Night mare
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Eyes glowing green with the hatred of the dead, the night mare's stare bores right through you. A magnificently beautiful equine, the night mare seems to be bathed in a deep green glow that tosses roiling shadows across her coat. Upon closer inspection, shadows can be seen that roil and crawl across its coat much like the nightmares that keep many awake at night. It is said that gazing upon a nightmare for too long will induce waking nightmares that are difficult to shake off.
Hunting strategies
You can keep a spell prepped to avoid being debuffed. However, this can backfire on you badly, as you can suffer nerve damage or even be killed.
Do not touch or interact with the ooze, whether the black stream, puddles, or ponds. These are poisonous and acidic.
Beware the gas clouds from steeds in this hunting area. They can be eliminated by casting dispel at it.
Other information
- Night mares used to cast Nightmare (713), per their theme, but now cast Balefire (713) rather than the curse version of nightmare.
- They have a defensive maneuver that allows them to temporarily spike their TD by +150:
You channel at a night mare. A night mare exudes a sickly yellow mist, creating a shimmering haze all around her! CS: +247 - TD: +327 + CvA: +25 + d100: +17 == -38 Warded off! A dull grey beam snakes out toward the night mare, but dissipates upon impact. Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds. Roundtime: 3 sec.
- Night mares are immune to cold.
- The mists hanging in the area are environmental hazards, which are capable of poisoning you:
A dull grey mist seeps up from the ground beneath your feet, and within moments has wrapped itself around you completely, covering you with a warm grey slime! You begin to gag and choke as your feel weak and listless, and the world seems to speed up around you! A sickly yellow mist oozes out of the ground and wraps itself around your ankles, insinuating its way up your leg. In seconds, it has covered you with a thin yellow membrane!
- Their skins (a silvery hoof) are widely sought by wizards who engage in Alchemy, as they are the most difficult to obtain ingredient in one recipe for thick silver potions.
Behind the Scenes
Nightmares were actually "Demon Horses" in Rolemaster. They would be demon-possessed horses, who would seek vengeance, either against those who had wronged the demon or the horse in life. They are treated as undead in GemStone, and are not considered extraplanar beings for system purposes. The Terrorite of Shadow Valley would summon demonic servants, some of whom were known to ride nightmares. The trouble is that it was the Terrorite that had wronged the horses, so when they returned the equines flew up and defeated it. Prior to their return the valley was filled with dust beetles. These beetles along with the possession, amnesia story, and possibly the northeast orientation of The Graveyard, are from "The Shadow out of Time" by H.P. Lovecraft. It was also important in its relation to Empress Kadaena for The Broken Lands and Purgatory.
The decaying pond on their Shadow Plain of "viscous black sludge" is self-aware, poisonous, and corrosive, which is probably a shoggoth allusion given the basis on "The Mound": "they were amorphous lumps of viscous black slime that took temporary shapes for various purposes." The story has an ominous wild herd trampling through a vast plain, with a telepathic race of phasers who only interact with the surface world through dreams. (The stampeding and dead horses - or the poison colors, chalk powder, and groundwater contamination - are from "The Colour Out of Space".) They worshipped a number of Great Old Ones such as Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, and the serpent god Yig, who looked exactly like a Terrorite demon. The black tarry rivers of Yuggoth are from "The Whisperer in Darkness", which cites in context Tsathoggua in N'kai as well as Yoth and K'n-yan.
The telling point about the pond as magru scene is the "piles of large bleached bones", which implies it was how the horses were actually killed. In the story the conquistador discovers a ruined shrine of Cthulhu made of all gold and barricades himself from the herd. This corresponds to the silver equine statue. The "bizarre form of the many basins and braziers" reflects the Dark Shrine, and is near another such puddle smelling of rotted flesh. The blocked rivers (here black sludge), earthquake motifs, and the horses as warders against an evil dragon, come from the ancient Vedic myth. The fundamental idea of piecing together the understanding of a sublime horror from vastly disparate knowledge is from "The Call of Cthulhu".
References
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