#25: Crocodile. We got giant crocs, we got large crocs, we got normal crocs. In contrast to OSE sharks and 5E crocodiles, there is no unique mechanic, like a bite-and-grapple; they just get bigger and bite harder. We’ll go with the giant crocodile, as it has a bit of lore – “usually encountered in Lost World regions” – that fits with our idea that the prison has a zoo of ancient pseudo-extinct beasties.
#95: Rat. Rats are typically either a tutorial challenge for newbie adventurers, or little more than set dressing. I like that OSE treats rats rather seriously. They have five (!) special characteristics, making them much more mechanically distinct than a lot of OSE’s other animal monsters.
- Afraid of fire. Will flee unless “forced to fight by summoner.” Their fear of fire means they are a puzzle monster; like the beetle swarm that invites the PCs to escape by diving into water, the rat swarm has built-in counterplay. We’ll decide later if these rats are compelled by a rodent-summoner, or just out there swarming on their own volition.
- Disease. There’s a 1-in-20 chance of disease, which allows a save, and the disease has a 1-in-4 chance to be deadly over 1d6 days. Given that the disease has no immediate effect, I would probably keep a rat bite tally during any encounter with rats, and sum the infection odds to a single roll after the encounter is over. The disease system here is pretty forgiving, but obviously scales in danger with the number of rats encountered…
- Pack. The equivalent of swarm rules from modern D&D. It does not specifically state how the pack feature interacts with the disease odds; I would rule that swarms have a 5-in-20 chance of inflicting disease, versus a sole rat’s 1-in-20.
- Attacking in water. Excellent swimmers, no penalty. Swarms of disease-ridden rats chomping away at a swimming adventurer is scary enough on its own, without even considering…
- Engulf. The PC saves versus death or falls prone, unable to attack until they can stand again. This is pretty scary in a land encounter. In the water… well, when your PC sinks beneath the surface, covered in ravenous, diseased rodents, no one is going to mistake that for a training wheels encounter.
#101: Rust Monster. Another classic creature that is brutal in its old-school presentation. Magical items only have a 10% chance per “plus” to resist the effect (the entry does not say if metallic magical items without pluses even get this chance). Oof.
I like the rust monster as an invasive species, possibly drawn by the abundance of unprotected metal in the prison. Like the cellipedes, they are a kind of dungeon vermin that specifically plagues prison wardens. As much as adventurers hate rust monsters, prisoners love them, as they can quickly destroy metal cell bars, incidentally freeing the incarcerated.
So the rust monsters are hated and hunted by the guardian monsters, but beloved by the prisoners. Escaped prisoners are trying to capture and herd the creatures toward their allies, using the rusties to jailbreak those who could aid them in a more general escape from the structure.
#117: Thoul. We planned for this. Our thouls are bodyguards to the hobgoblin king! They were mutated with trollish blood, which caused runaway cellular replication; the ghoulish infection counterbalanced that explosion of life, and now these creatures live a tenuous existence, their trollish blood and their necrotic flesh caught in a delicate balance.
#131: Weasel, Giant. Like the giant shrews before them, the giant weasels provide a surprising degree of mechanical crunch. They are tunnel dwellers who are good at tracking (favoring wounded prey) and have infravision. They attach to targets and suck blood (!), and treasure is found on the bodies of their victims, in their lair. This encounter writes itself.
The giant weasels are invasive to the prison complex. They have burrowed down into the ground surrounding the prison, and created tunnels between otherwise unconnected areas. They show up 1-4 turns after a PC is injured, stalking the group, waiting until the PCs are in darkness, separated, or otherwise vulnerable. They then emerge from the nearest tunnel, attempting to grab a victim and drag them back toward their warren. If they succeed in pulling someone back into a tunnel, they move backwards, so that their victim’s body blocks pursuers’ line of sight. The weasel can continue to drain blood as they drag their victim to their doom. That’s a pretty intense encounter, for a superficially unimpressive creature.
But those tunnels also provide an opportunity to the PCs. Like our mother fungus, apes, and gargoyles, the weasel is not just a combat threat, but also a creature that creates an overlay on the dungeon, another network of connections that intersect and defy the built structure itself.
#55: Hawk. Not much to see here. We have normal hawk and giant hawk; they can swoop attack, and they are trainable. That’s it for OSE. The Monster Overhaul index directs us to another entry with a “why are they attacking” table, where we find “judgement-altering disease.”
I’m going to combine that with OSE’s note that they can be trained, and use this as another opportunity to tell the story of the prison’s decline. The hawks were once kept by the prison wardens, perhaps used to track prisoners who escaped the walls and fled into the wilderness. They are now feral and have contracted some kind of illness that compels them to harry anyone who approaches the prison exterior, regardless of purpose. The brigands camped outside the prison have figured out some kind of combination of smells and colors that repel them, and have festooned their camp in associated materials (it makes them look ridiculous).
#86: Octopus, Giant. We’re running into some overlaps as we get deeper into the OSE bestiary. The giant octopus lives in the same mechanical space as the lesser sea serpent, and we haven’t even gotten to OSE’s giant squid. The Overhaul’s index refers both to the kraken entry. Rolling there are on the variant table we get chameleonic; pulsing chromatophores. I’m reminded most strongly of the intelligent octopi in the science fiction novel Children of Ruin, who use colors to communicate in a way that the humans in the story don't understand at first. Making our giant octopi intelligent rather than yet another big sea beast could carve out some interesting space. Deeply curious creatures, they’ve been to drawn to explore the dungeon.
#122: Triceratops. The OSE triceratops is an aggressive herbivore that charges on sight, presumptively behaving like a territorial bull. The Overhaul refers us to the same “herd lizard” category that we used for stegosaurus. Lets do something different and say that our knight Sir Guy Truthspeaker has captured a young triceratops and is using it as a mount. The other triceratops are agitated by the missing member of their herd.
#46: Gnome. The best bit in the OSE entry is “May make foolish decisions to obtain precious items.” They get along well with the dungeon's dwarves, so they fit neatly with an already-established faction. Like any good faction, some of these gnomes are on board with this whole “strip the magical prison of valuables” approach, while others recognize that this is a bad idea. The Overhaul gives us some unexpected material to work with, directing gnome-seekers to the elemental spirit category, where they are the earth/stone equivalents of nereids, sylphs, and salamanders. Rolling on the “local reputation” table, we get “the honored dead, reborn.” So the dwarves have summoned gnomes that they believe (rightly or wrongly) are reincarnated ancestors. That certainly adds an edge to the dwarves' betrayal.
#103: Scorpion, Giant. A good straightforward monster. Most OSE animals, even giant ones, are neutral, a pattern that holds true in modern D&D as well. But the giant scorpion is chaotic. I’m not sure why. It’s not because of the poison (the giant spider is also neutral). The chaotic alignment pushes me toward the idea that the scorpion was a prisoner (or specimen) in the dungeon, rather than an incidental invader.
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