Logokron Devil

Much like certain angelic beings use truename magic, so do some devils. As one might imagine, the logokron devil's use of truemagic is meant to cause pain. Their long tongues are marked all over with magic symbols which are painful to look at, causing one to seize up and shake with insurmountable agony. Other devils are unaffected by this symbol, allowing the logokron to incapacitate enemies whilst bolstering the other soldiers in its army.

The know the true words of agony and wounding, and blending them with a person's name can cause that person to be forever tormented, long after the devil has left their sight.

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Green Hag

Don't go into the woods after dark.

Make offerings at the temples of the travel gods, hold onto your talismans, wear your shirt inside out and carry a hazel stick.

Don't got into the woods after dark.

Do not acknowledge cute little old ladies, beautiful women or lost children. Do not heed the weeping in the trees, or the laughter, or the cries for help. Do not follow the swaying of lanterns in the darkness. If your friend left the path, they are gone. That is not their voice you hear.

But most of all don't go into the woods after dark.

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Goblin

By many, goblins are considered less a race of small humanoid creatures and more a universal constant or a force of nature. Noisy, smelly, and worryingly numerous, they are a constant nuisance to any and all around them (though never catastrophically so). With nests across the multiverse, they have been likened to the common cold - in that what they lack in raw destructive power they easily make up for in hardiness and resilience to extermination (much to the chagrin of the more "cultured" civilisations who they revel in bothering).

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I think my favourite goblins are Magic: the Gathering goblins, mainly due to the extent of their ineptitude (there's a running gag where goblin cards will do... like the opposite thing they ought to do - see Goblin Diplomats) and also their propensity for infighting and (*cough*) self-sacrifice. Plus, they're one of those creature types where you can easily flood the board with them, and my inner timmy lights up at the thought of swinging for lethal with 10,000+ goblins as facilitated by someone like Krenko.

Anyway! These goblins are inspired by Blanca's old 3d designs for goblins, which are slightly puggy, but also by the miniblin enemies from Wind Waker. I guess with the knobbly bits on their heads you might mistake them for some lesser devil or other, but from a folkloric perspective I think goblins/imps/bugbears/devils are all cut from kind of the same cloth, so I don't really mind.

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Spectral Mage

Okay so you can have ghost, but what if the ghost was, like, magic? I mean, I guess you could just tack on some spellcaster levels onto a standard ghost. Or you could use the somewhat superfluous spectral mage template!

Honestly there isn't that much difference between the two types of ghosties. Except maybe that spectral mages are a bit more consistent as poltergeists since they don't have to take breaks between levitation spells.

Mostly I like the idea of a wizard spending just, like, ages trying to figure out the elixir of life, or how to become a lich or worm that walks, only for them to accidentally blow themselves up and become a ghost.

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Hopping Vampire

 

Here's Mr. Vampire himself! Mr. Hopping Vampire. Don't laugh, coz he'll get ya.

So while they're called vampires and have the teeth to back it up, they're not your typical suck-your-blood types. They're psychic vampires, breathing on you and draining your chi. The big ol' claws are just a good way to make you stay put while they do that sweet chi draining. 

Also, unlike regular vampires, they don't have that whole shape-shifting thing to make themselves look sexy. It's the moldy rotting corpse look that they've got going on. Not that they could lay some seduction on you with words either, because they're not too bright either. These dudes are also completely blind, and detect their prey by sensing their breath. But they're reeeeaaallly good at sensing breath, can feel it from quite far away, so you'd better put some distance between you and Mr. Vampire.

So that should make them easy enemies, yeah? Well, sunlight doesn't harm them, so you can't just whip aside some curtains or come back to their hidey-holes after sunrise to kill them. They'll be awake and they'll be waiting. Or maybe they'll just be following you. And don't let them get you with the claws either, because pretty soon after you'll feel your muscles seizing up until you can only move at a hop-hop-hop.

Hop-hop-happy Halloween to you.

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Kraken (Redux)

"...Child of dark! Herald of void!
First-created of the gods, or else their elder!
We know the truth: the world above the waves is nought but wan reflection of thy realm,
and we merely its fragile custodians.
O! Drown the world! Snuff out the stars!
We beseech thee, Great One, that all might hear thy song
Borne endless 'cross the sable deeps!"

- Extract from the Holy Book of the Water-folk, Chapter 27 

So this is actually a redo of an old Dungeons & Drawings design that I did waaaaaaayy back in 2011! Go look at it if you want to see an example of the old slightly janky pixelart I used to do! I didn't think it was very good, even at the time, so I decided to redo it but still try and sort of... aim for the same feeling that I was going for before? If that makes sense? I think I succeeded to some extent.

I've always had a pretty deep-rooted fear of the sea, which I don't think is uncommon. I don't know if this was fuelled by anything (I suspect it was influenced by something I saw on TV or in a film) but I used to have a lot of nightmares about the sea, particularly tidal waves (like, cartoonishly large ones) and just the idea of big creatures either emerging or (sort of worse) lurking immediately underneath the surface. I actually went through a period of not wanting to do back-stroke at my swimming classes because I kept visualising something big "behind" me, under the water (yes, even in a swimming pool).

Krakens, Leviathans and other giant sea-creatures are likely to be encountered more as an environmental hazard than a traditional D&D fight, but I think their sheer scale makes them a fun (if terrifying) element to chuck into your game. I love giant monsters. I'm not, like, a big kaiju fan or anything like that, but I find there's something really compelling about a creature so big that it could destroy your life, your house, your city without even realising. Krakens also have the benefit of having a certain Lovecraftian mystique to them, emerging as they do from the inscrutable deep.

There's a persistent fringe theory about either octopi and/or squid being somehow descended from extraterrestrial life, and while I don't buy it myself, neither species does much to properly disprove it. They're pretty weird.

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Deep Dragon

As one would expect, deep dragons are found deep, deep in the earth. It's not completely certain whether deep dragons are their own species, or some kind of mutated version of a true dragon. Regardless, they're just as powerful as true dragons. Surface dwellers may now give a sigh of relief as it's made known that deep dragons have no interest in leaving their dark world. They sometimes make pacts with drow, but that's mostly to keep an eye on them and make sure that whatever the drow do, it won't interfere with the deep dragon's well-being.

Deep dragons cannot be trusted. They’re especially tricky creatures, and similarly difficult to fool. Even a wyrmling is born with innate true seeing, making them immune to the effects of illusions and invisibility. Older deep dragons become more attuned to their cavernous and stony environment. They start out being able to easily burrow through stone and worm their way though small cracks. By the time end of their lifespan, deep dragons can command the stone to open, close and warp as they please.

Why fight some repugnant humanoid skulking in the tunnel you've left behind when you can simply command the tunnel to seal itself, crushing the intruder?

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Hell Hound

Hell hounds are the canine companions of the servants of the denizens of Hell. Bred for size, viciousness and trainability, hell hounds can grow large enough to be used as mounts in the eternal wars between Hell and the Abyss. Wild hell hounds can also be found in wandering in packs throughout this evil plane, and while they're scrawnier than their tamed bretheren, they're also much more cunning.

Evil wizards and warlords will often summon or otherwise procure a hellhound for their own destructive needs. However, the hound's fiery breath and sulphurous smell makes them extremely hazardous to the very flammable Material Plane. Summoning, though only short-term, is probably the more sensible option if you have the means. Otherwise be ready to build stone pens. And make sure that you use good lucks; though beastly, hell hounds are smart enough to work out simpler locks.

Other wizards, fervent seekers of higher truths, also summon hell hounds in an attempt to answer a frustrating question:

Can this hound be a Good Boy when they are, by definition, a Very Bad Dog?

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Yuan-Ti Mageslayer

Yuan-ti hate hate hate hate hate anyone who isn't a yuan-ti. Especially any other creature who have the disgusting physical defect of not having scales. These Scaleless Ones are becoming increasingly troubling, what with their insistence on learning magic. This has forced that hands of yuan-ti lords, making them train elite groups of mages which expand on the race's natural spellcasting capabilities. Thus were created the mageslayers.


While the mageslayer has a couple of offensive spells (namely fireball, burning hands and acid splash), most of it's magic is geared towards espionage and quick, deadly takedowns. Yuan-ti favour sneak attacks over anything that calls attention to themselves. Take out the enemy slowly, one by one. If this is impossible, retreat. So the yuan-ti mageslayer will disguise itself, either as a disgusting Scaleless One, a pitiful but graceful small viper, or simply condescend to blend into their surroundings. Disenchant enemy weapons and block the abilities of any spellcasters. Lure them down wrong paths with invisible hands. And when the last intruder is left alive, grab him, and teleport away with your soon-to-be precious sacrifice.


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Pennaggolan

The pennaggolan is a type of almost exclusively female vampires. Like most vampires, they are nocturnal, but are immune to the dangers of sunlight. By day, the pennaggolan appears as a normal woman, but at night the head detaches itself from the body, dragging its entrails along with it and flies away. It often stalks lonely roads and houses, throttling travellers and feeding on their blood.

The best way to defeat a pennaggolan in to find its vacant body. The body can be destroyed, leaving the vampire permanently exposed in its gory from. Alternatively, the body (currently hollow) can be filled with thorns or broken glass, so that the pennaggolan's guts are lethally shredded when it tries to re-attach itself.

This creature come from Malaysian mythology. In the Malaysian tales, the pennaggolan (alternate names pennanggalan, hantu pennangal, balah-balah...) is usually a midwife. Some legends I've found say that the midwives make deals with spirits for supernatural powers, but fail to hold up their part of the bargain and get cursed to become these monsters. The pennagolan perches on the roof of a house containing children, pregnant women or women in labour, and feeds on their blood with an invisible tongue. Like in other vampire tales, the victim eventually contracts a wasting disease and dies.

When the pennaggolan returns home, she soaks her guts in vinegar to shrink them, so she can squeeze back into her body. Getting out is easy, but you try squeezing lungs and metres of intestines back in through a narrow neck-hole. Since the darkness can hide the face of a pennaggolan, sometimes the best way to tell if a woman is a monster or not is if she smells really strongly of vinegar.

There are a lot of variants of this monsters across East Asia. The Phillipines have the manananggal (detaches its upper body from its lower body), Bali has the leyak (way scarier face, also feeds on corpses), and Thailand has the krause (cursed with hunger; feeds on blood, flesh and poop).

I remember first reading about this monster when I was really young. I think it was maybe in some spooky Halloween edition of a kids magazine or something. I was quite struck by how weird it was. And also the whole protecting yourself by sticking a bunch of thorns and pointy leaves around you window. Them dangling guts don't wanna get tangled up in that mess.

Pretty reminiscent of the vargouille.


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Corruption Eater

The corruption eater is a type of aberration that feasts on the festering evil that wears down the soul. Encountering a corruption eater is both a good and bad thing. Good because it can cleanse you of the aforementioned festering evil; bad because getting cleansed still really really hurts and it can get mad when there's no more food left. The corruption eater uses it's stretchy tentacles to immobilize its target, then wraps the victim up in its hole-filled tongue to feed.

So you know how the other week I was talking about all the alternate magicky-magic things that D&D has? Well the Heroes of Horror book introduces the concept of taint: the corrupting influence of evil magic which wears you down both mentally and physically. As the taint increases, you weaken gaining a number of penalties that can result in death or complete madness (essentially death since the DM takes over your character).

However, certain feats, prestige classes or types of magic are only available to characters that are suffering from taint. This can result in a delicate balancing act of making sure that your taint stays above a certain level without actually being killing you.

Taint can be cured with certain spells, but a lot of them are quite high-level or expensive, so I like to think that maybe some smaller towns have a corruption eater locked away for medical purposes. Kinda like a leech. Or evil chemo. Just stick your hand in this hole. It'll hurt for a while, but we'll pull you back out once your eyes regrow and you stop craving human flesh.

Of course having a corruption eater holed up in your town would probably increase the ambient taint of the area, since you're harbouring an evil creature. Six and two threes.


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Redspawn Firebelcher

Like the bluespawn godslayer, the redspawn firebelcher is a mutation brought about by Tiamat's magic. Entirely lacking the dignity and majesty of true red dragons, the redspawn firebelcher is the stupidest of Tiamat's spawn. That doesn't make them any less dangerous, since the firebelcher is driven entirely by hunger. Other spawn might be able to control the firebelcher to use them as mounts and warbeasts, though they risk being eaten themselves. Despite the danger, Tiamat's spawn purposely starve the firebelcher in order to guarantee maximum ferocity.

Like all of Tiamat's more animalistic spawn, they exude an aura which protects nearby spawn from certain effects. In this case, it provides immunity to fire. This makes them potentially excellent mounts for whitespawn, since it can cancel out their weakness.

It's been a while since I've done anything for Dungeons & Drawings. I've been having a really really bad art block for the last several months. I didn't seem to like anything I drew. And while I still don't feel like I'm completely back to my comfort zone, I am gradually liking the last few things I've been drawing more.

Anyway, the firebelcher. Their entry describes them as often swimming around in lava pools. Well the first thought that came to my mind was crocodiles, but I really didn't want to go in that direction. The old red dragon illustration was vaguely mammalian anyway, so I went with basing this guy off a hippopotamus. Because hippopotami are horrendous nightmare beasts.

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Firenewt

 

Firenewts are relatives to lizardfolk, but their environment and behaviour is different enough for them to be confused with salamanders. Unlike lizardfolk, firenewts thrive in environments of extreme heat, with some tribes even living near or in active volcanos. Oftentimes, a creature so comfortable with fire would be a native of the Plane of Fire, but firenewts are completely native to the Material Plane.

Firenewts are extremely aggressive to both other firenewts and non-humanoid races. If a warband of these creatures is spotted, it's a sure thing that they're participating in a raid, possibly to smash the eggs of another firenewt tribe. They're also a highly religious people, with the most important members of society often being clerics in service to evil fire gods.

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Succubus

Of all the demonic denizens of the Abyss, the succubus is admired by mortals because it usually appears in the shape of someone especially desirable. Of course those mortals are very, very stupid if they think they're going to get a good time from this demon without having to give anything in return. The succubus is, after all, a soul-sucking monstrosity. They feel like ice. You will not have fun. Then you'll die.

Every culture has its version of the succubus, that is to say the seductive, disease-bringing, man-eating demon that serves as a warning against getting yourself some strange. The male equivalent, the incubus, isn't quite as common and usually extra rapey.

Some Christian texts claim that the incubus and succubus are the same demon shape-shifting between male and female forms. Angelic and demonic beings are supposedly unable to procreate the biological way. To get around this, the succubus steals semen from her victim, then shapeshifts into an incubus to impregnate a female victim. Despite the human source, the demonic transportation ensures that any child born of this union isn't completely human. Merlin is said to be the result of a union between an incubus and a human woman.

Something I really resent with depiction of succubi/incubi, especially modern depictions, is the focus on the sexiness of the demon. It's very much an "ooooh nooo, I'm getting seduced by this hot chick/dude with horns oh wellllll..." with none of the "btw this is sexual assault it hurts i'm literally wasting away please call a priest" part of the legends. These sex demons were associated with nightly emissions, sleep paralysis, sexual anxiety, rape... There's a reason these guys go after you in your sleep. So I really wanted so create a really repugnant image. Something that really showed the predatory sexual horror that this demon is supposed to represent.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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Ahuizotl

Lurking in swamps, watery caverns and murky rivers, the ahuizotl hides just below the water's surface, hoping to exploit the altruism of anybody nearby by calling out like a lost, scared child. When someone rushes towards it to help, this creatures grabs them and drags them into the water. The hand at the end of its long, prehensile tail is especially strong, and used as a primary weapon. Even those who escape the ahuizotl are often blinded forever, since its first moves tend to be an attempts to rip out their victim's eyes.

While the ahuizotl feeds on people, it's very particular about which body parts it prefers. Corpses are found floating on the water, skin bruised but untouched, missing their eyes, teeth and fingernails.

You may have heard about this creature from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but the ahuizotl is a creature of Mexican myth. Meaning spiny aquatic thing, it's described as a dog-like creature with monkey- or raccoon-like paws and a human hand at the end of its tail. It's a bit up in the air as to whether it's smooth (as stated in the Florentine Codex) or spiky (like it's name implies).

In the mythology, the ahuizotl is an agent of the rain and water god Tlaloc. Those killed by the ahuizotl were either chosen ones transported to his afterlife, or sinner punished for hoarding. In D&D, it's implied to be a completely independent aberration. I don't know why they chose to make it an aberration instead of a magical beast or outside, since aberrations tend to be tentacley, squishy alien things.

Most drawings of the ahuizotl tend to play up the dog aspect, but a few other people have thought the true water dogs: seals otters. But I didn't base this on your squeaky cute Redwall river otters or cuddly (but distressingly horrible) sea otters. I took my inspiration from the 5-foot long, nightmare-eyed, caiman-and-anaconda-eating monstrosity that is the South American giant river otter.

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Hecatoncheires

The Hecatoncheires -- the hundred-handed ones-- are one of those creatures from the dawn of the universe, when the gods were birthing freakish horrors all willy-nilly. There aren't that many of these creatures out there, which is fortunate, since the Hecatoncheires has one of the highest CRs in the game (57!) They don't have much in the way of magic, the way a lot of the creatures at that level of play tend to have.

It just has a heck of a lot of arms.

Good for you if you're a human-sized creature, because this fella'll only be able to get its arms in order to hit you twenty times in a turn (and it probably won't miss).

Okay, so I said they don't have much in the way of magic, but that doesn't mean they're completely non-magical. For one, on the very small chance that it feels it needs help, the Hecatoncheires can summon another one of its kind. So now you're dealing with 200 sword-wielding arms wanting to chop you into hamburger meat. Also, they can make themselves fly.

An average intelligence combined with the madness of 50 arguing heads means that they have little in the way of ambition outside smashing stuff. Probably the best way to get rid of a rampaging Hecatoncheires is to get yourself a really really powerful wizard to teleport it to an empty spot in the universe every couple of centuries.

In Greek mythology, the Hecatoncheires (there are three of them) weren't benevolent per se, but they were definitely less evil than the version in D&D. They got locked up in Tartarus by their father Uranus when he feared that they would usurp him. Later on, Zeus busted them out to get their help in his war against the Titans. As a reward, the Hecantoncheires now guard Tartarus, where the Titans are imprisoned. There's probably some poetic justice there.

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Ghoul

Sometimes ghouls get lumped together with zombies. They're dead, they eat flesh, they're just a bit meaner, right? Well, zombies happen because of external circumstances (spells, curses...) and are mindless, so that's not right. They're not the same as revenants, another species of intelligent undead, since they're not motivated by revenge, anger or any sort of emotion.


The ghoul rises from the dead because it's hungry.

Those who practice cannibalism risk becoming ghouls. Now, this seems like an easier path to immortality than, say, discovering the philosopher's stone or going through all the tedious rituals to become a lich. Just eat a few orphans and homeless people and that's eternity for you, baby. An eternity of being hungry. But if you're the sort of person that would happily chow down on your fellow man, then you're probably not the type to be disappointed in the results. You don't get magical powers, but you get some poisonous claws so that's neat I guess?

Did a buncha research on ghouls, because I know they're a folkloric beast that's undergone quite a bit of transformation over time. I already knew they were an Arabic beastie (a ghûl), with them appearing in the Arabian Nights stories -- spooky monsters what hide in graveyards and eat corpses. What I didn't know is that that version of the ghouls are a mistranslation-slash-fabrication by the translators of the original texts. Early ghouls were more like demons or evil jinn that lived out in the desert and lured travelers to kill them. They were also often feminine, shapeshifters, and used as boogeymen to scare kids. Pretty much a generic monster that appears in every culture in the world.

But the Westernized version has stuck so that the ghoul as a skulking male/genderless grave-robber functions as today's definition. Lovecraft went in a bit of an interesting thing with them, making them appear less and less human the more time the ghoul has spent unalive.

Happy Spookoween, peeps.

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Zombie

Zombies are perhaps the quintessential undead. Their ubiquity is due in part to their flexibility - anything that lives, dies. Anything that dies, can be raised as a zombie. Zombie humans, zombie dogs, zombie ogres, zombie dragons; all are potential foes when facing a necromancer of sufficient power.

In terms of necromantic finesse, however, zombies are pretty near the bottom of the barrel. An extremely quick fix to a deeply profound problem (death), they are often little more than hastily-recruited servants, capable of a narrow portfolio of limited tasks (such as biting adventurers, or carrying trays) and fall apart at the slightest pressure. Outside of amateur necromancy (where zombies and zombie-like efforts are drearily commonplace), zombies are rarely used except as a "meat shield" (grisly literal in this case) to absorb an attack, or as a swarm to overwhelm a weakened foe.

First post for me since the Colossus, which was ages ago! Oy. I actually did an earlier version of this but I didn't like it so I completely did it over. Maybe I'll post the other one sometime. It wasn't very good, though. I think both Blanca & I avoided zombies as a Dungeons & Drawings subject for ages because... zombies are quite ubiquitous as a subject of illustration? I hate saying stuff like that, but... I don't know. You just see them kind of a lot, I guess. My theory is that they're fun to draw because you can make them as ugly/deformed as you like and they don't look weird (you don't have to sweat proportions too much), and they are quite well served by relentlessly adding detail (wrinkles, wounds etc) - which also serve to mask any structural inaccuracies. Case in point - I only realised at the end of drawing this picture that the zombie's right foot is backwards. In any other humanoid creature that would be grounds for another tiresome redraw, but with the zombie - you can just explain it away by saying something like "oh, this zombie was just assembled poorly". Brilliant!

Anyway, Happy Halloween y'all!

- Joe

Gray Jester

Sometimes a circus appears in town. The music is joyous, there's laughter in the air, the sweet smell of butter and candied fruit. But the colour of the tents are muted, the animals in their cages are listless, and, despite the capering and smiles, there's something disingenuous about the entertainers. The ringleader, an especially tall lead clown, is the happiest of the lot, and his laughter and smiles ring true. Something doesn't feel right, but the show is good and the crowd has never found itself laughing so much. People return to their homes giggling and exhausted.

As silently as is appeared, the next day the circus is gone. People lie in bed, tired, faces aching from last night's smiles, and feeling strangely downhearted. It feels like after last night, they'll never feel that kind of happiness again, that every other joke they see will never be as funny. After some weeks, some people recover their spirits, but most don't. One night there's a laughing shadow in the streets. The next day, those listless few are gone. They're never seen again.

--

The Gray Jester is one of those fey creatures that prefers people to the forest. It's attracted to the feelings of joy humans are capable of, craving smiles and the sound of laughter, and strives to create those feelings in others. Of course, laughter is what the Jester feeds on. If it's antics don't work, it's fine. Tasha's Hideous Laughter can do the work for it. Its touch and its scepter can transfer the spell, and allow the Jester to feel on joy (leading to Charisma drain).

A spooooky creature for a spooooky month. I've always been kinda annoyed by the scary clown trope. Not the cliché-ness of it, but how some scary clowns go really over the top with the scariness with sharp teeth and tattered clothes and bloodstains and such. I don't find clowns scary, though I do admit they can be repulsive in that weird visceral way (especially Lou Jacobs; that head ain't right).

Having now attempted to draw a scary clown without trying to use those typical evil clown type markers, and I can say how difficult it is to do it. Thinking about Pennywise from the original It miniseries, part of what made him so scary was the jolly brightness of his outfit combined with Tim Curry's performance. With the new It, I really rolled by eyes and how spooky they'd purposely made him look. The parts were Bill Skarsgård got to goof it up like a real clown were gold, though. More of that and less screaming and running at the camera. Great acting on his part.

Anyway, turns out the performance aspect is really key, which you can't really communicate with a static image. This illustration was really tough and went though lots and lots different versions. My sketchbook has pages of jolly clowns now, and I've got two more files on my computer where I got really far ahead in the drawing before scrapping it. Another difficulty was trying to keep 2017's It design out of my head. The first version really ended up looking a lot like Fleischer's Koko the Clown cartoon.

Long post short, went for a pierrot look because I really like that design outfit.




PS. Do Gray Jesters update their look with passing time? Do they go from jester with a magic sceptre to a circus clown with an evil rubber chicken? Standup comedians with a mic?


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Bearded Devil (Barbazu)

Bearded devils, called barbazu in Infernal, are on the lower end of the mid-level hierarchy of Hell. As such, they get to be squad leaders. However, since their squads tend to be made up entirely of lemures, it's more like herding and goading irritable sheep. Their short tempers make them ill-suited for greater command. The barbazu itself is quite dangerous, however. Their primary weapon is a serrated glaive which causes persistent bleeding, requiring especially powerful healing magic or skilled surgery. If somehow deprived of their glaive, the barbazu has a not-so-secret weapon: it's eponymous beard.

The barbazu's beard is covered in disease-bearing toothy tendrils. Despite its wormy appearance, the tendrils are not prehensile. Still, the devil's use of them is suitably horrifying; it gets a good grip on a target with its claws and forces them face-first into its gruesome beard, forcing them to endure hundreds of little scrapes and bites. Should said target survive an encounter with the barbazu, they develop a fever which slowly saps them of their strength. The victim becomes too weak to even breathe and suffocates.

A creature we've encountered in our current campaign, as part of Vecna's troops. I've used on myself in a previous campaign, where a character was eviscerated by its claws (no chance for a beard attack). The glaive is a neat weapon, obviously, but nowhere near as colourful as the claw-beard combo. Even though the potential maximum damage of the glaive and claw-beard attacks are essentially the same, I guess the subsequent bleed damage of the glaive puts it over the top. Still, it's kind of a shame.

Notes on the design here. In the books I have (3.5 and 5th edition), the barbazu's beard is described as being snakey. In most illustrations I've seen, this has been interpreted as thick tendrils with pointy ends, like a barbed snake's tail. I decided to go more for the head end of the snake because it's so much more gruesome to have lots of little mouth nibble-nibble-nibbling at you. They turned out a little wormy though. Originally the design had a big mouth as well, but I took that away too. Now instead of having one big mouth, the barbazu has dozens of itty ones. They came out looking more like earthworms than snakes but shhh.

Maybe I should've forgone the single eye too and made it just a blank face, with the beard having his eyes. Lots of little eyes and teeth. Nibble nibble nibble.

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