Let's Play Pokemon Legends Z-A, Part 40: Dedenne Worker Rights!!!

Before anything... I got another shiny! Running around in the Hyperspace missions, the shiny sound effect rang as I was mindlessly chucking ultra balls at Pokemon to fill my missions. And it's... a shiny Meditite!

I'm not going to lie, I kind of don't like Meditite and Medicham, but I do appreciate the shinies for the two of them. Meditite is a bright red, but Medicham is a very pleasant light blue. They kind of switch colours, don't they? Medicham, unlike my other shiny Roserade, can Mega Evolve... but I do like Roserade a fair bit more than Medicham. I'll still train Medicham up a bit, though, since I've got a shiny one to play with. 

More sidequests here! One of my favourite is Felina, a lady who's standing next to three Meowth: regular Kantonian Meowth, Alolan Meowth and Galarian Meowth. The Kantonian Meowth is just sleeping blissfully on the grass. Felina speaks in a lot of cat puns. We approve of cat puns here, pawsitively so.

Best of all? To initiate the battle we get a blast to the past in terms of memes. "I can has Pokemon battle?"

Felina hints that I can choose my favourite of the three clawsome Meowths after battling her. And after I do... I get to... purrsonally play with the Meowth. No free Meowth for me. I can trigger all of the animations with any of the three Meowths, including some of the harder-to-trigger ones like eating, sleeping and sitting. Normally the dex and battles only really showcase the three 'attack' animations for physical, special and status attacks. Plus fainting and taking damage, I suppose. But it does make sense for her not to give away her Meowths! Unlike the random NPCs who give away their partner Raichus, Stunfisks and Gimmighouls, Felina's whole deal is that she really, really likes her Meowths, so why would she so freely give them away? 

I enter another 'new mega evolution detected... and it's a rogue mega showdown between two Mega Crabominables. A random dude called Boris runs up and gives some exposition about how horrible it is, and tells me to stop them. Who are you, Boris, and how did you end up here in Hyperspace Lumiose? No explanation is given on that front. 

This is a 2-v-1 battle, but I also, like, ate a +17 donut after the Mega Chimecho failure. Which really irks me because, again, it's the donut that seems to matter, not my Pokemon build or type matchups or whatever. I do want to say that Crabominable is one of my least favourite Pokemon in terms of visual design... and Mega Crabominable actually fixes that a lot. Instead of a tuft of stupid-looking hair on top, Mega Crabominable's hair has elongated into a shaggy, properly yeti-like mane that ends in yellow. Its eyes are whited out and look frenzied, and its lower jaw fangs are a lot more threatening. Its ugly-as-sin crab-glove-things are now encrusted in ice. And it's now standing on two legs like a rearing horse, with a massive ice-spikes acting as boots for the rear legs. 

This... this improves on everything I dislike on Crabominable and actually makes it a pretty cool looking monster ice crab. I am quite pleasantly surprised that, yes, I like Mega Crabominable quite a bit. 

The fight was hard mostly because there are two of the damn things, but between Mega Chandelure and Diancie I was able to use area attacks to whittle both down, and when Chandelure gets knocked out, I bring out Mega Mewtwo to sweep the crabs one by one. Pretty neat, although again I still don't like how dependent on the donut extending the timers and giving my Pokemon buffs are. 

One of the funnier -- if longer -- sidequests is a Cubone randomly on the street. The quest has nothing to do with any of Cubone's dex entries or biology, it literally is just there as a mascot for a saleslady doing a promotion and comes in for a 'moment of my time' once I bend down to talk to Cubone. She's doing a customer survey about Protein, asking that kind of survey, and it's like 5 or 6 questions with her giving a polite, rehearsed answer regardless of how favourable or terrible my answers are in respect to that product. Man, real salespeople doing surveys are just talking like video game NPCs, don't they? I actually find this funny, since the questions about price expectations, awareness of benefit and competitor/complimentary product awareness are pretty legitimate questions. This one was cute, even if it isn't something heavily Pokemon-related it feels like a nice 'vibe' setting. 

Another nice vibe sequence is a lady called Couver, who stands next to a painted manhole with Gogoat in it. She tells me to go out to Rouge district and bring the Pokemon that their painted manhole has, and it's actually a very nice artwork of a Pyroar. It's a nice little spotlight to an aspect of the city that is so easily overlooked thanks to the generic-looking buildings, and someone put effort into drawing up these pieces of art. We've only got five, one for each district: 

But I appreciate them. 

There is a strange little sidequest where we've got three NPCs standing around deciding what to name a new street. They can't decide between 'Lumiose Grand Avenue' and 'Mega Evolution Road'. Both very generic-sounding names, but they at least fit Lumiose City. The third one suggests 'Borevard Boulevard', to not give any wrong impressions to visitors, but I feel like he's just being a dipshit to his coworkers. I picked the first option. It's... it's a bit of an odd side-quest, but I also randomly felt very strongly that the third guy is such an uncooperative asshole for no real reason.

We've got a couple more quests that shows of new-ish Pokemon from Galar and Paldea, which I actually like a fair bit. A lady has her Toxel throw a massive tantrum, because someone stole its Lumiose Galette. Tangent: Toxel's quite hideous, isn't it? I really like Toxtricity, too. Anyway, the thief turns out to be a naughty little Nickit, which is at a puny level 15 where the DLC wants us to be running around with a party full of level 100's. Yeah, after a runaround with it, that Nickit got absolutely crashed. That's nice, though. It's simple, but we actually do get a spotlight on the gimmicks of these two Pokemon. 

Another one has a Frigibax who was just given by the quest-giver Modesta's cousin to her from Paldea. She wants me to help talk to some trainers in a Wild Zone to find friends for Frigibax -- three trainers with a Bergmite, a Torchic and a Zangoose. All three trainers are happy about it, despite initial concerns about Bergmite (who they remember naturally fight with Frigibax in the wild!), the Fire-type Torchic and the punkish, aggressive Zangoose. 

As I return to Modesta, she ends up pussying out at the last minute, saying that it's a bit too dangerous and she thanks me for my help anyway. The game actually shows me the 'quest complete' screen, complete with rewards... until Frigibax yells and blows it away, forcing its new trainer to re-evaluate, and Frigibax's three new friends and their trainers show up and make the move to be nice to Modesta and Frigibax... while also respecting Modesta's introversion. I actually like the little bait-and-switch with the fake ending. 

Vinnie's secretary Solu shows up and tells me that there's apparently some trouble with Quasartico's security guards... apparently the fact that I beat the Dedenne led into a bit of a problem. There are some people who refused to understand that it's two champion-tier trainers that defeated the Dedenne, and are demanding for the Dedenne to be replaced... assholes! Dedenne Worker Rights now! How dare! The Dedenne work hard all the time!

The solution from some of these other employees is to employ Morpeko. I... I could almost understand it if they had wanted like, fierce-looking guards like Houndoom or something. But going from one poke-clone to another feels disingenuous. I face off against the Morpeko guards, and they fight me, turning into their hangry mode in the midst of battle. Solu exclaims afterwards that thanks to building up an appetite while battling, 'they've given in to their darker natures'. The two Morpeko are just angrily making D:< faces.  Solu immediately jumps on this to say that these darker natures won't do at all for representatives of Quasartico Inc, and thus makes this the evidence to around. Okay! Cute.  

More importantly, the Dedenne's employment are safe for now. 

Another returning minor NPC is Trevelle, the backpacker from the Alpha Bunnelby quest. He's grown up a bit, and he's gathered a team to fight me with. They're all alpha Pokemon, although all ones from the base game like Heliolisk and Garbodor. He's still got his regular Bunnelby as his ace. He ends up having grown enough from his encounter with me that he wants to explore more of the world, and see more majestic stuff like the Dedenne. All right. 

One of the major sidequests is located in Rust Syndicate headquarters, which is a Hoopa portal that teleports me into a Hyperspace arena that resembles that house filled with boxes that I cleared some Gengar out of. And inside are... Corbeau and Phillippe. Just casually standing there. Taunie follows me into the distortion, and this is a nice coda to the Corbeau/Taunie relationship. Taunie thanks Corbeau formally for clearing her debt, and Corbeau brushes it off as needing to be in equal footing. 

We then get into a battle, a double battle between Taunie and myself and the two Rust Syndicate mafia. I actually consumed a really good donut before this fight, so I was able to wipe the floor with Corbeau and Phillippe's Pokemon. This is silly, isn't it? Does anyone find it silly? That the donuts I eat beforehand just either boost my levels to over-level the enemy Pokemon, or if I don't eat a good enough one, I get curb-stomped because my Pokemon would be forty levels below Corbeau's? That the donut crafting is what matters, and that the game doesn't really tell me if the '3 star sidequest' is actually going to involve a major battle or not?

Anyway. I beat them. Philippe and Corbeau have a bit of a moment where Corbeau thanks Phillippe for always training with him, and wraps up the meeting since 'we meet each other plenty of times in real Lumiose anyway'. Corbeau gives me... the best gift ever, which is his outfit. Fuck yes. I can walk around dripped out in Corbeau's mafia suit, that's awesome. 

Phillippe warns me not to masquerade as the boss with those clothes (fair enough) while Corbeau gives off another comment about how Team MZ and the Syndicate have been too buddy-buddy lately, and that they are supposed to be a 'ruthless syndicate that would happily send a beached Magikarp down to the bottom of a river; or peel the skin clean off an Ekans trying to molt'. Both examples, of course, being helpful ones to those two Pokemon that he's doing horrible things to. Oh, Corbeau, you tsundere mafia, never change. 

Anyway, that's a pile of side-quests done. Next up, more main story! 

Random Notes

• I did more Infinite ZA grinding, all the while evolving the new Pokemon. So far I've ended up fighting Naveen and Yvon. I feel like this would be more exciting if each trainer had more Pokemon (like, 4-5) and gave more points instead of short bursts of 2 Pokemon each. Also, give more of them mega evolutions! It's kind of a shame that so many of them actually do have mega evolving Pokemon but we don't see them. Also, DLC, give them the DLC Pokemon. Man, people who grinded the Infinite Royale without the DLC to do on the side must have found it miserable.  
  
• Yvon's got the same party of Aromatisse, Slurpuff and her ace being Vivillon, and added Slowbro and Trevenant to her party. Kinda wished that some of the other megas that didn't get spotlighted in the story went to these guys. That Slowbro could've mega evolved!
• We've got some more short side-quests:
• A dude in a battle court gives a tutorial about build-up moves like Razor Wind and Solar Blade, and it's cool to tell me we've got some new moves in the game, but it's so obnoxious because the game makes us wait like 10-20 seconds every time he does a 'zoom in to his manic expression gag'. 
• A lady on top of a rooftop called Condinu shows off multi-strike moves... and her gag is at least easy to button-mash through, she just uses a lot of multiple descriptions as she explains how cool they are. 
• A very miserably long side-quest has a dude who wants to be a 'tip board', and constantly does a finger-snap and a pose as he asks me three questions. He keeps making a big show of checking the answers for each question, it's nonsensical padding. He, at least, becomes an actual 'holo' tip-board at the end. 
• "If you owe someone money, you owe 'em your very life" - Corbeau. 
• Razor Wind, at least, has a very cool new animation as it sends out five sickles in all directions like an anime attack. Time will tell if it still sucks!

Reviewing 5E D&D Monsters - Volo's Guide to Monsters, Pt 2 (Deep Scion to Girallon)

And on, we continue, with my coverage of the monsters in Volo's Guide to Monsters, almost all of which were reprinted in Monsters of the Multiverse for 5th Edition 2024, or as I call it, 5.5th Edition.

Again, I would really like to highlight just how much I adore Volo's Guide to Monsters and its stance on making itself an 'expansion pack' to the original Monster Manual. Huge chunks of lore added to nine of the most iconic monsters in D&D, multiple more 'monstrous' races (Aasimar and Goliath, gloriously, became popular enough that they were elevated to core races in 2024's Player Handbook) and even monster groups that didn't exactly get a writeup like Demons, Yugoloths and the Fey in general get a fair bit of expansion in Volo's. 

The original version of these reviews had me talk about every single monster variant... and other than those that are significantly alien and different enough from the versions we see in the Monster Manual (which are just the Mind Flayers, Yuan-ti and the Hags) I am not going to cover the statblocks that are just there for the sake of being a stat blocks. So no 'giants, but with extra weapons' and 'Hobgoblins and Kobolds, but they remember to bring their equipment'. I have a personal policy to talk about every single stat block eventually, so I'll cover them... whenever I talk about the appendix for Monsters of the Multiverse, combining both the appendices for Volo's and Mordenkainen's together. 

I don't think I'll get to that appendix in a timely manner, because I'm far more interested in talking about newer books or streamlining the monsters in the adventures, though. 

• Click here for the first part of Volo's
• Click here for the second part of Volo's
• Click here for the index.

[Originally published in April 2020, revised in February 2026]

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Deep Scion

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Humanoid (5E), Monstrosity (5.5E); Neutral Evil; CR 3

A new monster to Dungeons & Dragons is the Deep Scion, and alongside the Sea Spawn also introduced in the same book, interestingly played out as a pair of monsters that tied to a Lovecraftian, Shadow Over Innsmouth style setting. D&D hasn't really shied away from having shout-outs to ol' Cthulhu, like Aboleths and Kuo-toa, but the Deep Scion specifically plays on the trope of humanoids that were changed, similar to the community infiltrated by the Deep Ones in Shadow Over Innsmouth. A couple of years later, these undersea monsters would have their own collection of adventures, the excellent Ghosts of Saltmarsh. 

The Deep Scions began as regular people who were drowning, and are saved and given a bargain by a powerful undersea power, like a Kraken, an Aboleth, an underwater god, or a being similar to the iconic Davy Jones of Pirates of the Caribbean. It doesn't have to be anyone particularly powerful, because the ritual to create Deep Scions are 'widespread among evil aquatic creatures', so theoretically a villain's Sahuagin minions could be the one offering the deal. The ritual is painful, and transforms the luckless drowned people into Deep Scions, who are shape-shifting infiltrators whose mind has been warped to serve its new master. 

And these Deep Scions re-enter society, either using its old identity or adapting a new one, but they are sent for some kind of mission. They can act, but they have no longer any empathy left for those they are sent to spy on. As family, a friend, or a lover, the Deep Scion's loyalty is twisted into thinking that it's just infiltrating on behalf of its undersea patron. Ironically, Deep Scions that are killed revert to their true non-aquatic forms, revealing that they are the ones most deceived after all.

What a cool design, too. I am always a fan of undersea-themed monsters, and a Deep Scion's piscine form has fins jutting out of their forearms, hair that trails off like squid tentacles, but most distinctive to me are those extra mouthparts that open up like a flower to reveal the monstrous fish-maw within. The original Volo's statblock classifies the Deep Scion as a 'Humanoid (Shapechanger)', and the Multiverse reprint has it as a 'Monstrosity'. While the latter is a bit more accurate, having the quality of the former would actually allow the Deep Scion better infiltration purposes since there are spells like 'Hold Person' that distinguishes humanoids. 

Standing at a CR 3, the Deep Scion isn't really that impressive of an actual combatant, with its special abilities being its natural ability to breathe underwater, and a 'psychic screech' that stuns those around it. In the ocean, this screech can also send a message to its master regardless of distance. Which really does show that similar to Doppelgangers, Deep Scions are meant to play up the role of an infiltrating enemy. 

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Demons - Babau

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Fiend - Demon; Chaotic Evil; CR 4

The cast of fiends in Dungeons & Dragons is always quite large, and the Demons tend to get the vast majority of these new additions. With how the Tanar'ri and Baatezu's lores are presented to us, it is a lot easier for designers to insert a brand new type of Demon without having to stop and think where it fits in the Devils' diabolical hierarchy. (This was, by the way, particularly exacerbated when 4E lumped Yugoloths and Demons together). But the Monster Manual is pretty good at just showing us mostly the 'original' set Demons and Devils presented in 1st Edition.

Even though the fiends would have to wait until Mordenkainen's to get a huge lore drop, it's not a surprise to me that Volo's gave us a handful of new fiends, particularly at the lower end of the power spectrum. The Babau, at a CR 4, fits in a nice niche below the Vrocks and Hezrous of the Monster Manual. Its abilities are a bit more spellcasting focused, with a weakening gaze and a bunch of spells like Darkness, Fear and Heat Metal. 

The appearance of the Babau is also a bit more 'traditionally' demonic compared to the more animalistic Demons in the Monster Manual, with the Babau being a nice combination of a flayed man and a Xenomorph. It's got an impressively cruel-looking skull face, jagged spinal nubs leading to a tail, and monstrous clawed limbs. The Babau's distinguishing feature is the single horn that curls upward from the top of its skull. I really do like the Babau's design as a weaker, more common demon, looking simultaneously cool enough but also weak enough as a 'footsoldier' of the Abyss. 

Volo's gives us some lore for the Babau, noting that they are created during a clash between the arch-devil Glasya and the demon lord Graz'zt, with the Babau being born out of Graz'zt's spilled blood. This is all backstory you can ignore for your setting, but it does explain the Babau's high intelligence for its relatively low hierarchy in hell. This origin somehow bestowed the Babau with the cunning deviousness of a devil. As much as this raises a whole can of worms on what this means for fiendish... 'reproduction', it does make the Babau fit nicely into the role of a more intelligent lesser Demon. 

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Demons - Maw Demon

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Fiend - Demon; Chaotic Evil; CR 1

Also known as 'Abyssal Maws' in their first appearance in 3E, the Maw Demon is one of the few D&D fiends to not have a fancy made-up name. These guys are just huge walking mouths, with three misshapen eyes, three arms and three legs. They just look malformed and hastily put together, and they are just one of the weakest and dumbest demons in the Abyss, noted even by some older editions to be just 'Abyssal wildlife'. At CR 1 in 5th Edition, Maw Demons are quite weak, only being able to bite and either having a last-ditch attack action (in Volo's) or a vomiting area attack (in Multiverse). 

5th Edition ties in the Maw Demons to the demon lord Yeenoghu, worshipped by the gnolls. Volo's spotlights the gnolls significantly, and this new lore notes that Maw Demons can be summoned as part of ritual offerings of freshly slain victims made to Yeenoghu. The Maw Demons aren't exactly obedient, but just run around after the gnoll war bands, feasting whatever the gnolls kill.

Yeenoghu as a demon lord is associated with savage gluttony, cannibalism and blood sacrifices, and so it makes sense that he would create these dedicated demons that run around and exist only to eat. After a Maw Demon rests for 8 hours, apparently anything it devours gets transported into Yeenoghu's gullet, which is interesting? Monsters of the Multiverse's reprint adds a table of potential contents of a slain Maw Demon, which in retrospect is a foreshadowing to the statblock style of the 2024/5.5E Monster Manual. 

I don't have much to say about the Maw Demons other than they're neat little buggers, so I'm going to just note that the Babau and Maw Demon actually just straight-up reuse artwork from 4th Edition. Not a problem, since they are gorgeous pieces of monster art, I just wanted to acknowledge the lack of 'previous monster appearances'. 

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Demons - Shoosuva

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

Shoosuva is our last demon for Volo's Guide to Monsters, and it's another tie-in to the gnolls. I've always loved the artwork for the Shoosuva in 5th Edition, starting off with a hyena but making it look as unnatural as possible. The ragged corpse-like body showing patches of flesh and bone below, the unnatural red eyes and the yellow glow in the ribcage, the massive set of horns running down the spine... and of course, the gigantic demonic scorpion tail. It is also in the 'large' size category, making it the size of a bear.

Shoosuvas are again associated with Yeenoghu, and are gifted to particularly powerful gnoll leaders or spellcasters after a great victory. A particularly victorious gnoll warband that pleases Yeenoghu will have him send one of these abyssal beasts through a cloud of fetid smoke, obeying one of the leading members of the gnoll tribe (a 'Fang of Yeenoghu' from the Monster Manual). Each Shoosuva is bound to its respective Fang, and the arrival of a Shoosuva tends to elevate said Fang to a leadership position. 

Combat-wise, as you'd expect, Shoosuvas are just simple battle-monsters, biting and immobilizing prey with its stinger tail, and being able to rampage as a last-ditch effort. It's not much more complex than that, but I appreciate the simplicity. Again, the Demons are meant to be the slavering, always-chaotic-evil flavour of fiends, and while I appreciate the competent schemers and commanders, it's also nice to have several other options to pad out the slavering, brutish hordes of the Abyss. 

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Devourer

• 5.5E/5E: Large Fiend (5E), Undead (5.5E); Chaotic Evil; CR 13

Of all the more over-the-top designs from 4th Edition, one out of the creatures of the 4E Monster Manual always stood out to me: the Soulspike Devourer. Devourers were a bit more obscure in older editions, being yet another lich-lite undead sorcerer, with the gimmick that they had souls trapped within their ribcages that they used as fuel for their evil sorceries. The Soulspike Devourer has bone growths where souls were impaled on them, screaming until the monstrous undead needs to use them. This image stuck out to me, and while 5E would scale back down on the more over-the-top, Warhammer-esque zanier designs... this one always stuck with me. 

5E's Devourer keeps the massive bulk of the 4E design, but is a bit more subdued compared to that. I do like that the core concept of the monster is kept, though. A giant unnatural skeletal creature with a ghoulish head, bone spurs across its unnatural arm, and a massive ribcage that serves as... well, a literal cage for the poor elf trapped within. That is indeed the gimmick of the Devourer, where they can teleport a creature into its cage, and either burn it up to fuel its 'Soul Rend' blast (mechanically, reducing the cooldown) or to just regurgitate them as new undead. Depending on the power of the creature taken, it will either be a zombie, a ghoul or a wight. 

Again, I find this absolutely cool. The idea of a 'lesser undead factory' is always something that stuck with me since my Warcraft III days, and the Devourer looks quite intimidating enough, while the 'ribcage as a prison' gimmick is easy enough to instantly 'get' what it is doing. 

5E's lore ties the Devourer more closely to the demon prince of undeath, Orcus. Orcus transforms his demon minions into Devourers, and the prose notes that Orcus even gets a different lesser demon as sort of a 'starter kit' for these newly-created Devourers, shoving one into their ribcages just to make sure the new Devourers have something to work with. That's adorable. Devourers are noted to be rarely unleashed on the Material Plane, but when they do, they attract other undead to it, while the Devourer itself continues to create more and more undead. Again, a pretty cool setpiece for an encounter, and one that I really do like a lot. 'Gimmick' monsters are a bit more of a hit-and-miss for me, but this one is cool.

Note that the Devourer was classified as a fiend in Volo's Guide to Monsters, a decision that I noted in my original review to be rather unintuitive. It started off as a demon, yes, but every other thing tied to it has been undead. Multiverse agrees with me, and retcons the Devourer into being an undead in the reprint. Neat!

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Draegloth

• 5.5E/5E: Large Fiend - Demon; Chaotic Evil; CR 7

The Draegloth is classified as a 'demon' fiend, but isn't technically a true demon, unlike the Babau or the Shoosuva above. And this is mostly due to its origin. The Draegloth is a tie-in not just to the fiends, but to the Drow. You really do get the sense that the writers of Volo's Guide to Monsters really wanted to do the Drow, but were told to save it to the next book, huh? A Draegloth is a half-Drow and half-Glabrezu... with the original writing for Volo's noting that it is "born of a drow high priestess in an unholy, dangerous ritual". The ritual rarely succeeds, as Volo's mentions. I mean, yes, the implication is quite... depraved, and I can totally see why the, uh, ritual is dangerous for the drow in question. Older editions were a bit more blatant with telling us how this happens. Multiverse caught on to this and censors it to still involve an elf priest and a Glabrezu, but without the specific wording. 

What a cool design, isn't it? It's basically the general concept of the Glabrezu but ironically, without the goofiness of its demonic parent. I do love the Glabrezu, goofiness and all, but I also have to admit just how cool the Draegloth looks like. Two pairs of massive arms that end in claws, reverse-bent legs, that badass mane of white hair, and a wolfish face? And it's gray-skinned? I must confess that the 3E Draegloth's lankier, almost skeletal build is cooler to me, but 5E's more muscular Draegloth is cool too. (4E, in contrast, gives us a generic humanoid drow). 

It is quite interesting that it's the Glabrezu that is chosen here, since Lolth is traditionally associated with Yochlol and some other types of spider-demons from the Demonweb Pits, but oh well. The Draegloth is loyal to its mother, a powerful trump cards in the politicking that Drow houses do against each other. Even without counting the Draegloth's considerable might, the sign that the Draegloth ritual even succeeds in the first place tends to be interpreted as a sign of Lolth's favour. Perhaps the more interesting aspect, however, is that the birth of a Draegloth ends up causing the Draegloth's house to always mobilize to craft a plan to crush its rivals in a way that incorporates the Draegloth... which is a detail that seems to be an interesting plot hook. 

Beyond this plot hook, the Draegloth lives an odd station in the very caste-based Drow culture. While it plays an important part in its house's takeover, a Draegloth cannot rise above the status of favoured slave or consort. Most Draegloth take this frustration out on their enemy, and some even abandon their house in response. It's an interesting bit that could be twisted for either treachery-related drama, or perhaps even a sympathetic demon. 

Combat-wise, the Draegloth is mostly an asset due to its strength and resistances, and its high stealthiness in spite of its ogre size. It also has a batch of spells that sows confusion, such as Dancing Lights, Faerie Fire and Darkness, because it is noted that Draegloths are a bit too impatient to bother with complicated tactics... but a few learn more destructive magic, which means that you could believably run a slightly more powerful Draegloth that has picked up a couple of magical spells under its proverbial belt. 

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Firenewt

• 5.5E/5E: Medium Humanoid (5E), Elemental (5.5E); Neutral Evil; CR 1/2 (Warrior), 1 (Warlock of Imix)
  

Firenewts are rather cute little humanoid newt that appear to be made up of solid lava or magma. Classified as humanoids in 5th Edition and retconned into Elementals in Multiverse, the Firenewts are essentially weaker versions of the Salamanders from the Monster Manual, a weaker set of sentient, intelligent enemies for a Fire Elemental campaign. I do like the artwork seeming to show the nerves of the Firenewt being visible through the skin, and how its newt fingers and arms seem to be slowly sloughing off, with how he's holding his sword and how the shield is attached to his arm. 

Firenewts originate from the Elemental Plane of Fire, and live in a 'militaristic theocracy' that reveres Elemental Fire. They worship Imix, the personification of the Elemental Fire, which leads their society to be wrathful, aggressive and cruel. Their physiology is an exaggeration of a real amphibian's cold-bloodedness, meaning that they need heat or they will become sluggish both physically and mentally. They need specifically 'moist heat'... which implies lava, but could also mean hot springs or boiling mud. It does imply the existence of rather charming fire-themed villages with little irrigation channels for whatever natural source of hot fluids they can find. 

Regular Firenewts use a combination of alchemy and a sulfur paste to have the ability to spit fire, so you have this fun image of a gaggle of Firenewts constantly chewing on what appears to be tobacco, only to launch them like balls of fire. Stronger Firenewt Warriors are also often paired with Giant Striders, which is a type of animal that we'll discuss below. 

More powerful Warlocks of Imix are those that are 'touched by the Fire Lord', gaining a mass of spells, a proper 'Fire Ray' attack, the ability to continue fighting briefly after a near death, and the ability to see even through magical darkness. The Warlocks of Imix lead the other Firenewts to go on raids to bring back treasure and captives, burning the most valuable in Imix's honour. Volo's notes that Firenewts consume the flesh of their captives, and enslaving the most useful. All these details about slavery and cannibalism are completely cut out of the Multiverse reprint. 

I've never really cared all too much about the Firenewt, to be honest, with or without the slaver 'hook'. I suppose there is some dark comedy that goofy-looking salamander monsters turn out to be pretty brutal man-eaters, but there's just not really enough to get me particularly interested other than maybe the description of how they always need heat. 

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Flail Snail

• 5.5E/5E: Large Elemental; Unaligned; CR 3

The Flail Snail, despite is appearance, is actually a creature of the Elemental Earth, a fact I always forget. I keep thinking this is a monstrosity! One of the weirder monsters to be introduced in the famous 1st Edition's Fiend Folio, the Flail Snail often gets to be mentioned whenever someone does a ranking of 'stupid monsters from old D&D'. Thus, the Flail Snail was never truly updated until 5th Edition... where it looks quite glorious! It is still goofy, of course, you can't have a Flail Snail that isn't goofy, but I like how 'natural' those tentacle-flails looks like now. I also like the little mouthparts that the Flail Snail has. 

The flavour text in Volo's notes how the Flail Snail looks like a 'ponderous, seemingly nonhostile creature', a nice little acknowledgement of its sheer weirdness and absurdity. However, if a creature comes close enough, the Flail Snail unleashes a flash of scintillating light from its shell (which blinds foes, or at the very least gives them disadvantage on attacks), before attempting to bludgeon enemies to death with its flail-antennae. The Flail Snail is also unexpectedly able to retaliate against magic. The anti-magic properties of a Flail Snail's shell allows it to convert spells cast against it into concussive energy. I actually do like this twist, that the Flail Snail's signature flail-antennae aren't actually the threatening feature of this creature, but it's rather its shell and the myriad tricks that it can pull off with it. 

Flail Snails will move across the ground and slowly consume everything (including rocks and soil; it is an earth elemental after all) and processing them, leaving behind a trail of... not slime, but glass. Some humanoids make a living following (or maybe farming?) these snails to gather the glass. The Flail Snail's shell is also described as an item, being noted as a rare, magical source of shield material that could be used to make anti-magic shields; or into robes of scintillating colours. 

As a whole, it does feel like a more distinctive version of the Cave Fisher in terms of being a 'loot monster'. The Flail Snail is more weird and more likely to surprise your players than actually pose as a serious threat to them, but I do really like the reinvention that keeps the goofy charm of the original creature, but also gives it a nice ecological niche in a modernized setting. There are other better, funnier 'joke' monsters, but the Flail Snail has a place near and dear to my heart. 

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Froghemoth

• 5.5E/5E: Huge Monstrosity; Unaligned; CR 10

Speaking of weirdos, behold the Froghemoth! The Froghemoth debuted in one of original D&D's more iconic stories: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, which features, no joke, characters from a fantasy setting essentially trying to explore a fallen UFO carrying alien specimens. The Froghemoth is one of these specimens. Barrier Peaks was updated in 2024 in Quests from the Infinite Staircase, which updates a lot of older D&D adventures for 5th Edition, giving us that excellent 'Froghemoth Elder', a truly massive creature. Check out the regular Froghemoth riding on its shoulder! 

But what is a Froghemoth? Well, it's a giant frog alien, around the size of an elephant. Its resemblance to a frog is mostly superficial, though, mostly involving its green colour, the shape of its mouth, and the fact that it has a long, prehensile tongue. The Froghemoth's feet are weird sucker-tipped stubby affairs, however. Its tongue is tipped with unnatural barbs. Its front limbs are two pairs of octopi-like tentacles. And instead of eyes, it's got a 'periscope' ending with three eyes, often the deceptively small thing peeking out of a pond before it bursts out in its full size and glory. 

It is interesting that despite more modern D&D liking to slap the term 'aberration' on any strange, alien being, the Froghemoth is still considered a monstrosity. 5th Edition emphasizes that these Froghemoths are creatures not of this world, with strange rumours of them being released by strange, cylindrical metal pillars buried deep underground where these things appeared out of.  

It appears that at least by the time 5th Edition rolls around, Froghemoths have became commonplace, with them being able to lay eggs without mating. Froghemoths live in swampy terrain, preying on other creatures with ambush tactics, keeping only its strange eyestalk above the water surface before ambushing them, grappling them with its tongue and tentacles, and swallowing them. In combat, Froghemoths are essentially grapplers and swallowers, although it has the strange trait of being stunned and temporarily weakened by lightning attacks. 

In a cute little addition that lets the Froghemoth have a bit more of a lore alongside other monsters, Bullywugs just worship Froghemoths, treating the big frog as a god and offering it tribute of food. The Froghemoth itself, being a giant confused animal, is happy with this arrangement, though this doesn't stop it from consuming a random Bullywug or two. That's cute, isn't it? The Froghemoth is most certainly an alien and not a frog, but the Bullywugs don't know that!

Like many 'sillier' monsters, the Froghemoth tends to only appear in side tie-in materials until 5th Edition, although I really do love the 2E and 3E artwork that the Froghemoth received, all of them nailing the idea of an alien monster that superficially resembles a tentacled frog quite well. I do like the look of the Froghemoth and how bizarre it is. It works just as well even if you ignore the 'actually an alien' origin story and just treat it as a particularly strange fantasy creature. And in Volo's spirit of having most of its statblocks be an 'expansion pack' for older monsters, the Froghemoth serves as an excellent one to the Bullywugs. 

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Giant Strider

• 5.5E/5E: Large Monstrosity (5E), Elemental (5.5E); Neutral Evil; CR 1

Originally described as a footnote in the Firenewt entry, Multiverse separates the Giant Strider and gives it its own entry, which makes a bit more sense to me. We don't list horses and wargs in the statblocks of humans and orcs, after all! Giant Striders are giant 'half-bird, half-reptilian' creatures. They're basically dinosaurs... or chocobos, if you prefer to use a Final Fantasy term. 

5E just has them as a weird animal (or, well, a weird monstrosity) but Multiverse explicitly notes them to be 'neither bird nor reptile', and are classified as elementals. Giant Striders are able to shoot flame out of their mouth, and this natural ability (as compared to a regular Firenewt needing alchemical reagents) causes them to view the Giant Striders as being a gift for Imix. Oh, they can also absorb fire, actually being healed by a fiery attack. 

This leads to a neat little bit of lore where the Giant Striders are often found in many of the same locations that the Firenewts seek out, and are often domesticated by the Firenewts, who provide shelter and food for their fire-breathing, dinosaurian companions. It's a nice little flair that they gave the Firenewts, I suppose. Not a whole ton to say here for me. 

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Girallon

• 5.5E/5E: Large Monstrosity; Unaligned; CR 4
  

The Girallon has never been a monster that's particularly interesting to me, although I was perhaps a bit too harsh towards it in my initial review. As a statblock, even with the flavour text, the Girallon is just a big monkey with four arms. In a world where Giant Apes exist, it's really not that weird. Sure, it's got those orc fangs, and they emphasize on the albino white fur being uncommon, but other than? It's just a big angry monkey. (I do note that I don't like the randomly exposed ape-boobs, and much prefer its 4E artwork)

And that's okay. I do think that these kinds of monsters, the 'slightly weird animals' help to be a nice demarcation between the more boring 'just a real life animal' to something more weird (like, say, the Displacer Beast or the Grick) and the fully fantastical (like the Roper or Mimic). And, again, that's okay. 

There is some attempt in making the Girallon interesting, with emphasis on the Girallon's stealthiness in spite of its size, and having foraging family units similar to gorillas. Perhaps the most interesting bit is that Girallons are drawn towards buildings and civilization, which isn't just there for you to do a homage to King Kong, but is given an actual in-universe logical reason: Girallons view a city's building as a particularly sturdy 'forest', or a jungle gym. In unnatural cities, the Girallon's climbing skills are paradoxically better. This quality has led mages to speculate that the Girallon used to be artificially created by a now-fallen ancient kingdom as guards... and indeed, some cultures like the Yuan-ti try and tame these great apes for these reason. 

The game classifies the Girallon as a monstrosity, more for the fact that they want to limit what Druids can transform into. But having fantastical animals in the setting like Owlbears, Gryphons and Girallons, again, helps to make the world feel more 'naturally' magical, so to speak. The iconic D&D jungle adventure Tomb of Annihilation features a Zombie Girallon, for example, which would feel 'too much' if they applied these monster templates to more over-the-top monstrosities. 

One Piece 1174 Review: Níðhǫggr

One Piece, Chapter 1174: The Strongest Thing in the World

Unfortunately, we do not get any more Brook. I am slightly, ever so slightly, upset.

This is a really good chapter, though, all jokes aside. And a good chunk of it has to do with the giant children, which is not something I expected to write in this story. But the matter of the fact is, even though Colon is the only character to really have any significant amount of time, the random little quirks that Oda has given to the little cluster of kidnapped children every time we cut to them did do enough to make each of them somewhat distinct that when Oda ends up pulling on the foreshadowing triggers, it works.

We start off where we left off with Summers briefly panicking that he destroyed the ship... but then we get Summers going absolutely ballistic with being delighted at realizing that he's about to witness a lot of misery and suffering as the children walk off to their deaths right in front of their parents. I'm not going to belabor the point, but god damn, Oda did a great job at making Summers' face really, really despicable as he laughs in what's essentially an orgasmic face as he sees the desperation among the giants. 

Summers starts speaking and taunting everyone over a megaphone, and we get to see some of the interactions between the parents and the children. Oimo, good old Oimo, tries his best to rescue his granddaughter the way that Saul and Robin did, but gets his hand impaled for his trouble, and dragged on the ground. The kids continue to cry and think that they're being punished, or that this is karma for disobeying their parents, while the parents are panicking and trying their best to save the kids. 

We've got some typical misbehaviour, but Colon gets a neat moment where Ripley scolds him for bullying another child; and Oimo's grandson is angry at Oimo for being part of the 'barbaric pirates'. Nice little moments. Colon tries his best to hold his composure... but he is still just a kid and breaks down crying at the end of the pier. Ripley kneels down in front of him and hugs him, and we get a scene of all the thorns piercing through Ripley's body but without a shred of showcase of pain in her face. 

And Ripley is just there with a smile, knowing that there's not a thing she could do to save her son... but she is going to be there, to be calm with her son, to make sure that he doesn't die alone. ALL the parents (or grandparents) do this. We get a nice short moment from Ronja (the Pollyanna kid) whose father praises her for being so brave, and Bent (the kid whose greatest fear is his mom) apologizes to his mother... who is happy to be treated as 'scary' if she can keep her son safe. The orphan Johanna is jealous for a bit... before Ange, the teacher, rushes in to hug her.

Oh, and Bjorn, Rodo's younger brother, regrets being ashamed of his nerdy brother, right as Rodo jumps in to grab him and fall alongside the rest of the children. 

Again, all of these built up on nice little lines here and there of foreshadowing for minor characters, and the juxtaposition with Summers' nasty laughing face is genuinely well done. 

...of course, Oda's not going to kill a bunch of children like that. But the buildup is great. They fall on a white layer on a black landscape, which seems to be intentionally drawn to look disorienting and confusing. The white layer is evidently Luffy, who boasts about this being his 'Gum Gum Tummy Cracker' or whatever, and we get a conversation between Luffy in his Nika form with an angry eyeball that is clearly Loki. Loki insists that he is The Destroyer, who wants everyone off his back to not hinder his fighting. 

And we build up, of course, to the reveal of Loki's true devil fruit form. It starts snowing. Lightning and thunder rock the land. Far away, Elder Jarl and his bodyguards hear the Nika drumbeat, and Jarl starts talking about a prophecy about the arrival of Sun God Nika... and we get a glorious two-page spread of a jet-black dragon with glowing eyes, bursting through the canopy and knocking away the giant Mumas. Luffy and Ragnir are standing on his head, dwarfed by the sheer size of Loki in his beast mode, and... and Mumas are just being thrown around like dolls. The sheer scope of Loki is just insane, since we've seen that the Mumas are already giants to the giants. 

So yeah, after a bit of teasing, we finally get to see Loki's beast form. It's not Fenrir! It's not a serpent, a squirrel or an eagle either, and I am quite happy that we're playing Loki's monster form completely straight. Just a cool, badass, monster dragon... and the size, too! Very excited to see what's going to come out of this. 

Random Notes:

• In his flashback, Colon has... an Emet toy? I... what? 
• This, by the way, isn't the first Emet toy to have appeared in the story, as Wapol, of all people, made an Emet toy in his cover story during his rise to prominence as a materials producer mogul. What!
• As per how I understand it, Gunko's arrow arrow fruit terminates at the docks, and since the children have walked all the way to the end and fell, they should be free from the Arrow Arrow Fruit, if not the Thorn fruit. 
• One of the mothers tries to bite off the thorny vines, bless her. 
• Killingham gets a brief cameo reacting to Summers's nonsense, but he doesn't really do anything. 
• Summers' reaction about how 'oh, I can pawn off the mistake on the Great One!' is an interesting one. Is it just Summers that's a bit of a moron, or are the God's Knights actually chafing under Imu somewhat? 
• Loki's draconic devil fruit name isn't told to us yet, but with Nidhogg being identified as the name of one of the Muma dragons, chances are that's the one, isn't it? 
• Rodo/Road, Colon/Collun... yeah, I'm pretty sure I mix up which romanization a lot of times.