A Bestiary of Sundry Creatures (PRINT)

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD WAS STRANGER THAN YOUR MONSTER MANUAL

Bees crawl as blind worms from the rotting flesh of cattle.

A cockatrice hatches from the egg of a black hen corrupted by sorcery.

Kittens born during May must be killed before they bring ruin upon the household.

The caladrius bird lives in royal palaces and can reveal, merely by looking at a sick man, whether he will recover or die.

This was not fantasy.

This was natural history.

A Bestiary of Sundry Creatures gathers the strange, contradictory and frequently magnificent beliefs recorded in medieval and early modern bestiaries, then adapts them for use in fantasy roleplaying games.

The animals of the pre-modern imagination were more than collections of teeth, claws and convenient experience points. Every creature possessed hidden qualities. Its flesh might cure disease. Its blood might expose poison. Its habits might reveal a moral lesson, predict disaster or provide the essential component of some obscure magical operation.

Even familiar animals become wondrous when viewed through unfamiliar eyes.

Inside you’ll find:

• Creatures drawn from medieval bestiaries, scholarly writings and rustic folklore.

• Descriptions of their supposed temperaments, habits and peculiar behaviours.

• Medicinal, alchemical and magical uses attributed to animals and their remains.

• Omens, superstitions and beliefs suitable for building adventures.

• Game statistics compatible with traditional OSR systems.

• Alternative statistics for Mörk Borg.

• Material for making medieval and early modern fantasy settings richer, stranger and more convincing.

• A substantial supply of things your players will confidently assume they understand—until the cows begin producing bees.

Use the book as a conventional bestiary, but that is only the beginning.

A creature’s body may be valuable to physicians, witches and alchemists. Its appearance may be treated as a divine warning. Its habits may influence heraldry, religious teaching or local custom. Hunting one might require knowledge rather than merely a sharpened sword.

A monster does not need seventeen special attacks to be interesting.

Sometimes it merely needs to behave according to rules the players do not understand.

A Bestiary of Sundry Creatures is ideal for Games Masters who want their fantasy worlds to feel genuinely old rather than merely modern worlds with poor sanitation and decorative swords. It replaces familiar assumptions with the unsettling logic of another age: a world in which folklore, theology, medicine and natural philosophy bleed freely into one another.

The result is stranger than invention because people once believed it was true.

PRINT EDITION

• 149 pages

• A5 hardback: 148 × 210 mm

• Full-colour interior

• Case-wrap binding

• Compatible with OSR games and Mörk Borg

• Written by Neil Coates

• Edited by James “Grim” Desborough

• ISBN: 978-1-291-99885-6

A sourcebook for Games Masters, worldbuilders and anyone tired of fantasy animals behaving like entries in a modern zoology textbook.

Here be creatures.

More importantly, here be beliefs about creatures—and those are considerably more dangerous.