The Lion

The flame of my torch crackles and spits as water drips onto it from above. Its fluctuating orange light catches on piles of bent sheet metal and rusting wire, throwing angular shadows on the tunnel walls as I pick my way through the ruins. One of the shadows seems to hang on the wall as I pass, solidifying into a heavily stylised mural reminiscent of some ancient jungle predator. Its face leers down at me with dead charcoal eyes. Pitch black fangs curl around spatterings of red in its gaping mouth, at the centre of which is a sloppily painted red arrow directing me further into the complex.

The air gets steadily colder as I proceed, but my torch gives off a dry heat that keeps me barely comfortable in my threadbare clothes. Eventually I reach a set of smooth metal doors, each thicker than I am wide and hanging slightly ajar. Smothering my torch I allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness before slipping through the doors. The room is dominated by a heap of cables - some thick as my arm - that seems ready to collapse on anyone who enters. As I step further into the room, two yellow lights flare to life near the top of the mountain of cables.

The room seems to shrink as the metallic creature bends down towards me. The countless cables snaking into the ceiling and walls groan, restraining it less than a foot from my face. Squinting up into its painfully bright amber eyes I hesitate, nearly forgetting what could've possibly motivated me to come down here. Before I can restore order to my thoughts the silence is broken by a low mechanical hum. A long electric blue tongue slides slowly across translucent silicon teeth.

"Either state your business, leave, or if you're feeling particularly lucky - take a few steps forward." The beast's deep voice buzzes loudly from somewhere deep within the heap of machinery, monotone yet still managing to convey a sense of deep impatience.

Despite how tempting the second option sounds as I stare down its softly glowing throat, I cannot leave empty handed. Not this time. "I.. I need to ask something of you, Lion. I need information." The Lion responds by retracting its head, leaving a mass of cables slack around its tree trunk neck.

"Information? Is that all? You lack ambition, little one. Most who come to me make grand requests - power, endless wealth, protection from death - for themselves or for a loved one." Some subtle change in expression must have given me away, as the beast immediately leans back down to meet my eyes, slowly rotating its head as it speaks. "Who did you lose? Friend, family member, lover? More importantly, how much were they worth to you?"

I take a deep breath and do my best to present an indifferent attitude. This is for her, after all. "That isn't what I'm here for, Lion. Like I said, all I need is information. Information about the Varicose Man." The Lion's eyes widen at this and I flinch away from the sudden brightness.

"Oh? Now that's a name I haven't heard in a while... Yes, quite a while... Not for three days, at least." I open my mouth to respond but the Lion continues regardless, amusement showing through its buzzing voice. "Yes, a woman came to me recently looking for information, just like you, about that sad old man. Oh, but I've already said to much."

I'm already fumbling in my bag for something to pay with as it finishes speaking, and quickly produce the five batteries I managed to scrounge on the way here. The batteries glow a dull amber under the light of the Lion's eyes and the mechanical hum dies down, leaving the room disturbingly quiet. Suddenly the noise returns and an impossibly deep rumbling shakes the floor, leaving me sprawled on the ground.

"You think I need power? You think I need your paltry wealth?" The Lion's voice shakes my bones and leaves my head ringing. Its bright blue tongue cracks back and forth in its mouth, sending sparks raining down on me. "I am power! I am eternal, and you are nothing!" The room shrieks in protest as it lunges at me, teeth snapping shut inches from my face, before going silent once again. Its head remains terrifyingly close to me and utterly still. My heart is still trying to escape my chest when the mechanical hum starts again.

"No, I know exactly how you're going to pay for this information. I think you'll agree it's quite a reasonable payment." Something bumps against my leg and I quickly scramble away, only to see a tiny metallic servant of the Lion scuttling out from the darkness. On its back is a gleaming tray, holding an incredibly clean pair of steel pliers.

"Pull out your teeth for me."

HOOK

I can't help but scoff loudly at my friend's startlingly bad taste. "Really? I only made it through three episodes, and the most enjoyment I got out of it was imagining how good it would feel to hit all the main characters with a shovel."

          

"Well yeah, it starts off kind of slow, but once the plot actually gets going...oh man." Josh grins and shakes his head, attention quickly returning to his Styrofoam packaged Korean food.

"Really. Well, I'll see if I have time to watch it between catching up on all the other quality shows you've recommend to me..." I smirk as he glances up, eyes narrowed and mouth full of noodles.

Quickly swiping a napkin across his face, Josh points his fork at me. "Seriously, you're not giving it enough credit. This show is hands down the best thing the studio has produced in years!" I roll my eyes as hard as I can, but he seems determined to convince me. "I guarantee you're going to like it. Just give it a chance to get going, by the fifth episode you'll be hooked, trust me."

"Alright alright, if it'll stop you from bugging me about it I'll-" Hook n 1. a curved or bent device for catching, holding, or pulling 2. something intended to attract and ensnare.

"Hey, you alright? I think I lost you for a bit there." Josh laughs, but I can hear the concern in his voice.

"Yeah, sorry, jut... lost my train of thought." I try to act nonchalant, but he likely doesn't buy it for a moment. "You were saying, something about the fifth episode?"

Luckily Josh possesses just enough tact to avoid prying, and immediately launches back into his glowing review of the series' supposed narrative complexity. Just as he begins to tease me with the details of a 'revolutionary plot twist,' a horribly familiar metallic sting washes over my tongue. Just before my hand reflexively snaps upwards to cover my mouth his rant trails off, and I look over to see his eyes fixed on me, a worried look furrowing his brow.

"Dude, I think your mouth is bleeding... You sure you're ok?" My fingers press together hard, making my hand shake slightly on my mouth. I put on the best 'everything is fine' face I can muster without moving my hand.

"I think I must've bit my lip or something, don't -" Hook n 1. a curved or bent device that catches, holds on and pulls 2. something intended to attract and ensnare and keep and "-worry about it, I'll be right back, just gotta clean this off." I'm already making my way to the bathroom by the time I finish my sentence. At this point it doesn't matter if Josh believes me or not, I just need to get out of there. My fingers are starting to slip.

Soon enough, but not nearly as soon as I'd have liked, I'm on my knees looking into a questionably clean toilet bowl. Blood drips slowly from my open mouth, individual drops slowly losing coherence within the water, tinting it a light pink. Maybe it won't be so bad this time, I whisper to myself, not believing it for a moment. A sudden shifting from within my abdomen crushes any remaining shred of optimism and sets off a series of prolonged retches. My eyes begin to water and spittle mixes with the blood in the toilet bowl.

As per usual, the initial retches bring up nothing but a small amount of bile that burns the back of my throat. It isn't long though until they start increasing in intensity, each heave lasting nearly a second and leaving me gasping for breath. A particularly powerful heave forces my eyes shut, and a shudder passes through me as I feel something emerge from the back of my throat. I quickly spit it out. There is no splash, yet it still takes a good deal of willpower for me to open my eyes. I'm almost certain I know what awaits me in the bowl.

My fears are quickly confirmed by the tiny shape wriggling on the water's surface. Awaiting me, bone white against the cloudy red water is a fat little worm, twitching frantically yet going nowhere. Struggling and dyi- HOOK 1. catching and pulling and catching and tearing and 2. seducing and putrefying.

Retches brings up bile and blood now, acid and metal burning my mouth. Suddenly I feel something tickling the back of my tongue. Between heaves I take a deep breath, and reach into my mouth. I am greeted by the end of a wire, thin and curling obscenely out of my throat. Wrapping it around my fingers, I pray that no one else is in the washroom before pulling hard. Tears well up in my eyes, blurring my vision. I only just manage to stifle a scream, gurgling through the blood collecting quickly in my mouth. Somehow I manage to keep pulling, and in response the mass within my abdomen shifts upward.

White knuckles grip off white porcelain. Two more worms slip out of my mouth as I continue to pull, wrapping wire tightly around my increasingly slippery fingers. The wire cuts into my throat, sending yet more salty tears to mix with the metallic acid in my mouth. The heaving gets stronger as I pull, leaving me nearly prostrate before my porcelain throne. I can feel the mass hiding in my abdomen slowly slither up my throat, and with a final agonizing pull it flops out and down into the toilet. Quickly retrieving the tiny pair of scissors from my back pocket, I reach as deep into my mouth as possible and sever the cord tethering my mouth to the toilet. Shaking, I reach for the lever to dispose of the thing, but can't help glancing down.

The water is opaque - blood and bile swirls together in countless red-brown vortices. Near the centre a golf ball sized mass bobs malevolently. Clumps of hair stick out from tangled lengths of thick wire, trapping white worms against its slick black surface. Before looking at it alone triggers another gagging fit I yank the lever, sending it swirling out of sight. The remainder of the mass slips down in my abdomen nearly in sync, and I barely suppress one final heave.

My back cracks in protest as I stand up and stagger out of the stall into the mercifully quiet and empty bathroom. Moving towards a sink, I'm greeted at the mirror by a grotesque mockery of my face, red eyed and filthy. Dry paper towel makes short work of the sweat and tears, but the large blood stain around my mouth takes a bit more effort and a good deal of hot water to remove. I make sure to fix my hair and bring myself back to a presentable level before stepping back out into the mall. Josh is still at the table, the mound of noodles in front of him only negligibly smaller.

He spots me as I walk over, a relieved smile on his face. "There you are, you had me worried! Few more minutes in there and I might have considered abandoning my food to check on you..."

I laugh, and as I sit down the mass settles in my gut, heavier than ever.

Organ Grinder

"Sir. If you could just sign here please, we'll be done."

            Snapped out of my semi-comatose state by the curt voice, I groggily raise my head, forcing my blurred vision to focus on the figure before me. The dim room makes it difficult to discern any details, but the voice seems to be female. 'She' rises from a seated position and makes her way toward me until she is directly in front of me. Yes, definitely female. Her austere grey suit jacket is dotted with simple gold buttons and is tight on her slight frame in a somewhat unflattering manner. Clearly she values practicality over style. Before I can even respond to my own joke, my in depth study of her midsection is interrupted by an ecru rectangle sliding into my vision. I struggle to focus on the markings scattered seemingly at random across what I now recognize as a clipboard, eyes rebelling from the strain.

            "Now as we have discussed, you expressly violated your contract with us, and this carries serious consequences. However we hate to waste a potentially profitable situation, so just sign here please." She indicates a blank space amongst the cacophony of symbols with a carefully manicured yet drab finger. I open my mouth to respond, but instead of the expletive I was attempting to produce my body is shaken by a violent cough and viscous liquid dribbles down my chin. The woman backs away mechanically. I feel a hand clumsily mopping the liquid off of my face. Surprisingly, the hand is my own and moving freely, unlike my three other thoroughly bound limbs. Using this new found mobility, I gesture crudely in her direction. The tendons of my arm ache in response.

            "Sir, please, every moment of my time you waste equals lost profits for both me and our benefactors. It is in your best interest to cooperate." Out of the corner of my eye I see her retrieve a dull grey prism from her pocket. It looks horridly familiar and I shiver uncontrollably at the sight of it. She moves silently behind me and places an icy hand on my shoulder. My skin throbs painfully underneath it as her nails bite into my flesh, sending bolts of pain through my whole body. The paper enters my vision once again. "Now, if you could just sign here, please." Her voice, dripping with disdain, hisses from behind my ear and I flinch. Recovering my composure I raise my shaking arm up to the clipboard and with a herculean effort smack it out of her hand. The woman sighs lightly and presses the prism into the back of my neck.

            "Perhaps next time you will be more willing to negotiate." Electric fire courses through my body, throwing my limbs into uncontrollable spasms. My legs strain painfully against their restraints, my free arm flails wildly, then suddenly freezes as my nails bite into my hand. My head is thrown back as my eyes do their best to escape the confines of my skull. Suddenly the pain stops and I slump down, blurry vision barely able to distinguish my own legs. As I begin to lose my grip on consciousness, I hear the clacking of high heels slowly moving away from me. The last thing I manage to perceive is the throbbing behind my eye sockets and the subtle squeaking of a chair.

            "Sir. If you could just sign here please, we'll be done."

Drug Addled Organic Exosuits

This will probably be the last of these little classic fantasy RPG race rundowns for a while, as I am having a hard time in scraping together enough original ideas regarding dwarves and halflings to merit their own posts. Anyway this particular post concerns itself with GNOMES, the absurd little fairy men that so often go overlooked. Not without reason however - I'm not particularly fond of the portrayal of gnomes in most fantasy games myself. Next to stubborn dwarves, sombre elves, ambitious men and brutal orcs a whimsical race of tinkerers sticks out like a sore thumb. This is likely because gnomes have no basis in Tolkien while most of the other races are drawn nearly whole-cloth from his work. Some people think this reliance on Tolkien is a bad thing, and I used to be one of those people. But that's a an entirely different discussion, and I have pointy hatted men to talk about.

Regardless of their inherent dissociation from the tone of a typical fantasy RPG, some people like to play gnomes (and its always good to have more small sized PCs... heheh...) so it seemed unfair to simply remove them from my nascent setting without at least attempting to make them interesting. With this in mind, I took an aspect of gnomes I did like - their connection to faeries, or fey - and ran with it until my legs gave out.

A terrifyingly alien consciousness inhabits this little chunk of ceramic

To fey, the planes of existence inhabited by humans and other 'mundane' creatures are as hostile to them as a plane made entirely of fire is to a paper crane. This analogy is somewhat misleading however - It's not a matter of the physical components of the material world being actively dangerous to fey so much as its contents are mentally toxic. Planes inhabited by fey are constantly shifting explosions of noise, light, smells and more esoteric stimuli typically only visible to the fey themselves.

Compared to this cavalcade of stimulation, the material planes are like extreme sensory deprivation chambers - the sheer emptiness of the material plane is enough to drive them completely mad, and often one of the first things to slip through the widening cracks in their psyche is how to return home. When it is considered that most fey are nearly as old as the worlds they inhabit and have likely spent their entire lives there, its surprising the shock doesn't just kill them outright.

Like this, but the angle never changes, you can't move your eyes, and you will likely never die

This begs the question then, why even attempt to enter the material world? Well all faeries, for reasons unknown, feel a constant powerful desire to meddle in the lives of mundane creatures. This urge unfortunately could not be sated through the notoriously unreliable methods of interplanar communication. So to achieve their noble goals of curdling milk, hiding keys and stealing babies some method of getting fey into the material world and keeping them sane had to be devised. This is where the gnomes come in.

This guy's speciality is chewing on your toothbrush while you're asleep.
He doesn't know why he does it either.

No one is sure whether they were altered from some ancient proto-gnome or fabricated entirely, but regardless of their origin they were the first 'vehicles' of the fey, and allowed them to spread their meddling tendrils through much of the material world. The gnomes' usefulness as vehicles stemmed from their unique neural architecture.

To a gnome, the intensity of any stimuli is amplified nearly ten times in an attempt to reproduce the vibrant madness of the fey planes. This prevented the gnome's 'pilot' from being driven insane, but this amplification was not quite enough to enable permanent residence on the material plane. Fey pilots were frequently swapped out to prevent excess mental strain, and the gnome mind was engineered to make this process as smooth as possible. The first gnomes possessed a 'neural net' similar to that used by wizards to hold spells, allowing the fey to not only see through the eyes of their creations, but directly control their actions.

Why are there so many results for this

The process of exchanging pilots was not perfect however, and occasionally a gnome would be left without a fairy to control it. Early gnomes were about as intelligent as toddlers without fey influence, and were often left to their own devices until the next pilot slotted in. Though these periods of freedom were brief, eventually some gnomes ended up breeding outside the supervision of their controllers. Gnomes proved to be much more fecund than the fey expected, and soon there were far more vehicles than pilots. Small communities of free gnomes went feral, multiplying rapidly and often dying just as quickly.

Alas, the world is too cruel for one so innocent...

A few 'true' gnomes remained in the service of the fey - growing fairy rings, confusing travelers, cavorting and howling in the moonlight - but they are exceedingly rare, and considered urban legends by modern gnomes. The fey for the most part discarded the gnomes as a failed experiment, and were eventually able to craft more suitable, permanent, and most importantly sterile vehicles in the form of satyrs and gremlins.

Meanwhile in the feral communities, the massive energy demand and intelligence suppression required by the neural contortions that house a fey pilot resulted in it quickly being removed from the budding communities through natural selection. The relatively benign sensory amplification, on the other hand, remained relatively intact. This amplification of stimuli is typically cited as the cause of the 'obsessions' commonly seen in modern gnomes, especially when that obsession involves creating something - both a complex mechanism and a simple clay pot can hold incredible sensory appeal to a gnome.

"Magnificent!"
-Every gnome

Unfortunately, this also results in gnomes being incredibly susceptible to even the mildest of addicting substances and activities. Most notably, many modern gnomes have taken to smoking copious amounts of nutmeg, being intoxicated not only by its somewhat toxic narcotic properties, but the simple fact that it has a very powerful aroma. Other strong sensations gnomes have been known to become hopelessly addicted to include staring at fractals/fields of flowers, rubbing their hands on bricks and obnoxiously loud humming.

Gravity Falls helpfully provides a sobering depiction of gnome drug abuse

Don't let this apparent absurdity fool you, however - The sensory amplification also grants gnomes the ability to detect illusions along with supernaturally keen senses. Though not nearly as much as elves, their fey heritage makes them predisposed to the use of magic, and their interest in mechanisms and creation makes them valuable as craftsmen.

Fear and Loathing in the Middle of Nowhere

Oh wow I did not follow through with the whole 'actual posts in an actual time-span' thing. Oh well. This post was heavily inspired by Arnold K.'s ideas on orcs, which you can read here (The equally good follow up is here). And I recommend you read them, not only because this post is essentially the same ideas shoved into my setting but because his stuff is absolutely brilliant, and much more creative than anything I've ever done.

Orcs are problematic though, to say the least. Intelligent races being slotted into a single alignment has never sat well with me, and I have had multiple Orc PCs in my campaigns. It's just kind of boring to assume all Orcs and all Orc societies have the same homogeneous world view. However at the same time I understand the desire for and convenience of having a non-human Other that players can fight with relatively little moral issues, and that can be flung at 'civilized' areas for dramatic effect.

This face just screams "If you kill me you get to take my stuff without feeling bad"
(source)

However, that's a discussion for another time, and others have said it far better. Arnold's posts mostly solved that dilemma for me, giving the Orc an interesting culture with great potential for individual/group variation, while keeping their usefulness as a hostile enemy Other. The key ideas I gleaned from Arnold's posts is that orcs believe that the gods view them with disdainful apathy at best and immeasurable hatred at worst, and that the main purpose of rituals is either to appease and be ignored, or ask for the gods to ignore their enemies in battle. In my still unnamed, rather amorphous generic fantasy setting, the most obvious example of this is the relationship between the orcs and the setting's also unnamed god of conflict. Unbeknownst to most of its worshipers, this god possesses three major 'aspects' of vastly differing alignment, and the orcs have a different way of dealing with all of them.

THREE aspects, you say?????

The lawful good aspect is asked to ignore the orcs; an Orc will attempt to convince it that it is too weak to pay attention to in an attempt to avoid being cleaved in half by a paladin. Worship of the neutral aspect alternates between appeasing it with glorious victories, and asking it ignore the Orc's enemies. The destructive eye of the chaotic evil aspect is kept far away from Orc settlements by frequent bloody raids against non-Orcs. This results in no small amount of cognitive dissonance as an Orc may in the same chant declare itself a lowly, incompetent nothing unworthy of divine attention, and in the next breath promise to personally sacrifice twenty decapitated heads. Of course, this hypocrisy is so routine that it is never questioned by any Orc. Outsiders tend to focus on the violent aspects of Orc religion, confusing appeasement for reverence, resulting in the stereotype of Orcs worshiping evil deities. From the Orc's point of view, they are simply taking a reasonable course of action in a universe that actively seeks their destruction: offering the most dangerous gods what they want (pillaging, death, pain, glory, etc.) in the hope that Orc lives will be spared from excess suffering. A life free of suffering is an absurd notion, and any Orc knows this well by the time their first set of tusks erupt from between their 'baby teeth'.

This fella died of natural causes at the ripe old age of  31!

This is one of the reasons half-orcs are treated so poorly in Orc society - they lack many of the physical and mental handicaps possessed by full-blooded Orcs. Half-orcs have smaller and fewer tusks, reduced bone spurring, almost no instances of childhood arthritis and far keener minds. It is believed by many Orcs that the lack of hardship provided by their bodies will bring woe to any Orc settlement that harbours half-orcs. However their value as leaders, tacticians, bookkeepers and diplomats (yes, orcs have diplomats) makes killing them outright a poor decision, so the Orcs in a tribe simply make sure themselves that the half-orcs suffer as a proper Orc should. This is a task they perform with no small amount of zeal, as they despise the human aspects (pampered god-blessed soft skinned bastards) of their half-blood kin almost as much as their Orc aspects. No one hates an Orc like an Orc hates an Orc.