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The Vampiric Yokai is yet another nightmare made flesh by the weakening of the balance. These parasitic monsters only purpose is to move from one victim to the next, draining the host of blood whilst riding the body in search of its next prey. From a distance it is hard to work out the unnatural, jerky movements of the poor soul’s body the Penanggalan uses to get close.
& we're back, going to try and close out the alphabetical listings this time...
Lots of S'es...
Enter the Sandman! Not only made of sand but also anyone within 20' must save or put to sleep. It's like the Marvel Sandman met the DC Sandman and had a baby.
Animated Scarecrows. Nothing like DC's Scarecrow meeting Marvel's Scarecrow and having a baby.
Remember this guy from the D&D cartoon, very useful character able to spy on the characters to move the plot along and gave Venger someone to give expository dialogue to. Great look too.
Oh my word.. "there are sufficient similarities betwen this creature and the Lurker Above (q.v.) to lead credence to the speculation that the one is some kind of undead form of the other".
Oh wait, characters killed by a Sheet Phantom become Sheet Ghouls! (q.v.)
Let's move on before I write 2000 words Sheet Phantoms/Ghouls.
Now this dude is cool, electrical attacks, disolves to dust when killed, speculated to be from the 'Electromagnetic Plane' (later reconned to the Plane of Lightning, which is where Air hit Positive Energy).
Evil Skeleton! The Ur Evil Skeleton! Basically what if fighters could become liches (q.v.)
Evil Frog! Evil frogs! The Chaotic Neutral answer to Demons is the (sigh...) Slaad, a race of evil chaos frogs.
Frogs.
Y'know GW's seperation from TSR might not be such a bad thing after all.
But it did give us these two.
Evil Skeletons! "Kyuss was an evil high priest creating the first of these creatures under instruction from an evil deity" besides the normal stuff they shed worms which burrow into your brain and turn you into a SoK.
Not bad.
And finally this thing, whatever it is. Shambling exoskeleton thing that lives 1000 years...
And that's the S'es. Skipping over (ANOTHER) imp, Skulks (once member of the human race with tendencies to extreme cowardice), another race of rat men, a 'relative of the gelatinous cube (q.v.), Svirfneblin (not Gnome, Deep (Svirfneblin)?) and another jelly.
Looks like Kyoto Secunda and her clone sister Kyoto Secunda Prime need some attention so that's it for now.
Tabaxi (Cat-Man), not Man, Cat (Tabaxi)? Jungle-dwelling cat men, sometimes just stick with the classics right?
Always room for another tentacle monster, but it's no flying brain squid.
"This leech is about 1" long and resembles an inconspicuous twig."
Wow that has to be the most embarrassing death in the history of dungeon delving. But better than those tiny little barbed fish that swim up your urine stream and lodge inside. Ick.
Another fine product from Sir Ian Livingstone, CBE!
"This triple hermaphrodite is 7' tall, naked and hairless."
OK, never mind what I said about the Throat Leech, this is the most embarrassing way to die in a dungeon. Look I know this book was written in the 70s but that's just no excuse...
I'm especially impressed at how there's no effort at all to explain this... thing. Not even 'created by a mad wizard' no it's just here's a 3 headed naked hermaphrodite who's gonna stuff you into the mouth in its belly.
After... whatever the hell that was, here's a nice Jeff Dee troll to clear the pallet. It's a troll! It had two heads! It's the result of mating an Ettin (q.v.) and a troll (q.q.v.). An image to carry to bed tonight.
Another funky idea, an etherial creature that adopts you as a host. The host gets to roll two dice for everything and pick the better, while everyone within 50' friend or foe has to roll twice and take the worse. Seems another way to mess with a party, perhaps buffing the worst character and hobbling the rest.
Skipped a lot, (ANOTHER) imp, a fire worm, a bird made of copper, a 5' fly-man, 3 other troll variants including "the product of preverted magical interbreeding of trolls and Invisible Stalkers". Onward!
D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D
Aquatic Umber Hulks, because at this point why not?
"It is believed that a salt-water species exists which is twice as large and much more ferocious" are they leaving room for another entry like some Marvel film sequel?
"The Xill have apparently only one aim in life - to produce young the creatures are asexual and reproduce by producing eggs which must gain sustenance prior to hatching in the stomach of a living human..."
OK so basically someone saw Alien before running a game.
And finally...
Unlike normal zombies that you meet every day, the Yellow Musk zombies have been infected by a plant and turned into mindless drones. Since their zombie-hood is not magical they can't be turned. Should I count them among the evil skeletons? Sure why not.
And yes, the entry for the Ys was the Yellow Musk Creeper.
Skipped the electric big foot, 5 varieties of sea urchin, a shadow that ages you, flying snake thing, living whirlwind, evil plant, 'skunk beast', another evil plant and some more rat men.
Join us tomorrow when I wrap this up and try to make sense of it all.
The last 20 page or so are taken up by stuff like this...
Tables, tables, tables.
Monsters by 'dungeon level' (which is different from both character level and spell level...)
Monsters by terrain type.
But at least the artists had real fun with these pages...
hey evil skeletons!
And I've mentioned before...
Back then we didn't have internet pr0n... we had Monster Manuals.
And finally, kudos to TSR for giving everyone credit!
They probably didn't have to, and it was probably some extra work but hey good on them.
Wonder what ever happened to that Ian Livingstone character anyway.
And you know...
I really miss forwards and epilogues. It's great to hear from the author explain why they wrote a book, the process, and what happened. Seems like we don't see this anymore.
D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D&D
So... What have we learned. I think my original thought is well-proven. Set 100 amateurs on a creative project and you'll get a lot of parallel development. Evil skeletons, imps, snakes, bats... Then you get the crazy outliers, triple hermophodites and flail snails.
So a lot of look-alike, feel-alike dross but with some real treasures.
As I was reading this though it was fun to put the pieces together for a campaign.
Villages disappearing, the populations replaced by insane Gibberlings (who of course are what the population became, as the PCs will learn to their horror). Are the Grimlock tribes to blame? Maybe the Jermlaine who infest everything in harvest time? What about the victims, can they be helped? Remove Curse and Cure Disease do nothing for the victims, and they don't radiate magic. Who could be behind this? Could it be these freaky brain squid things and their psychic powers?
So yeah, there's all kind of potential here that can be dropped into a sci fi, horror or fantasy game.
The real winner here is Russ Nicholson, who was also a long time GW artist and as of May this year still active.
He did about 1/3 of the monsters here and really raised things to a new level. A very different, exaggerated and gritty, style than the cleaner lines in the usual TSR books. He really raised even mundane concepts like Mountain Giants to another level.
So that's it for now, another interesting old RPG book done. 36 years later it's neat to look back.
Join us next time when I'm thinking of something red. Or maybe yellow.
Love the Russ Nicholson art. Think he did some of the Fantasy Warlord book, and if I'm not mistaken some of the Fighting Fantasy choose your own adventure books as well?
Thanks for posting this. I started AD&D when I was 10, andhad all the books through Oriental Adventures. I gave them all to Goodwill when I came here. I regret doing so even now. The lesson is: never get rid of anything.
I have nothing. All my stuff was first edition (I think), but I gave it all away long before the Old School revival, so it never occurred to me that I might want it again.
The skeleton warrior was one of my favorite entries in the FF (along with the Aleax, Githyanki, Catayrid Column and Penanggalan), and they even did an entire episode on one for the D&D cartoon with the Skeleton warrior, even going so far as to include the Circlet of Power mentioned in the FF, and how it holds sway over the spirit of the Skeleton Warrior.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/08/22 02:02:35
JoshInJapan wrote: Thanks for posting this. I started AD&D when I was 10, andhad all the books through Oriental Adventures. I gave them all to Goodwill when I came here. I regret doing so even now. The lesson is: never get rid of anything.
IIRC Wizards did a PDF release of the first edition a while back, it might still be available.
Like you I went through a purge and move (followed by multiple other purges and moves) but these I rebought and kept. And I'm glad I did.
I looked at some of the other books that had survived this long and was a bit disappointed. Rogues Gallery, which I remembered as a book filled with funky NPCs and character ideas turned out to be a book of tables and tables and tables and like 5 pages of characters. And the 2 I remembered (the assassin all in black and the fighter reincarnated as a lizard man) were the only two worth remembering
And it looks like my copy of Queen of the Demonweb Pits did not survive... It's only like $10~$20 on ebay so... maybe.
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (where the players explore a crashed starship) however did make it this far!
