Not Necessarily The Monstrous Compendium is full of Old AD&D type stuff. This collection of random articles and monsters and comedy from what I think is mostly Dragon Magazine, is just too interesting. Let's look at some of the art and prose:
It started in Egypt...
In ancient Egyptian belief, there were
two main spiritual forms of the deceased,
called respectively the ka and the ba. The
ka was supposed to dwell in the tombó
more precisely, in the mummified bodyó
and it was the form in which the dead
received their funerary offerings.
It seems that the ka represented the life-
force of an individual. It was created at
the time of his birth, remained with him
throughout his life, and subsequently lived
in the tomb after death. The dead were
sometimes referred to as ìthose who have
gone to their kas,î and the tomb chapel
could be called, ìthe house of the ka.î
Ordinary people had only a single ka but
gods and pharaohs had several.
The importance of preserving the corpse
can be seen through the ka belief. The
more intact the corpse, the better the
home for the ka spirit. The great pyramids
and other tomb structures of ancient
Egypt served primarily not as monuments
but as houses in which the kas spent their
afterlife.
~~~He then gives us a KA, a super mummy:
And finally I'll mention some crazy GIANT write up on the Iron Cobra, statblock way down there at the end:
Footnotes
Iron cobras are described in the AD&DÆ
1st Edition FIEND FOLIOÆ tome, pages
52-53. It is assumed herein that these
creations can be made by high-level wiz-
ards, and that they are more common
than generally believed (they are certainly
far less powerful than iron golems). Iron
cobras have a 50% chance to hide in
shadows (the FIEND FOLIO tome says they
hide as well as 8th-level thieves, but this
chance is 49%).
1. While they exhibit some signs of life,
iron cobras are merely cunningly designed
magical constructs. Rare and expensive
materials, powerful spells, and secret
crafting techniques are required to build
them, with different combinations of these
creating iron cobras with different capa-
bilities, Still, many components are held in
common by all such devices: mithral,
adamantite, or meteoritic iron; a vial of oil
of slipperiness; and many gemstones
crafted into gears and bits of machinery.
The cost of constructing even the smallest
of these automatons is 2,000 gp.
the sort of thing that the tinker gnomes of
Krynn might manufacture, an iron cobra
appearing in a DRAGONLANCEÆ setting
would likely have come from some other
universe, as the cost for tinkers to make
an iron cobra would be well above 20,000
steel pieces. But if confronted with an iron
cobra or the remains of one, a tinker
would have to make a check vs. wisdom
on 2d12 in order to tear himself away
from the fascinating device.
2. Iron cobras are not alive, so they do not
A mage owning a manual describing the
methods of constructing iron cobras will
protect it dearly, as it can fetch a price in
the hundreds of gold piecesóthousands if
it contains special directions such as those
for creating giant iron cobras.
As an aside, while these constructs are
need food, water, or sleep, nor will they ever
forget a command or be distracted from a
task. Thus they make excellent servitors
and, because of their combination of track-
ing and lethal combat capabilities, are some-
times used by bounty hunters or even
respectable legal authorities.
3. Iron cobras can be commanded in
many ways, the means being decided upon
during creation. While most iron cobras
obey voice commands, some respond only
to coded messages, hand signals, nonver-
bal sounds (such as musical instruments)
or other exotic or long-range modes of
communications. The manual used to
create an iron cobra includes a list of
possible command devices, so that a per-
son possessing a deactivated iron cobra
and the manual from which it was created
could, through trial and error, determine
the one method of controlling it.
The commands themselves can be of any
sort the creator desires, from such simple
things as ìattack,î to complicated orders
such as ìattack, targeting spell-casters
first, followed by elves, then by all others.î
Whatever the commands, they must be
selected at the time of the cobraís creation;
it will answer to no commands not built
into it after that.
Whatever the commands and command
method decided upon, they must be indi-
vidually programmed into each iron cobra
created. Thus the creator could use simi-
lar but subtly different commands for
each of his constructs, so that determining
the commands for one might not help an
attacker use them against others. This
would also allow the controller greater
subtlety in issuing commands.
4. Many iron cobras are created with a
built-in ìfail-safeî command that comes
into effect if the cobra spends a considera-
ble length of time without receiving or-
ders. Typical fail-safes include commands
to return to the cobraís creator, to its
owner, or to a specific place after a period
of time has elapsed (up to one year). Iron
cobras designed to be left alone for unlim-
ited periods of time, such as guardians of a
tomb, sometimes use other fail-safes, such
as commands to slay all intruders, to pre-
vent the theft of the treasures in the lair,
or to hide and await further instructions.
5. Every iron cobra can detect a single
specific property by spreading its hood
and orienting it on that quality. Typical
properties detected for are covered by
existing divination spells (e.g., good, evil,
magic, undead, invisibility, etc.); the ranges
and areas of effects are as if those spells
were cast by a 12th-level human mage,
with the divinatory ability being usable as
many times each day as desired. Other
divinatory properties can be used, but the
mage must have cast on the near-
completed construction a spell designed by
him for this purpose (for example:, a spell
that detects those who worship a particu-
lar god, for one who plans to use his iron
cobra against the worshipers of an op-
posed deity).
The iron cobraís construction manual
will list specific materials that must be
varied according to the detection spell
bestowed on the serpent (e.g., an iron
cobra designed to detect poison would
include eyes glazed with celadon, pur-
ported to locate such substances, while
one designed to detect magic might re-
place those eyes with eyes of magic-
sensing star sapphires).
While an iron cobra is almost infallible
at detecting the property for which it was
constructed, it cannot serve every pur-
pose. If a mage built an iron cobra to
detect evil, for use as a guardian of his
treasures, a neutral-good thief would
elude his precautions. Thus, owners of
more than one iron cobra often have them
constructed to detect different properties
such as evil, magic, and poison, in hopes
that intruders and victims will be revealed
by at least one of these traits.
Without its outspread hood, an iron
cobra is incapable of sensing anything
beyond that which is mundanely pre-
sented to it by way of sight, sound, or
touch (unlike a real snake, it has no sense
of taste or smell). The hood has the same
armor class as the rest of the cobra, but
attacks specifically aimed at the hood can
damage it without destroying the cobra
itself. The hood has the equivalent of one-
fifth of the cobraís normal hit points
(never less than one point), but these
points are in addition to those listed for
the iron cobra and are not calculated into
its hit-point total for purposes of destroy-
ing the machine or for experience-point
calculations.
6. The normal construction of an iron
cobra is such that it obviously appears to
be a machine. If its creator adds 10% to its
cost and construction time, the cobra can
be made to have some other outward
appearance, the most common of these
being the appearance of an actual cobra
(or other type of snake, if the hood and its
detection abilities are eliminated).
7. Most iron cobras are of the small and
inexpensive sort, but some are giants as
large as six times standard size. The cost
of manufacturing huge cobras is consider-
ably more than six times that needed to
make normal iron cobras, running as high
as 50,000 gp depending on what ìspecial
featuresî are included. Some mages would
spend those thousands on having many
normal iron cobras, but some consider it a
fair price for a huge serpentís capabilities
and its effect on enemy morale.
The giant iron cobra is identical in all
ways with the smaller version of the same
monster except as shown in the Iron Co-
bra Table and in other notes here. Both
are unaffected by spells such as snake
charm. Although some think that cold or
lightning spells should have a special effect
on them, they are insulated so that they
suffer no more than any living creature
caught in one of these spells. Thus, an ice
storm cast on one would still do damage,
but it would have no extra effects due to
the nature of the target.
8. As iron cobras are made of exotic and
strong metals, laced together by powerful
enchantments, normal weapons used
against them do only half damage on a hit.
In the case of giant iron cobras, the metals
78 DECEMBER 1990
9. Just as the iron cobra can have any
sort of detection spell centered on its
hood, it also can be equipped with any
type of poison in its fangs. Poison can be
changed by the controller of the cobra
whenever desired by merely draining out
the old poison and replacing it with a new
one. Typical toxins include those that
cause damage or death, those causing
special effects such as paralysis, sleep, or
various discomforts (disease, allergies,
rashes, etc), and other, more exotic, sub-
stances that can incapacitate or cause
insanity in victims.
Whatever the substance injected into the
victim on a successful hit, an iron cobra is
equipped with only 3-8 (1d6 +2) doses of it,
and they cannot withhold poison at will;
whenever they bite, if they still contain
poison, it will be delivered into their victim.
While giant iron cobras would appear to
have capacity for more poison than nor-
mal ones, they still carry only 3-8 doses of
their poison, but have larger and more
used are as much as six times as thick, and
the enchantments similarly stronger. Be-
cause of this, the giant iron cobraís skin is
much tougher than that of the small ver-
sion and a nonmagical weapon (which will
do the giant cobra no harm) has a possibil-
ity of breaking against it. If the attacker
misses with a roll high enough to have hit
armor class 10, his weapon has struck the
snakeís skin and, if it fails a saving throw
vs. crushing blow, it will shatter. Addition-
ally, for every bonus point of damage done
due to the attackerís strength, the saving
throw for the weapon will be one point
worse because such forceful blows are
more likely to break the weapon. Thus, if
the sword of a character with a 16
strength was forced to make a save, it
would have a worse chance of making its
save than the weapon of a weaker charac-
ter due to the strongerís +1 damage
bonus.
potent doses. Thus, if the same poison is
used by both small and giant iron cobras,
that of the larger mechanism is 10% more
effective (save vs. poison at -2 beyond
any adjustments vs. the poison of the
smaller machine).
etc.
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