The Book of Beasts

by Timothy Ferguson



Copyright Timothy Ferguson 1996, 1997, 1998. This material derives from the work of other authors, whose rights are held by Atlas Games. Derivative material is used with permission. This work may be used freely for personal non-profit use, provided that the author is properly credited.


Prologue (3k)
Chapter One: Designing Beasts (61k)
Chapter Two: New Rules for Familiars (2k)
Chapter Three: Familiars and Saga Development (42k)
Chapter Four: Popular Familiars (103k)
Chapter Five: Quadrapeda (84k)
Chapter Six: Birds (84k)
Chapter Seven: Serpents (62k)
Chapter Eight: Worms (9k)
Chapter Nine: Fish (13k)
Appendix One: Humans as Familiars (12k)
Appendix Two: Familiars of the Realms (70k)
Appendix Three: Forms, Effects and Sizes (11k)
Bibliography (6k)



Preface

The Book of Beasts is a large net-project designed to fill the hole left in the Ars Magica line by the absence of the Medieval Bestiary. It was originally submitted as a book about Familiars, then resubmitted as a more general work, but failed to achieve publication. Sections of the Familiars manuscript have been included in this version as two appendicies, since they are so very different from other source material available online.

Parts of this manuscript are incomplete. The second chapter has been removed, since it is to be published, in some form, in Mythic Perspectives magazine.

As a non-official work, you should check with your storyguide before using the variant rules found within. Although it never made it up to par for publication, I deeply enjoyed the process of creating this work, and hope that you'll enjoy reading it. If you have need of any clarifications, please contact me.

The author would like to thank all those who volunteered time as playtesters for the two versions of this work, and those who are hosting the manuscript on their web sites.

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Kenji Ulstein: The ideas that became the bond qualities Twilight Loss, Suppress Flaws, Added Size, Frog's Mouth, Ring Magic, Talking Telepathy, Shared Forms, Shared Personal Effects, Shared Touch Range, Cross-fire, Humanoid, Shared Sight Range, Single Life Force, Translocation, Flight From Azrael, Warped Bodies, Teleport, Biological Clock, Jealous Pack, Roving, Twilight Points, Size, Temperamental Bond, Wild, Blatant Gift, Undependable Bond, Size, Schism of the Mind, Transferred Linguistic Abilities, Superiority of Familiar, Jealousy, The Magus Reforged and many of the tinctures. Kenji's just a brilliant guy to have around when writer's block sets in. (If you can't find these, it means you haven't yet bought the issue of Mythic Perspectives containing the variant rules for bonding familiars. Just by the headings you can see what handy ideas they are, so head off to the MP page and check the price on back issues.)

Joshua Landrum: For general hole-patching.

Pre-submission Editing: Sarah E. B. Wishnevsky

Special Thanks To: Damelon Kimbrough

Damelon runs a site on the internet for "Ars Magica" and sent me one of his old copies of ArM3 when I couldn't get my hands on a rulebook. I promised myself I'd write articles for his webpage, by way of thanks, but the thousand words I wanted to write about how to play a cat realistically started to snowball uncontrollably and this book is how the process ended.

Damelon's webpage has now evolved into Mythic Perspectives magazine and Chapter Two of this book is only available through this wonderful magazine. Chapter Two is really useful stuff.

Playtesting

Soraya Ghiasi, Matthew Seidl, Nathan Gardner, David Czeck, Ken Stern, Warner Losh, Adrienne Kantor, Rita Czeck

Kenji Ulstein and Gang: Kenji, my notes on who was in your team were lost. Please provide them to me again. My apologies to all concerned.

Spanish Team: Javier Montalvo Espinosa, Javier Abad, Francisco Javier Rodriguez, Fernando Perez Lara, Jordi Gordon, Felix Fernandez, David Fernandez, Javier Rodriguez, Javier Ezequiel

Other playtesters: Jerome Darmont, Joshu Landrum, Mike Gearman, Reuel Miller, Serge Delonville, William Jensen

Index

Prologue

Chapter One: Designing Beasts

Chapter Two: New Rules for Familiars

Chapter Three: Familiars and saga development

Chapter Four: Popular Familiars

Chapter Five: Quadrapeda

Chapter Six: Birds

Chapter Seven: Serpents

Chapter Eight: Worms

Chapter Nine: Fish

Appendix One: Humans as Familiars

Appendix Two: Familiars of the Realms

Appendix Three: Forms, Effects and Sizes

Bibliography