The Sanity Erodes - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay -The Expert D&D Connection - The Caecilia

 Call it nostaglia or simply the fact that a friend of mine suggested that I go back to the Expert set of TSR Dungeons & Dragons for some monster inspiration. What I found however was something horrifying and I thought I'd share. 

We've been looking back through the B/X Dungeons & Dragons expert set today. Why?! Because there were a lot of monsters unique to this set. And we've been looking into these unique monsters for something a bit different and unexpected for our - Sine Nomine Publishing's Cities Without Number rpg & The Red Room's Orbital Decay campaign.  The idea here is that each time the Beyond touches our reality it leaves behind a bit of itself and corruption. And one monster that leaped out immediately is the Caecilia. Which according to the Expert set's stats go something like this; "Caecilia Armor Class: Hit Dice: Move: Attacks: Damage: 6 6* 60' (20') lbite 1-8 No. Appearing: Save As: Morale: Treasure Type: Alignment: 1-3 (1-3) Fighter: 3 9 B Neutral These giant gray wormlike creatures are about 30' long. They attack with their cavernous mouths and sharp teeth. An unadjusted "to hit" roll of 19 or 20 means that they have swallowed their prey whole. The victim will take 1-8 points of damage each round after that until either the victim or the caecilia is dead. Any attack from inside a caecilia may only be made with a dagger, and with a penalty of -4 on "to hit" rolls." 
And then I ran across Al's take from the Beyond The Black Gate blog from 2011 here; 
"Caecilia

AC 6[13]
HD 6
Atk Bite (1d8)
Special Swallow whole
Move 15(Crawl or Dig)
Save 10 (Fighter5)
No. Appearing 1d3
Morale 9
AL N
Treasure Type B
These 30' long, slimy, gray worms are voracious predators, often lurking just behind dungeon walls, floors, or ceilings (or spongy wilderness earth) and waiting for the vibrations of passing prey to bring them forth. Their toothy maws can swollow up anything horse-sized or smaller on a natural roll of 19-20. Swallowed victims are largely helply helpless and suffer 1d8 points of damage per round until dead, though they may attack with a small weapon such as a knife or dagger (at -4 to-hit). A faint scent, reminiscent of cinnamon and ozone, may linger in caecilia hunting grounds, warning savvy dungeoneers of their possible presence. The tooth of a Caecilia is rumored to enhance spells of an earthy nature." 

Now what's interesting about this is the fact that neither entry counterdicts the other. These could actually be merely different species or life stages of the same alien monsters from The Beyond. For our own Hudson River  City game the Caecilia are alien horrors that lurk around whenever a magus has been dallying to much with the Beyond. The Caecilia are corrupted lifelorms that have close ties to cults that use a form of unearthly Lovecraftian magic and they have ties to Bholes within our campaigns. The Caecilia are found wherever blood and magick have been spilt in the name of the Old Gods. 

The  Caecilia manifest whenever a gateway to the Beyond is found. They begin to grow and adapt to our reality very quickly. They hunger for the life and flesh of Earthly life. Any Earthly life that they can find is far game to these monsters. These horrors are fast multiplying branching off 1d6 worm spawn once they find a suitable food source. They are not only tolerated but actively summoned by wizards and occultists because of the fact that they actively sweat a gold like compound or  substance. They leave this behind along with a calcium like depoisit from thier feedings. This 'treasure' like substance is 99.9 % pure gold but is found in a matrice of human bone or animal calcuim as a waste product. 
The  Caecilia are also drawn to feed on psionic energies and so will seek out the flesh of psychics or shamans to feed upon.  This happens numerous times across the stars as the wizard or pychic opens the wrong doors. And instantly regrets it. 
In the Beyond there are often found  'Caecilia pits' places of thousands or millions of the monsters writhing together in obscene displays of inverted psycho sexual energies. The  'Caecilia pits' are the source of immense occult powers and are found in the wastelands of the side time Atomic War wastelands.  'Caecilia pits' beam occult power to the Lovecraftian gods & demons of inner reaches of the qlippoth.

Recently we had an encounter deep in the wastelands of  our Wretched Apocalypse game with a  'Caecilia pit' but it was merely a 10 mile across pit filled with tentacles. The players had no idea what it was after leaving the scene. Actually neither did I but now?! Yeah it was  a  'Caecilia pit' & there were rumors about Lovecraftian horrors after the players encountered an old mutant fortune teller in 

Apocalyptic Territories: Wasted Americana.