[none]

I think I have a new sig...

"Wherever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."
  --Harry S. Truman

On a more "serious" note, I had an entry for the
spelljammer villain challenge that I don't think made it to the list,
as I wasn't subscribing at the time.  So here is my first
"contribution" to the list (other than asking stupid questions about
frogs and starting flamewars by accident :)




Doctor Nibbelunk and his pet hamster, Fuzz.


Male Tinker Gnome, Level 8
3 feet, 4 inches tall;  92 lbs.

Description:  Dr. Nibbelunk has a grey, wiry beard and a long, pointed nose.  He wears
spectacles with lenses that constantly fall out, and is horribly near-sighted.  Without his
glasses, he could mistake a human for an orc at five feet.  His skin is becoming frail and
dry, and he has age-spots along his forehead and balding scalp.  He has bright blue eyes
that seem both sad and determined.  His personality is both fatalistic and depressed, but
he still pursues his higher calling.  Rumors about him at ports of call say that he has a
strange, perhaps even a split, personality.  Although Dr. Nibbelunk denies these rumors
as the work of his arch-nemesis Zaref, he is still shunned in the tinker-gnome community,
which believes that he, not Zaref, may have committed so many evil acts over the
centuries.

Str:    11
Dex:    14
Con:    15
Int:    19
Wis:    8
Chr:    13

Hp:     24

Alignment:      Neutral Good

Important Weapon Proficiencies: Repeating hand crossbows, staff-sling, shoulder-
held greek fire projector, dagger.

Important Non-Weapon Proficiencies:     Spellcraft, engineering, shipwright, weapon-
smithing, firebuilding, alchemy, animal training (giant space hamsters).

Important Equipment:            Tinker Gnome armor, +2.  Dagger +1.  Fuzzy Dice of Good
Luck (reroll any failed save, 1 time per day).  Amulet of Dramatic Death, Explosions
(when slain by explosion, the amulet protects him from damage and casts an illusion of
him horribly dying, while rendering him invisible).  The Gnomish Sidewheeler Star
Steam.

Dr. Nibbelunk is a kindly old gnome who has accomplished much in his time, albeit very
little that he remembers.  For the first two hundred years of his life, he kept to a reclusive
schedule, building devices and training his pets.  About a century ago, however, while he
was off testing a new flying device, he returned to his gnomish Sidewheeler and found all
of his friends and family cruelly slain.  Many had been skinned, others burnt, and even
chopped into little pieces and fed to his trained carnivorous space hamsters that he had
once used as guards.  A few had died without any noticeable marks on their bodies  a
mask of terror frozen onto their faces.

At that moment, Dr. Nibbelunk doffed his workmen's clothes and took up the armor and
purpose of a crusader, tirelessly fighting against his arch-nemesis Zaref, who he
eventually discovered was behind the slaughter of all whom he loved.  He has carried this
fight for the last hundred years of his life.  He spends most of his days and nights
designing and building new mechanisms to equip the forces of good, and to accouter
allies who are besieged by Zaref's minions.

Unfortunately, Zaref is a far more insidious foe than Dr. Nibbelunk is capable of
defeating.  He anticipates Dr. Nibbelunk's every move, often somehow sneaking into Dr.
Nibbelunk's secret laboratory aboard his gnomish sidewheeler, Star Steam, and
sabotaging his creations so that they horribly mangle and even kill those who use them.
No matter how hard Dr. Nibbelunk works, and how diligently he plans, he can never truly
defeat Zaref.  He suspects this at some deeper level, but being a gnome, he has vowed to
Garl Glittergold and the other gods of the gnomes that he shall never give up his fight
against tyranny.

In spite of Dr. Nibbelunk's often disastrous defeats at the hands of Zaref, Dr. Nibbelunk
has managed to survive without much harm through the decades.  As time passes, his
passionate hatred for Zaref grows.  Though he has never seen Zaref personally, he has
seen the results of Zaref's many crimes and his hideous plots.  Often, Dr. Nibbelunk has
escaped only in the nick of time, by some incredibly remote chance, or through sheer
luck.

In his elder days, Dr. Nibbelunk has grown increasingly despondent.  He spends much of
his time reading over old memoirs, looking at pictures of his wife and children, and
playing with his aged miniature giant space hamster, Fuzz.  When not actively pursuing
one of Zaref's evil plots, Dr. Nibbelunk is busily making repairs and 'modifications' to his
gnomish sidewheeler, for that day when Zaref attacks him on his own ship.  The ship is
thus littered with extremely deadly traps, explosion devices, weapons, secret tunnels,
survival gear, etc

For his personal safety, Dr. Nibbelunk keeps 8 fire-breathing giant sabertooth space
hamsters on board his ship, which are utterly loyal to him.  (ML Fanatic)


Zaref:

Male Miniature Giant Space Hamster
Psionicist, Level 16
Alignment: NE
HP:     55

Zaref is the alter-ego of Dr. Nibbelunk's pet hamster, Fuzz.  A century ago, during one of
Dr. Nibbelunk's experiments, he accidentally mated an intelligent (and very unruly)
miniature giant space hamster with another hamster that was possessed by a very
powerful psionic Vagabond.  A freak accident occurred, perhaps sparked by the strange
diet of shadowstone, intellect devourer flesh, and magical plant life that Dr. Nibbelunk
was feeding the creatures.  The result was Fuzz.

Fuzz has two personalities.  One personality is a cute, lovable, petable creature who
generally sleeps in a ball, curled up on the Doctor's shoulder.  The other personality is a
fiendish mastermind, who has orchestrated the deaths of literally thousands of innocent
(and not so innocent) victims.  Zaref, the alter ego, can bury his personality within the
mind of Fuzz at will, thus evading detection by anything short of a full psionic probe (in
that event, conduct a psionic contest, as per the devotion psychic impersonation to see if
Zaref is detected).  While resting, Zaref does not even use psionics, and cannot be
detected by any magics or abilities which detect its use.  Moreover, any mental attacks
(illithid mind blast, charm, chaos) directed against the hamster affect the mind of Fuzz,
not the mind of Zaref, unless Zaref is in control.

>From his vantage point within Fuzz's mind, he plots and hatches his schemes.  He
maintains a small network of agents working for him at various ports of call, where he
psionically dominates beggars and shadowy thieves and uses them as bodies from which
to walk and talk.  Thus, Dr. Nibbelunk and others have sworn to see the 'real' Zaref, a
cloaked, shadowy figure about the size of a short, thin man (or perhaps a tall gnome),
sneaking around in the shadows and speaking in a halting, thickly accented dialect of
common.

Dr. Nibbelunk has failed to realize Fuzz's alternate personality largely because he loves
the dear creature so much, but also because of several subliminal suggestions within his
mind that distract him whenever he begins to build the logical connection.

Zaref has several devious and deadly abilities at his disposal.  First, he has all the abilities
of a 16th level psionicist, as well as the defenses stated above.  Second, Zaref is a
technological genius.  All of the devices which most tinkergnomes fail to build, Zaref can
alter so that they work properly - after a fashion.  In truth, he is the only one who truly
understands the workings of the contraptions and defenses aboard the Sidewheeler Star
Steam.  Third, Zaref has used psychic surgery on the 8 fire-breathing sabretoothed giant
space hamsters aboard the Star Steam to permanently dominate them.  When he triggers a
mental command, they lose all loyalty to Dr. Nibbelunk and obey his mental commands
explicitly.  (He has the innate ability to telepathically communicate with all forms of
hamster life.)

Zaref has always been evil to the core.  He revels in pain, anguish, loss, and terror.  He
enjoys the artistic beauty of devastated landscapes and burning wrecks floating through
the deeps of wildspace.  He is beyond redemption.  Fuzz, however, is honestly and truly a
kindly, lovable pet and deserves no harm, nor even understands anything about what has
gone on.  Indeed, the only unusual thing about Fuzz is that he is 100 years old -
something that Dr. Nibbelunk explains by the special diet he feeds the little guy.

Zaref's finds Dr. Nibbelunk very useful, and thus has worked very hard to make sure that
the old gnome survives the disasters that strike whomever accompanies him.  It was Zaref
who obtained the amulet of dramatic death which has saved the Doctor's life many times.
Zaref will even arrange for ships to travel through areas where Dr. Nibbelunk is stranded,
in order to lure adventurers onto the gnomes' ship.

To be fair, not everything Zaref does is evil.  He does kill indiscriminately.  Thus, he is
just as likely to arrange for the death of a Mindspider full of Neogi as to release a terrible
disease on a small colony of halflings.

Zaref currently has two goals, though he is often so distracted from them by his love of
carnage that he is only just now beginning to get close to realizing them.  First, he wishes
to find and ally with the terrible Wooly Rupert, the bane of gnomekind, in order to plot a
hideous revenge against the small folk.  Second, he is seeking to capture and experiment
upon cranium rats from the outer planes, for he hopes to clone himself and link up his
separate minds in a group mind that will ultimate dominate the spacelanes and allow him
to spread throughout the multiverse, unlimited by the mortal bounds of a single body!  If
someone does not discover the true nature of Fuzz and Zaref soon, he may just succeed in
his horrific plans.  Woe then to any who cross his path!






-----------
Kevin D. Karty
Office E53-354                          Office: (617)-258-5969
24 Union St.                            Home: (617)-868-6322
Cambridge, MA 02141