The second part of my review of the monsters in the 5th Edition D&D sourcebook Volo's Guide to Monsters.I suppose I should talk a bit about who the titular "Volo" is, huh? Volothamp Geddarm is a recurring character in the Forgotten Realms setting, and is the in-universe author of many sourcebooks ever since 2E, providing in-universe descriptions of many aspects of the realms and its denizens, traveling with his long-suffering elder wizard editor, Elminster. He's made cameo appearances in the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights games, too! Volo essentially makes some in-universe little annotations here and there, although it's kept to a relative minimum other than a foreword in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
I actually finished reading the entirety of Volo's Guide to Monsters last night, and... I don't think I'll be adding too much to the other races expanded upon in Volo's? A lot of the new cultural aspects to, like, orcs and gnolls and giants and kobolds and whatnot sort of get wrapped up in the new variants introduced here, and the other aspects of their culture is... well, I'm not going to break down every single minutiae about the book, yeah? I mean, it's actually a pretty great read, and I do encourage you guys to look it up for your own if you're interested in D&D monster lore. I sure am!
- Click here for the first part of Volo's, covering Banderhobb to Froghemoth.
- Click here for the second part of Volo's, covering Nilbog to Yuan-ti variants.
- Click here for the index.
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Girallon
One of the many, many bizarre magical beasts introduced in 3E (which admittedly does dilute the monster pool a lot, but a godsend for wacky and bizarre monster designs) is the Girallon, and it's one that's unexpectedly returned in 5th edition. The Girallon is... it's honestly not even that interesting, just an oversized albino gorilla with a set of smaller arms under its nipples. Plus orc-tusks, I suppose. The 3E artwork makes it very tall and awkward-looking, too. Despite the Girallon's size, inability to climb up most trees and lack of camouflage, the Girallon is noted to be extremely stealthy. Somehow. They're also pack animals, and they tended to live in abandoned humanoid ruins in the jungle, because those vine-encrusted abandoned yuan-ti ziggurats or bandit forts actually can serve as a jungle gym for big ol' four-armed kong here. We get a brief possible origin that they were created as guardians of one of D&D's many, many ancient empires, and the girallons are left to their own devices. Depending on how you approach a band of Girallons, you might actually end up befriending them. Also, Yuan-ti often enslave the Girallon as guards. Overall, the artwork's neat, but I've always found the Girallon to be just kinda there, y'know?
Grung
Oh man I love the Grung. And if you think that I love the Grung because of that adorable artwork, you are 100% absolutely right. On one hand, yeah, I kind of understand that we've got a lot of frog-people in D&D already. The Slaad and the Bullywugs are very much staples from 1E, and that's not counting other frog-themed monsters and frog demons and stuff. Like, give other animals a chance, y'know what I mean? But the Grung just looks so neat, and specifically being based on adorable, traditionally cuter poison dart frogs as opposed to the more ugly-toadish Bullywug. And, just like the difference between poison dart frogs and regular frogs, the Grung live in rain-forests and jungles and are essentially tribal warriors that are super-territorial and xenophobic. Grungs are noted to be split up into castes depending on the shade their skin becomes after they get out of their tadpole stage. Green grungs are warriors, hunters and labourers; blue grungs are artisans and do domestic roles; purple grungs are commanders and leaders; red grungs are scholars and magic-users; orange grungs are elite warriors and gold grungs are tribal leaders. Grungs that distinguish themselves can rarely be given an invitation to join a higher caste, and they change their colour through a magical ritual. Being poison-dart frogs, the Grungs all secrete a poisonous mucus that they use to poison their weapons. Also, they're slavers, keeping their slaves compliant by weakening their bodies with poisoned food. Also, they have to be in contact with water like, once a day or so, or they will be severely disadvantaged.
I dunno -- I've seen some people grumble that the Grung are just a more malicious version of the Bullywugs, or Lizardmen-but-in-frog-form, but I feel like the flavour is relatively well-written (if admittedly similar) and the artwork's pretty neat. I'm a fan.
Guard Drake
As far as I can tell, the Drakes made their first proper appearance in 3E, and continued to show up in 4E and 5E. Both 3E and 4E went full-in with dragon and dragon-esque variants, and the Drake essentially fill in the role of weak, beast-like enemies without much intelligence, but still look enough like lesser dragons. Also, in 4E, they also sort of fill in the role of dinosaurs. 5E significantly cuts down the amount of drakes that show up, and to my knowledge we only have two, the Guard and the Ambush Drakes (which will show up in one of the Tiamat-related books). The Guard Drakes also kind of get a fair amount of new lore in 5E, instead of just being "a guard dog, but dragon", and apparently the Guard Drake is created out of dragon scales through a 'grisly ritual', and the dragon that the scales belonged to must be cooperative in order for the Guard Drake to be formed. Thus the Guard Drakes are often used by dragons or dragon cults to guard their territories. It still ultimately just kind of a guard-dog-but-dragon. Design wise, it's... it's relatively simple, just a short, squat, wingless dragon. Not super-interesting on its own, but as part of the bizarre symbiosis between a mighty dragon and the cult of humanoids that worship it, it's a neat little extra detail.
(The Guard Drake on that 4E artwork is the big, green, T-rex-esque one).
Hag: Annis Hag
The hags are one of the creatures that get spotlighted in this book, and as I've mentioned in my previous talk about hags, the previous editions had a lot of hag variants. One of the more popular ones is the Annis Hag, based on the child-eating witch called Black Annis from English folklore, and making her appearance in 1E's Monster Manual II. Annis Hags are described to lair in mountains and hills, and are actually reasonable physical fighters as opposed to their more spell-based brethren, being pretty told for an old granny, and being described to be powerful enough to 'tear grown men apart' -- the artwork doesn't show it, but she's described as a large-category creature. Like the folklore's Black Annis, the Annis Hag loves hunting down children, eating them and subsequently tanning their skin to make leather -- grisly things lifted straight from folklore. The Annis are described to delight in causing settlements to descend into fear and paranoia, but are noted to love to disguise themselves as a "granny" who approaches children and gives them a small iron token, communicating with the child through the token and slowly corrupting him or her by telling them that it's totally okay to do evil things, posing as kind of a fucked-up Jiminy Cricket. Breaking plates and wandering outside their house soon gives way to pushing kids down stairs or setting a neighbour's house on fire, and there's no real endgame to this other than just to mentally traumatize the kid and their parents. In a fight, she's not the most interesting, being mostly a physical enemy with a couple of resistances, but the description of how she corrupts children is pretty chilling.
Volo's also describes "Grandmother" and "Auntie" variants of all hag sub-types, noting that they are even more powerful and are extra-respected among Hag society due to their immense age and power. Also, we get the detail that hags can change their form from one to the other, depending on the individual hag's desires.
Hag: Bheur/Winter Hag
Based on an alternate name for the Gaelic hag-like weather deity Cailleach, the Bheur Hag, also known as the Winter Hag, is... well, she's a creepy old lady living in icy lands, and have a blue-white skin and appearance that's supposed to resemble someone who's frozen to death. Naturally, being winter hags, Bheurs have the ability to manipulate blizzards and snowstorms. Bheurs have twisted wooden staves that they can ride aroud "like a flying broom". Huzzah for the classic witch iconography! The Bheurs, like the other hags, encourage evil deeds, but apparently find "selfish actions caused by the cold" to be their thing, such as murdering another traveler in the cold winter to get their supplies, and they delight in causing sudden snowstorms in order to delight in how the unprepared, foolish humans deal and backstab each other just to survive. Bheurs are also apparently super-crazy in combat, often stopping to brutally rend and feed on any corpse that fell in battle, and it's implied that this is mostly just to be a massive dick and terrify the other combatants insane. Both the Annis and Bheur hags are neat variants of the regular hag, although I feel like they're not particularly interesting on their own. So much of 5E's lore ntalks about hag covens, though, and having a trio of different hags with different styles of tormenting humans does admittedly make them a fair bit more interesting.
Ki-rin
Oh, hey, it's the Kirin/Qilin from Japanese/Chinese mythology! And, well, it's another monster which has showed up a couple of times, even all the way to 5th Edition, where they appeared here! Originally coming from the Oriental Adventures sourcebook (which is frankly pretty outdated and kind of racist), the Kirin is perhaps one of the few oriental-myth monsters that retained a relative sense of prominence in D&D. There's a bit of an argument on just how much non-European monsters should show up in D&D and how much their lore can (or cannot) be modified, but I'm not going to discuss that. I like the real mythological Kirin, and seeing it adapted pretty well here is neat. If nothing else, the 5E version isn't problematic.
While the appearance and depictions are relatively faithful to the original myths (and the Kirin was never really consistently depicted in real-life as well), a lot of their lore is a bit more vaguely defined. The 1E Kirin is noted to just be a race of aerial creatures that live in the clouds and winds, often showing up mostly to aid humans in fighting evil, and being mighty spellcasters -- which fit into the original myths of Kirins basically being an auspicious, holy sign. Most depictions of the Kirin in D&D tended to lean more towards the 'celestial horse-like creature' look as opposed to the sometimes dragon-inspired ones. I suppose it's to make dragons feel more unique or something?
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| Kirin (3E) |
Korred
Oh, hey, another fey creature! The Korred, based on the Breton dwarf-fairy Korrigan, is one helluva bizarre-looking creature, but it's actually chaotic neutral. I significantly prefer its 5E look, which makes the Korred look so much more bizarre, as opposed to the 1E artwork who just looks like a nasty dwarf hobo (albeit with goat legs) or the 3E artwork, which is just straight-up a nasty dwarf hobo. Originally introduced as a sub-type of the Satyr, Korreds have eventually branched out to their own unique fey species. Their look in 5E emphasizes their massive chunk of hair and their exaggerated chibi proportions a bit, and they get a stony skin that ends up giving them a niche of an earth-elemental-aligned creature. Korreds basically have a supernatural mastery of earth and stone, able to sniff out veins of metal or gems, to point out tunnels and secret doorways, and they often gather in rituals to dance around and worship the earth. Also, their master of earth extends to manipulating it in combat. It's not quite earth-bender levels of awesomeness, but Korreds can hurl around boulders larger than itself, shape stone like clay, have super-strength if they are in contact with the earth and swim through rock. Their head hair's apparently a very coveted treasure -- when it's cut, it transforms into whatever material that's used to cut it. So, uh, yeah, just cut a Korred's hair with like a piece of sharpened diamond or gold or something, and you suddenly have whole lot of precious golden hair. The Korreds are very protective of their hair, but they will weaponize it themselves, creating iron whips and ropes out of their own hair. Overall, a pretty funky fey creature, and a pretty bizarre one.
Leucrotta
The Leucrotta, like the Ki-rin, is another creature that sort of shows up in multiple editions, and in 5th Edition, it's another creature that shows up in Volo's Guide to Monster. Based on an altered version of the Indian mythological creature the Leucrocotta. Just how monstrous the Leucrotta is varies from edition to edition, and unlike the hyena-esque beast of myth, D&D's Leucrotta is explicitly noted to be a chimeric fusion of "the body of a stag, the tail of a lion, and the head of a huge badger". Also, it can imitate human voices, while fooling humans with the tracks of a deer, before it eventually pounces on those that try to hunt it. 2E's artwork was a bit more comical, and 3E ended up going for a bit of an unsettling look, making the badger head really stand out attached to the stag-lion body.
I'm not as familiar with the depiction of the Leucrotta in the 2nd and 3rd edition, but 5th edition throws in a couple extra horrid things into the mix -- the brain of the Leucrotta is apparently the brain of a sadistic cannibal, the body is now explicitly noted to come from a hyena and the ritual to create a Leucrotta is now tied to the gnoll demon god Yeenoghu, and sometimes, these were spontaneously created when hyenas are mutated by Yeenoghu's essence. The tie-in to Yeenoghu and gnolls is pretty neat, considering the fact that the mythological Crocotta/Leucrocotta is now recognized to be basically linked to hyenas. Leucrottas are rare, but they tend to sometimes show up in elevated positions among gnoll tribes, sort of becoming an adviser-cum-torturer. I feel like the 5th Edition artwork does lean more towards 'horrid hyena-human' moreso than a badger head, but the result does really sell the 'loathsome beast' vibe. There's also a bunch of new powers that the 5E Leucrotta has, including generally being nasty and foul, polluting everywhere it goes to, and having teeth made out of bony ridges. Overall, the 1E Leucrotta is interesting enough as a bizarre weird beast, and while I would've preferred that they let the Leucrotta still have its badger head, I do appreciate the little update that the 5th Edition offered it.
Meenlock
The Meenlock is a creature from the first Fiend Folio that's shown up in every single edition, hanging in that strange zone where they were clearly considered a 'classic' enough monster to appear relatively early in each edition's lifespans, but never quite an 'essential' monster like your beholders and purple worms. Also, I kind of think that they were D&D's first try at adapting the Morlocks from H.G. Wells' stories, before the Grimlocks took that over? Just how the Meenlocks look vary from edition to edition, although they always have inhuman, buggy eyes; bug-like fangs and massive pincer-arms; but the nature of Meenlocks themselves does justify the sheer range of variety among the species. Look at how different the two Meenlocks in the 3E artwork looks! They do have enough in common, being deformed, twisted-looking humanoids with vaguely arthropod-like characteristics (despite having nothing to do with bugs). The only real alteration is 4E's Meenlock, which just looks like a generic humanoid ghoul. We also alternate on whether it's a fey or an aberration between editions, with 5E's Meenlock being considered a fey that represents fear.
The original 1E Meenlock was a creature who stalks a person who unknowingly disturbs their lair, eventually transforming them into a Meenlock through their hideous evil means. In 5E, the Meenlocks are fey born out of fear in the same vein that Boggles are born out of loneliness. They live in tunnel-like lairs in areas that are touched by the Feywilds, and those lairs apparently manifest spontaneously alongside the Meenlocks, and they just feel wrong to anyone who stumbles upon them. Just like their original counterparts, Meenlocks are able to teleport from shadow to shadow, and use a telepathic link to project spooky hallucinations into the minds of their chosen prey, explicitly picking unsettling visions like something darting just out of sight. As with most evil creatures in D&D, they are attracted to innocent souls, and they delight in kidnapping random people, then telepathically tormenting them until they succumb and transform into a Meenlock themselves. I kind of feel that I like the vibe of the original "unknown, telepathic stalker" vibe from 1E a lot more, but I do recognize that the Meenlock's subsequent retooling does make it a lot easier to run in a D&D setting.
Morkoth
In a streak of weird wacky water-dwelling monsters, we've got the Morkoth. Having the alternate names of "Morlock" and "Wraith of the Deep", the Mortkoth in 1E is... it's weird. It's got like this bizarre humanoid body with noodle arms, fins that run down its body, and a head that could be charitably described as a squid's head with anime eyes and a bird's beak. It's also got bizarre fin-wings for some reason. And it's easy to take the 1E artwork and sort of make fun of it, but you must remember that things like the Mind Flayer looked like this. The difference, of course, is the write-ups they have and the commitment of the game's creators into making a octopus-headed underground brain-eating man work. And the Morkoth's gimmick, sadly, while not exactly the most interesting one, is also something that various editions have alternatively dropped in an attempt to make the Morkoth be something more sinister. 1E Morkoth's whole deal is that its lair is a series of spiraling tunnels, and simply by navigating through the tunnels, the adventurers swimming into the Morkoth's lair will be charmed and hypnotized, ready to become the food of this bizarre squid-person. It's like Uzumaki, but goofier.
Interestingly, though, unlike some of the other abandoned 1E monsters, the Morkoth isn't just phased out or shuffled off as an easter egg in some obscure books in subsequent editions. No, the subsequent iterations of the game all tried their best to include the Morkoth in their core Monster Manuals. 2nd Edition scrapped the "squid-headed noddle man" and handwaved it as an erroneous description based on hypnotized eyewitnesses, and the 2nd edition Morkoth ended up being this awesomely gaunt-looking octopus-thing with a thin, bent spine that ended in the head of a deep-sea anglerfish or something, and four gangly bug-like hook-arms. Truly a cool-looking deep-sea horror that still has the lanky, goofy vibe of 1E. The 3rd Edition followed suit, although at first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking that 3E Morkoth is just an ugly fish. It's essentially the same design as the 2nd Edition one, but with some forced perspective, a larger angry-fish-head, a bunch of shorter shrimp-like bug legs, and the octopus part trailing off like a tail.5th Edition gave us an interesting take on the Morkoth, and even gave the Morkoths a gloriously over-the-top origin story. Morkoths are apparently ancient beings that travel from plane to plane, "born out of the petrified husk of a deity of greed and sprite", forming the squid-faced octopus creatures that are the Morkoths. And I could see the inspiration they took, borrowing the 1E Morkoth's goofy beak-face (which now actually does look like a squid's beak) and the octopus tentacles and bug-legs combo of the 2E and 3E versions. But instead of a mere lair where the shape of the tunnels will hypnotize their prey, 5E Morkoths now lair in straight-up extra-planar dream-scape islands where their prey go straight through some Alice in Wonderland madness. Morkoths can control these islands to move around from plane to plane, picking bizarre things from different planes or periods in time, and honestly that's just a recipe to make some pretty wacky, unsettling self-contained dungeon islands. The Morkoths are hoarders that are driven to gain whatever they don't possess, which is shown in 5E's artwork as having the upper part of its body clustered with random chunks of treasure. that probably can't be good for the Morkoth's back. It's a pretty interesting concept for a creature for sure, and makes the Morkoth super-duper badass and bizarre, and now they're these weird dimension-travelling hoarders who just happen to look like wacky octopus-creatures. I do like the update from just a weird hypnotizing labyrinth into a weird, strange landscape and the hypnosis being an innate part of the Morkoth itself. Perhaps not the most faithful update, but I'm growing to kind of like this weird space-octopus with a treasure hoard backpack.
Mind Flayer: Alhoon (& Illithilich)
Of course the Illithid have variants, and of course the Illithid gets a lot of love in Volo's. A bunch of these Mind Flayer variants are introduced in 3E, and have basically became mainstays in subsequent editions. And while I tended to leave 'variants of things we've seen before' after the breaks, I do think that the Mind Flayer variants are different enough and notable enough for me to talk about. First up is the Alhoon. Mind Flayers deplore arcane magic, but sometimes the temptation for superpowers is a bit hard for them to resist. It's these deviants who end up seeing spellbooks as a shortcut to gain authority over their own kind, but are invariably ostracized from their hive-mind communities, and will be barred from joining the host of minds that form the Elder Brain. Depending on the Mind Flayer arcanist's power, they will either be chased out, seek out other arcanists of its kind, or straight-up do a coup d'etat and take over the leadership position of their colony. But the fact that they can't join the Elder Brain scares them, and these arcanists end up turning to lichdom as a way to ensure that their mind survives after death -- but dabble in arcane magic as they may, mind flayers are apparently far from the 'apex of arcane power' needed for lichdom. The Alhoon is a group of nine Illithids who manage to grasp a ritual to turn an illithid into a lich, using a magical item called the Periapt of Mind-Trapping, which is sort of a combination of a phylactery and an Elder Brain style hivemind, so... yeah, now they don't just eat your brains, they eat your souls too.
I do love the artwork for both the 3E and 5E versions of the Alhoons, which really does a great job at keeping the standard design of a Mind Flayer, but making the tentacles and face look so dessicated and dried-out, a neat way to showcase an undead but not rotting octopus person. The prose notes that Alhoons are difficult to visibly distinguish from a regular illithid if you don't know what to look for. The Alhoons also have unique features unlike any other lich, returning into a hivemind of Alhoon minds in the Periapt if their body was destroyed. They also extend their life not by the quantity of souls they consume, but they extend their lives by the age of the person they sacrificed... so long-lived beings like elves and halflings are probably #1 on the Alhoon soul food menu. Volo's also describes the Illithilich, or Mind Flayer Lich if you don't want to bite your tongue while saying the name, where a Mind Flayer actually goes through the proper way of becoming a lich with the mastery of arcane magic, a fancy phylactery and everything, a creature that's significantly more powerful. I think in most previous editions, though, the two terms are used interchangeably. Ultimately, I do find it interesting that despite introducing a more powerful version of the Mind Flayer, they're intentionally meant to be rival antagonists to the regular Mind Flayer package, whose 'big boss' enemy is...
Mind Flayer: Elder Brain
...The Elder Brain! Mentioned a whole lot in the 5E Monster Manual, If I'm not mistaken, the Elder Brain was introduced in 2E sourcebooks as a lore thing, and eventually given artwork and stats in 3E onwards, becoming a central part of Illithid lore. And it's such a cheesy, old-school trope, one that's both creepy and also a little bit whimsy and silly. It's the gestalt hive-mind and the combination of hundreds upon hundreds of Mind Flayers, transformed and combined into a terrifying hyper-intelligent being that serves as both colony leader and the afterlife for these alien abominations... but it's a giant freaking brain with tentacles! It's just how the creepy brain-eating psychic aberrations from another universe are ultimately just octopus-headed brain-eating dudes. There's just that inherently silly quality about the Elder Brain that I really do like. The Elder Brain is mighty, but there's one huge, huge weakness to it -- it must be submerged in a
Anyway, the Elder Brain in 5E is described to reside in the center of any Mind Flayer city, stretching out with its mighty telepathic/psionic powers and maintaining a connection with all the Mind Flayers in its colony, quite literally being the 'brain' of the body that the colony forms. It can also rewrite the thoughts of non-Illithid minds around it, able to essentially make them see and feel what the Elder Brain wants them to see and feel. For more long-term, insidious plans, the Elder Brain can reach very far and implant suggestions as dreams to influence other non-Illithid minds. And if more subtle means of manipulation fails to work, there's good old Dominate Person, and if that fails, the Elder Brain can just utterly break the dude's mind with surges of psychic energy. The Elder Brain also feeds, eating the brains of other creatures, and when other Illithids die, their brains are devoured by the Elder Brain so that they may join into the unified thoughts and minds of the Elder Brain. While the Elder Brain is technically its own entity (and their personalities differ, with the only thing in common being that the Elder Brain has one hell of an ego problem), it may draw out the specific persona of any individual Illithid that's been consumed by it. Ultimately, a pretty damn awesome part of the Mind Flayer lore that both serves as a pretty cool boss-type enemy, as well as a pretty thematically appropriate leader.
Mind Flayer: Ulitharid
Another thing that Volo's expands upon Mind Flayer culture is their life cycle, which, as I mentioned before, involves a tadpole stage that's implanted, Alien-style, into humanoid slaves. But sometimes, you don't just get an Illithid... you get an Ulitharid, which is basically an Illithid with six mouth-tentacles instead of four, and in 3E and 5E, they have very long mouth-tentacles that reach all the way to the legs. Both artworks give us a pretty damn cool-looking creature, and I'm frankly surprised just how much cooler the design looks with longer tentacles. The Ulitharid is ultimately a super-Illithid, with most wielding powerful staves that enhance their psionic powers, but its place in a given colony is going to depend on the Elder Brain of the colony -- the Elder Brain will either dote on the Ulitharid and treat it as its most favoured servant; or view it as a rival of power and either manipulates the Ulitharid, or quash its ambitions. Of course, if they don't cooperate, Ulitharids are just as likely to flee with a couple of its servitors to start a brand-new colony.
And why are Elder Brains a bit afraid of Ulitharids? Well, because... where do you think Elder Brains come from? Ulitharids is a stage in the Illithid's strange, strange life cycle, and Ulitharids that died will have their brain grow into an Elder Brain if the conditions are right. Basically, Ulitharids have to sort of choose to become Elder Brains, by cracking open their skulls with their staves, and then its servitors will transport the brain to a brain pool, mixed with the ichor from the Ulitharid's body. Ultimately, I do like this. The Mind Flayers have sort of an ant-colony feel to them, with the Elder Brain sort of being the queen, and the Ulitharids are, I suppose, drones or pre-colony queens.
Mindwitness
So what happens when two of D&D's mightiest and most iconic aberrations are brought together? What is the result of the combination of the nightmarish Beholders and the terrifying Mind Flayers? Introduced in 3E is the Mindwitness, the result of an Illithid tadpole infiltrating a Beholder, and the other Illithids successfully subduing said Beholder long enough to bring it before an Elder Brain, and you get the Mindwitness! Both the 3E and 5E artworks show a pretty simple creature, essentially a half-dead Beholer with the Beholder's eye tentacles and singular eye, but with squiddy Mind Flayer tentacles at the bottom. I am simultaneously grossed out and love the dead eye sitting in the center of unnatural-looking flesh in that 5E artwork. The Mindwitness has a slightly different set of powers and more psionically-leaning eye powers, and essentially function as telepathic hubs, basically acting as fleshy, living radio stations that help telepathic messages to be sent throughout a Mind Flayer colony, particularly larger ones. Except unlike radio stations, Mindwitnesses can shoot out psychic rays. Ultimately, it's not super-impressive, and I dunno... I kind of expected more? I did like that the Mind Flayers have a lot of extra servitors to play with, though, between the Mindwitnesses and the Cranium Rats.
Neothelid
The Neothelid technically gets its own entry, but I'm not going to break up the Mind Flayer theme we've got going on so I'm swapping the orders a bit. The Neothelid is pretty damn cool-looking, huh? Some sort of crazy giant worm with a massive fang that opens up like a flower, revealing a sarlacc-like lamprey mouth with tentacles? Well, the Neothelid is the far, far more impressive result of the mind flayer reproductive cycle gone horribly wrong, caused when an Illithid colony collapses and an Elder Brain is killed. See, without the Mind Flayers or the Elder Brains to take care of how their tadpole stages grow, they are free to do what they want to do, and this tended to mean devouring each other until one is left... and said survivors eventually grow. Normal Mind Flayer life cycles involves the tadpoles being implanted into a donor brain, but, again, without a colony to take care of it, the super-tadpole evolves into a Neothelid, something that's anathema to actual Mind Flayers.
The Neothelids themselves are utterly savage, having minimal, almost animal-like intelligence, but also equipped with mighty psychic abilities, the equivalent of giving a child super-powers. They basically charge through the Underdark with the sole desire to feed their hunger, and they also spit tissue-dissolving enzymes to reduce all parts of any humanoid victim into slime, leaving behind only the brain. What a hilariously B-movie ability to have! The Elder Brains fear the Neothelids, because the Neothelids are so dumb that the Elder Brain can't sense it, but the Neothelids themselves don't really know that they have any sort of link to Illithid society. Ultimately, a pretty freaking cool giant worm monster. I know we already have a Purple Worm, but there's enough space in the Underdark to have two giant, horrifying people-eating worms, one that just gulps you alive and one that has a nasty lamprey-mouth that melts your flesh and eats your brain.
Neogi
Oh hey, the Neogi! I love these guys. They look like something out of Star Trek or Babylon 5 or something, like they would be weird alien puppet creatures. (EDIT: And, apparently, they were! Apparently they debuted in the space-themed Spelljammer modules, and were later introduced to D&D. I wrote the rest of this review without knowledge of this.) And whether it's the more spidery 5E versions or the 3E one with a more elongated neck, I've always loved just how weird the Neogi looks. Spider legs, furry abdomen, little skinny T-rex arms, an eel-like head and an not-quite-humanoid face... also, they're not huge spider-monsters, despite what the artwork might imply. They're like, the size of a Halfling or something, I believe, classified as 'small'. And their whole race revolves around slavery. Also, the Neogi apparently can survive almost anywhere -- the Material Plane, the Feywild, Shadowfell, the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane... they are apparently an invasive creature who spread into all the other planes, wanting to dominate and other creatures. Apparently their first slaves were the dimwitted Umber Hulks, and they created giant spider-vessels to move through planes. In the process, they end up meeting a bunch of horrifying Elder Beings like Hadar, Caiphon and Gibbeth, which, of course, I recognize as the creepy sentient stars that are the source of 4th Edition's Star Spawn. Okay! I've never been the biggest fan of the 'planeswalking aliens' style of backstory in D&D monsters, but it's an interesting one.
More interesting to me about the Neogi, of course, is their hilarious world-view, which I've seen someone compare to basically an 18th-century aristocrat obsessed with hierarchy. Being born with mind-controlling powers, the Neogi view it as a way of life and almost appropriate, and they end up being another one of those alien creatures in D&D who just don't get emotions and individuality. They don't do so out of malice or pragmatism, however, they just straight up are unable to comprehend non-Neogi reasoning, and all of their culture depends on the ability to control others. The more powerful control the more weak, and so on. When they are born, they live under the control of adult Neogi, and then they have to earn their place in their society by dominating other creatures, and they try their best to reach as high of a rank as they can, while kowtowing to Neogis of greater station. Eventually, when the Neogi's about to die, the elder Neogi would be swarmed by the rest of its group, inject it with poison, and transform it into a bloated flesh mass called a 'Great Old Master', which would later be used as something for the rest of the hive to lay eggs upon, and the great old master would become food for the hatchlings. When dealing with other non-Neogi, they basically pose as sleazy salesmen, selling and buying and trying to eke out as heavy of a profit as they can, while also at the same time trying to enslave their patrons. We get an interesting description of Neogi caravans and traders showing up to sell their wares (i.e. slaves) to drow, mind flayers or in 'planar bazaars, but their reputation tends to invite actual fighting more than not. I kinda wished that Volo's had spent more time describing their bizarre greedy space slave-merchant culture more than their life cycle, though. I like them. They're so fukken weird.
Hobgoblins
The Hobgoblins, like their goblin cousins, get a sub-chapter to themselves in Volo's, and we get two elite Hobgoblins out of it. I actually do like the depiction of the Hobgoblins as a far more martial and organized society, even if the 5th Edition artwork doesn't really scream 'goblin' for me. Hell, show me that picture of the Iron Shadow and I'd probably call her a weird tiefling or something as opposed to a hobgoblin, y'know? (I know, that's a mask designed to resemble a devil, but still...)
Anyway, the Hobgoblin Devastator are essentially the Hobgoblin society's version of wizards, and any hobgoblin with a talent for magic is called into study at the Academy of Devastation, turning them into specifically war-wizards -- they know how to cast fireballs, but they don't know the theory... but really, they're a war-like race. Of course they have no need for the theory. The prose notes how different hobgoblin culture is in making their wizards fight in combat as opposed to being 'cloistered scholars', but really, even without counting adventurers, surely wizards that wade into combat in D&D is the rule rather than the exception? The Hobgoblin Iron Shadow is, in contrast hobgoblin monks, who also double as secret police, scouts and assassins. So monk-rogues, then? They essentially become the secret spy society among massive Hobgoblin communities, and they are fanatically loyal to the goblin god Maglubiyet, and the Iron Shadows essentially enforce this rule heavily in hunting down treacherous goblins and whatnot. This could actually serve as a neat little plot hook if your setting has a rogue goblinoid character (or even an entire non-evil goblinoid village), because suddenly they have displeased their god, and now an entire society of secret police monks are out to murder your hobgoblin PC.
Anyway, the Hobgoblin Devastator are essentially the Hobgoblin society's version of wizards, and any hobgoblin with a talent for magic is called into study at the Academy of Devastation, turning them into specifically war-wizards -- they know how to cast fireballs, but they don't know the theory... but really, they're a war-like race. Of course they have no need for the theory. The prose notes how different hobgoblin culture is in making their wizards fight in combat as opposed to being 'cloistered scholars', but really, even without counting adventurers, surely wizards that wade into combat in D&D is the rule rather than the exception? The Hobgoblin Iron Shadow is, in contrast hobgoblin monks, who also double as secret police, scouts and assassins. So monk-rogues, then? They essentially become the secret spy society among massive Hobgoblin communities, and they are fanatically loyal to the goblin god Maglubiyet, and the Iron Shadows essentially enforce this rule heavily in hunting down treacherous goblins and whatnot. This could actually serve as a neat little plot hook if your setting has a rogue goblinoid character (or even an entire non-evil goblinoid village), because suddenly they have displeased their god, and now an entire society of secret police monks are out to murder your hobgoblin PC.
Kobolds
Kobolds kobolds kobolds! In addition to a lot of fun little details about how kobold society functions, Volo's adds three elite kobolds. The first is the Kobold Dragonshield, who... uh... is kinda boring. He's just a strong, distinguished warrior, selected by a kobold clan's dragon master to undergo special training so they can guard the dragon's eggs. They have shields made out of dragon hearts, and have some heavy, heavy impostor syndrome and thus are extra-desperate to prove that they are worth their status. The Kobold Inventor is my favourite out of these three, mostly due to the hilarious set of contraptions it's got attached to it. Clearly meant to be more comical than serious, the Kobold Inventor makes bizarre Wile E. Coyote contraptions out junk and random scavenged materials, which... somehow works. Maybe the bizarre Quipper-launcher 2000 works exactly for one shot, but sometimes one shot is what you need, y'know? And even if the Inventor blows up his own face, that's a distraction for the rest of the clan.
The Inventor might be my favourite thematically, but the Kobold Scale Sorcerer has my vote for favourite artwork. Look at those tattered fake dragon wings! Look at how pleased the Kobold is to be cosplaying as a dragon! Scale Sorcerers are essentially Kobold spellcasters, and we also get the lore that the Kobolds' actual deity is imprisoned (is that why they worship dragons?) and they have no access to clerics, so the Scale Sorcerers end up filling the role of fireball-launcher, negotiator-to-their-dragon-overlord, historian and advisor.
The Inventor might be my favourite thematically, but the Kobold Scale Sorcerer has my vote for favourite artwork. Look at those tattered fake dragon wings! Look at how pleased the Kobold is to be cosplaying as a dragon! Scale Sorcerers are essentially Kobold spellcasters, and we also get the lore that the Kobolds' actual deity is imprisoned (is that why they worship dragons?) and they have no access to clerics, so the Scale Sorcerers end up filling the role of fireball-launcher, negotiator-to-their-dragon-overlord, historian and advisor.
The 5E stats of the creatures covered here:
- Girallon: Large monstrosity; unaligned; CR 4
- Grung: Small humanoid - grung; lawful evil; CR 1/4
- Grung Elite Warrior: Small humanoid - grung; lawful evil; CR 2
- Grung Wildling: Small humanoid - grung; lawful evil; CR 1
- Guard Drake: Medium dragon; unaligned; CR 2
- Annis Hag: Medium fey; chaotic evil; CR 6
- Bheur Hag: Medium fey; chaotic evil; CR 7
- Hobgoblin Devastator: Medium humanoid - goblinoid; lawful evil; CR 4
- Hobgoblin Iron Shadow: Medium humanoid - goblinoid; lawful evil; CR 2
- Ki-rin: Huge celestial; lawful good; CR 12
- Kobold Dragonshield: Small humanoid - kobold; lawful evil; CR 1
- Kobold Inventor: Small humanoid - kobold; lawful evil; CR 1/4
- Kobold Scale Sorcerer: Small humanoid - kobold; lawful evil; CR 1
- Korred: Small fey; chaotic neutral; CR 7
- Leucrotta: Large monstrosity; chaotic evil; CR 3
- Meenlock: Small fey; neutral evil; CR 2
- Alhoon: Medium undead; any evil alignment; CR 10
- Illithilich: Medium undead - lich mind flayer; any evil alignment; CR 22
- Elder Brain: Large aberration; lawful evil; CR 14
- Ulitharid: Large aberration; lawful evil; CR 9
- Mindwitness: Large aberration; lawful evil; CR 5
- Morkoth: Medium aberration; chaotic evil; CR 11
- Neogi Hatchling: Tiny aberration; lawful evil; CR 1/8
- Neogi: Small aberration; lawful evil; CR 3
- Neogi Master: Medium aberration; lawful evil; CR 4
- Neothelid: Gargantuan aberration; chaotic evil; CR 13
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