Monster Monday: Lightning Bug, An Electric Insect

Today's Monster Monday is the lightning bug, a flashy magical insect that fires bolts of electricity at its enemies.  It's basically a living bug zapper.

Lightning bugs are surrounded by a field of electric energy that grows stronger the more of them there are in close proximity, allowing each lighting bug to draw on the electric fields of their neighbors to deliver a powerful jolt.  In combat, this means that each individual lightning bug does more damage when it is near multiple other lightning bugs.  This novel game mechanic makes fighting lightning bugs interesting and engaging for the players as they work out how the ability functions and how best to counter it.

Modified from a photo of Photinus pyralis taken by antfarmer, via Wikimedia

In addition, lightning bugs can deliver a blinding flash which dazzles nearby opponents, at the cost of draining its electrical energy for a few rounds.  Engaging these creatures in melee also has its risks, as any hit on the bug has a chance of delivering an electric shock to the attacker.

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

Monster Monday: Shellycoat, the Evil Armored Water Spirit

Today's Monster Monday is the shellycoat, a fey creature from Scottish mythology who is clad in a heavy coat of shells.  Shellycoats are malevolent tricksters, fond of such pranks as pretending to drown and then drowning any passers-by who try to help.  You know that old goof?  Unlike most fey, shellycoats are brutish and strong and heavily armored, making them formidable front-line troops or tough bruisers.

In Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1803), Sir Walter Scott said of the shellycoat, "he seemed to be decked with marine productions; and, in particular, with shells, whose clattering announced his approach."  From the tales recorded about shellycoats by Scottish folklorists, their pranks could range from the mischievous to the deadly.  Scott says that they shellycoat is "a freakish spirit, who delights rather to perplex and frighten mankind, than to serve, or seriously hurt them."  He goes on to describe one of the creature's pranks: calling out to a pair of travelers from a river, pretending to be a drowning person in need of aid.  The shellycoat led them upriver all night until they arrived at the source of the waters high in the mountains, only to laugh uproariously at the would-be rescuers and their wasted effort.  But in 1948, folklorist Lewis Spence described the shellycoat as "gigantic, swift, malignant, delighting in blood and violence."  One tale from Leith describes how a shellycoat seized a local man and threw him around until he died from the trauma.  So we have a picture of the shellycoat as both a prankster and a brutal murderer, both aspects of which I have chosen to include in the creature statted up below.

As with so many spirits and creatures of local folklore, the shellycoat suffered from innumerable variations, mutations, and conflations with other myths and legends across centuries of oral tradition until stories of the creature were finally recorded in the modern era.  One tale of the shellycoat comes to us from Ettrick Water, Selkirkshire, recorded in Allan Ramsay's Poems in 1721:

One of those frightful Spectres the ignorant People are terrified at, and tell us strange Stories of; that they are clothed with a Coat of Shells, which make a horrid rattling, that they'll be sure to destroy one, if he gets not a running Water between him and it...

The rattling coat of shells is there, but in this story the shellycoat apparently cannot cross running water - not an uncommon weakness for a bogeyman, but odd for a creature that is attested in other sources as dwelling in the water.  It is also said in some stories that the shellycoat became powerless if it took off its shell-coat - a trait probably borrowed from stories of selkies.  I have retained that aspect of the shellycoat because of the emphasis in puts on the creature's shell-armor, and because it sets up a combat where the adventurers are trying to sunder the shellycoat's armor before going in for the kill.

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

Monster Monday: Beaver and Dire Beaver - Those Dam Rodents

Today's Monster Monday is a twofer: the humble beaver and the moderately less humble dire beaver which had six-inch teeth and was roughly the size of a black bear.  Why am I talking about dire beavers like they were a real thing?  Because they were.  Castoroides leiseyorum roamed southern North America 1.4 million years ago.  Its relative, Castoroides ohioensis ranged across what is now the northern United States and Canada from about 130,000 years ago up to at least 18,000 years ago.  Ice Age North America wasn't just mastodons and saber-toothed cats; we had all kinds of crazy shit, like cheetahs and camels and saber-toothed salmon.

fossil C. ohioensis skeleton, via Wikimedia

There is some debate among paleontologists as to whether Castoroides built lodges and dams.  The shape of their teeth would have made them less efficient at cutting down trees than modern beavers, but it is known that a closely related genus of prehistoric beaver (Dipoides) built lodges, and a Castoroides fossil was found in association with what may have been a giant lodge in 1912.  Regardless of paleontology, the dire beaver statted up below definitely builds giant beaver dams and lodges, because that is too cool.  Modern normal-sized beavers have a tremendous effect on their local ecosystems by creating artificial ponds.  Imagine that but an order of magnitude greater.  Giant beaver dams would create huge ponds that attract all sorts of other creatures, from mundane fish and birds to nixies and shambling mounds.  A giant beaver dam might flood valuable farmland, creating conflict between farmers and the local circle of druids.  An older giant beaver dam might have become corrupted, home to oozes, aberrations, and - of course - skeletal dire beavers.

Lest we forget, normal-sized beavers are statted up below as well.  While they are less likely to serve as foes for low-level adventurers, beavers can act as familiars, granting their master a +3 bonus on Knowledge (engineering) checks.  They can also be prime targets for hunters and trappers, as they were in real life.  Beavers were historically prized for their water-repellent fur, which was used to make, among other things, top hats.  Beavers - both North American and European - have also traditionally been hunted for their castoreum, the secretion of the scent glands.  Castoreum is used in perfumery and in some traditional medicines.  In the Middle Ages, it was even used to increase the production of honeybees.  Any hunter or trapper who bags a beaver stands to profit not only from its fur but also its extracted castoreum.  Fun fact: because the castor glands are located near the beaver's testes, an ancient legend first attested in the works of Aesop but carried on by ancient and medieval naturalists says that beavers will gnaw off their own ballsacks to escape hunters.

via Wikimedia

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

Monster Monday: Trecouche, A Crabomination

Today's Monster Monday is the trecouche, a crab-like river beast that walks on dozens of pincers and drags its unsuspecting victims down into the muddy depths.  The trecouche (or traîcousse) is a creature of obscure Franco-Belgian folklore, used to frighten children from straying too near dangerous bodies of water.

I discovered the traîcousse through the excellent blog, A Book of Creatures, a site that collects and illustrates the cool, obscure, and downright weird creatures that populate human myth and folklore.  Not only that, but they provide sources and references, and occasionally do book reviews, which gets me all excited.  It updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so there are always new critters to learn about.  It's not strictly fantasy RPG related, but I think if you like my Monster Mondays and my digressions into the histories and origins of mythical beasts, then you'll really enjoy A Book of Creatures as well.

Anyways, as soon as I saw the trecouche, I knew I had to stat it up.  A creepy crab-like creature that has a toothy lamprey mouth and has a mess of pincers instead of legs?  Count me in!  You can bet your last copper piece that I will be statting up other monsters from A Book of Creatures as well.

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