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: Sea Bear - The Orca-Hunting Ursid

Today's Monster Monday is the sea bear, a massive grizzly bear adapted to an aquatic lifestyle, which uses its bulk, strength, and cunning to hunt salmon, seals, and even the mighty orca. The sight of their distinctive three-dorsal-finned back rearing out of the water is a sign to whales and fishermen alike to scatter, as the mighty sea bear is on the hunt.

This creature is based on the chaan xúujaay from the mythology of the Haida people of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Colombia. The sea grizzly bear appears as a motif in Haida artwork, combining elements of bear and orca (see this hat and its description at the Seattle Art Museum).

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

Monster Monday: Haietlik, The Lightning-Tongued Sea Serpent

Today's Monster Monday is the haietlik, a sea serpent from the mythology and folklore of Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) peoples of the Pacific Northwest.  According to legend, these lightning serpents had knife-sharp heads and could spit lightning from their tongues.  They were allies of the thunderbirds (the mythological creature, not the 1960s supermarionation show), who used them to hunt whales.

Before I get to the monster, here's some insight into how I research creatures like this before statting them up.  I first encountered the haietlik on Wikipedia.  Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks Wikipedia is a den of crowd-sourced lies devoid of any merit, but I do think it is important to take information found on Wikipedia with a grain of salt, especially if the article is very short and relies entirely on a single source which is just a link to a defunct webpage.  I liked the information that Wikipedia gave though: a sea serpent that hunts whales with its sharp head and lightning breath.  I just needed this depiction of the monster to be confirmed by other sources.

My first step is to check my ever-growing library of books on mythology, folklore, and legendary creatures.  Sadly, I do not yet have a book on the myths of Pacific Northwest Native Americans, and most general books on mythology tend to gloss over or largely ignore Native American myths.  Fortunately, there is an entry on the haietlik in Giants, Monsters & Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth, by Carol Rose, one of my go-to reference works for mythological creatures.  The entry (fairly good-sized for such an obscure monster) added that the haietlik hunted in coastal waters, that many pictograms of the beast could be found on rocks in the area, and that the skin of a haietlik brought good luck to whale-hunters.  Unfortunately, it said nothing of the creature's lightning breath or knife-sharp head.  None of my other books mentioned the haietlik, so I took to the internet again.  Googling around for more information of stub Wikipedia articles about mythological creatures rarely bears fruit.  Often, you will only find third-party wikis that regurgitate the same information from Wikipedia, cryptozoology wikis which have their own issues with reliability, and blogs of people talking about the esoteric monsters they've put in their own campaign settings (like this blog, I guess).  I was hoping to luck out and find a website that records Native American myths (like this awesome bilingual about inuit myth) but I had no such luck here.

Stuck, I went back to the defunct link from Wikipedia and took it through the Internet Wayback Machine.  Awesomely, the haietlik appears on the squadron badge of the RCAF's 442 Transport & Rescue Squadron.  Their website, as it appeared in 2007, describes the haietlik as the whale-hunting, knife-nosed, lightning-shooting sea serpent that I initially saw on Wikipedia.  I now have two sources to work from, which is less than I would like, but all I'm going to be able to get right now.  And at least I have the knowledge that my interpretation of this mythical beast is at least in accordance with that of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Squadron Badge of the RCAF 442 Transport & Rescue Squadron

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

GotWK Campaign Part 6: Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!

This is an account of part 6 of my ongoing campaign set in my homebrewed wild west setting, Guns of the Western Kings.  Get caught up with the previous parts here.

Previously, on Guns of the Western Kings: The party was caught in a conflict between a mining company seeking to re-open the Sunbeam Silver Mine and a tribe of elves who  guarded the mountain and claimed that mining there would unleash a great evil on the world.  In the midst of this, they took a side-quest to investigate a mysterious ore coming out of a Dwarven settlement.  There they met a new party member, Theodore the adventurous businessman, but they also discovered what it was like to careen down a subterranean river on a broken-down paddle-boat.  They ended up in the desert far to the south, and worked their way northwards via an exciting and dangerous cattle drive.  As they approached the city of Templeton, where they intended to catch a train, they noticed they were being followed by a group of canine-headed humanoids who always stayed just outside of rifle range.

And now:

Wikimedia

After selling a load of accumulated goods in Templeton, including gnomish grave goods and a giant rattlesnake skin, the brave band of adventurers buys train tickets up to Fort Crawdon, hoping to finally get their plans back on track.  Heather especially was looking forward to it, since their adventures had taken her far away from the area where she was hoping to find her missing daughter.  It is a short train - two boxcars, two passenger cars, and a caboose.  Theodore's horse, Bucephalus, rides in one of the boxcars. Bjorn and Falco ride with the incapacitated Dawne and Ash in the frontmost boxcar, as the railroad wouldn't allow the tomb-cursed duo to sit in the passenger cars.  Heather, Theodore, Gudguníis, and Rusty take their seats in the passenger cars and the train chugs northward through the prairie.

Rusty was the first to notice a rider out the window - a lithe humanoid with the head of a coyote, armed to the teeth and riding with purpose.  He recognizes it as a wayaha, a race of roguish tricksters native to these lands.  Although the wayaha are a tribal people, they are quick to take up new ways of life, and many have been drawn to the way of the gun and become bandits and rustlers.  Gudguníis grabs his rifle and rushes to the back of the train, hoping to pick them off from the caboose, but as he passes into the second passenger car he sees the door to the caboose slide open and a coyote snout poke around it.  The wayaha bandit steps into the train car, brandishing a pistol, and calls out, "Your money or your life!" before Gudguníis blasts him with his rifle.  The coyote-man slumps back against a train bench, clutching his chest wound, fires off a shot at the half-elf rogue that misses by a foot, and collapses to the floor.  The door to the car slams back open and a burly, tough wayaha warrior, bristling with orangish fur, muscles his way in and blasts at Gudguníis with his shotgun.  Heather rushes into the car behind the half-elf and dives for cover behind a bench, calling out to the cowering civilians in the car to stay behind cover or flee to the next car.

Monster Monday: Chindi - Ghostly Navajo Dust Devils

Today's Monster Monday is the chindi, a vengeful spirit from Navajo mythology that can take the form of a dust devil.

NASA/U. of Michigan

Yep.  That's a ghost alright.

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