The Misshapen and Gargantuan

The neutral parties of the Shadowlands, predator and prey. The monsters are sometimes intelligent and sometimes not. The common feature of monsters is that they are not human in appearance, although they will often have human features. Most grant no favors, either ignoring or hunting those humans they encounter, dependent

The most mysterious of the Others are the Monsters. And that is saying something, given the competition. The Monsters range from nearly human in appearance to entirely inhuman. They are typically seen as the neutral parties of the Shadowlands, predator and prey. The monsters are sometimes intelligent and sometimes not- but always inscrutable. They grant few favors, either ignoring or hunting those humans they encounter, dependent upon their nature. Those that do  grant favors ask for a most primal resource, blood. So tread lightly.

Legends say that this hesitancy to grant favors stems from the Monsters having already granted the inhabitants of the Shadowlands a greater favor than the rest of the Others. According to legend, the form of the Shadowlands was built from conceptual essence of the Monsters. Monsters are well known for being composed nearly entirely of form rather than idea. They are physical rather than spiritual. And legend says that this is because the Monster burned away their spiritual essence giving shape and form to the major realms, and that it was this expenditure of effort that rendered the Monsters indecipherable to the rest of the inhabitants of the major realms.

Gods are largely hostile to inhabitants. The Elders and the Fair Folk tend to be helpful to inhabitants. But Monsters, like the Spirits, can be either helpful or hostile. And unique among the Others, some Monsters simply wish to be left alone. But Psychonauts should not take this antipathy from the Monsters in general as evidence that monsters are generally not dangerous. The Monsters ranks include the Greater Abominations and the Hand Eaters. These Monsters are the most violent Others, more so even than angels. And likewise the Beasts of the Seven and the Great Old Monsters are actively and cleverly malicious. Many other Monsters are dangerous in the same way that a hungry predator is dangerous.

But unlike other groups of Others, such as the Gods, the Monsters have no shared goal that anyone can determine. From top to bottom, the Monsters are ciphers and mysteries. And psychonauts are advised to avoid even the friendly ones.

The Chimera

According to Wikipedia, the word Chimera has come to mean any mythical beasts formed from the parts of different animals. Many monsters appear formed from parts of many creatures. Chimeras are those monsters where the disparate parts are the key feature of the beasts. The strangeness of the forms of these monsters is what makes them Chimera. For some, like the Bakumera, the comparison to the classical Hellenistic Chimera is obvious. For others, such as the Story Hunter, the connection is less obvious.

The Lesser Chimera

The so called Lesser Chimera are what a gamer might consider the regular monsters of the Major Realms. The Lesser Chimera do not move between realms, and are typically unique to that realm. Each major realm has Lesser Chimera that hew to a particular idea. This is the world of stories after all.

Monsters of the Major Realms

The Monsters of the Foglands

The Monsters of the Foglands are birthed from the fallout of the corrupted Fair Folk known as the Broken. They exude corruption, dripping pus and oil, surrounded by halos of radiation. They are less uniform that other monsters, varying from specimen to specimen due to frequent and excessive mutation. They look unhealthy. Many appear to be dying. But that doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you.

The Monsters of the Mirrored Lands

The Monsters of the Green Lands

Speakers of the Free Tribes speculate that the monsters exist as tests or challenges for the warriors of the Free Path. Not all agree with this assessment, though it is popular among the Frontier of the Mirrored Lands and amongst the Ancient Tribes of the Green Lands. Most scholars and wizards agree, however, that Monsters of the Green Lands do exist as challenges and tests of the warriors of the Free Path.

The monsters of the Green Lands take the form of great prehistoric beasts, chimeric blends of animals long since gone from the Shallows and the Bonelands. The Great Barrow Monster is an enormous cross between a cave bear and a longhorn bison. The Great Plains Monster combines elements of the entedont (as called the hell pig) and the dire wolf. The House that Walks looks like a mammoth clothed in the bony shell and armored tail of the glyptodon. The Great Sky Thunder looks like a paraceratherium (a pre-historic rhinoceros) with the antlers and rib cage of the great elk. The Great Shallows Monster looks like an ambulocetus (the prehistory walking whale) with the face, fangs and claws of the smilodon.

The Great Barrow Monster is the test of cleansing. The Great Plains Monster is the test of Initiation. The House that Walks is the test of feasting. The Great Sky Thunder is the test of divination and insight. The Great Shallows Monster is the test of redemption. Hunting or confronting these monsters is considered a sacred part of the processes named. And if successfully challenged, the Monsters will accept the victory and leave the warrior in peace.

The Monsters of the Painted Labyrinth

The Monsters of the Painted Labyrinth all harken back the the prehistoric creature found in the Burgess Shale. The Monsters of the Painted Labyrinth are the most alien of the Lesser Chimera, being formed from the parts of creatures which have not walked to earth since before the age of the dinosaurs.

The Great Old Monsters

The Great Old Monsters are mighty singular creatures that travel between the Major Realms. They hunt artifacts, names, and rare stories.

• The Bakumera
• The Name Eater
• The Story Hunter

The Beasts of the Seven

The Beasts of the Seven are powerful Chimera aligned with corruptions of the precepts of the Song of Seven. These monsters precede the Hungry Empire. Everyone who walks the Free Path will find themselves tempted to stray from it. This temptation is what births the First King. This temptation is the source of the Hungry Empire at the beginning of each new cycle of the Age of Eternal Summer. And the Beasts of the Seven generate much of this temptation. They are not servants of the Hungry Empire however, and will not bend the knee to the Locust King. Despite their role, they serve the story. Iron must be forged. Steel must be tempered. Warriors must also be forged and tempered if they are to withstand the rigors of the role in the story.

The Beasts of the Seven are dangerous and untrustworthy. They are not sympathetic and do not like the practitioners of the Free Path, but they serve the story nonetheless. That is there role, they cannot help themselves.

The Hooded Ones

The transforming Monsters known as the Hooded Ones are a strange bunch. They are connected by the fact that they were all once ordinary inhabitants transformed into something truly alien. The Abominations fell victim to logical fallacies to such as degree that they were corrupted by their beliefs. The Hand Eaters became so dependent upon the hunger of the Locust that it twisted them into monstrous personifications of that hunger. The Rooted alone retain the ability to transform back and forth between their old and new forms.

The Abominations

The Abominations are always hostile and seem to naturally align with the Hungry Empire and the Locust King.

• Learn more about the Abominations here

The Hand Eaters

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The Rooted

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The Grigorim

The Giants of the lands.

The Giants

Defined by their size, the Giants are enigmatic creatures of mysterious origin. Three species of Giants remain, called the Last Giants. But there are also a great many individual Named Giants survive from the otherwise extinct species of giant.

• The Colossi
• The Watchers
• The Trolls

The Ancients

The Ancients are unique monsters. They are immense monsters, great and powerful beings. All appear highly intelligent, but only the Eldest of the Deeps ever speaks. 

• The Sentinel
• The Behemoth
• The Leviathan
• The Juggernaut
• The Eldest of the Deeps

The Cthonic Ones

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• The Burrowers
• The Tunnellers
• The Bloom