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: 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: 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: Sword Golem, a Thousand Angry Blades

Today's Monster Monday is the sword golem, a magically animated guardian that is forged, Iron Throne-style, out of thousands of swords. This noisy construct can slice and dice its way through any obstacle, launch individual swords at distant targets, blast groups of enemies with an explosion of blades, and even discorporate and transform its body into a wall of spinning swords. In short, this is a versatile monster that can provide a challenge to seasoned adventuring parties, and which fits in well in nearly any dungeon.

The origins of this monster lie in my childhood. I distinctly recall walking through the neighborhood at night and hearing loud scraping and clanking sounds coming from the neighbor's garage, like someone was shaking a sack full of scissors. Obviously, it was just the neighbor digging through his toolbox or something, but because it was dark out (I lived in a wooded area with no streetlights) and because I was young and easily spooked, I imagined a terrible monster whose body was made out of hundreds of swords and blades, all of them scraping rustily together as it moved. The image stuck with me somehow through the succeeding decades, eventually manifesting itself in this monster.

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

Monster Monday: Titanosaur, the Biggest Dinosaur Ever

Today's Monster Monday is the titanosaur, a mindbogglingly tremendous sauropod dinosaur. The titanosaurs were actually a group of many sauropod species, the largest of which were also the largest dinosaurs ever and the longest and heaviest land animals ever to walk the earth.

by ДиБгд, via Wikimedia

A life-restoration of the titanosaur ampelosaurus atacis, shown with spiky osteoderms along its spine

One of the cool things that makes titanosaurs stand out from your more well-known sauropods like brachiosaurus, diplodocus, or apatosaurus is that many titanosaurs had osteoderms - large bony plates embedded in their skin. These plates may have acted as additional armor for these already formidable beasts, and some (such as ampelosaurus, above) even had spikes. The ampelosaurus above shows a conservative distribution of osteoderms, but the diamentinasaurus illustrated below is depicted as rather more well-armored.

by T. Tischler, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, via Wikimedia

Life-restoration of diamentinasaurus matildae, showing one possible level of titanosaurid osteoderm distribution

What's in a name? Translating a real-world monster, whether mythological or real, into a fantasy world can be difficult, especially when they are saddled with a name that instantly ties them to our world. With many classic dinosaurs, this isn't so much of a problem. Household names like tyrannosaurus and velociraptor, while clearly grounded in our world's scientific Greco-Latin naming conventions, seem to fit in relatively easily to a fantasy world alongside dragons, chimerae, and basilisks. Equally interesting but more newly discovered animals often have names that stand out like a sore thumb, either because they are overly long and complicated or because they specifically reference a real-world name or place. Titanosaur names like argentinosaurus, aegyptosaurus, or isisaurus (named after the Indian Statistical Institute) do not lend themselves to a fantasy world's immersion.

The monster statted up below is an argentinosaurus, by many estimates the largest of the titanosaurs. I chose to call it, simply, titanosaur, a rather generic name which can cover many species (including the horse-sized magyarosaurus). Identifying this monster by its scientific clade is akin to naming the stat block for tyrannosaurus 'coelurosaur'. Still, I thought it was better than identifying it with the real-world nation of Argentina, or calling it 'titanosaurus', which, despite lending its name to the titanosaurids, is a much smaller titanosaur than argentinosaurus (13 tons compared to argentinosaurus' 70-100 tons) and is now usually considered to be a nomen dubium - a name or classification unsupported by current science.

Also, it is important to remember that paleoart is often minimalist, omitting many potential features of a dinosaur that are not preserved in the fossil record. More adventurous paleoartists like to go out on a limb with their reconstructions, giving them interesting features that, while not necessarily supported by the fossil record, are also not disproven by the fossil record and thus may rest within the realm of possibility (I call this the Air Bud approach to paleoart, i.e. "There's no rule saying dogs can't play basketball"). This type of paleoart emphasizes naturalism, showing prehistoric animals in all the variety of coloration, integument, and behavior as other animals we are more familiar with. This often breathes new life into depictions of prehistoric animals, and generates renewed public interest in paleoart. With that in mind, here is another titanosaur illustration that would certainly make an impression in a fantasy world.

by Danny Cicchetti, via Wikimedia

A be-striped, be-quilled, and be-dewlapped life-restoration of the titanosaur overosaurus paradasorum

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

Monster Monday: Hellmouth, the Gateway Monster

Today's Monster Monday is the hellmouth, a tremendous beast whose very mouth is a gateway to Hell (as you may have guessed from the name). Hellmouths were a motif in medieval art that tended to result in some pretty metal images, as in this detail from an icon showing a black hellmouth swallowing a bunch of damned souls, who are also simultaneously being roasted in flame, tortured by devils, and/or attacked by snakes:

Hellmouth, via Wikimedia

As it is statted up below, the hellmouth is not a monster the GM should use lightly. It is always important, when designing encounters, to take into account what might happen if one or more of the characters succumbs to the monster's powerful abilities. You don't want to throw a medusa at your players if you aren't prepared to spend some time with one or more of them petrified. Just so, you don't want to throw a hellmouth at your players if you aren't prepared to spend the rest of the session with half the part stuck in Hell. The hellmouth is best used when necessary as part of the story, rather than as a random encounter. That said, suddenly having to improvise a rescue mission to get your bard out of Hell sounds like a pretty fun session.

The hellmouth does not have to be a potential campaign derailer. If you aren't ready to randomly throw some of the PC into a screaming torture-dimension, the hellmouth can suppress its throat-gate, allowing it to simply swallow folks into its flaming stomach. It is also designed to act as a living infernal siege engine, launching flaming boulders at distant targets and calling in reinforcements from Hell.

By the way, I've decided to start giving some adventure hooks below each monster, so even if you don't feel like reading a stat block, scroll down for dem sweet hooks.

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

Monster Monday: Colossal Octopus, Tentacle of the Deep

Today's Monster Monday (apologies for missing last week's post) is the colossal octopus, a tremendous being from the inky black depths of the sea, larger even than the legendary kraken. This being is a force of nature; a terror to shipping and to coastal communities.

Drawing by Pierre Dénys de Montfort, via Wikimedia

The kraken is a threat thanks not only to its immense size but also to its cunning (Int 21, Wis 20) and its innate magic. The colossal octopus, on the other hand, is a wholly non-magical animal, but nonetheless a true monster of the seas. With eight tentacle attacks and a powerful bite, this beast is built to take on a whole ship full of adventurers. It clocks in at Challenge Rating 13, which means it is an accessible opponent for more adventuring parties than the CR 18 kraken. The description also includes rules for hacking off its tentacles individually, because how could there not be? I'm actually kind of baffled by how the tentacle chopping that was a part of the kraken's stat block in D&D 3.5 disappeared in the Pathfinder version.

Back in the days of the Enlightenment, as humankind's approach to studying the natural world transitioned from the natural philosophy of earlier times to the more rigorous scientific method, both the kraken and the gigantic octopus were occasionally considered to be real creatures. Carl Linnaeus, the father of the modern taxonomy himself, included the kraken (under the scientific name Microcosmus marinus) in the first edition of Systema Naturae, published in 1735. The French naturalist Pierre Dénys de Montfort included both the kraken and what he described as the larger "poulpe colossal" (colossal octopus) in his 1802 work, Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques.

Drawing by Pierre Dénys de Montfort, via Wikimedia

These vestiges of myth and legend were soon scrubbed from scientific literature due to a lack of evidence, but it is worth noting why they ever made it to those pages in the first place. While we may take for granted that creatures like the colossal octopus are pure myth, early naturalists did not have the luxury of such certainty, especially when it came to the mysterious ocean depths. Naturalists used not only their own observations in their descriptions of the natural world, but also reports from others, studiously collecting and analyzing eyewitness accounts, local legends, and the writings of their ancient and medieval fore-bearers. The kraken and colossal octopus were represented in those sources just as the real monsters of the deep were; the fact that the immense carcasses of the otherwise unbelievable giant squid and blue whale occasionally washed ashore only served to lend credence to the idea that these other abyssal titans might exist somewhere out there in the unplumbed depths of the boundless ocean.

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

Monster Monday: Redwood Treant, Titan of the Forest

Today's Monster Monday is the redwood treant, a mighty tree creature so large that it tears up the earth with its footprints, so thick that fire struggles to penetrate to its wooden core, and so ancient that it considers elves to be young upstarts.  Just as redwoods are to regular evergreens, so redwood treants are to normal treants: more extreme in every dimension.

The mighty redwood

The redwood treant has been on my backburner for a while now (I mentioned them in my introduction to Guns of the Western Kings back in 2014), but I was inspired to bring them to life during a recent trip to the California redwoods.  All photos in this article are from this trip which I took earlier in May; in some of them, such as the one above, my wife provides a helpful reminder of the scale of these immense giants.

One of the abilities of the redwood treant is that its footprints create an area of difficult terrain, meaning its very movement can change the nature of the battlefield.  This ability was inspired from in-the-field observations of fallen redwoods and the huge pits their root structure left when they toppled over.  You can see the size of a redwood treant's 'foot' in the image below - try to imagine a battle where every blow the enemy dealt was made with gnarled feet of that size!

Speaking of gnarled, a redwood's incredible longevity and resistance to stress manifests itself physically in odd deformations.  These scars occur when a redwood survives a particularly stressful event like a forest fire, infection, or intense storm.  Sometimes it can look like the bark of the tree boiled and began to flow off, other times a scar can take the form of a huge burl the size of a small car.  They can even result in beautiful, almost sculptural figures emerging from the trunk.  An ancient redwood treant, the veteran of many battles for the survival of its wood, would likely have several such scars, making each one distinctive and characterful.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 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: Living Grimoire, the Animated Spellbook

"That's no librarian," Jhonto whispered, gesturing with the point of his blade at the brown-robed figure slouched over the writing desk, steadily scribbling away at a tremendous manuscript.  "No one's set foot in this library for a century."

"I didn't mean... it could be a, like, librarian golem.  Or undead.  Or just a really old wizard.  I'm just saying, it couldn't hurt to ask."

"It can always hurt to ask," Jhonto muttered.  But looking around, it was clear that the party had already decided.  As the party's face, it was his responsibility.  He took a tentative step toward the desk and cleared his throat.

"Shhhhhh!"  The librarian didn't even look up from its book.

He tried again, taking two more confident steps forward.  "Excuse me, I was wonderi-"

"SHHHHHH!"  The librarian looked up, one skeletal finger pressed against its lipless mouth, glowing yellow lights burning in its cracked eyesockets.  In a rush of air, the skeletal monk and his desk and the bookshelves and Jhonto's companions all disappeared.  Jhonto clasped his head and stifled the urge to vomit - that queasy feeling he got every time he teleported.  The only light now came from his glowing sword, its pale blue nimbus flickering across the spines of hundreds of dusty tomes and scroll cases.  So he was still somewhere in the library.

"Guys?" he gave an exploratory shout.  Then louder: "GUYS?"  No response.  "All right, I guess I'm on my own then.  Just you and me, Nightcleaver."  He flicked his sword lightly through the air as if it were responding to him.  A glimmer of reflected light caught his eye.  One of the books was bound in silver with inset gems.  "Is this...  Did that crusty old librarian send me to the right place after all?"  He reached out for the book, but just as his finger brushed the spine, it shot off the shelf, its ornate cover flapping like the most awkward pair of wings.  Reams of yellowing paper - seemingly more than the book contained - flew out of the book and swirled about it in a whirlwind, expanding to engulf Jhonto.  The paper edges cut at his face and hands like knives.  The book was glowing from within now, brighter than Nightcleaver.  Abruptly, it turned to face Jhonto and opened to a specific page.  Swirling orange runes lifted off the page and hovered in the air before exploding in a blast of force that knocked Jhonto back against a stack, sending lesser scrolls showering off the top shelf.

"Oh, your gonna get it now, book!"  Staggering to his feet, he clasped his amulet and thrust it forward.  Seven glowing pink missiles shot out, arcing toward the hovering book, but seven floating sheets of paper moved automatically to block them.  "What the... Oh come on!"  He squared himself, took Nightcleaver in both hands, and charged the book.  It blasted him with a spray of clashing magical colors, but he ploughed through, bursting into the storm of swirling pages and cleaving into the offending tome.

When the rest of the party found him, he was fire-scorched and bleeding from a hundred shallow cuts, hunched in the middle of a mess of old papers, his sword thrust clean through a bejeweled grimoire.  The ruined shelves around him, blasted apart with countless spells, spoke of a long and furious battle, but all he said when they appeared was, "Couldn't hurt to ask, huh?"

Today's Monster Monday is the living grimoire, an animated spellbook that flies in a swirling cloud of paper and unleashes the spells inscribed on its pages.  Included below is an example Caster Level 1 living grimoire, along with rules for creating any living grimoire from Caster Level 1 to 20.

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: Glacioth, the Ice Mammoth

Every year since the wall of ice collapsed, the mammoths had come south through Eagle Pass at first snow.  Kennetwe had been the first to notice this, and so Kennetwe had been given the honor of leading the hunt ever since.  No longer did the Arokatcha eke out a living eating boiled roots and trading black squirrel pelts to the neighboring tribes.  Thanks to Kennetwe (and the melting ice), they grew fat on slabs of mammoth meat, grew strong defending the pass from their jealous neighbors, and grew rich trading ivory and hides to the River Cities.  

It was on one such trade expedition last summer, in the walled city or Urtalik, that Kennetwe had found the magic spear.  Crouching behind the grassy hummock and waiting for the other hunters to catch up to him, he admired the fine prize that he had traded five great tusks for.  The haft was made of a pale wood that looked almost like bone.  The spear head was broad and never needed sharpening.  Silver lightning bolts ran down either side of the head, framing a seated human figure that the Urtalikan had claimed was a god named Banatu.  At the time, Kennetwe had laughed - the gods do not take the shape of man! - but now he was convinced.  The spear crackled with power whenever he hefted it.  When he cast it, it flew straight and true, and badly scorched whatever it hit.  He was eager to try it on a mammoth.

Kennetwe readied the spear as the other hunters arrived.  He motioned them to follow, then leapt over the hummock down into the dry stream bed which ran with fast melt-water in the spring.  They advanced silently up the natural path, using the high banks as cover.  Mammoths spooked easily at the sight of man, and spooked mammoths would do no one any good.  The scent of mammoth was strong when they neared the killing field.  Stronger than ever.  This might be Kennetwe's most successful hunt yet.  He peered over the stream bank and his stomach sank.  The field was full of mammoths, all right.  Dead mammoths.  

He clambered out of the stream bed, the other hunters following.  A whole herd of female mammoths and their yearlings lay dead between the stream and the cliffs.  Did Tartakan hunters dare penetrate so deeply into Arokatcha territory?  Impossible.  Besides, there were no spears broken off in the mammoths.  No meat had been cut from their bodies, no tusks removed.  Kennetwe examined the closest mammoth.  It has been gored through its flank multiple times.  Its meat was cold and frosty.  A younger mammoth lay nearby, trampled to death by something very heavy.  

A trumpeting call ripped through the air, and the ground rumbled ominously.  Kennetwe looked up from the carnage.  A huge mammoth like none he had ever seen charged down the slope at them.  Its shaggy fur was white, and its skin was tinted blue like a frozen lake.  Its mighty tusks were made not of ivory but of ice, still dripping with blood and gore from the mammoths it had killed.  Four young hunters rushed in from the side and cast their throwing spears.  The brazen move would take down an aurochs but would be foolhardy in a mammoth hunt and was suicide against this beast.  The creature rounded on the boys and let loose a blast from its trunk.  A spray of ice crystals ripped into the first-year hunters, freezing them dead in their tracks.

Spears and arrows rained down on the beast from more cautious hunters taking cover behind dead mammoths.  Few found purchase in the monster's thick hide.  The white mammoth charged a pair of archers and skewered one on its icy tusk.  The archer's aborted scream hung in the air like a cloud.  This devil of a mammoth would not just end the hunt, it could end the whole Arokatcha tribe.  Kennetwe stepped up onto the corpse of a mammoth and belted out a war cry.  The white mammoth turned to him, snorted, and started to charge.  

He hefted the spear in his hand.  "Banatu, strike down this monster!"  The hairs on his arms stood on end as the spear trembled with power.  The white mammoth bore down on him, shaking the earth with every step.  Kennetwe took aim between the beast's eyes and let the spear fly.  

Today's Monster Monday is the glacioth, a snow-white mammoth with icicles for tusks that blasts cones of frost out of its trunk.  It's like a cross between a mammoth and a yeti, basically.

Whether you are running an ice age campaign (as I one day hope to do) or your party is venturing through the frigid northlands, a glacioth makes for a challenging foe.  It not only brings the power of a mammoth to bear, but also magical ice attacks.  Glacioths also make suitable mounts for yetis and frost giants or weapons of war for northern kingdoms.

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

Monster Monday: Ketos, Sea Monster of Divine Retribution

Today's Monster Monday is the ketos, an ancient sea monster from Greek and Biblical mythology.  This is the monster that Poseidon sent to eat Andromeda, and that Perseus petrified with Medusa’s severed head.  The ketos is also frequently shown as the sea monster that swallowed Jonah in late classical and medieval depictions of the story.  In both cases, it is a monster sent by a deity to punish the impious by eating someone.

Andromeda liberata da Perseo by Piero di Cosimo, via Wikimedia

Herakles, appropriating the myth of Perseus and Andromeda, apparently also rescued a princess from a ketos, doing so in true herculean fashion by leaping into its mouth and slaying it from within.  In 58 BC, the Romans put the bones of what they believed to be the ketos that Perseus slew on display during gladiatorial games.  The bones were described as “forty feet long, with ribs taller than an Indian elephant, and spines eighteen inches thick.” 

Image ©Peter on flikr

"Hercules Slays the Ketos" from vase painting in Athens, Stavros S Niarchos Collection.

Many medieval depictions of the inside of the whale emphasize its overwhelming heat, to the point where at least one such depiction has Jonah going bald from the heat.  In a late tenth century tale recounted by the French monk Letaldus, with parallels to the story of Jonah, a fisherman named Within is swallowed by a great whale and kills the whale by setting his boat on fire and attacking the creature’s insides with his sword.  After four days and five nights, he is washed up in the whale's carcass and emerges hairless.  The whale that swallows Within is likened to Scylla and Charybdis, and described “with snake-like teeth and with an ever gaping gullet, a gullet that could tumble entire cities to the underworld.”  

Photo by wmpearl, via Wikimedia

Jonah Cast Up, 280-290 CE, marble, late Roman, Asia Minor, Cleveland Museum of Art

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Argonaut - Giant Ship-Killing Nautilus Used as a Living Submarine

Today's Monster Monday is the argonaut, a species of gargantuan nautilus that hunts the vast ocean depths, preying on whales, sea-serpents, and even ships.  Some aquatic races have even learned to control these mighty beasts, modifying the empty chambers of their shells and using the creatures as living submarines.

Photo: Manuae via Wikimedia

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday Friday: Spinosaurus, the Aquatic Predator

It's not Monday yet, but I just read some new findings about Spinosaurus that place it squarely in the 'aquatic predator' camp, not the 'run at you T-Rex style' camp, mainly because Spinosaurus probably couldn't run.  You know how excited I get about prehistoric stuff.

Art: Davide Bonadonna, National Geographic, via Smithsonian.com

Obviously, I had to modify the existing stat block for Spinosaurus to take these new findings into account.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. It is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars, based on material published in Pathfinder Bestiary 3 © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Jesse Benner, Jason Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, James Jacobs, Michael Kenway, Rob McCreary, Patrick Renie, Chris Sims, F. Wesley Schneider, James L. Sutter, and Russ Taylor, in turn based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.

Monster Monday: Tsuchigumo, Spider-Legged Tiger Demon

Today's Monster Monday entry is the Tsuchigumo, a truly frightening Japanese monster with the body of a tiger, the legs of a spider, and the head of a demon.  They eat people - no big surprise there.  They also use an array of magical powers and their innate shape-changing ability to lure and/or confuse their prey.  Also, they are full of skulls.

Just... no.  Not okay.

Monster Monday: Krampus, the Christmas Demon

Merry Christmas, everyone!  In the spirit of the season, I have decided to stat up Krampus, the evil being of Germanic Christmas folklore who accompanies Santa and punishes bad little children by beating them with a birch switch, stuffing them in a sack, and carrying them back to his lair to eat them.  Wow, don't be naughty in Germany, kids.  Plus, I have statted up perchten, the minions of Krampus.

As an added Krampusnacht bonus, I am writing this post from Germany!

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

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Monster Monday: Gegenes, the Six-Armed Giant

Today's Monster Monday entry is the gegenes, a six-armed giant that packs powerful punches in its many limbs, scales cliffs with ease, and throws over-sized rocks at its enemies.

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