“Nerra” by Matt Cavotta, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at the Fiend Folio Art Gallery here 

[Commissioned by @justicegundam82. The second of three nerra commissions. Sorry about reusing the art. In 3e and 4e, group shots were common when depicting multiple monsters. See the varoot for general information about the nerra]

Nerra, Kalareem
This muscular humanoid has mirrored skin and faint facial features. They wear a breastplate polished to a shine and carry two swords.

The kalareem are the soldiers and guards of the nerra. They are taller and more muscular than most other nerra, and traditionally wear silvered breastplates as badges of office. These silver breastplates also serve as emergency escape routes for nerra patrols—a single kalareem will often stay behind in a losing battle, sacrificing its life so that its fellows can escape through its breastplate to another mirrored surface.

Although kalareem are not as clever or beguiling as other nerra, they are still savvy opponents who use layers of disguise to avoid fights or confuse opponents. They can spray mirrored shards from their bodies, slashing at their opponents and causing bleeding cuts. In addition, they can force an opponent that strikes them in melee to suffer the damage they deal to the kalareem.

A kalareem typically advances by class level. They usually take levels in classes that augment their martial abilities, such as fighter, barbarian or ranger.  Many kalareem collect weapons, particularly ones that do piercing or slashing damage.  

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“Nerra” by Matt Cavotta, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at the Fiend Folio Art Gallery here 

[Commissioned by @justicegundam82. The last of the nerra, and the last of this batch of commissions (which are still open). See the varoot for general information about the nerra.]

Nerra, Sillit
This mirror-skinned humanoid has a blank, smooth face. It wears a fine black robe and a sword at its belt.

The sillit are the sages and masterminds of the nerra, and they direct the activities of nerra cells in order to accomplish the species’ strange goals. Some sillit go undercover in mortal society for extended periods of time, living a seemingly mundane life as a humanoid for years or decades before springing into action. They favor robes and cloaks, ideally ones with magical abilities. Most sillits consider themselves intellectuals, studying the comings and goings of mortal races in order to find the most appropriate weak points for inciting chaos.

Although sillits rarely indulge in direct combat, they are skilled at it. Their most feared ability is their mirror maze—they can trap a single opponent within an extradimensional hall of mirrors while their allies battle the sillit outside. Although this mirror world is not directly within the sillit, images of the trapped creature appear to dance across the nerra’s surface, and if the sillit is slain before the mazed opponent can escape on their own, they reappear covered in bleeding wounds, as if they had forced their way through a physical mirror.

Like other nerra, sillits typically advance by class levels. Given their fondness for control and intellectual pursuits, most sillits take spellcasting classes such as sorcerer, wizard and psychic.

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Image by Franz Vohwinkel, © Wizards of the Coast

[The last of the nerra, commissioned again by @justicegundam82. If you’d like a commission of your own, see here for info. The racial traits of a nerra are found here]

Nerra, Delphar
This giant humanoid has an angular, faceted body and is mirror-like in its reflectivity. It has no real face, but points of light on its head give the suggestion of eyes. It clutches an immense sword.

Delphars are the masterminds of the nerra, and they often force themselves into leadership positions among their kind. Due to their fractious and chaotic natures, some nerra resent the intrusion of a delphar into their own business, but the results delphar get are difficult to argue with. A delphar can organize a nerra troop into a tactical fighting force, and their enhancing spells can make a weak nerra into a dangerous opponent. Delphars live for combat, which makes them popular with teltarym and kalareem, but annoys most sillits and varoots.

A delphar considers itself a leader, but is not content to lead from a distance. They are fanatic melee combatants, and will force opponents trying to close with their allies to teleport adjacent to them instead—this manifests as spectral hands reaching from the delphar’s ally to yank the enemy into one mirrored surface and out another. Delphars, unlike other nerra, can use their allies’ bodies as mirrors for the purpose of teleporting. They use this ability to make hit and run attacks against an enemy that might overwhelm their weaker allies. Delphars are skilled in disguise, but their size makes it difficult for them to pose as ordinary humanoids. A delphar stands eight feet tall and weighs about five hundred pounds.

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“Nerra” by Matt Cavotta, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at the Fiend Folio Art Gallery here

[Commissioned by @justicegundam82. The 3e Fiend Folio is a weird book. The mechanics, which are a hybrid of 3.0 and 3.5. The pierced nipples on the cover (seriously). But weirdest of all was “the competition”. Many of the designers for the book were tasked with creating an extraplanar humanoid race with the goal of making a new equivalent of the githyanki, the breakout stars of the original AD&D Fiend Folio. The nerra were one of those attempts.

The commissioner wanted the nerra to have the flavor from their reappearance in 4e’s Monster Manual 3, but challenge ratings equivalent to their Fiend Folio versions. I’ve borrowed some abilities from their 4e versions. The original were from a demiplane, the Plane of Mirrors, but I’ve moved them to the Shadow Plane to avoid plane inflation, and changed their alignments from N to CN to fit the 4e lore.]

Nerra
The Shadow Plane is often said to be a dark reflection of the Material, and no creature embodies this as thoroughly as the nerra. The nerra are a race of outsiders that appear as humanoids made of mirrors. They have a mystical connection to mirrored surfaces, allowing them to transport themselves via mirrors when conducting research or missions on the Material Plane. All nerra can disguise themselves as humanoids, and they particularly enjoy taking the appearance of a prominent person in order to act radically out of character and witness the chaos that results. They are observant creatures with a particular interest in the forces of good and evil—they appear to destabilize societies ruled strongly by one or the other of these forces and determine whether the original balance is restored.

The origins of the nerra are mysterious. Some argue that they are the natives of a lost demiplane, the Plane of Mirrors. Others suggest that they are transformed mortals, turned into strange creatures through a ritual. Whether the transformation to nerra was their goal or an accident depends on the version of the legend. The nerra do not comment on their origins with other species. They are distrustful of the gods and the outsiders that serve them, but have a particular hatred for kytons and the aberrations of the Dominion of the Black. Although they are found throughout the planes, their bastion is the Panopticon, a fortress of mirrors the size of a city.

Nerra Traits
All nerra are outsiders with the following traits:

Reflection of Man (Su) All nerra have access to disguise self as a spell-like ability. When a nerra uses disguise self, it can only appear as a humanoid. A nerra does not suffer a penalty to Disguise checks for impersonating a Medium humanoid.
Mirrorwalk (Su) A nerra can enter a mirror as a standard action and transport itself to another mirrored surface. This functions as the spell tree stride, except the nerra can determine the type and distance of other mirrors or mirrored surfaces. The types of mirrored surfaces, and the distance able to be traveled through them, are as follows:

o        Silvered mirror: 3,000 feet.

o        Polished glass: 2,000 feet.

o        Polished metal: 1,500 feet.

o        Water or other reflective surface: 1,000 feet.

A nerra may use this ability a number of times/day equal to its Hit Dice. A nerra may not use mirrorwalk through its own body or the body of another nerra.
Reflective Spell Resistance (Su) Whenever a targeted spell or spell-like ability fails to overcome a nerra’s spell resistance, the spell rebounds on its caster, as per the spell turning spell. This ability also affects rays and ranged touch attack spells, even though these are normally not affected by spell turning.
Resist 10 cold, fire and electricity
Vulnerable to sonic

Nerra, Varoot
This thin humanoid is covered from head to toe in a mirror-like sheen. It wears no clothes and carries a wicked looking dagger.

The varoot are the weakest of the nerra, but they make up for their physical frailty with guile. They are scouts and spies for the nerra, assuming the form of a mortal in order to gather as much information about their life and allies as possible. They are gifted in disguise even without magic, and may use multiple layers of magical and mundane disguise to confound their enemies. A varoot rarely wears clothing or armor, unless it is when they are “in character”.

A varoot rarely engages in direct combat if they can help it, but carry daggers to defend themselves with if necessary. Their favorite tactic is to assume the appearance of one of their enemies and engage them directly in melee—the magic of the varoot is such that opponents attacking it will be confounded and attack the model for its appearance. Any weapon carried by a varoot inflicts deadly bleeding wounds, and a varoot will not hesitate to use the distraction of this bleeding to take the opportunity to flee.

A varoot typically advances by class level. They prefer classes that augment their deceptive abilities, such as bard or rogue. A varoot is the size of a small human, rarely exceeding five and a half feet in height.

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Image by Matt Dixon, © Wizards of the Coast

[Commissioned by @justicegundam82​. The tulgar is a neat monster (originally from the 4e Monster Manual 3), but I’m not 100% set on the name. It’s not super common, but it’s a Turkish family name. Imagine naming a monster the rodriguez or the nelson, something like that.]

Tulgar
CR 8 LN Monstrous Humanoid
Antlers grow from the brow of this green skinned, shaggy humanoid. Their lower jaw is oversized and studded with jagged teeth, and they wear little more than scraps of clothing and harnesses for their axes.

Tulgars are an ancient people, descended from fey spirits of the First World. When civilizations began to arise in the Material Plane and despoil the natural lands that thinned the boundaries between the Material and the First World, the tulgars traveled to the Material in order to wage war on the gods and their civilizing influence. Although not all tulgars in the present maintain this ancient grudge against divinity, they are still suspicious of settled peoples and gods of agriculture, cities or other activities that transform the landscape. They are often bitter at fey creatures, which they see as not having made proper sacrifices in the cause of nature. Some, more evil aligned, tulgars make alliances with asuras and daemons to strike at a common divine enemy.

Tulgars make a living as traveling mercenaries, living off the land and trading for what they cannot make or gather themselves. They have keen senses of smell and make excellent trackers. Tulgars prefer forest environments, the more pristine the better. Tulgars reincarnate rapidly upon being slain and as they grow to adulthood have flashes of memories from their past lives. They believe that the nature of their death influences the speed of their reincarnation and the power of their next life, and so view death in combat as the ultimate honor. When a tulgar dies in combat, its soul grants one of its allies a boon in combat on its passage to the Boneyard. The number of blessings so received is seen as a mark of status in tulgar society. A tulgar views capture as a humiliation, and typically fight to the death in order to avoid being held prisoner.

A tulgar stands about six feet tall and weighs two hundred pounds.

Tulgar Spirit Talkers
Those tulgars who are most in tune with their ancestors are spirit talkers. These tulgars can call on the spirits of fallen tulgars who have yet to reincarnate, and are gifted in manipulating spirits in general. A tulgar spirit talker has the advanced simple template, and may use the following spells as spell-like abilities 1/day at CL 10^th; call spirit (DC 20), dismissal (DC 20), purge spirit (DC 18), spiritual ally. A tulgar spirit talker is CR 9. They frequently take class levels in spellcasting classes such as oracle (favoring the ancestor mystery) or spiritualist.

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The Imjarvi Encounter  © Richard Svensson.

[Commissioned by @wannabedemonlord, for @quirkybestiary. I hadn’t heard of this alien encounter before, which is a shame because it’s a great story. This uses the rules from Pathfinder RPG’s Technology Guide]

Gremlin, Imjarvi
CR 2 CE Fey
This gnomish creature has waxen skin, a hooked nose and clawed hands. It wears a strange outfit—a jumpsuit, boots and helmet—and carries in its hands a luminous box.

An imjarvi is a gremlin of advanced technology that delights in sabotaging and stealing powerful alien devices such as lasers, force fields and batteries. Their origins are somewhat mysterious—some say they were created as a natural reaction to the emergence of high tech items, whereas others believe they are transformed gremlins of a more common species. Whatever the case, they primarily exist in regions where advanced technologies are found, and delight in teasing and toying with its wielders.

All imjarvi possess a technological device called a “beam-box”. Such devices are not necessarily box shaped, and in fact do not work for any creature other than the imjarvi that made it—their power is to focus the gremlin’s own innate magic into weird and dangerous forces. These beams can injure, immobilize and even poison the gremlin’s enemies, with symptoms of the poisoning closely resembling those of radiation sickness. They are mean but cowardly creatures, like most gremlins, and typically flee from any sign of real resistance.

Imjarvis may sometimes disguise themselves as a gnome or halfling in order to blend into humanoid communities, but even then their intentions are sinister. Some technologists prize them for their ability to recharge technological items, but entrusting a prized possession to an imjarvi is a foolish errand indeed. An imjarvi stands about three feet tall and weighs 40 pounds.

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Image by Izzy, © Wizards of the Coast.

[Commissioned by @justicegundam82​. Sertrous is another one of the cast of Elder Evils, and the one who is the most redundant within Pathfinder RPG. This is because he was created by James Jacobs, who just rearranged some of the components and made them Pathfinder canon. Ydersius is a serpent god who was beheaded but lives on (and his name even rhymes!), whereas the heresy-snakes link got shifted onto Geryon. So when I got commissioned to write this creature, the obvious struggle was to make it fill a different campaign niche than either of these canonical villains. Inspired by the golothomas , I made it Ydersius’ sundered shadow-self. As opposed to the radically different flavor text, the mechanics of my version are almost a straight conversion instead of doing much radical. My biggest change was altering the form of madness/horrific appearance, as qlippoth lords cause physical changes with their horrific appearances instead of purely mental effects. I also toned down its complete immunity to all divine spells.]

Qlippoth Lord, Sertrous
CR 22 CE Outsider (extraplanar)
This being is an immense nightmare of slimy coils and shining scales. Two long serpentine arms emerge from its midsection, each ending in a three-taloned hand. Its head is that of a deformed snake, five jaws blooming radially away from each other like a monstrous flower. It is sickly green with a pale yellow belly, stripes of red running along its sides like rivers of blood.

Sertrous, The Poisoned Whisper, The Arch-Heretic, The Divine Shadow
Concerns heresy, poison, resentment, serpents
Domains Chaos, Evil, Scalykind, Trickery
Subdomains Deception, Entropy, Hatred*, Venom
Worshipers apostates, heretics, serpentfolk
Minions demodands, fiendish hydras, qlippoths
Unholy Symbol the shadow of a headless snake
Favored Weapon spiked chain
Devotion Spend an hour destroying a holy book or holy symbol, all the while reciting heresies and blasphemies specific to that faith. Gain a +2 profane bonus on all saving throws against divine spells.
Boons 1: misdirection 2/day; 2: spell immunity 2/day; 3: mass suggestion 2/day
*clerics of Sertrous can use the Hatred subdomain to modify the Evil domain

When the god Ydersius was slain, the violence done to him shattered his psyche and quintessence as well as his body. Although Ydersius persisted as the Sundered God, a part of his shadow was cast off, squirming into the Abyss and finding root. In time and hatred, this essence manifested itself a body. The divine shadow is Sertrous, the Arch-Heretic. Although Sertrous cultivates and spreads heresies of all kinds, his own existence is an embodiment of perhaps the greatest heresy—that the gods hate their own worshipers. After all, without the attention brought on by the serpentfolk’s schemes, Ydersius would never have been slain.

Sertrous is poison incarnate, both to the body and the mind. His venom is among the strongest in the cosmos, eating away at flesh with astonishing rapidity. Creatures that see him find their own bodies revolting, their shadows metamorphosing into deadly serpents that strike their owners as readily as their surroundings. He can implant suggestions in mortal minds and make them forget they were anything other than their own ideas. He can drain the free will from a grappled victim and turn them into an enthralled puppet. And if all of that fails, he is brutally strong.

Sertrous courts worship more openly than do most qlippoth lords, but his faith involves forsaking all divinity as a pyramid scheme. The organization of his followers is referred to as the Vanguard of Sertrous. Of all of the gods Sertrous hates, Ydersius, his creator/former self, is the most hated. Sertrous sees Ydersius’ reliance on his serpentfolk cult to be co-dependency, whereas he is happy to have abandoned all but the most depraved and apostate serpentfolk and expanded his minions. The Vanguard counts many demodands among its members, although whether they are true believers or are attempting to manipulate Sertrous’ maltheism to the benefit of the thanatoic titans is an unresolved question. Sertrous’ sanctum is the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional space accessible only in the depths of the Abyss. It functions as a tesseract, each of its chambers accessible to the others in seemingly impossible ways. The center of this complex holds the shadow of Ydersius’ severed head, which fell into the Abyss so many years ago and spawned Sertrous.

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Image by Jim Nelson, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed from “The Dour DM” here

[The swordwing has a great look and not one, but two nice minis, but has very little else going for it in 4e. Pretty much all of its abilities (bonus opportunity attacks, moving while attacking) are standard Pathfinder feats, and its flavor text is basically “what if eusocial insects were hoarders and weirdly high level?” I’ve kept the collecting instinct, but paired it with some way to interact with the world other than ambushing adventurers, and added new mechanics to compliment its high CR nature.]

Swordwing
This insect-like humanoid has one arm ending in a clawed hand and another ending in a massive, scythe-like blade. Its blue chitin plates are highlighted with red edges and a crown-like crest rises from its head.

Swordwings are strange subterranean monsters with a deeply rooted greed and mysterious origins. They are a plainly artificial race, possessing life-spans that run up to a thousand years and being unable to reproduce except through elaborate magical rituals. But who or what is responsible for their creation is a mystery. Individual swordwings may claim descent from the gods, creation by the aboleth or xiomorns, a pact with an archfiend or any other origin that suits their whims or flatters their current allies.

All swordwings are master crafters and inveterate collectors, with particular interests that differ between individuals. Such objects of obsession may be as mundane as geodes, macabre as preserved hearts or as valuable as golems or magical longbows. The prizes of said collection are protected behind layer upon layer of magical wards, and swordwings will do anything to improve their collections from trading to theft to murder. Some swordwings even infiltrate societies as dealers of magical goods in order to track and procure especially valuable specimens. In human societies, they typically use magic items to disguise their appearance, but elsewhere may use their monstrous forms and fearsome reputations to dissuade would-be rivals and burglars.

In combat, swordwings prefer to stay mobile, weaving in and out of melee on buzzing wings and dealing savage blows with their bladed arm. Their mastery of magic items extends to being able to use scrolls, wands and staves in an instant, augmenting their physical might with unpredictable magical effects.

A swordwing stands six feet tall and weighs about two hundred pounds.

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Still from Return of Ultraman accessed at the Ultraman Wiki here

[I am coming to the Ultra franchise pretty much cold, and am watching it in isolation from its fandom except for my girlfriend @abominationimperatrix. One of the things that I gather from her is that the monsters that stand out to me from these series are rarely fandom favorites. Like, I’m not planning on statting up Black King or Gudon or Twintail from Return of Ultraman… but this ratty anthro Snuffleupagus was immediately on my list. Part of that is how grody and gross he looks. Part of it is he has an interesting power set, one that led to my conception of the flavor text. It seems that Tsubaraya Studios thought the idea of a ninja elephant was worth exploring long before it was a joke on RPG.net about D&D 3.0’s skill system]

Sartan
CR 17 CE Monstrous Humanoid
This creature is as tall as a building. Its features are lumpy and misshapen, with bulging eyes and sparse, bristly hair growing from its head. It has a long, elephant-like trunk, clawed hands, and a short tail.

A sartan is an interplanetary thrill killer. They travel from world to world, using their powers of invisibility to spy on people and learn who their heroes are. They then seek these heroes out and kill them for no reason other than to challenge their abilities and to cause other people emotional suffering. Sartans are cruel and enjoy collateral damage in these assassination attempts. Some powerful entities attempt to hire sartans to work for them as assassins, but sartans care little for money. Only if a target interests them, or if the employer resorts to charm spells, will they take on one of these jobs.

A sartan usually only enters combat if it suits them, whether because they have found their target, they want to lure that target into the open, or if they just feel like committing some cruelty for fun. Their supernatural abilities are mostly defensive—a sartan is invisible unless it chooses to appear, or is actively locked in combat. They can become incorporeal, which they often do in order to have mundane weapons pass right through them. When it comes to actual violence, however, sartans do it the old-fashioned way, by getting their claws bloody or grabbing a foe with their trunks and squeezing it to death. Sartans value their own hides too strongly to fight to the death. They will usually attempt to flee a losing battle, but may come back for a rematch on their own terms. 

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