Monster Monday: Giant Camel and Two-Humped Camel

Today's Monster Monday is a twofer: both the two-humped camel and the giant camel, two sure-footed pack-animals specialized at living in harsh conditions.

Tang-Dynasty model of a Sogdian riding a camel, via Wikimedia
Modern camels aren't as big as that tiny rider makes this one look, but the scale is about right for someone riding a
prehistoric giant camel like titanotylopus. Also, the rider looks like a lawn gnome, which amuses me.

The two-humped camel is more commonly known as the Bactrian camel, but Bactria is a real place on Earth, so that name is probably not suitable for most fantasy campaign settings. The one-humped dromedary or Arabian camel has already been statted up, but I felt the need to stat up their hardier, stronger, and more wide-ranging two-humped cousins as well. Two-humped camels have higher Strength and Constitution scores, making them ideal for hauling heavier loads in harsher environments than dromedaries, and also making them more formidable in a fight - both of which are characteristics that adventurers in camel-country might want to look for in their mounts and pack animals.

Bactrian camels resting in Jiayu Pass, by Emcc83, via Wikimedia

Prehistoric North America was home to many species of camel, including the gigantic megacamelus, titanotylopus, and gigantocamelus (those last two are considered by some paleontologists to be the same). These giant camels could be roughly 12 feet high and weighed over 5,000 pounds, making them about twice the size of the largest modern camels. In your campaign, giant camels might be employed by wealthy merchants to ship large quantities of goods across the desert, or they might be ridden by desert giant warriors. They could even be used as fighting platforms similar to war-elephants; imagine a giant camel draped in scale barding armor, with two archers firing from its back and two pikemen fighting from armored baskets hanging on either side of the beast.

(Don't forget to check out the encounter ideas and adventure hooks for these camels below the stat blocks!)

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: Asag, the Rock Demon

Today's Monster Monday is the asag, a rock demon of Sumerian mythology that could wake the very stones of the earth and add them to his army.

The Asag (á-sàg, meaning 'disorder'), appears as an antagonist in the ancient Sumerian story lugal-e, also known as Ninurta's Exploits.  Asag is a hideous creature of rock chosen as the champion to lead the Mountains in revolt against the Plains.  He has sex with the mountains to produce an army of rocks, which he uses to destroy the cities and creatures of the plains.  When the gods receive word of Asag's campaign of destruction, they select Ninurta - god of thunderstorms, floods, and war - to defeat him.  Ninurta sends his magic talking and flying mace, Sharur (the earliest legendary weapon preserved in myth) to scout out the situation, and Sharur reports back that Asag is a foe beyond even the might of Ninurta.  Not to be discouraged, Ninurta goes to face Asag anyways.  Asag pelts him with stones, delivers mighty blows that cut deep furrows into the earth, uproots forests, and assails Ninurta with landslides, forcing the storm god to retreat.

With their mightiest champion defeated, the gods despair.  The cities of the plains lie open to assault by the hideous Asag, whose very presence causes fish to boil alive in their ponds, and his army of unstoppable stone progeny.  Sharur flies off for one last desperate consultation with Ninurta's father, the god Enlil.  Enlil suggests that Ninurta soften Asag up with a divine rainstorm.  Ninurta turns the full power of his storm on Asag and just barely manages to hold him off while the hard rains do their work.  Finally, Asag's body is softened enough that Ninurta can drive his spear into it.  He strikes Asag right in the family jewels, delivering a mortal wound and taking away the demon's ability to produce more rocky offspring.

With the revolt of the mountains finally crushed, Ninurta orders the stones of the earth, punishing the rocks that were most loyal to Ninurta (like basalt, which is sentenced to become molds for goldsmiths, and limestone, which must be used as foundations for buildings on muddy ground), and rewarding those rocks which remained neutral (like lapis lazuli, which would be valued and used in art and dyes, or diorite, which would be turned into statues of kings and gods).  Finally, he tames the wild streams of the mountains and causes them to flow down into the lowlands and irrigate the fields, filling canals made with the rocks that were Asag's children.

The asag I have statted up below might not pose a challenge for the mighty Ninurta, but it should definitely make for an interesting battle for a group of seasoned adventurers.  With spell-like abilities like wall of stone, expeditious excavation, transmute rock to mud, and spike stones, the asag can define the area of battle and shape it to the adventurers' disadvantage.  And because it can awaken nearby rocks as earth elementals at will, it will always have an army of rocks to do its bidding and run interference for it while it softens up the adventurers from behind with thrown rocks and stone call.

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

Monster Monday: Cave Drake, the Bat Dragon

Today's Monster Monday is the cave drake, a bat-like dragon with a deafening sonic breath weapon.

Excerpt from Drakes & Wyverns: A Study of Dragon-Kind's Lesser Cousins by Lord Jacobus Harweldt:
"But of the many species of drake, none can be considered more vexing to herdsman of this region than the cave drake, or 'bat dragon' as it is erroneously called by those less well-versed in dragonology.  The cave drake is unusual for living deep underground but emerging to hunt on the surface at night.  Its pitch-black scales make it quite difficult for watchmen to spot, giving it easy access to sleeping herds.  It seems to have no need of light, preferring to strike dark fields on moonless nights.  While darkvision may account for some of its nocturnal acuity, I believe it is able to navigate and locate prey through sound, rather like a bat.  Having been given the rare opportunity to study a cave drake cadaver, I can testify that the drake's external ear-like structures not only resemble a bat's ears, but when comparing their ear canals to those of a giant bat (specially procured for this very purpose), a number of striking similarities bear mentioning...
...Those adventurers who finally entered its lair described it to me as a foul charnel house.  The floor, they said, was littered with partial cow and sheep carcasses in various states of decay and consumption.  It appears that this cave drake had staked out such an ideal hunting ground that it could afford to eat only the choicest parts of its prey, leaving the rest to rot.  It was the presence of such a large concentration of decaying flesh that must surely account for the adventurers' encounters with unusually large amounts of  vicious subterranean scavengers on their way into the cave.  This certainly aids the cave drake in the defense of its lair, helping to ensure that it is not discovered by spelunkers during the day while it slumbers, though how much of this is pure accident and how much the cunning of this draconic beast remains up for debate."

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