Friday, 14 March 2025

White Apes & Yetis


















So BX d&d has white apes but in AD&D we got yetis with powers.

The ad&d yeti here are not like any of the folklore of modern era explorers who describe dark haired or level long haired creature. One man thought it was orungutang. People looked for two types of mythical bear and the two types people looked for turned out to be the same species. They also lower down have "Tibetan Apes" aka Macaca thibetana or Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana), also known as the Chinese stump-tailed macaque, a species of monkey found in eastern Tibet and surrounding regions, not an ape. Apes are very pulpy and white apes feature in pulp and comics and the Film Congo. Its unclear if yeti should be apes some might say closer to human but its wild speculation based on fraud and fiction so its ok to have yeti in a fantasy, be whatever its a relatively harmless piece of BS. 

Winter has arrived at Chagrinspire and yeti have come from glacial ice caves and mountain peaks. Some live high on the walls of Chagrinspire, where humans struggle to breathe and some might just die.

I made these to cover cthulhu mythos apes, pulp apes, barsoom apes (see comments) and a few other interpretations of these creatures. Ill probably have some using my mentalist spell list. 

White Ape
Nuetral (any), Ape Humaniod
Common AC+4 HD 2 Att Paw or rock d4 x2 
Morale 7 Mov 15 Climb 12 
Large AC+4 HD 4 Att Paw or rock d6 x2  Morale 9 Mov 15 Climb 12
Giant AC+6 HD 8 Att Paw or rock 2d4 x2  Morale 10 Mov 12 Climb 9
Collosal AC+10 HD 16 Att Paw or rock 2d8 x2  Morale 11 Mov 12 Climb 6
-if get two paw hits get a bonus unarmed bite or grapple attack
-thrown rocks (some use alternate missiles) range equals HD in range units
-nightvision & infravision, track by scent, acute hearing
-immune to penalties from ice, snow or blizzards 
-resistant to cold +2 save, -1 damage per dice

I live in isolated mountains, weird ruins, and underground caves. Can be peaceful and benevolent or human eating brutes who have been enemies with humanity for thousands of years before metal use. Once bad relations have set in with humans, it is hard to set them right. Most use rocks and clubs but some made stone weapons and even built crude cyclopean cities and temples. Most speak their ape language but a few might speak human language and even take up character classes like priest or sorcerer. Their ape hoots, giggering and screams can communicate long distances but they are silent when getting close to an ambush. Some may have secret pre-human lore and use magic items. Often only a single holy wise elder will have remnants of lost technology, magic or language. Possibly these special apes are born with ancestral knowledge but other tribes might all be this clever. The largest types are the rarest and often live alone, possibly among the last of their kind.

Varients
1in4 get extra two unarmed attacks per round using feet or has extra arms
1in4 leap extra metre per HD
1in4 can speak a human language, usually the local or underlander language
1in4 can mimic a human voice or animal sounds and ventriloquists
1in6 extra tall, furry and pearshaped +2HD
1in6 
can blend into rock or snow to hide and move silently
1in6 use superior stone tools and weapons, even bows, or throw javelins instead of rocks
1in8 huge fangs double damage bite (1in6 of these can feed off blood through fangs)
1in8 bump damage dice up one d4>d6>2d4>d8+2
1in6 human hybrid? more human face and possibly long hair and wears hides
1in10 freezing aura d4 cold damage within 1m per HD and immune to cold
1in10 fear gaze 1 range per HD one target per round
1in12 advanced with armour and weapons and speech and d4 character class levels
1in12 regenerate 1hp per round unless fire or acid damage
1in20 dimensional travel usually to the underworld or the plane of ice
1in20 cast these spells once per day: ice knife, cone of cold, wall of ice

d20 White Ape Plots
1 Mountain climbers and alpine villagers have been vanishing
2 Shepherds report vicious white apes attacking and stealing their goats and yaks
3 Strange sounds were heard from a cave, and people went to investigate, but did not return
4 A lost ruin is guarded by white apes who protect ancient pre-human secrets
5 Weird gibberings and shouts have been heard from a certain hard-to-climb rocky gulley
6 Huge weird bare footprints have been seen, and some ppl have seen hairy creatures climbing and hiding 
7 White apes carried off children to be food or slaves
8 Tribe of carnivorous white apes from a local cave hate humans and worship ice demons. Caused trouble for generations and seems vindictive and cruel
9 A huge yeti was killed by soldiers, so they skinned it and took its head and hands and feet, but inside they found a mysterious silver sphere with strange powers and intelligence*
10 Strange apes with sheilds, swords and suits of armour have been seen exploring
11 A planar portal to the plane of ice has opened by a monolith now guarded by white apes and the area grown colder 
12 Explorers found a hidden crude ziggurat and on closer inspection of the cyclopean ruins. They discovered it was inhabited by a clan of white apes who are cursed ancestors of the builders
13 A star fell from the heavens and around the crater are white apes. Did they ride it and is their any wreckage or did they come from a crack in the earth
14 Explorers found a glacial ice cave with frozen apes and a man thawed one out for what looked like an amber necklace, and trouble ensues
15 A nobleman wants a yeti hand ashtreys and a mounted head to decorate his winter retreat
16 A cave was found full of human bones, and some saw an ape creature in the area flee the scene
17 A monastery has been harassed by yeti who want one of the monk relics, a yeti scalp. One of the yeti yelled demands!
18 Local yetis have been heard chanting in the mountains, they are calling some powerful spirit of cold, perhaps a ice devil or being from the outer darkness or the frozen north
19 Yeti have been building walls and muli story cyclopean buildings instead of their usual igloos or ice caves, maybe they are preparing a fortress
20 A mountain village has been taken over by yeti who ate the villagers and now live in their houses in mockery of the original inhabitants. They even claim it was always their village

*100xp for anyone spotting this reference and mentioning in comments
Ill probably have as a control device of the black sphere who use yetis to do stuff when winter rolls in 

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