Monster Monday: Holly King, Protector of the Winter Wood

Today's Monster Monday is the holly king, winter's answer to the verdant green man of spring. The holly king is a man of twisted holly wood with a cloak and crown of spiny leaves and red berries. Squirrels and small birds flit about him, taking shelter among his branches. Travelers finding themselves lost in the wilderness may receive aid from a holly king, but those who despoil the wilderness or abuse the forest's hospitality will find themselves on the receiving end of a holly king's druidic wrath.

photo by Erich Ferdinand, 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: Caladrius, the Healing Bird

NOTE: d20 Despot is on vacation!  While I'm off on my own adventure, please enjoy some magical birds!  This week we have the Caladrius, a healing bird from European myth.  Next week we will have the hexcrow, a witchy corvid.

Today's Monster Monday is the caladrius, a pure white bird with the power to heal the sick.  The caladrius makes an excellent Improved Familiar for a benevolent spellcaster, but it is also highly sought-after by the unscrupulous and the desperate.  The caladrius does not just heal sickness - it takes another's sickness on itself.  For this reason, the caladrius will not usually heal those with a fatal illness, for the caladrius itself would die.

The caladrius is first mentioned by the Roman author Plutarch, who said:

we know how often those who suffer from jaundice are healed by looking at the bird charadrius. This small animal seems to be endowed with such a nature and character, that it violently attracts to itself the disease, which slips out of the body of the sick man into its own, and draws off from his eyes as it were a stream of moisture. And this is the reason why the charadrius cannot endure to look at jaundiced persons nor help them at all, but turns itself away with closed eyes; not because it grudges the use of the remedy which is sought from it, as some consider, but because it might be wounded as by a blow.

The magical bird remained a popular inclusion in medieval bestiaries, where it was used as a Christ analogue (medieval bestiaries tended to view any animal as a metaphor for either Satan or Jesus, except the bonnacon).  According to the Aberdeen Bestiary:

The bird called caladrius, as Physiologus tells us, is white all over; it has no black parts. Its excrement cures cataract in the eyes. It is to be found in royal residences. If anyone is sick, he will learn from the caladrius if he is to live or die. If, therefore, a man's illness is fatal, the caladrius will turn its head away from the sick man as soon as it sees him, and everyone knows that the man is going to die. But if the man's sickness is one from which he will recover, the bird looks him in the face and takes the entire illness upon itself; it flies up into the air, towards the sun, burns off the sickness and scatters it, and the sick man is cured. 

Other bestiaries say that the caladrius' bone marrow, not its poop, cures blindness.  I decided to go with that one.

Caladrius - Bestiary, Royal MS 12 C XIX; 1200-1210, via Wikimedia

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: Green Man, Guardian of Wood and Field

Today's Monster Monday is the green man, a powerful plant spirit from European folk mythology.  The green man acts as a guardian of nature and a protector of communities that show proper respect to the wilds, but also as an avenger against those who despoil the wilderness and threaten his sacred groves.

via Wikimedia

Unlike most other nature spirits - such as dryads and nymphs - a green man does not avoid human settlements, and in fact it is not uncommon to see a green man visiting a rural planting festival to bless the year's crops.  But for all his tolerance of humanity, a green man's wrath is to be feared like none other.  He commands a withering array of plant magics capable of turning the whole forest against any who cross him.

via Wikimedia

The green man is a common decorative motif, especially in the British Isles.  Its origins remain uncertain, but many have attempted to connect it back to pre-Christian beliefs and nature deities like Pan and Silvanus.  Others have seen connections to the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight, wherein King Arthur's nephew does battle with a jolly green giant.  The green man is also connected to the Jack-in-Green, a leafy figure that appears in some rural English folk festivals.  Is the green man an echo of Europe's pagan past, preserved through time by folk memory and sculptural motifs?  Or did sculptors just like carving leafy faces?  This may remain an unsolved mystery, like the question of why there are so many medieval illustrations of knights fighting snails.

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

Monster Monday: Trecouche, A Crabomination

Today's Monster Monday is the trecouche, a crab-like river beast that walks on dozens of pincers and drags its unsuspecting victims down into the muddy depths.  The trecouche (or traîcousse) is a creature of obscure Franco-Belgian folklore, used to frighten children from straying too near dangerous bodies of water.

I discovered the traîcousse through the excellent blog, A Book of Creatures, a site that collects and illustrates the cool, obscure, and downright weird creatures that populate human myth and folklore.  Not only that, but they provide sources and references, and occasionally do book reviews, which gets me all excited.  It updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so there are always new critters to learn about.  It's not strictly fantasy RPG related, but I think if you like my Monster Mondays and my digressions into the histories and origins of mythical beasts, then you'll really enjoy A Book of Creatures as well.

Anyways, as soon as I saw the trecouche, I knew I had to stat it up.  A creepy crab-like creature that has a toothy lamprey mouth and has a mess of pincers instead of legs?  Count me in!  You can bet your last copper piece that I will be statting up other monsters from A Book of Creatures as well.

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