Reviewing 5E D&D Monsters - 5E Adventure Modules, Part 8 (Wildemount)

I'm a huge fan of Critical Role, which, if you're unaware, is one of the earlier "let's play D&D as a live-show for an audience" show, and thanks to featuring professional voice actors that are happy to perform and do improv, is probably one of the bigger shows (alongside Acquisitions Incorporated) that codified the D&D-podcast/youtube-series. While the start is -- like most live shows -- a bit rough, it is certainly a fun one to watch! The Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is released in 2020, and is a campaign setting based on the continent of Critical Role's second campaign -- it ended a bit earlier this month, but I haven't actually caught up to the ending! I'm around a dozen episodes short from the finale, but I've most certainly been enjoying the ride so far. 

I'm actually not going to talk too much about the show itself; or the setting -- I don't want to turn this into a 'gush and be a fanboy'. I actually own this book, and I'm relatively immersed in the campaign, but, as always, I'm going to keep things just on the monster side of things. There's a lot of neat extra race variants (including a neat expansion on Dragonborns in particular) but we'll be covering through just the bestiary of the book. 

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Aeorian Absorber
So the first couple of monsters in the bestiary are the "Aeorian Hunters", which, without spoiling too much about the setting, are essentially the D&D equivalent of bioweapons. Created from humanoids, for maximum evil scientist tropes! The city of Aeor has a lot of wizards that want to essentially defy the gods, and created these magical beings to fight on super-natural beings like fiends, angels, fey and even the gods themselves. Obviously, fighting gods isn't something that ended well for the ancient city of Aeor, and the city got destroyed and these Aeorian Hunters survived and now stalk its ruins. They're immortal, but are still consumed by violence and rage, although they will never harm others of its kind -- the latter being part of their 'programming'. I did read the book's bestiary way before the Critical Role show reached the Aeor arc, and let me tell you, seeing the party encounter the Aeorian Hunters as a brief cameo (and later on as actual opponents) did make me go "oh, dang, I know what those are, those are the DM's officially-published monsters".

The first of the three Aeorian Hunters detailed in this book is the Aeorian Absorber. It looks like some sort of bizarre dog/cat creature, but with muscles that are slightly off... and it's got a huge tail that ends in a big-ass Legend of Zelda monster eyeball. Also, I really, really love the shades of blue and red used for this creature! It's so colourful. I love it. The Aeorian Absorber can simply draw magic into its body, and then redirect that energy as magical laser beams through the eye on its tail. A simple monster design, perhaps, and not what I was expecting when I first read through the 'Aerorian Hunter' segment describing how these were essentially magical bioweapons. 

Aeorian Nullifier

This guy is the strongest of all three Aeorian Hunters, the Aerorian Nullifier. It's also the creepiest-looking! Its silhouette isn't too weird, just a humanoid with a snake-head and too-large hands, but when you realize that mass of angry, snarling mouths on the front side of its body... ew! In addition to having powers to nullify and resist magical effects, the gibbering mouths apparently continually cause a 'cacophony of gnashing' that drives other creatures crazy. All the mouths gibber and speak in the same time, I guess, and the description that the dungeon-master for Critical Role definitely makes some very great mood descriptions when the Nullifier shows up that elevates this more beyond just 'weird gangly zombie man with a bunch of mouths on its torso'. It's creepy! The design for this creature is actually kind of similar to a different creature in the Critical Role campaign, the Laughing Hand. A mass of mouths on a humanoid's body is pretty creepy!

Aeorian Reverser
We kind of need a weaker version of the creatures, huh? So we've got the Aerorian Reverser, who unravels and turns magic back against enemy casters. This one isn't particularly interesting compared to its two stronger cousins, and it's kind of bland, honestly... but I do enjoy its green-and-pink colourations and its angry dog-face. As a set of monsters, you do kind of need a 'minion' type enemy (if we're borrowing 4E lingo), though I really don't have much to say about this one without going in-depth into their skills and in-game mechanics.

Blood Hunter
I normally don't do "human with a class" enemies in my D&D enemy reviews, but the Blood Hunter got listed as a bestiary entry with lore, and it's one of the new classes or something? One of the original main characters in Critical Role's second campaign is a Blood Hunter. It's sort of similar to World of Warcraft's Demon Hunters or a Hellsing-style situation, I suppose, a group of mortals that went through dark rituals and experiments to gain the powers of powerful monsters, in order to better hunt them. Again, I'm not one to discuss mechanics or whatever, but the Blood Hunters' hemocraft and blood-manipulating powers allows them to sacrifice their own blood to power their abilities. Neat!

Core Spawn Crawler
Yeah, bug monsters! What's better than creepy bug monsters? Extradimensional bug monsters. The Core Spawn basically tick off every single box in the type of monsters I like, honestly, and at least up to where I'm caught up with the campaign, these guys haven't shown up yet. The Core Spawns are created by the touch of 'Elder Evils' during a cataclysmic event called the Calamity, and manifest by using the inherent darkness of a plane's depths. They crawl all over an area called the Blightshore, and drive any survivors who meet them into madness. Okay, very Cthulhu, I approve! If the Lovecraftian influences aren't enough, these guys are the target of crazy warlocks who read the stars to hasten their arrival. 

These guys are a hive-themed bug monster, so the Core Spawn Crawler here is the weakest and most numerous, and I do like them a lot. They look like the best monsters from the Witcher franchise to me, where they look recognizably insectoid but don't really look like a traditional insect, y'know? A very fleshy body with a prominent reptilian tail (except it looks like tumorous flesh with random bone spikes jutting out of it), and odd, horrifying gaunt legs that end in hooks, and a face that's like a Xenomorph crossed with a Tarantula... pretty cool! The reptile-lizards do remind me of the Witcher games' Endrega or Kikimore, but the vaguely rune-like etchings all over the grey parts of its body does lend it to being the offspring of something otherworldly. 

Core Spawn Emissary

Speaking of stronger versions, the Emissary looks very, very cool. On a quick glance, they look like hunchbacked versions of the Swordwing or something, but the more I look, the more unpleasantly inhuman this thing looks. It's a bit more monstrous than just being a bug man! Look at those legs, which are less human legs and more bug legs bent oddly. The wings have a weird border to them, but that head, man. That head is... what is that, even? I kind of see like three clusters of hives, each with little cubby-holes where tiny bug buddies can hide in, but the mass of holes and mandible-looking protrusions end up giving the impression of a face nonetheless. Nasty! Those tubes, instead of spreading bugs, though, spread clouds of crystal spores. Very otherworldly, even if it's not too out of the realm for something so eldritch. I am a huge fan, this is setting off some major Darkest Dungeons vibes.

Core Spawn Seer

Oooh yes. Probably my favourite out of the four Core Spawns, considering how fucking weird this is. It's the 'spellcaster boss' of the bunch, wearing a hood and holding a huge crystal-tentacle staff and everything, but just look at the anatomy of this thing. Or, well, what we can see, anyway. An oval head that's just a mass of weird crystals? Or are those a mass of eyes? Two huge hands, then two smaller ones curled up like spider limbs in the front side of its crotch? A mass of spider-esque legs slowly trailing behind, giving a bizarre slug-like silhouette? And look at those crystals jutting out of every joint. Man, Final Fantasy makes crystals look so peaceful, but this Seer just looks so genuinely otherworldly. I do like the idea that we slowly go from 'merely' bug-flesh abominations to something genuinely unnatural as these beings incorporate crystals into their anatomy and... and whatever that is that passes for a Seer's face. It's explicitly noted that the Core Spawn Seers are humanoid arcanists that get corrupted into being Core Spawn by rituals and whatnot, which adds an extra layer of nastiness to this thing.

Core Spawn Worm
Because we need huge worm monsters. I am of the opinion that we can never have enough huge worm monsters. This one is cool, though. On a glance it looks like just a regular giant volcanic-coloured worm with a whole lot of fangs that are splayed out like an octopus or something. But then you realize that it's not just one big worm, it's a mass of smaller tendrils that coil together to form one massive giant knotted rope! Just look at the end of the Worm splitting apart into giant tentacles that are killing those adventurers. And I do really like that face a lot when I realized that there's a cute little xenomorph face nestled in the mass of tumours and jagged fanged tentacles. The Core Spawn Worm is explicitly lava-themed, forming of primordial lava that's continually hardening into solid rock. A very fun giant worm monster concept!

 
Frost Worm
Oh shit, I recognize this guy, he's in the original Monster Manual for 3.5E! Honestly rendered a bit redundant with the existence of both Purple Worms and Remorhazes, the Frost Worm is one of those creatures that sadly wouldn't feel too out-of-place as a 'forgotten monster from an older edition'. But hey, it's back, and look at that beautiful 5E artwork with that multi-layered set of fangs, and the hairy white chitinous armour! It's not quite the stag-beetle-mouth-on-a-weird-skull of the 3.5E artwork, but hey, Frost Worms! The lore entry notes that they are far, far more of an ambush predator, waiting under the ground and conserving energy while it waits for prey to walk overhead, and then bursting upwards when it senses vibration! It's like a bobbit worm or some shit, but giant and lives in the tundra. To make it feel a bit more unique from Remorhazes and Purple Worms, perhaps, 5E gave it the power to hypnotize and make its prey stand still with a 'haunting trill'. 

Gearkeeper Construct
This showed up in the campaign, in the charmingly named gnome-town of Hupperdook. D&D, I think, has been kind of been very, very shy on adapting more steampunk or technological elements to their lore, extraplanar robots like Modrons and Inevitable aside. I suppose that a lot of other fantasy settings did it in a much more expansive way (Magic and World of Warcraft come to mind). But it's always neat to see just how the scant couple of D&D robot monsters end up being! The Gearkeeper Construct here is a fun ball of death with giant swords acting as spider legs, giant swords jutting all oevr the place... it's sort of as if a giant metal ball and a bunch of sword-legs ended up trying to look like a spider doing a threat pose. A lot of Wildemount's flavour involves 'ancient magical artifacts that are left to ruin', and these guys are scuttling masses of enchanted walking weaponry that are far, far more interesting than just another humanoid golem or eidolon guarding your ancient mage tombs. There's a huge vibe of Dwemer mechs from Skyrim, too, especially these guys rolling around as metal balls throughout the labyrinths to reach intruders quickly. I do like that while still unabashedly a robot, the Gearkeeper Construct's attacks are a bit more... fantasy-esque? Shooting spears, vomiting out heated metal fragments... pretty neat. 

Gloomstalker
A creature more from the first campaign than the second, and probably the more prolific "OC monster" from Critical Role, the Gloomstalker is a creature that is native to the realm of Shadowfell. It's basically just a huge wyvern, but shadowy. It's like a Shadow Dragon, but it's a wyvern! Still pretty cool, even if it's kind of a pretty obvious combination of monsters to draw on. A giant shadowy dragon-bat is neat, though, and its name is a very clear indication of its powers -- it unleashes shrieks that disable their pray by making them sad. They are also used as mounts by dark arcanists in the past, though now a huge amount of them roam the land. Okay!

Horizonback Tortoise
Yea I love this guy just for the art alone. The trope of a tortoise being a giant island or something along those lines are pretty common, but just look at how ramshackle this guy looks! Armour plating all up and down its legs and heavily-armoured head, and then that house! It's like cobbled together from like a ship and the roof of a house... or is that the tortoise's shell? So many ropes and nets and bridges, too! I absolutely love the mental image that this guy brings, it's probably a walking base to like a small band of goblins or something. They're essentially calm, walking hills that allow for transportable homes (or siege engines, as the book suggests), and while there's not much to this guy beyond being a giant tortoise with a small bunch of houses on its back, it's still pretty dang cool. 

Moorbounder
This one is also featured kind of heavily, and I love them. They're just weird-looking big panthers initially. Oh, sure, it's got tusks... not too fantastical. But then you get to the bizarre frog/octopus-eyes, and that's significant enough of a change to make this thing actually feel like a totally bizarre creature that would fit right at home with the less-extravagant monsters. As their names imply, they live and stalk swamps, but are also large enough to become mounts to allow people ease of access through the marshlands of Xhorhas. It does admittedly feel like the writer just wanted to introduce a fast mount through the swamps, and this one feels more functional as an aspect of the setting (like Striders!) which isn't a bad thing at all! Of course the people living around the swamps of Xhorhas would point out the one creature that's the best for getting past its swamps and marshes. 

 

Nergaliid (a.k.a. Devil Toad) & Husk Zombie

The starter villain of the second campaign is a Nergaliid, a 'devil toad', which was a way to introduce fiends into a relatively early campaign that isn't just imps, spined or bearded devils. This is honestly not even our first frog fiend -- we've got the Hezrou and Hydroloth in the base Monster Manual, don't we? But I guess the armies of the devils now have a frog of their own. The Nergaliid itself is specifically a type of devil that's noted to essentially be a life-force vampire, hiding on the edges of society and sucking away life from their prey slowly night by night, creating a specific kind of zombie. Again, both the Nergaliid and its role does seem to be built for a relative short and simple part of your adventure, but I do like that it does offer a fair amount of interesting lot hooks. 

There are a lot of zombie tropes in media, and Husk Zombies are basically the 'fast, berserking zombie' popularized by... Walking Dead, I guess? It's a tie-in to the Nergaliid above! We do already have Ghouls for that, but Husk Zombies also basically spread a 'plague', where it kills and kills as much as it can, while any that it slays doesn't get eaten, but rather rise up as new husk zombies to join the massive Resident Evil party that's going on. Just to get even more video-game-y, the book also described Husk Zombie Bursters, which are beings so bloated with disease and bile that they can blow up. 

Swavain Basilisk
"Basilisk" is one of those monsters whose definition has gone pretty differently over the many, many different myths that feature it that at this point it's essentially just any sufficiently reptilian creature with the right powers. The Swavain Basilisk is a giant sea serpent that, as the book describes, creates "mysterious ocean gardens filled withs statues of sea creaturse and sailors", more by accident than anything as it petrifies anything that comes near its domain. Unlike the land basilisk's line-of-sight, the Swavain Basilisk secretes a thick oil that petrifies its prey, like some sort of insane, giant hagfish. That's actually kind of a cool variation that makes this feel so much more than 'okay, just a giant sea serpent'. That's a pretty cool flavour!

Udaak 
Mmm, I did kind of was originally underwhelmed by this one, but I think that's mostly because we already have a four-armed gorilla monster; it's the Girallon. The Udaak's artwork looks a whole lot cooler, though, in no small part due to the primal, more gorilla-looking stance, and that msasive, grinning fang and four sets of tiny, beady eyes. It's more like someone took the scariest parts of a gorilla and a spider, and mooshed them together to create this thing -- though the bestiary entry describes this as explicitly a "cross between ox and gorilla". I don't really think either one of those animals will result in that very predatorial face. Again, I do appreciate that a chunk of Wildemount's bestiaries are just weird-looking chimeric animals. These are actually no mere beasts, but actually imported wildlife from the Abyss. They're the wildlife of hell itself! They're proably the gorilla equivalent of an Abyssal Chicken or something. They're pretty cool looking. 

Frost Giant Zombie & Shadowghast

Some of the monsters in these splatbooks are honestly just sort of a "X meets Y" combination. Like, hey, what other monster makes a cool template-monster, like a zombie? Ooh, what about a Frost Giant? It fits the ice-themed setting. And even with the pretty cool prose describing just how spooky the looming statue-like undead frost giants are, it shouldn't be that impressive. But look at the cool artwork! That sure is a badass Frost Giant Zombie. Thanks to the unique way that these specific zombies are created (a magical artifact and a frost giant stronghold was involved) they also exude an aura of frost. Neato! 

The Shadowghast, I suppose, is a combination between the Shadow enemies and a Ghast (a strong ghoul), turning specifically into an assassin that can meld into shadows. A pretty cool combination of features, and the art really does make this creature's pose stand out by the simple addition of the tongues that intertwine together. I otherwise don't have much to say about this one. 

Sahuagin Warlock of Uk'otoa & Merrow Shallowpriest

There's a lot of nautical adventures in the second campaign, and one of the overarching 'greater evils' is the dark, slumbering sea being Uk'otoa (Uk'otoaaa) which is basically the big bad for one of the main characters of the campaign. So we've got Sahuagins corrupted into being servitors of the dread leviathan Uk'otoa (Uk'otoaa) and... it's still just a variant of an existing monster, but such a cool artwork! I lvoe that Sahuagin warlock guy has a necklace of eyeball reliefs, whila ctual eyeballs and discoloured skin run down his chest and left arm. Uk'otoa (Uk'otoa), like all self-respecting dread Elder God of the sea, infects people and drives them insane with dreams. 

The Merrow Shallowpriest are basically, well, a bit of an expansion to the Merrows, which is neat! Very,  very cool artwork, and I really do like that this more conventionally humanoid merman (large dorsal fins notwithstanding) gets to be a badass. Merfolk can be badasses without being fish-monsters! Shallowpriests in Exandria apparently have a massive underground waterway where they hold meetings to discuss how to best flood the surface-dwellers today. Neat.

Sea Fury
Another huge part of the second Critical Role campaign is nautical adventures, and while Ghosts of Saltmarsh did give us a whole slew of aquatic monsters, I do like that this one adds a bunch more. The Sea Fury is technically a stronger version of the Sea Hag, created from one of those covens in Volo's Guide to Monsters when three Sea Hags fight each other after their alliance is dissolved, and one becoming insanely powerful. The Sea Fury ends up being very powerful but also very lonely, often trying to attract sailors to its lair to find playthings. While essentially just an older, more powerful Sea Hag, the one Fury that the Mighty Nein encountered in their campaign does give us one of my favourite encounters with its very memorable lair. They had a lot of fun writing the many, many ocean-manipulation powers of this lady! You've got weather and water manipulation, but my favourite has to be her abilities to control seaweed mazes and to turn regular octopi and crab into giant versions. 

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Sapphire Dragon

I'm also going to include the Sapphire Dragon here, which is a bit of an easter egg to older editions. The stats for the Sapphire Dragon and a short little blurb were included in an official 5E dice set themed on the monster. See, especially back in the day, dragon variants were all the rage, and while it's kind of silly that 5E has been around for a while and we've only really acknowledged mostly just chromatic and metallic dragons, the older editions are so oversaturated with dragon variants. One of the more major ones, who showed up in 2E and 3E in their core books, are the Gem Dragons. With six major kinds (Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, Topaz, Crystal and Obsidian) they are solitary dragons that live in the inner planes, and are cast as the 'neutral' to the chromatics' evil and the metallics' good. Obviously, their body is made entirely of gems and crystals, and 5E's Sapphire Dragons have the tips of its head-tendrils and tail be disembodied and floating next to the rest of it. That's a pretty cool little detail, and a visual foreshadowing of the psionic force that the sapphire dragons have. Do they naturally detach from the dragon, or do the dragon physically break the tips of its own anatomy as a fashion statement? 

I'm drawing this little write-up from the older editions, which is my short disclaimer since I can't even purchase the dice set legally. The Sapphire Dragons are the most violent, warlike and territorial of the gem dragons, and they lair in deep caves. They keep large spiders at their homes as a food source. So, uh, like a farmer keeping chickens, then. Sapphire Dragons, as mentioned above, have psionic abilities, as well as the ability to breathe a high-pitched sonic blast. It's otherwise honestly pretty similar to a lot of the depictions of the chromatic dragons (except, y'know, less evil) so I actually kinda understand why they aren't in like, the Monster Manual or Volo's or something. 

Next up, Icewind Dale... and after that, I'm going to pick and choose from the many older-edition bestiaries I have. I actually finished the vast majority of D&D 5E's monsters, holy crap! This was fun. 

Explorer's Guide to Wildemount

• Aeorian Absorber: Large monstrosity, neutral evil, CR 10
• Aeorian Nullifier: Large monstrosity, neutral evil, CR 12
• Aeorian Reverser: Large monstrosity, neutral evil, CR 8
• Blood Hunter: Medium humanoid - any race, any alignment, CR 5
• Core Spawn Crawler: Small aberration, chaotic evil, CR 1
• Core Spawn Emissary: Medium aberration, neutral evil, CR 6
• Core Spawn Seer: Medium aberration, chaotic evil, CR 13
• Core Spawn Worm: Gargantuan aberration, chaotic evil, CR 15
• Frost Giant Zombie: Huge undead, neutral evil, CR 9
• Frost Worm: Gargantuan monstrosity, unaligned, CR 17
• Gearkeeper Construct: Large construct, unaligned, CR 10
• Gloomstalker: Large monstrosity, neutral evil, CR 6
• Guardian Wolf: Huge monstrosity, unaligned, CR 4
• Horizonback Tortoise: Gargantuan monstrosity, unaligned, CR 8
• Husk Zombie: Medium undead, neutral evil, CR 1
• Merrow Shallowpriest: Large monstrosity, chaotic evil, CR 4
• Moorbounder: Large beast, unaligned, CR 1
• Bristled Moorbounder: Large beast, unaligned, CR 3
• Nergaliid: Large fiend - devil, lawful evil, CR 3
• Sahuagin Warlock of Uk'otoa: Medium humanoid - sahuagin, neutral evil, CR 3
• Sea Fury: Medium fey, chaotic evil, CR 12
• Shadowghast: Medium undead, chaotic evil, CR 5
• Swavain Basilisk: Huge monstrosity, unaligned, CR 7
• Udaak: Gargantuan fiend, neutral evil, CR 16
• Vox Seeker: Tiny construct, unaligned, CR 1/8

Sapphire Dragon:

• Adult Sapphire Dragon: Huge dragon, lawful neutral, CR 15