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: Brongya - Evil Yak Men of the Mountains

Today's Monster Monday is the brongya, a humanoid yak that binds elementals to its will and can possess the bodies of humanoids. Brongyai (the plural of brongya) live in hidden cities secreted away in high mountain valleys, where they rule over enslaved giants, bound genies, and servile elementals. Using magic and their ability to possess others, they lure unwary travelers into a false sense of security before capturing them for their own nefarious purposes. The brongyai believe themselves to be the predestined rulers of the world, and they delight in inflicting suffering and torment on those they see as 'slave races'. From their mountain strongholds, they secretly infiltrate and manipulate surrounding lands in centuries-long plots for conquest and domination.

Brongya, by Jonah Bomgaars

The brongya is obviously heavily inspired by the yak folk first introduced to D&D in the al-Qadim campaign setting. Yak folk made their way into D&D 3rd Edition's Monster Manual II, which was released shortly before the switch over to 3.5 Edition. When Wizard's of the Coast created the Open Game License, upon which all of Pathfinder was built, that oddball 3rd Edition Monster Manual II sadly did not make it into the OGL, so the yak folk presented therein are still 'private property', as it were.

Even though a race of humanoid yaks seems pretty silly, they quickly became one of my favorite villains, and two of my longest running campaigns featured significant yak folk encounters. The brongyai are my OGL-friendly take on these not-so-classic, mostly-forgotten monsters, made from scratch without direct reference to the stat block in MMII. It is presented here so that all might someday live in fear of these surprisingly sinister shaggy bovine beasties.

The name brongya comes from the tibetan 'brong (འབྲོང), meaning 'wild yak'. Its alternate name, qutazi, comes from the tatar word for yak - qutaz (кутаз). The sword the brongya is holding in the picture is a forward-curving Nepalese sword called a kora - actually, a ceremonial executioner's version of the traditional kora.

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

Monster Monday: Giant Camel and Two-Humped Camel

Today's Monster Monday is a twofer: both the two-humped camel and the giant camel, two sure-footed pack-animals specialized at living in harsh conditions.

Tang-Dynasty model of a Sogdian riding a camel, via Wikimedia
Modern camels aren't as big as that tiny rider makes this one look, but the scale is about right for someone riding a
prehistoric giant camel like titanotylopus. Also, the rider looks like a lawn gnome, which amuses me.

The two-humped camel is more commonly known as the Bactrian camel, but Bactria is a real place on Earth, so that name is probably not suitable for most fantasy campaign settings. The one-humped dromedary or Arabian camel has already been statted up, but I felt the need to stat up their hardier, stronger, and more wide-ranging two-humped cousins as well. Two-humped camels have higher Strength and Constitution scores, making them ideal for hauling heavier loads in harsher environments than dromedaries, and also making them more formidable in a fight - both of which are characteristics that adventurers in camel-country might want to look for in their mounts and pack animals.

Bactrian camels resting in Jiayu Pass, by Emcc83, via Wikimedia

Prehistoric North America was home to many species of camel, including the gigantic megacamelus, titanotylopus, and gigantocamelus (those last two are considered by some paleontologists to be the same). These giant camels could be roughly 12 feet high and weighed over 5,000 pounds, making them about twice the size of the largest modern camels. In your campaign, giant camels might be employed by wealthy merchants to ship large quantities of goods across the desert, or they might be ridden by desert giant warriors. They could even be used as fighting platforms similar to war-elephants; imagine a giant camel draped in scale barding armor, with two archers firing from its back and two pikemen fighting from armored baskets hanging on either side of the beast.

(Don't forget to check out the encounter ideas and adventure hooks for these camels below the stat blocks!)

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

Monster Monday: Asag, the Rock Demon

Today's Monster Monday is the asag, a rock demon of Sumerian mythology that could wake the very stones of the earth and add them to his army.

The Asag (á-sàg, meaning 'disorder'), appears as an antagonist in the ancient Sumerian story lugal-e, also known as Ninurta's Exploits.  Asag is a hideous creature of rock chosen as the champion to lead the Mountains in revolt against the Plains.  He has sex with the mountains to produce an army of rocks, which he uses to destroy the cities and creatures of the plains.  When the gods receive word of Asag's campaign of destruction, they select Ninurta - god of thunderstorms, floods, and war - to defeat him.  Ninurta sends his magic talking and flying mace, Sharur (the earliest legendary weapon preserved in myth) to scout out the situation, and Sharur reports back that Asag is a foe beyond even the might of Ninurta.  Not to be discouraged, Ninurta goes to face Asag anyways.  Asag pelts him with stones, delivers mighty blows that cut deep furrows into the earth, uproots forests, and assails Ninurta with landslides, forcing the storm god to retreat.

With their mightiest champion defeated, the gods despair.  The cities of the plains lie open to assault by the hideous Asag, whose very presence causes fish to boil alive in their ponds, and his army of unstoppable stone progeny.  Sharur flies off for one last desperate consultation with Ninurta's father, the god Enlil.  Enlil suggests that Ninurta soften Asag up with a divine rainstorm.  Ninurta turns the full power of his storm on Asag and just barely manages to hold him off while the hard rains do their work.  Finally, Asag's body is softened enough that Ninurta can drive his spear into it.  He strikes Asag right in the family jewels, delivering a mortal wound and taking away the demon's ability to produce more rocky offspring.

With the revolt of the mountains finally crushed, Ninurta orders the stones of the earth, punishing the rocks that were most loyal to Ninurta (like basalt, which is sentenced to become molds for goldsmiths, and limestone, which must be used as foundations for buildings on muddy ground), and rewarding those rocks which remained neutral (like lapis lazuli, which would be valued and used in art and dyes, or diorite, which would be turned into statues of kings and gods).  Finally, he tames the wild streams of the mountains and causes them to flow down into the lowlands and irrigate the fields, filling canals made with the rocks that were Asag's children.

The asag I have statted up below might not pose a challenge for the mighty Ninurta, but it should definitely make for an interesting battle for a group of seasoned adventurers.  With spell-like abilities like wall of stone, expeditious excavation, transmute rock to mud, and spike stones, the asag can define the area of battle and shape it to the adventurers' disadvantage.  And because it can awaken nearby rocks as earth elementals at will, it will always have an army of rocks to do its bidding and run interference for it while it softens up the adventurers from behind with thrown rocks and stone call.

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

Monster Monday: Cave Drake, the Bat Dragon

Today's Monster Monday is the cave drake, a bat-like dragon with a deafening sonic breath weapon.

Excerpt from Drakes & Wyverns: A Study of Dragon-Kind's Lesser Cousins by Lord Jacobus Harweldt:
"But of the many species of drake, none can be considered more vexing to herdsman of this region than the cave drake, or 'bat dragon' as it is erroneously called by those less well-versed in dragonology.  The cave drake is unusual for living deep underground but emerging to hunt on the surface at night.  Its pitch-black scales make it quite difficult for watchmen to spot, giving it easy access to sleeping herds.  It seems to have no need of light, preferring to strike dark fields on moonless nights.  While darkvision may account for some of its nocturnal acuity, I believe it is able to navigate and locate prey through sound, rather like a bat.  Having been given the rare opportunity to study a cave drake cadaver, I can testify that the drake's external ear-like structures not only resemble a bat's ears, but when comparing their ear canals to those of a giant bat (specially procured for this very purpose), a number of striking similarities bear mentioning...
...Those adventurers who finally entered its lair described it to me as a foul charnel house.  The floor, they said, was littered with partial cow and sheep carcasses in various states of decay and consumption.  It appears that this cave drake had staked out such an ideal hunting ground that it could afford to eat only the choicest parts of its prey, leaving the rest to rot.  It was the presence of such a large concentration of decaying flesh that must surely account for the adventurers' encounters with unusually large amounts of  vicious subterranean scavengers on their way into the cave.  This certainly aids the cave drake in the defense of its lair, helping to ensure that it is not discovered by spelunkers during the day while it slumbers, though how much of this is pure accident and how much the cunning of this draconic beast remains up for debate."

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

Monster Monday: Gegenes, the Six-Armed Giant

Today's Monster Monday entry is the gegenes, a six-armed giant that packs powerful punches in its many limbs, scales cliffs with ease, and throws over-sized rocks at its enemies.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2013 Jonah Bomgaars.