“The Country of the Iguanodon” by John Martin, in the public domain. Accessed at Wikimedia here
[Commissioned by @glarnboudin. This is about as retro as retrosaurs get. These ghastly creatures made me think “zombies”, which took me in the direction I went with them. I can imagine this painting as an exhibition match between necromancers off in the distance, taking bets and sipping wine.]
Primord CR 9 NE Undead This immense pallid horror resembles a swollen lizard or crocodile, with piggy black eyes over a massive maw lined with teeth.
A primord is something of a showpiece among necromancers—it is a creature designed more to be a display of talent and resources than a useful entity. Primords can find employ as guardians and terror weapons by skilled necromancers, but are frequently expended to fight each other in contests of wizardly might. Primords are mindless killers, and they live to fight. Without orders, a primord will instinctively kill and devour creatures, adding their mass to its own. They battle with claws and teeth, but their most effective weapons might be the combination of their grotesque appearance and merely plowing over enemies with their mass. Primords are as comfortable in the water as they are on land, and free willed primords can often be found at sea, attacking whales and sea monsters.
Creating a Primord A primord is created using a mounted skeleton as a base—this can be the intact skeleton of a Gargantuan creature, or a composite made from the skeletons of multiple recent or fossil creatures. This skeleton is then buried in a mass grave with 20 HD of zombies, and the spells animate dead, false life andbestow curse are cast over the morass. A primord counts as having twice as many Hit Dice as it actually has for the purposes of the material component needed, and for animation and control.
John Martin (1789-1854), English painter and engraver.
This romantic artist will be particularly inspired by the apocalyptic evocations of the Bible, which he will sublimate by representing the gigantism of fury of the elements.
(Oil paintings details. The pictures show, in order : The Great Day of His Wrath, circa 1851 ; The Pandemonium, circa 1841 ; Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still, circa 1840 ; The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, 1852 ; Manfred and the Alpine Witch, 1837 ; The Bard, circa 1817 ; The Last Judgement, 1853 ; Macbeth, 1820 ; The restored version of The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, circa 1821 ; and finally, The Seventh Plague, 1823)
