An Old School (Essentials) Christmas Gift

Artwork by Jason Sholtis

The Dwimmermount Designer’s Edition is a project I still return to from time to time, though no longer with any real expectation that it will ever be completed. What continues to give it its hold on me is the commentary it contains about the megadungeon itself — my inspirations, intentions, second thoughts, and after-the-fact realizations. Even now, there is much I could say about Dwimmermount, though, for obvious reasons, I am often reluctant to do so. For better or worse, Dwimmermount remains, after Grognardia itself, the project for which I am best known and it continues to attract a great deal of attention.

With that in mind, I thought it fitting to offer you a small Christmas gift in the form of an example of what I originally intended the Designer’s Edition to be. What follows is an original monster from Level 1 of the dungeon, rewritten and presented for use with Old School Essentials, my preferred OSR rules set these days, accompanied by my commentary on its origins, design, and anything else that seemed worth including.

If this post proves popular, I may begin sharing additional excerpts from the unfinished draft of the Designer’s Edition here. Please let me know your thoughts.

Eldritch Bones

AC 6 [15], HD 1+1* (5hp), Att 1 × weapon (1d6 or by weapon), THAC0 18 [+1], MV 90' (30'), SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (1), ML 12, AL Neutral, XP 19, NA 3d6, TT None

Eldritch bones are the risen frames of fallen soldiers, hauled back from death not by necromancy but by artifice. They are not undead — no soul clings to them, no grave-born hunger stirs within their ribs — but constructs, animated by minute infusions of azoth that grant them motion, purpose, and a cold parody of life. This alchemical substance seeps into their remains, hardening and reinforcing them until bone takes on the strength of forged metal, gleaming under torchlight with a silvery-black sheen, as though their marrow had been replaced by moon-dark steel.

First discovered by the Eld and later refined into grim efficiency by the Thulians of the late Termaxian age, eldritch bones are prized for their resilience in battle, though they are not without their weaknesses.

• Blunt Weapon Vulnerability: Blunt weapons deal +1 damage.

• Edged Weapon Resistance: Slashing weapons deal half damage (minimum 1).

• Electrical Vulnerability: Electrical spells and effects deal +1 damage per die.

• Immunity: Unaffected by charm, sleep, and mind-affecting spells.

• Magical Origins: Created by powerful wizards.

Commentary

A formative experience for me during me childhood was seeing the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts in the theater. I'm old but not old enough to have seen it during its initial release. Instead, I saw it during its 1978 re-release — just a year before I discovered Dungeons & Dragons. In a movie filled with incredible stop-motion wonders, the stand-out for me was the battle with the skeletons that arose from the hydra's teeth sown by Aeëtes. From that moment on, I was a dedicated fan of animated skeletons as foes.

Consequently, when I started work on Dwimmermount, I knew I wanted it to include not just animated skeletons but special animated skeletons, though I wasn't quite sure what that meant. As my conception of the megadungeon and its history evolved through play, I eventually decided the skeletons I was imagining were made of metal and the products of alchemy rather than necromancy. I doubt I was conscious of the fact at the time, but I now suspect this idea came, at least in part, from the endoskeleton of the T-800 terminator from the 1984 film, The Terminator.

Whatever their ultimate inspiration, the eldritch bones helped me lay the groundwork for some of the other magical “technologies” that existed elsewhere in the dungeon. They enabled me to hit home that the Thulians, the Eld, and the Great Ancients before them treated sorcery as a science they understood with precision enough to produce all manner of oddities. The eldritch bones were thus the first clue to many larger mysteries within Dwimmermount.