[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, with a very interesting pedigree. This creature is a speculative evolution concept by Robert Bakker, an iconoclastic paleontologist. He developed it for an episode of the Discovery Channel documentary Paleoworldas a “missing” carnivore, a bone-crushing macropredator in the style of an entelodont. Of course, entelodonts weren’t specialist macropredators, but the facts never got in the way of a good Bakker story.]
Ursapotamus CR 11 N Magical Beast This massive quadruped stands taller than an elephant. Its jaws are long and hippo-like, except that they are filled with an array of shearing teeth. Its body is that of a long-legged bear, with flat feet ending in sharp claws.
The ursapotamus is a huge hyper-carnivore that feeds on megafauna. It is an artificial hybrid, possibly created in an attempt to emulate the ammut as a sacred animal. Even though neither bears nor hippos are solely carnivorous, ursapotamus are. They tend towards being strongly seasonal, gorging themselves during the wet season and retreating into aestivation during the driest months.
An ursapotamus is an ambush hunter, striking from cover of water, grass or both. They prefer reed beds and marshy grasslands to open rivers and lakes. Like a bear, they are capable of rearing onto their hind legs when attacking. An ursapotamus uses its massive bulk to shove grabbed opponents while simultaneously inflicting deep, bleeding punctures with its tusk-like teeth. They usually hunt large game, such as elephants, rhinos or hippos, but human sized prey will be taken.
Ursapotamuses are solitary for most of their lives, ranging over wide territories in search of prey. They mate when the opportunity occurs, but like bears can delay pregnancies until their dormancy period. A mother ursapotamus is usually awoken by her cubs being born, and feeds them with fatty, energy rich milk until they are old enough to walk on their own, whereupon they accompany her in her hunts and learn the tools of the trade.
An ursapotamus stands between ten and twelve feet high at the shoulder. They can live to fifty years of age, but such ancient individuals are rare.
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.
[Commissioned by @glarnboudin, based on the Pterodactyl Ghost from the New Scooby-Doo Show episode “Hang In There, Scooby-Doo!”. I figured I’d tie them to the phantosauras a similar pseudo-dinosaur creature. In the episode, there’s no evidence that these are even supposed to be ghosts, as opposed to relict pterosaur-men, but hey, a formula’s a formula.
Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Pterodactyl Ghost was based on Sauron from the X-Men. Very similar physical appearances.]
Ectodactyl CR 13 NE Outsider This green-scaled creature looks like a flying reptile bent slightly into humanoid shape. Prehensile hands grow from its wings, its feet are webbed, and its yellow eyes blaze with hate.
Lesser kin to the great phantosaur, ectodactyls are creatures created by the fearful dreams of mortals and their misconceptions of prehistoric beasts. An ectodactyl combines the form of a pterosaur with that of a humanoid, and their behavior is a savage parody of “man the hunter” and other fantasies of the blood-bespattered past. Ectodactyls are cruel creatures that hunt and kill for the sake of killing. They are found in remote mountains in the Material Planes, and are not uncommon of the slopes of the dreaded Plateau of Leng. They prefer to live in caverns, decorated with trophies of their victims. Their exploits are often carved onto cave walls as a permanent record of their evil deeds, and these may be mistaken for ancient relics until the monsters reveal themselves.
With their humanoid hands, some ectodactyls wield weapons, but most prefer to fight with their claws and beak. The beak of an ectodactyl is infused with negative energy, but such energy cannot even heal the undead (perhaps out of sheer spite). Ectodactyls enjoy hunting undead monsters as much as they do the living. Just about the only creatures an ectodactyl can stand aside from their own number are phantosaurs. Where their ranges overlap, ectodactyls view a phantosaur as a massive hunting hound, steering its activities in order to cause as much damage as possible.
An ectodactyl stands about six feet tall, with a wingspan of 10 feet.
While the idea that hadrosaursandsauropods were wallowing swamp-dwellers had been completely abandoned at the start of the Dinosaur Renaissance, the new view of dinosaurs as active sophisticated animals led to a surprising aquatic hypothesis during the early days of this paleontological revolution.
A specimen of the small theropod Compsognathus discovered in southeastern France in the early 1970s was only the second skeleton ever found of this dinosaur, and came over a century after the first. It was initially thought to represent a new species since it was about 50% larger than the German specimen of Compsognathus longipes, and it seemed to have something very unusual going on with its hands – its forelimbs were somewhat poorly-preserved and distorted, and had traces of some sort of large fleshy structure around the hands that was interpreted as representing elongated three-fingered flippers used for swimming.
This wasn’t necessarily as ridiculous of an idea as it might sound. Compsognathus lived during the Late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, at a time when Europe was a group of islands in a shallow tropical sea. A semiaquatic dinosaur specialized to swim and dive, hunting the abundant aquatic prey in its environment, and easily able to island-hop all around the European archipelago seemed at least somewhat plausible, and reconstructions of fin-handed C. corallestris even appeared in several popular dinosaur books of the time.
But it didn’t last.
Within just a few years doubt was being cast on this idea, and further studies of both known Compsognathus skeletons in the late 1970s and early 1980s concluded that C. corallestris was actually a fully-grown adult individual of the juvenile C. longipes. The French Compsognathus had normal-looking hands for its kind after all, with two large clawed fingers and a vestigial third finger, and the “flipper” impressions had just been ripples in the fossil slab.
For a long time after that the general view became that there just weren’t any aquatic non-avian dinosaurs at all – but more recent discoveries like the new Spinosaurus material and Halszkaraptor are starting to suggest that some of these animals were much more at home in the water than previously thought.
Something resembling Compsognathus corallestris might still surprise us in the future.
Spinosaurid teeth were first found in the 1820s in England, but were misidentified as belonging to crocodilians. It wasn’t until nearly a century later that Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was discovered and recognized as a dinosaur – and it would be another century after that before we really started to learn anything about it.
1910s
The first fossils of Spinosauruswerediscovered in Egypt in the 1910s. With only a few fragments of its skeleton known it was an enigma right from the start, hinting at a large and very strange theropod dinosaur with crocodile-like teeth, an oddly-shaped lower jaw, and elongated neural spines on its vertebrae that seemed to be part of a huge sail.
A few possible extra fragments were found in the 1930s, but overall these few pieces were all that was known of Spinosaurus for a long time.
The fossils were kept in the Paleontological MuseuminMunich, Germany,a building that was severely damaged during a bombing raid in World War II. Many important specimens were destroyed, including Spinosaurus, and only the published drawings and descriptions of the bones remained.
So for the next several decades Spinosaurus remained a very poorly-understood mystery. During this period it was generally depicted as a generic “carnosaur”, often modeled on something like Megalosaurus, in the standard-for-the-time tripod pose and with a Dimetrodon-like sail on its back.
Interestinglya 1930s skeletal reconstructionshowsSpinosaurus with an unusually long torso and fairly short legs, details that are surprisingly modern despite the retro posture.
1990s
In the 1980s some partial snout bones from Niger were recognized as having similarities with the jaw of Spinosaurus. Around the same time the fairly complete skeleton of Baryonyx was discovered, and along with further spinosaurid discoveries in the mid-to-late 1990s a decent idea of what Spinosaurus might have looked like began to emerge.
It was reconstructed with a long kinked crocodilian-like snout, a ridged bony crest in front of its eyes, an S-curved neck, and large thumb claws on its hands – an interpretation that was heavily popularized by Jurassic Park III in the early 2000s, bringing this enigmatic dinosaur to public attention and portraying it as a fearsome super-predator bigger than Tyrannosaurus.
2020s
Despite attempts to locate more complete Spinosaurus remains, only fragments continued to be found, and it remained a frustratingly poorly-known species even into the early 2010s.
Finally, in 2014, almost a full century after it was first described and named, Spinosaurus started to reveal its secrets with the announcement of the discovery of the most complete skeleton so far, discovered in the Kem Kem fossil bedsinMorocco. Its body was still only partially represented, but it included skull fragments, part of a hand, a complete leg and pelvis, some sail spines, and several vertebrae from the neck, back, and tail.
And nobody was expecting what these pieces revealed.
It had a very long torso and proportionally short stumpy legs, and was reconstructed with a huge distinctive “M-shaped” sail on its back. Its feet had flat-bottomed claws and its “dewclaw” toe was enlarged into an extra weight-bearing digit – adaptations for spreading its weight over soft muddy ground, and suggesting its feet may also have been webbed. Initially it was also presented as possibly being quadrupedal, due to how far forward its center of mass seemed to be, reviving an odd idea from the late 20thcentury.
Along with its long crocodile-like head and conical teeth, this was interpreted as evidence it was a semiaquatic fish-eating swimming animal – potentially making it the first known semiaquatic non-avian dinosaur. Spinosaurids had been suggested to be specialized piscivores before, especially since Baryonyx had been found with fish scales in its stomach, but they were generally assumed to be more like modern grizzly bears, wading into water to hunt but not being habitual swimmers. Spinosaurus’ weird croco-duck proportions, however, seemed like they might be much more suited to watery habitats than to the land.
SinceSpinosaurus had become a popular dinosaur with the general public by that point, the discovery was big news – and a big controversy for a while. It was so bizarre that some paleontologists were skeptical of the radical new interpretation, wondering if the measurements of the skeleton were correct or if the short legs were even from the same individual or the same species as the rest of the bones.
After a while the new proportions were accepted as fairly accurate, and over the next few years attention turned to instead figuring out just how this animal worked and how aquatic it actually was. An earlier isotope analysis of its teeth supported a semiaquatic lifestyle similar to crocodiles and turtles, but a buoyancy study argued that it might not have been able to dive below the water suface and its sail made floating unstable – but also found that its center of mass was closer to its hips than previously calculated, suggesting it could walk bipedally after all.
Then in 2020 came another surprise: more of the tail of the new specimen had been found, and it was just as weird as the rest of Spinosaurus. Its tail was a huge vertically flattened paddle-like fin supported by long thin neural spines and chevrons, resembling a giant eel or newt more than a dinosaur and also giving some more weight to the idea that it was a swimmer.
Our modern view of Spinosaurus is still evolving, and likely to be full of even more surprises in the future as we discover more about this unique dinosaur. But we at least know it lived in what is now North Africa during the Late Cretaceous, about 99-93 million years ago, and whether it was a swimmer or wading generalist predator it was one of the largest known theropods to ever live, estimated to have reached around 16m long (~52ft).
While the “M-shaped” sail reconstruction has been popularized by the recent discoveries, the exact shape of this structure is still unknown. Like with other sailbacked animals it’s also not clear what it was for, with ideas including temperature regulation, visual display, supporting a fatty hump, and a potential hydrodynamic adaptation.
A fellow monster artist of mine, @tyrantisterror, drew this lovely girl for me for just $5, a third of the usual $15 thanks to an ongoing sale - she’s part of an upcoming new project of mine that I’m largely keeping under wraps for now. But I can at least provide the gist of it here: Humankind’s subconscious is the source of a set of alternate dimensions a la Persona (with a smidge of @carnivorecreations’ defunct ID project; I got his approval to use the general concept as a basis for the worldbuilding of this one, don’t worry!). Everybody has a corresponding kaiju or monster in the mindscapes created from their deepest subconscious natures, of a variety of different types, but while people often become aware of their giant counterparts at some point in their lives, they can never really connect with them beyond dream-world interaction… or so everyone thinks. ;P
This is Guandon, the main character’s kaiju equivalent, a Prehistoric-type retrosaur - an herbivorous one, since I figured that plant-eating dinosaurs/retrosaurs need more love from a monster designer standpoint, ornithopods especially. The choice behind selecting a kind of animal everyone else sees as cannon fodder in dinosaur media as a design basis rather than, say, the bigger-name stars like T. rex or Stegosaurus is because the mindscape kaiju are based not on what their creators wish to be, but what they are truly like, and in the MC’s case this means being easily dismissed despite being capable in his own right. Guandon herself is a conglomerate of virtually every depiction if Iguanodon from the earliest to the most recent, with additional elements of actual iguanas (since the first depiction of Iguanodon was literally a giant iguana with a nose horn), obsolete aquatic hadrosaurs, and those iguana-Dimetrodon slurpasaurs from Journey to the Center of the Earth (1960). She’s rather high-strung and easily upset, but also very caring to those she gets to know personally. Also I’m getting a slight rocker girl vibe from her now and I love it, so I might play that up when I draw her official artwork - and I gotta say, TT did a wonderful job with her as it is!
I’ll start cranking out the details regarding this new project and several others after I take care of urgent IRL business, but in the meantime, feel free to stop by TT’s $5 sketch sale (assuming it’s still ongoing). And while I’m at it, allow me to shill his kaiju novel as well, ATOM Volume 1. His artwork, worldbuilding, and writing are absolutely amazing!
