If you don’t recognize the guy in the last panel, he was the one who was trying to look super-impressive in his evil armour back in this comic in 2008. There’s a lot of these characters who stick in the back of my mind, waiting to be used again when it seems right.
Riffing on the Chinese Qilin creature, D&D’s Ki-Rin is a good spirit of the sky. The Quilin is often “depicted with fire all over its body” according to Wikipedia, so I thought instead of white clouds I go with smoky clouds for it in the sky, as if it would be at home amongst thunderstorms rather than just marshmallow puffs on blue.
J was kind of a dud letter for awesome monsters. I tried to muster a slightly interesting approach to a jackal monster by giving him Egyptian-styled gear.
The ilithid, better known as mind flayers, are a subterranean race that use psychic powers and their brain-draining tentacles to enslave or kill. You don’t want to meet these dudes when you are level one. I’m not 100% happy with the skull cap. With the staff in front of it, it’s kind of hard to see. However, I do like the staff as a brain/cobra hybrid.
Into the D&D grab bag this week we have a harpy. From Greek mythology it’s a cross between a crone and a vulture. They like to eat marrow so I figured a sharpened bone and skull weapon would be up her alley.
My other entry for Classic-Castle.com‘s contest is in the mythical creatures category. Here’s a talking tree wizard brushing up on his spells near his friends at the unicorn castle. Click to enlarge.
The fine folks over at Classic-Castle.com are having their annual Lego building contests. This is my entry for the “Wooden Castle” category. I thought a shipwrecked group of knights and maidens would be a fun thing to build. If you like Lego and castles, you should go check out the other awesome entries. Also, click to enlarge.
In Dungeons and Dragons, the golem is a pretty tough customer. You need powerful magic weapons to hurt them. And only a few spells work against them. And I don’t think they’re ticklish or susceptible to bribes. Mostly they are made them out of flesh (like Frankenstein), clay, stone, or iron but in The Princess Planet you’re more familiar with the snow variety. Here I was definitely inspired by the Batman: Animated Clayface design but mixed with some Dan Seagrave heavy metal album cover art and the idea that there was a kiln inside the clay.
The Firbolg are a race of giants from Irish mythology. They basically look like humans with pink skin and red hair, so sunburned gingers. Since giants tend to love hurling stones (it worked for David, why not Goliath?) I decided to try for a weighty boulder weapon.
