Musings on Monstrousness

I have spoken of the old horrors of the world, the scaled aberrations and humans-made-monsters , but there are other things which yet roam the earth that harken back to the time between, after the time of dragons but before the dawn of man. The primordial age when the Terrestrial Gods roamed the earth freely, and made of it a wild garden which trampled all lesser beings. They contested the hoary old wurms that crawled from the depths and the alien predators of the Outer Dark which flitted down to prey upon the world. And they fell, of course, as man devoured them. But their creations remain. Every great beast, every astounding hulk of flesh and sinew not claimed by dragon-kind, these are their children.  The Behemoth For all its fearsome bulk it does not feed on flesh but rather the trees and grasses, rendering fields barren and branches stripped. A bane to farmers and a trampler of hovels but not a hunter of men as other beasts are, save when maddened with rage by pain or so...

    Guns are loud, slow, messy, leave smoke everywhere, best used with a bunch of guys in a line or up close so you don't miss. Everyone knows that. Marksmen are freaks, obsessives. The kind of man who can reliably nail a man with a wheellock from an appreciable range has honed his craft for years, decades even.  You are not one of those masters, but you wish you were. There is a kind of romance to the gun. A raw lethality that bows and crossbows cannot match, combined with an ease of use, in the basics at least, which requires little skill to hone, to say nothing of the fact that it dispenses death from afar, where all those fearsome blades and pikes can't reach you. But oh, if only there was a way to match the true sharpshooters without putting in all that practice. This attracts certain kinds of spirits which are happy to help you enact your murderous desires. After all, guiding a bit of lead is a trivial matter, but can be just so rewarding. Those who are practitioner...

          Alchemy is a long-favored art among the peoples of the Known World. The arts of miracle and gnosis kept safe in flasks and alembics, the laws of the world distilled into potable reagents and tablets. Only sometimes does it go horribly wrong. Certainly such malfunctions are more a matter of misfiring equipment than the rending of the soul through exertions it is incapable of. A detonating boiler cares not for what purpose it heats water. It is understood that there are four essential elements which make up all Worldly matter. Indeed, all materials of the world can be burnt, boiled, distilled, or dissolved into these fundamental materials. However, the more durable the material, the more effort must be expended. The more complex the material, such as living flesh, the more nuanced and complex the recipe must be to fully separate it into its purest components. And of course, if one can break something apart, there is also the possibility of reconstit...

The wilds are not safe. Everyone knows that. Monsters and spirits, dragons and devils, brigands and magi, all threats widely spoken of and deeply feared. But they are not what most deal with. The shepherd, traveler, and poor sellsword looking to make a quick profit must contend with simple beasts. And of them, three great families are the most known for their depredations. That is not to say that other beasts cannot host eaters of men among them, but it is these clans whose reputations are blackest, and whose presence in any guise near universally threatens those who come upon them. While many are what one could hazard as mundane, average, predicable... there are always exceptions.      Wolves may be found in any place in the Known World with abundant prey to feed them. The most social of the three predacious clans, their kind primarily hunt in packs (2d6), or even great hordes (2d100) of several hundred if there are sufficient victuals to claim. Cities broken by siege or...

    I have talked of many things thus far, and perhaps given the impression of a grotesque, cruel, and hostile world. This is perhaps not untrue, but it is not the only facet of Anlil. There yet remains beauty and awe untainted by the horrors of godless creation, and it is in the form of the angels, the commingled offspring of the human soul and the will of Heaven , that such beauty shines brightest. They are glimmering things, angels. Like opaque glass or pearl is their skin, and their eyes and veins are golden underneath. Their hair is purest white, pearlescent, or golden, as their feathered wings are, and they have one to four pairs. Sometimes a smaller pair covers the eyes, and sometimes they emerge from the wrists and ankles. Some have multiple pairs of arms, or circling bands of golden light or a halo of that same radiance. Among the True Faiths , angels may further differ in form. The Gospel of Dominion's angels are near-always clad in glimmering armor, while Eternity's...

  I have been busy for some time with work and will remain busy for some time yet, and I've been too taxed to write things here. But I'm in a bit of a lull so I thought I'd bang one out to prove I'm not dead. But anyway, a refresher. Sorcery, as discussed here , is a complex affair reliant on a selection of methods and items by which one may safely practice the art. Of particular interest to us now is the focusing implement, a complex contraption of sorcerous artifice which may allow a magus to channel the most potent of spells with ease and relative safety. But past a certain point, it becomes an unwieldy device like a pipe organ or alchemical laboratory, one which cannot easily be lugged about. How, then, does a wizard store such a thing? The natural answer is a tower. With its height it may loom over the trees and huts surrounding it, granting the sorcerer a clear view of earth to shape and things to smite, their booming voice echoing through the sky as the world twi...