PHoD Things

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

Love the DreadWraiths.  They're spectertacular! 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

And they don't instantly give away their misty presence by waving blithering insectly incompetent glowing eye emitters at you that can be seen three continents away.

I like that very much. I think that glowing eyes never make sense, nor do they ever look good. Most of the time they are used to make things scary and totally fail and make even the scariest things look funny instead of scary.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Mad Poet]

               

Love the DreadWraiths.  They're spectertacular! 

 

Ha ha! I see what you did there! 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Spectertacular? Ouch.

 

(inserts CD of the score from JAWS into player...)

One of the commonest perils of the sea wastes of Atlantis is Teraticthys ferox, (roughly translated as ferocious monster fish), but more usually know simply as "the Deathfish". Its victims usually just call it "Bloody hell, look out, quick, no, aaaaauuueeergaaagghh!"

It is apparently a very large, aberrant offshoot of the Coelacanth family which has evolved in isolation in the Atlantean deeps. Measuring fifteen to twenty feet in length, it is a rampaging homicidal maniac with all the social graces of Krakatoa.

And sometimes they hunt in shoals. Big shoals.

The Moon Goddess of Atlantis, Selena, has often found herself pitted against these ravening piscine horrors since they have the distressing habit of swimming up the Atlantean canal system into the heart of the citadel and then lunging out of the water and eating the citizens. Metal gates installed on the canals have proved ineffective as the dementedly savage Deathfish chew through the bars. Don't you just hate when they do that?

Now that I'm starting to get the ATLANTIS Modules started, I'm in obvious need of all sorts of freakishly unsightly undersea Spleens, so there'll likely be many more PHoD Grotesquely Antisocial Fish and things at some point. The Deathfish was designed for use (as the images tend to suggest) in walkable water, but there's nothing to stop them swimming about in "underwater" Areas.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Just a couple of Lesser Spleens, the first of which isn't necessarily, completely, absolutely a Spleen, but being a particularly foul-tempered and savage animal with abnormal tendencies, it's borderline Spleen so it's going in the big bag with the others...

The Acanthothere, commonly found in arid savannah and desert regions, doesn't like you. It doesn't much matter who or what you are, it doesn't like you. They don't even much like each other and when packs of the reeking things attack you, one or two of them are almost always liable to get into fights with each other over who gets to pull your head off.

According to the Acanthothere Owner's Manual, you should never, under any circumstances, ever, own an Acanthothere, because it will instantly try to kill you. Which rather renders the whole concept of a handbook for them more than ordinarily futile.

The Acanthothere Owner's Club, which has precisely a quarter of one member (and that's diminishing rapidly) has long held the coveted "Most Pointless Organization In History Award" for the last two centuries.

 

And another nasty, rubbery whassname thing... a really unsightly, armpitly ugly freak, this one...

The Rakbeast is hideous, and not just at an amateur level. This stenchbucket is professional, epic level hideous and has completed a ten year course of Being Hideous Master Classes with honours. It holds a full Doctorate of Hideousness from the University of Hideous and comes complete with a chromium-plated, fully-illuminated, genuine accessory Certificate of Hideosity.

(I know there's no such word as Hideosity, you know there's no such word as Hideosity, but IT doesn't know that... and it's best not to enrage one of these things or it'll start coming on all hideous at you.)

The Rakbeast often enters International Hideousism Competitions, and has for many years held the 500 Metres Being Hideous Race title and took gold at the 2008 Hideolympic Games in all events relating to being hideous. Aside from being hideous, it's also a savage, homicidal Spleen like all the other savage, homicidal Spleens, etc, etc.

And it's hideous too.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

By this point, many of you may have come to the conclusion that my Modules are solely inhabited by astoundingly curvaceous, ten foot tall female creatures with horns and such and endless hordes of massive, disgustingly savage and hideous abominations.

This is not so.

There are lots of demented NPCs many of whom are almost entirely "normal" and prosaic in appearance. After all, the Spleen Creatures need lots of people to kill horribly... as do the curvy Demonesses half the time.... Yes, it's a hard (and usually short) life being an NPC in a PHoD Module...

I mean, who wants to be piled on by something like this...?

The Gorlakh are bio-engineered weapons of war created by a highly advanced but shockingly short-sighted alien race who then, inevitably, became extinct when their monstrous creations turned upon them. The Gorlakh had been created to kill, hybrids of various savage, predatory species allegedly controlled by implants in their dismally small brains. However, their unnaturally heightened instinct to kill proved considerably greater than a few miserable impulses from stupidly feeble microchips and so they went on the rampage, slaughtered their creators and, as a result, the vast space vessel carrying them plunged out of control upon a world that soon discovered swords and sorcery did absolutely nothing to halt the sudden invasion of rampaging monsters from outer space.

Fortunately, Luce soon sensed them, and the curvy Huntress from Hell did not like the advent of amassed Spleens rampaging about HER planet. So she pushed their horrible faces in.

However, some small packs of Gorlakh remain, haunting dark, remote places, killing all in their random path. Quite apart from the times they've been discovered on other worlds during Luce and Kara's Plane jumping travels.

Worryingly, in some cases, the hybrid horrors are found to be moving with foresight and purpose as if controlled by a greater power, as if someone or something had found a way to command them through the implants rusting away inside them. As yet, the nature of this power has not revealed itself... but it'll likely prove to be the exact shape of a Spleen.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               

Fun exciting D&D fact about bioweapons gone rogue!

 

Beholders are bioweapons gone mad

 

For real

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Astounding proof that not all PHoD Spleen Creatures have huge, nasty, pointy, overstated fangs...

The Nameless is the unknown incarnate... What it is, where it comes from, what it ultimately wants, why it does the things it does are utterly mysterious to everyone... except, presumably, itself.

Unlike most savage, rampaging PHoD Spleens, the Nameless (though capable of devastating violence if it needs to) prefers to manipulate events from the shadows, to possess the minds of other beings, to twist and corrupt the threads of causality.

Its malignant manipulations are often subtle, but generally lead to cataclysmic ends. Whatever the mysterious thing is, it's evidently absolutely callous, without pity, mercy or care for entire worlds let alone individuals.

Also, nobody has the slightest idea why it stapled rubbish old masks from some dilapidated theatre to itself. Perhaps to hide its unquestionably foul visage, (except for all the nasty, rubbery tentacles that stick out round the edges). Or maybe just to stupidly enhance its rating on the Mysteriousometer.

Immensely intelligent, wholly perplexing in its very deliberate yet apparently pointless activities - at least until some vast, epic pattern starts to emerge - the Nameless is an adversary of considerable power...

Unlike its disgustingly mindless, voiceless minions. The Nameless Thralls are a bit rubbish really, but doubtless serve the mysterious "Spleen X" usefully by way of their unquestioning, fearless, blind obedience. They too have daft masks plastered on them for no appreciable reason.

And Velpa has evidently concluded that, being nasty evilist things, they clearly need to be hit over the head with a razor sharp implement when they least expect it...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Mad Poet]

               

*SQUEALS AT MASKS*

 

*coughs*

 

Sorry. Not sure where that came from.

 

I'm going to name you 'Comedy', and you 'Tragedy'.

 

'>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

I just call 'em "Spleen" and "Other Spleen".

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Spleens of the day...

The Arakhon, gigantic, filthily mutated arachnid aberrations generally found lurking in caves, shadowy ravines and in that cupboard, that one there, right beside you! It'll burst out of the cupboard at you any second... the... the, um, the really big twenty foot high cupboard... um... well... MAYBE they could be in a cupboard.

No. I s'pose they couldn't.

See, I heard about this other Spleen, see, and IT was in a cupboard.

Moving quickly on, the Arakhon (which do not lurk in cupboards but very probably WOULD if only they could find cupboards big enough) have all the advantages of spiders, venom, ability to create webs, etc, plus the ability to wield weapons, read maps, impersonate Elvis (badly) and, being typical rubbery Spleens they look DAMNED UNSIGHTLY whilst doing so.

There are numerous subspecies of Arakhon but all are guaranteed to be uglier than a Naked Mole Rat and hostile to pretty much everything else there is. The Arakhon are also famed for their pathologically rubbish efforts at close-harmony choral singing and their Choir is justly feared by all living things equipped with ears.

Mostly they just try to eat you though, which is preferable to having them sing at you... well, I say "sing" in the loosest possible sense...

Based on the Drider model but more than twice the size for added Spleen value.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_LastBard]

               

Oh God...amazing works on amazing works. When we'll can use all these beautiful creations? '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kamal_]

               I get the feeling there's two or three npcs alive anywhere in this world, and the only reason they are alive is because the spleens are fighting over who gets to kill them.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_3RavensMore]

               

kamal_ I've a feeling that the always present demonesses as well as the occasion goddess have no trouble carving up a spleen like a roast.

 

...and strangely I'm no longer hungry after writing that.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

               

Rubbishly nailed together from the bones of cursed Giants and a stack of rusty old iron and then animated by pathetically useless arcane power, OssuKnights are pathologically Spleen-shaped Constructs whose intelligence is non-existent and whose blundering incompetence in carrying out even the simplest of instructions is legendary.

If the clinically rubbish mages who create these putrefacted heaps of tripe send them to a village to fetch ingredients from the apothecary, chances are they'll slaughter most of the villagers, burn down the mill and return to their less than clever masters with a sack of mouldy turnips instead... and if asked to destroy the village, they'll probably miss it entirely, get lost, attack a cliff somewhere instead and be found the following morning buried under the landslide they brought down upon themselves...

Available with and without the incompetently angled blades sticking out.

LastBard:- You get the Colossal Sack of Spleens on the Vault soon... Bear with me... These dribbling trails of screenshots Spleenshots are just a sort of feeble blind to hide the fact that it takes me millions of years to actually dredge stuff up out of my vast and hideously debased Demoness Tales Haks and lethargically drag them to the Vault...

 

kamal, 3Ravens:- Somehow there just always seem to be more NPCs hanging about, mostly employed in the ceaseless task of rebuilding their towns and villages which invariably get completely annihilated again when some gargantuan Spleen attacks yet again. The biggest problem faced by the "dirty, soil-eating proles" as Lucirath calls any mortal humanoid in a rural area or "filthy recidivist baboons" as she calls anyone in an urban area is that she's not remotely interested in saving them, will often slaughter them copiously herself - especially if she catches sight of Merry Minstrels whom she detests with a vengeance... She has been known to use an entire village as Spleen bait to lure one out of hiding and will strike when she sees the right opportunity, regardless of how many people get eaten first...