Harginn (Fire Grue)

So while Fire Elementals are already a pretty dangerous and unpredictable bunch, as pure elementals, their attitude towards others is generally fairly neutral. Sure, they'll feel the compulsion to burn things, but it's not because they're especially mean or whatever.

Harginns are especially mean or whatever. They like burning living things. It's fun, you know.

Grues are elementals born out of sections of their Planes which have been touched by evil magic. Because of this, they're especially nasty, territorial, sadistic, though fortunately they're on the weaker side of the spectrum. However, grues are especially sought after by wizards because the combination of elemental and evil magic crystallizes as a small magical object in the core of each elemental, which remains even after the grue is slain. This object can then be studied to gain new spell knowledge.

So as far as I know, grues originate from Zork, a 70s text-based videogame. I played it once. It's quite difficult. Grues are creatures that lived in the darkness and it was inadvisable to wander out there. It is pitch black. You may be eaten by a grue. There was no physical description attached to the grue, since no one has ever survived an encounter. But I always pictured them looking like cranes (grue sounds like grúa which is Spanish for crane, both the bird and the machine), which isn't very scary. Somehow it made it more intimidating, the idea of this gangly beaky thing being able to devour you though.

Xylia Glass, Alienist

Alienists are wizards and sorcerers who have delved to deep into the study of aberrations and the chaotic powers of the Far Realm. They follow their science with religious zeal, slowly descending into insanity and physical mutation as they chase immortality and trascendence of normal dimensions. Even the creatures they summon with their spells are of a warped, unnatural appearance.

This is a pretty good prestige class for players who don't want to sacrifice magical power for specific class abilities, the Alienist being a flavour prestige rather than a strategically sound one. As you gains levels, your character literally begins to go insane; you lose points to your Wisdom stat and take penalties to your interaction with normal people and animals. It's kind of balanced out by a handful of extra hit points and a bunch of damage redutions. But you're also crazy. That's the fun of flavour prestige classes.

And what's fantasy without a little HP Lovecraft thrown in the mix?

PS: I've started a new blog that may be useful to any artists out there. It's called Reference Reference, and I'm going to be archiving my collection of reference/inspirational images. Look at it to see some of the references I used for this week's image.