Monster Monday: Blink Raptors, Deadly Teleporting Dinos

A constant damp pervaded the whole jungle. It wasn't even raining; water just dripped perpetually from leaf to leaf, more than enough to make sure that nothing ever dried out. Not for the first time today, the magistress was glad not to be wearing her academic robes, which would have instantly become unbearably sodden and overwhelming in this environment. Instead she wore simple, practical travelers' garb which belied the fact that she was the foremost expert in her field. She was supposed to be here studying the local plant life in all its scientifically intriguing strangeness. Now she barely registered it. A lot had changed since yesterday, when her expedition had been betrayed by her mysterious benefactor's security chief, leaving them unprepared for the furious onslaught of the monsters who dwelt in the deep jungle.
   "I can see the cave from here," she called out to the ranger, Muldoon. They were searching for Sir Raymond Arnold, who had been missing since last night. He had been seeking out an important artifact thought hidden in a nearby cave. The cave's black maw stood not far away, across a small clearing. So close, and yet Magistress Sattler was unnerved at the thought of exposing herself, even for a moment, by leaving the cover of the trees. "We can make it if we run," she suggested.
   "No we can't," Muldoon said, flat and measured, eyes fixed on a patch of jungle not twenty meters away.
   "Why not?"
   "Because we are being hunted."
   "Oh, gods..."
   "In the bushes, straight ahead. It's alright."
   A shadow flicked across the patch of leaves, and suddenly she could see a green reptilian eye watching them. "Like Hell it is!"
   But the keen-eyed ranger was already nocking an arrow to his bow. "Run. Towards the cave. I've got her." He paced forward, ever so slowly, and Magistress Sattler stayed with him, unwilling to free herself from this last safety tether. "Go!"
   She spun and immediately tripped on a root, twisting her ankle. She sprang up and hobbled faster than she had ever run on two good legs, leaping over logs, sliding through puddles, and out into the clearing. She breathed through gritted teeth, not daring to look behind her until she passed under the roof of the cave. 

Muldoon took one step forward, then another, slowly drawing his bowstring back until his thumb brushed his jaw. The creature clearly saw him, but made no move to attack. The dumb beast had probably never seen a bow before. He let fly the arrow, straight at the monster's eye. Faster than the arrow, the monster disappeared, reappearing in the same instant right next to him.
   "Clever girl." Muldoon nocked and drew again in the blink of an eye, but as he whirled to skewer the beast at point-blank range, it squealed and lunged at him. he was surrounded, but by how many he couldn't tell - they seemed to shift in and out of existence. Their claws slashed at him from everywhere and nowhere at once.
   The blink raptors' pack leader watched the kill unfold from the bushes not five feet away from where Muldoon had stood; completely still, eerily silent, and undoubtedly clever.

Today's Monster Monday is the blink raptor, a fierce and intelligent magical dinosaur that can teleport and phase in and out of the Material Plane. Think blink dog mixed with deinonychus.

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

Monster Monday: Abominable Snowman, the Dread Yeti

It probably doesn't surprise you, dear reader, to know that in times of hot and sunny weather, your humble d20 despot seeks shelter indoors with heavy curtains drawn across every window. To help cool things off, today's Monster Monday is the abominable snowman, or dread yeti. Much larger and more powerful than your standard yeti, these beasts have been known to lay waste to entire mountain settlements single-handedly. They call upon tremendous strength and an elemental connection to the cold, and their frightful roar can leave even the stoutest adventurer paralyzed with fear and scoured by ice crystals.

I created the abominable snowman for part 3 of my holiday mini-adventure series, which I did not have the creative energy to finish and publish last holiday season (I do still intend to finish it). This creature is not just a Huge-sized yeti: it can also throw rocks and chunks of ice like a giant, the yeti's fear gaze-attack has been traded for a roar that can paralyze its targets with fear, and it also gains a breath weapon that deals cold and sonic damage (so it can still be effective against smart adventurers who magically bundle up against cold damage). This CR 9 monster is designed to pose a higher-level threat than the existing yeti.

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

Monster Monday: Melinoe, Nymph of Madness

Adalis met his muse for the last time at midnight, at the crossroads. She was as beautiful as pure chaos, her skin shifting from black to white like the phases of the moon, now shining brightly, now dissolving into shadows. She embraced him. He felt every emotion well up in his body and then drain out of him like grain from a torn sack, a sack that she would mend and then fill with her genius. She had been there for Adalis when his songs fell on deaf ears, when he was booed out of the inn, when his beloved laughed at his heartfelt poetry. When he was invited to play for the baron, only to discover halfway through his performance that he was the butt of a terrible joke. His muse had always been there for him, ready to whisper in his ear that which he already knew. They were all fools who could never appreciate true beauty. They must learn. They must pay.

Tonight, she would teach him the song that drives men insane.

Today's Monster Monday is melinoe, a tortured nymph who spreads madness to all she encounters. The sight of her can render a stalwart adventurer into a babbling mess. Her mere glance can strip away the mind's defenses. When she sees madness in others, she nurtures it as other nymphs would care for a grove sacred spring.

from Antikes Zaubergerät aus Pergamon (Richard Wünsch, 1905), via Wikipedia

Drawing of a 3rd century AD spell-inscribed bronze tablet found at Pergamon, invoking (among others) Melinoe 

Melinoe is a rather obscure figure from Greek myth, closely associated with Hecate (goddess of crossroads and witchcraft). The real magic tablet* depicted above does not show Melinoe, but does invoke her name. A surviving Orphic hymn to Melinoe calls her "saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth" and describes her thus:

This specter drives mortals to madness with her airy apparitions
as she appears in weird shapes and strange forms,
now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness—
all this in unnerving attacks in the gloom of night.

All of this, from her power over madness to her shifting form between light and shadow to her 'airy apparitions', played a role in how I statted up melinoe as a monster. Her beautiful visage drives others to madness, her ever-changing form can have an actual effect on the battlefield, and she can summon allips to her service.

*When I say real magic tablet, I mean that this is a real Greek spell-tablet inscribed with magic words, not that magic itself is real. Sorry, D&D still can't teach you the real power.

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

Monster Monday: Minocentaur - Half-Minotaur, Half-Centaur

Today's Monster Monday is the minocentaur, a minotaur centaur. It has the lower body of a bull and the upper body of a minotaur. I guess its kind of like if a bull's neck suddenly turned into a full human torso. This taurine beast combines all the power and fury of a raging bull with all the power and fury of a raging minotaur. So watch out, I guess. Also, it dual-wields greataxes, because of course it does.

While I was statting it up, I was considering what kind of ranged weapon it should have: should it chuck a mighty spear, or go a more centaurish approach and wield a bow. Neither option quite felt right, but then I realized that I could just make it throw greataxes.

Photo by Wolfgang Sauber, via Wikimedia

Gilded Minoan axes in Herakleion Archaeological Museum. 

The reason minotaurs are often depicted wielding two-headed axes comes from their origins on the island of Crete. The minotaur was the monstrous offspring of King Minos's wife, Pasiphaë, and a super sexy bull that Poseidon sent out of the sea. King Minos imprisoned the minotaur in the Labyrinth, the name of which (labyrinthos) probably derives from labrys, a type of two headed axe (pictured above) which was used in religious ceremonies by the Minoans. With the Minoans strongly associated with bulls, labrys, the minotaur, and the labyrinth, it is almost inevitable that modern depictions of the minotaur would have him wielding a two-headed axe, even if he was not described as such in the original stories.

But enough about boring old two-legged minotaurs. Let's learn more about this twin-labrys-wielding, four-hoofed minocentaur:

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

Monster Monday: Pit Mimic, The Living Hole

Today's Monster Monday is the pit mimic, an insidious trickster that disguises itself as the floor, only to open up and reveal a pit. It is a living pit trap, capable of moving itself under its prey so that they fall in, or grabbing people with its tentacles and dropping them into its extradimensional maw. Its gullet appears to be an ordinary pit, but any who fall in will find it bristling with pummeling pseudopods. Of course I've included variant pit mimics that are deeper, or filled with acid, or filled with spikes.

pit trap photo by Georg Waßmuth, via Wikimedia

There is a similar monster in Pathfinder Bestiary 6 called the slithering pit. As I was reading through the new Bestiary for an upcoming review, I remembered my pit mimic and went searching for it. As it turns out, although I statted it up in January of 2016, I neglected to post it either here or to my patreon. Well it's here now, and if I do say so myself (I do), it turned out better than the official slithering pit from the Bestiary. But be warned: this is a huge stat block. Creating this creature was a challenge because it breaks a lot of the base assumptions for a monster of this size and power. As such, it needed a lot of special rules to make sure that the monster functions intuitively within a rule system that was not built with it in mind.  Check it out below! I hope to see many adventurers in the future falling prey to these living, moving pits.

The following text in gold is available, along with any accompanying tables, as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

Monster Monday: Colossal Octopus, Tentacle of the Deep

Today's Monster Monday (apologies for missing last week's post) is the colossal octopus, a tremendous being from the inky black depths of the sea, larger even than the legendary kraken. This being is a force of nature; a terror to shipping and to coastal communities.

Drawing by Pierre Dénys de Montfort, via Wikimedia

The kraken is a threat thanks not only to its immense size but also to its cunning (Int 21, Wis 20) and its innate magic. The colossal octopus, on the other hand, is a wholly non-magical animal, but nonetheless a true monster of the seas. With eight tentacle attacks and a powerful bite, this beast is built to take on a whole ship full of adventurers. It clocks in at Challenge Rating 13, which means it is an accessible opponent for more adventuring parties than the CR 18 kraken. The description also includes rules for hacking off its tentacles individually, because how could there not be? I'm actually kind of baffled by how the tentacle chopping that was a part of the kraken's stat block in D&D 3.5 disappeared in the Pathfinder version.

Back in the days of the Enlightenment, as humankind's approach to studying the natural world transitioned from the natural philosophy of earlier times to the more rigorous scientific method, both the kraken and the gigantic octopus were occasionally considered to be real creatures. Carl Linnaeus, the father of the modern taxonomy himself, included the kraken (under the scientific name Microcosmus marinus) in the first edition of Systema Naturae, published in 1735. The French naturalist Pierre Dénys de Montfort included both the kraken and what he described as the larger "poulpe colossal" (colossal octopus) in his 1802 work, Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques.

Drawing by Pierre Dénys de Montfort, via Wikimedia

These vestiges of myth and legend were soon scrubbed from scientific literature due to a lack of evidence, but it is worth noting why they ever made it to those pages in the first place. While we may take for granted that creatures like the colossal octopus are pure myth, early naturalists did not have the luxury of such certainty, especially when it came to the mysterious ocean depths. Naturalists used not only their own observations in their descriptions of the natural world, but also reports from others, studiously collecting and analyzing eyewitness accounts, local legends, and the writings of their ancient and medieval fore-bearers. The kraken and colossal octopus were represented in those sources just as the real monsters of the deep were; the fact that the immense carcasses of the otherwise unbelievable giant squid and blue whale occasionally washed ashore only served to lend credence to the idea that these other abyssal titans might exist somewhere out there in the unplumbed depths of the boundless ocean.

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

Monster Monday: Knocker, Leprechaun of the Mines

   "Don't be too hasty to finish that there pasty," Jago's wrinkled grey face twisted into a smirk. The old-timer leaned in toward where Cadwur was eating his lunch by the light of his candle-helmet. "You'll want to save a morsel for the knockers.  Like this." He took one last bite of his own pasty and tossed the remaining corner out beyond the candlelight.

   Cadwur's stomach rumbled. He was new to mine labor, and his lunch had not filled him as it should. He eyed the last bite of his pasty eagerly. 

   "Save a morsel for the rats, more like!" Massen butted in. "You'll go hungry if you listen to this old fool's tall tales, Fresh-Face." He popped half a sweet roll in his mouth and chewed loudly. 

   "And if you showed some respect to the fey, maybe your tools would stop disappearing." Jago turned back to Cadwur. "Go on, make your offering. Unless you want to take your chances like Missing Massen over here." 

   Reluctantly, Cadwur tossed his crust out beyond the circle of light. Over the now-familiar scrabbling of rats, he thought he heard the soft slapping of tiny bare feet. But then they all heard the screaming.  

   It came from further down the mine, from the main shaft where the men of the deep shift were working.  The screaming grew more violent as more voices joined in, and it meshed with the clash of iron and rock and the distorted echoes of a deep, unearthly growl. Then came the knocking. Loud, rhythmic, insistent, coming right from the entrance to the side shaft Cadwur and his whole crew were sitting in. Everyone instinctively recoiled.  Everyone but Massen, who leapt for the entrance, yelling, "Cave in! Everyone out!" Just as he reached the entrance, a support beam cracked and struck him on the head. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes and lay there for a split second, more serene than anyone had ever seen him, before the whole ceiling fell on him. They all watched in silence until his boots stopped twitching and the dust settled.  

   The screaming had stopped, but the noise had not. Something large and clumsy, roaring like a blast furnace and stinking like a charnel house, was scraping its way up through the mine. Candles extinguished, picks and shovels clenched in white-knuckle fists, every miner behind the cave-in listened with bated breath as the beast sniffed and clawed at the pile of rubble that had sealed them in. They stayed like that for what seemed like an hour after the monster gave up and moved on, then they breathed out a collective sigh of relief.  

   Cadwur pulled his flint and steel out of a satchel on his belt and lit the candle stub on the front of his helmet. A tiny man with a long, ratty beard and a protruding nose was resting against the shaft wall, right on the edge of his candlelight, hefting an oversized hammer in one hand. He winked at Cadwur, popped a crust of pasty in his mouth, and fell backwards through the solid stone. 

   Trapped by the cave-in, they were the only miners to survive the monster's attack. They lived in the dark for four days awaiting rescue, licking moisture from the walls and eating raw rats. And every man of them left out a scrap of rat for the knocker who had saved their lives.  

Today's Monster Monday is the knocker, an impish prankster from Welsh and Cornish mythology who lives deep in the mines and makes loud noises to warn of (or cause) cave-ins.

Knockers are responsible for odd sounds and mysterious disappearances that plague deep caverns and drive miners mad. They delight in causing mischief, from extinguishing lights and stealing tools to luring lone subterranean explorers to their dooms or trapping dozens of miners with strategically placed cave-ins. Most miners and subterranean races maintain that knockers can be appeased with offerings of food and drink, and some even claim that those whom the knockers favor are blessed with enduring luck underground.

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