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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6231070" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 348: October 2006part 4/6Horrors of the Daelkyr: In the past we've had october issues with an undead focus, a fiendish flavour, and a sanity-imperiling lovecraftian one. Looks like they're mixing it up this time round, with both undead and Cthuloid gribleys from other universes. So let's see what unique spin Eberron puts on the idea of an invasion from another universe, and it's fallout. The Daelkyr tried to take over the world several thousand years ago. Thankfully Eberron's natives have plenty of tricks of their own, so they managed to foil this and seal the gate in the end. But the creatures left behind haven't given up, and they've created new minions by mutating and crossbreeding natives as well. This has plenty of potential to put a cool new spin on existing ideas by recombining existing ideas. Akleu are transparent-skinned humanoid shark things from Xoriat. Excellent at stealth and climbing, they're dangerous ambush predators now they're stuck on eberron. They really ought to be doing more with their intelligence, but you know what monsters are like. Just can't seem to co-operate like humans despite their greater individual power. Dolgrue look like bad imitations of Glabrezu. Created from bugbear stock, they spend their existence in perpetual agony, only briefly relieved by torturing others. Which means they might not be inherently chaotic evil like real demons, but only the very strongest willed of them will be able to rise above their baser natures. Polymorph them into something more pleasant, and they'll probably be eternally grateful. Kyra look like relatives of Grell, giant brains with 8 wings replacing many of their tentacles. They're another genius, but insane creature that lives to trick and create misery for all they encounter. A shame that creatures like that can't turn over a new leaf when stuck on a less hostile plane, but have to go to so much effort to make it more like home. Opabina are a prehistoric creature we've seen grown to giant size several times before in the magazine. (issues 176 and 204) They actually move at a decent speed this time around, and have reach, which makes them slightly scarier. They're still annoying aquatic grapplers though. A fairly faithful conversion. Xenostelid are another attempt by the daelkyr to make themselves feel more at home by crossbreeding lots of different insects until they're gigantic freakish monstrosities, all legs and pincers and mandibles. With webbing, poison, and a deadly screech, they're pretty versatile, and make quite scary shock troops if put in a team. Xorbeasts are the most alien-looking of these, slimy creatures that exist to trap things in their folds, and take them back to their masters for gruesome experiments. I'd certainly be scared seeing one of these sliming around trying to grab me, so I think this article is a success in twisting things to give them a new, but still scary flavour. Can't neglect your body horror as well as the more psychological sort if you want to keep players on their toes. The ecology of the wight: Another halloween appropriate article here. Wights don't have as many literary antecedents as ghouls, and their name is a bit suspect, but if you asked parties of adventurers which they're more scared off, 9 out of 10 would say the one that drains your levels. Trying to differentiate them from the other low level undead, this sets out to tie them a bit more closely to their celtic barrow origins (making them the northern counterpart to mummies, amusingly) while still giving them some extra versatility. They already have several variants, including the terrifying epic level ones. They're also differentiated by being more warrior focussed than most undead. Mummies are usually priests, incorporeal ones pretty much have to be spellcasters, vampires do everything, zombies have no finesse at all. Seems to work. So I guess this is another decent but not exceptional ecology.</blockquote>

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