Blood Monkeys:

But for a slight increase in size, these red furred primates resemble their more harmless cousins, baboons. Unlike baboons, blood monkeys are not omnivores, they are bloodsuckers. They travel in hunting bands of 20-100 individuals. They are extremely aggressive hunters and will attack any being or group of beings unless the odds are obviously overwhelmingly against them- and once the blood has been spilled, there is absolutely no getting rid of them short of killing the entire band.
Typically Blood Monkeys will remain out of sight, stalking their prey from the relative  safety of the upper canopy. When the time is right- or when they can no longer contain themselves, they will drop enmass onto their intended target(s)  creating terror and confusion.
Once a blood monkey scores a hit, it latches onto the victim and does ongoing damage each round thereafter until it is killed or dislodged.

The dessiccated remains of Blood Monkey kills that are less than a few days old are easily identifiable by an individual with jungle experience or the proper education.
War Apes and other jungle dwelling races spend enormous amounts of effort keeping blood monkey populations in check. Sometimes rival groups will even band together in temporary alliances merely to facilitate this end.

Quote from: Aos(should they be a PC option?).

Yes!

Treesquid-
Treeesquid  are a horrible hybrid of primate and cephalopod, almost certainly created and inflicted upon the world by the Changers. Treesquid have a body covering of short green fur, eight prehensile tentacles, and a horrible beaked mouth. They are ambush predators, as a rule, but are extremely mobile at need. Usually they are found dwelling alone,  but Treesquid sometimes form groups  of 2-3 individuals. Treesquid can go days without eating and are extremely patient, and due to the color of their fur and their ability to remain motionless for long periods of time, they are able to make themselves nearly invisible while in trees. Treesquid will use this capacity to strike at just the right time. One common tactic is to select a single target from within a group and wait for  the other members of the group become distracted or have their attention otherwise engaged.At that moment, using its tentacles to both silence and capture this prey, the Treesquid will draw the hapless creature up  into the trees undetected and devour it in short order.

Cleptomonkeys-
Small monkeys that have an uncanny, unnatural ability to steal whatever a person values most.  Cleptomonkeys often work for other more potent creatures, either acquiring valuable items for them,  or baiting traps. A common tactic involves a Cleptomonkey stealing an item and leading its previous owner on a merry chase, which as often as not ends in the lair of large and dangerous monster or monsters. Cave Apes often keep and train cleptomonkeys for just this task.

Quote from: Fritzs;234320Yes!

Consider it done.
Glad to see you're still reading along .


I'm done for today- here's a preview things to come, though:

That's right, Warworms!



And yeah, the Freudian implications ARE a little disturbing.

BTW, I've done some stat work on the pc races and i'll likely start editing that post tomorrow.
The art will improve, at least a little bit, when I get a proper bottle of ink. Right now I can either ink with a pen ( like the minotaur above) or leave everything in pencil and wait ( I usually ink with a sable brush, it is a much better way to go.)

That's wicked dude. I can't draw for shit, and I don't have a scanner at all.

The apes remind me of that Book of the New Sun business by Gene Wolfe? Ever read it? He's got a somewhat similar idea - it starts so far in the future that the sun is dimming, in a vast city called Nessus that takes days to walk across, and Earth is nearly unrecognisable. The protagonist of the book fights these ape-men who live in a cave at one point.

I own three different copies of it . In turn, it was inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth (The Book of Gold that Severian carries around and reads from time to time throughout The Book of the New Sun) I own four copies of that- including a signed first edition. The tradition stretches back a bit further as well with authors like Clark Aston Smith, and even HG Wells, really.
I'm using a fairly good digital camera for the images, i badly need a scanner. I'm thinking of starting a webcomic, actually.

Worms

Iceworms:
Haunting the glacial expanses of the far north, Iceworms are huge white furred creatures that prey on animals and adventurers as they travel across the frozen waste.  Often 30 meters or more in length, Iceworms require vast amounts of food to survive. Considering their environment meals large enough to interest them are often few and far between. Iceworms compensate for this by spending most of their time in hibernation beneath the ice, waking only occasionally to hunt and feed. Vibration on the ice will attract their attention.
Smaller (younger) Iceworms will hunt in groups of three, often coming up through the ice and surrounding their intended prey. The larger ancient worms are solitary creatures and are large enough that they can often come up beneath their inteded prey and swallow them whole before they even perceive the threat.

Sewer Worms:
Sewer worms are putrid white creatures that infest the water of most of the larger sewer systems on the Metal Earth. Sewer worms hunt and live in small schools of 5-15 indviduals. They eat just about anything from garbage to rats to corpses to living beings unlucky enough to find themselves in the sewers.

War Worms:
War Worms came to the Metal Earth thousands of years ago as part of a failed invasion from beyond the Dark Boundary (see below). The invasion was broken, but many War Worms were trapped on the Metal Earth as aresult. In the Iron Time,  most War Worms serve as mercenaries for evil sorcerers or live as bandits and pirates. Although, they do at times maintain their own settlements, these usually occupy ruins or other villages they have overrun. War Worms make nothing but war.  Like the other Worms of the Metal Earth, they eat anything they can get. War Worms are sadistic and cruel; they are also thought to have twisted sexual apatites, but this may be mere myth inspired by their shape.

Physically they are about five meters in length with putrid gray boil ridden hide. They fight with any available weapon, but prefer firearms and energy weapons; however their jagged teeth will do in a pinch.

Edit: I added another monkey to the monkey post.

Weather and related climatic hazards:

Climate varies a good deal across the breadth of the Metal Earth, but for millennia prior to the War of Races, there was a worldwide network of weather control stations. Powered by a combination of atomic and arcane energy, these stations worked to homogenize climate conditions across the face of the entire world. The system was broken during the War of Races, but normal patterns did not reassert themselves. Quite the opposite, in fact- weather went wild- breaking and reshaping the world all at once.  Efforts were made by sorcerers and scientists stop this from happening- but if they had any impact, it was only to make things worse.  Eventually, an ice age commenced, which brought with it a modicum of climatic stability. This ice age has never really ended since that time, although there have been some slightly warmer periods. The time of the shattering is long over but extreme weather is more the norm than the exception. You are far more likely to get a blizzard than a light snowfall or a torrential downpour than a light rain, although mild weather is not completely uncommon in some microclimatic areas.

Beyond the extremity of most storms, the breaking of the weather control network and the resultant release of ungoverned arcane and atomic energies into the world's climate system resulted in at least two other ongoing effects, as well: Curse Squalls and Timestorms.

Timestorms:
Timestorms are not common, but they do occur with some frequency. Fortunately, most of them occur over water and are relatively, if not always, harmless.
Timestorms are usually preceded by the formation of dark cloud funnels, crisscrossed with purple cloud-to-cloud lightning; as the storm grows in intensity, so to does the electrical activity.  It is at the peak of the electrical activity that the storm really gets underway. Time vortexes open up- sometimes one, sometimes one hundred or more, depending on the intensity of the storm.
 
There are two kinds of Timestorms, takers and givers:
 
Takers: During a taker storm, things are sucked into the time vortexes and moved to a distant temporal location, past or future- it can go either way.

Givers: during a giver storm, things emerge from the time holes. What kinds of things? Just about fucking anything really, from dinosaurs to toasters to people.
Note: it is entirely possible to whisk a party of adventurers off into time during a taker storm; it is also possible to bring in a new PC (say a 20th century human into the Metal Earth with a giver storm.)


Curse Squalls are far more common than Timestorms, and usually more dangerous. Curse storms look like normal rainstorms (albeit of an extremely violent nature, even for the Metal Earth) except the raindrops have faint green luminescence.
Anywhere curse rain falls horrible shit happens. Sometimes, the dead rise from their graves hungry for living flesh (corpse burning is a near world wide custom due to this). Other times, simple field crops mutate into horrible carnivorous plants. Good men caught out in the curse rain sometime turn completely evil. Other times the rain is like acid burning and destroying all it touches.  Nobody can say what will happen for certain when the Curse Rain falls, but whatever it is, it wont be good. Often these effects last only until the rain dries, or until sunrise of the next day- other times, they last forever.

The magical element Arcanum can help protect crops and many other things from the curse rain. Farmers often sprinkle small amounts onto their crops as they plant them, and it is also an integral ingredient in brick making and construction in general. Arcanum is naturally occurring in many rock formations and can be mined. It isn't debilitating expensive, but it isn't cheap either. Because of this, despite the dangers, sometimes corners are cut- with predictably disastrous results, such as buildings turning into huge carnivorous stone monsters.

Arcanum Mining
Although Arcanum is relatively easy to find, it is dangerous to mine- due to the dangers of mining in general, cave ins, bad air, ect. and  the added hazards of Manalung (horrible magic cancer) and the ever present threat of subteranian monsters. It is work most often performed by slaves and convicts. The largest such mines are located in the southeastern peaks of the Crumbled Mountains, just north of the Singing Cliffs; these mines are controlled by the government of Shards.

Apparently (according the the number of views) people are looking at this. I just wanted to let you all know that I haven't lost interst. I've been figuring out PC race stats for True20 and Savage Worlds, the latter of which I'm just becoming familiar with.
I'm not aiming for straight up conversions though. I'm dealing with each case as if the others didn't exist, because otherwise, I'll go nuts.
Also I have a bunch more critters and hazards, and my geopolitical/cultural ideas are evolving, but I'm going camping with my family this wekend so it will be a a few days until the next major update.

Huge update, revision of PC races entry in post #2, complete with game stats for Savage Worlds, True20 and D&D. includes O level Anachronism rules for D&D, and War Apes for all three games.

And we're back...
Regional breakdown: The Shadelands



The Haunted Wood:
Environment: Topologically varied landscape covered by closed woodland. Fed by several small rivers, and a large underground aquifer.  One section of the haunted wood is a cold water salt marshland.
Climate: Arid and cold. Heavy snowfall in winter months.
Fauna: Full range of forest creatures. Most common macro fauna: black deer, moose, Megatherium, tree sloth, snow monkey, cave bear, Smilodon, boar dire boar, rats, several dozen species of bird, goblins, cave apes, boar, dire boar. the top of the conventional food chain is occupied by different creatures in different parts of the forest, but owlbears tend to dominate in the regions nearest to the Wurm. Despite the general stability of the ecosystem, the forest is full of hazards and monsters, undead being particular problem.
General facts: The Haunted Wood covers what was once a great Megalopolis the real name of the city is long lost in time, and it is known today only as Shade. Whole regions of Shade are rumored to remain intact, or nearly so, buried under ground.  

Adventure Hooks:

Protection: The Necromancer Zonboar has lived deep within the forest, residing at Blackbone Tower one hundred fifty leagues north of Shards. Zonboar controls a large horde of undead, and he demands a huge tribute in slaves and Arcanum every year from Shards. The Circle Council has at last grown tired of paying protection money, and is looking for someone to take Zonbar down.

The Hierloom:  one of the characters receives a mysterious gift from a recently dead relative. It is a riddle* map of an area of the forest that has an entrance to an intact, subterranean section of Shade.
•   *Reading the map involves some kind of trick to make it visible- for example, it has to be soaked in (human/dragon/whatever) blood, held out in the moonlight, travel in the girdle of a virgin for a month, or some sort of magic word has to be said- ECT… Anyway, whatever, it should be a bit of a challenge to read the map.

Nose Job:  A Sorcerer from Ssaur is paying good money (how much is up to the GM) to collect the beak of a huge semi legendary owlbear known as Blackbeak.
•   Blackbeak is about twice as powerful as a normal owlbear, and is intelligent and capable of using magic. He may actually be a forest god of sorts.
•   Complication: several goblin tribes worship Blackbeak as their God. They will attempt to prevent/ avenge it’s death by any means necessary.
•   Blackbeak’s territory lies over ground once occupied by a vast necropolis. Who knows how the death of such a puissant creature will effect the restless dead interred in the earth below?

Good to see you're back mate.

Here's a set of questions to riff on:

Why would I want to set a campaign or an adventure in the Haunted Woods, as opposed to anywhere else on Metal Earth? What distinguishes it from the rest of Metal Earth, and what makes it a particularly interesting location to adventure in?

Glad to see this is back on track.

How are you organising your notes, only on here or are you collating into a document too?

Do you have any idea what you're going to do with ME when it's done?

Still looking good, Aos.

I've a lightly houseruled C&C homebrew that your setting would be perfect for. So yeah, like Rob said, when do we see the pdf?