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Sample file CREDITS In Memory of Charles Wright. His seat at the table is empty now, the laughter remains. Writer and Designer: Evan Jackson Template: Adapted from Simple Microsoft Word Template by Laura Hirsbrunner Cover Illustrator: Matt Forsyth Interior Illustrators: Matt Forsyth, Jake Baker, Arthur Rackham, Agam, carcocta, Dorothe, Enrique Lopez Garre, Herbert James Draper, Sarah Richter, Tomislav Jakupec, Tristan Brandon, Wilgard Krause, Wizards of the Coast provided art. Special Thanks: Mara Kovacevic, Tristan Brandon, Steven Townshend Additional Credit: Grimnir's epigram in the introduction is (very loosely) adapted from lines that appear in Henry Adams Bellows' translations of the skaldic poems Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál. This crime against literary decency was perpetrated by myself with little regard to the integrity of original verse or skaldic form, cobbling lines together that are rewritten and out-of-context from disparate stanzas in two different texts. I doubt that Bellows would willingly recognize it as his own, but I could not have written it if he hadn't done it first, and better. –EJ ON THE COVER Matt Forsyth illustrates a giant serpent-like creature rearing from the depths in a cataclysmic scene. Matt is a fantasy artist and illustrator from New Zealand whose work has been featured in the ADOM roleplaying game, Greenbrier Games’ upcoming Lost One’s boardgame, and multiple supplements by Thieves’ Cant Games. His work is additionally featured the following pages of this text: 5, 8, 13, 14, 17-19, 22, 23, 29, 31, 33- 35, 37, 40, 42, 47, 48, 50, 56. Disclaimer: Thieves’ Cant Games is not responsible for the loss of hands placed in the mouths of gargantuan wolves, curses incurred while pilfering lindwyrm gold, or the consequences of ignoring ancestral guidance delivered by non-corporeal spirits. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Eberron, the dragon ampersand, Ravnica and all other Wizards of the Coast product names,Sample and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast in the USA and other countries. file This work contains material that is copyright Wizards of the Coast and/or other authors. Such material is used with permission under the Community Content Agreement for Dungeon Masters Guild. All other original material in this work is copyright 2021 by Thieves’ Cant Games and Evan Jackson and published under the Community Content Agreement for Dungeon Masters Guild. 1 KENNINGS AND ATTESTATIONS How the Norse imagination conceived the monstrous is INTRODUCTION known to us mostly through Skaldic poetry. These stories and songs were part of a vibrant oral tradition, which means they were probably told and retold over generations, with each poet reinventing them a bit along the way. Like all storytellers, good skalds adapted their tale to serve the needs of their communities. Sadly, many of these tales have since been lost to time, while others show signs of having been reinterpreted through the lens of later writers and traditions. Fortunately for us, Norse peoples imagined a broad menagerie of dangerous beasts—with some very specific ideas about the role they would play in the final destruction of their world. Some of these terrors appear in multiple surviving texts, alongside vivid physical descriptions and tales of their dreadful deeds. In fact, many were so well-known that skalds could merely refer to them indirectly with compound epithets called kennings. “Fame-wolf,” for example, appears as a kenning specific to Fenrir, the bound wolf of Ragnarök. For this reason, other legendary creatures are only ever mentioned in passing, leaving us with little more than a name or forgotten kenning to piece together their stories. Though incomplete, these accounts—or attestations—of the Norse monsters in Skaldic poetry have sparked the imagination of modern fantasy writers for generations. From Tolkien’s first forays in the genre to the bestiaries of our favorite RPGs, they’re in the DNA of our D&D archetypes but, like modern skalds, we’ve reinvented and reimagined them a bit to fit the needs of the game. The creatures attested in this supplement are a bit…on the darker side. They embody the abstract fears of a people who endured a harsh existence, given monstrous form. But what has always fascinated me about the Norse tradition is how they approached the certainty of death. They treated the end of their existence as a known quantity—an inevitable storm of fire and desolation that would one day erase everything they were from the world. They named their death and, in so doing, lived. At the core of their stories is a shared experience that looked a rough, unforgiving world in the eye…yet somehow still found the resolve to laugh, love, and be heroic. This book is my attempt to make a small part of that tradition possible at your table. May the stories you tell be nothing short of legendary. -Evan Jackson Thieves’ Cant Games Sample file 2 section that highlights its mythic trait, notes how using it CHAPTER 1: BESTIARY changes the difficulty of the encounter and the rewards, and includes read-aloud text you can use mid-battle to This bestiary provides game statistics and lore for forty signal a terrifying shift in the conflict. monsters suitable for any D&D campaign, but which are specifically drawn from Norse mythology. Among those presented are many of the major players from the foretold NORSE ARCHETYPES events of Ragnarök, but also creatures from lesser known While this book offers a variety of horrors to set upon your myths and folklore—all of them ready to serve as players, you may notice there are some common themes antagonists and allies for the players in your game. that repeat themselves. The creatures in this bestiary are organized As mentioned above, early Norse culture was survival- alphabetically. A few are grouped under a banner heading; focused. Many of the monsters they dreamed up can for example, the “Aptrgangar” section contains stat blocks probably be understood as reflections of things that for various types of again-walkers. Creatures within these represented threats to the collective safety of their tribes sections are presented alphabetically or in order of and communities. The tale of a villain so twisted by greed attestation. that they turned physically monstrous was a common At the end of this book is an appendix containing lists of attestation, as were creatures that embodied the spread of the creatures arranged by type, challenge rating, and poison, disease, and corruption. environment. DMs can use these lists, in conjunction with With death as a constant presence, it makes a certain similar information in the Dungeon Master’s Guide and amount of sense that skalds had plenty of stories about other sources, to choose monsters for a particular walking corpses, who were also readily blamed as vectors adventure or campaign. of infection when any of the above plagues struck. Insatiable, predatory hunger was also a repeated motif, particularly among the monsters set to devour the world at the Twilight of the Gods. In the Norse view, this unchecked consumption of life would besiege all human civilization, side-by-side with the staggering power of the primordial elements embodied in the armies of the jötnar. LANGUAGES, ALIGNMENT AND TYPE Some Norse monsters, like the legendary jötnar, defy certain models of D&D categorization. For this reason, languages known by the monsters in this supplement should be taken as a general guide and adjusted freely as needed. These selections were an interesting exercise because many of the monsters borrow traits from more than one of the traditional monster types. For example, is the “giant” language really the best representation for the tongue of the jötnar when not all jötnar were giants? Alignment can be similarly tricky when applied to Norse MYTHIC MONSTERS mythos. Ancient Norse concepts of right and wrong don’t necessarily map precisely to the traditional balance as Some of the most infamous terrors from Norse mythology depicted in the D&D multiverse. Returning to the previous are described in this supplement. The skalds who told their example of the jötnar, despite the fact that they were fated stories presented them as world-ending threats of antagonists of the gods, it does not necessarily follow that legendary proportions. The entries for the monsters in this such figures were evil. They could just as easily be seen as book that fit this archetype all have a feature that sets agents of cosmic cycles and change. them apart: mythic traits. Finally, typing Norse monsters also involves a similar Mythic traits were first introduced by Wizards of the complexity. As noted above, the concept of the jötnar is a Coast in the sourcebook Mythic Odysseys of Theros, which fairly broad one. Some scholars would even label figures featured monsters of similarly epic scale. As explained in like Fenrir and Jörmungandr as jötnar due to their that text, mythic traits are optional; they don’t need to be parentage, though they are clearly something different used during combat with these monsters. If you so choose, than the classical D&D giant. In cases like these, I have you may simply ignore a monster’s mythic trait and chosen types I felt players would most likely expect, mythic actions. If you wish to increase a battle’s stakes, adding the “titan” tag where applicable. though, using a monster’s mythic trait results in some In general, campaigns that are heavily saga-themed will mid-battle twist that changes the way the monster most likely require a bit of reskinning and customization behaves, restores its resources, or provides it with new Sampleof the classic D&D lore from thefile outset.