Monster Mash: B is for Beastmen~ Part 2 Elite Beastmen

FOR PART 1

ELITE BEASTMEN

The common beastmen are well known to all but the most sheltered of peasants but the elite beastmen are monsters that are a threat to all but seasoned knights, mercenaries and soldiers. From the dangerously powerful bovine/caprine butchers to the mobile equine tramplers to the cunning gnolls and werebeasts that make the Hold a place of untold horrors. A horde composed of common beastmen is a threat but can easily be handled by experienced military. An army composed of the following beastmen are a threat that can wipe countries off the map.

BUTCHERS

Brutality incarnate.

Butchers are the result of a beast hag getting a concentrated diet of quality chevon, mutton or beef and are the meanest brutes of the beastmen. They stand twice as tall as a man, bulging with leathery muscle, and are topped with a bovine or caprine head with cruel eyes and a maw full of sharp teeth made for tearing flesh and crushing bone. Butchers take particular pleasure in seeing the disgust and fear of their foes, reveling for the opportunity to walk into a group of enemies, and making an example of the first opponent: ripping their limbs off, taking bites of their flesh, and crushing them beneath their hooves are all techniques that butchers revel in to soak up the terror of their enemies.

Among other beastmen, their physical strength and sadism often makes other beastmen cower in deference.

 

TRAMPLERS

Tramplers are the cavaliers of the beastmen horde, a cruel mockery of centaurs, with the lower half and head of a horse joined with a human-like torso between. Their mobility makes them excellent scouts and messengers for beastmen groups. In combat they prefer hit and run tactics with bows and pole-arms that take advantage of their speed. They are proud creatures that enjoy showing off their skill on the battlefield.

GNOLLS

A mix of canine and human flesh in a beast hag's diet creates the more cunning and devastating foot soldiers in any army of beastmen. Gnolls resemble humanoids with twisted features of a hyena, dog, jack or wolf with digitigrade back legs and hunched spines. They often have enlarged fangs and some even grown horns. These cackling and barking madmen take more pleasure in the subtle nuances of cruelty, playing with their food, before tearing it to shreds. The nightmares of many soldiers are filled with the laughter of gnolls.

Besides being foot soldiers that are a match for professional soldiers, gnolls are excellent hunters, using their social skills, cooperation and wits to overcome their prey. They are also known to use beasts, particularly wolves, hyenas, and monstrous canines to help them in their hunts and to put fear into the hearts of all innocent men.

Other Abominations

There are as many different and unique subspecies of beastmen as there are animals for beast hags to eat and infused with the fiendish magic of their lord Kalibos. The most feared subspecies are the werebeast:

The werebeast is similar to a werewolf in that they can shift between the form of a gnoll and a human but have a more unique ability: they can transform into any person they've eaten. This means that a clever werebeast can kill a member of a community and infiltrate it. Famously, a large group of werebeasts managed to infiltrate a monster hunting church, taking on the form of pilgrims, before turning on the priesthood and exterminating them.

The most insidious ability of the werebeast is to reproduce via their attacks. If they bite and infect someone with their blood, the person will transform into a werebeast. Most people who suffer this fate go mad from the pain of transformation under the next moon, becoming feral and attacking people, before eventually being drawn to the nearest group of beastmen and joining their ranks.

This is an example of the less natural and horrifying potential of beastmen.

What did you guys think? Any ideas for horrifying beastmen? Do you like my approach to monster creation?

Monster Mash: B is for Beastmen~ Part 1 Beast Hags & Common Beastmen

Orcs and goblins have no home in Sublanarya. Instead, they are host to a uniquely disturbing and dangerous horde of their own humanoid savages; the beastmen.

Less than a millenia ago, Kalibos the Bastard Prince, the god of butchers and cannibals, was reborn in eastern Thule to a barbarian witch. The powerful and hateful brutality of Kalibos's tribe quickly saw The Hold's southern tribes fall to his savagery or join his quickly growing cult. The diabolical and monstrous god infused his servants with blood and transformed them into monstrous shapeshifters able to switch between their human and lycanthropic form. But even a large army of primitive shapeshifters wasn't enough for Kalibos and he intended to tear civilization down and drown it in a sea of blood.

Kalibos's "great innovation" came in the creation of a dark ritual that allowed him to impregnate his priestess with his own demon seed and transform them into the progenitors of a menace that would last long after his second defeat. These priestesses transformed into bloated brood mothers capable of bearing the monstrous spawn of a demonic god. After the ritual, they are able to produce the Cannibal King's offspring indefinitely without repeated ritual. However, they do require copious amounts of blood and flesh to create their spawn. Luckily, barbarian cultists of Kalibos and the beast hag's own children are more than happy to oblige.

While they are hardly picky, cursed with a ceaseless hunger that would see them eat their own children if made to wait to long, the content of their diet is important. In fact, the contents of a beast hag's diet contribute to the exact variety of beastmen formed: a beasthag who is fed rodents, rabbits, and other small woodland creatures produces hobbs, if she eats porcine flesh she produces mobbs, cougars and leopard meet makes prowlers, excess primate and human meat allows them to create orgs, tons of beef and mutton create butchers, horsemeat makes for tramplers, and gnolls are created from dog and hyena meat. This means that raiding for food to feed the beasthag is central to beastmen "society" as the contents of the beasthag's food directly contributes to the creation of specific beastmen subspecies-- the "better" the diet, the better the beastmen a tribe can produce.

Due to their bulk, beasthags are vulnerable in the open and spend most of their time in beastmen lairs to protect them while they spawn more warriors and hunters for the tribe. That doesn't mean they are unable to defend themselves and are not threats on their own: beasthags are capable of wielding devastating magical effects to keep their spawn in line and defend themselves from would be beasthag slayers.

BEASTHAGS

Now, let's look at the beastmen that beasthags spawn in greater detail:

COMMON BEASTMEN

HOBS

Hobs are the common rabble of the beastmen horde and make up the bulk of any group.

Opportunistic, easily-distracted, cowardly, stupid, and nasty are all words that perfectly described this wicked ankle-biters. As they are the result of a diet of rabbits, rats, moles, voles, and other mammalian vermin, they have similar but exaggerated features in the face with uneven ears, bulbous eyes, flat noses and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Hobs are usually about 1-3 feet tall with yellow to reddish leathery skin stretched over the boney bodies that are a mockery of the humanoid form. A trademark and unusual feature of the hob is the small horns or antlers they often have growing out of their temples. Some hobs headbutt each other in silly little games that often devolve into bloody fights between the creatures.

Hunched like apes with short legs and long arms, hobs rely on numbers or ambush to get their better of their prey, as they have neither the size nor the strength nor the intelligence to do much better. They are so common that many farmer's almanacs consider them pests and include handy descriptions on how to deal with hobs poking about your property. Still, like any beastmen, they are dangerous and a large enough group of hobs can go from barn thieves to raiding the villages if not dealt with quickly enough.

In a tribe of beastmen, they are the lowest of the low; hobbs quickly fall in-line under the scrutiny of bigger, meaner beastmen.

MOBS

Mobs have been described as a parody of orcs by loremasters and they're not wrong to categorize them as such. Usually in hues ranging between blue to green to yellow with porcine feature, such as snouts and tusks, mobs are the second most common breed of beastmen and make up the bulk of any tribe's warriors. They are not much smarter than hobs but are clever enough to prioritize, make tools, weapons and armor, and come up with strategies to overcome more than farmers with pitchforks. The biggest thing they have over mobs is size: they are between 4 and 7 feet tall with powerful builds but are prone to fattening themselves up on the spoils of war. They enjoy bullying lesser creatures, especially hobs, and are known to force the hobs to play cruel games for their amusement.

An organized group of mobs can make for a fierce army of brutes.

PROWLERS

Not even predatory animals are safe from the insatiable appetite of the beast hag. When a beast hag has been fed a diet infused with meat from predatory animals, such as mountain lions or wolves, she births prowlers.

Covered in shaggy fur, with powerful limbs and a terrifying fang filled mouth, they are remarkably stealthy for their intimidating builds. They use their natural predatory instincts, enhanced senses and survivalist aptitude to stalk the area surrounding a brood's cave or a beastmen camp for intruders or prey. They are gifted with surprising cunning when it comes to tracking prey and the elite of their kind are infamous for taking pleasure in picking off straggles of traveling party over a several day period before making a more direct move.

Still, they are known to be the most cowardly and lazy of their kind, and are the first to run when things don't go their way.

ORGS

Brute strength incarnate, orgs are the most valuable and difficult members of the common beastmen rabble. Not only does a beast hag require a steady diet of man flesh to birth these huge monsters, they are dull-witted and their power/size makes them difficult to control. Furthermore, their own monstrous appetites can often rival that of the beast hag and, in a pinch, they will kill and eat their own brethren.

Still, you will find at least one org in any band of beastmen. They are used for tasks that require immense strength, like lifting and moving trees or boulders, and in battle they crush all but the swiftest and most experienced warriors with their superior reach and their enormous great clubs. Furthermore, as they develop, their hides becomes so tough that they can shrug off blows from most practical weaponry. While other beastmen are feared for their ability to overrun small villages, a full grown org is enough to terrorize a county on his own.

Next time we will look at the more elite and uncommon breeds of beast men.

PEOPLE FIRST: The Beastmen Vs. The Beastfolk Pt. 2

BEASTFOLK: PEOPLE FIRST

Beastfolk are not beastmen.

In a land where horrible and monstrous beastmen terrorize the countryside, peoples with animal features are feared by the common folk. This means that even if they have good intentions, a person with animal like features is unlikely to be trusted or welcome company. Especially in the Free Kingdoms of Thule, where anything exotic is distrusted, unusual people are hunted down or run out of town. That being said, there are such people in Sublanarya that are no more inclined towards evil than humans or elves. Among the ignorant, they are "monsters" and among worldly peoples, they are called the "beastfolk".

Beastfolk come in many shapes and sizes, have a wide variety of cultures, and can be found in territories just beyond civilization (and others right under civilization's feet) all around Sublanarya and beyond. They may share animal instincts, but there are as unalike to each other as humans are to elves and dwarves are to elves, meaning that they have just as many reasons to get-along, or not, as anyone else. And then, on the issue of being unwelcome in many places throughout the realm, beastfolk mostly keep to their varied home environments with a few exceptions. Those that travel into lands dominated by human and elf alike, usually do so profit or for more noble causes.

Perhaps the greatest irony in the way that humanoids treat beastfolk is that, if they chose to work alongside them, they could fight the beastmen together. The beastfolk have just as much cause, if not more, to eliminate the threat of the beastmen. Beastmen are a corruption of nature and many beastfolk cultures revolve around natural order. And the beastmen are an insult to all beastfolk: whenever an innocent beastfolk is caught and punished by human hands, it is beastmen who are to blame for this discrimination. Lastly, just as humans, beastmen encroach upon the territories where beastfolk live and threaten their lives. The great irony is that while beastfolk are often erroneously lumped together with beastmen, they are often the ones keeping the beastmen threat from spreading into human lands. They are allies to the good peoples of this world, whether the good peoples realize it or not.

The beastfolk want the same things as any peoples; they want their homes to be safer and more prosperous for themselves, their loved ones and their children. Family is important and at the core of all beastfolk cultures. This comes from their tribal nature that is further nurtured by their reclusive lives. Most beastfolk tribes are far from humanity and, those that live aside them, are separated by choice or by threat of force. This means that most beastfolk seek friendship within their own tribes and through neighboring tribes. It is important to remember the strength and importance of beastfolk bonds as they inform everything they do. The catfolk warrior who rips the throat from a red mantis does so to protect her children. The dhole sailor traveling across the world owes a life debt to his captain. The blind ratfolk who steals bread from a cart has a sick father to feed. The grippli druid goes to the big city to convince the lord mayor to stop using the river that goes to her swamp.

The difference between beastmen and beastfolk is simple: beastmen are inhuman beasts. Beastfolk are people first and beasts second.

Let's take a look at each common variety of beastfolk in Sublanarya.

MONSTROUS: The Beastmen Vs. The Beastfolk Part I

 MONSTROUS PART I:

THE BEASTMEN

In Sublanarya, there are no orcs or goblins. At least, they aren't called that.

This was a decision I made to create a more unique feeling to the setting in a subtle way. This meant I needed to replace them with an equivalent horde-like threat. After all, people need a reason to be weary of going off the beaten path. So I turned to creating a monstrous breed that was a worthy threat and could fit into all manner of niches. Really it was a matter of adapting the roles of various classic monsters from ogres to lizardfolk. The most common humanoid threat to the every day folk are the "beastmen".

It all began in the east, in a region called the Hold. This region had long been home to a mix of feudal colonies, trade towns and many nomadic tribes. It is a cold, wild and desolate landscape that is considered the edge of civilization by most. It is a place for dark magic, for giants and for strange beasts. It was during the Age of Restoration, following the defeat of the giants, that the Hold's people came under the sway of demonic influence. Mass sacrifices in mass abattoirs, dark temples that cast shadow across the land, and a new threat. From these dark halls, came the monstrous horde, and it swept across the northern continent. The Hamuts and the Zafarians managed to stave off the horde but the other free peoples were overwhelmed. It would not be until the arrival of the Holy Imperium's Diamond Fleet that the beastmen's resolve was shattered and their numbers scattered. They are still a threat and many rangers spend their lives training against it.

There are several common varieties found throughout Sublanarya. Many are directly or indirectly based on classic monsters while some are blatantly classic monsters. They often ally with other bestial races like lizardfolk and kuo-toa since their share the same gods. Particularly dangerous and related are the lycanthropes and other shapeshifters.

The common varieties are less intelligent and less dangerous, but still pose a threat to the average citizen, especially as they gather in numbers. The elite beastmen are usually more organized and dangerous. They usually have larger goals and interests than just gathering food and entertaining themselves. They all worship demons, they all eat manflesh and they all seek to destroy the peace & happiness of the civilized races. They are a challenge to civilization and a corruption of nature.