MONSTERS AT MOONRISE

THE PROMPT

These were the immutable facts about this creature I was working with:

I won't lie, this first roll was so devastating it had me immediately questioning literally my entire methodology.

In D&D, a beast is essentially just a real world animal, or something close enough to a real world animal that it might as well be one. Mundane, non-magical, generally a low level encounter. A CR20 monster is not a low level encounter.

To put it in perspective, the contest for highest CR beast in any official sourcebook is a tie between the tyrannosaurus rex and the sperm whale, both CR8. Both kind of unfathomably strong in their own way, and both much bigger than just 'large'. I spent a long time pondering how I was going to plausibly create a regular animal worth 6 and a half times as much exp as a T-rex, much less one that was only large sized. Ultimately, I wasn't satisfied with any kind of creative workaround I was mulling over. I was going to have to create a regular old apex predator, simply one that for whatever reason was a number of leagues in power above any of its fellow beast.

I started with its dissociative stare and when from there. I figured that a creature so far above the rest of the natural world would probably have this kind of expression. The face of a critter that has never had to exert any effort to do anything at all, and understands with a dim sense of contentment that it most likely never will. A completely zoned out murder machine of muscle and fur.

The rest of the design fell into place pretty quickly from there. I'm pleased with it.

MONSTER 1: "Rabbit Tooth"

Rabbit tooth Rabbit tooth

This is the Rabbit Tooth.

Mother nature, in all her wisdom, tries her best to ensure that the natural world exists in a state of perpetual balance. If a generation of predators develop better eyesight, soon after will their prey develop better camoflague, or faster legs. It is the natural way of things that the animal kingdom will find its way back to a happy medium, where no creature rules with absolute impunity.

But ocassionally mother nature makes mistakes. Once in a millenia a phenotype develops by sheer random chance that so completely shifts the power balance that the natural world is forever changed. The most well known of these anomolies is man, blessed by luck with a brain that let him smite all that once hunted him with tools, weapons, and tactics, and eventually to build cities and civilisations, to escape nature entirely.

But before man was the first anomoly: the Rabbit Tooth. Nature's perfect apex predator. Blessed not with brains but such an incredible degree of brawn that they've remained unchallenged as the lazy sovereigns of the natural world for eons. Even mankind, with its bows and swords, steer clear of the Rabbit Tooth. We are smart enough to know when a fight cannot possibly be won.

I imagine these fuzzy monsters generally live lives of utter boredom. They're territorial, but due to their incredible speed and power are rarely desperate enough to skirmish over territory. Its position on the food chain so secured by its superior physiology that it has never been bothered a day in its life. An apex predator that meanders the forest floor tearing apart and eating everything and everyone that it wants. An animal gifted by a lucky roll of the arbitrary systems of natural selection with strength and durability far beyond anything necessary for its lowkey lifestyle. The power to tear down castle walls, punch holes in demigods, rip the heads off of adult dragons, but the desire only to sit around eating berries.

It still remains a conceptual stretch that a mundane forest critter the size of a bear could have the capacity to rip a lich in half or go toe-to-toe with ancient demons, even in a fantasy world, but hey, my hands were tied. I'm happy with how I handled this prompt, it was a tricky one.

My second roll was much easier. A substantially more sensible monster, with a much less intimidating CR that I got to be a lot weirder with.

INTRODUCTORY RAMBLE!

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