Monster: Nephilim

Nephilim

Stretched rubber skin, frozen shredded flesh, wheezing and deep engine growls, chemical sweat and cold blood

Hit Dice: 7, saves as 7^th-level fighter

Hit Points: 65

Armor: As plate and shield, although they are unarmored.

Move: 2x standard, long lumbering strides

Experience points: ##

Morale: 8

Attacks: 1d10 bite attack OR 1d8 grip, grapples on successful hit

Encountered: One alpha (+1 HD) and 1d4 pack members

Variations:

1d4 head:

              Sea Lion: +1 to attack rolls.

              Whale: +2 to magic-related saves.

              Orca: Can smell blood 1 mile away.

              Walrus: +1d6 damage.

1d2 arms:

              Fins: Double swim speed.

              Human: +1 to non-magic saves.

             

Encounter Flow:

1)       Could I kill this creature?

a.       If yes, kill it.

b.      If no:

                                                               i.      Is it hard to kill?

1.        If yes: wait until I can kill it.

2.       If no: leave it alone.

                                                            ii.      Is it a threat to me?

1.        Test morale. Success: fight. Fail: run away.

Ancient texts speak of the offspring

of God and Man – the Nephilim, the first heroes of the earliest days.

              Maybe in the Real, they were heroes. Maybe the first children of nature and humanity truly were agents of both God and Man: giants among ants, carrying out divine mission on the nascent Earth.

              The Nephilim in the ocean tell a different story: one of fear and naïve conquest. Perhaps the biggest separation between Man and the natural order is that man has and always will manipulate. They are guided by ego and lust and not instinct. Man will kill buffalo for the sport, not for hunger. Our greatest achievement was to separate ourselves from the natural hierarchy.

              Nature also has its own ways. A man facing a lion will almost always die – but that lion usually has good reasons to kill. Nature is terrifying, and although we understand it, we still cannot face it. Not with our frail, thinking bodies.

              Take these two concepts – Man, the manipulator, and God, the natural structure, and combine them. Nephilim in the Ocean were once dominant kings of the natural order. They were the apex.

              One day, a Nephilim killed a sailor for food and felt something. They felt a tinge of conquest. Hunger was replaced by lust – by the primal joy of killing, of utterly dominating another. From then on, the Nephilim were no longer animals.

              They were not entirely human either – but for every high concept they could not grasp, their love of lust and anger grew. Children, essentially, in the hormonally mutated body of a demigod. Beasts who play with corpses like toddlers play with blocks.

              Nephilim are usually about ten to twelve feet tall and look like gigantic muscled humans except for their heads. They are always naked, and completely hairless. Their skin is slick and rubbery like a dolphin. Muscles rope and knot underneath, undulating in constant work.

              Their heads are of animals, most commonly early aquatic mammals. These animal heads are different, more primal. Hairless and smooth, forms of future beasts that just crawled out of the primordial ooze.

             

              A Nephilim sees any target as a toy. Their brains are too under-developed to ever truly learn anything, but their young human intelligence drives them to interact.

              If you see one, run. They are stronger than you. They will play with your limbs until they get bored or hungry. They can never understand language, but they do understand screams – that means that the toy is weak, and that means that it can be killed.

             

Seeing a Nephilim in its prime is terrifying but seeing them in weakness is even more so. They bawl with extreme frustration – deep, soul-cutting animal sobs. It cannot be helped. They will never learn. Even with their poor intelligence, they know this. Some deep part of their budding conscience tells them that they are monsters.

              Do not remind them of this fact. 

Mawhi, the Whaleman, painted by  Marko Miladinović

Nephilim are bigger than Mawhi here - and they wouldn't be wearing clothes. This is a fine figure, though. 

Also this draft has a lot of errors, and I'm for sure not done with it, but I like to keep an archive of ideas how they initially appeared in writing. 

Drums and Oars: The Sons of Clay

      From the very beginning the ocean surrounded us. Long, long ago we crawled out of the waves and became bound to the earth. We learned to walk and hunt. Our development was not in mathematics or literature but in flesh, in ancient battles and primal ritual.

            Many forgot this truth. They did not.

            The Sons of Clay prescribe to no greater reality than that of their own bodies. There is no tomorrow. Today there is hunger and struggle. Their ships move with oars, for wind cannot be trusted. They beat with drums not to create art but to move in the most efficient rhythm. Clothing is only for those that need protection from the elements. Morality and hierarchy are extraneous, tools that the blind use to breed more of their own.

            Can you row?

            Can you fight?

            Then you are welcome.

Their pragmatism does not exclude spirituality. More so than perhaps any other faction, the Sons believe in a greater power. This power is tangible. It is the land of milk and honey: the promised land, Tír na nÓg, Heaven. It is the one memory and belief that they all share. To reach it is the ultimate goal, the culmination of the first man’s dream for warmth and food, carried out by the strongest descendants of the early dreamers of the earth.

            Their origin is hard to trace. Some say that when the first sailor dipped his sails into the waves of the Ocean Beyond, the Sons were born. More likely is the idea that multiple sailors, not drawn by philosophy but survival, came together and formed a fleet out of necessity. It was only later that they began to form their beliefs and their name. Like stones, the ocean weathered them and carved its truth into their bones.

            The first belief was in Paradise. The Promised Land was the easiest truth to believe. After many long years of struggle and conflict the young Sons decided that they were, in fact, sailing for a greater idea. Some of them had seen it, after all – a place overflowing with locusts and honey, gourd trees fat with breasts for unborn children to suckle, a land so bountiful and radiant that they felt it tugging at their spines when they closed their eyes. It was in the Ocean, and they would find it.

            The second belief was in their name – the Sons of Clay. They would find it. Not the haughty gilded ships, packed with mousy philosophers. Not the strange men sealed in iron. Not the stranger, uncertain of his desires: those who did not understand Paradise did not deserve it. Those that did deserve it knew simple truths about the world. In the Real, they were farmers, fisherman, mothers; men and women who lived and died with the earth they stood on. They knew that the best possible existence was routine. They wished to live with the setting of the sun and move with the wind that blew the rain. The earth was their home, and paradise was the ultimate extension of that home. One of them called himself a Son of Clay, in nostalgic remembrance of a legend he remembered from the Real. Others followed, and soon men and women called themselves Sons of Clay and sailed with deep oars across the sea.

            Over time the culture of these explorers expanded and formed into what modern sailors call the Sons of Clay, or colloquially the “oarsmen” for their exclusive use of oars on their ships.

 Organization

            While the Sons are certainly a singular body, their organization lies in a large network of extended families and debts. While they ultimately sail for the same reason, no Son will do anything for another unless they have good reason to, so autonomy among ships is common and encouraged.

            Each individual ship is basically the equivalent of a family in the Real. The ship’s name is just the name of the captain. Since almost all who come to the Ocean come individually without a family, the Sons use a system of naming to establish hierarchy. This is the only form of law: almost anything is tolerated, as long as it observes the rules of the name and the rules of the gift.

Naming

            New sailors in the Sons are nameless. They are referred to as “woman”, “man”, or derogatorily “unnamed”. Once they prove themselves to a ship, most often through an invaluable and notable feat, the captain of the ship reveals the true name of the new Son. The Sons believe that this name was always their name, and that it only becomes revealed when the new member emulates the prowess of Paradise. These names are usually just titles of jobs or professions, like “Bear-Killer” or “Wheat-Culler”, and they correspond to the role that the Son will play in Paradise.

            In naming a new member, that member becomes a part of the higher member’s “family”. A “family” is a group of named Sons and the one who named them. The Son who has naming rights is always the captain of a ship, and those who sail under them are always the ones that they have named. To have naming rights is to have authority. A Son must always respect the orders of the one who revealed their name, or else face death: the only criminal punishment in the Sons.

            Starting new “families” is a common tactic. A Son may leave their family at any time with no consequences. If they sail their own ship or find their own island, they establish naming rights on their new property. The new Son must always remember, however, that they still owe loyalty to the one who initially named them.

            This system of creating new families and naming rights lead to the dissemination of the Sons of Clay across the Ocean. The first to ever have naming rights is Leader of Men, who named the early Sons who then went off to found their own fleets and recruit new members. It is said that he found his name when he asked the winds what his purpose was: and they answered by forming men out of clay to follow him. Following a long chain of succession, Leader of Men has de jure command over most of the Sons. This chain is complicated and at times severed, so the Leader and other high matriarch or patriarch use gift-giving to establish more immediate bonds.

            Gift-Giving

            Establishing debts is also a common tactic among the Sons. By giving a gift from one Son to another, a debt is formed that must be repaid later in some way. These debts are based on an honor system and are not recorded. This tactic is used to form alliances outside of families, but is also used in daily society as well. Giving a small gift of shells to another means that they will repay later in some form, and is used to form marriages and friendships. Among ships, large stones or other unwieldy artifacts are transported across stretches of ocean to signify a bond. Often, these artifacts are impossible to move, and remain stationary: but as long as the Sons recognize that their ownership has changed, they are legitimate. The most notable example is Gift Rock, a large stone structure jutting out of the Ocean which is about as valuable as a declaration of peace.

            The Sons use no currency; gifts are enough.

Goals and Dreams

           

            The promised land is the ultimate goal. Reaching it is the entire purpose of the Sons, and all their actions eventually lead towards this truth. The Sons believe that Paradise is not only hidden geographically, but also spiritually: they may only reach it when they are worthy.

            A Sons of Clay ship, therefore, is doing one of three things at any given time:

1.      Searching for the location of Paradise.

2.      Naming more and more new recruits – once all names have been revealed, Paradise will open.

3.      Gathering artifacts, fighting others, and exploring islands to accomplish the earlier two goals.

When a matriarch or patriarch dies, they are laid down in a simple coffin which is placed on their ship. The crew of that ship sails with them into the open ocean. They do not stop on any islands. Eventually, the entire ship sinks.

      The Sons believe that these dead are waiting. When the gates of Paradise open, they will return to join the living in the joyous discovery of the promised land.

      The Sons of Clay speak of two important artifacts in their culture: the Tablet of All Names, said to contain every object’s true name, which will be used to find the missing Sons, and the Conch of Far Horizons, which will signal the opening of Paradise to the deaf and dead.

Encounters with the Sons of Clay

            The Sons are reasonable and pragmatic. Their purpose is clear, their resolve strong: they do not lie or scam. However, they do not tolerate or observe any laws other than their own. If you have an object that they want, and you are weaker than them, killing you is the most efficient option.

Sons of Clay Template

            Armor: Often unarmored.

            Move: Normal.

            Morale: 8

           

            Most Sons carry a waterskin, light rations, clothes if the climate requires, and a spear, axe, or other simple weapon. They carry their things around their belt, which is a rope harness that fits tightly to their body.

Microdungeon: The Chamber of the Nautilus

A "microdungeon" is a really small adventure that should take any group about an hour. This is written for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but it should work easily with any historical fantasy or fantasy game. I wrote this as something to take my mind off of my larger project and to refresh my creative energy. 

from Wonderlane on flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/5691813463

This is not really a challenge or a delve. The goal with this dungeon, "Chamber of the Nautilus", is to establish an atmosphere. The feeling I'm going for in this is coastal isolation: a sort of forlorn loneliness that one gets when walking across an empty coastline. You can drop this into any coastal hex or use it as the hook to a larger adventure. 

Italicized text is useful to set the scene for either you or your players. Read as much of it as you want. This is the thematic information: sight, touch, taste, feeling and other description. 

All other rules text is in normal font. 

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The entire coastline is quiet, save for the rhythmic lull of the waves. The sand beneath your feet is still damp, shaded by the salt-slicked cliff walls. A brisk coastal wind nips at your skin. It smells of fresh vegetation and the rich tang of rotting fish. 

The coastline where this adventure takes place floods entirely when the high tide comes in, which is about every four hours. If the players are in the Halls of Polished Stone (2) or the Center of the Nautilus (6) when this happens, they will be trapped in the tides. The furthest bit of land is a good swim away. Any players setting camp for the night will have to do so above the cliffs, which can be accessed by walking around an upper path not shown on the map. 

Scale-wise, everything is close enough together that you can wing dimensions. For reference, the Center of the Nautilus (at the very middle of the spiral) is about 5 feet by 5.

1. Driftwood Piles

The driftwood piles cycle with every high tide. They always look like they form some sort of pattern, but whatever pattern they do form is impossible to discern. No other part of the beach has driftwood. 

At night, the players can hear the sound of seals barking from the coast. If they approach the noise, they no longer hear it. 

Ten feet underneath the piles are exactly thirty-six seal skeletons, piled into a mass grave. Disturbing the seal skeletons stops the noises and the driftwood from appearing. 

2. Halls of Polished Stone

After eons of water rushing in and out of this cave, the walls have degraded to smooth masonic perfection. Inside, fossils dot the walls of various ancient sea creatures. They are not anything familiar - they appear insectoid and alien. 

If one stands in this cave for more than 10 minutes, they begin to hear the sounds of deep whalesong. The songs sound like they could be understood, if only they were listened to longer. After listening for over an hour, anyone in the cave will start to make out words. They resonate deeply, and sound almost like whalesong. 

This is what they say:

koovúra yúruk kámvuunupahitih.

The language is ancient and cannot be understood except by magic. It says, "Let it all flow downstream". The words are repeated every minute. 

One particular skeleton is larger than all the rest. It looks like a large humanoid with the skull and "tail" of a whale - it looks like a mermaid, just much larger. The skeleton arcs around the ceiling of the cave and curls down one of the pillars in a frozen swimming motion. Disturbing or mining it will bring dreams of a strange whale-man-giant-mermaid flopping on a moonlit beach. The dreams appear only once, and then disappear. 

3. Nautilus Shell Door

A gigantic nautilus shell pokes out of the side of the cliff. Players looking closely will notice this detail, but otherwise it just appears like the side of a cliff with a strange smooth stone outcropping. Walking within this cave reveals a clay seal, about as big as a door and preventing anyone from walking further into the shell.

The clay seal has carvings on it: all of them graffiti. They are written in an ancient version of the language spoken in the region, and due to their age do not degrade with the constant tides. This is what they say:

"Konstanz + Aka" 

"Aurelius defecated here today."

"Koz was here."

"Hello mother."

The bottom one is scrawled more haphazardly than the others.

"Cannot walk. Whale man? (this word is almost illegible) followed me. Town nearby. Goodbye."

Digging here reveals a skeleton, cradled in the bottom curve of the shell. It has twelve ancient gold coins, remnants of some leather journal that has long since degraded, and a silver family crest. Delivering it to a local family might be worthwhile, but selling it is just as useful; it goes for about 50sp. 

The clay seal is not enchanted or locked. A good hefty whack with a sword or similarly forceful item will break it open. The inside of the seal is actually carved intricately with an intense pattern, and is completely smooth unlike the front. The pattern cannot be recreated, however, as the clay splits into too many pieces to reasonably reconstruct.

 If someone could, the pattern would still be indecipherable: staring at it for more than a minute causes one to become lost in its winding patterns. They cannot move or take actions until they are no longer fixated on the pattern. 

The inside of the shell is smooth and lacks any sand or foreign influence: anyone inside walks directly on the curvature of the nautilus shell. It is about seven feet high, and five feet wide. 

4. I keyed the map incorrectly, so this is only here for cohesion. 

5. Whale Skeleton

 A gigantic whale skeleton peeks out of the sand here. The bones are sunbleached and somehow still moist. Bits of flesh cling to the underside of the skeleton, and continue to cling forever. The skull is hollowed out slightly, and a small altar hides inside of it: there are bowls for ritual oil, and incense holders made of carved bone. The center of the altar holds an art item worth 200sp in clear view. 

Taking it does nothing. The skeleton is completely mundane, and definitely not enchanted or cursed in any way. 

6. Center of the Nautilus

At the very center of the nautilus, there is a minuscule crack in the shell. From it trickles a small amount of inky black water. It is unbelievably salty, and collects in a small pool which somehow never fills up or drains. Harvesting it causes the flow to stop indefinitely after a gallon has been drawn. 

Drinking any amount of the water causes nightmarish hallucinations that persist for 1d4 hours: the character is convinced that they are drowning or that they are being hunted by some terrible beast that they cannot see. 

The Center of the Nautilus is where you should place any sort of interesting adventure hook or item for the party.

Trash World

The ocean has always been a garbage dump. Even very early on, when all we really wasted was walnut shells and oysters, that stuff went into the ocean. Some early caveman dumped it into the stream and it made its way into the water. We dumped bodies, ships crashed, and floods carried houses into the sea.

Back then, our technology was not advanced enough to make materials last. Wood rots and decomposes quickly. Now that we have plastic and metal, the things we dump in the ocean do not go away - at least not nearly as quickly. Plastic bottles take about 450 years to break down. That's four human lifetimes, and at least ten times as many fish lifetimes. Somewhere, out there, there is an entire lineage of fish that will live among plastic bottles and ocean trash. If these fish were sentient, bottles would be their landmarks and homes. Things that families would live and grow around, and maybe even worship. That's ignoring shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean, which stand as castles and complexes for seafloor ocean life. None of this was deliberate, but the trash we threw away seeded worlds that are yet to be entirely populated.



"Yet as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic.

"It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments. Months later, after I discussed what I had seen with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, perhaps the world's leading expert on flotsam, he began referring to the area as the 'eastern garbage patch.'"

- Capt. Charles Moore, article for Natural History in 2003



There are nations of garbage floating in the ocean. This will not go away. We cannot just scoop this stuff up with a big net and dump it somewhere. Inevitably, all of this will head back to where it rests now. There's a very real and intriguing future where all that is left is our garbage. This bottle I'm drinking will last longer than me - and with a grim worldview, it might last longer than the majority of the human race.

When I'm writing this project, I have to consider the full history of the ocean. Most of that history, in truth, is just the story of a really large and interesting garbage can. From the industrial revolution onward, the story of the ocean is the story of our pollution.

We won't always be here, but our garbage will, and soon enough crabs will build their shells out of cans. Fish will live in bottles. This stuff won't always be garbage. Eventually, flecks of plastic will construct beaches. That's an interesting world that none of us will ever see.

For me, that's really interesting. Trash tells a story. The Ocean Beyond is drawn from all periods of the ocean - so expect garbage. But not how you know it now. 

Sealed and Salted: The Chainers

Touch: frozen iron, slimy pruned skin

Smell: rotting mussel shells, dirty copper

Sound: singing bowls humming underwater, cans crushing under pressure

Sight: bloated floating bodies, sunken skeletons tethered to the sea floor, drowned ships crusted with barnacles

They come from the ocean floor. 

Rising with rusted locks and churning sand. Inexorable and deliberate. They walk with the latent rhythm of a sleeping world. There was always an answer. We could not name it, not of our mortal power. But one day, in the lowest pit of the lowest ocean, a single man learned the true name of the world.  

From him they came. Across the Ocean they took sacred rites in the humid hulls of beached vessels. One lock for each doubt, cradled in chain and sealed in steel. Iron men of no face, no name, and no purpose. Their goal is to have no goal. To break every lock; to absolve each doubt; to ascend as the First did in the cold womb of the world.  

The Chainers, as they are called, are perhaps the most feared faction in the Ocean. Not the sort of fear that comes from violence or implied pain. The Chainers cannot be understood. Not by any sane man. They carry the fear of the true unknown, of the possibility of an answer so profound that all else loses meaning. Walking examples of human futility. 

Most do not have a face. They appear as perpetually armored men, hunched and broken by the weight of the iron they carry. Their “armor” is shoddy and misshapen, constructed from scrapped hulls and shredded buoys. Around them circle countless chains, each link held by a small iron lock. Hence the name, “chainers”. They go by no other name and call themselves nothing.  

Long ago a single man created the chainer ritual. Across the Ocean people followed, drawn by hidden impulse. To take the ritual, one must suffocate themselves in restrictive armor. Then, while they are struggling for air, they wrap themselves in chain and fasten a lock for each mortal regret. Everything that ties them to this existence deserves a lock. If the ritual is not done correctly, the initiate dies in their own armor.  

Those who make it past initiation become more than human. They do not need to breathe and do not mind pressure and cannot speak or expel anything from their sealed bodies. Their only goal at this point is to break every lock on their armor by absolving their mortal tethers.  

They do not see this as a task with a clear goal and resolution. The Chainers see themselves as a point on a circle; they have no beginning or ending. They are simply points with directives. Trying to understand what a Chainer is doing is like trying to draw a map of the currents from above water. You cannot even begin to understand the full picture. Some writhe on abandoned beaches for years on end. Some cling to the bottom of ships like barnacles. One day, they reach with withered gauntlets and snap a single lock, only to vanish back into the depths of the ocean on another quest. 

Organization 

The Chainers are the only recognizable “faction” in the Ocean that does not sail with ships. Chainers can survive on the seafloor and do most of their travel this way. Since every Chainer has their own personal quest, few organize into crews or teams. The Chainers are more of a loosely organized religious cult than an actual fleet. 

Since all Chainers subscribe to different facets of the same philosophy, in rare cases they find the need to organize. In this case, the Chainers employ a specific subgroup of initiates known to sailors as “Speakers”. Unlike other Chainers, Speakers build their iron shell with a head and a mouthpiece. Most all of these “heads” are made of tarnished temple statues. Their job is to communicate with sailors. They speak in low and measured hums that undulate with a deep rhythm. Very rarely do they ever come to an agreement with any strangers, mostly because their demands are incomprehensible and deeply unsettling. 

You can tell the age of a Chainer by the amount of locks on their bodies. Very old and successful Chainers have maybe ten or twenty. Younger ones may have hundreds. The amount of Chainers that have cleared all of their mortal tethers could be counted on one hand, if they could be found. Such a process takes millenia, a long time to be sealed in armor. The body beneath is near-dead, waterlogged and pruned with whale-white skin. Eyes sag with rheumatic mucous. To expose it to air is to die instantly. If the Chainer can pass that test, they have truly succeeded.  

Encounters with the Chainers 

They are not mortal. Not even of flesh. What need do they have of trade? Why would they fight? There is greater Work to be done.  

You would do right to leave them alone.   

Chainer Template 

Armor: As plate and shield +2 

Move: 5’ 

Morale: 12 

Chainers do not typically have classes or levels like adventurers because they are so far removed from everyday adventuring. They do not need to eat, sleep, or drink, they do not age, and they cannot speak, vomit, or defecate (unless they are a speaker, in which case they can speak and vomit also (although they do both in low and deliberate rhythm).  

Becoming a Chainer is an involved process. It requires about 100 pounds of various metals, some incense, and a proper place to meditate. Becoming a Speaker also requires 1000sp worth of incense and a suitable statue head. The character must succeed on a Magic saving throw (or difficult Wisdom check) and must answer the following question correctly to avoid suffocating immediately: 

What is the name of the waves? 

There is no correct answer, but the answer should inform the newly made Chainer’s directive. If they ever fail to uphold their values,  if they make choices based on morality or personal interest, then they lose their “trance” and begin to suffocate. Once a Chainer reaches this stage, they die in their armor. Do not be afraid to lay this on brave players who take the Chainer ritual. It is not for the mortal heart to bear.

Random Chainer Directive (translated into mortal terms)

1)Every other person is a separate instance of myself. I must remove everyone to make myself the only version of existence.

2)  Every living thing has a true name, written on their entrails. To become whole, I must spell my true name from the bleeding letters of others.

3) Every breath I took was one breath stolen from the One. I must bottle the breaths of others in order to repay my debt to existence.

4) Join hands with me. We will make a greater being. We are tendons of the muscles of the limbs of the greatest golem ever imagined.

5) My greatest sin was my own birth - I must find a way to kill my past self in order to prevent my separation from the whole.

6) If I remain completely still for an eternity, eventually I will merge with existence and exist at all points at once. Then, I can begin the true work.

7) I exist as light shining through a pinprick in reality. I must construct a lens able to dissipate my essence equally through existence.

8) North.

9) If I can compress myself into a super dense space, then I will truly be a part of the Whole. I must descend to the lowest point of the ocean possible to crush myself.

10) This was a mistake. I doomed myself to a life of unfeeling. Flesh is our gift. I must regain my body.

This is an excerpt from my upcoming Lamentations book, tentatively called the Fifth Cardinal. Nothing is final, but this should be a pretty close to what goes in the finished product. Art is by me just for fun and theme (hopefully someone can do the true idea justice). 

This is damn good music to go with this: