Dekapus [Wermspittle]

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”

John Lennon

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Dekapus
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120' [40'] (Levitation)
Armor Class: Head/Torso 5 (as Chain Mail), Limbs 7 (As Studded Leather)
Hit Dice: 3+1 [Advance as Thieves, Spell-casters, and sometimes Fighters.]
Attacks: 2 (Improves by HD/Level)
Damage: 1d4 (+2 to hit), 1d4 (+2 to hit), or by Spell
Save: F4
Morale: 7 [12 if combating Mucoids]

Special: Affected by all spells that target 'Humans.' Dekapus can opt to convert one of their Attack rolls to a Dodge (Roll as 'To Hit,' and if successful they avoid one incoming attack. They receive double the normal bonus for using bucklers/small shields, but cannot use normal or larger shields. They can only wield Light weapons until achieving 4 or more HD/Levels at which point they can use Medium weapons. It is very rare that a Dekapus would ever wield a Heavy weapon and they would likely require serious augmentation to do so effectively. Dekapus receive double the normal DEX Bonus to all their Thief skills. All Dekapus can cast Blur, Hypnotic Pattern, Obscuring Mist, and Hypnotism once per day and Misdirection up to three times per day.

[Percent Liar: 72%]

The Dekapus is a pseudo-octopoid...these dishonest creatures are actually mammalian, possess ten limbs and claim to be descended from humans. Fierce enemies of the Mucoids and others, the Dekapus are notorious Oneiromancers, Mountebanks, and Thieves skilled in the arts of misdirection and obfuscation alike. Their appendages terminate in a pair of soft-seeming boneless fingerettes that can split into multiple smaller tendrils as needed, granting them a level of close-up finesse much envied by surgeons. For some reason, some claim it is squeamishness, the Dekapusians rarely, if ever enter into any sort of medical profession.

Actors, Performers, Jugglers, Troubadours, Poets (both Accursed and otherwise), Pantomimers, Puppeteers, Artisans, Repairers of Reputations, Insinuationists, Saboteurs, Spies, Observers, Dreamers (Lucid, Deep and otherwise), Reporters...Dekapus have taken on a great many roles throughout Wermspittle, primarily in order to carry on their ages-old conflict with the Mucoids. The mutual antipathy between these two peoples is legendary, fierce and abiding, having persisted across centuries with no clear-cut resolution in sight.

Most commonly Dekapus are Thieves of every sort, but an appreciable number of them become Spell-casters such as Illusionists (including Projectionists), Oneiromancers and Druids with a penchant for the Tulgey Woods, Purple Forest, the White Orchard  and other such Weird Woods.

The few Dekapus that take up the path of Rangers specialize in hunting down and slaughtering Mucoids and have developed a number of peculiar and unique weapons and harmful devices exclusively designed to kill, maim, or incapacitate Mucoids. Their unwavering hatred of the Mucoids is so severe that Dekapus Rangers will also sometimes deign to hunt down Rooftopi, Octoscholars and any other Cephalopodians who resemble Mucoids in even the least bit.

Other Dekapus go to great lengths to ingratiate themselves with all other forms of humanity, no matter how distorted, Infected, teratogenically Afflicted, or aberrantly inclined...just as long as they have no connection to their ancestral enemies...

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"My dreams are of water. And my nightmares..."

Siouxsie Sioux

Oneiric Encounters I

We
 have just begun to navigate a strange region; we must expect to encounter strange adventures, strange perils...

The Terror, by Arthur Machen

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Oneiric Encounters Table I (1d20)

1. A swarm of beetle-pigs stampedes past. They leave quite a mess behind them.
2. A smallish Oneiric Vortex shimmers and fluctuates in the immediate vicinity for 1d4 Turns, then collapses with a wet popping noise.
3. Six mice in blue surcoats, armed with tiny rapiers, are on a quest for a great green cheese. They scurry past and quickly descend into a rabbit-hole that closes after them.
4. A bed flies overhead. Someone is riding the thing. They wave as they go past.
5. (1d4) Dream Snails have caught your scent.
6. A school of moth-winged fish flutter past. There's a 30% chance that some prowling predator may be following the school.
7. A wave of roiling, boiling Dreamscum rolls across a section of the surrounding area at an angle quite different to your own orientation.
8. A slightly larger Oneiric Vortex swirls into close proximity and spins menacingly for 1d6 Turns before dissipating without a trace.
9. (1d4) Transparent Giant Spiders with 1d8 scowling faces in place of eyes. They are always bickering among themselves. Those with fewer than eight faces are always looking to add one more.
10. A very disoriented Miasmagaster Spawnling mewling and spewing for its siblings. Even in dreams, these things stink terribly.
11. (1d4) Feral Simulacra fight and claw their way up out of some barely coexistent region of nightmare. Each one resembles a distorted version of whomever first observes them. They are desperate to switch places, even going so far as to assault their originators with the intent to cast them into the nightmare realm in their stead. They are naked, unarmed, but will have access to spells equal to their originator.
12. Things start to look kind of wet. Then you realize that you've blundered into the midst of a massive Dream-Jelly. Thankfully it is currently occupied with the frenzied mob it is manipulating in the material regions of some world you're unfamiliar with. Perhaps you can avoid attracting its notice.
13. A 6 HD Mind Slime floats past, completely oblivious to everything. It is under the effects of an Oneirist's Dream-Binding. Interfering will break the binding and release the ungrateful, nasty creature.
14. Foul, miasmic tendrils of gellified madness and congealed hatred twist and writhe within the immediate dream-vicinity of a dying Harpy Tormentor. Come closer. She would appreciate a final victim before her passing.
15. Someone recently cast Oneiric Bubble on a space that impinges on the Dreamscape close to here. You can see it shimmering and shiny in the near distance. There's someone inside. It looks like an Aegogur. The new wand it was trying-out did not do what the Jaladari said it would do.
16. (2d4) Umbral Troglodytes slither out from the Vortex in pursuit of a more physical existence outside of the regions they used to occupy deep within the collapsing umbral-substrata of the Oneiric Cacophony of Zalchis. They thought they had found a point of entry, but that Oneiric Vortex collapsed, trapping half their number somewhere they can't reach any more.
17. (2d4) Grunters are out hunting and gathering on behalf of their Mistress, an ambitious young War-Sow from Kalkendru. They do not realize that they have become disembodied dream-things enslaved to their mistress. It probably wouldn't make much of a difference if they did know the truth of their situation. She did not select them on the basis of their critical thinking ability, only their loyalty.
18. A Rarebit Fiend has noticed you. Maybe they want to be friends?
19. The shriveled black gem-shard of a broken Hasnamuss streaks past on its doomed trajectory. You can almost hear its fossilized screams as it passes.
20. A Saiitii Manifestation has taken root in an abandoned attic lined with Yellow Wallpaper...and there is a Loathsome Mass leaking into the room from next door. This has created a weird oneiro-fungal infestation that has completely baffled every curious oneirist and incautious dreamer it hasn't out-right consumed or infected. Perhaps there are experts and scholars at the Academy who might reward those who alerted them to such a thing?

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Rarebit Fiend

Rarebit Fiend

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

Traditional Nagrothean Folksong

In Wermspittle the dish known as Rarebit is made using either wood alcohol or Black Liquor (or both), Butterkase, Vermkase or Casu Marzu, and in some cases the milky froth left-over from preparing Hard Candy. The ingredients are melted together and then poured over stale bread (especially ergotized rye), fried slices of bread-pudding, or whatever crumbly-bits of baked good are left on-hand. Some folks like to use the wort left after making a batch of beer, especially after it has been left to rot a while as it works better when it is ripe and alive, or so say the Midwives.

Not everyone has a taste for Rarebit. But for those who do develop a tolerance for this powerful and wildly unpredictable psychoactive delicacy, it is a one-way ticket to power. The kind of power known only to the dream-touched and the damned.

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Upon consuming Wermspittle-style Rarebit, a Save is required.
Those who succeed go on to experience terrible nightmares, lose 1 point of WIS for the next week, and suffer a -1 penalty on all Saves versus Fear or Confusion effects.
Those who fail become Chaotic in alignment, suffer a permanent loss of 1 point of WIS, and permanently gain Dreamsight.
Those who fail their Save three times become Rarebit Fiends.

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Rarebit Fiend
No. Enc.: 1
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 150' (50')
         Drift: 300' (100')
Armor Class: 3 (Only take half-damage from physical attacks)
Hit Dice: variable
Attacks: 1 (Touch or weapon)
Damage: 1d6, (Fear or Confusion)
Save: as per HD or Level
Morale: 6 (+any CHAR Bonus)

Special: Passwall (once per day per HD or Level), Dreamshift (enter fully into dream once per day every 3 HD or 3 Levels). When attacking, a Rarebit Fiend can choose to instill either Fear or Confusion in their victim (as a Touch attack) once per day per HD or Level. They can only do one or the other, not both, and anyone who successfully Saves against this special attack becomes permanently immune to that particular fiend's Fear or Confusion effects.

Rarebit Fiends are no longer completely here, nor quite right in the head. They are semi-transparent, resembling a ghost, and have become almost as much some kind of dream as anything material. They can only be seriously injured by magical weapons or spells, all other physical attacks only do half damage, unless the Rarebit Fiend opts to Dreamshift fully into Dreamspace, Slumberland, the Dreamlands, or whatever version, region or strata of the sub/unconscious realms they have gained access to in the course of their transformation. Making this shift to escape damage forces them to remain within the dreaming realms for 1d4 days per point of damage avoided.

They can wield magical items, armor and weapons, however magical armor only gives them half the protection it normally offers. They cannot use potions and must feed upon ectoplasm, oneiroplasm and similar things, including the life-force of living beings, however they are not immediately able to drain life-energy. That is a skill they must be taught, or spend many months or even years practicing, before they ever really get the hang of it.

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Rarebit Fiends really came into pop-culture prominence through the pioneering work of Windsor McCay and his ground-breakingly surreal comic strip adventures a well as some very early movies made with Thomas Edison. The collected Dream of the Rarebit Fiend comic strips are available online at the Comic Strip Library. More than one version of the movies W. McCay did with Edison is available at YouTube, including Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1906), The Flying House and The Pet. Windsor McCay went on to create both Gertie the Dinosaur and Little Nemo in Slumberland. There's a lot of Little Nemo in how we handle the Dreaming/Dreamstates/Dreamlands/Slumberland continuum...
We're big fans of McCay's animation and comics. Little Nemo in particular has been a very big influence on Wermspittle and is right at the top of the Vermiform Appendix; our list of influences and references for Wermspittle that somewhat parallels the Appendix N of classic D&D.