The official GemStone IV encyclopedia.
A creature of sublime beauty, the nonomino floats just above the ground in a pulsing sphere of unearthly light. Careful scrutiny of the creature will show cracks distending across his visage and mantle peeling away to reveal disease and decay. The incarnation constantly molts his epidermis, regenerating it moments later in a hideous parody of the struggle between life and death. Surprisingly, this horror's movements are very fluid and the adept dance of his hands as he summons his theurgical arsenal is hypnotic.
Hunting strategies
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Behind The Scenes
Nonominos are a class of mathematical objects with "nine cells", often serpentine in shape, used in puzzles reminiscent of Sudoku or Tetris. This strange name for a creature might be an oblique allusion to medieval Welsh folklore where Bran the Blessed wages war with the Irish King Math, involving a magical cauldron that brings the dead to life, which is kept bubbling with the breath of nine pythonesses. The mortally wounded Bran tells the survivors to sever his head, which continues to speak in Annwn, the Celtic Otherworld where time does not pass and food and drink are plenty. Castle Anwyn has a throne room of bones with a head on a pike and possesses magical foods which heal and unpoison player characters. The same magic cauldron appears in another Welsh poem where King Arthur goes to Annwn, which is considered an early basis for the Holy Grail.
Another more esoteric motivation for including a reference to higher mathematics is the possibility of influence by H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House", which involves these same premises as "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" which are important for The Broken Lands. In this story there is a student of advanced mathematics and physics who discovers that the subjects are intimately related to folklore and forbidden knowledge, where the intuitive understanding and perception of it allows the ability to project oneself into higher realities. This is influenced in the Lovecraft circle by the pseudo-historical work of Margaret Murray, where faeries are a surviving primitive race underground. Murray had become fixated on faerie lore and its relation to Arthurian legend while convalescing in Glastonbury which is often identified with Annwn. This is related to the mezuzah in the castle barracks, which is arguably also a reference to another pseudo-historical movement, British Israelism which asserts Hebrews and Phoenicians colonized Ireland as the medieval monks had used the same words to identify the Celtic gods.
References
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