Ode to a Dead Halfling

I was a little sad the other night, when Brick, the party's Halfling, got turned into a Brickcicle by a freezing blast of dragon breath.  It truly was a case of him being in the wrong place at the wrong time; the player figured the halfling was out of harm's way down a hall, away from the fight, not realizing that dragon breath would travel some 80' down the passage.  It was one of those absurd D&D deaths that underlines the randomness of the game.  The guys that charged the dragon's teeth, banzai style, all made it through.  War is hell.

As the referee, it's important to maintain an impartial demeanor, but that doesn't mean we can't feel bad when something unfortunate happens to the players through poor luck.  In this case, the players just missed identifying the extent of the risk.  But there are truly selfish reasons why I'm going to miss that party halfling.  Consider the following a spirited defense of the class.

Halflings bring two important and complimentary elements to the adventuring party; world class Scouting ability and Durability.  This makes them the ultimate trailblazers.

Let's first look at the importance of scouting.  Most of my favorite moments as a game master are when the party is confronted with a difficult situation, a tough tactical challenge or tricky puzzle, and all the players are forced to lean in a little closer, hovering over the map, planning their way forward through difficult choices.  I can't count how many of those situations emerged directly from the halfling's ability to creep forward, stealthily, and return with valuable information about the disposition of the enemy (it seemed like that happened almost every game).  We've been spoiled, perhaps, by the LOTFP flavor of the halfling, which emphasizes halfling stealth even more than Moldvay's BX rules.

Information is the lifeblood of player planning and strategy; it cannot be overstated how valuable it is to have a competent scout, even though we don't normally view it as an important character role or niche.  Not only is the poor thief abysmal at stealth during the low levels, he is further saddled with poor saving throws and weak hit points, making him a tough choice for risky scouting missions.

Which highlights the other under-appreciated value of those 4' tall crumb-snatching halflings; their amazing saving throws and durability.  Part and parcel of scouting ahead is a willingness to put your character in mortal danger, particularly when you get jumped by something that forces a saving throw.  And nothing brings the game to a halt like haggling over who is going to test some risky dungeon element, like sipping the unidentified potion, seeing if the trap was successfully deactivated, looking at the scroll to see if it was cursed, or "touching that thing and seeing what happens".  The halfling is perfect for those risk-taking instigators in the party.

So this is my selfish confession as a DM; I like halflings in the game, because their scouting prowess gives me frequent opportunities to give the players insider information, and their hardiness emboldens the players to take risks and test more dicey situations during exploration.  Both are powerful net positives and important party roles.

Alas, the halfling love is not universal.  For instance, ACKS has omitted the halfling class.  Here's what Alex had to say on the matter back when ACKS was in development:

Halfings were created by JRR Tolkien specifically as an example of a race that was NOT good at adventuring. That's their whole point in the story; they are the unlikeliest heroes imaginable, the meek, the average, the overlooked. But because the Fellowship of the Ring was the original adventuring party, and it had halflings, every RPG since has riffed on Tolkien and made halflings one of the core adventuring races -- missing the entire point. When a game includes halflings, they are aping the trappings of our fictional sources without understanding their context. Thus I refuse to make halflings a core playable race in ACKS for this reason!!

-Alex, game designer and confessed halfling hater

I'm a big fan of those Autarch products, but clearly, Alex has it all wrong on the utility of the these guys.  It seems like a good time for a new poll.  Be a kind soul and let me know how you feel about the grubby, shoeless, little mugs in the latest poll.

ACKS Player's Companion - Delivered

Pleasant surprise yesterday - the Player's Companion for the Adventurer Conquer King System (ACKS) arrived.  Wahoo. Looks great, inside and out:

Back when the Kickstarter backers gained access to the draft, I did a mini-review and survey of the preview contents - 19 new classes, templates (equipment packages and skill selections to speed character generation), 20+ pages on building custom classes, a large spell selection, and some supplemental rules  - new proficiencies, tables for generating followers for high-level characters, things like that.

If you're not familiar with ACKS, here's a quick overview:  I view it as the spiritual successor to BECMI, the Rules Cyclopedia, and the Mystara approach to expanding classic D&D play.  It uses the basic D&D chassis, with a  skill system that's an advancement over the Rules Cyclopedia; it adds domain management, economics, and campaign rules; quirky niche classes similar to the Gazetteer series for Mystara; unlike BECMI, it caps the class and level system around level 14 (instead of level 36 in BECMI); expecting a campaign to last to level 36 just seems nuts to me.

In my current campaign, now that the players have cleared most of the Transit Tunnels (in the Black City game), it's likely we'll get back to Gothic Greyhawk in the near future as I'll probably need a small break to design the deeper levels of the Black City below the caverns (covering play levels 4-5); with the publication of the Player Companion, I'm going to suggest we convert that campaign entirely to ACKS - we were already using ACKS to handle the economics and domain rules for the player's holdings, and I haven't been happy with using the AD&D 1E combat rules.  The new classes cover just about everything we have in the Gothic Greyhawk campaign.

Kickstarter Updates
Meanwhile, late Kickstarters are the order of the day.  Here's a bleak rundown on campaigns I've backed.  The ACKS Player's Companion Kickstarter happened almost a year ago - glad to see it over the finish line.  The woes of Dwimmermount are well-publicized (it was due last summer).  The LOTFP Hardcovers are still MIA, with slow but steady progress (due last fall).  The LOTFP grand adventures look like they'll be out late spring (due this winter); the guns supplement for LOTFP is probably going to be a year late.  I signed up for Sine Nomine's Spears of the Dawn; that looks like it's going to be the first project that's actually early!  Pelgrane's Drama System seems to be moving along right on schedule; Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man (for Call of Cthulhu) is delayed by a half year; although not technically a Kickstarter, MRP's Tales of the Sleepless City (a Cthulhu anthology of 1920's New York scenarios) is close to publication, but 6 months after preorders started.  Horror on the Orient Express had a year of lead time, so Chaosium could be on track.

Savvy publishers are learning a few things - either have a finished manuscript before launching a campaign, and use the Kickstarter approach just for polishing and capital, or heavily warn backers that an item is unfinished and/or unwritten, and rife with the associated risks.

Rules, Rulings, and Conflict Resolution Theory

Message boards are great for people-watching.  Sometimes you might learn something here and there about gaming, but more typically, you learn about people's biases and the bad experiences that have made them bitter and divisive.  Take these nuggets paraphrased from a recent thread, criticizing the rules-light approach in various older game systems:

• Arneson favored rules-light gaming so he could boss around the DM with his superior knowledge.
• Gygax favored gaming  where the DM made up the rules so he could boss around the players with his superior knowledge.

These types of complainants typically want a comprehensive rules set to which they can appeal as a higher authority, somehow saving them from those know-it-all, arbitrary DMs and bossy players.  Let's leave alone whether the medicine (lots and lots of rules) actually cures the submitted problem (bossy people at the table).  There's no need to impugn an entire style of game just because some message-board malcontents can't handle bossy people.

So what's really going on in these situations?  Smarter folks* than me have loosely grouped people according to how they handle interpersonal conflicts, and given them tags like competitors, collaborators, cooperators, avoiders, and accommodators.  Check out this stylish graphic that charts the various positions:

When you have one those know-it-alls at the table, who speaks with the Voice of Absolute Authority, they're acting like those folks in the upper left.  I don’t want that person either as my DM or one of my players, assuming they don't have the maturity to reign it in.  They're not a good fit for my gaming, regardless of system.

A long time ago, I wrote about my approach to making rulings when playing a rules-lite game:  Say Yes,Skill Checks in a Rules-Lite System.  Looking back on that post, it's clear my approach to creating a ruling is either cooperative or collaborative (the center square or the upper right).  I present a ruling to the players for agreement, there's usually some negotiation on how they can improve their chances, and then we ask for a dice roll, if applicable, and move on.  Rulings in the older games are just as fast (and just as collaborative) as assigning Difficulty Class (DC) in a modern game and opening the discussion up to discuss how various modifiers might affect the situation.  But no game system is going to solve for basic social problems at the table.


*The main one I've seen and used is the Thomas-Kilman conflict mode instrument, a set of questions used to identify and graph your default style

Hopes for the Gamma World

I had an epiphany the other day, putting a game report together for the Black City.  Somewhere deep down, I clearly have a yearning to run a Gamma World campaign.  It's manifested through me stocking parts of the Black city with robots and mutants, lightning guns and techno-magic items, insane super computers loaded with psychic powers, and most recently, radioactive zombies.  Somewhere, maybe in the attic, or buried in the garage, I might even have a coffee-stained, beat up copy of the 1E Gamma World rules.

Most fantasy gaming is already post-apocalyptic… older civilizations, more advanced than the current age, have fallen, leaving behind their relics and artifacts.  It's just that in the traditional approach, those relics are the many magic items found strewn about dungeons.  Depending on your point of view, this might be a legacy of Tolkien's influence on the game, or a historical nod to the dark ages and the passage of Rome.  The dissolution of earlier civilizations plays a large role in the weirder inspirational fiction - Lovecraft's elder things, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique and Hyperborea stories, or Vance's Dying Earth.  I've been enjoying the Marvel comics adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower, and that's a post-apocalyptic setting filled with gunslingers, robots, demons, and ancient magic.  It's a glorious mixed omelet.

Now that WOTC has lifted the embargo on PDFs of their games, will we see a high quality scan of the 1st or 2nd editions of Gamma World?  Why not, right?  Bring it on, WOTC brothers.

Have any fellow gamers posted reviews comparing Gamma World to Goblinoid's Mutant Future, or looked closely at Sine Nomine's Other Dust?  I'll have to take Mutant Future and Other Dust off the shelf and give them a thorough read, just to get a sense on how they differ.

My Name is Beedo, You Killed My Dragon, Prepare to Die

I feel like the Rancor-handler in that Star Wars movie, watching his man-eating pet get crushed under the door, or the guys in the Conan movie that get all bent out of shape because Conan hacked the head off their giant pet snake.  You read the monster books carefully, looking for that special critter you just need to have, "I choose you, White Dragon", and then you make it a special home in the dungeon, plenty of food, water, you arrange for all the necessary comforts - like a giant pile of soft coins for nesting - and then *they* come along, and wreck it all.  Adventurers.

It's the day after the carnage; now the coffee tastes too bitter, the sunlight is weak, and I have this hollow feeling that used to be filled with joy knowing a monstrous white dragon was lurking in the dungeon ready to spring a TPK at any moment.  Now it's dead.  Sure, there will be other monsters, other boss fights.   There's more fish in the sea.  I get it.  The monster books are full of hideous travesties to challenge even the doughtiest adventurers.  I even told myself I wouldn't cry.  It's just hard to say goodbye, White Dragon.

So what did *they* do, to bring me to this low point?  I'm glad you asked.

Things started out well enough last game - the party was exploring some new areas in the southeast of the current dungeon, they stumbled on some rooms filled with Black City Radium (a glowing green poisonous rock), they fought a group of green, glowing, radiation zombies, and got exposed to a heavy dose of the green stuff - in fact, over half the group is going to start suffering from a wasting disease that will be fatal in like 1-6 months, losing charisma and the ability to heal, along the way.

The Patriarch of Constantinople, in far away Byzantium, has been at war with Himerius, the High Hermite of Constantinople, a known arcane dabbler and summoner, such that the Patriarch sent a higher level witch hunter (Andronicus Priscian) with a party of hand-picked clerics and a troop of Byzantine spearmen to track the party's Russian elves and magic users, who were all known associates and disciples of Himerius… these trackers followed them to Thule, and have been closing in on the party for a while, and finally accosted them deep in the dungeon.  Last night.  Then the party killed them.  (I should have called it a night then).

The players decided it was time to mess with the Ice Cave itself - besides, most of them were infected with radiation sickness, anyway, and that made them feel like taking risks.  The Ice Cave is down a long, 20' wide tunnel,  growing progressively colder and blocked with giant icicles and stalactites along the way.  Beyond these barriers is a misty cave with walls of solid ice, and an unimaginable pile of coins.  One of the recent items the party had recovered was a "wand of telekinesis" and they hoped one of the magic users (Dominicus) could weave his way through the obstacles, get close to the cave, and use the TK wand to surreptitiously lift a chunk of treasure out of the cave without breaking the giant icicles blocking the way.

It was a good plan, except that that they had a dozen characters tromping along with armor in their group, along with an over-sized robot that rolls forward on noisy treads which grind against the stone floor.  In other words, they're not exactly quiet.  The inhabitant of the ice cave, an adult white dragon, was awake.  The rest of the party stood a good 50' behind the barriers of ice, unable to see Dominicus, but they did see a horrible blast of cold spray plume out of the area.  Dominicus was flash frozen, brought to -40 hit points or so instantly.  The robot was sent to smash through the icicles and pillars of ice and engage the dragon, while most of the fighters and other characters ditched into a side passage, to be out of the line of effect of any more ice blasts.  A few (foolhardy) range-attack characters stayed in the main hall, waiting for a chance to shoot into the cave once the robot had cleared the way.

A dragon fighting a big robot is pretty cool.  I queued up Godzilla sound effects, and had the Godzilla theme music playing in the background.  90% of our fights are the quick and abstract variety, but for something like this, we'll put out the vinyl battle mat and get out the minis - using the "elder white dragon" miniature (pictured) was perhaps too dramatic, but the kiddo wanted it.

The dragon and robot smashed their way through the ice, and the dragon started tearing the robot apart with claw and tooth, while the robot punched it a couple of times.  It had the makings of a drawn-out heavyweight prize fight.  And then the players did something totally unexpected… they charged.

It went like this - Brutok:  "I'm charging the dragon.  Who's with me?"  Visin (who adores Agnar):  "I'll charge if Agnar charges."  Agnar:  "Hey, Agnar's not my character, I'm just running him for Mike, who had to miss tonight, so of course I'm with you, Brutok.  Let's go!"

The dwarf and two of the fighters rolled high initiative, and sprinted out from around the corner, taking up positions on either side of the robot and laying into the dragon with axes and spears.  In the LOTFP rules, a charge does double damage, and the players got it down into a manageable hit point range with a few fortuitous strikes.  Once it started using its last two breath attacks, it was far enough down that the breaths were no longer instantly fatal to everyone.  The robot was frozen and destroyed, two of the fighters (Agnar and Visin) were dropped to zero hit points, the dwarf is made of hit points and managed to weather a breath attack, Tribunas the magic user made a saving throw and dropped unconscious (but not dead) from half damage, but poor Brick the Halfling was in the line of fire down the hallway, and took a blast directly.  He died.

Then the next wave of characters charged, including the two female Norse clerics (queue Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries) and Mustafa.  Again, the dragon rolled a 1 for initiative and took a round of beats, dying when Mustafa landed a killing blow.  I was… stunned.

I have to give some props to the players, the idea to hide around the corner and charge out at a surprising moment was inspired.

I may need to go back to DM school, to refresh on how to play dragons well as opponents… on a serious note, I do have some observations on the fight I'll put together later this week, a regular post-mortem.  Good job fellas, they took down a dragon, losing their uber-Robot and a pair of characters.  The clerics had enough healing after the fight to save the three characters that were between zero and -2 hit points (-3 hit points and lower is irrevocably dead in the game).  We had to end there as we were already an hour past our targeted end time.

That was Black City Game 21, below is the new and updated "dead list".  Hopefully the players can figure out a way to get a half dozen or more Cure Disease spells before too much game time passes, or a lot of folks will get added to the list in the near future when the radiation sickness catches up to them.

• Dominicus:  Tried to steal a dragon's treasure… alone.  RIP.
• Brick Bunnycracker:  Shot in the face with dragon's breath.
• Robbie the Robot:  Torn, crushed, and frozen by a dragon.  You served them well.
• Bjorn:  Shot in the face during an ambush.
• Gareth Bellringer:  Possessed by a ghost and marched into a death trap.
• Seamus the Gallic Mage:  Died fiddling with the unstable Hyperborean artifact.
• Dag the Unwashed:  Blown up by Seamus.
• Uther the Orphan-Poet:  Shot in the neck by a bandit.
• Falki Auldason:  Killed by a gjenganger.
• Kolfina Ian Svarti:  Killed by a gjenganger.
• Irena Edvards:  Killed by a gjenganger.
• Molnar the cleric:  Lost his grip on a rope and fell into the abyss.
• Arthur the Thief:  Killed by a gjenganger.
• Hring the Twig-belly:  Covered in oil, burned alive while rats were eating him.
• Herap:  Killed by a gjenganger
• Agdi:  Possessed by the ghost and marched into the death trap.
• Galm:  Infested by a devil wasp and turned into a villain, ultimately dropped down an 80' hole.

A few guys left when they failed morale checks in between adventures:

• Ulf Skullcrusher
• Visin Thorolfson

Black City Game 20: Assault on Zoltan

Despite a nice east coast snow storm last night, the roads are clearing up quickly today and there shouldn't be any problems for the gaming group to make it tonight - so I'd better get a report posted for last game!

The most recent game session was essentially one long battle - a drawn out, tactical slugfest, where the party took on the minions and resources of a diabolical intelligence called Zoltan the Welder.  In many of the recent sessions, the party was teaming up with an entity calling itself "Odin", performing small missions for Odin in the course of their regular explorations beneath the ruined city.  Many of these missions have involved things like restoring energy to parts of the dungeon, or fixing "network connections' between Odin and the remote areas of the Transit Tunnels.  In this way, Odin is gaining more access (control) over the tunnels and is able to project his consciousness and power in more areas.  The players keep wondering if they should continue to cut deals with Odin, but the pay has been good.

(Odin, incidentally, claims to be a Norse god, trapped by the ancient builders of the city to watch over the earth from an orbital space platform.  The party traveled to Odin's realm from the top of a crooked spire in the southern part of the city.  They're beginning to cotton on that maybe Odin is a rogue telepathic super computer with delusions of grandeur.  I wonder if it’s a problem that some of their recent capers have armed Odin with ancient, earth-scorching, super weapons?  Muhaha.)

Zoltan was identified by Odin as a demonic entity trying to usurp parts of the dungeon under the city, a direct competitor to Odin's sovereignty.   In a previous game session, he gave them something called an "M-crystal" that would pacify Zoltan if the party could swap out Zoltan's existing M-crystal; he showed them a holographic image where Zoltan's crystal was located in a wall in the demon's lair.  The party has been scouting the most northeastern dungeon, the Ice Cave dungeon, for the past few sessions, looking for Zoltan's lair, and they found it at the end of the game session before last.

Zoltan's lair is a gigantic, dimly lit chamber obscured by tables, equipment bins, and wheeled conveyances in various states of repair.  Robotic arms and tentacles hang from the ceiling and whirled along on metallic track balls.  In many ways, these areas of the Black City are reminiscent of Gamma World; before the fall, Zoltan operated a robotic factory that built the train cars that ran through the undercity.  Now he vivisects elves.  I really have to run a Gamma World campaign some time, I think it would be great fun.

Zoltan himself appeared like a huge, empty, hockey mask stuck to the wall, with baleful eyes glaring about.  He projected an image of himself that floated around the room, hollow robes topped by the glaring hockey mask head, with boney hands at the end of the sleeves.

The assault itself was three hours of D&D tactical combat glory, intricate enough that it warranted busting out the vinyl grid and using miniatures and tokens to track the action.  The party activated their giant robot, and it charged in, tearing robotic arms from the ceiling and drawing heavy fire.  Zoltan countered by attacking with ceiling arms topped with claws, knives and cutters, and white hot torches.  Zoltan's avatar also floated around the room, using telekinesis to grab characters and fling them around, dark jedi-style.

The party fighters formed a strong front, headed right for Zoltan's giant face-in-the-wall and the location of Zoltan's vulnerable M-crystal.  Timur the Russian Elf made an impassioned plea to Zoltan's slaves, a group of Dokkalvir (Norse dark elves) that were cowed and tortured into serving the Welder, and the elves flipped to the party side, drawing some enemy fire as well.

Brick, Agnar's Halfling retainer, was the MVP of the fight.  While all the heavy combat was happening, Brick was given Odin's replacement M-crystal, tucked it under his arm like a football, and he picked and weaved his way across the battlefield, around bins, under tables, and skulking alongside the wheeled train.  It took a number of rounds, but eventually Brick was sneaking right to the base of Zoltan's giant head, unnoticed in the larger melee.  "Hey, what are you doing down there, little man?  Close that panel at once!", cried the face on the wall.

Brick was able to avoid the telekinetic grab attack (good Save vs Magic, duh), and slammed the new M-crystal home.  Zoltan screamed and his face eroded, shaking back and forth and finally morphing into the likeness of Odin, as his control over the area was usurped. The surviving robot arms went limp, and the battle was over.

"We just totally pulled the Lord of the Rings maneuver on Zoltan", called out Smitty.  "Full frontal assault while the little guy snuck into Mordor and blew up the ring".

We ended shortly thereafter; the ascendance of Odin into Zoltan's lair gave the party a safe place to rest, and they wanted to take a few days to recover while still in the Ice Cave dungeon and tally some experience.  After seeing the destructive power of their robot in action, they're even thinking about smashing their way into the ice cave this week, heedless if it's actually a dragon's lair, to see how much damage the robot can dish out.  Should be interesting.

Here's an updated schematic of the Transit Tunnels, showing the locations of the recent delves - the caves of the frost gremlin queen, where they saw the jotun head frozen in the ice, is plotted, and I've marked the last dungeon in the Transit Tunnels, which the party is calling the Ice Cave dungeon.

The pace of character death has slowed in recent weeks and they now have a bunch of level 3 characters - almost ready to revist the upper ruins near the glacier again, or head to the vast caverns below the tunnels.

Cast of Characters
Agnar Beigarth, a Northman fighter (L3)
Mustafa of Arabia, a scimitar wielding desert warrior (L3)
Brutok the Strong, a dwarf (L3)
Borghild, a Norse cleric of Odin (L3)
Timur, Russian Elf (L1)
Vitaly, Russian Elf (L1)
Dominicus, Byzantine magic user (L1)

Retainers with the party:
Tribunas, Byzantine magic user (L1)
Brick Bunnybreaker (halfling L2)
Bottvild (cleric L2)
Visin Thorsteinson (fighter 3)
Hunlaf the Saxon (specialist 2)

Building Lichtstadt City

I've had a ton of work traveling the past few weeks, which is bad for my blog, but excellent for my reading list.  Some things I spent some time looking at, during one flight or another, were different approaches to building a fantasy city.

The ACKS game (Adventurer Conqueror King) provides all sorts of guidelines for the size of cities, density, income generated for the lord, thieves guilds, and the demographics of high level characters.  There are other economic factors too, like the market type, equipment rarity, and trade factors that influence the cost of goods.

I read A Magical Medieval City Guide (a free pdf available at RPGnow) which provides a detailed walkthrough on the structures of real-world Medieval cities, both the power structures and the physical layout.  If you want to know how many buildings are standing in how many wards, or how many glove makers are in the craft's guild, this is the guide for you.

And then there's Vornheim.  Vornheim is a book designed to help you run games in the city of Vornheim, sure, but it's also a guide on how to run city sessions, on the fly, in your own sprawling metropolis.  Instead of focusing on developing background material, Vornheim is about presenting something interesting that can be used to create an interesting game situation RIGHT NOW.  Okay, that's more than just a little useful.  The funny thing about each of these city tools is there's virtually no overlap between them.

Lichtstadt is going to get the Vornheim treatment.

I also think the "tavern-trawling" rules from Backswords & Bucklers will see a lot of use.  Lichtstad is too big to be a home base, so making the starting place a seedy tavern offers a small-town experience in the big big city.

What's your favorite tool for getting a fantasy city ready for game play?  How about mapping - what do folks think of the Hexographer city tool, or the city builder for Campaign Cartographer?

I realize this is a bit introspective (nigh useless), so here's some flavorful background for the city of Lichtstadt for your troubles.  There are three vampire families that lurk in the dungeon depths below the city; Clan Metzger, the Machthaberkind, and the Draganov Coven.

Miscreants, ruffians, and common robbers are taken to the Doleful Keep for incarceration.  Very few criminals survive long enough to see their appointed trial dates.  Nefarious chutes and slides are rigged into may of the prison cells, dropping their inhabitants into the heart of an endless maze.  When night falls, the vampires of Clan Metzger enter the maze, assume bestial form, and ruthlessly run their human prey to ground.  Vampires of clan Metzger feature shape-shifting powers and beast-summoning.

The Machthaberkind have subtly warped all manner of social institutions, but none so great than the many hospitals that minister to the old and affirmed throughout Lichtstadt.  Black clad nuns, the Sisters of Mercy (heh), attend to the sick and dying, fitting hospital beds with clean linens and performing simple funeral rites for those who "pass gently" in the night.  Our Lady of the Blessed Slumber is the largest and best known house for the poor.

Vampires of the Draganov Coven are predatory loners, selecting victims through arcane prognostication and thaumaturgy before dragging them back to their remote lair for languorous feeding.  They're known to keep their prey alive as long as possible, incarcerating them as favored pets, thus postponing the need to consult the necromantic spirits anew and launch a fresh hunt.