GUEST WEEK: Mind Flayer by Antoine Porcheron

Mind Flayers (also known as Illithids) arrived on the world from some unknown place beyond the stars. They live in the stony corrupt darkness, hidden from the light of the surface world. Of the organized creatures to live in the Underdark, these may be the most feared. While most other races simply kill or enslave interlopers, these creatures take it a step further. We're their cattle; we're the second stage of their growth cycle.

Mind Flayer's feed on the brains of their victims, done by boring holes into their skulls using their tentacles. It's partially the solid matter that makes up a brain that they consume, but a good part of their nutrition is made up of the psychic and other mental energy within it. Though they try to cultivate their food using mind control, they find the taste of slave brain unsatisfying (and it's dangerous, since their greatest disaster involved the freedom of the Githzerai and Githyanki, their racial enemies). The brain of a life well-lived and full of knowledge, willpower and excitement is delicious to the Mind Flayer.

The Mind Flayer is also quasi parasitic. That second stage of the growth cycle I mentioned? An Illithid tadpole is taken from the tank of the Elder Brain, and placed inside a facial orifice of some humanoid creture, where it consumed the brain and grows until the physical structure of the host is changed into their final form.

No wonder these guys are a classic D&D monster.

Kicking off this Guest Week with a fabulous ink wash illustration by Antoine Porcheron. Just look at that snazz. Way to make me look bad.

Elder Brain

The Underdark is shared by a great number of highly organized malicious creatures. As a contrast to the regimented societal structure of the backstabbing drow, there's the alien society of the equally malicious well-oiled machine of the illithids. The thing that keeps them working in such perfect order? The Elder Brain.

A huge amount of pulsing, sentient brain matter, the Elder Brain is the centre of the illithid cities. Though capable of movement, it mostly spends its life floating in the tanks and pools built for it. It's part leader, part supercomputer, part moral police and part afterlife; in short, it's near deific. It senses the thoughts of all creatures within the city. Not only does this prevent treason, but it also makes the cities notoriously difficult to penetrate.

The life of the mind flayer begins and ends in the tank of the Elder Brain. As little tadpoles, they're placed in its tank, where it feeds off their psychic energy. Those who survive get to become fully formed mind flayers. At the end of an mind flayer's life, the brain is removed from the creature's head and placed in the tank, where it's absorbed by their leader.

Tried to do a little redesigning of this creature (though I ended up with pretty much the same colours, because they just work). The Elder Brain tends to be shown as a bit too human, I think. If you look at the cerebral structures of animals, you find that they have really weird shapes as one part of the brain is more developed for whatever skill the animal has. When you get to simpler animals, they get even stranger. A shark's brain is a strange elongated thing. So I tried to model this a little bit more off an octopus brain with lots of neuron-tentacles.

Guest week starting Monday! It's gonna be neat.

Siege Crab

The kuo-toa priests and alchemists were finished. Years of research, prayers and failures had resulted in the ultimate weapon for their sea-floor expansionist war. Tomorrow a high priest with the coral circlet and his bodyguards would crawl through the belly compartment and lead the attack, but tonight the army would dine on their creation's discarded entrails.

The Siege Crab is a half-living tank, forged by the Kuo Toa (or any other evil sea-dwelling race, should you wish) by surgical and magical means. A live giant crab is taken and a chunk of its insides are taken out to create a small transportation area where its handlers can sit. Its carapace is reinforced with runes to give it resistnace to spells and even block the attacks from incorporeal creatures. Its sheer size and powerful pincers make it ideal for destroying fleets and razing cities.

Of course, since its half alive, that means that the death of its controller can result in, at best, a bored crab, or, at worst, a confused and pained rampaging creature. Also, if you happen to down the crab, that's pretty much a guarantee that the people inside it are trapped and will eventually starve, since the crab will almost inevitably land on its belly.

The Party

Presenting the cast of 3rd edition D&D, entering the treasure chamber at the end of a dungeon: Jozan the human cleric of Pelor, Mialee the elven wizard, Tordek the dwarven fighter and Lidda the halfling rogue. Mialee looks a little worried guys; better have Lidda check the doorway before you rush in.

Well, the cast of D&D is really much much larger, with representatives of each class and race. They don't just appear in the classes page, but also in adventure modules and in the feats and spells pages of the books, demonstrating the benefits of those choices. These four happen to represent the classic roles that an adventuring party is made up of (healer, arcana, tank and dps, respectively). I suppose I could've added the fifth man as Gimble the gnome bard/party face, but whaddaya gonna do.

Especially happy with the way Tordek turned out in this.


Anyway, this is my special illustration to you guys for getting me 100,000 views on Dungeons & Drawings. It's been about a year and a half since I started this blog with Joe Sparrow. Special thanks go to him for suggesting we start this blog.

Special thanks also go to my followers, my guest artists, the people who post my art in their sites and forums, my mom and family for being my first commenters, to the commenters that came after them, to the people who posted my stuff on reddit and to Wolfgang Baur for putting the blog in his Kobold Quarterly newsletter and got me a huge influx of viewers, to those that have commissioned me, to the forum-goers of Kobold Quarterly and Giant In The Playground, to those of you who voted on my polls and suggest monsters and to the industry people who make me feel special in that some of my work has caught their eye. I do this for fun and the art is worthwhile in itself, but it the attention doesn't hurt.

Now get me some more views.

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.

Dire Weasel

A few kobolds are perched on the fence of the outdoor corral, partially to make sure that the dire weasels don't stray too far should they escape, but mostly to giggle at Bik's attempts to break in an especially lively wild doe.

I know what some of you may be thinking. "Dire weasels? Well that's just silly." Well, they have dang near dire anything and I'm suprised there isn't a template. Or maybe I just haven't found it yet.

Dire weasels are to kobolds as dogs and horses are to humans. They make good mounts well-suited for tunnel-dwelling creatures such as themselves, and are notorious for their persistance in battle. Like a normal weasels and stoats, their battle-tactic amounts to hang on to the enemy and not let go until they die. Unlike normal weasels and stoats, they drain blood (mechanically translating to 1d4 points of Con damage).

What I'm saying is try to pick it off with arrows before it wriggles down a hole and don't get bit.

Had lots of fun watching videos of weasels and rodeos as reference for this image.

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.

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.