Monster, Monster, Come to My Door; for I've Rigged It with Unstable Explosives and Am Loading My Shotgun as I Wait for You.

I was discussing villagers the other night with a friend of mine when she made the comment that the villagers in every book, movie, and game are just faceless masses waiting for their own destruction at the hands of the latest bad guy to pick up a rock and think that blood is a pretty color and should be used to paint a room with because no one ever considers the way that people actually act when they get scared. It's too difficult to imagine that we pick up guns and start shooting every mother fucker who happens to poke his head in our window. 

She's not wrong. 

Think about the games you run for a minute. When do the villagers pick up the torches and pitchforks? Do they do it once there's enough to get them scared? Or do they wait until things have really moved beyond the threshold of reasonable action? Do they ever do anything more than run away and die?

For a long time my villagers did nothing more than run and die (perhaps I was too busy concentrating on making sure that my bad guys lived long enough to be more than a footnote in the game's play). What turned me about on that noise was realizing that the people I lived around - men and women from a rural, mountain community - wouldn't act that way. They would have started shooting the monsters in their stupid, fucking faces for getting too close to their stills and meth labs. They would have picked up ball bats, axes, Bowie knives, pipe bombs, and every gun they could get their hands on and fucked up some monstrous creatures' days; and that might sound like a stretch to you but consider this: we have coyotes, bears, mountain lions, wild dogs, and all manner of rabid animals. When they get a bit too aggressive the people in my home town will kill every last one of them and drive down Main Street with the carcass tied across the hood of a pick-up truck while bitching that there was only one to kill. I know, animals are different from people. Except that they're not really treated all that differently in this area as I know old women who have incapacitated rapists that had intended to kill them by twisting their balls in different directions (when asked she said it was because she wanted to hear him scream); gangs of baseball bat wielding vigilantes searching for the sons-of-bitches that murdered some cats on an out of the way highway; and a group of twenty angry women armed with knives searching for the boy who raped one of their friends so they could cut his dick off and shove it up his ass (the cops caught him first for those wondering). 

This community isn't an aberration in our reactions. I can pick up a copy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and read news stories about vengeance murders, gang attacks, posses formed to ferret out fugitives, and hunters killing wild animals. If it's something that happens in communities large and small then why isn't it happening in your home games?

My initial answer to that last question was that I wanted the players to be the stars of the show. After all, the game is about their adventures not a bunch of corn gobblers from a village that only the five of us know the name of and that I'll be the only one to remember. Only that's really a bullshit answer. See your villagers aren't suddenly becoming the main attraction of the story by reacting to the events in the game; instead they're becoming a catalyst that will help propel the players forward. While absolutely true that some of the villagers are going to be running for their lives you're also going to be having armed groups of regular people turning back towards the danger to try and stop it. Bringing these cats who are fighting rather than taking flight into the game has really made village situations something more exciting and far less mundane - especially since I just assume most everyone in my villages is a redneck with a rudimentary knowledge of explosives and born with an eagerness to see something blown to hell.  

The Child Thief of Greyhawk, Murq the Wizard

Last night I was reading the Glossography for the Guide to the World of Greyhawk when I ran across a villain that actually made me catch my breath.

". . . Fifteen years ago, the city of Greyhawk . . .  was plagued by a series of strange disappearances among the youth of the noble families. The children simply disappeared at night, never to be seen again, though sometimes they were replaced by simulacrums that committed vile blasphemies and had to be destroyed. After investigation both magical and mundane, the city magistrate determined that the wizard Murq was behind these awful outrages. (His exact purpose was never ascertained.) When a grim and determined group of high level guardsmen was sent to apprehend Murq, he had already fled, leaving behind only another simulacrum that was killed vowing vengeance upon the magistrate and the city.

The magician Murq and his outrages have almost been forgotten. Recently, however, the respected magistrate’s sleep has been invaded by evil dreams. In these nightmares, mad Murq appears surrounded by a cold fen, threatening the magistrate and the city with doom. He boasts of having found an ancient volume of great power, whose secrets are enabling the magic-user to create a mist golem. This creature, Murq claims, can slay others, but cannot itself be slain. When the stars are right, the golem shall be finished. Then it shall be sent to kill; first the magistrate, then anyone it can find, until everyone is slain or driven out of the city . . ." (Gygax, pg 26)

The abduction of a child is one of the most terrifying things imaginable for any parent and here is Murq, the child-thief of Greyhawk. Think about him for a minute. He comes in the night after you've put your children to bed and takes them away, never to be seen again. Not only does he take away everything that really matters in your life in that moment but if you're really unlucky he leaves you a present that looks just like your child. Only in the place of your child is an abomination before the gods.

It's hard to imagine what act Murq could have the Simulacrum perform that be so vile that it must be destroyed. Did he have them simply doing their best impressions of the Exorcist? Or did he have them begin summoning demons from the abyss into their bedrooms when their parents entered? Was he trying to bring one of the Demon Lords into the heart of aristocratic Greyhawk?

Murq is a perplexing monster in the setting. On the one hand he feels as though he could be just another serial killer hunting down and sacrificing children to vile gods; but what if there's more behind his actions? He's only attacking the nobility in this blurb. Could he an extension of the anarchists who murdered and rioted their way through the early 1900s and were popping back up in the 1960s and 1970s? Or is he just a nightmare given life in the world of Greyhawk?

No matter what his motivations the son of a bitch needs killing and I would have gleefully joined any party rushing his home and would have rushed headlong into his room hoping that my axe would be the one to sever his head from his dainty, little shoulders. But that wasn't how it ended for Murq because he got away and then he did got on the edge of doing something that terrifies every player in the game: he nearly created an unbeatable opponent. The mist golem he haunts the magistrate's dreams with is the sort of thing that no player in his right mind would ever allow to enter into the game's world - nor would any of us allow that technology to slip through our fingers if there's a chance that we might be able to send that bad boy against our enemies later in the game (hey we might be the good guys, but we're just not that good).

What happened to Murq? Did the players kill him? Did they save the kids? We wouldn't know the answer sixteen years when he would be mentioned in 1998's Greyhawk the Adventure Begins:

". .  . Hardly less notorious was the rogue wizard known as Murq, who, in 561 CY, kidnapped two-score children of Greyhawk’s noble families and fled the city. The fate of the children was never determined, though a group of adventurers (subtly guided by the Circle of Eight) tracked down Murq in the far north and, through a magical construct, prevented him from attacking the city again. The fate of Murq and the children was never revealed to the public . . ." (Moore, 61)

So the answer is we don't know for sure but there is a possibility that appeared in Murq's final appearance two years later in the article Greyhawk Grimoires from Dragon Magazine #269:

". . . A search of Murq’s abode offered no insight into his motives for the kidnappings, nor what became of the children (though it was frequently postulated that they had been sacrificed to some nefarious deity), Furthermore, investigators found nothing that could be used to track down the wizard. Indeed, Murq had disappeared without a trace, just as his victims had done . . ." (Mullin, pg 64)

It's obvious that the conclusion that the Mullin reached is that he children were sacrificed to some dark god but I have this crazy theory that Murq was actually playing with powers far deadlier for Greyhawk than just some distant god that barely notices some robed loser sacrificing children in their name. No, I think that Murq was trying to bring in one of the Demon Lords in a bid to take over Greyhawk. Which one?

My money's on Franz-Urb'luu.

Works Cited

Gygax, Gary. A Glossography for the Guide to the World of Greyhawk. TSR, Inc. USA: 1983. PRINT pg. 26

Moore, Roger E. Greyhawk the Adventure Begins. TSR, Inc. USA: 1998. PRINT 61.

Mullin, Robert S. “Greyhawk Grimoires” Dragon Magazine March 2000: 64, 66. PRINT

Buy the Books Mentioned Here

30 Day Dungeons and Dragons Challenge, Day 14: Favorite NPC

Over the years I've had a lot of non-player characters (NPC) that I have enjoyed playing, but none so much as Sir Reginald. 

Sir Reginald had begun his life as a knight errant questing against evil in all its forms, or so he thought. In truth Sir Reginald had always been an Iron Golem. Early on he had stood guard over the tomb of a vile necromancer named Micheal Moning protecting the monster's magical treasures. But over time a curious thing occurred, when there were no challenges to face the Iron Golem would dream, and in his dreams he was a questing knight errant out to stop the evil that threatened his lands. 

For a century he dreamed that slumber where the dream becomes more real than reality, only to awaken at the approach of a group of knights. He hailed them as fellow knights and asked what brought them to his door and soon he had joined them in their quest to empty out the dungeon of its vile inhabitants. The dangers he faced in that first adventure were mighty tasks that felled all his companions and yet he did not falter. No, instead he triumphed and left that dark place to explore new locations and fight evil in all its forms

Sir Reginald
Alignment: Lawful Good
Size/Type: Large Construct
Hit Dice: 24d10 + 30 (I usually place his hit points at 234)
Initiative: 3
Speed: 20 ft per round
Armor Class: 30 (-1 size, -1 Dex, +22 natural armor) Touch: 8 Flat-footed: 30
Base Attack / Grapple: +12 / +28
Attack: The Golem's Sword +24 (2d10 + 11)
Full Attack: The Golem's Sword +24 (2d10 + 11) and Slam +18 (2d10 +11)
Space / Reach: 10 ft. / 10 ft.
Special Attack: Breath Weapon
Special Qualities: Contruct Traits, Damage Reduction 15 vs adamantine, Darkvision 60 ft, immunity to magic, low-light vision
Saves: Fortitude + 6, Reflex + 5, Will + 6
Ability Scores: Str 33, Dex 9, Con 0 , Int 4, Wis 11, Cha 1
Skill: Climb (Str) +16, Handle Animal (Cha) +2, Intimidate (Cha) - 4, Jump (Str) +12, Ride (Dex) + 3, and Swim (Str) + 13.
Feats: Weapon Focus (Golem's Sword), Improved Initiative
Challenge Rating: 18

Breath Weapon (Su)10-foot cube, cloud of poisonous gas lasting 1 round, free action once every 1d4+1 rounds; initial damage 1d4 Con, secondary damage 3d4 Con, Fortitude DC 19 negates. The save DC is Constitution-based.
 

Construct Type: A construct is an animated object or artificially constructed creature with the following features: 10-sided Hit Dice; Base attack bonus equal to ¾ total Hit Dice (as cleric); No good saving throws; Skill points equal to (2 + Int modifier, minimum 1) per Hit Die, with quadruple skill points for the first Hit Die, if the construct has an Intelligence score.
 

Construct Traits: A construct possesses the following traits (unless otherwise noted in a creature’s entry): No Constitution score; Low-light vision; Darkvision out to 60 feet; Immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects); Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, and necromancy effects; Cannot heal damage on their own, but often can be repaired by exposing them to a certain kind of effect (see the creature’s description for details); Not subject to critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability damage, ability drain, fatigue, exhaustion, or energy drain; Immunity to any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects, or is harmless); Not at risk of death from massive damage. Immediately destroyed when reduced to 0 hit points or less; Since it was never alive, a construct cannot be raised or resurrected; Because its body is a mass of unliving matter, a construct is hard to destroy. It gains bonus hit points based on size, as shown on the table; Proficient with its natural weapons only, unless generally humanoid in form, in which case proficient with any weapon mentioned in its entry; Proficient with no armor; Constructs do not eat, sleep, or breathe.
 

Immunity to Magic (Ex): An iron golem is immune to any spell or spell-like ability that allows spell resistance. In addition, certain spells and effects function differently against the creature, as noted below.A magical attack that deals electricity damage slows an iron golem (as the slow spell) for 3 rounds, with no saving throw.

A magical attack that deals fire damage breaks any slow effect on the golem and heals 1 point of damage for each 3 points of damage the attack would otherwise deal. If the amount of healing would cause the golem to exceed its full normal hit points, it gains any excess as temporary hit points. For example, an iron golem hit by a fireball gains back 6 hit points if the damage total is 18 points. An iron golem gets no saving throw against fire effects. 

An iron golem is affected normally by rust attacks, such as that of a rust monster or a rusting grasp spell.