Monster Monday: Vampiric Creature Template

For today's Monster Monday, we have the vampiric creature template. No gothic horror campaign is complete without howling wolves and blood-sucking vampires. If you're pressed for time, why not combine the two? With the vampiric creature template, you can grant the most terrible of beasts the abilities of the mighty and mysterious vampires, from vampiric cats to vampiric dragons. The possibilities are nearly endless!

Presented below, along with the vampiric creature template, you will find example stat blocks for a vampiric wolf and a vampiric saber-toothed tiger. Imagine a vampiric chimaera with three fanged maws. Think of the implications of a vampiric elephant - would it suck blood through its tusks? (yes). 

As Halloween approaches, d20 Despot will continue to post seasonally appropriate monsters. You might want to stock up on ammunition and board up your house before next week's monsters arrive en masse to claw at your door.

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

Monster Monday: Borovoi - Slavic Forest Spirits

Today's Monster Monday Tuesday is the borovoi, a Russian forest spirit, trickster, and caller of storms. Borovoi are giant fey creatures who rule over large stretches of forest. They delight in leading travelers astray and then demanding heavy ransoms for returning them to safety. When angered, they bring down the fury of a winter storm on their enemies, and summon forth the wolves and bears of the forest to tear them to pieces.

Illustration from 1906 cover of Leshy Magazine No1, via Wikimedia

A more common name for these beings is leshy or leshii, but that name is already taken by a group of monsters in Pathfinder - tiny, adorable little plant constructs that look like topiary fanart of Sackboy from Little Big Planet. Why the name of a badass, godlike giant Slavic forest trickster was given to a bunch of little leafy dudes is beyond me (probably someone needed a name so they just looked through a thesaurus instead of doing research or making something up). These diminutive construct 'leshys' (why not 'leshies' - as English linguistics would suggest - or 'leshiye' - a transliteration of the actual Russian plural?) show up a lot in Pathfinder: Ultimate Wilderness, which reminded me that I needed to stat up proper leshies. The name 'borovoi' - one of several alternate names for the leshy - means 'man of the forest'.

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

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: Glacioth, the Ice Mammoth

Every year since the wall of ice collapsed, the mammoths had come south through Eagle Pass at first snow.  Kennetwe had been the first to notice this, and so Kennetwe had been given the honor of leading the hunt ever since.  No longer did the Arokatcha eke out a living eating boiled roots and trading black squirrel pelts to the neighboring tribes.  Thanks to Kennetwe (and the melting ice), they grew fat on slabs of mammoth meat, grew strong defending the pass from their jealous neighbors, and grew rich trading ivory and hides to the River Cities.  

It was on one such trade expedition last summer, in the walled city or Urtalik, that Kennetwe had found the magic spear.  Crouching behind the grassy hummock and waiting for the other hunters to catch up to him, he admired the fine prize that he had traded five great tusks for.  The haft was made of a pale wood that looked almost like bone.  The spear head was broad and never needed sharpening.  Silver lightning bolts ran down either side of the head, framing a seated human figure that the Urtalikan had claimed was a god named Banatu.  At the time, Kennetwe had laughed - the gods do not take the shape of man! - but now he was convinced.  The spear crackled with power whenever he hefted it.  When he cast it, it flew straight and true, and badly scorched whatever it hit.  He was eager to try it on a mammoth.

Kennetwe readied the spear as the other hunters arrived.  He motioned them to follow, then leapt over the hummock down into the dry stream bed which ran with fast melt-water in the spring.  They advanced silently up the natural path, using the high banks as cover.  Mammoths spooked easily at the sight of man, and spooked mammoths would do no one any good.  The scent of mammoth was strong when they neared the killing field.  Stronger than ever.  This might be Kennetwe's most successful hunt yet.  He peered over the stream bank and his stomach sank.  The field was full of mammoths, all right.  Dead mammoths.  

He clambered out of the stream bed, the other hunters following.  A whole herd of female mammoths and their yearlings lay dead between the stream and the cliffs.  Did Tartakan hunters dare penetrate so deeply into Arokatcha territory?  Impossible.  Besides, there were no spears broken off in the mammoths.  No meat had been cut from their bodies, no tusks removed.  Kennetwe examined the closest mammoth.  It has been gored through its flank multiple times.  Its meat was cold and frosty.  A younger mammoth lay nearby, trampled to death by something very heavy.  

A trumpeting call ripped through the air, and the ground rumbled ominously.  Kennetwe looked up from the carnage.  A huge mammoth like none he had ever seen charged down the slope at them.  Its shaggy fur was white, and its skin was tinted blue like a frozen lake.  Its mighty tusks were made not of ivory but of ice, still dripping with blood and gore from the mammoths it had killed.  Four young hunters rushed in from the side and cast their throwing spears.  The brazen move would take down an aurochs but would be foolhardy in a mammoth hunt and was suicide against this beast.  The creature rounded on the boys and let loose a blast from its trunk.  A spray of ice crystals ripped into the first-year hunters, freezing them dead in their tracks.

Spears and arrows rained down on the beast from more cautious hunters taking cover behind dead mammoths.  Few found purchase in the monster's thick hide.  The white mammoth charged a pair of archers and skewered one on its icy tusk.  The archer's aborted scream hung in the air like a cloud.  This devil of a mammoth would not just end the hunt, it could end the whole Arokatcha tribe.  Kennetwe stepped up onto the corpse of a mammoth and belted out a war cry.  The white mammoth turned to him, snorted, and started to charge.  

He hefted the spear in his hand.  "Banatu, strike down this monster!"  The hairs on his arms stood on end as the spear trembled with power.  The white mammoth bore down on him, shaking the earth with every step.  Kennetwe took aim between the beast's eyes and let the spear fly.  

Today's Monster Monday is the glacioth, a snow-white mammoth with icicles for tusks that blasts cones of frost out of its trunk.  It's like a cross between a mammoth and a yeti, basically.

Whether you are running an ice age campaign (as I one day hope to do) or your party is venturing through the frigid northlands, a glacioth makes for a challenging foe.  It not only brings the power of a mammoth to bear, but also magical ice attacks.  Glacioths also make suitable mounts for yetis and frost giants or weapons of war for northern kingdoms.

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

Monster Monday: Ursotaur, the Bear Centaur

Today's Monster Monday is the ursotaur, a centaur but with bear bits instead of horse bits.  Because why not?  Ursotaurs have bear bodies and bear heads but humanoid torsos.  They are a primarily tribal species capable of crafting tools to aid them in hunting, fishing, and other activities that bears enjoy.

Imagine: you are walking through the woods.  Huge firs and cedars - bigger around than the support beams of a cathedral - jut out of the loamy earth.  Somewhere above the unseen canopy, it is raining, but all that reaches the dim undercroft of the forest is a steady grey mist punctuated by fat drops dripping secondhand from sodden boughs.  Pushing through a dense stand of salmonberry and sword fern, you break into a clearing.  Suddenly, the roar of the river ahead is all you can hear, even as the rain falls harder now, unimpeded by tree cover, plastering your woolen hood to your helmet.  Huge salmon the size of dolphins lie beached on the scree of flat river rocks, gasping their last.  You draw a long knife and make your way towards the closest.  This one fish will feed you and your companions for days!  But as you kneel by the fish to gut it, something catches your eye.  Slowly, you turn your head.  Twenty paces upstream, a pair of four-legged bear-men with matted brown fur eye you suspiciously.  One of them has a dozen fillets of the giant fish draped and bound across his back.  The other, wearing a porcupine pelt as a helmet, grips a long spear.  His growl, resonant and bestial, reaches you clearly above the river's constant rush.  This salmon is his.  This river is his.  And yet... you must eat.

So if your campaign has been wanting a species of six-limbed spear-wielding bears with humanoid intelligence (and I think you will find that it has), then you need look no further!  Well, look a little further.  You'll need to scroll down, at least.

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