Tag: Mark Tygart

Magic Door (Solitary, Stealthy, Intelligent, Construct)

Magic bolts (d10 damage) 12 HP 3 armor

Close, Ignores Armor

Special Qualities: Arcane Construct

Created to guard magic doors will only answer to the proper key or code word; often the answer to a riddle. Otherwise they delight in foiling intruders by sending them on false quests, directing them to traps or simply wasting time.

Instinct: Block entry

Guards access

Lie

Direct to doom

Dybbuk (Solitary, Magical, Terrifying)

Personality drain (d10 damage) 12 HP 0 armor

Close, Ignores Armor

Special Qualities: Undead, Incorporeal, Only harmed by magic or magical weapons

A dybbuk is a misplaced soul who has eluded judgment. Like a ghost, it lingers on in the mortal world, either trying to fulfill a need to right some great failure that has marked its soul for eternity or merely to spread torment. Most dybbuks desperately seek a new body to inhabit. A Dybbuk will “kill” a victim and then inhabit that body until driven out by death, spell or ritual.A Heal spell will be required to restore that person’s personality. Often confined in a “Dybbuk Box” or other cursed item.

Instinct: Possess innocents

Terrify

Rectify failure

Inhabit human shells

Winter Medusa (Solitary, Devious)

Talons (d6 damage) 12 HP 0 armor

Close

Special Qualities: Gaze turns victims into ice statues,Immune to cold

An icy cousin of the normal medusa; the winter medusa is seldom found outside regions of extreme cold.They love conversing and taunting their victims before adding them to their collection of ice statues.

Instinct: Show disdain

Collect ice statues

Gaze victim into ice

Taunt

Harryhausen Medusa (Solitary, Construct)

Arrows (d6) or Constriction (d12 damage) 12 HP 2 armor

Close (Gaze or Constriction), Far (Arrows)

Special Qualities: Gaze turns humanoide to stone, Guardian of the Ancient World, Loves to talk, Darksight

A mixture of naga and medusa; more snake than woman the Harryhausen Medusa is usually a cursed guardian of ancient temples, treasures or portals to the Underworld. Amazingly strong, quick and deadly its weakness is often a fondness for toying with its prey. A keen archer even in total darkness.

Instinct: Gaze to stone

Collects statues, guards

Loves Harryhausen films

Likes to monologue

Yellow Musk Creeper (Solitary, Large, Devious)

Tendril (d6 damage) 16 HP 0 armor

Special Qualities: Sprays Yellow Musk Zombie Pollen

The yellow musk creeper is a hideous plant that grows in haunted graveyards, grisly battlefields, and other places where death hangs heavy in the air and thick in the soil. The yellow musk creeper’s method of procreation is singularly frightful—it slays the living, infests them with its seeds and pollen, then animates them as zombies. These zombies serve the plant as a guardian, but when new zombies are created, older ones wander off, collapsing and breaking apart to give seed to a new yellow musk creeper.

Custom Move: When you inhale yellow musk pollen, ROLL+WIS.

On a 10+, you keep control.

On a 7-9, choose 1:

You’re not dizzy for hours.(-1 on all rolls until you next make camp)

You don’t have to Defy danger vs. WIS to attack the musk.

You don’t take your friends for musk zombies.

On a 6-, you’re under the yellow musk charm. Fall asleep in the deadly embrace of the Yellow Musk Creeper, zombie soon to be…

Instinct: Spray Pollen

Yellow Musk Zombie (Group)

Bite (d6 damage) 6 HP 0 armor

Close

A yellow musk zombie is a rotting creature from which wet green vines have sprouted. Treat a yellow musk zombie as a standard zombie, but it is not undead. It is a plant creation of the Yellow Musk Creeper. Instinct: Destroy Intruders!

Obey the Yellow Musk Creeper

Slow

Mindless

A few monsters more…

I should note that this was inspired by the Tavern posted monster “Enchanted Chest”…

Magical Chest (Solitary, Small, Stealthy, Hoarder, Construct)

Toothy Lid (w[2d8] damage) 8 HP 1 armor

Close

Special Qualities: Arcane Construct, Full of Tricks, Liar

A minor arcane created mimic; the enchanted chest is enhanced with intelligence and arcane tricks; it will do anything to prevent loss of the treasure within but will choose lies over violence.

Instinct: To keep precious contents safe

Scuttle off when touched

Lead party to trap

Wail to attract other dungeon denizens

Pour forth flaming oil (2d6 dmg)

Spew blinding smog

Send party on useless quest

Liar

Alchemical Ooze (Solitary, Stealthy, Amorphous)

Acidic Grab (d8 damage) 12 HP

Close

Special Qualities: Steals voices, Shapeshifts,Amorphous

Formed from accumulations of runoff from arcane laboratories and regions of magical calamity, alchemical oozes are a sort of weak cousin to the true doppelganger. Briefly able to assume a human shape and mimic the voice of previous victims the ooze will seek to lure a meal to a dark, secluded spot and dine on the poor fool. Children or lost maidens are a favorite lure. Alchemical Oozes gain the voices of previous victims but are cunning as opposed to intelligent.

Instinct: Dissolve flesh!

Arcane accident

Can mimic human shape and voice

Always hungry

Mechanical Hydra (Solitary, Large, Construct)

Rends with metal teeth (d10+2 damage) 20 HP 2 armor

Special Qualities: Breathes steam, Arcane Construct

This steampunk horror was designed to mimic the fearsome magical hydra;its mechanic nature prevents regrowing heads but allows its three heads to breathe scalding steam (1d8) on victims. Rumored to have been invented by the infamous Engineer Ferremesz.

Instinct: Obey master

Breathes steam

Each head gets attack

Slow and noisy

Living Statue (Solitary, Construct)

Fists (d10 damage) 14 HP, 1 armor

Close

Special Qualities: Arcane construct

Living Statues are constructs like Golems, but usually more fragile and achievable at lower cost – represented by the generally weaker combat statistics and fewer magical immunities. The arcane short cut to creating a Living Statue is imbuing the creation with a greater degree of will. Independent thought makes Living Statues less reliable as guards and servants -they’re capable of interpreting commands loosely or abandoning their posts in the interests of self preservation. Living Statues are unaffected by Sleep, but they are affected by mind control – Charm and Hold spells can work against them – more evidence that a guiding consciousness is present within the construct, differentiating them from their more powerful Golem cousins. Living statues can be constructed from various materials but crystal and stone statues are the most common.

Instinct: Obey Creator

Dagoth (Lizard demon) Solitary, Large, Planar

Talons (d12+4 damage) 16 HP, 1 armor

Forceful

Special Qualities: Reverts to statue if horn removed, Only damaged by magic or magical weapons, immune from harm as a statute or horn

Dagoth, also referred to as the Dreaming God, was a demon worshipped by the people of Shadizar, particularly Queen Taramis. He participated in a large battle with other evil beings, during which his source of power, a jeweled horn, was broken off. Dagoth fell to Earth in a weakened state and his body turned into stone, becoming a statue. As written in the ancient Scrolls of Skelos, if the horn were found placed in the forehead of the statue, it would bring about the evil god’s resurrection, and as long as a virgin girl was sacrificed at the hour of the god’s rebirth (in this case, Taramis’ niece Jehnna), everything would be fine. Legend holds that Dagoth will grant any wish his restorer desires, but great care should be used in the exact words used for the wish. Unfortunately, the ritual was interrupted by Conan and his companions and Taramis’ vizier speared by Zula before he could sacrifice Jehnna, and the end result of this is that Dagoth became angered and transformed into a monstrous, lizard-like beast. The wizard Akiro deduced that Dagoth’s horn was his life, and in tearing the horn from the ex-god’s forehead, returned Dagoth to his statute form. Later both horn and statue vanished from Shalizar in different eras. Scholars speculate that Dagoth may be related to the ancient evil Zargon in some fashion.

Instinct: Destroy

Rage monster

Demon of the Ancient World

Pefers Conan the Barbarian movie

New Dungeon World Monsters inspired by J.E. Holmes’ fan novel “Maze of Peril”…

Dagonite Priest (Solitary, Magical, Intelligent)

Warps reality (d8 damage) 12 HP, 0 armor

Close

A human priest of the Cult of Dagon, now touched by the madness of the Old Ones.

Instinct: Corrupt

Transform Human Cultists into Dagonites

Serve the Cult of Dagon (Cthulhu)

Command Dagonites

Spread Madness

Dagonite (Group, Small, Construct)

Trident (d6 damage) 3 HP, 0 armor

Close

Special Qualities: Human transformed by Dagonite Priest, Slave Capturing Nets, Cannabalistic, Aquatic

A worshipper of Dagon (Cthulhu) transformed by a Dagonite Priest in a foul ritual into a sterile servitor slave race of frog-fish men. Dagonites will go insane if their controlling creator Dagonite Priest is killed. Some (50%) will then attack everything in sight in a berserker rage (+1 to all attacks) including each other while others (50%) mindlessly flee. If any survive long enough they will return to human form now loathing the Cult and its entire works. Recovered humans can never be transformed again but retain their gills and ability to breathe water. A distant, lesser cousin to true Deep Ones or the Underdark’s Kuo-Toas; Dagonites are used as cannon fodder in the Cult of Dagon’s war against the Amazons and the Cult’s pirate raids and slavery operations.

Instinct: Devour Infidels

Worship Dagon

Obey your Priest Master

Capture Slaves

Hope the world will end