The Monstrefact Omnibus: D&D Monsters

In this special episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, enjoy an assortment of past Monstrefact episodes about various Dungeons and Dragons monsters… (originally published 04/19/2023)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters.
In time, we have a special omnibus episode of The
Monster Fact here for you this week, collecting four past

(00:31):
episodes about miscellaneous creatures from the Dungeons and Dragons universe
and the possible science behind them. This was actually a
listener submitted idea, so we hope you enjoy the experiment
up verst the Nosferatu. Countless variations of the vampire have

(00:54):
emerged from our popular culture, fed by the blood of
global myths, folk tales, and legends. Some are sparkly and sexy,
others sinister and dangerous, others altogether monstrous. The Nosfaratu vampire
has come into its own, a pale, emaciated body with
ghoulish features, bat like ears, and a pair of elongated

(01:16):
incisors for piercing the skin of their victims rather than
the elongated canine teeth found in so many other vampire depictions.
While not always completely devoid of humanity, they tend toward
the purely monstrous end of the vampiric spectrum. They have
been consumed by their unnatural thirst, and this may leave

(01:37):
them in a primal state, or one in which their
human memories have faded gossamer thin Naturally. This monster dates
back to the nineteen twenty two silent German expressionist film Nosferatu,
a symphony of harm, which in turn has been reimagined
many times, including in the Werner Herzog nineteen seventy nine

(01:58):
film Nosphora to the Vampire. I find the nosferatu particularly
engaging in light of what we know of obligate sanguevares
in the natural world, particularly vampire bats. It is a
highly specialized diet blood and not at all an easy
survival path. Unlike their insect and fruit eating relatives, vampire

(02:22):
bats cannot hibernate or migrate. They lack the fat store,
so instead they must feed every night, lapping up fifty
percent of their body weight in order to survive. So, too,
the Nosferatu seems shackled to its thirst. In the fifth
edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the Nosfatu merits its own

(02:42):
monster manual entry, separate from all the other blood drinkers
with a level eight challenge rating. It's no pushover, but
it's both powerful and in some ways fragile. Hyper sensitive
to sunlight. It has a few different attack actions at
its disposal, including blood disgorge, in which quote the nosferatu

(03:04):
vomits blood in a fifteen foot cone. In doing this,
it inflicts necrotic damage on any hapless hero in its way.
In the natural world, scavenging vultures are known to disgorge
their meals when threatened, perhaps to bribe the attacker or
to lighten their load for an escape flight. This would
be a fit in comparison for the Nosferatu, but the

(03:27):
Texas horned lizard boasts an impressive defense as well. While
its camouflage is generally quite effective, it can also shoot
a stream of blood out of its eyelids with a
range of up to five feet. According to the Oklahoma
Department of Wildlife Conservation. The blood also contains a bitter chemical,
possibly derived from ants and the lizard's diet, which predators

(03:50):
such as coyotes find particularly distasteful. The lizard can use
up to a third of its total blood supply in
this counter attack, but it gets the Messa across, and
now let's discuss the owl bear. The owl bear has
a long history in the world of Dungeons and Dragons,

(04:13):
dating all the way back to the gaming table of
dn D pioneer Gary Gygax, who was allegedly inspired by
the design of a Japanese Kaiju toy which he used
as a mini on his gaming table. You can look
up images of the toy, a slightly dirty beaked monster
in yellow plastic, standing in the traditional stance of an

(04:34):
old school t rex toy. Now you'll find various choices
of dedicated owl bear miniature today, as the creature has
become a standard of fantasy role playing adventures. A hulking,
flightless owl beast that stalks the forests, hunting anything that
moves and littering its layer with their bones. It is

(04:56):
not an evil monster, but rather a neutral denizen of
the fantastic forest. The fifth edition Monster Manual tells us
that while the exact origins of the owl bear are unknown,
there are two prevailing theories. Either a mad wizard spliced
an owl and a bear together into a single beast,

(05:16):
or it has simply always been a part of the
fay wild, which I guess is basically like saying it's
a naturally occurring organism. Fair enough, in the world of
dungeons and dragons, magic has an objective reality, as do
just about every god and devil you could possibly imagine.
But what fascinates me about the owl bear is that

(05:38):
none of that seems quite required. It feels highly probable.
It's a whole different kettle of fish compared to something
like a beholder or even a fire breathing dragon. It is,
in essence, a large, flightless owl that has come to
fill the ecological niche formally occupied by a bear. In
the natural world, most bear species are omnivores, with pandas

(06:02):
and polar bears representing the dietary extremes on either side
herbivore and carnivore, respectively. It's implied that owlbears are carnivores,
but I think we can easily imagine them obtaining nourishment. However,
they can from freshly mauled adventures and scavenged corpses to
elvin compost bins and maybe a few fresh berries. You

(06:25):
might counter that owls, on the other hand, are certainly carnivorous,
but the burrowing owl, which will chase its prey across
the ground, consumes fruit and seeds in addition to various
invertebrates and small vertebrates. The burrowing owl is still capable
of flight and will swoop down on its prey, but
its scampering tactics make it perhaps the closest thing to

(06:48):
an actual owl bear in our world, despite its small size.
A more fitting match from prehistoric times, however, it can
be found in the giant Cuban owl or ornie megalonics,
which thrived on the island of what is now Cuba
during the late Plusticcene period. These owls measured three feet

(07:10):
seven inches or one point one meters in height and
were either flightless or nearly flightless. They are the largest
owls known to have ever existed in the natural world.
The giant Cuban owl and other large prehistoric birds, including
the moa, thrived on islands and continents that land mammals
hadn't reached yet. In these places, they filled niches typically

(07:31):
filled by carnivorous mammals and megafauna. So, as far as
my thinking goes, we don't need mad wizards to arrive
at the owl bear. We just need an ecosystem isolated
from mammals, in which some manner of ground hunting owl
can steadily adapt toward filling the role traditionally occupied by bears.
This would also work if some previously dominant organism had

(07:55):
been wiped out and owls were able to move into
that vacant niche. But of course, in the world of
dungeons and dragons, dinosaurs and dragons coexists, so it's hard
to imagine there being too many opportunities for evolving organisms
like this, So maybe a mad wizard is required after all. Well,

(08:15):
my son Sebastian, who actually just gave me an owl
bear mini for Father's Day, suggests that it could have
been the work of druids seeking not to release a
ferocious monster on the world and challenge adventurers, but rather
to bolster a challenged environment where perhaps adventurers had wiped
out the bears and there was this lovely niche that

(08:38):
needed filling. Well, why not the owl? Why not the
owl bear? Thanks to my son Sebastian for chiming in
on this one. Our third selection is the salt dragon.
From green dragons to golden dragons, from solar dragons to

(08:59):
lou dragons, the world of dungeons and dragons, as well
a lot of dragons. One variety that hasn't officially seen
the light of days since second edition is the salt
dragon of the Forgotten Realms the setting. These pale, yellow
and white dragons were said to inhabit salt encrusted lands,

(09:22):
and their breath weapon was fittingly salt themed as well.
They expelled a cone of salt crystals that could blind
and wound enemies both above and beneath the water. While
there are no true salt dragons in the natural world,
we do have the Galapagos marine iguana, an endemic algae

(09:43):
eating iguana species that adapted to thrive on the isolated
islands of the Galactos. These are marvelous creatures to watch,
sometimes comical and amusing as they bass on shore side
rocks and landings, but utterly graceful in the water. Sure
they frequently appear to sneeze, this is actually a means

(10:05):
of clearing excess salt from their bodies via special glands
at the nostrils. The resulting salt crystals sometimes encrust the
thorny heads of the lounging creatures, giving them an even
saltier appearance. Those horny protrusions on the head, by the way,
help scrape algae away from the rocks during feeding. So
for the marine iguana, salt sneezes are a means of

(10:27):
removing excess levels of salt from the body, not a
means of defense. Though even Charles Darwin in his book
The Voyage of the Beagle described the act as follows quote.
They do not seem to have any notion of biting,
but when much frightened, they squirret a drop of fluid
from each nostrul. First impressions surely, as the basting iguanas

(10:49):
seem to regularly emit salt regardless of perceived fright Still,
this curious feature allows us an avenue by which to
imagine the physiology of a fantastic salt dragon. Instead of
expelling all of its excess salt, perhaps the giant fantastic
creature is able to safely store the crystals or concentrated

(11:11):
saline solution inside its body for later use as a
defensive or offensive breath weapon. And for a final selection,
let's head into the cave. Nothing beats a good Dungeons
and Dragons cave environment. Whether you're talking about an isolated

(11:33):
cavern layer for a surface rampaging monster, or the dark
subterranean kingdoms of the underdark. Either way, there's no shortage
of exotic monsters to populate these environments, and at least
two of them stand out for their mimicry of stalactites
and stalagmites. First, let's refresh on the nature of stalactites

(11:55):
and stalagmites. Stalactites derived from the Greek to drill is
a mineral formation caused by dripping that forms on the ceiling.
The corresponding formation on the floor of the cavern is
a stalagmite. Some folks might keep the straight in their
own heads by reminding themselves that stalactite has a C

(12:17):
in it for ceiling and stalagmite has a G in
it for ground. At any rate, let's start on the floor.
Amid the stalagmites of D and D you'll find the
occasional roper, a large, one eyed monster that mimics a
silent cone of stone until an adventurer strays too close.
Then its tentacles lash out and pull the victim in

(12:40):
towards its deadly maw. Amid the stalactites, you'll find an
even more fascinating creature, the piercer. This predatory mollusk has
a sharp stalactite shaped shell, enabling it to blend in
on a cavern ceiling until guess what, along comes another
hand apless adventure and the piercer drops like the sword

(13:03):
of Damocles and hopefully skewers the poor sap to the floor.
If this is a success, the piercer or piercers, because
sometimes they apparently live in groups, begin the feast. A fail, however,
means the creature has to slowly crawl back up the
wall to the ceiling in order to try its gravity
assisted attack once more. The piercer is a fantastic monster concept,

(13:28):
and both of these cave dwellers have been lashing out
against adventurers since the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons. However,
when we turn to the cave environments of the natural world,
we don't find creatures that employ such tactics. While there
are many amazing subterranean organisms with unique adaptations, you might
well ponder over the seeming absence of stalactite and stalagmite mimics,

(13:51):
as evolutionary developmental biologist William R. Jeffrey points out in
his two thousand and nine paper Regressive evolution in a
Dionacs cavefish quote. In surface dwelling animals, pigmentation is used
for protection from sunlight, camouflage, mimicry, and species and sex recognition,
all of which are irrevolent in the dark cave environment.

(14:14):
Jeffrey is dealing chiefly with cavefish here in this paper,
but I think we can safely apply this concept to
other cave dwellers as well. Again, we have to remember
that these are lightless worlds, where sight in the organs
of sight lose their importance. Other senses become the coin
of the realm in dungeons and dragons. However, we have

(14:34):
to remember that these wholly fictional cave environments revolve entirely
around the inevitable arrival of generally cited characters, and that
they're often aided by magical vision lamps and or a
plethora of bioluminescent fungi. And we have to remind ourselves
that mimicry in the real world doesn't have to be visual.

(14:56):
It can certainly be auditory. For instance, the greater mouse
bat has been observed to mimic the sounds of buzzing
hornets to scare away predatory owl species. Meanwhile, Chinese cicadas
are also known to use intraspecific sexual mimicry that means
males using female sounds in this case, which amounts to

(15:16):
a similar sort of auditory deception. And hey, D and
D has us covered there as well, with the Lucratum
monstrous be said to lure in their victims by mimicking
the voices of humans and other intelligent species, inspired by
the half hyena half lion creatures described by Plenty of
the Elder said to reside in Ethiopia, yet quote mimics

(15:39):
the voices of men and cattle. Tune in for additional
episodes of the Monster Fact each week. As always, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
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