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: Titanosaur, the Biggest Dinosaur Ever

Today's Monster Monday is the titanosaur, a mindbogglingly tremendous sauropod dinosaur. The titanosaurs were actually a group of many sauropod species, the largest of which were also the largest dinosaurs ever and the longest and heaviest land animals ever to walk the earth.

by ДиБгд, via Wikimedia

A life-restoration of the titanosaur ampelosaurus atacis, shown with spiky osteoderms along its spine

One of the cool things that makes titanosaurs stand out from your more well-known sauropods like brachiosaurus, diplodocus, or apatosaurus is that many titanosaurs had osteoderms - large bony plates embedded in their skin. These plates may have acted as additional armor for these already formidable beasts, and some (such as ampelosaurus, above) even had spikes. The ampelosaurus above shows a conservative distribution of osteoderms, but the diamentinasaurus illustrated below is depicted as rather more well-armored.

by T. Tischler, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, via Wikimedia

Life-restoration of diamentinasaurus matildae, showing one possible level of titanosaurid osteoderm distribution

What's in a name? Translating a real-world monster, whether mythological or real, into a fantasy world can be difficult, especially when they are saddled with a name that instantly ties them to our world. With many classic dinosaurs, this isn't so much of a problem. Household names like tyrannosaurus and velociraptor, while clearly grounded in our world's scientific Greco-Latin naming conventions, seem to fit in relatively easily to a fantasy world alongside dragons, chimerae, and basilisks. Equally interesting but more newly discovered animals often have names that stand out like a sore thumb, either because they are overly long and complicated or because they specifically reference a real-world name or place. Titanosaur names like argentinosaurus, aegyptosaurus, or isisaurus (named after the Indian Statistical Institute) do not lend themselves to a fantasy world's immersion.

The monster statted up below is an argentinosaurus, by many estimates the largest of the titanosaurs. I chose to call it, simply, titanosaur, a rather generic name which can cover many species (including the horse-sized magyarosaurus). Identifying this monster by its scientific clade is akin to naming the stat block for tyrannosaurus 'coelurosaur'. Still, I thought it was better than identifying it with the real-world nation of Argentina, or calling it 'titanosaurus', which, despite lending its name to the titanosaurids, is a much smaller titanosaur than argentinosaurus (13 tons compared to argentinosaurus' 70-100 tons) and is now usually considered to be a nomen dubium - a name or classification unsupported by current science.

Also, it is important to remember that paleoart is often minimalist, omitting many potential features of a dinosaur that are not preserved in the fossil record. More adventurous paleoartists like to go out on a limb with their reconstructions, giving them interesting features that, while not necessarily supported by the fossil record, are also not disproven by the fossil record and thus may rest within the realm of possibility (I call this the Air Bud approach to paleoart, i.e. "There's no rule saying dogs can't play basketball"). This type of paleoart emphasizes naturalism, showing prehistoric animals in all the variety of coloration, integument, and behavior as other animals we are more familiar with. This often breathes new life into depictions of prehistoric animals, and generates renewed public interest in paleoart. With that in mind, here is another titanosaur illustration that would certainly make an impression in a fantasy world.

by Danny Cicchetti, via Wikimedia

A be-striped, be-quilled, and be-dewlapped life-restoration of the titanosaur overosaurus paradasorum

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

Monster Monday: Jackalope, the Horned Rabbit of the West

Wikimedia

Unlucky Jackalope - Spica, Kansas

Today's Monster Monday is the jackalope - that classic mythological critter of the American West - a jackrabbit with the antlers of a pronghorn antelope.  I felt I would be remiss not to offer the jackalope as an option for wizard familiars in my wild west Guns of the Western Kings setting.

Jackalopes are a classic example of rogue taxidermy, a term used to describe the piecing together of animal parts from different animals to create a fictional, chimerical creature.  I had always assumed - somewhat romantically - that the jackalope arose out of tall tales told around campfires out on the trail, and that the taxidermied jackalopes had grown out of these tales.  As it turns out, the jackalope was invented in 1932 by a boy named Douglas Herrick of (coincidentally) Douglas, Wyoming, who was learning taxidermy by mail-order.  He sold his piece of rogue taxidermy to a local hotelier, who displayed it as a tourist attraction.  Stories of jackalopes took off from there.  While it may not be a piece of true mythology, the jackalope certainly has an important place in constructed folklore, similar to the wild haggis in Scotland or drop bears in Australia.

Although jackalopes are a modern invention, they follow in a long line of similar feats of rogue taxidermy and actual belief in what was called the lepus cornutus, or horned rabbit.  In 1933, one year after the creation of the first known jackalope, American virologist Richard Shope discovered Shope papilloma virus (or Kappapapillomavirus 2) which causes keratinous, hornlike growths on rabbits in the wild.  This may be the origin of early mythological expressions of of the lepus cornutus, like the Arabian al-mi'raj, a rabbit with a unicorn horn.  Almiraj has existed as a monster in Dungeons & Dragons since the original Fiend Folio published in 1981, and was added to Pathfinder in Bestiary 4.  As medieval bestiaries gave way to naturalist studies in the Early Modern period, the lepus cornutus made the transition as well, probably buoyed by sightings of rabbits with Shope papilloma virus.

Wikimedia

lepus cornutus (center) in Animalia Qvadrvpedia et Reptilia (Terra),
painted in the late 16th century

The horned rabbit continued to appear in scientific works into the early 19th century, probably last given credence in the 1817 Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, which considers the creature to be possibly real but very rare.  This may have also encouraged another example of rogue taxidermy, the wolpertinger, a horned and winged rabbit, often with other animal bits added for good measure.  The wolpertinger serves a similar role in Alpine Bavaria as the Jackalope in the American West - as a local curiosity displayed in hotels and pubs and a focal point for tall tales told to tourists.  The wolpertinger entered Pathfinder in Adventure Path #61: Shards of Sin, along with a similar flying Swedish rabbit called a skvader.

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

Halloween Monster Monday: Spindles, Gaunt Humanoids with an Insatiable Appetite

Today's Monster Monday is the spindle, a carnivorous humanoid with an insatiable gut.  There are two types of spindles: civilized spindles are able to pass as human by clouding the perceptions of those around them, while feral spindles gallop freely on their four legs, chasing down and swallowing humans with their unhinging jaws.

Spindles are the brainchild of Jane Kelly, long-time friend of the site (and contributor to my favorite April Fool's post thus far), who basically spends all her free time creating characters, worlds, and stories.  The inspiration for spindles came from a creepy ball-jointed doll that had an oddly extended pelvis and four human legs.  This concept changed over time so that spindles could relatively convincingly pass as human; one of her characters, Maude, is a chain-smoking spindle who works at the deli counter of a grocery store so she can snack on raw meat.  A few years ago I statted up both the original centauroid spindle and the civilized spindle for Jane's birthday, and now I'm sharing these legitimately creepy monsters with you for Halloween!

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

GotWK Campaign Part 5: Desert Dungeon and Cattle Drive

This is an account of part 5 of my ongoing campaign set in my homebrewed wild west setting, Guns of the Western Kings.  Get caught up with the previous parts here.

When last we left our heroes, they had just crashed their bedraggled steamboat in a desert canyon, far to the south of anywhere they wanted to be.  Narrowly escaping a swarm of flesh-eating giant freshwater crabs, they found themselves facing the steep wall of the canyon they were trapped in.  Following a crumbling staircase carved into the rock, they came upon a cave, littered with shards of pottery, but large enough to rest in.  Before them looms a circular stone door ringed with strange glyphs.  In its center, a carved skeletal figure hanging upside down over a river, its dark maw open wide, as if waiting to swallow something.

We now return you to the adventure already in progress...

Photo: Tigerhawkvok via Wikimedia

Intrepid Theodore leads Big Bjorn, Falco the Flexible, Rusty the prospector, and the half-elf rogue Gudguniis in scaling the face of the cliff.  Ash the sharpshooter, Heather the hedge witch, Face the pigtailed paladin, and the newly-adult sorceress Dawne, meanwhile, attempt to figure out how to open the circular door.  They figure something needs to go in its gaping maw, but what?  Dawne shines a light in its mouth, revealing only a fist-sized smooth stone concavity.  Ash tries sticking his hand in, and when that doesn't work, he cuts his finger and rubs the blood inside.  Finally, he pours some whisky in there, and the door slowly rolls open.