Fiend Folio: Achaieri

All I can really say about the Achaieri is this: It's a bird. Why does it need four legs?

Okay, no, there are many more things I can say:

Why is it round? Why is the picture in the 3e MM even less menacing than the one in the Fiend Folio? I mean, it's kinda menacing. I could see how this thing could be scary. And then I think, "Round bird with four legs what?"

It gives off toxic black smoke when injured. That's actually kinda cool.

I've never used this thing in a game, and never had it inflicted on me in a game. It's in 3e D&D core, so obviously it's out there and around in people's headspace, but I suspect I'm not alone in looking at the picture and going "round bird four legs what?"

Which makes me think, hey, maybe I should use it in a game sometime. It's creepy and otheworldly and evil, it doesn't get much play, and the name is actually kind a cool.

This would all hinge on DM description, naturally. If I just went and introduced it with, "it's a large, round bird, with four legs each ending in wicked claws," well... basically I'd need some other way to describe it than "large, round bird." Even my players would laugh at me, and they're used to every monster description ending with "and it has great, terrible claws!"

Things to start with in describing the Achaierai besides "large, round bird":

1. Its stilted, unearthly gate.
2. Its four metallic, scaly legs, each ending in a wickedly sharp claw.
3. Its long, hooked beak.
4. Its terrible, clanging squawk, that seems to echo through the black depths of your very mind.
5. Its blood-red, filthy, matted feathers.
6. Its roving yellow eyes.

(And funny, I thought this was going to be my first FF post to revolve around some variation of "this is the most ridiculous monster I've ever heard of!" but apparently that fine distinction shall go to another critter. I really do think that this thing is kind of cool, in a deranged sort of way, now that I've given it some thought. And "deranged" is the best way to be cool, if you ask me.)

Fiend Folio: Aarakocra

I was recently reminded that I had completely forgotten to mention an item of crucial importance: I've got a copy of the AD&D Fiend Folio. (Someone very nice--but still evil!--figured out that I like collecting the old AD&D hardbacks. Thank you. ;) ) Which, incidentally, is currently the sole 20th century monster compendium I own. Which, as we all know, is pretty much a recipe for gaming awesomeness.

Flipping through the book, I noticed that some of them I've never seen before (the al-mi'raj? What the heck?!), others I'm familiar with through the 3e Monster Manual (the grimlock is there as classic cannon-fodder for illithids), or one-off 3e supplements (the aleax happily resides in the Book of Exalted Deeds), a few have come up in Trollsmyths game (the aarakocra), and there are a few I know because, well, how can you not have heard about the flumph?

Actually, I take it back about the aarakocra. The first time I ran into them was in a book I read in-game during my brief experience with Neverwinter Nights, which I assume mean they featured in a similar way in the Forgotten Realms: one of the mysterious lost elder races that have since ceded domination of the world to humans and dwarves and so on. This is basically how they've come up in Trollsmyth's game, too; the sorcerer the PCs in the group game hired gave us a short lecture about how they used to fight the evil elder menace that built the dungeon we were exploring, but they haven't been a major force, or even seen much at all, in ages.

And there's nothing about this in the aarakocra write up in the Fiend Folio. It's pretty easy to read it into the mountain dwelling tribes that get up to some spiffy weaving and will occasionally give you information that are in the write up, but it doesn't specifically mention anything about the grand past that I've always seen them associated with in later presentations.

What is in here is an adventure. Well, okay. Not a full adventure. You'd still have to have a reason to go into the mountains and get where you could mess with them. But there enough neat cultural details that, if I was putting together some crazy game happenings in the mountains somewhere, I'd throw in a few tribes of bird-men just to give the players something to play with.

Things to do with aarakocra:

1. Put a few territorial banners and pendants up somewhere the PCs are heading for a different reason, and watch them puzzle out what they mean. If and when they mess with them, they get attacked by angry bird-creatures.
2. Have a villain bribe a tribe with shiny objects to guard a place or raid villages. Make sure to throw in a few giant eagle and wind elemental allies for good measure.
3. Next time the PCs are looking around town for rumors, throw in one about terrifying bird-creatures stealing livestock from the surrounding farms. If the PCs want to make it a big deal, let them.
4. The PCs need to find something up in the mountains. The best option might be to hire an aarakocra scout.
5. Some crazy noble gets really into aarakocra weaving. They might just have it up on their walls when the PCs go to visit them (if your players are the kinds of people who ask questions about the scenery, and enjoy a good story to go with it) or they might be specifically interested in hiring the party to collect some good examples.
6. Some crazy noble got really into aarakocra weaving a while back, and wiped out an entire tribe to get the territorial pendant markers. Now either the other tribes nearby figure out what happened, or the PCs stumble across it in the course of another adventure. Hilarity ensues.