Moon-Beast

What the Bestiary 3 hints at, the latest Pathfinder Adventure Path issue (#65: Into the Nightmare Rift) makes explicitly clear: moon-beasts are the masters of the denizens of Leng.  Given how much ink the various Pathfinder products have spent talking up the intimidation factor of the mysterious denizens, that tells you how scary the moon-beasts should be in your campaign.

(It gets worse: Moon-beasts in turn serve even more awful nasties.  But anyway…)

Moon-beasts are perfect to run if you want your players to chase mirages, battle illusion after illusion, and generally jump at shadows.  A moon-beast will craft mirage arcana landscapes to mislead PCs and lure them into traps, trick them into wasting spells with major image, damage them with quasi-real effects thanks to shadow conjuration and evocation, get them to attack each other with confusion, dominate monster, and veil, after which it will air walk or plane shift to safety.  (Oh right, and let’s not forget its Wisdom-draining rend attack, which makes PCs even more vulnerable to all of the above and heals the beast.)

Not into visiting Leng or its evil moon?  Put moon-beasts on the moon(s) of your world.  Or dump them below the earth—they make great replacements for mind flayers in a Pathfinder campaign, and a city full of them might look like any number of Lost World settings thanks to their skill at illusions.

A strange woman in a hood is revealed to be a lashunta masking her alien appearance (see the Inner Sea Bestiary). This is not her only secret—she is also a princess among her people, and she bears the brand of a moon-beast slaver who is actively hunting her.  Despite her peril, she is adamant that she not be returned home, though she will not say why.

The pirate ships of Len-Al hide a terrible secret.  The swarthy human and bugbear crews are led not by the turbaned denizens of Len-Al they call “Captain,” but by moon-beast commandants.  This explains why the raiding fleets so easily vanish into fog banks, storms, and mirage isles, and why the nation of Len-Al itself is so elusive—because half of it is on the world’s second moon.

When the ancient empire of Taos crumbled and its capital province literally vanished into the earth, moon-beasts were to blame.  Moon-beasts also experimented on the Taosian people, now trapped underground, birthing the first morlocks, chokers, and skulks thanks to their experiments with inbreeding and fleshcrafting.  Skulks and chokers long ago escaped the moon-beasts’ control, but the morlocks still serve faithfully, traveling up giant pits called Moonwells to capture slaves, who are then brought below and forced to people a series of Dream Cities until they are fed upon by their aberrant lords.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 195

Every one of these H. P. Lovecraft posts I do reminds me that I will be a failure until I read at least some of his Dream Cycle, particularly The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

Looking for the monitor lizard?  The monkey?  The monkey swarm?  Well, there you go.

On Friday syringesin caught me apparently channeling Conan O’Brien.  And thanks to everyone who commented or liked!

Hey look!  It’s my first radio show of 2013, full of songs we liked in 2012. Well, the first half of 2012 anyway. You might even call it a "Best Of"!  Too bad I celebrated by being so absurdly late getting into the station!

 (Music starts 11 minutes into the file, because I suck. If the feed skips, load in Firefox or Chrome, Save As an mp3, and enjoy in iTunes. File good till Friday, 1/18, at midnight.)