The Monstrefact: Monsters of Ravenloft

focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. As a lifelong horror movie and Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast, I'm, of course a devoted fan of the Ravenloft campaign setting, which entails the various domains of dread Pocket dimensions separated by supernatural myths, each a prison for a different dark lord, and each a different shade of fantasy fueled horror, from Gothic to folk, from body to cosmic, and so forth.

The latest raven Loft gaming book just came out, Ravenloft The Horrors Within, so I thought I'd do an episode to run through some of the creatures, monsters, and entities in this particular volume. The book's bestI area includes various updated creatures from past raven Loft installments and some creatures I've covered on The Monster Fact before. For instance, there is the Nosferatu vampire, based of course on the tradition of ghastly cadaverous blood drinkers that springs initially from the

nineteen twenty two Silent film. As statted out in the Horrors Within the Nosparatu vampire blood Fiend quickly flies into a frenzy at the slightest drop of red and can emit a disgusting blood spew previously called a blood disgorge in previous editions to attack anyone that is getting a little bit too close and a little bit too player charactery for its own well being. This will enable the creature to emit a fifteen foot cone of spray. It

is the necrotic contents of its own stomach now. As I mentioned in a past episode of The Monster Fact, this attack suggests both a vulture's meal disgorgement, which might lighten the load for quick flying escape or serve as a bribe for an attacking predator. You know, don't eat me. How about you eat this disgusting thing. And it also brings to mind the defensive projectile ocular sinus bleeding of the Texas horned toad. We've talked about that on Stuff

to blow your mind before. We also have returning stats for the jiangshi, or the so called hopping vampires of Chinese folklore. In dungeons and dragons. These creatures are a common feature in karature and of course in the dark domain of I Caath based on Chinese folklore and Gothic horror. I Caath isn't prominently featured in The Horrors Within, but the Jugshi returns in the Bestiari. As I've previously discussed on both The Monster Fact and on core episodes of

Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This undead creature emerges from a ching dynasty crisis concerning the burial of the dead. A rise in unburied bodies left upon the ground caused an empire wide crisis of perceived spiritual and funerary dysfunction. The Jiangshi, stiff with rigor mortis, is forced to jerk itself forward to hop as it moves towards its victim.

Emerges from this ripe soil of anxiety of cultural anxiety, and of course later becomes a standard in Hong Kong horror films of the eighties and nineties, which, of course is that the prime influence point here for dungeons and dragons.

As The Horrors Within now includes Ensmith as a dark domain, a number of Cthulhu mythos monsters have also wormed their way back into the pages of Dungeons and Dragons, and these include the Migo, the gug, elder things, Yetheans, night Gaunts, show goths, and Cthulhu itself, all of them fully stated out. Fans of The Whisper in Darkness will be pleased to know that the Migo can in fact extract a player's brain and preserve it inside of a Migo brain canister.

But I want to discuss one of the other newly added or at least newly returned monsters in the book, and that is the Death's Head tree. This concept is as simple as it is grizzly. In Dunis and Dragons, Death's heads are floating, flying, dis embodied heads of various creatures, from humans and animals to medusas and mind flares, and a death said tree is where heads like this grow like foul fruit and sometimes even explode all over unfortunate

player characters. This concept has its roots in global folklore. In religion, the Qoran mentions the tree of Zukum, which grows in the Hell of Jahannam. Its fruit resembles the heads of devils, which then feed the inhabitants of hell, burning their stomachs in the process. Meanwhile, in Japanese and Chinese folklore, we have the tradition of what is commonly called the Jinmin Jew or the nim ben Jew tree, which produces flowers that look like human heads and face

shaped fruit. According to Matthew Myers Yochai dot com, the faceflowers will laugh at you if you laugh at them, but they will wilt and fall off if you laugh too hard. He also shares that this particular tree of heads and faces likely has its origin in Islamic folklore, specifically one known as the Wokwalk tree, which was said

to bear fruit shaped like humans and animals. The Walkwalk was also a factor in the legends of Alexander the Great, with the Macedonian conqueror having been said to receive a prophecy of his own death from such a tree. There's a whole array of traditions concerning human heads and other human parts growing on trees, and a much larger global tradition in which the botanical world crosses over with human and animal biology. You see this all over the place.

We've discussed some of these examples on the show before, such as the mandrake root and the vegetable lamb of Tartary. But I think this is a concept and a topic we might come back to for our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, because again, there's so many examples of humans and especially trees fusing together in folklore,

in mythology, and just in human thought in general. It's a common focus of human dreams and nightmares and is such fitting material for the domains of Dread, which also boasts other botanical harms. Tune in for additional episodes of the Monster, Fact, the Artifact, or Anomalius to Pendium each week. You never know what you'll get. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.