Monster Monday: Chordopod, Bony Tentacle Beast

Today's Monster Monday is the chordopod, an undead monstrosity that takes the rough form of an octopus or spider made of bones. At its center is a large skull-shaped head formed from twisted and distorted bones, while its many tentacles or legs are long spinal columns which whip and curl and crawl. This twisted undead abomination is the result of a great outpouring of negative energy in places such as mass graves, battlefields, and shipwrecks where the remains of many individuals are left to mingle and decay anonymously.

With the ability to burrow, climb, and swim, these nimble monstrosities are all-terrain foes (I guess you're safe in the sky, unless one of them grabs onto the hull of your airship as you are taking off). I can see them bursting out of the desert sand just as easily as I can see them bursting out of the storm-wracked ocean or bursting through the troubled earth of a bloody battlefield. I guess I just picture them bursting through things.

Also in the stat-block below, a diseased variant that rises from the mass graves of plague victims and stalks through the streets of disease-wracked cities or the pestilential countryside, spreading filth and rot in their wake.

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

Monster Monday: Ammonites - Spiral-Shelled Cephalopods of Prehistoric Seas

Today's Monster Monday is the ammonite, a hard-shelled nautilus-like creature that floated through the prehistoric seas for some 350 million years before being wiped out in the same extinction that ended the age of the dinosaurs.

Ammonites typically had a spiral shell made up of successively smaller chambers that they could flood with gas or water to control their buoyancy. The animal itself was a cephalopod, probably ten-armed, which protruded from the end of the shell. Some ammonites may have been able to withdraw into their shells like a modern nautilus or a snail. Some may have had ink they could release in a cloud like modern squid and octopuses. But when we are talking about ammonites, we are talking about thousands of species across hundreds of millions of years - there was room for plenty of variation. Some - like the nostoceratidae - had irregularly unwound shells and probably floated through the sea like plankton or jellyfish. Some just crawled along the sea floor. Most ammonites were small, with shell spirals reaching no larger than 9 inches in diameter. But the two types of ammonites we will be looking at today were big.

photo by Ghedoghedo, via Wikimedia

Titanites giganteus - Natural History Museum, London

Titanites giganteus did not let the ocean currents decide where it would go, as if it were some kind of overgrown plankton. No, titanites was a swift hunter, jetting through the ocean in search of prey it could wrap its probing tentacles around and gnaw with its sharp beak. Their shells reached 2-3 feet in diameter, much larger than the typical ammonite of its day. But even the bigly named titanites giganteus was dwarfed by:

photo via Wikimedia

German zoologist Hermann Landois sitting next to his fossil of Parapuzosia seppenradensis,
with a wire frame showing the projected size if the specimen were complete. 

Parapuzosia seppenradensis may be a mouthful of a name, but you would be hard pressed to find a predator capable of making this ammonite into a mouthful. The 5.9 foot diameter fossil seen above is broken - with its intact living chamber, estimates put this specimen at 8.4 to 11 feet in diameter, making it by far the largest ammonite species. In life, the creature may have weighed 3,200 pounds, fully half of which comes from its massive shell. If parapuzosia was a hunter like titanites was, it must have been an impressive and terrifying sight to behold.

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

Monster Monday: Tomtenisse - Tiny Fey that Pack a Punch

Today's Monster Monday is the tomtenisse, also known as tomte, nisse, or tonttu, an apple-sized little gnome from Scandinavian folklore which acts as a guardian spirit for a plot of land. These little guys have incredible strength for their size, able to punch out a grown man, snap a cow's neck, or carry a one ton load above their head. Why would these helpful farm spirits ever punch a cow to death? Well, tomtenisse can also be pretty dang ornery.

In the Christmas Night by John Bauer (1913), via Wikimedia

Tomtenisse help out around the farm in unseen ways, mending things, tending to the animals, and carrying loads. All they want in return is a bowl of porridge with a pat of butter on it on a specific day. If they don't get their porridge, they can become enraged, breaking things and lashing out at nearby creatures to punish their lax master. The older the tomtenisse, the more particular it gets about how a farm is run, and the quicker it is to inflict corporal punishment. If a new farmer on the land starts putting his tools away in the wrong places, a young nisse might rearrange them all in the night or pile them against the farmer's bedroom door, while an older nisse might simply break every tool that is out of its place. If a farmhand urinates in the barn, they might grab a manure shovel and smack them in the back of the head. If someone eats the nisse's porridge, they will usually be found beaten to within an inch of their life.

In perhaps the most illustrative story of the tomtenisse, a farmer leaves the nisse his usual bowl of porridge, but accidentally puts the butter on the bottom of the porridge. The nisse, thinking the farmer forgot the butter, becomes so enraged that he leaps up and cracks the neck of the farmer's prized cow. He then eats the porridge and finds the pat of butter at the bottom. Remorseful, the nisse runs to all the neighboring farms until he finds an identical cow to bring back for the farmer.

The tomtenisse reserve their deadliest weapon for those who cross them severely: a nisse bite can leave its victim cursed to wither away and die.

The tomtenisse legend may come from a pre-Christian belief in ancestor spirits. The earliest tomtenisse lived in burial mounds, perhaps the spirit of the first farmer to clear and work the land. In the 14th century, Saint Birgitte of Vadstena warned people not to worship the tompta gudhi (the house-lot gods). In modern times, the tomtenisse remain popular as Christmas figures, and though tales remain of angry nisse beating people to a pulp, they are more commonly seen having seasonal fun on Christmas cards.

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

Monster Monday: Xiuhcoatl, Aztec Fire Serpent

Today's Monster Monday is the xiuhcoatl, a fire serpent from Aztec mythology. This serpentine dragon has turquoise. Waves of heat ripple around it as it vents steam and breathes fire. When angered, it can charge with lightning speed, striking its target with an explosion of fiery force.

Xiuhcoatl sculpture at the British Museum (author's photo)

In Aztec mythology, the god Huitzilopochtli used his atlatl to throw xiuhcoatl like lightning-bolt javelin. It was how he killed his sister Coyalxauhqui when she led the Southern Star Gods to war against their pregnant mother. Xiucoatl was also a form of Xiuhtecuhtli - the Turquoise Lord - Aztec god of fire. Xiuhcoatl is the lightning bolt that starts a brushfire in the grasslands, the fire that rains out of a volcanic eruption, and the heat of the sun in the dry season.

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

Monster Monday: Poludnitsa - Lady Midday

Today's Monster Monday is the polunitsa, or Lady Midday. She is a malicious fey from Slavic mythology who appears in the heat of midday to deliver heatstroke and madness to those laboring in the fields. She tends to appear as a woman dressed in white peasant clothes and bearing a scythe, and she is usually either young and eerily beautiful or old and wizened.

Faucheuse ('Girl with a Scythe') by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1872), via Wikimedia

There is more I could say, but I am afraid Lady Midday has struck me with heat exhaustion and left me unable to think clearly. Instead, please enjoy this sassy-looking poludnitsa:

via Wikimedia

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

Monster Monday: Drop Bear - Australian Tall Tale

Today's Monster Monday is the drop bear, a big mean koala that plummets out of the trees onto its hapless prey. Unlike regular koalas, these drop bears are carnivorous predators with a taste for human flesh. It's still pretty cute, though.

modified (by me) from a photo by JJ Harrison on Wikimedia

Drop bears were a joke that Australians played on outsiders, building off the fact that Australian fauna is terrifying and deadly. It is unclear whether this is an original Australian settler tall tale, or if it originated from a joke Australian aborigines played on the invading whites, or even if it might come from some Australian aboriginal myth. We know from the yara-ma-ya-who that the Australian aborigines were no stranger to reddish mythical creatures that come down from trees to mess people up.

In combat, this monster has a pretty solid opening move - it drops from above onto its presumably flat-footed prey, and if it hits with any of its three attacks it takes no falling damage and inflicts half of the falling damage it would have taken to its target. If hunting a lone target, this gives the drop bear a solid chance of knocking it out so that it can drag it up the tree to feed at its leisure. If fighting a group of targets (say, an adventuring party), the drop bear might be able to knock out the most dangerous looking one, giving it a chance to drive off the others with its clumsier, less gravity-aided attacks.

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

Monster Monday: Armored Grave - This Armor Shall Serve as My Epitaph

Today's Monster Monday is the armored grave, a knight buried in his armor, its once-gleaming plates now bursting at the seams with hard-packed grave dirt and the putrescence of decay. These are the tanks of the low-level undead world.

Buried in their armor, these ritually-prepared undead take on a new body of hard-packed grave dirt, granting them an additional layer of protection. Compared to ordinary skeletons and zombies, armored graves are invulnerable, unstoppable death machines.

Just to kick things up a notch, an armored epitaph is a slightly stronger armored grave which has Intelligence and feats and which isn't staggered.

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