# dbm

key: __c_suffix
value:
  “When Peleus, some distance away, saw him torn apart by the frightful wound he
  shouted: ‘Accept this tribute to the dead, at least, Crantor, dearest of
  youths’, and with his powerful arm, he hurled his ash spear, at full strength,
  at Demoleon. It ruptured the ribcage, and stuck quivering in the bone. The
  centaur pulled out the shaft minus its head (he tried with difficulty to reach
  that also) but the head was caught in his lung. The pain itself strengthened
  his will: wounded, he reared up at his enemy and beat the hero down with his
  hooves. Peleus received the resounding blows on helmet and shield, and
  defending his upper arms, and controlling the weapon he held out, with one blow
  through the arm he pierced the bi-formed breast.”
      -Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, XII, 330. 8 AD.


key: __d_suffix
value:
  “Trogdor was a man!
   I mean, he was a dragon-man!
   Or... maybe he was just a dragon.
   ...
   And the Trogdor comes in the night!”
      -The Brothers Chaps, “Trogdor”. 2003.


key: __r_suffix
value:
  HAMLET [Drawing his sword.]: How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead [Stabs
  through the arras.]
      -William Shakespeare, _The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, III, 4.
  1603.


key: __cap-d_suffix
value:
  “On the other hand, Confucius is made to say to his disciples, ‘I know how
  birds can fly, how fishes can swim, and how animals can run. But the runner may
  be snared, the swimmer may be hooked, and the flyer may be shot by the arrow.
  But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the
  clouds, and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lao-tsze, and can only compare
  him to the dragon.’”
      -Life of Confucius

  “This Dragon had Two furious Wings
     Each one upon each Shoulder;
   With a Sting in his Tail as long as a Flail,
     Which made him bolder and bolder.
   He had long Claws, and in his Jaws
     Four and forty Teeth of Iron;
   With a Hide as tough, as any Buff,
     Which did him round environ.”

      -“An Excellent Ballad of a most dreadful Combat, fought between Moore of
  Moore-Hall, and the Dragon of Wantley”, retold by Ambrose Philips, _A
  Collection of Old Ballads. Corrected from the Best and Most Ancient Copies
  Extant. With Introductions Historical, Critical, Or Humorous_. 1723.


key: __cap-k_suffix
value:
  “The Parts Septentrionall are with these Sp’ryts Much haunted.. About the
  places where they dig for Oare. The Greekes and Germans call them Cobali.”
      -Thomas Heywood, _The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Book IX, l. 568.
  1635.


key: __cap-o_suffix
value:
  “The little princess, asleep in her cradle, floated on the water, and at last
  she was cast up on the shore of a beautiful country, where, however, very few
  people dwelt since the ogre Ravagio and his wife Tourmentine had gone to live
  there-for they ate up everybody. Ogres are terrible people. When once they have
  tasted raw human flesh they will hardly eat anything else, and Tourmentine
  always knew how to make some body come their way, for she was half a fairy.”
      -Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d’Aulnoy, “’Orangier et
  l’Abeille”. 1697.

  “NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get
  it? We both have layers.”
      -Shrek. 2001.


key: __cap-s_suffix
value:
  “The latter lived in the country, and before his house there was an oak, in
  which there was a lair of snakes. His servants killed the snakes, but Melampus
  gathered wood and burnt the reptiles, and reared the young ones. And when the
  young were full grown, they stood beside him at each of his shoulders as he
  slept, and they purged his ears with their tongues. He started up in a great
  fright, but understood the voices of the birds flying overhead, and from what
  he learned from them he foretold to men what should come to pass.”
      -Pseudo-Apollodorus , _Library and Epitome_, 1.9.11. circa 150 BC.
      trans. Sir James George Frazer, 1913.

  “A snake, with mottles rare,
   Surveyed my chamber floor,
   In feature as the worm before,
   But ringed with power.”
      -Emily Dickinson, “In Winter In My Room”. circa 1860.


key: __cap-t_suffix
value:
  “Buckshank bold and Elfinstone,
   And more than I can mention here,
   They caused to be built so stout a ship,
   And unto Iceland they would steer.

   They launched the ship upon the main,
   Which bellowed like a wrathful bear;
   Down to the bottom the vessel sank,
   A laidly Trold has dragged it there.”
      -George Borrow, _Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest_. 1851.


key: a broken pillar
value:
  “Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken
   and reared up for himself a pillar,
   which is in the king's dale: for he said,
   I have no son to keep my name in remembrance...”
      -KJV Bible, 2 Samuel 18:18.


key: a faded altar of an unknown god
value:
  “Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I
  perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and
  beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN
  GOD.”
      -KJV Bible, Acts 17:23-24.


key: a gateway to hell
value:
  “I am the way into the city of woe.
   I am the way to a forsaken people.
   I am the way into eternal sorrow.

   Sacred justice moved my architect.
   I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
   Primordial love and ultimate intellect.

   Only those elements time cannot wear
   Were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
   Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
      -Dante Alighieri, _The Divine Comedy_, “Inferno”, Canto III. ca. 1315.
       trans. John Ciardi, 1954.


key: a granite statue
value:
  “I met a traveller from an antique land
   Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
   Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
   Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
   And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
   Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
   Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
   The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
   And on the pedestal these words appear:
   ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
   Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
   Nothing beside remains: round the decay
   Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
   The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
      -Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”. 1818.


key: a labyrinth entrance
value:
  “Maze-treaders, whose vision ahead and behind is severely constricted and
  fragmented, suffer confusion, whereas maze-viewers who see the pattern whole,
  from above or in a diagram, are dazzled by its complex artistry. What you see
  depends on where you stand, and thus, at one and the same time, labyrinths are
  single (there is one physical structure) and double: they simultaneously
  incorporate order and disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity,
  artistry and chaos.”
      -Mark Z. Danielewski, “House of Leaves”. 2000.

  “Since I emerged that day from the labyrinth,
   Dazed with the tall and echoing passages,
   The swift recoils, so many I almost feared
   I’d meet myself returning at some smooth corner,
   Myself or my ghost, for all there was unreal
   After the straw ceased rustling and the bull
   Lay dead upon the straw and I remained,
   Blood-splashed, if dead or alive I could not tell
   In the twilight nothingness”
      -Edwin Muir, “The Labyrinth”. 1949.


key: a one-way gate to the infinite horrors of the abyss
value:
  “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
      -Friedrich Nietzsche, _Beyond Good and Evil_ , Aphorism 146. 1886.

  “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally
  get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been
  doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now here, you see, it takes
  all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get
  somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
      -Lewis Carroll, _Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_,
  ch. 2
      “The Garden of Live Flowers”. 1871.


key: a portal to a secret trove of treasure
value:
  “He saw a large cavern and a vaulted [roof], in height equalling the stature
  of a full-grown man and it was hewn in the live stone and lighted up with
  light that came through air-holes and bullseyes in the upper surface of the
  rock which formed the roof. He had expected to find naught save outer gloom
  in this robbers' den, and he was surprised to see the whole room filled
  with bales of all manner stuffs, and heaped up from sole to ceiling with
  camel-loads of silks and brocades and embroidered cloths and mounds on
  mounds of vari-colored carpetings; besides which he espied coins golden and
  silvern without measure or account, some piled upon the ground and others
  bound in leathern bags and sacks. Seeing these goods and moneys in such
  abundance, Ali Baba determined in his mind that not during a few years only
  but for many generations thieves must have stored their gains and spoils in
  this place.”
      -_The Arabian Nights_. trans. Sir Richard F. Burton, 1885.


key: a rock wall
value:
  “I know not whether Laws be right,
     Or whether Laws be wrong;
   All that we know who lie in gaol
     Is that the wall is strong;
   And that each day is like a year,
     A year whose days are long.”
      -Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. 1898.


key: a stormy altar of qazlal
value:
  “The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned,
  while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call
  progress.”
      -Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”. 1940.
     trans. Harry Zohn, 1969.


key: a tree
value:
  “I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than
  other things do.”
      -Willa Cather, _O Pioneers_. 1913.


key: agony spell
value:
  “Unbearable, isn't it? The suffering of strangers, the agony of friends. There
  is a secret song at the center of the world, Joey, and its sound is like razors
  through flesh.”
      -Pinhead, _Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth_. 1992.


key: asterion
value:
  “The fact is that I am unique. What a man can pass unto others does not
  interest me; like the philosopher, I think nothing is communicated by the art
  of writing. Annoying and trivial minutiae have no place in my spirit, a spirit
  which is receptive only to whatsoever is grand.”
    -Jorge Luis Borges, “The House of Asterion”. 1947.
     trans. Antonios Sarhanis, 2008.


key: aizul
value:
  “I went to Heaven —
   ’Twas a small Town —
   Lit — with a Ruby —
   Lathed — with Down —”
      -Emily Dickinson, _I went to Heaven_. ca. 1860.


key: antaeus
value:
  “That country was then ruled by Antaeus, son of Poseidon, who used to kill
  strangers by forcing them to wrestle. Being forced to wrestle with him,
  Hercules hugged him, lifted him aloft, broke and killed him; for when he
  touched earth so it was that he waxed stronger, wherefore some said that he was
  a son of Earth.”
      -Pseudo-Apollodorus , _Library and Epitome_, 2.5.11. ca. 150 BC.
      trans. Sir James George Frazer, 1913.


key: arbalest
value:
  “(Tell enters with his crossbow)
   W. TELL:
   My precious jewel now, —my chiefest treasure—
   A mark I'll set thee, which the cry of grief
   Could never penetrate,—but thou shalt pierce it,—
   And thou, my trusty bowstring, that so oft
   For sport has served me faithfully and well,
   Desert me not in this dread hour of need,—
   Only be true this once, my own good cord,
   That hast so often wing'd the biting shaft:—
   For shouldst thou fly successless from my hand,
   I have no second to send after thee.”
      -Friedrich Schiller, _Wilhelm Tell_, IV, iii. 1804.
       trans. Sir Theodore Martin, 1898.


key: asmodeus
value:
  “For myself, I have other occupations:  I make absurd matches; I marry
  greybeards with minors, masters with servants, girls with small fortunes with
  tender lovers who have none. It is I who introduced into this world luxury,
  debauchery, games of chance, and chemistry. I am the author of the first
  cookery book, the inventor of festivals, of dancing, music, plays, and of the
  newest fashions; in a word, I am ASMODEUS, surnamed The Devil on Two Sticks.”
      -Alain René Le Sage, _Asmodeus: Or, The Devil on Two Sticks_. 1707.


key: awaken forest spell
value:
   • Hel: [died to] Infection! She's mine!
   — Thor: From a splinter that she got bravely fighting an elm!
   • Hel: Trees are inanimate plants, you buffoon!
   — Thor: Bravery knows no limits!
      -Rich Burlew, Order of the Stick, #874


key: azrael
value:
  “And Allah said,
   ‘As thou the deed hast done, so now the office shall be thine, O Azrael,
    to gather up for me the souls of men and women when their time has come;
    the souls of saints and sinners, of beggars and of princes,
    of the old or young, whate’er befall; and even though friends weep,
    and hearts of loved ones ache with sorrow and with anguish,
    when bereft of those they love.’
   So Azrael became the messenger of Death.”

      -J. E. Hanauer, _Folk-lore of the Holy Land, Moslem, Christian and Jewish_.
  1907.


key: black sun
value:
  “The sky is sad and beautiful, like a vast altar.
   The sun has drowned in its congealing blood.”
      -Charles Baudelaire, _Flowers of Evil_, 43: Evening Harmony. 1857.
       trans. Ruth White, 1969.


key: basilisk
value:
  “Be thou like the imperial Basilisk
   Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
   Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk
   Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk:
   Fear not, but gaze—for freemen mightier grow,
   And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:—
   If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail,
   Thou shalt be great—All hail!”
      -Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”. 1824.


key: banishment spell
value:
  “An immense river of oblivion is sweeping us away into a nameless abyss.”
      -Ernest Renan, Souvenirs


key: bat form ability
value:
  “The bats have left the bell tower
   The victims have been bled”
      -Bauhaus, “Bela Lugosi's Dead”. 1979.


key: bow of krishna "sharnga"
value:
  “What will you do if Karna is able to kill me?” Arjun asked Krishna. Krishna
  smiled and replied, “The sun will fall, the earth shatter into a thousand
  fragments, and fire lose its heat before he kills you. But if he does, it is a
  sign that the end of the world has come. As for me, I shall kill him with my
  bare hands.
      -Vyasa, _Mahabharata_, Book Eight: Karna.
       trans. P. Lal, 1986.


key: call canine familiar spell
value:
  “There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I listened, I heard
  as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count's
  eyes gleamed, and he said.

  ‘Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!’ Seeing, I
  suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he added, ‘Ah, sir, you
  dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter.’”
      -Bram Stoker, _Dracula_. 1897.


key: cause fear spell
value:
  “And when Miranda sang
   Everyone turned away
   Used to the noose, they obey”
      -The Mars Volta, “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore”. 2005.


key: chain lightning spell
value:
  “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools,
   but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”
      -traditionally attributed to Samuel Clemens


key: cigotuvi's monster
value:
  “I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had
   created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if
   eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened,
   and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin
   wrinkled his cheeks.”
      -Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein”


key: cloud mage
value:
  “And when
   His master plan is unfurled
   There stands a handsome bid
   On the weather systems of the world”
      -Andrew Bird, “Banking on a Myth”. 2005.


key: corrupt ability
value:
  “I fumbled to the window to experience the world
   And to hear my Madness singing, sitting on the kerbstone
   [A blind old drunken man who sings and mutters,
    With broken boot heels stained in many gutters]
   And as he sang the world began to fall apart . . .”
      -T.S. Eliot, “Prufrock's Pervigilium”. 1912 (published 1996).


key: crazy yiuf
value:
  “There was an Old Man with a beard,
   Who said, ‘It is just as I feared!
   Two Owls and a Hen,
   Four Larks and a Wren,
   Have all built their nests in my beard!’”
      -Edward Lear, _A Book of Nonsense [No. 1]_. 1846.


key: darkness spell
value:
  “If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride,
       And hug it in my arms.”
      -William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”


key: dispater
value:
  “Hoc idem magis ostendit antiquius Iovis nomen: nam olim Diovis et Diespiter
  dictus, id est dies pater; a quo dei dicti qui inde, et dius et divum, unde sub
  divo, Dius Fidius. Itaque inde eius perforatum tectum, ut ea videatur divum, id
  est caelum. Quidam negant sub tecto per hunc deierare oportere. Aelius Dium
  Fidium dicebat Diovis filium, ut Graeci Dioskopon Castorem, et putabat hunc
  esse Sancum ab Sabina lingua et Herculem a Graeca. Idem hic Dis pater dicitur
  infimus, qui est coniunctus terrae, ubi omnia ut oriuntur ita aboriuntur;
  quorum quod finis ortuum, Orcus dictus.”
      -Marcus Terentius Varro, _De Lingua Latina_, Liber V, circa 40 BC.


key: dowan
value:
  “Skill and grace, the twin brother and sister, are dancing playfully on your
  finger tips.”
      -Rabindranath Tagore, _Chitra_, Act I, Scene iv. 1914.


key: duvessa
value:
  “Twin children: the Girl, she was plain;
   The Brother was handsome & vain;
   ‘Let him brag of his looks,’
   Father said; ‘mind your books!
   The best beauty is bred in the brain.’”
      -Aesop & Walter Crane, _The Baby’s Own Aesop_, 36: “Brother & Sister”.
  1887.


key: edmund
value:
  “And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
   Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper.—
   Now, gods, stand up for bastards!”
      -William Shakespeare, _King Lear_, I, ii. 1606.

  “When the forces stood in array Edmund proposed to decide their claims by
  single combat; but Canute saying that he, a man of small stature, would have
  little chance against the tall athletic Edmund, proposed, on the contrary, for
  them to divide the realm as their fathers had done.”
      -Thomas Keightley, _The History of England_. 1839.


key: enslavement spell
value:
  “He held up his hand, and they all stopped, and I thought he seemed to be
  saying, ‘All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more and greater,
  through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!’ And then a red
  cloud, like the colour of blood, seemed to close over my eyes, and before I
  knew what I was doing, I found myself opening the sash and saying to Him,
  ‘Come in, Lord and Master!’”
      -Bram Stoker, _Dracula_. 1897.


key: ensorcelled hibernation spell
value:
  “Sweet dreams are made of this; who am I to disagree?”
      -Eurythmics, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”. 1983.


key: fire storm spell
value:
  “Some have said there is no subtlety to destruction. You know what? They're
  dead.”
      -Jaya Ballard, task mage (Magic: the Gathering)


key: frederick
value:
  “I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are
  dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly
  and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.”
      -Mark Twain, _Autobiography of Mark Twain_. 1924.


key: geryon
value:
  “Khrysaor, married to Kallirhoe, daughter of glorious Okeanos, was father to
  the triple-headed Geryon, but Geryon was killed by the great strength of
  Herakles at sea-circled Erytheis beside his own shambling cattle on that day
  when Herakles drove those broad-faced cattle toward holy Tiryns, when he
  crossed the stream of Okeanos and had killed Orthos and the oxherd Eurytion out
  in the gloomy meadow beyond fabulous Okeanos.”
      -Hesiod, _Theogony_, circa 700 BCE.


key: ilsuiw
value:
  “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
   By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
   Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
      -T.S. Eliot, _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_. lines 129-131. 1915.


key: irradiate spell
value:
  “Reflex in the sky warn you you're gonna die
   Storm coming, you'd better hide from the atomic tide
   Flashes in the sky turns houses into sties
   Turns people into clay, radiation minds decay”
      -Black Sabbath, “Electric Funeral”. 1970.


key: khufu
value:
  “And then I looked farther, beyond the pallid line of the sands, and I saw a
  Pyramid of gold, the wonder Khufu had built. As a golden wonder it saluted me,
  as a golden thing it greeted me, as a golden miracle I shall remember it.”
      -Robert Hichens, _The Spell of Egypt_


key: kirke
value:
  “Lo, thy comrades yonder in the house of Kirke are penned like swine in
  close-barred sties. And art thou come to release them? Nay, I tell thee, thou
  shalt not thyself return, but shalt remain there with the others.”
      -Homer, Odysseia


key: lee's rapid deconstruction spell
value:
  “Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines
  were there; and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women,
  that beheld while Samson made sport.

  And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray
  thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at
  once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

  And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all
  his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were
  therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he
  slew in his life.”
      -KJV Bible, Judges 16:28-30.


key: mara
value:
  “This night the Lord of Illusion passed among you, Mara, mighty among dreamers,
  mighty for ill. He did come upon another who may work with the stuff of dreams
  in a different way. He did meet with Dharma, who may expel a dreamer from his
  dream. They did struggle, and the Lord Mara is no more. Why did they struggle,
  deathgod against illusionist? You say their ways are incomprehensible, being
  the ways of gods. This is not the answer.”
      -Roger Zelazny, “Lord of Light”. 1967.

  “He who lives looking for pleasures only,
   his senses uncontrolled, immoderate in his food,
   idle, and weak, Mara will certainly overthrow him,
   as the wind throws down a weak tree.”
      -The Buddha, _Dhammapada_, 1:7.
       trans. F. Max Muller


key: mass confusion spell
value:
  “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not
  understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence
  upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.”
      -KJV Bible, Genesis 11:7-8.


key: maurice
value:
  “‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’ There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves
  his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the
  baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the
  school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away
  they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming,
  knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and
  astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the
  sound.”
      -Charles Dickens, _Oliver Twist_. 1838.


key: menkaure
value:
  “Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king!
   I go, and I return not. But the will
   Of the great Gods is plain; and ye must bring
   Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
   Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,
   The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days.”
      -Matthew Arnold, _Mycerinus_


key: natasha
value:
  “It dooth appéere that there is in Cats as in all other kindes of beasts, a
  certaine reason and language wherby they vnderstand one another. But as
  touching this Grimmalkin: I take rather to be an Hagat or a VVitch then a Cat.
  For witches haue gone often in that likenes, And therof hath come the prouerb
  as trew as common, that a Cat hath nine liues, that is to say, a witch may take
  on her a Cats body nine times.”
      -William Baldwin, “Beware the Cat”, 1584


key: nikola
value:
  “One can prophesy with a Daniel's confidence that skilled electricians will
  settle the battles of the near future.”
      -Nikola Tesla, “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires As a
  Means for Furthering Peace”, _Electrical World and Engineer_. January 7, 1905.


key: orcish mines
value:
  “You load sixteen tons, what do you get
   Another day older and deeper in debt
   Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
   I owe my soul to the company store.”
      -Merle Travis, “Sixteen Tons”. 1946.


key: polyphemus
value:
  “...as soon as he had got through with all his work, he clutched up two more of
  my men, and began eating them for his morning’s meal. Presently, with the
  utmost ease, he rolled the stone away from the door and drove out his sheep,
  but he at once put it back again—as easily as though he were merely clapping
  the lid on to a quiver full of arrows.”
      -Homer, _The Odyssey_, Book IX.
      trans. Samuel Butler, 1900.


key: prince ribbit
value:
  “Princess! youngest princess!
   Open the door for me!
   Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me

   Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain?
   Princess, youngest princess!
   Open the door for me!”
      -Brothers Grimm (Margaret Hunt), _The Frog King, or Iron Henry_


key: psyche
value:
  “Let Psyche’s corpse be clad in mourning weed
   And set on rock of yonder hill aloft;
   Her husband is no wight of human seed,
   But serpent dire and fierce, as may be thought,
   Who flies with wings above in starry skies,
   And doth subdue each thing with fiery flight.
   The Gods themselves and powers that seem so wise
   With mighty love be subject to his might.
   The rivers black and deadly floods of pain
   And darkness eke as thrall to him remain.”
      -Apuleius, _Asinus aureus_, “Cupid and Psyche”. circa. 160 AD.
      trans. William Adlington, 1566.


key: shatter spell
value:
  “And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people
  shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. Then the people went
  up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And
  they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and
  old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.”
      -KJV Bible, Joshua 6:20-21.


key: shoals
value:
  “I often think about that old metaphor, the one that says we are all islands on
  a wide sea. Especially these days, now that things are more difficult than
  before and the world appears to be harsher than we once imagined it to be.

  We are all like islands, the philosopher said. Perhaps it’s true. Yet I cannot
  help but remember an older saying scratched on a cave wall somewhere by a long-
  forgotten prophet: In the end the sea will claim everything.

  The ancient words crash into my mind like waves, waking me from sleep, filling
  me with feelings I cannot fully understand. We are like islands. Does it mean
  we are connected? Do we share a common origin? Or just the common fate of
  sinking?”
      -“The Sea Will Claim Everything”. 2012.


key: sigmund
value:
  “But Sigmund turned him about, and he said: ‘What aileth thee, son?
   Shall our life-days never be merry, and our labour never be done?’

   But Sinfiotli said: ‘I have looked, and lo, there is death in the cup.’

   And the song, and the tinkling of harp-strings to the roof-tree winded up;
   And Sigmund was dreamy with wine and the wearing of many a year;
   And the noise and the glee of the people as the sound of the wild woods were
   And the blossoming boughs of the Branstock were the wild trees waving about;

   So he said: ‘Well seen, my fosterling; let the lip then strain it out.’”
      -William Morris, _The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the
  Niblungs_. 1891.


key: sticky flame spell
value:
  “Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm
  for the rest of his life.”
      -Terry Pratchett, “Jingo”. 1997.


key: summon demon spell
value:
  “'Tis now the very witching time of night,
   When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
   Contagion to this world.”
      -William Shakespeare, _The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, III, 2.


key: tartarus
value:
  “There is a drear and lonely tract of hell
   From all the common gloom removed afar:
   A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,
   Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.”
      -Edward Arlington Robinson, “Supremacy”. 1897.


key: temple
value:
  “And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go
  your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.”
      -KJV Bible, Revelations 16:1.


key: terence
value:
  “A MAN committed a murder, and was pursued by the relations of the man whom he
  murdered. On his reaching the river Nile he saw a Lion on its bank and being
  fearfully afraid, climbed up a tree. He found a serpent in the upper branches
  of the tree, and again being greatly alarmed, he threw himself into the river,
  where a crocodile caught him and ate him. Thus the earth, the air, and the
  water alike refused shelter to a murderer.”
      -Aesop, _The Manslayer_. 6th century BCE.
       trans. George Fyler Townsend


key: tiamat
value:
  “He saith that Tiamat our mother hath conceived a hatred for us,
   With all her force she rageth, full of wrath.
   All the gods have turned to her,
   With those, whom ye created, they go at her side.
   They are banded together, and at the side of Tiamat they advance;
   They are furious, they devise mischief without resting night and day.
   They prepare for battle, fuming and raging;
   They have joined their forces and are making war.
   Tiamat who formed all things,
   Made in addition weapons invincible; she spawned monster-serpents,
   Sharp of tooth, and merciless of fang;
   With poison, instead of blood, she filled their bodies.
   Fierce monster-vipers she clothed with terror,
   With splendor she decked them, she made them of lofty stature.
   Whoever beheld them, terror overcame him,
   Their bodies reared up and none could withstand their attack.”
      -Enuma Elish, Third Tablet. circa 668 BCE.


key: tomb
value:
  “In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the
  lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence,
  and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest
  at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this,
  when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the
  imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of
  selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the
  brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.”
      -Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Haunted Mind”. 1835.


key: alligator
value:
  “Alligators commit errors of diet.”
      -Bennet Bowler, M.D., _Contributions to the Natural History of the
       Alligator, (Crocodilus Mississipiensis), with a Microscopic Addendum_,
       p. 17. 1846.


key: amulet
value:
  “Gringoire put out his hand for the little bag, but she drew back. ‘Do not
  touch it! It is an amulet, and either you will do mischief to the charm, or it
  will hurt you.’”
      -Victor Marie Hugo, _Notre Dame de Paris_, Book II, chapter VII “A Wedding
       Night”. 1831.


key: amulet of warding
value:
  [...] says a traveller in Central Borneo: “[...] When a company from the middle
  Mahakam River visited me among the Blu-u Kayans in the year 1897, no woman
  showed herself outside her house without a burning bundle of /plehiding/ bark,
  the stinking smoke of which drives away evil spirits.”
      -Sir James George Frazer, _The Golden Bough_. 1922.


key: animal skin
value:
  “He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
   Of the skin he made him mittens,
   Made them with the fur side inside,
   Made them with the skin side outside.
   He, to get the warm side inside,
   Put the inside skin side outside;
   He, to get the cold side outside,
   Put the warm side fur side inside.
   That's why he put the fur side inside,
   Why he put the skin side outside,
   Why he turned them inside outside.”
      -Anonymous, in Wells' _A Parody Anthology_, p. 120. 1904.


key: apocalypse crab
value:
  “I should have been a pair of ragged claws
   scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
      -T.S. Eliot, _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_. 1915.


key: arrow
value:
  “I saw in a hall an arrow pointing the way and I thought that this inoffensive
  symbol had once been a thing of iron, an inescapable and fatal projectile that
  pierced the flesh of men and lions and clouded the sun at Thermopylae and gave
  Harald Sigurdarson six feet of English earth forever.”
      -Jorge Luis Borges, _Mutations_. 1960.
       trans. Mildred Boyle


key: bardiche
value:
  “The republic always maintains seven or eight thousand regular troops on the
  frontiers, to prevent the incursions of the Tartars. The King does not maintain
  these troops; he only pays the Heydukes, the Semelles, and the Janizaries. The
  first-mentioned are dressed in blue, with large buttons and plates of tin, and
  have bonnets made of felt upon their heads. They have firelocks, and the
  bardiche, which they say is a very good weapon.”
      -John Pinkerton, _A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting
       Voyages and Travels in all parts of the World, many of which are now first
       translated into English. Digested on a New Plan_. 1808.


key: bat
value:
  “The sun was set; the night came on apace,
   And falling dews bewet around the place;
   The bat takes airy rounds on leathern wings,
   And the hoarse owl his woeful dirges sings.”
      -John Gay, Shepherd's Week, Wednesday; or, The Dumps.

  “Ere the bat hath flown
   His cloister'd flight.”
      -William Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, III, 2, line 40. 1605.


key: battleaxe
value:
  “On Carian coins, indeed of quite late date, the labrys, set up on its long
  pillar-like handle, with two dependent fillets, has much the appearance of a
  cult image.”
      -Sir Arthur John Evans, “Mycenaean tree and pillar cult and its
       Mediterranean relations,” _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ XXI, p. 109. 1901.


key: battlesphere
value:
  “I'm your only friend
   I'm not your only friend
   But I'm a little glowing friend
   But really I'm not actually your friend
   But I am”
      -They Might Be Giants, “Birdhouse in Your Soul”. 1989.


key: blowgun
value:
  “Along the Upper Caiary-Uaupes blow-guns are made from the stems of a variety
  of palm (Iriartea setigera Martius)... The Indian selects two stems of such
  sizes that the smaller will exactly fit within the larger. After these stems
  have been carefully dried and the pith cleared out with a long rod, the bore is
  made smooth by drawing back and forth through it a little bunch of tree-fern
  roots. The smaller stem is then inserted in the larger, so that one will serve
  to correct any crookedness that may exist in the other. The wooden mouth-piece
  is then fitted to one end, and about three and one half feet from it, a boar's
  tooth is fastened on the gun by some gummy substance, for a sight. Over the
  outside the maker winds spirally a strip of the dark shiny bark of a creeper
  which gives it an ornamental finish, and his blow-gun is complete.
   ”The arrows are from ten to fourteen inches long, and of the thickness of an
  ordinary lucifer match. Those of the Indians of the Caiary-Uaupes are made from
  the midrib of a palm leaf or of the spinous processes of the Patawa (Enocarpus
  Batawa) sharpened to a point at one end and wound near the other with a
  delicate sort of wild cotton which grows in a pod upon a large tree (Bombax
  ceiba). This mass of cotton is just big enough to fill the tube when the arrow
  is gently pressed into it. The point is dipped into poison, allowed to dry, and
  redipped until well coated. The exact composition of this poison is unknown,
  and probably varies in different localities; but it would seem that the chief
  ingredient is always the juice of a Strychnos plant. It is known among
  different tribes by many names; such as Curari, Ourari, Urari and Woorali.”
      -C.W. Mead, _The American Museum Journal_, vol. VIII. 1908.


key: boggart
value:
  “He thinks every bush a boggart.”
      -John Ray, _A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs_. 1768.

  “A BOGGART intruded himself, upon what pretext or by what authority is unknown,
  into the house of a quiet, inoffensive, and laborious farmer; and, when once it
  had taken possession it disputed the right of domicile with the legal mortal
  tenant, in a very unneighbourly and arbitrary manner. In particular, it seemed
  to have a great aversion to children. As there is no point on which a parent
  feels more acutely than that of the maltreatment of his offspring, the feelings
  of the father and more particularly of his good dame, were daily, ay, and
  nightly, harrowed up by the malice of this malignant and invisible boggart.”
      -C.J.T., _Folk-lore and Legends: English_  1890.


key: bolt
value:
  “In the midst of our last assault, which would have carried the gate sure and
  given us Paris and in effect France, Joan was struck down by a crossbow bolt,
  and our men fell back instantly and almost in a panic — for what were they
  without her? She was the army, herself.”
      -Mark Twain, _Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de
       Conte_, Book II, chap. 40 “Treachery Conquers Joan”. 1896.


key: book
value:
  “On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll;
   On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
   Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,
   And lo! the Press was found at last!”
      -John Greenleaf Whittier, _The Library_, st. 4.


key: bread ration
value:
  “It is further reported that in the provinces [Caesar] gave banquets constantly
  in two dining halls, in one of which his officers or Greek companions, in the
  other Roman civilians and the more distinguished of the provincials reclined at
  table. He was so punctilious and strict in the management of his household, in
  small matters as well as in those of greater importance, that he put his baker
  in irons for serving him with one kind of bread and his guests with another...”
      -Suetonius, _De Vita Caesarum, Divus Iulius_. 110 CE.


key: broad axe
value:
  “Weapon, shapely, naked, wan!
   Head from the mother’s bowels drawn!
   Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!
   Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed sown!
   Resting the grass amid and upon,
   To be lean’d, and to lean on.”
      -Walt Whitman, _Song of the Broad-Axe_, l. 1-6. 1867.


key: buckler
value:
  “Let who will boast their courage in the field,
   I find but little safety from my shield.
   Nature's, not honour's, law we must obey:
   This made me cast my useless shield away,
   And by a prudent flight and cunning save
   A life, which valour could not, from the grave.
   A better buckler I can soon regain;
   But who can get another life again?”
      -Archilochos. 7th cent. B.C.
       trans. William H. Goodwin, 1878.


key: bush
value:
  “And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the
  midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the
  bush was not consumed.”
      -KJV Bible, Exodus 3:2.


key: butterfly
value:
  “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your
  grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
      -Nathaniel Hawthorne


key: cacodemon
value:
  “We’ll call him Cacodemon, with his black Gib there, his Succuba, his Devil’s
  Seed, his Spawn of Phlegethon, that o’ my Consience was bred o’ the Spume of
  Cocytus.”
      -John Fletcher, _The Knight of Malta_. 1647.


key: catoblepas
value:
  “So passed he over into the island, taking with him the two brothers of
  Anaxius; where he found the forsaken knight attired in his own livery, as black
  as sorrow itself could see itself in the blackest glass: his ornaments of the
  same hue, but formd into the figures of ravens which seemed to gape for
  carrion: only his reins were snakes, which finely wrapping themselves one
  within the other, their heads came together to the cheeks and bosses of the
  bit, where they might seem to bite at the horse, and the horse, as he champed
  the bit, to bite at them, and that the white foam was engendered by the
  poisonous fury of the combat. His impresa was a Catoblepta, which so long lies
  dead as the moon (whereto it hath so natural a sympathy) wants her light. The
  word signified, that the moon wanted not the light, but the poor beast wanted
  the moon’s light.”
      -Sir Philip Sidney


key: cherub
value:
  “The glory of Yahweh mounted up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold
  of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full
  of the brightness of Yahweh’s glory.
   The sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer court, as
  the voice of God Almighty when he speaks.”
      -WEB Bible, Ezekiel 10:4-5


key: cloak
value:
  “O Bell my wife, why dost thou flyte?
     Now is now, and then was then:
   Seek now all the world throughout,
     Thou kens not clowns from gentlemen:
   They are clad in black, green, yellow and blue,
     So far above their own degree.
   Once in my life I’ll take a view;
     For I’ll have a new cloak about me.”
      -Anonymous, “The Old Cloak”. 16th Century.


key: club
value:
  “I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a
  big stick; you will go far.’ If I had not carried the big stick, the
  organization would not have gotten behind me, and if I had yelled and
  blustered, as Pankhurst and the similar dishonest lunatics desired, I would not
  have had ten votes.”
      -Theodore Roosevelt, in a letter to Henry L. Sprague. January 26, 1900.


key: crimson imp
value:
  “The Devil, too, sometimes steals human children; it is not infrequent for him
  to carry away infants within the first six weeks after birth, and to substitute
  in their place imps.”
      -Martin Luther


key: crocodile
value:
  “How doth the little crocodile
    Improve his shining tail,
   And pour the waters of the Nile
    On every golden scale!

   How cheerfully he seems to grin,
    How neatly spreads his claws,
   And welcomes little fishes in
    With gently smiling jaws!”
      -Lewis Carroll, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, 1865.


key: daeva
value:
  “Between these twain the Daevas also chose not aright, for infatuation came
  upon them as they took counsel together, so that they chose the Worst Thought.
  Then they rushed together to Violence, that they might enfeeble the world of
  men.”
      -the Avesta, Yasna XXX, 6, Ahunavaiti Gatha.
      trans. Christian Bartholomae, 1951.


key: dagger
value:
  “He drew his dagger, that was sae sharp,
     That was sae sharp and meet,
   And drave it into the nut-browne bride,
     That fell deid at his feit.

   ‘Now stay for me, dear Annet,’ he sed,
     ‘Now stay, my dear,’ he cry’d;
   Then strake the dagger untill his heart,
     And fell deid by her side.”
      -English traditional ballad, “Lord Thomas and Fair Annet”, circa 1650.


key: dark maul
value:
  “This caliber should be appropriate.”
      -prince Dajmiech, “Kajko and Kokosz: The Battle with Dajmiech”, Janusz
  Christa


key: demon blade
value:
  “Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.”
   “A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.”
      -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, _Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium_, Letter LXXXVII:
       Some arguments in favor of the simple life, l. 30. ca. 65 A.D.
       trans. Richard Mott Gummere, 1917.


key: demon trident
value:
  “At these words he started up, and beheld—not his Sophia—no, nor a Circassian
  maid richly and elegantly attired for the grand Signior’s seraglio. No; without
  a gown, in a shift that was somewhat of the coarsest, and none of the cleanest,
  bedewed likewise with some odoriferous effluvia, the produce of the day’s
  labour, with a pitchfork in her hand, Molly Seagrim approached.”
      -Henry Fielding, _The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling_, Book V, ch. X.
       1749.


key: demon whip
value:
  “With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and
  vanished. But even as it fell it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and
  curled about the wizard's knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered, and
  fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss.”
      -J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_. II, 5, “The Bridge of
       Khazad-dûm”. 1954.


key: dire flail
value:
  “‘Ah! ah! ah!’ laughed his two men, ‘how the Norman villains will be humbled
  when they see their doughty knight's skull beaten in by our brave countryman.’”
      -_Tales of Chivalry; or, Perils by Flood and Field_. 1830.


key: doom hound
value:
  “Standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a
  great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever
  mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat
  out of Hugo Baskerville...”
      -Arthur Conan Doyle, _The Hound of the Baskervilles_. 1902.


key: dragon's call spell
value:
   “This is where the dragons went.
   They lie...
   Not dead, not asleep. Not waiting, because waiting implies expectation.
   Possibly the word we're looking for here is...
   ...dormant.
   And although the space they occupy isn't like normal space, nevertheless
     they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw,
     a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those
     trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realise that the space between
     each dragon is, in fact, another dragon.
   They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines
     were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant.
   And presumably, somewhere, there's the key.”
      -Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!”. 1990.


key: dryad
value:
   • Roy Quixote: Wait, what's my beef with clean energy again?
   — Durkon Pansa: Dunno, but if'n ye prefer, I know a grove o'peach trees tha've
  been gettin' fresh wit tha locals.
      -Rich Burlew, “Haleo and Julean”


key: efreet
value:
  “When the hoopoe returned to Solomon (he told him the news), and he responded
  (to Sheba’s people): “Are you giving me money? What GOD has given me is far
  better than what He has given you. You are the ones to rejoice in such gifts.”
  (To the hoopoe, he said), “Go back to them (and let them know that) we will
  come to them with forces they cannot imagine. We will evict them, humiliated
  and debased.” He said, “O you elders, which of you can bring me her mansion,
  before they arrive here as submitters?” One afrit from the jinns said, “I can
  bring it to you before you stand up. I am powerful enough to do this.”
      -The Quran, Sura 27 Al-Naml


key: elephant
value:
  “And the King went to where the blind men were, and drawing near said to them:
  ‘Do you now know what an elephant is like?’
   ‘Assuredly, Lord: we now know what an elephant is like.’
   ‘Tell me then, O blind men, what an elephant is like.’
   And those blind men, O Bhikkhus, who had felt the head of the elephant, said:
  ‘An elephant, Sir, is like a large round jar.
   Those who had felt its ears, said: 'it is like a winnowing basket.’
   Those who had felt its tusks, said: ‘it is like a plough-share.’
   Those who had felt its trunk, said: ‘it is like a plough.’
   Those who had felt its body, said: ‘it is like a granary.’
   Those who had felt its feet, said: ‘it is like a pillar.’
   Those who had felt its back, said: ‘it is like a mortar.’
   Those who had felt its tail, said: ‘it is a like a pestle.’
   Those who had felt the tuft of its tail, said: ‘it is like a broom.’
   And they all fought amongst themselves with their fists, declaring, ‘such is
  an elephant, such is not elephant, an elephant is not like that, it is like
  this.’”
   And the King, O Bhikkhus, was highly delighted.
      -_Udāna_, VI “Jaccandhavagga”. ca. 5th cent. B.C.
       trans. Dawsonne Melanchthon Strong, 1902.


key: emperor scorpion
value:
  “Portents had occurred indicating [Titus Flavius Vespasianus'] approaching end,
  such as the comet which was visible for a long time and the opening of the
  mausoleum of Augustus of its own accord. When his physicians chided him for
  continuing his usual course of living during his illness and attending to all
  the duties that belonged to his office, he answered: ‘The emperor ought to die
  on his feet.’”
      -Cassius Dio, _Roman History_, LXVI, xvii, 2. 222 A.D.
       trans. Earnest Cary, 1925.


key: ettin
value:
  “But he had not been long in his hiding-hole, before the awful Ettin came in;
  and no sooner was he in, than he was heard crying:
   ‘Snouk but and snouk ben,
    I find the smell of an earthly man,
    Be he living, or be he dead,
    His heart this night shall kitchen my bread.’”
      -Joseph Jacobs, _The Red Ettin_


key: eveningstar
value:
  “It is said to have been the favourite weapon of the Norman priest, who,
  objecting to the shedding of blood, had no scruple about the dashing out of
  brains.”
      -T. M. Allison, “The Flail and Kindred Tools (from a historical and
       literary standpoint)”, _Archaeologia Aeliana_, Third Series, vol. IV.
       1908.


key: executioner's axe
value:
  “She danced, and was compelled to dance—to dance in the dark night. The shoes
  carried her on over thorn and brier; she scratched herself till she bled; she
  danced away across the heath to a little lonely house. Here she knew the
  executioner dwelt; and she tapped with her fingers on the panes, and
  called,—‘Come out, come out! I cannot come in, for I must dance!’
   And the Executioner said,—‘You probably don’t know who I am? I cut off the bad
  people’s heads with my axe, and mark how my axe rings!’
   ‘Do not strike off my head,’ said Karen, ‘for if you do I cannot repent of my
  sin. But strike off my feet with the red shoes?’
   And then she confessed all her sin, and the Executioner cut off her feet with
  the red shoes; but the shoes danced away with the little feet over the fields
  and into the deep forest.
   And he cut her a pair of wooden feet, with crutches, and taught her a psalm,
  which the criminals always sing; and she kissed the hand that had held the axe,
  and went away across the heath.”
      -Hans Christian Andersen, “The Red Shoes”, _Nye Eventyr. Første Bind.
       Tredie Samling._. 1845.


key: falchion
value:
  “I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion
   I would have made them skip: I am old now,
   And these same crosses spoil me.”
      -William Shakespeare, _King Lear_, V, iii. 1608.


key: fire crab
value:
  “The planet brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which [they]
  ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees with
  breathtaking slenderness and colour which [they] cut down and burned the crab
  meat with.”
      -Douglas Adams, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy


key: flail
value:
  “Even after forcing their way, with great effort and loss, through this double
  defense, [the Germans] still found themselves at a disadvantage; for their
  armor scarce enabled them to contend on equal terms with the uncouth but
  formidable weapons of their adversaries. The Bohemians were armed with long
  iron flails, which they swung with prodigious force. They seldom failed to hit,
  and when they did so, the flail crashed through brazen helmet, skull and all.”
      -James A. Wylie, _The History of Protestantism_, vol. I, book 3, ch. 15
       “Jon Huss and the Hussite Wars”. 1878.


key: flying skull
value:
  “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most
  excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how
  abhorr’d in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.”
      -William Shakespeare, _The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, V, 1.
  1603.


key: ghost moth
value:
  “Always in focus
   You can't feel my stare.
   I zoom into you
   You don't know I'm there.”
      -Judas Priest, “Electric Eye”. 1982.


key: ghoul
value:
  “In the desert
   I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
   Who, squatting upon the ground,
   Held his heart in his hands,
   And ate of it.
   I said, ‘Is it good, friend?’
   ‘It is bitter — bitter’, he answered,
   ‘But I like it
   Because it is bitter,
   And because it is my heart.’”
      -Stephen Crane, _The Black Riders and Other Lines_. 1895.


key: giant club
value:
  “Therewith the gyant buckled him to fight,
   Inflamd with scornefull wrath and high disdaine,
   And lifting up his dreadful club on hight,
   All armed with ragged snubbes and knottie graine,
   Him thought at first encounter to have slaine.”
      -Edmund Spenser, _The Faerie Queene_, Book I, “The Legend of the Knight of
       the Red Crosse”, Canto VIII, stanza vii, l. 55-9. 1590.


key: floating eye
value:
  “El ojo que ves
   no es ojo porque tú lo veas,
   es ojo porque te ve.”
      -Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla. 1912-1917.


key: bullfrog
value:
  “Hello, my baby
   Hello, my honey
   Hello, my ragtime gal

   Send me a kiss by wire
   Baby, my hearts on fire

   If you refuse me
   Honey, you’ll lose me
   Then you’ll be left alone

   Oh baby, telephone
   And tell me I’m your own.”
      -Ida Emerson and Joseph E. Howard, “Hello My Baby!”


key: glaive
value:
  “To know the perfect length of your ſhort ſtaffe, or half Pike, Forreſt bil,
  Partiſan or Gleue, or ſuch like weapons of vantage and perfect lengths, you
  ſhall ſtand vpright, holding the ſtaffe vpright cloſe by your body, with your
  left hãd, reaching with your right hand your ſtaffe as high as you can, and
  then allow to that length a ſpace to ſet both your hands, when you come to
  fight, wherein you may conueniently ſtrike, thruſt and ward, & that is the iuſt
  length according to you ſtature. And this note, that theſe lengths will
  commonly fall out to be eight or nine foot long, and will fit, although not
  iuſt, the ſtatures of all men, without any hindrance at all vnto them in their
  fight, becauſe in any weapon wherin the hands may be remoued, and at libertie,
  to make the weapon lõger or ſhorter in fight at his pleaſure, a foot of the
  ſtaffe behind the backmoſt hand doth no harme.”
      -George Silver,_Paradoxes of Defence_.1599.


key: gnoll
value:
  “Then he descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him
  through knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the unearthly
  silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid screams of Tonker as
  they picked him up from behind — screams that came faster and faster until they
  were incoherent. And where they took him it is not good to ask, and what they
  did with him I shall not say.”
      -Lord Dunsany, “How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles”.
  1912.


key: goblin
value:
  “Swish, smack! Whip crack!
   Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!
   Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,
   While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,
   Round and round far underground
   Below, my lad!”
      -J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Hobbit_


key: gold piece
value:
  “Here it was that the ambassadors of the Samnites, finding him boiling turnips
  in the chimney corner, offered him a present of gold; but he sent them away
  with this saying; that he, who was content with such a supper, had no need of
  gold; and that he thought it more honourable to conquer those who possessed the
  gold, than to possess the gold itself.”
      -Plutarch, “Marcus Cato”, _Lives_. 75 AD.
      trans. John Dryden, 1683.


key: golden dragon
value:
  “You do not come dramatically, with dragons
   That rear up with my life between their paws
   And dash me butchered down beside the wagons”
      -Philip Larkin, “To Failure”. 1949.


key: golden eye
value:
  “No coveting nor envy burns
     In thy bright golden eye,
   That calm and innocently turns
     On all below the sky.”
      -Hannah Flagg Gould, _The Youth’s Coronal_


key: great mace
value:
  “There will arise one named Feridoun, who shall inherit thy throne
   and reverse thy fortunes, and strike thee down with a cow-headed mace.”
      -Firdausi, _Shahnameh_. ca. 1000 A.D.
       trans. Helen Zimmern, 1883.


key: guardian golem
value:
  “‘Listen Reb _Golem_,’ the old man said, wagging his finger. ‘Pay attention to
    what I say—you understand?’
   ‘Understand...’
   ‘If you want to stay here, you got to do like Mr. Gumbeiner says.’
   ‘Do-like-Mr.-Gumbeiner-says...’
   ‘_That's_ the way I like to hear a golem talk. Malka, give here the mirror
    from the pocketbook. Look, you see your face? You see on the forehead, what's
    written? If you don't do like Mr. Gumbeiner says, he'll wipe out what's
    written and you'll be no more alive.’
   ‘No-more-alive...’
   ‘_That's_ right. Now, listen. Under the porch you'll find a lawnmower. Take
    it. And cut the lawn. Then come back. Go.’”
      -Avram Davidson, “The Golem”, 1955.


key: halberd
value:
  “And Diarmid oh, Diarmid he perished in the strife;
   His head it was spiked upon a halberd high;
   His colours they were trampled: he had no chance of life
   If the Lord God Himself stood by!—
    Och, ochone!”
      -James Clarence Mangan , _A Farewell to Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan_.
       ca. 1840.


key: hand axe
value:
  “Lizzie Borden took an axe
   And gave her mother forty whacks.
   When she saw what she had done
   She gave her father forty-one.”
      -A popular skipping-rope rhyme, after 1893.


key: harpy
value:
  “Bird-bodied, girl-faced things they are; abominable their droppings, their
  hands are talons, their faces haggard with hunger insatiable.”
      -Virgil, Aeneid 3

  “And Phineus had scarcely taken the first morsel up when, with as little
  warning as a whirlwind or a lightning flash, they dropped from the clouds
  proclaiming their desire for food with raucous cries. The young lords saw them
  coming and raised the alarm. Yet they had hardly done so before the Harpyiai
  had devoured the whole meal and were on the wing once more, far out at sea. All
  they left was an intolerable stench.”
      -Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2. 179 — 434


key: hell hound
value:
  “About her middle round
   A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
   With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
   A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
   If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
   And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
   Within unseen.”
      -John Milton, _Paradise Lost_, Book II, l. 653-659. 1667.


key: hell knight
value:
  “Ok, let’s review. It’s up to the fair young maiden to rescue the dragon from
  the fire breathing knights in shining armour.”
      -Exiern


key: hobgoblin
value:
  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
  statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
      -Ralph Waldo Emerson, _Essays: First Series_, Essay II: Self-Reliance.
       1841.


key: hog
value:
  “Fern came slowly down the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying. As she
  approached her chair, the carton wobbled, and there was a scratching noise.
  Fern looked at her father. Then she lifted the lid of the carton. There,
  inside, looking up at her, was the newborn pig. It was a white one. The morning
  light shone through its ears, turning them pink. “He’s yours,” said Mr. Arable.
  “Saved from an untimely death. And may the good Lord forgive me for this
  foolishness.”
      -E.B. White, _Charlotte’s Web_


key: horn of geryon
value:
  ‘So Joshua called together the priests and said, “Take up the Ark of the Lord’s
  Covenant, and assign seven priests to walk in front of it, each carrying a
  ram’s horn.’

  ‘When the people heard the sound of the rams’ horns, they shouted as loud as
  they could. Suddenly, the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites
  charged straight into the town and captured it. They completely destroyed
  everything in it with their swords—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep,
  goats, and donkeys.’
      -Joshua 6:6,20-21, New Living Translation


key: hound
value:
  “A traveller, by the faithful hound, Half-buried in the snow was found, Still
  grasping in his hand of ice That banner with the strange device, Excelsior!”
      -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Excelsior”


key: human
value:
  “Do you know
   Do I know
   What’s this thing called ‘man’?
   God only knows what a man is!
   I only know his price.”
      -Bertolt Brecht, “The Measures Taken”. 1930.


key: iguana
value:
  “Once on a time when Brahmadatta was reigning in Benares, the Bodhisatta was
  born an iguana. When he grew up he dwelt in a big burrow in the river bank with
  a following of many hundreds of other iguanas. Now the Bodhisatta had a son, a
  young iguana, who was great friends with a chameleon, whom he used to clip and
  embrace. This intimacy being reported to the iguana king, he sent for his young
  son and said that such friendship was misplaced, for chameleons were low
  creatures, and that if the intimacy was persisted in, calamity would befall the
  whole of the tribe of iguanas. And he enjoined his son to have no more to do
  with the chameleon. But the son continued in his intimacy.”
      -_Khuddaka Nikāya_, Jātaka 141 “Godha-jātaka”. ca. 4th cent. B.C.
       trans. Robert Chalmers, 1895.


key: insubstantial wisp
value:
  “Lead then, said Eve. Hee leading swiftly rowld
   In tangles, and made intricate seem strait,
   To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy
   Bright'ns his Crest, as when a wandring Fire
   Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night
   Condenses, and the cold invirons round,
   Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame,
   Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends
   Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
   Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way
   To Boggs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Poole,
   There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr.”
      -John Milton, _Paradise Lost_


key: iron rod
value:
  “At this particular moment in time, I don't believe I have a healthier or more
  deeply-felt respect for any object in the universe than this here shotgun...”
      -Steven ‘Body Bag’ Behling and Michael ‘Splatter’ Steward, _Doom_. 1996.


key: iskenderun's battlesphere spell
value:
  “Maxim 4: Close air support covereth a multitude of sins.”
      -Howard Tayler, _The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries_,
       in _Schlock Mercenary_. 2008.


key: jackal
value:
  “Always ready to take advantage of every favourable opportunity, the Jackal is
  a sad parasite, and hangs on the skirts of the larger carnivora as they roam
  the country for prey, in the hope of securing some share of the creatures
  which they destroy or wound.”
      -John George Wood, _The Illustrated Natural History: Mammalia_. 1865.


key: javelin
value:
  “Suppose you found your brother in bed with your wife, and put a javelin
  through both of them, you would be justified, and they would atone for their
  sins, and be received into the kingdom of God.”
      -Brigham Young, _Journal of Discourses_, 3:247. 1856.


key: jelly
value:
  “Beware of the Blob!
   It creeps
   And leaps
   and glides and slides
   Across the floor
   Right through the door
   And all around the wall,
   A splotch, a blotch...”
      -Burt Bacharach and Mack David, “Beware of the Blob”. 1958.


key: komodo dragon
value:
  “The three of us were sitting ashen faced as if we had just witnessed a foul
  and malignant murder. At least if we had been watching a murder the murderer
  wouldn't have been looking us impassively in the eye as he did it. Maybe it was
  the feeling of cold unflinching arrogance that so disturbed us. But whatever
  malign emotions we tried to pin on to the lizard, we knew that they weren't the
  lizard's emotions at all, only ours. The lizard was simply going about its
  lizardly business in a simple, straightforward lizardly way. It didn't know
  anything about the horror, the guilt, the shame, the ugliness that we,
  uniquely guilty and ashamed animals, were trying to foist on it. So we got it
  all straight back at us, as if reflected in the mirror of its single
  unwavering and disinterested eye.”
      -Douglas Adams, “Last Chance to See”. 1990.


key: kraken
value:
  “... Kraken, also called the Crab-fish, which [according to the pilots of
  Norway] is not that huge, for heads and tails counted, he is no larger than our
  Öland is wide [i.e. less than 16 km] ... He stays at the sea floor, constantly
  surrounded by innumerable small fishes, who serve as his food and are fed by
  him in return: for his meal, if I remember correctly what E. Pontoppidan
  writes, lasts no longer than three months, and another three are then needed to
  digest it. His excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and
  for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place ... Gradually, Kraken
  ascends to the surface, and when he is at ten to twelve fathoms, the boats had
  better move out of his vicinity, as he will shortly thereafter burst up, like a
  floating island, spurting water from his dreadful nostrils and making ring
  waves around him, which can reach many miles. Could one doubt that this is the
  Leviathan of Job?”
      -Jacob Wallenberg, “Min son på galejan”. 1781.


key: lajatang
value:
  “A weapon that comes down as still
   As snowflakes fall upon the sod;
   But executes a freeman’s will,
   As lightning does the will of God.”
      -John Pierpont, “The Ballot”. ca. 1850.


key: large rock
value:
  “Well, I run to the rock and I hide my face
   The rock cried out, No hiding place
   There's no hiding place down here.”
      -Negro spiritual. 19th cent.


key: lasher statue
value:
  “To be a slave for a moment
   The body offered up to cruelty
   To the lash which whips on the skin
   Which slashes the flesh, lacerates the back”
      -Samael, “Flagellation”. 1994.


key: leather armour
value:
  “Nought can Deform the Human race
   Like to the Armours iron brace”
      -William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”, 99-100. 1803.


key: lindwurm
value:
  “Freilich verbürgt uns keine Silbe die Existenz von solcherlei Thieren, wenn
  wir uns den Drachen oder Lindwurm als ein Ungeheuer vorstellen, dessen langer
  Hals in einen Adler-, Löwen- oder Delphinenkopf endigt; das auf dem breiten
  Rücken Greifs- oder Nachisittige trägt; und am vielfach gerollten Schweif einen
  Stachel mit Widerhaken hat; Feuer speit; sich in Mädchen verliebt und diese
  entführt; bald diese bald jene Gestalt annimmt; auf sauer erworbenen Schatzen
  ruht — kurz, als ein Ungeheuer, das alle Eigenschaften besitzt, welche die
  Fabel ihm andichtet; dann wäre es Wahnsinn, an Drachen und Lindwürmer glauben
  zu wollen. Nehmen wir aber dafür bloß ein furchtbares Ungeheuer überhaupt,
  welches nun aus unserem Welttheile vertilgt ist, so hat der Glaube daran nichts
  Lächerliches.”
      -Leopold Ziegelhauſer, _Schattenbilder der Vorzeit: Ein Kranz von
       Geschichten, Sagen, Legenden, Märchen, Skizzen und Heldenmahlen, Aus allen
       Gegenden Deutschlands und des österreichischen Kaiserstaates_. 1844.


key: long sword
value:
  “While we were at grips with this great army and their dreadful broadswords
  (maquahuitl [made of obsidian]), many of the most powerful among the enemy seem
  to have decided to capture a horse. They began with a furious attack, and laid
  hands on a good mare well trained both for sport and battle. Her rider, Pedro
  de Moron, was a fine horseman; and as he charged with three other horsemen into
  the enemy ranks—they had been instructed to charge together for mutual
  support—some of them seized his lance so he could not use it, and others
  slashed at him with their broadswords (maquahuitl), wounding him severely. Then
  they slashed at his mare, cutting her head at the neck so that it only hung by
  the skin. The mare fell dead, and if his mounted comrades had not come to
  Moron's rescue, he would probably have been killed also.”
      -Bernal Díaz del Castillo, _The Conquest of New Spain_. 1623.
       trans. J.M.Cohen, 1963.


key: longbow
value:
  “Robyn bent a full goode bowe,
   An arrowe he drowe at wyll;
   He hit so the proud sherife
   Upon the grounde he lay full still.”
      -_A Gest of Robyn Hode_ Sixth Fytte, l. 120-123. ca. 1450.


key: lorocyproca
value:
  “There it had assumed a wild, incalculable and incredible shape, twisted into a
  fantastic arabesque — invisible to their eyes, but dreadful nonetheless — into
  the unfamiliar numeral under whose menace they lived.”
      -Bruno Schulz, “The Brilliant Epoch”. 1937.


key: lost soul
value:
  “She walks in the twilight, her steps make no sound,
    Her feet leave no tracks on the dew-covered ground.
   Her hand gently beckons, she whispers your name—
    But those who go with her are never the same.”
      -Magic: the Gathering


key: mace
value:
  “[My plan] does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents,
  who will require the interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the
  peace among them.”
      -Edmund Burke, “On Conciliation with America”, speech in Parliament. 1775.


key: mad acolyte of lugonu
value:
  “And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
      -Friedrich Nietzche, “Beyond Good and Evil”. 1886.


key: manticore
value:
  “Ctesias writeth, that in Aethiopia likewise there is a beast which he calleth
  Mantichora, having three rankes of teeth, which when they meet togither are let
  in one within another like the teeth of combes: with the face and eares of a
  man, with red eyes; of colour sanguine, bodied like a lyon, and having a taile
  armed with a sting like a scorpion: his voice resembleth the noise of a flute
  and trumpet sounded together: very swift he is, and mans flesh of all others
  hee most desireth.”
      -Pliny the Elder, _Natural History_, Book 8, Chapter XXI


key: merfolk
value:
  “Again at length my thought reviving came,
   When I no longer found my self the same;
   Then first this sea-green beard I felt to grow,
   And these large honours on my spreading brow;
   My long-descending locks the billows sweep,
   And my broad shoulders cleave the yielding deep;
   My fishy tail, my arms of azure hue,
   And ev'ry part divinely chang'd, I view.”
      -Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, XIII, 546-7. 8 A.D.
       trans. Garth, Dryden, et al.


key: merfolk avatar
value:
  “Then up it raise the mermaiden,
   Wi the comb an glass in her hand:
   ‘Here’s a health to you, my merrie young men,
   For you never will see dry land.’”
      -“Sir Patrick Spens”, Scottish folk song, version 58J in Francis James
       Child, _The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_. 1898.


key: merfolk siren
value:
  “Row'd on, in reach of an erected voice,
   The Sirens soon took note, without our noise,
   Tuned those sweet accents that made charms so strong,
   And these learn'd numbers made the Sirens' song:
   ‘Come here, thou worthy of a world of praise,
   That dost so high the Grecian glory raise,
   Ulysses! stay thy ship, and that song hear
   That none past ever but it bent his ear,
   But left him ravish'd, and instructed more
   By us, than any ever heard before.
   For we know all things whatsoever were
   In wide Troy labour'd; whatsoever there
   The Grecians and the Trojans both sustain'd
   By those high issues that the Gods ordain'd.
   And whatsoever all the earth can show
   T' inform a knowledge of desert, we know.’”
      -Homer, _The Odyssey_, XII, 268-82.
       trans. George Chapman, 1857.


key: morningstar
value:
  “Little did then his pomp of plumes bestead
   The Azteca, or glittering pride of gold.
   Against the tempered sword; little his casque,
   Cay with its feathery coronal, or drest
   In graven terrors, when the Briton's hand
   Drove in through helm and head the spiked mace;
   Or swung its iron weights with shattering sway.
   Which, where they fell, destroyed.”
      -Robert Southey, _Madoc_. 1805.


key: morningstar "eos"
value:
  “But soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk
   about the pyre of glorious Hector.”
      -Homer, _The Iliad_, XXIV, 776.
       trans. A. T. Murray, 1857.


key: moth of wrath
value:
  “When within sight of their foe Berserks wrought themselves into such a state
  of frenzy, that they bit their shields and rushed forward to the attack,
  throwing away their arms of defence, reckless of every danger, sometimes having
  nothing but a club, which carried with it death and destruction.”
      -Paul Belloni Du Chaillu,_The Viking Age: the Early History, Manners, and
       Customs of the Ancestors of the English Speaking Nations_. 1889.


key: mummy
value:
  “I see Egypt and the Egyptians — I see the pyramids and obelisks;
   I look on chisel’d histories, songs, philosophies, cut in slabs
       of sand-stone, or on granite-blocks;
   I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalm’d, swathed
       in linen cloth, lying there many centuries;
   I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the side-drooping
       neck, the hands folded across the breast.”
      -Walt Whitman, “Salut au Monde”


key: naga
value:
  “Amongst the deities and Asuras and celestial Rishis, O amiable lady, the Nagas
  are endued with great energy. Possessed of great speed, they are endued again
  with excellent fragrance. They deserve to be worshipped. They are capable of
  granting boons. Indeed, we too deserve to be followed by others in our train. I
  tell thee, O lady, that we are incapable of being seen by human beings.”
      -Mahābhārata, Santi Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, section CCCLX. ca. 500 B.C.
       trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, 1883.


key: nagaraja
value:
  “Then there have also come
   nagas from Lake Nabhasa,
   Vesali, and Tacchaka.
   Kambalas, Assataras,
   Payagas, and their kin.
   And from the River Yamuna
   comes the prestigious naga, Dhatarattha.
   The great naga Eravanna:
   He, too, has come
   to the forest meeting.”
      -Mahasamaya Sutta, _Dīgha Nikāya_, 20. ca. 500 B.C.
       trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu


key: needle
value:
  “I pray that, risen from the dead,
   I may in glory stand—
   A crown, perhaps, upon my head,
   But a needle in my hand.”
      -Eugene Field, “Grandma's Prayer”. late 19th cent.


key: neqoxec
value:
  “If thus mutation is influenced by natural selection, it implies, that any
  particular mutation must advance in a direction advantageous for the respective
  species, and, indeed, many examples of mutation known among fossil animals are
  apparently due to the advantage produced by the change. I must add here,
  however that probably not all mutations (in a palaeontological meaning) are due
  to natural selection, but that many do not imply an actual improvement.”
      -_Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, Volume XXV, no. 150.
       1896.


key: octopode
value:
  “In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus
  is not in good mental health, though where’s his basis for comparing? But there
  is a mad exhuberance, as with inanimate objects which fall off of tables when
  we are sensitive to noise and our own clumsiness and don’t want them to fall, a
  sort of wham! ha-ha you hear that? here it is again, WHAM! in the cephalopod’s
  every movement, which Slothrop is glad to get away from as he finally scales
  the crab like a discus, with all his strength, out to sea, and the octopus,
  with an eager splash and gurgle, strikes out in pursuit, and is presently
  gone.”
      -Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_. 1973.


key: oklob plant
value:
  “Carbonic acid is one of the three materials which together form the starting
  point of vegetable growth; the others being water and nitric acid. This acid is
  formed of carbon and oxygen in the proportion of one part of the former to two
  of the latter chemically combined. It is a colorless gas, having an acid taste
  and smell; is soluble in water; weighs one-half more than air and can be poured
  from one vessel to another, as a liquid may be; 100 parts of water dissolve 106
  parts of this gas, and it is from this source that the roots of plants derive
  the needed supplies of it.”
      -Henry Stuart, _The Culture of Farm Crops: A Manual of the Science of
      Agriculture, and a Hand-book of Practice for American Farmers_, ch X. 1887.


key: ooze
value:
  “Sea horses floundering in the slimy mud,
   Tossed up their heads, and dashed the ooze about them.”
      -John Dryden. _All For Love_, I, i, 15-17. 1678.


key: ophan
value:
  “As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside
   each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure
   of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike.
   Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they
   moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced;
   the wheels did not turn about as the creatures went. Their rims were
   high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.”
      -Ezekiel 1:15-18 (New International Version)


key: the open sea
value:
  “I mused upon the mystery of fish, their strange and mindless beauty, how—
  innocently evil—they prey upon each other, devouring the weaker and smaller
  without rage or shout or change of countenance. There, in the realm of water,
  which is also earth and air to them, the great fish passed up and down, growing
  old without aging and enjoying eternal growth without the softness of obesity.
  It was a world without morality, a world without choices, a world of eating and
  spawning and growing great. I envied the great fish, and (in other, smaller
  ponds) the lesser fish, darting and flashing and sparkling gold.

  They speak of ‘the beast in man,’ and of ‘the law of the jungle.’ Might they
  not (so I reflected, strolling underneath a sky of clouds as blue and as white
  as the tiles and marble of the Altar of Heaven), might they not better speak of
  ‘the fish in man’? And of ‘the law of the sea’? The sea, from which they say we
  came...?”
      -Avram Davidson, “Dagon”, 1959.


key: orange demon
value:
  “In Sparkill buried lies that man of mark
   Who brought the Obelisk to Central Park,
   Redoubtable Commander H.H. Gorringe,
   Whose name supplies the long-sought rhyme for ‘orange.’”
      -Arthur Guiterman, “Local Note”. 1934.


key: orb of fire
value:
  “There ’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
   But in his motion like an angel sings,
   Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.”
      -William Shakespeare, _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i. 1597.


key: pandemonium lord
value:
  “Mean while the winged heralds by command
   Of Sovran power, with awful Ceremony
   And Trumpets sound throughout the Host proclaim
   A solemn Councel forthwith to be held
   At Pandaemonium, the high Capital
   Of Satan and his Peers...”
      -John Milton, _Paradise Lost_,  Book I, l. 752-7. 1667.


key: phantom
value:
  “Who wondrous things concerning our welfare, And straunge phantomes doth lett
  us ofte foresee.”
      -Spenser, _The Faerie Queene_ II. xii. 47


key: pillar of salt
value:
  “Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the
  LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all
  the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But [Lot's]
  wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”
      -KJV Bible, Genesis 19:24-6.


key: polar bear
value:
  “The Polar Bear is an animal of tremendous strength and fierceness.iBarentz, in
  his voyage in search of a north-east passage to China, had proofs of the
  ferocity of these animals, in the island of Nova Zembla, where they attacked
  his seamen, seizing them in their mouths; carrying them off with the utmost
  ease, and devouring them in the sight of their comrades. It is said that they
  will attack and attempt to board armed vessels, at a great distance from shore,
  and have sometimes been with much difficulty repelled.”
      -George Shaw, _General Zoology, or, Systematic Natural History_, vol. I,
       p. 2. 1800.


key: potion
value:
  “Then gave I her, — so tutor’d by my art, —
   A sleeping potion; which so took effect
   As I intended, for it wrought on her
   The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo
   That he should hither come as this dire night,
   To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,
   Being the time the potion’s force should cease.”
      -William Shakespeare, _Romeo and Juliet_


key: potion of blood
value:
  “Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood _is_ the life;
  and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.”
      -KJV Bible, Deuteronomy 12:23


key: potion of curing
value:
  “But if when you say ‘whiskey’ you mean the oil of conversation,
   the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows
   get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on
   their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes...
   then certainly I am for it.”
      -Noah S. Sweat, Jr. “If By Whiskey”. 1952


key: potion of degeneration
value:
  “If when you say ‘whiskey’ you mean the devil's brew, the poison
   scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones
   reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea,
   literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children...
   then certainly I am against it.”
      -Noah S. Sweat, Jr. “If By Whiskey”. 1952


key: profane servitor
value:
  “A spell was cast and the sky turned red
   The angel's heart froze to ice
   In the gloomy sky black clouds were gathering
   The silence was broken by cries
   A spell was cast and the sky turned red
   The angel's heart froze to ice
   In the gloomy sky — The silence where dead angels lie

   Touch the snow... Caress the lifeless sculptures
   Die!!!”
      -Dissection, “Where Dead Angels Lie”. 1996.


key: program bug
value:
  “If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first
  woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”
      -Gerald Weinberg, Weinberg’s Second Law


key: quarterstaff
value:
  “Then Robin he unbuckled his belt,
   And laid down his bow so long;
   He took up a staff of another oak graff,
   That was both stiff and strong.
   ‘But let me measure,’ said jolly Robin,
   ‘Before we begin our fray;
   For I'll not have mine to be longer than thine,
   For that will be counted foul play.’
   ‘I pass not for length,’ bold Arthur replied,
   ‘My staff is of oak so free;
   Eight foot and a half it will knock down a calf,
   And I hope it will knock down thee.’
   Then Robin could no longer forbear,
   He gave him such a knock,
   Quickly and soon the blood came down,
   Before it was ten o'clock.
   About and about and about they went,
   Like two wild boars in a chase,
   Striving to aim each other to maim,
   Leg, arm, or any other place.
   And knock for knock they hastily dealt,
   Which held for two hours and more;
   That all the wood rang at every bang,
   They plied their work so sore.”
      -Anonymous, “Robin Hood and the Tanner”.


key: quasit
value:
  “You’ll have to pay double reckoning; ’tis only fair you should pay for your
  dexterity.”
      -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, _Egmont_, I, 1. 1788.
       trans. Anna Swanwick, 1914.


key: quick blade
value:
  “He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword...”
      -Julia Ward Howe, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. 1861.


key: rakshasa
value:
  “Vaisampayana said, 'Not far from the place where the Pandavas were asleep, a
  Rakshasa by name Hidimva dwelt on the Sala tree. Possessed of great energy and
  prowess, he was a cruel cannibal of visage that was grim in consequence of his
  sharp and long teeth. He was now hungry and longing for human flesh. Of long
  shanks and a large belly, his locks and beard were both red in hue. His
  shoulders were broad like the neck of a tree; his ears were like unto arrows,
  and his features were frightful.”
      -_Mahābhārata_, Adi Parva, Hidimva-vadha Parva, section CLIV. ca. 500 B.C.
       trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli, 1883.


key: rapier
value:
  “Who was the first that forged the deadly blade?
   Of rugged steel his savage soul was made...”
      -Albius Tibullus, _Elegies_ I, xi. ca. 25 B.C.
       trans. James Grainger, 1822.


key: reaper
value:
  “All our times have come.
   Here but now they're gone.
   Seasons don't fear the reaper,
   Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain.
   We can be like they are.
   Come on baby, don't fear the reaper.”

      -Buck Dharma, Blue Öyster Cult, “(Don't Fear) The Reaper”. 1976.


key: ring
value:
  “A ring of gold and a milk-white dove
   Are goodly gifts for thee,
   And a hempen rope for your own love
   To hang upon a tree.”
      -Oscar Wilde, “Chanson”. 1881.


key: ring of the octopus king
value:
  “A mermaid who fancied to sing,
   Roused lust in the Octopus King.
   Her squiggly suitor,
   Tried hard to woo her,
   But she couldn't wear all his rings.”


key: ring of fire
value:
  “Love is a burning thing
   And it makes a fiery ring”
      -June Carter and Merle Kilgore, “Ring of Fire”. 1963.


key: ring of flight
value:
  “What surprised him the most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed
  so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn’t understand why
  other men didn’t have them too.”
      -Gabriel Garcia Marquez, _A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings_. 1955.
       trans. Gregory Rabassa. 1972


key: ring of ice
value:
  “Some say the world will end in fire;
   Some say in ice.
   From what I've tasted of desire
   I hold with those who favor fire.
   But if it had to perish twice,
   I think I know enough of hate
   To say that for destruction ice
   Is also great
   And would suffice.”
      -Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”. 1920.


key: ring of see invisible
value:
  “Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can
  see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
      -Antoine de Saint Exupéry, _The Little Prince_. 1943.


key: robe
value:
  “CLEOPATRA: Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
   Immortal longings in me”
      -William Shakespeare, _Anthony & Cleopatra_, V, ii. ca. 1605.


key: salamander
value:
  “As for example: the Salamander made in fashion of a Lizard, marked with spots
  like to stars, never comes abroad and sheweth it selfe but in great showers;
  for in faire weather he is not seene. He is of so cold a complexion, that if
  hee do but touch the fire, hee wil quench it as presently, as if yce were put
  into it. The Salamander casteth up at the mouth a certaine venomous matter like
  unto milke, let it but once touch any bare part of a man or womans bodie, all
  the haire will fall off: and the part so touched will change the colour of the
  skin to the white morphew.”
      -Gaius Plinius Secundus, _Naturalis Historia_, Book X, ch. LXVII. 79 A.D.
       trans. Philemon Holland, 1601.


key: scimitar
value:
  “The museum-cabinet and huge library arrogated to themselves the entire lower
  floor — there were the controversial and incompatible books that are somehow
  the history of the nineteenth century; there were scimitars from Nishapur, in
  whose frozen crescents the wind and violence of battle seemed to be living on.”
      -Jorge Luis Borges, _The Form of the Sword_. 1953.
       trans. Andrew Hurley.


key: scorpion
value:
  “Those poisonous fields, with rank luxuriance crown’d,
   Where the dark scorpion gathers death around”
      -Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village”, l. 351-2. 1770.


key: scroll
value:
  “To drift with every passion till my soul
   Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
   Is it for this that I have given away
   Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
   Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
   Scrawled over on some boyish holiday.”
      -Oscar Wilde, _Helas_. 1881.


key: scythe
value:
  “It was instinct. Illogical as lightning striking and not hurting. Each day the
  grain must be cut. It had to be cut. Why? Well, it just did, that was all. He
  laughed at the scythe in his big hands. Then, whistling, he took it out to the
  ripe and waiting field and did the work. He thought himself a little mad. Hell,
  it was an ordinary-enough wheat field, really, wasn't it?”
      -Ray Bradbury, _The Scythe_. 1943.


key: seraph
value:
  “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne,
  high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
   Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered
  his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
   And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts:
  the whole earth is full of his glory.”
      -KJV Bible, Isaiah 6:1-3.


key: shadow
value:
  “Between the idea
   And the reality
   Between the motion
   And the act
   Falls the Shadow
       For thine is the Kingdom

   Between the conception
   And the creation
   Between the emotion
   And the response
   Falls the Shadow
       Life is very long”
      -T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”. 1925.


key: shadow demon
value:
  “As we grow old, we become aware that death is drawing near; his shadow falls
  across our path...”
      -Stefan Zweig, _Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman_. 1927.


key: shadow dragon
value:
  “Crux sacra sit mihi lux / Non draco sit mihi dux
   Vade retro satana / Numquam suade mihi vana
   Sunt mala quae libas / Ipse venena bibas”
          “Let the Holy Cross be my light / Let not the dragon be my guide
          Step back Satan / Never tempt me with vain things
          What you offer me is evil / You drink the poison yourself.”
      -full text of initials on the Saint Benedict Medal, worn to ward off evil
  spririts. Inscription from 11-15th century, formally approved by pope Benedict
  XIV in 18th century


key: shadow wraith
value:
  “Yesterday, upon the stair,
   I met a man who wasn’t there
   He wasn’t there again today
   I wish, I wish he’d go away...”
      -Hughes Mearns ,_Antigonish_, 1-4. 1899.


key: shapeshifter
value:
  “And then th' old Sea-God crept
   From forth the deeps, and found his fat calves there,
   Survey'd, and number'd, and came never near
   The craft we used, but told us five for calves.
   His temples then dis-eased with sleep he salves;
   And in rush'd we, with an abhorred cry,
   Cast all our hands about him manfully;
   And then th' old Forger all his forms began:
   First was a lion with a mighty mane,
   Then next a dragon, a pied panther then,
   A vast boar next, and suddenly did strain
   All into water. Last he was a tree,
   Curl'd all at top, and shot up to the sky.”
      -Homer, _The Odyssey_, IV, 602-14.
       trans. George Chapman, 1857.


key: shortbow
value:
  “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”
      -Khalil Ghibran, _The Prophet_, “On Children”. 1923.


key: short sword
value:
  “Who was the first that forged the deadly blade?
   Of rugged steel his savage soul was made”
      -Albius Tibullus, _Elegies_ I, xi. ca. 25 B.C.
       trans. James Grainger, 1822.


key: silent spectre
value:
  “There is a silence where hath been no sound,
   There is a silence where no sound may be,—
   In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea,
   Or in the wide desert where no life is found.”
      -Thomas Hood, “Silence”. Early 19th cent.


key: simulacrum
value:
  “The simulacrum now hides, not the truth, but the fact that there is none, that
  is to say, the continuation of Nothingness.”
      -Jean Baudrillard, “Radical Thought”. 1994.
       trans. François Debrix, 1995.


key: sixfirhy
value:
  “I saw a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was
  full of nails rattling. It was a child’s dream of a mouth.
   A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gun-metal driven by an electric wrist and
  shoulder. It was a child’s dream of an arm.
   The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again. The mouth bled melted
  iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
   And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is
  pounding and pounding, and the mouth answering.”
      -Carl Sandburg, “Gargoyle”, _Cornhusker_. 1918.


key: skeletal warrior
value:
  “Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
   Who, with thy hollow breast
   Still in rude armor drest,
   Comest to daunt me!
   Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
   But with thy fleshless palms
   Stretched, as if asking alms,
   Why dost thou haunt me?”
      -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Skeleton in Armor”. 1841.


key: skeleton
value:
  “God save us from the skeleton
   Who sitteth at the feast!”
      -James Jeffrey Roche, _The Skeleton at the Feast_. 1890.


key: sky beast
value:
  “Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion
  that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.”
      -James Thurber, _My Life and Hard Times_. 1934.


key: slave
value:
  “Who rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the
  oppressor turned slave.”
      -E.M. Cioran, _History and Utopia_. 1960.


key: slice of pizza
value:
  “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.”
      -Jack Brooks, “That’s Amore”. 1952.


key: slime creature
value:
  “The very deep did rot: O Christ!
   That ever this should be!
   Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
   Upon the slimy sea.”
      -Samuel Tayor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. 1798.


key: hunting sling
value:
  “And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and
  smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead;
  and he fell upon his face to the earth.”
      -KJV Bible, 1 Samuel 17:49.


key: fustibalus
value:
  “Thrice whirling round his head
   The whistling thong, Mezentius took his aim.
   Clean through his temples hissed the molten lead,
   And prostrate in the dust, the gallant youth lay dead.”
      -Virgil, Aeneid 9
       trans. E. Fairfax Taylor


key: sling bullet
value:
  “For when things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable
  to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as
  it outruns the eye.”
      -Francis Bacon, _Essays_, “Of Delays”. 1625.


key: small abomination
value:
  “No — it wasn't that way at all. It was everywhere — a gelatin — a slime yet it
  had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes —
  and a blemish. It was the pit — the maelstrom — the ultimate abomination.
  Carter, it was the unnamable!”
      -H.P. Lovecraft, _The Unnamable_. 1925.


key: smoke demon
value:
  “Why does the thin grey strand
   Floating up from the forgotten
   Cigarette between my fingers,
   Why does it trouble me?”
      -D.H. Lawrence, “Sorrow”. 1916.


key: snapping turtle
value:
  “After a while they came to a village. ”Now then,“ said Snapping Turtle, ”in
  the morning at daylight, my friends, we will make on attack. I myself will
  first go to the place,“ the leader of the war party said to them.

  ”Good,“ said the other little one, ”thou art the one who sees to it what we
  shall do,“ they said to that Snapping Turtle. ”Now then,“ said Snapping Turtle,
  ”verily I am now going to tell you what I shall do.“ Thus he spoke. ”Now is the
  time I shall begin to walk toward this village. Verily at the time I shall kill
  the daughter of the chief will be when the light of day is breaking, and at the
  same instant the sky will glow with red in the direction whence the morrow
  comes. ‘Ho, there, our comrade has killed her!’ will thus be the thought in
  your hearts. Then is the time when you want to make a great noise, when you
  shall whoop all keep it up. Now is the time that you go to attack this
  village.“ Thus he spoke to those his young men.

  ”All right!“ said the other little fellows.”
      -“When Snapping Turtle went to War”, _Publications of the American
       Ethnological Society, Volume IX: Kickapoo Tales_. 1915.
       trans. Truman Michelson


key: spatial vortex
value:
  “It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms
  of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence
  stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open
  before our frenzied eyes.”
      -H.P. Lovecraft, “The Colour out of Space”. 1927.


key: spear
value:
  “The halberd is inferior to the spear on the battlefield. With the spear you
  can take the initiative; the halberd is defensive. In the hands of one of two
  men of equal ability, the spear gives a little extra strength.”
      -Miyamoto Musashi, _The Book of Five Rings_. 1645.


key: spectral thing
value:
  “On the hungry craving wind
   My Spectre follows thee behind.”
      -William Blake, “Broken Love”. ca. 1800.


key: spellforged servitor
value:
  “When you think
   Your toys have gone berserk
   It's an illusion
   You cannot shirk”
      -Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Spellbound"


key: staff
value:
  “Bashō Osho said to his disciples, ‘If you have a staff, I will give you a
  staff. If you have no staff, I will take it from you.’
   Mumon's Comment
   It helps me wade across a river when the bridge is down. It accompanies me to
  the village on a moonless night. If you call it a staff, you will enter hell
  like an arrow.”
      -Mumon Ekai, _The Gateless Gate_, case 44. 1228.
       trans. Katsuki Sekida


key: staff of death
value:
  “'I am Aed Abaid of Ess Rúaid, that is, the good god of wizardry of the Tuatha
  Dé Danann, and the Rúad Rofhessa, and Eochaid Ollathair are my three names.’
   And thus he was, with Cermait Milbél, one of his sons, on his back, who had
  fallen in fight and combat by Lug, son of Cian, High King of Ireland. The Dagda
  betook himself to his knowledge and learning, and therefore frankincense and
  myrrh and herbs were put around the body of Cermait, and he lifted Cermait on
  his back, and bearing Cermait he searched the world, and came to the great
  eastern world.
   He met three men going the road and the way with their father’s treasures. The
  Dagda asked news of them, and they said ‘We are three sons of one father and
  mother, and we are sharing our father’s treasures.’
   ‘What have ye?’ said the Dagda.
   ‘A shirt and a staff and a cloak,’ said they.
   ‘What virtues have these?’ said the Dagda.
   ‘This great staff that thou seest,’ said he, ‘has a smooth end and a rough
  end. One end slays the living, and the other end brings the dead to life.’”
      -Osborn Bergin, “How the Dagda Got His Magic Staff”, _Medieval Studies in
       Memory of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis_. 1927.


key: staff of fire
value:
  “The wizard suddenly remembered the words of the god. He remembered that of all
  the creatures that people the earth, Fire was the only one who knew his son to
  be a phantom. This memory, which at first calmed him, ended by tormenting him.
  He feared lest his son should meditate on this abnormal privilege and by some
  means find out he was a mere simulacrum. Not to be a man, to be a projection of
  another man's dreams—what an incomparable humiliation, what madness!”
      -Jorge Luis Borges, _The Circular Ruins_. 1940.
      trans. Anthony Bonner, 1962.


key: starcursed mass
value:
  “Did you see that star go out?
   I seen it burn.

   That little star went out,
   your little eyes went out.

   Our burnt little dreams are hid
   up where the stars get lit.”
      -Thee Silver Mt. Zion, “I Built Myself a Metal Bird”. 2010.


key: steam dragon hide
value:
  “His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so
  near to another, that no air can come between them. They are joined one to
  another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.”
      -KJV Bible, Job 41:15-17.


key: stone
value:
  “How happy is the little Stone
   That rambles in the Road alone,
   And doesn't care about Careers
   And Exigencies never fears —
   Whose Coat of elemental Brown
   A passing Universe put on,
   And independent as the Sun
   Associates or glows alone,
   Fulfilling absolute Decree
   In casual simplicity —”
      -Emily Dickinson, “How happy is the little Stone”. ca. 1865.


key: stone giant
value:
  “I really believe what you say, answered the knight; for, I have been engaged
  with the giant, in the most obstinate and outrageous combat that I believe I
  shall ever fight in all the days of my life: with one backstroke, slam went his
  head to the ground; and discharged such a quantity of blood, that it ran like
  rills of water, along the field.”
      -Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, _The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La
       Mancha_, IV, 10. 1605.
       trans. Carlos Fuentes, 1997.


key: sun demon
value:
  “Behold him setting in his western skies,
   The shadows lengthening as the vapours rise.”
      -John Dryden, “Absalom and Achitophel”, I, 268. 1681.


key: swamp drake
value:
  “Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
   Until we meet a snake;
   ’T is then we sigh for houses,
   And our departure take

   At that enthralling gallop
   That only childhood knows.
   A snake is summer’s treason,
   And guile is where it goes.”
      -Emily Dickinson, “A Snake”. ca. 1865.


key: swamp worm
value:
  “The fool, as I think, at the chasm’s brink,
   Prone by the swamp or the marsh’s side,
   Did, even as I, in the end rejoice,
   Since the voice of death must be His true voice.”
      -Arthur Edward Waite, “At The End of Things”. 1906.


key: tengu
value:
  “A Bird came down the Walk —
   He did not know I saw —
   He bit an Angleworm in halves
   And ate the fellow, raw”
      -Emily Dickinson, “A Bird came down the Walk”. ca. 1865.


key: tentacled monstrosity
value:
  “Oozing and surging up out of that yawning trap-door in the Cyclopean crypt I
  had glimpsed such an unbelievable behemothic monstrosity that I could not doubt
  the power of its original to kill with its mere sight. Even now I cannot begin
  to suggest it with any words at my command. I might call it gigantic —
  tentacled — proboscidian — octopus-eyed — semi-amorphous — plastic — partly
  squamous and partly rugose — ugh!”
      -H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, “Out of the Aeons”, _Weird Tales_, 25, No.
       4, pp. 478-96. April 1935.


key: the lernaean hydra
value:
  “The second Labour which he undertook was the slaying of the Lernaian Hydra,
   springing from whose single body were fashioned a hundred necks, each bearing
   the head of a serpent. And when one head was cut off, the place where it was
   severed put forth two others; for this reason it was considered to be
   invincible, and with good reason, since the part of it which was subdued sent
   forth a two-fold assistance in its place. Against a thing so difficult to
   manage as this Herakles devised an ingenious scheme and commanded Iolaos to
   sear with a burning brand the part which had been severed, in order to check
   the flow of the blood.”
      -Diodorus Siculus, _Bibliotheca Historica_. [4. 11. 5.]. c. 100.


key: throwing net
value:
  “The look of a scared thing
   Sitting in a net!”
      -Edna St. Vincent Millay, “When the Year Grows Old”. 1917.


key: titan
value:
  “And on the other part the Titans eagerly strengthened their ranks, and both
  sides at one time showed the work of their hands and their might. The boundless
  sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken
  and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation under the charge of
  the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound
  of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they
  launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as
  they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great
  battle-cry.”
      -Hesiod, _Theogony_, 8th cent. B.C.
       trans. H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914.


key: toadstool
value:
  “But the Seneschal gathered the toadstool fly-bane.”
      -Adam Mickiewicz, _Pan Tadeusz_, III. 1834.
       trans. G.R. Noyes, 1917.


key: toenail golem
value:
  “Gentle socks pamper them by day, and shoes cobbled of leather fortify them,
  but my toes hardly notice. All they’re interested in is turning out
  toenails—semitransparent, flexible sheets of a hornlike material, as defense
  against—whom?”
      -Jorge Luis Borges, “Toenails”. 1960.
      trans. Andrew Hurley, 1998.


key: tomahawk
value:
  “Let them draw the sharpest knife, and whirl the swiftest tomahawk, for their
  bitterest enemy is in their hands.”
      -James Fenimore Cooper, “The Last of the Mohicans”, 1826.


key: tormentor
value:
  “Thou art to me a delicious torment.”
      -Ralph Waldo Emerson, _Essays: First Series_, Essay VI: Friendship. 1841.


key: torpor snail
value:
  “Snail, snail, slug-slow,
   To me thy four horns show;
   If thou dost not show me thy four,
   I will throw thee out of the door,
   For the crow in the gutter,
   To eat for bread and butter.”
      -Silesian rhyme. Quoted by S.W. Singer in _Notes and Queries_, no. 69.
       1851.


key: training dummy
value:
  “Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only
  costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness, with the base
  and the banal.”
      -Walter Benjamin, _Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and
       Mescaline 1927-1934_, “Protocol II: Highlights of the Second Hashish
       Impression”. 15 January 1928.
       trans. Scott J. Thompson, 1997.


key: trident
value:
  “Without noticing the occupations of an intervening day or two, which, as they
  consisted of the ordinary sylvan amusements of shooting and coursing, have
  nothing sufficiently interesting to detain the reader, we pass to one in some
  degree peculiar to Scotland, which may be called a sort of salmon-hunting. This
  chase, in which the fish is pursued and struck with barbed spears, or a sort of
  long shafted trident, called a waster, is much practised at the mouth of the
  Esk, and in the other salmon rivers of Scotland.”
      -Sir Walter Scott, _Guy Mannering_, ch. XXVI. 1815.


key: troll hide
value:
  “THE TROLL KING: Now, listen, Prince Peer, and give way to reason!
   You're cut out for a Troll. Why, look, already
   You bear yourself quite in a Troll-like fashion!
   And you want to become one, don't you?
   PEER GYNT: Of course.
   In return for a bride and a well-found kingdom
   I'm not unwilling to sacrifice something;
   But all things have their natural limit.
   I have taken a tail, it is true; but, then,
   I can undo the knots that our friend has tied
   And take the thing off. I have shed my breeches;
   They were old and patched; but that won't prevent me
   From putting them on if I have a mind to.
   I shall probably find it just as easy
   To deal with your Trollish way of living.
   I can easily swear that a cow's a maiden;
   An oath's not a difficult thing to swallow.
   But to know that one never can get one's freedom —
   Not even to die as a human being —
   To end one's days as a Troll of the mountains —
   Never go back, as you tell me plainly —
   That is a thing that I'll not submit to.”
      -Henrik Ibsen, _Peer Gynt_ . 1867.


key: ugly thing
value:
  “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which
  contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may
  even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every
  individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to
  regulate those of others.”
      -David Hume


key: urug
value:
  U r u g, tumbled down, fallen by crumbling down. Slipped down, as earth from a
  hill-side, stones which have been piled up or the like. To fall as water at a
  cascade. To fill up a hollow by putting earth into it. To lay gravel or
  materials on a road. A landslip.

  U r u r u g a n, apparently a plural form of 'Urug'. To go with a number of
  men to any work. To make war, to attack with an army. To set upon in numbers,
  as it were to tumble upon in masses.

     -Jonathan Rigg, A dictionary of the Sunda language of Java. 1862.


key: unseen horror
value:
  “The awful shadow of some unseen Power
   Floats, tho’ unseen, amongst us.”
      -Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, I, 1-2. 1816.


key: vampire
value:
   • Scuze me. My friend Burt says you're a vampire hunter. 'zat so?
   — Uh yes. Yes it is.
   • Well you n'ain't gonna find one round here, mate. They ain't no vampires.
   — You don't believe in vampires?
   • 'course not!
   • But I do believe in con artists. And charletans who like to stir up trouble!
   • Dead people who get up at night and suck blood. How stupid do you think we
  are?
   • My place is haunted with 16 ghosts and they all say there n'ain't no
  vampires!
      -Rich Morris, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic


key: vampire bat
value:
  “For something is amiss and out of place
   When mice with wings can wear a human face.”
      -Theodore Roethke, “The Bat”. 1938.


key: very ugly thing
value:
  “All the infections that sun sucks up
   From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
   By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me
   And yet I needs must curse. ”
      -William Shakespeare, _The Tempest_, II, 2. 1611.


key: vine stalker
value:
  “The monstrous plant bud . . . had grown again with preternatural rapidity,
  from Falmer's head. A loathsome pale-green stem was mounting thickly, and had
  started to branch like antlers after attaining a height of six or seven inches.
   “More dreadful than this, if possible, similar growths had issued from the
  eyes; and their stems, climbing vertically across the forehead, had entirely
  displaced the eyeballs.”
      -Clark Ashton Smith, “The Seed from the Sepulcher”. 1933.


key: wand
value:
  “[The principle of selection] is the magician’s wand, by means of which he may
  summon into life whatever form and mould he pleases.”
      -William Youatt, _Sheep: their breeds, management, and diseases; to which
       is added the Mountain Shepherd's Manual_, ch. III. 1837.


key: wandering mushroom
value:
  “Telimena, wearied with the prolonged wrangling, wanted to go out into the
  fresh air, but sought a partner. She took a little basket from the peg.
  “Gentlemen, I see that you wish to remain within doors,” she said, wrapping
  around her head a red cashmere shawl, “but I am going for mushrooms: follow me
  who will!” Under one arm she took the little daughter of the Chamberlain, with
  the other she raised her skirt up to her ankles. Thaddeus silently hastened
  after her—to seek mushrooms!”
      -Adam Mickiewicz, _Pan Tadeusz_, II. 1834.
       trans. G.R. Noyes, 1917.


key: war axe
value:
  “‘God speed the kiss,’ said Max, and Katie sigh'd,
   With pray'rful palms close seal'd, ‘God speed the axe!’”
      -Isabella Valancey Crawford, “Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story”, Part I, _Old
       Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie and Other Poems_. 1884.


key: war gargoyle
value:
  “Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed a lugubrious
  aspect. The restless light of the flame made them move to the eye. There were
  griffins which had the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one heard
  yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques which sneezed in the
  smoke. And among the monsters thus roused from their sleep of stone by this
  flame, by this noise, there was one who walked about, and who was seen, from
  time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the pile, like a bat in front
  of a candle.”
      -Victor Hugo, _The Hunchback of Notre-Dame_, 10, ch. IV. 1831.
       trans. Isabel F. Hapgood


key: wolf
value:
  “Teacher: How does a dog smell?
   Student: I don't know.
   Teacher: Correct!”
      -Traditional Spanish joke.


key: water nymph
value:
  “Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some
  watery tart threw a sword at you.”
      -Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975.


key: whip
value:
  “Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
   Nor with a Stone —
   A Whip so small you could not see it
   I've known
   To lash the Magic Creature
   Till it fell,
   Yet that Whip's Name
   Too noble then to tell.”
      -Emily Dickinson, “Not with a Club, the Heart is broken”. ca. 1865.


key: wight
value:
  “Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end,
   That doth his life in so long tendance spend!”
      -Edmund Spenser, “Mother Hubberds Tale”, _Complaints_. 1591.


key: wizard
value:
  “Each family or tribe has a wizard or conjuring doctor, whose office we could
  never clearly ascertain.”
      -Charles Darwin, _The Voyage of the Beagle_, ch. X. 1839.


key: worm
value:
  “While the angels, all pallid and wan,
     Uprising, unveiling, affirm
   That the play is the tragedy, ‘Man’,
     And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.”
      -Edgar Allan Poe


key: wraith
value:
  “God, though this life is but a wraith,
   Although we know not what we use,
   Although we grope with little faith,
   Give me the heart to fight—and lose.”
      -Louis Untermeyer, “Prayer”. 1919.


key: ynoxinul
value:
  “He fixed his eyes upon the door, which, slowly opening, disclosed a stranger
  of majestic form, but scowling features, who demanded sternly, why he was
  summoned? ‘I did not summon you,’ said the trembling student. ‘You did!’ said
  the stranger, advancing, angrily; ‘and the demons are not to be invoked in
  vain.’ The student could make no reply; and the demon, enraged that one of the
  uninitiated should have summoned him out of mere presumption, seized him by the
  throat and strangled him.

  When Agrippa returned, a few days afterwards, he found his house beset with
  devils. Some of them were sitting on the chimneypots, kicking up their legs in
  the air; while others were playing at leapfrog, on the very edge of the
  parapet. His study was so filled with them that he found it difficult to make
  his way to his desk.”
      -Charles Mackay, _Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions_, Vol. III,
       Part I. 1841.


key: zombie
value:
  “It seemed that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost,
  nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie,
  they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and
  endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life—it is a dead body which
  is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power
  to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot,
  galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave,
  occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge
  around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it
  like a dumb beast if it slackens.”
      -William Seabrook, _The Magic Island_. 1929.


