Procedural Generation Demonstration - Two Chromatic Islands

Evlyn at Le Chaudron Chromatique has created a minigame for referees to create island ecologies. She recommends starting with an encounter list, removing half the inhabitants (maybe they went extinct, maybe they never made it onto the island), then allowing the surviving inhabitants to speciate to enter the vacant ecological niches, and finally allowing the original survivors to evolve due to genetic drift.

Even starting from an extremely mundane encounter list, it's a procedure that's guaranteed to lead to weirdness.

Evlyn uses the Labyrinth Lord "Forest/Wooded" Wilderness Encounter Table.

For fun, I thought I'd try it again, using the D&D 5e "Sylvan Forest Encounters" from the Dungeon Master Guide. (I've modified the list to remove the non-creature entries, and to separate entries where you would encounter 2 different creatures at once.)

Also for fun, I thought I'd see what would happen if two different islands separated off the same mainland.


Step 1: First we see what species survive on each island. Evlyn suggests that half the mainland die off or fail to migrate, and half survive on the island.

ISLAND A
1 displacer beast
1d4 gnolls
2d4 hyenas
1 giant owl
1 dryad
1d4 satyrs
1d4 centaurs
2d4 elven scouts
2d4 pixies
2d4 sprites
1 owlbear
1d4 elks
1 giant elk
1d4 blink dogs
1d4 faerie dragons
1 elf druid
1 treant
1 unicorn

ISLAND B
1 displacer beast
1d4 gnolls
2d4 hyenas
1 giant owl
1 dryad
1d4 satyrs
1d4 centaurs
2d4 elven scouts
2d4 pixies
2d4 sprites
1 owlbear
1d4 elks
1 giant elk
1d4 blink dogs
1d4 faerie dragons
1 elf druid
1 treant
1 unicorn


Step 2: Next, we allow existing species to split off new species to fill the vacant ecological niches. Evlyn has a table to roll on to see which traits the new species "pick up" from convergent evolution into the niche, and any trait not "picked up" in this way should stay the same from the original species. 5e doesn't have Morale or Hoard Classes, but it does have official creature types and bolded descriptors used to organize the entry in the Monster Manual, so I'm going to use those instead.

ISLAND A
1d4 gnolls - replaced by unicorn, adopts 4 traits (AC, HD/size, special ability, appearance)
2d4 hyenas - replaced by treant, adopts 5 traits (AC, attack type, damage, special ability, Appearance)
1 giant owl - replaced by treant, adopts 3 traits (AC, saves, special ability)
1d4 centaurs - replaced by displacer beast, adopts 3 traits (alignment, movement, creature type)
2d4 elven scouts - replaced by giant elk, adopts 6 traits (number, AC, HD/size, descriptor, special ability, appearance)
2d4 sprites - replaced by giant elk, adopts 4 traits (alignment, movement, AC, HD/size)
1d4 elks - replaced by treant, adopts 3 traits (AC, descriptor, appearance)
1d4 blink dogs replaced by displacer beast, adopts 4 traits (alignment, attack type, damage, creature type)
1d4 faerie dragons - replaced by treant, adopts 4 traits (number, alignment, special ability, appearance)

ISLAND B
1 displacer beast - replaced by dryad, adopts 6 traits (alignment, movement, AC, attack type, saves, appearance)
1d4 gnolls - replaced by satyrs, adopts 4 traits (number, movement, attack type, special ability)
1d4 centaurs - replaced by giant owl, adopts 3 traits (movement, damage, creature type)
2d4 elven scouts - replaced by pixies, adopts 4 traits (attack type, saves, creature type, special ability)
1 giant elk - replaced by sprites, adopts 2 traits: (number, saves)
1d4 faerie dragons - replaced by hyenas, adopts 5 traits (number, movement, HD/size, damage, appearance)
1 elf druid - replaced by sprites, adopts 5 traits (movement, AC, HD/size, damage, special ability)
1 treant - replaced by giant owl, adopts 4 traits (movement, AC, HD/size, appearance)
1 unicorn - replaced by blink dogs, adopts 6 traits: (AC, attack type, saves, creature type, descriptor, appearance)


Step 3: Third, we allow each of the surviving species to experience genetic drift, so that they chance from the mainland baseline.

ISLAND A
1 displacer beast - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 dryad - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1d4 satyrs - random characteristic variant (modify: descriptor)
2d4 pixies - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 owlbear - random characteristic variant (modify: appearance)
1 giant elk - random characteristic variant (modify: creature type)
1 elven druid - hyper variant (intensify: damage)
1 treant - hyper variant (intensify: saves)
1 unicorn - random characteristic variant (modify: saves)

ISLAND B
2d4 hyenas - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 giant owl - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1 dryad - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1d4 satyrs - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
2d4 pixies - stunted variant (dilute: number)
2d4 sprites - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1 owlbear - giant variant (increase HD/size, reduce number)
1d4 elks - dwarf variant (reduce HD/size, increase number)
1d4 blink dogs - hyper variant (intensify: HD/size)


Step 4: The final step is to put it all back together into an encounter list for each island.


A - THE ISLAND OF CATS, ELK, AND TREES

1d4 dwarf displacer beasts (as displacer beast, except: size medium, 10d8+20 hp)

1 gnoll-like unicorn (as unicorn, except: size medium, 5d8 hp, add Rampage ability, appearance "feral humanoid with one-horned horse head")

1 hyena-like treant (as treant, except: AC 11, attack bite +2 melee weapon (1d6 piercing damage), add Pack Tactics ability, appearance "huge fallen tree with knot-holes like spots, stalks on four limbs")

1 giant-owl-like treant (as treant, except: AC 12, save S+1 D+2 C+2 I-1 W+1 C+0, add Keen Hearing and Sight special ability)

1 giant dryad (as dryad, except: size large, 5d10+5 hp)

1d4 variant-descriptor satyrs (as satyrs except: remove Hedonistic Revelers descriptor, add descriptor Abstemious Perfectionists "satyrs spend long hours practicing and perfecting their music, forswearing any distractions or mind-altering substances, living only to prepare themselves for seasonal concerts which they carry off flawlessly")

1 centaur-like displacer beast (as displacer beast, except: alignment neutral good, creature type fey, speed 50 ft)

2d4 elf-scout-like giant elk (as giant elk, except: AC 13, size medium, 3d8+3 hp, add Scout descriptor, add Keen Hearing and Sight special ability, appearance "humanoid elk with antlers")

2d6 dwarf pixies (as pixies, except: 1d3-1 hp)

1 sprite-like giant elk (as giant elk, except: alignment neutral good, speed 10 ft / fly 40 ft, AC 15, size tiny, 1d4 hp)

1 variant-appearance owlbear (as owlbear, except: appearance "panther body, wooden face, lion's mane of leaves")

1 elk-like treant (as treant, except: AC 10, appearance "huge fallen tree with crown of antler-like branches, bounds on four limbs")

1 variant-creature-type giant elk (as giant elk, except: creature type plant)

1 blink-dog-like displacer beast (as displacer beast, except: alignment lawful good, attack bite +3 melee weapon (1d6+1 piercing damage), creature type fey)

1d4 faerie-dragon-like treants (as treants, except: alignment chaotic good, add Innate Spellcasting ability, appearance "huge fallen tree with pair of leafy wing-like branches and root tail, hops and flits about")

1 hyper-damage elven druid (as elven druid, except: all attacks increase dice by two sizes, quarterstaff deals 1d10+2, produce flame deals 1d12+2, shillelagh deals 1d12+2, thunderwave deals 2d12+4)

1 hyper-saving treant (as treant, except: save S+12 D-2 C+10 I+2 W+6 C+2)

1 variant-saving unicorn (as unicorn, except: save S+0 D+3 C+3 I+4 W+2 C+2)


B - FAERIE AND GIANT ISLAND

1 displacer-beast-like dryad (as dryad, except: alignment lawful evil, speed 40ft, AC 13, attack tentacle multiattack, two +6 melee weapons (each 1d4 bludgeoning, 1d8+4 bludgeoning with shillelagh), save S+4 D+2 C+3 I-2 W+1 C-1, appearance "woman with dark green skin, black leaves instead of hair, two legs, four arms, two leafy vine tentacles growing from her back, cruel laugh, glowing emerald eyes")

1d4 gnoll-like satyrs (as satyrs, except: speed 30 ft, attack bite +4 melee weapon (2d4+1 bludgeoning damage), attack spear +4 melee or ranged weapon (1d6+3 piercing damage), attack longbow +3 ranged weapon (1d6+3 piercing damage), add Rampage special ability)

2d6 dwarf hyenas (as hyenas, except: size small, 1d6 hp)

1 giant giant owl (as giant owl, except: size huge, 3d12+6 hp)

1 giant dryad (as dryad, except: size large 5d10+5 hp)

1d6 dwarf satyrs (as satyrs, except: size small, 7d6-7 hp)

1 centaur-like giant owl (as giant owl, except: Speed 50 ft, Attack: Talons +3 melee weapon attack (2d6+4 bludgeoning damage), creature type monstrosity)

2d4 elven-scout-like pixies (as pixies, except: attack multiattack, two shortswords +4 melee (each 1d6+2 piercing), two longbows +4 ranged (each 1d8+2 piercing), save S+0 D+2 C+1 I+0 W+1 C+0, creature type humanoid (elf), add Keen Hearing and Sight special ability)

1 stunted-number pixie (as pixie)

2d6 dwarf sprites (as sprites, except: 1d3-1 hp)

1 giant owlbear (as owlbear, except: size huge, 7d12+28 hp)

1d6 dwarf elk (as elk, except: size medium, 2d8 hp)

1 giant-elk-like sprite (as sprite, except: save S+4 D+3 C+2 I-2 W+2 C+0)

1d4 hyper-sized blink dogs (as blink dogs, except: size huge, 4d12+12 hp)

1d4 faerie-dragon-like hyenas (as hyenas, except: speed 10 ft / fly 60 ft, size tiny, 4d4+4 hp, attack deals 1 piercing damage, appearance "cat-sized hyenas with rainbow-hued fur and butterfly wings, they wear sharp-toothed grins and their tails twitch with merriment")

2d4 elf-druid-like sprites (as sprites, except: speed 30 ft, AC 11, size medium, 5d8+5 hp, attack deals 1d6 damage, add Spellcasting special ability)

1 treant-like giant owl (as giant owl, except: speed 30 ft, AC 16, size huge, 12d12+60 hp, appearance "a huge owl with feathers like green leaves, its face like a mask carved from wood")

1d4 unicorn-like blink dogs (as blink dogs, except: AC 12, attack multiattack, horn +7 melee (1d8 +4 magical piercing), paws +7 melee (2d6+4 magical bludgeoning), save S+4 D+2 C+2 I+0 W+3 C+3, creature type fey, add Divine Guardians descriptor, appearance "white furred dogs that twinkle like starlight as they blink in and out of existence, a single spiral horn grows from each of their foreheads")


Final Thoughts: There's always something meditative about solo procedural generation, but trying to do this for a 20-item list (twice!) is maybe pushing the boundaries of what's feasible as preparation. This would probably work best with a shorter initial encounter list. More cosmetic and fewer mechanical changes might actually affect the player experience more.

It might also be interesting to utilize something like this method for an island-hopping game where the players will get to see multiple alternate ecosystems - especially if they can see them without having to fight all of them.

Undersea Miscellany - Microscopic Fairies, Undersea Lilliputians, Delicate Invertebrates, Plates of Jellyfish

 

 
Under Victorian Microscopes, an Enchanted World
Olivia Campbell
JSTOR Daily

"As they became more powerful and more affordable, microscopy became an increasingly popular hobby. Gazing through these “magic glasses” rendered previously unseen worlds, which teemed with tiny living creatures, newly visible. When it came time to describe what they were seeing, people frequently turned to the language of the fantastical."

"Naturalists and lay users readily used a vocabulary drawn from fairy literature to… convey the incomprehensible strangeness and minutiae of the microscopic world. Though the link may seem incongruous, a surprisingly substantial body of Victorian scientific literature and fairy stories connect microscopes to fairies."
 
 

Lilliput Under the Sea
Tim Flannery
New York Review of Books

"Varying from foot-long mollusks to speck-sized shrimps, invertebrates like those depicted are the largely silent majority of species on Earth. Yet by virtue of size, camouflage, or hard-to-access environments, they are all too often unobserved. To enter their world through this book is to dwell, albeit briefly, in a Lilliputian realm far more mysterious, breathtakingly beautiful, and mystifying than our own."
 
 

 
The Delicate Science-Art of the Blaschka Invertebrate Collection
JSTOR Daily

"The nineteenth century saw an explosion of interest in the exploration of the natural world, resulting in growing numbers of zoological and natural history societies, which often established museums to garner more popular interest and support. Expeditions that investigated ‘new frontiers’ - rugged tropical rainforests, the fossil record, the ocean depths - proved particularly sensational, and the findings they gathered were often put on museum display."
 
 

 
A Plate of Jellyfish
Lucy Jakub
New York Review of Books

"Haeckel believed that evolution would unite science with art and philosophy under one discipline, through which humans could reach a greater understanding of their world. His intention was to make the natural forms of elusive organisms accessible to artists, and supply them with a new visual vocabulary of protists, mollusks, trilobites, siphonophores, fungi, and echinoderms. Opening Art Forms is like stepping into a cathedral, a place crafted by human hands that nonetheless inspires awe of the divine. Within are jellyfish that look like flowers, protists that resemble Fabergé eggs, presented like crown jewels on black velvet, the seeming cosmic vastness of the images belying their actual, microscopic size."
 

Environmental Miscellany - Hideous Forest, Underland, Speculative Evolution

 

  
The Lessons of a Hideous Forest
William Bryant Logan & Damon Winter
New York Times  

"The deeper we walked, the uglier the woods got. The invasive oriental bittersweet and porcelain berry, along with the native grape and the poison ivy, fought it out to win the game of overtopping trees, bringing them down in a heap. The carnage looked like Mathew Brady’s photos of Civil War corpses, piled along hillsides and behind walls, in leafless, lifeless winter, as dead as dead can be. But unlike the soldiers, the trees were not going to perish."

"The vines moved on in search of new upstanding hosts. Noticing that their tormentors were gone, the trees had sprouted. A few lateral branches on a black cherry, now standing straight up from its fallen trunk, were rising as new trees into the sky. Most would die as the old roots rotted, but some would put down their own. One hollow mulberry had been dangling root filaments from inside its trunk into the soil, so when the mother went down, a youngster was already arising. This is called phoenix regeneration. There couldn’t be a better name."
   

 
What Lies Beneath
Rebecca Giggs
The Atlantic

"Of all the earth’s terrestrial vertebrates, humans make the deepest incursions into the underground. The farthest that any animal, other than us, is known to burrow from the surface of the planet is 13 yards - the feat of, unbelievably, the Nile crocodile. Below this level live permanent troglodytes, organisms that never see the sunlight. Microbes and minuscule stygofauna - glassy snails, shrimplike creatures - bob in groundwater systems, and pale amphibians furl in the murkiest reaches of caves. A species of roundworm has been detected more than two miles belowground. Yet humans go even farther. Aided by excavating machines, people have delved to a record depth of 7.7 miles, straight into the rock off the Russian island of Sakhalin, and deeper (as far as we know) than the most cavernous marine trench."

   
Wild Speculation: Evolution After Humans
Lucy Jakub
New York Review of Books

"It’s an almost nostalgic vision: the megafauna that were driven extinct during the 'Age of Man' have been replaced by new species that bear an uncanny resemblance to their predecessors. Humanity’s enduring legacy is not its alteration of the environment - but that the extinctions we have precipitated will have left behind an array of empty niches, to be filled by whatever adaptable species are able to take advantage of them. Imagine a game of biogeographical musical chairs in which penguins have evolved comb-like beaks to sieve plankton as whales do, rats have replaced the big cats as dominant carnivores, cats swing through the tropical canopy chasing monkeys, and monkeys glide on flaps of skin like flying squirrels. The book’s central idea is convergent evolution: that similar traits arise independently in different species, to perform similar functions in similar environments."
  

The Invaders - Invid, Inheritors, Dreamers, Ividia

The Invid were one of the first monsters I ever wanted to fight. The Invid are the villains of season 3 of Robotech.

The villains of season 2 of Robotech, the Robotech Masters, spend about half the season worrying that the Invid are coming. While the human heroes of the story are all going crazy wondering whether they can beat the Robotech Masters and their seemingly invincible army of clone pilots and bioroid mechas, the Masters themselves are going crazy because they're certain they CAN'T beat the Invid, and their only hope is to hurry up and finish things on Earth so they can run away before the Invid get here. In other words, the Invid are introduced by reputation as the REALLY BAD GUYS that even the regular bad guys are scared of. I have to tell you, as a suspense-building device, kid me found it pretty successful.
 

The evolution of the Invid from the Legends of Zor comic

 
Season 3 of Robotech opens with the Invid coming to Earth and completely wrecking up the place, so that the rest of the season is set in a ravaged, post-apocalyptic wasteland where humans are barely eking out subsistence. Which is to say, from the moment of their arrival, they absolutely lived up to their reputation.

The Invid we see appear to be crab-like crustaceans with partially mechanical/electronic components. On the show, it's ambiguous if what we're seeing are the Invid themselves, form-fitting suits of battle armor the Invid wear, oversized mecha with the same body-plan as their human-sized pilots, or mecha with entirely different looking aliens inside. (It's possible, for example, that the blue-green ooze that bleeds out when the armor is pierced IS the pilot, not the pilot's blood.)
 

Invid Scouts
This and subsequent images from the Robotech Picture Archive

 

Invid Armored Souts

 

Invid Trooper

 

Invid Shock Trooper

 
The Invid come to Earth seeking the Flower of Life. In season 1 of Robotech, a battle fortress crashes into the Earth, and the alien Zentradi come to seize it. Humans eventually repel the Zentradi  invasion. The battle fortress is so desirable in part because it's fueled by a large supply of a power source called Protoculture. In season 2, the Robotech Masters come to Earth to try to retrieve the Protoculture for themselves. Unfortunately, over the course of the season, the Flower of Life starts growing in the Protoculture, which makes it both useless to the Masters, and irresistible to the Invid, who can sense its presence from across the galaxy.

There are some interesting anti-colonial themes and themes of decadence at work in all this. The Robotech Masters enslaved the Zentradi, turned them into giants, and gave them their fleet of warships, but by the start of season 1, the Zentradi have escaped from the Masters' control, and are just a roaming army. They know how to pilot their warships, but not how to repair them or build more, and everything looks pretty heavily worn, even broken. They're hoping the battle fortress that crash-landed on Earth will include schematics that will let them make things and not just use them.

The Robotech Masters have also forgotten some of their technology. They can use Protoculture to grow clones, build bioroid mecha, and fuel their whole civilization, but they no longer remember how to make more Protoculture. They want the battle fortress basically just to buy time. The entire season, we see them fighting at far less than full strength because they're almost out of fuel. They want to seize the Protoculture in the fortress to replenish their supply, and it's pretty heavily implied that if they fail, they'll go extinct. They might be doomed even if they seize it though, since they have no particular plan to relearn how to synthesize the stuff for themselves, and the fortress might be the last great untapped supply anywhere in the galaxy. What they need is renewable energy, and instead, they're going absolutely all-in on using up the last bit of irreplaceable fuel.

Meanwhile, the Flower of Life itself is like a prion or a parasite, at least from the Robotech Masters' perspective. They describe it as both a pest that grows in Protoculture and as a mutation of Protoculture itself. Regardless, the Flower of Life contains all the energy of Protoculture, but in a form that's unusable to the Zentradi or the Masters. The Invid, we're told, were once either non-sentient, or at least a non-technological species from the same planet where Protoculture originated. The Masters' uplifted the Invid and enslaved them to either grow Protoculture, or to grow the Flower of Life and convert it into Protoculture. By the time of the show, the Invid have also escaped the Masters' control, and now outnumber and overpower them. All the old Protoculture farms are controlled by Invid who use them to grow the Flower of Life for themselves, and when they come to Earth, it's to enslave humans to farm and harvest the Flower of Life for them.
 

The Invid Flower of Life

 
The Invid use bio-technological Genesis Pits to experiment with ways to better adapt the Earth to their own purposes. They also use the Pits to transform a few of themselves into human-like bodies.

So to summarize, the Invid are simultaneously the sympathetic victims of a colonialist empire, and a terrifying unstoppable invasion force. They come to Earth to transform it into a slave-tended garden for growing their sole food-source, the Flower of Life. And they control their own biology to such an extent that we see them as both giant crab-robots and as humanoid spies.
 

Marlene was grown to be an Invid spy,
but her egg was damaged and she hatched with amnesia

 

Sera retained her memories,
but found that her human form gave her human emotions

 
Now these are absolutely some monsters I want to fight. BUT, they also remind me of some other monsters, and so rather than leave well enough alone, I want to put my own take on them for Gilded Age horror gaming. What shall we call these not-Invid? I think I would call them the Invidia, the Invaders.

In Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford's novel The Inheritors, the eponymous Inheritors are humanoid invaders from the Fourth Dimension who are endlessly fascinating to actual humans, and who are successfully able to exploit this fascination to ascend to fame, power, and prominence within British society. The book ends at about the point when they're about to move from acquiring power to using it to remake the world.

The Inheritors look basically human, but their presence is like a superstimulus that overwhelms most people's psychological defenses against being abused or manipulated. It's sort of not clear to me if Conrad and Ford intended these characters to be alien invaders, or just like a new "breed" of modern humans who are unbounded by tradition - but for the sake of gameability, let's go with aliens. Likewise, it's not clear if they intend the Fourth Dimension to be a literal place, or just a metaphor, and both interpretations of 4D were pretty popular at the time, but again, for the sake of gaming, let's assume it's a place. If the Inheritors are from another world, and take on human-like bodies when they come to ours, it's possible that they have another appearance entirely when they're at home.
 

The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story by Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford, 1901

In Samuel Delaney's short story "Aye, and Gomorrah", Spacers are essentially a third gender of humanity. Delany describes them as being agender and asexual. They live full-time in space stations that orbit the Earth, but can teleport down to the planet for recreation. When they come down, they're idolized, exoticized, and fetishized by "frelks" - people whose only sexual attraction is to Spacers. The story seems to imply that most people have a low opinion of both frelks and Spacers, and Spacers seem to see frelks' attraction to them as basically a joke. Throughout the story, frelks basically beg Spacers to exploit them, and Spacers are easily able to get cash, or a favor, or a laugh at a frelk's expense.

Although Delaney writes about a public that is distinctly un-sympathetic to his main characters, he seems to be pretty sympathetic to both the frelks and the Spacers, while showing that their relationships aren't healthy for either party. They kind of can't be, since they're fleeting, and so one-sided. But what if Spacers were more like Inheritors? What if almost everyone fell in one-sided love with them the way frelks do?
 

Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison, 1967

 
In James Tiptree's story "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side", humans have encountered aliens, and have joined galactic civilization. We're the newest members, so we have the least technology, least political power, and are economically the poorest species in galactic civ. And a significant portion of humanity becomes sexually obsessed with aliens from the moment we first meet them.

Tiptree describes this almost exactly like superstimulus - whatever qualities we find attractive in other humans, aliens simply have MORE of those qualities, more than any human ever could, so much MORE that we become unable to feel attraction for other humans again. The humans who love aliens love them desperately and one-sidedly, and never seem to get more than a pity-fuck out of their pursuit. Tiptree never says if the aliens who go along with this exploit their human lovers, economically or in any other way. But the relationships are clearly unhealthy, both emotionally and physically, as every human who loves aliens is shown to have permanent injuries they sustained during sex.

The Invid spies with human bodies do elicit deep feelings of affection and attraction in season 3 of Robotech, but throughout the series, love between humans and aliens occurs over and over because both sides sometimes find one another alluring and irresistible. The difference is, in Robotech, this love is shown to be reciprocal and valuable. The xeno-philia or xeno-sexuality of humans and aliens alike proves again and again to be the first step toward greater mutual understanding and diplomacy. Robotech is a war story - three war stories, really - but in each season, it's people who feel inter-species attraction who make the first overtures to peace. Tiptree's vision is different, like Delaney, she imagines a lopsided attraction that leaves one side willing to sacrifice everything, and the other side only willing to condescend to interact at all for the sake of receiving their sacrifices.

(Quick thought that serves no purpose: what if there were a setting were "homosexual" referred to ANY humans who loved humans - who loved the SAME species as themselves, who loved other HOMO sapiens? What if "heterosexual" referred to humans who loved aliens - who loved DIFFERENT species? That has no real relevance to what I'm talking about here, but I would find that to be a fascinating linguistic drift.)
 

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1972

 
To take another tack, in D&D's Eberron setting, the Inspired are humanoid bodies inhabited by the minds of extra-dimensional aliens - the Quori from Dal Quor. The humanoids are explicitly described as being not quite human. Their species, when not combined with a Quori to become an Inspired, are simply called Empty Vessels. The art depicting the Inspired often shows a phantasmal Quori floating behind the Inspired body. Personally, I interpret this not just as a way of illustrating that we're looking at an Inspired rather than a human, but as an indication that the Inspired sometimes project psychic images of their Quori when they're being overt about their identities.
 

Inspired and Quori

 

Inspired and Quori surrounding adventurers

 
In Jack Shear's Umberwell setting, he describes a species he calls Dreamers. Just describes Dreamers like this: "Dreamers are a rebirthed race; they are the souls of an insectoid species originating from a lost age of the city’s history reincarnated in bodies indistinguishable from the human form. If the theory that the city’s islands are the remains of a dead god is true, it may be the case that the insectoid souls of the dreamers achieved their initial sentience and innate psionic powers by feeding on a divine body as parasites. When they sleep they dream only of Scarabae - the precursor city that stood on the islands currently occupied by Umberwell."

You could imagine Dreamers as being like the Inheritors - human bodies with alien minds. You could imagine them like the Khepri from Perdido Street Station, as humanoids who simply followed a different evolutionary path to arrive at much the same place humans did. You could imagine them like the Insect-kinden from Empire in Black and Gold, as humans whose psychic powers and tribal identities draw on actual insects as a source of imagery and fictive-kinship. Or you could imagine them like the Inspired - humanoid bodies with phantasmal insects hovering behind them, like the totem animals that appear DC comics' Vixen or Mera use their superpowers.
 

Umberwell: Blackened be Thy Name by Jack Shear, 2018

 

Lin the Khepri by Justin Oaksford, 2011

In Greek myth, Invidia is the goddess of jealousy. Invasion, I think, could be imagined to be like jealousy. You want what someone else has, and you try to take it away from them.
 

Circe Invidiosa by John Williams Waterhouse, 1892

 
From there, it's a simple misspelling to arrive at Ividia, a genus within the family of pyramid-shelled snails. Is there any animal more D&D than a snail? It's almost too perfect to learn that Ividia snails are hermaphroditic, and usually parasites.
 

Turbonilla acutissima, not a member of the Ividia genus,
but still part of the Pyramidellidae family

And that, I think, is enough to start building our Invaders, our Invidia.

The Invaders come to us from somewhere beyond. Some of them claim to hail from the Crab Nebula, situated in the night sky between Aldebaran and the Pleiades. Others claim a kingdom within the Fourth Dimension, a realm but a sidestep away from our own reality.

The Invidia appear to us in humanoid guises. They are intoxicatingly beautiful, with flawless androgynous features. Some dress in men's clothes, others in women's, others in some mix. They claim no human gender, and each addresses itself like royalty, as "we" and "our". Those humans who have seen the Invidia without their clothes claim that all their bodies are alike, no matter what they wear, and that the resemblance to humanity only goes so far before giving way to impossible alien anatomy, unattainable foreign beauty. Those humans who have been trusted to see the Invidia like this are inevitably too far gone to really return to humanity. The rest of their lives will be spent as the Invidia's evangels.

Humans are like thrall before the Invidia. We lack the strength to refuse them, lack the will to oppose their desires. The first encounter with an Ividia is an unsettling, uncanny experience. They seem too good to be human, too perfect. Their strength of personality is overwhelming, their very presence, overaweing. Many who meet the Invidia fall instantly in love with them. They become suitors, followers, hangers on who accompany their beloveds everywhere they go. Others fall so deep in thrall that they become almost insensate. These "sleepwalkers" are uncanny in their own right, nearly mindless servants despite their human form.

It is as easy as breathing for the Invaders to enter the highest echelons of human society. They collect socialites and celebrities as their most valued sycophants. The Invaders' power over humans with worldly power makes their domination almost instant, almost complete.

The earth, to these Invaders, is like a garden, where they seek to grow Golden Lotus. This flower is life to the Invaders, it is the source of their abilities and their only food. It is also a powerful narcotic that affects them as opium affects humans. The effects of Gold Lotus on humans is even stronger. It can turn lotus-eaters into "sleepwalkers" or put them into a near-permanent twilight sleep. It can also imbue seemingly magical properties on the eater. The Invaders have come to earth to grow their garden, and though their vanity seems insatiable for our adoration and our praise, what they really want humanity for is to labor as their gardeners.

Though they usually appear in their humanoid form, the Invaders have other bodies as well, kept just a sidestep away in fourspace. When roused to anger, or high on Lotus, these ghostly golden bodies appear just behind the Invidia, always behind, no matter which angle they're viewed from. The translucent gold bodies of the Invidia are not human. They appear as the ghosts of giant, monstrous snails. A lesser caste of Invidia exists, who dwell on earth in their snail-bodies, and are summoned to act as soldiers when their leaders' charisma and diplomacy fails them. Sightings of the soldier caste are rare, for few can refuse the Invidia any request.
 

Should the Invidia be snails? or crabs, like the Invid?
Should they just have golden eyes? or entirely golden bodies like the Sovereign from Guardians of the Galaxy?
Consider this idea a work in progress.

 

GFA18 - Mountain Lion Varieties & Signs

My next batch of Gongfarmer's Almanac 2018 pieces are a series of related monsters for Weird West adventures in DCC. My initial inspiration for these was the Pokemon variations meme of drawing multiple versions of the same Pokemon in a way that resembles natural genetic variation. So this is my attempt to create slightly naturalistic monsters out of some famous "fearsome critters" of American folklore. Danny Prescott edited this batch of entries.
 
  
Travelers in the western half of North America know to fear the mountain lions that stalk the rocky Cordillera region from British Columbia down to Jalisco, and are even found occasionally back East. Mountain lions are solitary predators who follow their prey for some time and often surprise unwary victims. Mountain lions look like giant house cats, standing 3' tall at the shoulder and measure 7' from nose to tail. They have short tawny fur that turns white around their mouths and down their bellies. Their ears and nose are outlined in black, as are their paws and the tips of their tails.
  
If PCs encounter a mountain lion, roll 1d6 to determine the type: (1) ball-tailed cougar; (2) cactus cougar; (3) mountain-lion cougar; (4) sabretooth cougar; (5) wampus cougar; (6) were-cougar.
  
If the characters all stop attacking and throw down all their rations, kill an animal or person for the lion to eat, or allow the lion to eat someone who has already died, any mountain lion will take its meal and retreat to its den immediately.
  

 
Signs: Some characters are skilled trackers and can discover the presence of wilderness creatures before they're encountered. Judges may allow their players to encounter clues about the identity of local monsters before encountering them directly. Use the portents below if players are potentially likely to encounter a mountain lion. A character hearing a distant wail as a sign of a nearby lion will be the first character targeted by the wail during combat. I recommend playing Ratatat's "Wildcat" quietly on repeat from the time the characters encounter a sign (or roll initiative for combat) until the end of the encounter.
  
Ball-tailed cougar: The PC hears a sound like a child bouncing a ball, over and over and over.
  
Cactus cougar: The PC smells tequila in the wind and hears caterwauling like a drunkard singing on the walk home. The character who drank alcohol most recently is now drunk again and can feel the hangover coming already.
  
Mountain-lion cougar: The PC smells ammonia in the wind, and for a moment everything goes silent as the birds stop singing and insects quit their buzzing. After a short period the natural sounds resume.
  
Sabretooth cougar: The PC feels a sudden chill in the air, like breeze blowing in off a glacier, and hears what sounds like distant thunder.
  
Wampus cougar: A cloud crosses the sun and throws the PC into shadow. The PC hears a caterwaul like a mother's cry for lost children. The character with the lowest Luck and lowest hit points faints and immediately comes to after losing 1 hit point.
  
Were-cougar: The PC hears a woman singing. He can't make out the words, but it sounds like a lonely woman singing about her cat. The male character with the highest Personality and highest Luck is sure the singer is the most beautiful woman in the world.

  
   

GFA18 - Alternate Plantients for MCC

My fifth 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac article (and this is the last one I'm numbering, I swear) is a list of alternate plantient appearances for Mutant Crawl Classics. Like my alternate manimals, this is a follow-up to my earlier thoughts about MCC's plantients and to my post about Future Evolution. You may notice that common farm and yard plants get top billing here. For some of the plant types, I listed very common types as suggestions. For others, there were either too many options (I don't want to list every kind of flower I can think of, what could possibly be the point of that?) or too few (does anyone really have multiple strong images of ferns in their head, and need a table to help them decide which one to imagine now?) I think the player should be allowed the leeway to describe their plantient looking the way they want - which could include, for example, choosing to look like a pine cone instead of a pine tree if they rolled a 14. As with my other posts in this series, Keith Garrett made it better with editing, and Karim made it better with art.
   

Art by Karim

 
Table: Plantient Body Type
Roll 1d6: (1) Human body-plan with plantlike features; (2-4) Human-plant hybrid or anthropomorphic plant; (5-6) Sentient plant with roughly human-sized body, opposable thumbs, fine manual dexterity, and terrestrial locomotion.
   
   
Table: Plantient Subtype (roll 1d24)
 
1     Cereal grain - Roll 1d4: (1) rice; (2) wheat; (3) corn; (4) oats.
 
2     Leafy vegetable - Roll 1d3: (1) celery; (2) lettuce; (3) greens.
 
3     Underground - Roll 1d3: (1) bulb such as garlic/onion; (2) root such as potato/carrot; (3) rhizome such as ginger/lotus.
 
4     Vines - Roll 1d6: (1) berry/grape; (2) melon; (3) pea/bean; (4) tomato/pepper; (5) squash/gourd; (6) flowering/leaf.
 
5     Herb - Roll 1d4: (1) basil; (2) mint; (3) rosemary; (4) lavender.
 
6-7   Flower
 
8     Grass
 
9     Cluster of shoots - Roll 1d5: (1) asparagus; (2) sansevieria; (3) reed; (4) bamboo; (5) birch.
 
10     Bush/shrub
 
11     Fruit tree
 
12     Tropical - Roll 1d4: (1) palm; (2) coconut; (3) pineapple; (4) banana.
 
13     Leafy deciduous tree - Roll 1d4: (1) permanent spring flowers; (2) permanent summer green; (3) permanent autumn colors; (4) foliage progresses each time plantient gains level.
 
14    Pine conifer
 
15    Fern
 
16    Carnivorous plant - Roll 1d2: (1) flytrap; (2) pitcher plant.
 
17     Cactus or succulent
 
18     Seaweed, sponge, or coral
   
19     Fungus - Roll 1d3: (1) mushroom; (2) toadstool; (3) morel.
 
20     Moss, wort, lichen, or mold
 
21     Multiple mutations - Roll 1d20 once on this table and 1d20 once on the Mutant Appearance table.
 
22     Multiple mutations - Roll 1d20 once on this table and 1d20 once on the Manimal Subtype table (the character is still considered a plantient).
 
23     Multiple mutations - Roll 1d20 twice on this table.
 
24     Multiple mutations - Roll 1d20 twice on this table and 1d24 once on the Mutant Appearance table.

      

GFA18 - Alternate Manimals for MCC

My fourth 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac article is a list of alternate manimal appearances for Mutant Crawl Classics. By now, I'm sure every MCC referee has their own list of alternate manimals, but consider this my hat thrown into the ring. In my view, a good list has two characteristics - first, it's inclusive enough that no one reading it immediately thinks of an animal they want that isn't on the list (and if someone really wants a specific animal? don't make them roll, just let them have it), and second, it's exclusive enough that it doesn't include any animal that you have to look up before you're able to imagine it. Ideally the list is also weighted in some way that certain general broad types of animals more common than others (and also so that, for example, me knowing 10 times as many dog breeds as cat breeds doesn't mean that dogs are 10 times more common than cats). This is a follow-up to my own earlier post about manimals in MCC. This is also an example of me trying to apply some of the ideas in Future Evolution, so farm animals, pets, and urban pests are more prominent than animals that, say, only interact with humanity in our zoos. Keith Garrett edited all my articles about MCC for the 2018 GFA, and Karim provided all the art for this series.
   
   
Table: Manimal Body Type
Roll 1d6: (1-2) human body-plan with animal features; (3-5) human-animal hybrid or anthropomorphic animal; (6) sentient animal with roughly human-sized body, expressive face, opposable thumbs, and fine manual dexterity.
   
   
Table: Manimal Subtype (roll 1d24)
   
1     Primate - Roll 1d6: (1) gorilla; (2) chimpanzee; (3) orangutan; (4) baboon or mandrill; (5) monkey; (6) australopithecus.
   
2-3   Carnivorous mammal - Roll 1d12: (1) small-breed dog; (2) large-breed dog; (3) coyote, wild dog, or jackal; (4) fox or wolf; (5) tasmanian devil or thylacine; (6) hyena; (7) domestic cat; (8) bobcat, leopard, panther, puma, or cheetah; (9) tiger or lion; (10) ferret, weasel, or badger; (11) bear; (12) dire wolf, sabretooth tiger, or cave bear.
   
4-6   Herbivorous mammal - Roll 1d16: (1-2) cow; (3) bison, buffalo, auroch, gnu, or yak; (4-5) donkey, mule, pony, or horse; (6) zebra or giraffe; (7) pig; (8) warthog or boar; (9) sheep or goat; (10-11) deer, antelope, or gazelle; (12) elk or moose; (13) alpaca, llama, or camel; (14) hippo or rhino; (15) elephant; (16) woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, or mastodon.
   
7-9   Omnivorous mammal - Roll 1d20: (1-2) mouse or rat; (3) mole; (4-5) chipmunk or squirrel; (6-7) hamster, gerbil, or guinea pig; (8) pika, marmot, capybara, or wombat; (9) beaver or otter; (10) groundhog, prairie dog, or meerkat; (11-12) rabbit; (13) kangaroo; (14-15) opossum, raccoon, or skunk; (16) red panda, tanuki, or lemur; (17) panda bear, koala bear, or sloth; (18) hedgehog or porcupine; (19) anteater, armadillo, or pangolin; (20) megatherium or glyptodon.
   
10-11   Amphibian or reptile - Roll 1d10: (1) frog or toad; (2) salamander or newt; (3) iguana or lizard; (4) gila monster, komodo dragon, or goanna; (5) gecko or chameleon; (6) turtle or tortoise; (7) snake; (8) alligator or crocodile; (9) tyrannosaurus or velociraptor; (10) brontosaurus, stegosaurus, or triceratops
   
12-14   Bird or avian - Roll 1d24: (1) chicken or turkey; (2) duck, goose, or swan; (3) pigeon; (4) canary or parakeet; (5) cockatoo, toucan, or parrot; (6) cardinal, robin, or bluejay; (7) songbird; (8) hummingbird; (9) raven or crow; (10) eagle or hawk; (11) owl; (12) condor or vulture; (13) peacock; (14) pelican, spoonbill, or stork; (15) seagull or albatross; (16) penguin; (17) puffin, auk, or dodo; (18) flamingo; (19) iris, heron, or crane; (20) ostrich or emu; (21) bat; (22) kiwi, platypus, or echidna; (23) moth; (24) pterodactyl or archaeopteryx.
   
15-17   Fish or aquatic - Roll 1d20: (1) goldfish or clownfish; (2) salmon, carp, bass, or trout; (3) catfish or plecostomus; (4) sardine or anchovy; (5) puffer or blowfish; (6) lionfish; (7) swordfish, sawfish, or hammerhead; (8) piranha or shark; (9) manta or eel; (10) porpoise or dolphin; (11) seal, manatee, or walrus; (12) whale; (13) seahorse; (14) seaslug; (15) starfish or urchin; (16) jellyfish, octopus, or squid; (17) oyster or clam; (18) lobster, crab, or shrimp; (19) handfish or coelacanth; (20) placoderm, ichthyosaur, or plesiosaur.
   
18-19   Insect - Roll 1d16: (1) flea or tick; (2) cockroach; (3) mosquito; (4) spider; (5) fly; (6) ant or termite; (7) bee or wasp; (8-9) beetle; (10) grasshopper or cricket; (11) mantis; (12) scorpion; (13) worm, snail, or slug; (14) caterpillar, centipede, or millipede; (15-16) butterfly.
   
20     Protist - Roll 1d14: (1) amoeba; (2) paramecium; (3) dinoflagellate; (4) yeast; (5) algae; (6) diatom; (7) radiolarian; (8) streptococcus; (9) staphylococcus; (10) virus; (11) bdelloid rotifer; (12) tardigrade; (13) nematode; (14) slime mold.
   
21-22   Multiple mutations - Roll 1d20 once on this table and 1d20 once on the Mutant Appearance table.
   
23     Multiple mutations - Roll 1d20 twice on this table.
   
24     Multiple mutations - Roll 1d20 twice on this table and 1d24 once on the Mutant Appearance table.

     

     

I organized these more according to bodyplan and appearance rather than actual genetic lineage, which is why dinosaurs are being counted as reptiles instead of birds, while bats are counted as birds rather than mammals.

     

Umm ... I'm preeetty sure they are ...

     

Peter Ward & Alexis Rockman's Monsters I Want to Fight - The Future Evolutionaries

Future Evolution, written by Peter Ward, illustrated by Alexis Rockman, is not another After Man or another The Future is Wild.
  
Instead it's almost the antithesis.
  
Ward and Rockman don't imagine a future without humans or without our livestock and pets, where the remaining wild animals have re-inherited the Earth. They don't imagine a future full of new cool-looking megafauna, a return to 20-foot tall rodents and 100-foot long lizards.
  

Fig 1 - Possible future cladogram (bottom to top) - original dandelion, cactus-like, aquatic, arboreal, carnivorous, epiphytic. painted by Alexis Rockman

  
Ward posits (and Rockman paints) a future that is grounded in the likely continuation of both the human species and the current human civilization. The future they foresee is one of increasingly smaller and more isolated "island" habitats, where small ecosystems are separated from each other by impassable and inhospitable lines of building and infrastructure, where the farm and the garbage dump are at least as common of habitats as the forest and the prairie.
  
Their future is mostly full of small animals. There is, quite literally, no room in the world they see us building for animals even as large as the horse and the cow. Speaking of, their future is also mostly full of animals descended from livestock, from pets, from parasites and pests. They foresee us remaking a world that will have no room for today's wildlife, except in zoos, where they will be preserved as evolutionary dead-ends. Their future does see a re-proliferation of species, a branching out and diversification to re-fill all the abandoned ecological niches. But they predict that the progenitors will all be plants and animals that are connected to humans, the ones we raise, the ones that thrive because of or despite us. Many children, but few parents. A solipsistic world, where everything that exists lives because its ancestors had some connection to humanity, where everything disconnected from us has died out. (As I said, this future is virtually the opposite of Dougal Dixon's After Man, although it shares some similarity with the core conceit of Man After Man.)
  

Fig 2 - Possible future cladogram (bottom to top) - timber rattler, walking, pygmy, millipede, giant, flying, swimming types. painted by Alexis Rockman

   
They build their future world on eight principles, about how previous mass extinctions (and post-extinction recoveries) have gone, how the current ongoing one might be different and why.
  
For gaming purposes, most of these principles are irrelevant. But a few strike me as useful, especially if you move from the implicitly post-apocalyptic Dark Age setting of original D&D to the explicitly post-apocalyptic future world of Metamorphosis Alpha or Gamma World or Mutant Future or Crawling Under a Broken Moon or Mutant Crawl Classics.
  
"4. The modern mass extinction is different from any other in Earth's long history."
   
"Global terrestrial biodiversity will fall to end-Paleozoic levels because of continued extinction and the functional removal of barriers to migration."
   
"5. All mass extinctions have been followed by a recovery interval, characterized by a new fauna composed of animals that have either survived the extinction or evolved from such survivors."
   
"In this case, the recovery fauna is already in place, and consists mainly of domesticated animals and plants, as well as "weedy" species capable of living amid high populations of humans."
   
"6. There will be new species yet to evolve."
   
"Many of these new species will be the result of jumping genes, as DNA from organisms created under laboratory conditions by biotechnology firms escapes into the wild."
   
"Others will be mainly small species adapted to living in the new world of spreading cities and farms. The new animal and plant species will thus evolve in the niches and corners of a world dominated by Homo sapiens."
   
"The rules of speciation have changed: few large animals will evolve as long as humanity exists in large numbers, and as long as our planet remains divided into innumerable small islands."
    
"7. Our species, Homo sapiens, can look forward to both evolution and long-term survival. Of all the animal species on Earth, we may be the least susceptible to extinction: humanity is functionally extinction-proof."
   
"8. There will never be a new dominant fauna on Earth other than humanity and its domesticated vassals until we go extinct - and if we succeed in reaching the stars, that may never happen."
  

Fig 3 - Possible future cladogram (bottom to top) - original crow, vulture, raptor, shoe bill, wading, honey-eating, ratite. painting by Alexis Rockman

  
So how can we translate these ideas into game-able advice? (Aside from placing the twenty-five "future evolutionaries" specifically pictured here into your game?)
  
You don't need to go as far as eliminating every wild plant an animal from your games. But I would say that, if you want your game to feel like it takes place in a future where the planet has been indelibly marked by humanity's fingerprints, one way to show those marks is to increase the prevalence of monsters derived from domesticated animals, increase the prevalence of domesticated plants as set-dressing, beyond what you would ordinarily consider. And if you want your game to feel suitably post-apocalyptic, one way to do that is to have fewer progenitor species giving rise to more variant descendants, showing that there was a bottleneck, a great extinction, that everything that now lives evolved from what little survived.
  
A future where the players travel through a jungle of thousand-foot tall trees before finding a clearing where an army of tiger-women is fighting an army of polar-bear-men feels post-human. So much time has passed that we are forgotten, the fact that we ever existed at all is irrelevant.
   
But a future where the players travel through a forest of hundred-foot-tall cornstalks and fifty-foot dandelions, before finding a clearing where calico-housecat-women fight lamb-boys or teddy-bear-robots? Where they discover that their path though the forest is being cleared by a 10' cube-shaped pig? Where the corn-and-dandelion forest gives way to a Christmas-tree-and-Halloween-pumpkin forest? Or where all the forests are islands, surrounded by oceans of pavement? That's a future where the presence of humanity is still felt, where it is inescapable, suffocating.
  
Whether or not the players meet any humans, the fact of human existence is still obviously the dominant force shaping the world. If the humans they do meet have only stone-age technology, if they are trapped in a world their ancestors made that they can no longer reshape or even comprehend, that drives home just how apocalyptic the apocalypse must have been. The world might be post-apocalyptic, but it is not post-human, certainly not post-the-relevance-of-human-civilization.
   
Numenara posits a world where neo-medieval humans live among the relics of incomprehensible super-civilizations. But most other post-apocalyptic games imagine a nearer-term future, where it is essentially our civilization that has become the incomprehensible forebear to the survivors, and where a great deal of dramatic irony derives from the fact that what is incomprehensible to the neo-stone-age humans who live there is perfectly comprehensible to us. Peter Ward's and Alexis Rockman's ideas provide some insight for building a world like that.
   

Fig 4 - Possible future cladogram (bottom to top) - pig, genetically engineered, rhino-like, aquatic, pygmy, giraffe-like, garbage eating. painting by Alexis Rockman

Additional Ideas for Adventuring in the Deep Past

Since the last time I posted about it, the GLOG-o-sphere's collective dive into the deep past has continued.

Journey Into The Weird took a journey into the past, actually posting before my own previous entry, but escaping my attention until now.

"3. Archihylo Epoch, aka the Fae Invasion: Skarazi detect an infection of Fae on Elsai. Measures are taken to quarantine the infection. Glass domes encircle spreading forests to stop ensuing oxygenation. Quarantine is successful, but ecological changes make the planet unsuitable for Skarazi life. A majority leave Elsai behind and abandon SG8 to disappear behind the stars. A small majority dig in in more arid regions of Elsai, or on SG8 itself."

Coins & Scrolls followed up his original, more serious post about the historical past of his campaign world with a humorous look at three-dozen hypothetical past ages. These are all gold, right from the very start.

"39. Plantagenetic Period: Basic principles of royalty discovered. Kings of bacteria, kings of slime, kings of trees, kings of fish and fowl. Metalosynthetic bacteria learn to produce gold crowns, form valuable layers of quick-dying rulers and usurpers. Iconography still visible under a microscope. Most hereditary lines trace their origin to this period. A catastrophic series of succession wars left only the lion (king of beasts) and some insect-based royal lines intact."

"40. The Pseudopredatory Collapse: Mass extinction caused by the discovery that several apex predators were, in fact, cardboard cut-outs and plaster models. Arms race to claim the spots turns several innocuous species into vicious killers. Umber hulks evolve, smash the competition. Treaty of Mud, signed by most creatures (with eels and flatworms abstaining) bans vorpal claws, forces an unease peace. Parasite-spies steal evolutionary advantages and sell them to the highest bidder. Ends due to general exhaustion."

(See what I mean about these being gold? If Skerples were to collect these into a zine with illustrations depicting even a fraction of the entries, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat.)

The Amateur Dungeoneers joined in with a pair of weird pasts.

"1. The Great Funkadelican Era: Colors didn't always work entirely how we think they did. Before the era of humans, the land was dominated by civilizations of insect and crustaceans which could see a myriad colors. However as they grew more advanced as a civilization they saw fit to first categorize all colors and later to impose their own vision of beauty based on their peculiar color theory which only made sense to their alien eyes. Using great magic or science they began the 'great color mixture', combining colors which were never meant to be combine and which our puny minds and eyes cannot even begin to grasp. For a brief time the world was a technicolor funky mess to our primitive and distant ancestors but then the bug-crustaceans mixed colors which should have never been mixed, destroying the vast majority of colors in the process leaving us with those we know and a few survivors beyond our senses such as Jale, Ulfire and Dolm. And man, did that era look funky. Sadly the only ones who remember it are the mantis shrimp who still fly the colors of this bygone world."

Iron & Ink also posted the epochs leading up to the present day of his campaign world.

"4. The Clonocene Epoch: Photosynthetic life achieves stable form and explodes across the planet. Intelligent motile trees eventually prove to be the dominant life form, draining swathes of nutrients from the soil and leaving parched desert in their wake as they slowly drag themselves across the surface. The largest scrape the upper atmosphere and turn their attention to the sun, which they identify as the source of all life. In an effort to increase their uptake of solar energy they devise a plan to move the planet closer to the sun. This has predictably terrible results for all involved."

"Geological Layer: The Osteoradix. A twisting network of gargantuan petrified root systems. Internal parasites and fungi have adapted to their ossuary environment. A preferred hideout of liches. Lost undead creatures trudge through endless tunnels."

"Extinction Event: The Conflagration. Do not move your planet closer to the sun, especially if you are made of wood. Massive firestorms consume virtually all atmospheric oxygen. Life is virtually wiped clean and huge ash clouds lead to an extreme drop in global temperatures."

Most recently (by my count) Profane Ape continued the trend with more fantastical pasts.

"2. Dustball Earth: A slight slowing in the planet’s rotation caused by an approaching planetoid increased average wind speed while debris from said approach burned away most vegetation, leading to runaway erosion that eventually grinds the tops of continents down to mostly featureless dune deserts. The seas rise but become shallower overall as sand from the continents covers the sea floors and the displaced water spreads out over former landmasses. Continental dust storms rack the dusty continents, while ocean currents kick up silt storms in the brown waters. All the producers are kelp or really shitty palm trees that grow in the occasional equally shitty oasis. Competition between remaining animals elevates to heights of ludicrous cruelty. Fucking miserable."

In different ways, these parables remind me of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, Stanisław Lem's Cyberiad, Alan Lightman's Mr g.

The structure of any description of a fantastical past era is like a short-story or fable or morality play. We start briefly in an even earlier era, a time that sounds foreign and perhaps immoral. Somehow, our hero, a lowly and forgotten lifeform, is chosen for greatness, picked out as though by a fairy godmother, ascending to dominance as through hard work and determination. As it reaches new plateaus, it also changes, and forgets where it came from. Like a tragic hero from Greek myth, it retains a single flaw from its earliest days, some problem within itself that it never notices or corrects. In its arrogance, in its hubris, it overreaches. At the very height of its success, its flaw destroys it, and brings the entire world crashing down around it. The end of each story is the beginning of another, as another new lowly creature rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the world before.

Since my last post, I've had a few more ideas for incorporating multiple fantastical past eras into a campaign.

(9) Ancient kingdoms. My favorite idea involves using fantasy pasts to populate a hexcrawl. Each ancient epochal kingdom reigns over a small number of hexes, say something in the 2 to 6 range. (Use whatever method you like to generate this map, at whatever level of detail suits you. Use Coins & Scrolls' ideas for medieval mapping, if you like, at the county, barony, or local levels.)

Within its borders, it possesses a suitable biome, and the local ecosystem is whatever the fantasy past decrees, no matter how implausible. These are petty kingdoms, their time is past, almost nothing inside can survive outside the borders, and the local dissidents often have allies with the rulers of one kingdom over. So too are these shabby kingdoms. They are past the height of their power, already in decline, already suffering the beginnings of whatever fate wiped them out in the rest of the world.

This idea came to me thinking of how some of these fantasy pasts reminded me of China Mieville's The Scar, where one character hails from a land ruled by the undead, where humans hold a status somewhere between peasantry and cattle, and where the story's journey takes them all to an island that holds the last remnant of a nightmarish Anopheles Empire, ruled over by a class of super-high-tech mosquito people.

If I were to run this campaign, every kingdom would be a little feudal Ruritania, dressed up in nebulous nineteenth century European attire, full of corrupt politicians, scheming courtiers, venal merchants, and just enough young, pure-hearted souls trying to make better lives for themselves that you feel some tension between the competing desires to rob the place blind, help the people who deserve it, and burn the whole mess to the ground.

(10) Lost worlds. In a modern-ish setting, pieces of the evolutionary past might survive as "lost worlds," in underground caves, mountain valleys, and other isolated and out-of-the-way places, ancient prehistoric life still thrives. The whole genre of "lost world" fiction started with people imagining there might be hidden places where dinosaurs still survived into the present. We can do them one weirder by populating the earth with dozens of "lost worlds," each the remnant of a different fantastical past.

(11) Distant islands (or, The Voyage of The Time Beagle). In whatever kind of boat you choose, you and your adventuring party are sailing the sea, finding islands with weird ancient island ecologies. This idea isn't necessarily so different from "lost worlds," but its less tied to early 20th-century pulp as its genre. You could as easily be Greek Argonauts as you could Darwinian naturalists or tough guys in the tradition of Burroughs and Verne. The act of random exploration of innumerable islands by boat also feels quite different than chartering a private plane to fly directly to one of a dozen or so locations.

In many ways, Earth's actual past is nearly as fantastical as anything the GLOG-bloggers have come up with.

Consider the Oxygen Crisis. For a long time, life on Earth consisted of extremophile organisms who took in energy from their environment in the form of high temperatures, caustic acidity, toxic alkaline, overwhelming salinity. Each organism had a highly specialized metabolism, they "ate" dissolved minerals and the energy that comes from sitting in a steep gradient, the two poles of their unicellular bodies acting like living batteries, cathode connected to anode, and the current running through them, powering all their cellular processes. By virtue of their diets, each organism lived in a small, highly specialized ecology, surrounded by neighbors who each ate "food" the others couldn't stomach, who each thrived under conditions that would kill any nearby species. In tiny, highly adapted communities, life flourished. (Until it didn't of course. If local conditions changed, if local food sources ran out, the species who depended on them would die, unable to pass through any surrounding environment without being killed by it, unable to travel long enough to reach another suitable food source without starving first.)

Then one organism found a new diet, a new way to be an auto-trophe. Instead of being a geo-trophe, it would be a helio-trophe, it would "eat" sunlight. Instead of being trapped in a tiny island of livable habitat, it would have the entirety of the photosphere of the ocean to live in. The only problem was, this new organism, this plant, excreted a toxic waste-product: oxygen. For a long time, this lethal, radical gas set about rusting all the rocks and the soil on the surface of the Earth. It would kill any extremophile who came in contact with it, but for the most part, their habitats were so small, so specialized, so isolated, that they remained safely anoxic. Eventually the rocks rusted all they could, and this toxic oxygen gas began filling up the atmosphere, began dissolving in the ocean water. The plants began to suffocate on their own waste product, literally drowning in their own shit, to say nothing of all the poor geo-trophic archaea who'd survived billions of years of geological upheaval, only to be wiped out by the slowest crisis possible. The archaea who remained were the ones who could tolerate the presence of oxygen, alongside all the other hazards they could endure, or the ones who were more fully sheltered from the omnipresent poison gas.

And then, just before plants wiped themselves out, one plant discovered the way to save the world - cannibalism. It would stop eating sunlight, and start eating its siblings and parents. It would become animal. This new cell, this new life didn't just eat plants, it ate oxygen, and shat out the very carbon dioxide plants needed to breathe in. All plants survived because some plants got eaten, all life survived because some life learned to eat other life. The age of auto-trophes was over, and the age of hetero-trophes had begun. When one animal learned to eat another, when the first carnivore ate the first herbivore, the transition was complete. The Oxygen Crisis was ended, the atmosphere was saved, the very presence of life on Earth was saved, but at a price - what it meant to be alive was changed forever. No longer would "life" only mean that which took in energy from its chemical environment. Now "life" would also include that which took in energy by killing other living things. Life was saved by death. The community of the living was saved by mass murder.