Reviewing Undertale Monsters - Part 2

This is part two of my coverage of Undertale's 'lesser' monsters. I did a whole talk about Undertale back in the first part of this review series, which I won't repeat the majority of here. But essentially, Undertale is a bit of a deconstruction game on a lot of genres in the fantasy RPG genre of video games, particularly on the concept of respawning, monster deaths, and the ability to actually interact with every single sentient being in the game. 

As mentioned there as well, I'm also not reviewing any of the major characters who speak to you a lot in the main story -- they don't really give much for me to talk about monster-inspiration wise since a lot of them are just a simple humanoid monster concept, and it'll take a bit too long for me to go in-depth about their characterizations and role in the game. And as I play through this game, so far this will include Papyrus, Sans, Toriel, Undyne, Alphys, Mettaton, Asgore and Napstablook. 

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Aaron

"This seahorse has a lot of HP (Horsepower)."

I didn't quite realize that Aaron is meant to be a 'seahorse' until I read that flavour text, but he sure is a merman with the upper body of a muscular man and a horse head. It's an eclectic mixture of puns involving water-themed creatures! Aaron is most memorable thanks to the fact that every other dialogue out of his mouth is mentioning his muscles, or trying to flirt with either you or another monster on the encounter creepily. And he ends everything with a wink, because everyone knows that winks totally makes creepy innuendos into just 'playful' 'flirting'. ;)

(To be clear, Aaron's innuendos are extremely tame -- Undertale traumatizes its characters with murder and moral choices, not sexual harassment).

Sparing Aaron involves you, of course, flexing at him. That's kind of obvious, isn't it? But instead of 'befriending' or 'defeating' him, the act of flexing over and over causes Aaron to take it as a challenge and flex so hard that he 'leaves the room'. That's the kind of absurd humour that Undertale engages in, and I love it for that. With his name being more of a person's name than a descriptor (even though you can meet multiple Aarons) Aaron can actually go through character development -- forcing him to listen to creepy music makes Aaron self-aware enough of what it means to be creeped out, permanently changing all of Aaron's dialogues to remove his flirting for the rest of the playthrough. He still winks, though. ;)

Woshua

"This humble germophobe seeks to cleanse the whole world."

An interesting design in that it's not readily identifiable as anything -- Woshua appears to be a stout humanoid with one 'hand' and a mask-like face sprouting off where his right arm will be. Where his head should be is a tank of water with a... duck bobbing up and down? I'm not sure what the joke is meant to be. A washing machine, I guess? 

Woshua's whole deal is that he really likes to clean stuff. It gets disgusted by your jokes (he finds it 'dirty'!) and his attacks are framed as him trying to clean the filth off of you. You need to ask Woshua to clean you, at which point it starts adding 'cleaning bullets' into its attack and you need to run into them. 

Interestingly, and a nice testament to this game's commitment to its monster personalities, if you are somehow dirty because you hugged another monster (like Moldbygg below), and tried to hug Woshua, it will freak out and flee the battle. 

Moldbygg

"One size greater than Moldaverage."

Undertale's only monster with 'variants', Moldbygg initially appears with other Moldsmals in an area far away from the Ruins that they appear alongside. This is in a game that doesn't actually repeat monsters, and I suppose it's kind of a joke on how many video games simply reuse the same asset with different colours to represent different, stronger monsters? The joke of course is that the battle sprites are in black-and-white, meaning that you can't tell apart. Interacting with the Moldbygg will cause it to 'erupt' out of the ground from being a jelly into a giant monster-worm with the jelly moulding forming 'fangs' around an 'eye'. It's a neat design, but the monster variation/mimic joke actually could have gone a bit further in my opinion to actually differentiate itself. As it is, I can think of other video games where a similar gimmick is utilized. 

Moldbygg gyrates in place, and just like Moldsmal, you need to respect its boundaries by... 'unhugging' it. Okay? I like the idea and visuals, but I just didn't find this monster particularly memorable or funny. 

Temmie

"Loves to pet cute humans. But you're allergic!"

I don't include any of the characters, including Napstablook, but Temmie is less of a character and would later be revealed to be an entire species. In fact, one of the visitable areas in the game is the Secret Temmie Village, accessible by walking down a hidden pathway! Temmie is a strange cat-dog creature with human hair, fairy wings and a :3 face, and is the avatar of one of the designers of the game. Never a big fan of author avatar characters, but Temmie the monster is characterized as being so chaotically nonsensical that it's hard not to love her.

Firstly, a Temmie's :3 face is animated to constantly be vibrating at a different speed than the rest of the creature. Leave the game idle for too long, and in a nice interface screw joke the Temmie's face will vibrate off off the character. Temmie herself isn't actually hostile to you, she just wants to pet humans and accidentally hurts you! Oops! The real-world Temmie actually hates muscles and horses, and you 'defeat' Temmie by flexing at her... which causes her to run away and be replaced by an Aaron. 

The most memorable part of Temmie, of course, is that it speaks with over-the-top uwu language like "awwAwa cute!! (pets u)" and "hOI!!! i'm tEMMIE!!". It's so surreal, I can't help but like it! The entire Temmie Village is filled with Temmie NPCs who speak in a similar language style and interact with you in hilraious manners like a shopkeeper who asks you to help fund her '4 colleg', a Temmie that gets 'hOIvs!' from touching you because she's allergic to humans, and a Temmie that randomly speaks in perfect English,

Shyren

"Tone deaf. She's too ashamed to sing her deadly song."

You fight Shyren exactly once, but she only really appears for her encounter and doesn't have a ton of dialogue so I don't think she counts as a 'miniboss' or 'supporting character' the way Napstablook does. Shyren is a pun on Siren, and she's shy... but she wants to be a singer. And the pacifist way to deal with her is to just hum to her, at which point she begins to sing and get more confidence and she looks towards you. The game technically can go on multiple more turns after that, as more and more monsters come to watch the show offscreen. 

I do hvae a fair bit to say about Shyren, though. On the surface she's just a bit of an atypical-looking mermaid, but the 'Shyren' we see is actually two beings, confirmed in-game when we see Shyren briefly at the post-game and it's just the "head". Shyren's just an anglerfish-looking monster with a smiling face, and what looks like a chunk of her hair (or a pair of lips when her head is turned away) is actually her fish tail. That entire 'mermaid' lower body is actually her manager, a giant worm or leech with massive lips -- which gives the appearance of a pair of arms for the mermaid-style figure. I thought that was a cool bit of art fun from the designers, even if I feel like there could be something more done with her.

Mad Dummy

"Because they're a ghost, physical attacks will fail."

Mad Dummy is the cousin of the Dummy that serves as your encounter tutorial, and you encounter him in a location called the dumping grounds. And Mad Dummy will be angry with you... regardless of what you did to Dummy. This is a cute little subversion for this 'rewards you for sparing monsters' game, because Mad Dummy is understandably angry if you destroyed Dummy.... but he also gets angry if you didn't respect Dummy enough to fight him. 

Mad Dummy is technically a ghost possessing a dummy, and while the image here is static, he's actually splitting the Dummy into three pieces that moves around erratically -- and even moreso as the fight goes on in a rather hilarious manner. His 'head and nose', 'upper jaw' and 'lower jaw' segment dances along frantically to the tune of the background music, and it's quite neat. The battle against him involves him summoning little Dummy Bots and getting increasingly frustrated with his own minions as you dodge their surprisingly high-tech missiles... and redirect them at the Mad Dummy. As the flavour text notes, Mad Dummy is a ghost and is impervious to regular attacks, so you need to hit it with his own attacks... something that is a bit cute since it actually makes a creative use of the game screen. 

Kind of a fun encounter, actually, and probably my favourite non-boss fight. 

Vulkin

"Mistakenly believes its lava can heal people."

Starting off the 'Volcano' area is a fire-themed enemy, Vulkin... who is a cute little volcano with an anime-blushing face, tiny little legs, and she shoots lava at people. The whole joke is that she mistakenly believes that her lava can heal people, even though it's... lava! She also shoots thunder with the (actually true) belief that it makes people move faster and is helpful. You spare her by encouraging her, which makes her attacks go crazier until the moment that the spare button is triggered to be doable. Not much to say about her, I did actually feel like a lot of the Volcano-area monsters are pretty one-note with a single character trait that leads to their sparing. 

Tsunderplane

"Seems mean, but does it secretly like you?"

This was most certainly a joke that landed a lot better back in 2015, but Tsunderplane is a joke on 'tsundere', which was entering the lexicon at that time. Tsunderplane is a tsundere with like a wig or a hat or something, and her whole existence is a pun. The fact that this is an airplane in a setting that has mostly featured organic monsters and funky non-realistic robots adds to the sheer absurdity of Tsunderplane. She says lines like "Id... Idiot!" and she gets in the way! Not on purpose or anything! She 'accidentally' bumps you with her wing!

The way you spare Tsunderplane is to get close enough -- but not too close -- to the airplanes that spawn in the 'bullet hell' mechanic, which is a cute commentary on tsunderes in anime... who get angry if they get ignored but panic if their crush gets too close. And when you spare her, instead of just graying out she actually becomes tiny and observes you from afar. I found this one to be funny. 

Pyrope

"This mischievous monster is never warm enough."

A simple pun of 'pyro' and 'rope', I kind of like the design of this one. An almost-featureless head with a wide happy grin, it's on fire, and the rope forms like a torch. There's a pair of scissors at the bottom. Pyrope drops bombs down upon you, and to spare him you have to encourage him to 'heat up' twice. Not much to say, there's a cool heat-haze effect that happens as Pyrope gets wilder and wilder, but ultimately I do feel like other than his design Pyrope is one of the less interesting monsters. Sorry, Pyrope! 

Royal Guards

"Two lovers staring over the edge of the cauldron of hell."

It's just two guards in full armour. Not much to say based on their design, if we're being honest, and after the hilarity of the dog guards from Snowdin, I felt like these guys could have been a lot cooler or weirder or cuter or whatever. The way to spare them is quite cute, as you get one of the guards to take off his armour, and the other guards gets flustered and you encourage him to confess his love... it's probably one of the more elaborate ones of a non-named-character encounter, but overall it's kind of straightforward.

With the fact that the monsters and humans are meant to be different and that it's a huge plot point,, the fact that there really isn't a twist to the Royal Guards at all makes them feel extra bland. 

Madjick

"This enemy can only speak in magic words."

The next couple of enemies are encountered in the 'Core' area, and I do think that the random enemies in the later half of the game are a bit less inspired due to the greater focus on puzzles and character moments. There are a lot more focus put into the mystery and plot-dumping, and not so much a lot of wandering as the Waterfall and Snowdin areas were... and I think the game designers just shrugged off the 'random encounters' subversion at this point. 

Madjick is really fun, though. He's like a armless goblin wizard guy that's clearly having a good time with his smile. He's got two floating orbs, the Chaser Orb and the Corner Orb, both influencing the attacks that Madjick does. Staring at each of the orbs causes Madjick to become spareable. Or, you could pull out your Stick and Madjick thinks you're a fellow wizard. But rather hilariously, if you go for the 'Talk' option (the default option you do to try and establish a rapport with these monsters) you actually get confused by Madjick's babbling instead. 

Knight Knight

"This megaton mercenary wields the Good Morningstar."

Knight Knight would be a boring humanoid enemy if not for the fact that she has two animated faces. Where a regular human head would be is the top head, with eyes that move around, but her armour also makes up a second, somewhat bird-like head on the center of her body. That's a cool design! Again, both Knight Knight and Madjick show how to do a 'humanoid' monster that isn't just a regular humanoid design. 

The whole gimmick is that Knight Knight is a pun on 'night night'. She's very stoic and curt, but if you hum to her enough, she falls asleep. There is a cute easter egg that you can hum Shyren's song to her, and Knight Knight falls asleep much faster!

Final Froggit

"Its future looks brighter and brighter."

In a nice nod to a trope in many video games, some of the monsters in the final area are souped-up versions of monsters from the first area. Final Froggit is, of course, an epic version of Froggit. It's got fiery spikes, a crown, a mouth with scars on it... and even the random second face between his legs is now a bit more epic-looking. 

The attacks are more over-the-top versions of what Froggit has, and the previous attempts that could have pacified Froggit are useless. Instead, you need to 'Mystify' Final Froggit, which... just makes it realize there's more to learn in the world? I feel this is a bit of a letdown in terms of having either a joke or a character moment. 

Other than that little gag, though, there's not much to say about Final Froggit... but you don't really need much to say about Final Froggit. The whole joke is that it's a stronger, cooler, final version of Froggit.

Whimsalot

"It finally stopped worrying."

Our favourite little neurotic moth-fairy Whimsun has actually gone through a character arc, unlike Froggit, and has became a full-on knight! He's got a knight's helm, a double-tipped lance, and Whimsalot's dialogue is full of lines that a paladin or a knight would say, like 'there's still hope.' and 'not this time.' and 'I've made my choice.'

But whatever ultra-determination that Whimsalot gained can be shaken if you pray to it, making Whimsalot remember its conscience. It's a cute little 'paladin goes a bit too far' story, I guess, although I kind of wished that they made Whimsalot a bit more of a jerk to sell this character arc. 

Astigmatism

"This relentless bully ALWAYS gets its way."

Astigmatism is the upgraded version of Loox, the cyclops monster, and it has one of my favourite idle animations. The normal design is neat, but nothing to write home about. It keeps the big-eyeball look of Loox, but with more spikes and tattoos, similar to the bells and whistles given to Final Froggit. But then you see its idle animation, and it closes its 'main' eye... and the whole design morphs into a second face. The eyeball opens up to reveal a grinning mouth, and the two lateral stripes/tattoos have smaller little eyes pop up. That's so, so cool. 

Astigmatism is sometimes described as a condition where you have both 'plus' (farsightedness) and 'minus' (nearsightedness). It's a very inaccurate way to describe the condition, but this basically describes how to deal with Astigmatism. It flip-flops on whether it wants to pick on or be picked on, and you need to pay attention to the lines of dialogue it's saying and select the right one; either to challenge his bullying or to submit to it. 

There's a bunch of 'hard mode' versions of every single one of the Ruins monsters, but I haven't played the hard mode yet and I guess if I ever do a third part of this that covers the main NPCs and bosses, I might sneak those guys into it? 

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At this point, you would have faced all the random encounter monsters, and would be going to the end-game gauntlet of the final couple of boss monsters. After finishing that, though, assuming that you didn't go for the genocide route, the game's characters none-too-subtly tell you that you did well... but not quite good enough. Perhaps, you could investigate some characters you haven't talked to before, and maybe something else will happen? 

And MASSIVE SPOILERS for this branch of the game. It is ten years old, but it is also something that you should 

And if you did a 'pacifist' run, and befriended all the NPCs (most importantly the royal scientist Alphys) you are able to enter an area called a Secret Laboratory, which is as cool as all secret laboratories in video games are. Turns out that Alphys has been working on trying to deal with the whole 'human/monster' and 'determination' thing on her own, but her good intentions really ended up failing 

Memoryhead

"No data available."

Our first of these 'Amalgamates' is the Memoryhead, who initially just shows up in the game as a bunch of blank spaces where their names should be. They appear as our protagonist investigates a bunch of sinks in the secret lab, and they blorb out and appear as... well, as that. Their overworld sprite is actually quite different from how they are encountered in the battle, with their battle sprite looking like a whorling mass of different faces arranged in the rough shape of a comma. They say nicely creepy things like 'come join the fun' and 'you'll be with us shortly' and 'but nobody came', the latter being a significant phrase within Undertale's story. 

The Memoryhead's attacks are particularly nicely creepy, too, with a bunch of dots exploding into smiley, dead-eyed faces. Memoryhead are just weird, and at the point that you encounter the Amalgamates you would be in a Pacifist run, so while you can fight them, more than any other non-character monster, you are incentivized to look for a way to spare them. The Memoryheads, other than the shock value, is kind of the most boring of the five Amalgamates, not being tied to a previous monster and juts requiring you to check your cell phone in response to the dial-up noises it makes. 

Reaper Bird

"This relentless future finally looks brighter and brighter."

'Reaper Bird' is initially introduced as just , a comma symbol. It first appears by transforming out of an exclamation bubble that your character makes while looking at a mirror, and while its body looks like a long-necked bird, it's actually comprised of chunks of other monsters. Its head and beak is a sideways Astigmatism above, and while it's not quite as apparent, chunks of Final Froggit and Whimsalot make the rest of its body. It's also not immediately clear on this screenshot, but the Reaper Bird's body actually extends into the dialogue box, forming a bit of an interface screw. And when it speaks, it has all three dialogue options of Astigmatism, Final Froggit and Whimsalot layered on top of each other. 

I love this concept, not just the combination of these sprites and models to form a weirdly distorted being, but the fact that it banks on you, the player, being invested enough in these characters and these monsters that you would have been sparing to reach this point, and do the three actions that you would've done to spare the three component monsters. In a cute little distraction, other spare conditions from other unrelated monsters also show up, which means you do have to be paying attention. 

An extra layer of weirdness is how Reaper Bird attacks, where in the 'bullet zone' it just summons this strange, mouthless, vaguely beaked humanoid figure... who walks towards you menacingly. And at some point its head explodes and is replaced with a swarm of butterflies. The 'bullet hell' segments tended to be more representative of what the actual monster is doing, but the Amalgamates take it to a weird level. 

Endogeny

"It's unclear how many dogs this counts as."

I love Endogeny. It's a giant exaggerated dog made of white material, and a black void where its face should be. And its 'legs' are making negative spaces that resemble five more dogs, while the 'white' parts are still recognizable as distorted dog feet. Endogeny is comprised of the siblings of all the various dog NPCs you've met throughout the game, all merged and coalesced into a single being, while being a pun on 'endogenous'. It has 'dog' in it!

That hole on top also drips... some kind of mucus, which it also uses in its attacks where a little dog-with-a-hollow-face sprite shoots attacks at you in the 'bullet hell' mode. If the previous two monsters haven't made you realize what's going on, just like what the dogs did in the main game, Endogeny is meant to clue you in to the fact that these Amalgamates are nice fellows too! A good dog, er, good dogs, in this case. 

You spare Endogeny in a callback to the Greater Dog encounter, where you go through a whole sequence of trying to figure out whether it wants to be pet or if it wants to play with you. It is still a dog, so if you tried using the Stick item against it (which makes all encounters with dogs spareable) you get the same result with Endogeny. At the end of the game, if you do things right and not kill Endogeny, it gets reunited with the rest of its dog pack. 

Lemon Bread

"Welcome to my special hell."

Another one that's a bit more of a specific callback, Lemon Bread is a mixture of Shyren, Moldbygg and Aaron. She actually disguises herself as a save point, and blorbs up into a humanoid figure before facing us in... well, this form. The general look draws more from Shyren's anatomy, only replacing the fish head with that of Moldbygg's 'dune worm' mouth. And Aaron's muscular arm is there, too. Lemon Bread is specifically identified as Shyren's sister, or rather, one of her component pieces is Shyren's sister before the experimentation that was meant to keep the 'fallen down' monsters alive ended up causing her to glorp and merge together with a bunch of other monsters. 

Again, the idea is to remember how you spared the component parts of this monster, all the while avoiding the fact that Lemon Bread summons a giant facsimile of her fanged mouth to crush you. The Moldbygg part actually will sprout eyes sometimes which none of Lemon Bread's component parts has. 

Snowdrake's Mother

"Seems like it's losing itself."

And our last amalgamate is the most wretched one, identified only as 'Snowdrake's Mother'. Snowdrake is a very minor NPC, but you do meet his father as a non-battleable monster later on. It's a bit subtle but both of them do mention that their mother has been missing in action. And Snowdrake's Mother basically takes the 'snowflake as a head' concept for Snowdrake and... messes it up by having her seemingly falling apart and breaking apart. Animated, you even see Vegetoid faces where the Snowdrake's eyes would normally be, constantly opening and closing. 

Unlike the other four Amalgamates, Snowdrake's Mother is just... pathetic in battle. She's half-melting, half-destroyed, and her 'attacks', if you can even call them that, are harmless and easy to dodge, and even if it hits you they don't deal much damage. Some of them even fly off the board immediately, making it impossible to even get hit by them. She is really falling apart, and you need to tell bad jokes, like her son did, to get her to hold on to her personality, her past, and her strength of will. A very effective showcase of a 'broken-down experiment', and one that really fits well into Undertale's pacifist side of 'no one needs to die, everyone has a story'. 

CW's Supergirl - Season 6, Part 1

Supergirl, Season 6

So a couple years back, the CW's DC comics superhero shows made up the bulk of the reviews on this blog. During the huge pandemic thing, however, a lot of those shows went on hiatus, before half of them got either cancelled or turned into their last seasons. And... I think it's quite fair to say that a lot of them have essentially 'jumped the shark', so to speak. 

It's just that I never got to really watching any of them when the TV shows came back due to real life and other interests getting in the way. I did, eventually, watch some of the shows, but it was pretty slow going. For your reference, the first of these was done in early 2024... and was left in incomplete limbo for almost two years now. Since I'm going to disappear for a couple of months, I guess it's about time that these articles see the light of day. I'm not sure how much interest that these CW superhero shows -- particularly the later seasons -- will get. But since I'm not writing anything new for May/June of this year, you guys get to see what I wrote and shelved a while back. 

I guess it is somewhat appropriate timing, because there's a live-action Supergirl movie coming up this year? I don't think I've even reviewed the new Superman movie. Very behind on these things! 

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I decided to go with Supergirl first, with its final season. I really don't think there's much content to really deep-dive in a lot of these episodes, so I'm going to do what I did with the last Legends of Tomorrow season I watched, and do a 'partial season' review like this.

And... I'll probably have to explain how I do these reviews; I didn't write all of this article in one go, but rather watched an episode and wrote a couple of paragraphs for each episode, so on and so forth. I don't think I had the encyclopedic knowledge of the CW-verse that I used to have, nor do I want the pressure of having to maintain that standard, and honestly, nor did I have the time or interest to do so again. But if you see some minor inconsistencies in the reviews, that is what to blame. These TV episode reviews are also tricky to write because sometimes there's a natural mid-season cutoff point, but sometimes I just talk more in certain episodes compared to others. 

But I still do want to talk about these shows. So while it will probably take some time, you'll probably see me do The Flash, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, Stargirl and Batwoman. At the very least, the TV shows that I have covered here. I know there are a lot of other DC TV shows -- Pennyworth, Peacemaker, the Penguin, Lois and Clark... those, I think, I'll reserve for much later, and I'll have to see if I like them enough to talk episode-per-episode. (I'd much rather talk about the new Batman or Superman cartoons). This has nothing to do with the soon-to-be-released Superman movie, since I've been doing this rewatch since early last year, but it's a nice little coincidence that I could post the first of these close to the release date of that movie.

Anyway, Supergirl time! Last we left off, we had some storyline about Lex Luthor finally becoming a villain with the power of a VR Metaverse, Lena and Kara have a bit of a BFF spat, and also Brainiac was pretending to be evil and ended up getting caught up in the whole thing...

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Episode 1: Rebirth

And, well, 'Rebirth'... it's less of a season six premiere, but the final episode of the previous season. And I really can't be too mean to the previous season since it was haphazardly put together during the zenith of the COVID-19 restrictions. And... it's a okay ending, I suppose, with the caveat that I really have no memory of a lot of the supporting characters when I watched this episode. I know the big names like J'onn, Alex, Lena, Lex, Lilian, Nia and Brainy well enough, but I really find myself having to look up a lot of the other characters (particularly the CatCo plot). And since we jump from one character to the next a lot as we establish the sheer scope of Lex Luthor's latest ego-driven plot, we then go straight into dismantling it. It doesn't help that the whole Leviathan / Obsidian North / Lex plot is kind of convoluted, although I do think that around 10 minutes in, the show does the rather understandable decision of just focusing entirely on Lex. The, uh, robot lady from Leviathan ends up getting blown up in the opening act, and then we focus on Lex's plan to make everyone uploaded to the VR-world agree with him, and then kill everyone else with satellites.

And then the episode just... barrels through moments that's probably meant to be a bit more emotional, but everything just kind of feels perfunctory even among CW standards. J'onn and M'gann have this whole talk about the significance of the mind-meld, which... leads to zero payoff other than a big CGI explosion scene. Brainy trying to be evil because of logic, which was one of the few plot points that I remember from the previous season (certainly not because it's good) is just handwaved aside with a uwu-I-love-you handwave. Lena and Kara also just basically kind of shrug and return to being good friends with an apology. I'm also not entirely sure why Supergirl went through all the grandiosity of having to record some memoirs of her time on Earth, was it something I missed in season 5?

Anyway, Lex shows up with his hypocritical 'humans shouldn't be forced to bow down to alien ideals' while being perfectly happy to enforce his own ideals on him. We get a rather bland fight, Supergirl dies for five seconds before some deus ex machina brings her back to life. Lex... very randomly dances in the Fortress which is quite cringey, before the rather haphazard editing of the climax leads to Lex losing his powers, Supergirl shunted away to the Phantom Zone, and also Lena uses Myriad to wipe Lex and Lilian's memories of Kara's identity. Ultimately the whole episode feels like it's just really trying to clean slate in the neatest possible way while also dealing with all the scheduling issues. It is... functional, but I can't say it's a particularly good watch regardless. 

Episode 2: A Few Good Women

So this kickstarts the first half of Supergirl's sixth season, where... thanks to the lead actress being on maternity leave, the titular Supergirl had to film all of her scenes separately from the rest of the cast, leading to her showing up only in Phantom Zone sequences separate from the rest of the regular cast. Which, under better writers, might perhaps lead to something poignant about how the world is coping without Supergirl. Which is a nice thread to pull! Under CW, it's just a lot of angst. In other words, we're back to normalcy for these shows. 

The Earth storyline has our heroes deal with the fallout of the season premiere, with Lex Luthor being put to stand on trial. It's... it's okay. Jon Cryer is entertaining enough to hold his own in the proceedings, particularly when he pulls off the 'arrogant self-assured politician' card that ends up getting to charm the faceless jury, and his genuine surprise at the fact that he won the trial by being honest. Lex re-framing Eve and Lena as being jilted or hysterical women is probably one of the actually well-done Supergirl takes at feminism in that it's not shoved in our face so much but it just... plays out. 

Our heroes attempt to rescue Kara from the Phantom Zone, and we get a decent discussion between J'onn and M'gann, as well as Alex, about whether to put on the 'soldier mode' or 'empathy mode', which... really isn't that black-and-white in real life, but I appreciate them showing our heroes -- the two that view Kara as family instead of having a hero-worship of her like Nia and Brainiac -- being super-stressed in response to Kara's disappearance. There is some technobabble about why they can't access the Phantom Zone properly (something about the Crisis breaking it up) and some of the Game of Thrones wight-cosplayer Phantoms broke out, but the action scenes are clearly playing second-fiddle in this season. 

The Phantom Zone plot is... it's there, and probably the weakest part of the episode. (Second-weakest, I guess, since I have no investment at all with the the Z-list CatCo plot) Supergirl wakes up and fights the Phantoms on her end, and meets... her dad, Zor-El! I really do think they burned this 'the parent is actually alive' plot point to the death with Kara's mom, though, and I really didn't care about Zor-El showing up here. Again, it's obviously just there to have Supergirl have a plot in a Supergirl show, but it feels like some of Arrow's more uninspired island outings. 

Episode 3: Phantom Menaces

This episode feels very much like a 'connective tissue' episode, going through the same ground as the previous episode without the novelty of being the episode that introduces these concepts to us. The Supergirl-in-Phantom-Zone plot has Zor-El be abducted and Supergirl meet a brand-new characer, the banished fifth-dimensional imp princess Nyxlygsptlnz, based on Mxy's girlfriend in the original comics. She's lost her powers after being banished by her dad, but she gets them back by a literal motivational speech from Supergirl, which does feel kind of unearned? The Phantom Zone scenes generally happen so fast that it's a bit hard to feel emotionally invested. 

J'onn and Alex continue a bit of their storyline from the previous episode -- J'onn gets a nice scene with M'gann that puts into context the whole 'emotional bond' thing they did in the season premiere. The 'A-plot', such as it is, has our heroes del with the fact that the Phantoms that hitched a ride on the not-vampire alien last episode wreak some havoc, with M'gann being one of the victims. It's a pretty all right action scene, for what it is. 

But it's Brainy and Lena that ends up having the best emotional moment here. There's a very great scene where Brainiac, who has activated his emotional circuits or whatever, gets very excited at the suggestion of killing Lex Luthor and lists the many, many different ways that he could do it. This leads to a discussion with Lena where Jesse Rath delivers a great 'explosion of emotion' moment as Brainy just breaks stuff out of frustration. Lena, meanwhile, is all set on being cheeky and stealing funds from Lex to fund hospitals... until Lex does the rather darkly-hilarious "what did you expect was going to happen" thing and blows up the hospital. This is honestly the sort of thing that would make a harder stance like what Brainy is suggesting (or even Phantom Zoning him, no?) more palatable? But the show decides to spin it into a "cut off the toxic friends/family" with Lena deciding to step away from LexCorp and refuse to engage in the sibling rivalry that Lex has been stringing her along for her entire life. It's neat, for what it is. 

Episode 4: Lost Souls

And this episode very clearly splits the story into two parts -- the Phantom Zone part and the real-world part. I probably have the least to say about this, other than the fact that our heroes dealing with Kara and going through a "What Would Supergirl Do" mentality feel a bit more strongly shown in this episode. It's just that the plotline is not quite as interesting. The Prime Phantom or whatever starts reproducing more and more, there's something about M'gann having a sliver of a phantom's soul in her, and there's a huge, dramatic moment where Lena and Alex have to make a choice on whether to use the episode's MacGuffin (which can only work once!) to create a portal to save Supergirl, or to revert the psychic aliens back to their human forms. Oh, and random Ghostbusters ripoff machines are also utilized. There's a scene of the party dwindling as they charge into the Phantom lair in the sewers. 

It's all right stuff, and I felt like the arguments were a bit more genuine than the last two episodes. I felt like Lena's struggle about 'thinking differently' than the other heroes, and finding that it's okay, is a much better "real-world emotional problems translated into a superhero crimefighting setting" than the Lena/Lex sequence in the previous episode. 

The Phantom Zone stuff is... also a bit better, if predictable, mostly because Nyxly is a bit less of a cipher. I really didn't care about her introduction last week, but seeing her as a trickster that projects her own problems with her dad towards Kara is quite interesting, giving us an antagonist for that half of the story. Nyxly stabs Zor-El and tries to get her and Kara to go back to the third dimension, but when Kara rebuffs Nyxly's offer, she gets vengeful, forcing Kara to smash the portal back home. Nyxly appears to have been vaporized, but it's honestly rather obvious that it's one of those fake-out superhero deaths. The Kara/Nyxly stuff is all right, but one problem I still have is Zor-El. Who, despite being the father of our main character, feels less of a character and more of a plot device. 

Episode 5: Prom Night

As another cheeky way to get around Melissa Benoist's pregnancy, we now start off with a two-parter where our heroes time-travel to the past, so that Supergirl can still show up in the Supergirl show, but played by a different, younger actress. Admittedly, the handwave-y excuse to all of this is kind of bullshit. I highly doubt that the only Supergirl DNA that they have lying around requires them to travel back to 2009, and if time travel is required, why they didn't call on their sister-show time-travelers, the Legends of Tomorrow, for help. But hey, an excuse plot is an excuse plot.

The episode itself is just a bunch of fun. Brainy and Nia get to explore a bit more of their character arc this season, with Nia struggling with impostor syndrome and wanting to ask her mom (who's living in 2009) for advice, while Brainy is struggling to deal with his mission imploding around him and is stress-eating. Throw young Kara and young Alex into the mix -- Alex comes off as a control-freak but is also struggling with so much that her family's sacrificed for her sister; while Kara wants to prove herself but isn't as independent as she thinks she is. Oh, and thanks to Crisis retconning, Kenny Li is back alive again, though I had to wiki him to remember who Kara's old boyfriend is.

There's a fair amount of genre comedy here with Brainy being dragged into clubs and whatnot -- which I don't care for, but the actor sells the reaction so well that I don't mind. We have two antagonists -- a young Cat Grant (played by a different actress, which is genuinely impressive) trying to investigate the 'miracles' of this small town, while two generic alien bounty hunters called Mitch and Naxim Tork act as the obligatory threat that's preventing Brainy and Nia from doing a quick zip-in, zip-out mission. The excuse plot is just pretty hammy time travel shenanigans, but I do appreciate them trying to tie into the season's "who is Supergirl to you" overarching plot by having a young Kara and a young Alex be the ones to ask it. 

Episode 6: Prom, Again!

The second part of the prom two-parter is... it's there. I must admit that I wasn't particularly invested on any of the actual storylines. The zoo-menagerie aliens are such flat episodic villains that I didn't even bother to remember their names, and I ended up remembering why I found Cat Grant kind of insufferable in the first season of Supergirl. Even without the poorly-handled feminist rants in season one (this episode has a much better female-empowerment side with Kara, Nia and Cat), I really didn't find Cat's "fuck everyone, my career comes first" personality to be particularly endearing. Her origin story at the end is nice enough, but I found her to be quite irritating when her role is to wander around and break everyone's plans and extend the episode to fit its runtime... and the whole 'let's rewind time a couple of hours' solution was nowhere as engaging enough to be worth the screentime the episode dedicates to it.

Despite that, though, I did find that the actual emotional bits to be pretty well-acted, which is what the season seems to aim to do. Nia finding her confidence was kind of expected, although her conjuring a bad CGI pink cougar from her dreams is unexpected. I did find the short bits of resolution to young Kara and young Alex about Alex's control-freak big sister tendencies; as well as young Kara showing that she has bigger plans for her life to young Kenny to both be done well, but I also felt like all of these scenes could've been very easily integrated to the previous episode. (I felt like I would've given more of a shit about Kenny Li if he's an actual character instead of being just that one guy from an older flashback). There are some bits and bytes of your typical rom-com tropes, but not quite enough to justify all of it being stretched to a full episode, I feel. 

Episode 7: Fear Knot

The last episode in this initial batch of "Melissa Benoist is unavailable" batch is... an interesting one. I like it a bit better than the high school two-parter, although it does admittedly get a bit repetitive. After getting the plot device from the past to track down Kara's location in the Phantom Zone, J'onn reveals that their headquarters is actually a secret spaceship and they travel into the Phantom Zone. With one last hurrah for the whole 'phantom' concept, J'onn warns everyone that the Phantoms might cause hallucinations... and that's what the episode leads to. Admittedly, I wasn't paying full attention and was rolling my eyes at how utterly stupid-for-the-sake-of-being-stupid Alex Danvers was when she got into an argument with J'onn and locks him in a cage, but turns out that we keep zipping back to this time period two minutes ago and showing the hallucinations everyone is having. 

It all relates to their fears in some way -- Alex is afraid of being the reason that their situation is fucked up, Lena deals with a 'Kelpie' which also ties to her mother's death, Nia deals with a situation where the time she take to interpret her dreams is too long and leads to their doom (which is probably the one plot thread here that flows smoothly from previous episodes)... it's all nice and well and good, but it honestly is a bit too repetitive and I really do wonder if the ideas of these characters being subjected to fear visions wouldn't have been done better for the first five or so Supergirl-less episodes dealing with the Phantoms. As it is, by the time the third vision rolls in it just feels like we're burning screentime. The conclusion of this episode also feels rushed and leads to a bit of a 'so what' with the fear visions, as some of our heroes just... get over it. They beat the visions and manage to rescue Kara and Zor-El. Oh, and there's also a subplot of Zor-El giving Kara a whole hope speech... which is also a huge miss in my opinion because of the sheer lack of time that we've spent with Zor-El throughout the season.

Still, this is technically the 'midseason finale' of Supergirl's sixth season, with Supergirl and Zor-El rescued from the Phantom Zone and Nyxly hitching a ride. And... I don't think it's anywhere as messy as the previous season was, but it was definitely quite strangely structured.

Episode 8: Welcome Back, Kara

After the Phantom Zone plot and with Melissa Benoist finally rejoining the main cast, we get a bit of a breather episode to settle back in before Nyxly or Luthor comes back as a villainous force. And for a good part of this episode it deals with Kara's PTSD and a "it's okay not to be okay" moral, where she finally breaks down and admits that the Phantom Zone wasn't a nice fun trip and she's feeling a lot of weight from all the trouble that her disappearance has caused. Thus is mirrored, albeit less heavily, by a similar sentiment from Lena and Nia discussing their motherly woes.

Zor-El's return and introduction to human society becomes a bit of a catalyst of this episode's superheroic plot. There was a brief moment where he shows up as 'Uncle Archie' in CatCo which disappointingly does not lead to any actual hijinks. Zor-El tries to rush headlong into helping Earth -- in the way that he failed to help Krypton. Finding Earth's polluted seas to be the thing to obsess about, he reprograms the robot Kelex to clean the ocean. The plot is pretty standard 'good intentions marred by a lack of care', as Kelex gets infected by DEO alien trash, goes nuts, and morphs into a giant trash golem -- a far cooler CGI effort than the previous 7 episodes. They beat the robot with some teamwork, and we get a Superman IV: Quest for Peace homage with Supergirl chucking the giant trash golem into the sun.

Zor-El then decides to go to Argo City to meet his wife and confront his past, which... I honestly can say that while the events of this episode is nice enough for him, I really am uninvested with Zor-El as a character and I'm genuinely not sure what reviving him brings. Oh, there's also a CatCo subplot with them trying to make an expose about Luthor. Kara clashes with her boss, and her love interest (?) has moved on in the intervening time. I like the threads being built up that CatCo is going to matter to the Super Friends' legacy, but I also don't particularly find it delivered in a particularly interesting way.

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And I think that's a nice place to stop for now. Tune in next time for the next batch of episodes!

Reviewing 5E D&D Monsters - Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Pt 4 (Eidolon to Howler)

And with that slight deviation towards the lower planes, we return to talking about the rest of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. This one has a lot of elementals! I remembered the Elementals having so much presence in 4th Edition bestiaries, and that was scaled down a lot in 5th Edition. This is a nice way to give us some 'elite' elementals without going overboard with it. 

There are a lot less attempts to try and tie in to the main races/monsters being spotlighted in the first half of the book, I feel, other than the addition of obvious Duergar, Gith and Drow elite variants which we will cover in the appendix at some point. In fact, I actually think that Tome of Foes puts a bit more focus in expanding the fiends, elementals and aspects of the Shadowfell. Pretty neat, that. 

• Click here for the first part
• Click here for the next part
• Click here for the index.

[Originally published in May 2020; revised in May 2026]

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Eidolon 

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Undead; Unaligned; CR 12 (Eidolon)
• 5.5E/5E: Large Construct; Unaligned; CR 12 (Sacred Statue)

The term 'Eidolon' is a very cool word from Greek mythology that's yet another in a number of words utilized to described a restless, wandering spirit. D&D's definition and depiction of Eidolon has varied wildly over the various editions, but they have more or less settled down on being an 'undead construct' of sorts. In 5th Edition, Eidolons are ghostly spirits bound by a sacred oath to guard something -- usually a site, or perhaps treasure. They would be faithful devotees with unwavering devotion, and are noted to always be fanatics that will never leave their duty. 

And if interlopers should come besmirch their gods' sacred location, the Eidolon spirit will inhabit a 'graven vessel', a sacred statue that's specifically prepared to house the souls of the Eidolon spirit. That is the artwork shown, a giant statue that is being possessed by the Eidolon and will attack and crush the intruders. (It also happens to be the statue of demon lord Moloch on the cover of the 1st Edition AD&D Player's Handbook, a cute little easter egg there)

This is a nice variation of the "ancient statues come alive" trope seen in so much fantasy, except instead of mere animated statues or golems, the Eidolon's true form is the spirit. Sure, you might crush the 'Sacred Statue', but the Eidolon spirit remains unharmed and will just keep moving into more and more statues to exhaust the party. This makes for an interesting potential 'multi-phase' boss fight, but one that could also be terminated early by either negotiating with the Eidolon spirit, by dealing with the spirit as it moves from statue to statue, or by somehow separating the spirit from the statue (such as with the Dispel spell). 

It is an interesting encounter, since the true form of the Eidolon spirit doesn't even have a way to attack, merely to unleash a sense of 'divine dread' that can frighten but not harm enemies. The Eidolon is truly only able to properly fight while possessing a statue. During my original review, I didn't really care about it and dismissed it as 'a golem with some extra steps', but the gimmick and the roleplay opportunities for the Eidolon are interesting enough that I've gained a much better appreciation of it over the years. 

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Eladrin 

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Fey; Chaotic Neutral; CR 10 (Autumn), 10 (Spring), 10 (Summer), 10 (Winter)

Speaking of confusing changes between editions... here's the Eladrin! The term 'Eladrin' debuted in 2nd Edition's Planescape material, which codified a vast majority of D&D's cosmology and different planes. With the franchise severely toning down anything that could be treated as religious at the time, writers expanded upon the alignment axis to create various analogues to 'heaven' and 'hell'. And the Eladrin were introduced as natural, chaotic good celestials hailing from Arborea that are essentially 'nature angels' of sorts, having powers over natural phenomena. They are always depicted as having the appearance to elves, but are not overtly tied to them. The Eladrin also notably were spotlighted in the first Monster Manuals, making them quite prominent.

4th Edition changed the lore of almost everything, and Eladrin again showed up in the very first books... but with a radically different vibe. The Eladrin were introduced as essentially the equivalents to 'High Elves', with a bit more of a nature leaning, being the term for the subrace of elves most tied to the debuting-in-4E Feywild. 

5th Edition changes this again, and while I did grow up on the 3.5E lore, I must admit that this redefinition does help to make the Eladrin a lot more distinct. The 5th Edition Eladrin draws a lot from the 4th Edition concept of being a type of elves that stayed in the Feywild... but instead of 'merely' having more arcane powers, they are actually Fey, displaying aspects of nature not dissimilar to the Ghaeles and Bralanis of older editions. The 5E Eladrin have a fun but memorable theming in that the four Eladrin subtypes are based on the four seasons. And being capricious and ephemeral does help to retain the vibe of the 'holy outsiders' of 3E lore and 'fey-steeped elves' of 4E lore. 

Each individual Eladrin can transform from one to the next after moments of great emotion (though it's not something they can do mid-battle), and with the Feywild being so tied to emotions, it definitely makes a fair bit of thematic sense. Tome of Foes also includes these fey Eladrin as a playable sub-race option for elves, which is very cool. It is noted that Eladrins can change form as often as every day of the week, or remain in a particular 'aspect' for years. Regardless of the form they are expressing, Eladrin tend to love beauty, both natural and created... and sometimes this leads to impressing or even spiriting away people whose appearances or 'spirit' they find beautiful. 

Going in order of the seasons, the Spring Eladrin represent joy, cavorting through the forests while laughing and dancing. Their spell list are filled with charming spells and illusion spells, and they have a 'Joyful Presence' trait that charms those around them to join in cavorting. The artwork is pretty neat, bright greens and leafy, thorny hair and clothes. 

The Summer Eladrin represents anger, a burning state of wrath where they are the most aggressive. They radiate fear ('Frightening Presence!'), and their fighting abilities are enhanced that they are move with much more powerful force and speed. I like the artwork for this one the most, I think, with the great shading of oranges and yellows, and the cool curved sword. 

The Autumn Eladrin also has really nice colours of darker orange, and they represent the feelings of... goodwill? Not what a 'core' emotion, but I'm not sure what emotion I would associate with autumn. This is the calmest Eladrin state, and in this form they focus on defusing conflict, healing and are focused on maintaining peace. Mechanically, this means that the Autumn Eladrin is the 'healer', with healing spells, an 'Enchanting Presence' and an ability called 'Foster Peace' that forces attacks to miss in her presence. 

And finally, the Winter Eladrin is what you'd expect. Blue colours, an icy cloak, and representing the emotions of sorrow. Melancholy and bitterness grip the Eladrin's heart as tears -- frozen tears, obviously -- drip down their cheeks. They radiate a 'Sorrowful Presence', and have several ice-themed spells to do combat.

I do really like the Eladrin. Both as NPCs or player characters, they really bring a lot of options to ramp up the drama, and having these powerful emotions be the catalyst for plot are quite interesting hooks as well!

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Elder Elemental - Elder Tempest 

• 5.5E/5E: Gargantuan Elemental; Neutral; CR 23

And now, we have a set of four Elemental 'bosses', CR 16-22 beings called the Elder Elementals. Tome of Foes also gives us a bunch of stats for Demon Lords and Archdevils at around that CR bracket, trying its best to give more end-game boss stats after a common complaint of the previous 5E bestiaries being that there's just not enough of them. Now, the actual Elemental Princes, the ultimate authority in the Elemental Planes -- Imix, Olhydra, Ogremoch, and the painfully-named Yan-C-Bin -- were statted in Princes of the Apocalypse. But we're not talking about specific named entities in this review series, whereas these Elder Elementals are 'just' the greatest of the Elementals. 

The writeup in Tome of Foes notes that Elder Elementals are those that are, well, older and more powerful, feeding on their lesser kin and accumulating the essence of these creatures to their own until they become something far, far larger. When encountered, or worse, summoned, they are beings of apocalyptic devastation, the sheer force of nature itself wiping off civilizations off the map.

Representing the element of Air is the Elder Tempest, a brand-new creation of 5th Edition. It resembles a giant Asian Dragon, only with multiple wings running down its body and thunderbolts crackling across its body. Elder Tempests are formed out of clouds, wind and lightning, coiling across the sky and drowning the land beneath it with storm. The Elder Tempest has the power to unleash powerful lightning and thunder attacks upon the puny adventurers, damaging people with lances of lightning and knocking them away with thunderclaps and wind. All four Elder Elementals are considered 'siege monsters', meaning they deal extra damage to buildings. Understandable, considering that they are primal manifestations of natural disasters that can demolish buildings. 

Its special trait, 'Living Storm', causes a massive storm to appear with the Elder Tempest at the center. This limits visibility, reduces open flames, and imposes disadvantage on anything that involves having to hear. I like that emphasis on the debilitating nature of a howling storm. Despite looking like a giant multi-winged serpent, the Elder Tempest is still an air elemental and can disperse to just a mass of air. Howling, stormy air, but air nonetheless. I like that in elementals -- a huge sentient cyclone is cool, but it's also something that all the more mundane Air Elementals turn into. Having all four Elder Elementals receive great artwork that defines their form as animalistic titans makes them a lot more memorable! The Elder Tempest is a very cool art piece for sure. 

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Elder Elemental - Leviathan

• 5.5E/5E: Gargantuan Elemental; Neutral; CR 20

It is quite interesting that D&D seems to really want to push some underwater monsters, but it's not really until 5th Edition that Krakens graduated from being a footnote in the 'Giant Squid' entry into a proper unique monster; Sea Serpents are rarely represented; and Leviathans don't really get much love either. The term was used in some older material as a type of Giant Whale, which is cool enough, but again these giant sea monsters remain surprisingly obscure in D&D. 

5E's Leviathan is a gigantic, towering sea serpent made up of nothing but pure, flowing water. I really love the artwork of it just blending into the ocean water around it, with its fangs open and clearly large enough to consume that ship. Using the term Leviathan for one of the mightiest water elementals out there. Floods, tsunamis and monsoons are horrifying, and the Leviathan is that given the form of a titanic water serpent. 

Despite being a mighty CR 20 creature, the Leviathan is mostly a one-trick pony, using its 'Tidal Wave' ability to sweep everything in its path and knocking them around. It also has some rudimentary melee attacks other than that, but I feel like the Leviathan is meant to be a setpiece more than anything. I also like that they included a fun trait called 'partial freeze', and the Leviathan gets stuck in its tracks when it gets hit with a particularly powerful frost attack.

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Elder Elemental - Phoenix 

• 5.5E/5E: Gargantuan Elemental; Neutral; CR 16

Out of the four Elder Elementals, only two have had any kind of consistent relative prominence in D&D editions. The Phoenix, being an iconic mythological creature, has appeared in every single edition to date, and even in the first bestiaries for 2E and 4E. And it is quite interesting that 5th Edition doesn't spotlight it in the first Monster Manual, but waited for quite some time to include the Phoenix... and as part of a set of elemental beings, too! 

In previous editions, the Phoenix has had... an ever-changing lore. 1E's Monster Manual II has its Phoenix be a powerful spellcasting bird that native to the Upper Planes of Elysium, with the ability to erupt in a massive fire spell that leaves behind its egg. 2E expands on this lore, although notes that the Phoenix can travel between planes, and are so reclusive that many different legends about the Phoenix's desires and motivations change from in-universe culture to culture. 3E keeps the Phoenix's powers, but seems to imply that it's merely a magical bird. 4E has the Phoenix as a subspecies of Roc, able to immolate itself to instantly heal itself to full health. Combat tactics over lore, 4th Edition. 

Notably, while there is a constant focus on the 'death and rebirth' themes of the Phoenix, and the many different spellcasting abilities that the Phoenix has... the Phoenix's various appearances have all focused so much on describing the abilities and rebirth symbolism that we don't really get to learn all that much about what the Phoenix does.

5th Edition... doesn't to it particularly well either. Being an 'elder' fire elemental, Phoenixes are just masses of fire in the form of a bird, and is motivated simply with the desire of burning everything into ash, and 'strives to transform the world into an inferno'. That is indeed in line with the portrayal of most other Elder Elementals, or Elementals in general... but it feels so simple for the Phoenix, especially compared to how much the 2E material wrote about it. So while I like the addition of the lore of the Phoenix being tied to the Elder Elementals, I felt like there's something so overly simplified from the original Egyptian / Grecian myths. 

The abilities are greatly simplified, too. Thankfully the Phoenix's iconic 'death and rebirth' ability remains, although it only happens if the Phoenix itself takes enough damage to die instead of being something that the Phoenix is able to trigger. The Phoenix will leave behind an 'egg-shaped cinder', which will hatch into a new Phoenix within a week. All the other abilities are variations of fiery attacks flavoured as bird melee attacks... which, feels very dumbed-down. Again, it fits a 'Fire Elder Elemental', but for a Phoenix? The Phoenix, after all, isn't just a simple firebird, but also a bird of death and rebirth. 1E to 3E have different details, but generally Phoenixes have a some combination of healing spells in addition to its fiery abilities. 

So yeah, I'm actually not the biggest fan of this incarnation of the Phoenix. I tend to be neutral to positive about a lot of the 5E reinventions, like how I have discussed the Eladrin above, but I feel like we lost so much with the Phoenix by reducing it to basically just 'Fire Rodan'. 

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Elder Elemental - Zaratan 

• 5.5E/5E: Gargantuan Elemental; Neutral; CR 22

The other pre-existing D&D creature that is 'retooled' into an Elder Elemental is the Zaratan, based on the mythological creature from Arabic myths -- a giant crab the size of an island, which mutated by retellings of the story into a giant turtle. D&D's 2nd Edition adapted the more well-known turtle version as a 'turtle island' version of the creature. I suppose the idea of a titanic aquatic turtle large enough to be an island does double up with the Dragon Turtle. 

5th Edition takes the basics of this and converts it into its Elder Elemental, making the Zaratan a gigantic tortoise made entirely of dirt and rock, with chunks of foliage and terrain on its back. It reminds me of the Pokemon Torterra for sure. As a standalone creature, I do like the concept that a massive piece of the terrain just sprouted turtle legs and began to walk around. I also like that the artwork does not include eyes, which marks this creature as being more elemental than beast. 

5E Zaratans are noted to be dim-witted destructive kaiju like the rest of the Elder Elementals, and its main gimmick is its 'earth-shaking movement'. Each step that a Zaratan takes unleashes shockwaves that damages people, knocks them over and sometimes even shatter buildings. In addition to regular melee attacks, the Zaratan can also spew rocky debris from its mouth. 

Unique among the Elder Elementals, the Zaratan has a recovery ability, retracting its 'limbs' into its rocky body, regenerating itself (presumably by absorbing more earth matter?) and then emerging out to resume its march. It's cute, and I approve! I wonder why the other Elder Elementals don't have similar recovery abilities? The Phoenix has the egg ability, but surely a Leviathan and Elder Tempest, both of which seem to be in their elements, should be able to 'absorb' their own elements? 

Anyway, while I'm not as miffled about the Zaratan compared to the Phoenix, I still feel like it's an unnecessary transformation of a pre-existing creature into a dumb monstrous elemental kaiju for the sake of completing a set. I feel like they put in more effort into the Zaratan in the art and mechanics department, but I still feel that the Elder Elementals probably needed a bit more lore and flavour to them. 

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Elemental Myrmidons 

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Elemental; Neutral; CR 7 (Air Myrmidon), 7 (Earth Myrmidon), 7 (Fire Myrmidon), 7 (Water Myrmidon)

Whereas the Elder Elementals form the end-game bosses, the Elemental Myrmidons are a bit of a step-up in terms of challenge compared to the regular Elementals from the Monster Manual. The Elemental Myrmidons debuted in 4th Edition as 'Elemental Archons', stealing the term from a type of celestial... and I don't think you can convince me that the Myrmidons/Archons didn't debut as part of 4th Edition trying to mimic the feel of World of Warcraft, which features a lot of these armoured 'genie-body-layout' elementals in their game.

There were a lot of Archons in 4th Edition, but 5E streamlines the Myrmidons to just be one per element. They are all CR 7, a bit of a step-up from the CR 5 base Elementals, but are also Medium-sized, being roughly the size of a human. All of them also have armour and a helmet, and wield weapons. The end result is a more formidable, 'intelligent' looking Elemental as opposed to the unruly, unbridled chaotic forms of the base elementals. 

Pretty nice artwork for the four Myrmidons as well. The Earth Myrmidon probably looks the most boring because he actually has legs, and just looks like a giant rock golem holding a rock hammer. The Air Myrmidon has a nice, flowing, ghostly 'genie body' with a flail, too. But I particularly like the artwork of the Fire and Water Myrmidons, both of who have the coolest helmet and have the coolest effect of their respective elements roiling to form facsimiles of limbs and lower bodies. The Fire one dual-wields scimitars, and the Water one has a trident. 

The short blurb that Tome of Foes gives to the Myrmidons are that they are elemental spirits caught and bound into suits of magically-created armour specifically to house them, where they have no memory of being elementals and mindlessly serve their creators. This allows them, flavour-wise, to appear just anywhere with a wizard, or as part of a greater Elemental Cult sub-plot. Having Myrmidons and Myrmidon variants would certainly be far, far more interesting than the fifteen different cultists in the Elemental Cult adventure!

All the Myrmidons are simple melee fights that fight with their own weapon, with special effects for their attacks -- the Air Myrmidon launches a lightning strike, the Earth Myrmidon does a 'thunderous' knockdown strike, the Fire Myrmidon does fire damage, and the Water Myrmidon does cold damage. All four Myrmidons also lose their ability to squeeze through locations by turning into a mass of their element, which makes sense since they have armour now. 

I know 4th Edition suffers from having way too many variants for each and every sub-type of monster, but I actually wish that the Myrmidons have a bit more to differentiate them. Nice to get more elementals, though. 

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Frost Salamander 

• 5.5E/5E: Huge Elemental; Unaligned; CR 9

Originally printed as 'Salamander, Frost' in Tome of Foes and just considered 'Frost Salamander' in Monsters of the Multiverse, these beings don't actually have anything to do with the base, Fire-element Salamanders that are more prominent in the Monster Manual. The Frost Salamanders are huge elementals with reptilian bodies that hail from the Frostfell, the Elemental Plane of Ice. The other 'composite' elemental planes don't really figure as much into monsters, but ice has always been a major fantasy element trope and unsurprisingly, we get a bunch of ice-specific monsters appearing throughout D&D's history. 

Frost Salamanders are one of those creatures that live in the elemental planes that have a clear animal-like body and a rudimentary intellect. They particularly like to hunt warm-blooded creatures, and sometimes find themselves in frigid locations in the Material Plane. It's crucial to note that while the end goal is to feed, Frost Salamanders zero in on heat moreso than actual edible prey, willing to attack and prioritize campfires or blacksmith forges instead of tasty humans. 

When not going around wreaking havoc in snowside settlements, Frost Salamanders burrow through ice, creating extensive tunnels underneath snowy mountains, with their lairs being 'large enough to allow a small army to camp within'... and said army, or adventuring party, often becomes the Frost Salamander's prey. They also have a freezing breath, being a large reptilian monster. They are also sometimes associated and tamed by Frost Giants. 

Design-wise, the Frost Salamander actually just looks like a stouter, ice-themed version of the Behir. With six legs instead of a Behir's eight, but still, it's not hard to draw comparisons. With their similar association to giants (or at least one very specific type of giant), I wonder if the Frost Salamanders might have inspired the magical experimentation that the giants did to eventually create the Behir? Anyway, Frost Salamanders aren't the most interesting creature in the book, although I appreciate the attempt to expand a bit more on the elemental realms' denizens. 

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Giff 

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Humanoid; Lawful Neutral; CR 3

It's the Giff! The hippo-people! Now that I've had more of an appreciation for Spelljammer, I am a lot happier to see these crazy alien hippo-people show up surprisingly early in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. Giff are a race of hippo-men who have a culture that revolves around being a parody of military structure. All Giffs dress in gaudy military uniform, take rank and duty very seriously, and are extremely talented with muskets and cannons. I guess that's why they made it into the 'less-sci-fi' mainstream D&D, since even in their home setting of balls-to-the-walls-crazy Spelljammer, the Giff are way more interested in more mundane explosives. The Giff do straddle the line between fantasy and sci-fi quite well, I think, being just different enough without feeling too out of place. 

Even before Spelljammer fleshes them out as they become a playable race there, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes gives us a fair amount of flavour for the Giff. Which is just as well, since their stat block is... simple, simply a tanky brute with a preference for explosive artillery. Giffs organize every aspect of their society along military lines. From birth to death, each Giff has a military rank, and this is absolutely respected. A Giff goes up and down rank based on valour, and all of their education revolves around warfare... and this focus makes them unintentionally appear dull. It's less because they are dumb, but simply because of their upbringing that makes them not as verbose in matters that don't involve warfare. 

They travel through the cosmos and behave as warriors for hire, but work best (and sometimes exclusively) in units consisting only of Giff. Not out of racism, but simply because realistically only other Giff can match the HUT HUT HUT!!! energy of the Giff people. In an interesting twist for a mercenary society, All Giff will refuse to fight other Giff, and all their contracts will have a stipulation that allows them to sit out conflict that might involve hurting other Giff. That's a fun little detail.  

Giff are also extremely talented with gunpowder. The bigger the boom, the better! Whether it's from a musket, a grenade, or just explosives to bring down a fortification, Giff like the explosions. This trait is so prevalent that it becomes one of its passive abilities when the Giff got promoted to playable in Spelljammer. So much is this love for explosives that some Giff regiments prefer to be paid with kegs of gunpowder instead of just gold. Lastly, Giff culture seem to discourage spellcasters, although they're not hatred outright (at least not in 5E). 

The Giff aren't as easily transplanted to 'default' D&D as something like the Neogi, who despite also a Spelljammer-associated creature ends up feeling right at home as 'just' another aberrant monster. But the Giff wouldn't be the Giff without all the love for the bombs, the explosions, and the wacky military hijinks. 

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Gray Render 

• 5.5E/5E: Large Monstrosity; Chaotic Neutral; CR 12

Debuting in 3rd Edition, the Gray Render is a rather simple monster design. It's got a bipedal, vaguely dinosaurian body, with a massive head with large fangs and six eyes. It is really good in one thing and one thing only, and that is physical combat. It deals heavy blows with its claws and fangs, and it gets even more enraged the more it is hurt. On the surface, it feels like just a boring melee monster. 

But this is where the flavour works to make what's otherwise an Ogre-with-teeth fun. Gray Renders, despite being brutish hulks, wants most of all to bond with an intelligent creature. It has this almost dog-like instinct to want to look for a friend, and once they have bonded, they will do anything to fight for that bonded creature. Unfortunately, unlike dogs, a Gray Render is the size of a dinosaur and have absolutely no cunning. 

Described as 'inherently chaotic', Gray Renders looks for intelligent creatures and sing to them. They will sing a weird, warbling cry that's accompanied by 'scratching the earth and a show of reverence'. And then it will just keep following and serving its bonded master! How... how can you not love this thing? Gray Renders, unfortunately, often ends up causing problems like accidentally killing people in town, destroying its master's house, burrow holes on the side of a ship, and attack horses out of jealousy. That is just everything that a typical dog or cat would do if understimulated, though. Silly adventurers, don't blame your incompetence as the human (or humanoid, I suppose) in not giving your Gray Render enough stimulation! 'Inherently chaotic', what nonsense! That's excuses, excuses from an irresponsible pet owner. 

The Gray Renders reproduce by forming nodules on their back that break off into little baby Gray Renders, who all immediately scamper off to look for smarter beings to bond with. Speaking of which, I would like to highlight the table of Gray Render quirks, which includes 'likes to snuggle', 'chews on trees', 'hates horses', 'whines piteously in the dark', 'chases birds', 'brings offerings of meat to its master' and 'has terrific, eye-watering flatulence'. How... how can you not love them? They're big, monstrous dogs! 

Sadly, as a CR 12 Monstrosity it feels like almost hard for the GM to justify actually giving one of these monsters as a proper ally to the team Ranger. I feel like there really should be more avenues for a player to tame one of these things! I really do like the juxtaposition from a simple, brutish look with the puppy-like behaviour, and the hijinks that it would undoubtedly ensue... but I really wish that there are ways for a table to do this without unbalancing the party! 

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Howler 

• 5.5E/5E: Large Fiend; Chaotic Evil; CR 8

Oh, yes, Howlers. I loved these guys the moment I laid eyes on the Howler in 3.5E's Monster Manual. Look at that grisly, emaciated, hideous monster-dog covered with zebra-striped quills! What a horrifyingly monstrous beast! That head, in particular. And we had a similar design in 4E. 5th Edition did a redesign for the Howler and... while I appreciate the attempt to make it a bit more evocative of its 'howling' gimmick, I found the skull head, beady red eyes and the throat sac to be a lot less memorable. Their body shape is also a lot less interesting, being less starved-looking and with less dramatic spines. It's just personal taste, I suppose, but I just really liked the 3.5E Howler design. 

Howlers are classified as fiends in 5th Edition, arriving from the plane of Pandemonium -- or are captured by fiends from other Lower Planes and trained as warhounds. They announce their arrival with dreadful wails and noises, slowly getting closer and closer. Their howls cause the minds of their prey to slowly degenerate and be unable to form complex thoughts, forcing them to shamble about uselessly as the pack tears them apart. In-game, unfortunately, this is reduced to the rather bland 'frightened' condition. 

Howlers are noted to often be domesticated by both sides of the Blood War as war-hounds, but this domestication requires the leader to truly prove itself more powerful than the rest of the pack. Howlers hunt in packs, of course, relying on their mind-breaking howls to corner and disable prey. And in the Blood War, they are used specifically just for their ability to disable enemy spellcasters and tacticians in crucial moments. 

I don't have as much to say about the 5E Howler, really. It's a pretty simple 'hellhound', although it's more of a baboon-dog with a frog throat-sac, isn't it? It's still a really cool monster, I just find its previous incarnations a lot sleeker and more threatening.