Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng
Embellished and Adapted for an Alternate Campaign World
This is a game document of flavor text I created to go with a mini-adventure called the Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng, from the Role-Playing Game aid Vornheim — The Complete City Kit, by Zak S. The Zoo adventure was unusual and showed alot of promise, but was really just an outline designed to be incorporated into any Role-Playing Game system. To maximize on this promise and bring the Zoo to life in all of its eccentric glory, I wrote room descriptions and the text for explanatory signs on the creatures’ pens. I particularly focused on the latter, as the members of the strange menagerie are really the stars of the adventure. Flavor text, D&D 5e, and campaign world adjustments complete, the Zoo was a memorable addition to the ongoing adventure story I am running for my son and his teenage friends. In fact, not only did the teens have a blast, but some of the adults who witnessed the session came back to me later to pick my brain for storytelling notes that they could use on their own games.
Additional writing samples of D&D flavor text and post-game writeups — including the post-game writeup for the Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng — are available upon request. Suffice it here to say that the Zoo post-game vignettes involving Parnival the Vampire Monkey, the Candelabraxian Peryton, and the Water Closet with the emerald-fobbed dropchain were particularly choice.
Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng – Flavor Text & additional notes
Entrance – Outside of A
Working your way over the rubble of a ruined stone wall, you find that the floor has opened out into a higher-ceilinged area, dotted with occasional, darkly stained pillars – sort of an interior plaza. Some distance away, you can see that another hallway leads off to your left; there is a matching one to the right, but it is choked with rubble. Straight ahead, glinting dully, is a large set of verdigris-stained, bronze double doors.
Closer: It is evident that the doors were worked with designs, but so corroded is their surface that it is difficult to make out even if the designs were simply decorative or some sort of strange, highly-stylized writing. To either side of the doors, it is evident the walls around them were covered with mosaic or tilework, but none of this decoration remains – it all appears to have been pried or chiseled off.
Any successful search: Sifting through the dust, you find pieces of what appear to have been roughly 1” square tiles – one of them, intact, cut from ultramarine; the other, broken in three pieces, cut from amber. (The overall quality is low … the amber bits are worth 3 silver pieces, the intact ultramarine square about 1 gold piece. Every 20 such tiles weigh a pound – only relevant if the adventurers enter the museum.)
A – Opening the doors:
To your surprise, the bronze doors swing easily and quietly open, revealing an unusual foyer area beyond. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling with square, semi-precious gemstone tiles that richly gleam in the poor light with every color imaginable. Elaborate bronze torch sconces are set in the walls to the left and right, and contain metal torches that light the room with dim amber illumination, though no fire burns upon them. In their gentle, cobweb-shrouded glow, the room has a lonely, gently dilapidated beauty. In the distance, the musical sound of tinkling water is audible.
B – Onward:
Turning the corner in the tiled hallway leading from the foyer, you find yourselves gazing into a largish room – like the foyer, lit by dim torches and dazzlingly tiled in what appear to be 1” square semi-precious gems. Red plush benches – their upholstery intact, but faded – are set at intervals along the walls, and a 15’-diameter pool with a raised edge and a wide stone pedestal rests at its center, from which springs a bare-branched, golden tree about ten feet tall whose branches continually drip-drip-drip into the pool encircling it.
Perched on a branch of the tree is a small, unremarkable-looking bird with a long beak and six legs; the instant it sees you, it takes flight in alarm and flies away down a hallway to your right – there is also another hallway leaving the room about twenty feet into the room on your left.
C – Mutant Snail:
Walking down the hallway, you round a corner to the right, and see that the dimly lit hall continues on about 60’ before turning again to the right. High on the lefthand wall, just before the turn, you see a large, glistening lump stuck to the gemstone tiles like a carbuncle. A few steps down the hall, at eye level on the right, is a brass plaque, and the floor is littered with little bits of paper. The plaque reads:
MAJESTIC SNAIL
PRIZED DURING THE “SLOW PET” CRAZE DURING THE REIGN OF KING FAUCELARTE
OF THE 8TH ZIRCANBRITH DYNASTY, THESE RARE AND BEAUTIFUL CREATURES WERE
OFTEN THE COMPANION ANIMALS OF WEALTHY MEMBERS OF THE NOBILITY.
FOR REASONS UNKNOWN, THIS PARTICULAR SPECIMEN ONLY EATS PAPER, PARCHMENT,
OR VELLUM PRINTED WITH WORDS BEGINNING WITH THE LETTER “S”.
On closer inspection, the lump turns out to be an eerily beautiful snail with a spiral shell a foot tall, and richly hued in blue and yellow.
D – Vampire Monkey… “Parnival”
Rounding another bend, you see before you a room with a 40’-tall iron cage set in the far left corner. Reaching clear to the ceiling; branches seemingly sprout from the wall inside the cage, and vines – their means of life support a mystery – hang down from the ceiling above. A gangly, gaunt-looking, black-and-white monkey sits on a ledge about halfway up, eyeing you curiously. To the left of the cage is a brass plaque with writing in the same foreign, antique script you have seen previously here. If read, the plaque states:
VAMPIRE MONKEY “PARNIVAL”
THE UNUSUAL INSTANCE OF VAMPIRISM AFFLICTING A COMMON
BEAST. THIS EXTINCT SPECIES OF MONKEY WAS ORIGINALLY
NATIVE TO THE JUNGLES OF ANGWAWAR, WHICH SANK BENEATH THE
WAVES SEVEN AGES AGO.
E – Xortoise Stranger by far than anything else you’ve seen here, the occupant of this room is so large that its cage – made, seemingly, from bands of pure force– only allows for a slim 5’ wide walkway around it, even though the room is fair to middling in size. The creature is like a huge tortoise – if a tortoise was perfectly, radially symmetrical, and had a head on every side – one where you’d expect, one where it’s tail ought to be, and one on either side, positioned between the stout front and back legs. The top of the shell appears, from below, to have a deep, X-shaped split, and the 4 shell sections created by the split can be seen to occasionally, independently move, as if the shell were made of extremely tough leather, rather than being the rigid affair that is more normal. The creature looks at you through the rheumy eyes of its closest head, but seems disinterested. The brass wall plaque nearby reads as follows:
XORTOISE
PURPORTEDLY THE MUTANT SPAWN OF THE GREAT WORLD
TORTOISE, THE ACTUAL ORIGIN OF THIS ANOMALY IS UNKNOWN.
IT LIVES SOLELY ON A DIET OF RICH MINERALS.
F – Narcissus Peacock – wandering free (its plaque and long-broken cage are in the fungus room, H):
Strutting through this hallway, uncaged, head held high, is an exemplary peacock. It pops up on its hind legs like a meerkat, cocks its head to one side, and fans out its magnificent tail for you.
G – Unsettling Toad:
Walking down the hallway between exhibits, you hear the sound of a little girl singing ahead. As you approach the next open area, the melody grows louder, and you half expect to find a caged humanoid there … but instead you discover a brass cage on a large table of close-grained, purple wood. Sitting in the cage is what has to be the most grotesque-looking, lumpy toad imaginable. The size of a gnome, it ignores your entrance and continues singing sweetly in a cutesy, high-pitched voice. The plaque nearby reads:
UNSETTLING TOAD
AN ABERRATION, POSSIBLY UNIQUE, FOUND 384 YEARS AGO IN THE ARBORETUM OF AFHELBRIX, LIVING UNDER A BANK OF REEDS IN THE GARDEN OF EVERYWHEN. THE STRANGE ALCHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF THE LAKE THERE ARE THOUGHT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TOAD’S ALTERED VOCALS AND CONFOUNDING APPEARANCE.
H – Mottled Fungi (not an exhibit, but growing luxuriantly on the waste products of the zoo’s other residents):
The odorous funk of this room was detectable long before you reached it, and no wonder – the broken ruin of a cage that is in here is mostly buried in a veritable carpet of animal waste and an extensive, vari-colored fungal growth that covers most of the floor and the north wall, creeping ever upward towards the ceiling. To one side of the door is a brass plaque, that if read says:
NARCISSUS PEACOCK
SECURE IN ITS MAGICAL CAGE, YOU CAN ENJOY THIS RARE BIRD’S MAGNIFICENT TAIL … WITHOUT FEEDING IT TOO.
I – Water closet:
The door opens easily, revealing a room with a sort of basin-shaped, white chair or throne in it. The smooth metal seat appears to be a separate piece, and is fancifully decorated with a swirling pattern of fish and other sea life. Above the chair is a similarly decorated metal box attached to the wall, and connected to the chair by a thin post. Curiously, from the box hangs a long chain ending in a large, lozenge-shaped emerald. The walls of this small chamber are tiled with little squares of lapis, pink marble, and jade. There is a basin on one wall, made of the same material as the chair.
Search: You find the seat of the odd chair is hinged, and opens … to reveal that the basin of the chair is filled with clear water. On the inside surface of the basin, beneath the water, is the portrait, illustrated in dark blue upon white, of a rather unpleasant-looking man with buggy eyes and a sardonic smirk. The portrait is surrounded by flowing script in the same unknown language as the various display plaques you have seen throughout the zoo. (If read, the script turns out only to identify the portrait as that of some particularly detested public official. The emerald can be removed from the dropchain with little difficulty, is worth 5,000 gold pieces, and will thoroughly irritate the nightingale).
J – Tigris Azure:
The hall gives way to another exhibit room, tiled with white marble, lapis lazuli, and garnet. The large brass cage dominating the center of the room contains a bright blue-and-black-striped tiger that paces back and forth, regarding you as it might a fresh haunch of venison. The nearby plaque reads:
TIGRIS AZURE
AN EXTRAORDINARILY RARE ANIMAL FROM THE MOUNTAIN JUNGLES BEYOND THESTEPPES OF PARFUNG. IT IS SAID THAT THOSE WHO DREAM OF A BLUE TIGER ARE DOOMED TO BE ATTACKED BY ONE THE FOLLOWING DAY.
K – Firefly Woman:
The inhabitant of this exhibit is less menacing, but no less odd than anything else you’ve seen so far in the Immortal Zoo: A 5’-tall, vaguely humanoid-like female insect with a bioluminescent thorax. Its brass plaque reads:
FIREFLY WOMAN
OF UNKNOWN ORIGINS, THIS STRANGE CREATURE WAS CAPTURED IN THE FOREST OF FARAWAY ZUME AS IT SLEPT ON A FLOATING BED OF FLOSS HIGH ABOVE THE TREETOPS. EFFORTLESSLY BEGUILING AND INQUISITIVE, THE FIREFLY WOMAN APPEARS TO SPEAK AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE TONGUE OF ITS OWN DEVISING.
REFLECTIVE OBJECTS STRICTLY PROHIBITED BEYOND THIS POINT.
L – Giant White Octopus:
This room contains a very large pool, surrounded by a low, circular stone wall. From the inside lip of the wall, water continually runs down the stones and into the pool; a huge mass like a nest of white snakes undulates and twines about at the bottom, perhaps 15’ or so feet beneath the surface. Slowly dancing with flowing movements around the pool are two ghastly-pale human women in fancifully embroidered dresses. They seem completely oblivious or indifferent to your presence. The whole place has a fishy sort of smell, and there are various basket traps and other containers scattered around the margins of the room.
A brass plaque on the wall to your left reads as follows:
PUPPETEER OCTOPUS, ALBINO
THIS HUGE CEPHALOPOD, WITH DOZENS OF LITTLE MOUTHS ON EACH OF ITS TENTACLES — UNUSUAL FOR ITS GREAT SIZE, AND EVEN MORE SO FOR ITS ALBINISM – IS UNQUESTIONABLY FRIGHTENING-LOOKING; BUT HAPPILY IS PEACEFUL AND RETIRING BY NATURE.
WHILE ONLY MARGINALLY SENTIENT, THE PUPPETEER OCTOPUS HAS THE REMARKABLE ABILITY TO MENTALLY INFLUENCE OTHER CREATURES SUSCEPTIBLE TO SUGGESTION, GUIDING THESE ADOPTED SYMBIOTES TO PERFORM ACTIVITIES BENEFICIAL TO ITSELF. FEAR NOT; IF THE ZOO STAFF FIND YOU AT CLOSING TIME SCRUBBING THE OCTOPUS’ HIDE WITH A LONG-HANDLED BRUSH OR FEEDING IT LIVE PRAWNS, THEY WILL INTERVENE AND ENSURE YOU ARE FREE TO DEPART.
Note: The octopus, with its meals supplemented by the two ladies, is basically content, and will not attack or interfere with the characters – despite the fact it can leave its pool for an hour – unless they interfere with the women bringing it extra food.
M – Oswick the Griffon:
The hidden door swings open to reveal a caged griffon in the secret room beyond – clearly very old, and slowly swaying to and fro as if in a breeze, though the reeking air of the room is quite still. There is no metal plaque describing it, and the area in and around its cage is strewn with stained cushions, a few books, and dozens of teacups, some few of which are broken. All of a sudden it realizes it has company, and attempts unsuccessfully to sit up straighter, but instead indecorously slumps to one side – and you realize the beast isn’t necessarily senile; it is, in fact, absolutely stinking drunk.
“Pisssssh,” it says blearily, with forced cheer. “Welcome! You’re new here, aren’t you? My name is Ossshwick.”
N – Oliphaunt: In the wider section of hallway ahead is a rectangular table displaying a golden cage containing a cute, kitten-sized creature with wrinkly grey skin, tusks, and a ludicrously long and flexible nose. The brass plaque above the cage reads thusly:
OLIPHAUNT
A PEACE-LOVING, DOCILE FOREST FLOOR INHABITANT RARELY SEEN OUTSIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN LOWLANDS OF DINDEGRIS. IT IS SAID THAT THIS CHARMING LITTLE CREATURE’S MOST DISTANT ANCESTORS, PERVERSELY, WERE QUITE ENORMOUS.
O – Goat Scorpion:
The large cage in this room holds another weird muddle of a creature – a giant brown scorpion with the oversize, neckless head of a goat … there are also tufts of goatlike hair at the joints of each of its legs. When it sees you, it attempts to force its muzzle through the cage, but the bars are set just a little too close together. It champs its teeth in annoyance and pulls back a couple of feet, watching you closely.
A nearby plaque describes this abomination in these terms:
GOATSCORPION
A RESIDENT OF THE 67TH LEVEL OF THE ABYSS, THIS VILE BEAST WAS WRESTED FROM AN ELDRITCH CEREMONY DURING A WITCHHUNTER STING ON THE BLACK APOTHEOSIS COVEN IN THE WILDS OUTSIDE OF POMEREY. IT SUBSISTS ENTIRELY ON FEELINGS OF ANGST AND ILL-WILL.
P – Treasure Room:
This room appears to have once been an indoor garden. Pots of dirt with dead plant matter hanging from them are everywhere – but themselves are buried under a layer of the most egregious, sparkly junk imaginable – brass buttons, bits of tinsel, popped rivets, small metal jar caps, broken pieces of costume jewelry with paste gems, individual links of chain, blobs of metal from failed spot welds, wall hooks, bent tacks … what a mess.
Q – Candelabraxian Peryton:
Set into the walls of this room, tiled with squares of jade, lapis, and grey marble, is a tall cage that reaches to the ceiling, and has a number of perches set in it – one which supports a very large nest, made, seemingly, from hundreds, perhaps thousands of animal bones.
Sitting on a lower perch, and staring at you intently, is a strange creature with the body and limbs of a huge bird of prey, but the fanged head and breast of a great stag … and from there, things get weird. The right eye of the stag appears to be the normal brown eye of a beast, but the left glows in ever-changing shades of deepest red, the glare underlighting the creature’s tangle of magnificent antlers. Set on various of its antlers are seven yellow candles, all burning brightly. Their flaring light, and the light of the room’s unburning metal torches throw seven shifting, overlapping shadows behind the creature, all humanoid in form – not one of them the shadow of a huge bird with the head of a stag. The creature shifts a wickedly taloned foot back and forth on the perch, and regards your group in the uneasy silence.
This strange and menacing creature’s plaque reads:
CANDELABRAXIAN PERYTON
SUMMONED FROM THE INFERNAL REGIONS TO SUPPORT THE INVADING ARMY AT THE HISTORIC BATTLE OF GARG, THE CANDELABRAXIAN PERYTON, ACCORDING TO LEGEND, SLEW SEVEN WARRIORS BEFORE BEING ENSNARED BY KORTRAL OF THE ARTICULATED HAND. PURCHASED FROM A TRAVELLING SIDE SHOW BY PING FENG SOME 1,500 YEARS AFTER GARG’S FALL, THE PERYTON BECAME THE FIRST EXHIBIT IN THE IMMORTAL ZOO. THE ENTIRETY OF HELL CAN BE SEEN REFLECTED IN ITS LEFT EYE.
R – Demonic Fly:
The air in this exhibit room smells singularly nauseating, and a low, buzzing ceaselessly drones on at the edge of your hearing. The cage’s occupant here has a huge, black, spine-haired insect body topped with a bug-like, compound-eyed caricature of a human head. Inside the thing’s working, human-like jaws are chitinous points instead of teeth; additional working mouthparts of uncertain function are visible as well. It moves closer as you enter, gripping the bars of its cage with multiple, claw-like feet.
The plaque describing this vile being reads:
DEMONIC FLY
INADVERTENTLY SUMMONED DURING THE ENTERTAINMENT AT A BRUNDINGIAN ROYAL FEAST BY THE COURT MAGICIAN ZANSIFEL OF PLANGE, IT TOOK A TRIO OF WARLOCKS AND ELEVEN GLYPHS TO SUBSEQUENTLY CAPTURE THE MUSCARIAN ABOMINATION AS IT WAS LAYING WASTE TO THE SURROUNDING PARKLANDS. VICIOUS AND STUPID, THE DEMONIC FLY NONETHELESS HAS AN INSTINCTIVE GRASP OF POLITICS – BUT HEED ITS ADVICE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
S – Nagdusa (Thrace, sister of Eshrigel, noted elsewhere in Vornheim):
The close-set bars of the 15’-wide cage in this room contain yet another bizarre creature – this one has the body of a huge python topped with the head of a sharp-nosed, fanged humanoid woman with smaller snakes growing from her head instead of hair. Head swaying, she slithers and winds about the rocks, branches, and bones in her cage, nonsensically babbling in a sing-song, but not displeasing voice.
The plaque in this room reads:
NAGADUSA “THRACE”
PURPORTEDLY ONE OF ONLY TWELVE MEDUSA SISTERS IN EXISTENCE, PING FENG FOUND THIS NONESUCH HYBRID SADLY GUARDING A PLUNDERED HOARD BENEATH THE ANCIENT RUINS OF BHARTH IN THE DISTANT EAST. INGENIOUSLY FREEING THE NAGADUSA OF THE GEAS BINDING IT TO THE EMPTY TREASURE CHAMBERS, PING FENG WAS ABLE TO CAREFULLY TRANSPORT IT IN A WINDOWLESS COVERED WAGON TO THE ZOO WITHOUT MISHAP TO ITSELF OR OTHERS. THE MAGIC OF THE NAGADUSA’S CAGE PROTECTS OUR ZOO GUESTS FROM ITS MORTIFYING GAZE.
Note: Interested in her sister, interested in escaping, Thrace will accept any reasonable offer for the latter … but is barking mad, and will immediately attack upon passing through the front gate to zoo.
T – Empty Cages:
This room contains two empty, open cages; one has a brass plaque attached to it that reads as follows:
FURRED SNAKE
THE HUGE, WHITE-FURRED CONSTRICTOR SNAKE, NATIVE TO THE NORTHLANDS, IS NOTORIOUS FOR DROPPING FROM SNOWY TREES ON HAPLESS WAYFARERS, THEN SLEEPING OFF ITS MEAL FOR WEEKS IN A NEARBY DRIFT. THE CAGE’S ENCHANTMENT KEEPS THE SNAKE IN ITS PREFERRED ENVIRONMENT … AND SAFELY AWAY FROM OUR VALUABLE PATRONS.
U – Vampire, Nephilidian/Amphibious …”Vorkuta”:
Wanly floating in a circular tank like a tiled fountain with a bell-like iron cage over the top is an amphibious sort of humanoid with gills in her neck, webbed hands and feet, and light blue eyes. She paddles slowly around on her back, singing some odd bit of doggerel poetry, and seems not to notice you.
The plaque nearby reads:
NEPHILIDIAN VAMPIRE “VORKUTA”
NATIVE TO THE CONTINENT OF ABRAXUS, THIS TERRIFYING PREDATOR IS ON THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION DUE TO HABITAT LOSS AS THE VAST JUNGLE IN WHICH IT LIVES SLOWLY SICKENS BEFORE THE EVER-ADVANCING CLIFFS OF ICE FROM THE SOUTHERN POLE. HAS A FETISH FOR FINE JEWELRY; MIND YOUR VALUABLES.
V- Supply Room:
You peer around the corner into a large room full of maintenance, care, and feeding supplies – brooms, shovels, a wheelbarrow, tanks of live fish, tanks full of live maggots, cages of live monkeys, a bizarre apparatus with tubes extending into the walls, bins scattered higgedly-piggedly all around the room … and working slowly and deliberately amidst the chaos, a drooling, corpulent drone of a man in stained silk robes with pale, doughy skin. The room is lit by a simple chandelier hanging about twelve feet above the floor, and by a single pillar candle of soft wax in a metal stand, with (oddly) a large metal key sticking out of it about an inch from the top.
Notes: Gudge is not technically a zombie, but a living man with no higher mental functions to speak of – it attacked, he will attempt to defend himself with something like a shovel.
One of the bins in the room contains 10,000 gold pieces in semi-precious stones (for the Xortoise) … 10 stones per pound, or about a thousand pounds total.
W – Maceratops:
The very large steel cage in this room holds the most massive creature you have seen so far – a creature with a huge, pebble-skinned reptilian body, a stocky, powerful-looking tail, and a massive steel ball instead of a head, the whole of this sphere hobnailed with short spikes. It becomes agitated at your approach, and begins pacing its cage, but how it even knows you are present is anyone’s guess.
The brass plaque describing this vast, confusing horror ramblingly reads in this way:
MACERATOPS
THE PRODUCT OF ILLEGAL ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION DURING THE REIGN OF KING BULCH THE SOMNALENT, THIS UNFORTUNATE BEAST’S MEANS OF SUSTENANCE (NOT TO MENTION MEANS OF SIGHT, SMELL, HEARING, ETC.) REMAIN TO THIS DAY A MYSTERY.
RELEASED BY MILITANT ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS, THE MACERATOPS PROVED MINDLESSLY DESTRUCTIVE, RAMMING AND TRAMPLING AN ERRATIC SWATH THROUGH SEVERAL CITY BLOCKS BEFORE SUCCUMBING TO DOZENS OF PARALYTIC DARTS AND A HOLD MONSTER SPELL.