Giant Lynx, Mammoth, Manticore, Masher, Mastodon

 AD&D Giant Lynx

 

don't sue me TSR games I own the monster manual and can show it to people if I want...!

AD&D Mammoth, Mastodon
These nearly identical entries (Mammoth has 13 HD instead of 12, does 3d6 instead of 2d8, and has AC 5 instead of 6) take up a good half of a page and are largely redundant with the Elephant entry earlier. More and more evidence for the existence of someone very interested in finicky details of the pleistocene being involved with early D&D.

AD&D Masher
Probably among the most forgettable monsters of all time, these are 8HD 'worm-like' fish, dealing 5d4 damage and being covered in poisonous dorsal spines that mean it must be attacked from the front or below, lest the spines fend off attackers who must either abort their melee attack or save vs poison or die. They eat coral but are prone to attacking if surprised or threatened in "self-defense." It's not a bad concept for a monster, though it being underwater and just a fish limits the need to engage with them.

One might expect them to be popular sources of poison spears by the underwater races of Sahuagin and so on, but I see no mention of interaction with other sea creatures. In fact, apart from a lonely 2e wiki entry and a mention of dwelling in the waters of Raven's Bluff in Toril, they do not appear to have any internet presence.

Some random 5e character named Masher has about the same online presence as this fish on search engines

AD&D Manticore
An interesting creature, it can fire 4 volleys of 6 spikes, dealing 1d6 damage each at the range of a light crossbow. As they can fly, one assumes they soften up or slay foes at range, then close in to finish off whatever remains with their unimpressive melee (a regular ol lizard man is about equivalent if you ignore the HD difference) Their treasure type E is typically unimpressive- there is a chance of something good, but it is a low chance indeed. If nothing else, their iron tail spikes can no doubt double as iron spikes to shut doors with.

Manticores are an interesting tactical problem for low to-mid level parties- one must survive the volleys of fairly accurate (+6) spikes, then be able to defeat the creature before it flies away to end its aerial reign of terror, or find a way to track a flying beast back to its lair for treasure. They are of low intelligence but are 'Lawful Evil' which might imply deals can be struck with them, though it is unclear if they speak despite having human heads.

Sunset Realm Giant Lynx
Like most giant animals, the answer is 'sure, why not, there are many ways to become gigantic.'

nasty man

Sunset Realm Mammoth/Mastodon
See the Elephant entry. Most of them are found in the frozen lands of Fomoria south of the fault, driven ever further south by Deadliege expeditions to steal their bones and make necromantic war-constructs from them, just as what was done to their less-hairy elephant brethren in the warm north jungles.

Lungfungus had an interesting approach for these beasts statblock wise that I think I'll steal- failing a melee attack against one incurs 1d8 damage from trampling, as an automated way to make unskilled hunters better off on ranged duty and account for the bulk of the beast simply trampling people.

Sunset Realm Manticore
Goblinpunch already did a pretty great take which I am mostly stealing from.

Manticores are Nightmare creatures, born of dreams of spite and grudge. As Nightmare is closest to the waking world in Saresare, they are known to be residents of that desert sultanate, though they are often hunted and driven into Yuba, Fassulia, and Mercia, cursing all the way. Their faces are that of the host of the nightmare that made them.

They eat hard things, breaking their teeth and bleeding their gums, and incorporate those things as their tail spikes. Shards of bone, stone, and metal compose the quills of a manticores tail. Vomiting forth unsuccessful consumption leads to their lairs being foul smelling and messy, and frequently haunted by unclean spirits of disease. Harpies and manticores do not get along well, but are frequently found together regardless. They fear sphinx.

Manticores are generally unreasonable, growing more resentful of everything you have that they don't but can be satiated temporarily with slander and general nastiness. Politeness and care only pisses them off more. Aiding them with whatever grudge they are nursing is the only way to be allied with one.
If a manticore cannot kill you, it will follow you, harassing your friends, scaring off game, leading enemies to you, and worse if it can manage it.

If you are hit by a manticore tail spike, it embeds in you and you become poisoned by hatred. You cannot aid other people, and can only laugh at their misfortune, mocking them, listing out all your grievances and resentments towards them. Pulling out a spike deals 1 extra point of damage per spike, and you can pull out any number within a round as a full-round action, but someone with a spike in them certainly can't pull spikes out of someone else. Those who die, not from the manticore itself, but from the side-effects of this poison, will spawn a Nightmare incursion upon death which in turn will spawn manticores with their face. Manticores try to engineer these scenarios, knocking people off cliffs and then poisoning their friends and similar so they let them fall.

This poison is nightmarish in nature and only takes effect when the manticore hurls spikes, it can only be collected by things that can collect dreams or emotions.
Similarly, only their spikes are real- upon being slain, the manticore collapses and turns to nothing. Manticores do not have biology or ecology, and could indeed sit in a dungeon room for 100 years doing nothing but hoping to eat the next person they saw.

Demons part 3- The Lords of Nightmare and a Belated Overview of AD&D Demons as a whole.

OG Demon Lords
AD&D Demon/Devil Lords are among, if not the, most powerful beings in the monster manual. As such they rarely get used directly in most games, and mostly exist as Official D&D™ lore dumps you can look up online yourself far better than I'd explain 'em.

OG Demons- I find it interesting that the AD&D demons pretty much all have an amount of weight they can move via telekinesis listed in terms of gold pieces- like, that is prominently mentioned for demons. Sure they also tend to have levitation, and some sort of fear effect, often darkness, pyrotechnics, and polymorph self, and a variety of utility effects like language reading, detect magics, etc, but it really seemed like the big question about demons was 'how much treasure can it haul.'

Unlike many monsters, have motives ascribed to them.
Type I demons  like human flesh and precious stones and metals and are described as 'stupid and prone to listen to bribes.'
Type II demons are like type I, and animostity between these two types is noted.
Type III- n/a
Type IV- Noted to have names and to be 90% likely to listen to offers of great rewards for small services, as well as a fondness for human flesh and blood.
Type V- Noted to be feared by lesser demons as they are domineering and cruel, having names like type IV demons, and desiring the sacrifice of strong warriors to them.
Type VI- "With proper invoking, offerings, and promises, type VI demons might be convinced to co-operate with a character or a group for a time. Naturally, the demon will attempt to assume/usurp command at every opportunity."
Succubi- Rule lower demons through wit and threat.

By contrast Devils seem less inclined to negotiate as they are locked into a  rigid command structure of rulership.
Barbed devils are alert guards who immediately cast unauthorized creatures into cells for torment, Bone devils delight in making less powerful creatures suffer, Erinyes are pursuers and abductors of evil souls and engage in bargaining and temptation of others, Horn Devils hate things stronger than themselves.

Demons may be summoned by any alignment and types i-IV cannot cross thaumaturgic circles, and will never willingly serve (meaning they only do tasks that they believe they are getting the best deal from) and are likely to carry off 'Liked' individuals to be favored slaves. They are also warded off by holy relics and symbols.

The point of mentioning all this is that they seem custom built to  be puzzle encounters, and potential ways to carry more GP in a dungeon. Forget having slugathons with demons over moral differences, the way to deal with AD&D demons is to try to find their name, hide in/trick demons into thaumaturgic circles, ward them off with holy items, and bribe them. This is basically what I was doing with Ifrits and Djinn already, so extending it to demons is my new go to.

3.5 Demons
 By contrast, the 3.5 entries merely  talk about how the demons prefer to battle, the Balor entry even giving round-by-round tactics to employ. There is no mention of thaumaturgic circles, repelling demons with holy icons, and certainly no assumption that a player might ever interact with one in any way besides punching it. While it would be easy to point at this as yet more proof that 3.5/PF are games about combat math above all else, it's worthwhile to remember the whole 'satanic panic' thing made the executives of D&D explicitly adopt some guidelines to affirm a sort of 'moral center' to defuse the shrieks of the religious authoritarians. While they were not adhered to with unwavering obedience, I expect in addition to renaming demons and devils 'Tan'ari and Baatezu,' making interactions with demons solely a matter of 'good guy vs bad guy' may have played a part in the dumbing down of demons from puzzle encounters to combat encounters.

I'd be curious to see if the 5e statblock has any non-combat interactions laid out for demons.

Sunset Realm Demons
 Any immortal spirit being with 6+ HD and a dead or forsaken creator deity is probably called a 'Demon.' Things spawned from mortal nightmare realms are typically called Nightmares instead, but it's basically the same thing- a being that lost its original purpose and has grown corrupt, predatory, and self serving (or started out that way, depending on their origin.). There's no great point in categorizing all of them, and most spells of level 4+ probably have a type of demon competing with spellwisps to be unleashed onto the waking world. Binding a demon as a spell is probably the most common form of a demon pact, though if their names are found they could be summoned for all manner of things. While not inherently 'evil' as standard D&D assumes, many of their desires may be at odds with human experience (Two demons in my current campaign want, respectively, rare and impressive legs, and to encase living beings in prisons of unusual solidified objects. They want these things in the same way humans want to eat tasty food and to have satisfying social connections.)

Sunset Realm Demon Lords
There are two meanings for the term 'Demon Lord.' One is just words, applied to a demon who lords over things, or someone who lords over demons. These self-proclaimed or earned titles are basically just nicknames, no different from calling a king a 'Human Lord.'

The other meaning is in reference to things crawled from the deepest pits of nightmare, bad dreams with no dreamers, sprung from the edge of the unknowable darkness at the bottom of the collective consciousness that is the dream realm, and Demon God is more commonly used by sages who are wishing to be very clear on the matter (though it just obfuscates the issue in another way. Ah, language...). They are shaped by the dreams of all beings, and perhaps shape them in return, until it is unclear which created which, but unlike the desires of lesser demons, the Lords of Nightmare embody widespread feelings familiar to most people, and as such exist on a more transcendental scale compared to a demon that is basically just a rude spirit monster. Below are two such beings.

Unfortunately Mohawk Babyface was hated to death moments after the touching attempt to offer Isfrix a flower. A common demonic form of Cause Wounds/Magic Missile/Disintegrate/etc is stating things you hate about the target, invoking Isfrix, and then watching the target get scoured from existence. Isfrix hates everything so there's never restrictions on targeting, and most gods hate something, so they can't really complain about the occasional invocation of Isfrix from their clerics.

Isfrix, Lord of Hate- Possessed of equal and infinite hatred for all things, including itself, including the hatred for itself, including the hatred for the hatred for itself, etc etc, Isfrix is a mad and broken entity that seeks the destruction of all things, including itself. However, the hatred humanity(and other beings) engages in keeps the god alive and caught in a perpetual suicide, mashing its broken face against a mountain atop which the Sphere of Annihilation rests, regenerating faster than it can die and bleeding hatred into the world, which hate-stricken people refine into curses of all varieties through their own malign will. Hate will not vanish from the world until Isfrix is dead, but Isfrix cannot die until hatred has vanished from the hearts of all beings.

The race of beings Isfrix created are the Conqueror Worms, brightly colored little worms that have the ambitions, emotions, and intelligence equal to humans, but are trapped in pathetic and useless bodies that cannot sate their dreams... but can steal the bodies of others via sitting in the brains. They hate their creator, and are jealous of beings, but no simple villains are they- they are split into factions, those who wish to simply watch over the grave of Isfrix until the end of the world, those who wish to take what was denied to them from the other beings of the world, and those who wish to live in cooperation and transformation and break the cruel narrative Isfrix wrote for them back when the god was more sane and more actively malevolent.

I only realized I had just reinvented the plight of the Yeerks a few months later
don't sue me Applegate

Janus, Lord of Greed- The two-faced chthonic god of blood and gold, and the interplay between the two. Sacrifice blood to get gold, or gold to save your own blood- it's just like the interplay of violence and wealth that occurs even without the influence of demon gods. For a long time, Janus was accepted by many in the city of Oroboro, and still has influence on the folk of the deep places of the earth who tend to be rich on gold and violent monsters, and undead who pay for superior states of cursed unlife.

The Hell of Janus, a place where the servants wear chains of gold, the mountains are made of coins, and every last inch is stained with blood. The blackened towers of scabby gold have no connections to each other and simply compete to rise higher and higher. The promise of one day being lord of their own decadent tower keeps the lackey souls laboring eternally.

The flames of greed cannot be extinguished by throwing any amount of blood and gold at them, and so Janus, like Isfrix, will likely persist as long as a price can be set on life. Even the act of desecrating tombs of Janus worshippers spreads greed, for who would turn up their nose at the bounties of demon-gold beaten into grave goods? Areas that use a gold standard of currency are usually under the sway of Janus, and it is hard to say whether all gold came from Janus, or if Janus came from the bloody wars for gold.

DREAM-SLAVE OF THE NIGHTMARE FACTORY

Apparently these are album covers for a band called Sepultura. So now we know, you and I. If you're a player in my Crownless Lands game you might not want to read this, but it's really not so much for that game so I wouldn't sweat it, I stayed up till 6:31am glibbering this to the void so I expect its final form would prove divergent anyhow

This is in a hijacked dream, or maybe it's where a kidnapped dreamer was taken. The lines are blurred.

Top is up and bottom is down.
ENTERING- The players plunge through an opaque black portal found behind a wall and find themselves in 1.
1. 10 foot wide hallway, 50' feet tall, curving slightly. Before you is a cold blue light visible as ambience diffusing around the bend, behind you is darkness. After a bit of walking, the whole place rumbles and grinds horribly and continually and you all feel a bit unbalanced. Metal grid of crypts on right wall, easily scaled and traversed, left wall a rusty expanse of iron.. Every encounter turn, an undead awakens in a crypt just beyond torchlight, 1d6-1*10 feet above the ground. All move towards the party with some movement gimmick, and if somehow bypassed in the narrow hall do not change direction and vanish once out of sight. No wandering monsters here besides the dead.

like this but dark and spooky and apparently infinite

1-Skeleton- Crawls at elevation they emerged at, drops on players beneath.
2-Headless Zombie- Lands with a splat, gets up 1 round later, shambles forward.
3-Giant Bouncing Skull. Jumps forward in arcs with 1d3*10 max height and distance each round.
4-Wraith- Stays at elevation they emerged from, floating slowly by.
5-Giant Rolling Skull- Lands with a hollow 'clunk' and rolls at players at high speed.
6-Starving Ghoul- Stays put. Bursts into screaming action and attacks if someone comes within 10' feet. The only monster that actively pursues players.

No matter how much you walk, you won't reach the blue light, but the hallway is only about 200 feet long. This is because the light source is floating in a fixed position, while you and the crypt are all a big rotating ring cylinder.

Breaking through a tomb leads to the giant's area of 3a. If they somehow break the left wall, it leads out to 6.

 Undead return to niches in the rotating tomb-cylinder and are rotated out of sight, to spook the players next revolution. Hiding in a tomb-niche while the other players keep walking gives you a free ride around the cylinder to the end of the hallway and snuffing your torches causes the mechanism to cease and the undead to remain dormant, since it's run by zombies seeing light through pinholes in the walls and then running in hamster wheels or something. Or you could just split the party to walk opposite directions and while one group walks in place, the other group will advance on the light double-speed from the other direction. I'm sure enterprising players will find other ways to foil this goofy obstacle too.

2. Cute but evil glowy blue will-o-wisp who can ethereally interact with esoteric mechanisms inside the iron walls to turn a column of iron tomb-alcoves into a handy maintenance ladder, providing access to 3 and stopping the rotation. Will o wisps can only derive pleasure from being chased by people, but by the time the players actually reach it, the foul spirit is thoroughly satisfied and willing to help you out, and also explain their motivations until everyone is bored and distracted. Ladder is slippery with ectoplasm, unwary climbers save or fall into 3c for around 4d6 damage and squash a Watcher, because will o wisps also love luring people to their doom. Anyone who dies from this becomes a wisp themselves. I sorta like the ghost class here.

3. Control Chambers.  Glass windows look out upon the sheet-bound form of a titanic figure and the strange machinery that binds it, and strange buttons and levers abound. Pulling them injects/electrocutes/tickles the titan to affect its mentality, which in turn effects a change in the rules of this place. It also attracts a wandering monster. You can view each square bit as a separate room that might have a Watcher inside, filing paperwork or drinking coffee or tinkering with settings.

Random Reality Warping Examples
1-Gravity turned off.
2-Light/Darkness reversed.
3-Living beings muted.
4- Party Hasted. Age 1 year every turn/10 minutes.
5-Slow motion. Nonliving objects move at sluggish paces- arrows can be outrun, dropped items take a turn to land on the floor.
6-Water glows and burns, fire becomes an endothermic reaction that freezes things.
7- Party teleported to random location within dungeon.
8-Party Fused
9-Inventories put into temporal stasis.
10- Consumable items have infinite usage within dungeon but double in weight whenever used.

3a- Undead giants pushing axle of 1 in response to light trickling through crypt-cracks, or standing around aimlessly. Poking them makes them move predictably.
3b-Precarious rope and metal elevator down to 9. Can get off halfway to traverse gargantuan wall of 6 and its chaos incursions.
3c- Control room main. Locked Hatch leads to Titan Tubes, which lead to various small rooms (more like cages) along the titan's body where Watchers observe the titan from. There's usually at least a few Watchers here.
3d- Ejection Plug- Guarded by Watchers. Releasing its locks drops the titan into the Breach.
3e- Titan Tube Exterior. Climbing for the brave.

4- Watcher Living Quarters. Where the watchers hang out when not doing important Titan tasks. Really friendly watchers might invite you to hang out here, or you can play Home Invasion and rob the place of what trinkets they may have.

Watchers
Humanish, mostly, but they're from the dreamlands or the future or something. Doing important work here. No names, only jobs. Show up in yellow metal-lookin areas. Good reaction rolls indicate they're slackers looking for entertainment and ways to not do their jobs. Bad reaction rolls indicate they're no-fun allowed sticklers for trespassers and will try to exterminate you before you screw everything up and cause a nightmare incursion. They carry fairly standard adventuring stuff like rope, lanterns, paper, and random trinkets like these.
1-Senser- Nose like bloodhound, eyes like eagle. As thieves, with crossbows.
Wants: Knowledge, shinies, smellies.
2-Thinker- Just a giant head. Levitates around. Wizards with a focus on mental and dream magic.
Wants: Solutions to Problems.
3-Feeler Pin-headed brute. As Ogre.
Want: Lift Heavy Things
4-Gibberer- Disposable wretches. As Goblin.
Wants: To obey orders.
5-Necro-Manager-Indispensable wretch. As Goblin but other watchers have unbreakable morale while they're around, to the point where they can keep going even if they're dead.
Wants- To have orders obeyed.
6-Crossbreed-Roll Twice 

5- The Titan
This is the dreaming psyche of someone the Watchers invaded the dreams of to do mad oneiromantic science on. Just pick some relevant NPC, like a hireling or their main antagonist or the king or something. They are currently not lucid, and cannot be made lucid until the Watchers cease mucking around with things. Once freed of imaginary dream-drugs pumped into them and made to understand that this is a dream, they either wake up, collapsing the nightmare, or become as a god within their own mind and go mad with power and probably accidentally tear a rift to Nightmare and get psychically rent asunder and possessed. If they're dropped into 8 they'll vanish both in the dream and in real life, but telling clues of where they ended up will remain.


6- The Wall
Beyond this wall lies the Dreamlands. It is massive and the cracks in the mortar can easily be traversed to various '6' locations, or all the way down to 10. Reaching 5 or 3 locations might be possible with leaps swinging from precariously-hooked grappling lines. The wall is leaking horrors in this place, which seek to devour the watchers, or you in a pinch. They look like whatever displeases you, mostly, and their effects mostly only last until you escape the nightmare.
1-Exposer- Nightmare that looks like people you want to like you. Dissolves your inventory, starting with pants, then makes fun of you for CHA damage.
2-Pursuer- Looks like a wolf, sorta. Is always just a little bit faster than you are.
3-Insecuratrix- Doppelgangers, but they don't pretend to be you. They just turn into you and then act BETTER than you until your own party votes to kick you out and keep the Insecuratrix instead.
4-Desynchronizer- Removes senses. If all are removed, you are expelled from the dream and save or cease to exist. Feels like falling through nothing.
5-Neuterer- Reverses your stat bonuses, lowers weapon damage dice, counters spells. Not particularly tough but neither will you be. Also your teeth fall out.
6-Succubus That Looks Like Your Mom But Has A Penis???

now this is what i call high concept RPGing

6a- Ed the Abominable-Stats as gibbering mouther or black pudding or chaotic psychoplasm or whatever. A nightmare monster from realms of deeper sleep, trying to invade this realm and get everything it wants that it doesn't have, which is everything, pretty much. Knows all the desires of the players and can grant wishes that only apply in dreams. Needs to cooperate with Iago to break through but hates that stuffed-up schemer more than anything.
6b-Nightmare Eggs You know that scene from Alien with the eggs? But with a bunch of nightmares patrolling and tending the eggs, too. Too many to fight fair, that's for sure. Eggs make for squishy handholds on the side of the wall-cliff.
6c- Telespiral-Walk through the spiral shell, come out the other one.
6d-Iago the Abominable- Like Ed but more stable, physiology wise. Wants to invade the realm, take over the watchers, possess the titan, and basically begin a 12 step plan for world domination. Has no plans of what to do with the world once dominated, but has the intellect to advise players on anything they like. Needs to cooperate with Ed to break through the wall but hates that undisciplined oaf.
6e- Stress Geometry- Can be manipulated to undo reality warps, seal off the nightmare incursions or unleash Ed and Iago. Give the players something like this and 5 minutes to explain, or the opposite will happen of what they wanted to happen.

6f- Huge Trilobite- Stats as the biggest beetle/crab/scorpion in your monster manual. Kill it and it becomes 200 years in a bottle that you can pour out on things to age them in increments of 10 years. Also it guards a hollow bone tube that leads to-

7-Dream Shrine- Finally, a way out of this madhouse. You can dimly see some chanting cultists, as if through a veil of water, snorting powders and chanting arcane words of summoning to summon a 'Giant Trilobite of Antediluvian Aspect' to save them from some conan-looking dude chopping through them like butter. You can let yourself get summoned to escape this place, though you'll end up wherever these cultists and their conan-enemy is.

8- Portal to Somewhere- Emergency ejection port for the Titan to collapse the dream-realm and end the mess. You could dive through yourself, of course, but that's not what it was designed for and not even the watchers could honestly say where you'd end up.

9-Psyche Extraction-2d6 Watchers atop a tower oversee memory and sensation extraction, and also fend off monstrous nightmares slithering and flying down the wall. 3 rooms, stacked atop each other to make a 3 story building
Top- A narrow bridge, a precarious fall on either side, and Nightmares winging about like bats, barely kept at bay by long spears wielded by the Watchers as the head Watcher examines the newest extraction.
Middle- A rubbery tube-pit that would roll people down to Bottom(inside the prison cage in fact), and work-tables dangerously near it as the 2d6 watchers here do tests on their haul.
Bottom-A prison cage, with 2d6 watchers outside and a Nightmare inside, as they test out the third extracted item on a live threat.
Spells known by the Titan, if any, would be found here as scrolls written in 'Dear Diary' format.
The three extracted phenomenon wielded by the watchers here could be as follows
Guilt, an axe that gets an extra +1 magical bonus but also x2 weight whenever it kills someone.
Ignorance, a shield that blocks spells and monster attacks you didn't know about before... and positive effects too.
Nostalgia, a perfume that makes your actions seem favorable and charming when people think about you after you leave their presence. Each of these are successful extractions from the Watcher's mad oneiromantic experiments, and if not returned to the Titan their psyche will be altered.

10-Plain of Metal-leads to gigantic, grasping hands that mimic what nearby people are doing with their hands, and also to 11. The plain of metal has the occasional watcher and/or nightmare corpse lying about, and it is also joined to the Dream Wall of 6.

11- The Inquisitor Lens- Questions asked of the Titan will be revealed as imagery in the giant lens here. If retrieved to the real world, the Inquisitor Lens is monocle-sized and can provide similar telepathic slideshows fpr all to marvel at. Staircase below lens leading to 11abc, can be reached by shattering or unscrewing and removing lens.

11abc- Disgraced Watchers
Kept in the dungeons of their fellow watcher's nightmare factory for their crimes of dreaming too greedily and too deep. Also these oubliettes can probably contain replacement characters, maybe some bonus prisoners to rescue.
They offer faustian bargains of power, knowledge, blatantly obvious plot-hooks for whatever other dungeons you had prepped, and of course, a way out of this place.

Nightmare Extinct Civilization Dragons

Easy enough to say 'oh yes the dragynne is a symbol of the tyrant king taken to an extreme' but no, I'm going whole hog

Dragons, True dragons, spawn from failed civilizations. All the might and power and the rage and cruelty of a thousand thousand mortal souls condensed into a single nightmarish manifestation of their collective failure. Just like how individual mortals can have their psyche stripped and repurposed into nightmares, just on a bigger scale.

Dragons are a match for an army because once upon a time they WERE an army. Scales like bronze are common for older dragons, for bronze was common for older armies... and so, older dragons turn green with verdigris. More recent dragons may be red due to them being of rusted iron, and the freshest dragons are of steel or black cast iron. Very old dragons may be yellow, white, or brown, decrepit and cracked bone scales that menaced the ancient tribes of man, and have hoards of flint and fur and pretty stones.There are also grey dragons of the stone age, with scales like granite and teeth of flint.

Not to be confused with Drakes and Wyrms and Wyverns and the other sorts of biological dragons that lurk about. Those things are offshoots of primordial chaos serpents and while they rank very high on the bad news list, they can be defeated by 1d6 knights, damsels, and troubadours.

Dragons exist not in reality, but in the deepest layers of Nightmare because they are the dashed hopes of an entire people, long gone. They had their chance to menace the waking world back when they were living civilizations, and now they writhe and gnaw in nightmares dark and forgotten, unable to put their immense strength to the cruel uses they yet dream of.

TRUE DRAGON GENERATION
The civilization that spawned them was some form of despotism with a single ruler, it has but one head. If it was ruled by multiple people, it has multiple heads.

How the civilization fell is related to how to kill the dragon.
1- Assassination- Has a single weak point, like a missing scale or vulnerability to exact poison
2-Coup- Blow must be dealt to each head or limb simultaneously, by weapons of the age
3-Hereditary Incompetence- The dragon's offspring, or weapons made from them, are required
4-Revolt- The only thing capable of harming the dragon is itself and parts of itself.
5-Invasion- You can just stab it with whatever, but they are hard to kill.
6-Disaster- Dragon vulnerable to plague, lava, drowning, starvation, etc

AC is equal to the best armor of the civilization that spawned them, +3, and HD is about 10, +/- 1d4, with a set amount of HP per die.
3-spawned by small nomadic tribes that never really got around to the agricultural revolution
4- spawned by city states
6- spawned by Kingdoms
8- spawned by Empires/Colonial states

Moves-Dragons get 1 random move per turn per foe they are faced with, acting after each opponent, BUT each move is telegraphed and mentioned before the player takes their turn. They were once armies and castles, and the more foes they face, the easier it is to remember this.
Example Tells
1-Claw- 'The Dragon draws back a claw, one slitted eye following the movement of (target)
2-Jaw- 'The head coils its neck like a serpent, eyes fixed on (target).'
3-Breath-'It inhales, the sound of wind, and its nostrils flare and glow as it sizes up (targets)'
4-Wings- 'Wings unfurl with the sound of flapping sails and the dragon begins to ascend'
5-Gaze/Command- 'The huge eyes gleam, and reflect (target) for a moment'
6- Other- Other

1-Claw of Conquest- Just as the civilization took what they wanted by force, those struck by a dragons claw lose something valuable from their inventory, as it is broken. And take damage, for what is more valuable than life?  d6 damage

2-Jaws of Defeat- Fangs like spears/swords/common weapon of the civilization's army. Should deal damage directly to meat points/cause maiming/Force a save or be swallowed. 2d6

3-Breath of Razing- The flames billowing from a dragon are the flames of every enemy structure put to the torch. Damage= Half Current Dragon HP, save to avoid. If it has to target someone in melee it can only toast one of them, but it can do strafing runs and great gouts of flame to 1d3 people in the same general area. It can only Breathe once per round.

4-Wings of Sails and Hooves- The more horses and ships a civilization had, the faster the dragon flies, and the taller the towers, the higher it flies. It flies to a different position, such as atop a tower or to that pesky wizard cowering in back. If you wanna use the Abstract Dragon Positioning, it moves everyone 1 space relative to itself unless they save, and moves one specific unlucky target wherever it pleases, or 1 space if they save

5-Subjugating Gaze- Meeting the eyes of the dragon mean you have to save or obey its next command. Don't worry too much about avoiding this, it can also shout commands for the same effect.

Other- The dragon should have a special move related to its lost civilization, and this should be exploited to make the lair. Some random examples
1-The civilization's bureaucracy means can write, and those reading what it writes must Save vs Subjugating Gaze. It has scraped written traps that gotta be obeyed to the letter if read.
2-The civilization's spy network means it can read minds, learning secrets, plans, and so on, and acting accordingly.
3-The civilization's wizards means the dragon can cast spells.
4-The civilization's extensive fortifications means the dragon's tail is huge, totally impenetrable and can be coiled around like a wall to defend itself, separate players, and so on

You can go from ring to ring with a full round of movement, or go from flanking to frontal or vice versa (probably vice versa) with the same. The 'Wings' move is to represent dragons turning, flying to flank people and line up killer breath shots, buffeting them about with windstorms from wings and tailslaps, that sort of thing. I like this abstract battlefield cuz it shows how everything revolves around the dragon. It IS the dramatic landscape (though there's no reason not to have cover from dragon breath to hide behind and cliffsides and what have you as well).

SEASIDE CASTLE OF THE NIGHTMARE KING

 you know when a post title is allcaps it is because I grabbed some random idea and ran with it late night

say no more

 If you're a player in my Wolf Moons & Kingdoms of Day Game, reading this post might spoil you, but it probably won't spoil the actual fun of playing through it and you might never go here so whatever.

even if you do go here you might just turn around and leave because I mean really

1-Nodule Forest- Mirror-polished bubbles of plant material switch the places of you and your reflection, leaving you trapped within and your reflection walking free. You must mimic your reflection while it is in view, but if separated your actions need not mimic it. Your reflection has no back and will hide this, walking in the rear or keeping its back to walls. Some bubbles have remnant treasures from trapped and slain adventurers within. Your reflection will try to lead other party members back into the nodule forest so they can all be replaced. If the entire party is replaced, you may as well keep playing as the reflections, who are the loyal servants of the Nightmare King.

2-Path to the Castle- falling off the right side of this bridge drops you into the ocean, the left side drops you onto the elephant hide of 6. The perpendicular support beams drove through the lower levels are a little too far to jump between with 100% reliability, but the creatures on the path might be avoided this way. Path to the right leads to 9

3- Stilthenge- a grappling line or a swim through the ocean or a truly prodigous leap is required to reach the 'legs' of this structure.
Twelve standing stones and a 13th grave set aside, and two 3-stone archways are the scenery here and contain notes on nightmarish rituals, but the guardian won't let you examine them and indeed doesn't want anyone bothering him. He has a whistle that summons that giant-ass monster below 3 to claw and paw at people who can't get to cover of the stones fast enough. He was a servant of the crumbling prisoner and wants vengeance upon the current king, and to become king himself.
The crumbling prisoner (11) can be seen here

The Guardian- Fighter equal to highest level character in party. Has a whistle that only monsters can hear. The monster lurking below finds the noise of the whistle annoying and slaps at the whistles last heard location, so the Guardian tries to whistle and lure other people to stand where once he was standing, and use it as cover. I imagine he runs around the outer perimeter constantly in an attempt to string players out.

The Guardian's Monster- Basically just a huge monkey, a giant with speedy climbing. It needs 1 limb to hold on to the underside of 3, and can attack with 2 others blindly or expose its head and attack with 1 and sight. It must save or fall into the ocean whenever a limb (treat limbs as 4hd monsters ac leather, doing 2d6) is destroyed. Its main HP pool cannot be attacked unless it exposes its head or someone gets under 3 with it, which it will only do if there are no whistle noises to slap at.

4- Birthing Arch- From the vagina of the stone colossus, monsters come to stalk the bridge. The monsters fight each other for dominance so there should only ever be one monster on the bridge at a time, or two dueling monsters. Entering the vagina will mutate things into monsters. Players get to save to keep their sanity, otherwise they become bridge guardians. Past this, one can enter into 12, or the daring could climb up it to 13 or 15 and the suicidal could climb all the way to 16 or 17.
Manticores are a good choice but really, anything works for bridge monsters. Bridge monsters will fight the whistle-monster of 3 if its lured to the bridge or they're lured to 3.


5-The Great Maw- easily reached from the elephant's skin 6, or reached via somehow crossing the hundred-foot gap from the Path to the Castle. It gnashes people for 2d20 damage if it doesn't like how they smell, and the giant sniffing nose makes this pretty clear, but through it leads directly into the castle hall (12). The Nightmare King sometimes stands here and looks out upon his domain, and could shout at players on the path to the castle. Water flows from the maw and it will likely be mistaken as saliva, but it is in fact the King's Tears

6-The elephant hide- a great and stony tarp of taut, thick skin. Dying and dead monsters lie here, losers of bridge battles, and there are many giant monster skeletons as well.

7-Gate of the Goat- Walking atop it takes one to the Face Monoliths (8) and continuing the climb leads to 13. Entering it goes through a hollow tunnel-bridge of horns into the castle hall

8- Face Monoliths- Depicts past and current kings of the castle, and how how prior ones were slain by their replacement.Clues as to the current king's control of water and prehensile beard and mustache. Eyes of the monolith are gems matching the giant eyeballs irises.

9- The Entombed Oracle and the Gazer Rocks- Accessible from either long climbs along the outside of the castle, or the path from 2. The former brings you to the oracles face, the latter leads you through the gazer rocks.
The gazer rocks scrub away reality of those they gaze at, obliterating skills, stats, equipment, memory, etc, and eventually the entire existence of the object of their attention. They cannot gaze up towards the oracle or his pillar.
Anyone hung from the noose will have their memories added to the Oracles'.

The Oracle is just a face and internal organs, giblets being visible through the lattice pillar he is entombed in. He speaks grand and ominous prophecies, naturally, and can be killed by removing the log 'spikes' that keep his guts from falling down the hollow pillar, which breaks the power of his prophecies but also curses the killers.
He can also give an in-depth but less pretentiously portentous account of the next 1d20 actions of a player- they roll 1d20d20's and use the results, in order, for their next d20 rolls. Allow them to be as metagamey as possible with this nonsense because that's the whole point.
10-secret room
11-Crumbling Prisoner- He is disintegrating into nothing and wishes for a rematch with the current king and to regain his former glory. He has deduced the weakness of the current king(the hair! The eyes!) and curses himself for not seeing it sooner, when he isn't watching his hands crumble into nothing and babbling in madness. He dimly recognizes the guardian of 3.

12- An interior area. High balconies opposite the giant eyeballs lead to 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, and a seabreeze comes in through the gaping mouth of 5. The floor is sloped towards 5 gently, and that's where the tears flow.

The two gigantic eyeballs swivel to watch those inside, and the Nightmare King sees what they see.

The nightmare king himself has no eyes, just sockets. Tears flow from them unceasingly and wet his beard and mustache, and his control over water allows him to then use them to strangle up to 3 people at once. The king is huge and his throne room has streams of his tears running to 5, the better to strike down his foes with ankle-tugging currents and drowning bubbles.

I coulda wrote that there white text here, dang

Like 12 hit dice, armor as plate
The King cannot be flanked so long as the giant eyeballs watch the throne room and everything in it. He is very fast, probably like a horse. His morale is great, but he might flee into the sea for a vicious underwater phase 2 of the bossfight that I'm not going to get into.
The kings facial hair has 21HP and armor as leather, and he loses 1/2 his mustache or his beard every 7 damage dealt to it.

The giant eyes can't be punctured by mere arrows- it takes a full on spear to pierce them, or maybe a manticore tail spike. Once pierced, they deflate into waterfalls of blood. The king is blind without them but can manipulate the blood as water.

The king does 2 of the following moves each round, in the following repeating pattern, the first action before the players go and the second one after the players go.
Furious Advance->To the Throne!
Water Control->Furious Advance
To the Throne!->Water Control

Furious Advance- King advances, giant spear leveled at ya and feet like a small stampede. He's trying to drive you into a stream of tears or to the gnashing maw of 5. You can let him push you there, backpedaling the whole way and avoid all damage, or make a dex roll to dive to one side and let him go past you, or stand your ground and face a fearsome attack for 3d8 damage.

To the Throne! The king vanishes and appears in his throne along with any grappled characters, assuming it seems equally or more advantageous than his current position.

Water Control- The king makes 3 attacks with his facial hair or a single Ankle Snag or Drowning Bubble against an enemy standing in or near a puddle/stream of his tears.

Facial Hair- Grapples 1d4 limbs and deals that much damage as well each turn one remains grappled
Ankle Snag- save or be tripped prone. Prone targets can't avoid the Furious Advance.
Drowning Bubble- Engulfed by water around the head! Easiest escape is to drink the stuff. Takes 1 round to drink,+1 per previous bubble drank cuz you're so full.

Throw Captive- If the king has a captive and returns to the throne, he will, as his next action, hurl captives at other players for 3d6 to both of 'em, or just 3d6 to the thrown captive if he misses. If he has captured everyone, he throws them into the Maw instead.

He has a crown that looks like a tumorous spiderweb and would be worth a lotta money. With the gems from the monolith, enough for everyone to level up in a GP-to-XP system.

13- Nipper maw- Anyone entering has it bite at them unless they can slip through speedily, stealthily, or maybe jam it open with something. Enters to balcony of 12.

14- Licker Maw- Licks a slimy obelisk constantly. Something must be done about the tongue if one is to go through and enter the balcony of 12. The obelisk it is licking has a legendary recipe for cooking several types of monster into the ultimate meat kabob and the stone is rather salty tasting itself.

15-Chubgrub maw- This maw doesn't want to open for anything, and is on a tube of mobile flesh the size of a hallway(because it IS a hallway) so fighting your way through will be a lot of work. Tickling, tempting with tasty foods, and other guileful tactics should work.

16- Crabclaw halls- the balcony leads to these identical, steep hallways of red carapace. There is a lever that can release the appropriate tightrope end of 18 right before the bifurcated vertical tubes that are the pincers. There are also levers that allow the crabclaws to move and perhaps do battle with any godzilla sized creatures menacing the castle, but it takes a lot of thinking to figure it out.

17- Spike Lump towers- the balconies lead here too. Some deformed beastmen operate pulsing sacs of matter, which are the trigger cells that will launch man-sized spikes like ballista bolts. These are for aerial defense of the castle, and the beasts here see what the eyes see. If the eyes are blinded, they too are blind. They will fire upon tightrope walkers and surrender to those wearing the crown and can be taken on as hirelings (pretty much goblins)

18- Brainstem Tightrope- those walking the tightrope can speak with the Brain Dreaming Of Monsters and crown the wearer of the Nightmare King's crown the new Nightmare King, and hopefully cast amnesia on anyone who read that awful sentence. Others may ask to be transformed into a new shape so long as it is not (conventionally) beautiful and could be said to be monstrous.

The brain relies on being huge and floating high in the air for protection, but as the brain of the castle, it can control the spike-lumps and crab claws if no one is at the 'controls' of those features to defend itself from dedicated attempts to destroy it. A hijacked spike-lump or crab-claw can definitely kill the brain.

19- The Monstrous Miasma- This pillar of nightmare can be ascended to realms high and howling and horrible, like an escalator of half-dreamt monsters and raw terror

20- The Nightmare Sea- waterspouts and a grumbling storm threaten to send most people to a watery death, but perhaps there's something out there. The King would be mighty indeed if he fights in his own element, and if his morale fails he'll leap out the Maw and do just that,

The Happy Hunt and Dreamwraiths

MEGA EDITED- If you've seen the old version of this post, fuhgeddaboutit, this new version I wrote in 15 minutes at 4AM is way better


This is pretty much my take on Dark Souls invasions in D&D mashed up with The Nightmares Underneath

There is a spell, The Happy Hunt, that comes and goes in waves of cultish aristocratic fancy. "I am so bored" a foppish noble youth exclaims in some den of decadence, and some figure or another smirks and says, "Well, I have something fun in mind you've yet to try, I guarantee" and after some simple rituals, they dream of going off to dream of murdering someone and take a bit of their soul if successful, and the rumors and dreams of murder spread and spread until eventually the cult  grows too large and self destructs as they attack each others nightmare realms over imagined and real wrongs, or some moral authority shuts the whole thing down via torch and pitchfork. But copies of the ritual always escape or are dug up elsewhere or revealed unto mad wizards in swirling and churning nightmares.


The Happy Hunt
Target- One individual, who can be specified by name. If they are more than 10 miles away, part of their body must be in the possession of the caster, and it must be eaten. Alternately, random targets can be chosen.
Duration- [level] or [sum] hours or until the target is slain. The caster will remain asleep for the duration.
Range- 10 miles or Infinite(provided requirements are met)

Effect-The caster falls into slumber for the duration, and their psyche astrally projects to appear somewhere near their target... or so it seems. The astral projection is clearly some sort of magical entity, but it is recognizable as the caster and functions exactly as the caster would, with a few exceptions.

If the caster's projection is killed, they simply wake up.
If the caster's target is killed, they ALSO simply wake up, the events of the day being retconned into a bad dream.
However, successfully killing the target drains them of a level (or HD) of experience, and grants the Happy Hunter XP for the combat. Variants may allow other things to be stolen- spells, secrets, statistics, even the dream-versions of magic items, but the loss of level from the target is a given- the psychic trauma of being 'slain' and having bits of ones soul pillaged is extreme.

If the target is killed enough times to reduce their HD or level to 0, they are truly slain, and their body may be possessed by the offending Happy Hunter. Furthermore, the displaced and damaged soul of the slain will likely persist as a Dreamwraith.

Dreamwraiths- Not true undead, these are souls that linger in the dream realm, delaying whatever final destination their souls are drawn to. Though able to interact only with dreaming mortals typically, one salient point to make is that Dreamwraiths are perfectly capable of casting The Happy Hunt and menacing the waking world even when their bodies are long dead. However, Dreamwraiths still need an anchor to the living world, which will typically end up as the skull of their old body. Without such an anchor, they have no focal point from which to stage Hunts and will be unable to further menace the world.

Powerful Dreamwraiths can create mental palaces in the dream realm where they store pillaged and imagined dreamstuffs to create a more pleasant abode for themselves. This is an alluring alternative to any promised afterlife, as successful Happy Hunters could begin enjoying such psychic demenses even while still alive. In The Nightmares Underneath terms, these palaces would be Nightmare Realms, with the skull of the Dreamwraith/Happy Hunter serving as the Anchor.

Plots

1. A long-dead shaman lies somewhere in a Mound, his dreamwraith hunting those to sustain its existence in Dream and slaying those who attempt to find his hidden body.
2. In the distant past, there was a kingdom that delved deeply into the Happy Hunt and while the dreaming knights and lords and ladies fell into ruin in reality, in the dream realm they live on in immortal palaces of fancy, occasionally devouring the minds of those who trespass their ruined castles and estates. Still, that only means there's a crumbling palace in reality AND in dream to loot!
3. A serial killer uses this spell to kill without fear of reprisal. In a city of thousands of people, the reward for his capture is stupendous, but how to find him?
4. The spell has grown popular among drug-addled nobles, who hire outside help to assist construction of their fanciful dream-realms and to guard them from rival Hunters.
5.  A plot to kill the Emperor with this spell has been uncovered, and hysterical witch-hunts wrack the land.
6. A dead past PC or NPC has become a Dream Wraith, and targets the players out of vengeance or madness. Can they be reasoned with, or is a trek back to where their body is a necessity? Hopefully it's not like, at the bottom of the ocean or something.

 

Travel and Light in the Sunset Realms

So you want to travel across the wild wilderness. The travails of your travels depend largely on your light source. Stuff like food and maps is important too, of course- if you have a road or a river or some other very solid idiot-proof way of navigation, roll one fewer darkness die. If you aren't traveling and instead stay put (as most castles do) roll two fewer darkness dice.

These are not a replacement of random encounters, oh no. They are in addition- but they are also rolled once per trip, or for very long trips, once per change of lightsource.

Direct Sunlight- The most common time to travel. Helios looms overhead either for a short visit (or just as business as usual if you're in the Noonlands) and if any moonspawned monstrosities show their face above ground, they're probably going to get their shit smote. Your concerns will be other humans and maybe a pack of wild dogs or something. You can see a long ways, make note of landmarks, it's great.

Indirect Sunlight- Maybe there's a cloudy sky, or Helios is just a ruddy glow behind the horizon mountains, or you're beneath the thick canopy of a forest. Stupid and desperate monsters might come out in these conditions, though crafty ones know better than to tempt Helios. If you're traveling in this sort of near-night darkness, you should stick to roads and be sure you have torches on hand in case Helios drifts away. For those out in the Daylands, this is their standard and they are mostly used to it, though they prefer to only travel under the light of Helios when possible.

Roll a single Darkness Die for these travels.

Torchlight and other portable light sources- The light and law of Helios isn't around anymore. Whether you're underground, in a night phase of the Sunset Realms, or beneath a star-exclusive sky, you must realize that there is nothing between you and the dark but a small and feeble light. The kings of the securest castles still shudder when candles flicker in their chambers of stone, and people traveling by torchlight fear the unseen beyond their fires.

Roll two Darkness dice, so long as your lights last. If you have to venture beyond the light of a campfire for more wood, you're already in trouble.

Starlight- The stars, whatever they are, are distant and pitiless. Cold gleams of light on shiny leaves and gurgling water is all you might sometimes see apart from silhouettes and outlines, strange and terrible in this useless starlight. You are effectively blind when it comes to fighting and spotting things, but you can sometimes make out nearby movement and large objects.

Roll three Darkness dice.

Blind Dark- There is no light, none at all. Graves and caves are this dark. Even a second's exposure to this taints you until you are exposed to Direct Sunlight, and you roll an extra darkness die until this shadow is cleansed. But even a distant town, or a lone star, or an errant firefly, are enough to ward off actual darkness

You roll no darkness dice for extended times in this level of darkness, because the grues will get hungry before you do. A few hours is all you have. Maybe less, if you've been flirting with the darkness with teases of snuffed candles and hooded glances of flickering lanterns.

Moonlight- Moons aren't as bright as the sun and their light is often pale or off-color- it's hard to see color in Moonlight. Depending on the moon and your situation, traveling by Moonlight can be relatively safe, or it can be suicide. Moonlanders rely on Moonlight the same as Noonlanders rely on sunlight, and bold Daylanders sometimes set out in the light of a visiting moon for an early start, confident that Helios will arrive to chase off the offending moon and provide warm sunlight soon enough.
No Darkness Dice are rolled in Moonlight. Whatever their horrors, they are horrors of light, not dark.

Darkness Dice
1- Monster. If you're lucky, you've heard local information and it won't be a blind date with destiny.
2-Sign of monster. Two Signs in one journey indicate the monster appearing anyway
3- Lost. Could be mundane, could be warped space. Either way, you'll likely be rolling darkness dice again
4-Malevolence- Disease. Hronir. Evil shadows. Misplaced items. Mutation. Curse. Madness. That which lies unseen is ontologically uncertain.
5-Landmark- Something is here that wasn't before. A road leading off, a ruined tower, a gorge, stairs going down.
6- Local Color.

Monsters, Mystery, And the Supernatural vs 20 henchmen with crossbows

A player (presumably only half-jokingly) brought up how great and honestly not that expensive it is to hire many mercenary bands to just march in to a dungeon and overwhelm the inhabitants after they did just that, or just stay outside and bombard the place with catapults, or whatever logical strategy having a bunch of troops naturally lends itself to. There's a fun blogpost on this subject here
http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/2016/02/how-to-tackle-dungeon-i-first-steps.html

This sort of thing is well and good for domain-level play when you settle down from adventuring a bit and send troops to destroy or capture other strongholds of mundane (And even slightly magical) natures. Maybe it's even FAIRLY magical and you have some Age-of-Mythology style play with giants-as-siege weapons or whatever.

However! I'd say this is a failure state of the wondrous if it becomes an effective go-to solution to every threat. If 200 guys with crossbows in a skirmish formation can own a dragon, your fantasy isn't fantasy, it's become realism in a rubber suit. And y'know, realism can be fine if that's what you're after, but you have to ask some hard questions. The big one being 'why are monsters not extinct, with prejudice.' And if you come up with an answer to that, 'why are monsters a big deal if a squad of yahoos with spears can take them down?' The real world had big spiky monsters and you know what? Humans killed and ate them and now their remnants are kept around to entertain children and scientists. 

12HD, still deader than disco

So! If a dungeon is just a bunch of less socially organized humans and like, a pet tiger in a cave, your dungeon should probably have been cleared out like a thousand years ago by superior organized forces. And if you've come up with convoluted reasons for your lame dungeon to not have been dismantled by 20 guys with a bad attitude, (Or hell, even a good simple reason like 'island far from any society') you still probably don't have any answers as to why the players shouldn't be able to hire 20 guys with bad attitude to take it apart, and so either you give the players a strategic victory or you have to talk them back down into senseless genre conventions for the sake of the game. And though it may seem like I'm badmouthing those options, so long as everyone is having fun, it's fine- players who understand and stick to genre options are great, and stomping a lame house-of-cards dungeon with an unorthodox strategy is great too.

But! It's not very fantastical to have the players reduced to troop commanders who exploit quantity over quality, and it usually pretty much invalidates even pretending to care about the rulebook. RIP mythic age of heroes and monsters, hello Advanced Squad Leader.

Apparently this is some sicknasty hardcore World War Whatever action

And if you're playing  a Fantasy Role-Playing game and want to keep the FANTASY part relevant, you can either have players who will intentionally act stupid and gimp themselves for the sake of the genre, OR you make a setting that actually supports the genre and is internally consistent so the players can play smart without metagaming.

This is the heroes journey which, while not 100% relevant to RPG games due to the unscripted and emergent plot, isn't 100% irrelevant either. I've made a simplified version as related to my ideas about fantasy roleplaying and how to keep it from degenerating into a very modern affair with standardized tactics and the domination of more powerful but ultimately mortal creatures by 20 humans with spears.

A dungeon full of goblins, hell even a cave with a dragon- that's Known at this point. Werewolves, vampires, you know how to deal with that crap. It's no wonder some players want to establish a basecamp and have a bunch of hirelings do that dirty work for them- it's a known problem with known solutions. Why WOULD they walk into a dank murdercave with 4 guys when they could besiege the place with 20 guys? You can't pull the 'uhhh NPCs are too scared to adventure' if adventuring is basically no different from being a soldier fighting humans and maybe something scary like a helicopter- sorry, 'Dragon' every so often.

So, how to keep the game within the reins of an RPG and not a logistical wargame? Social stuff like 'oh only lords can legally muster troops' and so on only delays or obfuscates the issue

Exhibit A- <Monster> can only be hit by magical weapons.

 Demons, golems, elementals, many undead. Don't have a magic weapon? Then you can't fight it really effectively. This effect really got weaksauce in later editions, turning it into 'well it's just 5 damage reduction so if you're a big strong boi with 18 str which of course you are, you can fight it anyway it just takes a while and shouldn't your GM have given you some appropriate wealth by level and magic items to keep things balanced?' and man that was missing the point hard.

The point being that if a monster like that showed up, ANY NUMBER of NPCs are screwed.

The cops have better things to do than get killed!

You don't need an army, you need an exorcist or a hero. You need someone whose seen the Unknown and got stronger for it. Of course, people like that are a little Unknown themselves and probably aren't trusted. But if the alternative is licking mud off the hooves of Mayor Imp, well, you can probably tolerate some weirdos for a bit.

Exhibit B

This is from the Nightmares Underneath Free Edition, of course

Saying 'you might die fighting some goblins' is one thing. Saying 'you'll probably go mad from corruption and have your dreams and soul harvested by unknowable darkness as fuel for another blight upon creation if you spend even ONE HOUR in a dungeon' is a whole 'nother can of worms. If you marched 100 men into a nightmare incursion (the dungeons of the game) you're probably going to end up with like 5 more nightmares and like 50 lunatics. Nice job.

The threat of corruption by the 'Other World' or the 'Unknown' is honestly a lot more terrifying than mere death, and it's a venerable trope in both literature (See all those norse heroes corrupted by cursed treasure) and in D&D (spawn-creating undead, baby). If hordes of humans can quickly be twisted into hordes of monsters, well, keeping your group to a tight band of fearless heroes and leaving the henchmen at home starts to make a lot more sense.

Similar concepts get brought up in the Mythic Underworld concept, where the dungeon itself is a liminal space between location and enemy- the dungeon ITSELF is a warped reality trying to kill you, not a safe and known pile of bricks that you can respectably and predictably besiege.

Exhibit C- Dungeons tend to be tight spaces where not more than 1-6 men can fight at one time. If they get matched up against individually superior foes and can't use their numbers, a tagalong army can start looking more like a waste of dice rolls. Also, morale checks and logistics can become a threat worse than the actual whatever it is that made you want an army in the first place.

Anyway. It's good to think about what your setting is meant to be so you can in turn come up with ways to make a setting that supports the verisimilitude of a narrative of exceptional individuals, without relying too much on 'just cuz.' If a lot of problems could be solved by 20 guys with a crossbow, you really need either better problems, or at least better mass-combat rules because everything is gonna come down to numbers and grand strategy, not how much big Bruno The Barbarian's biceps are.

Nightmare Realms: Nexus Of Ash

You ended up here somehow. Colors faded, the world dark beyond this bubble of sourceless light.

 The Forest- Dead and twisted trees, the pits of empty graves, and tunnels that lead to places of drying slime and dangling roots, and perhaps too the graves of flowers. If you came from there, you know what made the marks on the trees.

The Cliff- There is a drop into an abyss that way, the dunes of ash rolling into it. Ash blows into the void like snow, and is gone. If you came from there, you can speak of the sealed gates in the cliff face that you scaled, and the arid ocean bed, miles below, the dry shells the size of houses and just as empty.

The Dunes- Rising piles of ash, a grey desert stretching to blackness. If you came from there, you recall lights, rare and distant, fading as you marched. This place was the light you made it to.

The Ruin- A semicircle of crumbled stone, and an out-of place fallen pillar. Mementos shine in the dark. If you came from here, you crawled out of the pool of tar, your flesh black sludge, your skin a layer of ash, your bones your own.

Random Memento. Something to hold onto and claim its memories for yourself.

1. A broken sword, and a memory of betrayal on the field of battle. +/-STR
2. An idol of some serene saint, stained and scarred. But despite it all, still here. +/-WIS
3. Rope, fraying and knotted. You can't rely on it, only yourself. +/-DEX
4. A heavy iron grimoire, locked tight. You threw away the key yourself.  +/-INT
5. A shard of mirror. You can't bear to see your face like this. +/-CHA
6. The stone of a poison peach, or perhaps it is your own withered heart. +/-CON

The Tower. 4 stories or so, leading to a bridge over the forest that leads to darkness. Was there something bright atop it, briefly glimpsed?

Floor 1- Entered via a crack, not a door. A low prison that spirals ever lower, with others like you, but mad and empty, now. You weren't special after all.

The staircase was wood, and is half broken and high above your head. How to ascend?
Or, one could descend deeper, past the prisoner cells.

Floor 2- A arrow slit looks out to the tops of trees. The Jailer monopolizes the view. He has a chain of keys and plenty of manacles for all of you. The door up is locked, if you run through the smallcircle of rooms to find it.

Floor 3- A gate house to the bridge, which extends to the darkness, and into it. A barrel of torches in a supply chamber, and flint to light them.

The Bridge- Crumbling at the edges, supported by pillars of crumbling stone. But it has to go somewhere.

Floor 4- Ruined support beams. A little girl, or an old woman, pale and fanged, kicking her heels in dark and empty air. She can make you strong, if you feed her memories and let her chew on your rancid tar flesh. She'd like to leave this world, but is very weak, herself, and doesn't know the way
Basement Floor 1+-  Past the cells, the dungeons. They go down forever, the quivering memories of cities that died with their worlds. Maybe one yet remembers a way out.