Teeny Tiny Tales of Terror: G is for Ghastly

[Joël of the FoS]

Back from vacation!

Golem, hangman [Monster Manual III]

We met this unknown creature in Darkon, and we are pretty sure it’s a new form of golem. In a crypt where we were looking for clues on the disappearance of duck hunters, we opened a door to see this huge humanoid, made entirely of rope. But the first thing we saw in the darkness was its pair of whitish glowing eyes. With the ropes swirling on top of its head, my first thought was that we were facing a medusa, but then it came into our torch light and we had a good view of its body constructed with ropes. My sister had the genius idea to quickly cast a rope trick spell on it, and this stopped the creature in its track for a moment. While I used this time to close the door to this room, I saw many shattered corpses in this room, surely victims of this rope golem. My sister then locked the door magically, trapping this thing inside the crypt forever. We let a warning message on the stone door and we left this place, grateful that it didn’t reach us in close combat.

Note added to “Van Richten Guide to Created” by the twins.

[Joël of the FoS]

Golem, web [Monster Manual III]

Sir Canifax is truly a fascinating character and we were eager to meet him after this letter exchange. This tall, old gentleman with a top hat says he retired from adventuring (but me and Laurie doubt he really is). He was willing to share details on a creature we are hunting, but in fact he didn’t tell us many things we didn’t knew already about the Telling Man – see these notes.

However, the discussion later switched to our uncle, and Canifax expressed regrets never to have met him in person. Laurie tried to discuss a point of magick, but we felt his unease and left him take the conversation elsewhere without insisting.

Then the conversation wandered about golems and he told us about a particularly disgusting type of construct, made entirely of webs! Canifax destroyed one a long time ago. Crawling among large spiders, this humanoid construct has many spider features: eight eyes, poisonous fangs and ability to crawl on ceilings. He said its web body was also very sticky.

Canifax is a very good raconteur, making the monster particularly creepy, but I do not think he was exaggerating this tale. Canifax assured us the golem builder was also destroyed. But I shiver to think somebody could find eventual notes and start building one of these horrors these days…

Note added to “Van Richten Guide to Created” by the twins

[Joël of the FoS]

Gray jester [Heroes of Horror]

A book on darkonese folklore I was reading told me about a puzzling being that could possibly be a subtype of bogeyman? I need to search more on these “gray jester”, as it is often called, to make an educated guess on its exact nature.

In short, I learned from this book the creature always appears as a very thin jester, clown or mime and mainly attacks children. This fact attracted my attention, of course. It is said to entertain children and then use the grim ability of draining the joyous emotions from the children it attacks, leaving them as mind drained automatons under the jester’s control. Does this bogeyman “feed” on joyous thought?

However I understand from the book many adults have seen the creature, which is puzzling and wildly atypical from the other bogeymen. More enquiry needed on this case.

Hans Gleam, private notes

[Band2]

Golem, sand [Sandstorm]

You have begin on the trail of this creature for how long? One? Two weeks? I have begin following this creature for three years. All the way from my homeland. I know what it is and I have learned where it came from.
The creature was created by Hatem al-Gabali, a sha’ir. He sought to create a powerful servant. First he built a large mold to mix the ingredients and form the creature.
To this he added the sands of Qual-Zinnar, the site where Caliph Aziz al-Jaffiri was murdered at the hands of his youngest son, some 80 years ago. The sand on which the holy caliph’s blood was split was considered by all to be cursed. No one dared go there before al-Gabali.
Next the sorcerer added the waters of the Black Sands Oasis, where the young Princess Jasmine, beloved daughter of Caliph Said al-Jamae, drowned.
With this mixture of sand and water, al-Gabali used his wizardly powers to capture a gen of the desert and force it into the form he had created. He sought a loyal servant bound to his will, but that is not what he got. Either the curse of Qual-Zinnar or the haunted waters of the Black Sands overwhelmed the summon gen, filling it with a murderous sense of betrayal and loss. In any case the creature is cursed to never be free of these sensations. It now hunts those it feels are responsible for acts of betrayal or who have caused the death of a young child. And now it has come to your city.

Notes from an interview conducted by Constable Sturm Androv in the case file marked The Smotherer

[Mangrum]

It's page three, so here's the updated list. Great progress!

G
Gaki, jiki-ketsu-gaki [Oriental Adventures]
Gaki, jiki-tuku-gaki [Oriental Adventures]
Gaki, shinen-gaki [Oriental Adventures]
Done! Ghost brute [Libris Mortis]
Done! Ghoul, gravetouched [Libris Mortis]
Done! Ghoul lord [Denizens of Dread]
Glaistig [Monster Manual III]
Goblin, dread, forestkith goblin* [Monster Manual III]
Golem, alchemical [Monster Manual III]
Golem, brass [Monster Manual II]
Golem, cadaver [Heroes of Horror]
Golem, chain [Monster Manual II]
Done! Golem, grave dirt [Libris Mortis]
Golem, ice [Frostburn]
Done! Golem, mist [Denizens of Dread]
Golem, mud [Monster Manual III]
Done! Golem, tombstone [Libris Mortis]
Greenvise [Monster Manual II]
Grimweird [Monster Manual III]
Grisgol [Monster Manual III]

[Joël of the FoS]

Ghoul, gravetouched [Libris Mortis]

“Hungry, they are, my dear. Sweet morsel they would say you are! So young and pretty! I’m not hungry for your flesh, but these truly are. Really, they are corpse eaters, you see. Unbury you and eat everything including your weak bones. But you would see one in a pack of ghouls and you would not notice, they are like the others. But their bite will make you sick. It would make you very ill, possibly incurably, trust me. And one of their kind you would become… madly hungry… but these flesh hunters lack something that makes us better … the communion of all these minds altogether…Now give me a hug, dearest…”

- from notes of a interview with one corpse possessed by Toben the Many

[Joël of the FoS]

Ghost brute [Libris Mortis]

“Yes, I’ve been protected by a ghost since I was young. Yes, you heard me, by a ghost being. You will think I’m crazy, but I this is true. I was killed once by wolves. I was only 8, and I went with Bones, my dog, into the forest to gather some mushrooms for my mother. She was selling them at the market, you know.

But a pack of wolves viciously cornered us and killed us both. Fortunately for me, a priest was touched by my father’s grief and raised me from the dead. I have no souvenirs from this event, only when I was again alive and woke up in my bed, with my parents crying from joy.

But since then, I’ve often seen the ghost of my dog around me, and it … protected me from harm. Since then, many people have tried to harm me, but they were bitten by my dog. Believe me. Now that I warned you, you should go your way and leave me alone. Bones, come here, good dog!”

- heard on a street

[cure]

GOLEM, TOMBSTONE

Such were the sins of Bloody Stoneheart against his own people that they cursed him so that the touch of unworked stone was fire to him. And it did not take long for the authorities to put him to flight from the cities. But he would find a reliable source of cut stone in the graveyards where he set to the crafting of his revenge. Within a few months, the named and dated markers of deceased relatives rose up as a single colossus to strike down the living.

-Working note for Van Ritchen’s Guide to The Created

[ChrisNichols]

GOBLYN

"The goblyn, Bestia epulum, is native to the forest of Forlorn. This bipedel of roughly human stature and form spends much of its time, curiously enough, putting to ruin this very forest. Make no mistake, this is not random violence on the part of an unthinking brute. The action is perfectly deliberate, although to what end science cannot yet say. The distinguishing feature of the goblyn is its enormous jaw set with teeth that recall nothing so much as those of the shark. Remarkably, the humanoid is sleepless and can sustain itself on any sort of biomass whatsoever. Goblyns, in a parody of the people who formerly inhabited the domain, are creatures of the clan. War, sport, and play are their favoured activities. Torture, combining elements of each, passes among them for art and is held in high esteem. More curious is their fondness, presumably acquired, for playing noughts and crosses. And of course as my face attests, no discussion of goblyns is complete without noting their propensity to feast on the living flesh of those who meet them in battle."

-Doctor Abelhous Nicholis, Professor of Biology at the University of Il Aluk in Exile at Karg, lecturing on the flora and fauna of the great southern forests

I'd like to point out that as of Van Richten's Arsenal, Prof. Nicholsi is dead, as he is refered to as "the late Professor Abelhous Nicholsi."

Also, in the Ravenloft Gazetteer 1 web enhancement, there was a sidebar on the origins of goblyns that may be useful.

Chris Nichols

[cure]

In the article that created the good doctor, he is described as having escaped the Requim by being absent and upon his return attempting to pick up the pieces of the shattered University of Il-Aluk. Is there any reason why the lecture could not have been given between the time of his return and that of his subsequent death?

Incidently, could you give me the page number for the sidebar? Thanx.

[cure]

GHOUL LORD

“I am the lady of all I survey”, she stated with manifest glee as her barely clothed arm, with that leathery skin and taloned hand, cut a grandiose arc over the vast graveyard, leaving greenish wisps of vapour in its wake. She continued, “A small kingdom it is, but it is mine and we do eat good, very good.” Then she turned her ill eye upon me, “Your slave is sick and fearful in my presence, but you not. I know why. You share the hunger. You would sup with me. What would you have my slaves fetch us?”

-Interview with a Ghoul

[cure]

GOLEM, MIST

I can hardly even begin to say how one constructs a golem, if that indeed was what it was, of mists, of the Mists. Perhaps one does not so much choose to do it, as one is chosen to do so . . . . The emaciated and tattooed Hazlani mage had lent his very shape, swollen and stretched, to the towering entity, casting in swirling mist a figure so improbable that we were carried off by a terrible laughter that proved ultimately to be the death of two of our number. The desperation of our plight, although hammered home by bone crushing blows, dawned upon us in its full enormity when Song Mistress Lairelle, who had given us courage against its frightful howl, was caught squarely in the chin, dissolved into mists, and was lost to all existence . . . or so I hope and pray at least . . . .

-Working note for Van Ritchen’s Guide to The Created

[cure]

GOLEM, GRAVE DIRT

“You were wise to run from that lumbering shade and to keep running for it is relentless. Know that it is a thing of earth, but in this land all earth is earth of the grave, and so a skull crowns its bone-ridden, bloated bulk. One must not let one’s person be touched by it, for its soil is fouled with the unlife of the dead, even if it is not itself one. Destruction is its yolk and so it is left to its hateful consumption by the Dark Lady. But it wouldn’t dare test its strength against that of the Eternal Order. Within Marbh-Cathair you are safe. Let us go now to the walls and watch the sunrise.”

-Unwald Rottennail, demented sentinel of the Eternal Order