%%%%
A broken pillar

“Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken
 and reared up for himself a pillar,
 which is in the king's dale: for he said,
 I have no son to keep my name in remembrance...”
    -KJV Bible, 2 Samuel 18:18.
%%%%
A gateway to Hell

“I am the way into the city of woe.
 I am the way to a forsaken people.
 I am the way into eternal sorrow.

 Sacred justice moved my architect.
 I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
 Primordial love and ultimate intellect.

 Only those elements time cannot wear
 Were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
 Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
    -Dante Alighieri, _The Divine Comedy_, “Inferno”, Canto III. ca. 1315.
     trans. John Ciardi, 1954.
%%%%
A gateway to a ziggurat

“Captain: Take off every ‘zig’!!
 Captain: For great justice.”
    -Zero Wing
%%%%
A gateway to the decaying netherworld of Tartarus

<Tartarus>
%%%%
A granite statue

“I met a traveller from an antique land
 Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
 Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
 Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
 And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
 Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
 The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
 And on the pedestal these words appear:
 ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
 Nothing beside remains: round the decay
 Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
 The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
    -Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”. 1818.
%%%%
A labyrinth entrance

“Maze-treaders, whose vision ahead and behind is severely constricted and
fragmented, suffer confusion, whereas maze-viewers who see the pattern whole,
from above or in a diagram, are dazzled by its complex artistry. What you see
depends on where you stand, and thus, at one and the same time, labyrinths are
single (there is one physical structure) and double: they simultaneously
incorporate order and disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity,
artistry and chaos.”
    -Mark Z. Danielewski, “House of Leaves”. 2000.

“Since I emerged that day from the labyrinth,
 Dazed with the tall and echoing passages,
 The swift recoils, so many I almost feared
 I’d meet myself returning at some smooth corner,
 Myself or my ghost, for all there was unreal
 After the straw ceased rustling and the bull
 Lay dead upon the straw and I remained,
 Blood-splashed, if dead or alive I could not tell
 In the twilight nothingness”
    -Edwin Muir, “The Labyrinth”. 1949.
%%%%
A one-way gate to the infinite horrors of the Abyss

“And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
    -Friedrich Nietzsche, _Beyond Good and Evil_ , Aphorism 146. 1886.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally
get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been
doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now here, you see, it takes
all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get
somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
    -Lewis Carroll, _Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_,
ch. 2
    “The Garden of Live Flowers”. 1871.
%%%%
A portal to a secret trove of treasure

“‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’ There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves
his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the
baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the
school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away
they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming,
knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and
astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the
sound.”
    -Charles Dickens, _Oliver Twist; or, The parish boy's progress_, ch. X.
1838.
%%%%
A rock wall

“I know not whether Laws be right,
   Or whether Laws be wrong;
 All that we know who lie in gaol
   Is that the wall is strong;
 And that each day is like a year,
   A year whose days are long.”
    -Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. 1898.
%%%%
A staircase to the Ecumenical Temple

<Temple>
%%%%
A staircase to the Tomb

<Tomb>
%%%%
A tree

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than
other things do.

    -Willa Cather, _O Pioneers_. 1913.
%%%%
Aizul

“I went to Heaven —
 ’Twas a small Town —
 Lit — with a Ruby —
 Lathed — with Down —”
    -Emily Dickinson, _I went to Heaven_. ca. 1860.
%%%%
Antaeus

“That country was then ruled by Antaeus, son of Poseidon, who used to kill
strangers by forcing them to wrestle. Being forced to wrestle with him,
Hercules hugged him, lifted him aloft, broke and killed him; for when he
touched earth so it was that he waxed stronger, wherefore some said that he was
a son of Earth.”
    -Pseudo-Apollodorus , _Library and Epitome_, 2.5.11. ca. 150 BC.
    trans. Sir James George Frazer, 1913.
%%%%
Asmodeus

“For myself, I have other occupations:  I make absurd matches; I marry
greybeards with minors, masters with servants, girls with small fortunes with
tender lovers who have none. It is I who introduced into this world luxury,
debauchery, games of chance, and chemistry. I am the author of the first
cookery book, the inventor of festivals, of dancing, music, plays, and of the
newest fashions; in a word, I am ASMODEUS, surnamed The Devil on Two Sticks.”
    -Alain René Le Sage, _Asmodeus: Or, The Devil on Two Sticks_. 1707.
%%%%
Awaken Forest spell

 • Hel: [died to] Infection! She's mine!
 - Thor: From a splinter that she got bravely fighting an elm!
 • Hel: Trees are inanimate plants, you buffoon!
 - Thor: Bravery knows no limits!
    -Rich Burlew, Order of the Stick, #874
%%%%
Banishment spell

“An immense river of oblivion is sweeping us away into a nameless abyss.”
    -Ernest Renan, Souvenirs
%%%%
Cause Fear spell

“And when Miranda sang
 Everyone turned away
 Used to the noose, they obey”
    -The Mars Volta, “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore”. 2005.
%%%%
Cigotuvi's Monster

“I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had
 created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if
 eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened,
 and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin
 wrinkled his cheeks.”
    -Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein”
%%%%
Corrupt ability

“I fumbled to the window to experience the world
 And to hear my Madness singing, sitting on the kerbstone
 [A blind old drunken man who sings and mutters,
  With broken boot heels stained in many gutters]
 And as he sang the world began to fall apart . . .”
    -T.S. Eliot, “Prufrock's Pervigilium”. 1912 (published 1996).
%%%%
Crazy Yiuf

“There was an Old Man with a beard,
 Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
 Two Owls and a Hen,
 Four Larks and a Wren,
 Have all built their nests in my beard!'”
    -Edward Lear, _A Book of Nonsense [No. 1]_. 1846.
%%%%
Darkness spell

“If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride,
     And hug it in my arms.”
    -William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”
%%%%
Dispater

“Hoc idem magis ostendit antiquius Iovis nomen: nam olim Diovis et Diespiter
dictus, id est dies pater; a quo dei dicti qui inde, et dius et divum, unde sub
divo, Dius Fidius. Itaque inde eius perforatum tectum, ut ea videatur divum, id
est caelum. Quidam negant sub tecto per hunc deierare oportere. Aelius Dium
Fidium dicebat Diovis filium, ut Graeci Dioskopon Castorem, et putabat hunc
esse Sancum ab Sabina lingua et Herculem a Graeca. Idem hic Dis pater dicitur
infimus, qui est coniunctus terrae, ubi omnia ut oriuntur ita aboriuntur;
quorum quod finis ortuum, Orcus dictus.”
    -Marcus Terentius Varro, _De Lingua Latina_, Liber V, circa 40 BC.
%%%%
Dowan

“Skill and grace, the twin brother and sister, are dancing playfully on your
finger tips.”
    -Rabindranath Tagore, _Chitra_, Act I, Scene iv. 1914.
%%%%
Duvessa

“Twin children: the Girl, she was plain;
 The Brother was handsome & vain;
 ‘Let him brag of his looks,’
 Father said; ‘mind your books!
 The best beauty is bred in the brain.’”
    -Aesop & Walter Crane, _The Baby’s Own Aesop_, 36: "Brother & Sister".
1887.
%%%%
Edmund

“And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
 Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper.—
 Now, gods, stand up for bastards!”
    -William Shakespeare, _King Lear_, I, ii. 1606.

“When the forces stood in array Edmund proposed to decide their claims by
single combat; but Canute saying that he, a man of small stature, would have
little chance against the tall athletic Edmund, proposed, on the contrary, for
them to divide the realm as their fathers had done.”
    -Thomas Keightley, _The History of England_. 1839.
%%%%
Fire Storm spell

“Some have said there is no subtlety to destruction. You know what? They're
dead.”
    -Jaya Ballard, task mage (Magic: the Gathering)
%%%%
Frederick

“I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are
dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly
and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.”
    -Mark Twain, _Autobiography of Mark Twain_. 1924.
%%%%
Geryon

“Khrysaor, married to Kallirhoe, daughter of glorious Okeanos, was father to
the triple-headed Geryon, but Geryon was killed by the great strength of
Herakles at sea-circled Erytheis beside his own shambling cattle on that day
when Herakles drove those broad-faced cattle toward holy Tiryns, when he
crossed the stream of Okeanos and had killed Orthos and the oxherd Eurytion out
in the gloomy meadow beyond fabulous Okeanos.”
    -Hesiod, _Theogony_, circa 700 BCE.
%%%%
Ice Storm spell

“Neither Deluge Nor Ice Storm Nor The Black Silence Of The Netherhells Shall
Stay These Messengers About Their Sacred Business. Do Not Ask Us About
Sabre-Tooth Tigers, Tar Pits, Big Green Things With Teeth Or The Goddess Czol.”
    -Anghammarad, “Going Postal”, Terry Pratchett.
%%%%
Ilsuiw

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
 By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
    -T.S. Eliot, _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_. lines 129-131. 1915.
%%%%
Khufu

“And then I looked farther, beyond the pallid line of the sands, and I saw a
Pyramid of gold, the wonder Khufu had built. As a golden wonder it saluted me,
as a golden thing it greeted me, as a golden miracle I shall remember it.”
    -Robert Hichens, _The Spell of Egypt_
%%%%
Killer Klown

“All the world loves a clown.”
    -Cole Porter, “Be a Clown”. 1948.
%%%%
Kirke

“Lo, thy comrades yonder in the house of Kirke are penned like swine in
close-barred sties. And art thou come to release them? Nay, I tell thee, thou
shalt not thyself return, but shalt remain there with the others.”
    -Homer, Odysseia
%%%%
Mara

“This night the Lord of Illusion passed among you, Mara, mighty among dreamers,
mighty for ill. He did come upon another who may work with the stuff of dreams
in a different way. He did meet with Dharma, who may expel a dreamer from his
dream. They did struggle, and the Lord Mara is no more. Why did they struggle,
deathgod against illusionist? You say their ways are incomprehensible, being
the ways of gods. This is not the answer.”
    -Roger Zelazny, “Lord of Light”. 1967.

“He who lives looking for pleasures only,
 his senses uncontrolled, immoderate in his food,
 idle, and weak, Mara will certainly overthrow him,
 as the wind throws down a weak tree.”
    -The Buddha, _Dhammapada_, 1:7.
     trans. F. Max Muller
%%%%
Mass Confusion spell

“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not
understand one another's speech.  So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence
upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.”
    -KJV Bible, Genesis 11:7-8.
%%%%
Maurice

“'Stop thief! Stop thief!' There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves
his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the
baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the
school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away
they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming,
knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and
astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the
sound.”
    -Charles Dickens, _Oliver Twist_. 1838.
%%%%
Menkaure

“Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king!
 I go, and I return not. But the will
 Of the great Gods is plain; and ye must bring
 Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
 Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,
 The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days.”
    -Matthew Arnold, _Mycerinus_
%%%%
Murray

“Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!”
    -Guybrush Threepwood, _The Secret of Monkey Island_
%%%%
Nikola

“One can prophesy with a Daniel's confidence that skilled electricians will
settle the battles of the near future.”
    -Nikola Tesla, “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires As a
Means for Furthering Peace”, _Electrical World and Engineer_. January 7, 1905.
%%%%
Norris

“Death and death alone gives meaning to life and this meaning is entirely
negative.”
    -Georges Poulet
%%%%
Polyphemus

“...as soon as he had got through with all his work, he clutched up two more of
my men, and began eating them for his morning’s meal. Presently, with the
utmost ease, he rolled the stone away from the door and drove out his sheep,
but he at once put it back again—as easily as though he were merely clapping
the lid on to a quiver full of arrows.”
    -Homer, _The Odyssey_, Book IX.
    trans. Samuel Butler, 1900.
%%%%
Prince Ribbit

“Princess! youngest princess!
 Open the door for me!
 Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me

 Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain?
 Princess, youngest princess!
 Open the door for me!”
    -Brothers Grimm (Margaret Hunt), _The Frog King, or Iron Henry_
%%%%
Psyche

“Let Psyche’s corpse be clad in mourning weed
 And set on rock of yonder hill aloft;
 Her husband is no wight of human seed,
 But serpent dire and fierce, as may be thought,
 Who flies with wings above in starry skies,
 And doth subdue each thing with fiery flight.
 The Gods themselves and powers that seem so wise
 With mighty love be subject to his might.
 The rivers black and deadly floods of pain
 And darkness eke as thrall to him remain.”
    -Apuleius, _Asinus aureus_, “Cupid and Psyche”. circa. 160 AD.
    trans. William Adlington, 1566.
%%%%
Sigmund

“But Sigmund turned him about, and he said: ‘What aileth thee, son?
 Shall our life-days never be merry, and our labour never be done?’

 But Sinfiotli said: ‘I have looked, and lo, there is death in the cup.’

 And the song, and the tinkling of harp-strings to the roof-tree winded up;
 And Sigmund was dreamy with wine and the wearing of many a year;
 And the noise and the glee of the people as the sound of the wild woods were
 And the blossoming boughs of the Branstock were the wild trees waving about;

 So he said: ‘Well seen, my fosterling; let the lip then strain it out.’”
    -William Morris, _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the
Niblungs_. 1891.
%%%%
Sticky Flame spell

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm
for the rest of his life.”

    -Terry Pratchett, “Jingo”
%%%%
Summon Demon spell

“'Tis now the very witching time of night,
 When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
 Contagion to this world.”
    -William Shakespeare, _The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, III, 2.
%%%%
Tartarus

“There is a drear and lonely tract of hell
 From all the common gloom removed afar:
 A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,
 Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.”
    -Edward Arlington Robinson, “Supremacy”. 1897.
%%%%
Temple

“And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go
your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.”
    -KJV Bible, Revelations 16:1.
%%%%
Terence

“A MAN committed a murder, and was pursued by the relations of the man whom he
murdered. On his reaching the river Nile he saw a Lion on its bank and being
fearfully afraid, climbed up a tree. He found a serpent in the upper branches
of the tree, and again being greatly alarmed, he threw himself into the river,
where a crocodile caught him and ate him. Thus the earth, the air, and the
water alike refused shelter to a murderer.”
    -Aesop, _The Manslayer_. 6th century BCE.
     trans. George Fyler Townsend
%%%%
Tiamat

“He saith that Tiamat our mother hath conceived a hatred for us,
 With all her force she rageth, full of wrath.
 All the gods have turned to her,
 With those, whom ye created, they go at her side.
 They are banded together, and at the side of Tiamat they advance;
 They are furious, they devise mischief without resting night and day.
 They prepare for battle, fuming and raging;
 They have joined their forces and are making war.
 Tiamat who formed all things,
 Made in addition weapons invincible; she spawned monster-serpents,
 Sharp of tooth, and merciless of fang;
 With poison, instead of blood, she filled their bodies.
 Fierce monster-vipers she clothed with terror,
 With splendor she decked them, she made them of lofty stature.
 Whoever beheld them, terror overcame him,
 Their bodies reared up and none could withstand their attack.”
    -Enuma Elish, Third Tablet. circa 668 BCE.
%%%%
Tomb

“In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the
lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence,
and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest
at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this,
when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the
imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of
selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the
brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.”
    -Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Haunted Mind”. 1835.
%%%%
__cap-T_suffix

“Buckshank bold and Elfinstone,
 And more than I can mention here,
 They caused to be built so stout a ship,
 And unto Iceland they would steer.

 They launched the ship upon the main,
 Which bellowed like a wrathful bear;
 Down to the bottom the vessel sank,
 A laidly Trold has dragged it there.”
    -George Borrow, _Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest_. 1851.
%%%%
agate snail

“Snail, snail, slug-slow,
 To me thy four horns show;
 If thou dost not show me thy four,
 I will throw thee out of the door,
 For the crow in the gutter,
 To eat for bread and butter.”
    -Silesian rhyme, _Notes and Queries_, Number 69. 1851.
%%%%
alligator

“Alligators commit errors of diet.”
    -Bennet Bowler, M.D., _Contributions to the Natural History of the
     Alligator, (Crocodilus Mississipiensis), with a Microscopic Addendum_,
     p. 17. 1846.
%%%%
amulet

“Gringoire put out his hand for the little bag, but she drew back. 'Do not
touch it! It is an amulet, and either you will do mischief to the charm, or it
will hurt you.'”
    -Victor Marie Hugo, _Notre Dame de Paris_, Book II, chapter VII “A Wedding
     Night”. 1831.
%%%%
amulet of clarity

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of conservation

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of faith

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of guardian spirit

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of inaccuracy

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of rage

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of resist corrosion

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of resist mutation

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of stasis

<amulet>
%%%%
amulet of the gourmand

“put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.”
    -KJV Bible, Proverbs 23:2
%%%%
amulet of warding

[...] says a traveller in Central Borneo: “[...] When a company from the middle
Mahakam River visited me among the Blu-u Kayans in the year 1897, no woman
showed herself outside her house without a burning bundle of /plehiding/ bark,
the stinking smoke of which drives away evil spirits.”
    -Sir James George Frazer, _The Golden Bough_. 1922.
%%%%
animal skin

“He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
 Of the skin he made him mittens,
 Made them with the fur side inside,
 Made them with the skin side outside.
 He, to get the warm side inside,
 Put the inside skin side outside;
 He, to get the cold side outside,
 Put the warm side fur side inside.
 That's why he put the fur side inside,
 Why he put the skin side outside,
 Why he turned them inside outside.”
    -Anonymous, in Wells' _A Parody Anthology_, p. 120. 1904.
%%%%
apocalypse crab

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
 scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
    -T.S. Eliot, _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_. 1915.
%%%%
apple

“MINERVA was the goddess of wisdom, but on one occasion she did a very foolish
thing; she entered into competition with Juno and Venus for the prize of
beauty. It happened thus: At the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis all the gods
were invited with the exception of Eris, or Discord. Enraged at her exclusion,
the goddess threw a golden apple among the guests, with the inscription, ‘For
the fairest.’”
    -Thomas Bulfinch, _Bulfinch’s Mythology_, ch.. XXVII. a. 1855.
%%%%
apricot

“Apricot Ratafia

This is made two Ways, viz. either by infusing the Apricots cut in Pieces in
Brandy for a Day or two, and then passing it thro’ the draining Bag, and
putting in the usual Ingredients; or else the Apricots may be boil’d in White
wine, and by that Means more easily clarify’d adding an equal Quantity of
Brandy, and a quarter of a pound of Sugar to every quart, with Cinnamon,
Cloves, Mace, and Kernels of the Apricots. After all the Ingredients have
infused eight or ten Days the Liquor is to be strain’d again and put into
Bottles and so kept.”
    -Charles Carter, _The Compleat City and Country Cook: Or, Accomplish’d
House-wife_. 1732.
%%%%
arrow

“I saw in a hall an arrow pointing the way and I thought that this inoffensive
symbol had once been a thing of iron, an inescapable and fatal projectile that
pierced the flesh of men and lions and clouded the sun at Thermopylae and gave
Harald Sigurdarson six feet of English earth forever.”
    -Jorge Luis Borges, _Mutations_. 1960.
     trans. Mildred Boyle
%%%%
baby alligator

<alligator>
%%%%
bardiche

“The republic always maintains seven or eight thousand regular troops on the
frontiers, to prevent the incursions of the Tartars. The King does not maintain
these troops; he only pays the Heydukes, the Semelles, and the Janizaries. The
first-mentioned are dressed in blue, with large buttons and plates of tin, and
have bonnets made of felt upon their heads. They have firelocks, and the
bardiche, which they say is a very good weapon.”
    -John Pinkerton, _A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting
     Voyages and Travels in all parts of the World, many of which are now first
     translated into English. Digested on a New Plan_. 1808.
%%%%
bat

“The sun was set; the night came on apace,
 And falling dews bewet around the place;
 The bat takes airy rounds on leathern wings,
 And the hoarse owl his woeful dirges sings.”
    -John Gay, Shepherd's Week, Wednesday; or, The Dumps.

“Ere the bat hath flown
 His cloister'd flight.”
    -William Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, III, 2, line 40. 1605.
%%%%
battleaxe

“On Carian coins, indeed of quite late date, the labrys, set up on its long
pillar-like handle, with two dependent fillets, has much the appearance of a
cult image.”
    -Sir Arthur John Evans, “Mycenaean tree and pillar cult and its
     Mediterranean relations,” _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ XXI, p. 109. 1901.
%%%%
battlesphere

Rule 4: Close air support covereth a multitude of sins.
    -The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
%%%%
big fish

“And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?”
    -Herman Melville, _Moby Dick_, ch. lxxxix. 1851.
%%%%
blowgun

“Along the Upper Caiary-Uaupes blow-guns are made from the stems of a variety
of palm (Iriartea setigera Martius)... The Indian selects two stems of such
sizes that the smaller will exactly fit within the larger. After these stems
have been carefully dried and the pith cleared out with a long rod, the bore is
made smooth by drawing back and forth through it a little bunch of tree-fern
roots. The smaller stem is then inserted in the larger, so that one will serve
to correct any crookedness that may exist in the other. The wooden mouth-piece
is then fitted to one end, and about three and one half feet from it, a boar's
tooth is fastened on the gun by some gummy substance, for a sight. Over the
outside the maker winds spirally a strip of the dark shiny bark of a creeper
which gives it an ornamental finish, and his blow-gun is complete.
 ”The arrows are from ten to fourteen inches long, and of the thickness of an
ordinary lucifer match. Those of the Indians of the Caiary-Uaupes are made from
the midrib of a palm leaf or of the spinous processes of the Patawa (Enocarpus
Batawa) sharpened to a point at one end and wound near the other with a
delicate sort of wild cotton which grows in a pod upon a large tree (Bombax
ceiba). This mass of cotton is just big enough to fill the tube when the arrow
is gently pressed into it. The point is dipped into poison, allowed to dry, and
redipped until well coated. The exact composition of this poison is unknown,
and probably varies in different localities; but it would seem that the chief
ingredient is always the juice of a Strychnos plant. It is known among
different tribes by many names; such as Curari, Ourari, Urari and Woorali.”
    -C.W. Mead, _The American Museum Journal_, vol. VIII. 1908.
%%%%
blue devil

“From the sad marine decanter I then drew the cork. Instanter
 Out there jumped a little devil, blue in colour; and before
 I could speak to the new comer (for I never was struck dumber),
 Down upon my empty rummer, straight the little devil bore,
 Right into my empty tumbler straight the little devil bore,
 Squatted, grinned and nothing more.

 There the little imp sat grinning at me while my head went spinning,
 So that had I not sat down I should have fallen upon the floor;
 'Though thy looks be somewhat evil,' said I ”tell me thou blue devil,
 Wherefore holdest though thy revel in the glass that held before
 Much the more agreeable spirit,—mizzle! leave me as before.“
 Then the imp said 'Never-more!'

 Though I felt uncommon funky, still this answer put my monkey
 Up, and at the small blue devil in an undertone I swore.
 Then I said I must be dreaming, although broad awake I'm seeming;
 Doubtless I shall have a screaming morning headache — what a bore:
 Salmon I will eat no more.”
    -J.T.S, “The Blue Imp”, _Melbourne Punch_. Sept. 4, 1856.
%%%%
boggart

“He thinks every bush a boggart.”
    -John Ray, _A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs_. 1768.

“A BOGGART intruded himself, upon what pretext or by what authority is unknown,
into the house of a quiet, inoffensive, and laborious farmer; and, when once it
had taken possession it disputed the right of domicile with the legal mortal
tenant, in a very unneighbourly and arbitrary manner. In particular, it seemed
to have a great aversion to children. As there is no point on which a parent
feels more acutely than that of the maltreatment of his offspring, the feelings
of the father and more particularly of his good dame, were daily, ay, and
nightly, harrowed up by the malice of this malignant and invisible boggart.”
    -C.J.T., _Folk-lore and Legends: English_  1890.
%%%%
bolt

“In the midst of our last assault, which would have carried the gate sure and
given us Paris and in effect France, Joan was struck down by a crossbow bolt,
and our men fell back instantly and almost in a panic — for what were they
without her? She was the army, herself.”
    -Mark Twain, _Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de
     Conte_, Book II, chap. 40 “Treachery Conquers Joan”. 1896.
%%%%
book

“On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll;
 On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
 Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,
 And lo! the Press was found at last!”
    -John Greenleaf Whittier, _The Library_, st. 4.
%%%%
bow

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”
    -Khalil Ghibran, _The Prophet_, “On Children”. 1923.
%%%%
bread ration

“It is further reported that in the provinces [Caesar] gave banquets constantly
in two dining halls, in one of which his officers or Greek companions, in the
other Roman civilians and the more distinguished of the provincials reclined at
table. He was so punctilious and strict in the management of his household, in
small matters as well as in those of greater importance, that he put his baker
in irons for serving him with one kind of bread and his guests with another...”
    -Suetonius, _De Vita Caesarum, Divus Iulius_. 110 CE.
%%%%
broad axe

“Weapon, shapely, naked, wan!
 Head from the mother’s bowels drawn!
 Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!
 Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!
 Resting the grass amid and upon,
 To be lean’d, and to lean on.”
    -Walt Whitman, _Song of the Broad-Axe_, l. 1-6. 1867.
%%%%
buckler

“Let who will boast their courage in the field,
 I find but little safety from my shield.
 Nature's, not honour's, law we must obey:
 This made me cast my useless shield away,
 And by a prudent flight and cunning save
 A life, which valour could not, from the grave.
 A better buckler I can soon regain;
 But who can get another life again?”
    -Archilochos. 7th cent. B.C.
     trans. William H. Goodwin, 1878.
%%%%
bush

“And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the
midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the
bush was not consumed.”
    -KJV Bible, Exodus 3:2.
%%%%
butterfly

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your
grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
    -Nathaniel Hawthorne
%%%%
cacodemon

“We’ll call him Cacodemon, with his black Gib there, his Succuba, his Devil’s
Seed, his Spawn of Phlegethon, that o’ my Consience was bred o’ the Spume of
Cocytus.”
    -John Fletcher, _The Knight of Malta_. 1647.
%%%%
catoblepas

“So passed he over into the island, taking with him the two brothers of
Anaxius; where he found the forsaken knight attired in his own livery, as black
as sorrow itself could see itself in the blackest glass: his ornaments of the
same hue, but formd into the figures of ravens which seemed to gape for
carrion: only his reins were snakes, which finely wrapping themselves one
within the other, their heads came together to the cheeks and bosses of the
bit, where they might seem to bite at the horse, and the horse, as he champed
the bit, to bite at them, and that the white foam was engendered by the
poisonous fury of the combat. His impresa was a Catoblepta, which so long lies
dead as the moon (whereto it hath so natural a sympathy) wants her light. The
word signified, that the moon wanted not the light, but the poor beast wanted
the moon’s light.”
    -Sir Philip Sidney
%%%%
chain mail

<leather armour>
%%%%
cherub

“The glory of Yahweh mounted up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold
of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full
of the brightness of Yahweh’s glory.
 The sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer court, as
the voice of God Almighty when he speaks.”
    -WEB Bible, Ezekiel 10:4-5
%%%%
choko

“I ought not to omit naming a vegetable which Mr Yates placed on our table, and
to which he directed our attention. It was the Tchu-tchu (Sechium edule) called
also by the people _pepinella_. It is a small gourd, very much like vegetable
marrow; one seed covers a wall with its ramifications.”
    -John Overton Choules, _The Cruise of the Steam Yacht North Star: A
Narrative of the Excursion of Mr. Vanderbilt’s Party to England, Russia,
Denmark, France, Spain, Malta, Turkey, Madeira, Etc_. 1854.
%%%%
clay golem

“Once upon a time a great Cabbalist lived in Prague called the Rabbi Löw. He
made a human figure of clay, and left a small aperture in the lesser brain in
which he laid a parchment with the unutterable name of God written on it. The
clod immediately arose and was a man; he performed all the duties of a servant
for his creator, he fetched water, and hewed wood. All through the Jews quarter
he was known as the Golem of the great Rabbi Löw. Every Friday evening the
Rabbi took the parchment out of his head, and he was clay until Sunday morning.
Once the Rabbi forgot this duty, all were in the Synagogue, the Sabbath hymn
was begun, when all the women and children in the assembly started and screamed
out, ‘the Golem! the Golem is destroying everything!’ The Rabbi ordered the
precentor to pause at the end of the prayer: it was yet possible to save all,
but later nought would avail, the whole world would be destroyed. He hastened
home, and saw the Golem already seizing the joists of his house to tear down
the building: he sprang forward, took the parchment out, and dead clay again
lay at his feet.”
    -Berthold Auerbach, _Spinoza_. 1882.
%%%%
cloak

“O Bell my wife, why dost thou flyte?
   Now is now, and then was then:
 Seek now all the world throughout,
   Thou kens not clowns from gentlemen:
 They are clad in black, green, yellow and blue,
   So far above their own degree.
 Once in my life I’ll take a view;
   For I’ll have a new cloak about me.”
    -Anonymous, “The Old Cloak”. 16th Century.
%%%%
club

“I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a
big stick; you will go far.' If I had not carried the big stick, the
organization would not have gotten behind me, and if I had yelled and
blustered, as Pankhurst and the similar dishonest lunatics desired, I would not
have had ten votes.”
    -Theodore Roosevelt, in a letter to Henry L. Sprague. January 26, 1900.
%%%%
crimson imp

“The Devil, too, sometimes steals human children; it is not infrequent for him
to carry away infants within the first six weeks after birth, and to substitute
in their place imps.”
    -Martin Luther
%%%%
crocodile

“How doth the little crocodile
  Improve his shining tail,
 And pour the waters of the Nile
  On every golden scale!

 How cheerfully he seems to grin,
  How neatly spreads his claws,
 And welcomes little fishes in
  With gently smiling jaws!”
    -Lewis Carroll, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, 1865.
%%%%
crossbow

“(Tell enters with his crossbow)
 W. TELL:
 My precious jewel now, —my chiefest treasure—
 A mark I'll set thee, which the cry of grief
 Could never penetrate,—but thou shalt pierce it,—
 And thou, my trusty bowstring, that so oft
 For sport has served me faithfully and well,
 Desert me not in this dread hour of need,—
 Only be true this once, my own good cord,
 That hast so often wing'd the biting shaft:—
 For shouldst thou fly successless from my hand,
 I have no second to send after thee.”
    -Friedrich Schiller, _Wilhelm Tell_, IV, iii. 1804.
     trans. Sir Theodore Martin, 1898.
%%%%
daeva

“Between these twain the Daevas also chose not aright, for infatuation came
upon them as they took counsel together, so that they chose the Worst Thought.
Then they rushed together to Violence, that they might enfeeble the world of
men.”
    -the Avesta, Yasna XXX, 6, Ahunavaiti Gatha.
    trans. Christian Bartholomae, 1951.
%%%%
dagger

“He drew his dagger, that was sae sharp,
   That was sae sharp and meet,
 And drave it into the nut-browne bride,
   That fell deid at his feit.

 ‘Now stay for me, dear Annet,’ he sed,
   ‘Now stay, my dear,’ he cry’d;
 Then strake the dagger untill his heart,
   And fell deid by her side.”
    -English traditional ballad, “Lord Thomas and Fair Annet”, circa 1650.
%%%%
dark maul

“This caliber should be appropriate.”
    -prince Dajmiech, “Kajko and Kokosz: The Battle with Dajmiech”, Janusz
Christa
%%%%
dart

“Loving the hand that sent it
 I the dart revere.”
    -Emily Dickinson. mid 19th cent.
%%%%
demon blade

“Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.”
 “A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.”
    -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, _Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium_, Letter LXXXVII:
     Some arguments in favor of the simple life, l. 30. ca. 65 A.D.
     trans. Richard Mott Gummere, 1917.
%%%%
demon trident

“At these words he started up, and beheld—not his Sophia—no, nor a Circassian
maid richly and elegantly attired for the grand Signior’s seraglio. No; without
a gown, in a shift that was somewhat of the coarsest, and none of the cleanest,
bedewed likewise with some odoriferous effluvia, the produce of the day’s
labour, with a pitchfork in her hand, Molly Seagrim approached.”
    -Henry Fielding, _The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling_, Book V, ch. X.
     1749.
%%%%
demon whip

“With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and
vanished. But even as it fell it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and
curled about the wizard's knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered, and
fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss.”
    -J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_. II, 5, “The Bridge of
     Khazad-dûm”. 1954.
%%%%
dire flail

“'Ah! ah! ah!' laughed his two men, 'how the Norman villains will be humbled
when they see their doughty knight's skull beaten in by our brave countryman.'”
    -_Tales of Chivalry; or, Perils by Flood and Field_. 1830.
%%%%
double sword

“Oh I won't get up, I won't get up,
 I can't get up for my life
 For you have two long beaten swords
 And I have but a pocket knife.
 Well it's true I have two beaten swords,
 They cost me deep in the purse
 But you will have the better of them
 And I will have the worst.”
    -English traditional ballad, “Mattie Groves”. ca. 1600.
%%%%
dryad

 • Roy Quixote: Wait, what's my beef with clean energy again?
 - Durkon Pansa: Dunno, but if'n ye prefer, I know a grove o'peach trees tha've
been gettin' fresh wit tha locals.
    -Rich Burlew, “Haleo and Julean”
%%%%
efreet

“When the hoopoe returned to Solomon (he told him the news), and he responded
(to Sheba’s people): “Are you giving me money? What GOD has given me is far
better than what He has given you. You are the ones to rejoice in such gifts.”
(To the hoopoe, he said), “Go back to them (and let them know that) we will
come to them with forces they cannot imagine. We will evict them, humiliated
and debased." He said, "O you elders, which of you can bring me her mansion,
before they arrive here as submitters?" One afrit from the jinns said, “I can
bring it to you before you stand up. I am powerful enough to do this.”
    -The Quran, Sura 27 Al-Naml
%%%%
electric golem

“I sing the Body electric”
    -Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”, _Leaves of Grass_. 1867.
%%%%
elephant

“And the King went to where the blind men were, and drawing near said to them:
'Do you now know what an elephant is like?'
 'Assuredly, Lord: we now know what an elephant is like.'
 'Tell me then, O blind men, what an elephant is like.'
 And those blind men, O Bhikkhus, who had felt the head of the elephant, said:
'An elephant, Sir, is like a large round jar .
 Those who had felt its ears, said: 'it is like a winnowing basket.'
 Those who had felt its tusks, said: 'it is like a plough-share.'
 Those who had felt its trunk, said: 'it is like a plough.'
 Those who had felt its body, said: 'it is like a granary.'
 Those who had felt its feet, said: 'it is like a pillar.'
 Those who had felt its back, said: 'it is like a mortar.'
 Those who had felt its tail, said: 'it is a like a pestle.'
 Those who had felt the tuft of its tail, said: 'it is like a broom.'
 And they all fought amongst themselves with their fists, declaring, 'such is
an elephant, such is not elephant, an elephant is not like that, it is like
this.'”
 And the King, O Bhikkhus, was highly delighted.
    -_Udāna_, VI “Jaccandhavagga”. ca. 5th cent. B.C.
     trans. Dawsonne Melanchthon Strong, 1902.

“And so these men of Indostan
 Disputed loud and long,
 Each in his own opinion
 Exceeding stiff and strong,
 Though each was partly in the right,
 And all were in the wrong!
 So oft in theologic wars,
 The disputants, I ween,
 Rail on in utter ignorance
 Of what each other mean,
 And prate about an Elephant
 Not one of them has seen!”
    -John Godfrey Saxe, “The Blind Men and the Elephant”. 1872.
%%%%
emperor scorpion

“Portents had occurred indicating [Titus Flavius Vespasianus'] approaching end,
such as the comet which was visible for a long time and the opening of the
mausoleum of Augustus of its own accord. When his physicians chided him for
continuing his usual course of living during his illness and attending to all
the duties that belonged to his office, he answered: 'The emperor ought to die
on his feet.'”
    -Cassius Dio, _Roman History_, LXVI, xvii, 2. 222 A.D.
     trans. Earnest Cary, 1925.
%%%%
ettin

“But he had not been long in his hiding-hole, before the awful Ettin came in;
and no sooner was he in, than he was heard crying:
 ‘Snouk but and snouk ben,
  I find the smell of an earthly man,
  Be he living, or be he dead,
  His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.’”
    -Joseph Jacobs, _The Red Ettin_
%%%%
eudemon blade

<demon blade>
%%%%
eveningstar

“It is said to have been the favourite weapon of the Norman priest, who,
objecting to the shedding of blood, had no scruple about the dashing out of
brains.”
    -T. M. Allison, “The Flail and Kindred Tools (from a historical and
     literary standpoint)”, _Archaeologia Aeliana_, Third Series, vol. IV.
     1908.
%%%%
executioner's axe

“She danced, and was compelled to dance—to dance in the dark night. The shoes
carried her on over thorn and brier; she scratched herself till she bled; she
danced away across the heath to a little lonely house. Here she knew the
executioner dwelt; and she tapped with her fingers on the panes, and
called,—'Come out, come out! I cannot come in, for I must dance!'
 And the Executioner said,—'You probably don’t know who I am? I cut off the bad
people’s heads with my axe, and mark how my axe rings!'
 'Do not strike off my head,' said Karen, 'for if you do I cannot repent of my
sin. But strike off my feet with the red shoes?'
 And then she confessed all her sin, and the Executioner cut off her feet with
the red shoes; but the shoes danced away with the little feet over the fields
and into the deep forest.
 And he cut her a pair of wooden feet, with crutches, and taught her a psalm,
which the criminals always sing; and she kissed the hand that had held the axe,
and went away across the heath.”
    -Hans Christian Andersen, “The Red Shoes”, _Nye Eventyr. Første Bind.
     Tredie Samling._. 1845.
%%%%
falchion

“I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion
 I would have made them skip: I am old now,
 And these same crosses spoil me.”
    -William Shakespeare, _King Lear_, V, iii. 1608.
%%%%
fire crab

“The planet brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which [they]
ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees with
breathtaking slenderness and colour which [they] cut down and burned the crab
meat with.”
    -Douglas Adams, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
%%%%
fire dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
fire dragon hide

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
flail

“Even after forcing their way, with great effort and loss, through this double
defense, [the Germans] still found themselves at a disadvantage; for their
armor scarce enabled them to contend on equal terms with the uncouth but
formidable weapons of their adversaries. The Bohemians were armed with long
iron flails, which they swung with prodigious force. They seldom failed to hit,
and when they did so, the flail crashed through brazen helmet, skull and all.”
    -James A. Wylie, _The History of Protestantism_, vol. I, book 3, ch. 15
     “Jon Huss and the Hussite Wars”. 1878.
%%%%
flying skull

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most
excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how
abhorr’d in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.”
    -William Shakespeare, _The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, V, 1.
1603.
%%%%
ghost moth

“Always in focus
 You can't feel my stare.
 I zoom into you
 You don't know I'm there.”
    -Judas Priest, “Electric Eye”
%%%%
ghost-faced bat

<bat>
%%%%
ghoul

“In the desert
 I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
 Who, squatting upon the ground,
 Held his heart in his hands,
 And ate of it.
 I said, ‘Is it good, friend?’
 ‘It is bitter — bitter’, he answered,
 ‘But I like it
 Because it is bitter,
 And because it is my heart.’”
    -Stephen Crane, _The Black Riders and Other Lines_. 1895.
%%%%
giant centipede

“Traffickers in the Black Meat, flesh of the giant black centipede—sometimes
attaining a length of six feet—found in a lane of black rocks and iridescent,
brown lagoons, exhibit paralyzed crustaceans in camouflage pockets of the Plaza
visible only to the Meat Eaters.”
    -William S. Burroughs, _Naked Lunch_. 1959.
%%%%
giant club

“Therewith the gyant buckled him to fight,
 Inflamd with scornefull wrath and high disdaine,
 And lifting up his dreadful club on hight,
 All armed with ragged snubbes and knottie graine,
 Him thought at first encounter to have slaine.”
    -Edmund Spenser, _The Faerie Queene_, Book I, “The Legend of the Knight of
     the Red Crosse”, Canto VIII, stanza vii, l. 55-9. 1590.
%%%%
giant eyeball

“El ojo que ves
 no es ojo porque tú lo veas,
 es ojo porque te ve.”
    -Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla. 1912-1917.
%%%%
giant frog

“Hello, my baby
 Hello, my honey
 Hello, my ragtime gal

 Send me a kiss by wire
 Baby, my hearts on fire

 If you refuse me
 Honey, you’ll lose me
 Then you’ll be left alone

 Oh baby, telephone
 And tell me I’m your own.”
    -Ida Emerson and Joseph E. Howard, “Hello My Baby!”
%%%%
giant spiked club

 oni-ni-kanabō
 “oni with a spiked iron club”
    -Japanese proverb indicating overwhelming power
%%%%
giga bat

<bat>
%%%%
glaive

“To know the perfect length of your ſhort ſtaffe, or half Pike, Forreſt bil,
Partiſan or Gleue, or ſuch like weapons of vantage and perfect lenghts, you
ſhall ſtand vpright, holding the ſtaffe vpright cloſe by your body, with your
left hãd, reaching with your right hand your ſtaffe as high as you can, and
then allow to that length a ſpace to ſet both your hands, when you come to
fight, wherein you may conueniently ſtrike, thrust and ward, & that is the iuſt
length according to you ſtature. And this note, that theſe lengths will
commonly fall out to be eight or nine foor long, and will fit, although not
iuſt, the ſtatures of all men, without any hindrance at all vnto them in their
fight, becauſe in any weapon wherin the hands may be remoued, and at libertie,
to make the weapon lõger or ſhorter in fight at his pleaſure, a foot of the
ſtaffe behind the backmost hand doth no harme.”
    -George Silver,_Paradoxes of Defence_.1599.
%%%%
gnoll

“Then he descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him
through knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the unearthly
silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid screams of Tonker as
they picked him up from behind — screams that came faster and faster until they
were incoherent. And where they took him it is not good to ask, and what they
did with him I shall not say.”
    -Lord Dunsany, “How Nuth Would Have Practiced His Art Upon the Gnoles”.
1912.
%%%%
goblin

“Swish, smack! Whip crack!
 Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
 Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,
 While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
 Round and round far underground
 Below, my lad!”
    -J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Hobbit_
%%%%
gold dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
gold dragon hide

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
gold piece

“Here it was that the ambassadors of the Samnites, finding him boiling turnips
in the chimney corner, offered him a present of gold; but he sent them away
with this saying; that he, who was content with such a supper, had no need of
gold; and that he thought it more honourable to conquer those who possessed the
gold, than to possess the gold itself.”
    -Plutarch, “Marcus Cato”, _Lives_. 75 AD.
    trans. John Dryden, 1683.
%%%%
golden dragon

“You do not come dramatically, with dragons
 That rear up with my life between their paws
 And dash me butchered down beside the wagons”
    -Philip Larkin, “To Failure”. 1949.
%%%%
golden eye

“No coveting nor envy burns
   In thy bright golden eye,
 That calm and innocently turns
   On all below the sky.”
    -Hannah Flagg Gould, _The Youth’s Coronal_
%%%%
great mace

“There will arise one named Feridoun, who shall inherit thy throne
 and reverse thy fortunes, and strike thee down with a cow-headed mace.”
    -Firdausi, _Shahnameh_. ca. 1000 A.D.
     trans. Helen Zimmern, 1883.
%%%%
great sword

<demon blade>
%%%%
greater mummy

<mummy>
%%%%
greater naga

“Then there have also come
 nagas from Lake Nabhasa,
 Vesali, and Tacchaka.
 Kambalas, Assataras,
 Payagas, and their kin.
 And from the River Yamuna
 comes the prestigious naga, Dhatarattha.
 The great naga Eravanna:
 He, too, has come
 to the forest meeting.”
    -Mahasamaya Sutta, _Dīgha Nikāya_, 20. ca. 500 B.C.
     trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu
%%%%
griffon

“As when a Gryphon through the wilderness,
 With winged course, o’er hill and moory dale,
 Pursues the Arimaspian who by stealth
 Hath from his wakeful custody purloined
 His guarded gold.”
    -Milton, _Paradise Lost_, Book II. 1667.
%%%%
halberd

“And Diarmid oh, Diarmid he perished in the strife;
 His head it was spiked upon a halberd high;
 His colours they were trampled: he had no chance of life
 If the Lord God Himself stood by!—
  Och, ochone!”
    -James Clarence Mangan , _A Farewell to Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan_.
     ca. 1840.
%%%%
hammer

“The hammah that John Henry swung,
 It weighed over nine poun',
 He broke a rib in his left han' side,
 And his intrels fell on the groun',
 And his intrels fell on the groun'.”
    -Onah L. Spencer, _John Henry_. Early 20th cent.
%%%%
hand axe

“Lizzie Borden took an axe
 And gave her mother forty whacks.
 When she saw what she had done
 She gave her father forty-one.”
    -A popular skipping-rope rhyme, after 1893.
%%%%
harpy

“Bird-bodied, girl-faced things they are; abominable their droppings, their
hands are talons, their faces haggard with hunger insatiable.”
    -Virgil, Aeneid 3

“And Phineus had scarcely taken the first morsel up when, with as little
warning as a whirlwind or a lightning flash, they dropped from the clouds
proclaiming their desire for food with raucous cries. The young lords saw them
coming and raised the alarm. Yet they had hardly done so before the Harpyiai
had devoured the whole meal and were on the wing once more, far out at sea. All
they left was an intolerable stench.”
    -Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2. 179 - 434
%%%%
hell knight

“Ok, let’s review. It’s up to the fair young maiden to rescue the dragon from
the fire breathing knights in shining armour.”
    -Exiern
%%%%
hobgoblin

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
    -Ralph Waldo Emerson, _Essays: First Series_, Essay II: Self-Reliance.
     1841.
%%%%
hog

“Fern came slowly down the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying. As she
approached her chair, the carton wobbled, and there was a scratching noise.
Fern looked at her father. Then she lifted the lid of the carton. There,
inside, looking up at her, was the newborn pig. It was a white one. The morning
light shone through its ears, turning them pink. “He’s yours,” said Mr. Arable.
“Saved from an untimely death. And may the good Lord forgive me for this
foolishness.”
    -E.B. White, _Charlotte’s Web_
%%%%
horn of Geryon

‘So Joshua called together the priests and said, “Take up the Ark of the Lord’s
Covenant, and assign seven priests to walk in front of it, each carrying a
ram’s horn.’

‘When the people heard the sound of the rams’ horns, they shouted as loud as
they could. Suddenly, the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites
charged straight into the town and captured it. They completely destroyed
everything in it with their swords—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep,
goats, and donkeys.’
    -Joshua 6:6,20-21, New Living Translation
%%%%
hound

“A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still
grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior!”
    -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Excelsior”
%%%%
human

“Do you know
 Do I know
 What’s this thing called ‘man’?
 God only knows what a man is!
 I only know his price.”
    -Bertolt Brecht, “The Measures Taken”. 1930.
%%%%
ice bat

<bat>
%%%%
ice dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
ice dragon hide

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
ignis

“When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted
anything, Diogenes replied "Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine.."”
    -Plutarch, _Alexander_. 75.
%%%%
iguana

“Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was
born an iguana. When he grew up he dwelt in a big burrow in the river bank with
a following of many hundreds of other iguanas. Now the Bodhisatta had a son, a
young iguana, who was great friends with a chameleon, whom he used to clip and
embrace. This intimacy being reported to the iguana king, he sent for his young
son and said that such friendship was misplaced, for chameleons were low
creatures, and that if the intimacy was persisted in, calamity would befall the
whole of the tribe of iguanas. And he enjoined his son to have no more to do
with the chameleon. But the son continued in his intimacy.”
    -_Khuddaka Nikāya_, Jātaka 141 “Godha-jātaka”. ca. 4th cent. B.C.
     trans. Robert Chalmers, 1895.
%%%%
insubstantial wisp

“Lead then, said Eve. Hee leading swiftly rowld
 In tangles, and made intricate seem strait,
 To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy
 Bright'ns his Crest, as when a wandring Fire
 Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night
 Condenses, and the cold invirons round,
 Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame,
 Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends
 Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
 Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way
 To Boggs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Poole,
 There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr.”
    -John Milton, _Paradise Lost_
%%%%
jackal

Always ready to take advantage of every favourable opportunity, the Jackal is a
sad parasite, and hangs on the skirts of the larger carnivora as they roam the
country for prey, in the hope of securing some share of the creatures which
they destroy or wound."
    -John George Wood, _The Illustrated Natural History: Mammalia_. 1865.
%%%%
javelin

“Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin
through both of them, you would be justified, and they would atone for their
sins, and be received into the kingdom of God.”
    -Brigham Young, _Journal of Discourses_, 3:247. 1856.
%%%%
jelly

“Beware of the Blob!
 It creeps
 And leaps
 and glides and slides
 Across the floor
 Right through the door
 And all around the wall,
 A splotch, a blotch...”
    -Burt Bacharach, “Beware of the Blob”
%%%%
jellyfish

“From this story it is evident that in former times the jellyfish once had a
shell and bones something like a tortoise, but, ever since the Dragon King's
sentence was carried out on the ancestor of the jelly fishes, his descendants
have all been soft and boneless just as you see them to-day thrown up by the
waves high upon the shores of Japan.”
    -“The Jellyfish and the Monkey”, adapted by Yei Theodora Ozaki, _Young
     Folk's Treasury_, vol. II. 1909.
%%%%
kobold

“Kobolds are harmless.”
    -Bearand the Bold, epitaph (Magic: the Gathering)
%%%%
kraken

“... Kraken, also called the Crab-fish, which [according to the pilots of
Norway] is not that huge, for heads and tails counted, he is no larger than our
Öland is wide [i.e. less than 16 km] ... He stays at the sea floor, constantly
surrounded by innumerable small fishes, who serve as his food and are fed by
him in return: for his meal, if I remember correctly what E. Pontoppidan
writes, lasts no longer than three months, and another three are then needed to
digest it. His excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and
for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place ... Gradually, Kraken
ascends to the surface, and when he is at ten to twelve fathoms, the boats had
better move out of his vicinity, as he will shortly thereafter burst up, like a
floating island, spurting water from his dreadful nostrils and making ring
waves around him, which can reach many miles. Could one doubt that this is the
Leviathan of Job?”
    -Jacob Wallenberg, “Min son på galejan”. 1781.
%%%%
lajatang

“A weapon that comes down as still
 As snowflakes fall upon the sod;
 But executes a freeman’s will,
 As lightning does the will of God.”
    -John Pierpont, “The Ballot”. ca. 1850.
%%%%
large rock

“Well, I run to the rock and I hide my face
 The rock cried out, No hiding place
 There's no hiding place down here.”
    -Negro spiritual. 19th cent.
%%%%
large shield

<buckler>
%%%%
lasher statue

“To be a slave for a moment
 The body offered up to cruelty
 To the lash which whips on the skin
 Which slashes the flesh, lacerates the back”
    -Samael, “Flagellation”
%%%%
lava fish

“In the black rocks about Tahiti is found the black noki or lava-fish
(Emmydrichthys vulcanus), which corresponds perfectly in color and form to a
piece of lava. This fish is also noteworthy for having envenomed spines in the
fin on its back.”
    -Jordan, Kellogg and Heath, _Animal Studies: A Text-book of Elementary
     Zoology_. 1903.
%%%%
lava worm

“Type-species. — Magmatodrilus obscurus....From magma (Greek, =lava) + drilos
(Greek, =worm), masculine, 'lava-worm' for the locality, springs in the lava
beds of Shasta County, Calif., from which topotypes were taken.”
    -_Proceedings of the United States National Musem_. 1968.
%%%%
leather armour

“Nought can Deform the Human race
 Like to the Armours iron brace”
    -William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”, 99-100. 1803.
%%%%
lemure

“When Hesperus, the Evening Star, has shown his lovely face
 Three times, from that day, and the defeated stars fled Phoebus,
 It will be the ancient sacred rites of the Lemuria,
 When we make offerings to the voiceless spirits.
 ...
 When midnight comes, lending silence to sleep,
 And all the dogs and hedgerow birds are quiet,
 He who remembers ancient rites, and fears the gods,
 Rises (no fetters binding his two feet)
 And makes the sign with thumb and closed fingers,
 Lest an insubstantial shade meets him in the silence.
 After cleansing his hands in spring water,
 He turns and first taking some black beans,
 Throws them with averted face: saying, while throwing:
 'With these beans I throw I redeem me and mine.'
 He says this nine times without looking back: the shade
 Is thought to gather the beans, and follow behind, unseen.
 Again he touches water, and sounds the Temesan bronze,
 And asks the spirit to leave his house.
 When nine times he’s cried: 'Ancestral spirit, depart,'
 He looks back, and believes the sacred rite’s fulfilled.”
    -Publius Ovidius Naso, _Fasti_, Book V: May 9. ca. 8 A.D.
     trans. A.S. Kline, 2004.
%%%%
lindwurm

“Freilich verbürgt uns keine Silbe die Existenz von solcherlei Thieren, wenn
wir uns den Drachen oder Lindwurm als ein Ungeheuer vorstellen, dessen langer
Hals in einen Adler-, Löwen- oder Delphinenkopf endigt; das auf dem breiten
Rücken Greifs- oder Nachisittige trägt; und am vielfach gerollten Schweif einen
Stachel mit Widerhaken hat; Feuer speit; sich in Mädchen verliebt und diese
entführt; bald diese bald jene Gestalt annimmt; auf sauer erworbenen Schatzen
ruht — kurz, als ein Ungeheuer, das alle Eigenschaften besitzt, welche die
Fabel ihm andichtet; dann wäre es Wahnsinn, an Drachen und Lindwürmer glauben
zu wollen. Nehmen wir aber dafür bloß ein furchtbares Ungeheuer überhaupt,
welches nun aus unserem Welttheile vertilgt ist, so hat der Glaube daran nichts
Lächerliches.”
    -Leopold Ziegelhauſer, _Schattenbilder der Vorzeit: Ein Kranz von
     Geschichten, Sagen, Legenden, Märchen, Skizzen und Heldenmahlen, Aus allen
     Gegenden Deutschlands und des österreichischen Kaiserstaates_. 1844.
%%%%
long sword

“While we were at grips with this great army and their dreadful broadswords
(maquahuitl [made of obsidian]), many of the most powerful among the enemy seem
to have decided to capture a horse. They began with a furious attack, and laid
hands on a good mare well trained both for sport and battle. Her rider, Pedro
de Moron, was a fine horseman; and as he charged with three other horsemen into
the enemy ranks—they had been instructed to charge together for mutual
support—some of them seized his lance so he could not use it, and others
slashed at him with their broadswords (maquahuitl), wounding him severely. Then
they slashed at his mare, cutting her head at the neck so that it only hung by
the skin. The mare fell dead, and if his mounted comrades had not come to
Moron's rescue, he would probably have been killed also.”
    -Bernal Díaz del Castillo, _The Conquest of New Spain_. 1623.
     trans. J.M.Cohen, 1963.
%%%%
longbow

“Robyn bent a full goode bowe,
 An arrowe he drowe at wyll;
 He hit so the proud sherife
 Upon the grounde he lay full still.”
    -_A Gest of Robyn Hode_ Sixth Fytte, l. 120-123. ca. 1450.
%%%%
lorocyproca

“There it had assumed a wild, incalculable and incredible shape, twisted into a
fantastic arabesque — invisible to their eyes, but dreadful nonetheless — into
the unfamiliar numeral under whose menace they lived.”
    -Bruno Schulz, “The Brilliant Epoch”. 1937.
%%%%
lost soul

“She walks in the twilight, her steps make no sound,
  Her feet leave no tracks on the dew-covered ground.
 Her hand gently beckons, she whispers your name—
  But those who go with her are never the same.”
    -Magic: the Gathering
%%%%
lychee

“The Litchi is the most celebrated native fruit of China. It is nearly round,
about an inch and a half in diameter, the shell is tough, becoming brittle, of
a chocolate brown colour covered all over with wart-like protuberances. When
fresh it is filled with a white almost transparent, sweet, jelly-like pulp in
which lies a rather large, shining, brown seed; the pulp is of a delicious
sub-acid flavour when fresh. The Chinese dry it when it becomes black like a
prune and thus preserve it for use throughout the year; in this state it is
frequently to be seen in the London fruit shops.”
    -John Smith, _A Dictionary of Popular Names of the Plants which Furnish the
Natural and Acquired Wants of Man, in All Matters of Domestic and General
Economy: Their History, Products, & Uses_. 1882.
%%%%
mace

“[My plan] does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents,
who will require the interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the
peace among them.”
    -Edmund Burke, “On Conciliation with America”, speech in Parliament. 1775.
%%%%
mad acolyte of Lugonu

“And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
    -Friedrich Nietzche, “Beyond Good and Evil”. 1886.
%%%%
manticore

“Ctesias writeth, that in Aethiopia likewise there is a beast which he calleth
Mantichora, having three rankes of teeth, which when they meet togither are let
in one within another like the teeth of combes: with the face and eares of a
man, with red eyes; of colour sanguine, bodied like a lyon, and having a taile
armed with a sting like a scorpion: his voice resembleth the noise of a flute
and trumpet sounded together: very swift he is, and mans flesh of all others
hee most desireth.”
    -Pliny the Elder, _Natural History_, Book 8, Chapter XXI
%%%%
manual

<book>
%%%%
merfolk

“Again at length my thought reviving came,
 When I no longer found my self the same;
 Then first this sea-green beard I felt to grow,
 And these large honours on my spreading brow;
 My long-descending locks the billows sweep,
 And my broad shoulders cleave the yielding deep;
 My fishy tail, my arms of azure hue,
 And ev'ry part divinely chang'd, I view.”
    -Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, XIII, 546-7. 8 A.D.
     trans. Garth, Dryden, et al.
%%%%
merfolk aquamancer

<merfolk>
%%%%
merfolk impaler

<merfolk>
%%%%
merfolk javelineer

<merfolk>
%%%%
mermaid

“Then up it raise the mermaiden,
 Wi the comb an glass in her hand:
 ‘Here’s a health to you, my merrie young men,
 For you never will see dry land.’”
    -“Sir Patrick Spens”, Scottish folk song, version 58J in Francis James
     Child, _The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_. 1898.
%%%%
metal gargoyle

“Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed a lugubrious
aspect. The restless light of the flame made them move to the eye. There were
griffins which had the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one heard
yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques which sneezed in the
smoke. And among the monsters thus roused from their sleep of stone by this
flame, by this noise, there was one who walked about, and who was seen, from
time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the pile, like a bat in front
of a candle.”
    -Victor Hugo, _The Hunchback of Notre-Dame_, 10, ch. IV. 1831.
     trans. Isabel F. Hapgood
%%%%
microbat

<bat>
%%%%
molten gargoyle

<metal gargoyle>
%%%%
morningstar

“Little did then his pomp of plumes bestead
 The Azteca, or glittering pride of gold.
 Against the tempered sword; little his casque,
 Cay with its feathery coronal, or drest
 In graven terrors, when the Briton's hand
 Drove in through helm and head the spiked mace;
 Or swung its iron weights with shattering sway.
 Which, where they fell, destroyed.”
    -Robert Southey, _Madoc_. 1805.
%%%%
moth of wrath

“When within sight of their foe Berserks wrought themselves into such a state
of frenzy, that they bit their shields and rushed forward to the attack,
throwing away their arms of defence, reckless of every danger, sometimes having
nothing but a club, which carried with it death and destruction.”
    -Paul Belloni Du Chaillu,_The Viking Age: the Early History, Manners, and
     Customs of the Ancestors of the English Speaking Nations_. 1889.
%%%%
mottled dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
mottled dragon hide

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
mummy

“I see Egypt and the Egyptians — I see the pyramids and obelisks;
 I look on chisel’d histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs
     of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks;
 I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalm’d, swathed
     in linen cloth, lying there many centuries;
 I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the side-drooping
     neck, the hands folded across the breast.”
    -Walt Whitman, “Salut au Monde”
%%%%
naga

“Amongst the deities and Asuras and celestial Rishis, O amiable lady, the Nagas
are endued with great energy. Possessed of great speed, they are endued again
with excellent fragrance. They deserve to be worshipped. They are capable of
granting boons. Indeed, we too deserve to be followed by others in our train. I
tell thee, O lady, that we are incapable of being seen by human beings.”
    -Mahābhārata, Santi Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, section CCCLX. ca. 500 B.C.
     trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, 1883.
%%%%
naga mage

<naga>
%%%%
naga warrior

<naga>
%%%%
needle

“I pray that, risen from the dead,
 I may in glory stand—
 A crown, perhaps, upon my head,
 But a needle in my hand.”
    -Eugene Field, “Grandma's Prayer”. late 19th cent.
%%%%
neqoxec

“If thus mutation is influenced by natural selection, it implies, that any
particular mutation must advance in a direction advantageous for the respective
species, and, indeed, many examples of mutation known among fossil animals are
apparently due to the advantage produced by the change. I must add here,
however that probably not all mutations (in a palaeontological meaning) are due
to natural selection, but that many do not imply an actual improvement.”
    -_Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, Volume XXV, no. 150.
     1896.
%%%%
octopode

“In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus
is not in good mental health, though where’s his basis for comparing? But there
is a mad exhuberance, as with inanimate objects which fall off of tables when
we are sensitive to noise and our own clumsiness and don’t want them to fall, a
sort of wham! ha-ha you hear that? here it is again, WHAM! in the cephalopod’s
every movement, which Slothrop is glad to get away from as he finally scales
the crab like a discus, with all his strength, out to sea, and the octopus,
with an eager splash and gurgle, strikes out in pursuit, and is presently
gone.”
    -Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_. 1973.
%%%%
oklob plant

“Carbonic acid is one of the three materials which together form the starting
point of vegetable growth; the others being water and nitric acid. This acid is
formed of carbon and oxygen in the proportion of one part of the former to two
of the latter chemically combined. It is a colorless gas, having an acid taste
and smell; is soluble in water; weighs one-half more than air and can be poured
from one vessel to another, as a liquid may be; 100 parts of water dissolve 106
parts of this gas, and it is from this source that the roots of plants derive
the needed supplies of it.”
    -Henry Stuart, _The Culture of Farm Crops: A Manual of the Science of
    Agriculture, and a Hand-book of Practice for American Farmers_, ch X. 1887.
%%%%
oklob sapling

<oklob plant>
%%%%
ooze

“Sea horses floundering in the slimy mud,
 Tossed up their heads, and dashed the ooze about them.”
    -John Dryden. _All For Love_, I, i, 15-17. 1678.
%%%%
ophan

“As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside
 each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure
 of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike.
 Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they
 moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced;
 the wheels did not turn about as the creatures went. Their rims were
 high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.”
    -Ezekiel 1:15-18 (New International Version)
%%%%
orange

“Conserve of Orange Peel

HAVING grated the rinds of some Seville oranges as thin as you can, weigh them,
and to every pound of orange rind add three pounds of loaf sugar. Pound the
orange rind well in a marble mortar, mix the sugar by degrees with them and
beat all well together. Put it into gallipots and tie it down so as properly to
prevent the air getting to it.”
    -Francis Collingwood, John Woollams, _The Universal Cook: And City and
Country Housekeeper._ 1792.
%%%%
orange demon

“In Sparkill buried lies that man of mark
 Who brought the Obelisk to Central Park,
 Redoubtable Commander H.H. Gorringe,
 Whose name supplies the long-sought rhyme for 'orange.'”
    -Arthur Guiterman, “Local Note”. 1934.
%%%%
orb of fire

“There ’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
 But in his motion like an angel sings,
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.”
    -William Shakespeare, _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i. 1597.
%%%%
pandemonium lord

“Mean while the winged heralds by command
 Of Sovran power, with awful Ceremony
 And Trumpets sound throughout the Host proclaim
 A solemn Councel forthwith to be held
 At Pandaemonium, the high Capital
 Of Satan and his Peers...”
    -John Milton, _Paradise Lost_,  Book I, l. 752-7. 1667.
%%%%
pearl dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
pearl dragon hide

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
phantom

“Who wondrous things concerning our welfare, And straunge phantomes doth lett
us ofte foresee.”
    -Spenser, _The Faerie Queene_ II. xii. 47
%%%%
phase bat

<bat>
%%%%
phoenix

“They have also another sacred bird called the phoenix which I myself have
never seen, except in pictures. Indeed it is a great rarity, even in Egypt,
only coming there (according to the accounts of the people of Heliopolis) once
in five hundred years, when the old phoenix dies. Its size and appearance, if
it is like the pictures, are as follow:- The plumage is partly red, partly
golden, while the general make and size are almost exactly that of the eagle.
They tell a story of what this bird does, which does not seem to me to be
credible: that he comes all the way from Arabia, and brings the parent bird,
all plastered over with myrrh, to the temple of the Sun, and there buries the
body. In order to bring him, they say, he first forms a ball of myrrh as big as
he finds that he can carry; then he hollows out the ball, and puts his parent
inside, after which he covers over the opening with fresh myrrh, and the ball
is then of exactly the same weight as at first; so he brings it to Egypt,
plastered over as I have said, and deposits it in the temple of the Sun. Such
is the story they tell of the doings of this bird.”
    -Herodotus, _Histories_, II, 73. ca. 440 B.C.
     trans. George Rawlinson, 1858.
%%%%
pillar of salt

“Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the
LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all
the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But [Lot's]
wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”
    -KJV Bible, Genesis 19:24-6.
%%%%
player ghost

“Know thyself.”
    -Inscription in the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi
%%%%
polar bear

“The Polar Bear is an animal of tremendous strength and fierceness.iBarentz, in
his voyage in search of a north-east passage to China, had proofs of the
ferocity of these animals, in the island of Nova Zembla, where they attacked
his seamen, seizing them in their mouths; carrying them off with the utmost
ease, and devouring them in the sight of their comrades. It is said that they
will attack and attempt to board armed vessels, at a great distance from shore,
and have sometimes been with much difficulty repelled.”
    -George Shaw, _General Zoology, or, Systematic Natural History_, vol. I,
     p. 2. 1800.
%%%%
potion

“Then gave I her, — so tutor’d by my art, —
 A sleeping potion; which so took effect
 As I intended, for it wrought on her
 The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo
 That he should hither come as this dire night,
 To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,
 Being the time the potion’s force should cease.”
    -William Shakespeare, _Romeo and Juliet_
%%%%
potion of poison

“‘poison’ is a harsh word. I prefer ‘potion of shut the hell up’”
    -Oglaf, bowdlerized
%%%%
potion of strong poison

<potion of poison>
%%%%
profane servitor

“A spell was cast and the sky turned red
 The angel's heart froze to ice
 In the gloomy sky black clouds were gathering
 The silence was broken by cries
 A spell was cast and the sky turned red
 The angel's heart froze to ice
 In the gloomy sky — The silence where dead angels lie

 Touch the snow... Caress the lifeless sculptures
 Die!!!”
    -Dissection, “Where Dead Angels Lie”
%%%%
program bug

“If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first
woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”
    -Gerald Weinberg, Weinberg’s Second Law
%%%%
pulsating lump

“Doom!
 He finds that in a sudden scrimmage,
 And lies, an unsightly lump on the sodden grass …
 An image that shall take long to pass!”
    -Ford Madox Hueffer, “Antwerp”. 1915.
%%%%
quarterstaff

“Then Robin he unbuckled his belt,
 And laid down his bow so long;
 He took up a staff of another oak graff,
 That was both stiff and strong.
 'But let me measure,' said jolly Robin,
 'Before we begin our fray;
 For I'll not have mine to be longer than thine,
 For that will be counted foul play.'
 'I pass not for length,' bold Arthur replied,
 'My staff is of oak so free;
 Eight foot and a half it will knock down a calf,
 And I hope it will knock down thee.'
 Then Robin could no longer forbear,
 He gave him such a knock,
 Quickly and soon the blood came down,
 Before it was ten o'clock.
 About and about and about they went,
 Like two wild boars in a chase,
 Striving to aim each other to maim,
 Leg, arm, or any other place.
 And knock for knock they hastily dealt,
 Which held for two hours and more;
 That all the wood rang at every bang,
 They plied their work so sore.”
    -Anonymous, “Robin Hood and the Tanner”.
%%%%
quasit

“You’ll have to pay double reckoning; ’tis only fair you should pay for your
dexterity.”
    -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, _Egmont_, I, 1. 1788.
     trans. Anna Swanwick, 1914.
%%%%
quick blade

“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword...”
    -Julia Ward Howe, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. 1861.
%%%%
rakshasa

“Vaisampayana said, 'Not far from the place where the Pandavas were asleep, a
Rakshasa by name Hidimva dwelt on the Sala tree. Possessed of great energy and
prowess, he was a cruel cannibal of visage that was grim in consequence of his
sharp and long teeth. He was now hungry and longing for human flesh. Of long
shanks and a large belly, his locks and beard were both red in hue. His
shoulders were broad like the neck of a tree; his ears were like unto arrows,
and his features were frightful.”
    -_Mahābhārata_, Adi Parva, Hidimva-vadha Parva, section CLIV. ca. 500 B.C.
     trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, 1883.
%%%%
rambutan

“The rambutan (_nephelium lappaceum_) is a beautiful fruit to which I have
already alluded, as resembling the mammoth arbutus; and you suppose them at
first, when at a little distance from you, a delicious dish of some tropical
strawberry. But you find on inquiring into the ‘particulars within’ the outer
coat, that there is concealed beneath the red and hairy covering a
semi-transparent pulp of a pleasant acid taste, enveloping a single oval and
oblong seed. I know not but I am peculiar in my memory of the beautiful fruits
of the straits, but none lingers in my recollection so sweetly in its clustered
beauties of the fruit-dish as the bearded and rosy rambutan.”
    -Fitch Waterman Taylor, _A Voyage Round the World And Visits to Various
Foreign Countries, in the United States Frigate Columbia_. 1847.
%%%%
raven

“The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was ‘Why
is a raven like a writing-desk?’”
    -Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
%%%%
ring

“A ring of gold and a milk-white dove
 Are goodly gifts for thee,
 And a hempen rope for your own love
 To hang upon a tree.”
    -Oscar Wilde, “Chanson”. 1881.
%%%%
ring mail

<leather armour>
%%%%
ring of dexterity

<ring>
%%%%
ring of evasion

<ring>
%%%%
ring of fire

“Love is a burning thing
 And it makes a fiery ring”
    -June Carter, Merle Kilgore, “Ring of Fire”. 1963.
%%%%
ring of flight

<ring>
%%%%
ring of hunger

<ring>
%%%%
ring of ice

“Some say the world will end in fire;
 Some say in ice.
 From what I've tasted of desire
 I hold with those who favor fire.
 But if it had to perish twice,
 I think I know enough of hate
 To say that for destruction ice
 Is also great
 And would suffice.”
    -Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”. 1920.
%%%%
ring of intelligence

<ring>
%%%%
ring of invisibility

“With yells of delight the goblins rushed upon him. A pang of fear and loss,
like an echo of Gollum's misery, smote Bilbo, and forgetting even to draw his
sword he struck his hands into his pockets. And — there was the ring still, in
his left pocket, and it slipped on his finger. The goblins stopped short. They
could not see a sign of him. He had vanished.”
    -J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Hobbit, or There and Back Again_. 1937.
%%%%
ring of magical power

<ring>
%%%%
ring of poison resistance

<ring>
%%%%
ring of positive energy

<ring>
%%%%
ring of protection

<ring>
%%%%
ring of protection from cold

<ring>
%%%%
ring of protection from fire

<ring>
%%%%
ring of protection from magic

<ring>
%%%%
ring of regeneration

<ring>
%%%%
ring of see invisible

“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can
see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
    -Antoine de Saint Exupéry, _The Little Prince_. 1943.
%%%%
ring of slaying

<ring>
%%%%
ring of strength

<ring>
%%%%
ring of sustain abilities

<ring>
%%%%
ring of sustenance

<ring>
%%%%
ring of teleport control

<ring>
%%%%
ring of teleportation

<ring>
%%%%
ring of wizardry

<ring>
%%%%
robe

“CLEOPATRA: Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
 Immortal longings in me”
    -William Shakespeare, _Anthony & Cleopatra_, V, ii. ca. 1605.
%%%%
rod of striking

“He that spares his rod hates his son: but he that loves him chastens him
 early.”
    -King James 2000 Bible, Proverbs 13:24
%%%%
rotten bat

<bat>
%%%%
rotting devil

“The slow adagio begins;
 The winding-sheets are ravelled out
 That swathe the minds of men, the sins
 That wrap their rotting souls about.“
    -John Davidson, ”A Ballad of Heaven". Late 19th cent.
%%%%
sabre

“Who was the first that forged the deadly blade?
 Of rugged steel his savage soul was made...”
    -Albius Tibullus, _Elegies_ I, xi. ca. 25 B.C.
     trans. James Grainger, 1822.
%%%%
salamander

“As for example: the Salamander made in fashion of a Lizard, marked with spots
like to stars, never comes abroad and sheweth it selfe but in great showers;
for in faire weather he is not seene. He is of so cold a complexion, that if
hee do but touch the fire, hee wil quench it as presently, as if yce were put
into it. The Salamander casteth up at the mouth a certaine venomous matter like
unto milke, let it but once touch any bare part of a man or womans bodie, all
the haire will fall off: and the part so touched will change the colour of the
skin to the white morphew.”
    -Gaius Plinius Secundus, _Naturalis Historia_, Book X, ch. LXVII. 79 A.D.
     trans. Philemon Holland, 1601.
%%%%
scale mail

<leather armour>
%%%%
scimitar

“The museum-cabinet and huge library arrogated to themselves the entire lower
floor — there were the controversial and incompatible books that are somehow
the history of the nineteenth century; there were scimitars from Nishapur, in
whose frozen crescents the wind and violence of battle seemed to be living on.”
    -Jorge Luis Borges, _The Form of the Sword_. 1953.
     trans. Andrew Hurley.
%%%%
scorpion

“Those poisonous fields, with rank luxuriance crown’d,
 Where the dark scorpion gathers death around”
    -Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village”, l. 351-2. 1770.
%%%%
scroll

“To drift with every passion till my soul
 Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
 Is it for this that I have given away
 Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
 Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
 Scrawled over on some boyish holiday.”
    -Oscar Wilde, _Helas_. 1881.
%%%%
scroll of acquirement

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of amnesia

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of blinking

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of brand weapon

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of curse armour

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of curse jewellery

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of curse weapon

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of enchant armour

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of enchant weapon i

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of enchant weapon ii

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of enchant weapon iii

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of fear

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of fog

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of holy word

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of identify

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of immolation

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of magic mapping

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of noise

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of random uselessness

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of recharging

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of remove curse

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of silence

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of summoning

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of teleportation

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of torment

<scroll>
%%%%
scroll of vulnerability

<scroll>
%%%%
scythe

“It was instinct. Illogical as lightning striking and not hurting. Each day the
grain must be cut. It had to be cut. Why? Well, it just did, that was all. He
laughed at the scythe in his big hands. Then, whistling, he took it out to the
ripe and waiting field and did the work. He thought himself a little mad. Hell,
it was an ordinary-enough wheat field, really, wasn't it?”
    -Ray Bradbury, _The Scythe_. 1943.
%%%%
seraph

“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne,
high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered
his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts:
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
    -KJV Bible, Isaiah 6:1-3.
%%%%
shadow

“Between the idea
 And the reality
 Between the motion
 And the act
 Falls the Shadow
     For thine is the Kingdom

 Between the conception
 And the creation
 Between the emotion
 And the response
 Falls the Shadow
     Life is very long”
    -T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”. 1925.
%%%%
shadow demon

“As we grow old, we become aware that death is drawing near; his shadow falls
across our path...”
    -Stefan Zweig, _Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman_. 1927.
%%%%
shadow dragon

“Crux sacra sit mihi lux / Non draco sit mihi dux
 Vade retro satana / Numquam suade mihi vana
 Sunt mala quae libas / Ipse venena bibas”
        “Let the Holy Cross be my light / Let not the dragon be my guide
        Step back Satan / Never tempt me with vain things
        What you offer me is evil / You drink the poison yourself.”
    -full text of initials on the Saint Benedict Medal, worn to ward off evil
spririts. Inscription from 11-15th century, formally approved by pope Benedict
XIV in 18th century
%%%%
shadow wraith

“Yesterday, upon the stair,
 I met a man who wasn’t there
 He wasn’t there again today
 I wish, I wish he’d go away...”
    -Hughes Mearns ,_Antigonish_, 1-4. 1899.
%%%%
shapeshifter

“And then th' old Sea-God crept
 From forth the deeps, and found his fat calves there,
 Survey'd, and number'd, and came never near
 The craft we used, but told us five for calves.
 His temples then dis-eased with sleep he salves;
 And in rush'd we, with an abhorred cry,
 Cast all our hands about him manfully;
 And then th' old Forger all his forms began:
 First was a lion with a mighty mane,
 Then next a dragon, a pied panther then,
 A vast boar next, and suddenly did strain
 All into water. Last he was a tree,
 Curl'd all at top, and shot up to the sky.”
    -Homer, _The Odyssey_, IV, 602-14.
     trans. George Chapman, 1857.
%%%%
shedu

“May my god stand at my right hand!
 May my goddess stand at my left hand!
 May the favourable Shedu, the favourable Lamassu...with me!”
    -Assyrian prayer. 2nd millennium B.C.
%%%%
shield

<buckler>
%%%%
short sword

“Who was the first that forged the deadly blade?
 Of rugged steel his savage soul was made”
    -Albius Tibullus, _Elegies_ I, xi. ca. 25 B.C.
     trans. James Grainger, 1822.
%%%%
silent spectre

“There is a silence where hath been no sound,
 There is a silence where no sound may be,—
 In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea,
 Or in the wide desert where no life is found.”
    -Thomas Hood, “Silence”. Early 19th cent.
%%%%
silver star

“Ah star of evil! star of pain!
 Highhearted youth comes not again”
    -James Joyce, “Bahnhofstrasse”, _Pomes Penyeach_. 1927.
%%%%
simulacrum

“The simulacrum now hides, not the truth, but the fact that there is none, that
is to say, the continuation of Nothingness.”
    -Jean Baudrillard, _La Pensée Radicale_. 1994.
%%%%
siren

“Row'd on, in reach of an erected voice,
 The Sirens soon took note, without our noise,
 Tuned those sweet accents that made charms so strong,
 And these learn'd numbers made the Sirens' song:
 'Come here, thou worthy of a world of praise,
 That dost so high the Grecian glory raise,
 Ulysses! stay thy ship, and that song hear
 That none past ever but it bent his ear,
 But left him ravish'd, and instructed more
 By us, than any ever heard before.
 For we know all things whatsoever were
 In wide Troy labour'd; whatsoever there
 The Grecians and the Trojans both sustain'd
 By those high issues that the Gods ordain'd.
 And whatsoever all the earth can show
 T' inform a knowledge of desert, we know.'”
    -Homer, _The Odyssey_, XII, 268-82.
     trans. George Chapman, 1857.
%%%%
sixfirhy

“I saw a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was
full of nails rattling. It was a child’s dream of a mouth.
 A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and
shoulder. It was a child’s dream of an arm.
 The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted
iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
 And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is
pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering.”
    -Carl Sandburg, “Gargoyle”, _Cornhusker_. 1918.
%%%%
skeletal archer

“For a glory of all evil spirits rise for victory
 Pain for pain, blood for blood
 Pagan warriors moved quickly forward
 Bows are ready to shoot out their searing
 Darts...”
    -Mastiphal, “For a Glory of All Evil spirits”
%%%%
skeletal bat

<bat>
%%%%
skeletal warrior

“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
 Who, with thy hollow breast
 Still in rude armor drest,
 Comest to daunt me!
 Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
 But with thy fleshless palms
 Stretched, as if asking alms,
 Why dost thou haunt me?”
    -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Skeleton in Armor”. 1841.
%%%%
skeleton

“God save us from the skeleton
 Who sitteth at the feast!”
    -James Jeffrey Roche, _The Skeleton at the Feast_. 1890.
%%%%
sky beast

“Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion
that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.”
    -James Thurber, _My Life and Hard Times_. 1934.
%%%%
slave

“Who rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the
oppressor turned slave.”
    -E.M. Cioran, _History and Utopia_. 1960.
%%%%
slice of pizza

“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.”
    -Jack Brooks, “That’s Amore”. 1952.
%%%%
slime creature

“The very deep did rot: O Christ!
 That ever this should be!
 Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
 Upon the slimy sea.”
    -Samuel Tayor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. 1798.
%%%%
sling

“And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and
smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead;
and he fell upon his face to the earth.”
    -KJV Bible, 1 Samuel 17:49.
%%%%
sling bullet

“For when things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable
to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as
it outruns the eye.”
    -Francis Bacon, _Essays_, “Of Delays”. 1625.
%%%%
small abomination

“No — it wasn't that way at all. It was everywhere — a gelatin — a slime yet it
had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes —
and a blemish. It was the pit — the maelstrom — the ultimate abomination.
Carter, it was the unnamable!”
    -H.P. Lovecraft, _The Unnamable_. 1925.
%%%%
smoke demon

“Why does the thin grey strand
 Floating up from the forgotten
 Cigarette between my fingers,
 Why does it trouble me?”
    -D.H. Lawrence, “Sorrow”. 1916.
%%%%
snapping turtle

“After a while they came to a village. ”Now then,“ said Snapping Turtle, ”in
the morning at daylight, my friends, we will make on attack. I myself will
first go to the place,“ the leader of the war party said to them.

”Good,“ said the other little one, ”thou art the one who sees to it what we
shall do,“ they said to that Snapping Turtle. ”Now then,“ said Snapping Turtle,
”verily I am now going to tell you what I shall do.“ Thus he spoke. ”Now is the
time I shall begin to walk toward this village. Verily at the time I shall kill
the daughter of the chief will be when the light of day is breaking, and at the
same instant the sky will glow with red in the direction whence the morrow
comes. 'Ho, there, our comrade has killed her!' will thus be the thought in
your hearts. Then is the time when you want to make a great noise, when you
shall whoop all keep it up. Now is the time that you go to attack this
village.“ Thus he spoke to those his young men.

”All right!“ said the other little fellows.”
    -“When Snapping Turtle went to War”, _Publications of the American
     Ethnological Society, Volume IX: Kickapoo Tales_. 1915.
     trans. Truman Michelson
%%%%
soul eater

“Negation is the mind's first freedom.”
    -E.M. Cioran, _The Temptation to Exist_. 1956.
%%%%
spatial vortex

“It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms
of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence
stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open
before our frenzied eyes.”
    -H.P. Lovecraft, “The Colour out of Space”. 1927.
%%%%
spear

“The halberd is inferior to the spear on the battlefield. With the spear you
can take the initiative; the halberd is defensive. In the hands of one of two
men of equal ability, the spear gives a little extra strength.”
    -Miyamoto Musashi, _The Book of Five Rings_. 1645.
%%%%
spectral thing

“On the hungry craving wind
 My Spectre follows thee behind.”
    -William Blake, “Broken Love”. ca. 1800.
%%%%
spiny worm

“No sooner had I reached the place than I began to vomit, during which there
came from my stomach a hairy worm about a quarter of a cubit in length: the
hairs were long, and the worm was very ugly, speckled of divers colours, green,
black, and red. They kept and showed it to the doctor, who said he had never
seen anything of the sort before...”
    -Benvenuto Cellini, _Autobiography_. 1563.
     trans. John Addington Symonds, 1187.
%%%%
spriggan assassin

“I never stabbed anything that didn't stop being an immediate problem.”
    -Jillian Zamussels, Erfworld, Rob Balder
%%%%
staff

“Bashō Osho said to his disciples, 'If you have a staff, I will give you a
staff. If you have no staff, I will take it from you.'
 Mumon's Comment
 It helps me wade across a river when the bridge is down. It accompanies me to
the village on a moonless night. If you call it a staff, you will enter hell
like an arrow.”
    -Mumon Ekai, _The Gateless Gate_, case 44. 1228.
     trans. Katsuki Sekida
%%%%
staff of air

<staff>
%%%%
staff of cold

<staff>
%%%%
staff of conjuration

<staff>
%%%%
staff of death

“'I am Aed Abaid of Ess Rúaid, that is, the good god of wizardry of the Tuatha
Dé Danann, and the Rúad Rofhessa, and Eochaid Ollathair are my three names.’
 And thus he was, with Cermait Milbél, one of his sons, on his back, who had
fallen in fight and combat by Lug, son of Cian, High King of Ireland. The Dagda
betook himself to his knowledge and learning, and therefore frankincense and
myrrh and herbs were put around the body of Cermait, and he lifted Cermait on
his back, and bearing Cermait he searched the world, and came to the great
eastern world.
 He met three men going the road and the way with their father’s treasures. The
Dagda asked news of them, and they said ‘We are three sons of one father and
mother, and we are sharing our father’s treasures.’
 ‘What have ye?’ said the Dagda.
 ‘A shirt and a staff and a cloak,’ said they.
 ‘What virtues have these?’ said the Dagda.
 ‘This great staff that thou seest,’ said he, ‘has a smooth end and a rough
end. One end slays the living, and the other end brings the dead to life.’”
    -Osborn Bergin, “How the Dagda Got His Magic Staff”, _Medieval Studies in
     Memory of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis_. 1927.
%%%%
staff of earth

<staff>
%%%%
staff of energy

<staff>
%%%%
staff of fire

“The wizard suddenly remembered the words of the god. He remembered that of all
the creatures that people the earth, Fire was the only one who knew his son to
be a phantom. This memory, which at first calmed him, ended by tormenting him.
He feared lest his son should meditate on this abnormal privilege and by some
means find out he was a mere simulacrum. Not to be a man, to be a projection of
another man's dreams—what an incomparable humiliation, what madness!”
    -Jorge Luis Borges, _The Circular Ruins_. 1940.
    trans. Anthony Bonner, 1962.
%%%%
staff of poison

<staff>
%%%%
staff of power

<staff>
%%%%
staff of summoning

<staff>
%%%%
staff of wizardry

<staff>
%%%%
steam dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
steam dragon hide

“His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so
near to another, that no air can come between them. They are joined one to
another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.”
    -KJV Bible, Job 41:15-17.
%%%%
stone

“How happy is the little Stone
 That rambles in the Road alone,
 And doesn't care about Careers
 And Exigencies never fears —
 Whose Coat of elemental Brown
 A passing Universe put on,
 And independent as the Sun
 Associates or glows alone,
 Fulfilling absolute Decree
 In casual simplicity —”
    -Emily Dickinson, “How happy is the little Stone”. ca. 1865.
%%%%
stone giant

“I really believe what you say, answered the knight; for, I have been engaged
with the giant, in the most obstinate and outrageous combat that I believe I
shall ever fight in all the days of my life: with one backstroke, slam went his
head to the ground; and discharged such a quantity of blood, that it ran like
rills of water, along the field.”
    -Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, _The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La
     Mancha_, IV, 10. 1605.
     trans. Carlos Fuentes, 1997.
%%%%
stone golem

“I see him there
 Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
 In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.”
    -Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”, _North of Boston_. 1914.
%%%%
storm dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
storm dragon hide

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
strawberry

“A Samurai was out walking when a large tiger began to chase him. The samurai
ran for his life, never seeing the cliff under his feet. As he fell, he reached
out and caught a vine that hung down. He looked down and saw another tiger
circling below; the first tiger waited above. The vine began to give away. The
samurai then saw a single strawberry growing on the vine. He reached out and
ate the strawberry. How sweet it tasted!”
    -Attributed to various Japanese buddhist monks.
%%%%
sultana

“A Turkish garden was among the curiosities to which the Jew found access for
Bentham. It was a sort of orchard of vines and other trees, without order or
apparent arrangement. From that garden Bentham sent specimens of the Sultana
raisin to England which he believed to have been the first of that species
which had ever reached his country.”
    -John Bowring, _The Works of Jeremy Bentham_. 1839.
%%%%
sun demon

“Behold him setting in his western skies,
 The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.”
    -John Dryden, “Absalom and Achitophel”, I, 268. 1681.
%%%%
swamp dragon armour

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
swamp dragon hide

<steam dragon hide>
%%%%
swamp drake

“Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
 Until we meet a snake;
 ’T is then we sigh for houses,
 And our departure take

 At that enthralling gallop
 That only childhood knows.
 A snake is summer’s treason,
 And guile is where it goes.”
    -Emily Dickinson, “A Snake”. ca. 1865.
%%%%
swamp worm

“The fool, as I think, at the chasm’s brink,
 Prone by the swamp or the marsh’s side,
 Did, even as I, in the end rejoice,
 Since the voice of death must be His true voice.”
    -Arthur Edward Waite, “At The End of Things”. 1906.
%%%%
tengu

“A Bird came down the Walk —
 He did not know I saw —
 He bit an Angleworm in halves
 And ate the fellow, raw”
    -Emily Dickinson, “A Bird came down the Walk”. ca. 1865.
%%%%
tentacled monstrosity

“Oozing and surging up out of that yawning trap-door in the Cyclopean crypt I
had glimpsed such an unbelievable behemothic monstrosity that I could not doubt
the power of its original to kill with its mere sight. Even now I cannot begin
to suggest it with any words at my command. I might call it gigantic —
tentacled — proboscidian — octopus-eyed — semi-amorphous — plastic — partly
squamous and partly rugose — ugh!”
    -H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, “Out of the Aeons”, _Weird Tales_, 25, No.
     4, pp. 478-96. April 1935.
%%%%
the Lernaean hydra

“The second Labour which he undertook was the slaying of the Lernaian Hydra,
 springing from whose single body were fashioned a hundred necks, each bearing
 the head of a serpent. And when one head was cut off, the place where it was
 severed put forth two others; for this reason it was considered to be
 invincible, and with good reason, since the part of it which was subdued sent
 forth a two-fold assistance in its place. Against a thing so difficult to
 manage as this Herakles devised an ingenious scheme and commanded Iolaos to
 sear with a burning brand the part which had been severed, in order to check
 the flow of the blood.”
    -Diodorus Siculus, _Bibliotheca Historica_. [4. 11. 5.]. c. 100.
%%%%
throwing net

“The look of a scared thing
 Sitting in a net!”
    -Edna St. Vincent Millay, “When the Year Grows Old”. 1917.
%%%%
titan

“And on the other part the Titans eagerly strengthened their ranks, and both
sides at one time showed the work of their hands and their might. The boundless
sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken
and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation under the charge of
the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound
of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they
launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as
they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great
battle-cry.”
    -Hesiod, _Theogony_, 8th cent. B.C.
     trans. H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914.
%%%%
toadstool

“But the Seneschal gathered the toadstool fly-bane.”
    -Adam Mickiewicz, _Pan Tadeusz_, III. 1834.
     trans. G.R. Noyes, 1917.
%%%%
toenail golem

“Gentle socks pamper them by day, and shoes cobbled of leather fortify them,
but my toes hardly notice. All they’re interested in is turning out
toenails—semitransparent, flexible sheets of a hornlike material, as defense
against—whom?”
    -Jorge Luis Borges, “Toenails”. 1960.
    trans. Andrew Hurley, 1998.
%%%%
tome of destruction

<book>
%%%%
tormentor

“Thou art to me a delicious torment.”
    -Ralph Waldo Emerson, _Essays: First Series_, Essay VI: Friendship. 1841.
%%%%
training dummy

“Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only
costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness, with the base
and the banal.”
    -Walter Benjamin, _Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and
     Mescaline 1927-1934_, “Protocol II: Highlights of the Second Hashish
     Impression”. 15 January 1928.
     trans. Scott J. Thompson, 1997.
%%%%
trident

“Without noticing the occupations of an intervening day or two, which, as they
consisted of the ordinary sylvan amusements of shooting and coursing, have
nothing sufficiently interesting to detain the reader, we pass to one in some
degree peculiar to Scotland, which may be called a sort of salmon-hunting. This
chase, in which the fish is pursued and struck with barbed spears, or a sort of
long shafted trident, called a waster, is much practised at the mouth of the
Esk, and in the other salmon rivers of Scotland.”
    -Sir Walter Scott, _Guy Mannering_, ch. XXVI. 1815.
%%%%
triple sword

<demon blade>
%%%%
troll hide

“THE TROLL KING: Now, listen, Prince Peer, and give way to reason!
 You're cut out for a Troll. Why, look, already
 You bear yourself quite in a Troll-like fashion!
 And you want to become one, don't you?
 PEER GYNT: Of course.
 In return for a bride and a well-found kingdom
 I'm not unwilling to sacrifice something;
 But all things have their natural limit.
 I have taken a tail, it is true; but, then,
 I can undo the knots that our friend has tied
 And take the thing off. I have shed my breeches;
 They were old and patched; but that won't prevent me
 From putting them on if I have a mind to.
 I shall probably find it just as easy
 To deal with your Trollish way of living.
 I can easily swear that a cow's a maiden;
 An oath's not a difficult thing to swallow.
 But to know that one never can get one's freedom —
 Not even to die as a human being —
 To end one's days as a Troll of the mountains —
 Never go back, as you tell me plainly —
 That is a thing that I'll not submit to.”
    -Henrik Ibsen, _Peer Gynt_ . 1867.
%%%%
troll leather armour

<troll hide>
%%%%
ufetubus

“We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons”
    -Czesław Miłosz, “A Task”.
%%%%
ugly thing

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which
contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may
even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every
individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to
regulate those of others.”
    -David Hume
%%%%
unseen horror

“The awful shadow of some unseen Power
 Floats, tho’ unseen, amongst us.”
    -Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, I, 1-2. 1816.
%%%%
vampire

 • Scuze me. My friend Burt says you're a vampire hunter. 'zat so?
 - Uh yes. Yes it is.
 • Well you n'ain't gonna find one round here, mate. They ain't no vampires.
 - You don't believe in vampires?
 • 'course not!
 • But I do believe in con artists. And charletans who like to stir up trouble!
 • Dead people who get up at night and suck blood. How stupid do you think we
are?
 • My place is haunted with 16 ghosts and they all say there n'ain't no
vampires!
    -Rich Morris, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
%%%%
vampire bat

“For something is amiss and out of place
 When mice with wings can wear a human face.”
    -Theodore Roethke, “The Bat”. 1938.
%%%%
vapour

“I had rather be a toad,
 And live upon the vapour of a dungeon,
 Than keep a corner in the thing I love
 For others’ uses.”
    -William Shakespeare, _Othello_, III, 3. 1603.
%%%%
very ugly thing

“All the infections that sun sucks up
 From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
 By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me
 And yet I needs must curse. ”
    -William Shakespeare, _The Tempest_, II, 2. 1611.
%%%%
wand

"[The principle of selection] is the magician’s wand, by means of which he may
summon into life whatever form and mould he pleases.”
    -William Youatt, _Sheep: their breeds, management, and diseases; to which
     is added the Mountain Shepherd's Manual_, ch. III. 1837.
%%%%
wand of cold

<wand>
%%%%
wand of confusion

<wand>
%%%%
wand of digging

<wand>
%%%%
wand of disintegration

<wand>
%%%%
wand of draining

<wand>
%%%%
wand of enslavement

<wand>
%%%%
wand of fire

<wand>
%%%%
wand of fireball

<wand>
%%%%
wand of flame

<wand>
%%%%
wand of frost

<wand>
%%%%
wand of hasting

<wand>
%%%%
wand of invisibility

<wand>
%%%%
wand of lightning

<wand>
%%%%
wand of magic darts

<wand>
%%%%
wand of paralysis

<wand>
%%%%
wand of polymorph

<wand>
%%%%
wand of random effects

<wand>
%%%%
wand of slowing

<wand>
%%%%
wand of teleportation

<wand>
%%%%
wandering mushroom

“Telimena, wearied with the prolonged wrangling, wanted to go out into the
fresh air, but sought a partner. She took a little basket from the peg.
“Gentlemen, I see that you wish to remain within doors,” she said, wrapping
around her head a red cashmere shawl, “but I am going for mushrooms: follow me
who will!” Under one arm she took the little daughter of the Chamberlain, with
the other she raised her skirt up to her ankles. Thaddeus silently hastened
after her—to seek mushrooms!”
    -Adam Mickiewicz, _Pan Tadeusz_, II. 1834.
     trans. G.R. Noyes, 1917.
%%%%
war axe

“'God speed the kiss,' said Max, and Katie sigh'd,
 With pray'rful palms close seal'd, 'God speed the axe!'”
    -Isabella Valancey Crawford, “Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story”, Part I, _Old
     Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie and Other Poems_. 1884.
%%%%
water nymph

“Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some
watery tart threw a sword at you.”
    -Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975.
%%%%
whip

“Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
 Nor with a Stone —
 A Whip so small you could not see it
 I've known
 To lash the Magic Creature
 Till it fell,
 Yet that Whip's Name
 Too noble then to tell.”
    -Emily Dickinson, “Not with a Club, the Heart is broken”. ca. 1865.
%%%%
wight

“Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
 That doth his life in so long tendance spend!”
    -Edmund Spenser, “Mother Hubberds Tale”, _Complaints_. 1591.
%%%%
witch

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
    -KJV Bible, Exodus 22:18.
%%%%
wizard

“Each family or tribe has a wizard or conjuring doctor, whose office we could
never clearly ascertain.”
    -Charles Darwin, _The Voyage of the Beagle_, ch. X. 1839.
%%%%
worm

“While the angels, all pallid and wan,
   Uprising, unveiling, affirm
 That the play is the tragedy, ‘Man’,
   And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.”
    -Edgar Allan Poe
%%%%
wraith

“God, though this life is but a wraith,
 Although we know not what we use,
 Although we grope with little faith,
 Give me the heart to fight—and lose.”
    -Louis Untermeyer, “Prayer”. 1919.
%%%%
ynoxinul

“He fixed his eyes upon the door, which, slowly opening, disclosed a stranger
of majestic form, but scowling features, who demanded sternly, why he was
summoned? 'I did not summon you,' said the trembling student. 'You did!' said
the stranger, advancing, angrily; 'and the demons are not to be invoked in
vain.' The student could make no reply; and the demon, enraged that one of the
uninitiated should have summoned him out of mere presumption, seized him by the
throat and strangled him.

When Agrippa returned, a few days afterwards, he found his house beset with
devils. Some of them were sitting on the chimneypots, kicking up their legs in
the air; while others were playing at leapfrog, on the very edge of the
parapet. His study was so filled with them that he found it difficult to make
his way to his desk.”
    -Charles Mackay, _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions_, Vol. III,
     Part I. 1841.
%%%%
zombie

“It seemed that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost,
nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie,
they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and
endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which
is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power
to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot,
galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave,
occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge
around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it
like a dumb beast if it slackens.”
    -William Seabrook, _The Magic Island_. 1929.
%%%%
