Beastmen: An Introduction to the Brugor

Brugor are voracious, horny and irrationally violent. The worst qualities of man and beast mashed into drunk, shrieking, manic bullies. They are a scourge on the earth.

The Brugor exemplify the bestial excesses of humanity: unrestrained appetites, poor impulse control, and vacillation between slovenly sloth and irrational aggression. A parody of toxic-masculinity. 

This is a tried and true archetype in fantasy (particularly in games) and I can't claim any originality in the basic shape of these adversaries. Like many before me, I take inspiration from Glorantha's Broo and Warhammer's beastmen. Arnold K has a particularly good rendition (here and here).

Brian Froud

What are the Brugor?

The Brugor are an all-male race of horned, hairy, cleft-hoofed, animal-headed humanoids. They breed prodigiously with domestic livestock and can reproduce at an alarming rate. Given access to a heard of cattle, they'll produce a horde in a matter of months. Their young are standing within minutes of birth, and on the hunt shortly thereafter. 

The most common varieties vary with the breeding stock available in an area but the most often seen include bovine (i.e. minotaurs), caprine (goatmen), ovine (rams) and cervine (stags) types. Often an outbreak begins with wildlife, before moving into settled areas and afflicting farm animals. 

They are carnivores. Their preferred feed is humans but they'll eagerly devour any animal they can catch that they can't impregnate.  

While clever enough to use tools, they lack the industry to make them. Any weapons they use more advanced than a sharpened stick will be plundered from humans. 

Herds form around particularly strong individuals and raid together, becoming bolder as their groups grow larger. Fortunately, they are fractious and disorganized so warbands larger than a dozen or two are rare. Occasionally, they'll be forced into the service of a non-brugor leader but it is almost never worth the effort.

Left to their own devices, brugor lack the social organization to form settlements or coordinate anything but the most haphazard raids into human territory. However, their mean little minds are perfectly suited for infection by Baphomet. 

#dungeon23: Week 1, the Beast Cave

 I have ambitions to write a longer post about my dungeon23 goals and methods. Today, however, I'll just take a few minutes to share Week 1:

Formatted like a journal with maps and ancillary details on post-its

1.1 - Ordure Entry

Vaulted entry hall, waist deep in muck. A rickety catwalk crosses the mire between the doors. Rotten, splintering boards may collapse under a person's weight. 

• Beneath the surface, jagged stakes & protruding nails will pierce anyone that falls in
• Making noise in this hall will draw beastmen from other areas.

1.2 - Crossroads

In the middle of this intersection, a large object under a filthy tarp.  

• Under the tarp, an iron cage containing a sickly, molting buzzard. If the tarp is removed, the bird will make a huge racket and draw beastmen from nearby areas

Mute Monks

Alexander Gauge as Friar Tuck

In my new #dungeon23 project, one of the commonly encountered factions will be the Mute Monks.

The local arch-cleric has taken the opening of the old mountain's fortress-monastery as an opportunity to thin the ranks of low ranking clergy and has declared a crusade into the haunted halls. Now the local abbeys, convents and charterhouses are sending their least useful and most enthusiastic adherents up to the dungeon. 

Though woefully ill-suited and under-equipped for dungeon exploration, the silent friars will cheerfully do their best to recover artifacts and render aid to the needy within the ruins. 

• These are intended as a comedic cannon-fodder group. Adventuring parties will find their hapless bodies everywhere within the mountain. If I need to telegraph traps, a monk will be discovered clutching his poisoned throat. If I want to forecast a monster, a monk's gnawed bones will be the clue.
• So long as they are not actively mistreated, the monks will do their best to aid adventuring parties within the mountain. They will share rations (bland, sad food), cast blessings and bandage wounds. Hopefully players will feel a little twinge of sadness whenever they find them mangled.
• The monks don't speak and communicate in pantomime (this just seems fun to do as a DM).

#dungeon23 Kickoff

If you're reading my blog, you are almost certainly already aware of Sean McCoy's viral #dungeon23 challenge. In short, make a mega-dungeon one room per day in 2023 -- 365 rooms divided into 12 levels, one per month. Ben L. of Mazirian's Garden is compiling periodic round-ups. 

Like so many others, I'm setting out to make an attempt.

Inspiration

In 2022, after years of having our travel constricted by the ongoing global health crisis, my wife and I were fortunate enough to go on a couple of big trips. In the spring, we went to Peru and visited a lot of Inca sites, including Machu Pichu. In the fall, we went to France, and spent a few days in Normandy, where we spent a day exploring Mont-Saint-Michel. The broad concept for my dungeon23 project draws inspiration from both of these trips. 

Machu Pichu is located on top of a isolated pinnacle of rock. The complex is built into the stone and was originally only accessible via miles of steep stair cases and ledges carved into the mountainside. It is believed that this site was a royal retreat and ritual space (and perhaps a religious academy). 

Mont-Saint-Michel has been a fortress since the dark ages. Over the centuries it has been used for many purposes. It houses churches and an abbey. It's been used as an armory, a prison and a treasure storehouse. 

Both of these places inspire me with their long history of different uses, their grand, imposing prominence in their landscapes and the rock-hewn nature of their construction. 

The Concept

My dungeon23 (name TBD) will be a grand fortress-monastery, carved into an imposing granite spire. Over centuries it has been used to safeguard holy relics of the Gothic Church and to hide profane artifacts. It has been used as a prison and a menagerie of monsters. It houses armories, stocked with obscure and powerful weapons. Deep within the stone, there are labyrinthine crypts, holding both the sacred slain and the bodies of those that the church feared might one day wake if left unattended. 

Perhaps it is something within the mountain itself or perhaps it was the presence of so many evil artifacts, prisoners and corpses but whatever the cause, over time the fortress twisted its inhabitants. Heresies sprouted, monsters spawned. The once orderly bastion became a warren of fratricidal warfare. Dark things escaped in the chaos and now roam the halls unimpeded. 

Cutting their losses, the Church sealed the mountain off, hoping that the fires of chaos would burn themselves out within. It seemed to work. The mountain became desolate and quiet. For decades it was avoided and the surrounding country mostly forgot its sinister history. 

As fear subsided, unsavory elements have begun to move in. It is rumored that cults have begun to climb the mountain to make their sacrifices on it's high places. Bandits have found hideouts in old towers. 

The Church has not forgotten their treasures. They are ready to begin recovering them. Adventurers are needed to delve inside, to map the lost halls and bring back their relics. Those that survive will be paid handsomely (and those that don't will surely be richly rewarded in the next life). Are you up for the challenge?

Fortress Monastery, 40k style