My prompt was from Betty Bacontime, who runs the Paper Elemental blog. The request was elegant and simple, I quote: "Skeletons. Thank you."
Skeletons? With pleasure!
This skeleton... (d100)
(roll d100 and read below!)
- Has a songbird trapped inside its ribcage.
- Is actually a puppet, you can see the strings if you look close enough – but who is the puppeteer?
- Wears a wide-rimmed hat with a fancy ostrich feather.
- Has gems inserted into the eye sockets.
- Chatters with its teeth all the time, it’s creepy.
- Has six fingers.
- Whirls around in the skeletal remains of a ballgown (you know, one with a steel cage crinoline).
- Is barely held together by leather straps and belts.
- Has moss growing on its skull.
- Only wants to hug one last time.
- Has occult-looking symbols engraved on its ribs – possibly a spell scroll?
- Wears a hangman’s noose around its neck.
- Has two heads.
- Is chained up.
- Holds a smaller skeleton by the hand.
- Has adamantium-plated bones.
- Rips off its own arm and uses it as a club.
- Hops around on hooves.
- Wears a Venetian carnival mask.
- Tries to drink from a bottle, but the vine splashes through its ribs.
- Wears heavy gold bracelets and anklets.
- Serves a local lord as butler.
- Is held together by silver pins and wires.
- Can jump up to 30’ and screams while airborne.
- Is twice as tall as the tallest player character.
- Still has hair, somehow attached to its skull. Long and curly.
- Escaped from a school biology classroom.
- Has a proper meaty non-skeletal arm – this is actually the arm of a murderer that was grafted onto it before its death.
- Scribbles poems on walls in mirror writing.
- Has shark’s teeth.
- Still wears the faulty jetpack that caused its demise.
- Falls apart and recollects every couple of rounds.
- Wears glasses, hell, maybe even sunglasses!
- Has a dagger stuck in its solar plexus (if removed, the skeleton falls apart).
- Is actually just half a skeleton (halved by a precise vertical cut).
- Is the stand-in for Slash in a yodeling Guns n’ Roses cover band.
- Communicates in Morse code (by tapping on its hipbone).
- Has four arms.
- Is humanoid, but has a long reptile tail.
- Sports large, coiled ram’s horns.
- Glows in the dark.
- Has an obsidian blade for its tongue.
- Reminds you of someone you know.
- Can speak (despite having no organs) and has a soothing ASMR voice.
- Crawls around on sheer surfaces and ceilings.
- Is friends with a toad or a cat.
- Has a flaming skull.
- Can detach its head and use it as a scout.
- Is armed with kitchen utensils (butcher knife or cleaver as weapon, pan as shield, pot as helmet).
- Has no legs, yet still walks, as if on phantom limbs.
- Knows your name, somehow.
- Has a small dragon curled around its neck.
- Is painted red with ochre.
- Carries a large sealed jug with an ooze monster inside.
- Wears an impressive amount of medals from the Skeleton Wars.
- Is for hire: it can do whatever your henchman does, but better and for half the price.
- Has a jack-o-lantern for its head, and, despite being carved, it changes and has a limited array facial expressions.
- Wears a clip-on tie.
- Contains the tastiest bone marrow.
- Is the infamous Skeleton Interrogator.
- Plays a trumpet.
- Is made out of wood, painted white.
- Was abandoned by its necromantic master.
- Wears a complete but very rusty set of plate armor; the helmet is adorned with a silver crown.
- Smokes a pipe of funny weeds.
- Is a bee’s nest, and yes, skeleton honey is very healthy.
- Has a big chunk missing out of its skull, and the remains of the brain are still visible.
- Produces an eerie melody when the wind blows through its frame, like an Aeolian harp.
- Is wrapped in the kingdom’s flag.
- Wears cowboy boots, complete with silver spurs.
- Hopes one day to become whole again.
- Is able to Turn Undead as a cleric.
- Just got out from a shallow grave and is pretty grumpy.
- Can fire death lasers from its eye sockets.
- Has a golden tooth.
- Wears a monk’s cowl, with a ruby sewn into the hem.
- Commands a small army of mice.
- Is covered in seaweed and barnacles.
- Wears a jester’s outfit.
- Explodes into a cloud of sleeping powder upon destruction.
- Doesn’t get along with the other skellies.
- Can open any lock.
- Has functioning vulture wings sprouting from its back.
- Fights like a fencing champion.
- Has spikey bone protrusions and uses them as weapons.
- Is still working on that novel.
- Can outrun a race horse, but only on short distance.
- Carries a briefcase full of important documents.
- Wears a cursed chainmail shirt that turns the wearer into a skeleton.
- Growls and wheezes.
- Has a religious symbol embossed on its forehead.
- Wields what is clearly a Wand of Magic Missiles, but uses it as a club – on maximum melee damage, the wand breaks (the characters understand this) and releases all the charges it has.
- Walks around in circles.
- Wears armor gloves with steel claws.
- Offers a drink from an empty chipped crystal chalice.
- Is covered in cobwebs and can release dangerous spiders from its mouth.
- Communicates telepathically.
- Has a hook hand and a pirate hat, and if put on a ship, navigates it to the treasure island.
- Can reorganize itself into any shape, as long as all bones are used.
- Rides a pale horse.
Thank you for the skeletons.
ReplyDeleteHappy Jackalope day!
DeleteI love that you went "full flavor, no stats"!
ReplyDeleteYeah :)
DeleteYou know, my first idea for this prompt was rather different. I wanted to do a bestiary, with stats, for different animated skeletons. A natural history museum comes alive, there are different dinosaur skeletons, different hominids... But then I went with these instead.