Cold Caller

Ravenloft was a D&D setting themed around the tropes of gothic horror-- vampires, werewolves, ghosts, suspense, curses, dark magic.  Basically it was "Dark Shadows: The RPG".  Which I'm pretty sure is actually a thing in its own right. 

Ravenloft had its own version of Frankenstein and his monster, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde., Dr. Moreau, Dracula AND Vlad Tepes (two different characters, one based off the vampire, one based off the historical figure), Abraham Van Helsing and lots of inspiration from Poe, M. R. James and other horror/macabre writers.  Thankfully, the game avoided Lovecraftian tropes for the most part (except for a land ruled by the octopus-headed mind flayers) since unfathomable, oozing cosmic horrors don't really fit with the very human horrors of gothic fiction.

  It also had, er, "mystic gypsies" called the Vistani-- though to be fair, the game did admit these people were based on the gypsy archetype of old movies, not on real Romani.

The March 1998 issue of Dragon magazine (#244) held a contest called "Terrors from Above", asking readers to come up with an original flying monster for Ravenloft.  The results were eventually compiled into a PDF book by the Kargatane, an online group of fans who generated tons of cool original work for the setting.

While the entries are pretty neat, there was a distinct trend towards creatures that were basically just winged gargoyles/demons or some slight ghost variant (2nd edition D&D had a glut of undead based on the "incorporeal spirit that cannot rest because they have unfinished business/were wronged in life/had some serious emotional issues" model). But there are still a lot of weird original creations-- including a D&D Mothman!

One of my favorites is the Cold Caller, created by Mathew Sernett.   Cold Callers are ethereal flying fish that use haunting, flute-like songs to lure people out of their homes on cold nights.  The creatures, which resemble pearlescent salmon with fluttering, gossamer wings, lead their entranced prey out onto thin ice, where they inevitably crash through into the frigid water. These unearthly fish then feed off the fear and panic of their victims as they struggle, slowly succumbing to the numbing cold.

I've always liked creatures that gain sustenance from emotional energy.  They aren't necessarily evil-- heck, the Cold Callers are nothing but dumb animals. Yet these emotional predators need the psychic terror of a sentient being to survive. The description even says they must feed on fear to gain enough energy to produce eggs.  

Cold Callers fit pretty well into the "gothic dread" feel of Ravenloft. Like the previous Righteous Clay, they play on the fear of dying or losing a close friend or loved one to the vagaries of nature. There's not a malevolent force, or even any kind of sentience behind this death-- just a stupid, hungry fish.

I like to think the Cold Callers were a deliberate creation of the mysterious and malevolent "Dark Powers" that control Ravenloft. A twisting of a natural animal to cause yet more fear and dread in the people trapped in the gothic land.

Duckbunny

And now for another one of my all-time favorite D&D monsters (if you haven't guessed by the name of this blog), the often-maligned  Duckbunny. 

Created by Johnathan M. Richards (with a nifty illustration by George Vrbanic)and first featured in Dragon magazine #243, the poor duckbunny has been tossed onto a lot of hackneyed  internet "stupidest D&D monster" lists.  Luckily, though, it has its fair share of defenders who understand the little web-footed anatileporid's* importance. Indeed, I don't think it's too far to say that some of D&D's more iconic monsters wouldn't even exist were it not for the humble duckbunny. 

First, let's talk about owlbears. A staple of D&D throughout all its editions, the owlbear is-- you'll never believe this-- a magical hybrid with the sharp beak, talons and keen eyesight of an owl merged with the bulk and strength of a grizzly.

 Sure the owlbear looks cool but, honestly, where the heck did this thing come from? If you want to get technical, the owlbear was originally created by D&D cofounders Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson based off of a cheap plastic "dinosaur" toy they used as a miniature for this weird pen-and-paper fighting game they were developing based off "Chainmail", Gygax's earlier medieval fantasy tabletop wargame. Here's an article by fantasy artist Tony DiTerlizzi talking about the owlbear's origins in more detail, along with other classic monsters like the Bulette and Rust Monster: 

But what's the in-story explanation for this weird hybrid? On the one hand, you could say that since the D&D multiverse is high fantasy, the owlbear just sort of "is", much like numerous hybrid monsters from myth: griffons, chimerae, quilin, uktena, etc.  The actual D&D lore, however, usually says that owlbears are magically-crafted guardian animals that proved too dangerous and untamable and were ultimately released into the wild.  Yeah, there's a fair amount of D&D lore that boils down to "a wizard did it", or for the even crazier, nonsensical stuff, "a mad wizard did it!"

Of course, why stop at making just one magical hybrid?  Richards' article provides several  pretty nifty crossed animals, including a cougar crossed with a giant salamander (an aquatic cat for defending moats), a dog with a scorpion (an enhanced guard dog with a stinger) and a giant turtle with a dragonfly (flying living transport-- which is totally getting its own post eventually).  

All this mixing begs a question, though: where does a sorcerous genesplicer start out?  You don't want to dive right into magically mushing a bunch of critters together without at least a little practice.  You'll likely either end up with a Cronenbergian horror-blob, or an out-of-control killing machine that will rip your throat out.  No, the aspiring wizard needs to start small, merging animals that couldn't possibly pose any danger.  Like, say, maybe a rabbit and a duck? 

So yes, the duckbunny is the apprentice biomage's entrance exam.  Though come to think of it, why not create a duckbunny?  You could make millions in the pet trade.  Who wouldn't want to own one of these things as a pet? 

A sentient platypus contemplating a duckbunny.  Done mostly because I wanted to draw a platypus wearing pince-nez

The duckbunny resembles a small platypus covered with white fur, bearing the rabbit's long ears and ducks yellow bill and webbed feet. Behavior-wise, it favors its rabbit progenitor, spending most of its time eating grass and hiding in underground burrows near water where it can indulge its anatidian side.  The article lists game stats for the creature, though these are mostly in place because every animal in old school D&D needed stats.  The things are barely worth any experience points, and are explicitly said to be unable to fight or cause damage.  Under that light, it's easy to see why the more "hack and slash and grab the treasure, raaaaawwwwrrgh!" section of gamers would dislike the duckbunny.  But hey, not every fantastical creature in your fantasy world needs to be able to eat your face off.

               

*I knew the Insomniac's Dictionary that I keep on my desk would come in handy someday.

Insomniac's Dictionary by Paul Hellweg. 

Righteous Clay

Yes, that is totally a Flumph PC.

A few early issues of Dragon magazine featured a special insert called the "Creature Catalog" (which is different from a  later hard-backed book, also called the Creature Catalog, which was an early version of AD&D's Monstrous Manual). Most of the creatures from these inserts have vanished from the game, though a few such as the Hamadryad, the Burbur and the Orpsu have made a few random obscure appearances in later editions.

Creature Catalog III from Dragon #101 features a monster called a Righteous Clay, created by Howard Granok and originally illustrated by Marsha Kauth.  A Righteous Clay is, at its name implies, a sentient lump of gray clay that skulks around caverns waiting to suck the souls out of anyone who wanders across it.

Wait, what?

Yeah, that's right.  It's an evil ball of clay that devours souls using an ability named, appropriately enough, Soul Gouge.

 So what exactly is a "soul" in terms of D&D? In later games, particularly the Planescape setting-- which allows your characters to explore the various Heavens, Hells, Astral, Ethereal and Elemental Planes-- the soul is your personality and "essence" which passes on to another plane of existence that fits with your alignment (i.e. you go to whatever Heaven your culture believes in if you're good, or your particular brand of Hell if you're evil).  It's what makes you you.

Thus, when the righteous clay steals your soul, your body is left an empty husk.  Not a dead.  Just empty.  You breathe and sleep. You move if someone pushes you. You eat if someone puts food in your mouth. But there's nothing inside you anymore.

And what does the clay do with your soul, exactly? It... gains a few hit points.  Your soul is food. That's it.  It uses the very essence of a sentient being the same way you'd use a cheese sandwich.

And what's even worse is, according to the text: "righteous clays are so named because of their extreme arrogance and self-centeredness."  It KNOWS what it's doing to you and your loved ones.  It's just too self-absorbed and snooty to give a crap.  It's not even like the clay has a vastly alien mentality and just can't conceive of its prey as a sentient being.  It can understand Common and can actually converse by vibrating its body, " in the manner of a stereo speaker" to quote the text.  They don't care about the pain and loss they're inflicting. They're just hungry, dammit.

It is possible to recover the souls a righteous clay has stolen if the beast is killed, then a Reincarnation, Remove Curse, Restoration, Resurrection or Wish spell is cast on the empty body the soul was taken from. So some of the horror is blunted. Especially in a high magic world like, say, the Forgotten Realms, where you can pop down to Main Street and pay a mage to give you a spell scroll.  

But what if the Clay escapes and vanishes into the miles of black caverns that it inhabits?  Or what if you're a poor farmer who can't afford magic? Or a goblin or kobold whose beneath the notice of other beings (hey, goblins and kobolds have loved ones too!). Then your soul, or the soul of a close friend or loved one, is gone forever.

I'm actually surprised this monster never made a return appearance anywhere.  It's absolutely terrifying.

Even though righteous clays seem a lot like oozes, slimes and puddings, I like to think they're a completely separate creature entirely. To me, the various ooze-monsters are giant monstrous slime molds like myxomycetes, dictyostelids, labyrinthulomycota, or some other sort of protist/fungi. Righteous clays, on the other hand, are literally sentient clay-- a soil material formed from extremely fine particles of feldspar (minerals containing aluminum and silica) with small traces of oxidized metals and organic matter. Though "alive", they don't have any cellular structures.

In our world, some scientists theorize that the development of life may have been aided by clays because they can attract and protect organic molecules and facilitate polymerization (the development of long chains of carbon-based molecules like carbohydrates and fats).  Maybe in a fantasy world, some of this early "life" remained within the clay, giving it a bizarre animation of its own.

Relating to this idea, many Earth mythologies describe a god creating human beings out of clay.  Maybe righteous clays are scraps from that original sculpting process.  Or perhaps rejected prototypes that have retained some of the living essence that the gods originally imbued into the soil.  

Yet their form of "life" is imperfect.  They constantly crave that which the gods gave their more fortunate relatives-- an eternal soul.  But the clays are only partially developed, and thus lack the ability to retain the souls they steal.  Instead, they metabolize them to power their own torturous existence, quickly destroying that which they hunger for most. Perhaps their arrogance and selfishness comes from envy of the god's more perfect creations. A defense mechanism to avoid facing what they are. 

Oh, also,  elves and half-orcs can be affected by the Soul Gouge power, even though, to quote the text "(they) do not possess a soul per se". That just raises so many questions.  Why didn't early D&D elves and half-orcs (and presumably orcs) have souls?  Where did they go when they died? What was animating their bodies and giving them personalities?  And, if they don't have souls, what is the righteous clay feeding on when it attacks them?

You confuse me sometimes, Old School D&D. 

Wyrmlet

A "head" wyrmlet with two drones

As I mentioned in my first post, before it became exclusively Warhammer and 40K, the British magazine White Dwarf used to be a general gaming magazine featuring articles about D&D, Traveller, Middle-Earth, Warhammer and many others. A regular feature was the Fiend Factory, which showcased reader-created monsters.  Some of the classic monsters of D&D, including drow, githzerai and githyanki, began in these pages (though they really didn't become famous until they were compiled into the original Fiend Folio.  More on that in a later post).

Sadly, there were also many, many delightful oddballs that vanished into obscurity-- frequently without seeing any other attention beyond the few blurbs in White Dwarf.

One of my personal favorites is the Wyrmlet from WD #32, created by Peter Ryding.

A wyrmlet looks like a 3 inch tall, fleshy coin with segmented legs and arms.  The two "faces" of most wyrmlets are featureless except for a small, beaked mouth on one side and a circle of tiny suckers around the edges.  Wyrmlets use these suckers to link together, forming a longer, serpentine structure/creature called a "wyrmling".  A rare, elite class of wyrmlet with more complex facial features will form the head of this colonial organisms, though the head is not strictly necessary once the whole colony has linked up. While linked, each wyrmlet can vibrate its cartilaginous beak, the cumulative effect of which is a freaking disintegration ray if focused by the head! Though,  due to its frequency,  this ray only destroys metals.

One unfortunate problem with the Fiend Factory articles is that they rarely provide any ecological or behavioral information about the monsters-- partially, I'd imagine, because this was back when most RPGs were all about hack-and-slash dungeon crawling and number-crunching.  So there's no explanation as to why wyrmlets link up like this. 

This does, however, leave them a blank slate for me to fill in my own ideas. The wyrmlet's colonial habits, for instance, remind me of siphonophores-- close relatives of jellyfish that are actually formed from multiple, specialized jelly-creatures all linked together by a common digestive-system.  Well-known siphonophores include the Portuguese Man-O-War and the By-the-Wind Sailor.

 I'd imagine the individual wyrmlets are also similarly specialized.  The text even hints at this a little, with reference to the more complex "head" individuals, along with wyrmlets that are "mages" and "clerics".  Each wyrmlet is probably a highly-simplified being, specialized for fighting, digesting, waste filtering, sensory awareness, etc.  So specialized, in fact, that they cannot function on their own and must link up into the colonial wyrmling to form a full metabolism. 

"Sensory" and "Stomach" wyrmlets

Wyrmlet colonies subsist primarily on metals-- specifically particulate, oxidized metals.  Specialized sensory wyrmlets can detect faint traces of iron, copper and other minerals in soil and stone, which the wyrmling extracts using its disintegration ray. They will, of course,  eagerly attack sources of pure metal-- such as armor or weapons-- to obtain metals in a concentrated, purified form.

Wyrmlets live in complex, ant-like tunnels beneath temperate forests, slowly extracting metals from the soil.  This metal extraction alters the floral composition of the forest above, encouraging the growth of plants that can tolerate reduced soil metals.  Wyrmlet droppings-- which are almost entirely oxidized metals-- are fed upon by particular strains of bacteria which can eventually form large, slimy colonies on the surface that resemble Nostoc or "Witch's Butter".  Ecologists, foresters and rangers can detect the presence of wyrmlets based on this altered ecosystem. 

Wyrmlet art copied from a "newspaper rock" found in their territory.

Wyrmlets are not intelligent enough to create complex societies, though they are do know how to wield discarded weapons from pixies, fairies, brownies and other tiny forest dwellers.  They will even produce the occasional artwork on hard surfaces such as stone or wood.  The subjects of these works are usually ants, springtails, worms, moles, tardigrades and other subterranean organisms that they regularly encounter, but there are hints that the wyrmlets have a rudimentary concept of a "god" or at least invisible spirits who provide the metals they consume.

Trosips

Killer Dusk Bunnies.  That's what Trosips are.  Living balls of dirt, hair, cobwebs and little crumbly bits of detritus.

Trosips come from the Red Steel campaign-- a swashbuckling-themed coastal setting in the vein of Alexander Dumas fiction. Set on the world of Mystara, the classic world where all the original 1st edition D&D games were set (more on that in a future post).

Trosips live in man-made dwellings-- castles, manors, houses, inns-- especially in all the nooks and crannies where genuine, non-living dust bunnies accumulate.  They're attracted to body heat and will congregate around a sleeping being in great numbers.  Such great numbers, in fact, that thy often accidentally smoother the sleeper. Because of this, dwellings along the Savage Coast, where the Red Steel game is set, are kept meticulously clean to discourage these critters.

 Trosips remain completely motionless when active, waking beings are around.  In this state they are completely indistinguishable from normal dust.

 According to the fluff text, assassins will sometimes use trosips to kill victims without leaving any traces.

I love these little oddballs so freaking much, you guys! You don't even know.  There's something so charming about a living dust bunny.  A KILLER living dust bunny, even!  If I ever have a chance to play a mage, I'd want a trosip as my familiar.  Heck, I'd just want a spell that would allow me to summon a herd of them.  Not to kill anyone, but just to have them scooting all around me like little dusty inchworms.

As to what they actually are-- I like to think they're colonial animals.  The ball of hair and dirt is just a shell for a mass of microscopic critters, maybe dust mites or tardigrades.  Or maybe just a single large amoebae-like organism similar to a deep-sea xenophyophore.

Introduction and Death Linens

I've been a huge fan of Dungeons & Dragons since middle school.  And one of my favorite things about the game has always been the weird monsters.  The weirder the better for me.

Starting a few years ago, there's been this trend on the internet towards making lists of "stupidest D&D monsters", because apparently only the grimmest of the grimdark are acceptable creature material (though that does seem to be changing a little for 5th edition). This blog will showcase the wide variety of obscure, silly and/or just plain weird monsters of D&D and hopefully show folks that these creatures have just as much of a place in D&D as the baddest-ass were-dire-owlbear tiefling (or whatever).  When possible, I try to give credit to the creatures' creator.

A major source for a lot of these critters is the "Dragon's Bestiary" column regularly found in the pages of Dragon magazine.  White Dwarf-- a sister gaming magazine from Great Britain that long ago dropped D&D to focus exclusively on Warhammer and Warhammer 40K-- also had a regular column devoted to creating new monsters for Dungeons & Dragons.  Many of D&D's most iconic creatures came from this magazine, including drow, githyanki, githzerai and grell.   In addition to Dragon, I've combed through several issues of WD to find more unusual and intriguing monsters for your enjoyment.

I should add that inspiration for this blog came from a similar series of articles written by Jonathon Wojcik over at Bogleech.com

So let's start this blog with one of my favorite weird D&D monsters-- a bunch of living bedclothes!

The October 1998 issue of Dragon magazine (#252) featured a Dragon's Bestiary article titled "Formidable Visitants" written by Michael D. Winkle.  The monsters here were inspired by the works of M. R. James, a popular writer of ghost stories from the early 1900s.  James wrote most of his stories to be read aloud at Christmas gatherings with friends (reading ghost stories at Christmas is, or at least was, a popular part of the holiday celebration in Britain which we here in America really need to adopt).  Eventually I'm going to talk about all of the Jamesian monsters featured in this article, but for today let's focus on the three species of "Death Linens". 

Winkle writes: "Death Linens are beings of living cloth, usually sheets, pillows, and other items associated with beds. They have been infected with latent psychic forces born of nightmares."

KILLER PILLOW

Basically a textile version of a Venus Flytrap or a predatory Megalodicopia tunicate.  Killer Pillows lie in wait on a victim's bed and close around their head when they sleep, suffocating them. They are, as the article says "literally bad dreams in physical form"

  The creatures were inspired by James' story "Two Doctors", specifically a scene at the end where a character is discovered dead in his bed with his pillow curled around his head by implied supernatural means.

FLANNEL BEAST

Described as a thin, ribbon-like bit of shredded cloth that lies coiled up in a pile of towels or linens, waiting to bounce on victims. Interestingly, the Beast is described as having poisonous fangs-- presumably formed from some material besides cloth? I'm curious where these hide when the Flannel Beast is camouflaged.  Are they folded up deep inside the cloth?  And where does the "poison" come from?  Does this thing have venom glands like a cobra?

SHEET

In essence, this is your classic, cartoon "sheet ghost", except instead of being the spirit of a once-living person, the Sheet is a non-living fabric that has been animated by supernatural (but not ghostly) powers.  When animated, the Sheet develops a disturbing, semi-human face formed from crumpled fabric.  Like the Flannel Beast, it possesses fangs (somehow) that it can use to cause damage.  And, like the Killer Pillow, it can wrap around a victim to smother them

Both the Flannel Beast and Sheet were inspired by the story"Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", wherein a character finds an old metal whistle in a Crusader ruin.  Blowing the whistle summons some sort of mysterious entity (exactly what is never made clear) which takes the form of the narrator's own bed sheets crumpled into a vaguely humanoid form at the climax. 

While Death Linens obviously don't provide much of a challenge in a hack-and-slash dungeon crawl game, they work quite well in a slower, atmospheric game.  Maybe even a campaign set in Ravenloft. 

Living clothing and other normally inanimate objects do actually exist in real-world mythology.  In Japanese folklore, any household item that has been around for 100 years will develop a soul and transform into an intelligent, semi-anthropomorphic spirit called a tsukumogami. 

Various Tsukumogami, including a Karakasa obake, Chochin-obake, Bake-zori and others annoying Ikuko, a miko priestess from my novel "At Yomi's Gate" which I am totally going to get around to publishing one of these days.

Folklore records dozens of distinct tsukumogami types, including animated parasols (Karakasa-obake), straw sandals (Bake zori), paper lantern (Chochin-obake), inkstones (Suzuri-no-Tamashi) and many more.  There is even a spirit equivalent to the flannel beast called an Ittan-momen.

Source: The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: A Field Guide to Japanese Yokai by Mathew Meyer