u/Elder_Cryptid

Sauce

It is time for another Tékumel Thursday! This post will hopefully have more stuff for players to steal from for their games or even entice you to check out Tékumel as a setting for your games. Check out r/Tekumel, too, as we have recently renovated it! We have a quick guide in our sidebar now for those interested in the sword and planet setting of Tékumel!

For this week, we’ll be giving the first of a few overviews of the different “intelligent nonhuman species” as they’re called. These are truly weird, alien species that work as NPCs, extra-planar aliens, or just monsters in your games! I am using Empire of the Petal Throne stats which is essentially an OD&D hack, so fairly easy to rework for your own system of choice. While there are many more species on Tékumel, this is just a brief glance at the more iconic and common intelligent nonhuman species.
These are 4 species friendly to humankind & typically involved in their affairs of war, politics, religion, trade, etc. In the far distant past, these were the intergalactic allies of the humans in Tékumel’s Humanspace who were stranded when Tékumel’s solar system was shut off in its own pocket universe.

Pé Chói (pAY chOY), “the Listeners”.
NA 2d6
AC 2
MV 12”
HD 1+3
Treasure Type A
% in Lair: 70 (1d6x100 Pé Chói in lair)
Treasure Type in Lair: C

Some of the best friends of humans who are renowned as fighters & for their psychic abilities. These insectoid creatures stand 7’ tall and have either black (males) or white (females) chitin and are known as subtle, self-controlled, and often overly intellectual.

Pé Chói; NA 2d6; AC2; MV 12”; 1+3HD; TT A; % in lair 70% (TT C); SA supra-senses (60% to detect invisible/inaudible creatures within 200’).

Pygmy Folk, (real name unpronounceable by humans)
NA 1d100
AC 6
MV 6”
HD 1-1
Treasure Type A
% in Lair: 70 (1d100x10 Pygmy Folk in lair)
Treasure Type in Lair: C

These 3’ tall, rodent-like beings have dark fur, sharp noses & teeth, large ears, and 3 fingered hands. They are prodigious traders and just as keenly perceptive of their environment. They are counted among the friends of humans even though their trading skills borders thievery!

Pygmy Folk; NA 1d100; AC6; MV 6”; 1-1HD; TT A; % in lair: 70 (TT C); SA auto-detection through doors/walls.

Swamp Folk, (real name unpronounceable by humans)
NA 2d100
AC 5
MV 9”
HD 1+1
Treasure Type D
% in Lair: 20 (4d400 Swamp Folk in lair)
Treasure Type in Lair: E

As their name indicates, these squat, rubbery, and rotund beings are at home in the water, leery to venture far from ashore. They have blubbery white-skin and stand 4-6 feet tall. They notably do not use magic and can use no spells, though they have the ability to detect sloping passages, traps, and dimensional nexus points with 80% certainty. Swamp Folk dislike fighting and value self-preservation. Their ships are prized among the Mu’ugalavyáni navy.

Swamp Folk; NA 2d100; AC5; MV 9”; 1+1HD; TT D; % in lair: 20 (TT E); SA 80% to detect slopes, traps, and dimensional nexus points.

Tinalíya (tin-ahlEE-yah), “the Gnome-like Ones”
NA 1d100
AC 7
MV 9”
HD 1
Treasure Type D
% in Lair: 40 (1d6x100 Tinalíya in lair)
Treasure Type in Lair: E

Standing roughly 2’ tall, these creatures are covered with horny skin. Renown as scholars and a learned folk, Tinalíya don’t really yearn for adventurous lives unless knowledge can be found. They are vicious fighters when push comes to shove, using poisoned blades and arrows to great effect.

Tinalíya; NA 1D100; AC7; MV 9”; 1HD; TT D; % in lair: 40 (TT E); SA poisoned weapons.

In Empire of the Petal Throne, players are allowed to play as intelligent nonhuman species and any species can be any class. These four intelligent nonhuman species all use the HD progression of their human counterparts in your system of choice, so no conversion needed.

Next week I will spotlight the intelligent nonhuman species of Tékumel that are neutral to humankind. Again, feel free to join us over at r/Tekumel!

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>when i showed this to my friends they didn’t believe me that sonic had a sword in one game

The tumblr blog these are from hasn't been updated since September 2025, so it is unfortunately probably abandoned, but an EXE story based around the Fleetway comics and featuring Maria as the spook is cool and unique so I wanted to share it anyway.

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>She's talking but... What is she saying?

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Image #2 DeviantArt

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>Old Caliborn comic. He means the world to me, sadly.

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>Went in just wanting to draw a character I haven’t drawn in a while. Came out with a rare ship in my hands.

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>Wanted to see what two of my favorite Sonic comic characters would look like in eachother’s outfits!

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>X went into my mind. He walked smoothly here and there, and looked with interest at all the pock marks he had created in one hundred and nine years. He looked at the cross-routed and reconnected synapses and all the tissue damage his gift of immortality had included. He smiled softly at the pit that dropped into the center of my brain and the faint, moth-soft murmurings of the things far down there that gibbered without meaning, without pause. X said, very politely, in a towering glass mural covered in damp blood lettering:

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

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>Image 1: A joke post of Sonic in Silent Hill by tumblr user thecreach

>Image 2: “Boar” is a terrible scuttling quadruped. Although very swift, its legs face opposite directions, and it is prone to erratic changes in its path as it sweeps the floor for tasty grime with its tongue. Its cold, dead looking body is covered in mold and held together by stitches. It represents Sonic’s feelings on having declined from an A-list game mascot to a cheap joke, only allowed to live because of the generosity of his former competitors still giving him a platform to make his games on. The pin-sharp tridents sticking out of its body evoke the image of reaching hands, representing Sonic’s yearning to be liked alongside his growing repulsiveness, both in the eyes of others and in his own. They are aggressive, but ultimately weak scavengers.

>Image 3: “Onion Child” represents every single time you threw a Chao across the garden for shits and giggles. Their appearances shift depending on what ending Sonic is slated for. Although they cause Sonic’s radio to emit static like all enemies/creatures, they are non-aggressive, and attempt to toddle away on their slow legs when Sonic approaches.

>Image 4: “Carrion Twin” is the mandatory scuttling insectoid enemy, and representative of Tails, always scuttling after Sonic in his shadow. They come to feed off of the corpses of enemies Sonic kills. They appear to have a fleshy ribcage growing around their midsection, restricting fly-like wings, symbolizing all the times you lead Tails into the claws of a Grabber in Chemical Plant Zone for kicks. It leaks acidic Chemical Plant water from the bisection in its face.

>Image 5: “Sow” slowly stumbles along, blindly searching for prey with the grasping appendage extending from the orifice in its chest (presumably a mouth, as it seems to “eat” with it). They are deadly, but slow, and represent Amy Rose’s anguish over Sonic’s cold indifference. Sonic was Amy’s hero, and repeatedly left her behind, snubbed her as obsessed, and wouldn’t even dignify her with a direct “no” to her when she would put her heart on the line and confess her affections. The pins through its head represent the many rejections she has faced.

>Image 6: “The Plumber” is a hulking creature bent on Sonic’s destruction. It blunders around Silent Hill Zone murdering everything in its path with unrivaled brutality, but it seems to despise Sonic even more than the other monsters of the Zone. It uses the brush of dark black whiskers and the hairs on its back to sense its surroundings. It represents how Sonic, unable to cope with the fact that Mario won the “Sonic vs Mario” wars, shifted blame off of himself for not being good enough and extrapolated his formal rival into being the demonic root of all his failures, eventually cumulating in the attempted murder of the famed plumber during Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games. After this murder attempt failed and Mario survived, Sonic spiraled downward mentally until he found himself in Silent Hill Zone.

>Can Sonic admit his own shortcomings and escape Silent Hill Zone? Or is he doomed to wander Full Circle through his own personal hell forever?

https://x.com/i/status/2021126477731762296

Artist Source.

>Drew a comic after seeing THIS POST