As one would expect, deep dragons are found deep, deep in the earth. It's not completely certain whether deep dragons are their own species, or some kind of mutated version of a true dragon. Regardless, they're just as powerful as true dragons. Surface dwellers may now give a sigh of relief as it's made known that deep dragons have no interest in leaving their dark world. They sometimes make pacts with drow, but that's mostly to keep an eye on them and make sure that whatever the drow do, it won't interfere with the deep dragon's well-being.

Deep dragons cannot be trusted. They’re especially tricky creatures, and similarly difficult to fool. Even a wyrmling is born with innate true seeing, making them immune to the effects of illusions and invisibility. Older deep dragons become more attuned to their cavernous and stony environment. They start out being able to easily burrow through stone and worm their way though small cracks. By the time end of their lifespan, deep dragons can command the stone to open, close and warp as they please.

Why fight some repugnant humanoid skulking in the tunnel you've left behind when you can simply command the tunnel to seal itself, crushing the intruder?

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The Shen Lung is one of many different dragons of the Lung type. Ordinary dragons are highly magical creatures, but in the end they are merely intelligent, large and potent beasts. The Lungs are inherently mystical beings allied to the elements who cross the boundary between the Spirit World and the Material Plane at will. Their powers come from a mystic pearl embedded in their heads (or brains), which allow them to fly without wings, riding the currents of air.

The Shen Lung (the Spirit Dragon) is among the lungs that mortals are most likely to meet, where all others prefer to remain hidden away in their celestial palaces or in the Spirit World. An aura of divine purity exudes from this dragon, repelling all verminous beasts that would dare approach it. It has special power over water and is often found near rivers inhabited by Chiang Lungs, whom they are bodyguards to. Pleasing a Shen Lung results in good harvests, while insulting one can lead to floods and blights, as it has control over the weather.

I like the traditional D&D dragons (blue and black are my favourites), but I have a soft spot in my heart for the lung type dragons. I think it's mostly the way they don't have wings but can still fly. There's just something quite cool about that. And the whole mystic pearl thing. Some Chinese (and I'm assuming other Oriental tales) feature the dragon's pearl being found by a human and then it bringing them good luck.

Some of you may recognize the name Shen Lung from the Dragon Ball series, where the 7 dragon balls (mystic pearls?) were gathered together to summon Shenron (or Eternal Dragon, or Shenlong) to grant the gatherer a wish.

The final image of Epic Month, which also consisted of the Phoenix, Phane and White Slaad. Using a dragon feels a bit like cheating, since dragons have more than one challenge rating depending on their age. But from 800 years onwards a Shen Lung is over CR 20 so that means it becomes an epic level creature so yeah.

Chronotyryn are one of those high level monsters who believe themselves to be gods --or that at least like to have others believe that. They have innate time-controlling abilities used to bewilder enemies and their feathers are adamantine, what's normally an extremely hard and rare ore.

It's an extremely intelligent creature and its double brain and voice boxes allow it to take twice as many actions per round. They bedeck themselves in the magical items of their victims, and keep several of them attached to a harness they wear, so they always have a trick up their sleeve.

 In other news, some of you may already be aware of him, but Noah 'Spoony' Antwiler has a series of shorts called Counter Monkey, stories of his previous experiences with D&D (and some other games) both as a DM and a player. They're very sweet and funny and you should totally go watch them. 

Black dragons are the most cruel-tempered of the chromatic dragons. Where blue dragons are vain, reds are tyrannical, greens are two-faced and whites are primal, blacks are petty. They despise all beautiful things. These dragons are of corpse-like apperance, growing more and more skeletal with age, and live in fetid swamps. They surround themselves in darkness, slime and putrefaction. The meat they eat is of creatures they've eaten and allowed to rot in the stinking pools of their undewater homes. Black dragons are ambushers; their chosen homes have too many trees for flight, and its easier to lie in the cool mud and wait for some hapless victim to walk by.

Tried to do something a little bit more unusual with this dragon. I ended up taking a lot of influence from Oceanic and Inuit masks.

Green Dragons are your fairly classic creatures: they're huge, they live in forests, they eat faeires and elves and other good creatures. Out of the five chromatic dragons, the Greens are one of the two lawful species (the other being Blue). However, unlike their Blue cousins, Green Dragons aren't creatures of honour. Be wary of them. Though they pride themselves on appearing civil and being masters of the spoken word, this is a paper-thin disguise. Green dragons are jealous, covetous creatures. Their words mask insults and their promises are broken when their mood sours, and you'll find yourself burnt from the inside out by their chlorine breath.

My contribution to DRAGON MONTH, ladies and gents. Behold our attempts to these creatures interesting again, since Smaug cemented the scaly lizard look. Admittedly, I'm not off to the best start with the whole "let's make this original" thing. I'll try something weirder with my next dragon. With this one I ended up trying the pixelly-style thing, which is a lot harder that I'd originally anticipated.

I've started a special tagging method over at Reference Reference. Now you can look at specific images that served as guides for the Green Dragon.

Moreso than any of their metallic brethren, Gold Dragons are creatures of utmost law and virtue. They are known to be kind and fantastically intellgent, devoting much of their attention to righting wrongs and helping the weak. Gold Dragons appear to take at times an almost parental role when dealing with lesser creatures, whether lending a helping wing to a besieged adventurer or scolding an opportunistic treasure-thief.

To celebrate our 100th post (it's kind of a joint thing with the blog's first year anniversary) this fair month of August is going to be Dragon Month. Yes, you may have noticed a conspicuous absence of fantasy's bescaled poster boys from our pages so far - early on we decided to hold off from illustrating them until we reached post number 100.

If the idea of this blog is to challenge peoples' perception of what standard fantasy art should look like, then dragons are pretty high on the hit-list of "stuff to challenge". Especially on the internet, dragons must be some of the most popular and often-drawn fantasy creatures ever, and a quick search on somewhere like Deviantart will give you a good cross-section of the visual tropes they tend to subscribe to. Seriously, go look at it. See that? That's what we're gonna try to avoid. Not because it's bad, but because being weird and different makes us feel special. ;_;

Stay tuned for the rest of Dragon Month and see if you like it!

The Wendigo is a malevolent spirit of the cold wastes, driven by purely by hunger. It has no feet, and leaves no tracks on the ground. Sometimes its body turns misty and can't be seen but out of the corner of your eye. You're more likely to hear him that see him, his gibbering laughter sweeping across the empty landscape like with.

So the winner of last week's poll was Middle Eastern / Indian monsters and North American monsters, with an equal amount of votes. I decided to pick North American monsters, since they're under-represented in modern fantasy culture outside the odd shaman, thunderbird and, of course, Wendigo.

Fun fact! Apparently the word Wendigo comes from the proto-Algonquian "wintekowa", possibly meaning "owl". At least according to the internet. Maybe they were freaked out by the hooting of owls at night? Anyway, that's why I decided to give the Wendigo a more rounded head instead of something wolfy or deer-like, like a lot of modern fantasy does.

I decided to play on the description in the D&D books that says they have a Corner of the Eye ability. Whenever a wendigo Wind Walks, they can never been looked at directly, always seeming to appear just out of your field of vision. This was pretty tricky, and I decided to try to employ the Hidden Face illusion trick. I'm not sure how well it worked though, so you guys'll have to tell me.

Man, I'm late this week.

Did a little bit more work with the tags this past week. Monsters are now also orginized by alignment (chaotic, lawful, evil, good, neutral) and whether they're template creatures.

Varakhuts are the elder, stranger kin of the Kolyaruts , both members of a mysterious family of mechanical creatures known as "Inevitables". Inevitables are the very incarnation of law and order, forged in the pure heart of Mechanus and sent out as agents of balance to bring order to chaos and prevent specific occurances which might harm the natural harmony of spacetime.

Each class of inevitable is responsible for a different aspect of order - Kolyaruts punish oathbreakers, Maruts kill those who unfairly avoid death - Varakhuts are responsible for the defence of deities against those who would depose them. Inevitables are not creatues that engage in worship of any god but understand that the destruction or deposition of these divine powers would bring only chaos. Varakhuts are as such the most powerful among the Inevitables as their natural opponents are strong enough to threaten gods.

We're a week late this week, so we'll be doing a mid-week post at some point to make up. Varakhuts are pretty cool, I like them because I imagine they are from a system older and more fundamental than the gods they protect. Like, the gods will come and go, but the Varakhuts will always be there to protect them.

A Bulette, or land-shark, is a huge quadrupedal burrowing creature. Strong and mindless, Bulettes live simply to eat, and with such a massive body comes a notoriously resilient digestive sytem. Bulettes are true omnivores and will eat literally anything, including animals, plants, metals, even soil and rock if nothing else is available. Solitary creatures (except in certain terrifying situations where they reside with a mate) Bulettes are mercifully rare.

Back to routine! After posting the animations we're back to just static illustrations for a while (although keep your eye out for an animated .gif or something). Trying to go for a stylised Craig McCracken look here, whilst tipping my artsy hat to that other great land shark.

Sphinxes are a family of creatures that widely vary in their levels of intelligence. Hieraco- and Criosphinxes are little more than savage animals, chimaeric creatures who fly and hunt effortlessly, rarely concerning themselves with anything above their basic urges. Gynosphinxes are much more intelligent creatures, with such great intellects that their their time is mostly spent in contemplation of things far more sophisticated than the human mind could appreciate. They are famously fond of puzzles, riddles, or ways of thinking that challenge their (already vast) understanding of the world, and are known to have much respect for creatures capable of appreciating such things. Though physically mighty they are reluctant to fight and would much rather win over an enemy with words than claws.

As requested by Wolfgang Baur, who runs Kobold Quarterly and has done an awful lot of stuff for a variety of roleplaying games! I like any creature that's basically "x-but-with-a-human-face", as it feels like these have really creepy, Boschian inspiration for them. I assume sphinxes were at least partially inspired by this kind of thing (be warned, it's kind of gross) but regardless it's nice to see a mythical beast that doesn't present women in a completely psychotic way (I'm looking at you, Harpies!).



Another reminder that tomorrow we start our Guest Week! check back every day, we'll be uploading another picture by a different artist. IT WILL BE AWESOME

These are the maidens of battle, towering above mortal man, born from the spilled blood of war gods. On their steeds the Valkyries are part of the endless battles of the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, or fly over earthly wars in search of great warriors. Their eyes always crackle with lightning, as do their swords. They know no cruelty, but they also know no mercy.


There are actually two entries for the Valkyrie creature in the books of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. The first is a storm-wielding woman of fury with wings and hooves, and the second one is essentially a celestial level 20 Paladin. I liked aspects of both (the lightning of the first and the steed of the second) and decided to combine them into a single image.

This image is dedicated to Wolfgang Baur, publisher of the D&D/Pathfinder magazine Kobold Quarterly, who requested this creature.

The Century Worm is a rare giant creature that can appear in any part of the world. It's a mindless creature, uncontrollable, born to eat and moves across the landscape making deafening screeching noises. It's large enough to swallow a horse whole, and anything it eats will be broken down by more than stomach acid; the Century Worm's stomach carries millions of its young.

This creature is one of the more high-level encounters, where a character needs to be at Conan levels of strength and Merlin levels of magic. It's a pretty slow creature, so it's always possible to run away.

The Yrthak is a monstrous flying reptilian creature. They are omniverous, but with a preference for meat, and are well-equipped with some extraordinary features for hunting. Although blind, a special sensory organ on the tongue informs them of the exact location of anything making a noise within around 120 metres, allowing them to swoop in deftly for the kill. For well-armoured foes, they posess the ability to use the large, spiralled horn on their head to emit a concentrated burst of sound, powerful enough to knock down and deafen anyone caught in its path. It is thought that this strange organ is also used in communicating (since the creature does not speak), and echolocation.

To clear up any confusion, the Yrthak is pictured above hunting another odd-looking creature, the bird-horse or Achaierai, with which it shares the environment of "temperate mountains". This week's theme is "flyers", and it took me a few goes to get it right (or at least "okay").

When traversing the elemental plane of fire, there are numerous dangers that face the adventurer. Rasts are by no means the greatest threat to travellers bold enough to explore this unwelcoming dimension, but to the ill-prepared they can prove deadly enough. Rasts are creatures of little more than animal intelligence, floating about in packs and hunting whatever they can find. It is a well-known fact that Rasts have an almost vampiric fondness for blood.

Rasts are one of the sillier-looking monsters in the first monster manual - kind of like the little head spider thing from John Carpenter's The Thing - I went with more of a blood-crazed jellyfish look in mind.