Monday, December 22, 2025

Skoloseme - a Poison for VtM

 

Skoloseme - a most wretched poison feared and coveted by the Kindred in equal measure for its ability to kill the even already-dead. Any container which holds it, even glass, weeps filth and eventually finds itself covered in a layer of stinking grease. The poison itself, a milky white substance, causes a [huge chunk of aggravated damage/save vs death] upon entry into the body of a Kindred, as their spine rebels against them; of course, it's a certain, agonizing death for any human unfortunate enough to even touch it. 

The etymological origin of the name Skoloseme is much debated among vampirekind. The vampiric scribe Uglubathr wrote that the name was a vile pun based on its creation and appearance, as it was brewed with the seminal emissions of centipedes in an unclean skull for a month and a night; a recipe revealed to them during their visits to certain abandoned Mithraic sites in the south of the continent. The Jesuit missionary Rinieri Mazelo (widely regarded by modern Kindred scholars as a pawn of his grandsire the Shivan Mater) violently contests this suggested origin as a "deluded distortion of certain Oriental rituals, typical for the seizures of those of Mala Cavilla humour" but provides no real alternative as to its origins. 

The historian and chronicler Glaude takes a completely different tack. He suggests that the name is a scribal error for the earlier and more accurate name of skotoseme, or simply "suicide poison"; a name the substance earned when the vampiric princess Aylin killed herself and much of her court by pouring the poison into her eyes, during the Kindred civil war in Constantinople. 

 



Thursday, December 18, 2025

GLOGmas 25: A Monster for the Gudgeon Moon

Merry Christmas Ro! I've been peeking at your blog for Christmas ideas and your Gudgeon Moon setting is delightfully strange. I haven't seen anything quite like it. One thing the weird alien beasties do vaguely recall to me, though, is Pikmin, and so eventually an idea for some kind of weird little creature popped into my head. 


Creucen

When Ite, the Fourfold World first fell onto the Mound, one of the few creatures to not just survive but thrive in the wake of the disaster was the humble creucen. The creucen, which comes up to around a foot tall, resembles a fat crystalline teardrop turned on its side with two stubby legs. Their eyes under the crystal covering are warped and magnified. The only part of their bodies where soft tissue is exposed is their mouth, a narrow bright-red slit which only occasionally opens up when it feeds or reproduces.

Extremophilic even for the inhabitants of Ite, the diamond-hard body of a creucen is nearly impervious to mundane weaponry; their mouth alone is vulnerable, and even its seam in the diamond needs to be hit at the exact right angle to split it open. Likewise, magic often simply bounces off it, and reflects back onto the unfortunate caster or their friends. Their one great weakness is heat: fire and lightning denatures their organic crystal armor and cooks the soft flesh inside. When a cruecen dies, within minutes its innards leak out into the outer shell, which quickly softens and turns a fetid black.

Creucen are social creatures, and roam in great peeping bands. Creucen are hermaphroditic, and have two tongues, one which they use to feed and one which is a specialized reproductive organ. When they reproduce, two creucen will "kiss", and one will sting the inside of the other's mouth with its reproductive tongue, The black nodules which develop within after are baby creucen, who eventually enter the world before their shells have properly developed due to the narrow size needed to leave; these infants are kept collectively in a central nest and fiercely defended.

Before the Drop, creucen lived in the territories of the Gofka and Myrivada. The former adore the creatures and keep them as pets; it's not uncommon to see a Gofka with several creucen peeking out of its mouth. The myrivada, on the other hand, see them more as pests, though the beauty of their shells is coveted. There is a jealously-kept recipe for a caustic liquid which, if a freshly dead creucen is dropped into, preserves their diamond shell; and one of the legendary regalia of the great Myrivada spear-kings is a set of invincible creucen panoply.

 

Creucen
No. Appearing
: 4d4
HD: 1-1
AC: 19, or 10 against fire and lightning
Morale: 8
Intelligence: one of the stupider kinds of bird
Morality: animal
Whip Tongue: +1 to-hit, 1d4 damage
Spells which target the creucen have a 50% chance of bouncing off and hitting a random target instead


Skoloseme - a Poison for VtM

  Skoloseme - a most wretched poison feared and coveted by the Kindred in equal measure for its ability to kill the even already-dead. Any c...