Monsters

Sometimes, you want to give your players a monster that they can’t just whack or shoot at willy-nilly. Today, I present frost mites, tiny arthropods that leech heat out directly out of their prey. Normally, frost mites are barely noticeable pests; a hand covered with half a dozen mites will feel uncomfortably cold, but hardly … Continue reading »

In a more sane world, the Tricaput would be one of those calm herbivores that mostly gets out of humans’ way. Instead, the Tricaput — all six tons of it — chooses a mile-wide area of land as its territory and defends it viciously against anything larger than a dog, flying into rages at the … Continue reading »

Spawned in abandoned graveyards and poorly maintained battlefields, skullspiders are large, venomous predators about the size of a cat. Unlike the single web of a typical spider, each skullspider will spread several thick webs over graves, crypts, bushes, and trees and feed indiscriminately on anything that gets caught there. They are also viciously territorial and … Continue reading »

Today’s monster is converted from the “hexmute” found in GURPS: Creatures of the Night by Scott Paul Maykrantz. Painsoppers are strange humanoids who live on pain. Usually encountered in groups of 3 to 10, they are indistinguishable from normal humans except for their irises, which are pure black, and the fact that they never speak. They … Continue reading »

Whip vines drink blood. They look simply like long, very thorny green vines, but they conceal a round sac, buried deep in the ground or kept high in the air, that acts as a simple “brain” for the organism. Whip vines sense movement with great accuracy. Any movement nearby causes the whip vines to animate, … Continue reading »

This carnivorous plant (about 3 meters/yards tall at full height) disguises itself as a normal tuberous plant, typically growing in the wilderness and occasionally in overgrown dungeon environments. When prey nears, it reaches out with its “arms,” which secretes a numbing poison (and can swallow tiny creatures whole). Then its large, serrated mouth lowers onto … Continue reading »

Some monsters are simply beasts — strange, perhaps, but fundamentally no different than a panther or hyena. Gaxxog is an abberant creature, a thing seemingly escaped from the depths of the hells. Those who encounter Gaxxog and live to tell of it describe Gaxxog as an alternately lethargic and savage creature. It often curls up and … Continue reading »

Sure, sure, there’s a giant owl in the Monster Manual. But all it does is swoop and attack with claws. Let’s make something scary, like the Great Owl from The Secret of NIMH. To me, the scary thing about a giant owl would be its silence and its rending beak. You don’t hear the owl coming … Continue reading »

Time travel is messy, and it always rewrites history. Someone has to keep track of all those changes. And so, the Library of Time serves as a collection of books about history, all history, including the histories that no longer happened. However, a book that tells of an alternate timeline can be a powerful weapon in the wrong person’s hands. The very … Continue reading »

This formless mass of flesh can tear small animals apart with its tentacles and consume an adult human in less than a day. But that is not why it is feared. Most adventurers assume this is just a normal ooze. But the Ooz emits a magical, sonic aura that creates a deathly silence all around it. … Continue reading »