So Many Monsters: The Aaracokra

So there's this book called the Monster Manual, right? And it's where (pretty much) all the iconic D&D monsters come from. And on this here blog I'm going to go through it and offer my thoughts on those monsters, because monsters are pretty darn cool.

Stop me if you've heard this one.

Okay yes not the most original idea. But a uniquely D&D idea. Other games have a set world or backstory and you can talk about your theories on where the Scarlet Empress went or what mages were active in 1920s New York, but D&D expects you to make your own setting. I don't know the history of your campaign world (and I'd likely find it as tedious as you'd find mine) but if you're playing D&D you probably have goblins of some sort and liches of some sort and if you've got a unique spin on those that's something I'd like to hear about and maybe incorporate.

Used to be all the worlds had a bridging cosmology in common - Sigil, the Great Wheel, the elements - but that got scrapped 13-odd years ago now, and talking about it is likely to start bickering about editions. Or ranting about how kids these days don't understand how amazing Planescape was, which is pretty much the same thing but more bitter and true.

The other common ground is alignment, but... no, let's not.

Monsters.

First up we have... the aarakocra? Sure, let's go with that.

Bird people. I can get behind bird people. Birds are nasty, filthy creatures - I understand not eating beef or pork because cows and pigs are kind of smart and personable, but chickens man fuck those guys a foot-cube industrial metal cage is too good for them. For aarakocra (or arakkoa, if you don't mind a Blizzardism and don't want players snickering at the cock in the middle) I'd play up the tattered violent bastard angle, make them the bad-tempered hobos of the humanoid races. Bit of Skeksi, bit of... whatever those things were in the mind-swap episode of Farscape (okay those were pretty much Skeksi too). Myth II had the bre'Unor, evil jawbone-throwing pagan types, who worshiped a "profane spirit of elemental air" they believed would become a god if it could feed on the last breaths of their dying enemies. That's totally metal so I steal it pretty much every chance I get, but it fits for dirty air elemental-summoning bird men more than most.

A whole group of javelin-throwing, barbed whip-swinging avians swooping down on travelers through the high mountain passes is a pretty cool image, and would make for a damn difficult fight. Could be fun difficult or frustrating difficult depending on how many ranged options the party had. Bring nets!

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station also had the garuda, which would be another way to handle these, just not a very interesting one. Garuda are proud and obsessed with freedom and live in the desert and hate cities. They're... kind of dull? But the book does give an excellent sense of how unsettling and alien something with a frickin' bird head would be to interact with, all unreadable and predatory, and how huge a bird of about human height would feel. Their bodies are all head and torso, their heads are all jagged killing beak, and their wingspans are so much more than their height. Like with giant eagles you always know this thing is built to rip your face off and eat it.

So take all that and make them also worship a profane spirit of elemental air that wants to suck the dying breath from your lungs. Much better.

(Next up's the aboleth. I'm excited.)