[Monster 1000, everyone! I think! In updating my indices, I found that that’s harder to pin down than I had thought, what with templates, multiple monsters in one entry, and non-monster but game mechanics posts. But I’ll be treating this as Monster 1000 because even if it isn’t officially, it’s darn close.
I figured I would commemorate the milestone with a monster that embodies the Codex somewhat. I’ve been thinking about how to do it for a while (since around monster 900 or so). I was eventually inspired by some of the major themes of the blog. There’s a lot of dinosaurs and a lotoffiends around here. So here’s a patron for them both. The Supreme Monstrosity originally appeared in the Dinosaurs Attack! series of super-violent trading cards (seriously, be aware if you’re going to click through the source link) as the leader of an army of time-displaced, ferociously murderous prehistoric beasts.]
Infernal Duke, Saurafer CR 26 LE Outsider This orange scaled horror is a bipedal reptilian humanoid taller than a giant. Its skull is swollen and features a crown of horns and six eyes. Its arms end in muscular paws, leathery wings grow from its back, and its tail ends in an immense spiked club.
Saurafer Devil Dinosaur, the Supreme Monstrosity Concernsdinosaurs, competitions of strength, savagery DomainsEvil, Law, Scalykind, Strength SubdomainsDevil, Ferocity, Judgment,Saurian Worshipersevil druids, reptilian humanoids, gladiators Minionsfiendish and half-fiend dinosaurs, horned devils, stygionyx Unholy Symbol a fanged maw biting a globe Favored Weapon heavy flail (or natural weapons) Obediencewin a competition of strength. If you are alone, spend 1 hour writing an argument about why one individual or creature would win in a fight with another one. Gain a +4 profane bonus on Intimidate checks, and add 4 to the DC needed to successfully intimidate you. Boons1:rage1/day; 2: mass bull’s strength 1/day; 3: extended frightful aspect1/day
Saurafer, the Supreme Monstrosity, is an infernal duke who rules over violent competitions of strength. He is perhaps the physical embodiment of the doctrine of “might makes right”, and seeks forever to test his power against other creatures. His chosen species are dinosaurs, which he sees as emblems of ferocity and power. Saurafer delights in pitting creatures against each other, especially dinosaurs against creatures of other eras and worlds, in order to see who is the superior. He is a sore winner, but an even sorer loser. He despises birds, as they are a reminder that in many worlds, dinosaurs succeeded not by becoming larger and stronger, but smaller and more intelligent.
As to be expected of the patron of savage combat, Saurafer is an absolute terror on the battlefield. He toys with weaker foes, using his fear abilities to send them scattering and then picking them off one by one. Those that resist are blasted with spells and breath weapons. If all else fails, Saurafer flies into a savage rage, which rarely ends until either he or his enemies are slain. Although he delights in one-on-one battles, if he fights multiple foes at once, he evens the odds by summoning devils and dinosaurs to aid him, or even uses animal shapes to turn devils into dinosaurs and improve their melee abilities.
Saurafer stalks the blighted realm of Avernus, single-handedly destroying armies that attempt to make a foothold in Hell and testing the forces of other infernal dukes. He is an example of a malabranche promoted, as he was successful in dragging an entire planet into the clutches of Hell. He hopes to someday repeat this performance, and is looking for ways of summoning and controlling enough dinosaurs at once to invade a whole world. Although he is not terribly intelligent by the standards of the hosts of Hell, he does not tolerate condescension, and is a shrewd judge of character. He has eaten at least one malebranche who did not show him proper respect.
[We end @glarnboudin‘s commissioned Scooby-Doo monsters with one from a DTV movie I was unfamiliar with. Apparently, it’s the ultimate source of the “Shaggy is all powerful” meme. There are several fake dinosaurs in Legend of the Phantosaur, but I went with the most outrageous, spooktacular version for my monster.]
Phantosaur This great luminous beast appears as a reptilian bipedal nightmare. Its head is massive and outfitted with great jaws and horns, its arms and legs each end in clawed appendages, and a row of spines runs down its back culminating in long spikes on its tail. The air around it shimmers.
Phantosaurs are born from the projections and expectations of mortal minds. They are composed of imaginings and nightmares about prehistoric beasts, especially dinosaurs, given solid form. As many hold perceptions that the beings of the past were savage killers, so too are phantosaurs driven to violence at random. No two phantosaurs look alike, but each resembles a patchwork of different dinosaurs and megafauna. Although they are born in the Dimension of Dreams, some make their way into the Ethereal Plane, and from there into the Material Plane.
A phantosaur’s entire life is devoted to violence, and they are exceptionally skilled at it. They attack with a variety of natural weapons—different phantosaurs may have different combinations of attacks, based on their physical appearance. Regardless, all phantosaurs have a deadly bite, which afflicts those struck by it with a regression to an imagined, feral past. Creatures so affected grow physically larger and bolder, but are incapable of even the simplest speech and are wracked with violent urges. Phantosaurs rarely encounter creatures capable of withstanding their onslaught, and as such often don’t consider fleeing until the last minute, if at all.
As creatures drawn from the mind, phantosaurs have no natural ecology. They may be corralled by dream hags and other evil creatures associated with the Ethereal Plane, but more frequently are free agents of chaos and destruction. Cults occasionally spring up around a phantosaur, seeing it as an embodiment of savagery—to these sects, surviving a phantosaur’s bite and being inflicted with its atavistic rage is a sign of the highest honor. Phantosaurs are typically solitary, but some have been seen cohabiting in sites sacred to Bokrug the Water Lizard.
“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.
[Commissioned by @glarnboudin. The original image was posted to Twitter, possibly as part of the #buildabetterfaketheropod movement, but appears to have been deleted. The little horns got me thinking “devil dinosaur”, and then it kept going. In the Pathfinder setting, my favorite daemonic harbinger is Deceid, the lord of invasive species and ecosystem collapses. I think he had a hand in these guys’ creation.]
Stygionyx CR 15 NE Magical Beast This massive reptile looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a crocodile, with white eyes and a pair of horns over its fanged maw. A jagged ridge grows along its back, and its long arms end with scythe-like claws.
Even the Outer Planes can suffer the effects of invasive species. Dinosaurs are not uncommon in the Abyss, particularly with the fiendish template, as various demon lords maintain primeval aspects to their layers or count reptilian humanoids as their worshippers. Among the carnivorous dinosaurs, the spinosaurus is one of the largest and most resilient, and they eventually escaped into the River Styx. Rather than being locked into a fugue state and becoming just another casualty of that mighty river, they were molded into even more fearsome semiaquatic predators. Stygionyxes now patrol all of the Lower Planes, seeking to make petitioners and fiends alike into toothsome snacks.
A stygionix is sapient, but they act much as their animal ancestors did, as ambush predators of waterways. Their claws and teeth pass through the hides of fiends with ease, and they radiate an aura that makes teleportation impossible. Once combat is joined, they will often fight until slain, still thrashing and slashing to the bitter end.
Acclimation to the River Styx has granted stygionyxes immunity to all manner of mind influencing effects and spells, making them difficult monsters to control. They can be negotiated with, but their single minded dedication towards hunting and eating leaves little room for compromise. Some fiends turn them against their enemies with promises of novel delicacies (such as celestial beings or mortals), or merely lure them into positions where their depredations can play a purpose. Fiendish warriors of many species hunt them for trophies or sport, but the hunter frequently ends up the hunted.
A stygionyx grows more than fifty feet long. The oldest specimens can live for a century.
Still from “A Scary Night with a Snow Beast Fright”, accessed at Biohazard Films here
[Commissioned by @glarnboudin. There’s just something about furry theropods that made them a recurrent pop culture monster decades before a real feathered, cold dwelling big carnivorous dinosaur was discovered with Yutyrannus. The Partridge Creek Monster was a fictional report of a black, feathery ceratosaurus in the Yukon. The comic 2000 AD featured the “furry tyrannosaurs” in several issues. And then of course there’s this handsome fellow. I went back and forth on whether to make it Huge or Gargantuan, since the animation of its size is woefully inconsistent throughout the episode.]
Gelusaur This immense shaggy beast appears to be something like a carnivorous dinosaur, although its tail drags on the ground and its arms are long. Its eyes have black sclera and red irises.
Gelusaurs are magically augmented dinosaurs that are top predators in the frozen reaches of the world. Their bodies are infused with elemental cold, suggesting the influence of the elemental planes, selective breeding by arcanists, or both. They are nocturnal creatures, rarely venturing from their ice caves except during the long polar winters. Then, they gorge themselves on mundane and magical prey alike, stocking up to hibernate through the summer months. Gelusaurs are usually faithful to their lairs, only moving if no prey returns to the surrounding area when the monster is inactive.
A gelusaur is a straightforward combatant—they attempt to grab prey items in their mouth and swallow them whole. Prey that keeps its distance is blasted with their freezing, blinding breath, and gelusaurs can throw rocks to cope with flying adversaries. They hate both fire and bright light, and will flee from enemies with ample access to fire effects. They are usually solitary creatures, but good parents—a group of gelusaurs typically consists of a mother and her sub-adult children.
A gelusaur is about forty feet long and weighs eight tons.
[Commissioned by @glarnboudin, who wanted a retro-rex with cinematic abilities. The original “Dynamosaurus” is a nomen invalidum, given to a chimera of Tyrannosaurus and nodosaur bones. I went with a magical beast given my predilection for retrosaurs as magically enhanced or created dinosaurs.]
Dynamosaurus CR 12 N Magical Beast This massive bipedal reptile is dominated by a huge head bristling with oversized teeth. Its arms are small in comparison, and its tail is broad and powerful. Armored scutes cover its back and body.
Augmented through magical enhancements and selective breeding, a dynamosaurus is a tyrannosaurus exaggerated and amplified. They are ultimate predatory beasts, their inherent instincts sharpened into a killing machine. Although they originated in arcane laboratories, dynamosauruses have escaped captivity and entered the wild, where they threaten to destabilize ecosystems with their lust for violence and hunger for meat.
The ground shakes as a dynamosaurus moves, and their very presence incites lesser creatures to panic. Those that are not already affected by its frightful presence are intimidated with its awful roar, and a dynamosaurus will frequently target fleeing creatures for the sheer joy of the chase. Their teeth can shear through solid bone, and the bony plates that protect their vital organs keep them from being felled by a lucky shot from prey. One of the few things that can kill a dynamosaurus is another dynamosaurus. Although they sometimes travel in groups, these are fractious alliances that can turn competitive in a blink.
A dynamosaurus is as long as a mundane tyrannosaur, averaging over forty feet long, but their musclebound frames and bony armor increase their weight.
