On trucking with demons (and beastfolken!)

My most sincere apologies! I slipped up – I forgot completely that beaastmen are not actually in the DCC RPG rulebook – they do however go all the way back to the beginning, Sail the Sunless Sea (check title)

Nonetheless I reference them many times in the book, statless, as I mistakenly thought they were in the core.  My bad and I should have checked.

In any case for those that need them here’s an appropriate stat block for beast folk, based off of (but not identical to) the classic Harley Stroh stats from Starless. (Wasn’t sure if I could reproduce them but also hey look I spun it.)

Bestialfolk (1-6) Init. +1; Atk spear +0 melee (1d6); AC 12; HD 1d8; hp 3 each; MV 30’; Act 1d20; SV Fort +1, Ref +1, Will -1; AL C.

For each Bestial encountered, roll 1d12 and 1d14 and combine the results to determine their appearance.

Beast folk are dim-witted, only marginally social creatures that are driven by a combination of instinct and both craven and darker urges that make it difficult for even the smartest of them to effectively reason.   They often appear to move as a pack or hive mob with no pretense of sentience.   Rare individuals may differ.

Tamarine breed beastfolken – roll 1d12 twice and combine the results

1.       Cow headed

2.      Scorpion tailed (attacks for 1d4)

3.      Horse hooved

4.      Covered in fine black and brown fur, some leathery webbing at the fingers and toes.

5.      Wasp head, mandible, antennae, compound eyes, buzzing from tiny vestigial wings. 

6.      Covered in fine Bee-like hairs, constantly covered in pollen

7.      Horse headed

8.     The digitigrade hind paws of a Wolf

9.      The horns of a Goat

10.   Serpent scaled

11.   large muscled body covered in short hair, and an additional head – that off a (1) dog (2) wolf (3) saber tooth (5) Lamprey (5) A feral, leonine head and mane (6) bee head

12.  A bejeweled dragonfly

1.       Doughy, leathern skin

2.      Shiny black-brown chitinous resin covering skin

3.      Mane of (1-3) horse (4-6) lion

4.      Thick leathery skin

5.      The blind eyes, large ears, and screech of a bat

6.      Six to eight eyes spread out across the face in two rows of three or triple rows of two.

7.      A thick luscious horse tail

8.     Horns of a goat, perpetually streaked with gore

9.      Oily black secretions constantly seep from enormous skin pores

10.   Thick bristly orange fur

11.    Wings and segments suggesting a bejeweled dragon-fly like body.  Wearing armor is impossible.

12.  Body is segmented into thorax and abdomen; wasp-like body with vestigial wings, goes about on all fours.

And now a question I'm surrprised I don 't get more often

Why would any civilized person ally with such a monstrous spirit as the red queen?

Because she legitimately will help you, and isn’t likely to screw you over unless you have first done so to her.  She has long offered her 'gifts' most readily to  those who place themselves in harm’s way – prostitutes and sex workers especially but also gladiators, professional fighters and those who do what they must to survive.   Sorcerers who seek the safety to a cushy court wizard position will find themselves increasinly challeneged by her patronage.  In rare instances, the Pandoramicum has been known to favor princes and princesses, and more commonly across the worlds down through the ages she is said to have watched over the smallest of children, most especialy the abandoned.....

In short, Tamarah is among the most "reasonable" of demons, but she remains a demon and a potent one. 
Play-wise, of course, Tamarah is there for those who seek to experience the patronage of a dicey untrustworthy cosmic power that equalmuch seeks to use them as they use it in the finest Moorcockian tradition.

Take the first sip here
Turn off your mind relax and float downstream. It is not dying, it is not dying. Lay down all thoughts surrender to the void - it is shining. It is shining. 

Teoc’fnenahl - A succubus and trader in fate

The demon before you has pale skin, chalk in colour but of much smoother, richer texture, such that it almost but not quite seethes with an inner glow of red.   Her eyes are swollen red orbs shot through with black and yellow veins, irises that are either snake or cat-like (depending on the angle) watch you with an immortal’s patience.  Her hair is that precise, freshly shed blood colour, spilling out behind her and around her shoulders like so much liquid silk.

Y-you can’t look at her mouth. Those lips.  Thinking stops immediately-

Fanged.  You remember that they are fanged and look away.  She chuckles, a throaty and knowing sound.

There is a table, covered in a light layer of what seems black felt, in a semicircle around her.   “Her” seems appropriate but you really don’t know.  The last one had skin of actual smoke and smoldering ash….which was unsettling.

She laughs again, challenging now, a deep rustling of ...curtains? Behind her.

They say her kind has wings.

There is a crack and she lays a spread from a deck of cards before you.   

Smiling

(INVITING - THOSE FANGS - perfect, warm, hopeless THOSE FANGS),

 Perfect lilac and pearl fingernails tracing the silver edges of the plaques, both offer and obscene caress.  

            “Cards?” musical. Lower Like the perfect card shark, with every passing deal or shuffle of the cards the deck itself changes shape and colour and detail.  

Any game of chance played with the aid of cards may be played here for any stakes that either will claim or have.   This does mean that the cards can be literally anything that Teoc wants them to be, up to and including any flavour of Tarot Deck or such things as Decks of Many Things etc. whether they can duplicate Amber trumps is up to the Judge)  

          “Door?” Just behind and to the right of her, sliding open like a hidden door panel in the air itself, is a rectangular doorway of irregular dimension and coruscating purple and red light.   “Where do you wish to be today?  Who do you want to be?”

She can open a door to theoretically anywhere in the multiverse; likely as that she is to attempt to trick the characters to walk through into a type of particular place - the inside of someone’s mind, into another’s body, etc etc.  (This is in fact her preferred means of disposing of irritating mortals;  some have found themselves drug addicts in 1970s new york, stone statues magically bound to watch sorcerer’s treasure rooms, or within some bard’s inner world, in addition to ‘merely’ sending people to their sun, or the 8th Hell, or the Lightless Flesh Realm of Infinite Crawling Life, or ancient Blackmoor, or wherever/whenever.).

        “RED?”  The moment any but the slightest interest is shown a decanter will appear, and she will pour the purest form of what seems to be pure liquid colour into the hexagonal but transparent glass.

          “What is it?”

          She proffers the glass to you. “It is RED.  Drink it, and feel the fire burn you.”

Other services she can offer

She is happy to inseminate one.  If for some reason there are difficulties in this arena, or one merely wishes to taste sex of the Pit, she will be happy to indulge you.  If two (or more*) people which to procreate despite biological or other differences she will be happy to “intercede as facilitator,” even providing or procuring additional ‘genetic material’ as needed.  

She will be equally happy to indulge any other such carnal acts and in any form desired.  She will know any particular tastes or desires of course, sometimes before the victim er possessor themself knows.   

Despite the above she does not offer actual time travel (at least not into the past, she can almost certainly send people into the / a future at will) as, while a demon, being a succubus she has sufficient sense of self to find the paradoxes thus unleashed personally threatening; consequently she will instead send characters into one of the infinite parallel worldlines most similar to the time and place in which the characters describe.  IF one does not exist she can probably create a (small) pocket dimension that resembles one, at least for a while (say … an adventure session).  

* Three parents via succubus? This practice is called "a Marriage in Hell”: and it is exactly what it says on the tin....despite expectations such a child will be fully mortal with perhaps an extra demon trait or so and a slight proclivity towards chaos and magic. I.e. most 0 level would-be wizard characters could qualify.

Teoc’fnenahl is merely one of the many members of Tamarah's court that you may meet in the Book of Scarlet Abomination (drive thru link) now available for the DCC rpg. 

The CHALICE GOAT HAS RISEN

Art, obviously by  zdzislaw beksinski and not me.  Duh. No I can't afford Bekinski, also he's dead. 

Who is the Red Queen?
She is the Liberator - a slave who freed herself in every conceivable way.  She will show you the way. Laugh. Be Free.
She is the avenger - the deliverer of our enemeis and the avenger of the marginalized
She is the Mother of Monsters.
You will become like her.
Have you heard the Good News about Tamarah?

Get it here