Chronotyryn

Chronotyryn are one of those high level monsters who believe themselves to be gods --or that at least like to have others believe that. They have innate time-controlling abilities used to bewilder enemies and their feathers are adamantine, what's normally an extremely hard and rare ore.

It's an extremely intelligent creature and its double brain and voice boxes allow it to take twice as many actions per round. They bedeck themselves in the magical items of their victims, and keep several of them attached to a harness they wear, so they always have a trick up their sleeve.

 In other news, some of you may already be aware of him, but Noah 'Spoony' Antwiler has a series of shorts called Counter Monkey, stories of his previous experiences with D&D (and some other games) both as a DM and a player. They're very sweet and funny and you should totally go watch them. 

Ice Serpent

Beyond the normal dangers of Faerûn's freezing North, a winding invisible predator is found. What seems at first to be the work of some twisting unnatural wind working itself over the snow and rocks is something else. Soon you find yourself trapped in the cold coils of a cruel unseen something, squeezing your bones and soaking up your life-heat. Something thin, quick and frigid tickles your cheek.

It's difficult to find a creature to go under the elemental tag that'll be interesting. Most of them are X Elemental or Y Elemental, while the more interesting ones get filed under the outsider type. The Ice Serpent is something that managed to slip through the gaps of that classification hoo-ha.

This creature has an interesting way of dealing damage. It's pretty simple in its attacks, being mostly a creature that grabs and squeezes, lacking even a bite or slam attack. It's constrict deals a combination of lethal damage (the constriction itself) and nonlethal damage (cold damage as it drains the heat from you). Potentially, it can just suck the heat out of you until you're unconscious then slither off. And then a blizzard kills you. Them's the breaks.

Also a little bit strange that despite the fact that this creature subsits on the body heat of living things, it still takes double damage from fire sources (it has the cold subtype). I guess something has to balance out the absurd DR it has.

Abeil (animated)

THIS S IS ANIMATED YOU SHOULD FOR RIZZLES CLICK THE PICTURE



Now that that's out of the way, this is an Abeil... vassal. A vassal is probably most accurate.

The Abeil are a race of tall, industrious bee-like humanoids. Their society is divided into three castes: vassals (the workers, in all different roles of society), soldiers and a queen. The worker is obviously the weakest of these three, but still possess a muscle-atrophying poison and the ability to create a buzz with their wings that leaves enemies into a sleepy stupor. Soldiers also have an amplified eardrum-rupturing version of this.

Like many insects, Abeils like to expand their territory, partially through economic means, which may or may not be good for any other surrounding cultures.

And now for my biological lecture for anybody who cares to read far enough down to this bit. I know why they seperated abeil society into worker-soldier-queen society: it makes for easy classification into who the commoners, the ones you fight and the one you diplomatize with are gonna be. Actual bee society is also quite interesting in that it's a worker-drone-queen society, where the all-female workers do all the work and defending of the hive. The stingless, all-male drones exist purely for the purpose of mating with the queen, usually of a different hive, since the queen stores all the genetic material necessary from previous drones for her 3-5 year lifespan.

The queen is also a really interesting thing. While the term 'queen' implies control, she's a slave to the hive. She literally spends her whole life laying eggs, and if she ever stops, the workers will raise a larva to become the new queen, which will kill the old one. Beekeepers usually imprison the queen in a certain section of the hive, so we can enjoy delicious, larva-free honey.

Also a little bit disappointed that abeils don't have a racial penalty to smoke-based attacks.

Disenchanter

Aw dang, I shouldn'ta given the PCs that staff; they're really screwing over my campaign. I'd better break out the big guns.

The Disenchanter is yet another creature in the category of silly creations by wizards, although this an also be classified as "silly things generals commission from silly wizards to fight other silly wizards". Like the Rust Monster, the Disenchanter is another creature in the DMs arsenal which can be (ab)used to take those uppity PCs down a peg.

At CR 17 (14 levels higher than the Rust Monster), with high AC and lots of hit points, it guarantees the destruction of a few magic items. It's a large, giraffe-like creature with a long sticky tongue it uses to grab objects from a character and begin draining the enchantments out of them, turning them into relatively useless mundane objects. It feeds on the drained magic.

The Disenchanter literally exists only to take away the characters' toys. Let me read from the Fiend Folio to you: "The Disenchanter ignores individuals who do not radiate magic and lopes away if there's no food to be found, even if it's attacked."

So a Disenchanter attacks the party. Staff of sphere of annihilation? Well, now it's a stick. And your +5 ring of protection is now a regular gaudy ring. Also your potions are now water. And now the Disenchanter's walked away. Wow, that sucked. I guess you guys shoulda rolled higher on your Spot checks, huh.

Clockwork Mender

Required raw materials: gold, silver, copper, rhodium, earth, amber, glass, ichor (earth elemental), blood (bird), blood (hornet), blood (own).

Being a bit late with these. I was working on last week's one and hoping to get it out on time, but it looks like it's gonna require a little bit more time.

Clockwork Menders are cat-sized vaguely insectoid machines that exist to repair other constucts. They can be individuals, but are commonly found in swarms, though the swarm doesn't last very long as Clockwork Menders will use up their own life force in the repair of another construct. Their main form of defence is a numbing poison.

With the Improved Familiar feat, some ranks in Craft (blacksmithing) and an open-minded GM, you too can have one of these little creatures as a companion. That or you can try to steal one from the plane of Mechanus.

Trying out pixel-stuff a little bit, because its fun in a way. I'm not sure if I could do this consistently, but it's still fun.

I was actually originally trying to do this with pen and ink, but found that I'm still to inexperienced with it to have the steady hand required for perfect circles.

Knell Beetle

The Knell Beetle is yet another creature you can add to the list of the products of bored wizards. Because sometimes you have to merge a bug with a bell.

Only the description in the Monster Manual is a creature with ten legs, claws and a red carapace. That's a crab, dawg, not a beetle. I couldn't decide on what shape to give them, as you can see, because I quickly found out that it's silly. Because knell beetles are tooting lobsters.

Oh and these things are CR 10, as big as cars and move in colonies. So if you feel like finding one to laugh at, you should probably wait a few levels.

Satyr

The Satyr bounds along the path playing his pipes. You begin to feel drowsy. Make a Will save.

The Satyr is a classic monster from Greco-Roman mythology. The Monster Manual actually had two challenge ratings for it, one with its pipes and one without. A Satyr who carries pipes around with him can play them to create three different tunes with different effects: charm person, fear or sleep. The pipes themselves are not magic; it's more like the Satyr happens to know how to play these spells.

I don't know if a CR 2 Satyr becomes a CR 4 encounter if he finds some pipes lying around, or if the CR 4 Satyr just knows the tunes, whether he has pipes or not.

Also experimenting with traditional inking. I found a collection of nibs back home over the holidays and am playing around with them, mostly because I got Bone as a Christmas present and think the inking in it is amaaazing.

Bacchae by Joe Sparrow

After four long days traversing a wilderness seemingly inhabited only by a smattering of parched trees, you begin to wonder if you will ever see civilisation again. Your hopes suddenly rise as you begin to percieve human sounds far off in the distance - sounds of revelry, it seems - and you quicken your step towards them. A camp? A village? Could it even be a town? As your curiosity deepens, you observe a group of men and women moving over the hill towards you clothed in rags and leaves, dancing, whooping, and playing instruments. 

But something seems off. The howls too gutteral, the dancing frenzied and animalian, the music strange and dischordant. And then you see their eyes, bloodshot and crazed, and you realise something is very wrong. As some instinct tells you to flee, to stay from their path, to block every sense against the hypnotic debauchery, the revellers are already upon you. The music swamps you as you steadily feel your mind become one with the endless festival, the great hunt of Dionysus, the dance of the Bacchae.

Happy New Year, everyone! Blanca's away without a functioning computer at the moment so I've been re-drafted in to help with the festivities. We talked over a bunch of NYE-themed monsters and the ones I liked most were the Bacchae, those paragonal partygoers who should serve an example (goal?!) to us all in their ability to keep a-rockin' through the early hours of the morning.

I myself  had a lovely dinner in London's chinatown with a friend and saw in 2012 being kettled in by police on Waterloo Bridge! but it wasn't so bad. Hope you all have a pleasant subsequent twelve months!

Gaspar by Adam Vian

You come across a huge deer on your travels through the Beastlands. It stands four times taller than a normal human being and antlers sprout not only from its head, but down its neck to its haunches, giving it a coat of grand bony spears. You're confident in the strength and tactics of your party as you charge through the bushes, where you surround the surprised Gaspar. It can't run anywhere without being met by fences of spears and swords. As you raise your weapons to pierce its comparatively soft underbelly, the Gaspar rears up and slams down.

There's a golden light and you can't see your quarry anymore, nor the eternal afternoon sun of Kirgala, nor the ancient trees of the Beastlands. The Gaspar didn't leave, but you did.

--

Drawing by Adam Vian of Super Flash Bros, since I'm currently trying to get my old laptop to cooperate with me and Photoshop.

Happy Holidays, folks.

Demilich

In the darkness you make out a pile of treasure. Seated atop all this is a dessicated severed head, dusty, parchment-like skin pulled tight against the skull. The treasure gleams green in the arcane glow of the emeralds that line its mouth and stare out at you from its head. It does not move. Roll for Fortitude.

A lich is what happens when a wizard thinks living is for squares and makes itself into a skele-zombie to continue studying magic throughout eternity.

A demilich is what happens when a lich decides that plain ol' having a body's for squares and decides to encase its soul into a gem-studded bone. Normally a skull. They can be an evil sentient bejewelled rib if they feel like it.

So a demilich is even more dangerous than a regular lich, created by Gary Gygax in the infamous Tomb of Horrors adventure for the purpose of killing any player who thought D&D is just a game. In addition to all the spells that a normal lich would have, the demilich has a signature ability: trap the soul. It basically sucks the spirit out of your body (which instantly crumbles to ash) and traps it in one of its gems. It can wipe out a whole party in just over 20 seconds, combat time.

Don't worry, your soul won't be trapped inside the skull forever. The demilich will slowly eat you over the course of 24 hours.

Wraith (formerly Tark Skulltaker, human barbarian)

Tark Skulltaker was our party's barbarian. Due to an unfotunate set of attacks involving wraiths, he died. Also unfotunately, when you're killed by a wraith, you rise as one seconds later, so that meant we had to double kill his evil spirit.

Wraiths are one of your standard D&D monsters for horror campaigns, when you want things to get a bit dangerous. We found one that had been killing kids and slew it dead, but not before withering away Tark and my pony Butterbutt. These monsters are extra dangerous because they not only hurt you when they attack you, they also drain the life from you (in D&D language, Constitution drain, the deadliest of drains). They have an aura around them that spooks animals, making it difficult for rangers, druid or just anyone who fights from horseback to engage in combat. Third, they're not solid, making them super difficult to hit. Spackle was pretty useless in that particular combat until I remembered I'm the one with the wand of holy magic and started whacking the wraith with it.

RIP Tark.

At least this means that the guy that played him is gonna get a second character portrait now. But not for a while, so that means I get to go back to doing regular monsters!

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!