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By Nelson Schneider - 03/12/22 at 06:53 PM CT
Every March, our beloved Community Manager, drain clogger, stale potato chip disposal, and disappearer of money, Chris, gets a year older and a year more idiosyncratic. Last year, I threw Chris a bone and poked fun at myself for being such an antisocial misanthrope, but in prior years, I’ve pointed out the numerous people and things I see EVERYWERE across all forms of media that remind me of him, be it ‘Pokemon,’ ‘ Dragon Quest,’ ‘ Final Fantasy,’ or just videogames in general.
This year, we’re taking things back to basics and ignoring all the fancy electronics and scientific magic that makes videogames work. Instead, I’ve compiled a list of 10 creatures from the pages of the various ‘Monster Manuals’ and related tomes in the world’s most popular tabletop Role-Playing Game, Dungeons & Dragons, that remind me of Chris. It’s a game that’s close to both of our hearts, and that we’ve been playing together off-and-on for 30 – that’s THIRTY – damned years!
10.Roper"Ropers are subterranean monstrosities that resemble lumps of rock, only with eyes, gaping maws full of sharp teeth, and (naturally) tentacles. Like Chris, Ropers spend as little time moving as possible, and because they never know when their next meal might fall into their paralytic tendrils, they tend to have eyes bigger than their stomachs, loading up on more “food” than they can possibly handle at once."
9. Feyr"Thanks to some poor choices in babysitters made by his parents, Chris grew up on a steady diet of HBO, Cinemax, and other cable networks, which frequently ran horror movies like “Friday the 13th” and “Nightmare on Elm Street.” These were foundational experiences in Chris’ early life, and he’s never truly recovered, delighting in the macabre to a disturbing degree. How, then, could he NOT pop into my mind when reading the bestiary entry for the Feyr? It is a creature manifested from the collective psyches of a densely-populated area, co-mingled with ambient magical energies. While most Feyrs live short, pathetic, transient existences, winking out like bad dreams with the coming of the morn, when multiples of these Lesser Feyrs coalesce, they can become a Greater Feyr, which is far more menacing. And just look at that depiction from 2nd Edition… A round blob (with tentacles) that somehow looks very, very sad."
8. Gibberling"Thanks to his forward-thinking Progressivism (yes, look up the actual definition of “progress” before leaving a knee-jerk dumbass comment about racism), Howard Phillips Lovecraft left behind a rich and vibrant fictional setting in his Cthulhu Mythos, which has been freely borrowed and improved over the years by all sorts of writers. D&D didn’t skip out on the opportunity to get some free inspiration, and thus created the concept of the Far Realm, a region beyond the borders of the established D&D cosmology in which Lovecraftian horrors dwell. Due to his questionable sanity, Chris could be seen as any number of non-Euclidian, betentacled abnormalities, but really, he’s less of the insanity maker than the insanity receiver. Thus we come to the Gibberling: A creature resembling a small, pathetic, fur-covered humanoid, whose exposure to the energies and entities of the Far Realm has driven it irrevocably over the brink of madness. While Gibberlings may have once had a civilization and culture, whatever Elder Entity broke their collective minds left them incapable of doing anything more that raving incoherently as they break like a destructive wave upon other civilizations. Coincidentally, Chris has started attending raves… in his 40s."
7. Flumph"The Flumph is the multiverse’s least-dangerous tentacle monster, but it’s also the closest Chris could ever get to being a genuine Lovecraftian Horror. Flumphs get their name from the farting noise they make as they shoot jets of air out of their backsides to stay upright and aloft (it’s also the pathetic sound they make when they land upside-down and get stuck). Flumphs are psionic (e.g., psychic) creatures, and they literally wear their emotions on their surfaces, changing a variety of colors depending on how they feel. Chris is nearly always “red” for “angry.” "
6. Bullywug"Bullywugs are a primitive species of frog/toad-like humanoids who live a stone-age lifestyle within remote swamps and bogs. They tend toward self-destruction and paranoia, often meddling with magicks and technologies far beyond their limited understanding, while simultaneously remaining oblivious to their negative impact on their surroundings."
5. Shambling Mound"A vaguely-humanoid heap of rotting vegetation. Chris hates vegetables, we’ve established, due to some instinctive taboo against cannibalism. Oddly enough, in more recent content releases, we’ve learned more about Shamblers (as they’re often called) and their ecology. It seems that each one was originally a humanoid corpse that became infested with magical swamp energies… so High Fantasy Swamp Thing, apparently. Chris is a superhero!"
4. Russet Mold/Vegepygmy"D&D has a number of fungal hazards that adventurers can run afoul of. Of course, the titular Dungeons are typically old, damp, underground ruins, and anyone with a basement should know that kind of environment just invites Christophers. Enter the Russet Mold: An irregular fungal patch covered in tendrils that resemble hairs, which slowly wave back and forth, as if moved by an unfelt breeze. Anyone coming in contact with a Russet Mold is subjected to its ever-present cloud of paralytic spores, which, upon completely covering and subsuming a victim, transform the unfortunate into a new form of life known as a Vegepygmy. I mean, I know Russet Mold doesn’t exist in real life, but clearly something similar happened to Chris."
3. Campestri"Continuing on the fungal theme, we come to the Campestri, a small, annoying, semi-intelligent ‘shroom capable of singing, dancing, and parroting back phrases it has heard, all while giggling maniacally. I don’t really think this needs any more explanation."
2. Gully Dwarf"Chris fully acknowledges that he is a dwarf (particularly, a Disgruntled one). However, it has been obvious for a long time that he belongs to a DragonLance-specific sub-variety known as the Aghar. In the DragonLance setting, there are Neidar Dwarves, known as Hill Dwarves due to their habitation of hilly areas on the surface. Likewise, there are a litany of other dwarven clans ranging from the Daewar to the Daergar to the Hylar to the Theiwar to the Klar who are collectively known as Mountain Dwarves, due to the fact that they live in vast underground kingdoms inside mountain ranges. Where to Aghar live? Garbage dumps, slums, sewers, ruins, and drainage ditches, earning them the less-than-spectacular moniker of Gully Dwarves. Gully Dwarves are the most reviled race within the DragonLance setting, in spite of the fact that they never do anything to hurt anyone else and are mostly harmless. Indeed, their horrible station in life stems primarily from their laziness, naivety, crude manner, and perceived lack of intelligence. Generally, Gully Dwarves aren’t as stupid as they’re given credit for, though. They just don’t apply themselves to learning anything beyond their motto of “Life Like Stew,” which would make Forrest Gump proud. They’re also a hybrid race, resulting from the intermingling of dwarves and gnomes – both of whom were originally a singular race until the chaotic magicks of the Graygem of Gargath amplified the greed of the dwarves and the scatterbrained creativity of the gnomes to the point of divergence… I think Chris’ mom is the dwarf and his dad is the gnome."
1. The Pudding King/Juiblex"Oh, man! When we played through the 5th Edition campaign, “Out of the Abyss” a couple years ago, I couldn’t believe that the writing team came up with such a Chris-like unique villain. While Chris does resemble all forms of D&D oozes, slimes, jellies, gelatinous cubes, and deadly puddings to a degree, the Pudding King takes it to a new level. Originally a disenfranchised and pissed-off Deep Gnome (a.k.a., Svirfneblin… gesundheit), the Pudding King received his crown and associated slime-powers from none other than the Demon Lord of oozes, slimes, and puddings, Juiblex. Now, Juiblex itself was always a mysterious and inscrutable being, even for a Demon Lord, with an alien mind and unknowable motivations that made it an outsider even among its own kind – who referred to it derisively as the ‘Lord of Nothing.’ By effectively incarnating itself within the body of a disgruntled gnome, Juiblex and the Pudding King became as inseparable as God the Father and Christ the Son! And we all know Chris loves pudding enough that he just might start worshipping it one day."
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