OSR: Elsewhere Creatures and Elsewhere Rifts

There are three types of teleport spells. The first, the False Teleport, transforms the caster into a cloud of smoke, a tiny insect, or a floating spark. It’s used for short jaunts of 100’ or less. All transformative magic has risks, but the False Teleport’s short duration makes it relatively safe.

The second type, the Reciprocal Teleport, exchanges the caster and an approximately equal mass of air or stone at the destination. Safe range is a few miles. Botched Reciprocal Teleports lead to tales of wizards embedded in stone, split neatly in half, or dropped from great heights.

The third type, the True Teleport, has effectively unlimited range. The caster is “folded Elsewhere”. They vanish with a warp and a thunderclap of displaced air and, almost immediately, unfold at their destination. Sometimes, a little too frequently for comfort, the caster fails to reappear or emerges mangled and torn by unseen forces. Outside of Dread Necromancy, True Teleportation has the greatest number of cautionary tales attached to it. Merely memorizing a teleport spell is risky. A botched fireball might melt your earwax and painfully scorch your sinuses, but an accidentally triggered teleport can launch your prefrontal cortex into the air.


Even worse, creatures from Elsewhere sometimes slip back into our world.

Aexion

Elsewhere Creatures

# Appearing: □ 1 □ □ 1d6 □ □ □ 2d6. (□ = tempo). Can be all of the same type or all different types.


The HD, Appearance, Voice, Move, and Damage of Elsewhere Creatures varies widely. See the Tables below.

Wants: completely inscrutable. To observe, to devour, to change, to freeze; who can say?

Morality: none detectable.

Intelligence: mechanical.


Move: equivalent to fly normal. 

Morale: 12

 or 1d12 or 2d6.

Elsewhere Creatures come from... Elsewhere. Other worlds, other dimensions, other planes; it’s unclear and a topic of wild speculation among fringe wizards. Classification is nearly impossible. They might be seed pods, angels, exploratory ships, or blind rampaging animals. They don’t obey local physical laws.

Sorry for the images. I usually prefer to post text, but it seems blogger doesn't like my formatting right now. Oh well.

Astronomers Bartholomeus Anglicus, ‘Livre des propriétés des choses’ (‘De proprietatibus rerum’, French translation of Jean Corbechon), Bruges ca. 1470 BnF, Français 134, fol. 169r

Elsewhere Rifts

Elsewhere Rifts are portals to other worlds. They are typically ringed with white fog and octarine sparks. Creatures and objects can pass through a rift, though the world on the other side may be hazardous, toxic, or actively hostile. There’s a rubbery forcefield across a rift. Objects require a little push to enter or exit.



Portals remain stable for  □ 1 hour □ □ 1d6 hours □ □ □ 1d6 days. Exploring the “other side” is possible and occasionally rewarding. It can also strand explorers.


 Read straight across for “sensible” rifts or roll for each column (6x d10s) for more unusual and esoteric worlds.

Igor Vitkovskiy

PDF Version

This post is also available as a fancy PDF. This content (after editing and additional playesting) will appear in Magical Industrial Revolution, but it might be useful right now for your games.

Aexion

I've tried to make a truly alien creature and environment generator that can still be used at the table. I don't expect it to be used every session, so I've tried to make it as compact as possible while still providing plenty of inspiration and flavor.