Santicorn 2019: Creatures Amidst the Ash

James Young, the wonderful organiser of this years Santicorn, had the following request:

Every few weeks, a poisonous fog that turns all organic life it touches to ash sweeps over the land. What creatures have evolved to survive in this hostile place?

Well done to all the other participants!

Kludge-Gubble: a depressed ash-ling frog made from slain creatures

Exactly like this, but dry and powdery instead of slimy

What can be said about the kludge-gubble that hasn’t already been said by itself? The frog-shaped creature can be heard above the desolate wind once the Fog has passed, croaking “Woe! Woe is me!” to anyone that will hear. Nobody will hear. Because they’re all dead. You hear that kludge-gubble? It’s not all that bad. Kludge-gubbles vary in size from ordinary frog, all the way up to bull-sized sedentary brutes. If torn to shreds, each individual part has approximately 50% chance of becoming a new "baby" kludge.

As far as anyone can tell, kludge-gubbles are composed almost entirely of the ash produced by creatures killed in the Fog. They have the nutritional capacity of boiled mud and their mournful croaking is enough to turn the stomach. Nonetheless, croc-vultures have been observed to land and shred the helpless beasts out of simple spite. Isn’t nature wonderful?

Helicorose: An incredibly delicate flower, that spins to produce clear air

Probably invented by a wizard as some strange attraction, this flower is otherwise helpless against common pests, and would never normally survive in the world. In the ash-washed landscapes post-Fog, free of weeds or any pests, the helicorose can flower. Looking like a mix between an orchid, an avant-garde wind-powered sculpture and a windmill, it spins constantly producing a consistent bubble of clear air directly adjacent to the main stem.

Amidst the desolation wrought by the Fog, gobabbits and croc-vultures often form an uneasy truce. Then more and more of the creatures flee into the cramped bubble. One of them is pushed, knocking into the helicorose… which explodes. The delicate flower shatters into crystalline fragments, the Fog rushes in, and kills everything sheltering within the bubble of air.

Nobody knows how the helicorose grows, or how it could be produced in a more resilient form. All anyone knows is, two can share a helicorose, but three will always break it.

Gobabbits: Half rabbit, half goblin, all dreadful

Like this but worse. Credit Jonathan Fletcher

Each gobabbit has 1d6 limbs, 1d6 eyes, and 1d4 mouths. They are only barely functional creatures, but that is their one redeeming feature: survival through disorganisation. Indisputably an evolutionary mistake, gobabbits take all the worst parts of a goblin and all the worst parts of a rabbit, somehow creating something more dreadful than the sum of its parts

They are busy and confused creatures, and can be seen squirming up from ash-covered hatching grounds within moments of the Fogs passing. Foraging for scraps, fighting, laying their foul rubbery eggs and... mating, make up their entire short lives, before dying in some manner or another. They are incredibly resilient to disease and injury, being composed mostly of undifferentiated cancer-like tissues. Even so, they are squashed, crushed, carried off by croc-vultures, burnt in steam-vents and fall of cliffs by their hundreds. They are an unavoidable pest, unfarmable, untameable, and generally obnoxious.

Someone who survives the death of the rest of their group by hiding in corpses, throwing themselves off a high ledge, or simply fleeing naked into the darkness, is often referred to as a "gobabbit". It's a mixed insult/accolade, to be sure.

Nuclear Albatross

Perhaps there is only one nuclear albatross. Perhaps it is the first or last of its species. Maybe it is a scout from another planet or eon, sent to observe the devastation we have wrought on ourselves.  Whatever the case, this creature is perfectly capable of spending months on the wing, high above the Fog, warming the wind beneath their wings with the radioactive heat pouring between their lead ribcage.

What does the nuclear albatross have in its mouth?

1. A ponds-worth of rare, possibly extinct fish
2. A merchant, who made a very bad deal
3. A nuclear albatross chick. So cute, only slightly radioactive, very hungry
4. Twelve ingots of +1 magic metal
5. A croc-vulture that has just woken up. Surprise!
6. Water-proof grimoire and an asphyxiated wizard

Death Slime

The humble ooze, normally so resilient, was wiped out almost completely by the Fog. Only one midnight-black subspecies was capable of surviving the onslaught, and has grown to fill the ecological and geological niches that are scattered about the Fog-stricken plains. Capable of dying, desiccating and reviving seemingly at-will, the motile slime is one of the first creatures seen moving just after the Fog has passed, scooping up those who still slumber or await the sunrise, setting the horizon aflame through the haze.

Death slime ranchers have had moderate success out in the Fog desert, but cooking them has encountered some difficulties. The methods attempted so far include:

• Boiling
• Frying
• Slime jerky
• Alcohol infusion
• Lye stew
• Pancaking
• Salad
• Pickling
• Poached
• Burning to ash and made into bread

If you can find a new method that is a) nutritious, b) effective and c) survivable will unlock vast calorific vistas.

Rock-lings: Philosophers of sand and stone

Credit Edgar Gómez

Equipped with inorganic shells of stone, the rock-lings spend their Fogs in sealed, silent meditation. They often enter this self-made isolation with thorny theological problems, emerging after the days of poison with follow-up questions, or even answers. Often, the original asker of the question is so much ash on the breeze, the irony of which is not lost on the rock-lings.

What is this rock-ling considering?

1. If a Wish spell is cast with the command "I wish this spell was not cast" what would happen?
2. If the Authority bids you to forsake him, is it a sin to obey, or a sin to disobey?
3. Where do rats come from?
4. If two arrows are fired towards the sky, one kills a man and the other lands in the sand, why should one archer be guilty and the other not?
5. Why... and also... how? (This rock-ling discovered magnetic vodka a few minutes ago)
6. Nothing at all, just looking pensive

Croc-Vultures

Nobody knows where the croc-vultures go

Maybe they go where the wind doesn't blow

Maybe they fly up up over the snow

Maybe we'll never, ever, ever know

Nobody knows what the croc-vultures eat

What strange ways they have of finding their meat

What do they do in that ash-stricken heat? 

What are these creatures, these horrid elite?

Nobody knows what the croc-vultures see

They chortle in squalor, they savour their glee

They stare from above, when we're ready to flee

They've those round red beady eyes, one, two… three?

But everyone knows

That they're fucking assholes