Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds bestiary

[MacGyver]

Aha! I just KNEW there had to be Wizardry monster manuals in Japan! I can just see a bunch of Japanese geeks getting together around a table for a game of Wizardry instead of D&D. Thanks for sharing your discovery!

Gas Dragons having only a single female is interesting; can't say I've ever seen that angle played with dragons before.

I always figured Raver Lords were corrupted Lords, so that isn't much of a surprise.

I actually had a dream a few weeks back about finding a Wizardry Monster Manual in a used book store. Alas, when I opened the musty old tome, a wood louse the size of a medium-sized dog jumped out and the dream obviously went into nightmare territory from there (the physics of that boggles the mind, as a small dog obviously cannot fit inside a typical hardcover book, but it was a dream.)

[Ebe]

Most of the entries are boring like I said, all they do is tell you what the monster looks like (we have pictures for that) and what powers they have (just look at a bestiary and you already know.) Sometimes they do give a slight explanation for powers, but not usually. Twice I've seen explanations: Gas Dragons' breath is a mix of vinegar and chlorine, and Sidelle's sickle hands are laced with a cloudy liquid that causes the paralysis.

Delf is an interesting one. He's apparently named after Delftware, a type of fine pottery from the Netherlands. His body is actually pottery that was built to house his evil spirit, the entire thing purposely constructed as a guardian for the Evil Crystal.

Fiends are actually a collection of creatures. An evil wraith serves as the body and each piece of it's armor/weapons is an individual demon.

Unsurprisingly Xenos are described as coming from fallen meteorites.

I'll describe more interesting things if I come across them. Sadly there are many interesting monsters (Were-Amoeba, Sidelle, etc) that describe the monster entirely in terms of spells, special abilities and sometimes even exact HP damage! The ones with interesting ecological information are few and far between.

[OuthouseInferno]

MacGuyber I dont know if you said something in another thread and it's old news, but the OP link is down.

[Ebe]

Old news he changed hosts.

Here's his homepage.

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/ace/MarksArtPage.html

[OuthouseInferno]

I guess I'll edit the op post with the new link

[MacGyver]

On a certain level, I suppose one could argue that Wizardry doesn't even need a dedicated monster manual, as so many of its monsters were cribbed from D&D to begin with, so you could just use the official D&D stats for those if you wanted to actually use them in a tabletop game (and for those that weren't, you could probably just use a similar existing D&D monster as a template.)

I have to wonder how much of that monster manual information, if any, actually comes from Wizardry's original creators, or if the Japanese author(s) just made it all up. I'm assuming it's an officially licensed product, so technically, that would make it canon.

I don't suppose Maelific's entry has anything to say about being undead? That monster seems to shuffle back-and-forth from being a demon, to undead, or both. Maybe he's intended to be Wizardry's version of D&D's Orcus?

Delf being possessed pottery is interesting; of course, seeing as how his unidentified form is statuesque, it makes sense. More than anything else, I'd like to know why Delf has faces for breasts and genitals.

Xeno is indeed a weird one--I don't think Xeno even knows what Xeno is. An alien from outerspace is as good an explanation as any.

I take it that, since Delf and Xeno are included, the book covers Wizardry 1-3?

[Ebe]

It seems so. The page where I got the monster stats from also has a "Goods" section. Some of the goods are cards for each game (Real Death's actual name is apparently Richaldes.) Next to most of the cards are boring stat blocks, but for the cards from 1-3 it will have descriptions, and at the bottom it will say "Taken from the Monster Manual."

Maelific's description is:

"古代の悪霊である．人間が文明を築く以前　
　の暗黒の時代には，このような邪悪な存在が　
　世界のどこでも見られたものだ．人々は恐怖　
　におびえ，その威力を静めるために彼等を　　
　"神"として祀ることもあった．アイルランド　
　のケルト神話，ヒンドゥー神話などの中には，
　神というにはあまりにも禍々しい者達がしば　
　しば登場してくるが，実はこのマイルフィク　
　こそそれらの正体であった．
　──『ウィザードリィ　モンスターズマニュ　
　アル』（ＭＩＡ発行）より抜粋"

It's definitely mentioned as a demon.

[MacGyver]

"Real Death" was just a guess on my part, translation-wise, as I couldn't think of anything better. I wonder, who, or what, a Richaldes is? Google/Bing didn't turn up anything useful . . . something historical perhaps?

I know Maelific is generally regarded as a demon, but I believe he's supposed to be an undead demon, like Orcus. For example, in Wizardry: Scripture of the Dark, the Maelific's unidentified form is a Kyodai na Akuma (Huge Demon), but it's classification is Fushi (Undead.) I believe several other of the Wizardry games Maelific appears in also classify him as undead - I can't remember if undead-specific spells, like Zilwan, affect him or not (I highly doubt a Priest/Bishop/Lord would be able to turn him, seeing as how he's usually a top-tier monster.) I may be wrong, but I seem to recall not being able to get Mogato (demon-banishing spell) to work on him either, which would seem to indicate he's not classified as a demon so far as spell effects are concerned.

[MacGyver]

Rather than start another thread, I figured I'd post this here, an all-new Wizardry bestiary (Scripture of the Dark) that I recently finished:

http://www.angelfire.com/ult/ace/WZD_SotD_bestiary.html

[Anyone00]

"And then the Earth Priest said unto Agan: Let my people go!"

Also, it's interesting there seems to be a race called Mooks.

[Ebe]

GREAT job coloring these! I keep forgetting that they didn't come that way!

I know you might not know, but I'm super interested in the basic plot.

Also I'm glad to see that King of Diamonds and Nobunaga are optional bonus bosses, I remember looking at the bestiary and thinking "What is wrong with the people who expect you to beat these things?"

As far as the plot/mechanics go, I'm also specifically interested in Light Lord and what's up with them.

[MacGyver]

Anyone00: The Earth Priest does indeed look like Moses, which is what I went for with my coloring job.

Mooks are a sasquatch-like race of creatures (which are also one of the races you can choose for your player characters). They're believed to be alien in origin. I don't use them much, but they have good strength, intelligence, and vitality (good qualities for a fighter/mage class), and some natural resistance to magic and cold.


Ebe: So far as I can tell, the basic plot of Scripture of the Dark is that the Agan King's love, Daria died (slain, years ago, by another party of adventurers in Wizardry: Throb of the Demon's Heart, when she became evil) and he tried to use the three sacred items (book, sword, and mantle) from Throb of the Demon's Heart to bring her back to life, but the ritual went horribly awry and he ended up getting snatched by the demons he invoked and corrupted. The land fell into darkness, yadayadayada . . .

Nobunaga is not an optional boss, he's a regular, and extremely deadly, enemy in the Dragon's Cave dungeon. Most history books fail to report that, when he wasn't trying to unify Japan, Nobunaga Oda spent his down time gleefully decapitating arrogant adventurers in dank catacombs.

There's nothing special about the Light Lord, he's just a powerful regular enemy in the Castle dungeon. Why a uber Paladin-type character would be fighting your party of heroes is beyond me (unless they were all of evil alignment, then it would make sense.) Maybe he's honor-bound to serve the Agan King's wishes, even if the acts go against his alignment?

The Diamond King is nearly impossible to beat unless you know the trick - you just keep casting the Alchemist spell Nofis on him, which lowers an enemy's magic resistance (which, incidentally, is a spell that SHOULD be in every Wizardry game), while attempting to also hit him with the Priest spell Labadi, which will instantly reduce a foe down to 1-8 hit points if it connects, at which point, the Diamond King is pretty much screwed. Summoning Agares, with the Mage spell Socordi, is also helpful, because he can inflict substantial injury as well (1,054 points of damage, on average, if all six of his attacks connect, which they usually do, because he's a high-level demon.) The same technique can be applied on Nobunaga, or any other really tough enemy; of course, the real trick lies in staying alive long enough for it to work. Alternatively, you can level your characters up to insane levels where they actually have the hit rate and damage capacity to deal with these super powerful enemies normally. For example, in Throb of the Demon's Heart, which also has the Dragon's Cave bonus dungeon and many of the same enemies, my Level 100+ Fighter and Valkyrie can actually hit and kill Nobunaga fairly easily with one or two attacks ( they do around 500 damage each when armed with Exalibur). It'd take them awhile to whittle down the Diamond King's HPs, just because he has so many, but they could do it.