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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6194307" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 337: November 2005part 3/7Monsters of the mind: Looks like Mind Flayers have still got a hold on the minds of the writers and editors, because here's another collection of monsters created by or related to them. Watch they don't get a grip on your mind too, for you never know when you'd make a better snack than you do pawn. Brainstealer Dragons are essentially illithid dragons. They have pretty much the same range of psionic/spell like tricks, but are obviously a much bigger physical threat on top of that. If the PC's can break into an illithid city and wreck an elder brain, this is the logical next choice for the big boss that's lurking behind even their schemes. Illithocytes are grown up illithid tadpoles who took a different evolutionary path to Neoillithids and learned to survive on psychic residue rather than actually eating brains. This does not mean they won't engulf you and eat you whole if they get the chance. Being able to survive on crap does not mean you don't crave better when offered it on a plate. Mind Worms scry you through reflective surfaces, and then reach out of them to swallow you whole. Beating the image does not kill the real one back in the underdark, so they can cause your party much paranoia over an extended adventure and lead to them shunning any reflective surfaces they see. That is a cool idea that would have been equally appropriate last month. Nerve Swimmers burrow into your flesh and control you by judicious application of telepathy and agonising pain, while not outright controlling your mind. If you've had to deal with Kyuss worms and rot grubs, these will get the players really worried and drag out the body horror a little longer. Muahahaha!  Ustilagor are the update to an old school monster that seems somewhat incongruous in this company. They aren't too different from what they used to be, although they actually explain their powers in the description instead of just listing them and sending you off to check the psionics book. That's one way they have definitely worked to make 3e and 4e more user-friendly over the years. Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Zuggtmoy is another of our more alien demon lords.  Queen of fungi, she presides over a very particular kind of horror. The prospect of having strange organic growths sprouting on and inside you, feeding off you and turning you into god knows what may be topical, and is not an appealing one. But Rule 34 trumps sanity and common sense, and so she attracts her own set of decidedly distasteful cultists, eager to receive her caress, and become freaky fungus hybrid creatures. As with most of these, we get stats for her, her cultist prestige class, her realm, lots of historical stuff, and her servants. We get another joyous revival of several old creatures which first appeared in the magazine here, with the Basidrond and Phycomid. Overall, she's probably one of the weaker demon lords, her multiple ugly defeats in modules having weakened her and reduced her abyssal prestige. But she's got lots of flavour, even if they do fall into the irritating trap of sexualising her just because she is sorta female :sigh: Still an entertaining read that manages to mix updated old stuff with a few new bits. Will there be a duff entry in this series? Guess we'll have to keep going and see. Full frontal nerdity: Looks like Aaron Williams has decided to start a new strip. Does this mean the end of nodwick? We shall see. The annoying occurrences don't stop though, just because we're on this side of the GM's screen. Seems pretty one-joke so far, despite the fact we get six mini-strips.</blockquote>

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