Watery March

recharging in between gamingmas filming

if i had two nickels for every mcr reference i’ve done for this thing i’d be prepared to have more

Image © Paizo Publishing, accessed at Archives of Nethys here

[Another Wonderland-y monster after the astrosphinx, this is 2e Pathfinder's take on a decidedly madder than usual Mad Hatter. This is one of my favorite monsters in Bestiary 3, and the conversion is fairly close. My main change was to make the status effects it can inflict with its hats a little nastier, as befits a CR 13 monster.]

Millindemalion CR 13 NE Fey This little gnome-like man has leathery skin with discolored lesions on his face and hands. He wears a hat almost as tall as he is, and carries a pair of shears.

There are plenty of stories about kindly fairies assisting mortals to make clothing, clean homes, or even spin straw into gold. When these friendly house fey are abused and mistreated, they may go sour. Boggarts are the most famous of these, but a powerful variant is the millindemalion. Millindemalions are created through exposure to toxic metals, especially the mercury used in hat production. A millindemalion can rapidly create magical hats that force other creatures into strange and disruptive behavior.

A millindemalion is more than capable of just stabbing people to death, and its magical shears are nasty weapons. Still, they prefer to torture rather than to kill, using their magical hats to force their victims to slow down, attack their allies, or simply blind them with animated flaps. Few millindemalions are willing to fight to the death, and often fight using hit and run tactics to minimize full attacks.

All millindemalions have a mania for hats: making them, collecting them, showing them off. Some make hats from the fur, feather and skins of their victims, whereas others slip contact poison into the hats for sale in reputable haberdasheries. They look enough like gnomes that they can disguise themselves as one with relatively little effort. A magical hat may be used as a bribe to gain a millindemalion’s favor, and a millindemalion who desires to disrupt people’s behavior for longer than a few seconds at a time may be on the lookout for cursed magical headgear.

which is a really weird take to me, because like. im not really sure deltarune would be half as compelling without all the shit undertale established. untangling what they are to each other is like, one of the most compelling parts of the experience.

Yes, Deltarune would probably not be as compelling without undertale releasing first, however we have little to no actual interaction between the two aside from sharing characters, which is only a thing as toby likely enjoyed writing the characters in undertale and just... Didnt feel like designing a whole new town of monsters when he already had designs?

but more frequently, deltarune does a lot that only makes sense if you had a foundation from undertale. the 7 colored flowers corresponding to the 7 human souls. characters like papyrus and mettaton that we've never seen, but are expected to have an emotional reaction to. things that echo oddly and make the player sort of trip when they encounter them, like gerson being dead and asriel being alive, or catty and bratty becoming friends to fall into the alignment we expect. the many, MANY times the narration waves at something from undertale, or the music carries over. whatever the hell is up with gaster, still. even just thematically, the fact that undertale sets you up to believe all your choices matter, and then deltarune knocks that back down.

undertale isn't connected in the sense that i think the characters are going to like, go visit frisk or something, but it's connected in the way that like, a deconstruction of a fairy tale expects you to be familiar with the original.

Just because theres references and potential crossover, does not mean that you can simply ignore the creator's on words on what their work is, a proof of concept and the intended product, which is what you attempted to outright deny in your original post.