Kitchen, Empty (Adventure Component)

You see a lot of empty kitchens in dungeons. Often lacking any adventure-critical features, they're a great example of an "empty" room that isn't actually empty, being full of objects and substances that are useful with a bit of creativity. This kitchen goes the other direction. It's dense! This is an attempted entry into the "adventure component" mode, but I'm not sure if it would quite take up an entire session of gaming. It's a bit more random, with less of a story to unfold, so it relies more on whatever dungeon you plug it into. I've pitched this adventure component at a lower target. It's a bit more mundane, less overpowering, less high-powered.

To avoid confusion when you plug this room into the dungeon of your choice, I've avoided describing the dimensions of the room or referring to any cardinal directions.

Thanks to Reneford for contributing ideas to this project

art by Zdenek Elefant

Areas

In the center of the room, a cauldron simmers over a tame fire.

Along one wall, there is a counter with three crooked cabinets.

Along another, a mounted cabinet rack sits.

Along another wall, pots, pans, and poultry hang from a rack above a long table.

Along the last wall is an old barrel and some sacks.

Cauldron

• The cauldron contains a thin bone broth. It has clearly been in near-constant use for days and days, a sturdy servant to a bustling brothier.
• The fire burns unfed. It is Blasegwynn, a sort of domestic and nephilonious angel with a fire-ring form and a curious eye that floats freely in her flaming gyre-body. (Stats as floating bear). Quiet unless approached, she is testy from lack of company, and feels like an Atlas, boiling this cauldron all the time. Idleness annoys her, and good work is her cheer. She defers to priestly types, embarrassed to have skipped out on Heaven's plans.

Counter

• The countertop is empty except for a trio of fresh heads of cabbage; a chipped, lidded jar; and a swollen, red-stained booklet titled Pliny's Healthful Preparations.
• The jar contains a trio of mundane mice, swollen from a feast that trapped them when the lid fell into place. 
• The book, bloodstained, is haunted by Mago's malice (see below) and will attack those who touch it without his placations (stats as ghoul). If calmed, Turned or slain without damaging it, the recipes within provide sustaining nourishment, increasing HP gained from resting by 1. Some of the simpler recipes include:
• Turkey Red Wine Stew: mix a milk of ground almonds and honey. Stew turkey chunks with butter, red wine, cloves, and slivered almonds. Add pepper, allspice, salt and the almond milk, then serve.
• Bonnekaal: fry beans with salt. Throw water, oats, and two finely chopped red onions in a pan, cooking until they make a sauce, then add a head of finely chopped cabbage until it crisps. Add the beans, then butter, paprika, and garlic to taste. Then serve.
• Pheasant à L'oignon: melt butter, adding parsley and thyme, stirring as it separates until it forms a reduction. Rub the pheasant inside and out. Beat six eggs, mixing them with a finely chopped onion, half cup of cheese, and a pinch of salt and allspice. Place the pheasant in a roasting pan, insert the mixture into the bird, and roast for an hour. Cool, then serve.
• The left cabinet contains a bag of almonds, a cup full of peanut shells, dried raspberries, and an old silver handbell. If the bell is rung while within the kitchen, it summons Mago, (stats as troll) entering through a door as though he had just stepped out. An immortal thane from long ago and intermediate step between ogre and elf, he is under a curse, compelled to prepare and serve food for any who ask, and unable to truly leave. Interested to hear of historical events of the last century, but happy to get the better of someone who doesn't understand that they can win any fight with him by asking for breakfast.
• The center cabinet gently rattles in slow inhales and exhales, and shows signs of disuse. Within nest dozens of rebel silverware, largely rustic peasant knives led by two-pronged pokers and an officious spoon. Individually, an implement is no more dangerous than a big wasp. Together, use the stats of a giant weasel. The rebels are placated by food or recognition of their sovereignty, and hate daggers and tridents as class traitors.
• The right cabinet contains a small jar of honey, several shriveled red onions, and most of a bottle of amateurish but lovingly made red wine.

Mounted Cabinet

• The cabinet is lined with cramped shelves full of spices. In addition to a sack of salt, a small shaker of pepper, some allspice, thyme, mace, paprika (poisonous to elves), parsley, cloves, garlic, and rosemary, there is more surprising fare:
• An ashy glass jar labeled "Burn-Not". Within is a miniature powdery corpse resembling a baby, an alien, or a plant root. If brought close to fire, the remains are revived, blazing to life. This humanoid princeling from the elemental plane of fire (stats as lesser fire elemental) will likely strike out, confused and disoriented, at the strange creatures they find themselves suddenly surrounded by.
• Dwarf Spices: cinnabar dust, rocksalt, malachite powder, mica flakes
• Nepenthene Salt: pale blue and warm. Each dose consumed increases Intelligence by 1 and decreases Wisdom by 1. Someone who consumes two or more doses sees their eyes go neon green and finds that they can stomach (and indeed, crave) seawater, and dream of flying stones at the edge of night.. Four doses remain in the jar.
• Still more esoteric ingredients, including eye of newt, spider hairs, mimic sweat, and ectoplasm. These components are useful in the creation of magic potions, and worth 1200 gp towards their creation if expended in the making.

Racks and Table

• On the rack, among various pans and cookery, hangs a fresh turkey, two dressed pheasants, and a lightly wriggling defeathered bird.
• Bowed but not broken, the living bird is a phoenix, subtly tied to the rack. It vainly attempts to guard ten of its eggs, which hover precariously in a hanging pot nearby. Each egg, rare and smoky-flavored, is worth 200 gp.
• On the table can be found four small cooking pots, a large roasting pan, a green glazed jug, a cooking pot, a knife block, a potted plant and a butter dish.
• The knife block holds a paring knife, peeling knife, utility knife, boning knife, bread knife, and chef's knife. If a knife is removed from the block, a gentle grinding sound can be heard, as the block has been enchanted to sharpen that which is drawn from it.
• The plant has pale, lobed flowers and a stem covered in dark splotches and thin white hairs. It is the dreaded Lesser Hogsbane, possessed of a phototoxic sap. Save to pull your hand away before you really touch it. The affected area lightly itches when exposed, and in the sun or other bright light the pain sharply increases. When in bright light, an affected PC automatically fails rolls related to the use of any part of their body that has touched the Hogsbane. The affliction lasts for 1d4+4 months.
• Laying on the ground beside the table is a spit and a disassembled stand to lay it on. The spit itself is covered in strange grooves, and careful study shows that it is a repeating message, "AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND AND". If the message is spoken while the spit lies on the stand, it will summon a spectral spaniel, who will begin to turn the spit, taking commands as to the speed and direction. If sufficiently distracted or enticed from his task, Turns Pete (the name on his collar) disappears until summoned again.

Barrel and Sacks

• The barrel is half-empty of sour beer. It has nails poking out of the lid, lacks a bung hole, and slightly sags. If the lid is moved, the alarum of a family of bells nailed to the underside of the lid triggers a wandering monster check. This was crudely installed as a precaution against sip-sneakers.
• If the barrel is moved, a crumpled up piece of paper can be seen— a scroll containing a Panacea Countercurse. If Mago's geas is countercursed, he cries with joy and thanks the PCs. They may encounter him in the future plumbing strange dungeons and selling strange wares. If Turn Pete's service is countered, he barks and wags his tail and accompanies his new friends, serving as a kitchen dog or banksman.
• Old sacks can be found containing oats, black beans, flour, millet, and another that undulates and buzzes softly.
• The flour sack gently rocks. It serves as a bed and larder for Grima, a minor bogy the size and disposition of a feral cat. Amber and gaunt in a stained chaperon, he is secretive and freedom-loving, pugnacious when disrespected. He does not know what bread is or what flour is used for, and eats it raw. (1 HD, unarmored, bite 1d4. 2/day, when injured can make one of his eyes erupt into yellow smoke to take no damage and instead redirect the blow, making an attack with the same bonus for the same damage at someone else. He can regenerate an eye by eating a pound of food, probably by stuffing his mouth full of flour.)
• Under a loose flagstone, Grima keeps his treasures— some pieces of glass, a pearl worth 500 gp, a pair of shaded spectacles worth 200 gp, and a treasure map.
• The undulating sack contains a pack of stirges, and the mouth is improperly fastened after the last time a humanoid grabbed a couple for a quick snack. 2-in-6 chance every time it's handled that the sack will spill open.
• Nestled among the sacks is a small wheel of cheese. Seemingly a passable parmesan, it is actually counterfeit and deeply illegal. This cheese carries the death penalty in many lands.

Humbling the Human Instant (Monsters)

More fun playing with Loch and Louis's monster generator. This time, I mostly went through a list of half-formed monster ideas and used the generator to flesh them out. This is why so many are humanoid in form.

For your own ease, here is an automated version of that generator using Spwack's list-to-html marvel: 

Pilate Bush

Grow slowly, only reliably reaching ambulatory adulthood near cataclysms and old battle sites. Lacking the full spiritual dimension of humanoids (which they are far more closely related to than true bushes), they seek to understand the divine spark of conscious life, like anatomists from the good old Burke and Hare days. They study victims spread-eagle, eventually giving up, drinking down the blood, and moving on.

HD 4. Armor: Needles. Attack: +2 impale/impale/impale/impale. Mind like a beefeater. Moves like an octopus on land— not apt, but surprisingly quick. # 1d2

• Needles: provide armor as leather, bypassed by sawblades, machetes, or fire.
• Impale: On hit, the target takes d6 damage. Until the Bush is dead, the target must make a grapple check to free themself from the needles. On a failure, they must either remain where they are or make a save vs death as they slide off the branch.
• Organization: tend to chase off others of their kind, but 50% chance an adult Pilate Bush is training its 2 HD offbudding. On that Treasure Type V lifestyle.

Eukaryote

Ancient pre-humanoids, chitinous guys with odd jaws and experimental shapes. Some tall and thin, others bell-shaped, others squat, and so on. Suspicious of intricate crafts, they count loyalty as the highest technology. Known for their anaugers, those who seek glimpses of the upcoming ages and help their community to plan for them.

HD 1. Armor: as chain. Attack: weapon or Friend. Mind like a first-generation business owner. Moves like an old man with a cane, swims with hesitant grace.

• Friend: Once all life feared the dry, deadly land. It was lightning, dancing light, that told them "I will go with you. I will bless and better you," In one round, a eukaryote can call out a spot for their friend to strike, and the vicinity goes tense with ozone. In the next round, the friend pounces, all flame and light— save or take 3d6 damage and everyone can see your skeleton.
• Lycanthropy: The moon has slain many Eukaryotes for fleeing his service in preference for the high-falutin land. A Eukaryote gets -3 reaction to all encounters found in the moonlight, and attacks against one in moonlight crit on a 19 or 20.
• Organization: undirected and ad hoc. Often encountered in groups of 1d8. Their spokesfigure is usually a carpenter or warrior. Elder Eukaryotes grow fatter shells and an extra HD, and are afforded bone kama as status symbols. Communities have Treasure Type D.

Carbonifer

Claim to have invented fire, but you'd think they'd be a bit more bored of it if that was the case. Broad-faced, neckless humanoid amphibians, they are genial swamp-dwellers who have through intelligence fucked up their ancestral niche. As a species, the carbonifer mates in the hot, dark summer, but suitable conditions can be simulated with enough smoke and fire. Small wars have been fought merely to gain hold of enough dry, flammable buildings to set the mood for an army's single's night. A more enthusiastic collier there has never been.

HD 2. Armour: sometimes. Attack: as weapon, or +2 tail whip 1d4. Mind like an impatient workman. Moves like a monkey in an axolotl's body.

• Coalsmoke: Groups of Carbonifers love to burn their so-special smokes, especially in exigency. Each subtle hue in the coal can be brought out by the patient screever to filter out some behavior or perception. This one filters out anger and fear, and thus pacifies. That one renders impossible the concept of an "army." When you breathe the smoke, save or have the intended concept filtered from you for 1d6 Turns. 
• Sluggard: Overexcitement mingles the fresh and spent blood in a Carbonifer's heart. They get -4 to grapples, physical saves, and the like.
• Organization: found in crews of 1d4 x 2, always operating in even numbers to facilitate use of the butty system. Carbonifers prefer their mixed coalsmokes to most magic items, but can meet or exceed the craft of dwarves with ten times the bulk and a steady-burning power source. Treasure Type G.

Nosto

Dignified and romantic, subtle and shrill, everyone dreams of dating a bat-person who fell from the moon in a meteor. But truth is often the disappointment of our dreams. These are a stoic and cynical lot, on a reckless mission to gain their way back home.

HD 1/2. Armor: Grace. Attack: Foil 1d6 or Bite. Mind like a James Bond. Moves in brief flutters, unused to the weighty earth.

• Grace: When holding still, unarmored. Otherwise, armor as plate and +3 to physical saves.
• Bite: Save or be suborned, charmed by the little guy hanging off your neck or arm, their skull flattening around their mouth. Control lasts for 25 rounds, minus victim's Charisma score. If the Nosto is killed before the duration ends, the affect [sic] continues until removed, dealing 1 damage to the victim.
• Organization: Nostos operate in isolated cells of 1d4+2, with a 2 HD handler. They are known to use magic wands and scrolls. Treasure Type S.

Hadean

Rocky centauroids from a world like our own volcanic past. They regard our experience of liquid water and plate tectonics as a pitiable state. Morose, cynical, and egalitarian.

HD 3. Armor: Rock. Attack: +2 (+4 when charging) Sledgehammer 1d8 or +3 Rescue. Mind like an umarell. Moves like an overladen deer.

• Rock: provides AC as chain armor, and DR 2 vs attacks that wouldn't be very effective against a rock guy, like a sword slash.
• Rescue: especially charitable Hadeans may try to carry off targets from their humid, soft-fleshed environs and rescue them to a nearby volcano or chasm. When a Hadean charges or rides by a foe, they can roll vs the target's AC to sweep them up. Someone who grapples their way free of a Hadean may risk 1d6 road rash damage (leather armor negates).
• Avert!: Hadeans regard lithostratic inquiry and geology to be the key to avoiding liquidity on their own world, and must save or be fascinated by sufficiently interesting minerals, fossils, or stones.
• Guileless: The unicameral Hadean mind is unaccustomed to flim-flammery, rhetoric, or legalism. It cannot assess whether a complicated series of logical statements are straightforward or deceptive, and thus many Hadeans regard the humanoids of our world like tottering tricksters. They get disadvantage vs. mazes.
• Organization: 2d4 clades (1d6) make up a pride, led by a 5 HD mare and a 4 HD quartermaster, who has a 50% chance of owning 1d4 stones similar to our world's feather token. Instead of a tree token, for instance, it might summon a lattice of gypsum. Instead of an anchor, a lodestone. Instead of a bird, a mole. Treasure Type A.

Pangean

Four-foot-tall brightly colored vulturoids, with round teeth, slutty mynacean garments, and advanced glass eyewear. Used to be top dog before their supercontinent-spanning empire was split apart by warring successor-generals and tectonic plates. Though their society is egalitarian and still very advanced in ingenuity, Pangean society at large disdains most of the world as jumped-up former colonies and ungrateful yokels. Nabobs seek to recreate their "golden age" society in missions across the continents, never admitting that the golden age they chase is long-set.

HD 1. Armor: none. Attack: Spell or Mammalesis Staff. Mind like a Lepidopterist. Moves like a vulture.

• Mammalesis Staff: used to keep servitor species in line, way back when. The target saves or grows more hirsute, spawns extra ossicles, broadens their forehead, and/or lactates. This deals 1d6 damage and 1d3 dexterity damage. If a creature is reduced to 0 dexterity in this way, they explode into a pile of live young of a new species. A staff has 2d6 charges.
• Dirge: to maintain their society's haughty and exclusive customs, Pangeans are stuffed with cultural programming and a literary canon like they're foie gras. If anyone plays the Notes of Noy, or quotes other examples of the works memorializing their lost empire, Pangeans must test Morale or flee and weep, thinking only of their losses.
• Organization: expeditions of 2d6 Pangeans, led by one 3 HD professor (75% chance of magic staff, 50% chance of 1d3 spell scrolls, 25% chance of treasure map) and accompanied by 1d20 non-Pangean servants. Treasure Type E.

Schioppa

Captured valkyries, left to winnow and molt in cages of armor plates, too clumsy to heal or carry, and too ill-oiled to sing thee to thy rest.  Most confuse them for ensorcelled armor with plaster wings. Sorrowing weapons of war, bound to bound forward like charging destriers to break a line, and leave the souls of the vanquished for the crows. Some wander the byways now, stuck in a never-ending pilgrimage, laying strangers low for there is nothing else they can do and no one to stop them.

HD 3. Armor: plate. Attack +6 Barrel Through 3d8 or +2 Buffet 1d8. Moves like a nurse just coming off a long shift, or like a drunken bull. Mind like a rambo.

• Barrel Through: with at least 20 feet of space to build up speed, a Schioppa can run straight through formations, walls, and even your scrawny ass, essentially running a path of destruction in a 60' straight line. Any hit that exceeds the target's AC by 5 or more throws them into the air, to somersault and crumple.
• Angelic: though diminished and pitywauling, the Schioppa still has scruples unbroken. Children and the totally innocent cannot be Barreled Through, and the monster is careful not to harm someone who is already dying. If she somehow breaks this prohibition, she must save or become demonmail.
• Bitter Fruits: A slain Schioppa's armor has a 50% chance of being cursed with one of the following: (d4) casts levitation at inconvenient times 1/day, -4 AC, frightening afterlife dreams that prevent rest, or -6 to attack Lawful creatures. Otherwise, a set of armor is worth 1,000 to a collector or 2,000 to a godi or jarl. Treasure Type U.

Breaker Guardo

The elite soldiery of and main export of Breakerland , a remote mountain nation which maintains shrines to gods of traps, gold, and lack of moral outrage, even trapping the few tunnels and passes into their land and banking for demiliches and Orcuses. There are two sorts of Breakers— those who carry a knife, and those who carry a knife and a short-hafted mancatcher. The cream of the crop are rented out to patrol and vouchsafe the bodies of  warlords, dungeon masters, and most famously, the faith head of the Archdruidal States. 

HD 2+2. Armor: Costume. Attack: +2 Mancatcher or +2 Knife 1d4. Mind like a child soldier. Moves like a parade ground bravo.

• Costume: Pantaloons and doublets of slate grey or marbled marble flicker into braggadocious technicolorcolor right before the Breaker attacks. Ambushes on a 1-2, as long as they remain still. Protects as leather +1.
• Mancatcher: On a hit, the target takes 1d6 nonlethal damage from the jostling spikes within the collar, and saves or is grappled. If reduced to 0 damage while mancaught, the victim is half-conscious and helpless, easily led and unable to defend themselves.
• Ancient Enmity: goes postal in the presence of a Gessler, an explosive skeletal wheel-shaped creature known for trampling crops by night and thwarting the looting of cities and churches. And you know what? Fair enough. Also fears other tokens of their local superstition, such as the linden leaf, depictions of Lady Medusa, and the touch of a Lawful cleric.
• Organization: Found in platoons of 2d4 squads of six. Like to carry magic items as a display of wealth, but tend not to use them. Treasure Type C.

Carnifex

When the wrong person is interred in a sarcophagus, especially a chamber intended for a rare and noble personage, the unrest in the ceremonial vessel and the lich can mingle together, spiraling around the unrest of lacking the proper inhabitant. Stone swells over the fingernails and tastes the gums. Bone swirls through and around the coffin. Once waiting becomes unbearable, the box-body floats up and begins to search for the right occupant.

HD 6. Armor: Lithossum. Attack: Apprehension and +6 Crash 1d8 or +4 Swallow. Mind like a starving rat. Moves like a mastiff running on ice.

• Lithossum: The ornate planes of the box are easy to strike (armor as leather) but harm is only suffered when attacked with something that has a reasonable chance of damaging stone.
• Apprehension: the mind of the Carnifex rubs against yours, searching for familiarity that will never come. You sense death probing you. Save vs fear or refuse to approach the Carnifex for a turn.
• Swallow: the lid unhinges to engulf someone— perhaps this is the correct occupant? If it is, the carnifex immediately disanimates. Otherwise, it begins to drain the moisture and youth from the victim, 1d4 Constitution damage each turn. The Carnifex will always use this ability after crashing into a group of foes.
• Vacation: The box's interior still contains the rooted skeleton of the original, erroneous occupant, the skull flickering with electrical force. When the skeleton is exposed (including during and right after the Carnifex attempts to use its Swallow ability), it can be attacked. It is unarmed and lacks the Lithossum ability, and when harmed inflicts double damage on the Carnifex. Treasure Type B.

These last two were largely the creative work of Renegade, who is very good at synthesizing a strong concept from the table results. I composed the words.

Scadu Fairies

The shadows of fairies, and some say their opposite. Rough and crass, they bring unwelcome news and unwise solutions, then demand they are enacted. They're always saying things like "So what if she gave back the ring? She can't run around with someone else!" and "You should kill your boss!" As a group, they have a raggedy hierarchy like kids playing soldier.

HD 1/2. Armor: smallness as chain. Attack: +1 needle 1d2. Speed: annoyingly fast. Mind like a tattle-tale. Moves like a dragonfly.

• Things of Shadow: Live in the shadows of flowers. At night, you can't see them and therefore they disappear until sunrise. They are flammable, and if one member of a cloud of Scadu Fairies is ignited, there's a 50% chance a nearby one will be too (and so on and so on). 
• Organization: Frequently appear in clouds of 2d10 or more, dispersing into a spy network to sniff out wrongdoing and demand the person they imagine to be the victim to seek justice. Treasure Type U.

Melach Hashuta

Also called a Fool's Angel. This creature hides in cavern pools, turning them into deadly sludge. A golden crystalline thing that can shift from the form of a pillar to a pile to a grasping tendril. Its touch fills water with sulfuric acidic. Made by an ancient logos as a chthonic angel to protect the occulted teachings of that godhead, and gradually parasitized by pyretic structures which help it drink up the vital juices of interlopers.

HD 5. Armor: as chain. Attack: +5 slam 1d8. Moves with lumbering reproach. Mind like the scripture of an inhuman god.

• Crystalline Coating: has achieved perfect, austere stillness, resembling a remarkably large but inert pyrite outcropping. Ambushes on a 1-3. Though large as a stallion, it can flow through any space large enough for a newborn foal. 
• Sulfuric Acid: All water touching the monster is impregnated with potent, scentless, colorless, oily vitriol. Those who might touch it unknowingly save to realize the danger in time, or take 1d6 damage, and 1d6 for each round spent in the water. Wood chars, leather suffers, metal discolors. If the water is superheated, as by a fireball, it will disperse acidic fumes in a 60' radius.
• Forehead: A broken Melach Hashuta will reform over the course of 1d4 days unless the pyrite around its head is scraped away to reveal the Secret Name that animates it. As soon as it is read, the creature slow, fails, and dims.