The deep elves lost the sweetness and gentle peace of their bright cousins ages ago, but they did not abandon grace. They move with a swiftness and beauty that would bring a tear to any warrior’s eye. In the dark, they’ve practiced. A cruelty has infested their swordsmanship—a wickedness comes to the fore. Barbed blades and whips replace the shining pennant-spears of elven battles on the surface. The swordmasters of the deep elf clans do not merely seek to kill, but to punish with every stroke of their blades. Wickedness and pain are their currency. Instinct: To punish unbelievers

• Inflict pain beyond measure
• Use the dark to advantage

It was not so simple a thing as a war over religion or territory. No disagreement of queens led to the great sundering of the elves. It was sadness. It was the very diminishing of the world by the lesser races. The glory of all the elves had built was cracking and turning to glass. Some, then, chose to separate themselves from the world; wracked with tears they turned their backs on men and dwarves. There were others, though, that were overcome with something new. A feeling no elf had felt before. Spite. Hatred filled these elves and twisted them and they turned on their weaker cousins. Some still remain after the great exodus below. Some hide amongst us with spider-poisoned blades, meting out that strangest of punishments: elven vengeance. Instinct: To spite the surface races

• Poison them
• Unleash an ancient spell
• Call reinforcements

Your worst seafood nightmare come to life. A vicious sort of half-man half-crawdad, cursed with primal intelligence and blessed with a pair of razor-sharp claws. Strange things lurk in the stinking pools in caverns best forgotten and the chuul is one of them. If you spot one, your best hope is a heavy mace to crack its shell and maybe a little garlic butter. Mmmm. Instinct: To split

• Split something in two with mighty claws
• Retreat into water

Driven from the city, a cultist finds sanctuary in towns and villages. Discovered there, he flees to the hills and scratches his devotion on the cave walls. Found out again, he is chased with knife and torch into the depths, crawling deeper and deeper until, in the deepest places, he loses his way. First, he forgets his name. Then he forgets his shape. His chaos gods, most beloved, bless him with a new one. Instinct: To undermine the established order

• Rewrite reality
• Unleash chaos from containment

The end of all things shall be a burning—of tree and earth and of the air itself. It shall come upon the plains and mountains not from beyond this world but from within it. Birthed from the womb of deepest earth shall come the Dragon that Will End the World. In its passing all will become ash and bile and the Dungeon World a dying thing will drift through planar space devoid of life. They say to worship the Apocalypse Dragon is to invite madness. They say to love it is to know oblivion. The awakening is coming. Instinct: To end the world

• Set a disaster in motion
• Breathe forth the elements
• Act with perfect foresight

Deep below the surface of the world, in freshwater seas untouched by the sun, dwell the aboleth. Fish the size of whales, with strange growths of gelatinous feelers used to probe the lightless shores. They’re served by slaves: blind albino victims of any race unfortunate enough to stumble on them, drained of thought and life by the powers of the aboleth’s alien mind. In the depths they plot against each other, fishy cultists building and digging upward towards the surface until someday, they’ll breach it. For now, they sleep and dream and guide their pallid minions to do their bidding. Instinct: To command

• Invade a mind
• Turn minions on them
• Put a plan in motion

Long-forgotten, our last remaining ancestors dwell in caves in the wild parts of the world. Driven away by our cities and villages, our iron swords and our fire, these ape-men eat their meat raw with sharp-nailed hands and jagged teeth. They strike out at frontier villages wielding clubs and in overwhelming numbers to seize cattle, tools, and poor prisoners to drag into the hills. Known for their viciousness and their stink, they’re an old and dying race we’d all sooner forget existed. Instinct: To prey on civilization

• Raid and retreat
• Use scavenged weapons or magic

Even spiders have their gods, whispered to in webs with little praying arms. Instinct: To weave webs (literal and metaphorical)

• Enmesh in webbing
• Put a plot into motion

They live in your skin. Or your organ meat. Or your eyeballs. They grow there and then, in a bloody and horrific display, burrow their way out. Disgusting. Instinct: To infect

• Burrow under flesh
• Lay eggs
• Burst forth from an infected creature

Evolutionary happenstance has created a clever underground predator. Disguised as a rocky formation—most often a stalactite or stalagmite—the roper waits for its prey to wander by. When it does, whether it’s a rat, a goblin or a foolhardy adventurer, a mass of thin, whipping tentacles erupts from the thing’s hide. A hundred lashes in the blink of an eye and the stunned prey is being dragged into the roper’s mouth. Surprisingly effective for a thing that looks like a rock. Instinct: To ambush

• Ensnare the unsuspecting
• Disarm a foe
• Chew on someone