Old POWERS!

 Bois, it’s time to get old. Old as bones.

Varguy

If I remember my own game correctly, one of the options for a starting character in Goose-Gold & Goblins is simply to be Old.

And by Old I mean 'Grandma' old; walking stick, slow pace, maybe a wheelchair, wrinkly, grey haired, maybe some thick glasses. Like Witch or Wizard old.

I don't really want medium-aged people in GG&G. Those of a common 'adventuring age'. Their social presence, physical capacity and general power and usefulness would really mess with the intended feel of play. I just want Children, Old people and pets. All beings with limited physical capacities, not much immediate social capital, and with lots of free time. People who are in society but for whom doing ordinary stuff might still be an "adventure".

My originating concept is that Old People have magic, as in standard D&D magic, or an Goosified equivalent of it. This fits the bill in a number of ways; like Wizards, OP's are weak, fragile and strange, with unknown powers and mysterious motivations. They have to think ahead to be useful and are a little cracked in the head.

If we try to imagine true multi-generational play, playing an 'Old Person' would be best for older children and parents.

Of course if we have a game with very young children in it, there will effectively be 'magic' or a form of it, as their grasp on and interaction with the simulated reality will likely be somewhat off its tits. Any young child is likely going to be playing some surreal, cartoonish strange figure, no matter what they think they are playing, and likely in GG&G, the Youngest-Sets-the-Tempo rule will be in effect.

So here is my development for being Old;

.....................................................................

Even Mehl Amundsen

Old People are very wise and cunning. They are also slow, fragile, forgetful, often grumpy and sometimes smelly. If you find one, try not to break it. If you ARE one, be careful on those stairs!

THE WEAKNESSES OF THE OLD

Literally fucking everything. 

Moving too fast. Sitting too long. Getting worried. Heat. Cold. Rain. Pollen. Literally any and any event or situation that might exist. 

Think this is Stepan Alekseev

THE POWERS OF THE OLD

Honestly, just bits of the BX/OSE spell list but re-contextualised as weird stuff and old person might do
From the perspective of a child, the difference between superior knowledge of the world, unknown techniques and contextual information, clever tricks, unlikely intuitions, 'soft' magical stuff like tarot and hand-reading and low level 'hard' magic like disappearing, is not that great

Like if you are five and your grandma tells you she can disappear and reappear in the post office by wearing a special hat then you are gonna be like hmm there is a 50/50 here that granny is fucking with me...

Probably no 'hard' highly physical powers like fireball but, well lets see the lvl 1 lists for Magic Users

• Charm Person
• Detect Magic
• Floating Disc
• Hold Portal
• Light (darkness)
• Magic Missile
• Protection from Evil
• Read Languages
• Read Magic
• Shield
• Sleep
• Ventriloquism

Really a substantial amount of this is stuff a five or six year old would not be surprised to find out their Grandma can do;

I have added in the Lvl 1 Cleric Spells which don't have duplicates in the MU list

Charm Person - persuasion, nagging, "I know your father young man"

Detect Magic - "Something funny going on here...."

Floating Disc - probably no, unless they know a special sausage dog they can summon at will & strap things to.

Hold Portal - Obv Grandmas can "double-lock" things. Doors can be locked once  so why not extend the concept.

Light (darkness) - Bit of a challenge. Think I will remove this as I want production of light locked to objects. Might have OPs capable of moving in the dark though.

Magic Missile - Nope.

Protection from Evil - Grandma draws a salt circle on the ground that keeps bad things out. Makes perfect sense.

Read Languages - Simple. If you find a strange musty book in an unknown language of course Granny can read it.

Read Magic - As above. Not much of a difference between them.

Shield - Hmmm, not that appropriate. Will probably remove.

Sleep - An edge case. probably too powerful a spell to be easily used. Will limit it by diegetic elements like special ingredients, circumstances, possibly blowback etc.

Ventriloquism - Obviously.

Cure Light Wounds - Simple. "Let me put a plaster on it then..."

Detect Evil - "Strange smell in the air...". Could easily combine with detect Magic.

Purify Food and Water - Hmm, this links with cooking which should really be its own section.

Remove Fear (cause Fear) - Removing Fear affects from PCs should be simple, give them a magic hug and dry their eyes. Causing fear, that would need some context to it. I mean Gandalf pulled it off when he went into goth-mode so probably.

Resist Cold - "Better wrap up warm dear" From whence do they draw endless supplies of scarfs and mittens? Who knows.

So, limit 'Spells' (which aren't really spells) by thematic groupings during character generation, then during gameplay through diegetic requirements ("Well of course I can send Goblins to sleep, if I had the feather of a Bomblenowl to burn..."), limited access to new spells and sources of knowledge, and through a magic points system.

Yes magic points, everyone’s favourite mechanic. BUT; Old-person magic charges up in old-person ways.

Kim Sokol

CHARGEUPS

You have to be careful charging your Old Person -  if you fill them with too much OP energy things can go HORRIBLY wrong..

Here are some charging methods, of course all have to be acted-out;


> "Things are "NICE"

"NICE, ISN'T THAT NICE" - every time an oldster can say "that's nice dear" or "isn't that nice" or "nice weather we're having isn't it" or any contextual comment on the world which uses the word NICE, that’s one twentieth of a chargeup. Or maybe each time you can roll a d20 and if you get a 20 you charge up, but you can't say it more than once a minute.

> Recollect

"What's going on?" - The other PCs have to remind their OP who they are, what they are doing, who you are, who everyone else is and what is going on. This all being done, a spell is charged.


> Fated Meeting

"Oh there's Gladys HELLO GLADYS" - If an old person sees another old person and starts a long long long conversation with them about what they have been up to and whatever health problems they have, and if it goes on for a significant segment of time, then that's a chargeup. This has the benefit of being a mutual chargeup for both OPs. A lot of OPs will just wander around charging each other up all day.


> Trowel

"Just need to prune these hedges dear, won't take a moments..." - Fixing shit in the garden can create powerups, with each task accomplished adding to the charge. The situational nature of this makes it good for a possibly-dangerous multi-charge powerup; start gardening, fall asleep, (BRIEF SIT DOWN), then forgetting what they are doing and having to be reminded (RECOLLECT), then finally finishing the task (TROWEL), before complaining about how everything is worse these days (TALES). A powerful, perhaps too-powerful multi-stage chargeup, with the downsides being the time and resources taken and the dangers of an overcharge.


> TEA

"Time for tea and biscuits.." - It can't just be tea from a thermos outside, it has to be indoors, with everyone sitting down, using the good china, with each teacup filled RIGHT TO THE FUCKING BRIM GOD DAMN IT, and everyone has to keep drinking the tea until they feel a bit sick NO-ONE CAN STOP. The darker version of this power-up involves forcing Tea upon an unwilling victim, with the strength of the charge being related to how unwilling they are.


>Tales

"This was all fields you know..." - maybe its still fields, but not the SAME fields. These new fields are somehow worse. Time for your OP to go on a long long long digression about how things were different and better back in the past and how things have changed and therefore become somewhat crappy. There’s a charge for you.


> Stairs

"Oh dear are these steeper than they were?" Successfully getting up or down a long flight of stairs can trigger a chargeup. Though it can also cause slips, trips and falls.



> Acquisition

Many OPs obsessively hoard particular types of object, these are always rare, specific, relatively cheap, perhaps even valueless, and ugly. They are always particular to an OP and the category never changes. Could be toby jugs, horse sculptures, silk doyleys, commemorative tea towels, spoons. If your OP finds and acquires one of these for their Hoard, mark a power-up.

> A Brief Sit Down

"My my what a morning, give me a moment dear and I'll take some weight off my legs" - The OP must sit down and pass out for a  randomly determined and perhaps lengthy period of time, on awaking they will not recognise, recall or admit how long they have been asleep.

> Annihilation

Defeating an opponent in games of bowls, card games, table games like backgammon or similar situations causes an instant power up as the OP consumes the shame of their opponent and transmutes it into raw magical energy. This goes both ways; they can also be drained of the same energy. So if you need some OP magic then challenging the boss goblin to a game of chess might give you the power to cast it.


Fuck I forgot Knitting. Have to add that in later.

Andrei Pervukhin

OVERCHARGE..

What happens if you do actually overcharge your OP? Its difficult to think of things that make diegetic sense but which also aren't potentially massively traumatic for children playing.

Freaking the Fuck Out - having a complete memory and identity collapse is diegetically appropriate but also pretty disturbing.

Falling Over - OPs don't have many Escapes to begin with, you don't want to risk them losing one of the few on an  overcharge. Will they even be able to get up? 

Asleep for a Day - the least troubling and traumatic option but also takes them out of the game and slows it down for everyone else.

Getting Racist - Yeah probably can't put this one in. COWARDS.

Getting Lost - Like some interdimensional power that just lifts OPs out of place and strands them somewhere else if they overcharge. Probably brings the rest of the group with them. (This actually explains why old people are always getting lost.)

Incapacitation - "ohhhh me lumbago.." Not passed out like the falling asleep option and could be amended by the right medicines or specific sweets or biscuits

Obsession - Maybe they follow a duck or something or just have to look up an old friend.

Grump-Out - They have HAD ENOUGH I TELL YOU and refuse to co-operate with either instruction or request. Again can be ameliorated by time and sufficient biscuits.

Burnt Bridge - "She's only gone and done it again for gods sake!" - The OP grumps out in a more permanent way, this time aimed at a former friend, colleague or adult NPC with whom they will no-longer co-operate or communicate. The reasons behind this may be obscure, and even imaginary but its going to be a nightmare talking them out of it. "Gladys KNOWS I shave my duck-boards and she sang that song ANYWAY!" (what the fuck?)

Situational Deafness - They are not going to hear anything they don't want to hear.

Optical Breakdown - "My eyes aren't what they used to be dear..."

Situational Incoherent Perception - They can 'hear' you, but whatever words are coming out of your mouth don't seem to have much effect on the ones going into their ears. "Well you said EASE the SWAN dear! You can't blame me for greasing the poor thing! Don't give me that I know what I heard!"

HELP ME PUT MYSELF INSIDE A CHILD

Ok I have reached a pause point with Goose-Gold & Goblins. I have spent.. well its coronatime so I have no idea how long I have actually spent doing this but it feels like I have spent quite a while filling out the bestiary with concepts for fifty non (or less) violent 'monsters'.

I have been doing that for so long that I feel like I lost my grip on the larger project somewhat. There is a lot to do, I intend this ultimately to be a pretty big book, or more like three books, D&D style.

Future topics to include building a 'household', magic, treasures, food and cooking, describing circles of familiarity and making friends, stuff about Strange Dangers like sickness, poison, curses, weather and seasons, magical events and poverty, a whole section on building dungeons/mazes, treasures. There is a lot to do.

But a key concept for the project is to have the best possible advice and ideas about running games for families, between generations, with children of different ages and with parents and children. 

I also need to know about child psychology, education and development to work out how to arrange rules and concepts in the book.

I know nothing about any of this so I am opening the Dread Portal, and asking for book reccomendations, and priority analysis of the books I have already listed to buy.

Here is my current list of books to consider buying.

Does the background intellectual capacity still exist in the OSR diaspora to even address this? And if it does is anyone still reading this blog who gives a damn? We shall see.

 If anyone in my audience knows much about the subjects in question then I am asking for advice about where to start, so I need advice on;

- Books or articles on Child Psychology, especially decent (sane) overviews of the topic.

- In particular, stuff about family games and playing games across generations and age groups, how children and adults of different ages play with each other.

- Games and entertainments which work well for children of different ages.

- Games which work with parents and children.

- Analysis about what children are like at different stages of development.

- What motivates them.

- What they can handle intellectually and emotionally.

- General howling at me about families, children, how I should or shouldn't be doing this, culture war stuff, yeah lets culture war it we may as well and its going to happen anyway.

Sky-Child and Monster Count

Ok the previous post got us close to fifty non (or less) vilent monster ideas for Goose-Gold & Goblins.

I told myself that  when I got to fifty I could stop making monsters and move on...

Comments from the last post had some pretty good ideas. Shall we see if, with their help, I can approach the finish line?

MIRROR-GIBBONS

The Gibbon Grandmaster is the governor of this gang. That mysterious madman sits upon a turquoise throne, half drowned in azure gloom, and whispers commands through his mirrored mask.

His weapon and his aim is the Gibbon-Simulation, a twisted mockery of the GooseWorld with all of its actors and actions replaced by long-limbed apes! 

The Mirror-Gibbons move through mirrors abducting and replacing people like a sci fi communism-monsters.

They act human by doing a crayon drawing of your face and sticking it to the front of their Gibbon face, and also wearing human clothes on their Gibbon bodies. They stand on each others shoulders and wear long coats, trying to act human. Or steal paper and write letters trying to lure people out to the trees; "PLS COM KWIK 2 TH GIBON TRES I UR MOFER NED U I AM NAWT A GIBON RITING TIS"

Then you wander out there and BANG, you are in a Gibbon-Sack and some Gibbon is in your house pretending to be you.

"there's something off about the mayor..."

What does the Gibbon Grandmaster actually want? What is their end-goal? Are they seeking some central kernel of humanity itself, so they may comprehend it? s their obsession with humanity driven by desire, resentment, or sheer perversity? How deep will their gibbon-simulation go? How engorged will their illusion become? What madness lies behind the gibbon-masters eye?

The Gibbon-Master, a dark echo to the Goosemaster. But while the Goosemaster tries to provide challenge, interest and fairness, the Gibbon Grandmaster tries to annihilate these things. They are a person against the principals of the game itself and they will not rest until they accomplish the Gibbonification of all that is and reality is but a shadow on the wall of time...

THE MONKS OF DOOM

The Monks Main Deal = looking spooky, being sinister, chanting mournfully, ringing spooky bells, walking in rows and dooms generally. They wear long cassocks and always keep the hoods up so their face is in shadow. They just have normal faces underneath but like looking cool and sinister.

Also huge leathern tomes of doom. The Monks keep scribal records of whatever dooms occur. You can go and look, to read the Dooms. Usually one is blind, cackling, possibly homicidal and mad, and has poisoned the pages and hidden the book in a labyrinth, but that’s pretty normal for the monks of doom you know?

The Monks of Doom are both sinister and scary, and tbh just seem like they are largely up to villainy. They bring doom to things. Or maybe they just know that doom *will* be brought to all things.

DOOM!

If they point at you and go DOOM then your doom is on its way.

Yes the monks are often scheming up some doom or other. Often just going through the motions if they don't have anything else on, like performing a ritual in a stone circle at night with blazing torches
not any particular ritual, just a general sort of one. 

They are very gothic monks, good at keeping terrible soul-shattering secrets, or just normal ones...

And by keep I mean gesture mysteriously and pointedly towards the secret, because they really want people to *know* that they have soul-shattering secrets which can BLAST THE MIND. TERRIBLE TRUTHS I TELL YOUUUU.

They also hang around in or near graveyards, ring bells during storms, loom dangerously from doorways, thrust scraps of paper into your hands with obscure sigils scratched on them before scurrying away.

They recruit kind of like its a cult. 

"We are not a cult!" (they are).

Talk about "ebon mysteries" and "sanguine chalices". They are basically like the Masons for weird secrets. Have meetings where you can dress up and wear masks, and they have a funny handshake too. Like many ridiculous conspiracies, things can go a bit wrong, someone always going a bit crazy and taking things "too far". Like, if they ran into an actual eldritch horror, what would they even do?

They have a hideout, (its not really hidden), the Monastery of DOOM, which has hidden passages, a crypt, a labyrinth in the tower, statues where you open secret doors by pressing the eyes in, eldritch tomes, an observatory, etc etc. Oh and a hunchback, and definitely lots of traps.

What do they want?

DARK SECRETS.

And either to prevent, or ensure some TERRIBLE THING OR OTHER. They are constantly insisting that things either not be done, or that they MUST be done, and usually with a time limit based on the moon or something.

SNAIL KNIGHT

They are knights. They ride huge snails - which don't really go that slowly when you think about it. About the speed of an ambling horse, and they keep at it. 

They all have quests, which as it happens gets them right up in your fucking business, and of course they are all excellent hand to hand combatants, (unless you run away), not that there is much call for that in this game. 

And they are very honourable, all into helping the weak and what have you, but they can be dangerously inflexible about that. If they make an oath or whatever that either gets all up in your face, or in your way, they will damn well stick to it, through hell or high water.

So they can be handy to have around, or a big problem. Possibly both.

Not to mention the kicker - they are all quite mad. Some think themselves made of glass. Some are in love with the moon. Some think their thoughts are birds which fly away at shocking sounds. Some narrate their own lives. Some cannot speak normally but only in rhyme.

So now you have a possibly-mad knight with a very specific quest following you very slowly about, you will have to run to avoid them. They are too slow to actually do anything useful but keep turning the fuck up everywhere you are at the worse possible time.

PICKLE LICH/PICKLE WITCH - from Benjamin Cusack

Pickle Lich or Pickle Witch. Really they are almost exactly the same thing, with roughly the same powers. Gender makes very little difference if you are dead in a number of jars. But they like the name to rhyme, even if there is only one of them present.

A lich, (or a witch), in a jar. Or possibly in several jars.

Don't place them in sunlight and please keep them in a cool room. 

They really want to get all their jars back together, and to avoid them being used as jam or whatever, and tbh those jars could be anywhere.

A main deal is that their limbs can roll this shit around like a hamster in a hamster wheel. They are horrifically vulnerable to breakages, failing seals, having a towel thrown over them or being violently shaken, so they will usually get their creepy minions to carry them about and hide them in specific places. Or anywhere there are shelves! MUHAHAHAHAH!

If you think about it the Pickle Lich, (or witch)'s main desire to get all of their limbs back, or at least on the same shelf, is pretty reasonable. Though if they do they will almost certainly set about evil doings in response. The more bits of themselves they can get back, the more kinds of super-magic they can do and the more trouble they can cause.

Their main foes are the Roadkill Pharaohs - taxidermized mummy lords, who will hopefully keep them busy.

SKY CHILD - from Montefeltro

The sky-giants, the Titans, who live up in the clouds and among the stars, and who almost never touch the ground, (and when they do it can be disastrous)..  Sometimes they just drop a child.

It falls like a meteor, crashing to earth in a giant crater and starts crying. (When they cry, it rains, and storms gather). The sky titans are maybe not great parents, or they are forgetful, or perhaps the earth is the last place they look when they lose a child.

But whoever finds the Sky-Child has to look after it.

A Titanic Toddler, from two to four years old. When up and walking about its maybe twelve feet tall, maybe taller. Say two stories? Twenty feet? 

And those proportions - whoo boy this thing looks messed UP.

At some point the sky titans will miss it, and work out where it is, and come and pick it up, and if it has been badly cared for... Well, I wouldn't like to be in that position, would you?

The Sky-Child has magical powers which come from the sky. Its moods affect the weather, which is unfortunate as it is a toddler and its moods are incredibly variable. So the place is sunny when it is happy, rain when it is sad and storms when it is upset, lightning when it has a tantrum.

Obviously, Goblins and other regrettable parenting influences might have their own ideas about what to do with the Sky-Child - they might seek to cart it off and teach it Goblinish ways. Can you even imagine! They may also want its teeth for secret reasons, (giant coins from the tooth fairy?), or to sing it goblinish songs so it dreams goblinish dreams.

Whoever finds them has to feed them, keep them safe, clean them, teach them, clear up when they get into trouble. The kid will follow them around.

Instead of giving it a milk bottle you have to give it whole cows to suckle, (the cows are pretty confused by the whole thing). The Sky-Child picks them up in one hand or two and drains them dry pretty quick, hopefully depositing them gently when it is done.

Obviously the Sky-Child likes picking things up and putting them in its mouth, which can be dangerous in many ways. You don't want it getting a taste for human flesh. 

Looking after a Sky-Child for a sustained period of time can be a massive drain on resources but in most cases a community will come together to help out, and you can even appeal to the Emperor for tax credits

The Monsters So Far.....

1. Amber Golem
2. Bomblenowl
3. Creature from the Unknown
4. Conspicuous Squirrels
5. Copy-Monsters
6. Crime Bird
7. Dracula
8. Dragon
9. Gelly Cube
10. Ghost (standard)
11. Ghost, of a Sinister Pig
12. Ghost Queen
13. Goblins, Cheese
14. Goblins, Corn
15. Goblins, Egg
16. Goblins, Gas
17. Goblins, Ghost
18. Goblins, Glass
19. Goblins, Gloom
20. Goblins, Grain
21. Goblins, Grass
22. Goblins, Gourd
23. Goblins, Long
24. Goblins, Mole
25. Goblins, Moon
26. Goblins, Trash
27. Ingot Beast
28. King Slime
29. Loan Troll
30. Men-Of-Bones
31. Mirror-Gibbons
32. Moblins
33. Moon Mage
34. Ogre
35. Pickle Lich/Witch
36. Pumpkin-Headed Böggelmen
37. Ratmaster
38. Rude Orcs
39. Secret-Eaters
40. Sinister Pigs
41. Sky Child
42. Sky Witch
43. Snail Knight
44. The Danger-Snake
45. The Master-Thief
46. The Monks of Doom
47. The Worlds Most Evil Dog
48. Thieflings
49. Trap Dogs
50. Xanthic Men

FIFTY! 

I DID IT!! I DON'T NEED TO COME UP WITH ANY MORE NON-VIOLENT MONSTER IDEAS!!!

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO NEXT!!!

The Danger-Snake! (and others)

THE DANGER-SNAKE

The Danger-Snake the Danger-Snake,
The terrible cake-striped Danger-Snake.
Its form doth flow and its eyes doth glow,
With a regular pulsing, long and low.
With high-visibility Battenburg stripes,
And eyes that flash like ambulance lights,
Hope it don't see you, hope it ain't there,
Over your head or under your chair,
For if you DO see it, if you see it at all..
There's harm and catastrophe soon to befall!
Crashing and bashing and splintering bones,
Burning and breaking and falling-down homes,
Sneezing and piercing and pins in your eye,
Stumbling and fumbling and glass in the pie!
Be it the herald or be it the cause,
The snake is orthogonal, separate to laws.
Singular, secret, yet vibrant and wild,
The snake is the seed of catastrophes’ child,
For if you DO see it, if you SEE IT AT ALL..
Deaths at the doorstep and doom is on-call.
So hope you don't and say you won't and pray its just a hose,
That curls out in the garden in the shadow of wet clothes,
And not the snake, the Danger-Snake,
The terrible cake-striped danger snake,
For its form doth flow and its eyes doth glow,
With a regular pulsing, long and low.


The high visibility snake signals danger, but also seems to summon or create danger. Striped like an ambulance or a police car, with eyes that flash like ambulance lights, but an ambulance that arrives somehow ahead of time.

GOB MOBLINS

Creatures who are not goblins, but who form gangs which act like goblins, or try to.

They claim to be the 'mob goblins' and will offer 'protection' to extort shopkeepers and homeowners, but in fact they are mere Moblins, a smaller, smoother, pinker and less dangerous form of goblin.

Yes they are like small pink cowardly people with dull brown eyes that weep when they are upset, which is OFTEN because they are nervous and angst-ridden beings!

They lack cunning and invention except for the scheme of feigning goblins, which gives them confidence. They paint themselves green and add finger extenders and pointy false ears and dentures to give them small sharp teeth, and they practice capering from books;

"ah hee hee hoo hoo ha!"

"AH HEE HEE HOO HOO HA!"

"(I say Chives, let us try that again, one more time)"

"(Ahem)... AH. HEE. HEE. HOO. HOO. HA!

"Very good Chesterfield, very good Chives. Very Goblinish indeed."

They speak in 1950s received pronunciation and are anxious about their schemes. They write these down on scraps of paper (the schemes are all veery carefully and exhaustively planned), and when not observed, they pull out the scraps and peer closely at them to make sure they haven't got anything wrong. But the false spiky fingers they wear get in the way, so they have to pull the fingertops off with their teeth. Then they get sweat on the instructions and smear the details.

Oh no, now their green facepaint is sweating off.

And their false pointy teeth cannot hold their long fingers. Both are falling out...

Oh no oh dear, oh dearie-me no.

The Gob Moblins are not that much of a threat to be honest. Their schemes almost always fall apart in desperate fashion, plus you can usually spot them by their shoes, they are excellent cobblers and hate wearing unshined footwear, plus they are bullied by every type of actual goblin, who they look up to as celebrities but also fear, and do not understand at all.

Their greatest threat may be to your emotions, as it can be anguishing to watch them try so hard and fail so pathetically, and then breakdown crying, their tears leaving green smears everywhere.

CHEESE GOBLINS

They are fermented goblin milk, solidified in warm conditions over time. 
Where from? 

The goblin milkers - by the Good Goose-God don't ask how or why they do it or who they are. It is one of the worst things that ever was. The horror of the Cheese Goblins.

If goblin parts get into milk, it ferments; they emerge. The milk curdling and turning greenish-white. 

They are full of holes, but they can be soft too, and riddled with a bluish mould, they can have a sheeny rind which peels off to reveal the milky Cheese Goblin beneath, they can be like mozzarella, or like brie.

They are of no especial quality or skill compared to other goblins, and to be honest, quite a bit less robust. But... think about their cheesy fingers reaching out for you, or cheesy eyes turning in their cheesy heads, transmitting cheesy thoughts to cheesy brains. Curdling and churning and thickening things. Churning themselves up, spreading themselves on crackers and posting each other through the letterbox.

Nothing is enough for the Cheese Goblins. What wild thoughts might they not think, and what cheese dreams might they not dream? For the Cheese Goblins have cheese dreams each night, dreams of the wildest invention, and darkest consequence.

They fear cheese graters, cheese knives, cheese cutters and cheese boards, and seek revenge upon all cheese-eaters.

LONG GOBLINS

They are especially long and wiggly, like ropes or hosepipes, with smirking little round faces like the ends of sticks of rock. Their length is not reassuringly noodly, like a snakes or worms, (both of which they HATE), they are clearly still a person shape, just stretched horribly, with the pointed vertebrae poking out of their flexible backs

Their very longness is their weakness and their strength because that is how they get into places, but there is no way they could pass as a person. Instead they gather together in long places, like drainpipes and have long conversations. They take a long time to decide what to do, which is fortunate for us, but once they do decide they will stick at it for an equally long time.

There is nothing about the long goblins which is not long, their attention spans, their vision, their stories and their names. 

All long.

Their dinner engagements are exhausting. Never ask one to give a speech, even their pauses are long, and their horrible long fingers as they creep out of a pipe. 

What do they wear? Long johns of course, and they are ruled by the Longest Goblin, who is as thick as a python and twice as squeezy.

They prefer long food, like spaghetti, noodles, hot dogs, eels and string-beans. Offering them such items, or cooking them a feast of such, might persuade them to leave.
 

The List So Far

Amber Golems
Bomblenowl
Creature from the Unknown
Conspicuous Squirrels
Copy-Monsters
Crime Bird
Dracula
Dragon
Gelly Cube
Ghost (standard)
Ghost, of a Sinister Pig
Ghost Queen
Goblins, Cheese
Goblins, Corn
Goblins, Egg
Goblins, Gas
Goblins, Ghost
Goblins, Glass
Goblins, Gloom
Goblins, Grain
Goblins, Grass
Goblins, Gourd
Goblins, Long
Goblins, Mole
Goblins, Trash
Gob Moblins
Ingot Beast
King Slime
Loan Troll
Men-of-Bones
Mirror-Gibbons
Moon Mage
Ogre
Pumpkin-Headed Böggelmen
Ratmaster
Rude Orcs
Secret-Eaters
Sinister Pig
Sky Witch
Snail Knight
The Danger-Snake
The Master-Thief
The Worlds Most Evil Dog
Thieflings
Trap Dogs
Xanthic Men

That's 46 in total. I want 50 for the book. I know what one more is; The Monks of Dooom. But what should the remaining three Dangerous Strangers be?

Update and Monsters

UPDATE

The STORE is now open again with all the postage costs updated. E.U. postage has had customs charges added on my side.

Now for some GooseWorld monsters, or as I have taken to calling them; Dangerous Strangers

XANTHIC MEN

Xanthic Men are a seasonal danger, appearing in Spring and remaining until around Autumn.

They grow near hedgerows, up in distant copses, on the borders of things, always hidden away. If a farmer sees Xanthic Men growing they will tear them up by the root of course, not that it does much permanent good, they just re-grow next year. The Xanthic men grow in comforting spots, sheltered places where one might rest or hide away.

They come it two sorts, the Herbaceous Man and the Ambling Man.

The first sort are Herbacious and thankfully they rarely walk, and if they do, they do not get far, having no bones and little remaining memory of the act.

Imagine them as huge woven-together piles of Dandelions, growing and crawling around each other like vines till they form the shape of a man, with flowers at his fingers and roots at his toes. There the Herbaceous Xanthic men murmur quietly to each other, slowly releasing seeds and pollen into the wind, beckoning to anyone who passes by.

The pollen of the Herbacious men is soporific, it makes one woozy and sleepy. As well as this, the Xanthic men gesture and murmur half-words and reassuring noises. 

Here lies the greatest danger, that a lonely or desperate traveller, or one ignorant of their ways, accepts their gestures and beds down with the Xanthic men, lying in their comfortable bower, surrounded by their nodding heads. When this happens, in the night the seeds of the Xanthic men drift down down down into the sleeping mouth and open nose.

Thence is born and Ambling Xanthic Man. 

Such a person starts out largely normal. Their veins are replaced by dandelion stems and they grow flowers at their fingertips and roots at their toes, but otherwise they can get about well enough. They also no longer need to eat, drinking sustenance from the earth.

The first horror of the Ambling Xanthic Man is not in what they do, but in what they will not do, which is; anything.

A Xanthic man will slowly but steadily seek to do nothing at all. They will just hang around, maybe on street corners, or at the bottom of the garden, or behind a wall. Sleepy, slow, deeply resentful of anyone the find doing more than them, which is everyone, and eager for recruits.

All Ambling Xanthic Men think everyone would be better off if they just become Xanthic Men, its more natural or whatever, and why work and torture yourself, and the earth, if you can just become a peaceful, enlightened Xanthic Man? 

If anyone foolish or weak-minded agrees with them, they can convert them to their cause by feeding them seeds, creating another Ambling Xanthic man who will hang around doing nothing, staring at people passing by and reluctantly, slowly, moving on if someone throws sticks at them.

They don't directly harm people, or force them to do anything, they just lie around staining the grass and resenting everyone. They talk to each other, but as they come to share a kind of loose hive mind, all they are doing is passing back and forth the same repetitive thoughts they had yesterday, repeating old arguments or dull stories. Xanthic men can't really come up with anything new, or think any new thoughts, though they believe that they are pretty wise and deep beings.

They just want you to relax, but if you do, you won't be able to stop relaxing, ever.

They do sometimes cause accidents, getting jammed in large machines or going under the wheels of carriages, their caustic sappy interiors crushed like wet dandelions, spraying trickly alkali-tasting sap everywhere. 

The Ambling Xanthic men seem to take this in their stride, not really accepting responsibility for anything, but not really being angry, or even shocked if one of them dies. Even deeply wounded ones will simply say that  "this sucks" and stagger off with the rest. They can't really feel deep hate, or desire, or anything to any strong degree. It is like they are half-asleep, but still wandering around.

When the end of summer comes and the winds of Autumn touch the air, all the Xanthic men begin to moan and clutch their heads. By this point their skulls are just as slender as leaves which open out revealing dandelion-seed brains while their toe-roots stick them to the earth.

As the wind comes the mind of the moaning Xanthic man is blown away on the breeze, whirling away to a thousand different places. The body left behind turns dry, collapses and rots into the ground like mulch. 

You would hardly know it had been there.

A few seeds will reach the safe and sleepy places where the Xanthic men prefer to grow, and next spring a new crop of Herbaceous Men will grow forth, muttering to each other in half-familiar voices of half-forgotten memories of the men they used to be, waving their flower-tipped fingers and releasing soporific pollen on the wind.

CONSPICIOUS SQUIRRALS

(Thanks to K Yani who invented this phrase in the comments)

Squirrel-People about three-feet high, Conspicuous Squirrels always look as if they are up to something.

They are.

Not many people know this but the favourite food of the Conspicuous Squirrel is human babies, they steal them in the night, carry them off to the tops of large trees and eat them alive.

They are always carrying out EXTREMELY SUSPICIOUS actions, like leaping out upon you from behind a bush, Carrying expensive goods out of a shop in the night while wearing striped shirts, digging holes near the bank

eyeing you through the window, climbing walls. Their hands are always moving and their black eyes always shifting and darting, through you never really know where they are looking. Their bushy tails, almost the size of their bodies, twitching and shifting in a fractured mirror to their movement.

If you complain about these things the Conspicuous Squirrels always reveal that they had a PERFECTLY INNOCENT reason for going into the bank with a mask, a sack and a gun, or meeting that unmarked truck in the middle of the night or whatever it was and they are shocked, SHOCKED that you would think there was anything SUSPICIOUS about it! Such prejudice we deal with!

Then they go back to their plans to steal and eat babies.

Furtive, creeping, juddering leaping creatures, dashing for the door then coming back, neither doing one thing or the other, but back and forth always, in and out, up and down. Glancing side-on (though to be fair with them they look at everything side on), eating secretly things held cupped in their hands... hiding what it is.

TRASH GOBLINS

Invaders from the Trash Dimension, the Trash Goblins are the disembodied spirits of mischief, banished from the GooseWorld by the GooseGod for their rubbish schemes. But, if the signs be right, they can emerge, formless, into our reality and take form from Trash, if enough trash is left available.

They come forth from out of the bin, bodies made of cans and newspaper with eggshells for eyes, dripping bin juice everywhere. Yes, they are held together by mould and dirty napkins, their guts are uneaten leftovers, their main enemy is hungry dogs. They cough dust, some are made of old rug with tongues of congealed porridge and string-bean toes "bleeghhhh". Birds may live in them, are twigs trash? sure, why not?. They have deep rasping voices and try to cook breakfast in the night. They get into the hard liqor and soak themselves in it, becoming drunk and aggressive, stinking of booze, stumbling into lanterns and fires, screaming and dying, racing around, "I'M BURNING! I'M BUUUUUURRRRRNNNNINNGGG AAAAAAAA", setting everything they touch on fire. This does kill, or banish them though, so that's a plus.

The first thing Trash Goblins will do is make more trash so more Goblins can come through from the Trash dimension, so YOU BETTER NOT HAVE LEFT A LOT OF TRASH LYING ABOUT. The more of a mess there is, the more goblins you will get.

What do the Trash Goblins really want?

To open a portal to the Bin Dimension, and make everything trash, emptying the GooseWorld into a universe of crap. 

The seas will be of plastic bags, the mountains of out of date ready meals, the rivers will be of broken bottles. For when all is trash, nothing shall be!!!

Pumpkin-Headed Böggelmen

 [Brief False Machine intermission: Brexit means VAT will start being added to my European orders. On the 4th of January I will export all my current orders to my distribution people, then shut down the store while I try to work out exactly what that means for me. That means when I re-open after the 4th postage will probably be going up.

So if you live outside the UK and want to order *before* that likely postage increase, then do it before the end of the 4th of January.

Ok, thanks for your time.]

...........................................................

The Böggelmen are tall and hairy with rank green fur and red paralysing hands.

Don't let them touch you!

The Böggelmen have squirming bones which bend like branches and round hairless heads exactly the shape of a pumpkin with lidless eyes like mad sharks and pink meaty flesh, like an uncooked sausage. Their head-meat is as wet and soft as raw sausages and they smile with wide lipless mouths full of uneven needle teeth.

The skulls of Böggelmen bend like a babies so they can squeeze them heads into anything, like an octopus in a jar. Same with those long bones, they can come in through a catflap like  cartoon character. Looping and waving is their stride as they walk beneath an autumn moon.

From here 

PARALYSING HANDS AND CAREFUL FEET

The Böggelmen have paralysing armpit glands. If they shove the sharp claws of their red hands up there and scratch around, then scratch somebody - they can paralyse them, a little like sleep paralysis. Like being locked in a dark dream, half-aware but unable to move. When the paralysis wears off it makes you sleepy, woozy and incoherent, as if you were drunk. If you start talking about Böggelmen in the night, they may not believe you. Maybe you are the only one who knows there is still one hiding in the cupboard.

The Böggelmen like to do these to people who are alone - or people sleeping in a group, they wake one person up and paralyse them, then move about silently and do things in the room with everyone asleep

THE PUMPKINS

The Böggelmen love Autumn because the Pumpkins ripen. The pumpkin is exactly the shape of their flexible head and is often carved with faces - which the böggelmen take to be a form of proprietary worship. If a böggelman without a Pumpkin finds a field of them, they will almost certainly carve out one and squeeze their head inside, looking out through two holes. f anyone sees them they may freeze and pretend to be a scarecrow.

(Offerings of carved Pumpkins are one of the few ways to persuade böggelmen to go elsewhere, but more on that later.)

Böggelmen prefer Pumpkins above all things, but if Pumpkins are not available, they will try to wear almost anything that fits around their soft heads - buckets, pots and pans, flowerpots, lampshades.

Reaper Miniatures

CULTURE OF TERROR

Böggelmen are big and string and sneaky enough to simply take what they want most of the time. They have very few needs and little hierarchy, böggelmen are ranked unofficially by the scares they can create, but this is more of a shifting reputational artistic and sporting system than a form of government.

So it is that the Böggelmen have no real need to terrorise people, they just really enjoy it.

Frightening people, especially children, or other vulnerable people like old people living alone or simple people with no protectors, frightening them to hysteria, madness and then death, is the chief source of pleasure in the culture of the böggelmen. In the böggelmens opinion someone being really vulnerable makes them exactly the best person to be scared.

Not quite a religion, but much more than an entertainment - it is the primary source of meaning in their lives and when they are not doing anything else they sit around talking about past scares they have had, future scares they wish to have and news about scares generally.

They also kill people - they can rip your head right off, but that isn't really the point.

Really expert böggelmen will do more than hide around the house and pop up, they will carefully drive someone totally and utterly insane over a period of time. they know their heads are scary and like to leave the big reveal till last.

Böggelmen don't just scare villagers, (though they prefer them best of all), they will scare goblins and ogres and vampires if they can, anyone really. They are not well liked by other creatures but they don't care at all.

TACTICS

Something Böggelmen enjoy is to fold up their bones inside a big coat, acting almost like a normal person, passing in disguise on the street at night, before revealing themselves.

Even more, they like to drive someone mad with fear and then hide, removing all trace of their presence, so that when their victim tells people they are being stalked by böggelmen, no-one will believe them - everyone thinks them mad or strange and this makes them even more lonely and afraid. Then they are trapped in the house, alone with the Böggelmen, who scratch the walls and tap the pipes.

The Böggelmen love all of this. What a scare!

They don't have any magical hiding powers, apart from being very bendy, very strong and quite clever, (they really like hiding in cupboards, wardrobes and under beds), and stealing clothes, making a mess of things, stealing money and precious secret items. They don't actually care about these things, they just love the trouble, suspicion and anger caused when they inexplicably go missing.

A few böggelmen in the endgame like to tear or cut off someones head and leave it somewhere amazing to be found by their victim (they think of the target of their fear as the victim, in most cases the person who got their head torn off was just convenient for that purpose) - this should hopefully send them totally gibberingly insane, at which point the Böggelmen will come out of hiding and dance around them madly and then possibly eat them if they are hungry, leave them there insane, or thrown them down a well or some similar place.

Yes they have no aim but fear itself, what else can be said about them?

WHERE ARE THE BOGGLEMEN?

How do they live, and where?

In any deep, dark place, somewhere surrounded by rats and dripping with dank. They do not really care about where they live. Up in a roof, in a shed, hiding in a pipe, hanging beneath the axle of a cart, in a bale of hay, underneath a pile of cabbages.

CULTURAL PRESENCE

Since Böggelmen will happily scare outsiders as much as villagers, (they do not really care about the differences), they are one of few problems which strangers and villagers share and can be an odd point of co-operation between them.

A Dracula, for instance, might not wish to admit to being scared to those 'in the know' and could, in a roundabout way, ask the PCs for help with a Bugbear problem.

They are truly an enemy to all.

Gaining böggelmens respect; 

- Scares, if you can scare them back, they will be impressed, bow, and leave.
- Free pumpkins.
- Unscarability, if you are impossible to scare they will become frustrated and leave as you are a "dead loss!"

Amber Golem (& Galaxy-Brained Update)

 First, if you haven't read the Ghost Post, take a look, you might like it, or even this one by Semiurge.

Now on to the Amber Golem

And no, I could not do any better than this concept by Warren D

Amber Golem

Magisterial and ancient artefacts. Sometimes found in museums or the dusty collections of dusty book-lads. Maybe uncovered after a flood when a riverbank erodes, the gleam of amber poking from the soggy shale, turned up in a field beneath a questing plough, dragged out of a mine, found, half-buried on a beach after a mighty storm, as if spewed from the bowels of the sea.

Great Amber statues! Primal animal shapes. Almost cubist, brutto and contained, like chess pieces. Treasure, surely. This much Amber being incredibly valuable.

Then...

The voice.

A thin, wheedling, whining piercing voice, coming from somewhere deep within. A tiny, ancient-accented sound, counterpointed by this huge, beautiful, gleaming thing.
The statue Moves!

"If they are Pre-Historic why do they have animal shapes?"

Shut up.

ORIGINS

Prehistoric evil mosquito sorcerers who froze themselves in huge palaces of amber and had their thralls carve them into forms of majesty and bury them, till they could rise and take over the world!
But now, as they half-awaken, they found 

THE INSECT DREAMS

The Undead Sorcerer Lords are only half-awake, they dream of Mosquito paradise, where they reign as LIVING GODS, but they drift in slumber, only part-aware of the nightmare reality into which they have been thrust, for in this Nightmare Reality giant animals have become intelligent,  insects had sunk into barbarism and the world is ruled by the descendants of the brutish dinosaurs.

Even in dreams the Mosquito Lich-Lords recognise the Goose as True Ruler of the Gooseworld. Long ago the Dinosaurs, brute and unthinking beasts, bestrode the world, and the Goose is obviously the natural descendant of those might beings. Smaller, (not that the difference in scale matters much to a mosquito), but more savage, worshipped and protected by all, surrounded by lesser beings who sacrifice their own welfare and resources for the comfort of the Goose.

If this world is ever to be ruled by Mosquito-kind again, the Geese must fall! So the half-waking war of the undead bugs is not with mankind, but with the Geese themselves!!!

The Mosquitos do not realise that by the fact that the Geese are pretty dumb really and don't know what's going on, so its like a battle between someone half-asleep who keeps randomly sparking static electricity, and a violent idiot. Here at False Machine towers we call that Pinteresque.

POWERS OF THE GOLEMS

Smashing Stuff - they can pretty much stumble through anything.

Uncomfortable Static Shocks - Being Amber, they can build up quite a lot of static electricity while wandering around, which can discharge in a field of crackling lightning 

Sleepy Sorcery - all the powers of a Master of Undeath, but focused mainly on the insect scale. Can raise terrible hordes of skeletons (insect skeletons), create vampire insects and ghost insects and can kill insects with but a single word or gesture. They do often forget what they are doing half way though or get confused, but that leads us onto weaknesses really.

WEAKNESSES OF THE GOLEMS

Stumbling around falling asleep, getting lost, pausing, losing their track of thought. Asking whats going on. Asking why everyone is so big. Going on long tangents about pre-history. Long stories about the time they met a Bee that have no point (the story not the Bee, the Bee had a point), why is it so cold, what happened to all the oxygen etc etc.

ROLE IN THE GOOSEWORLD

Depending on how awake they are, or how much dementia they don't have. The Amber Golem could be a random heavy who abducts the Goose to rant at it about ruling the world.

They could be tricked or manipulated by other creatures, send off to smash and rampage as a distraction or a living weapon.

Or if they are unusually together, they may be a primary antagonist themselves, creating plots and schemes to foil the Geese (and by necessity doing harm to the Goose's support system (the PCs), employing other creatures as part of a Master Plan for world domination.

Ghost (standard)

Ghosts!

If you move at all, or stick your feet outside the bedclothes, Ghosts WILL get you = FACT.

You meet someone sad and distracted on the road, or in the forest, at a quiet time or in a silent place. Not a ripple on the water or a bird in the air. When you describe them to a local; they are dead! Disappeared these twenty years and no-one knows how or why. 

Or an old woman you find reading silently in a room, but if you ask too many questions she starts screaming "MY HOUSE MY HOUSE THERE IS SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE MURDERERS NO! NO! NO!"

A Ghost generally means interpersonal drama. There is often a murderer to uncover, or at least a guilty party of some kind. Usually a wrong to right. Bones to bury, a body to find.

GHOST TYPES

Murdered Ghost; gotta reveal the murderer, see justice is done.

Lost Ghost; died without doing something very important. They have memory problems so may not know what it is. Have to sort out what they failed and fix it.

Evil Ghost; Doesn't want to be settled, actively likes hurting people. Has to be exorcised, its power broken (may turn out to be one of the other types, a ghost that can be reasoned with). Either find their bones, their murder weapon, or the bones of their victims, and consecrate them, or unveil the truth about them.

Ancient Culture Ghost; Is upset for some weird foreign and or ancient reason, probably a purloined relic or some ancient wrong. Hard to understand what its on about. Often connected to an artifact or injustice, can be settled once you work out what that was.

GHOST FORMS

Depending on how genuinely aggressive and scary a ghost is, you may or may not see its basic form, could be anywhere from a Harry Potter ghost, like a cheery local, to a Horror Movie Ghost, that only appears through signs and inference.

From broadly least-scary to more-scary;

Scare Level One

- Verbose Types

• Friendly animal like a ghost dog
• Historical, cartoonish wounds (like their head tips off).
• Sheet Ghost WOOooOOO!
• Historical, no visible wounds.
• Child, no wounds.
• Modern or near-modern, no wounds.

Scare Level Two

- Unaware of own nature, forgetful, obsessed, indifferent

• Historical - non cartoonish wounds
• Modern - non cartoonish wounds
• Child - visible wounds

Scare Level Three

- Hunting, stalking behaviours, deliberate mental torture and gaslighting.

• Apparent total normality, can't tell it from a real person.
• Reality warping and hallucinatory effects.
• Monstrous, nightmare or impossible animal.
• Distorted, horrific or mutilated individual.

HAUNTINGS - SCARY STUFF

Main difficulty here is telling the difference between ghost action and hidden Goblins (nearly all of these could be down to one kind of Goblin or another).

1. Small items moving when no-one around.
2. Taps left on.
3. Doors slamming in an empty house.
4. Small objects hurled with frightening effect.
5. Sounds of an argument from empty room
6. Steps in the corridor.
7. Lamps going out or lighting when no-one is there.
8. The shadows of feet waiting outside your door.
9. Very very slow scratching at your door, the doorknob catching.
10. The yowling of cats when there are no cats.
11. At night, someone standing beneath a lamp in the street outside, watching the house.
12. Clocks all fucked up and showing the wrong time.
13. Milk curdling, god damn it (free cheese though).
14. A face pressed against the window at night.
15. Some kind of rodent or creature in the attic or cellar (tbh this is probably Goblins).
16. Massive temperature drops, rimes of ice, bathwater freezing, tea gone cold!!
17. Food going off overnight, mouldy bread, rotten meat, stinking eggs, though sometimes only one item with the rest left as they were.
18. Yard or garden full of cats, birds or rabbits which stand still staring at the house.
19. Coughing or heaving as of someone very sick.
20. Spinning wheel spinning and clacking in an empty room.
21. Someone extra in the mirror..
22. Strong sense of someone behind you in the room.
23. Someone standing in the corner of the room silently.
24. Vile stains where they should not be.
25. Horrid smells with no discernible source.
26. Someone calling your name in the distance.
27. Insanely angry pounding at the front door in the middle of the night.

APPEASING BEHAVIOURS

(Largely for the more non-evil ghosts)

1. Always serve an extra seat at dinner.
2. That room must be cleaned but never used.
3. The garden must be kept a certain way.
4. Serve leeks with every meal.
5. Keep their spooky portrait up and say hello it it when you go past.
6. Keep an uncomfortable level of pot purri around the place.
7. Sing it to sleep each night.
8. Feed all cats that present themselves.
9. Keep place spic and span.
10. Always keep a light burning.
11. Don't touch the wedding dress in the closet.
12. Feed the snake which seems to live in the basement, and do not interrupt its movements when it goes about.
13. Make sure no draughts in house with those door gap draught blockers and keep a fire on at all times.
14. Put a biscuit under the settee every night.
15. Toast the King with each meal.
16. Leave particular process-action always partially undone (like a cloth half-woven, a picture half- completed, a book half-read, presumably the ghost completes these in the night).
17. Keep everything at an odd angle (no straight pictures, tables etc).

PROTECTION FROM GHOSTS

• Stay under the sheets and don't let your feet poke out.
• Don't look at them.
• Sing loudly (works as a group, not so much as an individual).
• Lights on everywhere.
• STAY AWAKE FOREVER.

WHERE ARE THE BONES?

1. Tangled in roots of evergreen tree.
2. Buried in the flower beds.
3. Behind a bricked-up cavity.
4. In a cavity in the chimney.
5. Buried beneath the cellar.
6. In a huge chest in the attic.
7. Spread between several large plant pots.
8. Trapped in the mill race beneath the wheel of the mill.
9. In the well (the Well-Dweller may be the ghost).
10. In an air duct.
11. In a secret passage between rooms.
12. In a hollow tree.
13. Under the old compost pile.
14. In the pumpkin patch.
15. In the scare-crow!
16. Under the hearth.
17. Hidden in a statue.
18. Under the wood-pile.
19. At the bottom of the lake.
20. Down an abandoned mine shaft.
21. Given to a villainous creature as a gift or toy.
22. out in the fields where a patch of crops grow extra-green (more visible as the seasons change).
23. Built into the beehive!
24. In the den of a dangerous beast.

MURDERER CLUES

If you are trying to find the identity of a Murderer so you can lay a victim to rest, then the ghost might be helping.

But if you have an *evil* ghost, and are trying to find out who they are, or proof of their dark deeds, then the ghost may be enraged by your efforts.

1. Old diary, possibly in code, or at least a foreign language.
2. Forgotten, hidden or torn will.
3. Distant relative got surprisingly rich after the death.
4. Witches charms found in old room.
5. Old bloodstained boots, but who do they fit?
6. Hidden bottle of poison.
7. Hidden bottle of antidote.
8. Flawed Alibi - (everyone there was actually drunk).
9. Flawed Alibi - (was a masked ball).
10. Flawed Alibi - (the piano they were heard playing is secretly a clockwork piano).
11. Flawed Alibi - (the time on the clocks can be secretly re-set from a hidden location).
12. "This was no accident" - Wooden support partially sawn through.
13. "This was no accident"  - Bell-charm makes a subsonic sound which enrages cattle.
14. "This was no accident"  - Scratches show stone Gargoyle or statue was moved before it fell.
15. Hidden book on bookshelf called "Evil Doings".
16. Book on Toxicology and an interest in mushrooms.
17. Flowers in Greenhouse are actually deadly.
18. Hair Dye and/or a Wig - the killer had one hair colour, the suspect another.
19. Old-Person costume and back brace - 'mysterious old lady seen around murder', one person claimed she was hanging about previously, but that person is the suspect.
20. Materials and fragments for sending cut-up 'threatening letters' suggesting an illusory other suspect.
21. Hidden message scratched under table or bookshelf, or behind painting "So-and-so is trying to kill me!"
22. Actually ambidextrous. Killer was left-handed, suspect is right-handed, but they catch an orange with their left hand!
23. Handwriting comparison, text of threatening letter matches that of someone else.
24. Treasure hidden in plain sight, like jewel or statue painted over and disguised as something else, either the murderer shouldn't have it but does, or they want it and are looking for it while trying to seem that they are not.

The Sinister Pig

 SINISTER PIG

Witness

A sinister pig might be able to lift small things with its gaze, make have hands hidden beneath its hooves, may be able to speak, in fact it is a ventriloquist, but won't tell you that.

A core element of a Sinister Pig is its apparent simplicity and decency, just a simple pig, trying to get along, maybe looking for a friend.

A pig you see alone. Alone in a field, at a quiet time, no-one else around. Just you and the Pig. You think it far away, singular, in the middle of nothing. Turning its head slightly to look at you. 

You turn away and BAM. There it is. Right by the fence.

Did you make a mistake? Are there two pigs? did you turn away for longer than you thought?

You wake up, maybe groggy from the night before. Maybe you only half-remember, you are uncertain, uncertain about the pig.

Then you walk downstairs to eat breakfast and BAM.

There is the pig, sitting at the breakfast table, buttering some toast. Talking to the family.

"Why.. you invited me? Don't you remember?"

"No, no no. I'm sorry, it's my fault. I know better than to stay where I am not wanted."

"Oh, what a mortification."

The pig laboriously puts on its boots.

(It has boots now?)

And seems like it might weep.

Of course, everyone asks it to stay. "Stay for breakfast", they say. You feel terrible of course.

"Well... if you insist"

You walk through the village. People seem to stare at you. They seem angry with you.

"shameful..." you hear mutters.

The Pig explains; "Oh isn't it terrible? Someone has been spreading rumours.."

"Oh you know, about what happened at breakfast."

"They all have simply the wrong idea. Don't worry, I'll put it right."

And the Pig does put it right, with an uproarious performance in the market. Has everyone simply wheezing with laughter.

"Ahhh, that Pig, they're all right you know. Lord what a card." They say.

The Pig thinks you are "Wonderful! Utterly wonderful. So talented, really, and.. (glances around).. I might even say, a little underappreciated."

Its strange though because sometimes the Pig seems bored with you. Distracted even. Its almost as if they don't like you at all. Sometimes they look at you and for a moment their eyes seem blank. 

Things go missing.

People get hurt.

INGOT BEASTS

Big semi-intelligent Platypus with big strong tongues who just lick away metal. Their saliva dissolves it and their abrasive file-like tongue wears it away.

They are super-excited to do it too, making little grunting and squeaking noises, and a soft grinding with each lick.

If its something light, not fixed down, they will trap it between their paws and lick it that way, even rolling around on their back with whatever it is clenched on their tummy, stopping between licks to shivver and chirp.

The bad thing is; they can get everywhere. They will sneak into places, they swim up rivers and hide in wells, hide under beds, hide in cupboards, sneak around the place. They can flatten themselves like cats, able to get under anything. Only the snuffling sound as they sniff out the ore gives them away. Snuffling and whuffling.

Its true they are very rarely encountered. Its much easier for them to live in rivers or in secret places deep underground and eat ores from inside the rocks, climbing around caves and following veins of metal, they don't end up above ground very much and are rarely encountered in 'normal wilderness'.

But the bad thing is that they can kind of fly. Well, not really. They can whirl those big platypus tails around like propellers, even that doesn't get them off the ground but but the lift does make them light enough to climb up walls, even across ceilings, though they are somewhat plump creatures to be doing that. And they are not exactly stealthy at this point, you can hear their tails going "WHIRRRRRR WUB WUB WUB"

You can possibly keep one as a pet. They can be persuaded to curl up in boxes or barrels, like cats, but sometimes dangerous strangers can use them as guards, (making sure no-one can bring tools or metal tricks into their lairs) and big cities have carefully controlled pet versions for detecting metal, (the license is very expensive and you are legally responsible for all the metal they eat).

But the only really bad thing is that they like water and often insist on being bathed, but if you let them into the bath they eat the taps and then the room floods.

MEN-OF-BONES

You must not dance with men of bones,

Do not go with them to their homes.

At night they rise to leap and play,

And will not dance in light of day.

Of bones they are and bones they keep,

They'll dance with yours to make them leap!

Of bones they are and bones they want,

Don't ask to stop, because they won't!

Of bones they are and yours will move,

They wriggle out and start to groove!

Of bones they are, so pale and thin,

They leave you as a bag of skin!

You must not dance with boney men,

So grab your bones and keep them in!

Where do the Skeletons come from?

From within. The ultimate conspiracy.

The great threat of the Men-Of-Bones is their music and their dance, (also that they can't drown or starve). They all move together, as if they are always dancing, and the music they are moving to is the music of the stars, and of the darkness between the stars, the darkness behind your eyes, so they don't dance, or even move, in daylight.

The way they are dangerous is that they make your bones want to dance. If they can form a circle around you, they can make your bones dance right out of your skin, leaving you alive. but just a bag person, like a floppy leech. To fix that you need to get your bones back, and get a surgeon or a docter to shove them back up inside you.

To get the bones back you have to find them when they are sleeping. You have to find the SKELTON BED, (A big bed they all climb into), and get the bones and either put pins where their ears would be, or put ear muffs on them, or just wrap them in cotton wool.

They move about like slapstick comedians. Their love of music is also their weakness, if you can play them a dancing tune you can often get them dancing your way, (they will dance you right out of your skin otherwise).

They also toot horns.

They can get more men of bones by having big dance parties on graveyards and calling up all the buried skeletons to dance.

They become really dangerous when you have a whole bunch of them, like a big carnival of bones. Then they can parade through the night, open doors and dance people out of their homes, dancing away with their bones.

Luckily there are not that many skeletons about.

Lots of questionable wizardly types have a handful of Men-Of-Bones as servants. The magic music needed to animate them is not too difficult to grasp at a basic level, and even comes intuitively to some. Once you have them up and capering about, they will usually perform any simple task you request, so long as they can dance and caper while doing it.