Today's
Monster Monday is the giant ground bat, a wolf-sized nocturnal predator that hunts by echolocation. This is a perfect low-level monster for a campaign with a Gothic horror atmosphere. I mean, a giant vampire bat that runs like a wolf? That is 100% something you would run into after your mysterious coachman lets you off at the foot of a twisting road up a darkly forested mountain, saying "That's as far as I can take you, but I'd suggest you get back in the coach and return to town with me. No good can come from going up to that castle. It's cursed, I tell you! Cursed!"
I would have made an illustration for this creature, but nothing I could have drawn or digitally painted would be as cool or terror-inducing as this mounted vampire bat skeleton:
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| Photo and mounted skeleton by Mokele, via Wikimedia |
The direct inspiration for this monster came from an article I was reading about
a new species of fossil bat discovered in New Zealand. Check out that rad ground bat illustration in the article. Yeah, apparently ground bats are a thing. They do actually have wings though, they just also spend a lot of time on the ground. Combine that with the future predators from
Primeval and maybe a dash of the
Varghulf from Warhammer Fantasy and you've got yourself a giant ground bat.
The following text in
gold is available as Open Game Content under the
OGL. Open Game Content is ©2018 Jonah Bomgaars.
