Big Jenny - Glaugust 2025 (The Last Living City in the World)
My second post written for Glaugust 2025, from the prompt ‘The Last Living City in the World’. It is ostensibly set in my post-apocalypse setting which doesn’t quite exist yet.
The rock formations of the Shifting Spires mostly shift on their own, the unstable earth and frequent microquakes changing the landscape on a regular basis. But sometimes, the stone barbs are disrupted by a two-headed horned lizard as enormous as the great warships of old. Big Jenny is the last of the living cities, the bones of the other hosts sunbleached and cracked a generation ago.
Buildings of flexible wood and fiber nestle between osseous blades and calcified outgrowths. All are lashed to the great lizard’s protrusions, insurance for when the indifferent matriarch of the city sways unexpectedly–a harrowing, if rare, event. Webs of jacklines stretch all across the city; residents are taught young to always keep their safety harness attached to the lines. Some of Jenny’s growths have been carved and hollowed out to act as habitable structures, such as the three remaining horns which act as lookout towers. The field of barbed spines on her sides are a stouter barricade than her passengers could build themselves, tougher than a wall of stone and infinitely more prone to catching on flesh.
The residents tend trellised crops near Jenny’s tail, fertilizing with the nitrate-rich scat freely given by their host. Nets hung below her cloaca catch the volatile, pungent cylinders. The children gather eggs from the birds that nest on the latticework ivy that grows on her spikes. The brave hunt the dog-sized mites that infest her skin; the meat tastes a bit like lobster. The foolhardy hunt the lurking parasites that haunt the valley between her necks. They hide under the blankets of molt that gather there, like mischievous children grown too large and too chitinous; the smaller mites make a suitable meal, but a city-dweller will keep one full for weeks.
Big Jenny spends most of her time standing still, but hunger or danger may push her to stomp through the rocky seas of the Spires. On rare occasions she climbs the enduring buttes that dot the otherwise inconstant landscape; the horn lookouts sound the alarm well before the whole city lurches sideways.
The great lizard’s left head has been uncharacteristically delayed recently, reacting more slowly than the other head. The residents suspect something is wrong. They do not know that a psychic brain wurm has taken up residence in her head, gorging itself on her gray matter. If it is not driven out or killed, Big Jenny’s left head will go mad within months. The terrific battle for control of her body will violently change the landscape and endanger more communities than the one on her back. Were she ever left defenseless or dead, her nuclear heart would draw in hungry opportunists.
Big Jenny
HD Lots
If your group really wants to fight Big Jenny for some reason, I suggest you use a wargame about naval combat and treat her as an aircraft carrier which can shoot superheated blood out of her eyes.
Titanic Lizard Mites
HD 1
AC as Leather
Damage 1d6-1
Lurking Parasites
HD 3
AC as Chain
Damage 1d6+1
Surprises on 1-3
Psychic Brain Wurm
As HD 12 Purple Worm
Communicates telepathically, with the intelligence of a clever pre-teen.
May project psychic hooks to a target within 60 feet having 4 HD or less. Save vs Repulse or take 2d6 damage. Any living being killed by this attack becomes an unliving thrall of the wurm.
D6 Encounters with Big Jenny
1 Big Jenny stands as if frozen, respiration slowed to a crawl and heads raised to the sky. A returning scout is being pulled up to the underside entry hatch of the gatehouse on her flank.
2 Big Jenny feasts at a giant anthill, heads snapping up armored treats. The elephantine ants are nothing to the lizard, but the residents have their hands full pushing back the few who manage to climb up past the spine wall.
3 A sudden loll of Big Jenny’s left head causes the lizard to stagger sideways. An unsecured farmer is flung overboard screaming while they grip huge purple carrots in each hand. They desperately flap their arms as if they might suddenly take flight, dirt flying from the huge purple carrots in each hand.
4 The lizard tears into the side of a rocky hill with her claws, boulder-sized chunks flying a hundred feet away. She will lay unfertilized eggs under the resulting cavernous overhang before collapsing it to protect the brood that will never be.
5 A ponderously raised back leg scratches Jenny’s side with a thunderous cacophany. The scratching dislodges 2d4 Titanic Lizard Mites (as HD 1-2 Giant Beetles), which fall to the ground. They are agitated and will happily eat non-reptilian prey.
6 A pack of buggies with silvery gyroscopic storage balls hitched to them are pulled up alongside one of the big lizard’s feet. A member of the trade caravan is in the middle of a shouted negotiation with a Big Jenny representative held in a harness dozens of feet above.