Camels

baby camels look like spaghettified lambs and you should google 'em

OG CAMEL
Faster than all but the fastest horses (except when loaded up with impressive loads of 600 pounds, at which point they're slow), camels seem like a pretty good beast of burden, though they aren't as good at kicking and biting as war-horses. They have a 50% chance to spit at people coming to ride them, with a 25% chance to blind for 1d3 rounds, so I suppose this 1/8 chance of being blinded could impair speedy getaways via camel and make horses slightly preferable. Bactrians are slightly slower than dromedary, and are tolerant of cold areas as well as the desert areas of typical camels. Both can go for 2 weeks without food or water, which is an obvious advantage over horses.

Sunset Realm Camel

you might be thinking 'lame, another no effort animal scribble'
but you see if I drew everything from the camel's ears to the camel's toe, the blog would have to be nsfw

First off, the hump IS full of water. Take that, biologists! Bactrian camels tend to have their humps freeze and be full of ice, making insulated saddles a must when riding them in cold weather. Camels do not die if their hump is pierced, but won't be able to go without water until healed and rehydrated, naturally. However, before you go sticking a straw into your camel, it is usually a better survival tactic to dump possessions to lighten the load, and then ride the camel towards a water source, as camels will make it further through the desert than you can. Smugglers sometimes deflate a hump and fill it with illegal goods, though this does not make for a happy or healthy camel. This is the origin of the nickname of a 'Smuggler's Mule.'

Dromedary camels are native to Saresare, and Bactrian camels are the moonland variety, being better suited to the frequent cold. While they were tamed in ancient times by Our Lady of Gardens, Saresare prefers to place its trust in the Law, rather than in gods and suns, and so their beasts of burden are a little sassier, both their camels (favored by the lower classes and merchants) and high-spirited horses (favored by the upper classes).


Entertainment wise, there are of course camel races, the official royal ones held either in or near cities having prize pools of 25 thousand silver, and the unofficial race 'Night's Temptation' held every 10 years or so and attended only by shady nobles and wealthy criminals. This invite-only race has a prize pool of a quarter-million gold coins, and is a multi-week race to an oasis town out in the Black Sands of the moonland, where treachery and murder of ones opponents is of course disallowed, but expected regardless. Vulch can typically be found along the path, waiting to eat the dead and guide souls to their desired resting place, but undead racers from last time often rise from the desert to participate, or simply take undiscriminating revenge.

Lesser known is the sport of camel wrestling, where camels are induced to wrestle each other, and the #1 camel (out of about 200 active ones, typically) is worth as much as winning an official royal camel race to interested parties. The camel that didn't fall down or run away is the winner. Yeah I dunno how they'd wrestle either but I didn't make this up, it was on wikipedia

Bugbear, Bulette, Bull

OG Bugbear

Literally described as 'Hairy Giant Goblins' , they menace with extra surprise chances due to quick and quiet movement, which most people remember bugbears for and, curiously enough, the ability to throw various hand weapons as missile weapons, which is rarely mentioned. Swords, spiked clubs, maces, hammers, axes, and spears, all yeeted from about 1/3rd human movement range at the furthest, or half that treated as medium range. They deal plenty of damage unarmed, so a rain of miscellaneous melee weapons seems a perfectly reasonable opening tactic.

That's about it for interesting things apart from the usual humanoid filler of 'they have a big buff leader type and a bunch of noncombatant women and children(stats as hobgoblin and kobold respectively) for your players to go all Anakin on and then spawn infinite internet arguments about the true alignment of killing orc babies. Thanks Gygax.

I believe there was an early artistic hilarity occurring when an artist, given vague and uncertain direction, drew them with literal jack-o-lantern heads. This variety managed to survive as the Jackobear, and I must say I am partial to the players battling food monsters for a lighter vibe. Lungfungus has tree-spawned fruit-bugbears in Fassulia as well.

Sunset Realm Bugbears
 There aren't any. I've got my thing with goblins and ogres being the shadowless, nameless servitors spun from shadow by ancient elf (or alf, rather) supervillains already, so 'basically just bigger goblins' might as well just actually BE bigger goblins to avoid redundancy. The weapon-throwing thing is pretty hilarious though, I think I'll include that as goblin-style secret fighter technique and have it be a thing.

BOTTOM TEXT

If you wanted a spicy take on bugbears though, look no further than below
http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-ecology-of-bugbear.html

OG Bulette
A monster with absolutely incredible melee damage. It has a bite/claw/claw routine of 4d12/3d6/3d6, and 9hd to back it up, or it can leap the height of a man and squash someone for 4 claw attacks. The creature has weirdly sectional armor- a -2AC, equivalent to +5 platemail, but the eyes are only as chain+shield, and it has a crest it raises when 'in a fierce fight' that exposes an area on the back that can be struck as studded leather+shield. I wonder how this came to be- a DM, regretful of the overly high AC beast they made demolishing the party and applying some nerfs? Some rulings made when players asked if they could aim for where the beast wasn't protected by armor? It's certainly killable with magic artillery, as it is stupid and hungry and unlikely to think to evade Fireballs and so on with burrowing.

A dwarvern craftsman can create a shield of +1 to +3 value from this crest, which is a nice reward for an otherwise treasure-free monster. As smaller 6hd and larger 11hd bulettes are said to exist, the 'default' bulette crest shield is probably +2.

I had a player in one of my bad teenage 3.5e campaigns I ran actually die to a bulette making a critical hit and biting his head off and I think ruining the player's power fantasy and causing them to lose interest after revival. That was the only time the threat of danger ever had teeth, as that campaign was all manner of chosen one big quest baloney that was the final game of 3.5 I ran, I believe. Nothing much of that game is remembered save that and a dreadful scene where 12 crossbowmen were all shooting ineffectually at the players from a balcony and killing everyone IRL of boredom, and something about a snakeman assassin stabbing the PC in the throat as they slept and the PC not dying because they had enough HP to survive.

So thanks for killing that crappy campaign, Bulette.

Sunset Realm Bulette
Again, I don't think there are any. They seem like the sort of monster that loses a bit of its monstrousness when they go from 'horrible nameless monster that bit the fighter in half in one hit' to 'known species and source of +2 shields' Name the beast, tame the beast, ya know.

Bulls 

these are just buffalos with slightly different combat stats, who else is ready for the C monsters yeesh

Brownies

The Original Gygaxian Brownie
Brownies are weird little amalgamations of various fairie myths in terms of their inspiration. They are "perhaps" half halfling, half pixie, lawful good, able to repair or create items of wood, leather, and metal with ease, and are good guides. They also can be convinced 50% of the time to help lawful good charaters, and havfe a hodgepodge of magical abilities to keep them safe- protection from evil, ventriloquism, dancing lights, continual light, mirror image, confusion, and dimension door. Their speed and camouflage allows them to escape as if invisible, and they are never surprised, and they come in groups of 4d4, which is honestly pretty terrifying if you consider the consequences on being on the receiving end of 9 Confusions.

Finding them and gaining their aid would be a tremendous boon, and might be the sort of help one might hope a brave, kind, honorable fellow (ie, a Lawful Good character well in line with a fairy tale protagonist) would obtain on a wilderness quest.

Brownies of various walks of life describing their work environments, so as to provide framing for
the game of 'whose job sucks worse'

Sunset Realm Brownies
More commonly known as Hobs, these are halfing servants, trained in specific useful magics and domestic services, of Alves who were drawn into the fey realms when the Alves retreated from the waking world into various dream realms in the 3rd intersolar period. They have grown magically potent in these realms, but are bound by strange fey laws and revert to regular halflings if they break their rules. Some brownies are entirely opposed to losing power, having grown accustomed to the favors and privileges allowed to favored servants of Alves. But others would happily forsake their corrupted Alf overlords and return to mortal lives, if only they can find an escape.

The Winter Court- The alves that struck pacts with ice and darkness ride in the frost and snow at the edge of the worlds, their own light and life sustained only so long as they pillage and steal from the sunlit realms. The halfling sorcerers dragged along for the ride were not infected by the cruel madness that took the Alves, and serve their masters only begrudgingly, and may offer aid to those humans who prove themselves worthy. They may not accept gifts without losing their powers, and doing them favors is a grave insult as that forces their hand to repay the favor in kind. They open mirror-gates in reflective ice and water so that the Hunt may spring forth, and are well versed in protective wards to keep Darkspawn away, and maintain artificial auroras to light the glacial fortresses that stretch between dream, waking, and the mirror-realms.

The Summer Court- the Alves who retreated into the dreams of trees are kindlier, in seeming, than those of the land of the ice and snow. Their Hob servants often venture forth to the waking world as scouts and messengers to mortal races who have despoiled too many trees, warning them to keep out of the forest before more strenuous objections are raised. Some brownies are assigned to households to keep an eye on the mortals, and ingratiate themselves by performing various household chores and repair jobs, as well as providing guiding lights to those lost in the woods. They may ally with humans against monsters that despoil their master's groves, acting as, essentially, animal control.

The Iron Moon- Those Alves who did not escape the fall of the 3rd Sun found themselves bound to its corpse, the Iron Moon, but their brownies were bound in no such way, and established mutually beneficial relationships with humans in the intersolar period. As such, some forests and households in the moonlands have brownies watching over them and keeping them from falling to the shadows and moon madness. Acknowledging these 'Free Brownies' directly may ruin their powers and revert them to their original mortal forms, so milk and bread are left out 'for the cats' and clothing 'for the children.' It is only on the holiday of Names Written In Light Upon the Face of Darkness that they may safely reveal themselves to humans and frank discussions may be had. Their names are lost, part of how they gained power, and discovering ones name ensures they cannot use their powers in your presence, and threatening to reveal it can compel obedience if the brownie fears loss of their magical powers and reversion to a regular little person. They fear Alves and Elves, for those immortal beings are more likely to know their secret names than any other being.

Maze of The Blue Medusa Diss Track

As a disclaimer, I'm not running the Maze as is. Names and relations are changed to suit the local Gothic Villain, everything in it has been warped to suit my own setting and the characters, the players aren't trapped within, etc etc. I've heard complaints about complaints about the place along the lines of 'You weren't running it properly and that's why it sucked' but that's not even remotely the problems I'm talking about.

While  it is certainly interesting as art/fiction, and while the overwrought aesthetics which lured me to this mess in the first place still provided a few fair few monocle-popping chuckles reading it, running it is an entirely different sort of activity, and unfortunately, the activity it is allegedly intended for. There are plenty of adventures so trash that I don't even deign to say they suck, they just get wiped from my memory, and while this is not one of THOSE dungeons, it's definitely not as high above the trash tier as one would hope. (unlike ur favorite anime which is definitely at the bottom of the trash bin)

1. Map Sucks

this is the sort of thing I see in fever dreams about running D&D late at night. Yeah sure lemme just flip to 3 different pages at once every time the players look around a corner

Maze has really complicated, in depth rooms(in description at least, but more on that later). It also has these open ended 'rooms' that seamlessly merge into other rooms. So what happens fairly frequently is the players are standing somewhere and there's like 3 circus attractions visible and possibly raring to throw clowns at them and my sorry ass has to describe all that and no one really cares anyway. The gallery area is especially bad for this- some complicated magical trap painting and then some cannibal critics standing around having highfalutin conversation about art, and there can be like 4 paintings with line of sight to each other. I run a text game, so players can just look at the chatlog to review information, but I can't even imagine trying to keep all this straight in a voice game or a live table where words get talked over and forgotten (actually I can imagine, I was in in a voice game for one session where the forest was constantly missed for the trees and we only got to the 'your fear becomes a scribble on the floor you must walk' room)

As another problem, I've been running and rekeying this place for months and I still have no clue what 90% of the 'secret/hidden/otherwise doors are. They're sometimes just not described on the room they're on for whatever reason so I had to make them up on the fly or make them regular doors.

2. Rooms Wondrous Only In Theory 

Someone made a complaint about Death Frost Doom (I think) that as everything is a horrible cursed item, there's no incentive to poke stuff, and the ideal player behavior is shuffling through politely not touching anything like they're on a museum tour. Well MotBM is like that too, only it's literally a museum.
Here's how a few rooms went.

Wizzz (GM)-The next room! has a glass vase, surrounded by what looks like a ribbon of dust wriggling in a circle around it

Blix:Magic?

"Wizzz" (GM):ye

It blocks access west, but you can go north, your intended path, without issue

Thirbaek Merrymace:"Looks like a horrible magical trap. Let's not bother it."

Blix:"As you can probably guess, it is indeed magic"

North it is

"Wizzz" (GM):North- there is an iron grille that peers down into Chronia's room. This window was too high to see from below. There's something that looks like the rainbow swirl of a bubble instead of glass in the window.

Thirbaek Merrymace:(Everything being worthless** has had the unfortunate effect of really dampening my treasure lust.)

"Looks like a horrible magical trap. Let's not bother it."

Scribe Elmyr:"Yes, horrible magic. Agreed."

**Also re: everything being worthless- it's astounding how true this is. I was running a game where 1 copper piece was worth 1xp, so finding a suit of plate mail, which RAW is 300gp was a whopping ~3000xp. Magic items were worth AD&D values if recovered as well, and yet, the players were still largely unable to collect satisfying hauls from the place to the point where I suspect the place wasn't designed with xp for treasure in mind. The dragon Crucem Capelli who serves as a buyer for art is said to 'pay you' but not with what or how much, which seems a sorry bit of lip service to the idea that the players are primarily treasure hunters.

3. Room Key Hard To Consult, Not Worth Consulting Most The Time Anyway
 Here's what the room fills the players skipped above actually read as. Amazingly, the players still aren't going to touch idiot-bait even if I describe it as "Idiot bait with the form of a 4-dimensional, open-work diagrammatic fluctuating construct, like an amoeba in a broken kaleidoscope"
I find it telling this entry assumes the players would try to cross the room with a saving throw instead of just poking it with a 10 foot pole first. Maze assumes a lot of 'roll to do thing', which I hate.

pentagrammiC WardThe Pentagrammic ward on the floor to the west is a ribbon of magical dust endlessly rewriting itself into the ground like the tracks of a snake. Also in the corridor, a table; on the table is a jar of glass and under it a note. You catch slight letterforms on the white paper.The wardIt traps evil people who try to walk across (save to leap away, leaving you back outside the corridor which-ever way you came in). If it holds a party member, it will slowly and fluidly move across the floor without breaking its pentagrammic shape. The party member will still be trapped inside as it moves and must move with it. It takes them all the way to Torgos Zooth in Almery 256. It moves at half walking speed.The noteIf you unfold the paper, it won’t stop. Unfolding and unfolding without end, cramped black handwriting on every page. Surface area doubles every round. It is a love letter. Picata Pleshenka writes to Psathyrella Medusae (Cells 304), listing all the reasons they should be “as one”. It won’t go back in the vase, no matter what you do. It does burn, though.


WarpWalloWThere is torn cast lead fencing across the threshold of the southern entrance; it is burned open and easy to step through. A room-filling, 4-dimensional, open-work diagrammatic construct fluctuates constantly like an amoeba in a broken kaleidoscope.It measures the ebb and flow of entropic time distor-tions due to Chronia To r n’s (Halls 27) movements and tempers. The basic pattern is simple: it moves violently when her time distortions are at their maxi-mum and it pulses quietly when she is restraining the effect.A magic user may discern the subtleties of her current mood by passing both a successful INTand CHA test. Psathyrella used to come here and just stare for hours.If touched (save to avoid doing so if you cross the room), the construct is actually made of entropic distortion, so it snags spacetime, causing a tear in reality. The effect of a tear isAny spell effect introduced into the dungeon for the next hour “echoes”—the spell repeats itself in some distorted way. Every time a spell is cast, roll d4:1. The spell repeats in a way harmful to the caster2. The spell repeats in a way inconvenient to the caster3. The spell repeats in a way helpful to the caster4. The spell repeats in a way extremely helpful to the casterSo, for example, on a roll of 2 for Magic Missile, a single new missile might appear and strike the cast-er’s ally, on a roll of 4, all the missiles cast at the origi-nal target might be launched again.
 
Naturally, despite these rooms being right next to each other their entries are far, far apart. All the 'woaaah this would be so cool to look at' grew tiresome. If I wanted to appreciate shiny pictures, the surrogate activity of staring at a pimply dungeon master as they describe shiny pictures gets real old when, as Thirbaek Merrymace so succinctly pointed out, it's mostly better to just avoid stuff. Little of all that tl;dr is actually gameable. The Warpwallow is a save to avoid touching or have wild magic accurse the dungeon for a bit, and a magic user can 'discern the subtleties of her current mood by passing both a successful INT and CHA test.' Rolling to see if you roll is not agency, not to mention, why would anyone roll such a thing when they can walk like 2 rooms over and just talk to Chronia? Why didn't the medusa pick up on 'Chronia is high on crack beasts' if this thing can detect Chronia's subtle moods and the medusa used it all the time? So yeah, I described it as a weird window and let the players walk past it, because they'd have no interesting decisions to act upon even if I did spout forth the full description.

Strawman MotBM Fanboy- "Oho, but you're forgetting the two core tenets!"
Never read text out loud word-for-word, it’s too dense and only terrible GMs do that. Just use the general impression to shape your own description. 
&Random encounters are very important—many of the rooms in the Maze are mere curios unless activated or interacted with. Without Random Encounters, the party may find themselves simply sneaking past lots of things they’re scared to touch
Yes SMotBMF, I am aware of basic gming procedure, the problem is that my 'general impression' of most of these fills is 'hollow aesthetics the players will swiftly tire of that provides neither actionable information nor gameable decision making.' And frankly, what, precisely, are these random encounters going to do to solve this? After all, one must assume that, in reaching the players, those wandering encounters ALSO must be sneaking past lots of things they're scared to touch and interacting politely with dangerous maze inhabitants. Should the players just rely on judo-throwing enemies into art installations while trying to avoid the same done to them, every single room, just 'exploit da nearest killer art' again and again? Is that what you think random encounters are, SmotMBF, just obligate combat scenes to add excitement to those endless killer paintings that sane people wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole? Ever heard of a reaction roll, where immediate attack is a mere 1/36 chance, you leering smurf, you ignoramus gretchling, you, you FOE GYG SMotMBF!?

Anyway now that that strawman is thoroughly defeated and it is clear that my brain is the big brain, I want to share an example of one of the 'interesting situations' that the author was presumably hoping for, like the random encounter of, I dunno, Torgos Zooth(Sir Moy, for my players) in room 85, where he and the players are forced to roleplay worrying about local schools at a dinner party due to 'boring hallucinations.'
The game says if they don't, they lose a limb. I decided to go for the carrot rather than the stick and offered a reward instead. The players just sorta sat around dumbfounded by the attempt to make them roleplay something so blatantly boring and time-wasting until I declared the duration was up, and that was that. Would it have been better if they had lost a limb, or if they had actually played along? Would they have shared nostalgic stories afterwards, of 'remember when we were put on the spot for boring improv acting like this was acting 101?' Would Sir Moy become a character-favorite NPC due to his opinion on local schools teased forth by this subtle phantasm?

There's a lot of intended scenes like this that could be interesting in a surrealist work of fiction where the characters are written to be clever and symbolic and full of revelatory character moments...
But this is like LotFP compatible, OSR-adjacent material, not Fate or PbtA.  MotBM would, I believe, be considerably better in a storygame, bizarre as that seems.

4. Characters Out of Storybooks
I could not bear to use many characters as is, and so they were replaced by past NPCs of my own campaigns or original creations who were of similar bent, had connections to the player characters, and roamed outside the maze in the Gardens of Ynn(warped) outside. Frankly, the more mortal a character became, the more popular and empathized with they were. As a rule, players do not view immortal, nigh untouchable beings with a great deal of fondness coughELMINSTERcough  as the usual best practices of interaction tend to be 'act polite and then get away asap.'

It's certainly fun to read and imagine the convoluted interactions between the quirky characters of the maze, and the maze does a relatively decent job of providing hooks and miniquests and so on for them as a way for characters to get to know them. But. Their convoluted psyches are all self-referential, their histories storied but thousands of years stagnant. Where is the room for the players, here? There are, broadly speaking, two types of player characters- empty vessels for the will of the player, who develop depth over time but are ultimately puppets for interaction with the game world, their actions retroactively forming a character when viewed with 20/20 hindsight. Then there are characters who really are 'role-played' as following motivations and backstories that they have earned or started with. Both characters are good. Neither of those characters have a place in the central dramas of the maze save as errand runners and messengers. They gaze upon the room of love letters from Xanthoceras to Zamia and it is a passing amusement at best, like a heart carved on a tree with X x Z, seen while hiking. There are no personal stakes there, and it's frankly hard to get involved when so many characters are immortal superbeings in stasis. Which leads into the following...

5. Dictating Roleplaying
There are too many examples to list, but this module has a great love of 'and then you gotta act like THIS because I'm writing like an playwright, not a GM.' The above example of 'act like you're worrying about local schools at a dinner party' is not an unusual thing- it's everywhere, constantly trying to get the players to act out zany surrealism, or even worse, forcing them to mirror the drama of the static superbeings of the maze, like the painting that makes you hate the killer of one of the sisters. Like really, did the author think a silver-tongued asshole who tries to betray the players and victimize women would be so popular that extra incentive would be needed to ensure the players have the 'correct' response to Milo de Fretwell? It's like the 'show don't tell rule' was never learnt with this place- if you want to have players fall into a pirahna tank, put some gold at the bottom and a greased ramp at the top, don't make magic hypnotic pirahna that make you save vs magic or jump inside (that's a butchered memory of one of the room fills). That's not a clever trap, that's just 'roll dice or suffer lmao,' a test of your character's saving throw, not a test of lateral thinking, observation, and ingenuity. 

I hate dictating player behavior. I don't even like fear and charm effects, having used them in the past and finding the experience utterly boring for me and the player who no longer gets to play their character. I, the GM, am here to adjudicate decisions made by other minds, and they to make decisions. For me to make their decisions for them is to make the game closer to a lonely single-player game or even a novel, and as such I find the attempt to create interesting situations by turning PCs into Non-Playable Characters is utterly at odds with the fun of gaming.

Bonus Round: Lion in Lapis Lazuli might be a punch down at trans people, or maybe it's just shitty representation, or maybe it's pure coincidence(see "Doubt," above). It's a tiger statue labeled and shaped as a lion(or maybe vice versa) and it is endlessly touchy, self-obsessed, and eventually, inevitably, violent. It was not me, but my players, who picked up on this possible interpretation of the symbolism of the creature's struggles and interacted with it in that lens, and, my mind blown by this fire-hot take on what I thought was just another killer golem, I had to abort the 'inevitable combat encounter' the RAW suggests. Read-As-Written, the creature is basically depicted as trying to get offended so it is then justified in attacking you. With the context of how the players were interpreting the encounter and actually trying to be supportive, punishing their actions via inevitable combat was not an acceptable outcome to me

if I get something that walks and talks like a fairy tale parable,
it damn sure will have a fairy tale moral about kind deeds being rewarded, RAW be damned

Anyway, the maze was never as popular among the players as the nearby 10/10 Gardens of Ynn were (though it did beat out the Castle Gargantua areas in terms of sessions investigated) so it is with great relief that their time with the module is largely over and largely incomplete, leaving me free to mine certain things I like from it (I was always fond of the puzzle-savant king lineage keeping a demon lord bound in a rubiks' cube analogue) and consign the work as a whole to the void.

SHOULD YOU BUY
No because one of the authors has disavowed it and the other one is canceled

SHOULD YOU ADOPT FROM SOMEONE WHO WOULD OTHERWISE TOSS IT IN THE TRASH DUE TO MORAL OUTRAGE
Sure, if you're a snobbish aesthete like me with a strong belief that art=/=artist, but there's a lot of interesting and more easily useful stuff on OSR blogs too, jus sayin


SHOULD YOU ACTUALLY RUN IT AS-IS 
Nah, though with some work stuff like the reptile archives or golden wedding or an unpetrified prison area could work as sub-levels in a megadungeon.

SHOULD YOU RUN IT IN STORYGAMES INSTEAD OF OSR
 I think there's a lot more potential for deep narrative character arcs about healing yourself by healing others, perhaps playing as depetrified prisoners who aim to redeem themselves by restoring a smile to everyone's faces (save for the irredeemably wicked, or perhaps rewriting them to be less irredeemable).
But you could do that elsewhere, without the massive overhaul conversion that would take too, so.

IN CONCLUSION 
Did I even run MotBM, or was this all, in the end, just my warped interpretation, the Nightmare House of The Naughty Noures? At what point does adjusting and tweaking and reskinning stray too far to be called running a module?

¯\(°_o)/¯

But I did the precise same thing to Gardens of Ynn and that's still been great, so there

Brain Mole, Buffalo

OG Brain MoleThese are regular harmless moles that attack those who use psionic powers with a 121 power Mind Thrust, or with an attack that causes a 20% chance of insanity per round against non-psionics using spells that emulate psionics.

If we look at the psionics tables in the 1e AD&D DMG to learn about Mind Thrust, we see psionics are a load of hooey and Gygax was totally justified in bullying these psionic nerds

This is how I imagine psionics advocates in the 70's must have been like at the D&D table to have provoked
enough manbaby gygaxian ire to spawn the Brain Mole

In short, it is the sort of gygaxian 'stop using your class abilities so much asdfgjkl' monster. It is much like the Ear Seeker, a similar sort of 'harmless unless you do the thing' monster. You'd think he coulda just not used psionics but whatever. I somehow doubt anything interesting ever came of the Brain Mole, but I imagine courts of kings could have these critters as pets to prevent psychic infiltration, and then you could have a plot about stealing Brain Moles from a king and then wearing them in cages to enable Mind Flayer busting.

Sunset Realm Brain Moles
Short Story: There are none

Long Story: There is no difference between a soul and a mind, so 'psionics' aren't really a separate thing, because souls cannot directly interact with each other, and souls imposing their will on matter without a matter proxy is called 'magic.' The nearest that can occur is manipulation of the brain, which can then affect how a soul can interact with its body, but you might as well call alcohol a 'psionic potion' then.



Buffalo-I believe both north american and water buffalo are included here. Anyway, the head has armor class as plate while the rest is leather (or possibly leather+shield), though since D&D does not track hit locations I do wonder why this was mentioned. Maybe they're the anti-mind flayer steed of choice, as one could rule that, as the tentacles are drawing out the brain, they must strike the head and so buffalo have slightly more AC than other steeds against brain-sucking. Unlike cattle, buffalo have no herd stampede rules, just a big charge attack that needs 40' distance to accelerate to ramming speed, which could make for some mildly interesting tactics and counter-tactics if the players own/are battling wartrained buffalo.

Sunset Realm Buffalo- I've nothing to say so here's a hex fill you could put n some plains somewhere. Frankly I halfassed it after the first entry because I need to complain about MotBM asap

You can skip reading my the rest of the the post and just try to make things dynamic and dangerous with water-buffalo riders everywhere, charging, failing to turn in time and ending up in the trenches, etc etc.

"Baron" Von Boltz's Buffalo Bastion of Banditry
 Quick Rundown- Von Boltz is a mercenary captain who has fallen on hard times, forged some documents of noble lineage, and claimed an old ruin from which he extorts (taxes) locals and hopes to have proper defenses up by the time any feudal nobles try to oust him. Though a good buffalo wrangler, his capabilities as architect and foremen are lacking, and the ruin (a single tower, two walls, and a fountain) has been surrounded by dirt mounds and trenches of aborted architectural schemes.

He needs more stone to renovate the keep, and would like to disassemble the {local minidungeon} for worked stone as he has neither miners nor masons in his employ, but his two strengths of buffalo cavalry and sniping are useless in the narrow confines of the {local minidungeon}. Alternately, wood could be hauled from a nearby forest with his buffalo workforce and a wooden fort could be constructed, but the woods are haunted by a horrible forest monster that, again, a bunch of buffalo cavalry are poorly suited for charging through.

There are frequent buffalo-rider patrols a few miles from the grassland fortress, and they engage with one member immediately returning to the fortress to raise the alarm, with those remaining attempting to negotiate for the peaceful surrender and escort to the fortress of anyone they meet, quickly escalating to violence if denied and taking captives by force. They use hit and-run tactics using the charges of the buffalo and their small bows that can be fired inaccurately from horseback.

Rider- 1hd, AC 16 (chain+mounted), shortbow and dagger, well disciplined.
Buffalo- 5hd, AC as leather (But as plate on head!), 3d6 charge with 40' running start or 2x1d8 horn attacks. Speed as warhorse. If rider is slain, immediately disengages unless it was already charging that turn. They can walk over the dirt hills around the ruin, but cannot charge over.

1. Von Boltz's Tower- A 3 story tower with 15 foot walls running off from two sides of it, which can be walked up at the ends due to collapse and ruin. Von Boltz conducts meetings on the ground floor (where his second in command, as 6th level fighter, stays as guard and companion), sleeps on the second, and gazes out upon 'his' lands from the top, and if alerted to intruders, will snipe at them with arrows from his magical quiver, "Henpecked"

Von Boltz is rarely armored these days and will prefer to escape on a buffalo or bribe his way out of trouble that manages to reach him. He wears a crown, necklace, and ring of 3000 coins total value that he claims are ancestral heirlooms, but are grave goods of a extinct noble line he looted.

"Henpecked" A human leather arrow quiver, with a bloodstain of a woman's lips (a harpy's) on the side. Arrows that rest in it will fly to their target heedless of range (though line of sight is still required), and then fly back to the quiver and whisper the name of whoever (or whatever) was struck. Small objects an arrow can penetrate that weight under a pound may be retrieved this way, and Von Boltz uses nasty barbed arrows that inflict an additional point of damage when they pull themselves free of the wound.
The enchantment must be renewed by having a harpy kiss the bloodstain once every year, or the returning arrows will strike the wearer of the quiver. Von Boltz knows of a flock and has sacrificed some of his enemies to them to get their cooperation, and plans to build an aviary for them to keep them conveniently at hand, which will definitely not backfire horribly ever.

2. Captain Tents-Near to Von Boltz's tower, but on the outside of the defenses, these captains have 2hd and lead scouting and extortion squads across the grasslands. They are loyal and have a buffalo each, and their buffalo are loyal beasts as well and will avenge their deaths.


There is a tunnel between two of the trenches here, and a slope down to the west.

3. Collected Stones- A low wall of salvaged rubble from this ruin. A large haystack is piled here for the convenience of the captain's animals. One can see over the stone wall, trench, and dirt mounds into the fountain 'courtyard' from this angle. A stone lying in the trench makes for easy crossing.

4. Troop Tents- The living quarters of the common member of the gang. A good many are just peasants who have decided to throw in their lot with Von Boltz in the hopes of getting a better deal, but some are actually members of Von Boltz's company.

5. Untrained Buffalo Pen- These animals are either wild or in the process of being trained. If spooked and released, they will stampede away.

6.Lookouts- Set to guard the camp from the north, it's never the same people two nights in a row, meaning they're easy to impersonate.

7. Quartermaster's Bridge- goes over the trench that dug into the aquifer that feeds the fountain. Buffalo can't cross without it having a 50% chance of breaking.

8. Magic Fountain- Maybe it has a nymph or a water weird or a buffalo spirit-god inside. The quartermasters tent and supplies are here as well, the quartermaster being one of the two 6th level second in command.

Bores

Original Gygax Boars
Pretty much bears, tbh. Omnivorous beasts with bad attitudes that hit pretty hard and keep fighting after reaching 0hp in a berserk rage for a few rounds unless reduced to some negative hp score,. There are giant prehistoric boars which are twice as big, and warthogs which are basically the same thing but with adjusted damage. For whatever reason, the damage scores of the baby boars of varying sizes are given as well, which I suppose is well in-line of the assumption so far that, in AD&D, all baby animals must be fought to the death and/or sold to villains.

if you think these are too halfassed maybe I should go back to the drawing board
but i probably won't because that sounds way too boaring
Don't hate me for my puns, I was boarne and bred this way

Sunset Realm Boars
Mostly notable in that the domestic boar, the Pig, is one of the animals favored and domesticated in ages past by Our Lady of Gardens, and they are sometimes used for corpse disposal, either of huge monsters or people. This practice is common in Prince's Spit to the point that the phrase 'Feeding The Pigs' has the same energy as 'Sleeping with the Fishes.' does IRL, and they are popular animals in the moonlands, though the winter moon can quickly revert them to hairier, wilder versions of themselves. ie, boars.

This has given boars some totemic value to some hunter-gather civilizations who are contemptuous of agricultural civilization and shaving, likening their own strength and adaptation to the harsh environment with that of the boar, and that of agricultural citizens being 'pigs.' Barbarians and castle-dwelling nobles alike tend to enjoy hunting boar for sport and meat though, and while boars aren't monsters, Our Lady of Gardens appreciates a prayer in her name at boar feasts regardless.

There is a misconception that berserkers and barbarians hate being called such. The truth is that boarserkers hate being called bearserkers because bears and boars have a bit of a rivalry going on, as they share mytho-ecological niches as bad-tempered warriors too angry to die on time. As a quick shorthand, a fur-clad warrior with a bad temper from the Moonlands (espeically Wrecker Bay or the Auroral Reaches) is probably your classic berserker, while the same fellow from Vint-Savoth, Prince's Spit, or the Beast Islands is probably a Boarserker/barboarian.

Monster Boars
 In the dark forests of Vint-Savoth, boars, like all meat eaters in the area, have a tendency to grow corrupt with age, as trace amounts of the accursed moonblood of the fallen Blood Moon collect in
 their bodies. Though the hunters work tirelessly to eliminate the scourge of beasts, there are several legendary boars that roam the dark forest and have decades-old bounties on them that are so swollen that many doubt the blood ministers of Vint-Savoth could even pay them.

Gloso- A black boar of large but not unusual size, with a bristly hide of black iron and internal heat like a furnace, said to sharpen its bristles by rubbing on gravestones and vomit the molten armor and weapons of those it has devoured. This particular creature is thought to use the ghoul-tunnels to travel the land and is said to haunt ruined settlements moreso than the deep woods.
Bounty: 32,768 gold coins. Doubles every Hunt, and has been doubled for 15 years straight since the monsters first appearance in the village of Gloso, which is now an ashen ruin.

Three Tusk- tall as trees, with a third tusk as long as a man's arm sprouting from its horrid jaw, this tremendous creature is too large to be hurt by conventional weaponry, and too deep in the overgrown wilderness to bring siege weaponry to bear against it. The alleged offspring (or, more likely, similarly accursed boars) sometimes grow to the size of oxen and are known as Two Tusked.
Bounty on Two Tusked Boars- 50 gold
Bounty on Three Tusk- Estimated ~50,000 gold coins, priced at 1000 gold coins per head of height at the shoulder the titan has, which hardly accounts for the massive increase in mass each head of height implies, frankly.

Carnutes Monok- a gigantic, scarred and one-eyed boar that emits a stultifying musk that draws other boars(and domestic pigs that fail saves) to it and causes confusion(as the spell) in humans. It is known to have had many offspring with the stampede of boars that always surrounds it and this virility has spawned (probably spurious) rumors of bestiality that proclaim this creature the grandfather of were-boars.
Bounty: 1 gold per lesser boar, and 1 gold coins per pig living in farms near Vint and Savoth (estimated twenty-three thousand, currently) as it is feared that if the beast ever makes it to the largest pig farms, the danger corresponds to the pig population.

Mozus Vanfeyr- A pig of average appearance, somehow infected with first-order vampiric immortality and able to affect men and pigs with all the dread powers of a true vampire. Animals usually do not have their blood tested for moon-corruption until they are slaughtered, so the thought of a domestically camoflauged monster has kept many a Vint-Savoth peasant in terror during campfire tales.
Bounty- None, though the state will pay sages a pittance to lecture the populace on how such a beast is impossible and does not exist, ostensibly to reduce panic. But if you believe the conspiracy theorists, this is only proof that Mozus is real and was, in fact, elected as [ignoble politician of their choice] within the last decade.

The Cromerlydonian- Once a sacred oracular pig of Our Lady of Gardens, now a disgusting moonspawned monstrosity, an abominable horror of writhing flesh barely recognizable as a pig. Its oracular powers seem to inform it to develop mutations to counter whatever might stop it, and the Gardeners of Our Lady have offered anything in their power to grant, if only someone can put an end to this blasphemous mockery. It roams the Bog of the Canal and the borders of Vint, and so is really more of a Prince's Spit menace.
Bounty- Name your price to the biggest Church-State of the Three Kingdoms!