That Night, A Forest Grew - d66 Monsters of the Sidhe Dream

A circumstance of para-Moorcockian science-fantasy, rather than a location. 

The subtle dimension allowing the so-called fairy folk to radically change shape and size, demonstrate disproportionate strength and take seven-league steps without suffering the consequences of mundane physics. 

Bypasses rationality, allowing animals to speak, the body to survive dismemberment, and lives to be lived fully between the ticks of a clock. As a hyperspace dimension, it is also a way to other places. 

Most reliably occurs on small islands, along riverbanks, at dawn and dusk, at the crossroads, along the treeline, on the shore, in desert oases, ruins and abandoned facilities, on the old straight track, deep in your cups, on sartain nights of the years, wells and springs, in mines, on train-tracks and at bus-stops, motorway service stations, under-maintained and remote parts of generational colony ships and post-apocalyptic quasi-utopian high-tech mega-bunkers.

Roll d6:

1. Roll d6:

1. Owlboars: Squealing, hooting pack of magical hybrids. A challenging meal, but delicious roasted. Capable of climbing and jumping out of trees. Cough up whole mummified corpses. Filthy and riddled with parasites.
2. Hyacinths: Child-sized with bouncing golden curls, goat eyes, forked tongues. Echo, mimic and ventriloquise to lure you from the path. No language of their own. Possibly telepathic.
3. Ophilines: Languid serpentine cats; wind themselves around branches; cannot constrict but can wrap you up to keep you warm or for auto-bite/claw. Intelligent animals that choose not to talk.
4. Shivery Boys: Blue-skinned and frosty, lost boys left out in the cold. Fairies took them in, then got bored with them. They call themselves Jack or Peter or Robin and are looking for ways back to the mortal world. If not already vampires, they will be once they get back home.
5. Surprise Hunting Boulder (1): Greedy for flesh and blood. Once it has chosen its prey, it can reappear wherever and whenever you aren't looking - including your dreams and understairs cupboard. Moves by rolling and tumbling when under observation, or when it wants to make a lot of ominous approaching noise. Thinks it's a lot more charming than it is.
6. Dire Erudites: Reptilian/dinosaurian druids. More like Hierophant druids than the ones of the mortal sphere.

2. Roll d6:

1. Feliquines: Cat-headed, cat-pawed, cat-tailed, cat-patterned horses; approx. 25% have venomous spines along their flanks. 2 on 2d6 it’s a lone Felicorn (with special abilities and a sought-after alicorn).
2. Corpse Elves: Instinctive glamour to appear as a corpse, often someone you know, making them unnerving interlocutors. Teleport via damaged/dead/dying trees. Meld with living trees to regenerate. Initial Reaction Neutral to Friendly.
3. Mousebear (1): Confused cyclical shape-shifter with a tail attack - damage as dagger for mouse, as polearm for bear, special effects from a monster you’d otherwise not use. Even the bear is afraid of the mouse.
4. Crimson Cattle: Soft red hide thick as plate armour; their meat, milk and blood cure physical, spiritual and societal ills. Glamour makes them seem a blazing, roaring, sun-blotting, town-crushing bovine sky-scape dominating the horizon. Intelligent. Variously capable of speech, spell-casting, prophecy and keeping-their-own-counsel. Have a taste for mortal flesh, but not compulsive gourmands. Horns are magical weapons.
5. Zoogs: Tentacle-faced tree-otters. As likely to track, torture and eat you as to share moonwine and news from beyond the fields you know. Sly, stealthy; pretty much like you’d expect. Implacable foes of the Vroons.
6. Shrill Viridian Things: That haunt bleak rivers. You can hear them from a mile off, but that might be ventriloquism. Maybe cross a Phase Spider with a Quickling for inspiration.

3. Roll d6:

1. Wamps (1-3): Blind, snuffling, mammalian, spider-like profusion of legs. Bat-ears and web-paws bright blood red in contrast to bone white skin and corpse grey fur. Thrive on a diet both ghoulish and vampiric. Mate with and grow/hatch from heads/skulls - detached, dead, whatever.
2. Skandars (Treebeards): Towering, hairy, multiple arms; masters of archery, hammerspace and juggling. Sometimes grow thoughtful and go into an overgrown, Ent-like hibernation.
3. Vroons: Amphibious golden-eyed little octopus folk. Walk upright. Talent for mind- and emotion-affecting magic. Generally benevolent. Sworn enemies of the Zoogs.
4. Sandestins (1-3): Elementals of Primal Chaos, unshackled by Time, hidden from Fate, evading Paradox, circumnavigating Error. Everyone is scared of their open-ended ability to manipulate reality. Comfortingly vulnerable to magical binding and command.
5. Wasp Elves: Aposematic nymphs. You bet they’re going to lay eggs in you. Not hostile, but self-interested and dangerous. Larvae (babies) have ranks of chitinous teeth, which they shed shortly after eating their way out of the host.
6. Piss-a-beds (Gnomes): Natural banded armour and venomous spittle (anaesthetic, anticoagulant, lingeringly diuretic). Pangolin-woodlouse things with a taste for blood. Glamour to look like piglets or great grey grubs.

4. Roll d6:

1. Hairy Nuns: (d6) 1 lascivious lamiae, 2-5 neutral clerics, 6 bloodthirsty Ogres in (magical or unconvincing) disguise. 
2. Tusked Knights: (d6) 1 clumsy buffoons, 2-5 incorrigible but more-or-less honourable duellists and jousters, 6 day-walking Vampire Wereboars. Gorgeously carved wooden plate armour; arrows that sprout into saplings. 1 on d6, they’re mounted on Feliquines.
3. Horned Monks: (d6) 1 satyrs, 2-3 neutral clerics, 4-5 mortal Inquisitors rooting out the devilish and glamour’d to ignore their own horns, 6 bloodthirsty Ogre magi in disguise. 
4. Bastard Uncle Toad (1): Troll/Vodyanoi with aspirations of godhood. Become his cleric (carrying his questionable doctrine abroad) – he grants spells up to 4th level (but you must visit him each time for 3rd-4th level spells), keeps your soul in a crystal pool as security, and calls you back as a zombie if you die in his faith. 
5. Maggot Elves: Magpie-plumaged goblin-harpies that like to eat living brains. Inappropriately friendly and conversational during and immediately after feeding. Can sniff out your dreams and desires, to pick out the most luxurious meals. You can (sort of) survive them eating your brain.
6. Homecomers: Bundles of hair, bone and fingernails, lumps of rocks, rotten stumps, and so on that the fairies leave behind when they steal your babies, but all grown up now and exercising their glamour and right to life. They know they're not people now, but they know who they were before.

5. Roll d6:

1. Janus Elves (1-3): Double-headed psychopomps, precogs and demon-fighters. Numerous Orders and Companies - with elaborate rituals, signature special moves, outlandish weapons, and awesome livery - each made up of no more than three members.
2. Wood Pigs (Gnomes): Armoured moth-bears with powerful climbing, digging, rending claws. Have a taste for gold and other precious metals. Disproportionately tough for their size. Sometimes known as aurumvorax.
3. Grandmother Spider (1): Wizened and kindly (but otherwise trad./RAW) Dark Elf matriarch. Loves all her small and giant charges, in the mundane world or otherwise, and they speak to her, so she knows how many you’ve killed and if you’ve broken any spider laws that you have no chance of knowing in advance. Near to or crouched on top of a cottage-sized obsidian sarcophagus, which can uproot itself like Baba Yaga's chicken-leg hut.
4. Sasquatch (aka Dark Watchers, Owlbears):  Shaggy, Human to Ogre-size darknesses, with three restless white marks (eyespots?) approx. where the heart would be if they are as humanoid as they seem. Presence accompanied by chill, stench, the dampening and disruption of glamour. 
5. Mandragora Mandragon (1): Draconic ceratopsian Dire Erudite and Ogre Mage. The Great Druid to beat to rise to the top of the hierarchy in this continuum (turns Hierophant with good grace if you do). 
6. Sleeping Beauties (1-100): Glamour'd Coffer Corpses.

6. Roll d6:

1. Dark Elves (1-100): Dead white skin, lustrous black hair, blank nacreous eyes. Submerged deep in the Dream, they rarely wake. Bunched close together or standing alone, they sway as if by currents of air and water. Their glamour walks abroad, acting out their dreams and neuroses.
2. Lost Wolves (2-12): Baffled and cautious, the Dream has given them understanding and they would like to get home and go back to being animals, please. 1 on d6 accompanied by a mortal child they are protecting or raising. 1 on d12 this child is a Shivery Boy taking advantage.
3. Light Elves (1-3): Beautiful, noble, radiant. Their backs are always towards you and they are always just out of reach while your eyes are open to see them. Prey on the recently dead, the dying, and dreamers/sleepers. 
4. Mothmen (aka Camazotz): Related/similar to the Sasquatch, but with vast spreading wings and red marks/eyespots. Sandestins fear and hate them. The source of those distant and mysterious whale-songs in the deepest woods.
5. Melancholy Ogres: The Dream changes you, and these anthropophagous brigands feel remorse for their horrible crimes and grisly feedings. Help them back to the mortal world and they will reward you with buried stolen treasures and locations/remains of victims. The Dream fades fast and old urges return.
6. Blood Moon (1): Amorphous, gelatinous, cloud-like; leering aerial-amphibious predator. Frightens your bones to jelly, then sucks them out of your still-screaming body. Can squeeze itself small into a burrow or hollow tree, or spread out over the surface of a pool. Not native; trapped in the Dream, but thriving.

Commentary.

Basic inspiration, Sidhi Dream as featured in Moorcock's Chronicles of Corum colliding with the Lovecraftian Dreamlands.

Pronounce it how you like - it was years before I realised Sidhe didn't rhyme with giddy. But maybe Moorcock's Sidhi does?

Probably also inhabited by variations on the Hjorts, Liimen, Ghayrogs and Metamorphs. Lord Valentine's Castle marked a shift in my mental universe, though it was my springboard into Jack Vance rather than pursuit of Silverberg.

Janus Elves a collision of Majipoorian Su-Suheris and an alien species from The Dead (Pete Milligan and Massimo Belardinelli's 1987 strip for 2000AD).

Elves, Goblins, Trolls, Dwarves, Greys etc are local manifestations of cosmos-/dimension-spanning kindreds you could circuitously eventually identify as Eldar/Eldren - selection/evolution over strange aeons and from settling stranger places.

For existing older-edition supplements that might help with fleshing out encounters and adventures in/adjacent to the Dream: The Nightmare Lands (2e Ravenloft, the eponymous domain), and Blood Spawn (2e Birthright, the Shadow World/ the Seeming). Missed these the first time round. Damn.

d66 Monsters of the Necropolis River Delta

You cross over the Dry Red & Ochre Hills and descend to a country of lagoons and channels - feats of ancient engineering swallowed by luxuriant growth and centuries of silt. 

This was where the nameless Necropolis Culture flourished. Swallowed up by the very conditions that allowed it to rise and thrive. 

The seasons are Misty, Flood, Hot, and Rainy - in whatever sequence you like best.

The Tower of the Astromancers is the only remaining intact structure that can be identified at a distance and with any certainty. It's importance to the Necropolis Culture (and those trying to plunder it) may simply be survival bias. But it was definitely somehow significant.

The Grand Necropolis is speculative, but firmly fixed in minds and on maps (though not its specific location).

1. Roll d6:

1. Killer Mud Pigs (1-3): Dire/Prehistoric Capybara, size of a Hippo and equally bad-tempered. Its mud-clogged fur foils infravision, just like in the documentary, Predator (1987).
2. Sentinel Crabs: ubiquitous; about the size of a dog; shells make cheap, short-lived shields. Signal to each other with rhythmic claw clicking, gathering in greater, louder and more intimidating numbers around whatever their current interest. Normally non-aggressive, scavengers and opportunists.
3. Skims: ray-like creatures look like floating mats of weed until they take to the air. Big ones can completely envelop you; small ones are like hairy leeches. Possibly intelligent.
4. Grindylows: Velya to the Croglin Vampire; ghastly clutches of them trapped in shallow pools, whispering for blood and darkness. Coughing cries ring out and are answered during the misty season, as they reminisce and plan for swarming during flood season.
5. Big Sleek Rats: predatory otters. May have ghoulish habits and taint from slithering through the tombs and scavenging the resting undead. 1 on d12 they’re Ghoulish Weres.
6. Banshee Caterpillar (1): named for its distinctive whinnying scream; colonised by bioluminescent animalcules; entrapping web strands; adhesive spit. Eventually burrows into the earth to pupate. No one knows what the adult form is, how long the gestation, nor total numbers waiting to hatch.

2. Roll d6:

1. Greasy Cormorants: nosy, noisy, gluttonous. Will flock your camp to snatch your dinner, and any loose shiny things into the bargain. Defensive and malicious projectile regurgitation and defecation.
2. Giant Catfish (1): can haul/hurl its bulk out of water and over solid ground - survives several hours out of water. Possibly delicious, mostly harmless, can swallow you by accident. 1 on d6 it’s capable of speech and wisdom (or a reskinned Aboleth).
3. Vicious Otters: aggressive and territorial, otherwise common otters. Local lore ascribes them human intelligence and powers of mimicry, if not of actually being shapeshifting witches.
4. Psionic Squid: if you’re immune to their abilities, they are quite sad-looking grey squid. Otherwise appear to be arabesque fractal peacocks with an infinite array of Mandelbrot tentacles. They’re learning to communicate with other lifeforms, but hampered by short lifespan, demanding breeding cycle, lack of transmissible culture. They’re not sure whether to make friends or take over the world.
5. Gross Bitterns: stout, dodo-like swamp birds. Communicate and defend themselves with infrasound. 
6. Lord Verdigris (1): colossal golem, still running on an apparently eternal power source; programmed to ceaselessly patrol the region, but nothing seems to occur that provokes a response. Infrequently dashes off swathes of heliograph messages to the distant Tower of the Astromancers.

3. Roll d6:

1. Terror Crane (1-3): Colossal nomadic wading birds. Incapable of flight. Criss-cross the delta, leaving a trail of incidental destruction and the empty shells of giant marsh clams.
2. Amber Golems: undead-android dinosaur/lizard-folk; guardians and soldiers of the Necropolis Culture, they follow ancient orders but could be reprogrammed. No one living knows the secret of their construction.
3. Thrif (Death Leeches): elemental anemone-urchins that spawn in places with heavy necromantic fetor. Animate alien-plant-animals absolutely loaded with dark mana. Respond instinctively to stimuli; casually lethal.
4. Shellycoats (Troll Gnomes): remnants of the Necropolis Culture's summoned slaves. Articulated hides clatter and ring. Agonisingly fused into glassy stone by the sun’s rays. Most are small because they don’t get the nutrition or leisure to get big.
5. Mist Drakes: chirruping vaporous things that coil out of the saturated air during the hottest, most humid days. Ephemeral and elemental, superstition holds them to be the ghosts of those who die in and near the Grand Necropolis.
6. Dragon Turtle (1): often mistaken for an island or undiscovered ruins, the Dragon Turtle is one the ancient spirits of the land, and you can only interact with it when it inhales, turning time back to when this was nothing but shallow sea. You've got until it breathes back out to interrogate it and to survive the aquatic dinosaurs and Serpent People mariners.

4. Roll d6:

1. Graveyard Crabs (1-3): tottering giant crabs rumoured to have grown huge on a diet of ancient corpses, but just the natural end of the Sentinel Crab lifecycle - they have grown too big, too fast and cannot sustain the necessary feeding and shedding. They go to ancestral grave sites, where - amidst great drifts of fragile, demineralised remains - they topple over and die. That’s where they’re heading when encountered.
2. Scum Creepers: slimy animate tubers that prey on weak and/or sleeping animals. Actively inedible.
3. Flame Dead: Necropolis Culture undead, wreathed in unearthly flames. Appear either as flickering perpetually offended versions of their living selves, or shrieking candle-wax skeletons. Distant processions of will-o-wisps are said to be Flame Dead pacing the walls of the Grand Necropolis.
4. Grendels/Fomorians: monstrous remnant of the Necropolis Culture; Thouls led/championed by Troll-Ghasts and ruled by Sea Hags (all reskins). Mortality horribly stretched, they require life energy (levels, ability scores) to maintain mental stability.
5. Punkies: halfling-like swamp folk; their lives do not look that attractive from the outside, and considered no better than Goblins by surrounding settled peoples. At least some of them take grim pleasure in decoying biggers into danger; at least some of them eat those they trick.
6. Rusty Derelict (1): counterpoint to Lord Verdigris; decomposed, predatory golem; lubricated with fat, blood hydraulics, and motivated by captured brains. Necromantic engine the likes of which has not been seen before. Haunted.

5. Roll d6:

1. Algal Mummies: weak to air and poison/pollution. Dreamy and meditative, they have become solipsistic druidic monks. Confined to algae-choked flooded tombs, they see through the web of life and animate water-plants to intervene in the breathing world. Think they are the undead remnant of a named individual but really the vehicle of a weird organism.
2. Fungoid Mummies: ornate and bursting with cordyceps-antlers; style themselves as the ultimate form and true inheritors of the Necropolis Culture. Cordial relations with the Mi-Go. Think they are the undead remnant of a named individual but really the vehicle of a weird organism.
3. Gunpowder Beetles heavy and slow; packed with tomb nitre and alchemical waste, warmed by necromantic radiation. Attacked or surprised, they produce a loud crack and a spark of utter darkness (blinding on the mortal sphere, visible on the Astral Plane) accompanied by the stench of brimstone and necrotic damage. Can be harvested and processed.
4. Widow Elves: bereft across centuries, forever mourning long dead mortals. The Necropolis Culture apparently did a brisk marriage business with similarly lost and forgotten Elfish nations, and these grief-mad lamias (and quite probably thousands of fey-blooded ancestors) are all that remain. At least equivalent to your basic Drow in abilities and equipment.
5. Giant Marsh Clams: can you justify a stat-block? Basically, bear traps you can eat and use the shell as a low-quality shield. 2 on 2d6, they’ve been feeding on Psionic Squid for generations and are capable of levitation and mind blast.
6. Dinosaur Ghosts: elementals and thought-forms that pile up in the sky, or loom vast from the mists. Terrifying, spectacular, mostly harmless. Abruptly real when the Dragon Turtle inhales.

6. Roll d6:

1. Lord of Fevers (1): gargantuan processional crustacean-centipede, supported by filmy wings grouped on nodes along its length. Emanations of blast-furnace gut cause radiation sickness. Probably a Larvae of the Outer Gods. Festooned with extra-dimensional parasites. Mostly out-of-phase with the material world; solidifies during Mist season.
2. Pazuzus: wiry, rangy, black manes and feathered wings; refugee demons from the bottom of the pecking order; melancholic because escape has cut them off from the Great Murmuration, choleric because they prefer significantly less earth and water in their environment. 
3. Hippogriffs: beaked and scaly croco-wolves; prefer lonelier hunting grounds as the mammalian predators soundly out-compete them in their niche. Their long-term survival as a species is in doubt, but prolonged by their feeding cycles being measured in months (even seasons) rather than days/hours.
4. Necromancers: apart from the sartorial distinction, they might be any other adventuring party exploring the wilderness. Roll d6: 1 turning undead and not by choice; 2 frosty but non-aggressive; 3-4 untried entry-levels; 5 in possession of something worth taking, whether you know it or not; 6 much too powerful for you to go toe-to-toe.
5. Mi-Go: maybe no more than a small away team across the whole region. Roll d8: 1 following the Lord of Fevers at a worshipful distance; 2 buzzing around the Tower of the Astromancers; 3 observing Lord Verdigris at a respectful distance; 4 taking samples and measurements from Rusty Derelict; 5 retrieving Shellycoat remains with extendable pincers; 6 vacuuming Mist Drakes into compression tanks; 7 containing Thrif in energy bubbles; 8 attempting to communicate with you.
6. Sabre-tooth Woolly Mosquitoes: immortal relicts of what came before the Necropolis Culture. Torpid for millenia, cocooned in something resembling fossilised tree resin; bumbling and mindless through lack of proper regular nutrition, still digesting prehistoric meals from animals long extinct. 3 on 3d6 there's a single Brood Queen waking from torpor, monstrously gravid with parasitic larvae, and capable of reviving the species. For stats, start with a Stirge.

d66 Monsters and Men of BIBLICAL CARCOSA!

Rodney Matthews. Don't know what it's called.

Biblically-accurate blood-soaked sci-fantasy hex-crawl across an Old Testament/Revelation para-apocalyptic fever-dream landscape that can be crossed in six days, or swallow up two million people (plus animals) for forty years.

Bruce Pennington covers (Book of the New Sun, Clark Ashton Smith, Dune); Rodney Matthews; Dark Sun; Kingdom Death; Mork Borg. McKinney's Carcosa, obvs.

System agnostic with the heavy stink of old-fashioned D&D-ish. 

Table not weighted for probability, because it's not really a random encounter table.

Roll d6:

1. Roll d6:

1. Nephilim: 8’ tall extra-terrestrial cat-folk lion-centaurs; favoured weapons, bow and arrow. Some of them have six legs. Refer to each other with the honorific ‘Coeurl’. Can be paid in salt. 
2. Lilin (Owl Women) (6-36): bird-featured, taloned hands and feet; otherwise human. Like to perch in trees, watching, with big staring eyes. Capable of dust/mud-caked suspended animation. Variously reviled as thieving monkeys and murderous succubi. Use small/medium flying humanoid stats (but no wings) of any type (including FF Berbalang). 
3. Ur-Griffin (1): towering, startlingly colourful, wingless griffin; sounds like Godzilla. Doesn’t roll to hit, you roll to save – no real point trying to fight unless you have an army of giants.
4. Gorgonians: snake-haired Amazons riding iron-scaled, fire- and gas-breathing bulls. Ruled by a medulich-queen. Seek mortal males to produce viable mandusas/maedar (rare, precious; no snakes; stone-to-flesh touch) to propagate their species. Fearsome, honourable, compassionate, inevitably practical.
5. Land Whales (Behemoths) (1-6): breast-feeding, live-birthing dinosaurs with belly buttons. Dragon Men prize their milk, and to ride one, slung underneath while suckling, is a legendary feat.
6. Leviathans (1-2): Ichthyosaurs, placoderms, plesiosaurs, zeuglodons – the biggest sea monsters and the longest dead. Vast, filmy and luminous, barely material - unconstrained by seas that no longer exist. You can survive being swallowed, as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.

2. Roll d6:

1. The Leonine Men: anachronistic leper Knights Templar in local dress: cavalier/paladin abilities and attitudes. Favour huge two-handed swords. Special characters equivalent to Mummies and/or Were-Lions. 
2. Moon Dogs: unsettling liminal beings, fluid to the mortal eye but more-or-less dog and/or human-like. Can see invisible, detect possession and telepathy. Enemies of disease and mind-control. Do not speak to mortals.
3. Seraphics (Winged Victories): paramortal androgynes; prototype of Paladin and Vampire. Battlefield scavengers, feeding on spent lives and broken morale. Appear variously glorious, gorgeous or ghastly – the effect is glamour/telepathic feedback camouflage.
4. Man Scorpions (1-3): morphologically similar to the Nephilim, but scorpions and bigger (range from large, through giant to gargantuan). Can have arms and/or pincers in any configuration. Smaller ones wield pole arms. Remarkably pleasant voices.
5. Hooved/Horned Lions (1-6):  one or another variety of brightly-coloured, furred and/or feathered aggressive ceratopsian. If you could raise and/or tame one, it’d make an awesome mount.
6. Cubes: their surface engravings are blueprints for constructing helical orbital tethers/space elevators. Capable of communicating - and presumably compatible – with the ones on the Moon.

3. Roll d6:

1. The Dreaded Ones (Purples): Flagellants, poisoners, voluptuaries. Affectionately refer to each other as horror and terror. Why not name their great Lankhmar-by-way-of-Erelhei-Cinlu city as Sodom-and-Gomorrah?
2. Silurians (Valusians): the Serpent People – deeply offended that their blood magic fuel-source is going to out-breed them into extinction. Invented magic, so have a chance to counter yours. 
3. Diluvials (not these ones): To survive the coming Flood, they need all the resources and all the livestock. Brigands, berserkers, dervishes and pirates; possibly even a/the Barbarian Horde. 
4. Opinicus (Flying Horses): a bustling crowd of dirty, noisy, ragged pegasi. Disturbingly omnivorous; mostly scavengers. Can be subdued/tamed, using kindness, fresh meat and/or brutality. Congregate in marshes. More like donkeys and jackasses than riding or war horses.
5. Edenites: the beautiful people, jealously beloved of a/the Creator. Everything they do is automatically Lawful Good. Multi-classed Druid/Paladins. They are both Eloi and Morlock. 
6. Annakim (Hill Giants) (1-3): not as bloodthirsty, cave-dwelling, dim-witted, gargantuan or lusty as renowned/rumoured. Sensitive, shy, woodland-dwellers, with psionic camouflage but a horrible stench. Can crush your skull with one hand.

4. Roll d6:

1. Carnotaurus: scaly carnivorous aurochs. If there’s only one, it’s significantly bigger and older than normal; bad-tempered. Cow’s milk is pink and syrupy (with purple froth), salty, and prized by Dragon Men.
2. Cherubim (1-4): Four-faced guardian obelisks that burst into grinding life as pyramidal killdozers with flame-throwers. “THOU SHALL NOT PASS”. Markers of places without honour, commemorating no highly esteemed deeds etcetera. And/or Eden.
3. Manna Bees/Beetles: nanite-swarms and drone-units. Convert the aftermath of battles into sweet, flossy, nutritionally-dense material, carried away in great drifts on the wind. As long as the violence continues, none need go hungry.
4. The Unfinished: misshapen primordial humanoids. Discarded clay, sparkless dust, withered fruit; misery of abandonment turns to envy and hate for the Creator and the Creation. So prototypical they are subject to neither Death nor Time.
5. Anunnaki: extra-terrestrial Mi-Go as the vulnerable gooey centre of a Xorn/Xaren exo-suit in pseudo-Babylonian/Sumerian-style. Breeding/modding humans to mine elements they are otherwise deathly allergic to. Masquerading as glorious tutelary deities.
6. Watchers (1-3): gargantuan baobab-cactus Elder Thing/Triffids. Glistening black eye-organ gives them 360 vision, heliographic communication and ability to focus available light as long-range death/heat ray.  You besiege or mine them, rather than fight them. Prefer to stay put, but have been known to uproot and travel (singly or in herds) – slow, inexorable.

5. Roll d6:

1. Men of Blazing Metal (Shining Ones): silver or gold, respectively roughly equivalent to Elf and Dwarf. Doomed to be out-bred by mundane humanity – silver will not go quietly; gold, neutrally accepting. Junior allies and trading partners of the Anunnaki.
2. Men of Glowing Metal: bronze or iron; Living Statues as persons/people – they eat the same food, breathe the same air and range across the same moral and cultural continuum as you, but piss fire and shit gold. Cannot hide from infravision.
3. Men of Shining Blood: Prefer very particular hot, wet environments and don’t stray far without grand designs. Guardians/hoarders/inheritors of Serpent People sorcery. They also invent(ed) fireball. No skin, except when going abroad in disguise. 
4. Elohim: goat-horned mountain-guerilla/gorilla Clerics; tough, vengeful; armed with staves, knives and slings. They’re more numerous and sophisticated than the received wisdom has it.
5. Dragon Men: bare- and barrel-chested. Cultivate keloids and cicatrices. Bifurcate tongues (penises, if they have them). Shout loud enough to knock you down/root you to the spot. Venerate, hunt, tame and ride the most draconic wild beasts. 
6. Sea Monsters: all manner of toothy, tentacles, scaly, slimy things (including flamin’ SQUARKS!). Drag themselves ashore and head inland, looking for somewhere to die and something to kill. Carcasses attract verminous monster pests and smell atrocious.

6. Roll d6:

1. d666 Locusts: half a HD, otherwise as Cave Cricket/Locust. Odds/evens, Demonic or Devilish for damage resistance/vulnerabilities. If one reaches your brain, has access to your intelligence and abilities. The noise of the swarm is deafening and maddening.
2. Winged Bulls: exactly that. Wrongly ascribed wisdom and beneficence. Good eating if you survive the hunt. They also breathe fire, but can be broken, clipped, extinguished then yoked as beasts of burden (if you’ve got what it takes). Destined to be bred into the aurochs that will be wiped out in/survive the coming Deluge.
3. Biblically-Accurate Angels (1-3): wheels, wings, eyes, blazing bright; practically invulnerable, utterly implacable killers robots transmitting “BE NOT AFRAID” like a fucking Dalek on all frequencies as they oversee the Creation. So many damage dice you'd think this was T&T.
4. Sick Giants: minimum hp, heavy plate armour and shield. Very strong and well-armed (Fire, Frost, Fir-Bolg equivalents). Carry great iron-shod staves to lean and walk on. Constantly complaining, but not automatically hostile. Mercenaries.
5. Devil Swine: basically RAW.
6. EYE OF GOD! Azathothian astronomical event. Visible across all space and time. The heavens peel back. All are naked before it. Nothing will ever be the same. Forever and ever. Amen.

Commentary & What Was Left Out.

Initially inspired by a random encounter table on a blog I saw maybe five years ago and recall without specifics. Details sketchy, possibly about East or West of Eden, the Land of Nod (not that blog as far as I can tell), Old Testament as campaign setting. If anyone has any idea, I'd appreciate a link.

I'm not enough of a scholar to include bits of Mormonism and Scientology, but there's probably room for a stripe of each. 

If there is a One-True-God then there are lots of One-True-Gods, hustling for position. I'm pretty sure they eat each other.

Clerics only get basic spell access (1st and 2nd level), otherwise more like 5e Warlocks or Dark Sun Templars. Accessible and vulnerable patrons.

Competing apocalypses. All the imagery.

The pre-humans of Islam (including some unorthodox contemporary 'scientific' takes on the jinn) and Theosophy.

Carcosa-as-Jerusalem or Jerusalem-as-Tanelorn are both valid.

Chorazin, with its Black Pilgrimage and powers of the air.

The sin(s) of Sodom (and presumably Gomorrah): Ezekiel 16:49-50.

Noah as rapacious warlord from some comic I read that I can't remember the name of; Cain was the Conan/Eternal Champion-like hero. 21st Century; possibly French.

Actual Biblical characters and stories optional, including Vampire or Zombie Christ.

Non-Plussed - d36 Magical Weapon Properties

Hand Weapons of Mass Destruction/ Victor Naumenko

Most suitable, I think, for the lower level/magic end of the game scale, or for when you don't expect to go beyond a few sessions.

Some things aren't going to work the same (or possibly at all) due to the niceties of various similar systems. Eg. even across AD&D, Chainmail OD&D and LotFP a 4th level Fighter is different.

System agnostic but reeks of D&D.

I've generally got swords in mind here, but why not axes, spear, hammers and bows, too?

1. Roll d6:

1. Won't break through normal use. Creative misuse, specialised technique or a feat of great strength to destroy. Still needs sharpening.
2. A blade that won't bend or blunt. You can shave with it, hack apart doors and vines, run through countless armoured foes, and you'll also have to institute damage & degradation subsystems for other weapons, or it's not really worth a damn. Can still be broken.
3. Invulnerable Monsters are vulnerable to it. But this pre-supposes a setting where immunity to normal weapons is much more special than in vanilla fantasy, or maybe a monster whose Invulnerability is a function of its great size.
4. Raise your Strength to the next adjustment/bonus tier (eg. penalty to no penalty, no penalty to bonus etc) while wielding the weapon. Maximum benefit is superhuman/one tier above human maximum.
5. Raise your Dexterity to the next adjustment/bonus tier (eg. penalty to no penalty, no penalty to bonus etc) while wielding the weapon. Maximum benefit is superhuman/one tier above human maximum.
6. When you wield the weapon, you go berserk until there are no suitable enemies in range to engage (as 1e AD&D Cavalier?). At which point you immediately take any negative effects. Use variations of 3e+ Barbarian Rage, DW Blood Rage, or any other suitable berserking mechanics.

2. Roll d6:

1. Ignore non-magical protective value of leather armour.
2. Ignore non-magical protective value of metal and leather armour.
3. Ignore protective value of all armour.
4. A shield or helmet will only protect against the weapon by being Splintered.
5. When wielding the weapon you roll to hit as a higher level Fighter (suggest 4th or 8th).
6. When wielding the weapon you Cleave as a higher level Fighter (suggest 4th or 8th).

* Unarmoured monsters' high protective value are only bypassed if the weapon is specifically enchanted to harm them, whether randomly or as plot device.

3. Roll d6:

1. Boost the Morale and Loyalty of your allies when wielding the weapon in their presence. 
2. Reduce the Morale and Loyalty of your enemies when wielding the weapon in their presence.
3. A successful hit forces a Morale Check on the victim.
4. A successful kill forces enemies nearby to check Morale.
5. Enemies nearby must take Morale Checks when you draw (to attack) or brandish/flourish (foregoing your attack that round) the weapon.
6. Anyone fighting you makes all rolls with disadvantage/penalty.

* I suggest HD/level limits for who or what is affected; further suggest 1-3 levels, but HD limit might vary to exclude/include various beasts of war (mainly normal fantasy-setting animals).

* Effects could be specific to a particular type associated with the weapon/wielder.

4. Roll d6:

1. All hits cause min. average damage per die.
2. All hits cause max. damage per die.
3. All hits are crits/double damage. You cannot use this weapon to inflict non-lethal/subdual damage. 'Double crits' are spectacular killing blows, enough so that they will shock onlookers - even the weapon's wielder.
4. Any mortal wound is incurable except by extraordinary means. Successful death saves/recovery rolls only means you linger for another day/week, remaining at 0 hp/casualty state. Might feel like cold, might feel like poison; might be accompanied by creeping shadows drawing ever closer, or a little white bird refusing to look you in the eye.
5. Any crit also inflicts a cumulative level of fatigue. This is now the most rested/restored the victim can be unless treated with extraordinary means. Some more powerful opponents get a save and will be alerted to the risk.
6. Any crit immediately reduces enemy to 0 hp/casualty state, regardless of their current hp. Some more powerful opponents get a save and will be alerted to the risk.

5. Roll d6:

1. Weapons wielded against yours much save vs. normal or crushing blow (1e/2e AD&D DMGs) each round or break. If you already have weapon breakage rules in place, this weapon is more likely to do it. Not necessarily resistant to breakage itself.
2. As above, but also affects armour and shields. 
3. The weapon vibrates/hums/screams/chimes/bursts into ethereal flames/twists in your hand when enemies (or treasure or secret doors) are within range. This is sometimes helpful.
4. A dazzling (blinding?) flash when drawn in dungeon darkness, gloomy wilderness or the fog of war. As well as illumination and dazzling, this could also extend the range of Morale/Loyalty effects.
5. The weapon is always at hand when needed. This is more subtle (and also maybe more unnerving) than it just teleporting to your hand. You can still be disarmed and have to pick it up. It can be taken from you and held hostage
6. As long as it's within range, the weapon comes when called (command word, concentration, whistling etc). It travels at least as fast as a thrown missile. You could conceivably fumble the catch, but have it jump into your hand on the next round.

6. Roll d6:

1. Make your attack/combat rolls with advantage. Negated vs. an equally or more powerful magic weapon.
2. Your opponent makes their defence/combat rolls at disadvantage. Negated vs. an equally or more powerful magic weapon.
3. When using the weapon against a more powerful (higher HD/level) opponent, you attack and defend at their ability, rather than your own. 
4. The Fighter is the traditional enemy of the Magic-User (and the Evil High Priest) and this weapon is the exemplar. You make all your saves vs. their magic with advantage/bonus - on a critical success, you are immune to their spells for the rest of this encounter. You must be holding the weapon.
5. When using the weapon against a more powerful (higher HD/level) opponent, they attack and defend at your ability, rather than their own.
6. Every hit connects, regardless of target's armour, agility, damage resistance etc. Roll to hit, but only for crits and fumbles. Crits as normal, but a fail takes you straight to 0 hp/ Casualty state as the weapon turns against you. If you survive, you can never wield it again. You can make max. 1 attack per round with this weapon, but can dual-wield if appropriate.

Further Thoughts.

Multiple properties for individual weapons. Of course. Why not? You can see that some abilities above are geared towards the mass combat and even social/downtime portions of the game, and don't have much application in dungeon-bashing.

Magical weapons are intelligent and controlling. No independent personality or speech (unless they're a spirit or demon bound to the object) - they're just addictive objects that get you into all sorts of scrapes.

And you can also use their stats to decide which magic weapon is strongest when their effects clash with/contradict each other.

Magical weapons are unique. I think I might have said this somewhere before, but each magic weapon is the only one of its kind - if you find a +1 shortsword, then that's the only one that exists in the game. 

This is not entirely compatible with the d66 presented above, but I'm calling them alternatives and options, not another canon.

Except when they're not. The shared characteristics of (say) Dark Elf knives and Wood Elf bows is down to the materials and traditional skills of the users. But you can't just pick them up and expect the same bonuses.

You can/can't craft your own. Following on from the third point above, you can't make a second +1 shortsword if one already exists in the game - you certainly can't churn them out in your downtime. You could make a shortsword of venom instead, or a frost brand, and so on. 

Magic arrows (and other ammunition) are something of an exception, but - unless it's just a single special arrow of slaying - any set of arrows will include a cursed one that you won't know about until you nock it. As is tradition.

The scarcity of magic weapons and the desire/need for them in the fiction means that making them should be part of the adventure anyway; every weapon is, at some stage, Sacnoth.

That weapon? It's not yours to keep. You need to be a particular type of epic hero to get a magic weapon for keeps. Even then, it will inevitably betray you and lie in your tomb for countless centuries until a new epic hero stumbles upon it, to continue the cycle and keep everyone's fate suitably tragic.

Magic weapons have an unfortunate tendency to switch owners when a more suitable (or less wilful) one happens along, as well as being objects of desire.

More powerful entities than you will take custody of weapons so that you don't try and raise yourself into the place of the Dark Lord you just vanquished.

Plus, sometimes you just want to put the weapon down so the killing will stop.

d18 x d6 Nested Table of Unholy Attributes

Leo Hartas, from The Elven Crystals (DW3).
Bunch of howling Unholy ghost monks unable to approach that Holy relic full of Holy water on that Holy altar.

Unholy isn't Evil, but that's not what the Universal Church of the True Faith teaches. 

Demons and devils, undead and spirits, pagan priests and sorcerers, elves and goblins, excommunicates and apostates - these are the kind of things that might exhibit Unholy Attributes. Most are vulnerabilities or can be used by others to detect/diagnose, but some just about qualify as special abilities.

Unholy Attributes doesn't mean you're the baddies, but it does set you apart and make you stand out in conventional society. I was never comfortable with Lawful standing in for 'good', nor with Lawful Good being the 'best' (even before I learned Gygax's thoughts on what was acceptable LG behaviour).

System agnostic - some mechanical suggestions, some are purely narrative. The table is not weighted for probabilities - I'm under a d6 geas so you get 108 using d666.

These are meant to have a (Anglo/Euro, because that's what I'm most familiar with) folkloric flavour. Sorcerous corruptions and double-edged Dark Gifts from other settings serve as ideal substitutes if you don't like those below. Change whatever you need to.

1. (11, 12) Roll d6: Sunlight
1. Destroys you. That's it - one little glimmer and you're dust. No save.
2. Dismisses you. If you have a lair or come from another dimension, you are immediately returned there.
3. Renders you invisible, senseless, silent and incorporeal. You are unable to perceive or interact with the material world until darkness falls. 
4. Enfeebles you. Pick an appropriate spell or monster attack for mechanics.
5. Terrifies you, causing you to flee to the nearest dark place, without consideration of any other factors than immediately escaping the sun's rays.
6. Starts the process of decay as if you were newly dead - you cannot reverse it, but keeping out of the sun delays your ultimate dissolution. If you're not already undead, you might end up so.
2. (13, 14) Roll d6: Mirror. This can mean any looking glass, only silver-backed mirrors or any reflective surface, as appropriate, and can also be extended to visual recording media, if they are found in your setting.
1. You have no reflection. Odds/evens, you are visible only as a slight haze or ripple.
2. Your reflection is grotesque, hideous. If you are already monstrous, it is even worse and enough to upset you.
3. While a mirror will reflect you, the moment you glance into it, it will shatter, blacken or otherwise fail/spoil.
4. Catching sight of your reflection causes you to immediately save vs. fear. Three successes in a row means you have controlled your fear for this encounter (which is a very elastic unit of duration).
5. Once cast, your reflection remains visible in the glass/surface. Under certain conditions, it may step into the material world, either to harm you or to go about its weird and private business.
6. Exercise extreme caution, for if you were to touch your reflection, you would be instantly transferred to the mirror world and lost forever. It might be that your reflection has a hypnotic effect, should you meet your own gaze.
3. (15, 16) Roll d6: Electricity/ Radio/ Wi-fi. These attributes will go unnoticed in settings where such forces are unknown/ yet to be discovered.
1. Confuses you when and while you are exposed. Your behaviour is erratic, irrational and unfathomable - your personality is not completely submerged, but you're not yourself.
2. You are a focus of interference, disrupting the signals - dampening, enhancing, subverting, converting.
3. You are the centre of dead zone, cancelling all signals within (say) d6x10' radius. Your touch may render useless (though reparable) reception and transmission devices.
4. You transmit signals that register as anomalous, but would need effort or an expert to decipher and to confirm you as the source.
5. Enfeebles (as Sunlight)
6. Decay (as Sunlight)
4.  (21, 22) Roll d6: Consecrated Ground. You'll need to define terms for your setting, but expect this to cover shrines, temples, burial grounds etc. 
1. While on consecrated ground, you are Enfeebled. You might be unable to use your supernatural special abilities, too.
2. You are unable to enter a zone of consecration (lively discussion at the table as to whether you can be pushed, thrown, catapulted or dragged by horses).
3. It burns! Take minor damage for every step you take; stand still too long and you'll go up like a bonfire. Odds/evens, the damage is permanent.
4. You are incorporeal and unable to use your supernatural special abilities while on consecrated ground. You are visible and can be heard, but cannot physically interact with anything.
5. St. Elmo's fire/ faerie fire springs up at every step you take, eventually enveloping your entire form. Your touch transmits the ethereal flame to objects.
6. Wherever you tread, wherever your blood falls, you leave a corrupt mark (smouldering, withered, rotting, ash, dust, fungus etc.). On those particular spots, the consecration no longer applies.
5. (23, 24) Roll d6: Shadow.
1. You cast no shadow. This is the kind of thing people will eventually notice and comment on.
2. Your shadow can detach and go abroad on its own. You may or may not be in control of this. It can be an ally or antagonist.
3. If your shadow falls on a mortal, they suffer as if attacked by an appropriate monster (Shadow, Vampire, Nabassu etc) or affected by an appropriate spell (anything from cause light wounds to disintegrate).
4. Your shadow can be attacked and you will suffer. These must be deliberate, directed attacks. You and your shadow do not necessarily share the same vulnerabilities and immunities.
5. Your shadow is grotesque, hideous - disturbing even to you. It is even more so when cast by moonlight.
6. You are vulnerable to the shadow of something (usually a relic, symbol or priest, but maybe an animal or monster that is used as a religious allegory). The exact effect can be that of another Unholy Attribute.
6. (25, 26) Roll d6: Silver/Iron
1. Burns your flesh: 2-7 hits or could be damage that will only heal over time, not through treatment.
2. Dismisses you. If you have a lair or come from another dimension, you are immediately returned there.
3. Being presented with the metal forces a Morale Check, fear save or similar.
4. You cannot cross a threshold that is guarded by this metal (horseshoe over a doorway, silver dagger on a window sill etc). This might mean only the specific crossing point, or may extend to the whole site.
5. Warms in your presence (tolerable to the bearer), melts at your touch.
6. Tarnishes in your presence, rusts/corrodes at your touch.
7. (31, 32) Roll d6: Running Water
1. You cannot cross running water, by bridge, boat, mount, ford, jumping or taking a long stride. You may be able to cross using an aerial vehicle, but it would likely need to be non-magical.
2. It's like concentrated acid. A splash will burn; immersion will strip the flesh from your bones, which will then turn to silt and be washed away.
3. It will not accept you. You cannot use this to walk on water, nor to resist the force of the water. It will keep off the rain, though.
4. When you enter running water, it becomes sluggish and stagnant. If you stay long enough, you may permanently silt-up or pollute a body of water.
5. Your very touch pollutes the water. While you are submerged (and possibly for some time afterwards), the water is unsafe - either poisonous or diseased.
6. The sound of running water fills you with fear and loathing - save to approach, and each round or withdraw/flee.
8. (33, 34) Roll d6: Lamplight. This includes all common and typically non-magical adventure game light sources, and could be extended to cover electric lighting. Bioluminescence is unaffected. 
1. Gutters/flickers in your presence.
2. If you place your hand on a light source, it will go out immediately and completely. It will be difficult to relight it while you remain close by.
3. Your presence dims the light level, including daylight.
4. You are permanently surrounded by an aura of darkness, in which vision is only possible through supernatural means (you are unaffected).
5. All light sources explosively flare and burn out in your presence.
6. In your presence, the light sources attract a growing profusion of moths and flies - eventually enough to extinguish them, and smother unfortunate mortals.
9. (35, 36) Roll d6: Animals.
1. Are scared of you, and will always cower. It does not stop them attacking you.
2. You are scared of them, and must make a Morale Check/ fear save.
3. Can always tell when you're near - they will not necessarily give you away.
4. You immediately square off against each other, hissing and spitting and baring teeth etc. This is a contest of wills.
5. All animals are tense and vigilant in your presence - their Reaction is always Unfriendly to Hostile.
6. Animals follow and fawn on you. They are submissive rather than servile. Reaction is Neutral and you cannot command them - they may, however, turn on enemies of your Unholiness (eg. witch-finders and paladins, rather than bandits and adventurers).
10. (41, 42) Roll d6: Holy Water. 
1. Your touch spoils holy water. This has a powerful psychological effect on believers, even in settings where holy water has no intrinsic special power.
2. Being splashed or threatened with holy water forces a Morale Check/ fear save.
3. Burns your flesh: 2-7 hits or could be damage that will only heal over time, not through treatment.
4. Whenever you are in the presence of holy water, you are compelled to drink it. Something like a Wisdom save to resist doing so.
5. You cannot cross a barrier of holy water. 
6. Boils in your presence. Even if you're not otherwise especially vulnerable to it, being splashed with it could scald you.
11. (43, 44) Roll d6: Prayer. This could also be extended to holy names, the invocation of a saint etc.
1. Dismisses you. If you have a lair or come from another dimension, you are immediately returned there.
2. You cannot hear anything other than the prayer while it is being spoken. This may have a secondary effect on your ability to communicate.
3. While a prayer is spoken, you are Enfeebled.
4. In your presence, the words of the prayer falter on the tongue of the speaker and fade from their mind like mist in the sun.
5. All prayers spoken in your presence come out as the vilest/lewdest blasphemy. The speakers will always remember the words they spoke, possibly tempting them to future beastliness.
6. Prevents you using your supernatural powers. It is likely you will physically attack or choose to withdraw.
12. (45, 46) Roll d6: True Innocent/Saintly. True Innocence/ Saintly cannot be achieved deliberately - you are or you aren't - though a person can strive for it. I guess deities could bestow it.
1. You cannot harm the truly innocent or the saintly.
2. You are compelled to harm them, though you do not have to do so directly or obviously. This can lead to you devising convoluted plans that take up time you could use more usefully.
3. You weep in their presence - you kind of love them.
4. You bleed in their presence - you hate yourself. Neither condition has a mechanical effect.
5. They bleed in your presence. This is upsetting for them, but has no mechanical effect.
13. (51, 52) Roll d6: The Dead. By this I mean otherwise lifeless, inanimate corpses - not undead monsters.
1. Cry out in your presence. If you're particularly powerful or notorious, they might begin to wail even as you set out from a great distance.
2. Attempt to attack you - they make one attack when you are in range, as whatever undead monster seems appropriate, then lie still again.
3. If buried, they attempt to burrow deeper to get away from your presence. If exposed, they will crawl or even get up and walk.
4. In your presence, tears roll from their eyes, blood runs from their wounds.
5. They rise up and follow you (treat as zombies or skeletons) - they will not fight unless you have special abilities or magic items to command them.
6. Raise their glutinous/scratchy voices in praise of your fabulous unholiness, your appetising darkness, your promises of howling eternity.
14. (53, 54) Roll d6: Salt. Or any other holy granules appropriate to your setting. 
1. You cannot cross a line or circle of salt. At a threshold, it may prevent your entrance to a site or dwelling.
2. The merest taste is poison to you (sickness, weakness, death etc).
3. Blackens, clumps, dissolves in your presence.
4. If you see it, you are compelled to count it - every individual granule. Something like a Wisdom save to resist doing so.
5. Compulsive gourmand - Wisdom save or similar to resist eating it in great greedy handfuls.
6. The merest taste awakens you to your ultimate fate/ horrible truth of your existence. Roll or choose another effect to see how this manifests. You will also be miserable thereafter, eternally.
15. (55, 56) Roll d6: Holy Symbol.
1. You can be Turned as an appropriately powerful undead.
2. Blackens/ tarnishes (odds/evens) in your presence/ at your touch.
3. The touch burns your flesh: 2-7 hits or could be damage that will only heal over time, not through treatment. Odds/evens, leaves a permanent brand mark.
4. Your touch causes the symbol to corrode/melt/rot/rust within 2-7 rounds.
5. Become red hot/ice cold in your presence (as chill/heat metal). Can be used to injure you if you are not otherwise resistant to fire and/or frost.
6. Just the sight forces a Morale Check, fear save or similar.
16. (61, 62) Roll d6: Church Bells/Cockcrow. Also covers the cultural equivalent for your setting.
1. The sound dismisses you. If you have a lair or come from another dimension, you are immediately returned there. The sound must be audible to you, so covering your ears and running might help.
2. You flee in terror.
3. Enfeebles until you have had a chance to rest (the equivalent of a night's sleep, whether you actually need to sleep or not).
4. Confuses you while it can be heard and for a short time afterwards. Your behaviour is erratic, irrational and unfathomable - your personality is not completely submerged, but you're not yourself.
5. Those in your presence cannot hear the bells or cockcrow, and anyone still asleep will not be able to wake up until you are gone.
6. The sound forces you to make an immediate death save. Make an equivalent save for the bells/cockerel. Instant death/destruction if failed - sometimes there are no winners.
17. (63, 64) Roll d6: Holy Names. You could also use the effects of randomised holy/power word spells instead. Holy names can be commonplace ("Jesus Christ!"), or arcane secrets - as appropriate for your game.
1. You are unable to attack the one who has pronounced that name. Only the first person to use the name is protected, and you are otherwise 'immune' to it until midnight/dawn (odds/evens).
2. You must obey a brief command given by they who spoke the name. No save and you hate this.
3. You must immediately and expeditiously retreat. You will not be able to return for one hour.
4. Cause pain and cringing - save vs. stun, and forces a Morale Check.
5. Make a save or be paralysed. Strength save to break free.
6. Immediately struck dead. A save may apply depending on the stature of the name pronounced.
18. (65, 66) Roll d6: Fire.
1. The cleansing flames set you free! No save, but you can attempt to extinguish the flames before they get too established. You leave only powdery ashes.
2. Will not consume you. If you are not otherwise fire-resistant, it still hurts.
3. You leave scorch marks on everything you touch. You cannot start a fire this way, nor cause more than narrative harm to a living thing - you might be able to kill small animals if this is acceptable fiction at your table.
4. In your presence, it seems like there is a fire somewhere nearby - distant crack and pop sounds, smudges in the air, a scent of smoke and/or brimstone, a stray spark or flake of ash. The evidence of the fire is not an illusion, but nor is it real.
5. You will not approach a flame/fire of greater than a few candles. Light and heat sources not using a flame have no effect - this includes electric light and maybe also gas jets.
6. The close presence of fire forces a Morale Check. To be attacked with fire forces a fear save, and again if you are injured by it.

d66/d36 Introductions for Replacement Adventurers

Guess what? You went on an adventure and you got killed. Hand in your character sheet and shed a tear.

But you don't have to stop playing. 

Either get yourself raised from the dead, or roll 2d6/d66 to see how a new character can be introduced mid-session, seamlessly or with a great thump of deus ex machina. 

There's no particular reason why the surviving adventurers would hand over their late comrade's equipment for you to use, so maybe roll on some other tables to kit yourself out.

This leans into the old school dungeon adventure type of game, but is system agnostic and should easily adapt to other settings and systems. These are narrative prompts to get you going when you don't have the luxury or will to research, hone and carefully edit a 30-page backstory.

1. Roll d6:
1. Solo Adventurer. A Solo Adventurer (sword, leather armour, backpack, rations, 1 potion, 3 random not necessarily useful/not necessarily useless items) approaches the party after the fatality.
2. Survivor. The party stumble on the aftermath of what looks like mutually assured destruction, but someone was knocked out and hidden under the blood and bodies. You're in need of some healing, but otherwise functional.
3. Bounty Hunter. Roll d3: 1. Hunting one of the party members, 2. Hunting the dead character, 3. Hunting an NPC in the dungeon.
4. Assassin. Roll d3: 1. Contracted to kill a party member, 2. Contracted to kill the dead character, 3. Contracted by an NPC in the dungeon (odds/evens, on their way to/from receiving orders/collection payment)
5. Messenger. Roll d3: 1. Delivering a message to the party, 2. Delivering a message to an NPC in the dungeon, 3. Bringing a ransom for a prisoner in the dungeon.
6. Spider Victim. Caught in a web or wrapped up in silk. Spider(s) present, 1 on d6.; Spider(s) nearby on a 2.
2. Roll d6:
1. Ghoul Victim. You're paralysed, but it will wear off in a few rounds. The Ghouls themselves have been driven off or are waiting in ambush (odds/evens).
2. Swallowed Whole. You're either in the next appropriate monster (vomited up, shat out or cut from belly during the battle) or the beast is already dead and you struggle free as the party arrive.
3. Prisoner. Locked or tied up in the nearest appropriate location. If a rogue-type, you may already have escaped.
4. Sacrifice. If you're not being dragged to the altar/ edge of the pit, you're either a prisoner or being prepared (odds/evens, you're drugged, hypnotised or otherwise subdued).
5. Black Ichor Addict. A twitchy, hollow-eyed, compulsive dungeoneer.
6. Amnesiac. Not necessarily equipped to have made it this far. Baffled, but you know your name and adventurer type. 
3. Roll d6:
1. Sleeping Beauty. Roll d3: 1. A sleep spell is expiring, 2. Can be woken with a kiss, 3. Naked and looted, your last memory is setting off a gas trap at a dead-end.
2. Friendly Doppelganger. "Their life's work was not done - I shall take their form and make sure this death is not for nothing."
3. Unfriendly Doppelganger. "No, I wasn't really dead - you just left me behind."
4. You were the Doppelganger. "Thank goodness, my evil twin has been slain and I can take my life back."
5. Activated Clone. You arrive on the scene with a convenient gap in your memory and a debt of 24,000 standard wealth units + 100 per Ability Score point (or adjust to reflect cloning procedures in your campaign/setting), but you're otherwise the same character.
6. Vengeful Revenant. Doesn't have to be the dead character. Dies a true death when avenged.
4. Roll d6:
1. Stone-to-Flesh. You transform as the party happen by. You may be from the distant past if you were petrified by magic or monster. If you were originally a statue, you will either be like the sculptor's subject (which might be a famous historical figure, allegory or deity) or an amnesiac. Or you could be a Living Statue.
2. Lovecraftian Resurrection. Someone said the right words and you have risen from your essential saltes. You are vulnerable to effects which can reverse this and blast you back to dust.
3. Mercenary/ Hireling. You were part of another adventuring party, but they couldn't pay/cheated you out of your share. It's possible you are just lost.
4. Treasure Hunter. You know the whereabouts in the dungeon of a significant hoard or object, and see the wisdom in teaming up.
5. Pilgrim. You are visiting the sacred sites. It's possible you are lost.
6. Sent by Fate. A righteous quest, the needs of cosmic balance or a karmic debt have driven you to seek out the party and fight alongside them.
5. Roll d6:
1. Vampire Victim. You are free of the Vampire's clutches now. Or are you? Obviously.
2. On the Run/ In Hiding
3. Berserker. When the red-mist cleared, here you were.
4. Summoned Monster. Plucked out of time and space by a spell, you completed your task and find yourself stuck here rather than back there.
5. Trapped by Lava. You seem to have got yourself stuck on the wrong side of the lava and would be ever so grateful for some help.
6. Trapped by Monster. "Such good luck that you turned up when you did - LOOK OUT!"
6. Roll d6:
1. Binding Circle. You were trying to keep something out or something was trying to keep you in. In any case, someone else needs to break the circle to set you free.
2. Forlorn Encystment. Your sentence is over and the enchantment wears off - you are unceremoniously expelled from the earth, and you don't remember a dungeon being here. Your sorcerous incarcerator could be long dead by now.
3. Monster Hunter. You're after a specific monster (or type of monster) found in the dungeon. You know its habits and weaknesses, but it turned out to be more than you can manage on your own.
4. Sorcerer's Apprentice. Someone has to collect the rare, raw leavings of the dungeon denizens so some tower-wizard can do their experiments. You're that someone, you're not necessarily magically gifted or even interested.
5. Outcast. You have been rejected, hounded out of the mainstream, and you walk the liminal spaces of the world, seeking solitude or rare companionship.
6. Doom Seeker. You can be found in the dark and dangerous places seeking the deadliest monsters and/or the most destructive artefacts - you fully intend to die trying.

d66/d36 Monsters of the Dry Red & Ochre Hills

1. Roll d6:
1. Horntoads: Somewhere between toad and lizard; very patient; more than can be fed will gather to take you down, then sort it out between whoever’s left.
2. Sailbacks: Dimetrodons, but about the size of dog (seem bigger, due to sail, tail and thickset). Strong jaws, slow-witted. Not very aggressive. Scavengers that can crunch up bone.
3. Venomous Flying Frogs: Some Scientician will tell you that they’re toads, actually; glide on flaps of skin along their sides; everything about them exudes a paralytic venom. Favourite food is Sand Dwellers.
4. Wretched Mi-Go: Something has ripped away their head-part and their intelligence. They cluster together without reason, bumbling about, setting up a hummadruz at movement within 10', light 30'. If you have means of interface, you can have them guide you to buried treasure and rare mineral deposits.
5. Strangling Vines: Tumbles of dry looking creepers that snare passing prey; stronger and not as flammable as you’d think. Bulbous root wedged in a dark crevice, vines can regrow as long as this survives.
6. Owl Bards: Look like child-sized burrowing owls (reskinned B/X halflings); can only fly in short hops; intelligent, can talk, like to pilfer; oral, poetic culture.
2. Roll d6:
1. The Owlbear (1): Reminiscent of a giant lion, but definitely an Owlbear; prodigious excavator and burrower; considers itself the apex predator.
2. Constellation Mimics: Bioluminescent chameleonic gelatinous levitating vampires (drain cranial and spinal fluids, too); pretend to be patches of sky at night; envelop then extrude hollow fangs; rapidly liquefy on death; vulnerable to fire and sunlight. You decide if they’re blob monsters, humanoids or a type of undead.
3. Grotesque Flying Heads: Out-and-about at night; quite chatty and gossipy when they don’t think anyone’s watching; they’ve got a shelf of their own in a cave/tomb somewhere, or on the mantlepiece of an abandoned cottage.
4. Hungry Dead: They won’t try to eat you until they’ve bought, begged or stolen all of your supplies; might trail you for days, but won’t leave the hills; they don’t look that dead by daylight, but become more obviously so as the sun sets.
5. Sand Dwellers: Enigmatic Mythos entities. Cave, rather than sand, dwellers (a misnomer); surprisingly pink and fleshy, because they have plenty of water in their lair. Will sacrifice you to the Hillbeast at certain times of the year, but otherwise not automatically hostile. Play mournful, discordant pipes.
6. Hillbeast (1): Terrifying, writhing, gargantuan lump of hairy flesh; usually confined to a cavern temple, but goes wandering on certain nights of the year; Sand Dwellers worship or otherwise attend it.
3. Roll d6:
1. Hunting Cacti: Vibration sense; move by jumping and tumbling; drain blood with hollow spines; will retreat if you can break enough spines; vulnerable core protected by thick, tough flesh.
2. Goblins: Brimmed hats, vizards and dark red robes to go out in the sun; share cave lairs with Spider and Fungoid allies; stake a claim on all Miniature Goats and Sheep.
3. Spider Elves: Naked, halfling-sized, with bestial (the rare and common fauna of the Dry Red Hills) caricatures of human features. Cut things with tiny triangular pieces of flint or obsidian, but as fond of general mischief as fatal exsanguination. Can turn their feet backwards or to leave animal tracks.
4. Grey Hags (1-3): Three squabbling immortal carnivorous sisters. Share an enchanted tooth, tongue and eye (symbolic or real). When they’re not scheming against each other, they’re making trouble recreationally. If you’re looking for a particular object, place or spell, they’ll be ones who know what, where and how. The price is always horrible.
5. Sphinx Elves: Tawny, with black eyes and yellow hair, but otherwise much like their mountain cousins.
6. Stone Scorpions: Smaller, redder and much less strong than their mountain cousins, but more aggressive, numerous and venomous.
4. Roll d6:
1. Flock of Sheep: Odds/evens, these are a double-sized flock of Miniature Sheep.
2. Herd of Goats: Odds/evens, these are a double-sized flock of Miniature Goats.
3. Monotaur (1): Massive, single-horned bull; dainty hooves, surprisingly agile; intelligent, but aggressive; stamp, trample, gore. Pick one other monster to be its local rival, or another Monotaur.
4. Jackalhydra (1): Pony-sized jackal with exploding d3 heads on branching telescopic necks. Cut off a head and two grow back (max. 18). Gaze attack causes sleep. Intelligent and can talk – using the languages and voices of those it devours.
5. Fink Harpies: Scrawny, long-legged, winged cats. So filthy and disease-ridden that their attacks are effectively venomous. Strong smell and repulsive habits. Scavengers, but will prey on the lost and the weak. Can sense and are utterly afraid of all types of undead.
6. Sun Loungers: Lazy, glittering things that stretch out on hot rocks to soak up the rays. At a distance, when they’re not conscious of your presence, you can’t tell if they’re a predatory iguana or a beautiful potential lover. Lure predators using adaptive telepathic feedback. Can blaze images onto your retina so you think you’re under attack from all sides.
5. Roll d6:
1. Pool Goblins: Tied to shrinking seasonal pools, these larval Fossergrims are unlikely to mature. Will attempt to stow away in your backpacks and water bags in hope of reaching a more suitable pool.
2. Urn Mummies: Dry, crumbly and stick-like, their gracious tombs long despoiled, these itinerant mummies carry their burial urns with them and use them as a vampire does a coffin-and-native-earth. Battered by the years and the elements, they have a cynical sense of humour and a desire to recount their great pre-mortem accomplishments.
3. Dwarves/Trolls: Reskinned B/X Halflings with Stone Giant Strength. The main difference between the two types is that Trolls are nocturnal, and have tougher skin and bones (Stone Giant AC). Brightly and noisily dressed, so stealth ability is paramortal glamour.
4. Cave Toads: Stone coloured, inside and out, but with iridescent, jewel-like eyes. Mama Toad's yawning maw is indistinguishable from a cave mouth; Mama Toad's hypnotic young sit on her tongue and exude an acid-resistant slime.
5. Tomb Raiders: Adventurers looking for plunder. Unfriendly and don't like competition.
6. Sere Ghouls: Jackal-fanged, with limbs like jerky, head and body wound about with dusty red cloth. Venomous spiked finger-sleeves and bronze sickle-swords. Lair on the cool, shady banks of secluded, welcoming pools. Cough blinding dust into your face to escape. 
6. Roll d6:
1. Old One Eye (1): A colossal, towering cloud on the horizon, resembling a bearded old man with hat, cloak, staff and vast, trailing beard. A break in the clouds is his missing eye. Sporadically benevolent, he can interact with creatures on your scale across many miles.
2. Griffins: Cat-sized, feathered dinosaurs with outsize gutting claws - fore and hind. Can glide and make fluttering jumps. Known as agile scavengers. Not widely known as highly successful ambush predators, which is unfortunate for you.
3. Carnivorous Horses: These sturdy-looking wild ponies seem attractively playful and guileless.
4. Monster Hunters: Adventurers looking for trophies. Friendly but insist on competition.
5. Dust Drake (1): Somewhere on the Venn of crocodile, hippopotamus and jackal, this brutish thing can direct a sonic lance causing rock and earth to crack and crumble. It can vibrate its scales to create a choking, blinding dust cloud (save vs. disease from shed scales and parasites). Enjoys a good wallow, preferring mud to clear water. Makes noises like a whale on starry nights, supposedly calling for a mate.
6. Skeleton Army: 2d6 x 12 Skeletons, blackened by the years of sun and dust, and arranged in orderly units, armed with scimitars and shields. They will wait patiently for the Triumph of Death, but -if disturbed- animate one at a time, one per round, as long as one is still animate, going from slow and jerky to swift and deadly in 3 rounds. Until animated, they are unaffected by Turning.