Homonculus

Homonculi are the messengers and spies of those who wish to remain unnoticed (or at least inconspicuous). Made by wizards either for their own purposes or else to be sold to others, the tiny artificial creatures can be made from any number of materials as required, and can vary wildly in their appearance depending on the task they have been built for. One thing, however, that unites construction of all homonculi is that they require a generous portion of the creator's blood.

"Homonculus" is a pretty broad term in pop culture, commonly used to mean a sort of golem or constructed servant but with plenty of flavourful variations. One particularly wacky take that comes to mind is in Full Metal Alchemist, where homonculi are near-immortal, super-powerful (but otherwise human-passing) created beings that fill out a good portion of the main cast. The D&D version is closer to the real-life history of the term (which is a pretty fascinating wikipedia read) and I think I prefer it.

Bisan

The bisan is a jungle dryad, specifically the dryad of camphor trees. But this chick's more dangerous than your run of the mill dryad. While other tree nymphs with wrap you up with roots, charm you into pretty please don't cut down my tree, and then stab you some, the bisan will wake up the trees around her to beat you up. Then she'll turn into a wasp and sting the holy bazoozoos out of you. That's what you get.

The bisan, like the bajang, is a Malaysian spirit. Walter William Skeat talks about it briefly in Malay Magic (I should really buy that book), where you get like maybe two pages of info. Plenty of elbow room for Wizards to transform a cicada spirit that's maybe female into a sexy lady who is also a wasp. Honestly, if I lived in a jungle where you got super loud cicadas with wingspans of up to 20cm I would totally say that's a spirit and make it some offerings so it doesn't attack me.

Basilisk

The Basilisk is a large, serpentine lizard most famous for its petrifying gaze, which it uses to hunt. Dwelling in warm deserts, it preys on small mammals, birds and reptiles, which it turns to stone before eating, digesting the petrified meat with a softening agent in its stomach. In addition to being an aid in hunting, turning its food to stone has the added benefit of staving off desert scavengers - basilisk lairs are commonly filled with what appear to be statues, in reality functioning as something larders, "preserving" the petrified meat for the basilisk to return to.

Despite their fearsome ability and carniverous nature, basilisks are sluggish and cautious, generally preferring smaller, easier quarry over humans. If an adventurer finds herself in a basilisk den, a reliable option is simply to run,  as despite its many legs, basilisks are actually quite slow on their feet and will usually give up after a short chase.

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!

Minotaur

Minotaurs are brutish anthropobovine creatures who normally live in small tribal settlements on fertile grassland. They are nomadic and naturally violent, although they lack the technological advancement to be a real threat to any but those who wander foolishly into their territory.

Minotaurs are famously popular as guards, henchmen and general muscle for the discerning Evil Guy on a budget. They are easily found, easily dominated or merely impressed by magic, and serve as a cheap but impressive display of power capable of intimidating most people you are likely to want to intimidate. Look past the quick temper and weakness for brightly-coloured fabrics and you have yourself a reliable minion.

Hippocampus

Hippocampi (or sea-horses) are among the favourite mounts and beasts of burden of underwater races. Aquatic gods are especially likely to have hippocampi drawing their chariots.

There's not much else to them, honestly. They're swimming horses, slightly smarter than the average horse. But you've got your fish-horse now.

Researching this was fairly interesting. Turns out hippocampi are generally associated with Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Maybe because Zeus was feeling especially jerky he decided to make Poseidon god of horses as well, and as the saying goes: you can bring a horse to water, but it will probably drown because it's a land animal. Well Poseidon gets around this because he's a god and if he's god of horses he'll just god them into being able to be underwater when it suits him.

Hippocampus is also the scientific genus name for actual real-world seahorses, those adorable but utterly helpless little fishies. They have really neat skeletons, real-world seahorses. It's basically a scaffold.

Hydra

Hydra are great amphibious beasts, instantly recognisable by their many (at least 5) toothed heads. Where in other species polycephalous offspring are usually aberrant and more often than not die young, Hydras seem to have evolved to make excellent use of their many heads, with none of the usual drawbacks of weakened physiognomy.

Hydra heads are nimble and strong, and even one by itself can do significant damage with its jaws. Some of the larger varieties, sporting upwards of ten heads, can easily face down a group of seasoned adventurers by itself. Even more terrifying is the matter of truly killing or even subduing one of these monsters - Hydra possess remarkably fast healing, making attacking the body fairly futile. Their long, slender necks might seem an excellent target, and in truth a Hydra can be slain by severing each one in turn - but the Hydra's fast healing extends to these wounds too, and a severed stump will regrow two new heads in 1d4 rounds unless cauterised with fire or acid. Fighting a Hydra effectively requires much planning and teamwork - but at least you end up with a good selection of trophies!

Another "classic" creature down! I had fun drawing this guy. As I was checking out the stats for Hydra in 3.5 they actually seem like kind of a good option for newer adventurers who want to fight something big - even the five-headed variant is in the Huge size category, making for an impressive fight, but the challenge rating isn't too high and besides the nasty bite attacks (5 x 1d10+3 damage potentially, ouch) they're not too scary, stat-wise. Provided you know about the whole "head regeneration" thing, anyway!

Ice Troll

While still reasonably scary opponents, ice trolls are acutally the weakest of the trolls. And perhaps because they are the weakest of the trolls, they're also among the more naturally intelligent and inclined to manufacture weapons. Ice trolls are especially good at hunting down smaller white dragons and rhemorazes, tanning their hides and making armour. So while they're still a mean bunch, there's a chance that the dipomatically gifted could strike a trade agreement with them. It's always useful to have armour that's both protective against weapons and the freezing wrath of the environment.

Not that ice trolls lack the natural grossness and brutality of their more dim-witted bretheren. As well as using their claws and teeth, the ice trolls also spits. Sure it's half frozen saliva that can give you a mild case of the frostbite, but mostly it's just gross.

Jackalwere

It's important to realize that despite first glances, the Jackalwere is not, in fact related to the Werewolf, or any other lycanthrope, despite its ability to shift from beast to man to beast. In fact, it's true form is that of a jackal, not a man.

Though it may come to you as a relief that the Jackalwere's bite will not infect you with an uncontrollable hunger for human flesh, you still shouldn't underestimate this beast. Though relatively weak compared to other dog-beasts, it's still strong enough to kill, and a Jackalwere will make sure to get it right the first time. This creature possesses a hypnotic gaze which puts its victim into a brief slumber. But not so brief that the Jackalwere will not kill you where you lie and eat you.

Jackalweres in human form are somewhat difficult to identify, but they tend to appear as scrawny, craven humans. Which make up a good amount of the population of human cities.

This one was a toughy to design. Mostly because it was difficult to illustrate that it's the jackal that's transforming, not the person. I guess it's a good way to fake out your players with a fake werewolf, or maybe you can use its stats for some kind of variant kitsune. Because, honestly, the word jackalwere sounds a bit silly.

Criosphinx

Criosphinxes are the ram-headed lesser cousins of the legendary Androsphinx and Gynosphinx. They share neither the magical abilities nor the inhuman intelligence that these beasts are known for, instead relying on brute force to get the job done. They exhibit an almost draconic attraction to treasure, and seek to hoard it wherever they can - including relieving adventurers of their valuables by force.

Had you heard of the Criosphinx?! I hadn't! According to Blanca's research, statues of these guys line the way to the temple at Karnak. I think the design here is loosely based on the Sanctuary Keeper boss from FFX, which I got stuck on as a child. This isn't a particular mark of difficulty, however, as I didn't quite get the concept of grinding in an RPG so I got stuck on literally every boss of FFX. Feh.

Muckdweller

Muckdwellers are a race of very small reptilian humanoids. Though of intelligence comparable to the average human, their comparatively stumpy and clumsy forelimbs mean that they're unable to wield weapons or indeed construct anything more than simple, crude items which will inevitably come apart. Because of this, muckdwellers live on the outskirts of larger, more complex reptilian societies, such as lizardfolk and kuo toa. They essentially become glorified waste disposers and pest controllers.

Because of a their small size (the largest ones are seldom longer than 2 feet), they are not a great physical threat to the most basic commoner. Indeed, the occasional missing small farm-beast or shiny object is the greatest harm that the ordinary muckdweller can do to a person without resorting to swarm tactics.

Not much more to say about this creature, really. It's fairly basic, essentially a very weak Tiny sized lizardfolk. But the description of them said they looked a bit like Gila monsters, which led me to discover that they have bumpy skulls. Neato.

Gelatinous Cube (& Happy 300th Post!)

Gelatinous cubes are a subset of oozes which share the remarkable tendency to settle comfortably into a cuboid shape at rest. While this might seem a uselessly bizarre trait, wizarding opinion speculates that the creatures may have thus evolved to comfortably exist in the man-made structures of abandoned underground structures such as crypts and dungeons. Here they simply "occupy" a cube of space, stretching wall to wall and waiting, spider-like, for prey to stumble upon them, whereupon they absorb and devour it.

Of course, the particular danger inherent in gelatinous cubes is their near-transparency when not feeding. For new adventurers, a seemingly vacant corridor can quickly go from being a symbol of brief merciful respite ("oh, thank goodness there are no hobgoblins here!") to one of  flesh-eating protoplasmic death ("it's eating our cleric!!!! And then it's going to eat me!!!! OH MY GOOOOOOD" etc etc).


---

So, happy 300th post, everyone! We decided to go for something classically D&D-ish with this one, and as we're always pretty short on Oozes (an amorphous blob of goo is actually pretty hard to make into an interesting drawing, huh) I thought I'd go for one of the more famously silly variations on the creature type. Gelatinous cubes have become pretty iconic among the fanbase (usually depicted with the traditional skull or somesuch floating within), confirming their awkward charm. I don't know the true origin of the creature but part of me suspects that the thing was an inspired by-product of trying to codify an ooze within a system with a grid-based ruleset. They make undeniably great corridor-filling deathtraps, but consider hanging one silently from a ceiling, then dropping it on your unsuspecting party!

Also featured in this particular image is a hapless Razor Boar, which some among you may remember as Blanca's very first image for the blog way back in 2010. Drawing this I actually felt pretty sorry for the little fella. Getting eaten by an ooze is probably not a good way to go, as evinced by the 1988 remake of the classic horror/sci-fi B-movie The Blob (warning, very gory!) and, to a more comical extent, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (superbly reviewed here by the guys over at Redlettermedia).

Anyway, thanks to everyone who continues to follow us, we appreciate it. We're nearing completion on the second book now, it should be out in the later half of this year, so keep your eyes peeled for more news on that. Obviously thanks to Blanca, too - I feel a bit of a sham filling in for our 300th post when it's mostly Blanca's efforts that have kept the blog going over the years. Here's to 300 more!

- Joe