Some thoughts on D&D's medusae as a self-reproducing race

In my last post I shared my thoughts on the "medusas as curse" concept from D&D 5e. In this post I want to touch on the other depictions in D&D of medusas as a self-reproducing race. (For reference going forward, I'm using "gorgon" as a gender-neutral term for medusas and co.)

In Greek myth, there's no apparent depiction of gorgons as a self-reproducing race. There was a trio of sisters, the Gorgons, born to Phorcys and Ceto. One of the sisters, Medusa, gave birth to Pegasus and Chrysaor after being impregnated by Poseidon. At most, one fragmentary account says Medusa's father was a gorgon. (For reference, "gorgon" in Greek translated to "terrible one, fierce one.")

In D&D, Gygax and co took various unique monsters from mythology and gave them ecologies where each was made into an entire species. These ecologies were often weird, nonsensical, or even misogynistic. In the case of the medusa, their reproduction actually changed across the editions due to differing writers and sometimes it was just plain weird. 

Initially the medusas received no information on their reproduction, then later publications started providing more information, then contradicted themselves later on. Some said most medusas were female (implying there were a few males for reproduction), others said medusas were always female (raising the question of how they reproduced). 

One 1986 article introduced a new monster called the "maedar" as the male counterpart of the medusa, whose appearance and powers were basically the inverse of his female counterpart: he was bald and turned stone to flesh with his touch. These gorgons reproduced more or less normally for sexually dimorphic humanoids. In a subsequent 1993 book this simple reproduction was needlessly complicated by the writer claiming that only 1% of offspring were maedar, while the other 99% were human infants that petrified upon seeing their mother. In order to birth more medusas, the medusa had to rely on human men. What kind of sense does that make? 

In a 3rd edition Dragon magazine article, issue #355, they were given a much more sensible method of reproduction. Gorgons reproduced normally among their own kind, although maedar were born rarely compared to medusas. Otherwise, medusas could abduct human men for reproduction: such pairings produced infant medusas, as well as human boys who petrified upon seeing their mother.

In 4th edition, the maedar were simply called male medusas and their abilities changed to a weaker form of the female's: he was still bald, but now his gaze was literally venomous.

There's no maedar in 5th edition due to their nature changing to a curse, but unofficial conversions combine the pre-4e maedar with the 4e male medusa so that he is bald, has venomous gaze, and turns stone to flesh.

So what do I think of all this? Well, I don't think D&D monsters need to have ecologies in the first place. It demystifies them and turns them into alien fauna. How is something a monster when it has a place in the natural ecology? Not only that but, as I said before, a lot of these pseudo-naturalistic ecologies are just silly. 

Gorgons don't need to have societies or reproductive cycles to explain where they come from. I'm satisfied with them spontaneously generating as needed by the GM. If you need a more detailed explanation for that, then posit the existence of magic fields that radiate across the world according to the movements of planets. These magic fields occasionally crisscross at symbolic times and locations, where they form magical vents that spawn magical creatures. The medusa is spawned when the magic fields of the Moon are ascendant, as the Moon is the planet sacred to cycles, reptiles, and delirium.

In you want something inspired by mythology, then I have another idea. In Greek myth there is a monster called the Dracaena ("she-dragon, dragoness"), who appears as a beautiful nymph from the waist up and a dragon from the waist down. Famous Dracaena included Echidna and Ceto, who gave birth to various monsters. I'm just gonna call her a "nymph-dragoness" to reflect her appearance. The fantasy world is therefore home to one or more of these nymph-dragonesses. They are legendary monstresses who live to spawn various monsters including gorgons. Where did she come from? The earth gave birth to her. Where did the earth come from? It arose spontaneously from the primordial chaos. Where did that come from? It always existed.

Some thoughts on DnD’s “curse of the medusa”

I recently read a deep dive on the history of D&D's medusas and had some thoughts of my own.

I prefer to call them gorgons after the original Greek myths, and will continue that usage for the rest of the this post. (The iron bull monster can just be renamed to "stone-breath bulls" or something.) I prefer to treat gorgons as a curse, as per the popular myth, as I find that origin more mystical and customizable than them being just yet another self-sustaining fantasy race. However, the 5th edition story for the curse has problems.

According to the 5e MM, the clients are vain brats who get eternal beauty from the patron, before it eventually turns them into gorgons. Do they know this is the price and, if so, why would they ever agree? What does the patron get out of the deal? It feels poorly thought out to me, so I think it needs revising.

Unless you can find a good reason for it, then ditch the whole patronage thing. Unless the patron is deliberately trying to torment people or spread death, then they have no reason to curse people into gorgons. Instead, make gorgonism a cosmic karmic punishment for women who seek eternal beauty to the exclusion of all else, particularly the health and safety of others. Such a vain women was wicked, used her beauty for evil ends, and resorted to dark means to preserve her beauty, like using dark magic to steal the life of others. So the universe curses her, turning her into a gorgoness.

The curse of the gorgoness, beyond being a hideous monster, is that now nobody can appreciate her beauty. Anyone who looks at her turns to stone. If the gorgoness ever looks at her own reflection, then she too turns to stone. As a result, they become very antisocial individuals.

A gorgoness's appearance is variable but reflects how long she has been cursed. Fledgling gorgonesses still appear largely the same aside from her hair turning into snakes and her skin taking on an earthier tone, perhaps to emphasize the irony. As the curse progresses, she grows brass claws and talons, venomous fangs and tusks, features like a hag, her skin turns to scales, and her legs are replaced by a massive serpentine tail. Some even grow wings like in the myths.

What of male gorgons? Well, here things become more complicated, but not really. See, the gorgoness's vanity was not simply the result of her own wickedness, but also contributed to by patriarchal society's obsession with feminine beauty. Women are socialized to value their beauty, and punished for failing to do so, far more than men are. As such, men who are vain enough to deserve cursing for it are rarer and manifest differently: he becomes a gorghias.

A gorghias doesn't gain the same monstrous combat benefits as a gorgoness does. All his hair falls out, his skin becomes earthy and scaly, and he gains a literally venomous gaze. Those who gaze upon his visage are literally poisoned by him, and seeing his own reflection sends him into anaphylactic shock. See the social commentary?

Do gorgons organize? Do they reproduce? No. The curse is meant to isolate them, turn them into a blight on society even worse then they were as mortals. They are immortal and do not reproduce. They don't even eat or drink anymore, instead draining lifeforce with their deadly gazes for sustenance. 

But these are just some ideas. Perhaps your gorgons are the spawn of a legendary dragon-nymph like Ceto or Echidna, the creation of a mad wizard like Morgoth or Doctor Frankenstein, or a demon lord's malicious curse on some poor fool. Greek myth wasn't consistent on where the gorgons came from, with one story saying they were spawned by Ceto while another claimed Medusa was cursed by Athena. You do you!

Eamonvale Pantheon and other goodies

The Eamonvale Incursion is an old module released in the 2000s. Creator Darkloch Creative Enterprises used to have a website with web enhancements that eventually died. I contacted the author years ago and got a backup, which can currently be found here. Most of these are released under OGL, so you can redistribute the material. Hope you enjoy!

Missing images are a problem! Plus, some images of interstitial planes

Some of the images from my old posts, such as this one, have succumbed to link rot. I was so stupid to not include the original image in my blogger gallery.

I'm not gonna go back and edit the old post. So here's some backups and substitutes! 

Great Wheel cosmology with elemental para- and quasi-planes

Great Wheel cosmology with elemental chaos

Anethemalon Planes of Existence

Elemental Planes by Sapiento

The Cordant Planes

Pathfinder's Great Beyond

A simple cosmogram

Hope you enjoyed!

Iconic monster substitutes, 2023 edition!

So a lot has happened in the past year regarding the Dungeons & Dragons brand. Wizards nuked their credibility and Hasbro is turning the IP into a mobile game microtransaction hellscape. The OGL is... well, for the first time since it's creation it's now considered poison and its former fans are now moving away from it.

So... fuck it. I'm gonna start a new series on substitutes from iconic D&D monsters. I'm gonna make up some ideas based on my past readings of various other monster substitutes and then I'm gonna release my writeups into the public domain so that everyone can use my ideas anywhere forever. You don't even have to credit me if you don't want to. I'm not doing this for recognition or profit, I'm doing it to satisfy my creative urge.

So let's start with one of the most popular ones: the mind flayer and the aboleth. I've seen several different takes on these, with the most detailed being the Phrenic Scourge by Lion's Den Press and later Dreamscarred Press, the Possessors by Ronin Arts, and the Lethid by Bad Axe Games. The latter also included effective substitutes for the displacer beast, the puppeteer, and the intellect devourer. I can't expect anyone reading this to shell out for a bunch of old books that may not even be available anymore, so I'm gonna just makeup a writeup here recycling those ideas but sanitized of any clearly identifiable IP. I guess.

So here goes... The following writeups I release in the public domain.

Alien Horrors: The Squiddies

The Squiddies are an alien race that lives by enslaving and parasitizing other species they encounter. They come in many different castes with different properties, all of which bear some superficial resemblance to deep sea invertebrates like cephalopods and crustaceans. They all have some form of psychic powers.

The most infamous form is the aptly named Tentacled Horror. These creatures are composed entirely of worm-like tendrils attached to a central trunk. They have no faces, eyes, mouths, limbs, or other remotely humanoid features. They can breathe and thrive equally well in air or water. They can maintain a loosely upright form with tendrils arranged to mimic a pair of arms and conceal their appearance by wearing cloaks and such. They have a variety of psychic powers, but the most dangerous is an area of effect attack that temporarily incapacitates the minds of their targets. The ends of their tendrils constantly shed and regrow like fingernails, but serve a key role in their reproduction: these ends are their parasitoid larval form. Upon contact with a potential host, the larvae will burrow into the body and make its way to the brain. It will instantly kill the host once it reaches the brain, then consume the corpse as nourishment until it reaches its adult size. Larvae that fail to find a host quickly die.

Some larvae are particularly hardy and can survive a fair amount of time after being shed. However, these ones exhibit abnormal growth and properties. If they find and take a host, rather than killing and consuming it they instead attach themselves to the brain and take control of the body. This allows the Squiddies to use the host as an infiltrator. These internal puppeteers can reproduce by extending a tendril from their host's mouth that sheds new larvae.

Although all Squiddies reproduce asexually as described above, there are dedicated breeder forms sometimes called "queens." These queens are massive conglomerations of tentacles that continuously spawn swarms of larvae, or in some variants puppeteer parasites (see below). They can also be used as signal boosters for telepathy due to their size.

There's some genetic transfer when larvae consume their hosts. The Squiddies have exploited this property to breed a number of different castes with more specialized purposes. These include bulky warriors covered in crustacean armor, lithe infiltrators that disguise themselves with psychic illusions, etc.

Perhaps the most grotesque castes are the various dedicated parasite forms. Perhaps selectively bred from the hardier larvae mentioned above, these parasites are much more versatile.

The tiny leech ray resembles a mix of manta ray and leech, like those aliens in The Puppet Masters. Once it finds a suitable host (typically humanoid), it burrows inside the body and attaches to the spinal column to exert influence over the host's mind. While unable to freely dominate the host and reliant on subterfuge, it is so deeply embedded in the nervous system that it cannot be removed safely without surgical means. Otherwise, their psychic abilities are minimal. They serve as spies and saboteurs.

The flying head squid is a mass of tentacles that uses telekinesis to fly through the air. Upon finding a suitable host (preferably humanoid), it engulfs the hosts head and takes control of their nervous system. Their psychic abilities are useful in combat, so they serve a similar role to the tentacled horrors. They can puppeteer dead hosts, but cannot halt the inevitable decomposition. They have venomous tentacles that they may attack with whether hosted or unhosted.

The plane jumping squid outwardly resembles the flying brain squid, but prefers to target large animal hosts. It attaches externally to the spinal column and pumps the host full of stimulants and steroids, using its long tentacles to supplement the host's natural weapons (these tentacles drip sedative venom). It's psychic abilities are minimal, but it has a plane jumping ability that it can use to teleport between two points any distance apart so long as the entrance and exit points meet a criterion specific to each plane jumping squid. This could be shadows, flat mirrored surfaces, corners inside vertices, knots, smoke, book pages, etc.

Then there are two enslaver forms that control victims through psychotropic means.

The hidden master puppeteer is a mass of tentacles arranged in the shape of a huge aquatic fish. It is physically impressive and a gifted illusionist, but by far its most impressive feature is the acid ooze constantly secreted from its body. While this acid ooze may be sprayed as a defensive weapon, its primary purpose is to spread a contagious brain-rotting disease. Vertebrate animals of lower intelligence exposed to the ooze contract a brain-rotting disease that rots their nervous systems and turns them into zombies under the master puppeteer's control. A single master puppeteer may control and see through the senses of hundreds of zombies at once up to a couple dozen miles away from it. Master puppeteers typically specialize in one or two species, such as rats or other vermin.

The true master puppeteer is an even more powerful version of the hidden master puppeteer. Its psionic abilities are vast: in addition to mental manipulation and illusions, it can warp spacetime to damage opponents. It's brain-rotting slime affects creatures of higher intelligence and its control radius is at least doubled. Its zombies ooze infectious acid slime, produce a maddening drone, and the master can use them as extensions of itself to extend it psionic powers' range!

These are just a small selection of the possible castes that you can devise. Feel free to invent your own!

Space zombies!

Found this neat post about space zombies for the OSR scifi game White Star: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com/2016/09/space-zombies-for-white-star.html

Also, Google will unfortunately start deleting inactive accounts this December 2023. Start archiving your favorite blogs before they vanish into the ether…

Taking on the catoblepas/gorgon again

I’m treating the catoblepas and MM gorgon as variations on the same thing, so don’t get confused later. The catoblepas has received a few variations in 3pp because the monster is public domain but was never included in the SRD. I’m gonna simplify all that into a series of random generation tables.

Melee attack, roll 1d4

1. Gore attack, roll to determine damage

2. Tail strike, roll to determine damage

3. Mane of snakes, deal special attack damage

4. Long neck doubles melee reach, roll 1d3 to determine attack from the above list

Gore attack damage, roll 1d3

1. Curling horns, bludgeoning damage

2. Pointed, antlers and/or tusks, piercing damage

3. Mix, bludgeoning & piercing damage

Tail damage, roll 1d4

1. Mace tail, bludgeoning damage

2. Spiked tail, piercing damage

3. Spiked mace tail, bludgeoning & piercing damage

4. Long tail doubles melee reach, roll 1d3 to determine attack from the above list

Defenses, roll 1d4

1. Thick hairy hide and/or bony plates, no additional effect

2. Metallic scales, adds vulnerability to electricity/lightning damage

3. Horrible stench, opponents must hold breath to avoid taking psychic/poison damage

4. Defensive spines, deal piercing damage if an opponent successfully hits in melee

Special attack, roll 1d3

1. Gaze attack*

2. Breath weapon

3. Eye ray attack*

(Roll on following table to determine damage)

*Cannot be used if the catoblepas’ eyes are covered or damaged. This include the eyes provided by the mane of serpents.

Special attack damage, roll 1d6

1. Poison damage, and resistant to poison damage; has violet pigmentation

2. Necrotic damage, and immune to necrotic damage but vulnerable to radiant damage; has black pigmentation

3. Acid damage, and resistant to acid damage; has green pigmentation

4. Petrifaction, and immune to petrifaction; has gray/silvery pigmentation

5. Fire damage, and immune to fire damage but vulnerable to cold damage; has red/orange/yellow pigmentation

6. Cold damage, and immune to cold damage but vulnerable to fire damage; has blue/white pigmentation

Throw spikes attack, roll 1d4

(If the catoblepas has spikes/spines from its tail or defense then roll this table, otherwise ignore)

1. No additional effect

2. Can throw spikes as a ranged attack, like manticore

3. Spines deal special attack damage

4. Spines can be thrown & deal special attack damage

Spit venom attack, role 1d2

(If the catoblepas has a mane of serpents then roll this table, otherwise ignore)

1. No additional effect

2. The snakes can spit venom as a ranged attack, dealing special attack damage

If desired, roll multiple times on single tables, ignoring nonsensical results.