Velvet Hooks : Curselings, Discretion Bugs

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Might break up the formula for this series for a bit , I was becoming frustrated with trying to find the line between "just highlighting what's there" and what is a good amount of expansion. 

CURSELINGS:

Nasty , pointy , malignities.  Skulk out from the shadows cast by an innocent life . What please them is riddles and gold , but suffering most.

5 Lost Things They Know The Location Of

1. The Ever-Traitor Sword Ujulla , a sword that will slay anything if used in an attack of betray. It will of course betray the user inevitably , but delayable if the wielder sates it with treachery after treachery. 

 2.A Jar of grains from a time previous, where the moon, and  not the sun,  was the source of subsistence to all that is green and growing. They will germinate and grew into strange crops capable of feeding anything that requires something other than food to survive.

3.Time's mercy, who cast it away so they could do their duty. Now in the possession of the nameless god of forgetfulness, kept somewhere in their ever expanding library. 

4.The puckered omphalos scar left by the umbilical cord used to bring the world to life. 

5.The Atalantean Brain Crown that commanded their architectural armies of coral and blight.

DISCRETION BUGS

Small and politeful , versed well in etiquette and civility , slight delusions of draconic grandeur .

5  gatherings of society in which their guidance would be the difference between fortune and dire ruin.

1. The Feast of The Star Eaters. When a star goes out  its meat is a feast for certain great beings of shadow and all their attendants and parasites.

2. Mermaid Prom. Whose ascendance is the source of red tides before and hence. 

3.League of Insect Nations. Domains are negotiated, grudges and food chains debated, pestilences assigned, sizes granted.Various arthropods are also in attendance but  no mammal has managed the paperwork as yet.

4. Fungal Court. Deep in the rotten heart of the earth, each of the entropy lords plays against the other. The gameboard the great legal work that dictates the properties of matter. To eavesdrop here is be an ear to the great words of undoing and witness the loopholes and make-dos that hold the world together.

 5. The Theatre of Cruelty in which the poet duelists of hell cut the souls out of each other. An appreciative audience could gain the patronhood of one of these psychosurgical artists or discretely gather a writhing soul sliver.

Velvet Hooks: Crimson Contrarodron and Cryptospider

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 Sorry it's been awhile , a lot of life admin and big slog projects, and nothing to announce yet.

And you only get another one of the Velvet Hooks series! Such a cruel fate dripple! 

Crimson Contrarodon 

A polyheaded reptile beast, crippled and deluded by its diet of poppy fields, that speaks of ancient and potent knowledge.  What it could be if not addicted , is equally unknowable to the amount of truth in its stories.

1.The original species , capable of chameleon powers . If not as a living beast, as the origin for a magical cloak or armour. (pretty much in the text)

2. Turns out her stories where true! A chunk of her flesh, was taken and resurrected and raised on a diet free of opiates,, this grew a terrible lizard king with vast psychic powers. Potentially the only thing capable of standing up to its powers is the original crimson contraodron , if it can be rehabilitated and motivated.

3.She has eaten some wise figure, and the knowledge of said figure must be deduced before it gets too muddled with its other thoughts. (pretty much in the text)

4. Her memory of the old world allows the location of the bones of great and potent beasts.

5. She can speak the language of the elements when they were people,

6. It's most obviously a location based beast, but potentially other species of psychoactive flower could have an equally entrenched Contrarodron, such as Datura or Morning Glory.

Cryptospider

 A intelligent spider whose webs catch thoughts that would otherwise be lost.

1.One has formed a partnership with non-human thinker, non-human thoughts have potential to reshape the human mind into one capable of new insights or holding alien perspectives.

2.As a hex encounter, the spider approaching the party and trying to convince them of its value.

3. A town or city that use these spiders as a justice system. By feeding the guilty the lingering pains of their victims, they hope to create empathy or at the very least appropriate punishment.

4. Artists murdering each other over thought theft via spider

5.Thought fishers, people who maintain a relationship with a spider, and offer 10 secrets for a gold coin. `    

6. A cocoon is found amongst the protected wealth of someone. Somehow this cocoons contents are known and valuable enough that it has become a unit of trade, worth equal of jewels and rare metals.

Velvet Hooks: Colour Monster & Corbeau

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HULLO ALL

It's been a while but I'm back with some  sweet, sweet, <default content>

CORBEAU

Poisonous quadruped that dwells (and multiplies) in mirrors

Of the handful of monster that I think needed another pass this is the one that I think needed it the most. It's sort of awkward between being a mystic mirror beast, but not actually being that mystical .  So I'm going to expand on it now , giving 6  new abilities of the Corbeau

1. The Corbeau will stalk its prey via reflective surface. It will appear only in the reflection and not  outside it until it chooses to. It can then appear anywhere that was reflected.  So someone who spots one moving in the reflection will likely look in the surroundings for the creature , rather than the mirror itself.  Subsequently this means no Corbeau casts a shadow unless its another Corbeau. (see number 4 for an expansion of this)

2. The encounter/use the description invokes is that of a mansion abandoned with wild stories about what befouled. Then inside the mansion is a Sallow* of Corbeau stalking the party through multitude of mirror. The wild stories of the Corbeau could make the party over estimate the danger or powers of the Corbeau , but the discovery of the Corbeau as simple ( but cunning) beast might prove anticlimactical, if none of the suggested additional powers are added.

3. One such additional ability is if a Corbeau is lurking in a mirror and the mirror is broken , it multiples the Corbeau into a number equal and proportional to the fragments  resulting.  So if you wish to deny a Corbeau a perch to stalk and spring from , you would best be sure their wasn't a Corbeau hiding in the reflection. Newly created Corbeau are extremely hungry and will have mere hours to find subsequent food before starving to death. They will often turn cannibal on each other if no other food is present. 

Still water doesn't have such a property as it doesn't break into clear shards.

4. A Corbeau can create another Corbeau by looking into a mirror or reflective surface from dawn to dusk.  They will only do so if food seems plentiful enough, so not to risk having a rival or even  a predator.

5 Corbeau cannot break or harm a mirror or reflective surface. In the case of still water this means a Corbeau can walk across it as if it were solid glass and a Corbeau falling into a still pool will result in it being broken across the unmoving surface of the water

6. If a mirror contains a Corbeau and another Corbeau is within reflective range, the Corbeau in the mirror will be compelled to perfectly mimic the Corbeau outside the mirror. Any other Corbeau lurking in the mirror aren't compelled in such a way, but if multiple Corbeau are in reflective range of the mirror then they will. There is also a limit to how many Corbeau can pop into the other side of the reflection, that being one a round. But once the amount of Corbeau outside and in the mirror reach an equilibrium, the compulsion will mean the remaining Corbeau will be trapped in mimicry until one/some reflected Corbeau leave the reflected range.

 Assuming all 6 of these abilities is present here's a quick 6 hooks for them

1. Odd disappearance has lead to Mirror Merchant believing one of his mirrors is cursed but he can't work out which one it is . (one mirror has a Corbeau)

2.Mirror with Corbeau in it as trap, alternates with Mirrors that are dangerous unbroken (these render a viewer paralyzed as they stare at the reflection)

3.Dark gruneous pine forest with multiple pools for Corbeau to lurk from (pretty much in text)

4. Mirror given as a gift , really an assassination tool, a lurking Corbeau in a mirror won't show up as magical.

5.Spy using trained Corbeau to sneak messages.

6.Mansion guarded at night by turning around the paintings. Each has a mirror on the back , and a Corbeau in at least one of them.  Just before the household staff being their morning duties a goat or stray dog is let loose in the hallways for the Corbeau to catch. It will then withdraw into a mirror with its prey and the  staff can safely turn the paintings around again.

*"Sallow" being the collective noun of Corbeau

COLOUR MONSTER

An invisible colour drinker, that is it is an invisible colour and it is a drinker of colour. 

1.Giving them an additional ability of eyes rendered blank from their attacks lose any gaze attacks , so they become weapon against monsters with a gaze attack (Beholders, Medusa) . Then a party in process of making preparations against such monsters , might go off to the swamps festooned in the brightest colours they can source, ready with nets to swing as soon as their garments start bleaching.

2.Chirurgeon who do a lot of amputations could potentially create a market for Colour Monsters. As the area they drink from becomes permanently numb they wouldn't be that suitable for general medical practice. But for an amputation, this matters not. However to keep a Colour Monster might require expensive pigments regularly obtained and it might serve better to commission adventures to source them before a military campaign and then destroy them afterward.

3.Potential City Encounter/event of Colour Monsters obtained for the above purpose getting loose and running amok creating panic as people cover themselves in the blandest garments they can manage. The would-be re-captors of the beasts would need to follow a trail of invisible formerly bright things and/or create bait of the wildest colours they can find.

4. A bizarre fighting style "the Glass Arm" , whose practitioners use long glass blades and render their fighting arm invisible via the Colour Monster. Such a follower could make for a distinctive mercenary, henchman , duelist or assassin.

5. Particular long wet seasons in the Melanic Moors can cause an excess of the brightly coloured flowers the Colour Monster is want to feed upon and subsequently creates an boom of Colour Monsters. If the following season is not as long , the available food runs out and swarms of Colour Monsters roam outside the swarm seeking colour to drink, resulting in a panicked population adorning themselves drably and donning mesh over their eyes. (pretty much in the text)

6. These swarms can result in a creature , as would be encountered on a random encounter table (Crimson Contradodron for example), having been previously attacked, and is now invisible , numb to pain, and likely confused and enraged.