Elven hounds are the canine companions of the Good People. Used as guardians, assistants in the Hunts, mounts and friends, these green dogs are loyal servant to their masters. Even when transformed to look like a mortal dog, the elven hound always sports a greenish hue. Like other fairy creatures, the elven hound has a strong resistance to enchantments.

I spent a good while trying to decide how to draw this little fella, especially since I didn't want it to look too much like some of the other hounds I'd done. For a long while I kept messing about with something that looked like a borzoi, because if there's a dog that's going to belong to a fairy, it's gonna be the one that looks like a cloud / hornless unicorn.

But then I read something about how's there's a story saying that the darker fur on a corgi's back is supposed to be from the saddles pixies use to ride them, so here you go. So fierce, so dangerous.

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Sometimes, in the darker regions of the forest, you may catch sight of these creatures as they ponderously shamble among the trees. Famously shy, myconids stay far from the bustle of human civilisation, serving as stoic watchers over their hallowed groves. Whilst their bodies may seem weak and pallid, they are quite hardy; a clan of myconids will not hesitate to gang together to protect their young and their weak from outside attack, aided by the poisonous spores they continuously shed.

I'm gonna cop to some influence here from the mushroom in Hollow Knight, but this also makes me think of the mushroom-people from the Dark Souls series, the way they travel in packs of children and adults. Also the design trope of a monster lumbering about with a bunch of weapons lodged in its hide is a real favourite of mine, the way it sort of tells a story, like - many have tried to kill this thing, but all have failed.

Firenewts are relatives to lizardfolk, but their environment and behaviour is different enough for them to be confused with salamanders. Unlike lizardfolk, firenewts thrive in environments of extreme heat, with some tribes even living near or in active volcanos. Oftentimes, a creature so comfortable with fire would be a native of the Plane of Fire, but firenewts are completely native to the Material Plane.

Firenewts are extremely aggressive to both other firenewts and non-humanoid races. If a warband of these creatures is spotted, it's a sure thing that they're participating in a raid, possibly to smash the eggs of another firenewt tribe. They're also a highly religious people, with the most important members of society often being clerics in service to evil fire gods.

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Sometimes ghouls get lumped together with zombies. They're dead, they eat flesh, they're just a bit meaner, right? Well, zombies happen because of external circumstances (spells, curses...) and are mindless, so that's not right. They're not the same as revenants, another species of intelligent undead, since they're not motivated by revenge, anger or any sort of emotion.


The ghoul rises from the dead because it's hungry.

Those who practice cannibalism risk becoming ghouls. Now, this seems like an easier path to immortality than, say, discovering the philosopher's stone or going through all the tedious rituals to become a lich. Just eat a few orphans and homeless people and that's eternity for you, baby. An eternity of being hungry. But if you're the sort of person that would happily chow down on your fellow man, then you're probably not the type to be disappointed in the results. You don't get magical powers, but you get some poisonous claws so that's neat I guess?

Did a buncha research on ghouls, because I know they're a folkloric beast that's undergone quite a bit of transformation over time. I already knew they were an Arabic beastie (a ghûl), with them appearing in the Arabian Nights stories -- spooky monsters what hide in graveyards and eat corpses. What I didn't know is that that version of the ghouls are a mistranslation-slash-fabrication by the translators of the original texts. Early ghouls were more like demons or evil jinn that lived out in the desert and lured travelers to kill them. They were also often feminine, shapeshifters, and used as boogeymen to scare kids. Pretty much a generic monster that appears in every culture in the world.

But the Westernized version has stuck so that the ghoul as a skulking male/genderless grave-robber functions as today's definition. Lovecraft went in a bit of an interesting thing with them, making them appear less and less human the more time the ghoul has spent unalive.

Happy Spookoween, peeps.

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Psionics users (a.k.a. psychics) use a different type of power from traditional magic. Their powers are based on affecting their surroundings by exerting their mental powers to affect physical objects or other minds surrounding them. Generally, psionicists don't deal with the plethora of other planes that make up the universe. If they do, it'll be the Astral Plane, mind dimensions and dreams, and, on extremely rare instances, siphoning energy from the evil and good, and positive and negative planes.

Your tradional arcane and divine magic user is able to summon allies from other dimensions from other planes, pulling a physical creature out of their home plane onto the Material Plane. Psionicists can't do that.

But some psionicists achieve a close second. They can bring in ectoplasm from the astral plane and condense it to take on a solid, quasi-alive form for a few seconds or minutes. These are called astral constructs.

Some especially talented psionicists are able to make their astral constructs take on forms suited for specific tasks. The agile loper type of astral construct is made for speed and charges. The ectoplasm around the "head" is under great pressure, forming ultra-dense, very hard horns to knock down opponents so the construct can trample them underfoot.

Back to constructs!

This isn't a conscious choice, mind you. When I can't think of a creature I particularly feel like drawing, I use a system to randomly select one out of the monster manuals. I just happens that that same system sometimes gives me similar types several times in a row.

I really want to try out a game with psionics, but I've heard that they're notoriously unbalanced. Maybe if you run a game that only has psionics and no arcane / divine magic? I don't know.


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Yurians are a species of man-sized intelligent crustaceans that move about precariously atop a pair of spindly insectile legs. Found mostly in coastal caves, they are a simple folk, primitive hunter-gatherers who subsist on fish-flesh.

Although the craftsmanship (craftscrabship?) of the common Yurian is meagre, they are known to hoard the seabound detritus they find - driftwood, scraps of gemstone and metal - and fashion small trinkets from them that, despite their simplicity and fragility, are quite beautiful. Yurian caves can be strikingly pretty dwellings.

Hey! So it's been a little while again... a gap mostly to do with house-moving and a pretty harsh art block kinda thing. Anyway, hope an adorable crab-man goes some ways towards an apology. How can you stay mad at those eyes!!!?

Homonculi are the messengers and spies of those who wish to remain unnoticed (or at least inconspicuous). Made by wizards either for their own purposes or else to be sold to others, the tiny artificial creatures can be made from any number of materials as required, and can vary wildly in their appearance depending on the task they have been built for. One thing, however, that unites construction of all homonculi is that they require a generous portion of the creator's blood.

"Homonculus" is a pretty broad term in pop culture, commonly used to mean a sort of golem or constructed servant but with plenty of flavourful variations. One particularly wacky take that comes to mind is in Full Metal Alchemist, where homonculi are near-immortal, super-powerful (but otherwise human-passing) created beings that fill out a good portion of the main cast. The D&D version is closer to the real-life history of the term (which is a pretty fascinating wikipedia read) and I think I prefer it.

Brixashulty are a specific breed of large goats kept by halflings for their milk, wool and to be used as riding beasts. They also make excellent guard animals, as they're incredibly distrustful of strangers, are armored by thick fur and have powerful butting attacks.

The Brixashulty is a completely non-magical animal. It's essentially just a goat with a weird name, an alternate mount for Small PCs who don't want to have a riding dog or pony. I haven't found any stats in the official books for goat or sheep (though there are goat-based monsters), so you could probably use this for a vaguely ornery but ordinary goat.

Sheep/goat mounts are pretty common in fantasy tropes for the smaller races, dwarves, halflings and the like. It's the basic mount for dwarves in World of Warcraft and the Kithkin ride them in Magic: The Gathering (technically they're springjacks, some kind of goat-bunny hybrid stats plz). It makes sense, with goats being associated with pastoral or rugged environments, which the smaller races are associated with. Of course, nobody rides goats for real, though there are the occasional novelties for children and apparently they make decent pack animals.

Like the drow, the duergar are a cold-hearted subterranean race of dark-skinned humanoids. Unlike the drow, they put on no airs of aristocratic refinement, despite thinking they're better than anybody else.

Duergar are deep believers that life is nothing but thankless, painful work, as the doctrines Laduguer state. The priests of their religion go through agonizing torture in order to prove themselves worthy. The rest of them are all craftsmen, creating beautiful treasure after treasure. However, they don't seem to indulge very much in them. The dress of the duergar is drab, without embellishment, while their works are locked away in deep trap-filled vaults. Life is work, not pleasure, even if it's the pleasure of artistic accomplishment.

Duergar also have a fascinating origin myth. Laduguer created the grey dwarves and taught them to work. And they did. But there was one dwarf, the Lone Craftsman, who would hide away from deific eyes and commit blasphemies: he created life. The Lone Craftsman made all the other races of the world and when Laduguer found out, he cursed him, transforming him into the first derro, another subterranan race made up of psychotic small man incapable of creation due to their small attention spans. So the Duergar see all other races as abominations and insults against their god. They especially hate other dwarves, seeing them as the Lone Craftsman's ultimate heresy. The only race they almost respect are gnomes, since they're almost as single-minded in their craftsmanship as the duergar.

They're tough to fight as well, with innate size-changing and invisibility abilities. I bet a good many adventurer has been smashed by an underground giant not realizing that they were fighting a dwarf.

There need to be more lady dwarves. Also, the lady dwarves need to be as hirsute as their male counterparts.

Petals are tiny fey creatures who can sometimes prove problematic to adventurers (but rarely intentionally). They inhabit secluded areas in temperate forests, and their chief reaction to travelers of any sort is to sing to them. This would, it has to be said, be less of a problem if the magical voices of Petals didn't put the listener into a drowsy, peaceful sleep.

While this might seem at first mischievous, they consider it in fact an act of utter benevolence - is there any creature alive who doesn't deserve a little more rest in life? Afterwards, they tend to their slumbering "victims" by removing their amour (it can't be comfy to rest in all those silly metal plates!) and weaving them soft garments of leaves, which the hapless adventurers wake up in.

The description of the Petal is so sweet I can't hardly stand it. I struggle a lot with the details on these lately - I want to add lines to define things like the mouth, fingers, but it's hard to make them not jar against the airbrushy shading. I'm pleased with the colours, though.

- Joe

Standing in its ripened state no higher than a halfling, the Porcupine Cactus is so called for its bizarre method of seed dispersion. Rather than relying on its fruit to be digested, rainwater instead causes it to swell to an enormous size, whereupon any disturbance of the plant will result in its body rupturing, sowing the thornlike seeds in all directions. The Porcupine Cactus' detonation also serves a more greusome purpose - should the source of the disturbance be another creature, the volley of thorns may kill it, providing a fresh source of nutrients for the next generation.

This is another "blind" pick - Blanca chose the creature, then gave me nothing more than the text description, with the name blacked out. It's fun! I think I'd have probably gone for something more deliberately cactus-like if I'd known, which might have been a bit predictable. Its face - well, the eye, anyway - is part artistic flourish (ie I just like the way it looks) and part a response to the fact that the plant apparently possesses Low-light Vision. I know this is probably more a representation of the plant's ability to "sense" things around it but I just liked the idea that it would have a big eyeball. WELP

My posts have been pretty few and far between lately. I'm fairly busy! I promise I'll get back into the swing of things, though.

ALSO you can drop by the MCM Anime Expo in Birmingham next week and see Blanca and I! I'll be hawking my lame comics, too. Look for us in the Comic Village!

- Joe

Beware of strange sounds on the misty mountains.

The tengu and the kenku both have the same mythological origin: the karasu tengu, or crow-headed tengu, mountain-dwelling, anthropomorphic bird swordsmen. Kenku is another acceptable term for tengu. It's a well-known creature of Japanse folklore, alongside kitsune, kappa and tanuki. It's said that the tengu would sometimes take on human pupils and teach them their own unorthodox fighting techniques. The tengu from Oriental Adventures is closest to its roots than the kenku, the latter essentiall being avian kobolds.

Tengu are nimble fighters, relying more on speed than strength. The setting may be Japan-inspired, but just because you teach samurai that doesn't mean you have to be obsessed with honor. Tengu use a combination of ambush techniques, illusions, intimidation and the buffeting of their wings to keep their opponent off balance. Despite this, they're not opposed to a good old fashioned duel.

I love doing creatures inspire by non-Western mythology because it really gives you an excuse to look up some new things. Japanese ukiyo-e and prints are absolutely beautiful and the fairy tales and folklore is really sweet. I've been on a pretty big fairy tale and folklore binge lately. This image of the tengu is partially inspired by this one, a painting by Katsushika Hokusai.

Yet another monster with those names I either constantly have looked up or be ready to copy paste. Looked up if it was based on or inspired by some mesoamerican monster, but it doesn't seem to be.

These dudes are manta rays with a bad disposition. And that's pretty much the beginning and end of it. When I first saw them I was hoping they were gonna be some kind of aboleth-like creature but they are literally intelligent four-foot long manta rays. The Demon Lord Demogorgon just gathered a bunch of these little fellas up and gave them smarts and a superiority complex. They're not even stingrays (no poison), they're just kinda slippery and mean. I've attempted to give them something a little more to their look so they have tell-tale signs of demonic influence. Some of them are called Vampiric Ixitxachitl, which aren't undead, just a subspecies that can feed off your life energy.

They should make for an interesting early-level enemy for your underwater campaign, instead of relying on kuo-toa and sahuagins. Plus your players may not think too much of the innocent little ray that's lying in the sand. Then come the negative levels.

Bogun are the homunculi of the druidic world. Where a wizard uses clay and alchemical ingredients to construct a homunculus, the bogun is created using woodland refuse including leaves, feathers, sticks, mud, animal skeletons, insect carapaces, slime... meaning that each bogun vary wildly in their physical appearance according to the materials used. Creation of both things require some blood of its master before being infused with life.

It's not a creature meant for combat, but can carry out small tasks for its master (fetch that, watch this...). It does have a weak poison that can cause some pretty bad rashes and cramps, so that's useful for annoying low-level adventurers intruding in a sacred grove.

Myconids are the mushroom-people. Something quite well suited for your Mario-themed D&D game I suppose. They live to about 24 years of age, getting larger and stronger with each passing year until the ruler of a circle of myconids is about 12 feet tall. They do a good many things via spores, the main three being communication (initating a telepathing link with someone), alarm and reproduction. Older myconids can use their spores to pacify and cause hallucinations --essentially drugging the target-- and to briefly reanimate dead bodies as vaguely fungoid puppets. Eventually the eldest mushroom-man is able to produce potions, which I like to think is actually some organically generated goo rather than something from a cauldron.

So I guess if you do want to use these guys for your Mario-themed D&D game, having an older myconid around can really give it more horrifying angle.

I like mushrooms. They're a delicious piece of not-plant. I also like how weird they look; there are some that you could look at and be astounded to find that they are, in fact, a mushroom. All of the myconids in this image take inspiration from different kinds of mushroom, varying in crazy looks and deliciousness.

The Drow, or 'Dark Elves' are the combination of two classic fantasy tropes: the sexy lady warrior race and the implausibly evil, sacrifice-happy race. I guess it's also an attempt by Wizards to make a race of D&D elves who aren't dainty, serene and all-around perfect.

The drow are a race of black-skinned, white-haired, subtarranean, innately magical elves, who build their cities in the cavernous bowels of the earth (the Underdark). Their society is matriarchical to the cruelest extreme of the word and patterns a spider motif inspired by their goddess the Spider Queen Lolth. They're a race of schemers and false courtesies that somehow hasn't backstabbed itself into extinction (probably thanks to the divine intervention of their goddess).

(Not that she tries really hard, since in demanding sacrifices she "prefers sentient creatures over non-sentient, humanoids over non-humanoids, elves over other humanoids, drow over other elves, powerful drow over weaker ones, and her priestesses most of all". She is actively demanding the sacrifice of the ruling classes and clergy just because she likes to eat powerful things. But she totally wants to keep this society running.)

It's an extremely popular race (with some expected backlash) for the uniqueness of its setting, its innate angst and darkness, its cruelty and its absurd cheesecake factor. And also several series of popular books starring the most famous repentant drow Drizzt Do'Urden by R.A. Salvatore (causing countless my character is seriously not copying Drizzt you guys what are you talking about). I've only read two of the trilogies: the Dark Elf trilogy and the Ice Wind Dale trilogy. I've got to say I prefer the Dark Elf trilogy a lot more, and then the first book out of that, since you actually get to see the Underdark and their bizarre social customs.

You are Buck the Hybsil, a member of a small deer-bodied race of fey. Although you'd normally live in wild seclusion, like the rest of your kind, you've recently come to a decision to go out into the world and begin a career as an adventurer.


The winner of the last poll was a male from a small and shunned race. Well, I guess I've slightly twisted the meaning of the word "shunned". Hybsils, who stand at 3 feet from hoof to horn, live in self-imposed exile, as most fey creatures do. This is also partially to do with the fact that poachers will sometimes track them down to take their antlers, since wizards want them as a magical ingredient. Shed antlers don't count, so hybsils have to deal with people trying to take their antlers, and also a good chunk of their scalp.

Trying something new with the polls. Story mode! Vote to determine which class he is.

Domovoi are fey of the helpful variety. They're normally found near places of civilized activity, homes or campsites. In exchange from some scraps and maybe some milk, these hairy little men will keep your fires live and warm. They're slippery creatures, and prefer not to be seen by the people they're helping. Even if you got your hands on one you'd find it difficult to keep a grip on them; they're covered in a fine layer of soot and ash, making it difficult to keep a grip on them.

"...wants to help me" was the winner for last week's poll. It was pretty close for a while, since "wants to eat me", "is three times bigger than me", "is tiny" and "is surrounded by its minions" where all tied with four votes each before the winner got an extra two clicks. I'd actually found a creature that could fit all four categories. Oh well.

Domovoi are creatures of Russian/Slavic folklore (as if you couldn't tell). They have a slightly more malevolent counterpart called the Dvorovoi. These other little men were in charge of barns and livestock, but could make your cows sick if they were in a bad mood.

The poll for this week is terrains. You can select multiple answers in this one.

Also, more work on the goblin. A friend helped me out by making some suggestions on the hand and clothes modelling. He's also now got teeth. Further crits would be appreciated. I'm probably going to start trying to figure out how to do blend shapes soon and that's the kind of thing where I need to be 100% certain on the model itself.

A bloodthirsty race of primitive lizard-men, Troglodytes are mostly found underground, where they live in small tribes. Rarely arming themselves with anything more sophisticated than a simple spear or javelin, Troglodytes have nonetheless evolved some interesting features for protection - most famously, they are capable of excreting a scent through pores in their skin which smells so awful it can disorientate and deter most non-troglodyte foes.

STILL NO ANIMATION, ALTHOUGH YOU CAN HAVE A SNEAKY WORK-IN-PROGRESS PEEK IF YOU WANT:


INTERESTING, HUH? CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK. :3

The mantis warriors scour their arid territory for today's meal, moving slowly and deliberately to best blend in with their surroundings. They come across some high cliffs and, looking up, spot a pair of desert goats steadily making their way up the rocky face. The hunters begin to leap up the steep face, easily finding handholds, and quickly closing the distance between them and their prey. They fall upon the goats with poisonous bites and swipes from their two-bladed gythkas.

Thri-Kreen are a classic D&D monster, appearing all the way back in 1st Edition and gaining popularity in 2nd Edition with the introduction of the Dark Sun campaign setting, where they became one of the playable races. They're one of the more popular non-core player races, though the Thri-Kreen are a little bit to strong for a truly low-level campaign. And really, who wouldn't want to play a giant praying mantis that can leap farther than most can walk, has unique racial weapons, doesn't need to sleep and (depending on the DM) has psychic powers?

This is the final entry for this round of Guest Week. Our closing image has been provided by Victoria Maderna, whose artwork has appeared in the official 4th Edition D&D book, the Player's Strategy Guide. More of her artwork can be seen on Pigs with Crayons, along with that of her partner Federico Piatti.

I'd like to thank all the artists that have contributed to the blog for the past week. It's been really awesome to see different people's styles take on the monsters of D&D. We're definitely going to do another guest week again in the future.