spencerranch

[spencerranch]

Power. Wonder. Indifference. In all the world, there had never been anything as beautiful; as terrible, as a gryphon. For a long time, we thought there never would be again.

We were wrong.

Once the gummi bears cartoon dropped the fact that baby gryphons were called mervins. I was well into adulthood when I realized it was a joke. Still. I think we should bring it back.

Let's bring it back.

Monster Month XP Day 31 - Gryphon

[spencerranch]

Poking about underground, looking for scrap, and trouble is a mistake. There are worse things than the dead underground. Deeper places than any dungeon, and worse perils than any monster. Like a vile and creeping sickness, down there in the dark. Bubbling up from the poisoned heart of the world; swallowing up anything good and living, and snatching the life right out of it... or worse.

You keep poking around in deep places like this, and you'll make a nice supper for some wretched nightmare thing. That's a promise.

The real star of Dungeons and Dragons: the wretched, ever watching, and ALWAYS SUPERIOR Illithid.

Monster Month XP Day 30 - Mindflayer

[spencerranch]

A shaggy, bipedal moose-eating dinosaur-like creature sighted in the Yukon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The creature was purportedly covered in course gray-black bristles, much like the hair of a boar, and was seen to leap great distances and had strength enough to carry an adult elk in its jaws.

Another one of my favorite cryptids, even though the chain of sightings is somewhat dubious. Just the idea of a ceratosaurus loping around in the snowy Yukon at the turn of the century is enough to send one's imagination spinning.

Monster Month XP Day 29 - Partridge Creek Beast

[spencerranch]

In the time before all things, even before the birthing of your sun, they slithered, bellowing, and hungry in the waters of the dark. And here, at the shattering of your comforts, you; a silly little thing with a sharpened bit of iron, presume to trouble one of THEM. Still unaware,... ignorant, rather, of the scale at which you are humbled.

You are not small in this sacred place. You are not regarded at all.

After all, what else could you be, but a sliver of a fraction of nothing to a dragon.

Monster Month Day 28 - Dragon

[spencerranch]

An extremely aggressive, and solitary animal which supposedly dwells in the waters of the Congo. The creature is said to be roughly the size of a bush elephant, herbivorous, and it is also said to; as the name implies, harbor a deep hatred of elephants (as well as hippos and water buffalo), which it kills on sight.

The creature has been alternately imagined as a surviving ceratopsian, as well as a colossal, semi-aquatic type of rhinoceros. I usually depict it this way, because there are a couple of sculptures from the area that look this way, and likely depict creature. The little bits of ecology sprinkled into the reports add a lot of character, as well.

Monster Month Day 27 - Emela-Ntouka

[spencerranch]

A huge flying creature with the wings of a bat, and the head of a dog spotted around the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State.

Batsquatch is another of the 'unrelated to sasquatch' squatches, and he's generally pretty cool.

Monster Month Day 26 - Batsquatch

[spencerranch]

M'lady.

Monster Month Day 25 - Nessie

[spencerranch]

A vulgar sewer lurking poop monster that looks like some kind of rude leather egg with too many teeth. That's the otyugh. And if that's not enough, now it's talking in your mind too.

Monster Month Day 24 - Otyugh

[spencerranch]

Wicked, huge, HUNGRY. You don't have to say a lot about Gnolls to get the point across.

Monster Month Day 23 - Gnoll

[spencerranch]

The best D&D monsters capture your imagination and suggest scenarios by their mere existence. The Displacer Beast is pure D&D. Peak wonder, equal parts strangeness, alien scariness and possibility.

Also, it's a kitty-kitty-kitty, or something similar. So, what's not to like?

Monster Month Day 22 -  Displacer Beast

[spencerranch]

A vile, gibbering mockery of a creature. Left forgotten, or perhaps locked away in dusty empty places, a pale distortion of the powerful wizard it once was.

Monster Month Day 21 - Nothic

[spencerranch]

Was there ever a truer classic?

I think not.

Monster Month Day 20 - Mimic

[spencerranch]

Perhaps the cutest of the Beholder kin, the lurking strangler is a couple of eyes, connected by a sinewy scrap of flesh. These little guys fly around, looking for sleeping folks that they can suffocate by wrapping their weird little bodies around the unsuspecting victim's neck.

Cute.

Monster Month Day 19 - Lurking Strangler

[spencerranch]

One of the strangest of the biological cryptids; The Dingonek is said to be a tremendous semi-aquatic reptile like animal with saber teeth and markings like a leopard that lurks deep under the surface of Lake Victoria, and it's constituent rivers. It has been called an underwater leopard.

This is another seldom-sighted cryptid, though it does seem to have analogs in local myths and legends.

Monster Month Day 18 - Dingonek

[spencerranch]

A shaggy haired sea-serpent, or at least sea-serpent adjacent creature, spotted hundreds of times in the Pacific Northwest. Caddy is said to sport the head of a horse, a long, flexible body, and a furry mane. Notable, in terms of cryptids, in that there have been supposed Caddy corpses recovered, and 'supposedly' juvenile specimens caught.

Caddy just always looked like a really friendly bloke to me.

Monster Month Day 17 - Cadborosaurus

[spencerranch]

Snortle is best kobold, and Mr. Muffins is best kitten-kat.

Monster Month XP Day 16 - Kobold

[spencerranch]

Death, it turns out, is a thing of the past. With enough ambition,... or hate, of course.

Monster Month XP Day 15 - Revenant