Reviewing 5E D&D Monsters - Ravenloft, Pt. 2

So our coverage of Ravenloft's The Horrors Within turned out to extend to more than a single article! If any setting would get more words from me, it would be the gothic horror one, but it's also worth noting that this book does have a huge chunk of monster entries within it since it revamps all of the entries originally printed in 2021's Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft!

The way I divided it was that all the entries that originally debuted in 2021 has mostly been covered in the previous article, and this one covers a lot of the newer ones. 

And as I had alluded to in the first Ravenloft article, I do think that The Horrors Within was particularly chosen in celebration/conjunction of the Cthulhu Mythos entering public domain. Even Cthulhu himself, big daddy squid-face of R'lyeh, gets a stat block in that book! He does count as a 'named character' so we're not going to cover Cthulhu himself, so stop your fhtagn-ing, but we do get a bunch of other Cthulhu Mythos characters from his Domain of Dread, Innsmouth, here! 

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Dhampir

• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

We have a handful of additional playable races, and of course we get some spooky, spooky ones! Dhampirs are half-vampires, of course, allowing your players to finally play a vampire without breaking the game by controlling a statblock designed to be a boss. Dhampirs in Ravenloft can arise through various means, from the traditional "one of your parents was a vampire", to other things like being cursed, magical experimentation, a vampire attack survivor, or being cursed by a dark power. In a fun little twist, Dhampirs don't always thirst for blood, and some are cursed with a hunger for other substances like life energy or dreams. 

The Ravenloft race options are quite interesting (and can be really broken) due to the "Ancestral Legacy" aspect, which functions similar to the templating, allowing you to mix and match features from the Dhampir features and whatever the character originally was. A human, an orc, a goblin, an elf... or something more fantastical like an aarakocra, a fairy, a centaur... game balance wise I don't really like this, but flavour-wise it makes sense, right? Why do all vampires look like humans or elves?

Dhampirs gain a 'vampiric bite' ability, which allows them to gain benefits if they choose to use their fangs to bite a living opponent, either healing themselves or being empowered by it. They also are able to scuttle up walls in a way analogous to the spider-climb spell. Interestingly, the 'hunger' isn't represented by an aspect of the stat-block, so that and any other potential vampiric weaknesses (which, admittedly, in fiction tends to be downplayed in the dhampirs) is up to you and the DM to play around with. The idea of an adventurer constantly beset and fighting their inner hunger and urges, while going out to hunt monsters, is pretty great! And who wouldn't want to play as Blade? 

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Hexblood

• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Our next new playable race is the Hexblood, which are very Hag-coded but are also described as anyone who's infused with so much fey magic that they are transformed/corrupted into being part-fey themselves. This is a new addition to 5E lore, and is a lot cooler than previous creatures like Calibans or Hagspawn that were cursed into being disadvantaged due to a Hag encounter. Player characters need to feel fun to play, after all. You can play a 'mini-hag', or I suppose more accurately a witch. 

In addition, other potential origins for the Hexblood include children who were swapped by faeries as a kid; or lost children who were cursed in the forest. It doesn't have to be Hags, which I do appreciate even if a huge chunk of the flavour text and abilities are very Hag-ish. 

The problem, I feel, is that Hexbloods feel too much like Satyrs in their art. I get that not everyone wants to play a tottering grandma (why?) but I feel like making the original Hexblood art purple-skinned with horns as being very misleading. The description (and the new 5.5E art) does give a bunch of other changes -- ears that split in forked points, skin in lurid shades, long hair that regrows if cut, and the irremovable living crown. I honestly don't think any of these really read as particularly 'hag-like', since even beyond the old-woman thing. But hey, at least the Hexbloods in that 5.5E artwork are having a lot of fun being their own coven!

A lot of what is described in the Hexblood does lead to some nice story beats that tie with a Hag that obsesses over a certain being that have the misfortune to catch the hag's attention. Sure, catching the Hag's ire is terrifying and you get turned into a frog or something, but a hag that wants to help? That thinks that she is your 'real mother', and gets jealous over your newfound adventuring party? Or maybe the hag curses you and turns you into a Hexblood because of a wish for power, perhaps, knowing the suspicion and reputation that hags have in regions like Barovia. 

In addition to gaining some access to fey-themed illusion spells, Hexbloods have a little bonus. As a homage to the creepy eyeball trinkets used by some hags, Hexbloods can create a magical token that they can use as either a remote viewer or to transmit a distant message. So it's like a mini-pager or a spy camera... except this has to be something like a lock of hair or a detached nail. Of course! 

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Reborn

• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

The most popular playable race out of Ravenloft, at least in the tables that I've seen, is the Reborn. Reborn are just... just undead. Sentient, living undead, walking revenants and wights and zombies that retain their original memories. Where Dhampirs and Hexbloods are playable versions of Vampires and Hags, Reborns are the fantasy of playing a lesser version of a Death Knight or a Lich... and I would be remiss not to mention the immense popularity of the Forsaken/Undead race in World of Warcraft. Man, I love the Forsaken. 

And the Reborn intrinsically is going to be really fun to play and build up! Being a walking corpse meant that you had a life before. How did you die? Was it a tragedy? It probably is a tragedy. How much do you remember of your previous life? How did you die? Who killed you? Who brought you back? Are you seeking revenge? How are you acclimatizing to undeath? Is it a blessing, or a curse? Add all that to the 'how will society react to a monster walking among them' storyline that makes all these monstrous playable races so much fun to play, and the Reborn is just such a fun outlet for various stories.

And a lot of the stories tied to the undead monsters are easily applicable to the Reborn as well. The 5.5E artwork shows a Reborn who seems to be reanimated in the style of a Flesh Golem. Who put that Reborn back together? Was the resurrection caused by a desperate ally, or an obsessive scientist who wanted to resurrect their creepy object of obsession? You could play out a Revenant's story of seeking out vengeance, or perhaps you are the result of an arrogant and failed experiment to gain immortality by becoming a Death Knight or a Lich. Perhaps you are a Wight or a Zombie, part of a necromancer's army, who gained sentience for some reason.

Whatever the case, the Reborn template here is just there to give a balanced outlet for any and all undead player characters. It's honestly very smart. 

The abilities are fun, too, even if I don't agree that the creature type is 'humanoid' -- they've been giving out fey, construct and dragon tags to some other playable races, why not undead? Anyway, Reborn have the same 'unnatural nature' lack of need for sleep or exhaustion that they also give to the Warforged. They rest by trancing, like elves... or rather reliving (or be tormented by) memories of their past life. Oh, and the Reborn also has an advantage from death saving throws because they've died once. That's funny. 

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Lupin

• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

It is genuinely shocking that D&D doesn't have a dedicated 'dog-person' race the way that the they have cat-people in Tabaxi. And with 5th Edition going on for more than a decade, we've had playable humanoid animal versions of tortoises, snakes, goats, cows, fish, frog, bunnies, elephants, lions, hippopotamus, monkeys, desert-bugs, birds, a different bird, and another different bird. But we've never had a dedicated dog-people, when you'd think that the demand for those would be quite high, especially with the amount of furry art out there. Yeah, Shifters are an option, and the lycanthropy curse is there, but that doesn't stop them from doing the Tabaxi and the Leonin for cats. 

So we've got the Lupin. They are just more anthropomorphic werewolves (which is a bit underwhelming, since 5E were-creatures actually do look a lot less beastlier than they probably should compared to the 'furry people'), and they draw their name from a very, very obscure 2E race. It frankly is quite amazing that 3E with its extensive customization options never actually made a proper 'dog-person' race either. 

Anyway, Lupins in Ravenloft are essentially what you'd expect, being people who survive lycanthropy -- but are uniquely affected due to a partial resistance, and are unable to shift between its two forms and are stuck in-between. This gives them some additional instincts, the ability to pounce, and the ability to unleash a werewolf-like howl. Other than the origin, the Lupin is just a 'wolf-person' or 'dog-person', which nicely makes it not redundant with the Shifter (which plays more on the fantasy of shifting and transforming between forms). 

Welcome back to 5th Edition, Lupins!

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Star Spawn Emissary

• 5E/5.5E: Small or Medium Aberration; Chaotic Evil; CR 19 (Lesser)
• 5E/5.5E: Huge Aberration; Chaotic Evil; CR 21 (Greater)
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

We're saving a couple of monsters that debuted in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and discussing them here. Now 'Star Spawn' in 5th Edition refer to the transformed cultists exposed to the Far Realm, and one of the Domains of Dread in Ravenloft is, of course, cosmic horror. These 5E books give us two very beefy 'final bosses' for a cosmic horror adventure, with the CR 19 Lesser Star Spawn Emissary, and the CR 21 Greater Star Spawn Emissary -- both meant to be 'phase 1' and 'phase 2' of a singular long boss fight. Keep in mind, they are still emissaries -- not even the true cosmic horrors themselves. Which is as it should be!

The 5E artwork just displays a massive mound of flesh with yawning, gaping mouths, whorling tentacles and random red eyes and teeth everywhere. Very cool artwork, and I can't ever complain about these sorts of flesh-mounds... but at the same time, the 5.5E artwork is awesome, too. The Lesser Emissary in the foreground has the hunchbacked body of a person, but it's in the process of mutating with claws and spikes, and the neck is extending like a worm while the face is contorted into a screaming face with a tongue lolling out while another mouth manifests on the side of its head. The Greater Emissary in the background is a giant, vaguely bug-like creature with multiple bug claws and tentacles, a vertical mouth down its front end, and its 'head' is an explosion of jaw-petals and tentacles like 5.5E's take on the Bodytaker Plant. 

Star Spawn Emissaries, of course, can look however the hell they want. The prose describes them as 'fingers of alien realms, digits that tip the scales of reality towards terror'. They are just here to make things ready for unimaginable masters, or distant manifestations of themselves. They tend to be secretive and utilize their shapeshifting abilities to do their strange plans and manipulations, undermining perceptions of order and reality. These are meant to be the final boss, the head of the cult or the hidden sponsor behind the doomsday cult, only really morphing and revealing its true form when it can't manipulate events to fit its whim anymore. 

As mentioned above, the Lesser Form is typically encountered first, which is why it is a 'small or medium' aberration, being confronted first in a form more comfortable to humanoids. Once you defeat it, its body dissolves into a 'gory slurry' before returning in its Greater form. Only by destroying the Lesser and the Greater form one after the other can the apocalypse be stopped... or, knowing the genre, delayed for just a little while.

An Emissary's Lesser form can disguise itself as anything, since these Star Spawn do not have any kind of 'misplaced pride'. Its true form is described as 'a roughly bipedal mass of agitated organs, self-cannibalizing alien orifices, and appendages suggestive of forms it has previously assumed'. And the greater form 'openly mocks a plane's reality', being a 25-foot-tall pillar of violent flesh. Their lairs are also likewise transformed into pillars and mazes that resemble mockeries of flesh. 

Again, a pretty cool Herald of Cthulhu or Azathoth or what-have-you to fight! The stat block itself has a bunch of heavy psychic and physical attacks, and the ability to warp its environment. Nothing stands out to me from the actual stat block if we're being honest, but I like that we do get a big bad eldritch horror final boss in Ravenloft. 

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Unspeakable Horror

• 5E/5.5E: Huge Monstrosity; Chaotic Evil; CR 8
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Okay, before we talk about the Unspeakable Horror, I think we should talk about the Mists of Ravenloft. The Mists are the supernatural force that created Ravenloft, spiriting away these powerful villains like Count Strahd from their native planes when they committed a massive evil, taking a chunk of their world with them and eventually creating the Domain of Dread which is a mini-plane themed around its respective Darklord. These Mists are also responsible for stealing away adventurers from other worlds and realms and plonking them down into a Domain of Dread where they need to survive against the horrors of Ravenloft. 

Within the Mists lurk Unspeakable Horrors, which are described as 'remnants of ruined domains', or 'yet-to-be-realized imaginings' of the dark powers that created the Mists. Normally these strange nothings manifest briefly into whispers or impressions... and sometimes they gain physical form, no matter how temporarily. And that temporary manifestation of the Mists are the Unspeakable Horror -- misshapen, unique entities that break the laws of reason and reality, existing for a while and causing havoc before disintegrating due to their instability. 

The statblock of the Unspeakable Horror isn't much, other than the expected psychic damage, a terror aura and an incomprehensible form that makes hitting it a bit harder. But the 5E books also come with a giant table to customize your Unspeakable Horror, which is fun! There are three tables to roll on -- 'body composition', 'limbs' and 'hex blast'. This allows you to describe the strange, eldritch details of your horror, and without going through every entry in the table, the end result is meant to be strange, unsettling, and combining a bunch of different features. The differing hex blast options also allow the Unspeakable Horror to feel different in different fights. 

Look at that 5E Unspeakable Horror! It's very vaguely bipedal, but looks more like a mass of coral and bone, with a head made up of bony tentacles, a giant bulbous hooked arm with eyeballs and orifices and bony growths all around it, a single skeletal hand ending in a humanoid hand 'waving' at you, a pair of mismatched legs (or are those three legs?), a bunch of ribcage bones, and random things that dangle here and there that don't seem to serve any discernible biological function. It is meant to be weird and nonsensical and meant to be terrifying because of that. 

5.5E, boringly, standardizes the Unspeakable Horror into just being generically an 'anathema to all forms of life' and 'their forms change constantly', reducing the stat block to being very boring. The artwork is very cool with a bunch of adventurers walking towards a giant black void that looks kind of like an eye, surrounded by undulating multicoloured tendrils that looked like someone painted over reality. Great artwork for sure, and it is as valid of an interpretation of the 'Unspeakable Horror born of the mist' as described by the first book, but I really like the idea of a customizable monster borne out of unrealized horror potentials of the Mist! 

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The Bagman

• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft actually has a very good segment in its book detailing how to create a monster, and how dungeon masters should not be afraid to customize the monsters they find to make every encounter unique and exciting. That is awesome. I agree with that. What is odd, however, is that it would introduce a sample of how to make an encounter awesome and horrific... and that encounter is 'the Bagman'... but not actually give us much beyond 'oh, just use a Troll stat block with one or two extra lines'. That feels like a gigantic missed opportunity, and I'd rather they take out one of the additional redundant extra statblocks like one of the Relentless Killers or removing one of the reprinted statblocks or the extra vampires and use that as the 'monster creation tutorial'. 

Because the Bagman itself is described as something far, far creepier than a troll. The artwork isn't the most impressive, being just a lanky naked dude with shaggy hair and glowing eyes. Neat, but hardly special. 

The lore, though... the Bagman is described as a gothic-horror adaptation of a more modern urban horror monster, something like the Slenderman or one of those 'creepypasta' monsters. The Bagman is a strange being that is tied to the Bag of Holding -- a quintessential item for adventurers once you reach a certain level; an extradimensional storage bag that allows the party to essentially have 'video game infinite inventory'. Both the Bag of Holding and the idea of camping and resting are things that are normally very safe in Dungeons & Dragons, and I love the idea of making a monster that perverts and subverts that. The Bagman appears from within the Bag of Holding, and it appears out of random Bags of Holding to abduct its victims. 

The Bagman itself is even given a backstory. There are urban legends about an adventurer that abandoned his party by jumping into a Bag of Holding -- you don't normally put living things in there -- and he became lost inside a constantly increasing and infinite number of extradimensional storage spaces. Being trapped in the space-between-spaces causes the person to mutate into a strange, monstrous creature. Every night, the Bagman slips out of a random Bag of Holding, trying to find his home. If he doesn't find it, he kidnaps someone and leaves behind a trinket. In Candyman fashion, if you speak too loudly over an open Bag of Holding, or whisper 'follow my voice' three times, the Bagman will be attracted and come to you. 

It's such a fun little mystery and story, and while I agree that the Troll stat block might be a good starting point for this creature, the fact that we don't get a finalized version of it or any changes beyond 'toss in a single alien mind trait, I guess' is honestly quite silly. I am surprised they didn't rectify this in the newer book either, considering how popular the Bagman was when Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft was released in 2021! For a book that has arguably the best monster-customization and monster-presentation-for-DMs material in 5th Edition, it is a bit surprising. 

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Elder Thing

• Large Aberration; Chaotic Evil; CR 14
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

Oh yes. Oh yes. We're talking about the Lovecraftian monsters, actual creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos that are now available for other games beyond Call of Cthulhu to feature due to the intricacies of public domain. I'm a huge cosmic horror geek and used to be really into the Cthulhu mythos, so I am really pleased as punch! I didn't actually know the Cthulhu Mythos was even released to the public domain, so I made quite a noise when I saw the Elder Thing pop up in my copy of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within. Yes, I skipped straight to the bestiary and missed Innsmouth and big ol' Cthulhu. 

The Elder Things are depicted quite faithfully to their original description as 'radially symmetrical creatures'. The Elder Things originally appeared in one of the most classic and well-known stories by H.P. Lovecraft, 'At the Mountains of Madness'. They were described as being barrel-shaped, with a five-pointed starfish-like 'head' with eyes and sensory organs, five long tentacles halfway down their body, two wings, and five tentacle-like 'feet'. The idea is that the Elder Things are adapted for both marine and space movement. Despite their very coral/starfish-like look, Elder Things are highly intelligent and highly civilized, being actually the ancient aliens that arrived and created ancient scientific societies on Earth billions of years ago, and is implied to have seeded the evolution of life on Earth before their society collapsed.

The Elder Things in D&D's Ravenloft is... not that. I mean, visually, they knocked it out of the park. The 'arm' tentacles end in fingers, and the wings are a lot more elaborate. The colours are a lot more fanciful in general, but it is a serviceable 'make it cool' adaptation of the normally-goofy Elder Things. 

But they are slapped with the label of 'chaotic evil', and noted to be ruthless colonizers that have colonized countless worlds over unfathomable aeons, collecting mind-shattering secrets of the multiverse. As the artwork shows, they unleash 'mind-scouring spores' and 'psychic skewers', which aren't exactly in line with the more neutral ancient-predecessor vibe that the original short story was going for. Just like how the Gallows Speaker and Dullahan were reduced to just 'vengeful evil horror monster', this really does feel very reductive... with one little bit of caveat. The flavour text did note that the Elder Things' ancient empires were destroyed by their rivals (the Yithians) and their rebellious creations (the Shoggoths), and those that remain are a broken race that zealously guard the remnants of their power. That does, in some way, explain their madness and hostility. I don't like it, but I kind of accept it. 

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Gug

• Huge Aberration; Chaotic Evil; CR 12
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

The Gug are pretty simple monsters that come from the Lovecraft story 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath', which featured Lovecraft's Dreamlands setting. I must confess I never really cared all that much about the Dreamlands as much sa the rest of the mythos, but I it's neat that the Gug made the jump here! Much of the Gug's association with anything in a dream dimension is cut out, and the Gug is just what it was depicted within the Dreamlands -- a giant, ogre-monster with a weird mouth that opens vertically. 

The Gugs are gigantic but stealthy, and favour subterranean locations. Their D&D statblock is relatively simple, just a big guy that chews its enemies. The D&D writeup note that Gugs fear and hate Gugs, and compete with them for territory. Oddly, this relationship was actually reversed in the Lovecraft mythos, with the smaller, intelligent Ghouls being the ones that fear the Gugs.

Anyway, without the little gimmick of being part of a dream-world, the Gugs end up being not that particularly unique, but I do like seeing some representation from the other Lovecraft material for sure. 

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Mi-Go

• Medium Aberration; Neutral Evil; CR 9
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

Also known as the 'Fungi from Yuggoth', the Mi-Go are first introduced in 'The Whisperer in Darkness'. The 5E art isn't the most clear about the anatomy of this thing, showing clumps of purple flesh, a bunch of tentacles that also kind of resemble insectoid claws... and in fact, the focus of the scene is the brain and nervous system that the Mi-Go is manipulating. 

That is actually part of the Mi-Go's lore in their original appearance. Described with particularly confusing terms, the Mi-Go were compared to fungi, insects and crustaceans, and the original short story never actually gave a full account of their appearance the way the Elder Things were described, beyond the fact that they were ultimately more fungi, and that their resemblance to insects were superficial. Most modern depictions of Mi-Go tend to go for 'cool bug monster', and I actually like this stranger, more formless depiction. 

The Mi-Go in the original story were part of a smaller outpost on Earth, and they were able to surgically remove human brains, and place it in jars in such a way that the brain remains conscious and intelligent. While horrifying to some, other people abducted by the Mi-Go see this as an opportunity to travel with these intelligent aliens to see the universe. The strange fungal-aliens are just weirded out that some humans have a problem with a perfectly normal medical procedure. 

Again, The Horrors Within's writeup does also use language that imply more explicit malice instead of the alien understanding of these cosmic stories. The Mi-Go are noted, similarly to the Elder Things, as colonizers of worlds and desiring to control inhabitants. Their scientific curiousity is adapted to malign coldness and cruelty, and their desire to hunt brains is for cold research and experimentation because they are evil scientists that do brutal experiments of brain-swapping just to learn how other creatures think. It does make for easy villainization, but they are kind of missing the point in adapting the more well-known but more explicitly non-malicious monsters in the Lovecraft Mythos. 

The Mi-Go are noted to like the dark, although they do not have sunlight sensitivity. They are also not given a flight speed, something that is accurate to the original short story (their wings don't work in Earth's atmosphere). One of their spells is Modify Memory, and one of their regular attacks is to bedazzle their foes with a bright dazing light. But ultimately the Mi-Go is designed to be creepy due to its brain-stealing abilities. 

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Mist Horror

• Large Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 3
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

The Mist Horror is a creature that has appeared in previous editions of Ravenloft, and it was kind of adapted into the Unspeakable Horror above in the 2021 Van Richten's book... where the Mist Horror was just a little sub-entry in the Unspeakable Horror entry, something that makes a bit more sense compared to other unrealized monster concepts in that 2021 book. Mist Horrors are noted to be animate clouds of vapour within the Mists of Ravenloft, stalking and transforming into whatever the person that sees it fears the most.

2026 gave us a full Mist Horror statblock, being far more faithful to its original incarnation as being a spectral part of the Mists of Ravenloft that focuses on instilling dread. the Mist Horror can also cast a couple of spells like Fog Cloud and Command, which, again, makes sense. It does work as a weaker, less 'corporeal' version of the Unspeakable Horror, for sure, but I otherwise don't have a whole ton to say about this.

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Mordenheim's Monster

• Medium Construct; Neutral; CR 12
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

Okay, just like many other classic horror movies, we have Victor Frankenstein's Monster... or, er, sorry. Viktra Mordenheim's Monster. Dr. Mordenheim is the Darklord of one of the Domains of Dread, and no prizes to who can guess which classic horror icon she is based on. 

Frankenstein's Monster has already been adapted to the very classic and always-reprinted D&D monster, the Flesh Golem. But just like the Loup Garou being an updated and much more powerful werewolf compared to the one we got in the Monster Manual, Mordenheim's Monster is likewise a much more powerful Flesh Golem. They've been upgraded to a monster of a CR of 12 as opposed to the original Flesh Golem's 5. 

The most important distinction is that just like the original Frankenstein's Monster, these creations of Mordenheim have wills of their own. They don't have single-digit intelligence scores anymore! Some serve their creator, others try to regain memories of their previous life (or lives), and others yet go through a whole identity crisis and try to create a new life. Mordenheim's Monster does everything that the Flesh Golem can do, but better -- including a very cool 'leap' action that allows it to jump around like a superhero. 

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Nightgaunt

• Large Aberration; Chaotic Evil; CR 8
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

Another one from the Lovecraft Mythos, and also coming from 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath', the Nightgaunts were reportedly inspired by Lovecraft's own recurring nightmares. It does, then, make perfect sense that these would appear within a nightmare story. The Nightgaunts were depicted as silent abductors, described as faceless, voiceless thin gargoyle-like beings. 

The Nightgaunts in D&D/Ravenloft drop the whole 'Dreamlands' thing as well, and are noted to simply be aberrations that soar in the skies of alien worlds, or over subterranean mountain ranges. They abduct victims and drop them from incredible heights. The artwork and flavour text describes the Nightgaunt's head as being a 'polyp' that splits apart to reveal creepy lights within before they drop their prey. 

While the stat block is relatively simple, it does funnily enough adapt one of the weirder descriptors. The Nightgaunt's touch gives a nerve-wracking, alien sensation that is the closest described as 'tickling'... although using that specific word in the statblock, just 'Tickle' instead of 'Eldritch Tickling' or 'Unearthly Tickling Sensation' or whatever, gives a delightful and/or disturbing mental image. 

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Shoggoth

• Huge Aberration; Chaotic Evil; CR 11
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

Oh, hey, the Shoggoth! Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li! Probably one of the most famous monsters, the Shoggoths also debuted in 'At the Mountains of Madness'. They were giant protoplasmic monster that have a main body of black sludge, with eyes, mouths and limbs growing all over its body, before being re-absorbed as they can transform into any shape they like. They were engineered as a labourer slave race by the Elder Things, and ultimately rebelled and caused the collapse of the Elder Things' empire on Earth.

If you couldn't tell, the Gibbering Mouthers in D&D are essentially based on this, scrubbed of all the backstory but retaining their fun imagery. Not the biggest fan of the artwork, which focuses more on the knight being strangled than the actual monster itself... although the Shoggoth is a formless ever-shifting creature.

The Shoggoth's flavour text is pretty much a summary of their story, noting that they were created by the Elder Things as slaves, rebelled, and now lurk and have taken over the ruins of the fallen cities -- including remote, icy reaches. At the Mountains of Madness was set in Antarctica, where a group of scientists stumble upon the ruins of Elder Thing civilization and are beset by the Shoggoths. The Shoggoth of D&D have all the expected ooze-like abilities, the ability to mimic voices, and a nice little nod to the original story where they are invigorated by the cold. (In the short story, they weren't exactly empowered by the cold so much that they are adapted to not be bothered by it... but eh)

Pretty expected, pretty all right. A bit weaker than I thought they would be, but then the Miskatonic University Expedition don't have access to the Fireball spell or Action Surges. 

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Strahd Skeleton

• Medium Undead; Lawful Evil; CR 4
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

Just like there are stronger zombies, the Horrors Within also gives us stronger skeletons. Despite its name, the flavour text does note that other vampires can also create Strahd Skeletons -- the name is just in honour of the most famous D&D vampire. The Strahd Skeletons are created by greater vampires that turn mortal servants into undead without wanting to give them the gift of vampirism.

These Strahd Skeletons have 'vampiric longswords' that can reduce maximum hit points, and the flavour text note this as them using these swords to suck blood from their victims to bring back to their masters. I do like the last bit of the flavour text: "tales disagree on whether vampires feed from these bloody blades, or merely revel in the sacrifice."

It's neat enough that I'll include it here.

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Waxwork

• Small or Medium Undead; Neutral Evil; CR 3
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

Vaguely inspired by the 50's movie House of Wax, and the general usage and twisting of artwork like The Picture of Dorian Gray and the prevalence of lifelike mannequins and sculptures in horror, the Waxwork are realistic humanoid sculptures that come to life. They are classified as undead, and they seek to kill the beings they have been crafted to resemble. I can't actually think of a specific movie this is referencing, but it does really feel into the vibe of classic pulpy horror. 

Waxworks believe that they are the original living entity instead of duplicates, and that their original inspiration is the duplicate. Any Waxwork confronted with evidence of its true nature will fly into a rage until it or its double is destroyed. Interestingly, Waxworks can also live as a regular person, being callous and vain... presumably, these are Waxworks that have succeeded in killing their copies. Some Waxworks seek to create even more Waxworks to replace more people, taking a page from the Bodytaker Plant. 

I do like this! A pretty simple twist, and the stat block is likewise simple -- the Waxwork melts when hit with fire damage, and has limited shapeshifting abilities. Implied by the flavour text, even if it is pointed out that it's using wax to shape-shift, it will deny this vehemently. 

Older Ravenloft material has had 'Wax Golems', which are merely copies of humanoids that are created for infiltration purposes (and needed to keep their 'original' alive for the magic to maintain its appearance) and otherwise obey every other rule that golems have. The way the Waxworks is presented, it doesn't have any of the actual combat traits that regular Golems have, but I am honestly convinced that they were originally a more straight-up adaptation of the 2E/3E Wax Golems originally before they decided to give a bit more spice to it. I like it!

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Yithian

• Large Aberration; Chaotic Neutral; CR 15
• Debut: Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

And finally, we close out this mix of Lovecraft monsters and other new Ravenloft additions with the Yithian. Debuting in 'the Shadow Out of Time', the Great Race of Yith are actually described with more flattering terms, being designated as 'chaotic neutral' by The Horrors Within, and their role as cosmos-traveling scholars are highlighted, even if the artwork still features a Yithian stalking a poor adventurer. 

The artwork doesn't show the best full view of the Great Race of Yith, but they are essentially cone-shaped masses of muscle with four tentacle-like limbs. Two end in pincer-claws, one ends in a set of pipe or trumpet-like organs (its 'mouth'), and one resembles a twisted 'head' with a flower-like arrangement of eyes and sensory stalks. 

The Great Race of Yith are actually capable of mental mind-transfer, beyond the normal idea of space-time. In their search to add to their vast libraries, Yithians can swap minds with inhabitants of other worlds... which happens suddenly, and sometimes indefinitely. This is a twofold problem, since a strange eldritch alien is taking over your body, but your mind/soul is also stuck in an unfathomable, alien world. 

D&D's Yithians are greatly 'nerfed', so to speak. Any mention of the mental time-travel is dropped, and the Yithians do not do it from outer space and need to be within 5 feet of its target. The Yithian also 'possesses' the target like a ghost, essentially disappearing until its host is beaten into unconsciousness and the Yithian is forced to materialize outside. It's a bit less weird and eldritch, and I suppose that's what happens when you adapt Lovecraft's bestiaries into D&D. I still appreciate that these guys at least get to keep their more non-malicious angle, though. 

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Not all of the Lovecraftian monsters are adapted in the ways that I would like, but it's still a nice little surprise for me. It does light back the fire of when I said that I was going to review monsters from one of the Call of Cthulhu manuals... I just really need to find one with a good enough bestiary! 

Marvel Zombies S01E02 Review: Resident Evil

Marvel Zombies, Episode 2

This second episode is another fun, relatively self-contained one. I do like that most of the Marvel Zombies episodes do feel like standalone entries in like a zombie movie series. This one goes for the trope of a remote, dangerous military/scientific base that is supposed to be safe, but ends up being overrun by zombies. 

But before that, we start off with another group of more neglected MCU characters, with Shang-Chi, his love interest Katy and Agent Jimmy Woo from Ant-Man ending up running around in San Francisco during ground zero. Because Pym Laboratories is there, we also get to see a bunch of giant zombies lumbering around, a nice nod to, again, the fact that this is taking place in a superhero universe. There is some rushing of moments, but as an origin story it does kind of make sense. In this version of the continuity, Wenwu / the Mandarin decides to make his move early, rescuing his son and ultimately dying in a sacrifice to save his son. This moment really did go a bit too fast and knowing what we do of Wenwu from the Shang-Chi movie this feels rather abrupt of a death... but it is an origin story for this depiction of Shang-Chi. 

With the Ten Rings wrapped around his arm to prevent the zombie infection from spreading, Shang-Chi ends up doing a bit of a resistance. Smash cut to five years later, where they are in a Mad Max esque biker gang, with Wenwu's minion Death Dealer silently following them. Just for the sake of additional wacky-comic-book-hijinks, they fight Skrull bikers. Which... okay? Sure. Also, Katy gets partial custody of five of the ten rings. Again, sure. It's alternate-universe stuff, even in the comics these alternate universes tend to do things different for the sake of being different. 

All of this is nice and rapidly-paced, though, which does hurt the setup a little. But ultimately Team Shang-Chi arrive in a location called the City on the Sea, which is one of those Walking Dead style safe havens. Shang-Chi's team has been gathering resources like cows to be let into the community, and this is around the time that Team Kamala from the first episode shows up. The two groups almost get into a fight over Shang-Chi's zombified arm, but the leader of the City on the Sea show up... and it's Baron Zemo, alongside his bodyguard John Walker. ('USAgent' Walker is probably the most OOC one in this show, because working for Zemo doesn't really fit either his Falcon-era or Thunderbolts-era personalities)

Baron Zemo doesn't like superheroes, but he'll let them into his City... which is actually a repurposed version of the Raft. It's actually a clever bit, I've seen some zombie movies (well, mostly the Resident Evil movie adaptations) where a water-based base is a safe haven from the land-locked zombies. There's a brief moment as the two teams finally have a chance to relax from all the zombie-running they have been doing, and they kind of get to know each other. Or, well, mostly it's just Shang-Chi that talks to Team Kamala, since Katy and Woo are comic relief and Death Dealer's entirely silent. There's a bit of a ship-tease between Yelena and Shang-Chi and whatnot, all moments that don't really matter in the long run but also makes these characters feel like an incarnation of their MCU characters instead of just a bunch of dead-people-walking. Team Kamala catch Shang-Chi up on their plan to get the plot device into space, and the next step is to reach New Asgard to get a spaceship. Shang-Chi is sympathetic but only wishes them luck. 

Turns out, though, that an underwater base is really only useful in a 'normal' zombie apocalypse world, and not a 'superhero world' zombie apocalypse world. The zombie plague has reached the Atlanteans (or, well, Talokans in the MCU, I suppose) and these zombified underwater-people attempt to breach the Raft. The Raft itself was constructed to stop the strongest metahuman villains, so they are relatively safe other than the constant thumping on the walls. Baron Zemo confides in Walker that this is the main reason he allowed the heroes in, as insurance against the zombie Atlanteans. 

Of course, there aren't just zombie fish-people, but zombie superhero fish-people. Okoye's presence as the main pursuer and minion of the Scarlet Witch is pretty neat as her horde reaches the harbour, and then Okoye awakens... Namor. Speaking of Scarlet Witch, her powers have grown far enough that it's infecting Kamala Khan's dreams, identifying her for some sinister reason. Blade ends up acting as a combination of an older mentor and someone who knows the more magical side of things to Kamala, which is neat. 

Namor starts to attack, however, and the Raft goes into red-lights crisis lockdown mode. Baron Zemo's definition of 'insurance' doesn't actually mean having the superheroes there to fight Namor, however, but to... launch Team Kamala's cells out of the Raft as bait. That is... that is so hilariously impractical! I love it. It's so dumb. Shang-Chi's group is horrified at this and realize that Baron Zemo is evil. Namor zeroes in on Kamala and attacks her group, but Kamala's forcefield powers protect them and the battle ends up with them being pushed back into the Raft. 

Namor and the Atlanteans start slaughtering everyone in the Raft, and the great usage of dark lighting combined with the blaring klaxons and red lights is pretty atmospheric for the carnage. A nice nod to the MCU as well as Namor is temporarily halted with the same Hulk containment unit from The Avengers. And just like that containment unit, it fails to do anything but delay Namor. 

Baron Zemo runs around as the typical 'quisling in power' seen so much in these zombie stories, shutting down doors behind him and delaying our heroes. Yelena gets a bit of a spotlight here as she forces Zemo to tell her about the manual override for the life pods, and goes deeper into the Raft to activate it. Meanwhile, Namor's rampage slowly dwindles down the group of survivors, killing Shang-Chi's unique-model resistance members and John Walker. Ultimately, Kamala manages to take down Namor, shoving a forcefield fist into the fish-man's mouth and blowing it up. 

However, as the survivors enter the lifepod, Red Guardian realizes that Yelena has not returned yet. Again, it's a rather simple moment when someone stays behind because they have already been infected. Pretty good animation particularly on Red Guardian's part as a grieving father mourning her daughter being left behind -- nowhere as good as the same character's performance in Thunderbolts when a similar scene happens, but it does act as a nice cap-off to the episode as Alexei grieves, and Yelena stoically pours a drink while waiting for the zombie horde to breach the doorway to her control room. 

This episode is probably my favourite one in the season. It is admittedly me really liking the setting of a high-tech base being overrun, but the darker lighting and the blaring lights really do make best use of the otherwise not-my-favourite animation style. The Yelena/Alexei moment was done well, and I do like the showcases of Shang-Chi and Zemo's respective groups showing how other parts of the world have taken to the zombie apocalypse.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the Sacred Timeline...
• The events of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings would have happened post-Endgame, but I suppose it isn't too far of a stretch that Shang and Katy would be still (or already) working as hotel valets five years before that movie. 
• It isn't too much of a stretch either to think that Wenwu and his Ten Rings organization would be keeping an eye on Shang-Chi. 
• Jimmy Woo would chronologically be last seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp. The Shang-Chi and Ant-Man movies actually both take place partially in San Francisco, so it makes sense that they'd meet up. 
• The events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the character development of Baron Zemo and John Walker/USAgent, would have happened after Endgame. Clearly things went a bit differently here, with Zemo somehow taking control of the Raft, but also setting up base near a bunch of shipping containers like he did in Falcon. 
• Namor and the renamed Atlanteans would have only made contact with the surface world in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but apparently the zombie plague reaches the depths of the oceans as well. 
• The Skrull biker gang are trying to steal the cows that Shang-Chi's group is transporting. One of the more memed older Fantastic Four stories involves Reed Richards transforming a group of Skrulls into cows as punishment. 

Marvel Zombies S01E01 Review: Dawn of the Dead

Marvel Zombies, Episode 1

I watched Marvel Zombies as it came out, but for some reason I didn't do a review for it. In my mind, I thought I did a full season review, but.... but I apparently never actually posted it? As I slowly catch up to the MCU projects I've missed doing reviews for, I suppose I could talk a bit about Marvel Zombies... and I decided to save it for the Halloween month! 

Marvel Zombies takes place after one of the episodes of Marvel's What If, which is a Marvel Zombies episode. And we start off with a somewhat chipper trio of younger heroes -- Ms. Marvel, Ironheart and Hawkeye II. They are supposed to be leading the 'young Avengers' that never really materialized at the moment of writing, but it's nice to see them doing something here. Oh, they also have FRIDAY, piloting an empty Iron Man suit. 

And the beginning gives us a simple 'people surviving in a zombie apocalypse and making do', with some minor battles against zombie Hawkeye. Or, well, zombie Clint. Whose fate was left ambiguous during the What If episode, which otherwise accounts for most of the earlier Avengers. The dialogue and dynamic here isn't anything to particularly write home about, but it's also a zombie movie and characters in zombie movies tend to be pretty economical in being reduced to simple traits. Kamala's the optimistic one, Riri's the pessimistic one, and Kate plays the straight-man against both of them. 

Riri finds out that an item they scavenged from a corpse in a Quinjet is some kind of Ant-Man-shrunken-down plot device, an Intergalactic Transmitter that is part of 'Project Life-Shot', which could contact help from space if they could travel to a SHIELD base. With our survivors introduced and our plot premise set up, our heroes head off to travel! 

Again, this whole setup, particularly with the pretty peppy (if bland) dialogue, does lull you into a rather tame sense of security. The road trip takes them to see some of the sights of the zombie-blasted wasteland that the USA has been turned into... until they arrive into a cataclysmic location where two god-like zombies are fighting... Captain Marvel and the Eternal Ikaris. The fight of two Superman-esque superheroes have blown up holes through mountains and have created a perpetual storm, which is a very moody location and probably one of my favourite parts of this series -- that zombified superheroes that retain their powers will cause some pretty cool levels of devastation. 

And as our heroes lose their van and go on foot... the realities of being in a zombie survival show kicks in as Kate Bishop is brutally, swiftly and suddenly atomized by a blast from the warring Captain Marvel and Ikaris above, reduced to a skeleton. This genuinely did surprise me, but it also made me believe that I'm going to watch a proper zombie show instead of just invincible, plot armoured heroes  Kamala's desperation as she loses her allies one by one is well-portrayed. Riri gets bitten and stays behind to distract Zombie Captain Marvel and Zombie Ikaris, while FRIDAY takes Kamala off to safety. And just to twist the knife in further, once Kamala is safe, FRIDAY flies back to help Riri... with no allusions to whether either of them will survive. But it's a nice character moment as FRIDAY is implied to have not been able to die alongside Iron Man. Little details like this. 

Kamala is rescued by an unexpected character... Blade. Who, at this point, has not properly appeared in the MCU, unless you are counting the alternate-universe Blade from Wolverine vs. Deadpool. But this isn't just Blade, this is Blade with the powers of the Moon Knight. As cool as the visuals are and as cool as Mahershala Ali is.... "Blade Knight" is kind of underused, particularly since we don't really explore either side of his superpowers beyond doing cool sword stuff. But I guess being cool is the whole point of his presence in this show. 

Blade and Kamala go off to Ohio, and Blade gives a bit of a recap on how he was chosen by Khonshu after the previous avatar was lost during the zombie outbreak. They find the SHIELD base surrounded by a seemingly docile zombie horde, and enter to meet the group from Black Widow -- Yelena Belova, Red Guardian, Melina Vostokoff and a bunch of nameless Widows. 

Melina, being the resident science person, explains that they can't use the transmitter because the planet's atmosphere is filled with interference after the 'battle in Wakanda' (which we saw glimpses of in the original What If episode). However, that discussion is interrupted when a horde of zombies comes up. This is an army led by Zombie Okoye, last seen facing off against Zombie Scarlet Witch and turned into her "scion", her leader of her troops. 

Zombie Okoye unleashes a horde of zombies upon the compound, giving us our third-act fight scene. This zombie horde has Hawkeye (who Okoye collected earlier this episode), Captain America, Abomination and Ghost. And I really like this random cherry-picking of Marvel characters that hasn't shown up in the original one-shot. 

The resulting zombie fight is pretty neat as we get some match-ups, with Red Guardian managing to finally fight and defeat the zombified Captain America, who sneaks in through the vent. Zombie Ghost gets to show off a really cool sequence of using her phasing abilities to kill the nameless Widows, when her live-action counterpart doesn't really use her powers in a creative fashion in Thunderbolts.

Again, in typical 'dwindling crew' situation, Melina uses the Red Dust to try and hold off the zombie horde, sealing away the rest of her allies... but Okoye, empowered by Scarlet Witch's powers, is too powerful and kills Melina. Ghost manages to chase the group through the bulwarks, but gets awesomely sliced up by Blade in a quick but brutal encounter. 

Kamala, Blade, Yelena and Red Guardian manage to then escape the facility after bringing down a tunnel to escape Zombie Abomination, and the journey is on as the little zombie survivor group continues on to try and save the world. 

I really like Marvel Zombies because unlike the later seasons of What If, it really felt like it was made by people who wanted to make jokes about the MCU, yes, but also cared to write authentic alternate-universe versions of the characters with some bathos and some depth to it. Moments like FRIDAY deciding to fly back and die with Riri; or the way that the Widow family reacted to each other, are all nice little moments that aren't like, going to make you tear up or anything, but done well to make me invested. The animation is also crisp, and being set in the dark with a lot more down-to-earth abilities makes the fight scenes at the end (with everything involving Ghost in particular), again, way more impressive than anything in What If's later seasons. 

I really did enjoy the opening episodes of this series a fair bit, despite -- or rather, probably because -- it is meant to be a standalone one-shot.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• So here is where I try to untangle time 'alternate universe' shenanigans, because I'm a geek and I do this as a hobby. The events of the What If... Zombies? episode takes place relatively concurrently with Avengers: Infinity War, which we can tell from the arrival of the Black Order at the beginning of the episode, and Zombie Thanos attacking Wakanda as the final scene. This miniseries takes place approximately 5 years later, placing it after the Endgame timeskip...
• In the Sacred Timeline...
• The events of Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever which led to the superhero origins of Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye II and Ironheart would have taken place post-Infinity-War, but the episode gives a handwave that Kamala's grandmother sent her the magical bracelet earlier; Kate Bishop survived and trained on her own thanks to her mother Eleanor's paranoia, and Riri just happened to scavenge Iron Man's armour after the events of What If... Zombies. 
• Captain Marvel would have been summoned to earth from space by Nick Fury in Avengers: Infinity War. We don't know exactly how it happened, but apparently she got infected regardless. 
• Ikaris and the rest of the Eternals would still be in hiding during all this time. Since a vast majority of Earth's population was turned into zombies, it's likely that the events of Eternals did not happen since the Celestial wouldn't awaken if humanity hasn't advanced enough.
• Blade has not appeared in the mainline MCU projects yet, but Moon Knight would have taken place post-Endgame. Clearly, something happened to Khonshu's traditional host(s), leading to him being associated with Blade instead. 
• The events of Black Widow would have taken place before Infinity War, explaining why Red Guardian, Yelena Belova, Melina Vostokoff and the rest of the liberated Widows would still be gathered together instead of scattering over time. 
• Abomination would still be in prison after the events of Incredible Hulk, and probably got infected at some point afterwards. 
• Ghost would still be on the run after Ant-Man and the Wasp, and again, probably succumbed to the zombie plague. 
• In What If... Zombies?
• Iron Man was one of the first zombies seen in What If... Zombies?, where he was decapitated and dealt with by Wasp. Riri notes that she salvaged the armour afterwards, since 'no one was using it'. 
• Zombie Hawkeye was among the zombies that attacked the cast of What If... Zombies in the train station, but was left behind and never dealt with. He's apparently wandered off to this street. 
• Okoye was last seen among the resistance fighting against zombie Scarlet Witch. She was last seen surrounded by Scarlet Witch's magic before being killed, and apparently left enough of an impression for Wanda to resurrect her as a scion. 

Reviewing 5E D&D Monsters - Ravenloft, Pt. 1

Ravenloft! The D&D multiverse's resident gothic horror setting, Ravenloft has had a massive fandom ever since its introduction in 1E and massive expansion in 2E. It was featured in 5th Edition in what is often touted to be its best adventure, "Curse of Strahd". But Curse of Strahd takes place in Barovia, which is merely one of the many Domains of Dread that make up Ravenloft. Different sub-realms all based on a different horror movie genre powerful Dark Lord, and beyond Strahd's gothic vampire horror domain, there are many others based on unstoppable serial killers, ancient mummy curses, cursed endless carnivals, and Cthulhu. Yes, Cthulhu.

Now there are lots of debate about how well 5th Edition updated Ravenloft, particularly with its setting sourcebook. I don't know about old Ravenloft enough to comment about this... we're here to discuss monsters, and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, released in 2021 with a bunch of updated art for the original Ravenloft batch and a few surprising new monsters... which I might need a second article to fit, actually!

This was almost released much earlier in this series, but with 2026 giving us Ravenloft: the Horrors Within, an expanded setting guide, I decided to push this a bit later... which proved to be a good decision, since Horrors Within actually revised almost every single one of the Van Richten statblocks, and added maybe around 10 more. Due to the length of what this article became (since I gave it the 5E to 5.5E treatment without even releasing the original 5E version first!) I have split it into two. This one primarily focuses on the monsters release din the original 2021 Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft .

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

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Bodytaker Plant

• Huge Plant; Neutral Evil; CR 7 (Bodytaker Plant)
• Small or Medium Plant; Neutral Evil; CR 1/2 (Podling)
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

I have never actually watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers before sitting down to do this review. It's odd, doing research for once! The Bodytaker Plant (named 'Doppelganger Plant' in 2E and 3E) is an obvious sendup to the classic plant horror movie, though instead of merely being a monster plant like Triffids or Audrey II, the Bodytaker Plant's horror comes from it looking like harmless plants that spread across a location while possessing a malevolent intent and a capability to create plant-based copies of the villagers and replace them. 

These Bodytaker Plants debuted in the Van Richten book, and it's shown as a huge bulbous plant with five thorn-tipped tentacles. On its center are a bunch of bulb-like 'flesh doors', which resemble lips, and the central one has just torn open revealing a green humanoid with a gaping mouth. When I first saw the art I thought I was looking at a plant with a face made up of multiple eyeballs and a central mouth!

The 5.5E redesign goes for more traditional and perhaps more boring venus flytrap mouths, at least for the pods that surround the central plant -- interpreted here as an undulating vine-like tree trunk. The central plant's mouth opens up into a multi-jawed, worm-like mass of thorny vines, while smaller vines tipped with venus flytap mouths coil all around the giant plant's periphery. Most disturbing is the open 'pod' in the foreground showing the Podling screaming as it is covered in the plant film. The idea that the pods are growing in the ground around the primary plant means it can spread it pods across a wider battlefield.

I really do enjoy both interpretations of the Bodytaker Plant, both conveying alien and pod-creation in a different way. The original writeup in Van Richten gives a multiple choice origin, either hailing from the stars or an ancient species deep underground, but The Horrors Within actually lock their backstory to the classic movie it is inspired from -- they come from a ruined world in the Material Plane, and have spread their spores across the stars like meteorites where they land and try and take over fertile worlds they land in.

Regardless of their origin, Bodytaker Plants are malicious and intelligent, and they want to rule whatever plane or planet they have landed on, and that all other living things are inferior -- "anyone who disagrees either lacks perspective or is fit only to serve as fertilizer". They slowly subvert societies on purpose, replacing individuals with duplicates called podlings. They do this by spreading invisible filaments as it slowly grows, corrupting the land and spreading its vines across the town. Like any good horror villain, even if the Bodytaker Plant is destroyed, unless salted or poisoned, these filaments will ensure that a new, vengeful Bodytaker Plant will regrow for the sequel.

The Bodytaker Plant converts its first victims with its vines, dragging victims into its pods where the victims are dissolved and transformed into a Podling -- a near identical copy even with knowledge... but with none of the nuance. Both Van Richten's and The Horrors Within give us a nice list of potential podling behaviours -- abandoning its hobbies and relationships are simple enough. Consorting with other Podlings and speaking in deepspeach is just a plot clue. But I do like the more plant-like quirks like being uncomfortable with hair and clothes, talking to houseplants, or exposing themselves to the sun. It's the Podlings' scheme and trying to figure out the nature of the strange kidnappers that I found to be quite compelling for these creatures, similar to the Oblex. It's a mini adventure in and of itself!

Horrors Within updates the Bodytaker Plant with the ability to transfer part of the damage it takes to its Podlings, and highlights its ability to communicate telepathically. It just doesn't want to -- it prefers to let its horde of Podlings speak in a creepy, moaning voice of the legion.

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Boneless

• Medium Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 1
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Look at this creep. One of the biggest criticisms that I have with undead in fantasy setting is that there are so many words for undead but they eventually boil down to walking corpse (with or without flesh), and floating spirit. Throw in sentience, intelligence, origin stories, bonus powers and bonus restrictions, and I've described most of the undead in fantasy. It really does stem from how terms like ghost, revenant, specter, geist, wraith, phantom and many others just mean the same thing in real life. It's just that it's a bit hard to keep track of things when you go from one fantasy setting to the next. (Or even when you go for some of the 'zombie with extra steps' D&D monsters)

The Boneless is a great twist on the simple zombie/skeleton trope of a corporeal undead... by taking away the skeleton. The Boneless are undead skin and flesh, noted to have risen from those that have suffered brutal deaths like skinning or crushing. Malice infuses their remains and their "husks flop and slither" in pursuit of vengeance. I fond this mental image actually kind of both simulatenously funny and creepy, which is alwaya a good combination in a horror monster.

The Boneless are amorphous enough to slip through door cracks and windows, and are driven by a compulsion to 'complete' themselves by wrapping and crushing other beings with bones.

Van Richten's Guide also notes that Boneless can just be created by the creativity of depraved spellcasters and necromancers, from abattoirs or charnel houses and the like, giving these foul undead differing forms.

I also really like the suggested image of the Boneless being "worn" by a different corporeal undead like a zombie and especially skeletons, and the skin peeling itself off of the skeleton is noted to be particularly disturbing to those who see it. Another suggestion from the newer book is to have the Boneless hang like a banner, like a creepy warning sign... and then for the flayed skin to actually move and slither about!

As a 'mere' CR 1 undead, this isn't a particularly powerful creature, but it sets a creepy mood so well. Gory without being over the top. I like it!

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Carrion Stalker

• Tiny Monstrosity (5E) / Aberration (5.5E); Unaligned; CR 3
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Look at this little weirdo! Not actually a baby Carrion Crawler as its name and original yellow artwork might have you believe, the Carrion Stalker is essentially the fantasy equivalent of the Xenomoprh Chestburster and proximity-triggered eggs from the Alien franchise. Carrion Stalkers grow in corpses, before growing into their adult form seen in the artworks. They lie still either burrowed in the corpse they grow up in or underground, and bursts out to ambush anyone who comes nearby to implant eggs and larvae into them, ready to turn them into new corpses and begin the life cycle anew. This explosion is lethal, as that new 5.5E artwork shows with the corpse in the background with a giant gaping hole where his torso and abdomen was.

Van Richten's Guide notes that Carrion Stalkers can sometimes appear in corpses that necromancers turn into zombies... but some particularly sadistic necromancers just explicitly implant these Carrion Stalker eggs as a little bonus threat in the zombie hordes they command. And if you are a necromancer and have access to horrific, chestbursting tentacle bugs, why wouldn't you use them?

Interestingly, Carrion Stalkers have a bit of a symbiotic (or mutualistic, really) relationship with Carrion Crawlers. The larger Crawlers avoid the corpses with Stalkers in them, and the Stalkers likewise do not do their larva-implantation on the Crawlers. But as the Crawlers root around the filth and corpses of these horror-laden plains, they sometimes move around the Stalkers' eggs, sort of like a sick, demented version of pollination. 

The look of the Stalkers are interesting. Van Richten's classifies them as a monstrosity, and they do look like just a more magical, monstrous bug. The 5E Carrion Stalker has a body shape that looks like a weird horseshoe crab or trilobite, with five beady eyes and two pincer like arms. It also has a whole writhing mass of worm-like tentacles it wiggles around in -- the original 2E writeup actually likens this to intestines, which meant that the original concept was to have the Carrion Stalker resemble (or perhaps be made up of) parts of the bone and guts of the host.

5.5E shows the Stalker from a different angle, and it is a bit more amorphous -- with multiple crab/spider legs, whiplike tentacles, and an underside mouth that extends out like a coral. There also seems to be an additional mouth on top, so this could conceivably be an underbelly view of the original 5E design with some extra spider legs. The background shows more scuttling Carrion Stalkers that look like multi-eyed bug monsters. This 5.5E Carrion Stalker is considered an aberration, which perhaps explains its less "magical beast" look.

I do enjoy that redesign, and the 5.5E artwork definitely communicates the chestburster gimmick well... but I do like the innocuous, "weird bug" look of the original 5E quite a bit as well. It also could just be a case similar to the Xenomoprhs they are inspired of that the Carrion Stalkers have a wide variety and may even take in characteristics based on their host. A fun little horror bug, and I really do like the potential story beats of how these could just be a random creature that evolved and thrived due to the horror setting... or aberrant, alien beings from the far realms. I just think the name "Carrion Stalker" isn't the most descriptive as it doesn't really 'stalk', does it?

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Carrionette

• Small (5E) / Tiny (5.5E) Construct; Chaotic Evil; CR 1
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Dolls are a great fixture of the horror genre. There is just something already uncanny about the artificialness of items designed to look like humans without actually being one, but there is also the sense of unease of corruption of a toy meant to bring joy to children twisted into something foul. Depending on the specific piece of fiction, the child in question may be the target of the haunted doll's wrath. Whether it's Chucky, Annabelle, Bannette, or Angie from Resident Evil: Village, haunted dolls have always been creepy.

The original Van Richten's writeup to Carrionnettes even carry a bit of tragedy in that they actually start off quite wholesome. Carrionettes are created by the heartfelt wishes of children who want their little doll to be alive... but Carrionettes want to escape the confines of their tiny bodies. 5.5E's Horrors Within makes it a bit less ironic, giving the origin as simply being dark energies infesting toys. I feel both stories are fun; and the former origin could and should be retooled to a different 'living toy' protector of children or something. Perhaps in a different setting, for this is Ravenloft -- everything is out to kill you.

In a storyline that I feel is adapted out of Chucky's Child Play movies, a Carrionette has a silver needle that pins its soul to its body. They want to get close to unsuspecting victims, often by posing as a toy. And then they will use the needle to stab its victim... which has the ability to swap souls! The Carrionette-in-human -body will then imprison their victim, now trapped in the doll's body, while they hijack the new body for their own nefarious purposes. They still need to keep their old body with the captive soul alive, though, since of the doll body is destroyed, both of the Carrionette and its victim dies. This additional bit adds an extra plot hook for your adventurers to hunt for the doll body, and a way to reverse the soul swap. That's perhaps the biggest reason 5.5E fixed the Carrionette's size from 'small' to 'tiny' -- dolls should be small enough to be stuffed in a toy box, after all!

Carrionettes can appear as any type of toy, with older editions giving actual Pinocchio-style marionettes, 5E giving us a creppy porcelain doll on a unicycle, and 5.5E giving us fantasy Chucky riding on the shoulders of a mannequin. Any sufficiently old toy can become a Carrionette, and the prose notes thag they always affect a disturbingly childlike personality. One of them, Maligno, is even the lord of their own Domain of Dread!

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Dullahan

• Medium Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 10
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Oh, the Headless Horseman! Drawing its name from the iconic Irish mythological figure, the Dullahan makes its grand D&D return in Ravenloft. The original Dullahan from mythology is actually a fey, being portrayed as an inflexible but fair arbiter of death, and one that has a hatred of being observed and a fear of gold. None of this is here, unfortunately, as this 'Dullahan' adapts more of the popular media's view of Dullahans as an adaptation of the Headless Horseman trope. We'll acknowlege that, before going on. 

Dullahans have shown up a lot in D&D-inspired settings, particularly in anime, that I am actually curious what ended up popularizing the Dullahan amongst many other fantasy monster staples. Both the 5E and 5.5E artwork are particularly awesome, showcasing the Dullahan wielding its mighty weapon, and riding on a nightmarish steed on fire. Both Dullahans, of course, are also surrounded by various numbers of flying heads -- which is tied to a different monster we'll talk about below!

Dullahans are described as headless undead remains of villains that let vengeance consume them, and they haunt the areas where they are slain. They, of course, butcher their victims by decapitation to quench their thirst of vengeance. As you do. Dullahans are also bound to some twisted codes of chivalry of soldiership, and only haunt certain areas that they designate as their territory -- which is a nod to one of the more famous 'headless horsemen' stories out there, The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow, where the legend of the Headless Horseman was about a decapitated soldier. All these more Sleepy-Hollow-coded details would be removed in 5.5E, probably to make it feel a bit more like a Dullahan... although it's a bit hard unless they actually turn the D&D Dullahan back into a Fey. 

In The Horrors Within, Dullahans are also known for 'seeking their lost heads', which give rise to regional legends that can serve as plot hooks. Perhaps the Dullahan is in search of shards of its skull, or its own family (for a head with a family resemblance, of course), and rather hilariously, 'two Dullahans search for the same head, both believing they're the actual owner'.

The Dullahan statblock is a pretty fun one, as it is designed as a bit of a fun boss fight. It's got the typical legendary resistances and legendary actions whatnot. Its attacks have a chance to decapitate their foes upon killing, and it can launch its own fiery skull at enemies. But most importantly, when a Dullahan dies, it enters a 'phase two' where it heals its health back and summons three 'Death's Heads', which are described below and were initially just sub-stats stapled onto the Dullahan stat block with minimal elaboration! This 'second phase' was scrubbed from its 5.5E incarnation, unfortunately. I'm not sure what the reasoning is, but while I appreciate giving the Death's Head monsters below its own identity, it does feel like they could've restored a bit more of the Dullahan's abilities from prior editions to make it still feel 'epic'. 

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Death's Head

• 5E/5.5E: Tiny Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 1/2 (Death's Head)
• 5.5E: Tiny Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 1 (Aberrant Death's Head, Petrifying Death's Head)
• 5.5E: Huge Plant; Chaotic Evil; CR 4 (Death's Head Tree)
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021); Ravenloft: The Horrors Within (2026)

The Death's Head was listed as a bunch of extra statblocks in the 2021 Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, essentially acting as a bonus set of minions for the Dullahan 'boss fight'. A Dullahan summons a bunch of Death's Heads which are floating heads that terrorize their prey. They aren't super threatening, and between Beholderkin, Flameskulls and Vargouilles, it's not that we haven't had flying heads before. The original statblock also suggests the floating heads of a regular humanoid, a Nothic, and a Medusa -- the latter two having their existing vision-powers, and being adapted into the Aberrant Death's Head and Petrifying Death's Head respectively in the 5.5E revamp. 

The idea is that these are all heads that the Dullahan has 'reaped' from its previous victims, and it does make sense. The difference however, is that the Death's Head is an existing monster from the original incarnation of Ravenloft in 1E-2E, and are tied to the plant monster known as the Death's Head Tree. The Death's Head Tree are cursed versions of awakened trees, whose fruits resemble dangling, decapitated heads. When the tree is threatened, the Death's Head Tree animates its fruits to defend itself. It's a very cool, simple design and absolutely fit the gothic horror vibes of Ravenloft. Only... Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft handles it a bit oddly. 

While 5th Edition isn't as bad as its predecessor in 'retconning' or 'reinventing' monsters, it did lead to a bit of a strange thing. It's one thing to reuse the concept of the Death's Head as a 'bonus' minion to the Dullahan. It's another, however, to actually sit down and make a sidebar on the Death's Head Tree lore... and then proceed to not give us anything beyond that, handwaving it as 'use an Awakened Tree statblock, I guess?'

Which... which is a bit irritating. These kind of 'substitute another statblock for a monster we don't have space for' is something you should do for, like, less-interesting creatures. Substituting a gharial statblock with the existing crocodile? Sure. Using a Deep Scion statblock to substitute a Cthulhu-corrupted cultist? Why not. But Van Richten does this a lot with some of the more interesting monsters like the Death's Head Tree and perhaps its most popular monster, the Bagman (which we'll cover next session). 

The Horrors Within fixes that, separating the Death's Head Tree entirely from the Dullahan, and giving us a nice statblock, explaining that they sprout from accursed lands like foul mass graves and sites of terrible tragedies, giving us a nice new art, a fresh new statblock, and a nice little table for additional heads and features. You can have anything as a Death's Head, from regular humans to medusase to mind flayers to elks to sharks. The Death's Head Tree itself can continue to spawn extra Death's Head minions, launch the immature fruits like bombs, and even provide cover to its giggling, flying buddies.

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Gallows Speaker

• Medium (5E) / Huge (5.5E) Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 6
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Oh, this is a cool one. Originally depicted as 'merely' a ghostly skeleton in raggedy robed in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, the Gallows Speaker's 5.5E incarnation is upgraded in size from Medium to Huge, and has a much more unique artwork of being a giant six-armed specter made up of dozens of moaning skulls. I like the three pairs of arms crisscrossed over its chest, and the masses of swords and arrows piercing its 'main' heads. Very cool artwork -- I don't agree with all the art direction of the 5.5E material, but when it makes this guy (er, these guys) look distinct from merely being another wraith/specter/ghost, I appreciate it a lot.

The Gallows Speaker rises from places of mass death where creatures regularly meet their doom, so as its name implies... a lot of gallows and executioner's grounds. All the regularly-created wraiths, specters, ghosts and phantoms that are born out of lingering businesses and powerful emotions end up merging together into this gestalt entity... which makes its newer artwork definitely make a bit more sense as it is a legion of amalgamated spirits. 

Gallows Speakers are wracked by their collective pain, and endlessly moan out the disjointed final thoughts of hundreds of dead people as they lash out against the living. They have the ability to foretell doom and suffering... and utilize this prophetic ability and weaponize it to overwhelm their foes with visions of violent deaths. Gallows Speakers are also noted to constantly mutter to themselves endlessly and can't properly communicate, although trying to pick apart its dozens of voices might lead some clues about final moments that may be important to your campaign's plot. 

The Gallows Speaker really feels like all it wants to do is to scream and talk and maybe move on in peace... It's just that all this gibbering and prophetic touches has the unfortunate side-effect of causing damage to everyone that hears it! 

While the art is much better in the new one, I like its original Van Richten's writeup a lot better, which is all of the above and characterizes the Gallows Speaker as being confused and dangeorus, but not entirely hostile. The Horrors Within reduces the Gallows Speaker as a simple monster that 'rage endlessly with weapons and death screams', removes all of its more compelling foretelling and divination abilities for a generic 'aura of violence', slaps 'chaotic evil' on it (all the Van Richten statblocks do not actually have alignment listed)... and this really is a flavour downgrade that robs the Gallows Speaker of everything that was unique in its original writeup, reducing it to yet another generic undead boss .

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Gremishka

• Tiny Monstrosity; Chaotic Evil; CR 1/8 (Gremishka), CR 2 (Swarm)
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

A classic from the 2E Ravenloft and recently getting a major boost in popularity due to appearing in Baldur's Gate 3, Gremishkas are hideous cat-like monstrosities that are a send-up to 'little gremlin' monsters like, well, the movie Gremlins. Gremishkas look a lot more like a vicious cat-rat in their original 5E interpretation, very much looking like a hideous beast with just a too-intelligent set of eyes and a creepy maw of fangs. When the mouth is closed, as Baldur's Gate 3 shows, the Gremishka actually looks like a mundane, if ugly, mammal. 5.5E gives them a more humanoid, imp-like build to tie in to the original gremlin inspiration. 

Gremishkas in 5E have a bit more of a specific backstory, noted to be the products of 'mistakes made by novice spellcasters seeking to create life'. Full Metal Alchemist jokes notwithstanding, the resulting Gremishkas end up being unstable, feral cat monsters that end up hunting and wanting to destroy anything magical. Spellbooks, spell components, magical items, and even familiars. It's a nice nod to how gremlins are traditionally associated with breaking technology, and what is technology in a D&D setting if not magic? Gremishkas are intelligent enough to torment magic-users, driven by a grudge for the spellcaster that brought it to life. The presence of a Gremishka causes magic to act wildly. Sometimes the magical spell rebounds, sometimes the magical spell causes a Gremishka to duplicate itself... and sometimes the Gremishka just blows up instantly even though you casted a simple illusion spell. (5.5E removes all the other effects other than the splitting-into-a-swarm, which is a shame)

They are also cunning little buggers, being able to imitate the sounds of whimpering children or masquerading as wounded animals, trying to get their victims to tight quarters where presumably the rest of the swarm is waiting. The idea is that one of the effects of a Gremishka's 'Magic Allergy' being that it splits up to more Gremishkas, and this can cause a gigantic infestation if not dealt with... and, of course, the swarm is just more powerful, being straight-up immune to lower-level spells. This is a wonderful little gimmick of infestation. I imagine it would be particularly be difficult to get rid of Gremishkas completely if they had exploded into a swarm, since they are intelligent enough to scatter and flee.

I like them! They're nasty little buggers. 

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Jiangshi

• Medium Undead; Lawful Evil; CR 9
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Drawing from Chinese mythology, the 'Chinese vampire' or 'hopping vampire' known as the Jiangshi has been the subject of many '80's-'90's movies in its home country, and I am very pleased to see it among the vampire variations introduced in the 5E Ravenloft update. Literally meaning 'stiff corpse', a Jiangshi is a reanimated corpse that has gone through rigor mortis, causing them to hop around to move and haunt the living. Jiangshi rise from corpses that died with unresolved anger, grief, or perhaps having an improper burial. This causes part of the soul to be trapped in the corpse, and this drives the Jiangshi to feed on the life-force of the living. In more recent media, the longer a Jiangshi exists (or the more life force it absorbs), the stronger it becomes. It also has a little pile of vulnerabilities -- the classic one being a Daoist talisman attached to its forehead that will immediately immobilize a Jiangshi. But other ways to immobilize a Jiangshi include daylight, the sight of their reflection, glutinous rice, black dogs (or a black dog's blood) and several others.

And the combination of life-force draining and some specific weakness does make it understandable why some translators ended up describing the Jiangshi as a 'Chinese Vampire', and the term stuck. 5E D&D nicely resents them as just a unique form of undead, even if it does present 'hopping vampire' as an in-universe nickname.

Jiangshi in D&D are created when a soul is trapped within its corpse, and the bitterness and malice reanimates the body. The Jiangshi stalk the communities it knew in life, sowing terror and taking retribution for slights in life or the lack of burial rites. The rigor mortis and hopping movements are still there from the osource mythology. Jiangshi lurk within their tombs or in dark ruins in the day, and at night they emerge to drain the vital life energies of other creatures. Those killed by a Jiangshi in this way are transformed into lesser undead (Wights, in this case) and if they manage to make their own kill, these Wights can transform into new Jiangshis later. 

The Jiangshi is also given a flight speed, as well as the ability to shapeshift. It's also got a couple of weaknesses, with the ones being adapted being the fear of its own reflection, and a vulnerability to holy symbols. Pretty welcome adaptation! 

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Loup Garou

• Small or Medium Monstrosity (Shapechanger); Chaotic Evil; CR 13
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

The 'Loup Garou' is just the French word for werewolves, but in essence it's just a much stronger Werewolf. Regular Werewolves are kind of a weak statblock in 5th Edition D&D, being a mere CR 3, but the Loup Garou is a much more ferocious beast at CR 13! Despite their prominence, Lycanthropes have always gotten the short end of the stick (I'm surprised they never added a 'bonus damage/immunity to vampires' to reference the popular pop culture rivalry) but I do like that the gothic setting gives us the Loup Garou.

The Loup Garou is stronger and more powerful than a regular Werewolf, and turns into a Direwolf instead of a regular wolf. Most importantly, though, the Loup Garou are described to have a strain of lycanthropy more virulent than their regular cousins, and aggressively try to spread them. 

Their version of the curse transforms the victims into werewolves... that are instantly under the control of the Loup Garou itself. That's cool, and that's a lot more threatening and can really spiral out of control especially if the Loup Garou is attacking a village with civilians or guards around. 

In addition, unlike the regular werewolf curse, the Loup Garou's curse cannot be healed or cursed as long as the original Loup Garou is still alive.... and even then, the remove curse spell needs to be cast during a full moon and you still need to succeed on a saving throw. It's a fun little gimmick that adds a little bonus plot urgency and stakes to the Loup Garou fights. 

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Necrichor

• Medium Undead; Lawful Evil; CR 7
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

This is an interesting one. The Necrichor initially looks like a little plot device or magical item to me, but is actually a being of living blood -- formed from the ichor of evil gods, or the sludge from the crypts of failed liches. Despite their blobby, oozy form, the Necrichor retains a terrible intellect and aspire to regain a body to continue being the most powerful evil dark overlord in Ravenloft. Good luck with that, Necrichor! It is a common trope in monster movies, of these depowered demon lords and dark lords whose victory condition is to get a 'proper' vessel body. 

The Necrichor uses blood to puppeteer its minions, being able to disappear and possess any creature that is significantly bloodied. The Necrichor takes control of the target's body while it is still conscious, which is an extra bit of horror and a little bit of Venom from Marvel Comics. Necrichors are also notoriously difficult to destroy, since they leave a bit of a trace of their essence within the veins of every creature they've controlled, and can regenerate from those creatures' blood if their 'main' body is destroyed. Like the Bodytaker Plant above, it's an interesting little bonus problem -- at CR 7, the Necrichor might not be the most threatening adversary, but it might just keep coming back as a horrifying blood-based Team Rocket, and some of the people with infected blood might even be people your party members like!

The flavour text describe that the Necrichors are therefore often just sealed in magically warded jails by organizations, which is why both Necrichor artwork show them in glass cylinders. But of course, information is lost or corrupted, and ancient seals break. Necrichors themselves are ageless and immortal, and they can just wait until they can break free and terrorize the living. 

I wasn't too impressed by Necrichors the first time I saw it, but sitting down and thinking about the tropes that it's trying to do, as these globulets of blood that ensure that this ancient evil cannot die -- without being too powerful itself -- is an interesting enough twist. Funnily enough, the Necrichor not the only 'sealed evil' in Ravenloft, which also reprints the Brain in a Jar statblock!

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Nosferatu / Vampire Nosferatu

• Medium Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 8
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

We don't quite get like a full dozen varieties of vampires the way Witcher III: Blood and Wine did, but there are a couple of new vampires given to us. The Nosferatu (renamed 'Vampire Nosferatu' in 5.5E) is a CR 8 vampire, whose role does admittedly overlap with the new, similarly more feral Vampire Nightbringer from the 2024 Monster Manual. It's a physical, savage beast, and even one of its attack is a rather disgusting 'blood disgorge'. 

The D&D Nosferatu, named after the iconic movie vampire, has all the tropes of the more vicious vampires. This is no Count Dracula, none of the dignity, charisma or grace. Nosferatus have all the vicious, endless thirst -- barely lucid and only doing so at times when their bloodlust is abated. Their joys are fleeting, and they do not engage in any of the hedonistic pleasures of their more refined cousins. During these moments of lucidity, one can actually converse with the Nosferatu -- with the potential of it going instantly feral mid-conversation -- but they are normally duplicitous, according to Van Richten's. 

I like the description of how a Nosferatu's lair is filled with heaps of mutilated rats, and how it charges and tears apart entire stables of cattle and turn them into mauled offal to drain their blood. When the sun rises, the Nosferatu retreats into ruins and sewers, anything dark and practical enough. Again, none of the castles and mansions of their vampire kin. (The original 2E Nosferatu, as far as I can tell from the old Ravenloft: Monstrous Compendium, is the exact opposite, being a fancy vampire count).

I do like the subversion and the addition of vampire variants, although I really feel like we're missing the 'why'. Why are these Nosferatu so different from other Vampires? Even the youngest Vampire Spawn seem to be in more control compared to the bestial, nearly animal-like Nosferatus! What made them so different? 

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Relentless Killer

• 5E/5.5E: Medium Fiend; Neutral Evil; CR 8 (Slasher), 12 (Juggernaut)
• 5.5E: Medium Fiend; Neutral Evil; CR 11 (Nightmare)
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Huh! The Relentless Killers are a group of dudes that I almost cut out of this review, until I looked at their stat blocks. They are considered fiends, and while they are just huge dudes with a bunch of spiky armour, these are send-ups to relentless, unstoppable serial killers like Jason, Freddy Kreuger, Pyramid Head and that general trope of a huge, unstoppable serial killer that keeps killing and killing and killing. That's interesting enough for me to talk about. 

The original writeup has them be hateful, revenge-obsessed creatures that have entered pacts with fiends, and are themselves turned into fiends. The transformation turn them into butchers that exist only to indulge their endless bloodlust, and any anti-heroic origin story are waved away as they just go and continue to murder and tear apart each successive victim. 

The CR 8 Relentless Slasher is something more like Jack the Ripper, being a more stealthy assassin that kills in silence before vanishing into shadow, infamy and whispered rumours. Like many serial slashers both real and fictional, Slashers are described as being fixated on a specific type of victims. It's got the ability to supernaturally control its knives.

The CR 12 Relentless Juggernaut are massive brutes that thirst for carnage, and their unnatural fiendish forms actually twists the world around them, causing mighty weapons to manifest around where they are. 'Sharp iron fences, crushing stalagmites and blades of glass conveniently appear to aid a juggernaut's brutality'. I like that. I like that little bit of reality-warping, which would absolutely be extra-true in a plane like Ravenloft. This one can just continually advance through most obstacles in its way, which is very Pyramid-Head-coded. 

5.5E gives us a CR 11 Relentless Nightmare, an explicit homage to Freddy Kreuger as someone who puts its foes to sleep and then attacks them from their dreams. When destroyed, the Nightmare re-manifests from the dreams of those it has cursed with its nightmares.

In addition, Van Richten's also gives a table for both 'origins' (which also adds a bunch of extra shout-outs, like to Hellraiser and Jekyll and Hyde... and maybe even more that I'm just not aware of) and 'methods' (turning victims into arts, sacrificing its victims, being a mad doctor, being penitent for its crimes, collecting trophies) for the Relentless Killers, for you to roll up your own if you don't have a specific movie you want to homage. I surprisingly like this -- I like that these monsters work 'in-universe' while still being obvious homages, unlike the Space Clowns from Spelljammer that was just eye-rolling! 

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Strigoi

• Medium Monstrosity; Chaotic Evil; CR 4
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Borrowing its name from a Romanian term for an evil spirit that feeds on the living (and also the inspiration for the classic mosquito-beast D&D monster Stirge), the Strigoi has been associated with vampire lore particularly thanks to the Witcher franchise really liking the term. D&D had the opportunity to tie its Stirge and a more vampiric Strigoi together, and they did it... which is an interesting thing to do. 

5E's Strigoi were specifically created by mad wizards who tried to transmute a swarm of Stirges, which, of course, backfired. Stirges that feed on vampires can also be transformed into Strigoi. They  essentially become humanoid-looking figures with bat wings and a head with a massive proboscis -- with both 5E and 5.5E's Strigois having the head of their respective version of the Stirge. 

Strigoi go on bloodthirsty rampages alongside other bloodsucking pests, draining not just the blood but also the marrow and soft tissues of their prey. This, as you can imagine, leads to a bunch of empty skins and muscles that are ideal to create Boneless! The Strigoi has also been 'uplifted' to a relatively intelligent being with an INT score of 11, meaning that it's self-aware enough. Some Strigoi are horrified and want to return back to their former existence (why would being a Stirge be better, I'm not sure) while others mimic vampires and create sick, twisted mockeries of aristocracies and courts which really reminds me of the Darkest Dungeon: Crimson Curse.

I do really like that last bit. Just making the Strigoi be mosquito-vampires are neat enough! I like the description of the Strigoi being able to manipulate lesser boodsuckers like mosquitoes and stirges the same way that true vampires manipulate bats. But the additional bit of personality of them trying to mimic true vampires is what pushes this over the edge to being really memorable!

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Swarms

• Medium Swarm of Tiny Beasts; Unaligned; CR 2 (Maggots), CR 3 (Scarabs)
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Yay, Swarms of bugs! Bug swarms are quite montsrous, and has been utilized to great degrees of success in some of the horror movies that Ravenloft is a send-up to like the flesh-eating scarabs in The Mummy. My own personal favourite of the most horrifying swarm of bugs in cinema are the fire ants from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. 

The Ravenloft books gives us two different swarm statblocks, a CR 2 Swarm of Maggots (renamed 'Infesting Insects' in THW) and a CR 3 Swarm of Scarabs (renamed 'Ravenous Insects' in THW). The Swarm of Maggots got a particularly grisly and awesome piece of art of a dapper gentleman who died sitting on his chair, and it covered with a massive blanket of writhing maggots, some of which are dripping and falling off of his jacket and hat. 

The flavour text notes that populations of scavenging insects explode when nefarious, necrotic powers grip the land, and these decomposers often explode in population and aggression. I love that they both have the trait of 'skeletonize', reducing corpses and leaving only skeletons behind in an almost B-movie manner. Which, by the way, is true behaviour for maggots and most carrion beetles. Because these are spooky bugs, The Horrors Within suggests a couple of additional behaviours you can roll on a table, like having the swarms crawl on walls in a vaguely bipedal shape, making skittering noises that sound like chanting, and occupying corpses and animating it like a hive. That last bit sounds the coolest to me!  

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Vampiric Mind Flayer

• Medium Undead; Chaotic Evil; CR 5
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

Or 'Vampire Mind Flayer', as the 5.5E reprint of the stat block calls it. The 5.5E art just looks pretty badass, showing an Illithid with extra fangs and being partially turned into shadow, but I really do like the very wretched-looking 5E design with how deformed the head and mouth-tentacles are, and how snaggly those limbs look. 

The Vampiric Mind Flayer were created from a specific group of Illithids that were desperate in staving off the dementia of its Elder Brain, and infected some Mind Flayer tadpoles with vampirism. The result is... it's not 'just' merging a Vampire and Mind Flayer stat block, but more of a combination of the two that end up in something that's a bit less than a regular Mind Flayer and a regular Vampire, but is dangerous because of the combination of tactics. 

Vampiric Mind Flayers drain cerebral fluids from their prey and bring it back to their damaged Elder Brain. The flavour text describes them as being physically and mentally unstable, being driven by the compulsion-like imperative of their existence. Their brains still have the psionic and telepathic capabilities, but so muddled is their brain that they can't employ them properly and just bombard their opponents with mental static. They have some of the basic powers of the vampires (and it's perhaps more accurate to compare them to vampire spawn) but none of the cool Dracula or Strahd powers. It's a bit more interesting to talk about than the Alhoon or Illithilich, for sure, and I like the little note that other Mind Flayers from other colonies see these barely-functional Illithids as abominations, and even its own coven in Bluetspur only employ them out of desperation. 

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Zombie Clot

• Medium Swarm of Tiny Undead; Neutral Evil; CR 1 (Swarm of Zombie Limbs)
• Medium Undead; Neutral Evil; CR 4 (Zombie Plague Spreader)
• Huge Undead; Neutral Evil; CR 6 (Zombie Clot)
• Debut: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (2021)

And we close things off with variant zombies. 5E's Ravenloft gives us three variants of Zombies, and we'll cover them from the weakest to the strongest. I like the descriptions of 'zombie apocalypses' in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, emphasizing how the threat isn't in a single zombie but in the unstoppable numbers. 'A throng of zombies will douse a forest fire with their own ashes, or march into a dragon's maw until the monster chokes'. 

The weakest is the CR 1 Swarm of Zombie Limbs, which I suppose are the smaller clumps in that brand-new 5.5E art. It's something similar to what they did with Troll Limbs, as well as statblocks for Swarms of Crawling Claws. It's a cute little addition to a more apocalyptic mass of zombies, and a nice little bonus surprise enemy for adventurers and parties who think they just have to deal with only the zombies. 

The CR 4 Zombie Plague Spreader is a relatively expected variation for any zombie in TCGs and fantasy games. Zombies are very often tied with plagues and disease anyway, and this slightly stronger zombie (bottom left in the 5.5E art) have both the ability to actively exude a virulent miasma, as well as a general poisoning aura. D&D zombies don't actually have the 'one bite of a zombie and you're a zombie!' trope, giving that over to stronger undead like Ghasts and Wights... but the Plague Spreader's effect allows you to do that with specific elite zombies. That's neat.

Far cooler and easily the reason why it got the sole art in Van Richten's Guide is the CR 6 Zombie Clot, which is just a massive, vaguely humanoid mass of corpses and zombies all bunched up together in the rough shape of a headless, heavyset form. Love the little adventurer running away from it! In addition to just being larger (and also exuding a debilitating stench), Zombie Clots can entomb its foes, suffocating and restraining them within the throng of corpses and limbs as they struggle to break free. Giant masses of corpses creating an even bigger undead monster is something that older D&D (particularly 3.5E) did a lot, and especially in other material, but unless the troll limb amalgates count, I don't think 5th Edition has done before. Like the Plague Spreader, it's not unexpected but most certainly a welcome addition to the horror gang.  

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