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Planar Bestiary by Monte Cook Games v1
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itsatraaaaap authored Dec 11, 2023
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]
}
],
"bookData": [
{
"id": "PB5E",
"source": "PB5E",
"data": [
{
"type": "section",
"name": "Introduction",
"page": 4,
"entries": [
"During my formative gaming years in the 1980s, I occasionally ran tabletop roleplaying games for my friends. Early on, that was mostly D&D, just like you'd expect. But our group branched out into other systems as they came to our attention through the pages of {@i Dragon} magazine. One of those was Gamma World, a game about adventuring in a vastly changed new world following a nuclear holocaust. I was keen to run it and bring my group of friends into an alternate dimension of mutants and radioactive threats the likes of which they'd never seen before.",
"So one afternoon we sat down and rolled up characters. Someone had scored a secondary source of new abilities from a different publisher. I don't recall where it came from, but the players were eager to fuse those additional interesting quirks into their characters, and I was all for it. Getting everything squared away during character creation took well over an hour, maybe two.",
"But finally, it was time to play! I had a short location ready for the PCs to explore: a gargantuan land ark constructed generations earlier, partly buried, filled with moldering super‑science remnants and horrible monsters. And in the very first compartment the PCs opened, they encountered gamma moths.",
"According to my recollection, gamma moths were radioactive. The monster entry asked that I roll on a radiation reaction chart to see what weird thing would happen to the PCs. I rolled, and in my shock at the result, I blurted it out loud before I could think twice about the repercussions: \"You're all dead!\"",
"Which I knew, even as I said it, was a terrible, no‑good way for the game to go. Chalk it up to a learning experience we all benefited from. Sometimes, you gotta let the dice {@i inform} your decisions as the GM, not dictate them. I mean, sure, a total party kill might eventually be in the cards; I've got a reputation to consider. But not during the first encounter.",
"Learn from my mistake. When you take your game someplace strange, like a perilous new world of the Material Plane or some other place in the multiverse, pay attention to what the monsters encountered there—and let's face it, there will be monsters—can actually do if they're new to you.",
"Guess what? {@i Planar Bestiary} is a trove of monsters gathered from across the planes of existence. All of them have an odd quirk, an unexpected backstory related to crossplanar travel or a dimensional anomaly, or possibly a deadly ability designed to test foes to the limit and beyond. New fiends and celestials, weird aberrations and monstrosities, and strange new humanoids (including some that hail from worlds of high technology) can be found within these pages.",
"However, here's my solemn promise to you: breathe easy—no gamma moths wait in ambush here.",
{
"entries": [
{
"type": "inset",
"entries": [
"{@i Planar Bestiary} was developed as part of the {@i Path of the Planebreaker} crowdfunding campaign, which presents new alternate worlds, including new planar class options, subclasses, feats, items, spells, player character species options, and of course, new planar monsters for the GM. Despite that, you don't need the {@i Path of the Planebreaker} book to use and enjoy {@i Planar Bestiary}. All you need is a working knowledge of the 5E ruleset."
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"type": "section",
"name": "Vanura",
"page": 142,
"entries": [
"A vanura is an anthropomorphic toad-like creature with a spinning ball of chaos embedded in its chest. Other intelligent creatures of Limbo (particularly another prominent toad-like species) look upon them as ridiculous mockeries of “true” chaos life, much like Material Plane humans might say about a monkey wearing a shirt. Whether they're mockeries or actually a divergent path split off from a precursor species (as some have hypothesized), vanuras and other natives of Limbo generally fly into vicious conflict at the first sight of each other.",
{
"type": "inset",
"entries": [
"Vanuras may be encountered alone, but more often they gather in small or large groups, swapping colors and fixations many times over the years."
]
},
{
"name": "Born of Pure Chaos.",
"entries": [
"The first vanura was born when a humanoid creature was slain in an area of Limbo where the plane's natural chaos was surging, transforming the corpse into a weird echo of its former self. A newborn vanura retains only fragmentary memories from its former life and is consumed with an urge to spread chaos—figuratively and literally.",
"Imprinted at their creation with strange obsessions and behaviors, they infest various planes, seeking fulfillment and spreading unpredictability wherever they go. Each vanura is predominantly one color, but they change hues with their comrades, much as people swap clothes and equipment."
]
},
{
"name": "Obsessive Nature.",
"entries": [
"Every vanura has an obsessive interest in one particular thing, such as wealth, death, weapons, emotions, or building things. They call this interest their fixation and make it the defining aspect of their personality. A vanura's fixation is more than a passion or hobby—it's the one thing that gives their life meaning. They argue and debate about it, make shrines to it, lose sleep over it, cry and laugh and scream over it. Vanuras have been known to fly into a screaming, murderous rage if their fixation is ridiculed or dismissed. A vanura's fixation determines its color; wealth-obsessed vanuras are ochre, counting-obsessed vanuras are maroon, death-obsessed are beige, and so on.",
"Vanuras usually keep their fixation for a few weeks or months, then abandon it for another. A vanura about to change its fixation becomes tinged with the color of its new interest, then transforms fully to its new color over a span of a few minutes when it's ready to obsess over something new. It's common for two vanuras in the same lair to swap names along with their fixations, so that the group always has one named Rauj who is fixated on wealth, even though the individual who was Rauj isn't the same creature.",
"Vanuras don't refer to each other by their colors, but by their fixations. For example, they would call an ochre vanura a “vanura of wealth,” “vanura of trinkets,” or a similar term indicating its interest in collecting valuable things."
]
},
{
"name": "Many Forms.",
"entries": [
"Although the base form of a vanura is consistent, as a species they are prone to mutation, and individuals vary greatly in shape, and sometimes even in size. One vanura's eyes might be within its mouth instead of on top of its head, another might have too-long limbs or an extra one, a third might have large fangs or a sharp bony crest on its head, and a fourth might be nearly twice the height of its comrades. These mutations may slowly change over time, but they can occur rapidly when a vanura changes its fixation. Other than its toad-like shape, the only real constant to a vanura's appearance is its color, which is determined by its fixation."
]
},
{
"name": "Reproductive Reanimation.",
"entries": [
"Although the first vanuras arose spontaneously (and some continue to do so in areas of concentrated chaos), most new ones are created by the deliberate action of an existing vanura. A vanura can eat the internal organs of a dead humanoid, then spend ten minutes channeling the chaos energy from their chest into the corpse's body, bringing it back to life as a new vanura. The type of vanura it becomes depends on what fixation persists from the mind of the dead humanoid; it is common for one type of vanura to reanimate an entirely different kind from a humanoid body. Most humanoids aren't suitable for this transformation and the process often fails (fewer than one in twenty attempts succeeds). Even the vanura don't know why it does or doesn't work, and assume that it is pure chance."
]
},
{
"name": "Heart of Creation.",
"entries": [
"A vanura can create small objects by pulling chaos out of their chest. These objects never weigh more than a few pounds and usually dissolve into nothingness a few minutes after the creature stops paying attention to it. Much of a vanura's equipment and treasure are made in this fashion."
]
}
]
}
]
}
],
"legendaryGroup": [
{
"source": "PB5E",
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