HIATUS - Secret Project

Dear readers,

I thrilled to announce that have been hired as a freelancer on a secret RPG project! For legal reasons, I cannot tell you the name of the company or the nature of the project, but I think it is something you all would like. This is a very exciting time for me, as you might imagine.

However, for the duration of the secret project, I will not be able to keep this site updated with all its Monster Mondays and whatnot - both for contractual and for workflow reasons. With that, I am afraid I will have to put d20 Despot on hiatus until the project is complete. My patrons on Patreon will not be charged for the months that I am away, nor will I be able to supply them with advance PDFs of upcoming monsters and other content as I usually do.

Rest assured, however, that I will return in the new year, brimming with creative energy and ready to serve up tons of new Pathfinder and 5E material along with more GMing and worldbuilding advice.

-your freelance d20 despot

EDIT: They have announced it, so I can confirm that I will be working as a freelance junior developer on 5E Cthulhu Mythos adventures for Petersen Games. I am 100% on-board for anything that involves Lovecraftian monsters resurrecting dinosaurs.

Monster Monday: Crystal Unicorn - The Prancing Prism

Today's Monster Monday is the crystal unicorn, a dazzlingly brilliant construct hewn from solid rock crystal into the shape of nature's most beautiful creation - the unicorn. This creature filters light into a dazzling array of magically enhanced colors, and its flawless facets are able to reflect spells back on their casters. The crystal unicorn is at once a deadly foe and a wealthy wizard's prized decoration. And don't be to hasty in celebrating your victory over this overgrown knick-knack - when defeated, these unicorns explode in a shower of crystal shards.

© Jennifer Petrie, Creative Commons Licence, via geograph

Like the arachnocalliope, I originally created this monster for my current campaign. The party was fighting their way through the lair of an old witch who, aside from having a lot of stereotypical old lady habits, was also a bloodthirsty murderer who built the bones of her victims into necromantically animated puppets. In one of her rooms, the adventurers had to fight off her private puppet circus which included a wind-up ballerina with a wicked kick, a mechanical magician marionette, and a crystal unicorn.

The best part about the crystal unicorn is, if you grew up in the household of a fantasy enthusiast during the 1980s, you probably already have a suitable miniature. All that's left now is to stat up little pewter wizards and ceramic dragons.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Calaca, the Lively Dead

Today's Monster Monday is the calaca - or calavera - a skeletal undead creature that eschews the traditional shambling and menacing of its undead brethren in favor of just, like, living its unlife. A calaca retains most of the personality it had in life and - unlike other undead - doesn't turn evil!

Calacas come from cultures that have a more positive outlook on death, where death is just an excuse to celebrate a life well-lived. These unique undead creatures reside most of the year in the Boneyard - the purgatorial realm of the psychopomps who usher dead souls to their eternal rests. Calacas are sustained by the memories of their living friends and relatives, and as time goes on they become more exaggerated representations of their living selves, sometimes verging on parody. Calacas can be summoned to the material plane at places to which they had strong attachments in life, or by remembrance rituals performed by the living.

© Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Calacas/calaveras are strongly associated with the Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos in Mexico, Día de los Muertos in the US), a holiday which blends Catholicism with native Mexican traditions regarding the dead. They have deep roots going back to the gods and ceremonies of pre-conquest Mesoamerica, but the modern calavera can be traced back to José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican engraver whose satirical pictures of skeletons acting like the living poked fun at contemporary Mexican society and politics. His most famous calavera - La Calavera Catrina - was a laughing skeleton dressed in the finery of an upper class Mexican woman, a caricature that Posada used to criticize Mexican women who rejected their indigenous roots by adopting European fashions and whitening their skin. Through subsequent decades of folk art, Catrina evolved and became closely associated with Día de Muertos, but always remained at her core a way for the dead to poke fun at the living.

Calavera de la Catrina - José Guadalupe Posada (c. 1910), via Wikimedia

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Skeleton Troop - Bones and Bows

Today's Monster Monday is the skeleton troop, a battalion of fleshless undead fighters armed with bows and bones. Now it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of skeletons. When I put those plot hook and encounter ideas down below each Monster Monday, once of them by default should be "The party encounters a skeletal version of this monster".

Scene from Jason and the Argonauts (1963) Colombia Pictures via Gamers and Grognards

The lowly skeleton archer has been the bane of many a beginning adventurer. It can shoot at you, but your retaliatory arrows are just going to pass through its ribs. Skeleton archers have been an enduring menace through every edition of D&D and similar games, but at high levels it can be hard to threaten the party with them. You either need a lot of them, or you need to stat up some skeletal champions that specialize in ranged combat. But, as we saw last week with the zombie horde, the 'troop' subtype is our friend. Now you can bring a whole bunch of skeletal archers to the table, but they all act as one monster, thus simplifying your job as GM without sacrificing the dangerous combat for your players.
The stat block for the skeleton troop below can fire mass volleys of arrows that deal automatic damage to anyone in their path, and with their troop attack they rip at any enemy that comes within melee range with their bony claws.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Zombie Horde

Today's Monster Monday is the zombie horde, a crushing mob of dozens of shambling undead, their insatiable hunger driving them inexorably onward. Zombies are nothing new in Pathfinder or D&D in general, but if you want to run a fight against a lot of them at once (as I'm sure you do), it can get pretty darn tedious to manage twenty-or-so individual low-level monsters. That's where troops come in.

The troop subtype is one of the best recent(ish) innovation that the Pathfinder RPG brings to the table. It basically functions as a swarm, but of larger and more intelligent creatures - a dozen individual monsters run as one big monster with a shared pool of hit points and an auto-hit swarm-like attack which ensures even low-level fighters can be deadly in large numbers. This allows the GM to run combats against veritable armies of men without getting bogged down keeping track of each individual soldier's attacks and hit points and whatnot, a task which I know from experience soon turns into the GM rolling bucketloads of dice and muttering to themself, robbing the encounter of its momentum and excitement. Currently the selection of available troops is limited to living humanoids organized for battle, but the troop subtype is much more versatile than that.

Night of the Living Dead movie poster, via Wikimedia

This stat block includes a number of special abilities to simulate our cinematic expectations of zombie hordes. Like individual zombies, the horde is staggered - able to take only one action per turn - but once the horde catches up to you it becomes a lot deadlier. The horde's troop attack does an extra d6 of damage to opponents it shares a space with. It also has improved grapple and the constrict special attack, which means it can grab and do ongoing damage to individual opponents that it overwhelms. Finally, once the mob slays an opponent, they take some time to devour them, destroying the body and regaining some health in the process. While D&D and Pathfinder zombies don't by default have the Romero ability to turn the living into more zombies, this 'devour' ability could easily simulate the conversion and addition of the defeated opponent to the zombie lifestyle.

Next week's Halloweenish monster will be another troop, but of a different sort of classic undead monster.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Vampiric Creature Template

For today's Monster Monday, we have the vampiric creature template. No gothic horror campaign is complete without howling wolves and blood-sucking vampires. If you're pressed for time, why not combine the two? With the vampiric creature template, you can grant the most terrible of beasts the abilities of the mighty and mysterious vampires, from vampiric cats to vampiric dragons. The possibilities are nearly endless!

Presented below, along with the vampiric creature template, you will find example stat blocks for a vampiric wolf and a vampiric saber-toothed tiger. Imagine a vampiric chimaera with three fanged maws. Think of the implications of a vampiric elephant - would it suck blood through its tusks? (yes). 

As Halloween approaches, d20 Despot will continue to post seasonally appropriate monsters. You might want to stock up on ammunition and board up your house before next week's monsters arrive en masse to claw at your door.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Giant Harvestman - The Daddy of all Longlegs

Today's Monster Monday is the giant harvestman, a gigantic arachnid whose long, spindly legs let it drop down from above without warning. A giant harvestman stalking through the woods on its tree-like legs might go completely unnoticed until its body swoops down to snatch a rider from his horse.

Harvestmen - better known as daddy longlegs (daddies longlegs?) - are common sights for us in our gardens and lawns. If you know any trivia about them, it is probably that they are not actually spiders or that they have very poisonous bites but their mouth parts are too small to be dangerous to humans. It is true that these oddball arachnids are not actually spiders - spiders have a distinct two-part body (the cephalothorax and the abdomen), while the cephalothorax and abdomen of harvestmen are fused into one mass. But their bites are not extremely poisonous; in fact, no species of harvestman has venom glands.

Aside from a ball-like body and a lack of venom, harvestmen also differ from spiders in a couple key ways. They have only two eyes, where spiders have - I think we can agree - far too many. Harvestmen do not spin silk and so can make no webs. Also, they can actually eat solid food. Spiders use poison to paralyze and liquefy their prey, wrap them up in their silk, and then suck the bug smoothie up with their gross mouthparts. Harvestmen are on no such juice cleanse. Their tearing pedipalps can rip off chunks of meat and swallow them whole - a rare ability amongst arachnids, and one that I am sure makes them a hit at parties. A less popular party trick they can do is secrete a stinky fluid from their scent glands to make them unappealing prey.

I have wanted to stat up a giant harvestman for a while, but their strange anatomy made that a challenge. Making them in the Gargantuan size category would be true to their actual size, but so much of that space is just open air because of their trademark long, spindly legs. As a compromise, I settled on a Large-sized body, with their legs not included in their size category but accounted for with special rules. If you are playing out a giant harvestman fight on a battlemap, you might use a Large-sized model as a stand-in for its head and eight coins as counters to represent the position of its legs. It might look something like this:

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Arachnocalliope - Musical Doom Construct

Today's Monster Monday is the arachnocalliope, a mad construct that is like a magical cross between a spider and a pipe organ. Piping atonal, demoralizing notes with every movement of its many brass legs and every contraction of its armored bellows-abdomen, the arachnocalliope is a true visual and aural horror.

This eccentric contraption functions as a sort of anti-bard in combat, laying down de-buffs on its enemies with sonic effects. Not that it is helpless on its own, with two sword-like forelegs and a sonic breath weapon (no one is resistant to sonic damage!).

The genesis of this creature lies in my Graverobbers campaign (which I have not posted an update on in about 3 years, but it's still going). In one session, the players were fighting some constructs made by a creative witch whose chosen artistic medium was bone sculpture. Among the odd bone creations they fought was this arachnocalliope. I decided it worked pretty well as its own stand-alone monster, so I re-worked it a bit to be made out of normal materials and here we are. Some of those other bone creations, like the ballistocentaur and the triskeliettin may make an appearance here in the future, but for now you'll just have to use your imagination to wonder what those polysyllabic monstrosities might be.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Moss Folk - Tricky Tree People

Today's Monster Monday is moss folk, a race of fey forest sprites who dwell in deep, ancient woods. Moss folk can step into one tree and out another an instant later, as if by teleportation, making them difficult to track and excellent guerrilla fighters in their forest territories. Wherever they enter a tree, they leave behind a patch of fresh moss, hence their name. Well, they also look pretty mossy in general. I guess moss folk is just an apt name for them all around.

As is the case with the trees they live in, moss folk are lithe and twiggy in their youth, while with old age they become gnarled, hunched, and increasingly bark-covered. It should come as no surprise that these tree-ish fey creatures are great admirers of the mighty treants, to the point where some moss folk tribes adopt a local treant as the living embodiment of the forest they live in and worship. Some treants tolerate this attention and lend their protection to these well-meaning sprites, while others may remain oblivious to the adoration that has fallen unto them.

Moss folk, or Moosleute, are creatures of Germanic folklore, where depictions of them vary widely from place to place and story to story, sometimes beautiful, sometimes shriveled and old, sometimes dwarfish, sometimes giant. In some stories they are plague-bringers, in others  they are healers who guide humans to healing herbs. In some stories they are deathly allergic to caraway bread (don't ask me why). The picture of them left to us through the ages is as fuzzy and indistinct as an old dead tree carpeted in moss. Nevertheless, there is enough there to build on to make a pretty neat creature for your fantasy world!

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Remipede - Venomous Centipede-like Crustacean

Today's Monster Monday is the remipede, a little-known variety of crustacean that has a long centipede-like body and venom-injecting pincers. In real life, these creatures are only a few centimeters long at most, but the three remipedes statted up below range from about a foot long to over ten feet.

Speleonectes tanumekes, via Wikimedia

Remipedes are so rarely observed that they were known from fossils before any living species were discovered. There are now seventeen known species from around the world. It was only in 2013 that it was discovered that remipedes used their syringe-like foreclaws to inject their prey with a combination of neurotoxin and digestive enzymes, making them the only known class of venomous crustaceans. Remipedes live in saltwater caves and saline aquifers, but of course the larger fantasy versions below roam out into coastal waters and even the open ocean.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Bemohla, Giant Icy-Winged Eagle

Today's Monster Monday is the bemohla is a mighty weather-controlling bird with power over ice and winter storms. Think of the bemohla it as the Articuno to the thunderbird's Zapdos. Aside from being a giant ice eagle, the bemohla also has a pair of moose antlers on its head. These wintry birds live on mountaintops, employing blasts of icy wind and sudden storms to keep human hunters off of their mountains.

The bemohla - also known as the pomola, bmola, bumole, and several other similar variations - is a creature from the mythologies of the Abenaki and Penobscot peoples of northeastern North America. According to some sources, it had moose antlers, but according to most sources it definitely hunts moose. It's not hard to figure out how an oral story about a giant eagle carrying off a moose could morph, through some confusion or a bad translation, into a giant eagle with its own antlers. In any case, the stat block below shows a bemohla with moose anlters, because that's badass.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Giant Sea Slug, Stinging Mollusk of the Reefs

Today's Monster Monday is the giant sea slug or giant nudibranch. These colorful, poisonous, acid-spitting creatures lurk in reefs or the open sea, feeding on coral and giant jellyfish, occasionally swarming shipwrecks or attacking castaways.

Clockwise from top left: Nembrotha aurea, Berghia coerulescens, Glaucus atlanticus (sea swallow or blue dragon), and Hexabranchus sanguineus (Spanish dancer). Via Wikimedia.

Sea slugs are carnivorous shell-less mollusks, far more varied and colorful than the garden slugs with which we are all familiar. Some crawl along the seafloor, others - like Glaucus atlanticus - cling to the surface tension of the water, and still others - like the Spanish dancer - can ripple and undulate through the water. In nature, sea slugs become poisonous by absorbing the stinging cells of jellyfish and hydrozoans that they eat, thus turning their prey's defenses into their own.

Giant sea slugs, as statted up below, combine elements from many different real species of sea slug, except instead of being tiny they are ten feet long and capable of feeding on giant jellyfish and even humans.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Sea Bear - The Orca-Hunting Ursid

Today's Monster Monday is the sea bear, a massive grizzly bear adapted to an aquatic lifestyle, which uses its bulk, strength, and cunning to hunt salmon, seals, and even the mighty orca. The sight of their distinctive three-dorsal-finned back rearing out of the water is a sign to whales and fishermen alike to scatter, as the mighty sea bear is on the hunt.

This creature is based on the chaan xúujaay from the mythology of the Haida people of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Colombia. The sea grizzly bear appears as a motif in Haida artwork, combining elements of bear and orca (see this hat and its description at the Seattle Art Museum).

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Chordopod, Bony Tentacle Beast

Today's Monster Monday is the chordopod, an undead monstrosity that takes the rough form of an octopus or spider made of bones. At its center is a large skull-shaped head formed from twisted and distorted bones, while its many tentacles or legs are long spinal columns which whip and curl and crawl. This twisted undead abomination is the result of a great outpouring of negative energy in places such as mass graves, battlefields, and shipwrecks where the remains of many individuals are left to mingle and decay anonymously.

With the ability to burrow, climb, and swim, these nimble monstrosities are all-terrain foes (I guess you're safe in the sky, unless one of them grabs onto the hull of your airship as you are taking off). I can see them bursting out of the desert sand just as easily as I can see them bursting out of the storm-wracked ocean or bursting through the troubled earth of a bloody battlefield. I guess I just picture them bursting through things.

Also in the stat-block below, a diseased variant that rises from the mass graves of plague victims and stalks through the streets of disease-wracked cities or the pestilential countryside, spreading filth and rot in their wake.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Ammonites - Spiral-Shelled Cephalopods of Prehistoric Seas

Today's Monster Monday is the ammonite, a hard-shelled nautilus-like creature that floated through the prehistoric seas for some 350 million years before being wiped out in the same extinction that ended the age of the dinosaurs.

Ammonites typically had a spiral shell made up of successively smaller chambers that they could flood with gas or water to control their buoyancy. The animal itself was a cephalopod, probably ten-armed, which protruded from the end of the shell. Some ammonites may have been able to withdraw into their shells like a modern nautilus or a snail. Some may have had ink they could release in a cloud like modern squid and octopuses. But when we are talking about ammonites, we are talking about thousands of species across hundreds of millions of years - there was room for plenty of variation. Some - like the nostoceratidae - had irregularly unwound shells and probably floated through the sea like plankton or jellyfish. Some just crawled along the sea floor. Most ammonites were small, with shell spirals reaching no larger than 9 inches in diameter. But the two types of ammonites we will be looking at today were big.

photo by Ghedoghedo, via Wikimedia

Titanites giganteus - Natural History Museum, London

Titanites giganteus did not let the ocean currents decide where it would go, as if it were some kind of overgrown plankton. No, titanites was a swift hunter, jetting through the ocean in search of prey it could wrap its probing tentacles around and gnaw with its sharp beak. Their shells reached 2-3 feet in diameter, much larger than the typical ammonite of its day. But even the bigly named titanites giganteus was dwarfed by:

photo via Wikimedia

German zoologist Hermann Landois sitting next to his fossil of Parapuzosia seppenradensis,
with a wire frame showing the projected size if the specimen were complete. 

Parapuzosia seppenradensis may be a mouthful of a name, but you would be hard pressed to find a predator capable of making this ammonite into a mouthful. The 5.9 foot diameter fossil seen above is broken - with its intact living chamber, estimates put this specimen at 8.4 to 11 feet in diameter, making it by far the largest ammonite species. In life, the creature may have weighed 3,200 pounds, fully half of which comes from its massive shell. If parapuzosia was a hunter like titanites was, it must have been an impressive and terrifying sight to behold.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Tomtenisse - Tiny Fey that Pack a Punch

Today's Monster Monday is the tomtenisse, also known as tomte, nisse, or tonttu, an apple-sized little gnome from Scandinavian folklore which acts as a guardian spirit for a plot of land. These little guys have incredible strength for their size, able to punch out a grown man, snap a cow's neck, or carry a one ton load above their head. Why would these helpful farm spirits ever punch a cow to death? Well, tomtenisse can also be pretty dang ornery.

In the Christmas Night by John Bauer (1913), via Wikimedia

Tomtenisse help out around the farm in unseen ways, mending things, tending to the animals, and carrying loads. All they want in return is a bowl of porridge with a pat of butter on it on a specific day. If they don't get their porridge, they can become enraged, breaking things and lashing out at nearby creatures to punish their lax master. The older the tomtenisse, the more particular it gets about how a farm is run, and the quicker it is to inflict corporal punishment. If a new farmer on the land starts putting his tools away in the wrong places, a young nisse might rearrange them all in the night or pile them against the farmer's bedroom door, while an older nisse might simply break every tool that is out of its place. If a farmhand urinates in the barn, they might grab a manure shovel and smack them in the back of the head. If someone eats the nisse's porridge, they will usually be found beaten to within an inch of their life.

In perhaps the most illustrative story of the tomtenisse, a farmer leaves the nisse his usual bowl of porridge, but accidentally puts the butter on the bottom of the porridge. The nisse, thinking the farmer forgot the butter, becomes so enraged that he leaps up and cracks the neck of the farmer's prized cow. He then eats the porridge and finds the pat of butter at the bottom. Remorseful, the nisse runs to all the neighboring farms until he finds an identical cow to bring back for the farmer.

The tomtenisse reserve their deadliest weapon for those who cross them severely: a nisse bite can leave its victim cursed to wither away and die.

The tomtenisse legend may come from a pre-Christian belief in ancestor spirits. The earliest tomtenisse lived in burial mounds, perhaps the spirit of the first farmer to clear and work the land. In the 14th century, Saint Birgitte of Vadstena warned people not to worship the tompta gudhi (the house-lot gods). In modern times, the tomtenisse remain popular as Christmas figures, and though tales remain of angry nisse beating people to a pulp, they are more commonly seen having seasonal fun on Christmas cards.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Xiuhcoatl, Aztec Fire Serpent

Today's Monster Monday is the xiuhcoatl, a fire serpent from Aztec mythology. This serpentine dragon has turquoise. Waves of heat ripple around it as it vents steam and breathes fire. When angered, it can charge with lightning speed, striking its target with an explosion of fiery force.

Xiuhcoatl sculpture at the British Museum (author's photo)

In Aztec mythology, the god Huitzilopochtli used his atlatl to throw xiuhcoatl like lightning-bolt javelin. It was how he killed his sister Coyalxauhqui when she led the Southern Star Gods to war against their pregnant mother. Xiucoatl was also a form of Xiuhtecuhtli - the Turquoise Lord - Aztec god of fire. Xiuhcoatl is the lightning bolt that starts a brushfire in the grasslands, the fire that rains out of a volcanic eruption, and the heat of the sun in the dry season.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Poludnitsa - Lady Midday

Today's Monster Monday is the polunitsa, or Lady Midday. She is a malicious fey from Slavic mythology who appears in the heat of midday to deliver heatstroke and madness to those laboring in the fields. She tends to appear as a woman dressed in white peasant clothes and bearing a scythe, and she is usually either young and eerily beautiful or old and wizened.

Faucheuse ('Girl with a Scythe') by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1872), via Wikimedia

There is more I could say, but I am afraid Lady Midday has struck me with heat exhaustion and left me unable to think clearly. Instead, please enjoy this sassy-looking poludnitsa:

via Wikimedia

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Drop Bear - Australian Tall Tale

Today's Monster Monday is the drop bear, a big mean koala that plummets out of the trees onto its hapless prey. Unlike regular koalas, these drop bears are carnivorous predators with a taste for human flesh. It's still pretty cute, though.

modified (by me) from a photo by JJ Harrison on Wikimedia

Drop bears were a joke that Australians played on outsiders, building off the fact that Australian fauna is terrifying and deadly. It is unclear whether this is an original Australian settler tall tale, or if it originated from a joke Australian aborigines played on the invading whites, or even if it might come from some Australian aboriginal myth. We know from the yara-ma-ya-who that the Australian aborigines were no stranger to reddish mythical creatures that come down from trees to mess people up.

In combat, this monster has a pretty solid opening move - it drops from above onto its presumably flat-footed prey, and if it hits with any of its three attacks it takes no falling damage and inflicts half of the falling damage it would have taken to its target. If hunting a lone target, this gives the drop bear a solid chance of knocking it out so that it can drag it up the tree to feed at its leisure. If fighting a group of targets (say, an adventuring party), the drop bear might be able to knock out the most dangerous looking one, giving it a chance to drive off the others with its clumsier, less gravity-aided attacks.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Armored Grave - This Armor Shall Serve as My Epitaph

Today's Monster Monday is the armored grave, a knight buried in his armor, its once-gleaming plates now bursting at the seams with hard-packed grave dirt and the putrescence of decay. These are the tanks of the low-level undead world.

Buried in their armor, these ritually-prepared undead take on a new body of hard-packed grave dirt, granting them an additional layer of protection. Compared to ordinary skeletons and zombies, armored graves are invulnerable, unstoppable death machines.

Just to kick things up a notch, an armored epitaph is a slightly stronger armored grave which has Intelligence and feats and which isn't staggered.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Zahhak - Snake-Filled Three-Headed Dragon

"When the Hero burst into the throne room, the wicked King Dahag was feeding the snakes sprouting from his shoulders - the snakes it was forbidden on pain of death to speak of or even look at. Dahag's guards rushed forward, shamshirs flashing silver, four-mirrored armor blazing with reflected flames. The Hero kicked over a brazier, scattering hot coals toward the guards, then leapt over the fire and met them blade-to-blade. His sword crackled with magic as he swept it through the servants of the divs, parting mail rings and biting into cursed flesh. 

   "Sword dripping with black blood, the Hero advanced on the throne, there to smite the wicked king. As he raised his gleaming sword, the king exploded. In his place towered a massive black serpent, bloated and venomous, with three swaying dragon heads. The creature that was the king struck. The Hero dodged the first head and parried the second, but the third struck true. Long fangs bit through his armor and acrid poison spread through his body. He rolled forward to avoid the next attack and slashed at the underbelly of the monster, opening up a huge gash in the creature's flesh. Instead of hot blood, dozens of venomous snakes poured out of the wound, swarming around the Hero. 

   "This fight would not be easy. But this was the Hero's last chance to slay the wicked king and forestall a thousand years of unholy terror."

Today's Monster Monday is the zahhak, a three-headed dragon from ancient Persian mythology whose body is filled with venomous snakes. Not only does this beast bleed snakes (metal af), but it can shapeshift into a humanoid form, the better to further its plans of conquest and domination.

Aži Dahāka, also known as Dahāg, appears in the ancient Zoroastrian text Avesta as a three-headed beast who rules the land for one thousand years until the hero Fereydun defeated him and, finding that his wounds unleashed poisonous creatures into the world, bound him within a mountain instead of killing him outright. Aži Dahāka's name, or some variation of it, became the word for dragon in many Persian-influenced Middle Eastern languages.

In the Shahnameh, the thousand-year-old Islamic Persian epic poem, the figure appears as Zahhāk, an evil king cursed with two serpents emerging from his shoulders. The epic tells how Zahhāk overthrew and sawed in half the hero-king Jamshid, took his beautiful daughters captive, and ruled for centuries until he was overthrown by the hero Fereydun.

via Wikimedia

Zahhak enthroned with the daughters of Jamshid, from a 1615 copy of the Shahnameh

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Giant Ground Bat - Nocturnal Predator

Today's Monster Monday is the giant ground bat, a wolf-sized nocturnal predator that hunts by echolocation. This is a perfect low-level monster for a campaign with a Gothic horror atmosphere. I mean, a giant vampire bat that runs like a wolf? That is 100% something you would run into after your mysterious coachman lets you off at the foot of a twisting road up a darkly forested mountain, saying "That's as far as I can take you, but I'd suggest you get back in the coach and return to town with me. No good can come from going up to that castle. It's cursed, I tell you! Cursed!"

I would have made an illustration for this creature, but nothing I could have drawn or digitally painted would be as cool or terror-inducing as this mounted vampire bat skeleton:

Photo and mounted skeleton by Mokele, via Wikimedia

The direct inspiration for this monster came from an article I was reading about a new species of fossil bat discovered in New Zealand. Check out that rad ground bat illustration in the article. Yeah, apparently ground bats are a thing. They do actually have wings though, they just also spend a lot of time on the ground. Combine that with the future predators from Primeval and maybe a dash of the Varghulf from Warhammer Fantasy and you've got yourself a giant ground bat.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Xiphactinus, Prehistoric Monster Fish

Today's Monster Monday is xiphactinus, a giant prehistoric monster fish known for swallowing other large fish whole. These ugly fish reached lengths of 15 to 20 feet and swam the seas of the Late Cretaceous, when Tyrannosaurus was roaming the land.

Xiphactinus audax life restoration by ДиБгд, via Wikimedia

It's no secret that I am a fan of prehistoric sea life. Xiphactinus may not be as well-known as, say, ichthyosaurus, but its fossils certainly leave an impression. Not only are they big and mean looking, with those upturned, toothy maws, but they often show another pretty big fish trapped within the fossil ribs of the xiphactinus. Of course it can swallow an adventurer whole. And we know they didn't just settle for prey "small" enough to swallow - a 20 ft. xiphactinus fossil found in Canada in 2010 had the flipper of a mosasaur in its jaws.

photo by Spacini, via Wikimedia

Xiphactinus audax with a delicious Gillicus arcuatus in its stomach.
Fossils on display at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kansas

This also marks d20 Despot's first monster that starts with an 'X'. My patrons on Patreon know that it won't be the last: coming up fairly soon, we have another 'X' monster, this one from Aztec mythology.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Whip Scorpion & Pseudoscorpion

Today's Monster Monday is all about things that are called scorpions but which aren't actually scorpions. Whip scorpions are arachnids that spray acid from their butts, and pseudoscorpions have poisonous claws but no tails. They are both really small, but because this is a fantasy RPG I made them big and threatening.

ARACHNOPHOBIA WARNING

This post contains pictures of arachnids. I know most arachnophobic people are okay with seeing scorpions but not okay with seeing spiders, but these guys fall somewhere in between on the spectrum. Personally, I cannot look at pictures of spiders, but for some reason I can see pictures of spider-like arachnids like harvestmen and solifugids with little discomfort. But still, these non-scorpions might be a little too spidery for some people. For the benefit of people scrolling through the main site, I will be putting the page break here instead of right before the stat blocks as I usually do. Click through for more information on these two rarely-discussed types of arachnids and to see pictures of them.

Monster Monday: Gelatinous Hypercube - The Slime Out of Time

Today's Monster Monday is the gelatinous hypercube, an ooze from the astral plane that has become untethered from causality. To the eyes of those who travel forward through time at a constant rate and for whom actions precede reactions (that is to say, most mortals), gelatinous hypercubes seem to rapidly shift between different versions of themselves, often jumping around erratically in space as they appear at random points on their personal timelines. Those engulfed by the gelatinous hypercube find themselves frozen in time and rapidly aged or de-aged at random.

Yeah, it's sort of a joke monster, but gelatinous cubes are sort of joke monsters too.

tesseract gif by Jason Hise via Wikimedia

A gelatinous hypercube prowls the astral sea

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Tasmanian Devil & Dire Tasmanian Devil

Today's Monster Monday is the Tasmanian devil and the dire Tasmanian devil. Sometimes called the "marsupial wolverine" by me and at least one other person, Tasmanian devils are fierce little critters from the island of Tasmania off the south coast of Australia. At about 2 feet long, the Tasmanian devil is the largest living marsupial carnivore. They may not be big, but their jaws are so strong that these guys can eat bones. They just munch 'em down like it's no big deal, even though whenever I try to eat a chicken wing bone my dentist yells at me.

photo by Mike Lehmann, via Wikimedia

So cute! Does it really deserve to be called a devil?

The devils got their name because, when they get together at night to feast on a delicious carcass, they let out terrifying screeches. When white settlers in Tasmania heard unearthly howls and crunching bones coming out of the already none-too-friendly Australian night, they thought that was fairly devil-like. They usually eat carrion, but they can take down prey when they need to - they can even take down a small kangaroo if pressed.

What about the dire Tasmanian devil? A lot of dire animals in D&D and fantasy in general are based on actual prehistoric creatures. This started with the dire wolf, canis dirus, which was a slightly bigger than normal wolves. Fantasy game designers ran with the exciting 'dire' descriptor and applied it to a slew of prehistoric animals like the short-faced bear and irish elk. They didn't stop there, though, creating 'dire' versions of animals with no real prehistoric equivalent, like dire weasels and dire badgers. The dire Tasmanian devil is one of the latter. Although there were larger prehistoric devils in Australia, Sarcophilus laniarius, they were only slightly larger than modern devils, not five feet long like the dire Tasmanian devil below. I took some creative license because I like 'dire' animals.

via Wikimedia

Tasmanian devil skull. Nice teeth.

I've been using the name 'Tasmanian devil' a lot in this post, but you won't see it in the stat block below. Why? Let's talk some more about real-world names in fantasy worlds. I mentioned back in my titanosaur post how names that reference real-world places (like the Argentinosaurus from Argentina) don't really work in a fantasy world. The Tasmanian devil finds itself in a very similar situation, given that most fantasy worlds do not have an island called Tasmania, let alone the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman for whom the island was named. Take away 'Tasmanian' and you are left with just 'devil', which is rather broad and pretty confusing, especially in a world where real extraplanar devils exist.

I ran through several potential alternative names before settling down on one. 'Devil quoll' sort of works - quolls are a related cat-sized marsupial carnivore that are smaller and less bitey than Tasmanian devils, but if I named it 'devil quoll' I'd have to explain what quolls are. 'Marsupial devil' gets the idea across fairly well, but it also conjures up images of Satan with a pouch full of babies on his tummy. Its genus, sarcophilus, sounds pretty cool but it sounds more like a dinosaur than a fuzzy little guy. Eventually I settled on 'tarrabah', which is one of the Tasmanian Aboriginal names for the creature recorded by early white settlers, along with 'poirinnah' and 'par-loo-mer-rer' - I went with tarrabah because it starts with a 't' like Tasmanian devil. If you incorporate it into your campaign (and boy have I been giving a lot of thought to an Australian-inspired fantasy world), call it by any of those names or none of them.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Bellwether - It Tolls for Thee

Today's Monster Monday is the bellwether, a black ram with a large bronze bell in place of its head. This harbinger of doom delivers blasts of pummeling sonic energy with every toll, leaving its targets shaken. If the bellwether is not stopped before it tolls thirteen times, all who hear its final bell are cursed, and the surrounding land is left blighted.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Termite Mound Guardian, a Swarm-Filled Construct

Today's Monster Monday is the termite mound guardian, a druidic construct full of swarming, biting termites. Crafted from the gigantic termite mounds found in the tropical regions of the world, these stalwart defenders are often created to protect villages, natural resources, or sacred spaces. From a distance, they appear to be ordinary termite mounds, but when interlopers approach, they rise out of the ground, taking on a roughly humanoid form. A flood of angry termites pours from a thousand tiny tunnels throughout its body, massing against the enemy, while other warrior termites take up defensive positions along the mound's body, ready to bite any who make contact with it.

via Wikimedia

5 meter high Cathedral Termite Mound - Litchfield National Park, Northern Territory, Australia

I like the idea that there is a whole range of naturalistic constructs that only druids can make. Like, if a wizard saw a termite mound guardian, they might think, "Why not just make a clay golem?" But druids see these as something that augments and complements nature, where golems are something that contravenes the natural order.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Creniad, Nymph of Wells and Fountains

Today's Monster Monday is the creniad, a rare urban nymph of wells and fountains. Creniads are guardians of these urban water sources, granting boons to those who respect them and leveling curses against those who defile their purity.

Detail from 'Am Schönen Brunnen' by Anton Ebert, via Wikimedia

Before modern indoor plumbing, public water sources like wells and fountains were very important for city-dwellers, especially since any rivers running through a city would likely be full of human waste and the runoff of industry. Rulers of cities would commission fountains to bring clean water into the city for the public good, often beautifying them with statuary and pools. Urban wells were less dramatic but no less important for supplying clean water. Both water sources would have been features of public squares where people could gather and socialize as they collected their drinking water.

Recently I have been interested in urban environments as habitats, and how wild animals adapt to live in man-made environments. Thinking about this in the context of fantasy RPGs brought up several ideas for urban monsters (one of which was the feral hivemind). The creniad derives from the crinaeae, Greek naiads associated with wells and fountains. There are already some urban fey, mostly household spirits like brownies and domovoi, but the idea of a nymph associated with urban water sources seemed like an interesting idea worth pursuing, since those fairies are usually depicted as being part of unspoiled nature rather than man-made environments.

The resulting monster (see the stat block below) is built around protecting these urban water sources. She has a number of water-based spells and abilities, but she can also curse those who despoil her water source, bless those who make offerings or wishes at her well, and even inhabit fountain statues. When a creniad's water source becomes polluted, she becomes ill, and she might even become corrupted, gaining an altered suite of spells and abilities that turn her into an evil spirit of vengeance!

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Mummy Wraps - The Embalming Construct

I approached the door with some trepidation, my earlier discourse with M. H-- on the subject of curses weighing heavily on my fevered mind. As a man of science, I held myself above such superstitions, but in that dark sandstone tunnel, choked with the dust of ages, such things seemed terrifyingly possible. Cuvier beckoned me examine the inscription on the door. Those inscrutable hieroglyphs remain a mystery to me, and I truly have no idea how my companion, learned though he was in such things, and quite more well-endowed with critical faculties than I, was able to derive meaning from them. Nevertheless, he did his best to explain. 'The room beyond must be the embalming chamber. Therein, the cadaver was prepared for the afterlife by the removal of the organs and the preservation of the flesh.'
   This gruesome fact was not new to me. I had, of course, read the MS by the renowned Mr. B-- of the Royal Society on the details of the process, which I have already laid out for you in great detail earlier in my account. But the idea that this place of ritual disemboweling lay just ahead of me through a foot of crumbling stone was, at the time, most disconcerting to my temper. Pallid though I was already, I am certain I grew more so at this news, though good Cuvier either did not notice or was kind enough not to remark upon it.
   Cuvier bade the workers make use of the great prybars which they had brought along for that purpose, and within the hour they had shifted the stone aside enough that we could make our ingress. Cuvier insisted on going first, and to my great and ongoing regret I let him do so with no small measure of relief on my part. He cast the light of his hooded lantern around the room, revealing what to the ancients must have been an impressive laboratory. Jars full of chemicals and unguents stood intact in chests of desiccated wood. An array of tools, equally at home in the hands of an anatomist as in those of a torturer, glinted in the light as if they were new, the dry desert air having preserved them for thousands of years without rust or decay. But in the middle of that cursed room - and I say cursed now, with full confidence and the benefit of hindsight - stood a solid stone mortuary slab topped with a tangle of ancient linen bandages. O that we had taken our leave then! But no.
   Fancying that I spied a scrap of writing on the bandages and fearing that my hands, moist from the fever and - I must admit - from nerves, might damage any ancient ink, I motioned Cuvier to take a closer look. When he did - O! If only this truly had been a fever dream! - the bandages rose up of their own accord and wrapped themselves around him. Helpless before these twining snakes of fabric, Cuvier at first stared in wonder, then tried to scream. His aborted scream, cut off by the living bandages as they covered his mouth, still chills me to my very core. With his last ounce of will, my dear companion reached out a shaking hand in a silent plea for help, but before I could grasp it, the bandages tightened and forced his arms to his sides. Before my very eyes, his skin grew brittle and taut and deathly dry. I could not help but turn away and, in my cowardice, flee headlong into the night.
   I know not how I made it out of that warren of ancient tunnels, the workers long since having fled and my only light source lying abandoned on the ground at the feet of my dead friend. Perhaps the instinct for survival alone carried my tired body back to my apartment on K-- Street. I can tell you that I did not sleep at all that night, as my thoughts were focused entirely on the arrangements I must make to leave this benighted country on the morrow. The full horror and the burden of guilt did not wash over me until that dark hour which lurks in the shadowy spaces between midnight and dawn. Alone with only my thoughts, I fancied that I perceived a dull scratching on my chamber door. I attempted to dispel the notion, but the sound grew only more persistent, its terrifying reality intruding even on my fevered and terror-stricken mind. At last, in a misplaced attempt to assuage my fears, I went to the door and opened it.
   There stood Cuvier, wrapped in those ancient linens, his skin browned with naptha and pulled tight across his bones. It is his face that still haunts me - cracked and sunken, with hollow eye sockets that could only be sightless and yet seemed so terribly perceptive. His papery lips pulled back into an accusing sneer, revealing yellowed teeth and a black tongue. I slammed shut the door immediately, and pushed my steamer trunk in front of it as a barricade. The scratching at the door came again in earnest, quickly becoming an insistent rap, and then a pounding that echoed in my ears. Abandoning my earthly possessions, I made my egress through the shuttered window and went by barge that very night to the port, with the intent of catching a ship bound northward at first light.
   I write this account from within the walls of St. S-- Asylum for the Criminally Insane, in the hopes that someone might read my words and know that, while I did not kill Dr. August Cuvier, I most certainly do not hold myself blameless in the story of his death. If his mummified body is ever recovered, I pray that whosoever finds it has the sense not to touch the bandages. 

Today's Monster Monday is mummy wraps, a dangerous construct that takes the form of spell-inscribed linen bandages with the power to wrap themselves around their victims, embalming them and turning them into mummies. While the victim's companions are presumably trying to figure out how to hit the bandages without harming their friend, the mummy wraps can control their cohort like a puppet, attacking them with their body as the victim watches helplessly.

The above vignette is written in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, albeit with fewer wordy and tortuous digressions on substitution ciphers, the value of inference, and the details of 19th century Parisian police-work. Don't ask me why, it just seemed fitting. Call it a tribute to my first DM, who kept a volume of the complete works of Poe on his shelf and insisted that it was "good fucking literature for Dungeon Masters."

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Borovoi - Slavic Forest Spirits

Today's Monster Monday Tuesday is the borovoi, a Russian forest spirit, trickster, and caller of storms. Borovoi are giant fey creatures who rule over large stretches of forest. They delight in leading travelers astray and then demanding heavy ransoms for returning them to safety. When angered, they bring down the fury of a winter storm on their enemies, and summon forth the wolves and bears of the forest to tear them to pieces.

Illustration from 1906 cover of Leshy Magazine No1, via Wikimedia

A more common name for these beings is leshy or leshii, but that name is already taken by a group of monsters in Pathfinder - tiny, adorable little plant constructs that look like topiary fanart of Sackboy from Little Big Planet. Why the name of a badass, godlike giant Slavic forest trickster was given to a bunch of little leafy dudes is beyond me (probably someone needed a name so they just looked through a thesaurus instead of doing research or making something up). These diminutive construct 'leshys' (why not 'leshies' - as English linguistics would suggest - or 'leshiye' - a transliteration of the actual Russian plural?) show up a lot in Pathfinder: Ultimate Wilderness, which reminded me that I needed to stat up proper leshies. The name 'borovoi' - one of several alternate names for the leshy - means 'man of the forest'.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Qishilong, the Chinese Chimaera

Today's Monster Monday is the qishilong, a chimaera of Chinese mythical creatures that serves as a powerful guardian and master of the four elements. One head is that of the qilin (or kirin), the so-called 'Asian unicorn' which gallops through the air on flaming hooves. The second head is of the shishi, or guardian lion (also known as a foo-dog), omnipresent guardians of palaces and temples throughout East Asia. The third head is of a Chinese dragon, or long (imperial dragon).

The qishilong is not itself a being of Chinese mythology, merely a creation of my own inspired by Chinese mythology. Chimaeras are inherently weird, and it is pretty fun to come up with ideas for new types of them.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Giant Woodpecker

Today's Monster Monday is the giant woodpecker, and no this isn't my April Fools Day post. The giant woodpecker is a seven foot tall monster of a bird that uses its powerful beak to crack open the shells of the giant insects that roam nearly every fantasy campaign setting. But just as real, normal sized woodpeckers sometimes get a little too hungry and crack open the skulls of other birds to get at their tasty brains (yes, this is a thing that they do), giant woodpeckers will sometimes pin down and drill into larger prey, including humans.

I cranked that illustration out in about 2.5 hours, so sorry the human victim there looks more like a character from a bad mid-2000s webcomic than an actual human. I promise I can draw humans sometimes. But check out that rad woodpecker, huh? Beautiful plumage.

The inspiration for this monster came from two fronts. One: I was reading The Urban Bestiary by master birder Lyanda Lynn Haupt, and two: I was contemplating playing the Mouse Guard RPG. When those two trains of thought collided, I of course thought of how terrifying it would be to face a giant woodpecker in battle.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Gaming with Cats: A Guide to Life with Furry Dice-Thieves

If you are a cat owner and a gamer, you know that the fuzzy bundles of purr that we so enjoy can suddenly become agents of chaos on the tabletop. Whether they are playfully batting your dice away, chewing the sword arms off your minis, or sneaking a bite of pizza while everyone is distracted, cats can be a real nuisance at the tabletop. But they don't have to be!

Today is the five year anniversary of d20 Despot, and to celebrate it, I'll be co-writing this post with my lovely cat, Ishtar. Aside from stealing my dice and destroying my minis, she also loves to walk across my keyboard while I type and fall asleep on my reference books when I'm statting up monsters. Together, we will share some tips and tricks for keeping your cat at bay while your game is in session, and - if worse comes to worse - even integrating the cat's interference into the game with a new set of rigorously playtested rules for feline intervention.

Keeping Your Cat Away

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Which brings me to my next point:

Cat-Disaster Management

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