Old school monster search

[Mordavian]

Hi I am looking for information on an old monster, I think it is from Dragon mag. I don't know the name I just know the special features of the monster. This monster eats the essence of undead and admits a aura that attracts them in swarms. I think the entry said something about placing it in a town and have the PCs try to find the reason undead were attacking the town. If anyone knows what this monster is please let me know. It has been driving me nuts. I want to use it in a campaign I am running. Thank you!

 

[Cleon]

Hi I am looking for information on an old monster, I think it is from Dragon mag. I don't know the name I just know the special features of the monster. This monster eats the essence of undead and admits a aura that attracts them in swarms. I think the entry said something about placing it in a town and have the PCs try to find the reason undead were attacking the town. If anyone knows what this monster is please let me know. It has been driving me nuts. I want to use it in a campaign I am running. Thank you!

That doesn't ring any bells.

Can you remember roughly what year it was, or what edition of D&D?

 

[Mordavian]

Might have been between 2000 and 2001 but I may be remembering it wrong and it could be late 90s like 98 or 99. I remember the entry looked like the old school appendix entries and had a black and white pic. The monster could only be damaged with magic weapons and had tentacles

 

[Cleon]

Might have been between 2000 and 2001 but I may be remembering it wrong and it could be late 90s like 98 or 99. I remember the entry looked like the old school appendix entries and had a black and white pic. The monster could only be damaged with magic weapons and had tentacles

Hmm, the only undead-eating tentacled monster from a 2000/2001 Dragon Magazine that springs to mind is the Avolakia from Denizens of the Wormcrawl Fissure in Dragon #276 (October 2000), but that doesn't have an undead-attracting ability or an undead-sapping aura.

Furthermore, the Avolakia's an early 3E monster, and your description of it as appearing in a MC appendix type entry with a black & white illustration means it's most likely a 2E AD&D monster, so would be in an issue from 1989 to 2000.

The monsters in latter years tended to have colour illustrations, so if I feel energetic enough to flick through my back issue collection I'd better start with the earlier ones.

 

[Cleon]

Hmm, the only undead-eating tentacled monster from a 2000/2001 Dragon Magazine that springs to mind is the Avolakia from Denizens of the Wormcrawl Fissure in Dragon #276 (October 2000), but that doesn't have an undead-attracting ability or an undead-sapping aura.

Furthermore, the Avolakia's an early 3E monster, and your description of it as appearing in a MC appendix type entry with a black & white illustration means it's most likely a 2E AD&D monster, so would be in an issue from 1989 to 2000.

The monsters in latter years tended to have colour illustrations, so if I feel energetic enough to flick through my back issue collection I'd better start with the earlier ones.

I had a look through my Dragon Magazines from issues #130 (February 1988) to #274 (August 2000) and didn't see anything that matched the description. That covers the entire range of Second Edition AD&D - the first MC style monsters are in issue #156 (April 1990) and issue #274 is the first of the 3E issues - plus a couple of years of the late-period First Edition AD&D issues.

So no luck I'm afraid. Maybe the monster you're looking for is from some other 2E source, but I have no idea what it could be.

 

[Mordavian]

Thank you for your help. I know it is a magazine but I guess I have no clue what one . Maybe one day, if not I will make my own from what I remember

 

[Cleon]

Thank you for your help. I know it is a magazine but I guess I have no clue what one . Maybe one day, if not I will make my own from what I remember

Well there were quite a few RPG print magazines around in AD&D's time.

There are the "official" ones - Polyhedron, Dungeon and Imagine as well as a few others like Ares that I don't think had much AD&D material in, but there are also dozens of non-TSR ones such as White Dwarf, The Adventurer and many more.

The non-TSR ones didn't tend to have monsters written up in the 2E Monstrous Compendium format though, but leant towards more truncated formats.

I'm pretty sure it isn't in Dungeon or Imagine, but Polyhedron seems a possibility - I haven't read my collection of those as often as the first two TSR magazines.

That said, it'd be easier and faster for you to just write up the monster from scratch than spend time trying to remember where you first came across the idea.