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 traƮcousse) is a creature of obscure Franco-Belgian folklore, used to frighten children from straying too near dangerous bodies of water.
I discovered the traƮcousse 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.