Happy Thanksgiving, One and All!

From We Heart Vintage

Just a quick note today to wish everyone (American or not) a happy day. It's always a good idea to stop and take an inventory of the blessings in your life, and among mine is the audience of folks who read my blog and buy my stuff. You folks have given me, through your attention and your cold hard cash, an opportunity to pretend to be a real grown up writer, and I appreciate it more than you know.

As a way to show my appreciation, I'm put all of my books at Lulu are now 10% off between now and the end of the year (not the PDF's though - they're cheap enough already). At the moment, Lulu is doing a 30% sale as well (code is DELIRITAS), so if you've been waiting to buy NOD or Blood & Treasure or anything else, now's the time! Remember, with Blood & Treasure, I'll send you a link for a free download of a PDF when you buy a hard cover book - just email me the receipt.

In other news, I've commissioned the first bits of character class art for the Nod Companion, which will gather together classes, races and other useful character bits from the NOD magazines, revising and updating them for Blood & Treasure. It will also include a brief run-down of the Land of Nod's history and major city-states and peoples, for those who want to know more and can't wait for me to hex crawl the entire planet (yeah, that's just about what I'm aiming for - I might skip a bit of open ocean, but I do want to hex crawl the entire landmass).

And finally, to keep this post useful ...

HELL-PUNKINS

Hell-punkins are orange gourds that are grown in the swamps of Hell. They are steeped in hatred and misery and, when the air turns cold, heaved out of the depths to spread fear on the Material Plane.

Hell-Punkins look like large pumpkins (usually about 3-ft in diameter) with burning red eyes and jagged mouths that look as though they were ripped into the flesh of the plant by the plant's own burning desire to nibble on the flesh of innocents. A single long tendril (8 feet) rises from the top of the plant.

Hell-Punkins can breathe cones (10 ft.) of molten gunk and seed from their mouths once per day. The gunk initially does 2d6 points of damage, and if the target fails their Reflex save to cut the damage in half, sticks to people's skin and deals another 1d6 points of damage the next round. More importantly, the seeds in the gunk begin to sprout the second round, digging roots into the person's blood (1d4 points of damage) and then sprouting forth in tendrils that grow quickly, entangling the victim (per the spell entangle). Victims killed by this burning gunk eventually become the fodder for a new crop of hell-punkins.

The creatures move by bouncing and utter a wheezy cackle of delight when they discover new victims.

Demons and devils enjoy a spicy pie made from hell-punkins, a pie that deals 3d6 points of internal damage to most humanoids.

Hell-Punkin, Small Plant, Low Intelligence: HD 3; AC 16; ATK 1 bite (1d4) and 1 tendril whip (1d4/10' range) or breathe burning gunk; MV 20; F13 R14 W15; AL Chaotic (CE); XP 300; Special - Breathe gunk, immune to fire and poison, magic resistance 15%