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: 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: 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.

Monster Monday: Herne, the Wild Huntsman

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,

Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;

And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,

And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain

In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know

The superstitious idle-headed eld

Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.

                 - William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

Today's Monster Monday is Herne, king of the Wild Hunt.  This ethereal huntsman rides his trusty steed through the woods accompanied by a far-seeing owl and two noble hunting dogs.  His motives are a mystery, but tales of this lonesome rider who hunts across the realms of men and fey have spread far and wide.

The tale of Herne the Hunter is first attested in William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (quoted above) which tells of a ghostly huntsman who haunts a particular oak.  The story may originate in the execution of a poacher named Richard Horne during the time of King Henry VIII.  The legend of Herne was expanded upon in Harrison Ainsworth's 1843 novel Windsor Castle, whence comes the illustration below.

Illustration of Herne the Hunter by George Cruikshank, via Wikimedia

Therein, Herne is described as:

a wild spectral-looking object, possessing some slight resemblance to humanity, and habited, so far as it could be determined, in the skins of deer, strangely disposed about its gaunt and tawny-coloured limbs. On its head was seen a sort of helmet, formed of the skull of a stag, from which branched a large pair of antlers; from its left arm hung a heavy and rusty-looking chain, in the links of which burnt the phosphoric fire before mentioned; while on its right wrist was perched a large horned owl, with feathers erected, and red staring eyes.

Some have tried to find the origins of the Herne story in the Celtic god Cernunnos.  While both Cernunnos and Herne are antlered huntsman, it seems to me a bit of a stretch to assume that a story first attested in 1597 has its origins in a god not worshipped there for 1000 years.  Nevertheless, it makes for a pretty rad monster.

Herne is a whole combat encounter rolled into one monster, mostly because he is never without his two loyal hounds, his noble steed, and his enigmatic owl.  These ethereal beasts are treated in essentially the same way as a druid's animal companion; the herne is considered a 15th level druid for the purposes of his hunting companions, with those 15 levels divided up between the horse, dogs, and owl.  So when a party fights the herne, they are actually fighting five individual creatures.  Check out the dauntingly long stat block below.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Qiongqi, the Flying Tiger

The journey to the Mouth of the East had been grueling.  Dry wind beat against their face wraps, stinging cracked lips and nearly blinding the camels.  It blew night and day, growing stronger the closer they got to the Mouth, a narrow pass between two towering mountains.  By the end, they couldn't even pitch their tents for shelter - one man who tried was blown away, clinging to a scrap of oil cloth, never seen again.  As soon as they made it through the Mouth, the silence was deafening.  It took an hour for Anachi's ears to adjust and for feeling to return to her wind-beaten face and hands.  She pulled down her face wrap and let the sun wash over her, relishing the steady desert heat that she knew from experience she would soon be cursing.

Then the stench of the camels hit her.  She wrinkled her nose and drew the wrap back over her face.  "Jashan, I am going aloft.  You have command of the caravan until I return."

"Yes, my lady."  Jashan patted the talwar at his hip and brought his camel to the head of the line.

Anachi reined hers to a stop and slid off.  She unrolled a carpet that had been wrapped in canvas and draped across her camel's back.  After some consideration, she also drew forth a small chest of purple heartwood, bound in silver.  This she fastened to the carpet with four delicate chains running through brass rings punched through the rear third of the carpet.  Finally, she placed a rectangular mask over her eyes, plates of rock crystal fitted into the narrow eye-slits.  She sat cross-legged in the center of the carpet and bade it rise into the air.

The dry desert stretched out below her, bound by the Copper Teeth mountains to the north and the mighty Ranbalahs far to the south.  She flew ahead of her caravan, looking for signs of the seasonal stream that would be their first water stop.  Out of nowhere, a blast of wind nearly threw her off her carpet.  She tightly clung to the front tassels as it rolled madly in the air, struggling to right itself and rapidly losing altitude.  Once her stomach returned to its proper place, Anachi began to tug at the carpet with experienced hands, coaxing it into a level flight path just as a shadow passed over her.  In a flurry of feathers, fur, and claws, the huge beast brought her and her carpet down hard against a red sand dune.

A mighty tiger's head was peering down at her, white and orange, with intricate swirls of deep purple between its black stripes.  Long yellow tendrils trailed away from its blue nose and its thick brows.  Harsh sunlight shone through a pair of tremendous white wings with pinion feathers longer than Anachi's arm.  "None may pass through my desert without paying tribute," the tiger growled.  "This carpet will do nicely, I think, and the chest.  And four of your camels."

"Camels?  What camels?" she bluffed.  A stupid bluff, but she had not yet recovered from the tumble and the fall.

"Is that not your caravan back towards the Mouth?"

"Ah, of course.  But," she changed the subject, "you do not want this carpet."

"It is magic," the beast boomed.  "And pretty."

Both were true, although the Tazhenti designs in orange and blue were faded from the carpet's overuse.  "Without the carpet, I will not be able to find water for my caravan.  We will all die."  This was only a partial lie; Anachi knew the locations of the desert wells, oases, and streams, though the ever-shifting sands made navigating to them difficult without seeing them from the air.

"I could just kill you all and take everything for myself."  The beast lowered its face, its hot breath seeping through Anachi's face wrap.

Anachi lifted her flight mask and met the beast's eyes.  "Hardly likely.  If you eat a whole caravan, no one else will pass through here until a brigade of Gaori soldiers comes to kill you.  And anyways, this is a flying carpet.  You can already fly."

"It is still pretty.  I will lay on it."

"Unlikely.  You wouldn't fit."

The tiger lifted its plate-sized paw off the carpet and began taking mental measurements.

"In any case, it's clear that the carpet is worth more to me than it is to you, so let's take a different tack, shall we?  I'll give you six camels, plus a basket full of-"

"What is in the chest?  Something magic.  I'll take that."  He nudged past her and sniffed at the box still chained to the rear of the carpet.  "And the six camels."

Anachi put a firm hand down on the lid.  "This is a royal gift from the Shaltana of Bayman to the Court of the Blue Emperor!  It is worth more than goods of seven caravans seven times the length of mine!"

The beast sat back on its haunches and folded its wings.  "I will have it."

"But-"

"I will have it or I will kill the lot of you and have it anyways, and damn the Gaori soldiers."

"But-"

"And you can keep your smelly camels."

Anachi looked at the creature's teeth and claws, then at the silver-bound chest, then back at the creature.  Silently, she drew a key from a thong around her neck, undid the chains, and unlocked the chest.  From within, she produced a hunk of white jade the size of an ostrich egg, polished smooth and snaked all over with gilded sigils, glittering in the sunlight.  Reluctantly she held it out to the beast.  It sniffed the stone smugly, then clutched it to its furry breast with one massive paw and leapt up into the air.  It beat its wings once, twice, thrice, and was gone.

Jashan leapt off the back of his camel and slid expertly down the side of the sand dune to come to a stop at Anachi's side, gleaming talwar clasped in one hand.  "My lady.  Are you hurt?"

Anachi could no longer mask her broad smile.  "Jashan, I have bought our safe passage.  I gave my teleportation stone to the qiongqi!"

Jashan looked at his mistress as if he were examining her for signs of heat stroke.

"You still have yours, right?" she asked, ignoring his unspoken questions.

The tall black-skinned man shrugged off his pack and pulled out a gilded stone identical to the one Anachi had just traded away.  "My lady, I'm afraid I don't follow..."

"When we get to Char Gao, we can hire a band of adventurers and teleport right into the monster's treasure hoard.  We're rich, Jashan!  Well, richer."

~~~~

Today's Monster Monday is the qiongqi (pronounced chyong-chi), a flying magical tiger that loves to ambush caravans and hoard treasure.  It comes to us from the Shan Hai Jing - The Classic of Mountains and Seas - a Chinese text from the 4th century BC that is full of accounts of fabulous beasts and peoples.

Composite from two photographs

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Vampiric Treant, a Sap-Sucking Fiend

Today's Monster Monday is the vampiric treant, a ghostly white walking tree that sucks the life out of its enemies with its long, probing roots.  Vampiric treants can lay waste to large stretches of forest, and drain the blood of any who would stand in their way.

It may surprise you to know that this monster is based (loosely) on a real type of tree.  A rare mutation in Sequoia sempervirens (the coast redwood) renders the tree unable to produce chlorophyll, resulting in an albino redwood.  Albino redwoods have white or pale yellow needles, giving them a ghostly appearance in the forest.  Unable to sustain themselves through photosynthesis, they become parasites, their root systems tapping into the xylem and phloem of other trees and leeching off their sweet, sweet sugars.

via Wikimedia

Albino redwood needles

It didn't take much of a leap to turn this fascinating natural aberration into a monster idea.  A treant that sucks the life out of other trees could make an interesting dilemma for a nature-loving druid or ranger: does this creature represent a threat to nature, or is its existence a part of the natural order?  This monster is also a good one to throw in when the GM wants to show that something is 'off' or threatening about a forest.

via Wikimedia

An albino redwood in the wild

Before you grab your torches and axes and go running off into Humboldt Redwoods State Park to kill some vampire trees, you should know that real life albino redwoods are not nearly as dangerous as the vampiric treants presented below.  Aside from the obvious (they can't walk, they don't suck human blood), these parasitic trees don't actually seem to harm their hosts all that much.  In fact, it has been suggested that albino redwoods actually filter toxic heavy metals out of the soil, making it safer for the other redwoods in the grove.  Only about 400 albino redwoods are known, and their locations are generally not made known to the public so that they are not accidentally damaged or killed by overzealous visitors.  If you encounter one in the wild, be careful not to trample its delicate root system or do anything that might harm it or its connection to the other trees in the area.

Of course, if you encounter one on the tabletop, you know what to do: axes, torches, etc.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Halloween Monster Monday: Spindles, Gaunt Humanoids with an Insatiable Appetite

Today's Monster Monday is the spindle, a carnivorous humanoid with an insatiable gut.  There are two types of spindles: civilized spindles are able to pass as human by clouding the perceptions of those around them, while feral spindles gallop freely on their four legs, chasing down and swallowing humans with their unhinging jaws.

Spindles are the brainchild of Jane Kelly, long-time friend of the site (and contributor to my favorite April Fool's post thus far), who basically spends all her free time creating characters, worlds, and stories.  The inspiration for spindles came from a creepy ball-jointed doll that had an oddly extended pelvis and four human legs.  This concept changed over time so that spindles could relatively convincingly pass as human; one of her characters, Maude, is a chain-smoking spindle who works at the deli counter of a grocery store so she can snack on raw meat.  A few years ago I statted up both the original centauroid spindle and the civilized spindle for Jane's birthday, and now I'm sharing these legitimately creepy monsters with you for Halloween!

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Glatisant, the Arthurian Questing Beast

Today's Monster Monday entry is the glatisant, a strange, chimæric beast of Arthurian legend.  Born of an incestuous union and symbolic of corrupting evil, slaying this beast is often the object of a knight errant's quest.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.