L is for Linnorm

"Doesn't matter how many legs we've got, we'll still give you a kicking!"

Linnorms are powerful monsters closely related to dragons. Like dragons, they also come in different breeds: forest, frost, land, grey, and so on. While none have wings, there's an inconsistency about how many legs they have: with some having just two, and others having four. Again, this could have something to do with real myth, as the linnorm (or "lindworm" to us English) can represent a variety of mythological dragons: whether wingless, legless, or bipedal. 

My personal favourite is the Lambton Worm, a monster from County Durham that grew inside a well after being dumped there by a young fisherman. Eventually it started eating children and livestock, forcing the lord of the manor to appease it with vast offerings of milk. Numerous villagers died trying to slay the beast, until at last it fell to the young fisherman who caught it - now a knight back from the crusades. He fought it wearing a specialised suit of armour covered in sharpened spear heads, which cut the worm to ribbons as it coiled around him. Now that's a D&D plan if ever I've heard one!  

K is for Kenku

"Check it out, Pa - I'm gonna be a god!" 

Kenku are naturally drawn towards thievery, forming underworld gangs within the larger cities of the world.  These crafty birdmen earn their living through rigged card games, confidence scams and backstreet ambushes, sometimes using their talent for disguise to pose as humans (though their "telltale large noses" give them a mere 50% chance to pull it off). Infant Kenku quickly mature into criminals, with the younger members of the gang carrying out the most daring and audacious plots (such as "posing as a god"). Gold given by a Kenku crumbles into dust soon after it's received, and their advice is always misleading. A gibberish language of chirps and squawks masks their true method of communication: telepathy.

Kenku often feature in Far Eastern adventures, as they're loosely based on Japanese folk spirits called Karasu-Tengu: a race of mystical birdmen who supposedly taught martial arts to man. Interestingly, traditional Japanese depictions of Tengu have become less and less birdlike over the years, ultimately ending up as angry red-faced men with really long noses. I wonder if that's why the D&D Kenku disguises itself as a man?

J is for Jackalwere

"No, boy. This form was made for killin', not playin' ball."

Absent from Wizards' recent article on shapeshifters was the notorious Jackalwere, a savage monster that preys on humans by masquerading as one of their own kind. Yes, that's right. The Jackalwere is actually the humorous opposite of a werewolf: an animal (in this case a jackal) that transforms into a savage human. They can also assume a halfway house between both forms: the half-human, half-jackal hybrid that Stacey's illustrated above. Somewhat surprisingly, this monster has infiltrated every edition of D&D to date.

In fairness, Jackalweres aren't proper lycanthropes. Great though it would be, they're not created by the infected bite of ravenous human: instead, they're a crafty race of jackals who can shapeshift at will to hunt down their prey (like that's any less silly). Of course, it works best if their prey is human. Isn't it strange there aren't any monsters that only transform into elves, dwarves, or gnomes? I suppose a Werehobbit doesn't have quite the same ring!

I is for Ixitxachitl

"Now what did I tell you about eating blowfish?" 

The supposedly-terrifying "Demon Rays" use slaves to tunnel out labyrinthine underwater cities in the coral. They're small, basically the size of a normal ray, with a poisonous barb on their tail, just like a stingray. In fact, they are stingrays. But with fangs and a silly name. You can get vampire ixitxachitl too, which seems like a slightly desperate addition to make them scarier. Best of all, we're told that for every 50 ixitxachitl there will also be a high priest and two guardians, all with Type U treasure ("magical items that can be used without hands"). Imagine that - a stingray wearing a gold chain. Or a cloak.

The Monster Manual helpfully informs us it's pronounced "ish-it-SHACH-itl", "icks-it-ZACH-it-ul", or "icks-it-zuh-chit-ul", which is basically an admission that you should say it however you damn please. Doesn't matter now though, as some bright spark eventually realised that ixitxachitl fulfil the same role as aboleths, and ditched them from the game.

H is for Huecuva

Who'd have thought that priests cursed by their god to wander the world as undead could be so cute? Huecuvas first appeared in the original Fiend Folio, and have since shown up in every edition of the game bar fourth. When a paladin fails his vows, or a priest commits an act of heresy, their god can curse them to come back as a huecuva (pretty harsh, if you ask me).

The monster's original entry comes from a magazine called "Underworld Oracle" (check the old-school pictures!), where they appeared in a Mesoamerican-themed adventure called the Forests of Yurupari.  "Huecuvu" are indeed part of South American myth: a type of plague spirit that can choose to appear in a variety of ghastly forms. Though the original adventure kept the monster's shapeshifting powers, these were ditched for later incarnations. Not so for their plague-tainted touch, which started out as yellow fever in the original adventure, changed to "acute cardiovascular-renal disease" in the Fiend Folio, and ended up as plain old "Heucuva Blight" in 3rd Edition.

Why would a good god curse its own worshipers to spread deadly diseases? It doesn't make much sense (unless it's to keep their other clerics busy!), yet I kind of like it. I prefer my gods terrible and unfathomable, rather than benign and predictable.    

G is for Grell

Grells are levitating horrors whose dangling tentacles secrete a paralyzing poison. They like to lurk high up in caves, dropping silently on their prey and hoisting them up to the ceiling, where they rip them to pieces with their sharp beaks. As a species they live together in weird "hives", communicating in a semi-telepathic language of chirps, squawks, and thrashing tentacle gestures. Each hive is run by a Patriarch, whose orders are passed on to the common workers by a caste of Philosopher Grells.

Strange that Grells feel the need to philosophize, given that all they do is eat people. Maybe they're looking for meaning. Judging by the picture above, they certainly seem to enjoy eating people - in fact, they find it pretty bloody humorous. That's okay. We find them humorous too, with their silly brain heads and daft beaks.

The internet tells me that Grells were invented by Ian Livingstone, which is pretty cool. As a kid I was fanatical about his Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and even wrote letters begging for this-or-that to be included in future titles (probably Vampires! or More Wizards!). I actually met him later on in life, and had one of those silly moments where I just shook his hand and smiled instead of saying how much his books meant to me. Anyway, I'm far from alone in my fandom - in fact, Jonathan Green's got a kickstarter going on right now to create a commemorative book for their 30th anniversary. If you have any interest in gamebooks - even the history of D&D - I'd suggest you head over there and pledge!

F is for Firenewt

Firenewts were a race of bipedal, lizard-like marauders that lived in deserts and arid mountains. Their raiding parties would strike out from volcanic lairs in search of tasty human captives, which they'd take back as food for their larders. As a species they were barbaric, tribal and thoroughly evil. Somehow, I don't think Stacey's illustration fully captures this.

I use the past tense because firenewts eventually went the way of the dodo, as far as the game goes. I guess D&D can only support so many  lizardmen (or "lizardfolk" as we're inclined to say now, to avoid discriminating against lizardgirls). Most likely they were usurped by Salamanders, which in reality are newts, and were once thought to have an affinity for fire. So they're the same thing really. In terms of lore, I suppose I prefer the elemental Salamanders (though I think they need the word "man" added to the end of their name).

As she was drawing them, Stacey decided that Firenewts like to dance, which is what this one is teaching his boy. So I suppose that adds something new to their lore!

E is for Ettercap

Ettercaps are weird, spiderish creatures that spin sticky webs to capture their prey. With their dinner trussed up and ready to eat, all the Ettercap has to do is sidle over and administer the killing poison bite. They click well with giant spiders, which they keep as pets, or rear as hunting dogs. The 3rd Edition Monster Manual suggests they also keep normal spiders as humans keep bees, although they can't exactly do it for the honey.

The 1st Edition Fiend Folio is very specific that an Ettercap's spinnerets are located "near the anus". I find that detail unnecessary and unsettling, as now I can't shake the image of Ettercaps spinning webs from their bum cracks. 1st Edition Ettercaps are also far more human, basically described as hairy, pot-bellied hobos who spin webs from their bums. I prefer the "insectification" that Ettercaps received in later editions, especially 4th (which added an extra pair of arms to make them even more spiderish). It's the 4th Edition version that Stacey's gone for in her illustration above, which she has lovingly called "Daddy's Girl". 

D is for Dracolich

A dracolich is a dragon that has traded its own mortality for diabolic power, raising itself as one of the undead. Even as its body decays into tatters, its soul remains preserved in a well-hidden soul jar, or phylactery. When its body is destroyed, it reforms again near the phylactery just a few days later. Only by destroying the phylactery can the dracolich be properly slain.

Now, dragons practically live forever as it is, and are extremely powerful. So they'd have to be fairly power-crazed to go through the ritual of lichdom, right? Especially if they're only wee, like the adorable little wyrmling Stacey has drawn above!

C is for Carrion Crawler

We've had some debate over whether we should include creatures with more than one word in their name. After all, B may stand for "Brain", but it doesn't stand for "Mole". In this case, we've got two Cs, so we're both happy.

Carrion Crawlers are horrible worms that feed on the dead and lay their eggs inside corpses. They're also efficient hunters of the living, using tentacles coated in paralysing gum to subdue their enemies. Interestingly, the 1st Edition crawlers don't have a bite attack, and their poison doesn't actually deal damage. In fact, they don't even appear to have mouths. This is a million times creepier. I imagine their paralysing attacks are completely unfelt, anaesthetising the nerves instantly, like the bite of a leech. Once they've subdued their prey, maybe they lay their eggs inside the still living bodies? This is probably painless too. In fact, once those hatchlings start to feed, I don't imagine you'd feel that either...

Later editions added mouths (fair enough), and fangs (which seem wrong to me). Now they look a little silly, much like the cute pair above. Aw, bless!

B is for Bullywug

Bullywugs are a warlike race of bipedal, swamp-dwelling frog things. They live in disharmony with their environment, often overfishing or outstripping their hunting grounds until their whole tribe is forced to move on or starve to death. Such debauched behaviour is taken a step further in 4th Edition: now their very presence warps and pollutes their homeland, perverting it into a "dismal echo" of what it once was. In a stroke of off-kilter design genius, killing a bullywug actually causes you to regain hit points, as though the land itself were thanking you! Sadly, such blessings are entirely out of whack with their cute, Kermit the Frog appearance.

A,B,C,D (and D)

For a while now, Stacey's had this plan to illustrate the alphabet according to D&D - the sort of thing you'd see hung on a classroom wall - with grown monsters for the upper case letters, and baby monsters for the lower case ones. The idea came from a children's illustration class she attended last year, where her tutor set the challenge of bringing letters to life. With 'Beholder Basic' gearing our thoughts towards kids, now seems an appropriate time to share the first.

Achaierais are massive, 15-foot tall flightless birds that prowl the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron. Despite their Sesame Street features, they're actually thoroughly evil, and delight in torture. They speak Infernal (in high-pitched squawking voices, I imagine), and can belch out clouds of black, maddening gas. Sounds to me like someone was smoking some of that mad gas themselves when they cooked them up.

Keep posted for "B is for...". With so many great contenders, who knows what we'll see? (one clue: it's not a Beholder).