Aranea

 

So these little ladies are about a step away from being werespiders. An aranea is a shapeshifting magical spiders, with a unique humanoid form, one beastly form and a third form being somewhere in between. Though not good, these creatures aren't evil, which is something quite pleasant when it comes to sentient spiders.

I just really dig the idea that the little old lady in the house down the road that makes extra nice sweaters has a bit of a secret. But that doesn't mean she'll eat you. Well, maybe she will. Villagers probably get the ol' torch and pitchfork when they find out about that. They've still got a good bit of poison, spells and sticky webs to gather you up with. So just be a dearie and keep Grammy Spider's secret, okay?

Centaur

Centaurs are a noble race of beast-men who, as in their appearance, straddle a line between humanity and animal savagery. Their trust is hard to earn; their wrath is cheap indeed!

Sorry for the lateness of this! Busy work and busy weekends make Joe a tired boy. Also apologies for the boobs on display here, I just felt like 99% of the fantasy centaurs I see are bare-chested, muscled males and I felt like switching up the gender - the result is something like Walt Disney's (planned) topless centaurs for Fantasia meets Merle from Escaflowne or some other borderline-furry catgirl cheesecake from my youth. I'm not much fond of furry art (to put it lightly), but for some reason centaurs and mermaids seem to avoid my distaste.

In any case, I've been looking at a lot of drawings of girls lately (Chris Sanders, Alex Ahad) and I felt like trying my hand at a pretty girl - I think the hair is a little boring, but I like the face and the rest of it. Maybe I'll change up the hairstyle later - for now, I'll just post it. Feel free to berate me in the comments for my possible idle sexism / corruption of America's youth etc etc. :)

- Joe

PS be sure to look at it full-size! I might put up some detail images tomorrow.

Cursed Cold One (Gelun)

The Cursed Cold Ones may once have been humans. Once. Now they're translucent humanoid creatures entirely dependant on heat. Any temperature below searing hot causes them to freeze into a block of ice and enter an agonizing state of hibernation.

To counter this, they live primarily in hot deserts, where they're guaranteed long days of extreme heat and sunlight. But desert nights are notoriously cold and the Cursed Cold Ones must find a heat source of risk becoming blocks of ice for the next few hours. Because their bodies are natural heat sinks, their touch is much like the attack of an Ice Serpent, freezing their victims as they drain them of their heat. Even their gaze can cause an enemy to reel with sensations of deep cold.

Tried to get some sketchy shading with this image. Sometimes I really like the scratchy dark shadows I do in my sketchbook.

Nashrou

Nashrou are among the many animalian predators that are scattered about the Abyss. Their intelligence is comparable to wolves, as are their pack hierarchy. They're rarely alone, but a solitary nashrou could be a good or bad thing. Good may mean that it's been separated. Or it could mean that they're a scout and the rest of the pack is shortly behind them.

Though fierce, these creatures have a big flaw: they're extremely vulnerable to specific hit. You hit one in an especially vulnerable point (i.e. score a critical hit) and you've got a pretty good chance of killing one instantaneously.

This was a blind monster (name and image blacked out) given to me by Joe. I'm pretty pleased that the image looks nothing like what's in the book, though I do regret that the one has a way more interesting body in an abstact geometry kind of way.

Dretch

Among the demonic hordes of the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, the Dretch is undoubtedly the most pitiful. Small, stinking, blubbery midgets, they are only barely intelligent enough to comprehend speech and cannot approximate it themselves - instead relying on a crude form of telepathy. Which is not to deny that Dretches are cruel, monstrous creatures who seek out murder and destruction for the sheer joy of it; merely that where there is a Dretch, there is also most likely a more powerful demon somewhere behind, goading it into action.

I finally bought a cintiq last week! This makes two entries so far made using a cintiq on this blog - this one and the Rogue Eidolon (which I made at a place where I was working last year). They both have a kind of painterly look, which is something the cintiq helps with. This guy was fun to draw, especially the graphic, simian face. I tried to get a balance between him looking scary/silly, it's a balance I like to straddle. What do you think?

- Joe

Gray Dwarves (Duergar)

Like the drow, the duergar are a cold-hearted subterranean race of dark-skinned humanoids. Unlike the drow, they put on no airs of aristocratic refinement, despite thinking they're better than anybody else.

Duergar are deep believers that life is nothing but thankless, painful work, as the doctrines Laduguer state. The priests of their religion go through agonizing torture in order to prove themselves worthy. The rest of them are all craftsmen, creating beautiful treasure after treasure. However, they don't seem to indulge very much in them. The dress of the duergar is drab, without embellishment, while their works are locked away in deep trap-filled vaults. Life is work, not pleasure, even if it's the pleasure of artistic accomplishment.

Duergar also have a fascinating origin myth. Laduguer created the grey dwarves and taught them to work. And they did. But there was one dwarf, the Lone Craftsman, who would hide away from deific eyes and commit blasphemies: he created life. The Lone Craftsman made all the other races of the world and when Laduguer found out, he cursed him, transforming him into the first derro, another subterranan race made up of psychotic small man incapable of creation due to their small attention spans. So the Duergar see all other races as abominations and insults against their god. They especially hate other dwarves, seeing them as the Lone Craftsman's ultimate heresy. The only race they almost respect are gnomes, since they're almost as single-minded in their craftsmanship as the duergar.

They're tough to fight as well, with innate size-changing and invisibility abilities. I bet a good many adventurer has been smashed by an underground giant not realizing that they were fighting a dwarf.

There need to be more lady dwarves. Also, the lady dwarves need to be as hirsute as their male counterparts.