GLOGust 2026 Challenge 6: GLOG Class: The Tetraptych-Backed Orphans

GLOGust

With special thanks to Locheil for the challenge.

The challenge for this post is "A short class with four A templates, which can be taken in any order.".

Pity the one who is alone in this world, for they have no family.

You have three siblings - a father, once, but he is dead now.

He was a painter of some renown. You are your siblings were to be his magnum opus. He was not a kind man, but making you special made up for that. There is a painting on your back, but it is not complete. It is meant to be paired with the paintings on the backs of your siblings. They are impossible paintings which never fade, with depth and hues that flesh shouldn't support.

Your siblings get whichever templates you didn't pick. The player to your left comes up with one sibling, the player to your right another, and the player across from you the last - or whatever other arrangement you can agree on.

Roll a d4 to determine which of you was responsible for your father's death. One of your siblings is friendly towards you, one is neutral, and one is hostile.

To attain another Tetraptych-Backed Orphan template you must gain sufficient XP in the usual way, and also force one of your siblings to admit defeat and surrender their share of your father's magnum opus to you.

GLOG Class: The Tetraptych-Backed Orphans
Equipment: Smock, 2d6 silver coins, easel, painting supplies
+1 to others' saves vs. your illusions for every Tetraptych-Backed Orphan template you have (because this is Many Rats on a Stick GLOG and saves are roll-under)

A, Cerulean: Blue Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

OR

A, Cinnabar: Red Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

OR

A, Smaragdine: Green Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

OR

A, Silver: Metallic Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

Pigments: Touch something with a colour matching a pigment you possess. Record the image of that something under your palette slots. Afterwards, you can paint an illusion of the image of that something in the air with your hands, expending it from your palette. This takes one round of action. To begin with, your illusions are still, silent, and can be no bigger than you are, though as you acquire more templates this will change. Your illusions last a day, or until something interacts with them enough to disrupt the pigment that composes them. Something can only be drawn on for its pigment once.

Palette Slots: A parallel inventory, but only for harvested pigments.

Δ Template - Deep Purple: 
Acquire the Cerulean and Cinnabar pigments.
If a creature fails a save against your illusions, they will be psychosomatically affected by it as if they're real, e.g. feel the resistance of an illusory wall, or take non-lethal damage from the pain of an illusory flame, and so on and so on.

Δ Template - Tealios: 
Acquire the Cerulean and Smaragdine pigments.
Your can now blow pigment away on your breath, creating an illusion anywhere within your line of sight.

Δ Template - Azure: 
Acquire the Cerulean and Silver pigments.
Your illusions can now be arbitrarily large, so long as the upper limit of their size is defined by other illusions you've painted - e.g. if you paint three illusions creating a triangle with 50-feet-long sides, you can then create another illusion within the bounds of this triangle that is as big as the triangle's area.

Δ Template - Muddling: 
Acquire the Cinnabar and Smaragdine pigments.
You can mix two or more pigments you've acquired, creating a new pigment with aspects of its component-pigments, destroying the components in the process. E.g. you could take a pigment of "bloodied bandit" and mix it with a pigment of "tree" to create a pigment of "bloodied bandit in a tree" or "bloody tree" or "bandit in a tree costume" or whatever else.

Δ Template - Gules: 
Acquire the Cinnabar and Silver pigments.
Illusions can now be animated and produce noise appropriate to what they're made in the image of.

Δ Template - Vert: 
Acquire the Smaragdine and Silver pigments.
When you create an illusion, choose one of two: Either the illusion now lasts a week, or they still last a day but being interacted with isn't enough to disrupt them anymore.

Δ Template - Primeall:
Acquire the Cerulean, Cinnabar, and Smaragdine pigments.
You can paint an illusion over a creature, and if they fail their save they will believe that they are whatever you've painted them to be until the illusion ends or another sees through the illusion and shakes them out of it.

Δ Template - Red Sun Over Paradise:
Acquire the Cerulean, Cinnabar, and Silver pigments.
When you create an illusion you can shorten its lifespan to effectively make it real. It will interact and act with the world as though it is what it is the image of. If the illusion would otherwise last a day it now lasts 1d6 rounds, and if it would last a week it now lasts 1d6 ten-minute turns.

Δ Template - Rust:
Acquire the Cerulean, Smaragdine, and Silver pigments.
If an illusion you create has eyes you can see through them, and if it has ears you can hear through them, and so on and suchlike.

Δ Template - Tinsel:
Acquire the Silver, Cinnabar, and Smaragdine pigments.
Your illusions can be imbued with the intelligence of whatever their pigment depicts, and commanded to react independently to circumstances accordingly.

Δ Template - Painted World:
Acquire all templates of the Tetraptych-Backed Orphans.

Your work is complete. You are complete.

The painting on your back can become a portal to another world. It will be a world of your own making.

The world is a pocket world, bordered by colourless empty space. It may be modeled as a pointcrawl, hexcrawl, a depthcrawl, or suchlike as you determine space to work within it.

Each pigment you're currently holding can be made into a location, creature, object, etc. within your world.

You can at any point detach the painting from your back to make it a free-standing portal, but cannot thereafter move it. You can control the passage of things through your portal, and detect when something is trying to do so.

GLOGust 2026 Challenge 1: Some Artefacts - The Second Dossier

GLOGust

With special thanks to Phlox for the challenge.

The challenge for this post is "Sequel to a Blogpost from Last Year". The blogpost from last year I'm sequelizing is this one: https://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2025/07/some-artefacts-first-dossier.html. Both this post and the last are riffing off this post: https://crateredland.blogspot.com/2025/07/facility-artefact-classification.html by friend of the blog Lexi.

Oχ - Fuck Your Excuses In The Ass!: A Bastard's Guide To Making Success Your Bitch: A profanity-laden self-help guide which includes nuggets of wisdom such as "Don't be a PUSSY when it comes to the next Big Thing!" and "If you're not WORKING UP a sweat in the Smith Machine, you're gonna be sweating in the boardroom, you stupid PIECE of SHIT!". Readers of the book, particularly when they attempt to apply its advice to their lives, exhibit a gradual decline in vocabulary and impulse control, losing the ability to express themselves except with excessive expletives (and in especially serious cases with nothing but expletives), and experiencing both more intense emotions and a weakening filter between those emotions and immediate action. Previous serious cases of exposure to this book's memetic effect have been able to be passed off as, and were likely exacerbated by, stimulant psychosis.

Lτ - The Anywhere Room: Tudor-style room without furniture. Stained wooden paneling, molded plaster ceiling, velvet curtains covering a window along one wall letting diffuse light in. Scratches along every reachable surface, but the blood has been cleaned out. Accessible from any door via a precise pattern of knocks - however once entered you cannot leave until someone else has taken your place. Do not look out the window.

EΨ - The Balsam Lake Lillypadian: An obscure cryptid which resembles a broad, flat, translucent disc with innumerable hair-thin tendrils trailing from its underside. According to local lore, the Lillypadian only comes out when it rains - a time during which it is nigh-invisible. Known only to the Organization, however, is the fact that when it rains the Lillypadian extracts buried corpses from their graves and washes them in rivers, somehow reducing them and reanimating them into roughly one-foot-tall "servitors" which cohabitate with the cryptid in its lairs. These servitors wear out over the course of months, and the Lillypadian maintains a group of six to eight of the things at once. The skeletons of disposed-of servitors have led to rumours of another cryptid in the area: a minuscule counterpart to Bigfoot. The Lillypadian is monitored by an observation team masquerading as an off-the-grid homesteader married couple, though recent reports suggest that the "wife" of the pair is developing an erotic obsession with the entity.

OΚ - Guilty Party: A fruit-themed board game which appears to groups of friends in isolated locations - holiday cabins and suchlike. It was originally believed that the game was placed in these locations by a human aide, but this has been ruled out after the game disappeared from the locked briefcase of a containment team while it was handcuffed to the team lead's wrist. The game's aim seems to be to turn those who play it against each other to the point of fatal violence. This is accomplished via special actions and activities the game prompts in play, including the Court of Apple-eals, the Punch-Down Bowl, the Confess-ction Booth, and the Bloody Ban-ana. Refusing to continue to play the game once it's begun, or refusing to participate in a drawn activity, will get the offending player placed in the Pear-ade of Agonies.

PΩ - The Mess at Izzy's Pastaria: Temporal recursions - that is to say, time loops - are recurrent-enough anomalous phenomenon to have their own generally-agreed-upon sub-categories. Some Organization scientists even believe that all time loops have the same source, stemming from the same agency or entity using them to turn sections of our space-time into a Petri dish. As time loops can only really be recognized by those outside them after they've ended, they are identified by what they leave behind - insensitively termed "causal poop". The Mess is a type I temporal recursion, because its causal poop is of the Long-Term Memory Overgrowth Syndrome variety - the people stuck in it apparently retained their memories of prior loops, leading to cumulative growth of nervous tissue that eventually made their heads explode all over Izzy's Pastaria (a family establishment which has never recovered reputationally from the incident).

Eτ - The Lady at the Crossing on 45th Street: Apparently an old lady with heavy make-up, a leopard-print coat, and big golden hoop earrings. If you offer to help her across the street she'll accept, and while walking with you share profanity-laden gossip about random people in your life that will always be true. Who these people will be and how deep the gossip is are random. The lady is surprisingly unsteady, and if allowed to stumble or if one acts offended at what she says, she will turn her insults on you, and every one of them will turn out to be true. Once helped across, the lady won't appear again for about a week. Where she comes from and where she goes after are as yet unknown. Agents making use of the ladies' services are required to report any gossip she spills about their superiors in the Organization.

Lβ - The House With Many Walls: A place well-known in occulture, second in infamy perhaps only to the Public Universal Bathroom. The firm Euler & Crake have in the last couple years launched expeditions into the House to colonize it, make it into a globally-accessible safehouse and transit node, and in their typical ruthlessly efficient manner have made great strides towards this.

OΔ - Mug of White Male Tears: A malformed mug somewhere in appearance between a Pythagorean cup, a Klein bottle, and the Elephant's Foot. The paint-job is much higher quality - rings of dainty little fuchsias on a white background. The mug is a hyper-dimensional object with internal reservoirs of hard-to-measure volumes. These reservoirs can be filled with various sorts of tears to produce various effects, from clouds of butterflies somehow still alive despite their hemolyph being replaced with champagne, to an insatiable cannibalistic hunger for eyeballs, to opening liquid portals to another dimension - apparently depending on the age and gender of the person the tears came from, the emotion that caused them to shed the tears, and other as-yet-unidentified factors. Study of these effects has been complicated by the aforementioned hyper-geometry of the object - tear-reservoirs mixing internally seems to correlate with undesirable outcomes.

Pχ - The Airce Heebie-Jeebies: A psychosomatic disorder endemic to the mountain resort town of Airce, Alberta. Those affected report itchiness, the sense that something living is moving through the pipes of their home, and a compulsion to scoop up, melt, and/or eat snow. The disorder appears in new arrivals, and disappears within a few months of living in Airce. The Organization wouldn't normally make a file on something like this, but a higher-up's niece recently moved to Airce and moved resources to make it happen.

Eπ - Green Mary: A woman who appears several-months pregnant. Mary is not her actual name. She is pregnant with a tree. Prone to automatic writing with whatever materials are available - for her comfort paper and pens are to be provided to her. Organization scientists are attempting to decipher her writings, but so far the real value of keeping her contained has been frustrating the cultist weirdos who venerate her as a conduit to their deities.

GLOGust 2026 Challenge 4: Some Unusual Crops

GLOGust

With special thanks to me for the challenge.

I.

Birdfisher Moss: A distant relative of the sundew, a carnivorous, symbiotic plant that dangles in tangled sheets from the branches they're rooted in, sharing a portion of the nutrients extracted from creatures that fly or crawl into their clutches with their host-tree.

The people who farm Birdfisher Moss supplement it with forage, as though it can be made into a fine stew or salad it alone cannot sustain like grains can - though besides being eaten, it can also be worked into rope, and boiled down with certain herbs to preserve its aroma as a perfume while removing its pest-attracting property. With this rope they live among the trees, seeing getting on the ground and walking as similar to having to get out of your car to push it along.

But the forests are shrinking against the fire and machetes of those who farm more productive crops, and the people are driven out to find new ways of living, or die. Many have become adventurers - though they can struggle with flat maps and cardinal directions, they've got a strongly-developed ability to memorize and navigate three-dimensional spaces that makes them well-suited to the underworld.

II.

The Hoherb Colony: The simulacrum-nations of the Hoherb Plateau derive their sustenance, legitimacy, and existence from the stem of the eternal roots which they spring from - for the Hoherb Plateau is encrusted around a clonal colony of trees, themselves capable of cloning other things. War is conducted not through the seizing of territory or the slaughter of populations (for on the Plateau both of these are pointless) but by desecrating and destroying an enemy nation's sacred, central stem. The city of Krammethad is an innovator in this unique form of warfare. Not content with encircling its stem with a wall, or importing venomous serpents to fill the tunnels of sappers, it has armoured its stem in stone from root to highest leaf. Light is allowed to enter through balistraria-windows, and patrols are round-the-clock.

III.

Yeoman's Delight: A flower of pleasing though unexceptional appearance, and a sensitive constitution. Growing it requires a dedicated plot and gardener, and for this reason is the purview of the upper classes. The flower's value is in its nectar, which is stimulating and psychedelic (and it requires quite a few flowers to supply a party, again limiting it to those with leisure-time and leisure-land).

The land in which Yeoman's Delight is farmed practices partible inheritance, and together with the mental effects of regular use of the nectar this has led to a profusion of secret societies with elaborate codes and cosmologies, enabling inter-family conspiracy to cement alliances without marriage and eliminate rival heirs. The foulest weapon of these secret societies are the Soulless (so named for being excluded from the Registry of Souls, due to bastardry or incest or being an orphan surrendered and reported dead), locked away in wretched conditions in attics and cellars and sheds, their minds blasted by mega-doses of the nectar into fearless dogmatic servitude.

IV.

Grincies: Technically not a crop, but functionally so - aquatic insect-nymphs, kept in ponds, and fed on all manner of scraps, converting waste into protein. Their growth is monitored by village elders as a matter of life or death, as metamorphosed into adults they become swift, vicious, and terribly venomous. When it's judged that a pond is too close to maturity an algal bloom is engineered to smother it, and the whole thing is dredged out. Each season a few grincies are transplanted to a water-filled pot to parent the next generation for harvesting.

Armies are loathe to march through villages known to farm grincies - to effectively salt the earth behind them the villagers will leave the pond unmanaged, and soon enough those passing through the abandoned place will find themselves passing through a buzzing, burning hell. 

V.

Chaos Grass: Each stalk is more unique than a snowflake, exhibiting extreme morphological variance with only a few common features between them all. Their riotous iridescence, while beautiful, will give you a headache if you stare too long. Their roots are sharp-tipped and eat right through stone. All the grass is a potent narcotic - when smoked, when steeped into tea, when chewed - even minute differences in preparation and consumption can induce wildly different effects, making the stuff highly addictive to those who crave novelty. On top of that, building up tolerance to chaos grass is impossible. Not too long ago people came to the Chaos Grass thinking they could make a tidy profit off it. They set up farms, shipped in workers, set up supply chains stretching across the ocean.

The grass itself seemed to reject their efforts. It concealed and provided for workers who fled the brutal conditions. It tore down walls and fed fires that razed outposts. Those who became accustomed to its smoke did not become docile consumers, but agitated and uncannily-coordinated saboteurs.

The enterprise was judged a net loss and abandoned, and many of those entrusted to oversee it were abandoned as well. The farms and their practices disrupted the grass's natural checks. Every year the grass grows out a little further.

GLOGust 2026 Challenge 2: Guest Stars on Frightening Anachronisms

GLOGust

With special thanks to Primeumaton for the challenge.

I combined two of Prime's challenges for this one, asking a selection of friends of the blog to provide their opinions on frightening anachronisms they like to include in their games... 'anachronism', fun word to say, like 'chthonian':

From deus ex parabola:

"I love a good Tube Station
tile floors, flickering cold lights on the ceiling, echoing tunnels
the kids talk a lot about "liminal spaces", and there's something to that
Grubby tiles and narrow staircases..."

From phlox:

"Well, I’m a sucker for portals into the near future where everything sucks because the PCs weren’t there to stop them from getting worse. I suppose that’s a frightening in-game anachronism."

From Eldritch Eternity:

"Geological ones are good.
Violations of how deposition is supposed to go. Younger fossils below older ones.
I saw a tumblr post that had a really good one. "fossils billions of years old at the top layer, and at the bottom, still rotting and bleeding carcasses of not yet extinct animals""

From maxcan7:

"I'm thinking about like tsukumogami. As technology gets more advanced over the 20th and 21st century, tsukumogami become more dangerous
Since tsukumogami develop over 100 years, the acceleration of technology makes them anachronistic
The tsukumogami of today would be the technological cutting edge of the 1920s fighting back against the technology of today
The idea needs more thought but that's what came to mind"

From Mikesmix:

"The printing press is a fun one
I like having newspapers in settings where they don't belong
Just the general idea that history in the setting isn't quite in the right order
People in BC times actually knowing that they are in BC times but not knowing what the years are counting down towards...
Dragons seen in the past are an anachronism. Dragons were once the gods of the world, rendered monstrous and killable once their pantheon was deposed...
Ooo ooo I always love to throw in WWI stuff into fantasy when we get to like planes of warfare
Barbed wire trenches appearing in the Shire"

From Whisperling:

"I once ran a game where spirits were tied to ideas. The noosphere was also timeless, so you could have a demon of television static appearing in ancient egypt.

So, why doesn't that sort of thing happen anymore with technology still yet to be invented? Funny you should ask. Maybe it does happen, and it's just that we don't know it when we see it. But maybe we're at the end of time."

Whisperling also made this relevant post: https://glassziggurat.blogspot.com/2026/08/100-modern-things-itd-be-messed-up-to.html 

From Hawkbeetle:

"Much as it shames me to admit it, all of the real games i’ve run that have lasted more than one session have been of the urban fantasy type, and though i suppose anachronism is sort of the central conceit of a game like that the presence of vampires in seattle isn’t really the kind of thing i think that kind of prompt asks for. It may be overplayed, but I am however very much a fan of anachronism in the sort of space-opera sense.. there’s a bunch of old material I wrote on it, mostly ancient settings I never did anything with… there was a space-mercenary thing I wrote at some point where the starting equipment list had railguns alongside katanas and that imperial japanese frogman bomb-on-a-stick thing… example characters show off the vibes a bit i think...

There was another setting I had from a similar time period (actually a full year earlier) where I contrived a scenario in which there was some sort of bebop-esque mass-incomplete-terraforming of the entire solar system, followed by a million-year dark age that left humanity to diverge into space-opera mutants inside the relictual venusian bio-aerostats and deep-lunar engineered hydrothermal caverns before the moon-people discovered miracle hydrox-fuel generating nanotech and used it to ride the remmanant space elevators with primitive spaceships into solar-system-spanning empire with the bare minimum amount of tech required to build a metal chamber large enough to hold a man exclusively so i could justify spaceships fighting at visual range with manually piloted torpedos because the posthumans rediscovered spaceflight before computers or even like, good telescopes"

From theisticGilthoniel:

"hm hmm
something that I included in my Mazes and Minotaurs campaign is the pre-tomb of the seer Tiresias, where his death, which has not happened yet, is honored.
hmmm
oh, Hannibal Barca.
nothing more frightening than inexplicable war elephants

I feel like in general the unexplained appearance of some famous and catalytic Great Man of History tends to go down well
like, if I'm playing a fantasy game, and I hear that there is some villainous mastermind in the next kingdom over whose taking control, and I go and find out that it is Napoleon Bonaparte, that's somehow more frightening than if it was Snakespell Poisonloins the 10th level wizard
If I'm playing a modern game and the npc in the shady research facility that I'm talking to is actually Lao Tze, there's no coming back from that.

All the players plans and conceptions are unsteadied, and you know that this guy is a big deal who probably has adapted frighteningly well to whatever setting he finds himself in, and you are probably gonna get your ass handed to you"

From gendernihilist (in lieu of a link to her blog, gendernihilist has instead provided a link to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund):

"most frightening anachronistic thing I include: way back beyond, before hominini times, giant bugs crawled...much more than dinosaurs, these prehistoric freaks are frightening 

most frightening anachronistic thing I want to include: the party makes their way into a clearing, or perhaps a floor of a dungeon with an entrance from the floor above to an outer room teeming with some kind of life (fungal, perhaps, some kind of magical greenhouse floor, who knows, clearing maybe works better) and as they make their way towards the center of the clearing/dungeon floor, the life is dying, dying, dead, and corpses of animals and beasts and humanoids litter the innermost places, and there in the center is a rod of radioactive material, perhaps with a hilt to wield it by, that is so severely radioactive that just having it in (non-bag of holding/portable hole/etc, mundane) a backpack or sack or whatever will begin to cause serious radiation sickness for the whole party if they should remove it and take it with them, but of course you just describe it as you would any strange rod in a dungeon, which adventures are wont to pilfer and try to deduce magical effects of and wield, but it would be their doom to do so"

From Louis Garamond:

"Frightening Anachronisms:
Barbed Wire
Amphetamines and Synthetic Opioids
Refined Petroleum Byproducts
...
Maybe that's it? Media Theory that is out of its time?" 

From Locheil:

"oh aye, hee
hmm
i like giving otherworldly creatures inexplicable industrial capacity / machinery beyond mortal ken"

From Priestess of Spiders:

"Idk I haven't proofread it so it's probably a bit goofy but here ya go. Inspired partially by Mormon Bigfoot and that book Them And Us which claims neanderthals were actually cannibalistic superpredators lol. Pictures included if you want illustrations, image #1 is from One Million Years B.C. image #2 is from Them And Us, image #3 is from Quest for Fire

Wolves with Knives

"And He said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth." (Genesis 4:10-12)

"For that bitter murder, the killing of Abel, all-ruling Father, the kindred of Cain crushed with His vengeance; in the feud He rejoiced not, but far away drove him from kindred and kind, that crime to atone for, meter of Justice. Thence ill-favored creatures, Elves and giants, monsters of ocean, came into being, and the giants that longtime grappled with God; He gave them requital." (Beowulf, chapter 2, lines 54-62.)

"And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones." (Enoch I 7:3-6)

"They knapped stones into razor sharp blades but never strung beads or shells onto a leather thong to make a necklace. And of all the pieces of bone that litter their campsites, not one shows evidence of being carved. These contradictions prompted anthropologist John Shea to describe them as “wolves with knives”. What emerges is a paradoxical hominid as merciless as a hyena but caring enough to bury its dead. A creature as ferocious as a tiger, able to bring down a woolly mammoth or rhino, but also capable of constructing 10 metre wide windbreaks. Perhaps the ultimate paradox is a capacity to hunt and eat humans but also to have sex with them." (Them and Us, Chapter VIII.)

- - -

They were born from the second sin, they are the children of murder. They were taught by the Watchers the secret arts of warfare and medicine, but shun art, religion, and even language. They are all that is animalistic and violent that lurks within the hearts and souls of men; beasts without even a shred of sympathy for any but their own kin.

They were human, once, but the Creator's mark has left them more like animals than men. They wear no clothing, and go naked in the wilderness, covered by a thick layer of matted fur which they shed during the warmer months. They are tall, some reaching 8 feet or more, though most remain around 6 and a half feet in height. Their eyes are wide and reflective, with slit pupils like those of serpents. They construct weapons, but even unarmed their teeth are like flint knives and their fists like clubs. Their skin is as tough as cured leather.

For their ancestor's sin, they are cursed to wander the Earth, never to dwell in one place. Even when they have tried to build cities, always they have burned, or fall to plague, or are washed away by flood. The Wolves with Knives gave up their humanity when their father introduced murder into the world, and for this crime they must live as beasts. Over the millennia, most of them have come to enjoy this state of being.

They aren't stupid; they simply are no longer tied to the same rules as mankind, and as a result have a different set of priorities. One does not judge the lion for its poor grasp of philosophy, nor expect the wolf to quote scripture. To them, our preoccupation with art and culture, our squabbling over politics and religion, all of our hopes and dreams and fears, seem like nothing but the most puerile madness. What importance do the fruits of civilization hold to a creature which, since birth, has known only the simple joys of the hunt, the ecstasy of murder? What concern does a creature of flesh have for the spiritual or the divine?

Sometimes they take wives from the children of Adam. Many of them join willingly, rejecting the roles given to them by priests and husbands, choosing instead to laugh and run and dance and spill the blood of beast and man alike. It is not surprising to find a half-dozen or more snarling, naked human women among a pack of Cain's children. The inexperienced will try to "rescue" these creatures, but they are just as much beasts as their husbands, and are likely to slit the throats of their would-be saviors while they sleep before stripping off their unwanted clothing and slipping back out into the night. It must be noted, however, that Daughters of Cain do not seem to take husbands from the children of Adam, or at least not for very long. Men are such fragile things, and without the impetus to protect unborn offspring, they do not last long among the Wolves with Knives.

Stats:

Wolves with Knives
No. Appearing: 5d12
HD: 2d10
AC: as leather
ATK: Knife or Spear, +2 to hit, 1d6 or 1d8 damage
Abilities: Can see by starlight as well as during the day, immune to all but the most extreme cold

Wives of Cain
No. Appearing: 2d6
HD: 1d8
AC: unarmored
ATK: Knife or Spear, +1 to hit, 1d4 or 1d6 damage

Also Antediluvian fantasy because I watched Noah and it was badass"

From purplecthulhu:

"Forgor the exact name and artist, but this is at the SF MOMA
Josie said that this made the fear/foreboding that people had for airplanes as a new technology click for her - the intentional blending between the commercial liner and fighter jet in design
I'll need to think more about this but it's what came immediately to mind"

Hopping On The Naming Bandwagon; Or: Names Across The Planes & Not One But TWO Appendices

Like so: https://sunderedshillings.blogspot.com/2026/08/trying-to-fire-up-bandwagon-names.html

It's funny - not "ha ha" funny, but funny queer - I like people like a dog likes people, just about everyone's got something interesting about them, something to like about them, but I don't like making characters. Worldbuilding and such I enjoy, but not making characters. Perhaps this is what saved me from the terrible fate of "trying to be a writer".

So names I find kind of annoying to come up with. Typically I use www.behindthename.com, search up a word's etymology and/or use google translate to find somewhat-related words to mash together, or just make up some bullshit that sounds good. I'm very bad at coming up with names on the spot, and my boys still make fun of me for coming up with "Tigré LeSharp" like a decade ago.

I didn't like Elden Ring that much, and haven't played their other games, but FromSoft has discovered the Sauce to good fantasy names - Eleum Loyce, Anor Londo, Lost Child of Antiquity, Raya Lucaria, Mohgwyn, etc. 

Also, because I don't like doing this "meta" stuff (it's like an actor looking into the camera), here's some naming schemes for the people of the planes of the Great Wheel:

The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus: They get designations and numbers, no I can't come up with anything more creative than that. Puller of the Crucible Lever in Sector A34-K70 No. 4,987, friends get to call them "Pully" or "Eight'n'seven".

Mount Celestia: These guys are named after virtues (Justice, Mercy, Fortitude, etc.) or they've got those weird Puritan names like "Destroy-Wickedness" or "Follow-The-Righteous".

Arcadia: There's nothing interesting about this place, so the people there give themselves fake wuxia-ass names like Flourishing Orchid in the Whirlwind of Regret or Tiger's Shadow Cast Over A Mountain. They're named like the deathlords in Exalted but nice.

The Twin Paradises of Bytopia: Their names have some kind of duality to them, or their names are palindromes, duality is like the only interesting thing about Bytopia, they've got names like VincentnecniV or Felicity-Felix.

Elysium: They're just Greek. Why not. But it's nice Greek meanings like Antares or Philosophia or whatever.

The Beastlands: They've got names like pets have like Spot or Rover or Tibby or they name themselves what animals would name themselves like Lounges-In-Sunbeams or Happily-Wallowing.

The Olympian Glades of Arborea: (One day I will figure out something interesting to do with these lame extra heavens) - fuuuck I already did Greek for Elysium... ok so they've got... plant names? Is that anything? Chloranthy and Cotyledon and Cyme and so on and suchlike.

Ysgard: They've got strong old-timey names with boastful epithets like Hrodnand the Hunter or Invincible Ysolde.

Limbo: They've got non-binary names like Mud or just kludge words that aren't names together like Cupajoe or Onthetable or Wheelnailcloud.

Pandemonium: Random kludges like Limbo but phonemes instead of words - Bvoolakalaka, Fiotria, Zzeem.

The Infinite Abyss: Only demon lords get real names and they're like Lolth and Pazuzu and Demogorgon, lesser demons might get a nickname based on a distinguishing feature like Milkeye or Shitstink, or if they're useful to their lord they might get one based on their purpose like Slaughter or Hostage-Killer.

Carceri: Everyone's a prisoner and a guard here, discipliner and disciplined... they've got a "face name" and a "mask name" and which is which depends on whether they're overtly or covertly part of the plane's power structure - like one guy might be Mr. Forsythe and El Loco Malvado and another might be Stumpfuck and also Her Ladyship the Dean.

The Grey Waste of Hades: Cenobite names. I know I keep leaning on cenobites for these guys - maybe I'll come up with more later. Pinhead. Chatterer. Sawn-off. Gouged.

Gehenna: (One day I will figure out something interesting to do with these lame extra hells) - uhh these guys get fuckin uhhh Hebrew names - Shemamama, Alivut, La'anot, Vile Shlomo.

The Nine Hells of Baator: (I like to imagine Baator as the name of the plane, which the devils have colonized after exterminating the native Baatorians) - they've got Key of Solomon-ass names and titles and they insist you use them all - e.g. Gavoriax, Grand Duke of the Boiling Baths, He Who Transformeth Men Into Serpents, Knower of the Mansions of the Stars, Master of Thirty-Three Legions.

Acheron: The rank-and-file get demeaning names like Maggot or Chirpy, distinguish yourself and work your way up and you earn a name like Captain Siegebreaker or General Butt Naked or Commander Spineripper.

Appendix Z: A list of names I have previously come up with, and am reposting here

The Republic of Beards/Gherriot, Curdle, Thaw, Itaban's Verge, Jornu, The Brayreyt Peninsula, Bakseo, Glower's Fen, Mandle Maar, Abrogance, Gomgastile, Lahasam, Seobex, Illa Vadenar, Talmer Iffre, Lantham, Holy Muss, Pxtou, Caolao, Secodorem, Mawuz Brin, Gattaband, Shinshir, Begor, Ichepu, THE HOWITZAR (Kaiser of kabooms), Finigal, the scrutch, the Old Stone Soul, Tumeld-Maer, kythe, the Confederacy of Humps, Ixaret, Hickoryholt, Skarlang, Ostelottz, the Tyrannies of Quelm, Theyis, the Republic-in-Chains, Avino, Etilig, Zelorn, Cathalo, Bick, Manap, Ogal, Mizoolah, Habiru, En-Yen-Yee, Warlumderby, Shiersha, Haxty Gron, Portry, Gurdielark, Pisnong, Bellganver, Umeziya, Harmonious Wallab, the Grace-Eater, Sacred Blue, the Land of Cobb, Godlove the Penitent, Chernabbas, Xenarthra, Aka-Shaan, the Prey Kingdoms, Yhanzeng, Sea-Meets-Sky, Snareybrush, Kalekenny, Phu-Neng, Xos-Gotox, Makoma, Gemakurie, Feallu, Thin Parkin, Rosha, Dismund, Fewmish, Fenwall, Kemüt, Dyrnu, Wagata, Oztarak, the Reach of Rot, Rhudreem, Ardenlaor, Aklay, Zalazeel, Old Grouse Hills, Boncloud, Yigadraz, Quilala Bucho, Shyshmu, Kao-Kha-Kao, Arembolus, Llod Mü, Chuma Sumaki, Amartza, the God-in-the-Keg, Demaerel, Abol, Blissum, Potreze, Vasalerat, Shashagosa, Addegastus, Solatio, Lentibelsinea, Hascell, Robin King Agbisherea, Arkhebalataia, Mossassul, Hamorda-morda, T'Jem, Buchevult, the Hushlands, Lyr Branwen, Scrome Blapherd, Mirramessa, the Stonies, Lindhog, Dumaruga, Sarconensis, Imrane, Ogdala, Scrammatelia, Dire Ulixes, Perfidious Albion, Nectanebos, Nystagmus, Modredus, Sonthonax, Aristide, Orfeo & Heurodis, Deirdriu Anbroin, Maesalynbeth, Indolent Semyon, Free Lance Ypolita, Yrento, Voivode Cyrus, Strong-Thewed Uruk, Loathsome Margot, Siglief, Gaheirn, Dirnemir, Berbiolette, Soldeva, Viraloon, Zecho, Pirralene, Lowch, Metton, Peygon, Ashumarit, Yamulpiiki, Darklord Duplicitous

Appendix S: A list of words & phrases I think would make good names for superheroes and supervillains (finally I have an excuse to post this)

Longshoreman, Skyclad, Skyscraper, Dustbunny, Fancyflight , Threnody, Lil Oozy, Death By Chocolate, Flambeau, Shadeshifter, Deadringer, Death Rattle, Shadowboxer, Purr, Knuckledragger, Snoozefest, Mote, Rocketglare, Junkyard Dog, Serum, Stonewear, Dirge, Incognito, Pigeonhole, Deathspiral, Charlatan, Acidreign, Sonicboom, Lancette, Top-Notch, Second-String, Munchkin, Whipsaw, Foie de Grâce, Steeplechaser, Kowtow, Freemartin, Catbird, Beach Bod, Pointbreaker, Polypro, Synth, Stargazer, Zero Day, Painstake, Man-at-Harms, Brack, Killage (like collage but for murder), Doctor Disorder/Shatterbrain (& The DSM 5), Robuster, Snowbird/Snowdrift, Tonguetwister, Tektite, Dropdead, Crystolero, Levy, Firstblood, Eldritch, Rightside/Brightside, Claviger, Turbo Hydroponic, Warhead, Kugelblitz, Derecho, Sunkissed, Arms' Length, Beefcake, Pursuit, Songstress, Battlehound, Tearjerker, Tocsin, Paramount, Intro/Outro, Blackstrap, Bellweather/Belle Weather, Gobsmack, Mortsafe, Jailbird, Team: The Sunday Best, Calling Card, Crux, Eyewitness, Varmint, Stormsarge, Pixie Cut, Grave Danger, Widdershins, Furrow, Undertow, Tailspin, Knightshade, Alkahest, Bodybag, Top Brass, Sidereal, Soulmate, Acumen, Aureate, Bioterror, Primetime, Team: The Birds of Purgatory, Evergreen, Hullaballoo, Frontrunner, Marathon, Team: Traffickstop, Shakedown, Tryst, Verruca, Nostrum, Lullaby, Flipside, Florid, Brainchild, Fleece, Jaunt, Eyrie, Whopside, Headstone, Candyflip, Pepperpot, Blur, Scofflaw, Iron Lion, Halcyon, Hoax, Darling, Melange, Durance, Killerwatt, Debauch, Silver Platter, Bluegrass, Scram, Rasp, Concertina, Nightspot, Bulkhead, Hirsute, Wickerman, Pratfall, Slapstick, Stucco, Oopsie Daisy, Sandbox, Hobnob, Kindread, Carapacious, Lovetap, Heyday, Smokescreen, Smokeshow, Horrorshow, Cottontail, Tailgate, Pepperbox, Capsize, Umpteenth, Exodus, Mechaniacal , Outbreak, Wallflower, Mother Tongue, Landfall, Cityslicker, Trench Rat, Gym Rat, Tailwind, Blood Diamond, Scoundrel, Dichotomy, Handiwork, Windshear, Hardknock, Hell’s Belle, Globster, Fullbore, Painwheel, Pen Pal, Surefire, Piece of Eight, Rite of Passage, Foxhole, Malinger, Gung Ho, Lopside, Goofball, Bugout, Hellbroth, Beknighted, Potbelly, Dogpile, Nemetom, Periplus, Double Trouble, Doubledip, Smithereen, Basketcase, Pigsty, Hogwild, Lollygag, Eureka, Scattershot, Jitterbug, Strafe, Tantrum, Yesteryear, Showstopper, Limelight, Harvestman, Stinkeye, Cornucopia, Draconian, Incendium, Tornadic, Sonor, Syzygy, Alcazar, Badmash, Barmecide, Bezoar, Chanticleer, Chiliad, Dwaal, Famulu, Gallus, Gnathic, Martlet, Mistigris, Noyade, Oretic, Pinguid, Mother Goose, Eclipse, Gullinbursti, Khamsin, Bygone, Thornback, Backbeat, Bloodsport, Anathema, Firebug, Beeline, Malpractice, Hayseed, Pipsqueak, Bakushinchi, Man of the Hour, Debonair, Staredown, Stainless, Dreadnought, Chickenhawk, Earshot, Polliwog, Bingo, Trellis, Doggerel, Fracas, Topspeed, Headcase, Road Gator, Crowdsourcerer, Guttersnipe, Needlenose, Catspaw, Sellsword, Aplombomb, Tinsel, Lametta, Trample, Wannabe, Crooktalon, Fiasco, Packrat, Akimbo, Stampede, Recurve, Tagalong, Buckaroo, Brawn, Straitlace, Knitwit, Hearsay, Windburn, Scrum, Rotgut, Pharaoh, Damascene, Pronto, Derby, Nervewrack, Kibosh, Maven, Meshuga, Knickknack, Tsuris, Nightwitch, Tankette, Char, Clade, Whizbang, Elan, Crying Wolf, Reticle, Rally, Hardboiled, Masterpiece, Sterling, Featherweight, Sleuth, Blood/Blue Moon, Skein, Heartthrob, Ironbound/Hidebound, Creche, Siege, Wallop, Barebones, Leather Daddy, Crybaby, Veto, Bittersweet, Sea Change, Bazooka, Silhouette, Spectator, Mulligan, Flamingo, Wink/Hoodwink, Pesticide, Royal Flush, Paper Tiger, Cumulus, Anthem, Fleetfoot, Rampant, Lionheart, Scrimshaw, Sniffle, Grizzly, Dryad, Rivet, Vorpal, Corona, Moodswing, Canopic, Chorus, Recluse, Tallow, Pathfinder, Sham, Fluster, Pelt, Impetus, Stowaway, Moot, Pinion, Anthill, Powderkeg, Protege, Rancor, Callithrix, Cicatrix, Marmouset, Decorum, Highborne, Charnel, Rendezvous, Ephemeral, Blunderbuss, Rabbithole, Vagabond, Wilt, Rollick, Black Sheep, Fluke, Thespian, Scorch, Scoria, Solace, Zeal, Bushwhack, Singsong, Flock, Multitude, Feedback, Skindeep, Greenthumb, Leeway, Stovepipe, Stormchaser, Acme, Crackerjack, Bravura, Intrepid, Puck, Apeshit, Rottreiter, Mothball, Salvo, Cordial, Heist, Angelface, Armiger, Burnout, Auspice, Martyr, Cloudburst, Lookalike, Bootleg, Forerunner, Tumbleweed, Artifex, Skyrocket, Jackpot, Growthspurt, Hazmat, Vorpal, Maximal, Maxim, Fusillade/Salvo, Aviatrix, Phaneron, Sennet, Thane, Hecatomb, Brand, Coyote Ugly, Top Dog, Sleight, Clandestine, Facade, Charade, Armada, Revhead, Burgermeister, Genome/Gegnome, Haste/Hastewaste, Exile, Conatus, Vermiform,, Creature Feature, Lariat, Collision Course/Crash Course, Little Green Monster, Lawbringer, Sacrosanct, Keelhaul, Gamut, Flea Circus, Morning Glory, Crossfade, Steadfast, Ironsight, Hierophant, Shrinking Violet, Tirade, Hegemon, Woebegone, Brazen, Vaunt, Ardent, Lambent, Ambrosia, Leeway, Whodunit, Florentine, Pilgrim, Jumpstart, Witchhunter, Speakeasy, Crocodile Tears, Maid of Dishonour, Leapfrog, Dashing, Flourish, Stockholm (like the syndrome), Worg, Deep Six, Reprise, Veneer, Grimalkin, Dibs, Knight Errant, Spearhead, Slouching Beast/Rough Beast, Grudge, Gab, Agony Aunt, Palate, Kuga (Serbian plague demon), Nectanebos, Miss Demeanour, Vagary, Muckraker, Mudslinger, Wild Goose, Flimflam, Hell’s Heart, Jaws of Defeat, Deathmetal, Avalanche, DEFCON, Exoplasm, King of Beasts, Pottymouth, Mosaic, Justiciar, Furball, Marmorean, Farrago, Swindler, Drench, Incarnadine, Shoutout, Rictus, Warchest, Esquire, Snake Eyes, Epitaph, Foursquare, Sleepyhead, Dark Horse, Torrent, Raze, Donnybrook, Caracole, Raffle, Doggone, Pointblank, Incognito, Liberty Cap, Forthright, Amigurumi, Jumpscare, Yomi, Manslaughter, Trichosis, Hardline, Gild, Pellmell, Imbroglio, Smashcut, Triage, Egress, Milk of Kindness, Gibs, Somnelier, Splashdown, Blitz, Awooga, Kachi-Kachi, Jetset, Regalia, Highroller, Glassjaw, Musclebound, Crazy Fox, Bogey, Whipcrack, Whiptail, Garland, Lockstep, Punchline, Grok, One Hit Wonder, Hotshot, Absentia, Repertoire, Malomagus, Trifecta, Chatterbox, Mr. Right, Ricochet, Eavesdrop, Bloodblister, Onfall, Diving Belle, Gunplay, Alleycat, Chokechain/Stranglehold, Mollycoddle, Wunderwaffe, Hedgemon, Pintsize, Nectar, Peek, Ninth Circle, Den Mother, Columbiad, Nitpick, Lockdown, Bolide, Coldsnap, Keepsake, Aureole, Menagerie, Quagmire, X-Rayzor, Gravitas, Swagger, Freedom Fry, Bushmeat, Chud, Idol, Odalisque, Turtledove (Bird of Purgatory), Gnash, Alias/Alibi, Tokamak, Joyride, Ikijime, Vault, Scathe, Poltergeist, Starlet, Blank, Longshot/Elfshot/Bloodshot, Gamine, Truphane, Bullpup, Vamprey, Auteur, Negentropic, Boiling Frog, Clawful, Sweetheart, Dero, Argent, Mainline, Throng, Greasetrap, Wreckless, Manhandle, Diamond Duchess (baseball theme), Hooplala, Southpaw, Vigilant, Scale Model, Deadbeat, Trencheon, Bunkerbuster, Hawkshaw, Lummox, Desperado, Unsound, Glare, Torcher, Ruckus, Chalk-Full/Monumental, Breakneck, Carrion King, Pittersplatter, Headliner, Chimneysweep, Chiffon, Hitherthither, Heartburn, Ibid, Pyroclasm, Onslaughter, Marshal, Fishstick, Pest Control, Paraswooper, Whitehot/Redhot, Thwart, Azimuth, Epiphany, Lionshare, Starfall, Blowback, Knack, Milestone, Hissyfit, Bloodmoon, Cold Comfort, Dominant Hand, Timetested, Fulltilt, Thaumatonaut, Ramp-Up, Flak, Slalom, Sector, Outroar, Canacapé, Chiasmus, Creosote, Fettle, Chromatose, Coldforge, Caldera, Cavalcade, Stellaqua, Feathercap, Crocquette, Equipoise, Ozymandias' Work (like Frankenstein's Monster), Brine, Ideal, Loot, Gorm, Kern, Invictus, Blitzen, Prise, Miracle Mile, Jolty, Carbon Copy, Smoking Bee, Saurus, Checkmate, pHazard, Halite, Bud, Hoard, Powerhouse, Hike/Hitchhike, Albedo, Angler, Curglaive, Anguiped, Yen, Team: Honey & Vinegar, Team: Bright - “Bright Makes Right”, Team: Valliance, Team: EpitoWe, Junglelaw, Cookiecutter, Sketch, Spiderweb, Cuirass, Ordeal, Sledgeslammer, Big Game, Lotus, Herkyjerky, Sprout, Diable en Boîte, Axial, Curbstomp, Skedaddle, Tearaway, Cabochon, Wick, Boo, Flotsam, Factotum, Songseer, Sortilege, Roughshod, Turnabout, Screed, Blockhead, Gray Mater, Rabid, Crown Jewel, Plenitude, Hat Trick, Patient Zero, Extradition, Gloamveil, Doline, Doldrum, Brumalia, Rout, Deodand, Mortasheen, Defect Prefect, Oubliette, Lament

GLOGust 2026 Challenge 5: Some People and Places in the Stolen World

GLOGust

With special thanks to bad doctor for the challenge.

The challenge is "Introduce something to another blogger's setting that fundamentally alters it. They MUST incorporate this change, so get permission first and don't be a pill." and bad doctor has given permission for me to write something for her Stolen World setting. This is that:

Edelfull: A village on a screefull slope at the foot of alarmingly tall and sheer cliffs buffeted by winds that smear anyone who attempts to climb them. They stack stones with great precision and when the landslides come they slide the stones together into drafty homes just so. Grapevines grow throughout the village and when the harvest is ripe wild sheep are driven through them and the people have learned to subsist off the fumes of the trampled grapes. Wild pigs were used once but the damn bastard pigs were too gluttonous to leave the mash to rot and many starved. As they live off fumes their teeth have fallen out and their mouths have grown small and they speak only in whispers and wheezes. As they live off fumes of fermenting grapes they are at all times jolly or weepy or angry and drunkenly foppish. Also they need twine and rope and suchlike to hold their inflated skins together or they will burst and fall to earth flayed. As they can float about through the sky they see many things and can carry messages between people and places.

Leanjeddies: A cavortment of olds with the Hounds of Id sniffing about their cerebellums. Nomadic on all fours but stand up while they're talking to people but sometimes they forget how they're supposed to do that and stand on their heads. Trepanned to the last, so that sometimes when the Hounds get in they can be fooled out. Live off begging to chew off people's fingernails and slurp out the dirt from under their toenails, and off mercenary-killings and brigandage.

Eivilley: Once upon a time there was a giant whose mouth was so big that the Ash-Tongued Curse could not put enough of its children in the giant's mouth to keep it from eating and eating and eating everything that belonged to Angbora. So other servants of Angbora came and cut the giant in half and buried one half under one stone and the other half under another. Some time later the village of Eivilley was formed in the cleft between the stones and with them its founders brought the feet of a statue which although were very large had nothing to do with the giant. They wrap chains around the toes of the statue-feet and wind them through holes in the stones which are as big as hills and they raised them up as high as they can and drop them down again and again as quick as they can and this agitates the worm's that crawl in the jaded deep which belong to no god which come up out of the ground and are seized and eaten up. The people here are deaf and prone to leaping and jigging and for this world they are relatively well-fed and if you bring them metal to weld to their chains which are always rusting they will let you share in the feast of worms.

No-People-No-Name: The people who once lived in this village could not figure out a way to live and so they had one last feast and one last dance and one last orgy and then they disguised themselves as their houses up the eaves and inside the walls and under the hearth. They wept and slept in their disguises and forgot they were people. The houses-that-were-people were alone for a time and without people living in them they began to wonder why it was that people lived in houses at all and not the other way around. The village appears well-kept though abandoned but if you linger the houses will try to make a home in you. The children of the villagers' last night as people were born some time back and now are furniture and they are much more reasonable and often move far away.

Cythylyx: A village in a frondling rainforest where the people dig deep pits and lounge in them as the water fills them up because this is the cheapest way to soothe their savaged throats. There are pitcher plants that grow in the forest wide as barrels, and the villagers cultivate them into varieties like the glassware of a chemistry lab. When the pitcher plants catch a thing the villagers scoop a careful portion of the digestive broth into another, smaller pitcher, and so on in gradations of dilution until they are left with a homeopathic cupful of almost entirely acid. Much more painful to quaff than hunger pangs are to endure, but won't kill you in the end.

GLOGust 2026 Challenge 3: Categorization Is Futile? And Other Such Things

GLOGust

With special thanks to Purplecthulhu for the challenge.

The challenge for this prompt is "futility of categorization", and then "perpetual motion" and "resurrection magic" for the Joesky tax because my response to the challenge is too fluffy & self-indulgent.

It's an immense joy when I come across a new work by one of my favourite mangakas (that is: a writer & illustrator of Japanese comics, for you baka gaijin). Just the other day I found a short manga by Atsushi Kaneko-sensei which was relatable to me.

The manga was about a perfectly ordinary man who believed himself to be the yolk of an egg laid by a great green caterpillar covered in glitter, who is to the universe as a hot dog is to its bun, destined to one day metamorphose and bring the solar system under his rule.

I too am a normal man. I obey the laws of my country, and those of other countries I visit. I pay my taxes in the full amount owed. I have no physical or mental irregularities. But that has nothing to do with what I'm about to talk about.

The futility of categorization... not the way I see it. The issue isn't that categorization is futile, because it isn't, and part of making rules and worlds legible enough to play, the issue is lame categorization - having goblins and hobgoblins and bugbears and thouls and hools and scrags and koalinths and so on being 1 HD-step-up versions of each other or simple aquatic flips of each other or whatever else.

There's a web serial writer who goes by Wildbow whose works I have enjoyed (who has recently been laid low by an escaped American bioweapon). Two of these works are Pact and Pale - urban fantasy stories set in a shared kitchen sink universe reminiscent of World of Darkness. The supernatural beings in these stories can be categorized into a great variety of kinds - fairies, goblins, horrors, echoes, typhlotics, spirits, oddfolk, dolls, incarnates, lost, bogeymen, oni, and so on and so on - and each of these kinds have particular tendencies in appearance, symbolism, abilities, weaknesses, etc., that you can make a game of looking at just about any fantasy/horror picture and fit it into the Pact/Pale-verse. As well, these are not generally mere naturalistic species, but socio-politico-magico-religio-yadda-yadda-yadda groupings.

Consider the case of three sorts of evil outsiders in D&D: demons, devils, and yugoloths. What, really, is the distinction between them? One is chaotic, one is lawful, and one is neutral, and I think one has acid resistance or something, but this is lame - we can do better.

Demons - there are no longer "vrocks" or "type II demons" or what have you. All encountered demons are now randomly-generated Boschian kludge-terrors. Perhaps demons under the same demon lord share an aesthetic and behavioural through-line - e.g. Lolth's demons share arachnid features and a tendency to subterfuge - but overall when dealing with demons you're going in ignorant of what exactly they're capable of.

Devils - classic horned & hooved primary-coloured & richly-adorned sorts. This has roots in heads of cattle as the basis of capital. Big on ranks and titles. Devils, of course, are bound by the letter of their word, but each kind also locks something down as law. Perhaps they always strike true but the damage is variable, or you can fight or hide from them, but never really run. There's always an element of certainty in dealing with devils.

Yugoloths - DiTerlizzi, ooo we love DiTerlizzi, don't we folks, we love the art of Tony DiTerlizzi - but a lot of his guys come out to the same long-faced or animal-headed sameyness. Yugoloths are now cenobite-esque guys. Their thing is that they don't interact with damage the way other monsters do, they're beyond pain and wounds and mutilation and so on. Maybe they regenerate, maybe they just shrug it off and keep coming as a cloud of ground meat patty, maybe they're just untouchable, whatever. But they're tenuous - they come when called, and they need an anchor to stay - an artifact, a ritual, a broken heart, whatever, and disrupting the anchor banishes them (as would typical stuff like turning & spells & so on).

Now you could say "Evil spirits shouldn't be categorizable at all! This is disenchanting!", to which I reply "Thunder fire you". I like all the weird cruft that's built up in D&D over the years, and doing it up like this hits the right intersection of interesting gameplay and worldbuilding for me.

Joesky Tax: The Hearts of Concentric Spheres

Lichdom, that is to say, the acquisition of immortality, is held by wider occulture to be the highest achievement of magic (and by liches to be the first step in serious pursuit of magic). It is an acquisition which becomes harder over time, for the gods of death are dutiful sorts, and each lich who finds a narrow path to eternity has the way closed behind them.

One lich (now known only as the Star-Lich, for tying their biological processes to the movements of the heavens and becoming able to hibernate through eons) once tried to share their sort of immortality, via the creation of a set of artifacts.

The Hearts are intricate orbs of metal about the size of two fists held together. Constellations are etched into the metal. The orbs are made of many overlapping partial spheres, connected to the layer above and below them by clockwork and wire, always in motion with no apparent power source.

Stick a Heart in the torso of a fresh corpse to activate it. Dismemberment and other wounds of the corpse will be corrected by extruded wires, so long as the parts are laid nearby. Afterwards, the corpse will spring to life, good as new.

It's an uncomfortable sort of new life. The resurrected can feel the wires twitching in their flesh at all times, and they can no longer sleep - and fortunately no longer need to. They must be constantly moving, and if they try to lie still will convulse as if electrocuted.

The first time one of those resurrected by a Heart remains in the same place longer than a day (place here being a hex or town or dungeon or suchlike) a hellhound comes for them, invisible and inaudible to anyone but them. The day after it's two hellhounds, then four, and so on and so forth. The clock never goes down - if they return to a place they've already been it continues just as they left it. This continues until they are torn apart and dragged off to a terrible fate.