Reviewing D&D Monsters - 4th Edition Monster Manual

So, yeah, I've been a fan of Dungeons & Dragons since a bunch of the earliest editions. I think the first one that I really got into was the unfavourite of the official editions of D&D, which is 4th Edition? Mostly because, again, a vast majority of my D&D experience honestly revolves more around reading the bestiaries and sourcebooks and not actually playing the game. I'm kind of weird like that. 

So... yeah, I've been sort of intending to talk about the 4th Edition and 3.5th Edition Monster Manuals, as well as the Pathfinder Bestiary and the original Fiend Folio, for a while now, since I actually own the physical copies of the books... but it's actually pretty hard to find good pictures of the 4E artwork online, and I don't have a scanner. So, with the disclaimer that you should support the publishers and the fact that, hey, I actually own a physical copy of this book, I've looked up one of the scans of these books and cropped the images from there in order to make this article. Which, I think, is a better way than to just yak on about the book without pictures. 

Also, since these basic Monster Manuals tend to repeat a lot of monsters over the editions, I'm going to skip through a lot of the monsters I've covered in my coverage of 5th Edition's Monster Manual (for an index of all my 5E coverage, click here) because when I did that, I tried to talk about the history of the monsters over the multiple editions of D&D. I will add a little addendum near the end to talk about the monsters I've covered before if the 4E versions are significantly different or weird enough, but otherwise we'll be focusing on the monsters that are new to this blog or ones that haven't been adapted for 5E.

Without further ado...

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Astral Stalker

One thing about the 4E bestiary system that is sometimes often criticized is that the lore isn't that expansive, and thanks to how it's formatted, it ends up sometimes feeling like a list of facts that the DM is supposed to say depending on how well your players roll, and the descriptions usually talk more about what the monster can do instead of what it is. And, of course, the MMORPG-esque way of having like five or six different subtypes of a certain monster listed as variants. Still, in addition to a whole slew of classic monsters from the first through third editions (which we won't cover here; the 4E Bestiary is relatively fresh in my head and I had talked about most of my favourite factoids from it when I covered 5E) we've got a couple of newcomers in 4E. Among them is the subgroup called 'Abominations', which in 4E lore are living weapons created during the cosmic war between the gods and primordials, which include some fun classics like Atropals and Tarrasques. Ancient weapons used by gods? Not exactly my thing, but it's still pretty cool. 

This guy is the Astral Stalker, which is some sort of lizard-person beefcake with badass giant fuck-off claws. The bestiary notes them to be great assassins and bounty hunters that often pursue enemies from their new homeland of the Astral Sea just to test its mettle against a worthy foe. The way it's described makes them basically be extraplanar fantasy Predators, going around from planet to planet to take down worthy foes and stuff. Among being Fantasy Boba Fett, they can also spit out poisonous bone darts and has invisibility powers. Basically just a magic uber-assassin. 

Blood Fiend

Another 'Abomination' is the Blood Fiend, which are... four-armed beefcakes with blade-like claws. Pretty cool, although I don't think it's particularly that special compared to the rest of the bestiary. These ones are apparently born out of the Elemental Chaos, and are also killers that hunt for food and sport? We really don't learn much about these guys since the page really only talks about how they will viciously attack a single target and be focused on it until it or the target dies; everything else details its physical abilities and the same repeated description about what Abominations are. Yeah, I definitely appreciate 5E's bestiary a lot more where they at least try to give a short blurb about their origins, biology or society.

Phane

The last of our Abominations, this one is actually cool, for the simple fact that it's not just some mutated humanoid like the Blood Fiend or Astral Stalker. The Phane has a fun centaurian body, but its upper humanoid body is so hulking and the head looks almost dinosaurian. And, of course, it seems to be continually fading off to mist. And that's just from the artwork! The description talk about how Phanes can manipulate time and love to sow chaos among mortals. There's even a fun little sentence noting how Phanes will be willing to form pacts with destructive mortals. I like this, simple addition, a little insertion point on how your DM can use the Phane. We still don't quite get an explanation as to what these are, but being a shadowy mist-creature that's on the verge of dissipating into mist, and has the ability to cast 'wizening ray' (it makes you grow old and decay) really works so much better into the fantasy that this thing is created from the remnants of a war between gods, and it breaks reality itself. 

Angels of Battle, Protection, Valor & Vengeance

Abandoning the traditional classification of Angels into 'Planetar, Deva, Solar' that most of the early editions have them as, both 3E and 4E experiment a bit with making a more original bit of mythology, I think? And that's totally fine -- if we're being frank, I actually prefer a lot of these more elemental-looking angels with a ghostly lower body. The Angels of Valor and Vengeance (the fire dude and the goth-looking one) are pretty cool, and while 5E does give us some pretty neat artwork of the chiseled-Adonis angels, I actually prefer there to be more variety among them. 4E's cosmology and origins are a bit different, and so these angels are the first beings born from the Astral Sea and serve the gods, basically being literal manifestations of certain 'celestial vocations'. Which means, well, Angels of Battle are all about battle, the Angel of Protection's main priority is protecting people... you get the gist of things. Interestingly, this causes the 4E angels to become, as the bestiary notes, 'mercenary forces for anyone willing to meet their price', which is pretty far off from the traditional fantasy for angels but one that is very interesting, and I'm actually disappointed that no other D&D edition have tapped into these 'former celestial army turned into mercenary warriors looking for a just cause' base. 

Archon (Elemental)

In 1E to 3E, Archons are just another brand of celestial servitors, perhaps to make it so that the forces of the heaven-analogue don't just merely have angels. They're either animal-people or cute floating lanterns! In 4E, Archons are... well, an organized elemental hierarchy? They're the 4E equivalent of Elemental Myrmidons in 5E. The artwork for these Fire and Ice Archons are pretty cool, very World-of-Warcraft-y, but at the same time I feel like it's kind of weird that they took the name of an established creature type and slapped it onto another. These guys are the footsoldiers of the Primordials, who fought the Gods and their Angel armies. Neat!

Perhaps this is where it's easiest to note just how much 4E's bestiaries love to detail the variants among their ranks, because 4E's system also emphasizes different roles in battle. Fire Archons, for example, are divided into Emberguards, Blazesteels and Ash Disciples; while Ice Archons are divided into Frostshapers, Hailscourges and Rimehammers. There's a lot of supposed 'lore' about them, but they're mostly repetitive, or just detail abilities that I can see on the ability page. Kind of a shame, I'd love to learn a bit more about these guys. 

 

Banshrae

Briefly appearing in one of the last Monster Manuals in 3.5E, the Banshrae shows up here in the core 4E Monster Manual! They're pretty assholish insect-fey, and that alone made me like them a fair bit... I do really think that making evil asshole fey beings is a wellspring of creativity that D&D tends to expand a lot upon in many of their side-books. I love the description in this book that "the kindest banshrae is an impish trickster, while the worse is a terrifying, bloodthirsty killer that toys with victims before slaying them'. The lore segment here even preserves one of the cooler things from the 3.5E version -- the Banshrae is completely mute, only communicating via telepathy... but they're obsessed with wind instruments despite not having a mouth to play them with. Mostly, I think, I just really like the artwork here -- she doesn't look particularly alien, but her creepy, mouthless face with those alien eyes and those long tapering fingers really strike her as being inhuman without going too over-the-top. 

Bats

One of my favourite parts about the 4E Monster Manual? Random real-life animals get entry pages... but all the entries describe crazy, over-exaggerated versions of them that feel more at home in Legend of Zelda or Pokemon. And I love it. Take the humble bat, for example! In addition to regular bats, 4E's Monster Manual describes the Fire Bat, bats that are made entirely out of fire (Fire Keese!) and are domesticated by Azers and stuff. Shadowhunter Bats, meanwhile, are giant bats that are domesticated by Shadowfell or undead-related creatures. I love that the artwork introduces regular ol' bats for comparison. This, I think, is one way where 4E's "many many monster variations" actually end up feeling like it builds upon the world instead of being just pedantic. 

Battlebriar

I'm 90% certain these guys show up in 3.5E's first or second Monster Manuals, too. Battlebriars are pretty interesting! They're giant living biological weapons that are purposefully grown to serve in military capacities. Very Magic: The Gathering or Resident Evil, I approve! And the fact that these are basically giant plant monsters that lumber around and smash enemy troops? The book doesn't go too in-depth about them, but what little we got really do make them be pretty cool. No real idea why a plant-based monster would have such reptilian gums and fangs, but I'm going to handwave that as being just weird thorns. I really love the vine-thorn-finger-leg things that the smaller Battlebriar has got going on. 

Of course, being magical monsters created for an army, Battlebriars can be met as either part of an organized military, or you might encounter them as having run amuck and act as autonomous wild monsters. It's a common thing in most D&D plant monsters, but Battlebriars can basically survive indefinitely with photosynthesis. The two shown here are the Warthorn Battlebriar (the smaller one, who prioritizes thorn attacks) and the Earthrage Battlebriar (it buries itself and attacks from the ground like a trapdoor spider, but with vines). Pretty cool, actually, and I would like to see them show up in 5E in an official capacity. We need more plant monsters! 

Colossus

Mmmm... not too impressed by this one, though I'm including him for completion's sake. The Colossus is described as just basically being a massive golem that is often fashioned in the likeness of a god or a king, usually done with an 'epic ritual' done by demon lords and divine exarchs. It sure is a huge statue with a big glowing lightning bolt in his hand... not my type of monster, but kind of cool nonetheless. 

Crocodiles

There are a lot of other animals that receive variations in this Monster Manual (like bears, boars, beetles and behemoths dinosaurs, screw you 4E) but I won't be talking about all of them. I'm just going to talk about what I find interesting! And these 4E crocodiles I found to be pretty cool, they're basically an art-style difference away from being a Pokemon. The Visejaw Crocodile is just a regular crocodile with a pretty cool gray-red colour scheme and I believe more defined legs than regular real-life crocos, but the Feymire Crocodile below is a fey crocodile, and they're able to use those plants on its back to unleash vines to drag their prey into their mouth. Notably featured in the big-name campaign Critical Role, which very prominently uses the 5th Edition, the Feymire Crocodile is a fun take on just how weird the Feywild is. This could've been boring; just a crocodile with vague fey-phasing powers or a generic piranha plant monster, but I love that somehow in the Feywild, crocodiles have somehow fused with plants and use vines to drag prey into their mouths. 

Evistro

In addition to a bunch of our classic demons from earlier editions (and some yugoloths/daemons, who get to become demons in 4E) we've got a bunch of new faces. The Evsitro, or 'Carnage Demon', is from 3E, and it's essentially sort of the generic 'there are lots of them, they are violent, and rampage mindlessly until someone puts them down' enemy that would feel at home as a common enemy to beat down in Diablo or something. That said, the Evistro is... pretty boring? He's basically the most standard muscle-man-with-red-skin-and-tooth-and-claws that you can think of. He's part of a set of other demons, and while it's surprising that the Evistro hasn't shown up in 5E yet, I can see why the designers were much more in a hurry to adapt like, the Armanite or something. 

Immolith

And then we have this guy, the Immolith, another demon. Yes, that's the clearest picture we have of the Immolith since he shares his artwork with the Goristro and Hezrou. The Immolith is basically just a pillar of flame with a screaming skull and a couple of skeleton hands. Kind of like a reverse-Ghost-Rider? The concept of the Immolith is pretty neat, where they are formed by the spirits of deceased demons that fuse together accidentally when they fall back to the Abyss to essentially respawn, becoming an 'undead demon'. That's a pretty cool concept that makes use of the pretty fun little 'can't be killed outside of their home plane' thing that demons have got going on, but it's just kind of a shame that we don't really learn what about the Immolith makes it so special. 

Destrachan

Oh I like this one. It crops up a lot in 'list of DUMB D&D monsters' lists I see out there and... yeah, I have to admit, that face does make the Destrachan look like one hell of a goober. That said... I really, really like him. He's got the body of a generic raptor-esque dinosaur, but its head is like some sort of troglodytic animal (the real life term, not the D&D monster). It's got such a glossy head without eyes, and a mouth that it uses to unleash sonic waves. It's an echolocating dinosaur! The Destrachan also weaponizes the sound to attack, which the 4E MM describes its hunting methods as 'blasting the prey with skullcracking waves of sound'. More interestingly, it's also a creature that can immitate any sound it hears often, so it can pretend to make ambient sounds to trick prey. Honestly, it does look like a huge goober, but I absolutely love this creature. It's so silly, and in a book with so many monsters, I do really think that we need a couple of sillier ones to contrast them. 

Dragonspawn

I remember Monster Manual IV from 3.5E where a full one-fourth of the book just went on and on and on about the many different kinds of Dragonspawn. They took 'Dungeons and Dragons' a bit too much in that book. And, well, the Dragonspawn are basically half-dragon creatures, though created by mixing dragon eggs with a Tiamat-worshipping ritual instead of the sexier kind of making half-dragons. Each Dragonspawn end up becoming its own 'breed' of race and can self-propagate. Essentially, you're making dragon mooks for huge dragon-themed dungeons without utilizing kobolds all the time or killing baby dragons. And, y'know, to make armies of dragons. I think this feels kind of WoW-based, because WoW's original Blackrock Mountain dungeons had a lot of quasi-dragon enemies, but I digress. 

There are a lot of these in 3.5E, but 4E only shows three. The first one, Redspawn Firebelcher, is basically a fatter, stouter dragon that belches fire. Pretty simple, isn't it? The Bluespawn Godslayer is the strongest one among the three, and is hyped up as being 'able to lay waste to entire cities', and actually has intelligence. So... kind of like a Dragonborn PC, then? But evil? They're apparently bred specifically to fight angels. Okay, sure. Blackspawn Gloomweb is the coolest among these three, because it actually looks pretty dang monstrous.  And it's part-spider, of course I'll like it. The artwork does admittedly look more like a demon spider than a dragon spider, but I do like the two intertwining tails serving as the rear pair of legs. Its webs are laced with poison, which makes it deadly in addition to sticky. I like this one. 

Drakes

We have a lot of Drakes in addition to Dragonspawn, and these are just natural bestial animals that look like dragons -- and are noted to be domesticated by a lot of people. I told you these older editions are gloriously intent on making the 'Dragons' part of the game stretch as far as it could. Including the Pseudodragon and Guard Drake (both of which we've covered in 5E), we've got six types of Drakes listed here. I'm going from relative left to right! The Spiretop Drake are pretty cool, I like their scaled skin and their weirdly beaked face, and they apparently act as fantasy asshole-ravens, perching on top of buildings to steal valuable objects from denizens. Needlefang Drakes are basically just dragon-themed versions of the Compsognathus from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, running and swarming over their enemies and often trained as pets and traps. The bigger green theropod is 4E's Guard Drake. 

Rage Drake, the bigger red brute has an interestingly ridged and long neck. I'm not the biggest fan of its design, though it does help to contrast with the rest of the drakes on these two pictures well. As its name indicates, it goes on a rage and gets extra-powerful when it's wounded. In one of the few fun descriptions of the wildlife of these drakes, apparently Rage Drakes that don't have a pack will force itself into a clutch of Spitting or Guard Drakes to become its leader. The orange one is the Spitting Drake who... spits acid. So it's a Jurassic Park Dilophosaurus? Sure. That's honestly about it that makes the Spitting Drake special. And the tiny spindly guy is 4E's version of the Pseudodragon. 

Honestly these feel more like fantasy Jurassic Park dinosaurs more than anything. I actually appreciate them a lot -- I'm a little bit more iffy about Dragonspawns and Half-Dragons, but the idea that there are so many Drakes and animals that resemble dragons in the world really does kind of make sense. I'm actually a fan of these, I just wish we had known a bit more about their ecology and biology beyond 'they sometimes get domesticated'. 

Death Giant

In addition to D&D's classic batch of giant sub-types, we've got a particularly metal one in the Death Giant here, where they harvest souls! His bigger cousin is the Death Titan -- all the 4E giants come in 'giant' and 'titan' forms. Look at that cloud of blue screaming souls that spin around these two muscle-men. It's pretty hilariously hardcore, and these feel like they come from a Dark Souls game or something. And I actually kind of like it. These giants have migrated to the Shadowfell and got corrupted into the soul-manipulating magical beings. It's actually pretty cool -- I think if they ever got imported to 5E they'd probably just be a sub-class of other giants, but I like that 4E actually makes these guys into their own thing, essentially the Giants' version of the Shadar-Kai or something. Pretty cool, pretty metal. 

Earth Titan

The only exception to the rule to 'the titan is just a bigger version of the giant' is the Earth Titan, the boss for the humble Hill Giants (which we see next to it). The Earth Titan is just a straight-up giant humanoid made up of rock. Admittedly a bit redundant with Earth Elementals, I do kind of enjoy the 'humans are made from dirt and dust' religious nod. I think in something that's unique to 4E, these Earth Giants enslave dwarves and transform them into Galeb Duhrs. Huh! 

Gibbering Beast

So the Gibbering Mouther in 4E is just a 'type' of Gibbering Beast, and I absolutely approve of making the Gibbering Mouther something that's a bit more expansive! The rest of the more powerful versions are just basically the same design but less oozy. Gibbering Abomination (middle) is a version that looks like a floating... octopus? Shrimp? It's floating and it's got tentacles, at any rate. It's less of an amorphous, undulating amoeba. It's got extra psychic powers, and I absolutely love the detail here. If you zoom in, I particularly like that one eye that's surrounded by two rows of mismatched teeth -- Gibbering Mouthers always give us some of the most fun art.

The Gibbering Orb, meanwhile, is a hovering Beholder-esque beast, and I love that the tentacles of this one is tipped with eyes and mouths and just looks so frayed. Particularly like that tentacle that ends with a mouth that opens up into an eyeball-tipped tongue. This one has random eyeball Beholder powers! 4E, if I am not mistaken, is the expansion that introduces us to the 'Far Realm', a realm full of Cthulhu-style monters and aberrant things that should not be. Gibbering beasts are creatures that spontaneously arise when sentient creatures die at a place touched by the Far Realm, while the Orbs are noted to be actual denizens of the Far Realm, more 'natural' than its two weaker brethren, and are actually "perversely rational" and have secret objectives.

Hags

Hags return, and we've got a bunch of new variants -- the Howling Hag (who doesn't get a picture), the Bog Hag and the Death Hag. The Bog Hag one is an... interesting one? The picture is of a naked sexy lady ripping off her skin to reveal the warty, spindly-fingered green hag monster within. It's actually a pretty interesting art piece, and I love just how much the false skin looks like it's one of those masks that people use in movies. Both the Bog Hag and the Howling Hag basically stand in for the more common 'Green Hag', and are relatively low-leveled as far as monsters go. The Death Hag is... it's just a hag with a necrotic 'life drain' spell, and the book doesn't really tell us what makes the Death Hag so different. The general backstory here is that the hags are just living manifestation of nature's ugliness, the exact polar opposite to elves and eladrin being nature's beauty.  

Lamia

I don't talk about repeat monsters, because otherwise we'd be here for weeks. There are some notable differences (like the yugoloths being demons; dryads being tree-monsters instead of plant faeries; everything about the eladrin) but I believe I've noted the differences where they were relevant back when I talked about the bulk of the 5E monsters.

But the Lamia... I have to devote a bit of a talk about her. If you forget, in all the other editions of D&D, Lamias are weird half-lynx women that are basically less-cool, more-evil Sphinxes. 4E's Lamia, on the other hand, is such a bizarre departure from the original that I actually wish that they had preserved this as a different monster in subsequent editions -- they walk around as pretty humanoid, but actually go around to stalk other sentient humanoids or for knowledge itself, depending on the individuals. When it comes time to reveal her true form, a Lamia basically explodes into a swarm of black scarabs that congregate around 'the flesh-stripped bones of a fey creature'. That's a pretty cool image! I also love the additional detail that whenever a Lamia kills its prey, it adds another beetle to its growing swarm. And when the swarm is big enough, it kills another powerful fey to harvest its bones, and then splits the swarm into two. Such a cool monster! For a Monster Manual that I complained about not really having a good 'story' for a lot of its creatures, the Lamia is one that is realized well. 

Larva Mage

Speaking of which, while I've mentioned the Larva Mage here and there, I don't think we've really talked about the Larva Mage, with the closest we've gotten being the Star-Spawn in 5E. This is a shame, because the Larva Mage is another monster I'm a big fan of -- I guess I just really like monsters that are made up of thousands of little itty-bitty critters? I love the backstory here -- a powerful evil spellcaster dies, but his spirit takes control of the worms and maggots that are devouring his corpse, and then lives on as, well, a massive humanoid made entirely of worms. The artwork here is also very appropriately disturbing, with masses of maggots making arm-esque appendages, and the Larva Mage removing his porcelain mask to reveal that his face is... more worms! There's honestly not much to them beyond being undead sorcerers that inhabit a mass of worms, and obviously they're related to the original 'worm that walks', Kyuss, but still a pretty cool visual nonetheless. 

Magma Beast

Someone really liked the idea of magma monsters, I see. Magma Beasts are just... well, animals born out of the Elemental Chaos and live in volcanic locales. Here, clockwise from top left, we've got the Magma Strider, Magma Brute, Magma Claw and Magma Lurker. Despite being made up of volcanic rock, they really, really like burned flesh, though normally eat ores, clays and other elemental creatures. You'd think that the two arthropod monsters are going to be my favourite, and you'd guess right. The Magma Strider in particular looks pretty creepy with that massive vortex of volcanic rock as a very inappropriate-for-a-spider mouth. Though I also really like the Magma Lurker, how most of his body is just flames and he's just got a bunch of armour pieces and half of a mask made out of solidified rock. Again, not sure how these guys are 100% different from just regular elementals, but they're pretty neat. 

Rot Harbinger

Huh, this guy's cool. Also known as 'Angels of Decay', the Rot Harbinger isn't a demon or fallen angel like what you'd think, but an 'elemental humanoid undead'. I really love the visuals here of a mummified, decrepit corpse whose undead flesh is just so much in tatters that it's flaking off because a wing is blowing it, and I love that his limbs and even his supposed angelic wings are one strong gust away from being dust in the wind. As their name implies, their touch causes rot. And hey, these guys actually have a fun backstory -- these Rot Harbingers were once angels that attempted to slay the Demon Lord of Undeath, Orcus, and a massive army of angels that attempted to attack Orcus were killed and turned into these Rot Harbingers. Some serve Orcus, while some have escaped him but are still twisted into being evil. I'm not sure why the Rot Harbingers have legs when 4E angels don't have them, but... eh. These guys look cool. 

Scorpion

I've been skipping a lot of the 'animal' entries, but suffice to say that most of them usually have two variants, each usually having some sort of element or gimmick to them. Some of my favourites I'm still including here, though, like the scorpions. On top we've got the Hellstinger Scorpion, which, in addition to being the size of a small dinosaur, also has large glowing claws and are common creatures that patrol the layers of hell. Pretty interesting! And then Stormclaw Scorpions, while smaller than its Hellstinger brother, is also still pretty big and has electric claws. I like them more than I should. 

Snake

More weirdo animals, we've got 4E snakes! from left to right, we've got the Shadow Snake, the Deathrattle Viper, the Crushgrip Constrictor and the Flame Snake. Deathrattle Vipers basically combine features from some of the most iconic real-life poisonous snakes (while also being larger than them), and having pretty cool spikes. Crushgrip Constrictors, also pretty true to its name, is a different trope, and it'll crush you to death with its coils. And then we've got the other two -- the Flame Snake are elemental creatures and hoo boy what a cool-ass artwork ,with the segments of the snake's body being black against a background of red. Very common theme in fantasy monsters but no less cool. The Shadow Snake has two heads for no real reason other than to be cool, and it's a sacred beast to the Yuan-ti (of course), who believe that they're created by one of their gods, Zehir, the god of night and poison.

Spider

Of course we're going to talk about the spiders. From left to right here we've got the Deathjump Spider, the Blade Spider, the Demonweb Terror, and -- while it takes a bit of a realization -- the Bloodweb Spider Swarm on top of the pillar on the right of the image. Cool! We'll start with the Bloodweb Spider Swarm first, where they're a mass of regular-sized spiders who go around trying to poison people because they're brought together under 'a malign influence', turning into a hivemind. It's not common, but there are some communal types of spiders out there. The Deathjump Spider is just an oversized jumping spider, though that alone is already pretty cool.

The Blade Spider kinda looks like a tarantula but it has got blades for the tips of its legs. That's fucking hilarious; I love that. Its even got blades on its pedipalps !And then the massive Demonweb Terrors are actually the minions of the evil drow goddess Lolth, who originate in her realm of the Demonweb Pits. I do like the really oversized Orb Weaver abdomen, and the fact that it glows green for no real reason. 

Swordwing

...okay, this one is kind of cool, actually. You had me at 'bug humanoid', but that absolutely awesome face that wouldn't look out of place in a Michael Bay Transformers movie? That massive sword arm? The bent-backwards lower legs? Those eight bug wings? This thing just looks plain cool, and looks pretty different from something like the Thri-kreen. I like this one, and Swordwing society is apparently defined by the individuals' collections -- where they will gather rare items that range from anything from books and magical items to the hearts and skulls of their victims. They're Underdark residents, and the other little bit of detail that the 4E Monster Manual tells us is that they live in giant 'nesting spires' that I'm going to assume is sort of similar to those giant nests that termites build... but are made out of stone because these are Underdark bug-people. Pretty cool. 

Vine Horror

Okay, I think this got heavily retooled into the Blights in 5E? The Vine Horror is just another Swamp Thing style humanoid, but entirely made up of vines. The backstory notes that these guys are created when a humanoid dies in a Shadowfell-touched location, and the blood causes the local vegetation to come to life as a vine horror, turning into a mockery of the one whose blood gave it life. Neat, but not the most memorable. 

Guulvorg

Regular 'Worgs' are just angry, lumpy wolves with the body proportion of an angry rat, and aren't particularly memorable. Their stronger counterpart, the Guulvorg, on the other hand? Just... just look at that picture. Somehow, its weaker relative just looks like a weird wolf, and then you've got this Gigeresque nightmare with claws running down its spine, a club-tail, legs with one too many joints and an utterly emaciated body. Absolutely awesome, I actually really like this monstrous creature.

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And with the Guulvorg being a pretty cool one to cap this off... this has been my coverage of the 4E Monster Manual. If I had wanted to be super-duper exhaustive I could do a listing of how different things are in the mythology of 4E compared to 3.5E and 5E (the other two editions I'm passably familiar with), or how the specifics of, say, the elementals or devils or whatever are.... but I'm not going to. That sounds like so much work, so I had just mostly talked about some of the new monsters and some of the most different monsters.

It's honestly kind of interesting to jump around the first Monster Manuals for the various editions and see what the various teams deemed to be 'necessary' to have as part of the core bestiary. And while some classics will always be there in the first Monster Manual -- the Mind Flayers and Beholders and Dragons and Aboleths and Lycanthropes -- I always find it interesting to see the ones that are a bit weirder and a bit more out there. Still, it has been fun going back through this book that I got back in 2009 or something for a gaming system I know close to nothing about (and having jumped into 5E, I still don't know anything about 4E beyond that it feels a bit more video-gamey) just to see the cool-ass monsters in this 'Dungeons & Dragons' game everyone talks about.