Travels & Troubles: Bizarre Bestiary

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville' is a wholly remarkable book. Published in the 14th Century, it claims to be an accurate travel guide of the unknown and sensational East. The book relates the travels of the author through Griffin-infested India and bizarre kingdoms of dog-headed people. Being nonsense, it sold like hotcakes. For a modern day example, picture what would result if a role-player had grabbed his DM's notes after a game, stuffed it full of second- and third-hand geography, added a bunch of creatures to it and published it as a Guide to Iraq, complete with manticores and talking statues. Of course, it would be a supermarket check-out aisle bestseller. More importantly, The Travels' is filled with the kind of fantasy that a DM can truly make use of. The average group of adventurers travels to far and distant lands in search of treasure...and usually finds creatures whose stats they're memorized and magic items whose gold piece value they know by heart. After all, mountain of orcs after mountain of orcs starts to make ever the most avid player's eyes glaze over. Presented herein is the first of series of things and tales truly fantastic done in Mandeville's style. Following are places, peoples, items, and monsters that are new, different, and memorable. These are things that players will ask the DM to describe twice, smiling, and talk about after the game. This is a break from the confines of The Big Book of D&D Monsters Whose Tricks You Memorized at Age 12. Let the players beware. They have no idea what's going to hit them. This 8 page PDF is just the sort of thing needed for DMs to add depth to any great d20 Fantasy campaign world.

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