A Work Relief Archaeology dig at an American Indian mound unearths a “red sarcophagus”. It disappears in the night along with several excavators, most likely looted.
A “bald cougar” attacks Civilian Conservation Corps workers, who chase the beast off with thrown rocks. The bite is unlike any the camp doctor has ever seen, like the man was stabbed with a sword.
A rancher wakes up one night to a group of men stealing his sheep. The confrontation turns violent and he shoots one, chasing the rest off. The body is an ape-man.
A teen boy tires of neverending agricultural hardship and hunger. He tells his sister he’s going to meet the yellow woman he saw in his dreams and runs away from home.
It all leads to one place:
A “bald cougar” attacks Civilian Conservation Corps workers, who chase the beast off with thrown rocks. The bite is unlike any the camp doctor has ever seen, like the man was stabbed with a sword.
A rancher wakes up one night to a group of men stealing his sheep. The confrontation turns violent and he shoots one, chasing the rest off. The body is an ape-man.
A teen boy tires of neverending agricultural hardship and hunger. He tells his sister he’s going to meet the yellow woman he saw in his dreams and runs away from home.
It all leads to one place:
THE MINES OF MAGOG
The year is 1933. The place is northeast Pennsylvania. Coal country, a billion tons of anthracite beneath a sea of mountains and trees. Company towns. A labor war or two. Now the Depression.
WHO ARE YOU?
Maybe…
WHO ARE YOU?
Maybe…
- Family of a child who wandered off into the woods.
- Public Works Administration surveyors.
- Treasury agents hunting moonshiners.
- Pinkerton thugs hunting labor organizers.
- A secret government task force hunting supernatural creatures.
THE CAST
The transformed denizens of Magog, Pennsylvania and their master.
Gabriel von Max
APE MEN
The inhabitants of Magog, Pennsylvania have been devolved by their new overlord. Its embrace has reduced them to hairy ape-men from a million years in the past. These unfortunate primitives toil in the mines or rush gibbering into battle, driven by the whips of the Women of Magog. The Ape Men lost a lot of gray matter when they were devolved but can understand language and recall pieces of their former lives. When not supervised by their brutal overseers they try to communicate with visitors.
The inhabitants of Magog, Pennsylvania have been devolved by their new overlord. Its embrace has reduced them to hairy ape-men from a million years in the past. These unfortunate primitives toil in the mines or rush gibbering into battle, driven by the whips of the Women of Magog. The Ape Men lost a lot of gray matter when they were devolved but can understand language and recall pieces of their former lives. When not supervised by their brutal overseers they try to communicate with visitors.
Dmitry Bogdanov
GORGONS
Pithecanthropus is not the farthest man can be devolved. The species has so much further left to fall. Further immersion in the womb of the Red Sarcophagus transmutes the victim to an ancestral cynodont. These horrible hairless things have no memory of being human. They bite hard enough to crush bone. If the prey fights back they let go and wait for shock and blood loss to do the rest as the tasty treat limps away and stumbles and falls. The Women of Magog use them as hunting hounds and guard dogs.
Pithecanthropus is not the farthest man can be devolved. The species has so much further left to fall. Further immersion in the womb of the Red Sarcophagus transmutes the victim to an ancestral cynodont. These horrible hairless things have no memory of being human. They bite hard enough to crush bone. If the prey fights back they let go and wait for shock and blood loss to do the rest as the tasty treat limps away and stumbles and falls. The Women of Magog use them as hunting hounds and guard dogs.
Ed Emshwiller
THE WOMEN OF MAGOG
Lucky villagers uplifted to the next stage of human evolution by the new lord of Magog. Imperious eight foot tall women, lemon yellow in color. Utterly devoted to the Red Sarcophagus, which controls them via hypnosis. The whips they wield are a sideshow. Their real control over the pithecanthropoids and cynodonts comes from their air of authority, prompting the apemen to grovel and submit.They remember what it was like to be human, and don’t miss it. Strong sense memories can remind them of what they truly loss and fill them with guilt, along with a powerful sense of dysmorphia when their new form does not match what they remember about their bodies.
Lucky villagers uplifted to the next stage of human evolution by the new lord of Magog. Imperious eight foot tall women, lemon yellow in color. Utterly devoted to the Red Sarcophagus, which controls them via hypnosis. The whips they wield are a sideshow. Their real control over the pithecanthropoids and cynodonts comes from their air of authority, prompting the apemen to grovel and submit.They remember what it was like to be human, and don’t miss it. Strong sense memories can remind them of what they truly loss and fill them with guilt, along with a powerful sense of dysmorphia when their new form does not match what they remember about their bodies.
Leo Morey
THE RED SARCOPHAGUS
A large waxy red thing with an interior cavity full of fluttering cilia. Those who gaze upon its folds are psychically compelled into its embrace. It pulls victims into the cavity with its sticky cilia and transforms them, evolving or devolving or dissolving them. It requires calories to work. Its slaves hunt wild game and steal farm animals. It eats people only in emergencies, hesitant to cannibalize its own workforce. It woke from hibernation and wishes to return to its homeworld.
A large waxy red thing with an interior cavity full of fluttering cilia. Those who gaze upon its folds are psychically compelled into its embrace. It pulls victims into the cavity with its sticky cilia and transforms them, evolving or devolving or dissolving them. It requires calories to work. Its slaves hunt wild game and steal farm animals. It eats people only in emergencies, hesitant to cannibalize its own workforce. It woke from hibernation and wishes to return to its homeworld.
THE TOWN
Magog, Pennsylvania. A mining town run by Leigh Coal. Slowly dying while the company waits for coal prices to recover. Alive again, but changed. The surrounding woods are patrolled by apemen, gorgons, and women in search of animals to feed the Sarcophagus and humans to convert.
All mechanical devices in town are piled in the streets in various states of disassembly, parts cannibalized for the mine. The Sarcophagus directs operations from its lair in the coal breaker, a towering structure where mineworkers once sorted anthracite. Clouds of rock dust billow from the enormous granite pluton over the town. The only surviving human is the well-armed but cowardly bootlegger Wolfsheim, holed up in his hidden still and drunk enough to avoid he sensitive noses of the devolved hounds.
THE MINE
The enslaved apemen ignore the coal and bore upward into the mountain above. They use strange machines that split the stone using sonic pulses. The Women peer at glowing radar screens and triangulate the path through the rock to the target: a ship, entombed in the stone. Like a metal chrysanthemum, petals pointed down.THE END
If the Red Sarcophagus enters its ship, it blasts off and returns to its world. The launch irradiates an area of many miles radius.
THE MAKING OF
This is a bonus adventure for the 2026 Appendix N Jam.
I finished my main entry and wanted to create another, so I trawled the
discussion page for abandoned prompts. I remembered the devolution ability from an old Dice and Doubloons post and the rest came together after that as I was trawling for images to use for the monsters. You can find the formatted version of
the adventure here.
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