Tarry Wisdom

Another critter the Champions fought was a farastu (tarry) demodand. That's the scrawny little critter on the left. Four of 'em exploded outta some zombies. Not much of a challenge, but sure evokes some nasty imagery, very Dead Alive.

Not a big fan of demodand, just kinda feel stuck on, because they needed neutral evil demon/devils. They excrete yuckiness, and in the farastu's case, it is tar. This tar makes weapons stick to them unless a relatively easy save is made, all saves were made so I couldn't use these scummy little boogers to take away some weapons.

In second edition, when they didn't want to call fiendish critters demons and devils, they changed demodand's name to ghereleth's. The decision to try to disguise demons and devils always pissed me off. In a weird way, the belief that D&D was devil worship gave it a little more credibility. Something you might play with metal heads, instead of a hobby exclusively enjoyed by dorks.

Garycon: Face the Eye Tyrant!

In celebration of Garycon, I put my players up against a beholder. Awesome. I've never had a party high enough level to even look at a beholder without dying. It was pretty crazy, they kinda peppered it with arrows till it died, which shows just how awesome the Champions of Cauldron are.

I wish I had a picture of it handy, but back in the day my mom made a beholder costume for halloween. My brother used to play D&D, he's the one who I inherited my first rule books from. He had a fistfull of mini's (which my dad would paint up for him) one of which was a cheap grenadier beholder knockoff. The bad boy shown over there on the left. Think it was painted glossy grey, if I dig deep enough, I might be able to find it in my box of discarded mini's.

Her "eye monster" was a big purple scaly thing with a giant eye for a head, and tubing tipped with styrofoam eyes dangling around the bottom. For some reason she didn't win the contest she went to, got beat out by a sexy witch or something. I'm thinking the judges thought it was a rental, not made from scratch (which it was!).

Really have nothing to say about E.G. Gygax's death that hasn't been already said, more eloquently, on other blogs. It really is a pity, makes me sad.