to swallow creatures whole. The prison builders enchanted this creature to crush ships approaching the island prison, and swallow any survivors in the water. Their intent was to prevent both prisoner escapes and rescue attempts from the outside. The whale itself can serve as a mini-dungeon, with survivors living inside the whale; that’s a classic trope.
#41: Gargoyle. The flow of water is already a consistent theme within this dungeon, so let's include gargoyles that honor the origin of the term. Historically gargoyles were not just statues (or “grotesques”) but specifically rainspouts on the buildings they adorned. Our gargoyles are bound by the dungeon builders to channel water through the dungeon, for hydration, drainage, and sanitation purposes. They may be cruel and twisted monsters otherwise, but their commitment to the routing of water takes priority over monstrous behavior. Two gargoyles can form a 1’ diameter “pipe” through solid stone between their locations. PCs who parley with them could use their help to bypass various hazards and obstacles. Beware their betrayal, however, as they could easily send you trouble instead.
#115: Stegosaurus. The OSE entry for the stego is minimal, but the Monster Overhaul, as usual, proves its value with supplemental random tables. Rolling on a few of those we get “fleeing a predator” as a response to the prompt “why are they charging?” and “we steal and devour their eggs” to answer “what do we use them for?” We’ll place these guys near the sabre-tooth tiger, since they also fit the lost world theme. But we also want to build up the idea that the dungeon’s divisions are breaking down, and that creatures from different regions are interacting with each other. So we’ll say these stegosauruses are frightened by the chimera, and that the noble and his retinue are stealing and eating their eggs.
#23: Cockatrice. It is interesting that cockatrices and basilisks, at 5 and 6 HD respectively, are quite a bit bulkier monsters in old-school D&D, while modern D&D presents them as relatively junior monsters, compared to the medusa and gorgon in the Family Stone. The cockatrice is described by OSE as “small,” but is about as tough as an ogre. The monster overhaul notes they are “rarely viscous, though their feeble minds and tendency to panic can lead to disasters” (this also serves as a good description of my cat). As discussed when we placed our medusa, petrification is an incredibly useful ability for the fantasy prison warden. Petrification can be a way of safely transporting a prisoner; putting them in “solitary”; managing a shortage of supplies by temporarily (unless…?) reducing the percentage of the prison population that needs to, you know, eat; and even creating statues that can fit together to build walls. You know, like in Unico in the Island of Magic.
Uh, you know, Unico in the Island of Magic? OK, maybe not everyone has seen Unico in the Island of Magic. You can watch it on Youtube! The petrified-people-used-for-building stuff starts around the 30 minute mark. I watched this when I was very, very small, and for years afterward, I had a very deep and paralyzing fear of being turned into a statue and used as building material. Fortunately, this never happened to me in real life, and I eventually got over that fear. But this probably does explain why I have written about gorgons so much on this blog. These blog posts don’t typically include processing childhood fears, but there ya go.
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the cockatrices are here for the same reason the gorgon (medusa) is – petrification is really useful to the prison builders. For the same reason I don’t want to cluster all the undead together, I’m not going to put the cocatrices next to the other petrification creatures. I’ll drop them near the center of the map, next to the doppelgangers, who were the second-ever monster we placed during this exercise. If the cockatrices petrified the doppelgangers, they might have formed a feral colony near that area. The zombies are unaffected or indifferent to their presence, and the bull sharks are protected from the stony birds by water.
#4: Basilisk. What a serendipitous result. We have our oops-all-rocks enemies showing up back to back. In Soviet Russia, rocks pet you.
Combined with our gargoyle in this entry, and our gorgon (medusa) lore, I think we have some interesting ideas of how petrification played a major role in the formation and maintenance of the dungeon. I like the idea that the prison-builders started with cockatrices (relatively easy to control, insofar as they have to make physical contact to petrify). Later, as the prison grew both larger and more difficult to control, they added basilisks, in a desperation move (capable of petrifying at range, but a real double-edged sword for other sighted creatures).
Rolling randomly, I’m gonna put the basilisk on the left side of the map, and it lands right next to the… rock baboons… which feels like the dice trying to tell me something. We’ll keep our scream-oriented baboons but also make them literal rock baboons. Why not?
#15: Bugbear. Another minimally described goblinoid in OSE. Hairy, ungainly, attacks with surprise (this also serves as a good description of my cat). Going to the Monster Overhaul directs us to the… ogre entry, surprisingly, but I respect it. The Overhaul is not afraid to create Weird Problem Creatures, and the bugbear is definitely one of them. Its abilities are as follows: “Harmed by innocence. Attacks against the [bugbear] take a penalty equal to the attacker’s HD or level. Bonuses to damage become penalties. Toy swords cut as steel ones.”
That’s kinda mental, right? Certainly more interesting than “stronk goblin with +2 to surprise, move along.” You can imagine why a creature that fundamentally subverts violence would end up in our prison. However, by imprisoning this freak amongst mostly guilty inmates, the jailers have inadvertently made him powerful. None of the twisted reprobates in the prison would be able to harm this guy. I’m not trapped in here with you, you’re trapped in here with me. This is a cool puzzle monster. Clearly our bugbear is a dungeon boss, like the dragon and the devil swine, controlling other monsters/NPCs, because they cannot harm him. We’ll drop him near the bottom of our diagram; he’s probably bossing around some combination of hobgoblins and humans. Maybe the poor cyclops too.
#69: Lizard Man. The most evocative bit from OSE is obviously “Man-eaters: Kidnap humans and demihumans, whose flesh they regard as a delicacy” (thankfully, this does not serve as a good description of my cat).
To my surprise, there is no entry for lizardmen in The Monster Overhaul. Not even an index entry pointing to another monster. I guess lizardfolk fall somewhere between kobolds and troglodytes in the Overhaul taxonomy. We’ll use troglodytes. With four separate random tables, they have enough going on in their entry that there will be material left for the actual troglodytes when we eventually roll them up.
Rolling a few times, we get “Genetic offshoot blessed with strange powers but cursed with mind-rot” and “Trepanning drill. Improves divine access” as a treasure. These two hooks together really sell these guys. The basic OSE beastiary does not have a direct mind flayer equivalent, so for this dungeon, our lizardfolk fill that roll.
#105: Shadow. “Intelligent, incorporeal (but not undead) monsters that look like shadows. Able to slightly change their shape.” I like the non-undead shadow concept. The Overhaul’s index suggests “Grue” as an interpretation, which isn’t on our OSE list, so we’ll use that to embellish these fellows. The grue is a highly mobile, durable, deadly creature in darkness, with light as its only weakness. It is easy to imagine our prison wardens trapping a grue/shadow here with redundant “walls” of light. As the prison keepers' authority slips away, the lights begin to go out, and the grue probes its containment, restless to be free. We’ll probably create a “high security” block for creatures like this, that require special methods to imprison.
#45: Gnoll. Gnolls have a little bit more going on than some of the other humanoids, but not much; the OSE description is just a winking reference to their post-Dunsany presentation as a portmanteau of gnome and troll. The Overhaul has no gnoll entry, but refers to the hyena entry, which has a nice “legendary abilities” table. “Hyenas only eat the corpses of unholy people. The souls of those they consume stay inside the hyena.” This gives them a pretty clear reason to show up in our dungeon. The gnolls have broken into the prison in search of "unholy" souls to devour. We’ll assume they’ve entered the prison from the top and are trying to get toward the lower middle, where the humans are.
Here’s our updated diagram. Getting a little more crowded, isn’t it? Remember, this is not the dungeon map; just a very simple diagram that can eventually inform regions, which can in turn serve as the basis for an actual map.
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