Griffon

Griffons make for excellent wilderness encounters or side treks.  At CR 4, they’re serious predators, but not so serious that they’ll throw off the pace of an adventure.  (Though for best effect, you should throw them at parties before the players get too many spells that go boom.)  Most of the time they’ll be more interested in the PCs’ horses than in the PCs themselves, but a griffon defending its mate, its nest, or its rider is not to be trifled with—especially since they understand Common well enough to coordinate with intelligent allies.

Barnabus Crump is looking to hire adventurers to find a griffon’s egg; he says he has a contract with the noble Grand Duke Ambrose’s sky knights. In reality, he wants the griffon for his traveling menagerie.  His last griffon doubled his profits for two years, but he beat it so severely it died.

The tawny-bodied griffons of Mekhtar are said to be sacred to the sun god, since they bear the falcon heads of his favorite son.  Sacred or not, they prey on horses just as rapaciously as their eagle-headed cousins—sometimes doubly so, as one in ten Mekhtaran griffons has two heads.

Elven griffon riders are renowned in song and legend.  Dwarven griffon riders are not.  This is because no one who has met the crossbow-wielding rangers and skirmishers has lived to report back.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 168

We last visited Mekhtar here.  Apparently it is a dangerous place.

If your players want griffon mounts, Mythological Monsters Revisited has more (courtesy of Michael Kenway) about their temperaments and capabilities.

Griffons are also ideal monsters in a low-magic campaign (say, one based on Anglo-Saxon, Arthurian, or Viking times)—just exotic enough to be a true monster but without the magical bells and whistles.

No show this week—I came down with a fever Friday and decided to play it safe Saturday.  But I’ve been meaning for weeks to put up my belated Easter mix.  The abridged version is here; if you want the full version, shoot me an email.

Grick

The grick is a relatively standard subterranean aberration without much history (dating back only to 3.0).  As a snatch-and-retreat predator that doesn’t immediately devour its prey, the grick is a good spark for a time-sensitive rescue scenario.  (“Sure you can stop to buff.  Of course, the butcher’s son will lose his leg.”)  There’s also the question of how communities cope with a threat that is hard to harm without magic…

Ironically, subterranean societies have just as many problems with their sewers and catacombs as surface dwellers do—perhaps even more so, since the deep-dwelling predators grow so much bigger.  Down-on-their-luck adventurers can find comparatively fair wages as grick hunters in dwarf or even duergar cities.  Drow are likely to force their slaves to do such dirty work.  None are likely to offer the necessary magic weapons, though.

Where jungle gricks are common, indigenous tribes use various means to ensure their safety. Crafting magic weapon salves is a daily chore for Mowatu shamans; Mowatu men keep these salves in jars worn on thongs around their necks in case of grick attack.  The Brilliant Talon tribe breeds shocker lizards for pets and defense.  The engineering-minded Weentar prize mobility, with vine-and-bamboo cable cars and zip lines keeping them high in the canopy.

Is a grick’s fear of the sky the instinctual impulse of an ambush predator…or something more?  A sage posits that gricks are refugees from the heavens who fear starspawn like akatas and shoggoths.  Of course, he needs specimens to prove his theory…

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 146

Green Hag

Of all the hags, green hags offer the most variety in terms of plots.  There are many reasons for this: They live closer to their victims and intrude in their affairs.  They are more likely to hide their identities and take human lovers.  They are more likely to spawn changeling (Pathfinder Adventure Path 43) offspring or create manikins such as leshys or soulbound dolls.  They often team up with ogre or giant thralls.  And they are the most likely to form covens.

For players new to fantasy, the discovery that hags gain more power when they form a coven is novel in and of itself.  But if your players have fought hags before—or if they’re big folklore buffs—feel free to explore the coven aspect further.  You might play up the maiden/mother/crone roles (see the annis hag entry for an idea in this vein), explore vile (from Monte Cook’s 3.0 Book of Vile Darkness) or sin magic (from the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path), or invite other species to join the trio.  As long as at least one hag is present, nagas, powerful fey, select oni, and witches of any race may have the necessary malevolence and chthonic female energy needed to complete the circle.

Raven is said to have once plucked the sun out of the sky.  Two green hags and a tengu witch emulate the act, plucking out the eyes of a lurker in light in order to gain more power over light and darkness.

When a changeling refuses the dark call of her mother, the green hag strikes back—in court, suing for custody.  She uses mimicry and disguise self at first, but even if exposed will pursue her practically airtight case in full view of the horrified town.

A green hag has been a thorn in the side of adventuring friends since before they slew their first goblin.  Now powerful enough to retaliate, they find their own community stands in their way.  The green hag is part of a coven that has offered dark aid to the surrounding countryside for generations, trading spells like control weather, speak with dead, commune, and even reincarnate for silence, loyalty, and protection.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 167

Hey, new reddit folk!  Thanks for sticking around. 

Hat tip to deathkraiser for suggesting I link to the SRD.

As mentioned before, Classic Horrors Revisited is worth a look if you want to customize your green hag covens a bit more.

Green Dragon

Big news!  It’s The Daily Bestiary’s first birthday! 

We began this crazy endeavor one year ago today with the aasimar.  Since then, we’ve covered every monster in the Pathfinder Bestiary, Bonus Bestiary and Bestiary 2 in alphabetical order from A to G (along with the Bestiary 3 starting with the letter E and a Tumblr mirror site starting with the letter G).  I’m excited to have made it this far, and thrilled to have plenty of monsters ahead.

I’ll have more to say about this below.  But first, today’s beast…

Traditionally, green dragons have been described with words like “cunning” or “crafty.”  They have to be, for two simple reasons: They are chromatic dragons of only middling power, and they share their forest homes with elves, whose longevity and mastery of magic, archery, and swordplay make even wyrms pause.  Survival demands that they pick their battles carefully, make and keep allies, and be always one step ahead of both rivals and prey.

Pathfinder’s green dragons, however, go beyond crafty; they’re downright intellectual.  The Bestiary calls them “perhaps the easiest to deal with diplomatically” among the chromatics.  Mike McArtor’s Dragons Revisited goes farther, painting them as scholars, archivists, and astronomers, a small percentage of whom even trade evil for cold neutrality.

However you define your green dragons, PCs should fear their brains as well as their breath.

Beset on all sides by the mercantile Free States, the wood elves of the Pinewald and the green dragon Parvox agreed to a century-long truce, mutually defending their forest from outsiders and road-builders.  The truce is set to expire, and the wood elves have suddenly awoken to the fact that their greatest enemy is now part of the fabric of their society.

Explorers stumble upon an ancient observatory of cyclopean scale.  Careful study reveals the site is still in use, and that no giant designed it.  A green dragon cleric searches the stars reverently.

On the jungle planet of Verdis—a world of carnivorous plants and loathsome parasites—civilization versus savagery is the far more important axis than comfortable notions of good and evil.  Here green dragon scholars and bronze dragon steeds ally with the diabolists and summoners of the Inevitable League.  From cities carved out of the hungry jungle, they battle independent tribes of men, fey, and kappas, and fend off black and brass dragon incursions.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 96–97

I love notions of evil scholars of any kind, draconic or otherwise.  (I think that’s my MFA scars talking.)

So yeah, it’s the blog’s birthday!  (And I already got a present: a super-nice note from gdsfjkl.  Won’t someone please buy him or her a vowel?)

So, where are we after a year?

What’s changed:

This is no longer a private project.  I kept things quiet at first, wanting to build up an archive before I looked for readers.  But now it’s definitely a public thing, especially with the arrival of my Tumblr mirror.

The style is looser.  Early on I kept this really spare: just adventure seeds.  But I began to want to say more about the monsters, explore their themes, make personal asides, even pimp my radio show…and so I got more casual and comfortable over time (again, especially once I started on Tumblr).

What hasn’t:

Still three adventure seeds a day. Still doing my best to make new monsters familiar and familiar monsters special and strange.  And still thrilled to get your comments and thoughts.

Also, I’m still keeping the adventure seeds PC-free.  Admittedly, there are times I have to do verbal gymnastics to avoid saying “the PCs do x”—using terms like “adventurers,” “sellswords,” “mercenaries,” “apprentices,” “ne’er-do-wells,” etc.—but I never want to force you to use a scenario a certain way, or choose sides for your players.  I present the seeds as if they were real-world scenarios, and it’s up to you if your PCs are the adventurers mentioned, or onlookers, rivals, etc.  The blog doesn’t presume to tell you how to enter the scene.

And I’m still dedicated to making these posts setting-neutral, with no Golarion-specific content.  This hopefully protects me from intellectual property issues (I’m not hear to step on Paizo’s toes) and expands the scope of what’s possible for each monster.  So steampunk, voidjammer, historical fantasy and weird fantasy fans should all find as much pleasure in this as medieval and Golarion fans do.

If you like, you can find out more about my brainstorming and writing process in the gloomwing entry.

Otherwise, thanks for reading; keeping sharing, reblogging, and commenting; and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Great White Whale & Whale

Even in fantasy seas, whales tend to be the largest oceangoing mammals.  And great white whales are creatures of truly epic proportions, likely to have folk names and personalities known to any sailor who frequents their domains.

A ship menaced by the whirlpool vortex of a charybdis is saved when a great white whale snaps it up, mighty teeth working on the monstrosity’s shell as the pair plunges below.  But when the whale returns, it casts a baleful eye on the ship it saved, and readies for a smashing breach.

The commonly hunted right whales begin to lash out at ships in the North Sea, ramming small cutters and overturning jolly boats.  They also begin to lead whalers on chases through iceberg fields and dangerous rocks.  Is some intelligence at work—perhaps a sea druid, cetaceal, or triton?  Has something awakened the whales? Or are stranger forces at work?

A globster of truly gigantic proportions is defeated on the rocks of Cape Isis.  Its remains reveal a part from the Aegis Apparatus, a technomagical artifact thought to have been lost at sea.  Finding the creature that spawned the globster—likely a great white whale known as Pale Scar—might mean finding the artifact.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 2 282

Remember kids, hunting whales is an Evil act.

Backlog alert: I’ve finally thrown up entries for the bugbear (rounding out September), the ceustodaemon and charybdis (knocking out October), the darkmantle and dark naga (finishing up November and thus all of 2011), and the faceless stalker (closing the book on January and all of 2012).

In other words, The Daily Bestiary is now completely caught up.  Every monster from the Bestiary and Bestiary 2 (plus Bestiary 3 from the letter E) in ABC order. 

I am thrilled about this.  I love doing this blog, but every missed entry from my early, spotty days was a canker on my enthusiasm.  It turned something that I created to be fun on my lunch break into plain old homework. Since March I’ve turned things around and posted without fail, but it’s nice to finally have all the boxes checked.

And not a moment too soon, given tomorrow’s blog birthday…

Greater Shadow & Shadow

I’m not sure which is scarier—energy draining or strength damage.  Certainly energy draining can erase months of role-playing, but at least there’s a save.  Strength damage, especially from a gang or swarm of shadows, just seems to happen so fast…and vs. a fly speed of 40 ft. running away may not even be possible.  All of which makes shadows terrifying in numbers and greater shadows terrifying, period.

A tapestry in an abandoned great hall features dark empty silhouettes at play in an otherwise richly detailed scene.  Anyone who lingers in the hall will be attacked by these silhouettes—actually shadows—that use their Strength-damaging attacks to “invite” visitors to join them in their tapestry home.

A well is haunted by shadows.  The quickest way to escape them is to rappel down to the bottom of the shaft.  The well is fed there by an underground stream, which will carry the climbers to safety…provided they can swim in their armor.

The necromancer Shrouded Hand used a grisly rite to surgically attach a greater shadow to his own.  He must feed one sentient creature per week to his dark double, or else it will begin sapping his Strength instead.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 245

In “basic” D&D, shadows weren’t undead, just monsters—a nasty twist to throw at divinely overstocked parties.

This Saturday's show said, among other things, "Good Morning Tucson." Perhaps it will add to your good morning, afternoon, or whatever, wherever you are.

(Music starts just over three minutes into the file.  The feed can skip, so let load in Firefox or Chrome, Save As an mp3, and enjoy in iTunes.  Link good until Friday, 6/8, at midnight.)

Great Cyclops

Does the Bestiary cyclops feel a little too…well, small for you?  Do you want your giants to be truly giant—great thundering, Greek-eating, spawn-of-Poseidon monstrosities?  The great cyclops has you covered.  Mind that flash of brutality, by the way…

A cyclops sage convinces human adventurers to accompanying him to a hitherto unknown cyclopean ruin.  He secretly intends to sacrifice his companions to reactivate the many magic circles there and return the city—and his people—to prominence.  But he is not prepared to face the great cyclopes who already people the city, and who regard him as a stunted degenerate to be snuffed out.

Minodes the True is more than a fighter; he’s a celebrity.  Having slain the Linnorm of Antarch and harnessed the Griffon of Ephar (subsequently presenting it to Countess U’Shem as a wedding present), his name is known throughout the land.  A promoter convinces him to headline staged combats in the great cities along Daggertooth Coast, dueling with well-fed and well-bribed manticores and lizardfolk.  But it all goes wrong when a supposedly tame great cyclops flattens Minodes with a single brutal blow, then turns to vent his rage on the thousands of gathered spectators.

A storm giant offers to take his buccaneer friends to any island that borders his domain.  But when they name the Smoking Orb, he grows pensive and silent.  Finally he says, “That is cyclops land.  I cannot disturb the Fathers.  Had you the will of a rune giant, my hands would still be tied.”

—Pathfinder Bestiary 3 61

Remember how I whinged about cyclopes not getting the love from D&D?  This cover is more like it.

And after three months, I’m finally up to 50 Tumblr followers!  (Thanks, assbakas-incorporated.) 

Which means it’s a great time to introduce my Kickstarter—naaawww, I’m just messing with you. 

But we are coming up on this blog’s birthday fast, so if you like what you’re reading, please feel free to like, reblog, link, and otherwise tell your Pathfinder and D&D-curious friends about it.  I do this for fun, but the more people who read, share, and comment, the more fun it is.