Merfolk

Of the sentient races that occupy the ocean, the merfolk are the most numerous, or at least visible. Merfolk are as fascinated with humans as humans are with them, most likely due to a physical resemblance combined with the allure of foreign lower body. However, any closer relationship between them is stymied by environmental requirements, though there are many stories of individuals using magical means to overcome that hurdle. Normally a marine race, freshwater variants have been sighted living in especially large lakes.

But the mischievous and playful nature of the merfolk doesn't mean that they're entirely harmless. Humans who abuse their waters or aren't careful with their nets will find their boats more likely to sink, or suffer greater punishment as the merfolk appeal to their own watery gods.

Yay, I got this done just in time for the end of Mermay!

There's a lot of legends about mermaids, but not so many that I've found about mermen. You get plenty of romances between fishy ladies and human men, but not so much the other way around. The British Isles have a whole buncha merfolk stories that mention the male half of the race, but while the females are pretty, the males tend to be less attractive (a design trend that continues to exist to this day). Think of it as the difference between the Zoras and River Zoras in the Zelda games.

Blanca’s Tumblr

Fitz-Auk, Abaddon Escapee (tiefling ranger / horizon walker)

Once upon a time, there was a not terribly attractive human ranger named Fitz-Auk, who was part of a small group of infiltrators for the Molthune army. Shenanigans ensued during a mission, which ended up with almost everyone in the group either dead or sent off to other planes of existence. Fitz-Auk, being in possession of terrible luck, ended up in Abbadon, arguably one of the worst places in existence. A magic book he stole from his mission's target protected him in the three months he spent there, but couldn't wholly prevent him from being corrupted by the plane's malevolent influence.

Our friend Jonathan Harris made a comic, Adventures in the Fangwood, which is really good. You should buy it. It's pretty much the last session we did with our characters and details exactly what happened to them. It's very funny and well done and details the exact reaction I got when I rolled three natural 1s in a row (a 1/8000 chance!).

Fitz-Auk is a character I really wanted to bring back. Joe's Fangwood campaign was the first part in the trilogy of adventures, and since the final installment was going to take place on the non-material planes, I figured that'd be the perfect time to bring him back.

As a ranger, he had Morse as a raven animal companion (actually an eagle that we fluffed as a really buff raven), which he lost when he gave him to another PC, who took it with him when he got teleported to Heaven (read the comic, explanations are given). Since he's spent to much time in Abbadon, I imagined he'd been mutated into a more monstrous race. I spent a little while trying to choose between tiefling for hellishness or a tengu because I wanted him to look kinda birdy. I went for tiefling in the end because it fit better and had more stuff I wanted. Now Fitz-Auk is down from his human 7 Charisma to a delightful 4 Charisma! Yay!

Blanca’s Tumblr

Wereshark

The curse of the wereshark is most often seen in coastal or island nations. The shark form of this curse means that the afflicted has so keep close eye on the lunar cycle, since transforming away from water leaves the shark in a helpless, painful situation. In water, of course, the wereshark is deadlyand difficult to outswim.

Like the werecrocodile, this is another creature that makes you scoff because it seems like a silly idea. But like the werecrocodile, it has a basis in myth and man's fear of his area's apex predators. The Hawaiian legend of Nanaue tells of a man born to Kalei and Kamohoalii, human woman and shark king. Before Nanaue was born, the shark god told the Kalei to never let the child eat meat. But as a coming of age rite, the men of Kalei's village took him away and gave him meat, not knowing what his mother knew. That sparked a hunger for human flesh in Nanaue and at night he would turn into a shark and hunt for human victims. Nanaue was forced to flee and make a new home several times, but the local villagers would always chase away the vicious man-eating shark.

Also Nanaue had a big ol' shark mouth on his back even when in human form.

Sorry about the several months of silence between posts! I just got really burnt out on work and hadn't been happy with my attempts to design interesting new D&D creatures. I hope this wereshark is a sign of inspiration returning.


Blanca's Tumblr

Flagella, Orcish Thug (Half-Orc Ranger)

Flagella is an orc ne'er do well, criminal, hired muscle, etc to be my next character in the campaign Joe is running. I struggled for a bit with coming up with a character. I originally wanted to do an undine fighter, basing her a bit off Morphling from DOTA 2, but it was eventually decided to stick to a more ordinary race. Technically I'm using the half-orc race, but for flavour purposes she's to be treated as a full-blooded orc that for some reason doesn't squint really hard in sunlight.

Also she's Tortella's mother. And should she die in this campaign, well then a Flagella in an alternate timeline goes on to join the circus as a lion tamer.

Tried out Manga Studio / Clip Studio Paint for this drawing. Normally I use Photoshop, but there was a deal to get Manga Studio for crazy cheapsies, so I got it. Currently suffering from shortcut muscle memory, so I ended up selecting the wrong brush / pen a lot while drawing this. I've not used it enough to decide whether I like it better than Photoshop or not yet.

Also looked up a bunch of images of fighting injuries for Flagella because I wanted her to look like she gets into fights ofter. One thing learned in never punch a person in the mouth because that's a fast way to get an infection.

Flagella was also really fun to draw because muscles. I usually draw my characters "naked" so make it easier to figure out how the clothes, and end up doing a lot of quite nice muscle and anatomy that doesn't get seen in the end. Also there's a disappointing amount of sexy orc ladies out there, by which I mean there's way too many. Orcs are supposed to be horrible big muscly things, like shaved green gorillas, but the females are always just vaguely buff (if that) green ladies with maybe tusks and a battleaxe. No. Orc ladies should be as horrible to look at as orc fellas. You don't have enough sexy ladies in fantasy that you can't let any of them be musclebound juggernauts? And real musclebound juggernauts, not She-Hulk. The closest thing to an appropriate female orc I've seen is in the lineup of races in 3.5 D&D. Now that's an orc-y lady.

Now with art process!

Renata Dramatata, Human Sorceress

The current campaign we're playing is an evil campaign. Though we've played campaigns where some of the players have had evil-aligned characters, the goals were always your fairly usual save the world heroic business. This is the first campaign we've played where we're terrible characters doing terrible thing.

The campaign is that we're initiates into an assassins' guild. It's meant to be a mission-based episodic thing rather than an outright full-blown story (for now? Maybe the DMs have something planned for later). There's definitely some Assassin's Creed and Dishonored vibe to it, especially the latter, since it takes place more in a Renaissance-y setting rather than an outright Medieval one. Our missions are supposed to have an investigative, social and stealthy element to it as we scope out our targets rather than just charging in and killing. Which is fairly unusual for a fairly hack and slashy game.

Needless to say, we goofed up pretty bad on our first mission (we were trying to kill a mob moss). Not enough reconnaissance coupled with bad rolls (several 1s came up when making especially important sneak attacks and subsequent attempts to escape). Let's hope the next one goes better.

Renata is an actress fallen on hard times. Maybe back in the day in some other city she was well-known, but her haughty attitude and desire to live the high life have left her a bit desperate for cash.   Renata is designed to be an infiltrator rather than an outright killer (she's not going to get her hands and clothes bloody, ew), though still with a sociopathic bent. If assassins are going to kill someone, she may as well get in on the action. Sophisticated dinners and fancy clothes aren't just gonna buy themselves.

I also wanted to make a vaguely bardy character without actually making a bard. I wanted to focus on magically influencing others through enchantments and fooling others with illusions. I ended up going for the Rakshasa bloodline for Sorcerer, for bonuses to Bluff and bonus mind-reading.

Werecrocodile

I know when I first saw the Werecrocodile in all its goofy glory in the pages of Sandstorm I was all pshaw running out of ideas are we Wizards and here I was thinking Weretigers were dumb. But after some research it came to my knowledge that Werecrocodiles are a legit thing (along with Weretigers and other Were-big cats), though not in the sense that were used to here in the modern West.

We've done the Werewolf before, arguably the poster boy for all werebeasts. It's a man who under the light of the full moon becomes a wolf hybrid type thing. The moon rule is followed with all the lycanthropes (an erroneous term, since the term lycanthope can only be linguistically tied to the werewolf), regardless of whatever creature you turn into. But the moon thing is a relatively new invention. Though some werewolf legends talk about transformations under certain stages of the moon, werewolves were more often described as willingly transforming through magic, usually by wearing a pelt, part of a pelt, reciting a spell or applying a potion.

So it is with Werecrocodiles. The folkloric key to becoming a werecrocodile is usually either an incantation or the wearing of a fetish.  Finding specific stories and legends is a bit tricky. I've found a lot of sites claiming that they appear in legends of Indonesia, Thailand, Zambia, Egypt and the Bakongo people. Basically anywhere where the crocodile is an apex predator. The person would transform into a crocodile and then lurk in rivers to eat people who wronged them / sexy bathers. Cannibalism is a recurring theme across the world when it comes to werebeasts.

 There's the Thai legend of Krai Thong and Chalawan (which is also a Thai film), but I'm unclean whether Chalawan is a giant/demon who can turn into a crocodile or a demon crocodile that can take on humanoid form. In Indonesia, the magical incantation/formula to take on human form is said to be tiang maleh rupa, and those who use the spell are known by the same name. In the 88th chapter of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, there's a spell invoking Osiris to give you the form of a crocodile, though the spells of the Book of the Dead are meant to aid the dead in the trials they face in the afterlife rather than affect still corporeal mortals.

Speaking of Egyptian mythology and Osiris and turning into crocodiles, you should totally buy Pantheon by Hamish Steele. It's a comic telling the creation myth according to the Ancient Egyptians. And boy I tell you I learned something from the book. Mostly that the Greek gods aren't the only ones with weird drama.

Vanim the Half-Elf Alchemist

PCs! in some ways I find doing player characters a little easier than monsters as we tend to push the monster designs a bit wackier. This guy is a character I created for a PvP tournament we're running at the moment, shown here in both his normal and steroid-enhanced forms.

The tournament is using the Pathfinder system, and this guy uses a Pathfinder class called an Alchemist. Alchemists are kind of weird, highly adaptible support spellcasters who are able to fill in a number of roles. Well, I say "spellcasters" but obviously all their abilities are themed around (al)chemical concoctions. Your base alchemist has three principal abilities:

1. Extracts, which are just spell equivalents that you select from a limited pool. They function as potions, and are mostly single-target buffs (like Bull's Strength etc) that target the drinker (they only work on the alchemist herself by default, although you can spec into the ability to give them to your allies too).
2. Bombs, which are just alchemical explosives that the alchemist mixes up on the spot - these hit a single target for fair damage and do a bit of splash too.
3. Mutagen, which is a neat sort of Barbarian-style steroid that gives a +4 bonus to one physical stat (typically STR) at the expense of -2 to a corresponding mental one. This, again, is drank as a potion but only ever affects the alchemist herself.

The usual use of mutagen is to induce an incredible-hulk-esque last resort in melee combat with the STR boost, but Vanim instead goes for a mutagen that gives +4 to DEX and -2 to WIS (I guess to represent the lack of caution you would feel having become spontaneously nimble). I've paired this with Weapon Finesse and Improved Feint, as well as an Alchemist variant that replaces Bombs with a rogue-equivalent sneak attack, so the game plan is going to be to run up to people, feint them repeatedly while sneak attacking them in the face. Will it work?!??!?!?!? Possibly.

As for actual character backstory - it's deliberately a bit thin on the ground (it's just a tournament, after all), but the idea is that Vanim is this half-elf with a bit of facial disfiguration. Blaming the blemish on his human ancestry, he becomes an alchemist to try and "enhance" his elven qualities, the result of which being his mutagen (his transformed body is supposed to be a caricature of an Elvish appearance - he thinks it's beautiful but in reality it looks pretty horrible).

Anyway, sorry for the long delays. What do you think of the way I've statted Vanim? Got any cool character creation stories? When will I post next? NOBODY KNOWS 

- Joe

Tortella the Half-Orc Acrobat

It's been a while since we've posted, so I'm gonna post what the peoples wants: more PCs! (we'll get back to actual monsters soon i'm really sorry).

So we're currently playing the Fangwood Keep campaign as run by Joe. When we came to lieutenant #2, Daigo Longtooth, Joe spun it so that he would face us on 1v1 combat. It the member of our chosen party (it was Fitz-Auk) defeated him, he would surrender. I managed to win with the help of a lot of disarm maneuvers. However, the rest of the party felt like it would've been cool if they'd had a chance for the 1v1.

So alongside the actual campaing, we're gonna be running a little tournament. Each one of us (eight in total), will submit a 7th-level character for a series of 1v1 matches on some custom maps. We're going to be using the duelling and performce rules from Ultimate Combat. It's all going to be quite exciting.

So my submission for the tournament will be Tortella, acrobat-on-sabbatical, a half-orc discovering what it means to be an orc by beating up things and taking their teeth. She actually uses the flowing monk archetype, because I felt that fit the character the best for what I wanted her to be. The whole monks must be lawful thing feels a bit more like a guideline to me anyway.

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.

Slok, Frogwarden

Slok is a PC I created for a comedic-themed campaign some friends of ours are running and is a masterpiece of planning because, despite being a bit of a joke, he covertly manages to be a) sort of a cool idea (for me, anyway) as well as b) possibly overpowered (pending on my reading up on a couple of rules).

He's the first druid I've ever rolled - for some reason I've never been much attracted to the class - and also my first half-orc. Druids are popularly considered overpowered through sheer versatility - their Wild Shape class ability allows them to transform into a host of different creatures which can be useful in many situations.

Slok's gimmick is that I'm using the Pack Lord archetype (actually for the Pathfinder series of games, which we've taken to playing lately) with him, which means rather than just choosing one animal companion (as is the druid's usual allocation) Slok gets to instead have a selection of lower-levelled animal companions (divided up between his druid levels, so at level 4 he can have 4 lvl 1 companions, 2 lvl 2 companions etc). I've accordingly given him four giant frogs as companions (he also has to forgo a domain). Archetypes are fun! You should check out pathfinder if you don't already know it.

The art was fun. Wanted to get it done quicker so went for a more flat, graphic style.

Asherati

The Asherati are a race of elfish creatures who live in societies beneath the sands of great deserts. Standing around the height of the average human they nevertheless appear strangely lithe in their gait, wearing fluid, skin-hugging outfits of tanned leather. Their minimal taste in armour is a result of their primary method of travel - they are capable of swimming easily through sand, or other very loose soil, to get from place to place.

I went for a sort of earth-themed-Zora look for this guy, as you can probably see by the nose and the eyes. Did you ever play Majora's Mask? The Zora swimming sections in that are incredibly fun, they got a great feel for the momentum of it. Maybe it's an unconscious coincidence but the chunky golden swords remind me of the big weapons Ganon has in OoT.

This one's a back-and-forth mix of Photoshop and Paint Tool Sai.

- Joe

Werewolf

Lycanthropy is a magical affliction, transmitted through contact with cursed creatures known as Werewolves. The hapless subject experiences a painful and spontaneous transformation into a bestial form resembling a humanoid wolf either upon experiencing physical harm or being exposed to the light of a full moon. In time, the subject may learn to control his condition, eventually becoming able to suppress the more animalian urges that accompany the transformation and in some cases to effect the change at will.

Werewolves are dangerous foes, mixing the ferocity of a wolf with the best traits of the host creature. Their resilience, too, is legendary - foes attacking with anything but silvered weaponry are unlikely to kill them.

I wanted to do the werewolf because, like dragons and other famous monsters, I find most depictions of them take a similar sort of route. I've shamelessly plagiarised the red face/blue lips from Blanca's sublime Red Dragon but otherwise tried to take the monster away from the usual lithe, brown and muscular form and into something that belongs in a game like FFIX, big and colourful and blocky.

Also, it might not be immediately obvious but the host creature in this case is a dwarf - this was something that always made me curious. Do bigger creatures make for bigger werewolves? I like the idea that conservation of mass would make a dwarf into a rather short, stocky wolfman. Pleased with the painting quality I got for this one - make sure you click it to see it full-size!

- Joe

Dark Creeper

Dark Creepers are a race of small sneaky subterranean creatures. They're very good at ambushing and have a natural knack for finding weak spots in their enemies and exploiting them. They absolutely despise light, natural or otherwise. While it doesn't deal damage or kill them, it still causes them a great deal of pain. They cover themselves from head to toe in tunics, capes, wraps, turbans..., so that the only thing you can see of them are their noses, hooves and eyebrows.

Despite their name and light-hating ways, they're not evil creatures (but they're not good either). They prefer to be left to themselves and will run from most conflicts. Just don't bring a lamp or torch, because they'll tear you to shreds if them see you using such an item.

Metharel Velenaedasr, elven conjurer

With Cincinnatus in tow, we went to visit the home of our initial contact, Kendra Lorrimer, who wanted to introduce us to somebody new. He was Metharel, an elven wizard from the university of Lepidstatd, who was interested in finding out who'd broken into the university and stolen the artifact (a plot hook for this particular adventure).

He proved his worth in our investigations of a burned asylum, and later at the raid that cost Edge his life. During this raid, he suffered nary a scratch from what we assumed was the protection of his robe of deflection (which are, in reality, completely mundane robes and he was just suffering from chronic luck). More luck for him as we later found a scrimshawed tusk among the loot in the place we were raiding, containing some quite powerful spells.

He's played by the same guy who made Tark, and has an absurd INT score of 23 (21 plus a headband of intellect).

NNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD


Special hello-hello to the folks at Paizo that may be looking at this blog and a special thank you-thank you for the Carrion Crown campaign. We're currently in the tail end of Trial of the Beast and enjoying it immensely. Here's to hoping that our DM runs the next part too.

Cincinnatus Tiberio, Oracle of Battle

When Tark died, we buried him at Lepidstadt's temple of Pharasma. Spackle was especially broken up about this, since it was partially her fault that he died (the wraith wouldn't have returned to attack if she hadn't taunted it with an illusion).

So one of our main front liners died and we went around looking for somebody who could fill his slot, and this one weird gravedigger seemed about strong enough. Enter Cincinnatus, whose charming black war-mask makes an appropriate addition to our for-real-we're-not-evil party.

Cincinnatus is unusual in that while he's technically a caster, many of his abilities are geared towards battle. He liked to big himself up and throw swords and axes at people (yes, I'm quite disappointed that his shovel isn't a weapon, but whatever). As a worshipper of one of the war gods, he's all about dealing as much damage as he can whenever possible in order to please his god. Even if what he's fighting is a misguided yet weak angry town mob. Needless to say his Chaotic Bloodthirsty lethal tactics against people who don't stand a chance against him grate with Spackle's Neutral Nice nature.

I can't even use any bardic abilities properly against him since he's deaf. However, if that means that he can't get the benefit of my inspire courage to whale on some mostly-harmless villagers well then that's not really my fault, is it Mr Deaf.

Also, Edge is dead. He got eaten by a frankenstein dog when we were going on a raid. So now it's just me and Cassimara left as members of the party who have been there since Day 1. We're getting a little paranoid about that.

Drow

The Drow, or 'Dark Elves' are the combination of two classic fantasy tropes: the sexy lady warrior race and the implausibly evil, sacrifice-happy race. I guess it's also an attempt by Wizards to make a race of D&D elves who aren't dainty, serene and all-around perfect.

The drow are a race of black-skinned, white-haired, subtarranean, innately magical elves, who build their cities in the cavernous bowels of the earth (the Underdark). Their society is matriarchical to the cruelest extreme of the word and patterns a spider motif inspired by their goddess the Spider Queen Lolth. They're a race of schemers and false courtesies that somehow hasn't backstabbed itself into extinction (probably thanks to the divine intervention of their goddess).

(Not that she tries really hard, since in demanding sacrifices she "prefers sentient creatures over non-sentient, humanoids over non-humanoids, elves over other humanoids, drow over other elves, powerful drow over weaker ones, and her priestesses most of all". She is actively demanding the sacrifice of the ruling classes and clergy just because she likes to eat powerful things. But she totally wants to keep this society running.)

It's an extremely popular race (with some expected backlash) for the uniqueness of its setting, its innate angst and darkness, its cruelty and its absurd cheesecake factor. And also several series of popular books starring the most famous repentant drow Drizzt Do'Urden by R.A. Salvatore (causing countless my character is seriously not copying Drizzt you guys what are you talking about). I've only read two of the trilogies: the Dark Elf trilogy and the Ice Wind Dale trilogy. I've got to say I prefer the Dark Elf trilogy a lot more, and then the first book out of that, since you actually get to see the Underdark and their bizarre social customs.

Valenmar (human cleric) and Edge (tiefling rogue)

Like most parties, we have a rogue and a cleric. Our rogue is a tiefling (supposedly, since he doesn't actually show any quasi-demonic abilities or traits) who specialized in knife-throwing, and the cleric is a human optimized for destroying the undead. Like, literally, we'd walk into a room filled with skeletons, he'd flash his holy symbol and boom. Everything's dead. The guy playing the cleric recently left the group due to the amount of stuff he's been doing, so that's gonna make things a little more deadly. We use my pony to detect when there are undead stalking us.

One more character to go now!

Tsar'goth Nou'ara, Half-Orc

Tsar'goth is one part team muscle, one part divine warrior. He's our paladin, and despite the half-orcness and the black armor, he serves Iomedae, the good goddess of Justice and Courage (her Greyhawk D&D equivalent would be Heironeous), and comes from the same temple our cleric. His thing is that his face is always in shadow from either his helmet of his hood, so nobody actually knows exactly what his face looks like, but we're banking he's either exceptionally ugly or mindblowingly beautiful.

Half Orcs are one of the core races of D&D, despite certain implications regarding to the conception of the creature. People normally play them as barbarians, since it fits so well, but I really like to see exceptions.

He's like 7ft tall, so Spackle quite often hitches rides on his shoulders to look around further or just because. One time we were looking for this woman that'd gotten lost in a moor and we had to roll Stealth checks to avoid being noticed by an interdimensional teleporting spider with a woman's face (I love this game). I scored a 30 on my roll, so I like to think that the spider didn't get a good look at me and thought Spackle was a tuft of blue feathers on Tsar'goth's helmet.

Also he's got a halo because Spackle is in the habit of casting light on his helmet whenever we need a light source. Why? Becuase she done gots herself a sense of theatrics, that's why.


Aaaaand with this one I'm totally back on schedule in terms of weeks skipped. Let's see how long this who being on schedule thing lasts.

Cassimara Raventhorn, Dhampir

Cassimara is the archer of our team, with an unusual combination of classes (ranger/rogue/inquisitor, I think). She hunts for undead with our team. What makes her unusual is that she's a dhampir, i.e. her dad was a vampire. Our team cleric is an "expert" undead killer who didn't notice this until she revealed it to us like three sessions into the game. It makes for an unusual team member since our cleric is pretty prone to accidentally hurting her with her energy channels, and always has to give her a heads up before he starts blasting things.

For healing, the first part of our adventure was pretty useful. We got these things called haunt siphons that are used to trap ghosts (think the traps for Ghostbusters). So we've got these bottles filled with unfortunate souls that she sometimes uncorks when she needs a little pick-me-up. She's never shown the whole "bloodlust" thing that dhampir are occasionally supposed to have, but I guess eating souls balances it out.

The closest thing to a dhampir in D&D is the Half-Vampire template, which is still a little bit annoying because of level adjustment things. D&D is rife with templates. I think Dragon magazine had a special issue dedicated to various templates for the offspring of the living and dead. Paizo did the Dhampir race, a much less powerful version of the Half-Vampire, so that you can play them from the get-go.

Kenku

The Kenku are a race of flightless corvid humanoids that live in cities. They're of evil disposition and are especially prone to theft, which they execute in large groups. The Kenkus small size, ability to mimic sounds and strong sense of cooperation means they're often contracted as thieves, spies and assassins by those who'd rather not implicate themselves in that sort of crime.

I consider kenku in the same family as kobolds and goblins: absurd, cute, pathetic little creatures that are somehow supposed to imply a threat. They're a more dishonorable version of the tengu, a crow-man creature of Japanese mythology known for their mastery of the sword. The Oriental Adventures book has the more faithful version of the monster.

The winner of the poll was city monsters.I'm really late this week because I keep working on the goblin stuff instead. I finished modelling the character itself and all his clothing and have started working on the skeleton. I've also bee working on the blend shapes for his head, which is really fun. I'm going to have to figure out how to stop the teeth from popping out of the cheeks when the face morphs.


Edit: Improved the image some with colours, shading and floury footprints.