Tabletop Game / Arduin

Arduin is a tabletop game developed by David A. Hargrave as an early alternative to Dungeons & Dragons. Its first publications were self-published by Hargrave as a personal project to use alongside friends, but its popularity inspired him to publish it publicly. Material in the late 70s was published by Grimoire Games and by Dragon Tree Press in the mid-80s, before the property was purchased by Emperors Choice Games and Miniatures in the early 2000s. The last major publication was The Compleat Arduin in 1992, a collection of earlier material.

Arduin is branded as a Science Fantasy game mixing science-fiction, horror and historical elements with fantasy, although traditional High Fantasy remains the dominant influence.

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This game includes examples of:

• Achievements in Ignorance: Exaggerated with the ibathenes, which have the ability to keep fighting for a number of rounds after they're killed because they're genuinely too stupid to realize that they're supposed to be dead.
• Adjective Animal Alehouse
  • The Compleat Arduin version of Arduin Adventures: An illustration has a view of Elric's Castle as seen from Red Lantern Street. One of the buildings has a sign that says "The Dancing Termite", presumably an inn or tavern.
  • Supplement Arduin Grimoire Volume 2: Welcome to Skull Tower. The following inns and road houses can be found in Arduin towns and cities as well as independently.
    • Talismondé: The Dancing Termite, The Wild Whipporwill, The Fat Fox, The Scarlet Rooster, The Tourmaline Turtle, The Silent Canary, The Star Bear, The Merry Manticore, The Unique Unicorn, The benevolent Basilisk
    • Khurahaen: The Wanton Wombat, The Velvet Turtle, The Fabulous Frog, The Wild Wasp, The Green Goblin, The Iron Swan, The Wayward Wyvern, The Reluctant Turtle
    • Melkalund: The Silver Seal, The Sleepy Snake, The Timid Tiger, The Happy Harpy, The Adamantine Oliphaunt, The Lavender Lizard, The Emerald Dragon, The Phantom Firefly, The Wobbly Wookie
    • Nytharna: The Yellow Toad
    • Vorlnyaas: The Sapphire Salamander, The Carnelian Cat
    • Tara: The Wild Wolf
    • Watchtown: The Silent Serpent, The Fabulous Falcon
    • Bridgewater: The Royal Rabbit, The Rainbow Dragon
    • Lowbridge: The Happy Hobbit, The Opaline Ogre
    • Hobbiton: The Grumpy Griffon
    • Rosewater: The Drowned Rat, The Phantasmal Pheasant, The Golden Dove, The Prismatic Bat
    • Leiberton: The Red Worm, The Golden Gull
    • Quatermas: The Pack Rat
    • Bordertown: The Lost Hobbit
    • Ridgetown: The Golden Canary
    • Owl Valley: The Golden Goose II
    • Hillhaven: The Iron Horse
    • High Bridge: The Bowlegged Dragon
    • Small Harbour: The Prancing Porpoise
    • Stoop House: The Marmalade Monkey
    • Mickleby: The Iron Worm
    • Easterly: The Gilded Camel. The Diamond Parrot, The Mithril Medusa
    • Ox Haven: The Emerald Ox
    • Pavane: The Timid Poltergeist
    • Smallshire: The Jolly Giraffe
    • The Quarries: The Marble Wyvern
    • Independent road houses: The Flying Lion, The Flying Turtle, The Red Leopard, The Dancing Dolphin, The Lazy Leprechaun, The Flying Whale, The Prismatic Pheasant, The White Roc (in the Whispering Trees near Arkham), The Silver Frog, The Iron Spyder, The Smiling Wolf, The Flying Fox
• Armed Legs: Arduin Grimoire Volume 6: House of the Rising Sun. One weapon used by assassins is the kharkuu, a boot which can deploy three razor-sharp five inch long knives when triggered by the wearer's toes. The blades are usually poisoned. A second combination of toe movements will cause the blades to be discarded.
• An Ice Person: The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources includes a few variants on this theme:
  • Ice Demons are immune to cold and their claws and wings cause cold damage, respectively when they hit. They have a Breath Weapon of intense cold, and can reduce the air temperature in a fifteen-foot radius around them by 20 °F per melee round, to a minimum of -180 °F. While in this or a similar cold zone the demon has improved saves and its Strength and Hit Points are doubled. It can also create ice in any shape desired.
  • The Greater Demon Apharoe is immune to cold. The intense cold she radiates can cause weapons that hit her to break and if the weapon survives the being wielding it will suffer frostbite damage. She can fire beams of freezing energy from her fingertips, turn any creature she touches to ice once every three melee rounds and summon 100-300 Freeze Bees to do her bidding.
  • The Greater Demon Boreas' claws inflict 17-36 Hit Points of intense cold damage on a hit and create snowfall in a ten-foot radius that causes five to ten Hit Points of cold damage per melee round. He can also create snow storms once per day, likes to use ice magic and has all of the powers of a regular Ice Demon.
• Attack Reflector:
  • There are quite a few spells that can do this:
    • Yathagon's Perfect Dome of Dynamic Defense will cause any physical attack that moves at more than 1 foot per melee round to rebound on its source.
    • Caowyn's Spell Catcher Ritual can absorb incoming attack spells and send them back at their source at full effect.
    • Dathan's Ritual of the Pentagram of Prismatic Power causes all attacks and magik from demonic or elemental forces to be reflected back upon them.
    • Milton's Copper Prismatic Barrier Against Airs, Winds and Breaths reflects any airborne or windborne attack (including dragon's breath) back the way it came.
    • Matronya's Indigo Prismatic Barrier Against Stoning causes any Taken for Granite (petrifaction) attack to be sent back the way it came.
    • Avicenna's Ultraviolet Prismatic Barrier Against All Elementals sends the attacks of elementals (including efreets and djinn) back the way they came.
    • Oodroom's Green and Yellow Prismatic Barrier Against Non-Clerical Magic will reverse all non-clerical magikal attacks and send them back the way they came.
    • Vierkant's Ultimate Prismatic Barrier causes all magik (with a few exceptions) to rebound upon its source at triple strength and with no saving throw.
  • Reflector Salve is rubbed onto objects. When any form of magik hits it, 1-100% of the magikal effect is reflected back at the source.
  • Several Greater Demons can bounce hostile magic back at their attackers:
    • If shapechanging magic is used on Boak Chaos Hoof, it will rebound on the caster with a penalty applied to the caster's chance to resist it.
    • All death magic used on Boreas the Winter Demon bounces back on the caster.
    • Any death magic used on Dagonus the Death Dragon will be reflected back on the caster.
    • When used against Iphang, the Lord of the Yellow Horde, attacks that cause disintegration, petrifaction or confusion are reflected back on the source.
    • Urandos, the Blizzard Queen, reflects all cold and lightning attacks back at their source.
  • If a medusa sees its face in a mirror or other reflective surface its petrifaction power will rebound on itself and turn it to stone.
  • Violet dragons have an aura that reflects a random amount of incoming magic back at its source if the dragon makes its MRS (Magik Resistance Score) roll.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Blue bellowers are beetles the size of elephants.
• Blob Monster: Arduin has quite a few of these. All have a semi-liquid composition and ooze around, attacking any living creatures they can find and catch. There is also Shuggondra the Bloated One, a greater demon resembling a huge white mass of squirming, quivering, translucent flesh with various protuberances (pods, nodules, tentacles etc.) sticking out of it.
• Breath Weapon:
  • Demons:
    • Fire demons can breathe out a cone of violet flame thirty feet long and ten once every three melee rounds.
    • Ice demons can exhale a freezing cloud that blinds all inside it and deals cold damage.
    • Night demons can breathe a fifteen-foot-long and three-foot-wide tongue of black flame that causes sixty Hit Points of damage and permanently takes away two points of Constitution.
    • The Greater Demon Amon-Rha can breathe out a cloud of poisonous gas up to eight times per day.
    • The Greater Demon Boak Chaos Hoof can breathe out a cloud of chlorine gas that, in addition to standard damage, causes any victim with less than thirty Hit Points to choke to death after one melee round of exposure.
    • Dagonus the Death Dragon can generate a 180-foot-long lightning bolt or ninety-foot-long cone of flame.
    • The Greater Demon Nagandas, Lord of the Sea Serpents, can breathe out jets of high-pressure water.
    • The Greater Demon Shabaleth, the Dread Elf, can breathe a cone of flames.
    • The Greater Demon Urandos, the Blizzard Queen, can breathe out a cone of freezing air.
  • The tarakk, a giant horned lizard, can breathe out a cone of fire ninety feet long and fifteen wide at the end that inflicts damage equal to the Tarakk's own Hit Points.
  • Wyvergons breathe out a petrifying gas.
  • Yellow dragons breathe deadly nerve gas that either kills or incapacitates victims. It also temporarily blinds any creature in it as well as having a chance for the blinding to be permanent.
• Brown Note:
  • The Hell cat's bone-rattling caterwauling causes intense fear in all creatures within 60 feet.
  • The sun demon's movement causes a squealing and groaning like tortured metal that inflicts a -5 penalty of the combat abilities of all creatures within 30 feet.
• Burn the Undead: Driches take 50% extra damage from fire.
• Combat Tentacles:
  • Demons:
    • The acid fiend has thirteen-foot-long pseudopods that each do 5-20 Hit Points of damage per hit.
    • The creeping doom's pseudopods are fifteen feet long, inflict 7-12 Hit Points damage, and drain one point of Constitution and up to three of Strength.
    • Swamp Demons have thirteen-foot-long tentacles that hit for 9-16 Hit Points of physical damage and 1d6 Hit Points of rotting damage. Thereafter they constrict for 13-24 Hit Points of damage and three Hit Points of rotting damage per melee round.
    • The Greater Demon Groak, the Lord of the Swamps, has thirteen tentacles on its head. One is on each side of its mouth: they are 20 feet long and do 7-12 Hit Points of impact damage and 29-48 Hit Points of constriction damage. The other 11 tentacles are six feet long and do 1-10 Hit Points of impact damage and 17-36 Hit Points of constriction damage. A hit by either type of tentacle requires any target with 280 Hit Points or less to make a saving throw vs. paralysis or be paralyzed for 21-40 minutes, with 1 melee round of paralysis even if they save. In addition, Groak's body secretes an acid that causes 21-40 Hit Points of damage per melee round of contact.
    • The Greater Demon Vathaak Troll Heart has three 8-foot long snake-like tentacles that can hit opponents for 11-20 Hit Points of damage. The next round they can wrap around the victim they struck and do 21-30 Hit Points of constriction/crushing damage thereafter. Once per melee round he can extend his tentacles up to 30 feet away to surprise an opponent who thought he was out of range.
  • Moutharms are large anemone-like amphibious plants with 11-20 tentacles that are up to 24 feet long. A hit by a tentacle paralyzes most living creatures for 11-20 minutes, and the tentacles are sticky so it's hard for even a non-paralyzed victim to escape.onents before pulling them to its mouth and swallowing them whole. The cilia paralyze almost all living creatures they touch.
  • Star spiders have between five and twenty-four thirteen-foot-long tentacles that each do 1-12 Hit Points of damage on a hit and 4-16 Hit Points of constriction damage thereafter.
  • Several Blob Monsters have pseudopods that can attack opponents, including emerald oozes (1-10, each does 4-40 Hit Points damage), blue slimes (1-3, 10 feet long, do 2-12 Hit Points corrosion damage), chartreuse slimes (1-5, each does 1-8 Hit Points acid damage), gold slimes (x1, does 3-6 Hit Points damage and drains 1 point of Constitution) and white slimes (1-20, 13 feet long, paralyzes living tissue and does 60 Hit Points of damage per melee round).
  • Red wraiths are skeletal undead with two thirteen-foot-long oozy black tentacles. Each tentacle hit does 1-20 Hit Points of damage and drains 1-2 points of the victim's Constitution.
• Creepy Centipedes: The yellow peril is a bright yellow centipede up to twenty-seven feet long, with a venomous bite and a Super Spit acid spray.
• Dash Attack: When charging its prey, the Black Lion can move at triple normal speed and has an increased chance to hit.
• Deadly Force Field: Phandelume's Spell of the Sphere of Doom contracts at a rate of three feet per melee round. Any creature trapped within it is pulverized and incinerated.
• Disintegrator Ray:
  • Spells:
    • Sarta Nor's Spell of Deadly Disintegration fires a beam of intense energy that disintegrates anything its strikes.
    • Elrik's Spell of Magik Metal Disintegration creates a cone of rippling red energy that destroys all magikal items it hits.
  • Adamantine golems can fire a cone of disintegration that does 100 Hit Points of damage a pop and disintegrates creatures it kills.
• Doppelgänger Spin: Landular's Multiple Image Spell allows the caster to create up to three illusory images of themselves. They move with the caster, doing everything the caster does.
• Elixir of Life: Every midnight, the Silver Chalice of Life fills with a mead that adds one day to the drinker's life. Consequently, its owner will have unending life as long as they possess the Chalice and drink from it daily.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows:
  • A number of spells use or create rainbows as part of their effects.
    • Sporling's Wall of Whimsey creates a wall of pulsing rainbow light that confuses anyone who passes through it.
    • Santander's Wasp Conjuration summons a rainbow-colored wasp that can be used to attack creatures.
    • Jastrakahn's Conjuration of the Resplendent Repulsion Area: A rainbow colored glow emanates from the caster.
    • Stafford's Star Bridge Ritual creates abridge of coruscating rainbow-hued light that can be walked upon.
    • Tokkrang's Star Bore creates a rainbow-hued energy stream that massively damages anything it hits.
    • Goraling's Ritual of the Opening Gate creates a shimmering, rainbow-colored half-oval archway.
    • Arturo's Rainbow Spray generates a bright rainbow-colored burst of light.
  • Dream Dust is a rainbow-colored metallic dust.
  • Monsters:
    • A star dragon's Breath Weapon is a 1,000 foot long rainbow-hued beam that disintegrates anything it hits. Likewise, every scale on its body glows with all the colors of the rainbow.
    • A shimmerling is a Faerie with rainbow colored wings that can fire a faery bolt (rainbow-hued burst of energy) up to 66 feet away.
    • Dyrdyrions are bright metallic red dragonflies 8-9 feet long with compound eyes that glow every color of the rainbow.
• Exotic Entree: Dirty Dorg's restaurant (a haven for evil creatures) has a menu featuring the meat of various monsters, including those of good-aligned creatures such as unicorn and hobbit.
• Eye Beams:
  • Iphang, the Lord of the Yellow Horde, can fire a brilliant green ray of intense heat from his eye once per melee round up to thirteen times in a row. After that it can only be fired once per minute until he doesn't use it (allowing it to rest) for thirty minutes.
  • Karong the Lord of Slime has three large glowing eyes colored red, yellow and green. Once each melee round each eye can send out a beam of the source eye's color; the red ray causes burning damage, the yellow ray causes rotting damage and the green ray causes paralysis.
• Fireball Eyeballs:
  • Red wraiths, a type of skeletal undead, have dancing red-black flames for eyes.
  • Star dragon eyes are described as twin suns of raging crimson flames.
• Flying Seafood Special: Air sharks and air squid are precisely what they sound like — otherwise normal versions of usually marine creatures that happen to swim around in midair. They do this by means of stores of lighter-than-air gasses stored in their bodies, which tend to have... explosive... reactions to lightning. There are also skyrays, which look like flying mantas but are actually flying fungus creatures.
• Food Chain of Evil: The ibathene was introduced for the specific purpose of providing a monster tougher than dragons, so as to provide something even tougher than the archetypal top monster of fantasy games. The result is an immense, reptilian beast strong enough to comfortably hunt and eat dragons and other powerful monsters — in fact, ibathenes hunted dragons to extinction in certain regions of the world.
• Freeze Ray: Arduin Trilogy Volume III: The Runes of Doom. If a living target takes 100% of its Hit Points in damage from an icer weapon (hand, rifle or semi-portable), it will be frozen solid.
• Giant Enemy Crab: The ghost crab is a giant crab with up to eighty Hit Points and two Power Pincers that each do four to forty-eight Hit Points of damage and drain a point of Constitution on each hit.
• Giant Spider: Spiders routinely reach colossal sizes, often pairing their increased physical strength with powerful venoms.
  • Giant tarantulas are black, hairy spiders six to eight feet long with a leg span of up to twenty-four feet.
  • Web widows resemble black widow spiders up to seven feet long, and can cast illusion spells.
  • The snow spider can grow nearly as large as a full-grown horse and their poison can cause permanent blindness.
  • Star spiders get to be between ten and twelve feet wide and long, possess Combat Tentacles and can swallow human-sized victims whole.
  • Spiga are spiders that can grow as large as a school bus.
  • The Greater Demon Calyandagg, the Lord of the Spiders, takes the form of a spider the size of a Greyhound bus. He does devastating damage in close combat, including a acid-like venom that he can inject with his fangs and well as a Super Spit.
• Glowing Gem
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 2: Welcome to Skull Tower: The gems known as Sun Drops glow with the warmth of the sun.
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 6: House of the Rising Sun.
    • The three magical gems known as the Foxfire Triplets glow a fiery orange color in the dark.
    • The center of the magical gem "Ghozer's Eye" glows with a red color similar to that of dawn at sea.
  • The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources:
    • The Witch Fire Wand is tipped with a glowing sapphire the size of a golf ball.
    • The Greater Demon Zyrax, the Dark Oracle has a large magickal ring carved from a single ruby that glows with its own fire.
• Healing Factor:
  • Greater Demons:
    • Nagandas, Lord of the Sea Serpents, regenerates six Hit Points of normal damage per melee round. He also regains one point of lost Strength, Constitution or Life Energy level once per minute to a maximum of eighteen points per day.
    • The Nameless One heals damage done to it at a rate of ten Hit Points per melee round.
    • Any damage done to Shuggondra the Bloated One is healed at a rate of eight Hit Points per melee round.
    • Vorcas Hell Jaws can regenerate damage at a rate of six Hit Points per melee round. He can also regain up to twenty lost points each of Strength and Constitution per day at a rate of one point per round.
  • Angelic beings (angels, maruts, etc.) heal five Hit Points per melee round.
• Hellhound: Hellhounds are infernal dogs with glowing red eyes, live on the Tenth Plane of Hell, are utterly without fear and relentlessly attack other creatures.
• Holy Burns Evil: Most demons or undead take additional damage from contact with materials such as Holy Water, which may inhibits regeneration as well.
• Horn Attack:
  • The boogie man undead has two horns that each do 4-12 Hit Points of damage and drain 1-4 points of Strength.
  • Chimeras can gore opponents with the horns on its goat head, doing 5-12 Hit Points of damage.
  • Oronts are crosses between rhinos and minotaurs provided with three horns that they can use to attack foes.
  • Satyrs can headbutt foes with their small horns, doing 1-3 Hit Points damage.
  • A Unicorn can stab and impale with its horn, doing 7-16 Hit Points of damage with a 20% chance of a critical hit.
• Hostile Weather: Weather can include blizzards, windstorms up to 70 m.p.h., heavy rain, thunderstorms and lightning, blistering heat (up to 120 °F), intense cold (down to -40 °F) and hail storms, and that's just on land. At sea weather can be waterspouts, typhoons and hurricanes.
• Immune to Mind Control:
  • A unicorn can never be mentally controlled, geased or mesmerized.
  • Angelic beings are immune to being mesmerized, geased or put under the psychic control of another creature.
• Intangibility: The Greater Demon Boak Chaos Hoof can pass through solid objects like a ghost, even while carrying a rider.
• Intrinsic Vow:
  • The spell Aura of Command will cause the target to carry out any order given to it unless the command is "fundamentally contrary to the essence of their being".
  • The bond of love between a Bigglie and its master is so strong that the Bigglie cannot be affected by mystik charms, geas or suggestions.
• Kill and Replace: The doppelganger is a quasi-living magical creation made to look like a specific target creature. It's designed to seek out, murder and take the place of that creature, and it does this very well.
• Killer Rabbit: Killkittens resemble normal kittens, but are actually cunning pack predators whose hollow claws can inject a paralytic poison. Their normal procedure is to set one of their number as bait to attract a potential victim by acting like an injured kitten, while the remainder of the pack lurks, hidden, nearby. When the unsuspecting schmuck picks the "kitten" up, it paralyzes him with its venom and the rest of the pack swarms and eats him.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • One of the few ways to permanently destroy a mummy is to chop it to pieces and burn the pieces to ashes.
  • In order to permanently destroy a zombie and set its soul free to go to its destination, it must be burned to ashes and buried in consecrated ground.
• Lightning Gun: Arduin Trilogy Volume III: The Runes of Doom. Lightning Guns (hand and rifle) fire a bolt of lightning that does electrical shock damage to their target.
• Living Gasbag: Airsharks have hydrogen gas bladders that allow them to swim through the air the way normal sharks swim through water. Fire-based attacks and lightning strikes will both cause them to explode.
• Medusa: Chaeronyx are medusa centaurs, pairing the typical snake hair and petrifying gaze with a horse's body in place of human legs.
• Mighty Roar: Blue bellowers are immense beetles know and named for their propensity for roaring loudly enough to deafen people close to them.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Vroats have the bodies of gigantic toads and the heads of crocodiles.
• Monowheel Mayhem: Dungeon #1 Caliban has a magikal construct called a "Warwheel" that ranges from 10-24 feet high. It takes the shape of a wheel with conical spikes coming out of the tread with a large eye and a long tentacle in the hub on each side.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous:
  • Earth demons have four long arms that each do 11-30 Hit Points of damage per hit.
  • Storm demons have four arms, each of which inflicts 9-16 Hit Points of physical damage per hit. Once per 2 melee turns each of its attacks can do an additional 13-24 Hit Points of electrical damage.
  • The Greater Demon Tankras has four arms that each wield a weapon — a seven-foot-long golden sword, a seven-foot-long silver battle axe, a spiked maul and flaming darts that can be thrown up to 900 yards.
• Multipurpose Tongue: An ibathene's tongue is long, prehensile and very strong, and their owners typically open fights by wrapping them around their targets, attempting to both crush them and drag them towards their mouths.
• Orichalcum: The spell "Gandolyn's Gates" traps a person in a tower of orichalcum.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Chaeronyx are centaurs with the upper bodies of Medusas, with rocky skin, a nest of vipers for hair and a petrifying gaze.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: In addition to regular wyverns, there are tryverns, wyverns with three heads and three tails, and wyvergons, fat and wingless wyvern/gorgon hybrids that breathe a petrifying gas.
• Partial Transformation: Metamorphs are a type of Shapeshifter that can change to any of three possible forms: human, 1 type of animal, and a human/animal hybrid.
• Pit Trap: In The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources' Random Traps table, the Floor section has many of these, filled with a variety of contents: Spikes of Doom, monsters, pools of acid, a 1,000 foot drop, mechanical grinders, molten lava, boiling mud, quicklime and dragon dung.
• Plant Hair: Perrinites are a crossbreed between elves and dryads that have plants and flowers where their hair should be.
• Poison Is Corrosive:
  • A black dragon's tail stinger injects an acid-like venom that does 3-30 Hit Points of damage.
  • The Greater Demon Calyandagg has an acid-like venom that can do up to 100 Hit Points of damage when he injects it into a victim.
  • The Greater Demon Groak can spit a ten-foot diameter blob of slimy acid up to 60 feet away. If it isn't treated within three minutes, the victim will start taking 6 Hit Points of poison damage per melee round for the next 1-10 melee rounds.
• Power Pincers:
  • Great black scorpions can grow larger than a Sherman tank and have huge dangerous claws.
  • The ghost crab is a Giant Enemy Crab with two pincers that each do 4-48 Hit Points of damage and drain a point of Constitution on each hit.
  • The Greater Demon Carchanore the Death Mole has two nine-foot long arms ending in large crab-like pincers that can inflict 31-50 Hit Points of damage.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Kill Kittens look like normal kittens. They pretend to have broken limbs and use whimpering and their big soulful eyes to lure victims into picking them up.
• Rapid Aging:
  • "Chastarade's Spell of the Stone That Weeps in Silence" causes a creature to turn into a boulder. If the target makes its saving throw, it ages 20 years instead.
  • Larissa's Conjuration of the Singing Sands of Time creates a whirlwind. Any creature that touches or is touched by the whirlwind immediately ages 1-10 years.
  • After several minutes in direct sunlight, a vampyre will swiftly progress to its true age and crumble into dust if it's older than its birth species' maximum lifespan.
  • When a creature touches or is touched by the Greater Demon Caphaoryn, it will wither and age 11-20 years. Any creature that dies because of this aging will rise as a ghost under Caphaoryn's control.
  • Any living creature that the Greater Demon Ralkul touches ages 1-10 years.
  • One of the random results of Table 81A Whimsy and Table 93 heck Spiral Transit Failure is to add the result of (maximum lifespan x 1-100%) to the creature's current age. E.g. Bob is 30 years old, has a maximum lifespan of 120 years and rolls a 50 on d100. He adds (.5 x 120) = 60 to his current age and instantly becomes 90 years old. If he had rolled a 75 or higher he would have added 90+ years to his current 30 years, thus exceeding his lifespan and immediately dying of old age.
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 4: The Lost Grimoire. The Hell Mouth monster can breathe out hellfire (a bright orange flame) that causes living beings to age 1-100 years instantly.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Arduin Grimoire. Deodanths are black 6-7 foot tall humanoids with flaming red eyes. They can rip an ordinary human being to pieces in seconds.
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 6: House of the Rising Sun. The Old God named Molodahr has smoldering scarlet eyes and is truly vile and evil, being a deity of the goblin races (including orcs) and trolls.
  • Arduin Dungeon #2 The Howling Tower has a deadly steel tiger monster with red eyes.
  • The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources:
    • Night demons are cruel, untrustworthy and are devoted to killing all non-demonic creatures. Their eyes are like blazing pools of scarlet flame.
    • The Greater Demon Abbadon has a single ruby red eye that shines like the light of an oncoming train. He is the Locust Lord of Hell and demands the sacrifice of 13 intelligent beings in return for providing the services of his Demon Locusts.
    • The Greater Demon Arioch Death Tongue is a Lord of Hell with a single glowing eye that looks like a faceted ruby. He is summoned by anyone who wants help with assassination and other forms of murder.
    • The Greater Demon Gorog-Nor, the Hungry One, has 9 saucer-shaped red eyes and lives on the 11th Plane of Hell. He can mimic the voices of creatures he eats: he uses this ability to lure the victim's friends to him so he can devour them as well.
    • The Greater Demon Tyl-Rhaen the Hound of Doom is a six legged monster with a venomous bite. Once on the trail it is a Super-Persistent Predator, able to track its victim without fail regardless of anything. It never gets tired, never gives up and always tracks down its prey.
    • The drich has glowing, dull red eyes. They are evil beings that survive by drinking the blood and eating the hearts of living, sentient beings during a horrible ritual. Each victim sustains them for a week, so they spend all their time hunting down new ones.
    • The fury is a red-eyed gargoyle/harpy hybrid that hates all other creatures and viciously attacks without any real reason. They are untrustworthy, have vile habits and no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
    • The eyes of hellhounds are "red lanterns glowing like the very gates of Hell".
    • The ibathene is a giant reptile capable of preying on dragons, with a single huge red eye on an eyestalk.
    • Madwings are an insanely chaotic type of faerie with red eyes that cruelly torture and slay any creatures that enter their domain.
    • Morghuuls are a type of undead with blood-red eyes and their touch causes paralysis and rot.
    • The quarl is a feline as large as a tiger, with a blazing red cyclopean eye. It's vicious, cunning and totally without fear, as well as being a Super-Persistent Predator that stalks its prey for days.
    • Red wraiths are soulless undead skeletons that were once priests of the dreaded Elder Gods. These abominations are evil incarnate, consort with demons and other foul things and exist only to destroy. They have dancing red-black flames for eyes.
    • Spectres are former evil mages or priests who made pacts with demons for eternal life. They have red fire where their eyes should be.
    • Spiga are spiders that can grow as large as a school bus, have glowing ruby red eyes, are highly intelligent and can use magik. They come from the 4th Plane of Hell and are faithful followers of the evil god Shaggrath the Red Moon Spyder.
    • Star dragon eyes are described as twin suns of crimson raging flames.
    • Star spiders are ugly creatures with long Combat Tentacles that constrict their victims. Opponents that are sucked or pulled into their mouths are destroyed by heat and radiation, which also consumes the victim's soul. They have a single glaring red eye like the headlamp of a giant train.
    • The vampyre is a powerful undead, the Arduin version of Our Vampires Are Different, with eyes that become blazing red when it's angry.
    • The windego is a tornado-like creature from the 18th plane of Hell with two glowing, dull red eyes.
    • Wobra are green bat-winged cobras with ruby red eyes. Their bite injects a deadly venom that they can also Super Spit up to 30 feet away. They flock like birds and go into a shark-like feeding frenzy when they smell blood.
    • Yellow dragons have have bright ruby red eyes.
    • Yeti are large carnivorous humanoids with blazing crimson eyes.
• Scary Scorpions: Great black scorpions can grow larger than a Sherman tank. They have dangerous Power Pincers and a deadly poisonous sting.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 4: The Lost Grimnoire. Illyander's Spell of the Infinite Eyes allows the caster to see through the eyes of the target of the spell for 13 minutes. The spell works no matter how far apart the caster and target are.
  • The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources
    • The spell Marlyn's Conjuration of the Mighty, Mystikal Mouse creates a magical mouse. While concentrating, the caster of the spell can see, hear and smell anything the mouse can.
    • Perrinites are a crossbreed between Elves and Dryads that can see and hear using the senses of forest birds, allowing the birds to be used as scouts and spies.
• Shout-Out
  • The Arduin Grimoire Volume 2: Welcome to Skull Tower. Some of the names of owners of inns and road houses: Carley Simon (Carly Simon), Pohl Asimov (Frederik Pohl, Isaac Asimov), Katherine Campbell (Katherine MacLean, John W. Campbell), Captain Hook, Vincent Price and Trader Vic (Trader Vic's).
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 4: The Lost Grimoire. The monster known as Falkynor (AKA the Luck Dragon) has mother-of-pearl scales, a dog-like head, a pink tongue, large floppy ears, and long white fur. It also has the power of "luck". In short, it is Falkor, the Luck Dragon from the film The Neverending Story.
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 6: House of the Rising Sun
    • The name of the magical Glowing Gem "Ghozer's Eye" comes from the evil deity Gozer the Gozerian in Ghostbusters (1984).
    • The Old God named Pygahr (The Fallen One) is a beautiful hemaphroditic humanoid with blond hair and angel-type white-feathered wings. It is based on the character Pygar in the film Barbarella, a humanoid angel with blond hair and white-feathered wings.
  • Arduin Dungeon #3: The Citadel of Thunder. In one room is a pool of magical black water that paralyzes elves and kills dwarves when they touch it. It is named "the Mhathmos", a reference to the film Barbarella. In that film, the Mathmos is a pool of liquid living evil energy under the city of Sogo. If it is ever released, it will destroy Sogo.
  • The Compleat Arduin Book 2 Resources
    • The magikal Ring of Rapid Transit has the strange sigil BART engraved on it. BART is an acronym for Bay Area Rapid Transit, the heavy rail and subway system serving the San Francisco Bay Area.
    • The Star Spider monster has many long Combat Tentacles and a single glaring eye, can suck opponents into its mouth and destroy them with fire and radiation (spitting out its victims' remains afterwards), lives in abandoned/wrecked spacecraft and can only be destroyed by attacking its eye. Any victim that escapes from it has nightmares about it and it will teleport as necessary to encounter the victim again. In short, it is the monster from the Space: 1999 episode "Dragon's Domain" in all respects.
    • When the monster known as the Thermite digs underground it makes the sound of frying bacon. In the Robert A. Heinlein novel Starship Troopers, when the Bugs (Arachnids) dig their underground tunnels, it makes a sound like frying bacon that can be picked up by the Mobile Infantry's listening devices.
• Spike Shooter:
  • The spinthaak is a giant land-dwelling sea urchin. It can fire up to twenty of its spines at a time, and has a total of 120 available.
  • The teleport rose can fire up to twenty of its thorns up to twenty feet away, doing one to seven Hit Points of damage per hit.
• Spit Out a Shoe: Creatures eaten by star spiders are sucked into their mouths and destroyed by heat and radiation. Afterwards, the spider spits out the victim's charred spinal column, rib cage and skull.
• Super-Persistent Predator
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 4: The Lost Grimoire
    • The Bloodbeast can sense its prey up to 50 miles away. Once it starts hunting a target, it is untiring and will follow its prey relentlessly.
    • Howlfiends are monsters from the 21st plane of Hell. Once they choose a quarry, they will track it relentlessly and tirelessly until they catch up to it.
  • The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources
    • The Quarl is a feline as large as a tiger, with incredibly keen senses of smell and hearing. It is vicious, cunning and totally without fear, and is known for stalking its prey for days.
    • The Silver Slyth monster can track any creature by scent even if the trail is up to ten days old. Once it starts tracking its prey, it will not stop until it catches it or the trail becomes more than ten days old. They feel no pain and never tire, so they usually catch the target.
• Super Spit: A variant form of the Maggoth giant slug can spit up to 60 feet with a 10% chance to hit the first time and 50% thereafter. Its spittle does 72-216 Hit Points of damage.
• Swallowed Whole:
  • The boomer is a type of giant frog that can swallow victims that have up to three times its own Hit Points.
  • The gworm is a giant black earthworm up to 300 feet long. On a successful hit, any target with less than 50 Hit Points is swallowed and takes 4-48 Hit Points of acid damage while in the monster's stomach.
  • The hell hopper is a frog up to the size of a small horse that uses its tongue to drag victims to its mouth and swallow them.
  • The ibathene is a giant reptile (up to 400 feet long) with a tongue up to forty feet long. Its victims are dragged to its mouth by its tongue, suffer a vicious bite (up to eight Hit Points of damage) and are swallowed whole. The victim takes up to forty Hit Points of damage from stomach acid.
  • The maggoth is a giant slug that has a 75% chance of swallowing any creature with Hit Points less than or equal to 1/2 the maggoth's total and a 25% chance of swallowing larger creatures. Its stomach juices do 3-36 Hit Points of damage to the victim. A snow maggoth can swallow any creature that has Hit Points equal to or less than its own.
  • Muckwurms can pull a victim into their maw and swallow it. Once in its stomach the victim takes 1-8 Hit Points of damage per melee round.
  • The silver slyth has Combat Tentacles that it uses to grab and crush its opponents before pulling them to its mouth and swallowing them whole. Its stomach acids to 11-20 Hit Points of damage to the flesh of swallowed victims.
• Taken for Granite:
  • "Chastarade's Spell of the Stone That Weeps in Silence" causes a creature to turn into a boulder and remain conscious the entire time they're in boulder form, which can be years.
  • Medahlia's Mist of Mystic Stone creates an area of fog that causes all creatures in it to slowly turn to stone. Once petrified, the victims remain stone for 1-100 hours and then either return to normal or die.
    • The krag spider has a poisonous bite that turns victims to stone. They can eat their victims because their saliva changes petrified creatures back to flesh a bite at a time.
    • The wyvergon is a cross between a wyvern and a gorgon. Its Breathweapon is a gas that turns creatures to stone.
• Tele-Frag: If the caster of Tandoora's Teleportation Spell rolls a miss and ends up in a solid object (like a ceiling or a floor) they suffer immediate and permanent death.
• Teleportation:
  • Tandoora's Teleportation Spell allows its caster to, well, teleport, although it comes with the risk of landing inside a solid object.
  • The ninthla is a pea-sized Mutant spider that can teleport up to one mile three times per day. Its favorite tactic is to teleport inside its target's clothing/armor and inflict a bite that injects a poison that either kills or renders the victim catatonic.
• Vampiric Draining:
  • Demons:
    • Hellflash demons attack targets with bolts of electrical energy and devour the victim's soul when it dies.
    • The Greater Demon Apharoe can drain the soul of a victim by kissing them for two consecutive melee rounds.
    • The Greater Demon Sl'yth can use its psychic powers to suck another creature's flesh off its bones and devour it. If the victim dies from this Sl'yth will also consumes its soul.
  • The drich are evil undead that survive by drinking the blood and eating the hearts of living, sapient beings during a horrible ritual. Each victim sustains them for a week, so they spend all their time hunting down new ones.
  • Liches must drain the Life Energy of a sapient being at least once every thirteen days or become unable to move.
  • Rakshasha (sic) can rend with their claws and bite with their fanged jaws. While doing so they psychically drain and devour their victim's soul.
  • Star spiders are about 10-12 feet wide and long. Opponents that are sucked or pulled into their mouths are destroyed by heat and radiation at a rate of 51-100 Hit Points per combat round, which also consumes the victim's soul.
• Voice Changeling: The Greater Demon Gorog-Nor can mimic the voices of creatures he eats. He uses this ability to lure the victim's friends to him so he can devour them as well.
• Weakened by the Light:
  • Nightmares can regenerate all damage they take at a rate of three Hit Points per melee round except that caused by light-based attacks. They can only regenerate light-based damage on the Ethereal Plane and only at a rate of one Hit Point per hour.
  • Banshees can't stand sunlight and flee from any kind of light produced by priest magic.
  • Boogie men can regenerate all types of damage except that caused by light-based attacks.
  • Shadows take double damage from all light-based attacks.
  • Direct sunlight hurts the eyes of vampyres and can cause blindness. After 11-20 melee rounds of exposure the vampyre will go into a coma. After several more minutes in the light the vampyre will suffer Rapid Aging to its true age and will crumble into dust if it's older than its maximum lifespan.
• Wendigo: The windego is a tornado-like creature from the 18th plane of Hell that grows up to 300 feet tall, with glowing red eyes.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve:
  • Arduin Grimoire Volume 2: Welcome to Skull Tower: The Red, Blue and White moons form a triangle in the sky at midnight on the 12th and 13th days of the month of Torvaen. Every other year, the 25 hour period between the two phenomena is the Night of the Long Death, the Black Equinox, when the dead rise from their graves and walk the land.
  • The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources: At midnight each day, the magikal Silver Chalice of Life will fill with a mead that will add one day to the drinker's life. In other words, the owner will have unending life as long as they possess the Chalice.
• A Year and a Day: Milton's Ritual of Slime Control takes a year and a day of intense study to master.

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