Dimorphodon & Diplodocus

Dimorphodon has a stupid name for an animal that should be labeled “amazing toothed toucan-pterosaur thing.”  It also makes a great animal companion.  Meanwhile, diplodocus gets the award for longest sauropod—with a 60-ft. whiplike reach to boot.

Climbing a sheer cliff, adventurers disturb a nest of dimorphodons.  Given the terrain, the flying pterosaurs have an advantage over the laden heroes.  Fortunately the flock is easily driven off so long as the adventurers don’t disturb the nest itself.  But the dimorphodons’ poisonous bites may make the rest of the climb difficult…and leave the party vulnerable to the entangling strikes of the assassin vine on the rocks above.

Dimorphodons are common pirate companions along the Wight Isles.  They're prized for being even flashier than parrots or toucans, as well as for wielding a bite whose poison can make the difference in a close fight.  It’s a buccaneer tradition to teach the dimorphodon (using the animal’s racial bonus trick) to snatch the hat off another pirate.  Doing so is a way to show you respect Wight Isle ways, and can get an outsider in good with a strange crew.

An adventuring company has been sparring with agents of the goddess of pain for months.  They are cleaning out her lushly appointed temple and gardens when the high priestess enacts the cult’s revenge.  She smashes an orb in the party’s presence and flees while the beast once trapped inside manifests.  It turns out there are whips and then there are whips…and long before the goddess became a deity of sybarites she was a far cruder orcish deity of retribution…which is why a full-sized, whip-tailed diplodocus manifests right in the middle of the city.

—Pathfinder Adventure Path #37 82–83 & Pathfinder Bestiary 4 58

Slightly more on the dimorphodon appears in Pathfinder Adventure Path #37: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv.  (I believe a few references also pop up in Animal Archive, but don’t quote me on that, since I’m at work and that book is tucked away in my nerd loft.  Which I should really post pictures of sometime.)

There’s just something about a hex map.  I don't care how gorgeous or authentically medieval the looser format of a Forgotten Realms or Golarion map is…I want my maps in 8, 24, and 40-mile hexes.  My brother used to stare at my Known World maps for hours, and he didn’t even play.  (In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t moved out right as he hit middle school.  His friends would have been awesome to GM for.)

Blogger is being cranky right now and won’t show me how I found this originally—through Bruce Heard somehow—but this map of Brun made me so happy.  And then I found this page.  If anyone needs me, I’ll be here for a while.

(Confidential to any Paizo staff who might come upon this: Hex map of one of the Golarion continents?  Like as a holiday download or a limited-run poster map?  Just a thought…)