The Bismuth Birds

This, part 2.

BISMUTH BIRDS

Once, they were but greedy brigands, plundering wanderers for pennies and scraps of food. Then, something changed. They donned the Masks, and became a trio of inhuman, terrifying predators.

The Bismuth Birds look like a mix between pharaohs and plague doctors. Their Masks, wrought from bone, have large beaks and dark, cavernous eye sockets. Their bodies are coated in shimmering beads and gold-wrought chains, a decadent display of luxury. They are disproportionately thin and tall, looking like skeletal mannequins in some respects. They each use the names of the weapons they carry when communicating to others- the Axe, the Needle, and most terrifyingly, the Nails.

The hallmark of their presence is silence. They cannot be heard, even if they try. Nothing CLOSE to them makes sound. Thus, they specialize in ambush- twisting their bodies to fit into crannies, then slinking out to make brutal work of stragglers in the cloak of their wordlessness. In addition, their bodies are resilient to the point of being impervious- a story persists of a Dwarvish prospector, pouch loaded with adamant, fought off the Birds by stabbing them, detonating gunpowder near them, and pushing them down a mineshaft hundreds of feet, and yet they still tracked him down and took their reward.

The Masks they wear are the control pieces of GREED. GREED, as far as experts think, is a concept-made-entity. If the Masks are broken or removed from the Birds, their bodies collapse into a pile of valueless baubles and counterfeits. This is their weakness, and their most closely guarded secret.

As creatures driven by GREED, they can be bargained with. They cannot speak, so they write in lilting and off-kilter rhymes, like a particularly murderous child writing themself bedtime stories. Their favorite word is “more”. They desire riches above all, for when the Birds have amassed all the wealth in the world, GREED will die laughing, and reincarnate in the fire of their enemy’s hearts like a hateful phoenix. If they are paid ludicrous sums, they may be convinced to murder specific people as a byproduct of their wealth acclimation. However, their whims are inscrutable, and their employer may well be their ultimate target.

THREE PRINCIPLES OF GOOD MONSTERS

1. Numbers don’t make them interesting. “Ooh, this creature does 4 damage instead of 3! My players will be challenged by this.” No. Stop playing the numbers game with your monsters and think of different ways they can pose threats. Do they sweat lava? Do they ignore armor? Which brings us into principle 2…

2. Monsters don’t have to follow the rules, but they have to follow some rules. You don’t have to make monsters follow all the rules players do. If you want them to cast spells without expending points or making a roll or whatever, or if you think their attacks automatically hit anyone dressed in red, no one can contest you. What’s more important is that you can rationalize why the rules are broken. Maybe they are master assassins, but they come from a nation where everyone has tritanopia, so they can’t distinguish color outside of red. The players should be able to understand and exploit the mechanism the monster is using with enough research and cleverness.

3. Memorability over realism. Fuck Gygaxian naturalism. You don’t need to worry about filling ecological niches or mapping magical creatures onto real assumptions about biology. For crying out loud, dragons are solitary and yet hyper-intelligent! Throw what makes sense out the window; so long as your monsters are internally consistent and have moderately feasible relationships between them, no player will nitpick that hard.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.