Bestiary

Bestiary

Saint George and the Dragon, Paolo Uccello, c. 1430s (public domain)

The company's field bestiary — the Harpers' running dossiers on every creature you have faced, told in qualities and tactics, never in numbers. Each entry records what we have learned: what wounds it, what it shrugs off, what it can do, and where you met it. As you learn more, the pages grow.

The entries below are the kinds. A particular named monster — a specific dragon, say — keeps its own page under NPCs.

Dragons

Overview: Dragon. Each colour breathes, and is immune to, a single element.

• Adult White Dragon — cold; feral, lairs in the frozen north
• Black Dragon — acid; cruel and cunning, fights from the swamp
• Green Dragon — poison; the great deceiver of the forests
• Blue Dragon — lightning; orderly desert despot
• Blue Dragon Wyrmling — lightning in miniature; flies, and understands speech
• Red Dragon — fire; the proudest and most terrible
• Dragon Turtle — steam and brine; a true dragon of the deep, fought as a wyrm
• Metallic (not always foes): the bronze Verithrax
• Draconic minions: Guard Drake, Kobold

Serpent-folk

Overview: Yuan-ti — a people remaking itself in the image of its snake god; hoods, rivers, and spoken magic.

• Yuan-ti — the kinds, from hooded pureblood infiltrators to the great serpents of the Serpent Hills
• Yuan-ti Anathema — the many-headed pinnacle; silence it first, then bring cold, force, and steel

Giants

Overview: Giant — there is no "standard" giant; each kind is its own foe.

• Frost Giant — immune to cold; axe and hurled ice
• Stone Giant — boulder-throwers of the deep hills

Trolls

Parent: Troll — fire or acid, or it will not stay down.

• Ice Troll — a frost-inured troll of the north
• Scrag — an aquatic troll; mends only in the water

Goblinoids

• Goblin — cowardly, numerous, quick
• Hobgoblin — disciplined soldier; deadly in formation
• Bugbear — a brute that kills from ambush

Undead

• Skeleton — brittle to crushing blows
• Zombie — slow, but stubborn to put down
• Ghoul — a touch that paralyses; hunts in packs
• Flameskull — a burning skull sentinel that rekindles
• Named: Mormesk the wraith, the banshee Agatha

Fiends

Devils of the Nine Hells — central to the company's infernal entanglements. Radiant light and a paladin's smite tell on them all; a devil slain by common means only re-forms below unless its soul is taken (the Raven Queen's blessed crossbow).

• Horned Devil — fire and a flaying tail; the winged enforcers of the Pit
• Bearded Devil — glaive and barbed beard; a foot-soldier of the Hells
• Named: the erinyes Zarchelia, who wears the shape of Lady Calera

Aberrations

• Aboleth — an ancient mind that enslaves at a distance
• Cloaker — a living cloak that engulfs and conjures phantoms
• Mind Gobbler — a mind flayer's making; survived the company once

Elementals

• Ice Elemental — a killing aura of cold; burrows through ice

Other monsters & beasts

• Sea Hag — kills through fear and enslaved thralls
• Merrow — an aquatic ogre that harpoons and drags
• Owlbear — bear's claws, owl's beak, killing temper
• Peryton — antlered wings and a man-shaped shadow; kills on the dive, eats only humanoids — ground it
• Umber Hulk — a tunneller whose gaze scrambles the mind
• Hook Horror — armored Underdark brute; hooks for hands, hunts by echolocation
• Rust Monster — devours metal; ruins armour and blades
• Mimic — a shapeshifter that apes treasure, then sticks fast
• Stirge — a blood-drinker, lethal in a cloud
• Giant Toad — swallows prey whole
• Hydra — many-headed; sear the stumps or it grows back worse
• Giant Spider — webs from the dark; burn them to break free
• Giant Crab — brittle alone, deadly in a swarm; and good eating
• Gelatinous Cube — a near-invisible ooze that engulfs the unwary; keeps the deep tunnels clean

Underdark folk met as foes

• Drow — dark elves; poison, darkness, and ambush
• Duergar — gray dwarves who grow giant-sized and turn invisible

Peoples & societies

Sapient folk the company has dealt with rather than simple monsters; their pages carry both lore and combat notes.

• Lizardfolk • Illithids (mind flayers) • Myconid

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See also: All creature pages • Monster Harvesting — what a carcass is worth • Session Logs • the Adult White Dragon dossier (the model for these entries).