Useful Elements From Appendix N

For my own purposes, I've decided to slowly create an "Appendix N Cyclopedia"....strictly for my own use in devising adventures and deciding on story elements.  But, having a sharing nature, from time to time I will post some snippets here.

Chu-Bu

An ancient polished mahogany idol, placed upon a diorite pedestal, which had been worshipped for ages prior to the advent of Sheemish. Chu-Bu was a minor god, with fat fingers and toes being the only specific features noted. Holy birds were kept in his temple.

Chu-Bu had been worshipped for a century or more by burning spices in braziers and fat on flat gold plates, by offerings of honey and maize, and by the words “There is none but Chu-Bu” on Tuesdays. Although a minor god, he was believed by the people of his city to have created everything. In actual fact, the only service he can offer those who pray to him is to grant +1d3 Luck as a bonus to a single check within any given seven day period.

The rivalry between Chu-Bu and Sheemish ended with a minor earthquake, wrought by both gods working in opposition, that destroyed the Temple of Chu-Bu.

Source: Lord Dunsany (Chu-Bu and Sheemish: Saturday Review, 30 December 1911)

Tree Spirits of the Vosges

On the eastern shores of a high, lonely lake in the Vosges, the trees are sentient and have been at war with the peasantry for hundreds of years. To eyes that can see, the trees are only the outward manifestations of the tree spirits, which dwell in an adjacent plane, which can be glimpsed through the aether by those they desire to converse with.

When viewed in this way, the female tree spirits are humanoid, and beautiful, with golden hair and large pupil-less green eyes, akin to those of deer, that dance with moonbeam motes. Their lips appear to be notably thirsty. The male tree spirits wear dark green kilts, and have blue or brown eyes. They are darker of skin and hair, and are very muscular. 

 The tree spirits can compel a creature to a copse where they can communicate with him (Will DC 10 resists), and are able to charm mortal men (as charm person with a +3 to the spell check)with their kisses. They desire to use mortal men to slay their enemies in this fashion, for they cannot act directly on the world.

However, they can cause the most hideous of accidents to befall those who cut wood within their forests - they are able to make a retaliatory attack whenever a tree is felled. This attack has a +4 attack bonus, and does 1d4 damage. Such an attack achieves a critical hit on a 18-20, using 1d8 on Crit Table I. These strikes occur from seeming-chance: as one tree falls, it bends the branch of another, which is whipped back; a branch gouges out an eye; a tree is felled upon the hapless woodcutter.

Their plane appears as a vast, silent world with opalescent palaces, great hills and mountains, circling plains, and where the leaping trout of this world appear as leviathans. The golden moss on the ground is spangled with tiny blue flowers. The only sound is the singing or speech of the tree spirits. Their lives are bound to the trees, which appear as the ghosts of trees on their plane. While they can share this life to some degree, by tapping a ghost tree and giving a tree spirit the golden sap to drink, if the spirit’s tree has been felled, this is but a short respite before withering.

Source: A. Merritt (The Woman of the Wood; Weird Tales, August 1926)