Goin' Through the Fiend Folio Part 16 (Tabaxi to Tween)

It's been way too long, again. I don't know if I really need to dwell on how long its been again. I gotta get over this taking months-long gaps between blogging. Anyway, here's a link to the first post in this series, here's a link to the most recent one, let's go!

Tabaxi
★★★☆☆
Tabaxi have become such an OC D&D staple (what with all the Furries that play D&D of course!) that it's almost weird to encounter them here in a totally different context. They're pretty much what you'd expect from a race of cat people, although as described here they are much closer to roving bands of paleolithic cat-men (nothing more advanced than bone and wood spears, atlatls, etc. are mentioned, and they're only tool-users when they find it convenient) than to the much more modern and social tabaxi that are more prominent these days. Also, they wear no clothes and do not trade because they find it demeaning (I'm torn on this... does that mean no player negotiation with tabaxi, or does it just make negotiating with them more complicated i.e. more interesting?). Also, love the uncanny vibe of the illustration!

Tentamort
★★★★☆
Maybe I just love weird tentacle monsters, so sue me! The tentamort (banger of a name, super unnecessary that the description opens with "its got lots of names, tentamort is just the most common" who cares, that doesn't add anything) is some kind of giant predatory echinoderm with suction cups on the underside that it uses to adhere to dungeon walls, floors, ceilings and slowly crawl along. They also have two long tentacles, one with strong constricting muscles and the other with a long bone needle on the tip that injects a corrosive saliva that melts the insides of a human-sized creature in 2 rounds (it's a bit confusingly worded... it takes 2 rounds to inject and then an additional 2 rounds to completely melt the insides and kill them, if I understand). The tentamort's M.O. is to ensnare a victim in the constricting tentacle and then inject the corrosive saliva with the other. Pretty basic, sure, but very strong conceptually! It evokes real-world animals in a way that I really love, and feels right at home in implied dungeon ecologies that are some of my favorite D&D things. Great critter all around!

Terithran
★★☆☆☆
Whatever magic-user-hating referee created the disenchanter must have loved this thing. It feels like something made specifically to counter magic-happy players, in a way that I'm not terribly interested in. Basically, the terithran is a creature of the ethereal plane that gets annoyed when magic-users cast spells because it causes ripples on the ethereal plane, so they come into the prime material plane to kill M-Us with a bunch of spelled-out supernatural powers like stunning blast, cause serious wounds, transportation (to steal away an M-U to the ethereal plane), etc. The idea of higher plane creatures that get annoyed with magic use is something that at its core interests me a lot, but the expression here is mostly boring. I'd want to take more cues from the real-life lore surrounding psychic phenomena for stuff like that! The terithran reads as a monster aimed at countering specific players with little else interesting going on (plus it's a boring little humanoid, there's so many of those).

The terithran is our first monster of this batch to be originally featured in the Fiend Factory column! Featuring this incredibly unsettling illustration that singularly bumps up the terithran to a 3/5 monster for me. Maybe I'm too susceptible to a cool drawing, but the image implied by a monster goes a long way to how likely I am to use it in my game! Mechanically, it is more or less the same. The description here is more explicit about when it will use its powers, with a bit less wordiness to get across that the terithran seeks to capture powerful magic-users and drag them back to the ethereal plane. Don Turnbull's comments open with "This is one of those creatures which is simpler to run than its description would have us believe." Good to know! The description, both here and in the Folio, does come across as very complicated. He also says he prefers anti-magic creatures like this to "klutz factor" as an added risk for magic use.

Thoqqua (aka Rockworm)
★★☆☆☆
A worm so hot that it melts through rock and ruins the arms and armor of characters when it attacks. Seems a bit redundant to me with the remorhaz also being a worm-creature with a heat-attack, but I guess the remorhaz also has an ice association... which honestly makes it more interesting anyway. It's implied the thoqqua is the larval form of some larger elemental creature which is fun. Pretty much exactly what you'd expect as a "fire worm."

Thork
★★★★☆
I love the thork, but I also just love weird birds in general. Thorks aka boiler birds are copper storks that heat up water inside their bodies to spit as an attack. The imagery of a bird made of metal standing in water with steam rising from its beak is just too good to pass up, and I honestly appreciate that they are explicitly non-hostile, only attacking in self-defense. But they very well might want to defend themselves, because they collect platinum in their subaquatic nests! The choice of platinum is a bit arbitrary and clearly just picked because it is so valuable, but having a valuable treasure protected by these boiling water birds is a great excuse to make players interact with them. Maybe, although this isn't very stork-like, thorks should build elaborate nests out of treasure, just to make it doubly hard to get the stuff out without attracting their ire.

Throat Leech
★★☆☆☆
Pretty basic, a bloodsucking leech that inhabits fresh water, looking like a twig, and if consumed latches onto the back of the throat and sucks blood (1-3 hit points of damage) for 10 melee rounds at which point it is distended with blood and stops sucking. The only way to kill it is with a heated metal rod inserted down the throat, which has a chance of horribly damaging the host's mouth and throat which is fun. But the chance of getting the leech in the first place is only 10%... So many words writing this stuff out, all just on the off chance the players even have to deal with it? I like the basic building blocks here, just wish more was done with it; drinking water hazards are always great!

Throat leeches were also a Factory original! Pretty much the same as in the Folio, except the description is mercifully much shorter. Did someone at TSR require that monster mechanics be written out in the most verbose possible way??? The illustration makes it look like throat leeches go for your throat when you go for a swim, despite what the description puts forward. 

Tiger Fly
★★★☆
The tiger fly is, at is simplest, a sexually dimorphic giant predatory stinging insect. Except, for some reason, they have a human face? Their intelligence is listed as "non-", which does bring to mind the question of just how uncanny it would be to see an explicitly non-thinking human face would be. Male tiger flies have two sharp sickle-like forelimbs they use to attack, and a venomous sting that deals a whopping 4d6 damage; females, on the other hand, have four arms which they use to grab victims, holding them in place to paralyze them with their stinger and lay a parasitoid larva in their body. Parasitoid insects are an absolute favorite of mine (and have cropped up in these reviews before, with the assassin bug!), and the combination of a parasitoid wasp-esque creature with a totally unthinking human face is very freaky. I'm imagining the face of a female tiger fly completely placid and uncanny as she injects her spawn into your abdomen, a fantastic visual! The illustration of a male tiger fly leans more goofy than uncanny, but it is still very fun either way.

Tirapheg
★★★★★
I LOVE THE TIRAPHEG!!! This is one of those monsters that I was introduced to before ever getting my hands on the Fiend Folio proper, via a mention in a Bogleech D&D monster review. And, keeping with the uncanniness implied by the tiger fly, the tirapheg is quite possibly one of the creepiest looking creatures that one could imagine shuffling out of the darkness in the dungeon depths. Seven feet tall, completely naked and hairless, with three heads, only one of which has any actual facial features, three arms, only one of which ends in a hand (and a sharp-clawed one at that), three legs, only one of which ends in a foot, and a large fleshy-lipped mouth with waving tendrils above in the middle of its torso. An inexplicable body horror monstrosity that is described as preferring to eat decayed flesh, the tirapheg is normally shy (this combined with the eating of decayed flesh perhaps implies tiraphegs are decomposers/scavengers? Yet, interestingly, they have average i.e. human-level intelligence) but sometimes will attack adventurers for "no apparent reason" (more accurately what seems like no apparent reason to the players). Additionally, the tirapheg can project illusory copies of itself in combat, which take no damage but can damage opponents, as well as creating a sudden blinding flash of light that causes confusion effects. Tiraphegs seem to be furtive dungeon scavengers, with supernatural abilities that serve to give them opportunities to flee combat and hide away somewhere... and they look like that.

For some reason, in their initial appearance in the Fiend Factory column, the tirapheg was called Lauren. The reader-provided description thankfully explains that Lauren is an anagram of "unreal." OH YEAH I FORGOT TO MENTION, tiraphegs/laurens have a third eye on the back of the head and double-jointed arms that allow them to attack from either direction. That element is the same in both versions. Otherwise, the two versions are much the same, although the Factory version is much simpler. The illustration goes for a more AHH! Real Monsters gross-out sort of vibe than the surreal uncanny of the Folio drawing, and while I think for the vibe I get from the description the Folio illustration is better, I can't help but love the scrappiness of the Factory rendition.

Trilloch
★★☆☆☆
Trillochs are a terrible force from the negative energy plane that thrives on siphoning life-force from dying creatures and uses its field of influence to accelerate death (but it cannot start death). If combat occurs in the presence of a trilloch, all attacks have +1 to-hit and +1 damage, unintelligent monsters are more likely to attack, etc. Trillochs apparently gravitate to especially evil and violent creatures and attaches itself to whatever ends up killing their "host." The basic idea is one I really vibe with, but I wish it wasn't just an invisible indistinct energy-creature. Literally anything else would be more interesting. I'd much rather have an awful little piece of shit critter that hangs around evil monsters and goads violence on than a... wait what I just described is a minion.

Trolls
There are four new types of trolls described here in the Fiend Folio, but most of them are uninteresting and repetitive!

It's a pretty good creepy drawing though!

Giant Troll & Giant Two-Headed Troll
★☆☆☆☆
Hybrids of trolls and other giant humanoids (hill giants in the case of the giant troll and ettins in the case of the giant two-headed troll). I get bored of mostly uninteresting humanoid hybrids. I'd much rather normal trolls just sometimes be allowed to be really big, or have two heads, than these get written up as totally separate monsters with naturalistic explanations. The two-headed troll is basically just a normal ass troll with a lower chance of surprise! Who cares!!

 Ice Troll & Spirit Troll
★★☆☆☆
These are both mildly more interesting than the other two troll variants. Ice trolls are not literally made of ice, but have the appearance of a translucent crystalline structure. It isn't mentioned here, but I'd love if you could see their internal organs, shivering and pulsating inside their icey exteriors. The ice troll is probably my favorite of the whole set here, namely because its regeneration only works when it is immersed in water. Almost like the opposite of Minecraft's enderman, goading the monster out of the water is an interesting strategy for combatting ice trolls, and presents good OSR-style problem solving on top of the already existing challenge of troll regeneration. Spirit trolls are hybrids like the giant trolls and giant two-headed troll, but they are hybrids of trolls and invisible stalkers. My distaste for humanoid hybrids loops back around to me now being morbidly fascinated at the very question of how that match even works. The magical breeding that produces spirit trolls is literally described as "perverted." Only the most nasty of wizards make spirit trolls. Spirit trolls are basically just trolls that are invisible and deal damage to STR as well as HP.

Tween
★★☆☆☆
A stupid name for a very strange monster. Tweens are entities that exist only on the ethereal plane and partner up with people on the prime material plane, forming a hazy shadowy mirror image of them that exerts a strange sort of effect on the host and those around them. Tweens can see a few seconds into the future and increase their host's luck while making everything worse for those around them. Basically, the host always has advantage on every roll, while everyone else around them, friend or foe, always has disadvantage. They didn't have that kind of language back when the Fiend Folio was published, so this whole system is explained in way too many words. I wish more was described about the relationship that the tween has with its host. It reminds me a lot of the vibe of an X-Files episode and... dammit, that makes me want to bump it up to three stars. If this was described differently, and more of an emphasis was placed on the, for lack of a better term, human element, I think I'd like it so much more. Something that just barely nudges swords out of the way and exerts an unlucky field around itself latching onto someone that it seemingly cares about, cares about enough to make lucky instead of unlucky, is such an interesting idea... I just wish it wasn't shackled to AD&D's kinda clunky implementation.

The tween was also originally featured in the Fiend Factory column! The illustration is much more unsettling than the Folio illustration, depicting a hunched-over, hazy, emaciated thing, and the description is pretty much the same in the broad strokes as the Folio version. However, the Factory version does note that the host will not be aware of the tween's presence! That explicitly cuts out the most thought provoking part of what I liked about the tween, the idea that they may be aware of something supernatural going on even if they don't necessarily understand it, and that the tween might literally care about their host. Turnbull's comment opens with a note that the tween could have easily been a character class which is actually insane. He also delights in the confusion that players might experience having to do all these extra rolls for no clear reason if one of the party members has a tween latched onto them, and provides some advice on how to handle that sort of thing.

Well anyway! Next time, we will be picking up where we are leaving off, with the letter U! I also think that it is very likely that our next installment will be our last, since there are very few monsters in those last letters of the alphabet. Looking forward to finally getting there, after much, much too long!

Isle of the Cyclopean Monolith (A Ten Room Dungeon for King of Kings)

So I've been wanting to post more adventure locations for a while, and a format that I think is great is Tristyn's Ten Room Dungeon. She made a bunch of them earlier in her blog's existence, but recently made that post I just linked to with a general overview of the format. So here I've made a ten room dungeon for King of Kings, Tristyn style! The rooms don't really stick completely to the guidelines in the post, but yknow its close enough. I'll start posting more of these, its a really fun way to make a nice lil adventure location!

Your ship rocking in the rough waves of the Sea of Giants, you spot a little black crag poking out of the seafoam... "Land ho!" you cry, turning toward what you hope is a respite from the storms and the schools of raucous dolphins, but instead you find...

THE ISLE OF THE CYCLOPEAN MONOLITH

You're gonna take this sketchy almost purely relational dungeon map and you're gonna LIKE IT

Wandering Monsters

Roll 1d6

1-2: Pygmy Giants [Total number: 16]

3-5: Pariah Dogs [Total number: 23]

6: The Piscine Apparition [Total number: 1]

Piscine Apparition % in Lair: 50% 

Pygmy Giant % in Lair: 80% 

[I include % in Lair here to account for reaching the lair/house of the respective creature while they may not be there.] 

Platform 1: A platform made of lashed together driftwood. The smell of briny sea air, the bitter feeling of salt on your face, the sound of yipping dogs. Small wood and rope pens hold a total of 21 fat pariah dogs. Connected to the pier by a wooden walkway, and to platform 2 by a rickety wooden staircase.

Platform 2: A platform made of lashed together driftwood. Frigid wind rushing through your hair, the floor shifting beneath your feet. Five small tents serve as houses for 10 pygmy giants, as well as 2 pariah dogs that sleep up here. Not all of the pygmy giants will be here all at once. Connected to platform 1 by a rickety wooden staircase, and to platform 4 by a wooden rope bridge. Beneath the platform lives a degenerate octopus that has grown fat and lazy on the waste and effluvia of dogs and does not take kindly to being bothered. It roosts on a large clam that holds a pearl worth 325 drachmae.

The octopus

A pygmy giant

Platform 3: A platform made of lashed together driftwood. The smell of briny sea air, the bitter feeling of salt on your face, the feeling that something you wouldn’t want to see has happened here regularly. Most of the platform is taken up by a pen used for breeding dogs. Beneath the platform is the little moray eel style lair of the piscine apparition.

PISCINE APPARITION 

Number Encountered: 1 

Hit Dice: 3 

Attacks: 1 kick (1d6) 

Armor: none 

Morale: 8 

Aquatic Curse: The piscine apparition can cast a curse of water breathing. Pointing with its big toe, which puts it off balance, the target must make a save vs. spells or have their respiration transformed to water breathing. 

Mischievous: The piscine apparition is a silly little thing that delights in causing problems.  

Spirit Being: The piscine apparition is a spirit of the Sea of Giants. It is immune to damage from mundane weaponry, fire, acid, electricity, etc. The only things that can harm it are immaterial weapons, spirit wards, and magic.  

A gawping fish thing sat upon two chubby humanoid legs. It wishes to get to the antediluvian monolith but cannot pierce the wards placed around it by the pygmy giants. 

The Piscine Apparition

Platform 4: A platform made of lashed together driftwood. Frigid wind rushing through your hair, the floor shifting beneath your feet. Three small tents serve as houses for 6 pygmy giants, with a fourth serving as a smokehouse for dog flesh. Not all of the pygmy giants will be here all at once. Connected to platform 2 by a wooden rope bridge, and to platform 3 by a wooden staircase.

Cave Room 5: Smoked dog meat and dog cheese storage facility used by the pygmy giants. Connects to room 8 and cave room 6. The passage to room 8 is marked by multicolored ragged flags and occult wards.

Cave Room 6: A chamber of things gleaned from the sea. A hostage sailor is tied up against the slick cave wall. He is desperate to be freed, but is liable to steal from the party if he has the chance. There is also a box of gold teeth, small pearls, sea glass, and scrimshaw collectively worth 450 drachmae. Connects to cave room 5 and cave room 7.

Cave Room 7: Soggy cave smell and the sound of dripping water. Empty except for a cave painting of octopuses, dolphins, and the outlines of squat hands. Connects to room 8, cave room 6, and cave room 9. The passage to room 8 is marked by multicolored ragged flags and occult wards.

Room 8, the Open Air Clearing: Wide open under the cloudy sky, ringed by the cracked craggy rocks at the peak of the island, sits the ancient, antediluvian monolith carved in days long forgotten. It exudes a terrible aura that causes intense nausea and confusion the closer you get to it, the cnidarian tentacles stabbed into its surface seeming to squirm in the corner of your vision. It is covered with a thin layer of green and black slime, algal and fungal, which prickles the skin to the touch. The pygmy giants hate to approach it.

Save vs. poison or be unable to approach the antediluvian monolith without collapsing and/or vomiting. If touched with bare skin, it deals 2 points of damage per turn to all touching it. The monolith is worth immense amounts to the right buyer, upwards of 2,500 drachmae if you can find someone who can stomach its unwholesome vibrations. If yanked out of the ground, beneath the monolith are the mummified remains of an anomalocaris. Connects to cave room 5 and cave room 7.

The cyclopean monolith

Cave Room 9: An eroded cavern dripping with caustic green slime. On the ground, amidst the half melted remnants of a human corpse, is a lapis lazuli statuette of a goat shaped goddess, worth 400 drachmae. Connects to cave room 7 and cave room 10.

Cave Room 10: A small cave marked only by a single cave painting of an eye in a star. Connected to platform 3 by a rock cliff that can be navigated with rope.

Pygmy Giants

Drawn by yours truly

Pygmy Giant

Number Encountered: 1d8 (5d8)

Hit Dice: 3

Attacks: 1 weapon

Armor: as leather

Morale: 8

Bullied Followers: Pygmy giants are often bullied or otherwise forced into submission by other giants and sometimes the few humans who come by their islands, and will often be found in the service of giants and sometimes in the crews of sailors and pirates.

Herding and Fishing: Pygmy giants are avid herdsmen and fishermen; they will react violently if their herds or nets are disturbed.

Weapons: Wield clubs, stones, and spears.

Pygmy giants are children of 'Ajuj and Majuj, the monstrous pair of the far north, the twin fathers of monsters, beasts, and giants... but unlike 'Ajuj and Majuj's other children, they are much, much smaller. Having been confined to isolated islands in the Sea of Giants, or distant frigid crags on the always frozen sea far to the north, they have undergone insular dwarfism, shrinking down to just under the average size of a human. They are just as muscular and dense as true giants, however, packing a lot of punch in a rather small package. Their heavily plodding feet leave deep furrows and prints in the wet sand of their salty islands, as they herd beasts of burden and fish from the depths. However, sometimes pygmy giants are pressed into service for their larger brothers and sisters, sometimes especially callous giants depopulating whole islands of their pygmy giant inhabitants for some raiding campaign thousands of miles away. The pygmy giants are xenophobic and wary of outsiders, and resentful of their elder brothers and sisters, but size and might makes right in the terrible family of 'Ajuj and Majuj.

Pygmy giants in the northern reaches of the Land of Darkness tend to be furrier and woolier than their more southerly cousins, but there isn't a hard divide of pygmy giants into two groups, and they can be just as visually diverse as other giants.

I just really love including real world biological concepts in my games and in my settings, and insular dwarfism is such a fun phenomenon! I also just love the image of little squat giants fending off adventurers trying to land on their island, or using these little guys as go to humanoid opponents in scenarios involving giants. Thinking up adventure locations using them as we speak!

1d12 Herds of the Pygmy Giants

1. Sheep

2. Walruses

3. Land octopuses

4. Cows

5. Coconut crabs

6. Giant (or normal sized) snails

7. Goats

8. Sturgeon (herded in water for their caviar)

9. Dogs

10. Pygmy wooly mammoths

11. Pygmy wooly rhinoceroses

12. Ostriches

1d12 Pygmy Giant encounter activities (home islands)

1. Spearfishing in the craggy shoals, the salty waves licking at their ankles.

2. Roasting a herd animal whole over a fire, filling the air with jokes and booming laughter.

3. Cooking one of those comically large cauldrons, or possibly a clay vessel, full of boiling broth over a fire.

4. Reciting poetry to one another in their gravelly deep voices.

5. Goading on a pair of crabs to fight each other.

6. Crushing seashells between two stones to create pigment.

7. Absentmindedly staring out over their herd, leaning on a club or crook.

8. Squeezing a very stressed looking sturgeon to push out its caviar directly into their mouths.

9. Painting an elaborate scene of dolphins and flying fish on a cliff face.

10. Curing beast skin into leather on a rack of driftwood.

11. Wrestling each other in a dusty circle on the ground.

12. Butchering a herd animal into pieces, and attempting to glean prophecies from its guts.

1d12 Pygmy Giant encounter activities (elsewhere)

1. Being beaten with a whip by a giant general.

2. Getting in a fistfight with one another, with brass knuckles made from seashells.

3. Getting their teeth pulled out.

4. Riding on wooly rhinos, two or three pygmy giants to a beast.

5. Practicing combat maneuvers in a field.

6. Roving the countryside harvesting branches to make wicker shields and arrows.

7. Rolling a boulder through the valley to bring to their giant master.

8. Hunting birds with spears and slings.

9. Groaning in pain, recovering from injuries.

10. Carrying armfuls of eggs in a panic, chased by angry chickens and/or peasants.

11. Sharpening their tusks to razor sharp points.

12. Playing games of dice carved from sheep bones, betting on meager pieces of fish and mutton.

Inhabitants of the World (Peoples of King of Kings)

I puzzled over what to title this post for a good while, mostly because I don't want to use the clumsy language of "races" that D&D stuff has been stuck with for a while, but inversely trying to puzzle out what the name for a broad group of people groups was really difficult and I didn't really want to use super scientific terms like "species", "genus", or "family". I think the incredibly vague and unhelpful word "inhabitants" does the closest thing to justice to the topic of this post, so it's what I went with.

So yeah, this is a setting post for King of Kings about the intelligent inhabitants of the world! It is more of a semi "world bible" of sorts, rather than an in universe statement of lore; the creatures and characters described in this post, and the categories into which they are placed in, are more for my benefit to define what sorts of creatures I use in the world rather than pure world building. I'm personally not a huge fan of the intense taxonomical drive that is present in a lot of D&D stuff, which you can read a very interesting and good post about here, from the wonderful Zedeck Siew. Obviously I am still putting things into categories in this post, but I'm aiming for relatively vague and general categories defined more by connections to fictional cosmology and myth than by how D&D races work, taking cues more from groups of spirits and creatures from real world myth and folklore. So there is still a taxonomic impulse, guilty as charged in that regard, but for King of Kings I want to keep taxonomy as light as possible, and instead emphasize geographic location, familial ties, or political/religious allegiance. If I ever make a KoK book in the future, I'd lean more in that direction for that more "official" presentation, but this post isn't the final official presentation, its basically just a collection of notes put together here for my sake and for anyone who wants to read about my setting.

Maybe that rant was unwarranted, I don't know, I just think about this stuff a lot!

Without further ado!

A person, on a rug

Humans/People

I think I would hope that everyone reading this post knows what these are. While King of Kings takes its cues from the world of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, fundamentally people back then were still just people! Humans are the main inhabitant of the world, living just about everywhere, forming tribes and nations and polities together, etc. etc. Not all humans are visually identical, however, and this is where KoK leans into ancient and medieval conceptions. People groups that would appear at first to be very different from humanity, such as dog headed men, amazons, men of the deluge, and the mouthless astomi, are all still human no matter their, from the perspective of people in the Enlightened Empire, strange customs and appearances. Here I'm trying to lean into ideas of the "monstrous races" from Ancient Greek natural histories and travelogues from Greece, Rome, and the Christian and Muslim Middle Ages. There's a really good book that I'd recommend about this topic that provides a detailed listing of such peoples from ancient and medieval sources, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. I find this topic super interesting, honestly kind of deserving of its own post, obviously of even more than a post because its a historical topic that has garnered plenty of attention in like, book length works and such. These ancient and medieval conceptions of people from faraway lands being monstrous are something to be careful about though because they're, yknow, tangential to and prefacing racism that developed in the modern period & etc. I find them to be a very fascinating and fantastical element of how real premodern people perceived their world, and I like using them as inspiration for KoK, as a basis to then provide some real depth and complexity onto, but just as with anything else really it's good to try and be mindful and whatnot.

Also people

But yeah uh, other than humans like the dog headed men and amazons, there are also humans that are closer to real world ancient human cultures. City dwelling Shahanistanis, rural farmers, nomadic pastoralists or raiding warriors, etc. etc. I'm going to make more posts in the future with more character backgrounds and stuff about different polities in different parts of the world, so there's plenty more to say. But yknow, its just humans.

from the Kitab al-Bulhan

Spirits, including Jinn

Possibly the broadest group mentioned here, spirits encompasses all manner of immaterial and supernatural entities that dwell all across the world of King of Kings. Mischievous kalikantzaroi, morning star worshiping liliths, burgeoning bakhtaks, all manner of ghosts and lingering auras, localized nature gods, and jinn of all sorts, including afarit like Fire Eater, ghuls, marids like the headless bull thing, and the half jinni half human nasnas. Spirits can be basically anything, which is kind of on purpose so that I can encompass all sorts of supernal immaterial entities and atmospheres in here. Jinn are to the world of spirits as humans are to the material world, and so jinn come in just as much staggering variety if not more than people do. They share in all being made from smokeless fire, and have a parallel and often very different society to that of humanity, but are otherwise incredibly diverse. I would never want to try to make any attempt at like, summarizing all spirits or all jinn in a single paragraph, let alone a whole post or book, though I do want to start writing up more spirits for King of Kings for the blog.

For resources that I've taken inspiration from for spirits and jinn in KoK, check out Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar by Robert Lebling, Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn by Amira el‐Zein, relevant entries in the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Encyclopaedia Iranica, and of course The Thousand and One Nights. Also I'd be lying if I didn't sometimes just take info from Wikipedia for folkloric creatures, or at least as a starting point. Who doesn't use Wikipedia as a resource these days? It's generally pretty good.

Sea Tyrants, including Amphibians

I've made a post about these before, although I'll definitely return to the topic in the future. The sea tyrants are the primordial once rulers of the world, the ancient despots from when the world was wet and the world was young. They flooded the world in an effort to take control of it in its entirety, but were rebuffed when some among them acted as a sorcerous Prometheus and stole star magic to give to mortals. Ever since then, they have dwelled deep at the bottom of the sea and deep in the depths of the earth, while humanity and the traitors to the sea tyrants thrive on the surface. The sea tyrants who betrayed their brethren and stole magic to give to humanity were the amphibians, namely the froglings, salamen, and elder olms. The froglings live among humans, in their cities and towns, and continue to practice magic and  serve as sailors and merchants, while salamen tend to live out on their own in isolated wilderness and swamp communities, and elder olms serve as a potential friendly faction in delves underground. I have so many ideas for sea tyrant related stuff, so keep an eye out for that in the future.

If you couldn't tell, the main point of reference for these guys is almost entirely Lovecraft stuff, yknow Deep Ones and Cthulhu and the subterranean city of K'nyan from The Mound and all that. Add in aboleths and mind flayers from D&D and other underdark goodies and you've got it. And with regards to the froglings, I can't help but bring up my love for Frog from Chrono Trigger, even if my frog people here don't have That much to do with him. Sure these are some of my most overtly pop culture inspiration creatures but who cares its my setting.

Moses tells the giant Cuj ibn Canaq how to curb an appetite

Giants, or the Children of 'Ajuj and Majuj

Far to the north, in the snowy Land of Darkness, dwell the ancient 'Ajuj and Majuj, twin fathers of monsters. Their offspring form monstrous man-eating lineages that roam the wintry vastnesses, attack human settlements of northern nomads, and on occasion raid down south. The Conquering King, when he took hold of all the world, built a great metal and stone wall with a great looming gate in the mountains on the southern edge of the Land of Darkness, to keep the Children of 'Ajuj and Majuj out. Also, I have an idea for a horizontal megadungeon of sorts which would be the slowly rotting body of a giant that you could dungeon crawl in, I think it'd be super fun and cool.

Like I keep on saying, keep an eye out for more posts about giants, especially since I haven't posted really anything about them so far. With regards to references, check out the Penguin book Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North and certain versions of The Romance of Alexander. King of Kings's giants are another example of taking cues and inspiration from how premodern people perceived people from other parts of the world, similarly to the dog headed men et al. I discussed in the section about people above.

Don't know the source of this one unfortunately

Daevas, or Divs/Dews

Dwelling on the upside down underside of the world, daevas are embodiments of all forms of evil and untruth. They are more than simple unclean spirits, they are the living forms of deceit and lies, and live completely alien and surreal lives on the flat plane of the underside. Some divs are collaborating with the sea tyrants in their efforts to slowly seize the surface world, but most divs are lonesome creatures serving only deceit. Like I keep saying, keep an eye out for more posts about these guys.

Here, the main point of reference is to daevas from Zoroastrianism and, later, the Islamic Persianate div; while the names are super similar, it's an important distinction to make, I think, between these religious/historic references and devas in Hinduism, especially since Zoroastrian daevas are comparable to demons. Just sorta making a note of that. For stuff I've taken inspiration from, the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi which I need to read more of, I haven't actually finished it and Manifestation of Evil in Persian Mythology from the Perspective of Zoroastrian Religion by Elnaz Bakhshayeh and Reza Ebrahimil. Also the Encyclopedia Iranica and Wikipedia again. I wanna do more reading to find good inspiration for these entities.

Skeleboy with some carvings made by the ancient Dinosaur Kings

Dinosaurs

A bit of an outlier for this post, because the dinosaurs are more or less all dead. Once the rulers of the eastern satrapies and other lands before the time of the Conquering King, many of them were killed or forced into hiding once they were defeated by his armies, either by his very soldiers or by their human subjects' retribution. Today, they are little more than carvings on walls and rumors of ancient tombs.

Beasts and Birds

Yknow, animals. I wasn't going to include them in this post because I feel like it's kinda self explanatory that animals exist in the setting, but I figured hey why not I can still say some stuff about some weirdos. Obviously, most beasts and birds are just normal animals, but King of Kings has some unusual creatures, whether they are fictional animals that are still more or less comparable to real world things like the lizardmen herded and bred by the Dinosaur Kings, or intelligent beasts like manticores or pigmen, or birds so beautiful that their plumage inspires awe like the huma, or monotremes like gryphons, owlbears, or the swamp dwelling platypus. Just figured I'd note them.

This is what came up when I googled "byzantine elf". Source

Elves, namely the Gnostic Elves

A last but not least, the newcomers on the scene, the Gnostic Elves. The Gnostic Elves rule an empire directly to the west of the Enlightened Empire, the two neighbors being in a constant slow and grinding war that has been going on for generations. They took over the western archipelago and their portions of the mainland a few centuries ago, having come in from across the sea on pale white boats. They wrap themselves up in full body coverings and often wear masks, and believe that the flesh is sinful and must be destroyed, and that through ascertaining hidden knowledge the material world can be transcended. There are, however, heretic sects of elves who reject that gnosis, most notably the Hedonist Elves who dwell underground in isolated colonies.

I know I sound like a broken record but yeah keep an eye out for more posts about the gnostic elves and about the never-ending war between the gnostic elves and the enlightened empire. The Gnostic Elves have taken a lot of inspiration from a variety of sources: obviously their religion is derived from ancient Gnosticism, while visually and with regards to their role in the fictional world they take cues from the Eastern Roman Empire (for which I really like to refer to The World of Late Antiquity by Peter Brown and the History and Secret History of Prokopios), and their history of having come here from across the ocean to conquer takes inspiration from the Tarascans/Purépecha of Mexico who have a similar story of coming from across the Pacific, and the Seljuqs who conquered Anatolia from Central Asia.

And that's it! Those eight inhabitants of the world are going to serve more or less as a guide for my world building and adventure location making, and a bit of a taste of some posts to come as I elaborate on some more of these in more detail! Hope you have a lovely day!