"Awesome Soup" Hex Maniac is an inspiration and a role model for me
his dark materials will literally always work bc every small child wants an animal companion that loves you most and goes on adventures with you and every adult wants an animal companion that can shoulder some of life’s immense psychologically damage for you. and you can pet it
And to tear down the feeble corpse of God! Every kid and adult wants that also!
Malebranche, Hadriel
Image by Sam Wood, © Green Ronin Publishing
[Commissioned by Soluman Blevins. Hadriel first appeared in the 3.0 book Legions of Hell, as the leader of two whole factions of devils, the Submitted and the Obeyed. This was yet another “BDSM is Evil” themed monster, which were a common theme in RPGs trying to be “edgy” in the 90s and 00s. And her backstory, rebelling against the misogyny of Hell, gives her original flavor text something of a girlboss vibe. I have nothing against either BDSM or rebelling against misogyny, so I wanted to make sure there was something genuinely evil about my take on Hadriel. Long story short, Hadriel is a TERF.
There is a 5e conversion of The Book of Fiends, which has rather more of an art budget and is in full color. I don’t like that rendition of Hadriel as much; she’s more conventionally beautiful and doesn’t even have visible bone hooks. Sam Wood’s more extreme take is very cool and very HR Giger meets Clive Barker. I suspect Hadriel might even have been an influence on Magic: the Gathering’s Elesh Norn, with the sweeping headdress and corset of gore.]
Hadriel Duchess of Domination, Lady Cindara, Mistress Concerns aristocracy, radical feminism, sadomasochism Domains Charm, Evil, Law, Nobility Subdomains Aristocracy, Devil, Lust, Tyranny Worshipers female supremacists, noblewomen, slavers Minions erinyes, handmaiden devils, kytons Unholy Symbol a crossed sickle and riding crop Favored Weapon sickle Obedience spend one hour inflicting pain on a sapient creature without killing it. You may use yourself for this purpose if you do not have a subject on hand. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saves against the staggered and stunned conditions. Boons 1: eagle’s splendor 2/day; 2: charm monster 2/day; 3: waves of ecstasy 2/day (as 6th level spell)
Malebranche, Hadriel CR 21 LE Outsider (extraplanar) This giant humanoid is cruelly thin, with violet skin stretched over bone. Her face is beautiful, but cruel, and a mane of spines grows from the back of her head. Bony hooks protrude from her wrists, and she wears a corset made of bones and a skirt made of tanned leather.
Hadriel, the Duchess of Domination, is a powerful and ambitious devil who became a malebranche on her own initiative. Originally an erinyes, she expected and demanded more power, eventually carving her own body into a stronger and more monstrous form and joining the court of Mephistopheles. In the misogynistic hierarchies of Hell, this entailed acting as a consort to a male pit fiend, who met with a “tragic accident” and had his resources usurped by Hadriel. She has since moved to the Material Plane as her primary base, seeking to sacrifice an entire planet to Hell in order to curry Asmodeus’ favor and gain further advancement. Part of this process has been spurring a cult to form on her behalf, granting her a sliver of divine power.
Hadriel is a sadistic combatant, and although she can end fights in an instant with her mind controlling abilities, prefers to drag them out. She wants to leave enemies broken, beaten and humiliated before making them her slaves. She has two auras, the first inspiring fear and the second an enthralling mental weakness. In melee, she fights with her bone hook and quill-like horns, but rarely fights alone, instead working along with a squad of bodyguards and thralls. She has no compunctions about abandoning a losing battle, leaving her minions behind to die as punishment for their failure.
The Duchess of Domination has shapechanging abilities, and commonly travels the Material Plane under the guise of Lady Cindara, a woman of great wealth and vague royal descent. Lady Cindara is the leader of the Shrieking Violet Society, a women’s club that acts as a front for Hadriel’s cult. Every headquarters is the site of an infernal sigil, part of a plan to transform an entire planet into a magic circle and transport it physically into Hell. Initially, the Shrieking Violet Society seems to be a place for upper class women to converse and advocate for their position, but the more initiated one becomes, the crueler revelations are made. Hadriel’s experiences with misogyny have warped her perspective into a complete reversal, envisaging a perfect society where “proper women” completely dominate men and rule over them with an iron fist. The Shrieking Violet definition of a “proper woman” is narrow, and trans women, gender nonconforming people and others who do not fit their criteria are seen as abominations to be exterminated.
Hadriel stands ten feet tall in her natural form. Her pride prevents her from ever assuming male guise through shapeshifting or illusion magic.
For some reason (she said, knowingly), tumblr doesn’t list this one. Hadriel doesn’t turn up if you search my blog, either for her name or for malebranche, despite being accurately and fully tagged.
How long before we start seeing cases like these for just being queer? Do we have to get to that stage for people to start to mobilize against this loudly? We can't let the fight against internet censorship and puritan outrage against NSFW content be another controlled narrative by the right wing grifters.
Glommer - Don't Starve: Reign of Giants
A many-eyed, fly-like insect that produces flammable and (technically) edible goop every once in a while. It spawns during the full moon and will follow you around if you picked up the rafflesia that it spawns near.
It is considered to be an extremely innocent creature, and killing it will cause Krampus to spawn immediately. As it should, whoever harms one of these beasts should suffer a thousand terrors.
More than "here in the Southern Hemisphere we have inverted seasons :)" thing, which is TECHNICALLY true, I would go a step further and encourage to think about that "much of the world does not exactly has a spring-summer-fall-winter season sequence as they show in cartoons"
so i live in boorloo (perth) which is on noongar country and 1. i fucking love the noongar seasons it’s so much more accurate to here 2. should be noted that other season stereotypes are completely different! there’s ONE native deciduous tree here (common coral tree) and it blooms in the middle of july, which to a greater point! different native plants are always blooming all year round! the traditional “spring” period doesn’t really that many more (native) flowers than any other time of the year!
anyways i fucking hate how northern hemisphere coded the western holidays are girl why are you putting up snowflakes and reindeer it’s 40°c outside i am going to melt into a puddle
The Wageworker, Lincoln, Nebraska, September 13, 1907
I would love to see a Monsters Reimagined on Yuan-Ti. I really like the aesthetic of snake humanoids, but the way they are described as “evil because they have no emotions by default” and the fact that they play into some of the worst mesoamerican stereotypes has always rubbed me the wrong way.
IMonsters Reimagined: Yuan-Ti
I'll admit that this one was a little bit of a challenge from a conceptual angle, in no small part because yuan-ti are one of d&d's many "monstrous humanoids" who's presence in the game is pretty much summed up by what kind of animal they are. Very specifically, they embody what western audiences THINK snakes represent: decadence, hedonism, scheming, coldness, eastern exoticism, mysticism, and evil. They are snake cultists, in that they are snakes who are part of a cult, and they are cultists who worship snakes, everything they do in the game is in some way related to cults and/or snakes, and that makes this post more of a full on reinvention than a simple reinterpretation.
That said, I love both challenges AND chances for me to give my opinion on things, so I'm happy to share my top to bottom thoughts on the serpentfolk beneath the cut. For now, the TLDR is that if you want to do something interesting with them, use the snake-cult transformation gimmick, but set it in the past, meaning that modern day Yuan-Ti are the descendants of heretics, visibly marked out as untrustworthy much in the same way that tieflings are. Some may lean in to this sinister reputation, while others attempt to hide it. Others use their hypnotic charm to carve out a place for themselves as courtiers, merchants, hucksters and influencers.
What's wrong: Much like orcs, Yuan-Ti were a pulp-adventure monster made to decouple tropes about exotic and sinister eastern spiritualities from any one particular culture. They were the default enemies to throw in if you needed fodder for a forgotten desert/jungle temple, and they rode the snake gimmick HARD, having traps, weapons, buildings, minions, cultures and religions all built around snakes. Yuan-ti culture went about as deep as finding an excuse to capture players and stick them to an altar for sacrifice, and most authors left it at that.
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