Three creatures that I considered pitching didn’t make it as far as me offering them for the Magonomia Bestiary. They’re still suitable for your table, but not right for the tone of this book.
This is the last episode for the Bestiary Kickstart: it ends on November 24 at 9:00 (US) EST.
George, the Minotaur d’Amour
This minotaur was originally designed as the creature at the centre of the Royal Exchange. He was to twist the perception of the humans nearby. This would make the world’s first shopping centre confusingly labyrinthine, and explain impulse purchases. I couldn’t land the idea, so I reworked it all in the Urban Wisps.
HC: The Minotaur d’Amour
T: Lives in a society that equates beauty and goodness
A: Misplaced Classical monster
A: Just a normal, workmanlike guy once you get past the whole minotaur thing.
S: Parting is such sorrow: See the Urban Wisps in the Magonomia Bestiary for the spell here. I sold it to Shewstone….(shrugs).
S: Cheap imitations of heirlooms of old: If George can handle a monetarily-valuable object, he can make a passable forgery of it in his workshop.
Skills: Crafts 5, Fighting 4, Physique 4, Athletics 3, Notice 3, Resource 3, Empathy 2, Lore 2, Stealth 2, Will 2, Contacts 1, Investigation 1, Provocation 1, Rapport 1.
Stress Physical 6, Mental 4.
Consequences: Mild, Medium, Severe.
The problems with the minotaur are several. In the original myth, the minotaur is a single guy, called Asterion. He’s not representative of a faerie race: he’s the lovechild of a queen and a sacred bull. How do I get him into Elizabethan London without doing something odd about the Queen, or using time travel? There are options (a statute bought to life, for example) but they are tough to work through. Even if you find one you like (for example that Jane Seymour died in childbed because she had twins, one a minotaur and the other King Edward VI) you still need to explain why he’s in the basement of the shopping centre.
His name comes from the plot hook that he was going to be desired to supplement the enchantment of for Dudley’s Love Castle. This doesn’t work for a couple of reasons. Americans don’t pronounce minotaur to rhyme with amour. Also, at least one early reader thought I was making up Robert Dudley’s Enchanted Love Castle, by which I meant the entirely real Kenilworth. Dudley tries to convince Elizabeth to marry him during a 19 day stay there in 1575, and he pulls out all of the stops by way of entertainment.
The word “amour”, which is Latin and French for “love” is believed in period to etymologically derive from the word for “hook”. For a while I toyed with him being able to take hearts and keep them alive outside the body, or take the beats out of hearts so that people felt listless when outside the shops. This was too powerful for what I wanted. Also, I though for a while of him using a hook and chain as his weapon (+2). It’s a popular piece of tackle used for loading cargo, so it doesn’t require a stretch for him to have one in the warehouse sections of the shops, but I’m not sure he’s best as a combat menace. If he does fight with a chain and hook, I’d give him an extra stunt that let’s him skip across a combat zone by swinging on it, like Indiana Jones does with his whip.
The Moonlight Shadow Witch
HC: Recursive Witch
T: Is trapped in a mirror
A: Unshakeable love
A; Famous artefact among British magicians
S: Come to, talk to, me: The haunted mirror can sense divinationary skill and surreptitiously move toward those who have it. Imagine how the One Ring seems to find its way Sauronwards when not held up by hobbits.
S: Stars move slowly: When divining using the possessed mirror, a character gains +2 on Astrology rolls. Swap this around to make your PCs want it more, if you like.
Skills: Astronomy* 4, Lore 3, Notice 3, Fighting 2, Rapport 2, Will 2, Crafts 1, Empathy 1, Investigation 1, Physique 1. *Or whatever entices your players.
Stress: Physical 1*, Mental 4. * Is literally in a glass mirror. If able to manifest outside the mirror somehow, this becomes 3.
Consequences: Mild, moderate, severe
This creature is based on a deliberate misreading of the lyrics of a tune called “Moonlight Shadow” by Mike Oldfield.. On my podcast I get a lot of mileage out of taking metaphorical things literally. She didn’t pass muster because she’s not so much a character as an embodied inciting incident. Also, she’s presumably a derived work. I don’t think Moonlight Shadow is based on folklore, so I couldn’t have sold her to Andrew and Vesna.
There’s a witch who gets a bad feeling (from the whispering winds in the trees) and scries her lover in a mirror. She sees him shot by a man on the run, while in the middle of a crowd. She tries to reach him with magic, but cannot. She pushes her power well past what’s possible for her, and dies.
This being the great tragedy of her life, the event leaves a ghost. Any skilled player character who tries to scry with her mirror on the anniversary of her death sees the witch, scrying in the same mirror, and seeing her lover die. Even unskilled people can see her at the moment of the anniversary, but given that’s at 4 am, not a lot of people are up and about.
The player characters can conclude the whole thing by finding the lover’s remains and reburying them by the witch’s. This leaves her mirror unhaunted, and grants it as a treasure. For example, perhaps this is how the player character explains a higher level of skill in a Science, or the availability of a new spell. The mechanics are embodied in the game setting by the antique scrying mirror.
Long Lankin
Lankin is a killer who murders a baby and mother. He’s found in the Child Ballads and various other places. My problem with him is that there wasn’t enough specificity to make him a distinct monster. There are two variants to the story. The older, found mostly in Scotland says that Lankin was a mason who had been refused his wages by the lord after building a castle. The version below, which is found more often in England, has him as a perhaps-shapeshifting spirit of the fens and waters. That arguably makes him a troll, but not in the sense that its being used in the rest of the Magonomia Bestiary, but in the Danish sense of trollishness being an attribute one can gain and lose. There’s a touch of folklore about that suggests his name, which is often given as “lambkin” indicates he had pale skin, as a symptom of leprosy, and that the blood of a baby was though a curative. I didn’t want to use any of that. This left me stymied for a reason to give him supernatural gifts.
Since the book has come out, I did find another poem that has given me what I needed, though. Let’s look at the two texts. Here’s one version of Long Lankin. There is, by the way, a good recording of this by Steeleye Span you could use as a gaming prop.
SAID my lord to his ladye,
as he mounted his horse,
Take care of Long Lankyn,
who lies in the moss.
Said my lord to his ladye,
as he rode away,
Take care of Long Lankyn,
who lies in the clay.
Let the doors be all bolted,
and the windows all pinned,
And leave not a hole
for a mouse to creep in.
Then he kissed his fair ladye,
and he rode away;
He must be in London
before break of day.
The doors were all bolted,
and the windows were pinned,
All but one little window,
where Long Lankyn crept in.
‘Where is the lord of this house?’
said Long Lankyn:
‘He is gone to fair London,’
said the false nurse to him.
‘Where is the ladye of this house?’
said Long Lankyn:
‘She’s asleep in her chamber,’
said the false nurse to him.
‘Where is the heir of this house?’
said Long Lankyn:
‘He’s asleep in his cradle,’
said the false nurse to him.
***
‘We’ll prick him, and prick him,
all over with a pin,
And that will make your ladye
to come down to him.’
So she pricked him and pricked,
all over with a pin,
And the nurse held a basin
for the blood to run in.
‘Oh nurse, how you sleep!
Oh nurse, how you snore!
And you leave my little son Johnstone
to cry and to roar.’
‘I’ve tried him with suck,
and I’ve tried him with pap;
So come down, my fair ladye,
and nurse him in your lap.’
‘Oh nurse, how you sleep!
Oh nurse, how you snore!
And you leave my little son Johnstone
to cry and to roar.’
‘I’ve tried him with apples,
I’ve tried him with pears;
So come down, my fair ladye,
and rock him in your chair.’
‘How can I come down,
’tis so late in the night,
When there’s no candle burning,
nor fire to give light?’
‘You have three silver mantles
as bright as the sun;
So come down, my fair ladye,
by the light of one.’
***
‘Oh spare me, Long Lankyn,
oh spare me till twelve o’clock,
you shall have as much gold
as you can carry on your back.’
‘If I had as much gold
as would build me a tower,’
. . . . . (Two lines are missing from the original here)
. . . . .
‘Oh spare me, Long Lankyn,
oh spare me one hour,
You shall have my daughter Betsy,
She is a sweet flower.’
‘Where is your daughter Betsy?
she may do some good;
She can hold the silver basin,
to catch your heart’s blood.’
***
Lady Betsy was sitting
in her window so high,
And she saw her father,
as he was riding by.
‘Oh father, oh father,
don’t lay the blame on me;
’Twas the false nurse and Long Lankyn
that killed your ladye.’
***
Then Long Lankyn was hanged
on a gallows so high,
And the false nurse was burnt
in a fire just by.
One way to have extended it would have been to use a hint from The Highwayman’s Ghost by Richard Garret. Note that ghosts in the Tudor period had a distinct solidness to them: they didn’t so much walk through doors as supernaturally push them open. The following reading is via Librivox, with thanks to JakeW.
TWELVE o’clock–a misty night–
Glimpsing hints of buried light–
Six years strung in an iron chain–
Time I stood on the ground again!
So–by your leave! Slip, easy enough,
Withered wrists from the rusty cuff,
The old chain rattles, the old wood groans,
O the clatter of clacking bones!
Here I am, uncoated, unhatted,
Shirt all mildewed, hair all matted,
Sockets that each have royally
Fed the crow a precious eye.
O for slashing Bess the brown!
Where, old lass, have they earthed thee down?
Sobb’st beneath a carrier’s thong?
Strain’st a coalman’s cart along?
Shame to foot it!–must be so.
See, the mists are smitten below;
Over the moorland, wide away,
Moonshine pours her watery day.
There the long white-dusted track,
There a crawling speck of black.
The Northern mail, ha, ha! and he
There on the box is Anthony.
Coachman I scared him from brown or grey,
Witness he lied my blood away.Haste,
Fred! haste, boy! never fail!
Now or never! catch the mail!
The horses plunge, and sweating stop.
Dead falls Tony, neck and crop.
Nay, good guard, small profit thus,
Shooting ghosts with a blunderbuss!
Crash wheel! coach over! How it rains
Hampers, ladies, wigs, and canes!
O the spoil! to sack it and lock it!
But, woe is me, I have never a pocket!
So, this gives me a sort of revenant Lankin for the player characters to seek. He’s got a list of people he wants to do ill to, and he’s checking them off. They want to get the PCs involved, although they may not know precisely who is after them. A corrupt set of local officials who believe they are being punished for something they truly did wrong may not, initially, be able to determine that hanging Lankin is what started these murders.
HC: Highwayman’s Revenant
T: Wants to have the pleasures of mortality, but is a wind-mummified corpse.
A: Driven by resentment
A: Diabolic reputation
S: The slightly-rubbery form of this monster allows him to enter into tiny spaces (Burglary +2, when he can use his odd physiology to surprise)
S: Knows the land for miles about (+2 Lore for his local area)
S: If he suddenly appears, he can cause a severe shock to most people (Will +2 to Create Advantage Severe Shock).
Skills: Burglary 5, Fighting 4, Riding 4, Athletics 3, Lore 3, Stealth 3, Contacts 2, Notice 2
Physique 2, Shooting 2, Crafts 1, Investigation 1, Resources 1, Warcraft 1, Will 1.
Stress: Physical 4, Mental 4.
Consequences: Mild, moderate, severe
Games From Folktales 