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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8509963" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 86: August 1993part 3/5Bestiary: Ahmi Vanjuko is a name that should be familiar to Ravenloft fans, as he goes onto be republished in their second monstrous compendium and mentioned in several other books beyond that. Once a normal ranger from Greyhawk, he's now trapped in a mechanical golem body, unable to taste or smell the nature he loves so much, with all animals terrified of him. He's slowly losing his grip on sanity & humanity as a result, but still tries to be a good person and destroy the other horrible creations of Easan the Mad. He gets a full 3 pages of florid backstory making it clear how tragic his life is (while also being a terrifying combatant if your PC's attack him, because Ravenloft does love the cursed with awesome trope. ) If you can communicate with him, he could be a valuable ally, and if you could get him a new human body, (preferably ethically sourced, perhaps a swap with someone who would be less angsty about the things they'd lose as an android, maybe even one of the PC's.) he would be very grateful indeed. Lots of different interesting plot ideas here, making him much more than just another monster to kill. Nice to see another thing that got a start in the newszine and then went onto bigger things. The Everwinking Eye: Ed runs out of things to say about Zhentil Keep for now, so this instalment is relatively short. 5 adventure ideas for things that could happen while there. As with his full adventures, they're fairly linear in design, and only work if the PC's do specific things, otherwise they'll miss them entirely or force the DM to improvise. There's plenty of opportunity to be screwed over by the Zhentarim, who enjoy baiting naive adventurers with plot hooks that are false or traps, but also some real plots to foil. A little divination magic would be very handy in telling one from the other and picking jobs that don't get you killed or wind up advancing the goals of evil in the long run. You may well be annoyed with how running these turns out, but you probably won't be bored. I guess it's another way of showing how despite the heroes always winning in the novels, the world as a whole still has plenty of challenges. At least some of the villains take the long view in between the maniacal cackling and know how to misdirect effectively so a loss isn't a complete loss. The Living Galaxy: Roger turns his eye to alien ecologies this time. Earth's ecology is large and complex enough that figuring out what makes an alien one different can be difficult; nearly anything you think of will have been tried by some species somewhere in space and time. The trick is in doing lots of research and then remixing elements in a way that's plausible. After all, the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe, and there are plenty of examples of convergent evolution on earth. You're going to get eyeballs, ears, claws, wings, grazers, pack hunters, stalking solitary hunters, etc wherever you go. Pouches, reproductive methods, colours, intelligence, specific numbers of limbs, on the other hand, can and have shaken out very differently. There's also substantial differences in overall competence. Is the planet one that will have it's ecosystem devastated by a few foreign bacteria arriving, or the kind that'll eat intruders alive and then spread back to where they came from? Are your biochemistries even remotely compatible? How do differences in temperature, gravity and atmospheric pressure alter what thrives and what dies? As usual, much of this refers you to much larger works on this topic, and then talks about which RPG's might be good for it, including many of the weird but not completely impossible creatures to be found in our own monstrous compendia. Call of Cthulhu comes out particularly well, given their emphasis on the bizarre and mindblowing. Overall, this maintains much the same standards of quality as the rest of them.</blockquote>

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