Great lumbering beasts, they live in places long since forgotten by the thinking races of the world. Gentle if unprovoked, but mighty if their ire is raised, they trample smaller creatures with the care we might give to crushing an ant beneath our boots. If you see one, drift by and gaze in awe, but do not wake the giant. Instinct: To endure

• Stampede
• Knock something down
• Unleash a deafening bellow

The shape and craft of men wedded to the hunger and the endless teeth of a shark. Voracious and filled only with hate, these creatures will not stop until all life has been consumed. They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be controlled or sated. They are hunger and bloodlust, driven up from the depths of the sea to ravage coastal towns and swallow island villages. Instinct: To spill blood

• Bite off a limb
• Hurl a poisoned spear
• Frenzy at the sight of blood

The medusa are children of a serpent-haired mother, birthing them in ancient times to bear her name across the ages. They dwell near places of civilization—luring folks to their caves with promises of beauty or riches untold. Fine appreciators of art, the medusa curate strange collections of their victims, terror or ecstasy frozen forever in stone. It satisfies their vanity to know they were the last thing seen in so many lives. Arrogant, proud, and spiteful, in their way, they seek what so many do—endless company. Instinct: To collect

• Turn a body part to stone with a look
• Draw someone’s gaze
• Show hidden terrible beauty

A traveling sorcerer once told me that lizardmen came before we did. That before elves and dwarves and men built even the first of their wattle huts, a race of proud lizard kings strode the land. That they lived in palaces of crystal and worshipped their own scaly gods. Maybe that’s true and maybe it ain’t—now they dwell in places men long forgot or abandoned, crafting tools from volcano-glass and lashing against the works of the civilized world. Maybe they just want back what they lost. Instinct: To destroy civilization

• Ambush the unsuspecting
• Launch an amphibious assault

Some are wont to lump these little, rat-like dragon-men in with goblins and orcs, bugbears and hobgoblins. They are smarter and wiser than their kin, however. The kobolds are beholden slaves to dragons and were, in ancient times, their lorekeepers and sorcerer-servants. Their clans, with names like Ironscale and Whitewing, form around a dragon master and live to serve and do its bidding. Spotting a kobold means more are near—and if more are near then a mighty dragon cannot be far, either. Instinct: To serve dragons

• Lay a trap
• Call on dragons or draconic allies
• Retreat and regroup

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