This is part two of my coverage of Morte's Planar Parade, the Planescape bestiary for 5th Edition. I did a longer deep-dive into Planescape's lore. I really have been dipping a fair bit into the original Planescape books from 2nd Edition thanks to this, and I do really feel like it deserves a bestiary and a setting guide that is a lot more extensive than this. It's kind of a similar feeling to what I felt with Spelljammer, although to an admittedly lesser extent. Planescape at least gave us a lot of subgroups like Archons, Guardinals, Demodands, Rilmanis and the expanded Modron family.
Anyway, this has been a pretty fun run! Reviewing the Monster Manual again is fun, of course, but it's always great to venture out and talk about monsters that are a lot more atypical to your regular fantasy setting.
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- Click here for the index.
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Kolyarut
- Medium Construct (Inevitable); Lawful Neutral; CR 20
A group of enemies I found particularly fascinating in the pages of the 3.5E are the Inevitables. Perhaps not their visual design, where they are merely more elaborate contracts. But the idea of a divinely-created race of constructs who existence is to ensure that certain 'inevitable' aspects of the cosmos is maintained is such an interesting idea to me. We got the Marut represented in 5th Edition with a significant change in design, but more or less the same concept. For a while, though, it seemed like 5E didn't really care to adapt the rest of the Inevitables, merely relegating the role of the Inevitable to the strongest among their ranks, the Marut.
But lo and behold, the Kolyarut makes its 5E appearance in Planescape, with an interesting twist. Kolyarut is now both the name of a type of Inevitable, but also its leader, The Kolyarut, which was created by Primus of the Modrons. Capital-The Kolyarut hangs out in Sigil, and acts as the ultimate judge and arbiter of binding terms and contracts. And if some enforcement or investigation is needed, The Kolyarut will send out Maruts to enforce the terms of the contracts, and fragments of itself -- the Kolyrauts given a stat block here -- to be both investigator/detective and enforcer.
The original 3E Kolyarut is merely just a robot man with some Greco-Roman robes. 5E's Kolyarut is a four-armed robot with blades. Star Wars General Grievous jokes notwithstanding, I feel like they could've done something more interesting here visually. The Marut redesign was a very distinctive steampunk/clockpunk design with a strange organic eyeball within. The Kolyarut just feels rather... basic, really. I still enjoy the lore of the Inevitables, and having these multiversal robo-detectives running around is neat, but I kind of wished they didn't look so bland.
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Maelephant
- Large Fiend; Lawful Evil; CR 10
Ah, monster elephants! When I first saw the Maelephants, I kind of rolled my eyes at what's just another monstrous animal-man. 5E did give a nice reinvention to the Maelephant that makes it a bit more monstrous while still keeping the base silhouette -- the 5E Maelephant has several spidery eyes on its head (or perhaps it's a helmet?) and has rather exaggerated tusks and spiky armour that sets it apart from a mere elephant-man like the Loxodon. The end result is a monster that only appears to have the head of an elephant instead of just being a cartoon elephant man, which is what this design is meant to be.
Maelephants are fiends that unleashes toxic fumes from their trunk that specifically saps memory. In the game, this is represented by a Maelephant's opponents to temporarily forget their combat training, spellcasting abilities and proficiencies; leaving them vulnerable to the Maelephant's considerable strength and to follow the orders of whatever fiendish allies. They are apparently extremely faithful to whatever sinister contract that they have entered, putting them as lawful evil.
I find them quite interesting. Elephant devils that absorb memory isn't a connotation I would've made on my own, but I do find this guy to be quite neat.
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Modron - Decaton
- Large Construct; Lawful Neutral; CR 8
Gasp, can it be? Modron expansion? Yes! The original Monster Manual brought the Modrons to a spotlight in modern D&D, but only the weakest Modron variants, all the way up to the Pentadrone. Planescape brings in the top dogs of the Modron race, the hierarchs whose names end in -ton. We are actually counting backwards in terms of power, starting off with the Decaton and moving up until we get all the way to Primus.
And right away you can see the difference in the aesthetics of the Decaton from the monstrous octopus-creature in 1E with the mouth of a dead fish. 2E and 5E both give us a more mechanized take of the generally same body design, interpreting the starfish tentacles as metallic limbs. I must say that I like the 2E 'steampunk' design a lot more. 5E has this obsession of giving the Modrons weirdly and contrastingly human features... which worked out for them a bit. The 5E Decaton has the Monodrone's very human eyeballs and lips, which is fine... but also has a pair of baby legs that it walks around in, which I find to be supremely disturbing. I don't know. I just don't feel like I can take the Decaton particularly seriously with those legs.
Keep in mind that the Decaton is a large creature, too, and you can see the scale to a normal human helmet that it's manipulating in its ten tentacles. A Decaton has ten tentacles and ten eyes, and their function is to monitor the physical well-being of the Modron minions. They are able to unleash lightning bolts from their eyes, and all the Modron hierarchs have the ability to plane shift and cast buffing spells.
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Modron - Nonaton
- Large Construct; Lawful Neutral; CR 10
Going up another rank is the Nonaton, which... yeah, just looks weird in 1E. 2E and 5E reinvents the Nonaton as a snake/caterpillar robot with the single eye and mouth on the end. I like the Nonaton's design a lot more than the Decaton, for the simple reason that we got rid of weird fleshy baby-feet. Fleshy eyes and luscious lips are good enough for the strange contrast that the 5E design team wants.
I do like the Nonaton as well, with four pairs of arms running down its serpentine body, and the ninth arm popping up from the center of its head. Nonatons, interestingly, are the enforcers of Mechanus, being in charge of hunting down rogue units (which is a plot point emphasized in both Monster Manuals' entries for the Modrons), and also interrogate any interlopers that come to Mechanus. Most importantly, it is able to summon a massive pillar of truth that forces anyone that enters it to revert into its natural form.
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Modron - Octon
- Large Construct; Lawful Neutral; CR 11
I actually love the original 1E design of the Octon, with its design best described as a plate with alien tentacles, stubby feet, and a pointy head-like organ. 2E redesigns the Octon into a rather boring design that's just a more elaborate Quadrone, and 5E also redesigns it to a rather mundane octopus-bot with a semi-dome head. I don't think this newest design even feels like a 'Modron', and most certainly not one that's supposed to be higher-up in 'evolutionary' ranking compared to all the Modrons we've seen before. I don't know. They don't quite feel like 'part of the set', if you know what I mean?
Anyway, Octons oversee daily governance, collecting and providing data to other heirarchs both above and below them. Their unique attack is a rather bland 'whirlwind attack'. I don't know. Design-wise it's a cute octopus/jellyfish robot, but as part of a set in the Modrons, it really feels off.
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Modron - Septon
- Large Construct; Lawful Neutral; CR 12
The Septons were also a lot more elaborate, alien-looking affairs in 1E and 2E. But in 5E, it's just... another almost-fully-mechanical robot. I do like that it at least still has eyeballs, with a tiny moncular head, and two eyeballs floating on top of two of its seven tentacle-claws. But once more, I would like to reiterate that this just feels like a random robot. There's nothing that screams 'Modron' visually from him, and you could say that these guys are part of the Rilmani or something and I'd believe you. I don't know... if you introduced a pattern for most of a type of creature and drop it without any real reason, they just feel off, you know?
Septons are the auditors of base Modrons, ensuring that operations are in perfect order. They also record stuff, so that kind of makes the Octons' jobs a bit more redundant. They have a 'lightning network' attack. And... I don't know. Maybe if the writers cared a bit more to give the more powerful heirarchs more interesting roles, I would be able to forgive their more generic-robot designs.
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Modron - Hexton
- Huge Construct; Lawful Neutral; CR 13
And I mean, I wouldn't want the Modrons to be just 'weird organic aliens with some metal parts' like what the 1E and 2E Hexton turned out into, but 5E went the other way and made the Hexton into just a big, lumbering iron giant with a single organic eye. Again, this just doesn't feel like a Modron, but just a random generic big mecha.
The Hexton is of the 'huge' size class, and the artwork we see it in has it looming over a Septon and two Octons that are barely half its height. Hextons serve as field generals that command troops, and are often the leaders of the Great Modron Marches. The 'hex' thing extends to the six glowing spikes in their body... which, again, feels a bit boring. They kind of also just dropped the whole geometry thing, didn't they? How is this a Modron? This is just a giant robot that shoots lightning bolts.
It is a bit of a letdown, really. I admittedly wasn't a fan of the original Planescape's take on the hierarch Modrons just turning into weird 'Frankenstein' cyborgs with random amalgamations of organic and robotic parts (and it gets increasingly human-like as we go up the Quinton, Quarton, Tertian, Secundus and Primus), but making them fully robotic, particularly after all the previous Modron variants have had a rather consistent 'uncanny organic features on geometric shapes' theme feels very odd.
I was actually quite excited when I flipped through this book and saw that we're getting some Modron expansion, but they didn't really give us much lore, and the three stronger Modron hierarchs just didn't get anything interesting either visually or lore-wise. I don't tend to be so negative in my D&D monster reviews unless I have a strong opinion, but in this case I definitely do.
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Planar Incarnate
- Gargantuan Celestial or Fiend; Any Alignment; CR 22
We've got a more abstract creature here, which does fit with the whole 'Planescape' setting. I will readily admit that these sort of more ambiguous-looking creatures are not my cup of tea in monster design, although I recognize the need for them. Essentially, the Planar Incarnates are pure, fundamental expressions of the Upper and Lower Planes made manifest, roiling energies with features distinct to whichever heaven or hell analogue it is birthed out of. It's like elementals, but instead of embodying fire or water, the Planar Incarnates embody good and evil -- such as D&D's cosmology defines them, anyway.
Morte's Planar Parade gives us an example of a good one and a bad one, with the Lower Plane Planar Incarnate being a ball of hellish rock and flame, while the Upper Plane has like miniature copies of the idyllic grasses and buildings on it. Planar Incarnates are noted to appear to protect their home from destructive or antithetical forces, before melding and merging back to their plane of origin. This does raise some questions -- do they always appear when a sufficiently powerful antithetical force enters their plane? What does this mean for the Blood War between the lawful evil devils and the chaotic evil demons; why are the Planar Incarnates not involved there?
The Planar Incarnate itself is a whopping CR 22 creature, but I honestly don't find its abilities all that interesting. Other than generic attacks and legendary resistances, its 'planar exhalation' is a very simple necrotic/radiant breath weapon. I know 5E is moving away from being so alignment-focused, but I felt like Planescape would be the setting to do an exception.
Being a bit curious about what they are in the original Planescape, I ended up looking them up... and the original Incarnates (not 'Planar'!) are far more interesting to me. Incarnates are embodiments of specifically abstract principles, and exist as balls of light that gravitate towards planes and beings that suit their individual aspects. And when they possess a being, they will essentially enhance that quality in whoever they possess. The evil incarnates are the seven sins in Christianity (anger, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, pride and sloth) and the good incarnates are the seven virtues (charity, courage, hope, faith, temperance, wisdom and justice). Even if the designers wanted to stay away from the more religious themes, I felt like being incarnations of like, lawful obedience or chaotic freedom or whatever would be way more interesting than 'big blob cloud go smash'.
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Razorvine Blight
- Medium Plant; Neutral Evil; CR 1
This is kind of cute. The idea of Razorvine has been around since the original 2nd Edition Planescape Campaign Setting, with Razorvine itself being likened to the 'kudzu of the Outer Plains'. Location-specific hazards are one of the sorts of things you kind of take for granted, but does end up adding up to the flavour that gives your locations some identity. Now 2E's Razorvines are just that, spiky vines that can drain vitality.
But with the Blights slowly rising to prominence across the newer editions, I love that they decided to merge the two together and create the Razorvine Blight. Regular Blights are created from a powerful vampire's curse, but Razorvine Blights are created by vampiric blood spilling upon a clump of Razorvine. Most of them are just ambush predators, acting like regular Blights... but the entry also notes that the Razorvine Blights are exposed to so much life and variety in the city that they sometimes mimic the behaviours of beings in it; and a particularly notable Razorvine Blight has actually spread copies of itself across the city, creating a one-plant spy network. That's cool!
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Rilmani - Aurumach Rilmani
- Large Celestial; Neutral; CR 17
And now we have the Rilmani, who were introduced in older editions as weird-looking metal men. And... again, they kind of look a bit boring concept-wise, the nice 2E art notwithstanding. The Rilmani are redesigned to be a lot more angular, a lot more geometric in 5th Edition, and... while I don't agree fully with just how sci-fi they look now, I will absolutely admit that this helps them stand out a lot more. Rilmani are mainly associated with the Outlands, and they represent the alignment of True Neutral. Rilmani want to maintain the equilibrium between good, evil, law and chaos, because they view all of these as fundamental to the multiverse's existence. Thus they try to ensure that no force over-exerts itself in the balance of the cosmos.
This is something that I feel is quite specific to the setting of Planescape and the clash of ideas between the different planes, and I feel like many of the other celestial, fiend, law and chaos factions actually do this a bit more interestingly. Just being a fence-sitter that makes sure everyone gets the same share of cosmic territory doesn't feel particularly exciting or easy to work into stories.
The Rilmani are also all metallic thematically -- which brings them in rather close conceptual theme with Metallic Dragons, Modrons or Inevitables. They go for a very angular, more abstract-sculpture looking design. Starting off with the most powerful is the Aurumach Rilmani, representing the metal of gold. They've got got a mouthless head that's floating off a slender body and is orbited by several floating spires. They normally wait within the Outlands, only appearing when the risk of planar collapse is about to happen, fighting with their spells and manifested blades.
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Rilmani - Cuprilach Rilmani
- Medium Celestial; Neutral; CR 12
Next in line for the Rilmani is the Cuprilach (copper), and I find the design of the two trooper Rilmanis to be a lot more interesting. The Cuprilach has legs that are still metallic, but not robotic -- the legs are bent in weird ways that wouldn't look too weird on like a demon or something. There's an orb on the hips, and then the upper body is just hovering on top of it. I like the head, too, which appears to be an eyeless cobra hood ending in mandibles.
Cuprilachs infiltrate places of power, serving the Rilmani as spies and assassins. They have spells that allow them to disguise themselves or to infiltrate, and they will follow the Aurumachs without question or emotion, and are single-minded at completing their mission.
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Rilmani - Ferrumach Rilmani
- Medium Celestial; Neutral; CR 9
The weakest Rilmani is the Ferrumach, which feels a bit more mundane as a robot. I do like the angular head and shoulder-pads, and the extremely strange design of the legs. This is kind of what I want to see in 'fantasy robots', which I didn't find particularly interesting with the 5E Kolyarut and to a lesser extent the Aurumach, both of which wouldn't look too out-of-place as Star Wars extras. There's something about the Ferrumach's proportions that make it look a lot more like something that magic would create.
Ferrumachs are footsoldiers and are relatively single-minded at, again, obeying the orders of their Aurumachs. Their arms can transform into blades, and they can shoot these at the enemy. I find the designs of the Rilmani to be a bit interesting, but I also find their lore to be quite... a bit too underdeveloped for my tastes. This is another thing that I feel I needed to go back to the 2E work to really understand what's going on with them.
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Sunfly
- Tiny Celestial; Chaotic Good; CR 0 (regular)
- Medium Swarm of Tiny Celestials; Chaotic Good; CR 1 (Swarm)
It's a little buddies! I think these are new to 5th Edition, and they sure are... interesting? Sunflies are obvious mascot material, and they've got head of a smiling cow-thing, a huge fuzzy body with bumblebee wings, bug legs, and a stinger tail. And they are colourful. The Sunflies move around different Outer Planes, and they act as a bit of a barometer on how 'healthy' a plane is. When the planes they are in struggle, so are the planes around them. Sunflies are also able to inject a specific toxin to other creatures, and these toxins have different effects depending on which plane you are in. Apparently, in the city of Sigil, Sunflies are treated as very valuable pets.
They are neat, but I also feel like every setting in D&D is a bit obsessed at churning out a brand-new 'cute' thing that sometimes feel a bit forced. In the Sunfly's case, they don't really scream 'plane-hopping being' to me, nor does the artwork really feel like this is a creature easily mutated by other planes. I would find them more interesting if they showed off proper plane-touched Sunflies. But maybe I'm just cynical here, but I feel like they just added the Sunfly to potentially sell more cutesy merchandise. I don't know. I'm very indifferent about these guys.
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Time Dragon
- Gargantuan/Huge/Large/Medium Dragon; Neutral; CR 26/18/11/5
We've got a new setting, and with a new setting comes a new dragon. And I think I can skip through a lot of introduction about the different size and age classes, and all that jazz. But I have a nice soft spot for the Time Dragons, and for me personally it's because of Warcraft. Warcraft's pulp novels is the first D&D-adjacent fantasy world I've stepped into, and this was before World of Warcraft popularized the game. But in the novels I read, among the five main dragonflights is the Bronze Dragons, which unlike D&D's equivalents, are actually the stewards of time. Giving all the dragonflights an aspect of reality to protect gave them such a huge level of gravitas.
And Time Dragons are similar to this concept (or rather, the Bronze Dragonflight are most likely based on 2E Planescape's Time Dragons), being creatures that are detached from time, and have a unique viewpoint on past, present, future, and even potential branching timelines. Their hoard revolves around keeping items preserved from ancient history and fallen cultures... and perhaps even those that have been annihilated from timelines due to time-travel shenanigans.
Also, my god how sick are those artwork for the adults? I particularly love the full-page art for the Ancient Time Dragon, with it almost ghostly-white scales, its massive set of feathery head-horns, its long tapering beard and the halo of light in the background. Of course it's coiled around a giant hourglass. Why wouldn't you, when you are a time-controlling dragon? They have a rainbow theme around their wings, with glittering rainbow veins that are meant to suggest 'time's pathways and possibilities'.
The Wyrmling and Young Time Dragons aren't particularly interesting combat-wise, merely having a time breath that 'desynchronizes' you from the timeline and weakens them. But the Adult and Ancient variants are a fair bit more interesting, having the abilities to 'slip' through time to negate attacks and teleport, 'fling' enemies through time (essentially removing them from existence for a turn), exist in two simultaneous space/time locations at the same time, or slow down the time of an attacker. The Ancients are able to create time gates to specific times and places in the multiverse (with the limitations being deities' domains) and the Ancient Time Dragons use this ability to essentially act as the multiverse's Dr. Who, preserving fate-determining moments or to banish threats outside the flow of time.
I really like the concept of Time Dragons. Of course, they are mostly neutral and they are beings that exist outside the general perception of time, and I like the flexibility of these Time Dragons being as likely to be antagonistic, helpful, or straight-up indifferent towards the party that encounters them. The most important thing here, of course, is that the Time Dragons are able to view the world in a much larger scale than mere adventurers, giving them a unique motivation that not a lot of creatures can compete with.
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Vargouille Reflection
- Tiny Fiend; Chaotic Evil; CR 1
Our last creature is another twist on a somewhat more obscure monster, the Vargouille. I love the Vargouilles, and I honestly found them to be a bit of an underrated horror story for the simple reason that the 'instant-death-and-become-a-flying-demon-head' isn't really a fate you want to push onto your very happy players. The Vargouille Reflection is a Sigil variant with a unique twist... instead of reproducing into more Vargouilles that look more or less the same, the Vargouille Reflection has a little ability to mimic its enemies, terrifying that creature by appearing as their own disembodied head.
I'm not convinced that this needs a whole stat-block, but on the other hand the artwork and the little boost to remind people that Vargouilles exist is really neat! Vargouilles are canonically like 'hell ticks' that often find themselves planarly displaced anyway, so it does make sense that they are included in a Planescape book.
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And that is it for Morte's Planar Parade! The third half of the book deals with a bunch of humanoid factions, like the Doomguard and the Bleak Cabal and the Fraternity of Order and the Harmonium... but as I've been mentioning, I don't really care to delve too deeply into very faction-specific enemies. I also skipped Shemeshka the Arcanoloth, who is a very specific character. There are, admittedly, some omissions that I find surprising (like the Lillend) but I feel like they did a much better job at representing a lot of the things highlighted in the original Planescape setting.
I did have some grouses towards how certain things are adapted, like the Modron hierarchs and Incarnates in particular... but overall, I felt like they tried a lot more here than some other setting updates. I do really feel that for a setting like Planescape, the truncated bios and write-ups for many of these monsters really do hurt the presentation, and I feel like there really could have been a lot more context given to so many more of them that doesn't require me to flip up the older editions for reference.
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