Part 12 – Magical Beings and Creatures

CHONCHON

Bite 12W, Augment Combat Talent 10W, Drain Magic 5W, Harm at a Distance Talent 8W, Fly Fast 5W, Sense Living Things 12W, Small 12, Terrifying Appearance 2W, Animist Tradition 15W

Distribution: Errinoru, Jolar, Kothar

Habitat: Any remote area

These foul spirits manifest physical bodies at night, but must return to the Spirit World if they are touched by sunlight. In physical form, the chonchon looks like a bodiless human head with large ears that it flaps like wings to keep itself aloft. They are named for their call of ‘kon-kon!’ which is rightly feared by most locals.

As purely magical beings, any anti-magic spells cast at them will injure them and may prevent them from using any of their magical abilities, including the power of flight which is their only means of locomotion.

Chonchons are malevolent and will seek to destroy any mortals who visit their remote haunts. They will concentrate on a single intruder, which they will bite and hang on to with their teeth. The bite of a chonchon drains magical energy from the victim, and works in a similar fashion to the sorcerous Tap spell against the victim’s best magical ability. However, unlike a Tap spell, the effect is temporary, and the ability will be regained at a rate of +10 per day until it reaches its former level.

Image: Chonchon

LOPER
(Moropus passator)

Claws 2W+1, Thick Skin +2, Large 8W, Scent Predator 10W, Strong 15W, Teleport 10W

Distribution: Jolar

Habitat: Forest

These strange looking herbivores inhabit have a heavy build, and dark brown fur with paler markings on the face and underbelly. Their hind legs are shorter than their forelimbs, and they can briefly stand upright to pull down leaves from trees with their clawed forepaws. Apart from this, their torso and head more closely resemble those of a horse than any other animal. They are normally solitary.

Most remarkably, however, lopers have a natural ability to teleport, being able to vanish from one place and re-appear elsewhere. Normally, they use this as a defensive ability, vanishing to escape from predators or other threats, rather than tackling them in physical combat. However, the long lost blue-skinned Loper People of Pamaltela found a way to tame the beasts as riding animals, and used magic to ensure that they could travel with their mounts. Wild lopers can travel just a few hundred yards, and, in any event, only to places within line of sight of their starting point. Nonetheless, the God Learners had records of the Loper People at times teleporting across whole seas en masse, presumably after using some form of magic to enhance their mounts natural powers and visualise their destination.

Image: Loper with calf

NASOBEME
(Tyrannonasus imperator)

Claws 2W+1, Sting 5W, Agile 12W, Ambush 15W, Climb Rocky Slope 5W, Spot Prey 12W

Venom: Debilitating, Lethal, Potency 8W

Distribution: Teleos, Palarkri

Habitat: Hills and mountains

Commonly known as ‘nose-walkers’, nasobemes are amongst the strangest of all Gloranthan creatures. A little under five feet in height, they have a furry, balloon-like body with four spindly clawed limbs and a long stinging tail. Yet the nasobeme does not use its limbs for locomotion; instead it balances upside down, on four three-foot-long inflatable noses that project in a horizontal row across its face. The head also has bat-like ears, round eyes and a thick-lipped mouth filled with sharp teeth. The nasobeme moves by inflating its noses with air and using them to walk, each nose hissing and squeaking as it takes the weight of the creature. When a nose-walker is hit with a weapon, it also produces a squeaking noise, its body deforms like a balloon, and its eyes bug out of its head.

PARENLING
(Metallica lithonatator)

Bash 10W+3, Metallic body +6, Flow Through Rock 18W, Large 15, Sense Metal 12W, Strong 18W, Tough 2W2

Distribution: Throughout Slon and Pamaltela

Habitat: Subterranean

During the Green Age, some of the power of Grower, the ancient force of life spread into the solid rock and infected it. The result was the parenlings, living, breeding organisms made from inorganic metal. The mostali regard these creatures as foul abominations; intrusions of horrible life-force into their stable realm. Trolls, voralans and other subterranean beings generally ignore them, or else trap them to harvest their metal.

A parenling appears as an elongated blob of pure metal, with tentacle-like pseudopodia extending from its body to serve as arms or legs. They have no eyes or other visible features, and seem to feel their way about by detecting vibrations and by sniffing out minerals with some unclassifiable sense. The most common parenlings are made from bronze, but lead, copper, tin and silver specimens are also known, and others rumoured. They graze on minerals in the rock, and are rarely encountered on the surface world; where they are it is only in the presence of bare rock, such as on high mountain peaks or plateaus. Parenlings can merge their body with solid rock, and flow through it, but they progress only at the agonisingly slow (to humans) rate of about one foot per minute. On a rocky surface, they can move freely, although they are still not particularly fast.

Organic beings have little parenlings could want, so that the creatures are more likely to flee than to stand and fight. However, their ability to flow through rock is too slow to allow an escape, so that they can be cornered, forcing them to strike out with their mace-like limbs at their tormentors.

They lay their eggs, cocooned in layers of tasty minerals, in deep concealed cracks and fissures, and as far away from dwarves or hungry trolls as possible. Dwarves will destroy parenlings on sight, given the opportunity. They are commonly found in packs of two to six individuals.

DEVOURING FANGTOOTH
(Anoplogaster drospolae)

Bite 2W3+4, Leathery Skin +3, Induce Terror 18W, Large 18W, Resist Hostile Magic 15W, Spot Prey 18W, Strong 5W2, Tough 5W

Distribution: Worldwide

Habitat: Lightless oceanic depths

A hideous creature, which looks more like a rotting corpse than a living fish, the Devouring Fangtooth has only strips of flesh where its fins should be, and a partially transparent body through which its organs and bones can be glimpsed. Its mouth is huge, occupying a third of the length of the beast, and possesses translucent, dagger-like teeth over a foot in length. Its eyes are bulging and dead black, enhancing its corpse-like appearance. Indeed, the Fangtooth is so supernaturally hideous that any being capable of seeing it will be stricken with fear. The Devouring Fangtooth dwells only in the deepest oceans, never rising above 6000 feet deep, and feeds on the rain of organic detritus that falls from the bright photic zone far above. It is perhaps the commonest of creatures to dwell in these dark and freezing depths, part of the court of Drospoly, the Cold Death. It is also, perhaps, among the least fearsome, a fact which should give pause to any foolish enough to venture there.

Combat Tactics: The fangtooth will attempt to simply engulf a small opponent with a single bite. Against targets of human size or larger, the fangtooth will bite great chunks of flesh from their bodies, quickly incapacitating them before swallowing the remains. Anything which is swallowed by the fangtooth is utterly destroyed, and the soul of any creature so killed is dispatched directly to the court of Drospoly from which it is unlikely to return.

Image: Fangtooth

NEREID

Close Combat 18, Dodge Attack 5W, Alluring 5W, Combat Talent 5W, Command Sea Creatures 10W2, Extinguish Fire Talent 15W, Healing Talent 5W, Lithe 2W, Swim Fast 15W, Devotee of Mirintha 12W

Distribution: Worldwide

Habitat: Salt water

Nereids are salt-water Mirinthae, similar to the Limnades and Limoniads found in fresh-water environments. Like other nymphs, they form their bodies directly from their watery home, and can command any non-sentient creature born within it. They suffer similar penalties to other mirinthae if they leave their native body of water. Nereids can animate salt water, becoming effectively identical to an undine.

They are more aggressive than their riverine cousins, requiring less provocation to attack. Nereids employ whips made from magically strengthened seaweed or other natural fibre, and are generally willing to fight hand-to-hand alongside any creatures they may summon. They are not foolhardy, however, and will hang back or change into undine form should their opponents prove powerful enough to warrant it.

Nereids have green skin, often with traces of scales, and wild, dark hair. They are free to move throughout a wide region of the sea which may be dozens of miles across; the boundaries are not visible to humans, although mermen say that they can detect differences in the currents or the taste of the water that distinguish the home of one nereid from those of its neighbours. Such regions are dynamic, and the boundaries may move with the seasons, tides, or for other, less clear reasons, but the nereids’ sense of ‘place’ is so alien to humans that it is unclear to what extent they are aware of these changes.

Nereids are particularly friendly with the Murthoi (blue elves), and seem to tolerate all but the most naturally destructive of native water beings. They can command any non-sentient sea creature presently travelling through their area, and not just those born there.