Mind you, a Tarrasque isn’t a god. It’s not even significantly clever. It’s a lizard-like creature of titanic proportions, armored with a thick carapace that’ll decelerate virtually any celebration of adventurers. Like Dune’s sandworms, it’s a drive of nature that rises out of its slumber solely to destroy every thing round it. It’s so troublesome to struggle that it’s by no means been featured in a serious online game or perhaps a tie-in novel. It exists as an “oh crap” machine; a Godzilla-level terror that solely the luckiest and most ready events can hope to defeat. Even then, they in all probability received’t. The lore of the Forgotten Realms goes as far as to counsel that there’s just one Tarrasque alive at any time, and it could even be a weapon left behind by previous gods.
Mind Flayers (Illithids)
The Mind Flayer is certainly one of D&D’s core monsters. It’s a recognizable monstrosity that seems all through the franchise multiverse, together with the sci-fi-themed Spelljammer setting. Intelligent, telepathic spellcasters with rubbery, octopus-like options, their design was clearly impressed by H.P. Lovecraft’s work. Actually,m Gary Gygax was studying a Brian Lumley novel and got here up with Mind Flayers on the spot.
Mind Flayers’ lore additionally borrows from Lovecraft’s Mi-Go and the Mi-Go mind cylinders. Mind Flayers also have a ruling class of Elder Brains which are saved protected inside their secret cities. Their in-universe origins are crammed with troubling uncertainties. They’re both alien refugees from a future they’ve forgotten, or some horrible evolution now scattered by means of time and house. There’s at the very least one citadel of the Mind Flayers in Faerun, Oryndoll, deep within the Underdark. As an enemy, they’re horrifying mind suckers that require talent to defeat. As a species, they’re a captivating take a look at a few of the darkest corners of D&D lore.
Beholders
Possibly probably the most well-known D&D creature is the Beholder: a fleshy, bulbous factor with means too rattling many eyes. Depending on the subspecies — there are dozens of them, together with an Eyeball cutie wizards use as a well-known — it could actually have as many as eleven eyestalks, along with a bigger eye usually set within the middle mass.
The beholder is the face of the franchise with a face solely a mom may love. Now attempt to not take into consideration how child beholders are made. It’s an authentic monster with no historic or mythological genesis moderately than the implications of the widespread phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Created by Gygax’s pal, Terry Kuntz, it wound up on the quilt of one of many earliest official D&D dietary supplements, Greyhawk. The beholder straddles (wobbles?) the road between Gygax’s dwelling video games and the period when Dungeons & Dragons turned a tabletop drive. There it floats, watching all of it, and stirring itself to struggle with quite a lot of completely different talents, one for every unblinking eye.
Gelatinous Cube
The Gelatinous Cube is one other Gygax authentic. It’s a geometrical ooze vaguely impressed by amoebae whose critics usually miss the purpose. Yes, they’re gradual and silly, however the cubes developed to suit into, and then reshape themselves inside, customary dungeon corridors. This makes them not simply an annoyance, however a good way to lose a favourite piece of drugs. Or your life.
