Monsters as invasive species and spawns of chaos

Something I've never really liked in fantasy bestiaries is the trend to give monsters pseudo-naturalistic ecologies. These are monsters, not animals: even in the game rules they're labeled "monstrosities" or something.

So, to that end, I prefer to give my monsters decidedly unnatural ecologies. For example:

• Monstrosities are creations of Chaos that blight the world. Whether they wander out of the Chaos Wastes, are brought into being by the rituals of cults, summoned by the creation chambers of living dungeons, or spawned by mysterious wandering progenitors, they are blights that despoil and bring ruin to any ecology they enter. Naturally, they're despised by druids and you can always count on them to aid you in any fight against these things.
• Hydras don't reproduce on their own: new hydras are created by fighting hydras (hence the "hydra effect"). Whenever a hydra's head is cut off, it doesn't die: it tries to flee as best it can. The head may even sprout legs, wings, fins or other appendages that it retains as it grows into a new hydra, thereby explaining the diversity of hydras. Each generation is smaller than the last until heads simply die after being severed, suggesting that an original Hydra exists somewhere.
• Basilisks and cockatrices are all sterile and created by alchemists, a process apparently involving multiple oddities such as a yolkless egg laid by a rooster being incubated by a toad or snake. 
• Thessalhydras don't hybridize through sexual intercourse with other monsters. Rather, they eat other monsters and severed heads will grow into hybrids of whatever the last monster eaten was.
• Chimeras don't have consistent anatomy. Their anatomy constantly shifts, so that the arrangement of heads and appendages is different from day to day. Even the animal components can change over time, adding or removing heads and appendages. As a result, the monsters are in constant pain and quite temperamental.

And so on and so forth. I'm sure I've said this in other posts but it's been years so I'm saying it again.

"Reinventing Fantasy Races" by Luke Maciak

 Some years ago I stumbled upon a blog series titled "Reinventing Fantasy Races" by Luke Maciak that I found a useful source of inspiration for my own writings. Since his website is suffering database issues as of the last two years or so, I was forced to use Wayback Machine to read his articles. The archive may be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210205155615/http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/tag/reinventing-fantasy-races/

There may be some missing images, outdated comments, or other errors. Thankfully the archive has multiple copies from different times so it should be easy to find everything with a little cross-checking. Other websites aren't so lucky... 

A glance at "Bestiaries: Creatures of the West and East"

Back in the late 2000s Stephen C. Klauk wrote two bestiaries, Bestiary Malfearous and Bestiary Nefarious, for his decades-old homebrew campaign setting Amberos. In addition to a lot of original monsters created for his setting, it includes a number of substitutes for WotC IP monsters. These include the serpentine aspii in Bestiary Nefarious and the octopoid menten in Bestiary Malfearous, who are described as mortal enemies in their similar quests to remake the world in their own image. Nice.

The two books are also each several hundred pages long. Damn. If only I were so creative and dedicated...

Anyway, the aspii are immortal serpentfolk that use alchemy to transform others into hybrid slaves, and the menten are octopoid aliens from the Realm of Madness that feed on minds (not physical brains, but the energy of the mind itself).

The aspii are similar to other serpentfolk I've covered previously, and share traits with all of them. The true aspii are giant semihumanoid cobras (similar to the illujan lords and anguineum ophiduans) with snakes for arms (similar to the inphidians from the Tome of Horrors series). They create hybrid slaves through both alchemical transmutation and more conventional crossbreeding.

The menten are semihumanoid octopoids that use modified tentacles are arms and legs. They were created by someone else to conquer the material plane by devouring or converting the inhabitants. There are several degrees of slavery, including being mind-wiped, used as raw material to make a horrifying "flesh engine", or taken to the Realm of Madness and transformed into "thrallkin" who form the lowest rank of the true menten species.

Unfortunately, aspii and menten don't seem to be Open Game Content. Not that I mind considering the other substitutes available, but the bit about them having similar goals and therefore being mortal enemies was actually pretty clever and I'm surprised nobody else thought it up. I'm definitely borrowing that bit.

The origins of D&D monsters?

The monsters (and planes) of D&D are often drawn from myth, folklore, or literature. I keep finding myself trying to refer back to such sources, so I've decided to keep a list of them. If anyone is reading this, then you might also find this useful.

• https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=60560
• http://www.hahnlibrary.net/rpgs/sources.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20180810053344/http://rpg.crg4.com/origins.html
• https://www.scrollforinitiative.com/2021/02/01/where-do-dd-monsters-come-from/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/969gcc/the_mythological_folkloric_or_literary_source_of/
• http://www.superdan.net/gaming/dnd3/dndmisc/outer_planes.html

Forgotten foes: illujan and ogdoad

Back in 2004 Fiery Dragon released Counter Collection: Gold web enhancements that included open game content replacements for slaad and yuan-ti. The illujans and ogdoads are features of Fiery Dragon's largely unpublished Karathis campaign setting. These monsters were handily archived by the Wayback Machine, so they're not lost on posterity. Unfortunately, no other publishers used these monsters despite their being open game content. Since they're almost two decades old now, I don't see that changing any time soon.

Time for some interesting trivia to justify making this post beyond plugging that link:

• Illujanka is a great dragon/serpent in Hittite myth that was slain by a storm god.
• The Ogdoad were primordial deities in Ancient Egyptian myth. They were paired deities of male frogs and female serpents. (For comparison, Pathfinder introduced chaos serpents called proteans.)

Eyeballs part 2: The Evil Eyes of Augrah-Ma

©2010 jistsomeguy

The Evil Eye is a monster from The Iconic Bestiary: Classics of Fantasy, reprinted in Forgotten Foes, and adapted in the first edition of Blood & Treasure. It is a substitute for the closed content Beholder. The Evil Eye's concept is simple: it is a giant flying eyeball that shoots various magic beams and is connected to a mysterious being known only as Augrah-Ma. The origins of the evil eyes and the nature of Augrah-Ma are left deliberately vague for the GM to fill-in as desired.

As the book explains:

An enormous floating eye, apparently ripped raw from the skull of some giant beast, hovers in the air before you. Lengths of optic nerve writhe and thrash behind it like tails, fading away after several feet into thin wisps of white mist. That same white mist is visible in the eye’s dark pupil, as though through a window to some distant world. 

The so-called evil eyes are also known as the Eyes of Augrah-Ma. Legend has it that Augrah-Ma himself (itself?) is some great and dark power; perhaps demon prince, perhaps a god, perhaps something else entirely. His presence is so inherently baleful that the very forces of nature prevent him from entering any of the known planes. It is said that the Augrah-Ma lurks in the emptiness between worlds. The evil eyes, though they seem to have independent minds and often pursue their own agendas, are said to literally be Augrah-Ma’s eyes, allowing him to see and influence events in the material plane. 

Most evil eyes seem obsessed with the destruction of spellcasters, and the acquisition of magic items. They rarely make use of such items themselves, but sages theorize that they constantly seek some means of allowing Augrah-Ma to enter the world — and to make themselves supreme in his order, rising above all other evil eyes. As such, evil eyes oppose one another as often as they cooperate.

An evil eye is about 8 feet in diameter, with its “tail” of optic nerves running an additional 3 to 9 feet, depending on the individual. These tails are fully prehensile, allowing the evil eye to manipulate objects as well as human hands. Some are perfectly white, some yellowed, and some bloodshot. An evil eye’s iris can be of any color, from standard blues, greens and browns, to inhuman violets, golds and reds.  

Evil eyes have no concern for any living being other than themselves (and sometimes other evil eyes). They are capable of fighting with their optic nerve “tails,” but prefer to remain at a distance and make use of their gaze attacks. Unless an evil eye believes itself outmatched, or believes it can bargain with or intimidate potential foes, it attacks without provocation. This is partly due to their obsession with acquiring magic, but also because they enjoy the kill.

The writer Ari Marmell offered further commentary:

You'd expressed some questions about the source of the evil eyes. I deliberately left the idea of where they come from vague, to allow DMs to choose whichever option best fits their campaigns. Here are a few possible suggestions, though:

• They are literally the eyes of Augrah-Ma, that he (it) has somehow detached and sent through the planar walls to the Material Plane.

• They are the eyes of sentient beings sacrificed in Augrah-Ma's name. The magic of the sacrifice causes them to burst from the skulls, grow to their current size, and develop a mystical connection to the trapped entity.

• Augrah-Ma once had an army of demonic servants, all of whom were enormous in size. They were all wiped out by the forces of good (or perhaps a rival evil), but Augrah-Ma reached through the worlds, ripped the eyes from their bodies, and gave them a new life of their own, now fully bonded to him.

Of course, plenty of other ideas could work as well, but these three should get you started. :)

And here is one such suggestion offered by a fan:

Have an idea for the origin of the Evil Eyes- there is a plane out there that is made up of eyes (call it the elemetal plane of eyes) and Augrah-Ma is an intelligent part of that plane (several sections have hive minds). It wants out and thus sends parts of itself to other plane to observe and determine which would the best for invasion. The problem for Augrah-Ma is another section of the EPE doesn't want it to leave. So now you can use both the evil eyes and either the beholder or a beholder variant. I wouldn't want to be the people living in such a plane that they are warring over...

Blood & Treasure offers further expansion on the concept at its blog.

So there you have it. I hope these references prove helpful to anyone who seeks to use them.

Kishi, the two-faced incubus

In previous posts I discussed myths related to hyenas. Here is another post in that vein:

Fairy tales in cultures around the world share the motifs of the "murderous bridegroom" and "murderous stranger." In Angola, legend tells of a demon named kishi. The kishi pretends to be a handsome man, but conceals the face of a hyena on the back of his head (talk about two-faced!). He uses the human face to charm unsuspecting women, then the hyena face eats them. As with other tales in this vein, the moral of the story is for women to be wary of unfamiliar men.

In modern times, the kishi has appeared as the subject of novels like The Kishi: An Esowon Story. It has appeared as a monster in fantasy gaming, too. Hence this post.

What is an amohaji?

The amohaji is an obscure dragon that appears in Green Ronin’s Monsters of the Mind and Expeditious Retreat Press’ Malevolent and Benign.

MotM describes amohaji as small aquatic dragons, dwelling in sewers and catacombs. They have natural camouflage and a mischievous demeanor. Their powers include breathing fire, telepathic powers, charm and compulsion effects, (un)locking doors remotely, shapeshifting, and magic armor.

 

M&B describes amohaji as small cousins to cloud dragons, masters of illusion and mental manipulation, breathing steam and forgetfulness, and living in migrating cloud lairs. If you kill them, then you can dig a magic pearl out of their skull that lets you cast some of their magic for the next 24 hours until it dissipates.

The two couldn’t be more different. However, the backstory of MotM states the amohaji migrated to the underworld after humans hunted them down ages ago. Perhaps those presented in M&B represent the amohaji before they migrated and adapted to the underworld.

Monsters that mimic objects and terrain

D&D has so many monsters whose shtick can be summarized as a simple formula:

1. Pick a taxonomic category like gastropod, cephalopod, manta ray, slime mold, etc.
2. Pick a piece of terrain, architecture, clothing, furniture, surface, etc
3. Create a monster out of category #1 that pretends to be object of category #2.
4. Voila!

This formula is so silly and overused that there have been numerous articles over the years mocking it. Such monsters are often called "obnoxious" or "stupid."

While some writers like to invent new ecologies for these trick monsters, I personally found it easier to treat them all as variations on the mimic. Eventually I might decide to explore ecologies for mimic snails, mimic squids, mimic rays, etc. But it seems a bit silly, no?

Dragon spiders and spider dragons?

A concept I found while googling are the dragon spiders aka spider dragons. Dragons with arachnid (or other arthropod) traits, arachnids with draconic traits, or some horrible hybrid of the two? Who knows! They’re just plain creepy and I like it that way.

Spidragon © 2016 Crowsrock

Some examples of spider dragons include:

• The arachnidrake from Book of Drakes. It is a winged dragon with arachnid features, and has a swarm of spiders living on its skin.
• The draconid from Tome of Horrors. It is a giant arachnid with two dragon heads on serpentine necks. No relation to the similar looking slassans below, but you could always posit a connection.
• The slassan from Arcana Evolved. It is a giant arachnid with a dragon head on a serpentine neck; it is an intelligent creature with mystical abilities. In The Diamond Throne campaign setting, the slassan and mojh were hybrid descendants of the dramojh (fiendish dragons). 
• Reprinted as aqrabuamelu in Monsters of Porphyra 2. "Aqrabuamelu" is another name for the scorpion-men spawned by Tiamat in Mesopotamian myth. In addition to OGL constraints, the new name was presumably used because girtablilu was already taken by Pathfinder Bestiary.

I haven't really worked out any kind of background or theology for it, but I wanted to indulge in some brief world building ideas. I'm thinking that Tiamat, the primordial dragon of chaos and salt water, spawned a number of aberrant dragons. When they entered the mortal world, they appeared in the forms of spiders (a la Ungoliant) but their dragon nature showed through their new forms. And that's where the spider dragons come from.

I had ideas for other connections too. I was thinking of substituting Arcana Evolved's dramojh, slassan, and mojh with the manalishi from OSRIC, aqrabuamelu from MoP, and dragonborn from SRD 5. No firm idea of their relationship yet, maybe in later posts after I defined what the heck a dragon even is supposed to be.

Links

• https://wanderingmoonsword.tumblr.com/post/153494310794/draconid
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/184120
• http://fav.me/d98ysed
• http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/races.htm#Dragonborn
• https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/draconid-tohc/
• https://koboldpress.com/arachnidrake/
• https://dragon-story.fandom.com/wiki/Spider_Dragon
• http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=7664

The vouivre, a weird wyvern/woman thing

The vouivre is a she-dragon from French folklore. The name derives from the Latin for "viper," and refers to the wyvern of heraldry or a mythical dragon inhabiting Lorraine, Jura, and other regions of France. In English, I suppose the idiomatic translation would be viperess or wyverness.

The following two pages from the comic book Vouivre: Thunder of Fury helpfully summarize the tales of this particular dragon:

The dragon is described as fond of bathing in her private cave and capable of assuming human form. This invites comparison to another French dragon, Melusine. Melusine became a dragon once a week and at this time bathed alone in her private quarters. A Book of Creatures calls the vouivres her spiritual descendants stripped of human form, with later accounts conflating the two to give the vouivre her womanly qualities where originally she lacked such attributes entirely.

Various regions of France and neighboring countries put their own spins on the myth. Traits include appearing as animals or balls of fire, greedily guarding treasure, dependence on magic gems (compare draconite from other folklore), and so forth. Your typical weird folklore stuff.

Modern sources put further spins on the monster:

1. When she was imported to the video game Megami Tensei, the vouivre appeared as a demon with features of both woman and dragon. Indeed, the left half of her body appears human but the right half appears monstrous!
2. When she was imported to the tabletop game Pathfinder, perhaps influenced by Megami Tensei, the vouivre became a bizarre creature resembling an amphisbaena with one end of the body appearing as a lovely woman. One wonders what was going through the writer's head, but I find it delightfully weird!

I like all these ideas so much. If I wanted to have the monster appear in all these forms, then I would use a simple explanation: the viperess' is a shape changer. Her power is flawed, however, and always reveals some obvious hint of her true nature. For example, the right or lower half of her body still appearing as a dragon, or she is followed by an entourage of vipers, or even that she sheds her dragon skin to bathe and is at the mercy of whoever steals it (echoing tales of the mermaid wife).

Research links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guivre
• https://www.blackdrago.com/species/vouivre.htm
• http://www.blackdrago.com/fame/melusine.htm
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vouivre
• https://abookofcreatures.com/2015/12/11/vouivre/
• https://www.wordnik.com/words/viperess
• https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type4080.html

Gaming and popular culture links

• https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Vouivre
• http://dailybestiary.blogspot.com/2014/02/vouivre.html
• https://shop.gempakstarz.com/clay/LM-XV-S03-ENG

Hellhounds and other fantastic canines

In this post, I will direct my attention briefly to the numerous varieties of fantastic canines in fantasy gaming.

Some thoughts on the lusca (sharktopus)

The lusca is a cryptid reputed to swim the waters of the Caribbean, variously described as part shark, dragon, and octopus. In modern popular culture, like Pathfinder Bestiary, it is often depicted as a "sharktopus."

The many names of the sea-dog

While researching heraldry and monsters, I was surprised to learn that creatures like the alphyn, enfield, and sea-dog (or water-dog) were actually variations on the same thing.

The onchú (literally "water-dog," probably from on "water" + cú "hound") appears to be either an otter or a mythologized version thereof. Through assimilation with the heraldic sea-dog and phonetic mutation into the alphyn and enfield, it acquired features like a fishy mane and avian talons.

• The sea-dog is a canine beast with fishy features including scales and fins.
• The alphyn is a vaguely lupine beast with avian talons and a long knotted tail.
• The enfield is a vulpine beast with avian talons.

Research links:

• https://abookofcreatures.com/2017/04/03/onchu/
• http://mistholme.com/dictionary/alphyn/
• http://mistholme.com/dictionary/enfield/
• http://mistholme.com/dictionary/sea-monsters/
• https://www.sacred-texts.com/lcr/fsca/fsca73.htm
• https://www.sarahsawyer.com/2012/03/mythic-creature-the-alphyn/

The sa'ir, a forgotten monster

The sa'ir is a weird monster that appeared only briefly in 2e as part of the lamia’s ridiculously convoluted ecology (ridiculously convoluted ecologies were extremely common in the days of AD&D). It is a lion with a goat's hooves and horns. It was never referenced again, and 3e seemingly introduced male lamia which rendered its existence superfluous. That has not stopped conversions to 5e, however.

The name immediately stood out to me because I recognized it as probably derived from the biblical sa`iyr (also sâʻîyr, sâʻir). As an adjective the word means "shaggy," as a noun "he-goat." By analogy, the word is translated as "faun" or "satyr."

In Isaiah 34:14, the sa'ir ("wild goat") is mentioned alongside the lilith ("screech owl") as one of the many beasts inhabiting the desert and night. As Lilith is the name of a night-haunting demon in Mesopotamian myths that fulfills the same archetype as the lamia of Greek myth, I suspect this is where the game's writer got the idea to introduce the sa'ir as a monster related to the lamia/lilith.

Otherwise, the sa'ir appears to be an invention of the game's writer, derived from the biblical verse plus the lamia as described by Topsell and depicted in Tudor heraldry. However, there are a couple of heraldic and artistic monsters that loosely resemble it and might have influenced its design:

• The chatloup (French for "cat-wolf") is a fantastic beast with the face of a cat, the body of a wolf, and the horns of an antelope. 
• The theow (also thoye, thos) is a fantastic beast with the body of a mastiff or wolf, cloven hooves and a bovine muzzle and tail. Dragonlore #71 speculates that it was the result of careless copying transforming depictions of normal wolves into bovine beasts.
• The homeric Chimera was described as having the body of a goat, the head of a lion, and the tail of a dragon/snake. Further variations on this design might add horns to the lion's head.

I do not really see a reason to revive it as a relative of the lamia. At least in my campaign setting, the lamia are the transformed souls of scorned lovers in loose accordance with their mythological origins and not a self-reproducing race that arbitrarily serves a demon lord. Even in the biblical verse, it was only intended as one of the creatures inhabiting the same environment as the she-demons, not a relative.

I can imagine reviving it in other capacities, however. Maybe it is a mad wizard's experiment, as lazy game's writers are wont to resort to for explanation? Maybe it is a variant of the aberrant beasts spawned by the chimera? Maybe it is the male counterpart to the female chimera? Maybe it is a liocorno related to the bicorn and unicorn? Maybe it is related to the chatloup and theow, just another fantastic beast that is natural to fantasyland? Maybe, as its name suggests, it is a relative of the satyrs?

There are any number of possibilities.

Mephits

Mephits are elemental imps, serving the same simple role of messengers and spies. They are one of those throwaway monsters that shows up in most monster manuals but nobody pays attention to and whose backstory is constantly changed by the writers.

In AD&D the mephits were imps summoned from the lower planes to animate elemental forms. Later they were tweaked so that they were created on the lower planes, and typically had a low life expectancy since they were often used to send insults.

Starting with 3e, mephits were no longer tied to the lower planes. This change did nothing to make anybody care about them more. Curiously, Necromancers of the Northwest gave them a detailed ecology as a web enhancement for The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire. In this ecology, mephits may arise spontaneously on the ethereal plane, born to two mephit parents, or created by magic as servants. Mephits that are born or generated lack an elemental affinity, though they might be able to gain one later.

Derek Holland suggested a few new varieties of mephit, such as gilded mephits, number mephits, and shadow mephits. He further suggested a new disturbing origin for mephits: children cursed by magic and enslaved by villains. This creates a moral dilemma for our heroes.

Relevant links

• http://legacy.aonprd.com/bestiary/mephit.html
• https://d-infinity.net/blog/derek-holland/new-mephits
• https://d-infinity.net/blog/derek-holland/new-use-mephits
• http://www.necromancers-online.com/articles/ExoticEncounters/2016/20161205.html
• http://www.necromancers-online.com/articles/BestinClass/2016/20161206.html
• http://www.necromancers-online.com/articles/BestinClass/2017/20171219.html
• http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/mephit.htm
• http://themonstersknow.com/mephit-tactics/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/3vblot/mephits/
• https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mephit
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephit

Puppeteer parasites

Puppeteers are a monster based on the common scifi trope of the puppeteer parasite. Puppeteers were initially a blatant rip-off of the aliens from The Puppet Masters. When they first appeared in the 3.0 Psionics Handbook, they were depicted as ray-like creatures capable of gliding short distances like the aliens in the story. In the d20 Modern rules, they were depicted as louse-like and fed on the blood of their hosts. In the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook, they lost their gliding ability and were depicted as slug-like instead. A variant known as the "flesh harrower" was introduced, which is a blatant rip-off of the aliens from Stephen King's Dreamcatcher.

Puppeteers were originally created by the mind flayers, but since the latter aren't OGL they were replaced with the phrenic scourges when Dreamscarred Press (the same authors who wrote the 3.5 psionics revision) wrote their own adventures and adapted psionics to Pathfinder. Dreamscarred Press provided further details on the puppeteers, such as the "hive brain" variant in the adventure Uncertain Futures.

Here are some in-character factoids about puppeteers to inspire your imagination:

• Puppeteers were created by the phrenic scourges for the purposes of infiltration and subversion. They are not particularly intelligent and require the occasional oversight from their masters.
• The species is divided into several specialized castes. The most common are puppeteer, flesh harrower and hive brain.
• The hive brain is responsible for reproduction and communication. 
• The puppeteer comes in at least three body types for better camouflage: slug, louse and manta ray. The manta ray form is capable of gliding short distances.
• Puppeteers subsist by siphoning harmless amounts of blood from their host. If multiple puppeteers attach to the same host, the blood loss will become harmful.
• Some puppeteers act as brood mothers who asexually spawn immature larvae, provided they have a source of biomass on which to feed.
• Some puppeteers may produce spores which grow into a red fungus known as byrum. If the byrum is consumed by a potential host, it will germinate within the digestive tract and fatally emerge as a flesh harrower. This has earned the moniker "shit weasel".
• The most intelligent and psychically formidable puppeteers are the "mind maggots". Unlike their kin, mind maggots act on their own initiative and require no orders. Indeed, some have rebelled against the scourges in favor of working as arcane familiars. Their fatal flaw is arrogance: even as a familiar they will still nudge their host in the direction they believe is correct. (see statistics in Monster Encyclopaedia II)

Monster evolution

A fascinating concept I encountered in some Japanese GameLit was monster evolution. The idea is that D&D monsters "evolve" (or more accurately metamorphose) into other monsters with increasing CR. This works similar to evolution in collectible monster games like Pokémon or Digimon. I suppose that technically this is metamorphosis, as evolution is a distinct scientific term.

The evolution is not necessarily a linear progression, but might branch into multiple different paths. The evolution might move in reverse, with higher CR monsters reverting to the form of lower CR monsters for whatever reason. Monsters might appear more or less humanoid as they evolve.

Evolution might form part of a life cycle a la metamorphosis, or it might be an independent indication of CR. Monsters might metamorphose into lower CR monsters as part of their life cycle, such as the tenebrous worm metamorphosing into the lower CR gloomwing.

GameLit seems to have plenty of examples. In That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, goblins evolve into hobgoblins, ogres evolve into ogre mages, and orcs evolve into high orcs. In Overlord, skeleton mages evolve into elder liches evolve into overlords. In The Rising of the Shield Hero, some animals evolve into cute monster girls.

There are examples in mythology of dragons coming into existence this way: Fafnir the dwarf became a dragon due to cursed treasure, a koi fish who spent a century trying to jump the Dragon's Gate waterfall became a dragon, and the Korean imugi became a dragon after a fallen star granted their wish.

I enjoy the opportunities opened by the concept of monster evolution, as much or even more than that opened by spontaneous generation. I hope to be able to detail some more ideas in the future.

Monster types in Pathfinder 2e

So the second edition Pathfinder rules have showed up on the online SRD sites. The formatting is terrible, but I was able to look past that.

Anyway, I wanted to address the monster types. Monster types are one of those rules that D&D and its derivatives have generally executed horribly. Pathfinder in particular had an atrocious type mechanic that was used to determine combat statistics. This new edition seems to have just adopted a similar mechanic as D&D5e, which has its own problems but I'll address those soon. So let's see how PF2 has revised its mechanics...

So the list of monster types is aberration, animal, astral, beast, celestial, construct, dragon, elemental, ethereal, fey, fiend, fungus, giant, humanoid, monitor, ooze, and undead. Let's not kid ourselves: this is a shameless copy of the 5e type mechanic with slight changes. Compared to 5e, PF2 subtracted the monstrosity type (good riddance!) and added the animal, astral, ethereal, fungus, and monitor types.

Unsurprisingly, PF2 hasn't learned from its mistakes so some of the types still have stupid arbitrary baggage rules attached, like elementals not needing to breathe. So an air elemental or fire elemental can survive just fine in the vacuum of space. That doesn't make any logical sense and it isn't thematic either.

PF2 divides 5e's beast type into animal and beast type, with the only distinction being that animals are limited to low intelligence. While this isn't an improvement over 5e's beast type (which covers all intelligence ranges), it is a massive improvement over PF1 which divided the same things into animals, magical beasts and vermin. Now animals may be ahistorical or have magical abilities: the ankheg and griffon are now typed as animals. Yay!

The PF2 beast type is unnecessary and nonsensical. Centaurs are typed as beasts, whereas medusae, merfolk, and minotaurs are typed as humanoids. Speaking of humanoids, the distinction between giants and humanoids is now fuzzier than ever. All giants are at least large size, but humanoids may be of at least large size too (e.g. minotaurs). So what gives?

The astral, ethereal, and monitor types were thrown in to cover corner cases. Astral creatures are from the astral plane, ethereal creatures from the ethereal plane, and monitors from the neutral planes. There isn't a type for creatures from the shadow plane or any other obscure planes, so it's up in the air what those will be typed.

So there are distinct types for good and evil (celestial and fiend), but chaotic, lawful and neutral are thrown into the monitor type. Because D&D and its clones use a stupid alignment system in which law and chaos play second fiddle to good and evil. I think that's stupid and vastly prefer 4e's origins tagging mechanic; if you need a type specifically for whatever aligned beings are supposed to be, then just add an immortal type or something.

The fungus type... dear God. Do we really need a fungus type of all things? Can it really not be covered by a tag applied to some plants and oozes?

In short, the new monster types mechanic is a marked improvement over PF1 but overall much worse than 5e. How difficult is it to devise a non-hierarchical tagging mechanic with separate tags for planar origin or whatever? 4e was vastly superior but these idiot writers keep ignoring its improvements because of stupid grognards complaining about it being too similar to MMOs.

Dear God. This isn't effing rocket science!

Vermin hosts

Vermin hosts are OGL monsters introduced by Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie.

Vermin hosts are similar to lycanthropes and entomanthropes, except for several key differences. They exhibit a number of similarities to the worm that walks. Their animal form is a swarm of vermin, and even in human form they still have several of these vermin crawling inside their bodies.

Like lycanthropes, vermin hosts may afflict others with their curse. However, the curse is not spread by their natural attacks. Instead, they send one member of their swarm to enter the body of prospective host and whisper offers of power until the victim accepts, at which point they are consumed by a swarm of vermin and transformed into a new vermin host.

A vermin host’s alternate forms might include a swarm of vermin, a swarm of vermin fused together into a roughly humanoid shape, a hybrid of human and vermin, and a giant example of that vermin.

The published vermin hosts included cockroach, rodent, leech, and spider.

The leech host reappeared in Slumbering Tsar #3. The vermin hosts were scheduled to be reprinted, updated for Pathfinder, in Monsters of Porphyra 3. To my knowledge, the vermin hosts have not been reprinted since their first appearance.

Other relevant links:

• http://www.d20resources.com/arcana.d20.srd/creatures/leechwalker.php
• http://www.d20resources.com/arcana.d20.srd/creatures/roach.thrall.php
• https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/swarmblooded-creature-cr-1/
• https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/worm-that-walks-cr-2/