Monster Monday: Creniad, Nymph of Wells and Fountains

Today's Monster Monday is the creniad, a rare urban nymph of wells and fountains. Creniads are guardians of these urban water sources, granting boons to those who respect them and leveling curses against those who defile their purity.

Detail from 'Am Schönen Brunnen' by Anton Ebert, via Wikimedia

Before modern indoor plumbing, public water sources like wells and fountains were very important for city-dwellers, especially since any rivers running through a city would likely be full of human waste and the runoff of industry. Rulers of cities would commission fountains to bring clean water into the city for the public good, often beautifying them with statuary and pools. Urban wells were less dramatic but no less important for supplying clean water. Both water sources would have been features of public squares where people could gather and socialize as they collected their drinking water.

Recently I have been interested in urban environments as habitats, and how wild animals adapt to live in man-made environments. Thinking about this in the context of fantasy RPGs brought up several ideas for urban monsters (one of which was the feral hivemind). The creniad derives from the crinaeae, Greek naiads associated with wells and fountains. There are already some urban fey, mostly household spirits like brownies and domovoi, but the idea of a nymph associated with urban water sources seemed like an interesting idea worth pursuing, since those fairies are usually depicted as being part of unspoiled nature rather than man-made environments.

The resulting monster (see the stat block below) is built around protecting these urban water sources. She has a number of water-based spells and abilities, but she can also curse those who despoil her water source, bless those who make offerings or wishes at her well, and even inhabit fountain statues. When a creniad's water source becomes polluted, she becomes ill, and she might even become corrupted, gaining an altered suite of spells and abilities that turn her into an evil spirit of vengeance!

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Melinoe, Nymph of Madness

Adalis met his muse for the last time at midnight, at the crossroads. She was as beautiful as pure chaos, her skin shifting from black to white like the phases of the moon, now shining brightly, now dissolving into shadows. She embraced him. He felt every emotion well up in his body and then drain out of him like grain from a torn sack, a sack that she would mend and then fill with her genius. She had been there for Adalis when his songs fell on deaf ears, when he was booed out of the inn, when his beloved laughed at his heartfelt poetry. When he was invited to play for the baron, only to discover halfway through his performance that he was the butt of a terrible joke. His muse had always been there for him, ready to whisper in his ear that which he already knew. They were all fools who could never appreciate true beauty. They must learn. They must pay.

Tonight, she would teach him the song that drives men insane.

Today's Monster Monday is melinoe, a tortured nymph who spreads madness to all she encounters. The sight of her can render a stalwart adventurer into a babbling mess. Her mere glance can strip away the mind's defenses. When she sees madness in others, she nurtures it as other nymphs would care for a grove sacred spring.

from Antikes Zaubergerät aus Pergamon (Richard Wünsch, 1905), via Wikipedia

Drawing of a 3rd century AD spell-inscribed bronze tablet found at Pergamon, invoking (among others) Melinoe 

Melinoe is a rather obscure figure from Greek myth, closely associated with Hecate (goddess of crossroads and witchcraft). The real magic tablet* depicted above does not show Melinoe, but does invoke her name. A surviving Orphic hymn to Melinoe calls her "saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth" and describes her thus:

This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions
as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms,
now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness—
all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night.

All of this, from her power over madness to her shifting form between light and shadow to her 'airy apparitions', played a role in how I statted up melinoe as a monster. Her beautiful visage drives others to madness, her ever-changing form can have an actual effect on the battlefield, and she can summon allips to her service.

*When I say real magic tablet, I mean that this is a real Greek spell-tablet inscribed with magic words, not that magic itself is real. Sorry, D&D still can't teach you the real power.

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

Monster Monday: Minocentaur - Half-Minotaur, Half-Centaur

Today's Monster Monday is the minocentaur, a minotaur centaur. It has the lower body of a bull and the upper body of a minotaur. I guess its kind of like if a bull's neck suddenly turned into a full human torso. This taurine beast combines all the power and fury of a raging bull with all the power and fury of a raging minotaur. So watch out, I guess. Also, it dual-wields greataxes, because of course it does.

While I was statting it up, I was considering what kind of ranged weapon it should have: should it chuck a mighty spear, or go a more centaurish approach and wield a bow. Neither option quite felt right, but then I realized that I could just make it throw greataxes.

Photo by Wolfgang Sauber, via Wikimedia

Gilded Minoan axes in Herakleion Archaeological Museum. 

The reason minotaurs are often depicted wielding two-headed axes comes from their origins on the island of Crete. The minotaur was the monstrous offspring of King Minos's wife, Pasiphaë, and a super sexy bull that Poseidon sent out of the sea. King Minos imprisoned the minotaur in the Labyrinth, the name of which (labyrinthos) probably derives from labrys, a type of two headed axe (pictured above) which was used in religious ceremonies by the Minoans. With the Minoans strongly associated with bulls, labrys, the minotaur, and the labyrinth, it is almost inevitable that modern depictions of the minotaur would have him wielding a two-headed axe, even if he was not described as such in the original stories.

But enough about boring old two-legged minotaurs. Let's learn more about this twin-labrys-wielding, four-hoofed minocentaur:

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