GOING IN the OPPOSITE DIRECTION GIVES INTERESTING RESULTS

“Rather than stating "Aaracokra as ogres", ask[ing] "what does ogre-type Aaracokra look like?" Ogre-type Aaracokra demand shiny things in tribute. They eat your mounts. They are cheating traders. What do elf-type Aaracokra look like? They look like nothing because you can't see them camouflaged and hiding in the forest. Elf-type Aboleth are super-genius masterminds plotting to secretly control the world. Phantom-type Aboleth are plague-spreaders trying to infect all sentients to make them mindless slaves.” - Simon Black

Fernand Cormon

Noism's recent Clan of Cain post tying to his all-Paladins concept (and Simon Black's comment thereto, excerpted above), coupled with Trey from Sorcerer's Skull's piece about Welsh Triads, got me thinking. The unity of creation, once sundered, organizes itself after a beat back into at least a mockery of the previous consonance. We all know there are no races anymore only ancestries - and antagonist critters form a People v. Folks Nations kind of thing, I think. They are against each other. All of them are against you. Bad luck, after all, does come in 3s.

As such, I made a chart (for the letter A only, and for the Monstrous Manual only, a nod to the source material).

Apologies to the aforementioned Simon Black, whose cryptic Aarakos hiding in the woods and plague-fish Nurgling-out could launch 1000 campaigns, but the dice have spoken and Elfakocra and Evil Phaboleths have no place in these particular triads:

	OGRE	ELF	EVIL PHANTOM	GIANT
Aarakocra	Magpikokra  We Demand Shiney objects	x	Warblers Half bird, half banshee	Casso-warriors  Flightless, Ornery from being earth-bound, violently chivalric.
Aboleth	Julia Cyclid  Eater. False-Machine-monstrorum type library of everything what it ate	Fish Luthor Criminal Mastermind, world dominator	x	Goat with 1000 Fry  Aqua kids everywhere, doling out depraved advice to every king and princeling. It's the stylish pet to own.
Ankheg	Sandkhegs It’s like landmines. Relatively undersized. Hungry. Step wrong and they seize you.	x	An-Khing  The old trope of cultists worshipping a big, in fact non-supernatural bug as a god. Still grants spells tho.	Ankheg and the Beanstalk You get a bag of cocoons for a song - they have a mutation that puts them outside of time – they will dig a dungeon overnight.
Arcane	x	Broker  Facilitates exchange between 3rd parties who own the magic items.	Hole-Saler  The items are crummy, probably (at least lightly) cursed. But cheap and plentiful.	Kingpin Almost impossibly massive, no matter what room. Wants obligatory entanglements not $$$.
Argos	Eat tu Brute Guardian creature gone out of control and ate what it was guarding and everyone else.	Canadian Caper It’s a fake space amoebae manufactured as part of a daring rescue mission.	Pentoconter It’s the ship itself – jolly roger type. You have to be undead, or disguised as undead, to ride without being consumed.	x
Aurumvorax	Draconal Reserve  A dragon or other keeper of hoards has a whole kennel of them – they hate each other and will create a hubbub if you open the crates.	x	Coinstallation  There are coins of a certain mint that have already been eaten by the an other-dimensional aurumvorax – the money will bite you, although it is also a map to a rich reward.	Unnova Tiny lap animal. Yet heavy (too much for the lap), fed without limit by an indulgent monarch. Eventual collapse like a star into a black hole is inevitable.

Per Noisms, Aarakocra = ogre, Aboleth=elf, Ankheg=ogre, Arcane=elf, Argos=ogre, Aurumvorax=ogre, so we haven't broken his system just yet. But the wells of vengeance are nigh inexhaustible. 

"One way or another, all accounts agree that the monastery was destroyed, and that only eighteen monks escaped with their lives (According ot the Shouxian version and the Narration, 110 monks perished by fire.) All but one also agree that only five survived to avenge the Qing’s actions." - Dian H. Murray and Qin Baoqi, The Origins of the Tiandihui - The Chinese Triads in Legend and History

Steve Burrows