A bit like a dragon, wingless though it may be. Heads, nine in number at birth, spring from a muscled trunk and weave a sinuous pattern in the air. A hydra is to be feared—a scaled terror of the marsh. The older ones, though, they have more heads, for every failed attempt to murder it just makes it stronger. Cut off a head and two more grow in its place. Only a strike, true and strong, to the heart can end a hydra’s life. Not time or tide or any other thing but this. Instinct: To grow

• Attack many enemies at once
• Regenerate a body part (especially a head)

Croak croak croak. Little warty munchkins. Some wizard or godling’s idea of a bad joke, these creatures are. They stand as men, dress in scavenged cloth and hold court in their froggy villages. They speak a rumbling pidgin form of the tongue of man and are constantly at war with their neighbors. They’re greedy and stupid but clever enough when they need to defend themselves. Some say, too, their priests have a remarkable skill at healing. Or maybe they’re just really, really hard to kill. Instinct: To wage war

• Launch an amphibious assault
• Heal at a prodigious rate

These strange creatures are no bigger or smarter than their mundane kin. They have the same vicious nature. Over their relations they have one advantage—an oily secretion that oozes from their skin. It makes them hard to catch. On top of that, with a twist of their body they can ignite the stuff, leaving pools of burning oil atop the surface of the water and roasting prey and predator alike. I hear the slimy things make good ingredients for fire-resistant gear, but you have to get your hands on one, first. Instinct: To ignite

• Catch someone or something on fire (even underwater)
• Consume burning prey

Ugly, wrinkled bird-folk, these. Once, maybe, in some ancient past, they were a race of angelic men from on high, but now they eat rats that they fish from the murk with talon-feet and devour with needle-teeth. They understand the tongues of men and dwarves but speak in little more than gibbering tongues, mimicking the words they hear with mocking laughter. It’s a chilling thing to see a beast so close to man or bird but not quite either one. Instinct: To lash out

• Attack from the air
• Carry out the bidding of a more powerful creature

What? Did you think they were all a mile long? Did you think they didn’t come smaller than that? Sure, they may be no bigger than a dog and no smarter than an ape, but a dragon whelp can still belch up a hellish ball of fire that’ll melt your armor shut and drop you screaming into the mud. Their scales, too, are softer than those of their bigger kin, but can still turn aside an arrow or sword not perfectly aimed. Size is not the only measure of might. Instinct: To grow in power

• Start a lair, form a base of power
• Call on family ties
• Demand oaths of servitude

Bakunawa has a brother. Where she is quick to anger and hungry for gold, he is slow and sturdy. She is a knife and he is a shield. A great turtle that lies in the muck and mire for ages as they pass, mud piled upon his back—sometimes trees and shrubs. Sometimes a whole misguided clan of goblins will build their huts and cook their ratty meals on the shell of the dragon turtle. His snapping jaws may be glacier-slow, but they can rend a castle wall. Careful where you tread. Instinct: To resist change

• Move forward implacably
• Bring its full bulk to bear
• Destroy structures and buildings

Their natural form, if you ever see it, is hideous. Like a creature who stopped growing part-way, before it decided it was elf or man or dwarf. Then again, maybe that’s how you get to be the way a doppelganger is—without form, without shape to call their own, maybe all they really seek is a place to fit in. If you go out into the world, when you come back home, make sure your friends are who you think they are. They might, instead, be a doppelganger and your friend might be dead at the bottom of a well somewhere. Then again, depending on your friends, that might be an improvement. Instinct: To infiltrate

• Assume the shape of a person whose flesh it’s tasted
• Use another’s identity to advantage
• Leave someone’s reputation shattered

It’s a really, really big crocodile. Seriously. So big. Instinct: To eat

• Attack an unsuspecting victim
• Escape into the water
• Hold something tight in its jaws

As if in direct defiance of the decay and filth of the world, the gods granted us the coutal. As if to say, “there is beauty, even in this grim place.” A serpent in flight on jeweled wings, these beautiful creatures glow with a soft light, as the sun does through stained glass. Bright, wise, and calm, a coutal often knows many things and sees many more. You might be able to make a trade with it in exchange for some favor. They seek to cleanse and to purge and to make of this dark world a better one. Shame we have so few. The gods are cruel. Instinct: To cleanse

• Pass judgment on a person or place
• Summon divine forces to cleanse
• Offer information in exchange for service

How do you kill a pile of goo? A great, squishy pile of goo that also happens to want to dissolve you and slurp you up? That is a good question to which I have no answer. Do let us know when you find out. Instinct: To dissolve

• Eat away metal, flesh, or wood
• Ooze into a troubling place: food, armor, stomach