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Slime

2019-07-06T18:52:15Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A: /* Slime Gods */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to divide. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown pudding live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice it has been attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells| Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. Has a vulnerability to sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava that consumes metal and stone. It cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have a overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing a piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic Skum: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Slime Gods===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[Tvtropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essential aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Slime

2019-07-06T18:51:47Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A: /* Slime Gods */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to divide. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown pudding live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice it has been attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells| Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. Has a vulnerability to sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava that consumes metal and stone. It cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have a overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing a piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic Skum: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Slime Gods===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[Tvtropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essential aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Slime

2019-07-06T18:37:21Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A: /* 3rd/3.5 Edition */

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to divide. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown pudding live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice it has been attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells| Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. Has a vulnerability to sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava that consumes metal and stone. It cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have a overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing a piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic Skum: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Slime Gods===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[Tvtropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essential aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]

Elder Evils

2019-07-06T08:07:59Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A: /* The Worm That Walks */

[[Elder Evils]] can refer to either a 3.5 edition [[Splatbook]] about world ending threats the players may face or a group of powerful entities that are the closest things [[Aboleth]]s have to gods.

==The Book==
The Elder Evils described in the book of the same name are entities with the potential to end the world. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of them are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them. Several of them were later adapted to 4th edition by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players them must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.

=== Father Llymic===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight who wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself, which are known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

===The Hulks of Zoretha===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

===Pandorym===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to threaten the gods, so they summoned an intelligent superweapon from another dimension which they named Pandorym, but then betrayed and sealed Pandorym away by separating its mind from its body and imprisoning them separately. The gods didn't like being threatened so they wiped the wizards out as soon as they had finished sealing Pandorym away. Pandorym desires to get revenge of the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then fulfil its contract with them by killing all the gods, and if it is unable to return home after this it will destroy the world too. As Pandorym gets close to being freed, a glyph spread across the sky that interferes with the connections between planes, making many kinds of magic more difficult to use, especially conjuration. Pandorym's mindless body resembles a larger than normal [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that always moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an extradimensional prison. It's mind is trapped inside of a crystal. When this crystal is damaged a shard of its mind may escape, which has a CR of 25. It's fully released mind does not have stats, as it is too powerful for the players to defeat. If it does completely escape from the crystal prison then only divine intervention can stop it from returning to its body.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym.. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be a [[Lawful Stupid]] [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), who wants to release Pandorym because Pandorym's contract was violated and it must correct this regardless of the consequences. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII as well as the prison's guardian constructs and undead. If they succeed in killing Obligatum VII, they may then have to travel to [[Mechanus]] to prevent Obligatum VIII from being made.

===Ragnorra===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people an other stolen living things as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low rogues sent the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.

===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but a immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm that Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The worm that walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), a villain from the book [[Exemplars of Evil]], escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the Exemplars of Evil book, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===Zargon===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As his influence spreads the world is affected by extreme weather.

===Dragon Magazine===
Two more elder evils were added in [[Dragon Magazine]]. Zurguth, the Feasting Vast, is the accidental creator of the [[Kaorti]]. Shothragot is a powerful servant of [[Tharizdun]].

==Aboleth Deities==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]]
* [[Bolothamogg]] (Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars): A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]] (The Hunger Below): A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]] (The Blood Queen): The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]] (Eater of Worlds): A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]] (The Violet Flame): A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it. It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Elder Evils

2019-07-06T06:57:30Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A: /* The Worm That Walks */

[[Elder Evils]] can refer to either a 3.5 edition [[Splatbook]] about world ending threats the players may face or a group of powerful entities that are the closest things [[Aboleth]]s have to gods.

==The Book==
The Elder Evils described in the book of the same name are entities with the potential to end the world. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of them are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them. Several of them were later adapted to 4th edition by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players them must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.

=== Father Llymic===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight who wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself, which are known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

===The Hulks of Zoretha===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

===Pandorym===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to threaten the gods, so they summoned an intelligent superweapon from another dimension which they named Pandorym, but then betrayed and sealed Pandorym away by separating its mind from its body and imprisoning them separately. The gods didn't like being threatened so they wiped the wizards out as soon as they had finished sealing Pandorym away. Pandorym desires to get revenge of the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then fulfil its contract with them by killing all the gods, and if it is unable to return home after this it will destroy the world too. As Pandorym gets close to being freed, a glyph spread across the sky that interferes with the connections between planes, making many kinds of magic more difficult to use, especially conjuration. Pandorym's mindless body resembles a larger than normal [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that always moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an extradimensional prison. It's mind is trapped inside of a crystal. When this crystal is damaged a shard of its mind may escape, which has a CR of 25. It's fully released mind does not have stats, as it is too powerful for the players to defeat. If it does completely escape from the crystal prison then only divine intervention can stop it from returning to its body.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym.. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be a [[Lawful Stupid]] [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), who wants to release Pandorym because Pandorym's contract was violated and it must correct this regardless of the consequences. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII as well as the prison's guardian constructs and undead. If they succeed in killing Obligatum VII, they may then have to travel to [[Mechanus]] to prevent Obligatum VIII from being made.

===Ragnorra===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people an other stolen living things as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low rogues sent the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.

===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but a immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm that Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff, a villain from the book [[Exemplars of Evil]], escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an avolakia who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. If you don't have the Exemplars of Evil book, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===Zargon===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As his influence spreads the world is affected by extreme weather.

===Dragon Magazine===
Two more elder evils were added in [[Dragon Magazine]]. Zurguth, the Feasting Vast, is the accidental creator of the [[Kaorti]]. Shothragot is a powerful servant of [[Tharizdun]].

==Aboleth Deities==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]]
* [[Bolothamogg]] (Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars): A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]] (The Hunger Below): A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]] (The Blood Queen): The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]] (Eater of Worlds): A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]] (The Violet Flame): A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it. It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Pole-arm

2019-07-06T05:51:56Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A:

{{cleanup}}
[[image:Polearms.jpg|thumb|300px|right|And those are just the ''most common european'' varieties, too!]]
A '''Pole-Arm''' technically refers to any type of weapon consisting of a metal head with a long wooden pole. [[Spear|Spears]] fall under this classification, but more often than not it is used to refer to weapons with something more than just a point at the end to stick people with. Pole-arms were usually capable of any combination of chopping, cutting, smashing, or stabbing an enemy by attaching [[Battleaxe|axe]]-heads, spikes, hammers, and various blades to the end of a long shaft. Due to their relative ease of use and the sheer versatility they offered, pole-arms have been used by civilizations across the length and breadth of the globe and have proven themselves to be very effective in massed combat.

The sheer number of different weapons the term covers means that attempting to classify them can get confusing, especially with some of the ones from Europe. Since there was no rigorous system of classification in place and several weapons like the bill, war scythe, and military fork were developed from peasants' hand tools, several different weapons have been called by the same name, and several different names have been applied to the same weapon; and that's '''without''' getting into things like glaive-guisarmes, fauchard-forks, and the various other combination weapons people tried to kill each other with over the centuries. As you might expect, this has sparked [[Skub|many arguments]] over what is called what.
== Pole-arms in warfare ==
When compared to spears, pole-arms retain some of the advantage of reach while gaining more flexibility in how they attack. A spearman is limited to simply poking his enemies to death, whereas a halberdier or billman can also hack at them and even drag horsemen off their mounts with the hooks on their weapons.

==Types of Pole-arm==
Spears are far from being the only form of pole-arm; there are numerous others, most of which tend to be difficult to distinguish from one another. A short list of some of the more notable types is as follows:

*'''Ahlspiess/Awl Pike:''' Take a spear, then replace the spearhead with a three-foot-long metal spike with a disc to protect the user's hand and you have the ahlspiess. The name comes from the fact it resembled an awl, a tool used to pierce holes in leather and wood, which fit rather well considering how good it was at poking holes in people. Unlike a normal spear the metal spike was impossible to cut though with a sword, which made it quite effective in a melee, if a bit on the heavy side.

*'''Bardiche/Berdiche:''' A Russian polearm taking the form of a long handled axe with a broad curved axehead on a long handle typically 1.5 meters in length. The lower end of the axe-head was attached to the shaft, while the upper end extended several inches above it. It was notable in that it was often used as a monopod by Streltsi (an elite force of musketeers that existed from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great).

*'''Bayonet:''' Honorable mention goes to the blade at the end of a gun, which was extremely handy back in the days where it took a long time to reload. Not used very often in modern times except by the British, who have engaged in bayonet charges during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Modern bayonets attachments would make guns more similar to a glaive than a spear though (with a big curve similar to that said weapon).

*'''Bill:''' Derived from a pruning tool called the billhook, a bill consists of a cutting blade that curves forward to form a hook, with later versions adding a spike on the top and a hook on the back of the blade. This combined the stopping power of a spear with the cutting ability of an axe, giving it the ability to pull horsemen out of the saddle, hamstring man and mount alike, '''and''' pierce gaps in the protection of heavily armored opponents. For this reason, it was the national weapon of England well into the 16th century. Interestingly, at a time when all the continental armies were using pikemen to form the bulk of their foot soldiers, an English army of hastily-raised levies (most of the English army being abroad in France, dying of dysentery and being of minor annoyance to the French) devastated a Scottish army, whose principle weapon was the pike, at Flodden Fields to such an extent they took a generation to recover. Often conflated with the guisarme due to their similar origins and use, they may very well be regional variants of the same general weapon.

*'''Bohemian Earspoon:''' This oddly-named pole-arm really existed; it was used in central Europe around the 14th and 15th centuries. It consisted of a tapered blade with a medial ridge and pair of lugs beneath the blade, similar to a boar spear, to prevent an impaled target working its way down the pole to reach you.

*'''Brandistock''': An unusual 16th century Italian thrusting polearm in that, not only did it possess three spikes at the end, but they were also retractable.

*'''Falx''': The Falx is an oddity that doesn't easily fit any category; most historians list it as a polearm as, despite being somewhat shorter than an ordinary polearm, it's shaft is too long to be considered a sword. This weapon was used by the ancient Dacians and Thracians against the Romans, and featured a 3 foot sickle-shaped blade with an equally long shaft, meant to be used two-handed and could deliver devastating downward blows, splitting shields and helmets alike. It's for that reason that the Roman Gallic helmet has a special ridge specifically for blocking falx blows. In fantasy, the Falx has been re-purposed as an Elven Greatsword of sorts, owing to its more unusual shape.

*'''Fauchard''': In many respects a fauchard is very similar to a glaive, except that it has a hook somewhere on the cutting edge, and above the hook the blade tapers into a sharp point.

*'''Glaive:''' The glaive was equipped with a single-edged tapering blade (like a kitchen knife) affixed similarly to an axe head. Some variations (called glaive-guisarmes) had a small hook on the end meant for catching horsemen, like a bill, or for locking enemies' blades in combat. Glaives often came in a very wide variety of bizarre shapes, so oftentimes it is used to describe a polearm with a blade shape that doesn't fit any of the other categories.

*'''Goedendag:''' the goedendag was a Flemish combination of a spear and club. It's believed to have been first used like a spear to blunt a charge, but then as a club once the melee is joined. Making it good against armored knights, and it was used to defeat French knights at the "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ksuFG8YaY Battle of the Golden Spurs]". The word "Goedendag" means "good day" in Dutch, so if nothing else this proves that the Flemish have a sense of humor.

*'''Guan-Dao:''' The Guan-Dao is a chinese polearm with a ''huge'' fucking blade at the end of a five-foot pole, with a small prong at the back and usually a tassle or two for ceremonial purposes. It is named after a popular character from the 14th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms called Guan Yu, who is often depicted as using a particularly beautiful Guan-Dao (even though he almost certainly didn't do so in reality, as the weapon didn't exist at the time).

*'''Halberd:''' One of the most iconic pole-arms, differing from the poleaxe in both form and function. Intended as more of a formation weapon than an individual weapon, both the shaft and spike were longer, as it was primarily a thrusting weapon. While possessing an ax's blade (which typically featured a slant pointing downward as opposed to a straight parallel or circular edge), it was less used for chopping (due to its unwieldy nature) and more as an extra attack; the ax was used in a draw cut in case the thrust missed its target and attempted to close in. The blade could also pull a mounted [[knight]] off his horse, though the bill was better known for this tactic. In the early Renaissance, the Halberd was a favorite weapon of the Dobbeltsöldner, being a good weapon to bump away enemy pikes and then blend the innards of the peasants holding the pikes.

*'''[[Lance]]:''' A bigger, heavier spear intended for [[knight]]s and other mounted warriors. They were too bulky to be wielded on foot and too heavy to throw, relegating them to use on horseback; however, they could be absolutely devastating during a cavalry charge. Variations of the lance continued to be used until World War I. They were also the go-to weapon for jousting tournaments.

*'''Lucerne Hammer:''' Basically a warhammer with a very long shaft, the hammer's head was pronged to better pierce the plate armor in use at the time. It also bore a long spike opposite the hammer and an even longer spike extending from the top. The name comes from the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, where many of them have been discovered.

**'''Bec-de-Corbin:''' Ask some people what the difference between this and a Lucerne hammer is and most people will have no idea what either of them is. The few who do know and can describe both will probably [[Skub|spend a few hours arguing over what the difference truly is]]. The name is Old French for "raven's beak" so maybe they hit people with the spike instead of the hammer. It's best to just consider them to be the same weapon with some slight differences.

*'''Man Catcher:''' A pole with two pronged semicircular head with or without spikes inside it and possibly with a mechanism to close it, designed for immobilizing enemies by catching their limbs or neck and pining them down and also for knocking enemies off of horses.

*'''Military Fork:''' It's basically a big pitchfork. The prongs made it effective at piercing plate armor and some had hooks much like other polearms to counter cavalry.

*'''Naginata:''' Similar to the glaive, the naginata is a wooden shaft with a large curved blade at the end which was covered with a sheath when not in use. Like the katana, it became a favored weapon of the [[samurai]], particularly the women (who were especially appreciative of its ability to keep opponents at a distance, thus compensating for [[-4 Str|the difference in raw strength between the sexes]]) in fact learning how to use a Naginata was mandatory for school girls in the Empire of Japan and it's still popular there. While they can be used to stab and hook opponents, the curved blade makes naginatas most effective as a cutting weapon; although it lacks the speed, control, and longer cutting edge of a katana, it makes up for it with superior reach and better leverage. Fun fact; sometimes when a katana broke, the blade would be reused to make a naginata.

*'''Partisan:''' A weapon that consisted of a spearhead mounted on a long shaft with protrusions on the sides of the spear head, which aided in the user in parrying sword thrusts. It remains in use as a ceremonial weapon in some countries. Party-focused politicians are known for fighting with these in political debates.

[[File:Pikemen.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Cavalry? We ain't afraid of no stinking cavalry!]]
*'''Pike:''' Perhaps the most effective of the pole weapons, but certainly the most widespread. The pike was, at its heart, a very long, sharp stick. We're talking 10-25 feet, here. It was ideal for defensive maneuvers, especially when wielded ''en masse''; each rank of pikemen was trained to hold their pikes so any charging enemy infantry had to deal with more sharp spiky objects than a hedgehog convention pointed at them. However, the tight formations needed to pull this off made pikemen vulnerable to archers and the unwieldy size of the pikes made it too difficult for them to effectively defend themselves if outflanked. Nevertheless, their lethality and defensive skill made them popular into the late 1600s, at which time people realized standing around in dense formations made pikemen an easy target for [[Firearm|arquebusiers]] and artillery. Both the [[Landsknecht]]s and the Swiss became famous for their proficiency with pikes. Some Japanese yari would be long enough to qualify as pikes and were used in a similar manner as the Europeans did.

*'''Poleaxe:''' It's an axe head on a pole, just as the name suggests. Compared to a halberd, it has a smaller head, which focuses kinetic energy onto a smaller area and lets it cut through armor more effectively. In other words, while the halberd prioritizes thrusting, the poleaxe prioritizes chopping. The spike on the end of the pole's butt also made it useful for thrusting attacks, and it could be used to block in the same way as a quarterstaff.

*'''Quarterstaff:''' The simplest type of polearm there is, inasmuch as it is an actual pole. It's probably the oldest, too; smacking someone with a stick is easier to think of than sharpening it so you can stab them. A favored weapon of [[monk]]s and other unarmed classes in DnD, these could be used both as a blunt implement and as a thrusting weapon, while a carefully aimed sweeping blow aimed at the legs could easily knock a foe off his feet and send him sprawling onto the ground. It's not too likely that these were used in actual warfare, as they were mainly meant for self-defense and martial arts. They were also useful as walking sticks, of course.

*'''Shaolin Spade:''': As the name suggests, it's a weapon with a spade-shaped blade on one end, with a crescent shaped blade on the other. The Shaolin monks used this weapon for two purposes: to bury the dead, and for defense against bandits. Possibly one after the other.

*'''Spetum:''' A spear-like weapon with two smaller, single-edged blades extending at acute angles from the base of the spear's head. Not only could it be used to impale and stab with the main spearhead, the smaller blades made it effective at knocking aside shields and severing limbs as well.

*'''Swordstaff:''' Take a full sized doubled edged sword, including the guard, but replace grip with a long pole. Swordstaff like weapons pop up in fantasy every once in a while but were rare in history, so not much is known about how they were used.

*'''Trident:''' The go-to weapon for a water-themed character. Mostly this was used by fishermen to skewer fish. The retiarius, a type of gladiator, used a trident alongside a dagger and net.

*'''Voulge:''' While superficially similar to the glaive, the voulge had a broader blade meant for hacking rather than cutting. Think of it as a meat cleaver on a pole and you have the general idea of how it worked. Also like the glaive, some forms (called voulge-guisarmes) had hooks added to the back of the blade, along with a pointed tip for stabbing.

*'''War Scythe:''' Contrary to popular belief, a scythe on its own is too unwieldy to make a good weapon. But if the scythe's blade is re-mounted to extend upward instead of out to the side, it can be fairly effective as far as improvised weapons go. Because of the ease with which they could be repurposed from common tools, they were one of the most likely weapons to be used in peasant uprisings. War scythes were the preferred pole arm of the Poles.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
image:Polearms-Geneva.jpg|Various 15th century European pole-arms
image:ahlspiess.jpg|An ahlspiess
image:01_108_Book_illustrations_of_Historical_description_of_the_clothes_and_weapons_of_Russian_troops.jpg|Russian '''streltsi''', each carrying a musket and a bardiche
image:Bec_de_Corbin.jpg|A bec-de-corbin or Lucerne hammer, depending on who you ask
image:Long_handled_bill_hook.jpg|A simple bill
image:Glouchester-billmen.jpg|Re-enactors holding examples of Italian and English bills
image:Bohemian-earspoon.jpg| A modern reproduction of a bohemian earspoon
image:naginata.jpg|A Japanese Naginata
image:Voulges.png|Several different kinds of voulge
</gallery>
{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Pole-arm

2019-07-06T05:40:49Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A:

{{cleanup}}
[[image:Polearms.jpg|thumb|300px|right|And those are just the ''most common european'' varieties, too!]]
A '''Pole-Arm''' technically refers to any type of weapon consisting of a metal head with a long wooden pole. [[Spear|Spears]] fall under this classification, but more often than not it is used to refer to weapons with something more than just a point at the end to stick people with. Pole-arms were usually capable of any combination of chopping, cutting, smashing, or stabbing an enemy by attaching [[Battleaxe|axe]]-heads, spikes, hammers, and various blades to the end of a long shaft. Due to their relative ease of use and the sheer versatility they offered, pole-arms have been used by civilizations across the length and breadth of the globe and have proven themselves to be very effective in massed combat.

The sheer number of different weapons the term covers means that attempting to classify them can get confusing, especially with some of the ones from Europe. Since there was no rigorous system of classification in place and several weapons like the bill, war scythe, and military fork were developed from peasants' hand tools, several different weapons have been called by the same name, and several different names have been applied to the same weapon; and that's '''without''' getting into things like glaive-guisarmes, fauchard-forks, and the various other combination weapons people tried to kill each other with over the centuries. As you might expect, this has sparked [[Skub|many arguments]] over what is called what.
== Pole-arms in warfare ==
When compared to spears, pole-arms retain some of the advantage of reach while gaining more flexibility in how they attack. A spearman is limited to simply poking his enemies to death, whereas a halberdier or billman can also hack at them and even drag horsemen off their mounts with the hooks on their weapons.

==Types of Pole-arm==
Spears are far from being the only form of pole-arm; there are numerous others, most of which tend to be difficult to distinguish from one another. A short list of some of the more notable types is as follows:

*'''Ahlspiess/Awl Pike:''' Take a spear, then replace the spearhead with a three-foot-long metal spike with a disc to protect the user's hand and you have the ahlspiess. The name comes from the fact it resembled an awl, a tool used to pierce holes in leather and wood, which fit rather well considering how good it was at poking holes in people. Unlike a normal spear the metal spike was impossible to cut though with a sword, which made it quite effective in a melee, if a bit on the heavy side.

*'''Bardiche/Berdiche:''' A Russian polearm taking the form of a long handled axe with a broad curved axehead on a long handle typically 1.5 meters in length. The lower end of the axe-head was attached to the shaft, while the upper end extended several inches above it. It was notable in that it was often used as a monopod by Streltsi (an elite force of musketeers that existed from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great).

*'''Bayonet:''' Honorable mention goes to the blade at the end of a gun, which was extremely handy back in the days where it took a long time to reload. Not used very often in modern times except by the British, who have engaged in bayonet charges during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Modern bayonets attachments would make guns more similar to a glaive than a spear though (with a big curve similar to that said weapon).

*'''Bill:''' Derived from a pruning tool called the billhook, a bill consists of a cutting blade that curves forward to form a hook, with later versions adding a spike on the top and a hook on the back of the blade. This combined the stopping power of a spear with the cutting ability of an axe, giving it the ability to pull horsemen out of the saddle, hamstring man and mount alike, '''and''' pierce gaps in the protection of heavily armored opponents. For this reason, it was the national weapon of England well into the 16th century. Interestingly, at a time when all the continental armies were using pikemen to form the bulk of their foot soldiers, an English army of hastily-raised levies (most of the English army being abroad in France, dying of dysentery and being of minor annoyance to the French) devastated a Scottish army, whose principle weapon was the pike, at Flodden Fields to such an extent they took a generation to recover. Often conflated with the guisarme due to their similar origins and use, they may very well be regional variants of the same general weapon.

*'''Bohemian Earspoon:''' This oddly-named pole-arm really existed; it was used in central Europe around the 14th and 15th centuries. It consisted of a tapered blade with a medial ridge and pair of lugs beneath the blade, similar to a boar spear, to prevent an impaled target working its way down the pole to reach you.

*'''Brandistock''': An unusual 16th century Italian thrusting polearm in that, not only did it possess three spikes at the end, but they were also retractable.

*'''Falx''': The Falx is an oddity that doesn't easily fit any category; most historians list it as a polearm as, despite being somewhat shorter than an ordinary polearm, it's shaft is too long to be considered a sword. This weapon was used by the ancient Dacians and Thracians against the Romans, and featured a 3 foot sickle-shaped blade with an equally long shaft, meant to be used two-handed and could deliver devastating downward blows, splitting shields and helmets alike. It's for that reason that the Roman Gallic helmet has a special ridge specifically for blocking falx blows. In fantasy, the Falx has been re-purposed as an Elven Greatsword of sorts, owing to its more unusual shape.

*'''Fauchard''': In many respects a fauchard is very similar to a glaive, except that it has a hook somewhere on the cutting edge, and above the hook the blade tapers into a sharp point.

*'''Glaive:''' The glaive was equipped with a single-edged tapering blade (like a kitchen knife) affixed similarly to an axe head. Some variations (called glaive-guisarmes) had a small hook on the end meant for catching horsemen, like a bill, or for locking enemies' blades in combat. Glaives often came in a very wide variety of bizarre shapes, so oftentimes it is used to describe a polearm with a blade shape that doesn't fit any of the other categories.

*'''Goedendag:''' the goedendag was a Flemish combination of a spear and club. It's believed to have been first used like a spear to blunt a charge, but then as a club once the melee is joined. Making it good against armored knights, and it was used to defeat French knights at the "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ksuFG8YaY Battle of the Golden Spurs]". The word "Goedendag" means "good day" in Dutch, so if nothing else this proves that the Flemish have a sense of humor.

*'''Guan-Dao:''' The Guan-Dao is a chinese polearm with a ''huge'' fucking blade at the end of a five-foot pole, with a small prong at the back and usually a tassle or two for ceremonial purposes. It is named after a popular character from the 14th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms called Guan Yu, who is often depicted as using a particularly beautiful Guan-Dao (even though he almost certainly didn't do so in reality, as the weapon didn't exist at the time).

*'''Halberd:''' One of the most iconic pole-arms, differing from the poleaxe in both form and function. Intended as more of a formation weapon than an individual weapon, both the shaft and spike were longer, as it was primarily a thrusting weapon. While possessing an ax's blade (which typically featured a slant pointing downward as opposed to a straight parallel or circular edge), it was less used for chopping (due to its unwieldy nature) and more as an extra attack; the ax was used in a draw cut in case the thrust missed its target and attempted to close in. The blade could also pull a mounted [[knight]] off his horse, though the bill was better known for this tactic. In the early Renaissance, the Halberd was a favorite weapon of the Dobbeltsöldner, being a good weapon to bump away enemy pikes and then blend the innards of the peasants holding the pikes.

*'''[[Lance]]:''' A bigger, heavier spear intended for [[knight]]s and other mounted warriors. They were too bulky to be wielded on foot and too heavy to throw, relegating them to use on horseback; however, they could be absolutely devastating during a cavalry charge. Variations of the lance continued to be used until World War I. They were also the go-to weapon for jousting tournaments.

*'''Lucerne Hammer:''' Basically a warhammer with a very long shaft, the hammer's head was pronged to better pierce the plate armor in use at the time. It also bore a long spike opposite the hammer and an even longer spike extending from the top. The name comes from the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, where many of them have been discovered.

**'''Bec-de-Corbin:''' Ask some people what the difference between this and a Lucerne hammer is and most people will have no idea what either of them is. The few who do know and can describe both will probably [[Skub|spend a few hours arguing over what the difference truly is]]. The name is Old French for "raven's beak" so maybe they hit people with the spike instead of the hammer. It's best to just consider them to be the same weapon with some slight differences.

*'''Man Catcher:''' A pole with a U-shaped head with or without spikes inside it, designed for immobilizing enemies by catching their limbs or neck and pining them down.

*'''Military Fork:''' It's basically a big pitchfork. The prongs made it effective at piercing plate armor and some had hooks much like other polearms to counter cavalry.

*'''Naginata:''' Similar to the glaive, the naginata is a wooden shaft with a large curved blade at the end which was covered with a sheath when not in use. Like the katana, it became a favored weapon of the [[samurai]], particularly the women (who were especially appreciative of its ability to keep opponents at a distance, thus compensating for [[-4 Str|the difference in raw strength between the sexes]]) in fact learning how to use a Naginata was mandatory for school girls in the Empire of Japan and it's still popular there. While they can be used to stab and hook opponents, the curved blade makes naginatas most effective as a cutting weapon; although it lacks the speed, control, and longer cutting edge of a katana, it makes up for it with superior reach and better leverage. Fun fact; sometimes when a katana broke, the blade would be reused to make a naginata.

*'''Partisan:''' A weapon that consisted of a spearhead mounted on a long shaft with protrusions on the sides of the spear head, which aided in the user in parrying sword thrusts. It remains in use as a ceremonial weapon in some countries. Party-focused politicians are known for fighting with these in political debates.

[[File:Pikemen.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Cavalry? We ain't afraid of no stinking cavalry!]]
*'''Pike:''' Perhaps the most effective of the pole weapons, but certainly the most widespread. The pike was, at its heart, a very long, sharp stick. We're talking 10-25 feet, here. It was ideal for defensive maneuvers, especially when wielded ''en masse''; each rank of pikemen was trained to hold their pikes so any charging enemy infantry had to deal with more sharp spiky objects than a hedgehog convention pointed at them. However, the tight formations needed to pull this off made pikemen vulnerable to archers and the unwieldy size of the pikes made it too difficult for them to effectively defend themselves if outflanked. Nevertheless, their lethality and defensive skill made them popular into the late 1600s, at which time people realized standing around in dense formations made pikemen an easy target for [[Firearm|arquebusiers]] and artillery. Both the [[Landsknecht]]s and the Swiss became famous for their proficiency with pikes. Some Japanese yari would be long enough to qualify as pikes and were used in a similar manner as the Europeans did.

*'''Poleaxe:''' It's an axe head on a pole, just as the name suggests. Compared to a halberd, it has a smaller head, which focuses kinetic energy onto a smaller area and lets it cut through armor more effectively. In other words, while the halberd prioritizes thrusting, the poleaxe prioritizes chopping. The spike on the end of the pole's butt also made it useful for thrusting attacks, and it could be used to block in the same way as a quarterstaff.

*'''Quarterstaff:''' The simplest type of polearm there is, inasmuch as it is an actual pole. It's probably the oldest, too; smacking someone with a stick is easier to think of than sharpening it so you can stab them. A favored weapon of [[monk]]s and other unarmed classes in DnD, these could be used both as a blunt implement and as a thrusting weapon, while a carefully aimed sweeping blow aimed at the legs could easily knock a foe off his feet and send him sprawling onto the ground. It's not too likely that these were used in actual warfare, as they were mainly meant for self-defense and martial arts. They were also useful as walking sticks, of course.

*'''Shaolin Spade:''': As the name suggests, it's a weapon with a spade-shaped blade on one end, with a crescent shaped blade on the other. The Shaolin monks used this weapon for two purposes: to bury the dead, and for defense against bandits. Possibly one after the other.

*'''Spetum:''' A spear-like weapon with two smaller, single-edged blades extending at acute angles from the base of the spear's head. Not only could it be used to impale and stab with the main spearhead, the smaller blades made it effective at knocking aside shields and severing limbs as well.

*'''Sword Staff:''' Take a full sized doubled edged sword, including the guard, but replace grip with a long pole. This weapons pops up fantasy every once in a while but was rare in history, so not much is known about how it was actually used.

*'''Trident:''' The go-to weapon for a water-themed character. Mostly this was used by fishermen to skewer fish. The retiarius, a type of gladiator, used a trident alongside a dagger and net.

*'''Voulge:''' While superficially similar to the glaive, the voulge had a broader blade meant for hacking rather than cutting. Think of it as a meat cleaver on a pole and you have the general idea of how it worked. Also like the glaive, some forms (called voulge-guisarmes) had hooks added to the back of the blade, along with a pointed tip for stabbing.

*'''War Scythe:''' Contrary to popular belief, a scythe on its own is too unwieldy to make a good weapon. But if the scythe's blade is re-mounted to extend upward instead of out to the side, it can be fairly effective as far as improvised weapons go. Because of the ease with which they could be repurposed from common tools, they were one of the most likely weapons to be used in peasant uprisings. War scythes were the preferred pole arm of the Poles.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
image:Polearms-Geneva.jpg|Various 15th century European pole-arms
image:ahlspiess.jpg|An ahlspiess
image:01_108_Book_illustrations_of_Historical_description_of_the_clothes_and_weapons_of_Russian_troops.jpg|Russian '''streltsi''', each carrying a musket and a bardiche
image:Bec_de_Corbin.jpg|A bec-de-corbin or Lucerne hammer, depending on who you ask
image:Long_handled_bill_hook.jpg|A simple bill
image:Glouchester-billmen.jpg|Re-enactors holding examples of Italian and English bills
image:Bohemian-earspoon.jpg| A modern reproduction of a bohemian earspoon
image:naginata.jpg|A Japanese Naginata
image:Voulges.png|Several different kinds of voulge
</gallery>
{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Pole-arm

2019-07-06T05:38:18Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A:

{{cleanup}}
[[image:Polearms.jpg|thumb|300px|right|And those are just the ''most common european'' varieties, too!]]
A '''Pole-Arm''' technically refers to any type of weapon consisting of a metal head with a long wooden pole. [[Spear|Spears]] fall under this classification, but more often than not it is used to refer to weapons with something more than just a point at the end to stick people with. Pole-arms were usually capable of any combination of chopping, cutting, smashing, or stabbing an enemy by attaching [[Battleaxe|axe]]-heads, spikes, hammers, and various blades to the end of a long shaft. Due to their relative ease of use and the sheer versatility they offered, pole-arms have been used by civilizations across the length and breadth of the globe and have proven themselves to be very effective in massed combat.

The sheer number of different weapons the term covers means that attempting to classify them can get confusing, especially with some of the ones from Europe. Since there was no rigorous system of classification in place and several weapons like the bill, war scythe, and military fork were developed from peasants' hand tools, several different weapons have been called by the same name, and several different names have been applied to the same weapon; and that's '''without''' getting into things like glaive-guisarmes, fauchard-forks, and the various other combination weapons people tried to kill each other with over the centuries. As you might expect, this has sparked [[Skub|many arguments]] over what is called what.
== Pole-arms in warfare ==
When compared to spears, pole-arms retain some of the advantage of reach while gaining more flexibility in how they attack. A spearman is limited to simply poking his enemies to death, whereas a halberdier or billman can also hack at them and even drag horsemen off their mounts with the hooks on their weapons.

==Types of Pole-arm==
Spears are far from being the only form of pole-arm; there are numerous others, most of which tend to be difficult to distinguish from one another. A short list of some of the more notable types is as follows:

*'''Ahlspiess/Awl Pike:''' Take a spear, then replace the spearhead with a three-foot-long metal spike with a disc to protect the user's hand and you have the ahlspiess. The name comes from the fact it resembled an awl, a tool used to pierce holes in leather and wood, which fit rather well considering how good it was at poking holes in people. Unlike a normal spear the metal spike was impossible to cut though with a sword, which made it quite effective in a melee, if a bit on the heavy side.

*'''Bardiche/Berdiche:''' A Russian polearm taking the form of a long handled axe with a broad curved axehead on a long handle typically 1.5 meters in length. The lower end of the axe-head was attached to the shaft, while the upper end extended several inches above it. It was notable in that it was often used as a monopod by Streltsi (an elite force of musketeers that existed from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great).

*'''Bayonet:''' Honorable mention goes to the blade at the end of a gun, which was extremely handy back in the days where it took a long time to reload. Not used very often in modern times except by the British, who have engaged in bayonet charges during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Modern bayonets attachments would make guns more similar to a glaive than a spear though (with a big curve similar to that said weapon).

*'''Bill:''' Derived from a pruning tool called the billhook, a bill consists of a cutting blade that curves forward to form a hook, with later versions adding a spike on the top and a hook on the back of the blade. This combined the stopping power of a spear with the cutting ability of an axe, giving it the ability to pull horsemen out of the saddle, hamstring man and mount alike, '''and''' pierce gaps in the protection of heavily armored opponents. For this reason, it was the national weapon of England well into the 16th century. Interestingly, at a time when all the continental armies were using pikemen to form the bulk of their foot soldiers, an English army of hastily-raised levies (most of the English army being abroad in France, dying of dysentery and being of minor annoyance to the French) devastated a Scottish army, whose principle weapon was the pike, at Flodden Fields to such an extent they took a generation to recover. Often conflated with the guisarme due to their similar origins and use, they may very well be regional variants of the same general weapon.

*'''Bohemian Earspoon:''' This oddly-named pole-arm really existed; it was used in central Europe around the 14th and 15th centuries. It consisted of a tapered blade with a medial ridge and pair of lugs beneath the blade, similar to a boar spear, to prevent an impaled target working its way down the pole to reach you.

*'''Brandistock''': An unusual 16th century Italian thrusting polearm in that, not only did it possess three spikes at the end, but they were also retractable.

*'''Falx''': The Falx is an oddity that doesn't easily fit any category; most historians list it as a polearm as, despite being somewhat shorter than an ordinary polearm, it's shaft is too long to be considered a sword. This weapon was used by the ancient Dacians and Thracians against the Romans, and featured a 3 foot sickle-shaped blade with an equally long shaft, meant to be used two-handed and could deliver devastating downward blows, splitting shields and helmets alike. It's for that reason that the Roman Gallic helmet has a special ridge specifically for blocking falx blows. In fantasy, the Falx has been re-purposed as an Elven Greatsword of sorts, owing to its more unusual shape.

*'''Fauchard''': In many respects a fauchard is very similar to a glaive, except that it has a hook somewhere on the cutting edge, and above the hook the blade tapers into a sharp point.

*'''Glaive:''' The glaive was equipped with a single-edged tapering blade (like a kitchen knife) affixed similarly to an axe head. Some variations (called glaive-guisarmes) had a small hook on the end meant for catching horsemen, like a bill, or for locking enemies' blades in combat. Glaives often came in a very wide variety of bizarre shapes, so oftentimes it is used to describe a polearm with a blade shape that doesn't fit any of the other categories.

*'''Goedendag:''' the goedendag was a Flemish combination of a spear and club. It's believed to have been first used like a spear to blunt a charge, but then as a club once the melee is joined. Making it good against armored knights, and it was used to defeat French knights at the "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ksuFG8YaY Battle of the Golden Spurs]". The word "Goedendag" means "good day" in Dutch, so if nothing else this proves that the Flemish have a sense of humor.

*'''Guan-Dao:''' The Guan-Dao is a chinese polearm with a ''huge'' fucking blade at the end of a five-foot pole, with a small prong at the back and usually a tassle or two for ceremonial purposes. It is named after a popular character from the 14th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms called Guan Yu, who is often depicted as using a particularly beautiful Guan-Dao (even though he almost certainly didn't do so in reality, as the weapon didn't exist at the time).

*'''Halberd:''' One of the most iconic pole-arms, differing from the poleaxe in both form and function. Intended as more of a formation weapon than an individual weapon, both the shaft and spike were longer, as it was primarily a thrusting weapon. While possessing an ax's blade (which typically featured a slant pointing downward as opposed to a straight parallel or circular edge), it was less used for chopping (due to its unwieldy nature) and more as an extra attack; the ax was used in a draw cut in case the thrust missed its target and attempted to close in. The blade could also pull a mounted [[knight]] off his horse, though the bill was better known for this tactic. In the early Renaissance, the Halberd was a favorite weapon of the Dobbeltsöldner, being a good weapon to bump away enemy pikes and then blend the innards of the peasants holding the pikes.

*'''[[Lance]]:''' A bigger, heavier spear intended for [[knight]]s and other mounted warriors. They were too bulky to be wielded on foot and too heavy to throw, relegating them to use on horseback; however, they could be absolutely devastating during a cavalry charge. Variations of the lance continued to be used until World War I. They were also the go-to weapon for jousting tournaments.

*'''Lucerne Hammer:''' Basically a warhammer with a very long shaft, the hammer's head was pronged to better pierce the plate armor in use at the time. It also bore a long spike opposite the hammer and an even longer spike extending from the top. The name comes from the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, where many of them have been discovered.

**'''Bec-de-Corbin:''' Ask some people what the difference between this and a Lucerne hammer is and most people will have no idea what either of them is. The few who do know and can describe both will probably [[Skub|spend a few hours arguing over what the difference truly is]]. The name is Old French for "raven's beak" so maybe they hit people with the spike instead of the hammer. It's best to just consider them to be the same weapon with some slight differences.

*'''Man Catcher:''' A pole with a U-shaped head with or without spikes inside it, designed for immobilizing enemies by catching their limbs or head and pining them down.

*'''Military Fork:''' It's basically a big pitchfork. The prongs made it effective at piercing plate armor and some had hooks much like other polearms to counter cavalry.

*'''Naginata:''' Similar to the glaive, the naginata is a wooden shaft with a large curved blade at the end which was covered with a sheath when not in use. Like the katana, it became a favored weapon of the [[samurai]], particularly the women (who were especially appreciative of its ability to keep opponents at a distance, thus compensating for [[-4 Str|the difference in raw strength between the sexes]]) in fact learning how to use a Naginata was mandatory for school girls in the Empire of Japan and it's still popular there. While they can be used to stab and hook opponents, the curved blade makes naginatas most effective as a cutting weapon; although it lacks the speed, control, and longer cutting edge of a katana, it makes up for it with superior reach and better leverage. Fun fact; sometimes when a katana broke, the blade would be reused to make a naginata.

*'''Partisan:''' A weapon that consisted of a spearhead mounted on a long shaft with protrusions on the sides of the spear head, which aided in the user in parrying sword thrusts. It remains in use as a ceremonial weapon in some countries. Party-focused politicians are known for fighting with these in political debates.

[[File:Pikemen.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Cavalry? We ain't afraid of no stinking cavalry!]]
*'''Pike:''' Perhaps the most effective of the pole weapons, but certainly the most widespread. The pike was, at its heart, a very long, sharp stick. We're talking 10-25 feet, here. It was ideal for defensive maneuvers, especially when wielded ''en masse''; each rank of pikemen was trained to hold their pikes so any charging enemy infantry had to deal with more sharp spiky objects than a hedgehog convention pointed at them. However, the tight formations needed to pull this off made pikemen vulnerable to archers and the unwieldy size of the pikes made it too difficult for them to effectively defend themselves if outflanked. Nevertheless, their lethality and defensive skill made them popular into the late 1600s, at which time people realized standing around in dense formations made pikemen an easy target for [[Firearm|arquebusiers]] and artillery. Both the [[Landsknecht]]s and the Swiss became famous for their proficiency with pikes. Some Japanese yari would be long enough to qualify as pikes and were used in a similar manner as the Europeans did.

*'''Poleaxe:''' It's an axe head on a pole, just as the name suggests. Compared to a halberd, it has a smaller head, which focuses kinetic energy onto a smaller area and lets it cut through armor more effectively. In other words, while the halberd prioritizes thrusting, the poleaxe prioritizes chopping. The spike on the end of the pole's butt also made it useful for thrusting attacks, and it could be used to block in the same way as a quarterstaff.

*'''Quarterstaff:''' The simplest type of polearm there is, inasmuch as it is an actual pole. It's probably the oldest, too; smacking someone with a stick is easier to think of than sharpening it so you can stab them. A favored weapon of [[monk]]s and other unarmed classes in DnD, these could be used both as a blunt implement and as a thrusting weapon, while a carefully aimed sweeping blow aimed at the legs could easily knock a foe off his feet and send him sprawling onto the ground. It's not too likely that these were used in actual warfare, as they were mainly meant for self-defense and martial arts. They were also useful as walking sticks, of course.

*'''Shaolin Spade:''': As the name suggests, it's a weapon with a spade-shaped blade on one end, with a crescent shaped blade on the other. The Shaolin monks used this weapon for two purposes: to bury the dead, and for defense against bandits. Possibly one after the other.

*'''Spetum:''' A spear-like weapon with two smaller, single-edged blades extending at acute angles from the base of the spear's head. Not only could it be used to impale and stab with the main spearhead, the smaller blades made it effective at knocking aside shields and severing limbs as well.

*'''Sword Staff:''' Take a full sized doubled edged sword, including the guard, but replace grip with a long pole. This weapons pops up fantasy every once in a while but was rare in history, so not much is known about how it was actually used.

*'''Trident:''' The go-to weapon for a water-themed character. Mostly this was used by fishermen to skewer fish. The retiarius, a type of gladiator, used a trident alongside a dagger and net.

*'''Voulge:''' While superficially similar to the glaive, the voulge had a broader blade meant for hacking rather than cutting. Think of it as a meat cleaver on a pole and you have the general idea of how it worked. Also like the glaive, some forms (called voulge-guisarmes) had hooks added to the back of the blade, along with a pointed tip for stabbing.

*'''War Scythe:''' Contrary to popular belief, a scythe on its own is too unwieldy to make a good weapon. But if the scythe's blade is re-mounted to extend upward instead of out to the side, it can be fairly effective as far as improvised weapons go. Because of the ease with which they could be repurposed from common tools, they were one of the most likely weapons to be used in peasant uprisings. War scythes were the preferred pole arm of the Poles.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
image:Polearms-Geneva.jpg|Various 15th century European pole-arms
image:ahlspiess.jpg|An ahlspiess
image:01_108_Book_illustrations_of_Historical_description_of_the_clothes_and_weapons_of_Russian_troops.jpg|Russian '''streltsi''', each carrying a musket and a bardiche
image:Bec_de_Corbin.jpg|A bec-de-corbin or Lucerne hammer, depending on who you ask
image:Long_handled_bill_hook.jpg|A simple bill
image:Glouchester-billmen.jpg|Re-enactors holding examples of Italian and English bills
image:Bohemian-earspoon.jpg| A modern reproduction of a bohemian earspoon
image:naginata.jpg|A Japanese Naginata
image:Voulges.png|Several different kinds of voulge
</gallery>
{{MedievalWeaponry}}

S1: Tomb of Horrors

2019-07-06T02:02:10Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A:

{{Oldschool}}
[[Image:TombOfHorrors icecream.jpg|thumb|It's Sphere of Annihilation flavored.]]
The original "bust your ass and then hand it to you on a silver plate" dungeon itself, the '''Tomb of Horrors''' is an adventure module for [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] that proved to be a legendary source of considerable [[rage]], with [[Gary Gygax]] listed in the author credits. It's used as the textbook example of an adventure that's meant to make players cry; while most of the "intruders keep out" traps in D&D tombs are designed to lightly tickle PCs without killing them because character death is Bad, the Tomb of Horrors's "intruders keep out" traps are designed to ''keep fucking intruders out'' by killing them as gruesomely as possible.

''(If you kids had any grey in your neckbeards, you'd know the Tomb is nothing compared to Gygax's [[Isle of the Ape]]. [[Grandpa Dreadnought|Now get off my lawn!]])''

It was the first module to have an inset booklet with illustrations of key areas in the dungeon, so players could get a feel for what it looked like.
The better for them to picture how they die brutally of course.

== How bad is it? ==
It's an [[Old School Roleplaying|old school]] module, so if you're not used to that play style, expect culture shock. The introduction also carries a [[Troll|warning]] that it is a module for thinking people, destined to frustrate [[Rip and Tear|kick-door-fight-orc]] gamers. If you prefer adventures that challenge your problem-solving abilities, then this will be a very difficult test and good fun.

{{Spoilers}}

Just to get INTO the damn thing, you have to probe a marshy hillock with that 10' pole every character buys. When you find the entrance, there's a 2-in-3 chance it's one of the fake entrances, which have either [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|a rigged cave-in for 5d10 damage]] or a 10' thick airtight stone crusher blocking off the exit. If your DM mentions a rumbling sound and starts counting at 1 1/2 second intervals, run out of there as fast as you can.

The real entrance has concealed pit traps with save vs. poison or DIE spikes. If you somehow lost that 10' pole you used to find the entrance and you do your probing for traps with your feet, you have about a 15% chance of getting spiked, not that the pole will be completely useful since there's a decent chance (1 in 3) that you don't trigger a pit while checking for them. A mosaic path will lead you around the pits, and has a poem engraved in it with clues for the tomb's traps you have to be reeeeal close to read, and the path goes over all the pit traps in the hallway... except one pit where the path leads you around it. What a [[Eldrad|dick move]].

There's the glowing archway at the end of that path that you have to touch the archstones in the right order, otherwise it teleports you into an oubliette with a 100' pit trap if you guess incorrectly with the unmarked release levers. The path also leads into an engraved mouth large enough to enter; it's the exit point of a few teleport traps elsewhere in the Tomb. The mouth is actually a [[Sphere of Annihilation|Sphere of Fucking Annihilation]]. Just in case the players think they can climb back in to return to the trap they triggered, the mouth helpfully detects as evil. Lastly, the main exit can be found by breaking away a relief of a door to find - a door.

There's a gargoyle statue with three arms that are carved to hold gems. It's likely that this will be encountered after fighting a four-armed gargoyle wearing a collar studded with ten gems. If you put expensive enough gems in the three hands (like the ones from the collar), they get destroyed, and nothing happens. If you use ten gems in this way, you get a gem of True Seeing, but the gem itself is invisible so you don't know it's there unless you cast a True Sight spell to detect it... or listen to the Magic Mouth that tells you where it is. Since so many illusions in this place are impenetrable without True Sight, you are doomed without this gem.

Many of the doors you see are actually fake, opening on a solid wall, and two of them conjure a spear that jabs the nearest person in the chest. Even if you went straight to the demi-lich's tomb, you'd have to successfully detect 11 secret doors, including one at the bottom of a pit trap (still with the save-or-die spikes) and another is a fake door that has a secret door in it AND a secret trapdoor in the floor on the other side.

The there's the fake boss-fight room -- which is shown in the illustration on the outside of the module just to fuck with people who saw it in the game store. The description for the fake boss-fight actually instructs you how to be a dick by telling the DM to count to 10 while a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|Rocks Fall]] illusion is going on, and tells the DM to put the game away, after asking if the module was too hard.

The real end-boss monster is a floating wizard skull that steals someone's soul every time someone touches it -- [[Old School Roleplaying|NO SAVING THROW]] -- turning their body and equipment into dust. Fighters need +5 magic weapons to hit it, thieves can throw gems at it, causing 1 hp of damage for every 10,000gp of value in the gem, clerics can dispel evil for 5hp of damage, and magic users have to be in the astral plane for any spells to affect it. After stealing eight souls, it teleports everyone else 100-600 miles in a random direction and curses them so that anyone that attacks you never misses (and you lose 2 points of charisma permanently if the curse is removed). '''Fighting him is entirely optional,''' since the skull only reacts if someone's stupid enough to touch it. The awesome treasure on the floor is protected by a phantasm that will threaten, but can't actually do anything unless the players attack it enough to give it enough juice to turn it into a ghost. If the players are still in 'touchy-touchy' and 'hack-and-slash' mode by the time they got this far, they get what they deserve.

Don't even think about jumping into the ethereal or astral planes at any time, there's a 1 in 6 chance that you'll run head first into a type I-IV demon every round you remain in them.

There are 20 pregen characters in the back, and it's recommended that players bring two characters each if there are less than six players.

Funny thing is that the module actually isn't really directly unfair as such, it just challenges the players assumptions about how the game is played. While there are some obviously dickish parts, the problems you need to solve aren't shockingly abstract, you just need to be really really careful.

== Versions ==
[[File:SpeedTombofHorrors.jpg|thumb|right|homebrew variation on the original map; fewer dead-ends]]
* Adventure Module S1, ''Tomb of Horrors'' (1978)
* Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Tomes, ''Return to the Tomb of Horrors'' (1998): Actually gave a reason to go there other than graverobbing. Added a village of evil cultists outside the tomb, then you went through the Tomb itself (the original module was included in the box), but in the final room you found instead a portal to the demi-lich's fortress anchored in the motherfuckin' Negative Material Plane, yet another module designed for maximum [[TPK]]. Came with an even bigger book of illustrations to show the players.
* novel, ''The Tomb of Horrors'', by Kieth Francis Strohm (2002) holy shit, it is bad.
* 36-page pdf, ''Tomb of Horrors (Revised)'' (2005) You can [http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a (Dead Download Link, no longer available)] for free.: This is a re-edit for [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|D&D 3.5]]. It was less deadly with "save or die" instead of instant death, made the end-boss a tiefling lich, and added an extra room with a brain-in-a-jar.
* ''Tomb of Horrors 4e''. This is actually a series of four tombs, designed to build a campaign around (although the tombs vary in difficulty from 9th to at least 25th level, so it'll be a looooong campaign): a Feywild graveyard, the wreckage of the 2e negative-material-plane module, the wreckage of the ''original'' tomb which now hosts a bunch of evil squatters, and a tomb to dead god''s'' in the Astral Plane. The plot of the adventure concerns the demilich who built the original tomb coming up with a plan which will allow him to ascend to godhood by draining power from various planes It's been [[nerf]]ed to match the 4rry attitude ("instant death" is now encounter powers with "fail three saving throws then die"), but it's still pretty deadly with encounters that have endless streaming monsters and boss monsters you're supposed to run away from instead of pwn outright. The fourth tomb has plenty of those 'Aspect of [God's name here]' monsters for extra fun. Players are supposed to return to the original tomb to fight the demilich final boss -- /tg/ highly recommends making them go through the full old school Tomb.
** It should be noted that the intro to the module specifically says that if you're the old-school kind of DM, use Rule Zero to turn those "three saves" into "one save" or "no save". Remember, gaming is about fun for everyone!
* There's also another 4th Ed version of the module, which is closer in spirit and content to the original O/ADnD Module (as in, you can actually die easily. In 4th Ed. What the Christ.)
* Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, ''[[Tales From The Yawning Portal]]'' (2018): Includes a conversion of the Tomb as the final adventure, for "high-level" characters. It's actually rather faithful to the original on paper, but 5e's carebear attitude to character death means that only the obvious instakill traps can really threaten your players' magical little snowflakes. And they didn't include the handouts from the original module. '''''FUCK.'''''
* Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, ''[[Tomb of Annihilation]]'' (2018): More cashing in on nostalgia. A mini-campaign balanced for organized play that retcons the Tomb and Acerak into the [[Forgotten Realms]], both of which automatically make it A Shit.
* In Act I of [http://thiefmissions.com/info.cgi?m=Calendras_Legacy_v1a Calendra's Legacy], a fan mission for <i>Thief II</i>, there's an easily missed mini-version of the Tomb.
* A [http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=197 Neverwinter Nights version] of the original Tomb is available if you want to see your savegame characters get killed repeatedly.
* A [[Minecraft]] version of the original Tomb can be found. No monsters, no save-or-die, but it's a nifty first-person perspective on the Tomb.

[[Category:Modules]]
[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]]

S1: Tomb of Horrors

2019-07-06T02:01:32Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A:

{{Oldschool}}
[[Image:TombOfHorrors icecream.jpg|thumb|It's Sphere of Annihilation flavored.]]
The original "bust your ass and then hand it to you on a silver plate" dungeon itself, the '''Tomb of Horrors''' is an adventure module for [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] that proved to be a legendary source of considerable [[rage]], with [[Gary Gygax]] listed in the author credits. It's used as the textbook example of an adventure that's meant to make players cry; while most of the "intruders keep out" traps in D&D tombs are designed to lightly tickle PCs without killing them because character death is Bad, the Tomb of Horrors's "intruders keep out" traps are designed to ''keep fucking intruders out'' by killing them as gruesomely as possible.

''(If you kids had any grey in your neckbeards, you'd know the Tomb is nothing compared to Gygax's [[Isle of the Ape]]. [[Grandpa Dreadnought|Now get off my lawn!]])''

It was the first module to have an inset booklet with illustrations of key areas in the dungeon, so players could get a feel for what it looked like.
The better for them to picture how they die brutally of course.

== How bad is it? ==
It's an [[Old School Roleplaying|old school]] module, so if you're not used to that play style, expect culture shock. The introduction also carries a [[Troll|warning]] that it is a module for thinking people, destined to frustrate [[Rip and Tear|kick-door-fight-orc]] gamers. If you prefer adventures that challenge your problem-solving abilities, then this will be a very difficult test and good fun.

{{Spoilers}}

Just to get INTO the damn thing, you have to probe a marshy hillock with that 10' pole every character buys. When you find the entrance, there's a 2-in-3 chance it's one of the fake entrances, which have either [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|a rigged cave-in for 5d10 damage]] or a 10' thick airtight stone crusher blocking off the exit. If your DM mentions a rumbling sound and starts counting at 1 1/2 second intervals, run out of there as fast as you can.

The real entrance has concealed pit traps with save vs. poison or DIE spikes. If you somehow lost that 10' pole you used to find the entrance and you do your probing for traps with your feet, you have about a 15% chance of getting spiked, not that the pole will be completely useful since there's a decent chance (1 in 3) that you don't trigger a pit while checking for them. A mosaic path will lead you around the pits, and has a poem engraved in it with clues for the tomb's traps you have to be reeeeal close to read, and the path goes over all the pit traps in the hallway... except one pit where the path leads you around it. What a [[Eldrad|dick move]].

There's the glowing archway at the end of that path that you have to touch the archstones in the right order, otherwise it teleports you into an oubliette with a 100' pit trap if you guess incorrectly with the unmarked release levers. The path also leads into an engraved mouth large enough to enter; it's the exit point of a few teleport traps elsewhere in the Tomb. The mouth is actually a [[Sphere of Annihilation|Sphere of Fucking Annihilation]]. Just in case the players think they can climb back in to return to the trap they triggered, the mouth helpfully detects as evil. Lastly, the main exit can be found by breaking away a relief of a door to find - a door.

There's a gargoyle statue with three arms that are carved to hold gems. It's likely that this will be encountered after fighting a four-armed gargoyle wearing a collar studded with ten gems. If you put expensive enough gems in the three hands (like the ones from the collar), they get destroyed, and nothing happens. If you use ten gems in this way, you get a gem of True Seeing, but the gem itself is invisible so you don't know it's there unless you cast a True Sight spell to detect it... or listen to the Magic Mouth that tells you where it is. Since so many illusions in this place are impenetrable without True Sight, you are doomed without this gem.

Many of the doors you see are actually fake, opening on a solid wall, and two of them conjure a spear that jabs the nearest person in the chest. Even if you went straight to the demi-lich's tomb, you'd have to successfully detect 11 secret doors, including one at the bottom of a pit trap (still with the save-or-die spikes) and another is a fake door that has a secret door in it AND a secret trapdoor in the floor on the other side.

The there's the fake boss-fight room -- which is shown in the illustration on the outside of the module just to fuck with people who saw it in the game store. The description for the fake boss-fight actually instructs you how to be a dick by telling the DM to count to 10 while a [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|Rocks Fall]] illusion is going on, and tells the DM to put the game away, after asking if the module was too hard.

The real end-boss monster is a floating wizard skull that steals someone's soul every time someone touches it -- [[Old School Roleplaying|NO SAVING THROW]] -- turning their body and equipment into dust. Fighters need +5 magic weapons to hit it, thieves can throw gems at it, causing 1 hp of damage for every 10,000gp of value in the gem, clerics can dispel evil for 5hp of damage, and magic users have to be in the astral plane for any spells to affect it. After stealing eight souls, it teleports everyone else 100-600 miles in a random direction and curses them so that anyone that attacks you never misses (and you lose 2 points of charisma permanently if the curse is removed). '''Fighting him is entirely optional,''' since the skull only reacts if someone's stupid enough to touch it. The awesome treasure on the floor is protected by a phantasm that will threaten, but can't actually do anything unless the players attack it enough to give it enough juice to turn it into a ghost. If the players are still in 'touchy-touchy' and 'hack-and-slash' mode by the time they got this far, they get what they deserve.

Don't even think about jumping into the ethereal or astral planes at any time, there's a 1 in 6 chance that you'll run head first into a type I-IV demon every round you remain in them.

There are 20 pregen characters in the back, and it's recommended that players bring two characters each if there are less than six players.

Funny thing is that the module actually isn't really directly unfair as such, it just challenges the players assumptions about how the game is played. While there are some obviously dickish parts, the problems you need to solve aren't shockingly abstract, you just need to be really really careful.

== Versions ==
[[File:SpeedTombofHorrors.jpg|thumb|right|homebrew variation on the original map; fewer dead-ends]]
* Adventure Module S1, ''Tomb of Horrors'' (1978)
* Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Tomes, ''Return to the Tomb of Horrors'' (1998): Actually gave a reason to go there other than graverobbing. Added a village of evil cultists outside the tomb, then you went through the Tomb itself (the original module was included in the box), but in the final room you found instead a portal to the demi-lich's fortress anchored in the motherfuckin' Negative Material Plane, yet another module designed for maximum [[TPK]]. Came with an even bigger book of illustrations to show the players.
* novel, ''The Tomb of Horrors'', by Kieth Francis Strohm (2002) holy shit, it is bad.
* 36-page pdf, ''Tomb of Horrors (Revised)'' (2005) You can [http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a (Dead Download Link, no longer available)] for free.: This is a re-edit for [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|D&D 3.5]]. It was less deadly with "save or die" instead of instant death, made the end-boss a tiefling lich, and added an extra room with a brain-in-a-jar.
* ''Tomb of Horrors 4e''. This is actually a series of four tombs, designed to build a campaign around (although the tombs vary in difficulty from 9th to at least 25th level, so it'll be a looooong campaign): a Feywild graveyard, the wreckage of the 2e negative-material-plane module, the wreckage of the ''original'' tomb which now hosts a bunch of evil squatters, and a tomb to dead god''s'' in the Astral Plane. The plot of the adventure concerns the demilich who built the original tomb coming up with a plan which will allow him to ascend to godhood by draining power from various planes It's been [[nerf]]ed to match the 4rry attitude ("instant death" is now encounter powers with "fail three saving throws then die"), but it's still pretty deadly with encounters that have endless streaming monsters and boss monsters you're supposed to run away from instead of pwn outright. The fourth tomb has plenty of those 'Aspect of [God's name here]' monsters for extra fun. Players are supposed to return to the original tomb to fight the demilich final boss -- /tg/ highly recommends making them go through the full old school Tomb.
** It should be noted that the intro to the module specifically says that if you're the old-school kind of DM, use Rule Zero to turn those "three saves" into "one save" or "no save". Remember, gaming is about fun for everyone!
* There's also another 4th Ed version of the module, which is closer in spirit and content to the original O/ADnD Module (as in, you can actually die easily. In 4th Ed. What the Christ.)
* Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, ''Tales From The Yawning Portal'' (2018): Includes a conversion of the Tomb as the final adventure, for "high-level" characters. It's actually rather faithful to the original on paper, but 5e's carebear attitude to character death means that only the obvious instakill traps can really threaten your players' magical little snowflakes. And they didn't include the handouts from the original module. '''''FUCK.'''''
* Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, ''[[Tomb of Annihilation]]'' (2018): More cashing in on nostalgia. A mini-campaign balanced for organized play that retcons the Tomb and Acerak into the [[Forgotten Realms]], both of which automatically make it A Shit.
* In Act I of [http://thiefmissions.com/info.cgi?m=Calendras_Legacy_v1a Calendra's Legacy], a fan mission for <i>Thief II</i>, there's an easily missed mini-version of the Tomb.
* A [http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=197 Neverwinter Nights version] of the original Tomb is available if you want to see your savegame characters get killed repeatedly.
* A [[Minecraft]] version of the original Tomb can be found. No monsters, no save-or-die, but it's a nifty first-person perspective on the Tomb.

[[Category:Modules]]
[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]]

Slayers

2019-07-06T01:56:34Z

2602:306:B88B:FB60:9C8E:ED5D:86ED:D39A: /* Magic Schools */

:''Has nothing to do with the [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|Dwarf]] [[Slayer]]s or the [[Demon: The Fallen|Halatu, the House of the Second World]].''

It's [[Friday]] night. You're sitting at the table with your face in your hands. "What's wrong?" asks Dave, rubbing his [[Cheetos]]-stained fingers on your back for comfort. You can't bear to look at him. "I'm sick of it," you mumble between your fingers. "I'm sick of half-naked muscular men fighting with half-naked muscular dwarves against half-naked androgynous elves. I'm sick of protagonists like Conan and Geralt and Aragorn. I'm sick of everything being a life-threatening situation. I come here to relax, not to have homo-erotic panic attacks!"

Does this sound like you? Do you want a protagonist you could break in half with your four-inch dick? Have I got a deal for you!

'''The Slayers''' is a series of light novels, [[anime]], and [[manga]] written by Hajime Kanzaka and drawn by Rui Araizumi about a sorceress and her adventuring party of [[murderhobo]]s. The Slayers was originally a Westaboo's [[steampunk]] vision of a fifteen year-old girl and her ten year-old clone, but ultimately the focus was changed to a European sword and sorcery setting, which was becoming popular at the time. Take, for example, Record of the Lodoss War which was based on another Westaboo's DnD campaigns, or [[Berserk]], Claymore, or Sorcerous Stabber Orphen. The largest difference between Slayers and the rest of the genre is that it focuses on [[fun|comedy]], rather than [[Grimdark|calamity]].

[[File:Bottom-left_corner.jpg|200px|thumb|left|When you see it, you'll shit brix.]]

The protagonist is [[DFC|Lina Inverse]], an extremely powerful [[Sorcerer_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)|black magic sorceress]] who had already become infamous by the time she was thirteen years-old as both a "Bandit Killer", having a minor catchphrase "Villains have no rights!" before executing them and taking their hard-earned stolen loot, and "Dragon Spooker", a shortened way of saying "dragons are so disgusted by her existence they want nothing to do with her". She's tagged along with Gourry Gabriev, her self-proclaimed guardian and possibly greatest [[Fighter|swordsman]] on the planet (though stuck with the brains of a jellyfish), and has occasional other [[party]] members, such as the chimera Zelgadis Greywords, a "blessed-with-suck" [[Mage_Knight|arcane-warrior]] that's an expert in Shamanism, and Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune, a princess that is [[Shortstack|gifted]] in restorative white magic. Before meeting Gourry, Lina also traveled with one Gracia Ul Naga Saillune, better known as "[[Sexy|Naga the Serpent]]" in the stories, though they were just as much enemies as allies as the latter proclaimed herself "Lina's greatest and more-attractive rival".

Through the series there were a collection of interesting villains that any [[Gamemaster|DM]] should learn from, either from what to do, or what not to do. Rezo the Red Priest is their first antagonist, an extremely-powerful sorcerer and regarded as one of the Five Wise Men of the age. Originally perfoming great miracles and healing the sick or injured, he slowly descended into madness in pursuit of a cure for his own blindness, which no healing magic could cure. Other antagonists include wizards adept at creating chimeras, warlocks who make pacts with demons in the pursuit of immortality, demonic generals and priests capable of militarizing entire countries to war and their masters who have control over death and Hell, and even fragments of the Dark Lord Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo which are so powerful they've killed gods.

Furthermore, the story's magic system is very consistent, making it a good example for anyone wishing to create their own campaign and understand that there needs to be limitations to make a story interesting.

==Cast of Characters==
Whilst the precise cast of characters and more importantly details on those characters varies between the light novel and anime continuities, there's still a pretty solid core set.

[[File:Volume_16_-_Lina_and_Gourry.jpeg|200px|thumb|left|Lina is 4'10". Gourry is 6'2". You do the math.]]

'''Lina Inverse''' is our star, a Chaotic Neutral [[Evoker|Black Mage]] who has an uncanny aptitude for the most destructive spells in her setting, most famously the Dragon Slave, which is pretty much THE biggest boom in the canon. And she uses all this magic of mass destruction in a VERY casual manner. Vain, arrogant, temperamental, greedy and gluttonous, she mostly travels to gain loot, see new places and make herself famous. Her big sister, despite being a part-time waitress back in their hometown, is a "Knight of Ceipheed", or a mortal born with the power of God himself. Lina's twitching inferiority complex over being essentially the less-powerful, less-attractive, less-successful version of her is at the root of many of her [[Rage|personal issues]], and the reason she joined the Sorcerers' Guild at such a young age. However, as the story progresses, it becomes apparent that with her magic capacity and spell selection, she could just be the strongest mortal spellcaster on the continent. The meta-joke with her is, to avoid being Murphey's Punchline, she hits first, and usually harder.

'''Gourry Gabriev''' is the only non-caster of the group. A skilled swordsman in amazing physical condition, his [[Dump Stat|stat-dump]] has left him with an incredibly-low intelligence score. Regardless, his combat perception is phenomenal, letting him detect the presences of enemies nearby and perceive things in a near-dark environment. Gourry is the descendant of the legendary Swordsman of Light who used the eponymous Sword of Light, Gorun Nova, to defeat the Great Beast Zanaffar, an alchemical [[chimera]] whose evil was so potent, the miasma its corpse left behind needed a holy tree to contain it. As such, Gourry himself has the legendary Sword of Light in his possession at the start of the story. We later find out he has a [[Fist of the North Star|bad relationship with his family, as he stole the weapon and ran away from home because of the in-fighting it caused as to who would inherit it]]. By the time Lina meets him, he had [[Awesome|operated as a mercenary, served in a war, and become a folk hero for the city of Sairaag, earning him a modicum of fame and admiration]]. There's a great deal of discussion as to whether or not he and Lina are romantically involved; while there is nothing to confirm it, by the end of the light novel stories he requests Lina take him to see her hometown, leading her to believe he wants to ask her parents for permission to marry her.

[[File:Volume_16_-_They_Return.jpeg|200px|thumb|left|Don't worry, she's eighteen now. He's in his mid-twenties. You do the math.]]

'''Zelgadis Greywords''' is a cursed [[gish|sorcerer-swordsman]] whose great-grandfather, the famous Red Priest Rezo, [[fleshcrafting|magically fused him with two different kinds of monsters to make him stronger]]. From a blow [[demon]], he gained increased magical aptitude and superhuman speed and reflexes, whilst a stone [[Golem]] gave him super-tough rocky skin and metallic wire for hair. He hates looking like a freak and is always out to find a cure for his condition. Despite attempting to appear dark and mysterious, he has an extremely sensitive side, contrasting with his rough, outer appearance. When he first captures Lina early in the story, he refuses to "[[Rape|kiss]]" Lina as he can't stand crying women, and by his own admission he has a soft-spot for maidens. Due to this unique personality, he's often paired with Amelia in terms of relationships, appreciating her naive nature while also having the ability to reel her in during her wild moments. His [[Tank#Character_Role|super-durable body]] has, on various occasions, resulted in him blocking cannonballs by headbutting them and being used as a makeshift ship's anchor.

'''Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune''' is a well-meaning, cheerful, good-hearted [[cleric|white mage]] princess whose desire for JUSTICE runs hot and deep. Whereas most parties would focus on where each party member is in relation to each other, Amelia's priority is to [[What|find the tallest object nearby, climb it, and make a hero speech to demoralize the bad guys]]. She was raised to believe in the good in people's hearts and strive for peace, and she will [[Lawful Stupid|kick anyone's ass that gets in the way of that goal]]. Originally joining up with Lina as an act of hero-worship, she's come to realize that Lina isn't the best example to follow. When not campaigning, she serves as a diplomat and emissary for the Kingdom of Saillune, though she often gets entangled in Lina's messes while doing so.

'''Xellos''' is the enigmatic trickster priest of the [[demon| Mazoku race]], who specializes in [[troll]]ing Lina's group and playing them like puppets. Is an evil jerk, but he's funny and charming enough to also be a fan favorite. He NEVER lies, using half-truths or his catchphrase "It's a secret" instead. He is notable for being the only creation of one of Ruby-Eye's subordinates, Greater Beast Zelas Metallum; unlike the other subordinates who created at least one priest and one general to serve them, Greater Beast made Xellos to serve both roles by himself. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent why giving so much power to one individual was a grand idea, as he was able to kill thousands of golden dragons on his own during the War of Monster's Fall over a thousand years ago.

[[File:Sweet_90s_aesthetic.jpg|200px|thumb|left|You can't be over-encumbered if you're wearing nothing at all.]]

'''Naga the Serpent''' is Lina's original traveling partner, before she finally managed to ditch her. An incredibly arrogant ditz with an ojou-sama laugh that can crack glass, she infuriated Lina as much for her bungling stupidity as for her incessant wearing of super-skimpy clothing to show off her ridiculously oversized rack, which made Lina feel quite inadequate. Her real name is Gracia Ul Naga Saillune, the runaway princess of Saillune after witnessing her mother's murder, and subsequently killing the murderer herself.

'''Milgazia''' is an ancient [[dragon]] that possesses at least a thousand years'-worth of experience. He originally guided Lina to a copy of the "Claire Bible", a manuscript left behind by Aqualord Regradia containing all of her knowledge, and later accompanies her as a large demonic incursion swept the north of the continent. He is known for having unbearably dry humor, and has devastatingly potent holy dragon magic in his arsenal. His magic is so far beyond Lina's capacity that she's unable to break a ward he casts on one of Gourry's items, for example.

'''Memphis Linesword''' is an elf who accompanies Milgazia as he travels in human form. Haughty and disdainful towards humans as per elven tradition, she is still a skilled fighter and magic-user, having access to "lost" traditional elven magic. Her most-powerful item, however, comes in the form of Zanaffa Armor, created with secret knowledge found in the Claire Bible that allows her to transform into a white giant that shoots lasers. She is largely antagonistic towards Lina despite being forced to work with her, until the two reach a mutual understanding and even a modest friendship.

'''Filia Ul Copt''' is a Gold Dragon priestess who recruits Lina's party to help her save the world in the third season of the anime. She knows holy magic, a skill completely lost to humanity on Lina's continent because of the "Mazoku Barrier" that was established after the death of one-fourth of God, the Aqualord Regradia, and tends to whip out the mace she keeps under her skirt whenever angered or flustered. While she has some understanding of her race's past, she's largely ignorant of the implications of it. Despite Xellos striking fear into every dragon he meets while also being as diplomatic as possible, Filia instead treats him with absolute contempt, referring to him as "raw garbage". So far, she's the only person to genuinely make the trickster angry.

'''Pokota''' is a prince whose people were experimented upon by Rezo, resulting in him being ripped out of his body and stuck in the body of a [[Animated Object|living doll]]. He's largely ignored due to his resemblance to a [[Digimon:_Digital_Adventures|Digimon]] and being a detriment to the two half-seasons he appears in, and anyone telling you they got emotionally-invested in his character is either lying or is seriously brain-damaged.

[[File:Nice_nipple.png|200px|thumb|left|Cold stare. Cold chest.]]

'''Sylphiel Nels Lahda''' is a timid [[cleric]] with healing and protective magics that are second to none, but she is comically inept at casting offensive spells. (Despite this, somehow she manage to learn how to use the Dragon Slave on the same level as Lina...) She met Gourry prior to him traveling with Lina when he performed an unnamed deed for Sairaag. She's a sheltered priestess, and given that Gourry is tall, handsome, and charming, she fell head-over-heels for the man. She ultimately gives up on her one-sided love after deducing Lina has feelings for him, despite how much she denies (or fails to recognize) them.

'''Luke''' is an arcane-warrior and self-proclaimed treasure hunter, described as having "evil eyes" and is armed with a sword capable of storing and releasing magic. He has a competitive and ambitious nature that led to him being a rival of Lina's, but as their stories intertwine they find working in-tandem, rather than against each other, serves their interests more. He is traveling companions with Milina, whom he has a disturbing infatuation with. His first and only goal, no matter what he's doing, is to try and impress her, much to her chagrin.

'''Milina''' is a sorcerer / cleric that makes up for her lack of emotions with acute critical thinking and planning. Extremely perceptive and rational, she is the person who keeps Luke from flying off the handle and making situations worse for the both of them. Whereas Luke is happy to tag along wherever she goes, she finds Luke's acts of devotion off-putting, and regularly knocks him down a peg when he tries to make a move. While her casting level isn't something too remarkable, she has a different spell selection from Lina, letting her stand out on her own in terms of battle prowess.

==Plot==
Lina's story has a few branches paths across the light novels, anime, and manga / video games, though there's largely a common "core" between them all. Although it's not necessarily perfect in its delivery, we nonetheless get to find out great detail about her setting and magic system. Simply put, while the world may have its ups and downs, there's nonetheless consistency between the works.

[[File:Modeling2.jpg|200px|thumb|left|Lina is fourteen. Naga is almost twenty. You do the math.]]

Long before Lina's journey began, the Lord of Nightmares accidentally created four worlds parallel to each other. On these four worlds existed "shinzoku" (gods) and "mazoku" (demons), with humans forced to live among them. On Lina's world, the Flare Dragon Ceipheed fought against [[BBEG|Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo]], who sought to return the world back to the Sea of Chaos by destroying it. Ceipheed managed to carve Shabranigdo into seven pieces, trapping the fragments into the souls of humans hoping that countless generations of reincarnations would drain the wickedness of Ruby-Eye until there was nothing left. However, this cost Ceipheed his life, and he created the four Dragon Lords with his remaining power. These Dragon Lords would continue the fight against Shabranigdo's subordinates: Chaos Dragon Garv, Hellmaster Phibrizo, Dynast Grausherra, Greater Beast Zelas Metallum, and Deep Sea Dolphin. Thousands of years after Ruby-Eye's imprisonment, Hellmaster would attempt to awaken a fragment of his master that had been trapped in a powerful sorcerer named Lei Magnus by instigating a global conflict centered on the northern continent, wherin thousands of human, elven, and dragon lives would be lost in what would be called the War of Monster's Fall (Great Koma War). The war's resolution came when Aqualord Regradia defeated Chaos Dragon Garv, forcing his essence to reincarnate in human form much like Shabranigdo's, and trapped Lei Magnus, the "Demon King of the North", in ice. However, Aqualord died as a result, sinking into the sea. Hellmaster then constructed the Mazoku Barrier over the continent, trapping everyone living within it, and preventing the outside world from coming in. Without the Aqualord, holy magic became lost to humanity within the Barrier. Since the global conflict had seen almost every spellcaster put on the battlefield, and the Mazoku Barrier trapped them inside, magic soon became a lost, truly "arcane" art to the outside world, leading to their technological advancement.

Lina's early stories follow her as a young girl of about fourteen, traveling with, or fighting against, her self-proclaimed rival Naga the Serpent. As seen in both the light novels Slayers Special / Smash, the OVAs, and most of the movies, Lina had accomplished more in her early days than most sorcerers do in their entire lives. Most of these stories are considered comedic one-offs, but nonetheless help frame the context for most of her behavior. These stories also explain a couple of the other characters' histories, such as Naga's or Gourry's backstories.

[[File:Volume_1_-_Shabranigdo_Reborn!.png|200px|thumb|left|The best way to start a campaign is to fight the hardest boss in the manual.]]

However, Lina's main adventures come after she and Gourry meet where he "protects" her from some bandits seeking revenge for her killing their leader and blowing up their base. She had stolen a large amount of treasure from them, one piece being a statue made of orihalcon containing the Philosopher's Stone, a fragment from the creation of the world capable of amplifying one's magical capacity to absurd amounts. This causes her to be hunted by Zelgadis at first, who seeks it to get revenge on his great-grandfather, the Wise Man Rezo the Red Priest, for turning him into a chimera and ruining his appearance. Ultimately, Rezo himself is seeking the Philosopher's Stone as a means of curing his blindness, which no magic he's researched has been able to cure. Despite succeeding, Rezo unwittingly discovers that a fragment of Shabranigdo was sealed within his own eyes. When Rezo finally opens them, he [[Not as planned|releases Ruby-Eye himself]], forcing Lina, Gourry, and Zelgadis to fight the monstrosity. Lina only barely succeeds by amplifying her magic with Gourry's Sword of Light to cast Giga Slave, which calls upon a Dark Lord stronger than Shabranigdo himself, and only manages to have the time to cast the spell thanks to the remaining spirit of Rezo combating his possessive invader. Rather than report this to the Sorcerers' Guild, Lina keeps this information to herself, knowing full-well she would have no way to prove her claims.

Zelgadis departs, hunting a cure for his condition, and Lina and Gourry soon find themselves caught-up in a Sorcerers' Guild squabble involving everything from clones, chimeras, and a pact with a demon named Seigram in the pursuit of immortality. Despite resolving the issue, they find no rest as a series of arrest warrants are made out for them. Following the trail to Sairaag while fighting off bounty hunters along the way, they reunite with Zelgadis, who also has an issue out for his arrest. They soon discover by talking with Sylphiel that the one who filed for their capture was apparently Rezo himself, much to their shock. When they confront him, they're surprised to learn that this Rezo is only a copy, created when the original was still attempting any means at a cure for his blindness. "Copy Rezo" is infatuated with proving that he's succeeded and surpassed the original, even going so far as to cast a spell so powerful it blows up the entire city of Sairaag in the process, reducing it to nothing, much to Sylphiel's distress. After defeating the copy, they volunteer to escort Sylphiel to her remaining family in Saillune, as Sairaag is nothing but a lifeless crater.

In Saillune, there's a royal assassination plot underfoot. Amelia's father, Prince [[Dwarf|Philionel El Di Saillune]], has gone missing after an attempt on his life, and Amelia's cousin, Alfred, is pointing the finger at Philionel's brother, Christopher Wil Borgg Saillune, having invited demons into the kingdom in the pursuit of power. With their father sick, Philionel has been acting as regent in his stead, and already one of his younger brothers, Randioinel, has tried to murder him for the throne, though he was thwarted thanks to Lina's intervention years ago. While trying to find clues, Lina and Gourry are attacked by a legendary assassin by the name of Zuuma, who is rumored to have killed all of his marks without fail. Amelia joins the party, and together the four of them manage to discover the truth of the matter; Alfred himself is the culprit, believing that his father deserves the crown and will do anything in the process to make it happen. Ultimately, the demons he invites into the kingdom kill him, and Lina manages to overcome both the greater demon summoned and blow off both of Zuuma's arms, who just barely escapes with his life, threatening revenge. Phil, instead of throwing the book at Christopher, shows him mercy, "because [he is] my brother". With a kingdom to put back together after a hostile takeover attempt, Phil gives Amelia permission to leave, and their journey continues.

[[File:Volume_4_-_Prince_Philionel.png|200px|thumb|left|[[This guy|This ugly bastard]] is the kindest, gentlest, sweetest man to ever bash in a criminal's head.]]

Lina accidentally discovers a cult forming in the backwoods, called the Cult of Shabranigdo. Proclaiming Ruby-Eye's benevolence at bringing the world back to nothingness, her attempts to interfere cause her magic to become sealed by a greater demon. Without the ability to cast spells, she panics, realizing she's become largely useless in terms of the group's ability to fight. Zuuma makes an attempt on Lina's life while she's weakened, having mysteriously gained new arms, but she is rescued by a priest named Xellos, whom she mistakes for the Great Sage Lei Magnus due to his ability to cast extremely powerful, costly spells. Zuuma escapes, once again threatening revenge. After the battle, Xellos corrects her with her identification, pointing that he's using magic amplification with gifts from Lei Magnus called Demon's Blood Talismans, which, according to him, contain the power of not just Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo, but also his three counterparts on other worlds. She offers him a deal for the talismans, bidding an incredibly low price, and when he angrily corrects her on their real value, she immediately provides goods that she had been storing her cape (operating as a bag of holding) that are equivalent to the price he demands. Begrudgingly, he gives them up to her in exchange, frustrated at being had. He explains that he's investigating the Cult of Shabranigdo because they apparently have a copy of something called the "Claire Bible", rumored to have Aqualord Regradia's knowledge within it. Thanks to the manuscript, they have schematics to fashion dangerous equipment to use in war. It's his duty, as a priest, to find copies of the Bible so they do not fall into improper hands. Working together, albeit separately, Lina gets her magic back after Xellos apparently kills the demon that sealed her magic by chasing it into a burning building, and the group finds the Bible in the cult's inner-sanctum. However, before Zelgadis can examine the manuscript to see if there's a cure for his chimerism, Xellos burns it, causing Zelgadis to become enraged. Xellos calmly tells him that specific portion only mentioned how to fashion Zanaffa Armor, which, when it was improperly made it the past, [[FAIL|created the Great Beast Zanaffar that destroyed Sairaag decades ago]]. Despite this explanation, Zelgadis would remain permanently hostile to the priest. Xellos is also revealed to be a demon, both priest and general to Greater Beast Zelus Metallum. After Xellos leaves, the team turns their attention towards another important matter: the assassin Zuuma, who has been hunting Lina for quite some time.

[[File:Volume_7_-_Chaos_Dragon_Garv!.png|200px|thumb|left|[[That guy|That smug bastard]] has better hair, better muscles, and better fashion-sense than you ever will.]]

Zuuma sends a threat to Lina telling her she must travel to the city of Vezendi, or else he will kill someone, presumably someone she knows. Reluctant and without much choice, they group travels there, and are immediately scouted by the local populace to be hired by the wealthiest man in town, Radok Ranzaad, as his bodyguard. He does this as he's received a notice from Zuuma, telling him he must hire Lina and her party, as the assassin is targeting him as well. Lina, taking advantage of the situation, tries to take Radok for a large sum of money, raising the ire of Radok's son, Abel, who calls them charlatans and believes the threat to be a fake so Lina can get an immense fortune quickly. While trying to defend Radok, two lesser demons, led by none-other than Seigram, whom Lina and Gourry had encountered months earlier, attempt to divide the group, splitting up Zelgadis and Amelia from Lina and Gourry, while Zuuma strikes Radok's estate. The businessman, fed up with being caged, decides to take a business trip claiming he must still do his work, but ostensibly trying to bring Zuuma out into the open so the "siege" can end. It isn't until an attack on the caravan that the truth is revealed: Radok is Zuuma himself, having a desire to kill and that he had fused with Seigram to get his arms back. Abel admits to knowing the truth, having tried to get Lina and her friends kicked out for their safety, and is left alone after Lina kills the assassin. However, this wasn't going to offer Lina and her friends a respite.

Radok's one and only servant, a man named Raltaak, outed himself as a demon, and none-other than the priest of Chaos Dragon Garv. Garv, being reincarnated within human bodies for generations, had changed his perspective on demon-kind's goal of destroying the world and sinking it into the Sea of Chaos, and as such was considered a "rebel" in the eyes of Shabranigdo's other subordinates. Garv's faction had come to learn that Hellmaster Phibrizo was plotting something, and Lina herself was the crux of the plan. Despite having details, Raltaak attempted to kill Lina near Gyria City far to the north, but his assault is rebuffed by Xellos' interference, who is now working with Hellmaster and has instructions to not only keep Lina safe, but to lead her to where she can potentially access the Claire Bible herself. They make it to Gyria City, only to find it militarizing itself for war. The military general, Rashaart, requests that Lina train their soldiers in basic black magic for a large fee, which she considers. However, she finds herself attacked in her sleep by an unknown assailant, and even worse, Gyria City has been lit on fire, with blazes running through the streets, the destruction of which takes the life of a young boy she had bumped into just earlier that day. Infuriated, she reunites with her party, and they barely escape the city, with Xellos fighting off both Raltaak and the now-revealed demon Rashaart. The group manages to make it up the Kataart Mountains, where dragons reside. Against his will, the ancient dragon Milgazia leads Lina to a copy of the Claire Bible, where she discovers the true nature of the [[God|Lord of Nightmares]]: Her desire to reunite all of the four worlds back into Herself, into a state of nothingness, and that the Giga Slave calls directly on Her. In other words, Lina has been casting a spell that draws the creator of all things into her recklessly, with the chance of sinking everyone and everything back into zero. However, her meditations are brought to an end when the location comes under assault by none-other than Chaos Dragon Garv himself.

[[File:Volume_8_-_Hellmaster_Phibrizzo!.png|200px|thumb|left|The best way to end a campaign is to kill a [[shota]].]]

Garv easily bests not only Lina's party, but Xellos himself. Boasting, he explains his position; he was seeking to get Gyria City ready to wage war against demons in an attempt to purge all demon-kind from the world, having learned that Hellmaster Phibrizo was plotting to start an even greater war himself, echoing the conflict from thousands of years ago when Aqualord Regradia fought against a portion of Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo's power, killing off thousands of humans, elves, and dragons. In his eyes, attacking first was the best way to end the conflict, and more importantly killing Lina should put an end to all of Hellmaster's plans. Lina barely manages to injure Garv with the spell "Ragna Blade", a form of magic still drawing on the power of the Lord of Nightmares, and in his weakened state Garv is executed by Hellmaster himself, his physical form being that of the boy Lina had found under the rubble. He mocks her openly, explaining that it was Xellos who attacked her at night in Gyria City, and was also the one who lit the city on fire. Xellos had been ordered to do this to make Lina believe Rashaart had attacked her, swinging her over to Hellmaster's side without her realizing it. He delights in preying on her emotions, and realizing she won't cast Giga Slave voluntarily, he kidnaps Gourry, demanding she come to the ruins of Sairaag, or he'll kill him. Seeing no other choice, the party makes their way there, only to discover that the city has been completely rebuilt, as if it were never damaged. The party also reuinites with Sylphiel, who is understandably distraught as her family, which had been killed by the copy Rezo's spell, were now back alive, and Flagoon, the Holy Tree that was once in the center of town, has been replaced with a nondescript, gargantuan temple. Zelgadis and Amelia investigate the temple, while Lina and Sylphiel visit the latter's family, and discover that Sairaag is a literal ghost town. Hellmaster, with control over souls and Hell itself, has brought Sairaag back "from the grave" specifically to prove his ability to give and take life. Infuriated, Lina and Sylphiel enter Hellmaster's temple. Inside, Hellmaster explains the true nature of Gourry's Sword of Light, Gorun Nova, as being a weapon created from the essence of a parallel Dark Lord from another world, Dark Star Dugradigdu, and returns the weapon back to its proper world. Then, with everyone's lives on the line, Hellmaster demands Lina cast the Giga Slave, summoning the Lord of Nightmares into their world, and causing absolute destruction. With no other option, Lina casts the spell, bringing the Lord of Nightmares into her body. Confused and bewildered, Hellmaster at first didn't understand why the Lord of Nightmares manifested Herself into Lina's body instead of appearing in Her own avatar, and theorized that Lina was restraining Her true power. [[Derp|He attacks Her, trying to break Her "vessel" to "free" Her, but it does nothing]]. Perturbed at being assaulted, She kills Hellmaster instantly and effortlessly, before Her possession ends. With Hellmaster dead, his temple begins to collapse, and the group escapes with the now-rescued Gourry, only to find Sairaag a barren city once more. It is here that the party splits up: Sylphiel returns with Amelia back to Saillune while Zelgadis continues to try and find a cure for his condition. Lina and Gourry, meanwhile, have their own trouble. Gourry traveled with Lina under the auspices of being her guardian, but without the Sword of Light, he couldn't protect her from demons. On a similar note, Lina very vocally made it clear that the only reason she let him travel with her was because she would find a way to convince him to give the Sword of Light to her. With the sword gone, the two appear to have no reason to journey together. Before they can say goodbye, Lina quickly makes the argument that it's her fault he lost his family heirloom, and it's her obligation to find him a new, powerful magic weapon. [[Dawww|Pleased with that excuse, the two continue their adventures together.]]

It is here that Lina's story vastly differs, depending on the medium being used.

==Cosmology==

[[File:Slayers_cosmology.gif|200px|thumb|left|How do you "accidentally" create reality?]]

The Slayers world is one of four, separated from and parallel to each other. In the beginning, there was nothing but the Sea of Chaos, the very material the Lord of Nightmares is created from. Accidentally and without her knowledge, these four worlds appeared from her essence, different but with many similarities. All of them have "shinzoku", gods, and "mazoku", demons. The chief god of Lina's world is Flare Dragon Ceipheed, while the chief demon is Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo. Thanks to the Demon's Blood Talismans Lina uses, and the invocation involved with it, we know the (partial) names of Shabranigdo's "parallels": Dark Star Dugradigdu, Death Fog, and Chaotic Blue. The only known "parallel" to Ceipheed is Night Dragon Vorpheed, the opponent of Dark Star, with the presumed titles of the other two being Blue Dragon and White Dragon.

[[File:Slayers_planechart.gif|200px|thumb|left|Based upon the Ars Goetia.]]

Their power is in the form of a pyramid, with the Lord of Nightmares at its peak. Just below Her are the Dragon Gods and the Dark Lords, and each of them have their own subordinates. Just before his death, Ceipheed created four Dragon Lords to look over the world in his absence: Aqualord Regradia to the North, which is Lina's continent; Flarelord Vrabazard to the East, which is Filia's homeland; Airlord Valwin to the West, where the manga Knight of the Aqualord takes place; and Earthlord Rangort to the South. In a similar fashion, Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo created five subordinates: Chaos Dragon Garv, Dynast Grausherra, Greater Beast Zelas Metallum, Deep Sea Dolphin, and Hellmaster Phibrizo. These five subordinates created their own priests and generals: Garv had Priest Raltaak and General Rashaart; Dynast had Priests Grau and Dee and Generals Sherra and Norst; Greater Beast has Xellos; and Dolphin had Riksfalto and Huraker. These priests and generals would operate on the behalf of their creator, though it was not unheard of for them to perform tasks for another subordinate. For example, Hellmaster relies heavily on Xellos, because his own priests and generals were wiped out in the War of Monsters' Fall.

In terms of pure power, no regular human has the ability to harm Dragon Lords or high-ranking demons. Lina's party has been shown on multiple occassions to be unable to deal with just Xellos fighting by himself. However, there are exceptions. Just as Ruby-Eye's fragments can be found in humans, waiting to be reawakened, so too can a portion of Ceipheed's power be found among them. Such a person carrying that mantle is named the Knight of Ceipheed. Despite having mortal limitations, their power is tremendous, able to carve apart the strongest of spells with ease. It is rumored that a Knight is even capable of fighting, and even winning, against a Demon Lord subordinate's retainer. In Lina's time, the Knight of Ceipheed is her older sister, Luna Inverse.

Regular humans, meanwhile, have a modest ability to fight against lesser demons, and potentially against dragons should they be trained properly. Dragons, the "ryuzoku", by and large serve the gods, with entire religious sects being devoted to either a Dragon Lord, or Flare Dragon Ceipheed himself. Demons meanwhile serve the Dark Lord or his subordinates, and thanks to the Dark Lord's existence monsters such as trolls and orcs run rampant throughout the world. Humans can learn spells to summon dragons or tear through lesser demon's with magic. As long as there is not a great cataclysm, heroes from the human race will always find a way.

It must be noted that demons do not exist in physical reality. On the contrary, they "project" themselves into reality, meaning that even the clothes they appear to wear are all part of one-whole frame used to give themselves physical shape. A demon's true form can always be seen inside of the Astral, or Spirit, World, where demons truly reside. Demons, having an astral body, are unharmed by elemental Shamanistic spells which draw upon the physical world. However, they are critically weak to Astral Shamanism and White Magic that uses purification or exorcism. Demons can be harmed by Black Magic, but only if the power draws upon a force greater than themselves. A Garv Flare spell, which calls upon Chaos Dragon Garv, cannot harm Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo in the slightest, but a Giga Slave calling upon the Lord of Nightmares, who is greater than him, can.

Again, as the terms of power operate as a pyramid, there is a strict hierarchy among all living things. The stronger an entity, the more-united its soul and body are. As such, a creature like Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo, despite being a demon with an astral body, is immune to the astral magic found in Shamanism. The Lord of Nightmares, being in perfect harmony with Her soul and body, and having no force greater than Herself, cannot be harmed; She is omnipotent. She is omniscient, Her mind making up all things, and omnipresent, because everything is made up of Her. Her true name is Lucifer.

... No, seriously, look it up. (You'll also find that there's no black people in Slayers unless you go outside of the Mazoku Barrier, so it's a racist's paradise.)
'''https://web.archive.org/web/20090727235003/http://homepage3.nifty.com/QPHOUSE/slrev/blast12.html'''

==Magic==
Magic is a force that permeates the world of Slayers. The Sorcerers' Guild is a body of spellcasters who work together in various fields, whether it's alchemy, chimeras, or archaeology. Some sorcerers, such as Lina, earn a traveling license, giving them permission to move from city to city and perform tasks with magic. Theoretically, anyone can become a sorcerer, not just in terms of donating to get special training, but also by learning and studying independently.

[[File:Volume_16_-_Dragon_Slave.jpeg|200px|thumb|left|"I'm angry! Angry about ELVES!!"]]

To perform magic, one must first know the Chaos and Power Words. Chaos Words are recitations that invoke the spell being used. Generally speaking, Black magic invokes demonic forces, Shamanism invokes nature and Mother Earth, and White and Holy magic invokes the powers of God. Chaos Words are difficult to master, not only because of memorization, but also because they can be interrupted while in a battle. If someone lacks the ability to remember or the ability to concentrate, it severely limits their spellcasting ability. Chaos Words can be recited mentally, but this is much-more difficult than verbal incantation. Power Words, meanwhile, are the actual names of the spells being used. After the power of a spell has been built using the Chaos Words, the Power Words fully releases that power, letting a spell "fire".

However, rote memorization isn't enough. Every person has natural "capacities", a "pool" and a "bucket". A pool capacity is a person's maximum magical potential and represents their personal stamina. A person with a larger pool capacity can cast magic longer than someone with a smaller one. However, having a large pool isn't enough to make someone a powerful sorcerer. Some people can tap into a vast amount of their power all at once, while others can only do smaller portions at a time. This ability to tap is called a bucket capacity, as the visualization of scooping water out of a pool with a bucket helps explain the magic system within Slayers. Lina Inverse is known to have both an extremely large pool and bucket capacity, being one of the only humans to cast Dragon Slave, the strongest spell within Black magic, and to do so repeatedly without becoming exhausted.

There are four known schools of magic, and one "theorized" school of magic.

===Magic Schools===

[[File:Volume_3_-_Mega_Brand.png|200px|thumb|left|roll:20]]

'''Black Magic''' draws its powers from the dark, destructive, negative energies embodied by the demons. It is, thusly, an offensive style of magic, most useful for delivering powerful magical attacks, with a side-deal in curses. It is the most useful anti-demon school known on the continent of Lina and her crew, because it tends to attack physical and astral bodies at the same time. However, that makes it very subject to nerfing; if the demon you're blasting is stronger than the demon you're drawing energy from, then that spell's not going to do anything. Likewise, spells drawn from a particular demon will do all of jack squat if you cast them ''on'' that very same demon. And if a demon is permanently destroyed, all black magic spells drawn from them will never work again.

'''Holy Magic''' is the polar opposite of Black Magic, drawing its power from the positive energies embodied by the gods. Very little is known about this kind of magic because it's been lost on the continent for generations thanks to the Mazoku Barrier, whilst in the Outer Realms, magic itself has dwindled to become virtually a lost art, a result of almost every magically skilled individual being drafted for the ancient war that saw the Mazoku Barrier being created, leaving all the mages stuck inside and the non-mages stuck outside. It presumably has similar abilities to White Magic, but with vastly more potent anti-demon killing spells.

'''White Magic''' is a lesser form of Holy Magic mixed with aspects of Astral Shamanism. It focuses on curative and protective spells, healing injuries and trying to keep people safe. A humorous anecdote is that the various temples don't know White Magic on their own, and instead have to request spells from the Sorcerers' Guild to teach their acolytes how to perform Healing and Exorcism. The temples are the biggest donors to the guild out of any business.

[[File:Volume_1_-_Refining_Gemstones.png|200px|thumb|left|Magic can also be used for alteration and transmutation.]]

'''Shamanism''' is a form of [[elementalism]] that draws its power from five elements; Earth, Air, Water, Fire and Spirit. It's the most well-rounded and utilitarian of schools, with lots of spells for attack, defense and utility. Earth Shamanism focuses on manipulating earth and metal, such as throwing giant rocks at people, causing spontaneous eruptions under them, or creating protective walls. Air Shamanism grants flight, razor sharp wind projectiles, lightning bolts and protective barriers. Fire Shamanism burns the shit out of things. Water Shamanism can manipulate water or hurl icy blasts, and is useful for countering Fire Shamanism. Spirit Shamanism is more commonly referred to as Astral Shamanism, as A: all shamanism spells call upon spirits, and B: its spells focus on manipulating the Astral Plane. This makes it the only branch of Shamanism that can hope to affect demons, with its Ra Tilt spell being considered as powerful as the Dragon Slave. It should be noted that while Astral Shamanism cannot physically harm a human, it does directly assault their spirit, meaning that while a Ra Tilt cannot kill a person, it will leave them unconscious for quite some time.

'''Chaos Magic''' is an unexplored and given name to two of Lina's spells, the "Ragna Blade" and the "Giga Slave". No research has been done on this school because, as far as history has shown, only Lina herself has ever cast these spells, which are the only spells to draw upon the power of the Lord of Nightmares Herself, although in the anime a race of dragons created something similar by combining black magic with holy magic. Lina learned Giga Slave after partially reading a Claire Bible manuscript, and figured it was only a more-powerful version of the Dragon Slave. The first time she cast it, it killed everything inside of a lake and polluted its waters. She developed the Ragna Blade by studying the complete Claire Bible, creating it to have a less dangerous "super spell" to rely on after she learned how dangerous the Giga Slave was. Regardless, she has had too many life-threatening adventures to be able to pause and study this theoretical field.

_

== Slayers and Gaming ==
[[Guardians of Order|Guardians of Order]] has, on two occasions, failed to make a good RPG out of the license. First was a series of three [[splatbook]]s for their [[BESM|BESM tristat]] game, each book represents a single season of the series. These books did nothing a veteran [[Gamemaster|gamemaster]] couldn't already do. But they did present playable stats of all of the main characters from the season they covered.
Their second failure was the Slayers [[D20|d20]] book, which was one of many [http://www.wikipedia.com/Ripoff hanger-ons] to the [[D20|d20]] [[OGL|OGL]]. Unlike most copycats though, this system did try to rebalance the classes, but ended up making a shit-ton of [http://www.wikipedia.com/Crap crap], such as the [[fighter|man-at-arms]], [[cleric|shrine-maiden]] and [[wizard|sorcerer]] classes. One good feature was its innovative magic system; it allowed a caster to know a level dependent number of spell level worth of spells. This was also capped in that there wasn't a spells per day system, but instead a caster roll based on the arcana skill.

===The Slayers D20===
Since 1d4chan takes pride in rescuing lost /tg/ stuff from the depths of time, let's take a look at some of the unique material from the Slayers D20 game that might be worth stealing, or at least building upon for your own games.

====Slayers D20 Races====
The Slayers anime is a weird setting; humans, [[beastfolk]] and [[dragon]]s abound, and so do various hybrids or [[fleshcrafting|magically crafted fusions]]. To represent this, the Slayers D20 has a relatively small set of true races, but a larger set of racial templates. These allow players to represent half-breeds or chimeras - a chimera is literally just a character that takes a base race and then takes two or more templates. It's an interesting idea, but, sadly, the scourge of [[Level Adjustment]] makes it incredibly impractical.

There are only three core races in Slayers D20; ''Humans'' (use the stats from the 3e PHB), ''Beastfolk'', and ''Golden Dragons''. The templates consist of the ''Half-Demon'', ''Half-Dragon'', ''Half-Golem'', ''Half-Mazoku'' and ''Half-Troll''.

=====Beastfolk=====
Technically called "beast''men''" in the actual series, beastfolk are a strange phenomena in the Slayers world. We really don't know much about them, except that they are distantly connected to the Mazoku and tend to fill the generic enemy mooks slot. A sprawling, chaotic mess of a species, beastfolk consist of both the typical humanoid beasts and what D&D would call "monstrous humanoids" - Slayers-world [[orc]]s are literally porcine beastfolk, whilst the "Berserker" monsters are considered a kind of beastman. For simplicity's sake, the Slayers D20 version of the race focuses strictly on the various humanoid animal beastfolk.

Most beastfolk look humans with animalistic heads and skins, but one strain is particularly weird. Fishfolk look like giant trout who have human arms and legs, and are unabashedly used as the most comedic of comic mooks. Even the book wasn't sure what to do with them - it gave them a specific ability score modifier set and favored class (+2 Dexterity, -2 Intelligence, [[Favored Class]]: Bandit), but didn't give them a swim speed.

Beastfolk strains have different ability score modifiers and [[Favored Class]]es, as described here:
::Bear: +4 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -4 Charisma, [[Favored Class]]: Warrior
::Boar: +2 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma, [[Favored Class]]: Warrior
::Bull: +6 Strength, +2 Constitution, -4 Intelligence, -4 Charisma, [[Favored Class]]: Warrior
::Dog: +2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom, -2 Intelligence, -2 Charisma, [[Favored Class]]: Bounty Hunter
::Fox: +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, -2 Strength, -2 Constitution, [[Favored Class]]: Rogue
::Goat: +2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma, [[Favored Class]]: Bandit
::Lizard: +2 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -2 Charisma, [[Favored Class]]: Bandit
::Raccoon: +4 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, -2 Strength, -2 Constitution, -2 Wisdom, [[Favored Class]]: Rogue
::Wolf: +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, -2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma, [[Favored Class]]: Bounty Hunter

All beastfolk, regardless of their strain, have the following stats:
::Medium
::Base land speed 30 feet
::Low-light Vision
::Bonus Feat: From a list of Endurance, Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Loyal, Run, Scent, Toughness or Track.
::+2 racial bonus on List, Spot and Survival checks

=====Golden Dragon=====
The dragons are another example of the somewhat slipshod approach to lore seen in Slayers. Golden Dragons, we know for a fact, are intelligent beings directly descended from the Shinzoku of their world, which gives them a powerful affinity for the forces of holy & white magic and a natural instinct to preserve the world. They view themselves as the living exemplars of good, and have an understandable hatred for the Mazoku, but as is shown in the series, they are - much like [[Dragonlance]] [[elves]] - nowhere near as morally infallible or as perfect as they like to view themselves. Then... there are the other dragons, which seem to vary from apparently sapient to mindless beasts, and with no explanation ever given.

Technically, Golden Dragon PCs are supposed to be restricted to Non-Evil, Non-Chaotic alignments.

::Ability Score Modifiers: +6 Strength, +2 Constitution, +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom
::Dragon type
::Medium
::Base land speed 30 feet
::Low-Light Vision
::Breath Weapon (Su): A Golden Dragon has two different kinds of breath weapon; Laser and Diflasher. Both are single-target attacks that can be dodged to avoid all damage if the target passes Reflex save (DC 10 + half the dragon's character level + the dragon's Con modifier). Laser Breath is a 100ft line of radiant energy that inflicts 1d8 Fire damage per character level possessed by the dragon. Diflasher is an astral attack, meaning it only affects Outsiders and other creatures vulnerable to astral damage; it inflicts 1d10 astral damage per character level possessed by the dragon.
::Alternate Form: Golden Dragons can shift between their true draconic form and a humanoid "interaction" form (which basically resembles an [[elf]] with some minor draconic traits, like a tail, slipping through) by making checks of their Control Shape skill - this is always a class skill for golden dragons and keys off of Constitution. Changing between forms requires a DC 15 Control Shape check, and a Golden Dragon in a highly stressful situation may be forced to take Control Shape checks (typically DC 20 or higher) to avoid reverting to their draconic form. In dragon form, a Golden Dragon is Huge sized, has a base land speed of 40 feet, has a Fly speed of 200 feet (Poor maneuverability), and receives the standard modifiers for changing size: +16 Strength, -4 Dexterity, +8 Constitution, +5 natural armor, -2 size penalty to attack rolls and Armor Class.
::Dragon Magic (Ex): Golden Dragons receive a +5 racial bonus to their Spell Drain & Spell Control Checks when casting White Magic.
::Dragon Faith (Ex): Golden Dragons of the Priest class don't require a staff to use that class's abilities.
::Hunger Resistance (Ex): Golden Dragons can go twice as long without food and water as a human, and only need to make checks against starvation/dehydration once every two hours.
::Spell Resistance: 11 + Character Level
::[[Damage Reduction]]: 10/Magic
::[[Favored Class]]: Priest
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +6

=====Half-Demon=====
If dragons are confusing when it comes to the question of where they sit amongst the racial hierarchy, then demons are worse. We know that they're lower down on the hierarchy than Mazoku, but share many of the same traits, such as being predominantly astral beings who manifest themselves in the world physically. However, they don't seem to be as invested in the whole "commit cosmic murder-suicide" deal. Theoretically, a half-demon could have a demon parent, at least in the Slayers D20 understanding of the lore, but the majority of half-demons are either a case of a mortal being possessed by a demon and having the ability to tap into that demon's inherent power, or else they are sorcerous fusions created to power-up the existing being. Demons are actually quite popular for this, especially if you're trying to make a chimera with enhanced spellcasting ability.

This is a Template Race, so you apply the following modifiers to a base race first.

::Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution
::Intuitive Spellcaster: A half-demon has the ability to cast Common spells, regardless of its class. White/Black/Shamanism spells still require that the half-demon take the appropriate classes.
::Intuitive Magic (Ex): +2 racial bonus to all Spell Drain and Spell Control Checks.
::Spell Resistance: 10 + Character Level
::Racial Skills: +2 to Spellcraft, Summoning and Use Magic Device checks.
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +2

=====Half-Dragon=====
Of the five template races, Half-Dragons are one of the only two that are likely to have actual interspecies erotica for a backstory. Whilst the lesser dragons, with their more bestial levels of intelligence, are used in chimeric fusion experiments, the template itself focuses on a half-golden dragon race, which is almost certainly the result of a rare tryst between races.

This is a Template Race, so you apply the following modifiers to a base race first.

::Ability Score Modifiers: +4 Strength, +2 Charisma
::Breath Weapon (Su): A half-dragon can use its laser breath as a single-target attack that can be dodged to avoid all damage if the target passes Reflex save (DC 10 + half the half-dragon's character level + the half-dragon's Con modifier). Laser Breath is a 100ft line of radiant energy that inflicts 1d6 Fire damage per character level possessed by the dragon.
::[[Damage Reduction]] (Ex): 5/Magic
::Low-Light Vision (Ex)
::Hunger Resistance (Ex): Half-Dragons can go twice as long without food and water as a human, and only need to make checks against starvation/dehydration once every two hours.
::Intuitive White Magic: Half-Dragons gain a +2 racial bonus to all Spell Drain and Spell Control Checks when casting White Magic spells.
::Spell Resistance: 5 + Character Level
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +2

=====Half-Golem=====
Like any good high fantasy setting, the Slayers world is full of [[golem]]s - simple masses of stone animated by sorcery to serve the bidding of a master. They're strong, tough... and stupid. Half-Golems, mortals magically merged with animate stone to gain the golem's toughness and resilience, are far superior.

This is a Template Race, so you apply the following modifiers to a base race first.

:Ability Score Modifiers: +4 Strength
::+4 natural armor
::[[Damage Reduction]]: 10/Magic
::Immune to Poison and Disease
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +2

=====Half-Mazoku=====
As incarnations of negative energy compelled by their divine creator to seek the oblivion of all things, Mazoku don't have a very rich dating life. In fact, they reproduce asexually, giving up fragments of their own astral being and letting these fragments awaken as new Mazoku. Half-Mazoku, then, are the result of magic. Whilst Mazoku are far more powerful and willful than demons, some mages are strong enough (or crazy enough, or stupid enough) to use them as power-boosters in chimera fusion experiments. Other "Half-Mazoku" are actually sealed Mazoku - mortals with Mazoku bound inside of them, creating a kind of possession where the host retains control over their body and can tap into the power of their spiritual occupant.

This is a Template Race, so you apply the following modifiers to a base race first.

::Ability Score Modifiers: +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, +4 Intelligence, +4 Charisma
::Type changes to Outsider (Native)
::Shield of Will: A half-mazoku adds their positive Charisma modifier to their Armor Class as a deflection bonus.
::Damage Reduction: 10/Magic
::Darkvision 60 feet
::Hunger Resistance (Ex): Half-Mazoku can go twice as long without food and water as a human, and only need to make checks against starvation/dehydration once every two hours.
::Immune to Poison & Disease
::Astral Phasing (Ex): Once per day per 2 character levels, a half-mazoku can shift from the material plane to the Astral Plane, and can return from the Astral to the material at will. They can also take along other people they are in physical contact with by giving up one extra "charge" of this ability to do so.
::Racial Skills: Vision is always a class skill for half-mazoku, and they receive a +2 racial bonus on Bluff, Intimidate and Summoning checks.
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +4

=====Half-Troll=====
In the Slayers world, [[troll]]s are a species of monstrous humanoid known for their strength, their toughness, and their ability to heal from almost anything. They readily interbreed with other races, or at least with Beastfolk, and are also a logical choice for the chimera-maker's arts.

This is a Template Race, so you apply the following modifiers to a base race first.

::Ability Score Modifiers: +4 Strength, +4 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -2 Charisa
::+2 Natural Armor
::Regeneration (Ex): A half-troll automatically recovers hit points every single round, at a rate of (1/2 character level + 1/2 Constitution bonus, round down). A half-troll reduced below 0 hit points automatically stabilizies itself, and regains 1 hit point per round until its hit point total reaches 0, at which point it resumes its normal regeneration rate. A half-troll reduced to -10 hit points is dead, having been damaged too badly for even its trollish regenerative ability to cope with.
::[[Level Adjustment]]: +1

====Slayers D20 Spellcasting====
If there's anything mechanically sound in the Slayers D20, it's the unique spellcasting mechanics it came up with, which actually reflect the mechanics of the setting very well.

=====Casting Mechanics=====
To start with, all spells require a single standard action to start casting. Then, the spellcaster has to make a Fortitude save, based on the difficulty of the spell; this is called a Spell Drain Check, and reflects the struggle to pull the mana for the spell out of the caster's own spirit. To further reflect how much a spell saps the caster's strength, all spells have an automatic Drain value, which is an amount of non-lethal damage they take as a side-effect of casting the spell. If they're exhausted when they try to cast, then Drain becomes lethal damage instead.

And you got to pay attention to how well you do on your Spell Drain Check. If you pass the check by 10 points or more, you halve the Drain you suffer. If you fail the check, then you take double the Drain anyway and need to make a Control Check, but if you fail it by 10 points or more, you're also automatically Exhausted.

What's a Control Check? It's a check of (1d20 + character's total caster levels + character's relevant ability score modifier) against the spell's Spell Drain DC - 10. If you pass this check, the spell still goes off, it just took a lot more out of you than it should have. If you fail, then the spell flubs in some way; usually harmless or annoying, this could potentially be incredibly dangerous for high complexity spells, such as Dragon Slave or Giga Slave.

Pretty simple rules. But, there's a lot of little sub-rules that make things more complex.

For one thing, you can use the spell's name as part of casting. This alerts everyone within earshot of what you've actually cast, but gives you a +5 bonus to your Drain and Control Checks.

Secondly, you can use the spell's incantation. This changes the casting to a full-round action, but gives you a +5 bonus to Drain & Control (which stacks with naming the incantation) ''and'' boosts the save DCs of the spell by +2. You can actually use the incantation without naming the spell, in which case listeners must make a Spellcraft check to see if they identify it.

Thirdly, there's Lethal Drain - so long as you weren't exhausted to begin with, you can choose to take your Drain as lethal damage for +5 to the Drain & Control Checks. This stacks with all of the above.

Now, this is pretty flavorful, but since the Wizard class in Slayers D20 is still running off a D6 hit dice mechanic, it's inherently flawed; spells quickly become too taxing on hit points to be worth casting at all, which really messes up the paradigm.

=====Cooperative Casting=====
Spellcasters using the Slayers D20 system can work to combine their powers in multiple ways.

For starters, up to three casters can pool their efforts to cast the same spell; this functions as a designated "primary" spellcaster making their Drain & Control checks, but with a bonus to the check equal to the secondary caster's caster level and equal to 1/2 the tertiary caster's caster level. This increases the chance of the spell going off, and lightens the load; drain is shared out as equally as possible amongst the participating casters, with excess going to the primary caster - so, if three casters pull off a spell that inflicts 22 points of drain, then the primary takes 8 damage and the other two take 7 damage each.

Secondly, when a caster has a spell sustained, a friendly caster can attempt to boost it by making a Spellcraft check (DC equal to the spell's Base DC -10); this lets the secondary caster either increase the spell's effect by one-half their caster level, or apply a single metamagic feat. As with pooling a spell, drain is shared out equally, but with excess going to the primary caster.

Finally, multiple casters can attempt to merge their spells together for greater effectiveness. To do this, each caster has to individually cast the same spell, but direct them at the same target. Area of effect and damage are multiplied by the number of casters merging spells (doubled, tripled, quadrupled, etc), unless the spells have different values to the others, in which case it's the largest individual value that applies. Save DC is always the highest DC of the individual spells, plus the appropriate ability modifiers of all participating casters. For countering spell resistance, a merged spell uses the combined caster level of all participating casters.

=====Concentration=====
Concentration works differently under Slayers magic. Certain spells, called Sustained Spells, can be held as long as the caster concentrates. This requires a new Control Check each round; fortunately, all of the original bonuses the caster benefited from when they first cast the spell still apply to each Control Check they make whilst sustaining a spell. However, a sustained spell is less taxing; a successful Control Check causes them to sustain the spell without any drain, whilst failing the check still only inflicts half the normal drain for that spell.

A caster can also attempt to use other spells whilst they have a sustained spell active, which requires a Concentration check (DC 10 + 10 per sustained spell). If they fail the check, the spell fails to go off. Likewise, if they get distracted whilst sustaining spells, they need to make a separate Concentration check for each spell they have sustained; depending on the roll of the dice, this may mean some stay active, or lead to a cascade failure.

=====Disguising Spells=====
One final little trick of Slayers D20 spellcasting is that it's possible to fake out others as to what spell your casting. This is a Bluff check opposed by Spellcraft, but it prevents the caster from using the Naming & Incantation options ''and'' inflicts a -5 penalty on the Drain & Control checks.

=====Metamagic=====
Under this system, metamagic doesn't influence spell-level or casting time. Instead, it simply ups the spellcasting checks by an amount determined by the metamagic effects you apply. On the plus side, this means you can apply metamagic on the fly and as much as you need it.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Tristat1.jpg|[[BESM|BESM]] Slayers, book 1
Image:Tristat2.jpg|[[BESM|BESM]] Slayers NEXT, book 2
Image:Tristat3.jpg|[[BESM|BESM]] Slayers TRY, book 3
Image:Tristat20.jpg|Slayers [[D20|d20]] book made by the same [[Guardians of Order|dipshits]] who made the [[BESM|BESM]] books.
Image:Dragon slave.jpg|It's pretty much like that.
Image:FakePHBcoverSlayers.jpg‎|[[Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition|4e]] tries to be like this
Image:Ironclaw_cover_art.jpg|Not to be confused with [[Ironclaw|the fucking Furries]].
Image:Lina's_crotchless_red_tights.png|Pragmatism is key when traveling.
Image:11.jpg|The end-result of Zelgadis and Amelia.
Image:Gourry_is_best_boy2.png|The smoothest idiot.
Image:Tits.jpg|This is why Amelia was written out for seven novels.
Image:Rui_is_a_genius.png|In "Slayers", all ships sail.
Image:Lina_v1.jpg|This was Lina in 1990...
Image:Lina's_side_profile.jpg|This is Lina now. Feeling old yet?
Image:Welcome_to_middle_earth.png|Seriously, she's officially named Lina the Pink. Heh...
Image:Rui_Araizumi_and_Hajime_Kanzaka.jpg|Rui Araizumi and Hajime Kanzaka.
</gallery>

==Lost Universe ==

[[Warhammer 40k|The Slayers' own science fiction spin off]] that also started as a light novel series. Despite reusing names and titles, the Lost Universe light novels are not connected to the Slayers universe, even though the former alludes to such a bridge existing. In the author's own words:

''Dear readers, it has been a long time since I wrote the previous book. Here I brought the last book of the Lost Universe, "Yami Owaru Toki". From the beginning, this story had such words as "Dark Star" or "Nightmare", and those words easily reminded the readers of another novel series that I'm writing. I know that many many people are wondering how this story is related with Slayers. Now, I give you the answer! The correct answer is, "there is little relationship between the two stories." .....................Ouch! No! Please! Don't throw stones! .... Well, to tell the truth, I liked those names Dark Star or Gorunnova, and I used those names in two different stories. That was the beginning, and nothing more. Basically, Lost Universe and Slayers are different stories, so, even though they have some common names or common words, it's no good to let those characters be the same things. If I let Gorunnova in the two different stories the same thing, it would be unrifined for an Edokko. (Citizens of Edo. An "Edokko" is stylish and don't stick to things.) Anyway, I was born in Hyogo, and live in Osaka... ''

http://www.inverse.org/e/res/msgs/1933.shtml

[[File:Lost universe plane chart.png|200px|thumb|left|Time to get the rust off your Elder Futhark!]]

However, the anime for Lost Universe '''is''' connected to the Slayers anime, which makes the relationship between the two series even more confusing. In the DVD release for Lost Universe, one of the bonuses includes translation notes that explain that Lost Universe takes place on the "Black World" ('''Dark''' Star Dugradigdu, '''Night''' Dragon Vorpheed) while Slayers happens on the "Red World" ('''Flare''' Dragon Ceipheed, '''Ruby'''-Eye Shabranigdo). It also uses the same symbolism and hierarchy depictions in its end credits that can be found in the credits of each episode of Slayers TRY. One of the characters, Rail Claymore, even has a chant that is part of the full Giga Slave incantation Lina Inverse uses.

In spite all of this, Lost Universe did not become as popular as Slayers in its seven-year light novel run. The anime adaptation had bad luck as well, as a studio fire damaged half of the cels for the season, requiring the animation team to re-create everything in only six months. The poor reception and lack of funds prevented a second season from being made, leaving the anime hanging on a cliffhanger. It does not have its own d20 system, and is mentioned solely as a reference here.

=== Background ===

''There once was a civilization in one galaxy. The aliens of this galaxy parted in two groups and fought each other for a many years. Finally, one of two groups created a critial offensive program; "System Dark Star". It uses the "fear" of the victims to kill themself. When this system works, the victims feel fear and this emotion affects the brain and checks the exchange of living energy. This system works without any distriction, so the creators of this system made an automatic battleship (spaceship Dugradigudo) to load this system on. As spaceship Dugradigudo was filled with the devices of the System Dark Star and there was no room for the deffensive weapons, the creators of the system made five escorting battleships; the spaceship Nezard, the spaceship Garveira, the spaceship Gorrunnova, the spaceship Ragdo Mezegis and the spaceship Bordigar. They were all automatic battleships and their energy was the power of human mind (in LU world, there is a technology which uses the power of human mind as energy, for example, psyblade). There are many patterns of human mind wave, and these battleships used the pattern of fear, for fear is always available at the battle. These six battleships ate fear and spread destruction in the whole universe. The first victim was their creators and their home-planet.''

[[File:Darkstar1.jpg|200px|thumb|left|It's not creatively-bankrupt to steal from yourself.]]

''When System Dark Star worked, people saw a huge pentagram (upside down) appeared in the sky. It can kill all the living things on one planet during a few hours.''

''Then there came spaceship Vorfeed with erasing system for those six demonic spaceships. Vorfeed's energy was hope of human. When it irradiated its enegy at Dugradigudo and its guardian ships, their energy (fear) was erased by hope and those six battleships became enable to work. They fought each other a long time ago, and finally, Vorfeed succeeded in erasing the energy of the enemies, but it lost its energy, too. These seven battleships fell down on to the nearby planet.''

''Many years passed by, and those battleships repaired themselve automatically. Then there came a boy. The AI of Dugradigudo found the boy and influenced his mind with its energy. This boy became human Dugradigudo, and when he was grown up, he named himself as Nightmare. Dugradigudo affected the mind and body of Nightmare so as to survive in the System Dark Star. He managed a powerful crime organization Nightmare to ready for another annihilation.''

''Dugradigudo and Nightmare thought that Vorfeed would come back again, and it begun to ready for that. It repaired its escorting battlships, and made a huge fortress Hecatombkale. And finally, Dugardigudo and Nightmare found spaceship Sword Breaker with AI Canal Vorfeed. So the battle begun again.''

http://www.inverse.org/e/res/msgs/1933.shtml

=== The Plot ===

[[File:LUcast1.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The main cast. From left to right: '''Who fucking cares?''']]

''In the Lost Universe anime, Dark Star is a powerful space ship that evolves every time it awakens.''

''Many, many years ago, Dark Star and his shinzoku counterpart, Night Dragon Vorfeed, grew tired of fighting and went to rest on a planet. They took the forms of spaceships. Years later, humans discovered the ships, and two young children, brother and sister, came across them at night. The boy, Albert Von Stargazer, found Dark Star. The girl, Alicia Shon Stargazer, found Vorfeed. Each child became the master of his and her respective spaceship. Thus, a family was torn by light and darkness.''

''Albert formed the Gazer Concern, which was a front for the Nightmare syndicate. Nightmare stove to spread Dark Star's evil throughout the universe. They kept the sleeping Dark Star inside a giant machine, Hekatoncheir, that served as Nightmare's headquarters.''

''Dark Star made Albert clone himself so that Dark Star would have a human body in which he could reside and use to interact with humans. This human body was referred to as Yami, sometimes called the Spreader of Darkness.''

''Ten years before the anime, the Spreader of Darkness (one of Dark Star's aliases), captaining Gorun Nova, confronted Alicia Shon Stargazer in Swordbreaker. She used the latter's Psi Code Final to defeat Gorun Nova, but at the cost of her own life. The Spreader of Darkness was put into stasis for ten years (87016 hours) in order to heal.''

''Throughout the years, more ancient spaceships were discovered, and named Lost Ships. Five of these are subordinates of Dark Star. Dark Star and his Lost Ships could be temporarily rendered helpless whenever someone chanted special phrases referencing the Lord of Nightmares.''

''The only known Lost Ship that served the light was Vorfeed's ship, named Swordbreaker. Swordbreaker was piloted by Alicia, but she died in a battle with Dark Star. Later, Alicia's grandson, Kane Blueriver, became the pilot and risked himself in order to completely rid the universe of Nightmare and more importantly, Dark Star. However, Dark Star was not completely destroyed, and only three of his subordinates had been disabled. Thus the battle was not over.''

'''Taken from''' https://kanzaka.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Star_Dugradigdu#Lost_Universe '''because I really don't want to re-summarize this silliness.'''

[[Category:Weeaboo]] [[Category: Dungeons & Dragons]]