Psysquito

These hand-sized mosquitoes use their steel-hard proboscis to penetrate skulls and suck out cerebrospinal fluid. The droning of their wings induces a hypnotic trance, allowing them to feed in peace. As both adults and gestating larvae they can sense sentient minds within 200 meters. The feeding is rarely lethal on its own, but the hole made in the scalp, skull, and meninges can easily develop a lethal infection.

Where it comes from: Psysquitoes grow in stagnant water, much like mundane mosquitoes. Unlike mundane mosquitoes, they can gestate for decades, only hatching when they sense sentient minds. Once they have fed for the first time they will lay their eggs, and then seek out more fluid to feed their young. 

What it wants: Psysquitoes do not need cerebrospinal fluid for themselves, but feed it to their larvae. The larvae drink as much as they can before going into gestation, and that is all they will ever eat. Adults can usually last for one to two months before dying of starvation, depending on their level of activity.

What it needs: larvae need ccerebrospinal fluid to grow, and will take in as much as they are given. As adults they do not eat at all, and live to serve their larvae.

What it will fight for: A Psysquito will only attempt a fight if starving. Otherwise, they always attack from ambush. If their drone does not work and their target fights back, they will attempt to flee, but will usually attempt another ambush. 

What happens if you eat it: Psysquito exoskeletons incorporate significant amounts of metal, and are thus inedible. The metal also allow their exoskeletons to be used like kettles; you can cook a psysquito into a thick nutritious soup simply by throwing it on a fire.

What can be crafted out of it: Drunk raw, partially digested cerebrospinalfluid is a minor stimulant. It is also used as the base for many potions that affect the brain.

The Town of Blue in the Desert

This town was built around a prosperous market on a busy trade route, but the sand has swallowed the roads and most of the town too. The houses are half filled with drifts of orange sand, preserving carved wood furniture and brightly colored frescoes. Bright blue lizards sun themselves on cracked rooftops during the day, then fill houses with warm sand to sleep in at night.

The lizards are very intelligent, but reluctant to speak to visitors. They can be tempted into conversation with gifts of rare meats and liqueurs, and when drunk will wax philosophical about the cycles of life and history. They keep many secrets, buried in the sand, and cannot be persuaded to part with them, but their eyesight is poor and their hearing worse. If you can present them from smelling you, records of ancient empires, strange and beautiful artwork, and books with no other copies might be dug free.

Psionic Lich

A being with incredible willpower, perfect focus, and endless patience, can make their way through the ordeals necessary to become a psionic lich. The only way to kill one is by destroying its mummified corpse, without which its mind will dissipate in the astral.

What it wants: Inscrutable. Many liches act in ways that seem random: observing unimportant doings, making seemingly inconsequential adjustments to the world, or simply wandering, gazing implacably at whatever they encounter. Others pursue obsessive tasks, building labyrinths, shifting rivers, experimenting with animals. A few have understandable goals, such as protecting nations or eradicating certain monsters.

What it needs: Nothing.

Where it comes from: Potential psychics must practice meditation. If they have the talent, diligence can uncover it. Once their talent emerges, they must continue their meditation to refine their power. To become a lich, they must gain perfect self-knowledge. When they believe they have have succeeded, they must prepare their body. They will drink nothing but a special tea, containing toxins that polymerize the body, shutting down a preserving organs one by one. When this process is complete they will be paralyzed, and must be sealed in clay and buried in an unmarked hole. If their self-knowledge is truly perfect, their psychic power will allow them to survive the death of their body. They will be trapped in their mummy, but their mind will persist. After centuries of constant meditation, they will learn to create an avatar of pure willpower, with which they can interact with the world.

What it will fight for: The avatar of a psionic lich will engage in combat only if it doing so is interesting to it. Otherwise, they will leave. The exception is if its body is threatened, in which case the lich will not retreat and continually escalate the fight, tearing apart the area with psionic force.

What happens if you eat it: The flesh was toxic when buried and its time beneath the earth has not improved it. Also, this would be cannibalism.

What can be crafted out of it: Mummy leather blocks psychic influence, making it useful for shields, armor, and wallpaper. The dirt surrounding the mummy is often suffused with psionic energy and is prized by psions as a stimulant.

Millisnake

Millisnakes are snakes with hundreds of tiny, gecko-like legs along their bodies, as well as oversized, viper-like vampire fangs. Their legs allow them to cling to any surface. They hang from branches or ceilings, then drop on to the backs of passing animals, biting down and sucking as much blood as they can before the animal manages to dislodge it. Excess iron is suffused into their scales, giving them a rust-red color.

Wants: When one has eaten enough, it will attempt to find a mate. Millisnakes hide their eggs by attaching them to the undersides of objects, and both parents will protect them until they hatch. Once hatched, the male usually leaves, while the female stays with her young as long as possible, feeding them regurgitated blood.

Needs: Blood. Millisnakes are hemovores, gaining almost all of their necessary nutrition from blood, occasionally supplemented with small insects.

Morale: Millisnakes are ambush predators. If their ambush fails, they will attempt to flee. If they mange to cling to you and bite down, however, they will not release until injured or full.

What happens if you eat this monster: They taste like metallic snake-meat. They are not poisonous, but eating too many of them can lead to toxic levels of iron in your blood.

What can be crafted out of this monster's body: Millisnake hide is an excellent material for belts. Millisnake meat, cooked in a stew, is a traditional remedy for bloodloss.

The Warrior-Monks

Our monastery was on the eastern slopes of Pavonis Mons, so that it was illuminated in the morning by a soft blue sunrise, only to fall into shadow in the early evening. It was in the blue light of dawn that we practiced the traditional forms of our ancient martial art.

We, the students, were all young women, pleased by our strength and eager to test it. After our exercises, we would often gather to relax and chat, discussing rumors we had heard from the lowlands. We had just heard about the fall of the Olympian Dictatorship, and the tumult that was following.

"Couldn't we help?" Arbella was saying, "We may not be masters, but we know how to fight."

"We could take bandits, I'm sure. Not much, but it would be better than nothing," Yen agreed.

"Or beasts. I've heard several geneticists had their workshops destroyed and their wares escaped and have started breeding. We could help a lot of people by hunting them down," continued Arbella.

Our teachers seemed ageless, and infinitely patient. They never raised their voices in anger, but only as a means of focusing our attention. So, when the voice of Teacher Scythe suddenly cut across our chatter, we immediately stopped talking and listened.

"Do not fool yourselves. What we do is not practical. You would not survive real combat."

"Surely it cannot be useless," objected Arbella, but was quickly overruled.

"You have learned how to fight unarmed against other unarmed humans. That is all. Do you think you could even survive in a fight with a man in a hoplite suit? A manticore? A sentient weapon? We practice to keep tradition alive, nothing more. We are monks, not warriors."

He paused, seeing that some of us still weren't convinced.

“Tomorrow you will fight a boar. It will be given no means of escape, and that will make it desperate. It will attack you however it can. It will not care about pain. It will not fall for feints. Few of your techniques are of use against a four-legged animal. I do not expect you to win. I expect you to learn."

Hamun-ran

South of the mountains streches a great salt desert, white dunes as far as the eye can see and a wind that stings the eyes. It is not hot, but rain never falls, and the air is drier than anywhere else in the world. There are no rivers, but there are oases, where water bubbles to the surface. The greatest of these springs is surrounded by the palace of the god-king Hamun, which is surrounded by the city of Hamun-ran, "Hamun's Household," built entirely out of salt.

Hamun has absolute control over the spring. Not a sip is drunk in the city without his blessing. It is his terrace-tower gardens that supply all food. It is his masked and voiceless guard who keep the peace, it is they who prevent any from leaving the city.

Hamun's wife, the Queen of Birds, keeps watch over the people through the eyes of vultures. She alone lives in a building not made of salt, but a gilded stone tower whose shine becomes painful to look at when the sun has risen. No one has seen the Queen of Birds, and it is rumored that there have been many Queens, discarded and replaced at Hamun's whim.

Making Use of an Empty Thing

At the north side of the steppe, where the great grey mountains that birth the ten rivers rise out of the grass, there is an ancient, isolated nation where they practice an ancient and terrible tradition called Making Use of an Empty Thing. They do not believe, or do not care, about the warnings and proscriptions applied by all civilized nations to necromancy. They had convinced themselves that as long as necromancy was practiced on beasts, and not on people, they were not doomed. As a servant of the Saint, it was Allix's duty to save them from themselves.

Allix had seen a military parade where the necromancers displayed their masterworks. Steppe crabs, killed with poison and then animated, riveted with steel plates and painted yellow-gold for the parade. They carried howdahs of black lacquered wood with tall banners and seats for two crab-knights, one armed with a pike, one with a long-barreled musket, and both in black chitin lamellar. 

Allix had fled the parade as fast as he could without attracting attention, and returned to the boarding house where he was staying, hurrying to his room and latching the door behind him. He felt for the burlap bundle beneath his bed and pulled it out, unwrapping it to check the contents. The larvae had almost finished off the pig carcass they had been living in, but it was no matter. Soon they would mature, and then the parasitic wasps they grew into would seek dead flesh, eating and growing and multiplying until no dead thing could last and every undead beast were devoured from the inside.