Thin Desert Fauna: Dune Sirens

René Bull's "Salomé".

 Beautiful voices beckon the weary traveller to leave the ­relative safety of the road. Few can ­resist the alluring call of the desert Rå. ­Presenting as ­beauti­ful specimens of a suitable gender, these ­ancient homunculi drink the souls of their victims.

No. Appearing: 1d6 HD: 2+1 AC: Naked Morale: 8
Attacks: 1 Bite (1d6) MV: As human Saves As: Magic-User
Special 1: Charm those who listen. Save vs magic or succumb to their requests, fighting anyone trying to stop you.
Special 2: Drain victim of one permanent Cha per turn, healing 1d6 hp. Last in turn, melee range, interruptible.
Treasure: Each adorned with 2d100 worth of jewellery

Lair: Cave of Eyes
Dried-up bodies of varying age litter the floor. Puddles of ecstatic tears. 2d100 eyes have been placed in the crevices of the walls, ravenous for a glimpse of their masters/mistresses.

Spoors
Soft voices in the wind. Eyeless but otherwise unharmed bodies.

Rumours about dune sirens

1. They collect their victims’ eyes, bathing in their adoration.
2. The best way to hunt them is to let someone be entranced while connected to a long rope.
3. Once works of art, the sirens hunger for an audience.
4. No, they are the ghosts of unresolved love affairs
5. Spymasters and voyeurs pay handsomely for an eye hoard
6. Veteran ­caravan leaders fill their ears with wax or ­cotton. If you can’t hear them, they can’t entrance you.

Magic item: Never-Blinking Eye
Some eyes (5%) remain fully functional after the siren’s demise and work as prosthetics. A magic-user can spend a downtime ­period of at least a week to align herself with an eye, ­after which it can be used for remote surveillance. Takes up one memorization slot until deactivated, and must be in physical contact to be reactivated.

What is the dune siren doing?

1. Adored by aged pillar skeptic, taking its time to feed
2. Singing broken verses from ancient opera
3. Takes the shape of a pc:s childhood sweetheart
4. Presenting as the hazy memories of a night of debauchery
5. Rearranging its eye hoard to give everyone a better view
6. Bathing in a pool of tears, laughing with childish mirth

Thin Desert Fauna: Cinomolgus

The Cinomolgi are migratory birds, known for building their nests with cinnamon wood collected from some faraway clime. To hunt these dangerous predators is to court disaster, but a single nest lets a band of cinnamon hunters live comfortably for years. 

No. App.: 1 HD: 9 AC: As leather Morale: 8 Saves As: Fighter
Attacks: 1 Beak (2d8) or 2 Talons (1d8) MV: Triple human in air
Special 1: Lift victim hit with talons (save or brought to nest)
Special 2: When full, must pass a save to take to the air, and another not to break its nest with its own weight 

Lair: Cinnamon branch nest. High above in ancient pines. The ground below littered with feces, red-and-yellow feathers, pine cones and the bones of game. The nest itself an emperor’s ransom in cinnamon branches (worth 10d6 x 100 gp). 1d4-1 eggs, each enough for a week's worth of omelette.

Spoors: The smell of cinnamon, rotten meat, red-and-yellow feathers.

What is the cinomolgus doing?

1. Eating a still living goat
2. Circling above the pcs
3. Enticing a mate with its call and a trail of cinnamon bark
4. Teaching its young (1d4, stats as giant hawks) to fly
5. Fighting with jackals over a carcass
6. Wounded with lead arrows (Halp HP), a band of 2d6 hunters arrive within the hour.
   

1d6 facts about cinnamon hunters

1. Many belong to the Fragrant Society, a shadowy guild that supplies the over-indulged tastebuds of Canal gentry with the rare spices they require to be roused from their ennui
2. Some fashion light but tough breastplates (leather +1) from the speckled egg shells of their prey
   
3. They mimic the bird’s mating call with jet black shells
4. Fattened oxen used as bait make the bird too full to take to the sky
5. Leaden arrows are used to weigh down airborne birds
6. They are friendly to travellers, but known to use them as bird bait if the oxen runs out

Fail again. Fail better. On Anastasis and those who provide it.

A PC dies, a player is too attached to let go: Between the Twin Canals, there is one option readily available: The Fountain of Second Youth. Here, a fortune can buy you a second chance -- but only one. What used to be a privilege of the imperial family and the higher echelons of the Ouroborée sect, changing circumstances have made available to the very lucky and the very rich.

The Autumn Palace & The Ouroborites

The Fountain is located in the center of The Autumn Palace of the Ever-Younger Emperors. Once rivalling the splendor of Phobos, the palace and its surrounding city is now a wilderness of broken architecture. The ruins are filled with white haired pilgrims, and those who would prey on them: robbers, two-bit oracles, peddlers of tonics and petitions, tavern owners, jackals, ghouls. And above: clouds of vultures, sometimes blotting out the sun.

The millennia have not been kind to the Ouroborite faith. There was a time when the High Mehen’s words would traverse the Red Planet in mere weeks, and worshipers would flock to the favoured cult of the Ever-Younger Emperors. Today, the Ouroborites are just barely tolerated by public opinion, and the ever-younger are openly reviled, especially by their proper heirs. In more than one Canal state those who age backwards are denied their former possessions and the civic rights of proper burghers.

The Ouroborite's godhead, The Laughing Hyena, imploring you to do the most of your second chance at life.

The Lottery

Nonetheless, the stigma is braved by many who fear death. Every morning, throngs of the soon-to-be-departed flock around a peristyle in the centre of the palace, forming lines to present their sealed-envelope offerings to the dried up Fountain, still standing before the Toppled Throne. When evening comes, the offerings disappear, and someone is chosen (At random? According to some hidden logic? A never-ending argument among the hopeful supplicants) to undergo the Rite in the subterranean halls of the ouroborites. (For a generous donation (2000+ gp) and a vow of discretion, the wealthy can bypass the Fountain's holy lottery and undergo the Rite.)

The money collected fund the ouroborée orphanages and charities for the elderly, from whose lips acolyte-caretakers collect the infantile blabber and senile ruminations for their always expanding corpus of religious texts.

The Rite

What is known is this: The rejuvenation procedure is generally initiated on the still-living. It will work on those who have not been dead for longer than a fortnight. After the rejuvenation, the revived body will grow ever-younger, until it reaches Second Childhood and, beyond that, the death from which there is no return: Unparturition.

The cost is 2000 gp OR a 1% chance per 150 gp in a petition envelope.

Short-term consequences: 

• After the Rite, the rejuveniled character requires a week-long period of convalescence.
  

Long-term consequences:

• Ages backward from time of death.
  

• -2 on reaction rolls if exposed as an ever-younger.
  

• Save against death or suffer an alteration (1d8):
  

1. Suffers from frequent deja vus.
2. Always new, creepily small milk teeth.
3. Irrevocably bald
4. Nails grow at an alarming speed, turns into faux ivory claws (1d4) if not filed down every day.
5. Minor oracle; can predict one mundane occurrence in exchange for debilitating migraine for the rest of the day
6. Half of face wrinkled; half smooth as a newborn’s
7. Re-roll HP every morning; keep if lower.
8. Accelerated youthfulness. 1d12 years younger every lvl up until unborn. Choose +1 str or dex every lvl up.

The Limits of Anastasis & What Really Goes On

No one, not even the Ever-Younger Emperors, has been allowed to undergo the Rite more than once. The particulars of the Rite is a sought after secret, and worth a lot to the right buyer. It is guarded thus, by seasoned acolytes half-way to Second childhood. Below the Autumn Palace, in the ancient catacombs that were there before the palace was built and remained after it was sacked, one of the few remaining vats of the Rejuvenile Heresy whirrs, its secrets lost to time. The supplicant, if still alive, is drugged to death. Then, the body is bathed for a night in the vat, filled with a mixture of acrid smelling herbs and the collected spittle of Little Ancients.

The Dirty Horde

The reason why the sect forbids a second reversal is that a second resurrection inevitably spells disaster; a breaking down of patterns, the fraying of an already-frayed vitality. It spawns abominations -- bearded children of impossible age, senile milk toothed beings that not even Death will go near. This is not known: The ouroborites keep the little ones, the Dirty Horde, in the catacombs below. Tending to them is penance, the collecting of the Holy Water saliva a small encouragement for a never-ending work. And, incidentally, gives them the key ingredient for the Rite.

LITTLE ANCIENTS
No. Appearing: 14
HD: 1 AC: Unarmoured.
Attacks: Bite (1d4, raise the damage a die each round after the first as they grow more teeth)
Movement: Like a small child Saves: Not at all Morale: 12
Special: When HP reach zero they fall asleep for 1d12 rounds, then awake with replenished HP
Wants: Sweets, eternal rest, pulling living things apart.
Treasure: Drools holy water, 1 vial/turn.
Always followed: By the Keeper of the Dirty Hoard. At the moment, that would be Molter Benjin, a lvl 5 cleric armed with a stick, infinite patience and a sizable bag of sugar.