“Sorry, master, I forgot myself. One moment, and I’ll go and see who it is.”
“Who is it, squidling?”
“My lord, it is Arch-Queen Xera, the Dark Princess of Dead-Wood, your nemesis.”
“Then show her in. This time, she shall not escape me.”
Many a memorable campaign has had at least one master villain who appears in more than just a single adventure. The main bad guy who comes back for more adds something to a long-running adventure path. A recurring villain gives your campaign, or a part of your campaign, a focus and a hate figure—someone on which you can hang whatever badness you wish, whether that is a feudal lord who takes land, a twisted warlock, or a serial killer who steals babies.
“Slush, ice, hail, blizzard. How lovely it all appears from in here, behind thick glass, whilst we sit by the roaring fire eating honey-roasted pig trotter.”
“Whilst you sit by the fire eating, great one. I have to content myself with blocking the gap in the window-frame with my posterior.”
“And so you should, maggot-sired, so you should. How lucky you are to be inside, however. Imagine if I decided suddenly on a whim to command you to sit outside…”
This ochre jelly is almost certainly one of many that have been deliberately created by alchemists and poisoners. The cloying poison ochre jelly exudes a contact poison that is difficult to remove. The jelly poison affects not only those slammed by the creature, but also those who touch it.
“Just imagine it!”
“Master?”
“If we could talk to the animals!”
“You can, master. Buy a scroll in the mystic market of animal conversations.”
“Chatting to a chimp in chimpanzee!”
“Or you could get a wand.”
“Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals! And they could squeak and squawk and speak and talk to us!’
“Oh dear . . .”
It comes up from time to time at our gaming table, often from our stubborn refusal to accept that Pathfinder gnomes can’t talk exclusively to burrowing mammals (which, with us, is the extent of their speak with animals spell).
The speak with animals spell is fairly evasive about what conversations you can have with animals and goes on to say that . . . the more stupid ones make inane comments.
Marvellous. What an opening for some occasional silliness at the roleplaying table.
