Reviewing 5E D&D Monsters - Spelljammer - Boo's Astral Menagerie, Part 1

It has been a while since we talked Dungeons & Dragons, huh? And I think a good part of it is because I just got quite a bit burnt out after Fizban's. And... just like MTG, I think one mistake was that I was trying too hard to be exhaustive and rapid-fire the monster reviews, which isn't the best thing to do. Neither is the 'completely exhaustive' approach to it when I'm not covering a specific bestiary book. Which is why I'm going to do something different. It's going to take some time, and I am obviously prioritizing this review first, but I'm going back and mcleaning up a lot of the D&D articles. In particular, the 'crossover' reviews, which are rushed and rather dismissive, are going to be retired and placed separately; with the bulk of the D&D 5E monster reviews that will remain on this site being just the books with dedicated bestiaries instead of things that are situational to the adventures. 

That won't be for some time, though I think I'll just remove the MTG crossover entries for 'maintenance'.

• Click here for the previous part, where we cover Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
• Click here for the next part, where we cover the second part of Boo's Astral Menagerie.
• Click here for the index.

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But SPELLJAMMER! It's Dungeons & Dragons IN SPACE, a glorious, hilarious blendering of Star Wars, Star Trek and Flash Gordon tropes mixed into a blender during the waning days of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, in an attempt to turn a forced editorial mandate into something actually fun. Spelljammer, despite its seemingly uninspired "oh, we have to go to crossovers now" concept, has grown to be one of the most beloved settings in Dungeons & Dragons and it has, after way too long, gotten a 5th Edition adaptation. 

I own the Spelljammer boxset and actually played through the campaign, so I might actually have a lot more to say this time around!

The setting of the Spelljammer series takes place in the "Astral Sea", where spellcasters ride huge magic-powered starships shaped like galleons and robotic animals through the strange magical space. The Astral Sea is already mentioned as being the strange realms that some of D&D's adversaries like the Githyanki hail from, and it's also part of the cosmology of the D&D multiverse. Each 'world' (like, say, Eberron) is covered by 'Wildspace', which is, like, our real-world space. But only up to a point (usually a star system's worth) at which point physics gives way to madness and magic, and Astral Sea/Spelljammer rules take over! I'm not going to go through the specifics, but I like the generalization and the frankly devil-may-care, it-looks-cool mentality that they put to the space stuff. We are not covering the actual space rules, but the actual bestiary included with the Spelljammer boxset... Boo's Astral Menagerie!

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Aartuk

• Medium/Large plant; lawful evil; CR 3 (Elder), CR 2 (Priest), CR 2 (Warrior) 

We're jumping straight in with the weirdoes, huh? The Aartuk is a race of plant aliens, and one that is remarkably faithful to its original 2nd-Edition artwork on the right. When 'recessed', the Aartuk looks like a weird spiny starfish with eyeballs at the center, making it both a plant alien and a starfish alien at the same time. Except as the manual notes, the structure is more akin to bark. But in combat, the Aartuk's central part lifts up to reveal a nasty tendril, from where its main attack -- a tongue-like vine whip -- strikes out to drag prey to the reach of its spiky bark tentacles. It's an adorable 'kind of realistic' adaptation of the original design's tongue, but one that still adapts the actual tongue. 

Aartuks, by the way, are a highly intelligent and warlike race despite looking like weird starfish-plants. Yes, these things also ride around in galleon-shaped spaceships, and worship gods of war; and in fact one of the main statblocks included is an 'Aartuk Priest'. Yep, they worship their own evil plant gods! The 5E Spelljammer books were errata'd and the Priest and Warrior were renamed as Starhorror and Weedling, but I find that to be cooler names than the originals. 

In the included adventure module for 5th Edition's Spelljammer, the Aartuks are even one of the potential races that you can recruit as allies! That's a pretty cool weirdo to start off this Spelljamming session with. 

Compared to the original Aartuks in 2nd Edition's Spelljammer (which, yes, I am reading. Slowly!) 5th Edition removed a little detail about their reproductive process, which involves the Aartuks spreading a parasitic virus into other races, turning their body into essentially compost for the Aartuk seedlings to grow. Boo, I say! That is a rather sufficiently cromulent old-school sci-fi grisliness!

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Astral Elf

• Medium humanoid; any alignment; CR 8 (Aristocrat), CR 7 (Commander), CR 5 (Honor Guard), CR 4 (Star Priest), CR 3 (Warrior)

The Spelljammer set introduces multiple new playable races, with one of them being the 'Astral Elf'. Because you need to have as many variations of elves as possible, I guess? The Astral Elves are villainous, though, and an Astral Elf empire serves as the primary antagonists of the 'Light of Xaryxis' storyline. They still look like regular pointy-eared elves underneath their armour, but they have a lot of fancy spacesuits that's a nice, wacky combination of fantasy armour and Mass-Effect style space gear. Particularly that 'Astral Elf Commander' with the fancy scarf, Kamen Rider chestplate and oversized bow! The Astral Elves are played a bit more villainously, having a lot of the 'ancient isolationist empire who thinks their culture is always superior to others' that has been mostly downplayed in a lot of modern D&D elves.

I love the origins of the Astral Elves, which sounds particularly kooky for a race that's otherwise treated with a lot of gravitas in the rest of the material. They wanted to go to the Astral Plane... to be closer to gods. Yes, that's the whole reason they successfully invented intraplanar space travel. It's by a relatively simple idea of 'we can fly to space to meet the gods'. Being stuck in the Astral Sea has made them effectively immortal, though, which leads to a lot more of their pride (or dreamlike melancholy, for less-asshole space elves). Anyway, I like it. I was rolling my eyes when I saw the list of playable races and that we got another elf variant, even if it's an evil one... but the reason they went to space is hilarious.

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Astral Blight

• Medium plant; unaligned; CR 1

The catalyst of the Light of Xaryxis adventure is that the Astral Elves have shot 'Astral Seeds' that sprout into gigantic crystal vines that will drain the energy of whatever plane our heroes come from, which is a nice segue to let them travel to D&D SPAAAACE. The Astral Blights (not included in the bestiary) is the constantly-respawning humanoids made up of vines that harass our heroes in the beginning part of the adventure, essentially reskinned versions of the Vine Blights. Neat! 

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Autognome

• Small construct; any alignment; CR 2

Another one of the possible races to play as is the Autognome, which are whimsical, tiny little robots! Autognomes are little mechanical gnomes that resemble their regular gnome 'parent'. Each Autognome is different, and the player's handbook notes that the only real commonality is that the exterior outer coating is metal. What's inside? It's up to the player, but it could be organs or completely clockwork-based. Regardless, Autognomes are sentient and in a hilarious bit of 'let's not let the players get confused', they have a special property that allow them to be healed by regular cleric magic as if they are flesh-and-blood. 

Autognomes are also able to malfunction, with a little table that has a bunch of stereotypical 'robots going haywire' options including exploding. In a neat nod to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, the Autognomes are always programmed with three directives: defend gnomes; defend yourself; protect children. Which can lead to some hilarious skewed properties because Autognomes will defend a dragon wyrmling from the rest of their party. The Autognomes are not my favourite of the Spelljammer races, but I do like the attempt of including space robots/droids in a D&D-appropriate manner. 

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Braxat

• Huge giant; neutral evil; CR 9

Huh, the Braxat are in the space book? Uh... okay! I was first introduced to the Braxat from the 3.5 Edition's second Monster Manual, where they looked like... well, giant spiky behemoths that don't really play up the 'rhino' angle too much. I think that horn isn't super distinctive in the 3.5E artwork. The original concept of the Braxat was meant to be a big rhinoceros-headed giant, which kind of got lost when 3E and 4E tried their best to make everything in D&D super-serious. 

5E's Braxat compromises by making the Braxat technically still be a spiky rhino-giant, but it looks more like a giant Triceratops-man (or like a Styracosaurus-man or something). Which does feel kind of more alien-y. Whether they're supposed to be rhino-men or triceratops-men, though, Braxats are carnivorous and they speed acid. And they have psionic abilities, too, which I suppose comes with the territory of being a space alien. Okay. I don't really find this guy particularly interesting.

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B'rohg

• Huge giant; any alignment; CR 6

No, not the Borg. B'rohg! Who are just... four-armed giants. Who, unlike the Braxat, doesn't really feel particularly space-y. They're an immigrant from the Dark Sun setting, which... is the desolate desert setting. I guess it's based on Dune, but that's a very loose connection to why B'rohg here is picked to be included in the main Spelljammer bestiary. They don't have anything particularly sci-fi or hostile environment coded, and are just... giants with four arms. The write-up is somewhat interesting, I guess, noting that the b'rohg are extremely isolationist and really just wants to be alone most of the time. And you can befriend them, though the b'rohg isn't used to kindness from strangers and are often initially wary of adventurers, before following them around like a lost puppy... until he gets bored and wanders back to its own kind. Even as a 'regular fantasy' giant, they're kind of boring, aren't they?

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Chwinga Astronaut

• Tiny elemental; neutral; CR 0 (Astronaut)

Oh hey, look, the Chwinga! I think they were introduced in... Tomb of Annihilation? One of the few 5th-Edition-original creatures that didn't come from a tie-in material! Apparently they found their way to space, and I just adore this little art of them sitting on top of a space guppy fishing for little space guppies. Cute! This Chwinga Astronaut seems to have ditched the somewhat porcelain-mask-like face that its terrestrial friends wear in favour for a head that's made of blue flame. That's cute, and the Chwinga can still hide inside natural objects while disturbed. 

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Cosmic Horror

• Gargantuan aberration; neutral evil; CR 18

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! I am always somewhat disappointed by the lack of cosmic horror in modern D&D. I promise I'll review that Call of Cthulhu sourcebook someday! But we actually get a giant, beefy Cosmic Horror. And I so appreciate that the giant cosmic horror creature isn't just a big Cthulhu or a big Beholder or something. Some tropes are in play,  of course, so this thing still has giant spiky tentacles and way too many eyes, but I like how its form is a bit... weird. It's got tentacles growing out of its 'forehead' and its 'neck', and two more coming down like a 'mustache'. It's not just a giant flying Cthulhu head, and I appreciate that! It is really big, though. Those little things flying under its mouth are either dragons or spaceships. 

The bestiary is intentionally a bit vague on what the Cosmic Horror is, noting that they just find themselves adrift from the "Far Realm" (which is D&D-speak for the realm where anything vaguely Lovecraft-inspired comes from), and also notes that 'no two Cosmic Horrors are alike'. Which is absolutely fair, since they are, y'know, cosmic horrors! They just go around destroying worlds until it gets bored and goes to a hibernation, or teleports away back to the void it comes from.

I did find the stat-block a bit disappointing, with its relatively limited choices of abilities. It is something that I find in common with a lot of the larger 5th Edition monsters like Krakens and Liches where the prose builds them up so much, but ultimately it all just ends up mostly being big numbers. 

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Dohwar

• Small fey; any alignment; CR 0

I told you Spelljammer's weird! The Dohwar are... SPACE PENGUINS! Yes, why not. Sorry, the Dohwar are SPACE PENGUIN PEOPLE! Because these guys are sentient beings. Not playable, though. And they have fingers for hands. For some reason! The Dohwar are actually a form of fey. SPACE fey. And despite how they look -- which is quite friendly and innocent-looking, the Dohwar are actually extremely economics-driven, always wanting to do business. And they're also like edgy merchants. Regardless on whether a Dohwar is selling you actual illegal drugs or something as innocuous as a keychain, the Dohwar will want to do the transaction in back alleys, all hush-hush like. That's cute, and honestly quite easily rolled into a more non-space traditional fantasy setting as well. 

I also like the description of the Dohwar worshipping all the different gods of wealth and commerce from other pantheons. I've always disliked the way that D&D handles its multiple pantheons, but this? This, where a culture decides not to worship a specific pantheon of gods but to pick the 'wealth' one from every single culture and worship them? That's a cute little way to pull from it. 

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Esthetic

• Gargantuan aberration; unaligned; CR 12

Spelljammer comes with a bunch of ship-to-ship combat, of course, with a significant portion of the Astral Adventurer's Guide describing the various common Spelljamming ships. Like the iconic Nautiloid Ship! I don't really have much to say about ships beyond going 'ooh, ahh' at the pictures, but the Esthetic is actually considered a monster! It's a biological ship that's created by a race called the Reigar (who we'll talk about later) and it's... a weird giant jellyfish! With bioluminescent markings! The Esthetic is essentially the bane of all other Spelljamming ships, having the magical/psionic equivalent of an EMP strike and disable other ships' Spelljamming Helms (which are chairs, not helms, but eh). Essentially, the Reigar have bred the Esthetic to be the perfect space-raider ships, being able to disable other Spelljammers and also use its giant jellyfish tentacles to grapple and disable the crew.

Not as cool as the Nautiloid ships that the Illithids rock, but I can respect this. 

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Eye Monger

• Large aberration; lawful evil; CR 10

Ummm... okay? A Beholder variant in space? But this Beholder masquerades as an asteroid? I like the idea of an 'asteroid mimic', but to make it a Beholder is certainly an unexpected choice. I like the silly grin it has as it unveils its real appearance behind those two silly space barbarians. Run, space barbarians!

Sadly, other than being a giant rock with an eyeball and a mouth, the Eye Monger's entry doesn't really describe much of it as a creature, instead describing that it's got an anti-magic gullet that suppresses the magical items of anything it swallows. And it swallows people, so cracking a dead Eye Monger open will often reward you with loot. 

I have perused through the original 2E Spelljammer book recently, and I realized that the Eye Monger was published there under a different name, the Astereater. Get it? Asteroid Eater? It's noted that while Astereaters/Eye Mongers are technically Beholderkin, Beholders utterly hate Eye Mongers for the simple fact that they are dumb and they give Beholders a bad name. 

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Feyr

• Large aberration; lawful evil; CR 5

This is another one that's from classic sourcebooks, appearing as early as 2nd Edition. Despite the spelling of its name, a Feyr isn't a fey... it's actually an aberration. It's pronounced 'fear', as Boo's Astral Compendium helpfully clarifies. I like both the 5th and 3rd Edition art equally. The 3rd-Edition monster is just a giant lump with multiple screaming faces and a whole mass of tentacles, while the 5th Edition foregoes the chaotic for several pairs of eyes and mouths of differing sizes. The original 2nd Edition art is something that's in-between, being symmetrical but also with a whole load of faces. 

The story is that Feyrs feed on strong emotions, but because it doesn't really like combat, it devours the nightmares of people while they're asleep. And they stow away on things like mansions or ships or space ships and emerge out to consume emotions while people are asleep. And, well, probably end up scaring the pants out of anyone that sees it. I like it! It's like a weird dream-eating monster, but it's a space horror instead of an incubus or a baku. 

This is also a creature that's so weird that it can really show up in either a space setting or just as a random threat in a fantasy world. I think the idea of a Feyr that stalks a party and slowly disturbs their resting periods by phasing out of invisibility and consuming their nightmares is an interestingly unconventional monster. There's just such a feral monstrosity to all of the Feyr's various artworks that I think this has shot up quite highly in my 'favourite obscure D&D weirdo' list.

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Gaj

• Large aberration; neutral evil; CR 4

The Gaj are big, weird bug monsters. I like bug monsters! They have a carapace that kind of look like craggy rocks, a lizard-like tail, and six pairs of monstrous insect legs. And it's got a cute set of feathery moth-antennae on a relatively mundane bug face. It is a bit hard to see in this artwork, but its mouth is actually made up of 'six finger-like appendages', and those feathery antennae allow the Gaj to read minds as a mental probe. 

The Gaj are apparently intelligent, but the Astral Menagerie doesn't really explain what they want to do with that information. Do they feed on it? Do they have some kind of goal they want to look for information about? A weirdo. I like this one, but I wish they told us more about it. It's another one, again, from Dark Sun, but unlike the four-armed giant this one feels a bit more space-y!

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Giff

• Medium humanoid; any alignment; CR 3 (Shipmate), CR 6 (Shock Trooper), CR 10 (Warlord)

Oh hey, the Giff! We saw the Giff in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes a while back. The Giff originated from the original Spelljammer and that seemed to just be a cheeky nod to the fan favourite setting. But since Spelljammer is back on the menu, Giff not only get a bunch of new variations (pictured here are the 'Warlord' and 'Shock Trooper') they also get to be a playable race! Yes, you can get to become a big burly hippo man with an obsession with swanky naval uniforms and firearms. 

We get a bit more of an expanded lore about Giff, and they are all about two things -- their regimented military ranks and achievements; and guns. Boy, they love guns, and they even get a racial bonus to utilizing any sort of firearms! I also like the slight little blurb talking about how there's actually a divide among the Giff on how to pronounce their species name, a very heated debate that's going to get people on opposing sides to fight each other. A sneaky reference to the .gif file format, and one that's delivered with a fair bit of subtlety compared to some of the jokes in this book series! 

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Githyanki

• Medium humanoid (gith); any alignment; CR 3 (Buccaneer), CR 7 (Star Seer), CR 9 (Xenomancer)

The Gith get most of their expanded lore from 'Astral Sea' stuff, so I'm not surprised to see even more Gith enemies show up... though they don't actually do much in the included story itself. I'm also surprised that we don't get any new Mind Flayer variants, considering that they come from space! But we do get three new Gith 'jobs'. The Buccaneer is just a regular pirate, but the Star Seer are gith warlocks that try to contact astral entities like Caiphon and Hadar (HUNGER OF HADAR!). The coolest one of the bunch is the Githyanki Xenomancer, which is the Gith's version of a druid... except with a bit more vivisection and animal abuse. The one shown in the art is controlling a space guppy! 

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Hadozee

• Medium humanoid; any alignment; CR 2 (Explorer), CR 1/8 (Shipmate), CR 1/2 (Warrior)

The Hadozee is another race mostly specific to the Spelljammer setting, and I wouldn't really comment too much about them if not for D&D having to remove some "problematic" content about their origin story as uplifted ape-slaves that overthrew their masters. I guess it was originally intended to be a Rise of the Planet of the Apes reference? I don't think I'm qualified to say anything about it, honestly. 

But the Hadozee themselves are just... monkey-people with a bit of a 'sugar glider' theme, with strange, uncomfortable-looking flaps of flesh that connect their wrists and lower spine. Which just looks like a somewhat impractical location to have wing-flaps, really. The Hadozee are noted to often serve as deckhands abroad most Spelljammer ships, and... uh... they sure exist. I didn't really care about them when I saw them the first time in these books. Playing a monkey-man is basically just me playing as a human, isn't it? It's not quite as novel as playing a hippo-man or a cat-man or devil-man. 

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Jammer Leech

• Tiny plant; unaligned; CR 1

Oh, I like these guys! The Jammer Leeches are basically space barnacles! As someone who lives close to the ocean, barnacles are assholes that grow everywhere and is a pain to scrape off. The Jammer Leech, when dormant, looks like a barnacle, but their actual fleshy body is a thick fleshy tentacle with a spike at the end, and a little eyestalk that pops out from the side. It's honestly a lot less weird than the anatomy of some real-life mollusks. 

The Jammer Leeches latch onto the hull of your Spelljammer ship in spore form, and then will continue to reproduce and fill in more and more space on your ship. In addition to looking unsightly, they drain magic from the ship's Spelljamming Helm. One little quibble, though, is if you kill a Jammer Leech when they're still connected to the ship (as opposed to scraping them off) they will unleash a psychic scream that will overload the spelljamming magic-user connected to the ship. An unfortunate surprise if you don't know about them!

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Kindori

• Gargantuan celestial; unaligned; CR 7

Big space whales. Of course we need big space whales. The Kindori are pretty cool-looking one, particularly with that artwork. Three glowing star-like eyes on either side of the body, and a texture that somewhat resembles space rock? Very cool. Despite the manual describing them as 'mammals', they are identified as 'Celestial' -- an honestly rather under-utilized category. The Kindori don't have mouth, and they essentially are implied to photosynthesize by drawing in the energies of stars. Those eyeballs are meant to drive away predators, which I assume are just space dragons or giant pesky Cosmic Horrors. 

Kindori are large enough to have their 'gravity planes' and 'air envelopes', making them very much suitable alternate spelljamming ships, other than the fact that you can't control where the big space whales go to. The book describes overgrowths of parasites and mosses, and I wish we had gone into describing some of these weird fauna instead of just going for 'oh, four-armed giants exist in space I guess'. Also very cool is the description of Kindori skeleton, which do not deteriorate -- a reference to the real-world phenomenon of whale falls, I am sure. You can turn the Kindori carcass into a spelljamming ship! 

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Lunar Dragons

• Gargantuan/huge/large/medium dragon; neutral evil; CR 19/13/7/2

We gotta have new dragon variants. Because a whole book about dragon variants still isn't enough! It's fair, I guess, 'dragons' does constitute half of the game title. And having the two dragons introduced in Astral Menagerie being space-dwelling does answer the question of 'why haven't we seen more of them in the material plane', which is the question when the older editions started introducing the ferrous dragons or the lesser gemstone dragons or the off-colour chromatic dragons and whatnot. 

Anyway, lunar dragons! The artwork is pretty cool, showing a dragon mottled with spines and spikes that remind me of coral? I guess it's meant to be moonrock. The lunar dragons (or moon dragons, or phase dragons) are typical of the evil dragons in D&D. They don't like other races, they burrow and hide in their lair, and they like to steal treasure. The 'twist', if it counts as one, is that lunar dragons like the act of stealing treasure more than the treasure itself. It breathes ice and as one of its moniker implies, can phase through solid object. The ice theme makes sense for an ice creature, with the whole 'cold of space' thing, and the lunar dragon will warp the moon it makes its lair in to be covered in haunting snowy winds and 'Moon Devils', which are air elementals that deal ice damage. 

Again, with the last D&D book I've read being a Draconomicon, it is kind of hard to make me super-excited about this dragon. Cool artwork, though. 

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Megapede

• Gargantuan monstrosity; unaligned; CR 11

Oh, the Megapede! I remember you in the 3.5E Monster Manual! It's interesting to see what the various different editions have taken to 'modernize' this design. 4th Edition goes for a very cool monstrous look, while 5th Edition goes for a somewhat goofier design that reminds me of the old-school campy space shows. I prefer the 4E design a lot, but I can't say that I don't like the 5th Edition Megapede with its differently-coloured legs and its big compound eyes. All versions do the Dune thing of hiding under the ground and bursting out to catch its prey. 

In addition to being giant centipedes, Megapedes has some innate abilities that actually do feel a bit more exotic. It can exude an aura of life-draining energy, or focus on a prey and unleash a "psychic bomb". It's a psionic giant centipede! Those weird cylinders on the back of the Megapede's back? Those are actually her eggs, which the Megapede carries around like a wolf spider until they mature, at which point they sometimes consume each other if food is scarce. That's a goofy little detail that I must say that I absolutely love, it feels like the kind of detail you put in like old-school Star Wars or something similar. Love it! 

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Mercane

• Large giant; lawful neutral; CR 5

Our last monster for this entry of reviewing monsters are the Mercane. Previously called 'Arcane' in the original Spelljammer, they actually made it to some Monster Manuals. Later publications would make use of the name 'Mercane' because calling them 'Arcanes' are extremely confusing. Mercanes are blue-skinned giants that are essentially the aristocrats of space, and are massive merchants. Get it? Merc-ane? They conduct their businesses and is often fair... as long as you've never swindled a Mercane before. Mercanes are connected to each other with a specific type of telepathy that also acts as what's essentially a 'customer blacklist'. 

They feel like a specific shout-out to something from a sci-fi series, but I can't really pinpoint which one. They feel more like an 'NPC' material, and indeed Light of Xaryxis features a Mercane NPC very prominently as a key figure in potentially gathering a whole lot of allies to help you fight the evil space elves... but he's driven more by his own self-interest. Neat, I guess, but not one I'm super excited about.