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: Planticore, a Leafy Beast

The goat was a problem, so he let it go.  It must have sensed its fate.  Broussilos would just have to hope that the wine would be enough of an offering.  He adjusted the thick straps that held the amphora on his back and continued his arduous trek up the mountain.  The Spring of Laersippos was hidden near the peak, guarded by a fierce manticore.  Local legend said the beast could be placated with the right gift, but no one was quite sure what that gift was.  A short bronze blade beat against Broussilos' thigh with every step: purely a measure of last resort.  The wine sloshed rhythmically in its container, like waves against the side of a ship at anchor.  If it wouldn't buy him passage to the spring, it might at least be enough to buy his safe retreat from the mountain.  

The brush grew thicker, wild vines choking out all else.  They pulled at his sandals, slashed at his linen greaves, and even caught on the amphora as if they, too, thirsted for wine.  Broussilos pushed through a plait of hanging tree branches and came face to face with the manticore.  It was upside-down, its huge man-like face purple and bloated, spiky beard matted with week-old blood.  Its wings were splayed out on the ground, pinned in place with serrated thorns as long as a man's arm.  Probing creepers grew into every nook and gash in its hide, twining about its bare ribs, hungry for decaying flesh.  

All in all, it was a very dead manticore.  

Broussilos could hear the burbling of the spring muffled by a mat of dense vegetation.  He took two steps toward it.  A great rustling of leaves marked the emergence of another great beast.  It was a cruel mockery of a manticore, its face all of knotted wood, its wings of veiny leaves.  Its leonine torso was woven of twisting brambles, and its swishing tail bristled with javelin-like thorns very much resembling those which peppered the corpse of the real manticore.  It growled, its voice like a thick cedar straining against a gale, and its amber eyes fixed on the intruder.

"I don't suppose you'll be wanting this wine," Broussilos began, unslinging the heavy amphora.  The beast's reply was an angry rattle of branches.  Then the vines all around snaked toward him, rearing up to grab at his limbs.  Bursts of nettles spattered his skin with burning poison.  "Very well then."  Broussilos cracked open the amphora's beeswax seal with the pommel of his sword and dumped the wine into his face, swallowing as much as possible and letting the rest spill over his body.  He tossed the half-empty container to the side, gripped his sword, thews tensing, and threw himself at the leafy monster.

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Today's Monster Monday is the planticore, which - as you might imagine - is a manticore made out of plants.  My wife threw the name out as a joke, and I took it and ran with it.  Planticores bristle with thorns, and they can even swallow people whole and crush them in the wicker cage of brambles that is their belly.  They can bend nearby plants to their will, unleashing plant-based magic against their foes while hovering safely above the action, bombarding the area with a barrage of thorns.

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

Monster Monday: Manchineel Treant, A Cruel and Poisonous Plant

Today's Monster Monday is the manchineel treant, a poisonous plant creature that delights in causing pain.  The manchineel is the deadliest tree known to man, with poisonous sap that can cause blisters and excruciating pain on contact and poisonous fruits that can cause your throat to swell up and close over.  If you take shelter from the rain under a manchineel tree, the raindrops will pick up sap from the leaves and burn you.  If you burn it, the smoke will blind you.

A manchineel tree, via Wikimedia

That's a tree that's just begging to be turned into a monster.  Even fire, an adventuring party's first recourse against plant monsters, just makes it more dangerous.

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

Monster Monday: Giant Otter and Dobarcu

For today's Monster Monday, we've got two big otters.  The giant otter is a man-sized Amazonian animal known to eat piranhas, black caiman, and anacondas (and now it can be your animal companion!).  The dobarcu, or otter king, is a bloodthirsty creature from Irish folklore that hunts the most dangerous game - man!

Photo: Frank Wouters via Wikimedia

I first learned of giant otters from a professor of mine who told stories about his research studying black caimans in the Amazon.  He mentioned that it was dangerous to go bathing or swimming there, not so much because of the caimans or the piranhas, but because of the giant otters.  They're fast and deadly, and they like to gang up on larger prey.  Modern giant otters range from 3.3 to 5.6 ft. in length, but before they were overhunted for their fur, large males could reach 7.9 ft.

Dobhar-cú (water hound) is the Irish word for otter, but folklorists and cryptozoologists (folklore enthusiasts who pretend to be scientists) use it (or the anglicized form 'dobarcu') to refer to a little-known creature from Irish mythology.  Also known as otter kings or an Irish crocodiles, there are stories of monstrous otters thinly spread all over Ireland and nearby islands.  The most famous and most detailed account goes thus:

In 1722, in Glenade (County Leitrim, Ireland), a woman washing laundry in the stream was attacked by a great beast.  Her husband went looking for her and found the dobhar-cú resting on her mangled and bloody body.  He grabbed his gun and shot it, but as it died it cried out for its mate, who came rushing up from the water looking for vengeance.  The man (perhaps with his dead wife's brother) fled on horseback to a nearby town 20 miles away, but the monster pursued him (or them) and he (or the brother) stabbed it with a spear (or dagger).  

The victim's tombstone still survives, with a carving of the monster getting stabbed:

No, it's not - as I first though - a dire scotty dog:
the bit at the front is a disembodied hand stabbing the beast.

Other accounts of dobarcu give its strange white-and-black coat, the fact that it can only be killed with silver like a werewolf, the idea that the beast's hide protects its wearer from drowning, and the story that anyone who kills a dobarcu will die the next day.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Ammit - The Deadliest Egyptian Chimera

Today's Monster Monday is the Ammit, a soul-devouring creature from Ancient Egyptian mythology with the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus - the three deadliest creatures in Egypt.

Photographed by the British Museum, via Wikimedia

The artist didn't know what a hippo looked like sitting down, so he was just like, "F*** it - stubby legs"

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday Friday: Spinosaurus, the Aquatic Predator

It's not Monday yet, but I just read some new findings about Spinosaurus that place it squarely in the 'aquatic predator' camp, not the 'run at you T-Rex style' camp, mainly because Spinosaurus probably couldn't run.  You know how excited I get about prehistoric stuff.

Art: Davide Bonadonna, National Geographic, via Smithsonian.com

Obviously, I had to modify the existing stat block for Spinosaurus to take these new findings into account.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. It is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars, based on material published in Pathfinder Bestiary 3 © 2011, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors Jesse Benner, Jason Bulmahn, Adam Daigle, James Jacobs, Michael Kenway, Rob McCreary, Patrick Renie, Chris Sims, F. Wesley Schneider, James L. Sutter, and Russ Taylor, in turn based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams.

Monster Monday: Wadjet - Ancient Egyptian Fire Cobra

Last week, d20 Despot received its 10,000th pageview!  It was only a few months ago that we got to 5,000 and, as I mentioned in last week's news-post, it was made possible by a reader's post to the RPG section of Reddit.  d20 Despot is a labour of love, and I'll keep coming out with new content no matter how many readers I have, but if you want to start seeing illustrated d20 Despot PDFs chock full of bonus content, I'll need a bigger reader-base.  And for that, I'm relying on you, my loyal minions!  Spread the word all around these glorious interwebs!

Speaking of content, today's Monster Monday entry is the dazzling wadjet, a giant winged cobra straight out of ancient Egyptian legend.  Watch out for their poisonous spit and their searing gaze!

via Amentet Neferet

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.