Thursday 15 June 2023

Scenes from an Ancient Notebook: List of Old Naacal Servitors

Going through old papers in my office I came across a notebook containing a list jotting down ideas for Old Naacal servitors, due to make an appearance some day in Behind Gently Smiling Jaws. The Old Naacals are the now mostly-disappeared original race who discovered the crocodile's memory-palace and made their homes there; they created strange servitors to serve and amuse them, and these remain here and there in the crocodilian post-apocalypse. 

I must have written these down in a stream of consciousness when half asleep and already on the threshold of dream world, but some of them are rather good little germs of ideas.

Here are the pages in question, with transliteration of my scrawl underneath:




TIGER LILY - swarm of disc spores

PORCELAIN MULE - ceramic horse-type carrier

CAT WITH COBRA - paired assassins

DWELLER IN THE REEDS - small gardener type

PADFOOT - Tree frog/ibis  - spy

PTHALO HOUND - Blue powder hound

PINION BIRD - Like that African squae-bill with German name, pinions enemies with blade-wings

BARBED WANDERER - Like a nest of barbed/razor wire on 'feet' waddling around - snags things and puts them in bed [?]

SEXY ARTIST - Ceramic woman, crafted to paint surreal compositions - or abstract pieces?

VERMILLION COOT - Waterfowl, dives to collect stuff?

DREAMSCRIBE - Writes stray thoughts of ancient Naacals (or those around it?)

HORNED FOX - Giant fox, antelope horns, hooks - cuts out livers of prey

CADMIUM CHILD - Made of cadmium, follows relentlessly

ACID LION - Lion made of acid [duh!]

IMPACT SPIDER - Like 'impact hound' [I think I was referring here to the 'impact hounds' in the *band roguelikes]

INERTIA BOAR HOG - Like 'inertia hound' [see above]

FIVE SNAKES - each clasping other's tail with teeth - but separates

SCULPTOR APE - Can't come up with own ideas - creates repetitive copies. Or copies of the PCs? Or random ones which come alive

JASPER ANT - Fetches and carries

DUELLIST - A particular colour (like Pthalo)

FLAG/BANNER BEARER - Scorpion? Uses semaphore style communication

PURPLE SNAIL - Hunts pests

SEWER BIRD - Sews flesh with razor sharp bill? Or beast which does it with hooks/fingers etc? [No, apparently not that kind of sewer]

IRIDIUM BULL - Gorgon type? Other types (many) of [illegible]

GOLDEN PLOVER - Flock which forms shapes?

WATER CARRIER - Ape/monkey with amphora. Or massive mouth and belly - walking amphora

DIGGER  - Jaguar with pick tail, shovel forepaws

COLOUR PYTHON - Constricts to turn prey to spray of colour

PARROT TOTEM - Piled on top of each other like a pillar

2 comments:

  1. Looks as unreadable as some of my old notes haha. I mostly use onenote now, and it can still be unreadable!

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    1. I like this kind of RPG 'realia' - it always interests me to see what other DMs get up to when planning/running games.

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